An Assortment of Hauntings

I’ve got ghosts on my mind today.  The thoughts are scattered, and on several sub-topics, but I decided to jot them all down anyway.  I hope visitors enjoy the read and feel free to respond with a comment or two.

Ghost Adventures

I’ve seen this show, which is fairly new on the Travel Channel, mentioned on Facebook.  They have a sidebar ad, and I visited their page, saw many positive comments.  There are quite a few followers.  Ergo, on Friday night, after things were sort of tucked in for the night, I hit the den sofa and turned on the tube.

I know that a lot of people like this show, and I’m not at all arguing with anyone’s taste.  For me, however, what I found was pretty much “Blair Witch Meets Scooby Doo” — without the cute Great Dane.  Grown men, and buff ones at that, guys that would intimidate me if I met them in a dark alley, for sure, were screaming like girls, yelling and shouting, and making a major scene at every little shadow.

The site was an excellent one, the scene of major Civil War era activity, where slaves were treated and mistreated, and Voodoo practiced on a regular basis.  There were some very cool moments where they consulted with experts about archaeological digs and traditions of the era and area.  Then, they would ruin the reason by playing up the dark side — talk of evil and curses, really over-doing the “spooky” aspects of a haunting.

The crew did bring scientific equipment with them, but instead of using it scientifically, they would assume they were dealing with something sinister and play their findings into their opinions, rather than the other way around.  They “caught” several EVPs, for example … none of which sounded anything like what they were saying they heard.  In fact, but for one, I could not make out anything that sounded like a human voice at all.  There was one where some music was captured — which was interesting, but hardly conclusive.

The thing that really bugged me was the shouting, though.  What ever happened to “Ghosts Were People, Too”?  They showed very little respect for the spirits that might have been there, taunting and challenging, and then yelling in fright each time anything responded.  They assumed “evil” at every shadow, and truly left me with a sense of dismay over how they treated the people who might have been there in the spirit realm.

Participating in a voodoo ritual, too, was major “only for television” overkill.  I mean, just the thought of Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson dancing around a voodoo fire … well, let’s not go there.  It just wouldn’t happen.

These gentlemen are probably perfectly decent investigators, and all of the drama and hype was simply played up for the camera, at the will of some producer who cares more for ratings than reasonable ghost-hunting.  I won’t be tuning in again, though.  I’ll stick with Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International, with a bit of Paranormal State tossed in.  The latter, mostly because I think Chip Coffey’s very cool.

If you like out-there entertainment strictly for entertainment’s sake, you’ll probably enjoy Ghost Adventures.  If you’re looking for real paranormal investigation, though, you might want to skip this one.

Am I Haunted?

I’m far from a skeptic, don’t get me wrong.  As an animal communicator, I speak to the dead frequently.  I am also a psychic/medium, and have sat in on many séances, seeing some pretty phenomenal results.  I’ve done psychic readings for clients, often helping them contact their loved ones on the other side.

When things are happening to me, however, I tend to hold off on any opinions, and for some reason am very reluctant to surmise that there are paranormal reasons behind events.

I found myself, yesterday, once again asking, “What are the odds of that happening?” It then occurred to me that perhaps I should just blog about the evidence, and see what visitors to my site might think.  Do we have a ghost?  Or is all of this just odd coincidence?

I’ve mentioned some of this here on gazehound.com before, but will start at the beginning, even if some of it is redundant.

My parents live(d) right next door, though the “doors” are a good seven hundred feet apart, I’d guess.  Mom passed away in November of 2006, on All Soul’s Day.  Since then, I’ve been close to Dad, always right next door if needed.  Currently, however, he is facing some health situations which necessitate my being closer and more available, and therefore I moved in to his house, on the 2nd of June, the day he was released from the hospital.  I’m still here, taking it one day at a time.

Emotionally, things have been charged and stressful.  Not due to Dad, he’s a great guy.  It’s just that, after the way life has tossed challenges at me the past few years, including the mess with my own health, it’s very hard not to be homesick, worried, miss my family, miss my pets….  Even though they’re all next door, it’s just not the same, and adds impact to my worries over my father’s health.

That wasn’t a whine.  It was just brief background to say that I recognize that one potential source of the “symptoms” may be my own psychic/emotional energy.

Even before moving to Dad’s, things were happening.  After he fell and broke his ribs, I leaned forward from a seated position (wheel chair) to pick up the dog’s bowl and cracked a floater rib of my own.  All I did was bend over.  Not long before that, I took quite a fall while on crutches, landing in the middle of the kitchen floor … again, with very little provocation.  I think I caught the tip of a crutch on the edge of the carpet, and that was the excuse I gave, but to be honest, I really don’t know for sure.  I stopped myself short of spouting the cliché, “It was like I was pushed”, and even typing it out now feels … hokey.

Since being here, bizarre events continue.

Dad has a coffee maker which, rather than a glass carafe, has one that is plastic and thermal in nature.  I set it into the sink to clean it, ran warm water in it (it had already completely cooled), and as I stuck the brush in the water, the entire inside of the carafe exploded.  Some glass flew out but, thankfully, no one was injured, and most of it stayed inside the pot.

The other day, I was cleaning his water filter container … it was one of the large, rectangular ones with the spigot.  The way the kitchen is arranged, the main space to set it after washing it was on the counter behind me.  It was some distance away, set firmly on the counter, and I was washing the inner portion of the unit.  Suddenly, the clear container crashed to the floor behind me, breaking.  I thought at the time that I may have bumped my wheel chair, which was behind where I stood, and the handle had knocked it off the counter.  Later, though, I realized that the wheelchair handles don’t even reach the counter.  Nothing touched it … it just fell.

Yesterday, and this was the event that finally set my head-scratching into motion, I went out on the front deck.  I sat into a lawn chair, leaning my crutches against the railing beside me.  They are taller than the railing and were set firmly against it.  There was no wind blowing.  Suddenly, the crutches were moving … and had fallen through the railing.  The spaces between the spindles are about three inches, the heads of the crutches, which were parallel to the rail, about seven in length.  Both crutches, despite the laws of physics being against them, wound up on the ground below the deck, a three foot drop, having moved downward, turned themselves sideways, and passed through the gap between the uprights.  One had fallen all the way to the ground, the other was still standing on its head, the tip where I could reach it.  I manged to use that one to hook the other and retrieve both of them … a good thing, since I couldn’t have gotten off the deck without the crutches!

I blogged not long about about having seen a Shadow Apparition, and that I hoped and trusted that it was my Mom finally showing herself.  To my knowledge, she is the only human spirit who might be hanging around here.  But why would Mom be so mischievous?

I have, several times, though, seen a cat.  Yes, Dad has a cat, quite alive, but this “other” cat definitely wasn’t Missie, as I’ve seen it when Missie was in plain sight elsewhere.  It’s a corner-of-the-eye cat, and I usually catch tail its end disappearing down the hallway or around a corner.  Several days after my Mom died, a little cat showed up on our back porch, and Monkey wound up living with Dad for two years.  She, however, disappeared one day.  Evidence as relayed by neighbors was backed up what three different animal communicators/psychics indicated — that she had been the victim of coyotes.  I searched, ran ads, and looked for her for a long time, anyway, but Monkey never came home.

Or has she?

But why would a cat toss my crutches off the deck?  Is she upset that Missie has moved in?  Or that I have?  If so, she’s not talking (not to me, anyway).

Anyway, I post these events for your entertainment, and to see what readers might think.  I haven’t come to any conclusions, other than that they are curiosities.  I’m not normally the clumsy sort — though confess that it’s possible that my health situation may have changed that.  And yet, it was not my own contact with any of the target objects which caused these manifestations.

What do you think?  And, do you have any similar experiences you’d like to share about?  Feel free to comment!

Related posts:

1. Shadow Apparition — Hi, Mom!
2. Psychic Fair