New Mexico Police claim to have captured a ghost on CCTV.

Scaredy cops: New Mexico police officers capture freaky 'ghost creature' on their station CCTV camera

• Footage taken Saturday night at Espanola Police Station

• Officer Karl Romero believes the figure was a ghost walking through the locked-down sally port

• Other officers have reported strange occurrences before

• Numerous unsolved murders in the area

Officers at a police station in New Mexico believe they are dealing with more than just criminals.

One cop at the post in Espanola believes he came in contact with a ghost on Saturday night - and has video evidence to prove it.

Officer Karl Romero was stationed in the surveillance room monitoring the CCTV cameras when he noticed something moving in the gated area.

Romero claims that a spirit-like creature could be seen moving across a sally port, which is a controlled entryway completely sealed off.

Detectives say there is no way in or out of the secured area without the gates opening and an alarm sounding, KOAT Action News reported.

'I do believe in ghosts,' Ramero told the station.

'I don't know (what it was on the video), but we've had some unsolved murders in the area.'

The CCTV footage shows a murky image moving across the sally port.

Ramero believes it clearly shows something with legs.

Other officers say they have witnessed unexplained occurrences and sometimes felt as if someone was breathing on them.

Article > Daily Mail by Joel Christie

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Haunted Tamworth pub goes up for sale.

Haunted Tamworth Moat House pub up for sale.

A haunted West Midlands pub that once served as a lunatic asylum for local women is up for sale.

The famous Moat House in Tamworth was built by the noble Comberford family in 1572.

The family entertained Charles I at the Tudor-built property in August 1619 while he was Prince of Wales.

Since then the building has served as an asylum’ for women, a restaurant and it is now available on a new lease with vacant possession.

Legend has it that the Moat House has a resident ghost called Emily, a young girl who has spooked many staff and customers over the years.

The pub offers a spacious bar and restaurant, library, separate function room, extensive gardens and car parking for over 80 cars.

It is being sold by specialist agent Christie & Co from its Birmingham office for an undisclosed sum.

  Article > Birmingham Mail by Brett Gibbons

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Haunted Scottish castle is Sold.

Haunted 16th-century Scottish castle sold to foreign buyer

The unidentified foreign buyer aims to restore historic Castle Grant, which formerly belonged to ex-Rangers football club owner, Craig Whyte.

The 16th-century Castle Grant, which formerly belonged to ex-Rangers football club owner, Craig Whyte, has been sold to an anonymous overseas buyer.

The reputedly haunted castle, near Grantown-on-Spey, is reported to have been sold for £1million by an unidentified foreign buyer, who is set to spend a substantial amount on refurbishment.

The sale of Castle White, the ancestral seat of the Chiefs of the Grant Clan, was handled by estate agent Strutt & Parker and attracted strong overseas interest.

Kevin Maley, a partner with Strutt & Parker, Inverness, tells OPP Connect, “Castle Grant was launched to the market in the spring and generated a significant amount of interest from buyers across the globe including America, Australia, Russia and Singapore.

“Those who did view the castle were fascinated by the history of it and the fact that it was purportedly haunted by the ghost of Lady Barbara Grant, not to mention the misfortune of many of the previous owners.

“The new owner is already planning on spending a significant amount on refurbishing the castle and grounds and it is reassuring to know that the ancient, ancestral seat of the Chiefs of the Grant Clan is in safe hands.”

Castle Grant was repossessed by the Bank of Scotland last year and was bought by Mr Whyte and his then wife Kim or £720,000 in 2006, media reports say.

The 35-acre Castle Grant grounds include a landscaped loch. It is the former seat of the Clan Grant chiefs of Strathspey in Highlands, and was originally named Freuchie Castle, but was renamed Castle Grant in 1694.

Lady Barbara Grant was the daughter of a 16th-century laird. She is said to have died of a broken heart after being imprisoned in a hidden closet for falling in love with the wrong man and legend has it that she died there of a broken heart.

Witnesses later claimed to have seen her ghost coming through the door of the closet, stopping and appearing to wash her hands, before disappearing through the door of the tower.

Article > Oppconnect 

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Poltergeist Possessed Microwave.

Paranormal Investigators Confirm Poltergeist Possession of Microwave.

Homeowner Bill Michaud says, “It started with random beeping. One time it went off like the food was done, and when I looked over, the damn thing was still going and said 6:66.” Unfortunately for Michaud and his family, this spooky occurrence was just the beginning of a long, kitchen-appliance nightmare.

“We found [the microwave] in the attic when we moved in a few months back. Didn’t have one, so figured, ‘what the hell,’ might as well try it,” says Michaud. “I tell you, the thing heats up the food real nice. Sometimes it beeped or turned itself off in the middle of cooking, though. Then really weird things started happening. It zapped at food as if we were putting shards of metal in it. I couldn’t figure it out.”

His wife Betty adds, “It turns on by itself. It turns off by itself, too. It’s like it’s messing with me. No matter how many times I popped the door shut, the minute I leave the room it pops open again. One night, really late, I walk into the kitchen and I’m about to open the fridge, and the microwave door flies open, lighting the whole kitchen up in a horrible, scary lightning-blue color. It’s like it wanted to electrocute me.”

The Michauds contacted the Kansas Ghost Hunter group right away. Founder Kevin Young was eager to study both the microwave and the entire home in general.

“The Michauds didn’t want to go without a microwave, or risk upsetting the spirit by taking it out of the house. We obtained permission to stay the night and study the phenomena in its natural environment,” said Young. “My wife, who is also on my squad, is highly empathic. As we warmed up TV dinners in the microwave, she sensed a presence. As soon as she mentioned it, the microwave started beeping repeatedly. The door flung open, and my Hungry Man dinner went flying across the room. We pressed the off button. We unplugged it. It beeped several times after we cut off the power. Of course our digital recording became corrupted, which often happens when there is such strong energy.”

Young called in paranormal investigator, and self-proclaimed authority on mechanical-possession, Carl Richards. He believes it is not a ghost, but a poltergeist that takes possession of the microwave.

“I followed the situation that the Michauds were facing from the beginning, as they posted their disturbances on Facebook. I keep an eye on all local ghost-hunter hobbyists and groups,” said Richards. “The EMF readings confirmed this supernatural manifestation is a poltergeist. I have seen poltergeists occupy washers, TVs, electric heaters, but this is the first time I have seen microwave possession first-hand.”

When Richards was asked if the Michauds should get a new microwave , he advised, “It is important to remember, the malevolent presence does not strictly ‘live in’ the microwave. Getting rid of the machine will not solve the problem. It has the ability to travel throughout the electrical wiring in the house.”

“It is best not to engage the being,” continued Young. “Try not to be fearful. Always remain calm. If you’re facing a poltergeist in your kitchen devices, just ignore its outbursts, and it will not be able to feed off your energies.

” Betty Michaud agrees with Young’s advice. “I think he knows what he’s talking about. It didn’t start getting really bad until we paid attention to it. Now we just ignore it like we would ignore a child’s temper-tantrum, and it still randomly shuts off or zaps from time to time, but nothing really serious. It still heats up our leftovers like a champ, too.”

Article > Empire News

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Ghostly activity caught on film at Barnsley Antiques Centre.

Ghostly goings on caught on video.

PREPARATION work for the opening Barnsley Antiques Centre in Old Doncaster Road has been hit by some ghostly goings on.

Business partners Danny Parker, 42, and Rachel Archer 38, noticed splinters of glass all around the floor.

Danny, 42, of Arthur Street, Pogmoor, checked the cctv establish who or what had smashed a large display cabinet,

And he was left freaked out by what he saw. He said: "I spent hours that night freezing the footage frame by frame on my laptop and suddenly two ghostly faces appeared.

"A split second later the glass exploded."

Article > Barnsley Cronicle 

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Family Flee Utah House.

Family moves out of 'haunted' rental home after discovering missing woman lived there.

• Joanna Aeosana and her family moved into a seemingly perfect home in West Valley City, Utah a few months ago

• She later learned that the house used to be occupied by the Powell family, the subject of a high-profile missing persons case

• Susan Powell disappeared in December 2009 and was never found; her husband later killed himself and their two young sons in a house fire

• Aeosana claims she heard crying while showering and that the garage door opens and closes on its own

• She has since moved out of the house and is now fighting with the rental company to release her from the lease 

A family recently moved out of a Utah home where a woman mysteriously disappeared six years ago, claiming the house is haunted.

The home in West Valley City has been the backdrop of one of Utah's most notorious missing persons cases.

Susan Powell lived in the home with her husband Josh and their two young sons when she disappeared without a trace in December 2009. Her husband Josh later moved out of the home, and committed suicide in February 2012, killing their two young sons as well in a house fire.

 It was only when a neighbor informed her about the home's eerie history that she couldn't stand to stay there anymore.

Aeosana and her family experienced several surreal situations while they were in the house, including the garage opening and closing on its own.

'I hear people crying when I'm showering,' she told 2News.

She says she also saw her 1-year-old son talking to an empty swing in the front yard, saying: 'Go away, leave me alone'.

Aeosana and her family recently moved out and now they are fighting with the rental company to let them off their lease, and help them find a new place to live.

Real estate companies aren't required to disclose details like these to potential renters, but Aeosana believes she should have been informed.

'I believe they should of, they should have told me,' she said. 'I just don't want to be in there.'

Article > Daily Mail

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Why Do People Believe in Ghosts?

Why Do People Believe in Ghosts?


 In June, Sheila Sillery-Walsh, a British tourist visiting the historic island-prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco, claimed that she captured an image of a ghost in a picture she snapped on her iPhone. In the frame of what was otherwise supposed to be a picture of an empty prison cell was a blurry black and white image of a woman. The story, which was printed in the British tabloid the Daily Mail, featured on the Bay Area's local KRON4 TV station and mocked by SFist, isn't the first time the Daily Mail has claimed that strange images have come up on smart devices.

Normally, a paranormal story wouldn’t catch my attention, but a few months before the story came out, a Spanish friend of mine named Laura showed me a weird image she found on her phone while I was traveling in Madrid. The photo, taken on her iPhone while on a trip to Ethiopia, shows a boy looking down at leaves he is holding in his hands. Seemingly superimposed onto the boy is another image of the boy, hands in a different position and eyes looking straight at the camera.

Laura was convinced she captured an image of a ghost.

Then a few weeks later I discovered an image of a man in the background of a photo I took with my own iPhone. The picture was taken in my apartment and the man, whom I can’t identify, was not actually in the apartment at the time. I’ve been using the photo to scare my friends, and myself, ever since.

* * *

Recent surveys have shown that a significant portion of the population believes in ghosts, leading some scholars to conclude that we are witnessing a revival of paranormal beliefs in Western society. A Harris poll from last year found that 42 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts. The percentage is similar in the U.K., where 52 percent of respondents indicated that they believed in ghosts in a recent poll. Though it’s tough to estimate how large the paranormal tourism industry is—tours of sites that are supposedly haunted (rather than staged haunted houses)—there are 10,000 haunted locations in the U.K. according to the country’s tourist board, and sites like HauntedRooms.co.uk list dozens of allegedly haunted hotels where curious visitors can stay. In the U.S., residents of places like Ellicott City in Howard County, Maryland pride themselves on their haunted heritage.

While the terms "spirit" and "ghost" are related and even interchangeable in some languages, the word "ghost" in English tends to refer to the soul or spirit of a deceased person that can appear to the living. In A Natural History of Ghosts, Roger Clarke discusses nine varieties of ghosts identified by Peter Underwood, who has studied ghost stories for decades. Underwood’s classification of ghosts includes elementals, poltergeists, historical ghosts, mental imprint manifestations, death-survival ghosts, apparitions, time slips, ghosts of the living, and haunted inanimate objects.

It seems that belief in ghosts is even more widespread in much of Asia, where ghosts are characterized as neutral and can be appeased through rituals or angered if provoked (as opposed to our scarier depictions of ghosts in the West), according to Justin McDaniel, a professor of religious studies and director of the Penn Ghost Project at the University of Pennsylvania. “[Ghosts in Asia] can be asked for help in healing humans, winning the lottery and protecting one while traveling or while pregnant,” he said. “Like American ghosts, they have an attachment to the human realm which keeps them haunting and helping humans.”

The author's friend believes she captured a
ghost in this photo, taken on a trip to Ethiopia.
(Laura Martinez de la Calle)

 In China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand, the seventh month of the lunar calendar (which falls in August this year) ushers in the Hungry Ghost Festival, when it is believed that ghosts of the deceased are temporarily released from the lower realm to visit the living. In Taiwan, some people believe that the presence of wandering ghosts during Ghost Month can cause accidents to the living. At least one study has shown that people avoid risky behaviors during this time, including those in bodies of water, reducing the number of deaths by drowning.

“Like in the West,” McDaniel says, “people in Asia have kept their belief in ghosts despite the rise of science, skepticism, secularism, and public education. In places like Japan where secularism is very strong, the belief in ghosts is still high. Even hyper-modern and liberal Scandinavia has a high percentage of people believing in ghosts.”

It turns out that a significant amount of people report having personally experienced paranormal activity. In a study published in 2011, 28.5 percent of undergraduate students surveyed at a southern university reported having had a paranormal experience. In a 2006 Reader's Digest poll, 20 percent of respondents (21 percent of women and 16 percent of men) reported that they had seen a ghost at some time in their lives.

But it’s also true that if you already believe in ghosts, or are told a place is haunted, you are more likely to interpret events as paranormal. A 2002 study found that believers in ghosts were more likely than non-believers to report unusual phenomena while touring a site in Britain with a reputation for being haunted. Visitors who were told that there was a recent increase in unusual phenomena occurring at the site also reported a higher number of unusual experiences on the tour.

The author says that the man at the top left, whom she
can’t identify, was not in the room at the time this photo
was taken.

Another study demonstrated that hearing or reading about paranormal narratives, especially when the story came from a credible source, was enough to increase paranormal beliefs among participants. With the abundance of ghost-hunting shows in the U.S. and the UK, like Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures and Most Haunted, which is returning to screens this fall, it’s probably not surprising that studies have also linked belief in ghosts with exposure to paranormal-related TV shows.

“What we have is people trying to make sense of something that, to them, seems inexplicable,” says Christopher French, a professor of psychology and head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, “So you get the misinterpretation of noises or visual effects that do have a normal explanation, but not one that people can think of. People assume that if they cannot explain something in natural terms, then it must be something paranormal.”

According to French, hallucinations are more common among the general population than most people realize, and are sometimes wrongly interpreted as ghosts. He points to sleep paralysis—a phenomenon that occurs when someone wakes up while still in the dream-inducing REM stage of sleep, in which your body is paralyzed— as one example. Studies have shown that around 30 to 40 percent of people have experienced sleep paralysis at least once in their lives, with about five percent of participants reporting visual and audio hallucinations, including the presence of monstrous figures, and difficulty breathing.

The experience has been interpreted as paranormal in several cultures. In a study done in Hong Kong, for example, 37 percent of students reported at least one instance of what they refer to as “ghost oppression.” In Thailand, the term for sleep paralysis–phi um—translates to “ghost covered.” In Newfoundland, Canada, it is known as a visit from the “Old Hag.” The woman in Swiss artist Henry Fuseli’s famous 18th century painting, “The Nightmare,” is said by French and other researchers to be suffering an episode of sleep paralysis.

Michael Shermer, author of The Believing Brain, argues that we see causal, intentional relationships—even when they don’t exist—because it is evolutionarily advantageous to do so and because humans have the tendency to look at patterns and see them as deliberate. In a column for Scientific American, Shermer writes, “We believe that these intentional agents control the world, sometimes invisibly from the top down (as opposed to bottom-up causal randomness). Together patternicity and agent­icity form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all modes of Old and New Age spiritualisms.”

One example of this is our tendency to see faces in random images, a phenomenon called pareidolia. In a study conducted at the University of British Columbia, researchers Aiyana Willard and Ara Norenzayan found that participants with a higher tendency to anthropomorphize—meaning those that are more likely to assign human qualities to non-human things—were also more likely to have paranormal beliefs.

“There is also the emotional motivation for these beliefs,” French says. “The vast majority of us don’t like the idea of our own mortality. Even though we find the idea of ghosts and spirits scary, in a wider context, they provide evidence for the survival of the soul.”

With that in mind, I reached out to Apple Inc. for a comment on the images at the start of this article. A representative for the company was kind enough to check out the images, but didn’t have a comment for the story. And though a few independent analysts had a good look at the photos and suggested that Laura’s could be something related to high-dynamic range photography, no one was able to come up with a definitive explanation for the man in my apartment.

Maybe more images like mine will surface and someone will come up with a technical explanation for these spectral iPhone photos.

Or maybe, it’s just a ghost.

Article > The Atlantic - Tiffanie Wen

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