My grandfather told me this story about an experience that happened to one of his friends. There was a house in eastern Tennessee that people claimed was haunted and no one dare to spend the night in. This particular friend of my grandfather, wanting to be the brave hometown hero, decided to give it a shot.
He went into the house well before dark and set up his stuff in the upstairs bedroom. Being a big believer in early to bed - early to rise, was in bed by 8pm. Precisely at 9pm, he heard the main door opened and then the kitchen door. He heard pots and pans being removed from the cabinets and soon he could hear the sizzling of meat frying. In fact, he could actually smell bacon and eggs. He wanted to go downstairs, but thought better of it.
Afterwards, he heard a kitchen chair being pulled out and something sat down. He could hear the fork scraping the plate. A while later he heard the chair move again, dishes were placed in the sink and water was run. He heard the clatter as the dishes were washed and put up and the pots and pans were replaced in the cabinets. Finally, he heard the kitchen door and then the main door opened and closed again. He stayed under the bed till morning because he was too scared to move.
Of course, nobody believed that he stayed the night in that haunted house, so he did it one more time. This time he sprinkled flour all over the kitchen floor. He really thought his friends were playing a trick on him. He sprinkled so much flour that an ant couldn’t have walked through without leaving a track. He waited in the dark upstairs and the visitor came at exactly 9pm for his meal again. After, it had left, he rushed downstairs to see if there were footprints in the telltale flour. There were none!
NOTE: this was forwarded to me a while back...I've read and heard similar versions before. Do you have a personal ghostly tale or experience a strange close encounter? Forward it to me for others to read...Lon
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Ireland's only known "satanic murder"
The murdered seven-year-old boy found in an attic in Dublin in 1973 was tied to rafters in the attic in a "cruciform", the author of a forthcoming book on the killing has said.
The death was Ireland's only known "satanic murder", according to David Malone, who came across the case while carrying out research on other events of the time.
Gardai who recall some of the events told the Sunday Independent the case was always regarded as strange and tragic and that the victim, John Horgan, disappeared while he was out looking for rabbits near his home in Palmerstown on June 13, 1974.
His body was found the next day in the attic of the home of a 16-year-old near the Horgan family home in Hollyville, Lucan Road. The 16-year-old, who was never named as he was a juvenile, was arrested and charged the following day with murder.
Gardai found an altar, on which was a chalice and Communion hosts, beneath the hanging body.
After the discovery of the body gardai called local parish priest, Fr Cornelius O'Keeffe, who administered last rites.
The author and TV documentary producer, Mr Malone, said: "It was a Satanist murder. When he was discovered he was in a cruciform tied to the rafters. As a result the 16-year-old was arrested and sentenced to life. It was a terribly tragic case."
The case reawakened last week at Dublin County Coroner's Court as Mr Malone said that during his six months of research into the murder he discovered that no death certificate had been issued for John Horgan.
"At the outset of researching something like this you start with birth and death certificates but I found that there was no death cert. I presume it was as a result of an oversight."
As the juvenile who carried out the murder was never named and not all the details of the nature of the killing were in the public domain there was relatively little publicity about the case.
The Northern Troubles were at their height and a number of security-related crises hit the country around the time of the murder and subsequent court hearings.
Last Tuesday the brief hearing to issue the death certificate heard that John Horgan was found in the attic surrounded by "religious objects".
County Coroner Kieran Geraghty gave a brief account of the details of the tragedy after his office was notified that a death certificate had never been issued.
It is a legal requirement that every death is recorded and registered with the State.
At the hearing, Detective Inspector Richard McDonnell said a male was later charged with the crime and served a sentence.
Det Insp McDonnell, from Lucan garda station, contacted the Horgan family after he was asked in February of this year to prepare an inquest file for the issuing of the death certificate.
"I contacted the family of John Horgan who indicated they did not wish to revisit a very traumatic period in their lives and reopen old wounds," the detective said yesterday. "However, the memory of their son is always with them."
The Horgan family was not present at the brief inquest.
The coroner revealed that the killer, who is now 54, was now living outside Ireland and said it would be inappropriate to call a full inquest without the consent of the family.
Mr Malone said he cannot reveal further details due to contractual arrangements with his publishers and because of discussions over syndication rights. The book, The Boy in the Attic, is due to be published by Mainstream Publishing this autumn. - independent.ie
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Jim Morrison Ghost Haunting Woman In Virginia
The ghost of Jim Morrison has begun haunting a woman at her home in Virginia.
Rhonda Baron said she saw the spirit of the late Doors star lying on a bed he apparently used to sleep in.
The property in Arlington was apparently owned by Morrison's parents before Baron's family took over the home.
"The spirit laid down on the bed. Completely laying down and looking at me like this. It was like a haze. It was like you could look through it,"she told WUSA 9 News.
Morrison shot to fame as the frontman of The Doors before he died in Paris in 1971 at the age of 27. - gigwise
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How the sci-fi writer Geoffrey Hoyle predicted 2011's technologies in 1972
What will the world look like in the not-too-distant future? It's a fun game to play sitting around the pub/dinner-party table, but unless you grew up in the house of the astronomer and science-fiction writer Sir Fred Hoyle (who, incidentally, coined the term "big bang", even though he rejected the theory), where lunches with the physicist Richard Feynman were not uncommon, chances are your beautiful "vision" will evaporate with the inexorable passing of time.
So it is a brave man who commits such ideas to paper. Which makes it all the more delicious that when Sir Fred's son, Geoffrey, was asked to do just that in the early 1970s, he got so many things right. And though 2011: Living in the Future was intended for children, the renewed interest in Hoyle's work (Facebook groups, a new US publisher) owes as much to Hoyle's prescience as it does the period charm provided by theaccompanying illustrations by Alasdair Anderson that have become something of a cult.
The new reprint is flattering to Hoyle, now 69 and living in a French village, but also, perhaps, amusing to a man who has been a theatre producer, a documentary-maker and an advertising executive before, somewhat reluctantly, entering the "family business" of science-fiction writing.
"The book was the idea of an editor at Heinemann," he says from his home near Perpignan. "They were publishing a series for children and asked whether there was something we could do involving science-fiction to make them think about what kind of world they would like to grow up into; and because it was going to be sold in America, it was made clear that there should be no politics or sex."
The fact that the book promotes an uncomplicated, politics-free vision of the future is made even more k astonishing when you talk to Hoyle now. Here is a man whose mind flits from subject to subject at an alarming rate – from accusations that 2011 is politically incorrect ("People blame me for the fact that there are no black people in the book, but I had nothing to do with the illustrations. Would I have chosen for the father to be a hippie? Probably not") to a deep feeling that while technology has developed almost as he had foreseen, attitudes and social structures have not kept pace.
This last point is something of a bugbear. "Over the years politicians have added new thing to new thing and nobody has the intellect to wipe the slate clean and say, 'What do we need?' What have changed over the decades are the levels of bureaucracy, the control over our lives and the rise of the career politician with pop-star status. We live in a time where there's a huge amount of disinformation and facts can be twisted to alarm or control. The original draft of the US constitution is 20 pages long; Brussels turns out thousands and thousands of pages – which says to me that no one knows how to make law [any more]."
So while Hoyle predicted both the large (the ubiquity of the computer, the invention of the smartphone and the microwave) and the small (Skype, home supermarket delivery, touchscreens and webcams) ways our lives have changed, he has no idea why the social model of Europe is still "tailored to the way people were living in 1947".
What, then, would the book look like if he were writing it now and trying to imagine the world in 2051? "I think that book might have to show the slow decline of the Anglo-Saxon industrial revolution. Things have either peaked or plateaued, so there will probably be a reduction in the standard of living. But then," he adds, "that book would inevitably be bleaker, because the 1960s and 1970s were fantastic and I am now, I suppose, a grumpy old man."
Hoyle is also acutely aware that he will almost certainly not live to see whether he is right or wrong in this analysis. Not that this realisation frustrates him. What does is the fact that of the many young people looking at the book now, few of them ("One out of 17 from a class of 11th graders in Kansas") have the imagination to consider their own future world. "I grew up at a time when people put money into original thinking. Now it's all about viable commercial ideas. But the jet engine and penicillin were not born out of that culture. So I'm thinking of starting a website-cum-blog where young people can post their own thoughts on how everything from clothes to food to how we live and work will change over the next 40 years."
And as far as Hoyle's own immediate future is concerned? "That's easy," he says. "My sister and I inherited my father's intellectual copyright, and 10 years after his death he and his ideas are still much talked about. I sit and watch, reply to emails, and enjoy the sunshine." - independent
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Ilchester Mill Investigation
On Thursday, April 6th, 2006, I assembled a small team to investigate the recent paranormal activity at the Simkins Industries mill located in Ilchester, MD. The plant is located on the Baltimore County side of the Patapsco River at River Rd. near Hilltop Rd. There are remnants of the Ilchester mid-1800’s village still standing, but all the houses are now boarded up. The plant was deserted due to a major fire on the top level in 2003.
I had received several inquiries from people who had recently been on the property as well as a few queries from former employees. There have been various incidents and reports of phenomena mainly strange lights and sounds. To our knowledge, no other investigations had been made in the plant since it was closed. For the record, we had investigated some paranormal activity in the plant in the early 1990’s (when operations were running...though the plant was shutdown for maintenance) and I have reported this previously.
The team consisted of my assistant Cory and two former employees of the plant, Keith and Jerry. We were able to work our way into the plant through a dock entrance and descended 2 stories into the main beater room area. Because Keith and Jerry knew their way around, I had Cory and Jerry start the investigation to get some baseline EMF readings at various locations throughout the plant and to record any activity. All the power was off in the plant, so I was hoping for solid electro-magnetic readings. I decided to stay in the main beater room area with Keith mainly because I had recent physical limitations that made standing and walking for a sustained period of time impossible. I figured if Cory found anything, she’d give me a call and Keith could direct me to the area. Before we began, I asked Keith and Jerry not to mention any specific deaths or injuries that had occurred in the plant. This plant has a long history and reputation for many horrific work related casualties.
We started at approximately 6:30 pm and figured we would stay until early morning unless we were run off by any security personnel...or worse. I hadn’t seen any security people touring the plant, so I assumed we’d be able to conduct a thorough investigation.
Not too long after we started to look around, I noticed that the images on the digital cameras were not developing though the register on the card indicated that images were there. There was full power in the cameras and the cards were fine, but no images were coming on the screen. That was truly strange because I had never experienced that before and for this to occur with both cameras was very unusual.
Everything was fairly quiet for about 2 hours. I called Cory and she said that nothing remarkable had happened other than she received 1 major EM spike in the machine room dry end and that they were going to walk back to our location. A few minutes later Cory and Jerry returned. Jerry commented that it was very strange that he had not seen or heard any cats in any part of the plant. He stated that the plant was always inundated with cats for the many years he had worked there. Keith stated that he had also noticed it and thought it was very strange. Frankly, up to that time it was eerily quiet. We sat together for about an hour going over her notes and planning out our next moves.
By this time, it was 11:15 pm and we decided to start walking to a few areas that Cory had suggested. We went through an area that I was familiar with from my initial investigation but, strangely, I felt nothing. We continued to walk until we reached the former maintenance department. I started to get a feeling of dread and nausea as well as tightness on my chest. Cory also stated she felt a bit weird. After a few minutes, I asked Cory where she had recorded the EM spike. She said on the floor below by a machine called a rewinder in the machine room dry end. We walked down the stairs and entered into the main part of the plant. As soon as I walked through the wide doorway, I felt like something pushed me in the chest...I literally backed up and tried to regain my breath. A few seconds later, we heard a loud thud sound. Each of us looked around not knowing where the sound came from. It seemed to me that something large had hit the floor but the sound was tempered as if it was in a tunnel. My feeling was that something catastrophic had happened here…the residual energies were coming at me from all directions. Cory was getting erratic EM readings stronger than those she had recorded earlier. I tried to endure the bombardment of energies I was experiencing, but it was getting very hard to deal with. I needed to get out of that area as soon as possible so I could gather my thoughts. I turned around and walked towards the warehouse area so I could sit down and rest. The others soon followed and we took a break.
I asked Jerry to confirm if someone had died in that area, but I didn’t want a name or know how it happened. He stated that at least 2 employees had lost their lives in that specific area but he was unaware of their names since the deaths occurred before he started employment. Keith confirmed the deaths but he also had no idea of the circumstances or names...only third party information he had heard. I was determined to go back into the machine room and see if I could sense anything from the spirits residing there.
After a bit of a rest, Cory and I walked back into the machine room. As before, I felt pressure on my chest but not to the degree I experience previously. I immediately felt pain and sorrow...like my life force was draining out of me and I couldn’t stop the inevitable. Then I heard the name “Russell”. It was obvious that this was the person who had been haunting here. The sorrow and grieve this spirit was projecting was as intense as I have ever felt. I fear he will remain on this plane and refuse to ever move on.
I decided that I was done here and that we should check out a few other locations within the mill. We spent another 2 hours in the plant taking EM readings and recording some history of the mill from Keith and Jerry. I asked Jerry if he could put me in contact with a former employee who could tell me about any of the people who had died in the plant.
That Sunday, I interviewed a gentleman who wanted to remain anonymous. He had retired from the plant in the mid-1980’s and had started there when Bartgis Brothers had owned the mill. He confirmed that an employee by the name of Russell was killed in the machine room in 1977 after a 1½ ton roll of paperboard had slipped off a forklift and crushed him to death against the rewinder. But, I was stunned by the information that was to follow. The employee who attempted to load the paperboard roll and allowed it to slip off was a man by the name of Robert Buzzard. If you read my initial investigation at the plant, you would recognize that name. I had felt a presence of a spirit who called himself “buzzard”. I had no idea at that time that this was an actual name. As well, I had this feeling that “buzzard” had died by his own hand. It was confirmed that Mr. Buzzard had become so distressed after the accident he decided to retire. Less than a year later, “buzzard” had indeed committed suicide.
NOTE: since I am now with Spirit Rescue International I would to like to help 'Russell' and 'Buzzard' to move on, though the status of the mill is unknown and security at the location is much higher than before.
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THIS WEEK'S SPIRITUAL / PARANORMAL ACTIVITY LINKS
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Grandma's Last Visit
Comforting Presence
TV Ghost
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Haunt Jaunting Hazards: Shady Haunted Places
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The Ghosts of Fort Morgan
The Prison of the Mind
Mercy for witchcraft girl 'told to stab mother'
Exploring Extra Sensory Sciences: Psi of the Quantum Kind
Eerie Vibes at Ten Broeck Mansion
How to spot a psychopath
Exorcism claim fails; mom guilty of murder
An Accidental Paranormal Tourist in Salt Lake City
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