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Showing posts from April, 2011

Win a Night in the Merchant House Museum

Want to spend a night in Manhattan's Most Haunted House? This may be your chance. The Merchant House Museum is hosting a lecture by Dan Sturges and a raffle. The Winner and a Guest will participate in a real paranormal investigation of the Merchant’s House Museum led by the Historic Paranormal Research team. Merchant's House Museum, also known as the Old Merchant's House and the Seabury Tredwell House, was a Federal-style red-brick row house built in 1832 by Joseph Brewster and designed by Minard Lafever in Manhattan, New York City. Brewster lived in the house until 1836 when he sold it to Seabury Tredwell, a wealthy New York merchant, for $18,000. Seabury lived in the house with his wife, seven children, two boys and five girls, four servants, and an ever-changing assortment of other relatives. Seabury died in 1865. The remaining family lived in the house until his youngest daughter Gertrude, who was born in the house in 1840, died in 1933. Three years after her de

GS Question of the Week

70 lead codices turned up five years ago in a remote cave in eastern Jordan and may be from the 1st Century C.E. Some scholars believe they are fakes. What are your thought?

Reader Submission - History of the Ouija Board

Written by Gary Mullen from HandcraftedUK, supplier of Ouija Boards : Paranormal tool to communicate with the dead or, a meaningless board to fool the naive? Whatever your opinion of the Ouija Board there is no denying that they are a source of intrigue and fascination for many people. But where do these boards come from? Do they have their roots in ancient spiritual practices or, are they nothing more than a modern toy? The exact origins of the Ouija Board cannot be traced but there is evidence to suggest they may have arisen from ancient civilizations. Perhaps they are based on the ancient Chinese divination method of fuji? Dating back to 1100BCE fuji involved guiding a stick around a tray filled with sand. The messages spelt out in the container were thought to be communications from the spirit world. In its early years the Ouija Board was referred to as a Talking Board and looked very different from the boards we recognise these days. These early designs had a pencil fitted t

Wordie House

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The original Wordie House was built in 1935 and named after Scottish geologist and polar explorer Sir James Wordie who visited the site with the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Australian explorer John Rymill and his British Graham Land Expedition team constructed the hut from timber they transported to the Argentine Islands aboard the 'Penola.' They spent the entire winter of 1935 there before moving on to Marguerite Bay. This version of Wordie House was captured by the sea and swept away. A recent diving expedition of the channel adjacent to where it use to stand uncovered the ruins. The second hut was built in January 1947 by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey. Meteorology was the most important scientific research carried out there. Recording instruments were housed in meteorological screens. The hut was extended in 1951 to include generator shed, office, store and toilet. It closed in May 1954 and operations were relocated to nearby Galindez Island where i

GS Question of the Week

What are your thoughts on the premiere of Syfy's Urban Legends? Like it? Hate it?

"Haunted" Swing

If you're a fan of Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files then you witnessed the phenomenon known in Argentina as the "Haunted" Swing. A single swing appearing to move on its own can be rather creepy. After viewing a reporter's video of this swing, the Fact or Faked crew set out to debunk it. When I see or hear about something this intriguing, I want, as others do, to learn more about it. I put my Googling skills to the test and went to hunting. Other than a few forums talking back and forth on the issue, pretty much every article I found on this subject says the same thing. This began in June 2007, although it doesn't specifically state the boy Fibian was the first to discover it; only locals are listed. Teachers or someone reported it to the police (would loved to have heard that conversation) after it supposedly kept moving back and forth for ten days straight and then stopped dead. When the police couldn't come up with an explanation, they called in physic

GS Question of the Week

Question from Dee of para - NORMAL aka My Life With Others : "Have you ever encountered your doppelganger?"

Reader Submission - Full Bodied Apparition at the Doncaster Air Museum

The following account was sent in by Stu from Simply Ghost Nights : The Full Bodied Apparition at the Doncaster Air Museum Some years ago whilst taking part in a ghost hunt at Doncaster Air Museum, I was in a group of fellow ghost hunters in the middle of a vigil, just calling out for some form of spirit communication. We were sat in the large hangar that was said to be where the planes were repaired during the second world war, and prior to that had been Doncaster’s international airport. The night was a cloudless summer night, it was also a rather mild time of the night too. The group was in good spirits all ready in anticipation for a night of ghost hunting, the adrenalin was starting to pump around the body of all of us. We were calling out for spirit activity when suddenly five of the group saw the solid mass of a human shape move directly pass the larger than normal doorway. We immediately ran to the doorway to investigate who, or what had fleeted past the door, but not

Haunted house of Sas van Gent

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In 1905, Saint Gobain ordered architect Jozef August Jacobs to build a glass factory and surrounding houses including an Executive Board house known as Sas-van-Gent De Villa. At the time of its construction, the border between the Netherlands and Belgium didn't exist. Today, the house use to sit right next to it. Jacobs was the head of the factory. He became the first owner of the villa. He lived there with his wife, mother and five children. Five years later, he built a phosphate factory in Sas van Gent. However, life soon took a turn for the worse. In 1914, World War I began. Holland stared as a neutral country with huge electric fences on the border. There are several stories associated with people and the electric fence closest to the villa. Supposedly, a German soldier looking to desert the army was electrocuted in or outside the house. Another story speaks of a small guy who escaped from the Germans by using a barrel between the electric wires. In 1927, the Jacobs

Magnolia Plantation

Note: This entry is in the process of being amended. I recently learned some details are not accurate. I hope to have the problem fixed soon. Jean Baptiste LeComte II received Spanish and French lad grants in the mid-1700s. Buildings began to erect in the 1800s in Westwego, Louisiana. However it wasn’t until 1830 Magnolia Plantation saw it’s first residents. Jean’s son Ambroise and his wife Julia Buard and began turning the property in to large-scale cotton production. Using slave labor, they converted 2,000 acres wooded area in to huge cotton crops. Their profits allowed them to expand to three plantations using Magnolia as their home base. Most of Magnolia’s structures which include a blacksmith shop, a plantation store, a former slave hospital, eight brick cabins and a gin barn date between 1835 to 1850. The slave hospital housed the owners when the main house was burned by retreating Union soldiers during the Civil War in 1897. The house that stands today is a recreation of the

GS Question of the Week

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Please examine the photo below: Do you think it is paranormal or a hoax?

Battle: LA

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The "Battle of Los Angeles" also known as "The Great Los Angeles Air Raid" is believed to have triggered the era of official UFO secrecy by the U.S. government. The incident occurred less than three months after the United States entered World War II as a result of the Japanese Imperial Navy's attack on Pearl Harbor and five years before the "capture" of a "flying saucer" in Roswell, New Mexico. The target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan especially since the alleged attack came one day after the Bombardment of Ellwood, Japanese submarine attacked coastal targets near Santa Barbara, California in 1942. Air raid alarms throughout Los Angeles County were triggered on the night of February 24th-25th. A total blackout was ordered and thousands of air raid wardens were summoned to their positions. At 3:16 a.m., the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at a repor