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Korner's Folly photo by Kala Ambrose

Unlike the Winchester Mystery Mansion in San Jose, California, the Korner’s Folly home in Kernersville, North Carolina was deliberately designed with style in mind. At the Winchester House, Sarah Winchester, upon the advice of a psychic, had carpenters build new rooms in her house twenty-four hours a day until her death. This ongoing construction was supposed to confuse and trick the angry spirits who had been killed by Winchester rifles from locating Sarah Winchester in her home and haunting her.

Inside the Winchester home, doors open to several- story drops below and staircases lead to the ceiling, going nowhere. The entire house winds around like a maze and by the time you’ve walked through it, you’ve walked over a mile. The effect is eerie, confusing and at times maddening.  While Korner’s Folly also has a variety of unique rooms and twists and turns, the effect feels very different; it’s charming and each rooms pulls you into an experience for the senses.

Jule created Korner’s Folly for an entirely different reason and ghosts were the furthest things from his mind.  A talented artist, Korner wanted the house to be a showplace for his work, both artistically in size and scale and to give prospective clients an idea of the various types of interior design that he could create in their homes and buildings.    The house has twenty-two rooms and there’s no easy way to describe them. Each room is unique; some fit for royalty, palatial in scale. There are trap doors, over fifteen different styles of fireplaces, cubbyholes to tuck away in, murals, and a library.

Science has explained to us that all matter is energy and with hauntings, we often see land and homes that hold the emotional energy of the occupants who lived in a home for a long period of time. We can “feel” a sad house, or a happy home and sense the energy in a building or on the land.  When something very unsettling and negative occurs, such as a battle, the emotional energy of this event stays on the land for a long time. Likewise, when a family has lived in a home for a long time where children played and great joy and love was radiated for years, it can be felt as well.

When energy, negative or positive is expressed in one area for a long period of time, it leaves an energy imprint and objects in the home like furniture can hold the emotional energy in the home. With over seventy-five percent of the furniture in Korner’s Folly being original to the home, the energy of the Korner family is felt throughout the rooms and around the property. Read the rest of this entry »

Beekman Arms Rhinebeck New York

The Beekman Arms Inn located in Rhinebeck, New York, was established in 1766 and is recognized as the oldest operating Inn in the country. A gentile piece of history, the Inn allowed the 4th Regiment of the Continental Army to practice on its front lawn in preparation for the American Revolution. Over the years, the Inn has seen its share of action and honored guests, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold, William Jennings Bryan, and Franklin Roosevelt have all slept here and all of the above have enjoyed a drink at the Inn’s Tavern, including most recently Bill Clinton.

Located in the center of the Village of Rhinebeck, the Inn is charming and inviting and as an added treat, has been updated to accommodate modern amenities. The result is pleasing and comfortable and welcoming to any traveler and the Inn continues to provide hospitality with the grace and allure of the old traditions.

On a recent journey to Rhinebeck, I stayed at the Beekman in the Townsend House. The room was spacious, comfortable and to my surprise, included a fireplace, a writing desk, two wing back chairs and a decanter of sherry waiting to warm me from the evening air. The room also had an enormous walk in closet, so large that it included a sink, a mini fridge and enough room to store 10 to 12 suitcases or trunks.

Settling in to sleep that evening, I woke at 3:30 am to the sounds of hearing heavy boots stomping across the floor in the room. Alarmed, I sat up and turned on the light next to the bed, as I assumed that the sound was coming from my husband, who must be up and moving something around in the closet. As I turned the light on and sat up in bed, the noise stopped. Calling out to my husband, I heard a snorting next to me and turned to see that he was deeply asleep next to me in bed. Fully awake at this time, I sat up for a few minutes, thinking that I must have been dreaming and that the sound I had heard had come from a dream.

This further perplexed me, as I am a person who has been able to remember at least three dreams every night of my life since I was a young girl and I teach about dreams and dream interpretations. I wake each morning and review my dreams and categorize them into dreams that are teaching me something, dreams from the other side communicating with me, and dreams from my subconscious that help me to work out what is going on in my life. There are also dreams that mean nothing, that occur when one is not feeling well or ate something too heavy before going to bed.

As I sat in bed thinking about how I woke up, what troubled me was that I remembered the dream that I had been having, and it had nothing to do with a man stomping around and walking. That noise, had actually entered into my consciousness and interrupted my dream and woke me up, with the feeling that someone was in the room. Taking a sip of water, I looked at the clock which now read 3:45am and I resigned myself to going back to bed, as tomorrow was an early day. As I turned off the lights and prepared myself for bed, the stomping of the boots began again! This time, I knew it wasn’t a dream. Read the rest of this entry »

USS North Carolina

Commissioned in 1941, the USS North Carolina was considered to be one of the world’s most formidable ships.  During WWII, the North Carolina participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific, earning fifteen battle stars, and was known as the protector of aircraft carriers, including saving the USS Enterprise in 1942.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor using 353 Japanese fighters and torpedo planes.  Four battleships were sunk and four others damaged. Two destroyers and three cruisers were sunk and almost three hundred and fifty aircrafts were destroyed or severely damaged.  Over 2,400 men were killed and more than 1,200 injured. The overwhelming devastation was a huge shock to the nation.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, almost all of the Pacific fleet was destroyed. The first wave Japanese attack inflicted most of the damage and the second wave returned to demolish anything left standing. Japan and the U.S. were in peace talks at the time, so the attack came as a surprise, as no declaration of war had been delivered before the attack. With this act, the U.S. then declared war and entered World War II.

The surviving sailors in Hawaii were in a state of despair; they had lost many of their friends along with their ships and they were isolated on an island far away from the mainland. The attack had been swift. Reinforcements and supplies were going to take months to arrive in Hawaii. Feeling alone and grieving, the men waited for seven long months for reinforcements to arrive. 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 »

Located on the West Coast, this isolated lighthouse has a beautiful story to share.

July 2011

by Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Mary Pesonen was only six months away from a brand new life, but even that short amount of time seemed too long for the pain and hopeless that had engulfed her.  Early one morning, she decided to bring an end to everything by hurling herself off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean.  Did she have second thoughts and regrets as she made her fatal plunge?  Perhaps, for her ghost is believed to haunt the grounds where she lived and died, at the North Head Lighthouse near the fishing port of Ilwaco, Washington.

The life and tragic death of Mary Watson Pesonen in 1923 caught my attention during a summer trip to the southwest Washington Coast with my sister, Linda, and brother-in-law, Ted.  Ilwaco lies near the base of a long spit of land on the north side of the immense mouth of the Columbia River, which forms the border between Washington and Oregon.  The coastal waters are treacherous and the bar has dangerous currents and sand bars.  The area is known as “the graveyard of the 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 »

My Proof of Survival about friendship beyond the grave.

February 2000

by Don M. Johnson

Dr. Lora G. Anderson was my best friend and metaphysical cohort. For nearly twenty years, I stepped outside of my profession of architecture and managed our mutual business in Lewiston, Idaho. In the early 1980s we moved to Southern California and affiliated with a metaphysical church in Woodland Hills—The Sanctuary of Revelations, Inc. Dr. Barry Lane, founder and current minister of the Sanctuary, is an enlightened teacher, as well as a psychic and trance medium. Read the rest of this entry »

A collection of reports regarding ghosts, phantoms and Bigfoot wearing distinctly patterned clothing.

April 2011

by Robert A. Goerman

For me, the very essence of the strange and unknown boils down to encounters between man and mystery, without the baggage of belief. Some of us have seen the windmill blink. We will never be the same. As if ghosts, bedroom phantoms, enigmatic visitors, and Bigfoot were not weird enough on their own, what are we to make of encounters where these same anomalies dress in plaid or checkered fabrics? We define plaid or checkered here as any fabric with stripes or bars of various colors and widths that cross at right angles. A true plaid has the same pattern when you rotate it ninety degrees. Try plugging the word “ghost” along with “plaid shirt” or 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 »

My Proof of Survival

January 2000

by Linda McDonald Williams

My husband Joe and I have had several paranormal experiences during our lives, individually before we met, and since our marriage 31 years ago. We are down-to-earth, commonsense people not given to flights of fancy. Our experiences are accepted as important facets of our lives and sometimes, the lesson to be learned from an encounter is not always clear at the moment it happens. This is an account of one experience I had:

It was a chilly Monday night in the fall and my husband was watching a football game on a TV set in our bedroom, while I sat in the living room watching a movie on another set. It was about 9:30 p.m. I had been watching a movie and dozed off, which I was prone to do occasionally when left alone to watch TV while my husband was in another room of our home. I had nodded off and upon waking, it was a little after ten o’clock. Having missed about 30 minutes of the movie I had planned to see, I decided to go to bed to read, a favorite ritual of mine. 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 »

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 »

Brandy Green is well known from Syfy’s Ghost Hunters International as the case manager working among cast members Robb Demarest & Joe Chin. From a young age, Brandy had personal experiences in the paranormal, fueling the interest. She began her search hoping to find some answers. She is a local Minnesotan. We were lucky enough to catch up with her between speaking appearances.

• How did you become interested in the paranormal?

As a child, I spent much of my time in South Minneapolis at my maternal grandmother’s home. At that time the house was already well over 100 years old with an interesting history, which doesn’t automatically mean a place is haunted; however, there was certainly some strange activity occurring within the walls of that home. Almost everyone that either lived in or stayed at the house experienced something paranormal. Radios, televisions, lights, and battery operated toys missing batteries would turn on and off with no aid from the living. Full bodied apparitions were seen by two family members, people would hear and feel breathing, movement, shadows, extreme anxiety in certain areas of the home, etc. That house had a little bit of everything and I had my share of odd experiences as a child and in my young adult life. Activity was also encountered at my other grandmother’s home as well. So, needless to say, it was this activity that drew me to paranormal research. With my combined knowledge in psychology, anthropology, and history, I have been researching claims of paranormal activity for years. It only seemed natural that I would end up involved in research such as this.

• You’ve been everywhere in your travels with Ghost Hunters, Int’l.  What was your favorite location?

My favorite location would have to be my bed in my house. *haha* I really enjoyed Costa Rica because of the diverse climate. Costa Rica is the size of West Virginia and is the seat of twelve different ecosystems containing extremely diverse wildlife on land, in the sky, and in the water. I enjoyed Poland not because of the country itself but because of the case that we had which was the Wolf’s Lair where the infamous Operation Valkyrie happened. Robb and I had a great time investigating together at the compound, and we walked away with perhaps more questions than answers. 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 »