Unsolved Mysteries: Ghosts, Disk 4 and other material
A historian talks about the Gettysburg battle and the effect it had on those who fought it.
There are people who dress up in period costumes and reenact the battle.
One story was from a couple of reenactors who were taking a rest and saw someone in what they thought was original clothing. The guy handed them some cartridges and then disappeared. The cartridges were determined to be original issue materials.
Other sightings were made, including sightings of men and auditory sounds of cannon fire.
Another sighting involved two women at a building that was once a hospital during the battle. The elevator door opened and they saw the hospital.
I'm not going to include any articles here as there are numerous articles in newspapers and magazines and there are entire books about the ghosts of Gettysburg.
(The following comments are mine and were not part of the show.)
There are a variety of types of ghosts and these include:
1. The “tape-recorder” type of ghost, where a figure is seen repeating particular movements over and over. This type of ghost does not interact at all with the person seeing it. One possible explanation for this is that something happened to the person that caused them to leave an “imprint” on the area. Probably something very emotional was involved, and the energy of their physical bodies was someone transferred to their environment as a kind of auric energy. A person who is sensitive to such energies, upon entering that environment, might pick up on that energy. In that case their mind would play that energy as an image and the person would believe there were seeing an individual go through a particular set of movements.
The more emotional energy involved the more ghosts would be seen, and the amount of energy that was expended at Gettysburg must have been phenomenal. Thus, there would have been a lot of “auric imprints” left upon the area.
Why, though, do some people see the imprint and others don't? It's possible that a person needs to be “sensitive” to that type of energy; thus, one person would see something but the person standing next to them might not.
2. The “intelligent” ghost. This is the type of apparition that can apparently communicate with a living person. In the story above, the two guys taking part in a re-enactment of the battle saw the Confederate soldier who spoke to them (and also gave them rifle cartridges that were real.) In this case the entity apparently was able to see the two men and speak with them. This is not a type of “repeat performance” type of thing and seemingly involves a being that is intelligent and capable of speaking to others in an intelligent manner.
Such an apparition is more difficult to explain. It could be an entity that exists as a ghost in the present time. It could be, however, that there is some kind of dimensional interaction going on; that is, that a real soldier from 1863, for example, saw the men (from around 1995), and thought they were contemporaries of his and thus spoke to them. It's not like the 1995 men physically traveled into the past; it's more like there was a blending of the energies from the two times.
However, this particular case is complicated by the fact that the entity gave the men something physical, which is much, much harder to explain (unless one assumes that: a) the men lied about seeing anything, and b) they somehow got hold of original Civil War rifle cartridges and then used those as part of their story.)
The noises that some of the people heard; that is, the cannons firing, the marching of men, etc, could again be noises from the past that are somehow bleeding over into the present, and those who are sensitive to such “energy bleeding” can hear them.
Note: There are various other categories of ghosts and sub-categories, especially among the “intelligent” ghost variety, since sometimes such ghosts seem to have a specific purpose in appearing, while at other times they just appear and interact but without having any specific agenda (such as warning someone of something, telling someone where some lost family item might be found, etc.)
This is one of two episodes that have a commentary track. The men reveal that the bullets that were given the guys by the one raggedy-looking ghost soldier are so valuable that they are kept locked up.
In 1972 a newly-married couple move into home in Cleveland.
One night when she was pregnant she heard sounds from the attic as of someone walking and something breaking. She called her father, who was a police detective, and he came over armed.
The attic had been trashed. The attic had been sealed tight against animals, and no humans were present. (Although the skeptic could claim someone was present and sneaked out while she was calling her father.)
Apparently in the 1940's previous owners had a little boy who mysteriously vanished and was never found.
Other events happened. Her second child was ill and was going to need surgery so she prayed.
Suddenly a white light appeared that she said was very soothing. The light was coming from the baby's room. When it finally went out she checked on the child and it was cured.
Several parapsychologists were brought in to investigate the house. They suggested the family get rid of a dresser from a previous occupant. (Unfortunately, there was nothing additional given about whether or not this helped, so the episode ends sort of lacking any kind of conclusion.)
Moss Beach, south of San Francisco.
The Moss Beach Distillery, a restaurant that has various paranormal things happening. Five ghosts have been seen along with winds, movement of objects and doors locking on their own.
Things started happening about seventy years ago.
In the days when the place was a speakeasy there was a love triangle involving this woman. She was caught and ended up being stabbed to death by her lover.
Former owners of the restaurant, they also knew about the ghost of the woman, which seems to be more a mischief-maker than anything else.
The ghost appeared once to some children, apparently trying to get them to get away from the edge of the hill they were on.
A ghost once appeared to a sick housekeeper and spoke to her in Spanish.
It appears this ghost was of a woman who killed herself and who was also involved in a love triangle.
Sylvia Browne, psychic and author, was asked by the owner of the restaurant to find out who the Blue Lady is/was. The name she came up with, though, was different from the previous ghost's name (which did identify itself to the housekeeper by name.)
A couple of the people from the restaurant went through various records and verified the name given to them by Sylvia Browne. In addition, the woman's maiden name was Reed, the last name of ghost that appeared to the housekeeper.
They found newspaper articles dealing with the woman, who was killed in a car accident. A séance by Sylvia Browne identified other ghosts as also being present. Thus, there might be several “blue ladies” rather than just one. In the séance a warning was given that the restaurant was in danger of having a fire; a few days later it did and the restaurant had to close for a short while.
A guy is out on his motorcycle in 1980 when a rainstorm hits. As he started to get off the motorcycle he was hit by lightning.
The paramedics called for a helicopter. The guy showed no pulse. Suddenly the ambulance lost all power.
While this was happening some woman came up yelling “I must touch him.”
The let her touch him and talk. She was wearing clothes from the late 1800's. She carried a Bible and then began speaking in tongues. When she was finished she smiled, got up and five seconds later she was gone.
There is controversy about what happened, though, as not all the paramedics were even able to agree as to whether or not any such woman was actually there. When the woman left the ambulance power returned to normal. The guy's pulse also started up. The guy was in a coma for two months than once day just woke up normal.
Not far from the accident is the location of a former spiritual retreat.
In a museum in the area is a dress from the time period which fits the description of the dress the woman was wearing.
Deadwood.
Seth Bullock, Deadwood's first sheriff.
He runs into Theodore Roosevelt. They ended up becoming friends and Seth joined the Rough Riders.
Deadwood today, with a hotel founded by Seth Bullock.
His spirit is supposedly seen in the hotel. This owner says it's been seen by over thirty employees and various others. Some specific sightings are discussed. They vary from entire apparitions to shadows to things being moved.
A psychic in England.
The psychic said Seth Bullock communicated through a Native American spirit about something that could happen in Deadwood in 1993. The psychic wrote a letter to the owner of the hotel, realizing that it probably wouldn't be taken seriously.
The owner says that the letter mentioned that Seth had said he couldn't haunt the hotel at that time because of all the banging that was going on. It happened that, at exactly that same time, the hotel was temporarily closed for renovations.
A guy is sleeping when an apparition appears. The apparition tells him to wake up and get up.
The next event was after he got married. His mother and his wife were at the house watching TV.
The dog on the couch barked and the guy's mother looked up and saw something at the end of the couch.
He used an ouija board to try and find out what was going on in his house. The board said it was a woman and her name was Kramer.
His wife seems to become obsessed and goes after him (sexually). He tries to get her to stop and slams her up against the wall three times. That causes her to return to normal. (Is there something about this that doesn't quite sound right? A wife goes after a husband sexually and he slams her up against a wall?)
The guy's wife, him and his parents tried pouring salt and various other things to get rid of the ghost. None of this worked permanently, however, and later rooms in the house began to smell or to be incredibly cold.
There are also a variety of voices heard. One night the father is able to identify the name of the ghost. A psychic and a parapsychologist are then called in.
The guy and his wife decide to move out.
An entire team of investigators loaded down with equipment arrive. A photo they took turned up an image similar to that the one woman saw on the couch much earlier. Even the parents moved out of the house after a couple of more months. The photo was analyzed by a Kodak lab and they found that he image was not caused by any film defect.
A number of people in different areas report a constant humming sound.  The show brought one of the people to Los Angeles to be tested by an ear doctor. They found he had a slight hearing loss but nothing else that could explain the hum, although the doctor said that some sound in his environment might, basically, be interpreted by his body as a humming sound although that would not necessarily be the original sound itself.
He went down into a mine to try to see if the ground would block out the sound but it turned out that the sound was louder.
A person in another state lives in an area where over a dozen people hear the same type of sound. She was able to create a simulation of the sound on the tape which was recognized by a woman living in another city in the same state.
The various countries where people have reported the low-frequency sound.
One possibility is that it's an ELF (extremely-low-frequency) sound used by the Navy to communicate with submarines. The system began to be used about the same time that people began to report the humming sound.
This is one of two episodes on the disk that has a commentary. The director said it was a touch show to do since it concerned a sound rather than something that could actually be seen. He points out it's not the high pitch sound of tinnitus, but it's a low-pitched sound.
Because he identified it as “the Taos hum” I was able to find a collaborating article from The Intelligencer, Pennsylvania, June 22, 1993:
Karen Walker, daughter, born in 1949.
When she was 17 she was helping a guy work on his studies (and would kick him in the shins when he wasn't paying attention.)
When she was 20 she was diagnosed with cancer. The guy she had been helping on his studies proposed and a wedding date was set.
The girl woke up one night and spoke with her mother for the first time in nine days, saying she couldn't go on and it was time. She died while her mother was watching (and her mother saw a wisp of something come out of the girl's head at the time of her death.)
The night after he died Jim, the fiancee, stayed at the Karen's house overnight and was studying but started to not pay attention when suddenly he felt his shin being kicked.
The parents went to various mediums but without any success, then found a different one who, at first, couldn't see them for six months but as they talked on the phone the guy said the spirits were telling him he should talk with the parents right away.
They were given information that was extremely specific and known only to those in the family, according to the mother.
Apparently the mother was able to do automatic writing from her daughter, later, and this book was the result. A search on amazon turned up the book with only two reader reviews, one positive and one very negative.
Additional Ghosts from the disk Treasures & Ghosts
A high-tech paranormal investigation at a hotel in New Mexico, the La Posada hotel.
Julia Stabb, who is supposedly haunting the hotel, came to Santa Fe around 1870 from Germany.
The outside of the mansion that her husband built for her.
The mansion was bought and a hotel was built around it, this showing the original entrance to the mansion which is now in the lobby of the hotel. Julia had seven children and a very happy life, but her eighth child died after a few days and she was so grief-stricken she went downhill emotionally and physically.
One day a hotel clerk took some guests on a tour of the hotel. They stopped at the bedroom that used to belong to Julia Stabb. Hotel policy stated that, before entering a room, the clerk had to knock on the door first, and he did so. Suddenly the entire group heard a voice saying “I'm in here” from inside the bedroom, even though there was not supposed to be anyone there.
The former security guard who was also with the group. While the clerk went downstairs to see if anyone was registered as being in the room, the guard and the group remained together outside the room. The group went into the room when the clerk returned and no one was in the room, and the windows were locked from the inside.
A year later another security guard saw a face in the mirror of the men's washroom.
The ghost has also been seen by hotel guests.
A “scientific investigator” who has been involved in 800 ghost investigations and says some 70% of the ones he has been on have rational explanations. Thus, he's not someone who just accepts every story as being a ghost. The investigations he is one include a psychological evaluation of the people who had the sighting. They are also given a physical exam to eliminate any physical explanations for the sightings, such as hallucinations caused by a brain tumor. His group then examines the environment, testing items in the environment such as the water and the air to see if there is anything there that could cause a reaction in people, making them think they saw something when they actually didn't.
After that is all done they then set up their monitoring equipment to check various forms of electromagnetic radiation, etc.
Then, after all of that is done, the team sits down for an analysis, going over the psychological makeup of the witnesses, the environmental factors in the sighting area, etc. In this specific case they could find no rational explanation for the sighting of Julia Stabb in the couple's bedroom.
This is another very poorly named episodes. “Ghost Fighters” has nothing whatsoever to do with anything in the episode. You have sightings reported by workers and guests at the hotel, and you have a team doing a scientific investigation of the sighting to try to find a rational explanation for what was seen. At no time does anyone try to “fight” a ghost.
It's a very interesting episode, especially in that the investigation team does such a thorough job of trying to disprove any sighting, and they use a very wide variety of methods to do so, testing the environment and the witnesses, both. I'm sure skeptics would still find lots to complain about, but in my opinion this group, at least, is bending over backwards to avoid branding something as a haunting.
This case takes place in Vancouver, Washington.
One night the wife heard the sound of a music box from her husband's workroom at their house. She looked in the room (he was gone) but found nothing. It wasn't long before he noticed strange things happening himself.
Later the wife saw an apparition.
The wife did some research and she believes the apparition was from a woman who had once lived in the house and who had died from cancer. Later she heard from the mother of one of her daughter's friends who knew the woman and said the woman looked a lot like her.
Things got more complicated, though, when the husband saw an apparition of a man standing in the living room.
And more complicated, when a third apparition, this time of a little girl they named “Pinkie” is seen.
They also seems to be something that likes to join people in the shower. The presence in the shower seems to be female and has no trouble hugging both men and women.
At times poltergeist-like things happen such as things being dumped onto the bathroom floor (although nothing is broken in the process).
The show arranged for Loyd Auerbach, a very famous writer on ghosts, to investigate the house.
As he checked he found that the areas where the ghosts and presences had been felt were matching directly with the areas where his instruments were detected something unusual magnetically. He could find nothing in the physical environment to explain their sightings, so he said their could be some kind of unusual thing going on, although it didn't prove that what they were seeing actually was there.
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