All About Paranormal: paranormal phenomenon

Showing posts with label paranormal phenomenon. Show all posts

The year was 1979 when Len and Cynthia Gisby along with their neighbors Geoff and Pauline Simpson took a holiday together. The couples lived England at the time and decided on a two week trip to Spain. They took a boat over to France and then rented a car for the remainder of their trip. The first hotel that they stopped at was in the Rhone Valley near Montelimar. They were told the hotel was full by a peculiar man dressed in a plum-colored uniform. He then gave them directions to a second hotel nearby. Upon arrival they noticed that the building was gas lit, there were no phones in the lobby and no elevators in sight. They also found it difficult to understand the clerks French at the front desk, however they were able to get two rooms there for the night. Once at their rooms, they noticed that the windows had no glass on them only wooden shutters and the bedding was out dated. What they saw were bedsteads with wooden bolsters and blankets rather than comforters. The doors had no locks only latches on them and the only bathroom did not have modern day plumbing. Despite their strange surroundings, the two couples enjoyed their evening together and even took some photos. The next morning they decided to have breakfast before heading back out on the road. Over a very simple breakfast, the couples noticed how strange the other people there were dressed. Two gendarmes came in the room and were dressed unlike any other that they have seen. Their uniforms were dark blue and they wore cloaks along with pillar-box hats. They also noticed a women who was sitting near them. She wore a long silk dress with button shoes. Perhaps the strangest thing was when it came time to pay for their bill. Both couples were amazed to see that they had only been charged a few pence for the entire night. Once on the road, they decided that they would spend another night there on their way back from Spain. They figured that they stumbled upon a theme hotel and were charmed by the rustic nature of the place. When they did return they could not find the hotel. It seemed to have completely disappeared. They went back to their first stop where the man with the plum coloured suit had given them the directions before. The clerk never heard of this man they looked for and stated that no one worked there matching his description. They gave up their search and spent the night elsewhere. Once back home they developed the pictures from their trip. All of the pictures that were taken on both cameras during their stay at that hotel were missing.

SCREAMS OF BATTLE

Possibly the most unnerving experience one can have at Gettysburg is actually hearing – by ear or by EVP recording – the echoes of that horrific battle and its ghostly cries of pain and death. Such was the memorable experience of Mary Adelsberger as told to authors Jack Bochar and Bob Wasel in their book, More Haunted Gettysburg: Eyewitness Accounts of the Supernatural.
Mary had gone to Gettysburg with her two grown daughters on a cold February evening. There was plenty of snow in the ground, but the three women were determined to brave the weather and visit the battlefield monuments. On Wadsworth Avenue, they found a marker that said “95th New York Infantry, July 1, 1863.” Almost immediately, they began to hear men’s voices in idle conversation, as though they were sitting around a campfire. Reluctantly, they chose to explore the woods to see if they could find the source of the voices. Suddenly, they heard a voice shout, “Get up! Get up! Go! Go!” followed by the command, “Charge!”
The women were terrified, to say the least, and ran out of the woods as quickly as their legs could carry them. Yet behind them they could hear the agonized cries of men, screaming and moaning.
Mary and her daughters retreated to their hotel but, astonishingly, decided to go back to the woods, even though it was 12:30 in the morning. “I agreed to go with them,” Mary said, “but with a couple of stipulations: we would drive, not walk; I would not get out of the car; and one of them had to promise to stay in the car with me at all times!”
With those conditions agreed to, Mary and her daughters drove back to Wadsworth Avenue. “Jen opened the car door,” Mary said, “stepped out, and before she even had a chance to close the door, I heard it – the most horrible, blood-curdling screams and moans that anyone could possibly imagine!”
That was all the women needed to speed away in their car, their faces wet with tears.

THE PHANTOM ON HORSEBACK
Did you know that George Washington is credited by some as helping the Union Army in one of its most decisive engagements at Gettysburg? Wait a minute... George Washington? He was a general during the Revolutionary War and died in 1799, well before the Civil War. Yet Washington – or rather his ghost – is said to have appeared to the 20th Maine Division as they approached Gettysburg.
En route to the battlefield, these soldiers reached a fork in the road and were unsure as to which direction to take. Suddenly, an imposing figure wearing a tri-cornered hat appeared on horseback to lead them. At first they thought he was a Union general, but noticed that both the man and his horse seemed to emit an eerie glow. Furthermore, some recognized the man as strongly resembling George Washington, whom they knew from his famous portraits. Hundreds of the soldiers verified that they had seen this phantom.
The ghost led the division of soldiers to a strategic position at Little Round Top, where they were able to repel a flank of Confederates.
So well-known became this report of Washington’s ghost that Secretary of War Stanton later conducted a formal investigation of the matter. In his testimony, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who was in charge of the troops in question, said, “We know not what mystic power may be possessed by those who are now bivouacking with the dead. I only know the effect, but I dare not explain or deny the cause. Who shall say that Washington was not among the number of those who aided the country that he founded?”

THE PHANTOM OF DEVIL’S DEN

There is a large, distinctive outcropping of rock in one section of the Gettysburg battlefield known as Devil’s Den. Dozens of ghost sightings have been reported here by tourists over the years. One of the most well-known is that of a barefoot man dressed in a butternut-colored shirt and floppy hat, which fits the description of a rag-tag unit from Texas who participated in the battle. Those who have met this spirit report that he always says the same thing: “What you’re looking for is over there” as he points toward the Plum Run. He then vanishes into thin air.

THE PHANTOM SURGERY

Mark Nesbitt, one of the foremost authorities and authors on the ghosts of Gettysburg, relates one of the area’s most gruesome experiences. Pennsylvania Hall at Gettysburg College has been the site of many Civil War era ghost encounters, but perhaps none can compare to what two college administrators saw one night.

One hundred years previous, the building had been used as a field hospital for many of the fierce battle’s wounded. But on this night, as the two administrators were taking the elevator from the fourth floor down to the first, the long-ago nightmare wasn’t even on their minds.

Inexplicably, the elevator passed the first floor and continued on to the basement. When the doors opened, the administrators could scarcely believe their eyes. What they knew to be storage space was replaced by a scene from the hospital: dead and dying men were lying about on the floor; blood-covered doctors and orderlies were rushing about chaotically, trying desperately to save their lives. No sound emanated from the ghastly sight, but both administrators saw it clearly.

Horrified, they frantically pushed the elevator button to close the doors. As the doors closed, they said, one of the orderlies looked up and directly at them, seeming to see them, and with a pleading expression on his face.

GHOSTS AS SACHS BRIDGE

Constructed in 1854 and originally known as Sauck’s Bridge, this 100-foot expanse over a creek not far from the battlefield also has its share of ghost encounters. One I’m very familiar with is told by Stacey Jones, founder and director of the Central New York Ghost Hunters. As I am affiliated with that group, I have heard Stacey recount this story many times, but she tells it best, perhaps, to our friend Jeff Belanger in his book, Ghosts of War.

Members of Stacey’s group were visiting Gettysburg in May, 2004 (this was before I joined the group). It was a warm Saturday night when they decided to venture out to Sachs Bridge to see if they could get some interesting photos or EVP. After they were there for awhile, a strange fog rolled in, seemingly out of nowhere. “And then we started seeing lights,” Stacey told Jeff. “They were coming from the field across from Sachs Bridge. These orange lights were coming from the ground and going up in an arch about 12 feet in the air and then coming back down again.”

The group then began to hear the sounds of neighing horses and what sounded like the distant rumble of cannon fire. “That lasted about 20 minutes,” Stacey said, “and then the fog disappeared and everything stopped.”

The group left the bridge, but seven returned later that night, thinking there might be more to experience. They weren’t wrong.

It began with people-sized shadows that seemed to be darting about in the field of tall grass across from the bridge. This was followed by a return of the arching orange lights that shot up from the grass, and then the unexplained smell of flowers and a penetrating cold. For a while, all was quiet. “There were no more shadow people,” Stacey recalls, “and no more lights, but we heard men’s voices out in the field. We couldn’t make out what they were saying. And we could hear movement in the tree line. The voices came right up beside us on the tree line... and then we started hearing the horses again.”

Finally, when members of the group heard the sound of a man growling quite close by, they hightailed it out of there.

GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA IS well established as one of the most haunted areas in the United States. During its three days of intense battle ending on July 3, 1863, more than 7,800 brave Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives, and tens of thousands more were wounded and crippled. American against American. It’s no wonder that hundreds upon hundreds of ghosts have been sighted and haunting activity experienced at this National Military Park. Tourists and ghost hunters have snapped photos with enigmatic images; dozens of fascinating EVP (electronic voice phenomena) recordings have been made; and one of the most interesting and compelling ghost videos was shot there.

Following is but a small sampling of ghost encounters people have had at Gettysburg:

JEREMY’S GHOST AT THE FARNSWORTH HOUSE INN

It’s been called one of the most haunted inns in America. Built in 1810, this brick structure is said to be the dwelling place of several Civil War era ghosts, and many people – both staff and guests alike – can attest to strange goings-on there.

My friend Jerry visits Gettysburg often and has stayed at the Farnsworth a few times, with interesting results. A few years ago, he stayed in the Sara Black room, located in an added-on section of the inn. “I was lying on the bed when all of a sudden it shook,” he says. “It was a pretty good jolt and that bed is pretty heavy.”

In March, 2009, Jerry returned to Farnsworth with his girlfriend, Deb, but this time booked the McFarlane room, which is in the original part of the house and where the ghost of a little boy named Jeremy allegedly visits on occasion. “It was Sunday morning and we were supposed to check out by 11 a.m.,” Jerry says. “We had not experienced anything paranormal in the room, so as I was getting out of the shower I asked Jeremy if he could give Deb an experience before we left – and I added a ‘please’ at the end of my sentence. When I opened the door and walked out of the bathroom, Deb asked if that was the first time I walked out of the bathroom. I said yes and asked why. She said that before I came out, she heard someone walk from the bathroom to the closet. She wasn't dreaming and she said it was inside the room. I then told her what I asked Jeremy. Is it a coincidence? I don't think so. I think Jeremy or someone was hanging around and heard me.”

THE GHOST OF LITTLE ROUND TOP

Civil War battles have been the subject of many motion pictures, but one of the best and most moving was 1993’s Gettysburg. During the filming of that movie, much of which was done right on location at the actual battlefields, some of the participants had an unexplained encounter. Because the film required so many extras to serve as soldiers, the production hired re-enactors who regularly portray the Union and Confederate armies.

During a break in filming one day, several of the extras were resting at Little Round Top and admiring the setting sun. They were approached by grizzled old man, who they described as wearing a ragged and scorched Union uniform and smelling of sulfur gunpowder. He talked to them about how furious the battle was as he passed around spare rounds of ammunition, then went on his way.

At first, the extras assumed he was part of the production company, but their minds changed when they looked closely at the ammunition he gave them. They took the rounds to the man in charge of giving out such props for the movie, and he said they did not come from him. It turns out the ammunition from the strange old man were genuine musket rounds from that period

The Necronomicon is a fictional book appearing in the stories by horror novelist H. P. Lovecraft. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound",written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in Lovecraft's "The Nameless City". Among other things, the work contains an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them.

Other authors such as August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith also cited it in their works; Lovecraft approved, believing such common allusions built up "a background of evil verisimilitude." Many readers have believed it to be a real work, with booksellers and librarians receiving many requests for it; pranksters have listed it in rare book catalogues, and a student smuggled a card for it into the Yale University Library's card catalog.

Capitalizing on the notoriety of the fictional volume, real-life publishers have printed many books entitled Necronomicon since Lovecraft's death.

How Lovecraft conceived the name "Necronomicon" is not clear — Lovecraft said that the title came to him in a dream. Although some have suggested that Lovecraft was influenced primarily by Robert W. Chambers' collection of short stories The King in Yellow, which centers on a mysterious and disturbing play in book form, Lovecraft is not believed to have read that work until 1927

Donald R. Burleson has argued that the idea for the book was derived from Nathaniel Hawthorne, though Lovecraft himself noted that "mouldy hidden manuscripts" were one of the stock features of Gothic literature

Lovecraft wrote that the title, as translated from the Greek language, meant "an image of the law of the dead": nekros - νεκρός ("dead"), nomos - νόμος ("law"), eikon - εικών ("image"). A more prosaic translation can be derived by conjugating nemo ("to consider"): "Concerning the dead".

Lovecraft was often asked about the veracity of the Necronomicon, and always answered that it was completely his invention.

Reinforcing the book's fictionalization, the name of the book's supposed author, Abdul Alhazred, is not even a grammatically correct Arabic name. The name "Abdul" simply means "the worshiper/slave of...". Standing alone, it would make no sense, as Alhazred is not a last name in the Western sense, but a reference to a person's place of birth.

In 1927, Lovecraft wrote a brief pseudo-history of the Necronomicon that was published in 1938, after his death, as A History of The Necronomicon.[10] This work allowed subsequent fiction writers to remain consistent with Lovecraft's treatment of the Necronomicon.[11] According to this account, the book was originally called Al Azif, an Arabic word that Lovecraft defined as "that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons". (One Arabic/English dictionary translates `Azīf as "whistling (of the wind); weird sound or noise".) (It is noteworthy that the Goetia is sometimes translated to have a similar meaning.)

In the History, Alhazred is said to have been a "half-crazed Arab" who worshipped the Lovecraftian entities Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu. He is described as being from Sanaa in Yemen, and as visiting the ruins of Babylon, the "subterranean secrets" of Memphis and the Empty Quarter of Arabia (where he discovered the "nameless city" below Irem). In his last years, he lived in Damascus, where he wrote Al Azif before his sudden and mysterious death in 738.

In subsequent years, Lovecraft wrote, the Azif "gained considerable, though surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age." In 950, it was translated into Greek and given the title Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas, a fictional scholar from Constantinople. This version "impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts" before being "suppressed and burnt" in 1050 by Patriarch Michael (an historical figure who died in 1059).

After this attempted suppression, the work was "only heard of furtively" until it was translated from Greek into Latin by Olaus Wormius. (Lovecraft gives the date of this edition as 1228, though the real-life Danish scholar Olaus Wormius lived from 1588 to 1624.) Both the Latin and Greek text, the History relates, were banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, though Latin editions were apparently published in 15th century Germany and 17th century Spain. A Greek edition was printed in Italy in the first half of the 16th century.

The Elizabethan magician John Dee (1527-c. 1609) allegedly translated the book — presumably into English — but Lovecraft wrote that this version was never printed and only fragments survive. (The connection between Dee and the Necronomicon was suggested by Lovecraft's friend Frank Belknap Long).

According to Lovecraft, the Arabic version of Al Azif had already disappeared by the time the Greek version was banned in 1050, though he cites "a vague account of a secret copy appearing in San Francisco during the current century" that "later perished in fire". The Greek version, he writes, has not been reported "since the burning of a certain Salem man's library in 1692" (an apparent reference to the Salem witch trials). (In the story The Diary of Alonzo Typer, the character Alonzo Typer finds a Greek copy.)

Appearance and contents

The Necronomicon is mentioned in a number of Lovecraft's short stories and in his novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. However, despite frequent references to the book, Lovecraft was very sparing of details about its appearance and contents. He once wrote that "if anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it."

In "The Nameless City" (1921), a rhyming couplet that appears at two points in the story is ascribed to Abdul Alhazred:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

And with strange aeons even death may die.

The same couplet appears in "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), where it is identified as a quotation from the Necronomicon. This "much-discussed" couplet, as Lovecraft calls it in the latter story, has also been quoted in works by other authors, including Brian Lumley's The Burrowers Beneath, which adds a long paragraph preceding the couplet.

The Necronomicon is undoubtedly a substantial text, as indicated by its description in The Dunwich Horror (1929). In the story, Wilbur Whateley visits Miskatonic University's library to consult the "unabridged" version of the Necronomicon for a spell that would have appeared on the 751st page of his own inherited, but defective, Dee edition.

The Necronomicon's appearance and physical dimensions are not clearly stated in Lovecraft's work. Other than the obvious black letter editions, it is commonly portrayed as bound in leather of various types and having metal clasps. Moreover, editions are sometimes disguised. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, for example, John Merrit pulls down a book labelled Qanoon-e-Islam from Joseph Curwen’s bookshelf and discovers to his disquiet that it is actually the Necronomicon.

In the Evil Dead series of movies, a similar book is described as "Bound in human flesh and inked in blood, it contains bizarre burial rituals and demon resurrection passages. It was never meant for the world of the living." Many commercially available versions of the book fail to include any of the contents that Lovecraft describes. The Simon Necronomicon in particular has been criticized for this.

According to Lovecraft's "History of the Necronomicon", copies of the original Necronomicon were held by only five institutions worldwide:

* The British Museum

* The Bibliothèque nationale de France

* Widener Library of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts

* The University of Buenos Aires

* The library of the fictional Miskatonic University in the also fictitious Arkham, Massachusetts

The last institution holds the Latin translation by Olaus Wormius, printed in Spain in the 17th century.

Other copies, Lovecraft wrote, were kept by private individuals. Joseph Curwen, as noted, had a copy in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1941). A version is held in Kingsport in "The Festival" (1925). The provenance of the copy read by the narrator of "The Nameless City" is unknown; a version is read by the protagonist in "The Hound" (1924).

Although Lovecraft insisted that the book was pure invention (and other writers invented passages from the book in their own works), there are accounts of some people actually believing the Necronomicon to be a real book. Lovecraft himself sometimes received letters from fans inquiring about the Necronomicon's authenticity. Pranksters occasionally listed the Necronomicon for sale in book store newsletters or inserted phony entries for the book in library card catalogues (where it may be checked out to one 'A. Alhazred', ostensibly the book's author and original owner). The Widener Library at Harvard, which is supposed to have a copy of the "Necronomicon" according to Lovecraft's stories, has a catalog entry telling the seeker to "inquire at desk". While the stories surrounding the Necronomicon claim that it is an extremely powerful and dangerous book (one that would not be safe just sitting on a shelf, where anyone could read it), it is equally possible that the listing has a much more mundane purpose -- several (equally fictional) versions of the book do exist, and (since books such as the Necronomicon are frequently stolen from the shelves) the entry may simply be an attempt to prevent its theft.

Similarly, the university library of Tromsø, Norway, lists a translated version of the Necronomicon, attributed to Petrus de Dacia and published in 1994, although the document is listed as 'unavailable'. Necronomicon.

In 1973, Owlswick Press issued an edition of the Necronomicon written in an indecipherable, apparently fictional language known as "Duriac." This was a limited edition of 348. The book contains a brief introduction by L. Sprague de Camp.

The line between fact and fiction was further blurred in the late 1970s when a book purporting to be a translation of the "real Necronomicon" was published. This book, by the pseudonymic "Simon," had little connection to the fictional Lovecraft Mythos but instead was based on Sumerian mythology. It was later dubbed the "Simon Necronomicon." Going into trade paperback in 1980 it has never been out of print and has sold 800,000 copies by 2006 making it the most popular Necronomicon to date.[citation needed] Despite its contents the book's marketing focused heavily on the Lovecraft connection and made sensational claims made for the book's magical power. The blurb states it was "potentially, the most dangerous Black Book known to the Western World". Three additional volumes have since been published — The Necronomicon Spellbook, a book of pathworkings with the 50 names of Marduk, Dead Names: The Dark History of the Necronomicon, a history of the book itself and of the late 1970s New York occult scene, and The Gates Of The Necronomicon, instructions on pathworking with the Simon Necronomicon.

A hoax version of the Necronomicon, edited by George Hay, appeared in 1978 and included an introduction by the paranormal researcher and writer Colin Wilson. David Langford described how the book was prepared from a computer analysis of a discovered "cipher text" by Dr. John Dee. The resulting "translation" was in fact written by occultist Robert Turner, but it was far truer to the Lovecraftian version than the Simon text and even incorporated quotations from Lovecraft's stories in its passages. Wilson also wrote a story, "The Return of the Lloigor", in which the Voynich manuscript turns out to be a copy of the Necronomicon.

With the success of the Simon Necronomicon the controversy surrounding the actual existence of the Necronomicon was such that a detailed book The Necronomicon Files was published in 1998 attempting to prove once and for all the book was pure fiction. It covered the well-known Necronomicons in depth, especially the Simon one, along with a number of more obscure ones. It was reprinted and expanded in 2003.

In 2004, Necronomicon: The Wanderings of Alhazred, by occultist Donald Tyson, was published by Llewellyn Worldwide. The Tyson Necronomicon is generally thought to be closer to Lovecraft's vision than other published versions. Donald Tyson has clearly stated that the Necronomicon is fictional, but that has not prevented his book from being the center of some controversy.

Historical "Books of the Dead", such as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Tibetan Bardo Thodol, are sometimes described as "real Necronomicons." They should not be confused with the Lovecraft Necronomicon, since their contents are meant to be read to and remembered by the dead, rather than to be used by the living to summon the dead. Lovecraft may have been inspired by these books.

The Astral Necronomicon

Kenneth Grant, the British occultist, disciple of Aleister Crowley, and head of the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis suggested in his book The Magical Revival (1972) that there was an unconscious connection between Crowley and Lovecraft. He thought they both drew on the same occult forces; Crowley via his magic and Lovecraft through the dreams which inspired his stories and the Necronomicon. Grant claimed that the Necronomicon existed as an astral book as part of the Akashic records and could be accessed through ritual magic or in dreams. Grant's ideas on Lovecraft were featured heavily in the introduction to the Simon Necronomicon and also have been backed by Donald Tyson; but Lovecraft, a strict materialist, would likely have been outraged. Like any claim based purely on supernatural evidence, Grant's ideas cannot be proved or disproved and have added further confusion to the issue.