Why my electricity bills are higher this month

         Because I haven’t yet splurged for fancy cable (I have basic), my sister sent me the DVDs of the Sci-Fi Channel’s reality series, “Ghost Hunters,” for my birthday. She vowed I would love it. And as I’m generally in favor of loving things and hopeful that I will, I popped the DVDs in and parked myself on my mini trampoline (currently doing triple duty as a trampoline/coffee table/place to sprawl in my living room) to watch, and prepared to be wooed.

         I must admit it wasn’t love at first sight. “Cheesy theme music,” I mused critically, from the first moment, as I’m also into musing critically. The production values seemed pretty low, too, and the guys involved were clearly unaccustomed to being on camera, and seemed self-conscious, if charming and earnest and self-deprecating in an ordinary-schlub way. But I kept watching, and little by little I grew very fond of everyone on their team, which is known as TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). In case you don’t know the premise of the show, TAPS was founded by two guys, whom I shall call Jason and Grant (because those are their names), who work for Roto-Rooter in Rhode Island by day and investigate paranormal activity on their off hours. Both are pretty grounded family men and quite credible, and both have allegedly had paranormal experiences that launched them on this quest for answers and evidence. Using an array of cameras, thermal heat and EMF detectors, and voice recorders, they and a little team of volunteers (just about all who've had their own eerie experiences), from Wiccans to cops to paramedics to hairdressers, set out to either debunk or gather evidence of paranormal activity in various places they’re called to. And they seem to get a LOT of calls.  The whole of New England is apparently haunted. So far they’ve gone to some very cool places.

         Their work is fairly methodical and their approach professional, and they’re pretty thorough. Step one is interviewing the client, and step two is debunking/testing. For instance, through experimenting and testing they can often prove that, say, vibrations or air cross currents creating a vacuum within a house are causing a door to open by itself, and their plumbing experience often come in handy for identifying vents through which reputedly mysterious sounds or smells can get through. In one episode, they proved a rattling door was caused by a kitty cat who liked to sharpen its claws against the doorframe, and had never before been caught at it.  But for every case they accept, they set up cameras throughout the premises for an evening, douse the lights, and walk through with their EMF detectors and thermal cameras looking for fluctuations in energy and temperature (which can be evidence of paranormal activity), and after a night’s worth of investigating an allegedly haunted place, they pore over evidence, often coming up with nothing very compelling. They in fact debunk about 80% of their cases, and are very reluctant to deliver a verdict of “yep, haunted,” if they don’t have something really compelling on a voice recorder or camera.

         But when they do come up with something, it’s…holy cow.

         For instance, I just watched the episode where the Coast Guard calls them to investigate an old, reputedly haunted lighthouse that they’re in charge of maintaining. A lot of Coast Guard members had unnerving experiences there and were increasingly reluctant to visit it. TAPS went through the lighthouse with their equipment, and followed a cold spot all the way up the spiral staircase (extreme, sudden drops of temperature are apparently signs of paranormal activity, as are unexplainable spikes in EMF's), where footsteps had often been heard when nobody else was there—the lighthouse keeper continuing to do his job after death?

        And then the TAPS crew set up cameras in the areas of most reported paranormal activity(noises, etc.) in the lighthouse, including the attic, left them running, and as usual, the day after an investigation they watched hours and hours and hours of footage…yawning, scratching, seeing nothing at all for long, long stretches at a time.

         And then, suddenly, in a shot of the lighthouse attic…you see a chair slide, casually, oh, about a foot across the floor.

         All. By. Itself.

         OK, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

         The thing is, it’s such a little, seemingly mundane thing. It’s not a demon morphing from the floorboards, or something.  The chair didn’t do backflips, or, like, talk, or anything. It just slid a foot or so. An absolutely unmistakable foot or so, as though someone pushed it. But it was absolutely a certainty that no living person was in that room at the time. Nothing pulled or pushed the chair. And the very mundane nature of the event somehow makes it that much more eerie. I mean, you can watch that footage of the chair over and over, and still your mind has a hard time reconciling what your eyes are taking in—because what they’re taking in appears to be a violation of the basic laws of physics as we know them. And for TAPS, this is profound evidence.

         What moved that chair? Who knows? The Ghost Hunters don’t really try to draw conclusions, per se, though they have a vocabulary to describe various kinds of paranormal activity. All they’ll do is try to debunk as much anecdotal evidence as they can—they're very invested in being considered credible professionals in a field that suffers credibility problems—and capture evidence if possible.

         Which they then show to their clients. Now, I think we can all assume that the Coast Guard isn’t, as a rule, staffed by sissies. But you see these big guys watch the video of that chair moving, and though they’re holding their bodies very still—they’re probably pretty disciplined guys, after all—they can’t stop their eyes from bugging out. Or their Adam’s apples from bobbing in hard swallows. Drug smugglers, rough seas, they can handle. But a chair sliding across the floor all by itself? They took it with good humor, relieved that they weren't nuts after all, but admitted they didn't really feel much more comfortable about maintaining the lighthouse. :)

         Anyway, so far I've seen TAPS catch some pretty wild stuff, including video of an apparation in an old prison and a door (originally shut very tightly) opening by itself in a house in New Orleans—then closing. Twice. I have more episodes to watch, though. And most people who call TAPS are relieved to either learn that they’re not crazy (if the TAPS team has similar experiences in their house and can provide some sort of tangible evidence of paranormal activity) or that they’re not haunted—that it's just the kitty cat and their imaginations, or what have you.

        Anyway, so, yeah, whatever you make of it, Ghost Hunters is fun. J  Though now after I watch two or three episodes in a row, I have to turn all the lights on in the house, and leave them on for several hours before my nervous system and my imagination recovers fully.Which usually happens by bedtime. And so this is the birthday gift that keeps on giving...in my electric bill. LOL.

        So Halloween is coming up...anybody out there have an eerie experience of their own? Anybody else been following Ghost Hunters?

Comments

[Kathy K]

I'm just getting shivers from reading your post, not to mention imagining a chair moving by itself....and I can fully understand the need to have the lights on *shudder*. And it's not as though I'm AFRAID of ghosts / spirits / things-that-go-bump-in-the-night; I do believe that there's more out there than we'll ever know; but it is a little freaky, nonetheless. I've not had any really ghosty stories that have happened to me, but my father-in-law is a font of ghost stories that he's been part of...brave man! 'Cause if half of the things that he's seen had happened to me, I'd be in a small room somewhere glued to a book. ^.^

I've not heard of "Ghost Hunters", but I'm sure curious about it and I'll have to look around and see if there is anything to be found up here.

Cool post Julie!

Kathy

[Julie Anne Long]

Hey Kathy...yeah, I don't think I'm afraid of ghosts, per se, either. But there's just so much we don't understand, so I can't say definitively whether I am or not, you know? In my life I've had some scary experiences (e.g., I was once mugged), but in truth, I wasn't genuinely scared in the moment—because you just can't believe the event is happening, so you're suspended in a moment of surreality. I was afraid right after the events, though, that's for sure.

And also, on some episodes of Ghost Hunters...well, there's this one where they investigate an old armory, and you see a big, plump cameraman for the Sci-Fi channel knocked flat on his back. He was standing with the group, and his hands are up in the air, holding the mics, and they were able to catch footage of his camera gear bag (which was hooked over his shoulder) flying up, hitting him in the face, and knocking him flat on his back. BAM. He went down *really* hard. The cameraman said something came up under him and knocked him down, and he was so terrified he couldn't speak or breathe, and he was crying a little. Just seriously freaked out. Poor guy. This was in an armory in Massachusetts (where the National Guard personnel staffing it have heard noises, footsteps, and felt cold spots, and a couple of guys reported being "pushed" hard by nothing there). The National Guard officer on duty attended the cameraman, because he knew first aid, and how to treat shock, etc. And the guy was seriously in shock. Now...should we be afraid of stuff like *that?"* What precisely *are* they (TAPS) messing with? The truth is, we don't really know, and don't really have any way of knowing. It could be all manner of types of things. Pretty wild stuff. So watching this show is a good way to freak yourself out. LOL.

[Doris O.]

So funny that you would mention this show, Julie Anne, because I just started watching it. Don't you think Grant is cute? ;) I have had a few interesting things happen in my house, which I inherited from my grandmother. A framed photo of my son and daughter-in-law that I'd been looking for all over the house suddenly showed up on the kitchen table the next day. Another time I could have sworn I heard grandmother singing in the kitchen, but no one was there. She spent most of her time in that room, so maybe she's lingering. I don't mind the company, though it is a little unnerving at times.

[Julie Anne Long]

Hi Doris! Well, Typepad seems to be acting up, because I just got a note from someone who told me they'd tried three times to comment and couldn't, so they gave up, and now I see your comment here, when it looked as though there were only two comments!! What fun!! LOL. Hey, the blog is haunted!! My sister seems to think both of the main Ghost Hunters are cute, though I haven't arrived at a favorite yet, personally. LOL. Your story about the photo reminded me of something that happened to my mom shortly after her grandmother had died when we kids were small...she (my mom)was looking all over the house for this particular button (I think it might have been a sort of antique button) that used to belong to my grandmother—my mom used to sew a lot, and kept buttons of all kinds in a big coffee can, and she could have sworn the button was there. But she couldn't find it. But tHe next morning, there was the button...in the middle of the kitchen table, looking deliberately placed there. It hadn't been there the day before, of course.

[Kathy K]

I love stories like that; the ones that give you a little shiver up your spine, but also bring tears to your eyes. I love the idea that family "check in" now and again, just to say "I'm here"...now THAT kind of thing has happened to me and others in my family.

When my grandmother was in the hospital dying, many of the family would spend time with her. At the beginning she was often conscious, but after the first couple of weeks, more often than not, grandma wasn't aware. Even so, there was someone with her nearly all the time, 24 hours a day, for two months. It was very peaceful. There were times that I was sitting there, that I "felt" my grandfather [who had died almost 20 years previously] there with grandma. My aunt and I, over coffee in the cafeteria one time, were discussing how nice it was to be able to sit with grandma even when she wasn't aware; my aunt mentioned to me, that at times, she sensed my great-grandparents (grandma's parents) standing at the head of grandma's bed, just to be with her. The closer we got to the day that grandma finally died, the more experiences many of us had with various deceased family members just being there. It was all very peaceful and not all scary ~ comforting, very comforting to think that there were loved ones waiting for her to join them.

It's been over 12 years since grandma died, and I've not remembered all this for a long time...what a gift to be able to have this memory!
Thanks Julie....

Kathy

[Ranurgis]

I've never had a "psychic" episode beyond the fact that I might be thinking of somebody and within the hour getting a telephone call from that person.

However, a good friend told me that she saw my father sitting in his chair by the window several times after he died. She never told my mother about this, maybe because she didn't want her to feel bad about not seeing him herself. The friend always assured my father that my mother was doing well and that he didn't need to worry about her.

She also had various experiences with a clock that her father had given her when she moved from England to Canada. I don't remember if it never worked here or whether it broke down here. Anyway, it couldn't be fixed. However, one day the gong worked again and she had the definite feeling something had happened to her father. She called her sister and sure enough, he had to be admitted to the hospital. Every time the clock mysteriously gonged she knew something was amiss with her father. The last time it did so just a few years ago, she again called her sister who said she'd just come from his place and though he had been sick for a while already, he had been in good spirits that morning. My friend kept insisting that her sister go to see about him. As soon as she got off the phone, she bought a plane ticket to England. When her sister called back it was to tell her that he had taken a turn for the worse and was in the hospital. I can't remember if she still saw him before he died or not but the clock has never gonged since then.

[Ranurgis]

Oh, and no, I haven't seen "Ghost Hunters". I have no connection to the TV right now. I have to wait to get rid of my debts and make some money first.

[Julie Anne Long]

I love your story, Kathy. And the story your friend tells, Ranurgis, about your friend seeing your father, and the clock. Isn't it funny how these types of "communications" seems to take place through objects, somehow, symbolically or otherwise? I've heard so many stories like these over the years—people sensing, dreaming or actually seeing loved ones who've passed on—many from people who'd spent their entire lives up until that point as utter pragmatists and skeptics. It's kind of beautiful and comforting and scary all at once—but then, we humans tend to be a little scared of things we'll probably never understand. :)I think it's good for us—not understanding everything, that is. Keeps us humble and questing. :)

And there are a number of different types of hauntings, apparently. :) The Ghost Hunters classify them by "intelligent"—the kind that knows you're there, and can intereact with you, if they choose—and then there's apparently a kind that sort of plays itself over and over at a certain time or under certain conditions, like a video or a tape recording, as though it's been stamped permanently in the fabric of time. This kind doesn't know you're there. And then there's poltergeist activity. Etc. See all the useful things I'm learning?? LOL. Anyway, Jason and Grant from The Ghost Hunters will apparently be on the Ellen de Generes show on Halloween, if you want to see them.

[Karen]

Hey, Jules! What color is your i-pod? No, seriously now, it's your sis, and as you know, our family is no stranger to 'spooky' goings on, but it seems that it has continued into the next generation with my son. My husband's mother was in her early 80s when Sam was born, and she passed unexpectedly when he was only three months old. Though she saw him in video, she never actually got to hold him, which was very sad for the whole family as Sammy is her only grandchild. The day before she passed, my sister-in-law held the phone up to her ear so that we could all speak to her and say our goodbyes, though by that time she was unconscious and unresponsive. It was clear that she wasn't going to recover, so we were all emotional wrecks and choked with tears. When I was speaking with her, I told her that she would always be a part of our lives, and that if she could, to please come visit us. Her breathing patterns changed noticably at that point, so much so that my sister-in-law later came on the phone and asked what I had said as her Mom had become so animated/agitated for a short time when talking to me. My mother-in-law was a devout Catholic, and not being Catholic myself, I had no idea if I had upset her by basically saying that she should come back and see us after she died or if she was indicating that she would accept my invitation to come back to see us. About six months later, my sister-in-law sent Sam a package that contained two decorative silver and pewter bells that belonged to his grandmother. One was the figure of a little girl, the other a little boy, and we told Sam that they represented Grandma and Grandpa C, and that whenever he wanted to be close to them he could take the bells out of the china cabinet and hold them. Mind you, Sam was only 10 months old at the time, so we didn't think much about it after that. Until one of the bells started ringing on it's own. The girl bell. At first we couldn't figure out what the heck the sound was, or where it was coming from as it was a delicate, intermittent chiming. We finally tracked it to the china cabinet, which is absolutely stuffed with china and crystal and even a couple other bells, and then more specifically to the girl bell when I was actually able to touch it while it was chiming and felt the little vibration of the clapper. We tried various experiments with walking and stomping in front of the cabinet, which made everything kind of clink and chime around, to just gently shaking it, which made nothing sound. I even moved the bells from shelf to shelf each time I heard the chiming (at least once a day), and still was unable to recreate the chiming of only the girl bell in my "debunking" process. We finally just agreed that it was Grandma's way of popping in to say hello to her family. It's been over a year since I've heard the bell chime on it's own, so perhaps Grandma C has become busier on the other side, but now and then Sam will point to the corner of the ceiling of a room and say "Grandma". When I tell him that "Grandma" (my mother) is at her house, he'll elaborate and say "Grandma C". He's also mentioned on ocassion that "Grandma C" is outside, and after a little gut-check pause the first time he said that, I just tell him to tell her to come on in!

[Ranurgis]

Well, Julie, I hope you hydro bill isn't off by as much as mine is. I ended up using $500 over budget thanks to the heat wave and a kaputt fridge.

Wrote e-mail Sunday evening.

[Ranurgis]

I just now read the rest of the entries and especially yours, Julie. I agree that it's good that not everything is clear to us. It reminds me of what Hamlet said to Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Of course, the basis for that too, I think, was Hamlet's seeing his father. I apply it to God as well. We will never be able to prove or disprove his existence and his power.

I just know that when my father was at death's door after his stroke, my brother and his wife were sitting with him at his hospital bed. He seemed totally lifeless much as my mother must have been just before she died.

My mother had gone to the Wednesday prayer meeting at church. Suddenly, my brother told my mother later, my father moved. I don't know what exactly he did because I was in Germany at the time. They sort of correlated the times and figured out that this small movement happened while the prayer group was actually praying for my father.

My mother had a few minor episodes too. The one that was the strangest occurred during WW II. She woke up one night and had the definite feeling that someone she loved had died at that moment. She knew that it was not my father. Later she found out that her favorite cousin had died at almost that exact moment.

I think one has to have a certain special sensitivity in order to be able to have experiences like this. Deeper feelings in some ways than I have. I think overall I'm too logical and pragmatic though I could definitely be wrong about that. That's why I don't have that creative talent that my mother had. I think these things go together. There's a word in German that I expresses it for me but it doesn't translate well into English.

BTW, do you know that it is very hard to find a German dictionary that will give you the meaning of German words? I was in a university town where one of the first universities was founded in 1477. I looked and looked in each of I don't know how many different bookstores. The only words they showed me were ones with what are called "Fremdwörter" literally "foreign words", words that come from the Latin roots, e.g., expression, operation, and 1000s of others including English or French words that have become part of German. Because of this, German has the second-most words in its vocabulary but just over half of what English has. Russian is third with lots of French and German words adopted during the time of the czars when the nobility spoke only French, and French is fourth. They, of course, officially resist the conquering English upstart.

I don't know how long it took me but I finally found one. I guess Germans naturally know all the words in the language. After all, the way German words are made is pretty simple: you just put words together, mostly nouns and adjectives, to come up with a new word. I know I'm missing part of his one; it's a lot longer but this part sort of stuck in my "Donaudampfschiffskapitän". Donau=Danube; dampf=steam; schiff=ship; s=possessive; kapitän=captain. Captain of a Danube steamship.

I'm getting silly and had better get to bed. We are now officially back on standard time. The computer change from 2:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. about 20 minutes ago.

Have a good night and a great Sunday. Yesterday was miserable here: raining and windy. It seems as if there will be little or no rain tomorrow. I must do laundry to get ready for my trip.

Have a good week in case I don't make it back early next week.

[Kathy K]

Karen, Wow! what a heart-warming story...it just gives me tingles all over. And I truly believe that those we love and that love us are never too far away.

Julie, I've heard that too, about the interactive ghosts and the repetitive ones. Another explanation for repetitive "hauntings" is that places where terrible events have occurred ~ battles with a tremendous loss of life ~ the emotional energy released is somehow trapped in the area and these events / battles are on a loop. I can buy that!

I love stuff like this ~ mystical, psychic stuff.... ^.^

Kathy

[Julie Anne Long]

Karen, that story is wonderful and incredible, and you'd never told me that before!!! Then again, considering it's our family, and all...LOL. Not hard to believe, really. In some former lifetime we were all probably barbecued in Salem. :) And you know...I have to believe there's no such thing as a real "ending" in life. WHen we lose someone, sometimes it's hard to take immediate comfort in that philosophy, but ultimately I've found it feels true and right. And I like this stuff, too, Kathy. :) I've had numerous psychic experiences, truly, and I just sort of take them for granted, now. Pretty frequently I just sort of "know" stuff, and much of it is random—who's on the other end of a ringing phone, when someone's going to be late, etc. All kinds of stuff. More than once I've dreamed things that have come to pass, verbatim. And yeah, I've witnessed one or two wild, unexplainable things over the years. :) So I'm pretty open to these kinds of experiences, too. And I'm OK with not drawing conclusions about them. I just take them in, and marvel, and speculate. :)

Thanks for the German lesson, Ranurgis!! LOL. Actually, there are some fabulous words in the German language that don't seem to have English equivalents. Like...Gemuetlich. Or Schadenfreude. :)

[Ranurgis]

Yeah, sorry Julie. I seem to get hung up on things very easily. Language is one of them, books another. So Karen is your sister? Older or younger than you? My sister's more than 11 years younger than I and has her 3rd grandchild on the way.

Yes, German does have some nifty words and expressions. Berliners love to name various buildings and monuments things like: the pregnant oyster, one church is the lipstick and the powder box. The monument to the Airlift of necessities to Berlin in 1949 when the Russians completely cut off access to Berlin is called the Hunger-claw.

Glad to see you know some German too. I think these little imponderables make translations of books never quite the equal of the original.

And your sister's story is heart-warming.

Please let me know if you didn't get Sunday's e-mail.

[Joyce]

Dropping by to wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
The practical thing on my list is a new electric fry pan as the one I have now is a bit scratched up. The unpractical would be if I recieved perfume because I do not wear it.
Health and Prosperity to All

Joyce

[Lorie Chalfant]

Hi and Happy Hoildays! BTW I would LOVE to be winner.