About 4 weeks ago I woke up very distraught in the middle of the night and told my husband that something very bad was going to happen.  Even with the passing hurricanes I felt that those horrible events were not even what I was dreading, unfortunately.  In a very strange way I kind of wished that it was.  I believe that the falling American economy, that has recently come to light to the world, is what I have been fearing all along… I even wrote something about it previously… the blog about Alex Jones, a person who tries to expose the truth about the state of the US.  I also wrote about Ron Paul and how he would be a great President for the US because he was aware of the threats and would most likely be best to resolve them.  I have been so concerned that even at a social event I was speaking to a someone that works for the government of Canada, in the Finance department, and I asked him if Canada was going down with the States.  He assured me that we “won’t get it as bad as the US & Europe”.  I hope he’s right but I can’t shake this sinking feeling.

Visitors to Lily Dale seek connections with the other side

Jul 05, 2008 04:30 AM

Comments on this story (2)

Benjamin Gleisser
Special to the Star
Lily Dale, N.Y.– A gentle breeze sways the 30-metre treetops in Leolyn Woods, the virgin forest that surrounds Inspiration Stump, a huge, concrete-topped hemlock stump.

Other than that, there’s dead silence.

That’s because, during summer months, visitors gather here twice a day to hear mediums from around the world deliver messages from beyond.

The benches that face The Stump are filled with people eager for news from deceased relatives and friends.

To increase your chances of having a medium make a connection with your own personal afterworld, it’s said, sit near the front and wear brightly coloured clothing.

Carolyn Molnar, a visiting medium from Toronto, paces before the crowd and scans her psychic radar screen trying to catch incoming blips from the spirit world.

“I’m getting a Don or Donald,” she says, searching the audience. “I’m seeing a blue uniform. Can someone take a Donald – Uncle Donald?”

A woman in the second row hesitantly raises a hand.

“Donald was my great-uncle,” she says. “He was in the Air Force during the war, but I don’t know a lot about him.”

Molnar pauses a moment, as if listening to a thread of music running through her head.

Then she says, “Donald says he is the one who has appeared to you during times of great stress and he will always be there to help you.”

The woman smiles and begins to weep.

But clearly there are skeptics in the crowd – such as the man, two rows away, with a grumpy expression and his arms crossed over his chest.

This is the largest Spiritualist community in the United States, based on the belief that death isn’t final, that the soul not only continues on, but that loved ones, friends and even long-lost acquaintances who have gone before are available to help and support those left on Earth – if you welcome them.

Believers in the afterlife, and those who aren’t sure what they believe, have been visiting Lily Dale since the gated village was founded in 1879, including notables such as author Arthur Conan Doyle, activist Susan B. Anthony and actress Mae West.

From the last weekend in June through Labour Day, Lily Dale offers visitors intriguing programs that run the gamut from fun to philosophical to woo-woo.

This year, for example, there are workshops on reiki, dream interpretation and how to meet your angels.

Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra often lecture here; John Edward got the idea for his TV show Crossing Over after guesting at The Stump.

Thousands of Canadians visit every summer, but most come for Canadian Weekend, held on the August Civic Weekend, when Lily Dale features Canadian mediums, healers and an ol’ fashioned sing-along.

Lily Dale is home to 45 registered mediums and other folk, but during summer months, the population grows to about 600.

And like the people who live here, the village is eclectic – a collection of 16 narrow streets where a quaint bungalow stands next to a Victorian house complete with turrets and bay windows.

One street over, paint is peeling off a white clapboard house that sits next to the kind of place where the Keebler elves would rest their weary little heads after a long day of baking cookies in a tree.

Cats of all colours – not just black – are everywhere.

The best time to enjoy Lily Dale is just after sunrise, when the morning mist lifts off nearby Lake Cassadaga, and the family of trumpeter swans glides across the water.

Beyond the lake are grassy, rolling hills. The air smells small-town fresh and the day feels full of possibilities.

The Maplewood Hotel, a rebuilt horse barn, hasn’t changed much since it opened a century ago.

Locals swear the place is haunted; stories abound of horse whinnies in the middle of the night, and a lady in Victorian dress that floats up the second-floor stairway.

Otherworldly shenanigans aside, people visit Lily Dale mainly for the peace and quiet.

Healing services are held twice-daily at the Healing Temple, a plain building where soothing music plays while white-shirted spiritual healers stand behind backless benches with their heads bowed.

Healing comes in the form of a sort of touchless massage, aimed at bringing a sense of peace.

“A lot of people say this is their favourite spot on the grounds,” says Barbara Sanson, who runs the Healing Temple.

“People often tell me they leave the service with less emotional stress.”

That pretty much describes, as well, how people leave Lily Dale.

Benjamin Gleisser is a Toronto-based freelance writer.

Alexandra Holzer is motivated, enthusiastic and with as many goals as she has talents, se is so much more than just the daughter of Hans Holzer, the first and most famous Ghost Hunter.::::::::Alexandra Holzer had anything but a normal childhood. One of two sisters, she is the youngest born to Ghost Hunter Hans Holzer and Countess Catherine Buxhoeveden. She explained some of the funny, offbeat and frightening moments of her youth in Growing Up Haunted: A Ghostly Memoir (Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2008). To understand Alexandra, you really have to know a bit about her parents, so we’ll begin there.

Hans Holzer is generally considered to be the father of modern spirit investigation. The author of over one hundred and forty-five books and novels, Hans wrote Ghost Hunter in 1963 and established the methodology that many within the field of paranormal investigation use today. He received his Ph.D from the London College of Applied Science and has made appearances on popular television programs such as In Search Of and Murder in Amityville.

Countess Catherine Buxhoeveden, also known as The Haunted Countess, is a direct descendent of Catherine The Great of Russia. Born at Castle Rovina in Merano, Italy, she grew up and eventually married Hans Holzer. Catherine helped research many of the topics for his books and added her own intuitive, imaginative and inspired artwork to those projects. The Countess lives on Long Island and often shows her art work in The Hamptons.

After reading almost all of her father’s books, I was thrilled to speak with Alexandra over the phone. She instantly communicates a sincere interest in spirit investigation. However, it would be wrong to believe that she is just some chip off the old block. Alexandra makes it clear that she and her father do not see eye to eye on a number of issues. One of them happens to be the subject of demons.

“My father doesn’t believe in demons…he says spirits are beings of light” she told me matter-of-factly. Hans is not alone in his assessment of evil spirits, however, it does cut a swath across research by others that do believe in them including Ed and Lorraine Warren, well-known ghost hunters and authors in their own right, and his own daughter. He also seems to find fault with some of her conclusions as evidenced by a recent debate over a photo she showed to him and her mother. Alexandra describes the situation:

“After rediscovering my ability of sight and tapping into my sixth sense, I began taking photo’s around my home. The results showed anomalies which I concluded were not manmade from the environment of my home such as dirt, dust or in-door rain. I became excited and had my mother take some of her own photos. I explained to her that the objects were probably the physical manifestations of spirit guides, family members that passed over and so on. She was just as excited and in her low-key mellow way, just as astonished to see what appeared on her bedroom curtains and floors. Shapes taking form, an arm here, a leg there… That began the topic of our orb conversations. Sounds like a bucket of chicken: You get the wing, oh look here’s the breast!”

“ I took it another step forward by taking some photos during a function at my sisters house in Riverdale, New York. I wasn’t just interested in preserving family moments, but was searching for evidence of life after life on film. What I believe to be a face appeared in one of the photos. It was just behind my sister and seemed to come out of her curio. After looking at the photo a couple of times, she agreed that the anomaly was a face. That’s when the orb fight began.”

“My mother, sister and I went to show the photo to my father. Well, Mr. Ghost Hunter didn’t exactly see eye to eye with us. He emphatically stated, ‘That’s not an orb! I can’t see what it is, BUT it’s not a person!’ That’s all it took to start a ten minute verbal battle over the photo and its contents. I said, ‘Look there is the head,’ and he’d reply, ‘That’s not a head, it’s the light coming from the room!’ I’d say, ‘It’s shaping here like a person,’ he’d reply, ‘That’s not a person, it’s a bug of some sort perhaps, but it’s not a person!’ We ended the argument by agreeing to disagree, but I was still red-faced angry over the whole thing and the argument was far from over as far as I was concerned.”

That’s what is so terrific about Alexandra. She has a passion that rivals her father’s when it comes to spirit investigation. That passion came through during own phone conversation and in her description of her relationship, agreements, disagreements, admirations and frustrations with her dad. She says, “Life with my father is difficult, confusing and inspiring all rolled into one.” Alexandra continued:

“As a child, he was there for me to hold my hand crossing the busy New York City streets. He was there to take me to the pediatrician when I was sick, but always felt uncomfortable sitting in the waiting room. He complained about the germs in those places. Despite that eccentricity, he was entertaining and very considerate of my likes and dislikes. He once made the mistake of bringing me toast with orange marmalade when clearly, strawberry was my favorite. I bellowed at him at the ripe old age of seven and said, ‘Father, that’s NOT the right jam!’ Laughing, he just smiled, left the room and returned with a new batch of toast and strawberry jam.”

“I long for those days and wish for more, but my father never allowed me into the paranormal side of his life with the exception of telling me stories from the past. As old age set in, it was too late to get involved with that. The man I once knew had become more difficult and less forthcoming of his business. Today, all I can do is develop my own path and try to carry on what little he’ll let me until he passes. When he does, I will be able to continue without walking on eggshells or being fearful of insulting his ego. He’ll be in a better place, smiling again, and devising a plan to haunt me I am sure!”

I was nine years old when I became aware that my father’s military career and the friends he knew from those days provided proof positive that Extraterrestrials were visiting our planet. That awareness became the catalyst which launched my interest in the paranormal. It caused me to read books on the subject (including Ghost Hunter) and watch people like her dad on television. I wondered when Alexandra first became aware that her father was a famous Ghost Hunter? She provided the following answer:

“I was around the age of nine or ten years old. It was Christmas Time and my mother began wrapping up some of my father’s books as gifts for the school teachers. I attended prep school in Manhattan, so the environment was quiet, proper and subtle. One day before Christmas break, my class sat watching our History teacher as he opened up his gifts. I hadn’t a clue what we got him, but was excited to watch him open the present. I picked out the silver, shiny paper that apparently left glitter all over any hands that touched it. As he looked at his hands, I felt very bad and sunk into my chair. He laughed it off and with a smirk continued to open the package.”

“When the paper fell to the floor, a bunch of books appeared and the look on his face went from a smirk to a serious grin. ‘What could it be?’ I wondered. ‘What the heck did mother buy this poor man?’ As the other kids and I crowded around him to find out, the teacher showed us the covers of the books that emerged from the wrapping. They were titles like ‘The Ghost Hunter‘, ‘ESP and You, ‘Witches’ and ‘The Lively Ghosts of Ireland’ by Dr. Hans Holzer! Oh no…that is MY father! I couldn’t believe it. He wrote those? What the heck does he do for a living? I sank to the lowest point in my chair at that moment. As if to add insult to injury, I fell off that chair to the ground with a thunderous thud! It was at that moment that I wondered if I should switch schools right away or maybe just leave the planet!”

As a Paranormal Researcher with more years of experience than I care to admit and children of my own, I can understand how strange it must have been for Alexandra to face her father’s unusual claim to fame. My own kids always enjoy listening to my radio and television interviews, but it can confuse them at times. After all, I am not exactly dealing with conventional topics. With that in mind, I wondered what Alexandra’s earliest memory of her father’s ghost hunting might be? She told me:

“I was around the age of eleven when my father came bursting into my room announcing he would be on television that evening. He gave me the time, channel and show’s name. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Yeah, okay whatever.” But when the time came for the show to air, I was not going to get off that easily. He stormed back into my room and announced it was on. My mother, sister and I (and the cat) went into the living room to watch my father on television. He sat there smiling, commenting and folding his arms. Although it seemed really funny at the time, I can now understand his sense of accomplishment as I am now trying to accomplish the same thing. I might have been bored when I watched those shows, but I was also impressed and sensed his fame.”

My paranormal ‘awakening’ occurred at the age of nine. I wondered how and when Alexandra became interested in spirit investigation. Now thirty seven years of age, she says that a ghostly experience of her own at the age of thirty two was what propelled her into the world her father had dominated for so long:

“I was folding laundry and I heard my late aunt’s whisper of a voice in my ear. She passed from a rare form of Lymphoma two years before. I had experiences as a child and never felt alone, but this was something foreign to me that suddenly became familiar. As I began to open up and allow her in, the dreams came, then the messages and soon, I was able to read people naturally. I didn’t ask for this second sight or to be a medium to help others. My aunt allowed me to get back to my roots and chose the right time for me. I could have picked a better moment, like before I had four children, but that is not how it works.”

Alexandra Holzer has partnered with Carly-Rose Singer and Shira Etzionis to form a kind of Charlie’s Angels threesome of east coast ghost researchers called New York’s Pretty Paranormals. Each one of them brings something to the table of spirit investigations including Alexandra’s vision of what Ghost Hunting should be. “I want to help people,” she tells me. I can understand her vision and admire the fact that she and her partners want to do more than just show up at someone’s house with a bunch of gadgets and an emotional detachment that is unhealthy for all involved.

There is an honesty and sincerity that comes across when you speak with the youngest daughter of Hans Holzer. She is motivated, enthusiastic and with as many goals as she has talents, she is so much more than just the daughter of a famous Ghost Hunter. You’ll be seeing a lot more of Alexandra Holzer. She hopes to create and host a television show about the paranormal and I cannot think of anyone better suited to do that. She’s also a prolific author with several books currently available and more on the way.

Alexandra Holzer is available for radio, internet and television guest spots and print interviews. She is also available for Speaking Engagements. For more, visit http://AlexandraHolzer.GothicMoods.com

Bill Knell is a popular Speaker, Author and Consultant with eclectic interests. Best known for his Paranormal Research and Seminars, Bill also excels in the area of personal, business and financial advice and management. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Omni, the L.A. Times, Toronto Star and NY Times; seen on CNN, NBC Nightly News, Fox Television and many Cable Networks; heard on Mancow, Bob and Tom and Howard Stern; consultant to films like Independence Day, Men in Black, the Fifth Element and World of the Worlds.

Graham Readfearn

March 10, 2008 11:00pm

ONE claimed she could make people urinate with the power of her mind while another confidently predicted an asteroid would destroy Bowen, in far north Queensland.

The long list of failed challengers for James Randi’s $US1 million prize is as entertaining as it is bizarre.

After reading the article below I realized that I have had my share of casting out unwanted energy so I was even considering going on an investigation. I still would rather take a paranormal course prior though because it is best to know as much as you can. It’s a very serious thing because most investigations are required to help people that have an unwanted and a possibly harmful entity, or entities, in their home.

March 4, 2008  - Foxnews.com 

NEW YORK —  Something strange going on in your neighborhood? You may want to give Brooklyn Ghost Investigations a call. For $20 an hour, the group of self-proclaimed paranormal investigators offers to go to your house to help chase away whatever goes bump in the night.

“When I was 10 years old, I started to see things _ spirits and ghosts,” said Sal Cicconi, 27, who formed the group with two other Brooklynites.

The group, which claims to have honed its spooky craft by watching such TV shows as “Ghost Hunters” and “Paranormal State,” has one client: a man who said he saw two apparitions in his apartment.

Cicconi and another member of the group, Sergio Ocasio, 20, went to the man’s house and waited until 3 a.m. to catch a glimpse of the ghosts.

“I caught something on tape,” Cicconi said. “It looked like two lights moving around, like the spirits were playing with each other.”

He said they used a homemade Ouija board _ often used in seances to supposedly talk to the dead (or undead) _ to coax the bogeymen to leave. But it didn’t work.

“Sometimes, spirits are afraid to talk or to show themselves to us,” Cicconi explained.

After reading the article below, what comes to mind is how ignorant and closed minded some people can be. There is more to the world than war, sports and beer. I am not sure why so many are fixated on things that are so meaningless! I am also unsure why people do such evil things. I can’t stand stupidity and negative energy. Anyways, please take a boo at the following, if you wish…

To some Helen Duncan was merely a medium but the police in wartime Britain took a more sinister view of her work. Now a campaign has begun for her to be pardoned. By Andy McSmith

 Friday, 29 February 2008

 Of all the suffering endured during the Second World War, the brief imprisonment of Helen Duncan, a Scottish grandmother who claimed to have paranormal powers, was a minor injustice at worst. But, six decades later, it is still causing hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

Mrs Duncan was one of the last people in Britain to be convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Yesterday, the Scottish Parliament received a petition with more than 200 signatures, demanding that she be given a full posthumous pardon. It was organised by Full Moon Investigations, a team of Scottish ghost-busters who claim to have paranormal gifts.

During the war, Mrs Duncan made several visits to Portsmouth where the desperate relatives of men killed or missing in action would flock to her seances, paying an admission price of 25 shillings a head – a huge sum in those days – hoping to hear the voices of their loved ones.

At one seance, she claimed to have made contact with a sailor from HMS Barham, a ship which had not been officially declared sunk. When it was announced, several weeks later, that the ship had indeed gone down, some took it as proof that Mrs Duncan was psychic. Others believed she had been tipped off and was giving away naval secrets to improve trade.

When she held another seance in Portsmouth, in January 1944, a plain-clothes policeman was waiting in the audience to arrest her the minute the first spirit from beyond turned up. She was sentenced to nine months in prison. After her release, she was more cautious about summoning the dead. She went off to join them in 1956, aged 59.

She was not, as is sometimes asserted, the last person convicted under the Witchcraft Act because six months later the same Act was use to jail a 72-year-old called Jane Yorke.

Her defenders at Full Moon Investigations are in no doubt that Mrs Duncan was a gifted medium persecuted by the authorities for fear of what else she might cause the dead to reveal. They see it as a late example of centuries of persecution of real or imagined witches, many of whom may have been faith healers, herbalists, or people who were either benevolent or just a bit cranky.

James VI of Scotland, who reigned in England as James I, was notoriously obsessed with witches, which was why writing Macbeth was a smart career move by William Shakespeare. Poor Agnes Simpson, the “grace wife of Keith”, was interrogated by the king in person, then deprived of sleep and subjected to days of barbaric torture until she confessed to being the leader of 200 witches who rode out to sea in sieves at Halloween and enjoyed a rendezvous with Satan in North Berwick.

Members of the Full Moon team feel very strongly about injustices such as this, because they are themselves the sort of people who might have been burnt at the stake if they had had the misfortune to live in Tudor or Stuart times. Their website describes them as having “a wealth of knowledge in all aspects of the paranormal”. Ewan Irvine, whose name heads the list of signatories of yesterday’s petition, discovered his vocation as medium at the age of 19 after “many strange experiences that could not be explained logically”.

There are still places in the world where being accused of witchcraft is life-threatening. Human Rights Watch has appealed this week to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to rescind a death sentence passed on anilliterate woman, Fawza Falih, who is accused of bewitching a man and making him impotent.

The main newspaper in Papua New Guinea, The National, reported the case this week of a woman seven months pregnant who was accused of sorcery when her neighbour suddenly died. Villagers hanged her from a tree. She gave birth while she was struggling to free herself. Mother and baby are in hospital.

The British authorities stopped taking witchcraft seriously nearly 300 years ago. The whole point of the 1735 Witchcraft Act was not to end witchcraft, but to end silly stories and phoney seances. The Act is like a forerunner to the Trade Descriptions Act; it made it illegal to con people into thinking you were performing magic.

Mrs Duncan already had a pre-war conviction for fraud, when during one her seances a guest grabbed at the shape of a ghost emerging from the other side under her skirt, and found it was a knitted elastic undervest.

At her trial at the Old Bailey, in 1944, Mrs Duncan’s defence team called witnesses, including a founder of Psychic News, to convince the jury she really could summon the dead. They were more convinced by the evidence of Portsmouth’s chief of police, who called her an “unmitigated humbug and pest”.

William Colvin, an investigative journalist who launched the campaign to rehabilitate Mrs Duncan, is in no doubt that she was the innocent victim of a judicial frame-up, who had a “precious gift that brought comfort to thousands”. Mr Colvin also concluded that Winston Churchill was a druid, who visited Mrs Duncan in prison. This is unlikely. A more plausible explanation is that she was a fraud who was rightly banged up for making money from the grief and gullibility of the bereaved. If I am wrong, no doubt I shall be turned into a toad.

I was lucky enough to witness the eclipse last night, but I still wanted more so I searched Youtube and found an actual clip of the spectacular event!  Please enjoy.

Haunted Valentines

Thursday, February 07, 2008 10:55:02 PM

Are you looking for a Valentine’s Day escape? Or just a romantic getaway any time of the year?

Leave it to our Scott Fais to find a bed and breakfast where Cupid’s arrows aren’t a match for “Mabel” — a ghostly spirit who never checks out.

This is Florida on a Tankful, with “Greetings from St. Augustine.”

“This house was built for elegance, quality,” said George Dann, the owner of the Casa de la Paz bed and breakfast.

Under blue skies and beyond the archway, the prime spot in St. Augustine holds a prime secret behind its gates.

“We knew the story of this place,” said Melissa Taylor, a guest at the bed and breakfast.

“We have a lot of nonbelievers, and then something will happen and they start to question ‘Maybe that is real?’” Dann said.

What’s real at the Casa de la Paz are the afternoon wine tastings over a casual game of Scrabble. But it’s what you can’t see that may take a few clues to spell it out.

“Mabel is our ghost,” Dann said.

“We’ve had guests here report they’ve seen her on the stairway and she has asked guests when are they are leaving,” Dann said.

The home, built in 1915, offers seven guest rooms, one of which is always occupied.

“We’re in the Queen Isabella Room, where Mabel, our ghost, originates,” Dann said.

“Her husband went out to sea and never came back,” Taylor said.

“She died of a lonely heart here in the house. She died in this room,” Dann said.

Spending the night with a ghost was something newlywed Melissa Taylor jumped at.

“We’re always hoping for stuff like that to happen,” Taylor said.

“So am I,” Fais said. “I spent the night in the same room where Mabel died, hoping to connect with her.”

“After a quiet evening, the only thing out of the ordinary I found — how our battery charger started beeping uncontrollably in the middle of the middle of the night,” Fais said.

Melissa experienced something else.

“We were both there watching TV and he had one hand on me and the other hand on his pillow, and I felt three taps on my shoulder and I looked at him and said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘You just tapped me on the shoulder,’ and he said, ‘I didn’t tap you on the shoulder,’” Taylor remembered. “I think it was a ghost.”

“But that kind of thing goes on here all the time,” Dann said.

“We are so not disappointed,” Taylor told Fais.

Mabel the ghost doesn’t like kids. Dann said that his bed and breakfast is reserved for folks 15-years-old and older.

You can find Casa de la Paz and several other bed and breakfasts located on the waterfront in in St. Augustine.

I was on Stage6 last night and I was watching Discovery A Haunting, Season 4 - Episode 11, Legend Trippers.  That is an actual term that is used and the show described it as persons who are interested in the paranormal, that go on casual investigations, of allegedly haunted locations.  That describes a majority of ghost hunters who are starting out, but if you are in that group, please beware. Don’t take the paranormal so lightly and always go in at least a group of two!  I wouldn’t recommend going at all if you are a vulnerable soul because you may be followed or overtaken. Speaking from actual experience, the force and strength an entity holds is beyond incredible. The following video is of three Wisconsin teenagers who have very little to do on a Halloween night so one learns of a legendary nearby haunted cemetery. The site also lists a dare and they decide to see for themselves if the stories are true.  I googled the site, but couldn’t find it.  For a list of haunted spots for Toronto, or your city, hit the web and you will surely obtain ample listings for public places with rumored activity.