Ghosts of Times Past

Well, this will be the last entry of this year. Next week/year I hope to have been accepted into P.O.R.T., have some more practical advice on specific spirits or cases, another gadget/gear rundown, some general investigation ideas, and also something to establish a bit more of my hipster cred since I feel like I've been focusing perhaps a little too closely on the Paranormalist bit of the blog. Anyways, take care, and have a great New Years!

Salaryman Blues

A bit of salt. Seems like an inconsequential thing, right? Well, sure, now it is. But once upon a time it was one of the most sought after seasoning you could care to name, and it's so primally wired into us that one of the basic taste receptors on the human tongue is dedicated to it. Also, according to many cultures, it is a powerful ward against magic and evil spirits. Let's break down why that may be, and what some "practical" (or as practical as you can get with ghost-hunting) uses may be.

So, even early on, salt had alot in the way of signifigance to civilization. We discovered that it was necessary for human survival and that salt in various applications sped up healing/purification processes, so that established it's symbolism as an element of life or vitality. But then again, it came primarily from the sea, establishing it's connection to that vast, primal power. Also needed for it's refinement (at least ast first) tended to be sunlight or flame, establishing it's covenant (yeah, I'm busting out some poetic license here, give me a break while I'm riffing :P) with those sources of life and energy. Also, it was used as one of the earliest forms of food preservative and...well, body preservative in fruneral rites, so that links it with death. It's also mentioned quite a bit in various religious texts and called for as a component of many of their common rituals, such as the sanctifying of holy water.

So we have alot of competing imagery, but one fact remains above all, that salt was/is an important substance. As far as it's usage in a spiritually protective substance sense, it supposed causes vampires to have to stop and count the number of grains dropped, and is also used to expel/create protective rings from demonic/ghostly entities. Depending on the sources, it can also drain/nullify minor magical effects or curses.

Okay then, end analysis time: what do I think? Well, I figure of all the good luck charms/things I could carry with me, a baggie of salt is not that bad an idea. It's cheap, and could potentially double as a low-tech form of mace. If I had my druthers, I'd probably use kosher salt evaporated out of holy water, or salt from the Dead Sea, but considering that I place it's actual usefulness fairly low on the "likely-o-meter", I can just head to Fred Meyer and pick up some regular kosher salt instead. Here's hoping I never get myself in a jam that actually requires it, though...

 

Nightmare Fuel, Part 3

 So, you just heard some of the wild stories I had a chance to hear the other day. If nothing else, that experience led me to remember something that I had known once upon a time, but apparently had forgotten in amongst the day to day grind of things...virtually everyone has had something inexplicable happen to them. And we're not talking just ghosts here...it could a pre-cognizant dream, a sound they can't place, tracks they don't recognize, a coincidence just a shade past what anyone else could consider chance, all of these are things that in all probability, Joe Q. Schmoe has probably experienced at least one of. 

Which in my mind is both thrilling and a little frightening to be trusted with, because most people I know do their best to try and keep those moments of wonder as close and as safe as they possibly can, exempt from the pervasive banality of the world at large; I mean, really, doesn't everyone want to be special, or feel like there's -something- out there that can't be explained? But the position I'm taking on is actively looking to both document and (if obviously proven as explicable by other means) debunk odd phenomena as they happen, putting me in the unusual position of both protecting and extinguishing these motes of wonder. And one has to ask, if you lose all sense of wonder, what else is left? The way I see it, you're left with living in hollow terms, where every action has a well-documented reaction, and nothing is left to surprise you but the depths people will go to try and seek that visceral feeling of uncertainty. Would I be able to live with myself knowing that I could condemn others to a fate like that? I can't answer that yet...but I'm sure it will come in time.

But maybe that's why I decided to do this "out of boredom". Because, really, I could've done any number of things...taken up a weird hobby, tried to plow through the mounting pile of books at my house, finally learned to cook (LIKE A BOSS), etc. But I've made my displeasure with my mounting cynicism known to my close friends, and maybe I'm seeking out these "sparks" to fan my own "flame", so to speak. Or maybe I just have some unresolved Doctor Who issues that I need to work out, who knows.

So, like me, believe the stories you may read here or not, it doesn't pay me one bit of nevermind. But for your own sake, find something to believe in that hasn't already been documented to death. Maybe if you're lucky, it will come easy. If you're like me, you may have a ways to go, but at least you'll get some good stories along the way :)

Nightmare Fuel, Part 2

Continued from yesterday, to be concluded tomorrow...

-Different guy this time. He claimed to have occurrences of uncanny precognition at odd times, including once when he was five at church. This specific incident involved him walking past an elderly person seated next to the pastor and quietly saying "I'm sorry that you're going to die of a heart attack soon." Indeed, the person died of a heart attack that day or shortly thereafter (that point, while known by the teller of the incident, is somewhat lost in my mind [did I mention beer was involved]), and he wasn't allowed to go to that church anymore after that...I dunno. I personally have precognitive dreams (the architecture of which being the main thing that I remember, so that I can navigate buildings I've never even seen before as if I'd been on the construction crew for them), and know that the feeling of deja vu is quite a common occurrence, though me and this gentleman had a long talk over the differences between precognition and simple deja vu. I think precognition is possible to a limited extent, and while the instance he talked about was incredibly specific, I suppose it's possible. Five out of ten.

-Same guy. "So," he said, "you want to research ghosts and spirits? Well", he continued with a small grin, "go to -blah blah- (again, the specifics evade me) graveyard in Washougal with a tape recorder and just walk around asking yourself questions, then listen to the tape afterwards. I did it once, and I'll never set foot in there again"...possible. I've heard of EVP phenomenon and while I've never watched Paranormal Activity (though funny story, have a friend who did shortly after both a move into a new house and his first child was born, and who also happened to have set up a baby monitor that same night prior to watching Paranormal Activity in the dark, and he swears that it was unknowingly one of the scariest things he's ever put himself through...but at least from now on I have a great idea for a good combo gift to give people throwing baby showers :P), and while I've never had occasion to experience it, I wouldn't mind giving this graveyard tour a try. As far as conceptually, I suppose that -if- spirits are simply a different form of energy that doesn't dissipate after death and -if- that form of energy retains the ability to communicate, then sure, why not this way? Though even with that admission and open-mindedness, I can't help but feel like the most vocal proponents of this method would get along well with the guys who listen to Beatles records backwards to try and hear hidden messages in them. Five out of ten.

-Lastly, the elder brother and other guy (not the other brother). Apparently, while elder brother was staying over at other dude's house, he saw a cookie sheet pick itself up from the dishwasher and slam itself into the sink; the other guy can only attest to the loud bang and the fact that his cookie sheet was inexplicably in his sink (though he didn't see the invisible placement of it). In another situation, the brother was sleeping in the same room as the other guy, and out of nowhere felt (and heard) a large SLAM next to his head in the dark, as if someone punched the ground next to him with full force. Again, other guy heard it and then immediately fell asleep, but didn't see it, while the elder brother sat paralyzed with terror in the dark...hmm, a poltergeist. No reports of it before the elder brother started to stay with him, but the other guy's grandfather passed not long before the incidents as well. And while there's some controversy surrounding the true explanation for what poltergeists are (whether they're restless spirits or mental projections of uniquely psychic individuals), there are widespread reports of them. I give this a six out of ten.

Nightmare Fuel, Part 1

So, I got to speak with a few fellows (friends of a new friend) the other night, and jeez, I had no idea what I was walking into. What started as a casual night of a few drinks and a couple games of pool quickly took a hard left as soon as I responded honestly to the seemingly innocent question of "what've you been up to lately?" with mentioning that I was trying to put together a paranormal investigations kit, and suddenly it seemed like an open mike night for das heebies und jeebies. Let me break off a couple of the stories I heard from these guys (again, no judgement on whether they happened or not, the interesting aspect of it is that all of these stories came unbidden from a group of relatively mundane-seeming guys). Keep in mind, I may be misremembering certain details, but for the most part, these are the stories as they were told to me, with commentary as I feel like it.

-One of them claimed that ever since they were a young child, a Grigori (guardian angel) had followed him and watched over him to keep him safe from harm, including pushing his brother back from a balcony that just happened to fall when he was not two feet from it...from a purely objective viewpoint, I could see this as possible, but more likely just a coincidentally lucky jump at the last second being attributed to divine intervention. Still, I suppose that this instance really comes down to whether you believe in guardian angels, the idea of which I have a fairly open mind towards. I'd give this one a six out of ten in believability that the cause of what happened was truly supernatural in origin.

-This same guy claimed that once, while he and his brother were playing about in an old cave, he'd heard a couple of loud knocks (which he personally attributes to a knocker, a small dwarfish fairy/spirit that makes it's home in caves and mines and "knocks" to warn of imminent disaster) that sent him and his brother running for the entrance, where shortly thereafter the cave collapsed behind them, sealing the cave entirely...I'm alot more skeptical on this one. Specifically, while I love the romantic concept of fairies, I find them hard to believe in, and especially when the "knocking" could just as easily be explained by the last few shifts of the cave before it came down. However, to defend the "believer's" side, if we talk about how the oceans are the most unexplored place on earth due to their vastness, couldn't the same argument be leveled against the very bowels of the Earth? If ever there was a place for spirits to chill out in undetected, that environ across the board would be a prime spot. But, hypotheticals aside, I call bullsh-t on this one. Two out of ten.

-Same family, this time from the other brother; once upon a time, they were playing in their house when they heard the stairs creaking as if someone was walking up them. Going to investigate, they watched an indefinite haze advance up and quickly disappear in the attic, where they quickly followed, and saw a man in white muttering agitatedly to himself as he paced back and forth while holding a knife. Suddenly, then man looked directly at them and screamed "NO!" while slitting his own throat, causing the head to roll off his body and thump against the floor as it rolled towards them, then vanish as it drew close. Needless to say, they didn't stick around for very long to see if anything else happened...while certainly smacking of a certain violence and suddenness, I'm apt to sort of disbelieve this one. Why? Because it sounds too Hollywood-ish. Seriously, the setting, the timing, the archetypes and framing of the situation...you could almost see someone with a video camera going through these self-same motions to make one of the "boo" shots of some new wave horror movie. I'm inclined to think that this was more likely a late night movie that's half-remembered by both brothers and being confused for the real deal. On the other hand, if it really did happen, then they have balls the size of the Dakotas to see something like that and not let it phase turn their hair permanently white. Two out of ten.

-Supposedly the patriarch of this family, while in the military, was walking back to a hotel room one night when he turned and saw a jet black dog with glowing red eyes the size of a small pony following him. Immediately, he turned and ran for sixteen blocks, arriving at his hotel room and barricading his door as his room filled with the sounds of pounding and shredding wood. Eventually, it stopped, and on checkin on the condition of the door from the hallway, he saw that large claw marks had been rent into it, and that it was torn half to pieces...I think this one is a bit too contrived as well. It follows the classic setup for most "Black Dog" legends, that a terrifyingly large hellhound appears out of nowhere and follows a hapless victim until they either arrive home or are torn to pieces. However, according to the legends of the black dog, you can either try to outrun it (very bad idea, as they're usually fast enough to catch almost anything), or continue walking quietly and do your best to ignore it, knowing that if it can tell that you notice it's presence, then your life is forfeit. It's the wrong environs for such a thing (they're traditionally found in moors, highlands, and long roads winding throughout the United Kingdom, Scotland, and Ireland), but there have been rare tales of other traditionally Anglo-Saxon spirits appearing to certain bloodlines even when their members are transplanted to different areas. Two out of ten.

-While the brothers were playing with plastic swords, one of them apparently tossed a toy sword through the other. Like, the sword dematerialized and rematerialized after passing through the body of the brother. They know it rematerialized because it hit a third brother in the head...I got nothing for this one. I've heard of partial and full dematerialization occurring in powerful psychics or in times of extreme duress, but I'd be more likely to chalk this up to a very unusual throw that barely missed the one brother, while still appearing to be a direct hit. Three out of ten.

-While one of the brothers was in their room getting ready for bed, he noticed an arrow drawn on the window. Puzzled, he looked closer and noticed letters being drawn on the window, eventually spelling out "TURN AROUND", to which he did (rookie move, dude!), and on seeing nothing, turned back to the window, whereupon he saw a dead girl swinging outside of it...again, seems kinda theatrical. If I lived in a house where all of this crap went down, I'd be making popcorn and charging admission. Two out of ten.

-While these self-same brothers were watching TV in the dark one night, they heard a skittering behind the couch they were sitting on. After telling Brother Number 1 to sit still, Brother Number 2 "felt something take control of him" and make him grab behind the couch and quickly throw -something- into the wall in front of them. After hearing a sharp thud and a human sounding scream, he immediately turned on the lights, and the brothers saw a shadow skitter under the entertainment center, but when checked, there was nothing there...the idea of human/animal hybrids like this so-called "rat-thing" are common across cultures (werebeasts, mummies in Egypt, and witchcraft in the US, to name a few instances), so the inspiration for such a story is not found wanting. However, to go back to the cynics view, I see it as more probable that the one brother grabbed something and tossed it into the wall, and that the scream came from the other already-anxious brother upon hearing the unexpected noise, and the skittering shadow was simply a case of their eyes becoming readjusted to the light. Then again, they say that they'd never heard it's like before, so there's that strike against that explanation. Two out of ten.

Continued tomorrow...

Das Bogey Bag

So, I'm at the part of the process now where I need to figure out what I need to pack, and this is where things start to get weird. Let's start with the recommended equipment, then I'll add my commentary as we go, and then fill in what I consider to be gaps in the list at the end.

1. Digital video recorder: this makes sense to me. No real issue with this.

2. Digital Still Camera: again, nothing too odd or silly about this.

3. Digital Image Editing Program: I sh-t you not, one of the lists online said this verbatim "sometimes by adjusting contrast, shadows and highlights or colors, you can find things in a photo you didn’t know were there." Yeah, no sh-t, Sherlock. Let me put it like my statistics professor did to me..."if you come into a situation with zero bias and look hard enough for results, you're virtually guaranteed to find some anomalous behavior that current data cannot explain. However, the replicability and significance of the findings will be questionable at best." Put into laymen's (my) terms, if you are open-minded to excess and scrutinize everything, then you'll always find something out of the ordinary, but you'll lose your perspective in the process and thereby lose your recognition of what qualifies as a "real finding". So yeah, it's a wonder that people don't take this area of inquiry more seriously, what with Pablo Picassh-le over here trying to find Jesus in every piece of toast they come across. 

4. 35mm FILM Camera: From the same source that gave me the quote above; "Experienced ghost hunters will tell you that a traditional 35mm camera, especially with black and white film often catches images that do not show up on even the best digital cameras." So you're saying that a different type of media (that commonly spits out artifacts such as "ghosts") that led to the creation of the digital standard (that's currently the vastly more prevalent one) is a good piece of equipment to double check your primary device? Does that sounds even a little bit questionable to anyone else?

5. Night Vision Equipment: I think this is useful...but not in the way the writer of this list intended. I think it's way more useful for the hunting of cryptozoological anomalies rather than spirits, but that's just my hunch.

6. Analog Tape Recorder: seriously, see my rant under 35mm above. I just don't think comparing apples to oranges is the way to do good science, especially when the apples are fifty years old.

7. Flash Lights: An unexpectedly pragmatic recommendation. Nice.

8. EMF Detector: for ghost-hunting parties, this is supposedly more useful than a flashlight. I think this'll just tell us when someone pops some Orville Redenbacher in the microwave, but they're cheap, so let's do it.

9. Compass: At first, I thought this was another amazingly practical recommendation, but it's intended as a backup to the EMF detector. Whatever, I have the feeling I'd use it more for it's original use.

10. GPS: This actually makes sense to me. You'd want an accurate estimation of -where- you were when ish went down, right?

11. Thermometers and Barometers: more actual measurement devices. Incredible!

12. Wind chimes: ? Seriously, they mean for this to be used like a sort of spectral equivalent of a piece of string and a tin can full of rocks...something tells me that if these things were stupid enough to fall for something that originated back with the "Little Rascals", then we wouldn't be trying so hard to capture definitive proof of their existence in modern times.

13. Infrared Thermal Scanner: Yeah, I see this as being useful, but again...if you take one of every measurement device out with you, then you're almost invariably going to trigger -something-, without having any way to replicate the experience or use it in any meaningful way to build a working hypothesis. It's not about the anomalies themselves, it's about constructing a parsimonious way to describe their occurrence and predict future occurrences.

14. Air Ion Counter: While the above point stands, this is something I feel like I'd carry more as an early warning system...I've heard reports that high concentrations of either one or the other type of ion can cause exceedingly powerful physical effects to manifest in humans, including things as drastic as suffocation, heart attacks, depression, and suicide ideation. Considering that particular places and (supposedly) powerful spirits can cause massive "fronts" of these ion clouds to occur, I'd want to know what the hell I'm walking into.

15. Walkie-Talkie: Totally covered on this one, I have like seven. Don't ask why...oh well, let's just say the college airsoft fights were much more intense that you can probably imagine.

Now that's a good list of measurement devices, but I feel that there's something lacking in the practicality department. Call me paranoid, but I worry more about how to defend myself, from both dangers physical and spectral. Here's what I'd want to pack as extras.

Camping gear-Seriously, let's talk basics people. What about the comfort on these overnight trips? What about taking more than one night to take our observations? If that's what's happening, then a tent/sleeping bag/first aid kit/etc. seem to be the order of the night.

Lighter-Mostly in the same line of logic as the camping gear, but also because fire is one of those primal elements that seem to occur repeatedly in many different stories involving the supernatural.

Combat shovel-Coming back to practical concerns, a multitool seems like a must. And regardless of whether it has any efficacy outside of the veil of tears we mortals are confined to, I'd like to have a multitool that also doubles as a weapon in case I meet something larger than I who decides it has taken issue with the particular ironic shirt I am wearing.

Air horn-I see this as being useful for both signaling others on the team, but also to disrupt "things". Mostly to scare off animals, but from what I've heard, loud noises can also serve to drive off malign spiritual entities as well, though in most of those stories it's debatable whether the noise drove them off or some religious/ancestral connection (i.e. church bells, heirloom drum, etc.). Either way, I'm the kind of guy who can't see how keeping an air horn on me could be a -bad- idea.

Notebook-Well, I feel like keeping a lab notebook of observations is simply part and parcel of good science.

Holy water/cold iron/salt/religious symbols/etc.-now this is where I get a little confused. See, I'd like to have something that (even if it's only on a superstitious level) can give me an "edge" against the things that go ba-donk-a-donk in the night. However, most of these supposed talismans seem to require a level of requisite belief in their efficacy or their constituent religions. Meh, I dunno...I guess I'll need to just hope that I either find God quickly or that the things that I'd need to use a cross on won't find me.

Studies in Heaven and Hell

Autoduo and Abaddon. While the origins of Autoduo are somewhat obscured (based as far as I can tell in a book by Richard Greenfield called “Traditions of Belief in Late Byzantine Demonology”), supposedly, if you're the sort of person that believes in angels and demons having domains and spheres of influence, Autoduo is the Angel of the First Hour of Sunday. Outside the fact that this is the angel who supposedly kicks off each week, the other thing I find striking about it is it's name...what an odd one, right? What is the etymology behind it? Strictly speaking, it means “self-two”, which in and of itself seems either paradoxically nonsensical or unbelievable profound...Or is there really any to be found? Was it just a manufactured label by the writer of that treatise to make it sound or seem more mysterious than it truly was? To quote the commercial after Mr Owl punked that kid over the Tootsie Roll Pop, “the world may never know”. 

On the other hand, Abaddon is a much more interesting name to try and pick apart...though mostly considered a demon, there is enough variance that it's hard to place it in that category with any real amount of conviction. See, while most official sources place “Abaddon” as an alternate name of Satan, others place it as the name of one of the fallen angels who originally sided with Lucifer, but quickly turned penitent and abandoned the war entirely for either side. Other sources claim that it was the angel that -bound- Satan to the deepest recesses of a bottomless pit, like an angelic super-jailer. Yet others purport other spellings of it (Abdon) as an alternate name of God, while others claim that it's the archetypal avenging angel, in that it was the one called upon by Moses when he called down the plagues on Egypt. However, regardless of good or evil intent, Abaddon is most assuredly a mysterious, dangerous entity of some sort, which in turn makes its nicknames “the Angel of the Abyss” or “Angel of the Bottomless Pit” quite apt indeed. 

Beast of All Hearts

So, I’m in one of my moods...specifically, one in which I'm feeling like I should give you an introduction to the sort of cryptozoological knowledge I'm familiar with by way of summarization of a legend-case known as the Beast of Gèvauden. Quite interesting, if you ask me, and please keep in mind this is all off the top of my head, so feel free to fact check me or cross reference in Wikipedia (which started this whole thing in the first place, actually), it has a very good article talking about it.

Anyways, the Beast of Gèvauden was an animal supposedly at fault for killing about 120 people and injuring about another 20 in France during the…well, specific times elude me, but it was back when France still had royalty, if that’s any help. It was sighted on multiple occasions, and was known not only for the savagery of it’s attacks, but also the fact it was virtually unstoppable (it had taken arquebus shots many times, and while it would be the sort of shots that would supposedly drop any other animal, in this case it merely wounded it and it seemed to recover fully from the shots within the period of a couple of days).

Ladies and peeps, this was the Great White Buffalo of werewolf stories. Specifically, there were countless reports and eyewitnesses to collaborate information, so the odds of this thing being completely mythical are virtually zero…there was something out there, and hoax or not, people were dying. It had all of the elements of a classic werewolf, in that it was a) had incredible strength and appeared to be completely implacable, b) seemed to regenerate from basically mortal wounds at an incredible rate, c) had a tendency to attack humans on sight in preference to any other prey (so even shepherds with a flock of sheep were preferable to the Beast over any of the smaller, slower prey), and also to gruesomely sit and eat its kills immediately after slaying them, and d) was completely undetectable outside of when it decided to hunt. You could think of it like an ancestor of Jack the Ripper, except involving an unidentified animal and a larger body count (I’m sure there were probably a couple of prostitutes involved, it was France back in the middle ages/dark ages/enlightenment/god I wish I could accurately pin this date down without compromising the freestyling of this off the top of my head).

So, we have a homicidal wolf thing (though it differed in a few key characteristics, such as supposedly having a tail as long as itself, and a large, rounded, feline-ish head rather than an elongated, canine one, upping the body count, with no stop in sight. What’s a peasant to do? Apparently, keep dying until the King of France gets irritated/scared enough to put his top two hunters on it, where they promptly fail to capture or kill it. Ticked off, the king sends out his personal arquebussist (think “ye olden bodyguard”) to try and finish what the hunters couldn’t, and in an almost “too-good-to-be-true” twist, he and a mob of local rifle hunters were able to bring down an absolutely huge (150 lb) wolf that was the biggest on record up until then, and after stuffing and shipping the thing back to the king’s court, the threat was considered over…until a couple of weeks later, when the killings resumed. At this point, the king didn’t want anything to do with it, so instead of sending someone else out, he simply passed an edict that severely punished whoever spoke aloud of the killings from then on out. Finally, a local hunter who had fallen out of favor was able to bring down a separate creature, this one being decidedly different from a wolf, but unidentifiable otherwise. The killings, though, were over once and for all, so mission accomplished.

Well, the question still remains...what the heck was that thing that did all of that? No one was able to figure it out, and though the beast was stuffed and sent to a museum, there was no records as to what happened to it after it was received; for all intents and purposes, it had disappeared off the face of the earth. Now, there were three major theories at play that I knew about, and now there's a new (and interesting one). The three that I knew of were that the Beast could have been a) a werewolf (pretty unlikely), b) a big, mean regular wolf (possible, but only in the most threadbare sense), or c) a dog-wolf hybrid (accounts for more peculiarities, but still kinda iffy). See, while we don't have any physical evidence of the Beast at this point, we do have very detailed, collaborated descriptions, including a tail almost as long as it, 42 teeth, a squarish head, and the ability to shear off limbs in a single bite. Each of those characteristics is right out for basically any kind of wolf, mutant or not, and other than the teeth and tail, for pretty much any dog-wolf hybrid, too. However, the new hypothesis put forth after the investigations by a cryptozoologist (at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I love those guys: they're like parapsychologists of biology, frontier scientists at their best!) and a forensics expert, they concluded that it was probably an especially large Asiatic hyena.

Now, that seems a little anticlimactic, but come on. A hyena in Europe would still be pretty cool. First, no one would know how to describe it, so they'd default to "wolf" due to it's predations and activities (which convergently evolved to have equivalently canid tendencies, even though it's more closely related to felines). They can get up to around 200 lbs. They have all the physical attributes described of the Beast, including the ability to shear bone and attack humans (the second is uncommon, but it happens). Everything seems to check out, even the backstory they pieced together on it.

Anyways, there wasn't a whole lot of point to this post, I just wanted to talk about werewolves for some reason...probably a conversation I had earlier this evening may have something to do with that. Take away the fact that you've probably never heard of this incident, but even so, mysterious, dreadful things have happened and continue to happen all around us, as long as we care to keep our eyes open. It seems like legends and myths have an uncanny habit of becoming real in the most inconvenient ways, so in my opinion it's better to study the little we think we know now and never need it than to simply stand in fear when the unexplained does occur (because it will). Because, if the Beast of Gèvauden teaches us nothing else, it's that the world was (and still is) much darker than we care to realize, and our ability to understand and control it is the arguably greatest myth of all.

Sweet dreams :)

Party Lines

I suppose a perfectly viable question for a reader to be asking right now is 'does he personally believe in the paranormal?' Well...yes and no.

Just as a preamble, I'm doing my best to go into all of this as unbiased as I possibly can. However, I do have two major sources of skew that luckily, courtesy of being from opposite ends of the 'believer-skeptic' spectrum, should just about cancel each other out. 

In the 'believer' corner, growing up I absolutely -devoured- anything I could find on mythology, folklore, the occult and unexplained, you name it...and I actually cleaned out the entirety of the six local libraries and most of the university's collection as well. So, put lightly, my working knowledge of what's supposedly "out there" is pretty freaking set. 

However, in the 'skeptic' corner, I have over seven years of working in some capacity (ranging from research assistant to primary investigator) with actual, honest-to-goodness research in both an academic and grant-funded sub-department setting. This experience has instilled me with a zero tolerance for unprovable hypotheses, appeals to emotion, and other "evidence surrogates" that I may come across...

So if we're talking about what I'd -like- to believe in, then the romantic in me wants to shout out "EVERYTHING!" as loud as it can for everyone to hear. The pragmatist in me, however, tempers that idealism with a healthy dose of "where's the proof?". So overall, I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to different phenomena (psychic, spiritual, etc.), with the notable exception being cryptozoology. When it comes to cryptozoology, I think that there's a much greater chance of proving that there is/was an undiscovered creature than an undiscovered form of consciousness or mental energy. So, if you're asking me if ghosts exist as such, my answer would be "maybe?". If you're asking if I believe in telepathy, I'd respond with "I dunno". It you're inquiring whether the Lindwurm could have ever been a real creature, I'd be much more optimistic. No matter what though, you better have something more solid than a good story to go off of.

Introductions, Of Course

My name is --------, and I'm a self-described hipster. I'm an arrogant elitist who looks down on strangers and passes judgment quicker than most would pass the salt. I only listen to certain types of music and get turned off by bands once they become mainstream. I'm an Apple user. I have a guitar that I don't know how to play proudly displayed in my living room. I am a snobby drinker, compulsively shop at thrift stores, and voraciously read books on men's fashion. In other words, the best example of a douchebag one could really ask for. However, thanks to a relatively unusual night of Craigslist hunting, I've applied to become a member of a paranormal research group. So, this blog is going to be a running journal of what my experiences are, both in pursuing the mysterious and interacting with those others who've decided to chase them. Oh, of course names will be changed to protect the innocent and all that jazz.