The Occult Section

As paranormal investigators, we often have to walk a fine line. Research needs to be done, and the best place to investigate the paranormal is in places that are reported to be haunted. The problem is, many places that have high incidents of supposedly paranormal activity are places where great tragedies happened, such as asylums, hospitals and prisons. So these are the places that many ghost hunters want to investigate, and where ghost tours usually happen. But as the popularity of ghost hunting has grown, so has the opposition from the families of the people who may have died at these locations and the community at large. Ghost Hunters International is now catching some flak from the Maori of New Zealand.

The international crew of ghost hunters secretly filming at Napier Prison have been condemned as “gauche” by local Maori activists.

The prison is the site of several hangings, including that of famed Maori warrior Kereopa Te Rau, who hanged the missionary Reverend Carl Volkner outside his Opotiki church, and ate his eyeballs.

"We're, like, totally respectful and stuff."

Denis O’Reilly, a close observer of iwi affairs in Napier, said the television series ghost-hunting at the Napier Prison, a Government-owner property landbanked for possible use in treaty claim settlement, was inappropriate. “Maori history and Kereopa should be treated with respect and that’s not what’s being done with the ghost busters here, there’s no need for cheap thrills. It’s the lowest common denominator of a reality TV show, it’s gauche in the extreme, and not where we should be positioning Hawke’s Bay tourism.”

However, Mr O’Reilly said Peter Wells’ new book, Sparrow on a Rooftop, which was this week awarded the $100,000 Michael King Writers’ Fellowship, had a strong following and was exactly how the situation should be treated. “It’s great that someone is doing some research into the story of Kereopa Te Rau, it’s an important story.”

The group of about 20 Ghost Hunters International staff were reportedly attracted to the prison, which was open between 1862 and 1993, after reports of “strange sights and sounds”, said co-manager of the prison, Marion Waaka.

She said the decision to let ghost hunters film was not taken lightly.

“We have to be respectful and we take our guardianship very seriously.

Even with the ghost-hunters there it wasn’t taken lightly, and it wasn’t for any tourism aspect, it was more for us living there and making us feel comfortable and the people visiting feel comfortable,” she said.

Ghost Hunters International is produced for Sky on the Skyfy channel not yet available in New Zealand.

There are two sides to this argument, and both are valid in their own ways. But seeing as how the Ghost Hunters franchise has now become a circus of unrealistic sensationalism in the quest for ratings, I can see why the Maori people are upset. I wonder if they would be more open to a smaller, more serious team who was actually there to investigate claims of the paranormal, rather than a TV show that tries to make the viewer jump out of their seat by having investigators freak out over seeing a spider or a bat.

What are your thoughts on investigating haunted locations while still remaining respectful to the families of the deceased and the community at large?

Technorati Tags: ghost, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, haunted, haunted house, haunted houses, haunting, maori, new zealand, News, paranormal, people, supernatural, syfy, thoughts, tv show

True Giants: Is Gigantopithecus Still Alive?

I first got my review copy of True Giants: Is Gigantopithecus Still Alive? a few months back, when it was originally released. Loren Coleman was nice enough to send me a copy before I even knew the book was coming out. At the time, my life was a bit hectic, to say the least, and I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to read it until last week. When I first got the book, I thought it would be an interesting look into a popular theory:  that what we know today as Bigfoot or Sasquatch may in fact be a surviving population of Gigantopithecus, a large ape long thought to be extinct. But when I started reading it, I realized I was a bit off track. This review will be a little different from ones I’ve done in the past, and I think the reason why will become clear.

History is rife with tales of giants, from the battle between David & Goliath in the Bible, to Jack and the Beanstalk, to more localized legends amongst native peoples of the world. It has long been speculated that these stories were just myths or fables, but others have suggested that there may have been actual living giants that gave rise to these legends. Authors Mark A. Hall and Loren Coleman make their case for True Giants actually existing, and these giants are even bigger than Sasquatch.

First, a quick fact about Bigfoot (or what many people collectively and mistakenly call Bigfoot). There are many types of hairy humanoids reported around the world, from the “classic” Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest, to the shorter swamp creatures of the south (think The Legend of Boggy Creek), the smelly and thinner Skunk Apes of Florida, and so on. All Bigfoot are not alike, would be the main bullet point here. So with that in mind, we can now talk about True Giants. The Pacific Northwest Bigfoot is generally regarded as the largest type, usually reaching anywhere from 6 to upwards of 10 feet tall. But when we have reports of Sasquatch that indicate the creature was 11, 12, 15 or even 20 feet tall, this is True Giant territory.

Coleman and Hall do a good job of culling together a myriad of stories, from early history and folklore right on up until recent times that tell of these monstrous True Giants. Each chapter focuses on a different geographical area, and puts forth all of the different stories to come out of that area, in a generally chronological order. They take us all over the world for different accounts, Europe, Asia, North and South America, and even on the oceans. Yes, the oceans. There are stories in the book of True Giants who could raft and therefore travel to other lands. And it doesn’t stop there. There are many accounts of True Giants actually learning from human culture, going so far as to wear rudimentary clothing and moccasins, building fires and even having a language.

To be honest, for some of these stories I needed to keep a very open mind. I think even being a paranormal investigator, there are some things that even I find hard to accept. And I think mainstream society and science feels the same way. Even if they don’t believe in Bigfoot, they can accept a large bipedal gorilla possibly eluding discovery. But giants that are 20 feet tall and wear clothing? That can be hard for many people to accept, and the authors acknowledge this. I don’t think they are trying to convert anyone, but are simply putting forth the evidence that is out there.

Now clearly many of these stories are folklore, myths, parables and fables. Another large portion of these are probably misidentifications and misjudgments in size. Studies have shown that people are pretty bad at estimating heights (especially when frightened or startled), so someone talking about a 15-foot-high creature may have actually seen one closer to 9 or 10 feet. Stories of giants with clothes and fire and language? Many of these may be hallucinations or the whimsy of people with nothing better to do than to make up stories. But as with anything in the paranormal realm, it’s not the majority of the stories that catch one’s attention, but the small percentage that cannot be easily explained away.

And that’s what I took away from this book. I didn’t believe every story I read, but some of the more recent and/or credible stories are fascinating. Huge footprints have been found and documented and even photographed. They invariably have only four discernible toes. That’s not something that all hoaxers across the board would probably do, unless that worldwide network of hoaxers that’s been operating for hundreds of years really does exist, as some skeptics would have us believe.

As with any of Coleman’s books, True Giants has a healthy set of appendices at the end (one of my favorite things about Coleman’s books is knowing that once I finish the main book, there will be an Appendix A, B, C, and so on). These are more scientific in nature, versus the more speculative and witness-driven accounts of the main part of the book, but they tie everything together nicely. Most of the pictures in the book are sketches from legend, skull size comparisons and photos of statues from various museums, but there is one picture that really caught my attention. On page 82, there is a photo of a True Giant footprint found in 1976 in Mississippi, and it is frighteningly  enormous, even by Bigfoot standards. And of course, like other True Giants, it only has four toes.

If you’re looking for a book about Bigfoot, this really isn’t it. If you’re fascinated by cryptozoology and want to learn more beyond what the mainstream puts out there, then I definitely recommend this book. It’s a very interesting read and once I did have the time to read it, I couldn’t put it down. There’s a particularly chilling story at the end of the book, where a woman writes to Coleman to explain an experience her son had on a Pacific island while in the military and if true, the implications are enormous.

The Bottom Line: To be blunt, this is not a book for everyone. People who already dismiss the possibility of the existence of Bigfoot will probably not enjoy this book. Those who do believe in Bigfoot may have a hard time accepting most of these stories. A lot of these stories go against mainstream science and evolutionary theory, and while it’s hard enough to believe in 10-foot tall apes, accepting that there may be ones reaching 20 feet tall may be too much for some people to bear. But the book overall does make you think, not just about cryptozoology but about society, evolution, and culture, and that in itself is worth the price of admission.

Final Score: 85%

Technorati Tags: bigfoot, Book Review, book reviews, books, cryptozoology, loren coleman, mark a. hall, media, paranormal, people, sasquatch, thoughts, true giants

This video has been making the rounds on the internet for the past few days, but I haven’t had the chance to view it or comment on it yet. It supposedly shows a Bigfoot being filmed in Ketchikan, Alaska. I’ll post the video below and then share some thoughts on it.

Now after seeing this video, I’m not quite sure what all the hubbub was. From the very little we can see, at one point it does almost seem to be walking upright, but it’s so hard to tell. This could be a bear, or a man in a costume. There’s no real way to tell how large this creature may be. Like many Bigfoot videos, it is shaky, blurry and we never get a good look at the supposed Sasquatch. To me, the cameraman’s reactions seem a bit forced as well. He doesn’t sound shocked or amazed, he just sounds like he’s acting shocked and amazed.

Technorati Tags: alaska, bigfoot, cryptozoology, debunking, hoax, ketchikan, media, News, paranormal, people, sasquatch, video

I don’t do too many stories on ghost hunters anymore, and there is a reason for that: there really aren’t too many interesting stories about paranormal investigators anymore. It seems that 95% of the time, it’s about some group trying to drum up attention for themselves in the local media. And that’s fine, but it’s not really blog-worthy, if you will. The other 5% of the time, it’s about some knuckleheads who get caught trespassing and then claim to be ghost hunters, giving a bad name to us all. I didn’t want to do yet another trespassing ghost hunters story, but this one just takes the cake.

 

Apparently these Maine ghost hunters don't really enforce an "over 21" policy for their group.

ORONO, Maine — Four area adults were summoned on trespassing charges shortly after midnight Tuesday after they reportedly scaled a barbed-wire-topped gate leading to Ayers Island with a baby in tow.

“They said they were looking for ghosts,” Orono police Officer Wilfred King said Wednesday evening. King said one of the ghost hunters brought along a camera in hopes of documenting paranormal activity on the island, which is privately owned and off-limits to the public. Several large signs there make that point.

King also said that the ghost hunters picked late Tuesday night because they said there was a full moon.

Sgt. Scott LaJoie said the group didn’t quite make it onto the island, however. King, who was patrolling the area that night, spotted their vehicle shortly after they arrived.

Charged with trespassing, but not arrested, were: Eric Roy, 23, of Bangor; Kimberly Patten, 19, of Orono; and Chauncey Hulbert, 27, of Bradley, and Hulbert’s 25-year-old wife, Suzanne Hulbert, King said.

King said that the Hulberts had brought along their 15-month-old child and that Chauncey Hulbert was taken to a Bangor hospital for treatment of leg injuries he suffered while climbing over the gate, which King said is about 8 feet tall and topped with barbed wire.

According to published reports, Ayers Island is home to the former Striar Textile Mill, which was built in 1890 and last operated in October 1996, as well as the former Orono Pulp & Paper Co. Most of the buildings that remain there were built around 1907, according to local histories.

It has been, among other things, the focus of redevelopment efforts and an environmental cleanup.

It also has a reputation for being haunted. In the summer of 2006, the cable network VH1 filmed two episodes of “Celebrity Paranormal Project” on the 62-acre island titled “Tanner’s Ghost” and “Wooden Lucy.”

According to local legend, the island in the Penobscot River, located two miles from the University of Maine campus, is haunted by the ghost of a foreman killed in a mysterious accident who is said to haunt the mill seeking revenge, and the ghost of a young girl whose father accidentally killed her after being tricked by a 300-year-old American Indian curse.

Roy and Chauncey Hulbert were among three men arrested in 2008 in connection with the theft of $6,000 in electrical wiring from a Bradley contractor.

Roy later was indicted by the Penobscot County grand jury and sentenced the next year to 30 days in jail and $500 restitution. He also has a theft conviction from March of this year and convictions for possession of drug paraphernalia and driving without a license.

Hulbert has been convicted of criminal mischief in 2010 and 2009, and assault in 2009.

I get annoyed when people take their infants to the movies. They paid probably upwards of $50 to get into the movies and get snacks, but they couldn’t spare another $20 for some teenager to watch their kid for 2 hours? But at least a movie theater is a relatively safe place. In that you don’t have to climb barbed wire fences to get in.

Technorati Tags: ghost, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, haunted, haunting, media, News, paranormal, people, supernatural, thoughts

I love when people come up with supposedly ”rational” theories to explain paranormal events that are actually more bizarre than the paranormal explanation. Actually, I don’t love it. It really annoys me. But it makes great fodder for blog posts. Haha. Anyways, according to an article in The Telegraph UK, author Annie Jacobsen speculates in her new book “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base”  that Roswell was really a plot contrived by Josef Stalin and Dr. Joseph Mengele to create a “War of the Worlds”-type panic in post-War America. And perhaps Lex Luthor, Bizarro  and the rest of the Legion of Doom were in on it too.

The so-called Roswell Incident of 1947 spawned conspiracy theories by the score.But now, sadly for UFO spotters, a new book offers an entirely man-made – and some would say even more bizarre – explanation, featuring two of the greatest villains of 20th century history: the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death” Dr Joseph Mengele.

The Hall of Doom

During a powerful storm in July, 1947, an object crashed near a rancher’s home in Roswell, New Mexico.

Roswell army air base initially said that a “flying disc” had come down, but hours later, as government scientists arrived in the area, it was stated instead that a weather balloon had crashed.

The incident went largely unreported until books and documentaries in the 1970s made allegations of alien life forms.

Area 51, the new book by Annie Jacobsen, is based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, the top secret test base in the Nevada desert.

It dismisses the alien story and puts forward the theory that Stalin was inspired by Orson Wells’s famous radio adaptation of the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds, which provoked hysteria across America when broadcast in 1938. According to the book, the plot started after the Soviet Union seized from Germany at the end of the war the jet-propelled, single wing Horton Ho 229 – a fighter said to be the forerunner of the modern B2 stealth bomber.

This is where Mengele enters the story. The Nazi doctor, who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz and fled to South America after the war, was supposedly enlisted to create a crew of “grotesque, child-size aviators” in return for a eugenics laboratory.

The book says that the plane was filled with “alien-like” children, aged 12 or 13, who Stalin wanted to land in America and cause hysteria similar to the 1938 broadcast. But, the plane, remotely piloted by another aircraft, crashed and the Americans hushed up the incident.

Jacobsen’s source, a retired engineer from the former defence company EG&G, which handled the US government’s most sensitive projects, said he was put on to the Roswell project in Area 51 in 1978.

Miss Jacobsen writes: “They found bodies alongside the crashed craft. These were not aliens. Nor were they consenting airmen. They were human guinea pigs. Unusually petite for pilots, they appeared to be children. Each was under five feet tall.

“They were grotesquely deformed, but each in the same manner as the others. They had unusually large heads and abnormally shaped oversize eyes.”

Two were supposedly found “comatose but still alive”.

The EG&G engineers were told “that seeing the bodies would be a shocking and disturbing experience”.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a spokesman for the US Air Force said: “We have not yet read this book so we are not able to make a comment on it.”

This story just reeks of sensationalism. To have Mengele conspiring with Stalin, creating human guinea pigs and then flying a craft into U.S. airspace and crashing it…well, it just seems even more far-fetched than just accepting that aliens crashed their UFO at Roswell. And honestly, it seems to be very much like theories we see in another unsolved case: Jack the Ripper. Over the years, lots of sensationalistic claims have been made as to Jack’s identity, from Lewis Carroll (author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, and even the Freemasons. And most of these theories involve vast conspiracies that really don’t make much sense. Again, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. I’m not saying that the Roswell crash was definitely extraterrestrial. But that explanation is a lot more believable than the Stalin-Mengele conspiracy.

Technorati Tags: alice in wonderland, alien, aliens, conspiracy theory, cover-up, debunking, Duke of Clarence, extraterrestrial, flying saucer, hoax, jack the ripper, lewis carroll, media, News, paranormal, people, Prince Albert Victor, roswell, thoughts, ufo, ufos