Every year at this time, conversations turn to scary talk of the mysterious world of supernatural phenomena, says Melissa Newman. Unlike the "safe scares" that Halloween brings, for those who encounter real paranormal phenomena, the encounters can be truly terrifying. Read more.
Scary stories of encounters with ghosts at Halloween
SOME SAY THAT on Halloween, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest. This allows the spirits of that dark unknown place to more freely walk among us - making Halloween the spookiest time of year. Whether that is true or just a tradition, it's certain that the living are more focused on ghosts and the possibilities of the paranormal throughout October. As we see every month in Your True Tales, encounters with the unknown occur all year long, but when creepy things happen at Halloween, the feeling of the season makes them all the scarier. Dim the lights, light the candle in your jack-o-lantern and read about these confrontations with Halloween ghosts.
THE HAUNTED MILL
The following incident happened on Halloween night 2005. The only reason this is burned into my memory is because about six of us were witness to it so it often comes up in conversation. Plus we have the photos as proof.
There is a legend nearby, deep in the dark woods, of an old haunted mill. The story behind it is that a family of three used to live there: a father, mother and their four-year-old son. The mother apparently went crazy and drowned her son in the pond next to the house. When the father came home from working at the mill and found his son dead, he attacked the mother, and the fight ended in the attic with the mother shooting the father in the head with a rifle. It is said that she hid his body beneath the floorboards, then hung herself up in the attic.
The legend suggests if you go up in the attic and call the woman degrading names, she will appear to you. So, being the bored kids that we were, my five friends and I piled into my little car and drove to the haunted mill. I had my digital camera and was anxious to capture images of some ghosts. (I am a bit of skeptic, too, and am always finding excuses for the so-called "orbs" in photographs, constantly insisting that they are flecks of dust, bugs or drafts of light.)
The woods that the mill is settled in are always very dark, so the moonlight hardly penetrated the trees as we arrived at the old stone house. We all crept out of the car and were startled to see two large, black horses standing in front of the house. I quickly snapped a picture of them. Then we moved around, trying to find a way in. To our dismay, the only opening was a small window through the basement. We had to get down on our hands and knees to crawl through. As I bent down, I felt someone "push" me from behind. I cried out and looked around to see I was in last place, and I put my hand down to catch my balance, only to cry out again as my hand caught something thorny. I looked down and saw nothing unusual. Upon examining my hand, everything looked fine. It felt like I had barbs sticking into my skin, yet I couldn't see anything.
After we all squeezed in through the opening, we turned on our flashlights and began exploring the house. The walls, to our surprise, were all drywall, and we realized that the house wasn't as old as we had originally thought. Yet they were covered in graffitI - a lot of upside-down crosses and "666" signs, which didn't do much to calm our nerves. I took pictures in every room.
Finally, we made it up to the attic. We all huddled together in the center and held hands. Nobody wanted to shout the curses, so I, being the skeptic (and the bravest), decided to take on that role. I shouted some choice words into the darkness around us and we all held our breath, waiting. Nothing happened. We waited for about 15 minutes with no apparition of the woman's ghost. With a mixture of relief and disappointment, we turned and headed down the stairs.
Somehow I got in last place again, so I turned and snapped one more picture of the empty attic. I swear to you, as my flash bounced off the walls, I saw a lone female figure standing in the back corner. Terrified, I ran down the steps after my friends.
No more incidences happened, although when we got outside, the horses were nowhere to be found. I took one more picture of the house, one of the old crumbling barn, one of the pond and one of the eerie little shack we found in the backyard. Then we once again all piled into my car and left the premises.
When we got back to my friend's house, we hooked my camera up to the TV so we could sift through the pictures on a large screen. The results were pretty creepy. A picture of the horses captured them standing there, staring at us. Their eyes were red. Now I know that that often happens to people's and animals' eyes in pictures, but it was still unsettling to look at. The rooms in the house all had millions of orbs in them. I brushed it off until we viewed the pictures of the barn, the pond and the little shack. None of those had any orbs! Yet the picture of the house had tons of them! Weird.
The attic photo showed nothing unusual, unfortunately, so nobody believed me when I said I thought I saw something. But the last picture that someone had snapped of the side of the house was the creepiest. A few orbs appeared in the air, but one orb in particular was an odd, bluish-purple color, and there was the distinct outline of a skull.
I have the pictures still to this day and everyone I have shown them to all agree that they are very strange, and the "skull picture," as we dubbed it, is the most chilling picture I ever took. The weird thing is, the skull is looming directly over the place where I had snagged my hand on something. And in the following days, an odd rash appeared all over my fingers. It eventually went away, but the doctors had no idea what it was. And neither do I. - Samantha
Next page: The Tickling Ghost and Bloody Mary
"I live in Anchorage, Alaska," reports Zachariah. "Roughly one year ago, I had gotten home from school, done my homework, and started to unload and load our dishwasher. Bearing in mind I'd yet to have eaten lunch, I put a fork aside to use for some chicken ramen. Now, there was nothing unusual about our table. It had no open drawers, no parts removed, and no holes. I turned back for a moment to put some forks away, and when I turned back, the fork was just gone. It hadn't fallen; we'd have heard it. It didn't get put away and I didn't misplace it, as I had searched everywhere for it. This wasn't some unholy haunting or some trippy time paradox or anything, but it was definitely weird enough to make me stop and think for a while. How could the fork have disappeared? Where had it gone to? What forces could've acted upon it to make it move so suddenly? I think of these questions daily, but no solution comes to mind."
Thanks, Zachariah. I had a similar experience a few years back. I opened a can of Pringles and dropped the yellow lid on the tile floor of my apartment kitchen. I heard it hit the floor at my feet. I stooped to pick it up... and it was gone. I looked everywhere for it, assuming it had bounced or rolled away. I searched every inch of that small kitchen, including under the stove, under and beside the refrigerator, in all the cabinets (which were closed) -- even the upper cabinets. I even thought of that lid when I moved out of that apartment and cleaned everything out. The yellow lid was never found. It simply seemed to vanish into thin air.
There is a mystery known as the "borrower" phenomenon or "disappearing object phenomenon" in which an object vanishes from where it was recently placed -- usually a "normal" place -- with no explanation. Extensive searches turn up nothing. Then sometimes the object mysteriously returns -- in that normal place. It's weird. Read more about this phenomenon.
Crescent Hotel Apparition
from Brandon Alvis, American Paranormal Research AssociationMy name is Brandon Alvis. I am the founder of the American Paranormal Research Association (APRA). We recently did an investigation of the historic Crescent Hotel in Eureka Spring, Arkansas. Myself and the co-founder of the group both saw something pacing back and forth at the end of the hall on the third floor. When I snapped a few photos, I caught a photo of interest.
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Filmmaker Raul Julia-Levy is offering this photo as evidence for a highly advanced, unknown, pre-Mayan civilization that he says suggests contact with extraterrestrials. The photo was taken in jungles of southern Guatemala in the 1930s, according to Julia-Levy and shows a 51-foot-tall, beautifully carved head, possibly of a female, with face turned toward the heavens. He says it dates back to between 3,500 and 5,000 B.C.
"I certify that this monument presents no characteristics of Maya, Nahuatl, Olmec or any other pre-Hispanic civilization," he says. "It was created by an extraordinary and superior civilization with awesome knowledge of which there is no record of existence on this planet."
This is just one piece of evidence that Julia-Levy is presenting in his upcoming documentary, Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond, the date for which has not been decided. (It hasn't begun shooting yet.)
Like all such bold claims, we'd like to see all the evidence and have it examined by experts. For example, we do not even know for certain if the photo is genuine. Also, even if the statue does stand as evidence for an as-yet-unknown civilization, how does that translate to alien contact? So is this evidence... or the hype we've seen so often?
Of course there have been many objects discovered that suggest ancient, unknown civilizations. Here are some of them.
This very interesting photo was received from Elizabeth Tolomeo.
"I took this picture of my husband fishing at a very remote lake, Dorothy Dunn, in northern Wisconsin," says Elizabeth. "The lake has no boat launch and no homes are on the lake. We had to hike in to the lake through brush and weeds.
"I took the picture in early 1990s. It wasn't for some time after I had it developed it that I realized it appears that a young girl, possibly wearing a pinafore and bonnet, is off to the right of my husband. Everyone was so intrigued by the photo because there was nobody there. The image is quite clear." Go see it in the Gallery.
The staff at the Shurland Hotel in Eastchurch, U.K. says they have experienced many instances of paranormal activity there, including unexplained raps on the walls, mysterious footsteps on the roof, and the apparition of a young girl in an upstairs apartment. During a morning staff meeting, the bar's closed-circuit TV camera might have recorded a poltergeist event. A pint of beer seems to fall from a table to the floor of its own accord. Was it knocked by "something"? Or did the glass just slide off the table? Go watch the video.
"In June, 2007, my husband and I took my elderly parents to visit my mother's sister in Clinton, ?Iowa," reports Carol. "My aunt had an unfinished basement that she had partitioned off with blankets and wires. We took one of these 'rooms' and my parents took another, only theirs was more like an actual room because it had a door.
"We went to bed after a long trip from Tennessee. We had just laid down and I felt the sensation that someone was watching me. I propped myself up on my right elbow and looked toward the curtain opening. There stood a female figure peeking around the curtain at me. I don't know why I did not say anything. I just watched.
"It looked as if she had her hair in rollers and something thrown over her shoulders. She went over to look at the furnace. She stood at the end of the bed looking at us, then turned around and did something to the furnace. The next day my husband and I were talking. He asked me if my aunt had come in our room the night before. I said, 'You saw it too?' After comparing notes, he had seen the exact thing I had. After telling my aunt, she was not surprised. She had never seen the apparition, but had heard footsteps, voices, and smelled cigarette smoke. It was a trip I'll not forget. I am not real exited about returning."
Thanks, Carol. Ghost sightings like this always have far more credibility when more than one person sees the apparition and is able to independently describe it in the same way. I know you said you don't want to return, but it would interesting if you could try to get more evidence there in the form of EVP, photos or even video. It seems you might have a good chance.
Here are tales of more domestic ghosts:
The Arizona Repbulic newspaper has written articles pertaining to a highway that the locals call "Blood Alley." There is another published article about the tragic death of a family of six along this highway. I am not sure of the year that this happened, but I believe it was around 1992-1993, either in August or September.
Blood Alley is a desolate, narrow, two-lane highway that runs from Wickenburg, through Wikiup, and down into Kingman, Arizona. It is a winding, hilly road filled with blind curves and almost no road shoulder room. Due to the hills, there are dead zones where cell phones don't work, and there is no radio reception except static. Oftentimes, you can travel the entire length of this road without ever seeing another vehicle.
A HISTORY OF TRAGEDY
The entire length of this highway is dotted with small white crosses. Some crosses are spaced at different intervals, some are a series of crosses, and in some spots a cluster of crosses that marks where an entire vehicle of people have died tragically.
There is one particular spot that is marked by six white crosses. A family of six, traveling in a station wagon with a hitched trailer, was moving from California to Arizona. Along the way, a rear tire blew and the father pulled his vehicle as far off the road as he could. He got out and set flares in front and back of the vehicle to warn other drivers. The father had just jacked up the car and had stepped behind the trailer to retrieve something. That's when he was plowed into by a pickup truck. The pickup hit with such force that it pushed the trailer into the back of the station wagon, killing the four children sitting in the back, all the way to the front where the wife was sitting, who was also killed. The car then caught on fire. The youngest child was only six months old. The driver of the pickup sustained severe injuries, but survived. Every time I have passed this spot, I've always said a little prayer for the family that died there.
THE TRIP HOME
Members of my family and I have travelled this road often on our way to Las Vegas and back home. On one such trip in 1992 or 1993, we had a strange experience that we've come to call "The Highway Man."
My husband Sam and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, were coming back from a family reunion in Las Vegas. As usual with our family reunions, we delayed in leaving because it was so hard to say goodbye. We finally left Vegas late at night for our return trip home. Since our pickup was having engine problems, we decided that we would drive ahead, with my brother following behind us. That way, if our pickup had problems, we could catch a ride with my brother and his wife and not be stranded out in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night.
It was between two and three in the morning, the air was chilly, the moon was out and the stars were shining brightly. I had just commented to my husband how bright the stars were without the glare of city lights. The moon was just bright enough to illuminate the landscape and the many white crosses. Up ahead, the road began a gentle bank to the right. I turned around to see if my brother was still behind us, and estimated that he was a little more than half a mile behind us.
AN EERIE LIGHT, A TALL STRANGER
When I turned to face front, I noticed a small white light ahead. It reminded me of a flashlight. I said to my husband, "Do you see that light up there? Looks like a flashlight, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," he said. "Looks kind of like a flashlight."
"God, I hope it's not an accident or someone stranded," I said. "How awful. Slow down, Sam, in case we need to help someone."
My husband began to slow down. As we got closer to the light, we saw that it looked more like a kerosine lantern - the kind you use for camping.
"That doesn't look like a flashlight. Looks more like a lantern," my husband commented.
"Yeah. Isn't that strange? Why would anyone be out here camping?" I wondered aloud. "And so close to the road? That doesn't make sense. Could someone be out there camping and walked to the road? Maybe their flashlight went out and they had to use a lantern."
Just as we came abreast of the light, a man stepped out of the shadows. I could make out that he was a little over six feet tall, dressed in a black duster, jeans and cowboy boots. He had on a black cowboy hat that was pulled down low, concealing his face. He held the lantern in front of him, just above his head. From the glow of the lantern, I could see an old-time black Harley parked behind him and off to his right side. I remember him taking one step forward and as we passed him, he took one step back, disappearing into the shadows. The light went out.
"Holy cats! Did you see that? Did you see that?" I shouted. I had turned around and was facing the back of the pickup. "I don't see the light! Where's the light? Oh my God! Where did he go?"
Next page: What her brother saw
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The Exorcism of Emily Rose is based on the tragic case of a young German woman named Anneliese Michel, who in the early 1970s underwent an ordeal that eventually led to her death. The details of her case can be found in such Web article as "The Real Emily Rose" and "What Really Happened to Emily Rose?". The controversy surrounding her illness, exorcism and death resulted in a sensational trial, all of which are part of the Emily Rose film.
Anneliese was diagnosed by doctors as suffering from grand mal epilepsy, a condition of the brain that causes severe seizures. This, compounded by other possible mental and psychological disorders, resulted in hallucinations of demonic faces and voices. Her religious parents, apparently baffled and frustrated by their 16-year-old daughter's increasingly psychotic and often violent behavior, chose to thwart the medical diagnosis and sought an exorcism.
For years, the Church refused to grant an exorcism. They accepted the medical diagnosis, finding no supernatural criteria to warrant an exorcism. There were certainly very serious and highly disturbing symptoms: Anneliese would mutilate herself, eat flies and coal, drink her own urine and physically lash out at her family. A profoundly disturbed girl. But there was no levitation, no documented telekinesis (heck, even poltergeist cases have some telekinesis) - nothing whatsoever that could be deemed supernatural.
Making Matters Worse
Despite this lack of evidence, however, in 1975 the Michels finally convinced priests to perform exorcisms - a whole series of them, in fact, sometimes two rites a week! Certainly, this only reinforced Anneliese's delusion that demons were inside her. And not just any demons. She claimed to be possessed by the spirits of Cain, Judas Iscariot, Nero, even Adolf Hitler, among others.
Only for a short time did she seem to improve because of the exorcism rites. But soon the mental anguish returned with a vengeance. She stopped eating and her knees ruptured from the 600 genuflections she performed obsessively.
Ultimately, the exorcisms failed. On July 1, 1976, Anneliese died of starvation, and her parents and exorcising priests were charged with negligent homicide - and rightly convicted.
The exorcisms failed because there was nothing to exorcise. Anneliese Michel was not possessed; she required heavy duty medical attention. Had her parents sought proper medical care for their daughter instead of seeking refuge in superstition, Anneliese might be alive today. With the improved medications and treatments now available, she might even be living a normal life.
Now here is a delicious Halloween treat you can give yourself. Prolific author of the paranormal Brad Steiger ventures into e-publishing with a new monthly e-book series, Real Nightmares: True and Truly Scary Unexplained Phenomena. The first volume has just been made available for Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and in ibookstore for other devices for just $1.99.
I just downloaded it, where I can read it on my Kindle, on my computer through the Kindle Cloud Reader (for Google Chrome), and with the Kindle app on my smartphone.
This volume includes seven chapters on the mysteries and high-strangeness of: the controversial HAARP array; the Bell Witch poltergeist case; the mysterious Lady in Black case of possession; Hitler's bizarre plan to turn Europeans into zombies; Montezuma's giant rattlesnake spirit familiar; a possible case of a human-alien hybrid -- the boyfriend/reptilian alien; and the remarkable story of a 17-year-old girl who survived a plane crash in the Amazon rain forest and walked to safety.
I'm eager to see the next volumes in the series.
TOYED WITH
I put everything away and walked to the driver's side of my truck toward the cab. I took the last couple of puffs off my cigarette and flung it into the parking lot, used my keys to unlock the truck and popped the door open. Just as I planted my foot on the fairing, I heard a distinct giggle. A girl's giggle. I stepped back down and shined the flashlight around. Nothing.
"This is getting kind of creepy," I said aloud.
"He heard me," a small girl's voice answered back.
I jumped backward away from my truck. The voice had come from inside the cab! Something was wrong. I had the entire truck locked up while I was walking around. There was no way that someone could have gotten in without breaking a window. Steeling myself for what was going to be an uncomfortable encounter at the least, I took a step up on the fairing and leaned my head into the truck.
"Is anyone in here?" I asked. I hit the switch to turn on the sleeper berth light. I climbed in. I put a knee onto the seat and peered into the sleeper berth.
"Goodnight," a soft voice said, which seemed to emanate from all around me. I flinched as I heard the word and felt a cold chill run through my body. I slid off the seat and stood up in the cab, bumping my temple off the overhead storage bins. I looked around the sleeper. No one was there.
SOMETHING... INHUMAN
I turned around and shuffled into the cab to close the door when I saw the young girl standing outside my truck on the pavement, looking up at me with lifeless eyes. Those eyes, you see, weren't meant for a person. They were designed for a predator, and all of a sudden I felt like prey.
I reached forward and slammed the door shut and flicked the lock. I quickly decided that I was not staying here for the rest of the night. I turned the key and heard my truck's motor rumble to life, along with the familiar, annoying buzzing that was my air-pressure gauge telling me that I didn't have enough air to release the brakes. I took a furtive glance out the window, and there she stood - still as a tree, looking up at me and smiling. I didn't want to get any closer to the window until I was ready to get my truck moving. This was wrong, and I didn't want any part of this.
That "girl" wasn't human, at least not anymore she wasn't. It was almost as if she was something so inhuman that it would take the form of a human. It's hard for me to explain and I feel sick just thinking about it. I heard the siren shut off and hit the valves to supply air to my brake system. As the system began to air up, the siren came on again.
Screw this, I thought to myself. I have enough to get out of here. I disengaged the clutch, grinded the truck into gear and roared out of the parking lot like the devil himself was behind me... which, for all I knew, he was.
I looked in my side mirror as I was about to start turning right and saw the girl washed in the red and amber glow of my running lights. She was smiling at me and waving. I flew through my gears as quickly as they would let me as I got back onto the interstate.
THE KNIFE AND THE POSTCARD
I drove for about forty-five minutes, repeatedly hitting the switch to turn on my interior lights to look around the cab and the sleeper before finally spotting a larger truck stop at the next exit. After backing into one of the few remaining spots left, I shut off my lights and turned on the sleeper berth light as I walked into the back. Then paused.
At the store, I had bought a souvenir. Nothing fancy, just a postcard with a picture of Arkansas on it. I also had bought a new knife. I had never even taken the knife out of the box, and remembered putting the postcard into a drawer for safekeeping. The point of the blade had been driven directly into the spot on I-40 where I had originally stopped for the night! The blade had been driven in deep, pegging the postcard to my nightstand!
It took me several minutes just to work the knife loose enough to withdraw it from the nightstand. Thankfully, when I turned the postcard over, no message had been left for me.
To this day I do not know what I saw. I hear other truckers talk of strange things that they see on the interstates, U.S. highways and state routes, but I've never mentioned my experience. I've always felt that just by mentioning her, I'd walk back out to my truck and there she would be, sitting on my bunk and waiting for me.
I threw that postcard away and tossed the knife into a dumpster. I got another postcard from Arkansas, just to keep the collection going. I've got 36 so far.
You are invited to participate in our 2011 Halloween Costume Contest! Just send in a picture of yourself, friend or family member in your scariest, craziest or most outrageous Halloween costume with a paranormal theme. The deadline is October 26. Read the contest rules.
Past contest galleries:
The most amazing part of the story of this photograph is that she subsequently did some research about Hawthorne and the house. While looking through a library, she came across one of Hawthorne's books, Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa. On the cover of that book is a portrait of Hawthorne's five-year-old son, Julian. And as you'll see by clicking on the photo at left, the portrait of little Julian bears a striking resemblance to the ghost in Lisa's photograph.
You can read the full story of this photograph in the article, "The Ghost of the Seven Gables."
What you'll see: The scene was recorded by a closed-circuit TV (CCTV) camera during the staff's morning briefing (around 10:30 a.m.) at the Shurland Hotel in Eastchurch, U.K. A male staff member sits at a table to the right. A dark pint of beer is on the table. Suddenly, it falls to the floor, which seems to surprise everyone. A female staff member begins to clean it up.
Review:
According to the description with the video, the staff at the Shurland has had several strange experiences in the hotel, and they were pleased that they finally had evidence in the form of the CCTV footage.
Because of the distance of the camera and the low quality of the video, we don't get a really good details of the event. I think we've all had the experience of a glass moving on a table: liquid either from the beverage itself or from condensation beneath the glass has surface tension on which the glass can slide.
From what we can see, it does look like the glass is very near the edge of the table, so it could have slid off. On the other hand, it doesn't quite look like it just falls off the table; it looks like it was knocked with force.
But again, the video is just not close or clear enough to yield us a better conclusion for poltergeist activity than "maybe." We also have to take into consideration the claims by staff of other paranormal activity at the hotel, including unexplained raps on the walls, the sounds of footsteps across the roof, and the ghost a little girl in the building's top-floor apartment.
GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:
The ghost face of the USS Arizona
On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor in an effort to destroy America's Pacific Fleet before they could officially enter the war and interfere with their intent to dominate the Pacific. During that catastrophic assault scores of ships and planes were destroyed and even more tragically nearly 2,500 unsuspecting soldiers horrifically lost their lives. On September 26th, 2011, an Australian woman visited the USS Arizona memorial and snapped this picture...
(Also read: Ghosts at Sea)
The ghost of every blooming thing
Hollister Hancock lived in her beloved house from the time she was seven until she was eighty-seven. According to Pam March, who bought and began restoring the house in 1977 as the perfect location for her floral business Every Blooming Thing, Hollister's ghost is still there. And she's welcome...
Vintners' ghost stories mix wines and spirits
As the crisp bite of fall turns vineyards into a kaleidoscope of russet and orange, the Napa Valley's spooky side comes out to play with tales of mysterious noises and ghostly sightings...
CREATURES:
Siberian region confirms Yeti exists
A Russian region in Siberia on Monday confidently proclaimed that its mountains are home to yetis after finding "indisputable proof" of the existence of the hairy beasts in an expedition. The local administration of the Kemerovo region in the south of Siberia said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains...
Bigfoot forum derided as United Russia ploy
A scientific conference featuring a boxing legend and U.S. Bigfoot believers has claimed that it found "95 percent evidence" for the existence of a Yeti-like hominoid in southern Siberia, but an opposition politician ridiculed the findings on Monday as pure pre-election publicity for United Russia...
Have we found evidence of the elusive orang pendek?
Richard Freeman describes last month's expedition in the jungles of Sumatra on the trail of the orang pendek...
Lair of ancient 'Kraken' sea monster possibly discovered
A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators - school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth...
(Also read: 5 Monsters You Never Heard Of)
Every October 31, from 1927 up to the present day, a s?ance has been conducted with hopes of contacting the spirit of Harry Houdini. So far, the great Houdini has not made his presence known. The Houdini s?ance has been a Halloween tradition since the first anniversary of his death. The magician died at the age of 52 on October 31, 1926 from peritonitis - an internal infection - as the result of a ruptured appendix. More about the Houdini s?ance.
Also read:
Ouija boards... demons... possession... Satanism.... The words themselves strike fear in the hearts of many people - especially those with strong religious beliefs. Danielle is one of those people, yet in the span of a month, the curiosity of her youth drew her away from her church to what her faith would call the dark side. And the results, according to her sworn testimony below, would be devastating and terrifying.
Non-believers would say that Danielle's experience was strictly psychological in nature, a product of her deep-seated religious belief system. Believers, however, assert that everything she went through - and is going through - is all too real: that demons really are out there, waiting to possess the innocent.
Whether it is real or not is in some respects irrelevant. Danielle believes it to be real, and so its effects on her life are real. This is Danielle's story....
This took place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at Springs Church. It all started around March, 2011 when I took up an interest in demonology. It didn't take long until the study had converted me from a Christian to a full-out Satanist. I had started attempting to summon demons and I never got a sign there was one there, so I bought a Ouija board.
On April 8, I used it to see if my promised Guardian Demon was there, and I remember the whole thing word for word, and here's how it went:
Me: Is there anyone else in this room with me who wishes to speak with me?
Ouija: YES.
Me: Holy - ! Are you good or bad?
Ouija: B.
Me: Ok.... Will you do anything to harm me or anyone?
Ouija: MAYBE.
Me: Alright then, how many spirits are here?
Ouija: 3.
Me: Okay, what are your names?
Ouija: BELIAL MALPHAS LEGION.
I thought perhaps it was just my imagination, so I decided to quit. Right as I was about to leave, I heard loud hissing from all around me...
Next page: The possession and the exorcism
| Did Pterosaurs Survive Extinction? | |
|
They were the largest creatures to ever attain flight. With wingspans reaching nearly 40 feet, pterosaurs ruled the prehistoric skies for over 100 million years, until they died out with the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.
Or did they?
There have been many modern-day sightings of creatures that by eyewitness description sound like pterosaurs. There are also intriguing rock carvings and even photographs that suggest that this species of amazing flying monsters could have survived extinction, could have soared through the skies of the southwestern United States until very recently, and might still exist in small numbers in remote parts of the world.
Pterosaurs were not dinosaurs, but a family of large flying reptiles ("pterosaur" means "winged lizard") that includes the pterodactyl and pteranodon. The pterosaur stood on two rather spindly legs and had wings composed of a leathery membrane that stretched from the animal's extremely long fourth finger to its body. Despite their appearance, they were not related to birds (as dinosaurs are theorized to be), and were highly successful flyers that might have dined on fish and insects.
Modern Sightings
Although there seems to be no hard evidence that pterosaurs did not die out millions of years ago - no pterosaurs have ever been captured and no bodies have ever been found - sightings have persisted. Stories of flying reptiles have been recorded for many hundreds of years. Some think that tales of the "mythical" dragons in the lore of many cultures around the would could be attributed to the sighting of pterosaurs. Here are some more modern accounts:
May, 1961, New York State - A businessman flying his private plane over the Hudson River Valley claimed that he was "buzzed" by a large flying creature that he said "looked more like a pterodactyl out of the prehistoric ages."
Early 1960s, California - A couple driving through Trinity National Forest reported seeing the silhouette of a giant "bird" that they estimated to have a wingspan of 14 feet. They later described it as resembling a pterodactyl.
January, 1976, Harlingen, Texas - Jackie Davis (14) and Tracey Lawson (11) reported seeing a "bird" on the ground that stood five feet tall, was dark in color with a bald head and a face like a gorilla's with a sharp, six-inch-long beak. A subsequent investigation by their parents uncovered tracks that had three toes and were eight inches across.
February, 1976, San Antonio, Texas - Three elementary school teachers saw what they described as a pterodactyl swooping low over their cars as they drove. They said its wingspan was between 15 and 20 feet. One of the teachers commented that it glided through the air on huge, bony wings - like a bat's.
September, 1982, Los Fresnos, Texas - An ambulance driver named James Thompson was stopped while driving on Highway 100 by his sighting of a "large birdlike object" flying low over the area. He described it as black or grayish with a rough texture, but no feathers. It had a five- to six-foot wingspan, a hump on the back of its head, and almost no neck at all. After consulting some books to identify the creature, he decided it most looked like a pterosaur.
Africa's Kongamato
While other reports of pterosaur-like creatures have come out of Arizona, Mexico and Crete, it is out of central Africa that some of the most interesting anecdotes have come. While traveling though Zambia in 1923, Frank H. Melland collected reports from natives of an aggressive flying reptile they called kongamoto, which means "overwhelmer of boats." The natives, who were occasionally tormented by these creatures, described them as being featherless with smooth skin, having a beak full of teeth and a wingspan of between four and seven feet. When shown illustrations of pterosaurs, Melland reported, "every native present immediately and unhesitatingly picked out and identified it as a kongamato."
In 1925, a native man was allegedly attacked by a creature that he identified as a pterosaur. This occurred near a swamp in Rhodesia (now Zambia) where the man suffered a large wound in his chest that he said was caused by the monster's long beak.
In the late 1980s, noted cryptozoologist Roy Mackal led an expedition into Namibia from which he had heard reports of a prehistoric-looking creature with a wingspan of up to 30 feet.
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Fraternal twins can also experience these psychic sympathy symptoms:
We have all heard the stories about twins who, even though they are separated by great distances (and in some cases were separated at birth and don't even know each other), have eerily similar lives, right down to making many identical choices.
Is this a case of two people who share very similar genetics simply making similar choices? Or is there truly a psychic connection that transcends distance?
Most scientists are naturally skeptical of such anecdotes as evidence of telepathic communication. "We do hear of things like this happening between identical twins more often than fraternal, but it isn't telepathy," says Dr. Nancy Segal, professor of psychology and director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University in an article for Lawrence Journal-World. "They're merely coincidences that occur when two people are so much alike in the first place. It's nature and nurture - same heredity, same environment. [Identical twins] come from the same egg, and they tend to have the same general thought patterns, intelligence levels, likes and dislikes."
Coincidence doesn't explain the effects documented in several interesting experiments, however.
EXPERIMENTS
Guy Lyon Playfair, in addition to his book research, has conducted informal experiments of his own to test the psychic connection between twins. These are some of the results:
Playfair is quick to admit that these were not experiments conducted with the strictest scientific protocols, yet it is difficult to explain their outcomes.
And there was a reason that Playfair used cold water and the element of surprise in his experiments rather than having the twins try to communicate the number and suit of a specific playing card or other such thing. The physical and emotional response could be the key to making it work. "Telepathy tends to work best when it is needed," he says, "and when sender and receiver are strongly bonded, as with mothers and babies, dogs and their owners, and those with the strongest bond of all - twins."
