Sunday, April 12, 2009

Ghosthunters In Miami

And it's time for Episode Four of Season Five....we don't get to start off with plumbing again (Dammit!) but we have second best, the TAPS meeting at headquarters:

Hey, Kris, give us a hint about where we're headed to this week.....
Party in the city where the heat is on
All night on the beach till the break of dawn
This the type of town I could spend a few days in
Miami the city that keeps the roof blazin

That's right, we’re going to Miami, Florida to the Cuban Club….and then to The Trelles Clinic.

We get the background on the place and J and G can’t wait to head down south to warm weather. It’s a big place so they call Britt to come along.



J & G get their serious plumbing faces on.


Some woman tells her story of seeing a male ghost there often, and the tour guide tells them that she wont go in the theater at night, because an actor hung himself her there. It creeps her out and makes the hair on her arms stand up. (I’m going to call it right now – Fear Cage!) It’s her only personal experience. She also tells them she has heard footsteps coming from the ballroom. And some people have seen a lady in white and a little boy playing with a ball there. Hmm….That’s a lot of secondary information.


Kris (EC to my bro) and Amy go to the ballroom and provoke the spirits. That seems to do the trick and a noise comes from the corner. but they can’t find an explanation so they ask J & G to check it out. G tries to walk on the roof to see if that makes noise downstairs but it doesn’t.


it's fun to tease spirits!!!!


He also finds that the buil.ding is close to electrical wires and there’s all other kinds of wiring inside the ballroom putting off some crazy EMFs....


Okay, Let me explain this Fear Cage thing one more time…..



Score! Did I call it or did I call it?


Wait, what’s this? Suddenly J is out- he’s not feeling well and he’s going to leave for the night. Britt is going to have to partner up with G.


Steve and Tango go to the cantina in the basement- where the little boy has been seen. They try for some EVPs. Tango suggests that maybe the ghosts don’t speak English and since neither of them speak Spanish, they suggest saying whatever Spanish words they know. Dave really gets into it.


Margarita!!

Tango accuses Steve of saying Spanish words with a Jamaican accent, which Steve finds amusing. It doesn’t seem to do anything, but they’re hopeful the EVP will turn something up. They run out of words they know in Spanish, and Steve yells out a final ‘Gracias!’


Britt and Grant take the K2 meter downstairs to maybe talk to the little boy. They also take a flashlight and ask the little boy to turn it on. Sure enough the flashlight comes on and then they ask it to turn it off…..please….and it does. This flashlight is not the push button one they usually use, but one that needs to be twisted on- which makes it even more impressive.



This happens twice so they start using it to answer questions- having him turn on the light for ‘yes’ answers. The area gets really cold and they find out the boy is 8 or 9. The flashlight is freezing when they’re done. G calls it ‘one of the moments you live for’ in the field.

And the left side of your building has a real bad case of what we pros like to call 'Fear Cage', Ma'am.



The Trelles Clinic is next….they’ve seen apparitions there, apparently. They’re doing renovations there- the place used to be a hospital. The owner says that he hopes whatever they find, they take with him. Clearly not a fan of ghosts!


Meanwhile, Jay looks suspiciously like he's not feeling well again.....


In the old pharmacy, a woman felt someone tug on the bottom of her shirt. She thinks it was a child. The owner says some people saw a ghost there and when they described her, he recognized her as the wife of the original owner (he has seen her in pictures). He also had a worker take off running when three big windows shut in front of him one at a time. There’s also some kind of meat grinder in the building that has a story about a man getting his arm caught in it and bleeding to death.



Time for the Investigation! J & G go into the ‘meat grinder’ room and get brave enough to open it….and it’s just a sterilizer, which is readily apparent by

1)opening it,

2)noticing the flush valves on the wall, and

3)reading the big sign on the thing that says STERILIZER.



So the whole ‘bleeding to death’ story couldn’t have happened….as Grant explains it, it would be ‘like getting your hand caught in a toilet and bleeding to death…it’s just not going to happen.’

Leave it to my guys to explain things with a plumbing analogy!

Debunked!


Tango and Steve checking out the windows….Steve makes the case right away that the windows are on a spring mechanism that is probably easily triggered….while trying to demonstrate to Tango…

SLAM!

Debunked!


J & G take the analyzed evidence back to the owner of the place….who you can tell right away does NOT wanna hear nothing about no ghosts!


It would be a reallllll shame if you didn't find anything...yeah, that would be really sad.....dang, what a waste of time!



Rub some dirt on it, pal.


But it’s not to be….since Kris and Amy picked up an EVP---that maybe is the name ‘Juan’ being whispered in one of the rooms they were in.

Suddenly the owner says that the last person who died there during surgery had the same name…I’m confused…did this guy bother to tell us this before?

Whatchoo talking about, Willis?


Jason looks like he’s having doubts about the dude as well….after all, this is the guy who decided something was a meat grinder despite the big sign on it saying STERILIZER.


Whatever…in any case, we have the best footage of the show so far this year….a camera that turns over 200 degrees on its tripod with no explanation. Freaky! J & G admit they have no explanation and that they tried experiments with the camera and tripod to see if they could loosen it to turn- but all the camera did when it was loosened was fall off the tripod. Also there is no shadow on the wall of any kind.


So most things at the Trelles Clinic were debunked, but the camera thing was pretty cool. J & G admit that’s probably a piece of footage they’ll wonder about for a long time. You need to head on over to hulu.com and check it out!


Time to get back to the East Coast….one last Fist Bump!

Weekly Totals:

Fear Cage! : One

Number of Windows Slamming: three, all Debunked!

Number of Footsteps caught on audio: Approximately Eight

EVP’s: One

Number of Cameras Turning on their own: One

Number of times ‘teasing’ a ghost actually led to communication: Zero (and EC and Amy did nothing but nanee nanee boo boo ghosts all through this show)

Number of times yelling random words in Spanish led to communication: Zero

Number of times using a Jamaican accent to do the above worked: Zero

Number of times saying just saying frickin ‘please’ to ghost worked: One

Number of Incidences of communicating with a flashlight: One


Plumbing Done: I’m going to give them ½ , because G said “leave it to a plumber’ when they discovered the meat grinder was really a sterilizer. They had pretty much figured it out but READING THE FREAKING SIGN ON IT sealed the deal. Which really means more of ‘Leave it to a READER’ but I was glad that plumbing at least made it into a conversation on the show, if nothing else.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Ghosthunters- Wharton Estate

And we’re off!…..to the third episode of GH.

And we begin….with omg…….no…it can’t be…..

Yes, my friends, it’s…..PLUMBING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Oh, yeah, daddy, with real wrenches and everything. J is handing G some big old wrench when the emergency TAPS phone he always carries rings. Kris is calling the Jaymeister telling him they have the Edith Wharton estate to check out. J thinks that sounds like a plan, G fixes the plumbing, and after a check to make sure things are running….the guys pick up their tools and we’re on our way to TAPS.


Holy Haunted Wharton Estate??......We're ON IT!!!!!


Kris says the place is huge. J and G decide they’re going to need extra help on this one. I can only hope it’s not so big they gotta call in Brian. Keep him on GH International.


They arrive and get the scoop. The house was built by Wharton to use as a retreat and entertain her friends. It was also owned by a girls school and a theater company.


We have a few first hand experiences recounted on video tape by people in the theater company. One woman said during a performance, she saw a man in a top c

oat who asked her ‘What’s all this ruckus?’ Not that unusual but his mouth didn’t move when he talked and then he disappeared into thin air. She said she read about Wharton later and identified the man as one of her lovers.


Another theater person who heard children’s voices outside playing…girl’s voices …and then of course there was nothing there. Another man tells a story about hearing someone walk down the hall and stop at his door- only to find nobody there.

In the stable, a workman saw a man watching him, and one of the employees heard footsteps and again, nobody there. I’m encouraged, most of these stories are first- hand, which my theory (yet to be proven) means the guys are more likely to find activity.

Britt from Ca is joining the investigation this time….and he has new equipment! He tells the story about hearing and feeling the vibrations of footsteps and not having a way to document that – so he’s come up with a machine to detect movement and vibration.

Also he has an EMF meter hooked up to something that emits a sound like a buzzing noise- so if the EMF is high, the buzzing will be louder.
Lots O' Ghosthunters.

Handprint???
J & G start in the mansion dining room and it isn’t long before they’re hearing footsteps above them. They go upstairs and hear something that sounds like a bowling ball being dropped. Then in another room they find something with the thermal that looks like a handprint.

They decide to use the new equipment while they listen again for footsteps.



Sometimes you just have to take a nap during these long investigations.....

Kristen and Britt go to the cottage and do EVP work, and also put one of the Geophones down. Then they hear some freaky ass noise sounded like someone yelling….Help or Help me….they go searching and whoops….




It ends up being nothing but a server in another room making a lot of noise.

That’s what I love about my peeps- they hear something freaky, they go TOWARDS it. Unlike me.


Then we have the one my brother calls ‘eye candy’ in the mansion attic with Amy. They notice there’s no drafts or movement of air. They h ear a little rustling and check it out, but Amy tells the spirits ‘you gotta do better than that, chumps’. Or she said something like that. Shortly after that she thought she felt someone pat her on the head. EC stands where Amy was standing and asks that someone pat her on the head too!
J & G to the attic. Its time to get the K2 out. J starts reading out of an old yearbook to see if that would get anything going, but no luck.

Yippee! It’s Dave and Tango time. D/T are like the comic relief of the show. Like the classic comedy team of ghosthunting, if you will. Much like we always have the part of the show where the TAPS office girl ‘explains’ the case to J & G, we always have the midpoint in the investigation where Dave tells Tango about some of the history of the place they’re at.


Or, Dave tells Tango that he has a special light for his head wh en it’s really a tiara. Then he lets him walk around with it on his head till the other guys ask him why he’s wearing a tiara. Those wacky guys! Anyway, Tango feels ‘funny’ in this room and asks D for the EMF meter. Turns out there’s really high readings, and they trace them back to some electrical equipment. Dave says he knew that people could be sensitive to high EMF like that, but it’s the first time he’s ever experienced it. Mini-Fear Cage, Anyone?


Then J&G check out the stables with Britt. Time to get out the K2 again. G calls the fellas in another room because he saw a shadow like someone looking in the doorway.

D/T in the dining room…..Dave tells T about the man who talked to the theater person. Tango says what scares him more is a floating head that’s screaming but you can’t hear anything. D says that’s a banshee. T imagines how cool that would be, if one of those just showed up in the room right now. D sez, ‘You so crazy’

Dude, if a floating head just turned up here screaming, that would be soooo freakin' SWEET


You mean like this.......AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


and then they start addressing the spirit who talked- and D decides maybe what they could do is make a lot of noise and try to disturb him. so of course they run around the table in cirucles and bang on things and clap their hands (and WHAT did I just say about comic relief???)


I smell a clip for the Halloween ‘best of ‘ show!

We wrap up, T/G analyze the stuff, and J & G go back to lay out the findings…. Turns out there’s not a ton of stuff besides everyone hearing a lot of footsteps and other misc noises…and the ‘head in the doorway’ and the mysterious handprint on the wall.

One thing J & G noticed about this handprint was that it was unusually LARGE.
Like, freaking big, dude. It was all, rarrrrrrrrrr........

And then I was all, Whoaaaaa, that hand is HUGE, J!

Seriously. It was one BIG hand. Like Bigfoot size. We're SO not even joking.

During the 'big hand' conversation, Grant reveals that his fingers can stretch pretty far (due to his piano playing abilities) and even he couldn't fill out the handprint.

Piano playing? In addition to being like, master plumbers, Italian chefs, AND Ghosthunters? Christ, what can't these guys do? Let's get them working on world peace during the hiatus!

this week we only have the one investigation, so it's time to get in the van and have the wrap up while the credits roll....looks like J and G are gonna rate this investigation as 'very good'. Only one thing left to do.....

FIST BUMP! And we're outta here.....

Number of doors opening (debunked as wind) -One

Number of potential orbs identified as insects -One

Number of odd noises that had no explanation -Many

Number of heads popping in the doorway seen by J -Two (Same one twice)

Number of Fear Cages! ½ ( a mini Fcage?)

Number of times footsteps were caught on Audio –One

Number of times actual plumbing was done- One (SCORE!)





Marlette UFOs

After re-reading your posts on the UFO's over Marlette (and also talking to others who saw things around that time) I thought maybe if I did a search I'd find something. I do remember that it made the local paper as well. This isn't from the paper, but maybe those of you that saw it can let us know if this is similar to your stories

Part 3 (no idea where parts 1 and 2 are)

Part 4


GH Update on its way later today....

Saturday, April 4, 2009

More Downstairs Bedroom Activity

I have a story about something that happened to me in the same room my mom had an experience. I was living there alone and one night when I was sleeping...and dreaming- about what, I'm not sure. All I remembered was that I saw a giant computer keyboard (or else I was very close to one) and one finger going towards the board to hit the 'Enter' button. As soon as the button was pushed, I was aware of being in my body- I felt like I just 'landed' hard into it- or was pulled hard into it.

At the same time as I felt that, it was like the LOUDEST biggest semi was going by the house- I could feel the house tremble and the lights were shining in the room- and I also remember that it was followed by another impossibly loud sound with lights- as I was waking up, I thought it was a truck followed by an EXTREMELY loud motorcycle.

As I started coming into wakefulness, I felt shaky and disoriented. Later-I don't know if was later that night, or the next day- I realized that there was nothing that would have been that loud or that bright. I don't know that we'll ever have a really good answer about what happened to me or my mom, but since those experiences, I have read other people's stories that recount almost the same thing. Some people also feel 'held down' or see people or scary things in their rooms.

The psychic Sylvia Browne has said she has heard many people tell her the same story (and I also had a friend -who also lived in Marlette when this happened- tell me his little brother got out of bed one night and told his family a very similar experience)
Anyway, Sylvia's theory is that when this happens, we're leaving our bodies and making a less than smooth re-entrance. This startles people and we hear the loud sounds, see the lights - basically it feels like things are very chaotic and scary around us, because we're scared and we're not fully aware enough in our bodies to understand what is going on.

I tend to side with her explanation-partly because it feels 'right' to me AND also I read her explanation after I had my experience. Seeing the 'enter' button being pushed just before this happened also makes me think I was out of my body.

Another reason I think I was out of my body has to do with another thing that started to happen to me when I lived in Marlette. If I went to sleep, and happened to be woke up prematurely, (usually in the first half hour or so of going to sleep) I'd wake up 'trembling' -feeling like my whole body was shaking very very slightly. I often wondered if someone touched me, they'd feel it- or if it was only in my head- but I know that I didn't have full awareness of what was going on around me until the trembling stopped.

I've lived in Milwaukee for over six years, and the trembling has followed me here- unlike many other things that only seemed to happen in that house- so that also makes me think that what happened was an out of body experience. I've also had other experiences precede the trembling- like seeing my arm (but not my real arm, which was laying beside me) up in the air and then suddenly pulled down very fast back into me when something woke me suddenly. Once I also thought I was in the kitchen going through a cupboard, when a noise or something woke me, and then I was in my body, trembling.

Sadly, I've noticed since starting school that the trembling happens more and more infrequently. Interestingly enough, my sleep has also gotten shittier! I used to be able to sleep through the whole night- now I sleep 3-4 hours at a time. I usually get up, move around, and then go back to bed. Not real restful and apparently not conducive to trembling. I've also read since then that trembling or shaking can accompany OBEs.

I'm hoping as my school responsibilities let up this summer that maybe things I used to love, like sleeping an entire night! and the trembling, will come back.

See you in the am for a GH review!
Mother F