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“This is one of my first meetings here, among Brothers. I want to make sure I don’t do anything wrong, especially with our rituals—they are long-established, and I’d hate to get those rituals wrong.  It’s been a half hour now and I’m doing fine, thank goodness. ….What’s this? I’m seeing an image. A Brother Mason. He’s entered our large meeting room and he’s walking the room’s length to the lead officer. I’m the only one that can see him. All these guys in the room here can’t. None of them know I’m a psychic medium, none know of my abilities. This secret I keep from them, for fear of being branded as a kook. He’s an older man, grayish hair, dressed in a basic dark suit. He stops at the bottom of the steps leading to the Lodge’s Master. Stares up at the Master and gives the Masonic greeting salute. He looks puzzled, confused. He asks, ’Why don’t you return my salute?’ He hesitates. After a few seconds, the man turns right and walks across the room back out the door through which he came in. I’m terrified, what the heck was that all about?!”—Karl Petry

The Masonic Lodge on Second Avenue has stood proudly for over sixty years in Lyndhurst, NJ.  You can

Freemason Square and Compass

easily mistake it for a church with its white color and lit stained glass window facing the street.  The Freemasons call the building by its official name, “Adoniram Lodge”.

Many Masons have come and gone through the lodge’s doors and walked its halls.  Over the years members grow absent, through sickness, moving away, or those random surprises life throws in all our paths.  In the case of Adoniram Lodge, one man continues to be a constant presence…and his membership continues after death.

After Brother Karl Petry’s first encounter with this specter, the scene happened again at the very next meeting. The same routine played out. Karl was shaken now. He felt he had no choice but to approach the Master of the lodge and tell him what he had—now twice—witnessed. “Based upon many past experiences with these situations, I was unsure how he would react to my narrative–typically, this is a moment I always dread: people grow suspicious, wary, even distrustful toward me, and I certainly didn’t want that to be the case in this situation,” Karl related to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Window in the middle of the floor at the Winchester Mystery House. photo by Kala Ambrose

“The tender word forgotten, The letter you did not write, The flower you might have sent, dear, Are your haunting ghosts tonight” – Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

You’ve heard of haunted houses, but what about a house designed by the haunted to keep the ghosts at bay?

In San Jose, California, a house just of this nature exists. It all began back in 1862, when Sarah Pardee married William Wirt Winchester, the manufacturer of the infamous Winchester repeating rifle. Sarah gave birth to a daughter Annie, who soon died from marasmus at only 42 days old. This fact is intriguing, as marasmus is caused by a lack of nutrients, displayed as energy deficiency (wasting away). Could the haunting of Sarah by spirits, already been around her at this time, depleting her energy and resources while pregnant? Her husband William later died from tuberculosis. Alone and grief stricken after losing her only child and husband, Sarah journeyed to Boston to speak with a spiritualist medium, seeking advice on why her life had been filled with such great misfortune.

The spiritualist medium reportedly told Sarah that she was haunted by the spirits of hundreds of ghosts, the spirits of those who had been killed by a Winchester repeating rifle. These spirits included soldiers from the Civil War, Native Americans and cowboys in the Wild West.

The medium went on to explain that in order to escape the continued hauntings, Sarah would need to move out west and to build a house. The house would not be an normal type of house, rather the construction must never cease. According to the medium, as long as construction was ongoing in the home, it would keep the angry spirits disoriented, while providing a place for the good spirits to commune with Sarah and protect her from further danger. In addition, the architectural design was meant to be complicated and confusing in order to vex and confuse the angry spirits, which would distract them from finding and further haunting Sarah. Sarah took this advice to heart and moved from Connecticut to San Jose, California and bought over 160 acres of land, where she began and continued construction on a home, which is now referred to as the Winchester Mystery House.

After her husband’s death, Sarah received twenty million dollars along with shares of stock in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It is reported that the dividends that she received averaged about one thousand dollars a day, along with her millions in the bank. This was in the late 1800′s, into 1900′s, when there was no income tax and the average rate of pay was less than a dollar a day. Read the rest of this entry »

Why we never talk about the miracles that come during suffering

Dec. 2011

by Julia Finley

Think what you must — they are “delusions” brought on by stress; “strands” let out by a strained mind — but truth be told, our dismissals are how we avoid touching the areas of life we do not understand, not coming anywhere near it.

The observer is stumped too, but without the luxury of these easy dismissals.  After catching a glimpse of the unknown — the part of reality that exists beyond the veil, peaking out for a moment to smile warmly, then everything returns as it was — the observer is left to wonder what to do with a miracle.

“Witnessing” is largely out of the question.  If they do “witness”, it has to be what people want to hear; if the observer insists on naked honesty, it is signed ‘anonymous’.  I remember two “witnesses” that were nakedly honest, but only because I was in a position where I had earned their trust.

The first was an old nurse turned teacher, somewhere during my interest in a medical profession.  The topic “Dealing with Loss & Suffering” had come up in our class, but the lecture soon turned to intimate feeling and experiences.  Twenty minutes in, the teacher confessed an amazing personal experience with loss and suffering:

“Some years ago, my dad was really sick in the hospital.  It was incredibly hard on me because dad and I were close.  Then one night, when I came home from the hospital, I sat in my bed and something happened.  I looked up and saw clouds opening, right in the ceiling, and light shined down upon me.  I heard a voice which told me not to cry and worry; everything is all right.  Then it told me that my father was going to die, and that my mom would pick up the body on Tuesday.  My father passed away that very weekend, and my mother did arrive to take the body on Tuesday.”

The story she recounted made a large impression on my views and assumptions.  How can we be so ignorant?  Doesn’t anyone know more about this?  How do I learn, without being regarded as crazy?  I began to recognize how many mechanisms exist in society, to sensor spiritual experiences.

In another, my own dear family member was going through her medical crisis; during a stroke, she witnessed:

“Shortly after my hospital bed was wheeled into an elevator, I had a stroke just before reaching the 6th floor.  I couldn’t move.  Four ladies around my gurney told me to stop struggling; what I needed to do was calm down.  I wanted to speak to my daughter, so I kept struggling.  One of the women told me she was watching over me, do not worry.  She was shaped like a pear — I don’t remember extremities, just her pear shape.  When I spoke about the four ladies later with my daughter, she informed me there were only two persons on the elevator.”

Now I understand something.  Our closed minds close off supernatural encounters, and foil the mission of their occurrence: impact.  Again, these stories left profound impact on me.  They arrive at trying times, not as products of stress, but as reassurance that life is still beautiful, even when it rains.  The best thing a listener can do with these amazing recollections, is to contemplate the timing and purpose of the higher power.  It could be that they arrive at that time on purpose, when we most need intervention, when it could change our views of life and reality  forever.

Images: “Abundance” & “Breathe” [masthead]  by Aaron Paquette

One woman’s story of supernatural encounter and its aftermath

October 2011

by Julia Finley

My Google Homepage has evolved over time.  Now its got a little digi-pet, some news wires, noticeably no games, and a major menagerie of spiritual quotes from various religions.  And of course, my email preview on the upper-left.

Thank heavens for that — I could never take the burn of directly viewing my inbox.  I need a buffer.  Did they have people like me in mind when they designed such things?

Anyway, today’s preview:

You are receiving this email because you have incurred a warning from Religious Messageboards.  Repeat violations will result in permanent banning.

I peek at the previous window to confirm something I thought I saw. …Yes, I received two emails with this same subject header, from two different moderators.  It seems I’m already a repeat offender, but of what crime, I must read on to find out.

Read the rest of this entry »

An unusual incident create cause for an explanation.

January 2004

by Michael E. Tymn

The prescription bill bottle was found partially inside of the wall directly behind the head board. No plausible explanation has been provided.

“It was like an explosion. I sat up in my bed from a sound sleep, turned the light on, and couldn’t see anything, so I turned the light off and went back to sleep.”

It wasn’t until two days later that Mary Voegele, an 85-year-old resident of Cottage Grove, Oregon, discovered the apparent cause of the “explosion.” Embedded in the wall right behind the headboard of her bed was a bottle of Mentholatum ointment. The bottle was firmly wedged in the wall at a 45-degree angle.

“I had taken the bottle from the medicine cabinet to use it that night Read the rest of this entry »

Malevolent spirits at the Silk Lane residence scare tenants into a hasty departure.

January 2004

by Thomas d’Agostino

The ghost of a woman can be see in the right hand ground floor window. She was not present proir to the photo being taken.

Most hauntings, and paranormal occurrences generally, happen to people who are just going about the normal routines of their lives. That is exactly how the following experience happened to me.

It all started when a friend of mine purchased a large farmhouse in Scituate, Rhode Island, right down the road from the Scituate Art Festival, which draws huge crowds every Columbus Day weekend. At the time I was single, living with my parents, attending college, and open to fun and adventure. When my friend approached me with the opportunity to live in this three-story farmhouse for a while and look after things while he tidied up his affairs, I jumped at the deal.

The farmhouse was very old and had an outcropped detachable kitchen. This was the way the colonial settlers built the house. If there should be a fire, Read the rest of this entry »

A man recounts his experience with a stray cat’s deceased owner.

January 2004

by Thomas M. Ginther

Cally is a short, fat female cat that started showing up at my house in January 2002. She showed up at the same time every day, so we assumed that her owners let her out when they got home, and being that she was quite fat, she was just looking for an extra free meal. We have fed a number of stray cats over the years and have always kept an extra bag of food on hand.

About the end of February, Cally started staying Read the rest of this entry »

Even baboons believe in ghosts.

October 1999

by John Keel

African farmers are often plagued by tribes of baboons who mess with their crops and raise general havoc because of their often mean disposition. You would not want a group of them in your own backyard. But how do you get rid of a mob of baboons humanely?

The African colonists once adopted an ancient system of anti-baboonery. They would trap one of the creatures, paint it from head to toe with harmless whitewash, and send it scrambling back to its tribal area. Its mates would then take one look at this eerie white intruder, start howling, and run away as fast as possible. They would keep running, leaving him far Read the rest of this entry »

The spirit of a loving brother clings to Grandma’s closet.

February 2004

by Lillian Burton

It was a raw, chilly day in March when Mother and Dad moved into the new home they had just bought in the northwest side of Chicago. It was an “income” home with three flats. Dad wanted the first floor apartment. The basement and upper floor were rented out.

Immediately my two daughters, Janine (age three) and Bonnie (age six), asked to stay overnight with Gram and Grandpa. They agreed to have the girls come in about a month, which would give Grandma time to get all settled. The girls looked forward to sleeping in the new Read the rest of this entry »

My Proof of Survival

January 2002

by Mary R. Crawford

In 1990, Wilburn Heath purchased a couple of acres on the outskirts of Scottsboro. The area was quiet and seemed to be an ideal retirement site. He and Nina, his wife of 30 years, were making plans for their “laid back” years, which would be coming in the near future. Wilburn immediately began building the small, compact house that they both had agreed upon. It was at the stage that it could be lived in, but was lacking the finishing touches and trim work. He had completed a very large building which he intended to use for storage and for a workshop. After retirement, he planned to do some small jobs just to keep from getting bored. Wilburn was a mechanic by trade and had a habit of trading for junk car parts. He had hauled in loads of these items to the point that the lots were overflowing.

Right in the midst of their preparation for retirement, Nina was diagnosed with breast cancer. Although she fought a hard battle, she was taken from him within a period of six months. Wilburn was devastated and attempted to Read the rest of this entry »

The ghost of Maria Roux.

November/December 2008

by Jason Day

Tales of phantom hitchhikers and road ghosts span the centuries; since the invention of transport, there have been numerous reports of spectral figures with unfinished business to attend to, or a journey they must complete that was cut tragically short.

As a consequence of the volume of reports amassed over such a long period of time, some of the more remarkable of these encounters are forgotten. The following account is one such haunting.

Tragic Accident

On Good Friday, March 1968, a young couple were driving along the Barandas-Willomere Road in the Karoo Desert, 200 miles east of Cape Town, South Africa. Maria Roux and her fiancé were driving to her parents’ house to discuss plans for their upcoming wedding. As they traveled along the N9 towards Uniondale, high winds began, quickly becoming so fierce they blew the car across the road. Maria’s fiancé lost control of the car and careened into a ditch. Although her fiancé Read the rest of this entry »

This rare story is about the ghost of the famous president. Actually, there seems to be evidence that Mr. Lincoln himself was quite mystic. It is said he dreamed his Emancipation Proclamation.

Summer 1948

by E. Sagerquist

Summer 1948- Vol. 1, No. 2

CARL SCHURZ, the great German-American statesman, was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln.
He had taken part in the Illinois campaign between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and in 1861 he
was sent by Lincoln to be minister to Spain. He soon resigned this post and returned to the
United States to join the Union Army with the rank of major-general of volunteers.

After Lincoln’s death, President Johnson summoned him to Washington. On his way there he
stopped off in Philadelphia to visit his close friend, Doctor Tiedemann. Tiedemann’s father was
a renowned professor of medicine in the University of Heidelberg. Mrs. Tiedemann’s brother was
Frederick Hecker, a famous revolutionary leader Read the rest of this entry »

My Proof of Survival: The Bloody Hand Print and South Minneapolis

June 2002

by Warren Brewer

My mother died in 1965 of lung cancer. About a year later, my father died of a heart attack. A month or so after my father’s death, a neighbor came through the back door for a visit. She asked me who the man in the bedroom was. But there was no one in the bedroom.

Several times while leaving or arriving at the house, a large man’s figure was seen moving in front of the window. Searches of the house were relentless, but there was no man in the house.

Then one night, I was going up the front steps of the house with my fiancée when a loud slapping sound was heard. My fiancée screamed Read the rest of this entry »

Are these unexplained phenomena troublesome spirits or manifestations of the subconscious mind?

January 2008

by Louis Proud

A family is terrorized by an unseen force.

The British paranormal experts Colin Wilson and Guy Lyon Playfair have something in common: they both reject the popular and “respectable” theory that poltergeist disturbances are manifestations of the unconscious mind, viewing them instead as destructive and mischievous nonphysical entities, or spirits. Unscientific and sensational though the spirit hypothesis may sound, it seems to make far more sense than the unconscious mind theory, at least as far as Wilson and Playfair are concerned.

Considering that poltergeist disturbances have been recorded for more than a thousand years, coupled with the fact that eminent scientists have been studying them for about a century, it might strike the reader as surprising that the phenomenon Read the rest of this entry »

Ghosting group delves into the frighteningly active historical site and contemporary art gallery.

January 8, 2011: 7 pm – midnight

518 2^nd Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414
by Christine Goodrich

The History of the Soap Factory:

The Soap Factory is located in the historic Marcy-Holmes neighborhood in Minneapolis. It was first part of St. Anthony, incorporated in

In the lower left hand corner a faint shadow of a person appears. At the time of the picture being taken there was no one present in the basement.

1855, which is located to the east of the Mississippi River. St. Anthony was eventually absorbed by Minneapolis in 1872. This area was home to the first neighborhood community and commercial center in this part of the region, utilizing the river as its main power source. Many flour and lumber milling companies sprang up in this area, beginning what would later become Minneapolis’ historic warehouse district in 1971.

Built in 1892, the Soap Factory was first constructed as a one-story warehouse for H.R. Carpenter’s Union Railway Company, with another story added a few years later. The building changed hands a few times in the early 1900s, first becoming a syrup manufacturing company and then a battery company. In the 1924, General Chemical and National Soap Factory (later National Purity Soap Factory) bought the building and began manufacturing commercial soap and detergents from animal fats until they moved to Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, in 1992. Read the rest of this entry »

Wraiths of Restless Witches Still Haunt Modern day Salem Village

January 2006

by Lee Holloway

Examination of a Witch by Thompkins H. Matteson, 1853. Curtesy of Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.

The Salem witch hysteria began not in Salem, but in nearby Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts), a community of scattered farms facing the great wilderness. The winter of 1691–92 was harsh. Ponds, lakes, and wells were frozen thick; ever-deepening snow blanketed the landscape as far as the eye could see; and icy winds penetrated even the thickest woolen cloaks. Days were short, nights long and dark. It was in this setting of abject isolation that several girls started gathering in the cozy kitchen of the village parsonage, where they were entertained by Tituba, a West Indian slave belonging to the Rev. Samuel Parris. Tituba, reveling in her suddenly exalted position, regaled her listeners with tales of ghosts, witches, and island magic. Read the rest of this entry »

Ship’s crews disappear in the Atlantic with absolutely no trace, leaving only the empty vessels to float aimlessly.

March 2002

by Dale Gilbert Jarvis

Drawing of Ellen Austin in 1884.

When people think of nautical mysteries, one of the first things that springs to mind is the Bermuda Triangle, the mystical zone defined by Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the coast of Florida. Within the Triangle, hundreds of ships and aircraft are said to have vanished without explanation. But the warm waters of the Bermuda Triangle are not the only seas associated with Read the rest of this entry »

My Proof of Survival

June 2003

by Richard D. Sparkman

Some people see ghosts. I am one of those people. Of course, I do not see ghosts all the time. In my experience, real ghost sightings are infrequent and unpredictable.

The most recent sighting occurred in my present home. Several years ago, when my children were still living with me, I met my resident ghost.

As I entered the front door carrying a bag of groceries through the living room into the kitchen, Read the rest of this entry »

December 2001

by Evan Kress

I was a skeptic in all things paranormal until the death of my beloved, much admired wife Jeanne, when I realized that she was communicating something important to me through our garden angel.

Less than two months after her death from cancer on December l, 1997, an incident happened at our home in Asheville, North Carolina, that caused me to re-evaluate my beliefs. I have now accepted that communication can happen between people who love each other after one of them has left this physical world. My experiences with Flora, our garden angel, are responsible for my new belief in the “spirit world.” Read the rest of this entry »

Mysterious lights flitted through the deserted mining camp. A phantom dog howled and rocks flew.

April 1954

by Charles C. Stemmer

April 1954- Vol. 7, No. 4

On Lynx Creek, 15 miles southeast of Prescott, Yavapai County, Ariz., is a deserted gold mining camp called Howells. In 1885 it had a lawless population of 2,500 and there were many killings. These appear to have set the stage for a variety of weird phenomena which have been witnessed by other persons beside myself.

In its heyday Howells was strung out along Lynx Creek for about a mile. The canyon through which the creek flows, its tributaries and the hills all around were rich with gold. At the lower end of the settlement was a smelter 100 feet wide and 225 feet long.

The west side of the canyon had been excavated to make room for the structure and a yard about 100 feet wide that covered the space between the building and the edge of the canyon. The yard ended at the lower end of the smelter. Opposite the site of the furnaces, in the canyon below, several thousand tons of slag had been dumped. Read the rest of this entry »

Even the Irish Parliament was concerned when workmen laid down their tools rather than offend the little men.

July-August 1952

by Harold Wilkins

This music was included in the orginal 1952 article. If there are readers out there who can play this music, we would love to hear what it sounds like!

In the summer of 1950 I tramped the roads of southern Ireland. On the road to the Township of Cork I got into an interesting conversation with a man who told me he was a bus conductor. The talk turned to the subject of ban­shees and fairies called, by the old Irish, “good  people.” They are said to be supernatural beings attached to ancient families and to descendants of ancient Irish kings and chieftains. The banshees ap­pear and announce the imminent deaths of members of these old Irish families. The sign of their coming is often an appalling scream in the night, or just before dawn. Read the rest of this entry »

Dixie’s claim to having caught one of the Little People is more than a fairy tale. She has amazing proof!

January 1963

By Mona Darden

This is a true fairy tale. Each time one of my youngsters lost a tooth over the years I played fairy without ever a slip-up. Then in 1950 a real fairy took over.

Three-year-old Dixie had lost her tooth so early in the day that by night time I had forgotten it. However, she placed the tooth under her pillow.

Early the next morning I went to investigate a slight noise in her room. Sitting up in her bed, Dixie was grabbing wildly at the air, as if trying to catch a mosquito. I was staring at her in blank astonishment when she burst out, “Mother! I caught the fairy!” Read the rest of this entry »

The Burwick House was named for the village of Burwick which is now Woodbridge, Ontario.

Walking into the circa 1840 house, there seemed to be something alluring about it, something I couldn’t immediately put my finger on.  As we entered the front door, it felt as though we were intruding in someone’s private gathering. The place was decorated with old Victorian charm. Evergreens, berries, and dried fruits added the sense of Christmas from years gone by. The Burwick home must have been inviting to anyone who was fortunate to attend the parties that took place here long ago. Wandering around this magnificent home was like being taken back in time. The table was set, the furniture all in its place, the grandfather clock stood tall and proud as we passed it to walk up the staircase. Read the rest of this entry »

Deaf Bill
My name is Wayne Hensley and I do the haunted tours in Alton, Illinois, at the old Mineral Springs Hotel (now a mall), with my co-workers Janet Kolar and Crystal Beacon, and I also own the barbershop in the building,which I have operated for the last 28 years.

The Mineral Springs Hotel sits near the Mississippi River.Years ago there was an island near the Missouri side call McPike Island. During the Civil War it was home to Confederate prisoners of war who suffered from smallpox. The island disappeared while the Alton Dam was
being built in the 1930s. The water level rose and it was washed away. Read the rest of this entry »

On the evening of Thursday, June 10, 2010 I went to prison – not as an inmate, but as a researcher. The Huntsville Unit Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas is an ominous red brick structure jutting up from the East Texas hillside. The ‘Walls,’ as it has commonly been called for decades, is the oldest prison in Texas and it still currently processes and houses inmates. Stories of ghostly apparitions and strange noises abound, and it’s no wonder; history has been made here. Texas leads the country in the number of inmate executions every year, and this is where all of them are carried out.

There are two death houses here, though only one currently remains operational. From 1924 to 1964 Texas executed inmates via the electric chair. A total of 361 condemned individuals rode the “thunderbolt” into the afterlife, paying the ultimate price for the crimes they had committed. “Old Sparky” now resides at the Texas Prison Museum, also located in Huntsville. Today, inmates on Death Row are put to death by means of lethal injection.

I will admit that I was initially drawn to Huntsville and the prison museum to see the electric chair, wondering if it held residual energy from its past. As it turns out, the electric chair draws more people to the museum than any of the other displays; this, according to the museum’s director and retired warden of the Walls, Jim Willett.

Read the rest of this entry »

Haunted by an ever-increasing number of “ghost” videos, the Internet frenzy known as YouTube might consider changing its name to BooTube this Halloween.

So many of these spirited films are too silly for words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt_51KF4×88

Some ghost videos might be very clever hoaxes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZI16Z13dw

Other afterlife leftovers are not nearly so ingenious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3C4CbUT5_k

Can any of this user-generated content be evidence of anything?

Read the rest of this entry »