The Occult Section

In Edinburgh, Scotland, something is lurking at the back of Greyfriars Cemetery that isn’t as friendly as Greyfriars’ Bobby, the legendary small dog associated with the graveyard. Ever since the winter of 1998/99, when a homeless man tried to seek shelter in the ornate mausoleum of Lord Advocate, George Mackenzie, an entity called the Mackenzie Poltergeist has been attacking visitors to the Covenanter’s Prison. The attacks were so bad that the authorities have locked the Prison to the public. Access can only be gained by taking part in the City of the Dead ghost tour, and  after hearing a stern ‘hazard’ warning.

The Covenanter’s Prison and George Mackenzie are closely linked to a particularly dark patch in Scottish history, the latter part of the fifty years religious persecution of the Covenanters. These were a group of Presbyterians determined to defend their outlawed branch of Christianity and were something of a pet hate to George Mackenzie. As Lord Advocate, it was his job to grind them down, and this he did with great zeal. He earned the nickname “Bluidy” Mackenzie for his efforts.  In 1679, after the Battle of Bothwell Brig, Mackenzie incarcerated over 1000 Covenanters captured at the battle in a small section of Greyfriars Cemetery, in what is believed to be the first concentration camp in history, and known today as Covenanters Prison. Many of the prisoners died. They were ill fed and made to face a harsh winter in the open as the prison was unsheltered. Guards had a free rein to shoot, and many prisoners were executed at the front of the graveyard, their heads hung on spikes on the cemetery gates. Some were sold into slavery, and some managed to get free by either renouncing their religion or bribing a guard. There were just over 200 left of the original number by time the Covenanters were set free from Greyfriars.

In 1691, George Mackenzie died. He was buried a few hundred feet away from the Covenanter’s Prison. One of the local legends went that his coffin moved about by itself because of his anguish at being buried near the site of the misery he orchestrated. As to the veracity of that, I’m not so sure, but angst between the ghosts of Covenanters Prison and Mackenzie is just one of reasons given for the existence of the Mackenzie Poltergeist. The entity is named this as it’s believed to have originated in Mackenzie’s mausoleum, when the aforementioned homeless man sought shelter there during a rainy night. He managed to get right down to where the coffins lie and experienced something nasty enough to have him fleeing back into the storm. There’s differing speculation as to what that was. Local author Jan-Andrew Henderson believed that something was disturbed that night, which has been grumbling ever since. For some strange reason, the entity moved from Mackenzie’s mausoleum into an empty mausoleum in Covenanter’s Prison.

In the early spring of 1999, people began complaining of being scratched and otherwise physically attacked when going into the Prison. Edinburgh City Council were perturbed enough to lock the gates to the public, and stories abounded of the strange ghost that ‘lived’ in what became known as the Black Mausoleum. At the same time, Jan-Andrew Henderson wanted to start his own ghost tour, but one that focused on a contemporary haunting. He heard about the poltergeist, made some enquiries, and the City of The Dead Tour was born. To begin with, Henderson and a friend took the tours, gradually taking on more tour guides as demand grew. The tour became very popular quite quickly, and is now one of Edinburgh’s leading ghost tours. It starts outside St Giles Cathedral in the city centre, taking in some twisting wynds and a steep hill, before ending up in Greyfriars Cemetery and Covenanters Prison, where it ends in the Black Mausoleum. Basically a poltergeist show and tell.

From day one, things happened to those taking part in the tour. People have been scratched, punched, seen strange figures and heard odd noises in the Prison. Quite a few have passed out in the Black Mausoleum, and only come to when taken outside. Some have been sent to hospital. The tour operators say that to date, they believe the poltergeist has attacked several hundred people, most of which they have recorded. Jan-Andrew Henderson, for it’s convenience to his work, once lived in a tenement flat overlooking Greyfriars. Several flats in the block had been experiencing bizarre phenomenon attributed to the Mackenzie Poltergiest, including fires. Henderson’s flat was destroyed by fire in 2003, not long after he released a book on the haunting,  The Ghost That Haunted Itself. Quite a few of his friends believed he’d been pushing his luck with the ghost.

I’ve been on the tour a couple of times since 2005. Not much in the way of the reported attacks happened, although I came away with some pretty nice shots of the Prison on my first visit. The second visit, one girl walked out of the Black Mausoleum before the guide had finished his talk. It is quite eerie being in the Mausoleum. It’s pitch dark, and the atmosphere is quite oppressive. Not helped by being packed into a small space with about 20-30 other people.

Part of the atmosphere seems to emanate from the history of the spot. One of the things that upsets people appears to be the brutality that happened in the prison. A way to explain this away is to attribute it to a poltergeist. In fact, the poltergeist to me serves as a way of remembering what went on. If the story of the Covenanter’s Prison was recounted as a purely historical event, minus the paranormal additions, it would probably fade. Scotland, let’s not forget, is a place where lots of violent events have occurred in the past. Yet another tale of nastiness would meld into the background. The ghost story seems to be a nice tool in making sure these things are remembered. And there’s not many people who don’t enjoy a good ghost story.

Technorati Tags: Bluidy Mackenzie, Covenanter’s Prison, Edinburgh, ghost, ghosts, Greyfriars Cemetery, haunted, paranormal, poltergeist, scotland, supernatural, UK

Oy Vey! Last Friday, The Possession, you know, the movie based on a true story, was unleashed onto the supple minds of the movie going masses. Admittedly, I was excited for its release and I did pay full ticket price, but before I tuck into this one, we should all take a moment to recognize that in the end, The Possession is, point blank, just another movie about a possessed demon child who does the things that possessed demon children do. The sad predictability of the film as it toppled from the horror movie Etz haChayim and hit every cliché on the way down is not my fault and I am not trying to spoil anything for anyone.

The Possession, with Kyra Sedgwick as its leading lady, may be one degree from Kevin Bacon, but just a nugget of truth doesn’t amount to a truly vindicating ghost hunting gold rush. Whether or not you believe in the “true story” on which this film is “based,” that real-life backstory is more titillating than its cinematic dybbuk dramatization.

The movie, for those who are not aware, chronicles how one broken family must reunite and overcome their past grievances to survive the mysterious evil encapsulated within a suspicious antique wooden box found at a yard sale. Little does the family realize, this box was built to contain a dybbuk, a wandering spirit of Yiddish folklore that inhabits and ultimately devours the soul of its human host. Driven by a love for his children and the burning desire to one-up his ex-wife, Clyde (Jeffery Dean Morgan), drives to Brooklyn to strong-arm Matisyahu (literally) into performing the Hasidic rights of exorcism on his daughter. Sounds juicy, right? Only if you like your juice made of freshly squeezed lies. The story played out in The Possession has very little to do with the real thing.

A dybbuk (“clinging of an evil spirit”) in Jewish mysticism is a human spirit who cannot cross over because they must atone for a sin they did not make right prior to death or a spirit tormented by a grave injustice in life that must be revenged. The spirit literally attaches itself to a person and forces them to physically perform the necessary tasks. This is not exactly what we encounter in this story or the movie. Rather, it’s attached to an inanimate object – in this case, the box – that essentially poisons anyone who comes into contact with the object or the person who owns it. This explanation seems to align itself with the sort of alarmist and farfetched legend that the box actually contained an evil spirit which was brought to America by a Holocaust survivor after WWII.

Outside look at the original dybbuk box

In the Hasidic belief system, people are not able to be possessed as one thinks of in the traditional Roman Catholic sense. Jews believe that there can be a possession of a living person by a displaced soul that has yet to move on due to unfinished business. The dybbuk is drawn to someone who is in the state where their soul and their body are not fully connected with each other because of severe melancholy, psychosis, stuff like that — where you’re not integrated. It seeks a particular person who in their current lifetime is going through what the possessing spirit went through, and so the spirit is drawn to someone who is struggling with the same thing it did. For example, in my heart I have an overwhelming desire to punch every baby I see, but I don’t follow through because I don’t have the chutzpah. The spirit of someone who has actually done it will be drawn to my desire and will possess me because we’re compatible. However, a possession does not always have to be a negative thing.

The second kind of dybbuk possession is called ‘sod ha’ibbur,’ which is Hebrew for ‘mystery impregnation.’ This kind of possession is a good possession — it’s a spirit guide (i.e. patronus). The spirit of someone who has struggled and overcome what you have struggled with and can’t overcome will be lent to you from the spirit world to possess you, encourage you, and help you overcome what you have not been able to overcome and what it has been able to in its lifetime. Then when it’s done and you’ve managed to achieve what you need to achieve in your life, it leaves you.Anyways, getting back to the real issue, the IRL portion of this ride came to the public’s attention in 2004 with an article in the Los Angeles Times that opened like this:

“A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one “dybbuk,” a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Losif Nietzke, described the container as a “haunted Jewish wine cabinet box” that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.”

Inside contents of the original dybbuk box

There are also several accounts documented by the original owner of the box in question. One such occurrence goes like this:

“At the time when I bought the cabinet, I owned a small furniture refinishing business. I took the cabinet to my store, and put it in my basement workshop where I intended to refinish it and give it as a gift to my Mother. I didn’t think anything more about it. I opened my shop for the day and went to run some errands leaving the young woman who did sales for me in charge. After about a half-hour, I got a call on my cell phone. The call was from my salesperson. She was absolutely hysterical and screaming that someone was in my workshop breaking glass and swearing. Furthermore, the intruder had locked the iron security gates and the emergency exit and she couldn’t get out. As I told her to call the police, my cell phone battery went dead. I hit speeds of 100 mph getting back to the shop. When I arrived, I found the gates locked. I went inside and found my employee on the floor in a corner of my office sobbing hysterically. I ran to the basement and went downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, I was hit by an overpowering unmistakable odor of cat urine (there had never been any animals kept or found in my shop). The lights didn’t work. As I investigated, I found that the reason the lights didn’t work also explained the sounds of glass breaking. All of the light bulbs in the basement were broken. All nine incandescent bulbs had been broken in their sockets, and 10 four-foot fluorescent tubes were lying shattered on the floor. I did not find an intruder, however. I should also add that there was only one entrance to the basement. It would have been impossible for anyone to leave without meeting me head-on. I went back up to speak with my salesperson, but she had left. She never returned to work (after having been with me for two years). She refuses to discuss the incident to this day. I never thought of relating the events of that day to anything having to do with the cabinet.”

A later occurrence relays a reoccurring dream experienced by the owner and any family members or friends who came into contact with the box:

“I find myself walking with a friend, usually someone I know well and trust at some point in the dream, I find myself looking into the eyes of the person that I am with. It is then that I realize that there is something different, something evil looking back at me. At that point in my dream, the person I am with changes into what I can only describe as the most gruesome, demonic looking Hag that I have ever seen. The Hag proceeds then, to beat the living tar out of me. I have awakened numerous times to find bruises and marks on myself where I had been hit by the old woman during the previous night.”

The authenticity of it all depends, essentially, on what you believe as the site says, “Here is the story of the haunted wine box, exactly as it appeared on eBay. You form your own opinion.” As far as the movie goes, on a scale of full price, matinee, Netflix, torrent, or streaming, I would give it a Netflix/torrent. The movie is not the most original thing I’ve ever seen, but its technical production is not completely wretched and it has some pretty excellent quotables. Plus, you get Matisyahu, The Closer, Papa Winchester, and the moths from Silence of The Lambs all in one movie.

For the Full Original Story:  Click here

For continued reading on dybbuks: Jewish Encyclopedia 

Technorati Tags: celebrity, debunking, dybbuk, ghost hunting, ghosts, haunting, horror movies, movie, movie review, News, paranormal, supernatural, the possession, thoughts

I was watching an old episode of “A Haunting” the other day, arguably one of the best television series to have ever been canceled, which centered around formulaic, “evil,” long-forgotten possessions in a dusty attic that were predictably infused with the residual energies of a former property owner. Typical. However, the story did have one redeeming facet that prevented me from phoning it in and going for another can of coke from the fridge: The mother had found an old necklace, which she then gave to her young child. The necklace, like so many others in paranormal story lines, had an indecipherable, worn inscription and was made of some blessed metal or another. In order to rid the house of the spirit, they took this necklace to the cemetery where the offending ghost was originally laid to rest and buried it next to her grave. The hitch to this story was that the two families, the one currently residing in the home and its former owners were of different cultural sets and religious beliefs. Wiccans moved in, took down the crosses, bathed the house in earthy Isis blessings, and woke up with the crosses back where they started.

“Picture Medallion” by Ruudt Peters

Sometimes when living in a society that is chronically bored, we can’t be bothered to appreciate what is going on around us. Conceivably, a piece of jewelry is able to be of great significance to a person. If this is the case, under the right circumstances, people and jewelry are inseparable; jewelry then has a human scale, and humans impute meaning to jewelry.It might be hard for some people to think of a piece of jewelry as anything other than a decorative ornament. It again often has a meaning to someone beyond the here and now. This might be something personal, marking an event, a celebration, a loss, or an identity. These meanings can also be universal, part of the code language – shaping society.

“Abschiedsfest” by Constanze Schreiber

In industrial and secular societies, rituals have often lost their meaning. Initial rites of passage have only a hollow semblance of what they once meant, and death and funeral rituals have become standardized. Jewelry is part of a familiar ritual, such as marriage, and it is frequently present in military and other official decorations. What has happened to humans, generally speaking, and social rituals?

“Bound by Blood” by Katja Prijust

Technorati Tags: A Haunting, ghost, haunted heirlooms, haunted history, haunted items, jewelry, paranormal, residual haunting, television

Side view of plague victim found with mysterious brick in her mouth

NERD FIGHT!

It all starts with a mass grave of 16^th Century plague victims that was discovered recently on the Venetian island of Nuovo Lazzaretto, northeast of Venice, where the body of a woman, let’s call her Carmilla, was exhumed with what appears to be a large brick stuffed into her jaw. While some scientists argue that there is a perfectly logical reason to snack on a brick sandwich (a low iron diet, maybe?), others are giddy with speculation that they may have uncovered a medieval exorcism ritual for dispelling vampirism. According to forensic anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy, if this theory were correct, that would make this woman the oldest specimen of vampire burials known to archeology.

Vampire superstitions were common folklore in medieval Europe during the plague as a way to explain why everyone was dying. Borrini assures us that most, if not all, of these tales from the crypt can be attributed to the natural stages of decomposition, and anyone who has ever seen a dead body can tell you that the dead can often seem unnervingly alive. For example, as the skin dries and pulls back, it appears as though nails and hair continue to grow after death.

In the case of Carmilla, Borrini suggests with a slight Sherlockian quality that she had been wrapped in a shroud, based on the position of her collarbone. As the body decomposes and corrosive fluids are dispelled, it could have appeared to gravediggers that she had chewed though the shroud. This would have surprised the gravediggers, no doubt, and perhaps scared them into believing that supernatural powers were afoot.

Vampire myths, and Matt Damon, are inextricably linked with contagions. Venice in 1576 was consumed by plague, all told nearly a third of the city, 50,000 people, perished. The grave digging dead collectors could conceivably have stumbled across this corpse and decided to take out some insurance that she wouldn’t be joining them for dinner.

However, every story, even supernatural ones, have two sides. One man’s vampire exorcism is another man’s accidental brick ball gag.

“Photos of the site where the purported vampire was found show her remains were surrounded by stones, bricks and tiles,” physical anthropologist Simona Minozzi said. Minozzi goes on to note that the jaws of corpses often gape open, allowing any number of items to fall in. At one time a skeleton was found in the cemetery of Vecchio Lazzaretto with a femur bone in its mouth.

There is also no clear evidence of a shroud, as the walls of a coffin might explain the position of the collarbone. They add that the legend of the so-called nachzehrer, or “shroud-eaters,” were tightly confined to the East German region and not Italy. Minozzi and her colleagues detailed their argument in the May issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Minozzi called the vampire idea “nonsense.” “Unfortunately, this is a common practice in the last few years in Italy,” she said. “This is probably due to the strong cutting of funds for research in Italy, so researchers seek to attract attention and money through sensational discoveries that often have little to do with science.”

Borrini and his colleagues strongly rebut the argument over their analysis. They discussed how the physical details of the site supported their interpretation in a response in the May issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, and that while the legend of the nachzehrer was found in Germanic areas, Venice was a crossroads during the epoch in which such legends from distant lands might have circulated.

Shawn and Gus from PSYCH as Lestat and Blacula

Read the full story here

Click here for a list of sexy vampire ladies in pop culture

Technorati Tags: conspiracy theory, debunking, italy, media, News, paranormal, picture, supernatural, thoughts, vampires, venice

I’m starting something new here at The Occult Section. I am ob-sessed with history and thought it’d be fun to do a weekly column featuring a paranormal story from the past. So! Without further ado, may I present to you a story from the New York Times, published on March 10th, 1884. Coincidentally, on the same page further down is a story on the funeral of Captain Thomas Melville, the governor of Sailor’s Snug Harbor, a place we at the New York Paranormal Society have investigated numerous times (see some summaries here, here, and here).

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: ghost, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, haunted, haunted house, haunted houses, haunting, history, News, paranormal, snug harbor, supernatural, thoughts