Seven Sisters Inn May be Calling Your From Beyond

Sunch a pretty house ... Heading to Florida? Want an encounter with the other side? Check out the pink and purple Victorian Seven Sisters Inn.

Inside, the air is heavier and sometimes cold. Slow piano music plays interminably, interrupted by the creaks and rumbles made by any 120-year-old structure.

But is there more to those sounds, those rushes of air and subtle drafts, those flickering of lights? The personalities for the SciFi Channel believe so, so much so that they will feature the inn during Wednesday night's episode of "Ghost Hunters."

Inn owners Bonnie Morehardt and Ken Oden say they don't need spiritual mediums and paranormal experts to tell them their homes are haunted. They've already seen enough.
"There is a feeling of energy here," Morehardt said Monday afternoon. "I think the spirits are here to care for the building and to care for us. It's a protective thing.

"But there are definitely different feelings at each house."

The Scott House, the pink-colored home on the property, is the older of the two and, Morehardt says, the brighter. Built in 1888, it's hard to keep track of all the possible spirits that may reside within its three stories.

Morehardt says she's seen a mysterious dressed-up woman, a young boy and an old man. Guests at the lodge have told her about a woman wearing white passing through doors and closets and checking them out in the bathroom.

Then there are the little things. Morehardt says she's heard a few shouts, countless footsteps on the old wood floors and the slamming of more than one door. She had to move an end table because she says a ghost kept tipping it over.

"I had this table up in the loft and it got overturned and broken three times," Morehardt said. "I finally just put it in another room. Clearly whoever is there didn't like the table."
Morehardt and inn manager Charlie Childes have trouble lighting candles, keeping the lights on and even keeping the locked front door from opening.

"I'll be sitting in the house by myself with the door locked, and all of a sudden I'll hear the bells on the door," Childes recounted. "I pulled up to the house one time and saw a man dressed like Abraham Lincoln walk right in through a wall."

One of the alleged spirits may have saved Childes life. As he was walking down the open staircase to the home's living room, something caused Childes to trip and fall forward toward a stained-glass window.

"I was falling head first, but something grabbed me with two hands," Childes said. "Then I was about to fall right on the coffee table and someone held me up."
The ghosts can be playful too, Morehardt said. They like to move furniture, flip lights on and off or just move some items to another room. Monday, as she looked around the third-floor loft, Morehardt found a book - "The Lady of the Lake" - that belonged in a downstairs bedroom.
"That's supposed to be in Sylvia's room," she said to Childes.

"Well, it wasn't here yesterday when I was up here," Childes answered back.

As playful and helpful the spirits in the pink house may be, Morehardt said, the same does not apply to the purple home next door. Built in 1892, the home's bedrooms have been outfitted with decor from across the world. Rooms pay tribute to France, China, Egypt and India, countries diverse enough to bring with them a diverse clash of spirits.

"You will hear fighting and arguing in these rooms," Morehardt said.

It's not the environment Childes prefers. He works the day shift and tries to stay away from the purple home at all costs.

"I don't like being here at night," he said. "When I walk into the other house, it's like walking into my mom's house. This one is darker."

Both homes will be featured on SciFi Wednesday at 9 p.m. For more information on Seven Sisters Inn, call 352-867-1170. (source)

WWII Ghosts Still Making Noise

It’s not your imagination — maybe that sound in the night really was a moan.

Stories of spirits and unexplained phenomena have persisted on U.S. military bases in the Pacific for years. Doors slam, shadows creep and voices shout in the night. Could it be spirits of the dead reaching out? As costumed ghosts and ghouls hit the streets for Halloween, Stars and Stripes has compiled some accounts of allegedly real ghosts and ghouls to keep the holiday creepy.

Creepy crematorium tale:

Many of the buildings on Yongsan Garrison in South Korea have been there longer than the U.S. military. Some date back to Japan’s occupation of Korea before and during World War II. One of those buildings, near the gas station on the garrison’s South Post, has been surrounded by rumors for years.

“I hate being here at night. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up just talking about it,” said Sgt. 1st Class Riviere Cools, 52nd Medical Battalion as he eyed the squat, red-brick building in the center of his unit’s complex of offices. “I don’t believe in that kind of stuff, but in the back of my mind, there are souls here.”

The entire compound, surrounded by a thick, crumbling, brick wall, was a prison during the occupation. For years, said U.S. Army Garrison spokesman David McNally, soldiers working there have passed along stories claiming that the area, especially the small building in the center, was haunted.

McNally said the building was most likely the prison’s administrative office, but those working around it have a more sinister theory. “Everybody that’s worked in that building right there has either seen something or heard something,” said Staff Sgt. Sae Kim, 52nd Medical Battalion. “Because that’s where they burned people.” McNally was quick to point out there was no evidence to suggest that the building was a crematorium, but that doesn’t stop the stories from spreading. “I haven’t seen any ghosts,” said Sgt. 1st Class Freeman Witherspoon. “But I definitely have heard the rumors. People say they see shadows when they have duty at night.”

The unexplained voice

Stories of strange happenings abound at the base chapel at Camp Zama in Japan. Strange presences in rooms and doors that mysteriously open and close are part of chapel lore, employees say. Some tell stories of strange figures passing by and then disappearing.
“My predecessor said that she used to hear footsteps through the halls late at night,” said Staff Sgt. Desmond West, the Unit Ministry Team noncommissioned officer in charge. Last year, Spc. Jennifer Villagomez, a funds clerk, said she was working late when a voice emanated from her unplugged computer speakers. It sounded like a Japanese man, “like a drill sergeant yelling at a private,” she said. At first, Villagomez said she thought the sounds were a practical joke and called for a sergeant who was the only other person in the building at the time. “And as I heard him come closer to my office, the voice on the speaker went lower and lower until it went away, just before he walked in the room,” Villagomez said. She said that since that incident, she tries not to be the last person to in the office at night. Sgt. Joshua Lee, who works at the chapel with Villagomez, said he didn’t hear the voice that night but has witnessed other strange occurrences. Chapel lights switch on and doors open seemingly on their own, Lee said. West, who has worked in the chapel for four years, said he has never seen or heard anything peculiar. “But the day I start hearing things, I’m running out of here,” he said.

Ghosts crowd Okinawa

Reportedly haunted sites can be found around almost any corner on and off Okinawa bases. So many ghost stories abound that Marine Corps Community Services and 18th Services Squadron on Kadena Air Base both run special Halloween spooky sites tours that sell out weeks in advance. Web sites and a book on the subject — Jayne A. Hitchcock’s “The Ghosts of Okinawa” — celebrate the local haunts.

A World War II soldier is said to roam Gate 3 on Camp Hansen in blood-splattered fatigues asking sentries to light his cigarette. Marines refused to stand guard due to the haunting, and the gate was eventually closed, according to Hitchcock.

Camp Foster is said to be the home of a ghostly samurai warrior who eternally travels from Stillwell Drive uphill toward Futenma Housing.

Kadena Air Base also has its ghost stories.

A small house behind the Kadena United Services Organization, numbered 2283, is now used for storage because, it is said, no one willingly lives in it for long. Some say the house remains haunted after a man murdered his family there. Others say the house rests on an ancient burial site, and the souls of the dead beneath are restless.

Kadena’s golf course might be the site where in 1945 a group of high-school girls pressed into service in the Japanese Imperial Army committed suicide, according to another yarn. The spirits of the dead girls are said to still haunt the land.

Off-base, half-finished buildings are abandoned due to reports of ghostly visitors.

Construction of the Royal Hotel off Route 329, near the Nakagusuku Castle ruins, was begun some three decades ago — possibly on a sacred site. Mysterious accidents and deaths drove workers to abandon construction.

Meanwhile, at Maeda Point, there is rumored to be a prophet-of-death ghost.

The elderly Okinawan apparition is said to appear at a tomb that can be seen only from the water, and within days of a sighting, a body is found on a nearby beach.



Christopher B. Stoltz / S&S
A Japanese bunker long rumored to be haunted lies inground at Camp Zama. Military personel claim to have heard a ghost at Camp Zama where haunted base stories are told around Halloween. (Source Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Wednesday, October 31, 2007 )

Halloween Cuteness ... Having a party?

GOOGLE MAPS CATCHES WWII GHOST --- WHEW!

I love this story. I have a great uncle MIA since 12/22/43; who was a pilot in WWII. So this story really intrigues me:

Eagle-eyed Internet sleuths have discovered hundreds of weird aircraft on Google Maps' satellite views, from stealth bombers to bizarre globular UFOs hovering over Florida.

But a map-watcher in England may have topped them all by finding a ghost from World War II captured by satellite cameras flying over his own house.

The mystery plane is a historic and flightworthy Avro Lancaster bomber, one of only two left on Earth.

Now living at the United Kingdom's Coningsby air force base, the Lancaster is one of only two such planes still airworthy. 7,377 of the massive bombers were built for World War II.
Although this Lancaster didn't fly in combat -- the war with Japan ended before it was ready for battle -- it was one of the only Lancasters that wasn't scrapped in the post-war years.
Carefully restored and now painted to look like its famous sister plane, QR-M, this bomber now serves in the Battle of Britain memorial flights.

Known as Mickey the Moocher for its nose painting of the Disney mouse pulling a load of German-frying bombs, the QR-M was one of just 35 Lancasters to survive more than a hundred combat missions.

The Battle of Britain squadron includes 11 historic planes from the Second World War, including a variety of Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes. The beloved old planes fly for special occasions such as VE Day.

"The original purpose of the Memorial Flight was to help celebrate the Allied victory and the anniversary of the end of the Second World War," the RAF says. "It has since become a flying memorial to all members of the Royal Air Force, who lost their lives during the War. The Lancaster bomber, Dakota transport, five Spitfire fighters and two Hurricane fighters represent the types of aircraft which played such important parts in the final victory."

Rather than store the old war planes at a mothballed air base, the Royal Air Force operates a museum that flies:

"The Flight is unique as a living tribute and more evocative than any static memorial. It flies in memory of those who flew. In these days of fast jets, it is a reminder of the remarkable achievements of the men who flew and maintained these historic aircraft in the heat of the great battles of the War."

Of the more than 7,000 built, 3,932 Lancaster bombers were lost in action. In the minds of many British, the Lancaster won the war against Nazi Germany.

The other surviving flightworthy specimen is at the National Lancaster Museum in Canada.

Great Site.... "Dark Stories" ...Unusual and true stories!

Dark Stories is a really cool (and scary) website. Great reads if you like the unusual and a great variety of topics. They are still adding info to the site, and if you have a good yarn to tell, you can send it to them. Plus, Halloween is coming up ... believe me; you can find some great stories for the party or campfire here : ) You will find on this site various texts on subjects if you like the strange one, supernatural stories, mysteries, myths and legends. Topics include: Swindle and forgers; Myths and legends, Eccentric People; Gost Stories and my favorite; Bad luck and coinidiences. Check out this story:

- THE CORNSTALK CURSE -

Almost two centuries before the shadow of the Mothman reared its head in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the land around the Ohio River ran red with blood. As the inhabitants of the American colonies began to push their way to the west, and later fought for their independence from Britain, they entered into deadly combat with the Native American inhabitants of the land. Perhaps their greatest foe in these early Indian wars was Chief Cornstalk, who later became a friend to the Americans. But treachery, deception and murder would bring an end to the chief’s life and a curse that he placed on Point Pleasant would linger for 200 years, bringing tragedy, death and disaster.... (click here for more)

Ghost slip ons .... Shoes by Ed Hardy ... I LOVE THESE!

I'm only posting this because they are called "GHOST" and I really, really like them!!!!!


GHOST/07 - $ 59.98
ROUND TOE SLIP ON

Houdini - A Magician Among the Spirits

What better time to remember Houdini than Halloween? This is a really, really nice site:

Harry Houdini is still considered today as one of the greatest illusionists and magicians in history. In addition to his fantastic escapes and stunts, he was also well known in the 1920’s for his debunking of fraudulent Spiritualist mediums. In this, modern information about Houdini tends to be skewed. Today, many skeptic organizations have claimed Houdini as one of their own, but this is far from the truth. Unlike these groups, Houdini did not start out attacking fake mediums because he did not believe in the supernatural. In fact, he had gone to them in an attempt to try and contact his dead mother, but found that the mediums he met were often frauds. This was when he turned to exposing them, still searching for the truth.
Before his death, Houdini stated that should it be possible to contact the living from the other side, he would do so. The question remains as to whether or not he actually succeeded. Read more here.