Ghost Hunters, "Inn of the Dead"

I learned something new from this episode.  I learned how to pronounce the word "cupola," which is a word I've only ever seen in print.  I always assumed it was pronounced just like it looks - "cup" like a cup, and "ola" like "Crayola."  Turns out it's pronounced "coop-ola" instead, with a long U.  Ya learn something every day!

The word "cupola" came up a lot in this episode, because one of the reported haunting was from a former employee, Fred, who hanged himself in the cupola.  Gruesomely, he hung himself at the start of a long holiday weekend, and his body was not found for many days.  At which point, things were apparently pretty bad.

A current employee reports that once on a whim as she was locking up for the night, she called "Goodnight, Fred!"  And heard a long, moaning, "gooodniiiiiiiiight" from the cupola.  Yep, I would have been out of there like a Looney Tunes cartoon, leaving behind an Erika-shaped hole in the nearest wall.

Another employee lived in the basement for years, and eventually hanged himself down there.  People report feeling uneasy in the basement, but who wouldn't?  Come on, show me the basement where people DON'T feel uneasy.  It's a basement!  It's just darned creepy.

The Orleans Inn turns out to have a long and gory history, actually.  In addition to the two relatively recent employee deaths, a prostitute named Hannah was murdered in the front yard.  And mobsters used to store illegal gin in the inn during Prohibition days.

I have to take back something I said last time about being frustrated that Jason and Grant didn't try and film the light flickering.  This time around we have the same situation, with something (or someone?) unseen blocking out a thin sliver of light at the far side of the basement.  The cameraman turns around to watch it, and… yeah, you can't see a darned thing.  I guess the IR lights they use for filming washes out any thin slivers of light.

But we return to one of my original grievances, which is the "turn on the flashlight for yes" thing.  If you unscrew a flashlight until it's easy to turn on, then it's also going to be liable to flicker on and off just from ambient vibrations, slight drafts, metal connectors warming up or cooling off, and so forth.

But then again, I got chills when Hannah answered in the affirmative that someone was upstairs.  The timing of that sequence is just wonderful.  So there's that.

Given the colorful history (both long ago and recent) of the Orleans Inn, I was hoping for a little bit more in the way of evidence.  Jason and Grant heard a scream, which was caught on camera, but frankly it sounded like coyotes to me.  And they got a chilling EVP from the cupola, that really did sound like "cut me down."  (Oh Frank, dude, if you wanted someone to cut you down, you shouldn't have killed yourself in the first place, jerk!)  But all in all, a fairly satisfying ghost hunt.

Celebrity Paranormal Project, "Pearl"

It's obvious that Celebrity Paranormal Project is faked.  The question that intrigues me is, HOW fake?  I wonder.  This episode featured a lot of things which would be simple to fake, things which would be difficult to fake but which were nevertheless obviously fake, and a few things which I assumed were 100% fake but turned out to be completely true.

This episode takes place in the "Warson Asylum for the Criminally Insane" which is actually the Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut.  On deck we have Tony Little ("America's Personal Trainer"), Baywatch star Traci Bingham, Ethan Zohn (winner of "Survivor: Africa"), Rachel Hunter (supermodel), and Godfrey (a comedian).

We are informed that Pearl is the spirit which haunts this location.  A patient named Nell Marley complained of being haunted by Pearl, who scratched her and tormented her mercilessly.  After Nell was given a lobotomy, Pearl was released into the world.  When a doctor asked if she was free of Pearl, she said "I'm not free of Pearl - Pearl is now free of me."  

This is a chilling little story.  One tiny problem is that it seems to have been invented whole cloth by Celebrity Paranormal Project.  

We first follow the lush blonde ponytail of Tony Little, who liberally spritzes himself with cologne before heading out on his "mission."  He heads out with the Baywatch star, who is definitely the most tightly-wound of all the celebrities on board this episode.  

One truism of the show is that  "by re-enacting a familiar experience, you may trigger a stronger reaction from the spirits."  Which is how we come to have a heavily sweating Tony lying on the floor in a straitjacket, while the Baywatch star hangs a pendulum from the ceiling.   Nothing happens, except that everyone freaks out.  

In the "easily faked" category for this episode we have the EMF reading, which completely pegged on the mattress where Nell supposedly died.  Just slipping a few AA batteries under the mattress cover would take care of that.  And of course some Teamster in the basement whales on the pipes with a wrench, thus scaring the wits out of everyone.

 A surprise of the episode is that Rachel Hunter turns out to be TOTALLY. BAD. ASS.  Even after her investigative partner bails on her and runs back to base camp leaving her alone in the dark, Hunter keeps it together.  

Hunter is also witness to what I'm sure is faked, although I don't know specifically how.  While panning a thermal camera around the hydrotherapy room, the outline of a person flickers into existence.  Looking wholly unlike any thermal paranormal evidence ever captured in the history of thermal camera evidence.  

This was where I started wondering about the celebrities' complicity in the fakery.  The team back at base camp also sees the thermal hit, and reacts accordingly.  Of course, the effect would be easiest to add in post-production.  Were the celebrities told to "see something scary on a count of three…"?  Or was the effect somehow pre-recorded on their systems?  

At any rate, it was absolutely terrible.

As for "things I thought were fake but turned out to be real," I assumed that all the jumbled furniture, scattered papers, and decayed padding in the padded cell were just set dressing, sprinkled around by the show's producers.  But it turns out that all that stuff is really there, as you can see by this incredibly beautiful photo gallery on Forbbiden-Places.net (click "Gallery of Photos").

The Djinn Whisper At Petra

The most recent episode of Destination Truth was really one of the best so far.  If only because their first destination was Petra, which was recently crowned one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and rightfully so.  Petra is incredible, and I hope one day to visit there.

But not after dark!

In one of the tombs, host Josh Gates asks "Is anyone else here?" and a voice clearly and immediately answers "Yes."  Frankly, I would have wet my pants.  This disembodied voice was preceded by throwing a rock at Gates, and followed by the sounds of scraping and clanging metal, like a sword fight.

All three of these items were reported as being associated with the Djinn, who are said to inhabit Petra.  (Who could blame them?  Have you seen pictures?)  

The only other characteristic behavior which the Destination Truth team didn't see was that the Djinn are said to call your name from the darkness.  Creepy, right?  I can't help but think of several occasions on "Ghost Hunters" where either Jason or Grant has heard their name being called, either audibly or on EVP.

I am also reminded of the Turkish and Eastern European legend of the Karakoncolos, who wanders about in the dead of winter, calling your name from the darkness.  The Karakoncolos also takes a human form, to stand on street corners and ask questions of passers-by.  (If you know what's good for you, you'll use the word "black" when you answer his questions.)

Interesting that legends and occurrences from such diverse places could all follow the same general pattern.

When most people think "Djinn" what they actually think is "Genie."  Which is to say, a guy (possibly Robin Williams) with curly shoes who lives inside Aladdin's magic lamp.  That, or Barbara Eden.  

But in the Arabic world, the Djinn are one of God's three sentient creations, along with humans and angels.  Djinn are mentioned in the Qur'an as one of the two creations who have free will (along with humans).  The Qur'an also says that they are made of "smokeless flame," which describes something that Western ghost hunters might construe as an "orb."

("Djinn" is the collective term.  A single entity is called a "jinni.")

Djinn are said to not only form communities just like humans (with "kings, courts of law, weddings, and mourning rituals") but they can also travel instantaneously to any point on the globe, and take the form of any creature.  The Djinn can be either friendly and good-natured or evil, and an evil Djinn is very evil indeed.  It is treacherous, malicious, and can possess you.

Just as with humans, there are many different kinds of Djinn leading many different lifestyles.  One sub-set of Djinn is called the Ifrit.  These are Djinn who specialize in inhabiting abandoned buildings (like Petra, or Preston Castle).  The Ifrit are notoriously strong and cunning (which didn't help the Ifrit featured in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," although it did serve the Ifrit in "Graveyard Tales" well).

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user betta design

 

Ghost Hunters, "Ghost in the Attic/New Jersey Bar"

This latest episode felt kind of "meh" after the last few.  Although "Ghost in the Attic" is interesting because the report is of a family which is frightened in their own home.  Whenever this situation arises, I always feel like the TAPS members go the extra mile to debunk everything.  So if they encounter anything which they have to admit is paranormal, then you can be fairly certain it's the real deal.

Sometimes I get hung up on the conflicting information and advice they provide.  Early, during the debriefing, we are told that the family has befriended their ghosts only to see them turn nasty.  "Sometimes they come across friendly just to get your attention and your trust," Grant says.  This frames ghosts as being something like raccoons.  Like, it's all cute and friendly at first, but eventually you're going to get bitten.

But later when reassuring the family members, they give the advice to treat the ghosts like people, because that's what they are.  Dead people, but people nevertheless.  

I'll be honest with you: whatever made that hiss from the bureau when Amy and Kris were upstairs doing their EVP sessions didn't sound like "people" to me.  But their first priority when dealing with a family home is to downplay everything, so there you go.

As a viewer, there was some frustration with some of the incidents not being captured on film.  I guess I can accept Jason and Grant's explanation that "the blue light didn't get captured on film because we're using infrared."  But when Jason repeatedly sees something pass across a slim line of light from a window, and he doesn't turn a camera to capture it, I can't help but be annoyed.  They are both carrying cameras for a reason!  

At the end of the segment at the Grzelak House, I was very impressed that Grant managed to gently debunk the homeowner's claims of being sat upon at night.  Sleep paralysis was the first thing that came to mind when she had originally related her stories, and her symptoms were pretty much textbook.  This is the phenomenon also known as "the night hag," and it can be incredibly alarming for those who experience it.  However, it's a medical condition, not a paranormal experience, and I have to give the TAPS guys props for putting the science where it belongs.

The second segment, at a supposedly haunted bar in New Jersey, was given extremely short shrift.  Any time you have two investigations in a single episode you know that one or both of them are kind of sucky.  I remain wholly unimpressed with the flashlight trick, which is just too easily explained away as random.  And although there were some odd rustlings and bangings heard from the apartment upstairs, nothing very interesting happened.  

Aside from that crazy-ass scream on the EVP when Kris was investigating the basement, obviously!  I love it when they catch crazy-ass screams on EVP, even though it's probably just a weird digital quirk.  They aren't as unnerving as a voice groaning "get out" but it's still not half bad.

Celebrity Paranormal Project, "In Sanatorium"

Hulu coughed up an interesting bit of entertainment for me over the weekend.  After watching an episode of Ghost Hunters, I noticed that a show called "Celebrity Paranormal Project" was shown at the bottom of the page on the list of "If you liked this show, you might like…" suggestions.

Oh, I might like it alright.

Celebrity Paranormal Project aired on VH1 for one season, 2006-2007.  Clearly it was capitalizing on and riding on the coattails of Ghost Hunters, which first aired on the Syfy Channel in 2004.  In fact, the Ghost Hunters themselves were just at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in an episode which aired in March, 2006 - a mere seven months before this oddball collection of celebrities stumbled onto the grounds of one of America's most haunted locations.

If you like the scientific mindset, the focus on documenting paranormal occurrences, and the overall trust and reputability of Ghost Hunters, then this is not the show for you.  But if you enjoy watching random celebrities freak the **** out in a scary place in the middle of the night, then I recommend it highly.

In fact, this show could more accurately have been titled "Celebrity Panic Attack Project."  This first episode brings together five reality show stars: Gary Busey (!!), Hal Sparks, Donna D'Errico, Toccara Jones, and Jenna Morasca.  They are sent in without any crew, just a collection of video recorders both hand-held and strap-on.  They are given Charlie's Angels-style directions for exploring the building, and sent off on various missions.

The down side of this show quickly becomes apparent.  The locations have embedded cameras, from which we watch the celebrities in the third person, so to speak.  Special effects have been added to the footage, depicting shadow people and funny little "zzzzip" warps that I guess are supposed to be ghosts.  Crew members are clearly afoot, pulling pranks like moving a child's ball around the premises.  

Going into it, you have to assume that everything that happens was staged by the unseen crew in order to frighten the celebrities.  This is problematic because so many of what you encounter in a place like Waverly Hills Sanatorium could so easily be faked - distant footsteps, faint echoing screams, random shadows, and slamming doors are all trivial to create.  

It's a damned shame to send people into a place like Waverly Hills, and then fake a bunch of footsteps and doors slamming.  It struck me as being like going to the ocean, and setting up a fake wave machine.  Why bother?  All you have to do is camera up some inexperienced people and send them in after dark and let their imaginations (and the sanatorium's contingent of actual ghosts) do the work for you.

Hal Sparks has the best line of the episode, "I stand by my statement that Gary is the scariest thing in this place."  Watching Gary Busey investigate a haunted sanatorium is definitely a sight to behold.  His Busey-isms included "this is the place where science fiction meets nostalgia" and asserting that he heard "sounds that were like a mechanical tiger."  

An accurate investigation into paranormal phenomena it isn't.  But it excels as a great evening of popcorn entertainment.

Ghost Hunters "Haunted Reform School"

In this episode, the Ghost Hunters crew travels to California to investigate the haunted reform school Preston Castle.  Am I the only one who thinks the TAPS crew should invest in two sets of equipment, one of which can be left on the west coast?  It seems like every other week they're having to drive back and forth across the country.  

I'm not complaining, because Steve Gonsalves is one of my favorite Ghost Hunters, and obviously he's not going to be flying to California any time soon.  But I've made that cross-country trip there and back again once in my life, and once was plenty.  Their gas bill must be absolutely insane.  And I bet they get tired of eating at drive throughs.

Anyway, Preston Castle was the juvenile detention of its day, where young offenders were sent to jail, basically.  Old abandoned jails have traditionally been excellent fodder for the show, and Preston Castle is no exception.  Let's put it this way: a lot of the people who "graduated" from the Preston Reform School went on to become famous boxers, according to the Wikipedia article.  Any school where you end up picking up boxing as a trade is probably a pretty rough place indeed!

(Random girly aside: when did Amy Bruni dye her hair?  I think the red really works for her!)

In addition to the usual torment and sadness and death inherent to any jail, Preston Castle carries the prerequisite story of a grisly murder.  One of the female employees was kicked to death and stuffed in a corner of the laundry room in the basement.  Her killer was never found, although one boy was tried three times and finally acquitted.  

Is her spirit angry that the person who beat her to death was never punished?  Hard to say, but a lot of disembodied screams and moans are caught on EVP.  (The one which they decipher as "slow down" sounds more to me like "oh noooooo," a moan of terror.  But that's just me.)

Jason and Grant get some of the best action in this episode.  Grant thinks he sees a face peeking at them out of the corner of his eye.  Then when he asks if they know his name, a voice clearly says "Graaaaant."  The voice seems to be coming from a room that happens to be missing its floor, and when Grant tries to investigate the room below it, the floor sinks and threatens to fall out beneath him.  Ghost hunting is dangerous, kids!

Preston Castle abounds in footsteps, the sound of closing doors, and funny noises which Jason and Grant finally source to a collection of old gurneys.   The gurneys won't slide around on their own, though; someone would have to be in there rattling them around.  Let me tell you something, a dark basement medical clinic room full of abandoned turn of the century gurneys is plenty scary, even without the possibility of an unseen presence nudging them around.

All in all, a very engrossing hour of television!

Destination Truth: "Haunted Mining Town/The Taniwha"

This was a fantastic week for ghosts on television, with both Destination Truth and Ghost Hunters hitting it out of the park.  I prefer Destination Truth as a cryptozoology show, but with episodes as creepy as this one, who cares?

In the first half of this week's Destination Truth episode, the team plus guest star Allison Scagliotti from fellow Syfy Channel show Warehouse 13 hoof it all the way out to the remote corners of northern Chile.  My interest is always piqued when these shows do a crossover thing, because there's always the potential for the guest stars having the bejeezus scared out of them.

Allison Scagliotti's presence proved somewhat distracting because she is so very tiny.  The camera crew obviously had trouble getting her and Josh Gates in the same shot.  Scagliotti is so little, she made Ryder look beefy by comparison.  That's an accomplishment, people.

The team scouts out the location, the abandoned mining town of La Noria, by parasail or some nonsense.  What?  I don't know.  It was wacky.  

La Noria is one of two abandoned mining towns in northern Chile.  Entire families lived and died in La Noria, a fact poignantly brought home when a crewmember stumbles across a tiny child's handmade leather shoe.  Needless to say, the mine workers were treated terribly by the mine's owners.  You get the idea that La Noria is a town which was built on human suffering.

Then the sun went down.  And suddenly things were not so wacky.  For example, the town's cemetery workers apparently never bothered to fill things in, because all the graves are open, with skeletons just lying there in the desert sand.  

Later, at the schoolhouse, Gates caught some amazing FLIR footage of a human figure's heat signature behind a window.  For those who think the show is faked, I don't think Gates is that good an actor.  Or that he would risk such expensive equipment by freaking out and flailing around in surprise like that.

Also, major props to anyone who sees what looks like an empty grave in the floor of a building and says "I'm going to go down there.  Drop this piece of wood like a door behind me, okay?"  I start feeling panicky just thinking about it.  WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT WHY.  It was an effective moment, let's just say that.

Destination Truth's ghost episodes specialize in plunking various crew members out in the dark and making them sit there for half an hour or so.  And this episode is no exception.  It always strikes me as being kind of like a psychological experiment or fraternity hazing, I mean, who wouldn't start getting freaked out?  This slightly sadistic (but entertaining) tactic is one thing which differentiates Destination Truth from Ghost Hunters, which always sends out its team members in pairs.

For once, I ended up feeling genuinely bad for a guest visitor.  Scags definitely gets the short end of the terror stick in this episode, from being one of the first people to stumble across the open graves, to her experience during the aforementioned "EVP session."  I won't spoil it for you, I'll just say that this is definitely a "must watch" episode!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the second half, where they go hunting the Taniwha.  They tape some interesting footage of an eel, and scare the living crap out of what's probably some poor platypus.  Meh.

Don't Shut Dat Space Program Down

Last night, Wednesday, April 14th, the skies over several  Midwestern states, beginning around  10 p.m were filled with a light show. What was it? Press reports are pointing to an apparent meteor — or possibly a piece of returning space junk — what ever it was, it illuminated the night sky, going from west to east, before it went out like a fire ball.

There was no sign of any "touch down,"  no debris, no remains hitting the ground, not anywhere in the Midwest, but, according to press reports,  " in some sections of the region, where the object was sighted, homes and trees shook and sonic booms were heard." So this wasn't mass imagination at work, photographic record withstanding.

All I have to say about this is this: President Obama, keep that space program going. We may have to one day defend the planet against you know who.

News Source:  Star Tribune, Madison.com

The EBay Haunted Painting

I had entirely forgotten about the oil panting "The Hands Resist Him" until someone sent me a link earlier this week.  This is something that hit big online in the early days, as brought to fame by the infamous eBay listing in 2000.  I suppose there are a lot of internet users who were too young to have noticed then!

Let's start with the painting itself.  It should be no surprise to learn that someone thought this painting was haunted and/or under the influence of demonic sources.  It is tremendously creepy.

A little boy stands on the front stoop of a building (presumably a home).  Beside him, a doll nearly his own size leans against the wall.  She clutches something in her hands.  Behind him, hands press against the glass of the door, all of them at his height or below it.  They are the hands of children - or perhaps of other dolls like the one who stands before him.

Ooh, I've given myself the willies.  Let's move on.

 "The Hands Resist Him" was painted by artist William Stoneham in 1972.  According to the artist's statement, he modeled the little boy after a picture of himself at age five in Chicago.  The doll is the boy's imaginary friend or spirit guide.  The hands represent the echoes of all the other lives which have been lived in that place in the past.  Ghosts, in other words.

The painting's odd history begins early on.  According to the artist, "Both the owner of the Gallery where 'Hands' was displayed and the Los Angeles Times art critic who reviewed my show were dead within a year of the show."

Somehow the painting ended up abandoned behind a brewery, or so claims the owners who listed it on eBay in February, 2000.  They also claimed that the painting came to life at night, that the figures in it took on a life of their own, that the boy and the doll fight with each other, and that the doll forces him out of the frame at gunpoint.

As soon as they posted their listing, the hits - and the reports of unusual effects - began pouring in.  People who viewed the auction claimed to experience myriad effects, including shortness of breath, feeling unusual drafts or blasts of hot air, dizziness, and nausea.  (All of these effects could easily be blamed on mass hysteria or panic attacks, but no matter.)

Some time after painting "The Hands Resist Him," Stoneham became a computer graphics artist living in Spokane and working for Cyan Worlds, the company behind mega-hits Myst and Riven.  Stoneham had forgotten all about "The Hands Resist Him" until he was contacted by a gallery in Michigan who were the winning bidders on the infamous eBay auction.

Stoneham was bewildered by the sudden attention his 1972 painting had received, and by his newfound notoriety on the internet.  On the up side, it led him to begin painting again, almost 20 years after he had apparently given it up in the name of getting a "real job."  Which is the best happy ending of all, if you ask me!

Back From the Dead for the 114th Time

When I was a child, a family member had a brush with death that is now famous in our family. He’s since had others as well, but this one was special in one way: he says that his near-death experience included the whole white light, tunnel, the rest of the near-death shebang that we see in the movies and hear about from various people who’ve almost died.

Though science has given explanations for this experience, many believe that this experience is actually the route to Heaven (or the afterlife, etc.), resulting in a belief in religion, a second chance at life, and perhaps more do-gooding within their lives.

So I have to wonder if Ann Mintram of North Wales experienced this white light and tunnel phenomenon once, or twice, or all 114 times she was brought back to life recently.

Mintram, 55, was given electric shocks to resuscitate her body, which died that many times in less than two days. Though extremely grateful, Mintram reports scorch marks on her body from the medical team’s efforts. A victim of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, in which the heart stops from beating for no apparent reason, Mintram had collapsed while watching television.

She had reported feeling dizzy and giddy, having passed out last April, and wrote it off as her age. Thankfully when she went unconscious, her husband was home and was able to help care for her.

Mintram went to the Ysbyty Gwynedd Clinic in Bangor for a night of observation, but all seemed well—until she was just about to leave, when her heart stopped beating. The CPR and defibrillator work then commenced. When her poor daughter asked about her mother’s condition and what plan there was to care for her after her 18th resuscitation, she was simply told, “This is the plan, there’s nothing more that we can do.”

She was then transferred to a specialty unit for heart patients at Liverpool’s Broadgreen Hospital. Between the two places, she died more than 100 times.

When I imagined this, I thought of Mintram as unconscious during the ordeal, but not so; she was awake every time after she was brought back to life, full of fear every time that it would be the last time she’d ever wake up. Can you imagine such an ordeal? All I can say is I’m amazed by both Mintram and her strength during the entire two days, as well as by the doctors who never gave up on her. Talk about dedication to your patient—and true heroism. 

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