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A Personal Message from
Robert D. Morningstar

Co-Editor, UFO Digest
 
New York City
June 28th, 2015
 
Ms. Anna Vander Ploeg has announced on Facebook that her father, Dirk Vander Ploeg, founder and  publisher of UFO Digest, has passed away.  Anna's statement announcing Dirk's passing over is linked below:
 
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1455699988083016&id=
100009290875466&fref=nf&pnref=story
 
"It is with a heavy heart that I announce the passing of my father, Dirk Vander Ploeg yesterday in his sleep. i can't find the words at the moment, but i love him and miss him very much. He was wacky, opinionated and full of ideas. Ill miss our movie dates. I am overseas at the moment, and being away is very hard right now.  Dad didn't want a fuss but we will have a celebration of his life.  RIP Daddy."
 
As a colleague and co-editor of UFO Digest with Dirk Vander Ploeg, I feel heartbroken to receive the news and regret to inform all friends of UFO Digest of Dirk's passing, peacefully in his sleep, on Friday night, June 26-27, 2015 at his home in Hamilton, Ontario
 
This is the saddest news that I have had in many years.  Dirk and I worked together for more than 10 years on developing and expanding UFO Digest, and we shall all miss him dearly.
 
Words cannot express my grief and deep sorrow.  Dirk and I were looking forward to meeting in New York City right after July 4th to discuss the expnson of UFO Digest news and services. 
I shall surely miss greeting him, welcoming him to New York and showing him the beauties and marvels of "The Big Apple."
 
My heartfelt condolences and deep sympathies go out to Dirk's wife, Carolyn, his daughter, Anna, Dirk's sons, Jacob and Robert and the entire Vander Ploeg family. 
UFO Digest now continues, carrying on his legacy and the tradition of excellence that Dirk Vander Ploeg established and leaves behind for us to continue in UFO research.
 
Sincerely,
 
Robert D. Morningstar

Mass killings and school shootings in the U.S. appear to be contagious, according to a team of scientists from Arizona State University and Northeastern Illinois University.

Study author Sherry Towers, research professor in the ASU Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, explained, "The hallmark of contagion is observing patterns of many events that are bunched in time, rather than occurring randomly in time."

Her team examined databases on past high-profile mass killings and school shootings in the U.S. and fit a contagion model to the data to determine if these tragedies inspired similar events in the near future.

They determined that mass killings - events with four or more deaths - and school shootings create a period of contagion that lasts an average of 13 days. Roughly 20 to 30 percent of such tragedies appear to arise from contagion.

Their paper, "Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings," appears in the July 2 edition of PLOS ONE.

The analysis was inspired by actual events in Towers' life.

"In January of 2014 I was due to have a meeting with a group of researchers at Purdue University," she said. "That morning there was a tragic campus shooting and stabbing incident that left one student dead. I realized that there had been three other school shootings in the news in the week prior, and I wondered if it was just a statistical fluke, or if somehow through news media those events were sometimes planting unconscious ideation in vulnerable people for a short time after each event."

The researchers noted that previous studies have shown that suicide in youths can be contagious, where one suicide in a school appears to spark the idea in other vulnerable youths to do the same.

"It occurred to us that mass killings and school shootings that attract attention in the national news media can potentially do the same thing, but at a larger scale," Towers said. "While we can never determine which particular shootings were inspired by unconscious ideation, this analysis helps us understand aspects of the complex dynamics that can underlie these events."

On average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the U.S., and school shootings occur on average monthly. The team found that the incidence of these tragedies is significantly higher in states with a high prevalence of firearm ownership.

Source: Phys.org
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-mass-school-contagious.html

---

MEL TORME FATHERS A UFO
SCREENWRITER

The expression "Like father, like son" is appropriate to Mel Torme's UFO sighting.

Mel told Beckley that late one night in 1953, while the singer was out walking his dog, a UFO put on a heavenly show for him. It was around 2:00 A.M. and Mel was standing near his apartment building in midtown Manhattan.

"I happened to see this red light in the sky over the East River," Mel said, "and it appeared to be moving around quite differently than an airplane would. It moved horizontally, faster than my eyes could follow it, before stopping dead in its path as though it had hit a barrier. Then it did lazy loops, almost like a figure-eight. It made a few more circles and then noiselessly it went zap again to another part of the sky."

For a brief while, the UFO just hovered there.

"Against the pitch blackness of the sky," Mel continued, "the object resembled the typical description of a 'flying saucer.' Eventually, after three or four minutes, it zipped off faster than my eyes could follow."

Meanwhile, Mel's dog remained rooted still to the ground, shaking and seemingly transfixed by the UFO. Mel says he still recalls the sighting vividly and the aerial maneuvers he saw the craft make have convinced him that the pilots must have been "superhuman beings."

Over the years, Mel must have planted the seeds of belief in his son, Tracy Torme, who would eventually write the screenplay and do production work on the CBS miniseries "Intruders," based on Budd Hopkins' book of the same name about alien abduction. Tracy also ventured into feature films by writing the screenplay for "Fire In The Sky," based on the Travis Walton abduction story.


Comic Robert Klein makes his living by being funny, but, during the course of a conversation with Beckley, he revealed that he is very serious when it comes to talking about his sighting of a UFO.

It was during the summer of 1957, when Klein was fifteen years old and attending a youth camp in Kent, Connecticut. He and 25 or so fellow campers were playing baseball.

"Before I knew what was happening," he told Beckley, "a group of my buddies were craning their heads skyward and pointing excitedly at something. Following the direction of their stare, I immediately saw what had captured their attention. There, in plain view, were these six cigar-shaped objects moving by at an extremely high altitude. They were in formation, one right behind the other, traveling in and out between the cloud layers. Strange as it may seem, they made absolutely no noise. I mean, not a sound. They were just coasting along as if they hadn't a care in the world."

None of the youths could make out any detail because the ships were too high in sky.
 
"But because of their great brilliance," Klein said, "caused by the reflection of the sun, we could definitely ascertain their shape as being elongated. They went out of viewing range after several minutes. How something this size could travel at such great speeds and not make any noise is beyond my understanding. They defied all the laws of physics."

Klein hastens to add that he is not an expert on UFOs and that he had never seen anything like the ships before or since. Like Buddy Rich, the boys felt compelled to call a nearby navy base and report the sighting. The base took the call seriously and even admitted that other reports had been received at about the same time. The base never called back to offer the campers an explanation, which Klein said he has since been told is really "par for the course."

"I strongly believe," Klein told Beckley, "there is a rational explanation for the majority of UFO sightings, but there is also quite a bit about which we know nothing and a lot that remains unexplained. I must, in all honesty, put my own UFO sighting into this category."


In 2011, classic rocker Sammy Hagar added his name to the list of celebrities who have spoken publicly about UFO and alien abduction encounters. Hagar made his remarks about alien abduction in an interview posted on MTV's Hive website and the story was quickly picked up by other news outlets. The interviewer asks Hagar at one point about the singer's consulting with psychics, studying numerology and having "crazy dreams" about UFOs.

"You know how big the universe is?" Hagar replied. "It's freaking huge! If we're really the only ones out there, that's scarier to me than thinking there are aliens. My opinions about the UFO stuff, I could write a whole book just devoted to that. I love it, man. I'm into it deep."

Hagar then answers the interviewer's point blank question as to whether he had ever been abducted by aliens by saying, "I think I have." The rock star referred to a story in his autobiographical book "Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock" where he talked about being contacted by aliens in the foothills above Fontana, California. "It was real. Aliens were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. Looking back now, it was like they downloaded something into me. Or they uploaded something from my brain. 'See what this guy knows.'"

Hagar also related an experience he had at age four. He saw what he thought at the time was a "car with no wheels."
"We lived out in the country," he said, "and I saw this thing floating across a field, creating this big dust storm. I threw rocks at it. And I don't know what happened after that."

The interviewer asked if Hagar had blacked out at that point.

"I guess," Hagar answered. "I just have no memory of it. And that wasn't a dream. It was during daylight."

Hagar said that he had been reluctant to talk about his alien encounters largely because he had no language with which to express what had happened to him.

"I couldn't talk about it because I couldn't explain it," he said. "But now I'm pretty sure it was a wireless situation. Either a download or an upload. They were tapped into my brain and the knowledge was transferred back and forth. I could see them and everything while it was happening. There was a visual involved."


In a section of the book on KISS guitarist Ace Frehley, Beckley reveals how he came by the affectionate moniker "Mr. UFO." It is not because of all the UFO literature Beckley has generated writing and publishing about the subject for more than 50 years. Nor is it due to all the radio and television appearances Beckley has logged trying to popularize a subject that still goes begging with the mainstream media.

The honor actually goes to Ace, one of the four original members of the blockbuster heavy metal band that was recently and controversially inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Considering the large throng of reporters around KISS, all of whom were trying to get the next scoop on the most theatrical rock group of its time, it's a wonder anyone among the press was recognized at all. 

"Ace used to refer to me as 'Mr. UFO,'" Beckley writes, "because I had once printed a short item about his sighting in a UFO magazine."

Ace had admitted to Beckley, "It was very strange. We were flying from Los Angeles to New York. This happened sometime before the end of July 1974, following the recording of our second album. The flight had been delayed six hours, and, by the time we boarded, it was well after midnight. I took a seat in the rear section of the 747, isolating myself from the rest of the group and the few passengers who were traveling this late at night."

Ace said an "eerie feeling" overwhelmed him as he tried to stretch out and get some sleep in the darkened airplane. He noticed a bright ball of light out the window to his right. He blinked his eyes to make certain it wasn't some kind of illusion.

"But sure enough this 'thing' was still there," he said. "I couldn't make out any great detail. It looked like an enormous baseball and its actions were completely erratic, moving from side to side. The UFO remained in view for a brief period and then darted off, traveling quite rapidly. I know it wasn't a satellite or another plane. We were pretty high up when it appeared, leaving me to conclude it was a UFO."

When Beckley asked Ace how he felt about his sighting, Ace replied that he was sort of elated by it.

"I'd always wanted to see a flying saucer," Ace said.


Actor Glenn Ford is best known for his tough guy cowboy roles, such as the outlaw in "3:10 To Yuma" in 1957, as well as for his leading man stint opposite Rita Hayworth in the classic "Gilda," from 1946.

Glenn knew UFOs are nothing to scoff at, and he made himself clear on that to Beckley.

"Millions of Americans have sighted them," Glenn said, "and it's a well-established fact that some twenty percent of such observations remain unexplainable."

Glenn had his own sighting while in Great Britain.

"I was trying to relax, taking it easy," he recounted, "and so I decided to spend a few hours alone on a beach near Oxford, England. All around me, as far as I could see, was nothing but a beautiful blue expanse of sky and water.

"Suddenly, my attention was attracted to an object skipping across the heavens," Glenn continued. "Looking closer, I saw what was definitely a disc-shaped object. What they call a UFO or flying saucer. I watched it for a good half hour as it darted back and forth right in front of my eyes. There is no way anyone can convince me what I saw wasn't some kind of intelligently-controlled craft. This 'thing' made sharp right angle turns that our fastest and most advanced military jets could not accomplish at the time."

Glenn also said he saw no reason why our planet could not be receiving visitors from outer space.

"Scientific evidence now exists," he declared, "which proves that thousands of inhabited worlds can thrive throughout the cosmos. I'm positive that there are other worlds nearby that contain lifeforms of one type or another."

Taken aback by what he saw on the beach that day in England, Glenn said he reported his sighting to some friends in the military out of a sense of duty.

"Unfortunately, they would not take me seriously," he said. "In fact, they acted as if I were a bit crazy."
Glenn believes the UFOs are probably friendly and piloted by creatures coming to Earth "simply out of curiosity."


Perhaps to test his "tough guy" cred, a UFO intruded onto the grounds of the plush Bel Air estate owned by "Death Wish" star Charles Bronson. Charles was away on location at the time, and the object was actually sighted by his charming actress wife, Jill Ireland.

Jill, being a firm believer in metaphysics and the human potential field, was open to talking about the incident with Beckley in a telephone interview.

"The episode stuck in my mind," she told Beckley. "My youngest girl was only three months old at the time. I remember it was about five in the afternoon when we had the sighting. I was sitting on the veranda, holding the baby in my arms. Our child's nurse, Zizi, was standing around talking to me when my eyes suddenly drifted to a bright blue patch of sky. Something up there - which had been reflecting the rays of the sun - caught my attention."

As is often the case, the harshness of the glare made it difficult to ascertain the exact shape and size of the object, but Jill feels it was "round, with perhaps a dome or tower on top." She would have had an easier time seeing it clearly if it had been an overcast day, she said.

The idea that it was a weather balloon crossed her mind, but she ruled out this explanation when the UFO began to rapidly rise higher and higher and flew against the wind. Looking back, she says it could have been a secret government aircraft or it may have been a genuine space traveler paying her home "a brief visit."

Jill was so impressed by what happened that she told husband Charles about it the moment he arrived home. In that same phone call with Beckley, Charles backed up Jill completely.

"There's got to be something to it," Charles said. "If Jill says there was something strange in the sky, I see no reason not to take her at her word. I remember she talked about it for quite a while afterwards, and, besides, I know she wouldn't make the whole thing up. Why would she?"


Beckley interviewed Anthony Hopkins backstage at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway when the actor was a mere 37 years old and garnering comparisons to Richard Burton for his Shakespeare chops. This was long before Anthony's Oscar-winning turn as Hannibal the Cannibal in "Silence of the Lambs" struck such terror in moviegoers' hearts.

A deeply philosophical person, Anthony freely admitted that he hadn't read much about UFOs, at least not enough to comment on the possible arrival of spaceships and aliens, but he is smart enough to realize that the universe must be teeming with life in all manners, shapes and forms.

"It's really a mathematical certainty that we are not alone," he opined to Beckley. "It would be a fundamentally lonely joke to think we're the only ones in the universe. The vastness of the universe alone tells us something. We can safely and mathematically assume that there must be millions and millions of forms of civilizations - civilized life - and that some of these may be highly advanced. I think it's a high probability - not just a possibility. Otherwise, what the hell is it all about, unless the whole thing is an illusion?"

After quoting philosopher Bertrand Russell to the effect that even the stars in outer space exist primarily in our minds and that material reality is a hard thing to pin down, Anthony offered his opinion on Erich von Daniken and the Ancient Astronauts approach to human existence.

"Writers like this fellow who did 'Chariots of the Gods?' are a bit too spectacular in their claims," he said. "But I think it was Einstein who said that it is possible that we have been visited by superhuman beings. Maybe they exist in a different space-time continuum. Otherwise how could they get here from the nearest other star system that is four and a half light years away?"


With typical Hollywood hubris, old-time movie trailers used to boast that a coming attraction featured "more stars than are in the heavens." While Beckley doesn't make that particular boast himself, his new book, "Shirley MacLaine Meets the Pleiadians Plus The Amazing Flying Saucer Experiences of Celebrities, Rock Stars and the Rich and Famous," does offer more stars than are covered in this article.

Some of those additional names are actors Cliff Robertson and Ed Asner, comedians Soupy Sales and Dick Gregory, singers Vic Damone and Neil Sedaka, and the classic era rock bands The Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane/Starship. And even that list is not complete. The book also covers the experiences and opinions of astronauts and presidents, to include a sighting by Ronald Reagan in which an alien advised him to switch from acting to politics.

Given the fact that, even today, the mainstream perception of the UFO phenomenon is so completely laced with the kind of pervasive ridicule that places the subject squarely within the "lunatic fringe," it is much to Tim Beckley's credit that so many stars were willing to speak so frankly to him about their experiences. Show business is a very "image conscious" line of work and it's a bit of a risk for a popular celebrity to talk about UFOs even casually and in private.

But when reading "Shirley MacLaine Meets the Pleiadians," it becomes obvious that even some among the rich and famous have had experiences with UFOs and the paranormal that they don't completely understand but which they are willing to share with the world, perhaps in the hope that they are not alone with the great unknown and are instead part of a wider experiencer community that also includes some of the rest of us.

SUGGESTED READING

SHIRLEY MACLAINE MEETS THE PLEIADIANS – THE FLYING SAUCER EXPERIENCES OF CELEBRITIES,ROCK STARS AND THE RICH AND FAMOUS 

THE SECRET OF MOUNT SHASTA AND A DWELLER ON TWO PLANETS

THE ASTOUNDING SECRETS OF JAMES W. MOSELEY

Source: Spectral Vision
https://spectralvision.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/the-profound-ufo-encounters-of-celebrities
-pop-stars-and-the-worlds-most-famous-prize-fighter-muhammad-ali-part-two/

It has long been suggested that animals 'know' when an earthquake is about to occur: changes in behaviour have been noted in laboratory mice, daily rhythms of ants have reportedly been disrupted, and cows have been observed to behave unusually.

Now, seismologists in China have established an official 'early-warning centre' for earthquakes that will monitor seven farms full of animals looking for odd changes in behaviour:

    "One of the seismic stations is an ecological garden in Yuhuatai district, containing 200 black boars, 2,000 chickens, and a 2 square kilometers of fish pond. Cameras are installed around the animals' living environment to observe their behavior. Their feeders report to the seismological bureau twice a day on any abnormal behavior that professionals will analyze for whether a possible earthquake is imminent."

Advance notice of impending earthquakes remains the holy grail of seismology, as there is still no reliable predictor of these sometimes devastating events. I recently noted here on The Daily Grail there is a long-held belief in many cultures that a number of animal species can sense an earthquakes coming:

    "Changes in behaviour have been noted in laboratory mice, daily rhythms of ants have reportedly been disrupted, and cows have been observed to behave unusually (in one case an entire herd of cows was witnessed lying down in unison before an earthquake struck). There were reports of elephants and flamingos heading to higher ground before the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami, and more recently of zoo animals acting strangely before an earthquake that struck Washington, D.C. One of the earliest reports of animal behaviour predicting earthquakes is from Greece in 373 BC, when rats, weasels, snakes, and centipedes were said to have left their usual homes several days before it struck. that appeared to provide support for the idea that animals can sense earthquakes in advance."

In that same post I also discussed a recent scientific study which appears to support this idea. Researchers monitored nine 'camera traps' in Yanachaga National Park in Peru to monitor the movements of animals in the park, and found correlations between the number of animals and earthquake activity.

Researchers theorise that changes in animal behaviour before an earthquake might be caused by the sub-surface grinding of rocks in the lead-up to an earthquake, creating an electric charge that has a number of effects which might be sensed by animals:

    "Emission of ultra-low frequency (ULF) electromagnetic waves that may affect biochemical reactions and disrupt circadian rhythms. Oxidisation of soil organics, creating toxic and/or irritating trace gases, such as carbon monoxide. Ionisation of air molecules - which has been reported to cause blood serotonin levels to increase in animals and humans."

The researchers concluded:

    "An enhanced air ionisation at the ridge prior to the magnitude 7 Contamana earthquake may have caused the animals to escape to lower altitudes, where they would have been exposed to fewer positive airborne ions. The pre-earthquake anxiety, restlessness and escape reactions of domestic or captive animals, reported anecdotally for many decades, even centuries, may simply be due to the fact that confined animals tend to panic when they are unable to move away from aversive stimuli in their environment. If this correlation can be substantiated by systematically monitoring a wider range of reported pre-earthquake phenomena, this would lead to a better understanding of the premonitory abilities of animals."

China is a hotspot for earthquake activity, so it might not be long until we find out whether this new 'outside-the-box' early-warning system works effectively.

Source: Daily Grail
http://www.dailygrail.com/Fresh-Science/2015/7/China-Establishes-Earthquake-Early-
Warning-Centre-Based-Changes-Animal-Behaviou

---

A husband called in a ghostbuster because he is convinced that evil demons are molesting and beating up his wife every night.

Father-of-three Keiron Fry, 32, from New Tredegar, south Wales, paid a paranormal investigator £100 to banish three ghosts which he says have been 'terrorising' his family for nine months.

He said his marriage to Tracey, 46, has been left on the rocks because the ghost keeps attacking her as she sleeps - leaving her covered with bruises in the morning.

The couple said the demons have also menacing their three children, threatening to 'slit their parents' throats' after their stepson used a ouija board on Hallowe'en.

Mr Fry said: 'We are being molested by demons.

'My wife goes to bed fine, doesn't feel anything in the night but when she wakes up she's in agony. I wake up the next day and said: 'I didn't do that. I would never beat my wife.'

The unemployed father took a picture of the ghost in his sons' bedroom which he says shows a small child in a white gown with a blue face and a tail.

He also asked a vicar to bless his house - but claims the demon is still terrorising his family.

Their cats have also been left too frightened to go upstairs after it was invaded by three ghosts including a dreaded incubus demon, according to the father-of-three.

His wife Tracy, who is a full-time carer, said: 'It's getting worse and worse and there's nothing we can do.

'I wake up every morning in agony because of the demon. My husband rubs cream into my bruise back every day but the pain doesn't go away.

'We were told by the paranormal investigator that we have an incubus demon - the worst type of demon you can get.

'He told us we have three demons in total, the other two helped the main demon pin me down.

'It has affected our marriage because we have been rowing and fighting all the time about the demon. It has been feeding off all the negative energy.'

The family, who moved into their Housing Association home in July 2013, called in a ghostbuster to tackle the spooks.

Robert Amour, 43, who has 20 years experience in the field, arrived at the house with a bible, crucifix and rosary for protection.

He banned the petrified family from going upstairs after he shouted to them that he could 'feel the evilness in the room.'

After 20 minutes the paranormal investigator, who charged £100 for a three-hour house 'clearance' returned to the frightened family - claiming he had slain two small demons.

Mr Amour, who is not connected to any particular religion, said he struggled with the third demon - who is still terrorising the Fry family.

He said: 'As soon as I arrived at the home I could sense there was negative energy. The incubus was brought via a ouija board – they are an absolute danger and can bring through anything.

'This particular one was reluctant to go.'

'I always speak to their residents first about exactly what they can see. I listen and deal with it from there.

'I can normally see the demons straight away. I then focus on it and move it on to a heavenly state.

'I don't send it back where it came from. It takes a while for things to calm down as you have to allow the negative energy to return to positive energy.'

Church of Wales Vicar Jonathan Widdess also visited the family to help them tackle the ghost.

He said: 'He invited us there and we spoke about what was going on. We said a prayer to try and help him.'

Source: The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3147073/Husband-calls-ghostbuster-
catch-demon-molesting-wife.html

A team of ghost hunters found the body of a missing woman on Sunday as they explored the old Kuhn Memorial State Hospital in Vicksburg, Mississippi, a site known to be one of Mississippi's most haunted.

Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong said Sharon Wilson, 69, appeared to have trauma to her head. Witnesses said her body was found outside Kuhn Hospital, but blood trails indicated she had been inside.

Two men, Akeem McCloud, 20, and Rafael McCloud, 33, have been taken into custody, but Armstrong said they have not been charged yet.

Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said his office was alerted to the body when a group of people came to the sheriff's office. Sgt. Jason Bailess was working on shift reports and talked with the group who told him that they had been at Kuhn Hospital. They told Bailess they knew they probably weren't supposed to be out there, but they had found a body and wanted to report it.

Bailess went to the scene and blocked off the driveway and called Vicksburg Police Department.

Armstrong said he was in the Delta searching for Wilson when the call came in. Leland Police Department was able to stop the McClouds, who are related, on a traffic stop. When they realized the car was stolen, as was a weapon in their possession, police asked VPD to check on the welfare of the owner of the vehicle.

"We checked, and she was not there," Armstrong said.

Wilson was last seen around 9 p.m. Saturday night by a couple who visited her home. She was reported missing around noon on Sunday.

Inside of Kuhn Hospital is a dark maze of rooms full of debris. Many of the walls are are spray-painted, and many of them have fallen down. It is nationally and internationally known as a hotspot of paranormal activity, with many paranormal groups coming to investigate apparitions and electronic voice phenomena recorded there.

David Childers, co-founder of the Mississippi Paranormal Research Institute, is very familiar with Kuhn Hospital, as he has conducted many ghost hunts there through the years. He said from what he saw inside Kuhn on Monday, it appears at one point Wilson was inside the hospital and was taken outside.

"You could tell where they had dragged someone down from the second floor in the middle of the building, to a grassy area on the left side of the hospital," he said. "On the steps, that's where most of the blood was, and it looked like they dragged her all the way to the grassy area."

Police said the McClouds told authorities they had put Wilson out on the side of the road after robbing her home and kidnapping her on Saturday.

Rafael McCloud was already known from previous run-ins with the Vicksburg Police Department, Armstrong said.

Armstrong says the body was sent to the state crime lab in Jackson for processing. Coroner Doug Huskey referred all questions back to VPD.

Because of the propensity for paranormal groups to visit Kuhn, Armstrong said police don't get a lot of calls there, but there is a lot of activity there. Some groups, like Childers', have permission to be inside the building. Others just go unannounced.

Childers said he didn't know the group who found Wilson's body.

In spite of his experience there, Childers said the old structure is dangerous and should be demolished. He said a ceiling caved in on him and some of his team in a ghost hunt last year.

"Kuhn Hospital has a lot of places inside and out that would be an ideal spot to place a body. In my opinion they should tear it down. It's condemned and is open for things like this to happen," he said. "It's an unsafe environment, there are open elevator shafts, black mold, asbestos, and debris, and people ought to stay away from that place."

"Some spirits just need to be left alone," he said.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/29/ghost-hunters
-discover-body/29491251/

---

---

 
If you were to crack a phone book in South Jersey and drag your finger along the pages in the "L" section, you'd find rows and rows of people named Leeds. And if you were to ring them up — one by one — and ask, sheepishly, if the person on the other end of the line knew anything about the Jersey Devil, you might hear claims of direct lineage, the kind of boasts made by folks with ancestors off the Mayflower or descended from European royalty.

Bill Sprouse, 39, has made that phone call and also has his own claim to stake. When he was 10 years old, the South Jersey native and author of "The Domestic Life of the Jersey Devil," was visiting his grandmother — his "BeBop," Helen Leeds — at her tiny house in Absecon when she told him, quite plainly, that he was related to the Jersey Devil.

The news did not immediately impress him.

"I kind of forgot about it for 10 or 15 years," he tells me as we drive down suburban backroads at the edge of the Pine Barrens, the Jersey Devil's backyard. "I think it's one of the weirdest things about growing up in this part of New Jersey. Somebody can tell you you're related to a monster and it won't seem like a very big deal."

Eventually, the story became Sprouse's back-pocket anecdote, the thing he'd pull out at parties and job interviews. "It wasn't until I left New Jersey — until I went to college and started mentioning that fact outside the local context," he says, "that I realized how crazy it is."

But there was something to it, this story. BeBop had some evidence.

The Legend of the Jersey Devil bears repeating, if only because it has never reached the iconic status of contemporaries such as Bigfoot. (Sprouse, himself, calls the devil a "resolutely C-list cryptid.")

The story goes that Mother Leeds, old and destitute, was pregnant with her 13th child when she cursed her own misfortune. "Let it be the devil's child," she declared, and so it was — a monster with a horse's head, cloven hooves, bat wings and a pointed tail. It flew up and out the chimney, and has haunted the Pine Barrens ever since.

Sprouse's grandmother told him they were directly descended from Deborah Leeds, a woman who lived in Leeds Point and had 12 children.

"My grandmother didn't actually think that Deborah Leeds had given birth to a monster, of course, but she did think maybe there was some reason why the neighbors told this story about her," Sprouse says. "So a lot of my book started out as a kind of investigation into what can be discovered about Deborah Smith and her husband, Japheth Leeds."

Ostensibly a history of the Jersey Devil legend, the book, he confesses, is "really an excuse for me to write about myself, my family and the place where I grew up." The result, at turns informative and funny, is part memoir and part historiography — a history of the history of the legend.

"What I really like about Bill's story is that it is struggling with, 'What does the Jersey Devil mean to us as people in New Jersey — or a wider culture? What does it mean to me?'" says Tom Kinsella, a professor of literature at Stockton University in Galloway Township and director of the school's South Jersey Culture and History Center. "Half the book's Bill, the other half's the devil."

Sprouse's book came out on Halloween in 2013 and the author laments he hasn't done a good enough job of marketing the thing, so on this day, he's signing copies on display inside the Cheshire Cat at Buzby's, a gift shop in the space that once held the area's only general store.

It's been raining, and as a dense fog settles on the pines, I promise him not to use it as a prop in another spooky ghost story about the Jersey Devil.

The pines are a constant backdrop in the traditional lore of the Leeds devil, but they play a muted role in Sprouse's story. In their place are the "casino buses" that ferry visitors from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York to Atlantic City (Sprouse's primary mode of transportation during the reporting of the book); JD's Pub & Grille in Smithville, where he spent an evening with a group of devil-hunters; and the Wawa convenience stores, at which he'd interrogate patrons and cashiers on their knowledge of the legend (a not-statistically-insignificant sample of Wawa cashiers say they have seen the devil itself).

Born in Atlantic City and raised in Egg Harbor Township, Sprouse did not venture deep into the pines growing up in the '80s and '90s. You won't likely find the devil there,

If the Jersey Devil legend was born in those woods, it has since moved to the suburbs. It's at once a symbol for fear of the unknown and the nostalgia for a past we've almost paved over, save for the sacred acres set aside in the Pinelands Preservation area. It's also the name of our professional hockey team and a story we tell to strangers.

"The people from the New York area are the ones (who) want to know where they can see the Jersey Devil," says Marilyn Schmidt, who owns the Cheshire Cat and does a good deal of business in Jersey Devil paraphernalia, though she guesses more of her customers are eco-tourists than devil hunters.

"I say, 'On a bad day, behind this counter,' " she adds, with a laugh. "Then I send them to Leeds Point."

"You see that hole right there?" Sprouse asks me.

We're driving around Leeds Point in a borrowed white pickup truck and we pass a large depression in a tract of woods just off the side of a road he's asked me not to name.

According to his great-Aunt Dottie, BeBop's sister, this hole once held the house in which Mother Leeds' 13th child was born.

Sprouse says there are "at least three" such holes with specious connections to the Jersey Devil in the immediate area. We visit another, a crumbled foundation surrounded by a feeble chain-link fence, covered in a tangle of weeds in nearby Galloway Township. This one's more famous.

The late Harry Leeds, former Galloway mayor and self-appointed spokesman of the Jersey Devil, would take television crews through the woods here and regale them with stories of local sightings. Sprouse's book begins with Harry Leeds as its chief antagonist, the aw-shucks "Area Man" always happy to declare on camera that, yes, he'd seen the devil and, no, "you do not go into the Pine Barrens at night alone."

Sprouse, it might be clear by now, is not a believer in the Jersey Devil, his own "kin." And while he was eventually won over by Harry Leeds, whom he credits with using his wiles to cement a unique part of South Jersey history into the wider culture, Sprouse is particularly cranky toward cable TV.

He blames television shows, such as "MonsterQuest" and "Scariest Places on Earth," for turning the Leeds devil, "a joke that's been part of the (local) culture for a long time," into a bad horror movie trope.

Media has always played a role in mythology, though.

THE THING THAT TURNED the local legend Leeds devil into the Jersey Devil was a string of sightings in 1909 covered breathlessly by the press. Strange tracks found in freshly fallen snow, coupled with a few second-hand accounts of appearances of the devil, filled the pages of several young regional papers for days. It didn't take long for the story to make the jump to the national stage, with newspapers across the country picking up on this peculiar story out of this peculiar state.

There have been sightings ever since, but those early stories form the foundation of the modern myth.

Sprouse says contemporary interpretations are overly concerned with uncovering evidence of the devil's existence, however dubious. But they miss the humor in the early media coverage of the looming threat of a fire-breathing monster.

The papers called the beast a "Woozlebug" and a "Jabberwock" as it tore across the Jersey countryside. The Times of Trenton printed cartoon panels showing the devil floating over a drunk waking from a bender.

"There were lots of stories in the papers," he writes in the book. "None that I read seemed exactly serious."

Sprouse says the existential question of the Jersey Devil — "Does it exist or not?" — is less important than the historical context that gave rise to the legend.

He thinks the germ of the Jersey Devil legend comes not from Mother Leeds, but from her father-in-law, Daniel, who played a supporting role in the Keithian controversy, a political schism in the Quaker community.

A bombastic Quaker pamphleteer and almanac publisher, Daniel Leeds relocated his family to Leeds Point from West Jersey after his writings got him dubbed "Satan's harbinger" by his contemporaries.

In the centuries since, the Leedses have spread out far and wide — Sprouse now lives in Mexico City, where he works as a freelance journalist. But they left legacies in the town names, the local landmarks and obscure holes in the ground we find ourselves gaping at awkwardly in the rain, searching for a devil neither believes actually exists.

"It was somebody's house," Sprouse says, "somebody's barn, somebody's root cellar, an ordinary structure."

"But to me, it said there were Leedses tramping around Leeds Point in the 1690s. Their descendants were still there in the 1890s and 1930s. Some of them are still there today," he says. "Somehow, that feels like a minor miracle."

Not quite a fire-breathing monster, but we'll take it.

Source: NJ.com
http://www.nj.com/inside-jersey/index.ssf/2015/06/my_uncle_the_jersey_devil_one_mans_quest
_to_set_the_record_straight_on_a_nj_legend.html