CAN OBJECTS BE HAUNTED?

As I mentioned in my last blog about hoarding and haunting a collector can unwitting bring an object home from an antique store, flea market or a garage sale and somehow a spirit could be attached to it.  Or you may have been given a handed down family heirloom from your great aunt and suddenly weird things are happening in your house.  Is this a manifestation of ghostly activity or just someone’s over active imagination? 

One of the stock and trades of TV shows like Haunted Collector are dealing with this very subject each week as the team tries to solve the mystery for different individuals who are experiencing “haunting” due to some object that is causing the paranormal activity. If they are successful in identifying the object causing the haunting, the star of the show, John Zaffis, then asks the homeowner if they would like him to take the object away, which they usually do, and later shows him adding this item to his vast collection in his “Haunted Museum” in Connecticut. He “grounds” the object with salt and places it under a glass dome. This is supposed to keep the spirit at bay. I wonder though, if he has that many haunted objects in one place you would think his museum would be the most haunted place in America?  Remember what happened in the first Ghostbusters movie when they collected a huge amount of “spirits” and contained them in a special chamber?  The power got turned off and the pressure of the energy of these ghosts busted through with thousands of them raining down havoc on the city of New York. I’m glad I don’t live in Connecticut!

There can be hundreds of objects with their ghostly stories we can discuss that could possibly have spirits attached to them. For brevity sake, let’s talk about some of the more popular objects that seem to attract spirits more than others.

Mirrors:

My literary agent Laurie Hawkins was cautious about taking me on as a client at the beginning. Her apprehension wasn't about my abilities as a writer and she was confident that I had a unique and terrifying story that would make a great book. She was worried about the paranormal aspects and her fears were well founded. She had experienced ghostly activity before in her own life mainly dealing with an old mirror a friend gave to her. No sooner did she hang it in her home then she was visited by the spirit of a little girl and other ghostly phenomena started to occur: strange faces seemed to be reflected in the mirror, objects were moving in her home and disappearing that finally my agent couldn't stand it and wrapped the mirror up and stuck it in her attic. She would like to get rid of it but is feels personally responsible if she gave it to someone else that they could then be haunted. What makes a mirror haunted?  For centuries people have been cautious with mirror in their various cultures. I remember my mom telling me in some of the older Italian Catholic traditions, that when a person died, you covered over the mirrors in your home for a period of time. Is it the idea that it reflects or represents a different dimension that a person’s soul could enter?  How about the superstition that if you broke a mirror you had seven years bad luck? Are you tempting evil or misfortune by doing this? 

Boxes or Chests:

Pandora’s Box- The Greeks had their myth of a beautiful alluring box that came with the gods warning not to open it-but because we humans are by nature curious, of course someone opens it and releases terrible misfortune, pain and evil in the world. Today we still use the term to describe something that should be left unopened or disturbed or suffer terrible consequences. There is something very old in the human conscience about containing and being in control of something in a small boxed-in area. If someone thinks they've contained a spirit or demon in a box- can it store up energy that can have horrible consequences if opened and released?

The Ark of the Covenant-This is one of the supreme religious objects both revered and feared. This golden box with its winged guardians on top and is literary the home of the Ten Commandants. If opened can supposedly unleash the power of God and any army that holds this relic in their possession would be invincible. No wonder Hitler had his Nazi Army scourer the earth for this and many other religious artifacts during World War II. This is not something Hollywood dreamed up as this has become a known fact.

Dibbux Box- The dybbuk box or dibbuk box is a wine cabinet which is said to be haunted by a dybbuk.  In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk or “dislocated spirit” is a restless, usually malicious, spirit believed to be able to haunt and even possess the living. Have you heard the story based on this box?  It’s the true account of a series of eerie events that unfold when a wine cabinet sells at an estate sale in Oregon. It is soon sold and resold on eBay, and each new owner becomes desperate to get rid of the box along with the health problems, accidents, or death they claim came with it. In the book by the same title, the main character places a bid on eBay and soon finds himself the proud owner of the Dibbuk Box. But as he carefully investigates and records everything he can about this unusual item said to be possessed by a Jewish spirit, he discovers a dark story that comes to light that began at the time of the Holocaust and seems to have come full circle.

Weapons: Guns, Knives, Swords, Daggers, Axes, from all world cultures.

This includes a wide range of any type of item that was used for personal defense, killing or murdering someone throughout all world cultures. Military weapons come to mind first along with parts of uniforms including, buttons, hats, buckles, shoes, satchels and combat medals that were personally associated by the soldier. Because of their unique properties (mostly metallic) and used for mainly for destructive purposes imagine the potential violent energy stored on these pieces! Are the weapons cursed by the evil their owners did as they dealt a death blow to their victims?

In one episode of the Haunted Collector, John Zaffis removed a piece of a civil war officer’s uniform to his museum when it was research revealed that this man had met with a horrific death in battle and his spirit was haunting the owners of the 1800’s house. Only after acknowledging this forgotten historical incident and giving this person recognition for his brave military service was this spirit laid to rest.

Seeing ancient weapons at our local art museum I realized looking at the swords, battle-axes, spears and daggers that they were used to cut, thrust into, slash, dismember, impale and even disembowel another person. It can give you the chills thinking, these weapons have taken someone's life. They have blood on them. Perhaps these things didn't kill just one person. They killed lots of people. Does that make the sword or ax evil? Or present a vehicle which spirits are attracted to and can find a home?

The Winchester Mystery House is a well-known mansion in Northern California. It once was the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, who invented the Winchester Repeating Rifle.  Although this is disputed, popular belief holds that a Boston medium told Sarah Winchester that she had to leave her home in New Haven and travel west, where she must "build a home for you and for the spirits (mostly Native Americans) who have fallen from this terrible weapon, too. You must never stop building the house. If you continue building, you will live forever. But if you stop, then you will die."  It was continuously under construction for 36 years and is reported to be haunted. Interestingly, the mansion had only two mirrors in the whole place. This is because Sarah believed that ghosts were afraid of their own reflection.

Under Winchester's day-to-day guidance, its "from-the-ground-up" construction proceeded around the clock, without interruption, from 1886 until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased. It now serves as a tourist attraction.

A word of caution to anyone the next time you are at an antique shop, flea market or garage sale and find you are attracted to and have to have that cool sword or blanket chest or even that carved mirror at such a reasonable price think about the purchase cautiously. It may be that although you got a “steal” you may have to “steal yourself” against supernatural forces that came along for the ride and in turn you may be getting more than you bargained for!

Next week I will talk about one of my favorite subjects, Dolls, and what makes them one of the most feared of Haunted Objects.

DOES HOARDING CAUSE HAUNTING?

*name has been changed

Is there a direct relationship between someone hoarding a large amount of objects and their house becoming haunted?  Is that rustling sound that of a mouse or a restless spirit?

Compulsive Hoarding (or pathological collecting, or, informally, pack ratting) is a pattern of behavior that is characterized by the excessive acquisition of and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that cover the living areas of the home and cause significant distress or impairment.

 According to the Mayo Clinic that did a study in 2008, rates of hoarding have been estimated at 2-5% in adults, though the condition typically manifests in childhood with symptoms worsening in advanced age when collected items have grown excessive and family members who would otherwise help to maintain and control the levels of clutter either die or move away. Clutter and hoarding can result in an accumulation or emit low-level energy; people living in these conditions are often afflicted with problems- financial, health, relationship and family.

There are several popular TV shows dealing with this subject of excessive hoarding where you see people basically filling up their “free space” they occupy with tons of stuff which seems to fill a void in their lives. Some carry it to such extreme levels they are almost “buried alive” by all the junk. Everyone has a different story or reason of why they started living this way but they all experience the same psychological effects (and possibly psychic effects) of literally having their life force sucked out of them!

                                                      My Friend's bedroom "Museum"

This was certainly true of my deceased friend Paul* who lived his last few years in more and more isolation, as both his parents were deceased and he was estranged from his only brother and his family. I hadn't been invited to his home for several years and he always seemed to have excuses when I would mention I'd like to stop by to see him, which put a strain on our thirty year friendship. He lived among his “museum” of artifacts and hundreds of boxes of collectibles and I don’t know whether he preferred it that way or felt trapped. He was an anthropologist and world traveler who not only collected art objects but also bought and brought home some ancient artifacts from his time excavating in South America. He felt apprehensive leaving his home for long periods of time, neglected going to the doctor (even after numerous pleas from me) and became paranoid of even having workmen come in to fix his bathroom plumbing. We later found out that Paul* had been living in very hazardous health conditions with the discovery of dust, mildew and black mold while cleaning out his basement. 

We have no proof but it is safe to bet that these years of accumulated harmful vapors in the moldy air caused him to be ill and his asthma condition to worsen. He told me he was using his inhaler more frequently and it may have masked his heart disease when he was short of breath thinking it was just his asthma. By the time the paramedics got him to the ER he was unconscious and showed signs of a heart attack several days earlier.  There was so much damage to his heart the doctors were unable to save him. What a sad way to live, to die, and then to haunt!

Some of the "hoard" in the basement which became the epicenter of the haunting. A tiny fraction of what we had to clean out.

So what causes the Haunting?

A collector, who brings items purchased at garage sales, thrift stores or in their travels into their home, may find they have ghostly attachments. Basically, you can be bringing the ghosts into your home!  Seems ghosts can attach to locations, objects or people. When we bring used objects into our home there is a possibility that we are also bringing some type of unusual low-level energies into our environment. Perhaps it is these objects that are to blame for that eerie feeling some people get in certain houses and locations. (More on this subject in my next blog)

Our particular experience relating to this phenomenon is told in my book, Estate of Horror, and how we had to clear out fifty years of accumulated hoarding by my friend, his mother and father and were then confronted by terrifying poltergeist activity as we tried to de-clutter the house for eventual sale.  The more we cleaned out the house the more the strange activity escalated.  We learned from a psychic medium that came to the house and was in communication with my friend Paul, “That my deceased friend and his family were upset with the major changes happening to the house and their emotional attachment to their hundreds of possessions did not end with their lives. They still wanted everything to remain the same.” We found this to be impossible to comply with as the house was to be sold and the proceeds donated to charity as specified in my friend’s will. I had no choice but to carry out his wishes. This made the ghosts angry and the haunting at the house become dangerous.

This photo was taken at the very beginning of the clean-up in January 2009. We didn't see this on the photo until later and have no explanation of this white spot. There was no light above, the paneling was dark and not shiny to reflect light.  

Yes, clearing out clutter and debris can improve a “hoarders” life one box at a time. With professional counseling, clutter-busters and experts in organizing, a person can get help.  There can be a psychological release that is physically, emotionally, and spiritually liberating in changing their lives. But, what about the possible psychically linked energy that may have been attached to some of the objects?  The Mayo clinic and other scientific and medical organizations won’t address this. Does Hoarding and Haunting go hand in hand? It’s just a theory, but from my personal experience, I believe it to be one that deserves further investigation.

What happens to those of us who cleaned out a hoarder’s house? In my case, you write a book about your experiences of being the Executrix of a deceased friend’s estate as a cautionary tale. In the ten months’ time it took us to clean out the house we found we had disturbed something supernatural and liberated some evil spirits that continue to haunt us even today!

GHOST MONEY

We have all heard the phrase and song, “Pennies from Heaven.” What would you say if that was really true? What if money just materialized from thin air? Is there a connection between coins, the newly deceased and ghosts? What is the connection between coins, the newly deceased and ghosts?

In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Usually a coin was sometimes placed in or on top of the mouth of a dead person to pay Charon for passage. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years. This ancient tradition continues today as some cultures still place coins on the eyes of the deceased before burial.

I've even read that scientists studying the Shroud of Turin saw indications of coins, type issued at the time of Pontius Pilate, placed over the eyes of the figure, regarded by many to be that of Jesus Christ; by the impressions left on the cloth picked up on their scanners. Fascinating!

Do spirits leave pennies around for us to find?

In my experience I would have to answer, YES! I have been finding pennies and other loose change on the ground and other places all my life, but never gave it a thought that it could be a loved one who had passed on to the other side and was trying to get my attention. I just thought I was the lucky recipient of some unfortunate person dropping their money. I wasn't that familiar with this phenomenon at all. It really became apparent that this could be something of the supernatural realm after my experience at my friend’s house when we had coins being tossed around the room and against the wall. Although this is unusual occurrence, it seems this is a common sign from spirits. We had a number of objects thrown during the time at my friend’s “haunted house” and pennies were among them.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing that happened after we sold his house to contractors was the frequent times pennies were dropping from the ceiling, thrown down the steps and against the front door at my house now! We even had foreign money appear out of nowhere. We've collected German Deutsche Marks, Canadian and Mexican coins, and even a Morgan silver dollar! No gold doubloons yet. I’ll get back to this-so keep reading.

So, if pennies are from Heaven or from a ghost, then what is the spiritual significance of finding dimes? Yes, we have been finding those too. A dime has ten pennies within it. After doing some research, apparently some consider the number 10 means, “We reap what we sow.” Ten can also mean fulfillment or completion of something. What dimes and pennies mean to me may not be of significance for you. There’s no right or wrong interpretation. No matter what your interpretation is, finding loose change around is supposedly a sign from the spirit world.

So is it a deceased loved one leaving the coins?

A friend told me her story about her deceased father and dimes after hearing the spooky experiences in my friend’s house. She and her family have been long time supporters of my strange story and totally believe my paranormal encounters to be true. She told me of her and her family finding dimes around the time of construction and decoration of her brother’s new dental office. Her father had been a cement contractor who did pavements, patios, and floors. So, when a new cement floor was being put down and still wet, apparently a dime was found in it the next day. Thinking the contractors were carrying out an old tradition, when people embed a coin in wet cement near a new project to bring luck, they asked the men if they had put in the dime. No, they said. Then my friend and her brother started to find other dimes around the office, and outside on the sidewalk near the front entrance. They decided later to collect the dimes that they now believed were from her father. Pretty soon they had a jar full of dimes! She told me that she had never gotten the chance to tell her Dad a final goodbye when he was in the hospital dying from cancer and that she always felt a bit sad and that she didn't have closure. This now seemed to be a validation from him to wish his family luck and that he was visiting and watching over them. This loving act has brought a sense of peace and humor to her and her family. They continue to feel he is popping in from time to time to visit, as they are still finding and collecting dimes!

So, let’s get back to our mystery of the foreign money being left at our house. As I mentioned we have had coins other than American money tossed and thrown around our house, and that my friend was of German heritage and world traveler. I am convinced it’s a link to my deceased friend and his family. I was with a client at my home studio back in March 2010, when we had to stop in mid conversation when we heard loud sounds of coins being thrown against my studio wall that is part of my center hallway. They had come from the direction of my living room,which had no one in at the time. My client was speechless when I pick up 4 German Deutsche Marks off the hallway rug. Chills went up my spine as I remembered 3 members of my friend’s family came to this country in the late 1940's and my friend was born in this country in 1953! That same day we had Canadian coins and Mexican pesos thrown from the upstairs hall down the steps and hit my front door. Again I looked at the date. The coin dated 1967-the time my friend attended the Montreal World’s Fair held in 1967 and he also spent a great deal of time in Mexico and South American being an anthropologist and archaeologist specializing in the ancient Mayan Indian culture. What about the Morgan Silver dollar? I tell you more about this coin in a later blog.

Were my friends and his family trying to communicate with me or just some random coincidence?  I don’t have the answers only my experience to share. I did get in touch with a metaphysical physicist, connected to a university in California several months ago. His reply to me, after telling him of my dealings with solid objects materializing out of nowhere, was that he had no answers only a theory. He believed that there are different inter-dimensional portals and perhaps beings (spirits?) related to those dimensions that can manipulate space and time that allow solid objects to act differently that we have yet to comprehend.

That made sense to me. There are just too many people with the same personal story of receiving “Ghost Money” for it to be just a freak occurrence. Our failure to recognize or comprehend this is no one’s fault. Only recently do people feel comfortable enough of telling of these unique supernatural experiences and not fear being told they are crazy. We’re not!  Maybe one day science will be able to explain this phenomenon to us but for now if you feel you are being left “Pennies from Heaven” thank the spirits or a loved one who sent it. They are listening.

Estate of Horror Book Teaser

MY FRIEND PAUL *- A REAL GHOST WRITER

*name has been changed

My good friend of 30 years, subject of my book Estate of Horror: A True Story of Haunting, Hatred and a Horrific Family Secret, for in all intense and purposes is the ultimate and a real ghost writer. Paul was an anthropologist, teacher, lecturer and most importantly a wonderful writer until his sudden death at the age of 55 from a massive heart attack in 2009. His articles for local newspapers spanned more than two decades and included subjects in a wide scope of interests. He was well known in our cultural community and it was a sad loss for us all when he passed away.

As Executrix of Paul’s estate I had to sift through thousands of papers he left behind, some hidden, some piled on shelves, some scattered on his basement floor and others stored in hundreds of boxes.  He was a collector and world traveler but not until his sudden death did I realize I was dealing with a hoarding situation.  Many of the papers I reviewed were original, or duplicates of his original typed articles and hundreds of extra copies of newspapers where his articles appeared. He was a gifted teacher, a brilliant man, and a bit egocentric whose wide interests ranged from Monarch butterflies to the European Monarchy. Paul had written an article about me for a local newspaper in 2006 about my talent for restoring antique dolls and it was well received. We had talked in length for several years of collaborating together on writing a book based on a certain historical female figure, which now with his untimely death, would never happen. I never imagined, that in a few years, I would write a book about Paul!

As I mentioned my friend was an anthropologist and he wrote numerous stories (on an old portable typewriter) and some topics were about the origins and history of our modern holidays. Halloween was one of his favorite times of the year and as it so happened I came across an article he wrote about this holiday.  His research showed that it was a holiday adapted from early pagan traditions to a Christian Holiday  honoring the dead and how it evolved to become one of our major holidays due to our cultural fascination today with icons associated with it: witches, goblins, demons, monsters, and GHOSTS.  He particularly singled out ghosts in this article that were called “Poltergeists”.  I think it had to do with the word being of German origin (meaning- noisy ghost) and my friend was very proud of his German heritage. Little did I know, at the beginning of my 10 months spent at Paul’s house, to clean it out for sale, that ironically I would be confronting some of the very subjects my friend had written about in his article!

I remember a conversation I had with my distraught friend after the death of his beloved mother in 2001. He told me he thought he felt her presence and that she was trying to contact him. I told him if it was true, and I had no reason to doubt his experience, it was to comfort him and to show him her love for the great and devoted care he had given her in her final days. He then asked me to make a pact with him. If either one of us were to die before the other would we try and contact each other and not be afraid?  I was so startled and stunned by Paul’s request, and told him, “Don’t be silly, we have many years before this could ever be a possibility.” But, he was so insistent about this that I could only humor my friend and quickly made the promise to him so we could get off the morbid subject. Neither one of us could have known then that this promise would be fulfilled sooner than anyone expected.

I would like to share this excerpt from my book, Estate of Horror: A True Story of Haunting Hatred and a Horrific Family Secret, as why I believe my friend’s spirit was haunting his house. You will have to wait for the book to be published to read the full and chilling story of my paranormal experiences so you can draw your own conclusions.

Excerpt from Chapter 15- Caught on Tape!

I walked into Paul’s almost empty bedroom and retrieved the tape recorder that I had placed on his bed earlier that day.  Only a clothes hamper, an old typewriter covered with a towel, and a large portrait painting of Paul, leaning against the wall, were left in his room. His large closet was emptied earlier of its hundred boxes of collectibles. It was hard to believe it was the same room. I brought the recorder to the dining room table and rewound it and found about two hours of tape had  recorded.

When I played it back, I could distinctly hear voices on the tape. Had I captured audible paranormal sounds? Then I realized they were our voices coming from the basement right below Paul’s bedroom. There wasn’t any insulation under the hardwood floor and the room didn’t have wall-to-wall carpeting to muffle the sound. I was sure our voices had contaminated the recording until I heard something interesting. Over our excited voices, and at the exact moment the poltergeist activity was happening in the basement, you could simultaneously hear either a knocking or a banging sound. I played the tape back for my son Chris and his friend Eddie when they came upstairs.

“It’s definitely timed to exactly when things happened in the basement,” Chris said. “But how come we didn’t hear those bangs above us?”

It was a question beyond any rational explanation.

“I don’t know. What gets me is that the knocks are coming right from Paul’s room,” I said. 

I paused and looked around the room, and noticed the portable typewriter covered with an old orange towel that had been pushed aside on one of the window ledges. I realized we had never even looked closely at it. To me, it was just another obstacle we moved out of our way to clear Paul’s room. This time, something was drawing me to the typewriter to take off the towel. 

“Guys, you are not going to believe this. Look!”

Chris and Eddie walked up to view what was a sheet of typing paper still in the typewriter’s roller. Several of the typewriter’s keys were stuck up in the air and jammed together. The paper was blank except for two typed words “the hell….”

“Dude, really?” exclaimed Chris.

We had no answers for this. My friend had to be the one who had typed the words but I had no idea when or why. Was he trying to send us a message? I wondered, was his room the source of the paranormal activity?

End of excerpt.

The typewriter as found in Paul’s bedroom and used in my book trailer.  http://youtu.be/kA2_q6GWJjQ

For more info and ghostly updates go to: www.estateofhorror.com

WHAT MAKES A HOUSE HAUNTED?

I want to post the top criteria for a haunting that we experienced while at my friend’s house. The unexplained phenomena didn’t happen overnight. We spent 10 months at my friend’s estate to clear out his “hoarder’s home” until it was ready for sale. His house was not anything special-a simple 1950’s ranch style house. This extended time spent at his house presented a unique set of circumstances as we (my son and I) were at the house for many hours each week, for a final total of over 2000 hours.

                               
                       My artistic renderings of my friend's house.

Small things happened randomly and us being novices to any haunting experience, we didn’t recognize them right away, until things started to escalate on a regular basis of such extraordinary scope that we could no longer deny that what we were witnessing was of a supernatural origin. Luckily we did document by keeping a written record and by filming, photographing, tape recording evidence and verifying eye witness accounts. We now realize we had the Trifecta of Hauntings: Residual Haunting, Poltergeist Activity and Intelligent Spirit Interaction.

In the ghost hunting shows on T.V. you see a group of investigators with their paranormal sensing equipment stay up to 24 hours (sometimes 3 days) at a “Haunted Location”. This in a way is putting the ghosts on notice to preform just for the audience. It doesn’t happen that way in a serious investigation of the paranormal. The audience doesn’t know the editing that goes behind the scenes so it appears as spontaneous activity. Remember this is for the entertainment value. It brings in revenue.  The residents of a home or a volunteer at a local historical site supposedly haunted have much more time and hours spent at that same location day in and day out than the sporadic visitor. Their personal experiences become a more accurate gauge with the consistency or pattern the unusual events keep occurring. They “feel” and live it every day. This is invaluable for serious investigation.

Here is a list of some of the top points we have complied by our documented evidence and reading other sources that match a classic haunting with our own “Haunting”. Here is how it started and progressed.

1. Cold air in areas where it is unexplained. There can be wavy distortions in the air, which can look like white or gray mist, or even feel like cobwebs.

Our Experience: We had sickening “cold spots” that occurred in certain parts of the living room and then the basement that physically affected my son. He would become nauseated and sick to his stomach and didn’t know why.

2. Residual-activity of an unexplained nature witnessed by the living where things, people or an evident is played in a loop, over and over again (like a tape) without any interaction with living.

Our Experience: As Executor of my friend’s estate, I had to pay the house bills. While reviewing his phone bill, an unexplained phone number kept appearing on it and we were being billed for a long distance call each week at the same day and time. This was strange as the calls were being made from his home at 4:05 AM same day, every week when no one was in the house. We had taken long distance services off the phone and when asked, the phone company had no explanation why the calls were going through. They took off the charges but the calls continued for 6 months until we had to change phone providers. Then the mysterious calls stopped. This was investigated further and our new evidence mentioned in a newer blog.

3. Excessive noise such as creaking, growling, faint voices, tapping or scratching. The sounds can be animal, human or demonic/inhuman sounding.

Our Experience: The first eerie sounds we heard were one Saturday morning. My son and I had stopped to check on the house and as I walked into the living room I heard 3 long moans. Chilling! Another time there was a noise so loud and long the vibration shook and rattled the dining room. Later sounds of an animal scratching, tapping, people whispering and then inhuman voices mocking us became more and more prevalent while the work at my friend’s house progressed.

4. Being suddenly locked in or out of a door to a room to cause separation and panic.

                                             

Our Experience: My son, Chris was locked in a bathroom for several minutes. He remembers not closing the door to the bathroom completely but the door slammed shut and he was locked in. The door handle was frozen when I tried to turn it, then inexplicably it opened several seconds later. Needless to say my son was very frightened. We also faced a crisis when my son and I became locked in the basement and his friend was on the other side of the door in the kitchen and the door lock was frozen. His friend was screaming that something was behind him and we were deliberately separated and unable to help him for several minutes. Needless to say his friend never came back to the house!

5. Poltergeist-(German for “noisy ghost”)- objects moved from one place to another or misplaced objects. Some of this activity can start out as innocent but can become quite violent, destructive and threatening.

Our Experience: We had poltergeist activity right around the time we had construction work done in the basement. This was only the beginning of the months of this type of ghostly activity we would be involved with-starting as benign and really funny but then it was much more personally directed at us with violent and sinister motivations. We have numerous witnesses that observed this rare phenomenon on many occasions.

6. Unusual unexplained smells, such as tobacco, a decayed smell, flowers, or perfume.
Our Experience: We would smell, outside of the hideous moldy, dusty and damp smells that reeked in the basement, that of a wet cat, something burning and a man’s cologne.

7. Flashes of light or orbs in your sight or peripheral vision.

Our Experience: We saw flashes of light in my friend’s bedroom, gold shimmering orbs on walls and on a kitchen table, black orbs go into a wall, and later digital photos captured large orbs in my friend’s bedroom, his parent’s bedroom and basement.

8. Unexplained shadows, figures or apparitions in or around the dwelling or in certain “hot spots”
Our Experience: My son’s friend was the first to see an actual apparition down below  the basement steps. We also had a shadow figure reflected on an appliance in the basement; a photo captured a dark figure peeking behind my cousin's shoulder and wardrobe closet in the basement-which was the worst “hot spot”

9. Direct contact/interaction with a spirit by ways of asking a question and receiving within seconds an intelligent answer by ways of recorded EVP’s or physical action.

Our Experience: It was an amazing event to me when I posed a question to whatever spirit was in the basement and then received an immediate answer by way of an object being thrown that only I would know and recognize. When I again asked for verification of the spirit another object was thrown near my foot within seconds. Our audio tapes of EVPs are numerous and our videos verify the close interaction we had with the ghosts in the house. Sometimes with unpleasant results.

10. Electronics inexplicably shutting off and on.

Our Experience: It was learned early on that we always needed to carry extra batteries and tapes and extension cords when we started to document the paranormal activity in my friend’s house. We could only use our camcorder battery pack for less than an hour, sometimes less before it would lose power. The batteries would be drained although they were fully charged before entering the house. The lights in the house would also shut off and on, and the refrigerator and freezer doors would open suddenly.

11. Physical attacks by unknown entities that can cause serious injury. This is the most dangerous when dealing with the unknown. Some people can be singled out for attacks.

Our Experience: At the beginning of the poltergeist activity objects were never thrown at us but around the rooms. Then as the work of clearing out my friend’s house, objects were thrown at us and some were near misses meant to intimate and frighten us. I experienced a physical attack (of being pushed) outside on the grounds of my friend’s estate and my son was thrown to the floor in the living room-he said something grabbed his ankle and tripped him. We had bumps and bruises for weeks. We knew then that we were dealing with something dangerous.

12: Spirits Attached to People/Objects-Is This For Real?

Our Experience: YES! This can be true. I would have never in a million years believed this but I’ve become a believer since it’s happened to my son and me. My deceased friend was an anthropologist and world traveler and he willed to me hundreds of his artifacts and souvenirs. I had no idea until his sudden death the scope and depth of his collection. It was like cleaning out a museum. We now believe that some of these objects that I possess had negative energy associated with them and I unknowingly stored many in my home months prior to the paranormal activity. Bad Idea!
                                            
What to do?
Document, keep a diary, dust off your video recorder or buy a new digital camera and audio recorder. Review the evidence-Look at photographs, listen to the audio and view the video from the “haunted location” for anomalies that might be caught on film or tape (EVP’s-electronic voice phenomenon). You are not imaging all this. You may have people that will say to you, "Oh, you are just imagined it or that you made things up". You have to be careful with whom you share your experience. This is the reason I wrote my book, Estate of Horror, to inform and explain the extraordinary set of supernatural events that have changed my life forever.  For more information about my story and book you can go to: www.estateofhorror.com

Who are you going to call?

Calling in professional help when intervention is required to know what you are dealing with and what you are up against. This can be a paranormal team of investigators, a psychic medium or a parapsychologist. You have to do your homework and it can be a tough call as there are many people out there calling themselves paranormal investigators and they could make your situation worse. You need to be careful on picking someone who is out just out for the entertainment venue at your expense or someone who is a true professional in the field. I learned this the hard way and you can read about that experience in my book. You need to educate yourself (knowledge is power), check credentials, their organization, and their websites, ask others for referrals, check out other clients who may have used them and also go with your gut instinct.

Your biggest offense is a good defense. Show them you are not afraid as spirit entities feed off that negative energy. Take control- don’t let them control you. Stay strong physically, mentally and spiritually. Good Luck!

ORIGIN OF THE "VEILED LADY'

I have been asked about the design and origin of the statue on my working logo for my debut book, Estate of Horror and featured in the Book Teaser. This statue is a direct link to my deceased friend who is the subject of my book. As you may know by now that the reason I became involved with the paranormal is because of my responsibilities as an Executrix (female Executor) to this friend’s estate. The statue of the “Veiled Lady” was among his many hundreds of items and artifacts he collected and left behind and willed to me. He was an anthropologist, teacher, writer and lecturer and my friend for 30 years. The statue had been used in some of his lectures on the history of early Victorian customs and practices.

The statue is a replica of a sculpture made in England in 1850 by artist Raphaelle Monti. The exquisite technique and treatment of the veil over the woman’s face was originally sculptured in Cararra marble. It was purchased and owned by an English lord, the Duke of Devonshire. Although the statue depicts a young maiden on the eve of her wedding, it now became a somber symbol to me, given the tragic circumstances of my friend’s sudden death, of a figure shrouded in mourning. I felt that this statue was a unique icon for the book cover and it evolved into the focal point for my Book Teaser video because of the chilling paranormal experience we had at my friend’s home concerning the statue. I can’t give away the horrific sequence of events of what happened, so I guess you’ll just have to read about it when the book comes out.

 

Or you can watch the Book Teaser. A fact is all the props in the video came from my friend’s estate. The many cultural statues, figurines, dolls, books, magazines, film slides, post cards, photos and “haunted” typewriter featured in the video are symbolic to the chapters in my book. Even the color red has meaning.

Here is the YouTube video link:  http://youtu.be/kA2_q6GWJjQ

Some things I have posted online on my Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/EstateofHorror from the video production feature some very strange and unexpected events that occurred during the filming of our Book Teaser in July 2012 that we are not able to explain. You can see "Spirit Orbs" in the photos here that we did not see until after we reviewed 100 still photos of the production shoot. There were at least 8 photos with anomalies on them. Looks like the spirits were not camera shy.
You can see these photos and other continued weird postings on my Facebook page. BOO!

 

At the beginning of the video, as the door slowly opens and creaks, you see a shadow figure wearing a brimmed hat reflected on our white door and just before that there is a brief 2 second EVP of a dog barking. Our producer and crew said no one heard any dog barking or noise when they were filming this video (around 11pm that night) and no one in the crew was wearing a hat. Our brimmed hat shadow man came to my son (who has become a medium) in a dream months before and told him was a former resident who murdered his wife in the early 1900's. My son described him as wearing farmer's overalls and a brimmed hat along with his companion -a large black dog with red eyes. We researched in county records (our property dates to the early 1800's) and indeed a former owner went to prison for murdering his wife in the 1900's. Watch and enjoy a few shivers down your spine!