When Ghosts Attack: Ghost Stalker

I watched my first episode of Destination America’s When Ghosts Attack a few weeks ago, and even though it scared the crap out of me, it was the best of all the paranormal shows I’ve watched lately, so I decided to watch another episode.  This episode is called “Ghost Stalker” and aired in November 2013.

The episode begins with Crystal Sipe saying, “I never thought that I’d have to fight with a spirit over my husband, but I did, and I almost lost my life.”  (Ooh, I’m interested…tell me more!)  In Weston, West Virginia, Robert Sipe proposed two weeks after he met Crystal, and Crystal and her 6-year-old son Tucker moved in with Robert and his 9-year-old daughter Whitney in April 2006.  Crystal thought the house seemed “off-kilter,” and her things would often go missing; she also noticed lights flickering and the TV turning on and off by itself.  One morning, Crystal went into the kitchen to make Robert’s lunch, then went back to bed; she awoke when the blankets were pulled off of her.  She thought her son had done it, but when she went to check on him, he was fast asleep, and no one else was there with them.  Crystal got back into bed and held onto the blankets, but they were pulled off of her again.  She told Robert what happened, and he confessed that there was a spirit in the house.  (Shouldn’t he have mentioned that before she moved in?!)  He said he was shocked by the encounter because the spirit had always been nice to him.  (Of course she was, she wants you to let your guard down, so she can have her way with you while you’re sleeping.)  One night, Crystal woke up when a female voice whispered “You need to leave” in her ear.  She thought/hoped she had imagined it, but when she walked out of the room, she saw the spirit down the hall, staring at her.  Crystal realized that the ghost felt threatened by her and wanted her out of the house.

A few months later, Crystal was home alone when she heard voices, the radio started changing stations by itself, and the TV came on.  Something pushed Crystal on the floor and began attacking her; a neighbor heard Crystal’s screams and rushed into the house, and the attack ended.  When Robert got home, he put bandages on Crystal’s wounds and told her everything would be okay, then they heard the crash of something hitting the floor; it was a picture frame displaying a photo of Robert, Crystal, Whitney, and Tucker, and it was now shattered.  (This ghost is such a jealous bitch!)  Crystal and Robert got married a few weeks later (yeah, that won’t make things worse…), and one day Crystal entered Tucker’s room to find him talking to nothing and drawing frowny faces on the carpet with permanent marker.  He said he didn’t do it, and Crystal told him that he shouldn’t lie because “God doesn’t like it because it’s against his rules,” to which Tucker replied, “But God’s a woman” and said that she visits him.  Two months later, Crystal and Robert, who had rarely argued before, began arguing about everything; Crystal thought it was the spirit trying to get between them.  One night, the alarm went off at midnight for no reason, and Crystal turned to Robert with a strange look on her face and asked, “Do you really love her?”  Robert knew that it was not Crystal saying this, and Crystal did not remember the incident at all.  Three months later, Crystal was in front of the mirror getting ready for work when she felt like she was being watched, then something shoved her into the bathtub.  Robert finally decided that it was time to move, and people who have rented the house have reported that paranormal activity still goes on there.

In Glenn Burnie, Maryland in September 2002, Terri Torrence was going through a divorce and had just found a new house to live in with her four daughters: Victoria (11), Christine (8), Charlene (6), and Jennifer (4).   Terri, who has been in a wheelchair since childhood as a result of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, was looking for a house that was wheelchair-accessible, and this house was perfect…or so she thought.  Terri found out from some neighbors that her property used to be a Confederate soldier camp, and a lot of people died there; one neighbor said to stay out of the woods because they were haunted.  Things were great at first, but soon doors would open and close by themselves, it would get really cold inside, and they would hear knocking sounds on the windows.  One night, Terri heard Christine talking in her room after all of her sisters had gone to bed; Terri asked her daughter who she was talking to, and Christine said that she was talking to her friends.  When Terri pointed out that there was no one else in the room, Christine said, “They’re sitting right there.”  Christine thought her new friends were girls who lived in the neighborhood, but realized they weren’t real when her mother couldn’t see them.  The girls were there to protect Christine from “the Man in Black…who had killed them in the woods.”

A few months later, Christine saw a black figure in her room; when Terri heard her scream, she went to see what was wrong, but the door would not open.  When she finally got in, a terrified Christine said that the Man in Black wanted to hurt her sisters.  Terri switched rooms with Christine, so Christine would feel safer, and after a week in there, Terri noticed a horrible smell and heard a male voice say, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”  The room started turning black, and Terri realized that they were not safe in the house.  Terri knew she couldn’t fight whatever was in the house, so her mother (Sarah) moved in to help them out.  The Man in Black kept returning and telling Christine to be mean to her mom and sisters and to hurt herself, and she would do whatever he said because she was afraid of what he would do if she didn’t.  Sarah decided she’d had enough and called the Man in Black a coward and challenged him to show her what he was capable of; suddenly she felt hands squeezing her chest until she could hardly breathe.  She managed to run out of the room, and when she turned around and saw the Man in Black, it was the most terrifying she’d ever seen and is sure he would’ve killed her if she had not gotten out of the house.  The Man in Black later started focusing on Jennifer, dragging her out of her chair at the dining room table one day.  Sarah says, “You could see her being dragged, but you couldn’t see what was dragging her.”  (If that happened to me, I have a feeling I’d need therapy for the rest of my life.)  Even though it wouldn’t be easy to find another wheelchair-accessible house, Terri decided that it was time to leave.  Everything returned to normal for the family after they moved, and the home’s new residents have not experienced any paranormal activity.

This episode of When Ghosts Attack was just as terrifying as the last episode I watched…that’s why I don’t watch this show at night.  The stories of the Sipes and the Torrences had me looking over my shoulder every few minutes, and I also learned a valuable lesson: Always be suspicious of a guy who proposes two weeks after he meets you…he’s probably just afraid to sleep by himself in his haunted house.  ; )

My rating: 9/10

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

When Ghosts Attack: There's No Place Like Hell

There's a new show on Destination America called When Ghosts Attack, and I'm not going to watch too many episodes because it's one of the scariest paranormal shows I've seen.  I purposely watched it in the afternoon because I knew it would creep me out too much if I watched it at night, yet that still didn't stop me from looking over my shoulder every few minutes!  I watched the first episode, "There's No Place Like Hell," and the first part of the show focuses on the Settle family (Lori, Donny, and Kaitlyn, who is Lori's daughter and Donny's stepdaughter) and what happened to them when they moved into a new house in Fayetteville, West Virginia in September 2002.  Not long after the family moved in, Lori says that she felt like she was always being watched; Kaitlyn also experienced this and felt like something that wasn’t human was watching her.  Lori felt like she was not welcome in the basement, like she was “invading someone else’s space.”  She discovered flies in the corner of the basement, and nothing she tried ever made them go away.  A few weeks after they moved in, Lori finished cleaning the kitchen and walked out of the room for no longer than a minute; when she came back, all of the drawers and cabinets were open.  On December 7th, Lori and Donny went to sleep and woke up to the sound of heavy footsteps (like boots) on the stairs.  Kaitlyn came in and said that there was a man in her room, standing at the foot of her bed.  Lori told Kaitlyn she was imagining it and took her back to her room and plugged a night light in; after she shut the door, the night light exploded. 

On January 14, 2003, Lori was home alone when she saw a child standing in the hallway, “fists clenched, head down, no facial expression.”  When the child looked at Lori, she had no eyes, and Lori ran out of the room. (I wouldn't have just left the room...I would've left the house and never returned!)  Less than a month later, Lori and Kaitlyn were asleep in Lori’s bed when Lori was awoken by a hand pushing her down into the mattress; a few minutes later, it pushed her so hard she fell out of bed.  Lori and Kaitlyn ran out of the room, and when Donny was comforting Lori, they heard a loud cackle.  Lori’s mother, Beverly Settle, suggested she do some research about the house, and Lori found out that a man named William Bennett lived there in the 1940s.   He had a wife and child, and the wife left him because he was too overbearing, and the daughter died at a young age; William was so depressed that he shot himself in the basement (in the corner where the flies gather).

Beverly says that Donny began to change, that he “became distant from Lori, he didn’t talk much, and then it seemed like he started to go into a depression.” Lori says he often seemed angry and agitated.  On April 29th, Lori and Kaitlyn went out, and Lori dropped Kaitlyn off at Beverly’s house before she came home; when she walked in the house, she couldn’t find Donny and he wasn’t answering when she called his name.  Lori soon discovered blood in the hallway and followed the trail to find Donny sitting dead on the bathroom floor, which was completely covered in blood.  The autopsy said that Donny died of an aortic rupture, but since he was only 42 and in good health, Lori thinks the house had something to do with it.

June 27, 2003 was the final straw.  Lori was going to the basement when something pushed her down the stairs, and she decided it was time to get out of the house.  Beverly came over to help Lori and Kaitlyn get their things together, and she felt cold air in the house, even though it wasn’t cold that day. Something unseen hit Lori in the face and left claw marks, and they all ran out of the house, leaving their belongings.  Beverly believes that Lori and Kaitlyn would’ve been killed if they’d kept living there.  Lori did not believe in the paranormal before living in that house, but her experiences there led to her becoming a paranormal investigator.

The second part of the show is about single mother Marsha Eden and her daughters Katrina and McKenzie.  In September 2010, they moved into a house in central New Jersey that Marsha's boyfriend, Raymond Griffis, found for them.  The house was old, but everything inside was new.  The house was across from an old mill, which Katrina says was as “bad as having a graveyard in front of your house.”  McKenzie says that the house was okay during the day, but creepy at night.  The girls started hearing hissing noises and feeling like they were being watched not long after they moved in.  Marsha says she would see shadows that would disappear into another room or into the wall.

On September 21, 2010, Marsha came home from work early because she had a migraine; she went to sleep and woke up to a loud noise from the bathroom.  When she went in there, the shower door was shattered and glass was all over the floor.  Two weeks later, Marsha was fixing dinner and felt a cold spot around her; she suddenly dropped the silverware she was holding, and something she could not see attacked her.  She asked Raymond to spend the night, and they later “woke up from a dead sleep,” heard a creak, then the door opened, and it got really cold in the room.  Marsha felt the cold on her feet, then it traveled up her legs and got heavier until it overpowered her, and she saw a man’s face right in front of her.  After that disturbing incident, they decided to do some internet research and discovered that the house used to be a boarding house for the employees of the mill and that many people died there as a result of accidents that had happened at the mill.

On October 19th, McKenzie says that she felt cold all around her and Katrina felt a sudden burning sensation on her back as she walked into the room; Marsha and McKenzie examined Katrina's back and found a red welt. Marsha and the girls ran and locked themselves in a bedroom, and Marsha called Raymond.  The walls started shaking, and they heard moans coming from outside the bedroom.  McKenzie found scratches on her thighs after feeling a burning sensation. Raymond came to help them, and everything calmed down once he showed up; he took a picture of Marsha, Katrina, and McKenzie in the bedroom, and there was a glow behind them in the picture.  Marsha decided that they weren’t going to live there anymore. The apartment is currently being rented by someone else, and there have been no reports of paranormal activity.

If you like scary paranormal shows, you should check out When Ghosts Attack...this might be the scariest one I've watched so far!

My rating: 9/10

http://america.discovery.com/tv-shows/when-ghosts-attack