OCCULT VIEW

There is an idea that ghosts haunt cemeteries or desolate, abandoned ruins. Why would a ghost want to wander such areas? Ghosts would likely haunt the location of where they died or experienced a tragedy and not where they were buried. I’d guess hospitals are likely the most haunted of places but you won’t find ghost hunters getting permission to wander hospital corridors with EMF meters.

If possible ghost enthusiasts should check out places where people die regularly. I did this recently. I went to a high-rise condominium that was built in the 1960s. Over the decades this building had a lot of older people living in it…and dying in it. Dozens of people have passed away at this place. However, the tricky part is trying to investigate the premises without drawing attention to one’s self. Who wants to get arrested for trespassing/ghost hunting?

Fortunately the hallways of this old condominium building are mostly empty. I wandered around discreetly taking pictures of the empty corridors. However, the longer I lingered the greater the chance someone would pay attention to what I was doing. My level of anxiety eventually prodded me to the sensible decision not linger for long.

Afterwards is the fun part, checking out the photos. Would anything anomalous appear in them? In one corridor I got orbs. Some consider orbs as potential manifestations of ghostly energies. Usually they’re just dust near the camera’s lens reflecting the camera’s flash. An orb has to have something special to be considered even remotely paranormal.

In this corridor I caught what appeared to be an orb in motion (pictured above). I find these intriguing. Usually an orb-in-motion is a raindrop or a bug caught in the camera’s flash. However there was no rain or insects in this hallway. Could it be dust in motion? Can’t rule that out. There is only one way to know for sure and that is to take pictures with a 3D camera. If an orb or apparition appears in 3D, then we have something. Otherwise we are wasting time. It is time for ghost enthusiasts (myself included) to put away the digital camera and invest in a digital 3D camera.

A decade ago I became casually involved with ghost hunting. I didn’t intend to get involved with ghost enthusiasts and their investigations. However, I had a friend Jamie who introduced me to the ghost hunting subculture, and I was intrigued.

Back then (not really long ago) ghost hunting was a true subculture few people heard about. That is hard to believe today. However not long ago the concept simply didn’t register on the public’s radar. If I talked about the topic, nobody heard of it. Blank stares. “What is ghost hunting?”

It was an interesting and exciting time. We felt we were entering a truly unknown world. Imagine doing something new, possibly groundbreaking. When I discussed our activities with non-enthusiasts, they thought I was…well, goofy. That was part of the thrill of an emerging subculture. We were doing something special yet it was not recognized by those outside the culture.

Today the story has changed. The media has totally absorbed this subculture, embraced it and commercialized it. Ghost hunting has gone mainstream. It is amazing how fast popular culture will consume a good idea. Ghost hunting makes for a cheap reality TV show. There are multiple successful cable TV reality series about ghost hunting. The Paranormal Activity movie franchise is making hundreds of millions of dollars. Once the wider world embraces a subculture, the subculture gets compromised. Mainstream acceptance pretty much extinguishes a subculture.

The original ghost hunters I’ve known have long lost interest in the pursuit. TV ghost hunting shows created an illusion of “expert” which does not exist. I can tell you for certain there are no experts. Nobody understands this phenomena; it is a true mystery.

Many ghost enthusiasts have moved on to newer things, as I have. My blog is one example of this new direction. This subculture still thrives but the wider culture has yet to recognize this new direction. We are still are on the cutting edge, but we now travel on a new blade.

Jamie had a ghost theme website on Geocities. Geocities, owned by Yahoo, was a hugely popular place for people to create websites long before WordPress or Facebook. Unfortunately Yahoo ended Geocities and all these sites created by the passion of thousands of individuals just simply vanished. The early history of the Internet, its Stone Age, was extinguished.  Do Internet fossils exist?

It seemed all the content from the early days of the Internet had been lost. However, there is a site named Oocities

They saved many of these sites before they vanished forever.  Digital fossils still exist!

The Oocities statement: “In October 2009 we archived many of the unique pages on GeoCities before they were taken down. Geocities started in 1994 and was one of the most important websites in the world until it was closed on 27.10.2009. Our aim is to save those pages which are worthy and unique scientific sources or are of great public interest as well as those, which are historically interesting or just representing the 90?s website culture and style.”

This is a great resource for older content, and I am glad Jamie’s ghost website had been included. Unfortunately not all his content has been brought across, but most has. Here is a reference to the early days of ghost hunting before it became popularized:

Jamie’s Chicago Gangsterland Ghost Page

Jamie’s site has a lot of information about ghosts. I’m glad it has been preserved.

I usually don’t repeat hearsay ghost stories in my blog; I don’t trust them. When someone tells me a first-hand, personal account I’ll take it seriously as a genuine experience. The experience was real, albeit explainable in different ways and not necessarily a ghost.

However, today I’ll repeat a hearsay ghost story, acknowledging it as hearsay. The individual who told me this story said his grandmother told it to him. I’m sure, but without the story told to me directly from his now deceased grandmother, how to judge her story? Maybe grandmother was hammered on rum or floating on weed at the time. Or it could have happened exactly as told.

The individual who related this story was born in Puerto Rico, where the incident occurred. His grandparents lived in a village on a small plot of land. He said his grandmother was a pretty but wild, fearless and fiery woman.  One day after a heated argument, his grandmother threatened to shoot his grandfather with her gun. His grandfather dared her and barely managed to shove the firearm out of the way as she fired at him, missing.  That taught grandpa a lesson…don’t piss off grandma!

One day the grandmother’s brother died.  It was a sad funeral, as they typically are.  But soon afterwards curious events began to take place at the grandmother’s home. There were strange sounds late at night, like someone was rattling the pots, pans and dishes in the kitchen. Objects seemed to have been moved at night. She would get up from bed thinking someone sneaked into her home and moved things around to annoy her, but she never found anyone.

After a week of this nightly disturbance, she was determined to catch the culprit. When it started again, she grabbed her gun and ran into the kitchen, then the living room, and then outside trying to catch whoever was responsible. “Where are you!” she cried out. Then she noticed someone hiding in a bush nearby. She pointed her pistol at the dark shape in the bush demanding to see them.

Out stepped her dead brother. Shocked, she tried to shoot this person, but the trigger wouldn’t move and the gun literally flew from her hand and dropped to the ground. Startled by the sight of her dead brother, she asked him what he wanted.

He said, “You must go to mass Sunday. And, take dollar bills, five of them, and give each dollar to a different person in need. If you do this I will leave you alone.” The spirit then vanished before her eyes.

Next Sunday she went to mass, and gave dollar bills to five needy people. Thereafter, there were no more disturbances.  The ghost of her brother never bothered her again.

I like this story, but it has the feel of an urban legend. I supposed it’s the ghost talking that makes me suspicious. And a ghost with a moral message! Yet, it could also be true as far as hearsay goes. Perhaps the grandmother did not hear a literal voice, but just had a “knowing”.

The actual story was probably more nuanced then what was related third-party. Which is why, when I ask about personal ghostly experiences, I ask for details. Secrets of the spirit world are often found in small seemingly unimportant details. I treat a personal ghost story like a reporter.

One of the most common types of paranormal events is reputed to be the appearance of a crisis apparition.  The crisis apparition is said to be the spirit of the injured, dying, or recently dead who appear to the living shortly around the time of the crisis.  It seems there is a brief window of opportunity for a spirit to visit one final time before passing into the “other world”.

I had written before about how my father, as a young man newly engaged for marriage, saw an apparition of his mother-in-law in a hallway.  Later he discovered that his mother-in-law had died around the time of his vision, and he had no knowledge of this event.  Just a coincidence?  We may have dreams or imagine our loved ones often, and if this coincides with an accident or death, we’d easily imagine it a premonition or spiritual visitation.

Then again, it may not always be only coincidence.  I have a story of a crisis apparition from a friend of mine.  They have a family story they repeat often.  It takes place in the early 1970s.  At the time my friend was around twelve years old, and his family had gone on their annual summer vacation at Castle Rock Lake in Wisconsin.  His parents and siblings all went camping together.

One night while camping my friend’s mother awoke in great distress.  She had a vivid and startling dream of her own mother.  Grandma hadn’t gone camping with them; she was back at home in their two-flat apartment in Chicago.  My friend’s mother said something terrible had happened to grandma, and grandma visited her.  Mother wanted to leave and go back home immediately.  The family told her everything was fine; she just had a dream.

To humor mom, they sought out a phone to call home.  Back there were no cell phones.  They called but nobody answered.  Yet that really didn’t mean anything.  But mother insisted they leave camping early and return home now.  So they all packed up and left.  When they eventually got to their home, they discovered grandmother in her flat upstairs, dead in her bed.  My friend recalls, as a boy, how everyone was shocked at the death of grandma and didn’t understand how mother somehow knew.

In this situation, the vision/premonition prompted a change in behavior from the norm, and the premonition proved sadly accurate.

The crisis apparition seems to occur when there is a separation, as if the injured or dying wish to communicate with their loved ones.  This startling phenomenon does not seem to happen when loved ones are together, aware of the dying process and are gathered around.  Perhaps when a family is present the need to visit one last time is not felt necessary.

It is curious some people appear to be more sensitive to these things then most.  Perhaps many of us are mentally closed off to this stuff, and even if the deceased tried to appear we’d not realize their presence.  The crisis apparition may be quite common, except few are open enough to see.

Another theory holds this is in fact telepathic communication and not a visitation of a ghost.  It seems sometimes we can perceive if someone we have a connection with is in distress. It doesn’t have to be something truly traumatic.  How often has someone suddenly had a feeling of anxiety, only to discover later around the same time something stressful happened to a family member or a friend?

Again, it appears some people are sensitive to this, and others aren’t.  Can we train ourselves for sensitivity?  I’d say yes, if we wished it.  Opening our intuition is something we can all do, but many people can’t be bothered.  It is a choice.

Pareidolia is when we see images we recognize in random shapes that seemed to look familiar. For instance, we may see the image of faces or animals in clouds. We tend to make sense of random patterns when they fit something we recognize.

I reviewed a photograph I took over a decade ago (above). This was before I had a digital camera, and for this photo I used a film camera.  The photo was taken at an old pub, and I thought the mural on the wall was interesting so I took a picture. There was nobody in this area at the time. When I later developed the film, this picture had a curious smoky image in it.

Studying the picture something became apparent to me; there was a face in the center of the vapor. In the photo above I drew an outline over where the features seem to be so it will be more visible. What struck me was that the face’s features were fairly symmetrical. The face even seemed to have an expression on it with its closed eyes, as if drifting in a slumber, half conscious between the world of life and death. Tendrils of smoke emerged for this central image with their own strange shapes.

Is this a photo of a real ghost or merely pareidolia at work? Certainly possible. Yet, pareidolia usually involves a caricature, something vaguely resembling what we imagine. When showed this photo to others, their reaction was either they couldn’t detect the face or OMG.

I would return to this pub hoping to get another picture of whatever possibly haunted the place. I never got another one, but I did get orbs, which don’t mean much either but are still interesting. Below is a photo of an orb that hovered…drifting. I wonder if it the orb could be the same smoky ghost except from a distance?

Over a decade ago I was told this story by a lady who lived in an apartment in Villa Park, Illinois.  When she told me this story, it reminded me of an urban legend she may have overheard.  However, she said this was her own personal experience and spoke of it matter-of-factly.

Rebecca said after she moved into her apartment, she gradually became aware of something strange in her unit.  She wasn’t immediately aware of anything unusual, but over time she began to hear strange sounds.  As she sat in her living room she would hear footsteps in the hallway between her living room and bedroom.  She would get up and look to see what it was but the hallway was empty.  She was also unnerved to hear footsteps in the hallway when she was in her bedroom.

Another sound she sometimes heard was a sigh.  When all was quiet, she might hear someone sigh as if they were tired or perhaps sad.  She couldn’t make out the location of the sighing.  This happened often enough that she came to accept her apartment was haunted.  She was not afraid of these noises.  If anything, there was a feeling of sadness accompanying these events, nothing scary.

Rebecca said she became curious about who this unseen visitor might be and made inquires about the former occupants of her apartment.  She heard a story that a gay man had lived in this unit.  This person was supposedly murdered, the story being it was the result of a hate crime, and the killer was never found.  Rebecca felt this event was the motivation behind the ghost.

Rebecca said she eventually decided to speak to the ghost in her apartment.  She said she spoke aloud, talking to him as if he were in the room.  She expressed her sympathy for what happened to him.  She told the ghost she heard the story of his death.  She wished there was something she could do to make things right.  She felt bad for him and wished him peace.  He was welcome to stay if he wanted.

Perhaps an acknowledgement of his situation and an expression of concern was what the spirit wanted.  After she spoke, she never heard footsteps or the sighs again.  The ghost had departed.

Her story shared many elements of a typical ghost story: the anomalies, the back-story, and the final departure of the spirit.  It seems communicating with spirits is sometimes enough to awaken and free them, if they are stuck in-between worlds.  Rebecca speculated the ghost simply wanted the crime committed against him to be recognized by someone, even if only her.

Recently I have tried to verify the story.  Was someone who lived in this apartment ever murdered?  If I could discover the back-story was accurate, it would add support to Rebecca’s tale.  However, since the date of this event is unknown, and I have no name to research, I have run into a dead end.

I’d like to pass on another story of the paranormal.  If these are actually paranormal events or tricks of the mind, I can’t say.  But the experiences are true.  Martha is an older lady who has been widowed for over a decade.  After people got to talk about strange stories Martha told us her own experience.

Martha’s husband was Michael.  They were married for their entire lives.  Martha said her husband, when he was tired, often took a nap.  Michael would not undress.  He’d take off his shoes and lie on the bed fully dressed.  He would just lie down on his back with his hands over his midsection and fall asleep for 45 minutes or an hour. 

A decade ago Michael became ill.  He had a stroke, and afterwards their life changed as she took care of him.  He died around a year after his stroke.  During a long marriage, the final year was difficult, but it was the only really bad year in a long life together.

Martha recalled one night a few months after her husband’s death.  She was asleep still lying on her side of the bed.  A bright light, which filtered through her eyelids, awakened her.  She looked at the source of the light.  She was astonished to see her deceased husband Michael in bed next to her!

He was surrounded by a bright glow, which lit the formerly dark room.  He was lying down on his back, with his hands clasped over him.  He was fully clothed, but did not have his shoes on.  He was asleep and did stir or make any sound.  His eyes were closed as he lay on his side of the bed. 

Martha was now fully awake.  This was not a dream.  She looked at Michael for what seemed like a couple of minutes.  She even remembered the clothing he was wearing (his plaid shirt).  He did not look sickly like he did before he died, but appeared as when he was healthy.

Finally she reached over to touch him, and when she tried, he disappeared and the light faded away.  She was back alone in her darkened bedroom.  It was almost dawn and she got up amazed at what she had witnessed.  She was wide-awake.  A glowing ghost in bed next to me would have sent me screaming.  But she felt peaceful and there was no fear whatsoever. 

Martha never had any experience like this before or afterwards. She thought her husband visited her so she’d know he was at peace.  Everything was ok. I offered the idea the ghost of Michael may have visited her many times in bed, and that night was the only time she became aware of him lying beside her.  Who can say?

I found the bright glow that initially awakened her interesting.  I suspect what she saw was not physical light (photons), but astral light.  Astral light often accompanies encounters with the otherworldly.  Religious visions and apparitions, UFOs and their “aliens”, and other spirit visitations are often accompanied by astral light.  It is a light not seen with the optic nerve but seen within the soul.  Astral light is the doorway to communication with the spirit world.  It is the same light (or senses) which allows people experiencing the out-of-body phenomena to clearly see even in absolute darkness.  It seems our physical senses are matched by similar spiritual senses.

I’ve previously written about Joan.  Her husband died three months ago.  Earlier this month she had a strange occurrence in her home.  A mop was hurled down the stairway while nobody was upstairs at the time.  This was witnessed by her daughter and grandchildren.  Was it poltergeist type activity?

I chatted with Joan again.  Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and she was not feeling good, a bit depressed.  The reason was her husband used to really enjoy celebrating Valentine’s Day.  He would buy a cake and give Valentine cards to everyone: Joan and all their child and grandchildren.  Yesterday Valentine’s Day was empty without her deceased husband Bob around.

Joan talked with her daughter on Valentine’s Day, and her daughter Kathy told her a strange story that happened earlier Valentine’s Day.  Kathy worked at a nursing home, or as people like to call it, assisted living.  This particular nursing home had a psych ward.

Normally Kathy has a happy-go-lucky, bubbly personality and was always smiling.  But Kathy was feeling depressed this special day because of the loss of her father.  She was unsmiling and lost in her thoughts.

In the psych ward was an older man close to the age of her dad.  This guy would mumble incoherently to himself, but nobody could ever understand what he was trying to say.  The poor guy was mostly in his own world.  This old man came up to Kathy and tried to speak to her, and suddenly he became lucid and spoke understandably.

“Kathy!” he called out to her.  Kathy never heard him mention her name before; she didn’t know he even knew it. 

He said, “What’s wrong?  Why aren’t you smiling?  I know why you’re not smiling.  It’s because your dad died, isn’t it?  Your dad doesn’t want to see you frown.  He’s ok and he wants you to know that.  He wants you to be happy and see you smiling again.”

After he spoke he started to mumble again and became uncommunicative.  Kathy was taken aback by what the old man said from out of nowhere.  How odd, she thought to herself.  Perhaps he overheard conversations in the past about Kathy’s personal life.  Or was this man, suffering from dementia, used to relay a message from beyond?  Could this have been a message from her dead father, as a Valentine card on Valentine’s Day?

Joan was wondering if she would receive a message from her deceased husband.  Her husband died three months ago.  In the past we discussed stories about people who encountered their loved ones shortly after the death, as ghosts or just in a dream.  She said she would love to see her husband again, if only as a dream.  So far she had nothing.  Maybe she was not ready yet, she supposed.

Not long ago we talked again and she said she had a story to tell me.  First she talked about her relationship with her husband.  Her husband had been retired, but she was younger and still worked.  After returning home from work, her husband would come down from their bedroom upstairs to greet her.  They would have a meal, and then return upstairs, usually to watch television together.  They really didn’t spend much time in the living room.

Then her husband then had a stroke.  Suddenly their daily routine changed.  Now Joan was in a hurry to get home to look after her husband.  A family member had moved in with her to look after her husband during the day.  Her husband had to stay upstairs most of the time, as his mobility was limited.  When Joan came home, she would first go upstairs to greet her husband and talk with him for a little bit.

His capacity to understand became diminished.  Sometimes the bedroom was a mess because he tossed stuff around.  She would patiently put things back in their place.  She would talk with him, and he’d mumble back but she didn’t know the extent he understood her.  After the chat, she would go downstairs, prepare a meal and bring it up to their bedroom and they would watch TV together.  If she came home and didn’t go upstairs right away, her husband would go to the stairway and shout downstairs, ”Joan, Joan!”  He wanted to see his wife, but he couldn’t handle the stairway.

A little over a year after Joan’s husband had a stroke, he died of heart failure.  It was a complete surprise and shock to Joan.  She had a large family and many friends, so she had a lot of support.  Now she had no reason to worry about returning home after work.  There was no hurry to go upstairs.  Yet she said she still slept on her side of the bed.  She had trouble sleeping.  She said she hadn’t had a restful night since her husband died.

Joan left work early as the Chicago blizzard of February 2 began.  Joan’s daughter came to visit to help Joan setup the new computer she bought.  Joan’s daughter brought her children along.  Joan, her daughter and grandchildren were all gathered around her computer in the living room for several hours.  Joan never bothered to go upstairs to her bedroom after getting home.

After perhaps 3 hours, there was a noise behind them, in the stairway, which led up to the second floor.  They all looked around at the entrance to the stairway, and a mop from upstairs had been hurled down the stairway.  It lay at the bottom of the entrance.  One of the young grandchildren asked, “Is grandpa upstairs?”  They all just stared at the mop at the floor, and Joan said to her grandchild, “Don’t worry, grandpa is just saying hello.”  Nobody was afraid.

There was nobody else in the house, all the children were in the living room, and the mop was upstairs in the hallway away from the stairway.  Even if the mop toppled, it could not have been thrown down the stairway.

Joan went upstairs and spoke to the empty hallway, telling her husband…”Bob, I’m sorry, don’t worry, I’m here, I’m here.”  She felt a profound sense of peace then, which soothed her heart.  That night, Joan had her first sound sleep since her husband died.

Did her husband finally visit her?  Was he there all along?  Perhaps he needed extreme measures to gain her attention.  And once he let Joan know he was there and he was ok, it was time for him to finally leave.  Or could his ghost still be upstairs, waiting for her to come home?

A HAUNTED CANDLE?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I was told a story about a potentially haunted room.  Is this room truly haunted or merely a reflection of someone’s imagination, a trick of the mind?  I don’t have an answer, but when told about this room, I asked a number of questions concerning the experiences involved.  Even tiny details can be important.  We add up the different elements together and see what we get.

This room is a bedroom in the northeast corner of the house.  When the current owner bought the house many years ago, he was told that the previous owner, an elderly lady, had died in that bedroom.

Over the years, the current occupant of this bedroom, a man, on occasion would experience cold spots (winter or summer).  He said sometimes there was an area in the room cold enough that he clearly noticed it, and the cold spot would move around.  The heating system was working fine, his windows were closed and there were no drafts.  He recalled even awakening to a coldness so intense it roused him from his sleep.  He would leave the bedroom to check the heat and everything was ok.  Oddly, this only happened rarely, but often enough for him think it peculiar.

Another thing the owner of the house experienced in this bedroom, on occasion, was voices.  He would be asleep and was awakened by voices in the room, loud enough to disturb his sleep.  As he awoke, he thought it was a dream, but even fully awake he still heard the voices which slowly dimmed and went away.  He said there were perhaps six voices speaking to each other, and spoke in something like a whisper or murmur.  He could not make out words, as if he were listening to a conversation at a distance.  But he said they were all women’s voices.  He would get out of bed and check to see if he left the TV or radio on.  But nothing…the house was silent.  Again, this did not happen often, perhaps a couple times a year, but each time it was the same type of voices speaking.

Finally, a few weeks ago he heard the voices again.  A few days thereafter, again asleep, he was abruptly startled awake by a loud thud!  He arose and turned on the light to see what it was.  In the corner of the room near the right side of his bed he kept a birthday gift, a large, heavy carved candle.  He was not big into knickknacks or candles, so he just stuck it in the corner gathering dust for a long time.  Somehow during the night it got pushed over and it fell hitting his nightstand and then the floor.  He was greatly puzzled by this, and so told me his story.  Above are pictures from my cell phone of this odd looking candle and the spot where it stood.  It is a strange candle indeed.  Maybe the candle is now haunted too?

There are natural explanations for this…perhaps mysterious drafts caused cold spots, and lucid dreaming created whispering voices.  But this candle spontaneously falling over is odd.  It smacks of poltergeist type phenomena…or maybe just a mouse.  The strange thing is the owner of this house is a credible man, not given to whimsy or flights of imagination.  He is not one to imagine stories because of cold drafts or believe dreams are reality unless what happened was convincingly real.

I suggested he keep a log to record any further incidences.  Mark down the time and day of an event.  There may be significance in the timing.  IF the room is haunted, he may just be an observer to an ongoing event.  Or, something might be trying to communicate with him.  I may return and see if I can discover anything for myself.