I saw Bigfoot! The UFO was over my house! The ghostly apparition appeared right before my eyes and then vanished!
There are many that are totally convinced of the existence of the paranormal, cryptids, aliens, etc. There are those who are totally skeptical as well. This article is about what lies in between those two sets of beliefs. As always, I will not make up stories or any facts, nor try to bullshit you into belief of the paranormal or disbelief. I will present to you only my perceived, objective personal experiences and those of others personally known to me who are of credible and ethical character. These were some of those accumulated from over ten years of research and investigation... so here goes!
During one particular research investigation in an old, historic coquina quarry in St. Augustine, FL, USA, as I was distracted with setting up video equipment, my wife, who was accompanying me, suddenly observed a male figure, approximately 30 yards distant and walking away from her. He just seemed to suddenly appear, dressed in a type of hooded robe a monk would wear. This person was only visible from the waist up and vanished within five seconds of appearing. The sun was setting but it was not yet dark. We were outdoors and the cultural significance of the clothing matched the historical time period of the area we were in. My wife is not one to make up stories or imagine things that aren't there. I believe her. There were also three other events that occurred at that location that defy explanation. The first was my reacting to what I felt were thick, heavy cobwebs that were hitting my head directly. The only problem with that was I was wearing a hat and I was out in the open away from any trees or growth. The second was the sound of several people approaching from dense growth in the marshes next to the quarry, an impassible area. The voices steadily got louder as if coming closer. They suddenly stopped. The third was the sound of squeaky wagon wheels producing a doppler effect as they came closer and then faded as if passing by. Even the sound of oxen hoofs were heard. This would have tied in with the method of transport of the coquina out of the quarry to build Castillo de San Marcos around approximately 1675. I have this captured on audio recorder and is the most astounding EVP I have captured or ever heard for that matter.
When it comes to EVPs, as an experienced acoustic analyst, I have examined my own and countless other alleged audio communications from those presumed to have experienced bodily death. Using equipment such as an oscilloscope and audio spectrograph, I can eliminate approximately 99%+ of suspected valid EVPs as attributed to other than spirit contact. My oxen cart EVP is one such unexplainable EVP. As a rule, when voices are involved, I don't even consider an EVP that doesn't have vocal tone. It's too easy to attribute whisper sounds and words to a plethora of reasons. One other outstanding EVP I have collected that I cannot explain is from a walk through a deserted, very old cemetery in the State of Georgia, USA. Not hearing this one-word EVP with my own ears, upon audio analysis the vocal-tone word "WALKER" was heard. That was it.. just one word. Having randomly 'marked' by audio recording sufficiently to determine the location of the EVP, I returned to the cemetery. Noting nothing unusual, by chance I walked around a set of bushes and there was a headstone that read "WALKER." No precognition was associated with this event which adds to its amazing nature.
Photographic evidence is another situation that deserves skepticism, simply due to the present-day ability to alter the photo. I will only speak truthfully of one of my own such photo captures. Years ago I had received permission to go into the famous Old Jail in St. Augustine, FL. The person who was to give the tour, had a traumatic experience the night before while closing up. She was visibly shaken as she explained to me having believed to have seen "the creeper." This was a shadow figure that crawled straight up the wall before her eyes. As I had shown up and already paid to be there, she let me go in alone. I proceeded to the basement where the popular "blue lady" cell was. It is a dark area of the jail/prison where only ambient light from a small window is available. After a few minutes there, the "feeling" changed, becoming different to the point I felt I was not alone, that I should be on my guard. I moved to a defensive position at the back of the cell, with my back against the wall. The feeling became so oppressive that I decided to leave. As I left, I pointed my flash camera behind me, selfie-style, capturing the jail cell's metal wall I had been leaning against. What appears in the photo is a rough resemblance to the mustachioed sheriff of the jail at that time period when the jail was actively used. This photo is the cover picture for this article. Is it just pareidolia? Perhaps it is. You decide for yourself. I feel no need to convince anyone.
I will just summarize a few of the other unexplained, alleged paranormal experiences I have had:
1) Being cautioned by my Cajun medicine man friend about elementals in a mountain cave in Manitou, Colorado, USA, my wife & I were almost blown over by an isolated, sudden, freak, intensely strong gust of wind as I approached the cave. This was later explained to me as a warning, as I had not made any offering of tobacco or requested permission to be there. Upon entering the dark cave alone, after a few minutes inside I unexplainably moved backwards as if pushed by an invisible hand, yet I felt no touch against my body. The EVP captured at that time sounded like "get out." (those damned little shits want that cave all to their own!)
2) Staying the night in the former operating room of a location in Colorado once serving as a tuberculosis hospital in the 1800s: I had a peaceful night there and upon reviewing my all-night video, a clear, single woman's scream was audible in the middle hours of the night. (Note: hotel management refused me access to their hidden basement door to investigate the basement where bodies were stored due to extreme cold, winter weather making the ground outside too hard to bury the dead).
3) Investigating a former hospital/now hotel in Cripple Creek, Colorado, USA, at approximately 2 AM, I had tiredly noticed with a quick glance, a man wearing a white T-shirt walk by the outside of the window of the dark rec room I was sitting quietly in. In my tired state it took me about 30 seconds to realize that the window is on the second floor and no one could have been just walking by. One of my static video cameras also captured a rod of light ascending the back, dark stairways, taking the two turns to the next floor that the stairway was constructed as. Of course, I could not discount an effect of the camera producing that alleged anomaly but...
4) While staying in a hotel over 100 years old that once served as an old west stagecoach stop in Springfield, Colorado, my video camera monitoring us sleeping in bed, my wife suddenly began talking in her sleep saying the words, "yeah, but I don't have anywhere else to go." Upon further analysis is an EVP on the video that sounds like the words "leave now" immediately preceding the words that my wife spoke aloud in her sleep. Was she being contacted by spirits as she slept? (This one intrigues the hell out of me... the possibility of spirit communication within the deep regions of our sleep state).
5) In what would seem to be a scene in a scary movie, I had investigated one particular house multiple times after being contacted for help. The teenage daughter had what might conveniently be explained as sleep paralysis, believing she woke to a demonic figure sitting on her chest. Spending several nights in that room, I did feel it was different than other rooms in the house but cannot dismiss a prejudice from precognition of the demonic complaint. However, I did enlist the aid of a Catholic priest to come to the house and bless it. As we later left together, the priest, having no prior knowledge of the situation in the house, mentioned in conversation the exact room where he felt something was "different" when he was in there. It was the teenage daughter's room!
Without going into more detail, some of my other investigative, unexplained observations include a photo of a dark, anthropomorphic figure staring out from the rocks behind me in Antelope Canyon, Arizona, a reflection in an old mirror of a woman not present in the room when the photo was taken in a former brothel in Cripple Creek, Colorado, a white misty figure at a civil war fort in Fernandina Beach, Florida, a white mist appearing in an abandoned railroad tunnel in Manitou Springs, Colorado, a misty apparition encountered during an investigation in a private home basement in Pueblo, Colorado, a vapor cloud suddenly appearing in an abandoned silver mine in Farmington, Utah, and a Colonial-dressed soldier who wasn't present when the picture was taken at Fort Pulaski in the U.S. state of Georgia.
Now, I do not subscribe to what I feel is pure bullshit with devices like the ghost box or SLS/Kinect type devices that basically conjure their own "ghosts." Take the time to research the functionality of these and you will find no proven scientific basis for claims of communication with any alleged ethereal presence. IMHO, the popular ghost devices not only set the terms for belief in ghosts, they attempt to define them for both sides of belief/non-belief.
What I also personally find fascinating are unexplainable things such as "coincidences." It is my hypothesis that if the spirit of a loved one is attempting contact with those of us left behind on this bodily, earthly plane of existence, the contact will never be direct, as dictated by the Creator/Cosmic Law. One must look for their allowable, hidden, indirect message as it is presented to you. Here are three short stories of coincidence as experienced by my friend, Kristy:
THE TAPPING ON THE GLASS
"There was a bird tapping on the glass for the longest time on our back, sliding door. We really didn't think anything of it, thinking it was just a bird being territorial. The bird had stopped tapping on the glass after my dad had passed. I ended up looking up the meaning for it after the fact, and found some people have stated that it can make you aware of a possible death coming. I found that very interesting because the bird never came back to this day after that happened."
THE BIRD AT THE GRAVESITE
"After my dad had passed, it was our last day in Puerto Rico. We went to his grave site. In the row that he was buried in, there were slots that were still being dug up by machinery. The workers there stopped digging because they knew we were going to be putting flowers in my dad's little vase. He still didn't have his plaque yet... it was still pretty early. So, as we were putting flowers in the vase, making sure everything looked nice, and started stepping back getting ready to leave, a random bird just landed on the machinery right next to where my dad was buried. It started chirping at us. There weren't any trees near us or anything in the area where its home technically would be. We thought that was pretty interesting. My two cousins noticed this as well and they kind of paused and were kind of taken back also."
THE WHITE DOG
"We were at my grandmother's house. We were ready to pick her up to go to a doctor's appointment. She's elderly and she gets food delivered to her home. She ended up saying that the person that drops off the food asked her, "do you have a white German Shepherd?" She looked at him kind of funny and replied, "no, I don't have any dogs." The delivery man said, "Are you sure? I saw a white German Shepherd in your driveway area." It's not necessarily a driveway. In Puerto Rico, the houses are gated off. They have iron-rod gates all over the perimeter of their house and so technically, no animal can really get into there, especially at my grandmother's house because it is so confined to the ground. Nothing can squeeze through. Even her fence around the perimeter, there is no way a dog can get through. We were there, looking around the area. I would have probably noticed if something could get through somewhere. My grandmother always has it locked around the perimeter anyway. When that happened, again I looked up the definition of a white dog showing up, and again it said something about it being kind of like a spiritual message or just a kind of spiritual meaning. After we returned to Florida in the states, I was on the phone with my grandmother and had questioned her about the white dog while traveling in my car. A car pulled up right next to us and there was a white German Shepherd there in the back seat of the car, looking straight at us."
As with any claims of spirit contact, most either believe in stories such as Kristy's or they don't. Believers see the connection made to alleged spirit animals by Kristy, and it is arguably unfalsifiable. Many of you no doubt have similar stories of your own. Non-believers stand by the explanation of something called "subjective validation."
By definition: "Subjective validation, sometimes called personal validation effect, is a cognitive bias by which people will consider a statement or another piece of information to be correct if it has any personal meaning or significance to them. People whose opinion is affected by subjective validation will perceive two unrelated events (i.e., a coincidence) to be related because their personal beliefs demand that they be related. Closely related to the Forer effect, subjective validation is an important element in cold reading. It is considered to be the main reason behind most reports of paranormal phenomena."
Described in this article are examples of why people believe there are meanings behind coincidences, unexplained events (like mine), etc. Does our human tendency to be over-reliant on heuristics contribute to a bias in our beliefs, causing us to create meanings attributable to strange events? Or is there really something to these coincidences that currently eludes us? It may all come down to beliefs.
If you believe in an afterlife, then enjoy this life you are in. Perhaps that is THE reason we are here where we are right now. It could be as simple as that. Relax and don't get yourself tied up into little knots over it! You might also entertain the belief that the answers to the many questions you have will be revealed to you after you die... how is that for a hypothesis?
- MoonJoey