Thursday, November 03, 2005

Spirits, mediums, Ouija boards, and ghost TV.

Halloween is over, but I still seem to be caught up in ghost stories. As I write this I am listening to a radio podcast of the late night radio show called Coast to Coast AM. This is the Halloween edition called ghost to ghost. It is nothing but ghost stories. Some sound fishy, but a lot sound very credible. I have also been watching a show on the Travel Channel called Most Haunted.

Most Haunted is a show that takes place in England and a team of paranormal investigators go to notoriously “haunted” places and investigate these claims. I have to wonder about this show because it seems to rely on mediums and psychics. I do believe that there are such persons that can commune with the dead, but when you see them on TV you automatically want to discount them. Nevertheless, it is a very entertaining show.

The team on this show uses cameras and mics, but they more rely on personal experiences. Personal experiences can be creepy, but they do not show up too well on camera.There are some freaky things that occur on this show that are captured on camera and if you turn out all the lights and watch about six hours worth, you can really get creeped out. I highly recommend this show and I believe that it is airing every Friday night on the Travel Channel at 8 or 9 PM central, check your guides on your satellite or cable guide. If you are curious about spirits then check it out.

On the Sci-Fi channel there is another show called Ghosthunters and it could not be more different from Most Haunted. While Most Haunted uses mediums and psychics, séances, and Ouija boards, Ghosthunters use more technological methods. They use many cameras, recorders, thermometers and other things when they investigate a “haunted” location. Ghosthunters also go into every place believing that it is not haunted and try to prove that it isn’t haunted, which makes it interesting. It is not quite as entertaining as Most Haunted, but it seems to be the most believable, probably because the Ghosthunters never come away with many Holy s#%@!! moments, while Most Haunted has about one or two a show.

I also recommend Ghosthunters, although its second season may have already ended. It usually comes on the Sci-Fi channel Wednesdays at 7 and 11 PM central. These two shows, Ghosthunters and Most Haunted give you both extremes when it comes to proving paranormal experiences and I find myself wanting to believe what I see on both programs.

The reason I am so interested in things like this, spirits, the afterlife, is because of something that happened to a cousin of mine in my house. I have a cousin, and some of you have heard this story a thousand times, that stayed over at my house when we were in high school. My parents were out of town and we were hanging out and watching a tape delayed UK basketball game. At half time, he decided he was going to go to bed and he was going to sleep in my parents’ room.

He went to bed and he kind of swung the door shut, but it didn’t catch. He could tell that it was shut enough that it would not come open, but you did not have to turn the knob to open it. He climbed into bed and was lying on his back, I guess waiting to go to sleep. He closed his eyes for a while and then opened them back up. He remembers looking at the clock and realizing he had just had his eyes closed for about five minutes.

He then looked down towards the end on the bed on the side he was sleeping on and saw a shadow as though someone were down on his hands and knees. He says the shadow started to move towards him like someone crawling on the floor. He thought it was my brother or I trying to scare him, so when the shadow came within reaching distance, he took his hand and swung toward the “face” of whoever it was coming towards him and he said, “Get out of my face.”

His hand went through whatever it was that was there and the shadow disappeared. He was petrified with fear saying he couldn’t move and he couldn’t speak. He was literally scared stiff. He then said he saw something out of the corner of his eye, but as he turned to see more clearly it disappeared. Now, how he was able to put this behind him and somehow go to sleep I do not know, but he did.

In the morning his mom brought his sister to our house to bring him some clothes for church as it was Sunday morning. I had just awakened and was just lying in bed, lounging and I heard her come in. She knew which room he would be in and came down the hall to the door of his room. I heard her knock on the door and tell him she would leave his clothes hanging from the door. She did this because the door was not only closed and latched, but it was locked. My cousin says he never closed the door the whole way, much less locked it. He was too terrified to even get up to lock it after he saw what he saw.

This story has always been one I love telling. Even today if you hear him tell it, you can tell that he was scared to death. A few years later, a group of us were messing with an Ouija board and I asked a “spirit” if what he saw in my parents’ bedroom was a ghost, the board said yes. It also told me it was an 18 year old boy. I never really believed in Ouija boards, I just can’t imagine a kid’s game being a link to the spirit world, so even though it said what it said I never put much credence in it. But I do notice sounds throughout the night. Sounds going down the hall or in my room. Whether they are the “ghost” or just house sounds, who knows.

I do believe in spirits, but I do not know why they are here. Are they lost souls? Have they missed their opportunity to go to heaven or hell? Are these spirits of people who had not found peace before they left their physical bodies? You may think I am an kook, but this stuff fascinates me. The good news is that there are many kooks out there like me, although some are a little kookier than I want to become.

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