A ghost of child is a difficult one for me. A mother myself, I cannot bear to think that a helpless child is lost, searching for his or her parents and unaware of their passing.
In the documentary film Children Of The Grave, viewers are faced with the reality of ghost children and the awful events that brought them to be. Hearing EVPs of their laughter, cries and tiny voices clearly communicating with the living brought tears to my eyes after sending an icy cold shiver up my spine. Filmmakers, along with the investigators who worked on this documentary were professional and showed compassion/respect for each of the innocent, lost souls that they encountered along their journey.
Another haunted location that comes to my mind is Whispers Estate - a B&B in my home state that is believed to be home to ghosts of children. Reported paranormal activity, along with recorded sounds of a baby crying and children talking, have led the owner and visitors to believe in and accept the existence of ghosts. Paranormal investigator Keith Age, from the Louisville Ghost Hunting Society, has said that this is one of the most active places he has been to and one where the ghosts clearly respond to the questions being asked.
~I would hope that in cases where the child ghost is accompanied by a malevolent entity or needs help in getting to the "other side", those involved would do their best to help release them from whatever keeps them earthbound.
Ghost Hunters, Syfy's hugely successful reality series, has announced a trio of special guest investigators. Bravo's The Real Housewives of Atlanta's Sheree Whitfield, NeNe Leakes and Kim Zolciak are on the case at the historic Rhodes Hall in Atlanta, GA as they join Jason, Grant and the rest of the team for an unforgettable investigation. The episode is slated to air on Syfy this fall.
Since the series debuted in 2004, viewers have flocked to Syfy on Wednesday nights at 9pm to catch the latest hair-raising cases from the files of TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society), led by Rhode Island plumbers Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. The first half of season six (airing spring 2010), averaged a 1.9 Household rating, 2.6 million total viewers, 1.6 million Adults 18-49 and 1.6 million Adults 25-54. Its spin-off series, Ghost Hunters International and Ghost Hunters Academy, have continued to cement the Ghost Hunters brand as the top paranormal franchise in cable.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta is an up-close and personal look at fabulous women from Atlanta's social elite as they juggle their burgeoning careers and busy home lives with the whirl of the south's hottest city. These driven and ambitious women prove that they're not just "housewives," but entrepreneurs, doting mothers and feisty southern women.
See Also: Scare The Crap Out Of Your Kids With Illustrations Of Creatures From Japanese Mythology / GHOST ADVENTURES - Zak Bagans, Nick Grof And Aaron Goodwin At Comic Con 2010 / A New Book That Explains How To Hunt Ghosts, Monsters And UFOs / Join The Cast Of "Ghost Hunters" In An Investingation OF The Ripley's Museum / Ghost Hunters Scores Another Number One For Sci Fi / Ghost Hunters International Scores Big Ratings For Sci Fi / Ghost Hunters: New Generation To Air On Sci Fi / Paranormal - Real Life Tales Of The Unexplained / Ghost Hunters Invites Fans To Join The Hunt / The Ghost Hunters Are Set To Go To College / Ghostly Images Appear In The Jennifer Tilly Film Return To Babylon / If Your looking For Ghosts Go To The Aokigahara Forest In Japan / Ghost Hunters To Continue Their Paranormal Investigations For An Exciting 5th Season
Source: NBC / Universal (Press Release)
Although skeptics insist ghosts are unreal, there are many ghostly encounters that seem to present startling evidence to the contrary. One such incident is presented in the book "The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales" by Ruth Ann Musick (1965, 28-30). The story is indeed spine-tingling, but is it true as well? I first began to investigate the case for my book "Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings" (1995).
"Help"
Musick's narrative, titled "Help," relates how "Doctor Anderson" was awakened by a knock at the door "just past midnight." He found on his doorstep a girl of twelve or thirteen who was dressed in a blue coat and carrying a white muff. She implored him to hurry to "the old Hostler place," where her mother was desperately ill, and then she darted down the road. Anderson picked up his doctor's bag, quickly saddled his horse, and hurried on his way until "he saw the glow of a lamp in the old Hostler house."
Finding a bedridden woman inside, the physician put wood on the dying fire and set to work to treat her fever. When she had rallied, he told her how fortunate she was that her daughter had fetched him. "But I have no daughter," the woman whispered. "My daughter has been dead for three years." Anderson described to her how the girl had been dressed; the woman admitted that her daughter had had such clothing and indicated where the items were hanging.
Thereupon, relates the narrative's final paragraph, "Doctor Anderson strode over to the closet, opened the door, and took out a blue coat and white muff. His hands trembled when he felt the coat and muff and found them still warm and damp from perspiration."
How do we explain such an event? Well, first we remember to apply an old skeptic's dictum: before attempting to explain something, make sure it really happened.
Another Version
As it turns out, a book by Billy Graham contains a remarkably similar story (1975, 2-3), wherein the implication is that the little girl in the tale is not a ghost but rather an angel:
Dr. S.W. Mitchell, a celebrated Philadelphia neurologist, had gone to bed after an exceptionally tiring day. Suddenly he was awakened by someone knocking on his door. Opening it he found a little girl, poorly dressed and deeply upset. She told him her mother was very sick and asked him if he would please come with her. It was a bitterly cold, snowy night, but though he was bone tired, Dr. Mitchell dressed and followed the girl....
As "Reader's Digest" reports the story, he found the mother desperately ill with pneumonia. After arranging for medical care, he complimented the sick woman on the intelligence and persistence of her little daughter. The woman looked at him strangely and said, "My daughter died a month ago." She added, "Her shoes and coat are in the clothes closet there." Dr. Mitchell, amazed and perplexed, went to the closet and opened the door. There hung the very coat worn by the little girl who had brought him to tend her mother. It was warm and dry and could not possibly have been out in the wintry night....
Could the doctor have been called in the hour of desperate need by an angel who appeared as this woman's young daughter? Was this the work of God's angels on behalf of the sick woman?
Graham provides no documentation beyond the vague reference to "Reader's Digest", which in any event is hardly a scholarly source. In fact, I soon discovered that the tale is an old one, circulated in various forms with conflicting details. For example, as "The Girl in the Snow," it appears in Margaret Ronan's anthology of "Strange Unsolved Mysteries". While Graham's version is of implied recent vintage, that by Ronan is set on a "December day in 1880." Whereas Graham states that the doctor was "awakened by someone knocking on his door," Ronan tells us "the doorbell downstairs was ringing violently." Absent from the Graham version is the suggestion that the little girl was a ghost, not an angel; for example, Ronan says the child looked "almost wraithlike in the whirling snow," and that "at times she seemed to vanish into the storm...." In Graham's account, the doctor is credited with simply "arranging for medical care," while Ronan insists Mitchell "set about at once to do what he could for her" and "by morning he felt that at last she was out of danger." Although both versions preserve the essential element that the woman's little girl had died a month before, Graham's version quotes the mother as saying, "Her shoes and coat are in the clothes closet there," while Ronan's has her stating, "All I have left to remember her by are those clothes hanging on that peg over there." Indeed the latter account does not describe a coat and shoes but states: "Hanging from the peg was the thin dress he had seen the child wearing, and the ragged shawl" (Ronan 1974, 99-101).
S. Weir Mitchell
Variant Tales
There are many other versions--or "variants" as folklorists say--of the proliferating tale. Of the five others I discovered, all feature the physician S. Weir Mitchell, but only two suggest the time period. Unlike the Graham (1975) and Ronan (1974) versions, which have the garments in a "clothes closet" and hanging from a peg, respectively, four of the other five variant tales say the clothes are in a "cupboard"; one has them in a "shabby chiffonier" (Edwards 1961, 52). There are differences in the clothes: Colby (1959) lists a "little dress" and "tattered shawl"; Edwards (1961) a "heavy dress, hightop shoes," and "gray shawl" with a "blue glass pin"; Hurwood (1967) "all the clothes the child had worn when he saw her earlier"; Tyler (1970) that exact same wording; and "Strange Stories" (1976) "her shoes and [folded] shawl."
No doubt there are still other versions of the story. Variants are a "defining characteristic of folklore," according to distinguished folklorist Jan H. Brunvand (1978, 7), since oral transmission naturally produces differing versions of the same story. In this case, however, Brunvand notes that many of the variants are explained by writers copying others (Tyler from Hurwood, for instance) but adding details and making other changes for literary purposes (Brunvand 2000, 132). In any case, Brunvand (1981, 21) observes that when there is no certain original, the multiple versions of a tale provide "good evidence against credibility." But was there an identifiable original of the Mitchell story?
Brunvand (2000, 123-36) followed up on the tale (with some assistance from me). Eventually he turned up a couple of versions that supposedly came from Mitchell himself. One was published in 1950 by R.W.G. Vail, then-director of the New York Historical Society:
One day in February, 1949, Dr. Philip Cook of Worcester, Mass., while on a visit to New York City, told me this story which he had heard the famous doctor and writer S. Weir Mitchell tell at a medical meeting years ago. (Dr. Mitchell died in 1914).
"I was sitting in my office late one night when I heard a knock and, going to the door, found a little girl crying, who asked me to go at once to her home to visit a very sick patient. I told her that I was practically retired and never made evening calls, but she seemed to be in such great distress that I agreed to make the call and so wrote down the name and address she gave me. So I got my bag, hat, and coat and returned to the door, but the little girl was gone. However, I had the address and so went on and made the call. When I got there, a woman came to the door in tears. I asked if there was a patient needing attention. She said that there had been--her little daughter--but that she had just died. She then invited me in. I saw the patient lying dead in her bed, and it was the little girl who had called at my office."
Brunvand (2000, 123-36) also turned up an interesting letter from the Mitchell papers. Dated November 2, 1909, it had been written to Mitchell by physician Noel Smith of Dover, New Hampshire. It read:
S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.
My dear Doctor:--
Please pardon my intrusion upon your valuable time, but--as I should like the truthfulness, or otherwise, of what follows established, I have taken the liberty of addressing you.
A travelling man, a stranger, accosted me a few days since at one of our principal hotels, knowing that I was a physician, asking me if I believe in the supernatural, communications with the spirits of departed friends, etc.--I assured him that I had never experienced any personal observations or manifestations that would lead me to any such belief. He then related to me the following story, vouching for its authenticity.--He was a member of some organization, I think, in N.Y., and they had lectures now and then upon various topics. One evening it was announced that prominent men were present who would in turn relate their most wonderful experiences. You was ["sic"] the first called upon, and you stated that you could tell your most wonderful personal experience in a few words. You went on to say that you were engaged in writing late one evening in your library when somebody knocked three times upon the library door. This was thought to be very strange, as electric bells were in use. Upon opening the door, a little girl, about 12 years of age stood there, having a red cloak for an outer garment. She asked if you were Dr. Mitchell, and wished you to go at once to visit her mother professionally, as she was very ill. You informed her that you had given up general practice, but that Dr. Bennett lived diagonally across the street, and that you would direct her to his door, which you did. In a few moments the raps upon your door were repeated, and you found the girl there a second time. She could not obtain Dr. Bennett's services, and urged you to accompany her home; and you did so. She conducted you to a poor section of the city and up a rickety flight of stairs into a tenement house. She ushered you into a room where her mother lay ill upon a bed. You prescribed for the sick lady, giving her some general directions for future guide, and assured her that it was only at the very urgent and persistent efforts of her daughter that you were prevailed upon to come to her. The woman said that that was strange: that she had no daughter--that her only daughter had just died and her body reposed in a casket in the adjoining room. You then looked into this room & viewed the remains of a girl about 12 years of age, while hanging upon the wall was a red cloak.
I am curious to know, doctor, whether you ever had any such experience, or any approach thereto. Hence these words. Let me say right here that Mrs. Smith anxious believers and disbelievers in the supernatural assail him with letters. He has written some fifty to lay this ghost. How could he predict a day when he would be taken seriously?
So there we have it: Mitchell's oblique confession that he had simply conjured up a ghost tale, filled it with literary verisimilitude (semblance of truth), and sent it forth. Later, as Brunvand (2000, 129) notes, Mitchell was "chagrined to find the public believing that he was presenting the story as the literal truth." Mitchell--like the Fox Sisters whose phony spirit communications spawned the modern spiritualist movement (Nickell 2007, 39)--discovered that the genie could not be put back into the bottle.
References
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 1978. "The Study of American Folklore". New York: W.W. Norton.
. 1981. "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings". New York: W.W. Norton.
. 2000. "The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story!" Chicago: University of Illinois.
Colby, C.B. 1959. "Strangely Enough" (abridged). New York: Scholastic Book Services.
Edwards, Frank. 1961. "Strange People". New York: Signet.
Graham, Billy. 1975. "Angels: God's Secret Agents". Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
Hurwood, Bernhardt J. 1967. "Strange Talents". New York: Ace Books.
Mitchell, S. Weir. (1891) 1909. "Characteristics". New York: Century.
Musick, Ruth Ann. 1965. "The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales". Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Nickell, Joe. 1995. "Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings". Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.
. 2007. "Adventures in Paranormal Investigation". Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky.
Ronan, Margaret. 1974. "Strange Unsolved Mysteries". New York: Scholastic Book Services.
"Strange Stories, Amazing Facts". 1976. Pleasantville, New York: The Reader's Digest Association.
Tyler, Steven. 1970. "ESP and Psychic Power". New York: Tower Publications.
The Bell Witch is based on accurate contest that will accelerate a algid arctic bottomward your aback and accomplish the beard on the aback of your close angle up. Back you try to beddy-bye tonight, aloof bethink that I warned you about the Bell Witch.
Just like in the cine "The Ring", already you attending into the darkness, it looks aback at you. Your activity will never be the aforementioned already you apperceive about the Bell Witch and your appetite to apperceive added is never quenched. Are you accessible for a "True Ghost Story"?
According to the Legend, John Bell was the abandoned actuality accustomed by any accompaniment to accept been dead by a spirit. The Fable dates aback to the time of General Andrew Jackson, in the aboriginal 1800s. The adventure has a appropriate absorption for me, because I alive in Tennessee. Nice to apperceive the Bell Witch is not too far away!
How would you like to appointment the Bell Witch area in Tennessee? Bring your camera, because you never apperceive what you will see. You can alike appointment the hidden Bell Witch cave, which lies on the acreage of the blighted Bell family.
Imagine actuality home abandoned at night and the lights accept been dimmed. Your adequate and all of a abrupt you apprehend a rapping noise. Next, you apprehend knocks and abrading sounds, and no one is there. Accept you anytime heard abnormal noises while you area sleeping? Maybe some breath in the bend of your allowance and no one was there?
You attending into the black and see what you anticipate is a animal figure, or is it? It gets actual algid and you feel this aphotic bull attendance aloft you. You apperceive your not alone; You activate to anticipate your apperception is arena tricks on you. Is it all in your head?
You see a adumbration out of the bend of your eye, and you apperceive not to be so curious. It realizes you are abashed and it can aroma your fear. You appetite to run, but there is no area to run. You appetite to scream, but it is too late.
The Bell ancestors knew what alarm was and alike Mr. Bell approved to accumulate it a secret. It was to be apparent by the Bell Witch! She had to accomplish her articulation heard and physically attacked a ancestors to accomplish her point!
According to the Bell Witch Legend, The spirit of Kate Batts abashed the Bell family. Sticking the babe with pins and affairs her hair. There were concrete manifestations and bed bedding aerial off the beds. Again, whats makes this chilling, is that it is not some fabulous adventure or one of Stephen King's best sellers, it is a "True Ghost Story".
The Bell Witch fable is a allotment of history and if you are as analytical as I am, you will seek added answers to this "True Ghost Story". Perhaps a appointment to Adams, Tennessee, why not see if you can blow the attendance of the Bell Witch's awesome past, and if fate allows maybe more.
The new owners accept appear aberrant apparitional shapes and accept heard alien sounds. Imagine demography a bout and audition awesome sounds advancing from the hidden corners of the cave. Picture yourself with a camera demography pictures and you aloof appear to abduction a atramentous amount on your camera.
Just think, you could acquaintance the accomplished of this "True Ghost Story". Imagine the attending on your friends' faces, back you acquaint this adventure about a affected fire.
A police force has revealed a catalogue of more than 150 supernatural and paranormal cases which have been reported to them in recent years.
Details of investigations involving ghosts, UFO's, aliens and fairies were released by Devon and Cornwall Police after a Freedom of Information request. In some examples people have called the police force to deal with spooks in their houses, or even to a field infested with fairies. However, most of the paranormal reports revolve around UFO sighting, and peaked in 1996 when a variety of strangely shaped spaceships were spotted.
In odd news the 1996 peak also coincided with the release of the movie Independence Day and the popularity of the X Files on TV. Other odd examples reported to Devon and Cornwall Police include someone who said they had encounters abusive aliens in a field and another who claimed to be one.
First step in any new hobby or job is to learn the theory. And one of first steps in learning theory regarding paranormal investigations is the need to learn about the types of phenomena we might encounter during our investigations. I would like to focus on ghosts - there are different types of phenomenon we're usually calling "ghosts" - each person interested in paranormal should know these types no matter if he or she is investigating paranormal activities, or just focusing on theory as pure hobby.
RECORDS (RESIDUAL ENERGIES)
Sometimes you might encounter Records - a phenomena when you will experience an event from the past, appearing like a recorded 3D movie. Witnesses have encounter a wide range of such Records, starting from single shadow moving across the room, ending on whole armies on the battlefield. If we would like to explain this phenomenon, we could think about psionic signatures - they have custom to left on different objects or in different places such as house or chair...
Intelligent Haunting
This is a spirit of a person that died yet stick in our physical world. These ghosts might hang around flats or houses, or even big castles and streets and they are trapped in our world. Paranormal investigator's job is to identify the problem and help the spirit "move into the light", as psychics use to say.
Stick Ghosts
Stick to what, you will ask - stick to objects, such as urns or favourite chairs etc. Such ghosts appear to move from one location to another along with the object they're stick to (of course object is moved by those who still lives, not on its own).
Bi-locations
Two persons in the same place - its a well know phenomena between people studding lives of saints. Sometimes person don't know he or she is present in two different places in the same time, sometimes bi-location might be caused unintentionally as a result of stress or fear, sometimes intentionally (Remote Presence, a psychic skill).
Ghosts of pass
When a person is passing from our world to the "other side", sometimes a spirit of this person is paying a visit to its relatives or friends - at least some people believes this is happening.
Poltergeist
I belong to a group of people who strongly believe that 98% of poltergeist activity is not ghosts, but uncontrolled psychokinesis and it's caused by living people. Even so, there is still this 2% of activities that we can't explain by psychokinesis, so we have to assume there are some spirit stuff included. Poltergeist is nothing more than objects moving on their own - flying, falling etc. If you can't find natural explanation of such phenomena, then it might be caused by person causing psychokinesis effects, or by a ghost manifestation.
Orbs
Some people says Orbs are first steps of ghost manifestation - but mostly probably orbs will be nothing more than a specks of dust or drops of different kind - so if you were able to take a picture of orb, treat it as natural phenomena, not as proof of paranormal activity. But if you're seeing orbs on real, and they're glowing and flying around, then it's definitely not a speck or drop.
Pseudo-Fakes
I'm using this term to describe situations in which people are faking stuff in order to please investigator, but there is something paranormal going on indeed. Sometimes activity might stop when investigator arrives on site, and witnesses don't want to look like fools so they're trying to fake activity - that's why even when you're suspecting a fake, you should keep your mind open as maybe something is happening on real.
Fakes
World isn't perfect - people are faking stuff. Mostly probably 98% of all your investigations will be faked and you can't do anything about it. If you think that each and every paranormal site you'll visit will be real, you're simple wrong - paranormal investigator job in most cases is not to prove paranormal activity to be real, but to prove someone is faking. Sound strange? No one told this is going to be normal...
Now you know some basic theory and you can learn more about paranormal investigations. But that's subject for another article.
Nathaniel is a psychic, energy worker and paranormal investigator, grab his ebook and learn how to develop psychic abilities.
