Real Life, (Local) "Ghost Hunters" wants to check Out My Place!

Over on FaceBook, I am friends with a couple of guys that are Lead Investigators of local-area Paranormal Investigation groups. Both are really awesome guys, and are helpful. One of them does YouTube videos of investigation tutorials and the like all of the time. You can find him there under the page Scream Freak 79. His name is Mike. And he the Founder of Viper Paranormal.

My other Paranormal enthusiastic pal is Alan. He's the Founder of Bedford Paranormal. We talked at great length for a couple days in regards to the happenings, both past and present that have been going on in my home around my family. We will be here for four years soon.

After telling Alan about everything that has transpired, and after he took a good look at the picture I had shown him of my daughter and an unseen arm (that seems to dissipate as it moves towards the wrist and hand area), he would like to come out and investigate the place.

We started talking not too long ago, after the last known incident involving ALL THREE of the kids.

Once in a while, they all get along. And this one night, they all three wished to bunk together in my son's room. Being THAT is a rare occurrence, I okay'd it.

Within about ten or twenty minutes, all three came running out of the room. Two in tears, all three with bug eyes. They were most certainly afraid. And mind you, when the lights are out in my son's room, and with the curtains and shades drawn, it is D-A-R-K in there.

When they came out, they about fell over one another as they ran through the hall, part of the dining area, and in to the living room as I sat here at the computer.

After catching her breath, my oldest said that as she was laying on her brother's bed, foot-end, she felt "weird". She looked down towards the floor. What she said next shocked even myself!

Apparently, in the pitch black darkness, she'd seen a hand, with an arm, that was a "black, dark shadow hand with an arm,that I could still see, even though it's really dark in B's room". It was, by her description, REACHING AROUND the end of the bed, and moving diagonal toward HER as if to try and grab her or touch her. And also, it seems that the other two kids had SEEN IT themselves as it was coming for their big sister.

After hearing what had transpired just nights before, and in the past, including my more-than-usual sighting of the little boy by the stairs of my basement foyer, and now even seeing him run past my bedroom down there here and there, as if he is going to the Family Area, Alan was getting concerned.

It's to the point that he would like to bring his Paranormal Investigation Team in, Bedford Paranormal (link above in previous paragraph). I made it well known that I will NOT have my kids here if/when it takes place. They can tell the team what they have seen/heard/felt, then it's time to ship them off to a friend.

That is IF I do this. Scott has yet to know of it. And I like that a private, localized group wants to take my case of haunted happenings. I have had a couple people tell me to contact Ghost Hunters. But nah! I love the show. But I really do not wish to have my family or my home on national TV. I'm no "fame attention seeker". Especially for THIS kind of subject.

Between Mike at Viper Paranormal and Alan at Bedford Paranormal, they have been a WONDERFUL help and guidance. They take my situation seriously. But they also look at it with a skeptic's view (think Ghost Hunters).

Now, how to tell the hubby that a local ghost hunting group wishes to check out our hauntingly active home...

Choking Game.. Ghost Style.

Last night, I went to sleep not long after midnight. I was tired, to say the least. Everything was right in my world. I had my wonderful husband snuggled beside me as we lulled off to dreamland.

Not long after 3 AM I had shot up in bed. I am not the type to do this. In fact, I am a very sound sleeper.

But last night, around 3:20, I woke to feel like I was about to literally faint. And the back of tongue, as well as a part of my throat went completely numb and tingly. It felt as if someone was cutting off my airway. I was being choked!

Never have I had something remotely like this ever happen to me. I never felt hands wrapped around my throat. But INSIDE, I felt like I was suffocating.

As soon as I bolted upright in the bed, the tingling and the numbness started to subside. As was the feeling of wanting to pass out.

Of course, this made my husband also bolt straight up and get worried. He asked what was wrong and if I was alright. I played it off and said I was, and that I must have had a bad dream.

Because he too knows that this is VERY out of character for me, where sleeping is concerned.

Now, is this something that is 'paranormal'? I do not honestly know. Maybe it is something medical.

But maybe, it could even be BOTH?

I cannot say for sure either way at this point in time. But I can say that I was more scared than I have been since the last physical encounter, which was a week after we moved in here. If you wish to know more about that experience, then please READ HERE.

If anyone that reads this can shed more light on what I went through, be it medical and/or paranormal, I am all ears (or is that eyes??). I'm flabbergasted.

The Victorian View On Death...

True, I normally write about ghosts and hauntings. But I have a "closet" fascination. Some would call it a morbid one, to say the least. But it is practiced (though rarely) still today. Primarily in the south of North America's culture. A fascination that forces us to take a really good look at ourselves, our lives, and our mortality. And it makes us hope that those that we leave behind, will wish to remember us as we were, before death placed it's cold grip upon our shoulder.

Back in the times of Victorian culture, it was not uncommon in the least, that the grieving families would have pictures taken of their loved ones after death, as to capture their essence from life, in which death had robbed them.

The pictures were taken before the deceased person's funeral and burial. And some are so exquisite, that while, heartbreaking, they are beautiful.

The practice was called Post-Mortem Photography. The practice had begun in 1839. But died out after the turn of the century. These were not meant to be a morbid means of "clinging on" to loved ones. But to have a memento of those that were loved dearly. Especially of children, who died in great numbers back in the Victorian era, due to the very diseases that we have eradicated or have built better immunity to in this day and age.

The earliest works of photographers that were doing "Memento Photos" had primarily face shots, or full-body pictures. But without the coffin, in most cases.

As time drew on, then the photographers tried to capture the dead in as real a life-like state as possible. Sometimes, going as far as painting the eyes on to the eyelids, to give the deceased an "awake" appearance.

With some people, the photographer would lay them on a bed or on a love-seat and show the subject as if they were just sleeping.

Over on YouTube, I had found a lady who posts videos of collections of old VHS tapes she had of this very subject. They are made by GhostWatching.

While it makes your heart pound, and it leaves you a bit morose and makes the reality of your own mortality more surreal, the pictures are breath taking, and genuinely beautiful. Especially the children.

Steps In The Attic

As always, with every great story, there is a beginning. So, I shall start from the point of childhood, at eight years old.

My Maternal Grandmother had passed away early in the year of 1984 (I was born in late 1976). She was a woman that took no crap from anyone. She, at the end of her life suffered with a heart condition, blindness due to Glaucoma, and Diabetes. She passed days after I last saw her outside her ICU window.

In her better years, Grandma loved to wear those thick-heeled, four-inch pumps. Everywhere. When she passed, she had a pair on for her funeral. This was to be the second "big" loss in my life of those that I dearly loved, and were close to.

Not long after her burial at sea, and us trying to lead a life without my Grandma living with us (or being alive period), I noticed odd occurrences. Primarily at night. Rustling, sounds like mice or other small animals roaming in the attic above me.

Mind you, NONE of us in all the years we (mainly my Dad and I, along with my mother who passed in 1989) went up in to the attic. I never once can recall that door EVER being opened.

One night, as I lay in bed to rest up for yet another school day, approximately three, maybe four weeks after Grandma died, I heard something familiar to my ears. Yes! Familiar. It sounded like her SHOES. Those thick-heeled pumps could never be mistaken. They had a sound that was unique to the sense of hearing of all their own.

It was a hard thumping 'click'. And that click was going slowly at first, only to pick up pace with my ever-faster beating heart. Finally, it became a fast-pace walk back and forth. It was almost like the person walking and pacing had a worried sound to them.

This walking noise came at a time where I wasn't asleep, but I wasn't awake, either. I was in bedtime-limbo. I was drifting off when that first thick-heeled click came about. Of course, I then lay wide awake from the fear and the constant back and forth movement of the feet, as well as the wood underneath them creaking with each hurried step.

For an hour, I hid in silence as I listened. Finally, I fell asleep. But never for years and years (even after my own mother's death), did I tell a single person, not even my father, what I had witnessed that fateful night.

From that point on, the strange happenings in my house got more frequently active. And I lived with it on my own. Then again, that is a tail for another time.