Friday, January 31, 2014

Movie Spotlight: Hell Baby

Hell Baby is a 2013 movie written and directed by the hilarious Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant.  Hell Baby stars Rob Corddrey, Leslie Bibb, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Ian Black, Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, David Pasquesi, Riki Lindhome, and Kumail Nanjiani, along with Lennon and Garant.  Jack (Rob Corddrey) and Vanessa (Leslie Bibb) move into a (unbeknownst to them) haunted house in New Orleans known as the "House of Blood."  Vanessa begins acting strange soon after they move in, and though Jack wants to believe it's just because of the pregnancy, there's really something more sinister going on.  The Vatican sends Father Padrigo (Thomas Lennon) and Father Sebastian (Robert Ben Garant) to help, but they are easily distracted by sandwiches and strippers.  A rottweiler keeps showing up in the yard, staring at the house, which I'm going to assume is a nod to The Omen, which also featured rottweilers and was about a demon child (and is also my favorite horror movie).

I love many of the actors in Hell Baby, and they all did a wonderful job, especially Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel as two of the worst cops ever...they would be right at home on Reno 911.  Some of the movie's biggest laughs come from Keegan-Michael Key as the neighbor who tells Jack and Vanessa about the history of their home and has no boundaries. The first time I heard about Hell Baby, I knew I would love it (I do write plays about Satan, after all) and was disappointed that it never played in a movie theater near me... I'm glad it's on DVD now, so I could finally see it.  I loved everything about it, and the hell baby was pretty scary...though to be fair, I think regular babies are kind of scary too. ; )   Of all the movies I've written about on my blog, Hell Baby is my favorite...this is one I'm going to have to add to my personal collection.

My rating: 9/10

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Movie Spotlight: Insidious: Chapter 2

Insidious: Chapter 2 is a 2013 movie starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey, and  Lin Shaye, who all reprise their roles from 2011's Insidious.  After the events of Insidious, Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) Lambert and their three children temporarily move in with Josh's mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey).  Josh grew up in this home, and he used to see the spirit of an old woman who wanted to possess him.  Paranormal activity occurs almost immediately, and after Renai is attacked by the spirit of a lady in white, she wants to take the family out of the house, but Josh (who Renai suspects might be possessed) tells her just not to be afraid of the spirits (yeah, like that's an option...).  As Renai deals with things at home, Lorraine, wanting to find out why strange things are happening, enlists the help of paranormal investigators, and they find the answers at Our Lady of Angels hospital, where Lorraine used to work as a nurse.

I enjoyed Insidious: Part 2 and thought it was pretty creepy.  All of the actors were great, especially Patrick Wilson, who basically played two characters: Josh and possessed Josh.  My only complaint is that the movie ended on a cliffhanger, and Insidious: Chapter 3 isn't coming out until 2015...I don't want to wait that long!

My rating: 8/10

http://www.insidiousch2.com/


Saturday, January 25, 2014

Ghost Intervention: Pennsylvania Poltergeists

Ghost Intervention aired on TLC in 2009 and stars case manager Raiya Davidson, intuitive medium Sierra Campbell, and clairvoyant medium channeler Dawn Clare.  I'd never seen it before, so I recorded an episode called "Pennsylvania Poltergeists."  The episode begins with Raiya, Sierra, and Dawn going to Concordville, PA to investigate the home of Jack and Carolyn Hanlon, who have lived in the house for forty-two years; some of their children (who are now grown) have heard footsteps on the stairs, smelled smoke, and seen a “dark figure pacing up and down,” and daughter Anne Marie says that the paranormal activity increases whenever they makes changes in the house.  The house used to belong to Alexander Scott, a Union soldier who bought the house in 1847 and died there in 1898.  Jack says that one time when he was in his office, the door kept opening by itself when he was home alone; the third time it happened, he said, “Mr. Scott, get in or get out,” and the door stayed closed after that.  Two of Jack and Carolyn’s daughters have seen the ghost of a young girl standing by the dresser in their parents’ bedroom.

Raiya, Sierra, and Dawn visit the house while the family isn’t home, so they won’t have any preconceptions about the case.  Dawn senses two young girls in the backyard, and the younger one is afraid of the well.  When Sierra enters the living room, she senses someone political who was associated with the Civil War and guns; she also senses the name Alexander.  She senses a nanny and the names Katherine and Anne Marie associated with the house.

The women meet with Jack, Carolyn and theirs daughters…Katherine and Anne Marie!  Dawn says that she sensed men with guns at the edge of the Hanlon’s property and that she feels that they were associated with the Civil War; Anne Marie tells her that both she and Katherine had recurring dreams about men coming out of the woods with guns.  Sierra tells them that she thinks the nanny gets annoyed every time they remodel the kitchen.  Anne Marie asks why the spirits are there, and Dawn says she thinks it’s because it’s a loving home.  Sierra tells the family that she doesn’t think they have anything to fear from the spirits.

On the drive to the Hannum House in Glen Mills, Sierra talks about a dream she had the night before where a little girl came to her and said she needed protecting and showed her some stuffed animals.  The Hannum House is one of the oldest homes in the country (built in 1695), and Kim and Eric, who have lived there for nine years, realized they had ghosts the day they moved in when Kim heard a scream and saw a man who was “dressed in full colonial war attire” come down the stairs and disappear into the fireplace.  Most of the paranormal activity takes place in the attic; Kim and Eric have seen a black figure up there, and Kim says that if they try to talk to the spirits, they start “thumping stuff and knocking on things.”  Kim and Eric’s tenant once went into the basement and saw two men, but when Kim checked, no one was there.  In the master bedroom, Kim and Eric heard footsteps and a voice saying “Mommy?;” they thought it was their daughter Emma, but when they looked in the hallway, she wasn’t there, so Eric walked down the hall to her bedroom, where he found her asleep in her bed.  In Emma’s room, toys and other objects would fall on the floor and wake her up, and spirits sometimes came up to her and tried to talk into her ear.

When Raiya, Sierra, and Dawn arrive, Sierra feels the spirit of a little girl around a tree and a “sense of neglect.”  Dawn says that she had a dream about the house, and there was a brothel and a bar in it; she also senses that the house was used for prayer at one point.  Dawn feels male spirits in the basement who were colonial soldiers.  In Emma’s bedroom, Raiya and Sierra see several stuffed animals, including one that Sierra saw in her dream.  Sierra senses the little girl that she sensed outside in the room, but does not think that Emma tries to communicate with the spirits, she just is aware of them and scared.  Sierra feels like the attic was used to hide people, possibly Native American women “who have been sold for prostitution and work,” and that many of them were killed or got pregnant and were sent away.  In the basement, she senses a spirit named Samuel who lived there in the 1700s after he was shot and needed a place to recover; she says that he warned her that the basement will flood within the next few weeks and that he’s been trying to get Kim and Eric’s attention to tell them to move everything out of there.

Dawn and Sierra meet with Kim and Eric, and Dawn tells them about her dream; they tell her that the house has been a church, courthouse, tavern, and brothel.  Sierra tells Kim and Eric about what she sensed in the attic, and Kim says there were women held in the attic in the past; Sierra asks if the name Samuel means anything to them, and Kim says that she has seen the name when researching the Hannum genealogy.  Sierra says that Samuel was in charge of the home’s maintenance and wants to stay in the house and help them.

I enjoyed Ghost Intervention, but not as much as most of the other paranormal shows I've written about on the blog.  However, it wasn't scary at all, which was nice since I watched it while I was alone. ; )

My rating: 7/10

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Hauntings in America

Hauntings in America is a DVD that was released in 2013 (but was made in 1996) and is hosted by Michael Dorn and Christopher Lewis.  Experts Dr. Barry Taff (parapsychologist), Daniel Cohen (author), Arthur Myers (author), and Laurie Jacobson (author) weigh in on eleven haunted locations across America.

1. Hollywood, California: At the Westwood Memorial Cemetery, Marilyn Monroe has been seen by her grave and was caught on film by someone who was taking a picture of the grave.  George Reeves haunts his former home.  Sharon Tate was once staying at the home of then-fiancé Jay Sebring when she saw the ghost of former owner Paul Burn; as she ran down the stairs to get away from him, she saw “an apparition of a person with their throat slit ear-to-ear,” which is how Sharon died two years later. (That is so creepy!)

2. Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California: A medium told Sarah Winchester that her husband and daughter died because of “the spirits of all the people killed by the Winchester rifle and that the only way she could appease them was by building a house continuously” (according to Winchester Mystery House employee Shozo Kagoshima).  Sarah would communicate with the spirits, and they would tell her what to do with the house.

3. Alcalde, New Mexico:  The ghost of a woman who fell or was pushed down a staircase of a Los Luceros adobe during an argument haunts “the stairs, mourning the children she left behind.”  There were also many hangings right outside the adobe because it used to be a jail and courthouse.

4. Olathe Naval Air Station, Kansas: A navy pilot who haunts the Olathe Naval Air Station is known as “The Commander.”  In 1949, the pilot, flying his plane at night in the fog, crashed his plane into the administration building; a witness claimed that he saw the pilot get out of the plane and walk away, but when emergency crews were able to get to the fiery plane, they found his body still inside.  People have reported hearing voices and phantom footsteps in Hangar 21 and finding things in a different position then they had been earlier (for example, closed windows being found open when no one had been in the building).

5. The South: In St. Francisville, Louisiana, the Myrtles Plantation was the site of ten murders and is said to be one of the most haunted places in America.  Hand prints have appeared in one of the plantation’s mirrors, and no matter how many times the glass is changed, the hand prints keep showing up.  Three spirits have been caught on film: two children and a woman who is believed to be Chloe, the mistress of owner Clark Woodruff, who cut her ear off after he caught her eavesdropping on his family.  In an act of revenge, she poisoned the birthday cake she baked for Woodruff’s oldest daughter, killing Woodruff’s wife and two of their children; Chloe’s death came at the hands of an angry mob, and she now likes to roam around the plantation.  The Waverly Mansion near Westpoint, Mississippi is haunted by a little girl who is “looking for her mother.”  The current owners of the house have seen the little girl and heard her calling for her mother and found a child-sized imprint on one of the beds.  An employee of Waverly Mansion says that the girl may have been a neighbor who was brought to the mansion during the Civil War to be taken care of during illness and died in the house.

6. Baltimore, Maryland: The U.S.S. Constellation is said to be haunted by the spirits of three sailors, including Commodore Thomas Truxtun, but a naval historian refutes the rumors, saying that Truxtun never even saw the U.S.S. Constellation.

7. YMCA Locker Room in Cambridge, Massachusetts: In 1991, a YMCA employee said that he had seen a ghost in the locker room, so Arthur Myers conducted a séance to try to find out who was haunting it.  Reverend Erle Myers came along and sensed a “tall, thin man, probably in his fifties” who was often around young people (it is believed that he was a teacher who abused his students) and didn’t have any friends.  Erle told the spirit to go toward the “white light,” and there have been no ghost sightings since.

8. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: This battlefield is said to be the Civil War’s most haunted, and “Sachs Covered Bridge may be a magnet for Gettysburg ghosts.”  Author B. Keith Toney says that his wife saw ghostly wagons and soon realized that she was seeing “Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg.”

9. Delta Queen:  The boat is haunted by Mary Becker Greene, who was the owner and died on the boat in the 1940s.  Soon after Mary’s death, renovations on Delta Queen began, and a bar was added; Mary never allowed people to drink alcohol on Delta Queen, and a few days after the bar opened, a small boat called The Mary B. crashed into the boat right where the new bar had been built, and they had to close it.  A crewman who was staying in Mary’s old room woke up to see “a cloaked woman standing beside him,” and the presence disappeared when he spoke to it.  The next time the crewman saw her, he turned a light on, and every light bulb in the room exploded.  A couple who was staying (and drinking) in Mary’s old room was shocked when a pitcher of water “lifted up in the air and smashed against the mirror.”

10. Rugby, Tennessee:  Englishman Thomas Hughes started a new colony in the mountains of Tennessee in 1880, and it is believed that some of the original settlers never left.  Room 2 of the Newbury House is haunted by Charles Oldfield (who died in that room), but only when women are staying by themselves; they will often find his ghost standing over the bed.  In the Roslyn Mansion, people have heard footsteps and caught a glimpse of a ghostly female figure (sometimes holding a baby) believed to be former resident Sophie Tyson.

11. Oil fields of Oklahoma: Thomas Gilcrease haunts his former home, which he had basically turned into an art museum since he spent most of his money on art.  People have seen an apparition of Gilcrease and reported cold spots and drafts in the house.  

Hauntings in America is very informative, but I found myself not paying attention and having to rewind it multiple times because I was on the computer like I usually am when I take notes on paranormal shows, and the show wasn't keeping my interest as much as most of the others I've watched.

My rating: 7/10


Monday, January 20, 2014

Haunted Highway: Lake Murray Beast/The Donner Party

Haunted Highway is a paranormal investigation show that airs on Syfy and stars Jack Osborne, Dana Workman, Jael de Pardo, and Devin Marble.  When I found out that they filmed an episode in South Carolina, my home state, of course I had to watch the December 2013 episode “Lake Murray Beast; The Donner Party.”

The episode begins with Jael and Devin traveling to South Carolina to try to catch a glimpse of the Lake Murray Monster.  Jael says that there have been reports of Lake Murray Monster sightings every year since the 1930s and that “every report has some kind of act of aggression.”  They go to Dooley’s Sport Shop and talk to owner Charles Dooley, who says that many customers have come in and said they’ve seen something strange and snake-like in the water.  He suggests that they talk to Sharon Kincaid, who has written a book about the Lake Murray Monster; she says that in the most recent sighting, the monster was reported as having “scales the size of an individual’s hand.”  Sharon points out a few areas where the creature has been spotted, so Jael and Devin get in a boat and head to Dreher Island.  They see a huge shadow in the water, but it disappears before they can find out what it is.  Night falls, and Jael and Devin build a campfire; they hear a splash in the lake, so Devin takes the boat out in search of what made the noise.  It is too dark to see anything, and while Devin is using the thermal imager something slams into the boat.  They decide to go diving to see if they can spot anything underwater; after Devin’s regulator malfunctions, he returns to the boat and sends Jael an RC submarine, which shows a snake-like creature before it stops working.  Jael sees something in the water and goes after it, but she soon runs out of oxygen and has to return to the surface.  The next day, they contact Captain Rich Harris, who is an expert on the types of things that live in the lake, and he tells them that the creature on the RC submarine is a sturgeon, which can get up to 300 pounds.  My in-laws have a house on Lake Murray, and I definitely won’t be going in the water there (but to be fair, I don’t go in the water anywhere…except the shower).

Jack and Dana go to Truckee, California to investigate claims of spirits of members of the Donner Party.  The Donner Party was made up of eighty-seven people who were traveling to California in 1846 when they got stuck in the Sierra Nevada mountains during a snowstorm and had to resort to cannibalism to survive; it is believed that the spirits of those who died there still linger, and there have been reports of shadow figures and strange lights.  Jack and Dana go to the Old Truckee Jail Museum to meet with Chelsea Walterscheid, who tells them them that The Donner Party ran into trouble because they took a shortcut.  She also says that a medium revealed that there are twelve spirits at the Murphy cabin site, and Tamsen Donner, who thought the shortcut was a bad idea, is one of them…and she’s angry.  Jack and Dana meet with Chelsea’s friend Jen (and her adorable dog Harlan), who says that one night she saw a “shadow figure kind of peek around the corner of one of the snow banks” and that sometimes on the trail Harlan lurches at things she cannot see.  Jack asks Jen if they can borrow Harlan, and she agrees (I would never let any of my pets investigate angry spirits…just sayin’.), so Jack and Dana take Harlan to Murphy’s Rock.  Jack attaches a camera and light to Harlan’s back, and Harlan starts barking at something and leads Jack into the woods.  Jack sees a shadow figure on the thermal camera, and it quickly disappears.  Dana joins Jack, and they set up an EVP, using beef jerky to draw the spirits out since most of them died of starvation.  Dana asks if there are any spirits there and if they’re angry, then feels something on her neck; Jack checks it out and finds a huge scratch.  She asks the spirits if it’s easier for them to communicate through her, then starts having terrible stomach pains and nausea.  A few of the cameras go out, and Jack has lost sight of Dana, so he sends a heat-seeking RC copter to find her; the copter catches sight of her and also shows a figure a few feet away from her.  Harlan starts barking and growling, and Jack and Dana notice two lights glowing near Murphy’s Rock.  These guys are brave…after I got a ghostly scratch on my neck, I would’ve gotten the hell out of there!

I've only watched two episodes of Haunted Highway, but I really like it; this episode was a little scarier than the first episode I watched, and the fact that part of it took place somewhere I've been before made me more interested in the episode.

My rating: 8.5/10

http://www.syfy.com/hauntedhighway

Friday, January 17, 2014

100th post: Haunted House for Sale

Have you always wanted to live in a haunted house?  Well, now's your chance...if you're willing to live in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, this "slightly haunted" house can be yours for only $144,000! You'll experience phantom footsteps, knocking sounds, and "hardly noticeable" screams at 3:13 in the morning.  If all of that doesn't sell you, this should seal the deal: you'll get your very own creepy ghost who will stare at you from the bathroom mirror!  Hurry before this amazing, terrifying house gets snapped up!

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1217-Marion-St-Dunmore-PA-18509/9559446_zpid/?z&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=emo-savedsearch-address

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

My Ghost Story: Caught on Camera-Disturbing the Peace

My Ghost Story: Caught on Camera airs on the Lifetime Movie Network.  I recently watched the episode “Disturbing the Peace,” which aired in March 2013 and tells five true paranormal stories.

-“Lavinia’s Lair”: Pamela Nance and Ashley Field decide to visit the Old City Jail in Charleston, SC because they’re curious about the paranormal, and there have been many claims of paranormal activity there.  Lavinia Fisher was America’s first female serial killer, and she is said to haunt the jail.  When Pamela and Ashley arrive at the jail, they begin taking pictures; Pamela sees a black shadow coming from the ceiling in one of her pictures, and Ashley sees a green face in one of hers.  They go to the floor where Lavinia was held, and the EVP captures a voice saying “I bribed ‘em.”  The women take more photos, some of them showing orbs and “light anomalies.”  At one point, Ashley asks if there is anyone there who wants to say something, and Pamela hears footsteps running toward Ashley, then Ashley goes flying “through the air at least four or five feet,” landing on top of Pamela.  When they listen to the EVP recording, they hear a man’s voice say “That shook ‘em.”  I live in Charleston, but I’ve never been to the Old City Jail because it sounds really creepy; Pamela and Ashley’s story makes me confident that avoiding the jail is a good decision.


-“Dark n’ Donuts”: Steffani Dauch says that twenty-two years ago, she was sleeping when a voice woke her up by screaming  “Hey, you, wake up!”  She felt like she should go check on her baby, and when she went in his room, he wasn’t breathing, so she gave him CPR and saved him.  Steffani has seen an apparition of a little boy, and now she’s a paranormal investigator.  The owner of the House of Donuts in Sandusky, Ohio hires Steffani to investigate paranormal activity (growling sounds, employees being hit) that has happened there, and her son Codey comes along.  In the basement, something throws a screw at Steffani.  Codey sees some orbs moving through the air on the video feed.  In the kitchen, Steffani asks, “Can you tell us what you died from?”  On the EVP recording, they clearly hear a woman’s voice say “lung cancer,” so they think it is the wife of the former owner since they know she had emphysema.  Codey’s cousin Dylan and friend Brock show up and accompany him to the basement, and Codey asks Dylan to light a cigarette, assuming that the spirit won’t like that since she died of lung cancer; when Dylan lights the cigarette, something leaves a huge scratch on his arm.  In the kitchen, Steffani hears a noise, so she takes a picture and sees a shadowy figure in the shot.  Steffani believes that the House of Donuts is haunted by the former owners and “some dark force.”

-“Disturbing the Peace”: Paul Ollivierre and his wife Johanne Lebouef are paranormal investigators in Montreal, Canada.  A peace officer asks them for help, saying that he feels a presence in his house and doors open by themselves, so Paul and Johanne pay him a visit.  Paul feels like something is watching him as soon as he enters the house, and Johanne feels a “negativity in the air.”  The officer has told Paul and Johanne that every night around 2 or 3 a.m., the basement door slams; when it happens this time, Johanne approaches the door and feels it vibrating, then it opens by itself, and Paul hears a voice telling him to go downstairs.  As they walk down the stairs, Paul feels like he is being choked.  Johanne takes a picture in the basement, which turns out to be full of orbs.  They do an EVP session and hear a voice on the recording saying “I think that’s yours.”  When they watch the videos that they have recorded, they see a chair move on its own, a door opening with no one there, and something throw a shoe at the homeowner’s dog.  Paul performs a “spiritual cleaning” and tells the spirit to leave; the spirit doesn’t listen, so Paul traps it in his hands and removes it from the house (I was not aware that it was possible to trap spirits in your hands and physically throw them out…).

-“Freshly Squeezed Terror” (love the title): Mary Ann McKeon believes that her home in Brooklyn, New York is haunted by her late husband; he always said that he would die when he was fifty years old, and he was right.  Since his death, Mary Ann often feels like she is being watched, sees shadows, and smells smoke.  Sometimes she is woken up by her bed shaking.  After Stephanie McKeon, one of Mary Ann’s daughters, sees the cap on the orange juice open and close by itself while she’s eating breakfast, she decides to do a paranormal investigation with her boyfriend.  They start an EVP session in Mary Ann’s bedroom, and Stephanie’s boyfriend sees an orb; in another room, they see orbs “flying out of [Mary Ann’s] hands into the air” while filming with night vision cameras.  Mary Ann goes to a psychic, who tells her that the spirit doesn’t like the changes she has made to the house, and that’s when Mary Ann knows that her husband is haunting the house since he smoked, drank orange juice with breakfast, and always tried to talk her out of making home improvements.

-“Spirit Inn-festation”: Terri Brown owns the Farmer’s Hope Inn in Manheim, Pennsylvania.  One night she hears a chair drag across the dining room floor downstairs when she is the only person there.  Psychic Jamie Woods decides to check out the inn and sees a spirit as soon as she enters.  Terri and Jamie go to the dining room, and Jamie says that she sees “a woman running through here with a man chasing her,” which is also what Terri’s server has described seeing; Terri calls the server in, and both Jamie and the server say that the woman is wearing a blue dress.  Terri calls in a team of paranormal investigators, and they see a shadowy figure in one of the rooms.  The team does an EVP session in the bar area; they leave a flashlight on the bar and tell the spirit to “feel free to play with that device,” then the flashlight turns on.  Next they set up a camera and catch the male and female spirit running through the dining room.
I really liked this show, and I wish I had more than one episode still on my DVR since there are no episodes scheduled right now.  All of the stories were interesting, and I’m glad they’re someone else’s ghost stories instead of mine!

My rating: 8.5/10

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Movie Spotlight: Ghost

I realize that Ghost came out almost twenty-five years ago, and pretty much everyone has already seen it…but I just watched it for the first time, so I’m going to write about it anyway.  Ghost came out in 1990 and stars Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, and Tony Goldwyn, and I figured that since I run a paranormal blog now, I should probably watch it.  Banker Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) and potter Molly Jensen (Demi Moore) are walking home from the theatre one night when a man with a gun demands Sam’s wallet; Sam and the man struggle, and Sam is shot.  He runs to find Molly and sees her cradling his dead body and realizes that he is now a ghost.  Not long after, Sam sees the man who killed him looking for something in Molly’s apartment, and he realizes that Molly is in danger, so he tries to warn her with the help of psychic Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg).

Ghost was a pretty good movie, so I don’t know why I waited so long to watch it.  The plot was interesting, the acting was great, and I really cared about what happened to the characters.  I liked the movie enough that if Ghost the Musical ever comes to Charleston, I will definitely buy tickets to see it!


My rating: 8/10

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Haunted Highway: Manchac Swamp; Moonville Tunnel

Did you guys know that Jack Osborne has a paranormal investigation show?  Well, he does, and it's called Haunted Highway.  It airs on Syfy, and I started out with an episode called "Manchac Swamp; Moonville Tunnel."  The show stars four investigators-Jack Osborne, Dana Workman, Jael de Pardo, and Devin Marble-and this episode starts out with Jack and Dana heading to Louisiana to investigate Manchac Swamp.

On the road to Louisiana, Dana says that Manchac Swamp is "said to be one of the top ten creepiest places on Earth."  In 1915, a woman named Julia Brown (who sang a song saying that when she died, everyone else would follow) died, and during her funeral, a hurricane hit and killed everyone in attendance.  People have reported seeing a Lady in White and hearing singing near the swamp, and Wayne Norwood of the Louisiana Treasure Museum tells Jack and Dana that he saw the Lady in White while camping there.  Local guide Cap'n Tom Billiott meets Jack and Dana at the swamp and suggests that they take a boat to an old shack where the Lady in White has been seen.  When they get there, Jack and Dana set up some video cameras, then split up to explore the area.  They hear the motion detector go off, so they head back to review the video, where they see a mist rising from the water.  Jack wonders if it could be methane gas, but Dana says that would not have set off the motion detector.  They find the area where the hurricane victims were dumped and hear singing there.  Dana lights candles and tries to communicate with Julia Brown, asking if she knew the hurricane was coming before it hit...and all of the candles go out.

Next Jael and Devin visit Zaleski Forest in Ohio to investigate reports of apparitions and strange sounds in the Moonville Tunnel.  Patrick Quackenbush of the Vinton County Historical and Genealogical Society tells Jael and Devin that there have been at least twenty-six deaths associated with the tunnel and that he captured an apparition on video.  He also says that people often smell lavender near the tunnel (the scent a woman was wearing when she was hit by a train there) and that some believe the ghost of town bully Baldy Keaton throws rocks off the top of the tunnel.  When Jael and Devin arrive at the tunnel, they set up video cameras and decide to use train whistles to try to trigger paranormal activity.  When Jael and Devon split up, Devin sees a light go out; he asks if Baldy Keaton is there, and a rock falls off of the tunnel.  He begins climbing the steps to the top of the tunnel, but the wind comes around the corner and holds him back.  Back in the tunnel, they notice a sweet smell, and when Jael asks "Are you the one causing the sweet smell through this tunnel?," the lights suddenly go out.  They review the audio and video, and when they listen to the EVP from when Devin mentioned Baldy, they hear the word "murder."  They also see shadows in the tunnel.

I enjoyed Haunted Highway and really want to watch more episodes.  There's one episode that takes place in South Carolina, so I'm definitely going to watch that one!

My rating: 8/10

http://www.syfy.com/hauntedhighway

Monday, January 6, 2014

Cool Website of the Week: Paranormal Soup

This week's cool website is paranormalsoup.com, a community where people can discuss the paranormal. The website includes forums to discuss haunted places, UFOs, Bigfoot, paranormal news, and lots of other paranormal phenomena, and you can even post your own EVP recordings, as well as photos and videos of ghosts.  Also, if you've been experiencing paranormal activity in your home, you can ask for help in the "Need help with a haunting?" forum...there are some pretty creepy stories in that forum!

http://www.paranormalsoup.com/

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Please help!

Please help my friend Alice...her beloved dog died right after Thanksgiving, and now her new dog is sick and will have thousands of dollars in vet bills that Alice cannot afford. The SPCA gave Alice a sick dog, and she should not have to be in debt because of this.  Please consider donating something to help out with Stark' s vet bills, even if it's just a dollar...Alice is a wonderful person who loves her dogs, and this is a terrible situation. Thanks!

https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/1fjJ2/ab/72YzI4?psid=98bbfb355fb54c8bab9b827dc6de142b&fb_ref=share__72Yxh5


Thursday, January 2, 2014

R.I.P. Layla

It's been awhile since I've posted here, and part of that was because I wanted to enjoy the holidays, but another reason is that the past week or so has been the worst week of my life.  The day after Christmas, my family had to put our beloved dog down after a battle with cancer; we weren't sure she'd be here for the 4th of July, let alone Christmas, so we got her longer than we thought we would, but seeing our sweet Layla in pain and having to say goodbye to her was devastating.  I had been planning on working on paranormal blog posts again starting today, but I'm spending the day painting a box for  Layla's ashes instead...though I wish I didn't have a reason to do that, it's giving me something to focus on, and I'm painting it to match the blanket she always slept with.  I'm heartbroken, and I'll miss her for the rest of my life...and of course I told her that she can come visit me any time she wants (I do run a paranormal blog, after all).  R.I.P. Layla...no one has ever loved a dog as much as I love you.