The Midnight Train Podcast

The Honolulu Strangler (He Totally Did It.)

Today we're taking the train to a land of paradise. Warm climate, great surf, beautiful women, and…. the Honolulu Strangler? That's right we're taking a trip to Hawaii and the land of unsolved murders. You know how we like our unsolved crimes here at the midnight train! So without further ado… Let's get into what we do know about the case and see if we can solve it like we do with so many other things. 

 

So the Honolulu Strangler was a serial killer who was active between 1985-1986. He tortured and killed 5 women. The five victims were found with their hands bound behind their backs, sexually assaulted and strangled. The strangler’s victims ranged in ages between 17 and 36 and came from different walks of life. The police had several suspects including one that… Well… is most likely the killer but… You know, the police let him go. Well get to him in a bit. First we are going to discuss the victims and then the few suspects they had. There's not a huge amount of information out there. Every source has the same information so we'll give you what we have found. 

 

 Let's start with the victims. 

 

The first victim was Vicki Gail Purdy. She was an attractive, petite 25 year old blonde who was a transplant from North Carolina. She lived in Miliani with her husband Gary. Gary was stationed in Hawaii as a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army. Vicki worked at the Wahiawa Video Rental store, which was a point of contention between her and Gary. Gary Purdy had long objected to his wife’s place of work, for the video store was known to sell pornographic films. The police found that Vicki liked to go dancing at clubs with her friends. On May 29 Vicki went to a club with a couple friends in Waikiki. Gary was expecting her back around 9. When she did not return home Gary started to page Vicki and continued to page her throughout the night. For you young kids out there, a pager is what you used to get ahold of someone before there were cell phones. You'd get a page and then you'd have to find this thing called a pay phone to call the number back. A PayPhone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with pre-payment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card.… It was nuts! At any rate… the next morning Gary finds his wife's car in the parking lot of the Shorebird Hotel. Police were contacted by a cab driver who said he had dropped Vicki off there the night before sometime around midnight. Vicki's body was found the morning of may 30th on an embankment near Keehi Lagoon. She was found with her hands tied behind her back. She had been raped, then strangled, and then killed. At first the police checked out any possible connection to the video store. On top of Gary not liking her working there, the store had a bit of a reputation already. In December of 1984, two women, a worker and the co-owner of the store, were stabbed to death at the store. Police initially took the angle that a porn obsessed man had stalked and killed Vicki. After investigation though police could find no link to the video store and the crime. They were back to square one. Her husband, Gary Purdy was a chief warrant officer with the 24th Aviation Battalion. At six feet tall and 165 pounds, he could obviously handle his own. He told media Purdy she had once “knocked the —- out of me” during an argument. He believed it would have taken two people to nab her. 

 

Victim number two was 17 year old Regina Sakamoto. Regina was petite like Vicki, but moreso. She was only 4'11" and weighed only 105lbs. Also like Vicki, Regina was a transplant. She was originally from Kansas. People said Regina was a shy quiet girl who had planned on attending college in Hawaii in the fall. Regina's father was a military serviceman stationed in Hawaii. On January 14,1986 Regina spoke with her boyfriend at around 7:15am. She had told him that she would be late as she was not catching her usual bus. She would be missing for about a month after this. In February her body was found. She had been bound with her hands behind her back, raped and strangled just like Vicki. Oh and she was found near Keehi Lagoon as well… Same as Vicki. 

  After the discovery of Regina's body, homicide detectives became convinced they had a serial killer on their hands. Due to the fact that both women were found with their hands tied behind their backs, both had been raped, and both had been strangled, police surmised the cases were linked. Add to that they were both found in the same area, and it was all but assured.  The Keehi Lagoon area was part of an urban beach park. There was ready access to the ocean and it was dotted with tiny islands. It was fairly secluded and made for a good dumping ground for the killer. 

 

Two weeks after Regina Sakamoto disappeared, but before her body was found, the killer struck again. This time it was 21 year old Denise Hughes that was the victim. Denise was a native of Washington state. Like Regina, she was also used to using the bus system and regularly took the bus to and from work. Denise failed to show up to work at her job as a secretary for a phone company. Police suspect she met the killer at the bus stop or on the bus. In February, three fishermen would find her body. There were a few differences between her body and the first two. First off she was found near Moanalua stream and not by Keehi Lagoon. Second, her body was wrapped in a blue tarp. Despite these differences and the fact that the body was pretty decomposed, they were able to assess that it was the same killer, due to the fact that she'd been bound the same way and strangled. Regina's brother would later do an interview with khon2.com and say

 

           “She was late for school that day,” “It was in Waipahu. She was sitting at the bus stop in front of Diners in Waipahu.”

 

Her brother was in 5th grade at the time. He would go on to say:

 

       "I used to look up to her. She’d babysit me and stuff like that", adding that she was “very bookish, smart, fun loving, everybody’s friend, that kind of thing.”

 

 When asked about revisiting the case, her brother says he wished they could test for DNA. Unfortunately they could only test for blood type at the time. 

 

“It’s kind of sad that both my parents, you know, they’re not here to, even if it does get resolved, they’re not here to see it,” Omar Sakamoto said. “I just want, what is that, closure.”

 

This interview was about 5 years ago when there was talk of reopening the case or at least revisiting some of the evidence. 

 

The killings prompted the Honolulu Police Department to form a task force that included an FBI profiler who helped put together a profile of the person they believed could be the suspect.

 

He was described as a Caucasian male in his 30s to 40s with no criminal record. The profiler also suspected the killer targeted women near where he lived or worked.

 

“He’s an individual who may be, at this particular juncture, may be experiencing girlfriend or marital problems and the selection of victims is probably the result of opportunity or chance encounters,” former Honolulu Police Chief Douglas Gibb said back in 1986.

 

Former homicide lieutenant Gary Dias was the head of HPD’s homicide detail at the time. “DNA could’ve been a much greater asset for us in that particular case,” Dias said, “and it’s useless in today’s age, because 82 percent of the world are types O and A.”

 

“Digital evidence is extremely important toward the advancement of investigations,” Dias said. Unfortunately back then, there was no cell phone video, and surveillance video wasn’t common. 

 

The next victim was 25 year old Louise Medeiros. According to a newspaper article we found from Hawaii from 1986, Louise J. Medeiros was a young woman who had lived much of life before she knew how to live it anyway. She'd left her large family on Kauai as a teenager, opting for independence and uncertainty on her own on Oahu. In six years, she'd returned to Kauai once, for a bowling tournament, and then only called home. She'd been on welfare, gotten in trouble with the law and lived with beach people at Makaha. Three months pregnant when she was killed, the 25-year-old had never married, had three children and a daughter in a foster home. But most of the family worries about their prodigal sister were soothed when Louise came home in March for a reading of her mother's will. The family found her centered and motivated, no longer the alienated rebel. Then the day after the reunion she was gone... abducted, police assume, from a bus stop near the airport on the evening of March 26. "She was finally happy. She had found peace within herself," recalled her eldest sister, Brenda Durant, of the last visit. "We were lying in my bedroom. She'd laugh

and laugh." On March 26, 1986,

Medeiros boarded a red-eye flight to Oahu. From there, Medeiros told her family that she planned to take a bus to Waipahu in order to meet them following the tragic death of their mother. Medeiros was last seen alive leaving the plane after it landed in Honolulu.

 

Medeiros's body was found by construction workers on April 2 near the Waikele Stream. Like the other four victims, Medeiros was found partially clothed. (The  killer always removed the pants and undergarments and left his victims nude from the waist down.) She had also had her hands tied behind her back. Medeiros had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

 

In order to catch the killer, the HPD began sending their female officers undercover to the Honolulu International Airport and to Keehi Lagoon. By now, it was clear that the killer favored out-of-town victims or those with limited connections to Hawaii.

 

The killer's last known victim was 36 year old Linda Pesce. Her roommate would be the last person to see her alive. Her roommate said she saw Linda when she left home on the morning of April 29, 1986.  The next morning the roommate was informed that Linda had not shown up for work. This was odd to the roommate. She was informed a little later that Lindas car had been found near a viaduct on route 92/interstate H-1. It was at this point the roommate reported her missing to the police.  Motorists claimed that on the evening of April 29 they saw the car’s emergency lights flashing, indicating it had stalled. They also described a Caucasian or mixed ancestry man in his 30s or 40s, of medium build, and a cream-colored, american made van with letters on its rear windows, both beside Pesce’s vehicle. 

 

In May of 2018, the TV show Breaking Homicide returned to the case and the show’s investigators suggested that the Honolulu Strangler may have also killed 19-year-old Lisa Au in 1982. Au was last seen alive just after midnight on January 21, 1982. Her car was later found near Kapaa Quarry Road. Ten days later, on January 31, 1982, a jogger found Au’s nude, decomposing body on Tantalus Lookout in Waikiki. Police were never able to officially list Au’s cause of death.

 

Ok, now… This is where shit kinda gets crazy! Depending on the source things get a little mixed up. We've found at least two different accounts of what happened next but they both involve the same man, a man who most people think is the killer. 

 

The first story we found was that an unidentified(at the time) 43 year old white male came to the police claiming that a psychic (also unidentified) told him where Linda Pesces body was. He said the psychic informed him the body was located on Sand Island. The man then led police to a spot on the island but Pesces body was not there. Police decided to search the entire island and then found her body. She had been strangled and her hands were bound with parachute cord like the other victims. From what I've encountered on this particular part of the story, he purposely did not go near the spot where they eventually found her body. Sounds sus af. And that just sounded weird coming from me. Moving on.

 

OK so that's the first version of the story. We found another version that goes a little something like this:

 

The as yet unidentified mean first came to police attention when Linda Pesce’s body had not yet been found. He voluntarily presented himself to the authorities claiming he had found some bones on Sand Island. When investigators processed the bones they discovered they were from a pig. The man was put under surveillance and, on May 9, was arrested due to circumstantial evidence linking him to the serial killings. 

 

So we found both of these stories in several different places and wanted to present them both. From here on out everything pretty much lines up through most sources. 

 

So who the hell is this guy? Well it would come out much later that the mans name was Howard Gay Dutcher. So who was Howard Gay and why was he considered the prime suspect even though he'd helped find the body of Linda Pesce? Let's have a look at this guy shall we? 

 

Gay was born in 1943 in Buffalo, New York. Not much is known about his personal history other than he joined the army and was stationed at George Air Force Base, a 30-minute drive from Apple Valley, California, where he lived for fifteen years. He was eventually discharged in 1965. Gay attended Victor Valley College, received his associate degree, and was employed by Continental Telephone in Victorville, where he held jobs as a lineman and teletype repairman. In the same year as his discharge, he married Rita Thompson, his college sweetheart, and fathered two children with her: Justin and Jason. In 1968, he was employed by Flying Tiger Line at Los Angeles International Airport. Gay’s role was to train cargo aircraft mechanics around the world and, in 1980, he was relocated to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Howard lived in a rented three-bedroom home in Ewa Beach. He divorced from his wife in 1983. One day, his family decided to surprise him by traveling to Honolulu, but when they showed up he was upset and even refused to let them in his home. He made them stay in a hotel and shipped them back to California two days later. His neighbors told reporters he was a gentleman, always willing to help others. A female assistant manager who worked at La Mariana Sailing Club in 1986 recognized Gay as a man who routinely stared at her, asked her to accept rides from him, and once reacted furiously when she once again refused. 

 

The FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit profiled the Honolulu Strangler as being a Caucasian male in his late 30s or early 40s who had no prior criminal record and may have been experiencing marital or girlfriend problems at the time. It said the killer may have lived or worked in the area between Sand Island and Waipahu. He was also an opportunist who cruised for victims and struck when opportunity presented itself, rather than a stalker who chose his victims. And due to prior witnesses, they had suspected the killer drove a cream colored van with words on the back. 

 

All of these things fit Gay to a T.  On May 9th 1986, police arrested Gay. Gays girlfriend had started to police the he like bondage sex and would routinely tie her up with her hands behind her back, like the victims. Another way he fit the profile and the police thought him to be a viable suspect is that his ex wife told police that each killing coincides with a domestic dispute the couple had. The ex wife says that Gay would leave the house after the fights and would not return until the next day.  On top of that he was connected to all the crime scenes since he worked at the airport (near where most of the victims were dumped) and lived in close proximity to Waipahu, where two victims disappeared and Louise Medeiros’ body was found. He also drove a cream-colored, american made van with letters on its rear windows, had a vasectomy like the man who raped three of the victims, and possibly had access to parachute cord due to his job. If that were not enough, Linda Pesce’s boss claimed she had written down Gay’s phone number on a note pad on the day she disappeared, since at that time Linda was looking for customers in the airport area. Gay offered to take a polygraph examination which (depending on the source)  gave an inconclusive result, or a failure result, and consented to a search at his home.  Despite all the elements against him, he was released after being held and questioned for ten hours, since prosecutors Peter Carlisle and Michael McGuigan decided they had insufficient evidence to win a case. 

 

Two months after the arrest a woman came forward to claim she'd seen Linda chatting with a man the night she disappeared. The woman was brought in and shown a lineup and picked Gays photo out of the line up. The woman said she did not want to be a witness as she was scared because the man had seen her as well. 

 

So what happened to Gay after this. Well… We'll tell ya. The killings stopped after Gay’s arrest and release. After his release he stated, “The police have released me, that’s all I know. They (the investigators) have plenty of good cause. They’re doing their job”..Gay returned to California in June 1986 to see his son, Jason, graduate from high school. Three days later, Jason was killed in an automobile accident, while changing a tire on the side of the road which prompted Howard to become a born-again Christian. Gay later worked for FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee, presumably when the latter acquired Flying Tiger Line, in 1988. He died of kidney failure in November of 2003. 

 

We found his obituary… Not one mention of his time in Hawaii...it reads as follows: 

 

Howard Gay lived in Apple Valley, California, for fifteen years. He was stationed at George Air Force Base, where he was honorably discharged in 1965. He attended Victor Valley College, where he received his associate degree. Howard was employed at Continental Telephone in Victorville, California, as a lineman and later a teletype repairman. In 1968, he was employed by Flying Tiger Lines at LAX, and later Federal Express in Memphis, Tennessee. Howard traveled throughout the world, training aircraft mechanics on airframe and powerplant systems on large cargo planes.

 

Interesting….

 

At any rate, police spoke to many people and followed other leads on cream colored vans and things like that. Nothing solid ever came from anything else other than the Howard Gay stuff. Police that worked the case spoke years later and they all are certain that Gay was the killer. Unfortunately since he is dead and since no DNA evidence is available we may never actually get a solid answer on this case, despite there being a reward of $25,000. This seems to be one of those weird unsolved cases that everyone seems to know who did it. Crazy case! 

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Well well well, here we are. Home state time. Creepy Ohio is where we are heading today! We're probably going to skip over the big boys like the Ohio State reformatory and places like that because well… You know about them. There will be plenty of good stuff though we promise!

 

Let's start off in good ol… Dayton? Sure Dayton it is! We're going to visit the Victoria Theatre. Fun fact about this place...The Victoria is one of the oldest continually operated theaters on the continent! It cost $225,000 to build and opened as the Turner opera house in 1866. If you're wondering, that's just under 4 million in 2021 money. According to an article, newspapers at the time called it the best theater west of Philadelphia! Impressive! General admission was $1. The best seats in the house were between $10 and $12. Arson was suspected of having caused an all-consuming fire May 16, 1869, which destroyed the theater at a loss of $500,000, about 10 million today,  of which insurance covered only $128,000, 2.5 million, so that sucks pretty bad. The rebuild took a few years and the theater reopened in 1871. The opera house resumed operations as "The Music Hall". In 1885 it became "The Grand Opera House". On September 18, 1899, it became the "Victoria Opera House", and in 1903, it became the Victoria Theatre, two years after the death of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Smooth sailing from here on out right? Wrong? 1913 brought about the Great Dayton Flood. The Dayton flood of March 1913 was caused by a series of severe winter rain storms that hit the Midwest in late March. Within three days, 8–11 inches (200–280 mm For all you civilized people out there) of rain fell throughout the Great Miami River watershed on already saturated soil, resulting in more than 90 percent runoff. The river and its tributaries overflowed. The existing levees failed, and downtown Dayton was flooded up to 20 feet (6.1 m) deep. This flood is still the flood of record for the Great Miami River watershed. The volume of water that passed through the river channel during this storm equaled the monthly flow over Niagara Falls. Daaaaaaaang! The ground floor of the theater was severely damaged. The theater's interior was rebuilt and remodeled. Ok now that disaster is out of the way…. Wait… What's that? There's more? Jeez… On January 16, 1918, fire struck again and gutted portions of the building. Due to WW1 the rebuild was delayed due to a materials shortage.  After the Armistice, The Victoria saw extensive interior remodeling and in 1919 re-opened as "The Victory Theatre" – a name commemorating the American war effort and its result. For many years after this, the theater had an amazing run and saw many of the top performers of the days come through. Al Jolson, The Marx Brothers, Helen Hayes, Fannie Brice, George M. Cohan, Lynn Fontayne, Gertrude Lawrence, Alfred Lunt, and some schhlub named Harry Houdini were just some of the big names to grace the theater! In the thirties the theatre  was fitted to also play talking pictures! Here's another fun tidbit of trivia, chainsaw was one of the pioneers of talking pictures! He started in the first talkie ever, it was called, "I Can't Believe This, What is this voodoo?" It was not good. In fact, don’t look it up on YouTube, it's really really bad. Over the years the change in times and the way the city of Dayton was headed, threatened to close the theater. In 1975 it was slated for demolition, in favor of a proposed parking lot. A public outcry for the theater's preservation that year helped to earn the building its listing in the National Register of Historic Places and, thus, it escaped demolition. However, portions of the building were in poor or fading condition. All the while, it continued to be visited extensively by traveling theater companies.The theatre had a network of access tunnels stretching out beneath the city's streets for several blocks. It was said that, during Vaudeville times, the tunnels allowed circus animals to be unloaded from railroad cars blocks away from the theatre, and held underground until showtime. As late as 1979, much of the tunnel network was accessible to employees, although some sections were blocked off by city steam pipes.  In 1978, the theatre was greatly benefited by the donation of a cache of equipment and stage draperies from National Cash Register's (NCR) auditorium, which had been slated for demolition. NCR also donated its historic five-rank Estay pipe organ to the Victory, which was renovated and installed by aficionados. In 1986, Virginia Kettering donated $7 million to fund a downtown arts center, conditioning her donation on the requirement that the center include the Victory Theater and be located within the same one-block area.The 1989 rebuilding of the theater was extensive. It involved razing the interior commercial space within the forward, Main Street-facing section of the building as well as the stage house, while carefully preserving and restoring the 1866–71 facade and the 1919 auditorium. At the same time, the interior auditorium portion of the structure was completely renovated. All of the commercial space at street level was reclaimed for a grand, new lobby. The result was an extensively-new Victoria Theatre (as it was now so renamed) designed expressly for the performing arts. The auditorium retained its original appearance with completely restored plaster work, drapery, marble work, gilding, and fresco detailing. Additionally, the house received state-of-the-art upgrading to its wiring, lighting, and sound systems and now accommodated infrared sound transmitters for headphone use.

 

The current theater accommodates 1,154, with 635 seats in the orchestra, and 519 in the balcony. The proscenium measures 37'7" wide by 29'0" high by 39'3" deep. A full-sized orchestra pit lies just below the stage lip. Ten dressing rooms, accommodating up to 18 people, are off-stage left, in the basement and at stage level.

 

You know we love to get the history of these places and this one is pretty cool. So what about creepy stuff? Well let's check it out! First off according to a dayton.com article, there's the story of a touring actress in the early 1900s who went to her dressing room to change for the next scene, and never came out of the room. No trace of her was ever found, though fewer and fewer actors would use that dressing room, with reports that some would look into the mirror and see her face staring back again. The same article talks about how in the 1950s, a man committed suicide in the theater by wedging a knife into the seat in front of him and throwing himself upon it. When the curtains around the left exit door are pulled, some people claim to see his face.  Staff members through the years have said they heard strange noises like the rustling of satin or taffeta, or suddenly smelled the scent of roses in the air. Others are said to have seen the ghost of the Victoria’s founder when they’re alone in the building.

 

Diane Schoeffler-Warren, Victoria spokeswoman, told us that many of the historic theater’s long-time volunteers and staff like to blame these strange occurrences on “Miss Vicki,” who was not a real person. 

 

  

PARANORMAL FINDINGS

Staff, patrons and performers have had a boatload of experiences with the spirits who visit or reside here.

 

Project Paranormal Investigations caught some hard evidence that greatly increases the known number of spirits who adore this theatre.

 

Apparently, the spirits here are a talkative group. They caught a boatload of EVP’s of many spirits. One spirit once worked there as an usher, some crew members, actors and actresses, a director and a well dressed man with a dirty hat who watches people who come into the auditorium.

 

One EVP possibly suggests that the spirit of Vicki’s killer is grounded here. “They will never catch me!”

 

This well-dressed man could be the spirit of the Victoria’s founder keeping a close eye on the living and still enjoying his theer.

 

Spirits freely gave up their names: Isaac, Jacob, Alice, Jennifer Price, Bill and Miss Josephine Swartz who was a well-known ballet instructor.

 

One male spirit pleaded for help.

 

One gruff spirit didn’t believe he was dead, and asked the investigator. “Do you want to fight?” This fiesta spirit said that the year was 2000.

 

One male spirit keeps the spirit of Vicky company. Hopefully he is a friend and her protector.

 

There was a negative, evil one there as well, reported by the other spirits. This spirit said that he was sent to keep another spirit stuck here. That's…. Nuts...ooh boy. 

 

So that's fun stuff, haunted theaters are always good. Where should we head now?

 

How about a lunatic asylum that's now part of a college… We know that seems crazy but just run with us. The Ridges, a building formerly known as the Athens Lunatic Asylum, has been a constant source of ghost stories and sightings for years. The Ridges, was a Kirkbride Plan mental hospital operated in Athens, Ohio, from 1874 until 1993. After a period of disuse the property was redeveloped by the state of Ohio. Today, The Ridges are a part of Ohio University and house the Kennedy Museum of Art as well as an auditorium and many offices, classrooms, and storage facilities. The original design included an administration building with two wings, one that would house the males and the other for females. The building itself was 853 feet long, 60 feet wide, and built with red bricks fired from clay dug on-site. Built onto the back were a laundry room and boiler house. Seven cottages were also constructed to house even more patients. There was room to house 572 patients in the main building, almost double of what Kirkbride had recommended, leading to overcrowding and conflicts between the patients.The administrative section, located between the two resident wings, included an entrance hall, offices, a reception room on the first floor, the superintendent’s residence on the second floor, and quarters for other officers and physicians on the 3rd and 4th floors. A large high ceiling amusement hall filled the 2nd and 3rd floors, and a chapel was included on the 4th floor. Behind and beneath the building’s public and private spaces were the heating and mechanical systems, kitchens, cellars, storerooms, and workspaces.  The site, which was first comprised of 141 acres, would eventually grow to 1,019 acres, including cultivated, wooded, and pasture land. The grounds were designed by Herman Haerlin of Cincinnati and would incorporate landscaped hills and trees, decorative lakes, a spring, and a creek with a waterfall. Not only would the patients enjoy the beautiful landscape, but citizens also enjoyed the extensive grounds. Though the facility would never be fully self-sustaining, over the years, the grounds would include livestock, farm fields and gardens, an orchard, greenhouses, a dairy, a receiving hospital, a Tubercular Ward, a physical plant to generate steam heat, and even a carriage shop in the earlier years.  The hospital, first called the Athens Lunatic Asylum, officially began operations on January 9, 1874. Within two years, it was renamed the Athens Hospital for the Insane. Over the years, its name would be changed many times to the Athens State Hospital, the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center, and the Athens Mental Health and Developmental Center. During its operation, the hospital provided services to a variety of patients, including Civil War veterans, children, the elderly, the homeless, rebellious teenagers being taught a lesson by their parents, and violent criminals suffering from various mental and physical disabilities. With diagnoses ranging from the slightest distress to severely mentally ill, these patients were provided various forms of care, many of which have been discredited today. The asylum was best known for its practice of lobotomy, but it was also known to have practiced hydrotherapy, electroshock, restraint, and psychotropic drugs, many of which have been found to be harmful today. More interesting are the causes listed for admission, including epilepsy, menopause, alcohol addiction, and tuberculosis. General “ill health” also accounted for many admissions, which included in the first three years of operation 39 men and 44 women. For the female patients hospitalized during these first three years of the asylum’s operation, the three leading causes of insanity are recorded as “puerperal condition” (relating to childbirth), “change of life,” and “menstrual derangements.” According to an 1876 report, the leading cause of insanity among male patients was masturbation. The second most common cause of insanity was listed as intemperance (alcohol). Depending upon their condition, a patient’s treatment could range from full care to amazing freedom. Over the years, numerous buildings were added, including a farm office, a new amusement hall, additional wards and residences, a laundry building, power plant, garages, stables, mechanics shops, a firehouse, therapy rooms, and dozens of others. By the 1950s, the hospital was using 78 buildings and was treating 1,800 patients. In the 1960s, the total square footage of the facility was recorded at 660,888 square feet. At this time, its population peaked at nearly 2,000 patients, over three times its capacity. However, the number of patients would begin to decline for the next several decades as de-institutionalization accelerated. As the number of people at the Asylum declined, the buildings and wards were abandoned one by one. Comprised of three graveyards, burials began soon after the institution’s opening as there were deceased patients who were unclaimed by their families. Until 1943 the burials were headed only by stones with numbers, with the names of the dead known only in recorded ledgers. Only one register exists today, which contains the names of 1,700 of the over 2,000 burials. In 1972 the last patients were buried in the asylum cemetery. Today the cemeteries continue to be maintained by the Ohio Department of Mental Health.

 

In 1977, Athens Asylum made news when it housed multiple personality rapist Billy Milligan. In the highly publicized court case, Milligan was found to have committed several felonies, including armed robbery, kidnapping, and three rapes on the Ohio State University campus. In preparing his defense, psychologists diagnosed Milligan with multiple personality disorder, from which the doctors said he had suffered from early childhood. He was the first person diagnosed with multiple personality disorder to raise such a defense and the first acquitted of a major crime for this reason. Milligan was then sent to a series of state-run mental hospitals, including Athens. While at these hospitals, Milligan reported having ten different personalities. Later 14 more personalities were said to have been discovered. After a decade, Milligan was discharged. He died of cancer at a nursing home in Columbus, Ohio, on December 12, 2014, at 59. The next year, the hospital made the news again when a patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared on December 1, 1978. It wasn’t until January 12, 1979, 42 days later that her body was discovered by a maintenance worker in a locked long-abandoned ward once used for patients with infectious illnesses. Though tests showed that she died of heart failure, she was found completely naked with her clothing neatly folded next to her body. More interesting is the permanent stain that her body left behind. Clearly, an imprint of her hair and body can still be seen on the floor, even though numerous attempts have been made to remove it. By 1981 the hospital housed fewer than 300 patients, numerous buildings stood abandoned, and over 300 acres were transferred to Ohio University. In 1988, the facilities and grounds (excluding the cemeteries) were deeded from the Department of Mental Health to Ohio University.

 

The Athens Center officially closed in 1993, and the remaining patients transferred to another facility. The property stood vacant for several years before restoration began. The name of the property was changed to the “Ridges” and in 2001 renovation work was completed on the main building, known as Lin Hall. Today it houses music, geology, biotechnology offices, storage facilities, and the Kennedy Museum of Art. Over the years, other hospital buildings were modeled and used by the University, although many others still sit abandoned. wow… Crazy stuff. The info and the history cave from a great article at legends of America.com. 

 

When the University took over the property, some students began to spend time at the Ridges. This is when many reports of paranormal activity began to surface. This includes hearing disembodied screams in the middle of the night, electric anomalies, rattling door handles and vanishing spectral images. Some of these events occurred in the area where Margaret Schilling’s remains were found and, were thus, attributed to her. Her spirit is said to have appeared staring down from the window of the room where her lifeless body was discovered. Her apparition has been seen attempting to escape. Others have seen her wander in various parts of the building at night.

 

Other former patients are also said to remain in residence as well. Visitors have reported seeing strange figures standing in the empty wings of the former hospital. Many have heard the disembodied voices of those in agony and warning those that wish to listen to them. You may also hear the squeaks of gurneys that are no longer there. Some folks see strange lights and hear screams echoing through the walls. More frightening, many have come across the spirits of patients in the basement, who remain shackled there in their afterlife. Sadly, these may be the many spirits who died or suffered at the hands of staff in the asylum.

 

The cemetery is also said to be haunted by shadowy people and strange lights. In one area, the linear shapes of the graves form a circle, rumored to be a witches’ meeting point. 

 

Let's switch it up for a minute and talk about Moody's favorite things … The cryptids! So what kind of cryptids can one expect to find in Ohio? Well we are gonna let ya know! 

 

Let's start with the Loveland Frogmen. Stories started popping out in the 50's, tales that differed slightly from one another, about a massive frog causing all manner of mischief.  Most of the stories start the same but there seem to be three major variations. In one story, the motorist is heading out of the Branch Hill neighborhood when he shines his car’s headlights on the huge figures. The trio stood on their hind legs and just stood in the middle of the road. The man honks his horn. The figures perk up. They twist their necks around. A gasp!!!! All three look at the driver with leathery skin and frog faces.

 

Version number 3: same bridge, the motorist pulls over, he gets out of his car and spots the creatures. All three are conversing animatedly. The driver calls out to them. One of the Loveland Frogman gets up, points his finger at his friends in the universal gesture of “put a pin in it,” turns to the bothersome intruder, “can’t you see we’re holding a conversation? How rude,” holds out a wand over its heads, and flicks the Harry Potter approved apparatus… a blazing fire of sparks cannons out of the wand. The motorist flees the scene. 

 

The other version goes like this: the motorist spots the creatures under the Loveland bridge, one of many going over the Little Miami river – he honks his horn. The creatures shot out from under the bridge, one lands on his hood and croaks… the driver passes out. On 3 March 1972 at 1:00 am, the Loveland police department goose marched into the madness. Officer Ray Shockey was gliding his car on Riverside Drive near the Totes boot factory and the Little Miami River when a suspicious animal ran across the road in front of his vehicle. He hit his brakes. Hit the steering wheel and looked on. The animal, now fully illuminated in his patrol car’s headlights, blinked at Shockey… who was having a meltdown true to his last name; Shockey was in shock. Framed in his car’s lamp stood the legendary Loveland Frogman. Shockey reported the sighting and stated, “it’s crouched like a frog.” The creature then climbed over the guardrail and jumped into the river.

 

Two weeks after that wild incident, a second Loveland police officer, Mark Matthews, did Shockey a solid and reported seeing an unidentified animal, similar in height and facets, near the same road. And you know what… He shot the damn thing! That's right, killed it! Unfortunately Matthews didn't actually shoot a frogman…nope. According to Matthews, it was “a large iguana about 3 or 3.5 feet long”, and he didn’t immediately pinpoint the creature’s ID because it was missing its tail… not a freaking Loveland Frogman. 

 

“It either got loose or was released when it grew too large"

 

In August 2016, local Cincinnati TV stations reported that "a night of fun turned into a chilling tale of horror" when two teenagers playing Pokémon Go between Loveland Madeira Road and Lake Isabella claimed to see a giant frog near the lake on August 3 that "stood up and walked on its hind legs".[7][8] It was later revealed to be a local student from Archbishop Moeller High School in a homemade frog costume.

 

Real or not? We may never know! You don't believe in the Frogmen you say well how about the grass man! 

 

Often referred to as the Eastern Bigfoot, the Grassman is reportedly a 7-foot tall, 300-pound hominid.

 

According to famed cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman, the Ohio Grassmen have a more human-like appearance and are more human-looking and are shorter than the classic “Bigfoot”.  The Grassman is often seen around farms and especially eating tall grasses such as wheat, which is what its main diet is, and where its name comes from. In addition to a different diet, the Grassman also seems much more sociable than Bigfoot. Many Grassman sightings include more than one Grassman, and it is reported that mothers have been seen with babies. The first sightings of the Grassman date all the way to 1869, however, one of the most prominent sightings was in 1978. The grandchildren of Minerva residents Evelyn and Howe Clayton, along with their friends, ran inside screaming about a hairy monster they saw in the gravel pit outside. When the couple went out to investigate, they saw the Grassman, just as the children had described, and it quickly ran off. The family saw the creature a few more times, and claimed that it would leave the smell of rotten eggs wherever it passed through, though it never seemed to steal anything. 

 

Yet another Bigfoot-type creature lurks in Ohio, this time near Minerva. The Minerva Monster was first spotted by the Cayton family in the late 1970s when they followed the sound of their barking dogs to a pit on their property where they disposed of trash. Inside the pit, they found a massive, 7-foot tall, 300-pound creature, covered in fur, staring at them as they approached. The creature returned to the family’s property so often that it was witnessed by several other friends and family members and even investigated by the sheriff. During the creature’s final appearance at the property, two creatures were spotted after the home was pelted with several rocks while the family was inside. We suspect this may have been chainsaw. 

 

Although sightings continued in nearby counties, none were as detailed as the Cayton families, whose stories remained unchanged for decades. 

 

How about the Charles Mills Lake Monster! This mysterious cryptid has only been documented one time. In March of 1959, teenagers Denny Patterson, Wayne Armstrong, and Michael Lane were running amok near the shores of Charles Mills Lake when they saw something that terrified them.

 

Out of the water came a 7-foot tall, armless, humanoid. The boys noted that the creature had glowing green eyes and massive webbed feet. After the boys reported what they had seen, authorities searched the area, finding footprints that they thought resembled tracks that scuba and snorkel diving fins would leave behind.

 

Crosswick Monster

Around 20 miles north of the Loveland Frogman’s territory lies Crosswick. Although the monster hasn’t been spotted in nearly 200 years, the legend of the Crosswick Monster is still told in the area. According to reports, two young boys were playing on the banks of a small creek when they were startled by a massive, snake-like creature. The monster sprouted arms and snatched one of the boys, dragging him nearly 100 yards to a massive sycamore tree that was assumed to be its den.

 

The Crosswick monster dropped the child just outside a hole in the tree’s bank. The 26-foot diameter tree was eventually chopped through by dozens of men from the town and when the serpent-creature reappeared, the men noted that it was between 12-14 feet tall. The monster escaped the men, crashing through a fence before darting into a cavern.

 

The full description read, “It is described as being 30 to 40 feet long, 12 to 14 feet tall when erect, 16 inches in diameter, and legs 4 feet long. It is covered with scales like a lizard’s, of black and white color with large yellow spots. Its head is about 16 inches wide, with a long forked tongue, and the mouth inside deep red.”

 

Although the Crosswick Monster was never seen again, it is remembered as one of the most believable cryptid experiences in Ohio, as more than 60 men claimed to have witnessed it.

 

Dogman

 

Described as a werewolf-like creature, the Dogman has reportedly been seen all throughout Ohio. Eyewitnesses describe the Dogman creatures as between 4-6 feet tall, often very muscular, and with pink or gray skin. It is sometimes seen on all fours or walking bipedally.

 

One of the most recent accounts was in 2016 in Allen County. The Dogman is typically associated with Michigan, but in the past decade, several sightings have taken place throughout Ohio, an understandable migration.

 

Ok so let's get back to creepy places! 

 

How about a haunted hotel? The Buxton inn  fits the bill! Buxton Inn was originally called the Tavern and it was built in 1812 by Orrin Granger. Today, the Buxton Inn is the oldest continuously running inn in Granville, Ohio. Aside from being an inn, Buxton also served as Granville’s first post office and a stagecoach stop. The Buxton became very popular and was patronized by no less than President William Harrison himself. After Orrin Granger died, ownership of the inn changed. Although it went through several owners, it never closed down because of its popularity. In 1829, more additions were constructed for the building. In the 1850s, the inn was purchased by James W. Dilley and it was renamed to “The Dilley House”. Major Buxton and his wife acquired the property in 1865. They attracted many guests and the inn continued to thrive under their ownership. After the death of the Buxtons, retired opera singer Ethel Bounell took over the inn. The current owners of the inn are Orville and Audrey Orr. The Buxton Inn’s long history lives on with the ghosts frequently seen there, the majority of which are the ghosts of its former owners. The first ghost ever reported at the hotel was Orrin Granger in the 1920’s who built the hotel in 1812.

 

During the 70’s, workers of the inn saw a man dressed in blue and since then they have refused to enter the inn after dark. Major Buxton (the man who the inn was named after) is also said to haunt the inn. He has been spotted in several locations around the inn.

 

Ethel “Bonnie” Bounell, the former innkeeper, is said to have died in room number nine. Guests who have stayed in the room have reported seeing a lady dressed in blue, Bonnie’s favourite color.  Shadowy figures have been seen in rooms number seven and nine and even in the basement. Guests have also felt the presence of a ghostly cat jumping on their beds. Other reports include heavy doors slamming shut and opening of their own accord, with no apparent breeze or other valid explanation. People have also reported hearing footsteps behind them in empty hallways, and their names being called out.

 

Definitely spooky… anyone want to take a trip to hell? No? How about just helltown? Well that is where we're headed! 

 

The village known as “Helltown” is purportedly teeming with crybaby bridges, spooked school buses, mass human sacrifice scenes, and a mutant python for good measure. The extreme folklore surrounding the region formerly known as Boston, Ohio is ironic since the only verifiable legend about the town is that it is deserted for a very frighteningly tragic reason. Founded in 1806, Boston Village’s original claim to fame was its standing as the oldest village in Summit County. Boston’s relatively uneventful life took a turn for the worse in 1974, when it became the unlucky victim of nationwide anxiety over the country’s disappearing forestland. Using the laws of eminent domain, President Gerald Ford signed a bill that gave the federal government’s National Park Service jurisdiction to expropriate land for the establishment of National Parks. The NPS decided that Boston Township would be the new home for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and began buying the properties of its longtime residents. The sentiment among citizens who had no choice but to leave their homes was expressed in a message scribbled on the wall of one of the houses: “Now we know how the Indians felt.” The empty homes were boarded up and adorned with U.S. “No Trespassing” signs. The government quickly fell behind on its plan to create the park and the village sat neglected. The remaining buildings, remnants of a “vanished” town, have created a fertile soil for the innumerable urban legends that have popped up over the years.

 

The hellish aura of the area only continued to grow when the NPS acquired Krejci Dump in 1985. Rangers visiting the site became ill and covered in rashes. It was soon discovered the dump was highly polluted with toxic chemicals improperly disposed of. The dump became a Superfund site and as of 2015 the NPS is wrapping up restoration of the area. 

 

Helltown is home to six or seven separate legends, which has led this area in Boston Township in Ohio to be grouped as one large haunted site. The overgrowth creates a dark, almost cursed place, where ghosts, cults, Satanists, and even a wild-eyed serial killer were said to lurk. Helltown is the nickname given to the northern part of Summit County. The areas most associated with the legends are Boston Township and Boston Village, as well as portions of Sagamore Hills. First settled all the way back in 1806, Boston stands as the oldest village in Summit County. The construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal brought loads of people to the region in the mid-1820s. The area then began to flourish when a railroad station was constructed in the town. The station was named ‘Boston Mills,’ and the name stuck.

 

Loads of legends come out of the Boston Cemetery, which sits deep in the middle of the area known as Helltown, including tales of a ghost who sits on a bench and stares out into space, forlorn, waiting for his family to come back for him. The only souls not forced to leave the area were the dead, now stuck in this abandoned ghost town, looking for their families which have left so long ago.

 

There are two roads through Helltown, both labeled as ‘dead ends’ even though you can watch them continue on into the distance. Legend says that local Satanic cults put up these signs to keep people out of their secret hideouts. Stanford Road, one of the main roads in Helltown, is sometimes referred to as The End of the World, or Highway to Hell. It is a twisting, dangerous road with a very sharp incline, so steep that when a car crests the top of the hill, it looks as if it is driving off a cliff. Some stories indicate that the road itself is evil, and is known to take possession of your vehicle, causing fatal accidents. It is said that if you park your car at the end of Stanford Road, you may meet your gruesome fate at the hands of the strange people who still patrol the area, protecting it.

 

One rumor persists through the ages that the town’s residents were actually evacuated due to a large chemical spill, and the National Park was just a cover-up. The chemical spills were said to have caused mutations in local children, and even created the Peninsula Python, a gigantic snake that slithers the area. 

 

An account given by a local paranormal researcher who explored the area truly sums up the overall vibe of Helltown – “I have experienced much in my explorations of there, some of which I don’t care to remember and some of which I can never hope to explain.

 

 

 

Helltown is not truly abandoned. It does have residents, but they are a strange and frightening breed. I have gone exploring the woods and cemetery of the area in the late night and wee morning hours, and have returned to my car to find strange people looking into its car windows. This has happened twice––once at 2:00 AM and once at 4:30 AM. Both times, the people fled as soon as they saw me approaching the car before I had a chance to speak to them. Both times, they were dressed in all black.

 

 

 

A part of me is glad that I didn’t get to converse with them because I have heard too many tales about the ways of Hell Town residents. Supposedly, they are all Satanists and worship at the town’s two evil churches. I have been to both of these churches, however not inside them. One, the Mother of Sorrows, has upside-down crosses hanging from it.

 

 

 

I have also been to the Boston Cemetery, where a ghost has been seen sitting on a bench. This cemetery is as dark a place as I have ever been. The graves date back to the early 1800s. I didn’t see the ghost when I visited, but I did hear strange growls and howls from the depths of the graveyard.  This was more than enough to convince me to leave, as the prospect of getting attacked by some strange boneyard dwelling beast was not appealing, to say the least.”

 

Welllllll we might not be heading there any time soon!

Ok we got one more place for ya. The Bellaire house. The history of Bellaire House stretches back to 1904, when it was constructed by Jacob Heatherington, who also owned a coal mine that ran directly beneath the property on Belmont Street.

 

When the original owner died, he left the land and the five-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath house to his daughter Eliza and son Edwin. 

 

But not long after coming into her inheritance, Eliza Heatherington collapsed dead on the dining room floor in the house.

 

Legend has it that her grieving brother became obsessed with the idea of communicating with his dearly departed sister from beyond and invited mediums from across the country to his home for that purpose. Paranormal researchers believe that it was Edwin Heatherington who, through his experiments with the occult, unwittingly opened nearly a dozen different portals to the 'other side' throughout the house, allowing malevolent spirits to cross over.

 

Research suggests that the plot of land on which the house sits also conceals Native American burial caves, and it has been intimated, though not confirmed, that prior to the Civil War the site was part of the Underground Railroad used by fugitive slaves.  

The Bellaire House sits on what is known as a Leyline. This means there is a consistent wellspring of paranormal activity that goes all through the house. A virtual spring of ghosts coming back from the dead.

 

Kristin Lee, the current owner of the house was affected by two floods which left her family homeless. After they moved into the home they saw “odd” things. Kristin Lee blamed everything except for the paranormal until the point when it was impossible to deny. She describes the history and her time there on the home's website. 

 

     "The house gained a mysterious reputation even during the years when it was sitting abandoned. The neighbors in the area claimed to see people roaming around in the house or peeking out of the windows. This was when the house was locked and no one was living there. There were some who thought that the kids were up to something nifty, but when I moved in there, it didn’t take long for its history to resurface because that’s when paranormal activities in the Bellaire House began to manifest in more violent ways. Jacob Heatherington built the Bellaire House in the vicinity of sacred Shawnee Native American burial caves. That makes the house 172 years old. Those caves were right behind the Bellaire House and the Ohio River is right in the front. Physics proves that water is a portal because it is always moving and the magnetic pull of the water creates a powerhouse of energy where spirits can cut through earthbound gravity, gain energy to port back and forth from their dimension to ours. The craziest part is that the portal sits right under the Bellaire House.

 

This area is still known as the Native American Internment Area. The thing is that the Native Americans who lived in this area used to bury their leaders, chieftain, shamans, healers, and witchdoctors in these caves. They used to hold their ceremonies in this area and practiced magic. In 1754 the French & Indian War rampaged through Bellaire. The native massacres by the hands of French soldiers were large. Blood still stains the grounds of the entire town of Bellaire. The residual energy of the slaughter still seeps inside the soil today.

 

She goes on to say: 

 

       Although Joe Estes & Associates cleaned the inhuman spirits, the house is always active to this day despite all the cleansing and Catholic rituals.

 

The ley line over which the Bellaire House is built is one of the alignments of ancient monuments and prehistoric sites in straight lines. It is believed by some that it indicates paths of positive energy inherent in the Earth. The Bellaire House is on the tip of one of the most ancient ley lines in the world! This could possibly be the reason why the Native Americans chose the land that the Bellaire House sits on because it is supercharged with such a profound energy source that it caused a direct connection to the great spirit, the old world gods, and intergalactic beings!

 

Research revealed that when Jacob Heatherington, who was a millionaire and used to run the city, died he left the coal mine company to his son Alex Heatherington, who was assisted by his daughter Lyde.

 

Unfortunately, the business started to fail due to Alex hearing and seeing things that were not there. He also began to have epileptic seizures and declared that "demons were trying to kill him." Back then people believed that he was haunted and cursed because of the coal mine explosions.

 

According to paranormal investigators, there are as many as 11 portals throughout the house. The most interesting thing is that no matter how hard paranormal investigators try, these portals refuse to stay closed.  Edwin and Lyde were also known to have servants. Mostly, all of them were named Mary. There was one particular Mary that had a child inside of the Bellaire House and it was rumored that the child had the bloodline that was needed to allow an entity inside of the Bellaire House to grow stronger to do Lyde’s bidding. There are village rumors that a servant’s child was lured to the attic and plunged to his death out of the window.

 

In March 1940, there was another explosion in the mines. This time in Coal Mine #2, which was commonly referred to as Willow Grove Mine at the time. It was about twenty minutes from Bellaire. The explosion trapped 180 men in the mine and took the lives of at least fifty men. Also, it left more than a hundred men burned and severely wounded. Although many members of the community tried to rescue the trapped men, only a few men could be saved. It’s said that the rescue attempt continued for several days to no avail. This explosion at Coal Mine #2 further contributed to the haunting of the Bellaire House..

 

So what exactly happened to Kristen Lee and her family in that house. One day, Lee said she was home when she heard the sound of footsteps coming from the attic. She assumed it was her boyfriend, Jeff, whom she thought was working upstairs.

 

When sometime later she heard Jeff come through the front door downstairs, Kristen was shocked, but figured that the noise she heard from the attic was just the old house settling. A few weeks later, Kristen was napping on the couch when she was awakened by a presence next to her. She opened her eyes to discover a man's greyish figure in a cap.

 

She screamed in terror and demanded to know who he was. The man said nothing in response, got up from the couch, made his way to the foyer and vanished into thin air.

 

Lee noted that her boyfriend and son were asleep at the time, but the family dog appeared panic-stricken. She also pointed out that it was so cold in the room she could see her breath.

 

Lee says that was her first startling encounter with the supernatural inside the house, which she would later dub ‘a portal to hell.’

 

In the following months, Lee and her family would allegedly experience strange voices and footsteps, objects moving on their own and ghostly figures popping up out of nowhere. It came to a point where Lee sent her youngest son to stay with her parents and her oldest with his father because she feared for their safety inside the house.

 

Things finally came to a head one evening when Lee says the family dog was hurled against a bedroom wall by an invisible force, which at the same time pinned her down, rendering her motionless.

 

After that incident, Lee and her family promptly decided to move and rent out the house, but her tenants did not linger there either.

 

One family that briefly called Bellaire House their home allegedly lost six of eight family members while residing at 1699 Belmont Street.

 

Kristen Lee then tried to offload the house by selling it to the town of Bellaire for a dollar, but there were no takers, as the locals were well aware of its bad reputation. 

 

Out of options she decided to turn the house into a spot where people could come and ghost hunt. And that is where it sits today. Maybe that'll be our next trip! 

 

That's since creepy Ohio for you! Again we left out some of the more well known stuff and didn't have room to include every cool thing so we may be back for round two of creepy Ohio say since point as well! There are tons of cool creepy places in Ohio. Check them out! 

 

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    "Once, in a time before time, God breathed life into the universe. And the light gave birth to Angels. And the earth gave birth to Man. And the fire gave birth to the Djinn, creatures condemned to dwell in the void between the worlds. One who wakes a Djinn will be given three wishes. Upon the granting of the third, the unholy legions of the Djinn will be freed to rule the earth. Fear one thing in all there is... FEAR THE DJINN."

 

Full disclosure… I need to preface this episode by saying that I’m going to SUPER FUCK UP a butt ton of words in this episode. If you’re new, yeah this is what Moody does to me. If you’re a long time listener, then you’re used to my idiocy and you find it endearing. Ok, with that being said, Dear friends, today we bring you an episode that your esteemed host (that would be me) has been wanting to do for a while. If you didn't get it from the previous quote…and the name of the episode… well you're an idiot… But it's the djinn… We're talking about the djinn. Djinn you ask? Like a genie? Well kind of, let's get into what they are, what they do, and hear stories of djinn encounters.

 

     So what exactly are djinn you ask? Djinn are believed to be powerful, invisible beings, capable of possessing people and even inflicting suffering on them. Stories of human encounters with djinn are very common across cultures and history.

 

    Djinn originated in the Muslim world. Muslims  believe that the djinn are real as the Quran explicitly confirms their existence and considers them an independent nation. There is a whole chapter in the Qur’an named “the Chapter of Djinn,’” where detailed information about these beings is revealed. 

 

Al-Jinn is the 72nd chapter of the Quran and contains 28 verses. According to Al-islam.org, The designation of the Chapter reflects that it mainly treats of invisible creatures, the jinn, their belief in the Noble Prophet of the Islamic faith (S), the Holy Qur’an, and Resurrection, and the groups of believers and disbelievers amongst them. The closing Verses concern the knowledge of the unseen unknown to all beings besides God Almighty. It is narrated from the Noble Imam Sadiq (as) as saying:

 

"One who recites Surah al-Jinn many a time will never suffer from the evil eye, magic, and ploys of the Jinn and magicians but will accompany Muhammad (S). O Lord! I believe in none besides him and I will never turn toward anyone but him.

 

Reciting the blessed Chapter would be a prelude to the awareness of its contextual meaning and applying it to one’s life. 

 

    AboutIslam.net describes the chapter and says God revealed to Prophet Muhammad that a group of jinn listened to his recitation of the Quran.  They returned to their own society and described the recitation as wondrous, saying that it called to what is true and sensible by distinguishing between right and wrong.  Those who listened believed in it and reported such to the others of their kind.  They declared that they would never again associate anything with God.This chapter puts this response to the unbelievers of Makkah who also listened to the recitation of Quran yet failed to believe in it.  Those of the jinn who listened immediately embraced a true untainted faith.  They said that the recitation exalted God and further stated that He had neither partner nor offspring.  At the time many Arabs believed that the angels were God’s daughters through marriage to the jinn but the jinn emphatically denied this.

 

The jinn declare that some of their number said shocking things about God even though they believed no one would ever have the audacity to tell lies about God.  But now that they had heard the Quran for themselves they realized that those ideas were false.

 

In the past some people had sought protection with some of the jinn but this only led them further away from the truth and increased them in sin.  Some humans and some jinn thought that God would never send a messenger to guide and warn them.  God, however, is generous and kind and does indeed send messengers to guide to the right way.

 

      The jinn disclaim any knowledge of the unseen, stating that it remains beyond their reach.  We tried to reach the heavens, they say, but found it to be fortified by stern guards and shooting stars.  Before Prophet Muhammad, the jinn were able to collect information by eavesdropping on the angels.  They then passed it on to astrologers, fortune-tellers and others of that ilk.  This is no longer possible and if they try they will find a celestial deterrent lying in wait for them.  They do not know what is in store for those on earth.  God’s intentions (misfortune or guidance) remain unseen. 

 

The jinn then describe their own situation and their attitude towards guidance.  Some of the jinn are righteous, others are not.  They follow many different paths and hold many different opinions and beliefs.  They understand that they can never damage God’s plans for earth and its inhabitants and they can never escape God’s will.  When we heard this recitation of the Quran we believed in it and those who believe in God need not fear loss, injustice or an unbearable burden.  Some (jinn) submit to God and are guided; others refuse to accept the truth.  Those who accept the truth have found their way to salvation; the others are fuel for the Hellfire.  This applies to humans as well, some accept guidance others plough a course towards Hell.

 

God tells Prophet Muhammad that if the Makkans had remained on the straight path, He would have provided them with abundant rain (water, and assuring their provision).  This is also a means by which God tests people.  The Quran tells us that having plenty is as great a test as having little.  The person who pays no attention to God’s warnings will face an arduous punishment, spiraling down into Hell.

 

The mosques are built for God alone; they make worship easy but a Muslim can pray anywhere (with very few exceptions).  Worship is for God alone so do not call on anyone but Him.  When Prophet Muhammad stood up to make supplication the crowd pressed in around him, the unbelievers ready to attack him.  God protected him on this and on many other occasions. 

 

This chapter now addresses Prophet Muhammad in a decisive tone making it clear to him that once he has delivered the message he has no say over how people respond.  He is told to tell the people that he prays to God alone and he does not set up partners or associates with Him.   He tells them that he cannot cause harm and he cannot force them to go in the right direction.

 

Prophet Muhammad says that if he were to disobey God no one could protect him and he could never find a place to hide from Him.   His mission is only to deliver the message.  Whoever disobeys God and His messenger will find themselves in the Hellfire.  The disbelievers think they have the strength in numbers but they will soon come to understand that Prophet Muhammad has God’s power and strength behind him.

 

   Prophet Muhammad informs the disbelievers that he does not know when the threatened punishment will take place.  He has no part in that decision, it is God alone who decides.  The promised punishments in this life, and in the life to come, are matters of the unseen and God does not reveal such matters to anybody.

 

However there is one exception, God may reveal unseen matters to one of His messengers if necessary. Guardian angels protect both the messenger and the message.  God knows everything about His messengers, there is nothing that escapes His knowledge.  Everything is counted and measured.  The message is carefully monitored.

 

So that's a breakdown of the chapter of the jinn as described in the Quran. So what exactly do the jinn do and what are they about? 

 

There are different types of jinn in Islam. Some have wings and fly in the air, some exist as snakes and dogs, and some Jinn are Earthbound beings who live and attach themselves to people and objects in our world. Disbelieving Jinn (Shayateen) whispers evil thoughts into people’s minds and constantly try to divert man from the path of righteousness. Some Jinn constantly instill doubts in human minds. Jinn can make humans think certain thoughts, leading them to misidentify these thoughts as their own notions. Jinn can make us dream about certain things. The strongest, evilest variety of Jinn is called Ifrit, and they are rare. Jinn delight in punishing humans for any harm done to them, intentionally or unintentionally, and are said to be responsible for many diseases and all kinds of accidents; however, those human beings knowing the proper magical procedure can exploit the jinn to their advantage. The appearance of jinn can be divided into three major categories:

 

zoomorphic

storms and shadows

anthropomorphic.

Jinn are assumed to be able to appear in shapes of various animals such as cats, owls and onagers (which are just wild asses, or “Moody’s” in the scientific world). Serpents are the animals most associated with jinn; in Islamic tradition, many narratives concern a serpent who was actually a jinn. Dogs are another animal often associated with jinn, especially black dogs. Gazelles, foxes, and ostriches are also associated with jinn, though not necessarily thought to be the embodiment of jinn but rather their mounts or hosts (i.e. mythical vehicle or vessel). The jinn are also related to the wind, and may even appear in mists or sandstorms. Although sandstorms are believed to be caused by jinn, others, such as Abu Yahya Zakariya' ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini and Ghazali attribute them to natural causes. Otherwise sandstorms are thought to be caused by a battle between different groups of jinn. Though a common characteristic of the jinn is their lack of individuality, they may gain individuality by materializing in human forms, such as Sakhr and several jinn known from magical writings.

 

In their anthropomorphic shape, however, they are said to stay partly animal and are not fully human. Therefore, individual jinn are commonly depicted as monstrous and anthropomorphized creatures with body parts from different animals or humans with animal traits.

 

The following is a list of the different jinn. 

Jann, a type of jinn

Marid, a powerful rebellious demon

Ifrit, a powerful type of demon in Islamic mythology associated with the underworld

Ghoul, associated with graveyards and consuming human flesh

Si'lat, talented shapeshifters often appearing in human form and female or male

Nasnas, a creature mentioned as Shaqq in One Thousand and One Nights

Hatif, a voice that can be heard without one's discovering the body that made it

Qareen, a spiritual double of human with a ghostly nature

Hinn, supernatural creatures, besides jinn and demons

Shaitan, also known as demons who make humans and other jinns sin

Malak, pure creatures that are created by light at the service of God/an angel.

 

Jinn are said to inhabit caves, deserted places, graveyards and darkness. According to Sakr (pr: “soccer”) they marry, produce children, eat, drink and die but unlike human beings have the power to take on different shapes and are capable of moving heavy objects almost instantly from one place to another. The Qur'an mentions how the Prophet Solomon contrived to subjugate the jinn and get them to perform tasks that required strength, intelligence and skill. 

 

The lines between devils and jinn are often blurred. Especially in folklore, jinn share many characteristics usually associated with devils, as both are held responsible for mental illness, diseases and possession. The jinn share many characteristics with humans, whereas devils lack them. Folklore differentiates both types of creatures as well. Since the term shaitan is also used as an epithet to describe the taqalan (humans and jinn), naming malevolent jinn also as shayāṭīn in some sources, it is sometimes difficult to hold them apart. Satan and his hosts of devils (shayatin) generally appear in traditions associated with Jewish and Christian narratives, while jinn represent entities of polytheistic background.

 

According to the website from the journal of the royal society of medicine...One Islamic concept that has entered into western mythology is that of the jinn or genies, as in the story of Aladdin. However, according to Islamic belief, jinn are real creatures that form a world other than that of mankind, capable of causing physical and mental harm to human beings. An example of such harm is possession. As defined by Littlewood, possession is the belief that an individual has been entered by an alien spirit or other parahuman force, which then controls the person or alters that person's actions and identity. To the observer, this would be manifested as an altered state of consciousness. In the UK, jinn possession is most likely to be seen among people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Middle East or North Africa. Some commentators claim that possession is a culture-bound syndrome but others argue that, although the manifestations may differ according to culture, the underlying theme is always the same. In Islamic writings true jinn possession can cause a person to have seizures and to speak in an incomprehensible language. The possessed is unable to think or speak from his own will.  In cases of real possession the task of the therapist, who must have strong faith in Allah, is to expel the jinn. This is usually done in one of three ways—remembrance of God and recitation of the Qur'an (dhikr); blowing into the person's mouth, cursing and commanding the jinn to leave; and seeking refuge with Allah by calling upon Allah, remembering him, and addressing his creatures (ruqyah). Some faith healers strike the possessed person, claiming that it is the jinn that suffer the pain. This practice, however, is deplored by Muslim scholars as being far from the principles of Islam and the instructions of the Prophet. 

 

We found a couple case files of suspected possession by jinn. We’ll go through one for ya!

 

A 25-year-old woman from Iraq with no previous psychiatric history gradually withdrew from other people, became uncommunicative and stopped eating and drinking. Investigations revealed no organic disease and severe depressive illness was diagnosed. She underwent electro-convulsive therapy without much improvement. Her family, believing her to be possessed by jinn but not wanting to say so to the doctors for fear of being labelled as superstitious, took her to a local faith healer, who offered to treat her in the traditional Islamic way. After a few sessions of combined dhikr and ruqyah her condition improved and she resumed eating and drinking. On recovery she had no explanation for what had happened, though she remembered the sequence of events. She stated that she had been aware of her surroundings, but had been unable to initiate anything. She denied feeling low in mood at the time. 5 years later she remains well and without medication.

 

So was it a jinn? Maybe… Probably… Most likely… The crazy thing is it's not only humans which are possessed, but also animals, trees and other objects.  By doing this, the evil Jinn hope to make people worship others aside from God.  The possession of idols is one way to do this.  Not so long ago the world-wide phenomenon of Hindu idols drinking milk, shocked the world.  From Bombay to London, Delhi to California, countless idols were lapping up milk.  Ganesh the elephant god, Hanuman the monkey god and even Shiva lingam, the male private organ (!), all seemed to guzzle down the milk as if there was no tomorrow! Unfortunately people were taken in by this and many flocked to feed the Hindu gods.  This feat was undoubtedly done by the Jinn as a classic attempt to make people worship false gods.

 

Another one of the powers of the Jinn, is that they are able to take on any physical form they like.  Thus, they can appear as humans, animals, trees and anything else.  Thousands of people have sighted strange looking creatures all over the world - and it seems more plausible all the sightings of such creatures may have been Jinns parading in different forms. The average Jinn is stronger than the average man, although specific men can be stronger than certain Jinn. Jinn can teleport from one place to another and travel at the speed of light. Whereas Jinn have several powers that humans do not possess, mankind possesses more wisdom overall. Jinn also have their own varieties of animals and beasts. 

 

The jinn had an indirect impact on Islamic art through the creation of talismans that were alleged to guard the bearer from the jinn and were enclosed in leather and included Qur’anic verses. It was not unusual for those talismans to be inscribed with separated Arabic letters, because the separation of those letters was thought to positively affect the potency of the talisman overall. An object that was inscribed with the word of Allah was thought to have the power to ward off evil from the person who obtained the object, though many of these objects also had astrological signs, depictions of prophets, or religious narratives. 

 

a sorcerer may summon a jinn and force him to perform orders. Summoned jinn may be sent to the chosen victim to cause demonic possession. Such summonings were done by invocation, by aid of talismans or by satisfying the jinn, thus to make a contract.

 

Jinn are also regarded as assistants of soothsayers. Soothsayers reveal information from the past and present; the jinn can be a source of this information because their lifespans exceed those of humans. Another way to subjugate them is by inserting a needle to their skin or dress. Since jinn are afraid of iron, they are unable to remove it with their own power.

 

Another interesting thing is that During the Rwandan genocide, both Hutus and Tutsis avoided searching local Rwandan Muslim neighborhoods because they widely believed the myth that local Muslims and mosques were protected by the power of Islamic magic and the efficacious jinn. In the Rwandan city of Cyangugu, arsonists ran away instead of destroying the mosque because they feared the wrath of the jinn, whom they believed were guarding the mosque.

 

Ok so that was a lot to take in. There is a ton of stuff out there on the jinn. Since the jinn are rooted in religion some of the readings can get a bit tedious and honestly if you're not familiar with the Islamic religion it can be hard to follow some of the stuff and put it together. Hopefully we did a decent job, up to this point. The real jinn are quite different from the jinn that have been westernized for entertainment, which is another thing that can make it difficult to figure out what is real and what is just westernized stories.  That being said, other religions have comparable spirits to the jinn.

 

The ancient Sumerians believed in Pazuzu, a wind demon, who was shown with "a rather canine face with abnormally bulging eyes, a scaly body, a snake-headed penis, the talons of a bird and usually wings." So basically, it's chainsaw.

 

The ancient Babylonians believed in utukku, a class of demons which were believed to haunt remote wildernesses, graveyards, mountains, and the sea, all locations where jinn were later thought to reside.

 

The Assyrians believed in the Alû, sometimes described as a wind demon residing in desolate ruins who would sneak into people's houses at night and steal their sleep.

 

 The description of jinn is almost identical with that of the shedim from Jewish mythology. As with the jinn, some of whom follow the law brought by Muhammad, some of the shedim are believed to be followers of the law of Moses and consequently good.

 

As in Islam, the idea of spiritual entities converting to one's own religion can be found in Buddhism. According to lore, Buddha preached to Devas and Asura, spiritual entities who, like humans, are subject to the cycle of life, and who resemble the Islamic notion of jinn, who are also ontologically placed among humans in regard to eschatological destiny.

 

Some scholars evaluated whether the jinn might be compared to fallen angels in Christian traditions. Comparable to Augustine's descriptions of fallen angels as ethereal, jinn seem to be considered as the same substance. Although the concept of fallen angels is not absent in the Quran, the jinn nevertheless differ in their major characteristics from that of fallen angels: While fallen angels fell from heaven, the jinn did not, but try to climb up to it in order to receive the news of the angels. Jinn are closer to daemons.

 

How about we leave you with a few spooky stories of jinn! These are copied word for word and we tried to correct mistakes but we may have missed some! 

 

   I was staying in Makkah one summer and living in an apartment under King Fahd Mosque (we were studying with the imam of the masjid). We were sleeping with about 7 of us in one room. I was lying down staring at the ceiling with my leg bent up and something came and shook me real hard. everybody was sleeping so i woke one of the dudes up and he was like just go and sleep in the other room. When i went into the other room everybody was sleeping too (3 ppl) but the light was flickering and the ceiling fan was shaking back and forth and it wasn't on (the blades werent spinning) so i was like weird and went to sleep.. bout 5 minutes later the dude that told me to go to the other room came running in and said something had grabbed him and covered his mouth as he was lying down... and he couldn't breathe but somehow managed to say "audhu billahi...'' So we were freaked out and phoned the imam in the middle of the night and he came and slept in the ap that night. Also in the same apartment at night you could hear people running and jumping in the mosque above in the middle of the night but no one was up there (we checked many times) and in one corner of the apt you could always hear someone reciting Quran.. and it was the most beautiful recitation i ever heard (better than sudais and all the rest)

 

Creepy!! How about another

 

there was this 9 year old kid that lived in the village and he went missing one night, which was strange because all the doors were locked to go outside the house and there was no other possible way to go out of the house. They woke up in the morning and he wasnt in his bed so they got everyone they knew and did a search for him everywhere, they didnt find him the village but in the middle of the night the next they found him in a nearby graveyard. Thankfully he was safe. But everyone didnt know how he could of possibly got out of the house. Then everyone thought it has to be a jinn.

This is a true story and happened while i was in pakistan!

 

 Someone posted a story about how when his maternal grandmother was on her deathbed, a cat started to appear in their home. The cat would even appear in the home when all the doors and windows were closed. It had a really bad smell and a very dirty coat. And whenever someone recited a holy verse from the Quran, it would vanish. After the grandmother passed away, the cat would still appear and the few times that it did, everyone in the house fell sick. 

 

Another?… Ok

 

   So apparently, in Saudi, my aunt lived in a house that was always being visited by a particular jinn who used to annoy her family. Once, she was laying in bed at night with her husband. She felt that something was off and when she left the room, she found her husband watching TV on the couch. When they went back to the bedroom to confront the jinn, it just laughed and went away.

 

Ok one more:

 

My great uncle went to visit his cousins in India. His cousins told him that since it was summertime they would all sleep in the courtyard together. However, they told him he wasn’t allowed to place his bedding in a particular corner. Apparently, a jinn slept there and strange things happened if any one disturbs that corner. My great uncle said it was nonsense and decided to sleep there anyway.

 

One night, he woke up on the other side of the court. He laughed at first and thought it was his cousins who were pranking him and decided to sleep there again. The following night, the same thing happened, so he left a note next to his pillow saying, ”Stop pranking me. I know there is no jinn.” That night, he said he was pushed off his bed, and his bedding was thrown on the other side. A note was thrown into his lap which said, ‘I sleep here.” The scary part is, it wasn’t that dark and there was no one there. 

So we're not gonna lie, religion is not really our forte. But hopefully we were able to get some of it right! The history and depictions of the jinn are pretty cool when you get into it. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it as well. 

 

Top horror movies about djinn

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=djinn

 

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=jinn

   

Who Was The Somerton Man?

   At 7pm on the evening of November 30,1948, John Lyon and his wife were walking along Somerton Beach, just south of Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. They noticed a well dressed man lying on the beach with his head propped up against the sea wall. The man was lying with his legs outstretched and his feet crossed. As the couple passed, they saw him raise his right arm and then it fell to the sand. John said it looked like a "drunken attempt to smoke a cigarette". A half hour later they were walking back the same way and noticed the same man was still there. There he was in his nice suit and polished shoes, an odd way to dress for lounging on the beach. He was still with his left arm laid out on the beach. The couple figured he was asleep, maybe passed out drunk. There were mosquitos buzzing all around his face. John commented to his wife "he must be dead to the world".

 

       The next morning John Lyons would discover how right he was. As he was returning from a morning swim, John noticed a cluster of people gathered around the area where he had seen the drunk man the day before. As he approached the group he saw a man slumped over in much the same position as the man from yesterday. The body was lying there, legs out, feet crossed, cigarette half smoked lying on his collar, but this man was not drunk, he was dead. This was the man John and his wife saw the day before, this was the Somerton Man! 

 

This case endures to this day as one of the greatest mysteries of Australia. No one is sure who the man is, why he ended up dead on the beach, or even how he died. Dr. John Barkley Bennett put the time of death at no earlier than 2 a.m., noted the likely cause of death as heart failure, and added that he suspected poisoning. The contents of the man’s pockets were spread out on a table: tickets from Adelaide to the beach, a pack of chewing gum, some matches, two combs and a pack of Army Club cigarettes containing seven cigarettes of another, more expensive brand called Kensitas. There was no wallet and no cash, and no ID. None of the man’s clothes had any name tags—indeed, in all but one case the maker’s label had been carefully snipped away. One trouser pocket had been neatly repaired with an unusual variety of orange thread. A day later a full autopsy was carried out and revealed some more strange things. It revealed that the corpse’s pupils were “smaller” than normal and “unusual,” that a dribble of saliva had run down the side of the man’s mouth as he lay, and that “he was probably unable to swallow it.” His spleen, meanwhile, “was strikingly large and firm, about three times normal size,” and the liver was distended with congested blood. In his stomach they found his last meal and more blood. He had eaten a pasty, a folded pastry with a savoury filling, typically of seasoned meat and vegetables. The blood in the stomach also suggested poisoning but there was no evidence that the food was the cause of any poisoning. The poisoning theory seemed to concur with the strange behavior the man exhibited on the beach, instead of drunken behavior it could have been the behavior of a man who had been suffering the effects of poisoning. Now, while this theory made sense given the evidence, repeated tests on both his blood and organs by an expert chemist failed to reveal the faintest trace of a poison. “I was astounded that he found nothing,” Dwyer admitted at the inquest. In fact, no cause of death was found. Among all this weirdness, other odd things were noticed. The dead man’s calf muscles were high and very well developed; although in his late 40s, he had the legs of an athlete. His toes, meanwhile, were oddly wedge-shaped. Testimony given by one experts went as follows: 

 

      I have not seen the tendency of calf muscle so pronounced as in this case…. His feet were rather striking, suggesting—this is my own assumption—that he had been in the habit of wearing high-heeled and pointed shoes.

 

Another expert had suggested that given these irregularities that maybe the man was actually a ballet dancer. 

 

Putting all this together made… Well… Zero sense. The coroner was informed by an eminent professor that the only practical solution was that a very rare poison had been used—one that “decomposed very early after death,” leaving no trace. The only poisons capable of this were so dangerous and deadly that the professor would not say their names aloud in open court. (My mind goes to Ricin, a highly potent toxin produced in the seeds of the castor oil plant.) Instead, he passed the coroner a scrap of paper on which he had written the names of two possible candidates: digitalis and strophanthin. The professor suspected the latter. Strophanthin is a rare glycoside derived from the seeds of some African plants. Historically, it was used by a little-known Somali tribe to poison arrows. 

 

At this point everyone was thoroughly and extremely confused. They took a full set of fingerprints and sent them all over Australia and then around the work to try and figure out who this guy was. There were no matches anywhere. They started bringing people with missing relatives into the mortuary to see if anyone recognized the man, no one did. 

 

By January 11, the South Australia police had investigated and dismissed pretty much every lead they had. The investigation was now widened in an attempt to locate any abandoned personal possessions, perhaps left luggage, that might suggest that the dead man had come from out of state. This meant checking every hotel, dry cleaner, lost property office and railway station for miles around. But it did produce results. On the 12th, detectives sent to the main railway station in Adelaide were shown a brown suitcase that had been deposited in the cloakroom there on November 30. The staff could remember nothing about the owner, and the case’s contents were not much more revealing. The case did contain a reel of orange thread identical to that used to repair the dead man’s trousers, but painstaking care had been applied to remove practically every trace of the owner’s identity. The case bore no stickers or markings, and get this, a label had been torn off from one side. The tags were missing from all but three items of the clothing inside; these bore the name “Kean” or “T. Keane,” but it proved impossible to trace anyone of that name, and the police concluded–an Adelaide newspaper reported–that someone “had purposely left them on, knowing that the dead man’s name was not ‘Kean’ or ‘Keane.’ ” So, a subterfuge! Spy games! (I just love that word)

 

The police had brought in another expert, John Cleland, emeritus professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide, to re-examine the corpse and the dead man’s possessions. In April, four months after the discovery of the body, Cleland’s search produced a final piece of evidence—one that would prove to be the most baffling of all. Cleland discovered a small pocket sewn into the waistband of the dead man’s trousers. Previous examiners had missed it, and several accounts of the case have referred to it as a “secret pocket,” but it seems to have been intended to hold a pocket watch. Inside, tightly rolled, was a minute scrap of paper, which, opened up, proved to contain two words, typeset in an elaborate printed script. The phrase read “Tamám Shud.” 

 

Frank Kennedy, the police reporter for the Adelaide Advertiser, recognized the words as Persian, and telephoned the police to suggest they obtain a copy of a book of poetry—the Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam. This work, written in the twelfth century, had become popular in Australia during the war years in a much-loved translation by Edward FitzGerald. It existed in numerous editions, but the usual intricate police enquiries to libraries, publishers and bookshops failed to find one that matched the fancy type. At least it was possible, however, to say that the words “Tamám shud” (or “Taman shud,” as several newspapers misprinted it—a mistake perpetuated ever since) did come from Khayyam’s romantic reflections on life and mortality. They were, in fact, the last words in most English translations— not surprisingly, because the phrase means “It is ended.” Weeeeird!

 

Taken at face value, this new clue suggested that the death might be a case of suicide; in fact, the South Australia police never did turn their “missing person” enquiries into a full-blown murder investigation. But the discovery took them no closer to identifying the dead man, and in the meantime his body had begun to decompose. Arrangements were made for a burial, but—being aware that they were disposing of one of the few pieces of evidence they had—the police first had the corpse embalmed, and a cast taken of the head and upper torso. After that, the body  was buried, sealed under concrete in a plot of dry ground specifically chosen in case it became necessary to exhume it. Oddly enough, As late as 1978, flowers would be found at odd intervals on the grave, but no one could ascertain who had left them there, or why. 

 

In July, a full eight months after the investigation had begun, the search for the right Rubaiyat produced results. On the 23rd, a Glenelg man walked into the Detective Office in Adelaide with a copy of the book and a strange story. Early the previous December, just after the discovery of the unknown body, he had gone for a drive with his brother-in-law in a car he kept parked a few hundred yards from Somerton Beach. The brother-in-law had found a copy of the Rubaiyat lying on the floor by the rear seats. Each man had silently assumed it belonged to the other, and the book had sat in the glove compartment ever since. Alerted by a newspaper article about the search, the two men had gone back to take a closer look. They found that part of the final page had been torn out, together with Khayyam’s final words. They went to the police.

 

Detective Sergeant Lionel Leane took a close look at the book. Almost at once he found a telephone number penciled on the rear cover; using a magnifying glass, he dimly made out the faint impression of some other letters, written in capitals underneath. Finally they had a solid clue!

 

So where did the clue lead them? Well the phone number was unlisted. But have no fear… They traced the number to a nurse who lived near Somerton Beach. The nurse has never been publicly identified. She is only known by the nickname Jestyn. She revealed to investigators that she had indeed given that book to a friend of hers, a man she knew in the war. She also gave them a name, Alfred Boxall.

 

Boom! Mystery solved!!! Right? Well maybe not so much. Detectives felt they had figured out the identity of the dead man. Except for the fact that when they tracked down Alfred Boxall in new south wales… He was still alive. Oh and also, the copy of the book he received from the nurse… He still had it and it was still intact. The gentle probing that the nurse received did yield some intriguing bits of information though; interviewed again, she recalled that some time the previous year—she could not be certain of the date—she had come home to be told by neighbors that an unknown man had called and asked for her. And, confronted with the cast of the dead man’s face, Jestyn seemed “completely taken aback, to the point of giving the appearance she was about to faint,” Leane said. She seemed to recognize the man, yet firmly denied that he was anyone she knew. 

 

That left the faint impression Sergeant Leane had noticed in the Glenelg Rubaiyat. Examined under ultraviolet light, five lines of jumbled letters could be seen, the second of which had been crossed out. The first three were separated from the last two by a pair of straight lines with an ‘x’ written over them. It seemed that they were some sort of code. They sent the message to Naval Intelligence, home to the finest cipher experts in Australia, and allowed the message to be published in the press. This produced a frenzy of amateur codebreaking, almost all of it worthless, and a message from the Navy concluding that the code appeared unbreakable:

 

          “From the manner in which the lines have been represented as being set out in the original, it is evident that the end of each line indicates a break in sense.

 

There is an insufficient number of letters for definite conclusions to be based on analysis, but the indications together with the acceptance of the above breaks in sense indicate, in so far as can be seen, that the letters do not constitute any kind of simple cipher or code.

 

The frequency of the occurrence of letters, whilst inconclusive, corresponds more favourably with the table of frequencies of initial letters of words in English than with any other table; accordingly a reasonable explanation would be that the lines are the initial letters of words of a verse of poetry or such like.”

 

The Australian police never cracked the code or identified the unknown man. The nurse, Jestyn died in 2007, so there's no possibility of ever getting her to reveal why she reacted the way she did when seeing the cast of the man. And when the South Australia coroner published the final results of his investigation in 1958, his report concluded with the admission:

 

I am unable to say who the deceased was… I am unable to say how he died or what was the cause of death.

 

And that's where the case sits

 

And that's it… Thank you guys and good night.

 

Oh wait… You want more? Fine.

 

The information on the initial case and investigation came from a great article on smithsonianmag.com

 

There… Still not enough…ok ok

 

So what about this nurse then. Turns out her actual name is Jessica Thompson and she passed in 2007 as stated earlier. Police had always felt she knew more than she was letting on. Her daughter would later say in an interview that she thought her mother knew the dead man. The reason her message was not released earlier is because she requested a pseudonym as she felt her connection to this case would be embarrassing. Why? Interesting. Some think that her real name is important because it may hold the key to deciphering the code. As stated earlier, her reaction to seeing the cast of the man led many people to think that she definitely knew the man. In a video we found the man who made the bust describes how when Jessica was brought in to see the bust she saw the likeness when a sheet was removed from it and immediately looked down and would not look at the bust again for the rest of the interview. It was during that interview that she gave them the information of Alfred Boxall. So the question remains with Jessica… Did she know the man? If she did know the man, why was she so informed to distance herself from this case? Was she involved in some way?

 

As far as the man himself, there are many theories floating around. One of the most prevailing theories is that he was a spy! We got us some James bond shit going down! Or maybe not. Others say he was involved in the black market as evidence but the clipped labels on his clothing. So he was dealing in babies and knock off clothing on the black market!!! Maybe not.  Well let's look into these theories and see what you guys think. 

 

One man who thinks there is a spy connection is Gordon Cramer, a former British detective with links to former intelligence officers. He says parts of the code match with Morse code letters found in the World War II Radio Operators Manual. He believed micro writing hidden within the letters of the five lines of code appeared to refer to the de Havilland Venom — a British post-war jet, still on the drawing board at the time.

 

He also saw the Somerton Man’s death coinciding with the start of the Cold War and, according to Mr Cramer, the visit to Adelaide of high-ranking British officials and weapons trials at Woomera — the later site of nuclear testing. So this guy thinks that's a link to show he may have been some sort of cold war spy. Other things that people say pointing to him being a spy include the family of our nurse friend telling 60 minutes Jestyn, aka Jessica Thomson may have been a Russian spy! And even crazier… That she may have had a son with the Somerton Man! This theory is further backed by another article we found. Derek Abbott, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Adelaide has spent over a decade studying the case. 

     

        “What makes this kind of go viral is, I think, just all the strange things. It kind of just gives you that creepy shiver down your spine.” 

 

DNA, Abbott said, is a key to solving the mystery. “I’m not so interested in how he died, but giving him his name back is the most important thing.”

 

Abbott also noticed that the man also had two distinctive features: canines next to middle teeth and ears with large upper hollows. After examining the mysterious letters of the code in the late 2000s, Dr. Abbott said, “I kind of fell down the rabbit hole.” In 2009 he tried to track down Mrs. Thomson (our nurse friend) for an interview but found that she had died two years earlier. She had a son who had been a DUN DUN DUNNNN professional ballet dancer, Dr. Abbott learned, and photos showed he had distinctive teeth and ears similar to the Somerton man’s. Oh shit son! Abbott decided to then track down this man but unfortunately he had died mere months before Abbott made his discovery. COINCIDENCE?? He found out that Thomson's son had a daughter of his own… So guess what… He tracked her down. And guess what… SHE was dead… Actually no that's not true she’s still alive. The woman's name was Rachel Egan. Ms. Egan had never heard of the Somerton man, but she agreed to help Dr. Abbott in his effort to name the man who might be her grandfather. Dr. Abbott laid out that scenario: “The Somerton man had Jessica Thomson’s number. He was found dead a five minutes’ walk from her house. Rachel’s dad was only 1 year old at the time, with no father. So you kind of put two and two together — but until it’s absolutely confirmed, you never know.”

 

And Dr. Abbott acknowledged that, if usable DNA was obtained from the exhumed remains, it might in fact show his wife had no link to the Somerton man. “All I can say is there’s lots of twists and turns in this case, and every turn is pretty weird,” he said. 

 

Want another weird twist? Abbott and Egan fell in love and were married in 2010. And yes that part is true. 

 

So, while he himself doesn't necessarily back the spy theory, his life of work could lend credence to said theory. 

 

Several years ago, Ms. Egan had her DNA analyzed, and links were found to people in the United States (including relatives of some guy named Thomas Jefferson… yes, that Thomas Jefferson). More recently, links were also found to the grandparents of the man that Jessica Thomson eventually married. “So my head is spinning,” Dr. Abbott said. “Does that prove she’s not connected now to the Somerton man? Or does that prove that somehow the Somerton man is related to her assumed grandfather? It’s getting all complicated, so complicated that I’m just going to shut up now and let the DNA from the Somerton man speak for itself.”

 

Another strange connection that could lend itself to a spot connection is the remarkable similarities to the Mystery of the Isdal woman. On November 29, 1970, while hiking Isdalen (Ice Valley) near Bergen, Norway, a father and his two daughters witnessed a horrifying sight. Wedged between the rocks of the hiking trail, they discover a badly burnt female body. The labels of her clothes had been cut off and any distinctive marks had been removed as if to make her completely unrecognizable. The front side of her body had been severely burnt and she was found in a boxer’s position, fists clenched. When you look into this case there are many similarities to the Somerton Man that we may just go ahead and cover in a bonus!

 

Again, Thomson's own daughter believed the Somerton Man to be a spy and that her own mother may have also been a spy. She said her mother taught English to migrants and spoke fluent Russian. Jessica had once told her daughter that “someone higher than the police force” also knew the identity of the mysterious man.

 

Another theory is that the Somerton Man was involved in illegal activities involving the black market that sprung up after WWII. People point to the missing labels on the clothes as pointing toward that possibility. Abbott who we discussed earlier had said that this seems a more likely route than the spy route. If he was involved in some sort of black market goings on or something similar, it would definitely explain the urge for someone to go to many lengths to keep his identity a secret. But what would the rest of the clues mean? Was the page or of the book meant to send a message to someone else? Some think the code found may have had something to do with black market shipments or deliveries, or possibly locations. Without solid evidence though this is pretty much all just speculation. 

Many people are also subscribing to the theory that this was just a case of a jilted lover. They believe that the Somerton Man and the nurse were lovers and that they had a child together. After this some people think that Thomson rejected the Somerton Man for some reason and it led to the man taking his own life. This theory seems most plausible but at the same time, why has no one been able to figure out who this man was. It also makes sense in the line of Thomson being embarrassed by being involved in the case and her unwillingness to discuss it with police as she was dating another man at the time of the death who would eventually become her husband. 

 

If you really want to get crazy with the cheese whiz so to speak, there are small groups of people that really are looking at the fringe theories. If you look into the far corners of reddit and other similar sites you'll find the usual theories of time travel and extraterrestrial origins. Those folks are definitely in the small minority but they are out there and most likely started by Mr. Moody. 

 

Ok so where does all the craziness leave us? Well… We don't know. The Somerton man's body was exhumed earlier this year and we haven't been able to find any updates on any sort of DNA analysis, because as we know, these things tend to take some time. In articles as recent as July of this year they are still waiting on results. Part of the problem is that getting quality DNA samples from that old and degraded of a body can sometimes be difficult. So, while there are many theories on who the man was and the circumstances around his death no one knows for sure who he was and what happened. The one person who seemed to have at least some sort of knowledge of the man passed away without ever revealing her secrets. The other difficult thing is that every time a question seems to be answered it only opens up even more questions. Is the code really a code? Was the man a spy? Was the nurse a spy? Was anyone a spy? Was chainsaw involved? Where was he in 1948? As the old tootsie pop commercial used to say… the world may never know! 

Best horror movies of 1948

 

https://www.pickthemovie.com/best-horror-movies-of-1948

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Ep. 112

Haunted

Venues

 

On today's episode we're going on tour!!! That's right Moody and myself are heading back out on the road and this time we're bringing Logan to carry our shit instead of us lugging everyone else's shit! Why are we heading out on tour you ask? Well it's because we are doing a tour of haunted music and theater venues throughout the world! This is an episode we've been wanting to do for a while especially because we've been to quite a few of these places! There's even one in our home town! Like we have at that certain Cleveland venue, we're sure some of our listeners have spent a ton of their time at some of the venues on the list. This is gonna be a fun one for us so hopefully you guys love it too!

First up we've got a big one that will be on every list of haunted venues. The House Of Blues in Chicago. So the history of the building took a bit to find because every search for the house of blues in any city comes up with the main house of blues page but with a little digging we found some info on the building's history. The House of Blues is part of a complex called The Marina City complex. The Marina complex is also known as the Corn cob apparently, and looking at it… You can see why. If you're listening in Chicago and are like "what the fuck, nobody calls it that", will remember our mantra.. Don't blame us, blame the internet… Although we did find that reference in a couple spots. The Marina is a mix of residential condos and commercial buildings built between 1961-1968. The complex consists of two 587-foot, 65-story apartment towers, a 10-story office building which is now a hotel, and a saddle-shaped auditorium building originally used as a cinema. When finished, the two towers were both the tallest residential buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the world. The complex was built as a "city within a city", featuring numerous on-site facilities including a theater, gym, swimming pool, ice rink, bowling alley, stores, restaurants, and, of course, a marina. WLS-TV (ABC Channel 7) transmitted from an antenna atop Marina City until the Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears Tower) was completed. Marina City was the first post-war urban high-rise residential complex in the United States and is widely credited with beginning the residential renaissance of American inner cities. These days the complex is home to the Hotel Chicago, 10pin bowling lounge, and several restaurants including… You fucking guessed it... Dick's Last Resort bitches!!! Oh and also the complex is home to the house of blues. The house of blues was built in the shell of the cinema which was out of use for quite some time. The story is that the hob is haunted by the spirit of a little girl that died due to an illness. There are many reports of weird things happening. The most circulated story seems to be that of a little boy who was playing with some of his toys toys. As he was playing he stepped away for a moment and when he came back he saw a little girl playing with his toys. She asked him if he'd like to play with her. FUCK THAT SHIT!!!! The little boy screamed and the girl vanished. Oddly enough, I did find a comment on one website from a man named Skyler seeming to corroborate this story. The comment reads as follows: 

 

          " This can not be… no way… I have performed there 2 times. once was in 2013, and there was a boy in the back playing with his cars. a few minutes after he screamed and started to cry. I was feeling bad,, but this can’t be him… also know that in 2015 in march i had another performance and all the lights turned off. This is too creepy."

 

Was this the same boy that the story is referring too? Who knows. We also found several comments from people staying in what we assume is the hotel Chicago as it's in the complex and pretty much right next to the house of blues. There's comment also claim the hotel is haunted. One of the claims says this: 

 

        "It’s haunted!!! I saw a middle aged/older woman (dressed in clothing from a period long ago) in my room when I stayed there in 1999/2000. I woke in the early morning to see a woman staring at me. I went through a rational thought process of it being my female business colleague (who stayed in a separate room) and I thought, oh well she can sleep in the other bed (it was a double room & I was in the bed furthest away from the front door) and then quickly snapped out of it and said to myself she has her own room why would she be in my room, I opened my eyes again and that’s when I could see it was a woman clearly (w/ angry face) staring at me. I then thought this is a stranger/intruder in my room – I laid there with my eyes just open enough to see – she was there staring at me & she still didn’t look happy. I laid there thinking of what to do – I decided I was going to reach and turn the light on and then charge her or run after her when she ran for the door (fortunately, there was a switch right next to the bed). HOWEVER, when I reached for the light and turned it on she was gone. This is what makes this story interesting — I called the front desk and simply asked, ‘had anything significant ever happened at the site of the hotel’ (b/c as the person above points out, its not an old or historic looking building (e.g. PreWar). I asked another question that any tourist could have just asked (I don’t recall what it was right now). She said immediatley, “No, why did you see a ghost?” My response was, yea, I saw a ghost, I’m in my twenties and not some nut job.” I asked if anyone else had ever reported seeing a ghost and she said, “No.” Anyway, when I met up with my colleague, she could tell I was shaken up and I was pretty pale (like “I had seen a host.”). My story has never changed in all this time. I did stay at the hotel 1 other time after (not in the same room) & didn’t see anything – but I slept with the bathroom light on… Scary & Cool experience for sure!"

 

Sounds spooky! 

 

Next on our list of haunted venues we are heading to Milwaukee! Which is actually pronounced meely waukay, which is Algonquin for the good land. Now the Rave is amazing for several reasons: first it's the location of one of Moody's favorite tour stories which also involves Jon and our friend Brad from Voudoux.  2: it's huge and creepy as shit. 3: the pool... The Rave/Eagles Club is a 180,000 square foot, seven-level, live entertainment complex in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The building contains eight independent clubs with capacities ranging from 400 to 3500. The Eagles Ballroom is the building's showpiece, featuring a 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) oval wooden dance floor, originally installed when the building was constructed, in addition to a large, old-fashioned domed ceiling and a stage on one side. Originally a ballroom, it has hosted everything from boxing matches to concerts to ethnic dances. The ballroom head hosted huge acts ranging from Bob Dylan to Green day, from the grateful dead to slayer and of course none other than Lil Pump. 

 

Along with the eagles ballroom, the building houses the Rave hall, The eagles hall, the Rave bar, The Rave craft beer lounge, The penthouse lounge, and the eagles club. 

Since its construction in 1926, the Eagles Club has known several incarnations. Prominently among them, it housed the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, a notable organization whose considerable impacts on America's cultural landscape remain in effect today.

 

In 1939, the idea of using the building for music presentations took hold, reinventing its purpose. The grand ballroom became a popular venue for big band music, such as band leaders Guy Lombardo and Glen Miller and their orchestras. Soon, other types of music, theatre and performing arts also offered shows and concerts in the large, elegant ballroom; from 1939 through the mid-sixties. Comedians like Bob Hope and Red Skeleton did stand-up comedy. In 1959, people who bought a $1.50 ticket to the Winter Dance Party, were treated to the music of Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Big Bopper, Dion and the Belmonts, and Richie Valens. This would be the last show for buddy Holly before he died. In 1964, The Eagles Club had its first rock concert, with the Dave Clark Five performing on the ballroom stage. The 1970s brought even more famous groups and people, such as Eric Clapton, Crosby, Stills and Nash and other rising rock stars.When the Athletic Club was closed, a homeless men’s shelter opened up temporarily in the basement area, providing shelter for the destitute which is life-saving during the freezing winter months. By the late 1980s, The Eagles Club was in a state of disrepair and The Eagle Club put it out on the real estate market, after getting it listed on The National Register of Historic Places, in 1986.  In late 1992, the Eagles Club was rescued when it was bought by Wauwatosa businessman Anthony J. Balestrieri and his wife, Marjorie, who performed in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. They began the long process of restoring the historic beauty of the elegant ballroom and interior art, as well as the outside facade. They also restored and renovated other areas turning the building into the multi venue building it is today. 

 

We wanted to include this history because: A. We love the history of places like this and B. It shows how many things this building way used for and how many people have passed through the building. We all know where there tons of history there tends to be ghost stories! 

 

Let's get into the spooky shit! Remember the pool we mentioned earlier… Well at one point a 17 year old boy had a fucking heart attack and died in the pool. Later, at least two more children would die in the pool. This would ultimately cause the closure of the athletic club.  Also the man who ran the homeless shelter was said to be extremely cruel and abusive to the men staying there. 

 

The basement area which is the home of the former men's shelter, is one of the more haunted areas. The shelter manager mentioned earlier is thought to be the reason behind the heavy negative energy felt there. Cold spots are often felt by staff in the late hours after closing. Shadow people have often been reported by staff as well as band members packing up after a show. 

 

Next is the pool area, which we've seen and it's fucking creepy. A little girl is said to roam around the area. People have heard her laughter and have said her presence can bring a sense of dread. Staff have said they have heard shuffling footsteps and have smelled a strong odor of bleach in the pool area. 

 

In the boiler room under the pool, a former employee still hangs and he doesn't like people in his area. "Jack" was once recorded telling a group on a ghost hunt to "get out, get out now" Apparently, you can find a video of this on YouTube, we’ll try and find it to post on our page.

 

The ballroom has had its share of apparitions hanging around during sound checks and after shows when everyone has left. An employee told a story of when he was standing on the floor of The Eagles Ballroom, making sure that the people going to the roof patio didn’t “get lost” and go into the Eagles Ballroom by design.  He said that one of his fellow workers had seen what they thought was a man, standing in one of the second floor boxes located above the Eagles Ballroom. He called security and when they approached this person, he ran down the aisle but disappeared before the staff person that was behind him and the security person cutting off his escape could try to grab him. 

 

One other common theme is people hearing either happy laughing children or sad crying children. Some staff have stated they've seen entities of children playing in groups. 

 

We've been here.. This place is awesome. Also another fun tidbit… not to far away from the Rave is the ambassador hotel. Which of you're up on your serial killers, you know is the place where Jeffrey Dahmer killed his first victim in Milwaukee. Steven Tuomi was Jeffrey Dahmer’s first victim in Milwaukee. Dahmer met Tuomi in September of 1987. At the time, Dahmer was out on probation after molestation charges of a minor. The two men spent the night together drinking heavily and visiting multiple bars. Later that night, they ended up in a room together in the Ambassador, room 507, which is a room some Dahmer historians have requested to stay in. Dahmer killed Toumi while he was in a drunken stupor. Upon waking up to find Tuomi dead, Dahmer put the body in a suitcase and took it to his grandmother’s house where he was living. In the basement, he acted out necrophiliac desires and then dismembered the body. Supposedly when Dahmer awoke to find Tuomi dead, the body was in an awkward position hanging off the side of the bed. Some visitors have reported instances of waking up to discover their partner in a similarly awkward position.

 

Visitors to room 507 have reported a variety of experiences, such as a heaviness to the room that they can’t quite explain. Some people get woken up in the middle of the night by odd circumstances. There's an extra little bit for ya!!!

 

Info on the Hauntings and most of the historical facts on the Rave was taken from an excellent article on hauntedhouses.com

 

Next up we're gonna head across the pond, so to speak. We're heading to London and the famous Royal Albert Hall! This place has a long and rich history behind it. The Royal Albert Hall was built on what was once the Gore estate, at the centre of which stood Gore House. The three acre estate was occupied by political reformer William Wilberforce between 1808-1828 and subsequently occupied between 1836-1849 by the Countess of Blessington and Count D’Orsay.

 

After the couple left for Paris in May 1851, the house was opened as the ‘Universal Symposium of All Nations’, a restaurant run by the first celebrity chef, Alexis Soyer, who planned to cater for the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.

 

After the exhibition and following the advice of Prince Albert, Gore House and its grounds were bought by the Exhibition’s Royal Commission to create the cultural quarter known as Albertopolis. A complex of public Victorian buildings were developed to house exhibits from the Great Exhibition and to further the study of art, science and industry. On May 20, 1867

7,000 people gathered under a purpose-built marquee to watch Queen Victoria lay the Hall’s red Aberdeen granite foundation stone, which today can be found underneath K stalls, row 11, seat 87 in the main auditorium. The Queen announced that “It is my wish that this Hall should bear his name to whom it will have owed its existence and be called The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences”, as a 21 gun salute was heard from Hyde Park and a trumpet fanfare from HM Life Guards sounded. By December 1870 construction of the Hall had moved on so much that HM Queen Victoria and her daughter Princess Beatrice visited the Hall to listen to the acoustics.

 

Almost three months later, on 25 February 1871, the Hall’s first concert was held to an audience for 7,000 people comprising the workmen and their families, various officials and the invited public. Amateur orchestra, The Wandering Minstrels, played to test the acoustics from all areas of the auditorium. 

 

This place has been running as a venue for 150 years! Again… History breeds ghosts and Hauntings! There's so much history in this building that we are not going to be able to include but please check out the official website for the royal Albert Hall to really drive into the history of this place. You won't be sorry you did. We gave you the beginnings to show how long this place has been around. We're gonna get right into the spooky shit though! 

 

On 13 July 1930 the Spiritualist Association rented the Royal Albert Hall for a seance for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, following the death of the Sherlock author on 7 July.

 

Conan Doyle was a spiritualist and believed in the existence beyond the grave. Upon his death 10,000 people gathered expectantly in the Hall to watch a medium take to the stage, hoping to witness some supernatural activity and hear a message from Conan Doyle from the other side…

 

       Lady Doyle: “Although I have not spoken to Arthur since he passed, I am certain that in his own time and his own way he will send a message to us”

Time Magazine, 21 July 1930

 

Lady Conan Doyle took to the stage alongside members of his family, with a vacant chair on her right reserved for her late husband.Time Magazine, who attended the seance, reports:

 

‘Mrs. Estelle Roberts, clairvoyant, took the stage. She declared five spirits were “pushing” her. She cried out their messages. Persons in the audience confirmed their validity. Suddenly Mrs. Roberts looked at Sir Arthur’s empty chair, cried: “He is here.”

Lady Doyle stood up. The clairvoyant’s eyes moved as though accompanying a person who was approaching her. “He is wearing evening clothes,” she murmured. She inclined her head to listen. A silent moment. Her head jerked up. She stared at Lady Doyle, shivered, ran to the widow, whispered.

Persons nearby could hear: “Sir Arthur told me that one of you went into the hut [on the Doyle estate] this morning. Is that correct?” Lady Doyle, faltering: “Why, yes.” She beamed. Her eyes opened widely.

The clairvoyant to Lady Doyle: “The message is this. Tell Mary [eldest daughter]…’

Time Magazine, 21 July 1930

 

At this the audience rose in a clamor, and the great organ of the Hall began to peal, the noise drowning out the answer of Mrs Roberts.

 

But what was the message delivered to Lady Doyle that night? Did the ghost of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle really visit the Royal Albert Hall on that night in 1930?

 

Seances are always fun and definitely work as we found out...yea...right….

 

Here's some more stories taken straight from the RAH website!

 

THE GIRLS

Beneath the Door 6 foyer, in the carpeted basement area, there is one spot where two young women, known as ‘the girls’, briefly appear each  November 2nd a little before 2am, when the building is almost deserted, except for some security staff.

 

Over the years, several staff members reported hearing ‘the girls’ laughing, and seeing their animated and excited silhouettes appear, clothed in the fashion of slightly risqué Victorian ladies (extravagant long dark dresses embellished with lace from neck to bodice, with many ruffles, especially around the sleeves and hem, and their hair styled in cottage-loaf buns with ringlets hanging over their ears). The Duty Security Incident Book indicates that there had been appearances by ‘the girls’ for the three years prior to 1991. They have been seen passing across the foyer space, which is bounded by double doors at each end, leading on one side to the staff canteen (where we still eat today) and on the other to the kitchen corridor, and then disappear. That is why some believe that ‘the girls’ may be responsible for unexplained accidents, tappings and footsteps that occur behind locked doors late at night in the kitchens. Assistants Chefs, who have to clean the kitchen every night after use, often used to hear noises and have been frightened whilst in that area. 

 

FATHER WILLIS

Whenever restoration work is carried out on our organ, its original constructor Henry Willis, fondly nicknamed ‘Father Willis’, returns as a stooped ghost wearing a black skull cap. When the organ was being reconstructed in 1924, workmen saw a little old man walk down the stairs late one afternoon. On returning to their workshop and relating the facts, their foreman asked what the man was wearing. When told that he was donning a black skull cap, the foreman decided it was the ghost of Father Willis, the original builder of the organ, long since dead, who would not approve of the alterations being undertaken. Since then there have been many reports of a sudden cold atmosphere in the area behind the organ.

 

When interviewed in 2018, Michael Broadway, the Hall’s organ custodian was asked if he had ever seen signs of the legendary ghost of Henry Willis. He answered: “I remember the organ builder Clifford Hyatt telling me about this over forty years ago. The tuner […] was making the final visit of the Willis contract before the Harrison & Harrison rebuild in the 1920s. When he got up on to the Great passage board he saw Father Willis there saying ‘They shan’t take my organ from me’. A lovely story, but I haven’t seen him. There are many questions I would ask him and hopefully have his approval of the way I look after this instrument. Perhaps he has no reason to be disturbed.” 

 

THE MAN IN WHITE

During a Jasper Carrott comedy event in May 1990, the Duty Manager was ordered to clear the Middle Choir seats and to post a Steward at either end to avoid anyone entering as it is very distracting for a performer to have people walking across the back of the stage during the show. That’s why a very angry Stage Manager demanded on radio to know why there was someone crossing the stage. The description was of a man dressed in white, walking oddly as if on drugs. The Stewards insisted no one had passed them and on further investigation no one except Jasper Carrott was onstage, but several people had seen the figure cross the stage from left to right.

 

THE VICTORIAN COUPLE

A staff member during the 2000s reported having seen a couple in Victorian clothing walk across the second tier near to Door Six and vanish into a box. As a venue whose history is so closely tied to the Victorian times, this didn’t seem particularly odd (people dress up sometimes…)

 

But in 2011, a Head Steward was finishing off his shift one evening and had made sure that all members of the public had left the second tier. On going downstairs into the auditorium, he noticed a couple sitting in the box so he returned to the second tier but found no one in the box. He assumed they had left while he was on his way back, so once again he returned to the auditorium… Only to see them again. So he went back to the second tier, and that’s when he heard the couple chattering. He assumed they were in the box but on opening the door, there was no one there.

 

There are several more accounts on their website and tons and tons of stories all over the web about experiences at the historical venue. It sounds like it's one crazy place!!!

 

We've got a couple more for you guys. 

   

          Next up is another club we've been too, the Masquerade in Atlanta. The Masquerade features three indoor venues with capacities ranging from 300 to 1000, appropriately named Heaven, Hell and Purgatory.  The Masquerade was founded in 1988 at the historic DuPre Excelsior Mill, a former excelsior mill at 695 North Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. The venue had both indoor and outdoor concert space. It was sold in 2006 and moved in late November 2016 after it was made part of a new mixed-use development called North + Line. The building was designated as historic by the city and all of the original parts will be saved through adaptive reuse. The masquerade had hosted tons of national and local acts from cannibal corpse to the greatest entertainer in history, Weird Al Yankovic.  

 

This night club is said to be visited by the spirits who died in fire and tuberculosis outbreaks long ago, both of which killed several members of the building’s former staff. Apparitions have been seen and unexplained footsteps have been reported.One popular story is that of a large and tall black man who is always seen walking around the nightclub. The staff believes that it is this man who turns the musical amplifiers every night.

 

The staff has also reported hearing footsteps from unidentified sources, as well as cold spots all throughout the building. Horrifying screams can also be heard coming from the back of the stairs even when there is no one there. They believe that the screams come from the young woman who died in a freakish accident in the nightclub. Nowadays, there are rumors that real vampires come to the nightclub and even live there.  Some people believe that this rumor has been spread to promote business as vampires have suddenly become very popular.

 

Next up were heading to Nashville and a place the Moody had been to, but not for music, for the national beard and mustache competition. He did not place unfortunately. The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats.When Ryman died in 1904, his memorial service was held at the tabernacle. During the service, it was proposed the building be renamed Ryman Auditorium, which was met with the overwhelming approval of the attendees. The building was originally designed to contain a balcony, but a lack of funds delayed its completion. The balcony was eventually built and opened in time for the 1897 gathering of the United Confederate Veterans, with funds provided by members of the group. As a result, the balcony was once called the Confederate Gallery.[5] Upon the completion of the balcony, the Ryman's capacity rose to 6,000. A stage was added in 1901 that reduced the capacity to just over 3,000. Though the building was designed to be a house of worship – a purpose it continued to serve throughout most of its early existence – it was often leased to promoters for nonreligious events in an effort to pay off its debts and remain open. In 1904, Lula C. Naff, a widow and mother who was working as a stenographer, began to book and promote speaking engagements, concerts, boxing matches, and other attractions at the Ryman in her free time.  Naff gained a reputation for battling local censorship groups, who had threatened to ban various performances deemed too risqué. In 1939, Naff won a landmark lawsuit against the Nashville Board of Censors, which was planning to arrest the star of the play Tobacco Road due to its provocative nature. The court declared the law creating the censors to be invalid W.C. Fields, Will Rogers in 1925, Charlie Chaplin, Bob Hope with Doris Day in '49, Harry Houdini in '24, and John Philip Sousa (among others) performed at the venue over the years, earning the Ryman the nickname, "The Carnegie Hall of the South". The Ryman in its early years also hosted Marian Anderson in 1932, Bill Monroe (from KY) and the Bluegrass Boys in '45, Little Jimmy Dickens in '48, Hank Williams in '49, The Carter Sisters with Mother Maybelle Carter in 1950, Elvis in '54, Johnny Cash in '56, trumpeter Louis Armstrong in '57, Patsy Cline in '60, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs (bluegrass) in '64, and Minnie Pearl in '64. The Grand Ole Opry was first broadcast from the Ryman on June 5, 1943, and originated there every week for nearly 31 years thereafter. Every show sold out, and hundreds of fans were often turned away. During its tenure at Ryman Auditorium, the Opry hosted the biggest country music stars of the day and became a show known around the world. Melding its then-current usage with the building's origins as a house of worship, the Ryman got the nickname "The Mother Church of Country Music", which it still holds to this day. The last Opry show at the Ryman occurred the previous evening, on Friday, March 15. The final shows downtown were emotional. Sarah Cannon, performing as Minnie Pearl, broke character and cried on stage. When the plans for Opryland USA were announced, WSM president Irving Waugh also revealed the company's intent to demolish the Ryman and use its materials to construct a chapel called "The Little Church of Opryland" at the amusement park. Waugh brought in a consultant to evaluate the building, noted theatrical producer Jo Mielziner, who had staged a production at the Ryman in 1935. He concluded that the Ryman was "full of bad workmanship and contains nothing of value as a theater worth restoring." Mielziner suggested the auditorium be razed and replaced with a modern theater. Waugh's plans were met with resounding resistance from the public, including many influential musicians of the time. Members of historic preservation groups argued that WSM, Inc. (and Acuff, by proxy) exaggerated the Ryman's poor condition, saying the company was worried that attachment to the old building would hurt business at the new Opry House. Preservationists leaned on the building's religious history and gained traction for their case as a result. The outcry led to the building being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. Following the departure of the Opry, the Ryman sat mostly vacant and deteriorating for nearly 20 years, as the neighborhood surrounding it continued to see the increasing effects of urban decay.  In 1986, as part of the Grand Ole Opry 60th-anniversary celebration, CBS aired a special program that featured some of the Opry's legendary stars performing at the Ryman. While the auditorium was dormant, major motion pictures continued to be filmed on location there, including John Carpenter’s Elvis (1979), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980 – Loretta Lynn Oscar-winning biopic), Sweet Dreams (1985 – story of Patsy Cline), and Clint Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man (1982). A 1979 television special, Dolly & Carol in Nashville, included a segment featuring Dolly Parton performing a gospel medley on the Ryman stage. In 1989, Gaylord Entertainment began work to beautify the Ryman's exterior. The structure of the building was also improved, as the company installed a new roof, replaced broken windows, and repaired broken bricks and wood. In October 1992, executives of Gaylord Entertainment announced plans to renovate the entire building and expand it to create modern amenities for performers and audiences alike, as part of a larger initiative to invest in the city's efforts to revitalize the downtown area. The first performance at the newly renovated Ryman was a broadcast of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion on June 4, 1994. Beginning in November 1999, the Opry was held at Ryman Auditorium for three months, mostly due to the success of the January shows, but partly due to the ongoing construction of Opry Mills shopping mall next door to the Grand Ole Opry House. The Opry has returned to the Ryman for all of its November, December, and January shows every year since then, allowing the production to acknowledge its roots while also taking advantage of a smaller venue during the off-peak season for tourism and freeing the Grand Ole Opry House for special holiday presentations.The Ryman has also served as a gathering place for the memorial services of many prominent country music figures. Tammy Wynette, Chet Atkins, Skeeter Davis, Harlan Howard, Bill Monroe, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Billy Block, George Hamilton IV, Earl Scruggs, and Jim Ed Brown have all been memorialized from the Ryman stage. In 2018, the Ryman was named the most iconic structure in Tennessee by Architectural Digest. And just because….On June 9, 2019, Wu-Tang Clan performed the first pure rap concert ever at the Ryman. The concert was sold out.

 

Again, we like to give history on these places for context and honestly it's just interesting to us so whatever. But this again illustrates the point that many crazy things happened here over the years as many many people have passed through this auditorium… Including Moody.

 

Ok, so let's get to the ghosts and spooky shit. Ryman’s spirit was fine with most performances but would rise if the people onstage were getting a bit risqué. Apparently, he disrupted shows by stomping around the room so loudly that spectators were forced to leave. Famously, the ghost wreaked havoc while the opera Carmen was taking place. Probably because it tells the story of a gypsy temptress. 

 

During the grand ole Opry period, rumors surfaced that the venue was cursed since apparently, most singers that performed there wound up dead. A total of 37 people met their fate in the most gruesome ways, dying from O.D.s, car accidents, fires, or slaughterings. Among the artists believed to have succumbed to the curse are: Stringbean Akeman, Patsy Cline, Texas Ruby, and many more. In a blog post by Virginia Lamkin titled Haunted Ryman Auditorium, the author explains that when the show relocated to the Opryland USA theme park, 14 additional acts died. It is believed that the curse followed because a large portion of the Ryman Auditorium stage was cut out and brought to the new location.

 

The spirit often referred to as “The Grey Man,” is believed to have been one of the Confederate soldiers who frequented the auditorium during post-war gatherings. Some say they’ve witnessed him sitting in the balcony while artists rehearse. He watches the stage steadily but disappears as soon as anyone gets too close.

 

”The lady,” on the other hand, isn’t a spectator; she’s a performer. Believed to be the ghost of Patsy Cline, she has been heard singing by staff. Usually, her performance happens late at night as they prepare to close. Patsy Cline, who died tragically in a plane crash, has also been linked to the Opry Curse. Could the curse not only kill but also trap artists in the venue?

 

Speaking of Opry Curse victims, Hank Williams is said to have been another casualty. The successful singer/songwriter passed away in 1953, after mixing prescription drugs with alcohol. Similar to the other artists haunting the auditorium, Hank’s voice has been heard clear as day by employees. They have also heard his songs being played onstage, without explanation. Along with Patsy, Hank Williams’ soul has lingered in the old venue ever since he passed.

 

The info on the history of the ryman comes mostly from their own website while the stories of the hauntings we found on the website ghostcitytours.com

 

Next up is the Phoenix theater in Petaluma California. The club has been in existence since 1905 and has changed in both structure and purpose, mostly due to severe damage caused by several fires. Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater has been entertaining Sonoma County residents for over 116 years. Hosting everyone from the likes of Harry Houdini to Green Day, the fabled teen center and music venue has a varied and interesting history.

 

The entertainment center opened in 1904 as the Hill Opera House. The structure was designed by San Francisco architect Charles Havens, who also designed Petaluma’s Carlson-Currier Silk Mill in 1892. The Beaux Arts-style theater hosted operas, theatrical performances, high school graduations and music for over 15 years until the early 1920s when it was gutted by fire.

 

In 1925, the venue reopened as the California Theatre playing silent films accompanied by music. A Jan. 24, 1925, Press Democrat article proclaimed the showplace the “largest playhouse in Petaluma and one of the finest theaters of Northern California.” A packed house attended the opening night performance which include a double feature picture show and live entertainment.

 

The theater switched to movies with sound in later years and lost major sections of its roof to a second fire in 1957. Petaluma’s Tocchini family bought the floundering venue in 1967 switching to a program of live music and entertainment.

 

In 1983, the theater was renamed the Phoenix - reflecting its ability to be reborn from the ashes. Tom Gaffey, a young man who had grown up in Petaluma and worked at both the California and the Showcase theaters, was hired as manager, a position he holds to this day. The theater gained unwanted attention after a late-night performance by the band Popsicle Love Sponge performed a questionable act with the body of what was believed to be a dead chicken. The late-night shows ended, but the movies continued for a short time.

 

Today the venue serves as a graffiti-covered teen center and venue for rock, punk, reggae and more. In 1996, it hosted the last show of the Long Beach ska band Sublime as well as rock and punk legends the Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, X, Metallica and Primus. The guiding principle of the Phoenix has always been that it's "everyone's building" and this was formalized in the early 2000's when the Phoenix became a 501(c)3 nonprofit  community center.

 

This place sounds pretty awesome. This following except it's taken directly from their website : 

 

           The Phoenix Theater is open seven days a week, generally from 3pm to 7pm, for drop-in “unstructured” use. Our building interior is large and soulful, with several rooms to accommodate a variety of activities. On a typical afternoon, you’ll find kids playing acoustic music (we’ve got two pianos and a big stage), skateboarding (across the large wooden floor and up one of four quarter-pipe ramps), doing homework in the tutoring room, or sitting in one of the overstuffed sofas: reading, talking with friends, or napping. There’s always a staff member onsite, but the atmosphere is casual. 

 

On top of this they have free music programs from lessons to recording to production to podcasting to band management and everything in between. Also they have many programs for teens in the art community to hone their skills. Not only that they have a teen health center to help inform teens and help them make better, more  conscientious choices regarding their personal health. They also have services for  transitive health and STD help as well. We feel like every town needs a place like this. Especially if it's haunted!!! Speaking of which we found an interview that Gaffney did where he talks about some of his experiences and other things that have happened. The following was taken from petaluma360.com:

 

Gaffey began by talking about his earliest days. “It was my job to close the theater down. By 10:15 it would just be me, and whatever people were watching the movie. Near the end, I’d go up to the projection booth. After the audience exited, I’d turn off the projector, come down onto the stage where the sound equipment was, turn off the amps, check doors, balcony, bathrooms, lock the doors, hit the security alarm, then go out the door by the box office.”

 

On three separate nights, as he was leaving, the box office phone rang.

 

Gaffey explained the building had five phone stations. The light on the box office phone indicated the call was from the projection booth.

 

“I’d have to turn off the alarm and pick up the phone. ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’ But there was nobody there.

 

“You can’t believe in ghosts when you’re shutting down a theater. You have to check.

 

“Three times I mustered my courage, turned the lights back on and burst into the projection booth. There was no one there.

 

“That was my first experience, when I was an unknown here, a spooky ‘welcome back.’”

 

Gaffey is quick to temper his conversation with “it could have been” and “maybe someone playing pranks.” He keeps an open mind. Ghosts or explainable experiences: it’s for the individual to decide.

 

“Blue lights have been seen floating through the building. There’s the Little Kid: he’d been seen even when I was a kid working down here. And one night, sleeping on stage as a teen, I could hear and feel big footsteps. I never felt afraid.

 

“The big guy has been felt by many over the years,” Gaffey said. “We named him Chris. Big Chris. He’s the only ghost - if there are ghosts here - who’s not from a show business background.” He added that psychics who’ve visited the theater have talked about Chris dating to the livery stable-era and that someone was murdered on this spot, possibly with a knife.

 

But Gaffey continued firmly, “My experiences in this building have been warm and protective. “Chris had the spirit of the Phoenix before it became what it is. Chris may have loved this spot. I think it’s one of the coolest corners in town.” He commented he sensed from the warmth he felt as he was talking that Chris was on stage, observing.

 

Then there’s the Little Kid - a boy. “That’s an interesting one,” Gaffey said. “Again - a psychic had come in. First off, he talked about the guy in the attic [the projection booth], said he seemed to be older, white hair and faded green, almost khaki, clothing; tall, thin with angular knees and elbows.

 

The older man, the psychic told Gaffey, is trying to make good on something wrong he felt he did to a child. The psychic added the old man hadn’t, however, done anything.

 

“I’m wondering,” Gaffey said, “if it’s the little boy. This was the fly area” - the area to the rear of the stage where backdrops hung. “With stuff hanging here and ladder work, maybe the kid was injured. He’s been seen by many. He’s got shaggy hair, maybe less than five feet, wearing shorts or knickers, a wool suit and a cap, from the 1920s.”

 

In the 1990s, a security guard for the thrash metal band GWAR got down off a ladder and asked, “Who’s that little kid back there in the exit?” When no one could find the boy, the guard quit. 

 

There is much more to the interview and we would definitely recommend checking it out!

We've got one one more venue for you guys even though there are a bunch more out there. Some of the more well known and covered places like Bobby Mackey's in Kentucky, The Avalon in Hollywood, Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carre in New Orleans, The rapids theater in Niagara falls NY among others we've left off but will definitely be back to cover at a future point as the history and Hauntings in these places is awesome. 

 

So that brings us to our home town of Cleveland Ohio and to the World famous Agora Theater. Now this a place where we've both spent many nights jamming out to some great fucking shows. And yes.. Whether you like it or not… Here comes some history fuckers. 

 

The first Agora in Cleveland, informally referred to as Agora Alpha, opened on February 26, 1966, at 2175 Cornell Road in Little Italy near the campus of Case Western Reserve University. In 1967, the Agora moved to a second building on East 24th Street near the campus of Cleveland State University. Once settled in their new location, the new Agora Ballroom, informally referred to as Agora Beta, played a role in giving exposure to many bands, both from the Cleveland area and abroad. Many artists such as Peter Frampton, Bruce Springsteen, Boston, Grand Funk Railroad, ZZ Top, Kiss and many others received much exposure after playing the Agora.[3] The Agora Ballroom was also the setting of the concert by Paul Simon's character in the opening minutes of the 1980 movie One-Trick Pony. The front facade of the Agora Ballroom was temporarily swapped for the one shown in the movie. It is also one of three locations used to record Todd Rundgren's live album Back to the Bars in 1978.

 

The East 24th Street building also housed Agency Recording Studios, located above the Agora. The onsite recording studio and the close proximity to radio station WMMS allowed for high-quality live concert broadcasts from the Agora. Some of these concerts were later released commercially, including Bruce Springsteen's “The Agora, Cleveland 1978”, the Cars' “Live at the Agora 1978”, Ian Hunter's “You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic, Deluxe Edition” and Dwight Twilley Band's “Live From Agora”.

 

The popularity of the club led the Agora to expand during the 1970s and 1980s, opening 12 other clubs in the cities of Columbus, Toledo, Youngstown, Painesville, Akron, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Hallandale, Hartford, and New Haven. However, the Cleveland location is the only one still in existence today.

 

In 1984, the Agora was damaged by a fire and closed.

 

The building currently known as the Agora first opened on March 31, 1913, with an English performance of Aida as the Metropolitan Theatre. It was the brainchild of Max Faetkenheuer, an opera promoter and conductor who had also been involved in the construction of the monumental Hippodrome Theatre on Euclid Avenue five years earlier. The new opera house was well received and did well early on, but later struggled to stay profitable. Among various uses, the Metropolitan was home to a Cleveland's Yiddish theatre troupe in 1927. This brief episode in its history came to an end a few months later in 1928 after the troupe was involved in a bus accident on the way to a performance in Youngstown; the actors were too injured to perform and the venture went bankrupt. By 1932, the venue had turned into a vaudeville/burlesque house called "The Gayety," hosting "hoofers, comics and strippers." The Metropolitan returned to its original use for a short time during the mid-1940s staging comedic musicals, but by the end of the decade stage productions had ceased and the theatre became a full-time movie house. From 1951–78, the theater offices were home to radio stations WHK (1420 AM) and WMMS (100.7 FM); the theater itself was known as the WHK Auditorium. In 1968–69 the theater was known as the Cleveland Grande. In the early 1980s, it briefly re-opened as the New Hippodrome Theatre showing movies. Following the fire which damaged the Agora Ballroom on East 24th Street, club owner Henry LoConti, Sr. decided to move to the 5000 Euclid Avenue location. Following extensive renovations, the new Agora Metropolitan Theater, the third Cleveland venue to bear the Agora name, opened in October 1986. The Agora has two rooms: a 500-person capacity, standing-room-only ballroom with adjoining bar, and an 1800-seat theater.

 

As far as some spooky shit goes, we were able to get some info straight from the source! We spoke with Mike who works at the agora and we got some cool stuff from him. In an email mine related the following information.

 

         "Prior to our merger with AEG Presents, I used to lead our ‘Ghost Tours’ with a group called Black Sheep Paranormal.

 

While I didn’t know what to expect, and I wasn’t exactly familiar with paranormal investigations, that quickly changed working with the group.

 

          One of the members of the Black Sheep Paranormal group was a retired police officer. Pretty easy to say he’s seen some shit, and could be characterized as fearless. Another member told him to check out the men’s room, where we have a utility closest between our sinks and stalls. From past experiences, we usually get some decent activity from that closest. However, nothing occurred this time. After giving up on this spot, the team member decided to use the bathroom. Seconds later, he hears **CLAP, CLAP, CLAP** from behind his neck, and he exited the bathroom about as white as a ghost.

 

Oh man… Good thing he was in the bathroom in case he pissed himself!! This next story is pretty crazy. He talks about "The Cleaning Lady"!

 

          "One of the known spirits at The Agora, who we call “The Cleaning Lady,” as you could have guessed, was responsible for cleaning the venue many decades ago. While I’m not exactly sure what happened to her, she was said to have fallen off our balcony, and died. One night, during an investigation, we were sitting in silence at the top of our balcony on the left hand side. As we sat there, we started to hear sweeping sounds. As the broom sweeps started to happen for a few seconds, all of the sudden, the sound traveled from the left side of the venue, all the way to the right side of the venue. We couldn’t really explain it, but that’s exactly what happened."

 

Wow! That's awesome! This next one would probably freak a lot of people out… but it's definitely cool.

 

        "Another occurrence was when we were up in one of the suite boxes up in the balcony. The venue was blacked out, and from where we were sitting, you could still see the bar area in our lower level. The bar had a mini fridge up against the wall that had lighting in it. We draped it off with a black table cloth, but there was still exposed light coming from the fridge. As we’re sitting there, we see a shadow fading in, and fading out of the light. Almost as if a person was pacing back and forth. We were able to see this because of the light from the fridge. As this shadow figure is pacing back and forth for a good 30 – 60 seconds, one of our team members calls out “if anyone is over by the bar, please make a sound.” And I shit you not, with no hesitation, a stack of plastic cups falls off the bar and onto the ground. That was definitely one of my favorite experiences."

 

Hopefully we get some action like that on our ghost hunt! Mike goes on to say that he actually got to see an apparition as well!

 

    "Over the years, we’ve heard and seen many things. We’ve had items that turn up missing, seen plenty of white anomalies, and other occurrences. Apparitions are rare, but sounds are usually constant. We’ve heard bangs on our doors, we’ve heard voices, we’ve even heard music; big band music to be specific. The apparition I’ve seen was an unreal experience. We were sitting in the balcony, and we just saw this shadow figure in one of the seats across/behind us. The figure was perfectly human-shaped, but you could see through it. It definitely seemed like it was staring at us the whole time. Sadly, my story telling doesn’t do this moment very much justice.

 

He said that a lot of the investigation stuff was mainly communication based with the spirits. He said they would ask  questions and they frequently got answers. We asked about how the spirits would answer and he told us: 

 

         "Most of the time in our investigations, we used dowsing rods for the questions, and asked them to cross the rods in a ‘yes or no’ type of questioning. They were always responsive in this form. As long as we got it started, we usually were able to keep the questions going. Obviously, noises would happen all the time. I remember one evening just working (no event going on), but we use to have these ‘garage’ type doors for our balcony entry. And for whatever reason, the spirts would not stop banging on them. Like something out of a movie, non-stop banging. That was the same day where my coworker went to use the bathroom, and as she was coming back to the office she heard “There she goes…” in a whisper type voice.

 

Damn! That's some crazy shit! We would like to thank Mike for his time and this incredible stories of the strange stuff that occurs at the agora! Hometown spooky shit is always awesome! 

Top ten horror movie musicals

https://screenrant.com/horror-musicals-best-ever-imdb/

The Necronomicon

In today's episode we are taking a different approach. We are starting off in the realm of fiction and learning about the Necronomicon, a fictitious book made up by a man we've discussed in the past. Then we switch gears and head into the real world, the land of the living, as some say, except we are looking at the land of the dead. We will be discussing a few true life Necronomicon books, or books of the dead. We have some examples of true to life books discussing preparation of the dead, helping them cross over, even what to do and expect when you get to the other side. Without further ado, let's get into this by visiting a previous subject, the one and only magnificently weird… H.P. Lovecraft!

 

     Since we've discussed ol H.P. in a separate episode we are not going to get into the man himself really. If you want to hear our take on Lovecraft, make sure to check out episode 37 from way back in January of 2020. What we are going to look at, however, is the book that he references in 10 separate stories. Those stories include: The Call of The Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, The Haunter of The Dark, The Thing On The Doorstep, and several others. The book we are talking about is, of course, the mother fuckin’ necronomicon. That's right… The Necronomicon as most of you know it, was made up by Lovecraft himself.  The book became such a part of his stories that Lovecraft wrote a short history of the book itself. That being said, let's see what the history of the book is as written by the creepy genius, himself: 

 

Original title Al Azif—azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons.

     Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia—the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients—and “Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told. He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.

     In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice—once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish)—both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only. The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy—which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550—has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692. An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library of the University of Buenos Ayres. Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R.U. Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that R.W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel The King in Yellow.

 

That was the history of the necronomicon as written by Lovecraft. Lovecraft stated that the name of the book came to him in a dream. Some claim however that Lovecraft was inspired by Robert W. Chambers' collection of stories titled The King In Yellow even though he isn't thought to have read the book until the late 1920s. Another person theorized that the book was derived from Nathanial Hawthorne. When asked about the Necronomicon, Lovecraft always maintained that it was wholly his invention even though The History Of The Necronomicon played as an historical text. 

 

Despite the book showing up in several stories the details of the book were pretty sparse. There were a few passages and words that were attributed to the necronomicon. The book's physical properties are not really talked about but generally it's described as being bound in some sort of leather and with metal clasps. As for the passages attributed to the book, there is a fairly long one that is described in the Dunwich Horror. The passage reads as follows:

 

           Nor is it to be thought...that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

 

Another is a considerably smaller snippet that is actually found in 2 stories, call of the Cthulhu and the nameless city, which goes as follows :

         That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

 

It is in Call of the Cthulhu that this small couplet is said to be from the Necronomicon.

 

In at least one story, the book was discovered to be disguised as another book. 

 

When asked about the contents Lovecraft once wrote:

 

       "if anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it."

 

According to Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon", copies of the original Necronomicon were held by only five institutions worldwide:

 

The British Museum

The Bibliothèque nationale de France

Widener Library of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

The University of Buenos Aires

The library of the fictional Miskatonic University in the also fictitious Arkham, Massachusetts

The Miskatonic University also holds the Latin translation by Olaus Wormius, printed in Spain in the 17th century.

 

Other copies, Lovecraft wrote, were kept by private individuals. Joseph Curwen, as noted, had a copy in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941). A version is held in Kingsport in "The Festival" (1925). The provenance of the copy read by the narrator of "The Nameless City" is unknown; a version is read by the protagonist in "The Hound" (1924).

 

Although Lovecraft always maintained he created the book, there have always been plenty of people who believed the book to be real. There have been several books published that are supposedly translations of the actual Necronomicon. Interestingly enough the Vatican received calls every year from people that believe the real Necronomicon resides there. There have been hoaxes and others who have added their cards into library files to make it appear as if they have a copy but it is checked out. In Norway, the library of Tromso lists that they have a translated version but it is listed as unavailable. 

 

In 1978 a version of the necronomicon popped up that had been edited by George Hay. Hay was a writer and the founder of the science fiction foundation. The version included an introduction by the paranormal researcher and writer Colin Wilson. Wilson also wrote a story, "The Return of the Lloigor", in which the Voynich manuscript turns out to be a copy of the Necronomicon. Which is a pretty cool idea. The Voynich manuscript will be a bonus we’re going to tackle so make sure you become a Patreon Poopr to get access to that and all of the other amazing bonuses. 

 

Kenneth Grant, the British occultist, disciple of Aleister Crowley, (another future bonus episode topic) and head of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, suggested in his 1972 book The Magical Revival that there was an unconscious connection between Crowley and Lovecraft. Grant claimed that the Necronomicon existed as an astral book as part of the Akashic records and could be accessed through ritual magic or in dreams.  The Akashic records are a pretty crazy topic which we will definitely cover one day. In theosophy and anthroposophy, the Akashic records are a compendium of all universal events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future in terms of all entities and life forms, not just human. They are believed by theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the mental plane. There are anecdotal accounts but there is no scientific evidence for the existence of the Akashic records.

 

In 2004, Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred, by Canadian occultist Donald Tyson, was published by Llewellyn Worldwide. The Tyson Necronomicon is generally thought to be closer to Lovecraft's vision than other published versions.[citation needed] Donald Tyson has clearly stated that the Necronomicon is fictional, but that has not prevented his book from being the center of some controversy. Tyson has since published Alhazred, a novelization of the life of the Necronomicon's author. Tyson had also been known to back Grant's thoughts about Crowley, Lovecraft and the Akashic records.

 

l The most famous of these versions of the book is the  “Simon Necronomicon,” named for its pseudo mononymous compiler (widely believed to be occultist Peter Levenda). The book is cobbled together from a mishmash of recontextualized Sumerian and Babylonian texts peppered with added references to fictional deities created by Lovecraft and the orientalist magical system of Aleister Crowley. Simon’s text basically steals the work of pioneering Assyriologists like R.C. Thompson, from whose Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia many of the translations are lifted. In their original context, these texts were incantations against evil spirits and the various ills they caused, not spells for conjuring them. (“Simon” has a tendency to present descriptions of demons’ evil natures in English, but slips back into transliterated Akkadian when the texts begin to call for the spirits to be cast out, leading to an implication that the demons are being invoked rather than exorcised.) These ancient Mesopotamian incantations have come to be considered “satanic” through a centuries-long process of reinterpretation. The Simon Necronomicon reads its ancient sources through a combination of medieval demonology, 19th-century Theosophy, and 20th-century pulp fiction.

 

But despite its clear origins as a hoax, the Simon Necronomicon has been used as evidence in murder trials like that of Rod Ferrell and his so-called “Vampire Clan.” In 1996, Ferrell murdered the parents of one of his friends in a brutal but mundane home invasion. But numerous factors that emerged in media coverage of the crime-- including Ferrell’s self-identification as a vampire and the discovery of a copy of the Simon Necronomicon in his car--led to the murders being reframed as a satanic ritual killing. This information on the Simon Necronomicon comes from an article written by Gabriel McKee for The Institute For The Study of The Ancient World.

 

So that's a basic history of the Lovecraft Necronomicon. Versions of this book have been in storytelling through the ages. Including Moody's favorite movies like… The evil dead series. It also makes an appearance in Jason goes to hell to build the narrative that the Necronomicon was used in some capacity to bring Jason Vohees back. The Necronomicon was again shown in Pumpkinhead 2: Electric Boogaloo. Oh wait… Make that “Blood Wings”, wrong sequel. This version of the necronomicon was shown to be written in sumerian instead of Arabic. 

So what about real life books of the dead? Well, there are some out there. The Egyptian book of the dead is probably the most famous. 

 

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a collection of spells which enable the soul of the deceased to navigate the afterlife. The famous title was given the work by western scholars; the actual title would translate as The Book of Coming Forth by Day or Spells for Going Forth by Day and a more apt translation to English would be The Egyptian Book of Life. Although the work is often referred to as "the Ancient Egyptian Bible" there is no such thing although the two works share the similarity of being ancient compilations of texts written at different times eventually gathered together in book form. The Book of the Dead was never codified and no two copies of the work are exactly the same. They were created specifically for each individual who could afford to purchase one as a kind of manual to help them after death. The afterlife was considered to be a continuation of life on earth and, after one had passed through various difficulties and judgment in the Hall of Truth, a paradise which was a perfect reflection of one's life on earth. After the soul had been justified in the Hall of Truth it passed on to cross over Lily Lake to rest in the Field of Reeds where one would find everything that one had lost in life and could enjoy it eternally. In order to reach that paradise, however, one needed to know where to go, how to address certain gods, what to say at certain times, and how to comfort oneself in the land of the dead; which is why one would find an afterlife manual extremely useful. 

 

The Book of the Dead originated from concepts depicted in tomb paintings and inscriptions from as early as the Third Dynasty of Egypt (c. 2670 - 2613 BCE). By the 12th Dynasty (1991 - 1802 BCE) these spells, with accompanying illustrations, were written on papyrus and placed in tombs and graves with the dead. Their purpose, as historian Margaret Bunson explains, "was to instruct the deceased on how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife by enabling them to assume the form of several mythical creatures and to give them the passwords necessary for admittance to certain stages of the underworld". They also served, however, to provide the soul with fore-knowledge of what would be expected at every stage. Having a Book of the Dead in one's tomb would be the equivalent of a student in the modern day getting their hands on all the test answers they would ever need in every grade of school. At some point prior to 1600 BCE the different spells had been divided in chapters and, by the time of the New Kingdom (1570 - 1069 BCE), the book was extremely popular. Bunson notes, "These spells and passwords were not part of a ritual but were fashioned for the deceased, to be recited in the afterlife". If someone were sick, and feared they might die, they would go to a scribe and have them write up a book of spells for the afterlife. The scribe would need to know what kind of life the person had lived in order to surmise the type of journey they could expect after death. Prior to the New Kingdom, The Book of the Dead was only available to the royalty and the elite. The popularity of the Osiris Myth in the period of the New Kingdom made people believe the spells were indispensible because Osiris featured so prominently in the soul's judgment in the afterlife.  As more and more people desired their own Book of the Dead, scribes obliged them and the book became just another commodity produced for sale. Bunson writes, "The individual could decide the number of chapters to be included, the types of illustrations, and the quality of the papyrus used. The individual was limited only by his or her financial resources" 

 

   It continued to vary in form and size until c. 650 BCE when it was fixed at 190 uniform spells but, still, people could add or subtract what they wanted to from the text. Other copies of the book continued to be produced with more or less spells depending on what the buyer could afford. The one spell which every copy seems to have had, however, was Spell 125. so what was spell 125 you ask, well we'll tell you. 

 

   Spell 125 is actually pretty cool and it's a story that spans other religious texts in different forms. It is essentially the judging of a person at the gates of the afterlife. In this case it is the judging of the heart of the deceased by the god Osiris in the Hall of Truth. As it was vital that the soul pass the test of the weighing of the heart in order to gain paradise, knowing what to say and how to act before Osiris, Thoth, Anubis, and the Forty-Two Judges was considered the most important information the deceased could arrive with. When a person died, Anubis would guide that person to the Hall of Truth so that they could make the Negative Confession. This was a list of 42 sins the person could honestly say they had never indulged in. Once the Negative Confession was made, Osiris, Thoth, Anubis, and the Forty-Two Judges would confer and, if the confession was accepted, the heart of the deceased was then weighed in the balance against the white feather of Ma'at, the feather of truth. If the heart was found to be lighter than the feather, the soul passed on toward paradise; if the heart was heavier, it was thrown onto the floor where it was devoured by the monster goddess Ammut and the soul would cease to exist. wow… Crazy! The reason that this spell is included in every book is fairly obvious. One needed to know the different gods' names and what they were responsible for but one also needed to know such details as the names of the doors in the room and the floor one needed to walk across; one even needed to know the names of one's own feet. As the soul answered each deity and object with the correct response, they would hear the reply, "You know us; pass by us" and could continue. The spell finished up with a summary of what to wear and even what to offer. It read as follows: "The correct procedure in this Hall of Justice: One shall utter this spell pure and clean and clad in white garments and sandals, painted with black eye-paint and anointed with myrrh. There shall be offered to him meat and poultry, incense, bread, beer, and herbs when you have put this written procedure on a clean floor of ochre overlaid with earth upon which no swine or small cattle have trodden."

 

There were quite a number of slips the soul might make, however, between arrival at the Hall of Truth and the boat ride to paradise. The Book of the Dead includes spells for any kind of circumstance but it does not seem one was guaranteed to survive these twists and turns. Not every detail described above was included in the vision of every era of Egyptian history. In some periods the modifications are minor while, in others, the afterlife is seen as a perilous journey toward a paradise that is only temporary. At some points in the culture the way to paradise was very straightforward after the soul was justified by Osiris while, in others, crocodiles might thwart the soul or bends in the road may prove dangerous or demons might appear to trick or even attack. In these cases, the soul needed spells to survive and reach paradise. Spells included in the book include titles such as "For Repelling A Crocodile Which Comes To Take Away", "For Driving Off A Snake", "For Not Being Eaten By A Snake In The Realm Of The Dead", "For Not Dying Again In The Realm Of The Dead", "For Being Transformed Into A Divine Falcon", "For Being Transformed Into A Lotus""For Being Transformed Into A Phoenix", “For being transformed into more than meets the eye” and so on. The Book of the Dead, as noted, was never used for magical transformations on earth; the spells only worked in the afterlife. The claim that The Book of the Dead was some kind of sorcerer's text is as wrong and unfounded as the comparison with the Bible. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is also nothing like The Tibetan Book of the Dead, although these two works are often equated as well. 

 

The information about the Egyptian book of the dead was taken from a great article on worldhistory.org It's a great resource for anything historical!

 

And speaking of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, let's see what that's all about! Although in Tibet there is no single text directly referred to as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this English work is the primary source for Western understandings of Tibetan Buddhist conceptions of death. These understandings have been highly influenced by Western spiritualist movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, resulting in efforts to adapt and synthesize various frameworks of “other” religious traditions, particularly those from Asian societies that are viewed as esoteric or mystical, including tantric or Tibetan Buddhism. Isn’t Tantric sex about having an intense orgasm without having intercourse? It’s also a great band. This has resulted in creative forms of appropriation, reinterpretation, and misrepresentation of Tibetan views and rituals surrounding death, which often neglect the historical and religious realities of the tradition itself. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a prime example of such a process. Despite the lack of a truly existing “book of the dead,” numerous translations, commentaries, and comparative studies on this “book” continue to be produced by both scholars and adherents of the tradition, making it a focal point for the dissemination and transference of Tibetan Buddhism in the West.

 

The set of Tibetan block prints that was the basis for the original publication of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1927 by Walter Y. Evans-Wentz (1878–1968) consisted of portions of the collection known in Tibetan as The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State or Bardo Thödol (Bar do thos grol chen mo). This work is said to have been authored by Padmasambhava in the 8th century CE, who subsequently had the work buried; it was rediscovered in the 14th century by the treasure revealer (gter ston) Karma Lingpa (Kar ma gling pa; b. c. 1350). However, as a subject for literary and historical inquiry, it is nearly impossible to determine what Tibetan texts should be classified under the Western conceptual rubric of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This is due partly to the Tibetan tendency to transmit textual traditions through various redactions, which inevitably change the content and order of collected works. Despite this challenge, the few systematic efforts made by scholars of Tibetan and Buddhist studies to investigate Bardo Thödol literature and its associated funerary tradition have been thorough, and the works produced by Bryan Cuevas and Donald Lopez Jr. are particularly noteworthy.

 

The Bardo Thödol is essentially a funerary manual designed to guide an individual toward recognizing the signs of impending death and traversing the intermediate state (bar do) between death and rebirth, and to guide one’s consciousness to a favorable next life. These instructions provide detailed descriptions of visions and other sensory experiences that one encounters when dying and during the post-mortem state. The texts are meant to be read aloud to the deceased by the living to encourage the consciousness to realize the illusory or dreamlike nature of these experiences and thus to attain liberation through this recognition. This presentation is indicative of a complex and intricate conceptual framework built around notions of death, impermanence, and their soteriological propensities within a tantric Buddhist program developed in Tibet over a millennium, particularly within the context of the Nyingma (rNying ma) esoteric tradition known as Dzogchen (rDzogs chen). Tibet and other tantric Buddhist societies throughout the Himalaya have developed a variety of technologies for practically applying Buddhist understandings of death, and so this particular “book” is by no means the only manual utilized during the dying and post-mortem states, nor is it even necessarily included in all Tibetan or Himalayan funerary traditions. Nevertheless, this work has captured the interests of Western societies for the past century and has unofficially become the principal introduction not only to Tibetan death rites but also to Tibetan Buddhism in general for the West. Information in this summary was taken from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia website.  

 

To go along with these, there is also the lesser known Texan book of the dead. This one is followed by a certain group of people in the Americas. There are some interesting passages in it and they read as follows: 

 

you say you want to go to heaven?

Well, I got the plans

Kinda walks like Sasquatch

But it breeds like kubla khan

In original dialect, it's really quite cryptical

 

Following this it says:

 

It's given me powers but kept me low

Many have scorned this

Modern day pharisees fat with espressos

 

Interesting… It continues:

 

you want to know paradise

Do you want to know hell?

Want to drink that cool clear liquor?

Better dig a little deeper in the well 

It goes on to reveal the mantra you need to recite to move on in the afterlife:

 

        Do you want that mantra?

Well, here you go

 

One for the money, two for the show

And a knick knack paddy whack

Give the lord a handicap

Ooh ee ooh ah ah

Twing twang walla walla bing bang

Oh ee ooh ah ah

Twing twang walla walla bing bang, oh yeah

Ooh eee ooh ah ah

B-I-N-G-O

Ooh eee ooh ah ah

E-I-E-I-O

 

It finishes with an emphatic phrase to remind you that on the afterlife, you're not running shots anymore, it reads:

 

"It is written, I have spoken

So put this in your pipe and smoke it"

 

Ok so if you made it through that with us you probably surmised that it was a bunch of hogwash. Texan book of the dead is actually a song by the band clutch but we figured we'd have some fun.  Some think the song has a deeper meaning referring to the ridiculousness of trendy ideas about spirituality and the process of life and death. 

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/necromicon-movies-book-of-the-dead/

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The Lady of the Dunes

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This episode takes us back into the world of true crime since you guys seem to like it so much! As per the usual we are looking at an unusual unsolved murder case. The reason it's unusual is that we have no idea who did it, we have no motive, and we have no idea who the victim is. See, unusual! Could the victim have been one of the casualties of a crazy serial killer? Could she have been an extra in the movie Jaws?  Nobody has the answers to these questions. And as of now the mystery remains as to the identity of The Lady Of The Dunes! 

 

As far as this case is concerned there's not a ton as far the actual murder goes. Given the fact that the victim and the killer are unknown there's not much to go on. But here's what we know.

 

On July 26, 1974, twelve-year-old Leslie Metcalfe was walking with her parents and their friends through the dunes at Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Their friends’ dog was tagging along with them when it became excited by something and rushed into a stand of pines. Leslie heard the dog barking and ran over to see what was going on. That was when she found the Lady of the Dunes lying face-down with her hands amputated. Leslie could see that the woman was nude and had clothing neatly folded under her head. She ran back to her parents and immediately told them what she saw. Her father went to verify the gruesome scene and, subsequently, notified the park rangers.

 

Another young girl, Sandra Lee, who is now a crime author, claims that she too saw the Lady of the Dunes as she was taking a walk with her dog a couple of days before Leslie found the body. Sandra says she noticed that the lady had a head injury. She could also see what looked like a slash across the woman’s neck. However, Sandra was too afraid to tell anyone about it. Therefore, most people credit Leslie for the discovery of the woman. 

 

When police got to the crime scene, they found the victim lying on one side of a green beach towel. A pair of Wrangler jeans and a blue bandana lay under her head in what appeared to be a makeshift pillow. Where her hands should have been, there were piles of pine needles. The perpetrator had practically decapitated her and pulled out several of her teeth. Detectives theorized that the removal of hands and teeth were efforts to conceal the woman’s identity. One side of her head showed signs of blunt force trauma, which investigators determined was the cause of death. There were also signs of sexual assault. About 15 feet from where the victim’s body lay, there were tire tracks. Leading away from the corpse were two sets of footprints. The estimates for time of death ranged from ten days to three weeks. One promising lead broke early in the investigation. Pathologists realized that the victim in Race Point dunes had high-quality dental work worth thousands of dollars done on her remaining teeth. This dental work, classified as ‘New York style,’ did not come cheaply. The age of the victim was somewhere between 20 and 49. However, a more accurate estimate is 25 to 39. The five-foot six-inch woman had an athletic physique and auburn hair. She may have been asleep at the time of the murder; the blanket under her body was undisturbed. 

 

As far as the investigation goes, it was tough for anyone to make any headway due to the fact that they couldn't identify the victim. Detectives poured over missing persons reports trying to find a match. Others tried to follow the lead of the expensive dental to no avail. Yet another group hunted for a vehicle that could have left the tire tracks at the scene. And while all of this was going on, more police were searching the cringe scene another time but did not come up with anything. Appeals to the public with a sketch of the victim garnered some fresh leads. One woman from Maryland got in touch with detectives regarding her sister that had gone missing. Like the victim, the sister had auburn hair. Both sisters had lost contact with one another when the missing sister moved home to Boston. However, the police never confirmed a match. 

 

Another possibility was that the woman was a female bank robber. Her name was Rory Gene Kesinger. She had been arrested for the attempted murders of two police officers in Pembroke, Massachusetts. She was initially arrested with members of an organized crime group she belonged to.

 

Police are suspicious that Kesinger was killed by members of the group following her escape for their own protection, and if she was, her body would have been disposed of locally. One of those arrested with her in 1973 claimed the rumor of Kesinger's murder was true. 

 

Police considered this a vital lead, and DNA information was collected in the years following. Initial comparison proved inconclusive; a 2002 test eliminated the possible match. Another lead down the drain. 

 

A more recent and interesting theory had been proposed by none other than the son of horror legend Stephen King. In 2015, Joe Hill, king's son, posited a theory that the Lady of the dunes could actually have been an extra in the movie Jaws! He was already very familiar with the case and while watching the movie he noticed something that struck a chord halfway through the movie. One of the extras that appeared for a scene shot in Martha’s Vineyard wore a pair of blue jeans and a bandana. As well as similar clothing, this young woman bore a passing resemblance to the victim. Jaws began filming in May of 1974, just a couple months before the Cape Cod murder. Provincetown is only a few hours from Martha’s Vineyard. Such an idea might seem far-fetched, but at least one FBI agent has postulated that ‘odder ideas have cracked cold cases.’ 

 

Without an identity the police also had no idea who may have murdered the woman. There are a couple interesting leads with major criminal ties. 

 

The first one is Whitey Bulger. Yes, that Whitey Bulger, the mobster! Bulger was a mob boss who led The winter hill gang in Massachusetts. He was also an FBI informant. On December 23, 1994, Bulger fled the Boston area and went into hiding after his former FBI handler, John Connolly, tipped him off about a pending RICO indictment against him. Bulger remained at large for sixteen years. After his 2011 arrest, federal prosecutors tried Bulger for nineteen murders based on the grand jury testimony from Kevin Weeks and other former criminal associates. At one point police learned that Bulger was seen with a woman who resembled the lady of the dunes around the time she was presumed to have been killed. Bulger was also known to remove teeth and haha and fingers of his victims similar to how the Lady was found. Unfortunately Bulger was murdered in prison before a link could be established. 

 

Several serial killers were also looked at as being suspects. One of those was Tony Costa. Tony Costa was suspected in the killings of 8 women while being convicted of 2.  The case gained international attention when district attorney Edmund Dinis, in comments to the media, claimed "The hearts of each girl had been removed from the bodies and were not in the graves…Each body was cut into as many parts as there are joints." Dinis also claimed that there were teeth marks found on the bodies. While he was an early suspect in the case he was eventually eliminated.

 

The second serial killer that's connected to the case is freaking Hadden Clark! If you're not aware of Hadden Clark then you must not be into serial killers. And we know that comes off as an odd statement but… Whatever. As for Clark we could definitely do a whole episode on this dude if we were ever so inclined but we'll give you a summed up account of him taken from parts of his visit as found on murderpedia.com. 

 

             Hadden Irving Clark (born July 31, 1952) is an American murderer and suspected serial killer, currently serving two 30-year sentences at Eastern Correctional Institution in Maryland for the murders of 6-year-old Michelle Dorr in 1986 and 23-year-old Laura Houghteling in 1992. He was also given a 10-year sentence for robbery after stealing from a former landlord.

 

Family life

Hadden Clark is the second of four children, and was born and raised in Troy, New York. His brother, Bradfield Clark, strangled a woman in California before eating several body parts. Clark's parents were both alcoholics and often fought with each other in front of their children. Clark's mother would dress him in girls' clothes when drunk and addressed him as "Kristen.” His father eventually committed suicide. As a teenager, Clark would torture and kill animals owned by children who bullied him.

 

Clark trained as a chef and served in the United States Navy until he was discharged after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Over the years, he held a number of menial jobs but was mostly homeless. Clark was arrested multiple times for theft and retaliation. He was also arrested for robbery after he vandalized a former landlord's property and stole several items.

 

Murders

On May 31, 1986, Clark was ordered by his brother to move out of his Silver Spring, Maryland home. Michelle Dorr, a six-year-old friend of his niece, came over looking for her. Clark took her up to an upstairs room and stabbed Michelle to death. Clark then drank some of her blood and stuffed her in a duffel bag. He buried her in a park 12 miles away.

 

On October 18, 1992, he killed 23-year-old Laura Houghteling in Bethesda, Maryland. Clark was working as a gardener for Laura's mother Penny when she accused Hadden of stealing tools from her backyard shed. Clark entered the house through the back door and stabbed Laura to death in her bedroom with a kitchen knife and suffocated her with a pillow. He carried her body in a bedsheet through a wooded area and buried her a half-mile away.

 

He left behind a pillow with his fingerprint as he moved the body. He later returned and dressed up in a wig and women's clothes and left through the front door to make people think Laura left the house alive to buy time to clean the scene. Police soon discovered the bloody pillow and linked the print on it to Clark. Clark confessed and led police to Laura's body eight months after the murder.

 

Police later began looking at him for Michelle Dorr's murder after discovering he lived just two houses down from Michelle's father at the time she disappeared. Police later tested his brother's old house for blood and found Michelle's blood in the wooden floorboards of an upstairs bedroom. Clark later led police to her body in January 2000. Clark has confessed to murdering dozens of people starting as a teenager. How does this coincide with our story? In 2004, Clark sent a letter claiming he had killed an unidentified woman in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1974 known as Lady of the Dunes. Clark explained that he had buried evidence from the crime in his grandfather's garden and that he knew the woman's identity but was not going to tell authorities because he claimed they mistreated him. Hadden said of the claim: "I could have told the police what her name was, but after they beat the shit out of me, I wasn't going to tell them shit. ... This murder is still unsolved and what the police are looking for is in my grandfather's garden." Police aren't sure whether there is any merit to this confession but He led police on December 15, 2000 to his grandparents' former property where they discovered a plastic bucket of over 200 pieces of jewelry. Among the items were Laura Houghteling's high school class ring. Clark claims they were "trophies" taken from his victims.  So were any of these trinkets items that belonged to our Lady? We may never know. 

 

The Lady of the Dunes’ body lies at the St. Peter’s Cemetery, except her head, which law enforcement kept for ongoing criminal investigation. The first facial reconstruction using clay came in 1970. Then in 2010, a high tech scan helped to create another model of her face. Her body was exhumed twice. In 1980, forensic investigators took blood samples from her corpse. However, the evidence did not offer any new information about her murder. Then in 2000, they unearthed her again for DNA testing to see if she could be the offspring of Rory Kesinger’s mother. As noted, she was not.

 

     In 2019, District Attorney for the Cape and Islands Michael O’Keefe opened up a new investigation for the Lady of the Dunes. He plans to utilize ‘genetic genealogy,’ which is a method in which criminal investigators use genetic databases to find family members of a perpetrator or victim to solve crimes. Evidently, this method helped detectives find suspects for 28 cases in 2018, including the ‘Golden State Killer,’ Joseph James DeAngelo, after a nearly 50-year-old search.

 

So there you have it, the lady of the dunes. Not only unsolved but we don't even know the identity of the victim. A couple of high profile suspects but nothing more to go on. We may never know who she is or who killed her. People in the area and those close to the case are holding out hope though. 

 

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Boarding the train in Japan we're taking the imaginary bridge and heading to a beautiful island. What island is that you ask? We are heading to a place that has been kicking ass with listener support recently, and as we learned from a listener, they are not all pussies. We are heading to the land of Peter Jackson, Taika Waititi, Sir Edmund Hillary, Ernest Rutherford, who if you're not up on your scientists, was a  physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. Encyclopædia Britannica considers him to be the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday, Jean Batten, a female aviator who made the first solo flight from England to New Zealand, and the list could go on. Since we gave it away in the last description… You've probably guessed it… We're heading to New Zealand! Not only that… Creepy New Zealand!

 

So you know by now how we do it here on our creepy series, we like to give you a history of the location we're at and then drive into all that is creepy about said place! Having said that, let's check out the history of New Zealand. It all started when Bilbo Baggins found a ring. It was the one ring to rule them all… Oh wait.. Sorry… Wrong history… oh ya here we go..

Māori were the first inhabitants of New Zealand or Aotearoa, guided by Kupe the great navigator. When did Maori first arrive in New Zealand? According to Māori, the first explorer to reach New Zealand was Kupe. Using the stars and ocean currents as his navigational guides, he ventured across the Pacific on his waka hourua (voyaging canoe) from his ancestral Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki. It is thought that Kupe made landfall at the Hokianga Harbour in Northland, around 1000 years ago. You will not find Hawaiki on a map, but it is believed Māori came from an island or group of islands in Polynesia in the South Pacific Ocean. There are distinct similarities between the Māori language and culture and others of Polynesia including the Cook Islands, Hawaii, and Tahiti. More waka hourua followed Kupe over the next few hundred years, landing at various parts of New Zealand. It is believed that Polynesian migration was planned and deliberate, with many waka hourua making return journeys to Hawaiki. Today, Māori are part of an iwi (tribe), a group of people who are descendants of a common ancestor and associated with a certain region or area in New Zealand. Each iwi has their own hapū (sub-tribes). Iwi can trace their entire origins and whakapapa (genealogy) back to certain waka hourua. The seven waka that arrived to Aotearoa were called Tainui, Te Arawa, Mātaatua, Kurahaupō, Tokomaru, Aotea and Tākitimu. Māori were expert hunters, gatherers and growers. They wove fishing nets from harakeke (flax), and carved fish hooks from bone and stone. They hunted native birds, including moa, the world’s largest bird, with a range of ingenious traps and snares.

 

Māori cultivated land and introduced vegetables from Polynesia, including the kūmara (sweet potato) and often cooked hāngi (an earth oven). They also ate native vegetables, roots and berries. Woven baskets were used to carry food, which was often stored in a pātaka — a storehouse raised on stilts.  To protect themselves from being attacked by others, Māori would construct pā (fortified village). Built in strategic locations, pā were cleverly constructed with a series of stockades and trenches protecting the inhabitants from intruders. Today, many historic pā sites can be found throughout the country.

 

Māori warriors were strong and fearless, able to skillfully wield a variety of traditional weapons, including the spear-like taiaha and club-like mere. Today, these weapons may be seen in Māori ceremonies, such as the wero (challenge). You can also find these traditional weapons in museums. While Māori lived throughout the North and South Islands, the Moriori, another Polynesian tribe, lived on the Chatham Islands, nearly 900 kilometres east of Christchurch. Moriori are believed to have migrated to the Chathams from the South Island of New Zealand. In the late 18th century, there were about 2000 Moriori living in the Chathams. However, disease and attacks from Māori saw the numbers of this peace-loving tribe become severely depleted. The last full-blooded Moriori is believed to have died in 1933.The first European to sight New Zealand was Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. He was on an expedition to discover a great Southern continent ‘Great South Land’ that was believed to be rich in minerals. In 1642, while searching for this continent, Tasman sighted a ‘large high-lying land’ off the West Coast of the South Island.

 

Abel Tasman annexed the country for Holland under the name of ‘Staten Landt’ (later changed to ‘New Zealand’ by Dutch mapmakers). Sailing up the country’s West Coast, Tasman’s first contact with Māori was at the top of the South Island in what is now called Golden Bay. Two waka (canoes) full of Māori men sighted Tasman’s boat. Tasman sent out his men in a small boat, but various misunderstandings saw it rammed by one of the waka. In the resulting skirmish, four of Tasman’s men were killed.

 

Tasman never set foot on New Zealand, and after sailing up the West Coast, went on to some Pacific Islands, and then back to Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). His mission to New Zealand was considered unsuccessful by his employers, the Dutch East India Company, Tasman having found ‘no treasures or matters of great profit’. Captain James Cook, sent to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus, was also tasked with the search for the great southern continent thought to exist in the southern seas. Cook’s cabin boy, Young Nick, sighted a piece of land (now called Young Nick’s Head) near Gisborne in 1769. Cook successfully circumnavigated and mapped the country, and led two more expeditions to New Zealand before being killed in Hawaii in 1779. Prior to 1840, it was mainly whalers, sealers, and missionaries who came to New Zealand. These settlers had considerable contact with Māori, especially in coastal areas. Māori and Pākehā (Europeans) traded extensively, and some Europeans lived among Māori. The contribution of guns to Māori intertribal warfare, along with European diseases, led to a steep decline in the Māori population during this time.  Signed in 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi is an agreement between the British Crown and Māori.

 

Around this time, there were 125,000 Māori and about 2000 settlers in New Zealand. Sealers and whalers were the first Europeans settlers, followed by missionaries. Merchants also arrived to trade natural resources such as flax and timber from Māori in exchange for clothing, guns and other products.

 

As more immigrants settled permanently in New Zealand, they weren’t always fair in their dealings with Māori over land. A number of Māori chiefs sought protection from William IV, the King of England, and recognition of their special trade and missionary contacts with Britain. They feared a takeover by nations like France, and wanted to stop the lawlessness of the British people in their country. As British settlement increased, the British Government decided to negotiate a formal agreement with Māori chiefs to become a British Colony. A treaty was drawn up in English then translated into Māori.

 

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed on February 6, 1840, at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands. Forty-three Northland Chiefs signed the treaty on that day. Over 500 Māori Chiefs signed it as it was taken around the country during the next eight months. The Treaty had three articles:

 

that the Queen (or king) of Great Britain has the right to rule over New Zealand;

that Māori chiefs would keep their land and their chieftainships, and would agree to sell their land only to the British monarch; and

that all Māori would have the same rights as British subjects.

The second and third articles have caused controversy through the years, mainly because of translation problems. Successive governments believed the Treaty enabled complete sovereignty over Māori, their lands and resources. But Māori believed that they were merely giving permission for the British to use their land. Disputes over ownership followed involving a series of violent conflicts during the 19th century. These became known as the New Zealand Land Wars, and were concentrated around Northland and the southern part of the North Island during the 1840s, and the central North Island in the 1860s. Both sides suffered losses, with the British Crown the eventual victor. Land confiscation and questionable land sales carried on through to the 20th century, until the vast majority of land in New Zealand was owned by settlers and the Crown. Following its signing, many of the rights guaranteed to Māori in the Treaty of Waitangi were ignored. To help rectify this, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up in 1975. It has ruled on a number of claims brought by Māori iwi (tribes) and in many cases, compensation has been granted.

 

While disagreements over the terms of the treaty continue to this day, it is still considered New Zealand’s founding document.

 

The grounds and building where the treaty was signed have been preserved. Today, the Waitangi Historic Reserve is a popular tourist attraction. Here you can explore the museum, watch a cultural performance inside the carved Māori meeting house, and visit the colonial mission house, historic flagstaff, and beautiful waka taua (Māori war canoe). Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century, the ‘homeland’ of Britain had an enormous influence on New Zealand. Government administration, education, and culture were largely built on British models. New Zealand troops fought, and suffered severe casualties in the Boer War and the two World Wars. As Prime Minister Michael Savage said about England in 1939, ‘where she goes, we go, where she stands, we stand’. After World War II, cultural ties with Great Britain remained strong. However, successive New Zealand governments saw the USA as their major ally and protector. New Zealand signed the joined SEATO (South-East Asia Treaty Organisation) and signed the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, and United States) Pact. New Zealand troops also fought with US forces during the Korean and Vietnam wars. While New Zealand is still heavily influenced by its colonial heritage, the country now has its own strong sense of identity. While still a member of the British Commonwealth, and maintaining close, friendly relations with the USA, New Zealand now has a far more independent trading and foreign policy. Since the mid 1980s, New Zealand has been a nuclear free zone, with its armed forces primarily focused on peacekeeping in the Pacific region. This history of the country was taken directly from NewZealand.Com. It was the best summation without getting too overblown we could find!  So now with that history of the country down let's get into the creepiness!!

 

First up, a ghost town! 

Now farmland and Bush, Tangarakau once was a thriving community of 1200 people. It's a tiny dot on the map 90 minutes' drive from both Stratford and Taumarunui - so remote that it isn't even on the Forgotten Highway. You must turn off State Highway 43 and drive 6km into bush and rugged farmland to reach all that's left of it, which is almost nothing. There's a campground with cabins and provision for motorhomes, a working farm, the heavily rainforested banks of the Tangarakau River and surrounding hills to explore and plenty of outdoor activities: fossil collecting, kayaking, hunting. The name, which translates as "to fell trees” seems appropriate, for there's nothing but paddocks where a community of 1200 tunnellers and railway workers once thrived. Tangarakau was the epicentre of an epic construction job accomplished with picks, shovels and dynamite - a project which it's said would have cost $9 billion in today's money. Construction of the Stratford-Okahukura railway line began from Stratford in 1901 and took more than three decades to complete. The link was mothballed in 2009, though you can still ride over it in tourist railcarts. For most of its life this railway thrived, with goods trains carrying coal, stock and wool and passenger railcars travelling both ways every day. One feature of visiting Tangarakau on the railcarts is that the railway ballast on this part of the track is full of fossils. For about 10 years, during the height of construction, Tangarakau boasted a drapery store, hairdresser and tobacconist, boot shop, tearooms, confectioner and fruiterer, social rooms, post office and savings bank, police station, a boarding house, resident doctor and dispensary (formed by a co-operative Tangarakau Medical Association), a maternity home, cinema and social hall, lending library and reading room, a well-equipped school, recreation ground and tennis court.

The streets were lit by a power station provided by the Public Works Department.

According to Taranaki's Ghost Town by Derek Morris, men who built the Stratford-Okahukura railway line earned only a few pounds a week. But everyone gave a day's wages to the victims of the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake. After the line was completed in 1932, the workers drifted away and most buildings were dismantled and removed. During the 1960s, the population dwindled to eight. Now only Bushlands Holiday Park remains.

 

Not far from the ghost town, in the spectacular Tangarakau Gorge, is the grave of pioneer surveyor Joshua Morgan who died in 1893.

Morgan was an extraordinary man - the first European to cross the Urewera Ranges and an eyewitness to the 1886 Tarawera eruption. He spoke fluent Maori and often used English and Maori interchangeably.

Morgan fell ill while surveying the road linking Stratford and Taumarunui and did not survive to see the historic railway line through to completion.

Morgan's tomb has become a place for travellers to pause and reflect on those who built the Stratford-Okahukura railway line. There's not a ton of sightings from this place but there are a few ghost stories. Some have stated that they've seen apparitions wandering the ground. And there are reports of strange noises in the area as well. Some campers at the campground have reported creepy things happening while they've stayed there including odd noises and something messing with their tents andRVs, wildlife or spirits of  the tallest workers that died working hard to complete the railway? 

 

So we started out light to whet your whistles. Let's get into more creepiness!

 

Next up we head to Auckland! There we find the Ewelme cottage, which from what we can tell is considered one of the most haunted places in the area! Built in the 1860s, this charming cottage in Parnell was once home to Reverend Lush and his wife. It also functioned as a bolt-hole during times of tribal conflict in Howick, where Reverend Lush preached. This house has remained largely intact and virtually unchanged in the years since when it was built.

It is a glimpse into what life in New Zealand used to be like!

 

It is also rumoured to be haunted by the spirits of women and children, and in particular by the spirit of a young girl. We found a description of a paranormal investigation done at the house and we're gonna share some of those findings. Rather high EMF levels were detected in a few places within the house. 🖕 They do disclose that some of these reasons were due to wiring in those areas. Upstairs, a couple of the more sensitive members felt rather uneasy and could feel ‘something’ in the child’s bedroom area. One of the sensitives, during an EVP session, picked up that the toy doll, sitting on a small chair in the child’s room, was lovingly named “Georgina”. One photograph, taken outside the house standing on the veranda aimed at a glass window, seemed to show a rather eerie face looking back at the camera through the glass. Also upon reviewing our photographs we noticed a couple of rather odd-shaped shadows which appeared on the wall in the study. These shadows did not appear in other photos taken off the same spot. They managed to debunk one of the shadow photos but the other one could not be replicated or explained. Two members recall doing an EVP session. One of the members had brought along a balancing bird toy as a trigger object. It balanced nearby to where they were sitting and started the session. During the EVP session they noticed that the bird was moving. Unfortunately a video camera wasn’t on it at the time. However, upon reviewing the recorded EVP session from that room, a “kkkkk” sound is heard and immediately after, they are heard then sounding excited about the bird moving. One of our sensitives felt that there was something, (a male) in the downstairs office. She also felt very sad in the upstairs children’s room and thought that maybe there was a little girl up there. The name Isabella came up. Outside of this we've found stories of many people seeing the ghost of a young girl by oak tree in the garden, this is a very common sighting. A further resident had claimed that people have seen a cat running down the hallway and disappearing into the wall! Another visitor claimed they heard whispers when they were in the upstairs of the house, which is also where the paranormal investigators claimed it seemed most likely there was activity. 

 

Nothing like a good old haunted house! 

 

Next up, one of our standby sites… An old railway tunnel! The Otira tunnel to be exact. The Otira Tunnel is a railway tunnel on the Midland Line in the South Island of New Zealand, between Otira and Arthur's Pass. It runs under the Southern Alps from Arthur's Pass to Otira – a length of over 8.5 kilometres (5.3 mi).  The opening of the 8.5-km Ōtira tunnel completed the long-planned transalpine railway between Christchurch and Greymouth. At the time, it was the longest tunnel outside the Alps and the seventh-longest in the world.

 

Work had begun on the ‘Midland’ line 36 years earlier, but the private developers’ grand plans soon came unstuck. The government’s Public Works Department (PWD) took over in 1895 and the West Coast section reached Ōtira by 1900. Tenders for a long tunnel through the Southern Alps to Arthur’s Pass, 737 m above sea level, were called in 1907. Contractors J.H. McLean & Sons began work the following year, but the project was plagued by engineering problems, extreme weather and labour shortages, forcing the PWD to step in again. When the two ends of the tunnel were joined in 1918, the surveyors’ centre lines were less than 30 mm apart, impressive accuracy for the era. Due to the tunnel’s length and steep gradient, electric locomotives were used to haul trains through it until 1997. As with all of the other rail tunnels we've covered, this one has had its share of deaths and accidents associated with it! The onboard commentary tells of a ghost who is sometimes seen on the Old Coach Road. Apparently the male ghost walks with his swag along the road beside the tracks. It is considered that the man was a Scotsman who was one of the workers killed during the construction of the 8.5km Otira Tunnel. He is always seen travelling east on the Old Coach Road and is thought to be trying to get to Littleton so he can catch a ship home. Many people have claimed to see this ghost also in various other spots along the railway.

 

Next up… How about a psychiatric hospital! Kingseat Hospital was a psychiatric hospital that is considered to be one of New Zealand's notorious haunted locations with hundreds of claims of apparitions being reported, as of 2011. The construction of Kingseat Hospital began in 1929 when twenty patients from a nearby mental institution came to the site along with twelve wheelbarrows and ten shovels. Kingseat Hospital was named after a hospital in Aberdeenshire, Scotland following Dr. Gray (the Director-General of the Mental Health Division of the Health Department at the time) returning from an overseas trip, who felt it appropriate to have a sister hospital with the same name in New Zealand. Flower gardens, shrubs and trees were grown in the grounds of Kingseat Hospital, using surplus plants from the Ellerslie Racecourse and Norfolk Island pine seeds from Sir George Grey’s garden on Kawau Island.

 

Kingseat Hospital was in operation from 1932. In 1939, the Public Works Department and Fletcher Construction Company, Ltd. agreed on the construction of a two-storey nurses home at Kingseat Hospital, with the government to provide the steel for the building.

 

The hospital grew throughout the mid-late 1930s and 1940s to such an extent that by the beginning of 1947, there were over eight hundred patients. In 1968, certain nurses at Kingseat Hospital went on strike, which forced the administration to invite unemployed people and volunteers to assist within the hospital grounds with domestic chores.

 

In 1973, a Therapeutic pool was opened by the then-Mayoress of Auckland, Barbara Goodman, four years before the main swimming pool was added to the hospital in 1977. The site celebrated its 50th Anniversary Jubilee in 1982.

 

During the 1970s and 1980s, there were many places attached to psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand where alcoholics were treated for their drinking addictions and Villas 4 and 11 at Kingseat Hospital served this purpose. In 1996, South Auckland Health sold Kingseat Hospital after government decisions to replace ongoing hospitalisation of mentally ill patients with community care and rehabilitation units. This led to the eventual closure of Kingseat Hospital in July 1999, when the final patients were re-located off the complex to a mental health unit in Otara.

 

After the closure of Kingseat Hospital in 1999, the grounds were initially considered as a potential site for a new prison, able to accommodate six hundred inmates. In 2000, legal action was taken against the Tainui tribe for financial issues involving the former hospital. By 2004, more than two-hundred people had come forward to file complaints against the national government for claims of mistreatment and abuse of patients at New Zealand's psychiatric institutions (including Kingseat Hospital) during the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the complainants, who at the time of the incidents were aged between 8 and 16 years old, said that they were heavily over-medicated, unwillingly subjected to electro-shock treatment, and placed in isolation for long periods of time — sometimes for months. A paranormal team found a diary that contained the following: 'There was never enough hands to help the extremely handicapped eat, no medications to avoid being scratched or attacked nurses or kitchen or laundry staff alike-if having to go past the residents to clean up or stop them attacking each other,' the diary read.

 

'We could use the hours between meals to just clean up the dining rooms.. I cried with relief to learn this hospital has closed.'

 

Oof, also the diary claimed more nurses died there than patients. One of the most prolific reports is of the 'Grey Nurse', believed to be the ghost of a former worker who died while the psychiatric hospital was still operational.

 

The property contains abandoned nurse's quarters where the apparition is meant to have been spotted lurking in the shadows. 

 

The nurse is just one of many 'shadows' spotted in the halls, a phenomenon which has been described as having 'always existed and feed[ing] on negative energies and the emotions of fear'.

 Here we have another paranormal team account: 'The EMF meter suddenly went off. We started tracking the field and found we could actually gauge the shape and size of it. It was about the size of a football and was floating about a meter or so off the ground,' he wrote.

 

'At one point it was ‘hovering’ around Kel’s [another team member] head for a couple of minutes, before moving off...As I was measuring the field around Kel, I could feel an icy cold patch all around my hand holding the EMF meter,' he said. The team recorded several unusual incidents, including hearing the name 'Stephen' very clearly when they used a 'spirit box' to communicate with ghosts in the rtold  A family living in one of the villas told the Haunted Auckland team that spirits regularly showed themselves.

 

'They play with the kids. Sometimes we see them, but they don’t bother us at all, it’s all good,' the team were told.

 

Footage shows the paranormal investigators of Haunted Auckland supposedly communicating with a ghost named Alexis Jackson, a nurse who continues to “look after patients” at the hospital. During a visit to a former nurse’s house, another team member claimed to feel “dizzy and nauseous” when she touched a bathtub. Climbing in, she sensed something terrible had happened.

 

“I closed my eyes and saw a bit clearer a picture of a woman being pushed under the water,” she said. “I saw her arms and legs threshing in the bathtub. I could see a hand and arm pushing her under the water drowning her. 

 

staff at Spookers(a haunted house attraction)  have been creeped out by “object manipulation”, and chilly spots. And at the Kingseat villas, there’s been some serious poltergeist activity with reports of shaking cupboard doors, tapping on windows, self-operating toilets and taps, and moving furniture. Voices have been heard, sulphur smelt, and shadowy figures seen. TV show Ghost Hunt features footage of an unplugged dentist chair turning itself on and claims to have captured the shape of a ghost’s face in a shower stall. 

 

Good stuff!

 

Cryptids anyone? Sure thing! How about the Moehau! Moehau also known as Maero, Matau, Tuuhourangi, Taongina or Rapuwai described by the Maori people of New Zealand as being "Terrible creatures, half man, half animal", with a very aggressive temperament, they were only too happy to massacre and eat anyone that strayed into their domain. Early encounters often talk of these creatures exhibiting aggression and throwing rocks to frighten people off. It was these creatures, largely found in the Coromandel Ranges, that were thought to be responsible for the find of a headless, partially devoured body of a prospector in the Martha Mine region in 1882, later further up in the foothills the corpse of a woman was found, it was discovered she had been dragged from the shack in which she lived while the remainder of her family were away, and her neck had been snapped.

 

On the topic of aggressive behavior, Taonginas were greatly feared by the population of the lower Wanganui River as they were said to viciously attack any fishermen who strayed into their territory. This vicious behavior however seems to have abated in more modern encounters as the beasts in most instances flee on sight of  humans.

 

Rapuwai are believed, from legend, to be able to crush any strong Maori warrior with ease employing their large powerful hands. They are said to be tool-producing beasts using wood and stone, the articles crafted are said to resemble those produced by Homo erectus hominids. The Rapuwai are mostly believed to be an evolved orangutan that fled to these uninhabited islands of Polynesia. Meanwhile the Moehau are depicted as being as tall as a man, completely hair covered, with marginally ape-like facial features. The primary difference from human appearance being the extremely long fingers, tipped with sharp talons, capable of tearing apart the toughest prey. Often described as “Manimals”. It is possible that if these man-beasts existed prehistorically they would have been more than capable of bringing down the largest of Moa - Dinornis. The large talons spoken of seem to designate this creature's predatory nature. However, large talons are also found elsewhere in the animal kingdom in animals that rip open rotten logs to acquire nourishment, considering the indigenous Maori used to eat the large nutritious Huhu Grubs; it is not impossible that this beast may also be insectivorous. Matau Giants are described as being ape-like but 3m tall. The Rapuwai are gigantic, slow clumsy creatures that are of a strong muscular stature.

 

These creatures can be categorized as follows, those that are the stature of an ordinary human, the Moehau and Maero and those that are of giant stature the Matau, Tuuhourangi, Matau Giants and the Rapuwai.Many areas of New Zealand are named for these great hairy man beasts, Moehau Mountain, where they are believed to reside and people are cautioned against going up there is one such place. The Moehau are thought to populate both Mount Tongariro and Ruapehu, the Karangahake Gorge, Coromandel Ranges, Martha Mine Region, Waikaremoana – in the Urewera Ranges, The Heaphy River of the Northwest Nelson State Forest Park, Kaikoura Mountains, Fiordland National Park and are believed to be very common in the Haasts Pass area particularly around the Haast River.

 

The Matau Giants inhabit Lake Wakatipu in Central Otago. Toanginas are found in the lower reaches of the Waikato River. Maero are encountered in bush country throughout both the North and South Islands. Rapuwai are said to inhabit the Marlborough Distract and the Milford Sounds area. There is further another as yet unidentified type of man beast that lives in the Cameron Mountains in the South West of the South Island. Footprints are in most instances the main evidence of these creatures, in 1903 footprints larger than a mans were found in the Karangahake Gorge in Coromandel. In 1971 a trail of footprints similar to a mans though extended in appearance was located on snow-covered ground and led into a zone of bush on a hillside by a Park Ranger. 1983 was when a deer hunter chanced upon man-like footprints that could have been no more than an hour old along a riverbank in the Heaphy River area. In 1991 campers in the Cameron Mountains of the South Island elected to abandon their camp after finding unusually large man-beast prints near where they were camping.

 

In 1970 another party of campers had to abandon their camp as a 2m tall man beast assailed them screaming loudly and hurling rocks at the camp.

 

1972 and a hunter in the Coromandel ranges watched a naked, hairy man beast about 2m tall work its way through the scrub on the other side of a gully, upon reaching the place the creature had been traversing, footprints were found.  

 

Well we know why Moody's going to New Zealand! 

 

Next up are the kaikoura lights! UFOs or whatever the lame explanation that the "man"  gives us. The now-famous sightings began in the early hours of December 21. Civil Aviation officials later called in the air force due to the number and nature of the UFO reports.

 

Two Safe-Air flights left Woodbourne bound for Christchurch and one sighted lights off the Clarence River just before 2am. On the way back north, the crew were told Wellington Radar was picking up returns from its transmissions in that area, and the crew reported lights again at 4am, making rectangular patterns.

 

The second aircraft left Woodbourne at 3am and also checked out the radar observations, without seeing anything near the river. But radar signals in Wellington appeared to show something tracking the Argosy and at one point the crew saw a bright orb, pear-shaped with a reddish tinge which seemed to be stationary, though the plane's own radar showed it tracking the aircraft. On December 31, another Argosy carrying a film crew saw a cluster of four or five lights near the Kaikoura Peninsula, and a pulsing white light, while Wellington radar had contacts about 21km ahead of them, near the Clarence River.

 

Then there were radar "returns" from behind the aircraft, and a radar "target" where the crew saw a white light off their starboard side.

 

Flying out of Christchurch after 2am, the crew again saw a large white light, which they said aligned with a large radar target.

 

The sightings were filmed by the professional news camera crew filming an item about the earlier incident.

 

In the 2cm-thick file on the Kaikoura sightings, a report by Dr Bruce Maccabee for the NZ UFO Studies Centre, said the incidents were hard to explain through "conventional phenomenon". Conventional phenomena huh… Right… Wanna hear the explanation? Well here ya go… declassified New Zealand Defence Force files released yesterday showed the RNZAF attributed the sightings to "freak propagation" of radio and light waves, an unusually-bright Venus and the lights of a squid fishing fleet, cars and trains. Sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to us. 

 

We'd be remiss if we left out a haunted hotel. So we now take a trip to the Vulcan hotel.  The Vulcan Hotel is a restored and reputedly haunted public house, located on the main street of St Bathans, and is the town's main tourist attraction. Originally called the Ballarat Hotel, it was built in 1882 of mud brick. The building is registered as a Category I historic place by Heritage New Zealand. The building is notable as possibly the country's most famous haunted building. Room 1 of the hotel is reputedly home to the spirit of a young woman, thought by some to be a prostitute known as "the Rose", who was strangled to death in the hotel in the 1880s. The new owner of the building had an encounter with a ghost! Royce Clark has been visiting St Bathans for duck shooting and rugby with mates for more than 40 years, and has been a regular at the hotel. He recalled a story where an electric jug in his room turned on by itself although it wasn't plugged in, one night and he thought it was his buddies needing around but he couldn't find any sort of trickery even after he took it apart the next day. He also talked about hearing strange things during his visit. 

 

Ok so there you have our first installment of creepy New Zealand. There were stone more cool spots including a hospital and prison that we didn't get to this time but we'll for sure be back!

 

7 top new Zealand horror movies

https://worldgeeklynews.com/films/7-great-horror-films-from-new-zealand/

Aokigahara Forest, AKA The Suicide Forest

Today we're taking a trip to Japan. Today's episode may contain some talk that could be hard for some to listen to. We will be discussing suicide in parts of today's episode. While we normally have a pretty lax, “we don't care who we piss off or trigger” kind of attitude, we all agree that mental health and suicide are serious issues and we do not want anyone who may already have some problems to listen to something we are discussing and to make any said problems worse. We joke around and have fun and there will be jokes and fuckery in this episode, BUT, we will not make jokes about suicide or mental health. We will try and find some levity to shake off the darker situations, but will do our best to also be respectful when needed. We say this all the time and this is another great spot for this message, please if you are having any sort of thoughts of suicide and depression please reach out to someone that you can talk to. There are many many excellent resources for those who need them.

 

With that being said, in today's episode we are talking about Japan's Aokigahara Forest, also known as the suicide forest. We are going to go through the history of the forest and we are also going to talk about some of the tales of spirits and monsters in the forest. Also we’ll get into some spooky stories, of course, because that's what we do here! 

 

Due to the high level of stress faced by the Japanese, Japan is seen as one of the top countries with high suicide rates. According to a report by The Guardian, depression, serious illness and debt are among the common reasons one seeks to end their life. 

 

Historically suicide has been viewed differently in Japan than the way we see it now. Most people today will remark how selfish or cowardly suicide is. Japan historically has had the view that suicide was an honorable thing.

 

Back in the feudal era in Japan, committing suicide was seen as an act of honour. Samurai warriors would rather commit suicide, or known as seppuku sometimes referred to as Harakiri (ritual disemboweling) than fall into the hands of their enemy – a way to uphold their honor and dignity. It was also used as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed because they had brought shame to themselves. It  was later practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa period (particularly officers near the end of World War II) to restore honor for themselves or for their families. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade like a tantō into the belly and drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the belly open. Some practitioners of seppuku allowed themselves to die slowly, but they usually enlisted the help of a “kaishakunin,” or second, who would lop off their head with a katana as soon as they made their initial cut. The goal was generally not to take the head off in one swing, rather most of the way off on the first swing with the second bringing down a very light cut allowing the head to fall into the hands of the deceased. Among other rituals, the doomed individual often drank sake, they were only allowed a specific number of sips, and composed a short “death poem” before taking up the blade. In each case, it was considered an act of extreme bravery and self-sacrifice that embodied Bushido, the ancient warrior code of the samurai. There was even a female version of seppuku called “jigai,” which involved cutting the throat using a tanto. Japanese Tanto knives (or short swords) are characterized by their dagger-like design. The tanto knife first appeared around the year 900. Seppuku fell out of favor with the decline of the samurai in the late-19th century, but the practice didn’t disappear entirely. Japanese General Nogi Maresuke disemboweled himself in 1912 out of loyalty to the deceased Meiji Emperor, and many troops later chose the sword over surrender during World War II. Perhaps the most famous case in recent history concerns Yukio Mishima, a renowned novelist and Nobel Prize nominee who committed ritual seppuku in 1970 after leading a failed coup against the Japanese government.

On October 25, 1944, the Empire of Japan employed kamikaze bombers for the first time. (Kamikazi bombers were named after the “divine wind” that had destroyed the Mongol fleet in the thirteenth century, thus saving Japan from invasion.) The tactic was part of the ferocious Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, which took place in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines. Kamikaze strikes against Allied warships continued throughout World War II.

 

Kamikaze pilots deliberately crashed specially made planes directly into enemy warships, which resulted in suicide. It was a desperate policy. Motoharu Okamura, who commanded a kamikaze squadron, remarked that by 1944, “I firmly believe that the only way to swing the war in our favor is to resort to crash-dive attacks with our planes. There is no other way. Provide me with 300 planes and I will turn the tide of war.” In these kamikaze attacks, more than 3,000 Japanese pilots were killed, and there were more than 7,000 casualties among American, Australian, and British personnel. Flight Lieutenant Haruo Araki wrote the following letter to his wife before his last flight: 

             

                Shigeko,

 

Are you well? It is now a month since that day. The happy dream is over. Tomorrow I will dive my plane into an enemy ship. I will cross the river into the other world, taking some Yankees with me. When I look back, I see that I was very cold-hearted to you. After I had been cruel to you, I used to regret it. Please forgive me.

 

When I think of your future, and the long life ahead, it tears at my heart. Please remain steadfast and live happily. After my death, please take care of my father for me.

 

I, who have lived for the eternal principles of justice, will forever protect this nation from the enemies that surround us.

 

Commander of the Air Unit Eternity

 

Haruo Araki

 

WOW!

 

The reason we wanted to include this letter is that last line. He referred to himself as living for the eternal principles of justice. He says he will forever protect his nation from the enemies that surround them. This goes to show that there was still a sense of pride in the fact that you are committing suicide for the cause. It was seen as a strength not a weakness historically. On the other side of the coin, the Allies, steeped in the Judaeo-Christian tradition of the sanctity of life, the apparent willingness of Japanese servicemen like Araki to carry out suicide attacks was profoundly shocking. But then, as scholars of the kamikaze point out, the word suicide in Japanese does not always have the same “immoral connotation” that it has in English. Two versions—jiketsu (self-determination) and jisai (self-judgement)—“suggest an honorable or laudable act done in the public interest.” There is, moreover, no ethical or religious taboo regarding suicide in Japan’s traditional religion of Shintoism.  To surrender, on the other hand, was seen as dishonourable, hence the contempt the Japanese felt for prisoners of war. Japanese soldiers believed that when they fell on the field of battle they would become kami, or gods, and join the nation’s spirits at the Shinto shrine of Yasukuni in Tokyo. Hence the typical farewell from members of the Shimpū (Divine Wind) Special Attack Corps: “I’ll meet you at the Yasukuni Shrine!” 

Nowadays, many have chosen to end their life not for honourable reasons, but mainly because they could not fit into society. In Japan today, suicide is considered a major social issue. In 2017, the country had the seventh highest suicide rate in the OECD, at 14.9 per 100,000 persons, and in 2019 the country had the second highest suicide rate among the G7 developed nations.  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is “an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives.”, as per their website. Seventy percent of suicides in Japan are male, and it is the leading cause of death in men aged 20–44. After peaking in 2003, suicide rates have been gradually declining, falling to the lowest on record (since 1978) in 2019. Monthly suicide rates in Japan increased by 16% between July and October 2020, due to a number of reasons attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. What is driving these big divide rates?  As of 2020, the leading motive, with 49% of suicides was "Health issues". However because the category for health issues includes both mental (like depression) and physical issues, it is not possible to distinguish between the two. The second most commonly listed motive for suicides was "Financial/Poverty related issues" (e.g., Too much debt, Poverty), which was a motive in 17% of suicides. The third motive is "Household issues" (e.g., disagreements in the family) listed in 15% of suicides.

 

By occupation, 59.3% of suicide victims were in the broad "Not Employed" category, which is not to be confused with the colloquialism "unemployed" (as in those who are seeking but unable to find a job). The "Not Employed" category also includes pensioners, homemakers and others. While the teenage suicide rate in Japan is lower than the OECD country average, teenage suicide rates have been the only category to increase slightly in recent years, despite the significant drop in overall suicide rates over the past decade.

 

Many who decide to commit suicide will chose a place where it is hidden and not easy to be found to spend their last moment. And for the Japanese, Aokigahara Forest is one of the most common locations. It is also known as the world’s second-most common location to commit suicide. The most common location is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, in the US. Aokigahara is located at the northwest base of the country’s highest mountain, Mount Fuji. Due to its high density of trees, Aokigahara is also known as a Jukai – which simply means a “sea of trees’. The tree cover is so thick that, even at noon, you will hardly find a bright spot in the forest. Aokigahara is also known as Japan’s Demon Forest, and the “perfect place to die”. Many Japanese believe that the forest is haunted and dare not go nearby. This 35-sq km, around 14 sq mile, forest is cold, rocky, and contains some 200 caves, of which a few, such as the Ice Cave and Wind Cave, have been popular among tourists. Because of the rocky area and thick trees, Aokigahara’s surroundings are almost identical, making it the perfect journey for those who are making a one-way trip. For trekkers and hikers, they often carry along plastic tape to mark their way so that they will find the way out again. 

 

Let's find out a bit more about the forest itself, because well, nerd shit. It formed out of a devastating volcanic eruption that occurred in the year 864. Which was ironically, chainsaw's second birthday. The nickname “Sea of Trees" captures the full grandeur of how this wind-swept forest appears from the mountain with its treetops rolling like waves. The trees in the forest do bear an exotic, gnarled appearance because they grew out of hardened lava. Their roots could not penetrate to the usual depth. The flow of the lava left the ground with an uneven surface before hardening, where it is not unusual to see trees partially uprooted, along with gaping holes—cave-like recesses—that have formed in the ground. Aokigahara has been falsely portrayed as a place where navigational compasses go haywire. Needles of magnetic compasses will move if placed directly on the lava, aligning with the rock's natural magnetism, kind of like moody, except the exact opposite, which varies in iron content and strength by location. However, a compass behaves as expected when held at a normal height. The forest has a variety of conifers and broadleaf trees and shrubs. Deeper in the forest there are many aromatic flowering plants. There are also many mosses, liverworts and ferns. Aside from the immense savings of plant life that choke the forest, it is home to plenty of wildlife. Some of the animals you may encounter include the Asian black bear, deer, fox, Japanese mink and Japanese squirrel, boar, and wild rabbit. Also the forest is a great place to see tits! That's right my friends, they have many kinds of tits including willow tits, long tailed tits, and of course the great tits.

 

So why is this such a popular place for people to end their lives? Well as stated earlier it is a very quiet place that offers up dense cover to help conceal things that are going on. Essentially it's peaceful and you can be alone away from prying eyes. Not only that, there was a mystery novel called “Kuroi Jukai” (translated as Black Sea of Trees) written by Seicho Matsumoto in 1960. The novel ends romantically with the lovers committing suicide in the forest, which revitalized the Suicide Forest’s popularity among those who wanted to end their life. Also Wataru Tsurumui’s controversial 1993 bestseller, The Complete Suicide Manual, is a book that describes various modes of suicide and even recommends Aokigahara as the perfect place to die. Apparently this book is also a common find in the forest, usually not too far away from a suicide victim and their belongings. Undoubtedly, the most common method of suicide in the forest is hanging. It's not uncommon for officials to find abandoned cars at the trail heads, empty campsites throughout the forest, strings and ropes left by people who venture off path to help find their way back, and sadly the body's of those who decided to enter the first and never come out. There are signs along the trails urging people to seek help if they are having issues and contemplating suicide. The signs read, “Your life is something precious that was given to you by your parents” and “Think about your parents, siblings, and children once more. Do not be troubled alone.” The signs end with a helpline telephone number, hoping the lost souls who seek to die would call for help. There are people who hike the forest in hopes of finding people and stopping them before it's too late. One man has found over 100 bodies in his time in the forest. With all of this death surrounding it, is it any wonder that there are tales of Hauntings and strange things happening here. There are also stories of demons that inhabit the forest. And with that being said and most of the heavy lifting being done, let's get into what we come here for every week… Creepy shit! 

 

The most common tale of the forest being inhabited by something evil had to do with the Yurei. Yurei are thought to be spirits barred from a peaceful afterlife. Ukiyo-e artist Maruyama Ōkyo created the first known example of the now-traditional yūrei, in his painting The Ghost of Oyuki. Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. The Zenshō-an in Tokyo houses the largest single collection of yūrei paintings which are only shown in August, the traditional month of the spirits. Yurei are seen in white clothing believed to signify the white burial kimono used in Edo period burial rituals. They have long black wild hair. They generally lack legs and feet and the haha typically dangle at the wrists. The arms are usually held stretched out or at the sides stretched out at just the elbow. The Yurei are often accompanied by hitodama, which are floating flames. They can be various colors such as blue, green or purple. So Yurei is actually somewhat of a catch all phrase for ghosts. There are actually different types of Yurei. There's Onryo, which are vengeful ghosts who come back to scene a wrong doing done to them, Goryo, which are spirits of the high class and aristocrats which are also vengeful usually for having been martyred. There are Ubume which are mother ghosts who either died in childbirth or left children behind when they passed, they come back to care for the child and often bring sweets to them. There are several others as well including Funayurei which are the ghosts of those who died at sea and Zashiki-warashi which are the ghosts of children. There are more but you get the point. According to legend, people bring their family members during famine to the forest and leave them to die there, in order to save their food for other family members. Those left in the forest would slowly die due to starvation, turning them into yurei. The belief in yurei continues to today. When a body is found in Aokigahara, forest guardians place it in a room next to the forest before being sent to authorities. Legend has it that if the body is left alone in the room, its yurei move around screaming in the room. Hence, forest guards will play rock-paper-scissors to determine who the unlucky companion to the body is. 

 

Also in Japanese legend, aside from the Yurei, the forest is said to be haunted by demons. So there's that. Demons are always good to have around. So knowing that there are possibly ribs of ghosts and demons hanging around, let's get into some creepy stories from the forest! 

 

During a VICE documentary that takes a tour of the forest, an extremely creepy curse is found. There's a Jack Skellington-like doll with his face cut off, nailed upside down to a tree as a sort of inverted crucifixion. According to the documentary's guide, Azusa Hayano, "They nailed this character upside down as a symbol of contempt for society. No, it's more like a curse. The curse is nailed in." Apparently, it's not that uncommon for visitors to leave a curse on the world they're leaving behind.

 

This next story was written for a Japanese newspaper:

 

Jun 26, 2011

I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast woodland whose name, in part, translates as “Sea of Trees.”

 

Inexplicably, I find myself moving toward the sound, searching for signs of life. Instead, I find death.

 

The source of that scream remains a mystery as, across a clearing, I see what looks like a pile of clothes. But as I approach, it becomes apparent it’s more than just clothes I’ve spotted.

 

In a small hollow, just below a tree, and curled up like a baby on a thick bed of dead leaves, lies a man, his thinning gray hair matted across his balding cranium. His pasty upper torso is shirtless, while his legs are covered only by black long johns — with blue-striped boxers sticking out above the waistband — and a pair of woolly socks.

 

Under his bent legs a pair of slacks, a white shirt and a jacket have been spread out as a cushion at his final resting place. Scattered around are innumerable documents, a briefcase and other remnants of a former life. Nearer to him are items more closely related to his demise: empty packets of prescription pills, beer cans, and bottles of liquor…

 

The article goes on but this is the end of the story for our creepy purposes...

 

The man had been dead for some time so there's no way he could have produced the scream. So where did it come from? A demon or Yurei trying to draw the man in?

 

The destination truth television show filmed an episode in the forest and may have caught a Yurei on camera. A man was hanging out in a spot alone and in a clip on you tube he says that he thought he saw something so he checked the camera. After checking the camera he notices a shape that seems to rise up from the ground. It's white and human-like. It's there for a couple seconds and then send to disappear back into the ground. Now what it was we can't say, it could have been a yurei or honestly it looks just as much like someone dressed in white standing up from behind a bush then crouching back down. Given the forest legend though… We won't rule out ghosts. 

 

We found this next story buried in a message board. There have been many stories of people who have had their guide lines cut while they were exploring the forest. This is an account of one of those incidents. It was written by an anonymous person so take it how you will! 

 

     "While on vacation me and my friend decided to check out the suicide forest. We were told the best thing to do would be to get on a tour and check out the caves as well. We didn't really want to do a touristy thing though. We decided to hike out there ourselves. We read up on dinner things about the area and decided we would bring along a bunch of Paracord to string along so we wouldn't get lost. We got there in the late afternoon and found a trailhead and parked. Immediately we were struck with an eerie feeling and the signs at the beginning of the trail and in various places saying not to commit suicide and get help didn't help. We set off on the trail to check it out. We walked for about 15 minutes and found a spot in the dense forest that we thought would be a good spot to head in. My friend tied the Paracord to a tree a few feet in and we set off. The further we got in the creepier it got. It was very quiet. You couldn't hear animals or birds or other people. There was not much light coming through but we could still see ok. After about an hour of exploring and letting out our line, which actually ended up being two large bundles of Paracord tied together, we decided to head back. We reeling in the line and heading back the way we came. At some point we started to hear a rustling. We thought this was strange cus we hadn't seen any animals but hey .. We're in a forest so who knows. But it soon became evident that something was actually following us! We were both spooked and picked up the pace. The rustling got louder but then whatever it was it seemed to take off ahead of us. We were both somewhat relieved… That is until a few minutes later when we got to a point where the Paracord had been shredded and the shredded end wrapped around a random tree! We couldn't find the other end of the cord and we started to freak out. Then… We heard the rustling again, but we could not see anything. We started to look around for the other end of the cord. As we were looking the rustling seemed to come from all around us. We kept getting more scared and my friend started crying and freaking out about being lost and telling about how we're going to end up dead like the rest of them. The rustling got louder and louder and then all of a sudden… Nothing. No rustling, no noise, nothing. We both stood there looking around. That's when I saw it. I saw a shadowy white figure off a little into the first. I thought I was seeing things at first. I rubbed my eyes and looked again and it was still there. At this point I lost it and started screaming. My friend turned around to see what I was screaming at and saw it too. It started to move towards us. It wasn't walking though it was like… Floating. As it came closer I see that the figure had no bottom half… It was basically a floating torso. You couldn't see the face as whatever it was had long wild hair. My friend started screaming as well and we both started frantically looking for the other end of our line. As the figure came closer we finally found the end of the cord and started moving as fast as we could. The figure continued to follow us, matching our speed. After what seemed like hours of moving as fast as we could through the forest with thing following us we finally came to where we started and could see the main trail. We ran on to the main trail and ran all the way to the car without looking back. Neither of us said a word on the way back to the hotel. To this day we don't talk about it. In my head I truly think that whatever that figure was trying to trap us in that forest. That figure still haunts me"

 

Creepy!!!

 

Locals in the area that reporters have spoken too, classic they have become used to the stories and they are not worried for the most part. Despite these statements there are still reports of locals hearing blood curdling screams at all hours from the forest. Some locals claim to see Nthe Yurei from time to time as well. 

 

There are numerous stories of people that may not have necessarily seen anything but definitely get the heavy sad feeling when they visit as well as the feeling that something or someone is watching them. Then of course there are those with the unfortunate story of coming upon a body which is probably the worst story you can bring home. 

 

By all accounts the forest is a beautiful place to visit and most people have no issues there. Regardless, take heed when exploring and please be respectful to the place that many have lost their lives. 

 

Movies:

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?countries=jp&keywords=japanese-horror-film&sort=user_rating&title_type=feature