GHOST HUNTERS

If you were a child of the 70s, there’s no way you bypassed that period of time without hearing references to "Chariots of the Gods?" book by Erich Von Daniken ( published in American in 1970 ). There was a TV documentary based on it called “In Search of Ancient Astronauts” which was wildly popular at the time. This is what happens when you follow your passion and aren’t scared to travel the world and seek knowledge. Von Daniken began as a study of ancient holy writings and, although like most of us was forced to work in the “real world,” he continued to study things of interest to an obsessive level. He found a theme in archaeological artwork which created his hypothesis; perhaps the earth was visited by aliens in ancient times. I have a personal respect for anyone who’s willing to create conjecture that rocks the majority’s world and makes us question just how much knowledge we have accrued and if perhaps we’ve accrued knowledge in the wrong areas for healthy growth. In hi

I’m absolutely consumed with abandoned sites and junkyards and anywhere else that humans were, but no longer exist. Something about what they left behind, the weather-worn pages of magazines, the rusted hinges, broken windows…is absolutely fascinating to me. Like an interesting crime scene mystery. I decided recently to combine my love of ghost hunting and abandoned sites by making beautiful objects from finds at cemeteries and abandoned sites. They will possess the untouched memories of where they came from and have the decidedly “grandmother’s attic” feel that will spook folks out. I began collecting things at these sites and storing them outdoors so they can age even more. When I begin to sell these crafts online, they’ll be called “Abandoned.” My son is working on the logo right now . I can really get into this because certain objects to me, as someone who reads them, have a combination that when put together can give people the unconscious feelings of what the objects contain. If

As someone who has had all sorts of different sleep disorders my entire life, I can definitely empathize with folks who have them more regularly. I’m lucky that mine are fairly few and far between nowadays, but in my youth they were a constant battle. Sleep disorders can run the gamut from common insomnia ( in which one has difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep ), night terrors ( in which the person is inconsolable and appears to be awake but is not actually fully awake and may be hallucinating and unable to hear you ), sleep walking, sleep paralysis, also known as hypnagogia, ( in which the mind is awake but the body cannot move ). There are lots of variations of these issues including chronic nightmares and repeat nightmares. I’ve had one repeat dream about a tornado chasing me. When I finally figured out what it meant, I quit having it. The tornado to me represented something I didn’t want to face or deal with in my current life. I watched my reaction in the dreams, sometimes

The yearly "Cemetery Crawl" event went off without much of a hitch, except perhaps some car troubles for one team. The two-day road rally based on "The Amazing Race" sent contestant teams through western Arizona to every small cemetery and interesting weird road stop possible. They did fantastic and I don't believe there was one speeding ticket ( a first, I think!) The winners came in pretty far ahead of the pack, the Catacomb Crawlers were the winners and they seemed to have a fantastic time following crazy rhyming clues, doing weird deeds, and collecting fake money along the way. At the end, they came to Double Buttes Cemetery in Tempe where they had to find a veteran's grave and leave a flag. Then, they were off to the labyrinth which is the crematory. They had to follow the weaving path to the center where they were given their prizes.

If you fell in love with horror during the 70s, there was a steady and promising banquet to feed upon. If you enjoyed the feel of “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Burnt Offerings,” “Watcher in the Woods,” and “The Reincarnation of Peter Proud,” this 1977 film will satisfy. “The Sentinel” stars some big-time names like Chris Sarandon, John Carradine, Ava Gardner, Martin Balsam, Burgess Meredith, and Beverly DeAngelo ( yeah, as in National Lampoon Vacation movies ). With this cast, it has a decidedly “Ghost Story” feel to it. This one isn’t for kids, as there is admittedly some nude shots involving Beverly DeAngelo ( which I suppose for some male fans of the Vacation series this might be a selling point ). A model finds a room in an odd boarding house. The people living there are quirky and her encounters with them mystifying. The plot keeps you wondering and the house is so creepy and the occupants so fascinating, that you wonder where this movie is going. It does have a twist ending that creeps

Even though I consider myself a ghost hunter, I’m interested in all areas of the unexplained and my second favorite subject is Bigfoot. This North American Great Ape as some would call him, is a puzzling creature. Although for centuries Native Americans have reported such a hairy man of the mountains, it was until the October 20, 1967 Patterson film taken in the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California, that people began to openly debate the existence of this cryptozoological creature. The film can be viewed here . The skeptic in me has to debunk before I can move on and say something is extraordinary. I’ve seen this film nearly all my life, but never stopped to really analyze it. I simply dismissed it because of the context in which it was taken. I tended to dismiss this film because these two men went into the woods to find Bigfoot with a camera. The setting in which this occurred to me was always suspect. Had they just happened upon him while filming a fishing trip, I admi

History: March 13, 1997: Lights in a formation that appears to be V-shaped are seen from Nevada, traveling southeasterly over the State of Arizona and into Mexico. The bulk of the sightings were reported during a three-hour time period by thousands of witnesses. First sighting: 7:55 p.m. Henderson NV Second major sighting : Prescott 8:17 p.m. ( only 22 minutes later traveling 170 miles ). Third major sighting: At 10 p.m. it was viewed over the Valley of the Sun ( 123 miles from Prescott in just under two hours’ time ). Fact: Something was obviously seen by thousands of people over hundreds of miles on the same evening. There was something in the sky. Something with lights. Something unconventional to those viewing it. We can say with definite assurance there was something in the air. It was photographed by many, as well. Some were directly under it, some saw it in the distance. They all saw it within the same time period. They all agreed there was something lit up in the sky in a

The 1980s heralded the turn in horror movies from gothic suspense to slasher. Some movies contained both characteristics during this time of change. The movie “Alone in the Dark” is one of those movies. And don't worry, the gore is very minimal. Made in 1982, this movie has an impressive cast including Donald Pleasance, Jack Palance, and Martin Landau. Yeah, a horror movie with all three bigshots! The premise is simple. A new psychiatrist comes to work at a mental hospital. The old psychiatrist he’s replacing moved on to greener pastures, but the patients who adored him come to believe psychotically that the new doc killed the old one and took his place. Now, they want revenge. And they break out of their hospital to find his home and his family and trap them in there for a real suspenseful standoff. The mental patients are fantastically developed into all your greatest fears of meeting on the street. That this innocent family has to deal with their wrath is terrifying. This was w

It’s hard not to write horror manuscripts and make spooky arts and crafts and hunt ghosts without wanting to watch horror in your down time. That’s me. I adore horror. I especially love supernatural themes and atmospheric British 1970s horror. One of the most popular horror makers in Britain in the 70s was Hammer Films. They produced movies from the 50s to the 70s that were part of regular viewing for lucky Brit’s. A slew of films came from it including lots of Dracula and Frankenstein, but also a TV series called “Hammer House of Horror.” This was somewhat akin to the series “Night Gallery” and “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” that were showing in America at the time. It begins with creepy music and spooky settings and moves into what feels much like a play. Some of the episodes included “The House That Bled to Death,” “Children of the Full Moon,” and “The Mark of Satan.” These episodes are actually very riveting once you get over the time period campiness of the mod short skirts and fros

I don’t have a lot of expectations for ghost hunting shows since the advent of “Ghost Hunters.” It’s probably because, even though I think TAPS is a bit half hazard at doing real research to better the field, they’re pretty good at debunking and they certainly can filter their clients to get reasonable folks whose homes show promise of paranormal activity without having fractured emotional states. While watching “Paranormal State” ( purely for the entertainment and mood it provides ) it dawned on me that of the ghost hunting shows, this is kind of the Jerry Springer version. The team is compromised of a leader who pretty much tells the group what things are and what they should do. The humble followers nod their heads a lot and do his bidding, but this is really all about Ryan and his belief system and what he wants the paranormal world to be comprised of. None of the members seem to offer any knowledge or insight, except for the Pagan who has some knowledge of spirituality ( other tha

It's that time of year again when Debe Branning from MVD Ghostchasers and I are working on the upcoming Cemetery Crawl event. It's based on "The Amazing Race" as a kind of road rally that has teams traveling the backroads of Arizona and visiting dozens of cemeteries and learning about history and ghost hunting while competing for prizes. Debe wrote a fantastic article about our very first one that started the whole yearly event. You can find it here.

This movie from 1981 is a forgotten gem. It stars John Cassavetes and is based on a book written by Ray Russell ( the book is very good ). I admit to being nostalgic for the old-time 70s feel of movies and this one certainly gives you a good dose of bad hair, clothes, and boxy cars. It’s very New England feeling and the score is really moody and appropriate. The story is of a New England town in which young women are being brutally raped. The question is, by whom? Or what? The local doctor is baffled and at the same time trying to protect his teenaged daughter from a young man he is suspicious of. The strong points of the movie are its nostalgic feel, the mystery surrounding the perpetrator, the acting is fairly good, and it keeps you wondering until the end. I like this movie because I’m fascinated with the concept of an incubus ( a demon trying to impregnate women ). The book was very well written and the author helped to write the movie, as well, which made it a much better story

I look for consistencies in hauntings. As I often tell people, I’m a Virgo and logic-minded. It doesn’t mean there isn’t unexplainable stuff out there, it’s just that we haven’t figured out how to capture it and give it a name. None of this will be done until folks doing the research start taking note of commonalities. Some of the commonalities I’ve witnessed are that ghost activity picks up when folks move into a place and move out of a place, renovate a place, take in a new member of the family, or lose one member of the family, or if they have young children. If they collect antiques, if they live in clutter, darkness, and loads of chatchki’s, they are also more apt to have issues. In fact, walking into a place to run a study, I can usually tell where the activity is occurring just by the way the house is laid out and even decorated. It makes one wonder if ghosts are armchair decorators. The principles of Feng Shui are that energy or “chi” moves throughout our environment, but depen

One of thousands of unanswered questions in the field of paranormal research is whether or not a ghost can be attached to an object and continue to “haunt” a favorite chair or bed or other possession. This is obviously impossible to prove, but there does definitely seem be an association with objects, their location, and activity. People who have recently inherited belongings from deceased relatives often report suddenly having footsteps, sounds, cold spots, and a sense of being watched; all signs of paranormal activity. Under this same cloak of phenomenon, the renovation of a house and changing of its walls and coverings can also seem to release activity. The question can be broken down even further by asking; Does a person’s soul attach to an object and continue to stay with it? Does his lifetime interaction with that object continue to replay somehow? Does a person's interaction with an object continue, even when they are no longer touching it? Does a person who has handled an o

I saw this movie on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” recently and was surprisingly riveted to watch the entire thing. This isn’t my usual mode. I have a low tolerance for new horror in general and usually become distracted within minutes. This time, I settled in with no distractions and watched it without pause. The film was made in 1988, so I’ll give it credit for that. ( It was some time in the 90s when horror went seriously downhill ). This one had some originality and forethought. It was very well acted and very well filmed. I was surprised by the quality of it because I had never heard of this film before and I usually follow the progression of any new horror movie. It takes place in small town in what appears to be the 70s/80s time period. A father is a doctor and has a life-sized doll used for medical education. It sits in his family clinic and he does a ventriloquist voice for the doll named “Pin.” His son and daughter come to think of Pin as a family member. The son, however, trul

I thought I'd give everyone a shiver and a smile today. This comes from Funny or Die website. What if Willy Wonka was a horror movie trailer?

I like to search for obscure horror movies. Admittedly, I’m obsessed with anything from the 50s to 80s, but I’m equal opportunity. Occasionally, a more modern one comes out that’s not too bad. The movie “Deathwatch” is one of those films. It’s also one you might have passed by in the video store and didn’t stop to check it out. I'm encouraging you -- stop and check it out. Made in 2002, “Deathwatch” is set in 1917 WWI. Hey, I’m not a war movie type at all. In fact, if it’s a war movie, I won’t watch it, but somehow I stumbled onto this one and after a few minutes, I was hooked. Imagine a fog-shrouded field and British soldiers moving in on the Germans. The Brit’s find a German trench and take it over for shelter. In the mists they find out they aren’t fighting the Germans anymore. They’re fighting something unseen. The trench is possessed with evil and they begin to turn on each other and freakish things happen to the men. The film was beautifully made and I’m crazy about anythin

This article really struck me as having some components that might explain hauntings. Is it at all possible that the human body can create a phantom self? Would this contain the soul? That this woman can actually relieve an itch with a third arm that does not to the eye exist, is intriguing. If you look at humans, we can imagine picking a lemon, feeling the waxy texture, and biting into it, and we will actually salivate. We are not actually biting a lemon--but our mind does not know the difference. I'd love to hear from ya'all about what you think of this phenomenon and how it might integrate into hauntings.

It’s probably not any wonder that when we ask people “what places do you think are haunted?” they will likely list places like; hospitals, battlefields, prisons, bars, and mental institutions. You don’t hear peoples list off; Disneyland, water parks, or malls. Why do you suppose that is? Hauntings are notoriously tied to emotional upset and tragedy. That somehow in that moment of death under great duress, a being is able to cling to that location and haunt it endlessly. What if when a person passes on he simply goes to his final destination, whether that is eternal sleep or heaven? What if, however, the moment of great anguish did imprint itself on the environment and is contained therein, ready to be released under the right conditions? This is the theory behind residual hauntings. Of course, all of ghost hunting is under the umbrella of “pseudoscience” until something tangible is discovered and recognized by science. I like to knock around some of my own theories and ones that are ci

I’m living in a state ( Arizona ) that is geologically intriguing. We have the Grand Canyon, but also many mining towns. Not surprisingly, the heavy haunting activity and the mining towns match up perfectly. Towns such as Bisbee, Tombstone, Globe, Jerome, Vulture mine, and numerous other mining hubs have reported ghostly activity even back to when mining began in those areas. Sedona is yet another geological wonder that reports a very high incidence of all kinds of paranormal activity from UFO sightings to healing energy to vortices and heightened extrasensory perception skills. There are a lot of theories on why geology is important to hauntings or especially residual hauntings ( when an event seems to be recorded by the environment and played back continually ). These theories include the conductivity of certain kinds of minerals for spirit energy and perhaps the qualities in them that make it possible to record events, to geomagnetic activity, tectonic strain, geological faults, ra

When I inherited the family photos and information ( my role as the baby of the family is the historian ), I also inherited a new insight into my mother. When I was growing up, mom hated to be photographed. So did my hippie sister, but I think she believed that photos were a way Middle America made folks appear what they weren’t (this from a young woman whose favorite color was “clear”). That being said, my assumption for my mother, who was overly concerned about her appearance, was that she didn’t want documentation of her aging. Still, watching her dive into the photos when they came back from the processor, searching quickly without doing the usual vain womanly preoccupation of picking apart your chin line or your smile, I realized she was looking for something. Something quickly recognizable. When I inherited the photos, I found out what that was . As you can see above by the collage, mother had dozens and dozens of such photos with what looked like light refractions on them. Th

Can you name any of these people?

Imagine living on an estate with two enormous boxwood mazes. Then, imagine having five kids in the family and parents who, no matter how well they were doing financially, didn’t buy their kids toys. They wanted them to be creative and resourceful. The land and its outbuildings alone had more than enough to work with, from building tree forts to using leftover furniture in the barn to turn it into a playhouse. One of our favorite activities was flashlight tag. It was especially fun on a hot Virginia summer’s night with lightning bugs competing for attention. The back boxwood maze was more mature in height and an ideal place for a great game of flashlight tag. The ancient birdbath with the naked cherub statue in the center was our starting point. Usually my brother wanted to manage ( or is that micromanage? ) the game, so he would begin by being “it.” The rest of us would scatter like buckshot throughout the winding maze of English boxwoods to find the perfect strategic point to make o

Today, I found proof of human spirits here . The song "Stand By Me" performed in bits and pieces by people from around the world.

Medical researchers have been working fast and furiously to try and debunk the notion that a person’s soul exits his body during a near-death experience. Many valid explanations have been placed on the table, but there are conflicts to each theory. If there were still some kind of “emergency” activity in the brain that causes a near-death experience ( leaving the body, traveling through a tunnel, seeing dead relatives, feeling at peace ), then this is an activity that does not show up on EEG machines. If the brain were still active in a pulseless/breathless state, then why not when one is anesthetized? Do you recall psychedelic dreams during an appendectomy? Probably not. So, perhaps the separation of the soul from the body must occur when the body is no longer a viable vessel. A part of the anesthetic is an amnesiac-inducing chemical. Could it take away the memory that your soul did separate during surgery? Playing both sides of the debate, I wonder too why the soul isn’t aware durin