I have decided not to remove the newsletter and not use a CMS for the website. The CMS I was considering was too restrictive for the needs of the website. So, I will continue to raw code the website, such as it is. At least the website will have the freedom that is best for it’s needs.

I’m considering closing the newsletter and moving all articles current and future to the main website. This won’t happen right away. I want to know who reads this newsletter first and if they have any suggestions.

In the event that the newsletter closes, I will open a new place for articles to be placed and read. I will have to post the articles myself since I currently raw code the site still. I am considering using a CMS (Content Management System) in the future, I just need to review my options before I pick one.

So, if anyone has ideas or an opinion, feel free to email me at:
ghosthunters.chat@gmail.com .

Different authors and people in the paranormal have their theories as to what a shadow person is, and these ideas come from all fields of study and belief, ranging from metaphysics, religious ideals, parapsychology, cryptozoology, even the occult and demonology. Others have ideas that shadow people are thought forms, ghosts themselves or sometimes even demonic forces.

A thought form, by the way, as most people are familiar with the basic ideas of what a ghost and demon may be, is a manifestation of mental energy from a thinker or person into a semi corporeal (physical) form. They called tulpas alternatively and the idea for them comes from Tibetan and Hindu mysticism.

Further speaking of the tulpas, there is a book called Thought Forms by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, which is essentially study on the power of the nature of thoughts. They state as their premise that thoughts have two effects on the physical world, a “radiating vibration” and a “floating form” and going further, they break up their classification of thought forms into several different categories:

*Thought forms that take the image of the thinker

* Thought forms that take the image of a material object

* Thought forms which take the form of a unique entity all of its own, expressing its inherence qualities in the matter which draws around it.

The book also examines the effects of music, emotion and colors in regards to thought forms as well. Some people feel that shadow people are creatures from another plane of existence that overlaps ours. Oddly, others believe that shadow people are two dimensional entities that reside or pass through our three dimensional reality and are somehow tied into Grey Aliens. This explanation is often tied into deep and twisted conspiracy buff theories and I personally don’t hold much to it.

I personally prefer the tulpas theory for most shadow people experiences. Remember, at any given time there may be more than just your own thought forms in a given area if that theory holds true. Tulpas may also be present during poltergeist outbreaks when people believe they are seeing demonic forms and monstrous creatures…if a thought form takes the form of your thoughts, and you are angry, distressed or worried, one must consider, what would anger look like given form? Or fear? Or passion?

I can almost bet it wouldn’t be pretty.

Of course, these are all possible and none confirmed. Now that we have explored the paranormal possible causes, we also need to be balanced and examine logical explanations as it always best to eliminate all possible rational explanations first before jumping to paranormal conclusion. Many different scientific principles can explain the effects experienced during shadow people encounters, including hallucinations and optical illusions brought on by different physiological or psychological conditions, drug use and or the interaction of external agents on the human body.

Also, images seen in the peripheral area (edge) of vision can be caused by what is termed pareidolia, which means in simple terms, when your brain incorrectly interprets complex lines, colors, light or shadow or texture that may appear to be something familiar…the common term used by us and the majority of other researchers was coined by Grant Wilson, matrixing.

Hypnagogia, what is known as “waking-sleep” is a condition in which a person is half way asleep and half way awake. While in this state, people can be conscious and aware of their environment but also at the same time in a dream like state, where images from their own subconscious may be perceived. People who have been in this state often report lights, and shadows moving around them, or faces in the dark as well as a heavy feeling of impending dread. This is one of the effects of sleep paralysis, as you noted earlier with the paralysis part coming from your body’s natural tendency to paralyze itself while in REM sleep to avoid reacting to internal dream stimuli.

Sleep paralysis is another good possible explanation or even lucid dreaming, while rare, may be occurring in which it would almost be a waking dream.

So in the end, Shadow People are as mysterious as ever and they are just one further reason to keep your eyes open and always be vigilant.

The scariest movie ever made.

That tagline used to belong to William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist.”

Not anymore

Now it belongs to a surprise smash hit that has stormed the country titled simply, “Paranormal Activity.”

Made on a budget of 15,000 dollars, the movie is filmed in a documentary style and is the brain-child of director Oren Peli, the plot revolves around a young couple living in a suburban home in San Diego CA, named Katie and Micah. Katie tells Micah that she has been followed since she was a young girl by an entity. Micah, a day-trader, purchases a video camera to attempt to document the entity and record its manifestations.

At first, little to nothing happens. Katie seems to tolerate Micah’s behavior up until the point that things begin to happen. After a self proclaimed psychic visits the home, small things begin to happen at first; objects moving, electronics malfunctioning, and it slowly escalates to larger and more terrifying events, such as doors slamming, horrible slamming footsteps and inhuman roars and growls.

As time progresses, Katie and Micah’s relationship becomes more and more strained as Katie looses sleep and begins to have prolonged sleep walking episodes and her fears about being harmed by the activity rise.  Katie repeatedly asks Micah to stop filming as she fears it will make things worse and finally, Micah asks to bring in an Ouija board to communicate with the entity after capturing some disturbing EVP’s.  Katie vehemently objects to this and after a heated verbal fighting match, Micah promises to not bring one in.

Despite Katie’s objections and trust, Micah brings a board in and uses it, to get no results. They leave and while they are gone, Micah leaves the camera on to film the board…and the camera catches a very eerie occurence, during which the board itself comes alive and the planchette beings to draw out a pattern, eventually bursting into flame.

Of course, Katie is furious with Micah and a titanic fight occurs, further driving up the stress in the home.

The pattern of activity escalates and finally the film attempts to climax in a  fashion that I won’t reveal here for spoilers sake but that is where the problem comes in; the film builds up a good level of suspense and delivers more than its fair share of genuinely scary spook attacks, but fails to live up to the hype in the end by nose diving into cheese…a large vat of ectoplasmic cheese that the Blair Witch Project fell into and never came out.

As an investigator, and an author myself, I attempted to set aside my investigators instincts and just enjoy the story and I did, but again, the ending ruined the whole piece. There is no exposition, no explanation, no reasoning, not even a believable or plausible ending. The film also overlooks key factual points in true demonic assaults. The acting is well done and believable, the special effects are quite good for a budget the size that it had and over all the story is solid but the ending should have packed more power, more of a punch and gave a better resolution.

It is like a roller coaster that climbs and goes up and up and then instead of an adrenaline rush as gravity throws you back in your seat….you get flatlined. The odd thing is, it is not the fault of the actors or the director but rather, strangely, Spielberg who altered the films ending. I honestly feel that if he had not done this, the film would have been much more coherent and packed a far more potent punch than it did.

With that being said, how did I finally score Paranormal Activity?

On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being of course, best, I feel that Paranormal Activity scored a modest 3 out of 10.

Hundreds of curious,fearful people surrounded the little house in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Some tried to burn it down, convinced it harbored a witch. Others threw garlic, an ancient protection against witches, onto the front steps. For very strange things were happening in this house. It was occupied by Gerald Goodin; his wife, Laura; and their adopted daughter,  Marcia, 11. They often heard tapping, banging sounds. Lights would go on and off. So did the TV. This was just a warm-up for terror.

Early one morning, Gerald Goodin noticed that a large refrigerator had turned from iuts unusual position. The kitched table began to flip up and down. Chairs fell over. He heard a crash from his wife’s bedroom. A religious pucture had fallen off the wall. An even louder crash came from Marcia’s room. Her bureau had fallen over. Wearing only nightclothes, the Goodins fled out into the street. A policeman lived nearby, and he went into the house, but left when the refrigerator began teetering back and forth. All sorts of explanations were offered – an earthquake, an underground stream, the house settling. Police came to the house to guard the Goodins. Experts on hauntings flooded in from all over the country. Among them was a Conneticut man named Boyce Batey. He talked with many witnesses, and saw and heard many of the strange things himself. The turning point in his investigation came on New Year’s Day, 1975, when he was sitting in the Goodins kitchen.

A stereo set moved, and a table went up and down with a bang. Actingon a suspicion, he ran into Marcia’s bedroom. The girl was lying on the bed, face down. “That didn’t seem right to me,” Batey says. “When a loud sound is heard, the tendency is to go towards it.” A picture in the bedroom fell from the wall, scattering glass across the floor. Marcia still lay motionless. Batey and other investigators began to develop a theory: the commotions were not being caused by a ghost or demon, they were being caused by Marcia.

It is becoming well known that some people can cause things to move without touching them. They can cause raps and bangs without hitting anything. This is called “parakinesis”. It happens particularly when people are emotionally disturbed. Often these people are teenagers or slightly younger, for this is often a difficult time of life. And Marcia had more than her share of problems.

 The Goodins had had a young son who had died. They had adopted Marcia, a Native American Iroquois from a reservation in Canada, in an effort to lessen their grief. They were so protective of Marcia that she had almost no outside life. Batey says, “This girl was a very normal child. She was intelligent, artistic, gentle,sweet.” But she had almost no social contact. Mrs. Goodin walked her to school and back. Some children taunted her about her Native American heritage. One kicked her in the back so severely that she was forced to stay home for weeks. It was when she was almost healed and was about to be sent back to her scary school life that the heavy poltergheist activity – things moving around- began.

Bately felt that initially it was Marcia’s way of expressing her anger at her parents and the world.  Afterwards, she wanted to keep the excitement going and the company coming. The police in the house made afuss over her. Her little game had brought social life into the house. Bately recalls: “One time, Marcia and a policeman were playing a game of checkeers, and he won. Withing three minutes, a bedroom bureau fell over, and a TV set fell onto the floor. Marcia had been disappointed by her defeat, but was too gentle to express it in an ordinary way.”

So it would seem that not all poltergheists come from another world. Some come from ordinarily harmless people who are very much part of this one.

Many small children can see ghosts that the adults around them cannot see. Usually, they do not speak of these visions, for they have learned that grown-ups will rebuke them, will tell them they are making things up. Irma was five years old in the summer of 1936. She and her family were staying at a resort hotel in the Canadian Rockies. One day two beautiful young people checked in. The man was tall and solidly built. The woman was short and slim. They seemed very much in love. The gossip went that they were on their honeymoon.

Irma was told they were champion swimmers, and had to come here to put the final touches on their training for the Olympic games, which were to be held a few weeks later in Berlin. They would go off every day and swim in the surrounding lake and rivers.  One morning at breakfast they mentioned that they were going to swim to a small island not far away. A waiter, who lived year-round in the area, overheard them and warned them to be careful. There was a very strong whirlpool near that island, with a poweful undertow. Over the years, several people had been drowned there, he said. The young man merely smiled, and glanced about the table as if saying, “These local people always have their stories.” A few minutes later, they left  the hotel in their swimsuits, laughing, as though they didnt have a care in the world. An hour later, the man came stumbling back alone. He seemed exhausted, and in such a dire emotional state that he was weeping and throwing up. He gasped out a tale that his wife has been caught in the whirlpool and that he had bveen unable to find her.

The whole hotel was thrown into a frenzy of anguish. A search party was organized, but the young woman’s body was never found. Little Irma had a question all her own, For when the man returned, she could see his young wife stnading behind him. She was wearing a wet bathing suit and was doubled over as if in pain. She was crying, “How could you? How could you?

Irma tagged along with the search party, and all the time she could see the drowned woman behind her husband, tears running down her cheeks. Even when the group returned to the hotel, the little girl could see the young woman a few feet from her husband.  This continued all summer for Irma. She could stand on a high place near the hotel and look across the water at the island. She could see the young woman on its shore, bent over as though in pain, as though she had been hit in the stomach. And even at that distance, Irma could hear her cry:

“Why did he do it? I loved him!”

Yes, it’s true, we’ve been de-linked from the TAPS chat page. We don’t have specific information as to why this has happened but we all have our theories.

This might seem as a bad thing but it’s actually a good thing. We will be moving on with other plans with better organizations. This event has shown us that TAPS has no interest in their fans who have been loyal to them for a few years now. Obviously, they think they can replace our chat channel with their inferior “xat chat”. “Xat chat” is a poor replacement considering the type of interface and lack of functionality in general.

Anyway, we have been shown there’s no negotiating on the matter. We weren’t asked or even contacted regarding this situation.  So, we’re moving on with life and have positive plans to go with. We will continue to take care of our chatters who find a sense of comfort with our community that we have.

Thank you to those who continue to come to our chat channel and support us. You will see we will move on to bigger and better things.

Something new has been added to the GhostHunters Chat website. It’s simply called “Sand”. It’s a game of sorts but there’s no gaining points or opponents. It’s just a matter of using different materials to do different things but most of the materials are sand-like. If anyone is interested, simply go to the main menu for the site and choose “Sand Game”.

Additionally, here’s the direct link: http://www.ghosthunters-chat.com/sand_game/

I have added the following commands to be used by everyone.

!spin – Spin the bottle
!topic – View current topic
!group – Paranormal Group Acronyms (Example: !group PSI )
!areacode – Areacode Finder (Example: !areacode 321 )
!uscode – US State Code Finder (Example: !uscode FL )
!ccode – Country Code Finder (Example: !ccode US )
!fcookie – Fortune Cookie
!date – Current Date
!dice – Throw Dice (Two numbers, up to 6 on each)
!8ball – Magic 8-Ball
!newtopic – New Topic Suggestions

New function suggestions are welcome, but please keep them useful and practical. Weather will not be added.

Trivia game commands will be placed on a different post.