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You are here: Home / Archives for The Paranormal Braintrust

The Paranormal Braintrust

The Haunted Housewife’s 2016 Haunted Holiday Gift Guide

November 22, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

By Theresa Argie
By Theresa Argie

As we say goodbye to the last vestiges of Indian Summer and quietly wade through a colorful autumn, we cautiously prepare ourselves for a long cold winter. Thank goodness we have something wonderful to look forward to – CHRISTMAS!

Tis’ the season as they say. For many this is a religious holiday based on faith and tradition. For others it’s a time of giving. It’s the season of family, friends, food, and phantoms. Hey, even Scrooge had a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, right?

For those who enjoy a more “spirited” holiday, I’ve assembled a paranormal gift guide – perfect for the most particular people on your Christmas list.

Prices are accurate at the time of writing but change quickly this time of year, so your mileage may vary. Check out the links below where you can find ghostly gifts to delight the haunted people in your life. Plus, remember it’s OK to do some self-gifting, too!

SB11 Spirit Box – This is a newer version of the popular SB7, a devise that quickly scans radio frequencies. The spirit box is used by some of the most well respected paranormal investigators including myself. In theory, ghosts can manipulate the white noise or sound waves to communicate with the living. $136.00

Mel-8704 & K2 EMF Meters – A popular coupling of paranormal devices. The Mel Meter was developed by Gary Galka as a way to speak with his deceased daughter. It has proved extremely effective in paranormal investigations.The K2 meter measures electromagnetic anomalies in the environment, which could indicate the presence of ghosts. $149.95

Polaroid Studio Series Rechargeable IR Night Light 36 LED – Adding an infrared light to a camcorder or camera lets you film in low light conditions. This one is rechargeable, saving on batteries. A must for any nighttime paranormal investigation! $39.99

GhostPro Full Spectrum Night Vision Camera – Take nighttime investigation to a whole new level with a full spectrum “GoPro” with full HD 1080P recording capacity in a waterproof housing. Simply awesome. $149.99

FLIR TG167 Spot Thermal Camera with Extended Range – Finally, an affordable option to the industry’s most sought after piece of equipment. At less than half the cost of previous models, the TG167 puts forward looking infrared capabilities in reach of the armchair, the amateur, and the well-seasoned investigator. $349.99

Etekcity Lasergrip 800 Non-Contact Digital Laser IR Thermometer. A essential and inexpensive device that belongs in every ghost hunters arsenal. Easy to use and straightforward. $25.98

Dowsing Rods – For the Old School ghost hunters. These simple but effective tool of divination used for centuries to find water, gold, ley lines, and ghosts! The Haunted Housewives use these as a communication device on every case! $19.95

Spirit Board Cleo Hoodie (Women’s Black, Too Fast Apparel) – Ouija clothes are all the rage this year! Show you’re not afraid to talk to ghosts with this stylish, well tailored hoodie. $44.99

Healing Crystal Wands: Amethyst, Clear Crystal Quartz, and Rose Quartz – The power of crystals can feel like magic. They are used for everything from meditation, healing, spiritual cleansing, opening one’s third eye, and attracting spirits. You don’t need to be a ghost hunter to appreciate the beauty and power of crystals. $20.98

GHOSTBUSTERS The Movie – The long-awaited remake of the classic 80’s movie staring Kristen Wig and Melisa McCarthy. Great for fans of comedy or the paranormal. DVD or BluRay. $19.96

From the hit TV show SUPERNATURAL – Winchester Driver T-Shirt Fitted Ladies – “Driver Picks the Music, Shotgun Shuts His Cakehole” YES PLEASE! $9.49 – $20.95

“I’m Not Saying it Was Aliens.. but it Was Aliens” Giorgio A. Tsoukalos T-Shirt – A MUST HAVE for the Ancient Aliens fan on your list! Giorgio’s trademark hair adorns this stylish T-shirt.$15.99

BooBuddy Ghost Hunter Interactive Bear – This adorable teddy bear serves double duty as a trigger object an interactive paranormal investigator. Outfitted with lights and meters, BooBuddy can record changes in the environment, movement, temperature, and even ask EVP questions!
$169.95

Ecsem Portable Wireless Speaker – No need for cables or bluetooth, this speaker work like magic. Just place your smart phone on top of the speaker and listen to clear, amplified sound! Perfect when sharing audio files with a group. This is one of the most useful pieces of equipment I have used in the past year. $19.99

 

BOOKS

My recommendations for the book lover on your list. These are works by some of my very favorite authors on various paranormal/occult topics. All available on Amazon.com

Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to Alien Phenomenon by Ryan Sprague (Richard Dolan Press, October 2016) The first book by fellow Paranormal Braintruster Ryan Sprague. This is a fascinating look into the topic of aliens that will satisfy the amateur and the elite UFO enthusiast on your list! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by many in the paranormal, including myself and Fact or Faked star Ben Hansen.
ISBN-10: 0967799589

Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldy Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena by Linda S. Godfrey (TarcherPerigree, October 2016)

Godfrey looks into creepy cryptids, monsters, and other unusual topics. Interesting, informative, and engaging!
ISBN-10: 0399176241

Women In Black: The Creepy Companions to the Mysterious M.I.B by Nick Redfern (Lisa Hagan Books, July 2016) You’ve heard of the Men in Black, but what about the Women in Black? These ladies are just as scary as their male counterparts! Redfern hits another home run with this amazing book!
ISBN-10: 0996968687

True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold’s Campfire 5 by Jim Harold (Jim Harold Media LCC ,September 2016) The latest addition to Harold’s very popular and successful Campfire series. More terrifying tales to keep you up at night!
ISBN-10: 1945676027

The True Ghost Stories Adult Coloring Book: Inspired By Jim Harold’s Campfire (Jim Harold Media LLC, July 2016) Who doesn’t love a good coloring book? This one is based on true campfire stories from Jim Harold’s followers! Great relaxation therapy for the paranormal lover!
ISBN-10: 1945676019

Mind Wars: A History of Mind Control, Surveillance, and Social Engineering by Government, Media, and Secret Societies by Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman (New Page Books April, 2015) This book will make you think and question everything you THINK you know about the subject. Well researched and beautifully written.
ISBN-10: 1601633580

The UFO Singularity by Micah Hanks (New Page Books December 2012) I’ve shortened the title but Micah Hanks doesn’t skimp on the information. The topic of UFOs is highly controversial but extremely interesting. Hanks keeps the reader engaged while fully delivering on the information. An awesome read!
ISBN-10 1601632401

Harsh Gods (Conspiracy of Angels 2) Shadowside Trilogy by Michelle Belanger (Titan Book August 2016) Book 2 in the Shadowside Trilogy by acclaimed author and occult expert Michelle Belanger. What’s next for Zack Westland? What new secrets will be revealed? What new characters come to life in the 2nd installment of this popular fictional trilogy?
ISBN-10: 1783299541

And finally, a shameless plug for my own book…

America’s Most Haunted: The Secrets of Famous Paranormal Places by Theresa Argie and Eric Olsen (Berkley September 2014) Follow the adventures of the Haunted Housewives as they explore the country’s scariest paranormal hot spots!
ISBN-10: 0425270149


NOTE: The prices listed are accurate as of Nov 23, 2016 and are subject to change or vary. The above are affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media.


Theresa Argie, The Haunted Housewife, is an experienced lecturer, educator, researcher and paranormal investigator and has had many years dealing with spirits, ghosts and paranormal activity. Theresa has worked beside some of the most well-known experts in the paranormal field, and has been featured by countless media outlets. She is also the co-author of America’s Most Haunted.

Filed Under: The Occult Kitchen, The Paranormal Braintrust, Theresa Argie Tagged With: 2016 Holiday Gift Guide, Haunted Holiday Gift Guide, Jim Harold, Paranormal Braintrust, Theresa Argie

Conversations With Ghosts: The Ouija Board Experience – Micah Hanks Writes

October 31, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Micah Hanks
Micah Hanks

“Where are you?”, the couple asked, as they watched the planchette begin to slowly move again across the lettered board. The arrow passed several of the symbols, before clearly coming to rest on the letter “H”. Hovering there for a moment, the arrow began drifting to the left, now hovering over the letter “E”. After a pause, the couple felt the planchette moving beneath their fingers again, this time more purposefully, gliding sharply to the right and coming to rest on the letter “L”, where it stayed.

“Hell,” she read aloud to him, looking up to meet his frightened gaze.

Chris had never believed in the supposed “power” of Ouija boards. When he agreed to play this game with Jessica, rather than going out to the movies as they normally would on a Friday night, he had done it mostly for her amusement. But within the first few moments after the planchette began to move eerily amidst the symbols across the board, he became fascinated—if not a bit unsettled—at the story which seemed to now be revealing itself to them.

Through their questions, and the movement of the planchette, a narrative emerged, as told from the perspective of a young girl, saying she had died more than a century ago in a small town in the Western United States. She, like many others at that time, had been a victim of consumption; but this apparent conversation with a ghost hadn’t been what frightened them. In addition to being aware of her death, the girl also expressed a desire to be reborn, and through the lettered face of the Ouija board, told Chris and Jessica she would come into the body of their eventual firstborn child.

This hadn’t set well with the young couple, hence prompting Chris to ask about the child’s whereabouts.

“HEL”

“Why are you in Hell, if you died as a child?” Chris then asked.

“I” was the first letter the planchette indicated, followed by a pause. It then slowly drifted over to the next sequence of letters, “K”, “I”, and “L”, where it stopped again.

“I kill?” Jessica gasped. Chris had already felt her fingertips trembling across from his on the face of the planchette.

“What are you?” Chris asked. The planchette moved again, spelling the letters “D”, “E”, “M”…

Goodbye.

It would be the final word the planchette rested on that night, in addition to marking the last time either of them ever touched a Ouija board. The experience, though badly frightening for them, certainly opened the couple’s minds to the strange kinds of experiences Ouija boards seem to be able to elicit, as so many others have described over the years.

Among all the modern implements of the occult, perhaps there is nothing else that remains so disturbing in people’s minds as the Ouija board. Despite their sale as common playthings in most department stores today, there are a striking number of individuals, like Chris and Jessica’s story above illustrates, who claim to have had unsettling experiences with the devices. Thus, even in modern times there are many look to biblical passages as evidence of their wicked nature, such as that which appears in Deuteronomy 18:10-11, reading: “There shall not be found among you anyone… that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” Similarly, many interpret this passage from the Quran to be in reference to such things, which it calls an abomination: “O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination; of Satan’s handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper.”

Perhaps the earliest historical mention of Ouija-like devices began to appear in China at around 1100 BC, although the rise of the Ming Dynasty coincided with the use of a stick or stylus crafted from the branch of a willow or peach tree called the “Fuji method”, which roughly resembled a dowsing-rod. By around 540 BC, Pythagoras and his students were widely believed to have used some sort of table mounted on wheels to communicate with the spirits of the dead.

The modern Ouija board, despite its similarity to ancient divination practices, appeared only as recently as the 1890s when two business-men, Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard, leapt on the idea to combine the popular planchette of spiritualist practices with a board covered in letters of the alphabet. On May 28, 1890, the duo filed for patent protection of their new idea, which became the first official Ouija board to be marketed and sold, with production duties handed to an employee named William Fuld in 1901.

The famous “talking boards”, as they became known, would first be marketed under the name “Ouija” by Fuld, who also rewrote the history of the devices, claiming that not only that he was the true inventor, but that his employers Bond and Kennard had stolen the idea from him. Once other companies began to produce the Ouija boards, Fuld sued many over the use of what he believed to be “his” design, until his death in 1927. In 1966, William Fuld’s estate sold the rights to the Ouija name to the famous maker of children’s games, Parker Brothers, who today holds all official trademarks and patents for the item.

Despite being generally marketed and sold as a plaything, the Ouija boards have remained controversial, due in no small part to the negative experiences so many have claimed to have with them. The famous esotericist Manly P Hall was quoted as far back as 1944 in Horizon Magazine saying that, “During the last 20-25 years I have had considerable personal experience with persons who have complicated their lives through dabbling with the Ouija board. Out of every hundred such cases, at least 95 are worse off for the experience.”

Some of the stories related to me personally over the years do seem to underscore the strange, and often unsettling nature of the Ouija experience. My earliest experience with such a tale dates back to my childhood, when my mother talked about an experience she had with a neighbor of hers, Nancy, while experimenting with a Ouija board. The story related to them during the experience involved a young man who, about a decade earlier, had become trapped under his convertible after he drove off the side of a bridge; pinned beneath the wrecked car, he drowned before help could arrive. After this experience, my mother maintained a strong aversion to Ouija boards, and was resolute in telling me not to use them, either.

On one occasion, a young man in Australia named Artemis wrote to me years ago, asking about whether I thought Ouija boards were “safe” to use. This was just after an experience he had with one he had obtained recently, believing his deceased grandfather had spoken to him through the device.

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

“He told me not to play with Ouija boards!” Artemis said. I figured that the response he received was more or less self-evident.

Perhaps the most unique story about Ouija boards ever shared with me was told by the American singer and songwriter Ellis Paul, who I met in 2007. “I have a song called ‘Conversation with a Ghost’ that’s about my one weird paranormal experience,” Ellis told me, during a live radio interview in Asheville, North Carolina. “I was out for a run with a buddy of mine named Vance in Boston, and he said ‘why don’t you come over for dinner?’ I said sure, and before we left we sat and had a glass of eggnog, since it was around Christmas time.”

“Once we got over to his place, his girlfriend, Margaret, was working on dinner in the kitchen, and I said ‘Well what have you been up to?’ She said, ‘I just bought this Ouija board for a dollar at a garage sale.’ She said she’d kinda been addicted to it, talking to some ‘spirit’ with a friend of hers named Beth. She’d been on it like most people get on the Internet, just going haywire. I told her, ‘You know, I’m kind of a doubter on that kind of thing, so why don’t we get it out as part of the dinner party?’ I thought we’d take it for a spin, and see what happens.”

“There were about fifteen of us there, and we went into the living room. I was the one asking questions to the ghost, whose name was ‘Pug’—Margaret Putnam was her real name, but ‘Pug’ was sort of a handle she apparently used communicating through the Ouija board. I asked Pug, with Beth and Margaret on either side of the board handling the little wooden triangle, ‘what song did I play last night?’ It spelled out R-A-I-N. Sure enough, the night before I had played a song called ‘Let it Rain’.”

Initially Ellis laughed about this, and noted that “if you’re gonna pick a title for a song, ‘rain’ might be in a good percentage of them.”

“Then, I asked ‘what’s the name of my booking agent’, which was something I knew neither of the women operating the Ouija board new. It spelled out G-E-R-M-A-N-E, or Germaine.” Indeed, this was the name of his booking agent at the time, despite the name being “misspelled it by one letter.”

The final question Ellis asked the board was, “What did Vance and I have to drink before we came over here?” As the planchette moved, it spelled out the letters N-O-G.”

“I got up and I locked myself in the bathroom for a while, freaked out,” Ellis confided to us. “I ended up writing a song about it, based on someone who had passed away, using a Ouija board to communicate.”

Ellis Paul’s unique story didn’t end here, though. “What’s even weirder about that story,” he told me, “is that after I calmed down a bit, I decided to go down to the Courthouse and dig through records to see if I could find this ‘Pug’ anywhere in Boston’s history, since she had told Beth and Margaret a few things about herself. For instance, she had been married to a doctor, and also described roughly the time and circumstances of her death. Sure enough, looking around I found that a Margaret Putnam had not only existed, but had lived there in Boston, and even married a prominent doctor operating in town at the time. I was floored.”

When considering stories like those of Ellis Paul and countless others, it becomes difficult to rule out the possibility that Ouija boards may indeed serve as a mode of communication between this world and the next. The view of modern science attributes no such “mystical” capacities to the function of the board, however, instead suggesting that a psychological effect known as ideomotor phenomenon can explain this, which similarly explains such spiritualist practices as automatic writing, dowsing, and other varieties of facilitated communication that purportedly links the living world to the afterlife in some way. The term was first used by researcher William Benjamin Carpenter in 1852, after which an alternative name for the phenomenon, “The Carpenter effect”, was derived.

Could the Ouija board truly be nothing more than a simple device, designed as a parlor game and long heralded since its conception as a tool of divination, which relies on mysterious functions of our deeper psyche? In truth, if this were indeed all there is to the “magic” of the Ouija board, one might argue that it would make the strange devices—and the bizarre stories associated with them—no less interesting. Whether their mystery stems from this world, or worlds beyond our own, it seems that there is much about the function of the human mind that eludes us… and hence, the inner space within each of us seems to remain, at the end of the day, the greatest mystery of our time.

—

Micah Hanks is a writer, podcaster, and researcher whose interests include history, science, current events, cultural studies, technology, business, philosophy, unexplained phenomena, and ways the future of humankind may be influenced by science and innovation in the coming decades. With his writing, he has covered topics that include controversial themes such as artificial intelligence, government surveillance, unconventional aviation technologies, and the broadening of human knowledge through the reach of the Internet. Micah lives in the heart of Appalachia near Asheville, North Carolina, where he makes a living as a writer and musician. You can find his podcasts at GralienReport.com and his books at Amazon.com

Filed Under: Micah Hanks, Slider, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Jim Harold, Micah Hanks, Ouija, Ouija Board

The Haunted Housewives at The World’s Largest Ghost Hunt – Theresa Argie Writes

October 30, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

By Theresa Argie
By Theresa Argie

October 1st, 2016 was designated as the very first National Ghost Hunting Day. In celebration of this new holiday there was to be an event like no other – one that would reach far beyond the confines of the United States.

This was to be the night the Haunted Housewives, along with dozens of other ghost hunters, participated in The World’s Largest Ghost Hunt.

Over 70 ghost hunting teams from all over the U.S. and several European countries would simultaneously conduct a guided paranormal investigation. Each team would represent a haunted venue and live stream their entire investigation on Facebook for all the world to see. The teams were joined by participants who paid a small fee which was donated to local animal shelters.

This unusual holiday came about as an idea, a dream, that turned into reality with a lot of help from the paranormal field. The good folks at Haunted Journeys brought the idea to the powers that be at Scarefest – one of the nations largest paranormal and horror conventions held in Lexington Kentucky.

In cooperation with a multitude of ambassadors and dedicated enthusiasts, paranormal investigator Brian J. Cano (Haunted Collector, Destination America) was picked to lead the charge and organize this monumental world-wide event. His celebrity and reputation helped spread the word about WLGH.

This was no small task. Logistically, Cano had to unify hundreds of ghost hunters, haunted venues, and the curious public to pull off this complicated feat. The ghost hunt began with a bang – literally – a shotgun start at Scarfest.

The Haunted Housewives were one of the teams leading an investigation. Our chosen venue was Farnam Manor in Richfield, Ohio. Farnam is a historic gem nestled in northeast Ohio with an incredible array of paranormal activity and lively spirits. Our previous visit introduced us to the ghosts of Emily and Everett Farnam and we were anxious to return.

The Farnams’ is a tale filled with tragedy and hardship, interspersed with moments of love and happiness. The property on which they built the manor house dates back to Ohio’s earliest inhabitants. The Native American tribes that lived in the area considered it sacred. There is a special Indian marker tree on the property. This was said to guide the natives as they traversed the land.

Today Farnam Manor is a historic living museum with a paranormal reputation. Ghost hunts, lantern tours, and various gatherings are held at Farnam. It is also a fantastic venue for a brunch, bridal shower, or other “non-paranormal” type gatherings. But it is the ghosts that keep the doors open. Farnam Manor was an excellent choice for inclusion in the World’s Largest Ghost Hunt.

The night began with instructions to ask the spirits to communicate via ITC (instrumental trans-communication) using audio recorders. EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) sessions commenced simultaneously with all teams asking the same series of questions. But this was no ordinary EVP session.

Participants were asked to concentrate on the questions being directed to entities known as the Technician and Conductor on a metaphysical plane called the Timestream. (This refers to a little known paranormal experiment conducted in the early days of paranormal research.) The hope was that we would combine our efforts and communicate with these specific beings. This was a collective consciousness experiment called “The Bridge”.

Could hundreds, maybe thousands of people all thinking about the same thing at the same time have any measurable effect on a paranormal investigation? Could our combined energy, our intent, be enough to cross the veil between worlds?

Yes. It could.

In all honesty, I think attempting to connect with the Timestream was a bit vague and ambitious. I’ve been in the paranormal field for decades and was unfamiliar with the Technician or the Conductor. But I was certainly willing to try a collective consciousness experiment using Instrumental Trans-Communication.

We began our ITC session as instructed. I turned on the recorder and read the question aloud. Those that joined us eagerly gathered around and dutifully concentrated on the questions. We waited for 60 seconds before stopping and playing back the recording. My partner Cathi was also running a recorder so we had two files to review.

We repeated the series of questions twice. The EVPs we captured were amazing.

When we asked about the Timestream we did receive messages. Strange voices were captured on our digital recorders. Was it the Conductor? Did we contact one of the stations still operating on the other side? I would love to go on record and say that we cracked wide open the door between our realm and the next, that these voices were confirmation, but I cannot.

One of the questions posed to the spirits was, “How do you experience time?” We didn’t get any intelligible response to that particular question, just some low muffled sounds. But the fact that we got ANYTHING on the recorder was remarkable!

Another question was, “What do we look like to you?” Our recorder captured a low breathy voice that said “…normal people…”

The last question was, “How can we improve contact?” And in a very matter-of-fact tone the spirit answered “…you can’t…”

Well, that certainly was interesting!

Once our required line of questioning was over, we were free to conduct our own investigation. We still tried to have everyone participate and concentrate on each session en masse. The collective consciousness idea was working! We then switched our focus to the local haunted inhabitants.

The rest of the evening was filled with Ovilus and ghost box sessions. One of my favorite moments came when we asked what was the name of the family that once lived in the manor house. The ghost box proudly proclaimed “FARNAM!”

Who were we speaking with? The box said, “…Emily…”

What happened to Emily? The response was, “…drown…”
Emily was the name of Everrett Farnham’s daughter who, as a young girl, fell into a cistern and drown.

Over all we were thrilled with the results of The Bridge. Was the experiment a success due to the collective efforts of thousands of willing minds all concentrating on the same thoughts at the same time? Maybe. Or maybe the spirits were just feeling chatty.

The World’s Largest Ghosthunt was by all accounts a huge success. Many teams captured EVPs or recorded ITC sessions with answers to the provided questions. The Bridge was crossed.

The final tally of ITC sessions and EVPs are still being tabulated. Its a monumental task quantifying the submissions of each team. Hours of review and transcription is required.

2016 was the trial, the prototype of the event. Not everything went according to plans, There are kinks and technical issues that will need to be addressed next year but the idea was solid. The spirit of the experiment was honored. Everyone came out a winner.

The biggest winners of the night were the dozens of animal shelters that received the donation bounty. Another secondary benefit went to the various venues that hosted the World’s Largest Ghost Hunt; in our case Farnam Manor. This important historic site was, for one brief moment, in the national spotlight. Hopefully the publicity and awareness will translate into future visits by those in the paranormal community, which in turn will generate much needed funds. Historic preservation cannot happen without a monetary component.

Like many haunted venues, Farnam Manor is in desperate need of income to keep up with the preservation and restoration needs. Once slated for demolition, two of its former volunteers took a leap of faith and purchased the property in efforts to save it and its historic designation. Now their efforts combined with The Haunted Housewives and those involved in NGHD will make a significant difference in the future.

This is just the beginning. With any luck, the incredible results of the first National Ghost Hunting Day will fuel the fire for next year’s event. With Brian Cano at the helm and Scarefest as our mothership, we hope to see a bigger, better, more refined event in future years. With a bit of luck and a touch of tenacity The World’s Largest Ghost Hunt will spill out of the shadows and into main stream media.

National Ghost Hunting Day is long over due in my eyes, regardless of whether your believe in the paranormal or not. A day set aside to recognize the tireless pursuits of those in the field will help validate our work. In the past decade the topic of ghosts and the supernatural have gone from hushed whispers to loud proclamations.

And when National Ghost Hunting Day becomes International Ghost Hunting Day, the Haunted Housewives will be ready – aprons on, recorders out!

We’ll see you in 2017.

—

Theresa Argie, The Haunted Housewife, is an experienced lecturer, educator, researcher and paranormal investigator and has had many years dealing with spirits, ghosts and paranormal activity. Theresa has worked beside some of the most well-known experts in the paranormal field, and has been featured by countless media outlets. She is also the co-author of America’s Most Haunted.

Filed Under: Slider, The Occult Kitchen, The Paranormal Braintrust, Theresa Argie Tagged With: Cathi Weber, Haunted Housewives, ITC, Jim Harold, Paranormal Braintrust, Theresa Argie

Beware The Bedroom Invaders – Nick Redfern Writes

October 29, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Nick Redfern
Nick Redfern

Of the many and varied monsters that have plagued and terrified people for countless centuries, there are very few which are more frightening than bedroom-invading things known as Incubus and Succubus.

They are male and female monsters that, in numerous quarters, are perceived as having outright demonic origins. And they are hideous things that have a long history of diabolical interaction with the human race. As evidence of this, reports of these evil entities date back not just decades or centuries, but millennia too. One of those reports comes from Michelle of Corpus Christi, Texas, who had just such an encounter in 1993.

Imagine the scene: it’s around 3:00 a.m. and you’re fast asleep when, suddenly, you find yourself in a semi-awake state. Confusion and terror quickly overwhelm you, as you realize you are unable to move. Even worse, you sense that something dangerous and malevolent is walking, or crawling, towards the bedroom.

You struggle to move, but it’s all to no avail. The thing then enters the room and you see its hideous form. It looms over you, like a monstrous sword of Damocles. Your heart pounds and your breathing becomes shallow as the nightmarish beast jumps onto the bed, straddles you, and forcibly pins you down. The creatures screams at the top of its voice, in a wailing, banshee-like style, and proceeds to have violent sex with you – against your will. You try and fight it off, but your arms and legs are like lead-weights.

And, then, as suddenly as the horrifying encounter began, it’s all over. The oppressive atmosphere is gone, the evil entity has vanished too, and you find yourself shaking, and in a cold sweat, as you wonder if what just happened was the result of a bad dream or something worse: violation at the claws of a supernatural monster. That is precisely what happened to Michelle.

Encounters of the kind I just described extend back to the earliest years of human civilization. Indeed, the term, Incubus, is taken from an ancient, Latin word, “incubare,” which means “to lie upon,” which is a most apt description. As for their appearances, Incubus and Succubus can take on multiple forms. They are forms which range from beautiful women to hideous monsters.

One of the very earliest examples of such a creature is Lilith. Her name is highly appropriate, too: in English it means “night hag.” Not exactly the kind of thing any of us should aspire to cross paths with. Lilith’s dark origins can be found in the ancient mythology and folklore of Mesopotamia, and particularly so within the culture of the Babylonians. Despite the fact that she was described as being a beautiful woman, with long and flowing hair, there was nothing positive about Lilith. She would regularly manifest in the homes of sleeping men, slip into their beds, and have sex with them. The purpose of which, ancient lore maintains, was to allow Lilith to steal sperm from her victims and use it to create hideous, demonic babies.

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Almost certainly connected to Lilith were Lilitu and Lilu, who played major roles in the lore of the Sumerian people, thounds of years ago. This paranormal pair, too, was focused on terrifying people in the middle of the night, violating them, and then vanishing back into the darkness from which they came. Joseph McCabe, a noted expert on these two demon-like entities, and the author of The Story of Religious Controversy, described them as “ferocious beings” that were part-animal and part-human.

Martin Baker’s encounter with just such a creature – in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 2007 – led him to conclude that, rather than being a demonic entity, his encounter with an entity that looked like Lilith was actually an alien-human hybrid engaged in gene-splicing experiments.

The people of Newfoundland, Canada have their own tradition of a particular shapeshifter. It is known to the locals as the Old Hag. For most people who have the misfortune to meet the monster, they describe it as a witch-like entity with long black hair and piercing, evil eyes, and dressed in a flowing black gown. She straddles her victims and either forces them into sex, or just sits on them, screaming wildly into their hysterical, wide-eyed faces.

Equally disturbing is the evil imp that squats atop a sleeping, beautiful woman in Henry Fuseli’s 1781 painting, The Nightmare. Combining horror with erotica, the artwork graphically captures the nature of these evil encounters. In Thailand, these creatures of the night are known as Phi Am. For the people of China, it’s the Pinyin that they fear. Mongolia has the Kharin Buu. While, in Tibet, the Dip-non should be avoided at all costs. And Pakistan has centuries-old stories of the Shaitan. All of these things perform the same, stress-filled and sex-based acts; yet, they take on physical appearances that suit the era and the area.

As Halloween comes around, beware of these terrible things.

—

One of the most prolific Fortean writers on the planet, Nick Redfern is the author of many books, including Men in Black, Chupacabra Road Trip, and The Bigfoot Book.  His latest book is Nessie. He can be contacted at his blog, “World of Whatever,” at nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com

Filed Under: If Its Weird Its Here, Nick Redfern, Slider, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Incubus, Jim Harold, Nick Redfern, Paranormal Braintrust, Succubus

Celebrating the Dead: The History of Dia de Muertos – Marie D Jones Writes

October 27, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Marie D. Jones
Marie D. Jones

Every October 31st, Americans head to parties or hit the streets dressed in elaborate, often spooky costumes, in celebration of Halloween, a time when the veil between this world and the world beyond death is said to be at its thinnest.

We decorate our homes and yards with scary monsters, witches and ghouls, provoking a fun sense of repulsion of all things terrifying. We cut up pumpkins and light with candles, and watch out for black cats. We spend a ton of money preparing for and enjoying one of the biggest and most anticipated holidays in the United States, rivaling Christmas for some people!

But throughout Mexico and parts of America with large Hispanic populations, another holiday offers a truer reverence for the dead with a rich history dating back thousand of years. Dia de Muertos, or Dia de los Muertos, is the “Day of the Dead” to millions of people that both playfully mocks, and joyfully reveres, death. The tradition began over 3,000 years ago when Aztecs and other Meso-American cultures created rituals that honored the duality of life and death. One of their core beliefs was that reality was the dream, and that death was when we truly became “awake.”

Dia de Muertos celebrations lasted three days, as they still do today, and end on November 2nd. Because they began on the same night as Halloween, the two traditions are often confused and mistakenly intertwined. The major difference is in the tone of the celebrations. Again, Halloween looks at the scarier side of death, while Dia de Muertos celebrates it with colorful dances, decorative skulls and candles, and other festivities, including the construction of elaborate private altars called “ofrendas,” with pathways of marigolds that are meant to welcome the dearly deceased. The Mexican “cempasuchil” or marigold, is the traditional “flor de muerto” or Flower of the Dead. Altars can be decorated with sugar skulls and other foods and spirits (including tequila or mescal) that the deceased loved most, as well as pictures and objects once owned by the deceased. If the deceased was a child, the altar might include toys and trinkets including favorite candies. Families hold vigils at their homes, or at cemeteries, and take pride in decorating the gravestones of their dead relatives, leaving gifts of food, flowers and sugar skulls, or actual possessions that belonged to the deceased person.

Family homes are decorated with skulls and skeletons, made out of cardboard or tissue paper, and always colorful and bold. Because of the Spanish colonization of Mexico, often Christian objects are found on altars alongside much more pagan objects. This might include crosses, rosary beads and statues of Christ or the Virgin Mary.

As with most major holidays, food and drink is a big part of Dia de Muertos festivities, with cakes and breads such as pan de muerto (bread of the dead) that have been baked around a small skeleton or skull. In fact, the garishly painted skulls now most associated with the holiday period are sold in shops and markets, but those made by hand are most cherished. Some are meant to eat, and are made of sugar or chocolate or even wood, with the name of the deceased etched into the forehead, but others are purely decorative and have become a popular collector’s item in the Southwest for those wishing to give their homes a distinct Mexican traditional flavor. To show the difference between our Halloween and the Dia de Muertos, in our culture, a skull is an object to be feared and signifies death in a terrifying way. We even use it to identify substances that are toxic and deadly, while to the Mexican people, a skull is a symbol of life, death and rebirth.

Prayer and remembrance also mark most Dia de Muertos festivities, something we do not do at Halloween, even though Halloween also has at its roots a time of reverence and celebration of the dead before it became commercialized. Some cultures wear shells and use other noisemakers to dance around and “wake the dead.” Others actually wear the clothing of their deceased loved ones. From village to village, traditions might vary, but all would be centered on honoring, not fearing, the dead and treating them with love, respect and a sense of sacredness. This attitude towards death has obvious pagan roots where the cycles of life were not only understood, but also accepted and honored, unlike today’s more modern cultures that have all but wiped nature off the map and made death something to be dreaded and avoided at all costs.

Like Halloween, Dia de Muertos was altered by the course of history when the Spanish colonization of the 16th century prompted the Catholic Church to move the original August three-day celebration period to coincide with Allhallowtide, All Saints’ Eve, and All Saints’ Day. Yet, scholars state the original festivities most likely lasted the entire month of August during which the dead came back to visit their loved ones. These summer festivities honored a goddess, the Lady of the Dead or La Calavera Catrina of modern times. “Calavara” is Spanish for skull, and the word is also used to signify a poem playfully mocking the dead, a custom that originated in the 18th century. La Calavera Catrina is a fun parody celebration of a Mexican goddess or upper class woman, complete with little dolls called “Catrinas” and men and women wearing costumes with skull masks. They also might get tattoos of the names of the dead, or carry dolls of the dead with them for good luck, much like we carry a rabbit’s foot or tattoo our children’s and lover’s names on our bodies.

The use of costumes and masks no doubt influenced or at least coincided with dressing up for Halloween and taking on the persona of a spooky entity, ghostly being or today, a trampy French maid. In modern urban areas that mark the Dia de Muertos, children do wear costumes and walk the streets, knocking on doors to ask for a “calaverita,” which might be a small gift of money or some candy treats, and even ask passers-by on the streets for goodies, something our Halloween kids have yet to figure out (twice the candy!).

The Spanish conquest of the Meso-American cultures resulted in changes to their old traditions, just as the Celtic holiday of Samhain, a celebration of death and renewal which gave Halloween many of its symbolic traditions, was suppressed and absorbed by the Catholic celebrations as well, something that happened with most major pagan holidays and traditions (Easter, Christmas…). Dia de Muertos also is linked to an ancient Aztec festival that was dedicated to a goddess named Mictecacihuatl and was once only a day of celebration for indigenous peoples in a very specific part of Mexico, before spreading further into the world in the 20th century. Holidays honoring goddesses and women often later became morphed into Christian holidays honoring male saints, or degraded and disempowered the women figures, much like our Halloween took the pagan crone, a wise old woman, and turned her into an ugly, wart-covered witch. Because the Spanish who conquered the Aztec became the dominant force and religion in the Mexican region, their influences naturally became interwoven with those of indigenous peoples, when they didn’t completely wipe them off the map.

Recently, the Mexican government made Dia de Muertos a national holiday in line with educational policies enforced in the 1960s that encouraged the practice of national traditions that unified cultures and regions of indigenous peoples. Many modern regions in Mexico honor different things on each of the three days, with one day devoted to dead children, and one to adults. Children are honored on Dia de los Inocentes, Day of the Innocents, and Dia de lost Angelitos, Day of the Little Angels. November 2nd was reserved for Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead focusing on adults.

More recently, other nations such as Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia have their own versions of a Day of the Dead, borrowing from the Mexican culture. South American nations celebrate as well, especially their indigenous populations. One of the more unusual rituals comes from Bolivia and is celebrated on May 5th. The Dia de los Natitas, or Day of the Skulls, comes from an ancient practice of actually spending the day with the skeletal bones of the deceased relative. Nowadays, they just keep the skull around, decorating it with flowers and trinkets, and making offerings of cigarettes and alcohol to thank the dead for watching over and protecting family members.

In America, the three-day festival now welcomes those of all cultures and races, who take part in enjoying a different perspective of the dead. Instead of being terrorized by ghost, ghouls and demons, those involved choose to celebrate the ones who have come before us with color, music, food and festivities alongside more serious prayer and remembrance. Though most festivities occur in the Southwest, a region with a high Hispanic population, cities throughout the country take part in this unique mash-up of Mexican and American cultures that, although they retain their classic Aztec origins, change with the times to adapt to new celebrations that honor the dead and embrace activism, environmental awareness and community involvement.

Sadly, the Spanish conquest thought the customs surrounding Dia de Muertos as being barbaric and primitive, not understanding the dual nature of life and death, light and dark, male and female, and other nature-related elements that were such a powerful part of the worldview of older tribes and cultures. Because of that, we may never know all the traditions and symbols used to show respect to the dead, since many of them were probably suppressed by Catholic Church leaders, who probably threatened punishment upon the lowly pagans who continued to practice such rituals and festivities. But like the old Aztec and Meso-American myths, their traditions remain at the core of many holidays we Westerners now like to think we created and evolved.

The subject of death is remembered mainly here in America as a time to mourn and grieve, as in our many holidays devoted to those lost in war or terrorist attacks. But other cultures that retain more pagan roots, while grieving death (as we are all human), instead look upon it as one part of a cycle or a wheel that turns over and over again, just as the natural world is a wheel of planting, harvesting, and planting again. Because our ancestors were so in tune with the earth’s cycles, whether they be the phases of the moon, the shifting tides, the changing seasons or the growth of animals, plants and humans evolving towards death, they came to see each part of the cycle as something to be cherished, and not feared or dreaded. Without death, there cannot be room for new life. Without the change of seasons, there can be no renewal of plant life in the spring, and new harvests of crops in the fall. Everything was in tune and in perfect order and harmony.

The Dia de Muertos may be just a time to party and eat great food and wear crazy skull masks for many people. But to millions of others around the world, it is an acknowledgement of a critical part of the ever-spinning wheel of existence, and a way to thank those who came before us and were a part of that wheel.

—

Marie D. Jones is the author of several books about the paranormal, metaphysics, and cutting-edge science (many coauthored with Larry Flaxman), including PSIence, The Déjà vu Enigma, Destiny vs. Choice: The Scientific and Spiritual Evidence Behind Fate and Free Will,11:11 The Time Prompt Phenomenon and Mind Wars. She has appeared on more than 1,000 radio shows worldwide, and on television, most recently on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series. Her website is mariedjones.com.

Filed Under: Marie D Jones, The Outer Edge, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Day Of The Dead, Dia de Muertos, Marie D. Jones, Paranormal Braintrust

The Feral Phantom Nose-Biter of the Carolinas – Micah Hanks Reports

September 30, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Micah Hanks
Micah Hanks

The modern world, despite what is afforded us by science and discovery, is still very much a place of mystery. To the open-minded thinker, a world of possibility exists here, where, through logic and reason, we may be able to glean new ways of understanding the nature of the physical universe.

It has been this essential credo that, for nearly two decades now, has kept me passionate about the study of the unexplained. By the time I was in my early 20s, I was writing articles on the subject of mysteries, and though my skepticism has become more focused over the years, my fundamental curiosity about unusual things remains strong. Hence, I’ve often take my interests beyond the written page and have ventured into the field, investigating odd claims that include everything from purported sightings of unidentified animals, to stories about weird things seen in the sky that seem to defy logic.

One area of interest that I’ve been less involved with is that of purported “cattle mutilations,” though this isn’t to say I’ve never had a run-in with the phenomenon (as we’ll see shortly). Beginning during the middle 1970s, reports of cattle being found drained of blood, as well as having certain soft tissues around the mouth and other areas removed, began to make headlines. Subsequent concern over this mystery led to involvement by the FBI, who have made available a number of their documents about investigations into cattle mutilations at their website, www.FBI.gov. Perhaps most alarming had been that many alleged mutilations coincided with sightings of strange lights, and hence, many began to believe that the cattle mutilation phenomenon was somehow connected with reports of UFOs over the Americas at that time.

Researcher Christopher O’Brien pointed out to me a few years ago that one of the earliest incidents involving an apparent mutilation of livestock had actually involved a horse, rather than a cow. The incident in question occurred on September 9, 1967, when Mrs. Agnes King of Alamosa, Colorado, accompanied by her son Harry, discovered the body of their horse, Lady, who’s three years old at the time of death. Lady’s curious death possessed many of the familiar tropes of future mutilations, which included removal of the skin covering the horse’s head and upper neck, along with the removal of flesh. The Kings noted the presence of what appeared to be very precise incisions, which bore cuts along lines that seemed far too controlled to have been carried out by any animal. There was no blood, and during a later interview about the incident, Harry King would state that he had smelled a strong aroma at the site of Lady’s death, which he described as “medicinal.” Law enforcement could cite “no earthly causes” for the animal’s death, which led to speculation about popular sightings of UFOs at the time. Hence, Lady’s mysterious death, preceding more popular livestock mutilations and death by nearly a decade, nonetheless became the first to associate purported extraterrestrial activity with the phenomenon.

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Which brings us to my own experience with livestock mutilations. Several years ago, a news report on our local station here in Asheville, North Carolina, detailed a number of mysterious cattle deaths on a ranch in a neighboring county. Little was said about the cause of death, apart from the fact that law enforcement was investigating, and that a group of biologists, one of whom worked at the time with the Western North Carolina Nature Center, had been brought along to help determine whether the deaths might involve some kind of predator in the region.

Soon after the report had aired, I contacted a friend at the television news station, and asked if footage of the dead cattle was still available, to which I was told that the tapes had already been wiped (this was standard practice, I was told, and that the footage had not been removed for any “sinister” reasons). I then contacted the Sheriff’s Department for the county in question and inquired about their investigation, as well as the Western North Carolina Nature Center, hoping for any leads that might become available there.

Numerous queries with the aforementioned law enforcement group yielded no results. Then, within days of the initial news report on the cattle deaths, a statement was released by the department, which told a story that was almost as unusual as the initial animal deaths had been. According to law enforcement, a stakeout with the property owners over the course of three subsequent evenings led to the observation of a large, feral dog, which had been attacking the cattle late at night. The officers and property owners had allegedly observed this large dog latching onto the noses of the cattle, wrestling them to the ground and killing them in this way.

The explanation was patently absurd. No dog—feral or otherwise—would have slaughtered a cow in this way, let alone their being much possibility that such a method, had it been attempted, would have rendered a successful kill. Around this time, I was contacted by one of the biologists with the Nature Center here in town, who privately expressed some concerns to me about the case. For one, the individual (who asked not to be named) told me that the explanation involving the “nose-biting feral dog” was just as absurd as I had guessed. In order to verify this, I called a biology professor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville with whom I often corresponded around that time, who similarly expressed dismay at such a clumsy manner of killing. “A dog would never attack any kind of bovine in that way,” he told me.

However, the eerie part of the story had involved the other information provided by my contact with the Nature Center. “Micah, if I may candidly tell you something,” her email began. “There were some very peculiar incisions on the cattle we observed.” She further explained that the ears appeared to have been removed and that in her opinion, whatever the cause might have actually been, “these killings looked just like the kinds of cattle mutilations you’ve seen on the TV shows.”

There was never any clear resolution to the matter, at least as far as why area law enforcement had offered such an absurd explanation for the incident, and why this had seemingly gone unnoticed, apart from my private inquiries with the biologists at the local university and wildlife resource center named here.

Granted, there are any number of factors that might reside at the heart of this mystery. During my talk with Christopher O’Brien, he expressed his belief that the majority of these livestock deaths have an earthly cause, although he does feel that some of the mutilations could involve testing by government agencies (and yes, this sounds very conspiratorial), which might be aimed at offsetting outbreaks of such afflictions as the well known “Mad Cow Disease”, otherwise known as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and other similar conditions that are specific to livestock of this sort. The same general idea has been endorsed in the past by Colm Kelleher, a biochemist who has engaged in his own first-hand field investigation into cattle mutilations.

Sure, the “secret government testing” hypothesis may sound nutty to a few of us. Then again, is it any crazier than the idea of aliens abducting cattle, for purpose of carrying out their bizarre hybridization programs, as has been long supposed by much of the UFO community? Weighing our options, the secret government testing theory might make as much sense as any.

However, there was a peculiar historical thread that I found worthy of mention here too, as it relates to all of this. Absurd though the “nose-biting killer” theory had been in my own review of a cattle mutilation case local to my region, a similar solution involving a dog involved in highly unusual behavior had been attributed to a classic livestock mass-killing, which occurred in Ireland in 1874. Writing of the incident in his book Lo!, the late-great Charles Fort described the incident thusly:

“For about four months, in the year 1874, beginning upon January 8th, a killer was abroad, in Ireland. In Land and Water, March 7, 1874, a correspondent writes that he had heard of depredations by a wolf, in Ireland, where the last native wolf had been killed in the year 1712. According to him, a killer was running wild, in Cavan, slaying as many as 30 sheep in one night. There is another account, in Land and Water, March 28. Here, a correspondent writes that, in Cavan, sheep had been killed in a way that led to the belief that the marauder was not a dog. This correspondent knew of 42 instances, in three townlands, in which sheep had been similarly killed—throats cut and blood sucked, but no flesh eaten. The footprints were like a dog’s, but were long and narrow, and showed traces of strong claws. Then, in the issue of April 11th, of Land and Water, came the news that we have been expecting. The killer had been shot. It had been shot by Archdeacon Magenniss, at Lismoreville, and was only a large dog.”

Fort, in his typically skeptical manner, had thought little of the large dog explanation, apart from the contention that it was of utmost absurdity:

“This announcement ends the subject, in Land and Water. Almost anybody, anyway in the past, before suspiciousness against conventions had the development that it has today, reading these accounts down to the final one, would say—”Why, of course! It’s the way these stories always end up. Nothing to them.” But it is just the way these stories always end up that has kept me busy. Because of our experience with pseudo-endings of mysteries, or the mysterious shearing and bobbing and clipping of mysteries, I went more into this story that was said to be no longer mysterious. The large dog that was shot by the Archdeacon was sacrificed not in vain if its story shut up the minds of readers of Land and Water, and if it be desirable somewhere to shut up minds upon this earth.”

Fort’s response is hardly surprising. However, it is the similar willingness to except anything that might appear logical, so long it is of a prosaic nature, in response to the seemingly unnatural, which seems to remain constant. A large dog slitting the necks of sheep, and the subsequent exsanguination of their remains only sounds foolish, perhaps, when contrasted against the image which springs to mind as we read the description of a feral dog clinging forcibly to the snout of some poor bovine, and suffocating the poor thing.

In either instance, we may never know precisely what happened to the livestock whose lives were lost, but the death-dealers were probably not the dogs who took the blame. Recognizing this is not to endorse an “alien” theory, of course, though either attempt from such extremities of dogmatic “explanation” might be worthy of ridicule. Thus, the livestock killings, though perhaps greatly misunderstood on such ideological grounds, seem to remain mysterious nonetheless.

—

Micah Hanks is a writer, podcaster, and researcher whose interests include history, science, current events, cultural studies, technology, business, philosophy, unexplained phenomena, and ways the future of humankind may be influenced by science and innovation in the coming decades. With his writing, he has covered topics that include controversial themes such as artificial intelligence, government surveillance, unconventional aviation technologies, and the broadening of human knowledge through the reach of the Internet. Micah lives in the heart of Appalachia near Asheville, North Carolina, where he makes a living as a writer and musician. You can find his podcasts at GralienReport.com and his books at Amazon.com

Filed Under: Micah Hanks, Slider, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Cattle Mutilations, Jim Harold, Micah Hanks, Paranormal Braintrust

The Strange Saga Of The Sons Of Satan – Nick Redfern Writes

September 23, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Nick Redfern
Nick Redfern

Since at least 1967, reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – slaughtered in bizarre fashion.

Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone.
While the answers to the puzzle remain frustratingly outside of the public arena, theories abound. They include extraterrestrials, engaged in nightmarish experimentation of the genetic kind; military programs involving the testing of new bio-warfare weapons; and government agencies secretly monitoring the food-chain, fearful that something worse than “Mad Cow Disease” may have infected the U.S. cattle herd – and, possibly, as a result, the human population, too. Then, there is the matter of the Sons of Satan; a secret cult that engaged in the sacrifice of cattle to their lord and master, the Devil himself.

The story dates back to 1974 and an inmate of the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. The year had barely begun when one of the prisoners at Leavenworth – a man named A. Kenneth Bankston – penned a letter to a well-known UFO investigator, Jerome Clark. Bankston’s reasoning for contacting Clark was simple enough: one year earlier, in 1973, Clark wrote an article on the cattle mutilation puzzle for Fate magazine. So, Bankston was looking for someone with whom he could share his story – a story focused on the aforementioned Sons of Satan.

Given that the cattle mutilation hysteria was at its height in the mid-1970s, it’s not at all surprising that others, besides Clark, were also writing about the grisly mystery. One of them was Kevin D. Randle, a noted UFO authority. Randle’s article, “The Killer Cult Terrorizing Mid-America,” appeared in Saga, just shortly after Clark’s was published. Both men discussed the “cult” angle, which was gaining more and more interest.

Among those who was interested in the cattle mutilation problem – but who was not overly convinced that it had a connection to the UFO issue – was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, of the Center for UFO Studies. Hynek, at the time, was liaising with an agent of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms – Donald E. Flickinger – who had a personal interest in UFOs. Flickinger, when approached by Hynek, agreed to undertake an investigation into the cattle mutilation controversy. While Flickinger did not find any evidence suggestive of a UFO connection to the cattle killings, he did note that “a certain pattern existed” when it came to the nature of the attacks, the removal of organs, and the significant blood loss.

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When Jerome Clark heard of Flickinger’s studies, he provided the BATF agent with copies of A. Kenneth Bankston’s correspondence. Bankston’s story was as eye-opening as it was controversial. The Sons of Satan was a powerful, very well hidden group that had seemingly endless funding and manpower and was led by a mysterious character, only referred to as “Howard.” The secret group was determined to provoke “hell on earth.” And the sacrificial rites were a way to ensure that Satan would aid in the group’s efforts to create hellish mayhem.

U.S. authorities did not dismiss Bankston’s story. In fact, the exact opposite was the order of the day. Flickinger wasted no time in calling the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney’s Office. When the facts were outlined, the office agreed that an investigation should proceed – and proceed quickly. As a result, Bankston and another inmate, a man named Dan Dugan, who asserted he was a member of the Sons of Satan, were moved from Leavenworth to another prison. Whereas Leavenworth was a high-security facility, the situation at the new jail was far more relaxed.

Of course, one could make a very good case that Bankston and Dugan made the whole thing up, primarily as a means to make it appear they were trying to help clear up a very disturbing mystery – a mystery that the government dearly wanted clearing up. In other words, by helping the authorities, the pair hoped that as a “thank-you” they would be moved from the oppressive environment at Leavenworth – which is exactly what happened.

It must be said, however, that this does not mean the story of Bankston and Dugan was without merit. The story was detailed, plausible, and – as far as the police were concerned – was viewed as being far more likely than the sensationalized UFO explanation. Indeed, acting on the words of the two prisoners, law-enforcement officials approached numerous “Satanic cults” in the United States, including Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. Despite such approaches, the secret order of the Sons of Satan were never found or exposed. Today, the cattle mutilation mystery continues – and also remains steadfastly unresolved.

One of the most prolific Fortean writers on the planet, Nick Redfern is the author of many books, including Men in Black, Chupacabra Road Trip, and The Bigfoot Book.  His latest book is Nessie. He can be contacted at his blog, “World of Whatever,” at nickredfernfortean.blogspot.com

Filed Under: If Its Weird Its Here, Nick Redfern, Slider, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Cattle Mutilation, Jim Harold, Nick Redfern, Sons of Satan

Doomsday Cults: Why Do People Have End Times Obsessions and Apocalypse Dreams? – Marie D. Jones

September 19, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Marie D. Jones
Marie D. Jones

The band REM sang about the end of the world as we know it, and they felt fine. In fact, many people not only feel good about the world ending, but actually welcome it with open arms, often joining with others of like mind to predict, plan, and prepare for the demise of humanity and the extinction of existence. But why? Who in their right mind would want the world to come to a crashing halt, taking all of life with it?

Just recently, an end of the world prediction for July 29th went bust. A group calling itself End Times Prophecies predicted a solar flip, which would lead to an apocalyptic chain reaction ending all life. Never happened. Days later, another prophesized end was all over the place, courtesy of a YouTube psychic named T. Chase who warned the world of the apocalypse to come in the year 2017…complete with a giant alien spaceship invading earth, shooting out death rays upon humanity. Chase went on to predict that Jesus himself would lead an alien army in UFOs against Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, who will start the third world war. This alien army will stop us from extincting ourselves in a nuclear showdown.

Chase claims he gleaned this revelation from, well, the New Testament Book of Revelations (specifically chapter 19) and the teachings of Nostradamus. But fear not, because according to Chase, the alien-army of Christ will win and we will all be happy living under a one-government confederation (New World Order?)

These are not the first predictions of end times, and they certainly won’t be the last. Prophecies of the end go back probably as far as the beginning, when the first humans pondered their own mortalities and wondered how long their like would hold up against vicious animal predators, wicked natural disasters and marauding tribes. But to actually form a club, or a cult, with a leader whose sole purpose is to drive his or her members to their deaths in a pre-emptive bid on immortality? That’s more of a modern thing. Remember the followers of a man named Harold Camping? In May of 2011, the then 89-year-old self-claimed scriptures expert stated the world would end on the 11th day of that month. It didn’t. Yet he ended up making millions of dollars off of believers and those who had hopeful expectations of the end. You could say, end times predictions turn a good prophet, I mean, profit. Just ask all those who benefited off of the alleged Mayan Calendar end date of December 21, 2012. Or maybe I should shut up because I wrote a book about the entire shebang that did quite well (although in my defense I wrote about the mythologies and predictions and not that I thought they would come true. I never did!)

Doomsday cults, also known as Apocalyptic Cults, or End Times cults, usually have at their basis a fundamentalist religious belief system that focuses on the literal interpretations of symbolic and metaphorical texts. This unhealthy focus on the final destruction of earth leads some of them to mass suicides in an attempt to be taken elsewhere before the apocalypse occurs. Two such cults that made the international news were the Guyana/People’s Temple, led by Jim Jones, and Heaven’s Gate, led by Ti and Do, which occurred right in my own area. But before we get to them, a little more background into these cults in general.

There are two basic types of belief systems driving doomsday cults; apocalypticism and millenarianism. Apocalypticism suggests there will one day be an apocalypse that will end the world in a fiery global catastrophe, resulting in the end of civilization itself. Some groups believe they will be spared, or that if they commit mass suicide first, their souls will be taken to heaven before the rest of the wicked ones on Earth perish in agonizing suffering.

Apocalyptic end times cults often believe in a messiah and that their own leader is that messiah, following him or her blindly to their own deaths. The leader may instead claim to be a representation of God’s will on earth or an offspring of the messiah, but some are so arrogant as to claim that title for themselves. In fact, many Biblical scholars refer to Jesus Christ as a type of apocalyptic messiah prophesying the end of the world for the Jews and a final judgment day to be unleashed upon humanity. He was said to return on a cloud as the “son of man” and the divine judge during the end times spoken of in the Book of Revelation.

Millenarianism is a belief in a coming mass transformation of society by a specific event or catastrophe. This was a widespread force behind a lot of predictions surround the year 1000 A.D. and then again on 2000 A.D., or Y2K when religious sects and cults alike awaited doomsday, or at least utter technological breakdown that might lead to it. Christian millenarian cults await the Second Coming of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth and in Heaven that will free the oppressed and usurp the powerful status quo. Often this goal can turn to mass suicides or violent acts of terrorism, such as the acts of Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven’s Gate, The Manson Cult, The People’s Temple and the Branch Davidians (led by David Koresh). Other millenarian cults include the Cult of the Holy Spirit and The Living Church of God, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Cult of the Holy Spirit, Joachimites and the Lord’s Resistance Army.

There are some common tenets shared by these extremist cults.

  1. A charismatic leader who calls his/herself a God/Messiah/Messenger.
  2. A specific prophecy members must believe in and adhere to.
  3. A powerful and compelling argument for cult members being special and the chosen/saved.
  4. An exit strategy or plan should said prophecy not come true, or should the government crack down on them first.

When a prophecy doesn’t happen, the cult leaders are adept at deflecting criticism and coming up with a new end times date, usually admitting responsibility for misinterpreting a date or time during their “vision.” However, cults like Aum Shinrikyo go as far as to help bring about the very apocalypse they desire with acts of violent terrorism. This Japanese New Religious Movement founded in the mid-1980s by Shoko Asahara Aum, released the deadly gas, sarin, into the Tokyo subway system in 1995 and procured military grade weapons from Russia. Their leader was eventually sentenced to death for various criminal acts.

The term “doomsday cult” was first coined by John Lofland in a 1966 study of the Unification Church, titled “Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith,” which eventually became a book in 1966 published by Prentice-Hall. He examined methods of conversion of members, the charismatic characteristics of cult leaders and how members were kept from losing faith and straying outside of the cult.

His book was followed by numerous psychological studies asking why and how ordinary people could get sucked into something as crazy as a doomsday cult hell-bent on death and destruction. One such study, by Leon Festinger and his colleagues, later published in a book, “When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World,” found that people tended to turn to such cults and the concept of the world ending in their lifetime when their own lives were meaningless. They found a purpose and meaning in these cults, becoming a part of a group with a very specific outcome, and belonging made them feel special. This is the driving mechanism behind why most people, in general, join cults, but the promise of salvation amidst a coming extinction served as extra magnetic fodder for the lost souls looking for meaning.

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The study, and others like it, also found that even as some members would leave the cult if the proposed end times date came and went uneventfully, others would stick it out, perhaps because they had already given up so much, they felt they had nothing to lose awaiting a new end date. This would keep members from humiliation and embarrassment of having to face the fact that they gave up their lives…for nothing.

To many suicide cult members, the promise of eternal glory elsewhere was so strong they didn’t even wait for the end date. They took matters into their own hands and took their lives in a mass ritual to find glory and salvation elsewhere. Heaven’s Gate was a UFO millenarian group in San Diego, California, that was founded in the 1970s by two enigmatic humans; Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. They became known as Ti and Do, The Two, Bo and Peep and a variety of other names signifying their leadership and intergalactic connections. They taught their members to give up all material possessions and that the only way to “level up” and be free of all human and earthly attachments, which brought suffering, was to be ready to board the Mothership. The spaceship was trailing the comet Hale-Bopp and coming to take them to the “next level,” and doing so required 39 people to poison themselves to death. That’s how strong their belief was.

As the UK Daily Mail reported, “All but three of the bodies were arranged neatly on their beds with their faces and torsos covered with a purple cloth. Each body had a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets and along with packed luggage at their sides. They mixed Phenobarbital poison into applesauce or pudding and then washed it down with vodka. They then tied plastic bags on their heads to asphyxiate themselves and speed their deaths. The followers, age 26 to 72, killed themselves in three waves March 24, 25 and 26. The survivors always neatly arranged their dead comrades’ bodies before committing suicide themselves.”

In 1978, the charismatic church leader Jim Jones called for an act of “revolutionary suicide” at the Jonestown agricultural compound in Guyana, resulting in the deaths of over 900 people, a third of whom were children, who took poison-laced punch and died at the hands of a clearly psychotic man who thought he was a messiah. Many were said to not want to go along with the suicide but were forced to do so at gunpoint. The Jonestown Massacre would go down in history as the deadliest non-natural disaster in history, until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

In order to make people take their own lives, one must have a blend of a truly charismatic leader with so much charm and magnetism, people would follow him or her off a cliff, with a mission or purpose so compelling, that death by cliff would seem almost holy and sacred. Add to that a variety of mind control and brainwashing techniques such as coercive persuasion and intermittent reinforcement, and members don’t have much of a chance of leaving or even thinking clearly enough to contemplate it.

With complete control of their members’ minds and thoughts and behaviors, cult leaders can do anything, or make you do anything. Absolute devotion to a cult leader is equated with devotion to a deity or to God, and rules must and will be followed…or else. But the promise of salvation and being among the chosen few overrides the free will and instinct of people caught up in the fervor of end times proselytizing. Charles Manson had over 100 followers who hung on his every word…even committed murders for him. And he was nothing but a down on his luck musician who tapped into the emotions of the young and angry, the troubled and disillusioned. In them, he found his tribe and was able to manipulate them into believing in a coming race war that drove the violent acts of his most devoted followers. “Charlie,” as his cult members called him, is still in prison and gets thousands of “fan letters” every year from people who want to become a part of his “family.”

Sometimes, the government catches on and tries to stop a doomsday cult from bringing about doomsday…and yet bring it about anyway. Think of the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists Church, led by David Koresh, who went up against a coordinated siege by the FBI, ATF and Texas National Guard in 1993 that ended after fifty-one days in the fiery deaths of 82 members, including children. Koresh was also a musician, like Charlie Manson, who became a prophet and was accused of sexual abuse of young women followers, which led to the government investigation. The leaders of cults are not special people, but disillusioned people who come to believe they are special, and who have the ability to get others to believe the same.

In some cases, such as the followers of Elizabeth Clare Prophet and her Church Universal and Triumphant, founded in 1975, it was all about prepping – doing what was necessary to prepare for and survive a disaster such as nuclear war. In this case, Prophet encouraged the building of fall-out shelters in the late 1980s, anticipating a nuclear catastrophe that never came. She has since died.

The prepper movement, like the survivalists, plan for disaster and apocalypse, but with a bit more of a practical bent. Their mission is to be ready either by building bomb shelters or buying up tracts of land in remote areas to live off the grid, growing their own food, stockpiling guns or training in various survival and disaster prep methods. Without the religious obsession towards total Armageddon, preppers may go a tad overboard in the eyes of most of us, but to them, they are just being smart and getting ready for the inevitable government takeover, nuclear war, or clamp-down on Constitutional freedoms.

I belong to an organization called CERT – Community Emergency Response Teams. We are fully trained disaster responders under FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. I am trained in medical triage, disaster assessment, heavy lifting, urban and rural search and rescue, psychological trauma, crowd control, fire control, and a host of other things, including ham radio operations in an emergency. Does that make me a prepper? Sure it does. Does it make me a doomsday cultist? Nope. I am banking on a few disasters happening in my lifetime, and hope to be ready and able to respond…but I’m not waiting and hoping for full-on Armageddon.

I have too much to live for.

—

Marie D. Jones is the author of several books about the paranormal, metaphysics, and cutting-edge science (many coauthored with Larry Flaxman), including PSIence, The Déjà vu Enigma, Destiny vs. Choice: The Scientific and Spiritual Evidence Behind Fate and Free Will,11:11 The Time Prompt Phenomenon and Mind Wars. She has appeared on more than 1,000 radio shows worldwide, and on television, most recently on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series. Her website is mariedjones.com.

Filed Under: Marie D Jones, The Outer Edge, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: David Koresh, Doomsday cults, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Harold Camping, Heaven's Gate, Jim Harold, Jim Jones, John Lofland, Marie D. Jones, Marshall Applewhite, Paranormal Braintrust, T.Chase

The Strange Life of A Soviet Psychokinetic, Nina Kulagina – Ryan Sprague Writes

September 16, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

Ryan Sprague
Ryan Sprague

She was a mere fourteen years of age when she joined the Red Army. The Nazi regime was making its deadly presence in the siege of Leningrad, and along with her father and two siblings, Nina Kulagina was thrust into defending her town in freezing winter temperatures, meager rations of food, and very little electricity or heat keeping her and her fellow soldiers alive.

It was more than any young teenager should ever endure, but for Nina, she not only suffered through the nine hundred day siege but excelled in her regiment. She bravely served on the front line as the radio operator of a battle tank. Her endurance led her to climb the ranks, and she eventually became a senior sergeant. But the risk of her bravery and dedication to Russia would catch up to her when she would be seriously injured by artillery fire at the tail end of WWII.

She was left emotionally and physically scarred. Disabled, Nina lived a rather secluded life until she married and had children in the mid-1960s. But what exactly was Nina doing in the time between leaving the war and starting a family? Information is scant, but when she resurfaced, it was certainly in full force. And while her past was full of valor and intrigue, her future brought an entirely new reputation of the most mysterious kind.

Nina recalled, as a child, that her mother was able to move objects with her mind. This seemed impossible to Nina, but she would watch in awe as her mother focussed intently on household objects as they began to spin, drag, and even fly across the room. Many years later, when Nina realized that her motor skills had been hindered during the war, she wondered if this strange ability her mother possessed could be passed on to her. And as she would soon learn, it most definitely could.

For Nina, the objects began to move when she was angry. She had very little control over it. But slowly, she began to harness this ability, and would find herself in periods of deep meditation. Her mind would become crystal clear, and her focus on the object was at its prime. She would feel a sharp pain in her spine, and her vision would blur. This was when she knew that it was now time to move the object. And move it did. She began to harness this power and gained more control over it. Was this something to keep secret? Or was this something that could give her the confidence back that had been stripped of her since the end of the war? This was when she decided to come forward with her amazing abilities.

A noted physicist, V.F. Shvetz, came forward stating that he once observed Nina mentally projecting the letters A and O onto a sheet of photographic paper. She was also capable of transferring an outline of an image she was looking at onto photographic paper as well. These abilities often came with a harsh aftermath. Nina would suffer unexplained burn marks on her hands after demonstrating her powers, her clothes even catching on fire at one point. One European journalist even claimed that Nina had mentally caused a red patch of discomfort to appear on their arm after demonstrating a telekinetic test for them.

As time progressed, more people began to learn of this simple housewife’s fantastic gift. Word eventually spread to members behind the Iron Curtain, and Nina once again found herself in the tight grasp of the Red Army. The Cold War was heating up, and the American public would catch wind of several silent films where a middle-aged woman appeared to move objects on a table in front of her without touching them. These cryptic black-and-white films were allegedly made under controlled conditions by Soviet authorities and were observed closely by over forty scientists, including two Nobel laureates. All had examined Nina, and every single one of them confirmed that her telekinetic abilities were indeed genuine. However, many skeptics at the time believed these videos to be pure fabrication meant as propaganda to show the Russian superiority in right-brain functioning and the possibility of psychic ability control.

One of these curious videos showed a water-filled tank in which an egg was cracked open and poured into it. Using her abilities, Nina was able to separate the egg yolk from the white, spreading them to opposite ends of the tank, supposedly with nothing more than her mind. During this remarkable event, sensors placed on her body showed a highly elevated body temperature and heartbeat. Her electromagnetic field and brainwaves had also intensified to abnormal heights. As if separating the egg wasn’t enough, Nina was also able to meld it back together again with ease.

While this event was truly astounding, Nina would raise the psychic bar in March of 1970 when another video surfaced when she would use her powers not on inanimate objects, but on the heart of an actual creature. Curious if her psychic power could have an effect on cells, tissue and organs, a frog’s heart was placed into a tank filled with saline solution. Using a small amount of electrical current, the heart was kept beating. At this point, Nina was asked if she could change the pace of the heartbeat. Astonishingly, she was first able to make the heart beat faster, then slower, and finally she was able to make the heart completely stop. This came to a huge shock to all, and the Soviets wondered if this peculiar ability could be used on human beings. Could it, in essence, be one of the greatest weapons against an enemy attack? Fortunately, Nina admitted that her abilities couldn’t penetrate the cellular make-up of humans, fatiguing her greatly. It appeared as though the hearts of potential enemies would be safe.

While Nina’s abilities would make her a semi-celebrity, this also attracted the skeptical minds of many debunkers who believed it all to be a hoax. Many argued that the experiments conducted on her were not done in proper scientific conditions. Sleight-of-hand trickery, magnets, and hair-thin string were all culprits thought to be responsible for the objects being moved across tables and floors. Scrutiny over her abilities even caught the attention of well-known stage magician and scientific skeptic, James Randi. Randi backed up these claims that everything Nina was known for could easily have been fabricated and that absolutely none of her actual psychic powers were authentic.

As the tests continued, it became clear that Nina’s abilities were taking a serious toll on her health. Doctors who’d been monitoring her were concerned after several experiments caused her to lose weight, her heart beat would become irregular, and she would spend days in bed suffering severe exhaustion. It appeared that to perform these feats, Nina was somehow converting the matter of her own body into psychic energy. Other symptoms began to appear, including a complete loss of her taste buds, disturbed motor skills, and extreme pain in her extremities. During this deterioration of health, she also suffered a nervous breakdown in 1964 and was put under close observation in a local hospital. While recovering, it was said that she spent most of her time sewing. While this may seem innocent in nature, something strange caught several of her doctors’ attention. Nina was able to reach into a sewing basket, select a specific color of thread, and all without looking. Upon inquiring how she could choose a color without seeing it, she claimed that she could see the colors with her fingertips. This was yet another fantastic ability to add to the list.

The contention and skepticism by the scientific community began to eat away at Nina. She struggled merely to prove that her powers were real. The Soviets welcomed her determination, and would push her to the furthest limits. Unfortunately, this caught up with her when in the late 1970s, she suffered a near-fatal heart attack. It was a clear message to the scientists, doctors, and the military intelligence agencies to finally slow down and give Nina the space she rightfully deserved to recover in peace.

Nina would conduct personal experiments with private institutions for the next two decades, knowing that she couldn’t completely suppress these special abilities. No matter the intentions of the Red Army, she knew that her powers could also be used for good. Many claimed that by merely placing her hands on them, she could heal some ailments and wounds. While this could not be proven, it brought about a whole new level of potential for what Nina could truly do to benefit her country. She was watched very closely for the remainder of her life, never being able to escape the fame and burden of those who believed in her psychokinetic abilities and those who didn’t. This would haunt her until her death in 1990 at the age of 64.

The attention to Nina was not unjustified at the time as Russia was willing to explore any type of alternative warfare in the race to beat the Americans. Remote viewing and anomalous cognition were specific areas that they found of keen interest. While the Americans focussed on the nuclear arms and space race, Russia was digging deep into the mind to create the “psi race.” The Americans wouldn’t truly catch on and take this topic seriously until many years later.

In October of 1978, Maj. Edmund Thompson, then the Army’s top intelligence officer, ordered Intelligence and Security Command to look into Extrasensory Perception, and a Pentagon-wide program, known as Project Grill Flame was set into motion. Another program of note came in 1986, with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Project Sun Streak, in which psychic abilities were used to find the whereabouts of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi before American planes bombed the country. It was clear that there was potential for such extraordinary abilities in warfare, and thinking outside the box was a beneficial strategy. Could this all have been prompted by the exploitation of Nina’s abilities over in Russia? Did the so-called “propaganda films” actually have more of an impact than once thought? There’s no way of truly knowing, as there is also no way of knowing if her abilities were authentic or not, to begin with. But one thing was certain: the doors of psychic warfare had been opened, and it is doubtful that they will ever truly be closed as top secret black budget projects hide in every corner of both countries’ intelligence and defense agencies.

While the strange life of Nina Kulagina involved abilities that even today have yet to be proven authentic, it wasn’t the psychokinetic aspect of her life that would be most remembered. Even at her funeral, she was praised for her dedication and service to the army earlier in her life, being hailed as the “Hero of Leningrad.” She had fought for her life defending her people and her country, becoming a cultural icon for both soldiers and women everywhere. Whether the fringe-filled aspects to her story afterward hold any true merit will be debated by believers and skeptics alike for many years to come. But for Nina, it surely was a life worth living. And as this article, and many others may suggest, it is most certainly a story worth telling.

– – –

Ryan Sprague is a professional playwright & screenwriter in New York City. He is also an investigative journalist, focusing on the topic of UFOs. He is the author of the upcoming book, “Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon”, published by Richard Dolan Press. He is the co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast, Into the Fray, available on iTunes & Stitcher. His other work can be found at somewhereintheskies.com

Filed Under: Ryan Sprague, Slider, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: Jim Harold, Nina Kulaginia, psychokensis, Psychokinesis, Psychokinetic, Ryan Sprague, Soviet Psychokinetic, The Paranormal Braintrust

The Mystery Satellites – Micah Hanks

August 31, 2016 By The Paranormal Braintrust

MICAH HANKS REPORTS ON UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS IN EARTH’S ORBIT 

Micah Hanks
Micah Hanks

Humanity has a long history with reports of odd things seen in Earth’s skies. For decades, reports of unidentified flying objects have captured the public imagination, with particular emphasis on descriptions of things likened to “flying saucers”, and more recently, large, ominous triangle-shaped craft that occasionally plod their way through the night sky at fairly low altitudes.

Harkening back to the early days of modern UFOlogy, there were reports of other things, as well. Beginning in the early 1950s, astronomers began to detect a number of unusual satellites circling the Earth, some of which moved against the natural spin of the planet in a retrograde orbit.

Today, the observation of such satellites is quite commonplace, and on any clear night, one can step out into a field or other area relatively free from city lights, and observe any number of objects reflecting sunlight as they traverse the sky overhead. However, until the launch of Sputnik I by the Russian space agency in 1957, there were no artificial satellites believed to have been launched into orbit, let alone any rockets powerful enough to carry one into space. Despite this, a number of odd observations occurred in those early days of the Space Age, many of which remain unidentified to this day.

The mystery all seemed to have begun around 1954, with a number of newspapers that featured stories quoting UFO proponent Donald Keyhoe, who around that time had overheard that the U.S. Air Force was monitoring two mysterious satellites orbiting Earth. Granted, at the time there shouldn’t have existed any technology capable of launching such a satellite into orbit; some further assert that Keyhoe’s statements had merely been in support of a new UFO book he had published. This might seem plausible, if not for the fact that Keyhoe revisited the “mystery satellite” cases from the 1950s in 1973, with the publication of his book Aliens From Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, which examined in greater depth the various observations of mystery satellites. In other words, it seems unlikely that Keyhoe brought up or borrowed the notion of mystery satellites purely as a publicity stunt.

Long-time UFO researcher and NICAP member Fran Ridge is also one who has taken note of these odd reports, discussing them in a lengthy article last year at the NICAP website. “At first there were reports in the 1950’s,” he said, “followed by reports in 1960, and more recently the reports of a Dark Star Satellite.” This “Dark Star” Ridge refers to here is, of course, the infamous “Black Knight Satellite”, an object that has appeared in many NASA photos over the last few years. Many continue to assert that the object is something akin to a 13,000 year old alien “probe” placed in Earth orbit by extraterrestrials long ago, with intent of studying the proceedings of human evolution as it ensued below. However, much to the chagrin of its proponents as a “genuine” alien vessel, the object that is commonly referenced as evidence of a “Black Knight Satellite” is well known to have been identified as a discarded thermal blanket from one of NASA’s EVA missions.

According to space historian James Oberg, “There’s a long sequence of the slowly-tumbling
thermal cover, clearly the same object previously misidentified as the ‘Black Knight’ satellite. It’s viewed through a dirty window but the shape is unmistakably the same.”

“You can hear the inside crew speculating on whether the spacewalkers would have a chance to grab it if it floated back,’ he further noted in a PowerPoint presentation he features on his website, jamesoberg.com.

In defense of those who have looked at the unusual object and leapt to an “alien” conclusion, it does, at times, look far more strange that its identity would seem to suggest. In fact, some photos depict the object looking far too large to even qualify as being a “thermal blanket”; it should be noted, however, that a number of obviously photoshopped images of the blanket exist online, which have further given the object a disproportionate size, and thus bolstering the “alien satellite” theory.

Despite all of this, many continue to argue that a single, massive “Black Knight Satellite” does exist, which, if taken in the broader context of more legitimate accounts of mystery satellites, only does us injustice by attempting to unite all the various observations into a single phenomenon. While the solitary “Black Knight” remains easily debunkable, the same cannot be said for other mystery satellites that have been observed.

“What really spawned my interest in all this was the Lunascan Project’s detection of what my Lunascan team believes was an unidentified LUNAR orbiter in 1996,” Fran Ridge recalled last year in his overview of the mystery satellite phenomenon. Ridge co-wrote a paper with astronomer Lan Fleming about the 1996 incident, in which a strange object was noticed in an apparent orbit around the moon for a brief period in September of that year (I should further note here that, according to an aerospace engineer friend of mine, the object may be an asteroid, although he noted that it is “unlikely a manmade object in lunar orbit since such orbit, as [Ridge] correctly states, are unstable, if low.” My friend’s best guess was that the object was an elliptical satellite in Earth orbit, or possibly a balloon, which had been among the possible theories proposed by Ridge and Fleming in their paper).

“As I began to collect information on Earth orbiters,” Ridge continues, “some in the form of documentation, the findings began to take the shape of a more comprehensive and interesting paper, rather than what I had initially envisioned.” Indeed, there does appear to be some interesting data about observations of unidentified satellites that exists today; consider an Advanced Research Projects Agency (former name of DARPA) document available online, titled “DOPLOC Observations of Reflection Cross Sections of Satellites”, which was filed under BRL Memorandum Report N. 1330, in March 1961. The report discusses no less than fourteen “reflections” of unidentified satellite objects, which to this day appear to remain unexplained.

AlienThere are a variety of theories about what these “mystery satellites” observed during the 1950s and early 1960s could have been. One involves the “moonlet” theory, which describes asteroids or other objects too small to qualify as being an “actual” moon, but large enough to have been detected with monitoring equipment during the period in question.

Fran Ridge expresses dissatisfaction with the “moonlet” theory. “It was accepted as a legitimate statement back then,” he wrote last year, “but today we know better, much better. It was a preposterous explanation. For several asteroids or meteoroids to come in from space and just go into a low and safe controlled orbit IS ridiculous.”

“Even if there were moonlets out there,” Ridge says, “we would be hard pressed today to get them into a stable orbit and make missile launching bases from them.”

It seems that, while there may be a non-zero chance that such a “moonlet” phenomenon could exist, is is far from likely. What would allow some asteroids to enter Earth orbit, and merely coast along overhead, while others present the grave threat of being captured in Earth’s gravitational field, and thus plunge downward, with potentially grave consequences?

Whatever the strange mystery satellites were that astronomers were observing back in the 1950s, their origins remain as much a mystery today as they had been when they first appeared; perhaps we’ll never know precisely what had been drifting along overhead, back in those formative years leading up to our own entry into outer space.

—

Micah Hanks is a writer, podcaster, and researcher whose interests include history, science, current events, cultural studies, technology, business, philosophy, unexplained phenomena, and ways the future of humankind may be influenced by science and innovation in the coming decades. With his writing, he has covered topics that include controversial themes such as artificial intelligence, government surveillance, unconventional aviation technologies, and the broadening of human knowledge through the reach of the Internet. Micah lives in the heart of Appalachia near Asheville, North Carolina, where he makes a living as a writer and musician. You can find his podcasts at GralienReport.com and his books at Amazon.com

Filed Under: Micah Hanks, The Paranormal Braintrust Tagged With: James Oberg, Jim Harold, Micah Hanks, Mystery Satellites

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