Can a Ghost Attach Itself to Your Body?

The diagnosis is familiar. You feel drained of energy, have a diminished ability to concentrate, and crave time alone. You find yourself sleeping more than normal and feel like you’re losing a part of yourself day by day. In a normal world, doctors might suggest you have a case of depression. In a paranormal world, you might have a ghost attachment.

Sarah had never experienced the winter blues before. Her mental health was sound and her spirit was high. After having a bad day, she treated herself to dinner at a new restaurant, which left her feeling fatigued. Several days later, she felt no better. In fact, she began losing gaps of time, finding herself short-tempered with bone-deep exhaustion. After suffering for nearly a week, she began to suspect that her issue wasn’t normal. Friends told her she had a case of the winter blues and suggested she stock up on vitamin D, but she knew this wasn’t the case. She’d never experienced winter blues before.

Why would it start now? It wasn’t until she ran into a friend with mediumistic abilities that she learned the truth. She had a negative ghost attachment.

The symptoms of a ghost attachment often mimic seasonal depression, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder. Unless you are a gifted medium, you might not feel the invisible fingers clinging to your soul. While depression is a very real medical illness, caused by chemical changes in the brain, and should be treated by a doctor, a sudden unexpected case of fatigue requires further pursuit. In Sarah’s case, the attachment was drinking her dry.

Lost souls, who’ve chosen to remain in our realm, need energy to survive. Some might take this energy from electronic devices and from natural electromagnetic sources, but other entities prey on the living. They find us in our moments of resolve, when our defenses are at their lowest, and they cling on like ghostly hitchhikers. Negative entities use this energy to pursue other ventures, such as wracking havoc on the living. Demonic attachments use it to gain control of the host.

Thankfully, Sarah was able to shed the attachment with the help of a talented psychic medium, who moved the entity back into the realm where it belonged. Others aren’t so lucky, enduring the fatigue for years before finding relief.

Depression is a real issue and should be explored by a doctor, but if the symptoms don’t cease with treatment, it can’t hurt to dig a little deeper for the solution. It might not be a normal illness. It might be paranormal.

The Goatman of Maryland is a legendary half-human, half-goat creature that carries an ax.

According to legend, Goatman is an ax-wielding, half-man, half-animal creature that was once a scientist who worked in the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. The tale holds that he was experimenting on goats, the experiment went awry, and he began attacking cars with an ax, roaming the back roads of Beltsville, Maryland. A variation of the legend tells of Goatman as an old hermit who lives in the woods, seen walking alone at night along Fletchertown Road.

The Goatman has been described as being between 6 and 7 feet tall. The first reports of Goatman date to around 1957 but sightings have continued over the years. The Goatman also gets around some with numerous sightings from various places, including Texas, California, Indiana, and Canada. Let’s just say he hoofs it.

In Prince George’s County, Maryland there is a bridge called “Crybaby bridge” and it is told that if you go there in the dead of night you will hear the sounds of a goat braying.

Some people attempt to tie the Goatman to Greek Mythology and as being Pan. Pan in mythology was the god of the wild, a half-human half-goat type of creature, While others tie Goatman to the devil himself. Another interesting fact about Prince George’s County is that it is home to the demon-possessed boy on which the hit movie The Exorcist was based.

The Goatman is not only said to stalk and terrify humans but reports claim Goatman snatches and kill small pets such as dogs and cats. Numerous carcasses have been found over the years and not knowing what really killed these animals, Goatman got the blame.

The Goatman is an interesting legend for many reasons, from ties with the Devil to stalking lovers in parked cars, to killing your family pets. Goatman continues to strike fear in some people and it appears the legend is here to stay. It is also worth noting that having an insane asylum nearby only adds to the terror mystic.

So when driving or visiting Maryland keep your ears sharp for the sound of a braying goat and your eyes peeled for the glimmering of an ax, because you never know when the Goatman will strike next.

The Eyes are the Window to the Soul

Looking into a person’s eyes can tell you what the person thinks and feels.

If the eye is the window into the soul, the pupil is an opening into the eye. The pupil acts like the aperture on a camera, dilating or contracting to regulate the amount of light coming into the eye.

We know how and why we are looking at someone in a certain way, while other aspects of our body language can be hidden.

In many traditions, the eye represents “the window of the soul”; this means that it immediately reflects our emotions, our fears, and our deepest emotive shades. “Look me in the eyes!”, it is said when we do not want to lose any of the messages a person’s gaze sends us.

A look is worth thousands of words and actually, we our eyes we do not just look at something, but we communicate to everybody our state of mind and we reveal our character.

So, at this moment, the direction of our gaze, its intensity, its movements, and many other features become significantly important, and they collaborate to project ourselves in the outside world.

To his day, after more than 30 years, this woman now in her 40’s still claims “that the doll WAS alive and wanted to kill her.”

Shortly after this occurrence, the family got rid of it for good and brought it to the Key West Florida Martello Museum. Now, Robert is displayed in a glass case for all visitors to see his scary face.

Haunted Dolls

Although people are scared of many different things, most would agree that a haunted doll is, at the very least, a bit disturbing if not outright terrifying. So why exactly are some dolls haunted? What characteristics does a haunted doll typically have? How do haunted dolls affect people’s lives?

There are several different reasons why a doll can be haunted. The most common reason is that a child or otherwise deceased person’s spirit has become attached to the doll. Whether the doll was a beloved childhood toy or a precious gift, sometimes spirits do not like to let go of their prized possession, and instead possess the doll themselves.

Other times the energy of spirits can become attached to the doll, and although the person themselves is not necessarily possessing the doll knowingly, the energy that they left behind can still cause strange things to happen. Thirdly, sometimes people who have accidentally summoned a demon or spirit from the other side, via an Ouija board or other mystical ritual, find that they need a way to subdue it. Since sending a demon or spirit back to the other side is often difficult, some people choose instead to trap the spirit inside of an object, such as a doll. Although this will stop the malevolent being from traveling around, it still maintains all of its powers.

Finally, some spirits become trapped in a doll accidentally. During the Victorian ages, it was common for a grieving mother to take a lock from her deceased child’s hair and weave it into that of a beloved doll. Despite the sweet notion, this caused many spirits to become “stuck” inside of the doll.

So what exactly separates a haunted doll from a normal doll? The answer to this is pretty obvious. Haunted dolls have been known to do everything from walking around on their own, changing positions without anyone touching them, following a person with their eyes as they move about a room, laughing on their own, and talking. Several owners of haunted dolls have reported hearing footsteps emanating from the doll’s room when no one else was around, or seeing the doll peering at them from out a window when driving by.

Salem Is Allegedly One Of Massachusetts’ Most Haunted Small Towns

Most of us have heard about the Salem witch trials by now, but that is only the tip of the iceberg for this small and spooky Massachusetts town. Salem is allegedly home to numerous accounts of paranormal activity, and many say that you can’t go anywhere without feeling an eerie presence. This small coastal town is home to dozens of sites that have spotted supernatural activity, making it one of the most haunted towns in all of Massachusetts. From Burial Point to the Witch House, Salem is as creepy as it gets. Many houses in Salem are reported to be haunted.

THE STORY BEHIND SALEM’S HAUNTED WITCH HOUSE

Salem, Massachusetts was a very different place back in 1692. It was a dominant shipping port on the East Coast and home to a large Puritan community. A stark contrast to the bustling tourist destination Salem has become today, yet one thing that remains consistent is the town’s fascination with witchcraft.

Salem is indeed best known for the hysteria that dominated it in 1692, resulting in the Witch Trials that were to cause the deaths of many. The fear that Salem succumbed to was initially created by two young girls aged 9 and 11, the daughter and niece of the Reverend Samuel Parris. They had accused the family’s slave (Tituba) of witchcraft, after acting peculiarly and claiming they were under the spell of a witch.

This was the event that triggered the onset of many being accused of witchcraft. Tituba was one of the survivors, pleading guilty to the charges. Those who were to confess their innocence were not as lucky. The trials ran for a relatively short period, claiming the lives of 19 who were hanged for confessing their innocence. Excluding one man who was ‘pressed’ to death via a medieval torture technique of stacking heavy rocks atop the chest in an attempt to coax a confession out of him. Then there were countless more who were condemned to rot the rest of their lives away in a jail cell.

Although this horrific moment in history is Salem’s claim to fame and the main driver of the town’s tourism, there is only one remaining structure surviving that is linked to the Witch Trials. That structure is known as the Witch House.

Salem’s Witch House was never actually home to anyone accused of witchcraft. Its link to the trials comes from its former owner, Jonathan Corwin. Corwin was a judge who presided over many of Salem’s Witch Trials, which were directly responsible for sending 19 people to the gallows to face their deaths.

The house, rumored to be built in 1642, was the Corwin family home for many years through to the mid-1800s. Although not related to the actual Witch Trials, the home did see dramatic levels of death come through its doors. Many of those deaths were from members of the Corwin family.

Corwin moved to the Witch House with his wife Elizabeth, who already had four children with another man from her previous marriage. One of those children had already died and her 12-year-old daughter passed away shortly after moving into the residence.

Elizabeth would go on to bear more children, this time to Corwin. Many of these also met tragic ends, with 8 of the 10 children dying young before adulthood. The Corwin remained in the house, both dying in the late 1710s around the same time their remaining adult children passed.

Because of the many deaths associated with it, the Witch House is today thought to be one of the most haunted places in Salem. It has attracted many paranormal investigators over the years, including the famed television show Ghost Adventures. The spirits of deceased children are thought to exist within the property and have made themselves known to the living by touching them and projecting their voices. Sudden temperature drops and cold drafts gushing within rooms have also been experienced within the Witch House.

Salem’s famed Witch House today functions as a museum and is open to the public seasonally. It pays to check ahead of time whether it will be open during the time of your visit.

The museum details the involvement of the home in the Witch Trials, the lives of the Corwin family, and what life in Salem during the 1600s would have been like. The house has been restored to what it would have looked like during the time of the Witch Trials.

Salem is lucky to still have this time capsule of history, which was nearly destroyed along with many of the other properties linked to the Witch Trials. Locals lobbied to have the home saved, raising enough funds to move the house 30 feet and out of the path of construction. Do not miss out on the opportunity to experience this piece of old Salem history, whether you are a paranormal buff or just visiting Salem for the fun of Halloween.

OLD SALEM JAIL

SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS

The reputably haunted correctional facility played host to an estimated 50 hangings and enjoys a long and dark history. The Old Salem Jail was built in 1813, located next to the Howard Street Cemetery, where accused witch Giles Corey was crushed to death. Among the many inmates to be incarcerated in the prison, Albert DeSalvo, more commonly known as the Boston Strangler, was famously confined here. By 1984 conditions in the prison had deteriorated to such a level that a federal judge ordered the jail’s closure, which eventually took place in 1991, until then, it had been the oldest operating prison in America. And there it sat abandoned, crumbling into ruin and collecting ghost stories as the years passed.

Visitors to the Old Salem Jail reported sightings of dark apparitions wandering the empty corridors and rooms of the prison. Mysterious lights were sometimes spotted shinning from within, and unearthly screams were heard echoing from the thick granite walls. Today, after an extensive renovation the structure has been turned into luxury apartments and the spirits of Old Salem Jail appear to be at rest, for the time being, that is.

Howard Street Cemetery and Salem Jail
Salem, Massachusetts

Salem has a long history of darkness. Since it was among the earliest communities of European settlers in the United States, the ethics and morals of its leaders were not always terribly democratic.

Quakers were beaten in the streets of Salem and good people were hung as “witches” after being wrongly accused by young children in the Salem Witch Trials. Salem was a petri dish in which new American’s learned some important “life lessons” that helped shape many of our countries beliefs about right and wrong. Little things like one’s right to defend oneself in a court of law that is separate and distinct from the church and freedom of religion became more salient as important pieces to the American Dream following the drama of the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Jail was built in 1813. It has been abandoned since 1991 and is currently slated to be restored into townhouses or condos.
The Salem Jail and Howard Street Cemetery is considered to be one of the most haunted places in Salem, Massachusetts. There are 100 prison cells and prisoners were executed here. Indeed, the famous execution of Giles Corey took place here.

Giles Corey and his wife Martha were accused of witchcraft. The laws in Salem at that time were pretty twisted at the time. People accused of witchcraft were pretty much screwed no matter what their plea. But if they didn’t enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, they would, at least be able to pass along an inheritance to their children. A plea meant that the city could take away a person’s belongings and distribute them among the city’s leaders. In this case, Sheriff George Corwin was the main benefactor when it was time to go gather up the belongings of community members accused of witchcraft.

Giles Corey was laid on a pile of rocks in the field that has become known as Howard Cemetery. Two boards were placed on top of him and then, large, heavy stones were placed on the boards one by one. Giles was slowly crushed to death by Sheriff George Corwin who was ultimately in charge of the execution.

Giles Corey, according to local lore, kept uttering, “more weight”. But in his dying breath he is recorded to have said, “Damn you Sheriff. I curse you and Salem!”

Local Salem historian and former High Sheriff of Essex County Robert Ellis Cahill discovered some time ago that the curse of Giles Corey may have some authenticity in events of late. Cahill has noted that each and every Sheriff down from George Corwin to himself, each headquartered at the Salem Jail overlooking the place where Corey was killed, has died while in office or has been forced out of his post as the result of a heart or blood ailment. George Corwin himself died in 1696, 4 years after Corey’s execution, of a heart attack. Cahill recently suffered a heart attack himself but thankfully was only forced into an early retirement whereupon he started looking more closely at the strange stories about Salem’s past.

Samuel Pickman House
Salem, Massachusetts

Samuel Pickman House is on the corner of Charter and Liberty Street, directly next to the Witch Memorial and the Old Burying Point Cemetery. The Pickman House was built in 1664 and is one of Salem’s earliest original structures. Owned by the Peabody Essex Museum, it too contains a dark, fatal history according to legend. One story tells of a husband and wife who lived in this house with their 7 year old daughter. The demons were believed to have caused the husband to go insane, chaining his daughter up in the attic, torturing and starving the child. He then tied his wife to a tree outside and killed her by pouring boiling hot wax over her body, leaving her to die a slow painful death. He then fled.
People take photos of the house claiming it is still inhibited by a demonic force and the ghost of the young girl who is sometimes seen looking out the attic window. Paranormal anomalies are the result of photographs showing what looks to be the girl looking out the window while people look in. Orbs and other odd lights are captured on film.

Rotherwood Mansion

Kingsport, Tennessee

The Rotherwood Mansion was built by the Reverend Frederick A. Ross in 1818 and is rumored to be the home of a ghostly Lady in White. Legend says that the lady is Ross’s daughter, Rowena, who was said to be looking for her love who drowned in the Holston River nearby. After several more tragedies, Rowena went to the same river where she drowned herself. Ever since, her spirit has lingered at the mansion.

The funeral of the most hated man in Kingsport, as the pastor began to give Phipps his final words, the river below the gathering began to bubble and churn, as if it were boiling, the currents moving so fast the water itself was muddy. The coffin was vibrating, as though something inside wanted out badly. They heard the scrabbling of what sounded like claws against wood and with a roar, a gigantic black dog blasted out of the casket, bolting out from under the black cloth as the attendants screamed in terror. The dog snarled at them with its gleaming eyes before bolting off across the grounds and vanishing into the woods.

Some say the angry ghost of Joshua Phipps can be seen or heard roaming the halls of Rotherwood and others report hearing a phantom dog barking. Phipps was known in life to be a cruel man and his evil laugh has been heard throughout the mansion. His evil did not stop at the slaves and his treatment of them. Phipps was just as cruel with his own family and had a strange request about his death. He wanted to be buried standing up on the top of the hill at Rotherwood, so he could always be looking down into the bottoms and see the slaves working.

The remaining family began to whisper of things moving in the shadows of the house, of hearing animal feet running through the hallways and most horrifying of all, that the laughter and sound of Joshua Phipps stalking his way around the home as he would appear at night at the foot of the bed and yank the bed clothes off, keeping anyone from sleeping.  The slaves claimed that the ghost of Joshua Phipps had risen from the grave along with a giant black dog to torment them every night. Fed up with such reports, the family to calm their own fears agreed that Phipps’s grave would be dug up to prove once and for all that the man was truly dead. Opening the grave turned out to offer more mysteries and terror than anyone imagined. The coffin was still there and once opened, it was empty.

Not longer after, violence struck Rotherwood again as the slaves were unable to bear the torment from their unseen attackers, they revolted, destroying Phipps’s headstone, desecrating his grave and finally and killing their last torturer, Phipps’s equally cruel mistress, the mulatto woman. They beat her to death and what happened to her body is unknown.

Hell Hounds and the apparitions of not only Joshua Phipps, but also that of Rowena Ross, Pricilla and the spirits of slaves murdered on the grounds are said to wander the property. 

It is also reported that you can hear the moaning, the wailing, the crying of slaves who were tortured or killed on the plantation grounds.

Pomeraning House Haunting

The story of the Pomeraning house in the small farming town of Saginaw County, Michigan, is not well known, but it definitely should be. Reports of haunting in this home have been reported since the late 1970s but rarely has it been examined as Steve Shippy’s Travel Channel show ‘Haunting in the Heartland’ does. The show features a farmhouse on Dice Road about four miles north of Merrill.

The distraught homeowners sought help after their granddaughter Aidabelle is driven out by some seriously eerie incidents where the spirits seem to be targeting her. Unexplained scratches, black smoke, mysterious footprints and a presence just not allowing her to live inside the home, this haunting is right out of James Wan’s ‘The Conjuring’, just the first one though.

Currently, the home is occupied by the Midcalf family and their granddaughter. All of them have described strange occurrences in the house from feeling locked out of a room due to an unseen force or seeing black smoke come out of nowhere, making it impossible to see. One such occurrence is said to have happened to Josh, the son of Celeste and Mike Midcalf. One night when he was in the kitchen, he was forced to sleep on the counter after a presence refused to let him pass and go up to his room. He had seen black smoke fill the room and he was unable to scream for help.

Records and media reports from earlier have shown similar things happening in the house wherein a boy almost died of suffocation. There have also been incidents of constant unexplained pounding sounds near the home that left the local and state police absolutely baffled. There have also been reports of a toilet paper roll catching fire with no accelerants around and burnt in such a way that it was humanly impossible for it to get the amount of oxygen it did – enough to fill the room with smoke. Police from different agencies and university researchers even stayed overnight in the house, and deputies staked it out on several occasions. Priests, a K-9 unit and a paranormal expert from Sweden were also called in for the investigation. However, none could explain the mysterious occurrences.

The history of the home dates back to 1845 to the town of Iva, where the structure used to be the only general store within a good few miles. Located at Iva and Dice roads, it was a hub for the community that was yet to be incorporated in the nearby areas, where people were buying land and clearing the area for farming. The tiny town was hit with the smallpox plague and instead of getting help, they were forcefully shut inside their home and the town set on fire. Men, women, and children affected could have been burned alive or left to die miserable, terrifying deaths.

Shippy, whose rapper stage name is “Prozak,” told the Detroit Free Press: “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any case that could remotely come close to the police reports, to the documentation, to the eyewitnesses of what happened in Merrill, and to me, it’s definitely one of the most shocking cases in paranormal history.”

Beyond the Gravestones Digital Issue 8

Beyond the Gravestones Digital Issue 8 is now available staring Rocky Ravic

Issue 8 Digital

Phone Calls From the Dead

On 9/20/1988 bestselling writer, Dean Koontz received a strange call at his unlisted number. The woman’s voice sounded distant and it faded further each time she repeated her urgent message: “Please, be careful!” After he hung up, Koontz was left with the impression he’d spoken to his deceased mother. Two days later the author was attacked by his father, Ray while visiting him in a care facility. Ray had secretly purchased himself a fishing knife which he used to slash at his son but the writer managed to get it away from him. When the police arrived, they pulled their weapons on Koontz who was now holding the weapon, thinking he was the culprit. Recalling the phone warning, Koontz realized THIS was the scenario for which he received the call.

The Sensabaugh Tunnel

Built in the 1920’s, The Sensabaugh Tunnel now stands in a state of disrepair. It is covered in graffiti and the road through it is only used by locals, and even then they prefer to take a different route than pass through the tunnel.

The Sensabaugh Tunnel is notorious because of a murder that occurred in it many years ago. There are several versions of the story but all of them involve a baby. The most widely shared story is that of a hobo who wandered onto the grounds of the Sensabaugh family. They took him in, but he was eventually caught stealing from the family. When he found out about the thievery Mr Sensabaugh went for his rifle but the hobo lifted the family’s baby and used it as a human shield. The homeless man escaped with the baby and once he was a safe enough distance away from the house he drowned the baby in the creek that runs through the tunnel. In another story Mr Sensabaugh went mad and murdered his entire family, including a baby, and dumped their bodies in the creek. Another story tells of a young pregnant woman who was kidnapped and murdered inside the tunnel.

There have been dozens of reports of strange happenings inside the Sensabaugh Tunnel. It is believed that the baby who was murdered still haunts the tunnel. Its cries are said to be heard if you drive inside the tunnel and stop the car when you are halfway through. That can cause a problem though, as it believed that car ignitions will not start once they have been turned off inside the tunnel. As well as baby cries the sounds of a woman screaming have been heard along with heavy footfalls rattling around the tunnel. Mister Sensabaugh is said to appear in the rear-view mirrors of cars when they stop inside the tunnel.

THE ENTITY IS UPSTAIRS!

I took this picture from my grandfather’s old house after he past away. The house always gave me a creepy feeling so I asked a friend to come with me to take some pictures. We got a lot of odd pictures and pictures that had, what appeared to us, faces in them. There was no electricity in the house so I had brought an oil lantern along with us. We made it upstairs and I had suggested going into the attic room. As soon as I said that, the fire from the lantern went out… which no windows were open so there was no breeze and neither of us simply blew it out. I snapped a picture as soon as I could and this is what showed up in the picture. This face appeared in the hole in the wall. We immediately left after that! Please note: I lightened the area around the hole for better charity but as you can see, there is no denying the presence of an entity in that old house.

Submitted by: Samantha