Haunted Pictures

Haunted Candle, Demon, and The Lady ~ PHOTOS

These photos were all taken by me and seem to have manifested something paranormal in each.

This image was taken from an Edward Gorey book that I got for Christmas from a friend. When I was a child the image frightened me, so I planned to tell the friend of my childhood fear. The image in the book is black and white--my image is NOT. Now the picture scares me even more.

None of my images are enhanced, highlighted, altered or changed in ANY way except to crop for size.

This image was taking while driving home in the fog during the winter. Notice the woman-shaped figure in the tree trunk.

The next image was taken on Gallows Hill Road in Cranford, New Jersey. I aimed my iPhone toward the spot that used to contain a gallows, and is purportedly one of the most haunted locations in NJ. When I took the shot, I accidentally took two pictures, the first one contained this green, demonic face, and the second showed nothing. Please tell me what YOU see.

Death Day

By Paola Cirmia~http://tinyurl.com/phz2zaw

I love spring when life is stirring. Of course summer thrills me as the suns warms me for a while. But we are coming to that time of year where the invisible bones of my dead relatives walk through my yard, and the darkness that resides in us all peeks from the creaking closet door of our childhood nightmares.

Oh, Halloween, my October love. Your brittle embrace allows us a small glimpse of death before our time. 

As I sit on my front porch at dusk and watch the sky turn from orange to purple, I wonder why so many of us are moonstruck in the fall. Some of us feel the familiar pull, the same kiss we read about that turns mortal into beast; and with the waning moon, back into a human being. 

It is more than our memories of trick or treating in the dark, crunchy leaves blowing at our feet, and the crooked smiles of glowing Jack o'lanterns grinning in a slightly sinister way. It is something more primitive, an ancient stirring we feel calling to us, but we don't know how to answer. It confuses us because it is delightful and wicked, but makes us feel very, very good. It is related to death, but we don't know how to celebrate death here in the United States.

We mourn our dead. We have somber ceremonies because a loved one has passed. But we don't celebrate what they were or the spirits they are now, happily haunting us for the rest of our lives. We wish their spirits would stay with us and never leave. We would not fear them.

We are only afraid of the ghosts that don't belong to us. 

Whether it be a simple memory or flash of movement out of the corner of our eyes, our private ghosts are precious. Far too few of us admit a belief in the otherworldly, but October thins the veil between our world and theirs, and the lovely creature-under-the-bed feeling we all experience in the fall is nothing but a temporary stroll between two worlds.

We don't realize it, but we have a foot in each of these worlds. We spend much of our time being rational and logical, states that can be overrated and over valued. But our beloved science is a study of humility, discoveries and revelations constantly being overridden and facts found to be false. 

Knowing when the phone is going to ring, saying the same thing at the same time as a close friend, and a flash of insight about the right thing to do are all tiny windows of our intuitive side, the B side of logic and rationale. Some say children and animals have a natural connection to the great beyond because no one has talked them out of believing, or told them they it is all their imagination. Maybe they trust everyone because they are being guided by the invisible hands of the dearly departed.

The sun sets earlier now, and we are exposed to the dark for longer periods each day. We think differently at night and fear different things. Our belief in the supernatural blooms during these long-shadow days, and we prickle with a faint knowing we don't understand. Why does it feel so good to decorate our homes with trappings of the dead for Halloween? Death is so sad, after all. 

Or is it?

Is this our secret way of celebrating death? Of allowing our intuition to embrace the knowing we have deep in our hearts that our loved ones have simply moved to a different location?

In Mexico and other countries they celebrate Dia de Muertos, an official holiday that honors the dead with sugar skulls, favorite foods of the deceased, and visits to the graveyard. Ghosts walk freely among the living during this three-day event, and friends and relatives do not feel so alone.

We Americans would never admit to celebrating death in such a way. But we will:

* decorate our houses with skulls, monsters, bats, and Jack o'lanterns on Halloween

* get dressed up as Dracula, a mummy, zombie, or any number of undead creatures and go to a party

* call psychics, astrologists, and tarot card readers to hear about our future or contact a dead relative or loved one

* attend a seance for messages from the grave

* watch shows like Ghost Hunters for clues and signs of spirits

The difference is we will do it in the name of FUN. We don't take any of these things seriously, right?

Maybe we should.

Maybe that sigh we heard from the kitchen was not the dishwasher again, and maybe the flickering light in the laundry room was not a loose wire. That perfume...isn't that what Gramma used to wear?

Maybe our minds are naturally more open during this spiced cider time of the year, when we are a bit more in tune with the other side, and the thoughts we have might be more than a little influenced by those we had known and had to bid farewell.

Zero by the amazing Nate Wragg--more here:  http://tinyurl.com/pghs2fd

I call for a Death Day of our own here in the United States to celebrate the lives of our lost parents, children, grandparents, friends, family, and pets. They deserve more of a place in our lives than just a picture on the mantle. October 30th sounds good to me.

So keep a cup of tea close at hand and don't be so quick to cover your eyes when you feel a shiver of fear. You never know who is close by.

For Marg <3 Woof

GATHERING GHOSTS

According to some cultures, ghosts are not only real, but can be troublesome.

Here in the United States we tend to believe in ghosts and they are sensationalized on television shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State. According to these shows, ghosts can do things like decrease the temperature in a room, cause orbs in pictures, occasionally move things like curtains or chairs, and speak in difficult to hear voices that are picked up on EVP recording devices.

If the entity haunting the house is demonic, supposedly it is much more dangerous to the inhabitants of the home. A demon or devil can possess a person and take over their lives.

There are many different types of ghosts according to Chinese culture, and even Confucius said: "Respect ghosts and gods, but keep away from them."

If a person died from hanging by either suicide or execution, or far away from home, a wrongful death, or was drowned, he will leave behind a spirit that is vengeful or evil. They can come to the party that wronged them or even seek to harm them.

Some ghosts are benign like Gui Po, who takes the form of a kindly old woman and helps around the house.

During the Ghost Festival, on the 15th day of the seventh month of the lunar year, ghosts and spirits visit the earth from the lower realms. People are told not to go out alone on festival night if they can help it or swim on this day for fear that a malicious ghosts will attack them or drown them in dark water as revenge. Those born during this month are said to be more sensitive and have the ability to see ghosts and apparitions.

According to folklore in Bali, ghosts clutter where it is dark and not many people walk or visit. If you have many useless papers or a dusty mess beneath your bed spirits may hide there in the quiet and interfere with your sleep. It is said we fear the dark not because of what we can't see, but what we CAN feel. 

Almost everyone feels a little trepidacious when walking down the basement stairs. The darkest corner is exactly where we do not want to go. That creepy corner of the yard by the fence that gets no light from the street lamps...you will probably get someone else to go and look what that noise was.

A Feng Shui practitioner might hang a wind chime in the dark corner of your yard to attract motion and rid the area of ghosts. According to Kartar Diamond, in certain instances hanging a wind chime can actually attract ghosts. (A great book on Feng Shui by Kartar Diamond: http://www.amazon.com/Feng-Shui-Skeptics-Kartar-Diamond/dp/0967193788  In a future post I will be talking about my own experiences with Feng Shui and Kartar Diamond after a long-distance consultation.)

Living too close to a cemetery can cause a property to attract more than its share of spirits also. There is a slang word in Chinese for cemetery because it is said the ghosts that inhabit the graveyard come "to life" at night, like at a nightclub.

If your house is very 'yin' it will attract ghosts also. A yin house is dark, damp, and possibly covered in plants. It could be built into a mountainside or have an overgrown garden or landscape.

If someone died in your current house before you lived there, the previous owner might decide to come and visit. If the death was particularly violent, the spirit might have a hard time detaching from the magnetic pull of the place where the death occurred.

If you have a long empty hallway make especially sure not to collect clutter there. The Chinese believe ghosts can only move in a straight line and call anything too straight a poison arrow. 

Ghosts dislike children and animals, especially if they are noisy and funny--so keep them laughing and busy!

Here is a list of things you can do to keep ghosts away:

* Burn crushed and dried orange peels

* Fu Dogs or Fu Lions placed at the front door keep away ghosts

* Placing a penny in the corner of each room in the house deters evil spirits. Copper conducts love. Even a jar of pennies in a room that seems a bit haunted could be the equivalent of psychic Raid.

* Play music in your house

* Live plants and flowers deter ghosts. Dead plants can give them a place to hover.

* Simply ask the ghosts to leave

* Keep the home immaculate. Fix dripping faucets and clogged drains. Get rid of clutter and pick up crumbs.

* Clean your mirrors and windows until they are spotless. Ghosts cannot inhabit them if they are clean

*Clean gemstones until sparkling and then cleanse them in salt

* Open your windows during the day--let in the sun and the air

* Take down pictures of people that give you any kind of bad feelings. Pictures of the dead can attract negativity and 'bad vibes' too

* Keep the entire house and yard well-lit

* Have your house blessed

* Place lines of salt before the windows of doors of your home. Supposedly ghosts cannot cross them and they cannot get in

* If ghosts are haunting your dreams sleep with a bowl of water beneath your bed. In the morning empty the bowl outside the house

* Remove suspicious or old items--dolls recently purchased from an antique store, ring that belonged to a deceased relative. Ghosts can cling to old items

Although the jury is still out whether ghosts actually exist or not, I will NOT be walking around on July 15th this year without a burly escort. For all I know a ghost could be looking over my shoulder right now...and wondering who is reading this.

If any of you have had any ghostly experiences I would love to know about them. I would also like to hear of any ways you keep the ghosts OUT. :)

More ghostly thoughts from 100 UNFORTUNATE DAYS: 

Day 57

Every single basement has a dark corner or room no one likes. Maybe the whole basement is dark and scary. Spirits collect in dark and cluttered spaces. They hide and wait for you because they are stuck. Some people can see them. Some people see the long thin black wispy figures with arms ten feet long that unfold as they slowly reach for you in the dark because you have to go down there to get something or fix a light bulb or retrieve a screwdriver. Part of you revs up and moves really quickly to get out of there because you know if you wait long enough and the arms fully unfold, they can touch you and then part of you belongs in the black corner in the basement. Then it will be very hard to be normal again. You will wake up in the middle of the night, and you won’t be able to get back to sleep because you will worry about all the things you have done wrong and how you are hurting people.

You can’t get this out of your mind now and you think that maybe if you count and envision each number in your head as you say it in your mind; you can block some of the bad thoughts. Or maybe you can pray—say the Lord’s Prayer over and over and over and God will surely be there to help you because you are saying his prayer.

But it doesn’t help. God doesn’t give a fuck when you are miserable—he doesn’t care if you pray. You can pray until there is blood dripping out of your mouth and nothing will change. God is an asshole that way. Even a relatively rotten person will assist you if you are begging for help. But your thoughts will just revolve through your mind over and over until you want to take a gun like the lead in Fight Club and shoot them out of your head. Maybe someday you will, but for now, you are trying to figure why God is such a jerk and you have to live like this. You wonder why you feel forsaken—well it’s probably because you have been forsaken and you don’t know how to live in that state. Because when you are a kid somebody probably told you everything would be all right, and now you realize they lied.

So you keep lying to yourself, telling yourself it’s not such a big deal, but actually it is. Because now the dark corners in your basement have started to get darker. And bigger. The arms get longer and longer and pretty soon there won’t be anywhere you can go where they can’t touch you. So you start to drink or take pills or do some other kind of drug so you can’t tell when you get touched. But now the problem is you get touched all the time, but you don’t know it.

At least now you don’t care.

 

The OUIJA BOARD--I Still Want to Use It

In third grade a girl named Margie brought a Ouija Board to our classroom. It would be a perfect addition to the Halloween festivities we had planned for the day.

The room was decorated with grinning Jack O'Lanterns and we celebrated in our costumes while Disney's The Haunted Mansion record played in the background. A few kids were on line for the Spider and Web craft, several more waited for the caramel apples, but the longest line was for the Ouija board. After quick instructions the first kids to try did not have much luck and quickly gave up. I tried with Margie and we got the planchette to move a tiny bit but not enough to spell out any cryptic messages from beyond.

Then the board seemed to warm up. Everyone that got a chance experienced some movement, but it never pointed anywhere--in fact it never stopped. It swung around and eventually moved in larger and larger circles. Sometimes it went off the edge. We took that as a sign that the 'spirits' wanted new participants.

About a half hour later we began asking question and got some answers. Our new friend from the great beyond was male and he was angry that we were bothering him. (We knew this because our teacher asked.) We asked what his name was, and the board did spell out a name, but I cannot remember what it was. Someone asked if he was stupid. My teacher said, "Be nice," and everyone laughed. But that was the last answer we got from the board. No one felt any motion after that and we all quit soon after.

The Ouija Board thrilled me. I went home and told my parents about how much fun we had during the day. They told us we had a board in the basement and they could not get it out fast enough for me.

Needles to say I was hooked. I played with my sister, friends, and neighbors. Then we started having seances. And we did levitation.

Soon after we moved to a new house and made some new friends. Our new basement was perfect for conjuring the dead. Of course we were scared a few times...we would have been scared just sitting down there with a single candle burning. It was huge and had plenty of creepy nooks and crannies. My obsession with the occult had officially bloomed. I guess Ouija is the gateway drug to more intense occult experiences.

Several years later my friend and I were wandering around NYC one afternoon and stumbled upon Weiser's Bookstore. Walking down a few steps we walked into what we discovered was a large and relatively famous occult bookstore started in 1929 by Samuel Weiser. (Weiser's still exists as an online bookseller and now publisher of esoteric and occult literature. http://redwheelweiser.com/p.php?id=2 ) . That day I purchased a pendulum for divination and spent many fun nights at parties reading fortunes.  http://readersandrootworkers.org/wiki/Category:Pendulum_Divination

Then I moved on to Tarot cards. I had a knack for them and people began to ask me to read them again and again. The results were oddly accurate. Although I just said whatever popped into my head, half the time it meant something to the person I was talking to. People began to offer me money for the reading, and not a little bit. I began to study them more and more, and found them fascinating.

If you have followed this blog at all you know I have had my share of strange and seemingly supernatural occurances in my life. The house I lived in before this one seemed haunted. We would hear the silverwear shaking in the drawer, the television would turn on and off by itself, and worst of all my husband and I thought we were having conversations with one another, but no one was there.

I came home from work one day and saw my husband looking out our master bedroom window at the woods across the street. I was waving and trying to get his attention when the automatic garage door started opening, and my husband stepped out.

I got very upset and I don't think my husband paid much attention to my story until the night he was having a conversation with me in the laundry room and he turned around and I was not there. He called my name and I answered--from our third floor master bedroom.

We had the house blessed. In the very last room of the blessing (the master bedroom again) as the final blessing was said my jewelry box with a small angel fell off my dresses. The minister turned around and asked me "Did you do that?"

No. I did not.

Things slowed down then came to a stop after the blessing. We were happy and planning to start a family. We have since moved to a new house. Not too long ago I woke in the middle of the night. No windows were opened--it is cold here in October. I watched the bathroom door slowly open on its own, and stop before it could hit the bookcase.

They're hhhhhheeeeeerrrrreeee......

I think American Horror Story would have a wonderful season if they based it on divination, but they certainly had fun last night with the circus theme.

A page from 100 Unfortunate Days about the dangers and delights of the occult:

Day 27

I went to a store in town whose name that implies the things sold there will help you be successful.

When you go in the store you can smell the burning sage and other incenses— you can smell this all the way down the block. They sell books for alcoholics and drug addicts and people who want to commune with God or spirits. They also do tarot card readings and angel interpretations and anything else you can think of that will attract spirits or angels or demons into your life. I thought this seemed cool. The card reading said pertinent things to me.

But I don’t know if this is healthy.

After this I took a class in hypnosis, and then one in acupressure, and then I carried the little Angel Cards that I picked at each session with me. And something bothered me about it every time. My marriage was terrible and getting worse. I could feel my hatred for my husband growing by the minute. BUT I was being open minded and I thought reading cards and knowing the future and reading about the devil was a good thing because I was enlightened. I stopped reading the book about the devil dead-smack in the middle and took a train south. I pushed past any exhaustion I felt. I threw away the cards I’d kept tucked into my wallet—they had demons attached to them and so I prayed to St. Michael. I should pray to him every day—twice a day. I wanted a shell of protection like I read about in The Screwtape Letters—somehow I got it. I know I am safe now and I will not stray again.

Ha ha. Even as I say this I realize I am full of shit, especially when there is a full moon and I’ve had too much wine. I feel surrounded by spirits at night. They can be there and I can be safe. I think. I can laugh at them and know I am with God—and as I write those words I know I am lying. I don’t think I am one of God’s favorites. The insidiousness of it all is the most evil. It creeps in and finds a place with a pillow and cuddles up and you are not even sure it is there at first. You don’t know when it starts to creep in, but it’s funny how you can tell when it’s gone.

At least for now.