Looking for Ghosts in Orlando

Tomorrow,  I am leaving for Orlando.  It is not my dream vacation.  I like travelling to places with history.  I like old, interesting cities with a story to tell.  Orlando seems too bathed in sun and tourism to have any interesting stories.  However,  everyplace has history and ghost stories.  A trip is what you make of it.   I plan on making the most of this trip.  I am packing my bags and making sure my sons have all there under where.  I've packed my GPS and put out food for the pets.  Everything is in order.  There is only one last thing to do.  Plan each of my haunted excursions.   This is my list of haunted places I will visit while in sunny Orlando.  Of course this list may change.  But here are the haunted places I plan on visiting in Orlando.  They have been taken from the Shadowland's haunted place index.

Pirates of the Caribbean:   This ride is haunted by the ghost of George.  George was a welder who died while building the ride. 

Boston Hill Cemetery:   A man can be seen swinging from one of the trees here.  There is a woman kneeling at his feet and weeping.

Rouse Road Cemetery:  The shadowy figure of a man who died in the 1840's can be seen wandering this cemetery.

The Tower of Terror:  The ghost of a man walking against the flow of traffic can be seen in this ride.

Epcott Center:   The ghost of a little girl who died on this ride still wanders the area.

Universal Orlando:  Back to the Future:  The third floor of this ride is haunted by unknown spirits.

I've packed my camera and am hopeful that I'll find interesting stories at each of these places.   Even in the sunlight,  there are shadows to be found and  I'm hoping to bring back more than a sunburn. 

The Link Between ADHD and the Ability to See Ghosts

I am reading an interesting book by Caren B. Goode right now called Kids Who See Ghosts.  I'm not very far into the book, but it is well written and well researched.  It brings up some interesting neurological research that I was unaware of in the first chapter.  According to Goode,
          "Brain mapping using EEG topography has found that creativity and intuition are associated with theta waves usually linked with daydreaming or fantasizing.  Theta waves are calm states in which intellectual activity at the conscious level isn't occurring. Children and adults with ADHD produce excessive theta waves.  Most people, children and adults alike, who see ghosts experience theta waves or brain-wave states of relaxation and meditation.  People who practice psychic skills have learned to concentrate in these states and master their psychic ability."

One of my constant concerns when I was working as a child therapist was the over medication of young children.  As a therapist,  I wasn't given an opportunity to question the psychiatrists who are given most of the control in the field, but the standard of care for children who have any problems was to diagnosis them almost exclusively with ADHD and medicate them.  Every child I saw in therapy was also being medicated for ADHD, despite the fact that research shows that this medication suppresses growth and causes other side effects.  In my opinion,  many of the children being medicated for ADHD didn't actually even have it.  They had PTSD or adjustment disorders etc., but of course that is another matter.  The ones who did have ADHD were often high functioning and performing well in school, but their behavior was a problem so they were medicated because it is a quick and easy fix to children who don't conform.

This research brings to light other questions.  In a world where ADHD is diagnosed in every other child,  could we be suppressing children's potential.   There have been links seen between ADHD and creativity and if is Good is right then perhaps there also might be links between ADHD and psychic abilities.  Are we suppressing our children's potential when we medicate them into silent, compliant behavior?   Are we shutting out the portion of their mind that might let them see beyond the concrete into a more abstract and deep world of ghosts and beauty?

A Review of the Three Manifestations of The Haunting

Fictional ghosts and hauntings are often the most wonderful.  My favorite fictional haunting can be found in the works of Shirley Jackson.  The Haunting of Hill house is possibly the best haunting book ever written.  The story is beautifully written and creates a story that breathes life into a house turning it into a creature unto itself.  It is a slow tale of the seductive power of darkness.  Its main characters are psychics and ghost hunters brought together for the singular purpose of opening up the darkness locked within Hill house.  According to Jackson,  Hill house was evil from the beginning. Deaths and tragedy swirl around it like the mist that settles on the grass around it.  As the main characters explore Hill house,  they are tortured by a subtle and psychological haunting that drives them to the brink of madness and pulls one of them to their death.  Jackson draws us into Hill house with words of such beauty that you could drown in them and there is nothing that can describe them as well as to quote them.

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

In 1963,  Robert Wise directed a movie version of The Haunting of Hill house called The Haunting.  Filmed in black and white,  The Haunting is a slow a deliberated film that builds on the terror of those trapped in Hill house to create a terror more real than any slasher movie has created.  This movie follows the plot of the book closely and carefully recreates the almost romantic attachment the main character, Eleanor, develops for the house. Jackson's own words start and end the film in all  their chilling beauty.   This is still one of the best haunting/horror movies ever made.

In 1999,  Hollywood imagined it could remake The Haunting.  I'm not sure if the directors of the 1999 revision of the classic read or understood Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill house at all.  This remake of  two masterpieces lacked everything that made the first to manifestations great.  It lacked the subtlety and psychology that pulled you into a dark pool of human emotion and left you there to drown.  It replaces these things,  with over the top special effects and characters that are both uninteresting and unbelievable.  It adds bizarre plot lines about child serial killers and dead relatives that are both unnecessary and badly thought out.   In the end,  it was at times so bad it was laughable.   It is a shame that this movie was even made.

The Haunting of Hill house and  The Haunting (1963) are two of the greatest depictions of hauntings in art.  Its to bad Hollywood can't just leave perfection alone.

Reviewing "The Devil's Backbone"

Instead of writing about real ghost stories tonight,  I'm going to salute one of my favorite fictional ghost stories.  The Devil's Backbone is one Guillermo del Toro most compelling stories.  Del Torro's best work is set in Spain.   This is a historical movie set during the Spainish civil war.  It echoes the beauty of  his future films like Pan's Labrynth and The Orphanage.   Del Toro knows how to pull at the heart strings and chill the soul with his lovely stories of everything that can be lost and forgotten in the course of life.

I should have watched this movie years ago.  It is one of the best and most tragic ghost movies.  I just saw this movie a month ago.   The Devil's Backbone is the story of a young boy orphaned by the Spainish civil war.  He is left in a large, broke orphange with ties to the resistance.   The boys in the orphanage are starving, despite the best efforts of those who run it.   The young hero meets the ghost that haunts the orphange as soon as he enters it.   He follows the ghost, but its secrets are kept hidden until the end of the film.   The most compelling feature in this film is the way in which Del Toro intertwines the characters' lives and stories turning the most mundane movements into a kind of art.   The ghost in this story is a hero as well.  It warns the boys of the many horrors ahead.  They are the horrors of the world of living and this movie reminds us that what we should fear most isn't what lurks in the shadows of old buildings, but what comes charging at us in broad daylight.

Although this movie was given lukewarm reviews,  I believe it is a classic ghost tale that brings the dead to life and celebrates the power of life to triumph in the face of death.

Finding Your Inner Psychic

Every ghost hunting team should have a good psychic.   Most things I have read on ghost hunting agree with this.  Of course,  psychics are rare.  Or at least,  people who advertise being psychic are rare.  Many people are psychic without knowing it.  They just have to develop their abilities and open up to it.  I went to a lecture on this topic a few months ago. It was interesting.  The psychic who was lecturing spoke about finding your spirit guide and developing your psychic ability.  She said she didn't discover her psychic abilities until later in life.  

My son and I discovered our untapped psychic ability while playing mastermind yesterday.   In mastermind,  you line up a series of 4 different pegs of different colors in 4 slots and hide them from your opponent.  Through process of elimination and logic your opponent uses pegs to determine what you have hidden from them.  A good player can determine their opponent's pegs color and arrangement in 4 or 5 moves.  My son and I were doing it on the first every time we played.  We just knew.  We have stopped playing each other.  Its boring now.  

So,  are you psychic?  I found this fun exercise to help exercise your psychic abilities in a book I've been reading. Try this exercise at home and see if you have some untapped psychic energy.

Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed and sit comfortably.  Take a deep breath.   Feel a protective bubble of light surround you.  Let your eyes go out of focus as you concentrate.  When you are ready, focus your mind's eye on the images that are behind your eyelids.   What do you see?  It's possible you will not see anything at all, and if so, that's OK.  If you do see images, can their meanings be understood?  When you are ready, take a deep breath, exhale and return to consciousness in a positive relaxed mood.

Practice this exercise several times to see if you can see anything.  Do you see the future?  The past?  Images of someone else's life?  If you do,  maybe you are psychic.

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Subject: Retaining your services
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To: undisclosed-recipients:;
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The Ghost Town of Pripyat

Founded in 1970, Pripyat was a model Soviet city built for the Chernobyl plant workers and their families. It was the ninth nuclear-city.  Its population had been around 50,000 before the accident.  It was a beautiful city filled with everything that anyone could want in a community.  It had high-rise apartment buildings, schools, a cultural center, hospital, swimming pools, theatres, stores, restaurants, cafes, playgrounds, and a stadium. On the morning of April 26, the citizens of Pripyat awoke to column of smoke rising from reactor four off in the distance. The reactor at Chernobyl had blown and Pripyat was within what would later be known as Zone of Alienation.   At noon on April 27, the Soviet government informed the citizens of Pripyat that they had two hours to gather their belongings and leave on a bus for mandatory evacuation. They were told that their evacuation was only temporary, for perhaps three days at the most, and so the residents left most of their belongings behind. The 50,000 citizens left their expecting to see their hometown again in just a few days. They would never return.  It took 36 hours for the residents of Pripyat to be evacuated from the city.  Many say the government failed them and should have evacuated sooner and although the citizens never would return,  many still suffer the ill health effects of the massive dose of radiation as a reminder of the home they will never return too.  Many have suffered losses as well and grief paints the city of Pripyat with sorrow.

Pripyat was left abandoned.   It became an enormous ghost city.  For a while it sat in stoic silence and then it began to decay.   Roofs gave way and water leaked in.  Grass grew between the cracks of the sidewalks  and weeds took a stranglehold on the once beautiful city.  The giant Ferris wheel that once entertained laughing children rusted and turned into a skeletal reminder of everything that had died in the city.   Ghost stories came with the dust and hid in the shadows of the empty buildings. Stories of ghost children seeped out like the radiation.  Pripyat has become a popular location for tourists and explorers.  Those with a fascination for the forgotten can get passes and travel to the ghost town with guides.  Radiation levels have been reduced to acceptable levels and for short periods of time Pripyat is harmless in small doses.  Destination Truth even visited Pripyat in search of the ghosts that wander its darkened shell.   What they managed to capture on film was chilling at times.  Pripyat is one of the most haunting ghost towns in the world.