The Occult Section

Not sure how I missed this announcement, so I’m glad I’ve been able to watch a bit more TV lately (well, more than the regular none) and was able to catch the commercial and subsequently program my DVR. I’m not a big fan of most of the current paranormal shows, as they basically all feature frustrated actors running around pretending to find evidence of ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, or whatever, but I do enjoy the old-school shows, where they simply feature first-hand accounts, reenactments and experts in the field weighing in.  So I am definitely (yet cautiously) optimistic about the new Destination America show, Monsters and Mysteries in America.

Pope Lickmonster? Didn’t he just retire?

Mysterious shadows. Screams in the night. A hair-raising sense that something is watching. Stories of the unknown capture our imagination and curiosity in Destination America’s new series MONSTERS AND MYSTERIES IN AMERICA, premiering Sunday, March 24 at 10 PM E/P. From all across the country emerge tales of close encounters with legendary creatures, from horrific monsters and ancient spirits to alien sightings and unexplained paranormal phenomena. Thirty percent of Americans believe that a beast such as Bigfoot is living in our forests*; in a quaint Montana town, reports of an elusive lake serpent have persisted every year since 1889; last year, UFO sightings were reported in 36 of 50 states in one week alone.** Featuring first-person accounts with everyday people who believe they have come face to face with real-life folktale fiends, MONSTERS AND MYSTERIES IN AMERICA travels our country’s untamed wilderness to tell of its storied past.

Each episode focuses on a different American region and features stories of people who claim to have encountered creatures of local legend. The first two episodes include:

Appalachia premieres Sunday, March 24 at 10 PM E/P

• Sheepsquatch (Breckenridge County, KY) – The border between southwest Virginia and West Virginia is an area shrouded in mystery and folklore, but few mysteries are more unusual and intriguing than that of the Appalachian white beast known to the locals as Sheepsquatch. Dakota Cheeks and his best friend Ricky Joyce become prey to the legendary white beast during a weekend hunting trip.
• UFO/Little Green Men (Kelly and Hopkinsville, KY) – One quiet summer evening in 1955, the Sutton family farm is invaded by unexpected visitors. The family is hardly prepared for what they encounter – a small, green creature with glowing yellow eyes, about 3.5 feet tall with pointed ears and long arms raised high in the air. And he’s not alone. At first, the family is captivated by this transcendental moment… but evil quickly takes over.
• Mothman (Point Pleasant, WV) – An innocent drive down a country road turns into a nightmare for Faye LaPort and her siblings as they come face to face with the legendary Mothman. Sightings of the Mothman began in 1966 and continued for more than a year, electrifying and baffling the entire region of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Although the hype has died down since then, the sightings have not.

Pacific Northwest premieres Sunday, March 31 at 10 PM E/P

• Sasquatch (Sierra Mountains, CA / Olympic Mountains, WA) – Within the region’s dark, tightly packed interior, wildlife is so abundant that it’s become the rumored home of an elusive wild creature known as Sasquatch. Many adventurers are drawn to these mountains in hopes of encountering the famed hairy giant, but some confront the monster purely by chance, like Justin Smeja who encountered a family of Sasquatch during a routine hunting trip.
• Shanghai Tunnels (Portland, OR) – Deep underneath the city of Portland lies a maze of underground tunnels. At one time, they were used for transporting goods between businesses and the Willamette River, but recently the possibility of a far more sinister purpose has come to light. Residents claim these underground chambers remain turbulent from the horrors that took place a hundred years ago and visitors claim to see spirits and phantom wolves.
• Flathead Lake Monster (Flathead Lake, Polson, MT) – Resting on the edge of the Pacific Northwest region, Polson is a quaint lakeside town with a mysterious monster resident. For decades, people from all around the world have flocked to Flathead Lake in the hope of spotting an elusive aquatic creature living below the surface. Sightings occur every year, dating all the way back to 1889. Skeptics have questioned the authenticity of these sightings, but to those who have seen it, this monster is very, very real.

Other episodes will features mysteries in the Ozarks, Badlands, Bayou, and Desert.

MONSTERS AND MYSTERIES IN AMERICA is produced by M2 Pictures for Destination America. For M2 Pictures, Mike Sinclair is executive producer. For Destination America, Fay Yu is executive producer, Sara Kozak is SVP of production, Marc Etkind is SVP of content strategy, and Henry Schleiff is president and general manager.

I’ve got this series all set to record, and will definitely be giving it a chance. Hopefully it’s not over-the-top shlock like pretty much everything else having to do with the paranormal right now. Here’s to hoping…

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, bigfoot, california, conspiracy theory, cover-up, cryptozoology, debunking, destination america, extraterrestrial, flathead lake monster, flying saucer, ghost, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, haunted, haunted house, haunted houses, haunting, hoax, hopkinsville, media, mothman, News, paranormal, people, sasquatch, shanghai tunnels, sheepsquatch, supernatural, thoughts, tv show, ufo, ufos, yeti

We don’t usually like blogging about Ghost Hunters here at The Occult Section, unless there’s big news or something ridiculous happening involving the show. Lucky for us, those two things usually happen at the same time. Last season the big buzz was about Grant Wilson leaving TAPS and Ghost Hunters. Now people are all a flutter talking about who will replace Grant (until he inevitably returns).

Serious, scientific investigators. And Jason Hawes.

SyFy isn’t sharing any details about how they will fill Grant Wilson’s role on “Ghost Hunters” in season 9, but Jason Hawes may have dropped a hint in a tweet dated August 22.

Grant Wilson, co-founder and lead investigator of “Ghost Hunters”, SyFy’s hit paranormal reality show, left “Ghost Hunters” after 8 seasons last spring, leaving fans to wonder how this will affect the dynamics of the show.

Although no announcements have been made from either SyFy or Jason Hawes, Jason Hawes may have given a clue when he responded to an inquiry from a fan on Twitter.

When a fan tweeted Jason “Is it weird without your partner in crime?” Jason responded in a tweet with “No. We still talk all the time & Steve’s been with me longer then G.”

Whether Jason Hawes meant to imply that Steve Gonsalves would step up to fill Grant’s shoes is unclear, but many fans speculate that he will. But, that would meant breaking up the Steve and Tango team and changing the dynamics of the show even further.

Emma Riley Sutton shares, “I don’t know how they will replace Grant Wilson. If they bring in a new person, I hope they find someone with the same spirit as Grant. Without his enthusiasm for uncovering the truth, I don’t think ‘Ghost Hunters’ would be the same.”

Other fans theorize that SyFy will fill Grant Wilson’s role with guest appearances from high profile celebrities in an attempt to draw in more viewers. “Ghost Hunters” has entertained celebrity guests such as Meatloaf, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Colin Ferguson, CM Punk and Elijah Burke on a periodic basis in previous seasons.

Tune into the premiere of “Ghost Hunters” Season 9, on September 5 at 9/8c on the SyFy channel and find out for yourself how Grant Wilson’s departure will affect the show.

Once again, I find it laughable that people are more concerned about the dramatic dynamics of the show rather than, you know, actually finding paranormal evidence. Jason’s tweet says nothing, and yet the fans are analyzing and over-analyzing it for meaning. And I mean, I like Meatloaf. I love CM Punk and wrestling in general. But the celebrity guests just further cheapen what is already an eroded image of this show. Maybe Snooki should replace Grant? Or one of the Kardashians? Ah Ghost Hunters fans…

Technorati Tags: celebrity, cm punk, colin ferguson, dave tango, debunking, Elijah Burke, ghost, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, grant wilson, hoax, humor, jason hawes, meatloaf, media, News, paranormal, people, steve gonsalves, supernatural, syfy, tango, the real housewives of atlanta, thoughts, tv show, wrestling, wwe

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

As anyone who reads this blog probably knows, I’m not a fan of the SyFy Channel show Ghost Hunters. I haven’t watched the show for a few years now (with one exception, which I will soon explain), and most of my paranormally-involved friends and acquaintances no longer watch it either, for a myriad of reasons. But I actually tuned in last week, because they were advertising a development that would mean Ghost Hunters would “never be the same.” Basically, in what is perhaps one of the worst-kept secrets in television history, Grant Wilson, one of the founding members of TAPS, was leaving the show.

Now before I get into my criticisms and have to once again deal with a bunch of comments saying how I’m jealous and have sour grapes, I have to say that I, once upon a time, loved Ghost Hunters. It was great to see a show with actual paranormal investigators and not just local yahoos and self-proclaimed psychics running around making claims they could never verify. These were guys who were dedicated, spent lots of their own time and money investigating the paranormal, and used scientific methods. We were all happy for them, and they inspired many more people to get into this field. But things quickly began to change. Instead of being skeptical and trying to debunk things, now they were finding EVPs every week and claiming locations were haunted, something they’d never done before. The focus shifted from helping the average family with ghosts (anyone else remember “We’re here to help?”) to pompous claims of being the first and only team to ever investigate whatever famous haunted location of the week they were visiting (which was rarely the case). The show went from being something we all enjoyed and respected and turned into a ratings circus. Those of us who actually investigate the paranormal came to see what the show was now really about: ratings and money.

Again, before anyone has a chance to lob insults my way for being jealous or whatever, let me just say that no, I do not want a TV show. I’ve been on TV many times, from local news to the Discovery Channel, and I’ve turned down many, many other shows, some of them quite ludicrous in their premise. I’m not jealous of them at all, merely disappointed. And as many paranormal investigators will tell you, when TAPS rolls into town, they change things. They do things to make it harder on the rest of us to get into places. They’ve done this with two locations my group had investigated prior to TAPS ever being there, one of them being Snug Harbor, a recent episode that I watched (see, told you I’d get to it). And for those of you who think the show is entirely real, I have a script they left behind that I can show you. They didn’t investigate overnight, only filmed the investigative shots they needed and then bailed.

Anyhoo, now that the disclaimer is over, my thoughts on Grant leaving. To me, Grant always seemed the more upstanding of the two founders of TAPS. Jason Hawes has always seemed a bit pompous, and in more recent seasons just seems very put-upon to be doing the very easy thing he does and gets paid tons of money to do. His lack of care shows through in every episode. You can tell his passion is gone, and he’s just doing this for the money now. Grant, on the other hand, has always seemed more compassionate and invested in the work.

Grant is a controversial figure though, as it seems that whenever TAPS gets caught faking evidence, Grant is at the center of it. Lots of people I know blame Grant for this, and call him the worst of the bunch. I don’t quite see it that way. I wonder if he’s just not as into the money, the trickery, the ratings, and perhaps his heart just isn’t into hoaxing things? And maybe that is why he fails.

According to a recent Grant Wilson FAQ on the TAPS website (which now just leads to the same info on Jason Hawes’ website), Grant left to pursue his education. If so, good for him. I tend to believe that his heart just wasn’t in it anymore. Though this could simply be a huge ratings ploy. Tease that he’s leaving on the season finale, then sort of admit that he has a “few more investigations to do” (so he WILL be back next season), and maybe by the time that all happens, he’s miraculously changed his mind and stays with TAPS. Even the way they handled his exit was staged. He tells Jason to turn off his mic so he can tell him while they are investigating? Hogwash. Jason knew exactly what was going on. They tell Steve Gonsalves to gather the team for a private meeting, and then the cameras cut to the team sitting in a restaurant, obviously being filmed by multiple cameras. Yeah, very private. Then the waterworks when Grant announces his departure. Maybe tears of joy that they all might get more airtime now (and thus, more money)?

I wish Grant well. I really do. Like I said, he always seemed to be the most genuine of the bunch. But that being said, he could have left many years ago, when the credibility of the show was falling apart, and he didn’t. I’ve seen people on Facebook and other outlets thanking Grant profusely, and they are almost like memorials. He’s not dead, folks. And ghost hunting existed long before he was on TV. And mark my words, he will be back, at some point.

Technorati Tags: cover-up, debunking, ghost, ghost hunters, ghost hunting, ghosts, grant wilson, haunted, haunted house, haunted houses, haunting, hoax, jason hawes, media, News, paranormal, supernatural, syfy, taps, thoughts, tv show

I saw a commercial about this today while watching football. How could I not blog about it?

When a renowned ghost hunter is killed, Carrie and Al discover that his death is linked to a chilling discovery he made on a recent assignment.

(source: IMDB).

Since it’s not animated, I’m not familiar with the show. I may have to tune in for this episode though. Hmm! Of course, now I’m insanely curious to see if a). this guy is in a group and they name the group, because chances are close to 100% that the group actually exists, and b). how they portray him in general.

The CBS Youtube Channel has a preview clip up for the episode (titled “Spirited Away”), which airs on Tuesday (Dec. 13) at 10/9c.

Technorati Tags: al burns, carrie wells, cbs, ghost hunter, ghost hunting, murder, News, paranormal, people, spirited away, thoughts, tv show, unforgettable