Mid-South Paranormal Convention

The Mid-South Paranormal Convention is the brainchild of the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society, and it takes place July 21st-23rd in Louisville, Kentucky. Guests slated to appear include medium Chip Coffey, "Scream Queen" Brinke Stevens, Bigfoot researcher/author Joedy Cook, as well as several paranormal investigators. I wish I could go since it sounds really cool, and if you want to go, you can find more info here:

http://msp.louisvilleghs.com/midsouth/2017/home.html

Tickets are $50 for a one-day pass or $65 for a weekend pass, and the convention will take place at the Ramada Plaza at 9700 Bluegrass Parkway. If you're planning on going and would like to write a guest post about it, please let me know (at crystalsmithconnelly@yahoo.com). : )

A Haunting: Gateway to Hell

I watched an episode of Destination America's A Haunting not too long ago, and I thought it was one of the better paranormal shows I've seen, so I decided to watch another episode.  This time I watched a 2006 episode called "Gateway to Hell."

Country singer Bobby Mackey has always wanted to own a country music club, so he decides to turn the former Rock ‘n’ Roll Roadhouse in Wilder, Kentucky into Bobby Mackey’s, despite the fact that his pregnant wife Janet has a bad feeling about the place.  Soon after Bobby buys the building, a man named Carl Lawson comes by and says that he used to be a handyman at the former club until it was shut down due to all the murders (there were six in the club’s last year alone); he warns Bobby and Janet that the club may cause people to turn violent, but Bobby isn’t worried since his club will attract a different type of crowd.  One day Janet sees the kitchen sink fill up with blood and feels a hand on her back trying to push her in, but when new employee Carl runs in the room after hearing her screams, the sink is empty.  Janet tells Bobby what happened, but he doesn’t take her seriously since he doesn’t believe in ghosts. (Really?  You don’t think a building where A BUNCH OF MURDERS happened might possibly be haunted?)  One night Officer Larry Hornsby is driving by and sees someone in the window of the club, so he calls for backup; when Hornsby and his fellow officer enter the building, loud music starts playing backstage, and they hear the voices of a man and a woman.  They hear the front door slam, but when they run into the parking lot, no one is there.

Janet is sweeping up a shattered light bulb when something pushes her down the stairs; after she hits the floor, she looks at the top of the stairway and sees a male spirit.  Bobby and Carl rush Janet to the hospital, afraid she’s going to lose the baby; she goes into labor and gives birth to a daughter.  Bobby Mackey’s opens a few weeks later, and Bobby tells Carl not to tell the customers about what’s been going on there.  In the storage room, Carl finds a diary belonging to a woman named Johanna, who was a dancer at the club decades ago and was afraid that her father had killed her lover; she poisoned her father and then herself.  The diary says that Johanna will “roam the halls of the club for all eternity, waiting for her lover to return.”  That night Carl (who now lives above the club) is awoken when he has trouble breathing, then the power goes out, so Carl goes to check the breakers; while he’s in the basement, he finds a hidden door in the floor and opens it to find a deep well.  After he closes the door, he turns to see the spirits of two men behind him.

Carl’s behavior changes after this, and Bobby confides in his friend Doug Hensley, a writer, who asks if he can talk to Carl about it; Carl tells Doug, “This place is evil.  I’ve seen stuff I can’t explain.”  Carl says that he only keeps working there so he can protect Janet and Bobby.  Janet tells Doug about the experiences she’s had in the club, and Doug decides to research the history of the building.  He finds out that two men (Alonzo Walling and Scott Jackson) were hung for murdering a socialite named Pearl Bryan, who was five months pregnant at the time of her death; Walling said that he would haunt the place where Pearl’s head was found.  Pearl’s body was found near a slaughterhouse, and it is believed that Walling and Jackson had put Pearl’s head in a well that was in the basement of the slaughterhouse.  This should come as a surprise to no one: the location where the slaughterhouse stood is now Bobby Mackey’s, and there is probably a decapitated head in the well Carl found.

Doug brings in Patricia Michelle, a psychic, to check out the club.  Carl says, “They’re here,” and Patricia cuts him off and asks him not to say anything and to let her walk through the club and see what she can pick up with her second sight.  She sees the spirit of a woman and asks what her name is; the spirit says her name is Johanna.  Patricia asks Johanna if she’ll let her send her “to the light,” and Johanna responds, “No, lady, don’t send me to no light.”  (Being a ghost is no excuse for bad grammar, Johanna.)  In the basement, Johanna looks down into the well and has a vision of a woman’s head in there.  Patricia feels dizzy and nauseous, so she is escorted to the bar area, so she can sit and have a glass of water.  Carl begins acting scared, and Patricia senses two male spirits in the room; she tells Carl that the spirits are trying to use his body and that he needs to ask a minister for help.  Doug brings in a minister, who says Bobby Mackey’s is “the most evil site that he’d ever stood foot on in his life” and that Carl is possessed by demons.  He agrees to perform an exorcism, and as he prays, Carl’s demeanor and voice changes, and he becomes violent, so Bobby and Doug come in to help hold him down.  The minister continues with the exorcism, and Carl starts speaking backwards and in Latin, at one point saying “I am Satan.”  The exorcism is successful, and Carl decides not to work at Bobby Mackey’s anymore (smart move, Carl); Janet also decides never to set foot in the club again, but Bobby still claims that he has never seen any paranormal activity there. (Seriously?  You witnessed an EXORCISM!  That seems pretty paranormal to me.)

This episode of A Haunting was pretty creepy, and you know I won’t be going to Bobby Mackey’s anytime soon (or ever).

My rating: 8/10

http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/a-haunting

Monsters and Mysteries in America: Appalachia

I was watching Destination America a few nights ago and discovered a paranormal show I hadn't watched before: Monsters and Mysteries in America.  I watched a 2013 episode called "Appalachia," which focused on Sheepsquatch (I did not know that was a thing...how has there not been a Syfy Original movie about it?), UFOs/Little Green Men, and Mothman.

A creature named Sheepsquatch, “a giant sheep that’s gone savage,” has been spotted in Breckenridge, Kentucky.  Paranormal researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley describes Sheepsquatch as having “wooly hair, it’s usually white or dirty white, huge jaws and fangs, and a tail that usually has no fur on it.”  In July 2004, locals Ricky Joyce and Dakota Cheeks went hunting, and their first morning there, they found one of Ricky’s dogs in a ditch with its head twisted almost all the way around (thanks for scarring me for life, Destination America!).  They’d been hearing strange noises coming from the top of the hill for months, so they decided to stake it out; when they were in their camper that night, all of the dogs got scared and ran off, then something started banging into the camper until it fell over.  The following night, they got their guns and went in search of Sheepsquatch; they saw something big (9 feet tall) and white standing in the dark, and it went after them, so they shot at it and ran back to the house.  They are convinced it was Sheepsquatch.

For more information about Sheepsquatch and pictures of what it supposedly looks like, check out this link:
http://www.americanmonsters.com/site/2011/07/sheep-squatch-virginia-west-virgina-usa/

When Geraldine Sutton Stith was 8 years old, she learned that her family had an encounter with the “Kentucky Green Men” at their farmhouse in 1955.  One member of the family saw a UFO when he went outside to get water, so he ran inside to tell everyone; when some more family members went outside with him, the UFO was gone, but they saw floating 3-foot tall creatures coming out of the woods.  They ran inside to get some guns; one of the extraterrestrials looked in the window, so the men started shooting.  The creatures eventually left, and the police were called, but they could find no evidence of bodies; they only found “a glowing substance on the ground.”

Residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia have been spotting Mothman since the late 1960s.  Mothman has been described as “a cross between a man and an alien-with wings and red eyes," and there was a 2002 movie made about the creature called The Mothman Prophecies (starring Richard Gere, Debra Messing, and Laura Linney).  Faye Laport Dewitt encountered the monster when she was 13 or 14, and it changed her forever.  After a day at the movies, Faye’s brother decided that he wanted to go find Mothman and prove that it was just a man in a costume, so he started driving with all of their siblings in the car.  Faye noticed that he kept looking in her direction as he drove, and when she asked why, he told her not to look; she looked anyway and saw Mothman flying right outside the window.  The car suddenly came to a halt, and Mothman landed on the hood of the car, staring at them with his glowing red eyes.  Luckily for the Laports, Mothman soon flew away.  A few months later, Mothman was spotted on the Silver Bridge; a few days after that, a stop light malfunctioned and caused cars to pile onto the bridge, which then collapsed.  The cars fell into the water, then the bridge fell on top of them, killing 46 people.  Many people believe that Mothman appeared on the bridge as an omen that something bad was going to happen.

Monsters and Mysteries in America was an interesting show, and I'm definitely going to watch more episodes...I looked at the schedule and saw that there's an episode about a creature called Batsquatch, and you know I am watching that!  I had heard of Mothman because I've seen The Mothman Prophecies, but I had never heard of Sheepsquatch until I watched this show, and Sheepsquatch sounds both hilarious and terrifying. ; )

My rating: 8/10

http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/monsters-and-mysteries-in-america

A Haunting: Demon Child

I recently watched a 2006 episode of Destination America's A Haunting called "Demon Child," and since I'm freaked out enough by regular kids, I should've known better to watch this while I was home alone at night. Jan and Dale Foster live in western Kentucky with their two children: Cody, 5, and Pamela, 16.  One day Cody's nanny tells Jan that Cody has started using bad language, threatening her, and talking to someone who isn't there.  Could Cody's imaginary friend be...SATAN?!  Jan asks Cody the name of his new friend, and Cody tells her it is Man; when she walks in on Cody having a conversation with no one, she asks who he is talking to, and he responds, "I'm playing with Man." (That's something no parent ever wants to hear.) While fixing breakfast, Jan tells Dale about Cody's imaginary friend, and they turn around to see Cody staring at them like a creep, and when they tell him to eat his breakfast, he starts screaming at them and acting like a little shit.  Later, Cody tells them that Man is 6 years old and "has brown hair, brown eyes, and pale skin."  When Dale asks where Man came from, Cody says, "from behind the park where the lake is, deep in the ground."  Jan asks if something happened to Man, and Cody tells her that Man was taken away from his mother by a man who did awful things to him.  That's when Jan and Dale realize that Man is the ghost of a murdered child.

Jan asks her friend, a Native American shaman, for help, and he tells her that he thinks Cody invited the spirit into the house, and they must revoke the invitation to get rid of it.  He tells Jan and Dale to burn sage and sweetgrass, put olive oil at each of the home's entryways, and pray.  For three months, everything goes back to normal, then Jan hears Cody talking to Man again.  He then gets really quiet, and when Jan goes to check on him, Cody is holding a Polaroid picture of an old woman and a little boy.  When she takes the picture from Cody, he starts screaming at her, and when Jan asks about it, Cody says that Man is the boy in the picture and that Man gave it to him.  And then things get really weird: when Jan drops Cody off to play at her cousin's house, the woman soon calls Jan at work, crying and saying that Jan needs to come get Cody immediately.  When Jan shows up, her cousin tells her that when Cody was playing with her daughter Kaylee, she heard a deep voice, and then Kaylee started screaming.  She ran into the room to find  toys floating in the air around Cody.

One night, Dale catches Cody cutting up his teddy bear, and Cody tells him that "Man said it would be fun."  Cody uses the same excuse when Pamela is searching for her cat and finds it underneath the couch cushion that Cody is sitting on.  Jan is cleaning one day and realizes that Cody has been peeing on everything in his closet; he says that Man said it would be okay and that he doesn't have to listen to his mother.

Cody finally gets fed up with Man when he starts making his bed shake.  After Cody falls asleep in his parents' room, Jan goes into his room and soon awakes to see Cody standing in the doorway.  He hugs her, and Jan sees his body grow into a full-grown demonically-laughing entity, but he looks normal again when Dale and Pamela come in to see why Jan is screaming.  Jan calls the shaman again and tells him that Man is a demon; he tells her to bless the house again and pray specifically for the demon to leave.  She does, and when she comes back inside, she feels a presence.  Jan continues the blessing inside the house and tells the demon to leave and never come back.  The family sometimes hears strange noises and feels like someone is watching them, and they worry that it's Man trying to reappear in their lives.

This episode of A Haunting was pretty creepy...I'm definitely going to watch some more episodes.

My rating: 9/10

http://www.destinationamerica.com/tv-shows/a-haunting