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Showing posts from 2017

I've got the feeling!

"In the 2013 science-fiction thriller  Gravity , Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut who gets stranded in a capsule in space following a catastrophe in which she is the apparent lone survivor.                                                                                                                                           Cold, frightened, and alone, she resigns herself to her fate and shuts down the cabin's oxygen supply to commit  suicide . As she begins to lose consciousness, she is visited ( or is she? ) by her fellow astronaut, played by George Clooney, whom she believed to be dead. He gives her a pep talk and a survival plan—and then he leaves.                                She eventually realizes that Clooney’s visit did not really happen, but the experience still gives her the strength to continue on. By following "his" plan, she is able to survive what seemed to be a hopeless situation.  The movie was science fiction, but the encounter th

Look into my eyes!

Have you ever seen those shows on TV or been at a Club or function where a stage hypnotist has a row of people in a sleep state and can make them do weird things for our hysterical enjoyment? They dance on command, bark like a dog, go screaming down the aisle. So cool right? To think that the mind can be manipulated so easily. Now that's scary. But not all of us can be hypnotised. Because, in the end, if we say we cant be hypnotised - we are right. You can really only be successfully hypnotised if you agree to be so. So all of those barking dog people have got to say they are happy to do so on subconscious level. All of those poor bastards appearing on stage have given their permission for the hypnotist to play with their minds. And there is usually a process whereby those not as easily put under the influence of the hypnotist are weeded out - as, of course, the deeper you go and easier and quicker, the better the stage spectacle. But where did all of this sta

Should we make things up just to make a better story?

I've had a few things happen to me this week. All of them centering about the telling of  porky pies to keep likers and followers or losing people because I am too 'beige', not exciting enough! This has had me thinking whether some people really care to hear the truth any more? Does it matter if there is a good story to be told? Maybe not - but when you are working on behalf of a site who has their integrity to look out for it matters greatly. Story telling is an integral part of a ghost tour. All stories get embellished over time - even just a little. But to tell untruths can hurt a site's historical base, integrity and the site can turn around to a tour provider like myself and say "What the hell are you doing?" Ghost tours do need a bit of spookiness for sure. Most sites also have great urban legends. There are also stories that can be passed down from one generation to the next ( with slight variations). Often urban legends have some an

How hard can it be to open up the Senses?

Have you ever found yourself in a room or space where there is a lot of background noise and someone is trying to tell you something but you cannot hear them? You start to strain and usually you step closer to the person. You may put your head to the side so that one ear in nearer their mouth so that you can filter out the other noises and hear what your friend is saying to  you. Or you may start to look intently at their mouth and attempt a bit of lip reading. Most of the time you just get frustrated offer up some sign language that translates to "I can't hear you!" That's a little bit like trying to hear spirit talking. In a world of constant chatter you try to filter out the noise until you can hook into one voice. Now sometimes that voice is nice and loud. Sometimes its so quiet you can hardly hear it even if the whole world stood still. Most often its just another one of the background noises that blend into all the others. Unless you train y

I can see a demon in that piece of toast!

We have all had that moment when we think we see a face in a picture that should not be there. We see shapes in clouds. We see shapes and faces in all sorts of images. We are programmed to see faces from the time we are a baby in our mother's arms. Making sure we know who we are being cuddled by is an important baby thing! Our eyes scan and look for what is familar. If we don't see mum - we cry. Our brains still do that when we get older. We still try and make sense from random shapes. Plenty of ghost hunters do it too. And often they do not use their logic in doing so. Something looks like a face and we will often read it as one before we actually go - oh! no it's actually not. Its just a shadow, or some reflected light falling on a shiny surface. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data. Some common examples are seeing a likeness of Jesus in a piece of toast or Mary in a railing in Sydney

Questioning the good and the bad - COLD READINGS

I have been doing some study lately of topics that can influence people to make their minds up about what they think they may be seeing, hearing and feeling. Its a bit of parapsychology. But its bought up questions about what sways people when having a psychic reading or seeing a medium. And always when I feel I am swaying to the side of 'believing' and not questioning enough I try and take myself out of the loop of ignorance as I would call it. As I grown and experience more - I feel there is a need to ground in more questioning of everything. I went to see a psychic recently - I don't do this often and I wont go into who or where. That's not the point of this. When a psychic or medium works in front of a crowd they have risen to a point where they believe in what they are seeing and saying. They must - as they have to be strong enough to deliver their message confidently. Most of the people that come to see a psychic or medium are there with great expecta

Those Crazy Poltergeists!

Poltergeists! What are they - are they real? What creates the activity? As with all ghost stories - each incident reported is different and individual. Do your reading and form your own conclusions. If you are after being there when it happens. Good luck - you have to be there at the right place at the right time or be intimately involved with the 'polt' you may have to be the focus or close to the focus of activity. Some  people only know what they have seen in the movies. Of course we all know that what you see in the movies is factual ! Right? The word 'poltergeist' is a German word meaning noisy ghost and depending on what information you wish to believe, some will tell you that there is no ghost attached to poltergeist activity as it is really the name given to the activity itself not that which is responsible for the activity. The theory is that there is a main instigator, a focus - one with a heart beat, and usually a boy or girl in the teenage age

Chasing the Ghosts of Scotland/England 2017

Flying is a little like going into labour. Its frightening. Its painful, unless you use drugs. And..once its over your brain blocks it out because you are likely never to do it again  - and you REALLY don't want to remember what it was like the last time you did it. So..after a 14 hour long haul to Dubai and then a 7 hour stretch to Birmingham we landed with a sigh of relief to be finally extricated from the sounds of children wailing, as if they were being scalded in boiling water, and the constant drone of freezing air conditioning in the plane which saw me wrap myself cocoon like in three airline blankets to raise my temperature  back enough to allow for blood flow. The 360 Airbus is huge and I rather not think about how the f**k they get it to stay up in the air. The food was not news worthy. It's worth the 24 hours of being curled up like a centipede, that has had its life threatened, to now be looking out of a window onto a sunny sky and the knowledge that my ad

A Haunted Life - chasing my own ghosts

Today is my birthday. I am 59 years old. I am proud to have reached this milestone with my sanity mostly intact. There where certainly times when I thought I had lost it completely and my own silliness led me down pathways that I regret, in hindsight. But...this path is what it is. It has been filled with ghosts. Mostly of my choosing. Strange, that most haunted people will tell you that they would wish otherwise. They long for their nightmares to just go away. Yet I have spent my life trying to work out who these energies are and why they have been around steadily pushing me in one direction as I mostly screamed and pushed in another. The ghosts I have struggled with most are remnants of the terrors I inherited from my parents. They are the manifestations of fear so deeply ingrained into their psyches through a war they barely survived which then became my nightmares. These creatures, so awful and so dark, plagued my mind as a child, becoming so real that I

Chasing the Ghosts of Aradale Lunatic Asylum - Victoria

I have just returned from a weekend in Aradale, Victoria. Aradale is about 2 hours drive from Melbourne and about an hour from Ballarat. Its a small township - and very pretty. It has a small main street, an RSL and a McDonalds. But...more importantly, it has one thing that has drawn ghost hunters to the township for many years. ARADALE MENTAL ASYLUM. Aradale Asylum was an Australian psychiatric hospital, located in Ararat, a rural city in Victoria, Australia. Now a ghost "town", Aradale was once known as the Ararat Lunatic Asylum. Aradale and its two sister asylums at Kew and Beechworth were commissioned to accommodate the growing number of "lunatics" in the colony of Victoria. Construction began in 1860 and was opened for patients in 1865. It was closed as an asylum in 1998.  At its height, Aradale had up to 900 patients yearly and is a large complex with up to 70 interesting historic abandoned buildings. https://www.aradale.com.au/aradale.ht