Have You Seen Shadow People? Help With a Research Project!

Ever since my first Shadow Person sighting in 2002, I've been very interested in learning more about the phenomena. These bizarre encounters span the globe and have so many similarities that, as far as paranormal experiences go, I feel they fall into a category all their own.

Because of my personal connection to the phenomena, I have decided to combine my nine-years of study with the responses of others who have had these close encounters in the form of a research paper for the Rhine Institute. This is where I hope you can help.

If you have had a run-in with Shadow People, I'd love it if you could take a few minutes to answer a brief questionnaire. Know a friend who has had an experience? Pass along the link to them! My goal is to have responses from at least 500 people by August 1, 2011. Let's make it happen!

Click here to complete the Shadow People Questionnaire.

Book Review: Baltimore Volume 1: The Plague Ships by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden, and Ben Stenbeck

No, I do not read solely for the sake of research - I also read for the pleasure of reading, to appease my longing for a carefully crafted and eloquently told story. That desire was certainly met when I read Mignola and Golden's illustrated novel, Baltimore: Or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire in 2007, and once again by the most recent installment of the story, The Plague Ships.

The novel introduced Lord Henry Baltimore, a member of the British aristocracy who had left his family behind to serve his country in the battlefields of France during World War I. While in the trenches, he discovered something far more terrifying than the Hessian savagery he had expected. Injured and nearly delirious, Baltimore witnessed an ancient evil feeding on the dead and dying, and then he fought back against it. His out-lash and determination to survive ignited another war, one much worse than the battle between nations - a war between humanity and a vampire horde.

The Plague caused by the vampires infested Europe in waves, bringing WWI to an end. Years have passed, and people in every town and village live in fear of strangers, the dark, and the dead who do not always stay dead. It is at this point where we step into Baltimore Volume 1: The Plague Ships, a graphic novel that introduces the next turn in the title character's fate.

Baltimore, on a quest to destroy the leader of the vampires, finds himself with an unlikely companion during one leg of his journey, and the two fight together against the undead and find an astonishing clue about the origins and perpetuation of the vampire plague. The images during these scenes pull no punches, and have most certainly pushed (maybe even distorted) the boundaries of horror comics. There is no gore simply for gore's sake, mind you, every frame adds another tiny glimpse of Baltimore's inner struggle.

Mignola and Golden truly shine in their storytelling, while Ben Stenbeck (of Living With the Dead) does a stunning job of adapting Mignola's artwork for this action-filled graphic novel. This is the first up-close look the reader really has of Lord Baltimore, and he is every bit the scarred and stoic action hero one hopes him to be.

While the horror comics of decades past were heavily plot-driven, Baltimore Volume 1: The Plague Ships draws the reader in and propels him forward with the instant allure of the book's title character. This dark and moody story is reminiscent of Mignola's earlier Hellboy volumes, but seems to delve much deeper into the shadows without the safety of Hellboy's wisecracks and comic relief.

I fell in love with the beautiful balance of action and emotion in this graphic novel. Because of that, I give it two thumbs up. If you're a fan of the horror genre but have never crossed the borders into the realm of comics or graphic novels, I urge to you dive in with Lord Baltimore!

Baltimore Volume 1: The Plague Ships is scheduled for release from Dark Horse Comics on June 28, 2011.

Book Review: A History of Ghosts by Peter Aykroyd

It's seldom I will shell out the cash for a hardcover edition of any book, but I grabbed up A History of Ghosts: The True Story of Seances, Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghostbusters by Peter H. Aykroyd and Angela Narth as soon as it was released. Why? Because I'm a hopeless fan of the Ghostbusters movies and couldn't wait to read about the actual events in the Aykroyd family history that inspired the films. Sadly, it was not at all what I had hoped it would be.

I felt a little mislead by the title of this book, for one thing. It is not a historical look at paranormal activity at all - it is instead a summary of the Spiritualist religion in the United States and Canada. If you've ever been curious about the formation of the church and the most famous mediums from its first 100 years, this book provides a decent overview for the casual reader. Peter Aykroyd provides a glimpse at the researchers, like Charles Richet and Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, who were out to expose the frauds in the field, but the author makes only a short reference to one of the staunchest skeptics out to expose the Spiritualist church - Harry Houdini. As so many of the mediums highlighted in A History of Ghosts were exposed as having resorted to tricks and deception, I feel the book could use a little more attention paid to those investigators, like Houdini, who revealed the most convincing trickery.

The most colorful and entertaining parts of the this book were the tales of the Aykroyd circles (seances held in the dining room of the author's grandparents) and the communications between the family's medium, Walter, and his spirit guides. I wish that there had been more of these first-person accounts and less encyclopedic profiles of Spiritualist "celebrities", but alas, what is done is done.

For those new to the ideas of mediumship and channeling, Peter Aykroyd does a wonderful job of explaining the practices of automatic writing, table tipping, early spirit photography, slate writing, materialization, and direct-voice mediumship. While he touches on the study of electronic voice phenomena (EVP), he is quick to discount the findings as natural artifacts of the recordings, while he openly accepts the spirit communications through a human medium as absolute truth. His lack of objectivity on the subject was incredibly frustrating for me as a reader (likely because our opinions differ drastically) but I'm sure such is not the case for all.

I'm not really sure which events from the Aykroyd circles were those that inspired the author's son to write Ghostbusters as they were never clearly identified as such. Maybe the constant talk of spirit contact and the open mind the family has about the afterlife were more influential than any specific encounter? I guess only the Aykroyd men know for sure.

I know it may sound like I've been harsh on A History of Ghosts, but I really felt like there was a bit of "bait and switch" going on with the packaging and marketing of the book. The content itself is a great overview of the activities surrounding the Spiritualist boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is ideal for those seeking a quick and easy read to introduce them to the subject, but a "history of ghosts" it is not.

Overall, I give this book only one thumb up because of its weak cohesion. I encourage you to form your own opinion by picking up a copy and putting it to the test yourself. Peter Aykoyd is 90 years old and currently suffering from rapidly degenerating eyesight. To learn more about him, check out his interview with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM.

Adventures in Kentucky

I've just returned from another exciting adventure, this time at Waverly Hills Sanitorium in Louisville, Kentucky. I feel I should confess - Waverly Hills was at the top of my "Do Not Want" list for many years. I turned down several invitations to investigate there, but a recent dream completely changed my thinking.

In the dream, I was walking down long green and white linoleum halls and could smell the sickening combination of sweat, blood, and iodine. It was icy cold, but none of the people I saw were complaining - they all smiled and laughed. Some played cards and others chatted with nurses and other patients. Bright sunbeams flooded the corridor and made the place seem more like a cheery community center than a building where the terminally ill went to die.

Seeing Waverly like this in a dream really made me stop and examine my reasons for having avoided it in the past. I had been so focused on the negative aspects of the site that I completely lost touch with the positive. This realization opened me up to a great opportunity, one that I am extremely appreciative of and very happy to have accepted.

During my visit to Waverly Hills, I had some free time and spent it roaming the third and fourth floors for more than an hour. While I certainly did not feel alone, I never felt anything malicious either. In fact, that time "alone" in the halls was the highlight of my trip.