Haley Haunted

Extreme UFO Video

2011-04-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

This was just brought to my attention via facebook. I would love to hear what people think of this video either via comment or through my email: Haley@Chroniclesofthehaunted.com

The theory that is presented through the caller (former Area 51 worker) is one that I have heard before (in fact, on this radio show I believe), but I just don't know how to take it.

Some of the video footage looks very fake and the message seems to be a little over the top, but then again... I just don't know. Reminds me of "Incident at Exeter" (not far from my house BTW).

Here goes.

Let me know your thoughts.

Spontaneous Combustion

2011-04-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

I just made myself an adult beverage by combining:

and

and after taking a drink and not tasting any alocohol, I added more. And more. After still not tasting anything I thought, "Wow. This is dangerous".

Then I got to the bottom. Apparently my boy Jerry doesn't automatically mix as well as his Naval superior Captain Morgan. I was holding my drink and shuffled in my socks down to my bedroom and grabbed the doorknob. Immediately following the static shock, I kid you not, the drink burst into flames.

I apologize now for any future facebook statuses, myspace rants, and twatty tweets. It's going to be an ineresting night.

Surprise... Butt Sex?

2011-03-01T18:34:00.001-08:00

This is my actual horoscope via Twitter for today...

(I wish I was making this up)...

"Sexy Venus is flirting with Uranus in your sign today, tempting you to say yes before you even know where you're going.

You may be seeing green lights, but keep in mind that things could change instantaneously if you don't stay aware of everything that's happening around you. Avoid any unpleasant surprises by focusing on the present moment throughout the entire day, instead of always thinking about what's next."

Listen Twitter...

A. Exit only.

B. Maybe YOU should focus less on my sex life and more on the fact that "ParanormalBlacktivity" is actually a trending topic at the moment.

Green light my ass... Wait, no.

New Moth Man Movie!

2011-02-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

I cannot wait to see this.

Three Chimneys Inn Event in NH!!

2011-02-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

Three Chimneys Inn Event in Durham NH
April 22nd and 23rd
Come investigate this historical (and very active) inn!

Come and learn the history and haunts of this 1649 Inn and see why it is considered one of New Hampshire’s most haunted hotels!!

Event will include a lecture and introduction to the world of paranormal investigation brought to you by Jeff and Lisa of Northern Paranormal Research Society and Chris ("Haunted New Hampshire") and "Haley Haunted" (that's me!) of Chronicles of the Haunted...

...as well as exclusive access to the hotel for an overnight investigation!!

Event tickets are $50 for the lecture and investigation and dinner tickets CAN be purchased separately if you are not planning to stay at the Inn.

However.

The rooms look like this...

My room has an actual knight in it and many of the rooms have jacuzzis.

Just sayin.

Event tickets can be purchased HERE.

To book your room for the event, please contact them at
(603)868-7800 or (888)399-9777
www.threechimneysinn.com

Paranormal Mystery in Manchester, N.H.

2011-02-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

Paranormal Mystery. Manchester NH.

Why is there an overwhelming smell of burnt toast on the Bridge Street Bridge every single morning?

Every morning.

These are my predictions:

Either I am smelling the residual haunting of a mill building from the industrial era of Manchester who's furnaces were fueled by croutons or...

someone in "little Puertirico" is burning a shitload of toast.

What the hell.

Ahead Of My Time?

2011-01-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend my parents gutted the attic and in doing that, I was reintroduced to boxes and boxes and boxes of my childhood. The GIANT bin of books didn't surprise me, I've always been a huge nerd. However, I guess I never realized how long I really have been into the paranormal.

I give you... the first paranormal investigation team ever formed by Haley Haunted:

The G.H.G.P., or Ghost Hunters/Ghost Patrol (yes we even had an acronym) was started in 1993 and had seven active members. The picture above is the cover of our logbook which contains member information, logged activity, investigation notes, investigative methodologies (surprisingly scientific), and legitimate research on theorized historical spirits, demonic names and characteristics and our town history of deaths and tragedies. I was incredibly thorough. And I was seven years old.

The majority of the rest of the bin was filled with books about hauntings, UFO's, ESP, myths and legends, and OBE's. All between 1991-1994 (ages six to nine).

First of all... who lets their first grader pick up a book like that, but more importantly what little kid would want to study the possibilities of psychic phenomenon?

I guess I was just born to study the paranormal. No turning back now, I'm screwed.

SnakeEater (1989)

2011-01-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite YouTube videos of the moment is "Eat Like Snake", a supposed Burger King Commercial from Japan. My boyfriend introduced me to the odd and surprisingly racist spoof and a few hours after seeing it, while looking for my next movie to review, the title "SnakeEater" immediately caught my eye. As soon as I read the info on it, I was sold. I don't know that it's considered a horror movie, but it is absolutely necessary that I review it. Watch this trailer and you'll understand:

The movie SnakeEater made its assumably sell-out debut in 1989. I'm not even going to bother with actor names, but will say that the "supporting" actors were reused as different characters often throughout the movie so do watch for that. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to recycle these actors as they are TERRIBLE. While watching the opening scene, I actually reconsidered my movie choice, not knowing if I would make it through. Thank God I waited it out. Not only did this movie feature cheesy catchphrases, feathered hair, and a Harley Sportster made into a jetski, it had more masturbation references than I knew what to do with.

The plot of the movie goes something like this: "Soldier" is an ex-marine that was part of a special ops group called the "SnakeEaters". However, Soldier was too much of a rebel to stick to government protocol and spent the opening scene as an undercover cop on a drug bust.

You'll want to pay attention to this scene as it will feature the only bra in the entire movie.

The drug bust turns into kind of a weird sex scene. Maybe I'm being overly romantic, but being in an abandoned, grimy warehouse with a man about to sell me some crack is not exactly on my list of sexual fantasies. I will give them credit for this gem of a line though:

"What do you think I'm going to hide a wire in my underwear?"
"Honey it looks like you got the whole radio in there."

I think this may have been an illusion though as his underwear looked to be the same make and model as hers.

Ooh la la.

Thankfully they didn't show any down and dirty details, but the sneak peaks they did show made me want to take a shower.

But it's a good thing Soldier rigged the entire area with booby traps both Data and Macaulay Culkin would be envious of because low and behold... the sex was a trap (it always is fellas) and two very handsome characters bust in to steal the drug money!!!

Blah blah...

Ok so cut to a girl in a bikini sunning herself on the front of a boat. In the dark. On a boat that can only be described as a motorhome that floats. And it's floating down a river that just may be the same location filmed on "Swamp Loggers". Exactly where you'd take your family on vacation to right? Ugh.

Suddenly, the boat is overtaken by a wild gang of my ex-boyfriends

who steal the girl and take her back to their shack where they lock her in a shed to be reproduced with later. This really upsets the bandits' sister who is used to being the only hen in their henhouse. The boat scene is also the first (but far from the last) appearance of an unnecessary hard hat.

Now, I'm not sure if this is an extremely overlooked mistake in the movie, but sitting right behind the hillbilly shack is an enormous colonial style house. It's fairly obvious in multiple scenes. I would think that having neighbors would prohibit a kidnapping and later multiple homocides. I found other mistakes throughout the movie too, like someone drinking from a ketchup bottle that was very obviously filled with water, and various sound effects for no actions. I think maybe the editors of the movie saw the errors, thought back to the quality of the movie and just said, "ah, screw it".

Anyway, it turns out that the girl that is kidnapped is Soldier's sister. When he gets word of his family's attack, he sets out to find out who is responsible. Somehwere around this part in the movie is where you meet my favorite character, "King", the local marina owner.

King is my favorite because he is always drinking from a brown paper bag and used the word "fart" twice in one scene. He also comes crashing through the boat house on his harley and flies directly into the river.

Ol' Boy King is who we have to thank for the Harley Jetski...

When King presents this horrible defacing of a great Harley to Soldier, he warns that "You'll thank me later". The foreshadowing of this line kept me in suspense until the bitter end. Actually, I think the director forgot to follow through on this line as the only benefit I saw was that 70 miles of river goes by awfully fast when you're on a Harley jetski.

Now it wouldn't be the 80's without a slow motion shot of a woman running through the water in a white shirt, and this movie did not disappoint. I'm just glad that despite running from a band of hillbillies, participating in hand-to-hand combat, being hung from a sleeping bag cocoon, and bathing in a river, she managed to keep her slip-on flats firmly on her feet.

I absolutely LOVED the last scene where Soldier returns to his job as an undercover cop. In fact, I really enjoyed the whole movie. Despite my heckling, I would own this movie. And if there were a SnakeEater shirt like the one Soldier wears available, I would absolutely rock it with pride.

I gave this movie a 23 for the amount of teeth I think the entire cast put together has and for using the phrase "diddling his fiddle".

Unfortunately, there were only two references to a snake which throroughly disappointed me. And for that I give you... "Eat Like Snake"...

Proof of reincarnation?

2011-01-01T18:32:00.001-08:00

Scott Gruenwald is no newbie to the paranormal world. His hilarious internet show, "The Stu" has been making us laugh since its creation in 2008.

But did you know that he just may be the proof of a paranormal phenomenon that has been theorized and debated for centuries?

That's right, Scott Gruenwald just may be the reincarnation of Mark Twain.

Demonic Hangovers

2011-01-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I had a dream that a woman was holding a crucifix to my stomach and attempting to expel a demon (which I could very much feel).

When I awoke it all made sense to me. The demon she was expelling was in fact real. It was a demon of overindulgence and its name is Captain Morgan.

Happy New Year Ghosties.

Inception Indigestion.

2010-12-27T19:29:00.000-08:00

So before I dropped off the face of the Earth (in the blogging world anyway), I had read about the movie "Inception" in some sort of nerdzine. For anyone that knows me or follows my facebook or twitter, you may know about my RIDICULOUS dreams. So when I heard about the premise for this movie, I instantly marked it's release on my calendar. And now, five months after it hit theaters, I have finally seen Inception. So here we go...

So to start off, Leonardo... yum. But don't roll your eyes fellas, as the cast was also joined by Marion Cotillard (a popular choice in many horror movies and an absolute babe) and the one and only Juno. The rest of the cast was also highly recognizable, but I don't feel like naming them.

The movie was good.

...Initially, that was going to be my entire review. That it was good.

It's just that it's so damn long. And not only is it long, but there's like 93 different lines and layers of plot going on at the same time, which really gave me the time to have an internal argument of whether I loved or hated the movie. An argument that may remain unresolved. I have decided to agree to disagree with myself.

Due to the complexity of the movie itself, I have decided to express my feelings toward it by comparing it to this diagram of radio waves that I drew. And by "I drew", I mean that I stole from google images:

In looking at this diagram, I feel that the top wave (the black "signal" line) represents my attention span throughout the movie. In the moments when the line is the highest, I was on the edge of my seat and ready to declare this in my top ten. When the line declined, I downloaded three different novels to my nook and purchased a new domain name.

The red line (the "AM" line) represents my ability/inability to understand what the hell was going on. But let's be honest, this line doesn't vary much from my understanding line of "Lady and the Tramp".

And the third line, represents the volume that I had to keep the movie at to understand the dialogue while avoiding blowing my eardrums out.

I was a little disappointed that no images from my own dreams were present, although I can't really say I'm surprised. I don't think zombies that can only be killed by dish detergent is a common theme in the dream world.

I did recognize one theme though, that is probably very popular in the dreams of many of my fellow bloggers. The guys anyway.

Layer three of inception...

looked remarkably similar to a certain video game my boyfriend has become obsessed with as of late.

Just sayin.

I give this movie a three. For the amount of confusing layers, the amount of times I debated the fast forward button, and the amount of times I'll have to see the movie before I understand it.

For anyone that enjoyed this movie or is interested in Dream themed topics, check out the book "Dream Science" by Thomas Palmer. It's one of my favorite books, is hard to find, and will make your brain explode.

"Contact" with Jodie Foster

2010-08-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

So last night I watched the movie Contact (1997).

Oh where do I start...

So the movie stars Jodie Foster, an astromer researching intelligent life on other planets. Using satellite dishes, she searches for radio signals in space. Everyone thinks she's out of her melon, until she finally gets a signal back.

01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110110 01101001 01110010 01100111 01101001 01101110

Alright, that's not at all the signal she gets, hers was more of a THUMP THUMP THUMP, but if you can translate that binary code, you deserve what it says.

I was very excited to see that the co-star of the movie was Matthew Mcconaughey and that he was rocking a borderline mullet. I was not excited about the love story, unnecessarily intertwined throughout the plot. Come on, I'm a chick and even I was annoyed with it. Why do movies do that? And not only that, but the star of the movie is Jodie Foster. Witnessing Jodie Foster being intimate with another person really made me consider celibacy.

In her defense however, I learned through this movie that she does in fact possess the ability to look female.

After a brief screen appearance from Hitler, chaos ensues and the fanatics set up camp around the satellites. Enter creepy, albino, religious fanatic from Utah (because where else would he be from?):

Turns out, for being such a man of God, the guy's a real dick.

And now the task of dicphering the mathematical message that they receive from outer space. Luckily for them, Mr. Hadden saves the day. Despite Mr. Hadden's generosity in "Ellie"'s work, if I were her I would definitely look into a restraining order and possible stalking charges. Just sayin.

And another thing I didn't understand is if he's so smart, you would think he would know that the "Six Flags Guy" look is not flattering.

(I had planned to do a side by side of the two so you could see how much he really does look like him, but apparently the guy that decodes the message and saves the whole story isn't important enough to have a screen shot of him on google images. Guess you'll just have to watch the movie).

It all came together though, when I realized that the space travel machine that E.T. instructed them to make looked a lot like a carnival ride.

More flags, more fun!!

(I drew that picture myself)

At some point during the movie I wrote the Aurora blog and so I missed about ten minutes of plot, but let's be honest, I wouldn't have understood it anyway.

And then it happened. After a few scenes of science fiction genius... just as I was about to mark Contact in my top ten... it happened. An epic display of terrible plot twist. I will say that the movie did somewhat redeem itself as it went on, but I never did fully recover from my disappointment.

I have to say that even though I disapproved of the ending, I really liked this movie a lot. I like any movie that combines science and religion and defends alternative sciences. There is a great scene where Ellie is defending her research to a panel of snobby investors who call her work crazy and useless. She comes back at them that almost every major discovery in history was at one time thought a crazy idea. Although I am no expert in the field of paranormal studies, I have found myself defending the field many times to professors, scientists, even religious people, and pointing out to them that at one time everyone swore the Earth was flat.

Another thing I liked about the movie was their discussions of faith. Specifically, faith without proof. A quote that I liked was "Did you love your father? Prove it."

There were some undertones of cheese, but it was bearable. Ooh, but bad green screen alert for sure. It also took me the entire movie to realize that one of the main characters is blind. And the ending left me wondering..

Who's Carl?

I would have to give this movie three and a half stars. Three and a half stars connected by a wormhole of death and disfigurement.

Northern Lights

2010-08-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

According to my local news, tonight was one of those rare nights when the "Northern Lights" would be visible from my backyard.

Northern Lights (or auroras) are natural light displays in the sky which can be seen (in different shades, degrees, and intensities) all over the world and even on other planets.

For fellow nerds out there, click here to read more about the causes and different effects of Northern Lights.

This is a time lapse video of Northern Lights in Canada in 2006.

Unfortunately for me, it was very cloudy in NH tonight, so this is what I saw:

And so I have given up and am now watching "Contact" and preparing for nightmares. Of Jodi Foster's career. I mean. Of aliens.

It's The End of the World As We Know It.....

2010-07-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

What better time to watch the movie 2012 than during a tornado warning in New England? I know, 2012 came out a year ago now. I'm a little behind on the times. On the upside, that means that I'm probably not spoiling it for anyone.

I think the first few minutes of a movie tell a lot about what's to come, so I made a few observations about my initial impressions. Here are my notes from the scenes previous to the title page:

1. Time moves REALLY fast in this movie. It's only been ten minutes, and I've already aged three years.

2. With the amount of insane special effects and CGI I know will be in the movie, I would've thought they'd do better with the font of the subtitles. I know I'm no spring chicken, but the movie's barely started and I already have a migraine from squinting so hard.

3. According to Dr. So and so and Dr. So and so, something very sciencey is going down and it's kind of a big deal. It's also very hot. Something about the center of the Earth turning into a giant easy bake oven. Wait. Maybe it was a microwave. [After watching the movie, I would like to confirm that it was in fact a microwave because it ended up turning the Earth into a giant hot pocket - bursting into flames in some places, still frozen in others].

4. Kindle's come in WAY bigger sizes than I ever imagined. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any video clip or screen shot of what I'm talkinga about so I guess you'll have to watch the movie again.

5. I think my next post should be on research on the paranormal phenomena that is John Cusack. It has come to my attention that he doesn't age.

(Twenty years. TWENTY YEARS!)

Even though I am probably the last person to have seen this movie, I still refuse to give away any portions of the plot just in case anyone is even further behind in the times than I am.

What I will point out is that there were a lot of product endorsements. Every scene seemed to be a commercial for something, at times it was beyond ridiculous.

Case in point, the last line of the entire movie.... "No more pull-ups."

Really?

The only product endorsement I was excited to see was the adult beverage chosen by Charlie, the crazy conspiracy theorist living in a van in yellowstone park. I didn't put together this montage so it has some extra stuff in it, but does show Charlie in all his whacky, science fiction loving, good beer drinking glory.

There were many parts of this movie that made me laugh. I think most were put there intentionally but I'm not sure that they all were. One part in particular happens at the very peak of all anxiety. I was at the edge of my seat, the fate of the world was within seconds of being destroyed... and then the reaction of one man sent me from anxiey to hysterics. All I will say is, when you start getting to that point, keep your eyes on the guy with the glasses, squishing his head.

I liked the nods to certain Biblical stories. The first scene that hints at that made me smile. It reminded me of a certain song by the Staggers. Unicorn. Download it.

Overall, I loved this movie. I wasn't fully prepared for the amount of times I had to reach for a tissue, but in hindsight, I should've seen it coming with most of the world dying. I really wish that I could've seen it in theaters, especially in 3D if that was an option. I normally hate CGI and tend to scrutinize the hell out of it, ruining the movie for myself and everyone around me. But that wasn't the case with 2012. I actually didn't even notice the parts that were done with special effects (which was most of the movie), and didn't find myself questioning it once.

So if you haven't seen 2012, do it up. It's free on On Demand right now anyway, so the only thing you have to lose is the time. All in all, I give this movie two PBR salutes and a two tissue rating.

Not So Abanonded Asylum in Taunton Ma

2010-07-18T20:51:00.000-07:00

I went to a wedding this weekend in Newport Rhode Island and on our way back, my boyfriend and I took a shortcut through Taunton, MA. Being from NH and surprisingly unknowledgeable about paranormal places in my general area, I had never heard of the Taunton State Hospital and was especially surprised to hear it was still in operation. Of course, I made him bring me to it.

Taunton State Hospital opened in 1854 and was the second state hospital (after Worcester) in Massachusetts. It was originally called the State Lunatic Hospital at Taunton. The building, like most Asylums of its era, is architecturally breathtaking.

Photo taken by Jeremy Harris

While browsing the Kirkbridge site (creators of other well known asylums like Danvers State), I found a little blurb posted by a reader about a patient at Taunton State named Jane Toppan.

"Jane Toppan of Bourne was arrested in 1901 for more than a dozen murders committed while she was working as private nurse and in several hospitals. Rather than caring for her patients, she poisoned them with overdoses of opiates. Tried in Barnstable, she was declared insane and sent to Taunton State Hospital until her death in 1938. She eventually claimed to have murdered more than 31 people as a type of euthanasia for people whose life was not worth living in her mind. Dubbed "Jolly Jane" by her patients before her crimes were known, her name on her birth certificate from 1857 was Honora Kelley. She changed her name in 1864 after she was taken in by the Toppan family. By all accounts, she suffered an unhappy childhood and mental illness afflicted her family. While at Taunton State, she was thought to have set fires to the main building more than once, and she often refused to eat the food, ironically claiming that it was poisoned."

Longer and more detailed articles on Cape Cod's first serial killer can be found here and here.

In 1975 the hospital, like all of its kind during that decade, was abandoned. In 1999, the large highly recognizable dome that towered over the administration building collapsed. And then on March 19, 2006 the building (including the adminstration and theater) caught fire.

Although I'm sure the fire probably started from curious teenagers or homeless residents, I like to think it was Jane Toppan, causing mischief even after death.

Most of the sites I have found state that demolition of the property has (or will, in some of the older publications) take place, however it didn't look to me that anything had been removed. Although a few of the buildings did still appear to be boarded up, the property was surprisingly active and populated. I found a few contradictions about what the buildings are now used for but the consensus seems to be that the site is still a mental hospital, with 10 wards and 2 child/adolescent wards. I couldn't seem to find any information about when the hospital re-opened after it was abandoned. The sites that confirmed it was still in use spoke nothing of it ever being abandoned and the sites that talked about it being abandoned showed no signs of it being used today. When we were on the grounds I had no idea of its use, just that it definitely was being used for something. To my knowledge, institutions were shut down in the 70's and (beyond temporary stays at a mental ward in a regular hospital or mental help facilities) nothing of their kind have existed since. I'm blaming TSH now for me still being awake and googling mental health history five hours from now.

As we left the property through the winding road surrounded by cornfields, we saw an old man in overalls walking slowly down the side of the road toward the urban streets outside the gates. Making jokes about escaped patients and murderous hitchhikers, we slowed down to eye the walker. Not taking our accusations seriously, we were a little surprised when just as we approached, the man turned to face us and offered his empty water bottle to our closed windows while muttering to himself. From the rearview mirror, I watched as he continued to shake the empty bottle at us and my mind wandered to all sorts of unlikely scenarios...

Finding pictures of Taunton State Hospital was surprisingly difficult, no matter what name I searched under. The few that I did find gave me a hard time about posting them via html, but I thought I would post some links if you are interested in seing more.

Flickr accounts can be foundhere and here. Also once under flickr, if you do a general search for the building you will find more.

For Jeremy Harris's album from Taunton State, click here

And for another site with awesome photography of Taunton State Hospital, as well as other abandoned buildings in New England, click here

I didn't exactly get advanced permission for the use of the pictures I did find, but have tried to give proper credit and link and promote each of their sites as much as possible. If any of these are yours and you're pissed, let me know and I'll take them down. If anyone has more pictures to share, also let me know.

Haley@QueenCityGhosts.com

2010-07-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

Due to my recent unemployment and chronic insomnia, I've been getting sucked into hours and hours of internet and youtube loops of research. I'm sure everyone's been there. You start off with a random curiosity on a subject, you do some reading, you find a video, that video brings up a link to an equally intriguing subject, and then next thing you know the sun is on its way back up. And here I am. Tonight started with watching a few old Paranormal STU clips, then split into researching Andy Coppock and the Wolfe Manor at the same time, which led to full spectrum cameras, then back to the Wolfe Manor, then Waverly Hills, The Trans-Alleghany (however the hell you spell it) and ended with documentaries on asylums.

I never get tired of old footage and stories about old state hospitals. It's not even so much the paranormal side of it, I just find it unbelievable that people were really forced to live in places like that and endure some of the treatments that existed. I'm a psychology major and entering the field of helping adults with developmental disorders so a lot of this really hits close to home. Anyway, I know it's a pretty common interest among all us ghosties, so I thought I'd share a good documentary I found while in my black hole. It's nothing breathtaking, and there's not a whole lot of connections to the paranormal (besides a few tidbits from a researcher in the area), but it is very interesting, shows a lot of old pictures and facts, and is very well put together. It's in 3 parts, but they're not overwhelmingly long.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Bladeless Fan???

2010-07-13T23:09:00.000-07:00

I found a tiny ad for this new fan made by Dyson in Better Homes and Garden tonight and was so intrigued I had to google it. Does anyone else find this insane?!

It made me even more excited when I found this video:

I know I'm fairly new to the world of Geek, but it just seems like this fan may open doors in other areas of technology. Obviously, at "200 pounds" per fan (what the hell does that even convert to anyway?), I don't think the Dyson Multiplier will be making an appearance in my house anytime soon. But damn.

When do we get those flying cars we all pictured in our future when we were little?

This just in....

2010-07-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

I will murder a small child for these shoes.

Iron Fist Isabella Inquisition Platform Shoes - Black/Pink (Vegan) - Punk.com

Paranormal STU

2010-07-12T00:17:00.001-07:00

Don't watch this video. Seriously. Don't press play. It's not hilariously funny at all. You won't love it. And whatever you do, don't watch Paranormal STU at http://www.paranormaltvnetwork.com/channelSTU.html Fridays at 11:30 pm (EST).

Backyard Sasquatches

2010-07-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit of a slacker lately on staying up to date with paranormal research. So when I finally checked out the other blogs I follow on Friday, I realized I had been out of the loop about a man called "Mike" claiming to have a family of sasquatches living in his backyard. My thoughts instantly flashed to a news clip I had seen a few weeks ago of a different man with a similiar problem...

My favorite part is when he tells Bigfoot to "Git!". Now if you read some of the comments, a valid point is stated that just because someone is overweight and doesn't speak proper english, doesn't necessarily mean that they are lying or that they didn't see something. It's just that 9 times out of 10 when investigation is applied...

Which leads me to "Mike". I'm glad I waited til after the weekend to express my excitement over such a mind boggling discovery. Instead of retelling something that's already been retold, I'll let you read it from Loren Coleman's blog, "Cryptomundo". Loren Coleman's the go-to expert on all things Sasquatch.

Loren Coleman's Blog/

I have to admit, I'm pretty bummed. The thought of a bigfoot family setting up camp in my backyard was really starting to grow on me. But Christopher Noel's right. If Bigfoot was so easy-going about bro-ing down with humans, he wouldn't have gone undiscovered for so long.

I do have to thank "Mike" though, for re-awakening my love for cryptozoology. In looking for the youtube video above, I stumbled upon video after video on the subject (which I knew I would), sending me into another paranormal phenomena known as the "Youtube Time Warp". It was a very narrow escape.

Paranormal news in MY town?!?

2010-07-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

I live in a hilariously small town. We just put up our first and only stop light a couple years ago. It has been the butt of many Adam Sandler jokes, including when he spoke at my high school graduation (I went to school in a nearby city, Manchester, and was in Sandler's nephew's class). But laugh no more world, we have finally made it big. Associated Press big.

Alright so to be honest, this is only making our reputation worse but the AP nontheless.

Even though we only have one stoplight, no grocery stores, and may be the last remaining town in New England to not have a Dunkin' Donuts, we do have a waterpark. Yeah, apply logic to that one. At this waterpark, there seems to be a flag with the face of Jesus in it. Now, I know what you're thinking. My thoughts immediately went to housewives in Oklahoma with pieces of toast that look like Elvis, but when I looked at a picture of the flag, I was surprisingly curious. It's not that it's in an odd shape like Jesus, or that your eyes "matrix" a face out of a pattern, it has a similiar look as the Shroud of Turin.

A local priest agreed to come take a look at the flag, although I'm not exactly sure what his goal is. "Yep. That's him alright."

The owner of the park says that since he acquired the flag, the weather has been "perfect" and business has picked up. I would love to speak with him about his definition of perfect.

To read the whole article in our newspaper...

Priest will wait to look at water park's flag - Thursday, Jul. 8, 2010

Earthly Expansions- going beyond the paranormal

2010-07-08T19:27:00.000-07:00

If you enjoy reading this ridiculous blog of nonsense, feel free to check out my new blog about non-paranormal topics. I named it "Ham and Eggs". I don't really know what that means, but it sounded kinda sweet.

The first few posts may look oddly familiar because, well because I'm lazy. Plus in school they taught me to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

www.haleyhauntedhamandeggs.blogspot.com

Rukka Bean Burrito skunks again.

2010-07-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

At 1:30 this morning my dog decided to have a midnight snack.

A skunk.

Luckily (well, not luckily actually), I had been through this exact scenario with her before...

A few years ago, I had an apartment with a few friends and I decided to take Rukka out one last time before we all went to bed. It was around 1:30 in the morning and about 0 degrees out. After two minutes of standing there holding the leash and shivering my ass off, my brainiac dog runs so hard that she literally snaps the leash in half and takes off for the porch. I immediately ran over to try to break up whatever fight was about to ensue (Rukka's a pitbull and not very sociable with other animals), but before i could get to the porch, I hit a wall of the most horrific odor I had ever smelled. Getting sprayed by a skunk is nothing like smelling one on the side of the highway. It's like a mixture of ammonia, bleach, and burning poo. You literally taste it. I ran back into our apartment screaming and the rest of my roommates came out. By this point, Rukka was flipping the skunk up in the air and catching it with her mouth. I wish that was even an exaggeration. One of my roommates tried to bite the bullet and run into the death cloud but came out only to yak up dinner all over our front lawn. All of our eyes were pouring water and burning as we stood there and waited for it to end. When it finally did, Rukka was foaming at the mouth. All I could think of was rabies, but then we all realized that it was her body's way of trying to flush the chemicals out of her mouth. Someone quickly got the hose and one of us ran upstairs to grab whatever tomato product we could find. I don't remember what it was, but knowing the usual condition of our fridge, it was probably a packet of ketchup. We scrubbed her down as fast as we could and rinsed her off and then rushed her upstairs to get her out of the freezing cold air before she became a big stinky pupsicle. Unfortunately for us, the door had locked behind us. And being that it was the middle of the night and we were all in our jammies, no one had thought to bring out their keys. We were on the second floor so climbing in a window wasn't an option and our landlord lived over an hour away. And so, a day later, we were on the phone with our landlord trying to explain why we had taken a baseball bat to the window of our front door. She seemed to understand. We were also still trying to figure out why, after four tomato baths, Rukka Pooka still smelled like skunk pizza. Turns out the ole tomato routine is just an old wive's tale. After a quick google search, we found that dish detergant was our best option and after one bath, she was good as new. Well except for any time she got wet for the next three months.

And so last night, as I opened the door to see what the holdup was and was hit with the rancid cloud of toxic doom, I had some idea what I was dealing with. I slammed the door as fast as I could, but not before inhaling the chemical mouthful that I had wished I would never taste again in my life. I woke up my father, prepared my arsenal of dish detergant, rags, and lemon juice, and waited for the fight to end. The fight, by the way, was taking place underneath my Mom's car which was a great wake-up present as she left for work this morning. Shockingly, the detergant worked like a charm and with the exception of a small patch on her head (that I was too nervous to really soap up), Rukka was impressively clean smelling. I gave myself a smug pat on the back, decided for one more follow-up scrub down in the morning, and considered the night an inconvenient but tolerable story to add to my collection. Except that that's not how my luck works. Way too satisfied with myself, I filled up the tub an hour before class today to apply the final hose-down. Stacks of cheese and biscuits ready, I picked up my little terror and attempted to plop her into the lukewarm water. Rukka had other plans. Still, hours later, I haven't figured how it happened but at some point between me lifting her up and her feet landing in the water, something slammed down on the water spout of our tub with enough force that it not only snapped the spout off, but completely broke the pipe off.

Gorgeous huh?

The only advantage I do have is that my boyfriend is a plumber (which seems just a little ironic with the whole ghost... well anyway) so it should be fixed right up but that didn't help me as I stood in the bathroom soaked in sweat, covered in skunky dog hair, and needing to be in class in a half hour. And so here I am. Sitting on the couch in filth, missing the second class of a new semester with the cause of all of my misfortune curled up in my lap. And even though the last 24 hours have been a nightmare, I can't help but smile as her big brown eyes stare up at me apologetically.

Honestly, who could be mad at that face?

VISIBLE ABDUCTION SIGNS

2010-06-28T14:16:00.001-07:00

It's official. I woke up this morning and I had three red dots in a perfectly straight line about a centimeter apart. I took the dots as proof that I really am interacting with an alien species against my will and without memory. I tried to take a picture of the markings, but due to the craptastic quality of my cell phone camera, it only came out as a giant red blur. It was also a little too close to parts of my anatomy that really don't need to be on the internet. ...which leads me to wonder what other experiements may have been done to me in my sleep.

I think that whatever the aliens did to me involved an injection of some sort because the area around the red dots have swollen into tiny bumps and are quite itchy. I also noticed that the creatures did not make a completely unnoticed exit, as there is a small hole in the screen of the window next to my bed. They must have morphing abilities beyond our own comprehension. In addition to all of this, I think I have found an link between alien encounters and other paranormal phenomena. It is a common occurence in the ghostie world to have an infestation of bugs in highly active areas. This also seems to be the case with my alien encounter, as there is a small family of mosquitos now living in my room. They must have some instinctual tie to alien scents.

I will continue to give detailed updates as they come. And if I end up pregnant with a hybrid creature, I'm naming it Spock.

UFO SIGHTING IN NH!

2010-06-28T14:11:00.001-07:00

This picture was sent to me by my friend Matt. It was taken in Southern NH a few months ago. Pretty compelling.

Ok fine, it's a cloud. Cool picture though.

Thanks Matt for sending it in!

Coocoo for Kaku

2010-05-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

Today it was so hot out that I stepped out of the shower and my hair was instantly dry. I decided at that point that I wasn't leaving the house. It takes a real nerd to skip school to stay home and watch educational television, but that's pretty much what I did.

Lately I've been dabbling with quantum mechanics/physics and the theories of multi dimensions and parallel universes.

I have an audio recording of a lecture by Chuck Missler on alien encounters that I started on my way home from work last night. After 15 minutes of trying to grasp the notion of what a fifth dimension would look like, let alone trying to understand where the additional five after that would fit in, I was left completely confused but intensely fascinated. Missler tries to illustrate an object that is a step beyond a 3-D object (which we are more familiar with), by making reference to a "hypercube".

After a quick google image search, this is what I found for a visual of a hypercube.

Basically a box within a box. I get it, but didn't have the easiest time really applying it to our universe.

Lucky for me, while cruising through Comcast On Demand, I found a show called "Sci Fi Science"

Unluckily for me, anyone that spends a 90 degree day watching a show like this is destined to become a spinster with 15 cats. But regardless.

"Sci Fi Science" is hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku

Dr. Kaku (who's name is WAY too close to the word kaka for me not to make reference to), is a "theoretical physicist". Theoretical. How friggen cool is that? I have since decided to change my current job title to theoretical drug store cashier. "If I were going to ring you out, it would look like this. But I'm not." Unfortunately, I think my paycheck would be theoretical. Then again, that's not much different than... anyway.

Kaku's episode on parallel universes and how to travel between them, had a much simpler breakdown for my beginner mind.

I found that he has also written a book on the subject, if anyone is interested in following down my same path of the cat lady lifestyle.

Kaku describes the universe as bubbles. Our universe makes up one bubble. And all around us (in other dimensions?) are other bubbles that were created by the same "big bang" that created us.

If the same particles came together in the same way during the big bang that we did, you would have to guess that there would be solar systems out there with the exact same constructs as ours. That would mean same suns, earths, chemical make-up, laws of physics, and assumably living things. The interesting part to consider is would other earth-like planets be exactly the same as ours? Is there another Haley out there (scary thought)?

Or would humans in other universes make different choices than we have in our history, creating a completely different world?

Without traveling to these other universes, we would never know. And that's where the difficulty comes. Traveling to a parallel universe would be ultimately impossible. Or would it? Kaku believes that this notion may not be as impossible as it seems and constructs an actual scientific plan to make the voyage a reality.

If you're interested in hearing that plan, you'll have to check out the show for yourself. Not because I found a new career in advertising, but because there's no way in hell I'd be able to explain it. It's worth an hour of your time anyway. I'm pretty sure it would give even the mildest of Trekkie's a hard-on.

If you are interested in parallel universes and want to learn more, there is a plethora of information out there. I found website after website explaining all the different theories and explanations. If I come across anymore that strike my interest, I'll be sure to post them. As for today, if my brain tries to absorb any more information, it's going to burst.

Close Encounters of the Non-Fiction Kind

2010-05-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Whitley Strieber's, "Communion", which made the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller's List (in 19 something...).

This was my first encounter with a book of the alien kind and it scared the hell out of me. That is, before establishing my "no reading of alien books before 8:00pm" rule.

The story follows Strieber in his discoveries of being "visited" by unknown beings throughout most of his life. The story takes you through his initial realizations, doubts, denial, psychological evaluations, hynosis, confirmation, theories, and mild acceptance.

Although I did find it a little convenient that such extraordinary events would happen to an already established horror writer, the book was very good. Although not grammatically or structurally breathtaking, Strieber's theories were extremely thought-provoking and encouraged me to do a little more research of my own.

One parallel he drew that I found particularly interesting was between our myths and perceptions of "aliens" in comparison to those of ancient Gods. He repeatedly compares his encounter with one being in particular to that of "Ishtar", a Babylonian Goddess of "fertility, love, war, and sex" (Wikipedia).

Although the book does tend to jump around a lot and can be redundant in places, I think it is very honest and real. As I read the sometimes scattered thought patterns, I felt all the more inside the author's head, and that I was struggling along with him to understand the happenings. There were also quite a few references to other books on the subject which I am now considering picking up as well.

This is a great book to pop your UFO cherry, if you haven't yet dived into the subject. Although extreme and invasive, Strieber also gives a comforting side to the encounters, which I am greatful for considering my extreme fear on the subject to begin with.

I give this book a scaley, tentacle-covered, alien thumbs up.

I also give an enthusiastic thumbs up to this picture, which I found while searching for a picture of the cover of this book...

I would also like to point out that after criticizing the book's "grammatical integrity", I reviewed my post to find that I had no idea how to even spell the word. Oh well, that's why I'm not an author.

PART II- Beyond Reality Events: Mt. Washington Hotel 2010

2010-05-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

After a pretty late night of partying, we came back and actually switched rooms from the tower we were in into the tower on the other side of the hotel. Our second suite was much more spacious (which is good because we were cramming three of us into it).

This was our living room, which may look familiar if you checked out my post of last year's event:

During one of the investigation nights, Amanda and I were putting in a movie when the door to the t.v. on the left hand side decided to swing itself open and then continue to knock a few times before finally stopping. We both just stopped talking, looked at eachother and then continued with our conversation. It's very easy to forget when you're working at events that the place you're staying in is haunted. This proved to be especially annoying later on that night.

Ashleigh and I shared this monstrosity of a bed and around three in the morning, the entire bed started shaking (keep reading sickos...). I asked her if she was shaking her foot, which she answered no to and I could see from looking over at her. A few minutes later, the shaking got much worse and it sounded and felt like someone was standing at her feet jumping up and down. I also kept hearing tapping noises against the t.v. and her bedside table, but couldn't see anything really happening. Ashleigh of course, slept through the whole thing. When she got up in the morning, her water bottle (which had been on the table next to her) was oddly on the floor and when I told Amanda about it later that day, she said that she had heard all of it and thought that Ashleigh and I were having some sort of dance party. Someone was, but it wasn't us.

This picture has no paranormal story in it, but is just a sweet jacuzzi tub. We planned to have a jacuzzi party in our bathing suits with rubber duckies and snorkels but it never worked out. Next time.

Our private balcony overlooking awesomeness.

The days were filled with the normal hustle and bustle of lectures, booths, and t-shirt selling.

Britt's REALLY tall in person.

The gorgeous and extremely talented Raven Quinn.

Books by Jeff Belanger.

Mike Brody's merch.

Tara Normal!

Shelly's photography.

Every year I plan to get a caricature done by Howie, so this year I finally sucked it up and did it.

However, I decided that while Howie was drawing me, I would draw him...

I think I was fairly accurate.

Let's be honest, he has some pretty stiff competition...

But in all seriousness... how amazing is Howie?
www.taranormal.com

Here's the one he did for Ash...

Gotta love the fingerless gloves.

These are some tarot cards that Scotty was selling.

I decided with that many tarot cards just hanging around, I might as well do some free readings...

"This is you jerking off 'the man'. Not a man, but 'THE man'. I also see you buying Haley a lot of drinks in the future."

"Oh, that means something about balance in your life!" -Kate
"Ummm... excuse me. I am the tarot master here. John, this means in five years you will have your balls cut off with a sword."

At first, I was very turned off by this booth, but after talking to one of the hypnotists I was hooked. I will definitely be paying a visit to their shop in Madison.

Bob Murch's Ouija collection.

I JUST realized her sign says "extra-large medium". At the end of John's reading she handed him something and said it was in case he wanted a second opinion. It was a fortune cookie.

Zombie repellant.

I think my bottle was broken...

These are the bags we packed as gifts for some of the attendees. The entire room was a sea of bags.

Not too sure what's going on here...

...but I like it.

More tarot readings.

Shots?

Nope. Water. Gotta respect the presentation though.

And then the unexpected happened...

This is pretty compelling evidence people... Check out the K2 meter!!

Ashleigh and Howie fighting over who likes me more (so embarassing...).

I made Amy PRETTY!!

Another delivery by Amanda...

I'm pretty jealous of this, I'm not going to lie.

Then it was time for the auction/fundraiser dinner.

Even I made a donation...

After the dinner, it was time for investigations of the hotel. Amanda and I had the night off so we stayed in and had a bathrobe/lady gaga sunglass party.

Yeah, again with the duckface...

The next day Ashleigh and Amanda went for a walk behind the property and got some awesome shots.

THE END.

PART I- Beyond Reality Events: Mt. Washington Hotel 2010

2010-05-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

On April 23rd, it was officially time for my favorite event of the year...

This was the first event I ever did for Beyond Reality Events and has remained my favorite. It doesn't hurt that it takes place in my home state and in one of the most beautiful areas in the country (ok, so maybe I'm a little biased).

Ashleigh and I loaded up my new ride (complete with working speakers and CD player) and headed up the gorgeous mountain roads to the hotel.

No matter how many times I visit this hotel, or what state of mind I'm in when I arrive, this sight always takes my breath away.

Yes, we had finally arrived.

Unfortunately for us, the housekeeper assigned to our room apparently had not. And so we waited. And waited. And waited... and waited.

Although the setting wasn't terrible...

After three hours of waiting and consistant pestering of the front desk staff, the receptionist let us know that the housekeeper was just finishing up vacuuming.

"With what a dust pan?!?"

One hour later, our room was finally ready and we could not wait to get into our suite, get ready quickly, and pour ourselves a cold drink. We called for the bellman to bring our stuff from the closet, from which he emerged holding the broken top half of the bottle of three olives pomegranete vodka I had gotten on our way up. Their way of frowning upon outside drinks? The kid felt terrible and apologized repeatedly and even worked out a way to repay us for the broken bottle. Wink wink, nudge nudge ;) And by that I mean, he reserved a round of drinks at the bar for everyone in our room.

But who needs the bar when you have Jager...

Ok, so I know this picture is sideways but I am entirely too lazy to go through the process of flipping it around and I've also decided that pictures involving Jager are probably better viewed from the side anyway...

Bottoms up!

And so I entered the meet and greet with a pretty good buzz...

I was also lucky enough to snap this picture as Chip and Amy were making the exact same creepy face.

Then it was time for Mike Brody's comedy show.

At this point the drinks really started to kick in and I am told that I raised my hand when Brody asked if there was a Dr. in the house. Dr....McGillacuddy?

Alright, so probably only funny to me...

After Brody's set, we hung out a little before heading down to the cave for some drinks.

Atta boy Jeff!

Kate really likes having her picture taken.

Now is probably a good time to point out a discovery I made. When I'm drunk, I LOVE to make duck faces...

No joke. Alright, so on to the cave...

And that concludes PART I of my Mt. Washington experience...

Beyond Reality Event: Cooperstown, NY

2010-05-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

On January 8th, we headed out to Cooperstown New York for..

Since I am not too far away from New York, Ashleigh and I decided to drive. We took my ratty old 2000 Taurus and prayed we'd make it (I've since gotten a new car, thank God). We first drove to Rhode Island to pick up the t-shirts and sweatshirts and had to cram as many boxes as we could into my already stuffed car. Once finished, I could see absolutely nothing outside my rearview mirror. We also managed to rig up a speaker system (fit for a white trash pickup with a gunrack) by purchasing two wal-mart plastic ipod speakers and supergluing them to my dashboard. Unfortunately, AFTER supergluing them, we realized that one of the speakers didn't even work. I actually have pictures of this, but apparently forgot where I saved them on my computer so you'll have to use your imagination for now. We then crossed our fingers and headed back up to New York.

Lucky for us, our little voyage happened to fall at the exact same time as a major snowstorm. Now this picture doesn't even begin to explain the terrifying mountain that loomed ahead of us. When we first caught sight of this hill, I legit thought it was a ski slope up ahead. It wasn't. Nor was it the only hill of it's size on our way to the hotel.

Once we got past all the hills, my GPS decided to take us on a lovely tour of Amish country via a narrow dirt road on the side of a cliff. I'm not sure why I end up on roads on the sides of cliffs every event, but it seems to be par for the course. We also ran into a cute little old man, blind as a bat, driving straight for us on this narrow dirt road. It seems Mr. Magoo was in the mood for a little game of "chicken" and he definitely won. Actually, I'm pretty sure he had no idea there was even another car on the road.

We did finally make it to the hotel and once there, we found that we weren't the only ones that had trouble getting there. I can't remember who's mother or mother-in-law it was (I want to say it was Grant's), but this poor woman was trying to find the hotel during the thick of the snowstorm and was having a really hard time. She spotted the clock tower from where she was and decided to just head straight for it. After a few minutes of driving, she came to a man standing in the middle of the road. Confused, she pulled up to him and asked "Hey! Why are you standing in the middle of the road?!" He answered, "Hey! Why are you driving in the middle of the lake?!". Whoops....

The hotel was gorgeous and was much creepier when we pulled up then this picture, which I pulled from their website. Our room was massive, although I can't find any pictures of our actual room. One thing I did take a picture of was that we had a sweet chandelier that I decided was a little naked and needed a rockstar makeover.

Per usual, I headed out for an airport run that night so I missed Mike Brody's comedy set (I guess it's not like I haven't seen it a million times at this point), but here's a picture I stole from someone else...

It sort of looks like Brody is conjuring an orb in that picture.

Meanwhile, back in the rental van... I was absolutely terrified to be driving the same route I had just come, only in reverse. Especially when it came to heading back down those huge hills, as the snow continued to pile up around me. This was the part of our show where Haley called her boyfriend and bawled her eyes out. True story.

But then the snow cleared up and I made it safely to the airport where I found Rob and Raven, who made me laugh hysterically for the entire ride back. They were exactly what I needed, despite us coming extremely close to making deer sauce all over the road.

This is the only picture I have of Raven, and that is definitely NOT Rob, it's Scotty but it'll have to do. How creepy is Jay in this picture though? Weirdo.

So needless to say, by the time we got back to the Otesaga Hotel, I was ready for a drink.

As was everyone else.

This is Britt's wife Holly (right) and Robyn (left). You'll be seeing a LOT of Robyn in my next post: Beyond Reality Event: Mt. Washington Hotel 2010. Robyn and I found we had a common interest. Booze.

So it turns out the Otesaga Hotel is actually closed in the winter (or was that winter) and had only opened for our event. In saying that, I would have to point out that this ash tray was completely empty when we arrived and only used by attendees of the event. I'm going to make a further assumption that it was mostly only used by Chip, Scotty, and myself. This was after night #1:

Yummm...

Somebody get me a fork.

I'll spare you most of the pictures that would only be exciting to those that attended, but will point out that all the usuals were there...

Here are a couple of pictures of Ashleigh and I goofing off in the merch room.

Finger mustaches = always funny.

I know there were some interesting things that happened on some of the investigations including an intense flashlight session with Amy and Chip, some surprises from "Andy's Box", a few EVP's, and a squirrel puppet discovered by Brody that had an actual sewn in "butt-hole". Wish I was making that part up.

There must have been something going on because my stomach reacted in its usual way when there's activity around... it regurgitated my lunch. Yummy. Bet you could've lived without that detail.

The next day I was feeling a lot better so Ashleigh and I headed out to see the local hot spots, which were pretty minimal.

Here's the Baseball Hall of Fame...

...And that's as close as we got to it.

We decided to go to a cute little diner instead, where Ashleigh ordered the biggest burger I've ever seen in my life and this picture does not even BEGIN to do it justice.

I am not exaggerating when I say this burger was at least four inches thick. I think they may have used an entire cow to make it. After eating, Ashleigh made me laugh so hard I literally peed a little so I had to run into the bathroom (located through the kitchen). And that's where I found this little gem...

Before heading back to the hotel, we decided to go into some of the local shops to get some souvenirs to bring back. Unfortunately, everything they had involved baseball, which we knew nothing about. We ended up leaving with a couple of shot glasses, a red sox toothbrush, and a couple of flattened pennies with the Cooperstown logo imprinted on them (which Ashleigh loudly announced she wanted her money back on for ruining a perfectly good penny).

And that pretty much wraps up our weekend in Cooperstown, NY. On the way home, my GPS took us a different way and landed us in the sketchiest little town in upstate New York I've ever witnessed. We almost ran out of gas and while looking for a place that was open at 3 in the morning, we ended up on a street that I swear had tumbleweeds darting across it. Every little shop along this cobblestone street was boarded up and there was an actual white night gown hanging from a doornob? Our encounter at the gas station was terrifying and I won't even go into it because I'd have to relive it, but I actually thought there was a good chance we would be raped and killed. I saved the receipt to remember to NEVER go back to that town again. Without an oozie. No cancel that, ever.

Beyond Reality Event: Stanley Hotel

2010-02-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

In November, Beyond Reality Events traveled to Estes Park, Colorado to the Stanley Hotel (the inspiration for Stephen King's "The Shining" and "Pet Cemetery".

Our timing was perfect, arriving shortly after a blizzard and ducking out the day before another one, our stay was surprisingly warm and sunny.

(I just thought it was crazy that the airport was so big you had to take a train to baggage claim)

Which way to the gun show?

The roads that take you up to Estes Park were absolutely terrifying, especially in the snow and in a rental that you're not on the insurance for.

Although the actual movie was filmed somewhere else, the mini series "the Shining" was actually filmed at the hotel.

The infamous hallways. One of the inspirations for the movie was the disorienting hallways. For some reason, the layout of the halls are very easy to get lost in. It took the entire weekend for me to finally remember how to get to my room.

Room 217, made famous by an episode of Ghost Hunters

Room 401, another very active room.

"Stanley Steamer". I was surprised by the connection too. And I thought that was a vacuum cleaner...

Mr. Stanley himself.

Holly, showing off the goods.

Some stuff from the movie in the gift shop.

Beautiful jewelry made by Holly Griffith (Britt Griffith's wife)

Books by Jeff Belanger

Mike Brody's Merch

Adorable.

Gorgeous art by Paulina

Jay and his family had the swine flu, so he was only able to skype in

Contrary to what everyone told me at first, this is not the real Jack. Syd and some friends decided it would be hilarious to make me think it really was and I totally fell for it. You have to admit though, his impression is pretty dead on.

These are two of the pranksters that told me he was real..

Mike Brody and Jeff Belanger doing introductions

They're creepy.

Meet and Greet

Scotty Robertson did a live radio show from inside the hotel with interview from all the cast.

I still haven't figured out why Britt was holding a toy pony throughout it...

Interviewing Adam Blai

Interview with Scotty of the Wolfe Manor and the paranormal comedy show "The Stu". One of the funniest people I've ever met.

You're official Merch girls.

On the second night of our stay, we heard about a karaoke bar down the street. Turned out to be the best idea of the weekend...

Someone tipped off the DJ who we were causing us to receive this lovely dedication of the theme song from "Ghostbusters".

The two girls at the bar will appear later in our night...

Officially the best part of the weekend.

I don't know why the color came out so weird in a lot of these pictures.

Ok, note bar girl #2 approaching the stage...

I believe this is where Brody says (still keeping with the music) that there's a drunk bitch on stage...

Ahh yes, and then she tries to assault him with a chair.

A lovely picture of some winter weight.

This was one of the bartenders at the Stanley. He was one of the people to tell us about Karaoke night and actually gave us all a ride there and back.

Seeing this trio at first made me fear the worst. I was expecting some sort of honkey tonk badonk a donk, but they were actually AMAZING.

So, in Colorado they have elk, similar to our deer except a little bigger...

Oh and way more ballsy when it comes to hanging out in public...

This fucker decided to stroll right out in front of Holly and I while we were in the company rental.

Nice rack.

These pictures were actually taken in Wyoming, which I went nowhere near, but they were taken by a friend of mine.

(he's playing dead).

(my friend Alli took all wildlife pictures. I'm not that talented, and I'm terrified of birds.)

Many guests at the Stanley enjoyed the wonderful experience of altitude sickness. This is one of them.

The view from the hotel (except not pink)

For more pictures from the Stanley event, check out my myspace www.myspace.com/haleyhomewrecker

KISS 108 INTERVIEW UPDATE

2010-02-12T22:34:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize that I never even put up the KISS 108 interview from Halloween. Fair warning: I messed up on my definition of "EMF". I knew it was wrong as it was coming out of my mouth, but what can I say I was nervous. I've been listening to Maddy in the morning since I was a wee little thing, so the fact that I even got words out was a proud enough moment for me.

Anyway, point and laugh, here it is:

I've been having some problems with uploading it onto this site, so if you can't hear it here, you can listen from my website's page:

www.queencityghosts.com

Haley who?

2010-02-12T22:30:00.000-08:00

I've been on a bit of a hiatus lately. And by hiatus I mean extremely lazy.

I've been getting pictures together though and should be putting out some new blogs soon.

Coming soon:

Beyond Reality Event: Stanley Hotel (Estes Park, CO) from Nov 2009
Beyond Reality Event: Cooperstown, NY January 2010
Private Residence: Anonymous, NH
Private Residence: Unity, NH (Demonic?)

KISS 108 FM RADIO INTERVIEW

2009-10-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

My director Ashleigh and I were guests on the Matty in the Morning show on KISS 108 (107.9) this morning. Besides waking up at an ungodly hour, the interview went great and the djs were a lot of fun. To listen to the interview, go to our group's website www.queencityghosts.com and click on the "Paranormal News and Events" section.

I will also be doing two more interviews this Friday for KIXX 100.5 and MAXX 98.5, but the stations only come in in northern NH. You can listen to the interview online at www.kixx.com and www.maxx985.com

On Saturday we will be doing a live broadcast from an investigation in Enfield NH with KIXX and MAXX. The djs from each stations, as well as four contest winners will be coming along with us for the night to investigate the Shaker Museum in Enfield. There will definitely be live audio broadcasting through the night, as well as at least some video. We're working on trying to link our infrared cameras to either their website or their facebook page so that viewers can send messages to us throughout the night.

Updates

2009-10-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

I have been insanely busy and haven't posted in months, but here is a really quick update on what's been going on and I'll go into details further.

I have written a couple of articles on www.allthingsnewengland.com. The two topics so far are The Spalding Inn (Jay and Grant's Inn in Whitefield NH) and The Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton NH.

On October 30th, my director Ashleigh and I will be on the Matty in the Morning Show on KISS 108 (107.9). We are EXTREMELY excited about this. It is THE most listened to radio station from NH to RI.

On October 31st we will be doing a live radio broadcast from the Sumner Mansion in VT. I don't have the radio coordinates at the moment, but will post them later. We will also be filming the investigation to post later.

And the first weekend of November, I will be headed out to Colorado to work the Beyond Reality Event at the Stanley Hotel, so if anyone is attending that, I will see you there!

I also have a few article summaries on parapsychological topics that I am going to post on here that I found interesting.

Now off to class...

UP FOR DISCUSSION WITH JEFF SYLVIA

2009-07-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Everyone be sure to tune into Jeff Sylvia's radio show "Up for Discussion" at 9 pm tonight on ali-fm.com!!

WILTON TOWN HALL THEATRE INVESTIGATION

2009-07-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday my group, Queen City Paranormal investigated the Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton, NH. We invited our friends from the Maine Paranormal Society as well, and were very thankful for them making the two hour drive to help us out.

(from bottom left: Holly (MPS), Ashleigh (QCP), Me (QCP), Bill (QCP) Top Left: JJ (MPS), Sophia (MPS), Jim (MPS), Darin (QCP), Chris (QCP).)

Jim's signature bunny ear picturebr>

Dennis, who runs and maintains the theater, gave us a very warm welcome and gave us a rundown on the extensive history of the building. Before being built, a hotel existed on the property, which later burned, killing a young boy named Henry. In 1883, the building as it is today was built, and over the years has been used as a vaudeville playhouse, silent film house, police station, fire station, and is now being used as a movie theater and town hall (downstairs).

We set up two infrared cameras on the balcony of the main theater, overlooking the room. Activity in this room consists of apparitions of a tall, skinny man and short, plump woman, heavy footsteps and whispers. We then set up an IR camera pointing down the stairs, where Henry is said to walk up and down, looking for his parents.

We also set up two motion detectors on the landing of the stairs and some toys for Henry to play with. The last IR camera was set up in the clock tower, in the attic of the building. Teams were then rotated between the clock tower, main theater balcony, main theater, smaller theater, and downstairs (consisting of the old jail cells and town offices).

Activity found:

Before starting the investigation, a member of MPS was using the bathroom and heard a woman's voice whisper close to his ear.

Main theater balcony: I had put a flashlight (the kind with the button on one end) on the railing of the balcony and it suddenly turned on on its own. This actually took us a minute to even realize because Bill was sitting behind me at the time, and I thought he had turned on his flashlight.

Main theater: Ashleigh, Chris, and Darin were investigating in this room and could hear whispers and thought they could make out shadows darting throughout the theater. One passed so close in front of Ashleigh's face that she jumped up and walked to the back of the room. While Jim, JJ, and Sophia were investigating, they noticed that the curtain was swaying. They searched the area for any kind of air vents or open windows, but found no reason for this to happen.

Small theater: While Holly, Bill, and I were investigating in this room, our MEL pulled a nutty on us. For some reason, it was reading the temperature at over 100 degrees F, when it was roughly around 75. At one point, the temperature shot up to 185 degrees. We're not sure if this was a fluke thing and may have been caused by a low battery, but it was very odd. We used a separate thermometer to compare, but it read 75 degrees, so we kind of threw the MEL reading out as anything paranormal.

These pictures aren't very clear, but show the MEL reading the temperature as 116.6 degrees.

We also had a couple of k2 hits, but they didn't seem to follow any pattern or interact with any of our questions or instructions. A loud whisper was also heard by both Holly and I (seated on opposite sides of the theater). While Jim, Sophia, and JJ were investigating, they received about four k2 hits, also not following any clear pattern that they could find. Their K2 was also on a different end of the theater than we had had ours.

I am about halfway done reviewing our audio, but haven't found anything that has really jumped out at me. I marked a couple places where I need to load the audio on the computer and enhance the sound, but I'm leaning toward us not finding any substantial evps for the night. MPS will be reviewing the video soon and I will post any findings that they might have, as well as any evps they might have caught. I'm hoping to at least see the moving curtain on video.

Haunted?: We didn't come to any concrete decisions this time around, but we agree with Dennis that if there is something here, it is definitely residual and definitely harmless. Dennis said that we are welcome back any time and we look forward to spending at least a couple more nights at the theater. All in all, it was a very fun investigation and we enjoyed getting to spend time with MPS again.

And now for some pictures of Ashleigh and I horsing around on the cannons during one of our breaks:

EVPs

2009-07-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

I posted three evps on my group's website. It's not much, but it's a start. Hopefully we'll be adding a bunch more after this weekend.

www.queencityghosts.com

New Mothman Sightings in Pt. Pleasant, WV!!!

2009-07-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

This post was taken from Commonwealth Paranormal's myspace blog. To visit their myspace, go to: www.myspace.com/commonwealthparanormal

"New Mothman Sightings at Pt. Pleasant, WV

There have allegedly been two Mothman sightings in the Pt. Pleasant, WV area since July 9th.

Today, I took my 13 year old brother and 12 year old nephew to Pt. Pleasant so that they could learn more about the Mothman. While there, we stopped in Whites Steakhouse and talked with Carolin White. As some of you may remember, Carolin was on the "Mothman" episode of Paranormal State. Anyway, she told us that there had been two recent sightings of Mothman there in Pt. Pleasant in the Sand Hill and Jim Hill Road areas.

One of the sightings was reported to her by a gentleman from Tennessee who was returning to Pt. Pleasant to visit relatives. According to her, he said the creature almost caused him to run off the road. There was another animal in the road in front of him when "Mothman" swooped down in front of him. Now whether or not it was after the other animal or after his vehicle is unclear.

After leaving the restaurant, I stopped back in at the Mothman Museum and asked Jeremy if he had heard of the recent sightings, and sure enough he had as well.

I was not sure where Jim Hill Road was, but I did know where Sand Hill Road was, so I drove for miles out it but I never saw the first sign of anything.

But this is something to definitely keep an eye on in the near future. Why has it returned after all these years, if it in fact has?"

TARA NORMAL!

2009-07-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

Everyone's gotta check out "TaraNormal" by artist H.C. Noel!!

Howie Noel is an extremely talented artist, and often makes appearances in the paranormal event circuits. His character "Tara" appears in a weekly web comic as a paranormal investigator. Howie is also well known for his incredible caricatures and his graphic novel "Mr. Scootles".

To learn more about H.C. Noel or to book him for an event, visit his website at: www.hcnoel.com

To see more of TaraNormal, visit: www.taranormal.com

WILTON TOWN HALL THEATRE INVESTIGATION

2009-07-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

I don't know what happened, but I've been sucking at posting blogs lately. I'm going to try to get back in the swing of things.

Anyway, Queen City Paranormal will be investigating the Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton NH.

This building was originally the Wilton Town Hall and was built in 1886. The building had a playhouse where vaudeville and traveling shows were peformed until converting to silent films in 1912. Today, the building still hosts movies regularly.

There are two theaters, "The Big House" seats 250 people, while the "Screening Room" seats 63. The Screening room was converted from the changing rooms of the original vaudeville actors.

In doing some research on the place, I did find some interesting history. The information however, is coming from local ghost sites and paranormal groups, so I'm not 100% on the information. According to one site, before the town hall was built, there was a hotel that burnt down in the late 1800's. A small boy, named "Henry", died in the fire and is said to haunt one of the staircases.

On top of that, Wilton NH is known for having a substantial amount of paranormal activity throughout the town. This seems to be in correlation to the high amounts of granite and quartz found here. Another paranormal hot spot, Vale End Cemetery, is also found in Wilton (and is one of the creepiest places I have been to, when the air is just right). Unfortunately, Vale End has grown a little too popular over the past couple years and is now heavily patrolled. The cemetery is posted as "no trespassing after sunset" and the Wilton police take this very seriously. My group has tried bargaining with them to let us do some investigating on a planned night, but to no success.

Known activity for the Wilton Town Hall Theatre includes: the felt presence of a child entity, a woman in the mirror of the women's bathroom, and a skinny male entity walking down the hallways then disappearing.

From what I've heard and seen in pictures, the place seems really big. I'm really excited about doing this place. My only negative thoughts are that I wish we had our IR cameras for this one. If the case is promising, maybe we can schedule a second investigation when our equipment is in.

TARADACTYL'S STILL EXIST IN NH!!!

2009-05-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

I know this because one took a shit the size of a small child on my windshield this morning...

Someone alert a cryptozoologist.

POLAND SPRING RESORT INVEST. W/ MPS AND NESPIME

2009-05-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I was invited by the Maine Paranormal Society to help investigate the Poland Spring Resort in Poland Spring Maine. I brought Chris, an investigator from my group Queen City Paranormal, with me. It was about a two hour drive, a little north of Portland. The weather was kind of crappy and the further we drove, the foggier it got. I thought the beverage I chose for the ride up was pretty appropriate...

When we finally got there, we did a walk through of all of the buildings. Two members from NESPIME were also up there to help out. It was awesome to have three teams come together for one investigation. It's something that hasn't happened a lot in the past, but will definitely be happening more in the future. I love meeting new people in general, especially people who have the same interests as I do, and it was neat to be able to compare evidence that our teams had gotten in the past, and experience different techniques in investigating. I think more groups should give working together a try.

One of my favorites of the crew up there was Warren, he was a hoot. We shared the same love for jagermeister (not on the investigation), and having to pick everything up around us.

This picture looks pretty badass until you notice the bunny ears.

Our main meetup spot/base was in the Presidential Inn, which was HUGE

Four floors of winding, neverending halls.

The resort is closed for the winter and was set to open up the following weekend, so no one was staying in any of the buildings, but they had been cleaned and were ready to go. When we got there, we had to play with the breakers to even get electricity in there. The first group to investigate this building went out to their cars for a minute and when they came back, there was a t.v. on in one of the rooms. At first we were thinking that maybe whoever last rented the room left the t.v. on and when they closed for the season, they may have just switched off the breaker. Then when we flipped the breaker on, the t.v. just came on with it. The only thing is, it didn't come on right when we flipped on the breaker. It was about an hour after we had turned the electricity on. Definitely something to think about.

This was the chapel.

There's a lot of orby, dusty, crapola in this picture, but keep in mind- it was raining. It was actually pouring when this picture was taken. I don't really buy into the whole orb thing anyway, and don't really know anything about them, but if you're into it, this may or may not be a good picture? I dunno.

This is most of us. Chris and I are on the right, Mandy and Lou (in red) are from NESPIME and everyone to the left is MPS.

We had access to this building, but didn't even have enough time to go into it.

I think we had all pretty much had it with the group pictures at this point.

This is one of the four cottages that were there, and also where most of the activity ended up happening.

Each cottage was named after a member of the Ricker family (the family that started the resort back in the 1800s). This cottage was named after Hyram (who you will see in a minute). These cottages were also set to open for the season the following weekend, so we were very surprised that when we unlocked it to do the walk through, there were two rolls of toilet paper thrown into the hall on the floor. There were no open windows and nobody should've been in there besides someone working there to get it ready for the season. A lot of activity ended up happening in this cottage. Chris and I had this building first, along with Kelli from MPS and Tom, a keyholder for the resort and friend of the group. When we first got back to the cottage from the initial walk through, we noticed a glass vase type thing sitting in front of the door. This definitely was not there when we there a couple of hours ago and is still a mystery to us. Jim (the MPS founder) wanted the IR cameras set up in this building because it seemed to have the most activity. Footsteps, faces in the window, and even some full body apparitions. I won't go into too much detail on the events because it was more Kelli and Chris's experiences than mine. But there was definitely something happening in there. We sat in the downstairs living room and started an evp session. Right away we could hear shuffling around in other rooms and footsteps upstairs.

We asked for whatever was there to come into the room with us, and I can't even really explain it, but the room got thicker. The engery in there was so bizarre. We experienced the usual cold spots, goosebumps, and some leg tugging, but the feeling of the rooms is what weirded me out the most. It wasn't pitch black in there, but was pretty dark. I would say just enough light to see objects in the room and notice if there were any shadows (which there were plenty of), but at one point, the air became so thick, I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. I literally just saw a thick mist right in front of me. Someone in the room was a sensitive and began picking up on some names and images. Later it was confirmed that all of the names they got were names of people buried in the family graveyard also on the resort.

There is a little misty orby something or other in this picture, and a little bit again in the next one. But I'm wondering if it was just caused by the flash of the camera. Because if you look at the second one, it looks like it may just be light reflecting off the base of the lamp onto the wall.

After our session in the cottage, all of us headed up to the Maine Inn to check out the library. Reports of activity there are books moving around, falling off shelves, and a full body apparition of the current owner's deceased husband. By this point, I was still a little numb from the activity in the cottage and needed a little refueling so Chris and I decided to go back to the Presidential building and get some food and explore in there a little.

We did hear a couple loud bangs and some footsteps, but we were pretty sure it was just noises coming from the pipes and heating vents. I'm not sure if anyone ended up having an experience in the library. I'm guessing they didn't because I'm sure we would've heard about it. People slowly trickled back into the Presidential Inn and we were all looking pretty tired. Chris and I decided to pack up and head home. I actually had to work that morning in Manchester.

On the way home, we put on our headphones and listened to the audio from the cabin. We did get a pretty clear evp of what sounds like someone saying "ELLIOT" (maybe the ghost of E.T. was there). I have no idea who Elliot could be, but I don't know what else it could be saying. The recorder I had left upstairs was pretty short, and I didn't get anything, but Chris said he got quite a few that I need to listen to. We're going to try to get them on the computer and I'll try to finagle a way to post them on here.

I'm also still waiting on pictures that MPS took. They took a lot of pictures of us throughout the night and I wanted to post them all at once, but I haven't seen anything up yet.

Ok, so now for the picture of Hyram...

Check out those sideburns...... Ooh baby.

INVESTIGATION OF POLAND SPRINGS RESORT, THIS WEEKEND

2009-05-11T15:05:00.000-07:00

This weekend my group, Queen City Paranormal, will be investigating the Poland Springs Resort in Maine with Central Maine Paranormal.

I'm not sure which buildings we will have access to yet, but the place is HUGE. I can't wait, I hope we get some good evidence!!

TAPS BOOT CAMP

2009-05-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

A comprehensive five hour course on the TAPS methodologies of Paranormal Investigation where they will cover......

Equipment

1) Video
2) Audio
3) Meters - EMF/KII/Geophone and more

EVP's

1) The Do's and Dont's of Recording
2) Analyzing the EVP
3) Tips and Tricks
4) Audio Compression
4) Equipment Demonstrations
and more...

DVR's and Handheld Cameras

1) IR light, what it is and how to use it
2) Video Noise vs. Mists
3) Compression is your enemy
4) Nightshot/Nightvision
5) Equipment Demonstrations
and more...

Pareidolia

1) See the face in the picture?
2) Did you hear that?
and more...

The Investigation and Your client:

1) The do's and dont's during an investigation
2) The interview process
3) Qualifying the client and premises
4) Finding clients and properties worth investigating
and more...
5) Investigation Etiquette
6) A proper reveal

Analyzing the Evidence

1) Software and Hardware Tools
2) Proper analyzation techniques
3) Tips and Tricks
4) Things to look out for

The business of the paranormal:

1) Insurance
2) Non Disclosure Agreements
3) Rights to Evidence obtained
4) Indemnity Agreements
and more...

All this and so much more ...so hurry and sign up now!

To sign up or see more information, visit the TAPS website at:

www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com

New Beginnings....

2009-05-10T08:11:00.001-07:00

I have made the decision to leave New Hampshire Paranormal to start a group of my own. This decision was not made with any hard feelings toward NHP or any of its members. In fact, I hope that the two groups will remain close and work together in the future.

My new group is called Queen City Paranormal and is based out of Manchester NH. We are in the process of putting up our website, as well as renovating our office which will be located on the East side of Manchester (details soon). We do have a myspace, it is www.myspace.com/queencityparanormal

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Mother's Day today! If anyone is heading down to Quincy for the Psychic/Paranormal Fair, I'll see you there!

This Weekend....

2009-05-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

A nice event to bring Mom to for Mother's Day!

Pictures from Beyond Reality Mt Washington Hotel Event

2009-04-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

The drive up with no radio or cd player

The back deck

Jeff Belanger

Our view from the merch room

Passes

the lobby

moose in the lobby

my room for the first weekend

The view from my room

The living room in my suite for the second weekend

The balcony of my room

View from the balcony

This is what happens when you pass your camera off to Jimmy

and this...

Hangin in the lobby

Holly checking people in

Holly and I working the registration table

the line for registration

The line snaked out the door and stayed like that for over two hours

putting passes together

Holly and I at the meet and greet table

Everyone left us...

Awesome skull necklaces made by Holly's friend

the merch table from the back porch

Mike Brody and Jeff Belanger opening up for the meet and greet

The crowd

Meet and greet table

Amy and Britt

Steve, Tango and Kristyn

J and G

Ashleigh's magic trick

Getting the hot sauce ready for Brody and Britt

Awww shit...

Bathrobe party

4am

The absolutely amazing Adam Blai

Brody testing out my jacuzzi tub

Trashy ladies!

I think Brody was looking for UFO's

slackers

Rob

Loren chattin it up with G

Brody trying to steal bigfoot from Loren

Holly and Britt

Piggy back rides 50 cents

digging for gold

bear hugs

Holly and Loren

Ashleigh and Loren

Robin, Holly and Ali

favorites

Jeff rockin my sunglasses

I don't know what happened here

smoking section

liquor was consumed

rockstars

up close and personal

door to the cave

The cave

sweet shoes
HERBIERTO!!

Sasquatch

Howie and Holly

favorite ladies of weekend two

Ouija collection

The Butcha's Ouija tattoo

radio show from the lobby

The Spalding

Mount Washington TAPS/Beyond Reality Radio Event

2009-04-21T11:03:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I was up at the Mt. Washington Hotel for the TAPS Beyond Reality Radio Event. I had an absolute blast and met a lot of amazing people. I haven't had time to put any pictures up, but I probably will after next weekend.

In the meantime, everyone has to check out Mike Brody's blog about the events. He did some hilarious profiles of a few of the characters up there last weekend (my favorite is of Herbierto the elevator attendant), as well as a summary of the weekend.

Here are links to a few of his blogs:

Profile: Herbierto

Profile: "Britt Griffith"???

Profile: cryptozoologist Loren Coleman

You can see more of Mike Brody's shenanigans at his comedy page on myspace at:

http://www.myspace.com/brodycomic

Valley St. Cemetery

2009-04-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

2009-04-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

I'll be selling merch at the Beyond Reality event at the Mount Washington Hotel. So come by the merch table and buy some shit.

PARANORMACON

2009-04-06T19:30:00.000-07:00

Hosted By:
In Nomine Paranormal Research

When:
Saturday, May 16, 2009

Where:
Fort Wayne Masonic Temple
216 E. Washington Blvd
Fort Wayne
46802

Description:
A premiere, two-day, paranormal conference hosted in the historic Fort Wayne Masonic Temple. Special Guests Include: Brian Harnois, Bishop James Long, Keith Age, Kat Tedsen, Bev Rydel, Nick Reiter, Kristy Robinett, Madelyn Alt, Wanda Lou Willis. Click on the Paranormacon flyer, below, for complete information, pricing, etc.

Click Here To View Event

USS SALEM PSYCHIC PARANORMAL FAIR

2009-04-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

Gifted Kids Getaway

2009-04-06T19:16:00.000-07:00

This physical world can be a very trying place, especially for those who arrive with Spiritual Gifts. For them, the everyday challenges of growing up are compounded by the additional input from Spirit beings. Without the proper guidance, support, and understanding these children often end up lonely, misunderstood, and at times misdiagnosed with some ‘physical’ ailment.

Over the last few years, in an effort to understand these children multiple labels have been attached. Including; Indigo, Crystal, Star, and Rainbow to name a few.
The unfortunate reality is that these labels tend to mostly help those who are around these gifted children and not the children themselves.

For this reason, Psychic Medium Serenity Moore , who herself had to experience the challenges of growing up a very gifted, is holding a series of Gifted Children Getaway weekends.
During these weekends, gifted children will have the chance to meet with Serenity individually, providing quite possible their first real opportunity to share their thoughts with another person who is uniquely prepared to answer their questions.
Children attending this event will also have group discussions where they can share their own stories within a group setting of their peers.
Also and perhaps most importantly, the parents/guardians of these gifted children will be able to meet with other adults, sharing their own concerns, questions, and experiences of raising a gifted child. In addition, the weekend will include discussions on meditation, cleansings, and what parents can expect from their child.

The first Gifted Childrens Getaway is scheduled for July 10th-12th at the Shanley Hotel in Napanoch, New York.
This is an amazing property with many bright Spirits currently sharing their time there and is uniquely suited to make the event a success.
The cost to attend is only $200 per child with one parent, or $250 for one child with two parents.
In addition to what I shared above, this very reasonable price includes lodging, dinners (Friday/Saturday), and continental breakfasts (Saturday/Sunday)
Additional questions can be answered by visiting Serenity’s myspace page at:

http://www.myspace.com/spiritualserenity

..

Book of the Damned

2009-04-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

I'm reading "The Book of the Damned" by Charles Fort right now. It was written in 1919 about weird things that have happened (black rains, red snows, ufos, etc) and how they relate to science and scientific theory and all that good stuff. But so far, all I can really say is that Mr. Fort was a very smart man, but I'm pretty sure was also a big fan of the marahwana... and that the book would make a whole lot more sense if I too was stoned.

Chupacabra

2009-04-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

If anyone has On Demand from Comcast, there is a whole section dedicated to the paranormal that is pretty interesting. I just watched the section on the chupacabra and it seems like they pretty much solved the mystery. There was clear video captured from a police car in Cuero Texas and two bodies were actually found that had been hit by a car. A woman that lives in the town (and who's chickens have been devoured by the creature), actually had one of them stuffed and kept the other frozen until a paranormal group (Texas Snipe Hutners) helped her dissect the animal. Parts of the first body were sent out to a lab to be tested and came back somewhat inconclusive. The scientists claimed that the animal was the result of the breeding of a wolf and coyote. It looked nothing like either of these animals.

Mothman Tours

2009-04-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

I want to go hahahaha

Candia Cemetery

2009-03-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

I took these today at the cemetery on High Street in Candia NH. Trees and limbs were down everywhere from all the storms this winter.

Utupian Society Using Meds?

2009-03-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

"How to Change a Personality"

I found this article on the TIME site. It's about medicines that effect personalities, concentration, etc and how it may change our future. The possibilites that are being opened are pretty scary. It reminds me of some sort of freakish utopian society from a fiction novel (complete with the quirks and flaws that would inevitably be the downfall of society and ethics).

What Happens When We Die?

2009-03-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

Article by TIME on "What Happens When We Die?"

An article on scientific research into the after-life and out of body experiences.

The Science Behind Psychic Phenomena

2009-03-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Time did an article on "The Science Behind Psychic Phenomena"

(Click above to go to article)

Distant Healing

2009-03-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

I read an article on explorejournal.com today about a study that was done to test "distant healing". Basically, healing through the power of thought and sent energy. A group of couples were split up and categorized as a "sender" and a "receiver". The sender would lay in one room and concentrate on the receiver (in a different room) for a set period of time, repeated, with breaks of no concentration in between. The results actually came back with a positive change during the concentration periods.

I always knew that the power of thought could heal illness. But I always assumed it was just the will within the patient. It sheds a whole new light on prayer chains.

Link to article:
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(08)00095-5/abstract

Fireman dresses as Spider-Man to rescue boy

2009-03-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

Thai Fireman Dresses as Spiderman to Rescue Boy
(associated press)

A Thai firefighter put on a Spiderman costume to rescue a superhero-loving autistic boy who climbed onto a third-floor balcony and dangled his legs over the side because he was nervous on his first day of school.

Somchai Yoosabai was called in after the 11-year-old boy's teachers and mother failed to coax him off the ledge on Monday, he said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

"He was nervous about the first day at school, and he was asking for his mother," Somchai said. "He cried and refused to let any of us get close to him."

Overhearing a conversation between the boy's mother and his teachers about his love for comics and superheros, Somchai rushed back to the fire station to change into a Spiderman costume before swinging into action.

"I told him Spiderman is here to save you. No monster will hurt you now," Somchai said. "Then I told him to walk slowly toward me. I was very nervous that he might have slipped if he got too excited and ran."

Somchai, who keeps costume of Spiderman and a Japanese superhero Ultraman to liven up fire drills at schools, said the teary-eyed boy broke into a smile and started walking into his arms.

The fictional hero was created by comic-writer Stan Lee in the early 1960s. The character regained its popularity in recent years thanks to the trilogy of Hollywood films starring Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst.

Salem NH Investigation

2009-03-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

The investigation last weekend went pretty well. It was VERY close to being cancelled, but ended up working out.

We haven't gone over evidence yet, but did have some personal experiences. We heard what sounded like a box being dragged across the floor in a back room in the kitchen. It happened three or four times and we figured out it was not any of the equipment in the room or movement coming from another room. There was also some strange things going on with our K2 in the pool room, where there is supposed to be the most activity. Evidence review should be interesting.

My favorite part... Ashleigh and I started the night out with a dance party in the parking lot to "Last Dance" by Donna Summers and they made us free food from the kitchen around 3 in the morning. Hopefully I can get video up of the dancing.

Haunting in Connecticut movie

2009-03-25T10:03:00.001-07:00

This article was posted on "Lost and Found Ohio"'s myspace blog. I'm not sure who originally wrote it.

SOUTHINGTON, Conn. - A Hollywood horror film that depicts the alleged haunting of a former funeral parlor in central Connecticut is turning into a nightmare for the home's current owners and their neighbors.

The movie, "A Haunting in Connecticut," doesn't open until Friday, but curious fans are already making a beeline for the Southington home that inspired the movie.

"It's just been really, really stressful," said Susan Trotta-Smith, who bought the home 10 years ago with her husband. "It's been a total change from a very quiet house in a very quiet neighborhood to looking out the window and seeing cars stopping all the time. It's been very, very stressful, and sometimes worrisome."

The family has never seen anything unusual inside their five-bedroom, two-family white wood-frame house and does not believe the property was haunted.

"It's got beautiful woodwork, and there is a nice warm feeling to the house," Trotta-Smith said. "Because it was a funeral home , the upstairs apartment is much more spacious. It's like two full houses , and it has a beautiful yard, too."

The movie, starring Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner and released by Lionsgate, is loosely based on stories that revolved around the house in the 1980s.

The residents at the time, the Snedeker family , claimed their son would hear strange noises in his basement bedroom, which once held casket displays and was near the old embalming room. He also claimed to see shadows on the wall of people who were not there. A niece visiting the home said she felt hands on her body as she tried to sleep, and her covers levitated.

The family brought in Ed and Lorraine Warren , self-described paranormal researchers, who became famous for documenting the alleged " Amityville Horror " haunting of a home on Long Island.

Lorraine Warren says she felt an evil presence in the Southington home and experienced the haunting herself when she spent a night there.

"In the master bedroom, there was a trap door where the coffins were brought up," she said. "And during the night, you would hear that chain hoist, as if a coffin were being brought up. But when Ed went to check, there was nobody down there."

Warren, whose husband died in 2006, has nothing to do with the movie. She said the house was "cleared" of the evil presence after a seance in 1988. A book and a television documentary followed.

The current owners, who rent out part of the home to another family, have removed the street number from the house and posted "no trespassing" signs. Trotta-Smith says they are concerned about the four children who live there.

"Most people are respectful. They stay on the road. They might take a picture," Trotta-Smith said. "But we have had a few problems with people kind of rudely coming up to the door and scaring our kids, telling them the house is haunted."

Police have added extra patrols to the neighborhood.

"There are creatures looming in the night but not inside the house," Southington police Sgt. Lowell DePalma said. "They happen to be people who are trespassing on the property, looking in windows and that kind of stuff. People are going to be disappointed. There are no ghosts."

Alison Taylor , 37, drove from her home in East Hartford with her camera after seeing a show about the haunting on the Discovery Channel and hearing about the new movie.

"I'm very intrigued," she said. "I figured since it was close, I could come. A lot of people are so skeptical, but I'm not. I'm sure some things are made up to make the movie look better, but I think it's great."

Katherine Altemus, who lives across the street, shoos curious onlookers away. She believes the ghost stories were a hoax.

"It's disgraceful," she said. "None of the haunting took place, and now it's ruining the lives of that wonderful young family that lives there."

Calls to the Snedeker family were returned by the film production company , who said they would attempt to arrange an interview.

Film producer Andrew Trapani said he believed the mother, Carmen Snedeker, was very credible, and believes the film does a good job depicting what her family went through. The movie was filmed in Teulon, Manitoba.

He said the names of the family and town in the film were fictionalized, in part to try and keep unwanted attention away from the real home. The Snedekers and Southington are identified on the film's Web site.

"We certainly didn't set out to upset anyone or have anyone show up at their home," he said. "I think in this case, this particular supernatural haunting had a much larger following than even I had anticipated."

Trotta-Smith said she's working with the police but has no plans to put up a fence. She said she just wants a normal life in the house, but she's not sure that will be possible if the movie becomes a big hit.

"I'm a little worried about this Halloween because I imagine that's when they will release the DVD and get everyone worked up again."

The Demonic Debate

2009-03-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Demonology intrigues the hell(no pun intended) out of me. I never really gave it a second thought until my group got involved with a case that had some history of "black magic" and "voodoo" and ended up getting some of the best evidence I could ever hope for (for more info on this case, I did write a blog about it caled "my favorite investigation so far"). Ever since then, I've been insanely interested but from a distance. I am extremely skeptical. I have been hunting ghosts ever since I was old enough to know what one is, and I have yet to see something that absolutely has proved to me that they exist. I don't claim any particular religion and have no real opinion on the reality of a heaven or hell. However, I do know it's not something I want to mess with. In my opinion, no one (or not many) know for absolute certain what happens when we die or what exists as far as Gods and Goddesses. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for anyone that has faith in religion. I'm just too stubborn. I guess I just want to see some kind of proof before I pick a side. At the same time, because no one knows for sure, I know that I need to tread with respect. And I think that's why "demons" have been on my mind so much lately. I'm so intrigued, but don't want to dig too deep and open up anything I can't handle or shouldn't be messing with, in case it IS all real.

Anyway, I came across this article and thought it was pretty interesting. Broad, but gives a good stance on both sides.

This article was taken from www.dw-world.de

**I do not agree or disagree with what they're saying, but demonology has been a pretty hot topic lately and this article did a pretty good job of covering both sides of the fence. **

The First College Course on Exorcism

by Megan Williams

The course is not quite as dramatic as Hollywood-style exorcism

The first college course on exorcism is being offered at a Catholic university in Italy. Already, priests from around the world are flocking to Rome to participate and study psychology, law and a history of satanism.

The university on the outskirts of Rome is about as far from Hogwarts as it gets. Sunshine streams in from a huge skylight above as a janitor pushes a broom across a slick, shiny floor and students mill about with coffee before making their way to class -- in black cassocks and dangling crosses.

Because beneath its modern veneer, the Vatican-backed Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, or UPRA, is grappling with demons. For the first time, this conservative Catholic university is offering Exorcism 101 this year.

"People are experiencing these things more for various reasons, but they are starting more and more to come to the priest and say I need some help," said Father Christopher Barrack, a priest from Lincoln, Neb., who was sent to Rome by his bishop specifically to take the 8-week exorcism course.

In one room, Father Piedro Barahan is giving a lecture to a class of 80 students -- almost all men. Forget Bibles and rosaries. With the aid of his laptop computer and a microphone, Barahan gives a power-point presentation on the theology of demons. Another 50 or so students follow the lecture through videoconference links with three other Italian cities.

"Most of these people here are priests and most of them in their pastoral work deal with people who feel that they have a problem of possession and they don't know whether it's really supernatural or psychological," he said. "I think they want criteria with which they can distinguish if it's really the supernatural action of the devil or a psychological sickness."

Barahan is an expert on demons and satanic worship. It's an especially hot topic these days in Italy. A sensational murder case involving teenagers who practiced demonic worship and Satanic rituals has got the country worried about the spread of such cults, especially among young people. One Catholic sociologist who was a guest lecturer here claims these cults are on the rise, with up to 100,000 young people involved.

There's no proof to back up the claim, but the alarm is real. And if this crowded classroom is anything to go by, there's certainly interest in exorcism and the devil among Catholic priests.

Like many Catholics, Barahan is convinced that the devil is a real, very powerful entity and not simply a symbolic representation of evil. He's assisted in numerous exorcisms and says he's learned to tell when someone is truly possessed as opposed to mentally ill.

"This is not so easy, but we have signs," Barahan said. "For example, the aversion against religious objects -- a cross or a rosary or blessed water. Sometimes these people have a lot of strength, not natural strength, against these kinds of signs. Sometimes they speak languages without having studied them before. Sometimes they know the future of other people. So there's not one sign, but several signs, especially, psychologically. You have a lot of instability as if you have two souls in one body."

Barrack explains he isn't an exorcist himself -- only priests appointed by their bishop can conduct exorcisms -- but he said his parishioners back home do come to him for help with a range of battles against evil: Anything from special prayers against temptation to protection against strange noises in their homes. But, he cautions, it doesn't mean the devil has taken them over.

"Certainly there could be a lot of temptation and oppression from the devil on a person," he said. "That does not mean possession. Possession is when a devil actually takes control of the person and the person does not have its own free will, so the devil is using the person to speak and act without the person freely consenting to that. That would be possession."

Barrack also said he believes that the devil is behind some of the New Age and other alternative spirituality groups. Even parents can be involved.

"I've noticed, from some people they've said maybe one of their parents dedicated them to Satan when they were born," he said. "There are many satanic cults or Gnostic groups, some that are well-respected in society, but behind the scenes there is this connection with Satan."

But not all priests are so convinced. Father Gerry O'Collins is a renowned theologian at the Gregorian University in downtown Rome. He says there's a real danger in Catholics focusing too much on demons. He cites the witch hunts of the 16th century as an example of how people can get carried away.

"There's definitely a risk of people seeing the devil's hand all over the place and being superstitious," he said. "You can become caught up by that and even obsessed by it. And certainly official church leaders don't want freelance priests and others to play games. They want a wise old priest who's the official exorcist and who's skeptical and who knows what he's about and I think that's a happy situation."

O'Collins does believe that possessions can happen, but of all the people claiming to be possessed, most Catholic theologians estimated only a tiny number is the real thing.

"Yes, it can happen, but it's extremely rare," Collins said. "Maybe 2 percent of the cases you should take seriously."

For the dozens of priests who are following the exorcism course in Rome, that percentage is enough to study exorcism. And at the very least, Barahan said, priests can help people who are under the illusion they're possessed by getting them psychological help.

Tonight's Investigation in Salem, NH

2009-03-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm investigating a restaurant in Salem NH with my group New Hampshire Paranormal. The bar area is open until 1am, so we'll be getting a late start, probably around 2 or 3.

And I have to work tomorrow morning. I'm going to be exhausted.

Radford Lecture

2009-03-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

This Article was found on the "UFO Digest" website and was originally posted on the Buffalo University site.

Making ghosts of mysteries
ELI GEORGE - Staff Writer

Just as its name proclaims, the Center for Inquiry is a place for rationality and critical questions. That rationality was put to the test Friday when seemingly radical theories on the paranormal became the center's focus, at least for one evening.

For a lecture titled "Applying Science to the Paranormal," writer and investigator Ben Radford brought his critical attitude to psychics, Bigfoot, and a Lancaster home that was reported to be haunted.

Radford works for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and has been in the paranormal business for 10 years, during eight of which he operated in Buffalo.

Though the presentation may have sounded like it was meant to utilize science in paranormal research, it was really just the opposite: using science to undercut the unfounded and irrational beliefs of certain myths. Radford himself even displayed this idea with the pin on his shirt, reading "The Real Ghostbusters."

At the very start Radford said, "The theme tonight is evidence and the illusion of evidence."

Radford went on to explain that evidence is something tangible and scientific, something that can be measured and explained.

For an example of the illusion of evidence, he started with his mother's idea that deaths come in threes. After Princess Diana and Mother Theresa died, she wondered who would be next. This notion, though, is ridiculous, Radford said, because anyone could be the third to which his mother responded that it had to be someone well known and beloved. He noted that Jimmy Stewart had died a few weeks prior to Mother Theresa.

If the criteria are not predefined, it is not really evidence. Why not make it deaths come in four, ten and twenties?

After getting his main point across, Radford began with psychics, naming names like Sylvia Brown of the "Montel" show as examples of famous clairvoyants he feels are deceptive. He said that psychics' contradictory and vague feelings are not information.

"What's amazing is how consistently they're wrong," Radford said.

Using examples from missing person's cases, such as Elizabeth Smart and Chandra Levy, Radford explained how thousands of psychics offered their help. However, none of them were right, and he feels they waste police resources by having them follow unreliable and unhelpful leads.

"If people (psychics) truly know where people are, why haven't we found Osama Bin Laden?" said Radford.

The next target for Radford's objective and critical approach was Bigfoot. He had molds of footprints and lots of popular pictures, such as the Bigfoot who sells Spam, as examples of how the legend exists in the media and in peoples' minds. Radford then took the time to go through all of the well-known eyewitness testimonials and the few pictures and tangible evidence that exist.

Many were proved at some point or another to be a hoax, but most are at the very least highly suspect. His biggest point of proof was that there has never been any Bigfoot hair, bones, teeth, blood or bodies found, ever. No Bigfoot has ever been hit by a car, no body found in the woods or a river, and nobody has accidentally shot one either.

"There is no lack of evidence, just a lack of good evidence," Radford said.

Last, he talked about a haunted house in Lancaster he investigated in 2003. Radford received a call from the residence of the home and he drove out there to decipher the meanings behind their evidence. They had weird creaking footsteps, strange voices, weird photographs, and the husband of the household thought the ghost had kicked his bed.

Radford went through their home and discovered that they just had a very squeaky staircase, the wind carried voices in from the street, and that the photographs were merely tricks of the light.

As for the kicking, it was due to one of the living resident's sleep apnea and a very light bed frame holding that large man. Radford's rationalized theory said that movement from the resident's body could cause the frame to move.

"I went through it one by one with them. In each case, there was a logical explanation for it. The devil is in the details with these sorts of mysteries," Radford said.

Another mystery debunked.

Robert Matecki, 48, works in the mental health profession in Buffalo. Though he enjoyed the lecture he said, "I was expecting more case studies."

Ben Marsh, a sophomore physics major said he also hoped for a bit more, particularly stuff that would give him reason to believe in paranormal mysteries.

"I thought he was a great lecturer," Marsh said. "I was a little disappointed. He only made me non-believe more."

2009-03-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

I saw this article on "Vivid Dreams" on yahoo.com today. I thought it was kind of interesting...

What Causes Vivid Dreams?

By: Molly Mann

Recently, I went through a period of having nightly dreams that were so vivid and frightening that I would wake up in a battle stance against my imaginary attackers, only to find my cat staring at me like she desperately wanted a new owner. Nightmares are one thing, but these were so lifelike, it took me a while to separate the dream from reality after waking. I still recall each sensory detail of those dreams in all their horror.

We spend about six years of our life dreaming and have accumulated much lore about what those dreams mean, but scientists who focus on oneirology—the study of dreams—still know very little about the actual process of dreaming. We do know that they arise from Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, in which the brain is as active as it is when the body is awake. Sometimes these dreams are extremely vivid, so much so that the dreamer often has trouble understanding that he or she is not actually awake.

Vivid dreams can be either pleasant or frightening. They have a variety of potential causes, from deeper systematic woes to simpler dietary hiccups. Provided they are not associated with any adverse health effects, vivid dreams can be a tool for achieving more lucid dreams and increased awareness while dreaming.

You Should See Your Doctor If …
You notice symptoms of bipolar disorder or diabetes, since both of these conditions may cause vivid dreaming. Both interrupt REM sleep and therefore affect the body’s ability to separate dreams from waking perceptions. The same effect can occur from taking depression medication, sleep medication, and some over-the-counter drugs. If you notice a recent development of abnormal dreaming associated with a change in your health, it is a good idea to see your doctor to rule out any of these possibilities.

Expecting More Than Work Tomorrow?
Many pregnant women experience vivid dreams, both pleasant and disturbing. Researchers have concluded that these dreams are a way for expectant mothers to prepare for the huge life changes that will accompany their child’s birth.
Women have reported dreams of cutting their stomachs open to pull the baby out before it comes to term, delivering deformed children or beasts, or being caught unprepared for motherhood once their babies are born. There is no reason
to believe these dreams are prophetic or in any way based in reality. They are simply the result of hormonal changes and the need to discharge fears surrounding the anticipated event of birth. It may be helpful to speak to a support group of other pregnant women, mothers, your partner, or a therapist about these fears, but they are completely normal.

The Link Between Diet and Dreams
You’ve probably heard that spicy or fatty foods can give you nightmares, but the link between food and sleep goes beyond that. Vivid dreams are a symptom of a vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) excess in the body and can be a warning sign of more complex
neurological disorders if over ingestion is continued. Most cases of vitamin B6 excess are due to supplements; limit intake to 100 milligrams (mg) or less per day to avoid toxicity.

Low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, is another cause of vivid dreams. When the brain senses that glucose levels are low, it will do strange things to get stored glucose into the blood stream. One way it does so is through adrenaline spurts. If your vivid dreams are accompanied by a feeling of being “wired” (if, like me, you find yourself doing ninja kicks around your bedroom at those pesky alien invaders), it likely stems from a blood sugar issue. I solved my problem by adding more protein to my diet, especially before going to sleep. It keeps my glucose levels regulated throughout the night and I sleep much more peacefully.

Take Control with Lucid Dreaming
The problem with vivid dreams is separating them from waking reality. However, the practice of lucid dreaming, in which you become increasingly aware of your dreams until you actually develop the ability to control them, may offer a solution that doesn’t stem from any of the root causes listed above. Oneironauts, or lucid dreamers, train themselves to alter their dream experiences to include flight, exotic travel, delicious tastes, and any other vivid experiences they desire. Researchers at the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University have developed a Super NovaDreamer kit that helps you recognize “dream signs” or signals that tell you that you’re dreaming. With practice, you learn to recognize and manipulate these dream signs to dictate the elements that will appear in your dream. It’s like a virtual reality game in your head.

Dreams come in all varieties, from the simply satisfying to the seriously scary. Most of the time, we don’t even remember having dreamt, but many people experience dreams so vivid that they spill over into the next day, blurring the edges of reality. After ruling out a more systematic cause of vivid dreams like diet or disease, you might be interested in taking the next step and playing around with how you can take advantage of this other dream world.

My favorite investigation so far....

2009-03-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, we investigated a private residence in Nashua NH. From the beginning, we knew it was going to be an interesting case. With experiences of mangled full body apparitions, growling, scratching, flying objects and voices, everything seemed to point to the possibility of a demonic entity. The client had some family history of voodoo and "black magic" and had received a demonic name through a Ouija board at one point. She had tried to do a blessing on her house with holy water and it only seemed to intensify the activity. I'm extremely skeptical so I took everything I was told with a grain of salt, but there was no denying the negative feeling inside the house.
While setting up, I picked up the small bottle of holy water that we keep in our kit (just in case) and eyed one of the other investigators. As soon as the bottle was in my hand, the client called from the other room that she had a really bad feeling about all of this. She said that all of a sudden, she had a heavy feeling of dread and her heart started beating rapidly. One of my investigators had her sit down and got her some water. I put the holy water back into the kit and as soon as it left my hand, she took a deep breath and said that it had passed. We told her it was probably just anxiety from everything that was going on and left it at that.
We had everything pretty much ready to go when we noticed on our monitor that one of our cameras had fallen. The camera was in one of the bedrooms, duct taped to a shelf in a closet. Falling cameras can happen. There are knobs in two places that help to adjust the angles of the camera. If you don't tighten the knobs after adjusting, it will very very slowly tilt down and then the weight of the camera will just bring it down. So Liz went up to retape it and make sure that everything was tightened. When I came up with some more duct tape, she told me that as she was holding the camera in place, it felt like someone was ripping the camera out of her hands. We had an extra handy cam, so we set it up on the other side of the room, facing the IR camera so that if it happened again, we could pin point why it was happening.
Naturally for the first round of investigating, Liz and I took that bedroom. After about ten minutes of asking some questions and getting a feel for the room, I asked "If that was you that moved our camera, could you give us some kind of sign that you're here. But... can you not touch our cameras because they're really expensive?!" As soon as I said it we heard "RRRRRRRRRRIPPPPPPPP" and the camera came FLYING off the shelf and then dangled by the cord. Now, I've seen cameras come untaped and fall, but this was nothing like that. When I went back and listened to the audio from it, you hear me take the biggest gasping breath and I'm pretty sure you could probably hear my heart beating out of my chest. Liz and I didn't even move. We just looked at the camera and then at each other in silence. After we had a minute to collect ourselves, we turned on the light and examined where the camera had once been taped. We checked to see if maybe the shelf wasn't level and the weight of the camera had somehow caused it to come down, or for a piece of tape that may have ripped. But we found nothing. In fact, the shelf was actually uneven, but in the opposite direction that the camera had fallen. So it would've had to have pulled somewhat against gravity when it came down.
We debated even putting the camera back up, those things do not come cheap. But finally we retaped it in the same spot, but made sure to go extremely heavy on the tape and triple check all of the knobs. This is the picture I took of the base of the camera to prove that we had used enough tape to hold it down:

After a about a half an hour, Ashleigh (one of our lead investigators) came into our room and told us that we had to hear something. Her and Darin were doing evp work in the bedroom next to us and every time they would ask a question, they would hear a distinct growl answer back. Ashleigh was acutally almost to the point of tears. She said she had never heard anything like it. So I went into the room with Darin, and Ashleigh stayed with Liz in our room. I sat for a few moments while he asked questions, but for some reason, we could no longer hear it.
Liz decided to have a sort of group meeting, so we called everyone into the flying camera room and updated the group on what had been going on. We turned the lights on and quietly discussed all the experiences we were having, while I rewound the handy cam to see what we had caught when the camera flew. Not even five minutes of us all being in there, we heard it again. The camera had once again ripped, had almost hit Darin in the head, and was dangling from its cord. At this point, I wish we had taken the hint that this thing did not want to be taped.
Throughout the rest of the night, we all had some little personal experiences. Whistling, a few voices, some scratching, but for the most part it was pretty mellow. We packed up quickly and didn't mention to the client the experiences we had had. We wanted to look over the evidence first to rule out anything obvious before breaking the news to her that she really did have something going on in her house.
I was laid off at the time and extremely anxious to see what we had caught, so I brought home the DVR (the computer system that records what we capture from the IR cameras) and hooked it up to my t.v. as soon as I got home. But when I plugged it in, it wouldn't work. The red light that lights up when the DVR is turned on was now flashing (which I had never seen). I tried a different AC adapter, but still got nothing. So mad. So the next day I brought the DVR back to Liz's house and tried it there, still nothing. We went to radio shack and had the guy that worked there try a few power cords, but nothing would work. We called the manufacturer and we still had a warranty, so we sent it back to be looked at. The next day the guy called and told us that we had lost EVERYTHING. He said that when he opened up the computer, everything inside was melted. Literally melted.
That day was definitely one of the worst days of NHP. Not only did we lose the evidence from that investigation, but everything from the past six months. We had plenty of room left on the hard drive, so we hadn't gotten around to dumping each case onto a disc. Not only that, but I was scheduled to do a presentation at a high school the next day and now I had nothing to show them. Luckily, we were still covered under our warranty as far as getting everything fixed, but we were heartbroken.
The night was not a total loss. We did have to cancel the presentation, and lost a lot of video evidence, but we caught some of the best audio I have ever heard. On Kerrie's (investigator)voice recorder, you hear her say "I'm not very happy with whoever you are, you're scaring the little kids that live here." Clear as day, a little boy voice answers back "We didn't do anything!". A few minutes later, you actually hear the duct tape ripping from the camera upstairs and the little boy says "That's in my sister's room!". About twenty minutes later, Kerrie is having a conversation with the other investigator in the room and the entire time she is talking, you hear an extremely deep voice in the background. I couldn't make out what it was saying because Kerrie is talking too. We need to get some audio software that will lift her voice. Liz swears she hears "Shut the f--- up or I'll go in you.", but I'm still skeptical of it. No matter what voice recorder you listen to throughout the night, you can constantly hear growls, scratches, whistles and children laughing and singing. At the very end of the night, Liz actually fell asleep in one of the rooms and began to snore and you can actually hear little kids laughing at her snoring.
We were supposed to go back to the house last weekend, but the client ended up cancelling because her kids were sick. I can't wait to return to this house, but I don't know if I want to risk melting another hard drive...

Private Residence in Amherst, NH

2009-03-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

These pictures were taken during an investigation of a private residence in Amherst, NH. The house was built above granite quarries that were mined at one point in time. The clients have experienced strange noises, voices, shadow figures, smells, and even a "ghost cat". While we were there we didn't have any major personal experiences and didn't seem to pick anything up on the infrared cameras. When we went back and listened to the audio, however, we found an evp of a very deep voice telling us to "GET OUT". Original, I know. It was definitely strange how loud it came through though. The voice recorder was in an upstairs bedroom and captured while we were on a break downstairs. Here are some pictures of us just setting up and sort of messing around before the actual investigation:

2009-03-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

These are pictures from a cemetery in Manchester NH. It's a pretty small place and very peaceful and one of my favorite places to take pictures and even just to sit and clear my head.

2009-03-04T17:05:00.001-08:00

I wish that if people are going to spread rumors about me, they'd at least get them right. It's not like I don't do enough embarrassing, stupid shit on my own. There's really no reason to make stuff up when the truth is way jucier (and sketchier).

On that note....

What a good first entry. Brings me back to my livejournal days....