GHOST HUNTERS

It's hard not to discuss the vintage era of ghost investigations without mentioning the married couple, Ed and Lorraine Warren, who became famous for their high-profile investigations and last word on hauntings. Ed was a lecturer, self taught demonologist, and author and his wife Lorraine was a psychic medium/clairovoyant. In 1952, the couple opened up the New England Society For Psychic Research. The couple authored many books and went on many investigations.  It was reported that they handled over 10,000 cases in their career, including the Amityville home, and many other notable locations. They covered cases of demons, werewolves, hauntings, possessions, you name it; the whole gamut of paranormal possibilities.  Ed has passed on and Lorraine, a gentle soul, is in her retiring years after many decades of responsibility for people who are in distress and coming to the aid of troubled those in homes.  The 2014 film, "Annabelle" was based upon one of their cases where some...

The 1950s was post WWII, when America was growing and succeeding, buying homes and cars and the youth were driving their own automobiles and gaining independence. Movie theaters were the great getaway, including drive-in's, and the boom in science from the discovery of splitting the atom, made people excited about the "magic" of science and also the horrors or "radiation." It was an ideal setting for over-the-top science fiction movies for couples to gasp and clutch each other and the movie industry to amp it up with 3D glasses. *Descriptions from IMDB . The Thing From Another World 1951 Scientists and American Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while at a remote arctic outpost. The Creature From the Black Lagoon 1954 A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study. Them! 1954 The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause ...

The 1968 book Chariots of the Gods sparked the equally popular documentary "Chariots of the Gods" in 1970. The impetus for this is a man named Erich Von Daniken. Erich Von Daniken, who was a in the hotel industry and had a past marked with * run-ins with the law and incarceration , came up with an interesting and unique concept that caught fire and became the hottest new para-concept; that ancient technology and ancient art showed evidence of visitation by aliens from other planets. His book was a huge seller and the documentary soon followed with equal fervor. In a world that had become jaded about religious texts and the rigid guidelines of the Bible, a young culture was ready to jump on this concept and help further it along, encouraging Von Daniken to come up with more and more and even more examples as he worked his way into the field of archaeology to expand on the hypothesis and create an almost cult-like excitement. There are many who have made careers based on this ...

The vintage era of paranormal adoration found in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, produced a LOT of themed shows. See which ones you cut your para geek teeth on -  *descriptions thanks to IMDB . The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 1968-1970 Lovely young widow Carolyn Muir, her two young children, and the maid discover that the New England seaside house they've moved into is haunted by the former owner -- an old salt named Captain Daniel Gregg. Gregg at first resists this intrusion, but he develops a ghostly love for his uninvited guest. Bewitched 1964-1972 A witch married to an ordinary man cannot resist using her magic powers to solve the problems her family faces. The Munsters 1964-1966 A family of friendly monsters have misadventures never quite realising why people react to them so strangely. The Addams Family 1964-1966 The misadventures of a blissfully macabre but extremely loving family. I Dream of Jeannie 1965-1970 A United States astronaut finds his life vastly complicated when he stumbles ...

The Pangboche Hand was an item from a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas and said to be the hand from a Yeti. Photo by Peter Byrne in 1958 In 1957, the expedition run by Tom Slick took the first pictures of this legendary hand supposedly held for ceremonial purses in a Himalayan Buddhist Monastery. Reportedly, Peter Byrne, a member of the team, had taken some bones from the hand when the monks would not allow them to be examined, and replaced them with some human bones bound in cloth. He supposedly got the bones from Nepal into India by way of the actor, Jimmy Stewart, who sneaked it out on his plane flight out to England.  It was said in 1960, Sir Edmond Hilary examined the bones while there and considered them a hoax when he saw the human bones mixed in.  The origin of the supposed yeti skull and hand that the monks held was supposedly from a monk's find. He had gone to meditate in a cave and found a yeti. Years later, he came back and the yeti had passed, so he took the re...

I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat for the first episode of the new Travel Channel show "Expedition Unknown" hosted by Josh Gates. He won our hearts in his stint on "Destination Truth" on Syfy, but I think we all knew he was way too much of a star for them, so gladly he found a new home at Travel Channel where they knew what to do with this world adventurer, archaeology buff, and insightful mind and humorist in the field of all things undiscovered.  I was worried that there would not be the supporting cast to bounce off on this show, but this show has true content and thrills. Instead of chasing monsters, per se, Josh is chasing after unsolved mysteries, treasures, ancient artifacts and every other Indiana Jones adventure imaginable. (my miserable photoshop talents) I have a dream that Josh goes up past Franz Josef Island in the arctic in search of the route the Norwegian supposedly took to end up at Hollow Earth. There's an ongoing mystery that has ...

Argosy Magazine was a long-running "pulp" magazine from the early 1880s to 1978. Although it started out as a children's magazine called "The Golden Argosy," several years later, it switched from children to pulp fiction stories and was renamed "The Argosy" in 1888.  During WWI era, it was turned into a man's railroad magazine for a short period of time. In 1920, it turned into "Argosy All-Story Weekly" and included fiction of all types including some amazing authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. It began to up the amount the swashbuckler and adventure types stories that it contained. In the early 1940s, it moved out of pulp fiction into slick paper and material moved away from all fiction to more men's magazine informational material. Stories included things like adventuring, war, animals, outdoorsman topics and subjects of manly interest like cryptids including yeti, Bigfoot and others. Said to have been the first magazine t...

It's hard to talk about UFOs in the 50s, 60s and 70s without mentioning abductees, but what of contactees? Whereas abductees are taken onto craft supposedly for experimentation and observation, procedures and the like, contactees have communication with alien beings without any physical manipulation/examination or moving to a secondary site. There was a supposed contactee named George Van Tassel. He was born in 1910 to a fairly well-to-do family in Ohio. He showed promise with his hands and mechanics and led a life of many jobs in the field of mechanic work and had a pilot's license.  By a strange series of events (like most contactees report), he came across a man who was a loner and owned a prospect near Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert in California. When the loner died during WWII, Van Tassel applied to lease there to develop an airstrip.   Van Tassel was an airplane mechanic and inspector. He spent years in the newly booming aerospace industry into the late 1940s. Then, he...

Tonight at 9 EST/8 Central - "Face Off" on Syfy -  making imaginary friends for kids!

Most everyone who recalls the 70s also recalls the movie that put a whole nation on edge. "The Exorcist" was a groundbreaking level of horror that took us to our greatest fear - evil possession of the innocent. The movie was based loosely on a real set of circumstances in the late 1940s to an adolescent boy. It was in 1949, when newspapers began to publish anonymous letters about an ongoing exorcism and possession, that the first kernels of this story came to light. The child was anonymously named, Roland Doe, born of a German Lutheran family in 1936. He lived in Maryland and was an only child. One of his closest family members to play with was his aunt who was a spiritualist and he became quite interested in the Ouija board. Following the boy's aunt's death, odd things began to happen from strange noises to furniture moving. The boy was sent to a parapsychologist's home to observe him, where objects began to move. He then referred the family to the clergy. *I...

Urban legends - tales that gather more and more steam with the telling, are cautionary tales that are passed around in hushed tones and voices that swear that they are truth, they really happened!  The 1950s really launched a decade of car-driving youths with a certain degree of anxiety of making adult decisions and too much time on their hands. Urban legends were born from this atmosphere, much like Native tales of the past that admonished children to beware the giant that would eat those who wandered. The Hook "The Hook" is perhaps the most repeated legend from the 1950s. The story has been reshaped many times but the basic gist is this -  A teen boy asks a girl out, they drive off to Lover's Lane and park. Over the radio, a newscaster warns that there is an escaped mental patient with a hook for his right hand.  The girls starts hearing a scratching sound and gets scared and begs the boy to drive her home. He wants to make out. Finally, she begs and he relents and driv...

Man has always pondered if we continue on after the death of the physical form. Religions have been based on the promise of an afterlife and people have died momentarily, to be brought back with stories of their experiences in another realm. Raymond Moody began with a few advanced degrees including philosophy and psychology. He eventually became a professor and a forensic psychiatrist.  (Moody) I don't mind saying that after talking with over a thousand people who have had these experiences, and having experienced many times some of the really baffling and unusual features of these experiences, it has given me great confidence that there is a life after death. As a matter of fact, I must confess to you in all honesty, I have absolutely no doubt, on the basis of what my patients have told me, that they did get a glimpse of the beyond. In the 1970s, Raymond Moody made the term near-death experience the newest speculation. He compiled stories of hundreds of people who had memories af...

I'm continuing on this vintage paranormal month on GHT to cover the 50s, 60s and 70s and the para events/icons/obsessions that made us all para geeks today. I'm covering one of the biggies in parapsychology - Hans Holzer.  Hans Holzer was born in Austria and ended up settling in New York. He had a life-long interest in the paranormal. Eventually, he ended up teaching parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology, as well as writing over 100 books on the paranormal and occult. He was involved in researching some of the most notable cases of paranormal activity.  He believed in the afterlife and ghosts. He believed ghosts to be imprinted and the right people could read their presence. Spirits, however, he believed, could interact with the living. He also believed in spirits being earthbound at times and reincarnation. In fact, many of his findings helped to define present-day takes on hauntings.  In 1977, Holzer and a medium did an investigation of the Amityville h...