If you have had an experience with the paranormal or want to, this is the place for you. You will find ghost stories,unexplained pics, inexpensive ways to investigate a haunting, ghost hunting tools and equipment for your everyday Ghost Hunter. No fancy equipment required. Spirits and the whole "after life" has been questioned for centuries. Lets see if together, we can't come up with some answers. Take a haunted ghost tour with me to Goatman's Bridge! Evil never was so kind.
Behind Every Cloud is a Kindred Spirit (BECKS)I lost my grandfather when I was 17. I had a VERY difficult time getting over it. How could I still communicate with him? I loved him so much I didn't think I could live without him. I read everything I could get my hands on to do with the "afterlife" and that started it all...the love of Ghost Hunting and the Paranormal. I have been researching the paranormal for over 37 years!! It is my way of staying in touch with my grandfather. Being a Ghost Hunter is not always as exciting as it seems on TV. Many nights I have sat in the dark and not a thing happened. BUT it is those times you DO get that one voice, that one explainable picture or have an experience that sends chills down your back that makes it sooo worth it all!!! My purpose of this blog is not to make people believe in ghosts but maybe to open their minds just a little bit... I LOVE this crazy thing called Ghost Hunting. It is as much a part of me as breathing. I am just a girl that refuses to accept we can't still contact our loved ones after they die. My grandfather won't let me.
If you have not stayed at the Congress Hotel in Chicago....you should!!! It is reportedly the most haunted hotel in the city. I was lucky enough to get a room at this hotel to do an investigation as a Christmas Present from my boyfriend and I loved every minute of it!!! I was also lucky enough to have one of my FAVORITE paranormal groups White Dog Paranormal to meet me there. We had a great time!
Ok....I know, you guys don't care about all that....you just want to know if we saw any GHOSTS!!!
First here is a little bit about this wonderful place. It was built to help house visitors of the World Fair in 1893. It was also owned at one point by the one and only Al Capone. Supposedly the most haunted floors are the 4th and the 12th(I stayed on the 12th). Some of the spirits roaming this place is none other than Al himself along with a mother and two sons, whom supposedly was waiting for the arrival of her husband and when she found out he wasn't coming, she through her two boys over the 12th floor balcony and then jumped herself. Then there's Peg Leg Johnny, a hobo that was murdered in the hotel. And the MOST HAUNTED ROOM OF ALL #441. YES, I did request to stay in that room but was told the whole 4th floor was closed! Of course, we had to go check it out ourselves and found that the 4th floor was completely dark! Did we leave......of course not!!! We just sat down in the floor, in the dark and started conducting an EVP Session.
The very top of the creepy stairwell
Creepy stairway
Stairwell
When you start asking questions about the spirits that haunt the hotel you will find out quickly that some of the people DON'T want to talk about it, but a couple of the bell hops were willing to share their stories. We were lucky enough to meet Johnny the late night security guard who has worked at the Congress for about 18 years. At first, he wasn't willing to talk, but he couldn't resist my Texas accent!!! LOL He eventually warmed up to us and took us on a tour all around the hotel and to places we normally wouldn't have access to. THANK YOU JOHNNY!!!! He told us story after story of paranormal activity. Even as recent as the week before we were there, of people leaving their rooms claiming things were moving, they were touched, etc.
After we left Johnny, we investigated on our own. Yep...you guessed it, we went places not many people could or WOULD not go. We had a lot of activity in a little stairwell we found behind an unmarked door. Be sure and watch the video I am posting of that session. You DON'T want to miss it!!!
Keeping in the spirit of Valentine's Day, I thought I would write about the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago.
LOCATION:
Street Address of the site of the 1929 Massacre:
2212 North Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois
On February 14th, 1929 the S-M-C Cartage Company, a red brick building and garage stood at this North Clark Street address, on the North side of Chicago. The garage was also used as a warehouse for illegal, black market liquor for the North side Bugs Moran gang, a mob of thugs who were in direct competition with Al Capone's gang in selling illicit bootleg booze to a very thirsty Chicago population during the Prohibition years.
HISTORY OF THIS LOCATION:
After the bloody killing of 7 of the Moran gang, the garage became an unofficial memorial, and the brick wall where the 7 were executed was riddled with machine gun bullets. It became a popular tourist attraction for a time.
Twenty years later, In 1949, the front half of the garage was converted into an antique furniture storage business by people new to Chicago and didn't know what had happened there. Unfortunately more tourists than customers came and they eventually gave up and moved on. In 1967, the old building was torn down, but the infamous wall of bricks was saved and used in another night club, built into a wall of the men's rest room. Other bricks were smuggled out by workmen tearing down the building.
A fenced off lawn, which belongs to a nearby nursing home, was put in where the garage once stood, with 5 trees planted on site. The tree in the middle of the lawn marks the place where the infamous brick wall once stood.
Chicago policemen re-enact the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1929)
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
HISTORY OF AL CAPONE
Al Capone, Chicago's most powerful, ruthless gangster in the 1920s era, was really a Brooklyn transplant who migrated to Chicago with his best buddy and future cohort in Chicago crime, Johnny Torrio who was originally hired by his Chicago mobster uncle, Big Jim Collisimo. Johnny Torrio and Al Capone made ambitious plans to take over the black market booze market, but not by fair market competition. (They missed taking economics in school because they dropped out at the 6th grade).
After knocking off Uncle Big Jim Collisimo, Al and Johnny waged a bloody war against other mobs in Chicago, resulting in 500 deaths by the time Capone was through in 1930. When Johnny was nearly killed in 1925, he retired, leaving a 30 million dollar empire in the capable hands of Al Capone at the age of 26! Al Capone had 1000 gunmen, half the police department on his payroll, as well as local politicians, state attorneys, and law makers. So whenever he had to conduct business, many just looked the other way; that is until he crossed the line on February, 14th, 1929 with the St. Valentines Day Massacre.
While Capone was far away enjoying life in Florida, he put this job in the capable, murderous hands of "Machine Gun" McGurn, who was given complete control of the hit. He planned it but stayed away from the event himself, with an air-tight alibi. "Talented out of towners" were recruited for this hit; Fred "Killer" Burke, James Ray, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, Joseph Lolordo and Harry and Phil Keywell from Detroit's Purple Gang.
DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT
On the morning of February 14, 1929, a group of Bugs Moran's gangsters were waiting in this garage, for a truck full of stolen liquor from Detroit to arrive. Johnny May, Frank and Pete Gusenburg, Bugs Moran's brother-in-law, James Clark, Adam Heyer, Al Weinshank and a gangster wanna-be, optometrist Reinhardt Schwimmer, who learned too late that it was dangerous hanging with men on the wrong side of the law.
As they waited, a police car pulled up outside. (Uh oh, this wasn't good!) Five men, three dressed as policemen exited and walked into the garage with machine guns ready. All seven men were lined up against the brick wall and shot many times from the machine guns. While Capon's gunmen wiped out the Northern Chicago gang, they missed Bugs Moran, who was late to the party. Bugs Moran later accused Al Capone of this vicious hit. Though there wasn't any evidence to directly link Al Capone to this event, people believed Bugs.
MANIFESTATIONS:
The location of this brutal mass killing has been haunted for years, the bricks are said to bring bad luck, and Al Capone himself saw his reign come to an end and was haunted by an entity until he died in Florida.
1) The location of this brutal mass killing has been haunted for years
a) Unusual light and mists have been reported.
b) Male voices are heard when no one else is around.
c) Sounds of screaming men and machine-gun fire are still heard by the living passing by this place
d) Sensitive people who stand in front of the fenced lawn, or walk by it, develop a sense of real fear and so do animals.
2) The bricks are said to bring bad luck.
a) The theory is that the bricks soaked in all this powerful negative energy from the killings. Legend has it that after the nightclub outlived its purpose, the bricks were taken out and sold individually for 1000 dollars each. But many of the bricks that were sold were given back because the new owners suffered a rash of bad luck, so the story goes.
b) Others say that the bricks were never sold individually but were kept together in a packed box, numbered, with a diagram as to how to put the wall back together, with the hopes that a single buyer would buy the whole wall of bricks. It never sold; not yet anyway.
3) Capone himself got his just desserts. Unfortunately for Al Capone, consequences resulted as a result of this planned massacre, carried out by hired gunmen.
a) People were repulsed with this bloody mass killing, and a lot of political pressure resulted in nailing Capone for tax evasion, landing him in prison, sentenced to 11 years of hard time, winding up on the rock, Alcatraz. Though he only stayed in until 1939, he didn't always have both oars in the water, which forced him into retirement.
b) The entity of Moran's brother-in-law, James Clark immediately started to haunt Capone who was living in his Florida house at the time of the massacres. He tried to send the entity to the other side via a medium in 1931, but it didn't work. After Capone, broken in spirit and mind, returned to Florida after being released from prison, the entity reappeared and haunted Al until he died.
c) Al Capone was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery. It is said that he sometimes appears to the disrespectful visitors who come to visit his family's plot.
The video below is one we took in the creepest stairway of the Congress Hotel in Chicago where Al Capone is said to have lived part time and stayed. You really have to look hard to this stairway we were in below! The bricks inside were burned and it was obviously a place where not many people go! Very old and very dark!
In honor of the death of Elvis Presley I wanted to do a re-post that I had done a couple years ago. There are several Youtube videos on EVP's with Elvis so if you want to go there check them out. I personally didn't find any that I thought was really that compelling.
Rest in peace Elvis until we meet again...or we talk on the spirit box! LOL
ELVIS!!! ELVIS!!! Do you think the female spirits in the afterlife were excited that Elvis Presley was coming? And do you think the male spirits had their tongues hanging out when they figured out Marilyn Monroe was dead??? The probing question is ARE THEY STILL FAMOUS AFTER THEY DIE??? I hate to burst your bubbles...but when a famous person dies....they are just like everyone else! Just spirits. Spirits do not look at each other and say "hey guess who I saw today"? LOL
Do their spirits linger around the places they loved.....of course! Just the same that any other spirit may haunt a location.....they do it because of some sort of connection.... because they loved it, they are watching over loved ones, or maybe because they left this earth so suddenly they don't even know they are dead, so they do the same things they always done...sing on stage, act in a theater, whatever it was..... they just do it.
Now, for us....the living.....sometimes I think because people soooo desperately want to seea celebrity.....even AFTER they died.....for us the living.......we still idealize that person hoping to get a glimpse of them and in some way for them to see us! That is why I think people still gather at the places celebrities lived, hung out or was sighted STILL having that hope of seeing their superstar! I do not think that being a celebrity makes them more or less likely to be seen than ANY other spirit. But just like in real life........sometimes it is hard for us to get over someone we loved dying.
Marilyn The ghost of this famous Hollywood starlet has also been sighted at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
as well as her former Brentwood home and near her tomb at Westwood Memorial Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
Liberace Flamboyant keyboardist and entertainer, Liberace, died from complications due to Aids. His act was once very popular in Vegas. Liberace's ghost is said to still haunt a restaurant he designed, Carluccio's Tivoli Gardens Restaurant in Las Vegas.
Sorry Deak....but I couldn't resist for all the female fans out there!
Elvis Presley The King of Rock n' Roll still haunts his former mansion, Graceland, as well as the Heartbreak Hotelacross the street from it in Memphis, Tennessee. Sightings of the late singer have also been seen by stagehands at the Las Vegas Hilton.
A recording studio in Nashville. Below are pictures I took at Elvis's birth place (little house with swing) and the first picture is the little church that he said played such an instrumental part in his music career. The rest are the inside of the house where Elvis grew up. Thought you guys might like to see the inside. I did not see Elvis, nor did I even catch an orb in either of these locations, BUT I can tell you.... being here you could just FEEL his presence and that alone was enough for me. If you ever get the chance to go to Tupelo Mississippi. Don't pass this bye.
Just thought you might like to listen to Elvis while you read...
The cemetery where Elvis twin brother is buried and Elvis is said to come here a lot to talk with his brother.
Does Al Capone still roam the halls in the Congress Hotel in Chicago.
But is "Bugsy" Siegel still haunting the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas?
Listen to our EVP session we feel we had with Al Capone.
One of the most evil places in America!!! Yes.....Alcatraz! And I can't wait! I will be visiting this place NEXT WEEK!!!!! So, you guys hang around and when I get back in a couple of weeks, hopefully I will have some "good stuff" for you. :)
Below is just some information about Alcatraz but at the bottom is a great link about the GHOSTS particularly.....
In the late 1850s, the first inmates to occupy Alcatraz were military prisoners who were put to work building a new prison that later became known as "The Rock." The U.S. Army used the island until 1933, at which time the Federal Government decided to open a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary to deal with the most incorrigible inmates.
Alcatraz was designed to break rebellious prisoners by putting them in a structured, monotonous routine until their release. Prisoners were given four basic things - food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Receiving anything beyond that had to be earned. Famous criminals, such as Al Capone, George "Machine-Gun" Kelly, Alvin Karpis and Arthur "Doc" Barker, spent time inAlcatraz. Mobsters in other prisons often managed to manipulate special privileges from guards, but not at Alcatraz.
Tough Punishment
The Strip Cell Prisoners refusing to follow prison rules risked being confined to the Strip Cell, located on the lower tier of D Block. It was a dark steel cell, where inmates would be stripped naked and given water and bread once daily, an occasional meal and a mattress at night. The only 'toilet' was a hole in the cell floor and there was no sink. While there, convicts had no contact with others, spending their time in pitch-dark solitude.
The Hole on D Block Similar to the strip cell, there were five 'hole' cells also on the lower tier, where prisoners were kept in isolation for up to 19 days. The cells had a toilet, sink, lightbulb and a mattress provided during the night only.
Prison Closure
Because of the huge cost to refurbish the prison it was closed in 1963. Later the island and parts of the prison were reopened by the Parks Services for daily public tours.
Tales of Torture
The fact that Alcatraz was built on an island and kept so isolated from public view, tales of inmates being tortured and of their bitter spirits coming back to haunt the halls of Alcatraz began to circulate.
The Ghost Stories of Alcatraz
The Utility Corridor One of the areas which some claim is the most active with paranormal activity is a utility corridor where inmates Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard were plummeted with bullets after a failed prison escape. It is there that in 1976 a night security guard reported hearing unexplained eerie clanging sounds coming from inside.
Cell 14D Cell 14D, one of the 'hole' cells is believed by some to be very active with spirits. Visitors and employees have reported feeling a raw coldness and at times a sudden 'intensity' encompasses the cell.
Tales have been told of an event in the 1940s, when a prisoner locked-in 14D screamed throughout the night that a creature with glowing eyes was killing him. The next day guards found the man strangled to death in the cell. No one ever claimed responsibility for the convict's death, however the next day when doing head counts, the guards counted one too many prisoners. Some of the guards claimed seeing the dead convict in line with the other inmates, but only for a second before he vanished.
Warden Johnston Other stories have circulated that Warden Johnston, nicknamed "The Golden Rule Warden," also faced a bizarre event while showing some of his guests around the prison. According to the story, Johnston and his group heard someone sobbing from inside the prison walls, and then a cold wind whisked past the group. Johnston could never explain any reason for the occurances.
Cell blocks A, B, and C Visitors to cellblocks A and B. claim they have heard crying and moaning. A psychic visiting wrote that while in Block C he came upon a disruptive spirit name Butcher. Prison records show that another inmate in block C murdered Abie Maldowitz, a mob hitman known as Butcher.
The Ghost of Al CaponeAl Capone, who spent his last years at Alcatraz with his health in decline from untreated syphilis, took up playing the banjo with a prison band. Fearing he would be killed if he spent his recreational time in the "yard," Capone received permission to spend recreation time practicing his banjo in the shower room.
In recent years, a park ranger claimed he heard banjo music coming from the shower room. Not familiar with the history of Alcatraz, the ranger could not find a reason for the sound and documented the strange event. Other visitors and employees have reported hearing the sound of a banjo coming from the prison walls.
More Paranormal Reports Other odd events experienced over the years include guards smelling smoke, but finding no fire; sounds of unexplained crying and moaning; unexplained cold spots in areas of the prison and claims of seeing ghosts of prisoners or military personnel.
Below is a GREAT link about the ghosts of Alcatraz! Check it out. And btw...if you have ever been to Alcatraz I would LOVE to hear about your experience!!! Email me or leave a comment and let's see what others have experienced! :)
