GHOST HUNTERS

This week begin my abandoned places/urban exploration theme week. Today, we explore abandoned sites associated with water. Ever since I saw the movie "In Dreams" ( awesome scary movie with Annette Bening and Robert Downey Jr) with a scene of divers diving in a lake where a town was underneath, swimming amongst headstones and a church, I have been fascinated with the idea of abandoned sunken ghost towns. Smith Island Chesapeake: This island in the Chesapeake is lost to time. It is 3 miles long and 1 mile wide and at sea level. It's lost a good deal of its citizens to poor crabbing and fishing conditions. The graves are topped by heavy stones so when there's a high tide or flooding rains, the bodies don't wash away to sea. At the rate of shrinkage, the island will be gone by the end of this century. Sharps Island: Around the beginning of the 19th century, Sharps Island was a roughly 600-acre (240-hectare) farming and fishing community at the mouth of Maryland's...

I am finishing up this week's theme of death/dying/afterlife with some awesome movies to provoke your imagination about the process. Let's begin with this documentary found on streaming Netflix. Flatliners - a very interesting and tense movie about med students taking each other to the edge to peek at the other side before being brought back to life again. Ghost - a romantic look at lovers separated by death. Heaven Can Wait - death, regrets, and reincarnation. Meet Joe Black - what if death took a holiday in the human realm? Constantine - He takes down the bad demons, but is he dancing with the afterlife?

Sure, I grew up in a notoriously haunted house. I witnessed a lot of phenomena, much of it I assumed as a kid growing up was perfectly normal. Some of it, like poltergeist activity, made me wonder how in the hell such a thing could occur. One time, when I was 10 years old, I stole my father's tape recorder he practiced his speeches on and sat on the stairs all night waiting for those booted footsteps and I captured them on tape only to have the sounds shot down by others saying I simply wore my father's boots and recorded it. I realized at a young age, you cannot disprove a haunting, but you also can't prove it! Jump ahead a few decades, living in a modern and not-haunted home, I had left the ghosts behind me, right? It all changed when my ex (husband at the time) was asked to a work friend's girlfriend's party. He wanted to go so he could play drums during the open mic all evening. I went along, but wasn't thrilled. I hated attending parties of people I didn...

The Mamas and the Papas "California Dreamin"  Tonight, Zak and the Boyz go to Glen Tavern Inn in California and they will get a tarot card reading and a seance in this hotel. Drinking game rules:  1. Stay home 2. Have a sip for every "bro," "dude," and every time Zak thinks a ghost touched him. The drink tonight? I'm thinking a good California wine. I personally like Pinot Grigio. How about Mirassou Winery's Pinot Grigio?

I can't help it. I have an evil sense of humor, so try and stick with me as we discuss the "grave" business ( pun intended ) of what to do with your carcass when you're gone. Some of the alternatives had me laughing and cringing as I discovered these really weird and interesting things to do with a dead body. There is no other approach to this bizarre subject than tongue in cheek... MUMMIFICATION: Summum Mummification of Transference says, “ Gifted artisans design each Mummiform to exact specifications. The Mummiform and "life mask" can be designed to incorporate the symbology of any religious or philosophical belief that you may hold. Everything is created in exact accordance with your wishes, as set forth in your pre-need arrangement." The casket can then be put in the ground deep enough that the cold won’t bother your remains or triple casketed. The price, you ask? The current costs for Mummification services are $67,000* within the continental Un...

I have performed many seances over the years and what I can tell you is this; there is no perfect saying or ritual, but there are some basics that should be adhered to - That being said, the elements of seances are similar, no matter how you word them or pace them. MEDIUM:   You do not need a trained medium, but you should have someone who is psychically sensitive. I would prefer to not use a empathic psychic , but someone who is more in control of the emotions that might bombard him/her, so I'd choose a psychic who has either precognition abilities, physical abilities like PK or psychometry, or someone who is very good at reading people by any means, whether it's tarot or palm reading, tea leaves, or whatever.  GROUP: You will want a group. I have found a group should consist of 4 people but no more than 8 . That seems to be ideal. Too few bodies and there is not enough energy. Too many bodies and it's intrusive and too much energy. Whether they are male or female does n...

Popularly termed NDEs, near-death experiences have been with us for as long as man has recorded his history for others to read. The moment of death and what occurs when the heart stops beating has been one of the major focuses of man since he had the ability to realize he was mortal. Many religions have been born with the promise to fearful mortals that there are rewards after their hard lives. Whether or not there is an actual “other side” will not be known until one passes and even then the answer may not be provided if the end is nothing more than darkness and loss of consciousness. But, we do have an interesting advantage with modern medicine, the ability to yank someone from the other side and back again to tell of his experiences. This occurs much more nowadays with our understanding and practice of resuscitation methods. ( "Flatliners" Intriguing movie! ) People’s experiences with near-death have given us some insight into what visual and sensory experiences might ...

Tonight at 9 pm EST, I'll be on Midnight Walker's radio show. Please come and listen!

The psychomantium is a gazing mirror used for making contact with those who have passed on. Dr. Raymond Moody ( of the book "Life After Life" fame ) made this ancient technique popular with his book "Reunions: Visionary Encounters With Departed Loved Ones." The best description I’ve found of this technique comes from this website’s description: “The initial setup is a little more complex and costly than that of a scrying mirror. A large mirror (4' high by 3-1\2' wide) is attached to a wall with the bottom edge about 3' from the floor. A comfortable, high backed chair is placed about 3' from the mirror. The top of the backrest of the chair should be below the bottom of the mirror. The feet of the chair should be trimmed to allow the chair to slant farther back than is normal. The person sitting in the chair should not be able to see his/her reflection in the mirror. The area around the chair and mirror is surrounded by a black velv...

There are mental, emotional and spiritual ways of recovering from grief. At first, dreams can be stuck in the death moments. You might repeatedly have these dreams of the death or the process.  If you cannot talk about the deceased without getting choked up or sobbing, the mental and emotional grief process are not over yet. When you can talk about the person and smile and feel warm inside, you are fully through the grief process because you think of them fondly and without the guilt, loneliness, or confusion. Mental and emotional ways of recovering include telling the story of the death to a loved one or writing about it in a journal, recalling every detail. You will have to do this same thing every day for a week to two weeks. It’s exhausting, but you will finally assimilate what happened and find it easier to talk about each time. This is the same process as recovering from PTSD. Dreams will begin to shift and when you speak the story or write the story each day, it is less and...

Sylvia Shults is a talented author of horror and romance. Tonight, Jim Heater , will be interviewing her. Expect Julie and I in the chatroom too. Paranormal Geeks Radio 9 pm EST/8 pm Central

Ready for today's theory about ancient giants?  I spent my Sunday off doing what a paranormal geek does, studying. I took all the accounts I could find of ancient giant skeleton finds and made a chart to find similarities, correlations, make some assumptions about migration or culture, time range, anything. While doing this, I thought about this -  Ancient giant skeletons have been found around the entire world - a race of exceedingly tall (7-12 feet tall) people with receding foreheads, double rows of teeth and technology (fire/tools/writing) a dvanced from other modern man/Neanderthal/Denisovans that were on the earth then. Ancient Indians said that they came to America and found the giants here with technology they didn't know. They had battles and the Indians say they killed off the giants. But, what if they simply drove them into hiding? What if for thousands of years, they remained hidden, and in that time became feral--loss of cloth-making/fire-making technolog...