Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Museum Ghost Caught On Video



Surveillance images from the Science Museum at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Mexico City) captured what seems to be an apparition as it entered the security gate after hours.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Examining Historic Meteor Falls And Their Impact - Or Lack Thereof

In recent days, what has been reported as a meteor, fell to Earth in a brilliant blue-white burst near Edmonton, Alberta. While it is a rare example of such a thing caught on video, it is not the first time such an impactful sight has been reported. Below are three historical accounts from the 1950’s that describe similar events – events that beg questions regarding lack of trace evidence and correlations to UFO’s.

On November 3, 1951, reports came from Arizona and New Mexico of a bright blue-white glow that erupted over the desert straddling those two states in a two-hundred mile radius. The object reportedly flashed across the sky from east to west. Pilot Captain Markle Sparks spotted the brilliant flash just after eight p.m. as he flew over southern California. "I thought it was another A-bomb," he reported. Sparks said the object's fiery trail lasted for thirty seconds after the flash. Buck Stockton, Maricopa county sheriff's deputy, said the trail was over a mile long but lasted only briefly. According to officials at LAX, at least seven other aircraft reported the unusual sight. Afterward, no reports had come in of any impact.

In early May, 1952, Seattle was "rocked" by an unidentified projectile that exploded over the city in a brilliant blue-white flash that lasted two seconds. From reports, it was estimated to have exploded approximately 2,000 feet in the air. Northwest Airlines pilot Bert Carlson first spotted the object as he was on approach to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He stated that the object was 7,000 feet up when it burst violently into roughly eight pieces that trailed like fireballs to the earth. Scientists however, refuted a meteor explosion so close to the ground (at either 2,000 or 7,000 feet) since it was their understanding that meteors normally destruct ten miles or more above the surface. In the aftermath of the event, no damage or fragments were ever located indicating anything had fallen intact to the surface.

In June 1958, Royal Dutch Airline pilot, Captain Peter J. Krouwel was less than two hours outside Shannon, Ireland when he spotted a bright light that disintegrated into three parts. The light initially traveled diagonally from left to right in front of his craft as he flew at 10,000 feet. Although it was 10:17 in the evening, and the moon was out, he knew he wasn't seeing any distorted reflections. Later, Krouwel surmised he must have seen the downfall of the U.S. satellite Explorer III. However, officials at the Smithsonian stated this was highly unlikely since Explorer III never orbited above 35 degrees north and Shannon lay at 62 degrees.

In correlating times and locations, it is likely that events such as these might explain away coinciding UFO reports, if only it could be determined that they were indeed meteors. However, in these and more recent cases, there is invariably a dearth of physical proof. No impact craters - no matter how small - are reported and no damage or fragments remain to proof this hypothesis. While the theme of bluish-white bursts of light that plummet downward for an instant seem consistent with meteor falls, we must regrettably set these aside as footnotes in annals of the anomalous until such time as more information becomes available.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Early Map Depicted Accurately America and The Pacific


Did an early 16th century mapmaker have secret knowledge that allowed him to create an accurate map of the newly discovered Americas long before anyone else? Or did his guess work and imagination simply bear an uncanny resemblance to the truth?

Check it out

BOLDLY GOING WHERE OTHERS HAVE GONE BEFORE



While even a cursory glance at the trailer for the new "Star Trek" film (dropping May 9, 2009) tells you some liberties may have been taken, it however still promises to be an action-packed thrill ride. While no filmmakers have covered these early years of the "Star Trek" crew, much of this is nonetheless well-trod ground and it will be up to director J. J. Abrams (ALIAS, LOST, Cloverfield) to give the franchise a fresh take.

After watching some of these clips, I fear an injection of "hipness," which rarely bodes well for already-established franchises (just Google the upcoming X-Men films). However, I've liked much of what J. J. Abrams has done in the past and he has a good eye for characters: keeping them contemporary without being insufferably hip. I am, however, saddened that the sole shots of Lt. Uhura are of the silent-but-naked variety. It would seem a step back in time, to reduce female roles to micro-skirts and cat-eyes; The Pussycat Dolls go to space, as it were. And what's with the Enterprise being built on the ground? I thought it had been well-established that it don't fly through the air too good. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose...

Friday, November 21, 2008

And More Strangeness From The Joplin Area



"Prosperity, Missouri, once a thriving mining town, lived up to its name from 1902 until about 1917. In 1907, the two-story Prosperity School was built in the heart of the Tri-state mining district, which had churches, saloons, general stores, hotels, and now a fine, large school of red brick and Carthage stone. It's a very active site filled with many spirits. Some are even children! After asking the spirits to appear I got this on my camcorder. I was blown away. We have this slowed down so you can see the lttle guy better!" [from the YouTube poster]

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Spirits Haunt Historic Missouri Home

A handful of miles past the Oklahoma border on I-44, in the small hamlet of Carthage, Missouri, which lies just northeast of Joplin, strange spirits haunt the halls of the Kendrick House.

Carthage is where my great-aunt spent her remaining years, and it's a stone's throw from where my grandparents were laid to rest. And not too far to the southeast, in the small town of Purdy, you can't shake a stick practically without hitting someone to whom I am related.

But I digress. This is all simply to frame why I found this story of particular interest. You, however, may simply enjoy another ghost story...

Monday, November 17, 2008

BFRO to hit the small screen?

One of the biggest Bigfoot investigation outfits looks forward to 2009 when production begins on their own television series. Much of it is still up in the air, and as yet it remains without a title. "Bigfoot Hunters," anyone?

Read more here.

Strange, Sudden Accents and the Psychic Mind?

Can individuals suffering from a rare disorder actually be tapping into the collective unconscious or perhaps the elusive power of the psychic mind? How can we explain a woman who suddenly speaks in an accent she may have only heard in passing? Moreover, how can we explain a woman who sometimes talks in a language she doesn't understand?

See more here.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Oklahoma Investigator Fears Fall-out From TAPS Controversy

Click for insights from Oklahoma investigator Tonya Hacker regarding the controversy surrounding TAPS/Ghost Hunter's 2008 Halloween investigationon the SciFi Channel.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

CREATURE ATTACKS UNSUSPECTING SWIMMER

I don't often write of personal events in my life, but yesterday as I swam in turbulent, post-Paloma Atlantic waters, I was attacked! A vicious man-hungry jelly fish had lashed at my wrist with its tentacles of doom!

I may be overstating a bit, but I can tell you ... IT HURT. Even as I type now, that arm isn't feeling 100% yet.

Apparently, if we've several days of Northern seas (as we did in the wake of Paloma) the chance of encountering jellyfish increases greatly. I know this now and can look forward to avoiding it in the future. However, I confess to feeling more than a tiny bit of trepidation about returning to the water so soon. Silly, I suppose...

Monday, November 10, 2008

In Memoriam: Michael Crichton (1942-2008)


A talented and influential writer will be missed.
http://www.michaelcrichton.net/

Research: The Key To Any Investigation

In stumbling across an announcement in The Oklahoman from January 1934 that apprised the populace of the sky-advertising antics of stunt pilot Roy Hunt, I wondered if similar situations couldn't be responsible for "strange sightings". After all, the article began: "Should mamma and papa wonder about strange lights in the sky or the white smoke that makes an insignia, it is the automobile industry advertising."

This is what is often missed when scanning historical accounts electronically or solely for keywords. It's important to view history in context and not myopically. Often when reading archived news, strange and relevant tangents can be observed by reading other articles around them or by reading through the papers before and after a certain event.

Moreover, research is work - but it is work that pays off. If you belong to a paranormal investigation team that doesn't have a researcher or historian, then I urge you to round your group out. Nothing exists in a vacuum.

I owe a great deal of my writing and investigating to the obscure treasures my personal historian digs up for me. She has a nose for news, honed over decades of librarianship and a masters in library science. Nevertheless, you needn't one to simply do some quality historical investigating.
Make sure you take use of county and state records offices, public libraries, genealogical and historical archives; university libraries and reputable online resources. If you really sink your teeth into the deeds, death certificates, land grants, census records, etc., you would be amazed at how many haunting myths you can lay to rest.

As well, records exist in myriad forms to better elucidate the truth behind UFO sightings. When you do research for a specific write-up, don't rely solely on the reporter who wrote the story. Check out the information yourself. Verify. Read around through the newspapers and journals to see what else was happening around that same time frame. Again, the results can often surprise you.

Research is an oft-neglected tool in the arsenal of paranormal investigators. However, it can make all the difference and set you and yours apart from the pack. If you are not familiar with the process, librarians and educators are often very willing to show you the ropes.

Monday, November 3, 2008

UFO Crash, MIB's, and Some Guy Named Bob


Earlier this year, something careened across the skies of Nevada and came to rest silently near Needles, CA. According to a mysterious eyewitness, the object came to earth approximately five miles up the Colorado River from Topock Marina. The strange goings-on thereafter (black helicopters and sinister paramilitary personnel) left no evidence but many unanswered questions.

Now, Las Vegas reporters have dug deeper into the mysteries surrounding what has come to be viewed as a crashed UFO.

The biggest question mark left in the object's wake involved the whereabouts of this mysterious witness, known only as "Bob". Purported to live on a houseboat at Topock Marina, Bob was so hard to track down, many begun to wonder if he even existed.

Apparently, what happened was that when the story broke, Bob - fearful of Men In Black reprisals - dropped off the grid. He avoided reporters, UFO hunters, and especially law enforcement.

Further fueling the flames of his paranoia was a very real wildfire that erupted near the marina the night before a TV crew was scheduled to shoot a report. Although the wildfire was not located near the "crash site", Bob wondered still if there was not some sinister connection.

If Bob's story is not very credible, it is at least interesting to note that reporters from Las Vegas were able to confirm from transponder readings that there was at least one military helicopter in the vicinity that night. They also discovered that a retinue of Night Stalkers (a military special-operations group) was at the Henderson Airport around the same time.

While these facts seem tentatively confirmed by journalists, the less easily pinned down aspects of this story remain enigmas.
Both Bob and KTOX radio employee Paul Fix claimed to have seen strange men about Needles the morning after the crash. They drove blacked out vehicles and were possessed of a "stiff looking" demeanor. Dave Hayes, KTOX owner, spotted these strange vehicles and their occupants after Bob first called into the radio station. Soon, others in town began calling in similar reports. Some even claimed to have been interviewed aggressively by strangers with a military bearing.

Photojournalist Matt Adams believes he captured photos of these Men in Black. And after an up-close encounter, he has become convinced they do work for some secret government agency.

As for the "crash site" itself? By the time local reporters were able to get on site, storms had scarred the landscape and the salt cedar had grown too dense to penetrate easily. Apparently, the pen is not mightier than the sword - or a machete.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Mommy Fearest: Famed Actress' Spectral Encore?

The following are thoughts from famed writer-cum-paranormal guru Brad Steiger on the recently-surfaced claims of supernatural activity at the former home of Silver Screen icon, Joan Crawford. It's interesting to me for both the haunting and the fact that I am related to Crawford(maternal grandmother's cousin).

Few actresses have rivaled Joan Crawford for star glamour and staying power as one of Hollywood's top movie queens. Her stardom spanned an amazing five decades and included such films as Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Rain (1932), Johnny Guitar (1954), and her Academy Award-winning performance in Mildred Pierce (1945).

Joan Crawford epitomized the essence of the Hollywood rags-to-riches story-a poor shopgirl who, in the 1920s, becomes the very embodiment of America's "flaming youth" and then transcends the role of "dancing daughter" to emerge the heroine of America's favorite melodramas.

In 1978, Christina Crawford, Joan's adopted daughter, wrote Mommie Dearest and shocked the United States with her heart-wrenching story of what it was really like growing up with one of Hollywood's most famous leading ladies. Mommie Dearest was on the New York Times best-seller list for forty-two weeks and was made into a 1981 film star-ring Faye Dunaway.

In 1989, we heard rumors of haunting manifestations in Joan Craw-ford's former home, and Christina seemed genuinely surprised that we knew about the stories.

"Not many people know that the house I grew up in may be haunted. It is not in print anywhere," she said.

When asked if there were manifestations or hauntings that she could remember as a child living there, Christina recounted the following:

I have vivid memories of some things, but when you are severely abused, you tend to block out other things. I'm positive that there were manifestations occurring when I was little. I saw them! There were places in the house that were always so cold that nobody ever wanted to go in them.

As a child, I was always told that I had an active and vivid imagination; I was always scared by things, but people just told me that I just had an "active imagination." Years later, I thought, oh well, maybe that was good to have had an active imagination, and I became a writer because of that.

But as a child, I saw things in the house! There was, of course, no context or framework in which to put what I saw and felt. I had nobody to speak to about the occurrences.

Any time I would become extremely frightened and would get out of my bed to try and find somebody, I was always treated as though I were just being a "bad child" that didn't want to go to sleep. I always expressed my fear to my mother because it was she that I went to find to help me ... because I would be very upset and I'd be crying.

I used to have terrible nightmares and that kind of thing, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that I saw things in the night; so the solution to that finally was just to leave the lights on everywhere. One of the things I saw seemed like an apparition of a child ... or children, but as I said, I may have blotted out a lot.

Christina told us that she had not been back to the house since she was seventeen. "That was when I went to college [in 1956], at which point, Crawford still owned the house."

Christina recalled her last day there:

I remember the woman who had taken care of me and my two younger sisters since I was four years old just watching me, without saying a word. I was going from room to room in the house, without saying anything, just standing in the middle of each room, then going on to the next one. She finally asked me what I was doing. I told her that I would never see this house again, therefore, I was saying goodbye to it.

Many years after I had left, we met again. She was now an elderly woman and had retired. We always had been quite close. She told me she had always remembered the look on my face when I said my goodbyes to the house. It seemed a strange thing to do, to say, 'I'll never see this house again,' when at that time there was absolutely no inkling of the house being sold. In fact, it was not sold for another two and a half to three years, and, indeed, I never have been back.

Christina had learned recently that the current owners of the house had called in the Reverend Rosalyn Bruyere of the Healing Light Center to work with the house:

Rosalyn described what she had seen in the house when she went there. She picked up on some things that astounded me because they seemed to validate what I may have seen and experienced when I was little. It gave me goose bumps when Rosalyn told me that she discovered so many spirits in the house and there had been signs of ritual abuse in one of the rooms. Many of the spirits had "underworld" connections.

I was sent to boarding school when I was ten years old. I came home infrequently after that. I always believed that I was sent away partly because I was too much the eyes and ears to the world--a witness. I saw too much, I guess.

Some of the things that I saw that were going on were very violent. Her [Joan Crawford's] relationship with men, a number of men, was extremely violent. I was getting too old, and I was beginning to understand what was going on.

That house is so weird! Now, evidently, the walls are starting to catch fire! Other people have heard children's cries in the walls! Every single owner has had trouble.

The first one was Crawford. She built the majority of the house. It was a small cottage when she bought it, but most of the house, she built. She sold it to Donald O'Connor, who sold it to the Anthony Newleys. They sold it, I think, to the current owner, who is a friend of the Reverend Rosalyn Bruyere, and they asked her to "work" on the house.

Every single family that has lived in that house has had horrible things happen . . . illnesses, alcoholism, addictions, relationship problems, and now, evidently with the current owner, the walls are breaking out in flames! I've heard that in particular it's the wall that was behind Crawford's bed.

Although the scene is in her book, Mommie Dearest, Christina re-minded us that the last words that Joan Crawford uttered were to a woman who was kneeling at the foot of her bed, praying for her.

"As she was dying," Christina said, "Crawford opened her eyes and said directly to the woman, 'Don't you dare ask God to help me!' ... and then she died." It was such arrogance, Christina said, that she believes is a major part of the difficulty with the seemingly accursed house.

And that has nothing to do with me! So it would not surprise me in the least if the "haunting" spirit that is in the house is Crawford! She was capable of real evil. If you have never experienced that "look" from another human being, it is almost impossible to believe that such an experience could even exist! I think perhaps that's why so many people are unwilling to deal with the shadow side because they can't really get themselves to believe that such a dimension exists.

My brother and I were absolutely terrified of her. In fact, there is a passage in Mommie Dearest that describes ('the look" on her face) when she tried to kill me when I was thirteen. We all saw "that look." My brother and I talked about it extensively ... it was not of an ordinary human being!

Later, we were able to contact the Reverend Rosalyn Bruyere of the Healing Light Center, who kindly agreed to share her thoughts on the manifestations in Joan Crawford's former home.

"It is true that the house was afflicted with spontaneous fires, primarily in the wall behind where Joan Crawford's bed used to be. However, I did not pick up that Joan Crawford's ghost was there."

The Reverend Bruyere expressed her opinion that the house had been poisoned in some way before Crawford had moved into the place but that the evil in the house had added to Joan's neuroses. The actress had apparently built onto a pre-existing cottage in a very chaotic man-ner.

"Nothing is where it should be," Rosalyn commented. "She added dining rooms and hallways that led to other dining rooms. It all combines to form an H-shaped house. Turn a corner and you're lost."

The noted healer, who in this case served as an exorcist to clear the home, said that she found the haunting existing in levels.

"It was a place of conspicuous negativity. I called it an 'Astral Central,' a gathering of spirits that were attracted to the negative vibrations. People had been tied up and tortured in that house. I picked up on gangland figures, corrupt politicians. There is an area in the house where a child [not Christina] had been tortured and molested. Terrible things went on in that house."

The Reverend felt that ghosts themselves were trying to burn the house down.

"Once the Beverly Hills Fire Department spent four days there attempting to solve the mystery of the spontaneous fires that would break out on the walls," she said. "I feel the spirits were trying to burn the house down to protect some horrible secret. There is something hidden there. I am certain that there are bodies buried in that basement."

She said that there had only been one recurrence in the house after she had exorcised and cleared it. "The house had become an astral dumping ground, but it seems clean now."

When we [Brad and Sherry] visited the former Crawford home in the early 1990s, the current owners graciously allowed us to enter to film a segment for an HBO special on haunted Hollywood. The couple told us that they had experienced some mysterious pyrotechnic phenomena and had witnessed quite a number of apparitions of quite a wide variety of entities in various parts of the home. The couple said that the small cottage next to the swimming pool very often seemed to be center of haunting phenomena.

We kept in touch with the couple for quite some time. It was not long after we had filmed in the Crawford home that they decided to move. We have no comment from them whether or not it was because of any haunting phenomena.

It would seem over the past decade that the once haunted mansion of Joan Crawford has found peace, for we have heard of no further ghostly activity occurring in the home.