When Ghosts Attack: Beasts From the Beyond

I haven't watched When Ghosts Attack in awhile, so I decided it was time to scare the crap out of myself again.  This time I watched an episode called " Beasts From the Beyond," which aired on Destination America.  Katharine Driver moved to Flat Rock, Indiana to help her parents renovate their house.  When she was a teenager, strange things happened in the house, such as a Quija board spelling out "BEAST" and "DEATH"  when Katharine's friends decided to try to contact the ghost that haunted the house.  When Katharine arrived to help her parents, she noticed a bad smell and several dead mice in the house, so she called cleaning specialists Cassi Bowman and Vicki White on August 3, 2011.  Cassi said she felt like she was being watched when she was cleaning, and Vicki saw a figure pass by a doorway; she thought it was Cassi (the only other person in the house), but it wasn't.  The next time they went to the house, Cassi saw footprints on the floor, even though she knew no one had been there since the last time they cleaned, and she heard a voice whisper "Get out." Vicki and Cassi did not return after that. (Smart move.)  On October 8th,  Katharine slept in the house and had dreams about a man in a gray suit running through the woods; he looked like he was from the 1800s and kept saying "What have I done?" and "How do I fix it?"  She began having the dream regularly, and one night she awoke to a freezing room and saw the man from the dream standing next to the bed.  Katharine later saw this man in the woods; she followed him, and he disappeared.  She decided to research the area and found out that two people had died in an explosion at the sulfur springs not far from the woods, and she wondered if the man she saw might be one of the men who died in the explosion.  On September 17th, 2012, Katharine woke up feeling like something bad was going to happen, and she was correct; her cat didn't appear when Katharine called her to eat, and she found her dead in the yard.  That night she kept hearing someone repeating the word "cat" over and over again, and then she felt something grip her throat; she said her neck felt cold and like it was being shocked.  She repeated a mantra that her grandmother had taught her ("White light, bright light, please protect me both day and night."), and then she could breathe again.  Katharine has not experienced any paranormal activity in the house since that night.

On June 9, 2007 in Manahawkin, New Jersey, Cam Sammartano and Lindsey Monaco decided to stop sitting around the house and visit a pet cemetery that was said to be haunted. (Sounds like a great idea...what could possibly go wrong?) Soon after arriving at the foggy cemetery, they began hearing barking and growling dogs, so they decided to get back in the car.  Once in the car, Cam tried to drive to the main road, but just kept driving past the cemetery; he tried to do a three-point turn, but the car wouldn't move.  Cam thought he saw something in the woods, and then the car was attacked by something that looked like a dog; Cam and Lindsey were terrified, but the attack stopped when the creature disappeared.  They eventually found the main road and made their way back to Cam's house; he worried about the damage to his mother's car, but when he got out of the car, there wasn't even a scratch on it.  They knew that it would be impossible for the car to not show any signs of damage after an attack from a real dog, so Cam and Lindsey concluded that the animal they saw must  have been a ghost.  They learned their lesson and never returned to the pet cemetery.

Katie Gammage thought it would be fun to work at Eastern State Penitentiary's "Terror Behind the Walls" Halloween attraction, but she was soon proven wrong.  On October 13, 2012,  Katie was locking up and felt like she wasn't alone.  She then saw a male figure wearing prison gear from the 1920s and felt cold air rush past her, and the figure vanished.  She then heard chains rattling and was shoved to the floor by "an unseen force."  An EMT heard Katie screaming and came to help her; she told Katie that the night before, she had seen an orb in the area where Katie was attacked.  Katie continued to work at the penitentiary, and though paranormal activity is still reported in the building, she has not had any more experiences like the one from October 13th.

This episode of When Ghosts Attack wasn't quite as scary as some of the other episodes I've seen, but I still enjoyed it. : )

My rating: 8/10

The Ghost Speaks: The Ghost of Murder Hill/The Sailor’s Secret

I recently discovered a creepy Bio channel show called The Ghost Speaks, and I hope they show more episodes because I really liked it and had to keep looking overmy shoulder to make sure a ghost wasn’t sneaking up behind me. ; ) . On the show, we hear from real people who have had paranormal experiences, and, in a move that sets this show apart from the countless other paranormal shows out there, we also hear the ghost’s point of view (which is of course totally made up, but that doesn’t stop it from being creepy).

The first half of the show was called “The Ghost of Murder Hill,” and the incidents discussed took place in La Porte, Indiana in 2001.  Mike and Laury Render bought a house that sat on property that was formerly owned by serial killer Belle Gunness.  After moving in, they noticed their son talking to a ghost by the woods; young Devincalled it “The Killer Ghost.”  Ghosts inside the house told Devin about how and where they died, and a ghost in the family’s car was a silhouette of a man who told Devin that he would hurt Laury if anything happened to him (I don’t know what the ghost thought could possibly happen to him since he’d already been murdered).  Historian Bruce Johnson says that Belle Gunness murdered and buried at least thirteen people on the property and that she may have murdered as many as twenty-two, so that’s a lot of potential ghosts!  Belle also set her house on fire with her four poisoned children and a servant (who she decapitated in order to fool people into thinking the body was hers) in the basement because she wanted to get away and couldn’t take the children with her.  Neighbor Diana Yerbey, who has lived in her house for sixty years and has seen the ghost of Belle, believes that the neighborhood is cursed.  Sometime after the Renders moved into their house on the haunted property, a fire started in the basement, and it was ruled spontaneous combustion…but I have a feeling that a certain evil spirit had something to do with it.

The second half of the episode was called “The Sailor’s Secret,” and it dealt with a single mother named Jackie Hernandez who was stalked by a ghost in San Pedro, California in 1987.  The ghostly stalker was a sailor, Herman Hendrickson, who drowned in 1930 after being hit with a rock.  It all started with Jackie feeling something watching her in her house and hearing noises…and she even saw the figure of a man with evil eyes sitting on her son’s bed.  One night Jackie woke up feeling like something was on top of her; she couldn’t breathe and saw lights moving around the room, so she decided to call paranormal investigator Dr. Barry Taff.  While investigating this incident, Taff’s photographer, Jeff Wheatcraft, ended up with a noose around his neck in the attic and believed that it was put there by the possessive ghost.  Jackie wanted out of the house, so she got in her car and drove to a trailer park near Bakersfield, but the paranormal activity did not end.  She heard banging on her shed all night, so Jeff, along with cameraman Barry Conrad, arrived shortly after and set a camera up and pointed it at the shed; they were all watching when the camera turned around on the tripod and pointed at them.  Jeff and Barry went to Barry’s apartment to review the footage, and strange things started happening, such as chairs ending up on top of the tables.  They decided to try to contact the spirit with a Ouija board, and they learned the ghost’s name and how he died.  They asked if the spirit had any enemies, and he spelled “JEFF” right before Jeff was knocked out by a sudden gust of air.

These stories were interesting and creepy, but since the show is only an hour, of course they had to leave some things out.  I can’t find much online about the Murder Hill hauntings, but I’ll leave you with a link to a more detailed account aboutthe Jackie Hernandez case.

http://www.ghosttheory.com/2009/02/07/the-haunting-of-jackie-hernandez-a-haunting-in-san-pedro-ca

My rating: 8.5/10