Know Your Ghosts – Chindi

The Navajo nation has a proud heritage. One of the largest remaining Native American cultures, the Navajo have a rich history of myths and legends.  Like most cultures, they have their own flavor of ghosts.

The Navajo word for ghosts is Chindi.  The Chindi are the spirits of those who do not receive proper burial rites, similar to the Scandinavian Gjenganger.  Also like the Gjenganger, the Chindi spread disease, though they are not seen as corporeal.

The Navajo believe that the final breath of a person releases the Chindi, which contains all of the sin of that person’s life.  If the Chindi is released outdoors, it can dissipate on its own given time.  In fact, some Chindi become dust devils (known as “chiindii”), with the clockwise rotating funnels being “good” and the counterclockwise containing “evil”.  If, on the other hand, the Chindi is released inside a home or lodge, it must be abandoned or ritually cleansed to remove the spirit.

A common belief is that Navajo witches and medicine men can infect people with the disease carried by the Chindi.  This “ghost sickness” produces nausea, fever, fatigue and sometimes a sense of being suffocated or drowned.  The Chindi themselves can visit this upon a victim or hiding a piece of a corpse on an individual can bring about the same illness.

Ghost beads, made from cedar berries, are supposed to protect against these evil spirits.  The beads are made by allowing ants to eat away the inside of the berry, leaving on the shell, which is then punched through on the other end and strung together on necklaces or bracelets.  Turquoise was also thought to keep the Chindi at bay, and was often used with the “ghost beads” to form talismans against the ghosts.

 

Eerie Ohio – The Lunatic Asylum of Ohio

Welcome back to Eerie Ohio, where I find bits of Ohio history that are…intriguing.  Today we’re going to talk about one institution in two separate locations, both of which are now long gone, but not forgotten.  Today we’re going to talk about the Lunatic Asylum of Ohio.

Ohio has a long history of being at the forefront of psychiatric medicine.  The Lunatic Asylum of Ohio was one of the first of its kind in the nation.  Proposed in March of 1835 and approved to start building in 1838, the original building was meant to help house the mentally disturbed, who were until then mostly kept in either hospitals or, too often, in jails.  More than that, however, the Lunatic Asylum of Ohio was a place for healing…whether the patients wanted to be healed (or needed to be healed) or not.

The original building was constructed east of the State House, somewhere near the Thurber House, and it was a large facility on thirty acres of land.  It opened its doors in 1838, its first patient admitted in November of that year.  The first director of the facility was Dr. William Awl.  A pioneer of psychological medicine, Dr. Awl fully believed in curing the mentally ill instead of just locking them up.  This sounds like quite an altruistic goal, but in 1843, Dr. Awl made the claim that 100% of his patients had been cured.  A 100% cure rate, for any disease, let alone mental illness, would be absolutely amazing even today.  Perhaps he hand picked patients that were easily diagnosed and cured?  Not at all; Dr. Awl said (and proved) he could take the most dangerous patients and cure them.

Can you guess his cure of choice?

Not all of Dr. Awl’s patients were “cured” in the same way; many ended up in unmarked graves around the property.  These graves were meant to be temporary until family members could collect the vict…er…patients and have them interred in family cemeteries.  Most never came to collect, as they were perfectly happy with the patients being out of their lives.  As a note to you, readers, please remember that they were burying people at this site; this will be important later.

Dr. Awl served as director of the facility for twelve years, from its opening in 1838 until 1850.  The facility could hold, at peak capacity, about 300 inmates.  Imagine how many he “cured”.  In fact, his critics also wondered just how he managed such a feat, and took to calling him “Dr. Cure-Awl” because of it.

The facility, sometimes called the “Columbus Hospital” or the “Ohio Lunatic Asylum” was considered a complete success despite Dr. Awl’s detractors.  In 1852, Dr. Awl’s successor, Dr. Samuel Smith, successfully lobbied the state legislature to build two more facilities, as he was out of room to handle more patients.  The state agreed and was originally going to build asylums in Cincinnati and Canton, but because of some political wrangling, the facilities were built in Cleveland and Dayton instead.  This trend of building additional asylums would continue for the next thirty years or so, culminating in the infamous Athens Lunatic Asylum, or “the Ridges” as they are known.

While Dr. Awl and his miraculous cures and the unmarked grave sites might seem sinister enough, there’s a twist to the story of the Ohio Lunatic Asylum; one night it burned to the ground.  On November 18, 1868, at roughly 10pm, a fire broke out on the north side of the west ward, the women’s ward.  Most of the patients were in the “Amusement Hall” that evening and were safe, but six inmates died while guards and firefighters tried to save them.  A seventh was brought out of the building but did not survive the night.  The firefighters had a hard time fighting the blaze as the city cistern system was woefully inadequate for the job.

However, while there weren’t many deaths in the blaze, there was something unsettling that happened.  Most of the guards had to assist the firefighters in clearing the large building.  The inmates were left locked in the Amusement Hall mostly unattended.  As you might guess, all the commotion stirred them up.  One witness was at a loss of words to adequately describe what went on while the guards were distracted, but I’m pretty sure you can guess.  The debauchery was considered quite obscene, and privately some referred to it as a full blown orgy.  Order was eventually reestablished, but not before the inmates had had their fill of physical pleasures, often carried out by male patients on the less than willing female patients.

The grand old building burned to the ground that night; not a bit of it remained when the sun came up.  The patients were shipped off to Dayton or Cleveland, and the whole affair was quickly hushed up.  The cause of the fire was reported as a “faulty flue”, even though there were no such chimneys near where the fire began.  Its true source remains a mystery.

The Ohio state legislature agreed to rebuild the hospital, but it was decided to move it to a larger facility.  This new asylum opened in 1877 on over 100 acres of land in the Franklinton Hilltop along Broad Street.  It was a gigantic facility, costing over three times what the original building cost.  It was a Kirkbride building, just the sort of place you imagine when someone says “insane asylum”.  If you have ever seen the movie Session 9, which takes place in an old asylum that looks from above sort of bat-like, you will know what the new Ohio Lunatic Asylum looked like.

This building operated until the late 1980s, when budget cuts and the Reagan plan to sunset mental health facilities kicked in.  The Ohio Historical Society tried to get it listed as a historic site, but failed, and in the 1990s, the building was torn down and replaced with an ugly glass and concrete monster that serves as the headquarters for the Ohio Department of Transportation.  However, the four hospital cemeteries are still on the grounds.

And here’s were we get spooky.  You remember that the original hospital buried patients in unmarked graves?  That location was several miles from this one.  How many of those patients, whose records went up in smoke in 1868, were moved to the new hospital graveyards?  Further, there are stones at the current graveyards arranged in a circle around a stone commemorating the original hospital, with dates prior to 1877 when the second facility opened – were the bodies really moved?  Or is it simply the headstones?  Nevermind that many of the graves have unmarked stones or stone marked “SPECIMEN”.  There’s no record I could find of any of the graves being moved here.  So is it a wonder there are reports of hauntings in the area of the old asylum, or the new-old asylum?

Perhaps some of the patients cured by Dr. Awl are still looking for a little payback for the good doctor?

 

Know Your Ghosts – The Gjenganger

Welcome to a new edition of Know Your Ghosts.  Today we look at an angry Nordic spirit, the gjenganger.

Hailing from Scandinavia, the gjenganger is a unique sort of ghost that is completely corporeal.  Usually the spirit of someone who left something undone in life, often gjenganger were murder victims, suicide victims, or murderers themselves.  Regardless of their demeanor in life, the gjenganger is always malicious, hurting the friends and family it once held dear.

Unlike most ghosts, the gjenganger can do more than simply frighten a person.  While possessing none of the traditional ghostly abilities, such as walking through walls or psychokinesis, the gjenganger instead spreads plague and disease.  The evil ghost will pinch someone, known as dødningeknip, and the victim’s skin will turn bluish as the spirit’s infection begins.  The flesh becomes necrotic, shriveling and dying, slowly working its way to the heart where it kills the victim.  This is usually done while the victim is asleep, leaving them helpless against the creature.

In many ways, the gjenganger is almost more like a type of vampire than ghost, though it does not feed from the living.  It stalks its prey in a similar manner, however, and is far more comfortable at night than during the day.  The gjenganger is also highly intelligent, like the vampire, and cold, cunning and ruthless.  They also appear completely human to the naked eye, with no spirit like qualities.

There are means of warding against a gjenganger, though most focus on preventing the spirit from rising.  Like vampires, holy symbols are said to repel the creatures, and a holy symbol above a door will prevent the ghost from entering.  A cross hung around the neck may prevent them from delivering their dead man’s pinch. Since the gjenganger was a corporeal spirit, locking doors and windows was also a means of escaping its wrath, as it could not, like other ghosts, walk through the walls.

The fear of gjenganger was once so prevalent that people took extraordinary precautions to stop them from rising.  The coffin containing someone who might rise must be carried over the church wall instead of through the church’s gate, and carried three times around the church itself.  Any shovels used to dig the grave must be left at the grave site and not disturbed.  A varp, a pile of rocks and twigs, should be erected on the spot where the person died.  Adding a stone to this pile brings good luck.  Finally, an inscription inside the coffin should prevent a spirit from becoming gjenganger:

For Birginga riste broren runer
Kjære syster mi, skån meg!

English translation:
For Birginga, the brother carved runes
My dear sister, spare me!

The gjenganger was originally a viking legend, though it seemed to be at least semi-mortal in the original stories.  The spirits could be slain by a man, and in doing so, the ghost would be undone.  They were also referred to as the draugr, though this may refer to a slightly different creature.  They were, however, clearly different from gasts, a Scandinavian ghost or ghoul that appeared more skeletal with white skin and sunken features.

The modern interpretation of this creature brings in more of the ghostly attributes, recasting the spirit as ethereal instead of corporeal, and it is seen more as a plague carrier than malicious spirit.  For the most part, the gjenganger has been supplanted or mixed with the spøkelse (ghost), and has lost much of its unique flavor.

 

Know Your Ghosts: The Fetch

It’s been a while, but as we start to approach All Hallows Eve, I believe it’s time to dust off the KYG section of my blog, and today I have a special ghost, the ghost of the living or recently (as in VERY recently) departed, the Fetch.

Originating in Ireland, a Fetch is a doppelganger spirit; it takes on the appearance of someone who has just died or is just about to die.  A Fetch will usually appear to the loved ones of the individual and will appear to be perfectly normal, if somewhat distant or distracted.  Additionally, the Fetch will sometimes appear ghostly or shadowy, and may vanish down alleys or halls if followed.

A Fetch is not actually the ghost of the person it appears to be; indeed, often the person imitated is still alive.  Instead it seems to be a phantom that simply takes the same form, though for what reason is unknown.  It may be related to the German doppelganger, but a Fetch rarely is malevolent.  They seem to only be portents, almost like projected versions of precognition.

In most cases, seeing a Fetch is a sign that the person it portrays is about to die.  The Fetch may even bear the signs of how the person will die.  The movie series Final Destination could be considered to be about an elaborate Fetch scenario, and much like in the films, the victim will usually die as predicted by the Fetch, if not in exactly the same manner.

While the appearance of a Fetch is usually quite dire, in some circumstances they are considered beneficial.  A Fetch seen in the early morning as the sun is rising is said to be a sign of a long and happy life for the person it imitates.  A Fetch may only be visible to the person it is imitating or may be visible to everyone except the person who it’s imitating.

The Fetch originally comes from Ireland, but migrated to England in the 18th century, where they became more commonly known simply as “Doubles”.  Stories of Doubles and Fetches abounded in 18th and 19th century folklore, with authors often employing the double as a means of showing the main character the error of his ways.

Interestingly, there are older Norse legends of a similar type of ghost, known as the Fylgja. The Fylgia does not necessarily imitate an individual, but rather accompanies them and is a portent of death.  However, female Fylgia are considered beneficial, and their appearance is said to bring good luck to a clan or family.

The Fetch is the central antagonist of The Stray Sod Country by Patrick McCabe.  In McCabe’s version, the spirit inhabits individuals instead of mimicking them and causes them to harm others around them.

 

Know Your Ghosts – Ectoplasmic Entities

At last a return to the popular Know Your Ghosts!  Today we discuss a type of ghostly spirit that originated in the good old USA: ectoplasmic entities.

The good old fashioned American ghost
A.K.A. An Ectoplasmic Entity

The term “ectoplasm” as it relates to spirits was coined by French Nobel Prize-winner and Professor of Physiology, Charles Richet.  However, the concept of ectoplasmic entities was truly explored by the American Spiritualist movement of the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.  In the simplest sense, an ectoplasmic entity is a spirit from beyond the grave manifesting in the physical world.

Initially, the Mediums of the Spiritualist Movement claimed that spirits spoke through them.  This was usually achieved while the Medium was in a trance-like state.  Traditionally, this occurred during a seance, with the Medium answering questions posed by the others in attendance.  The modern concept of the seance came from these early, rudimentary circles of questioners.

Eventually, however, Mediums claimed that spirits could do more than simply inhabit their bodies.  The spirits could, in fact, cause physical manifestations.  This was usually tapping or other sounds during a seance.  Because of the popularity of Spiritualism and the natural greed of human beings, there were a number of charlatans who gave the movement a bad name when they were exposed as frauds.  However, these con artists came up with many ingenious means of creating sounds and other small effects attributed to ghosts, leading the true Mediums to turn to more drastic measures to prove their connection to the beyond.

Thus began the age of ectoplasm.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described ectoplasm as, “a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes.”  Initially, ectoplasm came from the Medium themselves, usually pouring from the mouth, nose, or ears.

Soon, however, the ectoplasm stopped being simply a product of the Medium and became host to the spirits themselves.

You’ve probably seen photos of “ghosts” that are floating white mists – this is the modern view of ectoplasm.  No longer is there a source required for its manifestation.

The idea that ectoplasm could form a “body” for a ghost began to become more and more prevalent in the early 1900s.  Ghost photography became more popular than sitting in a seance listening to a Medium speak in a gravely voice.  Even the description of ghosts started to change.  The “white sheet” ghost came about as a way to show ectoplasmic manifestations.  Before the advent of this strange material, ghosts usually looked very much as the person did in life, though they might disappear suddenly, or walk through walls and other objects, but generally they weren’t described as glowing or in any way particularly different from seeing a normal person (in Western culture, that is – the Eastern world had many other ideas as to what ghosts looked like).

Of course, it’s really not possible to discuss ectoplasmic entities without talking about the movie that brought the word back into the common lexicon in the 1980s.  Ghostbusters was, of course, the renaissance of ghost lore, and brought ectoplasm to a new generation.  Oddly enough, the appearance of ectoplasm, or “slime” in the first movie is spot on.  It looks like viscous, runny snot.  The only thing the movie could have done better was to have the ectoplasm remain when the ghost is trapped, to essentially have a rain of slime when a ghost is pulled in, as the ectoplasm is left behind.

He slimed me

 

 

Why Ghostbusters is like a primer for ghost hunting

In 1984, the creators of Caddyshack and Stripes brought into the world a new comedy movie about ghosts, and it went on to become the biggest comedy film of the 1980s.  But where did it come from?  Where did all those terms for ghosts and the equipment come from, and why are they at least somewhat similar to actual paranormal investigators’ gear?

The answer is surprisingly simple: Dan Aykroyd, co-author of the script, is a paranormal enthusiast in real life. In fact, he and his father have had brushes with the supernatural.  Aykroyd initially intended the movie to be about a small group that busts ghosts in other dimensions and travels through time.  But a lot of the tech in the movie, and the terms used, came from his own knowledge of paranormal investigations.

Take, for example, the PKE meter.  The abbreviation stands for Psycho Kinetic Energy, and the device is designed to pick up on the energy of ghosts.  It’s very similar to an EMF meter, which detects shifts in electro-magnetic fields.  Both the fictional and real devices are used in a similar manner.  The ghost hunter uses the meter to record a baseline reading for a room, then takes various readings to try to determine if there are discrepancies.  It’s not dissimilar to Dr. Spengler scanning through the hotel looking for Slimer.  The PKE meter is also similar to thermal detectors used by ghost hunters to measure changes in temperature in a room to find cold spots left by ghosts.

In the movie, ghosts are on occasion given classifications.  Slimer, for example, is a Class Five full roaming vapor (a real nasty one).  Real ghost hunters also use a classification system, though it’s a bit more complex.  While the film, now approaching it’s thirtieth anniversary, was no doubt partially an inspiration for such classification systems, there were similar systems in place as far back as the early 1900s.  The American Spiritualism movement of the late 19th and early 20th century had plenty of “systems” for categorizing spirits, and introduced terms like “poltergeist” and “phantasm” to the public.

The movie mentions two fictional works, Spates Catalog and Tobin’s Spirit Guide.  Much like Lovecraft’s Necronomicon or Howard’s Nameless Cults, these two works have been reproduced in pseudo versions (plus RPG versions), but in a sense they were based on the works of Spiritualists such as Allen Kardec (author of several works including The Spirits Book),  Sir James Frazier’s The Golden Bough, Margaret Murray’s Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and of course, the works of Alestair Crowley.

Now let’s talk about the seminal Ghostbuster tool, the proton pack.  The concept is that the packs are miniature nuclear accelerators, basically a very tiny version of the Large Hadron Collider, and they fire streams of protons from the “wand”.  This, too, is based on actual paranormal principals: ghosts are a form of energy, it’s speculated, and produce negative charges (thus the spikes on EMF detectors).  Hit them with a large positive charge and you should, basically, cancel them out.  In the film, this kind of holds them in place and lets the guys maneuver them into place to be trapped, but in reality, it would likely disrupt and potentially completely disperse a ghost.

On that note, there’s the traps and the containment system (which blows up when it’s shut off).  Both apparently use a similar proton system, but they use a “laser containment grid” to hold the negatively charged ghosts.  Since no one has ever “caught” a ghost, there’s no way to be sure this sort of thing would work, but the fundamentals are, again, in line with real paranormal science principles.

And finally, how can we not discuss one of the most famous parts of the film (no, not Staypuft): slime.  Slime took America by storm in the mid-80s, much to the horror of parents everywhere as their carpets and furniture became stained with the stuff.  It plays a much bigger role in the sequel, but “He slimed me” is still a classic, well known line.  The slime is supposed to be ectoplasm, and believe it or not, it’s a real thing (or at least, a real parapsychology term).  The term has been around for a long time (there’s another use for it regarding cells, but we’re talking the ghostly form).  Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle referred to ectoplasm as, “a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes.”  Sound familiar?

In fact, certain Spiritualists claimed to be able to produce ectoplasm from their own bodies.  Mediums would spew the weird, sticky white stuff from various orifices during seances.  Many of these were eventually debunked, but there were many that were not, and the idea behind ectoplasm endured.

You may have noticed that several times during this post I’ve mentioned Spiritualism.  Here’s were it all comes full circle – Dan Aykroyd is (or was at the time anyway) a devout believer in Spiritualism, as was his family.  Many of the concepts he used in the movie came from those beliefs, and Spiritualism was one of the founding principles of modern ghost hunting.

So the next time you watch Ghostbusters, enjoy the fact that the film you’re watching isn’t as much a fantasy as it might seem.

 

The writings of Patience Worth

It’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of Patience Worth, but for a while in the early part of the twentieth century she was quite the literary star.  She wrote poems, short stories and novels which were quite popular and critically acclaimed.  She often attended parties where anyone who was anyone showed up to challenge her quick wit by asking her to make up poems or stories on the spot.  Although her writings are out of print today, at the time her books sold like hotcakes.

There’s just one thing about Patience Worth and her writings; you see, Patience had been dead for several hundred years when she wrote her novels, stories and poems.  Patience Worth is the name of a spirit that dictated her work through a housewife named Pearl Curran, and to this day her writings are one of the most mysterious curiosities of literature.

Pearl Curran was a Chicago housewife in 1912.  She had no particular literary background, was not well read, and generally was as average and normal as a person can be.  Her husband, John Curran, was also an average man, and neither of them had any particular interest in the supernatural.  Then one day in July, Pearl and a couple of her friends tried out a Ouija board.

In the early 1900s, Spiritualism was a sweeping sensation in the United States.  Seances were as common as cocktail parties today, and Ouija boards were the new fad.  Pearl didn’t particularly want to try one out, but her friend Emily Hutchings convinced her to give it a try.  Usually a Ouija session would lead to nothing but some gibberish, but with Pearl, something strange happened.  The board began spelling out actual sentences.  It became clear that the ladies were being contacted by a spirit that called itself Patience Worth.  Patience claimed to be from “across the sea” and had lived somewhere around 1649 to 1694.

Thrilled with their contact, the ladies continued to meet and call up Patience, but it quickly became clear that Pearl was the focus of Patience’s attention, and the only means of contacting the spirit was having Pearl at the board.  Soon, Pearl was able to use the board all on her own, spelling out long messages from Patience.  This quickly led to Pearl no longer needing the board, and she first dictated what Patience was saying, and eventually began typing or writing it out herself.

It would be easy to dismiss Patience as just a hoax, but there were compelling reasons to believe that it wasn’t Pearl producing the stories and poems.  There were differences in language that Pearl had no way of knowing, and descriptions of events she couldn’t have produced.  It became apparent that Pearl was a Medium, and through her Patience was able to communicate.

As I said above, she quickly became famous, and her novels were critically acclaimed.  Some critics even said that they were at a loss for how she was able to produce such vivid descriptions of ancient events.  At parties, famous poets challenged Patience (through Pearl) to make up poems about random topics, which she did without hesitation and in a way that the poets found impossible.  She needed no time or preparation to quickly provide a well written poem on any topic.  One poet challenged her to produce two poems, at the same time, on two topics.  She did so, alternating lines, producing two poems for the challenge, though afterward Pearl said her head felt quite fatigued.

Of course, there were plenty of skeptics, but unlike most “Mediums” of the early twentieth century, Pearl never attempted to cash in on her fame.  She did submit the stories and poems for publication, but she didn’t make a lot of money from them, and she did not “perform” for money, only in friendly parties.  She published a number of novels, including The Sorry Tale, Telka, and Hope Trueblood.  Her novels spanned different time periods and even different languages, with Telka being written in a middle English dialect.

Patience and Pearl also didn’t always get along.  Patience was critical of Pearl, and on a number of occasions referred to her host in quite condescending words.  Pearl also didn’t allow Patience to intrude upon her private life, and kept the spirit’s communication contained to periods of her choosing.  The relationship between the two eventually became more like a partnership, and Pearl would continue to act as Patience’s Medium for many years.

Late in 1937, Pearl told a friend that “Patience has just shown me the end of the road and you will have to carry on as best you can.”  It seemed that Pearl was not long for this world, and indeed two months later, she died from pneumonia.

One of the most fascinating bits of this story is that no one has even proven that the spirit didn’t exist and didn’t dictate the stories through Pearl Curran.  One theory holds that Patience was a separate personality, and that Pearl had multiple personality disorder, but that’s unlikely as she exhibited none of the other symptoms.  Additionally, there wasn’t the usual trauma that goes along with MPD.  Several highly successful skeptics tried to debunk Pearl’s connection to the spirit of  Patience Worth, but none ever succeeded and more than a few gave up and took her for real proof.

From time to time after Pearl’s death, people have claimed to have been contacted by Patience Worth, but there’s been little proof that the spirit has returned to continue her work.  Perhaps she’s too busy now, sitting with her old friend and talking of days gone by.

 

Pink Piggy

This is going to sound strange – I have a nightmare last night.  Why is that strange?  I don’t have nightmares, at least not the kind that cause me to not be able to go back to bed.  Usually bad dreams become fodder for stories.  I don’t know that this one ever will.

The nightmare was about me as a little boy, maybe eight or nine years old.  There was a little girl as well.  She had dark hair with Shirley Temple curls and she was wearing a white dress, the kind they used to call an Easter dress that would be too formal these days.  I don’t know exactly what was wrong with her, but she couldn’t speak.

My uncle (and I knew it was my uncle despite the man not looking like him at all) was furious with me that I was “faking being sick”.  In truth I was dizzy and disoriented in the dream, and I felt like I was going to pass out.  He claimed I was faking.  Then, when it was clear I wasn’t lying, he claimed the girl had caused me illness.  He put her in his truck, an old, beat-up truck that I’ve never seen in my life, and drove her off into the distance.  The whole time I was crying, “Don’t!  That’s what they want you to do!  They want you to hurt her!”

My mother (who was not my mother, but that was the role this woman played in my dream) tried to calm me down, but my crying went from frantic to…something darker.  I grew angry, furious even, and finally began screaming at my mother.  I remember the words…I swear I could never forget them and after waking I wouldn’t utter them in my apartment.  I was screaming “pink piggy!”

I have no idea what those words meant.  However, as I yelled, my face peeled away, revealing bone and gristle.  I kept screaming “pink piggy!” but I was trying to admit to my mother that I had killed the little girl, and I was strangling my mother as I did, a raw headed monster with blood filled eyes.  This part of the dream was in third person, not first as the rest had been, and the skull headed child I had been turned right at me and with an evil leer yelled at me, “PINK PIGGY!”  When I say it yelled at me, I mean at ME, the dreamer, not at anything else in the nightmare.

I woke up with my heart racing and my breath tight in my chest.  I got up, turned on all the lights and sat with my cat for the rest of the night.  I don’t know where any of that came from, and I’ll be honest, I’m a little afraid to go back to sleep tonight.  As I said, I wouldn’t say those words in my apartment…wouldn’t say them in the car on the way to work.  Wherever that dark nightmare came from, the one thing I am sure of is it wasn’t from me.

 

I’m fairly certain my apartment is haunted

I think my apartment is haunted.

O.k., so for me, that’s a pretty big revelation.  As I’ve stated before, I’m fairly atheistic, though I would qualify that by saying I don’t believe in a higher intelligence designing the universe or mankind in specific, while I am open to the concept of the supernatural (or rather, “stuff science hasn’t figured out yet”).  But I’m pretty sure my apartment has a ghost.

Not this kind of ghost, though that would be AWESOME!

I may also simply be suffering from sleep paralysis.  I’m aware that what I’ve experienced has been similar to the symptoms of that disorder.  Still, I’m a guy who writes spooky stories, and it’s close to Halloween, so why not engage in a bit of fancy here.

Here’s what’s happened so far:

1. A few months ago I awoke in the middle of the night to what I could have sworn was the smoke detector going off in the hallway outside my bedroom. As I leaped out of bed, I swear I saw two people, one crouched low, one standing, at my bedroom door.  I was so sure I saw them, and that they were robbers stealing stuff from my apartment, that I yelled “No!” and instantly grabbed for the sword I keep in the corner for just such occasions (some people have a baseball bat, I happen to have a 440 stainless steel ninja-to…tomat-oh, tomah-to).  Of course once I got my glasses on and checked out the apartment, there was no sign of anyone, no sign of a break in, and the smoke alarm was not going off.
2. Numerous times I’ve come home to discover my shower curtain pulled closed.  I usually leave it open after my morning shower (yes, I know I shouldn’t, but I do anyway).  It’s just subtle, but I notice when all of the sudden it’s closed when I can’t remember closing it.
3. My cat has a tendency to avoid certain areas of the house.  For instance, she doesn’t like crossing the threshold into my bedroom.  She’s fine in the room itself once she’s in, but she’ll hunch up her back and hop inside past the doorway for some reason.  She also is fascinated by the stairs leading down to the first floor door (I live on the second floor), though that could just be silly kitty behavior.
4. I have several times awoken unable to breathe.  Now, this sounds like sleep apnea, which I have had in the past, but I have never, ever, woken up choking until I moved into this apartment.
5. Twice when waking up choking I could swear I saw something in the room. The first time, I couldn’t make it out.  The second, it appeared to be a wheelchair beside my bed.  Since I don’t own a wheelchair, that’s pretty unusual.  These phantoms disappear by the time I get myself breathing again.

That’s the story of my haunted apartment.  Sounds crazy to me, but hey, crazy isn’t always a bad thing.

 

The Possession of David O’Reilly

Another mini-review.  I’m sort of liking this format.  Today I’m going to talk about a British film called The Possession of David O’Reilly.  This is a fairly recent film, made in 2010, and it’s on Netflix instant.  It is also known as “The Torment” and claims to be “based on a true story” though I seriously doubt that.  It has a very small cast, basically three main characters, a fourth supporting character, and the creatures…

I didn’t have much hope for this film.  Netflix rated it at a three for me, which often leads me to watching real stinkers of films.  This time, however, I was pleasantly surprised.  This movie is scary, really scary, and it leaves you guessing right up to the end as to what really was going on.  In the end, it’s never truly resolved, which is good – you have to decide what happened.

First of all, this is not a “found footage” film, though it plays out like one.  In fact, the camera work plays a big part in the scariness of this film.  The camera is generally worked as if from the point of view of a character, but for a majority of the film, it’s not the viewpoint of any of the main characters at all.  So who is it?  Clearly no one the characters can see…  The night vision scenes are scary as well, usually from the point of view of one of the characters, and they did good to simulate being in near total darkness where you can only see a few inches in front of you.

Let’s talk about the ghosts.  First, I’m pretty sure they are ghosts, not demons.  There’s a number of reasons in the film to believe this, though it’s never definitively said.  The ghosts are very well done, some costuming, some CGI, but you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.  This again goes back to the shaky camera and the lighting which keeps them just out of view enough that you can’t see them up close.  A few times you do, and they are well done.

The film also plays on one of my personal fears – looking out a window at night and seeing something out there moving…something not human.  The apartment where the action takes place has frosted windows in several places, and things moving behind them is very creepy.  The first scene where David looks out and sees…something… moving toward the flat is just terrifying.

The movie is titled The Possession of David O’Reilly, but he never appears possessed in the film.  However, you’re left wondering if he was just insane, which would fit the title, or if he was right, which would explain the final scene.  It’s impossible to know, but there are clues both ways.  Perhaps this is the story of a man who went crazy when he learned his girlfriend of three years was cheating on him, killed her, and then killed his two best friends.  Or maybe it’s the story of a guy who is being stalked by numerous ghosts for reasons unknown.  Either is possible.

I recommend watching this film.  It’s a lot better than it may seem, and it is very scary, if sometimes predictable.

EDIT: Here’s another, much more in-depth review.