Day of the dead

[pjthompson]

Ghost Hunters of the day: I can't believe that goofy Brian is now a father. My only thought was, "I hope the mom isn't the psycho he was involved with in earlier episodes." (Not that it's any of my business.)

And what's up with the show being over for the summer? They were on all of six weeks, I think. Both of the episodes from last night—the Manson murders and the Chaplin studios in Hollywood—could easily have been hour episodes on their own so I don't see why they were truncated. The Manson stuff was truly creepy.

It was also interesting to see Chris Fleming of Dead Famous on the show (as seen on the Biography Channel). IMO, Chris is somewhere between Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters on the credibility scale. He combines tech with mediumship, though no mediumship was evident on the Ghost Hunters episode. I just have a very hard time buying "channeling" and orbs. I notice that Grant, Jason, and Chris will be appearing at a ghost hunt on the Queen Mary in December? Two hundred thirty dollars a head, if you wanted to attend. A little rich for my blood.

Interesting fact of the day: Today my biological father would have been 107 years old. I was born in the last quarter of his actual life, but it still amazes me that he was so old when I showed up, and that the anniversary of his life was so very long ago. It's like I was living with ghosts since the day I was born. Rest in peace, dad.

Random quote of the day:

"The life of the dead consists in being present in the minds of the living."

—Cicero

I swear to God this came out of the quote file after I wrote the two entries above. Sometimes the synchronicity of this file floors me.

Picture of the day:

I decided to illustrate this quote with this image.

Here is the photographer's story about that day.

Comments

[wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com]

That picture made me cry.

And I like the quote. Definitely an uncanny synchronicity!

[pjthompson]

I like what you wrote before, too. I completely agree with it. In fact, I was thinking many of those things, looking at that image and crying myself.

[wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com]

LOL - took it off because I didn't want it to turn political. But...yeah. That's what I think.

[pjthompson]

What's really sad is that we have to be concerned about the politics of it. :-(

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Is that where Chris Fleming was from? (I don't get the Biography Channel.) I was trying to figure it out because the K2 meter seems too fancy for your run-of-the-mill ghost hunter to be carrying around. But, dude, when the temperature started dropping and they started answering questions... Even Jason was impressed and you know how hard it is to impress Jason!

I think, though, I might give Mind Control a try next week. I need another show to keep me entertained during the summer.

[pjthompson]

Is that where Chris Fleming was from?

Yep, but Dead Famous is not in production any more, I don't think. It's been all reruns for some time now, but some of those shows were pretty cool (and some lame). You can also check out Chris here:

http://www.unknownmagazine.com/main.html

Along with the fancy meter! And it really was cool how blown away Grant and Jason were by that and the temp drop! That voice on EVP, though? Soooooo creepy and so sad.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it? I kept thinking, "Oh no, is that the actress? It sounds like the actress is crying!"

[pjthompson]

She had a girly kind of voice--very disturbing. It could have been Abigail Folger, I suppose. She was the other woman who died that night.

[mrngglry98.livejournal.com]

I really like Mind Control. I've been watching the original British version, and Derren Brown scares the crap out of me. If I saw him coming towards me on the street, I think I'd turn around and run. hehe

[pjthompson]

I saw it once. He bugs the crap out of me. I'm not sure I'll watch.

[mrngglry98.livejournal.com]

Really? Because I figure that the majority of the reason his schtick works so well on people is because he's charming, well-spoken, and relatively good-looking. Most of the time, he barely has to do anything because people *want* to let him play mind tricks on them...or expect him to.

[pjthompson]

That's exactly why he bugs the crap out of me. Manipulative son-of-a-bitch! :-)

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

That picture--

Yeah, it made me cry. What a waste of both their lives. What a waste of all the lives of the young men in that cemetery.

[pjthompson]

Amen!

[mrngglry98.livejournal.com]

I just do not get the orbs thing, either. To me, it's obvious that it's just dust on the camera lens. I have plenty of pictures like that. I should send them the ones from my basement. Between the fact that my basement has a limestone foundation (which Ghost Hunters says is a prime conductor for paranormal activity) and the fact that my backyard is a cemetery, I could make a fortune off of amateur ghost hunters. ;)

[pjthompson]

I mistrust almost all photographic evidence on general principle. It's just too damned easy to fake/retouch pictures and make it look really good. The only photographic evidence which I would trust is that which is taken by me--but I don't expect anyone else to be convinced by it for the above-stated reasons. (And no, I don't have any good ghost pix.)

Video, film, heat scans, et al., are more convincing.

Between the fact that my basement has a limestone foundation (which Ghost Hunters says is a prime conductor for paranormal activity) and the fact that my backyard is a cemetery, I could make a fortune off of amateur ghost hunters. ;)

You should try doing some EVPs some time. Then again, maybe not. If it was me, I wouldn't want to know. ;-)

[mrngglry98.livejournal.com]

I'd want to know. I would be so excited if I had first-hand experience of paranormal phenomena because the majority of my brain refuses to believe in any of it. It's the hopeful, agnostic part of my brain that loves the Ghost Hunters and other such shows and wants someone to prove my rational part wrong. There's always room for a tiny bit of belief. ;)

Though, I do have to admit that, if someone proved my rational brain wrong, I might be too scared to sleep ever again...

[pjthompson]

Well, then, get yourself a digital handheld recorder (they aren't all that expensive) and either turn it on and leave it in the basement, or ask a question and then wait a long time before asking another. You may get something that doesn't have to have special software to analyze (i.e., that picks up sound outside the range of human hearing). Listening to all that dead (haha) air gets awfully boring, though.

Yes, I have done this. No, I didn't get anything that my human ears could pick up. (I didn't have the software so didn't take the analysis any further.) But a friend did. Tres creepy.

I might be too scared to sleep ever again...

One gets over it after a while. :-)

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

It was also interesting to see Chris Fleming of Dead Famous on the show (as seen on the Biography Channel).

I was not impressed. That meter he introduced seemed quite susceptible to manipulation, and I noticed that they never asked the so-called ghost any questions to which it answered "no." Even the Most Haunted team avoids that pitfall.

[pjthompson]

There was only one no answer, but I found the meter a bit weird, too. Like I said, Chris skirts the edge of "respectability," as far as I'm concerned.

And one more thing

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching soon after the K2 meter, or whatever that was. Not because I thought it was fake, but because ... man, I was alive when that happened. As soon as it came on the news, my parents would change the channel, but I caught enough. And my babysitter had the true crime book with photos. As my namesake, Evelyn, said in The Mummy, "No harm ever came from reading a book."

Well, yes, it did, and from seeing things on tv. That wasn't just a news story to me, but real people who were horribly murdered by monsters. That's what their killers were -- monsters.

And the idea that this man claims to own property haunted by those poor victims, and the whole Ghost Hunters/Sci-Fi group are turning a profit off of it, just made me sick. I shut the tv off.

[pjthompson]

I completely understand your reaction.

Yes, I was alive then, too, and remember it vividly. It had an extra creep/sadness/horror factor for me, as well, because of that. This is my home town, too! I thought it especially sad that there was even a chance that some of those poor people were still suffering and I wished there was some way to set them free. (There may be, and Fleming used to try to do that on his own show, but they either didn't go there this time or GH thought it might ruin their science rep to show it. That rather cheesed me off.)

But think about this (because it's something I think about a lot): it's true of every "ghost" they study. Just because these spirits were more recent and closer to home doesn't make it any less "exploitive," because if you buy into this premise, we are talking about the spirits of trapped and/or tormented once-humans here. (Or something posing as, but that's another post.) Many of them are trapped because of trauma, often because of murder or suicide. Their traumas are no less tragic than Sharon Tate's or the Black Dahlia, just less famous.

If we enjoy our frissons/fascination over them, we're just as complicit as SciFi/Ghost Hunters. I do think about this alot, and I'm troubled by it a lot. I expiated this sense of guilt somewhat by writing a story about it...but that seemed like a continuation of the problem. I never did anything with it.

And, basically, it's a natural human instinct to be fascinated and love getting the oogly wooglies over this stuff because it triggers all those lovely fear/adrenaline/endorphin centers in the brain--and because, simply, we want to know what might happen to us after we draw our last breath.

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

But think about this (because it's something I think about a lot): it's true of every "ghost" they study.

It's different in this way.

Some ghosts were people who died of natural causes. Some ghosts were people who died in battle, or who were murdered by strangers or loved ones.

But the scene of that crime is grotesque evidence that the people who died that night were not murdered by strangers or loved ones, nor by anything human. It is something more obscene than even the makers of snuff films could imagine.

Atrocities happen every day. Killings happen every day. These are facts of human existence. We carry them with us wherever we go, like a plague.

But what happened in that house, that night, was not human in origin. It was as if a rent was discovered in the fabric of our world, and something beyond our worst nightmares slipped through.

[pjthompson]

I don't disagree with you at all, and believe it or not, I am not defending the right of GH/SFC to exploit that murder or any other--that's precisely why I think about this a lot. Fret, if you will. I don't think this is the only haunted site where these kinds of horrific "openings" have occurred, either. Some of the places in Europe are darker than dark and in the grip of something I want no part of. I'm sure there are others here in the states, I just don't have personal knowledge of them--or can't think of any right off the top of my head. And yes, I agree that the creatures wielding the weapons that night were instruments for something much darker and nonhuman. I wasn't at all convinced that, even though the house has been torn down, something nonhuman isn't still operating there. I'm not entirely sure the EVPs were trapped murder victims. They may have been something else.

My main point here was that we should think seriously about all these hauntings, every last one of them, and not lose track of the fact that most of them are based on human suffering. I probably still watch, though. I can't seem to help it.

[merebrillante.livejournal.com]

The evening news shows human suffering too, and advertisers profit from it. So are we just supposed to shut ourselves up in our homes, cover our eyes, plug our ears? Or should we look?

I don't have the answer. I'm just asking questions to the universe.

[pjthompson]

As am I, basically. I won't be looking away, but I insist on asking myself--oh, and the universe--these questions on a regular basis.