Samhain/ Halloween

Happy Samhain to all my readers! I hope that, no matter how you celebrate the day, you do so safely and with great enjoyment.

Amongst modern neo-pagans and magical types, Samhain is one of the two great gates of the year, the other being the festival of Beltane in May. As you may know, in the Celtic lands in more ancient times, this is the time when livestock were slaughtered to provide meat for the coming winter and and when preparations for the cold season were in full swing. With the nights lengthening toward the Winter Solstice, shadows growing longer earlier and earlier each day and the energies of the earth sinking into dormancy, it was only natural that humans might also seek to turn within as well.

As with Beltane, Samhain was seen as a time when the veil between the worlds was thin and one might more easily commune with the beings of the Otherside. Amongst the Celts, at least, this communion seems to have taken the form of honoring the Ancestors and keeping up good relations with the Faerie. It was well understood that spirits of all kinds walked the night during this season and one had to be particularly careful if one had to be out and about but this was also a time when, for example, an extra place might be set at the table for visiting relatives who were no longer in their bodies.

As well, gifts of food and drink were left in a prominent place out doors for the Fair Ones as they made their rounds on Samhain. While offerings could be left for the Fair Folk at any time and, indeed, they often were, it was absolutely necessary to leave something (and do so generously) at Samhain to avoid any hostility on the part of “them ones”.

There is more than enough information on this feast out on the Net. Wiccans, in particular, love this time of year with all its witchy associations so feel free to check out some of their sites and have some fun, even if you are not of a neo-pagan bent.

Even if you are not inclined to believe in the Faery or other spirits that wander the night, each of us has Ancestors and, as I mentioned previously, Samhain was a time of honoring those ancestors and communing with them. In this day and age when we avoid death, hide our dying in hospitals and nursing homes and bury or cremate the dead as swiftly as can be arranged, we sometimes forget that, if it were not for the Ancestors, we would not be here. As many magical workers will tell you, we literally stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and it is up to us to prepare the way for those who have yet to come.

I urge you, on this night when the veil is thinnest to do some honor for your Ancestors. It may be something as simple as lighting a candle for them and saying a small prayer, setting a place for them at your dinner table or putting out a good cigar for your Uncle Vinny who loved a good smoke. Or you may decide to do something as deep as going to visit the ancestors in meditation. I am going to provide a link at the end of the blog to a resource that can help with this if you have never tried anything of this nature before. Andrieh Vitimus is a well known magician and priest in the Haitian Vodou tradition who knows a great deal about contacting the ancestors.

I wish you blessings on this most holy night. May you walk in peace as the dark half of the year begins and as your energies turn within may you find new aspects of your self to bring forward when the sun returns to the earth.

An excellent guided meditation for coming into attunement with the Ancestors

C2D1 Haunting : Spirit Negotiation

As I have mentioned, while I do not watch a lot of TV, I do keep up with several paranormal blogs and podcasts. I was listening to Beyond the Edge Radio a couple of weeks ago and heard about a haunting case I had not seen referenced before, the so-called C2D1 Haunting which took place at SUNY Geneseo in NY state. Here is a quick recap of the case for those not familiar with it along with the requisite spooky photo reportedly taken during the height of the haunting.

In many ways, the events that bedeviled Chris DiCesare followed the course of a classic, increasingly violent haunting. The events began with a voice whispering into Mr. DiCesare’s ear, calling his name, and escalated, over the course of several weeks to include alleged physical assaults and full body apparitions. Lon Strickler, one of the hosts of BTE Radio, a well known paranormal blogger, dug deeply into the story while Mr. DiCesare and his friend Jeff Unger were on the air. Strickler theorized that Mr. DiCesare was and is a “spirit beacon” – that is, someone who attracts the attention of spirits and with whom spirits will attempt to communicate. I would tend to agree with Mr. Strickler after listening to the interview and hearing some of the witness’ story in his own words.

In Spiritualist terms, it sounds as though Mr. DiCesare might be a latent spirit medium, that is, a person who has a greater than average ability to sense and communicate with spirits. In Mr. DiCesare’s case, that ability has remained mostly undeveloped likely due to the fright he received in this episode. It is interesting to note though that the haunting was resolved when Mr. DiCesare faced his fears and actually talked to the spirit involved. Later findings indicate that this ghost might even have been distantly related to the percipient, something which could only serve to attract the spirit even more. Imagine, if you will, being locked in a liminal state where very few people could see or hear you and suddenly having someone come along who could not only see you and hear you but also happened to be related to you. Would you not give your best effort to communicating with that person if you had some manner of unfinished business or simply needed some instructions on what to do now? Again, in Spiritualist terms, this is referred to as laying a ghost.

This episode, though, highlights a factor in hauntings that I think bears some attention. Like so many hauntings, this event began slowly and increased in intensity until it became an outright physical threat. Many modern ghost hunters would be quick to categorize this incident as a demonic haunting or at least the incursion of a negative or unfriendly spirit . . . and, they would be dead wrong.

If a ghost is, as most people assume, some non-corporeal part of a human being then we can expect it to behave in a manner similar to humans. Ask any medium and they will tell you that being dead does not, of necessity, make a person smarter, friendlier, or more enlightened than you or I. It certainly can give a person a different perspective, if they are willing to learn, but those spirits who are earthbound are often locked into old behavior patterns from life.

In this instance, Mr. DiCesare theorizes that the spirit in question was a distant relative who had been tortured and killed during the Revolutionary War period. I want you to take a few moments to step back and put yourself in this spirit’s place. You have been dead for over two hundred years and have been unable to pass over for whatever reason (it was not made clear in this interview). You see the opportunity to get some guidance from someone who can communicate with you and who is a relative. And suddenly, they are lashing out at you and even call in a priest to try to get rid of you. Your reaction? Please note that the haunting really escalated after the priest did the blessing trying to get rid of the ghost. As you or I would be, this spirit was angered and likely felt betrayed. It reacted accordingly and Mr. DiCesare’s situation got much worse before he finally consented to communication.

Fast forward to modern day with ghost hunters stalking through homes, with holy water and so-called demonologists, seeking to cast out spirits simply because someone in the home got a fright. Now, everyone who reads this blog knows that I am all for taking it to the Intruders when they rear their ugly heads and that I have no problem with a real priest doing an exorcism after all the protocols of the Church have been met and it is determined that there is a demon present (although I might quibble about the type of spirit). It seems to me though that a lot of the so-called hostile hauntings out there might simply be caused by spirits escalating things in order to get someone’s attention.

Once again, this is where having an experienced magical practitioner on a paranormal investigation team might yield good results. Even if the person is not a natural medium, they will likely know someone reliable and will have a good sense of when that person should be called in. Is it not far easier to negotiate with a spirit or ghost and find out what it wants than to plunge forward blindly in a manner that could aggravate the situation? Instead of calling the spirit out and attempting to get it to punch you in the nose, would it not be simpler and more effective to calmly ascertain what the spirit is after before pulling out the holy water and crosses?

My advice to ghost hunters? Listen to the witnesses! Once you are fairly certain you are not dealing with a hoax or hysteria, look for the person around whom the activity seems to settle and have them sit down with someone experienced, someone who can protect them if the being is truly malevolent and try to negotiate a truce. No harm can be done by doing this and it may resolve the situation to the satisfaction of parties on both sides of the veil.

Thoughts on the After Life

With Samhain (Halloween) coming up, talk naturally turns to ghosts and haunted places. There are a number of theories about what ghosts are and why some ghosts seem to remain in a particular area for a period of time. Let’s set aside, for this post, the various modalities that may produce haunted type phenomenon – strong emotional energy imprinted on a place, electromagnetic energy of various sources either fueling the phenomenon or causing the brains of humans to perceive the phenomenon, Otherworld entities that are not ghosts posing as ghosts for whatever reason, etc – and focus on the definition of a ghost that most people will bring forward if asked: the idea that all or part of the human soul complex might actually become stuck or choose to remain on this physical plane after the death of the physical body.

Now, if we accept this idea of a ghost being a remnant of a person, we are instantly led to the question of why the person is still with us. Again, many theories have been bandied about regarding this phenomenon: the person has unfinished business in our world, the person died suddenly and is having trouble accepting that they are dead, the person is afraid to pass over (hell might await them) and so on. I have had occasion to help some ghosts pass and I can tell you that these are all valid theories. I would like to add another idea to the mix, however, the thought that some people simply have no idea where to go when they die.

We have only to look at works like the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead to realize that humans have been considering the idea of what happens to them after death for millennia. Unlike the general fear of death and tendency to ignore the whole process typical of North America, these cultures not only viewed death as a natural process but even worked to provide their members (at least the favored ones) with road maps to the afterlife, veritable guide books to the places that the person who has passed would visit and how to get to the most desirable afterlife.

Reading these texts, you will note that they are very culturally and religiously specific thus skeptics, anthropologists and historians tend to dismiss them as quaint folklore or the attempts of a culture to allay their fears about what happens at the end. Of course, most skeptics, anthropologists and historians have never seen the inside of an esoteric temple much less been in one so they would have no idea what they were actually looking at when considering these ancient texts. The Books of the Dead are one of the many forms of the death dream.

Plainly and simply, occultists of varying stripes have known for ages that, when one passes over, it is a good idea to have developed a place to go. Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, the noted occult author and Director of Studies for Servants of the Light, speaks in one of her books (can not recall which one right now) of a project that she and a group of her adepts were involved in where in they helped people form their own death dreams.

These magicians worked with people in hospice and helped them develop a path for the time when they left their bodies. If the person had a specific religious belief then the mages used that belief as the story line for helping the person move on. If the person happened to be agnostic, then they were asked to recall a time in their lives when they were really happy. The adepts then helped the person develop a path out of life that lead to this time of happiness. In essence, the dying person was given a pathworking to work with and they had a chance to rehearse this path many times before their actual passing. The theory was that, when they left their bodies, they should then be able to more easily make it into the afterlife and not become stuck on our plane.

I had a teacher, some time ago, who insisted that we, his students, form at least a rudimentary death dream for ourselves since no one can really be sure of the day and hour of his or her passing. I was with this man for a little over a year and then he passed suddenly. I went to the rite of assistance held by his group for members who had passed over but this fellow did not need any help. I was able to perceive psychically that he had moved through his death dream precisely as he had set it up and the energy of that rite of assistance simply helped him through the final stages of his journey.

I’ve had people argue with me that Near Death Experiences prove that I am full of poodoo about this since NDE’s seem to be fairly universal. This is possible but it may be that the person who is clinically dead for a period but comes back has a different experience altogether from the person who dies and stays that way. I am not much of a gambler; I want to give myself the best odds of finding my way when I pass so I have definitely worked on the death dream since the passing of that mentor. If I am wrong then I will be happy to go to the Light and be done with it.

My experience with people who have passed though makes me more and more certain that the death dream concept has some weight. I’ve had to help both of my parents, neither of whom was particularly spiritual, to find their way into the afterlife and I have been at more than one funeral where the dead person was confused about what to do, even if they realized they were dead (something that has to be figured out before the death dream can be invoked). I’ve also seen this phenomenon with people who have died in catastrophes; there are always people left behind who are dead, who know they are dead but who have no idea how to cross over. Magicians and shaman have ways of helping these folks but it would be far easier on them if they had had a death dream.

So, the next time you read about a house haunted by this or that spirit, ask yourself: is that ghost there because it is attached to a person or place, or has some unfinished business or is the spirit simply there because it has no idea where to go?

More On Collecting Haunted Objects

In my last post, I ranted a bit about the danger to persons of accumulating objects that have been subjected to prolonged negative or even hostile energies, up to and including curses. I would like to follow up on that post with another article taking a somewhat broader view of this awful practice.

Again, I am not going to name names or point fingers. Some of the people involved with this practice are well known and quite popular in the paranormal community. Many people look to these folks as “experts”. I can not judge their expertise, having only had a chance to hear them on TV or podcasts but I think it is fair to say that, while they may have been on a lot of investigations, and may even have been lucky enough to help with some hostile hauntings, this practice of bringing items home and forming museums reveals a real gap in their knowledge of the spirit world and magical practices that can have catastrophic results.

Now before my dear readers think I have gone around the paranoid bend, I want you to consider for a moment an aspect of the paranormal and magical that we have discussed time and again in these pages – the concept of portals or window areas, liminal spots where the veil between the worlds seems thinner and where high strangeness seems to manifest on a regular basis. People involved with Forteana will think immediately of the Bridgewater Triangle, Cannock Chase or the Sedona ‘vortex’ areas. These places are some of the more famous paranormal hot spots around but, as I have pointed out, these portals may open almost anywhere and they may open for a variety of reasons.

Now, what do you suppose happens when you take a number of objects that have been exposed to the disharmonic emotional energies of a hostile haunting and put them all in one spot? Add in the fact that some of those objects may have been charged by magical practitioners who are not so careful of their fellow humans. Further, consider that spirits or their energies may be attached to some of these items. If you take all those eggs and crack them into the same skillet, it is quite possible and, in fact, likely, that, at some point, the energy will hit critical mass and open a doorway between the worlds. Now, take in the fact that like tends to attract like and you will see that such a place could very easily become a portal for the Intruders and all manner of other negative entities.

Fortunately, the astral worlds are vast and one open door, even one shining with dark light, will only attract so many entities. Astrological and other factors will prevent the door from being fully open all the time but let me assure you that such a site does not simply rest dormant. Until it is closed and the portal is effectively closed down, that site will allow through spirits of the sort that give people nightmares, literally. Even if these beings do not have the ability or strength to take on physical form, they can still effect the minds of unwary humans around them and produce the negative emotions upon which the entities feed. In extreme cases, I am convinced that such beings can effect the mind of an already unbalanced individual to commit acts of suicide or murder.

Fortunately, such incidences are rare and spirits of this nature can be effectively driven off with banishing rites and held at bay with the use of talismanic magic if they persist. Far easier though, would be remedying the source of the situation by shutting down these museums and safely disposing of the relics.

Collecting Haunted Items

I freely confess that this blog is going to be a rant but first a little background. I make no bones about the fact that I am a magical practitioner. As such, and because I try to do the right thing, I have been called on, occasionally, to help people who were in distress sort out an issue with magical or paranormal roots.

I have, at times when I was more public about my beliefs and practices, felt like a character out of Dion Fortune’s barely fictional novel The Secrets of Dr. John Taverner. If you know that work, I have actually met a child that I thought might be more Faerie than human and I have been in the middle of sorting out someone who had been initiated into what turned out to be a questionable group. Those who have read these pages know that I am a world walker, using both shamanic and etheric/astral projection techniques to travel in the Otherworld. While no one can know all of the Otherworld – it is simply too vast – I can lay claim to some knowledge and some familiarity with the spirits that walk those realms. As I have repeatedly asserted in this blog, many of the beings of the Otherworld are quite neutral toward humans, others are down right helpful and then there are the ones that are hostile to humans or regard us as prey.

Anyone who goes into the paranormal investigation “business”, unless they are astoundingly lucky, is going to come across cases where the forces in question are hostile, sometimes in the extreme. The proper response to these cases may vary, according to the skills of the team members. A team geared more for evidence collection is likely going to be forced to bail out of a hostile haunting while a team with other resources (mediums, shaman, Wiccans, exorcists etc) may be able to negotiate a truce or, in some cases, banish the entity.

What I want to rant a little about today is the practice, amongst some investigators who style themselves as demonologists, of actually taking items out of hostile haunted locations and storing them in “museums” where they can be accessed by the public. Not to put too fine a point on it, what the hell are these people thinking! Folks, I have done an etheric projection into one of these places and I can tell you with certainty that what I experienced there was enough to make me want to take a flame thrower to the place. Of course, humans have free will and they will do what they will do but I strongly urge you never to step foot in one of these houses of horror. The exposure to negative energies is not worth the thrills and chills. Even if 99% of the ‘legends’ in the place are false, that still leaves a small percentage of items that have been well and truly tainted.

A person who calls him or herself a demonologist should have a more than passing knowledge of the occult and magic. All those grimoires with spells for summoning demons were not fanciful medieval works of fiction. Granted, many of the “demons” were actually daimon who were mislabeled but I do not want to digress. The person who wants to call themselves a demonologist needs to have a deep knowledge of the spirit world (all types of spirits and not just the demonic) and more than passing knowledge of how energy works in a magical context (as well as a good understanding of physics). I’ve yet to see any of the alleged demonologists that are so popular on TV display any of this sort of knowledge, relying instead on appeals to St. Michael and other holy beings to keep things under wraps.

Now, far be it from me to discount the power of a fervent prayer, but, if you think that even the most fervent prayer is going to hold negative energy in check forever and render items that have come out of hostile haunting locations “safe”, then you are so delusional that you need to be checked into the magical equivalent of a psych ward right away. Even the best spells designed to hold something in place, will tend to decay over time unless there is a physical anchor for the spell and the spell is reinforced daily. Even then, it is a dangerous game to play – think of the djinn being inadvertently released from its bottle. Accidents happen.

There is no safe way to store “haunted” relics unless the item can be rendered completely inert – which will often destroy the object. But rendering the item inert takes out the creepy factor, doesn’t it? And these “museums” are making money off of offering people a new thrill, a different chill. This is not a game, folks. Contact with items that have been exposed, perhaps even immersed, in hostile energy fields or which may even have curses attached to them, can cause effects on people who are not even psychically sensitive. These effects can range from bad dreams and a sense of being watched to, in a worse case scenario, spirit incursion or even possession if the person is not properly defended. Again, having walked through one of these places in my other body, I strongly urge you to stay away from this kind of “entertainment”.

As I said before, humans have free will and will do what they will do. Perhaps it is part of the life lesson of some people to be exposed to these energies. It is my hope that it will be part of your life lesson to listen to the advice of an experienced practitioner and avoid these museums like the plague. Further, it is my fervent hope that this advice will spread and that the funds for these places will dry up completely so that there is no money in continuing this foolishness.

Here ends the rant.

More on the Creature of Mud Creek Road

In my last blog, I talked about an astonishing incident, reported by a couple in November 2011, in which they reportedly saw a being morphing from what they first took to be a naked human to . . . something else. The female percipient likened the witnessed transformation to watching someone become a werewolf while the male witness felt that he was, in the end, looking at a gargoyle without wings. I pointed out that, given the shiftiness of human perception, even in more normal situations, and the energies that surround an Otherworld incursion, the being in question might have been something reasonably harmless which was adopting protective camouflage.

I think this is a good theory since both witnesses survived the incident (and, yes, I am serious) but there are some other possibilities that merit discussion. I will start with the least likely and move to those I feel have more likelihood.

As unlikely as it seems, this case may have been exactly what it seems – a human shifting from one form into another. I have given my thoughts on why I think this is extremely unlikely (energy outlay = highly improbable) but let’s examine how this could be the case. In order for a human to transform from human to animal (or gargoyle for that matter) and back, a massive power source would be needed. People make the mistake of thinking that magic is easy – wave a wand or chant a spell and viola’, you get a result – but this is not the case. Magic like any other effort requires a power source. In mundane terms, the magician trying to pull off a “real world” physical transformation would need to find the equivalent of a nuclear reactor to power the working. Think gods, archangels, powerful old Faerie (which some see as gods) etc.

If a human being had gained sufficient access to such a being’s power (and I can not see an archangel being involved here unless it was to prove an ethical point) then anything, including a physical transformation is possible. As I mentioned before, there are legends of the gods and Faerie turning people into animals so there is some precedent as well. Still, I can not see such a being wasting that much energy. Its far more likely that the generator of such power might simply cast a powerful glamour to make both the “werewolf” and those around him/her believe that the individual was becoming a monster of some sort. Alternatively, the power source being might assist with some real werewolfery and help the person encase themselves in an etheric shell that looked and felt like a wolf or wolf man. In either case, both the shifter and the people seeing him or her would be absolutely convinced of a physical transformation and only punching the etheric shell with cold iron would dispel that notion. Most folks are not going to want to get that close to a raving werewolf.

So, such things are possible and there have even been people who learned or had a natural gift for the building of the etheric shell around the physical body but there is another magical technique that could have produced this frightening phenomenon. In the Norse story Hrolf’s Saga, we meet a hero named Bjarki who went forth into battle in the shape of a great bear. The interesting thing about Bjarki, if I have my sagas straight, is that while the bear was out fighting, Bjarki was out cold in his tent. In other words, this Viking warrior had mastered a form of projection that allowed him to manifest a bear on the field of battle, a solid physical form that played havoc in the enemy ranks until some clown woke the magician and forced him out onto the field of battle in his human form (the battle was subsequently lost, by the way). Such a gift of etheric projection would be extremely rare and would require a huge amount of time, training and discipline on the part of the projector as well as some serious help from the Otherside but I would imagine that anyone seeing the projection coming forth and taking form would be pardoned if they were convinced that they had seen a human transforming into something other. It’s that perception thing again.

Finally, and most likely in my view, is the possibility that the couple witnessed the incursion of an Otherworld being into our world. The Faerie, as one example, are noted shape shifters as are their cousins the djinn. While the creature might have just been adopting protective camouflage, it is also possible that it felt territorial about that area and wanted to scare the couple off, that it was more of a nature spirit and disliked humans on general principle, that it was a very powerful thought form placed there by First People shaman to protect a sacred site or that it was a spirit that fed on emotional energy and so performed this little scenario for a quick snack. In any of these events, I am sure that the experience was truly terrifying and I hope that discussing it with investigators has helped these two young people deal with an incident that would make even the most dyed in wool ‘skeptic’ think twice about his whole philosophy and outlook on life.

The Creature of Mud Creek Road

As I mentioned in my last blog, I have had the opportunity to listen to some of the paranormal podcasts out there. I was looking, the other day, for an interview with veteran researcher Stan Gordon, a man who has been investigating the unexplained for over 50 years, I found a great interview with him over at Beyond the Edge Radio (you will need to dig through their archives on iTunes or other podcast software to find the show). I wanted to see what Mr. Gordon was up to these days and, during the course of the interview, he mentioned a case that I had heard of before but had not had a chance to review here.

You can find the incident report for this occurrence at Phantoms and Monsters, one of the paranormal sites I have dialed into my RSS reader. This particular set of reports came to him from the aforementioned Stan Gordon and I found the first report in the queue, entitled “The Creature of Mud Creek Road” to be particularly interesting since I have a strong interest in shape shifters.

I am not going to quote the entire report, which comes from November 2011, but I would like to note the following. As you read this, please remember that when the couple in this sighting first saw the creature, they mistook it for a naked man crawling along the side of the road.

As the couple watched in amazement, the creature began to stretch its body. The man said that at this point the animal started to stand up on its back legs while also falling over onto its front feet. The driver said that in this position, the creature seemed to be about 6-7 feet tall. The animal then fell over on all four legs. The witnesses observed that the front claws of the creature was now two feet across the center line of the highway, while the back feet remain one-two feet from the edge of the road . . .

The witnesses indicated that this creature appeared to be changing form. The driver said, “Its shape was nothing like when it was squatted”. The woman stated to me that it “shaped into another form.” She thought it was a dark brown color, and looked like a werewolf with a little back hair. She estimated that when it was leaping into the woods, she thought it stood about 9 feet tall. The woman while reluctant to say it said, “I think it was a man changing into a werewolf”. The man after the experience went onto the internet to try to figure out what he saw, and told me that the closest way he could describe the creature would be a gargoyle with no wings. The man commented, “I will never forget what we saw that night”.

This is an utterly fascinating case of what appears to be someone or something caught in the act of shape shifting and it is well worth taking a look at the link and reading the full report.

I have stated more than once in these pages that I find it highly unlikely that a person could make a physical world transformation from human to animal. The energy outlay for such an event would be such that I doubt that even a werewolf could consume the calories necessary to sustain the Change to wolf and then back to human. A physical transformation would require the complete “re-booting” of an individual’s internal organs, bones and sinew and then a change back through the whole process. I never say that anything is impossible – legend states that the gods were able to change humans from one form to another – but I think it would require the interference of a fully manifested god form to bring on such a physical transformation.

So, what did these terrified people actually see? The answer here lies, I think, in perception. Note that each witness concluded something different when faced with this strangeness. The female thought it looked like a werewolf transformation while the male leaned toward a gargoyle.

Our perception of events, especially events outside our ordinary day to day life, can be skewed by any number of factors. Even in the more mundane instance of witnessing a purse snatching, police officers know that three different witnesses may give three different descriptions of the perpetrator depending on where they were standing, what the light was like, whether the day was overcast or clear and a host of other physical and environmental factors. If we add in the witnesses biases, their perception may be even more colored, literally. If, for example, the witness notes that the perpetrator is wearing clothes associated with a local gang, he may “see” the perpetrator as being of the race associated with that gang, even if the criminal happens to be of another ethnicity altogether.

Given that our perceptions are so easy to skew, let’s add in another factor, the incursion of an Otherworld being into our physical world. Such incursions are accompanied by energy, EMF and other, more subtle forces that are going to tend to cause perceptual issues in humans. The male witness noted that the creature seemed perturbed about being observed. It may be that the creature, whatever it was, was actually exerting an influence on the witness’ minds so that they did not see its true form. Its entirely possible that the couple encountered something benign along the side of the road that adopted protective camouflage when it realized it was being observed. My astral/etheric experiences have shown me that a lot of the nasty looking creatures out there are simply parasites that are either trying to get some emotion going so they can feed or are trying to scare you off so you don’t hurt them.

Somehow, I think that, if the thing really had been a werewolf or some other shape shifting monster, this couple might never have made it home to report this strange event.

The Wolf Pack: Another Early Warning Sign

I have periods of time in my work where I am tasked with doing a very necessary chore but one that does not require a great deal of brain power. I use those times to catch up on various paranormal podcasts (with headphones on, of course). Recently, I caught Linda Godfrey, the noted bipedal canid researcher, on Beyond the Edge Radio and she was talking about an episode of the TV show Paranormal Witness that was based on a sighting report contained in one of her many books.

“The Wolf Pack” is the story of a family who encountered not one or two but five upright bipedal canids on their property in Maine. The three people in the home at the time were literally kept from leaving during an entire night, despite the father’s best attempts to reach either his vehicle or his guns. While the TV episode does its best to make this scenario even more creepy and atmospheric than it already is, the bare facts of the case are enough to give one pause and to give us further cause to consider some of the signs that surround the opening of an access point between the worlds.

First of all, as I have mentioned before, I do not think that what Ms. Godfrey calls a manwolf or a dogman is the same thing as a werewolf. In magical terms, a werewolf would be a human being who seems to be capable of accessing wolf energy (or perhaps their own predatory shadow) and generating an etheric shell which resembles either a quadruped wolf or some hybrid thereof. It appears that the creatures Ms. Godfrey is studying are something “other” – either an unlikely canine mutation or beings of the Otherworld who sometimes cross over into our dimension for purposes that we can not entirely ascertain.

I talked in my last article about the Silence as an early warning sign for the opening of access points from one world to another. That was certainly the case in this occurrence. There were two times when the witnesses noted that the forest around their home had gone dead silent. In the first instance, they noted that deathly stillness on the night when they saw the lights in the woods that seemed to be a precursor to the wolf pack event. The second instance of the Silence happened right before the creatures were actually spotted.

One of the reasons that I do not think the manwolf is a canine mutation (and that Sasquatch is not a bipedal giant ape) is this phenomenon of the Silence. If the manwolf were a physical world predator, then you might see a localized area of silence in its immediate vicinity but chances are that other animals in the woods would make the beast’s presence known. This is why predators are not always successful when they hunt; other animals, if they detect the predator, will alert. When the Silence descends though, it is just that, a silence that is undisturbed by any movement or sound in the wood. To say that this is not natural is an understatement. To my knowledge, the only source of the Silence is an incursion from the Otherworld and, since we see this phenomenon associated with both the manwolf and Sasquatch, this leads me, again, to the conclusion that these creatures (and many other strange things reported) are just visiting this realm.

We see another warning sign of Otherworld intrusion cropping up in this incident: the lights that were seen in the forest some time before the manwolf event manifested. While some might instantly jump to UFO’s as an explanation (and technically, since these lights were flying and were unidentified, I suppose they were UFO’s), I am inclined to view these lights more along the lines of the legendary ghost lights seen in areas across the country. What many UFO researchers do not take into account is that there is a long history of association with these floating points of light and spirits, mostly of the dead or the Faerie. In other words, the ghost lights appear to be “lightweight” manifestations from the Otherworld.

In my view, the ghost lights might be the first signs of manifestation around an access point or the first beings able to make it through a portal that is not fully open yet. People who have had close contact with these lights often note that they seem to be sentient and will actively avoid people or play a sort of hide and seek game with humans, moving off to a distance and encouraging following, only to move off when the person gets too close. The concept of being Faerie-led into a bog or other dangerous place derives from these will-o-the-wisp type of lights. I have seen lights or so called orbs manifest in and around the circles used by magicians although I think that these may simply be signs of the gathering energy in a working. Perhaps these lights draw energy from the opening portal in much the same manner.

So, now we have identified two phenomenon that seem to accompany openings of access points from the Otherworld into this one and subsequent high strangeness. I am going to be considering other early warning signs that one might use to predict or at least recognize an outbreak of high strangeness and I will write about those in future blogs.

The Silence Re-Visited

In a previous blog, The Silence, I spoke about the quiet that paranormal witnesses often describe in their witness statement and some of the theories that surround that silence. In this installment, I would like to take this thinking a little farther.

David Paulides, the author of the Missing 411 series describes an incident, in this episode of Beyond the Edge Radio, in which he was out in the forest with an skilled guide and experienced an extended period of silence in the woodland around him. The shows host and co-hosts all agreed that this was “creepy” and, having experienced something similar in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona, I would have to agree. What if, though, such incidences are more than just creepy. What if they are a symptom of impending high strangeness and might even be used as a sort of early warning system for investigators in the field?

My theory is actually pretty simple. I admit to a silly love of monster shows and particularly enjoyed a BBC production called “Primeval”. In that show, “anomalies” open up and allow all manner of creatures, past and present, into our current space time. Now, you may call them anomalies, inter-dimensional rifts or rips, window areas, portals, the entry to Faerie or “a damn big hole in the sky” but it all boils down to the same thing – access points from other worlds into our world.

Likewise, there may be dozens of ways in which these access points occur ranging from natural magnetic processes to magical intervention. The skeptics can spend their time sitting around in denial but anyone who has spent any time listening to witnesses or looking at what little physical trace of these incidents is out there knows that there is a lot of weird . . . stuff happening in our world and sticking our heads in the sand is not the proper approach. Additionally, those of us who spend time in magical practices develop a deep understanding that there are worlds other than our own and that those worlds are inhabited by a plethora of beings.

Setting aside, for a moment, the idea that some of those beings are engaged in an organized deception campaign designed to feed their need for our energies, one never knows exactly what might come through one of these access points. I suspect that some of the more outlandish witness reports might be of creatures from other worlds that we do not often contact or who reach into the minds of humans looking for a form to assume. Given the richness of human folklore and imagination, there are all sorts of forms these beings could assume if they did not have a ready made “mold” of their own when they manifested.

The other important thing to remember is that these access points are two way. Beings can come through and, if we are lucky or unlucky enough to find one of these access points, we can step from this world into another and sometimes come back. Faerie lore from all over the world tells us this is possible though the person who has been to Faerie often suffers unusual consequences for his or her temerity. I have to wonder if some of Mr. Paulides’ missing people have not actually wandered inadvertently through one of these access points and been unable to return. It makes sense, from this theoretical frame work, to assume that, even if a person did make it back to this world they might not drop exactly where they left. This would help to account for small children and handicapped people being found miles from where they were lost, confused and unable to relate what happened to them (such a journey is bound to be a shock to the nervous system).

Unlike the characters in “Primeval”, investigators do not have “anomaly detectors” to work with in the field. While I suspect that an EMF detector would go nuts next to one of these access points, the investigator would have to be right on top of the “door” before he or she would pick up the readings. So, how do we know if we are in an area that is going to yield investigative results? Obviously, one has to look for areas of high activity but, once these areas have been located, The Silence might be a good early warning system, at least in more outdoor places.

Now, if my experience is anything to judge by, the investigator is going to have to have a firefighter’s personality – he or she is going to have to be willing to run toward that which most people are inclined to run away from. In other words, if the Silence settles in an area, the investigator is going to have to try to quickly and quietly move toward the center of the lack of sound and get any equipment in place in the same manner. If anyone actually wants to try this, please remember, safety first. Move in teams, watch your footing (especially when moving equipment), know some basic banishing techniques and don’t be too proud to retreat if things get out of hand. As I have pointed out, over and over in these pages, beings from the Otherworld come in as many varieties as humans do (more, actually) and with as many different motivations and ethical structures. Stealth and caution are the order of the day should you happen to find or get close to one of these access points.

Six Months . . . Still Blogging and Looking To The Future

I was looking at back posts for the blog the other day and realized that, without me quite realizing it, I had passed the six month mark for this blog and was well on the way to the one year mark (10 January 2014, for those who might be curious). I wanted to stop here, take a breath and thank everyone who has visited the site and especially those who are not following the blog. I also want to offer my sincere gratitude to those of you who have commented and offered encouragement over the past several months. I want to assure you that I am nowhere close to running out of ideas and will continue to do what I have been doing over the last (now) nine months.

Looking to the future though, I would also like to continue with my own etheric explorations of paranormal sites. In this post, I talked about a short series of etheric projection experiments that I did with a paranormal investigator that produced some very interesting results. I would love to continue to explore this realm and am considering reaching out to other investigators. If you happen to be reading this piece and know someone who might be interested in my input into their investigations, please feel free to leave a comment.

Here’s how it would work. I want to know absolutely nothing about the site except it’s physical geographic coordinates. If those are not available then a street address will do. All the investigator has to do is supply me with that information and I will do the rest. I use the coordinates to look at a “from the air” view of the area so that I can vector into the proper site. Once the projection is done, I will supply a full report of everything I see and encounter, if applicable, and the investigator is free to use that information or not as they choose. If I encounter anything that I deem hostile, I will let the investigator know in no uncertain terms and will hope that the team in questions will take necessary precautions. I will not, of course, be responsible if the team ignores my advice and gets eaten by monsters.

Again, many thanks for your continued support of the blog. Back to our regularly scheduled program.