East of Statesville, North Carolina, sits the Bostian Bridge. On the night of August 27, 1891, a train headed to Asheville from Salisbury derailed and plummeted to the ravine below. Thirty people are recorded as having died in the crash, and many more were injured.
Local legend holds that the wreck plays out every year on the anniversary of the wreck, at 3 AM. Stories are told of people hearing the horrific sounds of the crash, the twisting of metal, screams, and the crash as the train hits bottom. Some people report being approached by a man in a 19th century railroad uniform asking for the time so that he can set his watch. This spectre is usually thought to be the spirit of the baggage master, who was among the 30 killed in the crash.
Outside of the crash itself, the railroad crossing guard arms are said to sometimes descend without reason, a sign that the phantom train is on the tracks.
Commentary: Bridges and train tracks are both magnets for ghost stories, and so it is only fitting that we have a story that involves both. Unlike many ghost stories, this one focuses on a train crash that really did happen, which makes it even more interesting.
One of the hallmarks of this sort of story is the replaying of the wreck at a given time and place - in this case, on the wreck's anniversary at 3 AM (they're punctual buggers, these ghosts). This provides an opportunity for legend tripping, but unlike most other such opportunities, which arrive on a frequent if unpredictable schedule, this one only comes once a year, giving it a special feel. Which, really, is kinda' cool.
It's also worth noting that the annual ghostly visitation occurs at 3 AM. While my own experience is that ghost stories rarely claim that events occur according to a particular schedule, there is a popular folkloric belief that 3 AM is among the more active times for ghosts and demons.
As for the "crossing guards mysteriously closing" angle - which appears to happen from time-to-time and not on a fixed schedule - I grew up around train tracks. I can tell you from experience that the crossing guards close without a train on a regular basis. Sometimes it's intentional, testing equipment and whatnot, and sometimes it's due to equipment malfunction.
Back to the legend tripping aspect. Normally, legend tripping provides a safe way for people to experience a bit of a thrill. In this case, the legend tripping recently proved rather dangerous in and of itself. On August 27, 2010, a group of ghost hunters visited the bridge in order to witness the annual replaying of the events. The group of twelve headed out onto the bridge, and learned the hard way that the bridge is still in active use by the railroad.
When a very real train appeared on the track, ten of the ghost hunters managed to make it back to the safety, one was pushed off by one of her fellows and dropped 30 to 40 feet, sustaining injuries. And one was hit by the train and killed.
To the degree that any good comes of this, it is that it may serve as a reminder to other curiosity seekers to be mindful of where they are going, and be aware that there may be many real-world dangers that they need to protect against.
Sources: CNN, Local News Station, Haunted Bridges.info, N.C. Ghost Guide, Internet
Monday, August 30, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
A Haunting on 13th Street, Modesto, CA
I once again turn to the well, I go back to an article from an October, 2007, edition of the Modesto Bee (the newspaper of Modesto, CA and the surrounding area). The newspaper, like many regional newspapers, asked it's readers to submit their own personal stories of the supernatural int he run-up to Halloween. There were some really nice stories in there, including this one from a woman named Kim Meu. I'd paraphrase, but it seems better to just give a direct quote from the article:
Commentary: This one is a good, old-fashioned ghost story. Notice that it has many of the elements that are included in the Amityville haunting but without going completely over-the-top as Amityville did. It's all very low-key: weird dreams, hearing voices, and feeling physical contact when nobody is there.
Is the story true? Well, I see no reason to doubt that Ms. Meu is stating her recollections honestly. Did things happen quite as she remembers? Who knows? As described in the entry on Shadow People, there are so many different ways that both our perceptions and memories can be affected that it's not posible to say with any authority what happened to Ms. Meu. And several internet searches failed to find any more stories about 13th Street.
But as a story, this is fantastic. The imagery of the dreams (especially the skeleton in the back yard and the dead baby in the basement) gives snatches of story that hint at bad deeds in the house's past. Coupled with the sound of a kid's voice during waking hours, this really hits the "creep out" button.
Whether you believe it or not, this is the sort of story that can keep you up at night, twitching every time you hear an unfamiliar noise.
Sources: Newspaper
Kim Meu of Modesto was a young single mother working the night shift when a ghost routed her from her rented home.
“About seven years ago, I used to live at a house on 13th Street in Modesto. Every night I would have dreams, seeing a dead cat, a skeleton in the back yard and a dead baby in the basement. During the day while I was asleep, I would hear male voices telling me to get out of this house.
“And when I used to sit up using my computer, I heard noises like someone was coughing or a little boy saying, ‘Mama.’ But I never thought anything of it.
“Until one day, after a year of living in the house, at about noon or 1 p.m. — I was working night shift — and my little boy was about 2 years old. He woke up and said, ‘Mommy, I want to watch TV.’ I was fully awake. I walked him to the living room and turned on a cartoon for him.
“I stood there with him and watched cartoons, then all of a sudden I felt something like a finger scratched me across my shoulder. I turned around really slow and my heart raced to about 150 beats per minute at the time, and there was nobody (there).
“I ran to the door to grab my son, milk and the diaper bag. I was in my pajamas (and went) straight to my mom’s house. I came back home a week later with my mom and sisters and never stayed there alone anymore. I moved out a month later.”
Commentary: This one is a good, old-fashioned ghost story. Notice that it has many of the elements that are included in the Amityville haunting but without going completely over-the-top as Amityville did. It's all very low-key: weird dreams, hearing voices, and feeling physical contact when nobody is there.
Is the story true? Well, I see no reason to doubt that Ms. Meu is stating her recollections honestly. Did things happen quite as she remembers? Who knows? As described in the entry on Shadow People, there are so many different ways that both our perceptions and memories can be affected that it's not posible to say with any authority what happened to Ms. Meu. And several internet searches failed to find any more stories about 13th Street.
But as a story, this is fantastic. The imagery of the dreams (especially the skeleton in the back yard and the dead baby in the basement) gives snatches of story that hint at bad deeds in the house's past. Coupled with the sound of a kid's voice during waking hours, this really hits the "creep out" button.
Whether you believe it or not, this is the sort of story that can keep you up at night, twitching every time you hear an unfamiliar noise.
Sources: Newspaper
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Shadow People
We all know the feeling - you are minding your own business, perhaps you are doing some housecleaning, perhaps you are out for a walk, perhaps you're driving home after a long day, and you see something out of the corner of your eye. Something black, moving, and seemingly intelligent. It's just there for a split second, a shadowy form, human in shape, but with no distinguishable features other than it's dark hue. You turn to get a better look, and it is gone. Perhaps you have a feeling of fear or dread on seeing it. Regardless, you know that, whatever it is, it isn't good.
Some people claim to have seen more than just the split-second image in their peripheral vision. Stories abound of people seeing figures that look like living, 3-dimensional shadows. Sometimes these figures appear to be following or attempting to interact with the witness, at other times they appear to simply be passive observers. On occasion, they even appear to be trying to do harm. Although typically they are solid black with no distinguishable features, there are some that appear to have red, glowing eyes.
Although sometimes seen during the day, these strange creatures are typically spotted at night. Often, the witness feels a sense of fear or dread upon seeing them, and often there is a strong sense that these creatures are here to do damage to us or our world.
Commentary: This one is a bit of a departure from the stories that I normally post in that it's more a phenomenon than a specific story. I had tried to find a specific story that could be tied to a particular time and/or place, but always found Shadow People were either shoe-horned into existing stories about haunted places, or were simply mentioned as "a weird thing happened to me" stories without the location being relevant and often not even mentioned.
Still, even if it breaks the mold a bit, I wanted to find a way to include Shadow People on this site because they are rapidly becoming an important piece of our ghost story folklore, and I find the stories really damn creepy. Really, I find few things more shiver-inducing than walking down a dark road while listening to someone talk about their encounters with Shadow People.
That being said, I don't actually believe in Shadow People. Not in the least. So, what do I think is going on? Well, this quote from About.com's entry on Shadow People provides some useful information:
As does this one from the Shadow People Archives:
So, for quite some time, reports seem to have been of vague shadowy images viewed out of the corner of the eye, sometimes accompanied by a feeling of dread. Over time, however, people have begun describing seeing more intense encounters. The descriptions of these entities are extremely varied, but are beginning to become standardized into a few typological categories.
Let's take this one apart, shall we. And let's start with the nature of vision and memory.
Our eyes have large blind spots, and we are constantly unconsciously scanning in order to make out what is in the world surrounding us. Since we can't look at everything at once, our brain has to fill in the gaps between scans of an area by supplementing the image with information that has either already been gathered, or else tries to fill-in-the-blanks with semi-related information. Most of the time, this works so seamlessly that we don't notice it, but sometimes it doesn't, and we will see things - just for a split second - that shouldn't be there. It's a common phenomenon, and it happens to all of us. This pretty easily accounts for the majority of "black shapes that were there until I turned to look at them" whether people label them "Shadow People" or not*.
The accompanying feelings of fear and dread can also be explained naturally. It's startling when we see something moving where we thought that there was nothing, thus fear is generated. There are also more than a few different things that can mis-fire in the brain of a perfectly normal, sane person that can result in hallucinations and/or feelings of dread, see this article in Science Now for an example.
Many encounters with Shadow People, much like many ghostly encounters in general, occur while a person is in bed, either about to fall asleep or waking up from sleep. Again, knowing a bit about how our brains work (and how our bodies prepare for and revive from sleep) explains most of these cases. As described in this journal paper, it is perfectly normal for people to experience hallucinations - with vision, sound, and even emotion - in the period surrounding sleep. It's common for someone to insist "I know that I was awake" when this is pointed out - but the truth is that we often can't consciously tell when we are completely awake (and therefore not prone to sleep-related hallucinations) and when we are not completely awake. Add to this the fact that it is very common for people to dream that they have woken up and experienced something, and it can be difficult to figure out what actually occurred and what did not (I have had such experiences myself). So, again, a common line of evidence doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny.
Now, let's look at memory. Most people think of memory as functioning more-or-less like a computer's hard drive: data is coded, and then retrieved more-or-less intact when we need it. Turns out, that this isn't even vaguely how memory works (see here, and here). Memory is a much more active process, and we are, in essence, re-creating a memory each time that we call it up and usually end up either adding things to it or taking things away from it, the end result being that memories that we don't think about too often are more accurate than memories that we think about frequently.
It gets worse, though. In addition to our brains monkeying around with our memories every time we recall them, experiments have demonstrated that we are prone to having false memories implanted by simple suggestion. Some of these false memories can even become extremely vivid - to the point that the person with the false memories will remain convinced that the event actually occurred even after the method by which the memory was created has been explained.
And remember, these problems with memory apply to perfectly healthy, normal, honest, and sane people. This is not pathological, it's just the way that our brains work.
When you add our weird way of handling vision to the way in which our brains handle memories, it begins to seem pretty likely that many, probably most, cases of Shadow People in which the witness truly believes what they saw can be cracked up to oddities of human vision combined with the cludginess of human memory. Add to this the fact that, with the Internet, people can easily come across other people's stories, and you can see how a memory of one thing can begin, over time, to conform to a "group consensus" memory. This common social phenomenon would pretty easily explain why the variation in Shadow People stories seems to be shrinking, people are remembering more intense encounters, and a few specific "types" of shadow people are becoming the norm.
What about the other examples of people seeing Shadow People? Can I explain all of them?
Well, it's really not necessary. There are many, many different ways that the stories can come about - from honest misperception to people intentionally making stories up, and when you throw in a small number of people who actually are suffering from some mental pathology the mix gets pretty thoroughly screwy - and so you simply have to accept that there are probably many different origins for many different stories. You can find the root cause of individual stories, and probably find patterns that allow you to explain a wide variety of stories (such as what is described above), but there's always going to be at least one or two stories that don't fit that explanation, and so you'll have to figure out what happened in those cases. Hell, some people may even have seen something truly strange, but it's hard to separate the signal from the noise.
This, of course, hasn't stopped a large number of crackpots from developing a large number of psuedo-scientific explanations. If you type "Shadow People" into Google, you will be inundated with talk of "extra-dimensional beings", time travellers, and so on. All of the people talk of these things as if they are completely reasonable, without ever stopping to consider what terms such as "extra-dimensional" even mean**. Essentially, people interested in Shadow People have begun spinning explanations of this phenomenon without A) stopping to figure out if there is even a phenomenon needing explanation, and B) stopping to figure out if their explanations even make sense or are even vaguely plausible using the concepts to which they themselves are appealing. And so, we get some rather long treatises on the nature of something that may not actually exist using explanations that are cobbled together from pop-culture misunderstandings of physics and mathematics.
...and people wonder why I just stick to the stories and don't get into the research.
*I have had a recent experience with this myself. Not long back, I was driving home from southern California. It was late at night, and I was tired and had been driving for five hours straight. Off to my left, I saw a massive shape, a large 4-legged creature that was completely black, come chargin towards me. I swerved (thankfully there was nobody else on the road near me) to escape, and a split second later realized that my eyes and brain, in their fatigued state, had translated the movement of the trees and the black nightime sky into an image of a pure-black beast rushing towards me.
**Hint - it's a term that comes from mathematics and is applied to physics via that route. The way that Shadow People enthusiasts use the term doesn't actually make a lick of sense and owes far more to comic books than to physics.
Sources: Science Now, Podcast, Shadow People Archives, About.com, Journal Article (on hallucinations in normal, sane people), Wikipedia, Radio Show (warning, this one is pretty damn crazy)
Some people claim to have seen more than just the split-second image in their peripheral vision. Stories abound of people seeing figures that look like living, 3-dimensional shadows. Sometimes these figures appear to be following or attempting to interact with the witness, at other times they appear to simply be passive observers. On occasion, they even appear to be trying to do harm. Although typically they are solid black with no distinguishable features, there are some that appear to have red, glowing eyes.
Although sometimes seen during the day, these strange creatures are typically spotted at night. Often, the witness feels a sense of fear or dread upon seeing them, and often there is a strong sense that these creatures are here to do damage to us or our world.
Commentary: This one is a bit of a departure from the stories that I normally post in that it's more a phenomenon than a specific story. I had tried to find a specific story that could be tied to a particular time and/or place, but always found Shadow People were either shoe-horned into existing stories about haunted places, or were simply mentioned as "a weird thing happened to me" stories without the location being relevant and often not even mentioned.
Still, even if it breaks the mold a bit, I wanted to find a way to include Shadow People on this site because they are rapidly becoming an important piece of our ghost story folklore, and I find the stories really damn creepy. Really, I find few things more shiver-inducing than walking down a dark road while listening to someone talk about their encounters with Shadow People.
That being said, I don't actually believe in Shadow People. Not in the least. So, what do I think is going on? Well, this quote from About.com's entry on Shadow People provides some useful information:
Those who are experiencing and studying the shadow people phenomenon say that these entities almost always used to be seen out of the corner of the eye and very briefly. But more and more, people are beginning to see them straight on and for longer periods of time. Some experiencers testify that they have even seen eyes, usually red, on these shadow beings.
As does this one from the Shadow People Archives:
Sometimes it appears as the mere silhouette of a person, usually male, but generally lacking any other characteristics of gender. However, in no way does the description end there. There are “hatted” shadow beings, hooded shadows, cloaked ones, and solid or wispy, smoky types. Some are seen only from the waist up. Others clearly have legs that are seen fleeing from their observers. They dart into corners, through walls, into closets, or behind television sets, bushes, and buildings. Sometimes they simply fade into the dark recesses of the night. Lacking in the description is one common denominator unifying the many different types of shadow people that enter our world…except that they are “intensely dark.” But even then, there are exceptions.
So, for quite some time, reports seem to have been of vague shadowy images viewed out of the corner of the eye, sometimes accompanied by a feeling of dread. Over time, however, people have begun describing seeing more intense encounters. The descriptions of these entities are extremely varied, but are beginning to become standardized into a few typological categories.
Let's take this one apart, shall we. And let's start with the nature of vision and memory.
Our eyes have large blind spots, and we are constantly unconsciously scanning in order to make out what is in the world surrounding us. Since we can't look at everything at once, our brain has to fill in the gaps between scans of an area by supplementing the image with information that has either already been gathered, or else tries to fill-in-the-blanks with semi-related information. Most of the time, this works so seamlessly that we don't notice it, but sometimes it doesn't, and we will see things - just for a split second - that shouldn't be there. It's a common phenomenon, and it happens to all of us. This pretty easily accounts for the majority of "black shapes that were there until I turned to look at them" whether people label them "Shadow People" or not*.
The accompanying feelings of fear and dread can also be explained naturally. It's startling when we see something moving where we thought that there was nothing, thus fear is generated. There are also more than a few different things that can mis-fire in the brain of a perfectly normal, sane person that can result in hallucinations and/or feelings of dread, see this article in Science Now for an example.
Many encounters with Shadow People, much like many ghostly encounters in general, occur while a person is in bed, either about to fall asleep or waking up from sleep. Again, knowing a bit about how our brains work (and how our bodies prepare for and revive from sleep) explains most of these cases. As described in this journal paper, it is perfectly normal for people to experience hallucinations - with vision, sound, and even emotion - in the period surrounding sleep. It's common for someone to insist "I know that I was awake" when this is pointed out - but the truth is that we often can't consciously tell when we are completely awake (and therefore not prone to sleep-related hallucinations) and when we are not completely awake. Add to this the fact that it is very common for people to dream that they have woken up and experienced something, and it can be difficult to figure out what actually occurred and what did not (I have had such experiences myself). So, again, a common line of evidence doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny.
Now, let's look at memory. Most people think of memory as functioning more-or-less like a computer's hard drive: data is coded, and then retrieved more-or-less intact when we need it. Turns out, that this isn't even vaguely how memory works (see here, and here). Memory is a much more active process, and we are, in essence, re-creating a memory each time that we call it up and usually end up either adding things to it or taking things away from it, the end result being that memories that we don't think about too often are more accurate than memories that we think about frequently.
It gets worse, though. In addition to our brains monkeying around with our memories every time we recall them, experiments have demonstrated that we are prone to having false memories implanted by simple suggestion. Some of these false memories can even become extremely vivid - to the point that the person with the false memories will remain convinced that the event actually occurred even after the method by which the memory was created has been explained.
And remember, these problems with memory apply to perfectly healthy, normal, honest, and sane people. This is not pathological, it's just the way that our brains work.
When you add our weird way of handling vision to the way in which our brains handle memories, it begins to seem pretty likely that many, probably most, cases of Shadow People in which the witness truly believes what they saw can be cracked up to oddities of human vision combined with the cludginess of human memory. Add to this the fact that, with the Internet, people can easily come across other people's stories, and you can see how a memory of one thing can begin, over time, to conform to a "group consensus" memory. This common social phenomenon would pretty easily explain why the variation in Shadow People stories seems to be shrinking, people are remembering more intense encounters, and a few specific "types" of shadow people are becoming the norm.
What about the other examples of people seeing Shadow People? Can I explain all of them?
Well, it's really not necessary. There are many, many different ways that the stories can come about - from honest misperception to people intentionally making stories up, and when you throw in a small number of people who actually are suffering from some mental pathology the mix gets pretty thoroughly screwy - and so you simply have to accept that there are probably many different origins for many different stories. You can find the root cause of individual stories, and probably find patterns that allow you to explain a wide variety of stories (such as what is described above), but there's always going to be at least one or two stories that don't fit that explanation, and so you'll have to figure out what happened in those cases. Hell, some people may even have seen something truly strange, but it's hard to separate the signal from the noise.
This, of course, hasn't stopped a large number of crackpots from developing a large number of psuedo-scientific explanations. If you type "Shadow People" into Google, you will be inundated with talk of "extra-dimensional beings", time travellers, and so on. All of the people talk of these things as if they are completely reasonable, without ever stopping to consider what terms such as "extra-dimensional" even mean**. Essentially, people interested in Shadow People have begun spinning explanations of this phenomenon without A) stopping to figure out if there is even a phenomenon needing explanation, and B) stopping to figure out if their explanations even make sense or are even vaguely plausible using the concepts to which they themselves are appealing. And so, we get some rather long treatises on the nature of something that may not actually exist using explanations that are cobbled together from pop-culture misunderstandings of physics and mathematics.
...and people wonder why I just stick to the stories and don't get into the research.
*I have had a recent experience with this myself. Not long back, I was driving home from southern California. It was late at night, and I was tired and had been driving for five hours straight. Off to my left, I saw a massive shape, a large 4-legged creature that was completely black, come chargin towards me. I swerved (thankfully there was nobody else on the road near me) to escape, and a split second later realized that my eyes and brain, in their fatigued state, had translated the movement of the trees and the black nightime sky into an image of a pure-black beast rushing towards me.
**Hint - it's a term that comes from mathematics and is applied to physics via that route. The way that Shadow People enthusiasts use the term doesn't actually make a lick of sense and owes far more to comic books than to physics.
Sources: Science Now, Podcast, Shadow People Archives, About.com, Journal Article (on hallucinations in normal, sane people), Wikipedia, Radio Show (warning, this one is pretty damn crazy)
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Paganini's Phantom Violin
Niccolo Paganini was such an influential and flamboyant violinist that even a century and a half after his death I heard him referred to frequently as I learned to play rock guitar music. His technical mastery of the instrument was the stuff of legends, inspiring musicians proficient on stringed instruments to push themselves for greater and greater degrees of virtuosity in their playing. Paganini's playing and ability to put on a great show was so well known that even a century later it would serve as the inspiration of his musical descendants when rock and roll guitar playing became a highly technical form of performance in the 1970s. Guitarists ranging from Yngwie Malmsteen to Eddie Van Halen to Steve Vai and Joe Satriani all owe a debt to this early master of highly proficient stage showmanship.
Paganini's biography is a mix of the self-destructive superstar story that we tend to think only belongs in the post-1950s music scene with elements of pure invention that were either developed to denounce him, or that were promoted by him because they were good for business.
Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy in 1782. The strange course of his life was probably set early on when he suffered from measles and was thought dead*. Placed in a burial shroud, he was nearly buried, but was discovered to be alive at the last minute. In time, it would come to be rumored that his mother had been assured by an angel that her son would become the greatest violinist in the world, while another rumor held that his mother had made a pact with Satan to ensure her son's greatness.
Paganini's first violin teacher was his father, a man with a reputation for strictness and harshness towards his son. From there, he was taught by Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa and showed such talent that he was composing his own impressive pieces of music as early as the age of eight. He continued to progress under ever-greater teachers. Those who doubt that an angel or demon assured Paganini's mother of his greatness often claim that it was during his teenage years that Paganini himself made a pact with Satan to ensure his status as a great violinist.
Leaving his home, Paganini soon discovered that he could make a living for himself as a concert violinist, and he abandoned his father, who had become increasingly harsh towards his son. He soon found himself in a position very much like a modern rock star - money was available, as were drink and willing women. He cultivated a distinctive appearance, with shoulder-length hair, a gaunt body, and frequent black suits, he is said to have been frightening to behold. He Became a compulsive gambler, and only stopped gambling when he nearly lost a valuable violin that a friend had given him as a gift. He seduced women whenever possible, though there is evidence that he spent time living with a noble woman with whom he had fallen in love (and during this time he vanished for a period of four years).
Although people continued to pay to see him play, they also began to spread stories about him. In addition to the claims of his or his mother's pact with Satan, a story that he was the son of a demon began to circulate, and at least one concert-goer claimed to have seen Satan helping Paganini play. It's been claimed that people would cross themselves when they saw Paganini in the streets, and that men in London would poke him with their canes to determine whether he was real or supernatural (I'm guessing that these were handy paranormal-detection canes...they just don't make 'em like they used to). Needless to say, just as rumors of Satanic influence helped KISS and Ozzy Osbourne, they were of great financial benefit to Paganini as well. He may or may not have encouraged these types of stories, but he certainly benefited from them.
Paganini finally died in 1840, at the age of 57. Either because of the controversies that surrounded him in life or because he refused last rites before death, the church refused to allow his body to be buried on consecrated ground. The body was temporarily interred in an abandoned leper house (or, according to some accounts, his family's basement or even an olive oil factory), where passing fishermen claim to have heard the sounds of a violin playing, moving Paganini's story out of the realm of flamboyant showman and celebrity and into the realm of the ghost story. His body was later moved Parma, where some stories hold that the violin music was still heard until he was buried in the Parma cemetery two years later. In 1926, his remains were moved to his native Genoa.
*I often hear people dismiss measles as a harmless childhood disease, usually because they take issue with medicines used to prevent or treat measles, but the truth of the matter is that it can be deadly.
Commentary: I have known about Paganini for over twenty years, and I have still never been able to get over just how much his life and career might have served as the blueprint for those of so many 20th century musicians. The claims of Satanic influence would show up with 70s and 80s metal and continue today with Marylin Manson. The story of having made pact with Satan to gain a literally supernatural ability on his chosen instrument was later used by the great Bluesman Robert Johnson (who specifically added that he had met the Devil at a crossroads). His taste for fast living, womanizing, and gambling would also figure heavily in the stories of so many of the 20th centuries music superstars.
The story of his phantom music playing at his first burial-place is interesting for two reasons. The first is that the reasons given for the treatment of his remains vary, and may reflect either the politics or the religion of his day. Sometimes it is said that he was refused proper burial at first because he had led a life of sin (what with the gambling and womanizing), sometimes it is said that he was refused proper burial because of his rumored pact with Satan, and sometimes it is said that he was refused burial because he had refused last rites.
The most likely explanation is that either he was refused proper burial because he had refused last rites (reportedly because he thought that he wasn't yet dying), or that this was used as a technicality to deny burial to a figure who had generated a good deal of controversy. Of course, most of the less-researched (and more sensationalistic) sources hold that he was refused burial because of his alleged demonic ties, but this seems a little far-fetched (though it does make for a great story).
The other interesting thing about the phantom music is that it appears to be symbolic of Paganini not being at rest. It is said that the music played when he had not been buried in consecrated ground, wherever that may have been (next to a factory, in a leper house, in his family's basement, etc.), and that the music was mournful. The music is not reputed to be heard after the body has been moved to a "proper" place of burial. In this sense, it seems to be indicative of the religion of the time, with Paganini suffering until his remains are treated correctly and buried in ground consecrated by the Roman Catholic church.
I wish I could have provided more information on Paganini, he was a fascinating character, but for the purposes of this site, it seemed necessary to provide enough information to give the necessary flavor before cutting to the ghost story and supernatural elements. But I encourage you to follow the links below and learn more about him. Trust me, you'll be glad that you did.
Sources: BBC Website, Guitarra Magazine, About.com, Suite 101, Time Magazine, Internet
Paganini's biography is a mix of the self-destructive superstar story that we tend to think only belongs in the post-1950s music scene with elements of pure invention that were either developed to denounce him, or that were promoted by him because they were good for business.
Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy in 1782. The strange course of his life was probably set early on when he suffered from measles and was thought dead*. Placed in a burial shroud, he was nearly buried, but was discovered to be alive at the last minute. In time, it would come to be rumored that his mother had been assured by an angel that her son would become the greatest violinist in the world, while another rumor held that his mother had made a pact with Satan to ensure her son's greatness.
Paganini's first violin teacher was his father, a man with a reputation for strictness and harshness towards his son. From there, he was taught by Giovanni Servetto and Giacomo Costa and showed such talent that he was composing his own impressive pieces of music as early as the age of eight. He continued to progress under ever-greater teachers. Those who doubt that an angel or demon assured Paganini's mother of his greatness often claim that it was during his teenage years that Paganini himself made a pact with Satan to ensure his status as a great violinist.
Leaving his home, Paganini soon discovered that he could make a living for himself as a concert violinist, and he abandoned his father, who had become increasingly harsh towards his son. He soon found himself in a position very much like a modern rock star - money was available, as were drink and willing women. He cultivated a distinctive appearance, with shoulder-length hair, a gaunt body, and frequent black suits, he is said to have been frightening to behold. He Became a compulsive gambler, and only stopped gambling when he nearly lost a valuable violin that a friend had given him as a gift. He seduced women whenever possible, though there is evidence that he spent time living with a noble woman with whom he had fallen in love (and during this time he vanished for a period of four years).
Although people continued to pay to see him play, they also began to spread stories about him. In addition to the claims of his or his mother's pact with Satan, a story that he was the son of a demon began to circulate, and at least one concert-goer claimed to have seen Satan helping Paganini play. It's been claimed that people would cross themselves when they saw Paganini in the streets, and that men in London would poke him with their canes to determine whether he was real or supernatural (I'm guessing that these were handy paranormal-detection canes...they just don't make 'em like they used to). Needless to say, just as rumors of Satanic influence helped KISS and Ozzy Osbourne, they were of great financial benefit to Paganini as well. He may or may not have encouraged these types of stories, but he certainly benefited from them.
Paganini finally died in 1840, at the age of 57. Either because of the controversies that surrounded him in life or because he refused last rites before death, the church refused to allow his body to be buried on consecrated ground. The body was temporarily interred in an abandoned leper house (or, according to some accounts, his family's basement or even an olive oil factory), where passing fishermen claim to have heard the sounds of a violin playing, moving Paganini's story out of the realm of flamboyant showman and celebrity and into the realm of the ghost story. His body was later moved Parma, where some stories hold that the violin music was still heard until he was buried in the Parma cemetery two years later. In 1926, his remains were moved to his native Genoa.
*I often hear people dismiss measles as a harmless childhood disease, usually because they take issue with medicines used to prevent or treat measles, but the truth of the matter is that it can be deadly.
Commentary: I have known about Paganini for over twenty years, and I have still never been able to get over just how much his life and career might have served as the blueprint for those of so many 20th century musicians. The claims of Satanic influence would show up with 70s and 80s metal and continue today with Marylin Manson. The story of having made pact with Satan to gain a literally supernatural ability on his chosen instrument was later used by the great Bluesman Robert Johnson (who specifically added that he had met the Devil at a crossroads). His taste for fast living, womanizing, and gambling would also figure heavily in the stories of so many of the 20th centuries music superstars.
The story of his phantom music playing at his first burial-place is interesting for two reasons. The first is that the reasons given for the treatment of his remains vary, and may reflect either the politics or the religion of his day. Sometimes it is said that he was refused proper burial at first because he had led a life of sin (what with the gambling and womanizing), sometimes it is said that he was refused proper burial because of his rumored pact with Satan, and sometimes it is said that he was refused burial because he had refused last rites.
The most likely explanation is that either he was refused proper burial because he had refused last rites (reportedly because he thought that he wasn't yet dying), or that this was used as a technicality to deny burial to a figure who had generated a good deal of controversy. Of course, most of the less-researched (and more sensationalistic) sources hold that he was refused burial because of his alleged demonic ties, but this seems a little far-fetched (though it does make for a great story).
The other interesting thing about the phantom music is that it appears to be symbolic of Paganini not being at rest. It is said that the music played when he had not been buried in consecrated ground, wherever that may have been (next to a factory, in a leper house, in his family's basement, etc.), and that the music was mournful. The music is not reputed to be heard after the body has been moved to a "proper" place of burial. In this sense, it seems to be indicative of the religion of the time, with Paganini suffering until his remains are treated correctly and buried in ground consecrated by the Roman Catholic church.
I wish I could have provided more information on Paganini, he was a fascinating character, but for the purposes of this site, it seemed necessary to provide enough information to give the necessary flavor before cutting to the ghost story and supernatural elements. But I encourage you to follow the links below and learn more about him. Trust me, you'll be glad that you did.
Sources: BBC Website, Guitarra Magazine, About.com, Suite 101, Time Magazine, Internet
John Muir School/Youth Center, Modesto, CA
On Morris avenue in Modesto, CA is a building that has served as an elementary school and a youth center for nearly six decades before being damaged in a fire. Built in 1923, the building originally served as the John Muir Elementary School (and can boast as one of it's pupils a young George Lucas), and was later the John Muir Youth Center.
Local legend holds that people working in the basement of the old school building often hear the sounds of voices and dozens (or even hundreds) of feet pounding the floors overhead, as if children are running to or from class. Some sources even claim that this happens between 2:30 and 3:00 PM, the time when the children would have been let out of class for the day. Running upstairs to see what is going on, the workers always find the place empty.
In the obligatory "true ghost story" article that appeared in the 2007 edition of the Modesto Bee, someone claiming to be a city worker (but wishing their name to be withheld) claims that this very thing happened to her.
Commentary: In ghost hunter and paranormal enthusiast circles, this is what would be labelled as a "residual haunting", a more-or-less prosaic replaying of events that is creepy not in it's content, but in that it is happening without a clear source.
Despite having grown up in the area, I am not familiar with this particular building (I lived far enough away in the boonies that a youth Center on Morris Avenue would have been about as useful to me as a youth center on Mars). The first thing that I wonder on hearing the story is what the conditions in the basement are like. I have been in basements where the sound and vibration of a truck passing by outside sounds a lot like people running in the building overhead, and the echoes of people walking by outside sounds like people talking in the building above. Having had those experiences, I immediately wonder if something similar was happening in the John Muir building.
Another thing I would wonder is whether the stories were passed on by city workers who used them to freak out their more gullible co-workers. I have worked with people who do such things before, so it's not much of a stretch for me to imagine that happening as well.
Sources: Internet, Newspaper, Local Folklore
Local legend holds that people working in the basement of the old school building often hear the sounds of voices and dozens (or even hundreds) of feet pounding the floors overhead, as if children are running to or from class. Some sources even claim that this happens between 2:30 and 3:00 PM, the time when the children would have been let out of class for the day. Running upstairs to see what is going on, the workers always find the place empty.
In the obligatory "true ghost story" article that appeared in the 2007 edition of the Modesto Bee, someone claiming to be a city worker (but wishing their name to be withheld) claims that this very thing happened to her.
Commentary: In ghost hunter and paranormal enthusiast circles, this is what would be labelled as a "residual haunting", a more-or-less prosaic replaying of events that is creepy not in it's content, but in that it is happening without a clear source.
Despite having grown up in the area, I am not familiar with this particular building (I lived far enough away in the boonies that a youth Center on Morris Avenue would have been about as useful to me as a youth center on Mars). The first thing that I wonder on hearing the story is what the conditions in the basement are like. I have been in basements where the sound and vibration of a truck passing by outside sounds a lot like people running in the building overhead, and the echoes of people walking by outside sounds like people talking in the building above. Having had those experiences, I immediately wonder if something similar was happening in the John Muir building.
Another thing I would wonder is whether the stories were passed on by city workers who used them to freak out their more gullible co-workers. I have worked with people who do such things before, so it's not much of a stretch for me to imagine that happening as well.
Sources: Internet, Newspaper, Local Folklore
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Demonic Mirror
In October, 2007, the Modesto Bee (the newspaper of Modesto, CA and the surrounding area) asked its readers to share their ghost stories for the usual Halloween scare-fest that most media attempt to put out.
Included in this story was one from a fellow Named Gary Metzger, who worked in an Italian Restaurant run by an older Sicilian man near Sacramento during the 1970s. The following is taken directly from the article:
Commentary: I'm not really sure how to classify this particular story, but it is a good one. On the surface, it appears to be a variation on folktales concerning evil spirits trapped in objects. The fact that it's a mirror fits, as these objects often have rather sinister natures in folklore as well as folk magic, and breaking this mirror would certainly bring bad luck.
Going with the folktale angle, the idea of a successful businessman purchasing a cursed item that will ultimately be his undoing is an old one. Though, in this case, the purchase is not claimed to have done him any good at all. I have to wonder why the Sicilian man doesn't claim that the mirror brings him business success due to the demon being trapped inside.
Another folktale angle is that of the apprentice dabbling into things that he isn't yet meant to know. He was told to clean the mirrors, but not one in particular. He forgets this admonition, and pays a fearful price for his lapse in memory. It's played out on a small scale, but the basic story arc is a familiar one.
On the other hand, depending on the religious leanings of Mr. Metzger, this story of the demon in the mirror might have another meaning. I have written in the past about how members of certain types of religious backgrounds use stories of demonic encounters as a way of proving their own worthiness, and it is possible that this is just such a story. However, without information concerning the religious background of Mr. Metzger, it's impossible to say if this is the case here.
Of course, one has to ask whether or not Mr. Metzger experienced something or not, and if so, what he experienced. It is, of course, entirely possible that this was simply a good, and very creepy story that he had come up with, and the newspaper's request for stories was an excellent opportunity to share it. If so, my hat's off to him.
It's also possible that he perceived something weird. In that case, one has to wonder what he perceived. Given the rather odd nature of both human memory and human perception, it is possible for someone who is both perfectly sane and perfectly honest to experience or remember experiencing something vividly that never happened. So, that's a possibility. The flipside is that something truly weird really did happen. However, without providing us with the name of the restaurant, or even which Sacramento-area town it was in, we can't check up on the story. So, we are at a dead end.
Sources: Newspaper
Included in this story was one from a fellow Named Gary Metzger, who worked in an Italian Restaurant run by an older Sicilian man near Sacramento during the 1970s. The following is taken directly from the article:
“My boss told me to clean all of these gilded mirrors along one wall of the restaurant. He told me to leave alone one really old, dusty one at the end. Well, by the time I got to it, I forgot his orders. I dusted it off, squirted it with water and wiped it down.
“There was one smudge in the lower bottom corner that wouldn’t rub off. I looked at it real close, and it was like I was looking through it at this tiny pinpoint of light. And then the pinpoint got larger and this demonic face was jumping at me. It stayed in the mirror, but I yelped and my boss heard me. He came and took me to a table. He asked what I saw.
“He told me he had bought it in the old country and the salesman warned him there was a demon trapped in the mirror. He said the salesman also told him not to break the mirror or the demon would go free.”
Commentary: I'm not really sure how to classify this particular story, but it is a good one. On the surface, it appears to be a variation on folktales concerning evil spirits trapped in objects. The fact that it's a mirror fits, as these objects often have rather sinister natures in folklore as well as folk magic, and breaking this mirror would certainly bring bad luck.
Going with the folktale angle, the idea of a successful businessman purchasing a cursed item that will ultimately be his undoing is an old one. Though, in this case, the purchase is not claimed to have done him any good at all. I have to wonder why the Sicilian man doesn't claim that the mirror brings him business success due to the demon being trapped inside.
Another folktale angle is that of the apprentice dabbling into things that he isn't yet meant to know. He was told to clean the mirrors, but not one in particular. He forgets this admonition, and pays a fearful price for his lapse in memory. It's played out on a small scale, but the basic story arc is a familiar one.
On the other hand, depending on the religious leanings of Mr. Metzger, this story of the demon in the mirror might have another meaning. I have written in the past about how members of certain types of religious backgrounds use stories of demonic encounters as a way of proving their own worthiness, and it is possible that this is just such a story. However, without information concerning the religious background of Mr. Metzger, it's impossible to say if this is the case here.
Of course, one has to ask whether or not Mr. Metzger experienced something or not, and if so, what he experienced. It is, of course, entirely possible that this was simply a good, and very creepy story that he had come up with, and the newspaper's request for stories was an excellent opportunity to share it. If so, my hat's off to him.
It's also possible that he perceived something weird. In that case, one has to wonder what he perceived. Given the rather odd nature of both human memory and human perception, it is possible for someone who is both perfectly sane and perfectly honest to experience or remember experiencing something vividly that never happened. So, that's a possibility. The flipside is that something truly weird really did happen. However, without providing us with the name of the restaurant, or even which Sacramento-area town it was in, we can't check up on the story. So, we are at a dead end.
Sources: Newspaper
The Blackwell Tunnel Hitchhiker
In either 1972 or 1960, a motorcyclist was riding on Blackwall Lane, heading into Greenwich. It was a dark, wet night, and the motorcycle lost traction, causing it to skid out of control. The cyclist hit the curb, or perhaps it was a road sign, and was killed instantly.
Whether the accident occurred in 1960 or 1972, by 1972 a strange apparition was to be found at Blackwall Tunnel, the vehicle tunnel that provides a subterranean route to connect Greenwich with London north of the Thames River. The apparition, variably reported as a young woman or a young man (and occasionally reported as a child), appears at the entrance to the tunnel, trying to flag down passing motorcyclists for a ride. One cyclist picked the spirit up, and drove through the tunnel, discovering upon emerging at the other side that his passenger had vanished. He drove back through the tunnel searching for the person who he was certain had fallen off into traffic, but found no trace of them.
Confused, the cyclist drive to the address that had been provided, only to discover that the young woman or man who he had picked up had died in a motorcycle accident.
Commentary: Not only a vanishing hitchhiker story, but a vanishing hitchhiker story in an underground tunnel. In your face, Resurrection Mary!
...but, seriously...
The vanishing hitchhiker is an old an honorable ghost-story urban legend. Depending on who you ask, it may go as far back as 2,000 years (some folks will point to a Bible story in the Book of Acts concerning the Apostle Phillip baptizing a charioteer. Whether you buy that early vintage (or even the origin of the modern vanishing hitchhiker genre in this story), these types of tales have been around for a very long time.
One element of the story that is interesting to me is that the gender and age of the ghostly passenger is variable. Although most of the on-line versions refer to a young woman being the hitchhiker, other versions describe it as a child or teenager of either sex, and there are versions of the story in which it is a man in biker's leathers (cue either Steppenwolf or the Village People Music).
It's interesting to note that this story may have picked up it's "origin tale" in the late 20th century, at least two decades after it was first reported. In a 1994 letter to the ever-so august publication The Fortean Times, a man claimed to have been staying in the area of the tunnel in 1960, when he and his wife heard a motorcycle accident that claimed the life of the cycle's driver. It is this letter that also claims that the phantom sound of the accident was repeated two days later.
As with all ghostly stories, there are those who believe this whole-heartedly, and those who dismiss them entirely, and many more people who don't really believe, but don't really disbelieve either. One website asks the question "..but it is worth asking if there is nothing to the tales why do people keep telling them?" as if it is a question unanswerable by those who don't believe, or are at least on the fence. The simple truth, though, is that we keep telling them because they are great stories, and we all like that little "creeped-out/chills-down-the-spine" feeling that we get when we tell the tales.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, these are great stories and an important part of our folklore, and that alone is reason to pass them on.
Sources: Mysterious Britain & Ireland, the Londonist, Road Ghosts, Internet, Published Book, Wikipedia
Whether the accident occurred in 1960 or 1972, by 1972 a strange apparition was to be found at Blackwall Tunnel, the vehicle tunnel that provides a subterranean route to connect Greenwich with London north of the Thames River. The apparition, variably reported as a young woman or a young man (and occasionally reported as a child), appears at the entrance to the tunnel, trying to flag down passing motorcyclists for a ride. One cyclist picked the spirit up, and drove through the tunnel, discovering upon emerging at the other side that his passenger had vanished. He drove back through the tunnel searching for the person who he was certain had fallen off into traffic, but found no trace of them.
Confused, the cyclist drive to the address that had been provided, only to discover that the young woman or man who he had picked up had died in a motorcycle accident.
Commentary: Not only a vanishing hitchhiker story, but a vanishing hitchhiker story in an underground tunnel. In your face, Resurrection Mary!
...but, seriously...
The vanishing hitchhiker is an old an honorable ghost-story urban legend. Depending on who you ask, it may go as far back as 2,000 years (some folks will point to a Bible story in the Book of Acts concerning the Apostle Phillip baptizing a charioteer. Whether you buy that early vintage (or even the origin of the modern vanishing hitchhiker genre in this story), these types of tales have been around for a very long time.
One element of the story that is interesting to me is that the gender and age of the ghostly passenger is variable. Although most of the on-line versions refer to a young woman being the hitchhiker, other versions describe it as a child or teenager of either sex, and there are versions of the story in which it is a man in biker's leathers (cue either Steppenwolf or the Village People Music).
It's interesting to note that this story may have picked up it's "origin tale" in the late 20th century, at least two decades after it was first reported. In a 1994 letter to the ever-so august publication The Fortean Times, a man claimed to have been staying in the area of the tunnel in 1960, when he and his wife heard a motorcycle accident that claimed the life of the cycle's driver. It is this letter that also claims that the phantom sound of the accident was repeated two days later.
As with all ghostly stories, there are those who believe this whole-heartedly, and those who dismiss them entirely, and many more people who don't really believe, but don't really disbelieve either. One website asks the question "..but it is worth asking if there is nothing to the tales why do people keep telling them?" as if it is a question unanswerable by those who don't believe, or are at least on the fence. The simple truth, though, is that we keep telling them because they are great stories, and we all like that little "creeped-out/chills-down-the-spine" feeling that we get when we tell the tales.
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, these are great stories and an important part of our folklore, and that alone is reason to pass them on.
Sources: Mysterious Britain & Ireland, the Londonist, Road Ghosts, Internet, Published Book, Wikipedia
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