Native American Spirits

I live in an area that was once inhabited by several Native American tribes. There are still burial mounds in many areas and remnants of the people who lived here are pretty easy to find. When I go on a ghost hunt, it isn’t uncommon for people to believe that their properties are being haunted by the ghosts of these people.

In some ways it makes sense. The building of our homes and businesses has ruined a lot of land and disturbed areas that were once sacred to these groups. Burial grounds are sometimes unearthed in construction as well, so it’s not hard to believe that they could be upset with us for disturbing their land.

But in the years I’ve been ghost hunting, I’ve only run into one instance where I thought a spirit might be Native American (we caught an EVP in a language none of us recognized.)  It makes me wonder why I haven’t run into more spirits like this. Maybe they just don’t care enough about us to bother haunted us, or I’ve just be looking in the wrong places.

Do you think there are Native American ghosts still hanging around?

Weekly News Round-up 4/11/13

Huff Post has an article on a film called Sirius, which claims to have footage of an actual extraterrestrial. You can check it out here.

MailOnline has a story about a women who is asking for a new house after claiming hers is being haunted by a man named Nigel.

Two woman in Papua New Guinea were beheaded on claims of witchcraft. Read about it here.

Book Review: Fact or Fiction? The Paris & M6 Paranormal Crashes

Over the past year or so, I’ve been exchanging occasional e-mails with a man named Colin Hall who has been researching the M6 & Paris paranormal crash reports. He put together a book of his findings and sent me a review copy to check out, which made me happy since I haven’t done a book review on here in awhile. The book it titled Fact or Fiction? The M6 Crashes.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got my review copy. The book was pretty hard to put down and there was a lot of information about the incident and related events as well. It’s full of illustrations and photographs of the area, the people involved and other topics related to the crash. The chapters are fairly short and relate to different elements of what happened. It's arranged as a journal with his personal thoughts added to events that were occurring. There are also excerpts from various blogs, websites, and Twitter feeds that relate to the crash.

It’s clear that the author has spent a lot of time and energy into researching everything and anything related to the accident. It’s a quick read and fun for anybody interested in conspiracy theory, the possibility of time travel or the M6 crash in general.

I give this book 5 out of 5 ghosts

The book is available from the publisher here.

Weekly News Round-up 4/4/13

Rumors of Bigfoot DNA and a documentary video that claims to show a family of Bigfoot are being discussed here.

Is your brain being controlled by a parasite? Apparently you don't have to be dead to be a zombie. Read about it here.

A Roman ring that is thought to be cursed may have been the inspiration for The Lord of the Rings story. The article is here.

Ectoplasm

I thought I’d talk a little about ectoplasm today. Somewhere early on, people got the idea that spirits might give off some sort of physical substance. Early mediums started capitalizing on this idea by creating photographs of people who had mysterious white substance coming out of their bodies. Though the images were fake, the mediums would claim that these photos were signs of the presence of a spirit inside of someone. They called this white substance ectoplasm and the term sort of stuck around.

In ghost hunting today, people have pretty much accepted that ghosts aren’t likely to leak any sort of physical goo, but people still take photographs with white mists and swirling lines that seem to appear out of nowhere. These stuff in these photos is often referred to as ectoplasm, with the idea that a ghost may have left some sort of spiritual residue captured by the photo.

I’m pretty skeptical of these pictures in general, and I can usually pin point a number of solid scientific reasons for the creation of these types of photographic anomalies, but it’s still interesting to see how photos are still being used to try and capture evidence of the afterlife years after people first started doing it.

Weekly News Round-up 3/29/13

MailOnline posted an article about a woman spotting some sort of primate at a park in Dorset.

Some people in London are raising funds to set up a UFO museum. Read about it here.

A man claims to see an image of Jesus on a drop cloth he was using. Check it out here.

Vortexes

Something that comes up from time to time in ghost hunting is the mention of vortexes. The idea is that there are areas that have unusual energy levels and that can be turned into portals or doorways into the spiritual world. People who believe in them often think that spirits enter this world through the doorways created by vortexes. You can’t see or touch a vortex, but people with psychic abilities often claim to be able to sense when they are near one. I’ve been on numerous ghost hunts where the property owners claimed vortexes existed.

I’m personally pretty skeptical of the concept. Most of the photos I’ve seen that claim to be images of vortexes are clearly camera straps that have fallen in front of the lens. While there are certainly areas that seem to have higher levels of paranormal activity, I’m not convinced that it is because doorways exist in those locations. I could be totally wrong though, but proving something invisible exists is pretty challenging.

Do you believe the possibility of vortexes? If you believe in ghosts, do you think spirits need to enter through a gateway to our world?