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.



Sunday, December 22, 2013

Thank you!

The blog got its 4000th view yesterday! When I started this blog, I thought that just my friends and family would read it, so I'm thrilled that so many people that I've never met from all over the world are enjoying it.  Thanks to everyone who has been reading and sharing what I have to say about ghosts and aliens! : )