Signs Your House Is Haunted

Many years ago I used to live in a very haunted house, and one of the lessons that experience taught me was how to recognize the signs of a haunting. In hindsight most of the houses I have lived in were probably haunted, but in general the ghostly phenomenon was so subtle, and so rare, that had I not been very observant, or a believer in strange things, I may have just written them off as something mundane, and likely forgotten about it.

Most of us live busy and exhausting lives that take us away from where we live for the majority of our waking hours. The corona virus pandemic has changed all of that. Almost all of us are now either willingly or forcibly locked inside our homes, for who knows how long. These are anxious and turbulent times.  And now, as we are spending almost all of our time inside our houses, and apartments, and rooms I wonder how many people might be experiencing odd happenings that they may have not noticed before?

The following are some signs that your home may be haunted that I have learned through my personal experiences with ghosts, and through my many years of investigating hauntings. Its important to remember that since we are all living with a lot of anxiety and our routines have been upended a lot of what we may perceive as a haunting could have a natural explanation.

Strange Sounds: Are you hearing unusual sounds? Many hauntings do start out with strange sounds, knocks, loud bangs with no explanation, phantom footsteps, scratching sounds, disembodied voices, whispers, and even growls. Some sounds such as the house settling are normal, and you just might not be used to hearing them. If you can investigate the source of the sound you may be able to explain it.

Unusual Feelings and Sensations: Do you ever feel like you’re being watched when there is no one with you in the room? Have you ever had the sensation of being touched by unseen hands, or felt the temperature suddenly drop with no apparent explanation?  All of these have been reported by people who live in haunted homes, including myself.

Strange Dreams and Night Terrors: I think right now we are all experiencing these, but in normal circumstances people living with ghosts occasionally report having nightmares, and sleep paralysis.

My girls Pixie and Merry

Pets Acting Strangely:  Right now our pets are likely feeling the anxiety we have due to the pandemic. My own cats Pixie and Merry are very clingy lately and seem to know something is not quite right. But in general animals might react to spirits and ghosts in ways that are unusual such as barking at something only perceptible to them,  or not willing to enter certain rooms.

Objects Disappearing: When I lived in that very haunted house I would routinely have objects moved around, disappear, and sometimes reappear in places I knew I never put them. Ghosts are definitely tricksters. If this is happening a lot and your not in general absent minded you may have a ghost in the house.

Poltergeist Phenomena and PK or Psychokinesis:  This is more rare, but would include things like unexplained water puddles, fires, furniture moving, doors slamming, lights turning off and on etc. Electronic disturbances including strange interference with radio, tv, internet, and phone calls, and batteries draining are another sign that a place may be haunted.

Unexplained Shadows: Do you see shadows lurking out of the corner of your eye that are not there when you look around? Do you see shadows where one should not be? Shadow people are a newer phenomenon, but masses or balls of black shadow date back for centuries in the ghost literature. If you experience any of these unexplained shadows your house could be haunted.

Light anomaly or reflection? Taken at a place that was reputedly very haunted. 

Balls of Light and other Light Anomalies: I am not talking about "orb" photos which are mostly explained, but visually seeing balls of light with your own eyes. These are frequently associated with hauntings and are described in many different colours.

Apparitions: These include shadow people or human shaped shadows, but often they are described as fully solid looking 3D people or animals that witnesses would never have guessed were a ghost until they did something freaky like vanish or appear to walk through a wall.

An abandoned cabin in the woods near my home, that has a dark, and tragic past. 

Haunted History: Many haunted houses have a tragic or violent past or are perhaps built on land that has a history of turmoil. The home itself may have a long history of ghostly activity This is not true with all haunted houses. I have investigated ghosts in brand new buildings with no history nor the land they were built on. In those cases it seemed the people were haunted and not the place.

If you are worried that you may be living in a haunted house please keep in mind that hauntings are never like they are portrayed in the movies or horror fiction. When I investigated haunted houses one of the main things I took away from talking with people is that they were more afraid of what might happen than what had actually happened ie: their imagination was driving their fear more than the ghosts were.

Most hauntings end as swiftly and mysteriously as they begin with no lasting harm, but there are some tried a true methods to either live with ghosts or send them on their way.  In a few days I will write about some of the methods I've personally used and found success with.

Are you living in a haunted house? Can you add something to these signs of a haunting? If so, please leave a comment. 

Some of the suggestions I've been given in addition to the signs listed in the blog:

* A history of addictions or tenants with a addictive personalities
* Religious Iconography and or an overtly religious household
*Location --- near a cemetery, church, ravine, wood...
*History of Trauma --- either in the home or on the land
*Ratio of females to males living on the property
*Objects appearing and disappearing
*Strange smells that cannot be accounted for

These came from members of the Paranormal Experiences and the Pandemic Facebook group. Thanks so much to everyone who added to this post and please feel free to join the group.

UFOs and the Supernatural in Times Of Crisis

“The phenomenon of UFOs is real. I know that there are scientific organisations which study the problem.” - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev on 26th April 1990.

The quote above came at a time when the former Soviet Union was coming to an end, the Berlin wall had started to come down, Germany was reunifying, and millions of Russians and Europeans were living in a very liminal state. It was a time when UFOs appeared all over Russia and Europe particularly over NATO headquarters, and thousands more were experiencing strange paranormal events.

In troubling times UFOs appear, and the supernatural is more likely to be experienced, and reported.  This may be do to the amount of stress we are all under, or it may simply be a way to let us know that whatever is behind these strange magics, we are not alone.  I really don't know for certain why humans in crisis experience psychic phenomenon like poltergeists more often, but there is a lot of historical evidence that shows this to be the case.

In 2014 I worked on research with Dr Eric Ouellet that demonstrated how UFOs may in fact be parapsychological in nature, and part of that research included examining UFO events that occurred during times of liminal states.

The most obvious being the Belgium UFO wave and the Russian waves of the late 80's and early 90s, which is why I quoted Gorbachev. It was a very uncertain time for many Europeans and Russians, and there were numerous types of UFOs, and paranormal events being reported and investigated by both civilians, police and military. The cooperation between military and civillian UFO researchers at that time was unprecedented in the Western world.

In total more that 13, 000 people officially reported experiences with UFOs, UFO pilots, and other paranormal encounters, but the true number is probably much higher.

Once again we are living in an uncertain and turbulent time. This time the whole world is in crisis over the Covid 19 pandemic, and never before have so many people been plunged into a liminal state, all at once. As I write this a quarter of the world's population, over a billion people are quarantined. And, I have to wonder if this general state of anxiety, sickness, and uncertainty will produce mass paranormal phenomena including UFO waves?

I have reached out through social media asking if anyone hears of any increased UFO or paranormal activity to please let me know as I would like to document any large scale events that may occur.

Greg Bishop and I have created a group on Facebook that aims to explore contemporary accounts as well as historical cases of paranormal outbreaks at times of human crisis such as Covid-19. Please feel free to join us. Or leave a comment for me here.

Join us here: Paranormal Experiences and the Pandemic

This is a very scary time for many of us, and it may help to give us some insights into how human beings experience the paranormal during times of mass crisis.

Many good wishes to us all. Be well and safe my friends.

My Star Child

A lost memory that came back to me while doing some research for a book that I'm writing.

It was a sunny winter day when I first met him. I felt the warm rays of the sun streaming through the window, and like the dust particles in the air, he too became illuminated by the sun beams.

I must have been about four or five years old at that time. It was very cold outside with a lot of snow on the ground that I could see on the other side of the window pane. And I had to stay indoors to play. I was an only child at that point so maybe it was out of boredom or loneliness that I conjured him up.

He was a little boy and he hid behind the curtains of the big bay window in the front room of the very first house that I had grown up in. I called him blue boy, because although he was a normal looking kid of the 1970’s in every other way, his skin colour was very white with a tinge of blue, and his mischievous eyes were a bright blue colour.

I remember being so happy to have a friend to play with behind the big dark curtains at the house on Cottonwood Drive. We would meet there, behind the voluminous drapery and when out of sight of any of the grownups, we would fly!

Even as a child I understood that stepping behind the curtain was a means of magical transport. It was there where I first began my little experiments in bilocation that continue to this day. With my stuffed teddy bear clutched tightly in my hands, the blue boy and I travelled beyond the stars to strange forgotten spaces.

Sometimes after these long shamanic dream-like travels my Mom would find me asleep, tucked away behind the curtains of that big front window.

Decades later when I became acquainted with the 12th century account of the green children of Woolpit I wondered if there was any connection to that story and my own experience with the little pale blue boy.

The green children, a brother and sister were found by farmers working their fields at harvest time near some ditches that had been excavated to trap wolves at St Mary’s of the Wolf Pits also known as Woolpit in England.

Intriguingly European witches in later centuries who I feel a strong connection to were known to shape-shift into wolves when they conducted their night battles.

Were the green children little witches who got caught by the wolf traps?

Their skin was green, their clothes were made from unknown cloth, and initially their speech was unintelligible to the people who found them. Eventually when they learned to communicate in English they claimed to have come from a faraway land and that they were magically transported to Woolpit after wandering into a cave.

Were they travelers from behind the curtain like we were? Made up of imagination, and bits of dust, and starlight?  Maybe... but unlike the green children who emerged from a dark underground cavern, my imaginary travelling companion rode in on a sun beam.

I never knew the name of this star child, nor do I fully recall the strange places that we visited or the weird language that we spoke only between ourselves. I do remember how happy I was to have a magical friend.

He stopped appearing to me sometime after my sister Diana was born.

Please have a look at my newly updated online cupboard Out of My Mind's Eye

Susan
xo

Ghosts of Griffith Park Los Angeles

Detail from the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round

In November 2016 I took a trip to Southern California with my Sisters and niece. While there I was fortunate to visit a few places that are either reported to be haunted, and have a history or legend that is paranormal in nature. Of all the places my Sisters and I went we only encountered one definite cold spot that was very weird. I should note we were not ghost hunting, but just worked in the paranormal, magical, unique and interesting when possible.

On Sunday November 13th we visited Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and it was near the old, long abandoned LA Zoo that we had the odd happening. The old Zoo is located on a hiking trail off Fire Road, Los Angeles, 90027

Here is a brief history:

"The Griffith Park Zoo was originally opened in 1912, amusingly built on the former location of Griffith J. Griffith's old ostrich farm. It was opened with 15 animals, and due to lack of funding, it opened without any cages, simply stockades to keep the animals in, which was inadequate for several of the species kept on site.

Stories claim that the history of the zoo was rocky, and it was always struggling. For example, in 1916, the zoo was apparently leaking sewage into the L.A. River, and later during World War I, a meat shortage made it hard to properly care for the animals, forcing the zoo to substitute horse meat for beef, leading to the deaths of many of the meat eating animals, particularly the big cats. Luckily the zoo was free which kept visitors coming.

In the mid 1920s, with the failure of the Selig Zoo, William Nicholas Selig donated several of his animals to the Griffith Park Zoo. Selig had owned Selig Polyscope, which post closure of the film studio, led the movie producer to take all the animals he had gathered for his films and try his hand at opening up a zoo in East Los Angeles. A zoo he had plans to mix with a large amusement park. Selig had grandiose plans involving a large zoo, rides, restaurants, a hotel, and even a giant swimming pool complete with a beach and wave making machine. None of his plans ever saw fruition however, and although the Selig Zoo was occasionally rented out to film a few movies, such as the 1918 Tarzan, the zoo ultimately failed, leading Selig to donate the animals to the Griffith Park Zoo.

By May 1958, people had had enough of the Griffith Park Zoo and its condition, leading voters to vote for the establishment of a brand new zoo. An $8 million dollar bond was approved for construction, and by November 1966 the new Los Angeles Zoo opened a few miles north of the Griffith Park Zoo. All the animals were relocated there, thus ending the career of the Griffith Park Zoo."

History Source Weird California

We arrived at the head of the trail after several hours of exploring the Griffith Observatory and taking in a show at their Planetarium, which I highly recommend! There were quite a few people including families near the parking area who were picnicking, it was getting close to dusk, but still fairly early in the day and quite warm. As we hiked up to the abandoned zoo enclosures there were fewer and fewer people and no one on the trail giving us a chance to thoroughly check it out.

There is an eerie atmosphere there that can definitely be related to the history of how people used to believe it was OK to treat animals, and in some cases still do. A definite sadness in the air, and the scenery lends itself to a horror movie vibe.

After climbing into some of the enclosures and snapping a few photos we started back up the path away from the parking towards the trails. I was looking for some rocks to bring home from the location when my Sister called out to me to come over to where she was standing. Right in that spot there was a definite "cold spot" with absolutely no identifiable source. The temperature if I had to guess was at least 15 degrees colder and felt like standing beside air conditioner's vent. 

Here is a photo of the location of the cold spot.

This is another angle from near where the cold spot was encountered. 

Cold spots are considered to be part of a PSI or paranormal experience. Maurice Townsend of ASSAP describes them thusly:

"People often report 'cold spots' in haunted locations. These are small areas (usually a lot smaller than a room) that feel significantly colder than the surrounding area. They are considered by some to be a sign of a ghost in the area. Some cold spots are always felt in the same place while others seem to appear and disappear at different locations." 

Full article on cold spots here

I have encountered cold spots before while visiting reportedly haunted sites, but usually not so drastic a change, and never one outdoors before. An unusual and unexpected highlight of our visit to Griffith Park. 

For more on the Griffith Park hauntings please have a look Weird California's Curse of Griffith Park page which includes the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round which we visited after the the hike up to the Zoo. 

This Merry Go Round was the inspiration in part for Walt Disney to build his theme park. There is information and a history on the site. It is definitely beautiful with its own creepy long ago fairground vibe and vintage calliope music.

Creepy clown and devils lead the way!

Naturally we just had to take a ride! 

Merry Go Round Selfie!  

According to Weird California "a ghost lurks near the Merry Go Round, having been seen descending steps nearby and disappearing as he reaches the last step." I can believe it! And while we did not encounter that ghost I would love to hear from anyone who has had a first hand encounter or an interesting story from Griffith Park. Will definitely go back when in L.A.

Snack tip: Popcorn is free at the Merry Go Round at the end of day 😀

Visitations

Sauble Beach, Ontario, Canada - My photo

It has been 11 years since my Mother passed away after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. She is forever in my heart, and my mind, and I still miss her very much.

I have been going through some of my older posts from other blogs and websites that I have contributed to, and came across this one earlier today. It reminds me of how fleeting and precious our lives are, and I wanted to reshare it in honour of my Mom.

My Mother held no specific religious beliefs beyond that she would tell us that she believed in the stars, and the Sun, and our Earth. She was very much a Pagan in spirit if not in a self identifying label. She was a very spiritual woman in part due to a near death experience she had after falling into a river when she was 9 years old. And she was very interested in my research into exceptional human experiences.

A couple of weeks after her diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer with a very grim prognosis we had a long talk about death. She assured me that she had no fear of death itself, but was scared of the process of dying. Her illness came as a shock to all of us, including herself. A few weeks before she collapsed at home, and had to be rushed to the hospital we had taken a long walk on shores of Lake Ontario for her birthday. She loved the beach and she lived close to the lake. We had ice cream cones, and joked about stuff, and nothing seemed unusual or wrong on that warm Summer day. It was three weeks before we knew she was seriously ill.

When my Mom got her diagnosis she was in shock, and grief, and she told me she had no idea how she would be able to fall asleep for all of the anxiety.

Weeks later she told me that when she did go to her bedroom that first night, and climbed into bed with her book, something odd happened. She felt as if someone unseen to the eye had sat down on the bed right beside her. She could feel their weight, and mass as if someone was right there! She said it was like a larger person was sitting there, but she could not see them despite the lights being on.

A ghost?

She was not frightened, in fact she said she felt a great calm come over her, and she felt protected. She knew everything would be ok no matter what happened. And soon afterwards she was able to fall asleep.

Surely, she said to me, "this must have been my guardian angel come to comfort me." Everybody has a guardian angel isn't that right, Susan?" She told me about this strange experience a couple of weeks after it had happened, and as she, and we as a family began processing the knowledge that her life was coming to a close.

The day after the horrific diagnosis my Mom asked me to break the news to my younger sister. She couldn't bear to do it herself knowing it would break my sister's heart. I waited until my sister got off of work, and I told her our Mother was dying, and had very little time left. This was one of the hardest moment's of my life.

Before the end of the evening and as the news began sinking in for both of us, my sister said she had to tell me something, and it couldn't wait. She said she did not want to forget to tell me, knowing that I'm "into weird stuff" and that I'd find it interesting, and needed something else to occupy my thoughts even if only briefly.

Three days prior to the diagnosis of our Mom with terminal cancer my sister, and her partner were in the small town of Sauble, Ontario, Canada, that coincidentally was the same place our parents had first met during the 1950s. My Sis and her partner had stayed in the Sauble Beach area later than they had planned, and so they decided to rent a motel room for the night, and drive back to Toronto in the morning.

After watching a movie, my sister and her partner fell asleep. At some point during the night she was woken up by what she initially thought was her partner sitting down on the bed beside her. She felt it was a bigger person, and she turned around only to realize her partner was snoring, fast asleep on the other side of the bed!

She said she was a little startled by this because she could feel the indentation where this "bigger body" felt as if sitting right beside her, however she told me she was not scared.

The light was very dim, and she could not see this "person" only felt the sensation of someone being right beside you.

She then said it felt like a hand began stroking her head, and she felt comforted, as if the intention of this "unseen hand" was to soothe her, and she turned over and went to sleep.

She said she had no idea what the experience had been all about. In fact she said she probably just dreamed it all, but since she knew I collected "weird stories" she wanted to tell me, and give me the name of the motel so I could post an anonymous report about it to my ParaResearchers of Ontario website. Just in case someone else experienced something similar there or if there was a history of the place being haunted.

Bear in mind that at this point I did not know about my Mom's strange experience, and I had not been able to connect the two encounters yet.

So a couple of weeks later when my Mom began telling me of her "guardian angel" I was bursting, and almost leaping off my chair. And I believe the first thing I said to her was did you talk to Diana?!!!!

My mother and sister had not shared these experiences with each other yet. And both were amazed by this synchronicity. The descriptions of their separate encounters were nearly identical!

I did not have a similar encounter, and I'm not certain how I would have felt about it if I had. I did have several synchronicities leading up to my Mom's diagnosis, but I was only able to decipher them much later on.

There have been thousands of similar experiences reported over the centuries, and probably occurring since the beginning of human history. We are certainly not alone. I hope that somehow in the telling of our family's encounter this will help someone in some way.

Ghosts Are A Trickster

Video clip taken at Fort George. Both the security staff and I felt something brush past us in the dark room. This particular building is proclaimed the “most haunted” site in Kyle Upton's book on the ghosts of Fort George.

Ghosts are a Trickster

In the early 2ks I worked as a segment producer on a television show called Creepy Canada. The attached video clip was filmed by me (very poorly, sorry) after a day of shooting in Fort George, Niagara-on-the-lake, Canada. This particular building I was in is proclaimed the “most haunted” site in Kyle Upton's book on the ghosts of Fort George.

That evening after the production crew was wrapping up I was called into a room where another producer from Los Angeles had heard what he believed to be the sound of a child's spirit playing with some wooden toy blocks. I recall that he was super unnerved and when I heard the weird noises I grabbed one of the security guards who worked at the Fort to accompany me in trying to find the source of the sound.

We walked through the large barracks style building with only a flashlight and my camera to light our way until we got to the other end, down some stairs and to where the sound was coming loudest. At the source it had the very distinctive sound of an animal (maybe a squirrel or mouse that was in between the wooden panels and outer stone wall. Our walk to looking for the sound's source was a bit tense and so naturally we started laughing, and thinking of how we were going to tell the producer from LA that the "child ghost" which freaked him out so much was an animal scratching on the wall. I remember hoping the poor thing was not trapped and would find his or her way out.

The video clip begins where we started walking back. Still feeling satisfied at debunking the sound I all of a sudden felt a chill. The air literally shifted and changed. As we walked into the upper space I felt someone from behind push past me very quickly and brush my shoulder. I could see a figure a very dark a little taller than myself out of my peripheral vision. I should add here that the security guard and I were completely alone at this point.

On the video you hear me gasp, then the security guard and I ask him if he is ok? He answers yes, and I tell him we are not alone there. He also felt the figure move past us only he saw directly in front what he described as solid legs move through the door ahead.

A television production which is a fictionalized reality, a debunking, and a true encounter all in the same day in a very haunted place.

As I say, Ghosts Are A Trickster

Reflections on 2019

My Christmas Tree (my photo taken a couple of years ago on an icy winter day)

Its all about timing. 2019 was a year that was filled with adventure for me. I married my love on the Autumn Equinox at at the moment when light and dark were in perfect balance. I moved to another continent in the middle of an ice storm and I emerged from the aircraft into the warmth of sunshine. Together we set up our home in a mountainous medieval village, which I had wished for many years before, but I hadn't known at the time I was casting a powerful spell. On the Summer solstice we brought home our two rescue cats Pixie and Merry, one a black tiger and the other a calico who quickly chose to be a familiar to each of us. Its always the decision of the cat. At winter Solstice I began writing a book on witchcraft that will be published in both English and Italian later this year.

The beginning of this decade was a rocky one having lost my Mother the previous year. I had many health issues that at one point were life threatening, and lost some very good people. But this was a good year for us and a grand way to end this decade on a personal note.

But here I am standing on the cusp of the new decade, with good health, blessed with a beautiful and loving family in an amazing country that has quickly become home.  And so I pledge to myself to release all things from the past that might have caused any negative attachments to prepare for and welcome new changes, new lessons, and new adventures. To welcome new opportunities to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

The 2010s have not only been very difficult at times for me, but have been a very turbulent decade on a mass scale around our world. For many people I know and love 2019 was a shit year better almost to forget.

It is my sincere wish that this new decade will bring hope, peace, and much love and health for us all.

Happy Roaring 20's with much love Susan xo