ADAMS - After
reviewing hundreds of potential sites, a renowned paranormal specialist
and investigator may have found the perfect place to display his haunted
wares: A funeral home.
John Zaffis, who hosted the cable TV show "Haunted Collector," has
set his sights on a vacant building that once housed McBride Funeral
Home to establish a paranormal museum and research facility.
"Over the course of years I've collected quite a few items," Zaffis
said Wednesday from his Connecticut home. "They're out in my barn now,
but I always thought it would be fun to have people see the items and
hear the stories about how they are connected to hauntings."
Zaffis, 58, stressed that plans are still fluid, and that he hasn't put in an offer on the property yet.
The Liberty Street building, which has been vacant for more than 10 years, is listed for sale at $79,900.
WASHINGTON – The United States has long been a breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, spurred by an often violent history riddled, in particular, with shadowy political assassinations.
But the latest conspiracy movement seems custom-made to underscore the need for a national debate on mental illness. Some of the Sandy Hook Truthers, as they’ve been dubbed, believe last month’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax.
The Obama administration perpetrated the hoax, the conspiracy theorists claim, in order to ratchet up support for tougher gun control measures.
They call themselves Operation Terror, and many of the movement’s adherents appear to have ties to the so-called 9-11 truthers who have long held that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an inside job by the George W. Bush administration.
Their theories on the Dec. 14 shooting in Sandy Hook appear to lack any basis in fact, reality or common sense. But Google Trends suggests the movement is gaining momentum with both a Florida college professor and a libertarian Fox News anchor in Cincinnati questioning the official narrative on the events.
On various websites and blogs, some Sandy Hook truthers crow about the “smoking gun” they say proves the shooting was a hoax — a photo of President Barack Obama, backstage at a Newtown vigil two days after the shooting, a young blonde girl sitting on his lap.
(from For Liberty Sake: written by Daniel J. Fortune) Could national tragedies be nothing more than governmental conspiracies staged in order to disarm American citizens???
Since the Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy, many people/videos on YouTube have surfaced that challenge the typical story-line perpetuated by the mainstream media.
Following videos challenging the ‘lone-wolf’ shooter theory, some have come out fully discrediting the traditional Shandy Hook narrative. Among those is Ben Swann of Reality Check who is up to win the Shorty Award in Journalism. There are even videos and theories that insist Sandy Hook was staged and is part of some large government conspiracy.
Here is a list of some of the more popular videos and theories currently floating around regarding the Sandy Hook tragedy.
Alex Jones’ Infowars.com released a video asking what happened to the 2nd shooter.
The IdahoPicker produced a video that has received nearly 350,000 hits. He makes the point that there is a connection between the Colorado theater shootings and Sandy Hook. He also challenges the one shooter narrative as well.
Litchfield, Connecticut- Firefighters this week responded to a 2 a.m. report of a mysterious object falling into Bantam Lake.
The object cast a greenish glow, police said, causing concern that a small plane had crashed. But the firefighters found nothing.
The object could have been a meteor, which glow as they streak through the atmosphere, a police dispatcher said Thursday.
The Republican-American of Waterbury reported that a person driving in Litchfield around 2 a.m. Tuesday reported that a green, glowing object the size of a whale fell from the sky and crashed into Bantam Lake.
Walking through the front door of Woodbury's Curtis House Inn, the evidence of Christmas cheer is everywhere.
One is immediately hit with the Dickensian beauty of the place; the antiques and old portraits, the dark wooden tables, lanterns and candles that decorate the hearth beneath the low beamed ceilings. According to locals and ghost hunters, the charm does not stop there.
Built as a home in 1736, it has continuously been run as an inn since 1754.
It is called the Curtis House Inn because five proprietors of the place were named Curtis, and none were related. Coincidences abound in this charming inn, once named to be among “the top caravansaries in the country” by a long defunct publication entitled Milestones and Memories.
Some would say there are no coincidences at all.
Instead, unusual occurrences are blamed on the spirits of centuries and only decades past. Experts of the paranormal have come to visit and claim it is a highly haunted place.
“I have been aware of the haunting of the Curtis House for a very long time,” Warren said. “My husband and family have gone there. There is a bedroom upstairs, that first bedroom, that room always seem to very active. Sometimes when people come here from out of state for visits, I always ask them if they want to stay at a real haunted inn.”
The ghosts of many Christmases past are said by regulars and employees to still roam the halls. According to TJ Hardisty-Brennan, the inn's owner has lived at the inn most of her life, there are at least four known spirits who continue to live there.
She describes a matronly woman who watches over the dining room.
Another is a rider, an elegant confederate gentleman, who is said to be quite loud about removing his boots at night.
Then, there's Sally, who Brennan describes as her dear friend, who is believed to be a young woman who seems to prefer one of the bedrooms on the second floor.
Joe, a former dishwasher who truly loved the place, asked to be buried on the property and his wishes were honored by Brennan's father.
TJ gathered her employees around to tell stories of the encounters each have had with the ghosts they speak about in affectionate terms.
“I've been helping out with the rooms,” Juanita Chappell, a retired waitress, said. “I was looking for TJ the other day and I went to the second floor, and I see the chair rocking back and forth, back and forth. I figured TJ was up there and she must have knocked it as she went by, maybe she was bringing the laundry up. I went upstairs and looked in every room and she was not there. When I came back downstairs, the chair was still rocking back and forth, back and forth.”
“I know who's here,” TJ said, with a cheerful grin. “I have my own little relationship with them. Last March, we dismantled every room upstairs and Sally, which is what we call her, could not stand it.
There is a chair in a room upstairs, and we are the last ones out of here each night, and when we came up in the morning, the chair was twisted to face the wall. The drawers were all pulled out, and she was mad! We laughed and would go up there and say, 'Sally, will you just give us time. If you would just relax, you will like it.' And sure enough, she has calmed down.”
“There is a matronly figure in the dining room and she just likes everything to be as it should be,” Brennan continued. “ At Thanksgiving, we had a customer call me over, and she asked me, 'Have you been told you have spirits here?' I said, yes, but you don't know how people are going to take it. The woman said, 'She just wants you to know, she is very content, her day is done, and it went very smoothly. She is very happy with the way her day went.' We had a busy day that day and they, the spirits, just like to see how everything went.”
One of the spirits worked in the kitchen when TJ was a child. “There is a young man who worked here when he was 14-15 years old. I told him to go downstairs and get some firewood for the fireplace in the lobby. He comes running back up the stairs, and he would tell you the exact same story if he was standing next to me, he came up and said, 'I can't go down there, there is a guy sitting on the stairs eating his mashed potatoes!'
“I just flippantly went, 'Oh, so you saw Joe. Just go get the firewood.' And he said, 'But you just don't understand, he had white pants and a white shirt, and he was not clean shaven, he was sitting there eating his mashed potatoes!' I said, 'James, that's where Joe always went. That's where he always sat and ate his mashed potatoes and had his cigarette.' Joe was actually the dishwasher here when I was just a child. I said, 'James, the only way Joe will cause trouble is if you yelled at him for having a cigarette or tried to take his mashed potatoes away.”
Brennan laughed remembering the shock on the boy's face. “So probably eight years go by, and my sister and her husband took a spatula, because Joe always had a spatula in his hand, and they made a plaque and put Joe's picture on it for Most Valuable Employee kind of thing. So, James comes up at Christmastime and when he saw that, he said, 'Oh my gosh! This is the guy I saw!”
According to TJ, there have been many customers who have no idea the inn is haunted, but there have been some who report incidents that are more humorous than frightening. “Some people don't know a thing about it, some come because of that, some want to stay, but there was one person who was so polite about it.” Brennan laughed again, recalling one woman's reaction.
“We had a woman who was here for a few days, and she came down one morning and said, 'I cannot stay here. It's absolutely beautiful, everything is wonderful but there are spirits here and I am not comfortable. I wish I could stay here but I am making them uncomfortable because I am uncomfortable.” She said, “I have never seen them, it's never happened to me before, but it happened to me now.”
Employees of the inn are familiar with the comings and goings of the spirits.
Opal Strattman, who works as an assistant to Brennan said, “You go upstairs and the TV will be on, and you know no one has been up there. The beds get messed up.”
TJ laughed again and reported, “Someone complained that they couldn't sleep because the covers kept getting pulled down in Room 16. The woman came downstairs for dinner the next day and asked if we had ghosts. When we said yes, she nearly fell over.”
Donna Kent, another Connecticut specialist of the paranormal who has been featured in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, visits the Curtis House frequently and brings students with her to study the energy. She has seen orbs of light in many rooms, including the attic, and has detected energy in rooms where nothing else was going on.
“TJ has been choosy about letting ghost hunters come in because they can cause more trouble than good,” Kent said.
Brennan agreed. "The spirits are happy unless people are disruptive. Donna said they are very content, and as long as you don't set them off, or stir up trouble, it's fine. But if you come in here like gangbusters, to stir things up, they don't like it."
Kent wrote in her book "Ghost Stories and Legends of Western Connecticut" that The Curtis House has had an incredibly long history filled with mysterious details. “There was a hidden entrance that was used by the masons before they were allowed to practice in their own building. One of the owners, Lucius Foote, was murdered after a big win at a card game. His body was found in a shed behind St. Paul's. The portraits in the house have been known to cause trouble if not placed where they want to be. The Curtis House is actively haunted, but it's because the spirits of those who enjoyed the atmosphere loved it so much they didn't want leave.”
The Curtis House seems to continue its centuries old popularity with the living and the deceased. “I have never had a terrifying feeling at the Curtis House. Like the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present, there may be something to learn from these spirits. Life does continue. And the best way to get through the day is to do so in a respectful manner, whether it's with people or those on the other side," Kent said.
Witnesses in five states reported watching orange lights in the sky on Thanksgiving Day that appeared to move in a controlled manner, according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database.
Six reports were filed in the past 24 hours from Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina and Utah, all describing one or more orange lights - sometimes appearing as either a fireball or a teardrop shape.
In California, the witness was able to take video of the objects at the point where they were moving away in Case 33584.
"Noticed a single redish-orange fireball rising from eastern horizon from San Diego city center," the witness stated. "At first it looked like an asteroid, but it was going up instead of down. Shortly after a second appeared from horizon following same path as the first. Then there was a third. I ran to get my wife so I wasn't the only one who saw."
All three objects appeared to follow the same path.
"The three objects followed the exact path - rising fast at first, then appeared to slow down as they rose. First object faded, away then the second, and third faded."
Two cases were filed from Arizona.
A "glowing orange ball" was reported moving west to east over Maricopa, AZ, in Case 33587.
"At approx. 10:45 p.m., while seated, my mother witnessed through the window a glowing orange fireball above the neighbor's roof," the reporting witness stated. "It appeared to be about the size of a full moon, but was too low and disappeared quickly. She ran outside to investigate and found it had moved far to the east, and was now about the size of a nickel held at arm's length. I did not see the initial fireball, but followed her outside directly because her reaction seemed so unusual. Within seconds I observed the orange object to be aspirin sized at arm's length and moving quickly away from us in an easterly direction."
The objects continued to fade.
"Within moments the object diminished in size until we could no longer see it. It appeared to be moving at a high rate of speed. We heard no sound. The entire event took 60-90 seconds. Mom noticed it because it was bright, oddly out of place, and moving too quickly. It may be of note that we saw at least one helicopter in our field of view after the light disappeared, but the helicopter was easily identifiable and moving in a different direction. We are curious to know if anyone else saw this object."
Other witnesses also reported from Arizona, including Case 33582, where one person is a "retired Air Force technician who worked with A-10s."
"The first object was moving across the sky from what appeared west-to-east and then shot off into the distance. Soon after, another object of same color and shape appeared along the same flight path. It was bright orange and looked almost like a comet. It followed what, from the ground, appeared to be the same path."
In Florida, the witness describes two objects - a "bright orange glowing light" and an "orange fireball" in Case 33588.
"Looking to the northwest approximately 30 degrees or so above the horizon, I noticed a bright orange glowing light," the witness stated. "It was probably the size of a couple of stars put together, or of an aircraft landing light in the distance. I watched it for a few seconds because it was not the color of an aircraft landing light. I also looked for strobe lights or aircraft navigation lights. There were none."
The witness described the light's movement.
"The light then seemed to hover in place on a magnetic heading of approximately 200 degrees. The light then seemed to fade away as if it were moving off now directly away from us."
At Gastonia, NC, a Thanksgiving dinner was interrupted when an orange light was noticed in the sky in Case 33590.
"First thing I noticed, it was a cloudless star-lit night," the witness stated. "This orange light was moving slowly across the sky, slowing down, then moving again. Also while we watched the light, would turn a little red. We watched for about three or four minutes, then it almost stopped and then started going straight up. We looked at each other in disbelief as it then vanished into the sky."
In Utah, the witness described the object as an "orange ball of light" in Case 33581.
"I pulled my car over to use my phone to video record the light," the witness stated. "We watched it for about one minute until it faded out. I am not positive that it was moving when we first saw it, but it was stationary the entire time I recorded it." The video was not included with the MUFON report.
In other Thanksgiving Day reports:
Witnesses in Arizona describe three "stars" that moved in Case 33592.
"I was viewing Orion’s Nebulae at 2:15 a.m. through my telescope," the witness stated. "I thought the number of stars to be strange - meaning there seemed to be more stars then there's supposed to be. Then three 'stars' or UFOs just started to move in a westerly direction. Moving slowly for 10 minutes or so. All three just started to slow down, then they all stopped at once. I sat there for a few more minutes to see if anything else would happen, but nothing did, so I went to bed."
In Illinois, the witness describes an object with "two pulsating lights" and another light that moved around the object in a clockwise pattern in Case 33583.
"I was able to catch it in video for four minutes as it proceeded a flight pattern from east to west," the witness stated. "Lost site of it as it continued west somewhere over Route 53. This isn't my first sighting, and since I am closed to O'Hare Airport, I am familiar to distinguish this was not a jet plane or helicopter. It was at 9:33 p.m., so I hope others will report it."
In Ohio, the witness simply mentions "lights in the sky" at 1:30 a.m. in Case 33568.
"As I watched it more, it would move up, move down, very quickly and precisely," the witness stated. "It would hover, it was high up in the sky."
Then the object appeared to move away.
"As I looked up, it took off - as in - there was a streak of light, almost like a shooting start, but this was a straight path across the night sky. It went right across Orion’s Belt heading west. At that point I knew it was to be an unknown flying object."
A witness near Brookfield, CN, reports two red lights in Case 33594 at 9:25 p.m. after leaving a parent's home for Thanksgiving dinner.
"They live on top of a mountain overlooking the eastern part of Candlewood Lake," the witness stated.
"I came over a rise about one-third miles from the house and saw two red lights to the southeast about 20 to 25 degrees off the horizon. I drove about another one-third mile to a clearing where I had clear view to the east, south, and west. That's when I saw more clusters of red lights to the south and west.
They appeared to come straight at my position from the southwest and arced to the southeast and disappeared, coming the closest about one mile from my position. There were over 15 lights in loose clusters of 3 to 4 lights per cluster moving independently from one another. The lights were not attached to any solid object, I could see stars between the lights. The lights were about 20 times larger than navigation lights on airplanes. I observed them for about four minutes, during that time the lights were consistent in size and shape. They didn't pulsate, flicker, change color, or make any sound. Their speed was roughly about 60 to 80 mph."
