A man was charged in Texas on Monday with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after sending a Twitter message containing an animated strobe image to journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who suffers from epilepsy and was sent into a seizure. The charge includes a hate crime enhancement, based on alleged anti-Semitic bias associated with the crime.

John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Salisbury, Md., was booked into Dallas County Jail on Monday and released early Tuesday after posting a $100,000 bail. He was arrested in Maryland Friday on a cyberstalking charge in connection with the tweet.

Rivello couldn’t be located for comment. The Dallas Morning News reported that his lawyers, whom they didn’t name, issued a statement Tuesday saying that “their client, a Marine veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, immediately apologized for the incident” and is “seeking help from the VA.”

In December, Eichenwald, a senior writer for Newsweek, received a tweet in Dallas of a flashing animated image known as a GIF. It included the message, “YOU DESERVE A SEIZURE FOR YOUR POSTS.”

Immediately after viewing the GIF, Eichenwald had an epileptic seizure that lasted for “approximately eight minutes,” during which he experienced “a complete loss of his bodily functions and mental faculty,” court documents state. Those impairments lasted, in some form, for several months.

“It was a very serious seizure,” Eichenwald’s lawyer, Steven Lieberman, told The Post. He said Eichenwald was “almost fully incapacitated for several days” and also had difficulty speaking for a period of time after the episode.

According to the criminal complaint, Rivello posed as Ari Goldstein and tweeted under the account @jew_goldstein, which has been suspended.

The indictment stated Rivello “knowingly” caused “bodily injury to … a disabled person … by inducing a seizure with an animated strobe image.” Rivello “did use and exhibit a deadly weapon, to-wit: a tweet and a Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and an Electronic Device and Hands, during the commission of the assault.”

The charge is considered a hate crime because Rivello allegedly showed “bias or prejudice” against “persons of Jewish faith or descent,” the indictment said. Eichenwald’s father is Jewish.

It is, perhaps, the first time an animated image sent via Twitter has been legally defined as a “deadly weapon,” according to New York defense attorney Tor Ekeland, who represents clients accused of federal cyber crimes.

“I’m unaware of anybody being criminally prosecuted for this,” Ekeland told NBC News. “If it’s not the first time, it’s one of the first times this has happened.”

Though speech, including online speech, is generally protected under the First Amendment, experts said that protection likely doesn’t apply here.

“This doesn’t even get in the door of the First Amendment,” Danielle Citron, a legal scholar at the University of Maryland, told The Washington Post. “It doesn’t have expressive value. … It doesn’t express someone’s autonomy of views and opinions. It’s not contributing to the marketplace of ideas.”

“It was very much like sending anthrax in an envelope to someone, or sending them a bomb in the mail,” Lieberman said. “It wasn’t that it was going to convince Kurt that he was wrong about something, or hurt his feelings.”

The offending tweet was sent the same night Eichenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. The two argued heatedly, mostly about a Twitter message Eichenwald previously sent claiming President Trump was once institutionalized in a mental hospital. There is no evidence Trump was ever in a mental institution, nor did Eichenwald offer any, as The Post reported.

After the show, Eichenwald sent two tweets to Carlson stating, “[People] who gather and analyze intel at great sacrifice deserve to be honored,” specifically citing the CIA.

The seizure-inducing tweet was in reply to these.

Authorities said Rivello sent the image “as revenge for what he saw as the reporter’s critical coverage of President Trump,” as The Post previously reported.

Quickly after the episode, Eichenwald’s handle tweeted this:

    @jew_goldstein This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.

    — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 16, 2016

This tweet was followed by a string of hateful tweets from various accounts, many bearing Pepe the Frog avatars, popular among the alt-right, as well as a GIF with a strobe effect. Another showed a doctored photo of Eichenwald without pants.

Eichenwald had long been public about having epilepsy, dating at least back to an 1987 column he wrote in the New York Times about being diagnosed with the condition.

Two months before his Dec. 15 seizure, Eichenwald wrote in Newsweek about a similar attack in which he received a tweet mentioning his vulnerability to seizures. Included was a video with strobe effects that contained images of Pepe the Frog. He was browsing Twitter on an iPad and was able to drop the device before suffering a seizure.

He tweeted that since the Dec. 15 attack, he has received more than 40 GIFs with strobe effects.

    More than 40 ppl sent strobes once they found out they could trigger seizures. Details of their cases are with the FBI. Stop sending them.

    — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) March 17, 2017

The FBI also found several direct messages sent from the @jew_goldstein account that mention Eichenwald. One stated, “I know he has epilepsy.” Another, linked to an image, read, “I hope this sends into a seizure.” A third read, “Spammed this at let’s see if he dies.”

Still another read, “[Eichenwald] deserves to have his liver pecked out by a pack of emus.”

Lieberman said his firm, Rothwell Figg, is handing the case pro bono, “because we believe that it’s important to protect journalists who form a critical component of a democratic system.”

[Seizure-inducing tweet leads to a new kind of prosecution]

The online reaction to Rivello’s indictment was swift.

“Jew Goldstein is a political prisoner, arrested on behalf of the elites and their propagandists,” one Twitter message said. “I don’t agree with Jew Goldstein but I will defend to the death his right to try to murder Kurt Eichenwald in cold blood,” said another Twitter post.

Richard Spencer, the “face of the alt-right,” tweeted, “There’s now a legal fund for Jew Goldstein. It debunks claims.”

The fund appears on WeSearchr, which The Post’s Abby Ohlheiser described as “a bounty-hunting as journalism site run by perennial troll Chuck Johnson.” The page for the fund, which has raised more than $11,500 as of early Tuesday night, included a video of the Carlson-Eichenwald interview.

The page stated, “If this goes to trial, it will redefine ‘trolling’ and what it means to troll online.”

Max Ehrenfreund and Antonio Olivo contributed to this report.

Source: Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/22/tweet-that-sent
-journalist-kurt-eichenwald-into-seizure-considered-deadly-weapon-in-indictment/

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While the present incarnation of the King Kong franchise wreaks havoc at the box office, there is a connection to Cryptozoology and the tiny town of Whitehall, New York which is often overlooked.

Since the original "King Kong" debut on March 2, 1933, Kong has starred in many movies-- the biggest of those being the 1976 and 2005 remakes. Stars like Fay Wray, Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lang, Naomi Watts and Jack Black have taken center stage over the years.

In the 1976 remake, Kong was set in modern time and scaled the World Trade Center. In Peter Jackson's 2005 version, audiences were transported back to the original time period and once again saw Kong on top of New York's Empire State Building. This version is generally regarded as a modern four-star classic.

The movie also aided Cryptozoology by having the History Channel piggyback the release with a documentary called "GIGANTO: THE REAL KING KONG." Doug Hajicek who had previously done "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science" (History) and the "Mysterious Encounters" series (Outdoor Life Network), was chosen as the director.

"Giganto" referred to Gigantopithecus-- an ancient ape which many believe may account for modern Bigfoot or Sasquatch sightings today. The documentary was expertly narrated by actor Edward Hermann and took the viewer around the globe as it connected this ancient ape to present-day sightings.

In search of credible witnesses, Hajicek returned to Whitehall, New York and interviewed former Police officer Dan Gordon. Dan and another officer had a sighting of a mysterious seven-foot-tall creature as it crossed the road in front of their police cruiser back in February 1982. The dark haired bi-pedal being was able to cross the road in just three steps.

For the first time, Gordon related his account in detail-- and actually attached both his name and face (and reputation) to the sighting. I stood with Dan as he overlooked the recreation that was shot just a few hundred feet from his actual sighting. It was the first time in over twenty-two years that Dan had publicly come forward. I was fortunate enough to be credited as a "researcher" for the show.

The Kong remake had created an opportunity for a documentary which would showcase Dan Gordon and a very credible police-Bigfoot sighting in Whitehall.

The documentary was very well received and it served as a pilot for Hajicek to continue in Cryptozoology with his long running series "Monster Quest." So the success of "Giganto: The Real King Kong" actually sparked years of cryptid episodes to follow. In fact, Hajicek would return to Whitehall and further expand the sightings there. In a follow-up episode, Dan Gordon was given a polygraph examination, which he, and others, passed.

Those visits, as well as other documentary crews from other networks, have helped to cement Whitehall as a cryptozoological hotspot.

So as "Kong On Skull Island" rips through theaters today, I am reminded of the Kong-Whitehall connection and am thankful for the big ape's impact on the study of strange creatures today.

- Paul B. Bartholomew, along with his brother Dr Robert Bartholomew, is the author of the book "Bigfoot Encounters in New York."



No one can dispute the fact that King Kong is the king of all cryptids. But the mighty beast has been MIA for a number of years.  Recently, our team of trusty monster hunters went in search of the might primate in order to see what he has been up to.

We came across him a few days ago hanging out on Skull Island and while he seemed in an awful hurry he lifted both artist and designer  Carol Ann Rodriguez and myself up in his mighty paw so we could speak to him briefly.

QUESTION: So Kong you know you have a pretty strong fan base on social media (he squeezes us just a bit tighter) but you haven't logged into Face Book in quite some time. Can you tell us where you've been and what you've been doing?

KONG:  I have been hanging out in the Hollow Earth (he more or less grunts, his breath being anything but "honorable.").
I discovered there is a vast cavern system under the island here and its a bit cooler and less humid. But those damn lizzards
are a damn pain in my butt (which is certainly the largest your likely to encounter). They want to eat me alive. You better
watch out for them. They can swallow you whole. 

(Now we grasp and moan)

QUESTION:  So you say the earth is hollow. . .no one going to believe you, you know.

KONG: (Beats his chest) -- Don't care -- tell them to read a book by this guy Beckley about some Admiral.

QUESTION:  Are you coming to New York soon?  You're welcome to stop by. They are putting up several new skyscrapers on my block. You can hang on their roof and tell them to try to keep the noise down or you'll stomp on them.

Kong mutters something as he heads back to his home underground -- that is after he fights off some ferocious adversaries, including U.S. combatants who  come to the island to capture Kong complete with weapons of mass destruction. 

But have you fear you can visit with Kong at a safe distance in your local cinema. He is a terrific actor and I am pretty positive they won't hand him the wrong envelope at the next awards show!

Amityville.

The very name of the small Long Island, New York, community instantly conjures visions of horror, of a death-dealing psychopath laying waste his parents, two sisters and two brothers with a Marlin rifle. The egregious murders were chronicled in both a bestselling book and a major Hollywood studio movie and have become, pardon the pun, a “household name”: The Amityville Horror.

The convicted killer was Ronald DeFeo, Jr., whom one judge called “the devil incarnate.” DeFeo told varying versions of what happened the night of November 13, 1974, including the claim that he was possessed by an evil spirit and had committed the crime through no free will of his own.

While it is of course impossible to decide the existence or nonexistence of the devil and his demons in a court of law, the evil-spirit-possession argument was entered along with an insanity plea. Ultimately, Defeo received a 25 years to life sentence for each of his victims and remains in prison today.

But is it so easy to simply scoff at Defeo’s claim to have been an unwitting agent for the devil? Could it possibly be that Defeo was telling the truth of what happened?

This is one of many issues dealt with in the book recently issued by Timothy Green Beckley’s Inner Light – Global Communications publishing house. Entitled “Amityville and Beyond: The Lore of the Poltergeist and Other Petrifying Paranormal Phenomena,” the book breaks relatively new ground in making some overdue correlations between spirit possession, ghosts and even the UFO/alien presence.

This overarching “theory of everything” hypothesis can perhaps be credited originally to the late John A. Keel and was later expounded upon by the very prolific Brad Steiger. But Beckley and his hard working crew of contributors aim to take this theory and definitively tie up the loose ends and connect the many different forms of paranormal activity at play in the world today.


Paul Eno is among the topnotch researchers Beckley has assembled for the writing of   “Amityville and Beyond.” Currently Eno hosts, along with his son Ben, a radio show called “Behind the Paranormal” based in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.

“American history is full of poltergeists and nasty and vengeful spirits,” Eno writes. “Much has been written about the Bell Witch that frightened a U.S. president so badly that he fled in the early morning hours from a Tennessee homestead. Furthermore, this book contains the full story of the dreadful Amherst poltergeist, which is just as scary as any similar saga of evil you are likely to hear about from an historical perspective.

“My attitude about such cases,” Eno continues, “is a bit more ‘radical’ than the views of other researchers, who tend to treat such poltergeist outbreaks as either restless spirits gone awry or put them in the general category of a purely psychological manifestation attributable to the witnesses’ psychological state. I see such outbreaks more akin to a crossing of parallel dimensions by a variety of beings often mistaken for the undead – though they seem to have, in many instances, the same attributes as so-called ‘aliens.’ Even cryptids from the darkest realms of our minds have recently been brought into the poltergeist equation.”

Here Eno has very succinctly expressed the overall theme of “Amityville and Beyond,” that aliens and cryptid creatures like Dogmen are cut from the same cloth as “noisy ghosts” and possessive demons. Eno at one time was an assistant to the famed Ed and Lorraine Warren, the husband/wife paranormal researchers whose work has been the subject of the movies “The Conjuring” and “The Conjuring 2.”

Eventually, Eno broke away from the Warrens because he found their ecclesiastical approach to poltergeists and their subsequent use of exorcism to rid a person of the “demon in charge” to be too steeped in religious folklore and superstition. Eno says he found that reading jokes from a book did more to dispel the presence of the “devil” than the sprinkling of holy water by a priest.

In November 1974, Eno found himself on Lindley Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut, along with Ed, Lorraine and Father William Charbonneau, and an indeterminate number of police and reporters. And a very frightened family.

“The latter consisted of Gerard Goodin and his adopted daughter and only child, Marcia (pronounced Mar-SEE-a),” Eno writes. “Shortly Mom (Laura Goodin) returned from the St. Vincent’s Hospital Emergency Room with her right big toe bandaged. It had been broken by a flying television set. The house itself was a mess. ‘The Thing,’ as Laura called it, had been tearing pictures, especially religious objects, off the wall all morning. A priest had come to bless the house, apparently to no avail.”

Calling it the best-witnessed poltergeist event in history, Eno says that violent phenomena were witnessed by almost 100 people in the Bridgeport outbreak. Eno was on the scene himself when some of the bizarre incidents transpired.

“I stood in the kitchen,” Eno writes, “with three firefighters on one side of me and three police officers on the other and watched the refrigerator float off the floor, turn right, turn back, then settle gently back to the floor. Late in the evening of that first day, I was sitting at the kitchen table with Lorraine. Also in the kitchen was a huge police officer, Ed Warren and a reporter from WNAB Radio. Lorraine suddenly let out a yelp. I watched as a second-degree burn, with its trademark white blister, appeared on Lorraine’s left hand, between thumb and forefinger. This was all caught on the radio reporter’s tape, which still exists. You can hear a youthful me stating, ‘There’s a blister forming!’”


At another point during Eno’s visits to the Bridgeport home, he was alone in the house with the Goodins, playing monopoly with Marcia to pass the time and to help her relax.

“Suddenly an acrid smell, like ozone mixed with sulfur, came from the kitchen,” Eno recounts. “Instantly Gerard Goodin was up, dashed into the kitchen and started chanting in Latin! My skin tingled with an electrical charge that I now associate with the electromagnetic ‘branes,’ as physicists call them, presumably the boundaries between parallel worlds.

“A whitish, gauzy cloud began to form in the kitchen,” Eno continues, “and Goodin was back in the living room at once. I was convinced that four entities were ‘arriving’ in the kitchen from Marcia’s adjacent bedroom. They weren’t entirely invisible, and there were four distinct shapes coming from the kitchen in a line. They were each about four and a half feet high and had rounded tops, with no discernible head or shoulders.”

Goodin saw the figures also, and he followed one as it moved from the kitchen. As the mystery entities entered the living room one by one, Laura Goodin started to cry while Marcia clung to Eno for comfort. Then one of the almost-invisible things approached Eno and stopped.

“That’s when I made my mistake,” Eno confesses. “I began to feel angry toward this thing, which at the time I thought was a demon in the classic, theological sense. I was angry because it was obviously trying to get to this child. The whatever-it-was simply fed on the negative energy I was releasing and grew stronger.

“What happened next was the biggest shock I’d experienced in paranormal work up to that time. As the entity moved to get around me and at the girl, I instinctively pushed toward it. It resisted as though it was entirely material. In fact, I felt flesh and bone structure as if this were a solid being. These ‘demons’ were supposed to be spirits!”

Eno says it took him many years to come to grips with the experience, let alone explain it in terms of parallel worlds. He never even reported it to the Warrens, and it was decades before he could write or speak about it.

“While I stood there dazed,” he continues, “the entity got around me and threw Marcia across the living room. She ran back to me, crying. Finally, as the gauzy cloud inundated the whole interior of the house, and as I tired from, I would say today, being drained by this powerful parasite, I ordered everyone outside.”

Although the police had cleared away the crowds and cordoned off both ends of Lindley Street, there were still thousands of onlookers gawking from each end of the block.

“I could hear a voice in the crowd,” Eno writes, “preaching something about all this being a ‘sign of the end.’ These being the days long before cell phones, I had to use a neighbor’s phone to call the Warrens. It took them an hour to get back into the city because of all the traffic caused by this paranormal circus. When they finally arrived at about 9:15 P.M., we all reentered the house. Things were quiet.”

When Eno writes about the creature he pushed against as being almost invisible yet possessing a flesh and bone structure, what manner of being is this? It sounds not unlike the physical-yet-not-physical “bodies” of the familiar gray aliens whose stock in trade is the abduction of chosen subjects for whatever dark reasons are left for us to discover. As Eno so clearly explains, the aliens and demons who cross between dimensions may be one and the same entity but are given different names in scripture and folklore that vary according to who encounters the strange interlopers.


While the saying is popularly true that “we all have our personal demons,” in some cases the demons can achieve total control of a hapless individual. In a chapter of “Amityville and Beyond,” the celebrated Brad Steiger makes a case for genuine demonic possession being at the root of many a murder. He also talks about the demon/alien connection.

“There are many among us,” Steiger writes, “who have every reason to accept the Ultra-Terrestrials as demonic, akin to the poltergeists that plague our darkest nightmares and create havoc all around those they decide to target. If humankind is indeed interacting with an extraterrestrial species then those UFOnauts, the ‘Grays,’ as they are currently nicknamed, may be representatives of technologically superior reptilian or amphibian humanoids.

“These serpent people have been interacting with Earth for millions of years,” Steiger continues, “either appearing in cycles of programmed visitations or steadily monitoring our species’ technological and societal development from underground or undersea bases. At some point in their many centuries long interaction, some Ultra-Terrestrial entities began to exploit humankind in foul, lascivious and wicked ways. Whether they be extraterrestrial or multidimensional in origin, they have become known to those unfortunate humans with whom they have interacted as evil, cruel and demonic beings.”

Steiger says the reader can easily see that Ronald DeFeo, Jr., was not alone. Steiger provides a frightening list of killers who claimed they were driven by evil “voices” to commit their crimes.

For example: In January 1990, authorities searching an Ohio farm commune found the slain bodies of a family of five – all victims of human sacrifice. Jeffrey Lunden, a self-declared prophet of a new religion, had decreed the sacrifices necessary to persuade the “forces” to present Lunden’s cult with a magic golden sword.

Another case: Daniel Rakowitz, suffering under religious delusions programmed by “voices” who called him the messiah and told him to form a new satanic religion, sacrificed his girlfriend in September 1989 to insure his messiah-ship.

One particularly gruesome case happened in 2000. Prosecutors charged a man in Great Falls, Montana, with killing a ten-year-old boy, butchering him, eating his flesh in specially prepared dishes, then feeding the remains to his unsuspecting neighbors. A psychiatric evaluation indicated demonic fantasies about cannibalism and the taste of human flesh. Encrypted writings found in the suspect’s home revealed a list of recipes involving the bodies of small children.

“The terrible power which drives and compels those obsessed with sacrificial murders,” Steiger writes, “is something so much more insidiously evil and complex than can be created by the distortion of creeds, ecclesiasticisms or belief structures. The monstrous voices that command men and women to kill others are not those of mortals. Those who have fallen under the deadly spell of the possessing Ultra-terrestrial-multidimensional entities claim to have been controlled by something outside of themselves – usually personified as Satan or one of his demons.”


Evil speaking voices are also dealt with in a chapter by Tim R. Swartz called “When the Poltergeist Finds Its Voice.”

“It can be terrifying enough,” Swartz writes, “when a poltergeist makes its appearance in a household. Rocks thrown about, strange bangs on the walls, moving furniture, items disappearing and then reappearing – this is enough to set anyone on edge. However, when a poltergeist finds its voice and starts to talk, you know that events have decidedly taken a turn for the worse.

“Poltergeist activity has been recorded throughout history,” Swartz goes on, “and is probably the most prolific of all supernatural events. A poltergeist is extremely aware of its surroundings and will often quickly respond to suggestions by observers and other external stimuli. This shows that there is some kind of ‘intelligence’ behind its pranks and not just some random psychokinesis (PK). This intelligence, along with an ability to communicate, will manifest in a myriad of ways. Pieces of paper with strange messages appear; writing on the walls; children’s toys will be arranged to make words; and, perhaps the most shocking, they will sometimes start to speak out loud.”

According to Swartz, when a poltergeist achieves speech, it generally starts as animal-like growls and whispers that slowly evolve into discernible words. Most poltergeists never reach this stage in their development, but, once they do, a clear “personality” emerges from what were previously just random events.

Swartz recounts some case histories in the annals of poltergeist hauntings in which the intruding spirit spoke to its victims.

The 1817 case of the “Bell Witch,” the name for the poltergeist who took up residence among a Tennessee farming family headed by John Bell, Sr., is an interesting example. “The Witch” was extremely talkative and could imitate the voices of people from the area.

“The poltergeist was said to speak at a nerve-wracking pitch when displeased,” Swartz reports, “while at other times it sang and talked in low musical tones. In one instance, it was alleged to have repeated, verbatim, sermons administered by two preachers, occurring at separate locations, that took place simultaneously. The sermons recited by the witch were verified by people attending the churches as being identical in voice, tone, inflection and content. The poltergeist was even known to attend church and sing along with the congregation, using the most beautiful voice anyone had ever heard.”

Stories of a talking mongoose named Gef, who bedeviled an Irish family in the 1930s, as well as the tale of a Spanish family who heard maniacal laughter and voices emanating from their kitchen stove, help to round out Swartz’s examination of real-life incidents of “talking” spirits.

He also touches on the Middle Eastern folklore and Islamic theology dealing with the “djinn,” or genies, who can take possession of buildings or locations and torment any person who goes to live there. The djinn can levitate and cause objects to disappear as well as take any physical form they want – humans, animals and anything else. They can mimic the voices of deceased humans, claiming to be spirits or Satan. They enjoy playing tricks and frightening people. In fact, they can feel strong emotions such as fear or grief and gain energy from those powerful feelings.

“Like humans,” Swartz writes, “the djinn have distinct personalities. There are those who are of low intelligence, quick to anger and fond of playing tricks. Others have a superior intellect and act more along the lines of guardian angels rather than tricksters.”


Timothy Beckley has been marching to the sound of a “different drummer” for more than half a century. He rightly admits that when it comes to most UFO cases he has “been there, seen it and investigated it.”  He started out publishing a ten-page mimeographed newsletter when he was but 15, and over the decades has edited/published such widely circulated zines as “UFO Review” and “UFO Universe,” both sold on newsstands worldwide. And while he now claims to be “semi-retired,” Beckley’s prestigious para-physical publishing house still grinds out a couple of new titles every month.

“More and more, it became clear that there is only a thin line that separates what is known as poltergeist phenomena and events of a UFO nature,” Beckley remarked. “I always say what happens in a séance room or a haunted house is very similar to what you can expect to find at a UFO landing site or in the home of a UFO percipient.”

Beckley says that for a period of several months during the summer of 1982, members of a family he knew quite well were at the center of some unexplainable events which were triggered by the appearance of a circular device – a UFO – that was seen hovering across the street from their premises. Shortly thereafter an eerie presence could be felt as if some “adopted entity” had joined the family.

Voices were heard in the basement and at the bottom of a well. Children saw a silver suited being on the perimeter of their property and a shadowy figure was seen to walk behind the refrigerator and disappear into the wall.

The lady of the house goes on to describe in detail some of the bizarre incidents which took place and which tended to drive everyone “crazy.”

“From time to time,” the woman told Beckley, “it would feel like someone would come into the bedroom at night and would push against the bottom of my mattress. Sometimes I would be overcome by the feeling that I wasn’t alone, although nobody was physically in the room with me. One time, I was lying on my left side facing the wall and I felt a poke like someone’s finger jabbing into my shoulder.

“The business with the mattress happened almost every night. In addition, a photograph of my youngest son, aged two, kept falling from the wall This happened so frequently that finally I decided to leave it down where it couldn’t break.

“One night, I got bumped on the mattress and I thought that someone was trying to speak to me. I sat up in bed and said, ‘What did you say?’ I was able to hear the sound of someone talking but was unable to distinguish any words.

“Later, when my daughter arrived home, I told her about the voices and she said she’d heard them a few times as well. Actually, she seemed truly petrified. It seems that they had been bothering her for a while, but she was afraid to mention it to anyone for fear we would all think she was crazy. She said the voices would call her by name, but even though I was in her company when this happened, I could never hear anything.

“Things really got out of hand the day before Labor Day. Everybody had gone out to see the fireworks display put on by our neighborhood carnival and I was sitting around the kitchen getting the food ready for the next day when I heard a sound coming from the basement. It was the sound of someone walking across a board that had been placed at the bottom of the stairs to cover an open sewer pipe. When you step on it, it makes a little plunking sound, and someone was going back and forth across it repeatedly and it was driving me crazy.

“Not wanting to get hysterical and trying to brush the matter aside, I kind of laughed and thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got company.’ It was like a feeling of not being alone. Now and then, I got a little upset because it plunked a little too loud. I would stand out on the porch for a little while just to clear my head and then go back into the house.

“When the family got back from the fireworks display, I told them what had happened and that I had this strange feeling that I wasn’t alone. When I explained what had happened to the boards, my daughter replied they had been hearing that all day long but didn’t want to say anything about it. Her husband and my oldest son also heard it. My daughter’s husband even got up a couple of times to see if it was the kids fooling around and there was nobody there. He said, ‘It would sound just like someone was walking around down there and then when you went to look, you couldn’t find anything.’

“Our ‘friend’ seems to like my air conditioner. One night the dogs were barking out back and there was nothing outside. I shut off the air conditioner in order to go and check on the dogs. When we were below my bedroom window, my husband said, ‘The air conditioner isn’t on.’

“I said, ‘No, I shut it off so I could hear the dogs better.’

“So, we were out back of the house trying to figure out what was wrong with Max. He had plenty of water and food. It wasn’t that. He wasn’t nervous, like he was that other time. He wasn’t shaking. The dog was upset about something in the air.

“All of a sudden, my husband turned and said, ‘What was that?’

“I asked him, ‘What’s what?’

“He said, ‘The air conditioner just went on. Then it went off again. But just as we went by the window, it went on again.’ There is no way to shut it off and turn it on without pushing the buttons. When I had shut it off, it was on ‘Off.’ When we went back indoors it was ‘On.’

“I said, ‘Well, thank you, whoever you are. It is hot in there.’

“My husband said, ‘I know that thing was off. I know that thing went on and off a couple of times.’

“I said, ‘I know, it’s George.’

“He said, ‘Well, tell your friend to leave. I don’t want him hanging around here.’

“I said, ‘You tell him to leave.’ We went to bed and there wasn’t any more trouble that night.”


There is much more to be found in “Amityville and Beyond,” including chapters from a multitude of contributors as well as dozens of spooky illustrations. One can read about the night author and radio show host Joshua Warren spent in “America’s Most Haunted Bedroom;” paranormal investigator Michele Lowe bears heart-pounding witness to the spirits left behind in the aftermath of a murder-suicide; the rise of interest in poltergeist and paranormal lore that was part of the counterculture of the 1960s; the notion of cryptid creatures like the Dogmen, as studied by Pennsylvania researcher Butch Witkowski, as being physical embodiment’s of demonic extraterrestrials – the list goes on.

At the very least, “Amityville and Beyond: The Lore of the Poltergeist and Other Petrifying Paranormal Phenomena” delivers on the promise of its title and provides a great many scary, scary stories. Whether this nonstop horror show could all be a matter of real-world events is up to the reader, but you will in any case get a generous serving of fascinating tales of what happens when evil takes control and some among us mere mortals can only be its unhappy prey.

Source: Spectral Vision
https://spectralvision.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/the-competing-poltergeist-demonic-ufo-and-
ultra-terrestrial-phenomena-it-could-turn-out-they-are-all-one-and-the-same/