I haven’t yet written on our last investigation at the Queen Mary. Well, no better time than Halloween to share that story, right? So, for my birthday last month my beloved husband takes me to the Queen Mary to stay a couple of days. We pack up the usual ghost hunting equipment, video cameras, emf detectors, digital audio recorder, camera, night vision goggles… we are ALL set!

We get to the ship and check in rather late. We are starved, and ready to eat dinner, after which we will do a ship walk through. We have rented a suite, and so feel excited that the night will be elegant. But because we are checking in somewhat later they say they are all booked up and they are down to the last suite. Who cares, right? I mean, a suite is a suite, right? Wrong. We walk in and immediately there is a horrible chemical odor – hard to describe, but let me tell you, it was so strong it sent me into an asthma flareup. Plus, the room is butt-ugly.

We have stayed on the ship several times already and we know their rooms are generally lovely, fragrant, comfortable. This “suite” has the energy of an old office stuck in the 40′s. I could easily imagine the old dusty file cabinets, and desks that had once been in there. But it was more than just that… Usually when you get a ghost it’s like the ghost has invaded your time and space. Here, in this suite, I felt like I had disrupted the ghosts by walking in on THEIR time and space. It feels like a VOID in here, I remember thinking. We leave the room, me wheezing slightly, and my husband feeling down – expectations shattered. Upstairs, at the desk they say we have to downgrade, because that was the only suite available at that time. Fine, we say. They give us a room and back down the hall we go, excited again because this room is also supposed to be very nice.

So I open the door, and the second I walk in, I am penetrated by an icy cold chill that makes me break out in goose-flesh. It’s freezing in here, I say to hubby. He walks in, and immediately freezes. One good thing, the room is lovely, smells great, and is super clean. I turn the heat on, but the room stays cold, and we are getting chills. Within minutes we had gone from choosing which restaurant we’d eat dinner at, to grabbing the room service menu. We both felt like crap. I ordered chicken Alfredo, and he ordered the pizza, but by the time our food arrived we were both coming down with fevers, and so neither of us were hungry. The room wasn’t getting warmer and I called front desk to ask them what could be done about our freezing room. They engineer arrived within minutes and he said something needed to be adjusted somewhere, and off he went – and the warmth did start to come from the vents, thank God! So to make a long story short, we spent those two days on the ship horribly sick in bed and taking regular doses of fever and pain medication, watching HBO from time to time – not that anything good was on those days anyway.

The first night I felt something touching my knee, and that was creepy. I’d try to ignore it, until I had to brush whatever it was away. It was persistent though and I brushed “it” away maybe four or five times before it finally subsided.

The morning of our departure I was thinking about the ship’s horn and why I hadn’t noticed it at all during our stay. It goes off on a regular schedule, and is so loud you can’t hardly miss it – I really enjoy hearing it go off. About twenty minutes later I heard a very clear, very male voice say in my ear “It’s coming.” I thought my husband had said something but he wasn’t close to me, he was on the other side of the bed.
“What did you say?” I asked him anyway.
“I didn’t say anything,” he answered.
“Yes you did. You just said something in my ear. What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He was still sick, and I knew he wasn’t playing around.
Just then the ships’s horn sounded loud and long. Obviously, “it’s coming” meant the horn was about to blow, and our ghostly friend was kind enough to let me know. Least he could do for sucking our energy so he could haunt the ship for the past two nights.

So as a ghost hunter I have to ask myself now, am the the hunter? Or the hunted??? My guess is there’s a degree of give and take in the matter. It was my turn to give that time.

I guess there’s some style for everyone, and I can tell from facebook postings that many people love the comic style of Ghost Adventures…so boogie for them. I personally like the guys, and feel they know their game, but I would prefer less clowning around, and more serious investigation.

I guess I’ve come to appreciate the Ghost Hunters methods more, even though they had been getting on my nerves for awhile for picking on poor Brian all the time, who really seemed like he was bending over backwards to make Jason happy…

By the way, by now you might know that Ryan and his team won’t be returning for Paranormal State, which happened to be a pretty good show. Too bad. Enjoy these last episodes because… they are the last.

So Ghost Adventures, a little less three stooges from you guys would be nice – believe me, you’re entertaining enough without the wigs, goofy faces, and silly antics…

Ghost Hunters, you’ve encountered a lot of good evidence…just wish you weren’t so over-dramatic with the music and subliminal sound effects…Glad you got rid of certain air-headed investigators – and we all know who that might be…

Paranormal State, will miss you.

Keeping it Short and Sweet! — Gina

Over the next few posts, I’m going to share some authentic, personal ghost experiences with you, dear reader. This one goes back to 1998.

A friend of mine, Mary, had a sister that was mildly developmentally disabled. Mary’s sister was 40 ‘ish, yet functioned at say a five year old level. So, she could dress herself, speak and communicate somewhat, but she lived with her dad and though her dad took care of her, he had a lot of health issues – physical and rumor had it, mental.

One day my friend Mary called me and said her dad had gone into the hospital and asked could I spend the night at her sister’s house, and see she was taken care of. You see, Mary was married with small kids and had enough on her plate. Besides, she lived 45 minutes away. I told her I couldn’t do it that night but promised the next night if she still needed someone. So, Mary got another friend Ellen to stay over that first night. Mary’s sister (whom I will simply refer to as sister) knew Ellen and me pretty well so she was happy. To be honest, it didn’t seem that sister understood the extent of her dad’s condition. What happened that hot summer night was creepy. (Ellen called me the next day to tell me what had happened.)

Early in the evening while she and sister were eating dinner in the dining room, Ellen heard the screen door open and footsteps that seemed to go back towards the bedroom. She got up and went back to the back rooms, thinking it was Mary, or the dad had come home, but no one was there. She said there was a dense energy though, and she had a feeling something was wrong. About an hour later, Mary called to say her dad had passed away – about the time when they had heard the screen door open and footsteps. Ellen didn’t tell sister, because Mary would come see her the next day and tell her then. Ellen said that all that night she heard sister up watching TV, and though she tried to get some sleep, she kept feeling something pinching her. Needless to say, she didn’t get much sleep.

Now bear in mind, I had promised to stay the next night, and thus was called upon to fulfill that promise. I arrived to the house late afternoon, and immediately felt the unusual energy. Even though it was hot summer, the house was icy in some rooms. Especially the dad’s room and sister’s room. Still nothing dramatic happened until late evening. Sister had been staying in her room, and I finally invited her to come watch TV with me. She said, “No,” that in the living room TV she saw her dad’s face, and he was making scary faces at her. Then she retreated back into her room. I was creeped out at the thought, but then something caught my attention – the curtain cord was moving in a circular motion by itself. I noticed there was no draft, no air conditioning, no reason for the movement. And weird, it would move clockwise for a minute or two, then it would move counter clockwise. And switch back and forth. I watched it do that for several minutes and then went back to sister’s room to join her.

Now this is weird. I didn’t find her in her room, she was in her dad’s room. Because of his health issues he had his TV high up on the wall, next to the door. Like in a hospital room. Walking down the hall I could hear the TV blaring loudly commercial after commercial. As soon as I entered the room, the TV went snowy -white noise. You know, shhhhhhshhhhshhhhshhhh, no picture, just snow. I stayed about five minutes but sister was pretty unresponsive. I figured she just wanted to be alone, so I left. As I left the room, the TV resumed it’s normal programming, I could hear the familiar jingles of some commercial or another. I went to sit on the sofa, which looked towards the hallway, and those hallway walls were boiling with swirling shadows. I knew it was paranormal. I knew it was her dad – and then some, perhaps. I just stared at those shadows for several minutes then decided it was time for bed. I didn’t sleep a wink.

The next day Mary asked if I could stay one last night. She was going to put her sister in a special home and they would be sending people to help her starting the next day. I said yes. I talked with Ellen and we decided I would take some ammonia, sage, and a Bible and Crucifix. I arrived late afternoon, and sister was there alone. She had just come home from her program and was acting extremely odd. She taunted me with the door lock and wouldn’t let me in the house. She didn’t even seem to have a disability at all, the way she talked with such clarity and venom. Now, she couldn’t have known about the spirit-clearing items I had in my bag, but she kept asking, “What’s in the bag, huh? What’s in the bag?” Finally she sneered at me, and with a truly evil look on her face cackled, “I know what’s in the bag, and you’re not coming in here you Witch.” It was like she knew my intention was to do some energy cleansing, and she wasn’t going to let that happen.

From a payphone I called Mary and told her what had happened, then I waited in my car for her to arrive. Well, Mary got there within an hour and while she was packing to take sister to her place, sister decided she wanted to stay there. She coiled up to me sweetly and with a wicked grin said, “I’ve changed my mind, I really want to stay here with you tonight.” I grinned back and said quietly, “That’s not going to happen.”

The whole situation was uncomfortable. I would have to say that the dad was keeping his watch on her, and I have to wonder what her experience of that whole time period was. Unfortunately, her verbal and cognitive skills are not up to that conversation.