Posts tagged ghost

Dead Woman’s Crossing It all started in the summer of 1905.  Katie DeWitt James was ready to start a new life.  She had just filed for a divorce from her then husband and had only 14 months earlier given birth to a new child.  As the day wore on she knew it was going to be an important time for her.  But as the day turned to night, tragedy struck.  When her daughter was taken to the police covered in blood, officers were horrified.  Luckily, they found that the baby was unharmed.  But where had the blood come from?  What started as a murder mystery ended with a ghost story in Custer City, Oklahoma.The baby was cared for by Katie’s family when it was finally reunited with them.  But it had been several weeks since the family had heard from her.  Her father, Henry called the sheriff fearing something had happened to his daughter.  Days later Katie’s body was discovered in Deer Creek   When her husband James was visited by police, he answered their questions, but later poisoned himself and died.  It seemed the mystery had been solved.But that wasn’t the final mystery in this case.  A pair of travelers passing through town would later happen upon the area and spot the ghost of a woman standing in the woods holding a baby.  As the travelers looked at the woman they at first took for a stranded motorist, she eventually vanished and removed any doubt from their minds that what they had just witnessed was something paranormal.  Reporting their incident, several locals in the area knowingly informed them that they had become the latest witnesses to the ghost of Katherine DeWitt James’ ghost.But there were other witnesses as well.  Witnesses passing through the area would report that strange eerie orbs of blue light would pass overhead and dance about in the trees, sometimes accompanied by a field of what the witnesses could only describe as “energy.”But perhaps the strangest part of the murder mystery is the fact that the witnesses would so commonly spot the ghost of a woman holding a baby.  Was there another baby involved in the area that could have also died?  Or was this simply a projection of Katherine’s thoughts onto the area?  Is it possible there was more than meets the eye here?  If ghosts are actual embodiments of spirits that pass on, then the woman should have appeared by herself without the baby.  Perhaps this is instead simply a photograph burned into the space she was occupying that could show witnesses what happened just prior to her death.

Dead Woman’s Crossing

It all started in the summer of 1905.  Katie DeWitt James was ready to start a new life.  She had just filed for a divorce from her then husband and had only 14 months earlier given birth to a new child.  As the day wore on she knew it was going to be an important time for her.  But as the day turned to night, tragedy struck.  When her daughter was taken to the police covered in blood, officers were horrified.  Luckily, they found that the baby was unharmed.  But where had the blood come from?  What started as a murder mystery ended with a ghost story in Custer City, Oklahoma.

The baby was cared for by Katie’s family when it was finally reunited with them.  But it had been several weeks since the family had heard from her.  Her father, Henry called the sheriff fearing something had happened to his daughter.  Days later Katie’s body was discovered in Deer Creek   When her husband James was visited by police, he answered their questions, but later poisoned himself and died.  It seemed the mystery had been solved.

But that wasn’t the final mystery in this case.  A pair of travelers passing through town would later happen upon the area and spot the ghost of a woman standing in the woods holding a baby.  As the travelers looked at the woman they at first took for a stranded motorist, she eventually vanished and removed any doubt from their minds that what they had just witnessed was something paranormal.  Reporting their incident, several locals in the area knowingly informed them that they had become the latest witnesses to the ghost of Katherine DeWitt James’ ghost.

But there were other witnesses as well.  Witnesses passing through the area would report that strange eerie orbs of blue light would pass overhead and dance about in the trees, sometimes accompanied by a field of what the witnesses could only describe as “energy.”

But perhaps the strangest part of the murder mystery is the fact that the witnesses would so commonly spot the ghost of a woman holding a baby.  Was there another baby involved in the area that could have also died?  Or was this simply a projection of Katherine’s thoughts onto the area?  Is it possible there was more than meets the eye here?  If ghosts are actual embodiments of spirits that pass on, then the woman should have appeared by herself without the baby.  Perhaps this is instead simply a photograph burned into the space she was occupying that could show witnesses what happened just prior to her death.

(Source: unexplainable.net)

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Melbourne’s Princess Theatre  On the evening of 3 March 1888, the baritone Frederick Baker, known as “Federici”, was performing the role of Mephistopheles in Gounod’s opera Faust. This production ended with Mephistopheles sinking dramatically through a trapdoor returning to the fires of hell with his prize, the unfortunate Dr Faustus. The audience was spellbound. As the audience held its collective breath as Federici was lowered down through the stage into this basement, he had a heart attack and died immediately. They laid him on the floor, lifeless, in his crimson vestments. He never came back onstage, never took the bows. When the company was gathered together to be told that Federici had died, they asked, “When?”. Being told of what had happened at the end of the opera, they said, “He’s just been onstage and taken the bows with us.” Since then, many people who have never heard of the Federici story have claimed to see a ghostly figure in evening dress at the theatre. For many years, the third-row seat in the dress circle was kept vacant in his honour.  His appearance in the dress circle during rehearsals for a new show is considered a good omen. Photo taken in 1908

Melbourne’s Princess Theatre 

On the evening of 3 March 1888, the baritone Frederick Baker, known as “Federici”, was performing the role of Mephistopheles in Gounod’s opera Faust. This production ended with Mephistopheles sinking dramatically through a trapdoor returning to the fires of hell with his prize, the unfortunate Dr Faustus. The audience was spellbound. As the audience held its collective breath as Federici was lowered down through the stage into this basement, he had a heart attack and died immediately.

They laid him on the floor, lifeless, in his crimson vestments. He never came back onstage, never took the bows.

When the company was gathered together to be told that Federici had died, they asked, “When?”. Being told of what had happened at the end of the opera, they said, “He’s just been onstage and taken the bows with us.”

Since then, many people who have never heard of the Federici story have claimed to see a ghostly figure in evening dress at the theatre. For many years, the third-row seat in the dress circle was kept vacant in his honour.  His appearance in the dress circle during rehearsals for a new show is considered a good omen.

Photo taken in 1908

(Source: wikipedia.com)

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(Source: Flickr / magdalengreen)

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mirrorsgivethebesthigh5s: “After your death you will be what you were before your birth” -Arthur Shopenhauer

mirrorsgivethebesthigh5s:

“After your death you will be what you were before your birth”

-Arthur Shopenhauer

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klavieratrek: Photo taken a few months after the Lutz family fled the famous Amityville house. There were no children in the house at the time this picture was taken.

klavieratrek:

Photo taken a few months after the Lutz family fled the famous Amityville house. There were no children in the house at the time this picture was taken.

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 The expansive story of the Hodgson family began on a late August night in 1977. Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four,  claimed to witness what would be the first of many strange and seemingly unexplainable occurrences. Occurences that seemed to center around her two oldest daughters, and more specifically her middle child, Janet Hodgson.  What Peggy later told investigators, is that she witnessed a chest of drawers in the girls’ small bedroom slide, on its own accord, across the room and come to a stop in front of the pair of girls.    After moving the dresser back to its original position, Mrs. Hodgson was shocked when yet again, the chest slid across the room. Only this time, due to the force of some invisible weight, she was unable to move it. This incident was then accompanied by a disembodied knocking sound that would continue nearly the length of the entire fourteen months. Two journalists fro m:The Daily Mirror” are dispatched to the house.  They witness, but are unable to capture any tangible evidence of small objects floating in mid-air and being thrown around the living room.   Shortly after the floating object incident, the Society for Paranormal Research, or SPR, are contacted and two members by the name of Morris Grosse and Guy Lion Playfair are first to jump at the opportunity to investigate. After a short time of investigating in the home, both men are convinced that something genuinely paranormal is taking place. Loud noises of knocking, banging, and scratching in addition to the erratic movement of furniture, the major activity presented in the case, continue to escalate. SPR come to the conclusion that they are dealing with a particular kind of entity, one that they believe either manifests or feeds off of psychokinetic energy: a poltergeist. One of the more shocking accounts, as retold by Grosse, details the destruction of the girls’ 300-pound fireplace in October of 1977.  He explains having heard a loud banging, followed by the feeling of shaking. By the time he reached the girls’ bedroom, the fireplace had wrenched itself out of the wall, ripping a solid metal pipe in half. The only two witnesses present at the time were Margaret and Janet Hodgson, who claimed to have been sleeping. London University is contacted and a student of experimental physics is sent to the house to test the girls’ ability to influence metal. Within a short period of time Janet managed to bend a spoon completely in half without ever coming into contact with the object itself. The investigators now believed most of the activity to be centered around Janet, who appears to be less and less frightened of the strange events as they continue to occur.  In late November, three months into the investigation, the now familiar disembodied knocking became persistent to the point of being categorized as intelligent. Grosse attempts to communicate with it, asking it to answer questions by rapping once or twice on the wall. The response that follows is a succession of 53 distinct knocks, all recorded on nearby tape recorder. It is around this time that Janet begins to fall into what Grosse describes as a trance-like state. She is said to have developed phenomenal strength while acting out violently towards herself and others. In order to prevent injuries, Janet is restrained. On November 26th a doctor visits the house and injects Janet with 10 mg of Valium, sedating her. Half an hour later she’s found in her bedroom, on top of a dresser, kneeling on a wide clock radio with her head hanging towards the ground, legs in the air. Graham Morris, photographer for The Daily Mirror, sets up a remote control camera in the girls’ bedroom that can be activated from anywhere in the house. Once activated, the camera would proceed to take a photograph every 4 seconds. He captures what appears to be a series of photographs of Janet being forcefully pulled out of her bed and thrown across the room to the foot of her sister’s bed. In an even more controversial turn of events, Janet then begins to speak in a deep voice, like that of a man. Grosse begins asking Janet a series of questions, all of which are answered by “the voice”. Doubting that the voice is anything but a clever ventriloquism act, Janet’s mouth is filled with water and taped over. Grosse challenges the voice to continue. It does. During an interview done by both investigators, the voice refers to itself as a man by the name of Bill, a previous resident of the home who had died of a hemorrhage in a chair on the first floor. Months later, Grosse is contacted by a man by the name of Terry Wilkins. Terry’s father had lived in the Hodgson’s home prior to the family, and had died of a hemorrhage in his favorite chair on the first floor. His name was Bill. In July 1978, Janet is admitted to Maudsly Hospital for extensive psychiatric testing. Two months later she is given a clean bill of heath and returns home to a seemingly quiet house. Almost as quickly as they had begun, the strange happenings of the Hodgson home had finally ceased.

 The expansive story of the Hodgson family began on a late August night in 1977. Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four,  claimed to witness what would be the first of many strange and seemingly unexplainable occurrences. Occurences that seemed to center around her two oldest daughters, and more specifically her middle child, Janet Hodgson.  What Peggy later told investigators, is that she witnessed a chest of drawers in the girls’ small bedroom slide, on its own accord, across the room and come to a stop in front of the pair of girls. 

 

After moving the dresser back to its original position, Mrs. Hodgson was shocked when yet again, the chest slid across the room. Only this time, due to the force of some invisible weight, she was unable to move it. This incident was then accompanied by a disembodied knocking sound that would continue nearly the length of the entire fourteen months.

Two journalists fro m:The Daily Mirror” are dispatched to the house.  They witness, but are unable to capture any tangible evidence of small objects floating in mid-air and being thrown around the living room.

 

Shortly after the floating object incident, the Society for Paranormal Research, or SPR, are contacted and two members by the name of Morris Grosse and Guy Lion Playfair are first to jump at the opportunity to investigate. After a short time of investigating in the home, both men are convinced that something genuinely paranormal is taking place. Loud noises of knocking, banging, and scratching in addition to the erratic movement of furniture, the major activity presented in the case, continue to escalate. SPR come to the conclusion that they are dealing with a particular kind of entity, one that they believe either manifests or feeds off of psychokinetic energy: a poltergeist.

One of the more shocking accounts, as retold by Grosse, details the destruction of the girls’ 300-pound fireplace in October of 1977.  He explains having heard a loud banging, followed by the feeling of shaking. By the time he reached the girls’ bedroom, the fireplace had wrenched itself out of the wall, ripping a solid metal pipe in half. The only two witnesses present at the time were Margaret and Janet Hodgson, who claimed to have been sleeping.

London University is contacted and a student of experimental physics is sent to the house to test the girls’ ability to influence metal. Within a short period of time Janet managed to bend a spoon completely in half without ever coming into contact with the object itself. The investigators now believed most of the activity to be centered around Janet, who appears to be less and less frightened of the strange events as they continue to occur. 

In late November, three months into the investigation, the now familiar disembodied knocking became persistent to the point of being categorized as intelligent. Grosse attempts to communicate with it, asking it to answer questions by rapping once or twice on the wall. The response that follows is a succession of 53 distinct knocks, all recorded on nearby tape recorder. It is around this time that Janet begins to fall into what Grosse describes as a trance-like state. She is said to have developed phenomenal strength while acting out violently towards herself and others. In order to prevent injuries, Janet is restrained.

On November 26th a doctor visits the house and injects Janet with 10 mg of Valium, sedating her. Half an hour later she’s found in her bedroom, on top of a dresser, kneeling on a wide clock radio with her head hanging towards the ground, legs in the air.

Graham Morris, photographer for The Daily Mirror, sets up a remote control camera in the girls’ bedroom that can be activated from anywhere in the house. Once activated, the camera would proceed to take a photograph every 4 seconds. He captures what appears to be a series of photographs of Janet being forcefully pulled out of her bed and thrown across the room to the foot of her sister’s bed.

In an even more controversial turn of events, Janet then begins to speak in a deep voice, like that of a man. Grosse begins asking Janet a series of questions, all of which are answered by “the voice”. Doubting that the voice is anything but a clever ventriloquism act, Janet’s mouth is filled with water and taped over. Grosse challenges the voice to continue. It does.

During an interview done by both investigators, the voice refers to itself as a man by the name of Bill, a previous resident of the home who had died of a hemorrhage in a chair on the first floor. Months later, Grosse is contacted by a man by the name of Terry Wilkins. Terry’s father had lived in the Hodgson’s home prior to the family, and had died of a hemorrhage in his favorite chair on the first floor. His name was Bill.

In July 1978, Janet is admitted to Maudsly Hospital for extensive psychiatric testing. Two months later she is given a clean bill of heath and returns home to a seemingly quiet house. Almost as quickly as they had begun, the strange happenings of the Hodgson home had finally ceased.

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Its it, What is it? Its it: EVP's

A brief look into the history of EVPs is outlined here as some background information to help explain how paranormal research on EVPs got to where it is today.

The great inventory Thomas Edison is generally credited with being the first to conceive that a device could be created to hear and speak with spirits. In a 1920’s newspaper interview he said someday it may be possible to have such a device. This is considered a remarkable comment since Edison himself never really showed any interest in the paranormal or supernatural, nor express any deep spiritual beliefs.

At the same time other great inventors such as Gueglielmo Marconi (wireless radio) and Nikola Tesla (famous for his work with electricity), perhaps in cooperation with each other, also began work on devices that they believed could communicate with the dead.

In the late 1920’s through 1930’s several psychic researchers claim to have heard voices on recorded radio broadcasts that were not part of the broadcast not could be accounted for by anything in the surrounding area. During World War 2 Swedish and Norwegian radio operators reported hear unfamiliar voices. They assumed it was the Germans. But after WW2 when capture German records were searched no evidence of Nazi activity on those frequencies at that time could be found.

The actual credit for having first recorded an EVP goes to Fredrich Jurgenson. In 1959 Fredrich Jurgenson, a Swedish film producer, was supposedly recording bird songs in the Swedish Alps (he would later admit he was out trying to record the voices of the dead). He claims not to have heard anything unusual during the recording but heard many voices upon playback. He claims to have heard his own mother’s voice calling his name (some accounts say he heard his mother’s voice telling him he is being watched!). Jurgenson recorded hundreds of voices over his life time and played them at many symposiums and conferences. His recording still remain unexplained to this day.

Through the 1960’s and 1970’s researchers, especially in England, claim to have recorded thousands of voices. In 1982 engineer George Meek and psychic William O’Niell built a device call the “Spiricom”. They claim it allows two-way real-time communication with spirits. This claim is still under heavy dispute.

Today, with the advent of digital records and reliable, professional grade sound editing software, paranormal investigators around the world continue to record and analyze unexplainable voices.


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benslakesidelife: Awesome.

benslakesidelife:

Awesome.

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avecmonpenchant-photography: Weeping Willow

avecmonpenchant-photography:

Weeping Willow

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In 1982, photographer Chris Brackley took a photograph of the interior of London’s St. Botolph’s Church, but never expected what would appear on the film. High in the church’s loft, seen in the upper right-hand corner of his photograph, is the transparent form of what looks like a woman. According to Brackley, to his knowledge there were only three people in the church at the time the photo was taken, and none of them were in that loft.According to London Paranormal Database Records, “Mr. Brackley was later contacted by a builder who recognized the face of one that he had seen in a coffin in the church.”

In 1982, photographer Chris Brackley took a photograph of the interior of London’s St. Botolph’s Church, but never expected what would appear on the film. High in the church’s loft, seen in the upper right-hand corner of his photograph, is the transparent form of what looks like a woman. According to Brackley, to his knowledge there were only three people in the church at the time the photo was taken, and none of them were in that loft.

According to London Paranormal Database Records, “Mr. Brackley was later contacted by a builder who recognized the face of one that he had seen in a coffin in the church.”

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