Unusual Burial Options For Yourself

I can't help it. I have an evil sense of humor, so try and stick with me as we discuss the "grave" business (pun intended) of what to do with your carcass when you're gone. Some of the alternatives had me laughing and cringing as I discovered these really weird and interesting things to do with a dead body. There is no other approach to this bizarre subject than tongue in cheek...

MEMORABLE BURIALS

MUMMIFICATION: Summum Mummification of Transference says, “Gifted artisans design each Mummiform to exact specifications. The Mummiform and "life mask" can be designed to incorporate the symbology of any religious or philosophical belief that you may hold. Everything is created in exact accordance with your wishes, as set forth in your pre-need arrangement." The casket can then be put in the ground deep enough that the cold won’t bother your remains or triple casketed. The price, you ask? The current costs for Mummification services are $67,000* within the continental United States." (Personally, I'll only do this if my servants are buried with me).

VIKING FUNERAL: Of course, I’m frustrated that Viking funerals are outside the law. One woman wrote online asking about them since her husband wanted one. I laughed for a good 15 minutes when I read one person’s response in the chatroom, “you mean put in a raft and set afire? I think that can be done…” (somehow I envision this dude with a canister of kerosene and one of those Bic fireplace lighters waiting at the edge of a lake with a Walmart pool raft exchanging some crisp bills to “do the deed” while he downs a Budweiser).

GREEN FUNERAL: The rage nowadays and actually not a bad idea. Nixing the embalming and burying in bamboo and cardboard in a green hillside where the only markers are trees or bushes and no one would guess it’s a cemetery. (I just have one word for these places, "Poltergeist." I do recall a wonderful gem of a movie based on the idea of a subdivision being built where a cemetery was. Some Superstore is going to eye that plot of land and no one's going to remember it was a cemetery. What an excavation that'll be!)

FAMILY BURIAL: No, not burying your family with you! I wrote about this recently and it’s a creepy and not often talked about thing most often in rural areas (God, I hope so!) Folks are opting to design their own casket with their family members working on the artwork and having a solemn, quiet, peaceful send off with just the loved ones on a happy corner of the yard. You know, that place the family dog likes to bury his bones. (It's going to be Christmas for him every day!)

SPACE: Yeah, it’s the final frontier, but for some folks it’s the final resting place. I had to wonder (and thankfully the site for Celestis tells us) if we become space debris that falls to earth, because it would seriously suck if I were launched and then came back to kill my offspring. What really happens is not that you necessarily go into deep space and land on some happy planet and are revived like Spock in “Star Trek: Wrath of Khan.” This involves being in a rocket that orbits the earth until it finally fails and burns on reentry into a blazing glory. (Well, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s one fucking expensive and delayed cremation plan. You'd save money catapulting your urn into the night sky and hiring fireworks to be launched simultaneously.)

CRYOGENICS: Have your head lopped off and frozen indefinitely. Of course, that ain’t gonna get you a new body to attach to later on. (nor will it guarantee that in 2090, someone isn't going to throw the breakers on the old building before teardown and let you spoil...)

WAYS TO USE YOUR BODY AFTER DEATH:

ART: What if I want to donate my body to something worthy or even beautiful? Body Worlds (photo above) is a traveling show with real human displays. Your body fluids are replaced with a hardening polymer. (Jeez, aren't actresses in Hollywood already into this craze while alive?) Believe it or not, the waiting list is long, 6500 people wanting to donate themselves. (I think I'm a "piece of work," but not necessarily a "work of art." Besides, as much of an exhibitionist as I am, I don't see myself wanting to display my innerds, just my outards...)

RESEARCH: Donate your body through a local university. There’s no telling if you’re going to be used to understand disease or as a practical dissect for incoming med students, but you will be helping someone learn something and if you never did that in your lifetime, this may be your chance. (However, there's no telling what affectionate name the students will give you, so if that produces chills just thinking about it, move down the list to the next one...)

ORGANS: As well, you can donate your organs and honestly really should! My brother donated his organs and a woman in Greece was able to see again! Another person underwent heart valve surgery and survived. I am on the list and hope to keep myself healthy throughout life so they can still be salvageable when I'm say, 110 and decide to finally let go of them!

REEF: You couldn’t live underwater while alive, but when you die, you can join the building of a reef for sea life. At Great Burial Reef they turn you into a part of the reef (photo above): "Living ocean reef burials are performed individually and privately. After a brief dedication ceremony, the sealed burial reef is carefully lowered to the ocean floor by our crew. The precise GPS coordinates of the burial reef are recorded and provided to the family on a Certificate of Living Ocean Reef Burial." I actually really dig this idea—might consider it, (but if your family was a bunch of leaches, you might just be sick of others living off you, so perhaps not an ideal resting spot).

BECOME A TREE:  You can be put into a biodegradable urn with tree seed of your choice and be planted. 

No matter how they discard of your carcass, what really matters is what you do while you’re here. No one will remember you for your send-off unless they were joyously awaiting it (in which case you need to work on your social skills).

It truly does come down to ashes to ashes, dust to dust (well, unless you go mummy and then that's more like plump to dehydrated...)

Do It Yourself: Burying Your Own Family Members

I saw this documentary on instant watch on Netflix and it was fascinating. I was both horrified and very sad and also comforted at the same time. By the time it was done, my typical American fear of dead bodies and dealing with death was gone.

“A Family Undertaking: POV” is an amazing PBS documentary that shows how even today family members can and do opt to do a loving funeral themselves, sometimes involving the dying person in the details of their homemade casket and such. The process is watched with people who are dying and their funeral by their family members. It’s very intimate and very strange and surreal, but also in the end very loving and almost joyous.

As I will do for posts this month, the following is a list of movies that this subject might inspire you to watch - if you dare!

SAFETY COFFINS

In the Victorian era, a lot of hysterica abounded about being accidentally prematurely buried. Safety coffins were the rage with a bell attached to a string within the coffin so the buried person could ring it for rescue.

SUGGESTED MOVIES

The Premature Burial

Buried

The Mummy

Practical Magic

Cemetery Man

The Omen

Mortuary

One Dark Night

A Haunting in Connecticut

Phantasm

Poltergeist

Pet Cemetery

Haunted Attractions

Want to know what haunted attractions are happening in your area?

Look up your state in HauntWorld.  
You can also look up hay rides and corn mazes, pumpkin patches and real haunts. Wow! Love this site!

Here's the one Julie and I will do in October and report back about with photos and video -

The Crypt in Mesa, AZ
A theme of a cryptkeeper and restless spirits in the vault. It also includes the Asylum - with a mental hospital theme.

Are you lucky enough to be in New York? Here's one that sounds like my ideal - Headless Horseman Hay Rides and Haunted Houses This one in Ulster Park, NY promises this  "In 2013 guests travel on a one-mile hayride journey witnessing their futures unveiled as a fortune teller reads from a cursed deck of Tarot Cards. The haunted attractions also include: The Lunar Motel, Glutton's Slaughter House, The Root Cellar, Dark Harvest Corn Maze, Nightshade Greenhouse, Dr. Dark's Black Spider Sideshow, The Feeding, Dahlia Blood's Manor, and a magic/illusion side show. In addition, there are four food concessions, and Fear Gear, Magic Moon, Scareware and Witchy Women gift shops."


In Virginia? Consider Spotsylvania's Wicked Woods Haunted Forest. 
This includes a Murder Manor, Insanitarium Asylum, and Haunted Forest.

I admit I'm a freak for Sleepy Hollow and Haunted Forests, Abandoned sites themes.
I'm bored to tears by slasher/buzz saw/mental hospital themes.

Are you in Ontario in the Niagara Falls area? How about Haunt Manor
This offers 9 attractions in one location!

Julie and I plan to go to Schnepf Farms again this year, as we do every year to get our Autumn on. There will be weird videos, amazing photographs and sharing of the festival live online, as always.

 

Don't let the season pass without enjoying a bonfire, hiking a corn maze, enjoying a haunted attraction, staying in a haunted B&B, and getting your enjoyment out of the single best season of the entire year!

Dolls Are Creepy

http://mizerella.blogspot.com/2011/02/18-valley-of-dolls.html

Do We Have Collective Amnesia Of the Ancient Giants?

“The eyes of that extinct species of giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now.” Abraham Lincoln

Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian text) tells of the Annunaki who were said to be giants and part human/part god. 

"The Emim had dwelt there in times past, a people as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim. They were also regarded as giants [Hebrew rephaim], like the Anakim, but the Moabites call them Emim (Deuteronomy 2:10–11)." Bible

According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were red-haired band of cannibalistic giants.

According to Native Americans in the Ohio Valley area, the giants were here when the paleo-indians first entered the continent and this giant race was violent and evil. The Natives gathered forces to fight them off and kill off the last of them, so they believed.

New York Times May 4, 1912
First reported in the 4 May 1912 issue of the New York Times, the 18 skeletons found by the Peterson brothers on Lake Lawn Farm in southwest Wisconsin exhibited several strange and freakish features. Their heights ranged between seven and nine feet and their skulls "presumably those of men, are much larger than the heads of any race which inhabit America to-day."
Above the eye sockets, "the head slopes straight back and the nasal bones protrude far above the cheek bones. The jaw bones are long and pointed, bearing a minute resemblance to the head of the monkey. The teeth in the front of the jaw are regular molars."

"Before there were any humans on Pallene, the story goes that a battle was fought between the gods and the giants. Traces of the giants' demise continue to be seen to this day, whenever torrents swell with rain and excessive water breaks their banks and floods the fields. They say that even now in gullies and ravines the people discover bones of immeasurable enormity, like men's carcasses but far bigger."
--Greek historian Solinus, c. AD 200

"Throughout the length and breadth of central and far western New South wales, Aboriginal traditions speak of the Bulloo, or 'giant men and women', who they claim were 3m tall beings who wandered the land eating giant marsupials and other Australian ice-age 'megafauna' which they killed with large stone clubs and other giant-size implements.Further to the east, there dwelt the 'Jogungs' and 'Goolagahs', or 'giant hairy ones', tool making giant hominids sometimes confused with the Yowies, and who may, or may not have been related to the Bulloo."

The Norse had the Jǫtunn (Proto-Germanic *etunaz) might have the same root as "eat" (Proto-Germanic *etan) and accordingly had the original meaning of "glutton" or "man-eater", probably due to their enormous diet because of their size.

For the Basque people, Giants were reluctant to convert to Christianity who decide to stick to the old life style and customs in the forest. Sometimes they hold the secret of ancient techniques and wisdom unknown to the Christians, like in the legend of San Martin Txiki, while their most outstanding feature is their strength. It follows that in many legends all over the Basque territory the giants are held accountable for the creation of many stone formations, hills and ages-old megalithic structures (dolmens, etc.), with similar explanations provided in different spots. However, giants show different variants and forms, they are most frequently referred to as jentilak and mairuak, while as individuals they can be represented as Basajaun ('the lord of the forest').

Note: One has to wonder if perhaps nearly every indigenous culture upon the earth has stories of giants, giant skeletons have been found around the world, and even religious text has details about them, that perhaps it's because they had a collective knowledge we have lost, or perhaps we aren't willing to look at the present day evidence because it doesn't fit into our education or our belief systems....

Leaving Our Bodies: Astral Projection, Remote Viewing, Near-Death Experiences and Dreaming

Does the body carry the mind around or does the mind carry the body around?

We are more than just our physical limitations as a "solid object." We know this because every night we enter the dream world and during our work days we enter the daydream world. There are many ways in which our mind escapes the confines of our bodies and even travels distances and time.

Just as you're falling asleep, in that wonderfully blissful relaxed state, your entire body takes on a rushing sensation as if you are free falling; you startle, your body jumping, as you come awake with a protective reaction. You have just experienced something 70% of all people do at some point - a hypnic jerk.

The "Silver Cord" is a term used to explain a kind of psychic spiritual strand of light that holds our spirit to our body. When that cord is severed, we are fully dead, but those who experience NDEs feel a sense of separating from the body and then when returned to continue their physical life, they are snapped back into the body by this bungee-like silver cord that startles them, awakening them. Those who practice astral projection (the practice of having one's spiritual body leave their physical body), will tell you that they can always come back to their body because unless the body is dead, the cord is never severed.

In near-death experiences, the people undergoing them describe travel, out of the body, out of the room, down a tunnel, to other places. Those who perform purposeful out of body experiences during astral projection say it does not deal with time and space--it is immediate. Basically, this is a dream state.

In our sleep state, are we really traveling the world immediately in our astral form and, if so, are we sometimes interpreted as ghosts?

Here's a story that had me wondering. For some time, I was having dreams that had me waking up feeling completely exhausted the next day, as if I had traveled all night. The dreams were vague, but very busy and tiring mentally. I even woke up a few times, speaking a foreign language fluently. It shocked me to hear myself so easily speaking a foreign tongue.

I woke up late on a day off from a very detailed dream still vivid in my mind. I was in an apartment in Greece, speaking to a dark-haired woman with a dark-haired man standing behind her. She was leaning towards me speaking very slowly as she answered my question about where I would find the ruins in Athens.

When I awakened, I wondered if there was any reason I would be thinking about Greece. I recalled the night before I fell asleep, I was reading a blog from a wonderful psychic in Greece. Out of curiosity, I sent her a note, "did you have any weird visions lately?" Hours later, I got a message from her telling me that she had to take a moment and look up my blog to see my picture. She said, "It was you, wasn't it?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "You were in my apartment with me and my fiance. I am sorry if I sounded funny, but my English is rough at best and I spoke slowly so you could understand me." I blinked, mouth hanging open. I had visited her as I slept.

Sleep is an interesting and complex situation in which a person stops their daily life, lies down to hibernate in a situation that allows their body to be paralyzed so their mind can travel. But, is that travel internal or external? Do we haunt the earth during sleep in a sort of spirit form and interact with one another in the spiritual realm, as well as other entities that reside there 24/7? Is it a master design that we put our body into paralysis so the physical form stays put while the spiritual takes flight? Scientists can gauge brain activity during REM sleep (dream state), but does the mind launch the spirit?

It's come to my conclusion as a psychic and as a person who believes we can interact without physical contact, that there a way in which we exceed the borders of our body. We spend too much thinking about the human body as a vessel with boundaries and that we remain within that vessel. But, what if our boundaries extend beyond the body in an auric field? Or perhaps even astrally project? And, what of remote viewing, where people in one location can see another far away location in their minds?

Learn more about astral projection and remote viewing here -
Try testing your remote viewing abilities here -

Halloween Mood: Books, TV Shows, Movies

Tales From a Gas-Lit Graveyard
Assembled by an authority on vintage thrillers, these 17 Victorian-era stories of the macabre include works from around the world by both popular and lesser-known authors. Among the more celebrated contributors to this collection are Ambrose Bierce, Robert Barr, R. Murray Gilchrist, Mrs. H. H. Riddell, Richard Marsh, and Guy Boothby.

Ghost in the Mirror
Inside Ghost in the Mirror, Rule documents more than dozens of stories of paranormal apparitions that reveal themselves on the other side of the looking glass. Rule's painstaking archival research presents factual clues to each haunting, along with her own dramatic black-and-white photographs that capture the eerie unrest of the scenes she explores.

Servants of the Supernatural
"Servants of the Supernatural takes us on a joyously weird circuit of the Victorian obsession with the supernatural... Riotously enjoyable." Judith Flanders "Fascinating... brings to life the wonderfully flamboyant cheats and frauds of the 19th century medium trade... His tale stands beautifully as a reminder to choose one's beliefs carefully" Deborah Blum, author of Ghost Hunters "Lustrous... the heyday of the Victorian seance in all its table-trembling, tambourine-tapping glory." Word Magazine "[An] engrossing account of seances, mesmerism and mediums." Scotland on Sunday "The story of the Victorian obsession with seances, spirit writing, communing with the dead and all the showmanship that went with it...Melechi tells it well and wittily." Express

Cabin in the Woods 
Both functional and aesthetically pleasing, each home in this extensive collection was handpicked for its beauty as well as its creative use of recycled materials. The homes are profound statements of ingenuity that honors the abundance of nature. Often called objects of art, these homes are also filled with extraordinary rustic objects that complement their overall design. Recognizably the leading authority on rustic design, Kylloe presents each home in glorious photography that reveals the heart and sole of its materials and setting and the families who live there. He teaches us that the homes are not just structures; rather, they are living, breathing entities that help to make the world a better place.

The Fortune Telling Book
Filled with practical advice, gypsy folklore, and both ancient and modern divinations, this lavishly illustrated primer reveals the future to all those who believe and shows how to employ crystal balls, tea leaves, and playing cards to predict the future. Full color.

Poems Bewitched and Haunted 
A delightfully ghoulish array of specters and sorceresses, witches and ghosts, hags and apparitions haunt these pages–a literary parade of phantoms and shades to add to the revelry of All Hallow’s Eve.


Late Victorian Gothic Tales
The characters in Roger Luckhurst's excellent selection are variously assailed by mummies, bewitched by revived pagan goddesses, and doomed to inexorable decline by the misdeeds of their ancestors. Times Literary Supplement.

When the Ghost Screams
I do not know or pretend to know what happens when we die. Still, I hear the ghost scream. I hear the screaming and am compelled to write the stories of those whose lives were snatched away. They are the murder victims, the ones who roam restlessly. They are the headliners of this book. --Leslie Rule

Halloween
There are two aspects to this holiday, the ancient spiritual traditions and the fun and silliness. Someone may jump out and yell, "Boo!" but the shrieks of surprise and fear turn into shrieks of laughter. All of this is covered in Silver RavenWolf's book Halloween. Whether you are eight or one-hundred-and-eight, you're going to love this book. If you are interested in the spiritual and historic side of Halloween, you'll find the history and lore of the holiday in these pages, including how the modern traditions evolved from the ancient ones.  And if you're into fun, you'll find it here, too. There are all sorts of easy divinations to find out what the future will bring. You can do them with common items like a bowl of water or the pumpkin seeds from the jack-o'-lantern you carved. The book also gives recipes you can make, including Angel's Dreams and Wishes Pumpkin, Witches' Flying Mix and Sugar Snakes in Graveyard Dust. They're all tasty, easy-to-make, and delicious.  Also included are spells for doing Halloween magick. You'll find love spells and protection spells, house blessing spells, prosperity spells and many more. On a serious note, you'll see how there is a long tradition of honoring the departed on this night of the year. You'll be able to perform these rituals, too.  This is the most complete book ever on Halloween, and I think it is perfect of families and individuals alike.

Don't Go There! A Flash Horror Anthology
(by Sharon Day)
Got time for a short story? These short stories are timed! This 47,000 word book is an anthology of 16 short stories covering subjects from vampires to werewolves, clowns to gnomes, zombies to scarecrows, and so much more. Sharon Day takes the reader into some dark places the mind doesn't like to probe, some situations that are highly uncomfortable, and outcomes that were unexpected. Her love of atmosphere and mood and the desire to probe at the things we most fear has this writer satisfying your desire for dark tales. Each story starts with a short description, the word count and approximate reading time so that the reader can decide if there's time for a story while out and about or curling up in the evening before bedtime. As well, the author added bonus short stories telling real life tales of her experiences being in places alone where no one wants to be alone in the dark.

Growing Up With Ghosts
(by Sharon Day)
Popular blogger of “Ghost Hunting Theories,” paranormal investigator and author of several books including “Abandoned Places: Abandoned Memories (Desert Edition),” “Zombie Housewives of the Apocalypse,” “Zombie Housewives of the 1960s,” “Paranormal Geeks,” “Was That a Ghost?” and the upcoming “Growing Up With Ghosts.” Sharon grew up in an actively haunted home that was a Civil War Hospital for both the North and South during the war. That experience fueled her passion for all things unexplained. She is well known for her humor and her outside-the-box questioning of the popularly accepted and rarely questioned beliefs in the paranormal realm. Her driving forces are to help demystify the unexplained, turn magical thinking into scientific thinking, help clients to reframe their experiences in actively haunted homes, and make everyone question the old ways and seek theories and concepts that replace fear with wonder.

Paranormal Geeks
(by Sharon Day and Julie Ferguson)
“Paranormal Geeks” by Sharon Day and Julie Ferguson is an endearing homage to those of us who are into everything from UFOs to psychics, Bigfoot to ghosts, zombies to conspiracy theories. These two humorous paranormal bloggers interviewed dozens of paranormal geeks to find what made them PGs, their types, degrees, and ways they express it in their lifestyles and hobbies. There is a quiz to find out how much of a geek you are and a certificate to honor you in the end. The book also contains a large resources section to get your paranormal geek interests advanced to the next level. These authors take you on a magical journey into the minds of paranormal geeks and in the end remind us that we have found our large and varied tribe. As the authors like to remind us, “we outnumber the normal people.”

"Paranormal Geeks" is an overview of an underestimated American subculture. It's good to know I fit in somewhere, and maybe you do too. Take the quiz and find out. (Cliff Barackman, "Finding Bigfoot" show on Animal Planet)

"I used to hide my UFO books and articles when my friends would come to visit. I knew it wasn't "cool" to be into aliens and spaceships and I didn't want to explain to them for hours how much they didn't know. Certified GEEK. Finally, a book that represents all those hiding in the paranormal closet! (Ben Hansen, "Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files" Syfy Channel)





Movies to put you in the mood:
Halloween
The Fog
Dark Night of the Scarecrow
Trick R Treat
Boo
Night of the Demons
Night of the Living Dead
Sleepy Hollow
Phantasm
Pumpkinhead

TV:
Halloween Food Wars (Food TV)
31 Days of Halloween (Syfy Channel)
AMC Walking Dead Marathons (mid October)




PREVIOUS Shows:

Surprises From the Abandoned Trailer Park

I've been photographing this abandoned trailer park for several years, each time finding more and more of it gone. Originally other trailers and shed have long since been taken down and hauled away. Just one stubborn trailer remained and the other day, Julie (my co-author) and I found it collapsed. The trash items all around the desert were still strewn all over the place and this time a pack of dogs awaited us, wild ones.  Ironically, my son who did a film about the place while in college, had written a short story inspired about it of a man trapped in his trailer while the hounds of hell taunted him. That story went through my mind as we approached to photograph.

Vultures flew around overhead in silent circles.

As always, we ran into yet ANOTHER boat in the desert -

And the trailer was rather fascinating -

It gets even odder that we felt compelled to go see the place, feeling like it might be gone. And, it was definitely collapsed on its last leg. As well, the night before we were looking online for a bowl to use on our book signing table to fill with bookmarks and such, and we were trying to find a bowl held up by ghosts. We thought maybe at the trash site, we'd find an old hubcap that might be interesting to use, but as I stood in a spot I stood in a dozen other times, I looked down and almost missed sitting right on the desert floor, a glass bowl held up by a ghost.

Now, that gave us goosebumps!

A Giant Secret: Do Not Trust Educational Institutions About Man's Past

We have been taught an education through educational institutions, religious institutions and even the government that is false. It's a history that is biased, that is at times downright rearranged and rewritten to fit their purposes. Always question the inconsistencies in your education and don't ever hold these institutions to be beyond free will and individual thought.

Reconstruction the Giant Skeleton rediscovered in Loja in Ecuador 19 October 2012. Filed under: Anomalies (Source: Global333) in the province of Loja, in the South of the Ecuador and the Peru border, residents remember hearing long ago in the beautiful valleys in this province were reportedly discovered skeletons very similar to those of humans, but of an incredible size.













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Employing Critical Thinking

Belief is a powerful thing and it colors how we explain things in the world. If someone loses a loved one and believes in God's Will, he believes this was the person's time. One who believes in random acts of living believes it was just plain old bad luck and timing.  Same evidence (death of a loved one) interpreted two very different ways.

We can believe in Bigfoot, aliens and UFOs or ghosts, but when that explains evidence to us, then we are not employing critical thinking. A sound in a reportedly haunted location does not a ghost make. It makes a sound. A sound is not evidence of anything except a physical dynamic creating an audible outcome.

Someone recently shared a video of a reported Bigfoot. Besides the very contrived setting of the filming, all that was seen was a glimpse of something that looked hairy, moving out of frame within seconds. There were no details.  Someone in the BF community insisted it was legit because the witness was well respected. But, witness and evidence have to be separated because if you believe in someone, you now have a colored explanation when they tell you what they saw (remember how belief can create your interpretations?). This witness had only a tiny fraction of a moment of something with hair in the distance on film. But, he said it was a Bigfoot and a researcher believed the witness, so accepted what he was telling him. This was not film of a Bigfoot. It was film of something nondescript and hairy moving deep in the woods. With that moment in time long gone, we cannot ever prove that the hairy thing was a Bigfoot.

Employing your critical thinking is essential because if the context is ghost hunting or Bigfoot hunting and you see something or hear something you don't have a ready explanation for it, it's easy to attribute it to the context - searching for the unexplained. But, evidence is a murky thing. It rarely shows itself so blatantly as, say, the Patterson-Gimlin film, and so you're left with either someone's word on something coloring how you view the evidence or you have evidence that is incomplete and you cannot say one way or the other what it is. 

It's important that we separate belief in a subject from belief in the particular evidence being presented.  We can have belief and yet still be critical of evidence. That is the sign of a thorough investigator.

We all know someone who thinks everything is a ghost and everything is a Bigfoot. There pages on Facebook devoted to "find the Squatch" blobsquatches where a person goes into the woods and every single time, comes back, uploads their photos, and see a BF in every shot. To them, they are clear and obvious and to others who frown and study them, they are hopes and wishes.

I find the easiest way to employ critical thinking is to ask myself to describe to myself what I am seeing without giving it a name or conclusion.

"I see something that appears to have fur, nondescript shape, and is moving out of frame." This is only the absolutely logical description without any belief or interpretation. A wrong way of employing this would be, "I see a Bigfoot moving away from the camera." That is the belief coloring in the things that are not actually seen on the film.

Evidence is a very difficult thing to wrangle up in the para-field and nearly impossible to get evidence that is quite clear, quite obvious and not explainable by means of hoaxing. This is why evidence cannot ever be proof. We may be asked to make these assumptions in a court of law, but a moment in time in which a crime occurs does not always yield enough documentation of evidence to prove clearly. However, in a field that hopes to take para-experiences into the recognized science, video that can be hoaxed and audio that can be misunderstood cannot do it.

Each researcher must decide what evidence they find compelling, but reserve the right to dismiss that which does not hold enough substance to be relevant.

Prophetic Dreams

You dream that your uncle dies. The next day, you get a call from your aunt; your uncle died. You go to sleep and during the night you dream about the house shaking. You wake up in the morning, stumble into the living room, turn on the news and find out a big earthquake hit in Guatemala.

Even people who do not consider themselves psychic, at some point in the lives, have a dream of some impending calamity. My son, a few days before Billy Mays the TV pitch-man passed away, said he had a dream that Billy Mays died under questionable means. He woke up feeling sad that it had happened until he realized, the man was still alive. Days later, when Billy Mays passed under questionable means, my son shook his head. "I don't want that skill."

Understandably, those who rarely have prophetic dreams are uncomfortable with these events. But, those of us who have had many over many years, have to learn a new attitude about this ability to see briefly into an event that, to us feels as if it is already fact, even when it has not physically occurred yet in this realm. My first airplane disaster dream I recall having was in the 1980s. It was a Hawaiian bound flight that blew a hole out of it and a flight attendant was sucked out of it. In my dream, was I was flying without a plane, but flying on the copilot's side of the plane, about evening with the tail section, perhaps 500 feet away from the plane. A huge hole blew out behind the cockpit and a female flight attendant came flying out.

I woke up, feeling unsettled and creeped out, but was going to go about my day until I heard on the news this very accident. I had to sit down. I wasn't sure what to make of this insight. I hoped it was a fluke.

The "fluke" kept happening to me, earthquakes, helicopter and plane crashes mostly. In each dream, I was a passenger on the plane, a silent witness. The way I learned to know it was a premonition dream was that if I spoke to anyone, they did not see or hear me or address me during the flight. The plane blew up, crashed, was hijacked, came down and I followed the scenario the whole way. I learned over the years that this premonition happened within 48 hours of the actual incident and I also learned to not get emotionally involved because I knew I was there, but only to see it, not to physically be harmed.

One of my latest ones was a new one for me. I dreamed there was a meteor coming to hit the earth and I told people and they said, "Oh, we know about that, it's nothing." I thought "don't you realize this is going to hit???" I was exasperated. I told a friend about the dream and he said, "Oh, that's the asteroid. It's coming near earth, but gonna miss us." And it did. But, a meteor did hit that no one saw coming.

Someone asked me one time, "don't you feel guilty when you have these dreams?" I look at it this way, I'm nobody. Who is going to stop all flights because I had a dream? There is a destiny in the universe that will occur and we will all know about it when it physically happens. I simply know it a bit ahead of time. It's as if I can time travel in a way. I can't stop these things from happening, but this perspective of knowing them ahead of time has taught me much about the truth of time and events -  they are man-made concepts.

Everything that has been and will be is simultaneous, dimensions share the same space, and upon occasion, when conditions are just right - we tap into the universal knowledge, some would call Akashic Records others channeling, and still others would call it time traveling or psychic prophecy.

Tonight on Paranormal Geeks Radio

 

Tonight's show is going to rock! We have on a dream specialist - 

Dr. Gillian Holloway has been on the faculty of Marylhurst University for 20 years. Her work with dream research is known internationally and she is the author of four books on discovering meaning in our dreams. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times Health Blog, magazines such as Shape, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Self and Women's World. She is a veteran of over 500 radio and television interviews including Coast to Coast a.m. and ABC's 20/20.

9 pm EST/8 PM Central/6 pm Pacific

Paranormal Geeks Radio 

Black-Eyed Children Halloween Decor

This fun project was very cheap to make and yet had a very creepy effect.  It cost about $45 for this 30 x 44 inch large mirror that looks old and worn and has semi-translucent black-eyed children peering out.

One 30 x 44 inch glass picture frame from Goodwill only 24.99
2 cans of looking glass spray paint by Krylon
1 container black acrylic paint
1 container crackle medium
1 container ivory paint
printer paper

Print life-sized photos of Victorian kids in black and white (eyes blacked out)
Cut them out, glue with mod podge glue them to glass.
Wet your fingers and rub some of the paper away from the ink along the edges to soften the "cut-out" effect.
Spray the back of the glass (back of the pictures too) with looking glass paint. Don't worry about making it too perfectly even because you can create an aged glass look out of imperfections.
Paint picture frame black. Let dry.
Paint with crackle medium. Let dry.
Top coat frame with ivory paint and it will crackle in minutes.
Put glass back into frame.
Hang. 








Utilizing the Black-Eyed Children theme, consider making some in your window looking out at Trick-Or-Treaters.

Print the children out above in life-sized dimensions. Cut out entire eye shape. Tape black paper behind the eyes. Attach to front window of house.  On Halloween night, place a spot light or glow sticks outside the window to show them off.

Creepy baby doll mask; just add sheer black nylon hose behind eye holes.

Human Animal Hybrids?

Creepy, morbid, and rather thought-provoking concepts.

Designing Creepy Gardens

I am more obsessed with the outside of the home than the inside and I also love gothic atmosphere. There are a lot of wonderful ways to add creepiness, mystery, magic and frights to a garden.

You might want to begin with wrought iron. Nothing says cemetery, Victorian Era, and Gothic better than wrought iron fencing, gates, furnishings, and details.

Think in terms of hidden spaces and overgrowth, shadows and structures. Cryptic-that's critical for spookiness. It's what you can't see, what you have to meander to find, what you have to poke around in to discover that keeps the mind uneasy.

Architectural details can give a very spooky feel, especially if they are worn, broken, and look like you stole them from an ancient church.

The last thing you want to do is something neat and modern. Look at how the stone is broken as if it were ancient and yet left there in place as if no one had tended to it in centuries. Let vines grow up. Use brick for the ground that is beaten down on the edges and old looking. Let moss take over. Allow paths get to hidden and limbs to block off quiet areas. Add bird baths and gazing balls, fairy houses and even scarecrows.

Broken glass windows, aged shutters, finds from abandoned sites all help to make creepy factor, including a tiny little shed made from old boards and found things that makes one wonder at its origins and age -

Sometimes, adding magic to a garden is enough to make it mysterious. Tree faces, sculpture, boxwood mazes, arbors, vines and even labyrinths can give character and beauty, as well as unsettling creepy qualities.

Gnomes are freaky garden inhabitants, but what if you put in a lot of them in a grouping?

Lighting is critical for a creepy garden, whether it's a fire pit, chains of tiny Christmas lights, Wrought iron lanterns, or solar lights shaped like old-fashioned gas lamps.

Think in terms of sound, as well. Windchimes can add a magical life to a garden that makes it seem like a sentient, moving, changing being. I was filming an abandoned site one time and a sheet of rusted metal hung from an eave by a single bolt and the wind made it swing and creak. The sound was chilling. Very nice touch to hide in a garden somewhere.

Bamboo windchimes have a mystical spiritual sound to them, but the large metal long tubes like the ones above create a very churchyard sound that is compelling.

Other elements to consider adding are angel statues and other statues that look cemetery in origin, gargoyles, sculpted bushes, Green Man, as well as stained glass.

A catalog that might inspire is Design Toscano.

Here are some things I employed in my garden in the past when I was married and lived in a house.  -

Giant hand-made windchime

Mock cemetery in the corner with lanterns.

I made some styrofoam "orbs" by fishing string in the garden as a nod to my ghost hunting -- ironically, a poser orb showed up in the pic. Hee hee

Scarecrow

Totem.

Deciding a theme is a great way to go.  Magic? How about Green Man, fairies, gnomes and symbols? Medieval Gothic?  Windows, doors, stained glass, worn stone, and gargoyles. Horror? How about a chicken wire ghost or a few ghost figures for the garden?

A garden zombie crawling out of the ground.

Let the features of the land speak to you and don't be afraid to remember to let plants go wild, think vertical and horizontal, lighting, sound, and cryptic features. Gardening should reflect the homeowner and paranormal geeks seriously need a nod to their varied obsessions.