Friday, March 8, 2013
Monday, May 7, 2012
Ghosts vs. Spirits
What is the difference between a ghost and a spirit?
What leaves our bodies when we die is our soul. What happens to that soul after death determines whether it becomes a ghost or a spirit. A soul that goes on to the Afterlife goes through a Life Review and learning process, in which they become enlightened, and are then called spirits. Spirits are normally benevolent and protective. They visit with us, especially during "family" times, such as weddings, births, holidays, and deaths. Spirits have the ability to come and go from the Afterlife, in order to visit us, comfort us, or protect us.
A soul that does not go on to the Afterlife after death, but chooses to stay attached to the physical plane, is referred to as a ghost. Ghosts can become "stuck" between the physical world and the Afterlife for many reasons. They may feel that they were "too young" or "not ready yet" to die, especially if it was a sudden death. They may be attached to a person, place or object and may not be willing to let go. They may be afraid of "punishment" for the way that they lived and may be afraid to move on. Perhaps they feel that they still have work to do, as in hauntings involving lighthouse keepers or soldiers. Ghosts can be benevolent or malevolent in hauntings.
Ghosts that are "stuck" can be encouraged to move on to the Afterlife, where they will continue on to become spirits and join with their loved ones.
What leaves our bodies when we die is our soul. What happens to that soul after death determines whether it becomes a ghost or a spirit. A soul that goes on to the Afterlife goes through a Life Review and learning process, in which they become enlightened, and are then called spirits. Spirits are normally benevolent and protective. They visit with us, especially during "family" times, such as weddings, births, holidays, and deaths. Spirits have the ability to come and go from the Afterlife, in order to visit us, comfort us, or protect us.
A soul that does not go on to the Afterlife after death, but chooses to stay attached to the physical plane, is referred to as a ghost. Ghosts can become "stuck" between the physical world and the Afterlife for many reasons. They may feel that they were "too young" or "not ready yet" to die, especially if it was a sudden death. They may be attached to a person, place or object and may not be willing to let go. They may be afraid of "punishment" for the way that they lived and may be afraid to move on. Perhaps they feel that they still have work to do, as in hauntings involving lighthouse keepers or soldiers. Ghosts can be benevolent or malevolent in hauntings.
Ghosts that are "stuck" can be encouraged to move on to the Afterlife, where they will continue on to become spirits and join with their loved ones.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Virginia City, Nevada
One of my favorite places to visit is Virginia City, Nevada. This little town, nestled in the hills above Reno, is a living piece of the American Old West. Originally settled in the 1800's as a silver mining town, in recent years it has become a quaint Western tourist attraction and paranormal haven. Rich in history, visitors to Virginia City have included Mark Twain, and Richard Matheson, an author who was inspired to write the book "Bid Time Return" after his visit. His book later became the cult classic movie, "Somewhere in Time" starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.
My first visit to Virginia City was on the weekend of Oct. 13-14, 2001 for their very first Virginia City Paranormal Conference held at the Silver Queen Hotel. It was hosted by Janice Oberding, the author of Haunted Nevada, psychic Michele Hardison, and Khris Hamlet.
During the course of the conference, I began to feel very cold. Over the next few minutes I got steadily colder, until my bones literally felt like they were made of ice. I got up from my seat and went upstairs to my hotel room to get my jacket. When I returned, there was a group of people gathered around someone with a video camera. I walked over to see what was going on, and discovered that while I was sitting freezing in my seat, a person at the conference had scanned the room with a video camera, capturing what appeared to be a person-sized white misty "tornado" or "vortex" moving across the room behind where I was sitting. It was very compelling and exciting, and I knew exactly why I had been feeling so icy cold!
I was to find that this experience would be the first of several for me during the weekend, which I will be adding to my blog individually...including my experience with an angry shadow ghost and another ghost named Bobby McKinney, who shared his death experience with me.
My first visit to Virginia City was on the weekend of Oct. 13-14, 2001 for their very first Virginia City Paranormal Conference held at the Silver Queen Hotel. It was hosted by Janice Oberding, the author of Haunted Nevada, psychic Michele Hardison, and Khris Hamlet.
During the course of the conference, I began to feel very cold. Over the next few minutes I got steadily colder, until my bones literally felt like they were made of ice. I got up from my seat and went upstairs to my hotel room to get my jacket. When I returned, there was a group of people gathered around someone with a video camera. I walked over to see what was going on, and discovered that while I was sitting freezing in my seat, a person at the conference had scanned the room with a video camera, capturing what appeared to be a person-sized white misty "tornado" or "vortex" moving across the room behind where I was sitting. It was very compelling and exciting, and I knew exactly why I had been feeling so icy cold!
I was to find that this experience would be the first of several for me during the weekend, which I will be adding to my blog individually...including my experience with an angry shadow ghost and another ghost named Bobby McKinney, who shared his death experience with me.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
The Murdered Man
In the 1980's, in Sacramento, California, there lived a lady by the name of Dorothea Puente who turned her home into a boarding house. For several years, she apparently murdered some of her boarders, and had her handyman bury them on her property. She was finally caught and convicted of murdering 3 men, but suspected in the deaths of 9 victims all together. She was serving two consecutive life sentences at the Chowchilla Correctional Facility for Women, when she died of natural causes in 2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Puente
Around 2004, a fellow paranormal investigator and I went to Dorothea Puente's home in Sacramento. It had been empty and abandoned since her arrest about 10 years or so earlier. We were curious to see if I could "sense" anything paranormal there. At the time, since the home was empty and up for sale, the property was surrounded by a cyclone fence. Whenever we usually went by, the fence was locked and you couldn't access the property. However, this one night that we went, the lock on the gate was unlocked, and so we snuck into the yard. The home was a small Victorian, and the bulk of the yard was on the side of the house, with a smaller "L" shaped piece that went around the back of the house. As we walked along the side of the house, all seemed very quiet to me...I sensed nothing at that point. But when we turned the corner at the back, it was as though I suddenly stepped into a wind tunnel. I could feel paranormal energy all around, and picked up three individual energies. But what really got me were the emotions tied to the energies...I kept picking up on emotions like sadness, regret, frustration...these were the people that Dorothea had murdered and buried on her property. Other emotions that I picked up on came across as questions, such as "why did you do this to us", and "we were old and only had a few years left. Why did you steal them?". The overall feeling was very sad. When we got back around to the front of the house, my friend said to me, "When you went around the back of the house, do you remember what the very first thing you said was?" I told him no, and he replied, "You said 'Oh, I'm so sorry', then went on to describe all the things you were picking up". We took a few photos, then headed home. When my friend downloaded the photos, he came across one that looked like I had a ghost in the frame with me.
The photo below shows an apparent apparition behind me. To the left, I've added an enlarged closeup of the apparition. You can see his arm, thigh, head, chest, and if you look closely, a hat:
Here is the same photo, with the apparition outlined. The dots you see on his chest are actually garbage cans down the street.
It was a cool evening, but not cool enough to create breath or mist. The rest of the photos came out clear, without any mist in them. Ghost or not? I'll leave that for you to decide. NOTE: This home has since been purchased, and paranormal investigations are not welcomed there by the new owner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Puente
Around 2004, a fellow paranormal investigator and I went to Dorothea Puente's home in Sacramento. It had been empty and abandoned since her arrest about 10 years or so earlier. We were curious to see if I could "sense" anything paranormal there. At the time, since the home was empty and up for sale, the property was surrounded by a cyclone fence. Whenever we usually went by, the fence was locked and you couldn't access the property. However, this one night that we went, the lock on the gate was unlocked, and so we snuck into the yard. The home was a small Victorian, and the bulk of the yard was on the side of the house, with a smaller "L" shaped piece that went around the back of the house. As we walked along the side of the house, all seemed very quiet to me...I sensed nothing at that point. But when we turned the corner at the back, it was as though I suddenly stepped into a wind tunnel. I could feel paranormal energy all around, and picked up three individual energies. But what really got me were the emotions tied to the energies...I kept picking up on emotions like sadness, regret, frustration...these were the people that Dorothea had murdered and buried on her property. Other emotions that I picked up on came across as questions, such as "why did you do this to us", and "we were old and only had a few years left. Why did you steal them?". The overall feeling was very sad. When we got back around to the front of the house, my friend said to me, "When you went around the back of the house, do you remember what the very first thing you said was?" I told him no, and he replied, "You said 'Oh, I'm so sorry', then went on to describe all the things you were picking up". We took a few photos, then headed home. When my friend downloaded the photos, he came across one that looked like I had a ghost in the frame with me.
The photo below shows an apparent apparition behind me. To the left, I've added an enlarged closeup of the apparition. You can see his arm, thigh, head, chest, and if you look closely, a hat:
Here is the same photo, with the apparition outlined. The dots you see on his chest are actually garbage cans down the street.
It was a cool evening, but not cool enough to create breath or mist. The rest of the photos came out clear, without any mist in them. Ghost or not? I'll leave that for you to decide. NOTE: This home has since been purchased, and paranormal investigations are not welcomed there by the new owner.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The White Lady
When I was in my 20's, I lived in a town in Northern California. One night, a date and I went out to dinner at a popular place called Robin Hill, in Upper Lake, California. The building was a beautiful two story Victorian, built in the late 1800's by a wealthy merchant. The home was gorgeous, and sat on a hill overlooking the "top" of Clearlake, so that the view was of the lake sweeping south from the shoreline in front of the house. It was breathtaking and romantic.
The story behind the home was that the merchant who built it had a daughter. The stories about her vary...she either died in a fire or threw herself from the second story of the house because she was pregnant and unmarried. I heard the story of the fire more often than I heard the other story, so I always had a tendency to believe the former.
Over time, the home passed from different owners, eventually becoming a popular local restaurant. The first floor housed the restaurant, while the second floor was used for offices and storage. Workers at the restaurant would frequently report on paranormal activity that occurred in the restaurant on a regular basis. Workers would report that they would lock up the restaurant at night, with everything neat and orderly, only to open up in the morning and find things in a disarray. There were reports of silverware going missing, only to be found on the second floor, in the offices.
The approach to Robin Hill off the highway was from behind the house. The long driveway went towards the rear of the house, then passed around it on the left, to end in front where the parking lot was. You could park either facing the lake or facing the house. This particular night, my date parked facing the lake, which put the house to our back. It was the first and only time I had ever been to Robin Hill.
After we parked, I got out of the car, and as I got out, I felt a sensation on my back like someone was staring at me. The feeling was so strong that I could even "feel" where the eyes were focused most intently on my back. I turned, and instinctively knew where to look...the feeling on my back was so strong that I was able to pinpoint its origin.
I looked up at the second story of the house. There were three windows there, each divided by a wall space that was just as wide as each window. As I turned, I looked directly at the middle second story window, and right into the eyes of a ghost.
She was beautiful...there's no other way to describe her. Just absolutely beautiful. The three windows of the second story were all dark, as the lights were off. But she stood out in that middle window...all white, glowing softly but brightly, just like a florescent light. She was bright, but her light was gentle on the eyes. She was all white, and her details were in a very light grey, like shadows, so that her features on her face seemed to be shadowed with this light grey, while the rest of her face glowed white. The details of her dress were the same...I could make out her Victorian dress easily enough, and I could see that the pleats and other details were that light grey. There were no other colors to her...just the bright glowing white and soft grey details.
We stood there, staring at each other with our eyes locked. Then I felt the strangest sensation, like molasses was being poured over me...and when the "molasses" got to about my waist, I suddenly sensed her emotions as though I were her. I have never encountered anything like this before or since...I could feel her emotions as though they were my own, but they were separate from me. I wasn't being possessed, because I could still feel my own emotions and was still in control of myself, but it was more like her emotions overshadowed mine, and I could feel both my emotions and hers separately, but at the same time. That's about the best description I can give. It was an amazing experience.
The emotions that came through were feelings of sadness, loneliness and despair...as though she were very, very sad and reaching out for some kind of help. I stood there, dumbfounded, just going with the flow as it were, and feeling her emotions flooding out my own. It seemed like we stood there, our eyes locked together, for an eternity.
Then she abruptly turned to her right, breaking eye contact, and walked behind the wall partition that divided the windows. I waited for her to reappear in the next window, but she didn't. At that point, I heard my date say, "Ready to go?" and I looked over the top of the car at him, to see him getting out of the driver's side and looking at me while shutting the door. I remember feeling surprised that only a few seconds had elapsed when it seemed like the moment I had shared with the ghost went on forever. When I looked back up at the window, and she was gone.
My date and I had an uneventful dinner that night, but I never forgot my paranormal experience there. I have often wondered if she wasn't looking for some king of help...she felt so lonely and sad.
I have since heard that Robin Hill burned down in a fire a few years after I moved away from Clearlake. I have always wondered if the white lady there ever found the peace that she was looking for. I hope so.
The story behind the home was that the merchant who built it had a daughter. The stories about her vary...she either died in a fire or threw herself from the second story of the house because she was pregnant and unmarried. I heard the story of the fire more often than I heard the other story, so I always had a tendency to believe the former.
Over time, the home passed from different owners, eventually becoming a popular local restaurant. The first floor housed the restaurant, while the second floor was used for offices and storage. Workers at the restaurant would frequently report on paranormal activity that occurred in the restaurant on a regular basis. Workers would report that they would lock up the restaurant at night, with everything neat and orderly, only to open up in the morning and find things in a disarray. There were reports of silverware going missing, only to be found on the second floor, in the offices.
The approach to Robin Hill off the highway was from behind the house. The long driveway went towards the rear of the house, then passed around it on the left, to end in front where the parking lot was. You could park either facing the lake or facing the house. This particular night, my date parked facing the lake, which put the house to our back. It was the first and only time I had ever been to Robin Hill.
After we parked, I got out of the car, and as I got out, I felt a sensation on my back like someone was staring at me. The feeling was so strong that I could even "feel" where the eyes were focused most intently on my back. I turned, and instinctively knew where to look...the feeling on my back was so strong that I was able to pinpoint its origin.
I looked up at the second story of the house. There were three windows there, each divided by a wall space that was just as wide as each window. As I turned, I looked directly at the middle second story window, and right into the eyes of a ghost.
She was beautiful...there's no other way to describe her. Just absolutely beautiful. The three windows of the second story were all dark, as the lights were off. But she stood out in that middle window...all white, glowing softly but brightly, just like a florescent light. She was bright, but her light was gentle on the eyes. She was all white, and her details were in a very light grey, like shadows, so that her features on her face seemed to be shadowed with this light grey, while the rest of her face glowed white. The details of her dress were the same...I could make out her Victorian dress easily enough, and I could see that the pleats and other details were that light grey. There were no other colors to her...just the bright glowing white and soft grey details.
We stood there, staring at each other with our eyes locked. Then I felt the strangest sensation, like molasses was being poured over me...and when the "molasses" got to about my waist, I suddenly sensed her emotions as though I were her. I have never encountered anything like this before or since...I could feel her emotions as though they were my own, but they were separate from me. I wasn't being possessed, because I could still feel my own emotions and was still in control of myself, but it was more like her emotions overshadowed mine, and I could feel both my emotions and hers separately, but at the same time. That's about the best description I can give. It was an amazing experience.
The emotions that came through were feelings of sadness, loneliness and despair...as though she were very, very sad and reaching out for some kind of help. I stood there, dumbfounded, just going with the flow as it were, and feeling her emotions flooding out my own. It seemed like we stood there, our eyes locked together, for an eternity.
Then she abruptly turned to her right, breaking eye contact, and walked behind the wall partition that divided the windows. I waited for her to reappear in the next window, but she didn't. At that point, I heard my date say, "Ready to go?" and I looked over the top of the car at him, to see him getting out of the driver's side and looking at me while shutting the door. I remember feeling surprised that only a few seconds had elapsed when it seemed like the moment I had shared with the ghost went on forever. When I looked back up at the window, and she was gone.
My date and I had an uneventful dinner that night, but I never forgot my paranormal experience there. I have often wondered if she wasn't looking for some king of help...she felt so lonely and sad.
I have since heard that Robin Hill burned down in a fire a few years after I moved away from Clearlake. I have always wondered if the white lady there ever found the peace that she was looking for. I hope so.
The Body Basket or Wicker Casket
For those folks who are interested in the paranormal, most usually develop an interest for things that are paranormal or darker in nature. Things that the average person might not collect or even think about. I happen to be one of the former, and sometimes things migrate into my life without my even trying. Take the Body Basket...or Wicker Casket as it's also known. There isn't much history on them, but what little I do know I will share here.
The earliest records of them being used that I can find is during the Civil War. They were used as temporary caskets for the many, many soldiers that died every day. The wicker was a cheap material to use in large quantities as compared to the cost of wood, and wicker was lighter to transport. After the Civil War, and during the Victorian era, wicker caskets were used in the funerary business, mostly for viewings, and occasionally for funerals. They were popular for children. In the early 20th century, up until the 1930's, body baskets were used routinely by police and coroners to remove bodies from crimes scenes. After that, I wasn't able to really find any more information on them being used commercially any more. However, I did stumble across a message board a few years ago where a person posted that they'd seen about a half dozen or so of these wicker caskets in a dumpster behind a mortuary in their neighborhood! Such is the way of life and death, and as an antique collector and history buff (especially Civil War and Old West), it hurt to hear about those antiques and bits of history being discarded in such an awful manner. However, as luck would have it, a different wicker casket literally landed at my doorstep out of the blue one day. Here is a photo of my wicker casket:
It's actually reinforced with metal ribbing spaced throughout. It also has metal hasps to lock the top and bottom together. Metal handles, covered in wicker, are attached at the top and bottom for lifting and carrying. The wicker is wrapped over a wooden slat and metal ribbing frame and is very sturdy. I can stand it up on its' end to display it, provided that I lean it against a wall. The bottom isn't flat, but slightly rounded and it will rock because of its' own weight. But it will support its' own weight to stand up for display. Anyway, this was what I felt like blogging about today...just the paranormal history lesson for the day. Thanks for reading this far. Happy Hauntings.
The earliest records of them being used that I can find is during the Civil War. They were used as temporary caskets for the many, many soldiers that died every day. The wicker was a cheap material to use in large quantities as compared to the cost of wood, and wicker was lighter to transport. After the Civil War, and during the Victorian era, wicker caskets were used in the funerary business, mostly for viewings, and occasionally for funerals. They were popular for children. In the early 20th century, up until the 1930's, body baskets were used routinely by police and coroners to remove bodies from crimes scenes. After that, I wasn't able to really find any more information on them being used commercially any more. However, I did stumble across a message board a few years ago where a person posted that they'd seen about a half dozen or so of these wicker caskets in a dumpster behind a mortuary in their neighborhood! Such is the way of life and death, and as an antique collector and history buff (especially Civil War and Old West), it hurt to hear about those antiques and bits of history being discarded in such an awful manner. However, as luck would have it, a different wicker casket literally landed at my doorstep out of the blue one day. Here is a photo of my wicker casket:
It's actually reinforced with metal ribbing spaced throughout. It also has metal hasps to lock the top and bottom together. Metal handles, covered in wicker, are attached at the top and bottom for lifting and carrying. The wicker is wrapped over a wooden slat and metal ribbing frame and is very sturdy. I can stand it up on its' end to display it, provided that I lean it against a wall. The bottom isn't flat, but slightly rounded and it will rock because of its' own weight. But it will support its' own weight to stand up for display. Anyway, this was what I felt like blogging about today...just the paranormal history lesson for the day. Thanks for reading this far. Happy Hauntings.
Monday, April 9, 2012
The Burning House Dream
Dreams can be such strange things...most times, they're just our brain in REM, a normal sleep cycle, but other times, dreams can seem to be much more. Sometimes they are ways in which we connect to the Other Side, where loved ones can meet, or where we are given premonitions.
Back around 1989, I moved into an old farmhouse just outside of Santa Clara, California. The place was about 85 years old, and had been built by my landlord's grandfather, who was an Italian immigrant. According to my landlord, the grapes growing on the property were real wine grapes from Italy, that his grandfather had smuggled across the ocean in his long underwear. During the Prohibition, his grandfather was able to obtain a permit to make wine in the cellar. The cellar was loaded with big casks...big enough for me to crawl inside.
I had a few paranormal experiences during the few years that I lived in the house. The first experience I had was the dream.
It started the very first night I slept in the house, and for a week straight, I had the same dream every night. The dream played over and over, just like I was rewinding a movie and replaying it. In my dream, I was standing on the sidewalk across the street from my house, watching it as it was engulfed in flames and burned to the ground. In my dream, nothing survived...all our belongings were gone, except for the clothes on our backs. The foundation of the home was all that was left, and it was a smoking pit of burning embers and ash.
Every morning I would tell my then husband about my dream...being openminded about such things, after the third night, he said, "We'd better keep our eyes open for anything that might cause a fire". One night, after a week of having this dream, I was in the kitchen making dinner. My ex husband was in the living room watching tv, but then I heard him moving around, and sort of talking to himself. After a couple of minutes, he called out to me to come to the living room. When I walked in, I saw that he had moved the tv and was behind it. As I walked in, he looked up at me and said, "Hey, you know that dream you've been having? I think I found out why". Then he showed me the outlet in the wall for the tv. He'd removed the plate, and the wiring behind it was all very old, and wadded up in a big bunch. The insulation was worn and peeling and there were a number of bare copper wires. He told me that it was a fire just waiting to happen, and said that it needed fixing right away, and he did not wait. He got up and immediately shut off the power to the house, then went to the hardware store and bought everything he needed to replace the outlet.
That night, I did not dream about the house burning down, nor did I ever have that dream again during the next four years that we lived there.
Back around 1989, I moved into an old farmhouse just outside of Santa Clara, California. The place was about 85 years old, and had been built by my landlord's grandfather, who was an Italian immigrant. According to my landlord, the grapes growing on the property were real wine grapes from Italy, that his grandfather had smuggled across the ocean in his long underwear. During the Prohibition, his grandfather was able to obtain a permit to make wine in the cellar. The cellar was loaded with big casks...big enough for me to crawl inside.
I had a few paranormal experiences during the few years that I lived in the house. The first experience I had was the dream.
It started the very first night I slept in the house, and for a week straight, I had the same dream every night. The dream played over and over, just like I was rewinding a movie and replaying it. In my dream, I was standing on the sidewalk across the street from my house, watching it as it was engulfed in flames and burned to the ground. In my dream, nothing survived...all our belongings were gone, except for the clothes on our backs. The foundation of the home was all that was left, and it was a smoking pit of burning embers and ash.
Every morning I would tell my then husband about my dream...being openminded about such things, after the third night, he said, "We'd better keep our eyes open for anything that might cause a fire". One night, after a week of having this dream, I was in the kitchen making dinner. My ex husband was in the living room watching tv, but then I heard him moving around, and sort of talking to himself. After a couple of minutes, he called out to me to come to the living room. When I walked in, I saw that he had moved the tv and was behind it. As I walked in, he looked up at me and said, "Hey, you know that dream you've been having? I think I found out why". Then he showed me the outlet in the wall for the tv. He'd removed the plate, and the wiring behind it was all very old, and wadded up in a big bunch. The insulation was worn and peeling and there were a number of bare copper wires. He told me that it was a fire just waiting to happen, and said that it needed fixing right away, and he did not wait. He got up and immediately shut off the power to the house, then went to the hardware store and bought everything he needed to replace the outlet.
That night, I did not dream about the house burning down, nor did I ever have that dream again during the next four years that we lived there.
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