GHOST HUNTERS

I have been very blessed to know some amazing bloggers, but one who was very dear to my heart was my good friend, John Wolfe. He ran the blog Season of Shadows and embodied all things vintage and true Halloween. He would begin early in the year designing elaborate home haunts and sharing on video how he went about designing them. He did lots of volunteer work and was always available for anyone. He sought to understand the spiritual and the other side. In fact, as he was dying, he said he would contact me through EVPs. And, he asked me to write his memorial which I did and he read it and approved of it before his passing at much too early an age in his 30s. Each Halloween, I will post his memorial here. Halloween is his season, his paradise, and I miss him something awful every October. I'd like to share him with you now - "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" (Edgar Allen Poe)  ( John Wolfe ) “ Night of the Wolf” Nox Arcana ( one of his favorites ) I a

In a suburb in the capital of Peru, two 1000-year-old mummies were found.  They were found in what was an ancient religious complex and the child was thought to be perhaps buried alive with the dead adult as an offering to the gods. There were also jars with guinea pigs inside and cat designs on the outside. All the mummies found in this ancient complex were in squatting position, wrapped in rope. They were believed to be part of the Wari Culture that was around 100 to 600 AD and disappeared with no written language on record. This woman was wearing a wooden mask and, as you can imagine, it startled the people who found it. Many ceramics and textiles were found. Now, that suburb must seriously have some interesting vibes - 

Can a location be cursed?  Technically, a curse is a spell put upon a person (or place) to make bad things happen. If a location has a repeatedly dark history, one might make a case that it had been cursed. Cursed by the fates. Case 1:  "Doll Island" Mexico  (cursed to repeat a tragedy) This location where a man moved his family to find some peace, found instead a tragic event. A girl drowned in the canal near his island and he was consumed thereafter with the belief her ghost was still there. To appease the little girl, he left out dolls. Then, added more. And, over decades, others added to the collection until there were hundreds and hundreds of them. In the ironic curse of this whole scenario, the man eventually drowned in the canal. Here's the other question to ask-- Can cumulative bad energy affect the emotions/decisions of people who go there next? Case 2: "Suicide Forest" Japan  (cursed by cumulative bad energy) If enough people commit suicide in a place,

Tonight, one of the women I put on my Women Role Models in the Para-Field blog post , is going to be a guest on the show and I'm a HUGE fan of hers, especially her book, " Ghost ."  Katherine Ramsland is a forensics expert with a mind for the dark and unexplained, murder, and mayhem. The second hour, Michael Kleen will be on. This expert folklorist is just the ticket before Halloween. He is the author of Haunting Illinois: A Tourist's Guide To the Weird and Wild Places of the Prairie State . Julie and I are planning a trip to Illinois and this book will help us plot our descent upon the weirdness. I am so excited about tonight's show, I can barely stand in place. 9 pm EST/8 pm Central/6 pm Pacific Paranormal Geeks Radio

Brownie Kisses 1 package fudge brownie mix (13-inch x 9-inch pan size) 48 striped chocolate kisses Prepare brownie mix according to package directions for fudge-like brownies. Fill paper-lined miniature muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 350° for 18-21 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Immediately top each with a chocolate kiss. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely. Yield: 4 dozen. Mounds Candy Bar Brownies 2 Mounds candy bars 1/2 cup shortening 1 cup plain flour 1 cup granulated sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 cup chopped nuts Melt candy bars and shortening. Remove from heat. Add remaining ingredients and blend well. Spread in greased 9-inch square pan. Bake at 350F for 25 minutes. While warm, cut into bars. Candy Corn Bark 16 Halloween-colored chocolate sandwich cookies, chopped 1 1/2 cups broken small pretzels 1/3 cup raisins 1 1/2 pounds white chocolate, broken into square

When a Christian prays to God, he put his belief that his higher power (along with his own decisions and actions here on earth ) will come together to fulfill a goal. When a pagan lights a candle and calls on the desired deity for the task, he is putting his belief in the powers of that god/goddess ( along with his own actions and intentions, energy, and focus here on earth ) to make this goal happen. There is nothing of Christianity that wasn't fashioned from the earlier religion, Paganism. In Paganism, there were no earthly representatives of a higher power, there were gods and goddesses for each facet of life, like Catholics have Saints.  There was ritual, incense, candles, chants, and magic - as there is in the more modern Christian faiths.   That being said, how does this spiritual magic result from prayer and spellbinding? Belief Belief is the foundation of spiritual magic ( prayer, spellbinding, meditation ). Belief is key because the only false god is the one you do not be

I recently wrote about how to create a psychomanteum, theater for the dead . I decided this Halloween season to use one to try to communicate with a beloved Halloween Blogger, John Wolfe (Season of Shadows) to communicate from the other side. Here is the 6-video (brief videos) of the process -

October 31st is noted as All Hallow's Eve or Halloween.  It's believed Christians took this festival concept right from pagan origins of the Celtic Samhain celebration. There is much debate on how this holiday began, but it has become a most popular time for children to get candy and adults to put on costumes and watch scary movies. The basics are the same; scary decorations, costumes, parties, corn mazes, pumpkin patches, Jack O'Lanterns, apple bobbing, trick or treating, and horror themes. America has done Halloween up more than any other country, celebrating it full force with horror movie marathons to Haunted Attractions and huge parties. There is, however, a much darker side to Halloween - like the tainted candy fears. I don’t know about ya’all, but my Halloween’s as a kid were totally wild and free orgies in which the children ruled the streets. We carried pillowcases `cause we were cocky son-of-a-bitches and we figured it was going to carry our enormous amount of loo

"Destination Tr uth" had a season 3 opener that got a lot of attention for show casing something that isn't necessarily a haunting, but a combination of conditions that seem to be prevalent in "weird " places including ghost lights, feeling sick, plants not growing, even p olterge ist-like effects.  In the Romania forest of Hoia Baciu, the DT crew got a real wake-up call about the forces on the earth that are yet to be explained. I was able to find that gold and copper mining in this mountain range is extensive, loads of limestone and salt. When I think of gold, copper, and salt, I think of electrical conductivity. Hmm ... Going a bit further, I discovered that the copper mining had leached copper into the streams and there were huge issues with toxicity. On the show "Destination Truth" they probed for what sort of symptoms people exhibited in the haunted forest. They rattled off things like vomiting, anxiety, insomnia, headaches, skin rashes, and fa

I'm not sure I can explain why we find vintage Halloween photos so creepy. Perhaps it's the homemade costumes. Perhaps it's the bland and bleak settings back when folks just left at a pumpkin on the stoop. Whatever it is, these not-pre-fabricated costumes are freaky and send a shiver down our spines. And, how appropriate. After all, it is that time of year.