A decade ago ghost hunting used to be considered a bizarre pastime. Few people were involved in the hobby and most people never head of the concept. Back then ghost enthusiasts were on a cutting edge with the possibility of actually discovering something new. Then TV started multiple ghost hunting series and suddenly the subculture has become mainstream. The movie Paranormal Activity made over 100 million dollars showing how widely recognized the concept has become. In the process there seems to be less activity with the amateur community, many who have lost interest and left “ghosting” behind.
The difficult part in trying to record paranormal phenomena is finding a genuine haunting. Spirits come and go, and a location with a reputation for being haunting one decade may no longer be haunted another decade. Spirits of the dead may linger for a short time after their death, but a long-term haunting is really rare. If someone encounters a true spirit once or twice in a lifetime they are lucky.
I suspect the world is filled with temporary ghosts, as nearly everybody who dies will have a brief period of time when their spirit is earthbound before they depart the physical world forever. I’d guess a hospital would be filled with such spirits. However, most spirits don’t have the capacity to interact with the physical and let their presence be known. Only those who are sensitives may notice signs of their presence. Most of us would be oblivious if a ghost stood next to us.
Sometimes a spirit may be so attached to the physical world they refuse to let go. Terrible tragedies, extreme emotional states, unfinished earthly business, or deep regrets can trap a soul. It they are able to retain a connection to this world, they become that rare thing…a ghost.
For the ghost enthusiasts the lack of ghosts is a hindrance to the hobby. However, if the world is filled with temporary ghosts, instead of trying to find the ghost, why not invite the ghost to visit us instead? This could have a higher (albeit still slim) chance at success then walking around cemeteries at night.
In the distant past sorcerers would try to contact the dead with necromancy. Necromancers would use ceremonial magic, elaborate rituals using magic circles inscribed on the floor to protect the operator from hostile spirits. Eventually these involved rituals were abandoned for a more direct method to contact the dead…spiritualism. Mediumship and channeling came into fashion. Seances, Ouija boards, and automatic writing replaced the old style necromancy.
If we want to photograph the souls of the dead, why not ask them to appear for us? How to accomplish that? Many methods could be tried. I’ll relate my own experiment at summoning the spirits of the dead.
1. The timing
Awhile ago I visited a friend on a Saturday evening. My friend and I decided to try summoning any wandering spirit to join us late night. Timing is very important when it comes to summoning spirits. It was 2 am, the perfect time for this operation. It is said that during the “witching hour” the spirits have a highest capability to manifest their presence. It is suggested spirits are somehow able to manipulate electromagnetism, explaining much of ghostly phenomena. The Earth’s electromagnetic field is at its quietest point opposite the sun during the dead of night. Less “static” allow ghosts to interact with the physical world.
In addition, late night is a time when the environment turns quiet. Most people are asleep, or preparing for slumber. Importantly, there is less distraction for the attention of wandering spirits. With less going on late at night it is easier to attract the notice of a passing lost soul. The point is to be the only game in town.
2. Choosing the place
It is assumed that cemeteries are the best place to encounter ghosts. I doubt that. The dead tend to dwell at the places they knew in life. If we were spirits, why would we want to stand around a desolate cemetery without anything to do? If a known haunted location is not available, the best place to summon the dead would be in a populated area. It makes sense, since cities and towns are where most people pass away, sometimes tragically. The chance of someone dead being close by is pretty good.
Our experiment took place in the backyard of a crowded city neighborhood home. By day this residential city neighborhood was busy but late at night it became very quiet. The backyards were fairly sizeable and all were empty that night. We were alone and it almost felt like we were in a rural area.
3. Attracting the dead’s attention
A spirit may be in a semi-somnambulant state, half conscious and vaguely aware of its surroundings…drifting imprisoned unable to free itself. But if a ghost has retained a sufficient measure of consciousness, it will be an observer of its surroundings. What strikes its interest will attract its attention…and presence.
I wonder if the point of elaborate magic rituals is simply to attract attention to its self. Rituals for attracting spirits often included ceremonial costumes, masks, drumming, dancing or unusual physical movements and proclamations. If we were walking by and saw people engaged in a weird ritual, we would want to stop and see what was going on. So it is for the spirit world.
We decided to use music to attract spiritual attention. What music would work best? Since the dead tend to be older people, and since a ghost remains among the living usually for tragic reasons, we played the Blues. Muddy Waters in particular. In the quiet of the night, if a soul passed by they would hear blues in the distance…and might want to see what was going on.
4. The invitation and an offering
As we sat listening to the music, we would talk to any invisible presence and invite them to stay with us. We welcomed all who wished to share our music and our company. We set aside a spot at the table for any invisible visitors. There was an empty chair with a drink sitting there as if it were waiting for someone. An offering is important, and is a part of many ceremonial rituals. A spirit cannot partake of the physical substance, but it can remind them of what it was like in life.
A proper, respectful attitude is required. If this is attempted in jest, like a big joke, don‘t expect results. One should open their mind and accept the possibility. The dead may want to contact you and it takes a heightened sense of awareness to perceive clues to their presence. If we are perceptive, we’ll notice something. It could be a sudden cold spot, a tingling, a feeling that someone is beside you. How far you want to open your mind to communicate with spirits is a personal choice.
5. Recording
It will become time to capture any results from the summoning, depending on your equipment. Eventually I began to take pictures, after a polite request to any unseen visitors for their indulgence. If someone wanted they could use a digital recorder for any EVPs, or set up a camcorder and just let it record.
Summoning Orbs
On a chilly autumn night we tried our experiment. We invited any wandering spirit to hang out with us. I took a number of photos and caught an orb that seemed to float around in different photos (images shown at the top and bottom of this page). My friend felt a presence behind him and asked me to quickly take his picture. I took two pictures in sequence and sure enough there was an orb right beside him and behind his head. The orb in motion is intriguing. Ghosts or just a trick of the camera? Either way it was an uncanny coincidence. I’d like to imagine a friendly entity spent some time with us that night.
My mother died half a year ago and shortly after her death our family experienced some curious events which I’ve written about. Since then my father’s home has been quiet. If mom lingered around home for a few days after her passing, it seemed she had passed beyond to her final rest. That the deceased remain for a short time after their passing is a widespread belief in many cultures and it appears there may be some truth to the idea.
However, my father recently told me an unsettling story. It was a Friday night and dad was asleep in his bed. Around midnight something stirred him. He heard voices. In his bedroom. Half asleep, half awake, he was alarmed thinking these voices were someone in his house.
In the dark of his room he listened. There were many voices but he could not make out any words. It was something like a murmur. They were not talking to him but to each other. And he recognized these voices. He heard mom’s voice. And the voice of his sister’s husband who had died a couple of years ago. He heard the voice of his long since past mother and father and deceased aunts and uncles.
I asked dad if he heard the voices of anybody living. No, he only heard the voices of the dead. As he fully awakened the voices faded away. Dad wondered about the meaning of this. It was eerie. Of course it could’ve been just a dream, but does anyone recall having a dream which was only audible and not visual?
Dad recognized these voices could have been a trick of the mind, recalling memories past. Yet, our subconscious is open to contact with other realities, maybe only in our mind or maybe not, perhaps making a connection with the realm of premonitions, revelations and contact with spirits.
I wonder what this means. I imagine my father is sensitive to this higher reality, which he seems to be. He had a few paranormal experiences in his lifetime, which is more then most people ever have. If the dead were talking, they were not in his room, for the chance of all his family being ghosts hanging around his bed is not possible. Instead, in his subconscious he may have traveled to where they were in the afterlife. He was there where they were, and not the other way around.
One thing I don’t want to consider is his dead family were calling to him, that they expect father to join them shortly. In that was the situation I’d much prefer this was simply a dream. I don’t like these omens.
Above are pictures taken at a Christmas party in a previous year, combined into an animated image. That is I in the Santa suit. And swirling around the Christmas tree are a bunch of orbs. An invasion of holiday spirit orbs!
Sometimes I get drafted to be the Santa. And drafted is the right word because it gets hot and uncomfortable wearing that suit. Being Santa is not easy; it takes more then a hearty “HO HO HO”. Beforehand I ask the parents for a list of who has been naughty or nice for the children so I can praise each child for doing something nice, or become a disapproving Santa if the parents need Santa’s help with their behavior. It is a clever trick and the young children are shocked when Santa actually knows their stuff.
Under the Hot Santa Suit
Back to the photos; the pictures above of Santa have orbs. Orbs in a picture really don’t prove anything paranormal. Orb photos are a dime a dozen. However, there were several pictures taken with orbs, one after the other. Combined as an animated GIF, I was surprised to see what appeared to be the motion of the orbs. They seem to be circling the center of activity. Curious.
Let’s play with the possibility these orbs could actually be genuine spirits, ghosts visiting this home a few days before Christmas. Where did they come from and why where they here?
These photos were photographed at a home which was practically a new house. There should be no reason this residence would be haunted; there wasn’t any history to warrant that. So why are these orbs there, again on the remote chance these were reflections of the spirit world? I have a couple of theories.
First idea…one of the children may be the cause of the effect. There is an idea children are the cause of the mysterious poltergeist phenomena. Perhaps one of these children is the source or a magnet for paranormal activity. Could a child’s emotional state, when encountering the famous Santa, create paranormal manifestations?
A second theory is possible. From personal experience I believe in wandering spirits. There are ghosts of the dead, restless and wandering the earth, who are not attached to a surrounding as most ghosts are reputed to do. Such wandering ghosts would react like the living and be attracted to festivities. Imagine ourselves as a ghost, and how we would behave if we were invisible and immaterial. Ghostly passer-by’s might have seen a party and joined in. I think this happens far more often then anybody imagines. If such was the situation, wandering ghosts are harmless and they’d soon move on elsewhere.
Shaman used to wear ceremonial costumes to attract the attention these wandering spirits. Something out of the ordinary was used to catch the eye of spirits like colorful costumes, ceremonial dancing, and drumming. Perhaps my Santa suit did the exact same thing. Shaman Santa!
In the news has been the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip IL, a cemetery outside of Chicago. It is the scene of a gruesome and unsettling series of cemetery crimes. Four cemetery workers allegedly dug up existing graves and dumped the bones in a mass grave to make space for others to be buried. This was grave robbing for profit. I know someone who has relatives buried there, I just talked with him. He told me that since the cemetery has been closed, he does not know the status of his relatives’ graves. I wished him good luck with this. What a terrible thing, who would have imagined such a thing could ever happen?
I will approach this ghoulish story from a different perspective. Can a cemetery’s desecration cause it to become haunted? There is a belief that by ruining a cemetery the spirits of the dead will become unsettled leading to a haunted environment. A prime example is the infamous Bachelor’s Grove, an old cemetery that has long been abandoned. It suffered terrible desecration over the decades and developed a reputation for multiple hauntings experienced by first-hand witnesses.
Will the dark deeds at Burr Oak Cemetery give it a similar dark reputation in the future? Shall it become the source of ghostly legends years from now? Will Burr Oak Cemetery become haunted?
I’d suggest that the idea of a haunted cemetery is misunderstood. A cemetery is actually the last place we’d expect to encounter the ghost of a deceased human. Ghosts behave as we would in life, but often act as if they are trapped in a dreamlike state, with varying levels of consciousness. A ghost is most likely to be present at the source of the trauma that resulted in their unwillingness to disconnect from the physical world. Ghosts frequent places they were intimately familiar with in life. Just like you or I would not want to roam a cemetery, neither would a ghost. Once a ghost truly “dies” and leaves this world, they leave it permanently and don’t come back. Outside of human criminals, Burr Oak Cemetery is safe.
However, there is another side to the concept of the haunted cemetery. A handful of cemeteries are actually haunted. What is going on with those? Bachelor’s Grove is a perfect example. In these situations, I believe we are not dealing with human ghosts, but with non-human negative entitles. Cemeteries that suffer from desecration are usually abandoned. What happens with these abandoned cemeteries is they attract the attention of those who wish to use the cemetery for their own purposes. This includes practices such as necromancy and the darker visions of sorcery. If an abandoned cemetery is frequently used as a location for the evocation of the demonic, it could eventually create something like a portal where negative entities will linger. The same idea could apply to some other locations like a “haunted” house where an imprint, a stain was left behind.
The state is taking over Burr Oak and it will not be abandoned. The authorities will make sure the cemetery is properly managed. The grave robbing crimes at Burr Oak are terrible and disturbing, but in themselves won’t awaken the dead, nor cause a gateway to lower spiritual entities. Unless the criminals responsible also practiced necromancy or even worse over the years. Then we might have a problem. I wonder if there is more to this story then meets the eye.
I talked with my friend Brad. His mom and other relations are buried in Burr Oak, and he has no idea what is going on. He is really disturbed. He is getting calls form his relatives from out-of-state asking, “What the hell is going on in Chicago?” He has no answer. He is watching the situation in the news, but the cemetery is closed now. Here is a video that someone took before the cemetery was closed. It shows how important we value our deceased loved ones.
I will recount a genuine ghost hunt. For ghost enthusiasts the chance to investigate a true haunting is very rare. It really is a privilege. Most famous, publicly known hauntings have ceased being haunted long ago. Nearly every haunting is a private affair and rarely attracts any attention outside of the individuals involved. I got a chance at a combination of both. I think these are important stories and need to be recorded.
It was March of 2002. Jamie was a ghost enthusiast, and he invited me on what we loosely call an investigation. I use the term “enthusiast” instead of “ghost hunter” because ghost hunting suggests a professional enterprise, and there is no such thing. I believe there are no experts concerning the topic of ghosts. We can only hope to be at the right place at the right time.
In Jamie’s words, “Well the tentative ghost hunt I mentioned is on. We have a location. It’s at a private location with the owner’s permission near the former site of Victorian house antique shop. Victorian house is a well known haunted spot with lots of activity. I am going to contact the owners of the Victorian house and see if I can get permission to get in there too. The house now is standing vacant. If anyone is interested in going. I require an rsvp on this one and a debriefing as it is at a private site. Jamie”
This supposedly haunted location was a Victorian style building near downtown Chicago, an antique shop that has long since been closed. It had a reputation for being haunted. The facts are hearsay. It was built around 1880. The story was four people died in an attic fire. Another story concerned a woman murdered at this shop in the late 1800s. Customers have reported hearing strange sounds and witnessed apparitions in this shop.
I met Jamie and Jason (another ghost enthusiast) and two ladies who I did not know outside the closed Victorian Antique shop. We were not entering the actual store. It was closed and the owners had no interest in entertaining visitors. But the apartments opposite to this shop were a different story, and Jamie got an invitation to investigate from one of these renters.
We were invited in. The residents of the apartment were interested in discovering what was happening. They were experiencing a haunting phenomenon. At first they looked at us with some skepticism. But Jamie had a friendly, unpretentious southern demeanor that was disarming. Right away we wanted to know their stories. Why did they invite us here? What was going on?
A young man and woman lived in this apartment. Outside of their stories of odd sounds, footsteps and doors that closed by its self, I vividly recall the young lady’s story. Late one night the lady of the apartment got up from her bed and went into the kitchen, and she was absolutely startled to see a man sitting at her kitchen table. She was stunned. He was smoking a cigarette, and he seemed very depressed, with his head was laid low. He looked up at her sadly…and vanished. She was unnerved by this experience, seeing a stranger in her apartment. Except she had experienced other unseen people existing in this apartment. She called him the “sad one”. There were others. She said that this spirit was not associated with the others…not popular. The other spirits hanged together.
Intrigued, we took out our cameras. Jason had an EMP device. Myself I preferred a film camera figuring a film’s negative offered physical evidence. Jamie had his digital camera and right way he caught orbs. Orbs are frowned on, and properly so. Most orbs are nothing, yet they are not easy to get…random chance. But when we are in a haunting situation and orbs are photographed left and right, it is time for a serious heads up. Jamie showed the tenants the orbs on his digital. The guy started off skeptical, but when he was saw these orbs on Jamie’s camera he became immediately interested in what we were doing. Maybe his girlfriend’s experiences were not only in her imagination?
Above is a photo I took of their entrance door. There are obvious orbs by the door. However, what I think is remarkable about this film photo is the tiny orb by the floor. There is a small glob of light and below it is a ring of light, as if the orb actually reflected the camera’s flash on the shiny floor. I include a picture of their cat for perspective on the reflective nature of the floor, and what I imagine was captured. Could a flash capture the actual physical reflection of an orb?
We wandered around their apartment, with their permission, taking pictures and listening to more stories. I was attentive to the details of our “investigation”. I did not know the two ladies who joined us. They were of the pagan faith and suggested they could talk to the dead. Mediums. I thought to myself…uh-huh. Yeah right, ok whatever. On the other hand I had an open mind.
Jason and myself both experienced cold spots. There was no breeze whatsoever. I looked at him and he looked at he and me said,”did you feel that?” It was truly a physical coldness…as if something cold passed through you. Contact. We were in the real thing…this lady’s story was not only her imagination.
I did my usual tarot card layout as a means to attract the attention of any spirits. In this place it was not necessary. The layout is still interesting. What do the cards say about this haunting? The final card is…Death.
While the mediums were talking to the spirits us guys were doing our “scientific” guy-thing, taking pictures and measurements with EMF meters (electromagnetic radiation detectors) and recordings for EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena). Science? Not really.
Everybody gathered in the living room as the mediums began to talk with the lost haunted souls. I listened carefully. Were they the real deal or only pretenders? The ladies said there was a terrible tragedy in the past. And there were a number of spirits here; it was not a solitary haunting. They also thought that not all the tragedies happened in the antique shop. They just congregated here, and there was an anchor spirit that drew them here.
They said there were maybe five spirits present. Three women and two men. One of the spirits did not associate with the others. He was in the grip of a deep personal darkness and could not move on. Another was a young woman who was deeply in love and died. They spoke of one of the girl ghosts. This ghost thought Jason was cute. They said this ghost was sitting on Jason’s lap at this very minute! As Jason was sitting in a chair both Jamie and I caught these photos.
Orb sitting on Jason's lap
Jamie took a photo of an orb buy Jason’s left leg. Jamie’s photo is remarkable. This orb seems to have physicality, like a blob. My picture taken a few minutes afterwards shows another orb hovering by Jason. Notice that the wall’s shadow is cast on the orb. What the @%#@! An orb photo becomes more then an orb photo depending on the context.
The two ladies said we needed to free these lost souls. They began using smudge sticks. They lit the smudge sticks and let the smoke flow…and spoke to the lost souls…go home…go home and “Be free.” They talked directly to these souls asking them to let go of any hurt or tragedy. Whatever tragedies held them, don’t let any other spirit hold you back. They went room to room with their smudging.
We left, and I considered our ghost investigation as one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had. It really sparked my interest in the paranormal to a new level.
Here is what Jason wrote us afterwards:
“Hi. This is Jason. From the Victorian house. Just wanted to thank all of you for coming out to this place and sharing the knowledge and helping. That picture from the living room is amazing!!! There can be no other explanation for those orbs! And they are exactly where she said they would be. Thanks ladies too, for sending them home.”
We have many other intriguing photos from this visit, but since they include people in them and we need to protect people’s privacy, I can’t post them.
Here is Jamie’s ghost website, Jamie’s Chicago Gangsterland Ghost Page at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/2007/ and he has a Yahoo Group for local Chicago ghost fans, ChicagolandGhostClub
Vampires exist. Of course this reality is based on how we define “vampire”. The vampire of fiction, a walking, blood-sucking sexy corpse, is not real. However the vampire of folklore actually did exist, if only in people’s beliefs. People actually believed in them enough to act on that belief. In past centuries villagers would go through the trouble to dig up a grave, sometimes entire graveyards, exhuming the buried in search of corpses that did not decay properly. When such a corpse was found, it was killed a second time to make sure it was dead. It could be staked to keep it “down”, or it would be cremated by fire. The goal was to make sure the dead stayed dead. It was believed that the dead could truly be undead.
There was a recent story about the discovery of such a “vampire”. Check out these links below, they include images:
The source of this superstition seems to have emerged from people’s lack of understanding concerning the process of decay. There are factors that can slow down decomposition. Temperature, soil conditions, lack of oxygen in a grave and so forth. In the past people were not familiar with such things and if they encountered a grave where a corpse had not decayed but looked “fresh”, they logically assumed it was somehow still “alive” in some fashion and called it a vampire. The best look at the source of this folklore would be Paul Barber’s book “Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality”. He explores the causes behind the vampire folklore. It is the definitive word on the topic and highly recommended for anyone interested in the topic.
However, there remains a mystery. Why would people feel the need to dig up the dead in the first place? What could motivate people to such extreme action? It was an action taken when a community experienced sudden, unexplained illnesses accompanied by haunting phenomena. People back then felt the dead could be a source of menace to society…the vampire.
There was a belief that someone was not truly dead until the skeleton’s bones were bare and decomposition was complete. It was felt that the soul could linger as long as there remained cellular activity continuing on the body. A corpse is still alive in many respects…the process of decay is filled with microorganisms breaking down the body. The soul could remain connected to their body until nothing was left but the bones. This explained the need to kill a corpse a second time.
The vampire was sometimes mistakenly thought of as a walking corpse. However if we examine the folklore carefully, we see is that the vampire’s physical body did NOT leave his grave, only his or her spirit did. What people reported seeing was a predatory ghost that would feed off the life of the living, not sucking blood but one’s life, their chi or ka, causing illness. This ghost still had a connection to their physical corpse and it was thought to return to its body in the grave after feeding. These life-consuming spirits needed to feed to continue their halfway existence. This supposedly prevented the corpse from disintegrating into bones.
In spiritualist and occult theory, there is thought to be an intermediate stage between physical death and the point of permanently leaving the world of time and space. This intermediate stage is commonly referred to as our ghost. A ghost can still interact with the physical world in a subtle way. At death, the path to our final destination is usually swift and our ghost lingers only minutes. But it is possible for our soul to linger far longer for different reasons. Often a tragic death can shock a soul into remaining at the site of the tragedy, attached to it. Or a spirit may become attached to a place they knew in life. A soul may also remain attached to their physical body after death. When a spirit continues this attachment to their body after death, it becomes a vampire…a different and more dangerous type of ghost.
In my next post I will go into further detail about what spiritualism has to say about the nature of the vampire spirit. Ghosts are common, but vampire spirits extremely rare. Why? The answer next.
Ghost hunting is a fun hobby. It is a nice way to socialize with people from different backgrounds who share this common interest. It’s a great excuse to get together, hang out and share ghosts stories and unusual experiences. The best place to for such social ghost hunting is at a haunted pub!
Once a small group of us ghost enthusiasts went to visit the famed Red Lion Pub in Chicago. This pub is called the most haunted pub in the city. It is right across from the Biograph Theater where gangster John Dillinger was shot down in an alley. The over 100-year-old building had a history of being involved with the Chicago gangsters of the 1940s. Here is a link to the Red Lion’s website that tells about the fascinating history of the pub: http://www.redlionchicago.com/history.html
Second floor at the Red Lion
The stories about the Red Lion Pub concern multiple hauntings. The stories of ghosts include a young cowboy, a blond guy, and a bearded man-in-black. The most enduring ghost story involves the ghost of a young lady. Some stories suggest a beautiful young woman had died (was murdered?) in an apartment over the pub. Other stories say she is a flapper from the 1920s. Most convincing are the stories of a mentally challenged woman who lived and passed away at the building. These hauntings are said to occur on the pub’s second floor.
Tarot reading for the dead
The stories of the manifestations include sightings of vanishing people, objects moved in closed rooms, voices heard when no one is present, cold spots, invisible touches, the scent of a powerful perfume, and ladies getting locked in the women’s restroom…and then released after a few minutes with nobody around.
The evening our group arrived at the Red Lion Pub, we immediately went upstairs where the haunting is said to occur. Luckily it was empty so we were able to take photos without attracting attention. Not that it mattered. We are not the first to visit the pub with ghostly intentions. We all shared our stories and speculated about the pub and the nature of whatever might be present. When a ghost story involves what seems to be multiple spirits, that is really baffling. Solitary ghosts make sense, but what to make of multiple ghosts? We could only speculate that spirits gather together, just as the living does. Maybe ghosts like to socialize as well?
I did a tarot card reading, not for the living, but for the dead…for whatever unseen might be present. There actually is logic involved in tarot card readings for the dead. A tarot reading in a public place immediately attracts attention. I have done readings for people at social gatherings as something fun to do, and it always gets noticed. If it attracts the attention of the living, why not the dead as well? The dead probably don’t pay
2nd floor women's restroom
much attention to ordinary activity, but something new and unique might pique their interest…and perhaps allow us to take their picture! Looking at the cards I laid out, using the celtic cross method, I noticed a strong element of tragedy in the cards…very apt for the situation.
As the evening got late, other people eventually came upstairs and we put our cameras away. Of the pictures we took, the most intriguing picture was taken by one of our lady comrades. She took this picture in the second floor women’s restroom. This is where there were reports of women getting mysteriously locked in the lady’s restroom and then released. It is a picture of multiple orbs in a swirling pattern. The most persistent haunting story involves a ghostly female, and it is of note this photo was taken in the women’s restroom. Mere coincidence?
In a previous post I wrote about a visit to the abandoned cemetery Bachelor’s Grove, joined by some other ghost enthusiasts. I did a tarot card reading on a tombstone, attempting to communicate with any entities in the infamous graveyard. Not really a good idea. Afterwards I experienced a bout of bad luck, and I alluded to the idea that something might have followed me home. http://occultview.com/2009/01/11/tarot-reading-at-bachelors-grove/
Bachelors Grove
A couple of months after my visit to the graveyard, I had an unnerving experience. I was asleep in my bed when I was awakened by a sound…a growling sound, loud enough to stir me from my sleep. It sounded like there was a growling dog in my bedroom and close to my bed. I don’t own pets. I became wide-awake; it was not a lucid dream or anything like that. I laid face away from the sound, and I did not move…I stayed perfectly still and listened to this low growl. I was afraid to turn and look at what was in my room. Instead I said a mental prayer for God to protect me from whatever was there and send it away. After the prayer…the growling just…stopped. Yet I still did not turn to see what could have been there. Afterwards, I wondered what I might have seen had I turned around…anything? Or maybe I’d be discovered the next day in my bed, dead from a failed heart.
I know someone who had her own personal encounter with a growling ghost. Once, seemingly from nowhere, this lady’s home began to experience a haunting. She knew of nothing that would have provoked this to happen. But she said, there came strange sounds like footsteps on the stairway. Her daughter caught a brief glimpse of someone in the house, who then disappeared. Her microwave oven would turn itself on spontaneously. The final straw was after an incident with the microwave oven in the kitchen, she heard a loud growling outside her open kitchen window. She went to the window to look outside…and there was absolutely nothing out there. She had enough. Being a Catholic, she lit candles every night for a week and prayed to God that whatever was in her home would leave. After a week of this…she never experienced any sign of a haunting again.
What to make of this growling ghost? Ghosts don’t growl. Ghosts are deceased human beings and a ghost of a human is still human and humans don’t growl. These growling ghosts are not ghosts, but inhuman spirits.
There is the folklore of the Black Dog, or Barghest. This spectral hound with glowing eyes is said to prowl cemeteries at night. It is considered an evil omen to see one, an omen of death, and is said to be associated with the Devil. There are many legends concerning these Hell Hounds who haunt the graveyards. They are not considered to be the ghosts of men or even dogs. But the spirits of something inhuman. To encounter one is to bring doom. According to demonology, demons cannot take human form, but appear as grotesques, human/animal hybrids and monstrosities.
When I visited Bachelor’s Grove, maybe a “black dog” of that sad, haunted cemetery did follow me home. Maybe the Black Dog is not only folklore. Beware of the Growling Ghost.
Above is a friend’s picture from a winter visit to Starved Rock State Park in Utica, Illinois. He knew of my interest in anomalies and showed me this photo with a strange pink glow at the bottom of the Wildcat Canyon. He mentioned he’d heard that someone had died falling into this canyon. I thought it might only be an optical effect, but because he mentioned someone died there, I thought I’d look into it.
Starved Rock Park is a beautiful destination, but as it’s name suggests, it had a grim beginning. Its name comes from a story from the 1700s. In a conflict between Indian tribes, a band of the Illinwek fled to this rock after being pursued by another tribe. Trapped on top they were held under siege, and eventually starved to death.
Orb at Starved Rock Park
I visited Starved Rock Park last summer myeslf. I even got an orb photo. One thing I noticed was how precarious the paths were. There are few railings, and some very narrow walkways along the canyons and precipices. We had to really pay attention to where we were walking. We stayed there late, almost too late as the sun was started to go down. Deep into the park, I realized we’d better get out of there fast. To be trapped in the park at night would be putting our lives at genuine risk. One misstep could lead to disaster.
Over the years Starved Rock has been the scene of terrible tragedies. Most infamous was the brutal 1960 murder of three vacationing women at St. Louis Canyon. Here is a Time Magazine article that describes the terrible story. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,826120,00.html
In 1999 an 8-year-old girl fell to her death down Wildcat Canyon. The sad story is at this link: http://www.geocities.com/starved_rock/warning.html (Geocities no longer hosts websites, so this link as gone away. It had some really interesting information and I will try to contact the individual who owned the site and ask if I can post some of their information.)
Update: There has been a new tragedy at Starved Rock State Park. The body of a 53 year old woman was found at the park’s river trail at an area known as Eagle Cliff. A curious quote: “Investigators do not believe the woman was a victim of foul play and do not believe she had an accident that led to her death.” This story is below: Starved Rock body identified as missing Evanston woman
February 7, 2010 Is Starved Rock haunted? Is this picture above a reflection of the tragedies at Wildcat Canyon? Does something still linger there? When young people die it creates a powerful influence on our surroundings. It’s awfulness creates a residue. Lets hope it really is only a trick of lighting. Otherwise Wildcat Canyon might be a well of souls.
I was at a restaurant/bar located in an old hotel one Saturday night. It was late and the restaurant itself was empty, and the patrons were slowly drifting away as the last call approached. On my way to the restroom, I looked down an empty section of the restaurant. I had a camera with me to take some pictures and I decided to take a picture of the empty seating area. The right side of the wall had a mural on it, and all the tables were all empty.
Days later when I checked out the pictures, I noticed one picture I took at the restaurant. It was the one taken of the empty area and it had something strange in it, like a vapor. I thought that odd, there was nobody around. Then I looked at this picture again more carefully…and I was startled. This apparent smoke did not follow a random pattern of what would seem to be mere smoke. The smoke seemed concentrated in the center with tendrils of vapor emanating from it.
I looked even more carefully, and I was almost shocked. Suddenly I saw in the mist… a face. Not a caricature or grotesque, but with a symmetry to it. Closed eyes opposite each other…a nose, a chin, a mouth with lips. And the face even had an expression to it…as if someone were drifting asleep, in a dream state, with a hint of a smile. If you can’t see this, I traced out what I saw to make it more visible, side-by-side without the tracing.
I was determined to return to the restaurant and to take more pictures around the same time, hoping to capture something else. Again I took pictures in the same area (with the same mural on the right wall), and I got a picture with orbs. There are several orbs, and an orb by the mural had the same pale blue color similar to the color of my previous photo. It seemed like the orbs were stationed over the tables, as if a congregation of ghosts were seated at the tables when everybody else had left.
What to make of this? Maybe they were former, now deceased patrons of the bar, or just wandering souls, gathered here when people left to experience something like being alive? And maybe my picture of the vapor was a close-up of an orb taken by accident, showing details normally invisible. Perhaps I was at the right place at the right time, and this orb apparition was right in front of my camera.
For the ghost enthusiasts the lack of ghosts is a hindrance to the hobby. However, if the world is filled with temporary ghosts, instead of trying to find the ghost, why not invite the ghost to visit us instead? This could have a higher (albeit still slim) chance at success then walking around cemeteries at night.
summoning spirits. It was 2 am, the perfect time for this operation. It is said that during the “witching hour” the spirits have a highest capability to manifest their presence. It is suggested spirits are somehow able to manipulate electromagnetism, explaining much of ghostly phenomena. The Earth’s electromagnetic field is at its quietest point opposite the sun during the dead of night. Less “static” allow ghosts to interact with the physical world. 
My mother died half a year ago and shortly after her death our family experienced some curious events which I’ve written about. Since then my father’s home has been quiet. If mom lingered around home for a few days after her passing, it seemed she had passed beyond to her final rest. That the deceased remain for a short time after their passing is a widespread belief in many cultures and it appears there may be some truth to the idea.
I did my usual tarot card layout as a means to attract the attention of any spirits. In this place it was not necessary. The layout is still interesting. What do the cards say about this haunting? The final card is…Death.
Vampires exist. Of course this reality is based on how we define “vampire”. The vampire of fiction, a walking, blood-sucking sexy corpse, is not real. However the vampire of folklore actually did exist, if only in people’s beliefs. People actually believed in them enough to act on that belief. In past centuries villagers would go through the trouble to dig up a grave, sometimes entire graveyards, exhuming the buried in search of corpses that did not decay properly. When such a corpse was found, it was killed a second time to make sure it was dead. It could be staked to keep it “down”, or it would be cremated by fire. The goal was to make sure the dead stayed dead. It was believed that the dead could truly be undead.
The source of this superstition seems to have emerged from people’s lack of understanding concerning the process of decay. There are factors that can slow down decomposition. Temperature, soil conditions, lack of oxygen in a grave and so forth. In the past people were not familiar with such things and if they encountered a grave where a corpse had not decayed but looked “fresh”, they logically assumed it was somehow still “alive” in some fashion and called it a vampire. The best look at the source of this folklore would be Paul Barber’s book “Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality”. He explores the causes behind the vampire folklore. It is the definitive word on the topic and highly recommended for anyone interested in the topic.
In a previous post I wrote about a visit to the abandoned cemetery Bachelor’s Grove, joined by some other ghost enthusiasts. I did a tarot card reading on a tombstone, attempting to communicate with any entities in the infamous graveyard. Not really a good idea. Afterwards I experienced a bout of bad luck, and I alluded to the idea that something might have followed me home.
Is Starved Rock haunted? Is this picture above a reflection of the tragedies at Wildcat Canyon? Does something still linger there? When young people die it creates a powerful influence on our surroundings. It’s awfulness creates a residue. Lets hope it really is only a trick of lighting. Otherwise Wildcat Canyon might be a well of souls.
Days later when I checked out the pictures, I noticed one picture I took at the restaurant. It was the one taken of the empty area and it had something strange in it, like a vapor. I thought that odd, there was nobody around. Then I looked at this picture again more carefully…and I was startled. This apparent smoke did not follow a random pattern of what would seem to be mere smoke. The smoke seemed concentrated in the center with tendrils of vapor emanating from it. 
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