"And I'd've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids!"
Posted on 10/07/2006 7:46:41 PM PDT by CurlyBill
By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff | June 26, 2006
MYSTIC, Conn. -- Rain drummed on the deck of the 19th-century whaling ship Charles W. Morgan late Saturday night, as below deck, in the cramped and stuffy captain's quarters, a group of men and women armed with flashlights and digital cameras took their positions.
They were ghost hunters, members of the Rhode Island Paranormal Research Group, who had come to Mystic Seaport, the museum that houses the Morgan, to investigate reports of strange happenings on board the ship. Leaders of the respected maritime museum had agreed to let them roam the 165-year-old vessel, the centerpiece of the collection, for a simple reason: The recent talk of ghosts aboard the Morgan has been a much-needed boon to business.
"Whether they find anything or not, people like that they're looking," said Michael O'Farrell, the publicist for the museum. ``We're not promoting the Charles W. Morgan as a ghost ship -- it's up to you to decide -- but we know people are coming because of [the investigation]."
The paranormal research group became interested in the Charles W. Morgan last fall, after it received e-mails from three people who described similar experiences while visiting the ship on different days last year. All three visitors said they were below deck, in the room where the crew once stripped blubber from whales, when they saw a man dressed in period clothing sitting on a pile of rope and smoking a pipe, said Andrew Laird, the group's director.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Ghost Ping!!
Shermer has a strong opinion of what he will see Monday: nothing. "It's not haunted," said the California-based author and executive director of The Skeptics Society. "Who can say for sure what people saw or thought they saw? It could be a combination of bad food and sleep deprivation."
Now why, just why, would a skeptic want to deprive a sheep
in the first place.
I suggest he eat some Welsh rarebit and get back to me.
I went on a ghost hunt once in college with a professor and 6 or 7 other students. We visited an old Indian burial mound. They were all running around shouting about what they saw but I didn't see a damned thing. I got in my car and went back to the dorm shaking my head in disbelief. So much for ghosts.
Nothing creepier than an empty ship in the middle of the night.
Good midnight reading!
"And I'd've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids!"
There is some thinking that so-called "ghost" sightings are a part of the phenomenon created by the way that time works. Time flows like a river, with twists, curves and bends rather than in a straight line; in other words you may be standing in a particular location in a bend of the river of time and catch a fleeting glimpse of some happening in that same physical spot a hundred years or more before. - For example, we live not too far from a Civil War battlefield (Franklin, TN) There is an old mansion that is still on the site. People have said that they have seen on a particular date a Confederate courier ride up on his horse, jump off and run up the steps to the mansion where the generals were staying at the time of the battle. No. I haven't seen this personally and don't know anyone who has, but have heard that it has happened on the same date (the anniverary of that battle) numerous times in the same manner to different people.
It's just Teddy looking for a drink.
Or is he finally looking for Mary Jo? You know better late then never.
By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff | June 26, 2006
Reminds me years ago of the Boston gay banker who told me things moved around mysteriously in his apartment. This story comes from the all gay every day Boston Globe.
I think your explanation is a good one. I recall reading accounts of apparitions widely seen after the English Civil War. A large group of "ghosts" were seen to be refighting a major battle every day. Some of the original participants in the battle heard of the phenomenon and came to check it out. They were actually able to watch themselves fight again. So this was not the case of frustrated spirits of the dead, as the onlookers were still quite alive; it was some physical aberration in space-time. We do not yet know everything about physics.
"Who you gonna call?"
Another interesting "ghost" type phenomenon occurs in the Smoky Mountains at Cades Cove - only this ghost is an outline of a cabin which has been seen by several people when the light is just right on that particlar site. I read an article recently when we were up there that stated that the trees were getting so big there wasn't enough light to be able to see this apparition very well now. - From the description of the cabin sightings, that one sounds like it is a holograph. I wondered whether or not a cabin on that site might not have been struck by lightning and possibly burned down leaving a holographic effect. - I don't know much about holograms; maybe someone who does can comment as to the possiblity of it. It has to be something explainable, because ghost cabins make less sense than ghosts.
Why would that be? Because if,
"Time flows like a river, with twists, curves and bends rather than in a straight line; in other words you may be standing in a particular location in a bend of the river of time and catch a fleeting glimpse of some happening in that same physical spot a hundred years or more before."
then anything of the seen world would be subject to that same "bend" - cabins, carriages, gunships, etc..
My husband and I have joined a ghost investigation group and are going on our first real investigation at a dance school on Oct. 28th. I'm a skeptic, so I'm going to be looking for natural explanations, but I'm also keeping an open mind. Rule out the natural causes first, then we'll talk paranormal phenomena.
The woman who runs the school said her students have told her they see "whispy things"! LOL!!
I've been to the C.W.M. and stayed at Mystic overnight in our boat as part of the Mystic Seaport Club. I've had access to the museum grounds at night as a child. As much as I'd like to say something interesting happened, nothing ever did, and that's from the perspective of a child with let's say...a "creative imagination".
However I will say that I've had two incidents I'd rather not repeat.
Once was when I was at home in Trumbull, Ct. Lots of "history" there. Apparently my home which I was visiting while in college was having a series of incidents my mother refused to discuss as she was living there with my younger brother and was trying to deny out of existence.
I was looking for my brother who I thought was downstairs (3 story colonial). I had stopped at the top of the staircase downstairs to use the BR. The door was closed but I heard steps coming up the stairs, the stairwar door opened outside of the B.R. door not 3 feet away and shut. I heard the steps going across the kitchen floor which makes a particular sound so you could identify where the person was. I was calling for him to stop because I needed something, don't remember what. I got mad when he wouldn't stop and came bursting out of the BR yelling...and I saw what looked like two white triangles going around the corner across the house into the family room. I thought, "T-Shirt and White Shorts in winter?" These are pretty large rooms so I had to go across the house to catch him. When I got there...no one. There's another exit through the dining room that goes to a foyer and then up to a second set of stairs to the third floor, but he couldn't go that way without me seeing or hearing him.
I became really frightened. I saw him go around the corner. Then I began to think "No, not him. Some thing..." I felt the goosebumps begin to rise and ran upstairs (I'm getting goosebumps now as I type.)
I found him upstairs in Mom's room talking calmly. He wasn't out of breath like I was. I was screaming "Why the hell didn't you stop!" My mom told me to calm down, and my brother was wondering what the hell was wrong with me. My mom said what are you talking about and I told them what I saw, saying that he should have stopped, he heard me calling him. My mom got stiff and told me that he had been there for 10 minutes talking to her. I was getting upset and yeld "Well what the hell was that?!?"
My mom didn't say anything but my brother smiled and said "Oh, you saw 'Charlie'". My mom would never talk about it but my brother saw plenty of stuff, too. He just called it "Charlie" and shook it off. Apparently it scared the hell out of my mom and she, to this day, won't talk about it. I know what I saw but at the same time I don't know. It scared the crap out of me to think about what I was chasing that night into that dark room.
I'm done. taking a break. I may post the second incident later but I need to stop for now. Have a good one...
I was on the Morgan as a child... field-trip in grammar school. Other than feeling confined while inside the ships cabins... I felt NOTHING out of the ordinary. I gotta' bigger kick out of the Jap, midget-sub they had on the grounds. My ex had a 'ghostly' experience in college... and she's not the type given to believing in anything 'out-of-the-ordinary'.
Thanks Bill, I enjoyed the story right up to the end when the nutjob says she is talking to the ship.
Yeah, lots of nutjobs out there... which is why I don't bother posting most of the stories I come across.
Yeah, I usually do that in the week leading up to Halloween.
Neato! What's the date and battle?
Perhaps something horrible happened in the cabin and it's the residual bad vibes that make it appear. You know how some houses "feel" creepy and others light and happy?
My goosebumps can't wait!
I thought John McCain and Lindsey Graham outlawed torture.
/sarcasm
I don't remember the exact date or time of the sightings; it's just sometime during the anniversary of the bloody Battle of Franklin. - In order for the date/time river scientific theory of alleged "ghost" sightings to work, it seems to me that one would have to happen upon the exact site at the exact date, location and moment the incident happened. If this theory is correct, there is no such thing as ghosts as we have thought of them.
Well, that's probably true, but I just thought the way in which this cabin image appears it sounded more like we think of a holographic image looking than an in-color fairly solid realistic image. This appears as more of an outline done with light (the way it was described in the article). I just thought that since lightning was a dramatically strong electrical phenomenon, it might have hit the cabin and somehow left a strong holographic impression on the physical atmosphere. Was hoping someone who is an expert in holographs could consider this.
The "cabin" site has no indication other than the sightings that a cabin ever was on that site, however, there is an old well behind the "cabin" area that would clearly mean that someone once lived there. If the cabin was destroyed by lightning and burned down, there might be some archaeological evidence of charred wood. Anyone who might have remembered a cabin in that spot is long since dead and gone.
My folks had a recent vacation at a castle that belongs to a whealthy friend of ours (boyfriend of my cousin). Basically it's one of the hundred of small castles around France and this one our friend bought and is renovating.
The parents spent the night in one of the bedrooms and locked the door for the night. Don't remember all the details but during the night my dad heard noises (and he is one NOT to believe in Ghosts, No Way, No How) and he said that all of a sudden the key moved on the inside, the door unlocked and swung wide open. FREAKED HIM OUT!!! He got up and looked around but everyone else was asleep as far as he could tell.
When they shared that story the next morning at breakfast the owner just shrugged and said "Yeah, strange stuff happens here all the time. But as long as it doesn't hurt anything who cares!".
How interesting. I have been debating joining a group as late. Even at my advanced age. I want evidence though solid evidence. Photos. video, EVP's and such. The group on the ship lost me when it was revealed they had several "sensitives" that were in contact with the ghosts. Now I am not saying some people may not be more sensitive than others. My own mother was and my sister says she is.
But "feelings" can not be examined in the light of day.
I would go and be okay you say the place is haunted let's see what we find in Black and White.
goose Bump (for later reading)
I couldn't agree more. As soon as they mention psychics and "sensitives" they lose me as well. Like you, I want hard science.
If you go to the TAPS website (you know - the Roto-Rooter Guys from "Ghosthunters" on the SciFi Channel), there is a place for serious-minded investigators.
http://the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/
Go to the "TAPS 18+ board" and scroll down to "Opportunities". On that forum, you can find groups looking for members, and prospective members looking for a group to join in their state or country. Most of the people on there seem pretty level-headed. There's even quite a few conservatives! I'm under my usual handle "sneakers".
Ghost bump.
That sounds interesting. Let us know how it goes.
Will do KC!
While a student at Gettysburg College I had an experience that even now, some 20 years later, makes the hair on my arms stand to recall. Up to that time, I can't say I was a skeptic, believer or non-believer, but hadn't really given the matter much deliberative thought.
I'm still not prepared to say it was a 'ghost' or 'spirit,' and as others here have stated, may have been some sort of 'post-cognitive,' observation where I was looking at past events rather than some ghost of the past intruding on my present.
Ghost Hunters starts their new season this Wednesday, can't wait!
Connecticut ping!
Please Freepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent Connecticut ping list.
West of the Rockies, the number is.....
I am actually going to go in a ghost tour or two myself this month.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
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