Say Cheese!

Ghost photography is always an interesting topic and one I approach with great skepticism.  

I think some folks go way overboard in reading into paranormal phenomena.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe in ghosts, spirits, energies…all that stuff.  I have seen it with my own third eye enough times to drop a load of ectoplasm in my underwear.  One must be very cautious before jumping to any conclusions.  I am more apt to believe someone saying they “sensed” something and give a precise, documentable story than any ghost picture.  That may seem odd considering that a picture is worth a thousand words.

There are things such as accidental double exposures (or purposeful), sudden luminance/light changes in an environment and let’s face it…Photoshop.  A camera (photographic or video) can suddenly and seemingly inexplicably go out of focus if there is even a small amount of change in lighting.  Auto focus can be very precise, not to mention temperamental; if it is set on one specific area and the camera moves, it will refoucus if the lighting is different.  Don’t be quick to think The Ghost of Mr. Chicken threw out your focus until you study lighting changes in the surrounding area. 

And yes, there are images that have been captured that appear to be perfectly legitimate. 
I don't doubt for a moment that thousands of folks have gotten authentic pictures.  I believe that the "other side" does in fact make it's presence known frequently.  I have a few that we could never find a logical explanation.  Sometimes, you just don’t want to explain it away because it is just fun to believe.

Like this one.  This was taken right before my high school graduation.  It is very possible that some sort of double exposure occurred in the film processing lab….but…we always knew we had a ghost in that house.  (Look in between the two graduation caps)

  The ghostly image of chili that had boiled over on the stove. I ruled out the paranormal on this one:

One summer, my sister and I spent many a night in graveyards attempting to photograph…well…something.  Out of over 1,000 shots, we got only got two questionable photographs. Somehow, like an idiot, I ended up deleting one of them and this one you have to look really hard to see anything…which at that point, becomes a matter of interpretation….not fact.

This particular night, we had gone to the graveyard earlier and gotten freaked out, so we left.  We both felt a strange sense of dark, bone chilling unwelcome-ness; so much so that my sister said "They do NOT want us here."  I was already in the car ready to peel out by the time she figured it out.  We ended up going back a few hours later to the same spot...don't ask the logic on this one...with a cop friend.  I guess we thought if we were taunted by dark forces, he could arrest them for harrasment or snuff them out with his gun. 

It was pitch black and my sister and I both felt a certain area in which to aim the camera.  We decided at this point, it was our last shot we would EVER take.  As crazy as it sounds, we decided that it felt "exploitive" to go to a graveyard to take pictures.  How would you feel if someone planted themselves in your yard trying to get photographs of you?  We called this picture "The Last Pose", since it appears as if someone is sitting on a tombstone (looks like legs hanging down) and there is some sort of image next to it. 

These were taken with a tri-pod at a 40 second exposure with a professional grade camera, they were also lightened after downloading to inspect for any ghostly images. 

I took a test shot of this photograph of my father and I in 1967 for a project I was doing.  When I uploaded it, I was fascinated to find “Mom” had appeared, as if it was hand written.  It was not visible when looking at the photo with the naked eye on either side.  Further inspection with a magnifying glass showed me that the photo had probably been placed under paper while I was writing (as a child).  It was a very cool notion initially, since my mother passed away many years ago.

This is just increidbly frightening:

The Science of Ghost Busting

Most people have had had some sort of experience with a ghost or a family member who has recently been deceased or knows someone who knows someone who has. This can range anywhere from a feeling to a full on apparition.  Anyone who has experienced this will say it is indisputable that grandma or grandpa, Aunt Mildred or Uncle Howard showed up the night they passed away or they felt the presence of something or someone in their house.  For some, it may be a unique experience which will never happen again.  Just for the sake of saying it, I have an old boss who was a lunatic nutcase.  If there is a just and loving God, I will be allowed to taunt her from beyond just enough to nudge her over the brink, which trust me, isn’t that far.

One night while watching one of those ghost hunting shows, the “team” was at a lake investigating a haunting.  I approach these shows like a drunk watching Monday Night Football—I yell at the television assuming they can hear me.  They whipped out the trusty EMF Meter or Electromagnetic Field Meter. This is a commonly used instrument by ghost hunters to prove the existence of a discarnated soul.  What. A. Load. Of. Crap.  To dispel any questions about any electronic interference that may have affected  the EMF reading, the Alpha ghost hunter on this particular show announced to the viewer that they would turn off all electricity in the area.  Naturally, they got a strong “reading” from their little machine.  This is when I started yelling.  “ARE THEIR CAMERAS POWERED BY GASOLINE?”  NO ELECTRICITY AROUND AT ALL?  Give me a break.

The whole EMF Meter thing makes me nuts.  I mean it’s usage in the paranormal sense. 

The human brain has well over 100 billion electrical active neurons that emit EM fields.  To date, I have not been able to locate information on the exact amount of Hertz (Hz) the human body collectively emits*. Electricity is moved throughout the human body by means of our nervous system, we are determined “dead” or “alive” by measuring the electrical flux emitted by our cerebral activity (and cardiac activity).  While in deep REM sleep, the brain only throws a meager 0-4 Hz of delta waves, yet I know people who, wide awake, are so boring even this would be an off the hook number for them.  I am going out on a scientific limb here and assume that once we flat line on both a EKG and EEG it is safe to say that we are no longer a power house of electricity, thus we are dead as a doornail.  And I didn’t even go to medical school.

So how is it that Festus Jones, a civil war soldier who croaked in 1863 can throw out 26 hz of electricity with no body? Or what about little Timmy Paddock who died in a freakish head on collision with a bear on his bike in 1924, who can suddenly find the whopping 31Hz to alert a ghost hunter he still exists with no cerebral activity?  They can’t.  It makes it more palatable to the general public that this is proof.  It sells advertising and keeps the ratings up, that’s what it does.

Now, let me flip this around for the sake of argument. 

For proof that ghosts don’t exist, skeptics often use the “infrasound” explanation.  Infrasound again is based on frequencies, this time with sound the human ear can’t perceive.  Exposure to infrasound at around 20 Hz can cause a plethora of side effects.  At these levels, individuals report “eerie” sensations, disorientation, anxiety and in some cases hallucinations.  One explanation (among others) is the sound creates an almost undetectable resonating in the eyeball, causing someone to feel as if they are seeing things.  So effective is infrasound at higher levels that it is often added into the soundtrack in horror movies to evoke feelings of fearfulness.  

What are naturally produced sources of infrasound?  Elephants, whales, hippopotamuses, alligators—they use this as a method of communication.  If you are at the zoo or perhaps a circus when you have a meltdown, blame Jumbo the Wonder Elephant for the sudden download in your pants.  Other sources include earthquakes, severe weather and skeptics that pipe in the sound to prove a point.

Ok, that all makes sense.  I get it.  We have reactions to sounds the ear can’t easily detect. I buy that hook line and sinker. 

Let’s just say that a credible medium is in a location that is assumed to be haunted by a ghost.  And let’s also say that there are also documented high levels of infrasound at this location. Sure, he/she may feel the effects both psychological and physically, we understand that.  How do you explain the medium picking up clear and accurate information regarding precise particulars of the ghost’s former life, how they died, their name and any other grand details which is also documented and verifiable?  Where is that answer?  Don’t say “It’s because they researched the location.”  I said a credible medium.  Oh, maybe the proof is in the EMF Meter reading.

Some things are simply unexplainable.  Like why Brett Michaels is still famous.

So, how do we know ghosts exist?  I said so.

*Good luck Googling it.  You will find out how to rent a car.

The Vulcan Mind Melt

It was a hot summer night in 1978.  I was upset because my parents had rattled the cage of my teenage existence by not letting me go to the lake with my friends.  The forty minute drive out there made it a teen oasis not easily accessible to our parents, so we could pretty much run amok with minimal risk. It was where we basked in our adolescent debauchery.

My friend Lori had carelessly discussed plans well above the secretive decibel level to attend a party; after we announced to my parents we were going to the drive-in to see Grease.  My mother had overheard us, which triggered her highly vulnerable maternal instincts--forcing her to send Lori home followed by banishing me to my room for the evening.  At sixteen, this is a disaster of epic proportions.

I paced in my room careening through every possible argument as to why I should be allowed to leave the house.  I would run down stairs to where my parents were watching television, then state my case with the effectiveness of a salesman trying to convince a group of twelve year olds why they needed nursing home insurance.  Knowing I was fighting a losing battle, I gave up.  Ok, that’s not what really happened, that just made me sound good.  Really my dad was becoming increasingly agitated, warning me that my life would soon end if I didn’t stop whining.  He had a zero tolerance policy for lying. See?  It works to this day.

I fell asleep after all the cardio from running up and down the stairs. A few hours later, I woke up from a dead sleep with a headache.  This wasn’t an ordinary headache.  It was a very precise area across my forehead as if I had been smacked with something.  I jumped up and got a tissue to wipe my brow, feeling as if I had sweat pouring down my face.  I wiped my forehead, nothing was there.  As I lay back down, feeling bewildered to what was going on, I got an image.  It was like a flash of a scene that I was hovering over, observing and indirectly receiving the feelings involved.  

By the way, at this point it became solidified  that “hovering” was one of the methods in which I receive information.  It is actually called remote viewing, but I am going with the Hovering Method®, that way I can sucker people out of a few hundred bucks for teaching something that can’t be taught in the first place.  Well, unless you are unscrupulous and don’t mind robbing people of their hard earned cash.  Here is what you would get for your money; a ten second DVD that says “I have no clue how this works.  You really don’t want to know how to do this.  It’s a bitch on birthdays, holidays or any other occasion.  Surprises no longer exist. Just ask my husband.”

It felt like a memory, like when you sit and remember a specific event…but I knew that I wasn’t remembering because I had never seen anything like this occur.

I saw a white four door Toyota turned upside down in a ditch on a gravel road. In fact, I saw the dust had still not settled yet. There was an eerie silence.  It was out on the road to the lake, I could tell by the surroundings that I was so familiar with.  I knew exactly where.  The driver had hit his head on the steering wheel with great impact and was bleeding.  There was a female in the passenger seat and I saw three individuals in the back…two females and a male.  No one was severely injured, but I could see cuts and abrasions and felt a collective sense of shock. 

I wasn’t sure what to do.  By now, I had a deep seated mistrust with this kind of thing, it seemed far more logical to think I was completely and utterly insane than to believe this stuff happened. 

By then my parents had gone to bed. Feeling a powerful sense of conviction, I decided to act upon it. I ran to their room flipping the light on, yelling “Get up!  Get up! There’s been an accident!” 

My poor mother, completely startled jumped out of bed to her feet.  “Who?  What? Who is it? I didn’t hear the phone ring.”  My father snoozed through the entire thing.

I asserted with a condescending tone, like she was a total moron.  “The phone didn’t ring,  Mom.  I saw it happen.”  (I would now call her a “muggle.” In the Harry Potter series, a muggle is a person who lacks magical abilities.)

She was getting angry, speaking to me in her staccato I-am-sick-of-this-pain-in-the-ass-teenager voice, “For. Pete’s. Sake.  Where have you been?  We told you that you couldn’t go out”.  Unexpectedly, she cocked her head sideways, then slumped down taking a deep breath that filled up her cheeks like a puffer fish and let the air seep out slowly as she thought.

“Ok, is it one of those things? Or are you jiving me?”

“I didn’t go out, Mom. I swear.  Yea, it’s one of those things.  We have to go help these people.”

By this point in my life, although it made her uncomfortable, she had come to a place of acceptance with what I what I did.  Time and time again, since I had been five she had witnessed enough that my credibility was in good standing with her.  She was far more comfortable with it than I was.  I hated it. 

Still in a haze she didn’t miss a beat, “Okay.  Get dressed.  Where are we going, by the way?”

“Out by the lake.  Hurry let’s go!”

To this day, I still think about that night.  I wonder what she was thinking, but didn’t say.  Do we call the police?  How does a parent explain on a 9-1-1 call that your psychic kid saw an accident forty miles away, but we weren’t quite sure where?  We would have both been institutionalized.

As we headed down the street, I thought maybe there would be a sermon on how I was manipulating to get a chance to go out to the lake or some comment like “How long did it take you to think this one up?”  As if I would want to show up at the lake with my mother?  She said nothing of the like, except for questions on what I had seen.  We drove down the old highway and took a right on the gravel road to the lake.  We drove for quite a distance, finding nothing and finally gave up just short of a huge hill that was a few miles from the lake.

“Maybe you were dreaming. Can we go home now?”  It was around 1:00 in the morning, so I didn’t push the issue any further.  Perhaps I was wrong.  I felt like a fool.  It was nice to know my mother had so much faith in me, but it didn't take away my embarassment.

The next morning, my boyfriend was supposed to pick me up at 9:30 am.  By 11:45 he had not called or shown up.

He finally called,  “You’re not gonna believe……”

I interrupted him. “You saw a white Toyota that had rolled upside down in a ditch.  The driver hit his head. The passenger was okay and there were three people in the back seat. They were pretty beat up, but all okay. The driver must have hit his head on the steering wheel.”

“Yea, I took them to the hospital. I was there most of the night.….wait…how do you know?”  Ever so reluctantly I said  “I saw it in a dream. My mom and I drove out there last night.  We turned around because we couldn’t find it”. 

We began comparing stories.  He had driven up on the accident just moments after it had happened.  I had seen it through his eyes or that was my best guess.  This was something I would do from that point on…see images people have in their heads or read their memories.  Don’t ask me how because I have no explanation whatsoever how it happens or why.  It can’t be taught.  It doesn’t go away. 

I spent about three days completely freaked out, worrying it would happen again.  I made my boyfriend swear he wouldn’t share this with anyone for fear of the label that would become attached to me.  He never did. 

Did I Just Lose My Marbles? Part II

Continued from Part I:

My teacher, Mrs. Meriwether was writing out our weekly spelling words on the chalk board.  As I copied the words in my notebook, I felt someone standing behind me.  I thought it was Mrs. Fredrickson, our teacher’s aide.  Mrs. Fredrickson was kind, patient and warm, with a soft voice that was always soothing, even when she was angry at us for being unruly.  She would often stand behind us, observing what we were doing in the event one of us needed help, she never made anyone feel stupid because they didn’t understand something.  Thinking it was her, I quickly whipped my entire body around in my seat.  There was no one there.   Mrs. Meriwether, who never missed a beat, noticed my abrupt movement and sternly said “Little Missy, we need to pay attention.”  I focused on the board again, and started writing the next word—m-a-r-g-a-r-i-n-e.  The feeling persisted. Someone was behind me and this time there was a slight pressure on my shoulder.  I was positive it was Mrs. Fredrickson. She always put her hand on your shoulder when she came up from behind.

 This time, I turned around slowly and casually, so Mrs. Meriwether wouldn’t notice.  Damn.  No Mrs. Fredrickson.  I did a quick visual scan of the room.  My friend Janice was trying to pay attention, but doodling.  My best friend Julie was diligently writing down her spelling words.  Jerry Toteman was tapping his pencil on his tablet, staring into space bored to tears.  And there was Mrs. Fredrickson grading papers at the back desk.  Completely freaked out, knowing that no one got up from their desk to touch me, I started to fight back the urge to run screaming out of the room.  Any method of trying to concentrate went out the window, so I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, wishing it would all go away and when I opened my eyes whatever was happening would be over.  Somehow, closing my eyes only made matters worse. I got a haunting image of Grandpa Short.  There, in his bedroom was his lifeless pale body lying on his bed, I was observing this as if I was in the room.  Trying not to escalate to sheer hysteria, rationalizing wasn't working. Why was I suddenly was thinking of my deceased grandpa lying dead in his bed in the middle of spelling?  The answer came to me; Well, this makes sense, my parents are at his funeral today. I am just thinking about that.  Then I went completely over the brink. It was that moment, it dawned on me I have never even seen a dead body!  I don’t even know what someone looks like dead.  So why would I be seeing him like that?  Then, without warning I started feeling like I did when he was around.  It was a familiar sensation, because he always made me feel content, happy and loved.

I sat there with the reality of sixth grade spelling words fading in and out. This strange invisible warm feeling took over me.  Trying to tune in with what was happening and struggling to digest what was going on while creating an illusion to Mrs. Meriwether that I was paying attention became increasingly difficult. The room started to spin and I began dripping with sweat.  I was in a state of sheer panic that I was suddenly going to pass out, or even worse, pass out.  I started mentally singing a compellation of old standards my mother had taught me to distract myself from what was going on.  It was like being a ten year old stuck in a senior center.

I quickly made the connection between how I felt and who this was.  Yes, this was Grandpa Short.  I was sure.  Oh no.  Not now.  What is happening? I am going to get in trouble.  How am I going to explain this one?   Had he stopped by to say “Hey, I am still here”? Was he still chained to my grandmothers demanding organizational schedule? Was he there to remind me my desk looked like a worksheet tsunami?  My eyes filled with tears as I tried to maintain my composure. Quickly and abruptly, spelling ended. 

Mrs. Meriwether put her chalk down and said “Class, just copy the rest of these words”, grabbed a tissue off her desk came towards me, and said kindly “Lets go out in the hall”.  I plopped down on the bench as she sat beside me

 “My dear, what is going on?”

 All I could muster up was “My grandpa died”.  That would garner the sympathy I needed without even trying to explain what was going on.  What else could I have said? 

“Gee Mrs. Meriwether, my grandpa died and he is right here.  Well, he isn’t.  Well, yea, I think he is. You see, when I was little, I could do this.  I thought it went away. This whole concept is blowing me away right now.  And you’re worried if I can spell “margarine”?  I’ve got bigger things to deal with lady.” 

She gave me the tissue, excused me to go to the restroom and take a moment for myself.  As quickly as it had happened, it disappeared and left me in a state of utter confusion and fear.  I was a wreck the rest of the day.

Later that evening, I sat on my bed debating if I should tell my parents. This was a tough call, on one hand I needed to talk about it.  On the other hand, I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it.  I decided to test the water and see what would happen.  I marched down the stairs and sat at the dining room table where my parents were having a discussion.

“Mom, did Grandpa Short die at home in his bed?”

“Yes dear.  You need to take your bath. Wait.  How do you know that?”

It didn’t feel safe all of the sudden and I lost my confidence. 

“I just wondered. He was really old. Maybe he just didn’t want to go to the hospital.”

I quickly excused myself and heard my mother whispering in an ultra sonic shrill to my father; “How did she know that?  We never said anything. She’s doing it again.”

I went to my room and sat on the floor, scared.  I wondered why I had to be such a freak. 

Did I Just Lose My Marbles? Part I

My maternal great-grandfather was a delightful man.  He was in his late seventies when I came along, and even in his older years he managed to maintain his sharp wit and larger than life personality.  As his first great-grandchild, I had a unique bond with him and adored him. The connection was inexplicably wonderful.  As young kid, he would tease me with the “got your nose” illusion, in which I would respond with a forced laugh thinking does he really think I fall for this shit?  As I got older and became capable of engaging in actual conversations, we would often sit on the front porch swing eating popsicles as he told me war stories along with tall tales of my ancestors.  I was far too young to appreciate them at the time, but how I wish I could hear them again as an adult.  His name was Elza, which I later found out, because he was always “Grandpa Short” to me.  He was given this nickname earlier in life by his friends, as he was barely 5’4’’.   His wife, my great grandma Essie, had a few well organized bats in her dust free belfry. Grandma Essie was the embodiment of obsessive compulsive disorder. I wonder now, knowing she was born in the late 1800’s if she substituted the ritual of obsessively flipping light switches with lighting and blowing out candles three times in a row to avoid impending death.   

The announcement from my mother that we were going to visit them would immediately trigger me to have suicidal ideations.  During the two hour drive, I would sit slumped in the back seat whining and fussing that I didn’t want to go, praying for a fatal accident, just to get me out of having to spend the day with her.

Their house was pristine with nothing out of order.  The yard was neatly manicured and was there to look at, not to walk on.  The kitchen was painted a light turquoise color, which always reminded me of a surgical room.  It was probably safer to have surgery in her kitchen than in a hospital, it was that sterile. If all that wasn’t enough, Grandma Essie had neurotically placed plastic slip covers on all the furniture.  This combined with the Kansas humidity and her lingering phobia from the depression that turning on the air conditioner was an “unnecessary cost” made for a dreadful, sticky, painful day.  At the end of the visit, someone had always left a deep tissue DNA sample behind on the plastic.  I was smart.  I sat on the floor.  By the time we pulled in their drive way, I had this osculation of emotions; anxious to see great grandpa and hoping that at best, someone had robbed them, tied her up in the basement with duct tape on her mouth so she couldn’t run her cake hole all day about how I had messed up her house.  Maybe they just wouldn’t notice she was gone.

Their house had a nauseating old people, freshly brewed coffee, Ben-Gay, glycerin suppository coleslaw stench.  All they had to drink was water.  Water?  Who the hell  drinks water?  What a delightful treat.  And even worse, all they had for me to play with was a large one gallon mayonnaise jar full of 101 glass marbles in it.  I could play with them, but only in the dining room, where Grandma Essie could “keep an eye on me”.  I always wondered what kind of damage she thought I could possibly do with a bunch of glass marbles, except out of sheer boredom shove them up my ass for entertainment.

 One horrific day, while thumping marbles around on the floor in a haze of momentary delirium, I wasn’t paying attention. A blue marble went down into the heat vent. I sat there in sheer terror that she would find out.  I could see her becoming rabid, spinning around like a neurotic dervish flipping her wig if she knew.  As the conversation began to wind down with my parents, I could gleefully see that an end to this torture was in sight. I was ordered (as usual) to count the marbles before putting them back in the jar. That was only after I had cleaned each marble with the wet naps that she stole from Kentucky Fried Chicken. This ritual was followed by setting the marbles on a towel to air dry, before placing them back in the jar.  Even the wet naps had a special drawer in the kitchen where they were neatly rubber banded into groups of five and placed in perfect rows.  I wasn’t allowed to open the drawer, because God forbid, if I used too much force pulling open the drawer the potential existed for some sort of disorder, which would surely activate the apocalypse. 

That day, when she shook her knobby little finger at me and said “There are 101 marbles back in the jar, right?” I did what any other ten year old would do. I lied.  I  nodded “yes”.  As much as I loved my Grandpa Short, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough and I sure as hell wasn’t going to shimmy myself down the vent shaft to find one stupid marble much less be a suspect in the federal investigation that was bound to occur.

The following week, my Grandpa Short passed away.  My parents didn’t say much more than that, all they ever really said was that he was just old and it was his “time”. My mother cried a lot and I felt bad for her.  I was upset because on the last visit I had not spoken much to him or had the opportunity to have some alone time on the porch.  It truly was my first experience with remorse over not appreciating time spent with a loved one and how precious that time is..........

Part II tomorrow.....it's a LONG story...like everyone has time to read the whole story in one sitting. 

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