A CHRISTMAS HAUNTING

Jim shared his experience from About Paranoemal in the Christmas Ghost listings presented by S Wagner.

"These events occurred in Toronto, Ontario in December, 2009. I had just started seeing a new girl and she invited me over for dinner a few days before Christmas. It was my first time visiting her apartment, which she shared with a roommate who had already left to go home for the holidays.

After dinner, we went out to her covered porch for a smoke. As soon as I went into the room, I was drawn to a curious, faded portrait hanging on the wall. The portrait showed a woman in her late 20s or early 30s, and she seemed have a strange sentience in her stare. I asked the girl about it, and she said it was a picture of her great-great-aunt, taken in 1907. She took the picture off the wall and showed me the date scrawled on the back of the frame.

Later, we were in her room watching television and I took a bathroom break. The bathroom was adjacent to her room, and it had old plumbing - her sink had dual faucets for hot and cold water. I washed my hands in cold water when I was finished. I am 100 percent certain of it, and I cannot explain what happened next.

After I rejoined the girl, we were talking when all of a sudden, the sound of running water rose from the adjacent bathroom. She looked at me and said, "You left the water running."

"No, I didn't," I told her. "I'm sure I turned if off." And I was. I washed my hands in cold water and I certainly wouldn't leave someone's bathroom without turning off the faucet.

When I got up to check the bathroom, sure enough, the water was running. Thinking I somehow must have left the water running, I went to turn off the cold water tap on the dual faucets... but it was already locked in place! It wasn't turned on! The hot water was running. I didn't touch the hot water tap when I was in there not two minutes earlier. I am 100 percent certain of it.

Suddenly, I felt an extremely cold chill. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, but it's probably just because I got so suddenly spooked knowing some unseen force had turned the tap on. The girl and I talked about it afterward, and it all came back to the strange picture of her great-great-aunt hanging in the covered porch. She said she had the picture since she was very young, and it had always transfixed her.

She said this wasn't the first time strange things like that had happened - the lights turned themselves on and off, and the television did, too - and that it always seemed to be triggered by a male presence in the house. I asked why. She said she'd see what she could find out about her great-great-aunt.

It turns out her great-great-aunt had committed suicide when her husband left her for another woman. All I know is that the hot water tap turned itself on. - Jim T."

Thank you.
The picture is from Dreamtime and will be used for the Count Down To Christmas stories..

Exorcism Priest Trained In Trinad

Some do not believe that Exorcism is real.The Catholic Church still has priests with special training for that purpose.A recent post on Phantoms And Monsters has a quirw interesting post about this.I am using some excerpts from that here.

The illustration is a handmade piece by TeaAndLaundry feom Etsy
http://TeaAndLaundry.etsy.com

"...And there are at least three Roman Catholic priests in Trinidad, schooled in the ancient teachings of The Roman Ritual, and prepared for the epic God vs Satan battle to remove from the body of a believer, the evil which may dwell within.

American priest Fr Clifford Graham is one of the exorcists. He is based at a church presbytery in rural Coryal Village, near Sangre Grande. Graham has written extensively about The Roman Ritual.

Exorcists too are Frs Neil Rodriguez, Vincent Compton, and Reginald Hezekiah. They have always declined to describe a personal experience with the possessed.

Former Catholic bishop John Mendes, who died recently, was the famed priest known to have performed several exorcisms locally. He took his secrets to the grave....

it is through a devotee and confidante, businesswoman Seemoy Attong, details of one of his exorcisms have emerged.

So momentous was the day, that Attong remembers it with clarity.

The demon, she said, had possessed the body of a 15-year-old girl from Arouca.

The evil was the work of an Obeahman who had done the deed on behalf of a family jealous that the girl, a college pupil, was doing better in school that their child.

Attong remembers "the parents found that their child was not the child they knew. She was doing all kinds of wrong things and there were sweeping pains over her body. So they carried her to Fr Leo."

Said Attong "they didn't tell the girl where they were going. Along the way, the person inside the girl was telling the driver, 'I am fed up being in this child. This child is not worth the while. Carry me where I can be free'."

The exorcism, said Attong, was carried out at the Catholic church in Mon Repos, San Fernando.

Attong said, "I heard Fr Leo talking to the spirit and the spirit telling him that they had put him in the child. The thing did disappear because it wanted to go to rest. When I got there, the child appeared pale and like a dead person. But when she got up, she was okay. Fr Leo, when he came out of the room, was exhausted, wet with perspiration from head to foot, from his fight with the devil".

Fr Leo, born in Holland, died at the San Fernando General Hospital at the age of 69.

Attong said he asked her to sprinkle his bottle of holy water on his body before he died, much like he would have done during the exorcism of the girl, as he held the crucifix and made his incantations in Latin. Attong has kept as her guard Fr Leo's crucifix.
______________________

Full article:
http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2009/05/exorcists-battling-evil-or-folklore.htm

Paranormal ?

Maybe you have seen the TV program "Urban Legends". It presents a series of three stories and the viewer is to decide which is true? Well found this post that adapts the idea for the paranormal....
http://paranormal.about.com/od/trueghoststories/a/12-false-story.htm?nl=1


Love it...

A Real Elf Story

In doing some research for an upcoming post about "Little People" I found this story from a website.Could not resist.Here is the link for the entire story:
http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-2452-the-great-lansing-elf-visit-of-1998.html

The great Lansing elf visit of 1998by Neal McNamara
"...:For the purposes of this story, it would be important to point out that there's a difference between standard elves and Christmas elfs. Elves, according to Wikipedia, are fantastical creatures with roots in German folklore. Christmas elfs (do you see the difference in the spelling there?) specifically make toys, have pointy shoes and ears and wear shiny, red and green-colored clothes. One could assume that Christmas elfs were invented by some genius advertising executive back in 1930 so that Macy's and Sears could start making money from Jesus' birthday. But one would be wrong.
...The story of Lansing's Christmas elf isn't all candy canes and cherry-red cheeks. Our Christmas elf story is filled with blood, tears and gritted teeth. Well, no, it's not that serious. But it is about a guy who escaped from jail and ran around the city dressed as an elf.

Remember, everything you're about to read here is true. Except that the name of the elf is being kept off the record, because it wouldn't be fair to re-embarrass the guy 10 years later. And, frankly, we're kind of scared that he would get pissed and come after us (ha ha?). Without further sarcasm, we present you — culled from several court and police documents, interviews and some educated guessing — the story of the Lansing pre-Christmas Elf Pandemic and Chase of 1998
The costume change
Do you know how, in winter, Michigan gets pretty cold? Yeah? OK, well on Dec. 23, 1998, Lansing was cold and gray and there was snow piled up everywhere. It was gross out, except that a lot of people were happy that Christmas was coming up and they would get a few days off. There were wreaths and lights and things everywhere, and of course the tree was up in front of the Capitol. Gov. John Engler was sitting back somewhere just totally drunk on power, having just been re-elected governor, a woman named Robin Stewart was driving to work in her car, which was loaded with goodies for a holiday party at her office, and Lansing police officers were out doing their thing.

At the Towne Center building at the corner of Capitol Avenue and Kalamazoo Street, court was starting up for the day. One young man, dressed in the thin, yellow jumpsuit of the Ingham County jail, was about the appear for a parole violation. He was not handcuffed, because he was not a violent offender — he was on parole for some breaking and entering stuff earlier in the year.

And then, around 9 a.m. — and it's not quite clear how this happened — the guy just took off. It would be cool to think that the guy just snapped his fingers and disappeared into a cloud of sparkles and magic dust, but he most likely just booked it and was a little too fast for the bailiff.

So he's booking it. And he makes his way into a parking lot somewhere south of Kalamazoo Street off of Capitol.

This is where the magic starts to happen.
The guy then comes upon Robin Stewart's 1993 Mercury Topaz. He breaks into the trunk and finds a cardboard box filled with, well, an elf costume. We can't go back in time and find out what was going on in this guy's brain, but we guess he figured the most inconspicuous thing he could do would be to put on the costume and take off into the streets. And he did, his pointy shoes with bells at the end ringing as he ran.


The chase
It was only Officer David Isabell's fourth day on the job. He was training with Detective Bruce Holliday and the Crime Scene Investigation team on the morning of Dec. 23, 1998. Isabell, however, was weary of Holliday. See, Isabell's father-in-law was a Lansing police veteran, and apparently Holliday had promised Isabell's father-in-law that there would be some practical joking going on.

But a guy dressed up as an elf? No, that would be taking it too far.

As Isabell and Holliday were driving around in their C.S.I. van, a call came over the radio that there was an escape from the court downtown. Naturally — they were in the area — the officers went down to help out.

"A lot of units responded and people got out and were going around on foot — it was a cold day, lots of wind," Isabell remembers. "We searched the area for approximately 30 to 40 minutes, and by then most units cleared the area and gave up. But we stayed out a little longer because (Holliday) was showing me how to track footprints in the snow."

And then, a call came over the radio that a suspicious man was hanging out in a trash receptacle on Capitol Avenue. It was called in as a possible vagrant, so Isabell and Holliday went to check it out.
They pulled up to the corner — Isabell doesn't remember the exact location, Holliday puts it at the corner of Lenawee and Capitol — and parked the van in front of the trash can.
"And then, we see the lid lift up," Isabell said. "And a little guy with an elf hat is peeking out."

The officers didn't quite know what they were seeing, so they moved a little closer. And yup, it was still an elf. Bells, pointy shoes and all.

"Yeah, he was dressed as an elf," Holliday said. "He saw us and then bailed."

Holliday and Isabell took off after the elf. At one point, Holliday ordered Isabell out of the van, which was still moving — he was probably chuckling a little, too — and made him chase after the elf. The spryness of the escapee, was, almost, elf-like.

"He was super quick — like 5'7'', 155 pounds, and I'm chasing him," Isabell, strapping and now an officer at Michigan State University, said.

The elf leaped over a fence and Isabell followed, but proved not as spry as the red and green prison escapee. Isabell lost the elf in a somewhere in a back alleyway of downtown Lansing.

But it wouldn't be the last the two would see of each other.
"When you see a cop chasing an elf, you gotta laugh," Holliday said." But it wasn't like he could go far in that outfit."
Now, picture this: a young, professional woman sitting at a desk making calls, typing and whatever else one does while planning parties. Suddenly, over her shoulder and through the window an elf runs buy. Kind of like a scene out of the Three Stooges, right?

"We were working on inauguration activities," McNulty recalls. "I looked out the window, and I thought I saw an elf running, with like, you know, pointy toes and an elf hat. I think he had tights on. It was a runaway elf." she said.

"Then I see him dive under a car. Then I see the police. Then, I remember pointing at the car because I was in an upstairs office."

Unfortunately for the elf, he didn't have any more magic to work. But, seriously, he must have had some magic because he eluded police for several hours before he was caught.
...When the elf was pulled out from underneath the car, some jolly-feeling officer pulled out a camera and snapped a photo. The next day the Lansing State Journal ran the photo and a story on the front page, which made its way around the country as one of those "news of the weird" items."

Halloween Blog Give Away

Have a good story thought or known to be true,about spirits, ghosts, precognitive or out of body experiences? How about UFO's, Bigfoot, Angles? An especially unusual Tarot or Astrological Reading that left you breathless with accuracy?An experience with witchcraft that needs to be told?

Share it with my blog readers for publication.A panel of three judges will select the winner each week on Friday.
On Monday, the last week of October. The Etsy or Blog readers may then vote to select the Grand Prize winner.On Tuesday before Halloween the prize will be sent to the winner in time for Halloween.

All entries must have a username.No sexually explicit or obscene language please as this will be a family friendly presentation.(If a winner has an online store, it will be featured with the story on the blog with three or more pictures of the products and a link to the store.)
The entries will be taken at face value as submitted.If someone attributes a story to you which is not from you, you may request a retraction and that will be posted.Any entry submitted may be used later in the blog .

You may submit your story in the comments on the blog,in the thread on the Etsy forums Halloween Blog Give Away or send it to nursesnaturally@gmail.com.The weekly winner will receive a Halloween wrapped Soap or Hair Care Product from the Nurture Nature line.The Grand prize is a Bath Gift Basket which is to be listed as a Custom Order at http://nursesnaturally.etsy.com shop.Seen at
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=15669737


..Have A Haunting Halloween.
Enter Your story
Leave it in comments here or
Leave it on the Etsy forum thread Halloween Blog Give Away
Or send to nursesnaturally@gmail.com
Judges select a winner for each week on Friday
Weekly winner wins a Halloween Wrapped Unisex Bath Product
Judges/Voters select the best of all entries Monday October 27
Grand Prize Winner is announced and Gift Basket is mailed to winner October 28
Prizes are sent within the USA only.International winners will receive a 25% off item gift certificate.
User names required for all entries.EMail address requested.
Winners must provide mailing address for shipping .

Scandal Or...?Bigfoot ?

Those millions of Big Foot followers by the several names the mysterious creature is known are in an uproar about a recent happening.If you are a follower of the radio program Coast To Coast AM , this is not new to you.Several shows this week and earlier discussed the current debate.Two hunters in the North Georgia Mountains claim to have found a body of one .They were to have a press conference yesterday but the body was not presented at that time.There is a grain photo of something in a freezer ,The major thought is that it is a Gorilla costume stuffed....the debate goes on.One of the guys is a police officer on Administrative leave at that...Here is a link to the radio show site:
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

Bigfoot has never been of much interest to me, but this did capture my attention.

Ghost Ship The Mary Celeste

Another ghost ship you may have heard of is the ill fated Mary Celeste.
Originally built in Nova Scotia and named the Amazon in 1861, this ghost ship was
re-named the Mary Celeste in 1869 after numerous misfortunes and owners. One might say the Mary Celeste was cursed from the beginning.

On its last voyage, the Mary Celeste left New York City in November of 1872,a bright clear day for departure
The new captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife, and young daughter, along with 8 crew members departed bound for Genoa, Italy. The cargo consisted of 1700 barrels of raw American alcohol.

On December 5, 1872, the ship Dei Gratia came upon the Mary Celeste floundering on the sea. The captain of the Dei Gratia knew Captain Briggs and was surprised to see the ship derelict as Briggs had a reputation as an excellent captain. Men from the Dei Gratia boarded the abandoned Mary Celeste to determine what was going on.

The ship was found in good seaworthy condition. It appeared as though the crew had left in a great hurry. They discovered that the chronometer, sextant,and lifeboats were missing. There was water between the decks and the Galley was a mess.The stove was knocked out of place,cooking utensils were scattered around.Some cups of tea were o the table. Everything was soaked. A rope was found hanging over the side of the ship trailing in the water.
The crew from the Dei Gratia managed to get the Mary Celeste into port. When the cargo was unloaded, they found 9 of the barrels of alcohol empty.



What happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste? Some feel that the cargo became unstable and that the captain decided to trail behind the ship in the lifeboat until such time that it was safe to board. However, for some reason, the ship outdistanced the lifeboat leaving the crew helpless on the sea.
Others thought it was foul play, Mysterious blood stains were
found on three railings, and a blood stained sword was also found hidden under the
Captain's bed..Some think it was an abduction by a UFO,while still others think they were eaten by sharks while swimming in the sea.No one knows,The not knowing and the mystery of the empty ship sailing along without Captain and Crew has fascinated people to this day.