Morning Read 2: As Halloween nears, searching for the real thing
Two regional newspapers have been highlighting the North Country’s recent supernatural vogue. This from the Glens Falls Post Star.
“It’s a playful energy. It’s not a bit scary,” said John Conners, the curator of the Bolster Collection, on Saturday night during one of several ghost tours the museum offered.
The tours are a follow-up to the popular “Ghost Hunters” television show on the SyFy channel, which spotlighted the Canfield Casino’s ghosts on Wednesday. The planned Oct. 26 tour is already booked.
“We’d never done a ghost tour but we’d had paranormal experiences for years. Even the directors had had some and I feel uneasy in the building,” said Bob Bullock, president of the museum’s board. “We sent an e-mail to the show and within two hours they responded.”
Meanwhile, Plattsburgh hosted a gathering of paranormal investigators over the weekend. Here’s the treatment in the Press-Republican.
“People think this is horror-movie stuff,” said NNYPRS President Merrill McKee. However, for him and his team it has been reality.
The team also uses Electromagnetic Frequency readers to measure EMF energy during investigations. While electronic appliances can sometimes give off EMF energy, Leighton said spirits — which are made of energy — can also cause the meter to jump.
Anything that cannot be explained is logged into their most valuable tool, he said: their notebook.
As a curmudgeonly skeptic, I say humbug to any and all claims that this stuff is real. But as a fan of ghost stories, I say it’s pretty great fun.
How about you? Any North Country ghost stories or hauntings to share?
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You asked… About 37 years ago I was living in a house near Barnes Corners, the home I had grown up in during the late ’40s and early ’50s. My wife and I had just gone to bed and suddenly we heard someone stomping very loudly down the stairs that were on the other side of the wall by the head of our bed. Then we heard the door at the bottom of the stairs (which opened into the next room) open and slam shut loudly. No further sound. I turned on a light and went to the next room. No one there. I went to the stairway door and tried to open it. We did not use the second floor and it was a damp summer. The door was swollen shut and I had to put a foot against the casing while pulling on the knob with both hands in order to open it. No one there.
That was probably the most dramatic of a number of “unusual and unexplainable” occurrences in that house that began the first time my parents saw the house. The occurrences were REAL, not delusions of one person, attested to by multiple people who lived or visited there. When it comes to investigation via all sorts of electronic instruments however, I am a skeptic. When such things happen you don’t need any sort of meter to detect them and the rest of the time you’re just running around in the dark with electronics in your hand trying to find something spooky. You could probably be just as successful with an iPhone app. Paranormal investigators will be disappointed to hear that the house is no longer there for them to turn their cameras and electronic gadgets loose on. After my mother sold it, it fell down and the remains were burned.
I’m with you Brian. I don’t buy into ghosts or any of the other stuff. It is fun but can be dangerous.
A good example of the danger side is Voodoo. Whatever power Voodoo has is in the mind of the person who believes in it, sometimes added by drugs and auto suggestion from the Voodoo priest or priest.
Why do people believe believe? Because they want to believe. The logic is based upon the hope of an afterlife. If there are ghosts, there must be an afterlife, or so the logic goes.
I believe in Spirits, including demons.
It is not to be played around with in my opinion.
It continues to amaze me that people accept the existence of spirits with zero scientific supporting evidence, yet are skeptical of climate change and evolution where there are reams of scientific evidence.
way to take the fun out of it elba
PNElba, I can only vouch for what I heard or otherwise experienced. Is it scientifically provable, meaning replicable in scientific experiments on demand? No, that is major limit of science. It can only deal with physical phenomena that is either subject to our control or happens on a predictable basis so we can test it. People believe in God too and there is no scientific proof. Some of the experiences I’ve had have potential for rational explanation but with the one I described, I can think of none except an auditory hallucination and I think it highly unlikely that my wife and I would hallucinate precisely the same experience at the same time. BTW I do believe in climate change.
Hey Brian,
I am the Merrill quoted in the story out of Plattsburgh. I would love to have an open discussion with you and other skeptics about what it is we do, what the EXPO was about, etc.
I completely understand being skeptical, and one who has never experienced something that simply can’t be explained by conventional science should be. However, there are so many people that experience things they can not explain. That is where we come in, helping our clients (we do not charge for our services) figure out what is going on. More often than not, we are able to find natural explanations. Imagine thinking you experienced something out of a scary movie, and then finding out it was something simple? Wouldn’t you be relieved? However, on some occasions, we are unable to explain things. In these cases, we SEEK the TRUTH, and hope to someday find that piece of data that could prove what so many believe to be true.
I live in Watertown, and went to college in Utica, I have been a paranormal investigator/researcher for many years. I can’t say that such things are real. I can say that places like Blue Mountain Lake, Happy Valley WMF, Sacketts Harbor and Ogdensburg , have produced some strange results. I use full spectrum camera, video, digital mphoto and voice as well as thermal and EMF meters. I should start a web site some of the clips. photos, and recordings are just plain strange.