Since I was a wee child, I have prayed NOT to have visions. No demons. No angels. No saints. No dead relatives. No dead ANYTHING (except, maybe past dogs...)--surely not the myriad caged and bowled animals of my past. (Brrrrrrr.)
For most of my life, all the Invisibles honored my requests.
However, they did visit my dreamscapes.
Mostly, I was okay with this. Occasionally, however, it became just a bit too real and I had to again, negotiate. Pull out the St. Benedict exorcism crucifix, the fluorescent childrens' rosary, the singed sage and salt-in-the-corners, all the negative energy crystals aligned on the nightstand or attached to the bed. Holy water from Lourdes was kept in a separate, but easily accessed, drawer.
Once again, I was left in peace for the few hours of sleep I usually manage.
Then, the ghost chasers entered the Public Eye.
Suddenly, from cable networks to mainstream stations, on radio and satellite t.v., people, mostly in their twenties and thirties, equipped with thousands of dollars of electronic equipment ( night vision goggles; infrared cameras; laser trip lights; magnetic counters; video headgear, etc.) and t.v. sponsorship would enter private buildings, in the dead of night, turn out the overhead lights and begin filming.
Even with all the electronic gadgets and multi-lensed cameras, rarely did anything show itself. Computer enhancement did little to clarify the white smudges and fuzzy shadows that made the Ghost Hunters squeal. (In fact, the ghost busting gangs that went off on these adventures squealed quite a bit. In fact, most of the "thrill" of these unscripted shows came from their screams, shivers shared on those cameras, and running out of sight when a sudden "unexplained bump" or a whoosh of wind crossed their paths.)
Besides the constant video feed enabling the audience to "come along", the go-to piece of equipment seemed to be the hand-held audio recording device. Sometimes it was as simple as a cell phone. Sometimes it was a recorder--usually digital--left on and running while the team sat in silence after asking "the spirits" a particular question.
I have to admit, the recordings have gotten to me. Though all demand a computer translation and "clean up"--and granted, many are subject to interpretation ("It said 'I am the killer'! Did you hear that? Did you hear that?!!!")--I often interpret something else, but hey, I'm not on the location and I'm listening from a t.v. monitor, what do I know?--these electronic voice recordings are just plain creepy. They do sound like actual words. People-spoken. Some with accents. Some with age-related differences. But people. (I do question the obvious factor that every one that is played is in English...even when the ghost hunters go to other countries...do the ghosts translate themselves? Hmmm...perhaps we become poly-lingual when we leave this plane...Or maybe the editors only use what they can understand. We are Americans, after all...)
Most of these shows, I am rooting for the Invisibles. I would like them to take a quick bite out of the butt of some of these cocky-yet-easily-terrified-twenty-somethings. I would like a sudden apparition of Count Chocula or the Wolfman (circa Lon Chaney) or even Frankenstein's monster to come from behind a closed door in whatever asylum they are visiting that week. More than a passing cold breeze which raises goosebumps on the elbows of the camera people; more than dust mites massing into a swirl along the edges of abandoned staircases; more than creaking beams and moaning cracked windows. However, so far, that has not occurred.
When these teams enter shut down prisons, the guys always come in like Gang Busters; they shout, they threaten, they preach, they challenge, they pose and roar into the dark quiet. (Usually it is guys. Only in the past year have they used more than a single, lovely female, in their investigations. The women never seem to challenge or poke or even badger the Invisibles; only the men...) There is little respect for what could be going on, legitimately.
No matter what spiritual practice or study one engages in, there are views about the dead...yelling and challenging and bringing up bad karmas is never a suggested method. Why these guys do it seems to me the same motivation of why adolescents break windows in abandoned buildings...especially in places where they think they won't be caught. In the same way that I don't want to see the dead, I also respect the dead. If they have earned anything, they have earned some peace.
There is one show, however, where I feel that the people doing the investigations are truly trying to help--both those on the other side--if there is another side--as well as those on this side who may be engaging in some sketchy dead-associated dabbling. This show is called "Dead Zone".
The premise is that a working psychic takes a single camera-man to a site where someone has contacted them and requested they investigate. She knows nothing about the site and little about the actual "haunting"--except that they have been called in because of issues. She and the camera-guy walk along the property and inside the afflicted building. Before they get there for the walk-through, he has come and removed any personal photos or images of anyone who lives in the place that might mislead the psychic or give her unfair "clues" to who inhabits the space. It is a cold walk-through, when she arrives.
In conjunction with the psychic investigator, a retired cop begins his own investigation. He does what detectives do: meets with the family involved; goes through property records; town histories; talks to people in the area who might know of incidents that occurred or know some history of the occupation of the property etc. The show splits between his investigation and her walk-through. Her walk-through is filmed, of course. In the end of the search, they come together and discuss their findings and evidence, in front of the family associated with the haunting. They even have a mug-drawing, done by the psychic and a police artist--of what she encountered.
I truly don't know what is staged. I honestly don't know if it is a set up or if it is for reals. I do know that the woman is average looking--average size, not a teen-ager, and when she does her walk-throughs, her psychic readings are not pretty to watch. She is not a trained actress. No actress would manipulate her face in such bizarre ways for t.v. Her body moves are also not of someone taught to walk onstage or camera--they are exactly how any one of us would move through an unknown space for the first time--in the dark. She doesn't shriek. She doesn't jump at shadows and knock over cameras in her flight. She doesn't scream at cold breezes or when things "touch" her. (Just for this refreshing take, I'd watch the show...) She reacts in a way that seems scary because of its sense of truth. And the camera-guy gets it down--without special lenses or monitors or electromagnets or flattering lighting.
The cop part is genius. It is like a good mystery show--he building a "case" about what happened in the past--or is presently happening--to cause psychic disturbances. He is like a t.v. cop. Grizzled. Hard-line questioner. No nonsense approach--until the end. Even then, he usually winces once or twice, when the psychic reveals what she experienced and shows the "portrait" of the main Invisible she "saw". But it is a good wince. The stories are pretty intense--especially for these ghost chasing shows filled with old prison shadows and broken-windowed asylums.
I also love the fact that the psychic always has advice for the people who first initiated the call for help. She has business cards of other spiritual people --from priests to shamans to psychotherapists--for the families to contact for help in "releasing" whatever is in their midst. She also gives it to the people who are "playing" with psychic realms...Recently she busted a seventeen year old teen-ager who was having his friends do seances at this abandoned building behind his home. The building had been a quack clinic, run by what amounted to a serial killer/doctor--a woman--who, in the name of "curing people"--mostly rich people with bad illnesses--in reality tortured them and starved them. Many, many, many deaths were recorded at the clinic. However, since she was allowed to do her own autopsies--this was in the 1800s--and word didn't really travel about what was going on--this continued for years. Finally, she took her own life--evidently starving herself. A true psychopath and a serial sadist.
The family currently owning the property didn't know the horrible history--only the part that a woman doctor ran a clinic on the place--and that one of the buildings was still standing. The father didn't realize the son and his friends were doing seances for months back there--his son only admitting to doing one seance and getting scared. However, "things began to happen" in the home...The cop uncovered the history. The psychic encountered "all the confused and suffering dead". She felt the doctor was also still "stuck"--but the doctor's ghost was willingly staying. Whether to avoid "retribution" or simply to "feed on the pain"--she was still around.
The boy's seances had enlarged the door to allow more and more confused ghosts to assemble and to be used as feed for the doctor.
The sketch by the police artist, based on the description of the psychic, matched the late photo of the doctor, which the retired cop had come across in his historical investigation. It was uncanny. Even if it was a set-up, the sincerity of the people involved--including the psychic and the detective--as well as the squirmy guilt of the teen and the astonished father--were brilliant. I loved it when the psychic lit into the boy. She let him have it about "bothering the dead"! She told him that the dead have many phases to go through to get free from this plane--it isn't just stepping up to Heaven--or Hell--and often those who have died in bad ways are confused about their situation--they repeat the death throes they went through and can't escape right away. In a place where so much physical and mental torture was passed on as "therapy"--confusion was built in. So, when one died it didn't seem much different and the ghosts were further being trapped by the seances and the living trying to communicate with them--as well as the more powerful spirt of the sadist.
The psychic suggested people to contact to help "clear the dead" and to remove the negative presence. Also, suggested help for the teen--and warned him--and the father--to stop playing with this--it is real and it is complicated and it is powerful. One must take serious study in these areas to know what to do; to be protected; to do no harm. Obviously, this kid had taken no such steps.
She also suggested the building be brought down, to further cleanse the property and release residual spirits.
I love it! Leave the dead alone! At one point, on her initial walk-through, the psychic grimaces. The camera-guy asks her what is going on. She answers: "I get a lot of spirits in confusion, coming up to me--they are really angry--they are saying 'stop poking us; stop telling us to talk to you!"
(They meant the boy and his friends and the seances--not the psychic.)
Right on.
I think I will stop watching these shows, too.
(Except, maybe, The Dead Zone. They might be the real-deal...)
For most of my life, all the Invisibles honored my requests.
However, they did visit my dreamscapes.
Mostly, I was okay with this. Occasionally, however, it became just a bit too real and I had to again, negotiate. Pull out the St. Benedict exorcism crucifix, the fluorescent childrens' rosary, the singed sage and salt-in-the-corners, all the negative energy crystals aligned on the nightstand or attached to the bed. Holy water from Lourdes was kept in a separate, but easily accessed, drawer.
Once again, I was left in peace for the few hours of sleep I usually manage.
Then, the ghost chasers entered the Public Eye.
Suddenly, from cable networks to mainstream stations, on radio and satellite t.v., people, mostly in their twenties and thirties, equipped with thousands of dollars of electronic equipment ( night vision goggles; infrared cameras; laser trip lights; magnetic counters; video headgear, etc.) and t.v. sponsorship would enter private buildings, in the dead of night, turn out the overhead lights and begin filming.
Even with all the electronic gadgets and multi-lensed cameras, rarely did anything show itself. Computer enhancement did little to clarify the white smudges and fuzzy shadows that made the Ghost Hunters squeal. (In fact, the ghost busting gangs that went off on these adventures squealed quite a bit. In fact, most of the "thrill" of these unscripted shows came from their screams, shivers shared on those cameras, and running out of sight when a sudden "unexplained bump" or a whoosh of wind crossed their paths.)
Besides the constant video feed enabling the audience to "come along", the go-to piece of equipment seemed to be the hand-held audio recording device. Sometimes it was as simple as a cell phone. Sometimes it was a recorder--usually digital--left on and running while the team sat in silence after asking "the spirits" a particular question.
I have to admit, the recordings have gotten to me. Though all demand a computer translation and "clean up"--and granted, many are subject to interpretation ("It said 'I am the killer'! Did you hear that? Did you hear that?!!!")--I often interpret something else, but hey, I'm not on the location and I'm listening from a t.v. monitor, what do I know?--these electronic voice recordings are just plain creepy. They do sound like actual words. People-spoken. Some with accents. Some with age-related differences. But people. (I do question the obvious factor that every one that is played is in English...even when the ghost hunters go to other countries...do the ghosts translate themselves? Hmmm...perhaps we become poly-lingual when we leave this plane...Or maybe the editors only use what they can understand. We are Americans, after all...)
Most of these shows, I am rooting for the Invisibles. I would like them to take a quick bite out of the butt of some of these cocky-yet-easily-terrified-twenty-somethings. I would like a sudden apparition of Count Chocula or the Wolfman (circa Lon Chaney) or even Frankenstein's monster to come from behind a closed door in whatever asylum they are visiting that week. More than a passing cold breeze which raises goosebumps on the elbows of the camera people; more than dust mites massing into a swirl along the edges of abandoned staircases; more than creaking beams and moaning cracked windows. However, so far, that has not occurred.
When these teams enter shut down prisons, the guys always come in like Gang Busters; they shout, they threaten, they preach, they challenge, they pose and roar into the dark quiet. (Usually it is guys. Only in the past year have they used more than a single, lovely female, in their investigations. The women never seem to challenge or poke or even badger the Invisibles; only the men...) There is little respect for what could be going on, legitimately.
No matter what spiritual practice or study one engages in, there are views about the dead...yelling and challenging and bringing up bad karmas is never a suggested method. Why these guys do it seems to me the same motivation of why adolescents break windows in abandoned buildings...especially in places where they think they won't be caught. In the same way that I don't want to see the dead, I also respect the dead. If they have earned anything, they have earned some peace.
There is one show, however, where I feel that the people doing the investigations are truly trying to help--both those on the other side--if there is another side--as well as those on this side who may be engaging in some sketchy dead-associated dabbling. This show is called "Dead Zone".
The premise is that a working psychic takes a single camera-man to a site where someone has contacted them and requested they investigate. She knows nothing about the site and little about the actual "haunting"--except that they have been called in because of issues. She and the camera-guy walk along the property and inside the afflicted building. Before they get there for the walk-through, he has come and removed any personal photos or images of anyone who lives in the place that might mislead the psychic or give her unfair "clues" to who inhabits the space. It is a cold walk-through, when she arrives.
In conjunction with the psychic investigator, a retired cop begins his own investigation. He does what detectives do: meets with the family involved; goes through property records; town histories; talks to people in the area who might know of incidents that occurred or know some history of the occupation of the property etc. The show splits between his investigation and her walk-through. Her walk-through is filmed, of course. In the end of the search, they come together and discuss their findings and evidence, in front of the family associated with the haunting. They even have a mug-drawing, done by the psychic and a police artist--of what she encountered.
I truly don't know what is staged. I honestly don't know if it is a set up or if it is for reals. I do know that the woman is average looking--average size, not a teen-ager, and when she does her walk-throughs, her psychic readings are not pretty to watch. She is not a trained actress. No actress would manipulate her face in such bizarre ways for t.v. Her body moves are also not of someone taught to walk onstage or camera--they are exactly how any one of us would move through an unknown space for the first time--in the dark. She doesn't shriek. She doesn't jump at shadows and knock over cameras in her flight. She doesn't scream at cold breezes or when things "touch" her. (Just for this refreshing take, I'd watch the show...) She reacts in a way that seems scary because of its sense of truth. And the camera-guy gets it down--without special lenses or monitors or electromagnets or flattering lighting.
The cop part is genius. It is like a good mystery show--he building a "case" about what happened in the past--or is presently happening--to cause psychic disturbances. He is like a t.v. cop. Grizzled. Hard-line questioner. No nonsense approach--until the end. Even then, he usually winces once or twice, when the psychic reveals what she experienced and shows the "portrait" of the main Invisible she "saw". But it is a good wince. The stories are pretty intense--especially for these ghost chasing shows filled with old prison shadows and broken-windowed asylums.
I also love the fact that the psychic always has advice for the people who first initiated the call for help. She has business cards of other spiritual people --from priests to shamans to psychotherapists--for the families to contact for help in "releasing" whatever is in their midst. She also gives it to the people who are "playing" with psychic realms...Recently she busted a seventeen year old teen-ager who was having his friends do seances at this abandoned building behind his home. The building had been a quack clinic, run by what amounted to a serial killer/doctor--a woman--who, in the name of "curing people"--mostly rich people with bad illnesses--in reality tortured them and starved them. Many, many, many deaths were recorded at the clinic. However, since she was allowed to do her own autopsies--this was in the 1800s--and word didn't really travel about what was going on--this continued for years. Finally, she took her own life--evidently starving herself. A true psychopath and a serial sadist.
The family currently owning the property didn't know the horrible history--only the part that a woman doctor ran a clinic on the place--and that one of the buildings was still standing. The father didn't realize the son and his friends were doing seances for months back there--his son only admitting to doing one seance and getting scared. However, "things began to happen" in the home...The cop uncovered the history. The psychic encountered "all the confused and suffering dead". She felt the doctor was also still "stuck"--but the doctor's ghost was willingly staying. Whether to avoid "retribution" or simply to "feed on the pain"--she was still around.
The boy's seances had enlarged the door to allow more and more confused ghosts to assemble and to be used as feed for the doctor.
The sketch by the police artist, based on the description of the psychic, matched the late photo of the doctor, which the retired cop had come across in his historical investigation. It was uncanny. Even if it was a set-up, the sincerity of the people involved--including the psychic and the detective--as well as the squirmy guilt of the teen and the astonished father--were brilliant. I loved it when the psychic lit into the boy. She let him have it about "bothering the dead"! She told him that the dead have many phases to go through to get free from this plane--it isn't just stepping up to Heaven--or Hell--and often those who have died in bad ways are confused about their situation--they repeat the death throes they went through and can't escape right away. In a place where so much physical and mental torture was passed on as "therapy"--confusion was built in. So, when one died it didn't seem much different and the ghosts were further being trapped by the seances and the living trying to communicate with them--as well as the more powerful spirt of the sadist.
The psychic suggested people to contact to help "clear the dead" and to remove the negative presence. Also, suggested help for the teen--and warned him--and the father--to stop playing with this--it is real and it is complicated and it is powerful. One must take serious study in these areas to know what to do; to be protected; to do no harm. Obviously, this kid had taken no such steps.
She also suggested the building be brought down, to further cleanse the property and release residual spirits.
I love it! Leave the dead alone! At one point, on her initial walk-through, the psychic grimaces. The camera-guy asks her what is going on. She answers: "I get a lot of spirits in confusion, coming up to me--they are really angry--they are saying 'stop poking us; stop telling us to talk to you!"
(They meant the boy and his friends and the seances--not the psychic.)
Right on.
I think I will stop watching these shows, too.
(Except, maybe, The Dead Zone. They might be the real-deal...)
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