A few months ago my wife and I were watching a great show on the History Channel on haunted locations in America. The program detailed many great locations that have a history of great pain and distress and the hauntings that have been caused due to the extreme emotions. That was until they showed a segment of a psychic walking around a prison with a former inmate. As the psychic and her companion walked around the prison the psychic began to go into an extreme fit of emotion and began to give very general details of things that would commonly happen in a prison. She stated that she could feel how the former inmates who had perished at the prison and the extreme pain and suffering they endured during their stay. Now please keep in mind I do believe in psychics and their shall we say, rarified gifts that is not the issue here. What is the issue is this no shit she could feel pain and suffering and regret it is a prison not Disneyland. Men and women who committ crimes against their fellow man are sequestered away from the rest of society for punishment and correction. In other words prison is a violent place and really is not meant to be fun.

If you are anything like me and I know you are, you pretty drop whatever you are doing when your favorite show comes on dealing with the issue of paranormal phenomenon. It almost seems like you can not throw your remote at the boob tube without hitting at least ten channels airing some program about ghosts, cryptozoology or ancient mysteries. These television shows are every where the only problem is it can be hard to properly discern which is good and bad, sensational or sincere and just well, Non-crap and crap. I personally have a real love/hate relationship with these shows some seek to not only prove evidence of life after death they also seek to educate those who have serious questions and asking, “Hey what is it all about.” While other shows just seek to tittilate the masses and have a tendency to bring disrepute on the Science of paranormal research and investigation. In this entry We’ll be taking a look at some of the shows that I believe to be on the right path and those that just want to sensationlize a legitimate field of philosophy and scientific enquiry.

In his great book, “Will Storr VS. The Supernatural”, British journalist, Will Storr embarks on a very personal quest to discover whether or not there is any truth concerning true accounts of paranormal phenomenon. Along the way, Storr, is invited by a wildly popular Brit paranormal, Most Haunted, show that not only has a huge following in Ole Blighty but also has a cult following here in the States, to be an observer. While the show is taping he makes a shocking discovery that could have brought the show crashing down. Mr Storr discovers that Derek Acorah, the resident psychic medium’s impressions in haunted places are not only staged they are scripted. Now I’m not saying that Mr Acorah does not possess some degree of psychic ability what I am saying that this kind of behavior could single handedly bring the wrath of professional skeptics down on the heads of sincere paranormal researchers the world over. If you do have psychic ability do not allow television producers to exploit your gift for the almighty dollar. Keep it real.

“Celebrity Paranormal Challenge”, is a television show that I can’t even begin to believe that I subjected myself too but I had the flu and there was nothing else on. I caught this wretched piece of dreck on VH1 and after an hour I actually felt stupider. On this program several celebrities teetering on the brink of has-been-hood are taken to a location that allegedly has a history of great tragedy and they are fed a steady meal of half truths concerning the spirits that may or not haunt the location.

While these former stars are sent out in teams of twos they are given tasks that they must perform in order to win this psuedo gameshow. Some are given various dares such as sitting in a supposedly haunted morgue calling out the name of some evil ghost that allegedly haunts it for five minutes. Other dares consisted of looking into a blast furnace that is haunted by the shades of some unlucky folks who were allegedly killed by their murderous foreman who wanted to dispose of them before they blew the whistle on the dirty dealings the company was involved in. Although I truly hated this show it was kind of funny watching hip hop star, Coolio, scream like a bitch at a knocking on the wall.

The quest for ratings is a television station’s chief purpose for existence along with making that green. They have absolutely no problem sensationalizing the paranormal for a quick buck and oftentimes demand that a team of paranormal investigators fake evidence in order to keep up ratings. I have said a million times before and I will say a million times again, if you fake evidence you are a douchebag. Paranormal research and investigation has been attempting to gain respect from the mainstream scientific community since the birth of the Society for Psychical Research in England in 1882. However after the birth of the twenty-first century television stations have found that there is big money to be made in the paranormal and they will stop at nothing to exploit. And now for the good stuff.

In 2004 the syndicated cable station, The SciFi Channel aired a brand spanking new television program that was everything a normal everyday guy like myself would love, Ghosthunters. Jason Hawes and his partner in crime Grant Wilson are two guys that absolutely have their shit together. I have really grown to respect their and their teams investigation techniques and enquiries into claims of paranormal phenomenon. Instead of attempting to prove a haunting with the use of phony psychics they seek to disprove a haunting by using state of the art scientific equipment. If they just happen to gather real objective proof that an apparition actually calls a location home, awesome all the better for the proving that conciousness survives the death of the body. If they prove that a location is not haunted, that is awesome as well, they can put some poor home or business owners mind at ease by showing that their is nothing unusual haunting their property and they have nothing to fear. Although I hate the term “Ghosthunter”, preferring the more scientific term Paranormal Reasearcher I really do like this show and feel that amidst all the crap it Jay and Grant really do seek to educate folks on paranormal phenomenon. Keep up the good work, Gents.

And now for the show that I love but at the same time have my reservations about, The Discovery Channels “A Haunting” I really can not say enough good things about this show. I would have to say the reason I love this show so much is due to the fact that the real folks who experienced the alleged haunting in their homes are allowed to tell their story without some “Expert” throwing their two cents in. The hour long program shows a dramatization of the haunting with the use of actors while the real people comment on what they experienced. My reservations concerning this show is that the stories are anecdotal and completely subjective although it would be easy to believe every that proceeds from their mouth, I, and I hope you, desire something a little more, proof of the haunting. Anybody can say, “Hey my house is infested with the dead.” That’s great but can you back it up?

Someone once said, “Television is the opiate of the masses” and to be honest I am inclined to agree. Television and mass media expects us to just turn our brains off for a period of thirty to sixty minutes and become lost in a fantasy world where the incredible seems credible. Personally me, I can’t do that and I really hope you can’t do that either. Television is great as a diversion but it should not become the driving force in our lives. I guess ultimately the message I am attempting to convey, Kill your television and read a book. Oh yeah and please don’t sue me I ain’t got shit anyways, LOL.

Rick E. Hale
t_seeker@hotmail.com

“Fe, Fi, Fo,Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.” Who can forget those sinister words uttered by the giant in the classic children’s fairytale, “Jack and The Beanstalk.” The tale speaks of the adventures of an English youth who foolishly sells the family cow not for money but for a handful of magic beans and after planting them a beanstalk reaches into the clouds and Jack must square off with a giant that threatens to not only eat the youth but destroy the entire countryside. Thankfully for the English Jack defeats the evil giant and saves the world.

Throughtout history we have seen the idea of the giant come to life time and time again. If you are a religiously minded person and views the bible as the last word of wisdom you are well familiar with the story of the days of Noah. In the book of Genesis God commissions Noah, a simple farmer to build a giant ark because God plans to drown the world and only Noah and his family are the only people righteous enough to survive the great deluge. Now, Why would God do something like that? Earlier the biblical account tells us that in the days of Noah the fallen angels mated with human women and a race of grotesque giants were born or the Nephilim as they were called. Some view the story as a cauntionary tale against men gaining to much power and becoming giants of wisdom who do not need to look to God for wisdom. That is of course until you get further into the old Testement and giants are referred to again.

Joshua sends his scouts into a the land that was promised to them by the lord and when they return they are terrified to report that the country is inhabited by men of great stature and Joshua’s scouts were like grasshoppers to them. And of course everyone knows that David, future king of Israel brought down Goliath of a Gath a Philistine soldier who some say stood at a whopping nine feet tall. The majority of westerners now these tales and have heard them over and over again. However the one historical fact that most people are not aware of that over the last century and half amazing discoveries have been made that just may prove that giants did in fact roam the earth.

In 1888, in Clearwater, Minnesota archeologists made an amazing discovery that would knock the theory of evolution on it’s learned ass. While excavating a burial mound researchers discovered a group of skeletons sitting in a circle in a burial chamber, sounds innocent enough, but the skeletons proved to be well over eight feet tall. Upon closer examination the researchers discovered something so odd that the discovery would make any dentist giggle like an Anime schoolgirl. The skeletons possessed double rows of sharp dagger like teeth on the upper and lower gums. The researchers at first thought that this must be some ancient cultures attempts at dentistry possibly to make these excessively tall warriors all the more fierce looking. a few weeks after the find a dentist was brought in to take a closer look at the teeth and shocked the archeologists when he declared that the teeth were naturally occuring in other words these guys, whoever they may be, were born this way. Whoever these guys were and whatever ancient culture they belonged could not have been human in the strictest definition of the word.

A few years after the amazing discovery of the gruesome skeletons in Minnesota the scientific journal, “Nature” printed a story in it’s December 1891 Issue. The journal wrote of the discovery of a skeleton of gigantic proportions unearthed in a burial mound in northern Ohio. The skeleton, which stood in excess of nine feet was covered in what looked like a suit of copper body armor. The skeleton was also in possession of a giant sword that took five men to handle and a pair of deer antlers were grafted to the skeleton’s skull. After discovery of the fierce skeleton the Native American population was questioned concerning the strange skeleton and they came up blank no where in their legends could they find reference to giants. The tribes in the area did say that when the white man first came to their land they discovered a rich copper mine that looked as if it had been prospected many years before. The Natives also said that their people have never had a need for copper.

At the begining of the last century in 1911, some miners were digging out a tunnel, in New Mexico, when they broke through a wall of rock and found themselves in a strange burial chamber. In the middle of the burial chamber they discovered the skeleton of a man who stood somewhere in the ballpark of seven feet tall with long flowing red hair still attached to it’s long dead remains. When the local Paiute tribe got wind of the discovery they demanded that the burial chamber be sealed shut and they would not take no for an answer. When they were asked what they were afraid of they told a tribal legend of the Si-Te-Cahs which translated from their language means the Ancient Enemy. The tribal council told the miners that the Si-Te-Cahs, were a race of red haired giants that attacked the local tribes killing many and carrying women away for mating. For many years the local tribes felt that they were powerless until they banded together and defeated this Ancient Enemy. The mine had to be closed down otherwise the evil spirit of the Si-Te-Cahs would be released and would prove to be unstoppable. The Miners did as they were asked and the red haired giant skeleton was once again sealed behind a wall of rock for all eternity.

Skeletons of gigantic and terrifying proportions have not been the strange remains that have been found over the years in the continental United States. Some of the skeletons have proved to of a much shorter stature. In October of 1932, workers happened upon a strange mummy as they worked on a rich deposit of bat guano in the San Pedro Mountains. What they found was truly strange, sitting in a cross legged position on a pedestal was the mummy of a man but not just any man the mummy was a mere fourteen inches tall. The laborers felt they had made an amazing discovery and removed the little man from his tomb.

After showing the petite mummy to their boss, the big boss man called a friend who was an Anthropologist for the American museum of History. Doctor Shapiro, although skeptical told his friend that he would arrive as soon as he could he reassured his friend that what he had was the mummified remains of an infant who died at birth and was probably royalty which would explain the odd method of burial. When Dr. Shapiro arrived he immediately went about the task of inspecting the tiny mummy and made some astounding discoveries. Pedro, which the mummy was named, proved not to be the remains of a mummified infant but rather the mummy of a fully developed man of approximately sixty-five years of age.

After having, Pedro, x-rayed Dr. Shapiro’s suspicions became rock solid. The cranium was fully developed with no gaps that would be found in a small child or an adolescent. The mummy had pubic hair and it seemed to have at one time suffered a dibilitating back injury. Shapiro, also discovered that, Pedro was more than likely murdered by his kinsman, probably due to his crippling back injury, with a blow to the back of the head with a blunt object possibly a rock. Today, Pedro, after making the rounds in the carnival circuit, sits in the private collection of a wealthy collector of all things strange in California.

If giants and little dudes are not enough weirdness for you, try this one on for size. In the late 1800s in Sayre, Pennsylvania some workers dug up the seven foot remains of a skeleton. The skeleton, despite it’s unusual size, looked as human as you or I except for the large horns that did not appear to have grafted onto the skeleton by all appearances the horns were a natural feature of the skull. Mainstream scientific researchers have written this horny skull off as a genetic anomoly saying the man probably suffered from some kind of condition that caused calcium deposits to grow on his skull in the form of horns. Seems plausible, however, numerous skulls have been found all over the world with this same rare genetic anomoly. At the time the religious community said that the remains were that of a demon and proof that the minions of the wicked one roam the earth looking for souls to possess. I thought demons were immortal and unable to die. Oh well I could be wrong.

Whether you subscribe to evolution or intelligent design that is your business and I am not here to convince you of which theory is correct however one can not deny the fact that these strange remains have been discovered, documented and unfortunately filed away in the basements of the nations museums. Why are these skeletons not on display for the entire world to see? That question is easily answered archeologists and anthropologists are afraid. These researchers are paid large sums of money to keep up the staus quo and these remains would force them to rethink the whole question of, where did we all come from. Textbooks would have to be rewritten to make room for these strange creatures that appear human but might not be human. Like I said earlier, hey I could be wrong.

Rick E. Hale
t_seeker@hotmail.com