Tag: paranormal

4 creepy ghost stories from the Vietnam War

In Spring 1993, a Vietnamese farmer was on his way to work his rice paddy when he passed his wife and children in the road. The wife sat on a rock and greeted him “scornfully,” as his children cowered behind their mother. The meeting shocked the farmer, as his wife and his three children were killed when their village was attacked in 1968, and his house was burned to the ground.

Ghost stories like these are told across Vietnam, where rural communities attach great significance to spiritual encounters. In this case, the man understood his wife’s grave had been disturbed in the village’s recent developments, and he immediately set out to give them a proper reburial.

But there are many, many more ghost stories throughout the country, some relevant to the American War fought there. Many of those persist to this day.

Saigon’s Haunted Apartments

The building at 727 Tran Hung Dao in Ho Chi Minh City—once known as Saigon—was a building that housed American service members for much of the Vietnam War. But its construction was plagued by accidents from the get-go, some of which killed the workers building it. Many blamed it on the number of floors the building had, 13, which was considered unlucky.

To assuage their fears and complete the building, the architect decided to call in a shaman to rectify the building’s feng shui-like issues. It’s said the shaman brought the dead bodies of four virgins from the local hospital and buried them at the four corners of the building, which would protect it from evil spirits.

To this day, residents report hearing screams of horror in the middle of the night, the sound of a military parade on the march through the building, and the apparition of a spectral American GI walking, holding hands with his Vietnamese girlfriend.

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Most Americans say they have experienced at least one paranormal event

As this fall’s spooky season was beginning, a new YouGov poll asked Americans about their paranormal experiences. Most Americans say they’ve had at least one paranormal experience, and many believe that they personally have a paranormal ability.

60% of Americans say they have had at least one of 13 paranormal experiences, down slightly from 67% in October 2022. The most common paranormal events Americans say they have experienced — among the 13 asked about — are feeling a presence or unknown energy (35%), smelling an unexplained odor (32%), hearing an unexplained sound or music (31%), hearing the voice of someone who wasn’t there (26%), and feeling an unexplained change in temperature (26%).

Not many Americans say they have seen a demon (7%), seen unexplained smoke (9%), or seen an angel (10%).

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Story Time: My Trip to the Skinwalker Ranch

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!

– Traditional Scottish Prayer 

After I posted my Weekend Parting Shot Friday night, enough people responded that they would like to hear the stories of my visit to Skinwalker Ranch and my UFO sighting, that I decided to go ahead and pen another column, rather than relegating it to a comment response. 

 Two disclaimers:

  1. If you are here for hard news, political commentary, or want to own the libs, that’s fine, I get it, and we have no shortage of talented writers here who are doing that as I write this. At my heart, I am more of a storyteller and less of a journalist than I used to be. If you feel compelled to hit the “Back” button, I completely understand.
  2. There is no “big reveal” at the end of these stories. I did not slip into a parallel dimension, I did not receive any esoteric knowledge, and I was not abducted and *ahem* “probed. The only thing that sets these stories apart from much of the rest of the stuff on the internet is that they are true.

So, if that tracks for you, poke up your fire if you have one, open the beverage of your choice, and I’ll tell you the tales.

Story 1

It was back in 2003, and I was the fire warden for Uintah and Daggett counties in Utah. I was not working for the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, or the NPS. A fire warden is an employee of the Utah Department of Natural Resources and the Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands.

If we were not assigned to a fire, we were either issuing permits or doing fuels mitigation. Fuels mitigation is a technical term for removing combustible material from an area to reduce fire danger. And, since it was still early in the season, we were usually working on a fuels project.

If you look at a map of Utah in the northeast corner, you will see Flaming Gorge Reservoir and National Recreation Area. On the Utah side, there is a cluster of vacation homes known as Flaming Gorge Acres. That is where I was working the day the call came in. Flaming Gorge is a wonderful place to work during the summer. You are up high in the mountains, the sky is usually clear and blue, the air is clean, and about the time you are starting to feel the heat, a summer thunderstorm rolls through around lunch time to cool things off. Honestly, there isn’t a corner office in the world that has it beat.   

We had spent the day cutting down trees and limbing and bucking them for later disposal, and running what we could through a Vermeer chipper approximately the size of New Jersey. It was quitting time, and I was covered in needles, sap, dirt, bits of wood, and sweat, accented with a few dabs of saw fuel and oil. I was so tired that I was hoping we didn’t pop a smoke somewhere, since all I wanted to do was find a hot shower and a cold beer. Not necessarily in that order, and possibly at the same time. As I was packing up the engine, I got a call on my cell. A very nice lady wanted to know if I could swing by and give her a burn permit. She was out near Randlett. 

Randlett was founded in the 1800s and is largely populated by members of the Ute Indian Tribe, although at one time, there were a number of ranches and farms owned by non-Indians in the area. I haven’t been back in a while, so I don’t know if anything has changed. One of the problems complicating boundary disputes involving the Uintah & Ouray Reservation is that much of the land is checkerboarded, meaning that one parcel might be privately owned, another by the state, the next by the Ute Tribe, and the one after that by some other federal entity. I lived in Randlett back when I did a mission for the Episcopal Church. Where it has not been cultivated, much of it is high desert and covered in sagebrush. It is also about a two-hour drive from Flaming Gorge Acres, and I was beat. I asked the lady if I could swing by the next day. She said that would be fine and that she was at “The UFO Ranch.” 

I said I’d be there first thing in the morning. 

Since this was in the days before cell phone maps and GPS apps, I got very careful directions from her. Then I went off to find my beer and shower.

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A Billionaire, a Psychic and a Bad Investment: The Friendship Breakup from Hell

“OH, MY GOD,” said Taylor Thomson, clapping her eyes on Ashley Richardson for the first time. “You have those fabulous heroin-chic arms.”

It was 2009. Both women were lounging in the backyard at the Malibu home of Beau St. Clair, a film producer and mutual friend. Richardson, wearing a muscle tee over her bikini, basked in the sun while Thomson sat fully covered in a flowy outfit and a hat. Her then-10-year-old daughter clutched a hot-pink mini Birkin.

Richardson, a lanky, 6-foot-tall blonde, was a free spirit who went on to build a career designing social-media campaigns for companies like Ford Motor and McDonald’s. Thomson was an heiress to Canada’s wealthiest family. An eccentric with a self-deprecating sense of humor, she went to dinners and parties with wild hair and drapey, distressed clothes by California designer Rick Owens. “She was this subversive, secret billionaire,” says one mutual friend.

But a few crucial commonalities—a shared silliness, a love for animals and a deep spirituality—drew them together. Thomson liked that Richardson had spent five years in India working with a spiritual leader named Amma, the so-called hugging saint. Richardson bonded with Thomson’s daughter, whom she recalls as precocious and “a quirky little being.”

“Taylor is a Holly Golightly, adventurous bohemian spirit,” says Richardson. “She has this big beautiful heart when she lets her guard down.” Both women have ADHD, she adds. “Because of that, I think we got each other.”

Richardson soon became part of a small Los Angeles friend group that Thomson called her inner sanctum. Whenever Thomson would land in Los Angeles, says Richardson, her phone would blow up. The women, often with Richardson’s girlfriend, would order Nobu takeout and pair it with tequila at Thomson’s beach house. Richardson made Sunday dinners and frittatas at the heiress’s Bel Air mansion. When Thomson had staff there, her assistants chopped onions. When she didn’t, Thomson was the first to do the dishes, and Richardson taught Thomson’s eager then-teenage daughter how to roast potatoes. For New Year’s Eve, they planned a menu that included chocolates and truffles. “Also an onion to chop for caviar,” reminded Thomson in a text message at the time.

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Utah Rancher Enlists Paranormal Investigators in Cattle Mutilation Case

A Utah rancher who lost one of his bulls to a cattle mutilation earlier this summer enlisted paranormal researchers and other experts to look at the curious case, and their collective findings were rather remarkable. Paul Martinez discovered the downed animal on his property back in July, and the incident made headlines in late August. Speaking to a local media outlet last week, the rancher revealed several intriguing details about the case that came to light throughout the summer when he allowed an array of intrigued individuals to examine the animal and the scene of the strange slaying.

The first such weird insight came to light around 10 weeks after the incident, when livestock investigator Rob Wilcox used a metal detector on the downed bull, which remained where it had been killed. Strangely, he noted, something about the creature’s carcass or the land around it activated the device. Even stranger was that, following his visit to the site, the metal detector stopped functioning. Meanwhile, paranormal investigator Ryan Burns, who was also brought on to study the situation, recounted how the land around the downed bull was particularly peculiar in that it was “like walking on memory foam,” which only held tracks for “about an hour” before they “just disappeared.”

Another interested party invited to visit the ranch was Dustin Eskelsen, who serves as the director of the Mutual UFO Network’s Utah branch. He extracted soil samples from the location of the mutilation as well as 25 feet away and sent them off to a lab for testing. While the results were fairly routine, a significant difference in sulfur levels stood out as being unusual to Eskelsen. Similar tests done by Utah’s Department of Agriculture found contrasting calcium and iron levels between the target area and a control area.

Martinez’s rigorous attempt at figuring out what happened to his bull extended even further as he also turned to Johnny Alberto Gamiochippi, of the Northern Ute Tribe, who posited that something could have disturbed ancient spirits at the site. To that end, the pair pointed to a bizarre incident that occurred a few weeks before the cattle mutilation in which an intoxicated man escaped from police custody and wound up on Martinez’s ranch, where he stole his ATV and led police on a wild chase. “He might have been possessed by some demons,” Gamiochippi mused, suggesting that the sinister spirits then somehow turned their attention to the unfortunate bull.

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Cognitive Neuroscientist Claims ‘Gut Feeling’ Could Be a Memory From the Future

Precognition can have a scientific basis, according to some researchers. The assertion is shocking, as the practice is typically not associated with logic. The practice is essentially “gut feelings” that a human has about an incident that could happen in the future, according to Popular Mechanics. Across decades, many people have come forward with their claims of being able to predict the future. Many have believed, but several have responded with scepticism. Cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge herself claims to have this capability. Now, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has entered this debate by declassifying its extensive research on the topic, and the results support the believers. 

Examples of Precognition

Fatih Ozcan claimed in 2012 that he and his boss won a lottery due to his precognition dream, according to The Guardian. Other remarkable stories include Daz Smith using his psychic skills to predict cryptocurrency trends, and Michael D Austin hiring several “remote viewers” for his company, Soul Rider, to offer financial advice. Mossbridge has been recording her psychic dreams since the age of seven. These skills also have roots in ancient times, with several cultures, like the Tibetans, using precognition from shamans for various purposes.

CIA’s Take

CIA’s documents detailed several psychics who were using “remote viewing” to search for certain targets to help authorities, in both the past and present. These documents came to light in 1995 and were related to a project called “Stargate,” which spent around $20 million on this methodology for around two decades, since the 1970s. One of the major successes of this method was noted in 1976, when a psychic called Rosemary Smith found the location of a lost Soviet plane. The files concluded with a glowing review of the process and stated, “remote viewers can be used as collectors in conjunction with other intelligence sources.”

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Authorities Share New Details About Paranormal Investigator Found Dead After Touring ‘Possessed’ Annabelle Doll

Authorities in Pennsylvania are offering new details about the paranormal investigator who died suddenly while on tour displaying a supposedly haunted Raggedy Ann doll named Annabelle.

Dan Rivera, 54, a senior lead investigator for the Connecticut-based New England Society for Psychic Research, died on Sunday, July 13, during his visit to Gettysburg as part of the Devils on the Run tour, the Evening Sun earlier reported.

On Wednesday, July 16, the Pennsylvania State Police shared a report detailing what happened to Rivera on Sunday.

“Members from PSP Gettysburg responded to a hotel in Straban Township, Adams County for a report of a deceased [man],” officials said. “The decedent was discovered in his hotel room by workers.”

“Nothing unusual or suspicious was observed at the scene,” the agency added. His cause of death is pending.

Rivera had been with colleagues on Sunday morning but said he feeling sick and was going back to his room, Abrams County Coroner Francis Dutrow confirms to PEOPLE.

It’s unclear what Rivera may have been ill with; further information is pending his autopsy results.

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Paranormal Investigator Dies Suddenly While on Tour With “Haunted” Annabelle Doll

A paranormal investigator has died while touring with the infamous “haunted” Annabelle doll.

Dan Rivera, 54, died on Sunday night while he was in Pennsylvania with the Annabelle doll as part of his “Devils on the Run” tour.

Adams County medics and firefighters were called to Rivera’s hotel room on Sunday and gave him CPR, but he was later pronounced dead.

The cause of his death is still under investigation.

Per TMZ:

A paranormal investigator on his creepy “haunted” Annabelle doll tour in the “haunted” battlefield town of Gettysburg has died … completely out of the blue.

Dan Rivera, 54, was in Pennsylvania for his “Devils on the Run” tour — hauling the infamous doll across the country — when firefighters and medics rushed to his hotel Sunday night.

Adams County dispatch logs reveal a call for CPR in progress on a man matching Rivera’s age. Rivera’s death was confirmed by the New England Society for Psychic Research, where he was the lead investigator. His exact cause of death remains unclear.

Rivera, a fixture in the paranormal world, was doing what he loved — bringing spooky legends to life — when tragedy hit. He’d built serious ghost-hunting cred and a social media following off the eerie superstitions tied to Annabelle’s haunted past.

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Why Scholars Should Take Accounts of Supernatural Phenomena Seriously — And How it Might Save the Humanities

For a decade and a half, Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal has been advocating for the field of religious studies to not only take reports of alien abductions and visits from the dead as seriously as accounts of miracles, but to ask very different questions about “impossible” experiences and phenomena. His research suggests that these questions have actually haunted the humanities since the beginning, and they may be essential to saving the future of the humanities from obscurity and defunding.

Reading Kripal’s work—and especially looking at the footnotes—I’m struck by how thoughtfully he listens to his fellow humans, whether it’s alien abductees and other “experiencers” who are ridiculed by nearly everyone, or his graduate students (many of whom Kripal thanks for exposing him to new theorists and emerging fields of study). It also includes closely reading the canon of the humanities—from Nietzsche to Zora Neale Hurston—to rediscover what these figures really said about the hidden dimensions of reality. Yet after synthesizing all this data, Kripal told me, “I am not well enough read.” If Kripal is a crank, he’s an erudite and humble one.

Despite this singular body of work, How to Think Impossibly may be Kripal’s strangest book yet. It describes encounters with mantis-like aliens and other things that serious scholars aren’t supposed to take seriously. But Kripal clearly believes that religion scholars have no right to analyze the experiences of saints and mystics while scoffing at reports of ghosts and UFOs. It’s what prompted him to launch Rice University’s “Archives of the Impossible,” which collects documentation on “historical events and common human experiences that are not supposed to happen but clearly do.” Perhaps these impossible things aren’t quite so impossible if we’re willing to question our assumptions about time, the universe, and ourselves. For Kripal, such a reassessment doesn’t involve being uncritical, but rather doubly critical: It entails taking the hermeneutics of suspicion that has saturated the humanities and turning it back on scholars, challenging them to question their assumptions and take stock of their exclusions.

In our recent interview, an edited and condensed version of which appears below, Kripal shares his theory on why impossible things happen, suggests that altered states may help us understand certain texts, and addresses some of the criticisms he’s likely to receive.

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The True Story Behind The Conjuring: Where Is the Perron Family Now?

The Conjuring has spooked audiences for over a decade since its release, but the premise of the movie isn’t as fictitious as people may think.

The horror movie premiered in theaters in 2013 and quickly became a smash hit, grossing over $320 million at the global box office. The movie starred Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston as Roger and Carolyn Perron, two parents who try to protect their children from malicious spirits in their new home.

Desperate for help, the parents call in paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson), who reveal that the spirit of an alleged witch named Bathsheba Sherman is the one harming the family.

The Conjuring transformed the Warrens into folk heroes and turned the Rhode Island farmhouse where the events supposedly took place into a tourist hotspot. In 2022, the home was sold for a whopping $1.5 million, thanks to the film’s fame.

However, while the movie is based on the Perrons’ true experiences, the majority of the film is fictionalized.

“Even though The Conjuring is an excellent film for what it is, it’s about 95 percent fiction and about five percent hard truth,” the Perrons’ daughter, Andrea Perron, told Canada’s Global News in 2021.

But what’s the true story behind the notorious haunting, and where is the real Perron family now? Here’s everything to know about the tale that inspired The Conjuring.

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