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How to Make a Ghost: The Philip Experiment

9/23/2019

     Several years ago I attended a real, old fashioned seance. Before it got underway, I spent some time talking to the six other people who were in attendance and it was clear that all were either excited or nervous about what they might experience. Each was hoping to connect with one or more loved ones on the other side. Some brought pictures or momentos associated with the person, others just brought cherished memories. By the time the seance started, the room was alive with a palpable atmosphere of mystery and anticipation.
     The seven of us settled down in comfortable chairs around a wooden table and placed our hands lightly on its surface with our fingertips touching one another. We were told that this unbroken circle would generate a circle of energy that the spirits would use to help communicate with us. The room became quiet and the medium who lead the seance went into a light trance-state, then called out to our departed loved ones.
     I sat in rapt anticipation, looking furtively through half-closed eyes around the room for some sign that a spirit was present. I noticed that most people’s eyes were closed. I was certain that they were in deep thought about their loved ones. There was not a sound in the room except the soft ticking of a clock that hung on the wall which only heightened the sense of waiting and anticipation.
     Suddenly, the table began to vibrate almost imperceptibly under our fingertips, then light tapping sounds were heard from various parts of the room. These sounds started in one corner of the room, then quickly moved to the opposite corner. Soon, the tapping was all around us, even on the ceiling. There were more than a few surprised exclamations when the tapping started, and the sense of anticipation and excitement in the room increased considerably. The medium directed the spirits to answer her questions by tapping once for Yes, twice for No. As she asked her questions, the answering taps could be felt directly on the table. Sometimes there were more than two taps which confused us, but the medium assured us that this was simply an indication that the spirit either didn’t have an answer for us, or that a yes or no answer wasn’t appropriate. Of course, I kept half-an-eye open to make sure the medium wasn’t somehow generating these sounds herself, but I could see no indication that trickery was involved.
     After a while, the vibrations under our fingertips faded away to nothing, and the tapping suddenly stopped. We removed our hands from the table, and everyone exhaled audibly. There were a lot of smiles all around, and many said that as the seance was going on they could actually feel the presence of their loved ones in the room. One woman said that she even caught a whiff of her mother’s favorite perfume.
     Even though I was a seasoned ‘ghost hunter’, it was an exciting experience for me. And why wouldn’t it be? I had actually been in the presence of spirits, ghosts if you will. Or was I? Always the skeptic, I have to ask myself if something else could be responsible for the ghostly tapping and the sense of a spiritual presence? Is it possible that because all of us were so excited about the possibility of contacting a spirit, we actually made it happen? Did our heightened anticipation, hope, fear, excitement all contribute to the creation of the activity we witnessed? Did we collectively make a ghost?
     In September of 1972, a group of eight people from the Toronto Society for Psychical Research asked themselves the same question--Is it possible to make a ghost? Not to conjure up a spirit, but to actually create a ghost ‘from scratch’ so to speak. The experiment lasted over a year, and in the end it seems that they actually did it. They made a ghost.
     Before we get into the specifics of the experiment, we first need to understand the Tibetan Buddhist concept of tulpas. “A tulpa is an entity created in the mind, acting independently of, and parallel to your own consciousness. They are able to think, and have their own free will, emotions, and memories.” (1) The tulpa is essentially a thoughtform--a creation born from focused concentration, expectation, imagination and visualization.
     In the early 20th century, Belgian-French Buddhist Alexandra David-Neel claimed to have observed the practice of creating tulpas while spending time in Tibet. In her writings, she described tulpas as ‘magic formations generated by a powerful concentration of thought’. (2) She said that all humans have the power to create tulpas, and that ‘once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control’. This freedom happens naturally just as a child is able to live apart from its mother after leaving the womb. David-Neel claimed to have created a tulpa in the image of a cheerful monk who developed a life of its own and accompanied her on her travels. Unfortunately, it became evil and David-Neel had to destroy it by means of six months of intense concentration.
     If you’ve ever read Mary Shelly’s book, Frankenstein, you’ll notice some eerie similarities between the characters in the book and David-Neel’s tulpa. Creation involves a far-reaching moral obligation. The creator is fully responsible for his creation, and it is his duty to care for it. But what do you do when your creation becomes evil? After all, the creator is also responsible for the actions of his creation and how they affect others. When looked at in this way, the creation of a tupa can’t be taken lightly.
     Jewish folklore speaks of the golem, an anthropomorphic being created from mud or clay. Although golem are said to be human-like, and they take on a life of their own after they are created, no golem is fully human. They lack the ability to speak, and because they are made from the earth, they can’t go among humans without being recognized for what they actually are--inhuman.
     It’s believed a golem could be created by total concentration induced by combining certain letters of the Hebrew alphabet during a special ritual. After writing the Hebrew word for ‘Truth’ down a piece of paper, it would be placed in the mud effigy’s mouth or forehead which would bring the golem to life. The golem could be destroyed by altering the word ‘Truth’ to read ‘Death’.
     In a book published in 1748, rabbi Jacob Emden wrote, "I'll mention here what I heard from my father's holy mouth regarding the golem created by one of his ancestors. When he saw that the golem was growing larger and larger, he feared that it would destroy the universe. He then removed the Holy Name that was embedded in his forehead, thus causing him to disintegrate and return to dust.(3)
     As we take a close look at the Philip experiment, we begin to see that it was actually an experiment in creating a tulpa.
     The Toronto Society for Psychical Research assembled a group of seven of its members to be part of the experiment. Although all were obviously interested in psychic research, none claimed to have any psychic gifts. The group, under the guidance of poltergeist expert Dr. A.R.G Owen, was made up of people from a variety of backgrounds: an industrial designer, the former chairperson of MENSA, an accountant, a housewife, a bookkeeper, a sociology student, and Dr. Owens’ wife. Psychologist Joel Whitten also attended some of the sessions, but he was not actually a member of the group.
     The group’s first task was to create a totally fictional character. Working together, they came up with a biography of someone they named Philip Aylesford, a thirty-year-old aristocratic Englishman living in the mid 1600s. He was married to a beautiful but uninterested wife, Dorothea. One day Philip was out riding on the boundaries of his estates when came across a gypsy encampment. There he saw a beautiful gypsy girl, Margo. He instantly fell in love with her and brought her back to his estate where he kept her as his mistress. She lived in the estate’s gatehouse, and the two carried on their passionate affair in secret. Eventually Dorothea became suspicious and discovered that her husband was having an affair with Margo. She accused the girl of witchcraft and of stealing her husband. At Margos trial, Philip remained silent because he was afraid that he would lose both his reputation and his possessions. Margo was found guilty of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Afterward, Philip was so stricken with remorse and guilt at not having defended Margo that he ended his own life by throwing himself off of the battlements of his castle.
    As you can see, the biography they concocted was filled with drama, and like all good ghost stories, ended in tragedy. To further solidify the group’s image of Philip’s, one of its more artistic members drew a picture of him. One member of the group even traveled to England to photograph the area where Philip ‘lived’.
     Once everything was in place, the group met weekly for over a year to talk about Philip as if he was a real person. They meditated on the details of his life and tried to visualize him as clearly as they could. Although the transcripts of those sessions are not readily available, I’m sure the group elaborated on the details of Philip’s life as they went along, giving it as much drama and emotion as possible. Just imagine Margo’s terror as she is roughly tied to the stake atop the huge mound of kindling and firewood. Picture the throngs of spectators in frenzied anticipation of her execution, and of Margo’s pleas for mercy as the flames grow closer and closer, until they finally lick the bottom edge of her skirt, igniting it and engulfing the terrified girl in flames. Imagine Philip’s nightly walks along the battlements of his castle, his head in his hands as he sobs uncontrollably at the thought of what he failed to do to save the life of the woman he loved. We can almost see Philip staring over the edge of those same battlements, bright stars overhead as he finally throws himself down upon the rocks below in total despair.
     After meeting for over a year, the group still hadn’t received a sign of Philip’s presence. Although some members felt as if he was in the room with them, they still hadn’t received any type of communication from him. So they decided to change direction by attempting to contact Philip by conducting a seance. They sat around a table surrounded by Philip’s portrait and photographs of the type of castle Philip would have lived in, as well as objects from the 1600s. They dimmed the lights and placed their fingers lightly on the table, much like people did in the Victorian era to contact spirits by ‘table-tipping’. Finally after a month of trying to make contact this way, a slight vibration was felt under the groups’ fingertips. In the weeks that followed, the table began to rock back and forth. Finally, a single knock was heard on the table.
     The group was eltated. They asked Philip to knock once for Yes, twice for No. Addressing the spirit only by the name Philip, they began to ask him questions. Through yes and no knocks, Philip answered questions that matched the group’s fabricated biography. He also added other details that were not part of the group’s original vision of Philip. Interestingly, some of these details were found to be lacking in historic accuracy.
     “Sometimes someone would forget that Philip could only answer yes or no, and a question would be asked that required a different type of answer. When this mistake was made, Philip would invariably produce scratching noises. One one occasion, during a good session, one of the group jokingly asked Philip to give a rap under each person’s hand at the table. Philip took the request literally, and each member felt a loud rap under his or her hand at the same moment in time.” (Ghost Stories of Ontario, John Robert Columbo, p123)
     Because the table was the only way that Philip communicated with the group, participants in the seances were frisked to make sure that they were not using artificial means to produce the knocking sounds or to make the table move. And move it did! It tipped, rocked back-and-forth, slid from side-to-side, and balanced on one leg. It even moved when no one was touching it. Once, it moved all the way across the room on its own and became stuck in the doorway as it attempted to exit the room.
     In addition to moving the table, Philip also made the room’s lights dim on demand. When asked to restore the lights to their original brightness, Philip obliged without hesitation. Cool breezes were also felt around the table. Like the dimmed lights, Philip could produce these whenever asked. Some claimed to have heard whispers in response to their questions, but these were never captured on audio.
     The group claimed that the table felt different when Philip was communicating with them, describing it as feeling ‘electric’ and ‘alive’. A few times, a fine mist was seen covering the center of the table. One of the most astonishing things that the group reported was the table becoming so animated during a session that it would literally rush over to meet latecomers to the sessions. Occasionally, it even moved across the floor and trapped members in the corner of the room, much to the surprise of those whose hands were on the table.
     The experimenters went to great lengths to show that none of them were responsible for the rapping sounds on the table. The volunteers knocks were even recorded and compared to Philips’ knocks. There were differences, the most notable being that the vibrations from Philip’s knocks died away more quickly than those of the volunteers.
     The grand finale of the experiment was a seance conducted before a live audience and filmed as part of a television documentary. That night, Philip performed beautifully. Besides the table tappings, lights blinked off and on, and sounds coming from various parts of the room, the table completely levitated a half-inch off of the ground.
     One of the original goals was to have the spirit of Philip actually materialize. Unfortunately, this never happened. But the amount of activity that the experiment yielded gave the group far more than they ever imagined was possible.
     There certainly was an amazing amount of activity, but did the experiment actually prove that the group created a ghost? Not really. The activity at the seances was so similar to poltergeist activity that many believers in the paranormal feel that another spirit probably ‘sat in’ on the sessions and simply played along with the scenario. Others believe that because Philip only had knowledge available to the group, all of the answers came from their subconscious. But that doesn’t account for the actual sounds of the knocks, or the moving table. Or does it? Is it possible that the human mind is so powerful that it can move objects and make sounds even when it is unaware that it is doing so?
     Recently, Dr. Robert G. Jahn, head of the laboratory of abnormal studies at Princeton University, proved that the human mind can affect material objects. After thousands of experiments involving hundreds of men and women of all ages and professions, many subjects were able to move a pendulum placed under a transparent plastic cap. Five were able to move the pendulum regardless of their distance from the object.
     In the end, it’s impossible to know for sure where the phenomenon witnessed during the Philip experiment emanated from. Follow-up experiments by other groups did not have as spectacular results as the original. Maybe it was the chemistry of the original group that created an atmosphere that encouraged a great amount of telekinetic activity. Or, perhaps the group actually DID create a ghost named Philip; a seventeenth-century nobleman doomed to roam the earth riddled with guilt at having done nothing to save the woman he loved from death’s fiery embrace.

Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_experiment
http://www.frontrowreviews.co.uk/news/the-story-behind-the-quiet-ones-the-real-life-philip-experiment/29720
https://livinglibraryblog.com/the-philip-experiment/
https://www.liveabout.com/how-to-create-a-ghost-2594058
https://www.time-loops.net/Experiment_Philip.htm
https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2012/03/20/the-philip-experiment/
https://wiki.tulpa.info/wiki/Tulpa
https://www.funeralwise.com/digital-dying/inspiring-life-alexandra-david-neel-enchanting-world-death-discovered-tibet/
https://www.learning-mind.com/telekinesis-exists-scientific-evidence/

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The Incident at Dyatlov Pass

8/30/2019

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Time has a way of deepening and complicating a mystery, and the more time we put between the mystery and ourselves the more we want to unravel it and solve it once and for all. The story you are about to hear happened sixty years ago on a remote mountain in Russia. So if you love a good mystery and think you’re up to the task of solving it, then pay close attention to the details of what is now known as the incident at Dyatlov Pass. But be warned, just when you think you’ve figured it out, some detail will jump out at you and dash your theory to pieces.
The snow was six feet deep, and the temperatures 22 degrees below zero when the nine young but highly experienced Russian hikers set up camp. They pitched a single tent on the north slope of Kholat Syakhl, a remote mountain pass in Russia. Although the name of this area simply means ‘lack of game’ to the indiginous Siberian hunters, on February 2, 1959 the name took on its more sinister translation -- Mountain of the Dead; because in the middle of the night, the group was confronted by something so sudden, so shocking, so life-threatening that they ripped their way out of their tent with a knife and fled into the night in sub zero temperatures. Most were wearing only what they had worn to bed. All but two were either barefoot or wearing just socks as they walked nearly a mile downhill in a snowstorm to a forest. None would live to tell what happened that night.
On the surface, the cause of death of all nine hikers seems fairly obvious. When they wandered off into the snow barely dressed in savagely cold temperatures, they surely died from exposure. But there’s far more to the mystery of what really happened that night. Because as you’ll see, tales of strange lights in the sky; the presence of high-level radioactivity; rumors of Russian weapons testing; and brutal, unexplainable injuries to the hikers’ bodies all add up to the Dyatlov Pass incident as being one of the most baffling unexplained mysteries of all time.
     The team was led by twenty-three year old Igor Dyatlov, an experienced, physically fit guide who was passionate about climbing expeditions. He was highly respected by the ski-hiking community, and at the time of his last journey he was at the peak of his physical and athletic ability. The other members of the team were:
Yuri Doroshenko (21 years old)
Lyudmila Dubinina(20 years old)
Aleksander Kolevatov (24 years old)
Zinaida Kolmogorova (22 years old)
Yuri Krivonischenko (23 years old)
Rustem Slobodin (23 years old)
Nikolay Thibeaux-Brignolle (23 years old)
Semyon Zolotaryov (38 years old)
     Another hiker, 22-year-old Yuri Yudi, was also on the expedition, but he left a day after the hike began due to illness.

The group was planning on exploring the slopes of Otorten mountain on the northern face of the Ural Mountain range. Among climbers the Urals are not considered particularly dangerous mountains, and they are not much of a challenge in terms of scale or altitude. But the hikers’ ultimate destination, Otorten peak, is said to be sacred to the local indigenous people. Legend has it that Otorten means “Don’t go there”.
The group made their way to their hiking destination, and on January 31 they attempted to ascend Ural mountain by the shortest route, but bad weather forced them to go back to their camp. The following day they got off to a late start ascending the mountain, and once again bad weather got in the way of their climb and they ended up about 550 yards off course. Because of the bad weather, the team was only able to cover about a mile, so they decided to pitched their tent and spend the night on the north-eastern ridge of Kholat Syakhl. They probably chose this spot because it offered them some protection from the wind.
Recovered photos and journal entries show that up to this point, everything about the trip was fine. But some catastrophic event occurred that night that caused the nine to abandon their tent and to flee the campsite barely dressed in total darkness. Exactly what happened that night has been hotly debated for the past sixty years.

The entire Dyatlov mystery begins with the manner in which the team exited from the tent. For reasons no one has ever been able to explain, the sides of the tent were cut from the inside and the hikers chose this strange exit for leaving the tent rather than by the tent’s entrance. The only conclusion that can be reached is that they perceived a life threatening situation in close proximity to the tent. In their minds, to stay would have meant certain death.
To get a better understanding of how odd it is that the group left the tent, it’s important to know what they left behind. When the search team found the tent there were 9 backpacks laying on the floor, 9 blankets, and 9 jackets. To the left of the entrance were piled 7 felt boots and 6 pairs of hiking boots plus 2 pairs of shoes. To the right of the entrance were 3 axes, and various cooking items. There was also a 6 pound piece of pork loin.
Investigators said that everything in the tent seemed orderly except for the pile of shoes at the entrance. They described the shoes as being ‘chaotic’. It’s possible that even though they were frantic to get out of the tent, they attempted to grab shoes before leaving. But either there was no time, or there was not enough light in the tent to see where they were. As a result, some of the team fled wearing just socks, others were barefoot.
There’s another point of interest about the tent. In addition to the large cut that the group used to exit the tent, there were two small horizontal slits cut from the inside. It seems that something caught the hikers’ attention in the middle of the night that they wanted to see without leaving the safety of the tent. But what was it? And what could they possibly see in total darkness during a snowstorm?
Strange lights were reported by other hikers in the area which lead some to believe that the hikers encountered a UFO. Reports of glowing spheres were also observed almost continuously in a nearby village from February to March 1959. Some of the witnesses to these mysterious lights came from the Soviet military and the Russian meteorology service.
If there were bright lights in the sky that night, one can imagine a scenario where the area around the tent lit up so brightly that the hikers wanted to see what it was, so they cut the holes in the tent to have a look. The hikers had at least three cameras with them at the time, and some of the photos that were later developed show strange lights. One photo in particular seems to show the tops of three of the hikers’ heads looking up at a very large, intensely bright object in the night sky. Later, an investigator would come come forward with information that had been purposely taken out of the Soviet report of the investigation. The tops of the trees around the area were found to be burned. In addition, as we will discuss later, radiation plays a big part of the mystery of what happened at Dyatlov Pass.
     Those who dismiss the UFO theories may want to consider the Soviet weapons testing theory. There are records of parachute mines being tested by the Russian military in the area around the time the hikers were there. This type of weapon falls slowly from the sky, then explodes just over the ground. If the group heard an explosion in the middle of the night, they may have mistook the sound for an avalanche. But apparently, there were no traces of an explosion or metallic debris anywhere near the campsite. Then again, the investigation was led by the Soviet military, so it’s possible that any such discovery would have been quickly covered up. But even if the group thought they were about to be covered by an avalanche, why would they cut their way out of the tent rather than leave through the entrance? And what was it they perceived as being so dangerous that they would walk nearly a mile in bare feet in the snow.
Some claim that a Russian Bigfoot attacked the tent forcing the group to flee. However, no such footprints were found around the tent. In fact, the only footprints around the tent were the hikers’, which also squelches the theory that the group might have been attacked by a bear or a person. Whatever it was that caused the group to flee the tent in a state of sheer panic remains a mystery to this day.
Everything that happens after the hikers left the tent, we can only speculate about based on the evidence discovered by the search party. Nine pairs of footprints led to a cedar tree nearly a mile away from the tent. Here, the group made a fire out of branches from the cedar they took shelter under.
If we imagine the nine hikers staying together that night rather than scattering as they fled the tent, and based on the way the bodies were ultimately discovered, the following scenario is plausible.
Seeing that the group was in dire straits, group leader Igor Dyatlov may have decided to head back to the tent with Slobodin and Kolmogorova. He probably intended to ski back to the group at the cedar with clothing and supplies from the tent. The three tried to follow their tracks in the snow back to the tent, but soon after they left they must have been nearly blinded by the storm. Having already walked in socks or bare feet nearly a mile through the snow to the cedar, by this time their feet would have been severely frostbitten and would have had no feeling at all. Although some made it closer to the tent than the others, all three died in the attempt.
Back at the cedar tree, the fire begins to burn out. One of the remaining hikers probably suggests that they seek shelter from the wind by making a den in the side of a ravine 50 meters (164 feet) away. Zolotaryov, Dubinina, and Thibeaux-Brignolle leave the cedar tree to make the den while Aleksander Kolevatov stays behind to watch over the fire with Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko who are poorly dressed, slowly freezing to death, and no longer strong enough to travel. Kolevatov is also waiting for the team who went back to the tent to return with supplies.
     Knowing that falling asleep means certain death, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko desperately try to stay awake. One of the men actually bites off a piece of his knuckle in an attempt to remain conscious, but it's no use. The two begin drifting in and out of consciousness from hypothermia and soon after, they die. Kolevatov lies the two men side-by-side. He removes some of their clothing to help keep the remaining hikers warm. Seeing that no one has returned with supplies from the tent, Kolevatov leaves to join Zolotaryov, Dubinina, and Thibeaux-Brignolle who have successfully built a den eight feet under the snow.
But in spite of the warmth of the den, the four die from hypothermia after leaving it and sustaining unexplainable, deadly internal injuries outside. Their bodies were found just a few feet from the den’s entrance. Those who conducted the autopsies said that the injuries were similar to those that a person would sustain by being hit by a car at high speed, or by standing right next to an explosive device. Adding to the mystery is the fact that there were no external injuries corresponding to the fractures, broken bones, and internal bleeding.
As the last hiker takes his last breath and the storm rages on, the mountain becomes eerily quiet. The only sounds are the howling of the wind and the hiss of fast-falling snow. If this was a movie, we could imagine the camera panning away from the two dead men under the cedar tree and traveling several hundred feet up the mountain. There at various distances from the tent we would see the wind driven snow beginning to cover the bodies of the three who attempted to make it back. Panning slowly back down the mountain, our camera would now pick out the den built out of fir tree branches and hard-packed snow. Just a few feet outside of the entrance to the den we see the blowing, drifting snow slowly beginning to cover the four bodies lying there--just a few feet from the warmth and safety of the only place they could have survived.
Back at home, the hikers’ family members begin to worry. Although it is not uncommon for hiking expeditions to run over by several days, too much time had gone by without a word from the team. On February 21 several search parties were sent to the area. These included parties made up of the hikers’ friends. Planes searched the area from the air, and the following day more parties joined the search. Moscow also sent several specialists, and they ultimately ended up running the investigation.
There are many unanswered questions about the incident at Dyatlov Pass, but the most compelling comes from examining the condition of the hikers’ bodies and clothing. Injuries include blunt-force trauma, wounds that look as if some of the hikers were fighting off someone or something, and more than one hiker suffered a skull fracture. But most mysterious of all was the presence of radioactivity on some of the hikers’ clothing.
     On February 27, a search party discovered the abandoned tent on the slope of Kholat Syakhl in what is now known as the Dyatlov Pass. They followed the tracks from the tent 1500 yards (4921 feet/0.93 miles) down to the cedar tree and it was here that the search team made their first grisly discovery--the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko.
Doroshenko was found wearing a sleeveless cotton undershirt, a short sleeve shirt with all six buttons fastened, shorts and swimming trunks, and cotton underwear. He was wearing a different set of wool socks on both feet, and these were covered by a pair of lighter socks. He was shoeless. Krivonischenko was wearing an undershirt, a long sleeved shirt, swimming trunks, long underpants, and a torn sock on his left foot. His right foot was bare. The two men were wearing more than this when they first arrived at the cedar, but it was discovered that the other hikers took their clothing after they died in an attempt to stay alive.
     The next bodies that were found were those of the three hikers who attempted to go back to the tent--Yuri Dyatlov, Rustem Slobodin, and Zinaida Kolmogorova.
Three hundred meters (984 feet) from the cedar tree, Dyatlov’s body was found lying face up wearing a sleeveless undershirt, long sleeved cotton shirt, and an unbuttoned fur sleeveless vest. He was wearing ski pants over his pants. On his feet he had one cotton sock on one foot, and one woolen sock on the other, but he was shoeless. It was noted in the final report that it was highly unusual for someone who was freezing to death to leave a fur vest unbuttoned.
Rustem Slobodin’s body was found 480 meters (1574 feet) from the cedar tree. He was found face down with his head towards the tent. He was wearing two pairs of pants, four pairs of socks, and he had one felt boot on his right foot. He had on a long sleeved undershirt, a shirt and a sweater.
During the autopsy, something strange was discovered--Slobodin had a fractured skull and severe hemorrhages on both sides of his head. These injuries would not be consistent with Slobodin simply falling on the snow as he tried to make his way back to the tent. The doctor who conducted the autopsy suggested that the fracture could only have been the result of Slobodin being struck with a blunt object. The autopsy further concluded that he probably suffered loss of coordination due to the initial shock right after the blow. This would have surely sped up his death from hypothermia. Who, or what, had inflicted the blow that ultimately lead to Slobodin’s death? And why were there hemorrhages on both sides of his head. It was as if someone or something had come up from behind him and struck him repeatedly with both fists before dealing the final blow with a blunt object.
     Zinaida Kolmogorova was found 630 meters (2067 feet) from the cedar tree. She was lying face down with her head towards the tent. She wore two hats, long sleeved undershirt, a sweater, a shirt, and another sweater. She had on two pairs of pants, ski pants, and three pairs of socks. She wore no shoes. Her autopsy revealed a number of injuries to her face and hands, but these were most likely the= result of her struggle to make her way back to the tent. The cause of death was determined to be hypothermia.
The bodies of the hikers who left the cedar tree to make the den were found four months later. In May, the snow started to melt and a Mansi native noticed some cut branches that were forming a rough trail. He followed this trail 50 meters (164 feet) from the cedar and found a pair of black cotton sweatpants, the right leg of which had been cut off with a knife. He also found cedar branches, a young fir tree missing its top, and the left half of a women's wool sweater. The Mansi native had inadvertently discovered the location of the den.
The den is one of the biggest puzzles of the entire Dyatlov Pass incident. The fact that the four hikers were able to build it indicates that they were determined to do anything and everything to survive. And yet, it is still unclear why their attempts didn’t work. The den would have been warm enough to keep the hikers alive for some time, and their bodies were found OUTSIDE of the den, not in it. Autopsies determined that the four hikers who made the den sustained significant, unexplainable internal injuries.
When the search party arrived, they discovered the den under eleven feet of snow. It was made up of a bed of 14 fir tree branches and one birch branch. On top of the branches were some of the hikers’ clothing and other belongings. These included one leg of a pair of ski pants, a thick woolen sweater, a woolen jumper, and a pair of brown pants. Some of the clothing belonged to Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, the two men who died at the cedar tree.
     When the search team found the bodies of Kolevatov and Zolotaryov, they were outside of the den, and they were embraced as if Kolevatov was behind Zolotaryov, trying to protect him, or trying to warm him up. Oddly, both men were fairly well dressed. Zolotaryov wore two hats, a scarf, short and long sleeve shirts, a sweater, and a coat. On the lower part of his body he wore underwear, two pairs of pants plus a pair of ski pants, a pair of socks, and a pair of warm leather burka shoes. The den should have been more than sufficiently warm to keep him alive for days.
     Kolevatov was without a hat or shoes, but the rest of his body was fairly well insulated. He wore an undershirt, long sleeved shirt, two sweaters and a ski jacket. The jacket was found unbuttoned and unzipped--strange for someone trying to stay warm! On his lower body were shorts, and three pairs of pants. On his feet were three pairs of socks, but no shoes.
     When Nikolay Thibeaux-Brignolle’s body was found, it was discovered that he too was well protected from the cold. He wore a fur hat, a woolen hat, a shirt, a sweater, and a fur jacket. Woolen gloves were found in his pocket. Why there weren’t on his hands is a mystery. On the lower part of his body he wore underwear, sweatpants, cotton pants, and ski pants. His feet were protected by woolen socks and a pair of felt boots.
Lyudmila’s body was found wearing long underwear, two pairs of pants, a small hat and three pairs of warm socks, but she was shoeless. She also had on two shirts and two sweaters. One of the two sweaters belonged to Krivonischenko, one of the two men who died under the cedar tree. One of the most baffling things about the sweater she was wearing is that it was found to be highly radioactive. But that was not the only piece of clothing found to be radioactive. Aleksander Kolevatov’s sweater and pants were also found to be radioactive.
The presence of radioactivity on the the two hikers’ clothing is one of the most interesting, and most puzzling parts of the Dyatlov Pass mystery. The radiation levels on the clothing was very high, but the levels had certainly been MUCH higher when the hikers were first contaminated. Why? The bodies of the hikers in the den were found a full four months after they died, and their clothing had essentially been washed by the snow and running water from the time they died until the time the bodies were recovered.
Vladimir Levashov, a professional radiologist who conducted the examination of the clothing found that by rinsing the clothing in cold running water for three hours, the radioactive contamination decreased up to sixty percent. That means that the radioactivity on the clothing had been FAR higher before the bodies were found.
Mr. Levashov concluded that the clothes had either been contaminated by radioactive dust which fell down from the atmosphere, or by direct contact with a radioactive object or substance.
But here’s a question to ask yourself--Why did the Soviet investigators test the bodies for radiation in the first place? To me, this seems like a BIG red flag. It hints that the Soviets knew that some sort of an explosive device had been detonated over the hikers’ tent. This may be what spooked the hikers in the first place, and what caused the group to flee the tent.
But there’s another possible explanation for testing the hikers’ bodies for radiation. Since strange lights were spotted in the area by the Soviets, then they may have tested for radiation in an attempt to find out if the hikers had come in contact with a spacecraft, or if they had been abducted by aliens.
One fascinating aspect of the UFO theory pertains to the camera found on Semyon Zolotaryov’s body. Though the film was water damaged, the images that were processed showed what some believe were lights in the sky. These may have been the mysterious lights reported by others in the area. The man in charge of the Soviet investigation, Lev Ivanov, claimed that during the search, they noticed that the tops of many trees had been burned. He said that he was forced by the KGB to remove any mention of lights in the sky from his report.
     The hikers found at the den had suffered tremendous internal injuries. All four had multiple fractures of the ribs. Thibeaux-Brignolle had an extensive, depressed, multi-splintered fractured skull. Such injuries are similar to those caused by the impact of an automobile moving at high speed.
There was hemorrhaging of the heart muscle, some of which was found to have leaked into the pleural cavity. This means that the hikers were alive when they sustained their injuries which doctors said was the result of some strong external force striking the hikers’ bodies. A forensic expert who was interviewed during the investigation said that, “the internal injuries appearing without any damage to the soft tissue of the chest are very similar to the type of trauma that results from the shock wave of a bomb.”
Dubinina died around 20 minutes after the trauma, Zolotaryov probably lived longer. Thibeaux-Brignolle would have been unconscious from his concussion, but he could have lived as long as 3 hours after the initial impact of the still unknown force.
Some theorize that the four hikers at the den were simply crushed by an avalanche which would explain their internal injuries without the presence of tissue damage. But we know that the hikers died a significant time after they received their internal injuries. Two were found embracing one another in an effort to keep warm. Had they been crushed by a significant weight of snow, they would surely have died almost instantly. Furthermore, the autopsy did not indicate that asphyxiation was a factor in any of their deaths. They received significant internal injuries followed by death by hypothermia.
Doctors and forensic experts agree that had the hikers not received the mysterious internal injuries, they most likely would not have died of hypothermia. Their internal injuries were what ultimately lead to their deaths.
After sixty years, the incident at Dyatlov pass remains one of the most baffling mysteries of all time. After all these years, theories continue to crop up about what happened to the nine hikers. These include, but are not limited to: Murder by local natives; Murder by the Soviets; Fighting within the group itself; Infrasound--ultra low frequency sound created by the compacted snow which may have cause the team to panic; The Soviets mistaking the hikers as escaped convicts; Katabalic winds which caused the group to evacuate the tent; An attack in the middle of the night by a vicious wolverine who blocked the tent’s entrance forcing the group to cut their way out; Methanol poisoning, where the hikers accidentally ingested methanol rather than alcohol causing them to flee the tent; An attack by an interdimentional being who left no footprints in the snow; Beings from UFOs who hunted the team down and essentially willed them to died from hypothermia.
Interest in the incident at Dyatlov Pass remains so strong that this year Russia announced that it is reopening the investigation. But like so many unsolved mysteries, you can be sure that the findings will be disputed by many, and that even more theories will emerge based on any new information that is revealed.
What do you think happened at Dyatlov Pass? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Resources
https://dyatlovpass.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-dyatlov-pass-incident
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/12/28/dyatlov-pass-incident/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2019/02/01/mystery-at-dyatlov-pass/#7c5978a82741
http://forum.dyatlovpass.com/index.php?topic=235.0
https://www.vice.com/en_nz/article/wjj9yb/russias-dyatlov-pass-incident-the-strangest-unsolved-mystery-of-the-last-century
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/04/europe/dyatlov-pass-incident-scli-intl/index.html
https://www.rbth.com/history/329574-dyatlov-pass-russia-alien-conspiracy
http://www.coral-hull.com/testimony/fallenangelsexposed/dyatlovpass/dyatlov-3.html
https://amnationalistcouncil.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/the-dyatlov-pass-mystery-solved/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10026000/Yuri-Yudin.html
Excerpt from the book, “The Mystery of the Dyaltov Group”

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Workplace Ghost Stories

7/27/2019

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Did you know that the average American will spend roughly a third of their life at work? That averages out to about 90,000 hours over a lifetime. Many of us have horror stories about work that involve annoying bosses or fellow employees who just won’t shut-the-hell up when we’re trying to work, but this newsletter/podcast is about REAL horror stories in the workplace--stories that have to do with ghosts, the supernatural, and the unexplained.
     As a paranormal investigator, I’ve seen my fair-share of haunted offices, stores, and other places of business. I’ve investigated haunted office buildings, a haunted spa, haunted clothing stores, and even a haunted firehouse.
     I received the following email from someone on Facebook who wanted to share their workplace ghost story. And because I am a retired teacher, I think it’s the perfect story to start with. She wrote:
     I’m a teacher at a high school in Westchester County, New York. The school was built in the early 1920’s, and I have been working there for well over 20 years. Although I haven’t had a huge amount of paranormal experiences on-the-job, two incidents stand out that I thought you might be interested in.
One day I was talking to another teacher in a hallway outside of her classroom. Her room was at the end of the hallway so as we were talking, I had a clear view of the entire hallway which runs the length of the school. As we stood there talking, something caught my eye down at the end of the hall. It was a dark shadow figure in the shape of a person, and I watched as it slowly walked across the hall. It came from the custodian’s room on the left, and I could see the full figure of a person--head, shoulders, arms, torso, and legs. It wasn’t a menacing shape, it just looked like the shadow of someone walking across the hall. It wasn’t solid black, but more like a smokey grey that I could see through. This figure went across the hall and made its way to the hallway across from the custodian’s room. The figure didn’t vanish, it simply kept walking down the hall where I lost sight of it. Creepy, right?!
The second incident took place in the auditorium. My classroom is near the backstage door, and I needed to put something on the stage. As I opened the door, I heard beautiful piano music coming from the auditorium piano. The piano isn’t on the stage; it’s in the middle of the auditorium halfway between the stage and the doors at the back of the room. The music that was playing was classical music, and since we have a lot of very talented young musicians in the school I assumed that one of them had cut out of lunch and that they were playing the piano.
     I quietly closed the stage door and walked down the hall to the side entrance to the auditorium. I wanted to tell the student that they should be either at lunch or in class, but I didn’t want to startle them by coming out of the stage curtains. The music was still playing as I walked up the stairs that lead from the main hallway to the auditorium. It took me no more than three steps to get to the top of the stairs and to open the door to the auditorium, but as soon as I put my hand on the doorknob, the music stopped. I opened the door, but there was no one in the auditorium. As I said, the piano was in the middle of the room against one wall, so it was a good 30 feet from the doors at the rear of the auditorium and from the stage. The only other exit was the one that I had just walked in. There was absolutely no way that anyone could have ran away that fast, or hid in the empty auditorium. This happened years ago, but every time I pass the auditorium I think of it and wonder who the ghost was that was playing the piano that day.

The following stories were told by audience members at my library lectures. The first was told by a woman at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, NY. She said:

     I’m a Certified Nursing Assistant, and I work in a nursing home. I usually work the 3PM to 11PM shift, but one night I was asked to stay over for the 11PM to 7AM shift. At around 2:30 in the morning I was changing one of the patients and I had the door open. There was only one other nursing assistant and one nurse working with me that morning. The nursing assistant was off the floor, and the nurse was sitting in the dayroom down the hall. I was changing the person when I heard a sound like “Huhh”, and out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody walked right past the door in the hallway. I thought it was either the nurse or the other nursing assistant. I came out of the room when I was done and I walked down and checked the two rooms at the end of the hallway. No one was there. I didn’t think anything of it, but later on I told some other people I work with and they told me that they also experienced the same thing.
     Other things have happened in that facility. In the bathrooms are call bells, the kind that have a little switch next to the toilet and you have to pull it down to ring for assistance. There have been times where there are two patients rooming together who can’t get out of bed, and their bathroom call-bell will be pulled down.

Another nursing-related ghost story was told by a woman who attended a lecture at the Somers Library in Somers, NY. She said:
     I was a nurses aid in Somers Manor nursing home before they built the new facility. It was just the nurse and me on the night shift, because that’s how they staffed it. Most of the patients were not really conscious; they were very senile and had dementia. This particular night, the other nurse went to dinner I was there by myself. A little while later I started hearing the patients getting restless, which was very unusual. We had turned the lights down low because the patients were sleeping, and I looked down the hall and I saw an orb -- a very white, light orb that I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. And it went right down the hall, I got chills, and it went into one of the rooms where there were about six patients. I rushed down the hall and I started to walk into the room. I just got to the doorway and then it disappeared. I know I saw it. It was big, around the size of a beach ball. And I didn’t see just a quick glimpse of this thing. I saw it for about 45 seconds to a minute. I watched as it floated down the hall. I’ll tell you one thing, I couldn’t wait for that nurse to come back from dinner!

A teacher was in the audience at a lecture I gave at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, New York. She shared the following on-the-job ghost story:
I work at a school in New Jersey which was once the home 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. I watched her chair rock back and forth with considerable force and the woman 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 a candle, but of course there are never any candles lit in the school. 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 classroom, 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, and I knew right away it was some sort of a presence.

We think of daycare centers as being places buzzing with activity, but we rarely think of the activity as being paranormal! After a lecture I gave in Sherman Library in Sherman, Connecticut, a woman share the following story with the audience:
     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. 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 about 6:30 in the morning and there were two teachers in the school when the first little boy showed up for the day. He walks into the front door and 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 the teacher 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 something that sounded like a bowling ball rolling upstairs. One of the dad’s walked in to pick up his son and he said, “What’s going on up there?” The teacher 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.

Some of my favorite on-the-job stories come from electricians, plumbers, and carpenters. They often work in old houses, so they sometimes find themselves in ghostly situations. The following story was told by a plumber during a lecture at Danbury Library in Danbury, Connecticut:
     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 to the apprentice, “You seen that guy go in there?” And he saw him too. 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. But there was nobody in there. We both saw the same guy. Bald, tall, glasses, suit-and-tie on. 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 a few years earlier. I’ll tell you, it was the freakiest thing. And what was so cool was that my apprentice had seen the same thing.

Another hospital related ghost story was sent to me from someone on Facebook who had an amazingly creepy workplace story he wanted to share. He said:
I work at an eye bank, and I've done corneal procurements on thousands in my time--and one literally spoke to me once! None of my colleagues believe me, of course, but it really happened.
On this particular day, the eye bank I work for sent me to procure the cornea from a deceased woman who was listed as a donor. When I arrived at the hospital I let myself into the morgue. Usually I'm escorted, but back then they just gave me the key. I found the correct donor in a multiple freezer unit and wheeled her into the autopsy suite. I turned the lights on, set up my equipment and started prepping her. I was definitely totally alone in the room.
The woman had already donated other tissues in the O.R. before my arrival, and I was the last to work on her. As I was working, I was facing the entrance to the autopsy suite, but I was totally focused on the task. Suddenly, I heard a woman's voice with a distinctly New England accent ask plainly and clearly, "Who are you?" Without looking up I replied, "I'm James from the eye bank." There was no follow-up conversation. I assumed that some security guard had popped her head into the main door or something, but when nothing else was said, I looked up but saw no one. I say that the voice had a New England accent because the words all ran together, sort of like "Whowahyou?"
Completely puzzled, I could only draw one conclusion--The voice must have come from the spirit of the woman I was working on. Being the professional that I am, I decided to carry on with my work. Afterward, on the drive back to the office, I tried to interpret what had just happened. Thinking back on the experience, I wasn't sure if I heard the voice with my ears, or if it was in my head. But it seemed extremely loud and clear, albeit dislocated--as if it came not from her lips per se.
I considered researching if the donor was indeed someone who had grown up in New England, but I didn't pursue it. I tend not to delve too deeply into the personal lives of the cornea donors. I believe it to be inappropriate, so that's why I didn't investigate further. To this day I believe that the voice I heard came from her, from the woman I was working on in the autopsy room.

In 2018, I conducted one of the my favorite paranormal investigations ever at a firehouse in Tarrytown, New York. You can read the full story in the Case File section of my website, but here are a few excerpts that illustrate the type of activity that the firemen experienced while working in the firehouse.

The sound of phantom footsteps is a common occurrence in the firehouse, and everyone who works there has heard them. One firefighter, Jake, shared the following story:
“The other night I was in the engine room where the fire engines are parked,” he said. “I opened the door that leads from the engine room to the foyer and it sounded like I startled somebody and I heard them run up the stairs. It sounded like someone had been standing on the second landing, and then I heard footsteps shoot up the stairs. They went all the way up to the second floor and then stopped as if they were standing outside the meeting room door. I thought it might be a homeless person or something. One of the other firemen who also heard the running footsteps ran upstairs to check it out, but there was nobody up there.”
Another firefighter, Ryan, confirmed hearing the sound of ghostly feet in the firehouse. “You’ll hear footsteps going up and down the upstairs hallway all the time,” he said. Ryan also talked about the sound of furniture being moved around in one of the upstairs rooms.
“If you’re sitting in the engine room, right above is the meeting room,” Ryan explained. “It’ll sound like people moving the furniture around in that room. There are heavy, wooden meeting chairs up there, and when you drag them across the floor they make a really loud sound. So it’ll sound like people are rearranging the furniture up there, but there’s obviously nothing going. There’s never anybody up there when we go to check it out.”
One of the firefighters went up to the meeting room to demonstrate what the chairs sound like when they are moved across the floor. A few minutes later I heard the sound of one of the chairs being moved. It was a very loud, distinct sound; and one that could not be mistaken for anything else.
Jake shared a story that involved strange sounds coming from the kitchen on the second floor of the firehouse. He said, “One time, Bryan and I were alone in the firehouse. We took the elevator to the second floor and as we got out of the elevator we heard a cabinet slam in the kitchen, so we thought somebody was up there. We walked down the hall to the kitchen, and as soon as we opened the door we heard another cabinet slam shut. We looked around, but there was no one there. It freaked us out so we came back downstairs.”
Another fireman, Dennis, told us about the front door opening and closing on its own. He brought us over to the front door and explained, “This door is really heavy. It’s unlocked right now, but when it’s locked you have to punch a number into the keypad to get in. After you do that you’ll hear a click, and when you open the door it’s really heavy to open. One time I was alone in the garage, and there was no one else in the firehouse. All of a sudden I heard the front door open and shut, so I looked out the window but I didn’t see anything. Then, like a minute later, I heard it open again and I looked out the window and I watched the door open halfway, and then SLAM shut. So I ran from the engine room to the foyer thinking that maybe someone was in here, but no one was around. The door didn’t shut slowly the way it would if you just let it go--it really SLAMMED shut like someone outside was pushing it. There was no wind or anything that could have made it do that. The door is too heavy anyway and, like I said, you need a code to unlock it.”
The other eerie thing that the firemen report hearing is the sound of someone walking up and down the upstairs hallways accompanied by the sound of jingling keys. They describe it as sounding like someone has a large keychain on their belt that has a lot of keys on it, and that they’re jingling the keychain as they walk.
Dennis said, “There was an older firefighter, a real prominent guy named Ian who passed away a long time ago. Some of the old firefighters swear that the jingling key sound is Ian because he used to have this big set of keys on his belt. Everybody here has heard someone walking up and down the upstairs hallway, and the sound of keys jingling.”
Ryan was anxious to tell us about an experience he had in the upstairs rec room. He brought us to the room and said, “This is the old rec room where we used to sit and hang out and watch TV. We have the TV downstairs now because we didn’t like being up here ‘cause it kind of got a little too creepy. And the hallway that leads to the kitchen and this room is where you would hear someone walking. We would look over to see who was here, and no one walks through, or like you hear the keys jingling. There would also be times when you would hear the front door opening, and you’d go out to look out the window over there and no one else was here. If you open that door downstairs and you shut it, you’re going to hear it up here.”
Ryan had an encounter with something in the rec room that he never forgot. He said, “One day we were all sitting here in the rec room, and I was sitting right by the door. I was in one of these chairs, sitting right here. I was leaning back in my chair, but not to the point where I was going to fall over or anything, I was just leaning back a little. Then all of a sudden I felt someone grab me by my collar and pull me back hard, and I fell backwards. My chair totally fell backwards, and I fell on the floor. I jumped up thinking someone was there and that they had played a trick on me by pulling my collar and making me fall, but the door was closed. I had goosebumps and my hair stood up.”
The firefighters all have had unusual experiences in the firehouse, but one stands out from the rest--a full body apparition witnessed by two firemen. Jake explained, “But here’s the thing that really creeped me out the most. Bryan and I were backing one of the trucks out of the engine room one night, and the lights were on in the engine room. At night you can see into the engine room from outside when the lights are on in there. The garage door had closed and we were backing the truck up. Bryan and I looked at the garage door and we both saw a shadow figure walk past the six garage door windows. It looked like the head and shoulders of a man walking behind the glass, like a shadow. It was walking between the garage door and the truck.
     I told Bryan to stop the truck because I thought it was like a reflection or something moving. And then this thing just continued to walk across the engine room, in front of the truck, then through the door that leads from the garage into the foyer. When it got to the foyer we both saw the full figure of a man walk into the elevator. There were no details, it was just a black shadow of a man, but the entire full figure from his head to his feet.
     I didn’t say anything to Bryan until I saw the figure walk into the elevator. I was like, ‘Did you see that?’ And Bryan was like, ‘Yeah, I was just about to tell you.’ That was the freakiest and craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“How tall did the person look?” I asked.

“It was probably shorter than me, maybe around 5’ 10," Jake said.

“So just to clarify, you had shut the garage door?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “The garage door was shut, and you have the six windows in there on the garage door. The lights were on so you could see in. It looked like it was walking between the garage and truck that was parked in there. So it was only cut off at the shoulders in there because that was just as much as we could see because of the size of the windows. And then it went right into the foyer. It was literally like someone just went to the elevator. And we both saw it, and I was really creeped out.”
Bryan joined us and told us about his experiences in the firehouse.
“I’m sure about the footsteps coming up the steps,” he said. “I’ll be coming in here some days and it sounds like somebody is literally running up the steps and I think it’s one of our members who sometimes stays here or something. And I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll get him a cup of coffee or something.’ Nothing. I’ll go up and check. Nothing.”

“Are the footsteps always running?” I asked.

“Two times when I heard them on the steps, it sounded like somebody was on the last three steps with their feet scuffling around, like running up the steps. It’s sounds like, ‘Oh, somebody’s coming in. Let me run as fast as I can to get away so I’m not seen.’ I’d say I’ve heard the footsteps more than ten times, especially when we used to hang out up there before we moved the TV to the engine room.
     I saw a figure walk through the engine room, past the windows on the garage door, then through the door into the elevator. Jake and I saw it clear as day, then it was gone.
     I heard the chairs in the conference room moving around many times. I’ve heard the cabinets slamming shut in the kitchen upstairs. I went up to investigate, nobody was there. I’ve seen the front door opening and closing a couple of times when nobody was here. I used to sit in the engine room and I’d hear something like wet feet walking, and sometimes I’d hear keys jingling in the hallway upstairs.”

The Haunted Spa

I received an email from a woman who wanted to know if I would consider doing a paranormal investigation of the Day Spa she worked at in a small town in Connecticut. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, but I admit that it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint exactly who might be haunting a business. Businesses often change hands or undergo major renovations. Two small stores may be bought up and become one large office space; a large space may be divided into smaller storefronts, offices, or other types of businesses; a pizza place might turn into a beauty salon. You get the picture. Luckily, the investigation turned out to be one of the most interesting I’ve ever conducted and I am happy to be able to share it with you here.

     I arrived at the spa early one Saturday morning and met one of the workers, Chiara. I asked if I could do a walkthrough of the place before being filled in on the details of the haunting and she allowed me to walk through the spa alone.
     A long hallway runs the length of the spa with several treatment rooms on either side. The area closest to the gift shop felt clean, but I felt that a spirit often makes his way into the gift shop area and into the treatment rooms closest to the front of the store. I asked Chiara to keep the lights out for the time being, as I didn’t want any electrical current to influence what I was feeling, or possibly scare away any spirits that might be around.
     As I slowly walked down the dark hallway I began to get a familiar feeling—the feeling that a spirit was present. I often describe this as the feeling you would get if you drank several strong cups of coffee, and the caffeine kicked in all at once. I get a shaky feeling inside, something like feeling afraid without actually being afraid.
     As I neared the end of the hallway it became obvious that something was with me. It was a male spirit, and the name I was picking up was Andrew. The feeling of this spirit’s presence grew in intensity as I walked down the hallway toward the last two treatment rooms, and as I turned into the last room on the left I came face-to-face with a strong male presence. Although he didn’t seem angry that I was there, he was very reluctant to communicate with me. After a short time he moved out of this room and into the room across the hall. I followed him into the room and tried to pick up some intuitive information, but once again he moved out. Whoever this spirt was, he wanted to be left alone even though I was saying out loud that I was there to help him. I turned the lights on in these two rooms so I could take a few readings with my EMF meter. I took some photos, then made my way back to the front of the spa where Chiara was waiting for me.
     I told her about the male presence, and which rooms I felt him in. She confirmed that the rooms I had pinpointed were the rooms where things were seen and felt by employees and customers alike. Chiara joined me on my second trip down the hall where I conducted an EVP session and took some more photos, then we made our way back to the front of the store where I asked her to tell me about the activity that has been plaguing the workers and clients.
     She said,“It started with me just feeling creepy down there. The room on the left side of the hallway where you are feeling the ghost — It’s that room that I always felt weird about. In the morning I come into the store and light the candles to get ready for the day, and it always just feels creepy down there. It’s right in the exact spot you felt it. It’s in those two rooms at the end of the hall. I also feel cold spots down there.
     One day I was in the first room, and I was about to come out to go into one of the massage rooms and I saw a man-- or rather, a large, dark shadow in the shape of a man. This shadow was very dark, but not solid black. I couldn’t see features, but I could see that he was taller than me, around 5’ 8” or so. I saw it very quickly, but it was very clear.”
     Another day, Chiara saw something else that totally took her by surprise. “I was in the front of the store looking down the hallway and I saw a leg walking into Nora’s room. It was just the end of the leg, the way you would see it if someone had walked into a room and you just saw them taking their last step into the room. It had on pants and a shoe. It looked like a man’s leg. Of course, I took a look in there, but the room was empty.
     Another day, one of the Reiki therapists walked a client down the hall to bring her into one of the treatment rooms. As soon as they walked into the room the client got startled. She stopped, caught her breath and said, “Oh, I thought someone was sitting there!”
     One day, something very unusual happened in the giftshop area which was witnessed by two people. Chiara said, “Nora was working in the front of the shop and I was in the back. I heard her call my name, and she sounded really scared. So I came running out and found Nora standing there staring and pointing at one of the tables. We have a large, very heavy metal decorative piece that’s roughly in the shape of large piece of coral. It weighs about 10 pounds, and it always sits in the middle of this glass table.” At this point Chiara walked over to the table and showed me the object. It was made out of shiny, silver and gold metal, and it was indeed quite heavy.
     Chiara continued, “So I came out and Nora is pointing at the table, and I looked over and saw the coral piece was no longer in the center of the table - it was balanced in mid-air on the edge of the table! The entire thing was off of the table, and just a tiny edge of it was touching the table’s edge. It looked like something was either holding it up, or that it was levitating.
     So, as I ran out Nora is pointing at it and as soon as I looked at it it fell flat on the floor. But it didn’t just fall down, it fell at an angle so it ended up UNDER the glass table perfectly upright. And even stranger, even though it’s a heavy, metal object it didn’t make a sound when it landed. The way it was levitating, and the way it ended upright under the table without making a sound — it’s just not possible. We tried every which way to make it to that, but we couldn’t do it.” I tried to make the shell balance on the edge of the table the way she described, but there was absolutely no way to make it do that. It was simply too heavy.
     Although moving and levitating objects would be enough to frighten anyone, by far the most chilling occurrence was the sound of a man screaming. “This past week, three days in a row, Carol and I were right here in the front of the store at about 9:30 in the morning. The first day we heard a man screaming. It was really frightening.” Chiara imitated the sound she and Carol heard--a blood curdling scream. I asked Chiara where the scream came from. “It was down there at the end of the hallway,” she said. “Our first instinct was to help this man who sounded like he was in agony, and Carol actually started to head down the hall. Then she stopped and said, ‘What am I doing? There’s nobody here but you and me.’ It was a loud scream, definitely a man’s voice. It was very scary.
     The following day we heard him again, but this time it sounded like he was calling out to us. He said, “Hey!” in a loud voice. The day after that we heard a woman’s voice say “Hello?” the way you would if you walked into a house or a store and you wanted to let someone know you were there. But of course, there was no one in the store at the time because we hadn’t opened yet.”
     I knew that I had to do something to help this poor soul, so I told Chiara that I would do a clearing. Right before I was to begin the clearing the spa’s owner, Ruby, arrived. I told her what I had picked up during the investigation, and the three of us walked down the hall to the room where I felt the spirit. As we walked into the room I said, “He’s been moving around all of the rooms at the end of the hall, but he’s in this room now. I’m going to try to get him to move on.” Just as I said this, the most amazing thing happened — soft music started playing all over the spa. The sound system had turned on by itself.
     “That’s impossible!” said Chiara. You have to log into the computer, go to Spotify, and choose the spa station.” We quickly walked back to the office where the computer was. Although the computer was turned on, no one had logged onto it.
     We walked back to the treatment room where the spirit was. Ruby and Chiara were still talking about how amazing it was that the music had started playing by itself when the music in the room we were in began to get louder and louder. The volume in each room can only be turned up by pressing the volume button on the speaker. We walked out into the hallway to check the volume in the other rooms. Every room had soft music playing except for the room where I felt the spirit. In this room, the volume was turned up loud. It was clear that “Andrew” had made his presence known, and that he might be persuaded to move on to be with his relatives and friends on the other side.
     I asked Ruby and Chiara to wait in the front of the store as I conducted the clearing. For this clearing used a spray I made earlier that morning out of white sage leaves and rosemary, both of which have clearing properties. To this I added some holy water. As I walked around the room I said a number of prayers; asked angels, saints and spirit guides to help guide this spirit on his way. I then got into a meditative state and in my mind’s eye I opened a doorway of brilliant white light. The things we imagine become a reality in other dimensions, and this doorway was the spirit’s entrance to the other side. I said out loud, “It is time for you to leave now. Your family and friends are waiting for you. They have waited for you for a long time, and they are anxious to be with you again.”
     At this point an unbelievable sadness washed over me. I actually had to hold myself back from crying. It was a feeling of complete hopelessness and sorrow. The message I got was, “No one is waiting for me. I have no one. No one is waiting there for me.” This explained the sadness I felt earlier, and the reluctance for this spirit to move on. Although he was in agony, he felt as if there was no one for him on the other side, and that staying where there are people would be better than leaving for the unknown. I explained to him that God is on the other side, and that unbelievable beauty and peace was waiting for him. I continued to urge him to leave, and felt that he might be willing but that he was still hesitating.
     In the end, I left the doorway of light open. I would close it remotely after a few days, hoping that “Andrew” would go through on his own. I made my way back to the front of the spa where Chiara and Ruby were waiting for me. “Did you finish the clearing,” they asked? “We both felt so sad when you were doing it.” It seems that the women had picked up the same sorrow that I felt when doing the clearing.
     I left the spa with little doubt that I had made contact with a very lonely spirit. Only time will tell if the clearing worked and if this poor soul eventually joined the multitude of friends and relatives he is totally unaware of and who are waiting for him on the other side. If Andrew is still there, I’ll be back to run another clearing until he finds the peace he deserves.

Listen to the EVP below that I captured at the spa. The first was captured during my first visit. At the time, Chiara I were in the gift shop area and I asked her if she ever feel cold spots in the spa. Chiara said, "Well, down there, yeah," indicating the end of the hall. A male voice then comes in and says, "Come down".
     The second EVP was captured during a return visit to the spa where I did a second clearing. The voice I captured while I was clearing one of the rooms says, "My name is Derek".

I hope you’ve enjoyed these workplace ghost stories. If you have any others, I’d love to hear them. Please write me at barrypirro@yahoo.com.

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The Haunting of an American Icon

6/30/2019

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Anyone who has been to my lectures knows how much fun they can be. Sure, I tell a lot of pretty scary ghost stories, but the fun comes at the very end when people share their own true paranormal experiences. You have no idea how many people have seen or heard a ghost, or have had something totally unexplainable happen to them. After the lectures, there is usually a small crowd waiting to talk to me in private, and I’m always happy to oblige.
After a lecture I did last October, a woman stayed after and told me about a haunted estate that her friend lives on; then she casually mentioned that it was once the home of one of the most famous American icons in history! Obviously, I was fascinated by the ghostly stories she shared with me, but when she asked if I would like to visit this historic home I was dumbfounded. First of all, this house is not open to the public, so the only people who are invited there are the current homeowners' friends and, occasionally, historians. What’s more, no one has ever conducted a paranormal investigation there. I would be the first. So, as you can imagine, I jumped at the opportunity to visit the estate. The next day I contacted the homeowner, and we set the date of my visit for January 26, 2019.
Now before we go any further, I would love more than anything to tell you the name of this historic figure, but I can’t. As is the case with all of my investigations, preserving the privacy of those who are kind enough to open their homes to me is of the utmost importance. So if you care to guess who it is, be my guest--just don’t ask me if you’re right or wrong, because I’ll never tell! But for the sake of having something to call this distinguished and very famous gentleman, I will henceforth refer to him as Mr. Forrester.
     The Forrester estate lies at the end of a long, narrow, winding country road dotted with modest private homes. I pulled my car up to the two stone pillars that flank the driveway and stopped to consider the hundreds of people who passed through these same gates in the early 1900’s. How thrilled they must have been to spy these stately stone columns in the distance as they approached the estate. After all, the man they were about to visit was a living legend, and from all I’ve read about him, he was hysterically funny and a great host. As I drove past the columns and entered the grounds, I was as thrilled as any guest who had met the great man himself all those years ago. With any luck, I still might have a chance to meet him--or at least to meet his ghost.
     The main house sits on top of a hill that overlooks 28 acres of beautifully manicured lawns that cascade down to the surrounding woods. It is a fine looking house--large, but by no means ostentatious. The house was originally nestled in the middle of over 200 acres of land, so one can imagine how peaceful and serene this country home must have been.
     I had a special assistant joining me on this investigation--my son Ryan. Ryan pulled up to the house a few minutes after I arrived, and after getting our ‘ghost hunting’ gear out of the car we walked up to the front door and rang the bell. The homeowners, Marissa and Jack, greeted us at the door and invited us inside.
     As soon as I walked in the front door my psychic senses immediately kicked into gear. I felt strong energy in the front hallway. I was sure that I was feeling more than just my own excitement about entering this historic home. This was the very same doorway that hundreds of guests had used to enter the home of this larger than life gentleman, so I have no doubt that their excitement and anticipation left an indelible imprint on the entranceway.
Ryan and I put down our gear in the kitchen, and Marissa invited us to do a walkthrough of the house. As I explored the first floor of the house not much was coming to me, until I entered the dining room. Here I immediately felt very strong energy along one wall. I sensed that this was a place where people met and socialized, and where guests were treated to hearing Mr. Forrester’s humorous observations about life. I could feel his strong energy all along the back wall of the dining room near the three french doors that overlooked the rear of the estate. As I stood there looking out at the beautiful lawn that ran down to the woods below, I could imagine the man standing at these doors smoking a cigarette and contemplating the beauty of his new home. It certainly was a stunningly beautiful place. When Forrester moved here in the early 1900s, he praised the estate for its peace and tranquility.
     I walked back and forth in this room for a long time and wondered why it was just along this one wall that I was feeling such strong energy. The rest of the room felt clear. It was almost as if the energy was coming from the patio area that lay just beyond the French doors. I was told later that an important family wedding ceremony was held on the back patio. Family was extremely important to this man, so it’s very possible that the energy I was feeling was connected to that ceremony and other family celebrations that once took place in this room and on the patio.
I was lost in my thoughts when Marissa walked into the room, cell phone in hand, and apologized for disturbing me. She was on the phone with someone who had a first-hand paranormal experience in the house, and she was anxious for me to talk to her. Her name was Katie, and she and her mother had stayed in the home two years earlier. It was summer, and the two were the only people on the estate, the homeowners being away at the time. I took the phone from Marissa, and Katie shared the following story.
     “This happened two years ago,” she said. “I was 21 years old at the time. My mom and I were staying over that summer, it was just the two of us in the house, and I slept in what had been Mr. Forrester’s bedroom. It was hot that night, so I was just in my shirt and my underwear. I fell asleep with no blankets on, just the sheet.
I woke up in the middle of the night, and the entire bed had been made around me; the quilt tucked into the mattresses and everything.”
I said, “I know it was just you and your mom in the house at the time. Did you think that she was playing a prank at first?”
     “No,” Katie said. “I was half asleep when I woke up and saw it, so I thought, ‘Oh, I guess I must have just pulled the covers over myself.’ But when I woke up in the morning I was like, “What the hell? Who did this?”
     “Were the covers tucked in around your body?” I asked.
     “No,” she said. “They were tucked UNDER the mattress. It was just like someone had made the bed and tucked the quilt and the sheets and everything under all four sides of the mattress.”
     “So, you were kind of locked in there like a tamale!” I said.
     “Yes!”, Katie exclaimed. “It was crazy. It was so crazy. It was really weird.”
     I asked, “Was the bed neatly made? In front of your face, where your neck would be, was the quilt folded down?”
     “I honestly don’t remember,” Katie said. “I just know that everything was pulled neatly. It was just like someone had made the bed with me in it!”
I hung up the phone and thought, ‘What an amazing story!’ Two things occurred to me. First, Mr. Forrester was a kind man, but I couldn’t see him tucking someone in at night. It just didn’t suit his personality. At the same time, he was a very funny man. I could definitely see him doing something like this as a prank. As a matter of fact, Mr. Forrester wrote about a similar practical joke in a piece of fiction he published in 1876. In the story, a young character played a joke on a friend while he slept.
But there is another possible explanation. After Mr. Forrester’s death, the house was used for a short time as a hospital for recovering war veterans. Mr. Forrester’s room housed soldiers who were recuperating from wounds they sustained in the war, and they were attended to by a small staff of nurses. The description of the way the bed was made--the sheets and quilt being tucked underneath the mattress--is reminiscent of the way a soldier would make a bed, or the way a nurse would make a bed. Of course, neither would make the bed this way with a person in it! So, the mystery continues.
I asked Marissa if she or her husband had experienced anything unusual in the Forrester bedroom. She told me that in all the years they lived here, they’ve spent just two nights in the bedroom. “We had intended it to be the master bedroom,” Marissa explained, “but that was short-lived. As soon as we moved into the house we tried to sleep in there--but we never fell asleep. We never got one minute sleep in that room. We just lay there for two nights in a row, then we gave up and made the room down the hall the master bedroom.”
In fact, in all the years they owned the home there were just three people who have actually slept in the Forrester bedroom--Katie, a visiting historian, and a girl named Jeanne. “Jeanne was the first person to spend the night in the bedroom room,” Marissa said. “She was actually the only person up to that point who had slept in that room. But that didn’t go well either.
We were away for a week, and my friend Diana and her sixteen-year-old daughter Jeanne were taking care of the dogs for us. Rather than have them drive over each day, which would have been a long drive in each direction, I invited them to stay over.
     One night Diana, was sleeping in our bedroom while Jeanne slept in the Forrester bedroom. Diana woke up in the middle of the night because she heard Jeanne come down the hall from the Forrester bedroom. She then heard her come into the bedroom and stop by her bed. She thought that Jeanne was standing right at the end of the bed. Diana said, ‘What Jeanne, what is it? Jeanne, what is it?’ When her daughter didn’t respond Diana said, ‘Jeanne, it’s not funny anymore,’ then she flipped on the light. The room was empty. She was absolutely convinced that Jeanne was right there because she heard her coming down the hall and into the room. She ran down the hall to check on Jeanne, but she was in bed, sound asleep. After that, Diana refused to stay in the house. I tried to talk to her about it, and I reminded her that no one was hurt. It was just a sound--like the sounds my husband and I used to hear when we first moved in.”
     Soon after Marissa and Jack purchased the estate, they began to hear strange sounds outside. I asked Marissa to tell me about these mysterious sounds. “This happened during the first year and a half that we were here. It was much more pronounced the first week we were here, but now it doesn’t happen at all. There would be the sound of crunching on the gravel driveway, and I would run and look out the window to see who it was, but there was never anyone there. The sound of the gravel would be just about the amount of time that you would expect for someone to come onto the property from the road and pull up outside the house. But it didn’t sound like a car. It sounded like the wheels of a carriage. But like I said, I would always look out, and there would never be anyone there.
     Jack and I were always aware of the gravel sound. We were hyper-aware of it because one of our dogs was very protective. She was a really sweet dog, but she was scared of everybody. And she was a fear biter, so we were super cautious about opening the door. The reason I say all of this is because we were very, very alert and aware of the sound of people coming. So when there were gravel sounds it wasn’t like, ‘The mailman’s here!’ It was more like, ‘Quick, get the dog!’”
Marissa and Jack weren’t the only ones to hear strange sounds at night. I interviewed a family friend who stayed over with her daughter. She said, “One weekend my daughter and I were staying over while the family was away. I was sleeping in Marissa’s room, which is right over the back patio, and that’s where I would hear footsteps--on the slate patio underneath my window. It was like someone was actually walking around on the patio. But then when I looked out there and turned the lights on, there was absolutely no one there. My daughter and I would sometimes hear other noises outside, and the dog would pick up his head as if he had heard them too, and we’d look outside to see if anything was out there but there never was. Once in a while we would hear the floors creaking inside the house. That frightened us a little bit, but then we’re like, ‘Well, if it’s Mr. Forrester, at least we know it’s a friendly ghost!’”
     The family’s housekeeper, Bernice, was the only person to actually see something strange on the property--an eerie, full body apparition of a woman with a large dog. Bernice was working the day I arrived, so I asked if she wouldn’t mind showing me exactly where she was when she saw this mysterious woman. It was cold that day, so Bernice, Ryan and I bundled up and walked out the front door and across the front lawn to a spot that overlooks the property.
     Bernice looked down the road to the front gates and said, “I started working here about three years ago. This happened somewhere between the spring and summer while I was taking care of Marissa’s youngest boy. We were here on the front lawn playing and I looked down the hill toward the driveway entrance and saw an old lady walking on the road about to come onto the property. She had a big brown dog with her, and she was coming from the direction of the pool house which is just down the road. When I saw her she was almost coming past the posts that lead onto the property. I thought, ‘I wasn’t told that anyone was coming today. Maybe it’s someone from the neighborhood.’ I picked up the boy then looked back at the driveway--and there was nobody there! I thought,‘That’s strange. She couldn’t have moved that fast because she’s old, so where did she go?’ I looked everywhere.”
     I asked Bernice how old she thought the woman was. “I don’t know because she was far away, but she was definitely an older woman. When I saw her, I wasn’t thinking that she was a ghost or anything like that. I’m thinking she was just a person, maybe a neighbor. I tried looking around the property because I thought maybe she was walking around, but it only took a couple of seconds for me to pick the boy up. I picked him up because I thought she might be coming up to the house where we were, and she had a big dog. Someone in the neighborhood walking around with a dog, you know? I picked him up because he’s so little and I was worried about the dog, but a second later I looked and she wasn’t there. I’m looking around and she’s not here. I couldn’t believe it because I just saw her a few seconds ago. ”
     “You said the dog was brown. How big would you say he was?” I asked.
     “It was a large brown dog,” she said. “About four feet tall.”
     I asked Bernice to describe what the old woman was wearing. She said, “She was wearing a dress, like an old fashioned dress. The type of dress that you would see in pictures from a long time ago. The dress was very long. Maybe not all the way down to the ground, but very long. Since then I’ve looked to see if I can find a picture of the kind of dress she was wearing, but I can’t find one that looks exactly like it. One thing I noticed is that she was wearing…you know when a person is cooking they’re wearing something over them to protect their clothes? An apron. That’s it. I think she had an apron over her dress, or something that looked like an apron.”
     I asked Bernice if she was frightened when she saw her, but she said that she wasn’t. At first she was just puzzled. She said, “I looked around and thought, ‘I’m not crazy. I know there was a person over there, but where did she go? No one could walk or run that fast; especially an old woman with a dog. I looked around thinking that maybe she was sitting down somewhere. I tried looking around, but you can see everywhere from here and she wasn’t anywhere. I wasn’t afraid then, but as I’m telling you the story I’m feeling a chill just thinking about it!”
     I looked down the stately driveway to the gates where Bernice had seen the mysterious woman with the dog. I could see for myself that there was no way anyone could be seen walking onto the property from the road, then vanish a few seconds later. It’s just impossible because there’s a clear view of the gates and the surrounding woods from the front lawn.
     The entire time we were on the lawn talking, I had been recording our conversation using a digital recorder. A few days after the investigation I listened back to the recording and made a startling discovery. I had picked up an EVP--a spirit voice--as Bernice was telling her story. The voice was quiet, so I boosted the volume and removed some of the background hiss to get a better idea of what it was saying. It was clearly a man’s voice, and as far as I could tell he spoke with a slight accent, either German or Scottish. To me, and to everyone I played it for, he seems to be saying, “Couldn’t pass”.
     Keep in mind, the only people on the lawn were Bernice, Ryan, and myself. My son didn’t talk the entire time I was interviewing Bernice, and there was no one else on the lawn with us.
Listen for yourself. In the following clip, you’ll hear me say to Bernice, “So, she was close to the post when you saw her …” Bernice answers, “Yeah, yeah” and immediately after, the man’s voice jumps in and says, “Couldn’t pass”. I repeat the voice several times in this clip because it goes by so quickly.

What could this strange message mean? It’s possible the the voice was that of a former grounds worker who had been listening in on our conversation. It’s interesting that Bernice and I had been talking about the woman about to walk through the gates when the voice says, “Couldn’t pass”. It was as if he was saying that the woman couldn’t pass the gates for some reason. But why? Maybe the woman had been a neighbor and she was not allowed on the property. Or, maybe he knew that she too was a ghost, and that she literally couldn’t pass the gates because she was not a living person.
     We walked back into the house, thankful to be out of the cold and Marissa said that she wanted to tell us about an amazing thing she and her family witnessed in the upstairs master bedroom. We walked upstairs to the bedroom and Marrisa shared the following story.
“I had gone to a dinner party one night,” she said, “and I was shocked to hear how many people had personal paranormal experiences. It wasn’t like, ‘My cousin or my mother saw a ghost.’ These people were telling their own firsthand experiences. I was really surprised at the sheer number of regular, normal, trustworthy people who had stories.
      So when I came home I was thinking of all of these stories. I walked into our bedroom and my husband was in bed reading to our youngest son. Our older son was in his room, but when he heard me come upstairs he came into the bedroom to say hi, so all four of us were there.
      I said to my husband, ‘You’re never going to believe this. This person, this person, all these people who you know were sharing their ghost stories at the party. You’d never believe how many people have ghost stories from their own houses. You’d be so surprised.’ And while I’m saying this we all just stopped cold. We all stood exactly as we were, stock-still—our youngest son included, which is a lot for him. A toy car rolled out from behind this chair. It just rolled like this.” Marissa paused her story to show us how the car came from behind the chair in a curve, then straightened out. “It came across the room, and it came to rest at my feet. Now, if it had been any other time and we had been talking about anything else, that exact same experience probably wouldn’t have registered that way. I would have assumed, ‘Oh, I never knew that that toy was a pull-back car that moves when you pulled it back, or there must be an air vent that I didn’t know about.’ I would have assumed that it was one of those things. But the timing of it was just weird. And it wasn’t a pull-back toy. It was just a regular toy car.”
     Marissa was anxious to have Jack tell me his version of the story, so she called him upstairs and asked that he share it with me. Jack said, “I was in bed reading to our son, and I was kind of groggy. I just remember a car, a toy car, coming out of nowhere. It was over there and it kind of came rushing over. My wife was talking to me about the party she had just come from, and this car just took off. It was pretty fast. It was one of those toy cars, and it just started taking off. It started over there, and it came all the way over to here to the middle of the room. And I was like, ‘Alright, that’s weird!’”
     I asked Jack if his son would be willing to tell me his version of the story. Luckily he had just gotten home from school, so Jack asked him to come into the bedroom and tell me what he had witnessed that day. The boy said, “It was a toy car, and it was weird because it started here behind the chair, and it rolled AROUND the chair. It definitely wasn’t the kind of car that you pull back then let go to make it go by itself. It was just a regular toy car, like a Matchbox car. I remember it coming around the chair. It came out from behind the chair, then it slowed down. It moved slowly, and I thought it was going to stop. But it kept going all the way to here.” At this point, the boy pointed to a spot in the middle of the room--the same spot his mother and father said the car stopped.”It was going pretty slowly,” he continued, “then it was going really slow at the end.”
     I was impressed that all three had seen the same thing, and that their stories were nearly identical. The only discrepancy was the speed at which the car moved. Marissa and her son said it moved pretty slowly, while Jack thought that it shot out quickly from behind the chair. All agreed that the car came out from behind the chair, not in a straight line but in a curve. They also agreed that it had travelled approximately seven feet, and that it came to rest in the middle of the floor.
     I thanked Jack and his son for sharing their stories and decided to explore the other rooms on this floor. I was hoping to pick up some intuitive information that might help solve the mystery of whose spirit resides in this house. As I walked toward the front of the house, I suddenly stopped at the top of the staircase. There was a strong feeling here. Something had happened right on this spot. My head began to hurt, but the feeling quickly passed. I got a sense that someone had either fallen on this spot, or that they had experienced some sort of physical distress here. I later learned that Mr. Forrester had spent his last years in this house, and that his health had deteriorated considerably soon after he moved in.
     I turned right at the top of the stairs and walked into a bedroom at the far end of the hall near the back of the house. Ryan and I both commented on feeling something peculiar in the corner near the window. My son described it as a “creepy feeling” whereas I was feeling something very quiet and still. It was as if there was a stillness to the energy in the room; that it rested in just one place and was very quiet and motionless. I later learned that a close relative of Mr. Forrester died tragically in this room. Although I’m not at liberty to go into the details of this tragic death, the stillness I felt in this room seems in alignment with the way the person had died.
     We left this room and went down the hallway to a room near the rear of the house. Here I got a very strong sense that a lot of people met in this room, but this made no sense to me since the room is currently a nursery. Marissa later told me that the floorplan of the house had changed since the early 1900s, and that the room had originally been a sitting room where Mr. Forrester used to entertain his guests; so I was correct when I felt the energy of large numbers of people in the room.
The Forrester bedroom was across the hall from this room, and I entered with slight trepidation. After all, this was the room where the girl had woken up to find herself tucked into bed by unseen hands. It was also the room where Marissa and Jack were unable to sleep, and where footsteps were heard coming down the hall. So, I was more than a little disappointed when I didn’t feel very much in the room. There was some residual energy running along one wall, but other than that the room felt clean.
     Although there are some striking paranormal incidents associated with the Forrester bedroom, it helps to know a little about how spirits operate. First of all, they aren’t imprisoned in a room. They can move about freely. Just because I walk into a room hoping to make contact with a particular spirit; it doesn’t mean that they are always on hand. Second, spirits are ‘attracted to’ certain people. For example, if a spirit is that of a mother who had lost a child in life, then she might only make herself known to mothers, or to children. Third, there is often more than just one spirit in a home. As I theorized earlier, the incident with the bedcovers being tucked in around the girl could have been a soldier, a nurse, or Mr. Forrester himself. Or, it could have been someone totally different, like a former maid or Mr. Forrester close relative who died in the room down the hall. As for the footsteps heard coming from the Forrester bedroom--well, they could have been the ghostly footsteps of just about anyone.
     It was getting late, and Marrisa and her family had plans for the evening so Ryan and I wrapped up the investigation. I reiterated how thrilled Ryan and I were to have had the opportunity to run the investigation, and Marissa invited us to come back some day to explore one other house on the property. It’s a house that comes with a number of intriguing tales that involved Mr. Forrester directly--but that’s a ghost story for another day.
     As I drove down the long, dark, winding driveway I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I paid particular attention to the sound of the gravel crunching under my car’s tires. And you can be sure that as the beams of my headlights illuminated the stone gates in the distance, I was hoping against hope to catch even the most fleeting glimpse of an old woman in a long, old fashioned dress walking a large brown dog.

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The Pendulum: A Powerful Tool for Uncovering Hidden Knowledge

5/28/2019

1 Comment

In April of 1935, a French businessman was staying in the city of Valence on a trip. His family knew that he would be away for a while, but after a few days of not hearing from him they became concerned. They contacted the police who paid a visit to the hotel he had been staying at. His belongings were still in the hotel room, but the man was nowhere to be found.
Weeks had gone by with no trace of the man, and by now it was obvious that something terrible had happened to him. Since the police were unable to find him, the family called on someone they hoped would be able to help--Catholic priest, Abbe Mermet. They didn’t call on Father Mermet for spiritual help, and he wasn’t an amateur sleuth. Father Mermet was a dowser, and he was known to have helped locate several missing persons by using nothing more than a pendulum and a map.
    Father Mermet asked the family for a photo of the man, and he obtained a map of Valence. Holding his pendulum over the photo and the map, he was able to deduce what had happened. Mermet told the family that the man had fallen into the river Rhone and drowned. In the time since his death, the river had carried the man’s body nearly 80 miles to village of Aramon. He said that the body was was lodged between two rocks, and he told them the exact location of where they would find it. The family went to the location Father Mermet had indicated and they found the man’s body lodged between two rocks in the river, exactly where he said it would be.
    In another case, Mermet was called upon to help locate a missing twenty-six year old who had disappeared from his home. Using a pendulum, an article of the man’s clothing, and a map, Father Mermet deduced that the man had suffered a nervous breakdown and was still alive somewhere in Toulouse, France. Twelve days later, Mermet received a letter from the man’s mother saying that her son had been located. He had indeed suffered a nervous breakdown, and was found staying with friends in Toulouse. The man was brought home safely and received treatment for his mental illness.
     Look up the word ‘dowsing’ in the dictionary and you'll find it defined as “a technique for searching for underground water, minerals, or anything invisible, by observing the motion of a pointer--traditionally a forked stick, now often paired bent wires--or the changes in direction of a pendulum, supposedly in response to unseen influences.” But as we’ve seen, dowsing is much more than just looking for water or precious metals.
    Google the word ‘dowsing’ and you’ll get approximately 4,020,000 results. Take a look at the video results from the same search and you’ll find 141,000 videos on the subject. People dowse for water, minerals, gold, uranium, underground power lines and pipes, lost graves, and buried treasure. Pendulums are used to dowse maps to locate missing people and objects.
The military has also used dowsing. During the Vietnam War, soldiers dowsed to locate hidden land mines. During the second World War the Germans used dowsers to follow the movement of British ships.
People use dowsing for healing, to improve psychological health, and to test water and food for contaminates. And the list of uses for dowsing goes on and on.
    Whether you call it water-witching, divining, or even doodlebugging, one thing is for certain--dowsing is serious business. There are dowsing societies all over the world. The Appalachian Chapter of the American Society for Dowsers lists sixty-two international dowsing associations. There are organizations in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Chile, Cuba, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Finland, the United States, the UK, Venezuela, Russia, Japan, and Korea--to name a few.
    There’s a saying, “5,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong”. The same goes for dowsing. Let’s face it, people don’t waste time on things that don’t work. There are such a huge number of dowsers across the globe who devote time and money to the practice that there must really be something to this thing called dowsing. But how does dowsing work? Dowser Fay Semple (Facebook|Twitter|Instagram|YouTube) explains it this way:

“Dowsing is an alignment of body, mind, and soul. Our conscious mind is asking a carefully framed question; but the information we’re trying to gather from information fields that permeate everything and that sit behind physical reality, is something that our subconscious and subliminal mind is much easier able to access. But the subconscious and subliminal mind do not speak in language; they speak in archetype, image, feelings, dreams, and sensations. So, dowsing is a method of getting those two very different types of your mind to speak together. You ask a question, but your subliminal mind can’t answer in English. So what you’re doing through the body is asking for a graphical representation -- a Yes or No movement of the answer to the question.” She goes on to say, “When we think and put a question out there, a responding field comes back with information. Dowsing is a way of tapping into those fields.”
[By the way, I've had a sneak peak at Fay Semple's fantastic new website, so keep an eye on her social media for the official launch. I'll post the link in the 'Resources' section of this article once the site is up and running.]

Dowsing as we think of it today seems to have originated in 15th century Germany when it was used to locate underground sources of metal. When German miners traveled to England to work in the country’s coal mines, the practice quickly spread throughout Europe. Dowsing was accepted by just about everyone until the church got involved. In 1659, the Jesuits declared dowsing to be a satanic practice. Not to worry. Dowsing lived on long after it was banned by the church.
    In the 18th and 19th centuries water dowsers, also known as water-witches, were well-respected and important members of the community. They were relied on to find fresh sources of water on property, and no one would consider digging a well without consulting a dowser first. Why? You can’t just dig a well anywhere and hit water. Without a dowser, a homeowner might spend time and money digging hole after hole until they hit water. Dowers are often able to locate water the very first time.
    One man told a story from modern times that illustrates this perfectly. He said, “I remember as a small child in Shutesbury, Massachusetts watching this old man wandering the field next to our little house with a stick in his hand. My dad explained he was a dowser, there to find water. The well drilling company had struck three “dry holes” and so they’d called in a dowser. He found the place to drill in ten minutes.” 1
    As I mentioned earlier, dowsing isn’t just for finding sources of water. Many people use dowsing to help find lost objects. The American Society of Dowsers shares a number of such stories on their website.
    One story tells of a woman who asked dowser Louis Matacia for help in finding her lost wallet. Through dowsing, Mr. Matacia narrowed down the location of the wallet to a restaurant the woman had eaten at the previous night. He said that the wallet had fallen down into the booth the woman had been sitting at. She returned to the restaurant and after struggling to move the booth found the wallet deep in the corner where Matacia said it was.
    In another story, a man contacted dowser Marge Hefty to help locate a valuable object he had lost. Ms. Hefty dowsed the location while talking to the man over the phone. She first narrowed the location of the object down to his house, then to his bedroom, and finally two feet off the floor under a very large pile of books. The man searched the spot and found the item exactly where Ms. Hefty said it would be.
    George and Tonie Weller helped Elizabeth Robins locate the deed to two pieces of property that her mother had left to her after she died. Although the woman had searched both properties for the legal document, it was nowhere to be found. After 10 minutes of dowsing, Tonie’s dowsing rods lead her to the upstairs closet of one of the houses. There she found the deed in a shoebox full of old Christmas cards.

Tools of the Trade
    Although this newsletter deals primarily with pendulum dowsing, let’s take a look at the four most popular devices use by dowsers: Y-Rods, L-Rods, a ‘Bobber’, and a pendulum. Each device has its own ‘personality’, so to speak, and each has advantages and disadvantages.
    Y-rods are the traditional type of dowsing rod that is often depicted in movies. It's a forked stick shaped like the letter Y and it's anywhere from 12 to 24 inches long. In the ‘old days’ Y-Rods were made out of wood, but people now favor plastic or metal rods because they are easier to hold. Y-rods are primarily used to indicate a YES response to a question. For example, if you were dowsing for water the Y-Rod would point down to show where the water is.
    L-rods are a very popular dowsing device. They are simply two L-shaped rods, and you hold one in each hand with the long end facing away from you. Some people make these out of bent wire coat hangers. Or, you can buy them pre-made. Mine are made out of copper and have handles that allow the rods to move freely. To use them, you think of the thing you are trying to locate and begin walking with the rods pointed slightly downward. When the rods both point in the same direction, it is an indication to walk that way. When the rods spread in opposite directions, it indicates a NO response. When you reach the desired target, the two rods will cross in front of you.
    Bobbers are long flexible rods, branches or wires that sometimes have a coiled spring near the end that you hold. They may also have a weight on the far end. As you can imagine, the spring and the sheer length of the rod makes it bob up and down or from side to side when you walk--thus the name ‘bobbers’. The direction of the bobbing indicates either a YES or a NO answer.
The pendulum is my personal favorite type of dowsing device, and it is favored by many dowsers. It’s portable, easy to use, and I find that I get instant and accurate responses to my questions. A pendulum is basically any weighted object that hangs on the end of a string or a metal chain. The length of the string is typically four or five inches long. The pendulum indicates Yes or No depending upon the way it swings. One downside of using a pendulum is that it can be difficult to control when walking. But a big plus is the ability to use it when dowsing maps and pendulum charts. Map dowsing involves using a pendulum over a map. As you can imagine, there are any number of things that you can dowse on a map such as the location of missing objects, precious minerals, missing persons, just about anything.

My Experiences With Dowsing
    The pendulum is a valuable tool when trying to get to the bottom of who--or what--is responsible for a haunting. I recently used a pendulum at an investigation in New Millford, Connecticut. It helped determine that there were two spirits present. One was a girl in her early 20s, and the other was a non-human entity that came in as an attachment to an object the homeowner had purchased. Using this information I was able to do a clearing that the homeowner said was successful.
    I also used a pendulum in a case in Stamford, Connecticut where I was able to learn the name of the spirit that was haunting a house. The spirit was a soldier. After doing some research I discovered that there was a soldier with that name who had passed away in the 1940s.
    In preparing for this article, I did an experiment that turned out to be a lot of fun. I put six coffee cups face-down on my dining room table and asked my daughter to place a coin under one of the cups. Each time she hid the coin under a cup, she also moved the cups around the table.
    When using a pendulum, you have to know what YES looks like, and what NO looks like. For me, the pendulum swings in a horizontal line to indicate YES, and in a counterclockwise circle to indicate NO.
    The first time my daughter hid the coin, the pendulum indicated a definite NO as I suspended it over five of the cups, but it swung wildly in a horizontal line over the sixth cup. I turned the cup over, and there was the coin!
    I repeated the experiment a second time with the same result; the pendulum swung in wide circles over five of the cups which indicated NO, and it showed a strong YES over the one cup where my daughter had hidden the coin.
    On the third trial I was incorrect the first time; but I was able to locate the coin on the first try after re-dowsing the remaining five cups
    On the fourth trial I was correct, and I located the coin on the first try.
    On the fifth trial I was incorrect, and I was unable to find the coin by re-dowsing the remaining cups.
    Obviously, I would have to repeat this experiment hundreds of times to declare that my dowsing experiment was statistically impressive. But I was satisfied with the results. Remember, I didn’t use two cups which would give me a 50/50 chance of success each time--I used six cups. During the experiment, the YES and NO movements of the pendulum were well defined and when the pendulum indicated that the coin was under a particular cup, I had an internal feeling of certainty that I was correct before uncovering the coin.
    I did another experiment where I asked my daughter to hide a coin in the front yard. Using a pendulum, I was able to pinpoint the exact location of the coin. It was funny because I was standing right on the coin and my pendulum was swinging back-and-forth so hard that it was practically jumping out of my hand--but I couldn’t find the coin! It turns out that I was standing right on it. Even though I was barefoot, I couldn’t feel that I was actually stepping on the coin because my daughter had buried it slightly. It was as if the pendulum was saying, “It’s right under your foot you fool!”

Try It Yourself!
    Since most people don’t own a pendulum, you’ll want to start by making one yourself. Find a round, spherical or cylindrical shaped object that has some weight to it. I recently made a pendulum out of a Chinese coin. It was perfect because of its shape, and because it already had a hole in it.
    Next, suspend the object from a string, thread, or a chain that is around four or five inches long. You can also start with a longer string that you can hold at different lengths until you find the right length for you.
    The next step is to find out what a YES response looks like, and what a NO response looks like. Hold the pendulum in front of you and make sure that it is still. Say out loud, “Show me what YES looks like” and watch the pendulum carefully. It will either swing from side-to-side, back-and-forth, in a clockwise circle, or in a counter-clockwise circle. Next, say out loud, “Show me what NO looks like” and note the direction the pendulum moves. Many people see the pendulum start moving right away, others wait a long time and see just a little movement. That’s OK. Just keep at it. It sometimes helps to stare at the weight of the pendulum and imagine it moving.
    It’s important to keep in mind that when you ask a question, you are using the pendulum as a tool to get an answer from the universe or from your subconscious mind--The pendulum is not an intelligent being. The answers are coming through you, and the pendulum is the visual representation of those answers.
It’s possible that the answer is unknown, or that it’s not a good time for you to receive the answer. So you’ll also need to ask what “I don’t know” looks like, and what “I don’t want to answer” looks like.
    Now that you know what the answers look like, practice by asking questions you know the answer to such as “Am I a male?”; “Do I drive a red car?”; “Am I the oldest child in my family?” etc. You can ask the question out loud, or you can ask them silently--it makes no difference.

Asking Permission
    Many dowsers feel that it's important to ask permission before dowsing. Asking permission comes in the form of three questions: ‘Can I?’, ‘May I?’ and ‘Should I?’.
    By asking ‘Can I?’, a dowser is essentially asking if they have the ability to do a certain type of dowsing. Suppose you are looking for a lost object in your home. If you ask ‘Can I do this type of dowsing?’ and the answer is NO, it’s best not to proceed. You don’t have enough experience to do this type of dowsing. This is valuable information because it’s telling you to practice before taking on dowsing for missing objects.
    ‘May I?’ is asking permission of God--the universe, collective consciousness or whatever you want to call it--to do the type of dowsing you are about to do. If you get a YES answer, great! If you get a NO answer, it might mean that you are seeking information that you shouldn’t have right now because you are not ready for it yet.
    ‘Should I?’ is a question that you ask to find out if it’s a good idea to get involved in a particular dowsing job. Some dowsers are taken advantage of, so asking ‘Should I?’ is a way to protect yourself before taking on a dowsing job for someone else. Or, if you are dowsing for yourself, it may mean that the thing you are seeking might do you or someone else harm in some way down-the-road. If you get a NO answer, don’t question it; just stop the dowsing session and move on to something else.

Experiment, Experiment, Experiment!
    Now for the fun part. Use your creativity in devising experiments to hone your skills. I first recommend that you try the 6 cup coin experiment I talked about earlier. There are also experiments you can do with playing cards. First, remove the ‘royal cards’ and the Aces. Keeping the cards face down choose one at random and place it on a table. Suspend your pendulum over the card and ask, “Is this a red card?” or “Is this a black card?”. See how many you get correct out of ten tries.
    Next, try another card experiment with numbers. Choose a card at random, hold your pendulum over the card and ask, “Is this card between 2 and 8?” If you get a YES response, try narrowing it down. “Is this card between 2 and 5?” Keep asking questions until you get a YES answer for a single number, then turn over the card and check your accuracy.
    Here’s a great exercise. Find five or six small objects and put them in a row in front of you. Now, write the names of each object on a slip of paper and put the slips into individual envelopes. Mix the envelopes thoroughly, then select one. Hold the envelope in one hand and suspend your pendulum over each object at a time asking “Is this the object that is written on the paper in the envelope?” When the pendulum indicates a positive response, open the envelope to check your accuracy. This experiment can be taken a step further by placing each envelope with a positive response in front of the object the pendulum indicated. Don’t open the envelopes until you’ve tested all of the objects, then open and check for accuracy.
    Experimenting with a pendulum alone is fun, but with a partner it’s even better. It’s important to choose someone who is not skeptical or disinterested. The following partner experiments come from Richard Webster’s excellent book Pendulum Magic For Beginners: Tap Into Your Inner Wisdom. If you are at all interested in dowsing, definitely pick up a copy.
    Happy or Sad -- Have your partner close their eyes and think of either a happy or sad scene while you hold your pendulum over their upturned palm. Ask “Is (your partner) thinking of a happy scene?” If it indicates YES, you know it’s a happy scene. If it indicates NO, it’s a sad scene.
    Which Object Is It? -- Select several objects and place them in a line several inches apart. Turn your back and have your partner pick one up for a few seconds, then replace it. Now, suspend your pendulum over each object and ask, “Is this the object that my partner just picked up and held?”
    I Spy -- Have your partner choose any object that they can see in the room that you are both in. They don’t have to hold the object, they just have to look at it. Obviously, don’t watch them as they’re looking around. Now hold your pendulum in front of you and start asking it about each object in the room. You can also narrow down the search by asking questions such as “Is the object on the side of the room with the fireplace?” “Is the object within 5 feet of me?” etc.
    Hide and Seek -- Have your partner hide an object somewhere in the house or apartment you are in. Write the names of all of the rooms in the house on different cards, then test each card to see if the pendulum reacts positively to one of them.

Uses for Pendulum Dowsing
    The uses for pendulum dowsing are practically endless. You can use a pendulum to test the quality of food and water; to check which vitamins or supplements to take for various health conditions; to help locate lost objects, people, or pets; or to check for imbalances in your body’s energy centers known as ‘chakras’. Pendulums can be used to determine the health of a person at a distance, or even to heal at a distance. They can also be used to explore past lives, and to communicate with spirits.
    There are books that have pendulum charts that can be used to ask questions on just about every topic you can imagine. There are also pendulum alphabet charts that you can use in a way that's similar to an Ouija board. The disclaimer here is that I always warn people against using Ouija boards, but I don’t consider dowsing alphabet charts to be in the same category. Answers given while dowsing come from the universe or from your subconscious. Rogue spirits are not controlling the pendulum, so there is no danger of spirit infestation or possession when using a pendulum.
    I hope you enjoyed learning about the various uses of pendulums for dowsing, and that you'll try pendulum dowsing for yourself. If you do, I know you'll be amazed at the results. There are tons of books, websites, organizations, Meet-up groups, and videos where you can learn more about dowsing. Start by checking out some of the resources at the end of this article. Happy dowsing!

Resources
I've had a sneak peak at Fay Semple's amazing new website, so keep an eye on social media for the official launch.
https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/28/n03/Crabb_Mermet_Radiesthesia_Catholic_Gold.html (Article about Father Mermet)
https://theghostinmymachine.com/2019/02/11/how-does-it-work-dowsing-water-witching-and-the-power-of-expectation-divination-ideomotor-effect/ (Article about the history of dowsing and practical application)
https://canadiandowsers.org/military-government-and-big-business-use-dowsing/ (Short article on government and military usage of dowsing)
https://dowsers.org/ (The American Society of Dowsers website)
https://charliesheldon2.com/2016/12/13/dowsing-stories-that-are-true/ (Dowsing stories)
https://dowsers.org/confirmed-dowsing-stories/ (Dowsing stories)
http://dowsers.org//wp-content/uploads/2016/05/4_3_2_1_Handout.pdf (A concise dowsers handbook from the American Society of Dowsers)
https://dowsers.org/dowsing-to-get-rid-of-bad-habits/ (Advice for using to break bad habits)
https://www.surpliceofspirit.com/pendulums-answers/ (A general article on pendulums and how to use them)
https://www.annasayce.com/trouble-pendulum-dowsing/ (Advice for those having trouble getting started with dowsing)
http://www.archercousins.com/dowser.htm (An article by a man who used dowsing to locate lost gravesites)
http://www.featherhawk.com/articles/pendulum_dowsing_the_basics.htm (A well written and practical article about how to dowse)
http://wncdowsers.org/about-us/who-we-are/ (Appalachian Dowsers website) (History of dowsing from 8000 BC until the present)
https://ancientstandard.com/2007/06/19/a-brief-history-of-dowsing-8000-bc-%E2%80%93-today/ (History of dowsing from 8000 BC until the present)
http://www.wrf.org/men-women-medicine/dowsing-radiesthesia-health.php (Dowsing for health and healing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaJGBc5mCuU (Asking good dowsing questions) (Great video about asking the right questions while dowsing)

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Seeing the Dead: Magic Mirrors, Scrying, and the Psychomanteum

4/30/2019

1 Comment

     A woman walks into a dark room and sits in a comfortable chair. All around her, the walls are obscured by a black curtain, and in front of her is a mirror set at an angle so she only sees darkness reflected in its surface. The only light comes from a single candle on a table behind her. As she sits quietly and gazes into the mirror, a fog begins to cover its surface. Soon, bright flashes of light are seen dancing around the perimeter of the mirror. Then, suddenly, a figure appears in the mirror. The figure looks totally real; so much so that the woman feels as if she can reach out and touch it. The figure is that of the woman’s mother who died several years earlier, and she looks young and alive. As the woman looks in amazement the figure of her mother steps out of the mirror and into the room with her. The two embrace and talk, and the woman’s mother tells her that she is fine and that it is beautiful where she is. The vision ends as quickly as it had begun and the woman is left with a sense of peace, happiness, and closure. This is the psychomanteum.
       In the 1937 animated Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the evil Queen gazes into her enchanted mirror and says, “Magic mirror on the wall--who is the fairest one of all?” You know that line, right? I’m sure you do. Everyone does. But the queen says something else in the film that not many people remember. She says, “Slave in the magic mirror, come from the farthest space. Through wind and darkness I summon thee! Speak! Let me see thy face!” Let me see thy face. The queen is not simply asking the mirror to answer questions here; she is looking for a vision, and she’s looking for it to come from within the mirror itself.
    Disney didn’t come up with the idea for a magic mirror on his own. The use of mirrors as divination tools has been around for centuries. Scrying is a technique whereby the seer gazes into a mirror, a pool of water, or a crystal ball until images appear.
    But the real magic of scrying as it relates to seeing dead loved ones lies in something called a psychomanteum. The word comes from the Greek, and translates roughly as “theater of the mind”. A psychomanteum is a darkened room designed to induce apparitions through gazing into a mirror.
    A reflective surface seems to be key to having this type of visual experience. In his book, Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones, Dr. Raymond Moody tells the story of a woman who saw her deceased husband in the surface of a hotel picture window.
It was nighttime, so the glass only reflected the dim light from inside of the room. The woman was looking at this surface with nothing particular on her mind when she suddenly saw a man running toward her. He was wearing a bathing suit, and his hair was wet as if he had just run up from the beach. The woman instantly recognized the man as her husband who had recently died in a car accident. He ran right up to her and smiled. She said that she could even smell him, and that the vision was so real that she could have felt his wet hair if she had reached out. The man was smiling as he said to her, “Everything is fine here”.
    This story illustrates the emotional impact that a visual reunion with a loved one can have on a person and how such an experience can help them deal with grief. But keep in mind that the woman wasn't looking to make contact with her deceased husband -- he just showed up. How would you go about actively seeking out a visionary encounter with a deceased loved one? You would use a psychomanteum.
Dr. Moody describes the psychomanteum he made in his home this way: “A room was set aside for use as an apparition chamber. At one end of the room a mirror four feet tall and three and a half feet wide was mounted on the wall. The bottom edge of the mirror was three feet above the floor. A comfortable ‘easy chair’ was prepared by removing its legs so that the top of the headrest was about three feet above the floor. The chair was placed about three feet from the mirror and inclined slightly backward. This was done for comfort, but also to keep the reflection of the gazer from being seen in the mirror. In effect, the angle of the chair created a clear depth view of the mirror, which would reflect only darkness behind the person who was gazing. The result was a crystal-clear pool of darkness.
    This pool of darkness was assured by the black velvet curtain draped all around the chair from the ceiling. A curved curtain rod was used to allow the drape to surround the area around the chair and mirror, creating a curtained booth or chamber. Inside this apparition chamber and directly behind the chair was placed a small stained-glass lamp with a fifteen-watt bulb. When the lights in the room were turned off and the outside light excluded by blinds and thick window curtains, this tiny light provided the room’s only illumination.” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.82)
    Prior to using a psychomanteum, subjects are asked to look at photographs of the deceased person they wish to communicate with, and to try to recall vivid memories of the time they spent together. They also are encouraged to bring mementos into the room with them such as a piece of clothing or jewelry owned by the person. One man even brought his father’s fishing poles into the booth!
    The experiences people have in the psychomanteum vary, but most are extremely vivid. It’s not just that you see a fuzzy image in the mirror. People report seeing full bodied apparitions that look as real as any living person. Some even seem to walk out of the mirror and into the room.
    It’s interesting that many people encounter deceased persons other than the one they were prepared to see. One such example in Moody’s book comes from a businessman named James who described himself as an ‘interested skeptic’. He was using the psychomanteum to attempt a visionary reunion with his father who died when James was twelve years old. After preparing for the reunion by looking through family photos and pictures of furniture that his father had made, James entered the apparition booth.
    After being in the booth for a long time a man’s image began to form in the mirror and suddenly, the man stepped right out of the mirror and into the apparition room. But it wasn’t James’ father, it was his old business partner who had died of a heart attack a few years earlier. Interestingly, the two had been business partners, but they were not very close friends.
The man who stepped out of the mirror looked totally real, and he told James that he was fine where he was. He also gave a message about his daughter who once blamed James for her father’s death. This was all done telepathically, so he did not hear a voice in the booth. When the experience was over, the vision vanished quickly.
Afterward, James said that he felt that he had made peace with his business partner. He insisted that the man he saw in the booth was not an apparition or an hallucination; he said that it was actually his business partner in the room with him.
    Not all psychomanteum experiences are purely visual. In her book A Glimpse of Heaven: The Remarkable World of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (1) Carla Wills-Brandon writes of an amazing experience she had while using Dr. Moody’s psychomanteum. After just a few minutes of sitting in the apparition booth, she saw bluish-grey cloudy shapes begin to pour out of the mirror, then a bluish-white light began to sprinkle down upon her. This light turned into balls of light which began to grow in size. One of these blue-white orbs hit her on her left side near her heart and took her breath away. At the same time, it filled her with a peaceful, joyous, and loving feeling. Ms. Wills-Brandon said, “Then I saw more light around me and I was inundated with unlimited unconditional love. Very thin etheric streams of whirling white energy came toward my left side, touching my left arm, as if in an embrace. From this soft, cool touch, I felt pure amazement and joy. I will never know what would have happened next because one of Moody’s more aggressive visitors suddenly burst in and told me he wanted to try this psychomanteum. With this intrusion, the swirling, loving light immediately disappeared. For a moment, I just sat there stunned.” (Seeing is Believing! My Personal Experience With the Spirit World)
    One man who enter the psychomanteum had a purely auditory experience. He said, “After what I guess was no more than five minutes I began to hear the voice of this friend of mine who was killed in a boating accident. It was just like her speaking to me. I’m not talking here about thoughts or day dreams or imagination. I’ve never heard anything like it. She just talked to me and said it was wonderful where she was. I could hear each word plainly and separately. There was a quality to it, like an echo, I believe, like maybe she was speaking through a tin tube. It was her voice, though, definitely.” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.144)
    Visual encounters in the psychomanteum are usually highly emotional experiences. Moody reported that one woman not only saw her deceased grandfather in the psychomanteum, she also spoke to him and felt his touch. She said, “I was so happy to see him that I began to cry. Through the tears I could still see him in the mirror. Then he seemed to get closer and he must have come out of the mirror because the next thing I knew he was holding me and hugging me. It felt like he said something like, 'It’s okay, don’t cry.'” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.93)
    As we’ve seen, these visual encounters are often so real that people feel as if they can reach out and touch the apparitions, but they are not always able to. One man who used the psychomanteum in an attempt to contact his sister described the experience in this way:
    “I was sitting in there, and all of a sudden it seemed that these three people stepped right into the room all around me. It looked as if they stepped out of the mirror, but I felt that such a thing couldn’t be, so I was shocked. I didn’t know what was going on. For a moment I thought it was someone trying to play a joke on me, so I reached up quickly, trying to touch them, and when I did, my hand hit the curtain. I still saw them. I got a look at all three. My sister, Jill, was there, but two others also, my friend Todd and my grandfather. All of them looked very much alive, just looking at me.” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.135)
    Another woman was reunited with her deceased grandmother, her aunt, and her great-grandmother in the psychomanteum. She said, “I was so overjoyed during this whole meeting. I was so happy. There was not a doubt in the world they were there and that I saw them, and it was as real as meeting anyone.” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.123)
    Not all experiences with the psychomanteum happen right away. Dr. Moody calls these delayed experiences ‘Take-Out Visions’. One example of this type of experience comes from a woman who used the psychomanteum to make contact with her deceased husband.
    While in the booth, the woman saw images of people in the mirror, but they quickly disappeared when she tried to focus on them. After leaving the booth, she went home and had the distinct feeling that someone was with her. A night later, she had a strong sense that her father was in the room with her. The following evening she woke up in the middle of the night and also felt her father’s presence, and she could smell his aftershave lotion. She said, “I looked up, and my father was standing at the door of my bedroom. I had been lying on the bed but I stood up and walked over to him. I was within four steps of him. He looked just like my dad, but not sickly like he had been just before he died. He was a full figure, but he looked more fleshed out than when he died. He looked whole, like everything was wonderful.” Her father told her that he didn’t want her to worry, that he was fine. (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.138)
    Not all visions experienced in the booth are realistic. Some who use the psychomanteum have symbolic visions. These typically occur when a person goes into the booth without the goal of contacting a loved one. In these cases, it is as if the psychomanteum acts as a gateway to the subconscious. One woman reported seeing snakes in the mirror. Some of the snakes were rising up and hissing at her, but others were smiling and friendly looking. But no matter what type of snake showed itself to her in the mirror, she always felt fearful and she wanted to run away. Afterward, she said that she realized that the snakes represent trust because she has always been afraid that people will appear one way, then turn against her.
    Another woman went into the booth just to see what would happen, and she saw a huge peacock with brilliantly colored feathers. The peacock seemed to have a human face. Then she noticed that behind the peacock was what looked to be a sacrificial altar with a person laying on it who appeared to be dead. Suddenly, the woman found herself dancing with Jesus at the last supper! The two danced around the table until a woman lead her away. Since many of the symbols the woman saw had to do with religion and spirituality, Dr. Moody felt that they represented the role that religion unconsciously played in her life.
    Are the visual encounters experienced in the psychomanteum proof of life after death, or are they simply projections from our subconscious. As we’ve seen, the people who used the booth claim that the people they saw in the mirror looked as real as any person. They were convinced that they had actually made contact with their deceased loved ones. Dr. Moody himself said, “After conducting a number of mirror-gazing sessions in which apparitions were facilitated, I decided to try to have one myself. The result was a personal encounter that has totally changed my perspective on life.” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.22)
For Moody's experiment in the psychomanteum, he chose to focus on his maternal grandmother, but instead he made contact with his paternal grandmother. He said that, “In no way did she appear “ghostly” or transparent during our reunion. She seemed completely solid in every respect. She appeared no different from any other person …”
Moody said, that the experience left him “with an abiding certainty that what we call death is not the end of life.” (Moody, Perry, 1992, p.27-28)
    It may not be a simple question of whether or not people were actually reunited with their loved ones in the psychomanteum. Perhaps mirror gazing puts us in a state of consciousness where we are able to be in two worlds at once; a place where where there is no barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

Resources
https://www.near-death.com/psychology/experiences/psychomanteum.html
https://exemplore.com/paranormal/Spirit-Reflections-Ghosts-and-Haunted-Mirrors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychomanteum
http://www.everythingunderthemoon.net/spells/mirror-gazing-contact-spirit.htm
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804112355/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=eutm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0804112355
https://lonerwolf.com/scrying/
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/psychomanteum-mirror-gazing

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/column.php?id=257269

http://www.mirrorhistory.com
http://publicparapsychology.blogspot.com/2009/11/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Crystal-gazing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromanteion_of_Acheron

https://bigseance.com/tag/psychomanteum/
http://whitecrowbooks.com/carlawillsbrandon/entry/seeing_is_believing_my_personal_experience_with_the_spirit_world/

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The True Story That Inspired 'The Exorcist'

3/30/2019

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“Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.” ― Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
    In December 1973, an unlikely film became one of the highest-grossing movies of the holiday season. That film was The Exorcist. The movie was so scary that theatergoers threw up, fainted, and some even had to be taken away by ambulance. The Exorcist has been called the scariest film of all time. And it’s no wonder. In addition to horrifying, graphic scenes depicting a little girl’s possession and ultimate deliverance from a demon, the movie is littered with subliminal images and sounds.
    But The Exorcist is not simply a work of fiction. William Peter Blatty, the author of the novel and writer of the screenplay, was inspired by newspaper reports of an actual exorcism that took place in 1949. Unlike the movie, the child who was possessed was a 14 year old boy. And although there were no reports of his head spinning around or green projectile vomiting, the true story is every bit as chilling as the movie: even more chilling because it is real.
    Although the boy was given a pseudonym to protect his identity, today it is common knowledge where the boy lived. One famous paranormal show even did an episode in the ‘Exorcist House’. Since many of the accounts of the exorcism use the pseudonym ‘Robbie’, that is the name I will use in this article.
    The time is January 15, 1949, the place is Cottage City, Maryland. And so, it begins …
    There’s no record of who heard the sound first, the boy or his grandmother. But I would imagine it was the boy, Robbie. Grandma Wagner was old, and her hearing wasn’t all that good. One can just imagine the fourteen year old walking from room to room trying to locate the source of the sound. The drip-drip-drip dripping. Robbie put his ear to the wall at the foot of the staircase, but the sound wasn’t coming from there. Of course, he had checked the kitchen and bathroom sinks first, but both were bone dry. So he made his way upstairs and checked first his bedroom, then his parents bedroom but both were silent. At last, Robbie was rewarded with the satisfaction of knowing exactly which room the sound was coming from. It came from Grandma Wagner’s room.
“Grandma, come here for a minute,” Robbie called to his grandmother who was sitting in her favorite chair in the downstairs living room.
“Come where?” she called out. She was in the middle of doing a crossword puzzle, and was on the verge of coming up with a five letter word for the clue ‘Type of rum’ when the boy broke her concentration.
“Up here, in your bedroom. There’s something dripping, but I don’t know where it’s coming from,” he said.
    Grandma Wanger put down her puzzle and hurried up upstairs. When Robbie said that something was dripping, she expected to see a leak in the ceiling. But when she walked in her room, there was nothing to see. There was just the sound. A steady, incessant, persistent, loud dripping sound. It seemed to come from one corner of the room, but when she and Robbie went to investigate they discovered that it actually sounded as if it was coming from the opposite corner. Making their way to that corner, the sound seemed to have moved to the center of the ceiling.
    As Robbie and his grandmother looked up at the ceiling, the dripping got louder and louder. It sounded as if water was dripping from the roof and onto the ceiling above them. But then, as they stood there with their necks craned looking up, the dripping suddenly stopped. They looked at each other and simultaneously caught their breath on the intake. Grandma’s eyebrows furrowed in perplexity, and Robbie slowly aimed one ear toward the ceiling, listening intently.
    All was silent, but not for long. A new sound made its way to their ears, a quiet vibrating sound, and it was coming from the wall; specifically, it was coming from the painting of Jesus that hung above grandmother’s bed. The two stared at the painting and noticed that it was shaking slightly. Then, it suddenly began to bounce and rattle as if someone had struck the wall from behind. The picture wire seemed barely able to hold it in place. Finally, the movement stopped and the painting settled down with a loud bang.
    By the time Robbie’s parents got home from their night out, a new sound had emerged from Grandma Wagner’s room; the sound of scratching. It seemed to come from underneath the floorboards near the bed. The sound began at seven o'clock and lasted until midnight, and then all went silent. This same scratching sound continued for several days. Obviously, the family thought the sound must have come from mice, or rats. Perhaps they had built a nest under the floorboards, they thought. Whenever anyone stamped their feet over the sound, it got louder, so they assumed that something living must be under there. But why did the sound only occur from seven o’clock until midnight? An exterminator was called in. He drilled holes and put poison under the floorboards, but the scratching sounds continued. If anything, they became more distinct.
    Ten days later, the scratching sounds suddenly stopped. The family thought that the poison the exterminator put down must have worked, and that whatever rodent was responsible for making the scratching sounds was no longer a problem. But Robbie insisted that he could still hear scratching sounds. Try as they might no one else in the family could hear anything. Then three days later, another sound emerged. This one was different, and it was no longer heard in grandmother’s room -- it was in Robbie’s bedroom. It was the sound of footsteps; the sound of squeaking shoes walking back and forth along Robbie’s bed.
    Robbie was frightened. Remember, he was just a child. Any fourteen-year-old would be frightened of mysterious footsteps walking past their bed in the middle of the night, and the sound of scratching coming from underneath the floorboards.
    The mysterious, squeaking footsteps only occurred at night when the boy went to bed. Everyone in the family heard it, but they were unable to make sense of it. It was clearly NOT the sound of rodents under the floorboards, but what could possibly make this type of sound? The footsteps continued for six nights, and on the sixth night the scratching sounds were back again.
    As Robbie, his mother, and his grandmother lay on his bed listening to the footsteps and scratching sounds, a new sound was born. The three heard coming toward them what sounded like marching feet and the beat of drums. The sound got closer and closer to the bed until it was right next to it, and then it made its way up and down the length of the bed. The sound continued on until the mother said, “Is that you Aunt Tillie?” Her aunt had died two weeks after the sounds first started in the home. Aunt Tillie had been a firm believer in spiritualism and often used the Ouija board. She even taught Robbie how to use it, and the two of them would often try to contact spirits through the board.
    Robbie’s mom continued asking questions out loud, but there was no verbal reply. She then said, “If you are Tillie, knock three times.” Robbie, his mother, and his grandmother suddenly felt waves of air blow across them as they lay on the bed, followed by three distinct knocks coming from the floor. “If you are Tillie,” his mother continued, “tell me positively by knocking four times.” Four loud knocks came from the floor. These were followed by what they later described as the sound of “claw scratchings” on the mattress that the three were laying on.
    The sound of claw scratching continued over the next few nights. The activity only occurred at night. The family decided that they would try ignoring the sounds instead of asking questions about who was responsible for them. But this backfired. Whenever they ignored the claw scratching sounds the entire bed would begin to shake. One time, the coverlet of the bed was pulled out from the mattress and the corners stood up above the surface of the bed in a curled form.
    By the end of February, the strange sounds didn’t shows signs of stopping. But things were about to go from bad to worse. Pieces of heavy furniture would slide across the floor, and one time a chair flipped over when no one was near it. A few minutes later, as the family members were discussing the flipped chair, they watched in amazement as a vase slowly rose up off of a table. Soon after, a bottle of holy water that was put next to Robbies bed smashed to the ground by itself. Other holy objects owned by the family were hurled across the room or thrown onto the floor by unseen hands. The family consulted physicians and psychiatrists, but no one was able to come up with a logical explanation for the activity that swirled around the boy, making his life a living hell.
    On February 17, the family sought the help of their Lutheran clergyman, Reverend Luther Miles Schultze. The reverend suggested that Robbie spend the night in his home so he could observe the boy to see if any activity happened outside of the home. Robbie slept on a twin bed in the guest room, and the minister sat up in a chair nearby. He reported that when the lights were turned out, scratching sounds could be heard coming from the walls, and vibrations were heard coming from the bed the boy lay on. He also observed Robbie twisting and turning in bed, and uttering things in a language he couldn’t understand. Unable to sleep, Robbie got out of bed at one point and sat in a chair near the minister. Suddenly, the heavy chair tipped over by itself dumping Robbie onto the floor. At the same time, a pile of blankets that had been on the bed inexplicably began moving around the room. This bizarre display of activity convinced the reverend that there was an evil presence to blame. The next day, reverend Schultze suggested the family seek the help of the Catholic church, pointing out that the Lutheran religion did not have a rite of exorcism to handle demonic possession.
    Robbie’s parents made an appointment with Father E. Albert Hughes at neary St. James church. After listening to the parents describe the type of activity centered on the boy, the priest said that he would like to spend the night in the family home to observe him. That night, the priest witnessed the same type of phenomenon that the Lutheran reverend had; strange scratching sounds emanating from the walls, the boy screaming and spitting, and objects moving of their own accord. He also heard the boy speaking Latin, a language that Robbie was unfamiliar with.
    The priest thought that the case was one the church might take on, and the archbishop of Washington, D.C., granted permission for the exorcism to take place. Between February 28 and March 2, the rite of exorcism was performed on Robbie at Georgetown Hospital, a Jesuit run institution. The rite of exorcism is often performed in hospitals because a trained medical professional must be on hand at all times. But the exorcism ended violently when Robbie broke off a piece of a spring from the mattress he was strapped to and slashed Father Hughes from his shoulder all the way down to his wrist. The injury was serious enough to require stitches, and the priest got blood poisoning. The exorcism was called off, and Robbie was returned home to be with his family.
    A few mornings later, Robbie was at home getting dressed in the bathroom. Suddenly his parents heard the boy screaming and they rushed in to see what was wrong. Robbie was staring at himself in the mirror. On the skin of his ribcage were scratched the letters L-O-U-I-S. Although Robbie’s parents were alarmed at the strange writing on their son’s skin, his mother thought, ‘Maybe this is a sign. Maybe we need to go to stay with relatives in St. Louis. Maybe if we get Robbie out of this house, all of this will stop.’ So that’s just what they did. They took Robbie to visit relatives in Bel-Nor, a northwestern suburban city of of St. Louis, Missouri.
    Unfortunately, the same type of activity followed the boy to Bel-Nor and the relatives witnessed the same strange phenomenon. But one relative had an idea. She was attending St. Louis University, and she said that she would go to the head of St. Xavier Church, the church associated with the university, and seek advice of the pastor there.
    One of the women’s professors was Reverend Raymond Bishop. Bishop spoke to Revered William Bowdern, and on March 11 both vicars visited Robbie in his relative’s home. They noticed the boy’s absolute revulsion to anything sacred. They also witnessed his bed shaking, objects flying across the room, and Robbie speaking in a deep, strange sounding voice.
    Father Bowdern read the prayer of St. Francis, blessed Robbie with a relic and placed a crucifix under his pillow. After Father Bowdern and Father Bishop left the home, a loud noise was heard in Robbie’s room. The five relatives who were at home at the time found that a large bookcase had moved from its usual place, a bench had been overturned, and the crucifix that had been under Robbie’s mattress had moved to the edge of the bed. But most alarming was the sight of Robbie’s mattress shaking violently as the boy lay on it.
    Reverend Bowdern asked permission of the archbishop for an exorcism to be performed on the boy. The archbishop agreed with three conditions: Reverend Bowdern would be in charge of performing the exorcism; he was to keep a detailed diary of the deliverance; and he was not to disclose the location of the ritual.
    Bowdern was shocked! He was an elderly priest, and he had never performed an exorcism before. At the same time, he was a wise, down-to-earth man, and he was a veteran of World War II. He was a very religious man, and a very tough man, so the Cardinal thought that Bowdern would be perfect for the job.
    An exorcism is not simply a series of prayers that are read through once and the person is ‘cured’ of their demon. It is a long, laborious process, and not all exorcisms are successful the first time. It may take days, weeks, or even months of constant prayer. An exorcism is actually a confrontation, not simply a rite. Once it has begun it has to finish no matter how long it takes. If the exorcist stops the rite, then the demon will pursue him which is why finishing the process is so essential.[1] This is one reason why Robbie’s case is so unusual. The first exorcism that was started in late February was abandoned. But this time, things would be different.
    On Wednesday, March 16, 1949 Father Bowdern, Father Bishop, and a young seminarian named Walter Halloran arrived at the home in Bel-Nor at 10:15 PM. One can only imagine what must have gone through their minds as they exited their car on that cold night and looked up at the neat brick house with the shutters on Roanoke Drive. Since he had never participated in an exorcism before, Father Bowdern had been studying up on the subject, so I’m sure he had a lot to tell the other priests on the drive over to the house. But now that they had arrived, it was all business. Shortly after they entered the home, Bowdern began the prayers of the rite of exorcism.
    During the exorcism, the priests witnessed scratches appearing on the boy’s body, and the mattress shaking and rocking violently. In a radio interview with Father Halloran from 2000, he said that the boy’s mattress actually levitated. “The bed did levitate,” he said. “I read in an article somewhere that someone said that it moved just because it had wheels on it. Well, I was leaning on the bed and praying, and the bed came up off the floor and then went down. You know, it came up about 8 to 10 inches, then went back down.”
    During the entire ordeal, Robbie was unaware of what was happening to him. Father Halloran said, “He had no recollection, or no relatable experience at all. I’d ask him questions and he’d have a very blank look. He wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”
    Father Halloran said that a bottle of holy water that had been on a dresser flew across the room. “I was just kneeling there, saying the prayers in the rite of exorcism and all of a sudden this bottle flew past my head. It came from a dresser on the other side of the room. There was no one near it.”
    Letters began to appear scratched on the boy’s body. Father Halloran confirmed that one spelled out the word ‘hell’. “For the most part,” he said, “the scratches were long striations. Kind of like the reaction of being stuck with a thorn. They raised up and formed a welt.”
    Even though he was just a young seminarian at the time, Halloran wasn’t frightened. “I wasn’t frightened, I was mostly surprised. I looked to see if there was anything else that would go flying by my head, but there wasn’t. The only thing that had been on the dresser was the bottle of holy water.”
    Although Halloran wasn’t afraid during the exorcism, the one thing that came closest to scaring him during this time didn’t take place during the actual rite. He said, “One time we went out in the country just to get the little guy away from the hospital, just to get some fresh air. We were walking along a bluff looking over the Missouri River. And he suddenly took off and started running, which surprised me, and I called his name and nothing happened. So, I ran after him, grabbed him and we were both looking over the edge of the bluff, of the cliff, when I got to him. So, that was scary.”
    In the movie, “The Exorcist” the child could be heard speaking in a deep, demonic sounding voice. Father Halloran explained that this was not the case with Robbie. “The only thing that I noticed is that sometimes the little boy would try to speak in a deep voice. It would be evident to anyone that it wasn’t really a deep voice. It was a little child’s attempt at trying to imitate one. In other words, it wasn’t the voice of the evil spirit or anything like that, it was his voice.”
    During the exorcism, Robbie cursed violently at the priests and he spit at them. Apparently, he spit directly into their eyes even though his eyes were closed. Like the first exorcism, this one also caused injury. While he was thrashing about on the bed, Robbie broke Halloran’s nose; but the priest dismissed the injury as nothing more than an accident. “It was just a mistake,” he said. “His arm was flailing around and I just didn’t duck at the right time!”
    After three days, the exorcism was moved from the relative's home to fourth floor of the psychiatric wing of the Alexian Brothers Hospital. The change of location occurred because of the violent behavior that Robbie was exhibiting during the exorcism.
    When asked what type of conversations went on with the boy, or with the demon, during the exorcism, Halloran said, “Sometimes he would be answering questions that appear in the prayer of exorcism. Questions like, ‘What is your name?’ or ‘What time will you depart from this person?’ And he’d make answers like, ‘Never’ or he’d just laugh. One time he said, ‘I’ll never leave until the word is said.’ That was about the only direct answer or statement that was given. Many times it would just be laughter on his part. My reaction was that I was hearing what the evil spirit wanted him to say. There wasn’t any change of voice or anything like that.”
    The notes from the 1949 exorcism that were written by Father Bishop were recently published in a book by Christopher Saint Booth called, “The Exorcist Diary”. In his notes, Father Bishop wrote, “The most distinct markings on the body were the picture of the devil on R's right leg and the word "HELL" imprinted on R's chest in such a way that R could look down upon his chest and read the letters plainly. The imprint of the devil and "HELL" appeared at the repetition of the "Praecipio" demanding the evil spirit to identify himself. His arms were held above his head and seemed to be webbed, giving the hideous appearance of a bat. All the room observers agreed that the above two signs could not be mistaken for other designs."
    During the exorcism, Robbie’s personality changed rapidly back and forth between being ‘demonic’ to being that of a little boy. “The changes would be immediate,” Halloran explained. “I’d be there talking to him and all of a sudden he’d go into a kind of a seizure, thrashing about, that type of thing; and then just as rapidly he would change from that. Most of the time when he changed from acting in a possessed manner, he was kind of mystified because he had no recollection, no recall of what had happened just previously.”
    During the exorcism, Robbie’s behavior became increasingly violent. This included spitting at the priests and family members who were present, shouting and laughing fiendishly, using foul language, urinating all over the bed, and singing phrases from songs he didn’t seem to know before he was possessed such as, ‘Old Man River’, ‘Blue Danube’ and, ironically, the church hymn ‘Old Rugged Cross’.
    On April 11, Father Bishop’s diary entry reads, 'At midnight, the Fathers planned to give Robbie Holy Communion, but Satan would have no part of it. Even while the institution of the Blessed Sacrament was explained to Robbie his body was badly scratched and branded. The word 'HELLO' was printed on his chest and thigh. Upon the explanation of the Apostles becoming Priests and receiving Our Lord at the Last Supper, scratches appeared from Robbie’s hips to his ankles in heavy lines, seemingly as a protest to Holy Communion.'
    The rite of exorcism was performed on Robbie thirty times over a two month period. On Monday, April 18, the day after Easter Sunday, Robbie woke up with severe seizures. He cursed and spit at the priests, and he said that Satan would always be with him. At 10:45 PM, Father Bowdern called upon Saint Michael and asked that he expel the demon from Robbie’s body. Seven minutes later, it was as if Robbie awoke from a deep trance. He looked around the room, looked at the priests and said, “He’s gone”. Unlike the movie, no priests died or were harmed in any way during the second exorcism.
    There are some reports that a loud sound was heard throughout the floors of the hospital when the demon left. Some said it sounded like a thunderclap. Others said it sounded like a shotgun. Sound or no sound, the hospital room where the exorcism had taken place was permanently sealed off, and the hospital was eventually torn down to make way for a new medical facility.
    There is little information about Robbie’s life immediately after the exorcism, but because the Jesuits and Alexians who were close to the case kept track of him, we do know that he went on to lead a normal life. He married around 1970, had children, and never experienced anything like possession again.
    One has to ask the question, was Robbie actually possessed? There are certain signs that priests look for in order to determine whether or not someone is truly possessed. These include speaking fluently in a language that is unknown to the person, and demonstrating inappropriate strength. Another sign of possession is the afflicted person’s ability to know things they should have no knowledge of, such as the priest’s or other professional’s personal information. Robbie exhibited all of these things and more: Furniture moved across the room, his bed levitated, scratches appeared on his body, a vase levitated, the blanket on his bed stood up off the bed, and the bottle of holy water flew through the air.
    However, poltergeist cases often show the same, bizarre type of activity such as strange sounds and the levitation and transmigration of objects. And poltergeist activity often centers around adolescents.
    Is it possible that 14-year-old Robbie had some sort of a mental disorder, which was in some way responsible for poltergeist-like activity? It’s highly doubtful. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: “Only after a thorough examination including medical, psychological, and psychiatric testing might the person be referred to the exorcist for a final determination regarding demonic possession.” (1) In addition, there are never sudden cures for mental illness. Although it took two months, Robbie’s ‘cure’ was sudden and permanent.
    If you haven’t seen it in a while, take another look at “The Exorcist”. You may think that you’re immune to foul language and gory special effects, but I think you’ll be in for a rude awakening. “The Exorcist” works on our most primal fear--the fear of the unknown. And in the case of demonic possession, it is a fear that something totally foreign, something completely evil and out of our control can take us over and ultimately destroy us body and soul.
Resources

http://www.strangemag.com/exorcistpage1.html (Excellent and thoroughly researched article on the exorcism of ‘Robbie’)
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/TrueStoryExorcist.htm (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
https://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/hell-of-a-house/Content?oid=2491650 (Info about the house in St. Louis where the exorcism took place)
https://www.denverpost.com/2016/05/26/the-true-story-behind-the-exorcist-photos/ (Article with photos of the houses were the exorcism of ‘Robbie’ took place)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_in_the_Catholic_Church (Information on the Catholic church’s rite of exorcism)
https://www.slu.edu/universitas/archive/2014/exorcism.php (An in-depth look at Saint Louis University's part in the 1949 exorcism that inspired the novel and film “The Exorcist”)
https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13017185/mr-satans-neighborhood (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
http://www.strangemag.com/exorcistpage1.html (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/exorcist-leave-possessed-1973-review-article-1.2451412 (1973 review of “The Exorcist” movie)
https://www.washingtonian.com/2015/10/19/think-the-exorcist-was-just-a-horror-movie-author-william-peter-blatty-says-youre-wrong/ (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_of_Robbie_Doe (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
https://www.amazon.com/Exorcist-Diary-True-Story/dp/0692536698 (Book review)
https://www.amazon.com/Rite-Making-Modern-Exorcist/dp/0385522711/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=4Q1C9K7RZMD3HQBS25P9 (Book on modern day exorcisms, and the shortage of exorcists in the Catholic church)
http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacramentals/sacramentals-blessings/exorcism.cfm (United States Conference of Bishops - Facts about exorcism)
https://www.conservapedia.com/Robbie_Mannheim (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
allthatsinteresting.com/roland-doe-the-exorcist-true-story (Info about the 1949 exorcism that inspired the book and film ‘The Exorcist’)
http://twocrowsparanormal.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-exorcist-diary-reviewed.html?m=1 (Review of “The Exorcist Diary”; original diary entries from the 1949 exorcism)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/entries/b3dcaf69-3dae-3d90-8311-05460c60d3ae (BBC interview regarding radio drama adaptation of the Exorcist novel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWXs2RTg0sw (BBC ‘The Exorcist’ Radio drama 2014)
https://www.theninthconfiguration.com (William Peter Blatty fan-site)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vC0LQMqy8Y (1984 runion of the case of “The Exorcist”)
https://www.metv.com/stories/do-you-remember-the-exorcist-phenomenon-in-1973 (Short article about the public reaction to the film)
http://mentalfloss.com/article/87245/terrifying-subliminal-image-hidden-exorcist (Subliminal images in “The Exorcist” film)
http://captainhowdy.com/everything-exorcist/the-exorcist/ (“The Exorcist” film fan-site)
https://screenrant.com/the-exorcist-making-of-behind-scenes-hidden-trivia/ (Subliminal images in “The Exorcist” film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=0&v=-a97uHJ08zQ (“The Exorcist” movie trailer that was banned because it was too frightening)
https://knowledgenuts.com/2014/01/31/how-priests-tell-between-demonic-possession-and-mental-illness/ (“How Priests Tell Between Demonic Possession and Mental Illness”)

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Ghost Children

2/1/2019

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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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