I write this post with a load of skepticism, a load of “bullshit” if you will. I recently watched one of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit,” a Showtime series about debunking, well, the title of the series.

Pretty interesting show. Some favorites include the “Bottled Water” episode where they go to an expensive restaurant and offer all kinds of fancy-shmancy bottled water to the patrons. Behind the scenes we learn that the water all came from one source: a garden hose. Hilarity ensues.

One of the episodes revolved all around psychic phenomena. It started with the Ouija board and a couple of eccentric Ouija people who probably thought they were being interviewed seriously. I tend to agree wholeheartedly with Penn and Teller here, I think the board is a load of bunk. They tested a few volunteers and blindfolded them when they were attempting to reach the actor who played Fred on “I Love Lucy.”

Of course when they asked who the spirit was and where we know it from, the device spelled TV. Unbeknown to the spirit seekers, the board was flipped upside down. Now if the spirit knew to guide the people’s hands to the appropriate message, then surely it would know to point to the words “yes” and “no” now on the other side of board. But when it was asked a “yes or no” question, the hand held medium shot straight to an empty space on the board, right where “yes” would have been.

What did you expect to happen? It’s a game made by Milton Bradley.

Another interesting part was when they did a bit on celebrity psychics to see if they were full of the cow dung as well. Here they had a very emotional segment with people dying to speak to their dead loved ones. So much in fact they’d pay for it, and believe anything.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand these tricks while they’re being used. The “psychic” “fishes” for information and watches for reactions. When the crying son was trying to contact his mother, the psychic started with “Now I have a woman standing here who’s very nervous.” She sees the bewildered look on the son’s face and totally does an about face and tries, “But that’s not like her because she’s usually very talkative and social.” Then the son smiles and nods. Whew! Nice save.

So with generalizations and fishing for info, anybody can drag information out of somebody to make them think the psychic really is contacting the dead. The funny thing, that most of the “fishing” is really failure, but the TV shows edit those parts out to think the psychic got it dead on. But the wailing survivors only focus on the right info, and leave thinking they really contacted the other side.

The best part was when they sent in a guy the psychic never met before to ask for a reading, or a contact. He doesn’t tell her any info whatsoever. Here’s how it went:

Psychic: “I’m seeing a man here.”

(wow, that fast?)

Psychic: “He’s very black and very big.”

(of course the volunteer is very big and black. The funny thing is the guy simply watches on and listens to her, but shows no body language.)

So she’s forced to finally ask: “Does this sound like anyone?”

(The guy just shakes his head no, and this seems to anger the psychic. Why it would anger the psychic is beyond me and she says:)

Psychic: “Okay fine, let’s move on. He keeps calling you ‘my boy.’ (she keeps watching for reaction, and get only mild bewilderment) “Ring a bell? Do you understand?”

The man:”Yeah I understand I just don’t know who that would be.”

Psychic: FAILED, doesn’t know what to say. It’s funny that she supposedly contacted someone big and black who calls this gentleman his boy, and this guy has no clue who it would be. So who is this ghost, lady?!

Yeah these scam artists are just out to get a buck. Quite unethically I might add, as Penn and Teller would agree. They are preying on the vulnerable emotional states of these people, and really they’re just full of shit.

Do I think psychic phenomena is real? Absolutely! I just wouldn’t believe it if I saw it on daytime television.

I’ve generally talked about the strange and bizarre goings on here on Earth, but something is to be said of all the strange oddities they have found on our neighbor in the heavens, the Red Planet. Talk a look for yourself at these non-Photoshopped actual images of the surface of Mars and tell me you can seriously deny all possibility of aliens.

Who hasn’t daydreamed about being able to move things with their minds at least once in their lives? How great would that be, to be able to cultivate the mental powers needed to move something across the room by will? Psychokinesis, or PK for short, as a  phenomenon has been around for some time.

Psychokinesis can also mean a number of other things besides moving things with mind power:

•  Telekinesis, or moving matter
• Aerokinesis, controlling air molecules
• Self levitation or flying
• Object deformation (metal softening or bending)
• Influencing events
• Healing
• Teleportation
• Phasing through matter
• Transmutation of matter (converting a chemical element into another)
• Shape shifting
• Energy shield
• Control of magnetism
• Thoughtform projection

That’s quite a bit of phenomena, and if one person possesses all of these abilities, I’d watch out!

Attempting telekinesis can actually be pretty therapeutic. It involves meditating and/or intense focusing. I have tried myself a couple of times to no avail. On several different occasions a strange energy seems to build up around the room, however. One time I attempted to slightly rest my hand on a cigar container, and with enough concentration I would try to lift the box up without actually grabbing. I succeeded in freaking myself out when I heard a bunch of clicks and pops around the room when I got into it. Also an energy was definitely present, most likely my own, but still freaky.

I haven’t tried the whole “light as a feather, stiff as a board” thing in a group yet but I’m always trying to get people to do it. Everybody seems afraid, just like they don’t want to ever do a séance.  What’s the worst that could happen? OK the worst would be pretty bad. But where’s the fun in it, if you didn’t think it would work?

Now for teleporting this cigar box…

This is an article I wrote on my art blog vincesear.com. I figured I’d include it here because of it’s grotesque and eerie nature. It’s about James Ensor the painter who painted mostly people in scary masks and skeletons.

The Masks of James Ensor

Meet James Ensor, painter of masks and skeletons. What was it all about, those skulls and masks painted in such loud colors? What it was was a unique mastery unlike any other that has come before him or since. Born in Ostend, Belgium he quickly attained the master painter title, originally painting quite serene and realistic canvases. He founded the group “Les XX” or “The Twenty” but soon broke away to seclusion.

Bit by bit his paintings ventured into unknown territory becoming more and more bizarre. The painting “Scandalized Masks” marks a turning point away from conventional style and subject. Perhaps inspired by the dolls and masks sold in his mother’s gift shop, his paintings were dominated by masks and masquerade themes. Thin skinned and self conscious, he didn’t take it well when art critics thrashed his artwork saying it was too macabre and disturbing. They saw the paintings as too hideous which you might agree after looking at some of some of the more gruesome titles as “Skeletons Fighting For a Smoked Herring,” and “Skeletons Fighting For a Corpse.”

For Ensor, these paintings were allegories of the political and social climate of modern times. Rich with symbolism, his pictures were often satirical parodies of the behavior of his fellow Belgians and of humanity in general. A political satire he executed in 1888 was probably his most famous work, “Entry of Christ Into Brussels.” Here we have the biblical second coming of Christ into the capital city in modern times, met with the citizens as if it was a parade. The mayor, the upper crust, the politicians and advertisers use the event for their own personal gain and publicity. The people are drunk with self interest as they yearn to be seen in such a spectacle. The parade shadows and belittles the main event, Christ himself, who is barely seen in the street on his donkey.

His many mask paintings show crude and inhuman people wearing a mask over a mask, clearly signifying people’s two-faced nature. He expressed his opinions through his pictures not just of his critics and contemporaries, but of mankind in general, making quite a statement. Despite the rejections of many of his seemingly more scandalous works, his paintings continued to be exhibited. More and more his Belgian public cherished him and his works. He was eventually made a baron, and although his creative genius waned in his later years, he died a much loved national celebrity.

He would influence the Expressionist and Surrealist art movements and artists such as Emil Nolde and Paul Klee. He can be found referenced in modern pop culture in the “They Might Be Giants” song “Meet James Ensor” seen in this video.

See “Self Portrait in 1960,” “Self Portrait With Masks,” and “Self Portrait in a Hat”

Also see our model of “Scandalized Masks” by me and Noah,

and Have Fun With Art

There is always an eerie charm to abandoned buildings, no matter what they used to be. The older they are the better, because as a ghost hunter, this gives it that much more chance that there is a haunting spirit lurking around. The buildings that have been around for centuries have generations of possible deaths in the house, poltergeists, or spirits who have missed the boat and wandered back to their home.

Plus abandoned buildings are creepy regardless of the possibility of spooks and specters. There was this old red brick building three stories tall on a busy but wooded road in a kind of boon docks neighborhood. The entire first floor was completely boarded up and sealed which meant the only entry was through the basement and there would be absolutely no light on the first floor. This was all it took to get us hooked on the idea of investigating. We were definitely going in.

The idea that the small basement window on the side of the house was the only entrance (and exit) made it that much scarier. If something were to spook the hell out of us, there was nothing to do but egress the entire building down to the cold dark cellar to climb out of a tiny portal. So the only thing to do was crawl in and see what we could see.

You never know what you’ll find in these places. Besides seeing a ghost real world dangers loom such as rusty nails sticking up, floor boards that can barely hold themselves up let alone three big adventure seekers, and the possibility of structure collapse that is all too prevalent in a condemned building, not to mention unfriendly squatters. There was nothing of value there, so the place being boarded up meant one thing: imminent danger. All right!

The first day we went in with a couple of flashlights and explored what we could. In the cellar we didn’t find much but an old filing cabinet with what looked like the personal records of a business or medical service, so we ventured upstairs. As always I volunteered to be point man and slowly made my way up those creaky steps. The basement steps were the worst, very unsturdy.

The first floor was pretty interesting. Being completely boarded up, we relied on our flashlights to see, frantically pointing it around corners and whatnot. It looked like the house’s demise was that it was partially burnt out. Half the building was inaccessible and falling apart, the other half wasn’t in much better shape, with vines coming in all over the place. It had a really old stove and not much to look at. Although there was a fairly new potted plant in the kitchen, which was odd.

So we continued upstairs to the second floor where there was actually light. This was where I had the most fun. We creeped slowly up the old staircase cautiously. When I got to the top I turned the corner and screamed, “Oh shit” and jumped back towards the other two. I have never seen a guy jump down a whole flight of stairs in two steps before this day. It was then I bust out laughing, and they realized I pulled a prank on them. This is the perk of going first.

The top two floors where in pretty bad shape too. The bathroom was destroyed with the wall falling in and vines everywhere. The floor looked about to give out. We finally reached the third and top floor and looked out the window of the front bedroom. The room had an old mattress on the floor and nothing else. Of course we cut the mattress to see if somebody had squirreled a bunch of cash in it, to no avail.

It was then that we either got kicked out by some strange energy or we spooked ourselves, because some gust of wind slammed a door somewhere in the house below us and we jolted. The scary part was we had to go down the entire house, through where we heard the noise and down to the cellar to squeeze out the window.

Very scary experience. I think we went once or twice again and probably didn’t go all the way up again, but looked around the basement. These days, the fear of getting arrested outweighs the thrill of adventure, so I haven’t been there in years. But it’s still there and there might be a day when I have better ghost hunting equipement that I’ll return.

Next time: the abandoned slaughterhouse!

As promised I am about to tell you some ghost stories from my ghost books and from other sources. This will be the subjects for many posts to come, and this one I will take from the “Ghost Stories of Delaware County.”

It is the story of Boone’s Tunnel and it is particularly of interest because tunnels themselves can be pretty spooky places anyway. I wouldn’t want to hang around one alone in the dark for too long. The picture of the tunnel, in Darby, PA, has a caption that says, “although it is easily accessible…” -this right there is basically telling us to go ahead and go in- “it is ill-advised that ghost hunters enter it, it is private property and the tracks contain live Amtrack lines.”

Private Property? Hasn’t stopped us much before. Although the live Amtrack lines is a bit of a problem. You might say you’ll move out of the way if a train comes, but then again you always read of people getting killed on tracks, dunk or not. Personally, though I’d be more afraid if the lines were inactive and abandoned. It’s spookier, as anything abandoned is. Kind of like the ghost train in Ghost Busters 2.

This particular tunnel is Boone’s tunnel, nicknamed “Mummy’s Tunnel.” Like I said before, this is one of those instances of deaths by train. In that very tunnel there was supposedly at least two deaths which may be the cause of the hauntings. I know if I tripped on some tracks and then found myself haunting a dirty old tunnel for eternity I’d be pretty pissed. And that might be what some of the ghostly energy in the tunnel is.

Another tunnel I know of is the destination for our next ghost hunting excursion. This one though is an inactive train tunnel in northern New Jersey, and is much spookier than Boone’s in Darby. What sets it apart from other haunted tunnels? This particular tunnel goes right under a cemetery. Yep, the tracks will lead directly under a grave yard.

Some people complain that grave yards are not usually haunted because it’s just the bodies there, the spirits are usually where they died. I beg to differ. I’m sure at least some of the spirits are wandering around their final resting places not knowing much of what is going on, and probably not too happy.

Besides, if these people are not so afraid of graveyards, why not camp out in the tunnel in North Jersey and see what happens?

As a ghost hunter hobbyist, I figured I may as well keep you up to date on my ghost hunting adventures, as well as tell you all the ghost stories I come across.

I haven’t really been out ghost hunting in some time now, but I have recently been given a ghost book. It’s called “Ghost Stories of Delaware County,” and its about all the local ghost stories of my hometown of Delaware County, Pennsylvania. These stories are just as interesting whether you live in Delaware County or Terre Haute, Indiana.

In this book are all kinds of tales of poltergeists, spirits, and things that go “bump” in the night. From the “Sneezing Nun” of of the Pennsylvania Institute of Technology to the ghosts of the Pennsylvania Colonial Plantation, you’re guaranteed to get spooked. I’ll start tomorrow with some of the stories out of it, and keep you updated. Until then, sleep tight.

The fear of the unknown territory that is Death has plagued mankind since its beginnings. In this article from my art blog vince’s ear, I speak about Death and how it is often portrayed in art

Throughout the centuries our primal fears have neither waned nor changed; what we fear today is not new. Mankind has been fearing the same things since evolution has made it possible to ponder. There is no deeper fear than the fear of death or the afterlife. No matter what our religious beliefs, the fear of the unknown is as basic a human quality as any other.

Danse Macabre

Art has represented this subject with an intimate vigor in all forms and media. In the Middle Ages, the Black Plague would wipe out up to two thirds of some populations of countries in Europe causing a change in human outlook toward mortality. With the chances of each day being their last extremely high, the people began to look deeply at their own lives and wondered about the uncertainty of death.

The Danse Macabre (French) resulted from the idea that no matter who you are in life, the Dance of Death unites all. Typical in the accompanying art movement were depictions of death of all sorts from demons and devils to skeletons, usually dancing juxtaposed with the living, who cower in fear. It was a general warning to all people that any day you may be visited by the grim reaper, and so you should prepare yourself and pray. The common theme was all folk from pope to pauper would face death sooner or later.

The Afterlife and The Bible

Perhaps no single person’s death has been painted more in the history of art than that of Jesus Christ. The gruesome reminding of this religious icon’s tortuous death hangs in Christian homes, churches, chapels, bedrooms, and anywhere else you can think of to this day. More often than not, the painting or sculpture gives an accurate depiction of the horror of what a crucifixion must have been like: nails, blood and all.

Many portrayals of the biblical stories show the aftermath of Christ’s death. The body in the arms of his mother, the distraught disciples’ executions, the tomb, the resurrection of Christ into Heaven, and the assumption of his mother into Heaven have all been depicted in paintings over the centuries.

There are many examples of a horrible post-mortem destination such as Hell, oftentimes intended to warn people of their unholy ways. Hieronymus Bosch was a strong advocate for religious moral values and a firm believer in an eternal afterlife. Many of paintings show his fellow Man, swimming in sin, on a path to Hell lest they change their ways.

Not all afterlife visions were gloomy, however, with plenty of visions of Heaven and angels accepting those penitent people who knew all along not to waste their lives in sin and debauchery.

Death and The Maiden

The idea of an innocent young girl being courted by Death has been a long and celebrated one through art history. The obsession of human mortality can be seen in the practice of putting beauty next to horror. Some good ones are by Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Hans Baldung, and Kathe Kollwitz’s “Death Embracing a Woman” is probably the scariest one.

Similar to the Death and the Maiden was the Gustav Klimt painting Death and Life. The twisted group of warm, sleeping people are being stalked by the cold and waiting skeleton.

I’ll end this post with somewhat of an antithesis. I speak of Edvard Munch’s Vampire, the epitome of eternal life. I often wonder would I choose immortality such as this, or venture into the unknown that is Death…

Taken verbatim from my bed-side notebook:

Total Lucidity

road with walk path flew forward as if on 4 wheeler but not really. Went to warehouse, realized I could move willingly, I exaggeratedly looked in all directions, hopped around. It became slow motion at times. I jumped down from a platform and went outside, realized I could move my body almost parellel to the gound and still walk. Everything is so real, where am I? I walk in slo-mo, and it feels good. I take advantage. There is a fence so I smack the fence with both hands and feel the vibration, I watch it shake back and forth. I know I’m dreaming now and I know I can do anything. I walk to leave the parking lot, still in slo-mo, I miss the gate but I stop myself by grabbing the post. As soon as I leave I look up at the moon then down to my running feet and start to fly. I watch the ground under me give way, I spread my arms wide, I look back at the moon then down again, and now 15-20 feet high flying forward. I know in my dreams I usually fall when I realize I’m flying. This is different. I continue flying. Everything looks so real, feels so real. It is real, I’m really somewhere else. I wake up and forget nothing. Flying is so euphoric.