Re-Blog: Creature Of Mud Creek Road

This is another blog that I wrote back in 2013 about a fascinating case involving a “shape shifter”.  I am on the road travelling for work this week but did not want to let Tuesday pass without an article appearing in the blog. 

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.

Thoughts on Relocation

Well, the only thing in life that is constant is change.  After living in the Atlanta area for some time now, and establishing herself in her industry, my wife has been offered her dream job in Charlotte, North Carolina, and we will be moving at the end of this month.

I will try to get far enough ahead with blog posts not to cause an interruption in my weekly schedule but circumstances with my work may prevent that.  It seems that, after 12 years of service, my day job is being outsourced to India and I am expected to train those who will replace me.  Since I am not the sort of person who leaves cohorts in a lurch, I will be travelling a good bit this month as I prepare for my departure at the end of September.  I apologize in advance if this causes me to miss a post.

While I will be sad to leave some of the colleagues that I have worked with for so long, I am viewing this outsourcing as an opportunity to explore new revenue streams.  As I mentioned when I came back to the blog after being out for a while, I have been taking my writing seriously and the energy I have poured into it is beginning to pay off.  One of my short stories was accepted for publication in the anthology Into the Abyss by Darkerwood Publishing.  I have a second anthology submission in that I should find out about soon and the publisher of that anthology will also be publishing my first novel but there is no release date for that as yet.  I am over 30,000 words into the second book of that fiction series.

I will also be looking at “day job” opportunities in the Charlotte area.  Since we happen to be moving to a financial center, I suspect that my 12 years of banking will help me find something suitable and I will, of course, be working with my spirits to find just the right thing.

In the mean time, though, I am packing the house a little at a time and getting prepared for the aforementioned travel.  I am not one who flies well; it is not a mode of travel that I prefer.  I feel that human beings are not meant to be packed into flying cigar tubes, hurled through the air at ridiculous speeds and then dumped on the ground in a place that they often have no connection to.  Such travel, in my view, disjoints the spirit and puts a person in a position of literally having to catch up with themselves both coming and going.  I find car or train travel much easier, but alas, I do not have that luxury in this instance.

So, I will focus on something more positive instead.  As we have had more time to prepare for this move than for our move to Atlanta (we moved from Columbus, GA, to Atlanta in about three weeks), we have actually been to Charlotte and set aside an apartment.  Our new place actually backs onto a greenway and, as I explored the complex, I found that shaded walkway to be quite active with land spirits.  I think that, once I am in and settled, I shall have an interesting time getting to know the curious ones of this new place and welcoming the spirits that follow me to their new home.

I have been getting indications, from, the ‘friends’ that walk with me, that they would like something more permanent to live in here in my home, so I will be looking into the construction of what some call a spirit pot but I prefer to call simply a spirit vessel.  As you might imagine, such a vessel represents a home for a spirit or spirits who follow you.  For example, one might make a spirit vessel for the guardians who protect the home so that they make the move without any disruption of their protection.

I will also, as I get my feet on the ground in Charlotte, be communing with those who walk with me to secure just the right position – a job that will provide support for my household and still allow me time to develop my writing career.  I am fortunate to have such a long time to my release so that I have time to move and get settled and I also have access to not one but two employment assistance programs, one from my wife’s new company, assisting with spousal relocation, and the other from the company where I am presently working.  I will take full advantage of those services and give them both a magical poke in the rear to put me on the track of the above-mentioned job.

So, it is a time of stress for me.  I have experienced some  of Selye’s top stressors since the beginning of the year: loss of a beloved pet, loss of a job and relocation to a new place.  I am striving to maintain my equanimity by continuing my daily meditation practice, work with my ancestors and other spirits and energy work.

May this year of change settle soon so that I may get a good view of my life and the direction it is going.

 

 

 

 

Re-Blog: Tulpas, Thoughtforms and Monsters, Oh My!

This is a blog that I wrote back in 2013 but, given some of the rumblings about thought forms I have been hearing on-line, I thought this was a good time to re-post it.  

I am an inveterate podcast listener. The job that puts bread on the table can, at times, be very repetitive, requiring little in the way of thought, so I often spice up my day by listening to one or the other of the paranormal podcasts on the Web. The other day I was listening to an interview with the noted paranormal author, Nick Redfern and the discussion turned to the place of tulpas in monster lore. I realized, as I listened to this show, that while I had referred to these beings obliquely in some of my posts, I have not dedicated a post to this subject.

First off, a point of definition. In my view a tulpa and a thought form are the same thing. The only difference is that the term tulpa originates with the Tibetan esoteric tradition while thought form is used in the Western traditions to describe the same process. You will also sometimes see Western magicians refer to a thought form as a servitor. While some people will quibble and say that each of these concepts is a slightly different thing, I am going to throw them all into the hash together and refer to them, from here on out, as thought forms.

So what is a thought form? Pared down to basics, a thought form is a being of desire, visualization and imagination (see Magical Use of Thought Forms: A Proven System of Mental & Spiritual Empowerment by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and J.H. Brennan). To create a thought form, the magician pulls an image from his or her inner storehouse of images (imagination), visualizes it powerfully and in Technicolor detail (visualization) and empowers it to perform a certain task or tasks according to his or her desire. Simple enough until one realizes how flabby human visualization skills have gotten since the advent of television and film. The other skill that the magician must master in order to work effectively with thought forms is the skill of placing limits on them and de-constructing them once their purpose is finished.

What can a thought form be used for? Almost anything. As I mentioned, some modern magicians refer to these creations as servitors because that is precisely what they are supposed to do – serve the will of the magician. Thought forms have been used for everything from helping a writer with inspiration for a project (no, I do not use thought forms for this purpose) to providing a soldier with actual physical protection in battle. In general, a thought form is not visible to the majority of people (some psychics can see them) but, if you read enough magical lore, you will find stories of magicians who created thought forms that were not only visible but were able to physically interact with this world. In chapter 3 of the excellent book I mentioned above, one finds the story of a Tibetan lama who, after considerable effort, managed to bring a yidam, a type of meditation deity, into physical manifestation as part of his movement toward enlightenment.

That chapter is instructive not only in telling the reader about the possibilities of thought form creation but also in bringing to the attention the knowledge that the process of thought form creation is not as easy as it sounds. In order to do this type of work, one really has to be able to make an image real in the mind and then be able to infuse it with all the force of desire, directed by magical means so that the being is limited in its scope. This is important since magical lore also tells us that a thought form created without proper limits can take on a sort of life of its own.

One of the best known stories in this regard also comes from Tibet. One of the early theosophists, Alexandra David Neel, journeyed to Tibet and, during her stay there, worked on the creation of a tulpa (thought form) in the image of a short, fat, jolly monk. After several months of meditation and practice, this tulpa manifested and was seen by David Neel and others. David Neel also reported physical contact from this thought form on a number of occasions. Eventually, though, the monk began to take on a darker aspect and David Neel was forced to learn how to take the thought form apart and re-absorb it. I suspect that this had to do with David Neel’s not having a clear desire for the thought form when she created it; the being was an experiment and so did not seem to have a distinct purpose other than to assuage her curiosity.

Now, how does the creation of these magical beings tie into the world of the paranormal? I think that an excellent example might be some of the Manwolf sightings around Native American mounds in the Wisconsin/Michigan area of the United States. Archeologists argue about what purpose the mounds served but they are agreed that these were sites of importance to the indigenous people of that period. I think it is entirely possible that some of the Manwolves reported in those areas are actually thought forms, created by ancient shaman as guardian spirits for the mounds. If such a thought form were created by a group of shaman, given the assignment to guard the mounds indefinitely and then turned loose to do that bidding, there would be no reason for the thought form to dissolve. Over time, it would take on a single minded life of its own and the only thing that would prevent it from doing its job would be a lack of energy. It would have gotten a powerful shot of energy in its creation and would have been “fed” periodically by its creators but when those people died or moved away, the thought form would have languished and dissolved unless it found alternate ways to feed itself – such as scaring the heck out of people and feeding off that energy.

As with all the theories I discuss on this blog, I do not think that thought forms constitute the universal field theory of the paranormal but, given what is known about them, they should certainly enter into the consideration of any paranormal investigator.

Orlando

The Internet has been full of people slinging opinions around after the terrible tragedy of 50 people losing their lives at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.  Normally, I do not use this blog to get involved in such controversies.  Normally, I am content to let people believe what they want to believe and spew forth whatever vitriol they want to spew.  Normally.

There is nothing normal, though, about a madman bursting into a night club and gunning down a hundred or more people (dead and wounded).  Nor was there anything normal about the response to this shooting as I watched the social media outlets.  If I had to sum up the response, it seemed to me that it would have been “Sorry all those people died but, if you guys had listened to me about (fill in the blank) this never would have happened.”

 

What I have found particularly horrifying about this event and, in fact, the response to mass shootings in general is the high level of us vs. them, I am right and you are wrong thinking expressed in so many of the responses.  This sort of black and white, fundamentalist thinking is precisely what allows people to begin to rationalize marginalization, oppression and persecution of the “other” (whoever that may be) and, with the proper mental aberration, even murder of those who do not fall into the category of “us”.

Those 49 faces that are starting to appear in memorials?  They were fellow human beings who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  What you think about guns or immigration policy, for example, is completely irrelevant at this point.  There will be time for such discussion when cooler heads can prevail.

What is relevant, what is vital, is that we, as a country, step up and offer whatever support we can to the living victims and their family, friends, acquaintances and beyond.  What is vitally important, in my view, is that those people, people just like you and I are not left to bear their sorrow alone because everyone is so damnably busy pointing fingers or espousing their favorite cause.

This is a chance to show your fundamental humanity, folks.  Donate blood if you can, contribute to the relief funds, use social media to express your deep condolences and support of those who are left behind.  Leave the politicking behind for a little while and extend your heart and hands openly.

For all the healers out there, this is a time to ply your gift unreservedly and with all the strength you can muster.  For those who are magically inclined, there is work to be done making sure that the ways are open for those who died, that protection and healing follow those who survived and that healing spirits are everywhere available to help and console where you physically can not be.  It is so trite to say that our thoughts and prayers are with those in Orlando, but let that really be so and lets back those thoughts and prayers up with action.

I understand that tragedies of this sort prompt strong feelings in people and that many folks have opinions about how these monstrous acts could be prevented.  I certainly do.  Right now though, let’s stop being pundits for a short time and allow ourselves to be fully human, feeling the pain of those effected by this horrific act and acting with compassion and love from that empathy.  Do not harden your hearts and look at this as just another example of how you are right but allow yourself to move past your opinions to see the people who are so direly effected by this event.

 

 

The Three Kings

I happened across this little gem called The Three Kings Ritual amongst my Twitter feeds the other day.  I am beginning to think that I am going to have to write a book about safe spirit contact for those interested in the paranormal since people keep putting this tripe online (no offense intended to the Week in Weird folks – the original version of this ritual came from a Reddit feed).

Anyone who has followed the blog for a while will know that I am all for spirit work.  I work with spirits in my practices all the time and I feel that those spirits have blessed me with love, support, protection and guidance over the years.  I do dream work with the spirits that I know and commune with them regularly in my meditations and by making offerings and prayers to them on specific days.  I have built a relationship with them and, if I need something I ask.  Conversely, if the spirits in question want something from me, they are not shy about letting me know.  I try to accommodate them and, if I can not, I explain why and try to work out an equitable solution.

Does this sound familiar?  It should since my relationship with my spiritual ‘family’ is similar to the relationship that I have with friends and relations in our consensual reality.  I do not walk out into the middle of my neighborhood, approach people I do not know and ask them if they want to come over to my house for a chat.  Anyone proposing that you do that sort of thing would likely be met with a jaundiced eye by most people but the Internet seems determined to get people to do just that with the spirit world.  If I were of a more conspiratorial bent, I might think that there was a group of disharmonic entities working through people to put these ‘games’ online.

I am not going to waste a lot of words taking this ritual apart piece by piece.  Suffice to say that the ‘game’ is designed to place people in a semi-fearful state of mind or, for the more skeptical, at least create a sense of anticipation by using not so subtle cues like the performance of the ritual in the so-called dead time made famous on certain paranormal shows.  In addition, the constant harping on back ups (such as the candle, the water bucket and the toy to make certain that the person comes back from their trance) also creates the anticipatory feel that something is going to happen.  Add to that the effect of sitting quietly, in a dark room with two mirrors and nothing but the light of a flickering candle and all but the most concrete-headed will fall into some level of trance.  Basically, this is a set up for mirror scrying – clairvoyance using a mirror as a focus, a technique well known in ceremonial circles as a part of spirit evocation (calling a spirit into various levels of manifestation).  For more on the use of mirrors in magic, see my blog titled Mirror, Mirror.

The old adage in magical circles applies here: never summon what you can not send back.  The fact of the matter is that this ritual is dangerous simply because you have no idea what you are summoning, you have no protections in place in case something nasty comes through (yes, Virginia, there are spirits who do not like humans at all and other spirits who feed on the type of fear that this sort of incautious work engenders) and there is no easy way to send back whatever decides to show up since the worker has not taken any steps to contain any spirit that manifests.  As with the use of a spirit board, there is a correct way to use use such a tool in invocation/evocation work and there is an incorrect way.  This ritual does not even approach being the correct way to make contact since it follows the open door system of spirit contact – i.e. there is no specific entity being sought, rather, the door is being opened for any being to come through.

Given the references to the “Shadowside”, the creepiness of doing this during dead time, the repeated references to back ups designed to bring the operator out of trance and so on, the subconscious coding for this ritual is one of the anticipation of something scary manifesting.  Add to this the testimony of others on the site that something creepy did indeed occur and this ‘program’ is even more deeply set.  If your subconscious mind already has the ritual coded as a scary event, then guess what you are most likely to attract?

 

 

 

Cops and the Paranormal

Most people think of police officers, military police and public safety officers of varying sorts as being reliable witnesses.  Such individuals are trained observers, often with extensive experience in documenting what they observed and with a finely honed sense of the verity of those they come into contact with.  I just got finished reading Cops’ True Stories of the Paranormal: Ghosts, UFOs and Other Shivers compiled by well known author Loren W. Christensen and had to get my two cents worth in on this subject.

About the book, Mr. Christensen seems to have been a little short of stories of a particular type for the book so he pads the contents with news stories and pretty much takes a kitchen sink approach to the paranormal, throwing in everything from ghost stories to tales of ‘divine intervention’ to his own UFO experiences working as military policeman in the 1960’s.   The tales themselves are worth a read; more than one of the stories will make even the most seasoned paranormalist do a double take, especially when considering that the witnesses are public safety personnel.

Having spent a considerable amount of time working security of one type or the other when I was young, I had my own interesting experiences of the paranormal kind. The two incidents that stand out for me both happened when I worked as a security officer for a popular tourist hotel on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas (no, this was not the haunted Menger hotel, it was one of the structures that went up to accommodate the crowds that came for Hemisfair in 1968).

The top floor of this hotel was actually a large ballroom and, of course, it was a place that the security staff had to make certain was secured after hours since I and other officers had encountered adventurous lovers in various states of dress (or undress) when someone had forgotten to lock the doors.  Given that one never knew what one might stumble over and that walking the empty floor of the ballroom in the dead of night, with no light coming in but ambient illumination from the street below, was spooky even without the story below, patrolling the ballroom was not a duty that officers looked forward to.

I was working the midnight shift when a call come through from one of the other officers working that night to meet him in a service area on the floor below the ballroom.  I hustled to get there since the officer sounded a little panicked on the radio and, when I arrived, I found that the other security person working that evening had also responded.  “George” (names have been changed since I do not have express permission to use them), the officer who had called, was in a state.  He was pale, his hands were shaking and his eyes were so wide that I could see the whites all the way around.  At first, he could not seem to get out what the matter was but eventually, he led “Maria” and myself up the stairs to the ballroom.

It seems that George had been on patrol, walking the top floor of the hotel.  He unlocked and came through the double doors to the ballroom and, after re-locking the doors, noticed that there was someone standing in middle of the ballroom floor.  This, by itself, took him aback since he was certain that there was no one there when he came in.  He told himself that it had to be one of the banquet staff who had been behind the partition that hid the serving area from the main floor.  George hailed the figure standing in the middle of that large expanse of dance floor and, when he got no reply, turned his flashlight on.  The figure promptly disappeared and George made record time getting down to the next floor and calling back up to accompany him upstairs.  We cleared the area and there was no one there.

I might have been inclined to treat George with a strong touch of disbelief if I had not had an experience over the winter that convinced me that something odd was going on in this hotel.  Strangely, it happened that “Maria”, the officer who had accompanied us to the ballroom that night, was on duty with me that evening as well.

It was shortly before Christmas and, as happens with some hotels, our property was experiencing very low occupancy.  As such, “Maria” and I were covering the whole hotel for the evening.

I was about an hour away from finishing up my shift at 11:00 p.m.and was looking forward to meeting some friends for a friendly round or two after work when the call came in.  A guest was complaining of work men hammering in a room adjacent to him.  I responded to the area and did not hear anything and “Maria” showed up a couple of minutes later.  We stood in the hallway and listened.  There was no noise at all except for the murmur of a television down the hall.  After a few minutes, I knocked on the guest’s door, identified myself and spoke with him once he opened the door.  He invited “Maria” and I in and, sure enough, as soon as we were in the room, something banged on the wall in the room next door.

Now, this was alarming since our dispatch had confirmed that there were no guests in the rooms around the complainant.  There were no room renovations in progress and no reason why the maintenance crew would be working so we swiftly moved out into the hallway and used a master key to enter the other room.  It does not take long to check occupancy on a hotel room.  There was no one there but, as we stood looking confused, we heard the banging clearly again.  Only this time, the sound seemed to be coming from the room on the other side of this guest’s room.

Again, we sprinted past the occupied room and entered the unoccupied room where the sound seemed to come from and, again, the rom was completely vacant.  Since the hotel was almost empty, “Maria” and I spent the next half hour systematically checking all the rooms above and below the guest’s room and never found anyone.  We did, however, hear the banging two or three other times, always in rooms that we had either just left or in rooms that we were going to next.  Eventually, we explained to the guest that we were unable to locate the source of the noise and offered him a change to a room several floors below the one he was in.  He accepted gladly and that was the end of the problem.

The property was fairly old so I suppose that the banging could have been caused by pipes or some other mechanical issue but the trickster nature of the whole incident still gives me pause.

Mirror, Mirror . . .

I was listening to Into the Fray Radio a while back (sorry, can not pinpoint the exact episode) and Sam Sharon happened to tell a terrifying story about waking up and seeing words and images appearing in the mirrored door of the closet in his room (again, this was a while back so please pardon my lack of specificity).  At the time, I remembered thinking that the subject of mirrors would make a terrific post.

While I have not had any terrifying encounters with mirrors, I knew people, in my youth who had.  Now, I can not be entirely sure that some of these tales were not related to the consumption of controlled substances but I can say that several stories were told to me with right hand raised and the person swearing to me that they were ‘sober as a judge’ when the incidents occurred.  My favorite story comes from a young man who I will call Nate.

If Nate had grown up in another generation, people would have called him a goth.  He tended toward blacks and dark grays in all his clothing, was known to paint his fingernails black and, for the shock factor, sometimes were dark eyeliner when he was going out to bars.  He also, as you might expect, loved Dungeons and Dragons when he was not dabbling in the dark side of the esoteric.  Nate stated to me that he swore off any doings with the occult after the following incident.

Nate was a night owl long before he effected the Goth look.  If allowed to, he would sleep the day away and rise shortly before dark to commence his activities.  On this particular night though, he had to rise the next day for work and so retired at a sedate (for him) time of around midnight or one a.m.  Having consumed a libation or two before bed, he woke in the night and stumbled down the hall to his bathroom.  There was a large, oval mirror hanging in his hall and, when he passed this mirror, he happened to glance into the surface.  Immediately, he stopped, frozen on the spot.

It was not so much what he saw but rather what he felt that terrified Nate that night.  In his mind’s eye, or perhaps even to his physical eye, the mirror was filled with smoke.  What scared the life out of him, however, was the feeling that he was being drawn into the mirror, pulled by an unseen force into and through the surface smoke and into a layer of cold and darkness beyond.  Later, Nate would acknowledge that it was his essence or astral/etheric body that was being pulled but, at the time, Nate felt as if he were being physically sucked through a vortex into the darkness beyond.

Fortunately, Nate’s girlfriend happened to be sleeping over that night and heard something that woke her.  She stuck her head into the hallway and found Nate with his face pressed firmly against the glass.  Assuming that he was sleep walking, she pushed and shoved him away from the mirror and eventually, he “woke up”, wild eyed and inarticulate until he managed to calm himself enough to return to bed.  He did not tell her the full story until the next morning when he took the mirror down and covered it with a dark cloth.

Now, again, I can not attest to the absolute verity of this story.  Nate was a person of intellect and imagination and I know for a fact that he had used psychotropic drugs.  The thing that convinces me that something happened to him that night was the pallor of his skin and trembling when he told me the story later.  Something had genuinely scared the life out of him and whether it was sleep walking combined with dreaming, residual effects from his chemical experimentation or a paranormal experience, it was real enough to him to effect a change in his life.  To my knowledge, he got rid of all the questionable occult volumes in his possession (this was in the age before the internet).  I moved away from the area shortly after this happened and lost contact with Nate so I do not know if the change was permanent.

If you look at The Practice of Magical Evocation, the classic text by Franz Bardon, you will note that there is a whole section on ‘magic mirrors’ in the text.  Bardon notes that mirrors are used in spirit work for a variety of reasons: for scrying (a type of clairvoyance), for transmission of energy into a ritual space, as an energy reservoir, as a telepathic ‘telephone’ and as a protection against undesired influences.  Most important for our purposes though is that  “The mirror may be employed as a magnetic force for attracting the being that is to be evoked . . .”  Now, in the next sentence, Bardon discusses the use of a fluid condenser for bringing about this magnetic force but I would note that, in my experience, mirrors very easily become spirit portals if exposed to those energies over time.  Given this young man’s propensity for ‘messing with’ things of a darker nature, he may have set himself up for this scare through his own carelessness: a lesson to those who would dabble rather than taking the time to learn a system and learn it well before calling forth anything.  Remember the old adage: never summon what you can not put down.

Returning to Mr. Shearon’s fright, I would be interested in knowing what sorts of energies the closet mirrors in that bedroom had been exposed to.  What is the history of the apartment for example?  Had someone died violently there or perhaps even performed some magical act that had left an imprint.  Artists often have an gift for clairvoyance (known or unknown) so Mr. Shearon may simply have been picking up on something that was ‘left behind’ in the place.  If I wanted to get into really wild theorizing, I would wonder what projects, Mr. Shearon was working on at the time of the event?  Is it possible that the terrifying event was actually an inspiration for a horror piece that he was working on (or will be working on) transmitted into his consciousness as a vision of sorts?  Stranger things have happened.

Movie Review: Minerva Monster

As most of you know, I am an inveterate podcast listener and I could not help but hear about the folks over at Small Town Monsters and the series of films they are making about classic Sasquatch encounters.   I have listened to the interviews with interest and last night (15 May) I finally had a chance to go on Vimeo and rent the first in this film series.

I am not a fan of the “let’s run around in the woods, scare ourselves silly and do ridiculous things to attract Sasquatch’s attention” genre.  I watch the show that must not be named when there is a locale that I want to see and I can tolerate 45 minutes of people trying to pass off coyote howls and owl calls as Sasquatch vocalizations.  I am not totally against this mis-named show – it does raise awareness of Sasquatch and make people think about the creature – but I would think that people who spend as much time in the woods as these folks do would have better woodcraft.  I suppose it is simply a matter of generating suspense for viewers whose idea of the great outdoors is their backyard but I find it irritating after the first episode or two.

Having said that, I can assure you that Minerva Monster does not succumb to the temptation to copy the “successful” formula.  This movie is a straight up, serious documentary with no narrator about a classic Sasquatch sighting that happened in and around the Cayton property in Minerva, Ohio area in the summer of 1978.  The entire story is told from the perspective of people who were there and who witnessed the events or their aftermath.  Even the background on the town of Minerva is handled by the mayor and a local historian so that, often, the viewer feels as though he or she is simply sitting in a room with the person on camera, hearing their story.

I enjoyed the fact that there was no attempt to sell a particular viewpoint.  The cameras recorded whatever the witnesses told them no matter how outlandish. The most blatant example of this occurred when testimony was presented that indicated that the ‘monster’ was seen in the company of two large cats!  Anyone trying to present the bipedal ape or relict hominid angle would have cut this testimony but the director, Seth Breedlove, leaves it in and let’s the audience parse out what they make of it.

Another good example of this insistence on witness voice is the fact that no one in the film comes out and says that the Minerva Monster was a Sasquatch (or Bigfoot).  Some people say that they looked into the Sasquatch phenomenon after the episodes but most of the people in the film are of the opinion that something was there, something was seen but they really have no idea what it was.  I found this willingness to not try to explain the witness sightings and the findings most refreshing.

There were a number of other aspects of the film that were well done.  The closest that the documentary comes to computer animation is a series of drawings about events that are being discussed but which could not, of course, be recorded.  I believe these may be renderings from the talented artist who did the movie posters, Sam Shearon, but I am not certain on this point.  The production values are quite good for a small production shot on a tight budget.  As you would expect, there is nothing fancy in the camera work and sound but everything is clear and the only glitches with sound come from outside sources that could not be screened.  The background footage of the areas being discussed was useful in helping me visualize what the witnesses were talking about.  I would have liked to see a little more of the Cayton’s property and how it relates to the surrounding area but, again, given the limited resources for the film, editing decisions had to be made.

I would whole-heartedly recommend this documentary to anyone interested in the Sasquatch phenomenon and an in-depth presentation of a case that created a storm of media attention.  Not only does the film cover the sighting itself, it also talks about the aftermath of the sighting. The Caytons were faced with “yahoos” with pick up trucks full of beer and guns wanting to go on their land to hunt the creature, people blocking the street where they lived hoping for a sighting and subtle but pervasive ridicule in the town.  We often forget that sighting of an unknown anything can change people’s lives and not always for the better.

As noted, the video is available for purchase or rent through Vimeo On Demand but if, like me, you are impressed with the film, then you can purchase a DVD here.

Opening to the Paranormal

Between blog posts and my fiction writing, I have been putting in some hours getting words on the page lately so, when the evening rolls around, I like to watch an hour or so of TV to let my mind unwind.  Of course, some of the things that I watch are back episodes of paranormal shows and, of course again, watching those shows queued me up for yet another blog post.

If you have been following the blog for a while, you will know that I am all for people doing paranormal investigation (and I include things like looking for Sasquatch here) as long as they do it in a safe manner.   Safety starts in the physical world with using your common sense and staying out of crime ridden neighborhoods and old unstable structures, not trespassing, having survival gear packed if you are going into the woods and so on.  I should not even have to mention this but the tragic stories that come out, now and then, about people who are injured or killed because they ignore basic safety precautions encourage me to remind folks to be careful out there.  Chasing ghosts and other things that go bump in the night does not obviate the need to pay attention to what is happening on this level of reality.

Watching these paranormal shows, though, I am struck, over and over, by the need for investigators to follow some basic energetic safety protocols.  I can not count the number of times I heard someone on one of the shows talk about opening themselves up to whatever was going on in the site they were investigating.  As I have pointed out, again and again in these pages, you want to know what you are opening to before you make such an invitation.  It is the height of idiocy to walk into any haunting, especially one that is being presented as hostile and open yourself to whatever presences are there.  Even mediums, who work day in and day out with spirits, know that there are basic protocols to follow when making contact with the Otherworld and that those protocols help to keep them safe.

Safety is not gained by trying out your new Shakti Helmet in the midst of a haunting where  a young girl is being plagued by a being described as a ‘lady vampire’.  While, in actuality, this entity did not turn out to be one of the astral predators that feed on energy, the investigator in this case did not know that at the time that he undertook this experiment.  As I have pointed out on a number of occasions as well, safety is also not gained by going into hauntings with a deliberately provocative and belligerent attitude.  Such behavior may stir up activity and make for good television but there is a reason why magicians have a saying that one should not call up what one can not put back down.

In a very real sense, the paranormal investigators who are walking around, calling out to spirits that are supposed to be in a place are practicing a rough form of evocation that can lead not only to paranormal activity but to attachments and worse.   I am minded of one investigator who stated that he was effected for several days after a particular encounter.  This should not happen; investigators should, at a minimum, have the tools to cleanse themselves energetically after ghost hunting.

Every occultist has favorite techniques for protecting themselves but, if you have no experience in this realm then I encourage you to read Michelle Belanger’s The Ghost Hunter’s Survival Guide: Protection Techniques for Encounters with the Paranormal.  Occultists of all stripes love their ‘tech’ and, reading some of the books out there on psychic protection and/or self defense, you might become convinced that you have to become a practicing witch or ceremonial magician to take care of yourself energetically during a paranormal investigation.  Ms. Belanger approaches psychic hygiene from a non-denominational viewpoint and allows anyone with an open mind to learn how to work with energy and how to use it to protect and cleanse themselves in the ghost hunting milieu.  This is a good book to get the rookie ghost hunter started in protecting themselves and makes a good companion volume for Ms. Belanger’s other book, The Psychic Energy Codex: A Manual for Developing Your Subtle Senses, a book that will get the novice started on developing the sensitivity to know what sorts of energies they are coming into contact with and what level of protection they might need.  Sometimes, with some wrathful entities, it is better to back away and re-group than to stay.

Be aware though that, in my experience, once you have developed some talent for energy work, you begin to ask “well, what else can you do with this stuff” and the next thing you know your bookshelves and Kindle are crowded with books on esoteric subjects.  You have been warned, the rabbit hole awaits!!

 

The Role of Psychism in the Paranormal

I was listening to Marie D Jones on Into the Fray radio today and something that she and Ryan Sprague were talking about hit the “I need to write a blog on that” chord.  Basically, the discussion revolved around how, in some paranormal cases, one person will experience an event while another will stand to the side and wonder what all the fuss is about.

I first noticed this phenomenon in magical circles many moons ago.  In the more public era of my pagan life, I participated in quite a number of different rituals.  I would often come out of these rituals thrilled at the energies I had experienced only to have someone standing around at the feast afterward saying something like “it was a lovely ritual but I did not feel much”.  I remember thinking, in my more youthful hubris, that such people must be “concrete heads” not to have experienced anything in the ceremony.

In the same manner, two investigators may walk into a house that is allegedly haunted. One investigator may have multiple experiences while the other sits in the dark all night and experiences nothing, even with a coterie of electronic devices to keep that investigator company.

It seems, at times, as though the paranormal is controlled by an intelligence that is determined to leave humans standing, scratching their heads.  Given the many legends of trickster spirits, I think there is likely something to that idea but I also think that, often, there is a much simpler explanation of the seemingly random firing of the phenomenon that we study: sensitivity.

In the more public period that I spoke of above, I used to earn part of my living doing readings at my local metaphysical book store.  I can not begin to tell you how many people I looked at and asked “why are you talking to me, you could be doing this reading for yourself?”  Mouths would drop open and expressions of denial would spring to their lips but the truth was that , even though they denied it, these people had a lot of latent psychic ability.

You might recognize these folks: they are the people who ‘just have  a feeling’ that they should turn right instead of left and avoid an accident, who always seem to know who is calling or who have dreams about things that subsequently happen.  They do not think of themselves as psychic since only “those” people (you know the ones with the dark, incense laden parlors, cheesy robes and turbans) are psychic.  Whether they own the title or not, these people have enough ‘bleed through’ of their psychic abilities to respond to them, even if it is only at a barely conscious level.

On the other hand, you have people who, for one reason or the other, have sealed themselves away from their psychic selves, put those abilities behind a door and throw away the key.  I referred to these people as ‘concrete heads’ above and this is a pretty apt description; nothing short of the physical manifestation of the Archangel Michael or a strong poltergeist slapping them in the back of the head is going to get through to these people.  Whether it is their upbringing in a fundamentalist setting or simply their fear of being outside societal norms, these folks will not allow themselves to utilize the psychic, at least not consciously.

Psychic sensitivity runs a continuum, of course, from those that are aware of their abilities and use then to those that simply refuse to acknowledge psychicsm at all and will consciously ignore any input that does not arise from rational thought.  Add to this the fact (at least in my world) that no two psychics are the same and may have quite different modes of psychic perception and you begin to understand why two or more people in the presence of a paranormal phenomenon may have markedly different experiences.

Let’s go back to our haunted house and add another ghost hunter.  So, we have one ‘concrete head’, one sensitive person of some sort and one person who identifies as a medium.  The person who has shut away their psychism will very likely experience nothing or only have vague feelings of disturbance that they may or may not be able to verify with their equipment.  The sensitive may feel cold spots, have the feeling of being watched or may actually feel that they have been touched.  The medium, if there are spirits present may actually be able to see or hear those spirits and communicate with them.  Different level and varieties of psychic talent; different experiences.

I would make the argument that it is good to have different types of people on an investigation team.  If you have a whole team of mediums on a ghost hunt things are going to get out of hand pretty quickly.  On the other hand, a team of concrete heads will find that their investigations are, for the most part, not very interesting.  If you have different levels of ability on a team though then you have the opportunity to cross check what is going on around you.  If the medium on point says that they feel a spirit in a location and the concrete head tells you that there is a twenty degree temperature drop in the area the medium is pointing to then you can be pretty sure something is happening.  If the concrete head is even feeling a vibe about a place, then you might want to hold your medium in reserve or have them go in shielded to avoid over-taxing them.