Selasa, 05 Januari 2010

Pere La Chaise


I have been doing a lot of research for this blog and my research has lead me to many wonderful books and websites.  I recently visited a site that listed than ten most haunted places in France.  I have already written about one place on the list, Chenanceau, and there are several places I have yet to explore, but the second most haunted place on the list called to me.  

The second most haunted place in France is the famous cementery, Pere La Chaise.   As far as I can tell, this necropolis is one of the most beautiful places on earth and the art lurking in the shadows of death in this strange museum put the art in the Louvre to shame.  Pere La Chaise is the most visited cementery in the world and is the final resting place of numerous famous people including Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Oscar Wilde.  The cementary is named for Louis the XIV's confessor.  Napoleon took the land and turned it into a cementery in 1804.   Since that time the number of brilliant people buried there has grown over time turning a stroll through these hallowed grounds into a small history lesson.




It is not surprising that this cementary, filled with so many dead is considered haunted.   Any google web search will pick up hundreds of photos of ghosts wandering the tombs and stories of tourists catching fleeting glimpses of phantoms.   The stories are so prolific I will not do them the injustice of innumerating them all, but will instead give you a photo journal of this unforgettable museum of death. 




Senin, 04 Januari 2010

Fort Gaines


Dauphin Island has long been one of my favorite haunts.  It is a lonely, little island off the coast of Alabama that has beautiful, white beaches and great views of dolphins leaping just off the coast.    It has been missed by much of the tourist trade that has made Pensecola and Gulf Shores unbearable for me.  It is quiet and lovely.

The island itself has a long history that has shifted with the shifting sands of the island itself.   Daupin Island was initially name massacre island by the French until it was given a more comforting name by colonists.  The French colony on Daupin Island was short lived, however, and was the site of a notorious pirate attack that left the island abandoned.

The island's strategic positioning made it unforgettable, however, and it was taken by the US for the construction of a fort in 1812.  The construction of this fort was as doomed as the the original French inhabitants of the island.  Due to poor engineering, poor planning, and stupidity the fort was constructed in an area that was quickly flooded and reclaimed by the shifting waters of the gulf.     In 1853, a new engineer was brought in and the construction had to begin again.  The new engineer was not so dim as the first people to work on the Fort and construction of the new Fort Gaines was completed in 1858.

Fort Gaines was of critical importance in the Civil War and the Confederates used it as a base for blockade running.  Fort Gaines was also important in the Battle of Mobile.  Union Army commanders, Admiral David Farragut and Major General Gordon Granger, came through the bay amid fourteen ships, with the orders to shut down the fort.  The guns in Fort Gaines fired doing damage to the Union Army. Then, Admiral Farragut gave the notorious order, "Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" The Union army succeeded in its task when Fort Gaines surrendered to avoid hand-to-hand combat. Eighteen-hundred men died in the Battle of Mobile despite the surrender of the fort.

Fort Gaines is one of the most popular haunted sites in the nation.  The ghosts of dead soldiers have been captures on film by tourists and paranormal investigators.   All types of visitors have reported hearing mysterious footsteps, voices, and seeing ghosts.   MTV will even feature it on it's haunted television special.   I have been to Dauphin Island and Fort Gaines numerous times with my family and have never witnessed any of this activity.   More than anything I have been haunted by the lonely beauty of the island that has been ravaged by history and nature.  It remains one of my favorite places and I will face all manner of ghosts to wander the quiet shores of this island.

Shing Shun Lawyer

From: Mr. Tanaka Wong
Subject: Attorney needed(from Mr. Tanaka Wong)
Date: January 4, 2010 12:57:44 AM PST
To: undisclosed recipients: ;
Reply-To: jamesmorgan33438@gmail.com


Shing Shun Engineering Factory Co. Ltd
Address: Flat 22A, Yally Industrial Building,
6 Yip Fat Street, Wong Chuk Hang,
Hong Kong

Tel/Fax: +852 28734438

04-01-2010

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Best Regards,

Mr.Tanaka Wong
President/CEO
Shing Shun Engineering Factory Co. Ltd

Minggu, 03 Januari 2010

The Haunting on Larrabee Street


This haunting story has always been one of my favorites because it does not have a history.   The haunting on Larrabbee Street has often been compared to the Amityville case, however, the house on Larrabee Street didn't have the history the Amityville house had.   It is a haunting that is unexplainable.   The spirtit that haunted  Allen and Deborah Tallman came from nowhere.

The Tallman's moved into the house on Larrabee Street in Horicon, Wisconsin in 1986.  At that time, they had a little girl and a boy who was about 6 years old.   Deborah Tallman was pregnant.  The Tallman's loved their new home and began a fairly typical America life in their new home.   Although they loved their new home, The Tallmans immediately began having difficulties in the house.  They were plagued by a rash of sicknesses and their cat went crazy, climbing the walls and screaming all night.   Deborah was close to her family and her family usually spent a considerable amount of time visiting Deborah.   These visits began to decrease in frequency following the Tallman's move into their new home.   Both Deborah's mother and sister indicated they felt sick in the Tallman home.   They felt sick and suffocated.

It took more than a year for the haunting to escalate and culminate in the events that lead to the Tallman's fleeing their comfortable home.  Deborah had her baby girl and the children began to complain more and more about things in their room.   The little boy said that a hideous, diminuative, old woman would come into his room at night.  The little girl was plagued by visions of monsters.   The Tallman's grew more and more tired as their children kept them up night after night.    Even their attempts at time away from home were thwarted when the babysitter saw furniture moving on it's own. 

The children's nightmares could be brushed off as childhood fancy, but when Allen began to hear things and see things the Tallmans called their preacher.   The preacher came into the home and told the Tallmans that their home was in the grips of something from the devil.  He told them that the only way to dispel the evil that had been growing in their home was to go to church more.    The Tallman's listened to the preacher to no avail.  Things got worse.   Windows in the basement relocated on their own, the refrigerator door remained open on it's own, the children continued to be visited by nocturnal terrors.  Allen saw the garage catch on fire and when he rushed to extinguish the flame he saw a green eyed demon above the door.  Allen even saw a full bodied ghost that rose from the floor in a a kind of fog and took form just long enough to tell him that he was "going to die."

Desperate, the family called the preacher again.  The preacher came and told them to play church music all the time.  The family listened.   They listened and their was a brief reprieve before the entity came again.  This time the entire family and the babysitter saw the specter just long enough to turn them all white with fear and send them fleeing into the night.

After the Tallman's left their home,  the house became a local sensation and lines wrapped around the neighborhood with curious spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of some random terror.  Many spectators claimed to have been successful in their desires.   Many claimed to see snowblowers running up and down the driveway by themselves and furniture being flung around inside the house.  Of course, none of these stories have ever been confirmed, but the stories themselves turned the Tallman house into a local legend that grew with time.   Stories of the house being a gateway to hell and blood dripping from the ceilings proliferated and a media frenzy swept incidents out of control.

Despite this,  and despite accusations that it was a hoax on the Tallman's part,  the Tallman's have shown nothing but the desire to stay out of the spot light.   They've turned down interviews and even rejected Oprah when she invited them to be her guest.   They seem happiest forgetting the horror on Larrabee street.

Sabtu, 02 Januari 2010

Ghost Pictures



Sadly, I missed a day of blogging yesterday and to make ammends for my missing ghost story I went wandering in the woods in the freezing cold in search of an old, abandoned cementary.   The cementary is about one hundred years old and is almost completely forgotten.  For an avid hiker seeing small cementaries in the wilderness is not that uncommon of an experience.  I had been to this one before and with my new ghost story blog in mind,  I drug my family out into the darkness, turned the flash off the camera, turned off the flashlights, and took pictures of the cementery.  I then turned the flash back on and took pictures with the light of the flash.   I have included both sets of shots here.  I can account for some lights in the distance that belong to houses, but the rest I'm not sure about.  I'll leave it to my readers to decide.


Kamis, 31 Desember 2009

The USS Alabama



The USS Alabama is a large and impressive ship that is a major tourist attraction for Mobile, Alabama. It has been retired and docked in the Mobile bay and sees thousands of visitors every day. At night, the ship hosts many cubscout campouts so the battleship is rarely empty or quiet. Despite the fact that officials claim the ship is not, nor has ever been haunted, many claim to have seen ghosts on this ship. There have been reports of phantom foot steps and odd noises. It is said that late at night bulkheads open and close by themselves and odd tapping noises can be heard throughout the ship.

The Alabama’s first two deaths were of men who were in the Norfolk shipyard as she was under construction. She was finished in 1942 and served 37 months without any deaths due to enemy fire. As for death under friendly fire, however, there were 8 deaths on gun mount #5 when gun mount #9 fired upon them. It seems that the safety feature that was supposed to prevent the turrets from firing upon each other had failed. The men were completely destroyed; the only thing left of the his gun commander was his boots.

My boys were fortunate enough to spend the night on this wonderful ship this summer. Both of my boys claim that they saw and heard ghosts the night they stayed on the ship. Of course, as normal parents, we shook our heads and said there is no such thing as ghosts. So when I began researching haunted places in Alabama, I was surprised to find out the ghosts may not have been the products of their young imaginations. My oldest son says he saw a barefoot ghost by turret five. I have attached a picture of their overnight to this blog that clearly shows an orb by one of the turrets. The orb is directly above my son's head.

Rabu, 30 Desember 2009

Hell's Gates

Today we took a trip to Hell's Gates. Hell's Gates is a set of broken, rusted gates on Green Mountain in Alabama. There are many stories about these gates although there is no story as to how these gates aquired their diabolical significance.

The most commonly told story about Hell's Gates is that when you pull up to them and wait, a car will pursue you down the mountain. The car will vanish at the bottom of the mountain. My husband reports that he tried this when he was young and he was pursued by a ghostly car that vanished. Another of my friends cooberates this story, however, when we tried this today nothing happened.

A final source told me a more diabolical story about Hell's Gates. The story is that a group of her acquantances once went into the woods behind the gates to participate in some pagan ritual or another. They built a large fire and one of their group wandered off into the woods. That friend was never seen again.