Spouses & Ghosts

You'll find that usually, a person's spouse is pretty long-suffering when you're a ghost hunter. I mean, unless you're a ghosthunting team, your significant other has to be a patient soul. We're talking evening investigations and sometimes overnight ones away from home. Ghosthunting can be quite a time commitment and it is definitely something to consider and take into account as one.

You come across spouses who are skeptical of the whole thing, despite the gung-ho with which their other pursues it. Then you have the ones who are resigned to their fate, lol, like my husband D. who is pretty okay with it all. I have been doing this for years and he enjoys watching all of the hauntings/paranormal TV shows and hearing the stories, but he says he's never experienced anything himself (and he's OK with that, lol). He even went to Ireland with me and stayed in haunted castles and visited Leap itself. Trust me, he was terrified every night--even to the point of once threatening to stay in the nearest town--but he hung in there and would even do it again. Some people like presents and all sort of stuff from their spouses, but one who will stay with you in haunted-as-hell castles?

Now that's love.

He has some theories of his own that I thought everyone would enjoy...

D.'s Theory of Places That Are Haunted:

1. Jails
2. Hospitals/Asylums
3. Lighthouses
   
4. Castles
5. Victorian homes
6. Anything that's been turned into a bed & breakfast--especially if it is a castle or Victorian home

I don't know, he might be on to something with the whole Victorian thing. What was it about that time period that most homes and buildings here in the U.S. seem to have a resident ghost? I think I'll discuss it in another post in the future.

Ghosthunter L's Paranormal Movie Cliches

In the past two weeks, I saw two different "Based upon a true story"-style paranormal movies: The Entity and The Uninvited. While I really enjoyed The Entity, The Uninvited had so many paranormal cliches. Heck, take it back, even The Entity wasn't entirely cliche-free. Al, the head of DCMAG, always jokes that watching paranormal movies with me is a riot. As a ghost hunter, I think I just get driven crazy by all of the "Hollywoodness" of them sometimes, LOL. Thinking about all of the haunted movies I've enjoyed in the past, here's my preliminary list of paranormal movie cliches:

1. The whole damn family's seeing ghosts and the dad is the holdout. Crap truly hits the fan, he finally sees stuff himself and then he's a believer. Way to trust your family, man!
2. Ghosts moving like marionettes--jerky and choppy.
3. Mom/dad/sister/brother is being attacked by something unseen. Whoever else that is witnessing this is just standing there instead of trying to help them.
   
4. The whole damn family's seeing ghosts, but won't stick up for the person who's being deemed "crazy."
   
5. Untraumatized kids. Crazy stuff's happening at home, but they still go to sleep just fine.
6. They always find the gravestones/cemetery/graves/bones on their land at the last minute.
   
7. The kind psychic they just happen to come across in their everyday life who shows them "the way."
8. People getting picked off one by one by vengeful ghosts. That'd be a heckuva news story.
   
9. Ghosts accompanied by thick fog/swirling portals/crazy colored lights.
10. They're told to "go into the light" and they just GO.
11. You can't kill what's not alive in the first place.
    
12. The psych who always proclaims everything's a hallucination/repressed thoughts/mental
13. You can't trap and contain them.
    
14. Don't just stand there screaming. RUN. And then, please don't trip.

Feel free to add more, because I know I will...

Reflections and Paranormal Pics

I've got some examples of pics that just aren't paranormal...they are all reflections.

These were taken while DCMAG was on investigation. I'm not saying that these places aren't haunted (nor am I concluding that they are either), but they are great examples of reflections and mirrors/glass creating effects in photos. Note the blur in the center of the top photo from the picture frame glass. Then the swirls in the mirror in the 2nd and the oval blurb in the botttom. All are reflections. You have to be careful when analyzing your photos not to confuse something natural like this with what you'd consider the paranormal. Remember, the natural must be ruled out first.