The First Ghosthunt? The Drummer of Tedworth Case

You can barely swing a dead cat these days (not that I advocate that,) without hitting a ghost hunter, but paranormal researchers go back in history well before our more “enlightened” time.

Perhaps the first recorded ghost hunter and paranormal researcher’s exploits were published in 1668 under the title Sadducismus Triumphatus. In it, Joseph Glanvill, a clergyman, describes poltergeist activity related to a drum confiscated from a musician during a legal case. The plaintiff in the case received the drum as part of his settlement (or to punish the drummer) and began to report typical poltergeist activity including drumming, moving objects and unexplained noises. Much like the Amityville case of our day, the Drummer of Tedworth case became well publicized amongst citizens of the British Isles.

Glanvill examined the case, and indeed witnessed activity himself. He ruled that the drum was haunted, although others from that time believed the drums owner had used witchcraft to put a curse on the drum so that it would wreck-havoc in the new owners home.

Other investigators cropped up to look at the case and it was later believed this activity was a hoax and that the home owner had people knocking on walls outside while ghost hunters were inside. Of course, they didn't have all the bells and whistles modern day ghost hunters have, so it’s hard to blame them for their possible misdiagnosis.

Real or false, paranormal activity has intrigued and challenged men’s intellect since early days and the fascination continues. Perhaps Glanvill broke ground for all of us fascinated with the mysteries of this world and the next.

I've Got Your Number

Numerology is the belief that our lives are intertwined with the universal language of numbers. Numbers are thought to generate our life path and are determined by the number of letters in our names or our birth dates. An easy and fun way to get a horoscope style reading, there are plenty of places online for you to investigate the basis of your personality, past and future. Here are a few to check out.
Go to: http://www.sanatansociety.org to get your psychic number based upon Indian beliefs. You input your birth date and it will automatically calculate your numbers. Meanings for your unique numeric identity are listed there as well.

Next,check out the Psychic Numerology-Master Numbers web site and with a few calculations you will be on your way. This is a pretty comprehensive web site with plenty of information that may inspire you to take an even closer look at numerology.

If you want one more opinion, check out stargaze.com. A more traditional approach, you put in the month you were born then browse to find your exact date. Comparing all the numerology sites may give you a good overview of your motivations in life and what the future might hold.

Image by: www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb

Preston Castle and The Ghost Adventure Team

Ghost Adventures, the Travel Channel series I love to hate is back with new episodes. All set to be irritated, I sat down for the season premiere waiting with bated breath for the rude antics of Zak Bagans and crew. I have to say, they must have mellowed since last season.

Sure, Zak still carried a leather whipping strap around with him and threatened the Juvenile delinquents and young criminals with his "new supervisor"y techniques, but all in all, I would have expected worse from him.

The location was great.

Preston Castle in California, an old abandoned and decrepit facility had plenty of personality and the prerequisite shady past. Not only were young offenders apparently mistreated and some died under mysterious circumstances, one of the most active spirits haunting the place is said to be the spirit of a house keeper whose brutal murder on this site was never solved.

After a tour by a local ghost hunting leader, the team unnecessarily "locked" themselves into the establishment and began collecting evidence of both auditory and physical manifestations.

There were some scratches, and some really far fetched EVP translations, but the creepiest thing about this episode was the supposed possession of Zak himself.

I have to say, I liked the kinder, gentler more possessed Zak, who inexplicably began to hum, smirk and communicate with the female housekeeper from the past. Eerie and yet not fully developed in the episode, we never see him actually come out of the trance like state, but obviously later we see him donning his trademark dumbass hat, so apparently he's back to normal.

All in all this episode was worth watching for both the fruitful location and the apparent possession. If you missed the premiere episode check out highlights online at the Ghost Adventures website or watch your travel channel listings for repeated episodes.
You can make arrangements to do your own ghost hunt at Preston. Click here for more information about Preston Castle.

Photo by atomicpuppy68 FLickr.com

Zak is Back

If you have been missing (missing hating that is) Ghost Adventures, the Travel Channel has been posting a mini series following a Bob Mackey ghost hunt the guys did with some other ghost hunting enthusiasts.
During their original go-round with this famous haunted location, Zak suffered a well deserved back scratch from what he deemed was a "demon." In the web-episodes the gang invites along a man-of-the-cloth to help with the demonic presence. Predictably, the Reverend or priest gets into the act of calling out the spirit and suffers a little reminder that one should always mind their manners when dealing with those on the other side. The ghost hunting tag-alongs seemed to get their money's worth on this adventure as I am sure you'll agree.
Love em or hate em, they are entertaining during the mid season drought of ghost hunting shows. Check out the broadcast here. Ghost Adventures Web Episode

Exorcisms and the case of Annaliese (Emily Rose)

Some of the recent Paranormal State episodes have involved demonic possession, a condition either believed to be myth or fact. Movies like “The Exorcist” dramatically illustrate what can happen during a demonic possession, but also portray the eternal struggle of good vs. evil in such a way that some people cannot believe it to be an actual real occurrence.

Although exorcisms seem to be so far removed from ordinary life, I think that people would be surprised at the commonality of the event. It would not take much research to find a priest in your area that either can or has performed an exorcism. I met a local priest who, when asked, admitted to being present at an exorcism, but other than saying he strongly believed in good and evil and demonic possession, he was unwilling to discuss his experience. He said it was frightening.

Exorcisms like the one shown in the “We are Six” episode of Paranormal State show that truly removing a demon is difficult work. The movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” shows that a demonic possession does not always have a remedy and the final result can be tragic to the host. The real story of Annaliese Michel, whom the movie is based on, is even more disturbing than the film portrayal.

According to reports from the actual case, Annaliese was possessed by several demons including Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Nero, Cain, Hitler, and Fleischmann, a disgraced Frankish Priest from the 16th century. Although four people were convicted of negligent homicide in the case, some of Annaliese’s injuries included the ligaments in her knees rupturing due to the 600 genuflections that she performed obsessively during each exorcism session. A genuflection is an act of reverence consisting of falling onto one or both knees (called a "double genuflection.” She was exorcised 67 times in 10 months.

Whether you believe she was really possessed or truly a victim of human negligence, the case is significant due to the amount of photography and audio evidence. Check out more photos and evidence from the case at chasing the frog.com
Be sure to check out the audio of her speaking in tongues here it is SUPER creepy.

So, do you believe in demonic possession?

Ghostly Phone Calls

I was in the middle of a super spooky book about exorcism and demons when the phone rang. My cell phone, which I only use for emergencies or when I travel was ringing, and since all my friends knew I was at home in Kentucky, there really was no reason for it to be ringing. Yet here it was. Playing “Sweet Child O Mine” by Guns and Roses, shaking me out of my fiction induced state of horror. I picked up the phone and said “Hello.” In return I got a barrage of language in a foreign tongue. Not just foreign, but, like Super Foreign. It was some form of Arabic I would say from the sounds of it, and after a minute or two trying to interrupt the conversation, I suddenly got a thought about the connection to what I was reading. Was my reading about demons conjuring up some kind of freaky phone call that I didn't understand? I freaked myself out. Although this call was probably harmless, it did get me thinking about ghostly phone calls.

Ghostly phone calls can be anything from a phone ringing without any sound on the other end, to the voice of a dearly departed loved one on your answering machine. After my mother died I frequently had my phone ringing with no one.. actually, more than that.. an absence of anything... on the other end. After this would happen a few times in a row, I would talk to my mother in the space of my empty living room and the calls would stop. I know I am not the only one who has had ghost calls like this, and here are a few stories I found online to share with you.

Sleepless Nights and Ghostly Phone Calls

Here's the story of my haunting. In the summer of 2000, when I was 11 years old, me, my mother, and her boyfriend all moved to a small house in the town of Deal, New Jersey. Despite it's small size, The house was quite luxurious with it's tastefully decorated rooms, dual sink bathrooms with Jacuzzi bathtubs, and it's unique features, such as the old record player in the family room. My mother and her boyfriend stayed in the main part of the house, while I got the whole second floor to myself. You would think a nice luxurious house with the whole second floor to myself would make a kid happy, but I wasn't. For some odd reason, I could never really warm up to the place. I wasn't in the best situation either, me and mom or me and her boyfriend would get into fights every day about one thing or another, and I was always getting picked on in school.

My life was really going downhill. I would wake up, get teased for six straight hours at school, come home either pissed or sad, get in a fight with my mom and her boyfriend, and lay awake in bed either enraged or crying, and that was a good day for me. However, anger and sadness weren't the only things that kept me up at night. For some reason, I always felt oddly uneasy in my room, or floor rather, at night. It was like the way you feel when you go to bed after watching a really scary movie; you know nothing's going to happen, but you lie awake scared that there's a monster under the bed anyway. So, I did what anyone else would do, blamed it all on my own imagination and ignored it.

Then, just when my life couldn't get any worse, the frightening oddness of the house dramatically escalated. I began to notice that the upstairs floor of the house was always freezing cold, no matter how high the thermostat was set, my insomnia was to the point where I had to take benadryl just to get a few hours of sleep at night, and I would always feel the room getting darker. It wasn't the lights actually dimming; it was like the darkness was coming into the room rather than the light coming out of it.

This is the part of the story where I stop believing that it's just my imagination and start to question whether it could be something more. If I told my mother that the undead inhabited my room, she would probably have sent me to the crazy house, so I was forced to live with the demonic presence in my floor of the house, until things went too far.

One night while I was lying awake in bed, I saw this glowing green light in the shape of a clawed hand appear in the middle of my room, stay there for about second, then disappear. It took me a few minutes to even register what I just saw. I was completely terrified, all I could do was sit up in my bed, stare wide eyed at the walls of my room, and wish that the sun would come up. After that incident, I considered going to live at my father's house. However, it would take one final incident to push me over the edge.

It was about two weeks later when I saw something again, something far worse. I was lying awake in my bed again when I heard what sounded like feet shuffling across my floor. My mother and her boyfriend were both asleep so it couldn't have been them. The pair of shuffling feet became two pairs of shuffling feet, then two became three and three became four until shuffling filled the whole room. I was frozen with fear once more.

Then came the voices. The voices weren't the usual inaudible whispers you would expect to hear from ghosts, but rather the jumble of voices you hear when you're in a crowded place where everyone's talking and you can't make out what any individual person saying. Just when I thought things couldn't get more terrifying, they did. I heard a bunch of phones ringing all at once. It couldn't have been a real phone because there were no phones on the second floor. In the midst of all this shuffling, talking, and ringing, one voice rang clear. It was the voice of a woman.

She picked up one of the phones, said hello, and then I heard her say "yes sir, the file is ready." Then, just as suddenly as it began, everything stopped. No more talking, no more ringing, no more shuffling, just silence. After that, I moved into my fathers house quicker that you can blink an eye. Ever since I moved, I feel no more uneasiness; I sleep sounder than a baby, and the only demons I stay awake watching are the ones on Inuyasha. It's been four years since I've seen that house, and when I look back on it all I sometimes wonder why the hell would a ghost be talking about some damn paperwork?
 -Mandy. (story from http://www.guardiantales.freewebspace.com/Sleepless.html)

Another freaky story...

On a very warm summer afternoon, I was alone in our house and was taking a nap on the sofa in our front room. I was having a strange and melancholy dream about my brother who had died a little over a year ago. I don't remember the details of the dream but I remember that he kept telling me a certain number over and over and over again! When I finally woke up, the number was still sticking in my head... it was a seven digit number. After several minutes I realized that the string of numbers was a a very familiar phone number. I just couldn't place the number at first. Then, suddenly, I realized that it was the phone number of my grandparents who lived in San Diego. They had died over ten years prior. My deceased brother and I were very close to them and often called them to talk when we were in our elementary school years ( which is why it was such a familiar number! ). I don't know if it was because of the heat or because of the lingering emotions brought on by my dream, but I got a crazy notion to call the number.

The phone on the other end rang four or five times, and then someone answered. My heart started racing, because I was expecting a message that the number had been disconnected! I really didn't know what to say... so I asked, "Is Dottie there?" ( Dottie was my grandmother's name. ) There was a pause, and then the voice said, "Who IS this?". I said, "This is David." Then there was what I would describe as surprised laughing on the other end of the line. Then the female voice chuckled "Oh my God! It's been so long!" I asked, "Who is THIS?". The voice sounded slightly perplexed and she said, "Why, it's Nana!" ( That is what my brother and I used to call my grandmother. ) Only our family and my uncle and his family knew that we referred to her as Nana! I felt my stomach getting queasy from fright and disbelief, and I squeaked out "Nana?" The voice said, "Yes! It's so good to hear from you David! Let me go get your Grandpa. He's out in the 'Rumpus Room' out back." My grandparents had a part of their garage in the backyard that had been converted to a full bar with a pool table and couched in it, which they referred to as their "Rumpus Room".

The line got very noisy, then there was a squealing sound, and then the line went dead. I felt a mixture of relief from the creeps I was getting from talking to my long-since dead grandmother and disappointment that I didn't get to talk longer to her, or at all to my grandpa. I have called the same number again in the recent past and got the message that "This number is no longer in service.." I really don't know what to make of that phone call. It seemed that the person really was my Nana. It sounded kind of like her voice -- but younger than what I remembered -- and because she knew about the "Rumpus Room"... Is it really possible to make a phone call to the Other Side?

Story from http://www.castleofspirits.com/stories02/otherside.html Got your own ghost phone call story? Share it here.


photo by mscaprikell flickr.com

Ghost Photography

Ghost photography is the practice of attempting to catch ecto-plasm or ghostly apparitions on film. Whether you believe they are dust particles in the air, faulty camera lenses or true spirits caught on film, the Internet has hundreds of these images online for your judgement.

Ghoststudy.com has a large group of ghost images online plus some handy tips on how to take your own ghost photography. Follow this link to check them out for yourself and learn how to create your own.
Ghoststudy.com

Got any ghost photos of your own? Email me and I will post them here!