New York man captures ghost of a cat on video at haunted hotel!

A paranormal investigator captured some compelling footage at a hotel in New York earlier this year. In one of his clips, a ghostly figure seems to pass by a doorway at the end of a long hall. A closer look at the video and what appears to be a tail wagging back and forth is seen as an apparition of an animal enters one of the rooms.

On January 15, 2013, paranormal investigator Stephen Barcelo set off to Napanoch, New York to explore the Shanley Hotel. Barcelo was determined to gather evidence of the hotel's ghosts so he set up cameras in various rooms of the alleged haunted hotel.

In one of the clips from Barcelo's footage, a ghostly figure seems to pass by a doorway at the end of a long hall. A closer look at the video and what appears to be a tail wagging back and forth is seen as an apparition of an animal enters one of the rooms on the third floor.

Shanley Hotel owner, Sal Nicosia believes that the figure could be the ghost of a cat that he once had that lived in the hotel. Nicosia also said that he picked up an EVP one night of a ghost named Claire saying that it was her cat.

"I had a cat close to 14 years and when I lived in the other house I would let the cat out and the cat would come back every day. When we moved into the hotel, the cat refused to go out. I couldn't get the cat to come into my apartment. For some reason the cat wouldn't come into that room. I would bring her into the room and she'd run right out the door so I started feeding her in the hallway," Nicosia said.

According to Nicosia, the third floor seems to be the most active with paranormal phenomena in the hotel. Suite 13 is the room where the footage was captured.

"The cat was roaming the building and after awhile she would start going up to the third floor and she would come down to the second floor and go back to the third floor. Then after a few months she refused to come down from the third floor. She stayed in Claire's room," Nicosia said about his cat.

What do you think the ghostly figure is? Is it dust or debris? Is it a hoax? Is it the ghost of a cat? Post your opinion in the comment section below.

Visit the Shanley Hotel's website or call 845-210-4267 for more information. The Shanley Hotel is located at 56 Main Street, in Napanoch, New York.

Indiana police believed woman’s tale of supernatural haunting that ended in exorcism

Do you believe in demons? One Indiana police captain said he didn’t until he started investigating a bizarre case in 2012.

Charles Austin, a 36-year-old veteran of the Gary police department, said he initially thought Latoya Ammons had made up the strange tale involving the demonic possession of her children and supernatural occurrences as a scheme to make money.

But after visiting the family’s rental home and speaking to others who had been there, Austin changed his mind.

“I am a believer,” he said.

The Indianapolis Star examined medical, psychological and other official records handed over by Ammons, who agreed to speak about the case as long as her three children were not interviewed or identified.

Ammons told the paper that she moved in November 2011 with her children and mother, Rosa Campbell, into a rental home on Carolina Street in the gritty industrial city.

Horseflies, unexplained footsteps and levitation

Within weeks, the family noticed swarms of horseflies on their screened-in porch, which they thought was unusual for December, and they sometimes heard heavy footsteps clumping up the basement stairs and the creak of the basement door opening – but no one was there.

Campbell said she awoke one night to find the shadowy figure of a man pacing her living room, and she found large, wet boot prints on the floor after leaping out of bed to investigate.

In March 2012, while the family stayed up past 2 a.m. mourning the death of a loved one with friends and relatives, Ammons said her 12-year-old daughter levitated, unconscious, over a bed where she had been lying with a friend.

The group surrounded the girl, praying until she eventually descended back into bed. The family’s guests refused to return to the home, and the family began seeking help from local churches.

They cleaned the home with bleach and ammonia, drew crosses on doors and anointed themselves with olive oil and built a makeshift altar in the basement.

A clairvoyant they called told the family the home was possessed by more than 200 demonic spirits and urged them to move, but Ammons said they didn’t have enough money to break their lease.

Ammons and her mother said the three children – ages 7, 9 and 12 at the time – began showing signs of demonic possession, and she said their eyes bulged, evil grins crossed their faces and their voices deepened each time.

Boy walks backward up a wall

The family contacted their physician in April 2012 to seek help, and he noted in medical reports shared by Ammons that he believed they suffered from delusions of ghosts and hallucinations.

Then both boys began cursing the doctor in demonic voices, according to reports prepared by the Department of Child Services, and one medical staffer said the youngest boy was “lifted and thrown into the wall with nobody touching him.”

Both boys then passed out and were hospitalized, and DCS opened its investigation.

Ammons and her children were examined and found to have no marks or bruising to indicate abuse, and authorities said they appeared to be of sound mind.

But during an interview with a DCS case manager and a registered nurse, the 7-year-old began growling and then tried to choke his brother.

Then something really strange happened.

The case manager noted in her report – and the registered nurse corroborated to police and the newspaper – that a “weird grin” crossed the 9-year-old’s face and he “glided backward on the floor, wall and ceiling” and then flipped over onto his feet.

“We didn’t know what was going on,” said the nurse, Willie Lee Walker. “That was crazy. I was like, ‘Everybody gotta go.’”

DCS took protective custody of the children without a court order as an emergency measure, and a hospital chaplain called a priest to ask him to perform an exorcism on the older boy.

The Rev. Michael Maginot visited the family’s home to begin ruling out natural causes for the disturbances, and he noticed flickering lights in the bathroom and Venetian blinds swaying without the aid of a breeze.

He blessed the house, which he came to believe was home to demonic and other spirit presences, and told Ammons and her mother to leave.

Police report strange sights and sounds at the house

The women returned about a week later with the DCS case manager and police officers, including Capt. Austin, who said strange things happened to him there and after he returned home.

Austin said officers’ audio recorders malfunctioned and captured a voice whispering, “Hey,” although the room was otherwise unoccupied. He said photos they took there revealed a cloudy white image near the basement stairs that resembled a face, along with a green image that looked like a woman.

Another image (above) appears to show someone standing at a window, although police said no one was inside the home at the time.

The police captain also said the driver’s seat of his personal car later began moving backward and forward inexplicably, and mechanics told him the malfunction could have caused a crash if he’d been driving.

Psychiatrists said they believed the children had been influenced to act possessed by their mother’s fears, and they asked her to stop discussing demons with the children and develop a disciplinary system that didn’t involve religion or supernatural events.

They also ordered Ammons to find a job and another home for the family.

A larger group of police officers, joined by the priest and another DCS case manager, returned in May 2012 to the home, where they dug up the basement floor near the steps and found a pink press-on fingernail, a pair of white panties, a political shirt pin, cooking pan lid, socks with the bottoms cut off at the ankles, candy wrappers and a heavy metal object that may have been a drapery cord weight.

The case manager said her finger suddenly began hurting as if it had been broken, she became short of breath and went outside to calm down.

The others saw an unexplained oily substance dripping from the blinds in a bedroom, and Maginot said he wrote to the bishop asking permission to perform an exorcism.

Beelzebub, lord of the flies

The priest said Bishop Dale Melczek had never authorized one in 21 years as head of the Diocese of Gary, and he initially denied Maginot’s request and asked him to contact other priests who had performed one.

However, he performed what he described as a minor exorcism on Ammons, and a DCS case manager who attended said she got chills during the two-hour rite and felt like something strange had happened.

The priest asked Ammons to look up the names of demons that were tormenting her so he could identify them during an exorcism, and she said the computer kept shutting down during her search.

But she eventually found some names – such as Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, and others that torment and hurt children – and Maginot received permission from the bishop to perform a sanctioned exorcism.

Maginot performed three such rituals on Ammons – two in English and one in Latin – in June at his church in Merrillville as police officers watched.

The priest said Ammons convulsed as the evil spirits left her body, and she said it felt like something inside of her was trying to hold on and also inflict pain as intense as childbearing.

“I was hurting all over from the inside out,” Ammons told the paper. “I’m trying to do my best and be strong.”

‘No longer fixated solely on religion’

Ammons and her mother moved to Indianapolis and she eventually got custody of her children returned in November 2012, and she said they have lived without fear since the third exorcism.

The children left behind the demonic voices and fears that plagued them at their former home, Ammons said, and case workers who have visited the family agree.

“The family is no longer fixated solely on religion to explain or cope with the children’s behavior issues,” wrote a DCS case manager in January 2013 seeking to end DCS wardship of the children.

The owner of the Carolina Street home said the new tenants have not complained of any problems, but he called the Gary police department to ask curious officers to stop driving past the home and alarming the residents.

The landlord said he was skeptical of supernatural events, although the involvement of the Catholic Church made him less so.

Ammons remains convinced that God helped her overcome her problems, not psychologists who worked with the family.

“When you hear something like this, don’t assume it’s not real because I’ve lived it,” she said. “I know it’s real.”

Scientists Prove Ouija Boards Work....

… but not in the way you might think.

According to new research conducted at the University of Bristish Columbia in Canada, Ouija boards may indeed tap users into a source of intelligence beyond what is normally accessible in day-to-day life. But is that due to the influence of ghosts, spirits, or other magical force? Probably not…

The Ouija, also known as a talking board, is a wooden plaque marked with the words, “yes”, “no” and the letters of the alphabet. Typically a group of users place their hands on a movable pointer , or “planchette”, and ask questions out loud. Sometimes the planchette signals an answer, even when no one admits to moving it deliberately.

Believers think the answer comes through from the spirit world. In fact, all the evidence points to the real cause being the ideomotor effect, small muscle movements we generate unconsciously.

That’s why the Ouija board has attracted the attention of psychologists at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Growing evidence suggests the unconscious plays a role in cognitive functions we usually consider the preserve of the conscious mind.

Take driving your car along a familiar route while planning your day. On arrival, you realise you were not in conscious control of the car, it was your “inner zombie”, said Hélène Gauchou at the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness conference in Brighton, UK, this week. “How can we communicate with that unconscious intelligence?”

Gauchou’s approach is to turn to the Ouija board. To keep things simple her team has just one person with their finger on the planchette at a time. But the ideomotor effect is maximised if you believe you are not responsible for any movements – that’s why Ouija board sessions are most successful when used by a group. So the subject is told they will be using the board with a partner. The subject is blindfolded and what they don’t know is that their so-called partner removes their hands from the planchette when the experiment begins.

The technique worked, at least with 21 out of 27 volunteers tested, reports Gauchou. “The planchette does not move randomly around the board; it moves to yes or no. It seems to move almost magically. None of them felt responsible for the movement.” In fact some subjects suspected that their partner was really an actor – but they thought the actor was deliberately moving the planchette, never suspecting they themselves were the only ones touching it.

Goucher’s team has not yet used the technique to get new information about the unconscious, but they have established that it seems to work, in principle. They asked subjects to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to general knowledge questions using the Ouija board, and also asked them to answer the same questions using the more orthodox method of typing on a computer (unblindfolded). Participants were also asked whether they knew the answer or were just guessing.

When using the computer, if the subjects said they didn’t know the answer to a question, they got it right about half the time, as would be expected by chance. But when using the Ouija, they got those questions right 65 per cent of the time – suggesting they had a subconscious inkling of the right answer and the Ouija allowed that hunch to be expressed.

Read the original study in the Journal of Consciousness and Cognition.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810012000402

Monsters: The Dover Demon

The Dover Demon is a good old American monster that might be lesser known. Beginning in 1977, it was sighted in the area of Dover, Massachusetts.  It was only sighted by a few over a few-days period. One might say this makes a good case for another dimensional being crossing over for a brief little jaunt in our world.

A teen saw it while driving down the road at night, moving along a wall. He drew up a sketch of it for his father. Then, soon after, another teen saw it hugging a tree. Yet, another teen saw it in the car's headlights at night. 

It was described as being about 4 feet tall with two legs, hairless body but rough-textured skin, long spindly peach-colored limbs, and a large head like watermelon with glowing orange eyes. (sounds like Pumpkinhead).

There were no more reports or explanations for what was seen, but some believe it was an alien.

The Dover Demon's Visit

It crept along the darkened roadway shyly. Vehicles had passed by, scaring it into the bushes. The noise, the strange smells, the damp round and chill night air were all most foreign to him.

Once, he saw a four-legged hair creature trot down the woodland path and bark at the blackened sky. The demon looked up at the sky. His vision was clear at night. Everything was awash in a glorious yellow tone that made it it possible to see everything coming for miles. His visual acuity in such a dense woodland was almost painful. There were too many varying heights, shapes, and textures in this world and much too much light at night.

A vehicle came up on him when he was deep in his thoughts of other worlds, much simpler worlds, much better smelling worlds with prettier sounds and darker nights. The bright lights shined on his thick skin and he turned away, scampering towards the wall to shimmy up before anyone caught sight of him.

 

The last thing he needed was to be feared by some human and killed or, even worse, captured and kept in this realm.

 

Only a few more cycles of night and he would be free from this awful world and mark this off of his bucket lists of must see universes!

Source: http://www.ghosthuntingtheories.com/2014/01/monsters-dover-demon.html

The Punchbowl Ghost

Do you believe in ghosts? Apparently a lot of people in Hawaii did in the early 1900s. A few news stories about ghost sightings appeared in major Hawaii newspapers. 

In 1908, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser reported the Pecaricks claiming strange phenomena at the Boyd house on Punchbowl Street. Stones flying around the room. A roast of beef bouncing on the kitchen floor. Pictures falling from the wall. Faucets and tin cups from the kitchen lying in the dining room.  A rock going through a closed window without breaking the glass. Knives and a corkscrew flying from the kitchen and getting stuck onto a table. A clock falling over two to three times. Stovewood coming into the house despite closed windows. A shoehorn flying from the bedroom through doors until it hit Mrs. Pecarick.

Mrs. Pecarick said one night she and Mr. Pecarick heard unusual noises. With a lantern, he went outside to investigate and reportedly saw firewood moving itself and making another pile. 

Neighbors visited, and Mrs. Pecarick told them ghost stories. After she showed them the stones during a conversation, they reportedly flew and struck the neighbors. When they went outside, the benches toppled over. 

When a PCA reporter went to the house, he saw a cake pan fly forward and strike the wall. He then sat in the living room for 30 minutes, waiting for more phenomena, but nothing else happened.

Later, the brass faucet in the kitchen reportedly slammed against a wall in another room. Esperanza said she was at the sink when something hit her on the side. To remedy the problem, the Pecaricks had two Roman Catholic priests bless the house, with no avail.

An old Hawaiian man said the house was built over a Hawaiian person's grave. Supposedly, the spirit had returned, discovered items in the house he had never seen before, and was now happily causing destruction. Reportedly nervous looking, police officers investigated, with no avail.

When a reporter asked 13-year-old servant Esperanza Gonsales if she knew if a medium can make pictures move from wall to wall, she didn't want to have her name in the newspaper, but inadvertantly gave her name anyways:

"No, I no see moving pictures, I don't think I'm a medium. You want my name? No, no, I not tell you my name. If you put my name in the newspaper, when I walk down the street everybody point at me and say, 'There go Esperanza Gonsalves.'"

Days after the PCA ran the story, hundreds of people flocked to the house, many willing to pay to get in. Some were Christian scientists, theosophists, psychists, and psychologists. The visitors trampled over the flower beds and peppered Esperanza with questions, and the police came to control the crowds. Mrs. Pecarick told visitors ghost stories. But nothing unusual happened in front of the visitors. 

The Pecaricks attributed the phenomena to ghosts, with Esperanza as the medium. Most of the phenomena happened when the pretty "Spanish girl" was at the house and stopped when she left. Others thought Esperanza was just making trouble. Esperanza angrily told Mrs. Pecarick to stop telling people she, Esperanza, was the medium with no avail. People questioned and teased Esperanza for hours, and some called her a witch, leading her to cry for hours. 

A few days after the first news coverage, Esperanza lost her job. Her family relied on her as the breadwinner, with her hospitalized father and her mother recovering from an illness. Fearing her daughter would not be able to find a job, Esperanza's mother told the Evening Bulletin that Esperanza worked for other families, and they never reported any ghost problems. 

Meanwhile, the Pecaricks changed their story and insisted the house, not the girl, caused the phenomena. Mrs. Pecaricks said, "Why the night before last she [slept] in this house, and all day yesterday she was here, and nothing happen. The house is the whole trouble." They reported more phenomena and then moved out of the house. 

The last tenants of the house said they did not encounter any supernatural phenomenon, with cockroches as the only issue. However, the Pecaricks accused them of lying and said the neighbors told them of the past phenomena. 

Despite reporting the Punchbowl ghost story on their front pages, newspapers were skeptical. The Evening Bulletin notes a fallen picture with a string attached to it, suggesting that "a trick could easily have been played." The newspaper also says that a stove-lifter that the spirit supposedly broke was actually broken due to its age and rust. 

The Hawaiian Star says, "In the light of a day's perspective the doings of Sunday at the Pecarick mansion on Punchbowl begin to appear more and more 'fishy' and there appears to be more and more improbability of any 'true psychic phenomena.'" About Mrs. Pecarick's claims of the ghosts, "... a wagon-load of salt should go with every statement."

Articles from the Chronicling America

"Punchbowl Ghost Excites Wonder: Spiritualists Declares Girl Is Instrument of Spirit"

Evening bulletin., September 28, 1908, 3:30 EDITION, Page 4, Image 4

http://chroniclingamerica.com/lccn/sn82016413/1908-09-28/ed-1/seq-4/

"Ghost Refuses to Do Things: Punchbowl Spook Laid, but House Was Jammed All Day"

"Real Ghosts Defies Priests, Reporters, and Detectives

The Hawaiian gazette., September 29, 1908, Pages 1 & 5, Images 1 & 5

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025121/1908-09-29/ed-1/seq-1/

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025121/1908-09-29/ed-1/seq-5/

"Girl in Danger: Persecuted by Curious Neighbors by Questions About Alleged Ghosts"

The Hawaiian star., September 29, 1908, SECOND EDITION, Image 1

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015415/1908-09-29/ed-1/seq-1/

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015415/1908-09-29/ed-1/seq-5/

"Girl No Medium: Pecaricks Now Say House Is Haunted--Work of Astral Hand"

The Hawaiian star., September 30, 1908, SECOND EDITION, Image 1

http://chroniclingamerica.com/lccn/sn82015415/1908-09-30/ed-1/seq-1/

"House Is Haunted; Girl Is Innocent: Pecaricks Say So, Finding Ghosts Were There Formerly"

Evening bulletin., September 30, 1908, 3:30 EDITION, Image 1 & 2

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016413/1908-09-30/ed-1/seq-1/

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016413/1908-09-30/ed-1/seq-2/

Here are 10 paranormal tales that recently appeared in newspapers and on TV

Haunted Tudor Mansion for Sale
Daily Mail

“A 500-year-old Tudor mansion boasting a 100ft great hall, three priest holes, and its own ghost is for sale for £4.75million. Owned by a grand Roman Catholic family for centuries, Sawston Hall has secret places where outlawed Catholic priests could hide when the terrifying priest-hunters came to call during the Reformation.”

Couple Has Trouble Selling ‘Slightly Haunted’ House
NBC 10 – Philadelphia

“Between the mysteriously banging doors, the odd noises coming from the basement, and the persistent feeling that someone is standing behind them, homeowners Gregory and Sandi Leeson are thoroughly creeped out by their 113-year-old Victorian. So when they put the house in northeastern Pennsylvania up for sale last month, they advertised the home on Marion Street in Dunmore as “slightly haunted.” Then things got REALLY weird.”

How to Rent Out or Sell Haunted Property
The Independent, Singapore

“So your last tenant ended gibbering about shadows and voices, before they carted him to the asylum. And at least three prospective buyers have turned religious while trying to view your house. You have a haunted property to deal with friend; and we’re going to show you how to do it.”

Haunt-Hunting at Iowa State University

Des Moines Register

“Satan’s Legion is one of many unproven ‘ghost’ stories about the Iowa State campus — so many, in fact, that on Wednesday the university was ranked the fifth-most-haunted college in the Midwest by the blog Mysterious Heartland.”

Haunted Punta Gorda Mansion for Sale
ABC 7 – Fort Myers, Naples, Port Charlotte

“A Victorian-style house in Punta Gorda has captured people’s attention for more than 100 years with its haunted tales. Now, it’s up for sale.”

Haunted Dornoch Castle for Sale
The Scotsman

“A historic ‘haunted’ Highland castle built in the 15th century has gone on the market for £2.25 million. Dornoch Castle, which has had only three owners since being converted into a hotel in 1947, is said to be haunted by the ghost of Sutherland sheep rustler.”

Mystery, History, Ghosts, and Now Fire Haunt Historic Hanover Home
CBS 6 – Richmond, Central Virginia

“Mystery has surrounded the historic Mills home on Scotchtown Road for decades, including tales of ghosts in the front room and in the kitchen.”

Haunted House Attraction May Actually be Haunted
Lex18 – Lexington “A home has been a part of their family since 1944 but it wasn’t until recently that something strange started happening at the Benton family farm house in Walton. Now paranormal investigators are flocking to the home trying to explain the unexplained.”

Czech Skeptics Offer Reward for Proof of Paranormal Phenomenon
Prague Post

“The Czech skeptic club Sisyphus has offered a reward of 10,000 Kč to anyone who would prove the existence of paranormal phenomena in an experiment, and it would recommend the successful applicants, if some appeared, for a worldwide $1 million prize.”

City Woman Seeks Relief from Paranormal Activity in Home
Sun Gazette

“Jodi Hill recently shared her story of being harassed, frightened and attacked by an unknown tormentor allegedly not of this world on Travel Channel’s ‘The Dead Files.’ But, although the film crew left in July, the paranormal activity hasn’t stopped.”

Rugby's haunted home?: Tackling ghostly goings-on at Salford stadium

Staff have reported an unexplained object that was caught on CCTV cameras running across the pitch, strange noises, lifts going up and down on their own accord and a glass moving off a boardroom table during a meeting.

With the stadium the base for clubs nicknamed Red Devils and Sharks it is only to be expected there would be plenty of surprises - and not always of the most pleasant kind to keep the fans enthralled.

But we can reveal there is action of a very different kind at the AJ Bell Stadium at Barton, the home of Salford Rugby League, Sale Rugby Union and United's academy at night when the ground and barren land surrounding is pitch black and deserted.

Things are going bump for there are spooks about with staff reporting some odd goings-on including an unexplained object that was caught on CCTV cameras running across the pitch, strange noises like footsteps inside the stadium, lifts going up and down on their own accord and a glass moving off a boardroom table during a meeting.

"We're haunted, it's as simple as that," said one petrified stadium worker who refused to give her name because she thought whatever is giving her the jitters might target her.

"Everyone is talking about what's going on here at night. Is it some kind of curse? We don't know but it is weird. Virtually every night something happens be it a sinister figure in the match security office or cleaners refusing to work on their own because they are frightened.

"Do we call in the Ghostbusters? Well, what I'd say about that is it seems to be a friendly sort of spook, not malicious but certainly mischievous.

"The M60 Barton Bridge is always busy, even at night so vehicle headlights could be playing tricks. Whatever is happening staff are always talking about things that cannot be explained like items going missing and then turning up a few days later in a different place."

Stadium janitor Mark Young, 38, said: "The weirdest unexplained happening-  and there have been a few - was that night something ambled across the pitch. We all thought it was big fox but on the camera it looked like a gorilla, baboon or even a cheetah.

"That was a complete mystery, as was the image in the security box which was checked out but nothing found. I don't want to make out I'm scared because I have a reputation to maintain!"

Security officer Matthew Gilmore, 21, added: "We are always monitoring the cameras and haven't got any absolute proof that we are haunted but we check out  many reports of strange footsteps being heard at night.

"When we were discussing what's really happening someone said there is an old story of a young boy and a dog drowning and then freezing in a brook near here, and that's why all this has started. You never really know do you?

Million-Dollar Ghost: Haunted House For Sale In Florida

  

For most people, the thought of of sharing a home with a ghost is not exactly appealing … But one Florida couple is hoping their supernatural roomie will be a selling point for the unique home they say is haunted.

“I hear my wife walk down the stairs, and i call out her name and she says yes from a different part of the house,” homeowner Vander Wynn says. “There’s some weird things like that you really can’t explain.”

The beautiful Victorian mansion has a tragic past, involving a 14-year-old girl named Mary Leah, who, according to Wynn, was killed when kerosene spilled on her and she caught fire.

Luckily for prospective buyers, despite her painful demise, it sounds like the teen ghost is more like Casper , than that freaky girl from the ring.

“She’s really not scary she just makes noise,” Natalie Wynn explains. “Sometimes I’ve told her, ‘You need to be quiet.’”

If you’re not spooked by the supernatural, this gorgeous home and its resident ghost could be yours for a cool $1.59 million — that is, if the current owners don’t manage to convince their ghostly companion to make the move to their new home.

“We’re just gonna leave the door open and the car open, and if she wants to come she can,” Vander Wynn jokes.

4 Possible Scientific Explanations For Ghosts

The first ghost story dates back to Pliny the Younger in the first century A.D., who wrote of an old man with a long beard and rattle haunting his home in Athens. Spooky stuff. But it's odd to think that ghosts, or at least the idea of them, have endured for two millennia. A considerable slice of humanity still believes that the tortured souls of the departed walk among us: A recent HuffPost/YouGov poll showed that a startling 45 percent of all Americans consider ghosts to be real.

Perhaps they're right! Perhaps there's something more to specters than lazy Halloween costumes and Paranormal Activity. There are, however, at least a few perfectly logical explanations behind people's supposed run-ins with poltergeists. Here are a few of them:

1. Sleep paralysis
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a frightening inability to move, despite being fully aware of your surroundings? You can't shout for help. You can't wiggle your toes. All you can do is lie there frozen.

Oftentimes people report encountering all sorts of paranormal spookiness in this state — blurry figures, strange whispers, footsteps, etc. This feeling of being crushed by an invisible presence is referred to as a "ghost press" in Chinese culture.

But sleep experts have another, more rational term for it: Sleep paralysis.

Dr. Priyanka Yadav of the Somerset Medical Sleep for Life Center in New Jersey explains that the phenomenon occurs when there's a disconnect between the mind and body as people enter or exit REM sleep. "It seems like you're paralyzed, which naturally occurs when you're sleeping," Yadav explained to NBC News.

"But this somehow happens while you're awake. It can last from a few seconds to a minute or two and is often associated with hypnagogic hallucinations, things you might see when trying to fall asleep or hypnopompic hallucinations, things you see when you're trying to wake up." [NBC News]

It's akin to dreaming while awake, and explains why many ghost sightings are reported between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.

2. Brain glitches
People don't see ghosts, per se. More often they report catching something creepy — a Civil War soldier? a woman in a Victorian-era dress? — out of the corner of an eye. These glimpses usually occur when the mind is wandering or focused on something else, like when you're vacuuming.

Basically these images are illusions produced by the brain, according to Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. They can result from a number of factors, such as a brief psychotic state, sleep deprivation, or even temporal lobe epilepsy. (The part of the mind associated with visual memory.) It's your tired, distracted brain trying to fill in a blank. It's trying to make sense of your surroundings using incomplete sensory information.

"It's a trick of the eye," according to Nickell. "Your eyelid will twitch or an insect will fly by and this will trigger a momentary welling up of a mental image. It's like a camera's double exposure for just a brief moment."

3. Carbon monoxide
In 1912, the "H" family moved into a gloomy, large haunted house. Pots and pans crashed seemingly on their own. Strange voices called out the names of Mrs. H and her children. Footsteps clacked through the hallways. Dark figures (one of which was a long-haired woman dressed in black) were spotted in the dining room. Plants withered and died.

"The days went on, and the children grew paler and more listless," she wrote. "Some days, as their colds seemed worse, I kept them in bed. Then again, as there did not seem to be very much the matter with them and they appeared to be growing too fond of staying in bed, I made them get up and go for a walk in the sun."

Only it wasn't the spirits of a grisly past tormenting the Hs; it was carbon monoxide poisoning. In a famous yet bizarre paper published by ophthalmologist William Wilmer in the American Journal of Ophthalmology about a decade later, a local physician confirmed that a leaky furnace was sending plumes of the odorless gas up through the chimney. Over the course of several months, oxygen deprivation was triggering listlessness and hallucinations in the H family and their servants. Not quite as creepy as real ghosts, but somehow more terrifying.

4. Infrasound
The year was 1998. Strange things were happening to Coventry University lecturer Vic Tandy as he worked in his medical lab. Coworkers often complained of chills as if an unearthly presence had brushed past them. The cleaning lady said she saw weird figures at night. Tandy admitted that, working alone one night, a dark apparition appeared in the corner of his eye and suddenly vanished when he turned.

Odder still: A fencing foil he brought into the lab would start vibrating wildly in his hand, moving around on its own. And the foil vibrated most strongly at the center of the lab, but didn't move at all as he approached the room's edges.

Not one to be spooked out, Tandy set out to discover what was behind all the weirdness terrorizing his lab. In a paper published in the Journal of the Society of Psychical Research called "The Ghost in the Machine" [PDF], Tandy discovered a very low frequency standing wave (19Hz), or infrasound (which humans can't hear), in the center of the laboratory being reflected back from the walls.

"In effect," he wrote, "the wave was folded back on itself reinforcing the peak energy in the center of the room." He even calculated its frequency.



The culprit producing the infrasound, as it turned out, was a new ventilation fan that had been installed at the other end of the lab. When the fan was switched off, the standing wave — and all the spookiness accompanying it — went away. For it turned out that infrasound can mess with people's brains and even trigger madness.

Tandy would go on to conduct infrasound tests at other "haunted" destinations, including Edinburgh Castle and a basement near the Coventry Cathedral, and found infrasound there as well.

Busted For Hiring Ghostbusters!

A Montana government employee was reprimanded by her boss for enlisting ghost hunters to catch spirits she believed were haunting her office. The employee invited the Butte Paranormal Investigative Team into her building after hours to set up an infrared camera to monitor any paranormal activity. “The public trusts us and we need to take that seriously,” said the county’s chief executive Matt Vincent. “Setting up cameras in public buildings to catch paranormal activity I don’t think is gaining the public’s trust.”

A Couple Are Suing Their Landlord Over A Haunted House!

Josue Chinchilla and his fiancee, Michele Callan,
 left their New Jersey rental after a week of living
with what one paranormal investigator says
was a demon.

The spooked tenants fled their new home after just a week of allegedly creepy occurrences. Will a judge rule that ghosts can get them out of their lease?

Most ghost stories don't wind up in court. But a family in Toms River, N.J., has filed a lawsuit demanding that their landlord let them out of their new lease and return their security deposit, because, they say, the house he rented them was "haunted." Is this an Amityville Horror-style story, or a scam? Here's a brief guide:

What exactly happened in this "haunted" house?
Some extremely spooky stuff, according to the tenants, Josue Chinchilla and Michele Callan. In their lawsuit, the couple, who lived in the house along with her two children for just one week, say they frequently came home to find clothes and towels strewn across the floor. They also say that doors in the house sometimes opened slowly and slammed shut, on their own, and they often saw lights flicker. Sometimes, when everyone was in bed, the family could hear footsteps in the kitchen.

Do they have any proof?
Chinchilla and Callan hired N.J. Paranormal Investigators to back up their claim. Marianne Brigando, co-founder of the agency, says her investigators found more evidence of haunting in this house than in any other house they have ever examined. Brigando says something unseen answered a question from her team using light switches. They also brought in a church pastor, who suggested the house had been possessed by demons. And, as it happens, the house is in the sametown where the 1979 version of The Amityville Horror was filmed.

What does the landlord say?
Predictably, landlord Richard Lopez is not buying it. Lopez, who has an orthodontist practice next to the allegedly haunted house, says he's been renting out the house for years with no complaints, and his new tenants just made up the story so they could break their lease without losing their $2,250 security deposit. Lopez filed a counter suit accusing Chinchilla and Callan of using "paranormal activity" as an excuse to get out of a rental they can't afford. "She is a single mom, she has this fiancé living with her," says Lopez's attorney David A. Semanchik. "I think she is in over her head."

So do the tenants have a case?
"Ultimately a judge will have the final word on whether the family will be able to escape their alleged nightmare on Lowell Avenue," says Alyssa Newcomb at ABC News. It's going to be an easy decision, says Cherlyn Gardner Strong at Paranormal Old Pueblo. "The only thing that matters is the terms of the rental contract," which has no haunting clause. Even if testimony from paranormal detectives were admissible in court, the evidence in this case is flimsy. They don't stand "a ghost of a chance."

Haunted Letchworth Village

Ruins of Letchworth Village.

Vines Intruding In The Hallway

The hospital laboratory, a rumored supernatural hotspot.

The Mortuary (Cold Storage)

Haunted Letchworth Village

Letchworth Village was a residential New York institution built for the physically and mentally disabled of all ages from the newborn to the elderly. Letchworth was closed in 1996, leaving the buildings to decay. Many who worked at the Village refuse to speak of their experiences.

Letchworth is a Chilling Place

In Rockland County there is a small village called Letchworth. It is the home of an abandoned mental institution. Of course many rumors have surfaced about the old mental hospital. I know that my friends have experienced many things there, including hearing noises and seeing ghosts. The old hospital still contains some left over patient files, writing on the wall, and old beds. Walk into the hospital and you can feel nothing but chills going through your body. 

The Village of Secrets

Known as the village of secrets, Letchworth Village Rehabilitaion Center in Haverstraw, New York is one of the world’s most active paranormal locations. They called it the village of secrets because people that worked there didn’t want the public to know what was really going on. Letchworth use to be a mental institution. Just like any care facility, it had the best of intentions. Unfortunately, the plans for this facility didn’t work out the way it was supposed to.

Letchworth Village housed the mentally retarded, mentally ill, physically disabled, and people who they believed were unintelligent. ABC news New York did a report on the institution in 1972 called The Last Great Disgrace. The footage is very sad to watch, as you see children in wheel chairs, children crying, and children curled up into a fetal position on the ground. There was a quote from the report that said “This is what it looked like. This is what it sounded like. But how can I tell you about the way it smelled? It smelled like of filth, it smelled of disease, it smelled of death.” Since Letchworth was so understaffed, employees had problems keeping the children clothed. A reporter in the footage asked why the children were so unclothed. The nurse said they didn’t have the help to keep them properly dressed.

The kids were disabled. However, they were as normal as any other human being. Nobody knows why these kids were brought here. If I had to guess, it’s probably because the parents of these children didn’t want to have to take care of their illness or disability for a lifetime.

In the 1950s, they tested out the polio vaccine on an eight year old. The eight year old survived, so they decided to use it on nineteen other kids. This was not the only form of mistreatment at letchworth. When it came to supper time, some of the workers would shove food in the kids mouth. Some of the kids ended up choking to death because of this. Also, when it came time to give the kids their medication, they only had one spoon, so they used they same spoon for all the kids to give them their medication. Finally, there was the lab. When a patient died, their brain was removed and put in a jar with formaldehyde. Sounds like something out of your typical horror movie. Unfortunately, this was real life and they were all over the lab.

A couple of miles from Letchworth is the graveyard for the patients. During Letchworth’s run, it wasn’t appropriate to mention someone’s mental illness or physical disability, so they marked their graves in numbers. Today, there is a monument that has all the patients names at the cemetery. Hopefully, these souls are able to rest now.

People curious of the paranormal have trespassed on Letchworth even though there is no trespassing. Oddly, people report a feeling of addiction when coming to this particular haunting. The police don’t even want to come in if there are trespassers in the building. One trespasser said a couple of cops said “You guys are some sick f***’*. We didn’t even want to come in after you.” Now that has to make Letchworth Village a legitimate haunting. Read on, because it is.

A group of investigators that trespassed on the Letchworth property witnessed something very disturbing. When they were investigating the place, they were calling out a friends name. He then came over to them when suddenly they saw a 7 foot tall creature with piercing white eyes and legs bent backwards walking towards them. That wasn’t it. More activity happened....outside of Letchworth. One of the people in the group was listening to the radio when suddenly it went static and a voice came through the static noise.

The Village of Secrets definitely has a sad history. It’s also a terrifying haunting. Maybe if you step forth in Letchworth Village, you’ll discover more secrets about it for yourself.