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Ghost Children

2/1/2019

What is it about the ghosts of children that creep us out even more than the ghosts of adults? It could be that because children rely on adults for just about everything, once we’ve seen a child ghost we think that they are now somehow attached to us. Secondly, kids can be mischievous. Ghostly children might play pranks on us, and there’s nothing quite as scary as an invisible trickster. And need I remind you of this simple fact … they’re little. Why does this matter? Adults feel safer when they can react quickly to perceived danger. An adult’s line-of-sight is somewhere between 5 and 6 feet off the ground. The thought of a little, creepy, half-invisible, three-foot tall ghost child who suddenly appears out of nowhere or jumps out at us where we can’t see them coming is pretty damn scary! Lastly, thanks to horror films and books, ghostly children always seem to have more knowledge than they should. They never grow old, and they are usually portrayed as being overly precocious; and whenever adults don’t have the upper hand, we feel insecure and frightened.

But before we go any further, I have a confession to make. I’ve seen a ghost child with my own eyes. Yup, I really did! And do you know what? It wasn’t scary at all. It really wasn’t. At least it wasn’t to me. Here’s what happened.

Several years ago I did an investigation at a home in Larchmont, New York that was built somewhere around the turn of the twentieth century. I guess you could call it a mansion because it was pretty large, and it had servants quarters on the ground floor. These were really just bedrooms where the cook and maids once lived. But the family that currently lived in the house had turned these rooms into spare bedrooms and an office. Prior to my arrival, the homeowner told me that the front door was broken, and that she would meet me at the back door. This door lead to the hallway that passed through the servants’ quarters.

I was greeted by the homeowner and we made our way down the hall past the former servants’ bedrooms; three on the left side of the hallway, and one directly in front. As we walked, she was making small-talk and I was futzing around in my ‘ghost bag’. I had forgotten to turn on my digital recorder, and as we walked I was looking down into my the bag to find it. I glanced up for a second, and as I did I saw a little girl in the room at the far end of the hall. She was sitting on a wooden stepping stool, and she was just looking at us as we walked down the hallway. She had blond hair done up in two pigtails that fell on either side of her shoulders, and she was wearing some type of a white top, or a dress. She was smiling at us, and her hands were folded on her lap in front of her. I only looked up at her for a few seconds, then I looked back into my bag for the recorder. My first thought was, “Damn, there’s a kid here. I told the homeowner that kids aren’t allowed in the house during the investigation. Oh well, I guess I’ll be nice and say hello to her when we get down to that room.” I finally found my recorder, and as we neared the bedroom I looked up to say hello to the girl, but there was no one there. The wooden stepping stool was there, but there was no little girl sitting on it. I thought this was really odd because the room was so small that she couldn’t still be in there without my seeing her, and we had arrived at it too quickly for her to have left without my noticing.

We turned right and made our way to the living room. I said, “Are your children home? I just saw a little girl in the bedroom at the end of the hallway.” The woman smiled and said, “What did she look like?” and I described the girl I had seen. “No,” she said, “the kids aren’t here. You said that they shouldn’t be at home during the investigation, so my husband took them out for ice cream. But, we’ve seen the little girl you just described.” She pointed up to the top of the staircase that went from the living room to the upstairs part of the house. “We’ve seen that same girl looking at us through the bannister that runs along the upstairs hallway,” she said. “She has blond hair with pigtails, and she sometimes looks at us between the bars of the bannister as we’re down here in the living room watching TV.”

I was dumbfounded! The girl I had seen looked as solid as any real person, and she wasn’t frightening at all. I wasn’t creeped out by the experience, I was totally psyched! ‘Holy crap!’ I thought, ‘I just saw a ghost! How cool is that?!’

Sightings of ghost children have been reported for centuries all over the world. Let’s take a look at some of the most chilling tales of ghostly children.

In my newsletter on naked ghosts I tell of two child ghosts. Here is a brief retelling of those stories.

Walnut Girl
In Armona, California, the ghost of a young girl around nine years of age has been spotted near the walnut groves in the area. The story goes that at some point in the late 1800s, a group of young girls were swimming naked in a waterhole outside of town. A group of boys showed up and teased the girls, and all but one of the girls took off running. The girls who ran away hid in the nearby walnut groves, but the girl who stayed hid under the water and ended up drowning. Since then, sightings of a ghost girl around nine years old have been reported on numerous occasions. The thing is, she only appears to girls around her own age, and she is always reported as being naked. The ghost has been given the name “Walnut Girl” because she is always seen near walnut orchards, or in places that store walnuts. It is almost as if she is trying to make up for her mistake of not running to hide with the other girls in the walnut grove.

The Craven Street Ghost Boy
In North Carolina there is the famous child ghost of Craven Street bridge. One hot, summer evening, sometime in the early 1900s, a group of boys went swimming in the French Broad river. Children often swam naked in those days, so the boys stripped down and dove into the river. But they didn’t realize that there had been bad storms upriver a few days earlier, and the usually calm waters of the French Broad were now filled with swift, dangerous undercurrents.

The sun had started going down, and the boys were having too much fun to notice that they were floating down the river faster than usual. When they finally noticed that it was beginning to get dark, they had drifted down close to the pilings of the Craven Street bridge. By now, the water was flowing in dangerous rapids around the bridge’s pilings, and the boys decided that they needed to get away quickly. But there was one problem. One of the boys was missing. They searched frantically for their friend, and one of the boys swam to shore and ran for help. All night long boats combed the river by lantern light, but to no avail. The search continued through the following weeks, but the boy’s body was never found.

Soon after the boy’s drowning, some who traveled across the Craven Street bridge at dusk began reporting something strange. They said that they saw a naked boy running across the bridge, but when they called to him he kept running as if he was unaware that they were there. Those who ran after the boy and were able to catch up with him were stopped dead in their tracks as the nude boy vanished before their eyes. The ghost of Craven Street bridge is seen to this day, and drivers who cross the bridge in the early hours of hot summer days are sometimes surprised to see a naked young boy running alongside their car, vanishing before he finishes crossing the bridge.

I love giving lectures about my work as a paranormal investigator. It’s a fascinating topic, and almost everyone has either had a strange experience themselves, or they know someone who has had one. At the end of the lecture I open the floor up for audience members to share their ghost stories, and invariably those include stories of ghost children. One woman told the following story:

Girl by the Side of the Road
“My husband and I live here in Oxford. He was a Marine, and he doesn’t believe in ghosts at all. At the time that this happened, his buddy, who is also a Marine, was with him. They were in their car coming down Punkup Road where it intersects with Silano Drive. They stopped at the stop sign and to the right was a girl dressed in white. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground on the corner on the grass, and she was kind of levitating. So she turned her face around and she had this creepy smile on her face -- and she had silver eyes. My husband came home and he was scared shitless, because he doesn’t believe in ghosts. And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to go see, take me back there.’ But he wouldn’t take me! This guy is never scared, so I know it was real to him."

Ghost Boy in the Woods
At another lecture, a woman shared her story about a ghost boy that she and her daughter saw one night. She said, “You showed a photo in your presentation of a young boy with blonde hair. I was wondering if it’s an actual photo of a ghost that was reported, because I saw a boy who looked just like him! I was at an estate sale in Ridgefield, Connecticut with my daughter and my son. As we were leaving we drove by a wooded area and I saw a boy that looked just like the boy in your presentation. He was a little blonde haired boy. He was standing in the woods, and he was wearing old fashioned clothing. He had on a white button-down shirt, and he had either knickers or riding pants on; and he was just standing in the woods facing out into the road. There was nothing around that area. No house or anything, and there was no reason why you would see a kid dressed like that. When we passed him I said to my daughter, “Did you just see someone standing there?” And she said, “Yeah, I saw a little boy standing in the woods.” We turned the car around and drove back, but there was nobody there. But even my daughter said that he was wearing old fashioned clothing. He looked just like the boy in the photo you showed when you were talking about the Ridgefield story, and that’s where the estate sale was. It freaked me out when I saw your photo. Like, “I’ve seen that boy!” You can see the photo the woman was referring to below.

Ghost Children On San Antonio’s Railroad Tracks
Without a doubt the haunted railroad tracks in San Antonio, Texas is the most famous story of ghostly children in the United States. The story has been featured on numerous TV shows, including Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings.

Not far from the San Juan Mission is an intersection of roadway that crosses railroad tracks. Legend has it that in the 1930’s there was a fatal accident on this spot in which a train collided with a school bus. Apparently, ten children died in the accident, and their ghosts are reported to haunt the spot to protect others from meeting the same fate.

Supposedly, if you park your car directly over the tracks and shift it into neutral, the car will be pushed forward, uphill, and off the tracks. If you apply talcum powder or flour to your car’s bumper beforehand, you will see the imprint of children's hands and fingers.

As you can imagine, area residents and law enforcement are tired of all of the publicity. They say that there is no record of such an accident ever occurring on the spot, and that the road is actually at a two-percent decline, not an incline. They claim that such a grade would naturally cause a car to roll off of the tracks. They also point out that talcum powder will reveal fingerprints long after the car has been touched, so the hand marks and fingerprints probably belong to the car owners.

But many others disagree, insisting that a two-degree slope could never cause a 3,600 pound car to move on its own with no starting momentum. One witness said that she tried the experiment while sitting in a 2.5 ton Lincoln Continental with two other passengers with the car parked in neutral. Nothing happened at first, then the car suddenly began to move forward. The driver tried putting on the brakes, then tried putting the car into park, but it would not stop until it was over the tracks. This same woman put talcum powder on the bumper and trunk of her car and after the car moved by itself she found small hand prints pressed into the powder. She said that these were smaller than her hands, and MUCH smaller than her husband’s hands. And she rightfully points out that if you wash your car with soap, oils from anyone who had previously touched the car would be washed away; and she washed her car before trying this experiment.

Believers in the eerie phenomenon feel that the residents of San Antonio just want people to stay away from the ghost tracks. They say that even if a school bus never crashed on the site, there is definitely something mysterious about this area. Perhaps some other unrecorded tragic event occurred on this spot; or maybe the spirits originate from Native Americans who once lived in the area. One thing is for certain, stories of cars mysteriously being pushed uphill across the tracks, and the appearance children’s hand-prints continue to this day.

The Radiant Boys
There is a unique category of ghost children called ‘The Radiant Boys’. This type of phenomenon originates from Northern England, and from Germany where they are called the ‘Kindermorderinn,’ which translates as ‘Child Murderer’. This is because the radiant boys are said to be the ghosts of children murdered by their own mothers. Their souls supposedly roam the earth as ghosts, and it is said that if you see a Radiant Boy, bad luck or death is sure to follow. Reports of radiant boys goes back as far as the 1600’s, and the apparitions are described as young boys who glow with an eerie light. The light they are bathed in varies in color, and the boys are almost always naked. Radiant boys seem to be almost angelic in their appearance, being described as ‘beautiful’ and ‘gleaming’. After seeing a radiant boy, the witness is usually left in a state of shock.

The most famous radiant boy case occurred in 1803 at Corby Castle in Cumbria, England. In September of this year, Reverend Henry of Redburgh and his wife visited the castle for the evening, and they were put up for the night in a room that was known to be haunted. The next day, the reverend wrote in his journal:

Soon after we went to bed, we fell asleep; it might have been between one and two in the morning when I awoke. I observed that the fire was totally extinguished; but, although that was the case, and we had no light, I saw a glimmer in the centre of the room, which suddenly increased to a bright flame. I looked out, apprehending that something had caught fire, when, to my amazement, I beheld a beautiful boy, clothed in white, with bright locks resembling gold, standing by my bedside, in which position he remained some minutes, fixing his eyes upon me with a mild and benevolent expression. He then glided gently towards the side of the chimney, where it is obvious there is no possible egress, and entirely disappeared. I found myself again in total darkness, and all remained quiet until the usual hour of rising. I declare this to be a true account of what I saw at Corby Castle, upon my word as a clergyman. (1)

The reverend and his wife made a hasty retreat the next morning. Unlike most radiant boy sightings, the reverend’s life didn’t end tragically. In fact, Reverend Henry lived to be a very old man. Those who knew him said that he told the story up until the end of his life. One family friend said, “I can most positively assert that his own conviction with regard to the nature of this appearance has remained ever unshaken. The circumstance made a lasting impression upon his mind, and he never willingly speaks of it; but when he does, it is always with the greatest seriousness, and he never shrinks from avowing his belief that what he saw admits of no other interpretation than the one he then put upon it.” (2)

Another radiant boy sighting was witnessed by Captain Robert Steward who was stationed in Ireland. One day he had gone hunting and had strayed so far into the countryside that he couldn’t find his way back. A storm was moving in, and as he wandered through the woods he was happy to come across a small house. He knocked on the door and requested shelter for the night, and he was provided a modest room with a small fireplace. Soon after drifting off to sleep, he was awoken by a strange, brilliant light in the room. He first thought the room had caught fire, but when he sat up in bed to investigate he saw a beautiful naked boy who glowed with a dazzling light. The boy said nothing, but just looked at the Captain earnestly, and then he vanished.

The next day, Captain Steward told the homeowner what he had seen, and he was told that the room was haunted by the ghost of a family ancestor who had been killed by his own mother. The homeowner went on to say that to see the boy was a bad omen, and that whoever saw the radiant boy would rise in power only to have it ripped away from him. Afterward, a horrible death was sure to follow. I’m sure that the good captain was more than a little annoyed to have been given this particular room for the night!

In the years following this ghostly encounter, Steward became a prominent political figure. But the curse of the radiant boy would soon live up to its reputation. Little by little, Steward’s fortunes began to dwindle. Then, tragedy struck his family. First his father died, then his older brother. Soon after, he lost most of his money and his health began to fail him. Finally, Steward went insane and had to be confined to his country house where he took his life in 1822 by slitting his own throat with a razor.

Another radiant boy is said to haunt Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, England. The castle was a monastery in the 12th century, and it was used as an army barracks during World War II. Throughout all those years stories of the castle’s radiant boy were abundant. He was said to appear as a young, naked boy surrounded with a blue glow, and he primarily haunted an area called ‘The Pink Room’. The castle has been investigated by several famous TV paranormal programs including Most Haunted and Scariest Places on Earth.

Ghost Girl Caught on Video
I met Lisa at a lecture I had given at the Oxford Public library in October 2017, and after the crowd thinned out she shared a number of amazing stories about her haunted house. Then she said, “We actually have a video of the ghost that was captured on our security camera. Do you want to see it?” Lisa brought up the video on her iPhone and I leaned into have a look.
    Although the clip was just a few seconds long, it was absolutely amazing. It shows a girl in a long white nightgown or dress standing at the bottom of a staircase. Her back is to the camera, and her long, straight, dark hair hangs down to the center of her back. Oddly, she takes a step backward towards the camera, turns, then steps backward again down the hallway to the left of the staircase. Something in the front of her gown can be seen as it swings around just before the entire figure steps out of the frame. This might be her hand, a large bow on the front of the dress/nightgown, or a sash that swings around as she turns. Seconds later, two bright orbs appear by the front door, just opposite where the figure had been.
    I asked Lisa to tell me the specifics about the video. She said that on August 22, 2017, she and her husband, Ed, went out to visit friends who lived nearby. Prior to leaving, Ed moved a home security camera from outside the house and placed it inside on a shelf in the front hallway. He put it in that location because their dog had been acting strangely, and he wanted to keep an eye on him. The camera had a clear view of the bottom of the staircase, the front hallway, and the front door. The dining room could also be seen just past the staircase.
    At 11 PM, when Lisa’s phone indicated that the security camera had detected motion, her first thought was that it had recorded a raccoon or some other animal outside the house. She didn’t know that her husband had moved the camera indoors to keep an eye on the dog. She turned on her phone to have a look and was stunned to see a strange girl in a long, white gown in the front hallway. Who was this girl? It certainly wasn’t one of her daughters. And what was she doing in their house? Lisa quickly called home and her teenage son, Jake, answered the phone. She told him about the video clip and asked him to check on his sisters, Holly and Morgan, and to ask them where they had been a few seconds earlier. Jake ran upstairs.
    Twelve year old Holly was laying on her bed and said that she had not been downstairs. She was wearing a bright pink shirt and black jeans -- not a long white nightgown. Fourteen year old Morgan was in the shower. Jake went downstairs and waited until Morgan was finished with her shower. When she came downstairs and went to her bedroom, he asked her if she had been downstairs. She told him that she had been in the shower the whole time.
I conducted an investigation in January of 2018. During the interview I asked Lisa if there were any other sightings of this ghostly girl. Lisa said, “I have to start back in 1999 when the house was being built. At the time, the only other house on the block that was completed was the house across the street. My husband and I used to come to our house all the time to watch it being built. One day I came to the house with my brother-in-law. We were going to meet up with my husband who had driven over earlier. As we pulled up to the house, my brother-in-law and I both saw a young girl walk into the house from the concrete front steps into the front door. She looked to be about 7 or 8 years old. We walked in the house and looked around for her, but we couldn’t find her anywhere. We looked upstairs saying, ‘Where did this girl go?’ When my husband walked in with the builder we said to him, “Oh, by the way, is your daughter with you? Because we can’t find her in the house.” The builder said, “I don’t have a daughter, what are you talking about?” We said, “We saw a girl walk in the house. She walked right in the front door before we came in.” He said, “There are no kids around here except for the boys across the street.”
    I asked Lisa if she had seen the little girl any time after that. Lisa said that she saw her one other time. She was sitting at the kitchen table filling out soccer registration forms for her son. She felt someone behind her and thought it was one of the kids. She was anxious to finish the paperwork, and thought that if she ignored them they would go away. Then she turned around and a little girl was standing there just a few feet away from her. She said that she was around four feet tall, and thought that she would have been about seven years old. I asked Lisa if she saw the girl’s face, but she said that she only saw her for a second before screaming for her husband. He came running into the kitchen and Lisa said, “I just saw her! Oh, my god I just saw that little girl again!”
    Lisa’s youngest daughter, Holly, also saw the girl. One night she was in her bedroom talking on the phone to a friend when she suddenly felt that something was wrong. She got out of bed and started to walk toward her bedroom door, and as she did she saw a little girl with long black hair standing in the hallway just outside of her door. The girl was wearing a long white gown, and she had her head down slightly as if she was looking at something on the floor. Her long, dark hair hung down and obscured her face. Holly blinked, and the girl vanished.
    Other strange things happened in the house over the years. TV’s would turn on by themselves, the family dog was found locked in the bathroom, and upon returning home in the evening, bedroom doors that had previously been shut to keep the cat out would be found wide open.
    During the investigation, I picked up an amazing EVP of a little girl’s voice. We were in the kitchen, and Lisa was telling a story of when her cat was nearly carried away by a hawk. In the middle of the story, a little girl can be heard saying, “We didn’t see her”. The cadence of the girl’s voice is odd and was very close to the recorder. You can hear the recording by going to the full Case File on my website.
    I researched the area and discovered a map from 1864 that shows two houses on the property. These houses are long gone, but I’m certain that the little ghost girl seen at the house and captured on video once lived in one of these houses. She seems to consider herself one of the family, and the family is no longer afraid of her.

As a special part of this month's newsletter I interviewed psychic medium Chris O'Connor, co-founder of the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society, about his encounter with a ghost girl named Lilian Rose during a paranormal investigation.

Chris: The reason why we went on the case in North Haven was, I actually met the client at an MRI class that I attended. She called us a couple of weeks later. The claim was that her mother was seeing a spirit; that was as much as I knew. What she told the team was that a little girl was waking her up.
So we went out, and when we got there we thought that it was going to be a boring case. There were not objects moving, no unexplained noises or anything like that. But upon entering I said to the client, “OK, we’ll try to help her with this little girl and see what else we can find.” Then we proceeded do our investigation. We set up a bunch of cameras – IR cameras, DDT recorders, and the piece of footage that captured the girl was the handheld video camera.
Upstairs was pretty benign. Nothing was happening up there. We decided to go down into the basement, and there she was! I immediately started having a conversation with her. I was able to describe her. I write everything down, either messages that they give me or I will write down my description, what I’m seeing of them. And I had written down ‘A young girl, about 8 or 9 years old, wearing a yellow calico dress, white patent leather shoes and her hair was pulled back in like a half ponytail with a ribbon.’ I wrote all of this stuff down.
At the same time, the other co-founder of the group, Dave, was experiencing a growth process with his psychic ability and he was asking me questions. “Are you getting this? Are you getting that?” In particular was her name which I wrote down. She told me her name. Her name is Lillian Rose, and he asked, “Is her name like a flower? Like a summertime flower, like a Lily or a Rose?” And of course I was like, “That’s pretty good Dave!”
We were in this office space and I knew she was with me. I was feeling around for her. And I was feeling the temperature change. Dave had asked if he could find a chair because he was crouching down trying to communicate with the spirit. So, he was looking for a chair, and that’s where Melissa, who was holding the video camera, was helping Dave find the chair with the light from the camera. As she panned over toward the office that I was in, is when she captured the spirit. She didn’t know it at the time. We found Lillian during our evidence review. Again, as she panned over she was able to get the doorway of the room that I was in; and you can see on the video the image of this little girl trying to sneak out of the office, and it seemed like she almost got caught and then sneaked back in. It’s a pretty amazing piece of footage.
Melissa had sent over the video because she though that she heard something that she wanted me to verify, and then that’s when we saw the movement. And that’s how we caught Lillian Rose on camera. Now, we had an IR camera pointing into the office and you can see her energy near my feet. So the IR camera is showing that. And then at the same time, the camera that Melissa is holding actually captured her.
During the reveal, the client’s mother described the little girl to us where she had never said it to us during the interview process, which validated what I saw and what we captured. To back it up even more, the land that the housing development was built on used to be an orchard. Part of the communication process that I got while we were in the basement was how she passed away. She was playing amongst the apple trees and she was up in one of the trees and had fallen out of the tree, and that’s how she died.
Barry: Do you know what year that was?
Chris: The thirties. Between 1930 and 35.
Barry: Now, just jumping back a little bit. I know that you said that the family had seen this little girl. Had more than one person seen her?
Chris: No, just the mom.
Barry: Did she have the same description of her as you had seen?
Chris: Yes, but we didn’t know the description at the time of the investigation. She told us the description after. Before we did the reveal she was telling us about this little girl, how she was dressed, and Dave and I looked at each other like, ‘Yup! That’s her!’ But what’s really cool about this whole process is that we got validation in several different forms. Validation from the mom, validation from the history of the property. I was able to validate what Dave was seeing. Dave was pretty spot-on. He got most of everything correct. He called her dress beige, and I called it light yellow. It was really good for him because he was able to validate his gift.
Barry: Were you able to determine why she’s there? Is she a happy little ghost, or is she sad?
Chris: She’s not unhappy. She visits many of the homes in this neighborhood. I had actually asked to ask her neighbors if they see her because she visits many different homes in that area. So, she’s attached to the land. Her family home isn’t there anymore. So, she just hangs out. She doesn’t hurt anybody. She may be annoying to the mom keeping her awaking, but I don’t think she realizes that she’s keeping the mom awake. She’s definitely an intelligent spirit. She does interact.
Barry: Does she seem shy? I know that in the video she took off and tried to hide, but does she seem shy in general?
Chris: I would say she was timid. She told me her name, but she was very infatuated with Dave. What happened is, when Dave got up I think it startled her and she scooted back to where she felt comfortable.
Barry: Have you done a follow-up? Has she made any more appearances since your investigation?
Chris: We were doing a presentation in North Haven, and the client’s colleague came to the presentation and expressed that Lillian Rose still comes around.
Barry: Do you want to give us your website address? I’m sure people would love to go there and see the video, and to read more about your group and about some of your other cases you’ve done.
Chris: The address is EasternCTParanormal.com.

We can’t say for certain what a ghost is. Is it the spirit of someone who was once alive? If so, why are they here? Are they unaware that they are dead? Are they stuck here? Are they ‘lost souls’ who don’t know how to cross over? Are ghosts just pieces of our personalities that somehow get left behind after we die? Or, are they residual energy from the past that plays over and over again like a movie? There are more questions than answers, and we may never have a definitive answer. Perhaps children who become ghosts do so because they simply can’t imagine a world without them.

But if a ghost is a person’s soul, or their consciousness, and they are somehow stuck here, we really shouldn’t be afraid of them -- we should take pity on them, especially if they are a child. It’s heartbreaking to think of a child who is lost, with no friends or family. After every paranormal investigation, I try to move spirits on to where they belong. And more often than not when I help adult spirits find the other side, crowds of children are waiting there to cheer them on and to greet them when they arrive. I truly believe that all child ghosts are eventually called home, with or without our help; because I’m sure that just as children can’t imagine a world without them, neither can heaven.

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January 07th, 2019

1/7/2019

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Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something directly without the need for conscious or analytic reasoning. There are actually two types of intuition. The first involves our subconscious mind taking in a large amount of subtle information and using it to formulate a conclusion. The second is associated with the paranormal and involves the use of extra sensory perception, ESP for short. This is the type of intuition that I will explore in this newsletter. Here’s a good idea of what I’m talking about.

A few years ago I was invited to do an investigation at a private home on Long Island. I didn’t know anything about the house I was about to visit other than the client was experiencing some sort of paranormal activity. The night before the investigation I sat in my favorite chair, closed my eyes, cleared my mind, and focused on the upcoming case. At first, nothing of interest came through, just images of trees, and of an out-building that looked like a cottage. These were just fleeting pictures that flashed across my mind. I knew that they were probably things that I would see on the property, but I wanted something specific about the haunting that I could use to help the family.

Suddenly, a vivid image flashed across my mind. I saw myself in a large room. As I walked across the room I noticed a door on the far wall. The door opened to reveal a closet, and in it was a stained glass window made up primarily of yellow glass. Sunlight shone through the window, and the yellow light from the glass spilled onto the floor. I wondered to myself, ‘What is a stained glass window doing in a closet?’ But this question was quickly squelched by what I saw next -- an old man standing outside of the open door. He was wearing a white shirt and dark pants, and he was standing in profile to the closet so his head was exactly in line with the stained glass window. The yellow light streaming in behind him made it look as if he had a glowing halo around his head. But more striking than this was the look on his face. At this point, my vision seemed to zoom in on his profile. His face was gaunt, and he was staring straight ahead with his eyes wide open as if in horror. His grey, wiry hair stuck up wildly around his head. If I were asked to describe the look on his face, I would say he looked insane. And then it was gone. The vision was gone, and I was back in my chair. I quickly wrote down my impressions with as much detail as I could remember. None of it made sense to me, but I was hoping to learn the meaning of it the following day.

I had to take a ferry from Connecticut to Long Island, and the client picked me up in her car and drove me to the house. As we pulled in the driveway, the first thing I noticed were the trees. The property had lots of old, tall maple trees. As far as intuitive impressions go, this was nothing to write home about. Most properties have trees on them. But when we pulled up in front of the detached garage, I knew that I had gotten a ‘hit’ the previous night. The building was no longer used as a garage. The owner told me that it had been turned into a rental cottage a few years earlier, and she was eager to show me around.

After a tour of the cottage we walked across the driveway to the main house. It was a large Victorian with a beautiful wrap-around porch. Before we entered the house I said to the client, “I wanted to share an intuitive impression I picked up on last night. I don’t know if it will mean anything to you. It’s actually really confusing to me because it doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll share it with you anyway.” I proceeded to tell her about the closet with the stained glass window with the yellow glass, and the elderly man with the crazed look on his face. The woman gave me a strange look, but said nothing. I thought, ‘That’s great. I just said the dumbest thing. I should have just kept my mouth shut. Why would a stained glass window be in a closet?’

As she took me on a walkthrough of the house, I began to pick up impressions of the people who once lived there. I could see several families in my mind’s eye, but an elderly man really stood out. He resembled the man I had seen in my vision the night before, but he didn’t look mentally disturbed. He wore the same clothes, but looked perfectly normal, and he had a kind face. Even though he had the same wiry hair, I thought that I must be picking up on someone else and left it at that.

The woman lead me to a spacious room with couches and chairs which opened up into another smaller room. The woman walked over to a door in this smaller room and said, “This is the living room, and here is your stained glass window in the closet.” She threw open the door to reveal a small closet with a beautiful stained glass window in it. It was made out of yellow and orange glass, and the yellow light cascaded onto the floor just as it had in my vision. She said, “When you said that you saw a stained glass window in a closet, I just couldn’t believe it! How could you know such a thing? And the man you described -- I know who that is. Two doctors lived in this house and used it for their medical practices at different times; one in the early 1900s, the other in the 1920s. Both committed suicide in this house. The man you described was the doctor who lived here in the 1920s. I’ve seen pictures of him. He was a very thin, older gentleman. The most striking thing about the photos I’ve seen of him was his hair. It was grey and wiry, just the way you described it. I always thought he must have constantly had to wet it down to keep it from sticking up. I’m told that he was very happy in the house when he moved in, but something must have gone terribly wrong in his life. The poor man killed himself in the upstairs bathroom.”
(Below is a photo of the window in the closet at the house on Long Island)

You don’t have to be a paranormal investigator to benefit from improving your intuition. Intuition can be used to know what to expect on job interviews, and when to make important decisions. It can also be used to determine what type of a person you will be working with, and what kind of a day lies ahead. Imagine getting a ‘hunch’ that you should take a different road home from work and later finding out that you avoided a terrible traffic jam. And don’t you wish you had been a little more intuitive about some of the dates you’ve been on? Don’t we all! Developing your intuition is easy because we are all naturally intuitive. It just takes a little work to uncover your full potential. In this newsletter, I’ll be introducing you to four different exercises that will have your intuition up and running in no time. Let’s go!

Step 1 - Meditation

Before introducing you to the different exercises, you’ll need to learn how to meditate. Meditation is by far the most important part of improving your intuition. Intuition aside, meditation improves our emotional and physical selves. Learning to clear your mind of negative, repetitive thoughts will benefit every aspect of your life. It only takes a few minutes a day, and it’s easy. There are many meditation methods out there, but I’ll just tell you about the one I use. Feel free to explore other methods. It doesn’t matter which one you use, as long as you do it consistently.

First, choose a mantra. It can be any word or words of your choosing. The purpose of the mantra is to shift your focus away from your busy mind. You will probably try a number of different mantras before settling on one. Or, you may end up with a few favorites that you use at different times. Your mantra can be either a word or a short phrase. Sanskrit words are thought to have powerful vibrations, and phrases with personal meaning are often used to help clear the mind. Here are just a few examples of words and phrases that can be used as mantras:

Om -- Om is the sound of the universe, the first vibration which represents the circle of life, death, and rebirth.
Rama -- In Hinduism, Rama is an avatar, a material deity or god on earth.
Aham Premea -- Pronounced ‘ah-hem-pree-mah, this phrase is Sanskrit for “I am divine love”
“Let go” or “Let go and go deeper” -- When used correctly, these phrases can still the mind and take you into deeper states of consciousness.
“God’s light surrounds me” -- This phrase can be used to still the mind while simultaneously reminding us that we are never apart from God, as He is a part of every particle of life itself.

Once you’ve chosen your mantra, set a timer for 15 minutes, then sit in a comfortable chair or couch. You can either place your feet flat on the floor, or sit cross-legged. Place your hands on your lap with your thumbs and index fingers touching as if you are making an OK sign with your hands. This keeps the energy circulating throughout your body. Close your eyes and begin to concentrate on your breathing. Notice the air flowing in and out of your body. Feel the sensation of the cool air entering your nostrils, and the warmth of the air as it exits. After a few minutes of mindful breathing clear your mind of all thoughts and relax.

At first you will notice that it is difficult to keep your mind clear from all thought. This is natural. As soon as you are aware that a thought has entered your mind, replace it with your mantra. Don’t do this forcefully. Simply introduce the mantra into your mind and let it replace your thoughts. As you continue your meditation, allow your thoughts to naturally come to the surface, but don’t focus on them. Acknowledge them without judgment or emotion and let them go. Continue to notice your thoughts entering your mind, and gently replace them with your mantra until the 15 minutes are up. Open your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Meditation is best done twice a day, morning and evening. You can increase the amount of time you meditate as you get better at it. Some meditations will fly by, and you won’t believe that the time is up. Other meditations will feel like they drag on. One is not more valuable than the other.

Methods for Improving your Intuition
Most people equate using intuition with predicting the future. This is incorrect, and having this belief will get in the way of improving your intuition. Intuition is about connecting to a person or place. Time has nothing to do with it, so it is not predictive. Time is not linear. The past, present and future all occur at the same time. So, when you connect with a person or a place intuitively, you obtain knowledge about them no matter when they existed, or when they will exist. Got it? Kind of? Good enough!

Exercise #1 -- Intuitive Book Reading
This first exercise is a great way to get your intuition in gear, and to see what it means to interpret intuitive impressions. You will need a book, and a notebook for this exercise. Take your book and open it to a random page. Don’t look at the page, but place it face down on a table. Now, sit in a chair and clear your mind the way you would during a meditation. Put your notebook next to you and hold a pen or pencil. You will be writing your impressions down as they come to you.

Once your mind is calm and still, imagine yourself walking over to the table and picking up the book you just set down. Picture that you turn it over and that you are looking at the page. It will probably be blank. That’s OK! In fact, that’s what you want. Just as you do in a meditation, allow thoughts to rise to the surface of this blank page. These may come to you in the form of pictures, words, phrases, feelings, or even physical sensations. Keeping your eyes closed, write down ALL of your impressions. Don’t leave ANY out. This is extremely important. If a particular impression seems strong, ask a question about it. For example, if you get the impression of a man you can ask yourself, ‘What is important about this man?’ or ‘What is this man’s name?’. Continue to allow impressions to rise to the surface until you feel that you are not receiving any more information. Now open your eyes and take a look at your paper. It will be filled with scrawled words and phrases. Some may be hard to read, but don’t worry. You’ll remember what you wrote.

Now, go to the book that you put down earlier and read through the pages that were faced down. Compare what you wrote to what you are reading. Are there any connections? No? Don’t be so sure! Intuitive impressions are symbolic, not literal. Let’s say that you wrote down “Boat” as one of your impressions. Read the book carefully. Is there a reference to water, or to travel? Is there a reference to a ‘deep blue sky’ that you may have associated with water? Do you associate the word ‘boat’ with a particular place? For example, you may think of Cape Cod when think of boats, and the setting of the story may be the Cape or a similar place. Go through your list of words and circle the possible ‘hits’. Next to them, write what was actually in the book. Do this exercise at least once a day for a week and you will begin to see a marked improvement in the amount of accurate information you are able to gather. It will also help you learn how to interpret your impressions, and what it ‘feels like’ when you are correct.

How does it work? Because time is not linear, everything is occurring simultaneously. So, you have already read the book and you know its contents. You are simply remembering what you already saw. Accept this and your intuition will grow rapidly.

Here are the notes I wrote while doing this exercise.

Notice that I circle the words and phrases that were ‘hits’ and I make note of what they were in the book I was reading. It’s not necessary to get exact matches. I wrote down “Streetcar” and the book talked about a “bus”. I wrote down “Time” and the phrase “looked at her watch” was in the book. I got the impression of a “Fountain”, but because the fountain I was seeing was the large type seen in parks. I considered the setting of the story, “a park” as a hit. The book described the main character as being tired from walking up several flights of stairs, so “Elevator” is connected, as if I thought she should have taken the elevator instead. You’ll see that there were some words that weren’t hits at all. Vase, flowers, 53, court, stand, justice and funny didn’t seem to match. That’s OK. Even if you get a few hits, you’re on the right track.

Exercise #2 - Working with a Partner
A remote viewer is trained to develop their skills in a tiered fashion under strict scientific conditions. Because training for remote viewing is very specialized, I won’t be able to teach it to you here. But you can use the following technique to help improve your intuition. You’ll need a partner, and a pad and pencil.

Your partner should be either in another room, or in a more distant location. Start by meditating to clear your mind. At an appointed time your partner, the sender, will concentrate on a visual image called the target. I came across an excellent website that generates random images that is perfect for this exercise. Click HERE to go to the website. You can also use magazines, or photos as a target. The sender’s job is to fully concentrate on the image, trying not to let their mind stray. Your job, the receiver, is to connect with the sender so that you are in a sense seeing what they are seeing.

Start out by picturing your friend in your mind’s eye, and imagine them looking at the target. Allow your mind to receive images, words, phrases, and feelings. Write these down on your pad with your eyes closed. You can also draw quick sketches during the session. These can be simple shapes, or more complex drawings. Of course, you will have to open your eyes to draw, but some people find that they can remain in the proper receiving state even with their eyes open. Time the session so that both the sender and the receiver know the start and finishing times. For example, you might plan on starting your session at 8PM and end it at 8:15PM. Start out with short sessions, no more than 10 or 15 minutes long. You can increase the time as you improve your skills.

Next, ask your partner to share the image with you. You should actually look at the image, not just listen to the sender describe it. The sender can email you a screenshot of a computer generated image, or a photo of the image they were looking at. Compare your notes with the image and circle any hits. Remember, intuition is all about symbolism. I did this exercise once with a partner where I was the sender. I held a small bust of JFK in my hands, and throughout the session I turned it around so I was looking at all sides of the object. Afterward, the receiver said that they kept seeing a walnut. Although it may sound like they didn’t read the target accurately, they actually did. The bust was painted, and when viewed from the back JFK’s brown hair looked remarkably like a walnut. Another person taking part in the same exercise said, “I think this person was famous in some way.” Obviously, another hit.

Don’t be surprised if your hits are highly symbolic and personal. Say your receiver is looking at a close-up photo of the bottom of a bare foot. If you write down the word “pig”, it may be because you associate toes with the rhyme ‘This little piggy went to market’. Or if you wrote down “hills”, it may be because the outline or silhouette of the foot resembles five little hills. Share your impressions with your partner. You might be surprised to find that you actually picked up on their personal association with the object. If you wrote down “glass”, your partner may have been unconsciously associating being barefoot with recently cutting his foot on glass. This exercise is actually a lot of fun! Several people can participate at the same time, and comparing notes afterward is often fascinating because of the variety of ways that people perceive the same images.

I tried the exercise myself using the random image generator and got a humorous result. In my mind’s eye I was seeing a train and a girl. You’ll see in the photo below that the man and woman resemble a train with the box (box car) on their backs. If you look closely, there’s someone in the box! So, it’s even more like a train because it has a passenger. Interestingly, the words “Arrival and Departure” are in the background -- two words commonly used when referring to train schedules.

Exercise #3 - The Walkthrough
Being highly intuitive has its ups and downs. My wife and I recently went to a restaurant we had never been to before. It was a bright, cheerful place and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I felt good and was ready to enjoy a great meal with my wife. But as soon as I sat down, I began to pick up an extremely negative feeling about the place. In spite of the friendly waiters and waitresses and the cheerful music playing in the background, the place felt absolutely terrible to me. My wife said, “This place is really nice!” And I said, “Yeah, but it feels horrible in here! Something terrible happened here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s really awful.” Needless to say, my intuitive impression put a damper on the evening, and I couldn’t wait to get out of that place. I never did find out what occurred there, but the feeling was so strong that I’m positive that something happened in that restaurant or on the land that it was built on that was tragic and highly emotional.

We are all made up of energy, and our thoughts and emotions are also made up of energy which leave their imprint on places. To improve your intuitive skills, try to ‘tune in’ to your feelings and emotions when you visit new places. One of the best places to do this exercise is at historic homes or locations that offer guided tours. You may pick up information that the tour guide later verifies. Or, you can ask questions or do some research afterward to see if you were reading the place correctly. I once toured an historic home in New York where I got the distinct impression that an important meeting was held in one of the rooms. I could see men gathered around a table looking at maps and other documents, and another man looking out of the window as if he was the ‘lookout’. After the tour I asked the tour guide, “Were there any important meetings held in this house?” She said, “Yes! During the revolutionary war, the front room was used as a meeting place to plan attacks against the British. Spies would meet here in secret and share their information.”

To do this exercise, simply clear your mind and walk through a house, or any location, and take note of any feelings or impressions you are picking up on. You may even feel physical sensations such as sudden pains or headaches. You can write these impressions down, but it’s better if you are with someone who you can tell your feelings to. If you’re alone, you can speak into a recording device. Or, you can just remember them and write them down later.
Try to get as much information as you can during your walkthrough. For example, if you feel overwhelming joy in a room, see if you can pick up any more information about that feeling. Don’t try to guess what it might be. Just allow images to come to you. Here’s a good example of this. I was touring an historic house once and walked into a very small room on the second floor and immediately felt overwhelmingly joyful. I reached out for more information and suddenly I sensed that there were children in the room with me, but I wasn’t exactly sure how they were connected to the room. I commented to the tour guide, “This seems like a happy little room.” She smiled and said, “Yes it is! The couple who lived in this house in the 1700s had 8 children, and all of them were born in this room.”

Exercise #4 - Psychometry
Psychometry is the ability to obtain information by making physical contact with an object. This usually involves holding the object in your hands. Psychic detectives often use this method when they are called upon to help solve cold cases. This is because all objects hold energy. By making direct physical contact with an object, you can pick up information about the person who owned it or used it.

The best way to practice psychometry is to borrow items from friends or relatives. These should be things that they have been in direct contact with such as jewelry or items of clothing. You will need to make direct contact with the object with your skin, so you can’t wear gloves when doing this exercise. This exercise is best done by using a recording device instead of a pad and pencil. You will be holding the object in both hands, and you should not break contact with it throughout the exercise. All Smartphones have built in memo apps, or you can use a digital recorder to record your impressions.

Start by putting yourself into a meditative state and clear your mind. Now, close your eyes and hold the object in your hands. Move the object around in your hands for a few minutes to get acquainted with its energy. Now state your intention by saying to yourself, ‘I am seeking information about the history of this object and the people who owned it or held it.’ Allow images, words, phrases, and sensations to enter your mind. As you pick up information, say it out loud so it is recorded on your recording device. Occasionally, hold the object in one hand and allow the other hand to hover around it. You will most likely feel a kind of forcefield around the object. This is the object’s aura which extends from as little as a few inches, to as much as several inches around the object. When doing this part of the exercise, make note of any colors that you may be seeing or sensing. Auras are made up of color, and you can check the meaning of these colors after your session. Work with the object for 10 minutes or longer, then close down the session by doing a quick energy clearing of yourself. This is important, as you do not want to absorb any negative energy the object may hold.

To clear yourself of negative energy, put the object down so that it is not making physical contact with you, then picture a beam of pure white light coming down from above you. Allow this white light to enter through the top of your head and watch it grow until your entire body is flooded with light. Say to yourself, “God’s light and God’s love protects me from any and all negative energy.” Now open your eyes.

It is important to transcribe what you said on the recording so you can check with your friend about the accuracy of the information you picked up on. Remember, intuitive information is symbolic, so don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions when you are checking the information. For example, if you say to your friend “I kept seeing flowers. Did the person who owned this object like flowers?” and the answer is “No”, don’t stop there. If you really had a strong impression about flowers it must mean something. “Did they like gardening?” Then answer might be “No, she didn’t. She actually lived in an apartment.” Keep going! “Do you know if she had a painting of flowers hanging in her apartment, or a picture book of flowers?” You might get an answer like, “Oh my God, I forgot all about this! The ring you were holding belonged to my aunt, and she used to love to paint. Her favorite things to paint were flowers!” Bingo!

The Little Things
You don’t have to constantly be doing exercises to help improve your intuition. There are little things that you can do to help keep you connected with the world around you. Here are just a few:

Charge your water
Drinking water charged by crystals is a great way to increase your energy level and improve your intuition. You can buy crystals online or in ‘New Age’ stores. Start with either a quartz or amethyst crystal. Make sure to cleanse the crystal first by rinsing it in running water or leaving it in the sun for a while. There are other methods of cleansing crystals that you can find online, and there is an excellent article in the resources section of this newsletter. Now fill a bottle with water and place the crystal inside. Place the bottle on a sunny windowsill and leave it for an hour or more. If it’s a cloudy day, leave the bottle outside to absorb the greatest amount of light possible. Now remove the crystal and use the water for drinking, cooking, or cleaning.

Lose your shoes
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m almost always barefoot in all types of weather, year-round, indoors and out. Why? There are so many benefits to being barefoot that I could write an entire newsletter on the subject. But for now, I’ll stick to the basics.

Earthing, also known as grounding, is based on research that suggests that connecting to the Earth's electrical energy promotes physical and emotional wellbeing. The act of Earthing refers to a physical connection between the electrical frequencies of the human body with that of Earth's. (1)

When your bare feet come in direct contact with the earth, your body takes up free electrons -- natures antioxidants. These help neutralize free radicals which lead to inflammation and disease. Benefits of barefoot living include the elimination of chronic pain, improved sleep, defusing the causes of inflammation, increased energy and vitality, lower blood pressure, quicker healing from injuries, and lower stress levels. It is recommended that you spend at least 15 minutes per day walking barefoot outdoors on grass, sand, soil, and other natural surfaces.

In addition to the health benefits of being barefoot, by connecting with the earth’s energy field you increase your ability to pick up intuitive information. I am usually barefoot during paranormal investigations because it is a form of psychometry. Rather than walking through a house and touching everything I see, being barefoot gives me instant access to the energy in the house.
Barefooting is the easiest and best way to benefit from the earth’s energy, so lose your shoes as much as possible and you’ll actually increase your ability to pick up intuitive information.

Record your Dreams
Writing down your dreams is an excellent way to help improve your intuitive skills. Dreams are often messages from our subconscious alerting us to intuitive information. The more we pay attention to dreams, the more we will be in touch with the level of our mind that has access to intuitive information. Simply write down your dreams every morning. This can be as simple as writing, “I dreamt I was on a boat that was sailing down a street in a city.” Or, you can write down all of the details of the dream. Either way, you will be putting yourself in closer contact with your subconscious and will have easier access to it when you need it.

Increasing your intuition is easy, but it does take some practice. Use the exercises I taught you in this newsletter and you’ll be amazed at the amount of intuitive information you’ll be able to pick up. I’d love to hear about your experiences, so let me know how the exercises are working out for you, and how much your intuition is improving. Write me at barrypirro@yahoo.com

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Connecticut's Haunted Cemeteries

12/1/2018

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If you stop and think about it, cemeteries are kind of creepy. I personally know several people who are totally creeped out by cemeteries. They tell me that the thought of all those bodies lying there all stiff and dead below their feet makes them think of every horror film they’ve ever seen. Think of the famous opening scene of the 1968 film ‘Night of the Living Dead”. A young man and his sister are visiting a cemetery to pay their respects to a deceased relative. The brother, John, jokes with his sister, “They’re coming to get you Barbara,” as a creepy man in a dusty suit can be seen in the background lumbering slowly through the gravestones. After that, well, things go downhill pretty quickly for the two. John is killed by the man who turns out to be a zombie, and Barbara just narrowly escapes the same fate by fleeing in her car and hiding in a farmhouse.

You might consider cemeteries to be kind of creepy, but not very long ago they were actually popular meeting places for family and community picnics. These graveyard luncheons came complete with tablecloths laden with food and spread out over family plots. Saint Paul’s Churchyard in Lower Manhattan was often the scene of crowds of people carrying baskets filled with fruits, cookies, and sandwiches. Across the country people would seek out the serenity of cemeteries for relaxation. Times were different then, but how did this practice of eating and relaxing in graveyards get started?

One of the reasons eating in cemeteries become fashionable at the turn of the 20th century had to do with the epidemics that were raging across the country. Diseases such as yellow fever and cholera decimated entire families. Death was common, and it was thought that cemeteries were the perfect place for people to meet with family and friends, both living and dead. And from the looks of photos taken during the time period, these family graveyard picnics didn’t seem to be gloomy affairs. On the contrary. People seemed to actually enjoy being together in cemeteries, breaking bread and celebrating life.

But all good things come to an end. The cemetery dining fad slowly went out of fashion in the 1920s. By this time, real progress had been made in the field of medicine and, as a result, fewer people died. Those who saw to the day-to-day operation of cemeteries began to restrict food on the premises to discourage such gatherings. Today, cemetery picnics are just a memory.

Obviously, the dead and cemeteries go hand-in-hand, so it’s no wonder that many cemeteries are considered to be haunted. Although logic tells us that a cemetery would be the last place a dead person would want to visit, there are many cemeteries that are known to be haunted. Here’s a story that illustrates the type of activity reported in one rural Connecticut cemetery.

Gunntown Cemetery, Naugatuck, CT

It was a cold night in late November of 2011 when a group of amateur, teenage ghost hunters decided to pay a visit to one of Connecticut’s most haunted cemeteries, Gunntown Cemetery in Naugatuck. It was almost midnight, and the air was crisp and cold as the three young men exited their car and cautiously entered the grounds. Dead leaves crunched under their sneakered feet, and the wind that had started to pick up made whispering sounds in the upper branches of the surrounding pine trees. Walking by the light of the one weak flashlight they had brought with them was something of a challenge, but the three had staked out a grave of interested the day before, so they had a general idea of where they were headed. The autumn grass was covered with a stiff layer of frost, and it made their steps sound far too loud for such a quiet place. A dog barking in the distance made them think of the stories of a large black hound that was often seen in the cemetery, but they pushed the thought from their mind and forged ahead to the far edge of the graveyard. They stopped at what was probably one of the oldest gravestones, and which lay just a few feet away from the stone wall that surrounded the cemetery. The name of this long forgotten soul carved on the stone had worn away long ago, so they were uncertain who lay buried six feet or so under their feet. But the day before, this part of the cemetery seemed to call to them, as if someone had something urgent to tell them, so they figured that this would be the perfect spot to run a paranormal investigation. Now, in the dead of night, each of them secretly wondered if coming here was such a good idea. As they started to unpack their equipment -- a hodgepodge collection of cheap digital recorders, thermal imaging cameras, and EMF meters -- one of the boys suddenly whispered, “Shh ... What was that?” The other two carefully set down their equipment and listened. A minute passed. “I don’t hear anything,” one boy whispered. “Listen, just listen,” hissed the first boy. At first the only thing they could hear was the sound of their own breathing, and the sound of the wind whispering softly in the trees above them, but then they heard it too. Way in the distance. The sound of soft, tinkling music. It was impossible to tell from which direction it was coming from, and none of the boys could tell exactly what type of instrument would make such a sound. They later said it sounded like a cross between a music box and set of delicate metallic wind chimes, but there was also a hint of a female voice humming along tunelessly. The boys stood-stock still, listening intently to the music, and as they did they noticed something. “Holy shit,” whispered one boy harshly, “it’s … it’s getting louder!” And indeed, it was. But when they realized the reason it was getting louder, fear simultaneously gripped the three and they instinctively huddled closer together -- the music was getting louder, because it was getting closer. It sounded as if it had slowly entered the cemetery from all directions. Then all at once it closed in on them. The music got louder and louder, to the point where they had to put their gloved hands over their ears to keep it out, but that didn’t help. The music was now in their heads, and the woman’s voice sounded as if she were humming a demented, tuneless lullaby. Without thinking or giving the order to retreat, the three took off running for the car. They left their equipment at the base of the frost covered headstone and made a beeline for the cemetery entrance. As soon as they passed the iron cemetery gate, it stopped. The music stopped. The wind in the trees seemed to suck in its breath and hold it, and the only sound to be heard was the distant barking of a dog, and the frantic clamor of three terrified teenage boys as they dove into their car and sped away.

I’ve visited Gunntown Cemetery, and each time I was struck not only by a vague sense of creepiness, but also by the history that the stones reveal. Many local citizens who supported independence from British rule during the Revolutionary War are buried here, and demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren once gave it their stamp of approval by declaring the cemetery to be, and I quote, “Officially Haunted”. The type of activity people report in the cemetery varies, but the most common is the sound of disembodied voices and the eerie sound of children’s laughter. Many have also reported hearing music that sounds like it’s coming from the surrounding woods. As the previous story illustrated, the sound moves into the cemetery, getting louder and louder as it reaches the ears of the listener until it stops suddenly. As far as visual sightings, many people have reported seeing a large black dog both inside and outside of the cemetery. Strangely, sometimes one person will clearly see this dog, but the people they are with do not. Others have reported seeing a man dressed in period clothing holding a lantern in front of him as he leads a horse slowly across the grounds of the cemetery. Photographic anomalies such as orbs, gauzy shapes, mists, and beams of light have been captured at Gunntown Cemetery. Even more striking are the multi-colored orbs that many have seen with the naked eye as they flit amongst the headstones and race along the ground.

Bara-Hack, Pomfret, CT

Many haunted cemeteries have their roots in history. A perfect example is Bara-Hack in Pomfret, Connecticut, which isn’t technically a cemetery; it’s an abandoned settlement that was established in the late 1700s. The first settlers were of Welsh heritage, thus the name Bara-Hack which translates as “breaking of bread”. The settlement started with a company that supplied flax spinning to the surrounding area residents, but over time it grew into a small village complete with a waterwheel and a mill. Family homes were built, and some had slave quarters; and of course, there was a community graveyard. Even then, strange legends began to circulate throughout the town. One told by the Randall family slaves told of a ghost baby who was often seen resting against a tree in the graveyard. The town flourished at first, but then fell on hard times. There were economic hardships, and after the founding families died out the remaining residents moved away. By the time of the Civil War, Bara-Hack was abandoned. In the early part of the 20th century, it became a destination for people who wanted to spend a quiet time in the country exploring the picturesque ruins of the settlement. But the ruins were not totally quiet. Many who visited the area reported sightings of the ghost baby, even though they weren’t aware of the original story told by the former slaves. In addition, a bearded man’s face was seen floating around the grounds of the cemetery. Paranormal investigators captured streaks of light and orbs in photos taken of the ruins, but the most unsettling reports were of the strange sounds that emanated from the place. Imagine walking among the ruins of a long forgotten town and hearing the sound of farm animals, horse drawn buggies, and the voices of men, women and children. It would be enough to send anyone running from the area, which is usually what happens. The area became so popular among paranormal enthusiasts that it was closed to the public and ‘No Trespassing’ signs are now posted to discourage anyone from entering the area.

Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, CT

The New Haven Register recently ran a story about the Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. On a winter night in the late 1990s, the cemeteries manager, Dale Fiore, received notification from the security company that an alarm was going off in the cemetery so he jumped in his car and drove there to see what the problem was. The night was dark and cold, and there was ice and snow on the ground, and ice falling off of the trees. When Fiore got to the cemetery, he noticed that it was eerily quiet. He thought, ‘If an alarm was going off, why am I not hearing it? And why aren’t there any policemen investigating?’ Apart from the sound of snow and ice hitting his car, Evergreen Cemetery was totally quiet. Since there was not point in staying, he decided to leave and tried to make his way out of the cemetery’s Winthrop Avenue exit, but something strange happened. His car wouldn’t budge. Fiore said that it felt as if his car was being held in place. He looked down at the display on his car radio, and noticed the clock change from 11:59 p.m. to midnight. At that very second, his car began to behave normally and he was able to drive. The next day, he went to work as usual and decided to check the alarm to see which area of the cemetery it was going off in when the alarm company called. But something really strange was going on. There was absolutely no record of the alarm going off at any of the buildings the previous night. This was impossible since the alarm company hooks directly into the cemetery’s security system. If the company picked up an alarm going off, it would have registered on this system. Fiore attributes his experience to the cemetery’s own resident ghost, Midnight Mary.

Although some of the stories surrounding Midnight Mary may be nothing more than legend, one the thing is for certain. On October 15, 1872, Mary Hart collapsed at noon in her New Haven home and died exactly 12 hours later at midnight. How do we know this? The details of her death are carved into her headstone. The story goes that the night after Mary was buried, her aunt had a vivid and terrifying dream that Mary had been buried alive. She somehow convinced the family to exhume the body, and when they opened the coffin they were shocked by what they saw. Mary’s lifeless body lay twisted in agony. Her unseeing eyes bulged out of her head, and her face was frozen in terror. The fabric on the inside of the coffin lid was shredded, and Mary’s nails were bloodied from trying to claw her way out of the grave. It was true. Mary had been buried alive. At least that's one of the legends. Others are that Mary wanders the neighborhood around the cemetery at night, or that she is a witch and that a midnight visit to her grave will doom the visitor to a horrible death. Whether the stories are true or not, the engraving on Mary Hart's gravestone contains this creepy, foreboding message, "The people shall be troubled at midnight and pass away." The quote is actually from the Book of Job, but over the years some have interpreted the phrase to mean Mary Hart hated the world enough for burying her alive to curse it with her final epitaph -- which is kind of silly when you consider that in all likelihood, Mary wouldn’t have had the foresight to write the inscription on her own grave prior to her death.

Gregory’s Four Corners Burial Ground, Trumbull, CT

Gregory’s Four Corners Burial ground is a small cemetery located on Spring Hill Road in Trumbull, Connecticut. The burial ground was established in 1761, but little remains of the headstones that once marked the graves of those buried there. Most of the stones are either missing, or the elements have worn them away. Only one marker remains intact and in perfect condition -- the gravestone of Hannah Cranna, “The Wicked Witch of Monroe”.

Hannah was born in 1783 and married Captain Joseph Hovey. She apparently picked up the nickname Hannah Cranna while she was still alive because that is the name carved on her gravestone. According to most accounts of the story, Hannah’s reputation as a witch began after her husband died under mysterious circumstances. The tale goes that the Captain went out for a walk one night and died after somehow falling off of a cliff. The townsfolk were suspicious of the good Captain’s death, and there began to be whispers that Hannah had somehow bewitched him into becoming disoriented which lead to his untimely death.

Even when Captain Hovey was alive, Hannah’s shrewish personality gave her a bad reputation. But after the Captain’s questionable death, the residents really began to loath the woman. Putting the story in perspective, Hannah was a widow with no real means of supporting herself. She was forced to ask neighbors for help. But it was probably Hannah’s personality that got in the way and which lead to her witchy reputation. Apparently, she often insisted that her neighbors give her free food and firewood, and if they didn’t immediately comply she would threaten to use her dark skills to curse them. One story goes that a local farmer’s wife denied Hannah a fresh-baked pie, so Hannah cursed her and the woman was never able to bake again. Another story is that she cursed a man for fishing on her property without her permission. The result? He never caught another fish again. But not everyone who crossed Hannah’s path had bad luck. Good things came to those who gave her food, and who treated her kindly.

Over the years, Hannah Cranna’s reputation as a witch grew to the point where people said that her house on Craig Hill was guarded by snakes, and that she had a familiar; a supernatural entity that assisted her in casting spells on people. In this case, the familiar was a rooster named “Old Boreas”. Shortly after the rooster died, Hannah told a neighbor that she too would die soon, and she gave strict instructions about her burial. “My coffin must be carried by hand to the graveyard,” she insisted. “And, I must not be buried before sundown.” The day after giving these instructions, Hannah Cranna died at the age of 77.

It was snowing heavily on the day of Hannah’s burial, so the locals decided that rather than following her instructions, they would pull her casket across the snow on a sled. Rumor has it that as the sled made its way toward the cemetery, the coffin fell off of the sled and slid all the way back to her front door. They tried putting it back on the sled, but they had even more trouble with it. They finally decided to honor her wishes and carry her by hand to the graveyard. As she had requested, Hannah was buried just after sunset. On the way back to her home the townspeople saw a glow in the distance. When they arrived, Hannah’s home was completely engulfed in flames.

It’s said that Hannah Cranna’s ghost roams the cemetery and that she has been seen walking along Spring Hill Road. And rumor has it that drivers who see her wandering the road end up crashing their cars. So, if you’re ever out driving at midnight on Spring Hill Road in Monroe, Connecticut -- Beware!

Great Hill Cemetery, Seymour, CT

Some legends that are attached to haunted cemeteries are pretty outlandish; but most are based on fact and have been distorted over the years. Imagine the game of ‘telephone’ played by thousands of people over the course of a hundred years and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how difficult it is to separate fact from fiction. Such is the case with the stories surrounding the haunted happenings at Great Hill Cemetery in Seymour, Connecticut. The burial ground has stones that date back to the 1700s, and others that are more recent. Legend has it that a former cemetery caretaker who had a hook for a hand hung himself from a tree just outside the cemetery. A more gruesome version of the story says that the caretaker murdered a boy who had stayed in the cemetery after dark, and that the boy’s body was found impaled on a large hook and dangling from a tree. Yet another version of the tale involves a man with the last name of ‘Hookman’ who was accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and who was hanged in the cemetery.

Some say that if you park your car under the tree where Hookman was hanged -- or where he hung himself, whichever version you believe -- your car will stall and you will hear his metal hook scratching on your roof. The place is a popular spot for amateur paranormal investigators, and some of the EVP that are posted online by Connecticut Soul Seekers are pretty impressive. Whether or not they are related to the legends is debatable, but there is certainly something eerie going on in Great Hill Cemetery. So, if you’re up for the challenge, pay the place a visit one night. But don’t be surprised if your car stalls and eerie scratching sounds start coming from your roof.

Union Cemetery, Weston, CT

Union Cemetery in Weston, Connecticut has the reputation of being the most haunted cemetery in the state. Famed demonologist Lorraine Warren who lives right down the road from the cemetery once said, “I can tell you for a fact that this place is haunted. It’s one of the most haunted places around.” Lorraine and her late husband Ed Warren visited the cemetery on many occasions and have documented a variety of paranormal occurrences there. They even claim to have a video of the famed “White Lady” who supposedly haunts the grounds and surrounding streets. Unsuspecting people attending church there, or those riding along Route 59 have seen this mysterious woman. She is described as having long black hair and wearing a translucent white wedding dress or nightgown. Some reports is that she is a young woman, others that she looks to be in her 60s and that the sleeves of her nightgown have cuffs which come down over her hands. She has been sighted in both Union Cemetery and in Stepney Cemetery, four miles away in Monroe, Connecticut. She has also been sighted in other areas outside of the cemetery, such as the Smith Richardson Golf Course in Easton.

Lorraine Warren often talks about the White Lady in her lectures. In one interview, Mrs. Warren said, “We have actually witnessed her walk right down the gravestones, weaving in and out. We do have the White Lady on camera. Who she is, we do not know.” Over the years the Warren’s have talked a lot about the video, and they used to show it at lectures, but the video of the White Lady isn’t currently available for public viewing.

One popular story about the White Lady is that late one night a man was driving down Stepney Road just past Union Cemetery. Suddenly, a woman in a filmy white dress appeared in the middle of the road. She appeared so suddenly that the man didn’t have time to slow down, and he struck her with his car. As you can imagine, the man was in a total panic. He he pulled quickly over and leapt out of his car to investigate, but the woman was nowhere to be found.

In 2009, NBC Connecticut News interviewed a man who had a first-hand encounter with the White Lady. Rod Vecsey of Easton, Connecticut was driving past the Union Cemetery at about 1AM one night when he saw her. Mr. Vecsey said, "I saw a woman standing farther up the road, so I tapped on the brakes. As I tapped on the brakes, I felt something touch me. I looked over and there was a gentleman sitting in my (passenger) seat." Some reports of this story describe this mysterious passenger as wearing a straw hat. Although this ghostly fellow startled Vecsey, what happened next was truly horrifying. When he looked back at the road he saw a woman standing in the middle of the road right in front of his car. "She raised her hand up,” Vecsey said, “and what I remember the most was that her hand got very large. As soon as that happened, I looked over and the image I had seen next to me disappeared. As I got over the hill, the road seemed to turn red until I got to the bottom.” In other interviews, Vecsey said that he saw the road turn red, and that the pavement turned into cobblestone. All of this vanished when he reached the bottom of the hill.

To this day, the identify of this mysterious woman in white is unknown. But one theory is that she is the ghost of a local woman who died centuries ago. One gravestone in Union Cemetery belongs to Harriet B. Seeley, a woman who died on May 28, 1853, just seven days after giving birth to a son. Some feel that Harriet Seeley is the ghostly woman in white, and that she wanders the cemetery in search of her dead son.

Another theory is that the haunting has something to do with one of the two gruesome murders that are associated with the cemetery. The first occurred in the 1800s when John Smathers was viciously murdered near the cemetery and his body was dumped in a sinkhole behind the Baptist Church which adjoins the cemetery. His killer, Richard Dean Jason, was obsessed with Smathers’ wife Ellen. Jason murdered John Smathers in a twisted attempt to win over Ellen’s devotion to him. After the murder, he told Ellen what he had done, then he killed her when she, unsurprisingly, didn’t return his affection. Jason dumped Ellen’s body in the sinkhole next to her husband’s which he had weighed down with chunks of iron. He later confessed to the murders, blaming them on his passion for Ellen. Some feel that the White Lady is actually the ghost of Ellen Smathers, and that she haunts the area where her body was buried.

Another twisted murder associated with Union Cemetery occurred in the 1930s and involved a man murdered by his adulterous wife’s lover. Mrs. Ethel Nott was convicted of second degree murder when her husband, George Nott, was murdered by her lover whose name was Elwood Wade. The two had planned the murder together. Eerily, George Nott’s body was discovered in the same sinkhole where John and Ellen Smathers’ bodies were dumped. After the murder, Elwood Wade put George’s body in a trunk that was filled with lead and sunk it in the sinkhole behind the Baptist Church. Against all odds, the trunk surfaced a short time later, and Elwood Wade was charged and convicted of murder. Wade was executed for his crimes, while Ethel Nott received a short prison sentence and was released in 1937.

In addition to the woman in white, other ghostly apparitions have been reported in Union Cemetery. One involves a ghostly cemetery caretaker who walks along the wrought-iron fence that encircles the perimeter of the grounds. There are also stories of men dressed in old-fashioned military uniform who have actually conversed with people. When asked where they are going, the men say, “Straight through,” and point to a path that now leads to a man-made reservoir. (2) Other activity includes the sound of a baby crying, small rocks and sticks thrown at visitors, shadow people, glowing red eyes, and growling sounds. The growling and red eyes may be connected to occult rituals that have been performed at the cemetery over the years. Union Cemetery is now off-limits to the public after sundown, but access is allowed during the day.

Milltown Rural Cemetery, Brewster, NY

This last story is one I experienced first-hand at a cemetery just a few miles from the Connecticut border, “Milltown Rural Cemetery” in Brewster, New York. This quaint old graveyard is filled with historic stones and monuments, and one of the most prominent belongs to Seth B. Howes, a famous Brewster resident who has been called “the father of the American circus”. The legendary little person Tom Thumb was once part of Howes’ circus, as were the famous Siamese twins, Eng and Chang. Howes’ mausoleum is surrounded by a ring of fencing that some say represents the circus ring, and the impressive home he lived in can still be seen by driving along Brewster Hill Road.

But my story doesn’t have to do with Howes’ monument, or any other for that matter. It has to do with a stone structure at the very back of the cemetery. It looks like a mausoleum, but it contains no name, just the date 1909 prominently carved above the doorway. I believe it was once used as a holding place to store coffins during the cold winter months when the ground was frozen solid and impossible to dig.

One day I was exploring the cemetery and was drawn to this stone structure. The brass doors are now green with age, and a small stained glass window at the rear of the building is missing most of its glass. This window was long ago sealed up with cement cinder blocks, but there was just enough space left for me to place my digital recorder on. When I did, I felt a male presence with me and I invited this spirit to communicate with me. I asked a few questions, then left the recorder running as I took a short walk around the cemetery. I was hoping that this male presence would have something to say. When I returned a short time later, I thanked the spirit who I had felt earlier and made my way home. Upon listening back to the recording I was more than a little surprised to hear a male voice. The voice had started speaking about 3 minutes after I had left the recorder running in the mausoleum window, and it said something very strange. Actually, it asked a question. “How old do you think I am?” it said. I have no idea who this voice belongs to, or how he is connected to the Milltown Rural Cemetery, but something tells me that the answer to his question is, “Very old”.

There's a saying that goes, "You live only as long as the last person remembers you." Throughout history, people have gone to great lengths to make sure that no one forgets them after they’re gone. They commission artists to carve ornate statues and to craft beautiful stained glass windows. They build mausoleums and erect obelisques that point to the sky, monuments to themselves; ones that they hope will live on forever just as they hope that their souls will live on eternally. But some cemeteries contain more than just monuments and memories. Some are meeting places of lost souls who for one reason or another find it hard to move on. So the next time you pass by a cemetery, consider stopping your car and taking a stroll around the grounds. And pay close attention to that gentleman standing by that old gravestone. His outdated clothing may not be just a fashion statement, and if you look away briefly, he may not be there when you look back.

Below - EVP from "Milltown Rural Cemetery" and photo of crypt where it was recorded.

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October 2018 Library Lecture Stories

11/8/2018

1 Comment

Somers Library - Saturday 6 October

I once went to see Lorraine Warren when she was giving a lecture, and I went up and tried to get near her at the lectern and I started to get some kind of a connection. And when I saw her there I saw this image behind her of a man in a robe. And I immediately thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s got a demon with her!’ And then I also thought like, ‘He doesn’t seem bad. He seems good.” I couldn’t figure it out. So the next day we were there and she was telling us her stories and she was saying that, like you, she also has a strong connection to Padre Pio. She believes Padre Pio protects her and watches over her. And all of a sudden it dawned on me who I thought I might have seen. So I went up and I talked to her about it and I said, “You know last night I was thinking about you and I saw Padre Pio.” and she goes, “Oh you see him too!” She said, “A lot of people will connect him to me.” And I was just amazed by that. And then when you brought your connection to Padre Pio, and you don’t even have a connection to her (Lorraine Warren) I thought that was pretty cool. She said that he was there during the Amityville case. That was her first connection to Padre Pio.
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[The following was told by a young girl in the audience who sat with her dad during the lecture]
My mom told me a story about two friends. One of the friends was going to move, and the woman that was coming to see her brought her kids. On the way back they got in a car crash and they all died. But then the night after, the woman that was moving fell asleep and she dreamt of the woman who had died with her kids. In the dream she was holding up a girl and saying, “This is your baby.” And then a few weeks later the woman found out that she was pregnant. The baby she saw in her dream had a red streak in her hair, and that was the baby that was born.
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I have two daughters, but one in particular is an empath. And we get spiritual activity a lot in the house. She knows now -- she’s old enough that she understands. She turns on the light, she calls it ‘the light’, which means that she’s open for business. But when she goes to sleep she doesn’t want the spirits to come to her, so she pushes them out with the ‘white light’. So when she was much younger we had a menacing male spirit in the house and he would come to her in dreams. He had been murdered and he wanted someone to avenge his death. And my daughter was like, “No, no, no. You have to go to the light. I can’t help you. I’m just a little girl.”
Barry: How old was she at the time?
Ten or maybe eleven. So when the girls were at school, it always seems to be her bedroom. She’s the one they seem to go to. So, I’m asking basically about your clearing. I had a heart-to-heart with whoever this person was and I basically had to say, “She’s just a little girl. You can’t be here. This is our home. We’re taking it back. Thank you for visiting, but you gotta go.” And I was strong. I wasn’t fresh, but I had to be strong for the family, like ‘You’re out’. And I have to tell you -- that worked! But I never did it before, so I want to hear from you what you do. And I did say, “It’s time for you to go to the light.” And I did say, “You have family -- you have family waiting.”
Barry: You did it! And that’s basically what I do.
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It was on my bucket list to go to the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River, MA., and I finally got a hold of a friend of mine who wanted to go. We drove out, went on the tour. It’s about an hour. A very nice, nicely restored house. After the tour, the tour guide said, “Do you have any questions?” And I said, “I understand that there’s a new theory that Andrew and his wife were murdered because Andrew was having an incestuous relationship with Lizzie. And there was so much rage it appear from the physical look of … you know, he was beaten over and over again in the face. And likewise upstairs with her, it was theorized that she was just venting on him and that the step-mother was killed because she knew about it but didn’t do anything to stop it.” And after I went through that the tour guide said, “I’ve learned not to say anything bad about Andrew in the house because I get very bad vibes. But I’ve been told by two different mediums that have come to the house that my grandmother stays in the house with me and guards me while I’m giving the tours.”
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I can tell you one about my daughter who is an empath. She’s was up at college. She has an apartment. She comes in one night and she goes to bed. Her closet is open. It just has a sheet, there’s no door. It’s an old, old house. She can see, but before she sees them she feels them, and she knew there was somebody in the closet. I would have died! I would have just been out of there. But she’s just so brave. I don't’ know how she does it. So she does the whole thing in her head. “So sorry I can’t help you. You need to move on.” And she has this whole conversation. He comes out and he gets closer, slowly. It’s menacing.

B: Is she seeing this or is she feeling this.

No. First she felt him in the closet, then he made his appearance, he came out of the closet. He’s a dark figure. A dark, dark figure. He’s a man. She sees him, and she’s having the whole conversation with him, “I can’t help you. I can’t help you.” To me, this is my worst nightmare, but he comes closer. Comes very close. It’s not a very big room. It’s stronger than she is. She said that she’s never encountered anything so strong, so she knows she can’t do it on her own. She enlisted the help of Archangel Michael, and she prayed. She prayed to him. And this makes me cry. If I cry, I’m sorry because this is my daughter. With that, Archangel Michael comes and lays on the bed, and she felt his arms come around her and she said that she felt a thousand times better. She felt brighter and happier and lighter. And with that this dark figure slowly moved back and went into the closet.

And he [Archangel Michael] stayed with her I can’t tell you how long, and then all of a sudden she felt that he was gone. And with that he disappeared. But she said, “Mom, it was so strong. I’ll name my son Michael because he was wonderful.”

And I want everyone to know that if you ever just count on them ... you have to ask them for their help. They’re there to help. And my daughter did. She called upon Archangel Michael and he was there. So, please utilize them. They’re waiting. Those angels are there for our protection, and that’s exactly what he did.
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This happened to me when I was a kid. So, here I am -- I’m an innocent 16-year-old who’s in a basement with a girlfriend of mine, and her boyfriend, and my boyfriend. The four of us. And my boyfriend and her boyfriend go off into a corner and they’re using an Ouija board. We said, ‘OK, goodbye. We’re going to be over here giggling and laughing’. So this went on for a couple of hours. We’re like, ‘Stay away from us with the Ouija board.’ But we weren’t scared. I just want you to know that even though we didn’t know what they were doing or who they were calling, we were having our own good time.

So, it’s now like two o’clock in the morning and it’s late, and my boyfriend said, ‘Let me drive them home. Are you going to be here when I come back?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ So I stayed and it was like a 15 minute drive and he came back. We said our goodnights and then I left and went home. And again, I pointed that out because I wasn’t scared to be alone. I didn’t feel like anything, I didn’t feel threatened.

But when I came home I didn’t want to wake my sister ‘cause I shared a room with her, so I slept on the couch. It was late now, probably around four o’clock in the morning, and my cat jumps up on me and goes to sleep on my chest, which is not unusual. Then all of a sudden when I was just at that point of about to go to sleep I felt a burning sensation at my feet. I felt like I was almost being burned at the stake. And while this is happening to me I’m looking at my cat and I could feel this like heavy, heaviness on my chest. Like all of a sudden my cat is now like a man laying on my chest, and heavy, heaviness. And the breath was coming out of my mouth like I couldn’t breathe. And the only thing I could think to do is pray, because I’m Christian. So I started saying prayers. I started saying the Our Father and ‘In the name of Jesus Christ you need to leave.’ Because I did feel that it was evil all of a sudden. So with that, it leaves.

I waited for the sun to come up and I called my boyfriend and said, ‘What happened last night?’ And he said, ‘What do you mean?’ I go ‘What were you doing with the Ouija board? Because something really freaky happened.’ He’s like, ‘We were calling Aleister Crowley.’ Now, I didn’t know to much about Aleister Crowley, but I found out that he was really evil. I ended up looking him up and it said that he used to sacrifice cats and burn cats. So I felt like there was this connection with my cat and this burning feeling.

So when I called my friend, she said that she woke up at 4:15 AM, the same exact time this was happening to me. She said that she had a dream that she and I were doing the Ouija board and she asked the Ouija board, ‘Have we contacted spirits?’ and it said, ‘Yes’. And she said, “Are they good’ and it went to ‘No’. And she shot up out of bed and said, ‘Oh my god that was freaky’ and she couldn’t get back to sleep. So we found out like twelve hours later when we started comparing stories, that the same thing happened at the same time.
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Carmel Library - Saturday, 13 October 2018

This happened at least ten years ago. We were visiting my son and my daughter. They were young, ten or seven years old. We were watching TV and my daughter and another little boy was watching TV with the blanket over their legs up in the bedroom upstairs. And, my son who was like seven at the time or ten at the time was trying to read in the living room with me and my friend and her mother. And it was dark and I kept saying, “Matthew, you’re going to ruin your eyes. Turn the light on. Turn the light on.” And then all of a sudden, the overhead light went on like after five minutes of me saying this to him. The overhead light went on. We all freaked out. But at the same time, my daughter who was upstairs watching TV with the other little boy with the blanket over them, they both screamed and ran down the stairs. They said that a wind or something went across their feet underneath the blanket at the same time as the light went on. We were ready to just go home, but we were upstate and didn’t want to drive home in the middle of the night. It was scary.
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Years ago I was at an historic place around Tarrytown, and as they were doing the tour I started feeling that there was a little slave girl in the corner. I didn’t see it, but I felt it. And this little girl was trying to tell me how hard her life was, and she was crying. So, I was a little upset. I went home and I thought, ‘I have some imagination!’ And I was kind of ignorant of the fact that there was actual slavery in New York back then. Since that happened I’ve gotten a history degree. I went back with my sister, and they have re-done the whole house. There are shackles on the windowsill. And when I saw that I got really pale, and I felt sick. Since then, any time I’ve been there for any kind of event, I can feel her. So the last time we were there I kind of said, “You can go over now.” And it worked.

__________

This is a story that my dad told me. About 10 years after his father had passed away, he looks at the couch in his home and his father’s keys are laying on the couch. And the keys had not been seen since he had died. And the couch didn’t exist when he was alive, so it’s not like they fell out of the couch. That couch was not in the room.

__________

I work at a school in New Jersey which was once the house of a very famous family. I’ve had many things happen in the room that I teach in, but most recently I was giving an evening parent/teacher conference and the door to my room kept opening, and the mom was getting really annoyed by it. So she got up and went to go close it -- these are very tall doors -- then she went to sit down. She sat down and all of a sudden she said that someone pushed her chair. She went like that (rocks chair back and forth with considerable force) and she said, “Oh my gosh!” And her husband said, “Are you OK?” and then HIS chair got pushed the same way!

Another teacher and I have also smelled the same candle, and there are no candles lit. This isn’t the smell of a modern scented candle. It’s just like the smell of a wax candle. We’ve both smelled this in my room, and right outside of it. The first day I ever taught in the room I felt a swish of air or something go right past my leg, which I knew was some sort of a presence.

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Sherman Library - Saturday, 13 October 2018

I live right next to Fairfield Hills, which is an old abandoned mental institution in Newtown. There have been a lot of horrible things that happened there. When I was younger I started hearing the voice of this little girl in my house. At that time my dad was still alive, and he would hear it too. I would be in one room and hear her talking in another room. One time my brother was getting off the bus and I heard downstairs as clear as day, “Is he getting off the bus?”. Another time I was down in the basement and I heard footsteps on the wood floors, and giggling. My dad came down and screamed at the ghost! I’m sure that this girl’s spirit came from Fairfield hills, but there was another spirit with her that was a non-human spirit that would act as a doppelganger. My brother would often see me wandering around the yard when I wasn’t even home. One time I was walking down in the basement and I see my brother running at me, and right as he’s about to hit me he vanished. One night I got out of the shower and went into my bedroom. I was sitting on a beanbag chair in my room. The hallway was dark, and I was just on my phone and I looked up and I saw my brother clear as day. I see him like bent over, and he’s flailing his arms weirdly. I see it for a good five or ten seconds and am thinking, ‘What is going on?’ And I blink and it’s gone. I did a clearing on my house and haven’t had any issues since. But me and my friend have both seen a very tall Native American man standing in the woods at night. This is at the same house on Manawalk road. So, we think there may be some connection.

We’ve had lights turn on and off. There was even one time when my mom was home alone and she was in the shower. There was a knock on the bathroom door. She opened the door and said, ‘Who’s there?” and then she closed and and said, “Nobody better knock on that door again”. Nobody does, but she gets back in the shower and the hot water is running and then all of a sudden the water goes totally cold. It stays that way, so she called a plumber. He came over and took a look at the water heater in the basement and he takes a look at it for no more than a minute. He said, “I’m not even going to charge you. The hot water heater is switched off.” So, it switched off when my mother was alone in the house, right in the middle of her taking a shower.

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I went to school in MA, so it was closer by the water near Quincy. I was staying at my friend’s house for the weekend just to get away from school. And basically we saw a shadow girl on the wall. It was like a little girl dressed in an old gown and stuff, and we both saw it. But I didn’t really say anything about it until way later. I said, “did you see that” and she was like “Yup, I saw it!” It was a tiny room, like an office or a den where the computer was. There was a window with the six panels, and then there was this space where the door was and we saw it right in that space. We did just about everything to debunk it, but we couldn’t figure out what caused that.

B: Did it look solid, or like a shadow on the wall?

It looked like a shadow. You know when your shadow goes by. The other weird thing was it smelled like a campfire, but there wasn’t a fire or anything in the house. The only other person that was home at the time was her father who was downstairs. I don’t know what caused that.

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I worked at a daycare in Tucson Arizona, and the buildings were made up of two different houses that were kitty-cornered to one another. And then in between the two houses was the playground. So you walked into the front door of the daycare and there was a staircase that went up to where there was a storeroom and the staff restroom. The kids never went up there. It was early in the morning, about 6:30 in the morning. There were two teachers in the school and the first little boy shows up for the day. He’s two years old. He looks at the stairs and says in Spanish, “Quien es ese?” which means, “Who is that?” And the teacher says, “Quien is quien?” -- “Who is who?” And he said, “La Mujer!” -- “The woman!” And she said to him, “There’s no woman up there. It’s just me and the other teacher, and she’s right there.” And the boy said, “No, the woman on the stairs. She’s there every day. She says hello to me every day.” In the same building, one time the same teacher was there with the last couple of kids at night and she heard like a bowling ball rolling upstairs in the same area upstairs. The dad walked in and said, “What’s going on up there?” and she said, “I don’t know. I’m the only one here with the kids”. He said, “Are you sure? Because there’s definitely somebody up there.” The dad goes up, looks all around, but there was nobody there. We shut down the school about a year later, and a Frat house was built right there, so who knows what’s going on there now!

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I moved into an apartment in Millford by the beach, and the told me that two people had died in the apartment I was moving into. Now, as a kid I would have been frightened of things like that, but when I moved in I said out loud, “I’m here. My name is Maryanne. You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you.” And that’s just the kind of attitude I had with the whole thing. So I didn’t ask about anything. What room they died in. I didn’t want to know anything. So, at Christmas time I’m putting my tree up. I’m untangling the lights, going up and down, up and down. ALl of a sudden I pick up the last string and there’s this full body apparition. I saw not through him. It was my height. He was this close to me. I didn’t even. I’m thinking, “Is he breathing or isn’t he?” (laughs) But when I described it to the neighbor downstairs, they said, ‘That was the fella who died in your apartment.” I mean, the hair, the coat. Just the whole look about him. And I never knew if it was a kid or whatever. I just looked up at him and thought, “Where did you come from?” And then all of a sudden, in a split second it was gone. But that was freaky! It looked as real as anything. It really did. It was like if you touched it, you would have really felt someone solid. That was the only time that anything like that ever happened.

Barry: Were you standing at the time? How tall was he?

He was as tall as me. I bent down to get the Christmas lights and stood up. I wasn’t dizzy or anything. I stood up and there he was right in front of me. It was like if you were a little closer to me now and I looked him right in the face and thought, “Where did you come from?”

Barry: Did you notice what he was wearing?

Yes. He had a green army, like the US reserve jackets, the green. He had it up a little bit. He had a flannel shirt I noticed. His face was a little dirty. I was like, “What, did you crawl out of a hole or something?” And his hair was kind of wild, but they said that this kid had punked hair with colors and whatever. And probably all the way down, I could feel that he was down to the floor. He wasn’t floating or anything. But he was dressed for outside for that time of the year. But I don’t know where he was or where he came from. I never saw him again after that, but the dogs would sit there and follow something with their eyes. They’d look up and follow something from room to room with their eyes and I’d say, “What the hell are you looking at?!” (laughs)

Barry: Do you still live there?

Hell no! (laughs) But one time, if any of you have pets, you know how they come up to you and they jump on the bed next to you. Well, I felt that and I out of the norm, it doesn’t faze you. Oh good, the dog’s in the bed. I felt it. My dog wasn’t even home! And I said, “What is this?!” I didn’t move out because it was scary. It wasn’t scary whatsoever. But that particular thing, I am amazing that I was able to let it roll off of my shoulders. But I didn’t let it bother me.

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This sounds kind of cliche, but it all started after my sister got her car from a family friend. We were cleaning it out and we found this tape of children’s nursery rhymes. And it was these weird nursery rhymes about old horses and stuff. Not like normal nursery rhymes. A couple weeks later my sister is cleaning out the car again, and she’s on the phone with her boyfriend who lives down in Florida, and all of a sudden they both hear this screaming on the phone. Like, really weird screaming. She’s freaking out, he’s freaking out. She tells me and I’m like, ‘It’s probably nothing’. But then, weird things start happening to my dog. I’m super protective of my dog. Nothing happens to my dog, ever. And so all of a sudden my sister’s car starts setting off the dog’s electric collar around the car, which never happens anywhere. Then, I’m home alone. Her car isn’t there. But still, in the area of her car I’m starting to feel uneasy. I’m outside with my dog. Then all of a sudden I hear what sounds like a little kid scream, “Puppy!” And my dog’s freaking out. She’s getting super excited about nothing. So I’m like, ‘What are you seeing that I’m not?’ So it’s a couple of weeks later, it’s the middle of the summer. I start hearing leaves crunching outside, really loud. I’m watching TV and it’s just loud leaves crunching outside. So I go and I check it out. Nothing’s out there. I take my dog out. And then all of a sudden I see this light almost in the shape of a person, and it runs off into the woods. And nothing has happened since.

Barry: This was a used car?

This was a used car.

Barry: So it sounds like something came with the used car besides the creepy tape.

But ever since it ran off I haven’t, and my sister and i haven’t seen or heard or felt anything since.

Barry: I wonder what made it leave? You don’t care, right? As long as it’s gone.

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My husband’s family’s house was an old farmhouse in Pine Plains which is just at the top of Dutchess and Columbia counties. His sister and I were best friends in high school. And many, many, many strange things happened. But two that put us on edge. It was during the day, the middle of the day. We were by ourselves. The back door came into the kitchen, but the floor of the kitchen had been ripped up. It was just two-by-fours. And we were sitting in the front part of the house. It was a great big farmhouse. We were sitting in the front part watching TV. And they had a flapping door that went from the dining room to the kitchen, and it was shut because there was no kitchen at the time because it had been gutted. It was in the summer, and we lived in the middle of nowhere. Nobody locked doors or anything. And we heard the door flap. And we were like … how could somebody come in? There wasn’t even a floor. We walked into the dining room which had hardwood floors and there were wet footprints going across the floor. Like, I can picture it today. We were like, holy crap! And they just dissipated. They were full sized footprints. They were like little footprints. They were men’s … and they weren't shoes. They were bare feet. A man’s bare feet going across. And they dissipated. There were like four or five steps, and then they were just nothing.

Barry: Well, it would be like if someone walked in a puddle ….

Then they would dry as you went along. Right. So, the same house happened to be just the two of us again. They had a lot of dogs. They raised Afghan dogs. So they went to a dog show, her sisters and her mother and we were dog sitting. This time it was at night, and we kept two dogs with us. We were going to sleep in the living room and watch TV, and we kept two of the big dogs. A big greyhound and a really aggressive Afghan, because we’re in the middle of nowhere and nobody locks doors. And we’re watching TV and we hear music playing. Clear as day. And one of the back bedrooms upstairs on the second floor on the back corner that was also like two rooms within a room, and it also had a staircase that was a walk-up to the attic. This was all in one room. At the time it was Jimmy’s bedroom, but he was not there. His stuff was in there, but he wasn’t living there. And we hear music. And the door was closed because nobody used the room. And it was LOUD. And we’re like, “There’s music coming from upstairs.” It was current music. Like a radio playing. Current music. And we were of course afraid. We were like, ‘Someone’s in the house,’ because it’s just an impossibility.

We took the dogs and they’re growling as we’re going up the stairs. We come to the door. The door’s shut. The music is playing. I’ve got chills going up and down my body thinking about it. The dogs are growling. We open the door. The music stops. There is no music. We put on the lights. There is no one there. We walk in, the dogs, the hair is up on their backs, and they’re still growling. And there’s like, so there’s the bedroom, and then there’s a little room off of it that also has a closet in it. And we walked into there. The dogs’ hair was up on their backs, and they went over to a corner and were growling at this corner. They could sense something … we couldn’t see anything, but there was something. It was so frightening that we slept with the lights on, and the dogs were on the couch with us. That upstairs room always had a funny feeling to it. I don’t know if it was the attic. You always felt like somebody was going to come in on you. Do you know what I mean? Like, you felt as if something would come out of that door and come down. Yeah. A lot of very strange things happened in that house. There are a lot of good stories about that house. You’d make a pot of coffee, you’d go in and half a pot would be gone. It made absolutely no sense. Five cups of coffee would just vanish, and it would be just half a pot. At the time, everybody smoked. Cigarettes, whole packs, would just disappear. Gone. So, I guess he liked coffee and cigarettes.

Barry: So I guess he was a barefoot, coffee drinking smoking ghost!

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Mount Kisco Library - Saturday, 20 October 2018

My dad’s offices were in the city, and every time go back or forth he would let me throw the dime into the bucket at the Henry Hudson toll booth. To this day I find dimes everywhere I go. I’ve gotten up and found dimes in my slippers at home, or gone to change the sheets and there’s a dime in my sheets. Everywhere I go. At one point I took them to the bank and I had $33 dollars worth of dimes. And I find them everywhere.
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My grandmother was from Puerto Rico, so I grew up in an Hispanic culture, so this was very much a part of my upbringing. And she used to take me to seances when I was little. I’ve seen exorcisms, I’ve seen things that were good and bad. I choose not to acknowledge the bad, so I’m open only to the good. I sell houses for a living, and when i walk into a house I can feel the energy. And when I go to funerals, standing in front of a casket or even just walking into the funeral home, I can feel that it’s sort of like an energy that’s a wave. It almost makes me feel like I want to pass out. It like passes right through me, but I can feel that a person is still attached to this plane. Or changes in temperature. When my grandmother died, it still happens sometimes, I walk into my bedroom and the TV would be on. So, they like electronics too.

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This took place quite a while back and basically I woke up feeling like I had to go to the bathroom. So I went to the bathroom and I saw something in my kitchen doorway. When I looked back in walking back from the bathroom, there were blue eyes glowing bright. Everything else was like dark, like there was no light source, but it was only illuminating the thing itself. It looked like it had some kind of dark hair going across it. It looked like it had some kind of white on the bottom of it. But once I saw it I though, ‘Hell no!’ and ran right to my bed and hid under the sheets.

Mark Twain Library, Saturday 27 October 2018

I was at the Old State House in Hartford and they have this Hall of Oddities, which is this museum of really creepy stuff. We had a couple of Boy Scouts with us who were working on a badge, and I’m walking out of the room and something tugged on my sleeve and a voice said, “Mom!, And I turned around and everybody was at the other side of the room. And the director of the Old State House was with us and she saw my reaction and she said, “What happened?” So I told her, and she said they have a lot of activity in that room.

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I lived in a house in Ridgefield that belonged to my great aunt. I had two things that happened to me in that house. Once I was sitting in the living room on the couch and I was looking straight at the hallway and I saw a vision of what looked like a see-through almost like silk object just pass down the hallway. Another time I was sitting on the living room floor, it was in summer. They have no fans, no air conditioning, and there was no wind outside. I was on the floor playing with my youngest daughter and I felt like extreme cold. Like something came on and passed right through me.
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My story is, I was about six-years-old and for like my entire life before that I always had a nightmare every night. ANd I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. One year we moved down to the basement because it was bigger and we had more space down there. And a week or two in, I had this weird nightmare of being chased by buffalo and they trampled me and I shot up like this … and I looked around and I looked back, and I saw something that at first I thought was clothes hanging, but then all of a sudden it formed into what looked like a witch holding a cane with a skull on it. And it stared at me, turned around, and walked away from me into the hall. And then i just snapped into day, still in the same position. And then since that I had not had a single nightmare. Not one. Even after seeing anything else, not one single nightmare.
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I was at a hotel once, and I was watching a movie real late and just as I was going to bed, I was really tired. I don’t know if it was an illusion, but I saw a transparent man in the corner of the room. And so then I fell asleep, and the like two years after when i was at my house, like a similar story. I saw a movie and I was really tired, and I saw the same shape in the left hand corner. The same person.
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A few years back we were in Memphis, Tennessee, and there’s a section with victorian houses that they give tours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So we went on a tour of the Mallory-Neeley House and we toured the first floor. The rules when you walked in the house were you could take pictures but no flash, and don’t touch anything. So we toured the whole first floor, toured the whole second floor. And we were with her for about an hour and after and hour she goes, “There’s actually a widow’s watch” and we were compliant for the whole time and she said “You could go up by yourselves if you like” because she had some kind of a respiratory thing that prevented her from climbing the stairs. It was basically a third and fourth floor. So there’s a stairwell going up to the third floor, about a twelve by twelve room. And then another stairwell that went up to the fourth floor. So my wife Karen was recording it on her camera the whole time. So she scanned the room when we were on the third floor, and then we walked up to the fourth floor. Along the way from the fourth floor there’s a stairwell and there’s a curtain. And the curtain was kind of draped across the window so Karen pulled the curtain back, scanned out the window. We walked up to the next floor, scanned around. The next day we were on the highway driving from Memphis to Nashville and she looked back at the video and she actually captured a ‘Class A’ EVP. The moment that she touches the curtain and pulls the curtain back, you hear a voice that says, “Maybe you shouldn’t touch it.” Because that was the rule in the house when we came in. It’s not something that sounds like that, it’s right there with us. Now, I’m a skeptic but I can’t explain it.

Note from Barry: I was running my digital recorder while listening to the EVP that the woman was sharing with me, and I was able to get a recording of it. But what's really strange is that I picked up an EVP at the Mark Twain Library! As I was listening to the woman's EVP, a man's voice jumped in and said what sounds like the name "Mike Goldman". If the couple who shared the EVP from the Mallory-Neeley House are reading this, and that name means anything to you, please contact me. Both EVP are below

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I lived in a duplex here in Redding, and this guy committed suicide at the end of June. I was living on the other side of the wall. Before he died I used to hear his footsteps every morning at about 5AM before he died. But the morning he died, I hadn’t heard his footsteps. He used to be a smoker, he would smoke on the front porch. After he died, I came home twice that first week and I smelled cigarette smoke. After that, I started hearing his footsteps at around 5 AM, the same time that he used to walk around in his apartment when he was alive. And it woke me up.

Now I didn’t know it at the time, but there was another guy who killed himself in the house. I would hear stuff in the attic. It sounded like there were people above me. I’ve heard footsteps in the room above me. So I think the whole place was haunted even before my neighbor killed himself.

The night I was moving out I heard voices. Men’s and women’s voices. I thought it was my sister and her two male friends coming back from the storage unit, but it wasn’t. I checked the street, but there was nobody walking outside. I could see the street clearly, and I would have seen someone if there were out there.
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Lewisboro Library, Friday 26 October 2018

My grandfather’s very tidy, and he had moved a cup from the living room and put it into the sink. A few minutes later, the cup showed up back in the living room. It had moved about 20 feet from one room to the other. I don’t think that it traveled through the air or anything like that. It was almost as if it had dematerialized in the kitchen, then rematerialized in the living room. My grandparents were both very serious freaked out when this happened.
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I was in fourth grade and my mom had died when I was four, so I used to pray at night that she would come to me. We had bunk beds when we were kids, and I was the youngest so I was on the third bunk. There were three windows against the wall, and we just had blinds so you could see shadows in the room. I went to Catholic school, and before this happened I said to the nun in religion class, ‘How about if you see something, or you don’t understand something and it’s bad.” And she said, “Just say, ‘In God’s name, who are you?” I remembered that.

At that time, the nuns had very distinct habits. They were very high with a huge bib in front. And one night this nun appeared over where the windows were, and she started coming towards me. Now, I’m on the third bunk and her shoulders were that high. I couldn’t see a face, but I could see the habit, but there was something different about the habit. I don’t know. But she was so huge and she almost touched my bed. I said, “In the name of God who are you?!” And I jumped off of the bed and ran in my dad’s room and shook him and said, “Pop, I’m sleeping with you.” And he said, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “I just saw a nun!” and he said, “Guilty conscience.” So I had to go back into my room. But I never forgot that.
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When I was nine my dad was suddenly killed in a car accident. He was only in the hospital a few days. We were young. At that time they thought that nine was young, so they kept saying, ‘He’s going to be fine.’ But then three days later my mom woke us up and said that he died. This was the 1960s and they didn’t let you go to the funeral back then, so she didn’t want to bring us to the funeral. She let us stay with my neighbor who had children our age. I remember feeling very lonely. I wanted to be with my mother, and I was scared. I was sleeping in the same room with the three girls who were about my age, but I couldn’t sleep. I was just laying there with my eyes shut thinking, ‘I want to be in my own house, I’m sad.’ And all of a sudden it got very bright in the room. Even though my eyes were shut, it got very bright in the room. And a voice very clearly said to me, “Don’t be afraid. Open your eyes. Everything’s going to be OK.” And I did NOT open my eyes because I was very, very afraid. Then it got dark again, and as soon as it got dark I sensed that whatever had said that to me wasn’t there anymore.

I jumped up and went into the room next to me and the mom said, “What’s the matter, you can’t sleep?” And I said, “No, I can’t sleep. It’s lightning out and it’s just too bright in the room.” And she said, “There’s no storm outside!” I hadn’t told anybody that story until I was about nineteen-years-old because I thought that I had just imagined it, but it was as clear as day.
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Unfortunately a couple of years ago, we had to have our beagle euthanized because she had cancer. I loved my beagle, and I was grieving terribly about that. It was a couple of nights later. We were going to bed and she used to have a habit of jumping on the bed, and when she did I could feel her jumping on the bed and she would come up between Mike and me and cuddle. Well, I felt that again. I distinctly felt the bed go down and come up. She was big. She was a big beagle, so you couldn’t miss it. And I looked down and went, ‘Oh!’ And it was just a habit and I said, “Come on Chloe!” And I looked, but of course nobody was there, nothing was there. And then I felt the grief again and it really affected me. And I realized that she’s probably still here. She’s probably comforting me for awhile anyway. So, it wasn’t much, but I remember it very distinctly. It’s amazing how pets will do that.
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What you said kind of confirmed the experiences I’ve had. My family’s apartment house, in two separate instances a few years apart. One of my uncles had died, and then another one had died. And in each case, the first one was ill for a while and he had a certain way of breathing and it was distinctive. The other uncle would sit in the back of one of the apartments and play the guitar in the most terrible way. It was very annoying because I was at college at time and it would disturb me in the middle of the day. And in each case when they passed away, I kept hearing the breathing of this one uncle several days in a row at least. It was freaking me out. And finally I just turned around and said, ‘I can’t take this anymore, can you please stop Uncle Eddie,’ and it stopped. And in the other case I was trying to study and by that time I accepted that it was him, my uncle Charlie, and finally I couldn’t get any peace because of the guitar and I said, ‘Can you please stop uncle Charlie, I’m trying to study,’ and it stopped. It went on one more time about two weeks later and I said, ‘Are you going to keep this up?’ and it stopped finally.
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Like you, I saw something that didn’t scare me. It had to be something. At two in the morning about 20 years ago I was riding back home in Newtown, and it’s pretty rural with no street lights. And a huge white horse with a man in full English riding habit with a scarlet red hat just came out of the side of the road. And I’m driving home and all I’m thinking is, ‘Don’t hit the horse!’ And then I got home and my husband said, ‘Do you think ….?’ And that was in Newtown where they used to run the hounds. But it didn’t scare me at the time. But it was a HUGE white horse and the scarlet red hat. It was very solid! I thought I was going to hit it because it was coming right at me, and I thought, ‘Don’t hit the horse’. And then it just went. But what IDIOT would be out riding at two in the morning?!

Barry: Were you riding towards it?

It was coming toward me. I was at a four way intersection, I was going across and it was coming across someone’s front lawn, and it was coming down the lawn toward where the hounds used to ride down Fox Hill. So it was headed down that way.

There’s another road in Newtown that freaks me out. Poverty Hill. I avoid it at all cost. I had been driving down with my son who was about seven. I didn’t tell him that this road creeps me out. But it’s night and he’s looking out at the woods and he turns back slowly to me and says, “Lots of eyes looking back out there!”
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Oxford Library - Monday, 29 October 2018

I grew up in a house in Ansonia. It was a two family. I didn’t move out until I was eleven, so this happened when I was a little girl. The house is, the first floor in the front is built on a cliff, so my sister and I shared a bedroom that was three stories up. So, one night she looked out the window and there were eyes staring at her. So the following morning my mom made sure that she put me next to the window and put her against the wall because my sister would never sleep in that room again. And then my brother who slept in the other room, he woke up to the shades going up and down, up and down, really quick. That happened a couple of times to him. The people above us had a big dog -- named Satan by the way! (laughs) One day we thought the dog was rolling a bowling ball. That’s what it sounded like -- up and down the living room. And when my mom asked them, a few hours later she went there up to say hi and she said, “Oh my God the dog. What’s the dog playing with?” And the neighbor said, “Nobody was home”. They had the dog out, and it sounded just like a bowling ball.

And then we had, it was kind of like a walk-up attic. I would go up there when I was little, and there was this one room that I refused to go in. And of course, it was where my mom kept all the change of clothes for the seasons. And she would make me go in there and I refused. I absolutely hated that room. I didn’t know why. But there was a closet and all the clothes would be up in the closet, and I would NEVER open the closet door. I wouldn’t go into that room. And they actually put a cross in that room, and I still would not go in that room as a little girl. And so finally when we moved out I was like ten or eleven years old, we found out that the next people that moved in, a couple weeks after that, everything in the kitchen entirely shifted and moved in the kitchen. And then we never heard what happened after that. But the house looks like it’s in horrible shape now.
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I was always interested in stuff and read about it, but I never really had seen anything. I’m a plumber, and working in some houses you get like an eerie feeling in old houses. But this was in Harold Leever Cancer Center. I was working at night. We would go in after everybody had their chemo; so we had to work at night and get done and make it look like we weren’t there. So, my apprentice and I went up. The nurse said, “Everybody’s done. Go ahead. You can start.” We go up there and we’re starting to get ready, getting our cart and our tools. And we look across and i would say about fifty-feet away from us we saw a man go into one of the patient rooms. And I said, “I thought everybody was out of here.” And I go, “You seen that guy go in there.” So we walked down there, and we go in that room, and it was cold and every hair on the back of my neck and my arms stood up. And there was nobody in there. We both saw the same guy. Bald, tall, glasses, suit-and-tie on. And we told the nurses about it the next time we went to work. And they were like, “Look at this picture. Does it look like this guy?” And we were like, “Yeah. That’s the guy.” It was a doctor who had passed away there. It was the freakiest thing. And then I believed. And what was so cool was that my apprentice had seen the same thing.

Barry: Did they say how long ago he had passed away?

It was like only a couple of years earlier that he had passed.
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So, my grandmother had passed away, and she was a really neat lady. And so after the funeral and everything we were all sitting around in my mom’s kitchen. They were telling stories about her, and my mom’s kitchen has a little bathroom off the side, and just as we were talking the toilet flushed! And we just kind of felt, because it never does that, that she was just sort of giving us a sign that she was there. I’m not sure why that sign!
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I have a lot of stories, but I’ll share one of my favorite ones. I’ve lived in haunted houses and seen ghosts that seemed real to me that nobody else sees. They used to swing me on the swings when I was a kid, I was an only child. But I always had a lot of ‘friends’ around me, so it was kind of weird. But my very favorite story is when I went to Nashville and went into the Ryman Auditorium with a friend of mine. And we came down the hallway, down the walkway, and she said, “Oh, we’ll sit here.” And I was like, ‘I’ve got to cross by all these people!” And I’m going (pretending to walk past people who are sitting in chairs) “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.” And all of the seats were empty. I didn’t see them empty though. I just saw a whole bunch of people waiting for a show just like we were.
__________
A woman and her sister were sitting together in the audience, and they shared this story ...

My parents moved to Monroe. This is going back to the 90’s. My father was a believer, and we never really knew why he was so interested. He would go to the library and he would look up literature on different paranormal topics and different people. He even went to Dudelytown in Connecticut where all of that paranormal stuff is supposed to happen. He loved US history and he would always research things. My mother is different. She’s not a believer. She’s a devout Catholic, and we were raised Catholic too. So she was that type, she just didn’t believe. Now, my sister lived with her son in my mother’s house. Different things would happen in that house. Things would go missing. When I’d go over to visit, the TV would turn on and off by itself. It was the old fashioned type of television. No remote control. You’d just be sitting there and it would turn on and off.

A lot of different things happened, but one day in particular, my sister was looking out of a big picture window. They lived on a dirt road, not one neighbor. It was by a camp, but the camp had closed down years before. And she said to my father, “Oh my God, some guy just walked by.” And he said to her, “Was he wearing a flannel shirt and overalls?” and she said, “Yeah! How did you know?” And he said, “I think that that’s our ghost.” He had that sense, my father. And other things happened in that house. My sister’s son’s baby pictures went missing.

Sister talking: There were a ton of my son’s baby pictures on a stereo in the living room. I went to dust one day and I asked my father, “Where are all of Justin’s pictures?” We literally moved the stereo, everything out of that whole section, and they never, never showed up. And there was a lot of them. Another time, I was on the phone one night talking to my friend and it started to thunder and lightning outside. And the lightning flashed under the tree and I saw a guy dressed in a sailor’s outfit. I saw him totally clear when the lightning flashed. We had this big tree in the backyard, and he was dressed like a sailor. And I saw him good enough so I could even see what his face looked like. He was cute!
__________
Two small things. I used to work with the person who had the “Annabelle” doll. I’m a nurse, and she was a nurse, and I worked with her in the operating room. I guess they wrote a book about it? I never read the book. But it was real. She didn’t like to talk about it, and she refused to have her real name in the book. She didn’t want to be associated with that doll.

The second thing, my husband and I live in Oxford. He was a Marine, and he doesn’t believe in ghosts at all. At the time that this happened, his buddy was with him. Also a Marine. So they were in their car coming down Punkup Road and Silano Drive and they stopped at the stop sign, and to the right there was a girl dressed in white. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground on the corner on the grass, and she was kind of levitating. So she turned her face around and she had this smile on her face, like this when she looked at him -- and she had silver eyes. He came home and he was scared shitless, because he doesn’t believe in ghosts. And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to go see. Take me back.’ and he would take me. This guy is never scared, so I know it was real to him.

__________

I’ve had dreams, my grandmother used to say that she was one of eighteen children, but I would say she was one of sixteen children because we never knew if her twin siblings actually survived. She lived in a small house in Asonia. She used to have big parties in the dining room at her house when she was younger with all of the brothers and sisters, brothers-in-laws. So I started having dreams, and one of my dreams was that all the people who had passed away were having a big Thanksgiving dinner. Then a couple of days later, one of my grandmother’s siblings passed away; my grandmother’s sister -- the one who everyone says I’m most like, her really bossy sister.

My grandmother passed a few years ago, she was ninety-four years old, and she was the last one left of the sixteen children. I just recently had another dream. In the dream, I’m at my grandmother’s house, and she looks at me and says, ‘Why are you here? Get out of here!’ and she was pushing me out of the house. I’m wondering, is that a sign that it’s not my time? Because in all of the other dreams I’m looking at the scene from above, and I’m watching everyone welcoming the next person coming over.

Barry: Did you see the next person in the dream?

Well, in this last dream she was pushing me away saying, ‘It’s not your time - why are you here?’, but in the other dreams it was my grandmother’s two brothers and one of her sisters. The actual day my grandmother died in her house three years ago, they found her on the floor. And when they were carrying her out, my dad said they saw a big bald eagle leaving the house.
I’m also a genealogist. My grandmother did the genealogy of the family for twenty years, and I picked up her work. In it she mentioned the twins who died when they were about seven months old. I was doing research online, and in January, on the exact day of my grandmother’s birthday, I discovered that her twin siblings were born in 1912, and they died a day apart. I found this out on her birthday, which I think is pretty significant. So I’m wondering; is she telling me from the other side to finish her history? Now I can say for sure that she really was one of eighteen because the twins were actually born, they had birth certificates and death certificates.
_____________
Danbury Library, Tuesday 30 October 2018

This happened in Princeton, New Jersey off of Route 1. I lived in an old plantation house, and they converted it into eleven apartments. And I was able to compare it to other stories of people who had lived there the night I was moving out. I lived there for two year, but we were all so busy that we didn’t say anything about things that were happening. The house was huge, and there was a lot of space -- a huge living room and bedroom, but a little efficiency type kitchen. At the time I was working a lot - seven days a week, 12 hours a day. I was a computer programmer, and it was a brand-new job. So, of course I was really tired after work, and at first I just wrote off all of the things that were going on as my imagination because I was tired. But here’s the things that happened. Once I hit that sack, that’s it. And all the lights were off, but it happened all the time that the bathroom light would be turned on in the morning. And I’d be at the sink washing my dishes and it felt like someone came from behind and came real close to me. You know that feeling, when it feels real different when someone is right behind you? And then one night I go to bed, and it felt like there was somebody else in the bed! And I was really tired, so I would just go and sleep on the couch. It happened a few times. Sometimes Sunday mornings I’d just be laying there on the bed, not sleeping, just resting and relaxing to get some rest in, and I would hear my name being called. And it sounded like it was in a tunnel. “Lucy!” It was slow, like a hollow sound, like a tunnel sound. Another time the person who lived underneath me complained, “Why did you walk all night long? You kept us up!” But I didn’t, I was in bed. With just five hours sleep, I didn’t get up.

On the day that I was packing up and moving out, all of the people who lived in the building stopped by and we started comparing stories about all the the things that had happened to us. We were all saying, ‘Oh my God, this has been happening to you to?!’ The girl who lived in the attic apartment had the best story. She had a French horn hanging on her wall, and it would just go off. It would start playing by itself. She said that she would be getting ready for work and put her earring down, and the would turn around and they would be gone and it never turned up.
__________
This was my first ghost encounter ever. This happened in Cold Spring, New York when I was pretty young. My aunt used to own a restaurant, but it shut down so she converted that into her sewing company. She had people sewing all night and all times of the day. I must have been about four or five at the time. I was in that part of the former restaurant and I was sleeping in a hammock because my mom was sewing in a room upstairs. There was this big hole on the side of the restaurant where the old kitchen used to be, and as clear as day I felt a tingle go down my spine and I thought, ‘Oh, I have to get up.’ As I did, I watched these five figures walk in sync from the old kitchen. They had this green glow about them, and they all walked in sync. Then all of them turned their head at the same exact time and just stared at me. It felt like forever. They went from one door and then out into the outside; they just went through the wall and then outside. I remember screaming for my mom. Now, at the time there were monks staying in the building. They came to bless the house, not the restaurant. When they heard what happened, the monks blessed me so I could forget about it. So, that was my first encounter. And ever since then I’ve always seen things and sensed things.

I had sleep paralysis once when I was in high school, and I saw the form of a man. He had hair like a box-top kind of afro, he was wearing a dark green shirt and dark jeans, and he was standing on me. I heard him laughing as he was pressing down on me and I couldn’t breathe. That was my second one.
__________

I remember not too long ago me and my friend were kind of jokingly using a makeshift Ouija board. And we apparently talked to a man named Fred who was really into disco music. Then we were just joking around about it and then my friend got the bright idea to ask him where he was, and on the Ouija board it spelled out HALLWAY. So we kind of just flipped out and we said, ‘Goodbye!’ and we just packed up everything and we just left.
__________
I have a lot of stories, but this happened in the 90’s. I was living in East Norwalk in an old Victorian. There was a pizza place on the ground floor, and my apartment was above it. I had a couple of cats, and because I worked with the Department of Mental health I had borrowed a sound machine. I plugged it in because the apartment was across from a bar. I thought, ‘Let me just put it on and that way it’ll be nice and quiet.’ In the closet there was a ladder that lead up the attic door, and one day one of my cats thought they were going to go up there and check things out. I got the catfood and tried to get her down, but she wouldn’t come down. So I said, ‘You know what, I’m just going to let her come down when she wants to.’ And this man’s voice said, “You’re right”. And I freaked out. Something like that wouldn’t bother me now, but at the time I was in my twenties and I had never heard a voice before. I had seen things, but I had never heard a voice. It was a male voice. He was really nice, he was trying to be reassuring, but he scared the heck out of me!

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The New England Vampire Scare

10/3/2018

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Let me start by saying that although this article is about vampires, it’s not REALLY about vampires. It’s actually a look at one example of mass hysteria that took place in New England in the 19th century. And while I’m not trying to make excuses for the gruesome things that occurred during the New England vampire scare, I have to point out that it is just one example of mass hysteria that has plagued humankind since the beginning of time.

Mass hysteria is a phenomenon that spreads the illusion of a threat, whether real or imaginary, throughout a population. This is usually the result of rumor, or of fear. When mass hysteria hits, the behavior that people exhibit is often totally bizarre. Need an example? I’ve got plenty!

During the Middle Ages, a nun living in a French convent began to meow like a cat. No one knew why, but soon, some of the other nuns in the convent also started meowing. Soon, ALL the nuns were meowing away just like a litter of kittens. They would meow together, kind of like a cat choir, for a certain period of time every day. The community was puzzled, and probably more than a little amused and entertained by it all. I know if I lived in that town, I’d be hanging outside the convent everyday waiting for the kitty concert to start. What put a stop to this strange behavior? The police. They stepped in and threatened to whip the nuns if they didn’t shut the hell up -- so they did.

Not to pick on nuns here, but there was another case of mass hysteria that involved nuns. In the 15th Century, a nun in a German convent began biting her companions. Like the beginning of all mass hysteria cases, her actions were totally inexplicable. Strangely enough though, other nuns began biting each other at other convents. Nuns started biting each other across Germany, then the behavior spread to Holland. As far away as Italy, nuns were biting each other for no reason at all.

One of the most famous cases of mass hysteria occurred in July of 1518 in the French city of Strasbourg. This case didn’t involve meowing or biting. It started out quite innocently. One day, a woman named Mrs. Trofea, began dancing feverishly in the street. Her dance lasted about six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined in the dance, and within a month there were approximately 400 predominately female dancers. But the dancing wasn’t without its consequences. It was reported that at one point, as many as 15 people per day died from the result of the dancing. Some died of exhaustion. Others had heart attacks and strokes. The authorities were called in. Something had to be done, but what? “I know,” they said. “We’ll encourage more dancing so they’ll get it out of their system!” So they built a special stage for the dancers, opened two dance halls, and made a market available as a place where people could dance day and night. To help increase the effectiveness of the cure, the authorities even paid musicians to keep the dancers moving. The idea was a colossal failure. The number of dancers underwent a dramatic increase. In the end, the dancing lasted about two months, and then ended as mysteriously as it had begun.

Jumping ahead to the 20th century we find the strange case of the laughter epidemic of 1962. Three girls at a boarding school in Tanzania started laughing, and they couldn’t stop. The laughter spread to 95 of the 159 students, all of whom were girls between the ages of 12 and 18. These laughing seizures lasted from as little as a few hours, to as long as 16 days. Two months later, the school was forced to shut down. But this only made the laughing epidemic worse. After the girls were sent home, the laughing spread to their villages. The school reopened after a few months, but then had to close again as more and more girls found themselves laughing uncontrollably. Soon, another school found itself in the same predicament where 48 girls were affected. A few weeks later, two boys schools had to be closed when the boys ‘caught’ the laughing hysteria.

The list of examples of mass hysteria goes on and on. It includes hundreds of people fainting; people having convulsions; scores of men, women and children having seizures; people claiming to have been attacked by a mysterious man with a mallet and bright buckles on his shoes; and of course, the great ‘Clown Panic of 2016’ where clown sightings were reported across the country.

But of course, the most famous example of mass hysteria of all were the Salem Witch trials of 1693. In the end, between 140 and 150 people were arrested for witchcraft. Of these, 19 were hanged, and one died of torture. In addition, four people died in prison awaiting trial, and two dogs were put to death. The others who were arrested were either found guilty but pardoned, never indicted, found not guilty, or escaped from jail.

Like the Salem Witch Trials, the New England Vampire panic was set off by one of our most primal emotions -- Fear. Fear is a reaction to anything that threatens our safety or security. It alerts us to the possibility that our physical selves may be harmed which then motivates us to protect ourselves. When looked at in this way, fear is a good thing. But fear can get out of hand, and when it spreads across a population … well, things can get ugly.

A full century after the Salem Witch Trials, citizens of Rhode Island began hearing whispers of something even darker than witchcraft. People began to suspect that there were vampires in their midst. You heard it right - Vampires! But what is even more disturbing, they didn’t think the vampires were strangers. Many people believed that members of their own families were vampires; and like Van Helsing, they hunted them down and made sure that they wouldn’t drink even one more drop of blood.

I’ll begin our search for Vampires in New England in 1784. In June of that year, The Connecticut Courant and Weekly Intelligencer posted a letter to the editor from a Willington, Connecticut town councilman. In it, he cautioned readers against being influenced by a ‘quack doctor’ who was encouraging families to dig up and burn their relatives bodies. The letter went on to say that several children’s bodies were exhumed at this doctor’s request, and that the families thought that the burning of the bodies would stop consumption, now known as tuberculosis, from spreading throughout the family. Although the word vampire wasn’t used in describing the supposed cause of the disease, it’s obvious that people believed that a relative who died of consumption somehow came back to life and returned to spread the disease throughout the family. So, naturally, exhuming their body and burning it seemed to be the best way to keep them from coming back.

Where did this gruesome practice of exhuming bodies start? It’s important to remember that many immigrants in America’s early history came from Europe, and they brought their traditions, folklore, and superstitions with them. Throughout Europe, exhumation of bodies of those thought to be vampires was not uncommon, but what was done to the bodies afterward varied by region. Some corpses were beheaded, while others had their feet bound with thorns. Even if a body was badly decomposed, it was often beheaded and the rest of the bones carefully rearranged to prevent the vampire from rising. As we will see, this practice of rearranging the bones of the dead made its way to New England.

In 1790, the first case of New England vampirism as such was that of Rachel Harris Burton from Manchester, Vermont. Less than a year after marrying Captain Isaac Burton, the deacon in the town’s Congregational Church, Rachel died of tuberculosis. A year later, the Captain married Rachel’s stepsister, Hulda, and soon after she to began exhibiting symptoms similar to Rachel’s. Because rumors of vampirism had begun to spread across New England, family and friends soon began to suspect that Rachel was responsible; that she had risen from the grave as a vampire and was making Hulda sick by sucking her blood. So on a frigid day in February of 1793, three years after Rachel’s death, between 500 and 1000 Manchester residents gathered together to watch as the liver, heart and lungs were removed from Rachel’s exhumed, rotting corpse, placed on a blacksmith’s forge, and set on fire. There is some speculation that pieces of the organs were saved to make a medicine to help cure Hulga; but whether this is true or not, we’ll never know. What we do know is that Hulga died seven months later. Because the ‘cure’ didn’t work, the townspeople began suspect that Rachel hadn’t been a vampire after all. Their conclusion? Witchcraft must have been responsible. Case closed.

Another tragic example of exhumation and vampirism was that of the Spalding Family in Dummerston, Vermont. In the 1790s, Lieutenant Leonard Spaulding was grieving the loss of six of his eleven adult children from tuberculosis. Soon, another of his children became ill. Desperate to stop the spread of the disease, the Lieutenant ordered that the most recently deceased child be dug up, and the vital organs removed and burned. It is not recorded if the child who was ill survived. But it is important to take note that when Spalding’s son Reuben was buried in 1794, his grave was set apart from those of his other family members. Why? There was a vampire related belief that vines would grow between buried caskets, and that once all of the burials in a plot had been connected by these vines, another family member would die. By burying Ruben away from the rest of his family, Spalding hoped that this would break the vampire-vine-chain, and that other family members would be spared.

Some of the most interesting cases of New England vampirism involve those where people claim to have been visited by deceased family members or by other mysterious figures prior to their falling ill. One such case is that of Abigail Staples of Cumberland, Rhode Island. A short time after twenty-three year old Abigail’s death from tuberculosis, her sister Lavinia began to show symptoms of the disease. She also began telling the family of dreams she was having in which a shadowy figure was sitting heavily on her chest, sucking the breath out of her -- and during the dreams, her family heard her calling out Abigail’s name. So, in February 1796, Stephen Staples was given permission by the Cumberland town council to exhume Abigail’s body. Although the town officials gave their consent for the exhumation, they said that they considered it ‘an experiment’ to save Lavinia’s life, and noted that the decision was made ‘against the better conscience of this council’. Unfortunately, there is no record of what came of the exhumation; nor is there a record of what became of Lavinia.

One of the most famous cases of the New England vampire panic occurred in 1799, and it centered around a girl named Sarah Tillinghast. Sarah lived with her family in Exeter, Rhode Island. She was said to be a very sensitive girl who often spent time reading poetry and wandering the small, rural graveyards where Revolutionary soldiers were buried.

One night, Sarah’s father, Stuckley Tillinghast, had a disturbing dream. In the dream, half of his orchard died. Stuckley was an apple farmer, and he feared that the dream was an omen that he might lose his livelihood. He and his wife had 8 daughters and 6 sons to support, so it is no wonder that he found the dream so disturbing. Sometime after Stuckley had this dream, Sarah came home one day and said that she wasn’t feeling well. She took to bed, and within a few weeks developed a high fever. A few weeks later, she died of tuberculosis. But of course, the story doesn’t end here. The family was still grieving when Sarah’s brother, James, came down to breakfast looking pale and shivering. He complained that he felt as if there was a weight on his chest, and then said something chilling. He said that Sarah had come to him and sat on his bed in the middle of the night. The family dismissed it as James imagination brought on by grieving for his sister. Within a few weeks, James too had passed away.

But Sarah and James were just the beginning of the family tragedy. Shortly after James’ death, two more Tillinghast children died. Both had claimed that Sarah had visited them in the night. These days, stories of visitations from deceased family members are taken as a comforting sign; that although a loved one has passed, they are doing just fine on the other side. But in the late 18th century, things were different. Religious belief mixed with folklore and superstition were the recipe for the acceptance in things that today might not make much sense. Things such as fairies, gnomes, trolls, woodland spirits, and Vampires. To the Tillinghast family, Sarah’s nocturnal visits to her brothers and sisters meant just one thing. That she was returning from the grave to draw life from the remaining family members - that Sarah was a vampire.

Soon, more Tillinghast children died. Then, Honour Tillinghast, mother of all of the deceased children, became ill. As she lay on her death bed, she claimed that all of her dead children were calling to her. For Stuckley Tillinghast, this was the last straw. Early one morning he and his farmhand Caleb went out to the cemetery where Sarah was buried. They took with them a long hunting knife, a bottle of lamp oil, and two shovels. As the sun was rising, the two men dug up Sarah’s casket and turned back the creaking lid. Even though she had been dead over 18 months, she looked as if she was just asleep. There was no sign of decomposition. Seeing his daughter’s face looking flushed as if with blood, Stuckley Tillinghast took his hunting knife and thrust it deep into his daughter’s chest. Digging through flesh, muscle and bone, he cut out her heart. Later, Stuckley claimed that her body gushed with blood. He took her heart and lay it on a nearby stone. There he doused it with lamp oil and set it on fire. He and Caleb watched as the heart was reduced to ashes, then the two of them reburied Sarah. Their job was done.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Honour Tillinghast recovered from her illness. In the end, Stuckley Tillinghast’s dream had come true in a symbolic sense. Half of his ‘orchard’ -- seven of his fourteen children -- had died. But after burning Sarah’s heart, no more children died, and there were no further reports of Sarah appearing to the family. To the Tillighasts, the vampire curse had finally ended thanks to Stuckley’s intervention. And because the entire town knew how he had prevented his family from further deaths, the belief in Vampires was strengthened and word spread near and far.

The Last American Vampire: Mercy Brown
George Brown must have felt as if his family was cursed. Tuberculosis had claimed the life of his wife Mary Brown in 1883; then six months later, his 20-year old daughter Mary Olive succumbed to the same disease. It seemed as if the epidemic had finally run its course, but in 1890 George’s only son, Edwin, contracted tuberculosis as well. George watched helplessly as his son struggled to breath, and constantly coughed up blood. Edwin was sent to Colorado, hoping the different climate would help cure him, but he returned to Rhode Island two years later showing no signs of improvement. While Edwin grew weaker and weaker in the winter of 1892, 19-year-old Mercy Lena Brown passed away after a year of illness.

George Brown was at his wits end. He had to do something to save his son, the only remaining member of his family, Edwin. Since medical science failed to help Edwin, residents of Exeter began to talk about vampires as being the real culprit. They reasoned - find and destroy the vampire who was responsible for spreading the disease, and the disease will be stopped dead in its tracks. A group of Exeter residents believed that Edwin’s mother, Mary Brown, or one of his sisters may be one of the undead, a vampire, and sucking the life out of poor Edwin from beyond the grave.

So it was that on March 17, 1892, George Brown reluctantly agreed to allow his relatives and neighbors exhume the bodies of his loved ones interred at the Chestnut Hill Cemetery in an effort to stop the disease. George said that he did not believe in vampires, but he was willing to try anything.

A small crowd gathered in the graveyard behind the town’s Baptist Church. There, a group of people exhumed the bodies of Mary Brown and Mary Olive Brown. They opened their caskets, but the only thing they found inside were bones. Next, they turned their attention to the casket of Mercy Brown who been buried just eight weeks earlier. When the lid was lifted off of her coffin, the townspeople gasped in horror. Mercy was lying on her side, and her face was flushed as if she was still alive. Someone quickly took a long knife and thrust it into Mercy’s chest, removing her heart and lungs. Mysteriously, there was still blood in her heart, and in her veins.

While he was unable to explain why Mercy was lying on her side in her coffin, Dr. Harold Metcalf, who had raised objections about the exhumations from the very start, said that the preserved state of the body was simply due to the short amount of time Mercy had been dead, and that the cold weather had preserved her body. But the people of Exeter ignored the doctor’s explanations. They built a fire on a pile of rocks in the churchyard, then took Mercy’s heart and lungs and cremated them. They returned to Edwin’s house with the ashes of his dead sister’s heart, mixed them with water, and fed them to him. Disgusting? Yes! But it was thought that this was the only way to prevent Edwin from dying. Sadly, and not unsurprisingly, Edwin died two months later.

Looking at the timeline of events, it’s baffling how anyone would have suspected that Mercy was responsible for her family’s illness - vampire or no vampire. Her mother and sister had died nearly 10 years earlier, and her brother had become ill two years before she died. But, as we’ve seen, cases of mass hysteria grow out of fear and superstition, and very few people often stop to think whether or not any of it makes sense.

In 1990, children playing near a hillside gravel mine in Griswold, Connecticut found something that they thought was really cool. A skull that was in a grave with other bones. One of the boys ran home and showed his parents. The police were called, and the area was secured. At first it was thought that the skull may belong to a victim of a local serial killer, Michael Ross. But it soon became clear that the bones were more than a century old. Archaeologists were called in to excavate the site, and they discovered that the bones were part of a family burial plot from the colonial-era. New England is full of such unmarked family graveyards, so the 29 burial plots were pretty typical of the time. That is, all except one plot - burial number four.

Burial number four was only one of two stone crypts in the cemetery, and it lay several feet below the surface. When the first of the two large, flat stones was removed from the crypt, the archaeologists saw the remains of a red painted coffin, and a pair of skeletal feet. But when they removed the second stone, they saw that bones of the rest of this individual had been completely rearranged, and that the skeleton had been beheaded. The skull and thigh bones rested on the ribs and vertebrae. Further investigation showed that the beheading and other injuries to the rib bones occurred roughly five years after death. And, someone had smashed the coffin. The person buried in the plot number four, a man in his 50s who was buried sometime in the 1830s, was almost certainly accused of being a vampire. The fractured ribs point to just one conclusion - his heart had been removed 5 years after his death.

The New England Vampire panic finally died off in the late 1800s once science had discovered the cause of tuberculosis. But it illustrates to what lengths people will go to save themselves and their families. The exhumation of bodies and the burning of hearts and other vital organs were often clandestine, lantern-lit affairs. But some were quite public and even had an air of festivity. In 1830, one vampire heart was set on fire in the Woodstock Vermont town green; and in Manchester up to a thousand people turned up to witness the burning of Rachel Burton Harris’ heart, liver and lungs.

While vampires don’t really exist, it’s only a matter of time before a new mass hysteria panic rears its ugly head. And afterward, historians will shake their heads and say, “What on earth were those people thinking?”

Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-new-england-vampire-panic-36482878/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_vampire_panic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases#cite_note-Bartholomew_2001-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518
https://www.vampires.com/a-true-rhode-island-vampire/
http://realparanormalexperiences.com/rhode-island-vampires-sarah-tillinghast
http://elemaredesign.com/hauntedri3/sites.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EzFykZfn0M
https://locationsoflore.com/2018/07/26/the-vampire-case-of-sarah-tillinghast/
http://www.thewesterlysun.com/news/state/2598348-129/documentary-traces-ri-roots-of-the-vampire-motif.html

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Naked Ghosts

9/3/2018

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Under of our clothes, we’re all pretty much the same. Sure, there are a variety of body types, but without clothing, it’s difficult to tell very much about a person. In a very real sense, our clothing defines who we are. What we wear affects how we are perceived by others, and how we perceive ourselves. Simply by observing what someone is wearing, we can make inferences about that person’s age, their social status, the type of job they have, and we can even get an idea about what their personality might be like.

In “Macbeth”, it is highly unlikely that Shakespeare put in the stage directions:
The ghost of Banquo enters stage right. He is naked from head to toe, except for a card that hangs from his neck that reads “I Am Banquo”, because without clothes ... Well, let’s face it ... He could be just about anybody.
But if Shakespeare had decided to show the ghost of Banquo in the nude, he would be in good company. Stories of naked ghosts have been around for ages.

You might laugh at the thought of a naked ghost, but it’s not as far fetched as you may think. There is a real debate about why ghosts wear clothing at all. Those of us who believe in ghosts accept that they exist because we have faith that some part of us, our soul, continues to live on after death. What does a soul look like? No one really knows, but people often think of a soul as something that is made out of light or some kind of energy. It may or may not have a human shape -- and it certainly isn’t wearing clothes. Ghosts, on the other hand, are almost always described as wearing clothing. But if a soul is the essence or energy of a person, then it has no need for clothes. And if a ghost is the soul of a person, then why the hell do ghosts wear clothes?!

Ghosts have been described as wearing all sorts of clothing that helps identify the time period they lived in, and who they might have been. Ghosts have been seen in Gettysburg wearing the blue and grey uniforms of the men who fought in those battles. Ghosts have been seen wearing nun’s habits, the style of which helps date them. There have been ghosts of nurses wearing old fashioned uniforms; ghosts of men, women and children wearing clothing from different time periods; and Native American ghosts wearing the clothing of the tribe they once belonged to.

We know that ghosts seem to wear clothing, but has anyone ever actually seen a naked ghost? The answer is, yes. Although there are far more cases of clothed ghosts than nude ghosts, naked ghosts do exist.

In the early 1900’s, mathematician and author Alice Mabel Gray lived a secluded life just outside the town of Chesterton, Indiana. She lived in primitive conditions among the sand dunes, which earned her the nickname, “Diana of the Dunes”. Her unconventional lifestyle fascinated the public, and her passion for preserving the dunes was critical in helping to establish the area as a nature preserve. Alice was a free spirit in life, and she was known to enjoyed swimming naked in Lake Michigan by the light of the moon. She lived on the dunes until her death in 1925, and her ashes were scattered in the area where she had lived. There have been reports that her ghostly naked figure is seen bathing in the lake at night at what is now Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

New Orleans has more than its share of ghosts. It is, perhaps, one of the most haunted areas of the United States, and it too has a naked ghost story known as the ‘Haunting of the Octoroon Mistress’.

In the 1800s, people of mixed race were discriminated against, and those who were ⅛ African American and ⅞ White were labeled “Octoroon”. Julie was a beautiful woman with black hair and dark eyes. She met a rich, handsome Frenchman and fell in love with him. To the Frenchman, Julie was just his mistress, a secret lover. But Julie wanted to marry the Frenchman in spite of her mixed race background and the difference in their social status.

After months of Julie begging the Frenchman to marry her, he came up with a test that he said would prove that she really loved him. He had invited some friends over to his house, and he would be playing cards with them in the downstairs parlor. He told Julie to strip off all of her clothing and to wait for him on the rooftop until he was done with the game. It was a bizarre request, and the Frenchman thought that Julie would never take him seriously, but she did. Julie undressed in her room, then climbed naked onto the rooftop to wait for her lover to return. It was December, and the night was cold and damp. The Frenchman finished his card game, then went to bed and waited for Julie to come to him as she always had. He didn’t think that she had taken him seriously, but when he realized that she was nowhere to be found he ran to the roof to look for her. There he found her naked, frozen body huddled in a corner waiting for him.

The octoroon mistress is said to haunt the house to this day. Some say that on cold, damp December evenings you can see her naked figure pacing back and forth on the rooftop, trying to keep warm, and waiting for her lover to return.

In all the years that I’ve been conducting paranormal investigations, I’ve only come across one case that involved a naked ghost. The investigation was at a home in Stamford, Connecticut where some pretty strange things had been happening, and I captured some really interesting EVP. You can read about it in the Case File called, “Totally Unexplainable: What One Family Found in Their Home”. A few months after the investigation, the homeowner called me to tell me about something that her husband saw that night -- the ghost of a naked woman.

She told me, “Before we start, I have to tell you that my husband has never been a big believer in the paranormal. Even after we’ve had some pretty crazy things happen in our house, he always shrugs it off and tries to explain it away. But this was the thing that made him a believer.

“My husband was in the living room. It was about nine o’clock at night and I was already upstairs cozy in bed. He came up to our bedroom with a strange look on his face and said, ‘How did you get in bed so fast?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘You didn’t just walk up the stairs naked?’ And I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ But I could tell by the look on his face that he already knew what he had seen. He looked at me and said, ‘I think I just saw a ghost!’
I asked him to tell me what had happened. He said that he was in the living room and the lights were on, so it wasn’t dark or anything. He saw this dark haired, shapely, naked, woman walking up the stairs that lead from the living room to the upstairs part of the house where our bedroom is, and he thought it was me. He said that he saw the her out of the corner of his eye, and that she was totally naked. He was so sure of what he saw that he really thought it was me. Or at least, he was hoping it was me! As soon as he saw her, he came upstairs. So, he must have seen that she was walking kind of slowly for him to question how I got in bed and under the covers so quickly. But that was it. My husband saw the ghost of a naked woman, and now he’s a believer!”

Most naked ghosts that are reported are adults, but it seems that even children sometimes get naked in the afterlife. In Armona, California, the naked ghost of a young girl around nine years of age has been spotted near the walnut groves and fruit orchards in the area. The story goes that at some point in the late 1800s, a group of young girls were swimming naked in a waterhole outside of town. A group of boys showed up and teased the girls, and all but one of the girls took off running. The girls who ran away hid in the nearby walnut groves, but the girl who stayed hid under the water and ended up drowning. Since then, sightings of a ghost girl around nine years old have been reported on numerous occasions. The thing is, she only appears to girls around her own age, and she is always reported as being naked. The ghost has been given the name “Walnut Girl” because she is always seen near walnut orchards, or in places that store walnuts. It is almost as if she is trying to make up for her mistake of not running to hide with the other girls in the walnut grove.

In North Carolina there is the famous naked ghost of the Craven Street bridge. One hot, summer evening, sometime in the early 1900s, a group of boys went swimming in the French Broad river. Children often swam naked in those days, so the boys stripped down and dove into the river. But they didn’t realize that there had been bad storms upriver a few days earlier, and the usually calm waters of the French Broad were now filled with swift, dangerous undercurrents.

The sun had started going down, and the boys were having too much fun to notice that they were floating down the river faster than usual. When they finally noticed that it was past sunset and it was beginning to get dark, they had drifted down close to the pilings of the Craven Street bridge. By now, the water was flowing in dangerous rapids around the bridge’s pilings, and the boys decided that they needed to get away quickly. But there was one problem. One of the boys was missing. They searched frantically for their friend, and one of the boys swam to shore and ran for help. All night long boats combed the river by lantern light, but to no avail. The search continued through the following weeks, but the boy’s body was never found.

Soon after the boy’s drowning, some who traveled across the Craven Street bridge at dusk began reporting something strange. They said that they saw a naked boy running across the bridge, but when they called to him he kept running as if he was unaware that they were there. Those who ran after the boy and were able to catch up with him were stopped dead in their tracks as the nude boy vanished before their eyes. The naked ghost of Craven Street bridge is seen to this day, and drivers who cross the bridge in the early hours of hot summer days are sometimes surprised to see a naked young boy running alongside their car, vanishing before he finishes crossing the bridge.
The United States isn’t the only place where clothing-free ghosts have been spotted. England also has its fair share of naked spirits. A few years ago, a couple checked into Room 7 of the nine-hundred-year-old Weston Manor Hotel in Oxfordshire. But in the middle of the night they felt a cold presence in the room, and an overwhelming sense of dread. The couple fled the room and spent the rest of the night in the hotel lobby. The hotel attendants weren’t at all surprised. Room 7 is haunted by the nude ghost of a nun. Legend has it that the nun, whose name was Maude, was burned at the stake after being caught in bed with a monk. Her nude figure has been seen in Room 7, standing near the four poster bed.

Another famous British specter is that of a young woman seen wearing nothing but a white wedding veil. This free spirited, clothing optional spirit has been seen at the Bramshill House. The ghost was witnessed in 1944 by the exiled King Michael and Queen Anne of Romania after they took residence there.

Moving on to Scotland, we find reports of another ghostly woman known as the Green Lady who has been seen at Muchalls Castle. Parts of the castle were constructed in the 13th century, and there was a tunnel that ran underneath it that was used by smugglers. This underground area also had a cave that was used to hide wine and spirits in order to avoid paying excise taxes. The tunnel ran from the castle to the sea, and it was here that the Green Lady died. She had gone down the tunnel for a secret rendezvous with her lover. She traveled by boat and waited for him by the sea, but she accidentally fell into the water and drowned. Another version of the story has both lovers drowning in the tunnel as the tide came in. After the girls death, the figure of a beautiful naked woman has been seen combing her hair in front of a mirror in one of the rooms that had once been a bedroom. Why is she naked? No one really knows. Perhaps the ghost is reliving the hours before her death as she was getting ready to meet her lover.

There are lots of reports of the ghosts of naked women, but what about naked men? Bath Abbey in Scotland is home to one such naked bloke. The abbey and the surrounding streets are haunted by the ghost of a naked Roman soldier. How do we know he’s a Roman soldier if he’s naked? Some assumed that he’s a soldier since the Roman baths are just behind the building. Or maybe he was seen wearing a helmet - and just a helmet -- which would have identified him as a soldier. Either way, the figure has been seen on numerous occasions. Once a police officer gave chase after the ghostly streaker, but the figure faded away as the officer approached him.

In order to understand the ghost of the naked running man a little better, it helps to know a little about the Roman baths. It was a hoppin’ place! It was a public bathing house, a place where people of all walks of life could soak in the healing properties of the mineral-rich springs. But it was also a temple to the goddess Sulis Minerva, goddess of justice and healing. Lead and pewter ‘curse tablets’ have been found at the baths, and many are inscribed with pleas to Minerva to curse those who had stolen from people as they were bathing. One reads:

“Solinus to the goddess Sulis Minerva. I give to your divinity and majesty my bathing tunic and cloak. Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman or whether slave or free unless he reveals himself and brings those goods to your temple.”

So, maybe the ghost isn’t that of a naked soldier. Maybe it’s the ghost of a thief. What do you do when you’re caught stealing and you’re naked? You can’t put the stolen goods in your pockets, can you? No. The only thing left to do is run. So, perhaps the ghost of the naked man is seen running from the baths because he had stolen something and he was being chased by guards.

Back in the US, one well known historic site that is haunted by a naked ghost is the famous island prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco, California. The former prison is now part of the National Park service, and park rangers and visitors have reported a wide range of paranormal activity in the island prison. These include the sound of whispering coming from cells, the sound of cell doors shutting, mysterious figures seen walking down hallways, cold spots, and the sound of musical instruments and sewing machines.

One section of the prison known as ‘the hole’ contains six small cells that were used for solitary confinement. The rooms had no windows, so they were completely dark. Prisoners were thrown into these cells either totally naked, or were provided scant clothing - socks, shorts, and coveralls. Prisoners in the hole were also given limited food and water, and they were often beaten. Some died of starvation, others died of exposure, and some took their own lives after spending time in solitary confinement. One of the cells in the hole, Cell D-14, is said to be the most haunted cell in the prison. It is reported that an apparition of a naked male inmate has been seen cowering in the corner of the cell and crying.

Another ghost has been seen either entirely nude, or wearing next to nothing at the Glen Acres Golf and Country Club in Seattle, Washington. Between the years 1956 and 1976, there were a sizable number of police investigations of a naked man seen running around the golf course. On at least one occasion, the police gave chase but the naked man vanished without a trace just as they had corned him.

In the 1950s, many people reported seeing the apparition of a Native American man performing a twisting dance on the grounds of the golf course. The man was described as being totally naked, except for a colorful ceremonial headdress.

What’s more terrifying than one naked male ghost? Eleven naked male ghosts! West of the village of Shap in Cumbria England is an ancient burial mound called Skellaw Wark or “Skull Hill”. In the early part of the nineteenth century, three sisters were walking home past Skull Hill when a group of eleven naked men materialize before them. The girls said that the men appeared one by one until the full group was assembled, and that they walked in single file. They were described as being totally nude and glowing with a strange yellow light, and they were waving their fists in the air as if in anger. At the time, many thought this story was just nonsense. But a few years later in 1827, eleven male skeletons were discovered near the area, and all were wearing golden bands on their wrists. It is thought that they were killed either in battle, or sacrificed as part of an ancient religious ritual.

Theories
So, if ghosts are the souls of people, their spirit energy, then why do they most often show themselves as wearing something as mundane as man-made clothing?

If I told you that the ghost of Humphrey Bogart was in my family room last night, you’d think I was crazy. But he was. He really was! I really did see him. And I’ll tell you what else -- I also saw the ghost of Katharine Hepburn. You see, I was watching the 1951 film “The African Queen” and I swear that Bogart and Hepburn were right there on the TV in my family room. They walked, they talked, and they even wore clothes! It’s just a movie? Well, yes it is. So, I guess it wasn’t the actual actors I was seeing on the screen; it was just their images. But if you think about it, I was seeing the image of two people who died many years ago, and they looked as real as could be. Thus, the first theory of why ghosts wear clothes.

Many people believe that ghosts are simply the imprint of energy on a particular location; that they are simply images of people and events from the past, and that they play over and over again like a movie. This particular type of ghost is often seen in the same spot, doing the same thing, and they sometimes appear during a certain time of the day, or even on a particular date. Some ghosts are seen doing mundane things, such as washing dishes or walking across a room, oblivious of the people who are observing them. I recently heard from someone who said that gunshots are heard in the basement of their home where a murder was committed over a hundred years ago. The shots are heard at the exact same time every night, and it is assumed that the time coincides with the time of the murder.

But not all ghosts fall into this category. Some spirits seem to interact with people, and they move objects with purpose. Their voices appear on digital recorders as EVP, and they touch people as if to let them know that they are around.

One theory is that ghosts are made up of electromagnetic energy. This is why many ghost hunters often use EMF meters (Electromagnetic Field Meters) to detect the presence of spirits. I use them myself, and they do seem to react to spirit energy. I once did an investigation where my EMF meter was placed on a bed, and I communicated with a ghost by asking questions and watching the meter. When I said, “Can you come closer?” the numbers on the meter began to rise. When I asked it to step away, they went back to zero. I continued to ask questions such as, “If you are a woman, please step closer” and the meter responded. So, there is definitely something to the theory that ghosts are either made up of electromagnetic energy, or they are able to manipulate EMF.

If ghosts are able to manipulate EMF, even if they are doing so unconsciously, then they may be imprinting images on our minds. This sounds like science fiction, but it’s actually based on fact. EMF affects people’s brains, and it can even be dangerous. High EMF readings caused by faulty electrical wiring in homes and from other sources of electricity have been proven to cause nightmares, hallucinations and feelings of fear and paranoia. If a ghost is an electromagnetic being, then they may be imprinting the way they see themselves onto the minds of the people who witness them.
If I ask you to close your eyes and picture yourself washing the dishes in your kitchen, you’re probably not picturing yourself in the buff. We tend to think of ourselves as being clothed. Even hardcore nudists think of themselves as wearing clothes if they are asked to picture themselves at work or walking down the street. This is why ghosts appear to be wearing clothing. We are not actually ‘seeing’ ghost; our minds are sensing the imprint of the image that the ghost has of themselves.

This is also the case with spirit visitations from loved ones. Many, many people report that their deceased relatives look much younger than they remembered them looking in life. The majority of these spirits show themselves as healthy, vibrant, and young. Some think that spirits picture themselves as looking they way they did during the happiest times of their lives, and that as a result, we see them looking younger than we remember. Then again, grandma may know that you might not recognize her as a 20 year old hottie, so she appears the way you knew her in life. Either way, the image is being imprinted on our minds.

If this is the case, then why are some ghosts naked? It seems to have something to do with the circumstances under which a person died, or it is an emotional imprint that happens to involve being naked. In the stories I shared, the boy and girl who drown were naked. The woman waiting for her lover was naked when she froze to death. The eleven naked men seem to have been killed as part of a ritual where they were nude. Maybe this was the last way these spirits remembered themselves as looking. I highly doubt that you’ll see the ghost of your dead grandpa chopping wood in the yard in the buff. At least, I hope you don’t! But if that’s how grandpa liked to chop wood, well, more power to him!

I’ll leave you with this story. Several years ago I was at beach that happened to be clothing optional (although I don’t think there was a single person who chose the option to wear a bathing suit) and I noticed a group of people near the shore rushing over to help someone who was obviously in trouble. Soon, park rangers were on the scene trying to revive a man who had had a heart attack, but they were too late. The man died on the beach, naked as the day he was born, and surrounded by a bunch of thoroughly naked spectators. That beach is no longer clothing optional, but if the theories are correct and that man’s energy imprint is still on that spot, then beachgoers might be more than a little surprised to see the ghostly image of a man strolling along the beach with not a care in the world, wearing nothing but a smile.

Resources
http://weekinweird.com/2011/09/10/ghosts-uncovered-paranormal-nudism/
http://www.strangehistory.net/2017/03/28/nude-ghosts/
http://www.carolinaparanormal.com/paranormal-newsinfo/naked-ghosts.html
http://www.carnivalia.com/ghosts_gone_wild.htm
https://spotlight.picturehouses.com/film/clothes-and-ghosts/
https://seeksghosts.blogspot.com/search/label/naked%20ghost
http://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=5780
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=10431
https://www.thoughtco.com/why-are-ghosts-seen-wearing-clothes-2594051
https://www.racked.com/2016/3/21/11264216/ghosts-human-clothes-paranormal-fashion
http://theparanormalblog.tumblr.com/post/46571447028/naked-ghost-caught-on-tape-in-england-theres

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August 01st, 2018

8/1/2018

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Let me ask you a question. When you hear someone say, “They’re here!” - what do you think of? That’s right -- Poltergeist. Most people associate the word Poltergeist with the 1982 Steven Spielberg movie of the same name. In the film, a family moves into a new home and strange things begin to happen. Objects begin to move on their own, light bulbs suddenly flare up with overwhelming brightness, chairs are found stacked in an impossible configuration, silverware is found twisted into strange shapes, and objects materialize and drop from the ceiling.

Of course, the movie Poltergeist is pure fiction; but the type of phenomenon that the film shows is fairly typical of poltergeist activity. That said, poltergeists are perhaps the most misunderstood of all types of paranormal phenomenon. The word poltergeist is a combination of two German words which mean ‘noisy ghost’. But there’s more to poltergeist activity than just a lot of noise. The things that people experience in poltergeist cases are not just curious little incidents. They are bizarre, often violent outbursts of activity, and they often center around an adolescent.

Poltergeist activity is characterized by, among other things, the levitation of objects; loud bangs and rapping sounds which can be heard moving around a room, or even going from room to room; the materialization of small objects such as coins and jewelry that seem to fall from the ceiling; the hurling of objects such as pots and pans; stones raining down upon the roof of the house; and doors and windows rapidly and violently opening and closing on their own. Other activity includes blankets being quickly pulled off of people at night, and fires being set. The fires are sometimes found in unusual places such as inside of closets, under blankets, or in unoccupied rooms.

“A study of 500 poltergeist cases by Alan Gauld and Tony Cornell shows that the effects most commonly reported are the movement of small objects (64%), rapping sounds (48%), large object movements, for example chairs and tables (36%), the appearance of a human phantasm (29%) and the presence of a voice or groaning sound (26%). Phenomena reported less often are the mysterious appearance of small objects, sometimes in mid-air, small animals seen or heard, various luminous effects, incendiary effects and inundations of water.” (https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/poltergeists-overview)

History is ripe with cases of poltergeist activity. Because some of the reports are so old, it’s impossible to check the facts of these cases. But it’s interesting that the phenomenon that is reported is consistent with modern day cases. Here are just a few famous poltergeist cases.

The Glenluce Poltergeist
In 1685, Scottish minister and mathematician George Sinclair wrote a book called “Satan’s Invisible Works Discovered”. Although the book was primarily about witchcraft, it also included an account of the “Glenluce Devil”, the first published account of a poltergeist case. The incident took place in 1654 at the home of a weaver named Gilbert Campbell in the small Scottish village of Glenluce. As the story goes, in October of that year, a beggar named Alexander Agnew, was refused a handout by Campbell. In retaliation, Agnew put a curse on the family. Over the next two years the Campbell household was plagued by strange phenomenon.

It all started when Campbell’s daughter Jennet was at a well and she heard a shrill whistling sound. Other women who were at the well also heard the sound. Then a threatening voice was heard saying, “I’ll cast ye Jennet into the well”. A witness described it as sounding like a woman’s voice.
In November, the “foul fiend”, as he is described in the book, started throwing stones at the doors and windows, and down the chimney of the family home. Other activity followed. Campbell found that the family’s clothing had been cut with scissors while they were wearing them. Coats, bonnets and shoes were all mysteriously cut. At night, their blankets would be pulled off of them. Chests and trunks would open on their own, and items would be found hidden around the house.

The activity got so bad that Campbell moved the majority of their belonging to a neighbor’s house to protect it from being cut or hidden. He also conducted an experiment, perhaps the first paranormal experiment of its kind. He moved his children away to different places to see if the trouble followed a particular person. After a while, they came home one at a time. All was well until his son Thomas came home. The following day, the house mysteriously caught fire and was put out by neighbors. A week later, the house caught fire again and was extinguished.

A local minister agreed to let Thomas stay with him, but he too started to experience the same phenomenon of clothing being cut and items going missing. Thomas returned to his home, but after a few days of being there, he claimed that he was being abused by an unseen force.

Soon after Thomas’ arrival, the entire family began to hear a voice who they believed to be the devil, and they had conversations with it. Then things got really strange. They not only had conversations with this voice; they stopped speaking to one another and would only speak with him. When the minister heard of this, he went to the house and told the Devil he wasn’t welcome. The Devil made threats against Thomas and threatened to set fire to the house if he wouldn’t leave. Things got so bad that the family was starving because all of their food would be hidden from them. It seems that Alexander Agnew’s curse had worked. They had given him no food, and now they were starving.

The story ends abruptly, and there is no follow-up information about whether or not the activity eventually stopped. And although this story sounds a little like a sermon with a moral -- You reap what you sow -- it does have all of the classic signs of poltergeist activity.

The Great Amherst Mystery
One of the most frightening and widely publicized poltergeist cases occurred in Amherst, Nova Scotia. In 1878, an unseen entity tormented a girl and her family for a full year. The intense paranormal activity was witnessed by neighbors, scientists, clergymen, doctors and investigators.

As mentioned earlier, poltergeist activity often centers around an adolescent. In the Glenluce case, it was the son, Thomas. In the Amherst case, it was 19 year old Esther Cox. Esther lived in a cottage house with her family and a number of other relatives. One day, Esther claimed that she was sexually assaulted by a family acquaintance. After the traumatic assault, Esther’s behavior changed. She seemed depressed, and her sisters said the she often cried herself to sleep.

Shortly after the molestation, strange things began happening in the house. Esther and her sister Jane began to hear strange rustling sounds in the room they shared. The sounds seemed to be coming from under the bed. After this, Esther became physically ill.

For several nights, her body swelled up to such a size that she felt as if she would explode. Her body temperature would change from sweltering hot one minute, to freezing cold the next. The girl’s body went into spasms, and she would sometimes fall into what looked like a trance. During this state, she would say things that she would later be unable to recall.

In addition to the strange sounds and Esther’s illness, physical manifestations began to occur around the girl. The pillows and blankets flew off of her bed repeatedly, often immediately after they were replaced by family members. Then writing began to appear on the wall above Esther’s bed. One message said, “Esther Cox, you are mine to kill”. The rustling sounds under the bed were now replaced by loud sounds that some described as sounding like claps of thunder. These deafening sounds were also hear on the roof.

After a while, the activity followed Esther outside of the house. Once when she was attending a church service, loud rapping and knocking noises were heard in the church. Although Esther sat toward the back of the church, the loud banging sounds were coming from the front pew. The knocking sounds were so loud that it became impossible for anyone to hear the service, and the congregation became alarmed at the unexplained racket. Finally, Esther left the church and the knocking immediately stopped.

Esther was eager to find the source of the problem, so she consulted a number of different mediums, but none were successful in contacting any spirits. Then she tried automatic writing. Automatic writing involves holding a pen or pencil, and allowing it to move across a piece of paper on its own. It was by this method that Esther contacted a spirit who claimed to be Maggie Fisher, a girl who attended the same school as Esther, but who had died in 1867. Esther had not known Maggie Fisher, but she was aware that they had gone to school together.

Through automatic writing, other ghosts came forward. One was a 60 year old shoemaker named Bob Nickle. Another was Mary Fisher, the sister of Maggie Fisher. Other ghosts included Peter Teed, John Nickle, and Eliza MacNeal. The number of ghosts, and the coincidences of some of the names make some doubt the believability of this part of the story. But I know from experience that spirits contacted through the Ouija board are known to lie about just about everything. Since using automatic writing to contact spirits is similar to using a Ouija board, I believe that they were purposely lying to Esther in order to confuse her, and to make people doubt her story.

The family called in a doctor to see if he could help. Dr. Carritte became the next witness of the poltergeist activity. He heard the loud claps of thunder coming from under the bed. He saw the mysterious writing on the wall, and he heard the loud knocks that responded to questions that were asked of the ‘ghost’. He also heard the thunderous sounds on the roof that he described as ‘sounding as if someone was banging on the roof with a sledgehammer’.

Soon, the neighborhood residents became aware that something odd was going on in the Cox home. The noises had become so loud that they could be heard as far as 200 yards from the house. Word about the strange activity began to spread, and soon the whole town was aware of it.

One of the most common occurrences in poltergeist cases is the movement of objects by unseen hands. There was no shortage of this type of activity in the Cox household. Objects moved by themselves, flew through the air, or materialized out of thin air. Some household items would disappear from one location, and reappear in another. Later, fires began to erupt without warning in the house. Esther began to hear voices, and she claimed that she could actually see the entities that were tormenting her.

Because the activity was so frequent and so terrifying, the family decided to move Esther out of the house. She was taken in by a local family, but unfortunately this didn’t put an end to the frightening activity. The hauntings followed her. Esther worked in the family’s dining saloon and patrons witnessed many amazing and frightening things. One of the most horrifying was a knife that flew through the air straight at Esther. The knife stabbed her. After it was pulled out it flew back again into the exact same wound.

The Amherst haunting was investigated by scientists, doctors, and clergymen, and many witnessed the strange happenings first-hand. One well known reverend witnessed a bucket of cold water that was sitting on the kitchen table begin to boil. In later years, Dr. Edwin Clad, a baptist clergyman, gave lectures saying that the case was authentic, and that Esther was not causing the manifestations herself.

In June of 1879, investigator and author Walter Hubbell spent six full weeks in the home in order to document the case. He witnessed many alarming paranormal events that occurred around Esther, many of which were violent. In his book, ‘The Great Amherst Mystery’, Hubbell included the affidavits of thirteen witnesses who swore that they witnessed the paranormal events outlined in the book firsthand.

In June, Esther tried to turn her misfortunes to her advantage by going on tour. She hoped that by telling her story to large audiences, she could make back some of the money her family had lost during the ordeal, and to possibly make a living from the income. She was assisted by Walter Hubble, the author who documented the case. Although the first few performances were well attended, the crowds were skeptical. One evening a rival theater owner began heckling Miss Cox from the audience. The crowd joined in and a riot broke out. As can be imagined, it was the last time that Esther Cox was on stage, and the tour came to an abrupt end.

Esther returned home, but the activity followed her everywhere she went. While she was working for Arthur Davison, his barn burnt down. He accused Esther of arson, and she spent a month in prison. Soon after this, the paranormal events slowly began to fade away until they stopped altogether.

The Enfield Poltergeist
The Enfield Poltergeist case is perhaps the most famous of all such cases. The events took place in Enfield, England between 1977 and 1979. Recently divorced, Peggy Hodgson lived in a rented house with her four children - Peggy, thirteen: Janet, eleven; Johnny, ten; and Billy, seven. In August 1977, Peggy called the police to the home after two of her four children said that knocking sounds were heard on the walls, and that furniture was moving by itself. When they arrived, a police constable said that she saw a chair wobble and slide across the floor, but she could not determine the cause of the movement. By the next morning, it was claimed that marbles and Lego pieces began to “zoom out of thin air and bounce off the walls.” Janet seemed to be the epicenter of the incidents.

The activity in the house continued and included disembodied voices, loud noises, toys and rocks thrown about, overturned chairs, and levitating children. Janet began speaking in a strange, deep voice. “Just before I died, I went blind,” the gravelly, evil sounding voice once said, “And then I had a haemorrhage and I fell asleep and I died in the chair in the corner downstairs.” Paranormal investigators theorized that the spirit was that of 72 year old Bill Wilkins, a man who had lived and died at the house decades earlier.

Janet’s trances soon became more violent. The gravelly male voice began to curse at reporters during interviews, and one time Mrs. Hodgson rescued Janet after she wrapped herself in a curtain and the fabric became tightly tangled around her throat.

Over a period of 18 months, a series of strange phenomenon was witnessed by more than 30 people. These included psychic researchers, journalists, and the Hodgson’s neighbors. The neighbors claimed that they saw heavy furniture moving by itself, objects being thrown across the room by unseen hands, and the daughters were seen levitating several feet off the ground. Many also heard and tape recorded loud, unexplained knocking sounds, as well as a gruff, male voice. The activity attracted a huge amount of press, but by 1979 the Enfield poltergeist had left the Hodgson home except for an occasional isolated incident. It is thought that the motivating force of the poltergeist activity, the parents’ divorce, had run its course.

Some believe that the haunting was genuine. These included two members of the Society for Psychical Research, inventor Maurice Grosse, and author Guy Lyon Playfair. Others were unconvinced,. They found evidence that the girls had faked incidents for the benefit of the reporters who were constantly at their home.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that the bulk of the activity occurred when investigators and reporters had just left a room. “It’s smarter than we are,” said one investigator. “Look at its timing. The moment you go out of a room, something happens. You stay in the room for hours, and nothing moves. It knows what we’re up to.”

Evidence of the girls’ trickery is pretty obvious. A video camera that had been left on in a room caught Janet bending spoons and attempting to bend a thin iron bar. One investigator observed her banging a broom handle on the ceiling, and hiding his tape-recorder. Ironically, the investigator who observed this trickery, Maurice Grosse, was one of the people who continued to believe that the haunting was genuine.

Even after admitting that some of the phenomenon was probably staged by the children to impress the reporters who were visiting the house, members of the Society for Psychical research brushed it aside. “It did not bother us very much,” Said Playfair. “We had already seen incidents with our own eyes that the children could not possibly have done deliberately.”

In a recent interview, Janet, now in her 50s, claims that only 2% of the phenomenon was staged. She maintains that every other detail of the haunting, from the demonic sounding voice to her spontaneous levitation, was totally genuine.

Poltergeists, Hauntings and the Demonic
Because poltergeist activity often mirrors the type of phenomenon that occurs in cases of hauntings, it is often difficult to label a case as being poltergeist related. Let’s take moving objects, for example. Objects are known to move in hauntings. I’ve personally witnessed things moving around during my own investigations. And objects also move in poltergeist cases. So what’s the difference? It’s the violent way that objects move that differentiate them from regular hauntings. In poltergeist cases things are hurled around rooms either randomly or directly at people. In addition, objects levitate in full view of witnesses, and heavy pieces of furniture bounce up and down on the floor making loud banging sounds.

In hauntings, objects often disappear and are later found in odd places. The same goes for poltergeist cases. And in both hauntings and poltergeist cases, voices are often heard. The difference is, in poltergeist cases the voices often say threatening things, and are aimed directly at individual family members. In hauntings, someone may hear a voice, but it rarely addresses them directly.

To make matters more confusing, all of the phenomenon that occurs in poltergeist cases occur in demonic cases. Threatening voices, objects hurled around rooms and at people, hidden objects, writing on walls -- all of it occurs in both types of cases. The difference, again, has to do with the level of violence attached to the activity. In demonic cases, the voices threaten death, they swear, they growl or grunt, and they speak against God. In addition, the intent of the force at work is different in demonic cases. Demons are determined to ruin peoples lives, wear their will down, and eventually possess them. Poltergeists are often childish in their anger, and much of what they do often seems more like a juvenile prank than a destructive act.

Theories
The key to poltergeist cases appears to be the presence of an adolescent. Although there are many cases of poltergeists that involve adolescent boys, the majority involve girls. Poltergeist activity literally explodes around adolescent girls. When a poltergeist is experienced, it almost always centers on someone who is going through some sort of emotional turmoil. This can be as traumatic as sexual abuse, such as Esther Cox’s abuse in the Amherst case, or it can be something less traumatic such as a divorce. Or, it can just be the tumultuous physical and emotional changes that occur during adolescence.

It is generally agreed that poltergeists most likely have nothing at all to do with spirits. Some theorize that the activity is caused by Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK for short. Psychokinesis is the ability to move objects through non-physical means. In RSPK, the movement is unintentional and unpredictable.

While I agree that poltergeist cases have something to do with uncontrolled adolescent energy, I believe that poltergeist cases are actually a combination of psychokinesis and spirit communication. Here’s why. Spirits need energy to manifest, and they seem to get this energy from two sources -- electricity, and human emotion. In haunted houses, electronic devices often malfunction or behave in strange ways. Lights suddenly flare up or flicker, TVs and lamps turn on by themselves, smoke and CO2 detectors go off for no reason, and batteries are drained of power.

In his article, “Brain Battery”, author Ryan T. Jones writes:
“The human brain is a battery, or rather, a collection of approximately 80 billion batteries. Each of the approximately 80 billion neurons in the brain possesses the ability to accumulate a charge across its cell membrane, which results in a small but meaningful voltage. I think it’s safe to say that humans really are batteries, and the brain contains more than 80 billion of them. Even crazier is that each of these batteries contains four times the electrostatic force that normally results in lightning during a thunderstorm!” (https://knowingneurons.com/2012/12/14/brain-battery/)

I feel that because the energy in adolescent bodies is still forming, these 80 billion neurons create a mini electrical storm that is literally swirling around them. If spirits need energy to manifest, what better source is there than the adolescent body? Once this energy settles down, the poltergeist activity subsides because the energy is no longer available to spirits.

Conclusion
Poltergeist activity is rare, but it is a fascinating area of paranormal study. Scientists are constantly discovering new sources of energy. As we begin to expand our exploration outward into space, we are also beginning to explore inward. And when science finally realizes and understands the interconnectedness of body, mind, and spirit -- poltergeists will finally be taken off the list of unexplained phenomenon.

Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poltergeist https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13563-theyre-here-the-mechanism-of-poltergeist-activity/
https://www.learning-mind.com/poltergeist-origins-of-the-mysterious-phenomenon/
https://www.thoughtco.com/poltergeists-three-famous-cases-2595934
https://www.prairieghosts.com/poltergeists1.html
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/enfield_poltergeist
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/poltergeists-overview
https://knowingneurons.com/2012/12/14/brain-battery/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfield_Poltergeist
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/movies/new-movies/margaret-and-janet-hodgson-return-to-london-poltergeist-house-after-40-years/news-story/745ac33467c1ac744272740ce9f47166
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6023279/enfield-poltergeist/
https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/6415/ghosts-supernaturalism-and-the-wesley-poltergeist
https://www.livinglifeinfullspectrum.com.au/blog/the-devil-of-glenluce-satans-invisible-world-discovered/
https://www.historicmysteries.com/great-amherst-mystery/
Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENyW68ALuUw (Poltergeist activity caught on film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sls6pszMGfk (Enfield Poltergeist)

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Haunted Objects

7/2/2018

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Homes that were the scene of murders, suicides, or other such tragedies are often reported to be haunted. The house in Amityville, Long Island where Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed six members of his family is perhaps the most famous, but there are many others. The Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts; the Winchester Mystery House in San Francisco; and Alcatraz prison just to name a few.

Why do ghosts attach themselves to these places? It probably has something to do with energy. We are made up of energy, and our energy influences every person and every place we come into contact with. In a haunted house, the emotions of the people who lived there are embedded in the fabric of the house. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the energy, and the more likely to produce paranormal activity. But let’s take this one step further. A house is an object. It’s a very BIG object, but it’s really just an object. If the object we call a house can be haunted by being influenced by the energy of the people who lived and died there, then any object can be haunted.

There is often a bond between the haunted object and the owner. In fact, people often feel compelled to purchase an object because they feel that it is somehow calling to them. I had this experience when I saw a Tau Tau doll in an antique shop. I really felt as if it was calling to me, and I almost bought it in spite of the high price tag attached to its toe. But I didn’t. The fact that I was so obsessed with buying it made me think twice. And it probably was good that I didn’t buy it. What is a Tau Tau doll you ask? It’s a wooden effigy of a dead person, and is used to guard their tomb.

In 2011, demonologist John Zaffis premiered a unique paranormal show called “Haunted Collector”. In the series, John and his family investigate reports of paranormal activity. At the end of each episode, John removes a haunted item from the location and stores it in his ‘Haunted Relics Museum’ located at his home in Stratford, Connecticut. He places the object on a pedestal, surrounds it with a circle of salt for protection, and covers it with a glass dome. Zaffis claims that the majority of paranormal activity ceases once the haunted object is removed from the home.

I have to admit that I was a huge skeptic of haunted objects, and of the “Haunted Collector”. Why? Well, at the time I didn’t understand the idea behind haunted objects. Also, it seemed too simplistic. I’ve investigated and researched hundreds of haunted locations, and all of them seem to be either inhabited by departed spirits or infused with residual energy of the people who used to live there. How can one object cause so much havoc in a home? Well, the truth is, everything changed when I unknowingly purchased a haunted object from a thrift store; an antique and very haunted bed frame. I purchased the bed as a surprise for my daughter. Unfortunately, the surprise was on me!

The bed frame leaned up against the wall of the thrift shop, looking neglected and abandoned. I spied the headboard peeking out from beneath a tattered quilt that had been thrown over it. I moved the quilt and found that the bed was ornately carved and in perfect condition. It was obviously antique, but not being anything close to an expert on antiques I could only guess that it was at least 80 years old. I searched around behind the headboard and found the two side boards. They were in decent shape; in need of some cleaning, but nothing a little furniture polish wouldn’t take care of. After searching for a few minutes the saleslady helped me locate the footboard. It too was ornately carved and in excellent condition. There was a price tag on the footboard - $50. Fifty dollars for this beautiful bed-frame? What a steal! Without even considering how I would fit it in my car I, I paid for the bed and left feeling as if I had just won the lottery. Little did I know that the bed I had just purchased came with strings attached - it was haunted.

My daughter was at college and I decided to paint her bedroom and install new hardwood floors. Her old bed was falling apart and was of the ‘little girl’ variety that she had grown out of years earlier. The bed frame I had purchased at the thrift shop would look beautiful once the room was finished. After a few weeks work the room was painted, the floors installed and the antique bed frame assembled. The room was perfect. Or, at least it looked perfect. That first day when I stepped back to look at the finished room something seemed … off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. At first I thought that the bed needed to be placed against a different wall and the dresser moved to a different location, but after trying various configurations I went back to the original setup. The new hardwood floors looked great, the color on the walls was rich and soothing, the new rug provided a splash of color - but something was wrong. I shrugged off the feeling and took some photos to send my daughter at college. I texted her the shots. She loved the look of the room, especially the ‘new’ bed. She had a break coming up in a few weeks and couldn’t wait to come home to see it in person.

The night after installing the bed I had one of my typical bouts of insomnia. Rather than keep my wife up with my tossing and turning I decided to try to get some sleep in my daughter’s newly furnished room. I went down the hall to the newly renovated bedroom and climbed into the antique bed. It was very comfortable, but after a short time I noticed that something just didn’t feel right. As crazy as it may sound, I had a strong feeling that someone was standing right next to the bed staring at me. I turned over to look, but of course there was no one there. I turned onto my other side but the feeling persisted, this time as if the ‘person’ had moved to the other side of the bed. After trying to shake off this feeling I turned the light on and read for a while until I was good and tired, then finally fell asleep. I slept for just about an hour, but my sleep was plagued with horrible nightmares. My dreams were filled with strange images, people I had never seen before, and a feeling of sickening fear. I woke up with a start, thankful that the night was finally over.

I didn’t mention my disturbing night to my wife, but when I got home from work I found that the room was having an effect on her as well. Earlier that day she had folded some of my daughter’s clothes and had put them in her dresser. As she was in the room putting the clothes away, she started feeling very uncomfortable. She too felt as if she was being watched, and as much as she tried to ignore this feeling she just wanted to get out of the room and quickly left. She thought this was strange because the room looked so nice now, and she had never felt this way before about any room in our house. As the weeks went on, the feeling of being watched intensified and she avoided going into the bedroom. After a while, she stopped putting clothes away in my daughter’s dresser. She just left the laundry basket with folded clothes on the floor and made a hasty retreat.

I attempted to sleep in the room a few more times, but the feeling of being watched was overwhelming and the nightmares were becoming more and more disturbing. I found myself dreaming of strange people, being unable to find my way out of a house I have never seen before, and being taunted by groups of people without faces. During the day, it got to the point where just passing the room gave both of us the creeps and we took to keeping the bedroom door closed.

Now, you would think that a ghost hunter would immediately come to the conclusion that the bed was haunted, but it actually took me a while to put two and two together. The biggest problem? I never believed in haunted objects before! I remember watching John Zaffis’ show “The Haunted Collector” and, as much as I loved the show I found myself laughing at the simplicity of tracing a haunting to an object, removing it, and solving the problem. But here I was faced with the same problem. I had purchased a haunted bed and needed to do something about it. My daughter was due home any day, and I didn’t want to subject her to any of the bizarre nightmares and creepy feelings my wife and I were experiencing. However, it was too late to get a new bed so I thought I’d just wait and see how things went once she got home.

My daughter came home from college for the weekend and was delighted at seeing her new room. I didn’t tell her about the problems we were having with the bed. It might sound cruel, but I didn’t want to scare her and was interested in seeing if she had any feeling about it. As it turned out, she didn’t! Her sleep was undisturbed, she loved the bed, and she didn’t complain about the room feeling any different than before. Some might say that this proves that the bed was not haunted to begin with. Not so fast! Even in the most active haunted houses, some spirits resonate with certain family members and others are often not disturbed at all. The bed was obviously having an effect on my wife and me, but not my daughter.

After my daughter went back to college I decided to conduct an investigation on the bed the same way I would with any other haunted location. I set up my digital recorder, took photos, and tried to connect with the spirit who had attached itself to the bed. I had a strong impression of an old woman, laying in bed sick and unable to take care of herself. The phrase, “I fell down the stairs” repeated over and over in my head. In listening back to the digital recorder, I was surprised to hear a male voice saying, “Don’t drink”. I was sure that the spirit was that of an older woman. It’s possible that the voice had nothing to do with the bed. A close family friend had died in an alcohol related accident just a few days earlier, so I think it was him ‘leaving me a message.’

Satisfied that the bed was indeed haunted, I did a clearing using sage, holy water, sea salt, religious objects and prayer. Although it took over a month, I finally cleared the bed of the spirit. The room feels fine now, and I have spent spent many nights sleeping in the bed without being bothered by nightmares. Another satisfied customer!

The Haunted Organ
One of the first paranormal investigations I ever worked on involved a haunted object. It was an antique pump organ, and Kathy O’Donnel, Karen Darby and I were asked to investigate a series of bizarre incidents that occurred after the instrument was brought into the home.

When we arrived, the homeowner, John Kirtz, told us that the activity started when he bought the organ from a client. Kirtz was an electrician, and he saw the organ in a home that he was doing work at. It was a beautiful old pump organ, the type with two foot pedals used to inflate the bellows that produce the sound. The wood was ornately carved, and there were two mirrors on either side of the music stand. Kirtz was an amateure musician and he expressed an interest in buying the organ. The homeowner told him that he would gladly sell it to him, but there was one thing he needed to know about it. The organ was haunted. Kirtz said that he didn’t believe in such things, and he was thrilled when the owner agreed to sell it to him. But as soon as he took it home, all hell broke loose.

The family started to hear strange sounds coming from the room. It sounded as if someone was in the room moving things around, but when they investigated nothing was disturbed. They also began to hear organ music, even though the organ couldn’t make a sound unless someone were working the foot pedals. After that, various members of the family began having nightmares about the organ, specifically about the mirrors. In their dream they would see people in the mirrors dressed in old fashioned clothing. John actually removed the mirrors from the organ because he thought that they might be causing the dreams.

John’s office was in his basement, right below the living room. John and his wife often took care of their grandchildren, and there were a lot of toys in the living room. Often when John was alone in the house working in his office, he would hear the children’s toys rolling around on the floor. He could make out the sound of toy cars and trucks being pushed, and other toys being moved around.

Then things REALLY started getting strange. One day, John’s teenage son Zach was on his way upstairs to his room and he saw his mother standing at the top of the stairs. She was blocking his way, and she was just looking at him. Zach said, “Hey mom. What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that? Mom? Mom?” But his mother just stood there staring at him as if she were in a trance. Suddenly, Zach heard his mother call him from downstairs and he turned his head in amazement as his mother rounded the corner and looked up at him from the bottom of the stairs. “Zach. Who are you talking to up there?” she said. Zach turned around and the woman at the top of the stairs that he thought was his mother was gone.

One day, a group of the teenage kids were in the living room watching television. They heard footsteps and looked up to see someone walking down the stairs. The staircase was situated in such a way that you would first see the person’s feet and legs coming down the stairs, and once they were past a certain point you would see their chest, shoulders, and finally their head. They all looked up to see who it was, but as the person got to the point where the kids would be able to see their face, the kids all started screaming and running out of the room. The person on the stairs had no head. The kids ran out of the living room to the house next door which was owned by their cousin, and they called the police. Do you think that was bad? The most horrifying was yet to come.

It’s important to tell you that when we arrived at the house, every single wall had a crucifix on it. There were several crucifixes hanging on the wall going up the stairs where the headless man and the doppelganger woman had been seen. Every bedroom door had a crucifix on it, and every bedroom had a crucifix hanging on the wall. The family felt that this would be protection from the activity that they have been experiencing.

One night, John tucked his 8 year old son to bed and talked with him for a while. The boy told him that he was afraid at night, and John said, “Whenever you’re afraid, look up at the crucifix and pray to Jesus. That will help you to not be afraid.” That night, the family was awakened by the little boy screaming in terror. John ran into the room and turned on the light. His son was sitting up in bed with his back to the wall, staring at the wall across from him. When John finally got the boy to calm down, he asked him what had happened. The boy told him that he woke up in the middle of the night and he began to feel afraid. He looked at the crucifix that was hanging on the wall across from his bed and began to pray the way his father had taught him to. The boy said that as he prayed, the figure of Jesus that was hanging on the crucifix lifted up his head and turned it, and looked directly at the boy. John told him that he must have been dreaming -- that such a thing could never happen. Then he looked at the crucifix and was totally shocked by what he saw. One of Jesus’ arms was broken at the shoulder and was hanging down from the nail on the cross. John said that he had just bought the crucifix that week, and it was brand new and in perfect condition. It was also hanging much too far off of the ground for his young son to have reached.

John decided to get rid of the organ. He called a local music store and asked them if they wanted it. They said yes, and John told them that it was haunted. Of course, they didn’t believe in such things and gladly took it off of his hands. Soon after, the owners called John and said that as soon as they put the organ in the store, all sorts of strange things started happening. They were so spooked by it that they got rid of it. They rented a storage unit and paid for one month, then stopped paying the rent on the space. When the company couldn’t get hold of them, they must have gotten rid of the organ. But whether they sold it, donated it to Goodwill, or threw it away, no one knows.

Ways that Objects Become Haunted

Imprinted Energy
As I mentioned, any object can become imprinted with the energy of its owner, or from its surroundings. Although this energy is not intelligent and cannot communicate with us, it can cause problems. Depending on the severity of the emotions influencing them, objects with imprinted energy can make us feel sick, depressed, anxious, or even suicidal.

In their book, ‘Haunted by the Things You Love’, John Zaffis and Rosemary Ellen Guiley tell the story of a woman who purchased an amethyst ring at an estate sale. She fell in love with the ring and started wearing it every day. But she soon found that she felt extremely sad whenever she wore it, and that she began having ‘memories’ of a woman she didn’t know. She would see this woman in her mind’s eye as being elderly and dressed in period clothing. After a while, she felt as if this woman was actually taking over her thoughts. Her house took on an oppressive air, and she started having trouble sleeping at night. It was only after the ring was removed from her house that all of the activity and strange feelings stopped.

The energy stored in an object can mean trouble, but there is a silver lining. Objects can also be infused with love, joy, hope, and healing. Anyone who owns an object by a loved one knows that just having it in our presence often makes us feel better. Likewise, medallions blessed by priests are often worn as protection. They make us feel safe, and that we are guarded from evil influences.

Spirit Attachments
Earthbound spirits can and do attach themselves to objects. It’s not so much that they ‘hitchhike’ a ride on statues, paintings, or jewelry. They are emotionally attached to things that they owned in life. If you happen to buy Aunt Matilda’s wedding band in an antique store, she may stay close to it and become a permanent guest in your home. And if Aunt Matilda doesn’t want you to have her wedding band, she may very well let you know by moving things, making strange sounds, or making your house feel … well, haunted.

Not all spirit attachments are filled with wrath. Some are lonely spirits who have never moved on. They are attached to the things they loved in life and just want to be close to them.

Curses or Hexes
Not to beat a dead horse here, but haunted objects are all about energy. Heightened emotions, tragedy, accidents, can all charge an object with that energy. Likewise, someone skilled in the dark art of hexes or curses can infuse an object with bad energy and bad intentions. But it doesn’t end there. Objects can be the hiding places of evil spirits conjured by those involved in Satanism or the dark forms of witchcraft. Objects used in satanic rituals often come with evil attachments, and sometimes a ritual is performed to summon a spirit and attach it to an object. These spirits are then used to cause harm to the person who possesses the object.

Often, people blame modern day witches when they hear of curses or hexes. Wicca, or pagan witchcraft, is actually a gentle pagan system of worshiping and respecting the spirits of nature. But there are bad people of all faiths, and a witch who has ‘gone to the other side’ can wreak havoc on a person’s life by putting a curse on an object. And it’s not just witches who hex objects. Now that you can teach yourself to do just about anything by going online, people are hexing objects by following online rituals - but they have no idea what they are getting themselves into. The Wiccan Threefold Law states “Ever mind the rule of three, what ye send out comes back to thee.” In other words, do good and you will receive good. Put an evil curse on an object, and you will be cursed yourself threefold.

A Few More Haunted Object Stories
The following stories come from the book, “Haunted by the Things You Love’. If you get a chance, pick up a copy. It’s an excellent book. I’m summarizing just two stories here, but the book goes into much more detail, and has many more stories.

Creepy Clown Dolls Take Over
Sarah collected clown dolls, and she was happy when she purchased the two limited edition clown dolls at a collectables shop. Both had yellow-sh green faces. One had an open mouth looking as if it was laughing, and the other was more serious looking, almost sad. As soon as Sarah brought the dolls into her home, the atmosphere of the house changed. The house used to feel warm and inviting, now it felt cold and unfriendly. Sarah started having terrible nightmares at night. The next thing she noticed was the lights that seemed to turn on by themselves. Next there were odd rustling sounds in the middle of the night, light tapping on the walls of her bedroom. Finally, and most creepy of all, the dolls started moving. Sarah would come into the room and find that the two dolls were in different places than she had left them. One morning, she found one doll on the floor tucked in the corner, and the other sitting on top of some of the other dolls in the room. Sarah called John Zaffis to investigate. After pinpointing the dolls as the problem, they were removed and the activity stopped. But that’s not the end of the story. Another woman, Rhonda, purchased the same limited edition clown dolls and had similar activity in her house, only worse. Her dolls were moving as well, but she was finding them in different rooms in her house. One day she came home and found one sitting in the bathroom sink. Another time, she opened her pantry door and found one of the doll’s on the shelf. She threw them away, but they somehow ended up back in her house. Zaffis came to the woman’s home and did a ritual cleansing on the dolls. He then planned on removing them from the home. But to his surprise, the woman didn’t want to give them up. The cleansing would give some protection for a while, but Zaffis knows that it won’t last.

The Haunted Violin
The first thing that Janet noticed was the cold. No matter how warm it was outside, or how high she turned up the thermostat, the bone-chilling cold just would not go away. The house had never felt like this before. It was always warm and cheerful. Now, Janet felt like she was living in an icebox.

Next were the broken things -- glasses, dishes, vases. Janet would come home from work and find things smashed on the floor, or looking as if they had been hurled against a wall with great force. The activity soon escalated to things breaking when Janet was at home. At the sound of breaking glass, Janet’s cat would leap to his feet and run from the room. Janet would dash to the location of the sound and find the pieces scattered on the floor.

Luckily, Janet’s collection of antique musical instruments had not been damaged. Over the years she had amassed quite a collection of instruments - flutes, clarinets, oboes, a dulcimer, and several violins. Her prized possession was an 18th century violin from Austria which sat in a glass shadow box that she had proudly hung on her living room wall. The violin had set her back quite a bit of money when she purchased it at an estate sale, but Janet thought it was well worth it.

One night, Janet woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of violin music playing. It was a classical piece that she recognized, the second movement from the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, and it was coming from the living room. ‘I must have left the television on,’ Janet thought as she got out of bed. She made her way to the living room, listening to the music as she walked down the hall, but as soon as she stepping into the room the music stopped. The television was off, as was the radio. Janet shrugged it off as having been a dream and went back to bed.

As the months went by, the house continued to feel freezing cold. One night she heard footsteps walking down the hallway, and she fled the house. After this, the activity really began to ramp up. The same, mournful violin melody now played nightly, and the phantom footsteps were heard making their way down the hallway in the dead of night. One night Janet woke to the sound of the violin playing the same tune over and over again. She had had enough. She screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! Go away!” but the music played on. She got out of bed, and just as her feet hit the floor the music stopped. Janet walked nervously into the living room, being careful to not make a sound. Suddenly, the shadow box that contained the antique violin launched itself off of the wall at tremendous speed straight at her. It crashed against the floor, just missing her. The violin was broken in pieces inside of the box, but the box itself was totally undamaged. Even the fragile glass cover hadn’t broken even though it had hit the floor with incredible force.

Janet called John Zaffis who came to her house to investigate. He surmised that the violin had once been owned by someone who was obsessively possessive of it, and that his spirit was not happy to see it in Janet’s house. Zaffis took the broken violin to his ‘Haunted Relics Museum’ where it sits to this day under a glass dome, protected by a ring of blessed salt. All activity in Janet’s house totally ceased after the violin was removed.

Some Friendly Advice
Objects that are haunted are rare, but they are not unheard of. Here are a few tips to help you if you suspect an object is haunted, and to help prevent you from buying a haunted object in the first place.

Before buying something, pay attention to your reaction to it. If you walk into a store and see something you that you absolutely have to have, even though it is way out of your price range, and part of you doesn’t really even like the looks of it - run! Haunted objects call to us. They try to coax us into taking them home, but don’t listen. If you are ever in an antique shop or a thrift store and you feel compelled to buy something, take a deep breath. Hold the object in your hands for a while and see how it makes you feel. See if any images come into your mind. If you feel even remotely uneasy or sad holding the object, put it down and walk away.

If you already purchased an item and suspect it might be haunted, ask other people if they have experienced anything unusual around it without telling them your experience. You are looking for confirmation. If everyone tells you that they feel creeped out every time they walk past the painting you just bought at the yard sale, there’s a good chance that the painting came with an attachment.

If you notice unusual activity after bringing something new into the house, remove it from the home and see how things feel. You don’t have to throw it away, just put it somewhere away from the house. This can be outdoors, in a shed, in the woods - anywhere far away from the house. If things feel better without it, then consider getting rid of the item.

You can clear objects that you buy by smudging the with sage, or spraying them with salt water. You can also bless them with holy water, or say prayers over them asking angels, saints and spirit guides to rid the object of any negative energy that may be present. It is a good idea to do this with any used object you buy. Assume that the energy of everyone who came into contact with the object is stored in it, just waiting to come out. Your job is to neutralize the energy before it can do any harm.

If nothing works, either get help or dispose of the object. I don’t suggest you sell it to someone, or donate it. You are just passing the problem on to someone else. In drastic cases, the item should either be buried, burned, or weighed down and thrown into swiftly running water, such as a large brook or river.

Conclusion
In closing, I think you’ve heard enough stories and had enough warnings to make you think twice before rushing into buying something at a thrift store or garage sale. So I leave you with this poem about the things we collect over time, and then forget about.

That book, that block, that ticking clock
that marks the minutes in the dark
That velvet chair, that dancing bear you had to have,
That dusty pair of porcelain children’s faces
from a close and crowded, musty shop

They’re with you now,
they watch, they wait
They wait, they watch,
that book that block,
That ticking clock
That marks the minutes
in the dark

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June 16th, 2018

6/16/2018

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To say that Edgar Allan Poe loved a good mystery is a major understatement. Poe is the undisputed ‘father’ of the detective story. Long before Sherlock Holmes, there was Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, who is featured in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, and “The Purloined Letter”. So, it is both fitting and ironic that Poe’s life ended under very mysterious circumstances, and that to this day no one has ever been able to solve the mystery.

Those of you unfamiliar with the case will find the facts of Poe’s death both fascinating and baffling. And as a bonus, I’ve enlisted the assistance of world renowned psychic detective Troy Griffin to see if he can help solve the case. As far as I know, a psychic detective has never taken on the Poe case, so this is a first.

Troy Griffin is a psychic medium who has worked as a consultant on well over one hundred missing persons and cold case files. Troy combines his psychic gifts with detective work to help uncover the truth. Troy’s personal and group readings have been praised as being amazingly accurate, and his Christian centered messages have restored hope to those in need of spiritual guidance. He has been featured on ABC News Nightline, ABC News 7 NY, ABC News Atlanta, ABC Action News 2, and Fox News 21 just to name a few. You can read more about Troy Griffin’s work by going to psychicmediumtroy.com.

In the first half of this newsletter, I’ll present the facts of the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe and explore just some of the many theories that have arisen over the years. In the second half, I’ll share Troy Griffin’s psychic impressions of the case and the intuitive information he was able to pick up on as it relates to Poe’s mysterious death.

The Case
On September 27, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe left Richmond, Virginia bound for Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems by Mrs. St. Leon Loud. He then intended to go to New York, where he was living at the time, to escort his aunt back to Virginia for his upcoming wedding.

Although he was undoubtedly still reeling from the death of his wife two years earlier, Poe’s engagement to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Shelton, was an indication that he was hoping to put the past behind him and to look ahead to a brighter future. Those who met him in the days before his departure described him as cheerful and in good spirits.

The night before he left Richmond, Poe stopped by the office of his friend, Dr. John F. Carter. When he left, he mistakenly took Dr. Carter’s cane and left his own behind. Whether Poe knew it or not, Dr. Carter’s cane contained a hidden sword. Afterward, Poe had dinner at a restaurant across the street. He dined with some acquaintances who stayed with him until late in the evening, and then walked with him to the Baltimore boat which set sail at 4 AM. One witness said that Poe was “quite sober and cheerful to the last, remarking, as he took leave of them, that he would soon be in Richmond again.”

But Poe never made it to Philadelphia. He got off of the boat in Baltimore to wait for the train that would take him to Philadelphia, but once off the boat he wasn’t seen until three days later. Where did he go, and who did he meet? No one really knows. One thing is certain -- Edgar Allan Poe vanished for three days after getting off of the boat in Baltimore.

Poe was obviously carrying some money with him when he left Virginia, but how much is uncertain. The day before he left, he was paid a small sum of money for an article that he was to write. He also collected subscription money for his magazine, but it is unlikely to have amounted to much. Subscriptions were just $5 per year, and Poe hadn’t sold very many subscriptions up to that point.

On October 3, five days after he arrived in Baltimore, a newspaper printer send a message to Poe’s friend, Joseph Evans Snodgrass which read: “There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan’s 4th Ward Polls, who goes under the name of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears to be in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you, he is in need of immediate assistance.” Snodgrass hurried to Ryan’s 4th Ward, a tavern where voting also took place, and found Poe sitting in a confused state.

Poe’s odd clothing caught Snodgrass’s immediate attention. They had obviously been changed. In place of his own suit of black wool was one of cheap, dirty cloth; and he was wearing a strange hat. Snodgrass described the hat as as “a rusty, almost brimless, tattered and ribbonless palm leaf hat.” Snodgrass went on to say that, “His clothing consisted of a sack-coat of thin and sleazy black alpaca, ripped more or less at several of its seams, and faded and soiled, and pants of a steel-mixed pattern, half-worn and badly-fitting, if they could be said to fit at all. He wore neither vest nor neck-cloth, while the bosom of his shirt was both crumpled and badly soiled. On his feet were boots of coarse material, and giving no sign of having been blackened for a long time, if at all”.

Surprisingly, Poe still held Dr. Carter’s cane. Why all of his clothes had been changed, but he retained the cane is a mystery. Had he kept it because he knew it contained a sword, and he wanted it for protection? All of Poe’s money was missing, as was the luggage he had taken with him from Virginia. Had he been robbed? Lost the money? Gambled it away? Spent it on alcohol? No one knows.

Snodgrass was about to send word to Poe’s relatives in Baltimore when Poe’s cousin, Henry Herring, arrived at the tavern on electoral business. It seems odd that of all the people in Baltimore, Poe’s cousin should walk into the same tavern. Could Henry Herring have had something to do with Poe’s sorry state? And if so, how and why? It was assumed by Snodgrass that Poe was in a drunken state, but this has been disputed by many as you’ll read about later in this article.

Poe’s cousin refused to take care of him, so he was taken by carriage “as if a corpse” to Washington College hospital where he remained unconscious until the following morning, Thursday, October 4. When he came to, he had “tremor of the limbs” and was delirious. His delirium was described by one physician as “constant talking and vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls.”

On Friday, October 5, Poe recovered from the manic state he was in, but he was still incoherent. He told the doctor that his wife was in Richmond, which was not true, and that he did not remember when he had left that city. When the doctor tried to pacify him by telling him not to worry because friends would soon be there to take care of him, Poe said that the best thing a friend might do was to blow his brains out for him. After saying this, he fell asleep.
On the evening of Saturday, October 6, Poe woke up and was once again delirious. He began calling out the name “Reynolds” continually until three o'clock the following morning. The doctor later wrote, “Having become enfeebled from exertion, he became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time, then gently moved his head and said, ‘Lord help my poor soul’ and expired.” Edgar Allan Poe died on Sunday, October 7th. He was just 40 years old.

The only public reference to a cause of death was from the Baltimore Clipper, who wrote that Poe had died from “congestion of the brain”. Death certificates were not required at the time, and none was filed.
Poe’s funeral was held on Monday, October 8th. Only four people attended; Poe’s cousins, Henry Herring and Neilson Poe, and two other unknown mourners. Poe’s close friends and relatives were totally unaware that he had died, and only learned of his death when they read about it in the newspaper after he was already buried.

Theories
Today, Poe is remembered as a great writer, but in his day he was known as a magazine editor and harsh literary critic. His nickname was “tomahawk man” for the cutting quality of his reviews. As a result, he had many enemies. The after Poe’s funeral, author Rufus Griswold posted in the New York Tribune, “Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.“
Theories of how and why Edgar Allan Poe died abound. Some are far-fetched, others are plausible, none are definitive.

Alcohol
Poe often said, “I am done with drinking forever” -- a familiar proclamation of many an alcoholic. There is no doubt the Poe struggled with alcohol. Friends, acquaintances, and enemies alike wrote of his frequent bouts of drunkenness. And while it’s true that he only drank intermittently and then abstained for months at a time, there is strong evidence that he often ‘fell off the wagon’.

Although alcohol may have played a large part in the situation that Poe found himself in his last days, there are problems with alcohol being the main cause of his death. For one thing, it fails to explain Poe’s change of clothes, nor does it explain the five days of delirium he suffered. Even if he drank heavily before he was found, the effects would have worn off.

To add to the mystery, in 1874, the doctor who took care of Poe, Dr. Moran, wrote, “ I have stated to you the fact that Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the effect of any intoxicant, nor was the smell of liquor upon his breath or person.” Dr. Moran, however, changed his story many times over the years, and some say that he claimed that Poe was drunk when he was in his care.

Rabies
In 1996, Dr. R. Michael Benitez published a theory in the Maryland Medical Journal that Poe died from rabies. Dr. Benitez said that …
”The writer entered Washington College Hospital comatose, but by the next day was perspiring heavily, hallucinating and shouting at imaginary companions. The next day, he seemed better but could not remember falling ill. On his fourth day at the hospital, Poe again grew confused and belligerent, then quieted down and died. That is a classic case of rabies.
In the brief period when he was calm and awake, Poe refused alcohol and could drink water only with great difficulty. Rabies victims frequently exhibit hydrophobia, or fear of water, because it is painful to swallow. Although there is no anecdotal or physical evidence that a rabid animal had bitten Poe, 25% of rabies victims reportedly cannot remember being bitten. After an infection, the symptoms can take up to a year to appear. But when the symptoms do appear, the disease is a swift and brutal killer. Most patients die in a few days.”

Diabetes/Hypoglycemia
Poe was known to be affected strongly by taking just one drink. His intolerance for alcohol may have been rooted in a problem with his blood sugar levels. Untreated, diabetes can progress to damage to the kidneys resulting in acute confusion from hypoglycemia. Studies have shown that psychiatric disorders can also be a risk factor of type 2 diabetes.
Poe biographer, Jeffrey Meyers, believes that the poet died from low blood sugar, also known as hypoglycemia. Symptoms of untreated hypoglycemia are trouble talking, clumsiness, loss of consciousness, seizures, sweating, and shakiness. Poe exhibited all of these signs. Alcohol may have triggered such a steep drop in Poe’s sugar levels that he was unable to recover from it.

Syphilis
Some believe that Poe died from complications from untreated Syphilis. If so, he may have contracted the disease prior to marrying Virginia Clemm. Rumor has it that the couple never consummated their marriage; but obviously such a rumor is hard to prove and may have been started by one of Poe’s many detractors.

Brain Tumor
Twenty seven years after Poe’s hasty burial, his body was exhumed in order to prepare the foundation for a large monument that was to be erected over Poe’s grave. George W. Spence, the sexton in charge of Poe’s burial in 1849, directed the exhumation. Three years later he told a visitor to Poe’s grave that when the grave was opened in 1875 he had lifted up the head of Poe’s skeleton and “his brain rattled around inside just like a lump of mud.”
The brain is one of the first organs to decay after burial. Tumors do not decay at the same rate, and often are present a very long time after the body has decayed. Could the rattling sound in Poe’s skull been a tumor, and was this what eventually lead to the poet’s death? The last photo of Poe may provide additional evidence. The right side of Poe’s face is drooping. It is especially noticeable in his right eye. This is a classic symptom of a brain tumor or stroke.

Suicide
Based on Poe’s own letters, and letters from those who knew him, Poe likely suffered from manic depression. He alternated between bouts of debilitating depression and bursts of physical and creative energy. Poe was far from wealthy. In fact, he made practically no money from his writing, and in the final years of his life was so poor that he and his wife were often given food and money just to survive. Could poverty combined with mental health issues have played a part in Poe’s death?

In November of 1848, after the death of his wife, Poe attempted suicide by taking laudanum, a medicine derived from opium. But he had taken such a small amount that it was more of a half-hearted suicide attempt than a real one. Reports that Poe was an opium addict are pure fiction. They grew from the 1845 reviews of Poe’s Tales which more than one critic dismissed as “the strange outpourings of an opium eater”. Poe himself only mentioned opium, or in this case laudanum, when he wrote a friend telling her of his suicide attempt.

The question is, did Poe attempt suicide again in Baltimore? Like the alcohol theory, this one is improbable. If he attempted to take more laudanum the second time, he would have fallen into unconsciousness and died rather quickly.

Murder
While it is highly unlikely that Poe was actually murdered, a series of events occurred three months months prior to his death that illustrate his extreme paranoia brought on by either physical or mental problems.

On July 1, 1849, Poe was arrested in Philadelphia for being drunk in public. His incarceration apparently lasted just a few hours, as the mayor recognized Poe and had him released without fining him.

The following day, Poe visited his friend John Sartain at his home. Sartain later described Poe as looking "pale and haggard, with a wild and frightened expression in his eyes." Poe told him that he was looking for "refuge and protection" because he was being followed by men who were trying to kill him. He said that he had overheard their plan to kill him while on the train. Sartain asked why anyone would want to kill him, and Poe said that it was "woman trouble."

To conceal his identity, Poe asked for a razor so that he could shave off his mustache. Not trusting Poe with a razor, Sartain suggested he do it himself using a pair of scissors. Sartain wrote, "Accordingly, I took him to the bathroom and performed the operation successfully."

After taking a walk outdoors, Sartain took Poe back to his house and helped him to bed. Poe stayed with Sartain until July 4. Speaking of the supposed murder plot a few weeks later, Poe claimed that his pursuit was just paranoia or hallucinations "created by his own excited imagination."

Cooping
Cooping was a form of 19th century electoral fraud by which unwilling individuals were forced to vote several times for the same candidate in an election. These innocent bystanders would be grabbed of the street by gangs working for a political candidate, and they would be kept in a room and given alcoholic beverages in order for them to comply. If they did no cooperate, they would be beaten or killed. Often, their clothing would be changed to disguise them as they voted multiple times at the same location.

There was an election going on in Baltimore when Poe vanished, and he was found outside of a polling place. We can imagine Poe walking the streets of Baltimore as he waited for his train to arrive. If he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he could easily have been kidnapped and given alcohol. For Poe, even a little alcohol was too much. And the cooping theory would explain the odd clothing he was wearing. But because the cooping theory is really an alcohol theory, we are still left unable to explain how alcohol alone could have killed Poe.

Troy Griffin’s Psychic Impressions
I spoke to Troy Griffin a few weeks before writing this article and asked if he would be willing to reach out for intuitive information about Poe’s death. He liked the idea, and said that he would give it a try. A few weeks later Troy wrote me about the impressions he picked up on the Poe case, and they were fascinating. Troy wrote:

I feel that Poe was in Baltimore seeking medical help on his conditions in a private and secret manner. I believe that he called upon Dr. Nathan Covington Brooks for such help and that he was using current conventional medicine of the time along with seeking the use of holistic alternatives.

It is well known that Poe went to Philly to comply with the request of Mrs. Leon Loud to edit her collection of poems. I do think he had intended to edit her poetry collection,
but I also sense that he was ill and that part of his trip was to seek medical help to try to figure out what was wrong with him.

It is merely a coincidence that Poe was found outside of a polling place. I believe that he put on the strange clothes he was found wearing in order to try not to be recognized. I discount the cooping theory. He was not given liquor, nor was he beaten in order to vote.

Alcohol use by Poe seems to be consistent and no cirrhosis of the liver is noted. I discount the alcohol theory altogether. The confusion that Poe displayed when he was found was caused by a brain lesion, not by alcohol. When he used alcohol, it was to fight the pain and severe depression that accompanied the illness. Poe’s confused state of mind was due to his brain lesion and illness, not from alcohol.

When I read about all of the theories about diseases and suggested causes of death mentioned by others -- tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, rabies, etc -- many of these diseases have a connection to brain lesions, some of which are called cancer in today’s medical wording. I sense that Poe was drinking and taking opium to help with the pain and tremors associated with brain lesions.
I conclude that Poe died of a brain lesion, with added complications from diabetes. I believe Poe’s brain lesion could be traced to an infection that he sustained early in life. Poe had a scar on his left shoulder. I believe that this is where the infection started, and that it lead to the brain lesion that eventually killed him.

Conclusion
In concluding this newsletter, I’d like to take you to a little cottage in the Fordham area of the Bronx, New York. It was the last home that Poe lived in, and for a brief time it was the place where he spent the happiest days of his life. At the time, Fordham was very rural. The small cottage sat on two acres of land. The sparsely furnished home had a kitchen and sitting room on the first floor, and a bedroom and Poe’s study on the second floor. Poe and Virginia kept songbirds in a cage on the front porch, and Virginia and “Eddy”, as she called him, spent a good amount of time out of doors. In a letter to a friend, Poe once said of the cottage “The place is a beautiful one.”

We tend to think of Poe as an eccentric, strange man who struggled with inner demons. It’s hard to think of Poe enjoying life, laughing, and spending time with friends and family. But that’s just what I’d like you to do. Poe’s mysterious death came at the end of a very hard, sad life. So for just a little while, let’s picture him in his best times and close by imagining that he went on to live a long, full life. A life full of joy. And oh what tales he would have told!
Resources

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-04-28/news/1993118157_1_david-poe-edgar-allan-poe-poe-life (Modern Psychologists diagnose Poe as manic depressive)
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X2014000600466 (Neurological diseases a possibility in Poe’s death)
https://www.biography.com/news/edgar-allan-poe-death-facts (Excellent article)
https://www.eapoe.org/index.htm (Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore website)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/still-mysterious-death-edgar-allan-poe-180952936/ (Smithsonian Magazine article on Poe’s death)
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-81611676/ (‘Looking Back at Poe on the Anniversary of his Death’ - L.A. Times)
https://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol65/mollegaard.pdf (Excellent article about Poe’s fame after his death)
http://worldofpoe.blogspot.com/2010/08/riddle-of-neilson-poe.html (Poe considered his Cousin Neilson Poe to be his enemy. This article examines their relationship)
http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/library/source_death.asp (Primary source documents related to Poe’s death)
http://poecalendar.blogspot.com/2009/07/poe-prison-pursuers-and-shaved.html (‘Poe, Prison, Pursuers, and a Shaved Moustache’)

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Ouija Boards

5/17/2018

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I speak to hundreds of people each year about my work as a paranormal investigator, and towards the end of my lectures I say to the audience, ‘Do Not Use Ouija Boards --They Are Dangerous’. Not everyone feels this way. Many people think that Ouija boards are perfectly safe. But after well over a decade of studying the paranormal and investigating hauntings and other types of ghostly activity, I personally feel that playing with Ouija boards can be extremely dangerous.

That said, I have to confess that between the ages of 17-18 I was deeply involved in using the Ouija. At first I used a real board, one that I bought at a thrift shop. But after awhile I would just draw the alphabet and numbers on a large piece of paper, and use a glass or some other object as an indicator. And no matter who was using the ‘board’ with me, we always received messages. After a summer of using the board almost daily, it started to become clear that this was not such a good idea. The first indication was how I physically felt while using the board. My Ouija ‘partner’ and I would put our hands on the planchette or glass and wait for it to move, and little by little I would feel my body begin to change.

It started with a feeling that I can only describe as ‘the chills’. I would literally start to shiver; not violently, but the way your body shivers when you have a fever with chills. Next, the indicator would start to move around the board. It usually started by tracing the figure eight over and over again as if it was thinking. Then, after awhile the planchette would move rapidly around the board and begin spelling out words, phrases and full sentences. The movement from one letter to the next was not tentative; it moved rapidly and with purpose. Sometimes it moved so rapidly that it was hard to predict what the word would be. For example, I remember once the letters W-R-O-U came up and I thought to myself, ‘There’s no word that starts with those letters.’ Then G-H-T followed. Wrought? ‘Is that even a word?’ I thought. Yes, it is a word. It’s a word that most 17 year old boys don’t know, an archaic version of the word “WORKED”.

What were the messages I received? There were many, and they were varied. One time a young man came through saying that he had been killed in a motorcycle accident in some town in Ohio that I had never heard of. He said that he was lost and he was asking for help. Another time, two spirits conversed back and forth with one another. One was supposedly good, and the other evil. As each took over the board, a totally different feeling would come over my body. In the end, the good spirit ‘won’ and said that God is all good and that evil cannot prevail. The session ended with the cryptic message, “You, I die”.

Speaking of which, I was often told that I would die. One spirit told me that I would be run over by a car that night, and it told me the name of the person who would kill me. Guess what? It never happened. The board would often lie to me. Some of the lies were about me, about what was going to happen to me that night or in school the next day. Lies about my friends. Predictions that never came true. Lies about people’s lives. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, more often than not, the message I received were either stories about the spirits’ lives and deaths -- stories that I could never corroborate -- or outright lies.

But not all of the messages I received were negative. The most amazing message I ever received from the Ouija board was a poem. The spirit who came through said his name was Albert Killings, and the poem he dictated was:

Never trust the wind that blows,
It often seeks but never knows,
It crawls upon the skies at night,
And often chills us with its bite.

I have searched high and low for that poem, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t exist anywhere in written literature. I now hold the copyright to the poem, which is odd since I don’t really think 17 year old Barry Pirro wrote it -- Albert Killings wrote it through me. A few days after receiving the poem, I hit upon the idea of writing a book of poetry dicted from the Ouija board. But just one other poem came through. It simply said, “The stars are holes in the sky”.
My Ouija board days ended abruptly when I was 17 years old and a spirit actually left the board and made its presence known in a physical way which proved to me that this was not something I should be fooling around with. The experience was terrifying, and I have not used the Ouija board since. I’ll tell you the full story at the end of this newsletter.

History
The Ouija board we know today originated with the Spiritualist movement of the late 19th century. From 1849 until 1888 the Fox sisters from Hydesville, New York became world renowned for their public seances. During these seances, mysterious knocks were heard, some answering yes or no questions by the number of knocks the spirits supposedly produced. The sisters toured the country, and even held a seance at the White House for president Franklin Pierce’s wife who was desperate to communicate with her dead child, Benny.

With the rise of the Fox sisters’ fame the Spiritualist movement was born, and other mediums came forward claiming that they too could communicate with the dead. But in October of 1888, the Fox sisters’ fame came to an abrupt end when Margaret Fox confessed in a signed statement that it was all a hoax. She told how at an early age the sisters learned that they could make loud sounds with the knuckle joints of their fingers and toes. In retrospect, it’s amazing that they were able to fool so many people for so long using just their hands and feet. It was later discovered that they also used a specially designed table that contained a spring mechanism that would strike a steel bar on the inside of the tabletop, thus producing loud rapping sounds. This table is now on display at the Rochester Historical Society. You can see a picture of it in an article in the Resources section of this newsletter.

Despite Margaret’s confession - which she later recanted after losing all of her money - the Spiritualist movement continued to flourish. Many mediums began to explore other methods of communication. Some used tables that would tip back and forth beneath their hands and spell out words as the legs tapped on the floor. But this method was slow and tedious, and some began to explore the use of alphabets on tables and eventually on boards. As the Spiritualist movement continued to expand, the use of talking boards became common, and by 1886 they were in wide use.

In 1890, businessman Elijah Bond filed for a patent for a talking board that worked by using a planchette, a rectangular device that would slide across the board to spell out words. The Kennard Novelty Company was the original manufacturer, and in 1901, William Fuld took over the talking board production.

How did the Ouija board get its name? The board supposedly named itself! In 1890, the board still didn’t have a name. On April 25, 1890, William Kennard was spending time with fellow investors Elijah Bond and Bond’s sister-in-law, Helen Peters who was a medium. They decided to ask the board what it wanted to be called, and it spelled out “O-U-I-J-A”. When they asked what it meant, the board spelled out ‘good luck’. This story may or may not be true, as “Ouija” is also a combination of the words ‘Oui’(French for Yes) and ‘Ja’ (German for Yes).

Although Ouija boards can be found in the toy isle of many department stores, they are not all fun and games. Many people feel that Ouija boards are dangerous, and that they invite evil spirits into the lives of those who play with them. But not everyone feels this way. Some think that the use of Ouija boards is harmless, and they can be used to communicate with loved ones and spirit guides. Let’s take a look at both sides of the issue.

The Good Ouija
When the first Ouija boards were made, they were not viewed as evil. Remember, they grew out of the Spiritualist movement which had a positive view of communicating with spirits. Today, there are many people who still believe that Ouija boards are harmless, and that they can be used to contact good spirits and deceased relatives.
In her book, The Spirits of Ouija: Four Decades of Communication, author Karen A. Dahlman talks about the many positive benefits of using the Ouija board. These include contacting loved ones on the other side, spirit guides, and making new ‘spirit friends’. Ms. Dahlman feels that Ouija boards have a bad reputation because of people’s religious beliefs, and because of the way that Hollywood has portrayed the board. She thinks that using the Ouija board can actually help develop empowerment and spiritual growth. Dahlman says that she is able to contact deceased loved ones, stuck spirits (aka - ghosts), higher selves, inter-dimensional beings, angels and animals. She claims that she speaks to animals who are no longer living, and to those who are still alive.

Many authors have used the Ouija board, and some claim that entire books have been ‘dictated’ to them by spirits. Poet James Merrill used the board to write many of his works, including the 560 page ‘The Changing Light at Sandover’(1982) which consists of message from fellow poet W.H Auden, a few of Merrill’s deceased friends, and the Archangel Michael. In 1957, Sylvia Plath wrote ‘Dialogue over a Ouija Board’ after a session she had with the board. And author John G. Guller used the Ouija board to contact the spirits of some of the people killed during the airline crash of flight 401 when writing his book, ‘The Ghosts of Flight 401’.

70’s rock icon, Alice Cooper, claims that he got his stage name from the Ouija board. The board told him and a friend that Vincent Furnier (Cooper’s real name) was actually reincarnated from a 17th century witch named Alice Cooper, so he used it as his stage name.
Did you know that the Ouija board was, in part, responsible for the creation of the Alcoholics Anonymous program? Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA, had a room set up in his house where he would contact spirits via the board to help him with his alcoholism. In his autobiography, Wilson acknowledged that he used the Ouija board to create the program’s famous 12 steps.

The Bad Ouija
Many people feel that Ouija boards are dangerous. I am one of them. I base my opinion on the work I’ve done as a paranormal investigator, and on my personal experiences with the board. In 2017 I conducted an investigation in Danbury, Connecticut. The case file appears on my website as “It Came from the Ouija Board”.

The case involves a woman in her mid-twenties named Abigail who used the board her girlfriend when they were in their teens. When I interviewed her about her experiences with the Ouija board Abigail explained, “We had an OK experience the first time we used the board so a few nights later we were like, ‘Let’s try it again’. It was about midnight. My mom was home, so we went upstairs to my room to a cubby hole that we used to hang out in. It was kind of like a clubhouse. That was a bad idea. The messages that were spelled out on the board were “Get out”, “I don’t like you”, and “I’m gonna kill you”. Then we heard a bunch of swearing.”

“Did you actually hear the swearing in the room with you,” I asked?

“Yes,” said Abigail. “It didn’t swear on the board, it swore out loud. It was getting mad at us. We heard the swearing right in the cubby hole with us. I don’t know if I can do it justice but it was like ‘YOU …’ then a bunch of curses. It was a deep, growling type of voice. It was a full grown man’s deep voice, and he sounded very, very angry. We could also hear stomping in the bedroom. We peeked out from the cubby hole, but there was nothing there. It sounded like heavy boots stomping on a wood floor, and it went on for a long time. We came running out of the room screaming, and my mom was like, ‘What are you screaming at?’ She hadn’t heard a thing; not the man’s voice, not the boots, nothing.”

Things went from bad to worse for Abigail. First, she began to feel as if she was being watched. Then one day she was sitting on her bed and she felt a hand grab her arm. It left an imprint that lasted for over 5 minutes, and which was witnessed by her mother. A few months later, Abigail walked into her kitchen one night and she saw a heavy set man looking in the window at her. She ran upstairs and her mother called the police. Two officers came to the house, but they didn’t find anyone. In fact, they looked outside underneath the window where Abigail had seen the man, but there were no footprints in the snow that had fallen that day.

Years later, Abigails’ fiance moved in with her, and even though he was unaware of the activity in the house, he began to have horrible nightmares every night. One night he woke up and watched a bright blue orb travel from the closet in their room, watched it cross the room, and then saw it vanish into the wall. Another night, Abigail heard two men arguing in her kitchen. No one was home at the time, so she was very frightened. She slowly made her way down the stairs, but as she stepped into the kitchen the voices stopped and she heard footsteps running away into the dining room. She ran into the dining room, but there was no one there.

Soon, things began to get even worse. A black figure with red eyes was seen standing at the far end of the upstairs hallway. Abigail said that it would just stand there and stare at her. One night, the black figure appeared in her bedroom at the foot of her bed as she was playing on her cellphone. She suddenly felt a burning sensation on her back, then ran out of the room. Two deep scratches appeared on her back. These scratches mysteriously vanished the next morning.

The black figure continued to make itself known. Abigail explained, “One day was I was standing in the kitchen looking into the dining room and I saw a black head with red eyes. I just saw a head, a black head with glowing red eyes staring at me and then, poof, it went away. It was high up on the ceiling, it was upside-down, and it was staring straight at me.” When asked her to describe the eyes, Abigail said, “They weren’t human. They don’t look like my eyes or his eyes or yours. They’re not that size. They’re bigger than normal, like the size of ping-pong balls.”

There is more to the story, but the important thing is that it all started with the Ouija board. You can read the full case file, and hear the EVP I captured by going to http://www.connecticutghosthunter.com/case-files.html#Ouija

My Last Ouija Board Session
As I mentioned at the start of this article, my Ouija days ended when something actually manifested in the room with me when I was 17 years old. It was summer, and I was helping a friend look after his neighbor’s dogs while there were away for a few days. After we had walked the dogs and watered the plants in the living room, I suggested that we try the Ouija board. My friend had never used the board before, and he was skeptical, but he agreed, so we sat at the kitchen table and I drew a board on a piece of paper. We used a drinking glass as an indicator.

We started asking questions, and we watched as the glass began to slowly travel across the board. The entity who came through said that he was the spirit of my friend’s brother who had died as an infant. I never knew this about my friend, but he admitted that he did have a brother who died shortly after birth. I asked the spirit how it knew how to spell if he died as a baby. It said, “They teach me here”. It went on to say that it watches over my friend and that it protects him. Just then, the dogs who were in a room in the basement began howling. The glass began to move faster and faster around the board in a figure eight, and we suddenly heard a loud SWISHING sound come from the living room. We jumped up from our chairs and hurried into the living room. As we walked into the room we were totally shocked by what we saw.

In one corner of the room was a large, indoor palm tree. Prior to beginning the Ouija session, we had watered this tree and it was a healthy plant. Now, nearly all of the palm tree fronds were broken off the tree, and they were scattered all over the room. Some lay on the couch, others were strewn about the floor. The few remaining fronds were broken, bent, and ripped looking and were hanging off of the trunk. It was almost as if someone ran a closed fist down the trunk of the tree, then grabbed all of the leaves and threw them around the room. The dogs were still howling downstairs, and my friend and I were really afraid. We quickly cleaned up the living room, then made our way back to the kitchen.

To this day I don’t know what made us do it, but we went back to the board. I guess we needed to know what this was about. We needed an answer. I asked the board, “Did you do that to the tree?” It spelled out “Y-E-S”. My friend asked, “Why did you do it?” -- and the board spelled out, “Because I love you.”

Some might think that it was a charming answer, a message from my friends deceased brother, a happy ending. But just as the board had told me many lies before, I was sure that it had been lying to us. The spirit that came through may have had some knowledge about my friend and his deceased brother, but it was using that knowledge to lie to us. The feeling that came through the board was bad. It was not a warm, loving feeling. It was evil, and I don’t use that word very often.

By using the Ouija board you are, in a sense, entering into an agreement with unknown spirits, demons, and God knows what else. The agreement goes something like this:

“By using this Ouija board, I am allowing any and all spirits to temporarily take over my body and use my hands to transmit messages. Whether these messages are true or not, I don’t really know or care about since it’s just for fun and entertainment. After using the Ouija board, I fully expect those spirits who have taken temporary residence in my body to leave it, and to also leave my home - even though I was the one who invited them in.”

Does this make sense to you? Me neither.

Some people may think that Ouija boards are safe, and that the messages they receive are from loved ones, spirit guides, or angels. Others believe it’s just a harmless psychological game, and that our subconscious is causing our hands to move and to spell out words and phrases. But I think otherwise, so I’ll end this newsletter with the exact words I use at my lectures:
DO NOT USE OUIJA BOARDS -- THEY ARE DANGEROUS
Resources

A very interesting and well written article about the Fox Sisters can be found HERE
Read more about the Fox Sisters, and see photos of the ‘rapping table’ HERE
Author Karen Dahlman talks about the positive side of Ouija Boards - Click HERE
Click HERE to read various Ouija Board stories.
Author Rosemary Ellen Guiley talks about her book “Ouija Gone Wild” - Click HERE
Read about 10 famous uses of the Ouija Board HERE
You can read 8 short, scary Ouija Board stories by clicking HERE

Ouija Board Collecting

Videos

Click HERE to listen to an outstanding interview with Ouija Board expert and collector, Bob Murch
Watch a ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ segment about Ouija Boards by Clicking HERE

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