Did a Ghost follow a haunted staircase ??

In the 1950s, many old mansions in England were being dismantled and sold off; crippling taxation meant their owners could no longer keep them. Such a fate befell Blake Hall, in Mirfield, Yorkshire, which was dismantled in 1954. Its fine old Queen Anne staircase was purchased by a London antiques dealer.

On this side of the pond that year, Allen and Gladys Topping built a new home they called Sanderling on Beach Lane in Quogue. In 1958 they attended the Kensington Antiques Fair looking for items to put in their house; they bought the Blake Hall staircase and installed it at Quogue. Blake Hall was notable in that Anne Bronte worked as a governess there in 1839, and it's claimed that she based characters in her book Agnes Grey on its inhabitants.

In 1966, a syndicated newspaper columnist wrote that Mrs. Topping told him, "On the 3rd of September 1962, about sunset, I was sitting in my second-floor bedroom in an hour of meditation. […] Suddenly I heard light footsteps which seemed to be on the stairs. […]


To my astonishment, I saw the figure of a young woman ascending the stairs. She was dressed in a long, full skirt which she lifted above her ankles. A tri-cornered shawl was about her shoulders, and her hair was held in a bun on the back of her neck. In her right hand she carried a chamber stick. Her expression was pensive, as though she were locked deep in her own pleasant thoughts.

Read Full Story: Hamptons Curbed

Ghost reaches out to Santa in New Jersey

Was Jersey City visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past? Or was Santa touched by an angel?

In this photo taken at the Historic Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery, what appear to be white, ghostly hands reach out and touch Santa as he and Mrs. Claus lay down a wreath on an old grave.

Cemetery director Eileen Markenstein snapped the photo during the Christmas tree lighting ceremony and holiday festivities last Saturday as Santa helped decorate the gravestone of the Losey brothers, both soldiers who served in the Civil War.

"If you look closely, you can see what looks like fingers on both sides of the white aura," said Markenstein in an email. "I can't explain it, but it sure makes me feel like the spirits are very happy!"

Read Full Story: New Jersey.com

Police Detective hunts ghosts in Port Jervis, New York

Late one night in 2002, Port Jervis police detective Mike Worden was scouting around the well-tended tombs of Laurel Grove Cemetery when, he says, “I felt like I was walking through cobwebs. I felt them on my neck, my face, everywhere. But it was different from actually walking through cobwebs, where you see what you’re walking into.”

One of his companions had the same experience at the same time. They were not looking for criminals, but rather for ghosts, Worden’s avocation on his off hours, sometimes at odd hours. His book, "Ghost Detective," describes his adventures, including the ones in Laurel Grove. His findings, with his ghost investigation partner, Linda Zimmerman, and her husband, Bob, helped get the cemetery listed on the New York State Haunted History Trail.

They brought infrared cameras and audio recorders to places where others “saw things” suggestive of ghosts. But they encountered several problems, Worden said.

“With the lights from Interstate 84 and background noise, sorting out the normal from the paranormal is difficult,” he said. Also, the way light bounces off gravestones creates illusions, and infrared light gives moths an “unearthly glow.”

Nevertheless, he did find some “unusual activity” by the Farnum mausoleum, about 100 feet from the caretaker’s cottage. A “red glowing streak” appeared in a photograph. Whether it revealed a ghost or was merely an “anomaly from the film development process,” Worden has no certainty.

Read Full Story: Times-Herald Record

Katie Price, a former model, says her house is haunted.

 Katie Price thinks her house is haunted.

The former model wants to call in a medium as she and her husband Kieran Hayler keep hearing unusual sounds and smelling strange scents so she is convinced there is a spirit in the property and she doesn't want to upset it while the building is being renovated.

She said: ''Kieran keeps smelling cigarettes and I Googled it and spirits normally smell of smoke and flowers.

''I am getting a medium in. Because we're knocking things down, we're disturbing the spirits. I am 100 per cent sure there's a ghost.''

However, not all the mysterious goings-on can be attributed to a ghostly encounter.

Kieran said: ''The other day Katie woke up at 4am swearing blind she could hear a ghost but it turned out to be Kevin the dog outside our room!''

Read Full Story: Contact Music

'Haunted House' for sale in Niagara-on-the-Lake

Is it haunted?

If ever there was a house that seemed hospitable to ghosts, 240 Centre St. in Niagara-on-the-Lake would be it, and it’s been the subject of local ghost stories and paranormal websites for year.

An elegant, stately but simple two-storey house of soft pink brick, it’s been abandoned for almost 60 years, boarded up against curiosity seekers and vandals who have nevertheless found their way in.

It was broken into as recently as Halloween, the plywood door covering and lock replaced yet again.

Inside, most of what you see is original, including brick room partitions and wood floors, and other features, such as the original window frames and shutters, are piled up against the walls. There are four fireplaces on the main floor and another four upstairs, some with mantles intact, plus two more in the basement, which was used as a kitchen.

There is no electricity, and shining a flashlight around reveals hunks of ceiling hanging down, missing floorboards and burned interior doors and framework.

A large hole in the roof has left the inside of the house open to the elements for decades, and yet there is no sign of four-legged presence.

Read Full Story: Niagara Advance

UFO spotted over The Statue of Liberty (video)

‘Of course, there's always the possibility this was a real UFO sighting,’ reported the Examiner.

‘Silver orb spaceships are the latest trend, along with triangular aircraft performing amazing aeronautical feats.

‘So far, this UFO sighting seems to be the first incident catching a pulsating black orb UFO on video.’

On the video Mr Kensington explained how his wife and sister filmed the UFO while they were visiting New York City. He said the shaking was due to her being ‘freezing from holding the camera for so long with no gloves. He continued: ‘She said at first she thought it was a balloon but it stopped all of a sudden and stayed in one place for a while. ‘She also ran out of disc space hence why the footage suddenly stopped. ‘What the hell was this guys. Please tell me someone else got this on video to [sic].’

While the prospect of this being an alien spaceship is alluring, the real answer is almost certainly that it is actually a solar balloon A solar balloon is a black or dark object that gains buoyancy by being heated by the sun’s radiation. Heat inside the balloon expands as it is heated, causing it to rise as it has a lower density than the surrounding air.

Some have suggested that solar balloons could be used to explore Mars quickly and easily some day in the future. But for now they are only used on Earth - sometimes to perform experiments in the sky.

Read Full Story: Daily Mail

Top 5 Haunted Places in Egypt

Baron Empain's Palace

The history of the Baron's Palace is haunting in and of itself, however, the old Heliopolis gem is believed to be subject to a quite literal haunting. Neighbours witness the building's windows open and close at will and lights in rooms, despite the house having been abandoned for many years. Initially believed to be a go-to address for orgies and Satanic meetings, the palace is now closed to the public.
Baron Empain's story reads like a horror novel. After his widespread infidelity, his wife died in the palace after falling down the impressive spiral staircase of the main building. Having suffered from mental illness, his daughter passed away just a few years later. Her condition had made her sit in the basement for days at a time. A secret corridor beneath the building is said to lead to the Baron's final resting place adjacent to the Basilica. Who knows, maybe it's the Baron's ghost himself who is still haunting the premises?

The Valley of the Kings

Hosting a few hundred dead Pharaohs for the past 5000 years, the rumour that the Valley of the Kings is haunted should come as a surprise to no one. A pharaoh in a chariot has been seen roaming the valley as well as perceptions of strange noises such as footsteps, screams and shuffling without a source. Watchmen believe these are the spirits of the deceased whose tombs have been desecrated. Now they are looking for their treasures which are, largely, crammed in the Egyptian Museum a few hundred miles away.
On top of that, the "Mummy's curse" has made Tutankhamun's gravesite a creepy place. Upon financing the discovery of the site, Lord Carnarvon died before he could harvest the fruits of his investment due to an infected mosquito bite on his neck. The later inspection of Tutankhamun found a similar wound on the young Pharaoh. Howard Carter, the archaeologist who found the site, died due to chemicals used in the chamber after it was discovered. Hence, his greatest discovery was also his doom, spreading more superstition over the apparent curse on the tomb. These accounts are super scary albeit highly controversial.

The Great Pyramids

A haunted pyramid? Yes, of course! Many eye witness reports have recorded a man and his three children, dressed in clothes typical of the 1920s, roaming around the Great Pyramids looking for something. As we are telling a ghost story here, we're going to assume that he's searching for his wife and mother of his children.
The much creepier story surrounding the haunting of the pyramids is the emergence of the ghost of Pharaoh Khufu himself who is the proud owner of one of them. Dressed in traditional ancient Egyptian armor, he appears at midnight and walks the streets, visiting houses and telling their inhabitants to leave the area. If ghosts have unfinished business to linger around, Khufu has been very patient for many millennia now.

Man photographs 'White Knight Ghosts' watching neice playing in park

A dad-of-five was left spooked when he spotted two ghostly figures – which he believes are knights – in the back of a photo.

Richard Jones noticed the ghostly figures when he snapped his five-year-old niece Amy Jones at Tamworth Castle Grounds in Staffordshire.

Originally the 38-year-old didn't notice anything strange about the photo as it was bright daylight.

However, once he got home, a baffled Richard spotted the celestial outlines in the trees behind his niece.

Richard said: "When I noticed the figure I was confused.

"I can't quite make out what they are, but it looks to me like two figures.

"It could be two knights carrying a shield – which would make sense as it was by the castle.

"What's so strange to me is that there is absolutely no colour – it's all white."

 In the back of the picture it appears like there are two grey figures – possibly dressed in chainmail – carrying a white shield with one carrying a white shield.

Read Full Story: Mirror UK

Sword For sale WARNING might be haunted - $150 on Craigslist

This sword is from the 1700s. I got it at an antique store in my memaw's home town back in 1984.

The person who sold it to me told me to be careful because there is a 90+% chance that it is cursed. Since it's been in my house my life has descended into pure chaos.

My knitting group came over and they all said they could feel a strange energy in my sword room (I have a collection of over 100 swords.

This is my only haunted sword). Since i got this sword, about 3 times a week a crucifix will fall off of my wall for no reason.

I am 76 years old. I cannot have this cursed item in my house anymore. Please take it off my hands!!

See Full Story: Craigslist

Ouija boards are the must-have gift this Christmas. "You know, for kids"

What better time to talk to dead people for fun than the festival to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Ouija boards are flying themselves off shelves and under trees this Christmas, according to trends data released by Google. The company has recorded a 300 per cent increase in searches for the spirit-bothering devices, fueled by a terrible movie that was effectively a feature-length ad for a board game, an appearance on The Archers, and the Victorian belief that if the dead could speak, they would use a plank of a wood and the alphabet.

Ouija, released in October in time for Halloween, was, by all accounts, a cliché-ridden turkey about a group of teenage girls who experiment with a board and get scared. It has a disastrous 7 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregating site, but became an occult hit, to the delight of its backers. Hasbro, the toy company behind Monopoly, pushed for the revival of the film, which had stalled in development, and partnered with Universal to make it happen. Its Ouija Game, including a glow-in-the-dark version, is – sure enough – the biggest seller online.

All of which is appropriate, because the Ouija-board trend, circa 1890, was always about selling games. Spirit writing dates back much further. In 12th-century China, it was believed that spirits had the power to guide a "planchette" to write Chinese characters. In the late 19th century, when doubts about God inspired by Darwin's little birds led to a boom in spiritualism, planchettes became a novelty hit in the west. Elijah Bond, an American lawyer and inventor from Baltimore, devised and patented in 1891 "a toy or game by which two or more persons can amuse themselves by asking questions of any kind and having them answered by the device used and operated by the touch of the hand, so that the answers are designated by letters on a board".

Read Full Story: Independent UK

Real Housewife of Beverly Hills swears house is haunted

We’ve just been introduced to Lisa Rinna on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills but already we’re head-over-heels in love with the gorgeous soap star. After just two episodes this season — and the countless other shows she’s appeared on — we have a sense of just how kooky Lisa is, but now she’s claiming her house is haunted by a Casper-like spirit.

“Fact is, I can’t prove it, but I believe there is indeed a female ghost named ‘Karen’ ... [who] died in the house back in 1980 ... that lives with us,” Lisa writes in her latest BravoTV.com blog. Thank goodness the 51-year-old reality star says the ghost “absolutely loves” her daughters Delilah and Amelia, and “loves to be around them.”

The former Melrose Place star went on to reveal some of Karen’s tragic backstory, something we’d love to see explained on RHOBH this season.

“Karen had a 3-year-old daughter when she passed away, so I feel like she really presented herself to us when the girls were just babies,” Lisa explained. “She’s a good ghost. A protective spirit that I’m grateful to share my home and family with.”

Read Full Story: WetPaint

Chattanooga Tennessee has a very patriotic ghost

The Chattanooga area is rich in history. And wherever there is history, there are ghosts. One of the region’s most flamboyant ghosts is Soddy-Daisy’s Col. William Clift.

The first account of Clift’s apparition occurred in 1898, just before the Spanish-American War broke out. An elderly man trudging the back roads of Soddy-Daisy claimed the colonel rose from his grave in Mount Bethel Presbyterian Cemetery, accompanied by the sounds of taps and muffled drums.

Just before the outbreak of other wars, the same events unfolded at the graveyard, according to witnesses of the day. Folks surmised that the colonel was warning of danger to America.

His place in history suggests that their story is based on some truth. The man was a zealous patriot. Anyone who knew the colonel during life might well imagine that even death could not silence him.

Described as Hamilton County’s first millionaire, in peacetime this influential slaveholder directed his passion toward taming thousands of acres of land he had amassed throughout Hamilton County. But when the Southern states seceded in 1861, Clift was devastated that the differences in values and opinions were literally tearing the once United States apart.

Clift’s stand on the War Between the States was firm—he risked all to follow his heart. At the age of 67, he joined the Army as a Northern officer, determined to preserve the nation intact. Described by historians Govan and Livingood as a man "who never failed to give assistance to the Union cause," his fervor for the Constitution led him to fight against many of his neighbors and even members of his own family.

Read Full Story: Nooga.com

"A Christmas Carol" performed in a real haunted house in Manhattan

An unassuming row house occupies the lot at 29 E. 4th Street in the neighborhood that is now referred to as "NoHo". Of course, when the house was first built in 1832, trendy abbreviation was not yet a common practice in the world of Manhattan real estate. East 4th Street was part of the new Bond Street 
neighborhood, the latest suburb for New York's wealthy merchant class. Nearly two centuries later, most of the neighborhood's original houses have been demolished. 29 E. 4th Street remains, however, much as it did when hardware merchant Seabury Tredwell moved his family and their four Irish servants into the house 179 years ago.

That remarkable perseverance is very much thanks to the tireless work of the staff of the Merchant's House Museum, the not-for-profit organization that maintains the house and keeps it open to the public as a museum. Pi Gardiner is the executive director. "When you walk into the parlor, you feel the nineteenth century," she explained of her initial attraction to the house. "I fell in love with it."

 Similarly, actor John Kevin Jones loved the period atmosphere and thought it would be the ideal setting for a solo performance of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. "Doing A Christmas Carol in a Victorian home seemed so perfect," he recalled of the initial idea. So Jones and Summoners Ensemble Theatre contacted the museum to set up a private performance in early 2013.

Read Full Story: Theater Mania