If ghosts exist anywhere in the United States, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is perhaps the right place to look for them.

The rolling green hills where the armies of the Union and Confederacy clashed still seem haunted by the more than 50,000 soldiers who were killed, wounded or went missing in the Battle of Gettysburg.

On November 19, Americans will commemorate the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, delivered after the decisive Civil War battle.  It remains the bloodiest event ever on U.S. soil, and in recent decades the south central Pennsylvania town has become a magnet for people who believe in ghosts.

On a recent night, I joined a group of people there on an “Extreme Ghost Hunt,” venturing inside an old dark mansion that we were told had been a casualty collection center during the fighting.

They were equipped with an arsenal of so-called ghost detection equipment, including thermal imaging cameras and electromagnetic frequency meters.
 
A guide took out a pen-like device that emitted a matrix of low-intensity laser beams.

“This is for capturing shadow figures,” he explained. “If something crosses in front, you see the shadow figure.”
 
I went around the house splashing walls with green dots, but did not see a single shadow.

But I was apparently alone in my inability to see ghosts. Tour participant Charlie Souders was convinced the static he picked up on one of the gadgets was what ghost hunters call “electronic voice phenomenon.”

“Wow!” he exclaimed.

A study by Baylor University in Texas estimates that 68 percent of Americans believe in ghosts or other kinds of paranormal manifestations such as UFOs or psychic abilities.

Souders said ghosts don't scare him. On the contrary, he feels comforted.

“It’s kind of curious to know how the afterlife is; maybe know a little bit more before I go,” he said, adding that he plans to communicate with his family after he dies and “let them know what’s going on.”

Ghost tours and paraphernalia may be a boost for a local economy that depends on battlefield tourism. And clients do learn some true history of the sites in and around Gettysburg.
 
But the paranormal business also offers answers about the hereafter that some people feel traditional religion doesn’t provide, says theologian Pamela Cooper-White of the Columbia Theological Seminary.

“People are in a quest for a kind of certainty, and the more scientific or technological it seems, the better,” she said.

Cooper-White researched the Gettysburg ghost tours and will be presenting her findings at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Baltimore later this month.

In an interview, she said its growth in recent decades can be linked to a reluctance by Americans to confront some of the “harder truths” of their history.

“I think in many ways the ghost that has not been laid to rest here is that in many ways we’re still fighting the Civil War, and the legacy of slavery and racism have by no means been solved.”

On a homestead outside Gettysburg’s center, author and psychic Laine Crosby walked through an empty field and engaged in an elaborate conversation with what she said were Confederate soldiers.

“James and Bartholomew and Bill and all the rest of you?” she called out. “Can you tell me how many soldiers are with you here today?”

She recorded the conversation on an early model digital voice recorder, and when she played it back her question was followed by unintelligible static.

“Did you hear that!?” she said.

Holding a pendulum, she spoke to a battlefield physician. “Doctor Robinson, can you move this in a circle if you are here?”

Crosby claims such spirits from the past appear vividly to her and that the pendulum and recorder are just to convince skeptics.

“It was just to prove to you all that there really was somebody here,” she said, “and that I’m not just some crazy person out here dragging you through a field.”

Clearly, many people don’t think that because her book Investigative Medium - The Awakening is the No. 1 best seller in Amazon’s Kindle store’s occult supernatural category.

Source: VOA News
http://www.voanews.com/content/america-bloodiest-battlefield-becomes-a-magnet-for-ghost-hunters/1788834.html

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The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament decries repeatedly “the evil that is done under the sun,” but what if there is also great evil done beneath the surface of the Earth? I have written previously about how flying saucers may originate from an Inner Earth paradise, but the late author and “victim” Richard Shaver would doubtless offer a vigorous protest to that idea.

Publisher and author Timothy Green Beckley, a longtime supporter of Richard Shaver and even a close confidante in Shaver's later years, said that Shaver predicted the coming of the flying saucers well in advance of Kenneth Arnold's breakthrough 1947 sighting. According to Beckley, Shaver also described ancient astronauts visiting the Earth decades before Erich von Daniken achieved worldwide fame by popularizing the idea that man's "gods" were really travelers from outer space. The Men-In-Black were another phenomenon Shaver was first to mention. Meanwhile, Shaver's tales of the advanced underground technology of the “dero” (about whom more later) long preceded the stories of hidden alien bases like the rumored subterranean compound in Dulce, New Mexico, from which horror stories similar to Shaver's have emerged, including rumors of large vats containing human body parts.

For Shaver, as with most participants of the paranormal, the strange experiences began in his childhood. In a book from Beckley’s Global Communications/Inner Light Publications called “Richard Shaver: Reality of the Inner Earth,” edited by Tim R. Swartz, Shaver describes hearing horrifying disembodied voices as a young boy.

“From as far back as I can remember,” Shaver writes, “there were the voices. They weren’t there all the time, but they were there enough that they played an important role in my early childhood development. At first I thought that everyone heard the voices. I thought there was nothing strange about being awakened at night with the hideous screams of someone being torn limb from limb ringing in your ears. I thought it was normal to hear the maniacal laughing of an invisible someone who thought it was a fine joke to see an innocent soul run down by a speeding train. I thought everyone knew that the voices were with us all of the time, watching, waiting, scheming for our bloody deaths. But I was wrong. It seemed that I was the only one who heard the voices. I learned quickly not to talk about them, lest I be thought a maniac.”

Shaver’s voices gradually faded from his life and became only a distant childhood memory. They returned, however, when he was an adult working at an auto plant in Detroit. He began to hear them through the noise of the machinery, conversing among themselves about gleefully tearing the skin off a woman as she screamed for mercy or causing cars and planes to crash.

He concluded he must be quite insane, quit his job, began to live a hobo life and took to alcohol to try to block the voices out. He found himself confined to a prison or mental hospital – he seems unclear on which – and came to believe the voices came from people living in caves beneath the institution where he was incarcerated, tormenting him and the other prisoners with strange technologies he compared to some kind of x-rays.

Shaver writes: “My problems, I realized, did not stem from some kind of mental impairment. I wasn’t crazy in the traditional sense, even though at times I felt like I was being driven mad by the hateful rays that were being beamed at me by the people below. No, I was sane in an insane world.

“I have often wondered,” he continues, “how many people who have been institutionalized because they were diagnosed as crazy were in fact victims, such as myself, of the damnable rays. Did they themselves think that they were insane because of the voices they heard in their heads and voluntarily committed themselves? Even today I still wonder if most forms of mental illness are not actually insidious attacks from the world below.”

Over time, perhaps as a method of coping with the voices, Shaver began to develop a myth or a narrative to explain them. He writes about the coming of the “Titans,” a humanoid race that migrated from their home planet and settled on Earth long before mankind was created. The Titans created the first civilization on the Earth, a social and scientific utopia that has never been equaled since.

But there came a time when the sun began to flare in dangerous ways and Earth was flooded with world-destroying radiation. The Titans had no choice but to flee, but some of them stubbornly refused to abandon their homes and instead moved underground or beneath the seas. They took their great machines and scientific knowledge with them, in hopes of someday finding a solution to the solar radiation and returning to live on the Earth’s surface.

But even deep within the Earth, the solar radiation continued to affect them. They tried moving even deeper into the planet, but to no avail.

“Those who did not die immediately,” Shaver writes, “suffered genetic damage that was passed down from generation to generation. Eventually, this once mighty race was reduced to mutated horrors, retarded in intelligence and social structure. Worse still, these monstrosities still had access to the self-repairing machines of their ancestors. But instead of using them for their intended purposes, they used them to satisfy their sick, twisted desires. These are the demons of ancient myth and folklore.”

Shaver eventually began to write about this complex and bizarre scenario and sent a letter to a pulp sci-fi magazine called “Amazing Stories” in late 1943. At the time, the much-celebrated Ray Palmer was the editor, and he writes about discovering Shaver in another Global Communications release called “The Hidden World, Volume One,” part of a series of books consisting of Shaver’s collected writings.

“One day a letter came in,” Palmer recalled, “giving the details of an ‘ancient alphabet’ that ‘should not be lost to the world.’ It was opened by my managing editor, Howard Browne, who read it with typical orthodox attitude and tossed it in the wastebasket with the comment, ‘The world is full of crackpots.’ Even through the intervening wall I heard his remark, and the word ‘crackpot’ drew me like a magnet.”

Palmer began to experiment with the ancient alphabet, said to be the basis of all known human language, and realized the language system Shaver had written about actually worked. Palmer published the letter in “Amazing Stories,” which quickly made pulp magazine publishing history. Hundreds of letters poured in asking where Shaver had gotten his alphabet. Shaver answered by submitting a 10,000 word manuscript, poorly typed and entitled “A Warning To Future Man.”

Palmer read the manuscript through and then asked himself what it was he had exactly? It was not a simple matter of an author trying to make a sale. Shaver wanted no money for his manuscript, which was really more accurately a letter written as a warning. Shaver was anxious that it be published, not for notoriety but out of a sincere desire that the world be warned of the terrible danger it faced and informed of a wonderful heritage it had lost and which should be recovered if at all possible.

Palmer said the manuscript was problematic for “Amazing Stories.” It was not a story about the future, based on factual science, the usual fare for the magazine. Shaver’s manuscript instead purported to be about the science of the past. But Palmer saw that here was a “jumping off place” for some really terrific stories, and with his mind focused on potential profits for the magazine if the stories were properly packaged and promoted on the cover, he began to rewrite Shaver’s manuscript into a longer story entitled “I Remember Lemuria.” Palmer says he did not alter the “factual” basis of Shaver’s manuscript but changed the story so that it did not revolve around literal caves in the Earth with actual people living there but instead was the product of “racial memory,” a story encoded into Shaver’s DNA from eons past. The point in doing this was to make it more believable to the magazine’s readers, but the results went surprisingly beyond initial expectations.

Not only did readers find Shaver’s story believable, they did so in unprecedented numbers. The issue of “Amazing Stories” that included “I Remember Lemuria” sold out its first press run of 135,000 copies, but this was during World War II and even pulp paper was rationed by law. But through some shady dealing – and with the help of Shaver’s underground “contacts” – sufficient paper was obtained to print another 50,000 copies, which sold out overnight. The enormous popularity of what came to be called the “Shaver Mysteries” had begun.

But that popularity did not come without some nay-saying. The readers of “Amazing Stories” were hardcore sci-fi buffs who weren’t interested in some fantasy story that claimed to be true. They of course wrote to the magazine in protest. Meanwhile, one of the owners of the publishing company that included “Amazing Stories” in its empire of pulp magazines, Bernard Davis, called to say the extra 50,000 copies had been printed without the approval of higher-ups and predicted they would not sell. Of Shaver’s story, Davis said, “I have never read such balderdash in my life.”

Nevertheless, a total of around 50,000 people wrote letters praising “I Remember Lemuria,” with many of them claiming to hear the same voices Shaver was hearing. Palmer writes of visiting Shaver at his home in Pennsylvania and reporting that he also heard voices as he lay in bed long after Shaver had retired for the night.

Part 2 Next Week.

Read more from Sean Casteel at www.seancasteel.com

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The ghostly traditions of Latin America have not received much attention in the English language media. Perhaps the stereotypes of fun in the sun and Carmen Miranda-type dancers make it hard to believe that hauntings form an integral part of the traditions of countries from Mexico to Argentina, with some apparitions dating back centuries. In Mexico alone we find La Llorona – the ancient Aztec goddess known a Cihuacoatl, the serpent woman, worshipped in the darkness of the temple known as Tillán by a secretive priesthood who approached her statue on their knees – whose banshee-like wails filled the streets of Tenochtitlan at night, foreshadowing the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores.

During the Colonial period of Mexican history, the creole population of viceregal Mexico City quailed in terror at the same nocturnal wailing, saying that it was the revenant of La Malinche, the late lover of the conquistador Hernán Cortés, bemoaning her betrayal of her own people. Dressed in white, her features covered by an impenetrable veil, the figure would wander the streets of the old city. According to the scholar José María Marroquí, the lateness of the hour would be broken by “the clothing, the air, the slow and steady stride of that mysterious woman and her penetrating, shrill and prolonged moan, terrifying those who saw and heard her. Some brave hearts would try to follow her, availing themselves of the moonlight, only to see her vanish upon reaching the lake, vanishing into the waters. Unable to glean more information about her, or whence she came from, she became known as La Llorona.”

Yolotl Gonzales Torres, the noted Mexican ethnographer and religious scholar, notes the following in her Diccionario de mitologia y religión de mesoamerica (Larousse,1991): Cihuacoatl displays “three characteristic aspects: screams and lamentations in the night, the presence of water, since both Aztlan (the place of origin of the Aztecs) and Great Tenochtitlan were encircled by water, and by being the patroness of the cihuateteo, who scream in the night, being women who died during childbirth and come to earth on certain days appointed to them in the calendar, haunting the crossroads, being fatal to children."

Artemio del Valle-Arizpe mentions another ghostly woman during the colonial period – one that we would classify today as a “shadow person” – wandering the streets as a dark cloud, but emitting small streams of multicolored light. A colonial gentleman decided to put an end to the mystery, boldly facing the apparition and challenging it to uncloak itself. When the dark figure moved forward, unimpressed by his challenge, he stabbed it with his sword, only to see the darkness advance along the length of the blade – streaming multicolored lights as it did so – and eventually engulfing his hand and forearm. The terrified caballero issued a scream and fell to the ground in a dead faint.

In more recent times, video evidence has emerged of a ghostly presence in the Casa de los Azulejos (House of Blue Tiles) on Calle Madero in downtown Mexico – in La Llorona’s old neighborhood. During construction work in the early years of this century, workers reported seeing a shadow descending the stairs, vanishing on one of the landings. Another presence was seen entering the building’s courtyard, which is occupied by the popular Sanborns restaurant.

Learning about the existence of ghosts in Puerto Rico is perhaps even more disconcerting for the casual reader, as one would think the sunshine and tropical breezes would serve as a barrier against the repetitive activity of restless spirits. Quite the contrary, according to folklorist Calixta Vélez, author of a number of books on children’s games. In a statement to the island’s El Nuevo Día newspaper (29 Oct 2010) Ms. Vélez observed that ghosts have always been seen in Puerto Rico, adding: “This all forms part of our oral tradition. Ghosts have always been seen in various parts, although whether this is true or not is an entirely different matter. The human mind is extremely powerful, and since we are not merely flesh, but incarnated spirits, many situations can come about. Paranormal phenomena are defined as events that are hard to explain both by science and religion.”

Spirits, notes the expert, remain on the terrestrial plane after bodily death. “Spirit transcends matter and remains on Earth for a few days after death, especially those who die suddenly. They remain where they are because they have not realized that they are no longer supposed to be there. Some remain longer, others less so. This is why they are seen so often on highways, because their deaths were so sudden.”

Religion, she believes, is charged to making sure that the spirit goes to where it is supposed to, hence the Catholic tradition of praying the Rosary for nine days after a person’s death, as it is necessary to tell the person that it is time to go. Far from being afraid, says the folklorist, if confronted by a “wandering spirit”, we should tell it that it no longer belongs to this plane and must depart.

In 1901, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle published a remarkable account of ghostly activity in Puerto Rico only a few years after the U.S. invasion of the island. Bearing the title “He Drives Up To The Castle and Cares Nothing for Sentries”, the newspaper article is centered on St. Gerónimo Castle, a 17th century Spanish fort built on the Ensenada de Boquerón, a body of water that separates the Condado Lagoon from the Atlantic Ocean. The contemporary tourist trade has come to know it as the ancient structure almost on the grounds of the Caribe Hilton hotel, or visible from the sands of the beach on the property of the Condado Plaza hotel.

Things were different in 1901, however: “Major Seldon A. Day, with two orderlies, is the sole occupant of the picturesque spot,” notes the article “and he has been quartered there since General Miles first entered San Juan. He and his dogs, cats, ponies and a Brazilian mountain lion seem to be under some sort of influence which pervades the place. For the last two winters the Major has had a houseful of guests. nearly all or more or less literary fame, who came to this secluded spot to commune with nature and take notes and weave weird stories of love and war, underground passages, haunted fortresses and the like.”

“Every night, promptly at midnight,” the article goes on, “or so Major Day tells his guests, a team of white horses attached to a coach dashes up the driveway and into the court. From the coach alights a transparent figure attired in the uniform of a Spanish officer of 150 years ago. He enters the fort noiselessly and the coach drives clattering down the lane. The sight is such a familiar one to the old artillery chief, that he no longer, so he claims, cares a rap whether the antiquated Spanish captain visits him or not, but whenever a new guest arrives the host insists that he remain until the ghost appears. At first, two years ago, one of the sentries fired point blank at the driver, who had refused to halt on command. The ball passed through his breast, according to the soldier's tale, but the coach did not even tremble. The guard did, however, and afterward served a term in the guard house for deserting his post.”

The article adds the intriguing note about a tunnel connecting San Gerónimo to the great fortress of San Cristobal on the walls of Old San Juan – a distance of two miles. “These underground passages are a part of the general defense system of San Juan built by Spain years ago. They have not been explored. As the evacuating army destroyed the records October 17, 1898, and their exact location has been lost. But in the minds of army officers these passages do exist, the entrance to nearly all are known and are pointed out to visitors al Fort Cristobal and Morro—stone built holes in the fortifications through which one may pass for a certain distance until further progress is prevented by heaps of fallen masonry and rubbish. In one of the entrances in plain view, back of the Executive Mansion, near the water's edge, the visitor may go forward about fifteen feet, when a massive iron door, rusted on its huge hand wrought hinges, is encountered.”

Frequent visitors to the military structures of the ancient city may find this hard to believe, although a tunnel – shown to visitors every day – exists within the structure known as the Casa Blanca, the masonry home of Juan Ponce de León, built as a shelter for the population of San Juan against raids by pirates and Carib Indians. The tunnel links this structure with La Fortaleza, the white colonial structure that has served as the residence of the governors of Puerto Rico from 1822 to the present.

The final paragraph of the article is no less tantalizing. “Only a few weeks ago one of a gang of workmen repairing the foundation of a building on the Plaza, was surprised to find himself suddenly precipitated twenty feet below the level of the ground. He had sunk through a thin crust roofing of an underground room. Examination disclosed well-built concrete arches, subterranean galleries and hallways. Members of the older families still relate stories to their children about these passages, and it is claimed by some that the recently disclosed room was used as a dungeon in the seventeen century. The proprietor of the building was so besieged by curiosity seekers that he closed up the place without thoroughly examining it. Governor Allen and dozens of others visited the spot, but were only rewarded with a glance of a dark opening and whiffs of most foul air. Some people claim to believe that dozens of skeletons of old time martyrs or kegs of treasure may yet repose in this walled up underground room.”

Do the ghosts of these “old-time martyrs” haunt the city? Quite likely. The existence of these tunnels, moreover, is corroborated by the discovery of similar networks of tunnels on the other side of the island, under the Porta Coeli church in San Germán, which was attacked by French corsairs so often that the town was relocated several times until it reached its present location.

Among the mysterious locations of the ancient walled city of San Juan we find the Devil’s Sentry Box – La garita del diablo, in Spanish –whose legend was made popular by the 19th century author and educator Cayetano Coll y Toste. In the writer’s romantic late colonial story, Dina, a young woman given to taking her evening strolls along the fortifications attracted the attentions of an Andalusian soldier surnamed Sánchez, who took to playing love songs on his guitar under the girl’s balcony.

“There is within San Cristobal Castle a sentry box, far from the fortress itself, that faces the north and appears to plunge into the sea,” Coll y Toste tells us. “It is a strategic place for watching the coast toward Escambrón and the ever-suspect marine horizon. One evening, when it was Sánchez’s turn at guard duty, Dina felt an irresistible urge to speak to him, as he had become the mainstay of her fancy…waiting for her aunt to fall asleep, the girl opened the door to the street and slid away, behind the city wall, to the sentry box, its black basalt standing against the foggy outline of the sea coast.” The lovers met, and the author coyly ends by saying “let us leave the sweet mystery of life to the sweet mystery of the night!”

Daybreak and the changing of the guard, however, showed that the sentry was gone, leaving behind only his rifle and bandoliers. Superstition held that the Devil had taken him for breaking his sacred oath to watch the city walls, yet others – perhaps more wisely – noticed that Dina had also inexplicably vanished, so the legend must have a more terrestrial explanation. But popular tradition prevailed, and the Devil’s Sentry Box still stands for all to see.

Interviewed by the EFE news agency on 31 October 2008, paranormalist Virginia Gómez stated that three centuries of military actions against San Juan from French, Dutch and English armies had created “ideal conditions for spirits or specters to remain among its structures and subterranean tunnels.” These bombardments caused the deaths of thousands of people who are now wandering the through the ancient city."

Gómez agrees that San Cristobal Castle – mentioned earlier – is perhaps the greatest source of paranormal activity, with a number of ghostly stories being told about it. The El Convento Hotel in the heart of the city had been a monastery that took in the widows of soldiers and their children following the attacks. Guests and employees, she says, claim having felt, seen or heard nuns walking through the corridors, rooms and surroundings. Other notable buildings in the city, such as the Tapia Theater, dating back to 1832, also offer hauntings of their own.

Source: Inexplicata
http://inexplicata.blogspot.fr/2013/11/a-quiver-of-ghosts.html

It's a question pondered by philosophers, scientists and the devout since the dawn of time: is there an afterlife?

While the religious would argue that life on earth is a mere warm up for an eternity spent in heaven or hell, and many scientists would dismiss the concept for lack of proof — one expert claims he has definitive evidence to confirm once and for all that there is indeed life after death.

The answer, Professor Robert Lanza says, lies in quantum physics — specifically the theory of biocentrism. The scientist, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, says the evidence lies in the idea that the concept of death is a mere figment of our consciousness.

Professor Lanza says biocentrism explains that the universe only exists because of an individual's consciousness of it — essentially life and biology are central to reality, which in turn creates the universe; the universe itself does not create life. The same applies to the concepts of space and time, which Professor Lanza describes as "simply tools of the mind".

In a message posted on the scientist's website, he explains that with this theory in mind, the concept of death as we know it is "cannot exist in any real sense" as there are no true boundaries by which to define it. Essentially, the idea of dying is something we have long been taught to accept, but in reality it just exists in our minds.

Professor Lanza says biocentrism is similar to the idea of parallel universes — a concept hypothesised by theoretical physicists. In much the same way as everything that could possibly happen is speculated to be occurring all at once across multiple universes, he says that once we begin to question our preconceived concepts of time and consciousness, the alternatives are huge and could alter the way we think about the world in a way not seen since the 15th century's "flat earth" debate.

He goes on to use the so-called double-slit experiment as proof that the behaviour of a particle can be altered by a person's perception of it. In the experiment, when scientists watch a particle pass through a multi-holed barrier, the particle acts like a bullet travelling through a single slit. When the article is not watched, however, the particle moves through the holes like a wave.

Scientists argue that the double-slit experiment proves that particles can act as two separate entities at the same time, challenging long-established ideas of time and perception.

Although the idea is rather complicated, Professor Lanza says it can be explained far more simply using colours. Essentially, the sky may be perceived as blue, but if the cells in our brain were changed to make the sky look green, was the sky every truly blue or was that just our perception?

In terms of how this affects life after death, Professor Lanza explains that, when we die, our life becomes a "perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse". He added: "Life is an adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard-ball-matrix but in the inescapable-life-matrix."

Professor Lanza's theory is explained in full in his book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.

Source: The Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Is-there-an-afterlife-Science-can-prove-there-is-quantum-physicist-claims/articleshow/25839769.cms

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