While in recent weeks stories of “mystery noises” filling the air have captured the attention of many, sometimes the less easily discernible sounds around us could hold the key to unraveling strange secrets of time and space. This is particularly the case with Electronic Voice Phenomenon, also known as EVP.

I’ve always been fascinated with EVP personally, because unlike a number of other elements that are often associated with paranormal research, there seems to be a long history of interest in the recorded sounds of inexplicable voices that have provided tangible proof, according to many, that something strange is indeed going on. But if claims of EVP can be believed, what is the real basis for the phenomenon; how does it occur, and what, if anything, can we hope to learn from it?

Interest in electronic means of gathering voices of unknown origin dates back to the early days of electricity and its use in powering devices within the home. Thomas Edison was even asked whether popular spiritualist practices might be further augmented with the use of sensitive recording equipment that could discern the soft voices of the deceased. Edison agreed that doing so might present a more plausible approach to studying parapsychology of the day, as opposed to the sorts of table-tapping and séances that were so popular around the turn of the last century. This acknowledgment of the “spirit potential” likely contributed to the sense that Edison himself might have attempted to build such a device, though there is little evidence that this actually occurred.

The lesser-known American political dissident William Dudley Pelley would also make attempts at spirit communication, with claims that he had built a device used for communication with the dead during the 1940s. Again, there is little proof that this project really ever got off the ground; however, according to Pelley historian Vance Pollock, who managed to track down an old associate of Pelley’s named Guy Harwood in the late 1990s, Harwood had claimed that Pelley “build a machine that could speak with the dead.”

Later on, another revision of the infamous device for dead-talking came with William O’Neil and George Meek’s Spiricom, which was allegedly so successful due to O’Neil’s own prowess as a medium. However, many critics argue that O’Neil had likely hoaxed many of his recorded conversations with the deceased. A number of other attempts at recording ethereal and otherworldly voices would be attempted over the years as well, citing varying levels of success with the controversial art of EVP.

In all likelihood, if EVP does exist, it is capable of being recorded via of one of just a couple of processes. One possibleway this is achieved is by the recording of sounds that may be sub-audible to most natural human hearing; in other words, while an individual with very acute hearing may do better in terms of detecting such noises in real time (something which a few mediums claim to be able to do), these noises would remain almost inaudible to the average listener. Perhaps more likely as an alternative solution to the way EVP are recorded is the notion that electromagnetism and/or resonance are somehow involved. For instance, when recorded sounds are sent as an electrical signal to an antenna, rather than a set of speakers, the information being broadcast is no longer capable of being heard. However, the use of a dynamic microphone, which functions by a process of electromagnetic induction, will enable the sounds to be recorded nonetheless, as the signal broadcast from the antenna resonates with the coil in the microphone. On playback, one will find that some things that cannot be heard with the ear can nonetheless affect recording equipment.

So does an experiment like this provide some justification for how EVP might work? While we can assume that it does, it is still impossible to discern exactly what the source of such strange noises may be. EVP, while inconclusive in terms of being that all-hallowed “proof” of an afterlife, nonetheless presents some rather compelling evidence for something inexplicable… but what, precisely, is it? Will science ever reach a point where technology will be capable of discerning the likelihood that voices of the deceased, perhaps remaining in the physical world in some energetic form, can still make their presence known through electronic means?

Life in Bolckow … never a cell phone or internet signal … landlines down constantly … electricity blinking on and off sporadically … locals are reclusive and unfriendly … stories of strange disappearances and mutilated pets … sounding like a horror movie yet?

— Tamin, Facebook post, February 3, 2011, 3:03 p.m.

A long, winding grey asphalt road splits from a rural highway thirty-some miles north of St. Joseph, Missouri, and runs between brown winter farm fields and a scattering of trees before it enters the tiny town of Bolckow, Missouri. A weathered sign welcoming visitors stands at the city limits. To some, the welcome ends there. This hilly town with its curbless streets, long dark business fronts, and many houses with grand days decades past, hides something sinister.

Tamin and Tony Morrell bought a house here in 2008; they signed the papers on Christmas Eve and moved in Christmas Day. “When we bought the house it was known as ‘the old haunted house,’” Tamin said.

The house was strange from the first day, partially because the previous owners never really moved. “They left everything,” Tony said. Furniture sat as it had for years, pictures hung from nails on the walls, dirty socks lay crumpled in the bathroom closet.

“It was spooky,” Tamin said. “The table was made. There was food in the refrigerator. Their clothes were in the drawers. They just left.”

The Morrells bought this two-story, four-bedroom house after a foreclosure. Few prospective buyers had looked at the house, Tamin would find later. “I got it really cheap,” Tamin said. “But I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

As Tony, originally from Davenport, Iowa, Tamin from nearby St. Joseph, Missouri, and her children Katheryn and Jake Hatfield, finished carrying boxes into their new home, trickles of strangeness began to fall. “The first night I slept on the couch, and I heard pots and pans rattling around,” Tamin said. “But we hadn’t unpacked. We weren’t using the kitchen.”

Tony heard something, too, but not pots and pans. It was a voice. “It sounded like a kid crying,” he said.

Last night I was awakened by my son’s voice calling “Mom” … yet he was sound asleep.
— Tamin, Facebook post, April 21, 2011, 8:42 a.m.

The first morning in the house, the smell of breakfast cooking greeted the waking family, but there was no breakfast cooking in the small kitchen. “It was weird,” Tamin said. “But there’s always weird smells.” Like death. The family began to notice the smell of rotting flesh throughout the house, but the smell never lingered. This scent of decay would appear in some parts of the house, then move to others and disappear, only to come back weeks later. The smell continues to plague them, but they have never found a cause.

During the first month the family lived in Bolckow strange occurrences in the house slowly escalated. The smells, children’s voices, doors slamming, cabinets opening, and the sound of footsteps were their constant companions. The worst thing about the house, however, was the feeling. “A lot of people say in a room upstairs they feel it,” Tony said. “A depressing feeling.”

Tamin added, “If I’m the only person here at night I feel really depressed. Almost frozen, like I can’t breathe.”

The atmosphere on the ground floor of the house is thick, heavy. But, Tony said, so is the atmosphere of the town. “I’m the biggest skeptic in the house and I’ve felt things here,” Tony said. “This house is weird anyway. The whole town is weird. The first month we lived here we only saw kids. No adults. Yeah, this town is weird.”

Driving down the road in to town, heard rain drops hit the car, stuck our arms out and felt the cold stinging raindrops hit our hands and arms, smelled the rain … yet our hands and arms were dry when we pulled them back in the windows, there were no visible rain drops on the car … weird place Bolckow is!
— Tamin, Facebook post, March 20, 2011, 8:16 p.m.

Strange things in the house continued. Thousands of flies appeared in an upstairs room, and the day after the family cleared them out, a thick mass of flies lighted on the porch. A sound like a bowling ball rolling down the upstairs hallway has woken Katheryn in the night. The dogs refuse to go into the basement. And Tamin has seen shadow figures wandering through the house. The occurrences became commonplace to the family, then the house grew violent. “I got thrown down the stairs,” Tamin said. “It was morning time. I was not scared or anything. I was standing on the landing with my dog Chewie, and the next thing I knew I was halfway down the stairs bouncing down and wondered what happened.”

They decided to move back to St. Joseph. Although Tamin said the main reason was financial, Tony said another was their now bizarre life. “We didn’t like being in this house.” The move culminated at Halloween.

The previous family who owned the house was pre-occupied with Christmas … ironically they moved in on Halloween (OUR favorite holiday) … btw … we moved in on Christmas day … coincidence?
— Tamin, Facebook post, April 10, 2010, 2:55 p.m.

Neighbors in Bolckow didn’t seem to take kindly to Halloween, and given the fact that the town’s population is 234, everyone is a neighbor. “We volunteered to donate Halloween decorations to the park,” Tony said. “People said, ‘we don’t celebrate Halloween. We celebrate the fall harvest.’”

The family decided to celebrate anyway; with a haunted open house. They didn’t realize their house was well known outside of Bolckow. “When we handed out fliers in St. Joseph,” Tamin said. “This guy said, ‘I know that house. It’s in Bolckow. It is evil.”

The event didn’t get any easier. Although many locals shunned the event, some came. “When they were drunk,” Katheryn said. “Some kids went through but their parents weren’t supposed to know about it.”

Most of the guests came from out of town to tour Bolckow’s haunted house, and the house performed, the audio system in the attic behaved of its own free will, and ornaments spun from strings in the dead still attic. The activity soon grew intense. “There was a girl in my room and the window imploded,” Tamin said.

Katheryn was there. “She stepped back and it blew on her.”

“It was a mistake, I think,” Tamin said, “to do the haunted house.”

Today I was upstairs sorting clothes in the closet and came out with scratches on my hands and arms!
— Tamin, Facebook post, April 12, 2010, 5:51 p.m.

In November, the family moved back to St. Joseph, leaving the strange house behind. They rented the house to Jim, a long-time friend of Tony’s, but the house hit the renters with everything it had.

“They changed so much,” Tamin said. “They changed when they lived here.”
Jim, his girlfriend, two teenage boys and a ten-year-old girl moved into the house and immediately felt the weight of the house upon them. “The little girl said she came to our house to talk to ghosts,” Katheryn said.

One day the renters were just gone. “They left their clothes here,” Tamin said. “They left their cell phone.”

“There was food in the fridge,” Katheryn said.

And worse. Buckets of grease and urine were scattered throughout the house. Tamin and Tony didn’t know what had happened to the people who lived in their house, but they knew the house had done something to them. “We didn’t know where they were and they never came back for their stuff,” Tamin said.

Reluctantly, Tamin and Tony moved their family back into the Bolckow house soon after.

This house has not lost its depressing, suffocating, oppressive feel. It’s like the house sucks every bit of hope and happiness out of a person when they walk through the door.
— Tamin, Facebook post, February 13, 2010, 5:01 p.m.

“Since we’ve moved back, I have not been able to sleep well, and I can always sleep,” Tony said

“We all don’t,” Tamin said.

Katheryn sat in a kitchen chair, holding her hands. “I feel like someone is shaking me.”

They moved back into the “hell house,” as Tamin calls it, because of personal finances, and crime rates in St. Joseph. “I thought, ‘let’s go back to Bolckow and everything will be fine.’”

It wasn’t. The haunting continues. Katheryn told Tamin of a dream about a little girl who lives in the house. The girl told her “the grey kitty is my favorite.” That morning Tamin found the grey cat had been inexplicably locked in the parlor all night.

“My life has been nothing but insane since I moved to Bolckow,” Tony said.

Tamin nodded. “I feel like I’m in a movie.”

They lurk in the shadows by cover of night, waiting for their victims to fall asleep. Then, entering bedrooms beneath the unforgiving shield that pale moonlight provides, the strike; biting the neck and sucking precious life’s blood from the innocent. These are the unearthly habits of the vampire, and their particular manner of devilish dealing has continuously managed to capture both the minds and hearts of the masses, as evidenced by the nearly constant appeal this subject has maintained through books, films, and television.

For most of us, the fascination with Vampires ends with the silver screen. However, there have been a few to have come and gone who asserted far more interest in the subject than that which exists merely within the bounds of horror fiction. For some, Vampire hunting Van Helsing-style has grown out of a mere fascination with the occult, leaving those involved pondering whether blood-suckers that exist by night might not have some factual basis in reality.

I was reminded of one such individual while visiting The Reynolds Mansion, a haunted nineteenth century mansion in Western North Carolina, at the request of a friend who worked their. There were numerous stories of ghosts in the building, and while being given a private tour, the host, Billy Sanders, showed me a particularly unique item among his collection of macabre art and film memorabilia: an actual vampire kit, used as a prop in the 1960s Hammer Films release The Brides of Dracula.

Digging through the kit, one would find a coffin key, actual silver bullets, wooden stakes of carved oak, holy water, and a host of other things expected for use in battling the undead. However, perhaps my favorite item contained within this unusual collection of belongings was an old 1928 hardbound edition of Mantague Summers’ The Vampire: his Kith and Kin.

Summers, born in 1880, had been described through his life as an eccentric occultist and clergyman, with a variety of unusual interests. One of his earliest published works dealt with poetry dedicated to the Bithynian youth Antinous, whose relationship with the Roman emperor Hadrian was believed to have involved pederasty. Summers himself would go on to be accused of maintaining such relationships with young boys, although he would be acquitted in a court of law of these accusations.

Despite the ill repute that Summers would become known for, these were hardly the most bizarre accusations made against the man, who would go on to also convert to Catholicism, even claiming to have been ordained a Catholic priest. Indeed, the eccentricity of Montague Summers extended well beyond a mere interest in the occult with titles such as the aforementioned thesis on Vampirism; he also worked as a devotee to the Gothic genre, translating such titles as The Castle of Otranto, The Malleus Maleficarum, and authoring works of his own devoted to the darker aspects of literature, such as his 1938 book The Gothic Quest: a History of the Gothic Novel.

The strangest thing, perhaps, about Summers’ interest in vampires had dealt with his treatment of the subject as though vampirism were a very real condition. The Vampire dealt with not only accounts of biting ghosts and bloodsucking agents of the evening, but also the prescribed methods of dealing with such devils, which of course, became popularized in film (often with the use of such tools as those included with the vampire kit I described earlier). Based on his writings, Montague Summers either boasted a kind of eccentricity with his stylistic offerigs that blurred the lines between his treatment of fact and fiction, or he we must assume that he very much believed that the vampire was a real agent of evil, and one that must be dealt with through drastic means.

Was the quirky cleric indeed merely pulling our leg with his professed concern with denizens of the undead realm? Or do Summers’ written works indeed point to the mind of a man who perhaps bought a bit too much of his own hype, resulting in a twisting of fact and fiction around what has become one of the chief staples of the horror genre in modern times?

The very idea that the green and pleasant British countryside may well be playing host to hidden populations of wild baboon sounds manifestly bizarre and unlikely in the extreme, which, for the most part anyway, it surely is! And, yet, sightings of baboon-like animals certainly do surface from time to time, and from across much of the entire nation. That these same sightings, of what are actually African and Arabian Old World monkeys, are comprised of encounters with both flesh-and-blood entities and beasts of a distinctly spectral and paranormal nature, only adds to the mystifying strangeness, as you will now come to firmly appreciate.

In 1913, Elliott O’Donnell penned the classic title Animal Ghosts, which included in its pages the decades-old story of a ghostly baboon seen in a large, old, imposing country-house-style abode near the English town of Basingstoke, Hampshire. In O’Donnell’s own words:

“A sister of a well-known author tells me there used to be a house called The Swallows, standing in two acres of land, close to a village near Basingstoke. In 1840 a Mr. Bishop of Tring bought the house, which had long stood empty, and we went to live there in 1841. After being there a fortnight two servants gave notice to leave, stating that the place was haunted by a large cat and a big baboon, which they constantly saw stealing down the staircases and passages.

“They also testified to hearing sounds as of somebody being strangled, proceeding from an empty attic near where they slept, and of the screams and groans of a number of of people being horribly tortured in the cellars just underneath the dairy. On going to see what was the cause of the disturbances, nothing was ever visible. By and by other members of the household began to be harassed by similar manifestations. The news spread through the village, and crowds of people came to the house with lights and sticks, to see if they could witness anything.

“One night, at about twelve o’clock, when several of the watchers were stationed on guard in the empty courtyard, they all saw the forms of a huge cat and a baboon rise from the closed grating of the large cellar under the old dairy, rush past them, and disappear in a dark angle of the walls. The same figures were repeatedly seen afterwards by many other persons. Early in December 1841, Mr. Bishop, hearing fearful screams, accompanied by deep and hoarse jabberings, apparently coming from the top of the house, rushed upstairs, whereupon all was instantly silent, and he could discover nothing.

“After that, Mr. Bishop set to work to get rid of the house, and was fortunate enough to find as a purchaser a retired colonel, who was soon, however, scared out of it. This was in 1842; it was soon after pulled down. The ground was used for the erection of cottages; but the hauntings being transferred to them, they were speedily vacated, and no one ever daring to inhabit them, they were eventually demolished, the site on which they stood being converted into allotments.

“There were many theories as to the history of ‘The Swallows’; one being that a highwayman, known as Steeplechase Jock, the son of a Scottish chieftain, had once plied his trade there and murdered many people, whose bodies were supposed to be buried somewhere on or near the premises. He was said to have had a terrible though decidedly unorthodox ending – falling into a vat of boiling tar, a raving madman. But what were the phantasms of the ape and cat? Were they the earth-bound spirits of the highwayman and his horse, or simply the spirits of two animals? Though either theory is possible, I am inclined to favour the former.”

Moving on, in September 1979, wild rumors that a terrifying monster was haunting the dark woods of Brassknocker Hill, near the old British city of Bath began to surface. Described variously, and in both excited and hysterical tones, as resembling a baboon, chimpanzee, spider monkey, gibbon or lemur, the creature was of far more concern to some than it was to others. Eighty-one-year-old Brassknocker Hill resident Frank Green, clearly hyped up and living out his Dirty Harry fantasies, took up nothing less than a shotgun vigil and said loudly: “I am very fond of some animals, but I reckon this creature could be dangerous and I am taking no chances.”

By the following summer the mystery seemed to have been solved when a policeman caught sight of a chimpanzee in the woods. “We were sure this mystery creature would turn out to be a monkey of some sort,’ said Inspector Mike Price, adding with humor: “After all, men from Mars aren’t hairy, are they?” Quite! But rumors of baboons on the loose in Britain don’t end there.

On January 17, 1999, a very curious story surfaced in the pages of Scotland’s Ayrshire Post newspaper. Titled Baboon sighted near Prestwick Airport, it read as follows: “A motorist spotted what he believed was a ‘Baboon-like creature’ on the Shaw Farm Road in Prestwick, not far from the airport. Police rushed to the scene, and as the officers got to within 30 yards of the animal it disappeared into the undergrowth.”

A police spokeswoman told the newspaper: “We received a call from a local man who said he’d narrowly avoided hitting a baboon-like creature on Shaw Farm Road, Prestwick. A patrol car was sent out and after a search of the area the officers reported seeing an animal of some sort, although they couldn’t be sure what it was.”

Given that the eye-witnesses to the beast included members of the police, the matter was taken seriously, and newspaper staff noted that careful-but-futile checks were made at the airport, which, rather interestingly, had received a cargo of livestock only days earlier. A baboon, said an airport spokesperson, was most certainly not part of that same cargo. As the mystery grew, and with no answer in sight, checks were also made with numerous zoos across Scotland, but none had lost a baboon – or, more correctly, none admitted to having lost one.

The final word on the matter came from a senior policeman, who – in light-hearted tones – told the press, always eager for an entertainingly weird story, and one that ultimately, albeit briefly, threatened to eclipse Scotland’s most famous mystery beast – the Loch Ness Monster – that: “The officers were very careful how they phrased the sighting over the radio…They didn’t want to make monkeys of themselves.”

So, what can we say for certain about these very odd cases, which span more than 170-years? Well, the answer has to be: not a great deal! But, if you should ever find yourself in the wilds of Britain and you come face-to-face with a baboon – spectral or physical – of one thing you can be sure: you won’t have been the first to have had such an encounter, and based upon what we have seen, you probably won’t be the last!

When people ask me about my favorite books, I’m often met with surprise when I tell them that most of them have very little – and, more often than not, absolutely nothing – to do with the realms of Ufology, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the many and varied similar topics that occupy much of my time. Amongst my most cherished of all titles are Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles; and Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur.

But, if I was put on the spot and asked to name my all-time favorite, it would have to be Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, which tells – in a definitively-masterful, and definitively-Gonzo style – the entertaining story of Thompson’s early years and journalistic adventures on Puerto Rico, a place for which I have a great affinity, having worked there on a number of occasions. I eagerly devoured the book when it was first published in 1998, decades after it was actually written, and which is now a fine movie starring Johnny Depp.

And, it’s perhaps because – having spent more than 20-years in the field of freelance-journalism myself – I can deeply relate to Thompson’s literary romps in and around San Juan, that I immensely enjoyed Tabloid Man & the Baffling Chair of Death by Paul Bannister, which is a new book written very much in the spirit of the Gonzo-master’s own work. And a fine piece of work Tabloid Man is, too, being equal-parts illuminating, hilarious, insightful and adventure-driven.

Bannister, like me, is a transplanted Brit, now living in the United States, and someone who – also like me – spends his days and nights earning a crust in the realm of freelance journalism. And, as Tabloid Man demonstrates – and as I can attest, too – it’s a realm that can be as rewarding as it can be harsh, and as bizarre as it can be unpredictable (but in a very good way, if you keep your wits about you, and have a love of getting into the thick of things in search of a rollocking good story).

Basically, Tabloid Man tells the story of Bannister’s life as a near-constantly-on-the road journo for numerous tabloids, but chiefly for the National Enquirer and its legendary boss, Generoso Paul “Gene” Pope, Jr., a fascinating character with a somewhat ruthless flair for business, a brilliant mind, and near-Machiavellian links to none other than the CIA.

Given that Bannister spent many a year paying the bills courtesy of the Enquirer, we get to learn a great deal about his excursions to foreign and far-away lands in search of all manner of story – but very often relative to Hollywood scandal, sensational murder cases, and much more of an entertainingly controversial nature.

Particularly jaw-dropping are the stories Death by Python and Cougar Attack, which are as graphically horrific as they are fantastically captivating. Much the same can be said for Mafia Hit Man – a Sopranos-style affair from Bannister that provides a unique insight into the world of the hired assassin. In other words, Bannister is someone who has literally been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale.

But, one of the reasons I am so keen to tell you, the readers of Mysterious Universe, all about Tabloid Man is because our fearless author was someone who was at the absolute forefront of covering stories of a definitively paranormal and supernatural nature for the Enquirer.

Indeed, the book’s sub-title (…& the Baffling Chair of Death) is a direct reference to an engagingly-weird story of an old, seemingly innocuous-looking, chair that, for many years, stood in a Yorkshire, England pub, eagerly inviting one and all to sit in it. The problem is that those who chose to do so often met with very quick and fatal ends. Or, at least, so the legend goes. Of course, for the Enquirer, as Bannister notes, this story was practically Manna from Heaven. Yep, the tale of the chair was a controversial one; but, by God, for getting one’s foot in the door, it was a good one too!

It was also a story that – having helped secure for himself a good position and a “can-do” reputation with the Enquirer – led Bannister to be dispatched just about here, there, and everywhere in hot pursuit of further supernatural-themed stories, including tales of spectral Roman soldiers, encounters with the psychic-spies of the CIA, the spoon-bending exploits of Uri Geller, and a multiplicity of all-things ghostly and ghastly.

Coupled with highly amusing stories of (A) carefully-modified expense-claims (surely not!), (B) copious amounts of free-flowing booze, (C) adventures in exotic climes, (D) the undeniable camaraderie that comes with working with fellow-freelancers on breaking, historic stories, (E) last-minute flights to the other side of the planet, courtesy of the Enquirer, and (F) doing whatever needs to be done to get the story and earn the dollars, Tabloid Man is a first-class account of what goes behind the scenes in the the world of freelance journalism and its links to Hollywood, deep scandal, and all-things supernatural.

But, Tabloid Man is far more than just that. It’s also a celebration of what it means to live rather than just to exist, of doing things on one’s own terms, of grabbing the proverbial bull by the horns, and of the always-unpredictable adrenalin rush that accompanies the words of your forever-demanding editor: “Get on a plane to Thailand; someone has just seen Elvis!” Or, something like that anyway!

To purchase your own copy of Paul Bannister’s Tabloid Man, go to: www.bannisterbooks.com. Disappointed, you won’t be!

For many devout believers among the Judeo-Christian tradition, mankind’s struggles don’t end with our passing from this realm. And to be fair, a number of other cultures and long-practiced religious institutions spanning the centuries have maintained a belief in something that exists beyond our commitments in this physical life, as well. With belief in the afterlife, or even notions like ghosts and haunted sites, we’re given a certain hope that there may be more to life than merely living and dying.

While the notion of something beyond the physical–or to quote Raymond Moody, belief in “Life After Life”–remains a popular theme among the multitudes, there are nonetheless those who would argue that notions of an individual spirit existing beyond the mortal confines of the body is pure rubbish. Thus, it brings a touch of irony in knowing one of the staunchest critics, in recent times, of there being a potential for consciousness persisting after the body dies, has himself now passed from the mortal realm.

Yes, I’m speaking of none other than Christopher Hitchens, the erudite political and philosophical firebrand whose books, including God is Not Great and his recent autobiography Hitch 22: A Memoir illustrated with harsh lucidity the author’s own doubt that there could be more to our existence than what the physical body alone may allow. Of the writer’s passing, I offered the following earlier today:

One of the brightest minds we’ve ever seen, Christopher Hitchens, has come and gone. Ideologically perpendicular to most and intellectually parallel only to the clouds, the man’s genius, and firebrand, were certainly not paralleled by most humans. Whether you loved him, hated him, or merely observed him over the years like so many of us did, it’s a mind like his that so many of us will miss… and though I’m certain there was no heaven waiting for Hitch (he woudn’t have wanted one, at least), his is not a spirit that will be forgotten. If nothing else, I hope he knows the freedom and liberty he admired throughout his life… da mihi libertatem aut da mihi mortem.

But in wishing Hitchens well in the afterlife, we are similarly given opportunity to consider the nature of reality, and of course, the potential for there being an afterlife. A recent article on the notion of religious beliefs and people’s apparent guilt with regard to disbelief was featured at The Guardian, with some of the more heady criticisms presented by the ever-controversial (and tactful) Richard Dawkins, who argues that many, rather than holding belief in a creator or divinity in the great beyond, are instead quite attached to the mere belief in belief itself.

Belief in belief for its own sake is so prevalent that it makes non-believers feel guilty. Odd though it seems, people who can’t accept propositions for which no empirical evidence exists tend to suffer more self-doubt than those who take great leaps of faith into the unknown. And this may help to explain why books denying the existence of God – Dawkins’s one, for example, and Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great – shoot straight to the top of the bestseller lists. For even in our overwhelmingly secular society, belief in God is still regarded, even by those who don’t have it, as evidence of a person’s respectability; and guilt-ridden non-believers cannot get enough reassurance that it is perfectly acceptable to be an atheist.

Sure, there may be respectability that “belief” in a God can lend to an individual; this has become curiously the case in the determinations made of American political candidates. But taking this approach, the notion that a God exists, or for that matter, spirits of the dead, can also present troubles for us in equal measure to the assurances they lend. While many of religious predisposition consider the idea of “ghosts” to be relative to demonic forces or evil spirits, the very idea that a soul could indeed exist beyond the physical body is a reassurance, in the sense that it shows us that death is not the ultimate end. If anything, tantamount to notions of a fully conscious, non-physical spirit is the potential for absolute freedom in the truest sense; when we leave the world of the physical, perhaps we know real spiritual mobility, and thus become capable of harnessing the greater truth hidden away within the cosmos… often of a variety that steadily surpasses the conventions of human thinking.

The cluttered box that becomes human ideology, while grasping desperately for freedom and truth, can often become stifling as one is drawn ever more deeply into a narrow-sighted vision (to put it ironically) of what “truth” is supposed to be. Thus, whether we choose to believe in ghosts, gods, devils and demons, or the afterlife, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become so completely stoic in our opinions that we become blinded to the obvious truth that surpasses any human understanding: that we simply cannot know all the answers, and that trying to surmise truth in partiality only leads us into the quicksand of an intellectual black hole. Once we’ve fallen in, it can become a damning process trying to get unstuck.

While proof of an afterlife cannot be asserted without any doubt, we also cannot, as humans, assume to be so all-knowing that we can say, with certainty, that there aren’t forces of divinity that supersede all things known in the physical world. We also cannot rule out the possibility that spirits of the dead might linger on after the body ceases to live. Certainly, if there is any afterlife waiting for the likes of Christopher Hitchens, he will with no doubt have a field day unraveling the mysteries on that clandestine other side of the spiritual senses; but rather than representing the greatest of all “gotchas”, perhaps instead it will be an introduction, of sorts, to a new kind of freedom and liberty. Philosophically, this was certainly the quest Hitchens seemed to care most for in his life, and as with any good hope for a life beyond the living should be, it may not only be a new notion of what “truth” is that he discovers. For all we know, it may be that he’ll find that a new definition of freedom itself exists in such a place just as well… and that is something all spirits–living or dead–seem to desire.

On many occasions, people in terribly life-threatening situations manage to prevail, virtually without the help of any others. This would appear to be the case outwardly, at least… but the very ones who might contest it could be those who actually have endured such experiences.

Some may attribute such persistence to thrive to the help of a higher power. For instance, many who have near-death experiences recount meeting their deceased friends at some spiritual gap between this world and the next, and being told either that they have a choice as to whether they remain on Earth, or enter the great beyond. Others might not have the luxury of any option, returning instead from the throes of death after being advised that their work in this world may not be complete.

But there are others who recount far more extraordinary encounters with the great beyond, in which they literally feel that they owe their lives to some presence that may have not only preserved their physical existence but that may have granted them insights into seemingly otherworldly things that may be very much of this realm.

Recently on The Gralien Report Podcast, I had my friend Jeffery Pritchett of the popular Church of Mabus radio program drop in to give an update about some of his future guests. However, as I often like to ask of the hosts who join us on the program from time to time, I was interested in hearing if Jeffery might have had any paranormal experiences throughout his life that influenced him in terms of wanting to pursue the study of strange phenomenon. Indeed, Jeffery admitted that while in his teens, he had been diagnosed with cancer, and at one time questioned whether he would make it through the ordeal that followed the diagnosis. This experience, however, had also been when, in his own words, he had “found God,” and recalled lying bed, asking the creator “to heal all the world’s troubles and make him a superhero.” Indeed, Pritchett would recover fully from his ailment, but this wasn’t all that seemed to happen.

Indeed, much like the abilities a “superhero” might have, Pritchett literally began to experience strange sensations, as well as having the occasional sightings of apparent non-human entities. “Some of them looked like snakes, while others resembled a fat little Jabba the Hut,” Jeffery told our listeners, noting that even many of his family members had felt that Jeffery had begun to somehow draw strange presences toward he and his family members, some of which described having similar encounters while in Jeffery’s presence. Could it actually be that while Pritchett was indeed healed, he may also have begun to harness some strange ability to perceive worlds beyond our own?

There are a number of other stories of those who have claimed to suffer near-death experiences and near-fatal illnesses, only to recover and go on to harness extraordinary abilities following their sickness. For instance, even Dr. Stephen Greer, famous advocate of UFO and extraterrestrial disclosure, also made similar claims in his book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge, chalking his recovery up to what he believed were aliens from space that had chosen to help him.

But according to some, there are more prosaic explanations that could account for at least some miraculous tales of survival. Back in April of this year, I commented on a 2008 book titled, The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible, by author John Geiger. In it, Geiger recounts a number of instances of apparent survival against the extreme, where many of his cases described having been helped or accompanied by a ghostly presence. “All have ­escaped ­traumatic events only to tell strikingly similar stories of having experienced the close presence of a companion and helper,” Geiger wrote, citing instances of this phenomenon that run the gamut from ­prisoners during wartime, to aviators and ­astronauts, survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and even a 1953 Himalayan encounter with one survivor who believed he “was not alone” during his mountain climbing excursion gone-wrong. I went on to speculate that this very sort of interpretation might even have had something to do with a particularly strange Yeti encounter, in which a man claimed he had been rescued by one of the gentle mountain beasts.

Bearing Geiger’s “Third Man Factor” in mind, when it comes to surviving the impossible, maybe this is one instance where the expression “three is company” doesn’t always apply! I would be interested in hearing whether any Mysterious Universe readers have had similar experiences where you’ve felt that a ghostly or otherworldly encounter may have helped you cheat death in the past… feel free to share your own comments and stories in the field provided below.

It was around the year 1910 that a weird and horrific saga began – on what is today the B3212 road, which can be found in the vicinity of the Dartmoor, England locales of Postbridge and Two Bridges. It became known as the mystery of the Hairy Hands. Somewhat disturbingly, a hairy, monstrous and unknown force would time and again violently lash out at unwary passing drivers, and which, in one case, reportedly even resulted in a tragic death for an unfortunate road-user.

In most of the cases, the victims of the frightening phenomenon reported seeing large, hairy, “disembodied hands” manifest out of thin air, firmly grabbing the steering wheel of their vehicles – or the handle-bars of their bikes – and unsurprisingly striking complete terror into their hearts; something which invariably resulted in them being violently forced off the country road. For a decade or so, the events were considered nothing more than a mild – albeit certainly sinister – curiosity for the superstitious locals of the Dartmoor wilderness. That situation would drastically change in 1921, however, when tragedy struck.

In June of that year, Dr. E.H. Helby, who was at the time serving as the Medical Officer at the nearby Dartmoor Prison, died on the same stretch of road when he lost control of his motor-cycle and sidecar, in the latter of which were seated his two children. Helby had just about enough time to warn his children to jump to safety – which they did – before he was thrown from his motor-cycle and instantly killed.

Then, on the dull, foggy day of August 26 of the same year, a young British Army captain – described by the local media as being “a very experienced rider” – was also thrown into the verge of the very same road, after he too lost control of his motor-cycle. Significantly, and incredibly, the captain stated at the time, in response to media questions:

“It was not my fault. Believe it or not, something drove me off the road. A pair of hairy hands closed over mine. I felt them as plainly as ever I felt anything in my life – large, muscular, hairy hands. I fought them for all I was worth, but they were too strong for me. They forced the machine into the turf at the edge of the road, and I knew no more till I came to myself, lying a few feet away on my face on the turf.”

And there was much more to come – and none of it was good, either.

In the summer of 1924, the well-known and widely-respected Devonshire folklorist Theo Brown was camping in a trailer, approximately half-a-mile from the road where practically all of the ominous activity was taking place; and, in later life, would detail the particularly nightmarish, and nighttime, encounter that she experienced, and that is directly relevant to the mystery of the Hairy-Hands.

Brown, the author of Devon Ghosts and Family Holidays around Dartmoor, said: “I knew there was some power very seriously menacing us near, and I must act very swiftly. As I looked up to the little window at the end of the caravan, I saw something moving, and as I stared, I saw it was the fingers and palm of a very large hand with many hairs on the joints and back of it, clawing up and up to the top of the window, which was a little open. I knew it wished to do harm to my husband sleeping below. I knew that the owner of the hand hated us and wished harm, and I knew it was no ordinary hand, and that no blow or shot would have any power over it.”

She continued: “Almost unconsciously I made the Sign of the Cross and I prayed very much that we might be kept safe. At once the hand slowly sank down out of sight and I knew the danger was gone. I did say a thankful prayer and fell at once into a peaceful sleep. We stayed in that spot for several weeks but I never felt the evil influence again near the caravan. But, I did not feel happy in some places not far off [sic] and would not for anything have walked alone on the moor at night or on the Tor above our caravan.”

Then there was the story told to the writer Michael Williams, author of the book Supernatural Dartmoor, by journalist Rufus Endle, who maintained that while driving near Postbridge on an undetermined date, “a pair of hands gripped the driving wheel and I had to fight for control.” Luckily, he managed to avoid crashing the vehicle; the hands, meanwhile, simply vanished into thin air. A concerned Endle requested that the story specifically not be published until after his death.

So, what were – and possibly still are – the Hairy Hands? Some sort of malevolent ghost? Evidence of a spectral man-beast – of Bigfoot or werewolf-style proportions? The questions are many. The answers, unfortunately, are few.

But if you ever find yourself driving along Dartmoor’s B3212 road, you may want to keep a careful and sturdy grip on the steering-wheel. You know: just in case…

People often ask me: why aren’t we ever able to secure hard, physical evidence of the presence and existence of such beasts as Bigfoot, lake-monsters, the Yeti etc? Well, it’s a very good question! Some might argue that given such creatures may be so few in number, this explains their overwhelming elusiveness. Fair enough. But what about those reports where people have seen Bigfoot vanish in a flash of light, or a werewolf-style beast do likewise? Like it or not, such cases most assuredly do exist. So, this suggests another possibility: maybe some of these “things” are not flesh-and-blood animals, after all. Perhaps, incredibly, they are the ghosts of long-dead creatures from equally long-gone eras.

Yep, the scenario sounds manifestly strange in the extreme. And, of course, it’s very much dependent on the theory that ghosts (in some form) are a reality. But, I have a number of reports in my files that are eerily suggestive of just such a possibility. And, one in particular stands out as being highly relevant to this controversial theory.

Jill O’Brien contacted me in January 2009, and had a somewhat creepy tale to tell, too, of a creature she claimed to have encountered only days before in a particularly dense area of Seattle woodland. It was, she assured me, nothing less than a fully-grown Saber-Tooth Tiger. Yes, you did read it right. But, the kicker was that Jenny’s Saber-Tooth Tiger seemed far more spectral than physical.

Just like the Mammoth, the Saber-Tooth Tiger – a massive creature that weighed up to 900 pounds, and which roamed both North and South America as far back as 2.5 Million B.C. – is widely assumed to have become extinct around 10,000 years ago. In other words, no-one – anywhere on the surface of the planet – should be seeing such a beast, at all.

Of course, in the world of on-screen fantasy, this marauding and ferocious killing-machine is a regular player, and one for who extinction plays absolutely no role at all. For example, there was the movie, Sabretooth, that made its debut on the Sy-Fy Channel in November 2002, and in which a scientist uses fossilized DNA to bring the beast back to life. Unsurprisingly, it goes on a murderous spree, slaughtering pretty much all of the cast of the movie one by one.

In addition, in an episode of Britain’s hit TV show of the 2000’s, Primeval, a character named Valerie finds a Saber-Tooth Tiger cub that has stumbled through a time-portal to present-day England. And, you may ask, what does Valerie do? Well, she hides the creature in her garage. That is, at least, until it grows at an alarming rate, inevitably escapes, and causes chaos, death and disaster at a local amusement park.

So much for televised fantasy: but what of the real world? Could it really be the case that the Saber-Tooth Tiger still exists, hiding from one and all in the many thick woods and forests of the United States? When the bare bones of Jenny’s story were related to me, I figured that this was the angle she was suggesting. But, as I continued to listen, it became apparent that her tale was far stranger than that – and much more intriguing, too, I have to now confess.

According to Jenny, she had been walking through the woods with her pet Labrador dog, Bobbie, when it suddenly stopped in its tracks, whined loudly, and dropped to the floor, shaking. Thinking that her faithful pet had possibly had a seizure, Jenny quickly bent down to comfort the dog, and could then see that it was staring intently to its left. Following Bobbie’s gaze, Jenny was horrified to see moving in the undergrowth what looked like a large cat – “like a mountain-lion, but it was much bigger.”

That the creature was possibly a mountain-lion quite understandably filled Jenny’s mind with nothing but dread; however, that dread was amplified to stratospheric proportions when its face could clearly be seen, including the two huge teeth that were the absolute hallmarks of the Saber-Tooth Tiger. As Jenny said to me, with much justification: “You don’t have to work in a zoo to know what a Saber-Tooth looks like: everyone knows.” Indeed, they do.

It was then, however, that Jenny’s story became even more bizarre. As the Saber-Toothed monster loomed fully into view and out of the confines of the bushes and undergrowth, she could see that its body seemed to be semi-transparent and that, “the bottom of its front paws were missing or invisible. It looked at me with a sort of surprise when it saw me watching it, and then it was gone, just like that. It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying; but it was a beautiful animal, too. Seeing it was scary, but a privilege, too.”

Jenny concluded that what she was had encountered was not a still-living Saber-Tooth Tiger at all. Rather, she considered the possibility that it “had to be the ghost of a Saber-Tooth.”

Perhaps, the elusiveness of the many and varied beasts that comprise the realm of Cryptozoology is not due to their uncanny ability to elude us in conventional fashion. But, quite simply, because there is nothing conventional about them at all. Maybe their elusiveness is indeed a by-product of the possibility that they are full-blown ethereal specters, long-extinct creatures that still – in a decidedly weird fashion – continue to travel their old hunting grounds.  Or, rather, haunting grounds would be a better term to use…

Gray clouds roll endlessly behind dismal looking mountain crags in the distance. The last colors of autumn cling to the skeletal trees overlooking a nearby swamp, and rain begins to fall across the dark landscape of the valley. In short, it’s a perfect setting for a dark and weary tale of woeful weirdness.

And yet, while the description I’ve given you here may indeed sound like something from a 1960s horror flick produced by the Hammer Films company, what I’ve detailed is really the otherwise beautiful valley just outside Gralien Manor, here at our Southern command in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Pepper the sky with a little rain, a nice, dark overcast of clouds, and a whistling wind skirting across the mountaintops, and we suddenly have a nice setting for a creepy Crocktober tale.

What, pray tell, is “Crocktober,” you might ask? It’s really quite simple: all month long, the Gralien gang and I have been celebrating the creepier aspects of existence, leading up to Halloween at the end of the month. So while we’re getting in the mood for getting our Creep on, I thought it might be prudent to break from the traditional UFO oriented blogging I provide for folks here at Mysterious Universe in favor of sharing some of my own favorite creepy stories with you, our dear readers.

When I was growing up, my younger brother and I were always very entertained by ghost stories our mother would tell us. Among them, there was one in particular that always fascinated us: the story of Helen’s Bridge, a strange old bridge that formed part of the remnant of an old road along the top of Beaucatcher Mountain, overlooking our hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. The old bridge had gotten it’s name from a peculiar story associated with the site; many claimed that the ghost of a woman still haunts the location to this very day.

The legend goes something like this: Helen had been a mistress of sorts to a wealthy man who had moved into the Asheville area named Phillip S. Henry, and now owned a beautiful castle home, nestled high above the town near the summit of Beaucatcher Mountain, known as Zealandia. Helen, while staying with Henry at the mansion, would often have her daughter along, who would run and play along the grounds, and enjoyed visiting with the horses kept in a stable near the center of the large residence.

As the story goes, Helen’s daughter had been visiting these stables when a fire broke out within. Against the stone walls of Zelandia castle, the fire managed to do little harm; but all within the stable itself was destroyed, including Helen’s poor daughter.

Distraught upon learning of her daughter’s death, Helen gathered a long length of rope, and committed suicide by hanging herself from the base of the bridge. Thus, the legend states that on cool, foggy evenings, one can sometimes see Helen’s spirit wandering along the winding mountain road near the infamous bridge. Tales of those passing by who have stopped to ask if she were in some kind of trouble are met only with a blank stare from the pensive apparition, along with a question: have you seen my daughter?

Like many urban legends of this sort, there are even games associated with the famous apparition: locals in the region will tell you that in order to make Helen’s spirit manifest, one need only to park their car directly under the bridge, and invoke the deceased spirit by chanting, “Helen come forth” three times. But interestingly, while every town has its variations on such legends, there are also a number of stories shared by credible witnesses that involve the allegedly haunted locale, describing strange, inexplicable occurrences at the lonely bridge.

Some time around 1976, Mitchell Buckner, a native of the Leicester area just beyond the Asheville city limits, claimed he had been driving over the mountain on (you guessed it) a dark, misty night. The moonlight was bright; almost bright enough to outshine his headlights, and Buckner had been driving the narrow, twisting road that leads from nearby Tunnel Road over the top of Beaucatcher Mountain. Just as he came around the curve that would set him directly beneath Helen’s Bridge, he began to get a strange feeling, but ignored it his odd premonition, and continued along anyway. Just as he rounded the corner, immediately as he passed under the famous bridge, the lights on his car went dead. “I couldn’t see a thing,” Buckner told me several decades after the incident. “I just steered along in the moonlight, hoping my lights would come back on.” By the time he had made his way down the opposite side of the mountain and back into town, the headlights came back on, as though now unaffected by the odd influence of whatever had been lingering near the bridge.

Could it be that there actually is a ghost at Helen’s Bridge? On the other hand, could it be instead that a legend was woven around the area, based on strange encounters folks had described having, much like Mitchell Buckner’s dark drive down Beaucatcher Mountain? Who knows what really might be occurring… but regardless, it makes for nice fodder for creepy tales to be told around the hallowed month of “Crocktober.”