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Viewing 1 - 6 out of 6 Blogs.
.....if you take money for doing so.
Here in the UK and Europe they are discussing a new law in the EU Parliment that would make speaking to the dead a crime. Thought some of you on IAH may be interested in this.
There may be trouble ahead
By Finlo Rohrer and Sarah Bell
BBC News Magazine
A change in the law could mean mediums, psychics and healers face
prosecution if they cannot justify their claims. Spiritualists are
delivering a mass petition to Downing Street and complaining that a
genuine religion is being discriminated against.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.
Whether it's TS Eliot or Shirley Ghostman, the world of the medium has been gently drizzled with ridicule for some decades.
But now psychics, healers and spiritualists fear a new threat. Not gentle ribbing, but the long arm of the law.
Parliament is about to debate measures that will see all forms of
paid-for paranormal activities fall under the new Consumer Protection
Regulations. As well as tackling a raft of more mundane commercial
sharp practice, these regulations will also replace the Fraudulent
Mediums Act 1951.
SPIRITUALISM
Seven principles
Practised since 19th Century
Believe in god
Believe contact with dead is possible
Many mediums are not spiritualists
And some mediums are not happy. Under the old legislation, it had to be
proven that any accused psychic was setting out to commit a fraud. The
first case was a man in 1952 on a charge that he did in "purporting to
act as a spiritualistic medium, unlawfully use a certain fraudulent
device, namely, a length of cheesecloth". He was acquitted, setting a
pattern for the last 50 years of very few prosecutions. Under the new laws, some mediums feel they will be
obliged to prove what they do. And when you're in the business of
contacting spirits in the afterlife, that's not easy. At Battersea Spiritualist Church, the new laws mean
visiting medium Bill Rae is peppering his session of clairvoyance - for
which there is only a voluntary collection - with disclaimers along the
lines of "this is not science" and "this is just an experiment".
Spirit world
The clairvoyancy session is like a game of psychic battleships. Rae
fires off little salvos. Most shots miss, but many hit, generating
wonder in the congregation. He speaks to a man a few rows back. Rae, who receives
nothing more than expenses for these sessions, has seen a man in the
"spirit world". He thinks it might be the subject's father. The man
nods and Rae continues.
NEW REGULATIONS
Aimed at unfair sales and marketing practices
Follow EU directive
Will need approval by Parliament
Centre on "reasonable expectations of the average consumer"
Persistent breaches punishable by enforcement order
Breach of order punishable by two years in prison or fine
The medium describes the man's father as jolly and there is agreement
from the subject. Now Rae sees a name. George. But the man knows no
George. "Georgette?" No, the man replies. Then the medium wants to establish where the man's
father is from. He sees a link to Jamaica. No, says the man. Now Rae
sees the word "Windward". The Windward Isles, he tentatively ventures.
No, says the man again. But Rae is unperturbed. He guesses that the man
is from an island. No again. Then Rae has a purple patch. He asks about the name
Gregory. The man's brother is called Gregory. And he infers that the
man's father died of prostate cancer, which is correct. The subject
comes from Washington DC and his family have been there for
generations. But he is inspired by Rae's references to his brother and
father and seems totally convinced.
Talking to Rae, it is immediately apparent that he has a strong and genuine belief in what he is doing.
Healing hands
Another person who is concerned over the new rules is Alison Lyndle, a
spiritual healer, shaman and "space clearing consultant" who operates
out of an anonymous interwar mock Tudor house in Harrow. Contrary to the cliche of the heavily bejewelled
healer, Lyndle's hands are unadorned with rings. And yet she, and the
people who come to see her, believe they have the power to heal. The patient lies on a GP surgery style bed as Lyndle
lays hands on the patient's head for more than half an hour. Hearing
just the chirping of birds and the gentle thrum of the central heating
boiler turning on and off, it is easy to see how both sceptic and
believer would feel better afterwards.
"I agree that there needs to be something in place to stop people who
are fraudulent," she says. "I get e-mails from people from time-to-time
saying they have paid thousands of pounds to people."
But she says that she fears that the law would open up the possibility that sceptics could make malicious complaints.
David McEntee-Taylor and his wife Carole have set up the Spiritual
Workers Association to protect people like Lyndle and Rae and campaign
against the new regulations. McEntee-Taylor is particularly worried about the effect
on spiritualist churches, many of which are held in impromptu venues
which must be paid for. And he is not happy about having to start religious
services with a disclaimer, something that most religions would give
short shrift to.
"If you believe why should there be a disclaimer? Why should it be different for us?"
And yet the established religious body, the Spiritualists' National
Union - which claims 100,000 adherents - seems unconcerned by the
imminent change in the law. Minister Steven Upton, a spiritual healer and the
movement's public relations head, says regulation to tackle fraudsters
is welcome. "We don't understand why people are protesting. If you
are claiming you can prove life after death you've got a problem. We
never guarantee it is going to work. Trained mediums don't make false
claims."
Anecdotal evidence
Psychologist Prof Richard Wiseman has spent 15 years investigating psychics, healers and mediums and is unconvinced.
"Anecdotal evidence on their abilities is impressive, but if you put it
under more scientific conditions, their claims tend to crumble. [Now]
they will need to be able to justify the claims they are making."
But there are many ordinary people who will continue using mediums, and they come from diverse backgrounds.
Lorraine Crighton-Smith, 27, a journalist from London, saw a medium
four years ago when a friend invited one to her house to do readings
for a group of seven, professional, 30-something women. "He asked 'who's William, who's Bill?'. I replied,
'he's my dad' and he said 'something's going to happen to your dad
sweetheart'. "I suppose I did worry for a while but I was more
impressed he had mentioned a name familiar to me than I was concerned.
He was spot on when he was talking about what I was like, my
personality traits." The Office of Fair Trading says enforcement of the new
regulations will not target sessions like this or churches, instead
being more likely to be used against foreign mass mailshot fraudsters
extracting large sums of money.
But despite the protestations of officialdom, the medium community has enough foresight to see potential problems ahead.
There is a lack of respect in the world today.
Respect for the living and for the dead?
It is a problem.
This is what I observed from 50 years of 'talking' to spirits:
'Ghosts' are the spirits of the dead that are within our visible plane for some reason or another.
Some are angry they are here, some are lost, some don't know they are dead, some are playful,
most want someone to talk to.
All want to be honored
Respecting and honoring the dead that are among us will soothe the ones who strike out at us in their pain, just as it does for the living.
I, like all here, am trying to learn wisdom that I do not know.
But the paranormal community has to keep its respect for the dead as well as the living.
We have to remember the dead are not just research subjects.
They are our ancestors.
If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come.
Arapaho
Gakina-awiiya
(We Are All Related)
A blog posted by dsdollman telling us some history of the Casper cartoon character began me thinking.
I have often wondered how other people coped with their early age paranormal experiences they encountered as a child? I began seeing 'spirits' at around the age of 3, mostly through dreams. Luckily, Dreamers run in our family and it was accepted by my family readily and as a child I was not told I was imagining it all or was crazy. My mother would just say, I had inherited my father's 'problem'.
I never looked at it as a problem, but my mother had to share a bed with my father and he thrashed around all night and disturbed her sleep, so to her, it was a problem
A child will usually just readily accept it as being normal to see spirits, unless told by their support group that it is abnormal. But some of what I saw was frightening to me and in my child mind I wanted protection from those.
I found that protection in a cartoon character.
I loved Casper as a child!
I was reading at a very early age, before the age of 4, and I was introduced to Casper through comic books. We had a television but we lived too far away from a town to get reception often, so we read out loud to each other and played board games for entertainment. I also had the Casper board game. This would have been the mid 50's.
What drew me to Casper over say Mickey Mouse was the fact that he was a ghost. He made perfect sense to me because I saw ghosts, and through him I began to accept this gift and learned to not be afraid of my dreams or visions.
I had a Casper the talking doll I slept with every night! I knew if a scary spirit would come to me in my dreams, he would be there to protect me. If I had a dream that frightened me and woke me up in the night, I would pull his string and he would say, "I'm a friendly ghost!!" and in my mind that was protection against the scary spirits that sometimes visited me in my dreams or walked with me during the day.
The doll said more phrases then that, like "Will you be my friend" "Will you play with me" and "Boooooooooo" but the phrase I would need him to say to protect me was "I'm a friendly ghost" and I would pull that string over and over until he said it. My mom would get agitated with hearing him in the middle of the night, for we all slept in one room with only curtains to divide our personal space.
I slept with that doll until I was in my late teens, to be honest.
In my child mind, Casper was my spirit guide, it was the beginning of the materialistic world in America, seeping into our homes though the television screen. It was magic to us and we believed all that emitted from it.. the truth.
I have since shot my television and put it out of its misery.
I learned as I got older that my spirit guide was not a cartoon character, but for my child mind, it was Casper, and he helped me to make sense of my gifts.
For my children and my grandchildren, it is Scooby Doo who helps explain the unexplained in their paranormal lives and they all sleep with their Scooby Dooby Doo spirit guides at night.
But for me
CASPER RULES!!!!
A couple of days ago I went on Exeter City’s tour of churchyards and the city’s Catacombs. I had long wanted to tour the Catacombs because I sometimes cut through St. Bartholomew Cemetery, where they are located walking home from the city center and at night it can be a foreboding place. It was built right up against the ancient Roman city wall on a mound of dirt looking down upon the terraced cemetery below. It was quite an engineering feat for its day. It was built in the 1800s during the surge of the Victorian death obsession and its purpose was to protect the well to do of the city from the ‘Resurrection Men’. It was not a success in the monetary way that the church who built it thought it would be. For in the Victorian period here in the UK, death was a major obsession with the public, and capitalizing on its popularity was rampant. So much so that Acts of Parliament were passed to protect the consumer. 
Entrance to St. Bartholomew Catacomb
I learned a lot on this free tour supplied by the City Council about the culture of death in Exeter over the ages, beginning in the Roman occupation to present. We began the tour on the grounds of the Exeter Cathedral, a public green space where people meet, Goths gather, Skaters rail, lovers profess their love and families have picnics. It is a lovely open area surrounded by ancient storefronts backed by modern shopping areas. I myself have gone there many times to relax during shopping trips in the city center. But what I didn’t know, and neither did the scores of people sitting on the ground enjoying the somewhat rare sunny weather for this time of the year, was that underneath them lay buried the bodies of over a quarter of a million of Exeter’s dead.
The Exeter Cathedral Grounds as known today The cathedral was built in the 1200’s and burying people was a major income for the cathedral because they were the only churchyard within the city walls. Over the years the cathedral administrators had gotten greedy and they had literally begun to bury the cathedral itself. The ground’s surface level had risen to the point that the lower windows of the cathedral were no longer visible by the 1500s and all burials were ceased. Approximately a quarter of million more bodies where dug up to lower the ground level and the bones were moved to beyond the city’s walls into mass graves.
Exeter Cathedral west façade, known for the medieval sculpture covering the whole lower section of the facade Now, I am thinking as the tour guide speaks, about a previous blog I had written titled ‘Can A Cemetery Be Haunted?’ and the comments I had received from IAH members. I began wondering if the ‘haunted atmosphere of a spooky cemetery with overgrown tombstones’ did have something to do with people thinking that a cemetery is haunted, as mentioned by some in my responses.
For here I am on an open cheerful green area with no tombstones in site, standing on layers upon layers of hundred of thousands of bodies with no spooky atmosphere anywhere, except for the serious Goths who had gathered over in the corner. Is this area haunted because of these graves?
The night before I had gone on the City’s ghost tour, and we learned that there are sightings of ghosts on the cathedral green. There is a girl seen running across the green, as she is being chased by her murders; there are the two men who fell to their deaths trying to steal the copper roofing off the cathedral; there is the nun seen in July of every year walking from the cathedral towards the rectory and there is a topless female ghost that used to walk the walkways along the ancient storefronts dating back to the 1500s.
This topless enitity was murdered and buried in a sewage ditch that used to surround the green. It seems she was probably murdered by the shopkeeper of the smallest building in the image below and dumped just outside his door and covered over with garbage. They found her body about 15 years ago while digging up a sidewalk and moved her skeleton to the museum. From that moment on, her ghost has no longer been seen walking in front of these quaint shops.
These are the store fronts where the ghost of the topless woman was seen walking. You can see how much higher the cathedral grounds are from the street level. A wall had been built to contain the burial ground, which used to be much higher than seen in this photo before moving the many feet of graves.
Ok, so now I am thinking… the physical moving of the skeleton stopped the haunting by this particular woman’s spirit... isn’t that strange. She wasn’t buried in a proper grave so that could not have been the reason the haunting stopped. Maybe it was because she was finally found, that stopped her nightly walk. But the point is, the body was moved, the haunting stopped. So is this a direct connection to the body of the deceased and the haunting itself? Some of the comments on my blog on haunted cemeteries stated that ‘why would a ghost haunt a cemetery, hauntings are caused by the emotional imprinting of an event, so ghosts would hang out where their death or murder took place or where they had fond memories or strong connections more likely than where their body was buried’
Now, what is going through my mind is… if that was the case, why did this ghost sighting stop after they moved the body? Is this woman’s ghost now haunting the museum where they removed the body to? I will have to ask a friend of mine who is a curator there if this topless ghost now walks the halls of his building? There were no stories of ghosts rising up from the cathedral ground itself or hovering over where just feet, and in some areas inches, below the surface, lie over 125,000 bodies. I myself have gone to the cathedral green late at night and taken photos, with no results of mist/fog or strange ‘orb’ lights hovering in the air over the green, like the ones I get on every night visit to one of the cemeteries I am researching. (see images) My head is reeling with thoughts as we move on through the dark streets to hear more haunted stories of the ‘Ghosts of Exeter’.
 This is an image of the location where the spirit of a Nun is seen walking during the month of July. This image was not taken in the month of July but during the night of the lunar eclipse 2006
The follow day on the catacomb tour, my head is still reeling with questions regarding, Can Cemeteries Be Haunted? Some of the comments from the blog mentioned above stated that maybe the ‘hauntings of the cemeteries are from the living that came to visit the graves of their loved ones, an emotional imprint of grief left behind by them, who return to the grave of their loved one to grieve even after death'.
Now, this theory intrigues me! The cemetery surrounding the cathedral has always been such a public area that I doubt that people came there to grieve their lost loved one. They may have gone inside the cathedral to light a candle and pray for them, but to walk the grounds and openly grieve was probably not done. Maybe there is something to this thought of the ‘haunting’ of cemeteries being done by the bereaved and not the deceased.
I am going to expand my research on the cemeteries in England to include the culture of death and burial in the UK through the ages. My hope is that it may shed some light on my question, Can a cemetery be haunted? If I choose the above theory as the basis of my research, it just may.
In my last blog, "Can a Cemetery Be Haunted?", I talked about a cemetery that I am researching for my project on cemetery statuary and tombstones here in the UK, where I get a high amount of unexplained images, especially on the nights when the church is having bell ringing practice.
I got some requests to see some of the images. Now, I have posted images before online and have found them on other sites without giving me artistic credit for them, it is a problem for the artistic world. I am an aritist, it is my career, please be considerate if you copy them and allow me artistic credit for the images. That is how I become successful as an artist. I appreciate any assistance to help explain these images, but please communicate to me that you want to assist me by altering them in an investigative way BEFORE you do, I love to meet people and I would appreciate any explanation of what the procedure is that you will be doing and please share your image findings with me. I am so eager to learn.
Respect my artisitic sensitivity towards my work and I am yours for life. 
I have posted on my page some images of the cemetery itself and images of the cemetery taken on 'one night of bell ringing practice'. Actually all of the images posted were taken on the same day, both the day and night shots were taken with a digital camera, Samsung D103 with a built in flash set on 8 mgpix. I used the 'program' setting. That is about as techincal as I get on my photography. I do not know the exact temperature or the humidity readings at the time of the shots.
I did record the evening with a digital recorder but mainly because I wanted a recording of the bell ringing, not for EVPs. I have listened to the recordings but they are pretty contaminated with street traffic and such that you can't tell too much about it, and when the bells are ringing, that is ALL you can hear. Except, that I noticed that the birds sang louder when the bells rang. I would have to listen to it more thoroughly to detect anything of significance in that direction. And if I did find something, I would have no idea what to do with it. I would have to write another blog on here asking you good people what to do. 
I am still researching the cemetery historically but I do know that the tower is the oldest part of the church, dating back to the 1500's and there is a reference to a chapel being on this location in the 1400's, the first written mention of this site. There is also evidence that a burial ground has been on this site since prehistoric times. This area of England is the home of the Celtic tribes, the oldest indigenous tribes of England. It is located in the southwest of England, bordering Cornwall, which is located south of Wales. It is just south of King Arthur country on the coast bordering the English Channel as it meets the Atlantic.
The cemetery and church is located in a small victorian seaside resort village. The is no statuary in the cemetery, which is not unsual in small churchyard cemeteries in the UK. It does have a crypt in one corner that is a bit unsual in architecture. It is surrounded on three sides by residences and backs up to woodlands and open fields. I have included day images of the cemetery so that you can get a better feel for the surroundings and layout of the cemetery to better view the night images.
Now, on to the night images. (Please remember, all the night shots were taken during bell ringing practice which lasted about and hour and a bit). Slideshow (1) sequence begins with the image of the reddish object in front of my lens. I was standing in front of the crypt when this was taken in the begining of the photo session. I do not have a strap on my camera. I always take them off when I shoot, I have had too many shots ruined because of a camera strap falling in front of the lens. I have close cropped hair, not even long enough to blow in the wind I am afraid. I have no idea what that reddish image is, I did not see anything in front of my lens when I took the image.
I then went to the side of the crypt (of which there is a day shot of) and took some images of the inside. I had to hold the camera above my head and put it through the wrought iron to photograph the inside so I had no idea what was in my frame at the time of the shooting. I took a series of three photos with about a six second interval between each. I again did not see what is on the image results with the naked eye. I turned my face downward and held my breath so as not to breath towards the camera lens and to steady my shot. Even with 35m cameras, your breath can fog a lens. As you can see, the first has a mist/fog, the second does not and the third does. In the daylight images of the crypt, you can see how far the cross tombstone is inside the crypt and you can see how the walls are constructed for the crypt. This area of the cemetery is an area I am not comfortable in and I will force my husband to walk with me while I shoot in this area day or night. He normally does not leave the churchyard path, so as not to get in my shots.
I then walked toward the center of the churchyard and took the next five image series with the same time intervals between them, about six seconds. I took three of the cross tombstone (the same cross tombstone that is in the daytime images) that ended up with strange lighting I cannot explain. At first observation, I thought maybe the strange lighting was caused by flash back from the built in flash on the camera, but on closer examination, I am not so sure. These images are placed on the slideshow in the order of shooting. On the first, the strange lighting is brighter, the second not so bright and in the third it is gone. I turned slightly to the right of the cross without moving my position and took the next photo where you see a strange mist/fog and then I stepped backwards a few steps and took a wide angle of that same area that contained the mist/fog, all were taken with the same six second intervals between them. Again I did not see what is on the images with my naked eye and neither did my husband who was several feet away to the left of this area.
I want to say here that there was no wind that night, it was a clear night with no moon. I would say the air tempature was around 46 to 50 F because I had a light jacket on and was comfortable. I have no idea about the humidity, but it was a clear night, so I am assuming it was low. I do not smoke nor does my husband and we were the only two people in the cemetery during the photo session.
In slideshow (2) the sequence begins with the image of a small wispy mist/fog in the upper right hand corner of the photo. I walked further down the churchyard path, past the church, towards the open field gate, just in front of the yew tree that is in the day shots, and took this next series of three shots, with a six second interval between. (that is about how long it takes for the flash to recharge on this camera)
The image with the clear green, for the lack of a better word, 'orb', in it was taken on my way back towards the crypt looking towards the church. You may notice, if you can zoom, that in the shot, near the church's door, you can see two eyes glowing. It is a dog, one of the many animals that came into the churchyard during the bell ringing. I stepped onto the path, walked towards him and took a shot of the dog coming towards me. Now I am not one for orbs, I find them annoying in my shots with a digital, but these two are a bit different than most I get. I would say it was taken about 20 seconds after the clear green one.
The last image in the slideshow (2) is near the crypt and was taken when I went there to get my digital recorder, where I had left it on the window edge of the crypt for the entire period of the night shoot. I went alone to get it and it felt so stange I turned and took the shot with the mist/fog results.
The timing of all my photos is on instincts, day or night, indoors or out, still life or action. I have found over the years that instinctively my timing is good for photography. If I think too much about it, the photo's outcome is not as good, in my artistic opinion. For the night shots, I just walked around and shot when it 'felt' right. With no moon, it was hard enough to see where you were going or what you were shooting.
So any comments on the images will be appreciated, if you have any. I live for opinions of my work, critical or not, they all help me grow and learn as an artist and human being. I am pretty confused and intrigued about the results of the shots from this cemetery and 'dying' :) for some explaination. I hope you enjoy them.
smile on
Jacque Brown
I spend alot of time in cemeteries photographing sculptures and tombstones both during daylight and night hours. I am not looking for ghosts, I am there purely for artistic and historical purposes. But I will say, I have captured many strange alterations to my images that I have no explanation for as a photographer and I have felt and heard strange happenings that I have no knowledgable explanation for.
I usually do not have any other insturment with me other than a still camera both digital and 35m, I do not own any paranormal investigating equipment, but I am going to begin to bring a digital and an analog voice recorder with me while I work here in the UK over the next few months, just out of curiosity.
Being of Native American and Celtic heritage, I have always been taught to listen to the four spirits whose job it is to warn you of danger and to change your course when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I have felt that sensation in many a cemetery I have photographed to different degrees of sensation and I must admit, in some cemeteries, I will not venture in certain areas because of these sensations. I have also felt strange temperature flucuations standing next to certain graves to the point that I will stop and put a jacket on.
I usually do historical research on all of my cemeteries because it pretains to the period of the sculpture or style of tombstone I am photographing. I find that the locations that produce the images with the most unexplained alterations occur in ancient places of worship/burial dating back to prehistoric times. I must say I have not photographed many US cemeteries as of yet, most that I have studied are in the UK.
I have also noticed a marked difference in the unexplained photographic images if the church located near or within the cemetery is having bell ringing practice, not hand held bells but full sized tower bells, which send massive sound vibrations throughout the area I am photographing. The usual unexplained alterations will consist of floating mists, fogs, lights, both circular and rod like, strange obstructions in front of the lens, and odd lighting effects.
The bell ringing will also bring more wildlife, birds, owls especially, and domestic pets into the cemetery. Since most bell ringing practice here in the UK happens in the twilight to night hours, I have always found this observation interesting. On the nights that there is no bell ringing, I rarely see wildlife, maybe an occasional cat or a dog being walked by its owner, rarely an owl.
Now I am not a certified parnormal investigator and I have never been on a group investigation so I have no idea what these finding would mean to an experienced investigator, but I would love to know if it does have a meaning and what the opinions are regarding my findings.
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