This piece continues the exploration of the Mirror Queen’s motifs, or recognizable key pieces that we understand to be from particular stories, her characterization and use of the folkloresque from The Brothers Grimm. The folkloresque is the use of folklore to build fictional worlds; drawing upon elements of an existing story (or in this case, stories) to create an alternative tale from an existing idea.

All the other fairy tale motifs mentioned in The Brothers Grimm movie will also be discussed. The ATU, or Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, is a tool is used by folklorists to trace a tale’s ancestry.

1. Little Red Riding Hood (motifs: little girl, grandmother, red hood, wolf)-ATU 333

Charles Perrault was first to introduce Red Riding Hood into fairy tales. This version in the movie is truer to the original story since by wolf, they meant werewolf. The wolf represents carnal male lust instead of general danger and the Grimms restored the “happy” ending/huntsman intervening. The story is designed to admonish bad behavior and reinforce the female need for a male savior, which is incredibly sexist, as were many of the original tales.

When another little girl is taken, it draws from Red Riding Hood (ATU 333), using the classic setup where Little Red notices that the wolf is dressed as her grandmother.  “Such big eyes you have, and big ears you have.” They repurposed that part of the story for a sequence not related to an existing fairy tale where a girl becomes trapped via spiderwebs. She is swallowed up by the horse to transport her to the Queen for the spell. The wolf from the story (now a werewolf in this story) makes an appearance during the kidnapping sequences.

2. Hansel & Gretel (motifs: leading the children to the witch, the witch, crows gobble up their trail of breadcrumbs, gingerbread house, cannibalism, oven)-ATU 327A

In this version, they are “Hans and Greta”. Hans leaves the breadcrumbs that the crows eat to hide their path while Greta’s shawl floats away in a sort of game-lure. She sees an etching of the beauty spell on a cave wall with bugs surrounding it before the werewolf kidnaps her.

3. Rapunzel (motifs: tower, long hair, prince)-ATU 310

In the queen’s backstory, we see her as the Rapunzel character with her extremely long hair that she combs from a high tower window. She built this tower to avoid getting sick with plague and sings while she combs her hair, thinking herself safe. The queen, however, didn’t know that “plague is carried on the winds”. She eventually died from it and in the story told to a young Anjelica by her father, it’s said that her screams about her rotting flesh are heard if one listens to the wind. She also has imagery from Rapunzel with her crazy-long hair and the tower she built so she wouldn’t get plague like everyone else; her life revolves around that reflection, to the point that she has no name.

4. The Gingerbread Man (motifs: talking confection, chase, mischievous nature)-ATU 2025

The Gingerbread Man figures into the story as an enchantment that literally stole a little girl named Sacha’s features to create itself, using magical mud from a crow who flapped it all over her, which then caused her eyeballs and mouth to literally fall off. The sludge with Sacha’s eyes and mouth then ate the girl, reforming into the cookie shape, also tasting itself: “I taste good!” Sacha then ran away saying, “Can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” The method of kidnapping is pretty novel and also the stuff of nightmares.

5. Sleeping Beauty (motifs: magical slumber, finger pricking, awakened by kiss a prince, asleep until awoken)-ATU 410.

Sleeping Beauty is a symbol of sexist female passivity since she is completely docile in sleep and needs a male to save her. We also see themes of death and resurrection within the story. In one version of the tale, she was raped by the king while she slept and had twins. The idea of going through childbirth while asleep sounds ideal but being raped and suddenly married to a king because of his actions, without consent, sounds horrifying. The werewolf also pricks young maiden’s fingers via a needle (an updated version of the spindle) to collect their blood for the queen’s spell.

6. Cinderella’s glass slippers are present on all the girls during their spell-induced slumber (motifs: glass slipper, prince, fairy godmother, magic)-ATU 510A.

Cinderella is one of the most recognizable fairy tales that exists; over 500 versions have been found in Europe alone. It is Charles Perrault’s version of the tale that gives us the motifs we recognize: the glass slipper, the pumpkin stagecoach and mice footmen, and the fairy godmother. The Grimms’ version of the tale relied heavily on nature to help Ashputtle (a variant of Aschenputtel, the German name for Cinderella in the original folk tale).

7. Snow White (“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Fairest of Them All” question, mirror magic, poisoned apple, magical sleep, awoken by prince’s kiss of dead girl, black hair/red lips/white skin)-ATU 710

This is another popular fairy tale that is often referenced in movies and tv through its motifs. In 2012, four Snow White movies were released. The evil queen character subverts her gendered role of passive female, but is reduced to a vain woman having beauty-related squabbles with someone younger. If the spell from this movie had existed for the evil queen in the original story, I bet anything she would have used it. This movie’s queen says the famous misquoted (though still recognized) line: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

Women in Fairy Tales

In fairy tales, there’s a focus on inequality of the sexes with a special emphasis on women. Usually, the inevitable transition to adulthood also features. Fairy tales were not originally written for children specifically, they were for everyone. The concept of childhood was a later invention since kids were treated as working adults at the time. A major problem with this genre is that goodness is often equated with beauty, while villainy is associated with ugliness or disability.

The Mirror Queen was as ugly as her heart

The Brothers Grimm gives us a beautiful, wretchedly selfish evil queen but truthfully, the Mirror Queen was as ugly as her heart for a huge chunk of the movie. It was only in the last act that she got a taste of her beauty back before it was ripped away from her again (and rightfully so). Often in fairy tales, females are beautiful, passive appendages to men. Angelika is a notable movement away from this motif being the fighter she is, but even she needs to be saved at the end. The Mirror Queen also needs a male to help her get things done in the world, powerful as she is. In the end, it seems to say, men are needed to save us. As if. I view the Mirror Queen’s use of men as a commentary on how easily men are manipulated by beauty.

The Mirror Queen’s existence poses the question: what if all your favorite fairy tales came from the same place with the same evil queen in an enchanted forest? She herself is folkloresque, meaning that she is not real folklore but her story feels enough like folklore to be mistaken as such. Her story incorporates bits and pieces of other tales to create a terrifying new amalgamation.

Conclusion

I love the use of folkloresque in movies. Stories evolve and can be improved upon by our imaginations. That process often happens naturally in folklore with the death of certain details that are then reborn in other tellings, with people accidentally adding new parts of stories. Usually, this is somewhat subconscious on the part of the teller but each time a story is told, it changes slightly because of the teller. The only time the folkloresque becomes dicey for folklore is when people believe the creative parts and ignore the real story.

These fallacies help folklorists study how the public perceives those changes and the process of incorporation into public truth (even if there’s not an ounce of truth). The truth is malleable in story form even though almost all stories are told as true. This is because the teller and hearer believe that truth. The Mirror Queen resonated with me as a child and into my adult life because her tale is a good story. I know as a folklorist she isn’t “true” but I love her all the same even though she’s the villain. Sometimes the villain is more compelling than the hero; besides, the heroes were guys. I personally think women’s stories are more complex and interesting overall.

References

Antti Aarne, Stith Thompson, and Hans-Jörg Uther. The Aarne-Thomson, Uther Tale Type Index. 1910.

The Brothers Grimm, dir. Terry Gilliam. 2005.

Gaiman, Neil. 2017. Norse Mythology.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 2003. “Familiars: Your Magical Partners.” https://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/480.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 2009. The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology.

Hallett, Martin, and Barbara Karasek, eds. 2018. Folk and Fairy Tales-Fifth Edition.

Jaye, Victoria. 2022. Podcast episode: Demon Folklorist, Paranormal Buzz Radio, “Reincarnations of Snow White”.

Livni, Ephrat. 2018. “The Terrifying History of Lunar Eclipses.”  https://qz.com/1336627/lunar-eclipse-2018-the-terrifying-history-of-blood-moons-and-lunar-eclipses.

Tolbert, Jeffrey A., and Michael Foster. 2015. The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World.

Images – Canva

Finedon is a picturesque, semi-rural village that sits quietly amidst the county of Northamptonshire, England. The village is famous for its quaint public houses, breathtaking hillside views, and cobbled streets that have awed people for centuries. Residents and visitors alike enjoy the wonders of grassy knolls, peaceful trickling rivers, and the gentle bleating of sheep, but the town has not always dwelled in such calmness. The rise of the Black Death plague in 1348 saw the once-thriving and bustling village slowly deplete of everything that gave it character. Children’s laughter that once graced the lush green pastures slowly began to fade, and the clunking sound of horse hooves on the cobbled streets became no more. Illness and death cast their sticky web of destruction over every home, forcing many to flee. An orchestra of silence was all that echoed in the tragic streets and hopeless homes for many years.

New Beginnings

Fortunately, the Black Death eventually succumbed to nature. Resettlement began sometime in the 17th century and life returned to Finedon. Inns were again filled with laughter, farming began to flourish and the once death-infested homes became occupied by young and happy families. The town continued to develop into the 20th century with no further signs of misfortune. Until a young school teacher was appointed the village school’s headmistress in 1901. Her name was Mary Ozier and curiously, our tale begins with nothing other than a kind gesture from this professional lady.

A Commemorative Oddity – A Haunted Doll

Proud of her appointment and seeking to christen her new status, Mary pondered greatly. She also needed something unique to commemorate the Finedon school’s upcoming anniversary, something that reflected the unique and quirky character of the village and school. She chose a beautifully crafted wooden doll and strategically positioned it in a small alcove above the school's main entrance, where it could be admired by all and keep watch over everything!

Very little is known about the origins of the doll. It is believed that it was made by a mysterious merchant who Mary allegedly met on a quiet country walk one afternoon. After conveying her ideas for the commemoration, the merchant gifted Mary the doll. Conveniently, it lay inside a sack upon his back. He took no payment, walked away, and was never seen again.

Dressed to Impress

The doll was deemed peculiar from day one by all who saw it. Mary’s sentiment was appreciated by the locals but there was something about the doll’s aura that emitted an uncomfortable, eerie feeling. Standing at approximately three feet in height, the figure was so intricately carved that the dark brown flowing dress looked almost real. Equally impressive was the carved white Dutch cap that adorned the head. The face appeared emotionless with dark staring eyes and tightly closed lips. These features were a strange contrast to the cherub cheeks upon which they sat. The doll’s attire closely resembled the fashion of the modern-day Puritan woman, complete with dark boots with a slight heel, also carved from wood.

The Dutch headpiece became the doll’s most famous and defining feature. It also resembled the hat worn by the children of the school at the time. As curiosity and uncertainty grew, the strange figure eventually became known as the ‘Dutch Doll of Finedon’. Finally, and probably the strangest feature of all was what sat tightly grasped in its hands. On the right was a bible, and on the left was a scroll that bared the writing ‘ Search the scripture-John-verse 39’…

Sinister Happenings

Days after the doll’s arrival, inexplicable events began to unfold. The once tranquil and carefree vibes of the school turned to anxiety and dread. One morning, a chastised student was sent to the school's front lawn to spend her break alone while others played in the yard at the rear. As she moped, a startling gust of wind appeared from nowhere, knocking her backward with great force. The girl grazed her head as she fell against an old tree. Within seconds, the wind was gone and the calmness of that June morning returned. As the girl composed herself, she saw something that chilled her to the marrow and contested until her dying day. Peering down from its concrete throne, the doll waved its left arm, scroll in hand, and juddered violently. The tight wooden lips were puckered, and its eyes glared with sadistic pleasure. Within seconds, the face returned to normal and the arm to its original position. Shocked and shaken by what had happened, the girl ran home, never to return to the school.

Since that horrifying incident, many students recounted witnessing the doll move on its own accord and the school record book reportedly possessed pages of daily occurrences depicting many traumatizing accounts. In the dead of night, the students who lived as boarders could often hear the sound of tiny pattering feet scurrying through the hallways. Dormitory doors would open on their own and scratching sounds could be heard on the floors. Some students claimed to see ‘tiny wooden hands’ and ‘beady wooden eyes’ peering around open doors before they were violently slammed shut. Piercing and blood-chilling cackling could also be heard around the school. Quite often, the shrill cries disrupted lessons and caused panic among teachers and students alike.

Was it a Haunted Doll or Not

Concerned for the student’s welfare, staff and parents decided to examine the doll during a school holiday. Convinced that the doll possessed a mechanical feature that could explain the phenomena, it was brought down from its cove above the door. After a thorough search, nothing was found. It was suggested that the doll may have been used in witchcraft rituals or even acted as a vessel for a malevolent spirit. Taking no chances, the now haunted doll was permanently removed from the cove. It was tightly locked in a chest and placed in the school’s dank, dark cellar.

For a short while, calmness settled upon the school. During this period, poor behavior would often be controlled with ‘tongue in cheek’ threats of detention in the cellar. Students trembled at the thought of being at the mercy of the wooden demon. It was the perfect deterrent. As time passed and incidents lessened, students began to believe the stories had been nothing more than a hoax. That was until a young student was sent to the cellar to retrieve more slates.

Haunting Crash

As the student gathered the resources, she heard an almighty crash behind her. The chest that housed the doll had fallen from a shelf and hit the floor with a deafening thud. Slowly, the chest started to rattle and vibrate furiously. A series of violent thumps followed and the chest edged toward the girl. Groans and gasps could be heard from inside the chest, each one more penetrating and violent than before. The student fled the cellar immediately. Terrified and shaken by the incident, she too left the school, never to return.

Eventually, the cellar was permanently closed, leaving the haunted doll entombed and alone for many years. Although the phenomenon decreased, a lingering and anxious atmosphere engulfed all who walked through the school. And despite the cellar being deep below the classrooms and far from the dormitories, strange laughter and voices could still be heard. The chilling echoes pounded through the school in the dead of night for many years.

A Mysterious Twist

Decades passed but the phenomenon and unrelenting feelings of dread persisted. A new headteacher, determined to alleviate the school of its supernatural reputation, had the doll removed. It was taken to the local St Mary’s church, and fixed tightly to the west wall. Locals hoped this would eliminate further troubles and suppress whatever strangeness lurked inside. As a result, the school returned to a state of calm that had not been felt for almost a century. Years passed and the memory of the Dutch doll began to diminish. All that remained were the frightening tales that once plagued the school, passed down through the generations. That was until an alarming and unexpected event took place…

Haunted Finedon Doll Vanishes

On the 24th of January, 1981, the parishioner unlocked the church to prepare for his daily duties. Upon walking to his alter, he noticed something unusual on the west wall. Further inspection revealed that the Dutch doll was no longer there. The hooks and bolts that kept it secure were strewn on the floor. Confused and unnerved by what had happened, the parishioner immediately visited the local police. Fears of supernatural forces being responsible resonated with him more than the idea of a potential thief. The parishioner knew that he had locked and bolted all the church doors the previous evening. All windows had also been locked, and only he possessed the key. It hadn’t been possible for anybody to gain entry without his permission. As a result, homes, fields, shops, and even the school were aptly searched. Locals were questioned but to no avail and restlessness returned to the town.

Tales of the haunted doll and superstition began to resurface, causing some parents to remove their children from the school amid the fear that the doll had returned. Fears of misfortune and miscellaneous activity repeating themselves grew at an alarming rate, forcing the town’s hierarchy to act. The townsfolk were reassured that the doll would be found and returned to the church. Despite everyone’s efforts, the haunted doll was never recovered. No further progress has since been made, and its disappearance remains Finedon’s biggest mystery. Is the Dutch doll residing in your home? It might be wise to check all those dark places before going to bed…

Photo Credits

St Mary’s church

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Finedon (Public domain)

Haunted Doll photo

https://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/b983998b-1e60-4476-8ee6-20cf35bb3213/9259919c-06c0-4e43-8055-c804e1a8b96f.jpg

A few months ago, I joined a team of paranormal investigators, visiting haunted locations for the first season of a brand-new indie ghost-hunting show called Inhuman Beings. This month, we launched a Kickstarter to finish Inhuman Beings and a paranormal documentary series called New Blood. The two shows aim to present a new outlook on the supernatural, showcasing the esteemed specialist in the occult, Michelle Belanger. Her expertise has been previously displayed on several publications such as Paranormal State, Portals to Hell, Conjuring Kesha, among others. Locations have been chosen for the first season of a brand-new indie ghost-hunting show called Inhuman Beings. This month, we launched a Kickstarter to finish Inhuman Beings and a paranormal documentary series called New Blood.

Inhuman Beings

Each episode of Inhuman Beings features a different location with a reputation for high strangeness. Rather than trying to banish ghosts or uncover demons, we approach the unknown with a sense of curiosity, keeping an open mind and looking into ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, the fae, and more.

We use some traditional paranormal investigation techniques, experimenting with REM pods, spirit boxes, a Kinect SLS camera, and an Ovilus. But we also get weird, trying out remote viewing experiments, using dream sigils to communicate with entities, and following our curiosity as far down the rabbit hole as we can go.

That led us to some strange places. During production, we found ourselves crossing a remote river to visit land ruled by the fae, exploring a strange castle with a mysterious past, and investigating the most haunted building in a small town.

As the team’s paranormal researcher, I dug into the locations before filming and was floored by how many anomalies had been reported in each spot.

In one episode, we venture to the area of the original Loveland frogman sightings, along the banks of Ohio’s Little Miami River. While doing preliminary research, I couldn’t believe how much lore was concentrated in one small area and how interconnected the different paranormal phenomena were there.

I had heard the famous 1950s story about a man encountering strange, frog-like humanoids—one of whom carried a wand emitting sparks—but the more research I did, the more reports I found about local sightings of UFOs, cryptids, aliens, and ghosts.

That was my first hint that things were going to get a lot stranger than I had expected. However, I was not fully prepared for the firsthand experiences we had when we arrived at the site and engaged in conversations with the locals, conducted our own experiments, and gained a true understanding of what the place was truly like.

New Blood

Much of the cast and crew of Inhuman Beings are also in New Blood, a longform docu-series about modern-day vampires.

In New Blood, a series of synchronicities leads witch and host of paranormal podcast Follow the Woo Fen Alankus (she/they) to move from LA to the spooky Midwest. There, she conjures an investigative film crew to document a secret society of vampires.

They delve into the mysterious world of vampires while staying in a haunted Airbnb. The experience, which involves visiting sacred vampire ritual spaces, braving the creepy woods of Ohio, and performing out-of-the-box psychical experiments and spells, changes all of them. Season one was a wild ride, and the next phases of initiation have already begun for the team.

The Kickstarter and team

Michelle Belanger (he/she/they) and Fen Alankus (she/they) have gathered a top-notch crew of film professionals and paranormal investigators. That includes historian and medium Stephanie Bingham (she/her), who has been featured on the CW’s Mysteries Decoded, Destination America’s Paranormal Lockdown and SyFy Channel’s School Spirits; tarot/oracle reader Tigresse Bleu (they/she); filmmaker, forager, and hedgewitch Aubrey P. Archer (they/them); and photographer and skeptic-turned-believer Taylor Brown (she/they), and me.

More than 100 hours of footage have already been shot for these shows, and both shows are slated for release in Fall/Winter 2023.

With the Kickstarter funding, the team will finish up the first seasons of both shows, start pre-production on the next seasons, and more. Backers get rewards like magically imbued Ouija planchettes, Bigfoot and Pride Demon T-shirts, subtle-body portrait readings, bonus and behind-the-scenes content, executive producer credit, guest spots on their shows, and more. Spread the word and help bring this fresh paranormal project into the world!

Time To Conjure Up Some Facts

I decided to buy a book about Freemasonry after conflicting cyberspace claims caused me to ponder if they were good guys, bad guys or a strange brew of both. I settled for The Key to Solomon’s Key: Is This The Lost Symbol of Masonry? Second Edition, written by Lon Milo DuQuette; author, magician, master freemason, singer-songwriter, recording artist and humorist. He believes that every one of us is our own self-contained King Solomon:

“We are suns not planets, atoms not molecules, kings and queens, not subjects. The fundamental unit of society is not the family, not the community, not the nation, not the church, but you and I. Until we come to the full realisation of this fundamental truth, we remain like unenlightened Crusaders, fighting and dying for someone else’s absurd fantasy cause, slaves to arbitrary and impersonal outside entities, unable to recognize (let alone fulfil) our human potential.”

The Key To Solomon’s Key

In my experience, nothing beats a spiritually nourishing, well written book, especially by lively, old school authors who enjoy a smattering of controversy. The publication of The Key To Solomon’s Key allegedly rattled the cage of Freemasonry’s exclusive inner core, which probably did them the world of good. Thankfully, DuQuette didn’t suffer the same fate as Freemason William Morgan who, in 1826 or thereabouts, allegedly broke his vow of secrecy by working on a book revealing the organization's secrets. Morgan mysteriously disappeared and lodges consequently saw a big dip in membership.

Welcome to Chapel Perilous

The Key To Solomon’s Key is well-paced, honest, illuminating and refreshingly entertaining. Part One, Solomon’s Secrets, hits the ground running with confessions and secrets aplenty about this mysterious age-old order. (Freemasonry’s documented history dates back to around 1717, the height of the Enlightenment era.) Part Two, The Magic of Solomon, provides comprehensive, step by step magic lessons and even lists the names and biographies of 72 famous spirits of ‘Mighty Kings and Princes’ that allegedly escaped from King Solomon’s Vessel of Brass. Heavenly and hellish stuff all rolled into one. (But where were the Mighty Princesses, I mused.)

“DuQuette’s book carries a ticking religious timebomb of historic proportions just waiting to explode. The implications for our time are provocative.” Arthur Rosengarten, PhD.

The opening lines of the Introduction penned by James Wasserman, who describes DuQuette’s work as a ‘manual of Gnosis’, are well worth repeating:

Brother Lon Milo DuQuette is about to take us on a guided tour of Chapel Perilous. He has asked me to make the following announcement: Will all readers please fasten their seatbelts.

Many of the concepts and questions to which you’ll soon be exposed may be altogether new. Some may threaten your most closely held beliefs and childhood conditioning. We ask only that you approach with an open mind and a willingness to continue your own research when you emerge from these pages…We will be encouraged to become “a principal player in the great plan of creation.”

Why Masonic Lodges Are Closing

If, like me, you have had zero interest in Freemasonry for most of your life and considered it to be nothing more than a charitable old boys networking club, here is an official definition from the Fellow Craft Degree Free & Accepted Masons, California Cipher, Grand Lodge of California. F. & A.M.:

“Masonry is a progressive moral science, divided into different degrees; and, as its principles and mystic ceremonies are regularly developed and illustrated, it is intended and hoped that they will make a deep and lasting impression upon your mind.”

Sadly, Duquette reveals that this definition does not reflect what all Masons think the Craft should be. Many now feel that the esoteric roots of this ancient institution are “an embarrassment – queer and unwholesome links to paganism, the occult and even Satanism.” Oh dear. Worse still, there is a concerted effort taking place within Masonry to “once and for all divorce the Craft from its esoteric heritage, and make it an organization open only to men professing certain specific religious convictions.”

The author suggests that this is why Masonic lodges are closing and fewer men are attracted to the fraternity. Traditionally, candidates need only profess a belief in a Supreme Being and a form of the afterlife. But today, there are jurisdictions and lodges around that world that won’t even consider an application if the candidate’s religion is not mainstream enough, or his interest esoteric nature of the craft is suspiciously intense.

Are Our Younger Aspiring Masons The Answer To Spiritual Bankruptcy?

On the brighter note, DuQuette confirms that a significant number of younger Masons are joining the order because they are passionately interested in the esoteric and mystical aspects of the craft:

They come on a personal spiritual quest rather than to exploit opportunities for business or political networking; or the quaint traditions and ceremonies. Some, including the author, view their involvement in the Craft as a magical initiation – a new beginning, or awakening – a conscious decision to become more than they are.

Perhaps a breakaway Freemason fraternity is on the cards.

Oh Solomon, Where Art Thou?

If I had to choose one favourite aspect of The Key to Solomon’s Key, it would be DuQuette’s dogged dig for tangible evidence that King David, King Solomon or Israel’s golden kingdoms actually existed. I must confess that I found this dilemma to be rather amusing given that King Solomon is the central figure of both the secret rituals of Freemasonry and forbidden rites of sorcery.

I realise that for some readers this may sound uncomfortably like heresy. Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe it is certainly possible that evidence may someday be found that supports these particular biblical accounts.

DuQuette also confirms that 12th century Jerusalem’s first Knights Templar who had the exclusive opportunity to excavate the alleged site of King Solomon’s temple, also discovered no tangible evidence to suggest that King David or King Solomon ever existed.

Can we rely on biblical accounts alone?

Arguments To Support The Author’s Controversial Claim

1. No mention of the name of David or Solomon has ever been found in the mountains of surviving records kept by the Egyptians or the Assyrians or those of any other neighbouring nations who were allegedly defeated in battle and for years paid massive tribute to Solomon.

2. No archaeologist has uncovered their tombs, a tablet or inscription bearing either of their names or the names of any of their kin or colleagues as outlined so explicitly in the Bible.

3. Most conspicuously absent are any records whatsoever of seven years of taxes and labour levies for what the Bible suggests should exist for 183,000 workmen conscripted locally and from foreign countries, documents which most certainly should be found in abundance among existing contemporary records.

4. Considering the fact that the Holy Land is an area of the world where digging has taken place for centuries… it is almost inconceivable that such celebrated kingdoms and powerful world rulers such as David and Solomon could remain so completely invisible to the archaeological record.

If you happen to come across any hard evidence to suggest otherwise, I’m sure that Lon Milo DuQuette would love to hear from you.

Transcending the Confines of the Bible Narrative

Religion exalts mystery as an unknowable secret that must be fearfully worshipped from afar, while initiation requires direct participation and demands each of us to evolve our abilities and worthiness to receive the spiritual treasures.

The intrepid author swears that he is breaking no vows of secrecy by sharing that the ceremony of the third degree revolves around the story of King Solomon and the building of his temple. Some of it is taken directly from the Bible but most of it concerns a patently non-biblical story – a dramatic myth unique to Masonry.

He reveals that this ceremony gives the new Mason permission to meditate on sacred mythological truths existing outside the strict confines of the biblical narrative; that perhaps something was buried beneath the Holy of Holies of the Temple – not the fictional Temple of Solomon but the very real ruins of the 1st century BCE temple of Herod the Great.

Almost as if to say “You know – those Bible stories of David and Solomon and King Solomon’s Temple? There’s something underneath those stories. You might want to dig into it.” Masonry urges all her members to use the Volume of the Sacred Law as the Great Light in their profession.

Modern Templar treasure hunters suggest that the Masonic myth points to something buried beneath Scotland’s Rosalyn Chapel whose foundational footprint is said to be scaled to that of Herod’s Temple.

Who Wrote the Books of the Bible?

I have been asking the exact same question as DuQuette for over 30 years. He is of the opinion that we don’t know who wrote the books of the bible. However, it is clear that from approximately the 6th century BCE, multiple scribes and authors were involved including Prophet Jeremiah and Ezra the Scribe. But what we do know for certain is that for the greater part of the last two millennia, western civilization has relied upon the Bible as its primary source of historical information. It was the first book printed in the 1450s and for the next few centuries, it was more than a book. Says DuQuette: “It was the book. The unerring Word of God. Conversely, anything not found in the Bible was considered equally untrue.”

The author is of the view that the historical and archaeological fingerprint of the Hebrew people united by a single religion and occupying a nation with its headquarters in Jerusalem, is non-existent. And according to Professor Norman F Cantor, author of The Sacred Chain, the first Millennium of Jewish history as presented in the Bible has no empirical foundation whatsoever.

Revelations That Would Have Vaporized The Authority Of The Church

Furthermore, the author points out that the narratives of both the Old and New Testament are linked and supported by the story of David and Solomon. If this capstone is removed, not only does the historic integrity of much of the Old Testament collapse but a major facet of the credentials of New Testament Jesus is also radically altered. After all, the gospels go to great lengths to demonstrate that Jesus was a direct descendant of David and Solomon.

Removing this capstone would also be unsettling for pious Muslims, despite their differences…and what would happen to Islamic traditions that also presumed to reach that far back into biblical history? In the 12th century, such faith-crushing revelations would have threatened to vaporise the authority of the church and reduced to ashes concept of the divine right of kings that had been the foundation of the social order in Europe and the west for 1000 years. It would have turned the world upside down. It would have been the most dangerous secret in the world.

Predicament of the Early Templars

DuQuette also recognizes that while it appeared obvious the church was intimidated by whatever the Templars had, it would have been futile to confront this omnipotent establishment directly. Not only would this have put the early Templars in a position of perpetual danger, the secret would have isolated them from a world represented by the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam religions that revered certain books of the Bible; religions that owed their very existence to the adherents’ belief that they were descendants of certain biblical characters, and that the Bible narratives were historically true.

The most dangerous secret in the world was also the world's most blasphemous heresy. The Templars would become the most Easternized Westerners in the world – men who saw the bigger picture of life and culture – men who dreamed greater dreams than those of their fellow Europeans – men who tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge – their eyes were opened and they became as gods.

Important Tips for Budding Magicians

Last but not least, here is a sneak peek into Part 2 The Magic of Solomon, Elements of Spirit Evocation. Without giving away too many secrets, I considered this particular question to be a fitting choice to include in this review.

Under what circumstances is it appropriate to evoke the spirit?

1. First you must have a problem – a real problem. Before enlisting the aid of spirit to resolve the problem, you must have done everything in your power to take care of the matter by regular means on the physical plane. That’s magic too.

2. The problem you wish to be resolved must be a personal matter. You can’t do magic for someone else. When you formally evoke a spirit, you evoke an adventure. Adventures are not always pleasant and can be dangerous, even deadly. If you survive, you’ll emerge from the experience a better, wiser, braver person.

3. You must feel totally justified in doing what you are about to do and have a deep emotional involvement in the matter you wish resolved. Once you have evoked the spirit, you must be able to consider the spirit as the personification of your problem (for in essence, that is what it is.) The spirit has to listen to you, so you better know what you want to tell it. It’s either going to shape up and do what you command or you are going to annihilate it.

4. Don’t make deals with the spirit. In a very real way, you’ve been unconsciously making deals with the spirit your whole life. That’s why you have your problem. The whole ceremony is your formal way of branding your subconscious mind with the idea that you are through making deals with this tangled piece of ignorance, flawed perception, fear, vice or addiction (take your pick, they’re all demons.)

Freemasonry Liberated Millions In Its Heyday

In its heyday, Freemasonry helped liberate millions and led to the founding of governments built on the principle of the consent of the governed. Perhaps the suggestion to expand that doctrine to read ‘informed consent’ can be reviewed by the inner core that currently stands accused of some startling allegations by a reputable UK intelligence and law agency.

What To Do About Corruption At The Highest Levels

My research into Freemasonry has also revealed that the original principles and ethics of Freemasonry have been corrupted at the highest levels and need to be urgently addressed. Some learned circles have suggested that Freemasonry is rotten to the core but arguably about 90% are decent people trapped in a bad system, and most are unaware of the hidden practices of the inner core. This seems to be a common theme across many occult societies and power mongering organisations that do not have humankind’s best interests at heart.

To conclude this review, I have chosen the following passage of liberating wisdom that can be applied to everyday life by us all:

To achieve progressively higher levels of consciousness, you must become a new kind of person and we have to start that process the same way the legendary Knights Templar did – by first liberating ourselves from the great delusion that keeps most of us in a state of spiritual bondage – the delusion that we do not create our own reality, the delusion that we are helpless victims of someone or something else’s reality. This seems like such a little step, but it is in reality a quantum leap of consciousness, a fundamental shift of self-identity.

The Key to Solomon’s Key unlocks a treasure trove of mystical historic tales, and a wealth of wisdom, wonder and controversy. DuQuette’s book is certainly worth making space for in your personal library, or requesting your local public library to order it in for you. The perfect companion to Dean Radin’s equally enlightening book, Real Magic. I wish the younger esoterically inclined Masons well on their unfolding journeys.

Recommended Viewing

We are Living Through an Attempted Masonic World Takeover https://rumble.com/v14rwm6-we-are-living-through-an-attempted-masonic-world-takeover.html

The Secret Masonic Victory of WW2 | Full Documentary by Dennis Wise (COMPLETE VERSION) – Dennis Wise https://archive.org/details/tsmvww2_201912

Arise Guerrilla News Broadcast: Report about the current state of Freemasonry in the UK (1:35:10) https://rumble.com/v10jifh-arise-guerrilla-news-broadcast-april-10-cdt.html

You are at the park, and in the distance, you catch a glimpse of this tall man in a dark suit. He is out of place, and you can tell something about him is just not right. He is unusually tall and oddly thin. His arms and legs are long and seem disproportionate to his body. He then turns and looks at you, and that is when you notice that his face is featureless.

You want to scream, and you can feel the panic rising in your chest. Your breath begins to quicken, and your body feels flushed with adrenalin. You have a sudden urge to run but don’t want to make a scene. You start moving towards your car, trying not to burst into a sprint. You turn to see where he is, but you’ve lost him. With panic taking over, you give up and break into a run.

You make it to your car and take another look around. You cannot see him as you unlock your doors, but the hairs on the back of your neck stand up because you can feel him following you, stalking you, and waiting until you least expect it. That is when he will snatch you, and you will never be seen again.

Slender Man History

Slender Man is one of the most popular fictional characters across the internet. The Slender Man stories have inspired blogs, web series, fan art, and even a movie. What started as an internet contest has morphed into a cult-like following. While the origins of Slender Man are just one internet search away, he has morphed into a modern urban legend. Like any urban legend, the more the story is told, the more real it seems. These retellings and sharing of a story are what help validate a story, leading to people believing Slender Man is real.

While the story seems old, the legend’s origins are just one Google search away. Slender Man originated on the Something Awful humor site and was created by user Victor Surge, whose real name is Eric Knudsen. The original story was posted as part of a scary photo contest. The contest challenged the participants to manipulate an ordinary photo into something scary. Victor posed for two black-and-white photos with children in a park and a tall silhouette looming in the background. He appears to be watching the children in the photo intently.

Fear Factor

What is so scary about a tall, thin man in a suite? He is just thin; he is unusually thin and tall. Most sources describe him as being over seven feet tall. His limbs are long and disproportionate to his body, which gives him an eerie humanoid appearance. Sometimes his arms and legs are replaced with tentacles, which give him Cthulhu vibes. The most unnerving feature is his featureless face, often depicted as a flat, white blank face.

While the original version of the legend was limited to photo captions, this story has been added to and new versions created over the years. People have added stories such as personal encounters and other anecdotes about him abducting and killing people.

If you search for Slender Man on the internet, you will find him looming in the background of photos of groups or children. He stalks his victims from the shadows for days—and sometimes even months—before kidnapping them. Most people don’t even know they are being watched until it is too late. His victims just disappear without a trace. The assumption is that they are killed.

The Urban Legend

Like most urban legends, the Slender Man legend uses real-life situations to instill fear. The first photos posted showed Slender Man lurking in the background of a playground, along with the claims that the children had gone missing that day and were never seen again. The inference being that all the children were killed by Slender Man. Missing children and child murder are not just horrifying but death is a taboo topic. Many people fear death, but as a society, child death is especially morbid.

As humans, something relatable like kidnapping can be more frightening than something abstract like ghosts or other characters like Freddy Kruger. Slender Man appears like he could be a real man, stealing children and making people question their own mortality.

Fiction Bleeds into Reality

Slender Man started with two photos on an internet message board but has morphed into an integral part of culture. The popularity of the Slender Man legend exploded in the mid-2000s, with people adding to the story or creating slightly different versions. The website Creepypasta, where many horror stories are shared, has many reports of sightings and new stories related to the original telling.

Slender Man is also represented as a part of pop culture history in a web series called Marble Hornets. It was created in 2009 and ended in 2014, but it still has a following even today. What no one expected was that the legend would be the motive for an attempted murder by two 12-year-old girls.

Two twelve-year-old girls in Waukesha, WI, were so obsessed with Slender Man that they developed a plan to murder a friend. They were convinced that if they murdered their friend, Slender Man would take them to his house, and they would live with him.

The pair of girls lured another 12-year-old classmate, a girl they considered a friend, into the woods by a public park. There, they stabbed their friend 19 times. Amazingly, the victim lived. The two juvenile attackers have been committed to a psychiatric facility.

Even though I know that Slender Man isn’t real, if I see a tall, creepy guy in a suit lurking near my children at the park, we are going to make a run for it. Stay safe and know your legends.

References

The Slender Man Wiki

https://theslenderman.fandom.com/wiki/Slender_Man

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man

https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/22/18701350/youtube-creepypasta-marble-hornets-slenderman

http://slenderman.wikidot.com/creepypasta#toc0

I’ll get to Wikipedia in a moment, but first a little background. One of the more depressing aspects of my job as a Parapsychology journalist is dealing with the skepticism. It’s not that skepticism isn’t warranted when dealing with the paranormal, it absolutely is, it’s that the vast majority of skepticism is just . . . bad. Any open minded person arguing with people who are strongly skeptical quickly realizes that their claim to being tough minded and objective is really just stubborn people never admitting to being wrong. It’s not critical thinking, it’s just . . . tedious.

Where skepticism really goes off the rails is when it becomes a belief system. This is what I documented in my book PSI WARS: TED, Wikipedia and the Battle for the Internet. The skepticism has become more of a fringe atheist religious-like crusade to bring rationality to an increasingly irrational world, it seems like it should be a good thing. Who doesn’t want more rationality? Amiright?

Pseudoskepticism

In practice, what they do is properly called pseudoskepticism, which isn’t a careful analysis of specific objections, but rather a general dismissal of both people and subjects that they disagree with. Even the word “rationality” becomes a sort of dog whistle.

In their case rationality refers to a very specific belief system that these skeptics fully embrace: They believe in a material universe. (This is increasingly up for debate as quantum physics repeatedly demonstrates that the universe is entangled and not locally real. As Rovelli pointed out, even physics itself is relational.)

This materialistic belief, which is at the core of this true believer skepticism, leads to assumptions about reality which these skeptics hotly defend. They believe that psychic ability can’t possibly exist and its study is pure pseudoscience (another skeptic dog whistle); holistic medicine is nonsense and is also pseudoscience. One finds this all over Wikipedia now. Reddit User Hastener_Of_Days wrote this assessment.

The way the terms "pseudoscience" and "fringe" are used on Wikipedia, is now akin to jewtagging. It's really quite disgusting. In the Wikipedia coverage of any of these areas, most notably Homeopathy, readers are treated like children, and are quite literally beaten over the head and forced to a conclusion. This is distinct from the original Wikipedia model of neutrality, where you simply present the facts, in due proportion to their reliability, and trust the reader to come to the right conclusion.

Weird Skepticism

When you travel down the rabbit hole of this organized skepticism it gets really weird. Congratulating children on discovering that Santa Claus isn’t real; attacking naturopathy, (the science of promoting self healing in the body. It’s a licensed profession found in many hospitals); licensed chiropractors (found everywhere, accepted by insurance companies) are also apparently pseudoscience to them for . . . reasons. Religion is an infantile belief that does more harm than good. Religions are responsible for most wars.

And now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to discuss Wikipedia and the Paranormal.

Bias and Lack of Scholarship

If you concentrate on Wikipedia articles about holistic medicine, or the paranormal, you’ll find that most of the articles are not just written from a skeptical point of view, but one that is strikingly similar to that of a particular skeptic organization.

Wikipedia, for example claims the following about parapsychology:

Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Parapsychology has also been criticised by mainstream critics for many of its practitioners claiming that their studies are plausible in spite of there being no convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research.[1][10][11]

What is wrong with this? What’s not wrong with it? Parapsychology isn’t a pseudoscience. The Parapsychological Association is an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here is a quote from a paper by a very skeptical critic who has worked with parapsychologists and is familiar with the research:

Parapsychology at its best—as exemplified by, for example, the articles in the Journal of Parapsychology—appears to meet most if not all of the benchmarks of true science as opposed to pseudoscience.

His views are shared by other skeptics familiar with the research such as Richard Wiseman and Susan Blackmore. When you limit your search to the tiny handful of critics who actually engage with the research you come away with an entirely different take on this scientific field.

Bad Citations

Some of their citations to back up this Wikipedia article are over over 30 years old, others are just someone’s opinion that they wrote down, unsupported by evidence. One says the opposite of what they’re claiming. This isn’t what valid citations look like; it’s just Wikipedia editors scrounging up whatever they can find to support their weak argument.

And lastly, we see the claim that there is no convincing evidence. Here is a paper that Wikipedia editors seem to have mysteriously failed to cite despite the fact that it’s extremely well known within the field:

The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review

Parapsychology is an area of expertise for me; I can see the flaws in articles like this because I know what’s missing and where the editors are making claims that I know aren’t true. I have read many of the documents they’re referencing, I know who’s who in this field, when someone is just a poser and who is the real deal.

It’s Worse than Mere Incompetence

The Wikipedia editors had to go out of their way to make this article as blatantly false as it is. This isn’t incompetence; it’s deliberate. And it isn’t a one off either. The vast majority of articles related to parapsychology of any substance are treated this way, including biographies.

This extends into articles about the paranormal, including psychics and mediums and also pretty much any holistic medicine or holistic medical practice you care to name. They are so littered with references to criticism that you’d think this was a gossip column and not an encyclopedia.

To understand why Wikipedia is horrifically inaccurate and/or misleading about paranormal topics and holistic medicine, you need to understand the connection between the editors and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

The Link between Organized Skepticism and Wikipedia

CSI is an organization dedicated to skepticism. They publish the Skeptical Inquirer and came into being at a convention of the American Humanist Association in 1976. It was founded by Paul Kurz and Marcello Truzzi. Truzzi left the organization after realizing that impartiality wasn’t the goal.

Because the organization is driven by a non mainstream atheistic belief that the paranormal is impossible and that they, the chosen few, are providing rationality to an increasingly superstitious and irrational world, this has led to their never ending battle against an increasingly convincing body of scientific evidence, with at least one of their leading skeptics grudgingly conceding first that parapsychology is a real science and then that the results of some of the experiments are valid.

And as I said earlier, they dismiss chiropractic care, naturopathy, acupuncture and other generally accepted holistic medical practices as pseudoscience. For those interested in a longer read of their history, here is an article by the late Guy Lyon Playfair. (here) There is also an accounting of their deliberate attempt to suppress the results of an experiment they conducted when they didn’t get the results they wanted. (here)

This cultist skeptical organization and others like it, form an echo chamber where they cherry-pick their way to conclusions they want, often relying on their own members to form the arguments and then citing those as proof. They pounce on positive portrayals of psychic ability or holistic medicine, making sure to write articles and then seek media attention to promote their viewpoint.

The Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia

Out of this toxic stew, the Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia was born. I first found out about them after I’d finished reporting on parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake’s dust up with TED talks and had started writing my book about the controversy in 2013.

Sheldrake, at the time, was the subject of a great deal of controversy after his TED talk was banished to the hinterlands of an unsearchable corner of TED. He is notable enough to have a Wikipedia page written about him and his Wikipedia page got worse in proportion to the increase in fame he was experiencing. A few Wikipedia editors with an agenda had targeted him and were making changes to his biography to portray him as a pseudo scientist and quack.

It was strongly suspected by journalists who cover this subject, Greg Taylor of the Daily Grail, myself and Robert McLuhan, who works with the Society for Psychical Research, that the Guerrilla Skeptics had a hand in this. They never admitted to it and they operate in such secrecy that this could never be factually established. Susan Gerbic, founder of the Guerrilla Skeptics wrote in the Skeptical inquirer:

Plus, when asked, I always refused to offer transparency of who our members are, what conversations we have been having, or what pages we have worked on.

The Problem of Secret Editing Groups

Except for Gerbic herself, who uses her real name on the platform and personally operates in the open, no one really knows who they are or what they’re doing. That this has been allowed to exist on Wikipedia is a clear demonstration of the flaws inherent in the platform. So what is the problem of an organization like the Guerrilla Skeptics? A reddit user familiar with Wikipedia outlined the issues:

With the advantage of being able to coordinate in private without anyone on Wikipedia knowing these people are acting as a group, it is if course suspected that GS [Guerrilla Skeptics] breaks any number of really quite important Wikipedia rules. Rules against canvassing, rules against vote stacking, rules against using blocking powers in your own interests, and rules that say you must declare any relevant conflicts of interest.

The rules that essentially ensure that Wikipedia is a level playing field for all editors, equal under the wiki law, given the same opportunity to propose and defend their edits as anyone else, and letting the benign force of consensus result in the best edit for Wikipedia.

Even other Wikipedia editors are sick of them and put them on trial. But on a platform that allows anonymous editors, all kinds of shenanigans can take place which cannot be prevented. This includes individuals being both editors and their own administrators under different names, organized editing to capture administrative positions and control arbitration processes.

If they have succeeded at this, they can then ban other editors over disagreements by misusing Wikipedia’s own rules. A product of anonymous editing is that a secret group can gain de facto control over information on sections of the encyclopedia.

Wikipedia Cannot Prevent This

Wikipedia’s enforcement abilities are limited to banning specific editors. Even if they had decided to ban the Guerrilla Skeptics entirely they could not have done so. They don’t know who the members of the organization are; nor would it help if they did know. Banned members only need to come back under a different name. They can ban IP addresses, but it’s easy enough to get around that.

I see little reason to doubt that they are behind the steady degradation of paranormal topics on Wikipedia. when one sees the Wikipedia treatment of various paranormal subjects, one finds many references to articles by CSI fellows, Skeptical Inquirer articles and other sources that are unique to the skeptic community. Various members of CSI and their editors have favorable Wikipedia pages, while their paranormal and parapsychology counterparts are either omitted or their Wikipedia pages contain a lot of skepticism. This type of editing is literally their mission.

Guerrilla Skeptics = The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

If one needed further proof of the connection, one needs to look no farther than the Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine of CSI. Gerbic writes for it and they have a page for her. She’s described as their Wikipediatrian. It’s safe to say that her views and theirs align.

The result is that there’s a never ending stream of edits to paranormal articles on Wikipedia that all look like they were written by people from the same group with the same agenda. It might be acceptable if it was all out in the open, but the fact that it’s being organized by a group that claims to be benign, but collaborates in secrecy creates serious credibility problems for Wikipedia.

Their secrecy is a double edged sword. On the one hand they have plausible deniability, but on the other hand there is absolutely no reason to trust anything Gerbic says. “We operate in total secrecy, but you can trust us.” is not convincing to any objective party.

Fair Minded Scholarship is Missing From Wikipedia

For many of these articles, particularly for anything related to parapsychology, there are a number of knowledgeable people who could contribute sufficient documentation to balance the articles, but have been shut out of the process. They have run into coordinated efforts that rebuffed their attempts and in some cases, kicked them off Wikipedia, solely for scholarly disagreement. They are simply shut out of the process. I documented a couple of these cases in my book, and I know of others.

You have to be organized to do that. It takes several people working together to kick someone off that platform. And the only organization that exists on Wikipedia with the means and the motivation is the Guerrilla Skeptics. It would also partly explain why they operate in secrecy because ganging up to kick people off the platform for the kind of disagreement that is supposed to be a normal part of the Wikipedia process is frowned upon, to say the very least.

Wikipedia Can be Fixed

All of this could be fixed with a couple of changes to how Wikipedia is edited.

1. Require people to use their verified real name to edit. So many problems can be solved by just this one thing. When people are tethered to their online behavior, they tend to be less obnoxious.
2. Ranking by real world expertise. Once Wikipedia limits people to using their real names, they can be ranked by their real world expertise and removed from discussions where they have nothing important to contribute. If an area has a governing body, they have the final say. Encyclopedia articles are supposed to tell you about the subject matter and the best people to do that are those that are experts in that field. True experts generally know what the evidence is, both for and against their subject.

Do those two things and many of Wikipedia’s worst problems will go away. People with actual expertise will be able to edit and trolls will be powerless to stop them.

My introduction to all that was spooky started with the elementary school book fair and an old cemetery at the back of the playground. Most children that are fascinated with the paranormal have read Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. These dark tales and amazing illustrations were a collection of folk tales, songs, and urban legends. One of the best stories is The White Dress.

A young man invited a young woman to a formal dance. But she was very poor, and she could not afford to buy the evening gown she needed for such an occasion.

"Maybe you can rent a dress," her mother said. So she went to a pawnshop not far from where she lived. There she found a white satin evening gown in her size. She looked lovely in it, and she was able to rent it for very little. When she arrived at the dance with her friend, she was so attractive, everyone wanted to meet her. She danced again and again and was having a wonderful time. But then she began to feel dizzy and faint, and she asked her friend to take her home. "I think I danced too much," she told him.

When she got home, she lay down on her bed. The next morning, her mother found that her daughter had died. The doctor did not understand what caused her death. So he had the coroner perform an autopsy.

The coroner found that she had been poisoned by embalming fluid. It had stopped her blood from flowing. There were traces of the fluid on her dress. He decided it had entered her skin when she perspired while she was dancing. The pawnbroker said he bought the dress from an undertaker's helper. It had been used in a funeral for another young woman, and the helper had stolen it just before she was buried. (The White Gown by Alvin Schwartz)

History

The story always starts with a girl who needs a fancy dress for a special occasion. As one of the earliest US urban legends, it has been told hundreds of times and has many different versions. It has been known may several different titles including, Embalmed Alive, Dressed to Kill, The Wedding Dress, and the poisoned dress.

While the name and some minor facts change throughout the retelling, the premise of the story doesn’t. In all versions, there is a young girl who purchases a dress and then dies from some form of poisoning. Some versions describe this dress as a wedding dress, others say it was a formal dress or a ball gown. Where the dress was purchased varies as well. In many of the versions, the dress is purchased from a secondhand store or a pawn shop. Others say the dress was purchased from a department store and the dress had been returned after the dress was worn for a funeral.

The first printed version of this legend can be found in New York Folk Lore Quarterly and was printed in the Autumn of 1952. Post-WWII in the United States was a pivotal time in history. The country was coming out of a war and a decade-long depression. As rationing ended and the middle class grew, some people were able to spend on small luxuries again.

Deadly Clothing

Deadly clothing is not a new concept in literature. The Grimm’s Fairy tale of what is today known as Snow White was far from the quaint Disney tale. Snow White was put into a corset that was meant to suffocate her. When that didn’t work there was no poison apple but poisoned hair combs and red-hot iron shoes. The Grimm Brothers often used poisoned or dangerous clothes in their stories and Hercules met his death after donning a poisoned tunic.

Greek mythology warns of other poisoned clothing as well. One of the most famous is the legend of Glauce. Greek poet Euripides tells the story of Medea and Glauce. Medea was in love with Jason, but he is to marry Glauce, daughter of the king, and Medea is banished with her children. In what appears to be a token of good faith, Medea presents Glauce with a wedding gift. The gift is a beautiful crown and a gown, but when Glauce dons the gown it instantly burns her flesh, and she dies instantly.

In the late 1800s they developed a beautiful green clothing dye. It was known as Shelee’s green. This dye contained arsenic, which was the key to giving it a unique green color. Arsenic is a naturally occurring element but in even small levels can be fatal to humans. These dresses became toxic. The wearers rarely had many symptoms due to the limited exposure. Most symptoms ranged from rash to fatigue. However, the seamstresses working with these dresses would cut the fabric, releasing toxins into the air and then breathing them in. Several died of arsenic poisoning.

Unlike the girl in our story, arsenic poisoning does not cause a quick death and has many symptoms prior to becoming fatal. The first symptoms are mild and include headaches, confusion, diarrhea, and vomiting. Later symptoms can progress into coma and death as the organs shut down.

Social Implications

Why is poisoned clothing so terrifying? It is because a person cannot fight what they cannot see, leaving them defenseless. Clothing is supposed to be protective. It provides warmth, covers nakedness, and provides protection from the elements. Clothing is meant to keep us safe. Being attacked from a point of safety and potential happiness is devastating. In each of these stories, the victim felt safe but shortly succumbed to their own demise.

Clothing can also represent status. Fashion industries paste their logos on their clothing and accessories to show that you can afford the $10,000 purse and shoes. While the homeless are often described as wearing tattered and worn-out clothing. Most versions of this story focus on a girl who cannot afford a new dress to attend and event, so she purchased a secondhand dress instead. This being a representation of social class divide.

These themes are current even in today’s society with events such a homecoming, high school prom, and events such as cotillion. These events require expensive dresses for teens to wear for one night and other expenses such as hair and makeup. This leaves many teens, especially girls being left out.

Medical Science

In all versions of this story, the victim is poisoned by embalming fluid because the dress was once worn by a dead body. As the new wearer’s skin warmed, the embalming fluid seeped through her skin, and died from the poison in the embalming fluid. To your average person, this sounds incredibly scary and possible. Talk of death is taboo in most cultures and not usually discussed, making it scary to most people.

Embalming fluid is made up of many chemicals and is injected into a body after death to preserve the tissues from breaking down while awaiting burial. Over the years the composition of this fluid has changed but the main component has always been formaldehyde. This is the same thing that preserved the frog you dissected in high school. While formaldehyde can be absorbed through the skin, in small doses is not toxic. Formaldehyde is metabolized very quickly in a live human. In order to reach toxic levels, you would have to soak your skin a significantly large quantity of the liquid. Formaldehyde also has a very distinct smell. A dress covered in the embalming fluid would have an odor, especially as the body heats up.

Most urban legends have a grain of truth woven into the fantastic story. While it is possible that a girl died after a social event, especially in the 1950s when medicine was much less sophisticated, but the cause was not due to embalming fluid. Spooky stories such as fables and urban legends use inherent fears to illicit emotion. This story still lives on in both written versions and word of mouth.

References

Alvin Schwartz (2019). Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

The Hairpin.  A Dress to die for.

https://www.thehairpin.com/2015/03/a-dress-to-die-for/

#FolkloreThursday: The Poisoned Dress

https://steampunklibrarian.blog/2022/01/27/folklorethursday-the-poisoned-dress/

The last kiss

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dressed-to-kill/

Vice

The long strange history of women wearing deadly clothing

https://www.vice.com/sv/article/pgwgnv/the-long-strange-history-of-women-wearing-deadly-clothing

Embalmed Alive: A developing Urban Ghost Tale

https://ia804503.us.archive.org/12/items/sim_new-york-folklore-quarterly_autumn-1952_8_3/sim_new-york-folklore-quarterly_autumn-1952_8_3.pdf

There are many theories of reality out there ranging from the religious to the mathematical to elephants on top of turtles. What I’m going to do here is demonstrate that you can break this down into two paths which are incompatible with each other. To chose one is to completely reject the other. It all seems very complicated on the surface, but understanding the basics of reality is actually quite straightforward once you take step back and look at the problem as a whole.

Those two points of view are materialism and idealism. Materialism means that you believe that everything is ultimately made out of material and idealism means that you believe that everything is ultimately made out of ideas.

These two ways of looking at reality are incompatible because a universe that is strictly material cannot create ideas and a universe that is strictly ideas cannot create something material. Yet we seem to be in a universe where both exist. However, one of these two things must be right and the other must be wrong.

Physical vs. Mind

If you’ve never explored this topic, then it can be difficult to follow; particularly in understanding the difference between thought and physical reality since we blend the two together seamlessly.

The short version is This:

1. If it is physical, it can be measured and it has no inherent meaning.
2. If it is an idea, it has inherent meaning, but cannot be measured.

To take a rather mundane example, an actual wooden chair has measurable height, weight, and volume. If you throw it, it has the velocity as well. But if you asked the question: What does this chair mean? That is nonsensical. The wooden chair doesn’t mean anything, (and neither do any other physical objects.)

But suppose I say: “It’s a chair.” “Chair” doesn’t refer to a particular object, so there is no height, weight or volume to measure. And if I ask what does “chair” mean, you could easily reply with “something to sit on.” It’s an idea and therefore contains meaning, (all ideas contain meaning) and is not measurable.

Something can either be measurable or it can have meaning, but it cannot be both.

Is the Universe Material?

If the universe is strictly material, then everything in the universe can be broken down into reducible physical processes, nothing has any meaning at all, and consciousness doesn’t really exist; it is considered an epiphenomenon: A secondary process that occurs as the result of brain activity that can’t affect physical reality. In this scenario, only physical things that happen through purely physical processes are real. Our thoughts and memories are just stored electro-chemical reactions managed by an organic supercomputer.

Life is created out of an enormous multitude of random reactions that eventually get complicated enough to create a self-perpetuating thinking machine.

Everything to do with consciousness, therefore, also doesn’t exist. A physical universe exists without meaning because physical objects have no meaning.

So why would we believe that this is correct?

The Argument for Materialism

We need only look around to be aware of this physical, material world that we live in all our lives. To say that we have to pay attention to it is a massive understatement. We have bodies that must be managed, physical lives that are lived and we interact with the physical even while we’re sleeping. There is never a moment during our lives when we’re not attached to physical reality.

The world we live in behaves in a very physical, mostly predictable way. Most of what happens in our lives can be explained by material processes, whether through biology, chemistry or physics. We use physical processes to think and our thinking is affected by changes in our brains. No brain = no thinking. Our emotions correlate somewhat to physical processes in our bodies.

Different people all see the same thing and interact with it in the same way, and this seems to prove that an objective, physical reality exists.

If reality were based on ideas, you’d think that reality would be a lot more . . . bendy and dreamlike, people would see different things based on their inner worlds and that we wouldn’t ever grow old and die. You’d think that an idea based universe would allow you to change reality just by thinking about it.

But that doesn’t seem to happen. If you want to change physical things, you almost always have to engage in some task in the physical world to make it happen. If your car is making a weird noise, you can’t just wish it away, (although we’ve all tried at some point), you’re going to have to repair it.

There are, in other words, very good reasons to think that physical reality is primary and that consciousness is secondary.

The Problem With Materialism

While this all seems very obvious, there are serious problems with this approach, and it all starts with the fact that our entire experience of our physical reality happens in our minds.

All we will ever know of our physical world, we will know because of our conscious minds. There is absolutely no way around this. We cannot “get behind” consciousness and examine it from the perspective of being outside it. For example, if we are studying a car, we can handle it, take it apart and look at the various pieces. But consciousness doesn’t work that way. There is no way to stand apart from it, take it apart and see how it works. We have to be it, to look at it.

Our minds are what translates our body’s interactions with reality into something comprehensible. You cannot experience our physical reality without it.

Patterns and Meaning Are Not Physical

Here is where things get difficult. Patterns, codes and information are ideas. They have meaning and are not measurable. They are not physical objects. We assign patterns, codes and information to our physical universe, but these are not inherent properties of a physical reality. They are created by consciousness.

And now the hammer comes down: We experience our reality as patterns, codes, meaning and information. (These are all different names for the same thing.) We cannot experience reality any other way. This makes a truly physical universe impossible to prove.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The physical reality that we know is made up of patterns, which are creations of consciousness, and therefore our physical reality, as we know it, is utterly and completely dependent on consciousness to exist.

Another way to say this is that forming patterns is an act of consciousness. Because we can only see our reality in terms of meaning and patterns, we are experiencing a reality that our consciousness has created. If you are talking about a reality that exists without consciousness, you are talking about a reality that is without meaning and is patternless. We have no means of demonstrating such a thing to be real.

We Have to Reject Materialism

And if we can’t demonstrate it to be real, it can’t be our reality. The reality THAT WE HAVE requires consciousness to perceive it. That’s what we have to work with. In the case of materialism, there is no point in pursuing an avenue of investigation where it is impossible to gather any evidence.

Here we are then: A physical world which is impossible to disentangle from the consciousness that recognizes its existence. And with this, the philosophical approach of materialism comes to a dead end.

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Homes

We know that if materialism is false, then that leaves idealism. The material cannot create the immaterial and the immaterial cannot create the material. So if the universe isn’t material, then it is immaterial. The physical reality that we know must be a creation of consciousness.

Reality is Made of Ideas

This is completely counterintuitive. Our thoughts certainly do not feel as real as the physical world around us, so it’s going to take some effort to explain this. Let’s start with the obvious: our minds can function without input from our bodies, but take away the mind and there’s nothing there. The body can live for a little while, but it can’t even eat.

This leaves a very significant questions about a physical world made of thought, such as “why do we share this reality?” and “How does it hold together?” and “Why does physics work so well?” For the answer, we look to a feature of quantum physics known as entanglement and take the data to its logical conclusion based on the assumption that our physical reality is made of ideas.

The 2022 Nobel prize in physics is relevant here:

Three physicists won the Nobel Prize together for their work on entanglement. We already knew that entanglement was real; what they discovered was that no one has been able to prove the existence of hidden variables, (which would support materialism) and that reality is in an indeterminate state until it’s observed:

This is somewhat simplified, but if you split an electron, sending the two halves in different directions, you can know the spin of one by looking at the other no matter how far apart they are. If the wave function of one collapses, so does the other, apparently instantaneously. You can’t set up any situation where they act independently of one another.

Reality is Actually Timeless and Spaceless

No information can travel between them, so the only other conclusion that fits the data is that they were never separated in the first place. Although the subatomic particles move through time and space, their entanglement behaves as though time and space don’t exist. If you can demonstrate that anything at all ignores time and space, then time and space cannot be fundamental attributes of our reality, which means that our physical 3D reality isn’t fundamental. It is a kind of scaffolding over the top of a fundamental timeless, spaceless reality.

There is stuff there; reality is not an illusion; but because it is fundamentally timeless and spaceless, it’s not physical in any way that we would understand. Our connected consciousness is creating a template to translate it into a scaffolding, which is the physical reality that we understand and experience.

This doesn’t mean that we’re living in an illusion or the matrix, just that we’re dealing with a layered reality. That’s why I use the term “scaffolding.” The scaffolding is real, but the reality that we experience is not strictly physical, but probably better described as representative.

Separateness is Not Fundamental to Reality

The deeper reality, which is timeless and spaceless means that we are fundamentally not separated from each other or the rest of reality. People, and in fact all of life are not really separate. The separateness is just scaffolding. This is a concept that we need to grasp in order to understand what holds it all together. Our connectedness; oneness or whatever you want to call it, is what gives the physical world: (the scaffolding), its “stickiness.” We are not individuals, individually responsible for the creation of our own realities. We’re more like cells in a larger organism and our reality is massively shared.

This physical reality is made “real” by the connectedness of every living thing that shares in the experience. We’re not living in our own little worlds creating our own private physical realities, we’re following a ready made template.

Now, in that light, let’s look at that Nobel prize again:

Here’s a quote from Scientific American:

One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half century is that the universe is not locally real. “Real,” meaning that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking; “local” means objects can only be influenced by their surroundings, and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead, the evidence shows objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement.

In an idea based universe, this describes a quantum level process of creating a local, physical reality scaffolding over the non-local timeless, spaceless, reality of consciousness. A collective, connected consciousness is giving physical form to what is fundamentally timeless and spaceless at the quantum level.

Quantum Weirdness Explained?

This might explain the general weirdness of quantum mechanics. It may occupy the liminal space between our physical reality and the underlying timeless, spaceless reality.

Living things physically live within their physical worlds, but our minds are timeless and spaceless. It may help to visualize collective thoughts vs individual thoughts. A collective thought would be what creates the template for our shared physical reality. It is almost entirely subconscious and virtually unchangeable. If I have a spoon in my hand for example, that would be a collective thought; it is unaffected by my conscious thoughts and it reliably and very predictably interacts causally with the rest of the physical world.

Individual thoughts are how we normally use our minds. These are transitory. They don’t have physical form and change rather frequently. We can make them stronger or weaker depending on our level of focus, but it’s extremely rare for them to overcome collective thought. Our individual thoughts don’t normally affect the template. Someone could possibly bend a spoon with their mind under very specific conditions, but it’s not the norm.

Our Minds are Timeless and Spaceless

I know that for many readers, all of this probably seems quite bizarre, but let me ask this question: How do you perceive time and space in your mind? Do you feel the passage of time? What about events, do events long in the past seem long ago? Do places that you know well seem far away in your mind? Chances are, the answer is no to these questions. We tend to perceive things not on their physical or temporal distance, but rather on our familiarity. Our personal experience can be described as a continuous “now”. We can remember the past and imagine the future, but only from a position of experiencing “now.”

My point here is that our mind is experiencing the deeper timeless, spaceless reality all the time. It’s so completely normal that we don’t even think about it. We have to stop and think about how much time has passed and how far away things are. These things are not wired into our thinking.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. What I want to leave you with here is that getting away from a strictly physicalist model of reality doesn’t change much about how we live our lives or even how science is conducted. While our reality might be based in ideas, it’s still very much a robust, measurable physical reality to us and it doesn’t detract from scientific accomplishments.

Reality

But we need to be aware of the underpinnings of our reality. We’re not working with the details of a physical world, but rather an idea based scaffolding. Learning about the scaffolding is extremely valuable to our well being, but we need to remember that we’re dealing in information when we do that and we are creators of information. It’s not all as separate as it appears to be.

PDN has an exciting mini-conference for you coming up very soon.

Sign up here: Book Your Ticket Here

You are invited to our small mini-conference. This is a fundraising event that will take place online and will cover 3 main topics by three passionate speakers and advocates for Psi, Parapsychology, and Spiritual Science.

This conference is to help educate and sow seeds of inquiry into the minds of those interested in a professional approach to the subject. The speakers have been chosen for their knowledge, experience, and passion to educate and support a misunderstood subject. Each speaker brings a unique skill set and their topic is chosen to give our attendees a unique perspective that they can discuss with other attendees.

We can’t wait to see you there. The cost is $20 USD and a portion goes to psi research.

We’ve made some innovations to help you enjoy the experience without feeling information overload and give you some time to either chat up other people in the audience, grab something to eat, or get a couple of chores done around the house to clear your head before the next speech.

We do this by having a ten-minute Q&A after each speech and then a 20-minute break. Whatever time zone you’re in, you won’t be rushed.

We’re using a sophisticated networking software program that puts you at tables, so that it’s not a free for all, and you can leave a table if you’re not grooving with the conversation there.

This is what your screen looks like. If you join one of those tables, it looks a lot like a Zoom conversation. It’s a great way to find people to talk to or locate a friend who is also attending. Take the time to put in a profile and people will be able to see who you are at a glance. You can message anyone or join group messaging at a particular table to share info with each other.

For some people, this is the best part of conferences.

We have a great lineup of speakers:

Our featured speaker Loyd Auerbach:

M.S. (Parapsychology), Director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations and President of the Forever Family Foundation, has been in the field for over 40 years focusing on education and field investigation. He is the author or co-author of 10 nonfiction books and one novel and teaches online Parapsychology courses through the Rhine Education Center.

He is on the Board of the Rhine Research Center and the advisory boards of the Windbridge Research Center and the Forever Family Foundation. His media appearances on TV, radio, and in print number in the thousands, including The UnXplained, ESPN’s SportsCenter, ABC’s The View, Oprah, and Larry King Live. He works as a parapsychologist, professional mentalist/psychic entertainer (Professor Paranormal), public speaking & media skills coach, and as a professional chocolatier.

Loyd will be talking about:

Do Ghosts Have ESP? Parapsychology can answer, but Reality TV Cannot

Description:

The field of Parapsychology/Psychical Research, with its over 140-year history, provides much from both field investigations and laboratory findings that are generally ignored by the paranormal reality TV shows, and therefore unknown to or ignored by most who follow the often TV-producer-influenced methods. Parapsychologists, as scientists, have to assess their cases carefully, always looking for alternative "normal" explanations for every reported event, not just the overall case (this is not "debunking," by the way, but rather the process of applying science).

Also speaking: Jock Brocas

Jock Brocas is the founder of PDN, an evidential Spiritual Medium, and spiritual author of several books. Jock’s latest book “Deadly Departed” challenges the widely accepted paradigm of the afterlife. Jock writes with passion and in-depth knowledge. The books are written with one common goal, which is to enlighten and teach spiritual lessons of love, compassion, and forgiveness. Jock has appeared in national media and has written for global media on the paranormal, spirituality, and the afterlife. He has dedicated his later years to his own spiritual development and the professional development of his Mediumship and understanding of Parapsychology. Jock takes a more scientific view of the paranormal and the afterlife.

As a proponent of many disciplines, these skills have culminated in developing unique perspectives on spirituality and spiritual life. Jock teaches regularly and works tirelessly to help those developing on a spiritual path.

Jock’s Speech:

Dangers of Paranormal Belief for Mediums and Investigators

Description:

Are we wired for belief in the paranormal, and does a common bias cause more problems when it comes to the investigation of potential anomalous phenomena? Mediums, Uninformed Investigators, Religious perceptions, and the uneducated public could cause more suffering for a family, individual, or community under spiritual crisis. Jock will cite examples of mediumistic bias and the dangers associated with paranormal belief.

Also speaking: Craig Weiler

Craig Weiler is the science editor for Paranormal Daily News, a parapsychology journalist, author, and blogger.  Craig covers controversies in parapsychology (and occasionally other topics) as well as interesting studies, various researchers and projects, and the occasional topical subject related to parapsychology.  In particular, Craig covered the TED controversy of 2013 extensively as well as a Wikipedia controversy later in the year and was the first to report on Russell Gruber's Mirror Worlds Research.

His book: Psi Wars:  TED, Wikipedia and the Battle for the Internet follows the TED controversy while taking a broader look at why this sort of thing is happening in the first place.

Craig’s Speech:

The Handyman’s Guide to Reality

Description:

Craig’s nuts and bolts approach takes you on a practical and easily understandable discussion of the ongoing debate between people who believe in a totally physical world and those who believe that consciousness is fundamental. He then shows how you can use this information to practical effect in your life.

Miss Something? The Conference is Being Recorded

The conference will be recorded and each paid attendee will be able to watch the conference recording within our new private community at any time. Buying a ticket to the event ensures access to the new para community app.

Aleister Crowley; a man deemed the wickedest man in the world. Crowley was also an influential figure in the Western esoteric traditions. Furthermore, he is not forgotten since his death on December 1, 1947. His legacy lives on.

Aleister Crowley and His Early Life

The occult pioneer was born on October 12, 1875, in Leamington, Spa. He was known as Edward Alexander Crowley until he adopted the Gaelic form of his given name.

Crowley was born from a wealthy family. However, even at a young age, he had been vocal with his criticisms against his parents. He deplored their' fundamentalist Christian Plymouth beliefs, leading him to reject the entirely said faith.

It wasn't until he started his education at Trinity College, a division of the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, he pursued his interest in poetry and mountaineering. He then published several of his writings on his passions.

For some biographers, this is when Crowley was allegedly introduced into the British intelligence agency. It was suggested the man that everyone feared had lived as a spy throughout his life.

Crowley's Spiritual Journey

Even though Crowley detested Christianity, which is supported by his several anti-Semitic sentiments. He still considered himself an immensely spiritual and religious person.

In 1898; he was recruited in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He practiced and applied the ceremonial magic under the care of Allan Bennett and Samuel Lidell MacGregor Mathers.

His interests in mountain pursuits grew. To feed his quest for excellence, he once visited Mexico to mountaineer with a friend known as Oscar Eckenstein. He then travelled to India to study of Buddhism and Hinduism in India.

Biographies of Crowely

In multiple biographies, Crowley was described to have explored the belief systems of Kabbalah, Judeo-Christian, yoga, and Hermeticism. This was despite his critical view on the dominating religion.

Rose Edith Kelly married him in 1904, and they set their honeymoon in Cairo, Egypt. It was in this place that changed Crowley's life forever.

Supernaturally Touched

Crowley claimed that a supernatural entity named "Aiwass" had contacted him and lent him the “Book of the Law”. This was then to be the sacred text of Crowley's established Thelema religion.

It was the start of Æon of Horus, or the "Era of Horus." As the trustee of The Book, Crowley was hailed as the prophet of Thelemites. The era of Osiris, and the Isis, represented the previous ages, where the era of Isis was a period of matriarchy. In contrast, the era of Osiris displayed the power of the patriarchy.

Additionally, Osiris' generation has set a great emphasis on religious sacrifices. Yet, the followers believed that the era of Horus was the time for individualism. This was taken from the Egyptian belief that Horus struck his own, so he could learn and grow.

In Thelema, figures like Hadit, Nuit, and Ra Hoor Kuit are revered as the deities that guide the believers. They are equated to the Egyptian gods and goddess, such as Horus, Osiris, and Isis.

They may be seen as literal beings or archetypes, as long as Crowley's works are viewed canonically. The interpretation of The Book is left to the individual understanding of followers.

Aleister Crowley Created Thelema as the Way of Life

The law of Thelema states that, Thelemites should strive to ascend into a higher state of existence, unite the self to higher powers, and embrace the True Will as their ultimate place and purpose in life.

The religion upholds the beliefs

"Every Man and Woman is a Star" and the "Love is the Law. Law under Will."

The former refers to the perspective that everyone possesses unique abilities, potentials, and talents. Therefore, no one has the right to impede in their search for True Self. On the other hand, the latter indicates that each person is entangled with their True Will using love.

“As someone learns to love. They come to discover that it's founded on unity and understanding and never on coercion or force.”

A Ruthless Legacy on His Wake

In 1920, Crowley finally decided to move to Sicily to build the Abbey of Thelema. The abbey was to serve as the Thelemites' headquarters.

He went beyond his spiritual enlightenment by declaring himself as the Ipssissimus, roughly translated as “beyond the Gods,” in 1921.

After two years, Crowley began engaging with drugs and sexual endeavors. He communed with both men and women, all while bisexuality was concidered a taboo subject back then.

Not long after, an Englishman passed away under mysterious circumstances. Furthermore, this followed a ritual to which it was disclosed that he consumed the cat's blood.

To say that the Italian fascist and British press are appalled is an understatement. As a result, the Abbey was shut down. Not only that but Crowley was also expelled from the city, leading the rest of the Thelemites to scatter. Nonetheless, this wasn't the first time that Crowley made a gruesome move.

Boleskine House

Aleister Crowley sowed dread in the Boleskine House as he used it as a secluded area to practice his magic by “The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.”

The act prompted the sudden death of the housekeeper's two children. As a consequence, Crowley further bragged that a former drunkard employee, had been under the influence of alcohol and tried to murder the rest of his family.

Even after Crowley lost ownership of the place, the house was still filled with dark energy.

Suicide

In 1965, a suicide incident had taken place when an army major shot himself with a shotgun. Although the next owner; Jimmy Page, rarely spent time in the estate, he undoubtedly heard some odd creaks, ghostly apparitions, and unexplained groans within the house whenever he visits.

Instead of leaving the land to a friend, Jimmy decided to continue owning the property despite the frequent attempts of Page and Aleister Crowley fans to enter the premises.

Later, owners dismissed the notions of witchcraft and hauntings around the house, but a 2015 incident of the house enveloped in fires may have said otherwise.

Evil On the Loose

Crowley was put in disgrace, and was in a near-skeletal state due to his heroin addiction, but his followers never left his side. In fact, he fathered a handful of children, where most of them were illegitimate. Even then, Crowley was still considered a remarkable magus and medium.

Tarot and Magick

Aleister designed a new sequence of tarot cards and incorporated them into his 1944 “Book of Thoth” until he marked the end of his life in Hastings in 1947.

He may have been referred to as the wickedest man in the world, but there's no doubt that Crowley would deny this claim. It's worth noting, that after everything that Crowley had put people through, he had complete confidence that his works were good as they opened men to spiritual experiences by abandoning the earthly rules.

In the present day, there are a couple of individuals who still call themselves Thelemites and follow the works of Aleister Crowley. It’s as if he is still here, among us and plying his craft.

Aleister Crowley; a man deemed the wickedest man in the world. Crowley was also an influential figure in the Western esoteric traditions. Furthermore, he is not forgotten since his death on December 1, 1947. His legacy lives on.

Aleister Crowley and His Early Life

The occult pioneer was born on October 12, 1875, in Leamington, Spa. He was known as Edward Alexander Crowley until he adopted the Gaelic form of his given name.

Crowley was born from a wealthy family. However, even at a young age, he had been vocal with his criticisms against his parents. He deplored their’ fundamentalist Christian Plymouth beliefs, leading him to reject the entirely said faith.

It wasn’t until he started his education at Trinity College, a division of the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge, he pursued his interest in poetry and mountaineering. He then published several of his writings on his passions.

For some biographers, this is when Crowley was allegedly introduced into the British intelligence agency. It was suggested the man that everyone feared had lived as a spy throughout his life.

Crowley’s Spiritual Journey

Even though Crowley detested Christianity, which is supported by his several anti-Semitic sentiments. He still considered himself an immensely spiritual and religious person.

In 1898; he was recruited in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He practiced and applied the ceremonial magic under the care of Allan Bennett and Samuel Lidell MacGregor Mathers.

His interests in mountain pursuits grew. To feed his quest for excellence, he once visited Mexico to mountaineer with a friend known as Oscar Eckenstein. He then travelled to India to study of Buddhism and Hinduism in India.

Biographies of Crowely

In multiple biographies, Crowley was described to have explored the belief systems of Kabbalah, Judeo-Christian, yoga, and Hermeticism. This was despite his critical view on the dominating religion.

Rose Edith Kelly married him in 1904, and they set their honeymoon in Cairo, Egypt. It was in this place that changed Crowley’s life forever.

Supernaturally Touched

Crowley claimed that a supernatural entity named “Aiwass” had contacted him and lent him the “Book of the Law”. This was then to be the sacred text of Crowley’s established Thelema religion.

It was the start of Æon of Horus, or the “Era of Horus.” As the trustee of The Book, Crowley was hailed as the prophet of Thelemites. The era of Osiris, and the Isis, represented the previous ages, where the era of Isis was a period of matriarchy. In contrast, the era of Osiris displayed the power of the patriarchy.

Additionally, Osiris’ generation has set a great emphasis on religious sacrifices. Yet, the followers believed that the era of Horus was the time for individualism. This was taken from the Egyptian belief that Horus struck his own, so he could learn and grow.

In Thelema, figures like Hadit, Nuit, and Ra Hoor Kuit are revered as the deities that guide the believers. They are equated to the Egyptian gods and goddess, such as Horus, Osiris, and Isis.

They may be seen as literal beings or archetypes, as long as Crowley’s works are viewed canonically. The interpretation of The Book is left to the individual understanding of followers.

Aleister Crowley Created Thelema as the Way of Life

The law of Thelema states that, Thelemites should strive to ascend into a higher state of existence, unite the self to higher powers, and embrace the True Will as their ultimate place and purpose in life.

The religion upholds the beliefs

“Every Man and Woman is a Star” and the “Love is the Law. Law under Will.”

The former refers to the perspective that everyone possesses unique abilities, potentials, and talents. Therefore, no one has the right to impede in their search for True Self. On the other hand, the latter indicates that each person is entangled with their True Will using love.

“As someone learns to love. They come to discover that it’s founded on unity and understanding and never on coercion or force.”

A Ruthless Legacy on His Wake

In 1920, Crowley finally decided to move to Sicily to build the Abbey of Thelema. The abbey was to serve as the Thelemites’ headquarters.

He went beyond his spiritual enlightenment by declaring himself as the Ipssissimus, roughly translated as “beyond the Gods,” in 1921.

After two years, Crowley began engaging with drugs and sexual endeavors. He communed with both men and women, all while bisexuality was concidered a taboo subject back then.

Not long after, an Englishman passed away under mysterious circumstances. Furthermore, this followed a ritual to which it was disclosed that he consumed the cat’s blood.

To say that the Italian fascist and British press are appalled is an understatement. As a result, the Abbey was shut down. Not only that but Crowley was also expelled from the city, leading the rest of the Thelemites to scatter. Nonetheless, this wasn’t the first time that Crowley made a gruesome move.

Boleskine House

Aleister Crowley sowed dread in the Boleskine House as he used it as a secluded area to practice his magic by “The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.”

The act prompted the sudden death of the housekeeper’s two children. As a consequence, Crowley further bragged that a former drunkard employee, had been under the influence of alcohol and tried to murder the rest of his family.

Even after Crowley lost ownership of the place, the house was still filled with dark energy.

Suicide

In 1965, a suicide incident had taken place when an army major shot himself with a shotgun. Although the next owner; Jimmy Page, rarely spent time in the estate, he undoubtedly heard some odd creaks, ghostly apparitions, and unexplained groans within the house whenever he visits.

Instead of leaving the land to a friend, Jimmy decided to continue owning the property despite the frequent attempts of Page and Aleister Crowley fans to enter the premises.

Later, owners dismissed the notions of witchcraft and hauntings around the house, but a 2015 incident of the house enveloped in fires may have said otherwise.

Evil On the Loose

Crowley was put in disgrace, and was in a near-skeletal state due to his heroin addiction, but his followers never left his side. In fact, he fathered a handful of children, where most of them were illegitimate. Even then, Crowley was still considered a remarkable magus and medium.

Tarot and Magick

Aleister designed a new sequence of tarot cards and incorporated them into his 1944 “Book of Thoth” until he marked the end of his life in Hastings in 1947.

He may have been referred to as the wickedest man in the world, but there’s no doubt that Crowley would deny this claim. It’s worth noting, that after everything that Crowley had put people through, he had complete confidence that his works were good as they opened men to spiritual experiences by abandoning the earthly rules.

In the present day, there are a couple of individuals who still call themselves Thelemites and follow the works of Aleister Crowley. It’s as if he is still here, among us and plying his craft.

The Roswell Mill sits at the edge of Vickery Creek. A short drive north of Atlanta, it is part of the trail network in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. At its entrance, visitors can cross a covered bridge, leading them deeper into the trail where you are thrust into a forest of lush ferns and greenery.

A Mother’s Day trip to the mill’s location was right up my alley. Like most historical places in Georgia, it’s nestled amongst trees right off of a busy road. A hidden waterfall and scenic trail located right in the center of downtown Roswell, it’s the perfect day trip for an easy hike. And, of course, it’s haunted.

Sounds Of The Past

Over the years, nearby residents have reported hearing clanking noises as if metal were banging against metal. And blood-curdling screams are often reported coming from the area when no one is around. With no occupational safety measures during the days of its operation, workers were often injured, some as severe as having their limbs torn from their bodies. Could these be their sounds of agony echoing through the woods?

The site is stunning, and it was the ideal location to build the mill as the natural water source provided the power needed to operate it. With a waterfall not far from the old machine shop, the soothing ambiance and tropical-like scenery make the sight a fun and relaxing destination for all to visit. And if you're lucky, you may even have a paranormal experience.

Built, in 1839, like most places in the metro Atlanta area, it witnessed the horrors and tragedy of the Civil War. Constructed to be a cotton mill, it was one of many mills that lined Vickery Creek. Numerous buildings once sat along the water's edge, where they housed workers of the mill. Today, the only original building standing is the old machine shop.

During the war, all men capable of fighting were sent off to battle, leaving the women and children behind. The women of Roswell took over running the mill in order to earn a living while the men were off fighting. Many of whom brought their children along to work beside them as there were no other options for childcare during that time. The children were used as laborers and put to work just as long and hard as the adults. Because of their small and nimble fingers, the children were used to fix broken pieces of thread when they snapped in the machines. They would run between the working parts of the moving machinery, tie broken threads together and rush back out. You can only imagine the number of injuries that took place.

A Fight For Survival

Union soldiers eventually took the city of Roswell. General William T. Sherman instructed his men to burn the buildings of the mill when it was discovered that the workers were manufacturing the grey uniforms for the Confederate army. In an attempt to claim neutrality, a French worker of the mill flew a French flag above the roof. But the attempt failed, and the Union army burned all of the buildings to the ground. Some residents tried to hide within the buildings when General Sherman charged all remaining workers with treason. Some reports say that it is likely there were fatalities during those fires from people trapped inside. In the end, over 400 women and children were rounded up, arrested, and put on box car trains to the North.

General Sherman received substantial backlash and outrage from the North, and the prisoners were never tried for treason. Though many had already died on the journey, and those who survived were never able to return home to Georgia.

Today, it is not uncommon for visitors to glimpse apparitions of women and children roaming the grounds along the water's edge, or to hear screams coming from the boarded-up machine shop. Could these be the lost souls who were forced from their homes, returning to finish their work? Could the flowing waters of the creek be fueling the hauntings, providing the energy needed for spirits manifest? Or are these the residual haunts from wounded mill workers who suffered within its walls?

If you do visit, be sure to look for the signs of old foundations of buildings that once stood. Hidden beneath piles of dirt, moss and vegetation, the fallen bricks hold the stories of what took place. And, take a moment to listen carefully. You many just hear the sounds of the past echoing beside you.

We’ve all heard tales of spiritual possession. Most of the time, the stories we hear are of malicious, demonic entities hell-bent on controlling the living. Frightening and ghastly visions come to mind when we think of them. But what if some spirits are only looking for a way to communicate. In the form of a living person, a vessel to help them find closure to a life cut short? Or, to help bring peace to their own family, whose grief is so deep, they’ve taken to rituals to communicate with the other side? So was the story in the historical, haunting case of the Watseka Wonder.

The Watseka Wonder is credited as the first well-documented case of possession in the United States. It has inspired a movie, and it was so profound that the physician, Dr. E. Winchester Stevens, who witnessed the phenomenon first hand, wrote a book documenting the case.

To understand this mysterious story, we must first visit the heartland of America, Watseka, Illinois. Here, an ominous-looking home stands. Built, in 1868, the long, narrow, arched windows and brick exterior give this Victorian, Italianate style home a Gothic mood. Known today as the Roff House, it was constructed by Asa Roff, a prominent member of the Watseka community in the mid-eighteen hundreds, and has remained a mystery in the paranormal world since the Roff’s occupied it.

Clairvoyance Brought On By Illness?

Asa and Dorothy Roff’s daughter, Mary Roff, suffered from epilepsy and had frequent seizures. As she grew older, Mary claimed that spirits were around and spoke to her. These episodes became more violent as years passed. During one of her last and most violent spells, she became so fierce that it took several adults to restrain her while she calmed down. By this point, Mary was incredibly weak from a suicide attempt and blood loss, yet she exhibited a tremendous amount of strength.

She eventually settled down and remained delirious for five days and slept for many hours. When she awoke, it is said that Mary gained supernatural gifts. Her senses seemed to be heightened and, supposedly, could read while blindfolded.

Witnesses stated that she accurately read a letter in the pocket of A.J. Smith, editor of the Danville Times. The letter was supposedly sealed and in his pocket, but Mary read it aloud.

Because doctors could not find a cure or proper diagnosis of her strange symptoms, it was assumed she was afflicted with insanity. She was placed in an asylum for treatment in Peoria, Illinois, but died there in July 1865.

Séances And Secret Societies

After her death, The Roff family home was constructed in 1868. Being devout spiritualists and a common practice during the nineteenth century, the family immediately began holding séances inside the house. In addition to the family séances, Asa Roff was a known member of the Odd Fellows. A secret society who were known for partaking in mysterious rituals surrounding the dead during that time.

Some have speculated that the Roff’s involvement with the spiritual word may have been the catalyst that awoke the spirits which plagued Mary.

Watseka Wonder Under Spiritual Possession

In 1878, over a decade after Mary’s death, a young girl named Lurancy Vennum, who was thirteen years old at the time, lived in Watseka. One day, she suddenly became ill and began suffering epileptic seizures, stomach pains and said she saw angels around her. Her illness soon worsened; she spoke in different voices, taking on personalities not her own, and, at times, became violent.

This was during the height of the spiritual movement and gained rapid popularity amongst those practicing spiritualism. Instead of following doctors’ suggestions of placing Lurancy in an asylum, her parents sought help from local spiritualists to investigate.

Asa Roff was interested in Lurancy’s case because her symptoms so closely resembled his daughter, Mary’s. He had been convinced that Mary’s illness was not caused by insanity, as doctors tried to explain. But that she had been touched by the spiritual world, and he carried a tremendous amount of guilt over what happened to his daughter.

Good Spirits vs. Bad

Lurancy claimed evil spirits possessed her, and that was the cause of her violent outbursts. One of the doctors treating Lurancy asked her to seek a more pleasant spirit surrounding her to possess her body. When she stated that Mary Roff was present and wanted to help, the witnesses were astounded. Lurancy then invited Mary to take control of her physical body.

Immediately after the possession, Lurancy became calm and polite. A sharp contradiction to her previous behavior, and took on the personality of Mary Roff. Though Lurancy had never met Mary and had no knowledge of what Mary had gone through, she seemed to have intimate details of the Roff family. She was able to recognize them and knew the names of the Roff family relatives. She was even able to recall personal possessions that the family had owned.

Lurancy no longer recognized her own family and asked to be taken to the Roff home. Convinced that Lurancy was under the possession of his daughter, Asa asked if he could take Lurancy with him, believing that his daughter was asking from the spiritual world to be brought back to her family.

The Vennum’s agreed, and Lurancy accompanied Asa back to his home, where she lived for 15 weeks. At the end of that time, she bid the family goodbye in a tearful departure that she had prophesied and promised the return of Lurancy once she departed her body.

As promised, Lurancy returned. Seeming to be back to her old self and without any further episodes of spiritual possession, she went back to live with her parents. She eventually married, had a family of her own, and lived a normal, long life with no other illnesses.

Summoned Spirits Left Behind

Today, the Roff House still stands and is owned by John Whitman, who has worked to restore the home and turn it into a Bed & Breakfast. However, the Watseka Wonder possession story is not the only haunting tale attached to this property. Over the years, the owner and guests at the house have reported ghostly activity—some sinister.

Whispering is often heard from empty rooms. Black shadows have been spotted. Even reports of demons have been made. The owner stated in an interview that while staying the night, he awoke to a figure in his bedroom which appeared to have been burned, was wearing a black hooded cloak, and an evil grin curled its lips. Some visitors have also said that spirits have taken over their bodies, in a temporary possession.

Many believe that the ghostly sightings and dark presence that roam the property were invited through the portals opened during the many séances that the Roff family held. And that over the years, investigation groups who were inexperienced could have unknowingly exacerbated the haunted property by inviting more unfriendly spirits into the home.

Conclusion

As alluring as it is to make contact with the other side, one must always be cautious. Opening doors could very well let the person you are seeking to communicate with in, but there is no guarantee that others spirits, friendly or malicious, won’t follow them.

Image References:

https://www.newsbug.info/iroquois_countys_times-republic/roff-house-earns-preservation-award-from-landmarks-illinois/article_66084618-d77d-5464-94c6-f702b580178e.html

The exorcism of Janet Moses is another story where someone suffering from mental health issues suffered a so-called exorcism that caused their death. Unfortunately, this story is just as horrific as some others. It leaves many people wondering if a lack of access to mental health services is breeding more of these incidents across the world?

What Happened To Janet Moses?

Janet Moses was killed during a so-called exorcism in New Zealand. Janet believed someone was going to get her and tried to kill her family. Instead of seeking mental health services, forty of her family members gathered at her grandmother’s home. They then proceeded to surround Janet and stomped on her feet while chanting “Go with peace and love”. Janet was also subjected to drowning, as her family threw bowls of water at her while she was being restrained. As Janet had trouble breathing, her family believed she was struggling with demons. Eventually, Janet died in her bed from drowning.

The case actually dates back to October 2007 and none of the family members involved were actually convicted. However, the tragedy led to a documentary, which investigated if the case was actually callous murder opposed to the family believing they could help Janet.

Janet Moses History

Janet Moses was a mum of two young children. She found herself in an unhealthy relationship with a man who frequently cheated on her. In addition to that, she was also suffering mentally after the recent death of her grandmother.

Moses’ family who contributed to her death believed Janet was possessed after the theft of a stone lion from a hotel. This event occurred weeks before Janet started to behave weirdly. However, once Janet showed signs of mental illness, that’s where it went wrong.

Instead of getting proper mental healthcare or see a licensed practitioner, Janet was taken to a Kaumatua. A Kaumatua is an elder of the Maori community, whose advice is regularly sought in these matters. Unfortunately, this advice would also lead to the death of the young woman. In fact, the Kaumata told the family that the lion brought an evil presence inside the home and had caused Janet’s psychotic behavior.

Why Was The Family Not Convicted?

The trial involved nine family members who faced manslaughter charges. Each of the family members plead not guilty to their charges. Their defence attorney claimed that the family believed Janet was genuinely possessed and that they only tried to help her. The trial lasted for almost a full month and mainly involved a discussion on consent for exorcism, more specifically if Janet had given her consent for the exorcism.

Throughout the trial, the lawyer claimed the family loved Janet and only wished to helped her. He also claimed that they paid a heavy price in return, the death of a loved one.

Even the documentary maker eventually agreed with the findings, stating:

“It’s recognised there are times when hysteria can take over and people are not in control of their actions, almost like being controlled by a substance. You’re not in your right mind. Nobody intended to murder anyone.”

“When they discovered she was dead they couldn’t quite believe it themselves and blamed it on the demon, not themselves. “It wasn’t calculated, it wasn’t deliberate and it was coming from a place of love, not malice.”

Conclusion

The trial certainly brings forward more questions about intent. Even if the family did not intend to kill Janet, she still lost her life due to religious superstitions and a lack of mental healthcare access. Who in the end is held responsible? Because at the end of this trial, nobody truly paid for the death of Janet Moses. Perhaps more investigation is required into these types of cases where the thin gray line between mental illness, religious superstition and the reality of real proven demonic possession can be identified.

Gwrych Castle was the location for British show ‘I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here’ in 2020. Due to the pandemic, the normal location in the Australian jungle was out of the question. But not all was well in Gwrych Castle. After all, many people claim that the castle is haunted. Even some of the cast and crew were starting to come out with stories. But what is the true story behind Gwrych Castle?

What Is The History Of Gwrych Castle?

Gwrych Castle is a fortress situated by the Irish Sea. It is surrounded by a whopping 250 acres of land, making it quite isolated. The castle’s origin dates back to 1810. It was built by Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh.

The castle was the home for many people over the years. It was passed down to the Earls of Dundonalds through marriage. The estate was eventually sold in 1946 and was opened to the public later.

In 2018, the castle was bought by the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust. As the castle started to fall into disrepair, the trust set upon a mission to restore the castle to its former glory.

Castle Hauntings

Gwrych Castle has quite the history when it comes to reported hauntings. There is a legend surrounding the Castle, as it is believed that the Countess of Dundonald Winifred Cochrane haunts the grounds.

Countess of Dundonald Winifred Cochrane was born in 1859 and died in 1924. She was a patron for the arts in Wales and was known for and wide for her contributions to charity. When her father died in 1894, she became the sole heiress of Gwrych Castle.

Winifred Cochrane married the 12th Earl of Dundonald, although the marriage was not thought to be a good one. It is claimed the Earl of Dundonald was never around and spent most of his time in Scotland.

The Countess of Dundonald eventually tried to leave her castle to prince George as a gift, who would later become King George V. However, George refused and the Earl of Dundonald later bought the Castle for £70,000.

Over the years, Gwrych Castle has been rumored to be haunted. In fact, one of the locations associated with the most ‘supernatural’ occurrences is the Countess’ Tower. At least, this according to the Castle’s own website. Naturally, the Castle is benefiting greatly from the ghost story.

The Countess of Dundonald is believed to be haunting the castle still, this according to paranormal investigator Gemma Williams. The investigator also claimed she had to run away when in a lady in a red dress walked out of the wall and screamed.

In addition to the reports about the Countess of Dundonald, some claim the castle is haunted by a servant girl who died when she fell off a horse. Others claim that the castle is haunted by numerous former servants who cannot find peace.

Ghost Hunts

Gwrych Castle has taken full advantage of the haunted stories that surround it. While the castle was still open to the public, it held its own ghost tours from 8 pm to 1 am. One of the stories featured on the website from staff and visitors include:

“The handrail gave way to nothingness and I felt something propel me up the top three stairs. Seconds later, my colleague told me the butler died right there on that same staircase.”

Unfortunately, the castle is currently not open to the public as it is being repaired. So, it seems the income from the TV show is being put to good use. Therefore, it will be a little while before people can start roaming the castle grounds again.

If you love paranormal romance books, then you will love the new book by Temperance Dawn who captivates us in weaving the paranormal with a hauntingly dark love affair. Temperance has a fascination for the paranormal and uses her interest in creating captivating tales from the haunted locations she visits for PDN.

A new step in paranormal romance.

Temperance Dawn’s riveting story ‘Protecting His Windflower’ shared many stories within its own. From the tale of Liam and Emily, to the shocking story from our antagonist. The story began with a background from our main character and built toward romance. Whilst one of our main characters, Emily, is moving into a new strange home, another, Liam, is trying to fix the place up in time for the return of the owner. Once Emily starts to get comfortable, a benevolent force awakens, and the main characters are encompassed by dark secrets.

Dawn’s writing was enthralling and always kept me on the edge of my seat. Her fast-paced style provoked me to never leave a page unturned. I was itching for a new plot point to be revealed. Not to mention, the horrific sightings of paranormal activity made my bones chill. My blood pressure increased everytime I feared for the characters. Dawn did a brilliant job with character diversity and development. As the story progressed, I loved learning more about the characters we had met. Especially the new ones, that were referred to at the beginning of the novel, later becoming more important later on. Dawn’s approach to the end of the novel tied a seamless ribbon, and proved a promise for another book in the series.

The paranormal romance genre’s new addition, ‘Protecting His Windflower’, entails an incredible story of love. This thrilling story made me more interested in other paranormal histories and novels. For anyone who enjoys a touch of horror, romance, and multiple storylines, I suggest this book to you. Dawn’s debut novel is a ride you will want to take.

Protecting His Windflower Is Available Now

Review by: Myria Candies

Supernatural games have always been popular with both young and old. Just think about games such as ‘Bloody Mary’ and the Ouija Board, which have been around for a very long time. When one wants to connect with the afterlife, you either go to a medium or you play a supernatural game, but at your own peril. One of the latest supernatural games to come forward is the Charlie-Charlie Challenge. But should parents be concerned about this new game and their children’s interest in it?

What Is The Charlie-Charlie Challenge?

The game could be described as a basic version of the Ouija Board, which works with pencils. It has been heavily featured on social media and so a large number of children have been exposed to it. To start the game, the phrase “Charlie, Charlie can we play” is uttered. Then, a question is asked and participants wait for the pencil to move towards “yes” or “no”.

Do Supernatural Games Have A Harmful Effect On Children?

Supernatural games have been around for a very long time and have always fascinated the younger generation. Yet, despite their popularity, there is little research into the effects of these supernatural games on children.

Despite the lack of research into the effects of supernatural games on children, we do know some of the numbers in terms of these game sales. While the Charlie Charlie Challenge is quite rudimentary, there are actual supernatural games for sale in stores such as Toys R Us. In 2014, a Ouija Board marketed for children and young adults saw a sale increase of a whopping 300%!

Researchers have looked into why people are so fascinated with supernatural games. To understand this, we need to look at three reasons why people are so fascinated by horror films. These three reasons are relevance, tension, and unreal ism. In other words, some part of the horror film is relevant for the watcher, yet the viewer will experience suspense and a situation that is far removed from their own reality despite the relevance. A similar explanation could be found for the Charlie Charlie Challenge. Another theory by Dr. Carl Jung claims that supernatural scary films actually go deep into our collective subconscious and connect to a so-called primordial archetype. However, this theory is subject to quite a lot of criticism within the psychological society.

So, since there is no research into the effects of these games on the psyche of children and adults, it is impossible to determine if they are from a psychological standpoint. Of course, it also opens the door to some interesting psychological research that would be well-worth exploring.

Religious Standpoint

Since children are attempting to contact demons during the Charlie Charlie Challenge, there has been a reaction from the Catholic Church. One priest called Father Stephen McCarthy gave the following warning to his students:

"There is a dangerous game going around on social media which openly encourages impressionable young people to summon demons. I want to remind you all there is no such thing as 'innocently playing with demons'. Please be sure to NOT participate and encourage others to avoid participation as well. The problem with opening yourself up to demonic activity is that it opens a window of possibilities which is not easily closed."

Conclusion

As I often think from a psychological perspective, there is no evidence that playing supernatural games could cause harm to children. That being said, there is such a thing as common sense. Even though there is no evidence to prove that harm is being caused, there is no proof that no harm is being caused either. So, this is very much a case reminiscent of schrodinger's cat. It could, or it could not.

At the end of the day, it is important to educate children on the dangers of playing with supernatural games and their implications. Information and education tends to be the right course of action, even though if children seem to dismiss any efforts made towards it. But at the end of the day, the message will be in the back of their mind.

The William Westerfeld House sits on the corner of Fulton and Scott Streets in San Francisco, CA. Anyone heading east up Fulton Street can tell you, as you come to the top of the hill at Alamo Square; this stunning, Gothic home is a sight to behold. It also happens to be one of the cities most haunted locations.

With its multiple metal finials surrounding the roof line, the tower at the top is one of the home’s most interesting features. At the same time, it makes you wonder why such a room was desired. Your interest is further piqued by the building's Gothic “Adams Family” look. The style is unique in its own right, and the building possesses a presence both foreboding and intriguing. It should be no surprise that the house has an interesting and dark past.

Passing The Infamous Westerfield House

As a native San Franciscan, I grew up passing by the Westerfeld House often. I always wondered about the history of it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned of the haunting tales that took place and its strange connection to the occult.

Constructed in 1889, William Westerfeld, a German baker, commissioned Henry Geilfuss, a well-known German architect (who built many Victorian homes and refined the iconic San Francisco style Victorians in the late 1800s) to build the mansion. The multilevel home was to be Westerfeld’s family residence. Unfortunately, he died only six years after its construction, and this is where the strange history of the house begins.

After William’s death in 1895, the home was acquired by John Mahoney, another prominent San Francisco figure, famous for contracting the building of San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel and the Palace Hotel. During Mahoney’s time of residence in the home, he entertained many famous guests, two of whom were Harry Houdini and radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi. It is said that the two spent time in the tower. It is there where Marconi transmitted the first radio signals on the west coast, and Houdini attempted to send telepathic messages to his wife across the Bay. One can only wonder if the energy from these activities paved the way for future events.

Night Club Shenanigans

In 1928, it was bought by Czarist Russians, where it became a community center. The basement was turned into the “Dark Eyes” nightclub, and the building as a whole became known as the “Russian Embassy.” It is documented that a Russian colonel was murdered inside the residence during a fight over a woman.

In 1948, the home was converted into multiple apartments and housed African-American musicians who played in local Jazz Clubs. Furthermore, In 1967, the occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger leased the property. In an interview in 2018, Anger stated that he bought the home because he felt it was “Already heavily charged with demonic energy”, and he confirmed that he did perform satanic rituals in the tower.

The Occult At Westerfield House

While Anger lived in the home, he filmed several occult classics, including the notable “Invocation Of My Demon Brother” and “Lucifer Rising”. A frequent guest of Anger was Anton LaVey (who is said to have also lived inside the home at one point), founder of The Church Of Satan. It’s believed that LaVey used to hold Black Mass in the tower where he opened doors into the spiritual realm.

Adding to the list of residence who practiced the occult, a member of the Charles Manson family, Bobby Beausoleil (who was a follower of Anton LaVey), lived in the home for a time. It is thought that he brought Charles Manson to the house.

Ghost Adventures

In a 2018 interview with Ghost Adventures host Zak Bagans, Anger stated that it was not him nor LaVey who painted a pentagram on the floor in the tower. But that it had already been present when he moved in.

With the dark, heavily charged atmosphere swirling around the Westerfeld House, one can’t help but wonder if the rituals that Anger and LaVey performed indeed opened the doors to hell. Could Beausoleil, a notable musician at the time, have been influenced by demonic entities to carry out a gruesome murder for the Manson Family?

The ceiling in the tower had been removed by Anger and LaVey, exposing the rafters. In an attempt to magnify their forces, a parabolic microphone was hung from the rafters, pointed toward the sky, intensifying their ceremonies as they opened doors to hell and called upon and invited demons into the house.

To this day, residents of the home report that strange happenings do occur within the walls of the Westerfeld House. Unexplained noises are common. Seeing figures and disturbing nightmares are a regular occurrence also being reported. One resident stated in a Ghost Adventures interview that, “You’re never alone here.”

Behavior Patterns

One disturbing regular occurrence is the rapid change in people's behavior upon entering the home. It seems that people become influenced by an unseen force, some becoming violent. Others delving into addiction.

Other residents of the home have expressed that though they regularly feel a strange presence, hear unexplainable noises, and sometimes feel uneasy, they do not feel in danger and continue to live on the property.

Today, the home is owned by businessman Jim Siegel, who has poured love into the house, restoring it and preserving its character. The Westerfeld House is now on the National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco. Siegel has said that he always knew he would someday own the “Adams Family” looking house and had been fascinated with it since childhood. When he purchased the property in 1986, he immediately had Buddhist Priests bless every corner of the home. Although he claims that he’s never seen a ghostly apparition, he has stated that he's experienced one paranormal occurrence in which his bed shook violently while he lay watching TV one night. And it was not due to any earthquakes.

Georgia’s rich history, beautiful landscape and inviting southern charm make it an excellent pick for anyone wanting to visit. And if you’re looking for historical haunted landmarks, you won’t be disappointed. From graveyards to museums and civil war battlefields, the local haunts around the state are plenty, some of which are hidden right in the middle of a city.

Bulloch Hall lays nestled within the busy town of Roswell. Hidden amongst the dense trees, it was a plantation home that produced cotton. Built by slave labor, it was constructed in 1839 by Major James Stephens Bulloch, one of Roswell’s first settlers.

Haunted Plantation

Perched on a small hill, the expansive green lawn and massive Greek Revival-style pillars beckon visitors to its entrance. The great Oak trees that line the property have witnessed the antebellum South, war, and slavery. Adding to its deep roots, it was home to President Theodore Roosevelt’s mother, Martha ‘Mittie’ Bullock Roosevelt, and has played host to many events throughout its time. Mittie Bullock married Theodore Roosevelt Sr. on the property in 1853 and when the Bulloch family fled the home during the Civil War, it became a barracks for the Union Army.

Bulloch Hall is magnificent. The road leading to the estate, now paved for modern-day transportation, gives visitors a glimpse of what the elegant home looked like in the nineteenth century. It’s easy to forget you are in a large city while walking amongst the tall trees (some of which have been there since before the Hall’s construction) or relaxing by Malon’s Pond. The historic site has been restored to look as it once did when first built, including a reconstruction of the slave quarters in the service yard. Guests can walk through and gain a sense of what slave life was like on this particular property. A plaque on the cabin lists the names of all known slaves who served at Bulloch Hall. The exhibit is dedicated to all of them.

Though it sits only a few hundred feet from a major city road, the lush greenery and gardens bask visitors in quiet serenity, instantly transporting them back in time. But one shouldn’t be fooled by its beauty. The moss-laden paths, calm pond and shade cover trees have a story to tell.

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As with many locations in the South, this one is no different when it comes to the history of slavery and war. The site was once a cotton plantation and was home to over thirty slaves, one of whom is said to have been a young girl, around 14 years old.

There are two wells located on the property, the first being in the front yard, which was used as the Bullock family’s primary source of drinking water. The second is located in the rear behind the home and the story goes that the young girl fell to her death in that well.

Soon after her death, weeping could be heard coming from the well. Some visitors still report that they can hear sobbing echoing from the now boarded up well. It is believed that her apparition has been seen inside the Hall by visitors over the years and there have also been reports of lights flickering on and off within the Hall. According to stories, the young girl's responsibility was to maintain the lighting within the home. Could this strange occurrence be the young slave girl still tending to her duties on the property?

Some witnesses have reported seeing men in civil war dress peering out of the second-floor windows and there have been sightings of a young boy running through the front yard. Even as the Hall sat abandoned for a time, there have been eyewitness accounts of shadows walking the grounds and many photos have been captured over the years of strange apparitions in the front yard and windows. Guests of the local ghost tour often capture these pictures, along with unexplained thermal images.

You’ll find Bulloch Hall on the itinerary for the local ghost tour that is held each week. But whether you visit on your own, or with a tour, or see a ghostly sighting or not, you're sure to leave with Bulloch Hall's iconic and majestic image forever etched on your mind.