Far more common than the sort of stories I just posted on are those focusing on the explosive growth of ghost hunting paranormal societies. For a variety of reasons the number and profile of such groups has surged in the last few years. The Sci-Fi Channel show Ghost Hunters is typically cited, and I'm sure it is influential. But many groups existed before the show, and are now just more prominent.
In ufology, many old-school researchers and enthusiasts argue that the internet killed the UFO group and flying saucer club. One didn't need to meet physically anymore to go UFO hunting. The ghost groups show this to be very wrong. They actively go a-hunting, photographing orbs, recording cold spots and EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena). The active element of creeping around in a cemetery or abandoned building has it's own appeal, whereas UFOs are nearly always cited by people who don't expect them. Also, UFOs are political, perhaps too political for many in the very polarized past five years. Interest in UFOs almost inevitably leads into some element of conspiracy theory, and one of the most recent innovations in ufology is the explicitly activist expolitics. Most ghost stories, on the other hand, often feel safe enough for the pages of Reader's Digest.
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Wisdom Quarterly translation ("Tirokudda Kanda, Petavatthu" 1.5)
Beyond the walls they wait and at crossroads
They stand at doorposts returning to their old homes
Long forgotten when fine meals are laid out
The fruits of their karma being borne out
But who sympathizes with departed relatives
Timely offering of wholesome food gives:
"For our ancestors may this be!
May they be well and happy!"
Those ghosts who gather round,
Assembled from the village and town,
With gratitude exclaim "Well done!"Bless and bring blessings on:
"May our kith and kin live long,
Who provide the gain we've won!
We have been remembered, honored
And donors also gain a great reward!"
From whence they hail there is no harvestingNo cattle, no commerce, no trading
They subsist on what is offered here,
These hungry ghosts who now live in fear
Rainwater rushing down sloping hills
Flows below until the valley fills,
Just so what is donated to the dead
Goes when offered to their benefit instead
As rivers full of water fill the ocean full,
Even so these donations pool
And benefit departed recipientsWith great alacrity and expedience
"She gave to me! He acted on my behalf!
My kith, my kin, companions, friends!" --Offerings should be given for those who've passed
When grateful one reflects on the past
For neither weeping, wailing, nor lament
Benefits those who came and went
Yet well-placed is an offering to the saffron-wreathed,
Which long serves to benefit the deceased
Our "dharma", our duty, to them is shown
Greatly honored they we call our own
And the Order has been given strength
No small merit for what is spent
* The Wheel of Life: Suffering and Salvation (kheper.net)
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nvdaily - Continued ghost sightings and paranormal activity has prompted an investigation at the Toms Brook, VA Fire Hall.
There don't seem to be certain times or circumstances that prompt the strange happenings, such as lights turning on and off, doors opening and closing and pots and pans flying off of shelves. But several people can attest to the fact that these things do happen -- and they attribute them to a ghost they call George.
Richard Funkhouser, who was fire chief at Toms Brook for 14 years, says he has seen George twice.
"But there's been a couple of other people that have actually seen him, and we all describe him the same way," he says. "Floppy hat, little square glasses, with a riding coat."
George has been around awhile, too, Funkhouser says, as there were some sightings at the old fire hall, which was built in the early 1900s. Funkhouser believes George followed them to the new facility when it was built in 1983 -- and so does the Virginia Independent Paranormal Society, a local team of paranormal investigators who are very familiar with the Toms Brook Fire Hall.
Shenandoah County-based Vips was formed in 1996 by Toms Brook residents Rusty Edmondson and his wife, Sharon, and their friend, Wade Ross, of Edinburg. All three are Civil War re-enactors and historians. They believe that George and many of the other ghosts they've encountered were Civil War soldiers.
During their investigation of the fire hall last year, Vips found some mists, orbs and energy balls, Edmondson says, referring to terms used in the paranormal world to describe images and the like that are detected using various equipment. In one picture, they captured "almost the form of a body getting ready to go up the steps," he says, and they picked up some "energy streaks in the bathroom."
"He has a fetish for the bathroom," Edmondson says of George.
"This ghost likes water," Funkhouser agrees.
When he was fire chief, Funkhouser says he had several volunteers leave the building and not come back until the next day after strange things occurred when they were sleeping there overnight.
"A lot of them are scared to death," he says. "One of them, it likes to mess with him in the bathroom. It shakes the stall door."
Funkhouser got a call from one of the volunteers one night, he recalls, who said, "Some creepy stuff is going on down here."
A soda pop fell out of the machine and onto the floor, the fire hall's office door opened and closed, and the door to the radio room, which Funkhouser says takes a lot of force to open, was opened on its own.
"I'm getting the hell out of here," Funkhouser says the volunteer told him, and he did -- even leaving his coat behind.
And then there was Christmas night three years ago. Edmondson says he was in the fire hall waiting for his wife to pick him up when he heard the commode flush. He thought someone else was there, but couldn't find a soul. Lights proceeded to turn on and off and doors slammed. Edmondson says he had finally had enough.
"I said, 'That's it pal. If you don't want me to be here, I'll leave.'"
But George is only one of the spirits Vips has encountered over the years. There have been many men, women, children and even animals they say they've seen, heard or captured on film or audio recordings. Most of them are from the Civil War era, but not all, Edmondson says.
"I guess I had seen stuff for years, but didn't believe in it," he says.
All that changed in 1996. Edmondson says he was living in Middletown when one night he heard cannons going off. The next day, he noticed that the pictures on his walls were crooked. He asked his neighbors if they had heard it, too, but only three houses out of 15 had. From that point on, "a lot of other things started happening," he says.
In 1999, Edmondson was working at Crystal Caverns in Strasburg. He was working during one of the cavern's haunted cave tours, when he fell down on the ground to play dead. He was wearing a Confederate uniform.
"Something grabbed me by the arm and shook me and said 'Are you all right?' And I realized I could see right through him," he says, adding that it looked like a Civil War Confederate soldier.
Edmondson and Ross have had other paranormal encounters over the years, which started with their pastime as Civil War re-enactors.
"At re-enactments we'd just take off and start looking around," Edmondson says, "listening for funny sounds."
They have a spooky story about Gettysburg, and one from Harper's Ferry, W.Va., where Edmondson says they captured "10 full body apparitions" in a picture. There was one modern-day soldier in Air Force dress blues among all the Civil War images. All of them were misty, "but it was wicked," Edmondson says.
Vips has since grown from its three founding members and some old equipment. They now boast about 36 members, with six of those being the core team. A year and a half ago, Vips decided to invest in new equipment. They bought wireless microphones, digital recorders, camcorders, gas meters, a ghost box, a geophone and more, Edmondson says. The ghost box is a radio that scans all the time "and the [spirits'] voices will come in on it," he says. "We've got thousands of dollars invested in equipment. [We did it] for the credibility of the team."
Mrs. Edmondson says the investigations are not done to prove a haunting, however, and each one is performed using a skeptical approach.
"We go in to prove it's not haunted," she says. "There's a lot of explanation for a lot of things."
"If it is not found on technical equipment, it is not there," her husband adds. "It's just a personal experience."
Still, Vips gets calls from all over the United States from people who have seen their Web site, or have heard about them on Facebook or by word of mouth. Edmondson has played parts in various videos and TV shows, including a PBS video documentary called "Things That Go Bump in the Valley," the Travel Channel's "Haunted Road Trips" and History Channel's "Haunted Battlefields." He also has been quoted by a couple of authors of books on the paranormal.
There's been a recent trend about paranormal activity in TV, books and movies, but Edmondson and Vips co-founder Ross both say they were into ghost hunting before it was considered to be cool.
They offer an explanation as to why they've had so many encounters with ghosts over the years when other people may not have: "Who's to say that paranormal stuff wasn't going on 150 years ago?" Ross says.
"But with the onslaught of Hollywood and TV shows... there's more interest now," he says. "Plus, technology has finally caught up. You can take a digital recorder into a room and get something. You don't have to be so sensitive anymore. You used to have to be psychic [to see these things]."
For some, there is a fear of admitting they see or hear paranormal activity.
"There's a stigma around stuff like this," Ross says.
Other people see a chance to cash in on the popularity of the subject, says the Vips team, but they insist they aren't in it for the money.
"We don't charge. That's against our religion," Edmondson says. "That's just wrong."
Edmondson adds that there are no plans to turn Vips into a business in the future and says they only want to help people understand the paranormal.
"We need to get the word out," he says. "We need the credibility."
And to all the skeptics, the Vips team says all it takes is one experience to become a believer.
"We all had to see it to believe it," Ross says. "We saw it, and now we believe it."
Ghostly Apparition, Activity Probed at Northern Virginia Firehouse
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To dispel my disappointment that I cannot rent that Room to Let in Old Aldgate, I find myself returning to scrutinize the collection of pictures taken by the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London held in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute. It gives me great pleasure to look closely and see the loaves of bread in the window and read the playbills on the wall in this photograph of a shop in Macclesfield St in 1883. The slow exposures of these photographs included fine detail of inanimate objects, just as they also tended to exclude people who were at work and on the move but, in spite of this, the more I examine these pictures the more inhabited they become.
On the right of this photograph, you see a woman and a boy standing on the step. She has adopted a sprightly pose of self-presentation with a jaunty hand upon the hip, while he looks hunched and ill at ease. But look again, another woman is partially visible, standing in the shop doorway. She has chosen not to be portrayed in the photograph, yet she is also present. Look a third time - click on the photograph above to enlarge it - and you will see a man's face in the window. He has chosen not to be portrayed in the photograph either, instead he is looking out at the photograph being taken. He is looking at the photographer. He is looking at us, returning our gaze. Like the face at the window pane in "The Turn of the Screw, he challenges us with his visage.
Unlike the boy and the woman on the right, he has not presented himself to the photographer's lense, he has retained his presence and his power. Although I shall never know who he is, or his relationship to the woman in the doorway, or the nature of their presumed conversation, yet I cannot look at this picture now without seeing him as the central focus of the photograph. He haunts me. He is one of the ghosts of old London.It is the time of year when I think of ghosts, when shadows linger in old houses and a silent enchantment reigns over the empty streets.
Let me be clear, I am not speaking of supernatural agency, I am speaking of the presence of those who are gone. At Christmas, I always remember those who are absent this year, and I put up all the cards previously sent by my mother and father, and other loved ones, in fond remembrance. Similarly, in the world around me, I recall the indicators of those who were here before me, the worn step at the entrance to the former night shelter in Crispin St and the eighteenth century graffiti at the entrance to St Pauls Cathedral, to give but two examples.
And these photographs also provide endless plangent details for contemplation, such as the broken windows and the shabby clothing strung up to dry at the Oxford Arms, both significant indicators of a certain way of life.To me, these fascinating photographs are doubly haunted. The spaces are haunted by the people who created these environments in the course of their lives, culminating in buildings in which the very fabric evokes the presence of their inhabitants, because many are structures worn out with usage.
And equally, the photographs are haunted by the anonymous Londoners who are visible in them, even if their images were incidental to the purpose of these photographs as an architectural record.The pictures that capture people absorbed in the moment touch me most - like the porter resting his basket at the corner of Friday St - because there is a compelling poetry to these inconsequential glimpses of another age, preserved here for eternity, especially when the buildings themselves have been demolished over a century ago. These fleeting figures, many barely in focus, are the true ghosts of old London and if we can listen, and study the details of their world, they bear authentic witness to our past. Two girls lurk in the yard behind this old house in the Palace Yard, Lambeth.A woman turns the corner into Wych St.A girl watches from a balcony at the Oxford Arms while boys stand in the shadow below.At the Oxford Arms, 1875.
At the entrance to the Oxford Arms - the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London was set up to save the Oxford Arms, yet it failed in the endeavour, preserving only this photographic record.
A relaxed gathering in Drury Lane.A man turns to look back in Drury Lane, 1876.At the back of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield, 1877.In Gray's Inn Lane.A man peers from the window of a chemists' at the corner of Lower James St and Brewer St.A lone policeman on duty in High Holborn, 1878.A gentleman in Barnard's Inn.At White Hart Inn yard.At Queen's Inn yard.A woman lingers in front of the butcher in Borough High St, Southwark.In Aldgate.A porter puts down his basket in the street at the corner of Cheapside and Friday St.In Fleet St.The Old Bell, HolbornAt the corner of Fore St and Milton St.Doorways on Lawrence Pountney Hill.A conversation at the entrance to Inner Temple, Fleet St. Images copyright (c) Bishopsgate Institute"You can see more pictures from the Society for Photographing the Relics of Old London here In Search of Relics of Old London"
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