The owner of a pizza shop in Bloomfield believes the security camera outside his store picked up the image of an angel.
Bob Usner, from Adrian's Pizza on Pearl Street, was checking video from overnight when he found the shot of the parking lot taken around 6 a.m. Friday. In the upper part of the screen is a white image with a distinctive shape.
"You can see a face up at the very top and you can see the hands and you can see the wings," said Usner.
Usner believes it's a sign from his dad. Anthony Usner was a 30-year veteran of the Pittsburgh Police who died two years ago.
His dad helped him get the pizza shop. But business has been tough lately, and he's been thinking about closing.
"Maybe my dad coming down to help me," said Usner.
Both he and his sister, Carol Goerk, view the image as a sign of encouragement from their dad.
Word is spreading about the angelic surveillance video. A group of nuns from a nearby convent stopped over to view the image Friday night.
When asked if there could another explanation for the image, maybe a spider web or a lens flare, Usner said the camera has never captured anything like this.
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THE SCARIEST UK GHOST STORY EVER REPORTED
On September 11th 1987, a well-respected police officer, PC Dick Ellis and a former Special Constable, John Beet were two of a number of witnesses to see probably the scariest and noticeably witnessed ghostly apparition ever to be reported in the UK.The location - A616 bypass (under construction at the time by the McAlpine building company), Stocksbridge, near Sheffield. Situated in the north of England.This ghost story is very vivid in my mind as I come from Sheffield and have driven over the bypass on several occasions, but more importantly - my sister used to work as a police officer in the same 'Deepcar Police Station' as PC Ellis.
Although she never knew him, the story has always remained consistent....Tuesday night, September 8th 1987 - two security guards employed by McAlpine to patrol the bypass site and guard building materials telephoned their boss, Peter Owens in a frantic state.
Owens arrived at the site to find the two large men in a state of hysteria.
Owens then questioned the two men, who told him strange things had started around 12.30pm the night before.They had been driving along Pearoyd Lane, near Stocksbridge steelworks and were very surprised to see children playing near the half constructed bypass at the side of a pylon and far away from the nearest houses.
They told Owens they had decided to investigate, therefore they parked their car and watched the children skipping about, but they were both puzzled by the children's unusual and outdated clothing.
In an attempt to discover why the children were out so late, they got out of their land rover and proceeded in the children's direction, only to find the children were now nowhere to be seen.
When they arrived at the spot where they had seen the children playing, they were puzzled to discover...there were absolutely no footprints in the mud.They described to Owens how the following morning they were still more baffled than frightened as they relayed their story to the McAlpine builders and how this was heightened when they were then told by some of the men...they had heard children's voices in the night as they rested in their caravans.
Owens was told how their bafflement turned into fear just before they phoned him. They went on to describe how they were driving as usual up Pearoyd Lane towards the site. Upon reaching it, they saw a large, dark figure of a monk on the partly constructed bridge. They then explained, as they drove towards the figure, when the headlights reached the apparition, it disappeared.
After listening to the security guard's story, Owens was convinced they were being truthful, and called Deepcar Police Station. As you can imagine the police officer who took the call, PC Ellis laughed and suggested they call a priest instead as this was hardly a police matter. However, Ellis got a surprise later that day, when a priest called, Stuart Brindley phoned him at the station and asked if they could send someone to help him with two security guards at his church.
The priest went on to describe how the guards were demanding an exorcism of the Stocksbridge bypass site, but his main concern was for the men's state of distress, which he had no control over.
The police station had no alternative but to investigate the guard's story. Therefore, PC Ellis and Special Constable John Beet were commissioned to the job.
As Ellis and Beet drove towards the site on the 11th September 1987 both of them were very sceptical about the story's authenticity and believed that the security guards were being hysterical and attributed the saga as being one of the most hilarious they had ever heard.
The evening was quite warm, so Ellis and Beet sat in their car facing the bridge with the windows down. It wasn't too long before they noticed 'something' moving on the bridge. Ellis climbed out of the car and ran to the bridge, where he found a piece of loose tarpaulin flapping around in the wind. Ellis went back to the car and they decided to wait a little longer before calling it a night.
PC Ellis commented to Beet how he had just had the oddest sensation as though someone had just walked over his grave. He asked Beet if he had felt anything. Then suddenly, Ellis felt a presence at his side. He turned his head sharply to find a dark,clothed torso pushed right up to his door. Ellis noticed the dark clothing had white 'v' shaped material running down the chest.
Suddenly the apparition vanished and appeared at Beet's side in an instant. Then it vanished again as Ellis stepped out of the car. He walked all around the car and looked underneath...nothing was there.
Ellis got back into the car and turned the ignition, but nothing happened... he tried again but still nothing. On the third attempt the car started.
Ellis decided to drive to the construction area, where he pulled up and radioed the station to give their whereabouts. Suddenly, there was a loud bang on the back of the car, which Ellis later described as sounding like it had been hit with a baseball bat or pick axe handle.
Beet sat rigid in the car as Ellis hesitantly climbed out. Again, there was nothing around - not a sound or sight of anything. Ellis rushed back and jumped in the car, just as the car was struck again. A booming noise reverberated as the car rocked up and down. Ellis frantically started the car, but again it was hit.
Ellis put his foot down and raced back to Deepcar station.They reported their findings to shocked colleagues, who wrote statements of their accounts. Both Ellis and Beet stated, their fear was so intense, they described it as; 'it was not that which one has when you are about to encounter danger - but worse, it was the kind where you have absolutely no control over...a feeling of 'dread'.
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Is this a picture of a message from beyond? That's the question from terrified Rotherham woman Angela Casswell, who fears she is being haunted by a poltergeist.
Angela, of Doncaster Road, East Dene, and her mum, Dot, who lives opposite, both say they have seen all kinds of spooky phenomena in Angela's house.
They ghostly messages written on frosted up window glass.
One said "You dead soon" and that was followed by the message in the picture, which says "2 weeks left."
Other activity includes ghostly sightings and footsteps, loud banging noises and lights flashing on and off.
Now desperate Angela (43) has called Swinton-based "psychical investigator" Iain Lawrence, who runs a company called Hauntastic Events, to try to get to the bottom of the spooky goings-on.
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A historic - and some say haunted - Los Angeles hospital that has been closed for two decades is set to be converted into apartments for low-income seniors in a 40-million makeover.
Linda Vista Community Hospital is an imposing relic from the days when railroads took care of their sick and injured employees in company facilities. Originally known as Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospital, it was built for employees of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway in Boyle Heights, a blue-collar neighborhood east of the city's rail yards and home to many railroad workers.
The original hospital opened in 1905. It was razed and rebuilt on the same site in the mid-1920s, and additions were made through 1939.
Although the hospital closed in 1991, the six-story complex survives with its dignity mostly intact - with peeling paint and roosting pigeons adding to tales of sudden chilly drafts and paranormal activity inside.
Hallways are wide with coved ceilings intended to evoke the inside of a railroad caboose. Former staff dining halls and patient rooms are outfitted in colorful Santa Fe tile. The white concrete edifice commands a sloping four-acre site on St. Louis Street overlooking Hollenbeck Park and the downtown Los Angeles skyline.
"It has such a presence sitting on that big lawn," said Wade Killefer, the architect overseeing the hospital's conversion.
Renovation is set to begin next month in an adjacent structure. The challenge, he said, "is the same as it is with every great historic building: how not to screw it up."
The steward of Linda Vista's comeback is Amcal Multi-Housing Inc., an affordable housing developer in Agoura Hills. It expects to succeed where previous efforts to convert Linda Vista to residential use fell short, including a pre-housing-crash plan to turn it into condominiums. One big hurdle is the need to remove hazardous lead and asbestos at a cost of about 4 million.
"A lot of things came together" for Amcal, Chief Executive Percival Vaz said. Among them was a grant of 9 million in federal funds intended to stabilize neighborhoods through the revitalization of abandoned properties.
And Linda Vista is a lulu of an abandoned property.
Visitors come across stray medical equipment such as dusty baby incubators and gleaming stainless steel autopsy tables. A corner of the basement holds what appears to be a cluster of jail cells.
The rooms are unnerving, but the atmosphere is intentional.
That's because Linda Vista is one of L.A.'s most popular filming locations. It was daunting enough to stand in for a squalid mental asylum in a Duran Duran music video, and it has been the subject of televised paranormal investigations.
Caretaker Francis Kortekaas brought in medical equipment and made the mock jail to enhance its appeal to directors. Sometimes filmmakers leave props behind, like the wooden throne from the upcoming Rob Zombie movie "The Lords of Salem" that commands one room.
It can be hard to tell what's real and what's Hollywood flimflam. The former main dining room looks like a chapel because it was redecorated for the 2005 remake of the movie "The Longest Yard," starring Adam Sandler.
Faded bed curtains in a jumbled pile on the floor of a patient room? Real artifacts. Dangerously drooping electrical conduit in the former laundry room? Recent props from an episode of "True Blood," where the hospital portrayed a mental asylum.
Makers of the HBO series about vampires also filmed live wolves running through Linda Vista's lobby, Kortekaas said. Filming takes place in Linda Vista as much as 130 days a year, he said, which helps pay for maintenance.
Some of the projects are upbeat, such as the pilot episode of "ER" and hospital scenes from the 2001 movie "Pearl Harbor." Often, though, Linda Vista serves as the backdrop for slasher tales and other dark fare, such as the 1995 murder-thriller, "Se7en."
Television shows that follow ghost hunters also have spent nights at Linda Vista, and the makers of a documentary-style show called "From Beyond" said the hospital was "home to the team's most haunting night ever," with crew members hearing voices and being grabbed and scratched.
"People tell me it's the most haunted place in L.A.," said Maurice Ramirez, executive vice president of Amcal. "Because it's been empty for maybe 25 years or so, it becomes the subject of a little urban folklore about ghosts and things."
Kortekaas, who has spent more time in the hospital than anyone else over the last several years, acknowledged a couple of incidents he can't explain.
In the dimly lighted underground level housing the operating rooms, Kortekaas said he once saw the water turn on when he approached a sink where doctors scrubbed before surgery. Then the water, which is controlled by a leg-operated lever, turned off.
On another occasion, he sensed a small child putting a hand in his - but no one was there. "It felt like my daughter's hand," he said.
Next month, Amcal plans to start converting Linda Vista's nurses' residences into 23 senior apartments. The separate three-story building has a cozy living room with a fireplace and is connected to the hospital by a short tunnel.
"We're just remodeling it a little" to add bathrooms and small kitchens, Ramirez said. "The historic character will be maintained."
Starting early next year, the upper five floors of the hospital building will be converted to 74 apartments, most of them one-bedroom units for people ages 55 or older whose annual incomes are 16,000 to 25,000, the criteria for subsidized housing eligibility in Los Angeles. Construction is expected to take 14 months.
Improvements will include new landscaping and the addition of reflecting pools to soften the hospital's institutional appearance in front.
"It's going to look like an upscale hotel," Ramirez said. "People in the neighborhood will really see a transformation."
Linda Vista is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a city historical monument, said Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy.
"It was the precursor of medical services connected to employment," she said.
Applications for units at Linda Vista will be accepted this summer, Amcal said.
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"After a close encounter with the front end of a school bus, Alona Dare goes from Homecoming Queen to Queen of the Dead. Now she's stuck here in spirit form with no sign of the big, bright light coming to take her away. To make matters worse, the only person who might be able to help her is Will Killian, a total loser/outcast type who hates the social elite. He alone can see and hear her, but he wants nothing to do with the former mean girl of Groundsboro High. "
"Can they get over their mutual distrust-and this weird attraction between them-to work together before Alona vanishes for good and Will is locked up for seeing things that don't exist?"
I don't think I've ever smiled so broadly after reading a book than I did with Stacey Kade's The Ghost and the Goth. Vibrant and full of life, this book just downright loveable. Yep, you totally should get this, and devour it right away.
Alona Dare - three-time homecoming queen, varsity cheerleader co-captain, technically perfect - is such classic Queen Bee (warning: can be bitchy). I love her voice - undeniably feminine, saturated with unyielding confidence and with an admirable tenacity. What endears me most to Alona is not the fact that she has hidden issues or that she is afterall imperfect, but more because she's not infuriatingly arrogant. She may be ruthless, but this only stems from one trait: frankness. Unlike the conventional miss perfect, she's not being mean for the sake of it. It's simply just her defense mechanism, the one way she knows how to survive the big world with.
Similarly, Will Killian is a charming character with many faults and vulnerabilities. Although commonly labelled the school freak, hidden behind the drone of music and the colour black is really just a boy longing to live his life in peace. In the world's unlikeliest partnership (that's not even considering the fact that she's dead and he's not), Alona and Will will find answers, help and drive each other mad. And tell you what, I love every single bit of Alona-Will moments!
It's hard to find fault in either of these wonderful pair. It's one of those rare books with characters so magnetic you immediately connect with them - that's what it was like to me. They are charming by themselves alone and so hilariously uplifting together. Alona's and Will's narrative occur alternatively in this book, interwoven to ensure a continuous flow of all the positive vibes I could ever get in a book. But no, I'm not implying the book is everything fun and happy. It has depth and morals too. The plot spends time in highlighting the transition of Alona and Will's relationship with each other from aversion to acquaintance to friendship and beyond, and in doing so emphasises their acceptance of each other by seeing more than just the superficial. As they begin to trust each other, their smallest acts become significant and carry with them a major 'aww' factor. So very cute!
As the plot progresses, the focus shifts more towards seeking answers both Alona and Will are looking for and generally turns to its darker side. Sub plots also become more prominent in the second half of the book, as do the secondary characters. Unconnected links are finally drawn together and a very fresh, very inventive take on the afterlife is conjured in the Ghost and the Goth. It's slightly vague at parts, but there should be some more answers in the sequel, and there was nothing significantly amiss. Of course, Alona and Will learn to accept, if not understand each other too. In doing so, their respective characters really develop and mature. Together, these two seems to have an endless supply of surprises that had me giggling and grinning and being extremely happy!
The Ghost and the Goth is one of the most endearing books I have ever read. Uplifting, funny and loveable beyond compare, it's also one of my utter favourites! Loving the cover as much as I do is not harm either, right? What am I to do whilst waiting for Queen of the Dead?
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Matt Damon and Michael Douglas are said to be convinced that their new movie set is haunted.
The two stars have been shooting for 'Behind the Candelabra', which is about the life of famed pianist Liberace.
The duo is convinced that there is some supernatural activity going on around them and a male spirit has been watching them work.
"The movie centres around Liberace's last years with his young bodyguard/live-in lover, Scott Thorson, and several times during filming, Damon and Douglas turned to each other after a scene and said, 'Did you feel that?," News.com.au quoted a source as telling National Enquirer.
"They swear they've felt cold damp air swish by, reeking of a potent men's cologne.
Douglas portrays Liberace in the release, while Damon plays the role of Scott.
Douglas has spent a lot of time behind the piano while shooting scenes for the TV movie and it is then when he felt the presence at its most intense.
"He actually felt someone caress his shoulder," the insider said.
"He whipped around - but no one was there! Not only that, but on several occasions prop lights flickered uncontrollably," the source added.
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