Tag: paranormal

Antiques Roadshow’s most haunted family heirlooms – and their eye-watering values

Antiques Roadshow has made some lucky Brits quite a pretty penny over the years.

The beloved BBC One show has been uncovering some of the most valuable gems hidden in away in attics up and down the country since 1979. The long-running show never fails to shock viewers with eye-watering values for their forgotten possessions.

Some hopefuls are left downhearted being told their prized artefacts are worth close to nothing. Yet sometimes an unsuspecting collector will bring in an item worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But it’s fair to say many of the antiques have left a lasting impression on many of the experts and viewers at home – and it’s not for their jaw-dropping value. Over the years many contestants have brought along their haunted possessions to be sold at auction to rid them of their terrifying effects.

To mark the 45th anniversary of the fan-favourite show, Daily Star has taken a deep dive inside the programme’s most valuable haunted antiques.

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Mystery of Massachusetts’ ‘Monsterland’ – a five-mile stretch of unchartered woods where locals claim they’ve seen flying saucers, glowing orange orbs and BIG FOOT

Deep in the heart of Massachusetts is a spooky place known as ‘Monsterland’ – a five-mile stretch famed for its paranormal activity.

For centuries, the eerie woods that line the small city of Leominster, near Boston, have been a hotbed for rumored sightings of UFOs, strange glowing orbs and even BigFoot himself. 

Some say these mysterious tales first began surfacing in the New England town in the 1800s, with locals sharing stories about a berry-eating beast. 

But suspicions really took off in the 50s after a man claimed in a local bar that he had encountered a ‘monster’ – before vanishing when he left to track it down. 

Since then there reported supernatural sightings have only increased, earning the area its ominous nickname and attracting Big Foot hunters from all over the country. 

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The True Stories Behind 6 Haunted House Movies

The latter part of the 20th century was rife with paranormal activity. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, supposed supernatural incidents occurred in homes across the globe and led to novels being written and filmmakers adapting those ghost stories into hit films.

Though all of these stories have since been debunked, there are those who still want to believe that these events really did happen. Regardless of which side you stand on, they make for some spooky tales. Here are the true stories behind six of the best haunted house movies.

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SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE OCCULT: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE

Belief in fairies, ghosts and other supernatural phenomena may seem to have little to do with science and its technologies. But such beliefs—often called ‘occult’—have a long shared history with science.

This story looks at the role played by imaging technologies, such as photography and X-rays, in the history of the supernatural, and how photographers and scientists like William Hope and William Crookes tried to use images to reveal a hidden world.

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY AND WILLIAM HOPE

Can cameras capture ‘spirits’ invisible to the naked eye? From the mid-19th century onwards, many have believed so. The photographs below were taken by the British medium and photographer William Hope around 1920. After his photographic plates were developed, ghostly faces which had not been visible in the room itself mysteriously appeared. Hope and others claimed that they belonged to spirits of the dead.

The earliest known spirit photographs were taken in America in 1861, some years after the spiritualist craze began sweeping the world. Spiritualists believe that the spirit continues to exist and act in the world after death, including interacting with the living. Spectacular displays of ‘spirit’ phenomena during séances were central to spiritualist belief, from mysterious rappings to full-on spirit materialisations. Spirit photography seemed to empirically capture these often elusive phenomena, serving to confirm spiritualist understandings of reality.

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10 Unsettling Truths About the Crying Boy Paintings Curse

A series of portraits, dubbed the Crying Boy paintings, features a young ragamuffin with large eyes that meet the viewers to establish an instant connection. Complete with fresh tears streaming down his face, the perfectly captured expression of despair evokes a strong emotional reaction. The image was designed to pull at the heartstrings of its viewers, and it did just that.

The Crying Boy series gained fame in the UK, and other parts of the world, with thousands of prints purchased and displayed in homes and businesses. However, when terrifying events accompanied the paintings, many began to question if there was something sinister attached to them. Rumors spread of a curse that was so evil it destroyed its subject and creator and damaged the homes and lives of anyone who purchased one of the prints. Skeptics, on the other hand, provided other explanations. Many seem to have an opinion on this story, from urban legend and a cursed myth to media hysteria and a bid to sell more papers.

Decide what you believe about the curse after hearing these ten unsettling facts about the Crying Boy paintings.

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The ghosts in Scotland that ’emerge in June’ including phantom piper and hounds

With summer having now truly begun, you may think that spooky season is many months away.

However, just because the sun is shining and the temperature is rising, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t unexplained phenomena occurring. June in particular is said to see many creepy occurrences each year in and around Scotland.

From spooky castles to historic city pubs, no matter where you are in the country, you aren’t likely to be far from somewhere said to have a supernatural presence. In June, however, it is the site of an old Angus farm and a ruined Borders tower that you are most likely to experience strange goings on.

The Paranormal Database has compiled a list of the ghosts across Scotland that are believed to come out only during the sixth month of the year.

Read on for a summary of some of the spirits that you may see this month in Scotland if you’re in the right place at the right time.

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Inside the ‘Gateway Process,’ the CIA’s Quest to Decode Consciousness and Unlock Time Travel

In 1983, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Wayne M. McDonnell was asked to write a report for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) about a project called the Gateway Process. His report, declassified in 2003, gives the “scientific” underpinnings—as well as instructions and technical assistance—to help people convert the energy of their minds and bodies into a kind of laser beam that can transcend spacetime. The goal was to “gain access to the … intuitive knowledge which the universe offers,” as well as travel in time and commune with other-dimensional beings.

Even more intriguing, one seemingly crucial part of the document, page 25, went missing for 40 years.

For a lot of people, hearing about this report was right up there with finding out that the CIA had tested clairvoyance as a spying tool, or that U.S. Department of Defense had been secretly collecting data on Unidentified Flying Objects, even as it labeled UFO spotters as crazy. Non-scientists have long been frustrated by scientists claiming the exclusive right to pose implausible theories with impunity. After all, scientists expect to be believed when they say that 95 percent of what’s in the universe is invisible, composed of dark matter and dark energy. They say it’s conceptually possible that, as in The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, we create new timeline universes through daily decisions. And many lauded scientists embrace string theory, which suggests our universe might be a multi-dimensional hologram.

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Ex-Military Intelligence Officer Reveals PSI Psychic Unit Used Remote Viewing to Predict Disasters

Retired U.S. Army Major Ed Dames is one of very few people with specialized knowledge of remote viewing as developed by U.S. military intelligence. Remote viewing operations are now declassified, though they were kept under wraps for decades. The power of remote viewing, an extra-sensory perception involving seeing distant places and people through one’s inner eye, is explored on Major Dames’s website.

He now teaches this skillset to the public and says successful predictions include the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, and Hurricane Irene in the United States.

Awards Major Dames has earned for his work for the U.S. government are testaments to the success of his remote viewing course. One award, cited in a video on Major Dames’s website, states: “His insightful threat analysis has contributed significantly to this country’s ability to maintain its military superiority.”

Another states: “Dames identified and confirmed the existence of an entirely new Soviet offensive weapon, and then personally briefed senior officials of the National Intelligence Agencies regarding the significance of this new Soviet capability.”

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Why Carl Sagan Believed “Reincarnation Deserves Serious Study”

Late planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator Carl Sagan, who was well known for being a “hard” and rigid scientist, was actually a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). Not many scientists even entertain the possibility that what we call “paranormal” may in fact be real and in some way provable using the scientific method.

Sagan was quite famous, yet his interest in the paranormal was and is not really known amongst the general population

He once wrote that “there are three claims in the (parapsychology) field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study with the third being that young children sometimes report details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”

He wrote this in 1996. It’s now more than two decades later and the number of examples and evidence accumulated suggesting that reincarnation, or at least some form it, is real is quite eye-opening.

Serious scientific study of reincarnation has spanned the last several decades. There are many interesting cases of children remembering details they could not have obtained from anywhere else.

For example, a report published in 2016 in the journal Explore titled “The Case of James Leininger: An American Case of the Reincarnation Type” published by Jim B. Tucker, MD from the University of Virginia, explains,

Numerous cases of young children who report memories of previous lives have been studied over the last 50 years. Though such cases are more easily found in cultures that have a general belief in reincarnation, they occur in the West as well. This article describes the case of James Leininger, an American child who at age two began having intense nightmares of a plane crash. He then described being an American pilot who was killed when his plane was shot down by the Japanese. He gave details that included the name of an American aircraft carrier, the first and last name of a friend who was on the ship with him, and a location and other specifics about the fatal crash. His parents eventually discovered close correspondence between James’ statements and the death of a World War II pilot named James Huston. Documentation of James’ statements that was made before Huston was identified includes a television interview with his parents that never aired but which the author has been able to review.

At the age of two, James’ father was looking through a book called  The Battle for Iwo Jima 1945. His father reports that James pointed to a picture showing an aerial view of the base of the island, where Mt. Suribachi, a dormant volcano, sits, and said, “That’s where my plane was shot down.” His father said, “What?” and James responded, “My airplane got shot down there, Daddy.” That’s when it all started.  This is one of many cases that are similar. In this case James demonstrated knowledge of events from 50 years before he was born. Many of his accurate statements  were documented before the previous personality was identified.

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Archeologists Unearth ‘Vampire’ Buried in Poland Pinned By Sickle in Her Grave

The local population has believed that some of their neighbors could be vampires and return from the dead to feast on the living for centuries. The superstition led to some unusual burial techniques for those suspected to be a vampire. How locals determined if a person was undead, however, remains unclear.

Archeologists from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland have unearthed an unusual, if not unique, grave of a “vampire” – at least so thought to be by relatives or those who buried her near the city of Pień, Poland in the 17th century.

Was it the pale skin, nasty temperament, midnight shenanigans or distaste for garlic and silverware? Researchers do not know what led locals to believe that the woman was a vampire, but they sure did try to make sure she never rose from the grave again. The deceased was pinned in her tomb by a sickle, with the sharp edge touching her neck so that if she had second thoughts about dying, she would cut her head off trying to escape the coffin.

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