GHOST HUNTERS

I love this place. I love the drive there down the 60, weaving in and out of hillsides filled with boulders. It’s just a beautiful and surprisingly fast drive. If you stop in Miami along the way, it’s a very abandoned feeling town with tons of bizarre antique shops. They were in the middle or renovating the town when the recession hit. It’s left it with an eerie feel. For a time there, money-burning yuppies were rushing there to buy second homes away from The Valley ( apparently, Queen Creek and Maricopa weren't far enough away ). It has a feel that’s so unsettling that I’m both repelled and attracted to it. You'll really want to see the shops here, take at least an hour stop here just to see. They have shops that sell some of the strangest stuff I've found while antiquing. Continue on to Globe which is very near. I saw my first and only full-body apparition in the top floor of the Gila County Jail which is abandoned and has become a museum and place for tours. ( see sk...

We all fell in love with you the moment we got up from our seats after viewing "Sixth Sense." We were intrigued by you when you came out with something original for the comic book freaks, "Unbreakable." We were in absolute terror during "Signs" when the brother was watching TV and saw the home video a family had taken of the alien just as it would have looked on CNN had it happened here and now to us. It didn't seem like the honeymoon would ever end. But, then like that seven-year itch...we got restless. You brought us "The Village" and we wanted so much to be scared. We tried so hard. We waited for the monster only to find it was not a horror movie but a psychological thriller. We didn't ask for our money back, we walked away trying to defend you still. "But the scenery was lush, the colors poignant, the use of red..." We waited hopefully for you to get back on the path. You were our Hitchcock of the new milenium. You had all ...

I tend to list my horror movie collection in a way that makes it possible to find something depending on my mood; woods, darkness, beasts, devil, witches, haunted houses, stalkers… you name it. Different times of the year, I’m in different moods for horror. In the springtime, for some reason, I pull out my woods-themed ones. Perhaps because the world is starting to get greener again this time of year ( yeah, even in Phoenix ). My top 5 favorites of the most popularly known films about woods are: 1. Blair Witch. 2. The Howling. 3. Friday the 13th. 4. Wrong Turn. 5. The Evil Dead. But, there’s a wide variety in the genre that didn’t get attention, but are worth digging up. If you liked any of those listed above, these might satisfy your need for woodland horror. Listed in order of favorites using my adjectives as always. 1. The Final Terror: stalking, green/lush, “Predator”-feel . This one was made in the 80s with a some well-known stars in it like Adrian Zmed and Rachel Ward an...

I'm so excited that B&Bs and folks with haunted hotels are getting into ghost hunting weekends. Regular folks without access to historic sites but want to learn about hunting ghosts, can use equipment and learn stuff while having a getaway and sleeping amongst ghosts. Here's just some examples of what's out there: Chestnut Hall in New Oxford Pennsylvania offers a ghost hunter's weekend pursuit March 27/28 2009. It includes being taught the equipment, doing a hunt, learning to use your own ESP to help you on the hunt. Learn more at: http://www.bbonline.com/pa/chestnuthall/specials.html Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River Massachusetts. There are tours of the house and on weekdays and on weekends it can be rented out. This is the famous murder site of Lizzie Borden's father and mother. Learn more at: http://www.lizzie-borden.com/ Villisca Ax Murder House in Villisca, Iowa. This house was the site of an entire family and two family friends murdered with ...

Thanks Julie and Mike of "Above the Norm." Something you said made me think about this subject close to my heart - Halloween Haunted Houses. As you can imagine, I've tried a good deal of them. I know what I'd like in an ideal haunted house. 1. The haunted house should be out in the countryside--an actual building that's perhaps old and abandoned. This does a few things: a. It's not a temporary tent which everyone knows they're entering and therefore loses its authenticity. b. You can weed out the city folks from the folks who truly want to go to a haunted location. How many times have you waited in a 4-hour line with teenager girls with their boyfriends screaming and being obnoxious? If it's further out, harder access, and not in the city with all the other restaurants and things around, you've just cut out some teens whose parents would just drop them off for the night. c. You don't scare people by lining them up in a parking lot and having ...

Since 2003, I've returned many times to Double Buttes Cemetery in Tempe for an ongoing puzzle that I want answered. Why have several different cameras, several different photographers, and many years of return visits produced continued strange photographic phenomenon at one family gravesite? It's the Wolff family grave--white fencing--east of the caretaker's shack. PLEASE LOOK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE TO SEE A STRING OF THE PHOTOS TAKEN FROM 2003 ONWARD. These are only a sample of the things we've gotten on film. Different photographers at vastly different times with different cameras have captured the rainbow effect. It peaks and then dissipates, but it's always in the same orientation no matter which angle you film it. The blue seems to emanate from one grave area of the 19 or so family members. We've never come to a conclusion about it. We can't recreate it and we can hold the camera steady in place and get it peaking and then disappearing. It really c...

If you were a single looking for a hookup, you might try a bar or one of those online dating services, attempt a speed dating event, or hang out in the bookstore hoping to find a bookish gal/guy, but in the ghost hunting world our options are a bit more limited by the issues of property ownership. The fact is haunted sites more often than not fall into these categories; haunted buildings which are publically owned/operated such as museums and theaters, haunted buildings which are privately owned such as homes, B&B’s, restaurants, public historic sites which are haunted and accessible such as Gettysburg, and other public often private sites that are not supposed to be accessible such as graveyards. For the weekend ghost hunter who doesn’t have carte blanche like TAPS to go anywhere they wish, it can be daunting. Asking folks if you can investigate gets mixed reactions and anyone who doesn’t have a long-term reputation isn’t going to be even allowed over the threshold. What a lot of...

(This art is one of my son's pieces) I am a huge advocate of rational emotive methods ( see works of people like Albert Ellis and David Burns ). I incorporate these into my work as a ghost hunter and as a human being so I can enjoy a healthier more productive life. It allows me to interpret things accurately and believe in my abilities to cope so that whatever comes my way, I’m confident about my ability to cope. Here’s an example of how getting your head in the right place can give you a very different reaction to an event than someone who lets their mind take over without interruption. My best friend and I did lots of “girl getaway” wild and crazy things together, so I figured that since I was the queen of Halloween, I’d take her to a huge haunted house event. You know, one of those ones that takes 45 minutes to get through and lots of screams. I thought, since we’d gotten into lost of mischief in the past, this would be another fun and silly event for us to laugh about in the fu...

I know I write about ghost hunting theories, but everyone knows I also adore Bigfoot and so in my extensive horror collection, there’s a lot of Bigfoot themes roaming amongst the DVDs. I figured since most people who are interested in the paranormal area also interested in the “Man of the Woods,” I’d let you know about my five favorite Bigfoot movies, if I could only keep five of them. I’m extremely picky about what kind of Bigfoot movies I collect-very few are worthy of my keeping or even watching the first time ( made for Sci-Fi channel crap ), and I have a huge amount of documentaries. I think the documentaries are usually more scary than the movies. In fact. “Bigfoot Lives” by Tom Biscardi ( remember the guy who promoted the Bigfoot in a Freezer hoax?) Well, that documentary was actually quite entertaining and unbelievable, but I wouldn’t recommend it, mostly because I don’t wish him to profit from anyone buying it. The sad fact is that there’s not a lot out there, so sometimes t...

It seems only appropriate since I'm a ghost hunter and doing some articles on ghostly movies, that I include an interesting find: "Death of a Ghost Hunter." The leader of our local ghost hunting group turned me onto the making of this movie by locals. In fact, I believe it was filmed in Queen Creek or Mesa??? I love to support small moviemakers especially because my ghost hunting buddy and I always say that with me as a writer and her as an artist, we could make a better horror movie than the crap that's out there. We miss the really suspenseful elements of a good haunted house movie where you don't see the ghosts, don't know what they'll do next, and the tension that creates. So, when I heard about this movie, I pre-ordered it before I even saw it. I'm glad I did. It's a movie about a ghost investigator in a home with a dark past. It mixes the complications of lust and religiosity and gives you that "Legend of Hell House" feel. I didn...

I think all of us horror movie lovers probably know the big haunted house movies like; Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, The Haunting, The Entity, Legend of Hell House, House on Haunted Hill, The Shining, Watcher in the Woods, and The Changeling. I’d like to introduce you to some you might not have known about. I’m putting them in order from my favorite to least favorite of the top 5. Once again, I use some words (italics) that help you to decide what movie you might be in the mood for: The Stone Tape (1972): Dark, original, 50s sci-fi feel, British. This one was very hard to find online, but when I did it only worked on the computer and not the DVD player, so be prepared if you buy it from England. This is one of my classic favorites because of the theory they handled in this early 70s movie. The concept of stones holding and recording events and haunting a place by releasing the events again and again. This was a theory I've felt since I was a child and visited other haunted sit...

I hope to regularly write about some of the more obscure horror movies you might have missed. Today’s article is about Made-For-TV horror of the 70s, my top 5 fav's. I admit as a nostalgic adult, I love having a collection of the movies that terrified me as a kid. Here's the top 5 obscure ones that I have practically worn out. I suppose it's a combination of remembering my first real thrills at horror and a longing for the days when budget movies could eek out a lot of tension and mood and atmosphere instead of slicing and dicing characters. These were true thrillers and give you the taste and tang of the 70s. If you were around during that time period, these will surely get you nostaglic. Of course, there were some huge ones like “Burnt Offerings,” Salem’s Lot,” and “Trilogy of Terror,” but I want to introduce readers to ones they might not have known about. If I could only keep 5 of my made-for-TV 70s horror movies, these are them. I tend to write a few descriptive words...

Around Halloween, you'll hear a lot more from me about crafts, but this is a fun theme for the backyard that I just had to share. I made these years ago as a nod to my ghost hunting hobby. They're fake orbs that dangle from a tree. Need: fishing wire, florist pins, 6" stryofoam balls, stone-effect spray paint. I went to Michaels ( you could also go to JoAnn or other craft store )and got the supplies. I took the styrofoam balls and tied a long piece of fishing line to a florist's pin and stuck it into the ball. I then hung it from the tree and while it was hanging, I went around it with spray paint that makes a pale gray stone effect on the surface. I hung several from the tree. At night they float eerily. It's really a fun effect. You could even do glow-in-the-dark paint or plaster them if you want more texture. What was really intriguing about this was that as soon as I hung them up, I started getting what I call "the poser." An orb that hangs out with ...

You know, with my love of cemeteries, I have to mention a very special one: Mobile’s Galilee Baptist Cemetery. This cemetery is special because Mobile was the first African American settlement town in Arizona. The cemetery houses its founders. It was nearly forgotten until the Pioneer Cemetery Association came forward at the insistence of a worried resident who believed builders in the Maricopa area might be planning to infringe upon the cemetery. To help document the graves and discover the historic significance of this lonely cemetery, I went along with the Association to log all the graves and listen to the history from the words of one of the founders’ daughters. She even took us into the desert where there was a cattle watering hole once used for baptisms by the locals called “Negro Flats.” It was the most spiritual spot I’ve been to in a very long time, along with Mt. St. Helens and the Vortex on Airport Rd. in Sedona, and a few other stray places, this place really got to me. T...

This is my line of articles about places to do day trips from the Phoenix area to haunted and historic sites in AZ. The trip to Mayer is a good one. It's about a 1 hour 16 minute drive from Phoenix. Take I-17 north to AZ-89 towards Prescott. Very soon there will be a turnoff for Mayer at Goodwin. Take Goodwin towards S. Marina St. Turn left onto S. Marina St. Turn right onto Gurley St, turn slightly onto AZ-69 E. Turn right onto Main St. Main Street is awesome because there's a couple of charming antique shops. My ghost hunting partner and I were very comfortable in the building on the left with the outdoor display, but the building on the right we kept thinking we heard someone over our shoulders calling our names inside. Very strange. I'd like to learn a bit more about that building. You can head on towards the cemetery which I think is the best cemetery in AZ as far as location and very old west feel. At the antique shops there's a stop sign at Oak. Turn right on ...

I'll try to do columns for different cities and what I've found there, as well as a column on day trips. Later today I'll probably do a column on a daytrip to Mayer. Mesa, Arizona is the most haunted portion of the Valley of the Sun by my estimation. If you stop in the middle of the growing confusion and crowding, you can slow time down just enough to feel something heavy, something watching, something humming at a strange frequency--not with sound, but with vibrations that ripple through your body. My conjecture on the matter is that Mesa is haunted by the extensive HoHoKam canal system that ran through it in ancient days by a culture who vanished mysteriously. Living in the desert and waterways being the difference between life and death, surely springs were spiritual centers as well as practicalities. No one knew how to manage their water like the HoHoKam. For a good map of where the canals ran in the olden days ( portrayed in the pale blue lines on the map ) go to here...

We had a funky time the first time we went to this cemetery. My ghost hunting partner and I rambled around the place at night, getting a feel for it, but it took only a few minutes to realize something felt very wrong. I stood near some headstones just to the right of the entrance and I felt dizzy. It distinctly felt like something was chasing around the cemetery, zooming past me, sometimes close, sometimes far away, but speeding around like a lunatic. I had a sense of something in fright running from it. I couldn't explain it except to say that I spent the evening chasing its trek and taking shots, even though there was no breeze. My hunting partner agreed. Something seemed to moving about. I felt it was up in the air above us, swooshing and racing, and full of mischief. I couldn't describe it any further than that, but the shots all evening showed something that appeared to be chasing something. I have a feeling about orbs that they are completely explainable, but this phenom...

I'd like to mention to my regular followers that the head of MVD Ghostchasers, Debe Branning, writes regular articles as the paranormal writer for Examiner online. She has loads of great articles on the ghosts of Arizona (she wrote the book "Sleeping With Ghosts" about Arizona's haunted hotels and is currently writing "Dining With Ghosts" about haunted AZ restaurants). Her articles can be found at (you'll want to bookmark this one for regular viewing) http://www.examiner.com/x-2345-Arizona-Haunted-Sites-Examiner~y2009m1d15-Ghost-hunter-resource-center

I thought I'd cover some of the Arizona cemeteries, since going to them and photographing them is a hobby of mine, as well as looking for infamous tenants. Some folks like to walk the grounds of cemeteries and they become park-like such as City of Mesa's cemetery that has more exercisers and strollers than visitors. There's also cemeteries for hardcore taphophiliacs (lovers of graves) like St. Francis in Phoenix. You can reach it by taking Thomas to 48th Street and heading south towards Oak. It's on the left and broken into two huge graveyards. The furthest one is actually the better in that it has tons and tons of outdoor crematory remain crypts and all the nuns and priests are buried there. I'd say for all the AZ cemeteries, this one is probably the most crowded with residents. Foot per foot, there's more folks there than anywhere else I've seen in AZ. What I like about St. Francis is that it has wild cats running around there. A nice local lady feeds th...

Local legends are always fun. This one is very scary. In Casa Grande (just northwest of I-10 meeting I-8, south on Thornton Rd which is a washboard dirt road) there's a place called "The Domes." This conglomeration of weird shaped buildings was originally built as a factory that never opened. What's left is a bunch of very long and Kiva-shaped buildings that are open to the elements. And to transients. People have reported black magic rituals, a rape and murder, black figures darting between the buildings, tapping on cars, weird sensations, and weird vibrations. Well, you just know that I had to find out about it. I went with the leader of MVD Ghostchasers, Debe Branning, on a little road trip to document Adamsville Cemetery on the 33rd parallel. We were not far from The Domes, so we thought we'd investigate. The road down there is very very bumpy washboard dirt road. When you get to it, there's some barbed wire to contend with. We were brave ( or should I say...

I was never scared or threatened by the haunting at Aspen Grove. In fact, as a child I determined that the ghosts of soldiers missing their families had just attached to my large family and were walking the halls at night to guard us. There was, however, one haunting feature that so disturbed me that if I were home alone, I’d stay outside on the swing set. My parents’ master suite was an original part of the house. The largest upstairs room. Of course, used by the most important people living there. I like to think that included the troops who had set up shop in the house during the Civil War and were performing surgery on its floors. It’s the only explanation for what happened in that room even a hundred plus years later. We had three huge Waterford crystal chandeliers downstairs in the house; one in the music room, one in the dining room; and one in the living room. They were multi-tiered and tinkled beautifully if someone were walking upstairs in one of the bedrooms. My mother could...

As you move on in the ghost hunting world, you add a lot of new finds to your list. When I first started hunting, I was still stuck in the obstacle of what to do with orb photos. That seems so long ago now, but once you have knowledge, you can't go back to not having it. It's like that day when I was a kid and questioning the Sunday School teacher's explanation about how women were fashioned from one of Adam's ribs when I had just learned that men had nipples and milk ducts because they were women to begin with and in the womb with the right hormone being introduced their genitalia became external and they became men. So, I tried to explain to her how technically, men were fashioned from women and that would make God of the female gender if we were designed after her . That was the beginning of the end of organized religion for me. I came to the conclusion at the ripe age of 12 that religion was the prostitution of spirituality. There was definitely no room in the orga...