Video Captures Possible Ghost In The Mirror Of A Haunted Castle

June 8, 2019

Located in Coolderry, County Offaly, Leap Castle is known as one of the most haunted locations in all of Ireland. And just recently a member of a group of paranormal investigators captured a video of what appears to be a ghost in one of the mirrors located inside of the castle.

On June 1^st, a team of paranormal investigators were joined by 15 members of the public for a lockdown of the haunted castle. One of the public guests was recording a video of a mirror when they captured an eerie-looking figure. Lead investigator Siobhan McAuley told the Irish Mirror, “If you watch the mirror you will see the man coming back and forth on demand, we have named it ‘The Man in the Mirror’.”

The video was pretty shaky, as the person who was recording it didn’t have a steady hand. So was it really a ghostly man in the mirror or was it just a reflection or lens flare from the constant movement of the camera? You can see the video of the ghostly image here and decide for yourself.

Leap Castle

Leap Castle does have an extensive history of paranormal activity. There are conflicting reports as to when it was first built – some say the 12^th century, while others believe it was the 15^th century. What is known, however, is that the castle was built on top of a site that was previously used by druids who conducted initiation ceremonies there.
The castle was originally called “Leim Ui Bhanain” which translates to “Leap of the O’Bannons”. The O’Bannons were a wealthy family, but they didn’t rule the castle for long, as the O’Carroll family seized the property and legend has it that many massacres took place there. After the chief of the O’Carroll clan passed away, his two sons fought over who would become the new ruler. When Thaddeus, who was a priest, was performing mass, he was killed by his brother Teighe at the “Bloody Chapel”. Thaddeus’ ghost can often be seen roaming around the chapel.
The McMahon family was at the castle for a celebration when the O’Carrolls poisoned them. The spirits of the McMahon family have been witnessed wandering around the grounds.
One of the most well-known spirits is the “red lady” who is a very tall woman wearing a fluttering red gown and holding onto a sharp blade. Legend has it that she was imprisoned by the O’Carrolls and was raped on numerous occasions. After she gave birth, the family murdered the baby and that’s when the distraught red lady took her own life.

Leap Castle

One of the more gruesome discoveries was an oubliette that was found behind a wall inside of the chapel that had several human skeletons on wooden spikes. There were so many skeletons, that it took three cartloads to take away all of the remains. It is believed that the O’Carrolls’ guests would drop down through an unsuspecting trap door which had a spear at the bottom, ultimately killing them.
The daughter of the O’Carrolls later became the heiress of the castle and her husband would hide treasures around the property. However, after he was imprisoned, he returned to castle but forgot where he had hidden his treasures. His ghost – called the “wild captain” – is often seen searching the grounds, presumably for his lost treasure. One of the captain’s ancestors performed séances at the castle and allegedly awakened an evil elemental spirit.
In the 1970s, Peter Bartlett, who was an ancestor of the O’Bannons, purchased the property and did a lot of restoration work on the castle. He claimed to have experienced poltergeist activity and called on a white witch to help remove the spirits.
After Bartlett’s death, musician Sean Ryan and his wife Anne bought the castle in 1991. Unfortunately for them, they have been the victims of several accidents while living there, which included a broken kneecap and ankle. The Ryans still own the property to this day and people can take tours of the extremely haunted location.

High Strangeness in a New York Library

June 7, 2019

Back in the early summer of 1967 – thanks to an introduction made by a woman named Jaye P. Paro, a host on Babylon, New York’s WBAB station – John Keel met with a girl who had a fascinating story to tell. It was a disturbing story too. Given the controversial nature of the affair, Keel agreed to always, and only, refer to her as Jane. As Keel noted: “She was a very sensitive woman, more ethereal than sensual. There was almost something mystical about her appearance and grace.” At the time in question, there was a wealth of very unsettling activity going on in the Mount Misery area of Huntington, New York, a place about which researcher Arthur Criscione says: “Locals have called the area Mount Misery for centuries but you will never find it written that way on any map. It got its name because of its unfarmable land and the steep hills. Since the area was not conducive to farming it became a crossroads between farming communities and the difficult trek caused many a wagon wheel to snap.”
The foreboding area was, and still is, a veritable magnet for paranormal activity: ghostly, glowing-eyed, and black-haired hounds prowl around the landscape; mysterious, black cars cruise the roads; and spectral children and adults – some of a classic “phantom hitchhiker” variety – wander along the old pathways, always by night. And then there are Mount Misery’s UFOs, sightings of which reached their peak in the early months of 1967. Not surprisingly, the local kids immediately caught wind of the reports. And, as a result, on dark, weekend nights, girl- and boy-friends would drive around the area, looking for flying saucers, and, under canopies of trees and darkness, doing what young lovers do on Saturday nights all around the world. This included Jane and her boyfriend, Richard.

It was one particularly chilly and dark Saturday evening in mid-May 1967 when Jane and Richard were driving around the roads of Mount Misery and when Richard, quite out of the blue, fell ill. He managed to pull the car to the side of the road, immediately after which he fainted at the wheel. Panic-stricken Jane didn’t know what to do. As it transpired, the decision of what to do next was suddenly, and violently, taken out of her by-now-clammy hands. A near-blinding white light flooded the vehicle, having originated somewhere in the deep, almost impenetrable, woods that surrounded the car. Jane found herself completely immobilized in her seat by some unseen, paranormal force. It’s clear there was a degree of missing time involved, since the next thing the couple remembered was driving along Mount Misery’s Old County Road, some distance from where all of the terror exploded. That was barely the start of the high-strangeness, however.
A couple of days later Jane experienced something that is a common factor in UFO encounters: an odd and somewhat disturbing telephone call. The mysterious woman at the other end of the line did not identify herself to Jane, but – in a weird, “metallic”-sounding style – instructed Jane to go to her local library, to ask the staff for a specific book on Native American history, and to then turn to page forty-two and read it. Very carefully. It was an extremely curious request (one which bordered upon an order), but Jane felt oddly drawn to follow the instructions of her anonymous Woman in Black. Jane reached the library around mid-morning. Even her arrival was dominated by profound oddities: aside from the librarian and Jane herself, the building was completely empty of people and was vacuum-like in its silence and stillness. As for that same librarian, well…

Her hair was black, her eyes were “very black,” her skin was olive, and her black-colored outfit was curiously out of time. In Jane’s words, the Woman in Black was dressed in “an old-fashioned suit like something out of the 1940s, with a long skirt, broad shoulders, and flat old-looking shoes.” Most astonishing of all, before Jane could say anything, the woman handed her – from under a desk – a copy of the very book Jane had been instructed to seek out by her mysterious caller. Jane, unsettled, but determined to find out what was going on, took a seat, opened the book and turned to page forty-two. As she did so, the writing on the page changed from large to small, and back again, several times. Rather amazingly, the writing then did something else: it magically morphed into a message. Jane was able to remember the entire, length message – word for word – something which suggested it had been subliminally implanted in her mind. She carefully wrote it down:
“Good morning, friend. You have been selected for many reasons. One is that you are advanced in auto-suggestion. Through this science we will make contact. I have messages concerning Earth and its people. The time is set. Fear not. I am a friend. For reasons best known to ourselves you must make your contacts known to one reliable person. To break this code is to break contact. Proof shall be given. Notes must be kept of the suggestion state. Be in peace.”
With that, Jane stood up from the chair and closed the book. The mysterious woman was nowhere to be seen. Jane was all alone in a deserted, silent library. To say she fled the place in terror would be an understatement.

Haunted D-Day Battleship USS Texas To Be Moved From Houston

  June 7, 2019

Seventy-five years after serving its country proudly on D-Day, it was announced that the USS Texas – better known as the Battleship Texas – will be moved from its current location in Houston to another dock in Texas. Besides being a beloved historical monument, the Battleship Texas is considered to be one of the most haunted locations in Texas. Will the ghosts be going along with it?

“People have seen anomalies that appear to be nothing more than vapor, while other individuals have heard unusual whispering and chattering around the vessel.”

Haunted Rooms America is hosting hybrid history/paranormal tours of the Battleship Texas from now until it is moved, most likely by the end of 2019. The history side of the USS Texas is worth the price of admission. It was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1914 – just in time for its battery of ten 14-inch (356 mm)/45 caliber Mark 1 guns, twenty-one 5-inch (127 mm)/51-caliber guns and four 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes to see action in World War I, firing the first American shots at a German U-boat.

In World War II, the USS Texas saw its first action in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa (a young Walter Cronkite was onboard as a reporter). On D-Day (6 June 1944) the USS Texas took position 12,000 yards (11,000 meters) offshore near Pointe du Hoc and fired its guns in support of the Omaha Beach operation. The ship later took part in the Battle of Cherbourg, Operation Dragoon, and the Pacific battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
In 1948, the USS Texas arrived in Houston to become America’s first permanent battleship museum and that’s where the ghost stories begin. While the ship was involved in numerous battles, its crews suffered only one combat fatality. However, those same battles may be the cause of the ship’s most famous apparitions – visitors report mysterious white vapors that appear suddenly throughout the ship and strange voices heard when no one else is around. An often-seen ghost is a young red-headed sailor in uniform seen wandering through the ship’s halls or standing at the foot of ladders. The description given doesn’t match the one known casualty, so it’s assumed he’s a former crew member with a supernatural attachment to his old ship.

With the money already budgeted (and awaiting the governor’s signature) for the old ship to be moved to drydock, repaired and then moved to a new location, Haunted Rooms America has stepped up its ghost tours and is now offering overnight stays with psychics and paranormal equipment, including trigger objects, EMF readers and spirit boxes.
While the Battleship Texas is said to be one of the most haunted places in the state, there are no guarantees that visitors will see a ghost. However, they will most definitely see an historic piece of D-Day and US Naval history that just might be ready to reveal a few more tales before moving on.

Unidentified Skeletal Creature Found Along North Carolina’s Outer Banks

  June 7, 2019

Wildlife experts in North Carolina were mystified this week after a mysterious carcass was found along the Outer Banks. The remains were found by a beachcomber at Cape Lookout National Seashore, a section of NC’s Crystal Coast operated by the National Park Service. After Park Service personnel were unable to identify the remains, they of course turned to social media for help.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse

“Weird things are found on the beach,” the park service said in a Facebook post accompanied by several pictures of the odd-looking remains. “We need some help identifying this object. … So far, we’re stumped as to what it might be.” The pictures show the remains to be some sort of long, tube-like soft tissue covered from tip-to-tip in strange three-pronged bony structures, almost like a candy bar covered in poultry wishbones. They’re truly bizarre-looking and unlike any animal remains I’ve ever seen.

TIL this thing is called a furcula.

Some Facebook users think they’ve seen them before, though. The comments on the National Park Service’s post range mostly from the ridiculous to the absurd, and there is still no consensus as to what type of creature the remains may have once belonged. However, several users note that the remains look like those of members of the Diodontidae family, a family of fish which includes what are typically called blowfish, pufferfish, and various synonyms thereof. The leading candidate seems to be the striped burrfish, a small spiny fish native to the Atlantic coast of the Americas.

While that may be true, I’ve yet to dig up a picture of a Diodontidae skeleton that looks anything like this one. Weird things happen to animal carcasses after they’ve been in water for a long time, though, leading to frequent mistaken maritime identities and the globster phenomenon. There’s no telling exactly what creature may have once inhabited that skeleton.

Judging from the few pictures of dead pufferfish I have been able to find, I can see how a heavily decomposed specimen could turn out looking like the one found along the Outer Banks this week. Mystery solved? Probably. Still, given that the vast majority of the world’s oceans still remain unexplored, we never know when one of these odd finds may turn out to be something truly weird and wonderful. Keep combing those beaches.

Mysterious Staten Island Creature Reminds Witness of Montauk Monster

June 6, 2019

“That’s not a knife. THAT’S a knife.”

That memorable line is from the movie “Crocodile Dundee” in a scene on the streets of New York City when a mugger pulls a switchblade on the Australian crocodile hunter and Dundee (played by Paul Hogan) pulls out a massive bush knife. Cryptozoologists and those who chase Bigfoot and other legendary and allegedly large and dangerous cryptids must feel the same way when they read stories like the recent one out of (coincidentally) Staten Island, New York, where a man finds a mysterious creature in a park and compares it to the Montauk Monster – another New York legend that, while obviously fiercely ugly, was most likely the decaying remains of a dead raccoon. Well, take a look at the pictures of the not-yet-named Staten Island creature (see them here) and get ready to hold up a picture of your favorite cryptid and shout …

“That’s not a monster. THAT’S a monster.”

Are you talking to me?

Feel better? Some of the photos were taken over the weekend of June 2nd by John Graziano, who was walking his dog with his girlfriend at Wolfe ‘s Pond Park in Prince’s Bay, a Staten Island neighborhood, when one of them (probably the one with the best nose) found the carcass on the shore of the pond. One of the pictures taken by Graziano shows the dark-skinned thing next to his dog, which seems to be about the same size. Interestingly, rather than uploading the picture to a social media platform, Graziano instead contacted The Staten Island Advance, the borough’s daily newspaper and online news source, which sent out a photographer who took more pictures and posted them with the story on the Silive.com website. No other media sites seem to have picked up on it, although a New York Times blogger who is probably looking for a new job posted a link. That lack of coverage on a slow news weekend is not a good sign, even when Graziano compares his creature to a more famous one.

“It kind of looks like the thing that washed up on Long Island a few years back.”

“That thing” was the Montauk Monster. In July 2008, Jenna Hewitt and three friends found a mysterious creature (see the photo here and feel free to yell again) at the Ditch Plains beach in Rheinstein Estate Park near Montauk on Long Island. That photo was picked up by local news and blogs, followed by the national news. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman is credited with giving it the name “Montauk Monster” and it helped the story that the “monster” was found near the government animal testing facility known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Coleman agreed with most others that the creature was a dead raccoon.

I don’t see any resemblance.

The Staten Island Advance didn’t say if it consulted with Coleman on this one (too bad – he’s good at coming up with clever names) but it did call in Staten Island Academy science teacher Clay Wollney, who said this one is also a dead raccoon, although he did it in a science teacherly way:

“From the picture I saw yesterday, with part of mouth exposed, it also has the right dentition.”

“Dentition” – there’s a word for “teeth” you can use to impress your dentist. If you do and he or she asks you where you learned it, and you tell them about the Staten Island monster, be prepared for them to pull out some strange X-rays and yell:

“That’s not a monster. THAT’S a monster.”

Australia’s Mysterious Haunted Island

  June 6, 2019

Lying out in Australia’s Sydney Harbor, right at the junction of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers and just out past the bustling metropolis, is a speck of land looming over the water called Cockatoo Island. It seems rather bleak and nondescript now, just a lashing of treeless rock infested by the ruins of old buildings from another time, but this place has a rather colorful yet grim history. Between the years of 1839 and 1869 this was a place that served as a destination for the worst of society’s worst. It was a penal establishment designated as “secondary punishment” for convicts, meaning that they only came here when they had been released from normal prisons and reverted back to their wicked ways. The convicts were put to work carving out the largest shipyards the country had ever seen, and the island has since been included on the National Heritage List of historic places, but it was not all industry and everything was most certainly not fine on this speck of rock, and there have been persistent hauntings here from way back.

Considering this was a penal colony for the worst of the worst, it is perhaps no surprise at all that living conditions were hellish to say the least. These hardened criminals were subjected to the worst treatment imaginable, with swift, torturous punishments doled out for the slightest perceived dalliances. Prisoners would be beaten, tortured, and at times left within darkened, constricting solitary confinement cells more like coffins than anythings else, and prisoner deaths due to the actions of guards were par for the course. During the shipyard days safety precautions were nonexistent, and penal worker deaths were far from uncommon, with some prisoners mysteriously vanishing into thin air, their fates unknown.

Cockatoo Island

In later years, the prison was shut down, and the facilities became the home for wayward Aboriginal girls between the ages of 8 and 18, and even then the grim atmosphere of the place was kept intact, with stiff punishments given to the poor children who dared to break the rules of their disciplinarian overseers. One researcher has said of this transition to a home for girls thus:

Cockatoo Island was chosen as the new location (for the girl’s institution) but this site was really no better than the old one. The building allotted to the school had obtained a terrible notoriety as a convict gaol. The home influences essential to the wholesome training of girls, the very lack of which had brought them to the school, are impossible of attainment within the gloomy walls of a prison.

This has all added to the grim history of this island lair, and it may be no surprise at all that it should be said to be very haunted. Here amongst the abandoned ruins of another time the amount of paranormal activity recorded here is amazing. Dark shapes have been persistently seen roaming about the premises, often with not particularly peaceful thoughts on their minds. Workers and visitors have been pushed, punched, and prodded by unseen hands, and electronic devices are known to malfunction or simply go dead regardless of whether they have a full charge or not. There are also reports of the inexplicable smell of cigarette smoke, as well as disembodied voices, footsteps, and even screams or shrieking.

There have also been spotted the apparitions of young girls dressed in period clothing running about and giggling, and there are often reported sudden, overwhelming clouds of dread and suffering. One of the most well known of these child spirits is said to be the deceased daughter of one of the former superintendents, of which it has been said by one of the island’s tour operators:

She’s very friendly, very playful, smacking their hands or stroking their hair. Only the other day we had a school group out there where two of the teachers came up to me and very embarrassedly and very awkwardly asked me if anything strange ever happens on the island. When we were here camping two years ago with this group of students in the morning, we asked them how they slept. Two of the girls sharing the same tent said we didn’t sleep very well because a little girl in a white dress kept coming in and waking us up and asking us to come outside to play.

There are also anomalous smells that come and go, such as in the account from one of the tour operators on the island, who says:

When we were trialling this new tour we were in the commanding officer’s residence, in the dining room, and there was a distinct smell of pipe tobacco. There were six of us. We all smelt it. It lasted for about 20 seconds and then disappeared completely. This is a perfect example of a residual haunting where something is manifesting itself based on events that happened many, many years ago.

As it is today, Cockatoo Island is a curious expanse of rusted out, long abandoned buildings from another era, all preserved and opened to various tours, many of them specializing in the more haunted aspects of the island. It leaves one to wonder just what went on here to warrant such haunted madness? Was it all the death and the pain? Does the suffering that went on here have some role to play? Or is it just the musings of minds cued up to experience the paranormal at such a desolate place that seems perfect for it all? Whatever you may think, Cockatoo Island still lurks out there, and is accessible if you only dare.

A Sinister Man: “It was like something out of The Exorcist”

  June 6, 2019

Kathy Kasten, who passed away in August 2012 at the age of 72, was a frequent and feisty contributor to the now-defunct online discussion group, UFO Updates. Before her death, Kathy shared with me a number of her strange encounters with ties to the UFO phenomenon. She generously let me use the case-files too.  One particularly weird story really stands out. I’ll let you read Kathy’s very own words, without interruption. She began: “Nick: So many highly strange events have happened in my life. Sometimes I forget some of them. Briefly, back in the late-eighties, I returned from a vacation to find that the company I worked for had hired someone named Linda. The company, in L.A., were consultants to commercial and government clients. They surveyed, dug into information, etc., about parcels of land the client was interested in and produced reports containing that information. Linda sat at the front reception area with Carolina.  My desk was in the middle of the suite of offices. Linda asked me out to lunch to tell me she had been hired to be office manager. I thought that was very odd that she was providing this information, and wondered if it was true.
“The next lunch invite, Linda went right to the point. She played it a little on the cagey side, suggesting we walk and talk. It was then she related to me her abduction experiences – or what she thought were abductions by ETs. She had read Whitley Strieber’s book, Communion. At the time, I knew nothing about abductions, Strieber or his book. Whatever bait she was tossing out, I didn’t bite.  It was very soon after that I was never again invited to lunch with Linda. Plus, she gave her notice she was leaving to return to care for a family member. Anyway, she left.

“Carolina and I were now carrying the work load. I was forever making trips to the front desk to interact with Carolina. During one of my forays, as I was bending down talking to Carolina, I looked up and there was a very short, almost bald man of indiscriminate age standing on the other side of the reception area counter. The counter rose to just a little under my breast bone. The guy was really short wearing a plaid shirt that did not match in anyway shape or form the plaid of his pants. Very white and pasty looking.  He never took his eyes off me the entire time he stood in front of us.  I rose up and stood facing him, affecting my street attitude style. As if to say, ‘Come on, give it to me and see what happens.’ I don’t remember what he said because I was focused on the fact the smile on his face did not match what he was saying.
“I seem to remember Carolina moving her chair closer to me while still sitting down. I didn’t pick up any creepy feelings. I was just irritated with the interruption of my work. He left. As I remember it he had whisked in and whisked out. Not really disappearing. But, he moved very fast. That wasn’t the end of this guy. The building where the office was near the SW corner of Wilshire and Gayley in LA. When I left the office that evening, I walked south on Gayley. As I walked I noticed the Man in Plaid across the street pacing me. Not behind me, but ahead of me. I slowed down. He slowed down.  I think I said something like: ‘What has this guy got: eyes in the back of his head?’ At which point, his head turned to face me while his body kept facing forward walking at our shared pace.  It was like something out of The Exorcist. It was not a normal head swivel.  That wasn’t the end of it. The next day, I shared with Carolina what had happened and reminded her of this guy coming to our offices. She claimed that we never had any visitors that previous afternoon. I kept insisting we had. She insisted that we hadn’t. End of that episode.”