The Occult Section

Imagine you’re digging into your family’s history and you find out a). not only are there some indications that you and your spouse may possibly be related, and b). the guy you both are related to is a respected local historical figure who is buried in a place within driving distance to your home. So, you naturally go to visit his grave site and then find out c). his grave has been turned into a haunted attraction, complete with signs painted in dripping blood-red paint! AWKWARD.

All the answers to life’s questions can be found behind the goats.

The living never know to which cemetery a genealogical trail will lead, but a Cleveland man said he was shocked to find a prominent relative’s burial site turned into an amusement park attraction.

The small cemetery where the remains of Judge Charles Fleming Keith lie is part of the Judgment Day Haunted Trail in the Mayfield Farm and Nursery Corn Maze and Pumpkin Patch, north of Athens on Highway 307.

Dietrich said his wife accompanied him to the family cemetery that first time in January 2012.

“We tried to get permission to come on the property though we didn’t have to have it because it is a cemetery. We wanted them to know we were here. We went to the business office, but no one was there. There were a lot of vehicles, but no people. We started searching for it and drove all over the place until we finally found it there behind the goats.”

Dietrich said the overhead sign proclaiming “Judgement Day” in red, dripping paint shocked him. A line scrolled underneath described it as the gateway to a haunted attraction.“We were just shocked quite honestly to see the sign, the haunted trail and the way they were treating this as an amusement park attraction rather than a cemetery, because it has such historical significance to this area,” Dietrich said.

He was taking pictures when Michael Mayfield approached them. He was friendly and encouraged Dietrich to take all the pictures he wanted and visit at anytime.

“I went home and wrote a really nice letter to Michael asking him to please consider doing something else with the cemetery that would be more in keeping with the dead, particularly somebody as prominent in Tennessee history as Judge Keith was,” Dietrich said. “A year later, he hasn’t done anything.”

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Holy crap. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since “The X-Files” pilot episode aired. I watched the first episode when it premiered. I was 10 years old. And after that first episode, I subsequently taped every single episode, bought magazines, books, soundtracks…and can thank David Duchovny for pushing me right into puberty (even after all his, er, follies, I still have a really really creepy totally normal – I swear – crush on him). Don’t believe me? Ask my friends. Actually, don’t, they know far too much.

But I digress. 20 years, y’all! wow!

It’s been 20 years since “The X-Files” opened to viewers’ wanting-to-believe eyes, and the hit paranormal investigation drama’s creator, Chris Carter, doesn’t quite know what to make of that phenomenon.

“Scully, would you think less of me as a man if I told you I was kind of excited right now?”

“It’s surreal,” he told a sold-out crowd Sunday at the Hero Complex Film Festival shortly after entering to a standing ovation. “It’s like an X-File…. Twenty years’ missing time.”

Asked what he might do differently if he made the show now, he said, “It was of its time…. You probably could make the show today, but, I don’t know why, it just feels like it was made exactly when it should have been made.”

The festival’s closing night was devoted to the acclaimed Fox series, and included screenings of three fan-picked episodes – the pilot, which he wrote, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” and “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose.”

Carter said the pilot scene in which FBI special agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a skeptical scientist, first meets her new partner, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), a crusading believer in aliens and conspiracy, wasn’t just their introduction as a duo to the audience, but to him as well: “That’s the first time they really acted together. They didn’t audition together for the parts. We really cast them separately, so we didn’t know there’d be that chemistry. What you were watching was really a kind of test, and it ended up working.”

David, if you’re out there reading this…call me!

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Yes, it’s another addition to the list of celebrity ghost stories. Apparently Miley Cyrus had some paranormal activity in her London apartment during her 2009 tour. I’m terrible at research, so does anyone know if she had been smoking marijuana back then? Also, this is not the first time the Cyrus family has been linked to the paranormal…or featured  on our blog (see here, here and here, where Billy Ray Cyrus was supposed to host a show on SyFy).

“A ghost? That’s pretty cool!”

The 20-year-old singer and her family rented an apartment in the English capital during her 2009 European tour but they had to move to a hotel after a number of ghostly encounters.

She told British Elle magazine: “It was seriously so terrifying. One night, my little sister — it sounds crazy to tell you — but she was standing in the shower and all of a sudden, I hear her scream. I run in there and the water had somehow flipped to hot but it was still … It wasn’t like the water had just changed, the knob had turned but she hadn’t turned it and it was burning her. She was really red.

“I thought I had seen a little boy sitting on the sink watching me take a shower so I felt really freaked out. I was sitting there the next night and maybe I’m crazy, but I could have sworn I could see this little boy sitting there on the sink, kicking his feet.”

The family later discovered the apartment was reportedly haunted and Miley has vowed never to stay there again.

She said: “We found out that there was this older man that owned it [the bakery that had once been in the building] and his son lived with him there, and I guess the wife died or something, she had gotten sick.

“So it was just the son and the dad that lived there in the bakery, and then the dad died and the son took over the bakery, and I thought I was seeing the son. I’m not even kidding.

“I had to move. That’s not a lie. I will never stay there ever again.”

I think it’s safe to say that ever since Ghost Hunters came on the air, any business that can charge admission of some kind is not “reportedly haunted.” Hell, it’s an easy way to make a buck, and all you have to do is make up some cliché, non-verifiable story, and the knuckleheads will eat it up and pay $200 to get in and investigate with 150 other knuckleheads. Like, totally seriously though, old faucets and valves can move on their own if they are old, broken,, and there’s enough water pressure. Like, totally.

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I’m intrigued by this article. There’s a house for sale in Montreal, right, and people are already assuming it’s haunted. Why? Cuz paranormal stuff is so hot right now. But seriously, it’s an old house and apparently hasn’t been renovated much, if at all, since being built almost 100 years ago.

An eerie house for sale in Montreal’s Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie area is still in search of a buyer nearly a year after going on the market, according to CTV News.

The listing says a building contractor built the house with his employees in 1919 and 1920. Judging from the images posted online, nothing has changed since.

The house looks like a time capsule from the 1920s; its well-worn furniture and dusty floors contributing to a sense that something of its past owners lingers on inside the empty rooms.

“Probably the first Victorian house to be built in the area of Petite Patrie and certainly the last to be renovated,” the listing says.

It adds that the floors, doors and paneling are all original, made from oak. The floor was only ever covered with beeswax, it says. The walls bear the marks of items that once hung there and the bedroom still contains a bed.

A visitor told CTV News the house had a feeling to it, as though it was haunted.

The listing includes a warning that there is no legal warranty for the house’s quality.

In this day and age, it’s totally acceptable to presume everything you come across is paranormal, full of ghosts, possibly demonic, and definitely soon-to-be on TV.

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I’ll admit, I’m totally jealous of these two – they get to look for all the famous ghosts, while most of us are reduced to searching for the “normies.”  I suppose someone’s gotta do it though, and why not Robbie Williams and Meat Loaf? Also, can we just talk about how this article informally refers to Meat Loaf as just “Meat.” AWESOME.

Yeah…this kind of happened….

SUPERNATURAL nut ROBBIE WILLIAMS would do anything to spot ghosts and UFOs.

Now he’s got a new pal to help him do that – MEAT LOAF.

The pair have known each other for years and Meat is planning to take Rob on a hunt for CHARLIE CHAPLIN’s poltergeist.

He said: “Robbie should absolutely come ghost-hunting with me. There are so many places to go – we could head to the old A&M recording studios in LA. They think Charlie Chaplin’s down there.”

Meat, who starts his farewell tour in Newcastle on April 5, believes his body acts as a ghost doorway.

He said: “There are people they say are conduits, who are more open to it, and so this stuff’s been going on since I was a kid.

“I’ve seen my mother after she died and my grandmother. I talked to my mother, and she talked back.

“And I’m not crazy, but people would think, ‘He’s crazy’.”

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