The “Create Paranormal Images” thread on Something Awful forums included a variety of non-Original Mythos posts that were similar enough in spirit that they ought to be included here for posterity’s sake.
See also: Original Mythos Images, Slender Man Images, Dreams and Pareidolia
Create Paranormal Images
I call it, Lee Harvey Ghostwald
Fooling around with gifs
So I’m not sure if this counts because it’s not really “paranormal” so much as spooky/weird, but I think it’s an elaborate photoshop someone was playing on me. Before I was laid off, I worked for a newspaper and I was going through some of the archive negatives from the newspaper’s past to do some promotional work on the website. I was going through some slides marked “circa 1920” and came across one that really freaked me out.
I think it speaks for itself. Sent shivers down my spine.
On July 3rd 1865, the nation was still recovering from a hard fought civil war and there were still plenty of hard feelings all around, especially in Barlow Mississippi where 22 year old Ezekiel Settles, recently freed from slavery, was trying to make a living as a handyman. On the eve of the 89th anniversary of the United States declaring its independence from England, Independence Day held a special meaning for Ezekiel as it was his first Independence Day as a free man, but sadly he would never see it. As he was on his way to work at the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, he happened across the pastor's young wife, Allison Wolcott, lying on the road unconscious. He tried to render aid as best he could by removing his shirt and tucking it under the young woman's head but, as he was doing so, along came Pastor John Wolcott returning from a luncheon with the church's ladies' society only to find a shirtless black man kneeling over his unconscious wife. Ezekiel tried to explain that he found her in that condition but the pastor was fuming and, afraid that the pastor would beat him or worse, he ran off.
That night, with his still unconscious wife under the care of a doctor but resting comfortably in her own bed, John Wolcott went looking for Ezekiel Settles with a dozen or so men from his flock. They didn't have to look far, for Ezekiel lived in a small shack that he built from scrounged lumber in the woods behind the church. There the men found him and they dragged him back to the church, and as the parishioners took turns beating him, John Wolcott fashioned a noose. When his flock put the rope around his neck, Ezekiel pleaded his innocence, saying that he was just "tryin' to hep the young missus." After they stood him up, John Wolcott hung a sign around his neck that read "FOR ACCOSTING A WHITE WOMAN" and spat in his face. Then he joined the other men as they pulled Ezekiel up into the tree, just shy of midnight.
When he returned home, the doctor assured him that his wife was fine but had apparently suffered from sunstroke. The doctor also assured him that she definitely had not been raped. Pastor Wolcott went to his wife relieved but suddenly overcome with guilt that he, a man of God, had just participated in the murder of a man that was just trying to help his ailing wife. So overcome with guilt and anguish was he that the next day, with the same rope, the very same noose that he tightened around Ezekiel Settles' neck, he committed suicide by hanging himself from the same branch. According to the note that he left, "It is befitting and just that I should take mine own life as I have taken another's. With that same rope that I hanged an innocent man, from the same branch in the same tree. May God forgive me my sins." Some say that as he hung there, the last thing John Wolcott saw were the fireworks set off for the town's Fourth of July celebration.
The Church is still there and so is the tree upon which hung both Ezekiel Settles and John Wolcott, and nobody noticed anything unusual about it until one Fourth of July when, during the town's fireworks display, somebody saw what appeared to be the shadow of a hanged man on the trunk of the tree. It soon became a favorite spot for teens and ghosthunters to gather for Fourth of July celebrations to see if they can see the shadow during the flashes. The town quit having a fireworks display in 1992 but occasionally, the shadow can still be seen in a camera flash. Nobody knows if it is the shadow of Ezekiel Settles or the Pastor John Wolcott.
It's easy to capture ghosts on film but these ghosts from the future showed up on the artist rendering of what the scene would have looked like as they worked out the wording of the Declaration of Independence……..
Story and image sent to me from Linda Gallegher in Belmont, NC.
"In 2004 my husband Scott and I found a beautiful Victorian-era home in a few towns over going for a surprisingly low cost. The house was in excellent condition despite being so old, so we jumped at the deal and purchased it.
Our first night there, my two children, Adam and Nicholas, complained of the stairs creaking constantly. I told them the house was old and it was a little drafty; we had to reassure them there were no monsters living under the stairs. After that, our days went relatively uneventfully.
Three months later, I awoke suddenly from a deep sleep to hear the sound of someone sobbing. Assuming it was Adam, my youngest, I ran to the kids' bedroom to check on them. They were sound asleep. The wailing continued. I hurried back to my bedroom and roused my husband. Once he was awake, he listened and heard it too. We left the room and went into the hallway, where we saw what appeared to be a wispy, headless human figure floating away from us. We froze and it disappeared into the bathroom.
From that night on, we noticed strange occurrences. Door would close and shut, especially the doors to the bathroom and the spare bedroom. I tried to get Nicholas to move into that bedroom so he would have his own, but he refused. He claimed a sad woman lived in there.
One day after work I decided to do some research. In 1898, a decade after the house was built, a young woman by the name of Elizabeth Chester was found murdered in the bathroom, decapitated. Her murderer was her uncle, an untreated paranoid schizophrenic that frequently went into mad rages. Her body was buried in the cemetery two miles away from here, but her head was never found.
After a week of constant reminders that someone else was there, the supernatural activity stopped for months. After a year, Nicholas felt comfortable to move into the guest bedroom and my husband decided to renovate it: replace the cracking wood floors and paint.
One Saturday when Scott was tearing up the floorboards and I was downstairs watching TV, I heard his cry out in surprise. I hurried upstairs and into the bedroom. He turned to me, his face pale, and simply pointed at the hole in the floor. In it sat a human skull, yellowed with age and dusty. Beside it was a folded piece of paper. Uneasily, I reached in and picked it up. Unfolding it, I read it aloud:
'Elizabeth, my dear Elizabeth, your sweet face is to be hidden away safely forever. I trust not the men that court you, the lecherous swine that they are. Heaven is where you truly belong, my sweet Elizabeth, and I kept a part of you here with me to remind me of my favorite niece.'
I turned to my husband, whose pale complexion suddenly seemed even more pallid. He stared at the wall, trying to speak but unable to form words. I glanced to where he stared and almost fainted in horror.
A woman in a long Victorian gown stood before us, not wispy or transparent but plain as day. I could have reached out and touched her if I so desired. Her neck was severed completely; blood poured from the headless stump to the floor. After what seemed like hours, she turned to the window and disappeared.
Quickly, I ran and got a towel. Tossing it over the skull, I picked it up and wrapped it safely.
'What are you doing?' Scott demanded.
I told him that she meant us no harm, she merely wanted to be at peace. I told him to stay with the kids; I would be back soon.
I took the skull with me to the cemetery, along with a small gardening shovel. I searched for an hour before I found her grave, the tombstone crumbling but her name clear: ELIZABETH CHESTER. The graveyard was most empty, and whatever people that were there were occupied with their own matters. Subtly, I dug a small hole at the head of the grave and buried the skull under a foot and a half of soil.
Since then, nothing has happened in our house. Nicholas complains of nothing in his bedroom, and our nights are worry-free.
The picture I attached with this story is a picture that Scott took during the height of paranormal activity. My youngest Adam is the further to the left, while Nicholas is the third from the left. Here they are seen playing with the neighborhood kids. Quite clearly, you can see a figure to the back next to the tree. I have no idea what the yellow wisps in the foreground are.
Hopefully, Elizabeth is at peace. Every once in a while, I swear I hear a faint whisper saying my name or 'I slumber.' I hope my story has been interesting and informative."
Story and picture by Evan Summers.
"Throughout my years of college I thought of myself as a sort of amateur ghost-hunter. I would go out alone or in small groups of friends to graveyards or old broken-down houses and take pictures and audio, searching back later for EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) or anything weird in photos. I usually found something interesting, but most things were usually explained away as dust or reflections or wind.
It wasn't until I went to visit my dad in Pennsylvania that I got my best shot of all. At about 12:45 AM on April 25, 2009, I set out for the graveyard seven blocks from the apartment to take some pictures.
The night was uneventful. The graveyard was small, so there wasn't much to shoot. Just as I was about to head home, I heard a bloodcurdling scream near the path. My heart racing, I hurried back to the path, hoping it was a ghost and not a human. The scream was unworldly, and really hard to describe: it sounded animalistic yet human, and part of me was trying to convince myself I hadn't actually heard it, but it was all in my head.
As I reached the path, I stopped dead in my tracks. Something that might have been a girl was crouched near a headstone. Her skin was sickly white, her hands mutilated into nothing but twisted stumps, and her legs were stubby and stuck out of her body in strange positions. Breathing heavily, I snapped a shot.
At the flash, the girl raised her head. Her eyes were two black, empty sockets, and they stared into my soul. I suddenly felt like I was freezing and somewhat numb. I raised my camera again and took another shot. Bad idea.
The creature reared her head back and let out another ungodly scream. It pierced my ears… I felt something warm and wet in them, as if she had caused them to bleed. As she screamed, I shot another picture and began to run. I looked back to see her chasing after me; the way she ran was horrifying. The only way I could possible describe it is for you to imagine a crab scuttling forward instead of sideways.
I ran and ran. I ran all the way back to the apartment. I ran upstairs, unlocked the door, and hurried inside. Locking it behind me, I fell to the ground and touched my ears. The blood had started to dry. There was blood. I hadn't imagined it.
I developed the pictures the next day. The first one turned out completely black, while the second turned out clear, but had no Screaming Girl in it. The third was the only image I have of her, though it is a bad shot due to the fact that I was starting to run.
Since the incident I have been cold. It's been warm, but I am constantly freezing. I can see my own breath when I exhale not matter how hot my surroundings are. Every night I dream of her. She did something to me."
OFFICIAL REPORT
12:09 AM, AUGUST 23, REDACTED:
911 call received from Mr. [REDACTED of REDACTED Parish. Caller stated that he was concerned for the safety of his nearest neighbor (Mr. REDACTED). Caller states that he had been awoken at midnight by the sounds of some commotion, a dog barking loudly and furiously followed by shouting, a single gunshot, horrible screaming, and finally silence. Caller informs 911 operator that the home of Mr REDACTED is “a few hundred yards away” from his own, and thought it odd that the sounds had traveled so far through the woods. 911 operator dispatched officers to the scene.
12:48 AM AUGUST 23:
Officers arrive at the residence on Mr. REDACTED to discover the an area of the outer wall of the residence ripped away, leaving a gaping hole (approximately 15-foot wide by 10 feet high) where the entry door had been. Debris spread from the tearing down of the wall was spread both inside and outside the residence, in an area approximately 20 feet in every direction from the hole. Unable to determine whether the wall had been knocked down from inside or outside the home, one officer on the scene reportedly said the wall looks to have simply exploded from within. Signs of a struggle were evident in the upstairs bedroom. Some furniture had been knocked over and the mattress “looked like someone went slash-happy with a sword”, in the words of one responder. A shotgun with one spent shell was on the floor, but officers were unable to locate any buckshot scoring of the walls or other objects in the room, and the window glass was unbroken.
Officers were unable to locate any sign of Mr. REDACTED. Small traces of blood were found in the adjacent bathroom sink but this is not likely a result of this event, as an adjustable shaving razor was also in the sink.
Though the caller had reported hearing a dog barking and officers did find a bag of dog food and water/food dishes on the floor in the kitchen, the dog was nowhere to be found.
Though many photographs were taken, the data got corrupted somehow, and only one photo was usable.
Photo from outside of the home:
The Old Man
Dear god, I feel like I'm in a waking nightmare. I'm at work; paranoid, jumpy… out of adjectives, too. I quite literally jumped when I saw a reflection in my glasses as I was turning my head a moment ago. Adrenaline is roaring through my veins, and my peripheral vision is on overdrive. Every last reflective surface is being noted by my brain whether I realize it or not, and I've got this horribly pervasive feeling of being watched because of all of that. Hell, a dude came into the store a second ago. I managed not to jump or yell when the door buzzer went off, but as I was heading to the counter I kept watching the guy. Intently. Desperately. As he walked between the racks and shelves, I kept trying to get glimpses of him to make sure he wasn't melted or dripping. Making sure he was intact and verifiably human. I made sure not to turn my back to him, and he only left my sight for a moment at a time. And then, when I turned to get his cigarettes, I was positive he was going to *change* somehow and then lunge across the counter at me. I'm freaking out over here, man.
I think it started with having a really long dream about being robbed at work over and over and then waking up to a house full of smoke due to somebody leaving a pot with a couple of packs of ramen in it on the stove to burn. No, that wouldn't be right. I think it was before that. I'm certain it was before that.
"The old man came drip, drip, dripping down the wall." That's where it started. That simple, silly-sounding sentence. It seems innocuous enough; just a handful of words strung together in a nonsense phrase. Yet it's been circling through my mind, endlessly repeating every morning for the last few days. Always in the wee hours before the sun rises, but after everyone else has retired to the sanctuary of sleep. I sit, solitarily awake, in a chair placed at the center of the room with a laptop in its natural position before me. With the sound muted I browse along, sipping my beer and occasionally venturing out for a smoke or a trip to the bathroom. Then, out of nowhere, the phrase comes to me. "The old man came drip, drip, dripping down the wall."
"Well," I think, "That's an odd thing to come up with. Kind of has a ring to it, though. 'The old man came drip, drip, dripping down the wall.' Funny."
But suddenly I don't feel so alone in that chair. I get the feeling that maybe something might be watching me watch the blue glow of the computer. Something dark, corrupt, and putrescent. Something mostly silent as it oozes down from the ceiling, unseen and stealthy behind me. I get the unsettling image of something long left to rot into a black, brackish jelly bubbling out of the pores of the wall in slowly writhing tendrils. "The old man came drip, drip, dripping down the wall."
Suddenly the phrase doesn't sound so silly to me anymore.
I decide that a smoke and another beer would be a really good idea right about then. And some light. Definitely some light. So I get up and go into the kitchen, trying not to gasp as a hulking, shapeless thing materializes in the faint glow from my lighter. Nothingness. A trick of the mind. I flip on the lightswitch for the basement hallway, trying to keep as far as I can from the darkness filling each doorway I encounter. "The old man came drip, drip, dripping down the wall."
Why does it repeat itself if it makes me feel so anxious? Why do I let it repeat? So I try to distract myself; concentrating on my cigarette and my beer, trying to plot out what to do when I next go to work, ignoring the swirling shapes in the darkness, sensing congealed masses working their way out of the floorboards and forcing their way around the doorjamb behind me at every turn. But I won't think it again. Won't let (The old man…) myself even (…drip, drip…) think about (…dripping…) looking at (…down…) the wall. So I retreat to the bathroom. I hear dripping. I glance into the bathtub, but there's no water. It looks dry. I look away, and hear it again. Drip… drip… dripping dow- except I'm not thinking about that. The furnace kicks on and suddenly there's hot air against my back and I can't hear anything and I can't look everywhere at once but at least before I could hear everything and- drip. Dear god, I know there's no water in the tub or the sink, yet I can still hear it. But it's not water. In my mind and just under my vision are images of (the old man) something clinging to the inside of the shower, dead yet (dripping) moving steadily closer to where I'm standing. The thought is so strong that I douse the lights and nearly sprint to the bedroom and the safe, sane glow of the laptop.
Sitting down, I settle in for what's sure to be a very long morning. A couple of hours still remain before I can rationalize going to bed, and at least an hour of that will be spent in darkness. My mind is running on overdrive. Every time I look into the shadows beyond my computer screen, I see shapes and shadows of waking dreams leaping and creeping; yet, safe again in my chair, I seem to be calming down a bit. Getting a grip. All those fanciful thoughts are fading as my mind slowly allows me to rein it in. There's no old man, no dripping, and nothing standing directly behind my chair. Nothing at all. Yet the phrase keeps repeating like some sort of evil chant, and it keeps getting louder in my head. With each repetition I lose a little more control over my mind, and my heart begins beating faster and faster. Again, every creak of the house becomes some loathsome thing slithering just outside my view; every glance into the darkness reveals the nearly seen glimpse of monstrous things neither quite liquid nor solid. I'm dreaming with my eyes open and I realize it, yet the realization does nothing to break the irrational fear. And the words keep running in my head. "The old man comes drip, drip, dripping down the wall."
"The old man comes drip, drip, dripping down the wall. The old man comes drip, drip, dripping down the wall. The old man comes drip, drip, dripping down…"
A vision comes out of the darkness, vivid as reality. An amorphous, churning blackness writhing and dripping over and into itself, dappled with spots alternately void of light and highly reflective. It looks as though it should reek of the grave, and my mind knows instantly that it was once human despite its current formlessness. With the suddenness of a striking snake, a taloned, skeletal arm shoots out of the sludge; ringed with pitch-black tendons and tipped with unnaturally long fingers. It's gone from my mind as quickly as it appeared, but not before I can see sharpened ribs within its mass, the ends gnashing together like an unholy mockery of a slavering maw.
About that time I decided to go to bed. Yet even still the phrase repeats itself. Where it came from, I'll never know. Perhaps an overactive imagination, or perhaps… Perhaps it was a thought born from truth, a warning of the unseen things lurking in the dark? I never saw whether anything hides behind me in the dark hours before dawn, but sometimes I get the feeling I'm being watched. And occasionally, once in a great while, I think I hear something sliding. Oozing. Dripping.
The old man comes drip, drip, dripping down the wall…
The photograph above, reputed to have been taken by S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky circa 1902 is the only visual record of what has come to be known as the Pillaging of Pid'ma. Sometime during the early afternoon on the 1st of July 1902 unknown assailants moved swiftly through the Russian village, killing and dismembering men, women, children and the village’s livestock. The remains of the deceased were later found co-mingled with those of their animals in the dying embers of a large bonfire lit in the centre of the village. Nothing was taken from any of the residences in the village, nor was the nearby Church of the Transfiguration desecrated. In several dwellings food set up to be eaten for midday meal was left untouched. The motive for the attack is unknown to this day and no group has ever come forward to claim responsibility.
The photographer and his party were none the wiser when they took this sequence of slides, assuming the black-clad figures on the right of the picture to be farmhands returning to the fields after their midday meal.
Ouija boards have been excellent tools for paranormal investigation for many decades. You can see me here using my ouija board to try and communicate with the spirit world. What I do nowadays, with it being the 21st century and not table tapping in some Victorian parlour, is to set my camera up on a tripod and connect it to an EMF detection meter. Then if there are any disruptions in the natural magnetic field when I am trying to use my ouija board to communicate, the camera starts taking shots.
This shot was taken this evening whilst I was trying to communicate with spirits.
If you do start communicating with the departed REMEMBER, as long as you do not invite them into your home you tend to be okay, generally! Although sometimes walks home at night can be very disturbing if a soul becomes obsessed about you or one of your family members. But beware! Though you may not invite them in to your home, if they are lost or malevolent sprits, it can be quite upsetting being woken in the early hours by tapping and scratching at the window. And if they become attached to the area surrounding your home…MAN…there is nothing more frightening than peering through your curtains at night and seeing the face of an earth bound spirit looking straight at you, especially if you are not on the ground floor!
In the shot I took this evening, the fingers on this apparition look disturbingly long and slim, I have never come across anything like this in my paranormal investigations before.
I live in a relatively big house, with a big garden. There's usually a lot of noise in the night, but one particular night it sounded more organized, so to speak. The following morning I went out to investigate what could potentially have been trespassers.
Checking up on my garage, nothing of value seems to have been stolen.
Outside.
Proceeding to my garden, I discovered what seems to be some kind of marks. They seem to have been there for atleast a few hours?
Found this close to the trees. I haven't noticed this bird carcass until now, so either I'm blind, or something very hungry has been busy.
This was the last picture I took, before my camera ran out of power.
I'm not exactly sure what has been going on in my garden yet, but it seems like some kind of animal. Atleast that's the least I should fear :(
My name is Raymond Bates, but if you are reading this, you already know that. You know that because the only persons who will read this report are the psychological and nursing staff at the Greater Miami County Mental Rehabilitation Institute, and… well… the men who study what drove me here. You already know I was an Adjunct Professor of Parapsychology at the Tulane University Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory. You know I am 34 years of age, white, atheist, an alcoholic, and you probably know that I got an 800 on the verbal SATs, and a perfect on the LSATS too, but I decided to grad school in Parapsychology for reasons you will never understand. All of this is listed in my extended medical report, and all of this is completely irrelevant to the story you are about to read, the story that I was ordered to write, the story that I will – well. The story that an orderly will eventually have to transcribe, because by the end of this story, the only way you'll be able to get me to talk will be by strapping me to a board and torturing me. I know this because… I can see things now. I can see things I never wanted to see. I can see that the world will never be the same for me and that everything that comes into contact with me will never be the same, either.
I know this, and you know this, because I do not recognize the State of Louisiana's State Attorney Office's claim that I am responsible for the deaths of five people on October 8th, 2009, and this has made me the focus of an intensive state and federal investigation into my life and the events that transpired that day. And the story of my life is irrelevant, because the events that happened that day are… well… what happened that day is not really…
You'll see. I'll tell you. But to tell you what happened on October 8th, I will have to tell you the story of the year before that.
It was August, 2008, and I was doing research on extrasensory perception and paranormal manifestation phenomena. Tulane didn't take the EARL program very seriously. In fact, other than Professor Stewart and four unpaid interns, I was the EARL program. We coordinated with a similar program at Princeton before it got shut down the year before due to lack of funding. Retrospectively, it is a miracle that Tulane even kept a professor of my discipline around – it's exceptionally hard to find students willing to take a parapsychology major in this day and age, and discipline has really been in decline since the 70's. Now, the weird thing was, all the other students I had gone to grad with, and most of the professors I had learned with, had all dropped out of contact in some way or another. There was a running joke in the small circles that kept in contact with one another that they all had to be being bought out by the government, for their ghost warfare lab at DoD. No one took this seriously, but I can't think of that anymore without wanting to scream.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think the federal government has a ghost warfare lab. That's… well, it's inane, and no one took the idea as anything more than a lame joke, the kind of thing people giggled politely at at parties, or made sly references to in periodicals, without really finding it funny or amusing… but there was this undercurrent of suspicion, and real fear, as to why our colleagues had dropped off the face of the planet, why no one had heard from them or their loved ones, why their relations hung up the phone at the first mention of parapsychology or engineering anomalies or phenomena classification research.
At the time, we assumed it was shame, shame at a profession which the real world had never taken seriously, and had less of a use for every passing day, and they merely wanted to be cut off from their embarrassment, their chagrin, their thorough discredit, their… well… hate.
And, in a way, this was thoroughly understandable. The extrasensory perception segment of my research was a joke even in paranormal research circles. Have you ever seen Ghostbusters? (I'm going to state here and now, that in my profession, this was considered the pinnacle of modern filmmaking.) There's a scene in the beginning where Professor Venkman – he's this ghost hunter – is holding notecards backwards at a cute undergrad, and asking her to guess what's on the other side, and of course she gets it wrong but he won't admit it, saying she has all this psychic talent, and with the obvious intent of sleeping with her – well, that's what I did, sometimes six hours in a row, except there wasn't any cute female undergrads. There was a specific brand of student which would volunteer for that kind of research, and they were usually male, greasy, and thoroughly unpleasant to be around for more than five minutes. One guy kept on seeing demonic symbology on the back of cards for about a half an hour until I nearly physically punched him - it was ink blots, you know, not a seance or a Necronomicon masturbation marathon or something.
The paranormal manifestation investigation phase of my job was far more interesting. We'd get a call. A hint. If we were lucky, the paranormality had been within an hour or two, otherwise we were just chasing ghosts, ha-ha, a little bit of… nevermind. So, we'd get an alert, usually from a guy we had in the local PD who didn't want to waste police resources on spook hunts, or from a webboard where local enthusiasts collaborated, and then we'd head out in the ghost van, ha, just this… it all sounds so trite now. It was a van with a ghost and Tulane EARL acronym painted on the side. Professor Stewart and I – I guess, the late Professor…
I'm sorry, I need a minute. Just a minute. I'm trying to focus on explaining what I did, before what happened, and… god. God. I'm sorry. Let me, let me refocus here.
You have to realize New Orleans had its share of 'ghost' sightings. None of them ever amounted to anything. We didn't get significant, I mean statistically significant, results in six years of research. It was a miracle Stewart and I weren't sacked after the first, but it was New Orleans, and there was always a demand for a class on the mythology of New Orleans, or an elective in basic parapsychological studies, or what-not, and the university tolerated us beyond the point of tenure, and that was that.
We do sound kind of pathetic, and… well… we were. Once, twice a month, chasing after ghosts, half the time it was pranks, the other half a scared housewife, never once something conclusive, occasionally a glimpse of something unreal, but never anything we could prove or even observe beyond the plausibility of a hoax. So we mostly occupied ourselves writing cultural histories of mythology, some research into the fields related to our actually scientifically-derived equipment – even though we were dreadfully unqualified, and any contributions laughable – and a few times a month, we got to live, really get out of our shell, do what we really wanted to do – it sounds so loving stupid now – hunt ghosts.
Hop in our early-90s van full of obsolete, old equipment, pay for our own gas, drive to the location, and get to work.
So, now, when a paranormal manifestation appeared – hopefully we would be ready to move in, set up a perimeter, you know, seal off access, interview the witness, and hopefully ask local law enforcement out of the area, that kind of thing – and then we could get to work. Set up our equipment – we had technical experience, could set up the monitoring equipment, video feeds, etc, you know, all within ten-fifteen minutes – and we could have spectroscopic scanners, EMF meters – that's electro-magnetic field, subtle variations in the earth's natural magnetic field, we could triangulate movement with a proper network, I'll be layman from now on – ion and geiger counters, sub-solution nets, subsonic sound monitoring, the works, but in reality all of this equipment was late 80s, maybe early 90s at best, a lot of it off Ebay, we were really running a lovely operation. More like a hobby than a career.
We had some interesting cases. A poltergeist moving desks in broad daylight in a school. Screeching in a nearly-abandoned theater at night. Once we had an abandoned nightclub, needed to be renovated, right off Bourbon Street, which the new owner kept insisting was bleeding from the walls, which we got some bizarre readings off of, but never – I mean never – did we have a case where there wasn't a 'rational' explanation.
It was August 18th, 2008, when it all changed forever, that call I will never forget, that Stewart wouldn't either until the night he died.
Not Slender man related, you’re thinking about the “Bloat Baby” ghost legends.
The origin of the “Bloat Baby” began in Japan during the Feudal ages where women would drown their babies in rivers either because they couldn’t care for or didn’t want their child taken by what ever was going on in their village (slavery, black market, thieves and what not)
The American versions of “Bloat Baby” began during the period before and during the Civil War. Escaping slaves would drown their babies or children when capture seemed close. During Sherman’s March on the South rumors spread across smaller farming towns of Union troops kidnapping children to sell to rich northern families. Worried women went and drown their new born children in lakes, rivers and wash tubs.
This is when “bloat baby” would show up.
The legend goes that after the baby is killed, if the body was left to float away in the river or what ever body of water it was killed in the spirit of the water would enter the dead child, and soon would haunt the mother who killed them. At first the mother would feel as though something was watching them, most people would say it was just guilt for the death. Some times the women would scream in the middle of the night, saying they saw their dead child, bloated from the water.
But when the “Bloat Baby” would strike would be years later, when the memory of the dead child would be long gone, and the mother would have a new child. The new child would talk of hearing a baby crying at all hours, or when the child would play near the river hearing splashing and crying of a baby. Soon the child would start seeing an odd baby, looks bloated and in odd colors. A day or two after this, that child would drown. And the same fate would hit every child born to the guilty mother afterwards.
She awakes, moaning, damp hair clinging to her cheeks.
She struggles to catch her ragged breath, inhaling and exhaling deeply, as if to physically expel the memory of her dream. None of this should be surprising by now; every night brings a fresh nightmare, and every morning a desperate awakening. It’s just that there seems to be so much damned variety in her dreams. After a lifetime of fitful sleep visited by an ever-changing cavalcade of monsters, her only creative ability seems to be dreaming up new horrors each night. Demons, dragons, Martians, serial killers, deep sea creatures, beloved pets turned rabid, bizarre twists of mundane circumstance - all have taken part in robbing her of restful sleep, for as long as she can remember.
She stumbles to the bathroom, turns on the light, and looks at her haggard reflection in the large mirror - the dark circles around her eyes, the too-prominent cheekbones, the pale skin - and whispers, no more. Please, no more.
The doctor gives her a prescription - a bottle of tiny white lozenge-shaped pills. Take one just as you’re going to bed, he says, and you’ll sleep peacefully all night. If you have any dreams, you probably won’t even remember them.
Gratefully, she swallows a tiny pill, chases it with cool water, and climbs into bed.
Her sleep is blessedly sweet and deep and dreamless; and if there are any dark things scuttling around the edges of her consciousness, she does not notice them.
Be thankful for the demons, the dragons, the monsters that haunt your nightmares and awaken you so suddenly. It may be that they are guardians, however fearsome, who keep more monstrous things at bay. Perhaps it is during your most unguarded, your most relaxed, your most serene and dreamless nights, that the dark scuttling things may find their opportunity at last.
Found this online. Thought I'd share it with the rest of you.
The masked men in the woods would come hidden from behind the trees at the edge of the wood, slowly at first, creeping, skulking and silent until they would launch into a horrifying gallop towards the towns. They were hard to see with attentive eyes but you could catch a quick sight if you were caught off guard. "They were thieves! Dirty rotten thieves!" The old ones would say, "Taking things that don’t belong to them!". Trinkets and baubles mostly, little things you would miss and they presumed you would go looking for. The search would lead you deep into the woods, much deeper than decent folk dare to wander and slightly deeper than young boys claim to have gone. Once you’ve gone that far they’ll come down from the trees, "and you won’t even know because they sound like the wind in the leaves and nothing more!" What happens next is anyone’s guess.
We caught one once, but he faded away as we held him down and all that was left was this.
I'm a professional photographer who just so happens to also be a geek…and thus I'm into paranormal shit. I did a couple photo shoots a few months ago to create a series of 'ghostly' images.
