Accused Thief Blames Ghosts

When you're caught with the stolen property in your basement, I guess blaming ghosts as a defense is better than no defense at all.

A former Ohio police officer accused of theft denied being aware of stolen property in his basement, saying he avoided the room because he believed it contained a paranormal presence.

WBNS-TV reports that Joseph Hughes faced 21 charges when items ranging from a heater and a welder to an air conditioning unit labeled "auditor" were found in his home. Read more

Are a Small Boy's Vivid Memories Evidence of Reincarnation?

A small boy's vivid memories may be evidence of reincarnation.

Another great case from The Survival Top 40 is the James Leininger reincarnation case. This story is sufficiently well known that I don't think I need to summarize it; anyway, Miles Edward Allen's excellent summary is readily available at this link (PDF).

Besides the strongly evidential value of James' statements about the plane he piloted, the ship he flew from, the names of his fallen comrades, etc., there are three aspects of the case that strike me as particularly interesting.

First, little James showed strong emotions when remembering his past life as a pilot. The whole episode began with James' nightmares, in which he struggled and screamed in bed. Whatever he was experiencing was obviously vivid and terrifying. Moreover, he showed flare-ups of righteous indignation that would seem more appropriate for a WWII flier than a two-year-old. As Miles Edward Allen recounts, when James identified his ship as the Natoma, his father replied that the name sounded Japanese. "Little James grew indignant and said no. It was American!" It's certainly credible that a patriotic serviceman would have that reaction; after all, it was the Japanese who shot him down. James, on the other hand, was probably too young to know or care about the Japanese through his own personal experience. Read more

Ghosts Are Not Always What They Seem

Ghosts are not always what they seem, says Malcolm Robinson. He examines a couple of possible explanations for ghost sightings, including the "Stone Tape Theory."

In my last article I mentioned that ghosts and not as cut and dried and plain and simple as you might think, there are many variations to a ghost, I’d like to continue with this so let’s look at some other explanations that may explain ‘some’ ghostly sightings. Read more

Pete Doherty Claims to Be Haunted by the Ghost of Amy Winehouse

Rock singer Pete Doherty claims he is being haunted by Amy Winehouse's ghost (and it's not because of drugs).

So here’s a completely normal story involving the Pete Doherty and the ghost of Amy Winehouse.

According to friends The Libertines and Babyshambles singer believes that he’s being haunted by the late singer.

"He is utterly convinced that he has seen her ghost,” a mate told The Sun.  Read more

Dowsing Competition Pits Believers against Skeptics

Dowsers who claim to be able to locate archaeological features from maps are invited to enter a specially devised competition. Most challenges issued by paranormal "skeptics" are rigged in favor of the skeptic, but this one seems as if it might be fair.

Mention the word dowsing and most people will think of a chap in muddy wellies trudging around a farm with a stick, looking for a good place to sink a borehole, or a fey type in a tie-dye T-shirt wafting about looking for mystical ley lines.

For centuries there have been believers in dowsing, a form of divination traditionally used to locate groundwater sources, and argument rages in the archaeological community about whether dowsers, armed with no more than a bit of bent copper wire and the power of faith, can also locate long-vanished Roman roads, Bronze Age barrows or prehistoric rock carvings.

However, even believers in the muddy wellies type of dowsing often have grave doubts about map dowsers, who claim to be able to locate such features just by holding a pendulum over a Google Earth satellite view taken from miles above a site. The debate has rumbled on through many archaeology forums, with believers and sceptics equally passionately engaged.

A website dedicated to prehistoric archaeology called the Megalithic Portal is now launching a competition to try and resolve the question, with would-be psychics and scoffers invited to join a hunt for archaeological remains from the comfort of their own armchairs. Read more

Voyage to the Land of the Living Dead

Inexplicata contributing editor Manuel Carballal describes one of his most perilous brushes with the unknown, an encounter with Haitian voodoo.

The scene could have been derived from any suspense film. Manuel Delgado instinctively held on tightly to his television camera as we clutched our machetes. Our vehicle was being surrounded by a dozen ebony-skinned Haitians. The blancs, as they derisively call Europeans, are not welcome in Haiti and we had been warned that under no circumstances should we venture into the shanty towns outside Port-au-Prince where, we were told, "there exists a 90 per cent chance of being mugged." We ignored this sage advice, of course.

After endless minutes of waiting, our guide allowed us to emerge from the car. Monsieur Balaguer, an important bokor -- a voodoo high priest -- would allow us to visit his hounfor or temple. The hounfor consisted in a humble wooden shack whose center contained the peristyle, the indispensable central column of every voodoo ritual, by means of which the gods or loas descend to earth. A filthy light bulb and seven candles enabled us to see the disquieting form of Monsieur Balaguer, a tall man with sparkling black eyes, who covered his head with a Stetson.

While our guide stated all the arguments at his disposal in order to have Monsieur Balaguer allow us to film his "she-devil" and his "zombie", we were startled by a sudden blackout. The dirty light bulb was extinguished, plunging us into the shadows, illuminated only by the seven candles around the peristyle. Balaguer greeted his "she-devil" -- supposedly located behind a mysterious metal door -- by rapping on it a few times. From the other side, "something" responded with brutal blows against the door, causing the entire temple to shake. Suddenly we were told that the bokor had to consult the loas: we looked on as Monsieur Balaguer fell int a sort of trance, being "ridden" or possessed by Bravo, one of the loas who shares the lordship over death and cemeteries with Baron Samedi and Baron La Croix. Subjecting us to a sort of "trial," exchanging a curious combinations of handshakes to which we instinctively responded to, Balaguer drank rum through an ear as he smoked a cigarette through one nostril.

The fact of the matter is that in Haiti, Western patterns of logic become fragile in the face of the unpredictable, incomprehensible and irrational voodoo cult -- vodú in the native tongue -- which originates from the Fon language of Dahomey, meaning "deity" or "spirit." This is the precise nature of voodoo: a spirit that envelops Haiti, influencing each and every cultural or social manifestation of this small country, the poorest of the Americas. Read more

Did Leonardo da Vinci Fake the Shroud of Turin?

Does the newly discovered painting "The Saviour of the World" prove that Leonardo da Vinci faked the Turin Shroud? Two British researchers reveal the art history sensation that may end decades of controversy.

Do Einstein's Laws Prove Ghosts Exist?

Do Einstein's laws prove ghosts exist? Since the universe's energy is constant and can't be destroyed, what happens to energy in our bodies when we die?

Every night, amateur ghost-hunting groups across the country head out into abandoned warehouses, old buildings and cemeteries to look for ghosts. They often bring along electronic equipment that they believe helps them locate ghostly energy.

Despite years of efforts by ghost hunters on TV and in real life, we still do not have good proof that ghosts are real. Many ghost hunters believe that strong support for the existence of ghosts can be found in modern physics. Specifically, that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds of all time, offered a scientific basis for the reality of ghosts. Read more

10 Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion

Though some people say that spontaneous human combustion is just a regular fire that people can't be bothered to find the cause for, take a look at ten actual cases of spontaneous human combustion, and decide for yourself.

Some people say that spontaneous human combustion is just a regular fire that people can't be bothered to find the cause for, that could have been avoided through basic fire safety. Others say that it's just a peculiar shift of our internal chemistry, that can happen to anyone at any time.

Take a look at ten actual cases of spontaneous human combustion, and decide for yourself. Read more

White House: Extraterrestrials Haven't Contacted or Visited Earth

Move along. Nothing to see here. According to the White House, extraterrestrials haven't contacted or visited Earth. Well, that settles that.

Alien lifeforms have not contacted Earth yet, the White House claimed over the weekend in response to petitions asking for information on supposed human interactions with extraterrestrials.

"The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race," Phil Larson of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy wrote in a blog post responding to the inquiries. "In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye." Read more

Ohio Woman Claims to Have Witnessed Ghost Sex

Euclid, Ohio woman Dianne Carlisle claims to have witnessed ghost sex.



Typically, Nerve treats the story as a joke:

If you heard the song "Grim Grinnin' Ghosts" at some point during your Halloween debauchery, you know from the lyrics that they occasionally come out to socialize. What the song doesn't tell you is that they also like to bone one another — at least, according to Euclid, Ohio woman Dianne Carlisle, who purports to have seen two spirits bumping uglies in her living room. "It looks like ghosts having sex in my living room!" she says of the above photo, which her four-year old granddaughter took while playing with her cell phone. "They are having sex, you can see the lady's high heeled shoes!" Read more

This story is actually rather unusual. As discussed in my post Spectrophilia: Sex with Ghosts, stories about sex between spirits and humans are not new, but this is the first I've heard of someone claiming to have witnessed spirits having sex with each other.

Cave Creatures: Reptilian Humanoids from the Hollow Earth?

Stories persist of reptilian humanoids from a Hollow Earth.

Continuing our celebration of the month of “Crocktober,” there are a multitude of new creepy films and other entertainment out there, designed to chill the bones and raise the hairs of the faint-hearted (in a fun way). For many, the terrors that can achieve this sort of thing remain in the realm of sewn-together man-things like Frankenstein; or maybe your favorite ghouls are the blood-sucking boogers, most of which are far-less cordial and romantic than Edward and his Twilight ilk.

While I enjoy all of these creepy critters too, my personal favorite remedy for the Crocktober Creeps involves the subject of creatures from the depths of the underground realm. Books and films like The Descent take the notion of mankind’s greatest fears into the recesses of a hypothetical underworld which, in truth, provides a unique allegory for the eternal struggle between mankind and the influences of darkness… perhaps no place gets any darker than the Hollow Earth.

Taking a more Fortean angle to all this, for most of us the serious treatment of any idea that there might be humanoid monstrosities lurking within cavernous corridors beneath the Earth’s surface is little more than lunacy. In many regards, I have to agree that, while I enjoy the films and other fictional portrayals that delve into the depths of this subject, we cannot take very literally the idea that subterranean non-humans exist. And yet, from time to time, there are indeed reports that “surface” (pun intended) which seek to illustrate that this very sort of thing actually is more than mere fiction. Read more