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 Ghost Radar is one of the coolest apps I’ve run across. It supposedly detects energy fluctuations in your immediate environment that may be paranormal phenomena – ghosts, spirits, or other entities.  

From the FAQ that comes with the app: “It has been suggested that paranormal energies manifest themselves through the Quantum Flux or are an aspect Jung’s collective unconscious. Regardless of the medium through which the energies manipulate electric devices the resulting manipulated readings seem to indicate intelligence on occasion… It’s believed that paranormal energies have the ability to influence electrical equipment. This idea comes from the concept that matter, life, soul, and life are fundamentally an electrical phenomena.  The app provides a set of parameters for paranormal energies to manipulate which are then processed as graphical, textual, and audible readouts.”

The app comes with a radar screen that shows the fluctuations in the environment as blips. The red blips are the strongest signals, followed by yellow, green, then blue. Over 2,000 words are programmed into Ghost Radar, so paranormal energies can also use words, the audio part of the app. In the above image, you can see the red blip on the radar screen and the word speech to the left of it. That word was spoken aloud when the red blip appeared.

I walked through the house with the phone – and, later, my iPad – and got a few green blip readings. The first synchronicity happened when I walked into Rob’s office to see if there were any fluctuations. A red blip showed on the radar and the word military came up. Rob and I looked at each other.

“Your cousin John,” I exclaimed.

His cousin, who died several years ago, was career military.

Okay, maybe it was a fluke, I thought, and walked outside with my iPhone, but nothing showed up on the screen. It supposedly has a range of about 50 yards. I got distracted by the dogs, who were running around, playing tug-of-war with a toy, and couldn’t stop smiling at how much fun they were having. Suddenly, the Ghost Radar said, Smile. I began to wonder if there could be a telepathic aspect to this app, too. It was definitely a synchro – a word was spoken that precisely described what I was doing.

I started toward the backyard, which is dense with trees and plants, and headed toward the spot where we buried our beloved cat, Tigerlily,  three months ago. A red blip appeared on the screen. I walked faster, watching the blip instead of where I was stepping, and my right foot sank into something wet. When I looked down to see what it was, the Ghost Radar said, Wet. Another synchro. Fortunately, the wetness was just a depression in the ground that was saturated from rain earlier today.

 Now I’m eager to try Ghost Radar in a cemetery (in daylight!) or at some local spot known to be haunted. For just 99 cents, this little app may prove to be most intriguing.

I have been very happy the last few weeks. My Nika has been visiting and she really appeals to my wild side, that part of me that enjoys breaking rules and modes of behavior…well, just because. She and I don’t always succeed on these ventures, our humans are wise to us, but when they’re distracted, we can get away with squirrel hunting that is truly beyond the pale.

When our car pulls into the dog park in the late afternoon, Nika is usually leashed because our humans know she will head wherever the squirrels are – which is usually away from the dog park, in the open land to the south. So as they restrain her, I sneak out the back door and take off toward the dog park. She then strains to join me and if there are no other dogs entering or leaving the park, the human who holds the leash is nearly dragged to the pavement and releases her.

She tears after me and we race around through the trees just outside the dog park, where the squirrels often chitter and chat and laugh about all the dogs. We show them a thing or two, Nika and I do, leaping up at their trees, nearly climbing their stupid trees. And when Nika gets fed up with them, she flies to the south, to all that open land, her leash slapping the ground.

I can only follow her so far. I don’t run as fast as she does.  And always, within me, is the collective voice of my humans, calling me back, to the park, to treats, reminding me that retrievers retrieve, that they return to where they are supposed to be. Once I do what I’m supposed to do, Nika makes a very wide circle and joins me and we enter the park, free of our insulting leashes.

So while we race along the periphery of the fence, where there’s an overhang of branches and leaves from the outside trees, our humans sit around in the shade with others of their ilk and talk and talk. Syria, food, weight loss, job hunting, horses and polo and the interminable heat. Today, here in the shade, it’s 95 and feels like 111, that’s what some weather app on a human phone says. I’m grateful some human has brought in a pool; I plop down in the cool water, and gaze across all the green and sunlight at Nika, who has dug a hole and climbed into it, panting.

I know that Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq are places far from here where horrible things are happening. The humans discuss it.But why should these wars be mine? I only want to chase squirrels and be with Nika. I want other dogs to run and play and chase squirrels and find their true loves; I don’t want them to starve or flee their homes.

The human Prez talks about how there must be consequences for violating international law. This has something to do with the use of horrid chemical weapons. But how can ‘surgical air strikes’ act as punishment when only innocent civilians will be affected? Maimed? Killed? I feel the human despair and rage and hopelessness about this. But it’s not my war.

Just show me the squirrels. Just let me run and dream and wear myself out so that at the end of the day Nika and I are zonked, settled in, gone for the night.

Do you think the world might be a better place if our main enemy was squirrels?

Joe Nickell is a former magician who traded in his magic tricks decades ago in favor of the role of debunker of all that is paranormal. He’s associated with the Skeptical Inquirer magazine and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal–CSICOP).

I call Nickell a debunker rather than a skeptic, because clearly he is driven by his belief in the non-existence of the paranormal and is incapable of admitting that some things are not so easily explained by a rational, reductionistic perspective.

Now in his book The Science of Ghosts, Nickell tells us that the only thing that so-called ghost hunters are detecting is themselves.  “If they go through a haunted house and stir up a lot of dust, they shouldn’t be surprised if they get a lot of orbs in their photographs,” he said in an interview last October.

He doesn’t have anything better to say about mediums and their connections with spirits. “The people who profess to be able to talk to the dead tend to be either fantasy-prone personalities, or charlatans, or possibly a bit of both,” Nickell declared. “They would be harmless if they didn’t mislead so many people.”

So it’s not surprising that Mr. Nickell and his colleagues at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry were quite perplexed by the results of a poll they sponsored that was aimed at comparing educational levels with the belief in ghosts. Their survey in 2006 found that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. Contrary to expectations, a poll of 439 college students found seniors and grad students were more likely than freshmen to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and other mysterious phenomena.

Oops! It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. But then, contrary to what the skeptics tell us is real – or rather what is not real – stands a sizable percentage of the American public.

Nearly half of Americans say they believe in ghosts, according to a 2012 HuffPost/YouGov poll. Of the 1,000 adults interviewed Dec. 17-18, the poll revealed 45 percent believe in ghosts, or that the spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations.

Those results nearly mirror a CBS News 2009 poll, which showed that “nearly half of Americans say they believe in ghosts, or that the dead can return in certain places and situations.” That poll also revealed that 78 percent of Americans believe in life after death.

The skeptics’ response to these polls? In a word, “Scary!”

The photo at the top is the famous ‘Brown Lady,’ a photo taken in 1936 at Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. The one below is a photo I took behind the home of Joe and Nancy McMoneagle, south of Charlottesville, Virginia.

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HAPPY 24th BIRTHDAY, MEGAN!!!

The Biltmore Estate is touted as the largest privately owned home in America. Which is ironic since no one lives there–except the ghosts. The Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina exists as a museum to a way of life as lived by the Vanderbilt family near the turn of the twentieth century. While the house is immaculate and furnished with priceless antiques, it lacks all the modern conveniences that the Vanderbilts and the rest of us rely on today. But the ghosts don’t seem to mind.

We took a trip to Asheville several years ago, and were astonished by the immensity of the estate. It’s comparable to England’s Highclere Castle, better known as Downton Abbey, thanks to the popular PBS drama.  Built by George Washington Vanderbilt between 1889-1895, the Biltmore maintains such an aura of the past that you literally expect to see a coterie of servants attending to the needs of wealthy heirs who dine every evening in formal attire. Apparently, some people have seen just that.

We didn’t see any ghosts on our visit, but we might’ve smelled one! Like any museum, there is no smoking allowed in the house. Yet, as we worked our way from room to room and entered a library, we distinctly smelled cigar smoke. We looked around, but there was no one else in the room. We moved on to another room where Trish asked a guard about the smoke. He raised his head and sniffed.

“It’s one of the ghosts. We smell the cigar smoke from time to time,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner. It was clear he wasn’t joking.

L.A. Stewart, who works at the Biltmore, says that several times a day guests approaches her and ask about ghosts. She doesn’t hesitate to say that there are plenty of them. She should know. Not only does she works at the house, but she’s also an empath, which means she can sense ghosts or spirits, and she says she can also hear and see them. She also has written about her experiences on the Yahoo! Contributors Network.

“One of my first encounters with spirits on the Biltmore Estate occurred in a stairwell at the Welcome Center during the Christmas season of 2006. As I was coming up the second floor, I clearly heard a woman say, “Abigail!” in a strong voice. Turning quickly around, I realized there was no one in the stairwell with me, and there was nowhere anyone could have hidden without my seeing them.”

She asked her supervisor if there was anyone named Abigail working in the welcome center, and the answer was no. However, a year later, someone familiar with the history of the estate mentioned that there had been a house in the area of the welcome center, and a woman named Abigail had lived there.

Stewart has also seen her share of ghosts inside the house. She recalls one day looking into the staff dining room and seeing a woman in her forties or fifties sitting in a small straight-back chair. She was rocking back and forth, crying into the long kitchen apron she wore. The story about this ghost is that she is weeping over the death of a young man who had worked in the house before joining the army to fight in WWI. Her love and grief for the man is said to continue to this day, residual energy replaying like a video loop.

“I once had a chance encounter with a woman who turned out to have been Mr. Vanderbilt’s head housekeeper. As I was passing through the basement hallway one busy afternoon, she was going by the floral rooms. She was middle-aged, rather short in statue, but carried herself very stiff and erect. She walked quickly by, her hands folded in front of her black taffeta dress. Every pleat of her skirt was perfectly ironed. I could hear the material rustle as she passed. I had the feeling of a woman with great responsibilities, always giving the appearance of being very self-assured, yet a woman who was feeling the effects of age and pressures of her job.”

Another hot spot for ghostly activity is the banquet hall, where a mischievous spirit likes to trip employees on the same spot in front of the organ loft, even though the floor is level and free of any objects. “I have lost count how often I’ve been tripped there, and many other employees have said the same. Just the other day, I encountered a different spirit in the Hall. He was one of the butlers who served in the house when Mr. Vanderbilt was alive. He was rather tall, in his mid 30’s, and dressed in a black tux, white gloves and white ‘boiled’ shirt. (Boiling white shirts was a method cleaning them.) I was almost run over by him as he quickly came into the Banquet Hall. He was carrying a rather large silver tray and heading towards the Butler’s Pantry. I literally did a fast sidestep before realizing he was a spirit!”

Stewart notes that many lives have been tied to Biltmore Estate over its 115 plus years of ownership by George Vanderbilt and his descendants. “These employees laughed, cried, and shared the joys as well as sorrows with each other. They took great pride in their positions within one of America’s more prominent families, and the current employees feel that same way.”

L.A. should know. She met many of them,  past and present.

Here’s a UFO video that comes from a suburb of Montreal, called LaPrairie. It apparently was filmed sometime during June of this year. It takes more than three minutes before the object is clearly seen. Then it goes in and out of focus. At 6:21, it’s very clear for a couple of seconds. Besides the sighted object, the other anomaly in this film is that the Quebecois family is speaking English. Very convenient for non-French viewers.

The video appears on Unknown Country and was analyzed by a digital film expert, who thought it looked pretty good. The analyst also thought the comments heard were genuine. One possible non-alien explanation is that it might be a model quad helicopter with led lights. The analyst noted that it was visible for an extended period of time and others should have seen it. But there apparently were no other reports or videos of the object.

As usual, we are left to wonder.

Read the original source: https://www.unknowncountry.com/out-there/latest#ixzz2cYkva0xJ