http://spoonful.com/halloween
Costumes, masks, jack-o'-lanterns, and trick or treat — each October 31, kids and grownups across the United States celebrate the Halloween holiday. They prepare for costume parties, visit haunted attractions, tell scary stories, and watch horror films. But what are the roots of Halloween in America? The following brief overview will give you a basic timeline for the history of Halloween.
The name "Halloween" (sometimes spelled "Hallowe'en"), a Scottish version of All-Hallows-Eve, was first used in the 16th century. Some trace Halloween history to Roman times, but most historians link the annual, mainly secular holiday to the Celtic festival of Samhain (which celebrates summer's end) and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day. The ancient Celts believed that on the day separating the lighter half of the year from the darker months, the border between the living and the otherworld grows thin. Spirits, both harmless and harmful, can then pass through. To ward off unfriendly spirits, people dressed up in costumes and masks. The belief was that you could protect yourself from harmful spirits by disguising yourself as one — which is why traditional Halloween costumes are those of monsters such as ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils.
Halloween history is also the story of symbols and imagery. Pumpkins, apples, bats, and black cats are just some of the items that have become an important part of the holiday. These and other Halloween symbols are drawn from ancient traditions, local customs, Gothic novels like "Frankenstein" and "Dracula," and horror movies. Bonfires, for example, were central to the Samhain festivities. Jack-o'-lanterns derive from the Celtic practice of carving turnips into candle lanterns. At first, pumpkin carving in America was a part of the harvest celebration. It was not until the 19th century that the jack-o'-lantern became associated with Halloween. And some traditional Halloween games originally were celebrations of nature or forms of divination relating to love and fertility. Bobbing for apples might be traced to Roman festivals devoted to Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or to Samhain in Celtic times. In Celtic tradition whoever bites the apple first will be the first to marry.
No matter how you celebrate this popular autumn holiday — whether you bob for apples, dress up as a monster, go trick-or-treating, visit a haunted house, or tell ghost stories — there's a long and rich history of Halloween that led to your October fun.
http://www.newhampshirehauntedhouses.com/
Haunted Bed and Breakfasts
Filed Under: Arizona, California, Haunted, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Orleans, Pennsylvania
haunted-bed-and-breakfast Shanna Riley, Flickr
Ignite some fright into your vacation, and book a stay at one of these haunted bed and breakfasts where ghostly spirits and apparitions roam the halls. Visitors and innkeepers have become accustomed to spirited pranks and unusual sounds. The ghosts many believe are responsible for them -- some angry spirits and some playful -- promise to make a night at the inn more interesting.
Lizzie Borden Bread and Breakfast
Fall River, Massachusetts
Lizzie Borden may have been found not guilty of the violent murder of her father and stepmother in 1892, but in the public's eye she was always the prime suspect of the bloody hatchet murders. This long unsolved mystery still attracts attention, especially because the ghost of all 3 of the main characters in this horror story are said to lurk around the house today. Guests can spend the night in the rooms where the bodies of Abby and John Borden were found or just take a tour of the house between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. daily. The innkeepers embrace their otherworldly residents: They offer ghost hunter university classes and crime re-enactments and have a museum gift shop on-site that sells coffee mugs, T-shirts, books and even a Lizzie Borden bobblehead wielding a bloody ax.
Magnolia Mansion
New Orleans, Louisiana
In a town filled with ghost stories, the Magnolia Mansion capitalizes on the New Orleans frequented by vampires, ghosts and the people who love them. The ghosts at this B & B are fun-loving pranksters who move personal belongings, especially shoes, and make their presence known in filmy orbs in photographs. The ghostly shenanigans are centered on the Vampire Lover's Lair, a luxurious room draped with rich gold and red fabrics on a carved wooden canopy bed that is modeled after the king-sized beauty in the movie "Interview With a Vampire." Continue your spirited getaway to New Orleans with a vampire tour and moonlight stroll through the city's famously haunted cemeteries.
Thayer's
Annandale, Minnesota
About an hour and a half from the Twin Cities, Annandale, MN, is a quiet town with winding roads, lakeside views and a hotbed of paranormal activity all taking place at Thayer's bed and breakfast. The Ghost Hunting 101 package includes a night at the haunted inn and class time with instructor psychic Sharon Gammell. Guests may encounter Gus Thayer, the former landlord from the late 19th century who leaves pennies around in unusual pages, as well as his wife, Caroline. There are even 3 ghost kittens that can be seen, and even heard purring, around the inn.
The Red Garter
Williams, Arizona
Celebrate the Old West with a stay at the Red Garter, an old-time bordello on Saloon Row restored to its former glory of the 1890s. The bed and breakfast has 4 rooms, each with its own bathroom. In keeping with the old-time spirit, the ghost of Eve, a long-haired beauty, makes occasional appearances. This gentle spirit is known to be shy, only appearing to some guests and making her presence known in subtle gestures like a late-night trip up and down the stairs or a slight brush of the arm. After you've explored this unique ghost town, check out the area's historic and natural wonders at the Grand Canyon, Sedona and along Route 66, all just a short drive away.
General Stanton Inn
Charlestown, Rhode Island
The Stanton Inn is a historic spot in Rhode Island dating back to the days of the early settlers in the New World. When it was built in 1667, the house was a single room used as a school for the children of owner Thomas Stanton as well as local Native American children. Over time, more rooms were added to the home, and the mansion first became an inn after the Revolutionary War. It was a hotbed of activity for gamblers and travelers passing through during Prohibition, but the ghosts who roam this haunted bed and breakfast today are said to be generally mild-mannered: Some visitors to the Washington Room claim to have been touched by unseen forces while others have witnessed ghostly apparitions.
Farnsworth House
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Gettysburg was the site of the bloodiest battle during the Civil War, so it's no surprise to ghost hunters that many sad and damaged spirits still lurk around the town. The Farnsworth House celebrates the memory of the war's deceased soldiers. Its rooms are filled with antiques and old-time decor, and it offers generous hospitality. A full breakfast is served in the dining room under historic Civil War photos, while dinner is a throwback to the Civil War era with homey soups, hearty sides and the signature dish of game pie. Head to the attic where guides dressed in period garb introduce you to the ghosts of Farnsworth House, including soldiers, a weeping nurse, a playful young boy and a curious cat. Afterward, continue your tour with a visit to nearby Confederate hospitals.
Ghost City Inn
Jerome, Arizona
The Ghost City Inn originally served as a boarding house for managers overseeing the gold mines in 1890, but it was also an ashram and a restaurant before opening its doors to overnight guests as a B & B in 1994. The inn was restored with cozy rooms and cheerful decor with great views of Verde Valley and Sedona's red rocks in the distance. Guests have described ghostly experiences including slamming doors and unidentified voices as well as apparitions of a female spirit in the Cleopatra Hill room. For more ghost adventures, take a short stroll through town to the Crib District where residents believe the sad spirits of the town's former prostitutes, including that of ghost story legend Sammie Dean, still walk the streets.
The National Hotel
Jamestown, California
In the heart of California's Gold Country, Jamestown is just 1 of the towns where purported spirits still roam the streets, some looking for lost fortune and others pining for lost loves. The inn's ghost Flo is one of the many spirits that have lingered since she followed her love to the National Hotel in 1859. Henry was tragically murdered in the hotel's lobby before they could marry, and she died of a broken heart shortly thereafter. Locals say Flo is a gentle soul who plays pranks like switching off lights and dumping out suitcases, though occasionally guests hear an unseen women sobbing in the hotel. There are 9 rooms in the bed and breakfast, filled with period antiques and frilly curtains reminiscent of the olden days, and Flo is said to spend most of her time in the second floor rooms.
Eliza Thompson House
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is believed to be one of the most haunted towns in the South, and the Eliza Thompson boasts a number of resident spirits that guests swear roam the halls. The stately house was the first built on Jones Street in 1847 and the elegant space served as a private home, a doctor's office and a dentist's office before becoming an inn in 1977. Despite updates over the years and the modernizing of the rooms, some things stay the same. Confederate soldiers are said to lurk by the windows on the upper levels and a young girl in a white dress has reportedly caught visitors by surprise passing through the hall.
The Myrtles Plantation
St. Francisville, Louisiana
This antebellum mansion was a glorious plantation when it was built in 1796 and the Southern charm remains with cozy rockers on the wide verandah, 10 acres of towering oaks and 11 guest rooms with stained glass, crystal chandeliers and antique furnishings. Guests say they've experienced paranormal encounters with the plantation's ghosts, a motley crew of spirits including Chloe, a former plantation slave who allegedly poisoned the family of the house and was hanged for punishment. The most haunted spot in the house is thought to be the grand piano on the first floor that plays itself and the hallway mirror, where apparitions of the souls who were killed in the house over the centuries are said to manifest themselves to guests.
http://www.visithauntedplaces.com
Alabama[edit]
Main article: Reportedly haunted locations in Alabama
Alaska[edit]
Dimond Center in Anchorage. It is allegedly built on burial grounds and haunted by Native Americans.[1]
Arizona[edit]
Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone. There have been reports of ghostly laughter, yelling and strange music. These reports date back to the 1880s. It was investigated on Ghost Adventures. It was also investigated by TAPS on Ghost Hunters.
Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee. Owners claim mysterious voices, odd sounds and smells and levitating objects.[2] It was investigated on both Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures.
Gadsden Hotel in Douglas. It is reportedly haunted by a few specters, including a cowboy, and two "shoppers". This place is also home to a few stories, such as those of a woman being pinned to her bed, another having her hair pulled, and yet another having someone lay down next to her in bed.[3]
Lee Williams High School in Kingman. Part of the football field lies atop the old Pioneer Cemetery. Women in prairie gowns and men wearing suits from the 19th Century have reportedly been sighted during outdoor graduation ceremonies.[4]
Monte Vista Hotel in Flagstaff is reputed to be haunted. A phantom bellboy is said to knock on the door of room 210 and announce "room service." John Wayne reported seeing a ghost in his room while staying at the hotel in the early 1950s.[5]
Vulture Mine in Wickenburg. It is reportedly haunted by the ghosts of prostitutes in the bordello, children in the school house and silver miners that were killed in this area.
Arkansas[edit]
The Crescent Hotel is a historic hotel in Eureka Springs. Built in the 1880s, it is still in service today and reported to be haunted.[6]
Fort Chaffee in Western Arkansas, which is near Fort Smith, is reportedly haunted. It was featured in episode 10 of the 4th season of the TV series Ghost Adventures on Friday, November 19, 2010.[7]
The King Opera House is a historic live performance venue in Van Buren. Opened in the late 19th century, the opera house is purportedly haunted by a young Victorian man who was whipped to death by the father of his lover when they attempted to elope.[8]
In El Dorado, Arkansas, there is an old theatre building called the Rialto that is claimed to be haunted and has been investigated by a local group of ghost hunters.
California[edit]
Main article: Reportedly haunted locations in California
Pioneer Park
Colorado[edit]
The Hotel Jerome in Aspen is claimed to be haunted by several different ghosts. The most frequently reported is that of a young boy who supposedly drowned in the hotel pool in 1936.[9]
Osgood Castle in Redstone is claimed to be haunted by the ghost of its builder, John C. Osgood.[10]
Pioneer Park, also in Aspen, is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Harriet Webber, wife of its builder, who died of what was ruled to be an accidental strychnine overdose in 1881, four years before it was built.[11]
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, near Rocky Mountain National Park, is purportedly haunted by several spirits, including that of its founder, F.O. Stanley, and served as the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining. It has also been featured in several episodes of various supernatural series, like Ghost Hunters and "Ghost Adventures".
The Peabody Mansion in Denver is reportedly haunted by the spirit of a former governor, and a rape victim.
The Colorado Grande Hotel in Cripple Creek is reported to be haunted by the spirit of Maggie, who is seen in her room on the third floor
Connecticut[edit]
Bara-Hack is a ghost town in the northern part of the state that is reportedly haunted.[12][13]
Dudleytown is an abandoned town founded as a settlement in the mid-1740s. It lies in the middle of a forested area in Cornwall. The original buildings are gone and only their foundations remain. Videos purport to show restless spirits in the area[14] and hikers have reported seeing orbs in the area.[15] Visitors claim that the area is unusually quiet and without wildlife.[15] It is on private property and is closed to the public.
The Remington Arms factory in Bridgeport was once a weapons factory. It was closed in the 1980s. It is claimed that accidents and fatalities were the cause of the closing. People have claimed shadow figures, voices, yelling, and residual working sounds. It was featured on the TV series Ghost Adventures.
Union Cemetery in Easton (also Bridgeport), which dates back to the 17th century, is touted as "one of the most haunted cemeteries in the entire country" by authors of paranormal books who report that visitors have photographed orbs, light rods, ectoplasmic mists, and apparitions. A spirit known as the "White Lady" has also been reported.[16][17][18]
New London Ledge Lighthouse in New London is said to be haunted by a lighthouse keeper named Ernie who jumped from the roof.[19][20]
Delaware[edit]
Addy Sea Inn in Bethany Beach is said to be haunted.
Dead President's Pub & Restaurant in Wilmington is haunted by a former patron named "Lemonade" Mullery.[21]
Fort Delaware in Delaware City is reportedly haunted by imprisoned Confederate soldiers who fought during the American Civil War.
Florida[edit]
Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine is allegedly haunted by the Spanish soldiers who once inhabited the fort. It was featured on the TV series Ghost Adventures.
The Riddle House in Royal Palm Beach is reportedly haunted by the spirit of Joseph, a former employee of the original owner Karl Riddle, who hanged himself in the attic after being falsely accused of a crime. Moved from its original location in West Palm Beach, the house was featured on the TV series Ghost Adventures.
The Saint Augustine Lighthouse is allegedly haunted by two little girls, the daughters of the engineer responsible for building the lighthouse. A drifter is also said to have hung himself in the lighthouse in the 1800s and a couple of ghosts are reportedly past lighthouse keepers. It was featured in one episode of Ghost Hunters.
The Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Thomas "Fatty" Walsh, a mobster who was murdered on September 7, 1929 during a gambling dispute. Claims include that his ghost haunts the hotel elevator. Claims also include that of a woman who was said to have jumped out of a window to save her child and a woman in white clothing in their rooms.[22]
Georgia (U.S. state)[edit]
The Moon River Brewing Company in Savannah is allegedly haunted by angry spirits. Staff members have claimed physical attacks, possessions, and dark figures. It was featured on the TV series Ghost Adventures.[23][24]
The Hampton-Lillibridge House in Savannah has been referred to as the "most haunted house" in the US.
The Masquerade Nightclub in Atlanta is said to be haunted.
The McDonough Square is reported to be haunted due to the Camp Creek train wreck in 1900. As many of the victims were brought to the McDonough Square for medical treatment and most died within hours it is believed they haunt the area.
Hanging Grounds off Padgett Road in Senoia is said to be haunted by a Civil War executioner.
The Warren House in Jonesboro is said to be haunted by the figure of a soldier.
Ebos Landing (Igbo Landing) in Dunbar Creek, St. Simons Island, Glynn County is reportedly haunted by the souls of Igbo slaves who committed mass suicide by drowning there in 1803 in protest against slavery in the United States.[25][26]
Hawaii[edit]
'Iolani Palace is purported to be haunted.[27]
Idaho[edit]
Old Idaho State Penitentiary in Boise is reportedly haunted by former prisoners.[28] It was investigated on an episode of Ghost Adventures.
Illinois[edit]
Ashmore Estates is a former almshouse and current an allegedly haunted attraction in Coles County. It has appeared in several books, television shows and documentaries, including Soul Catcher and an episode of Ghost Adventures.[29]
Bachelor's Grove Cemetery has been the location of several ghost sightings. The cemetery was featured on Ghost Adventures
Crenshaw House, Gallatin County also known as The Old Slave House, is reported to be haunted.[30]
Manteno State Hospital an abandoned mental hospital in Manteno, is reputed to be haunted.
The McPike Mansion constructed in 1869 in Alton.
Pemberton Hall is the oldest all-female dormitory in the state of Illinois. It is home to the legend of Mary Hawkins, a former dorm mother who reportedly haunts the hall.
Peoria State Hospital is an abandoned mental hospital in Bartonville reputed to be haunted.
The Stickney House in Bull Valley is thought to be haunted.[31]
Hundley House in Carbondale, Illinois near the campus of Southern Illinois University Carbondale is reputed to be haunted.[32]
Indiana[edit]
At the Story Inn in the town of Story a guest room is supposedly haunted by a ghost known as "the Blue Lady".[33][34][35]
Willard library, a public library in Evansville, is reportedly haunted by the ghost of a woman called "the Grey lady". Every October, ghost tours are held there.
Black Moon Manor, a home in rural Greenfield, Indiana, is reportedly haunted. It was featured on Ghost Adventures.
Whispers Estate, a home in Mitchell, Indiana, was ranked 4th in the Travel Channel presentation "Most Terrifying Places in America" which aired on Oct 29, 2010.
Iowa[edit]
Brick building in Farrar featured on The Travel Channel TV show My Ghost Story is reputed to be haunted.[36]
The Villisca Axe Murder House was featured on the TV series Ghost Adventures.
The Jordan House in West Des Moines is said to be haunted by the ghost of Eda Jordan, the three year-old daughter of Iowa abolitionist James C. Jordan. She broke her neck and died in 1893 when she fell off the bannister which she was sliding down. She supposedly walks the halls of the house while carrying a white cat.[37]
Kansas[edit]
The Brown Grand Theatre in Concordia has stories of a ghost that haunts the theatre, especially during the opening season.[38]
The Oxford Middle School (Also Known As the 5th & 6th grade center) in Oxford, Kansas is supposedly haunted by a ghost named Anne Marie, though the school has closed, the legend lives on. Multiple sightings of Anne Marie have been reported, she supposedly resides in the storage area in the balcony of the Gym.[39]
Kentucky[edit]
Main article: Reportedly haunted locations in Kentucky
Louisiana[edit]
Magnolia Plantation (Derry, Louisiana) is a former plantation in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001.[40][41] Included in the Cane River Creole National Historical Park, Magnolia Plantation is also a destination on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail. Reportedly haunted by spirits of residents of the main house and of slaves who practiced Voodoo, Magnolia Plantation has been featured on the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures. Scariest Places on Earth also sent two families to spend the night here.
The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville is reportedly haunted by a slave known as Chloe. Chloe was put to death by the other slaves after she intentionally or unintentionally killed at least some members of her master's family with oleander leaves put in a cake. The other slaves possibly killed her to prevent punishment by their master. It has been called by some one of the most haunted homes in America.[42]
The Mystere Mansion, otherwise known as the haunted mortuary in New Orleans is believed to be haunted by people who were cremated and buried in the area. The mansion was featured on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures
Maine[edit]
Fort Knox, Prospect, Maine A 19th Century seacoast fortification located on the banks of the Penobscot River. Investigated by numerous paranormal groups, including SciFi Channel's Ghost Hunters. Numerous reports of apparitions, sounds, EVPs, touching and film/photo evidence.[43]
Maryland[edit]
Auburn House at Towson University in Baltimore County is said to have a female ghost.[44][45][46][47]
Chestnut Lodge in Rockville was a private facility treating mental patients for over one hundred years. Closed in 2001 and now under renovation for resale as upscale condominiums, separate recent investigations claim paranormal activity. The building was burned down in June 2009.[48]
Engineered Piping Products is a Baltimore-based reseller of industrial pipe, valves and fittings. The building is located upon the site of an old residential neighborhood. All of the activity tends to happen at the site of the old Deboser home. A local paranormal group, Pasadena Paranormal, has cumulatively logged over 100 EVPs from this location. They have experienced buzzing sounds that fly by their heads, and recently[when?] one employee had his coat tugged from behind when he was in the building alone. This site has been submitted to the Syfy's Ghost Hunters Great American Ghost Hunt for their consideration.[49]
Point Lookout Lighthouse, at the southernmost tip of Maryland's western shore of Chesapeake Bay, has seen numerous shipwrecks, bodies washed ashore, and plenty of paranormal activity, as documented over the centuries.[50]
Massachusetts[edit]
The Boston Athenæum is said to be haunted by the scholarly Rev. Harris, who was seen there by Nathaniel Hawthorne.[51]
The Houghton Mansion in North Adams, where North Adams' first mayor, A.C. Houghton, and his family, lived, is supposedly haunted by the family's chauffeur, who committed suicide after a car accident that led to the deaths of Mrs. Houghton and the Houghton's only daughter. It is now used as a Masonic temple. It was investigated on the TV series Ghost Adventures.[52]
The Joshua Ward House in Salem is associated with the Salem witch trials. Sheriff George Corwin and witchcraft victim Giles Cory are said to haunt this place.[53]
The Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, which is now a bed and breakfast, is said to be one of the most haunted houses in the US. It is the site of a double murder, one of the most famous in US history, claimed ghost sightings and noises.[54]
The USS Salem (CA-139) in Quincy, which now serves as a museum ship open to the general public. Though never seeing combat, the ship has seen its fair share of life and death. Notably after the 1953 Ionian Earthquake serving as a hospital ship. The ship is home to the Fore River Paranormal Society, hosts ghost tours on a regular basis, is converted to a haunted ship open to the public during Halloween and was even featured on the show Ghost Hunters.
Michigan[edit]
Big Bay Point Light is reputedly haunted by the red-haired ghost of its first keeper, Will Prior.[55]
The Mission Point Resort (formerly Mackinac College), located on Mackinac Island, is reported to be haunted by many ghosts including a little girl in the auditorium as well as those who drowned in lagoons, pools, and from jumping off cliffs. Syfy's Ghost Hunters investigated the phenomena in 2011.
Historic Fort Wayne is a part of Haunted Historic Fort Wayne Tour in Detroit, Michigan. It will be featured on Haunted Collector on April 17, 2013.
Minnesota[edit]
Winona State University is haunted by anonymous specters, especially in Lourdes and Richards Hall. Other paranormal reports include pictures getting knocked off walls and moved around by themselves, doors opening and closing by themselves as well as apparitional people walking through the halls when no one is in site.[56]
Palmer House Hotel in Sauk Center is reported to be haunted by children and numerous negative entities, the location was featured on Ghost Adventures
Mississippi[edit]
Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. This site is haunted by various specters in the 334th and 338th training squadrons. Paranormal activities include lights flickering and an abnormal coldness radiates from the place, radios turning on and off by themselves, windows opening by themselves, as well as lockers.[57]
King's Tavern in Natchez is reported to be haunted by numerous spirits, with the notorious one being Richard King's mistress, Madeline. This tavern was featured on Ghost Adventures, where leader Zak Bagans says that this location's hauntings may be related to a tornado that went through here on May 7, 1840.
Rowan Oak in Oxford is haunted by William Faulkner's spirit.[58]
Vicksburg National Military Park is haunted by Confederate soldiers who fought for the Battle of Vicksburg during the American Civil War. Paranormal reports include spectral battling shouts and gunshots.[59]
Missouri[edit]
Town of Avilla on historic route 66. Known haunts of large numbers of Shadow Folk throughout village. Also haunted by a Revenant Civil War-era bushwhacker nicknamed "Rotten Johnny Reb", from a gruesome historical event now called the "Legend of the Avilla Death Tree".[60]
Vaile Mansion in Independence, Missouri is reputed to be haunted.[61]
The Henderson Mansion located at 1016 Paseo in Kansas City, Missouri is believed to be haunted in relation to a murder that occurred in the mansion in 1978. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.[62]
Town of Lebanon on East 32 Highway. Known haunts of large numbers of Shadow People throughout property.
Reports of a woman calling out the name "Peggy." Several people have reported that they have heard voices too. Ozark Visions is open to the public year-round.[63]
At Kemper Arena in Kansas City there are said to be sightings, sounds, and lights flickering on and off in the arena late at night from a former WWE wrestler named Owen Hart who died in 1999 by falling 78 feet (24 m) to his death from the ceiling of the arena. There are also said to be sightings of him still in his Blue Blazer suit at the top of the arena looking down with the cable hooked up to him.[64]
Pythian Castle [20] was haunted. The castle was originally built by the Knights of Pythias as an orphanage & senior citizens home for its members and their families in 1913. It was called the Pythian Home of Missouri.
Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City is reported to be haunted by numerous inmates after countless riots have occurred there
Union Station in Kansas City is reported to be haunted by immigrant spirits and those of the Kansas City Massacre. The station was featured on Ghost Adventures
The Lemp Mansion [21] (3322 Demenil Pl, St. Louis, MO) is a historical restaurant and inn located in Benton Park, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. It formerly served as the home and office of the Lemp family, owners of the Lemp Brewing Company. The site of three Lemp family suicides, it is said to be haunted.[65]
Montana[edit]
Bannack, Montana, a ghost town reportedly haunted by executed outlaws and a woman in a blue gown by the name of Dorothy.[66]
Bannack, a ghost town that was one of the first-settled towns in its county, is reportedly haunted. It was founded in 1862 and named after the Bannock Indian tribe. Several reports of hauntings have been made there, including the apparition of a woman in a blue gown named Dorothy who drowned in Grasshopper Creek. A gang of outlaws were also executed in the town and their ghosts are said to haunt the area. There were several epidemics of illnesses there as well, and a reported 8 to 14 infants died in the town; visitors have often reported hearing babies crying.[66]
Carroll College, in Helena, supposedly has a ghost in the men's bathroom in St. Charles Hall, where a drunken student died of a cerebral hemorrhage after falling and smashing his head against a sink in the middle of the night.[67] The bathroom was closed for a period after the death, but was later reopened for student use. Several maintenance men and students have reported coming into the bathroom and seeing blood in the sink where the student hit his head. St. Albert's Hall is also said to be haunted by a nun who died of influenza in the college's early days.
The Copper King Mansion in Butte is said to be haunted by its original owner, Senator William A. Clark.[66] Owners have reported a warm and welcoming presence in the house, but have reported witnessing unexplained shadows and footsteps, as well as cold spots. The mansion also served as a Catholic convent in the early 1900s.
Garnet, a ghost town nestled in the Garnet Mountain Range about 40 miles outside of Missoula, is said to be haunted by several ghosts, including gold miners and a woman executed for murder there.[66] People have often heard voices and loud music when nobody is there.
Little Bighorn National Battlefield, a battlefield in Big Horn County, Montana, is said to have recent claims of paranormal activity at the park from visitors as well as employees. These include taps on shoulders, rangers seeing apparition movement out the corner of their eyes when no one is around, orb spectacles throughout the fields, a Native American war cry, as well as moans and screams. Lt. Benjamin Hodgson was a member of Company B who died in the battle and has been claimed to have been seen a couple times near the Stone House.[68]
Montana State Prison Museum, located in Deer Lodge, is reportedly haunted and had a history of extremely violent criminals, countless executions, and several riots.[69] Built in 1871 and in operation until the 1970s, the prison is now a museum open to the public, and guests have reported disembodied voices and footsteps in all areas of the prison. An underground solitary confinement sect of the prison, known as "the hole", which housed prisoners in total darkness, is said to be haunted, and guests have reported being pushed and touched while in the cells.
Virginia City, a ghost town-turned-tourist-attraction, is said to be haunted. The saloon and theatre are two areas of reported ghost sightings.[67] The town had a violent past and was home to many outlaws. Calamity Jane lived in the town as a child.[67]
Nebraska[edit]
Hummel Park in Omaha. Paranormal activity reports include apparitional Native American drums and wolves howling at night as well as anonymous specters. Another paranormal activity at this site is a mysterious stairway nicknamed the "Morphing Stairs" because there are always more stairs to count going up than going down.[70]
The third floor of the Jennie M. Conrad Hall at the University of Nebraska at Kearney is said to be haunted by a ghost.
Nevada[edit]
Abraham Curry House in Carson City
Abraham Curry House in Carson City is a historic residence reportedly occupied by the spirit of its namesake builder Abraham Curry, the founding father of the city and state capital, who died in 1873 with only one dollar in his pocket.[71]
Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, Nevada has been reportedly haunted, both the Ghost Adventures crew and Ghost Hunters have investigated there.[72][unreliable source?]
The Madame Tussauds wax museum in Las Vegas is said to haunted by famous celebrities.[73]
La Palazza Mansion (1700 Bannie Avenue) in Las Vegas is reported to be haunted by spirits that were rumored to be sacrificed or killed by the mafia. The home was featured on Ghost Adventures
Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings is reported to be haunted by gamblers and the victim of a plane crash in the area. The saloon will be featured on Ghost Adventures
Bonnie Springs Ranch near Blue Diamond is reportedly haunted by spirits passing through on the Spanish Trail, and also has haunts of the native Indian tribes. The area was featured on Ghost Adventures
The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah is reportedly haunted by mining victims and murder victims. The hotel was featured on Ghost Adventures
The Redd Foxx's home in Las Vegas. It is said that the famous American comedian is playing pranks on the current tenants as a ghost.[74]
The Nevada Governor's Mansion in Carson City was first occupied by the family of Governor Denver S. Dickerson in July 1909. Guests and staff have reported seeing a woman and child on the premises, thought to be Dickerson's wife Una and daughter June, the only child to have been born in the residence.[75]
Virginia City, Nevada
The Yellow Jacket Mine has been reported to be haunted by the spirits of eleven miners who were trapped underground during the Yellow Jacket Mine fire. The television series Ghost Adventures sent three investigators to discover the mystery of the numerous hauntings in the mines.[76]
The Mackay Mansion is reported to be haunted by the former residents of the mansion. The television series The Dead Files aired an episode of The Mackay Mansion to investigate the many haunting occurrences.[77]
The Old Washoe Club is reported to be haunted by the spirits of swingers and prostitutes that perished in the area. The club was featured on Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters
New Hampshire[edit]
Huntress Hall, a dormitory at Keene State College, is supposedly haunted by its namesake, Harriet Huntress. Students often report strange noises coming from the building's attic, where Huntress' wheelchair remains to this day.[78]
The Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods. Room 314 is allegedly haunted by the wife of the original owner. It has been investigated on Ghost Hunters.[79]
Pine Hill Cemetery (also known as "Blood Cemetery") in Hollis is allegedly haunted by a family murdered in the 19th century. People have reported orbs, EVPs, and a mysterious little boy running out onto to the road to stop cars.[80][81]
New Jersey[edit]
Burnt Mill Road in Atco is reportedly haunted by a young boy killed by a speeding car many years back. If one drives to a specific spot at midnight, a little ghostly boy may be seen running into the road chasing his ball.[82]
Burlington County Prison in Mount Holly is reportedly haunted by a legless, floating spirit that moves from the entrance to the yard, a tall male in a uniform in the basement, and the third floor is claimed to have a flurry of paranormal activity.[83]
The Devil's Tree in Bernards Township is said to be one of the old headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey. An area surrounding the tree is said to give off unnatural warmth where snow doesn't seem to stick in the dead of winter. They say that the tree has a branch that still hangs low from where the KKK would lynch people. People who have tried to cut it down or do harm to the tree have allegedly met an untimely death.[84][85]
Domani's Restaurant in Roselle Park is reportedly haunted by its former owner who died in the building.[86]
The Essex County Hospital Center in Verona is believed to be haunted by full-body apparitions of nurses and patients. Some have even claimed a demonic presence. The sound of a rolling gurney can frequently be heard.[87][88]
Poltergeist incidents and other ghost sightings have been claimed at the Union Hotel in Flemington since its upper floors were closed and it was converted into a restaurant.[89]
New Mexico[edit]
Boyd's Sanatorium in Dripping Springs. Apparitional former patients and staff roam this defunct location. People camping nearby have reported nightmares of what life was when it operated as a mental asylum. Feelings of being watched and of general unease are reported by witnesses. Other paranormal activities include unexplained cold spots, feeling of touched by unseen presences, light anomalies, disembodied voices and shadowy figures.[90]
Chino Mines Creek in Bayard. There is an older woman by this creek who cries for her son. The story is that she and her son were wiped away in a flood. She was a beautiful Hispanic woman who was poor and married a rich handsome man. It seems that this man changed after they got married. He would go away a lot and wouldn't come back for long periods of time. It seems that he was cheating on her. She was very upset but didn't seek revenge in the usual way. Instead of murdering him, she decided the thing that would get him most is to not see the children ever again. That is when she drowned her children in the river. At the last minute she realized what she was doing but by that time it was too late and they were dead. While running down to rescue them she fell and cracked open her head. This ghost is called "Llorna" which means crying lady. Since that had happened it is said that you can hear her crying all over searching the riverbeds for her children.[91]
Highway 666. Paranormal activities include a large gasoline truck driving up the center of the road (some have seen it as being on fire) at high speeds and tries to run other vehicles off of the road, two female apparitional hitchhikers (one who disappears from your car when picked up and another who will run out into the highway in front of cars disappearing when she is about to be hit), cars passing travelers with no driver behind the wheel, disembodied dogs running across the highway and mysterious lights appearing in the sky.[92]
Holy Cross Sanatorium in Deming. It started out as a military base in World War I and as a TB ward in World War II. Then a Satanic cult used it as an animal sacrificing place at a later date. There is only one building left now. The rest have been destroyed and this place is most certainly haunted. Noises come from the top stories. Also there is a shadowy apparition in "the alter room" not to mention a pretty disturbing cemetery nearby in which a cross has been knocked down. Murders occur here quite often. There was a lover's quarrel with a drainpipe and a gang killing a peer for sacrifice.[93]
Insane Asylum in Albuquerque. Reports by paranormal investigators include black clouds, light anomalies, mysterious mists, disembodied voices, apparitional former patients and the feeling of being watched by spirits.
Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe. The most paranormal activity areas of this former prison are Cell Block 4 as well as Cell Block 3, which housed the maximum security prisoner, the tool room and the tunnels underneath the prison including the laundry room as well as the gas chamber.[94]
St. James Hotel and Saloon in Cimarron. It was the site of numerous murders during the 19th Century and is reported to have a paranormal activity in one of its rooms.[95]
New York[edit]
108 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York
112 (now 108) Ocean Avenue, Amityville. Based on the 1977 book The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson. Scene of a tragic mass murder of a family on November 13, 1974 committed by Ronald DeFeo, Jr., the next inhabitants of the home claimed that it was haunted and fled after 28 days. Their experiences were portrayed in Anson's bestselling book, which was followed by a hit movie The Amityville Horror which in turn spawned a cottage industry. Despite accusations of a fraud, the family maintains that they experienced paranormal phenomena while living in the Amityville house.
Big Moose Lake. Grace Brown's apparition is seen by witnesses in the cabin where she stayed until Chester Gillette murdered her. Witnesses have reported to the media about seeing her both from the outside and the inside of Covewood Lodge. She is also seen by visitors in the lake as she reenacts her tragic drowning. Her presence is also associated by a feeling of wet chills descending over witnesses and her face has been seen staring up from the lake’s depths.[96]
Cherry Hill, a late 18th-century farm manor house in southern Albany, was the site of a murder in 1827 that led to Albany's last public hanging after a controversial trial. An unidentified ghost has been seen on the property.[97]
The Church of St. Barnabas in Irvington reportedly has some ghosts of former occupants. In 2000 workers installing a new organ left the church in haste after seeing one.[98]
The Farnam Mansion in Oneida is said to be haunted by human and animal spirits alike. Research conducted by the current owners, Gerri and Brian Gray, found seven known deaths had occurred in the mansion. The Farnam Mansion has been investigated by such paranormal groups as the New York Shadow Chasers and New York State Paranormal Research, all of whom have reported paranormal phenomena.[99]
The New York State Capitol building in Albany is said to be haunted by the ghosts of a night watchman who died in a 1911 fire, artist William Morris Hunt, and others.[100]
The Smith-Ely Mansion in Clyde is said to be haunted by the ghosts of not only its historic inhabitants but also more recent victims of suicide. The house has since been converted into a bed and breakfast. The B & B now draws patronage from casual tourists and ghost hunters alike.[101]
SUNY Geneseo's Erie Hall dormitory (room C2D1) is alleged to have been haunted in 1985 and popularized in the media as the "C2D1 Haunting".[102][103]
Durand-Eastman Park on the waterfront in Irondequoit is known for the legend of the "White Lady", said to be a local mother whose daughter was murdered by her boyfriend. The story was voted "Best Local Urban Legend" in City Newspaper's '2008 Best Of' Awards.[104]
Rolling Hills Asylum in East Bethany is reported to be haunted by spirits that perished there as patients. Notorious spirits include that of Roy, the 7 foot giant, and Ray, who attacks women in the basement. The asylum was featured on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures
Sailor's Snug Harbor in Staten Island is haunted by the spirits of sailors, a matron after her son stabbed her with scissors, and a priest after he was shot dead on the church grounds. The harbor area was featured on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures
Letchworth Village in Haverstraw is believed to be haunted by patients that perished in the building. The area was featured on Ghost Adventures
North Carolina[edit]
Shouting by disembodied voices was heard during a paranormal investigation of the stone building that formerly housed the Ashe County Hospital in Jefferson. The investigators also heard an elevator in the building "ding" even though the structure had no electricity. Also in Jefferson, the Museum of Ashe County History occupies the century-old building that had been the county courthouse. In the summer of 2010, a college intern working alone in the building on the main floor heard a telephone ring on the second floor and a person walk across the floor to answer it.[105]
The Attmore-Oliver House in New Bern has been the scene of some poltergeist-like activity stemming possibly from either deaths in the house during a smallpox epidemic or the spirit of the last private owner.[106]
Brown Mountain in Burke County is reputed to have ghostly orbs of light radiating from the mountain. The Brown Mountain Lights date back as far as the year 1200, according to local Cherokee legend. This was the year of a great battle, and the Cherokee believed the lights to be the spirits of Indian maidens who still search for lost loved ones. There also has been speculation of alien activity. Wiseman's View on Linville Mountain is the best vantage point for viewing the Brown Mountain Lights. The lookout was used by German Engineer William de Brahm in 1771 while studying the phenomenon. He attributed the lights to nitrous gases emitting from the mountain and combusting upon collision. His theories were later disproven.[107]
The Carolina Theatre in Greensboro, NC was set ablaze on July 1, 1981 by a woman who was assumed mentally disturbed. Ms. Melba Frey went up to the upper balcony and started the fire, which burned the entire balcony and lobby. Her body was found in the stairway by firefighters, and she is now believed to haunt the area in which she died, flipping the folding seats up and down.[108]
The Devil's Tramping Ground near Bennett, North Carolina is a 40 foot ring in the middle of a forest devoid of any growth for at least a century. Legend has it that this a site where the Devil rises to the surface of the earth to plot his misdeeds against mankind. A United States Geological Survey team could uncover no scientific explanation for the lack of growth within the ring.[109]
An older woman in 18th-century dress is said to haunt the second and third floors of the Harvey Mansion Historic Inn and Restaurant in New Bern. A North Carolina State University professor reported seeing her glide by his table while dining in the second-floor restaurant.[110]
Lydia's Bridge is located in Jamestown, just outside of Greensboro, NC. According to the story, in the early 1920s Lydia and her date were headed home from a dance. It was a foggy night, and in a hurry to get home by Lydia's curfew, her date lost control of the car and hit the Southern Railroad Underpass Bridge head-on. Her date died on impact, but Lydia, badly injured, managed to escape the car. Trying to flag down a passing car for help, she was mistaken as a hitchhiker, and died by the roadside. There have been accounts of people picking up a hitchhiker in white, who says her name is Lydia. She gives an address and says she doesn't want her mother to worry and she needs to be home by curfew. Then she disappears before she reaches her destination. Lydia is also known as The Phantom Hitchhiker; The Lady in White; and The Vanishing lady. Lydia's Bridge is now abandoned, but U.S. Highway 70 used to run under it. Now High Point Road, it was straightened and a new underpass was built a few feet away in an effort to make the road safer.[111]
Fayetteville hosts ghosts such as "The Lady in Black" who haunts the Sandford House (formerly called the Slocumb House).[112] Her apparition first appeared in the late 19th century and has been sighted recently[when?] by members of The Woman's Club of Fayetteville.[113]
The Tar River, near Tarboro in Edgecombe County, is associated with a legend of a banshee. The legend speaks of a Patriot miller who was killed by a small group of British soldiers during the American Revolution. Before they drowned him in the river, he warned the soldiers that if he were killed, they would be haunted by a banshee. After his death, she appeared and caused the deaths of the soldiers and supposedly still haunts the river.[114]
North Dakota[edit]
The Liberty Memorial Building in Bismarck, according to former employees was said to be haunted by a ghostly presence nicknamed the "Stack Monster." When the building housed the State Historical Society of North Dakota, an archivist reported hearing a voice call him by name. A superintendent of the Historical Society claims he stepped off the elevator in the basement and thought he saw a man in a white shirt walk into a storage room. Archivists working at night say they were "suddenly overwhelmed with the sensation" that they should immediately leave the building. One employee speculates the "Stack Monster" vacated the building. Another assistant says they observed the heavy entrance doors on the building's south side slowly open and close as if someone was going outside. Employees humorously created an ID badge to invite the "Stack Monster" to "check into newer quarters" at the Heritage Center.[115]
Ohio[edit]
Cincinnati Music Hall is a theater that was built over a potter's field. Reports of spirits on the property date back to 1876 and continue through modern times. In 1988, during the installation of an elevator shaft, bones of adults and children were exhumed from under the hall.[116]
The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield is a defunct prison that was shut down in 1990. Now, people report cell doors slamming, yelling, physical attacks on women, and shadow figures. It was investigated on the TV series Ghost Adventures.[117]
Ohio University is known in state folklore as one of the most haunted college campus in the United States. Established in 1804, the university is old by Ohio standards, which adds to its ghostly reputation. A large number of places on campus are said to be haunted, and numerous other popular tales are told about the university in Athens county. The British Society for Psychical Research claims that Athens, Ohio, is one of the most haunted places in the world.[118] Fox filmed an episode of its Scariest Places on Earth at the university. Many of the ghost stories associated with Athens and the University center around the former Athens Lunatic Asylum and the horrors that supposedly went on there.
Prospect Place in Trinway. Satanic rituals were allegedly performed on the site, and many people were supposedly killed during its time as a stop on the underground railroad. It was investigated on the TV series Ghost Adventures.[119]
Spring House Gazebo in Eden Park, Cincinnati. In 1927, Imogene, wife of George Remus, was shot at the gazebo. Her ghost has been reported at the site wearing a black dress.[120]
Emmitt House [121][122] in Waverly, Ohio. Some reported sightings and human remains found.[123][124]
The Sedamsville Rectory in Cincinnati is reported to be plagued by a negative entity after child abuse and dogfighting were practiced there, the rectory was featured on Ghost Adventures, where the team had an exorcist cleanse the property
Kings Island amusement park in Mason is haunted by a boy who fell 50 feet from the Eiffel Tower replica, a little boy in a white shirt who haunts the Racer roller coaster, and a little girl in a blue dress from the cemetery on park property. It was on Ghost Hunters.
Oklahoma[edit]
Dead Women Crossing is a community in Custer County, Oklahoma.[125]
Oregon[edit]
Hot Lake Hotel circa 1920s, located in Union County, Oregon.
Bagdad Theater, located in Portland, is a theater built by Universal Studios in 1927 that was used as a cinema as well as a theatre stage for plays and vaudeville shows. A theater maintenance man hanged himself behind the stage, and the women's bathroom is reportedly haunted by a spirit.[126] It is now operated by McMenamins as a cinema and pub.
Hot Lake Hotel is a supposedly haunted hotel in eastern Oregon. The hotel is known for a massive fire that occurred in 1934, as well as suicides and hauntings from ghosts during its days as a sanatorium.[127] Countless people died on the property, including a doctor who killed himself in an operating room, as well as a nurse who died after falling in the scalding hot springs.[128] The building served as a hotel and resort for its homeopathic mineral waters, as well as a hospital and elderly home, and housed a restaurant in the late 1980s. It was in disrepair by the early 1990s, but was restored for the public in 2003 by a private family. In 2001, the hotel was featured on the television show The Scariest Places on Earth.
The Multnomah County Poor Farm, also known as the Edgefield Poorhouse and Edgefield Power Station, located in Troutdale, Oregon, is supposedly haunted. The construct, built in 1911, operated as a poorhouse, and also housed the mentally challenged, the disabled, and the elderly;[129] since death was common in poorhouses, many people were buried on the property in unmarked plots.[130] The property later served as a sanitorium and a reform school for troubled kids before falling vacant in 1990. It is now a hotel operated by McMenamins restaurant and brewery, and has several restaurants and bars on the property as well as an outdoor stage for concerts. Hotel guests have frequently reported hearing a woman's voice reciting nursery rhymes, as well as unexplained crying in the building. A woman dressed in white is also often seen roaming around the property.[129]
Pittock Mansion, located in Portland, is reportedly haunted by its original owners, Henry and Georgiana Pittock, who built the house and died there.[129]
Rhododendron Village, located near the town of Rhododendron along the Barlow Trail, is a campsite that was used by pioneers on the Oregon Trail in the mid-1800s, and is reported to be haunted. The site, which houses several log cabins and mess halls, is near Laurel Hill, the steepest hill along Barlow Trail. Conestoga wagons were often hoisted up the hill by ropes, and many deaths occurred there; the Rhododendron Village served as a gravesite for many of these people. Volunteer workers there have reported doors slamming open and shut as well as lights turning on and off, and several graves have been discovered around the property.[129]
The Shangai tunnels located in Portland are part of an underground city located in the Old Town/Chinatown district. The tunnels were often used during prohibition, as well as to kidnap and smuggle immigrants, laborers, and prostitutes who would be sold to ship captains passing through on the Willamette River. The tunnels are reportedly the most haunted place in the city of Portland.[131]
The Welches Roadhouse is a two-story house in Welches, Oregon on Mount Hood that is supposedly haunted by a woman who killed herself on the property.[129] The woman purportedly jumped from a second-story door used for snowdrifts after the man whose child she was bearing—an escaped convict whom she had taken in—left her.
Pennsylvania[edit]
Main article: Reportedly haunted locations in Pennsylvania
Rhode Island[edit]
Belcourt Castle, a French Renaissance-style château in Newport, is alleged to be the location of numerous paranormal phenomena and events, including moving chairs, moving armor, ghostly apparitions, a possessed statue and various other sightings.[132]
In Exeter, there are a few buildings formerly known as the Ladd School, a school for the mentally disabled that was founded by Dr. Joseph H. Ladd in 1907 and officially closed in 1994. The school reportedly mistreated students, and there are stories today of ghost sightings of the children who suffered, noises, and electronic malfunctions. The Exeter Job Corps Academy was built over the Ladd School's ground, with many of the older buildings still intact and reportedly "haunted."[133]
Sherman- Arnold Farm, Harrisville, Rhode Island is alleged to be haunted. It was the property on which the Perron family purportedly experienced the events documented in Ed and Lorraine Warren's case file which was the basis for the movie entitled The Conjuring.
South Carolina[edit]
The Jacksonboro Light is a phenomenon that has been reported by many witnesses in the vicinity of Jacksonboro, approximately 30 miles west of Charleston. In the late 19th century, a preacher in search of his missing daughter was struck by a train while searching for her by lantern at night. Witnesses report seeing the swaying lantern light and the outline of the deceased preacher along Parkers Ferry Road at night when a train whistle is sounded.[134]
The Old Charleston Jail in Charleston is reported to be haunted by the spirit of Lavinia Fisher, one of America's first female serial killers. The jail was featured on Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters
South Dakota[edit]
Mount Marty College in Yankton. This college is haunted by numerous different anonymous specters. Other paranormal activity reports include showers turning on and off by themselves, water fountains running by themselves, mysterious footsteps, and apparitional shadows.[135]
Tennessee[edit]
The town of Adams, TN was the site of the Bell Witch haunting, as well as the Bell Witch Cave. Townspeople (even in modern times) have reported seeing strange occurrences, including seeing a little girl in a green dress who disappears shortly after being seen. This is a common apparitional state in which the Bell Witch chooses to be seen.[136]
The Carnton Mansion in Franklin, Tennessee was used as a hospital for Confederate Soldiers during the Civil War. Many of the deceased here were buried in mass graves. Several of their apparitions have been seen, heard and even felt here. Among them is the white apparition of a woman who appears on the back porch.[137]
Back in the Sixties and Seventies when it was still known as Hendersonville High School, Ellis Middle School was haunted by ghostly footsteps and random apparitions. Students once described the apparition of a dark coachman on the location. The Seventies TV-Series "That's Incredible" once considered a segment on the hauntings but passed it over for other projects.[138]
The Isaac Franklin Plantation in Gallatin, best known as Fairvue, is reported as haunted by the ghost of a Union Officer and a little girl on a tricycle. Three families have lived here and it was once used as a Civil War Hospital.[139][unreliable source?]
The Loretta Lynn's Plantation House and the area surrounding Hurricane Mills, Tennessee are both said to be haunted by the founders of the plantation and its town. There have been unexplained reports of Civil War soldiers walking and camping around the town and near the plantation. In 2011, the Ghost Adventures crew conducted an investigation inside the house, and aired the episode of the Loretta Lynn Plantation House, during which the crew observed a significant amount of unusual activity.[140]
The Orpheum Theatre in Memphis is haunted by the ghost of a small girl who was killed in a car accident in front of the theater. She appears in Seat C5 watching the performances and around the structure. In 1979, a parapsychology class from the University of Memphis found evidence of six more ghosts on the location.[141]
Built in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1818, Rotherwood Mansion is haunted by the ghost of a "Lady In White." She's believed to be Rowena Ross, the daughter of the builder of the house. She supposedly returns looking for her true love who drowned on the Holston River.[142]
Also known as the Grand Ole Opry House, Ryman Auditorium was originally built as a church, but years of music concerts here made the location the home of Country Music in the United States. Many believe the location is haunted. Footsteps have been heard, doors close and the voice of Hank Williams Sr. has been heard singing his old songs. Others have described the image of a Confederate Soldier on the premises.[143]
The Sheraton Read Hotel in Chattanooga is reportedly haunted by the ghost of Lisa Netherly, who was murdered by her husband as she was meeting her lover for a secret tryst. She is said to haunt her former room and to jump into bed with male guests who check in alone.[144]
Tennessee High School in Bristol, TN is haunted by former students and a phantom locomotive that roars over the gym and down the hall. Part of the school was reportedly built over forgotten railroad tracks.[145]
Tennessee State Prison is supposed to be haunted. A former warden describes odd voices, strange sounds and disembodied footsteps. The location was used in the movie The Green Mile and also elaborated on in the TV-Series, "Celebrity Paranormal Project."[146]
The Woodruff-Fontaine House in Memphis is supposedly haunted by the ghost of Molly Woodruff. She has been seen and felt in the Rose Room which was once her bedroom. The location is now a museum, and one docent once heard Molly's voice say, "My bed doesn't go there." Others have sensed cigar smoke in the old mansion they can't explain.[147]
The Hales Bar Dam in Haletown is reported to be haunted by victims of a curse set on the land by the Cherokee after their leader, Dragging Canoe, was murdered in the area. The dam was featured on Ghost Adventures
Texas[edit]
The Alamo in San Antonio
The Alamo in San Antonio is reportedly haunted by many spirits of those who died during the Battle of the Alamo. The site has been the scene of many ghostly sightings, starting shortly after the battle and continuing up to modern times.[148] It is also said to be haunted by monks in the cathedral portion of the original building.
The Devil's Backbone in Texas Hill Country is allegedly haunted by Spanish monks, Native Americans, Confederate soldiers on their horses, and a wolf's spirit.[149]
Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston has long been a popular spot for local ghost hunters. The existing building was completed in 1925, allegedly on the site of a mid-19th century cemetery, and has recently[when?] been remodeled into apartments.[150]
Marfa lights In May 2004, students from the Society of Physics Students at the University of Texas at Dallas spent four days investigating and recording lights observed southwest of the view park using traffic volume monitoring equipment, video cameras, binoculars, and chase cars. The conclusion was that all of the lights observed over a four night period southwest of the view park could be reliably attributed to automobile headlights traveling along U.S. 67 between Marfa and Presidio, TX.[151]
Miss Molly's Bed & Breakfast, Fort Worth. It's rumored that every building in the legendary Stockyards of Fort Worth is haunted. But none is quite as haunted as Miss Molly's—which is considered by most to be one of the most haunted places in Texas. The hotel was built in 1910 and it's gone through several different transformations. Everything from a "speak-easy" named The Oasis during prohibition to a bordello in the 1940s named Gayatte Hotel—which was operated by a Miss Josie. Today the Star Café is on the bottom floor and Miss Molly's Bed & Breakfast is on the top floor. The building has been confirmed to be haunted by-way of apparitions to spirits not knowing that they're dead.[152]
Presidio La Bahía in Goliad is a fort that was the site of numerous conflicts before and during the Texas Revolution, including the Battle of Goliad and most notably the Goliad Massacre in 1836. Many South Texas locals have claimed the spirits of massacred soldiers can be found on the premises, and some have even claimed during the night their cries of agony can be heard from time to time.[153]
Catfish Plantation Restaurant in Waxahachie is a restaurant that has been featured on television shows as being one of the most haunted places in America. This house was bought and turned into a restaurant but the paranormals have come along for the ride. There are reports of apparitions, various aromas, objects being moved, and people being touched.[154]
The Grove (Jefferson, Texas) is an 1861 home that has been called "The most haunted home in the most haunted city in Texas."[155] There are footsteps heard in the house, but no one can be found to account for the phantom steps,[156] and apparitions ranging from a lady in a white dress to a man in the garden have become commonplace on the property.[157]
The Littlefield House in Austin, Texas.[158]
The University of Texas at Brownsville in Brownsville, Texas.[159]
Yorktown Memorial Hospital in Yorktown is reported to be haunted by the spirits of patients and that of the nuns who built the hospital, who choke people with tattoos. The hospital was featured on Ghost Adventures
The Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells is reported to be haunted by spirits that killed themselves and committed suicide in the hotel. The hotel was featured on Ghost Adventures
Utah[edit]
American Fork Canyon is haunted by people who lost their lives due to auto accidents, including a hitchhiker.[160]
Asylum 49 in Tooele is reported to have negative entities roaming the halls alongside the spirits of deceased patients. The hospital was featured on Ghost Adventures
Vermont[edit]
Bennington College students in the Jennings Hall music studies facility have reported hearing voices and footsteps, particularly after dark, and have reportedly seen the image of a woman coming down the main staircase, allegedly the spirit of Mrs. Jennings, who died in the house. It was the inspiration for the Shirley Jackson novel "The Haunting of Hill House".[161]
Virginia[edit]
Aquia Church in Stafford
Aquia Church in Stafford is said to be one of the most haunted churches in Virginia. Legend says that the church and the church graveyard, which has graves dating back to 1738, are both home to paranormal activity that has taken place for over 200 years.[162][163]
Ball's Bluff in Leesburg was the site of a Civil War battle in October 1861 and is said to be haunted by those who died during the fighting here.[164][165]
Bremo Historic District in Bremo Bluff, where a house at Bremo Recess is reportedly haunted by Anne Blaws Barraud Cocke, the wife of John Hartwell Cocke, brigadier general in the War of 1812 and builder of the plantation estate.[166]
Ferry Plantation House in Virginia Beach, a colonial and plantation era house, with 11 reported ghosts, including: people who perished in an 1810 ship wreck at the ferry landing, former slave named Henry—who still considers this his home, Sally Rebecca Walke—eternally mourning the loss of a lover, former resident/artist Thomas Williamson, and the Lady in White from 1826, who reportedly died from a broken neck falling down the stairs.[167]
Manassas National Battlefield Park has many reports of paranormal activity. An unfinished railroad located within the battlefield which was ordered by Robert E. Lee to be constructed during the Civil War is said to be a hot spot for paranormal activity.[168][169]
Monticello in Charlottesville was the home of Thomas Jefferson, and employees have often heard him whistling on the grounds, as he was known to do during his living days. It has been reported that there has been seen an apparition of a 10 year old boy wearing a uniform and a tri-cornered hat peering out a 2nd floor window.[170]
The Rosewell plantation in Gloucester County is a mansion constructed in 1725 that has been home to numerous accounts of paranormal activity.[171][172]
Washington (state)[edit]
Kells Pub / Butterworth Building located in Seattle's downtown Pike Place Market area, is said (by employees, customers and ghost hunters) to be haunted. It was once a mortuary, currently converted into a pub. This located was featured on Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures[173]
Montgomery House Bed and Breakfast in Kalama was once a hospital, bordello, and medical clinic, built on land formerly occupied by the Cowlitz Indian Nation. The land was site to tens of thousands of Native American deaths, and full-body spectres are reported both in the establishment's back yard and within the home. This location was the subject of the 2009 feature film documentary Montgomery House: The Perfect Haunting, directed by psychic Danielle Egnew.[174]
Washington, D.C.[edit]
Main article: Reportedly haunted locations in Washington, D.C.
West Virginia[edit]
The Blennerhassett Hotel in Parkersburg is a grand hotel that was built in the late 19th century and is reported to be haunted by several ghosts.[175][176]
Harpers Ferry in Jefferson County.[177][why?]
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, formerly Weston State Hospital, is purported by its owners and visitors to be haunted by the spirits of patients who died there. Ghost Hunters, televised by SyFy has investigated the facility for their television series. Ghost Adventures did a live event on October 30, 2009, where they performed an overnight paranormal investigation on the Travel Channel.[178]
The West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville was built in 1867 and has been called one of the "most haunted places in America." SyFy's "Ghost Hunters" and Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures have both televised paranormal investigations of the facility.[179][180][181]
Wisconsin[edit]
Summerwind Mansion, formerly known as Lamont Mansion, is a ruined mansion on the shores of West Bay Lake in Vilas County, Wisconsin. It is reputed to be one of the most haunted locations in Wisconsin.
Wyoming[edit]
Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne is haunted by 19th Century Cavalry soldiers at night. Other paranormal activities occur in the dormitories.[182]
Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins is reported to be haunted by the most violent inmates in Wyoming history. It was featured on Ghost Adventures.
Top 10 Most Haunted Places
4 Comments
by Jennifer Plum Auvil
Filed Under: Haunted, United States
Whether you're a believer or not, America's towns are filled with true ghost stories passed down through time. From haunted fortresses and historic military spots to grisly tales of suffering and death, we've collected the country's most chilling real ghost stories.
Looking for more haunted places to visit? See what creepy locations our panel of advisors chose for Travel's Best Halloween Attractions 2013. Prepare to be spooked!
top-haunted-places-moundsville Taber Andrew Bain, flickr
Moundsville Penitentiary
Moundsville, West Virginia
During its more than 100 years in operation, the Moundsville Penitentiary in West Virginia was one of America's most violent correctional facilities and the final stop for almost 1,000 criminals. The prisoners lived in cramped quarters, which led to riots. Many men were hung or killed in the electric chair, while others were murdered by other prisoners. The prison closed in 1995, but according to some, the tortured spirits are still behind bars and in the bowels of the prison and may be seen or heard on a tour.
top-haunted-places-trans-allegheny
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
Weston, West Virginia
Once known as the Weston State Hospital, this asylum was home to thousands of people with mental illness, starting in 1864. Hundreds of people died here before the facility closed in 1994. Spirits are said to haunt the building and grounds today, dating back to the Civil War era when the asylum's grounds served as a military post. Paranormal tours of the facility feature 2-hour visits to the asylum's 4 main hot spots. The more intense Ghost Hunt is an 8-hour overnight paranormal adventure with experienced ghost-hunting guides.
top-haunted-places-villisca-axe-murder-house
Villisca Axe Murder House
Villisca, Iowa
On June 10, 1912, the old white frame house at 508 E. 2nd Street became a grisly crime scene. The heinous murder of Josiah B. Moore, his wife, their 4 children and 2 young girls who were overnight guests rocked the small town of Villisca, IA, and the murderer was never identified. Over the years, residents of the home reported visions of a man with an ax, children crying and unexplained paranormal activity. In 1994, the home was restored to its original condition with no indoor plumbing or electricity. These touches add to the chilling ambience during a lamplight tour from April through November or an overnight experience available by reservation for groups.
top-haunted-places-sammie-dean Thinkstock
Sammie Dean
Jerome, Arizona
Jerome, AZ, is a former copper-mining town with a paranormal reputation that dates back to the Wild West. The town is now home to just 400 residents (down from 15,000 in its heyday), but legend has it there are plenty more ghostly residents from the days of mining accidents and shoot-out gunfights. One well-known spirit is the working girl Sammie Dean, a prostitute who was strangled by a customer in the old Crib District. Her beautiful spirit roams the alleys looking for her killer who was never found.
top-haunted-places-cuban-club Ebyabe, Wikimedia Commons
Cuban Club
Tampa, Florida
Cuban Club, also known as Circulo Cubano de Tampa, can be found in Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood. In 1917 this spot was a popular hangout for Cuban immigrants who enjoyed the ballroom, outdoor band shell and cantina with a stage and dance floor. Today the compound, protected by the National Historic Register, hosts concerts and special events and is the setting for many ghost stories about spirits playing the piano and riding the elevators.
top-haunted-places-fort-mifflin David Smith, flickr
Fort Mifflin
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Built in 1771, Fort Mifflin is the country's only Revolutionary War battlefield that is still intact. There are 14 restored buildings on the grounds on the Delaware River and reportedly plenty of spirits from the past. Amongst the ghosts said to haunt the fort are a screaming woman whose cries are so loud that the Philadelphia police have been called to investigate, only to find no one there. Other characters in the local ghost stories include a faceless man wandering around the fort, a tour guide dressed in revolutionary garb and numerous children and dogs.
top-haunted-places-manhattan-bistro Healey McFabulous, flickr
Manhattan Bistro
New York, New York
SoHo is one of Manhattan's hipster havens with trendy shops and gourmet restaurants. But you may get more than you planned for at dinner at the Manhattan Bistro (129 Spring Street), a French restaurant with a notable ghost. Juliana Elmore Sands was killed in this building in 1799 when she was thrown into a well in the basement. According to some ghost stories, her spirit, often called the Ghost of Spring Street, manifests itself as vapor rising from the kitchen floor and causes front-of-house mischief with flying ashtrays and shattered dishes.
idea_ghost-stories_311x175
Moon River Brewery
Savannah, Georgia
The Moon River Brewery brought its beloved beers to Savannah in 1999, but the building is one of the oldest in town, dating back to 1821. In its original incarnation, it was the City Hotel, a high-end hotel with a history of violence during the Civil War. Men were killed in the hotel during heated skirmishes, including a Yankee who was beaten to death by locals in 1860. Some bar patrons today say they've seen bottles mysteriously fly through the air and have witnessed guests being pushed, touched and even slapped by unseen forces. One resident apparition, Toby, is said to skulk around the billiard room looking for the next great bar brawl.
top-haunted-places-sultans-palace Frank Maggiore, flickr
The Sultan's Palace
New Orleans, Louisiana
The house at 716 Dauphine Street is a classic French Quarter beauty with classic wrought-iron balconies and a large courtyard. But in the 1800s, this residence was a house of horrors for the Sultan, a wealthy man with a depraved lifestyle, multiple wives and children and a harem of women and young boys held against their will. Neighbors complained about the mysterious habits of this man who had a predilection for partying, opium and torture. But the greatest mystery in the house was the Sultan's demise when he was buried alive in the courtyard after his family and harem were hacked to pieces in a bloodbath by an unknown perpetrator. Today, his angry spirit is thought to be responsible for the unusual noises, loud music and strong incense smells that waft from the home, as well as unwelcomed advances on past female residents who swear the Sultan is still up to his old tricks of groping female visitors.
top-haunted-places-calcasieu-courthouse Anthonyturducken, flickr
Calcasieu Courthouse
Lake Charles, Louisiana
Toni Jo Henry has been the talk of the small town of Lake Charles since the 1940s when she killed a man in cold blood. Just as notorious were her stunning good looks. The former prostitute charmed a gentleman in a pickup truck to give her a ride while she was walking the highway with a friend en route to spring her true love from a Texas prison. It took 3 trials for a jury to convict the wily Toni Jo, who had charmed the courtroom and jail staff and divided the town over her presumed guilt. In 1942, this murderous beauty known as Tiger Girl was the first female to die in the electric chair in the state. Her spirit lingers in the courthouse today, and workers there swear they feel her presence, hear her screams and even smell her burning hair. Many believe that she tinkers with office equipment, locks doors and meddles with everyday office life at the courthouse.
Some Quick Ways To Waterproof Matches
Monday, October 21, 2013 10:20
(Before It's News)
zmatch 150x150 Some Quick Ways To Waterproof Matches
Matches are a great addition to any survival kit – or any kit for that matter. They are inexpensive and can be added anywhere: first aid kits, tackle boxes, purse, knapsack, etc.
The reason matches are a great addition is that they are one of the easiest ways to start a fire (along with mechanical devices like butane lighters.)
Just strike the match, lay it in a pile of tinder under the kindle and you will very quickly have a nice fire to warm yourself or cook with. And even though there are many ways to make a fire with a spark and tinder, these more primitive methods can be tine consuming and frustrating.
But not a match… Unless it gets wet!
Waterproof container – This is certainly the easiest method. Just put a supply in a waterproof container and you are good to go. And if you are concerned the seal is not water tight, just lay a piece of plastic wrap (or white plumbers tape on a screw top container) on the top of the container before sealing it.
Here are several ways you can quickly waterproof wood matches.
http://beforeitsnews.com/self-sufficiency/2013/10/some-quick-ways-to-waterproof-matches-2464932.html
DIY Survival Earth Shelter Dwelling
Monday, October 21, 2013 10:20
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(Before It's News)
DIY Survival Earth Shelter Dwelling
The thing is, you can’t see how awesome this underground shelter/bunker is from this photo alone, nor can you see how simple and straightforward it is to build if you have basic DIY skills…
A shelter like this would great for your secret bug-out location. This is a about as low-tech as it gets, this shelter/bunker is more about grunt and man hours than it about skill and precision. If you can use a chainsaw, axe, hammer and shovel, you could probably build this shelter, given enough time. Check out the other photos of the build and the interior.
http://beforeitsnews.com/survival/2013/10/diy-survival-earth-shelter-dwelling-2494378.html
DIY Survival Earth Shelter Dwelling
American Blackout
What would you do if the world suddenly went dark?
That is exactly what NatGeo’s original movie American Blackout – which premieres Sunday, Oct. 27, seeks to discover. The power grid collapses following a cyber attack, forcing the nation into an immediate crisis. Although the man-made disaster lasts just 10 days, civil unrest, economic turmoil and a horrific amount of deaths still occur.
The National Geographic movie is extremely timely. As previously reported by Off The Grid News, the first ever nationwide power grid down drill will take place on Nov. 13-14.
American Blackout director Jonathan Rudd stated during a Q&A session for the media that a cyber attack was specifically chosen as the power grid disabler because such a scenario is no longer science fiction. As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported earlier this year, the United States experienced a 68 percent increase in “cyber incidents” at federal agencies during 2012. The DHS also warned that a cyber activity increase in America appears to include Middle Eastern nations such as Iran.
Rudd also said:
“The research drove the narrative. This film is obviously a drama, but we were determined to be as informed as possible and we spent countless hours trying to get it right.
Source: http://www.offthegridnews.com/2013/10/18/natgeos-american-blackout-examines-us-without-power/
The Poor Man Bulletin – For Independent Minded People!
Independent and Subscriber Supported
http://PoorManSurvivor.net
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.”
– William E. Borah
(1865-1940) U. S. Senator
The Smiling Dog Saloon Files
In This Issue:
1. Protecting yourself if the dollar collapses
2. Garden with garbage
3. Haggling 101
4. Handgun training
Go here for this issue:
http://poormansurvivorblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/protecting-yourself-if-dollar-does.html
A few gems…
This week’s vote did one thing for those of us that are preparing — and that is it bought us more time. More time to prepare, save up, learn some skills, buy a little more ammo, etc. This entire debate on the budget and looming default issue will rear its ugly head in only a matter of months from now…Congress is great at kicking the can down the street!
Over the last five years the world has changed dramatically.
There is the broken “traditional economy” of the past, and a new emerging “digital economy”.
The economy of the past is where the majority are still fighting for success and survival.
I think we’ve seen that this economy is shrinking and cannot be relied on to support the lifestyle you REALLY want to create.
Distrust of government is deepening, experts say.
Only 19 percent of Americans in a Gallup poll last month said they trust government in Washington to do what is right always or most of the time. Eighty-one percent said they rarely, if ever, trust the government.
But then again, everywhere I turn folks still spend like there is no tomorrow. I most observe this with kids and high priced cell phones. My parents would never have allowed us to have phones nor could they afford it… a time will come soon however, when they’ll have to go it alone, with the government bankrupt, U.S. currency worthless and the general public in a free-for-all.
While U.S. officials and independent economists have not raised the specter of complete anarchy in the wake of a failure to raise the debt ceiling, they have used increasingly dire rhetoric to describe the consequences after Oct. 17. They warn a default could trigger economic shockwaves, send the dollar downhill, cause interest rates to soar and freeze credit markets across the globe. It could thrust the U.S. into a recession worse than 2008, some officials say.
“If there is that degree of disruption, that lack of certainty, that lack of trust in the U.S. signature, it would mean massive disruption the world over, and we would be at risk of tipping yet again into a recession,” IMF head Christine Lagarde said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Those warnings have plenty of average Americans on edge, and eager to stock up on water, practice fire-making skills and hunker down.
We now live in an era when taxes are on the march upward… the government is allowed to spy and pry to an unprecedented degree… and a devaluing dollar is draining your spending power…
This is something I’ve been predicting for years…
NBC Predicts: All Americans Will Receive A Microchip Implant In 2017 Per Obamacare (VIDEOS) (video)
Is NBC predicting RFID implanted in Americans in 2017 or are they the mouth piece for the beast? If you take the RFID Microchip they can TRACK your every move, Control your MONEY, Control your FOOD and possible even KILL you if you don’t obey! (Read More Below) A number…
/alternative/2013/10/nbc-predicts-all-americans-will-receive-a-microchip-implant-in-2017-per-obamacare-videos-2797326.html?utm_content=beforeit39snews-verticalresponse&utm_campaign=&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fb4in.info%2FrMKW&utm_medium=verticalresponse&utm_source=direct-b4in.info
Also noted: Watch more banks pull what Chase Bank did to its customers – No more electronic fund transfers to foreign countries and a limit on withdrawals from your accounts to no more than $50k in any given 30-day period…
Your muckraker at large, Bruce `the Poor Man’
Prepare Now,
Survive Later!
>>SPONSORS<
http://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2013/10/mysterious-goat-headed-bat-winged-creature-seen-in-eastern-usa-new-evidencefootage-has-emerged-video-2454794.html
Susan M. Swearer
Dr. Susan M. Swearer is a professor of School Psychology at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. She was born in Princeton, NJ, grew up in Swarthmore, PA, migrated west for graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin and settled in Lincoln, NE with her husband, two children, a horse, a dog, and a cat. She consults with school personnel, students, and parents across the United States in an effort to change the conditions that support bullying in schools, homes, and communities. As a licensed psychologist, Dr. Swearer is a tireless advocate for promoting positive social relationships among youth and adults.
Bullying is directly linked to student absenteeism, school morale, and academic achievement. Schools also have a moral imperative to deal with bullying and its consequences. But what works to reduce bullying and aggressive behavior? Why are some programs more effective than others? To learn more about this pervasive problem and what can be done about it, we reached out to Dr. Susan Swearer, associate professor of school psychology at the University of Nebraska and a nationally known authority on school bullying and intervention programs, who has worked with schools and districts nationwide to reduce bullying behavior. The following is an abridged version of our interview with Dr. Swearer.
Q: How extensive or serious a problem do you think bullying is in the schools today?
Dr. Susan Swearer: Approximately 75% of children experience bullying either as perpetrators, victims or bystanders. So in some way or another, it touches the lives of many students and teachers and parents in our schools.
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Q: What do the demographics say about bullying?
Young woman getting bullied at schoolDr. Susan Swearer: There really is no profile of a person who bullies or is victimized. So, it transcends race, it transcends gender and it transcends family income. Bullying can occur in every community and in every school. Some kids who bully others are also victimized; we call them “bully-victims.” They are a particularly troubling sub-group of kids because they have higher mental health needs and issues than kids who maybe just bully others or who are just victimized. The bully-victims often get in trouble for bullying others but educators don’t necessarily recognize that they are also being victimized, whether by peers or at home or in their neighborhood.
Bullying: What Parents, Teachers Can Do to Stop It
Questions for bullying expert Susan Swearer, PhD
Reporters/editors/producers Note: The following feature was produced by the American Psychological Association. Feel free to use it in its entirety or in part; we only request that you credit APA as the source. We also have a photograph of the researcher available to reprint, as well as other experts on this topic.
Susan SwearerSusan Swearer, PhD, is an associate professor of School Psychology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL) in the Department of Educational Psychology. She is also the co-director of the Nebraska Internship Consortium in Professional Psychology; co-director of the Bullying Research Network and was recently a visiting associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Swearer is a licensed psychologist in the Child and Adolescent Therapy Clinic at UNL, and is a consultant to National School Violence Prevention Initiative, The Center for Mental Health Services, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Technical Assistance Consultant Pool. She has presented dozens of keynotes and workshops on bullying across the United States.
Dr. Swearer is co-editor of the recently published book, “Bullying in American Schools: A Social-Ecological Perspective on Prevention and Intervention” (2004; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), one of the authors of “Bullying Prevention and Intervention: Realistic Strategies for Schools” (2009; Guilford Press), co-editor of the “Handbook of Bullying in Schools: An International Perspective” (2010; Routledge), co-editor of “Bullying in North American Schools” (in press, Routledge) and is on the editorial review boards for “School Psychology Review,” “Journal of Anxiety Disorders,” “Journal of School Psychology,” and the “Journal of School Violence.” She has written more than 50 professional publications on the topics of bullying and mental health issues.
APA. The news of late seems to be filled with terrible stories about youngsters being bullied, even to the point of suicide. Has bullying become more prevalent or more severe, or is this a case of over-reporting by the media?
Dr. Swearer. We don’t know if bullying has become more prevalent or more severe in recent years. We don’t have national, longitudinal data that can answer this question. What we do know is that bullying is a problem that reaches into the culture, community, school, peer groups and families. The extent of the problem will vary across different communities and schools. In some schools, physical bullying might be particularly prevalent, whereas in another school, cyber-bullying might be particularly prevalent. In some schools, there may be a lot of bullying and in other schools, there may be very little bullying. The media are reporting cases where students commit suicide as a result of being bullied because these cases are so tragic and in some cases, have resulted in lawsuits against the bullies and the schools. We should remember that Dr. Dan Olweus, the Norwegian researcher who started studying bullying in the early 1980s, did so partly as a result of three boys, ages 10 to 14, who committed suicide in 1982 as a result of being bullied. Sadly, this is not a “new” problem.
APA. If a parent or teacher suspects a child is being bullied, what are the most effective steps he/she should take to protect the victim?
Dr. Swearer. Parents and teachers MUST intervene when they see bullying take place. First, they must tell the student(s) who are doing the bullying to stop. They need to document what they saw and keep records of the bullying behaviors. Victims need to feel that they have a support network of kids and adults. Help the student who is being bullied feel connected to school and home. Students who are also being bullied might benefit from individual or group therapy in order to create a place where they can express their feelings openly.
APA. Who is more at risk for suicide if bullied? In other words, are there personality traits or markers that parents and teachers should look for when they know a child is being bullied?
Dr. Swearer. There really is no “profile” of a student who is more at risk for suicide as a result of bullying. In the book Bullycide in America (compiled by Brenda High, published by JBS Publishing Inc. in 2007), mothers of children who have committed suicide as a result of being bullied share their stories. Their stories are all different, yet the commonality is that the bullying their children endured resulted in suicide. We do know that there is a connection between being bullied and depression, and we know that depression is a risk factor for attempting suicide. Therefore, parents and educators should look for signs that a child is experiencing symptoms of depression.
APA. You have been conducting research on a program called “Target Bullying : Ecologically Based Prevention and Intervention for Schools” that looks at bullying and victimization in middle-school-aged youth. Your findings suggest there are certain psychological and social conditions that fuel bullying. What are they and what are the best interventions to stop the cycle?
Dr. Swearer. I have been conducting research on bullying since 1998 and during this time, I have become increasingly convinced that bullying is a social-ecological problem that has to be understood from the perspective that individual, family, peer group, school, community, and societal factors all influence whether or not bullying occurs. The question that I ask students, parents and educators is: “What are the conditions in your school (family, community) that allow bullying to occur?” The answers to that question are then the areas to address for intervention. We write about how to do this in our book Bullying Prevention and Intervention: Realistic Strategies for Schools (by Susan Swearer, Dorothy Espelage and Scott Napolitano, published in 2009 by Guilford Press). Interventions should be based on evidence. Since bullying will vary across schools and communities, each school in this country ought to be collecting comprehensive data on bullying experiences. Then, schools can use their own data to design effective interventions in order to change the conditions that are fueling the bullying in their own school and community.
APA. From your research, what can you tell us about who becomes a bully? Are there different types of bullies? And if someone is a bully as a child, how likely is it that he or she will continue to bully into adulthood?
Dr. Swearer. If we conceptualize bullying from a social-ecological perspective, there is no way to “profile” a bully. If the conditions in the environment are supportive of bullying, then almost anyone can bully. In fact, the mother of a daughter who committed suicide after being bullied once told me that the girls who bullied her daughter were just “regular kids.” The conditions in their small town and small school were breeding grounds for bullying. My research has also looked at the dynamic between bullying and victimization. In one study, we found that kids who were bullied at home by siblings and/or relatives were more likely to bully at school. So, you can see that the dynamic is complex and crosses all areas in which we all function – in our community, family and schools. We do know that if left untreated, children who learn that bullying is an effective way to get what they want are likely to continue bullying behavior into adulthood. Thus, it is critical to intervene and stop the bullying during the school-age years.
APA. How is the growth of social media, such as Facebook and mySpace, affecting bullying?
Dr. Swearer. Technology has definitely impacted bullying. What used to be a face-to-face encounter that occurred in specific locations is now able to occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Technology—computers, cell phones and social networking sites -- are all conditions that allow bullying to occur. One way to protect our children is to limit and/or monitor their use of this technology. I ask parents, “Would you let your 12-year-old daughter walk alone down a dark alley?” Obviously, the answer is “no.” The follow-up question is, “Then why would you let your 12-year-old daughter be on the computer or be texting unmonitored?” Parents and kids don’t realize the negative side to technology and social networking sites.
APA. Are there any other trends you’re seeing through your research that you’d like the public to know about?
Dr. Swearer. I really want the public to be aware of the link between mental health issues and bullying. As a licensed psychologist in the Child and Adolescent Therapy Clinic at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, I and my colleagues have seen an increase in referrals for bullying-related behaviors. Whether students are involved as bullies, victims, bully-victims (someone who is bullied and who also bullies others) or bystanders, we know that in many cases, depression and anxiety may be co-occurring problems. I always assess for depression and anxiety when I’m working with youth who are involved in bullying. Bullying is a mental health problem.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 152,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.
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Report Number: 4329
Date: June 16, 1942
Location: Caribou, Alaska
Caribou, Alaska, 1900
Background: Gold was discovered in Caribou, Alaska, in 1899 and, within two years, over 30,000 people had made the trip up the Yukon River to this small town to seek their fortune. But when the gold ran out in 1901, the fortune-seekers moved on, and Caribou became a ghost town.
Forty-one years later, an advance team of ten Army Engineers arrived in Caribou as part of one of the great road-building feats in history: the Alcan Highway, the passage that would finally connect Alaska with the lower 48 United States. The Army engineers were experts in demolition: they had come to Caribou to blast a passage through a mountain pass and clear the way for the road builders, who were to arrive a few days later. On June 11th, 1942, the team erected tents just outside of the ghost town and set to work with renewed vigor, as the highway project was in its final stages.
Construction along the
Alcan Highway, 1942
Incident: At 11:43 pm on the night of June 13th, 1942, Project Headquarters in Whitehorse, Canada, received an urgent radio message from the Caribou camp. In the brief message, a terrified-sounding man claimed that the camp was under siege from a pack of vampires. The message was cut short, and Headquarters was unable to raise the camp on the radio over the next twenty-four hours. The FVZA office in Seattle was notified.
Investigation: An FVZA assault team flew into Whitehorse on June 15, and immediately set out for Caribou in a convoy of trucks. They arrived at first light the following morning.
The assault team found the ten Army engineers sleeping in their tents; all had recently been transformed into vampires. After the engineers were trapped, examined and destroyed, the assault team's dogs picked up a scent and led the team to an abandoned mine near the camp. Five vampires were flushed from the mine, examined and destroyed.
An examination of the clothing and personal effects of the vampires found in the abandoned mine revealed that the five must have been infected and transformed during the Caribou Gold Rush of 1899-1901. Somehow, the vampires had come back to life after an unprecedented forty-year dormancy.
Young Klondike
Magazine
Post-Mortems: A check of past FVZA records failed to turn up any reported vampire encounters in Caribou. Further research led to a story in "Young Klondike," a popular magazine of the period. Each issue of "Young Klondike" was filled with often fanciful stories of the characters and events of the Alaska Gold Rush. The April, 1902, edition contained a story entitled, "My Encounter With Vampires," a first-person account by prospector Josiah Franklin concerning events that transpired in Caribou in the winter of 1901:
"People started going missing. Every morning, one, two folks was gone. At first we didn't think nothing of it, that's how things was in Caribou. People left. Then one night, Pete Dawson, the owner of the saloon, came running down the street hollering, waking everyone up. He said he'd been attacked by vampires, said he barely got away, and from the looks of him, with his clothes all torn up, he wasn't lying. So about twenty of us got together, waited till the sun came up, then we went looking for them. We checked all over, every building, every miner's camp. Found nothing.
That night, we drank us some coffee, hid in an alleyway and waited for them. Must have been after midnight when they came in. First there was this one man, a feller I recognized who had a claim out on Spring Creek. He came creeping through, like he was the scout or something. Then the rest of them came out of the shadows without even making a sound. There was five in all. We lit our torches and tried to surround them, but they turned tail and disappeared. Good thing we had dogs, because we would have never been able to catch up with them ourselves.
We found the dogs outside one of the abandoned mines and from the way they was barking we knew the vampires was in there. Problem was, none of us wanted to go in and finish the job. So we decided to blow up the entrance to the mine and trap them for good. We rigged up some dynamite and detonated it and a whole big bunch of rocks came crashing down around the entrance. I don't reckon a team of elephants could have cleared those rocks away. After that, we went back to the saloon and celebrated. And we never saw no vampires again."
If Mr. Franklin's account is true, then it might explain what happened to the Army engineers. Trapped in the chill depths of the mine on that night in 1901, the vampires likely were frozen solid. And they probably would have remained that way forever, had the Army engineers not arrived forty years later. In the course of blasting their way through the mountain pass, the engineers apparently opened up the entrance to the mine. As it was summer, the vampires must have been thawed out, after which they awoke, and eventually found their way to the camp.
Comments from Dr. Pecos: With their often remote locations and reputation for lawlessness, mining towns were notorious breeding grounds for vampires. Residents of these towns often had no choice but to take matters into their own hands, and this case was no different. The locals thought the problem was over when they sealed the vampires in the mine. Subsequent events proved how wrong they were.
This case underscores the importance of retrieving vampire bodies, no matter how unlikely their survival. History has proven that vampires can survive fires, shootings, explosions...and being frozen alive.
Fort Blood
The North-West Mounted Police,
Special Division, a.k.a. the Specials
At about the same time that the FVZA was being organized here in the United States, our neighbors to the north were coming to grips with their own vampire problems. For about 200 years, the huge swath of land in the western half of Canada was controlled by the fur-trading Hudson's Bay Company. The powerful Company was able to keep any vampire outbreaks in check with their own security force. But when the Canadian Confederation Act of 1867 brought the western lands under Canada's control, the Hudson's Bay Company pulled out, leaving the region in a state of disorder. A motley crew of outlaws began moving into the region, and in those days, whenever outlaws congregated, vampirism was sure to follow.
The opportunistic outlaws were mostly Americans who saw money to be made setting up illegal whiskey-trading camps in the region. These scofflaws would trade whiskey with Indians in return for buffalo furs and horses, and the success of their operations sometimes enabled their crude encampments to grow into rowdy towns rife with gunfights and prostitution. Vampirism inevitably took hold, driving out the transients and leaving the Indians to deal with the problem.
Inside Fort Blood
There was one whiskey-trading camp that eclipsed all others in debauchery and lawlessness. The camp, which would come to be known as Fort Blood, was the provenance of the Gallatin Gang, a group of low-lifes who had escaped from a Montana prison before making their way to the Great White North and establishing a successful whiskey business. Even by the standards of whiskey camps, Fort Blood was a den of iniquity. With all the prostitutes and transients, it was inevitable that a vampire plague arrived, and when it did, the Gallatin Gang hit upon a novel solution to the problem. Rather than leave town, the Gang struck up an agreement with the vampires in which they would lure Indians to the camp with the promise of whiskey, and then set the vampires on them. In return for providing blood for the vampires, the Fort Blood outlaws were able to keep and sell whatever buffalo hides and horses they took from the Indians. By the early 1870s, Fort Blood had grown into a formidable problem, paralyzing regional trade and settlement and poisoning sensitive relations between the local Indian tribes and the new Canadian government. Now that Canada was responsible for this land, it was clear that Fort Blood had to go.
In 1873, a freshly-minted force of 250 Canadian Mounted Police, or Mounties, traveled west with orders to destroy Fort Blood. But the Gallatin Gang received word of the impending attack and was ready when the Mounties arrived. The Gang repulsed the attack and then, as night fell, unleashed the vampires. All 250 Mounties were killed. The defeat was a stinging rebuke to the newly formed government, and proof that Canada needed a specialized force to fight vampirism in the west.
In 1874, a bill was passed creating the the North-West Mounted Police, Special Division, or the "Specials," for short. 400 men were recruited and trained in vampire combat, and in July of 1874, they left their compound at Fort Manitoba for the long trek west. With 300 horses, 73 wagons and 142 heads of cattle in tow, the Specials followed the Boundary Trail west and made camp at a bend in the Milk River not far from Fort Blood.
The Specials in control
Rather than conduct a frontal assault on the fort, the Specials took a more stealthy approach. A small battalion slipped into the fort posing as Indians and, once inside, killed the Gallatin Gang. They then let the rest of the Specials in to finish off the sleeping vampires. By the next morning, Fort Blood was nothing more than a smoldering pile of ash.
For the next several years, the Specials marched from outpost to outpost, slaying vampires and restoring order to the region. Trade and settlement gradually returned to normal, and relations with the Indians improved. However, the frontier nature of the west ensured that the Specials remained busy, especially during the periods from 1882 to 1885, when the railroad was under construction, and 1896 to 1899, during the Klondike Gold Rush. Like the FVZA, the Specials were often pulled away to fight wars on foreign soil, but they still managed to keep a lid on any vampire or zombie outbreaks in their homeland. In 1973, the Specials celebrated their centennial with a ceremony during which they received medals from Queen Elizabeth II. Shortly thereafter, they were disbanded.
Paris' eerie
catacombs
In the summer of 1891, young painter Lucien Steketee arrived in Paris from a small village in Brittany to find a city energized by bold artists breaking free of the confines of Impressionism. Even in a place crowded with painters, the young Breton quickly stood out. Tall and handsome, student of Monet's, friend to Pissaro and Cezanne, he cut a dashing figure in the City of Light.
Like fellow painter Toulouse-Lautrec, Steketee's preferred subject was the nightlife around his atelier in Montmartre. He painted prostitutes, dancing girls, beggars...and vampires. While other artists had painted vampires from memory, Steketee was the first to have them sit for portraits. Despite the danger, Steketee painted over a dozen vampire portraits, and with each one his sense of ease grew. In July of 1892, a vampire suggested to him that Paris' underground catacombs, with their stacks of skulls and bones, would be a more atmospheric backdrop for the portrait; Steketee foolishly followed him there and was set upon by a hunting pack.
Moulin Rouge
Two days later, a local vampire patrol discovered Steketee about to sink his teeth into a young woman. He fled to the nearby Moulin Rouge nightclub and barricaded himself on the third floor. A mob formed outside and began chanting for the vampire's head. In desperation, Steketee stepped out onto the balcony and made an impassioned plea for his life. So persuasive was he that the mob spared him and allowed the gendarmes to take him away to jail.
Steketee in an
1890 self-portrait
Steketee had found his calling. Writing feverishly in his dim prison cell, he advanced the radical notion that vampires should be treated like the sick people they were, and hospitalized rather than destroyed. Steketee's broadsides were distributed by his artist friends and created a sensation in Paris. Key to his growing support was his claim that he could live without blood. "Controlling bloodlust," he wrote, "is a matter of discipline and faith." He held himself up as proof, and the public bought it.
With public sentiment on his side, Steketee was released into the care of Madame Mauriello, a wealthy widower and devoted follower. She set him up in her Tuileries mansion, where he continued his crusade, speaking to huge crowds and winning support from politicians and religious leaders.
Mme. Mauriello's mansion
the day after the fire
But away from the spotlight, Steketee was hunting, with the help of Madame Mauriello. Each night, she would prowl the streets of Paris looking for young women to lure back to her mansion under the auspices of posing for a famous artist. Once there, the women would be plied with wine until Steketee emerged, fangs flashing. He kept the "newly converted" in his service as a sort of harem.
The arrangement was shortlived. Early on the morning of December 12th, 1892, a terrified girl arrived in the police station claiming that she had narrowly escaped the clutches of a vampire. Police officers followed her back to the Mauriello mansion and discovered the pack. Word spread, and for the second time in his life, Lucien Steketee found himself hiding out from an angry mob. But this time, there was no escape: the mob burned the mansion to the ground, with Steketee, Mme. Mauriello and the young vampires inside.
Steketee's body was never found, leading to speculation that he had escaped; a suspicion strengthened during World War II, when several members of the French Resistance reported seeing a man resembling Steketee prowling the sewers. To this day, he is said to emerge from underground on the anniversary of his death to claim a victim. Which is why, before nightfall on December 12th, suspicious Parisians hang garlic and crosses over their doorways.
How to grow your disguised 4X4 garden and save $90.00 per week on your grocery bills:
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Learning about Homesteading:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5386856_life-homesteader.html
http://www.littlehouseliving.com/homestead-living
How to Decode Weather Radio Warnings
by MERISSA on JULY 12, 2013
Post image for How to Decode Weather Radio Warnings
One of the things on my the top of my recommendation list for ALL households to have is a weather radio. During a storm your television might be down, your internet might not be working, but as long as you either still have power or if you have a battery powered Weather Radio, you will still be able to know what's going on around you and what's still to come.
A weather radio can provide invaluable information that will help you better prepare for what's coming. Weather Radios are inexpensive and you can choose from a few different kinds of models. If you are worried about not having power, make sure to get a battery powered or a hand crankable radio. If you don't plan on being near your radio all the time, one with an alarm is the way to go. Whichever way you go, make sure you have a weather radio in your home at all times! By looking over the options I'm sure you'll be able to find the best weather radio option for your family. We personally have a small Midland Weather Radio we picked up for only about $25. (We used to have a crank radio but I found that did not get as good of a signal where we lived, although I really liked the crank option.) While I'm sure ours isn't the best weather radio out there, it fits our needs because it has an alarm that will go off automatically and alert us for coming weather so I don't have to push the buttons on the device and wait for the weekly weather to finish before I can hear the alert.
Now about what that cryptic monotone voice on your weather radio...what exactly is she talking about? Let's decode her warning piece by piece.
"The National Weather Service in ________ ...."
Each weather radio runs off the weather provided by their local reporting offices and the blanks up above represent your closest town with one of these offices (usually the largest town in the area unless you live in a large city or suburban area, then they would have serveral).
"...has issued a..."
Here's the different kinds of warnings that can be issued by your weather radio
Tornado
Hurricane
Severe Thunderstorm
Flash Flood
Flood
Winter Storm
Special Marine
Non Precipitation (Wind or Fog)
Tsunami
Space Weather
DSC_0434
"Watch or Warning"
Knowing the difference between a Watch and Warning are important. A Watch means that conditions are likely or favorable to develop whatever the announcement is about. A Watch is your chance to prepare for the issue so when it changes into a Warning. A Warning means that whatever the announcement is about is happening now so it's time to seek shelter and get ready for immediate issues.
"For the following counties...."
With this announcement the voice will then list all the counties that the particular watch or warning is for. They will also say if it's only for a certain part of a county (Central, West-Central, Eastern, ect) so you know if you are in the path. It's a good idea to set your weather radio to report all surrounding counties...not just the one you live in, so you are aware of what is going on around you and what is headed your way sooner than if you just put in your own county. Weather can move quickly and it's better to be prepared.
"Until _____ am/pm."
The voice will then let you know what time to expect this weather until. This time can change frequently so it's a good idea to keep listening to future broadcasts, even if they seem the same, to make sure the time hasn't changed.
"Stay alert for...."
This warning phrase isn't always mentioned at the end of the broadcast but often when they want to rely more information this will come at the end of the warning and let you know what kind of hail is associated with the storm, or what kind of damage the storm has already produced. This is a good part to listen to so you have a better, more specific idea of what to watch for and be ready for.
This should conclude a typical weather radio warning. There may be another warning for your county that will follow this warning for something else that you should be alert about also so make sure to listen to the broadcast.
Weather radios can also tell you of chemical issues, earthquakes, avalanches, and more. They are one of the best ways to stay informed about what is happening around you so you can be prepared for what might be coming your way!
For Homemade Laundry Soap!
http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2011/07/frugal-homemade-laundry-soap.html
For homemade Laundry Spot Remover:
http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/03/diy-laundry-spot-remover.html
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http://www.homestead.org/
http://cookbook.homestead.org/
http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2010/11/25/how-to-become-a-modern-homesteader
http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/
http://www.organic-gardening-and-homesteading.com/self-sufficient-life.html
Make your own Peppermint Extract!
DIY Mint Extract
1 cup fresh mint leaves (I used Peppermint, but feel free to play around with other varieties)
1 1/2 to 2 cups of vodka
Time…
peppermint extract recipe
1. Harvest the mint, and give it a quick rinse. Pat dry.
2. Remove the leaves from the stems, and discard the stems.
3. Crush and smash the leaves in your hands–this will help to release some of the oils and give the process a jump start.
4. Place the leaves in a pint-sized glass jar, and fill the jar the rest of the way with vodka.
5. Give it a shake and set aside in a cool, dark place.
6. Allow the mixture to steep for one to two months. Take a peek every so often to see if it’s strong enough for you.
7. Strain the leaves, and bottle the finished extract in cute little jars.
diy mint extract recipe
Notes
The amounts on this don’t have to be exact- feel to use more or less mint/vodka. The most important thing is that you completely cover the leaves with the alcohol, so they don’t mold.
I usually use the cheapest vodka I can find for my extracts.
Yes, I feel really weird dragging my two small children into the liquor store so I can buy a giant jug of vodka.
http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/#sthash.lWkBtEhJ.dpuf
Dr. Mikao Usui
Quest for Knowledge
Reiki was rediscovered and revived in the middle of the 19th Century by a Christian monk by the name of Mikao Usui. The story of Usui's search for the secret knowledge has been told many times by Grand Master Hawayo Takata (1900-1980).
Usui was the Principal of a Christian seminary in Kyoto, Japan. When his students asked him why they had not learned anything of the healing method used by Jesus, they asked Usui to demonstrate it for them, but he was unable to do so. It was at that time that he decided to relinquish his position as Principal of the seminary and he left to study Christianity in a Christian country until he gained the knowledge.
The Holy Writings
Usui's quest led him to America, where he attended the University of Chicago and became a Doctor of Theology. However, he could not find any answers in Christian writings regarding hands-on healing. Able to read Japanese, Chinese, English and Sanskrit, Usui searched Chinese scripts to no avail, and eventually traveled to North India, where he was able to study the Holy Writings.
Meditation and Revelation
Usui later returned to Japan where he discovered some Sanskrit formulas and symbols in old Buddhist Sutras which seemed to hold the answers to his quest. At the time of his find he was living in a monastery in Kyoto, from where he traveled to the Holy Mountain of Kuriyama. It was there that he decided to fast and meditate in solitude for 21 days with the hope of gaining contact with a level of consciousness as described in the Sanskrit formulas. Upon his arrival at the mountain, he placed 21 small stones in front of him, to enable him to count the number of days in his fast. As each day passed he would discard one of the stones.
During his time on the mountain Usui read in the Sutras, sang and meditated. Nothing unusual happened until the last day, when he saw a shining light moving toward him at great speed. It became larger and larger until it finally hit him in the center of the forehead. He saw millions of little colored bubbles of blue, lilac, pink and all the colors of the rainbow. A great white light appeared, and he saw the little-known Sanskrit symbols in front of him glowing in shining gold. This was the birth of Usui's system of Reiki as revealed to him from the Buddhist Sutras.
The Healing Miracles
When Usui returned to a normal state of consciousness, the sun was shining high in the sky. He felt an elation of spirit and a sense of strength and energy, and thus he began his descent from the mountain. In his rush downward, he stubbed his toe on a rock and he fell upon the ground. His toe was bleeding, and when he instinctively grabbed his toe in both of his hands for a few minutes, the bleeding stopped and the pain disappeared. THIS WAS THE FIRST MIRACLE.
Usui was very hungry, and he stopped at an inn along the wayside and ordered a large Japanese breakfast. The innkeeper warned him not to eat such a large meal after fasting for so long, but Usui was able to eat it all without any adverse effects. THIS WAS THE SECOND MIRACLE.
The granddaughter of the innkeeper had a bad toothache from which she had been suffering for several days. Usui laid his hands upon her swollen face and she immediately felt better. She ran to her grandfather and told him that their guest was no ordinary monk. THIS WAS THE THIRD MIRACLE.
The Birth of the Ethical Principles of Reiki
Usui returned to his monastery but decided after a few days to go to the beggar City in the slums of Kyoto to treat the beggars and help them lead a better life. He worked for seven years in an asylum treating many illnesses. One day, however, he noticed the same people with the same old faces kept returning. When he asked them why they had not begun a new life, he was told working was too troublesome and that it was easier to go on begging.
Usui was deeply shaken, and he wept. He suddenly realized that he had forgotten something of great importance in his healing work, namely to teach the beggars GRATITUDE. In the following days he thought out the Reiki principles as follows:
Just for today do not worry
Just for today do not anger
Honor your parents, teachers, and elders
Earn your living honestly
Show gratitude to everything
Soon afterwards he left the asylum and returned to Kyoto where he kindled a large torch and stood in the streets. When asked why he stood in the streets with the torch, he said he was looking for people in search of the TRUE LIGHT - people who were ill and oppressed and longed to be healed. This was the beginning of a new part of his life, which he spent traveling around Japan teaching Reiki.
Usui is now buried in a Kyoto temple, with the story of his life written on his gravestone. It is said that his grave was honored by the Emperor of Japan. One of Usui's closest collaborators, Dr. Chijiro Hayashi, took his place, becoming the second Reiki Grand Master in a line of tradition. He ran a private Reiki clinic in Tokyo until 1940, where unusually severe illness and disease could be treated with Reiki. This clinic was where Hawayo Takata of Hawaii first received Reiki treatments that would later lead her to study with Dr. Hayashi. Takata returned to Hawaii after her studies and was made a Reiki Master by Hayashi when he visited the Island in 1938. Upon his death in 1941, Takata succeeded Hayashi as Grand Master herself when she was about seventy-four years of age, initiating 21 Reiki Masters to carry on the great work. On December 11, 1980, Hawayo Takata passed to the higher side of life, leaving 22 Masters in the United Stares and Canada.
Giving you breaks from chronic pain, which allows you to have the energy for those things important to you, and cutr back on the need for pain medication.
Helping to bring balance and harmony to the confusion caused by neurological disorders, and help the body to form new pathways so that you can do tasks your way. Also help in studying and learning things new to you.
Allowing you to be your best for holiday celebrations, important events, communicating with friends and family, and when you want your project to be take on that special light.
Grounded you in such a way that you can focus and put 100% of yourself into one thing.
Easing depression, insomnia, lack of confidence, addiction, and fear-based illnesses.
Helping you in reprogramming your thought process so the old tapes that today are causing you stress can be rewritten in a positive way.
Bringing the healing of balance and harmony to places in need that may not be detected by you or medical professionals; healing can happen before you experience any symptoms, or when you feel lousy but technology cannot diagnose the reason.
Cleanse all of your energy field that surrounds you, which are called auras and chakras, with any rituals.
Helps broken bones to heal faster and better then medical professionals expect (in class I give a personal example of this). Cuts, burns and bruises also heal more quickly as universal energy enhances and strengthens your healer within.
Relieve congestion and help you to move cold and flu viruses out of you body more quickly.
What Can You Expect During A Reiki Treatment
Reiki can be used to treat the whole body or can be localised to a specific part of the body. A full body treatment can last between 45 to 90 minutes, with a localised treatment lasting approximately 20 minutes or so. You remain fully clothed and typically will be asked to lie on a massage table or be seated in a chair. You are then entered into a calm and relaxing state, and then I will place my hands on or near various parts of the body, including the head, torso, knees and feet. Hands will remain in certain positions for approximately three minutes before moving to the next position. The hand positions will often coincide with your seven main chakra points.
What you can expect after your treatment
After your treatment you may feel deeply relaxed and ideally if possible you need to try and rest and allow yourself to enjoy the whole experience. Reiki stimulates natural rebalancing so take time to come around before driving, although any lack of concentration will soon pass and you should feel refreshed following the experience of undergoing a Reiki treatment. There will be a requirement to drink plenty of water to flush away toxins in the system.
Benefits Of Reiki
The benefits of Reiki are said to be many, but in general terms having a Reiki treatment is said to release Reiki energy that will assist in providing balance to the whole person in mind, body and spirit and is a non-invasive holistic therapy.
Adapts to the needs of the recipientReiki Benefits wChakra Symbols 32175814 std 223x300 Reiki
Helps meditative states
Promotes personal awareness
Enhances spiritual connection
Fosters natural self healing
Relaxes and reduces stress
Balances energies in the body
Relieves pain and discomfort
Examples Of Where Reiki Can Help
Acute or Chronic pain
Allergies
Arthritis
Cancer patients respond well to Reiki
Detox the body
Headaches
Heal emotional issues
Heal trauma
Help calm the mind
IBS
ME
MS
Panic Attacks
Promote deep relaxation
Reduce stress and tension
Speed up healing after surgery
One of the greatest Reiki healing health benefits is stress reduction and relaxation, which triggers the bodies natural healing abilities, and improves and maintains health. Reiki healing is a natural therapy that gently balances life energies and brings health and well being to the recipient.
This simple, non-invasive healing system works with the Higher Self of the Receiver to promote health and well being of the entire physical, emotional and psychic body. Therefore it is truly a system of attaining and promoting wholeness of Mind, Body and Spirit.
Reiki is a specific type of subtle energy work in which healing is performed by the touch of the hands, allowing the flow of the energy from a limitless source (God Force) to the patient via the Reiki practitioner. It is extremely powerful, yet gentle energy that can be easily channelled to yourself and others, just by intention.
Reiki healing is a pure energy form. When it is combined with the sincere Desire of the Healee, who is willing to effect a cleansing within their emotional and spiritual consciousness, a total healing can occur.
POTENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS OF REIKI HEALING TREATMENTS
When the flow of the "Life Force Energy" is disrupted, weakened or blocked, emotional or health problems tend to occur. Imbalances can be caused from many situations occurring in our lives, such as: emotional or physical trauma, injury, negative thoughts and feelings, including fear, worry, doubt, anger, anxiety, negative self-talk, toxicity, nutritional depletion, destructive lifestyle and relationships, neglect of self and lack of love for oneself or others, from emotions that are not expressed in a healthy way...
Reiki is excellent for healing any physical, mental, emotional and spiritual issues of any kind and it gives wonderful results.
Some Of The Reiki Healing Health Benefits:
Creates deep relaxation and aids the body to release stress and tension,
It accelerates the bodie's self-healing abilities,
Aids better sleep,
Reduces blood pressure
Can help with accute (injuries) and chronic problems (asthma, eczema, headaches, etc.) and aides the breaking of addictions,
Helps relieve pain,
Removes energy blockages, adjusts the energy flow of the endocrine system bringing the body into balance and harmony,
Assists the body in cleaning itself from toxins,
Reduces some of the side effects of drugs and helps the body to recover from drug therapy after surgery and chemotherapy,
Supports the immune system,
Increases vitality and postpones the aging process,
Raises the vibrational frequency of the body,
Helps spiritual growth and emotional clearing
When we are relaxed, stress-free, we are able to restore our natural ability to heal.
Long term practice of whole-body reiki will restore the general condition of the body. It will open the energy channels and this will allow the body to deal properly and naturally with stress and build-up toxins and cope with anxiety and depression.
When a person is in good health, regular therapy will increase the bodies built-in defences. This will manifest itself as confidence and outward harmony in dealing with everyday events. The person will gain a positive outlook on life.
Reiki will also provide additional energy required to recover from illness.
A Reiki healing session can induce an extremely comfortable state of being that can bring alteration in the clients consciousness.
If used with other natural therapies (meditation, crystals, aroma therapy, Bach Flower remedies, homeopathy, etc.) Reiki will reinforce their effect.
It can be used also as complementary therapy, because Reiki is truly a complementary care. It complements and enhances the health care the patient receives in the hospital or from other health care providers.
Reiki healing complements Eastern and Western medicine and everybody can benefit from it.It is beneficial to the health of woman (even pregnant), man, children and it is also excellent to be used on animals (dogs, cats, horses), plants, water, etc.
Reiki healing energy is a tool for use at any moment, any time, any where for on-the-spot stress release, pain relief and quick energy.
ABOUT THE USUI SYSTEM OF REIKI HEALING
This natural healing modality originates in Tibet. The name "Reiki" (rey-key)comes from the technique as re-discovered by Dr. Mikao Usui, a Japanese Buddhist in the early 20th century.
"Re" means "Universal" and it is a general term for spirit or unseen spiritual quality, which serves as channel for "Ki" or "Life Force Energy" (some call it God, Buddha, Chi, Qi, Prana, Love Energy, or similar). It relates to the superior, all-encompassing cosmic energy from which all other minor energies in the universe draw their power. Everything in the Universe is made up from energy particulars which form the Omniscient, All-Knowing Blueprint for Creation. The Vital Living Energy Force comes in different manifestations of energy and one of these being the frequences in which Reiki was born.
The Usui System of Natural Healing teaches us also the "Secret Art" of "Inviting Happiness" into one's life which can be achieved by working with the Five Reiki Ideals and the Three Degrees of Attunements. The Five Reiki Ideals help us realize that improving oneself is an essential part of Reiki healing.
HOW REIKI HEALING ENERGY WORKS?
The body is more than just a collection of functioning parts. Since everything generates a frequency, the body and its organs have their own energy field which is continually changing. All conditions of disease are rooted in this energy system. If our "life force" is low or blocked, we are more likely to get sick. But if it is high and flowing freely, we can maintain our health and well being.
Reiki Healing Energy provides means to balance the human energy fields (Auras) and energy centers (Chakras) to create conditions needed for the bodies healing system to function.
The Reiki practitioner assists the client to heal themselves spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically by a simple laying on of hands. By the use of ancient healing symbols the practitioner channels the Universal Life Force energy allowing it to flow where is needed to bring the energy centers into alignement.
The Reiki practitioner must be a clear vessel through which the healing energy flows. He/She plays an instrumental part in the healing process, but ultimately it is up to the healee to manifest harmony and balance in their own life.
Many human cultures have given names to the full moon throughout the year. Different full moon names can be found among the Chinese, Celtic, Old English, and New Guinea cultures, to name a few. In addition, Native American tribes often used moon phases and cycles to keep track of the seasons and gave a unique name to each recurring full moon. The full moon names were used to identify the entire month during which each occurred.
Although many Native American Tribes gave distinct names to the full moon, the most well known names of the full moon come from the Algonquin tribes who lived in the area of New England and westward to Lake Superior. The Algonquin tribes had perhaps the greatest effect on the early European settlers in America, and the settlers adopted the Native American habit of naming the moons. They even invented some of their own names that have been passed down through time.
The names given below aren't the only ones that have been used. Every full moon, with one exception, had variations on its name among various Algonquin tribes, not to mention other tribes throughout North America. But the names below are the most common. Some of the variations are also mentioned.
January: The Wolf Moon
In January snow gathers deep in the woods and the howling of wolves can be heard echoing in the cold still air. Some tribes called this moon the Snow Moon, but most often it was used for the next month.
February: The Snow Moon
Snow piles even higher in February, giving this moon its most common name. Among tribes that used this name for the January moon, the February moon was called the Hunger Moon due to the challenging hunting conditions.
March: The Worm Moon
Snow slowly begins to melt, the ground softens, and earthworms show their heads again and their castings or fecal matter can be found. Other signs of spring gave rise to other variations: the cawing of crows (the Crow Moon); the formation of crusts on the snow from repeated thawing and freezing (the Crust Moon); and the time for tapping maple trees (the Sap Moon). Christian settlers also called this the Lenten Moon and considered it the last moon of winter.
April: The Pink Moon
Flowers begin to appear, including the widespread grass pink or wild ground phlox. Other variations indicate more signs of full spring, such as Sprouting Grass Moon, Egg Moon, and Fish Moon (common among coastal tribes).
May: The Flower Moon
Flowers come into full bloom and corn is ready to plant. Also called the Corn Planting Moon and the Milk Moon.
June: The Strawberry Moon
Strawberry-picking season reaches its peak during this time. This is one of the few names that was universal to all Algonquin tribes.
July: The Buck Moon
Buck deer start growing velvety hair-covered antlers in July. Frequent thunderstorms in the New England area also resulted in the name Thunder Moon. Some tribes also used Hay Moon.
August: The Sturgeon Moon
The sturgeon, a large fish common to the Great Lakes and other nearby bodies of water, is most easily caught during this month. The reddish appearance of the moon through the frequent sultry hazes of August also prompted a few tribes to dub it the Red Moon. Other names included the Green Corn Moon and the Grain Moon.
September: The Harvest Moon
Many of the Native American tribes' staple foods, such as corn, pumpkins, squash, beans, and rice, are ready for gathering at this time. The strong light of the Harvest Moon allowed European farmers to work late into the night to harvest their crops. The Harvest Moon does not always occur in September. Traditionally, the name goes to the full moon closest to the autumn equinox, which falls during October once or twice a decade. Sometimes the September full moon was called the Corn Moon.
October: The Hunter's Moon
After the fields have been reaped, the leaves begin to fall and the deer are fat and ready for eating. Hunters can ride easily over the fields' stubble, and the fox and other animals are more easily spotted. Some years the Harvest Moon falls in October instead of September.
November: The Beaver Moon
At this time of year the beavers are busy preparing for winter, and it's time to set beaver traps and secure a store of warm fur before the swamps freeze over. Some tribes called this the Frosty Moon.
December: The Cold Moon
Winter takes a firm hold and temperatures plummet at this time. Sometimes this moon is also called the Long Night Moon as the winter nights lengthen and the moon spends more time above the horizon opposite a low sun. The full moon name often used by Christian settlers is the "Moon before Yule".
Blue Moon
Note that due to the 29-day lunar cycle the exact dates of the full moon move every year. Most seasons have three full moons, but because of the variation some seasons have four full moons. The term "blue moon" was used to identify one of these extra full moons. A mistaken definition in the March 1946 edition of Sky and Telescope magazine claimed the blue moon fell on the second full moon of the calendar month. This mistake caused widespread misunderstanding until it was finally corrected in 1999.
In the days of the Old Testament, the ancients watched for the New Moon diligently; when the pale crescent
Moon first appeared in the sky. This was, actually, the crescent Moon of modern astronomy. The exact
point of the New Moon was always in darkness. It could be expected to hear the ram’s horn at New and
Full Moons as per Psalm 81:3, but another explanation of how the New Moon was announced in Jerusalem
during the days of Herod;
The accurate determination of the new Moon was always of the utmost importance to the Hebrews,
because if they were not precise with the exact time of the new moon it would upset their whole calendar,
and the Lord of the calendar would be sought on the wrong days. If the Lord is indeed the Lord of times
and seasons and designed a calendar, then it was their duty to observe it with accuracy and heart-felt
passion.
During the time of Herod’s Temple the high priest was the one chosen to announce the New Moon from
the Temple, based upon the testimony of two trustworthy witnesses. Once the announcement was made
torches were lit on the Mount of Olives, which was a signal to those waiting upon other hills, even distant
hills, that the New Moon had appeared over Jerusalem and to celebrate the New Moon with those even
of the dispersion.
The ancient lunar calendar as well as the tropical astronomical calendar seem to make more sense than
the Gregorian. Very few people realize that some of the holidays we celebrate are based on the ancient
Lunar Calendar as well as the Astrological.
Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the full Moon after the Spring Equinox which usually falls on
March 21st.
Christmas is celebrated on the fourth day after the Winter Solstice as the Sun begins its Northern trek past
the Spring Equinox to the Summer Solstice when, again the Sun will rise a bit Southerly passing the
Autumnal Equinox and set a bit South of East.
Following the Lunar Cycle as part of our spiritual devotions can be very fulfilling in developing a deeper
connection with our planet, Mother Earth, and Father Heaven.
The Eight Lunar Phases and Keywords
New Moon: New beginnings, fresh start, blank page.
Crescent Moon: Intention, hopes, and wishes
First Quarter Moon: Challenges, decisions, action.
Gibbous Moon: Adjust, refine, edit.
Full Moon: Signed, sealed, and stamped.
Disseminating Moon: Gratitude, sharing, enthusiasm.
Last Quarter Moon: Release, let go, forgive.
Balsamic Moon: Surrender, rest, recuperate.
Following the lunar phases has special meaning to women as for 50 years or so we are physically and,
perhaps, emotionally following the same phases in our lives. The Moon represents women in Astrology.
The New Moon represents the menses and in ancient days women retired from others during this time.
After three days, another hormone takes over and a woman is preparing and intending her next action.
After a week (the first quarter) she returns to the action in her life and takes the steps towards fulfilling her
plans. Any changes comes at the gibbous phase and the flowering occurs during the Full Moon which
occurs two weeks after the New Moon (this is also the time she is fertile and can become pregnant).
The disseminating Moon is the time a woman reaps the rewards for a job well done with celebrations and
accolades. The last quarter is clean-up time, putting everything back in place and letting go of the
emotional intensity of the last weeks. The balsamic phase is the recuperation and surrender phase;
preparing for another time of retiring from her world at the New Moon coming.
New Moon
The Lunar Phases begin at the New Moon. Today it is all figured out when the actual New Moon occurs,
but in ancient days the New Moon began at the first observance of the crescent Moon.
Historically, new moon spotters in Israel watched for the thin crescent to establish the beginning of each
month. Once seen they reported their sighting to the calendar court authorities of the Sanhedrin. Note
what one authority says, “Originally, the New Moon was not fixed by astronomical calculation, but was
solemnly proclaimed after witnesses had testified to the reappearance of the crescent of the moon,”
Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 12, p. 1039. http://www.yrm.org/whatisbiblicalnewmoon.htm
So, too, today as we cannot see the actual New Moon, the Dark of the Moon is a time for a fresh start, a
clean slate, and a new beginning. It’s a time of gathering our thoughts, planning our campaign, and getting
ready for announcing it at the Crescent Moon.
Crescent Moon
The Crescent Moon is the time to announce our intentions, hopes, and wishes for the Lunar Month. It is
good to write them down either on a piece of paper or in our Journal. Journaling can be a valuable tool in
our daily spiritual devotions.
First Quarter Moon
The First Quarter Moon appears approximately a week after the New Moon. We might call the First
Quarter Moon, as well as the Last Quarter Moon, “the half Moon,” because the Moon appears cut in half. It
is not a quarter of a Moon at all in appearance.
At the First Quarter Moon, we might meet challenges we had not prepared for. We may need to make on-
the-spot decisions about how to proceed and then do what needs to be done in order for our intentions to
manifest. It is a time for action.
Gibbous Moon
At Gibbous Moon we may have to refine or edit our primary hopes. Maybe something has happened that
we cannot fulfill our intentions; maybe we changed our mind. Whatever has occurred, this is the time to
rephrase or adjust/edit our written note. There is nothing to fret about; it is a good thing to realize
limitations or change of mind. This is the time that it is easy to accommodate and adjust.
Full Moon
This is the time that our contract is signed, sealed, and stamped. Note that it is not necessarily delivered.
It may be, but if it is not, do not be discouraged. We still have two weeks to devote to this intentional
period. Know that the intention is “out there” in the universe and time is gathering all the circumstances
and other people’s intentions and time frame together to make this happen the best way for all concerned.
Some teach that in six months the Full Moon will be in the same House as the New Moon occurring this
month. Therefore, it may take six months for your intentions to manifest rather than two weeks.
Disseminating Moon
This is the time to be grateful, talk about your intention to those who wish you well, share your hopes and
wishes, and ask those who love you to keep good thoughts for you. Tell yourself enthusiastically that your
intentions are “already done.”
Last Quarter Moon
Now is the time to let go, release, and forgive anything and everyone that you may feel has hurt you in any
way. It is a time of emptying self and allowing the universe to take over or whomever you trust in your faith.
It is out of your hands and no more action is needed from you.
Balsamic Moon
Peace. This is the time to surrender, rest, and recuperate. No more thinking, planning, getting in your own
way, or action of any kind; just peace. As the Moon slowly enters “the dark of the Moon,” we allow our visual
minds to become dark, too, and still. Peace.
**This is not to replace the advice of your Physician's Diagnosis and Treatment:
Concept of Blood
The concept of blood (xue) in traditional Chinese medicine is closely related to the concept of blood in Western medicine except that it goes further to include functions such as tissue nourishment. The diagnosis of “blood deficiency” in Chinese medicine often corresponds to iron deficiency anemia in Western medicine but a patient can still have “blood deficiency” by Chinese medical standards even though testing may reveal normal blood iron level.
During female monthly cycle, blood plays a major roll in nourishing the endometrium (uterine lining) and preparing it for embryo implantation. Endometrial tissue is very sensitive to hormonal fluctuations and as it gets closer to the ovulation, estrogen production increases which in turn provokes endometrial lining to proliferate and produce more blood vessels. Nice and rich uterine lining creates a fertile ground for the new life to develop. If uterine lining is too thin the process of conception becomes more difficult. Uterine lining can be seen and measured via ultrasound and the thickness between 8 and 13 millimeters in the second part of the cycle (after ovulation) is generally considered normal.
What Causes Blood Deficiency?
Women are especially prone to blood deficiency if they have a history of heavy periods. It is important to replenish the blood that has been lost during the period by eating blood nourishing and iron rich foods. Inadequate protein intake is a very common contributing factor as well. If a woman is consuming vegan or vegetarian diet she has to be especially careful to include enough protein with every meal, supplement vitamin B12 as well as include cereal grasses like wheat grass and micro algae such as spirulina and chlorella . According to Chinese medical theory, overexercising tends to consume the blood which is why most professional athletes tend to stop menstruating.
Inability to absorb nutrients and gastrointestinal bleeding are important contributors to blood deficiency. If a person experiences digestive issues it is important to address them first before prescribing blood tonic herbs which can be difficult to digest. Anxiety, worry and over thinking can interact with the digestive process since the way we process our emotions is directly linked to the way we process our nutrients. That is why our gut has been referred to as our “second brain” and functional GI disorders are closely linked to the amount of stress that we experience.
Signs and Symptoms of Blood Deficiency
Typical signs and symptoms of blood deficiency include:
-history of irregular periods
-light and short menstrual bleeding
-amenorrhea (complete cessation of periods)
-fatigue especially during and after periods
-dry skin, brittle nails, hair loss
-thin body constitution
-tingling and numbness in extremities, muscle tension
-tendency toward constipation and dry stools
-pale complexion, pale tongue, thin and weak pulse
How is Blood Deficiency Treated?
Blood deficiency responds well to dietary changes and usage of blood building herbal tonics. To enrich blood with nutrition there are two general approaches: improving digestive function and absorption of nutrients and adding blood building foods. General guidelines for improving overall digestive function include:
-remove processed and denatured foods from your diet
-reduce or completely avoid sugar
-include fresh vegetables on daily basis
-eat fruit when in season
-consume only best quality organic meats
-regularly consume fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, miso,
-drink only room temperature water and herbal tea, avoid fruit juices, coffee (especially decaf), sodas, energy drinks
Foods that are specifically used to build blood include:
-animal protein: chicken/beef liver, lamb,beef, chicken, turkey, gelatin, mussels, oysters, sardines, eggs
-plant protein: tofu, tempeh (tofu should not be consumed in large amounts in people with cold constitution)
-grains: rice, oats, wheat, bran flakes, millet
-legumes: lentils, beans (black, kidney, navy, pinto), garbanzo beans, mung beans,
-vegetables: green leafy veggies (swiss chard, spinach, kale), beets, seaweed, sprouts, artichokes, mashrooms, cabbage, celery, watercress
-fruits: cherries, all berries (blackberry, raspberry…), grapes, dried apricots, dried figs, prunes
-nuts and seeds: almond, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, cashew
-herbs/other: nettles, wheatgrass, spirulina, royal jelly, mugwort, white peony root, angelica root, rhemannia root, blackstrap molasses
General suggestions:
-chew your food properly
-sit down when you eat and avoid watching TV, reading, talking on the phone while eating
-try to rest as much as possible during your period and keep you body well dressed and warm
-don’t excercise to the point of exhaustion
-use meditation or any other mind calming excercises that help you relax
RECIPE:
Fast Beet Root Soup
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium beetroots, grated
1 large carrot, grated
1 onion, finely chopped
1 leek, cut into thin strips
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 litre/1 3/4 pints beef/chicken/vegetable stock (or plain water)
salt and black pepper
2 tablespoons natural yogurt
Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the vegetables and garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. Before the end of cooking time add salt and pepper to taste. You can add yogurt just before serving.
Beetroot is nutritious and energizing, rich in potassium, silica, iron, amino acids and vitamins A, V and C. It is ideal blood tonic in anemia and is traditionally used in debilitating diseases and convalescence. Beef stock provides vital amino acids and nutrients for strengthening muscles and bones.
1, Enrich the blood fruit – Oranges
Orange is a kind of very good enrich the blood fruit, it is rich in fruit acids, vitamins and trace elements selenium, vitamin C content to be higher than the pears, apples, peaches and grapes. The adequate nutrients to help keep the skin moist, and anti-oxidation, promote collagen formation, increase elastic, but also act as a “bleach” role, remove freckle and inhibit pigment formation. The main role of enrich the blood and beauty: white skin, reduce pigmentation and melanin formation and reduce fine wrinkles, restoring skin luster.
2, Enrich the blood fruit – Cherries
Cherries is rich in vitamin C, and iron and carotene, fruit acids, minerals and potassium content is also very high, so is the best beauty and enrich the blood nourishment, can effectively resist the formation of melanin, skin whitening smooth, ruddy, and can promote the formation of the stratum corneum, whitening skin, maintain skin elasticity.
Cherries can alleviate the anemia: adolescent girls, the strong growth. Body’s demand for iron, coupled with menstrual cramps, prone to iron deficiency anemia; pregnant lactating women to supply nutrients for the fetus or infant, iron requirements for greatly improved.
3, Enrich the blood fruit – Pomegranate
Pomegranate is one of very good enrich the blood food, it contains many essential nutrients, the fruit with vitamin C and B vitamins, organic acids, sugars, protein, fat, and calcium, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals . According to the analysis, the pomegranate fruit contains 17% carbohydrates, 79% water, sugar 13 to 17%, of which vitamin C content 1 to 2 times higher than Apple, while fat and protein content of less.
Red pomegranate is rich in minerals, and contain two antioxidants – Red pomegranate polyphenols and anthocyanins, also contains linoleic acid, vitamin C, B6, E and folic acid. Red pomegranate contains calcium, magnesium, zinc and other minerals, extracts, can quickly add skin moisture loss, make skin more bright and smooth. Red pomegranate has been shown to have strong antioxidant, it contains a substance called ellagic acid composition, can make the cells free from the pollution of the environment, UV rays harm, trophoblast cells, slowing the aging body.
Pomegranate juice contains many amino acids and trace elements, helps digestion, anti-ulcer, soften blood vessels, lowering blood pressure and blood sugar, reduce cholesterol and other functions. Prevent coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, can be refreshing to stomachic, increase appetite, longevity of the efficacy.
4, Enrich the blood fruit – Kiwi
Kiwi is considered the highest nutrient density of fruit, eat two kiwi fruit can be added in the body of calcium, enhance the body’s absorption of food, improve sleep quality. Kiwifruit contains slightly acidic, can promote gastrointestinal motility move, reducing flatulence and improving sleep. Kiwi is rich in vitamin C, a kiwi containing 87 mg of vitamin C, and some black particles in the pulp, is rich in vitamin E. Mainly for beauty effect: whitening and smooth the skin has a certain effect, but also helps hair growth.
Kiwifruit contains amino acids and natural nutrients such as inositol. Vitamin C and E concentrations are very high, not only beautiful skin, but also has antioxidant, effective whitening the skin, remove freckles and acne at the same time can enhance the ability of anti-aging skin. Its rich minerals, but also form a protective film on the hair surface.
Frankincense Essential Oil - History and Benefits of Frankincense
By Peter J. Rose
Frankincense essential oil is precious oil that is derived from the resins of the Boswellia tree. This tree is by itself amazing because it can thrive even in harsh environment and can even live on a solid rock. It grew on the lands of the Middle East and some parts in Africa.
The resin has a long and rich history. It was offered by one of the three kings to the infant Jesus. Presently we may raise some thoughts on why would a king offer a resin as a present. Back then, Frankincense was considered to be more precious than silver and gold. It was a gift fit for a king. Additionally, it was also found in the tomb of King Tut. With the two classifications of resins, the female frankincense was much more valuable than its counterpart. Female resin is described to be in reddish pale color and considered to be of higher quality fit for the kings.
Frankincense today remains as precious as it was before. Of course it would not cause you much gold but for the people who got the opportunity to be blessed by its wonderful benefits - it's priceless.
The benefits of frankincense are both used in medicinal and spiritual uses. The resins have longed been burnt in temples and important ceremonies. The oil derived from it was used for anointing. The use of it as incense passed on to generations and still is being used in Catholic masses. Medicinal side of the resin is best exemplified for treatment for respiratory ailments. When broken down, a component of the resin is considered to be anti-inflammatory which is great for inflammatory problems caused by arthritis pains by improving blood supply. The component found in the resins is called the Boswellic acid.
In aromatherapy, Frankincense is used to calm the senses. It relieves anxiety by slowing down breathing ideal for meditation and promotes stillness. It is noted that its aroma has antidepressant properties which relaxes while uplifting the mood.
With so much that this oil can provide, it is no wonder that nations would go the distance to experience its wonders.
Note: The information provided on this article is for educational purposes only and is not intended to assess, diagnose, or prescribe for any medical condition. Always seek the counsel of a qualified holistic health care practitioner for concerns.
Essential Oil - Frankincense
(Boswellia carteri)
calming, purifying
Breathing the scent of frankincense oil slows and deepens the breath allowing one to become more centered. For this, it is prized as an invaluable aid to meditation and prayer. It was recently covered in BBC Online News as an anti-cancer agent. [See our blog commentary: Frankincense Oil and Cancer]
Frankincense oil has many therapeutic applications, but its primary topical use is as an highly effective cosmetic for the reduction of wrinkles and fine lines when blended with evening primrose as a carrier oil.
Frankincense is tapped from the scraggly but hardy trees by slashing the bark, which is called striping, and allowing the exuded resin to bleed out and harden. These hardened resins are called tears. The aroma from these tears are more valuable for their presumed healing abilities and are also said to have superior qualities for religious ritual.
There are several species and varieties of frankincense trees, each producing a slightly different type of resin. Differences in soil and climate create even more diversity of the resin, even within the same species. Boswellia Sacra trees are considered unusual for their ability to grow in environments so unforgiving that they sometimes grow out of solid rock. The initial means of attachment to the rock is unknown but is accomplished by a bulbous disk-like swelling of the trunk. This growth prevents it from being ripped from the rock during violent storms that frequent this region. This feature is slight or absent in trees grown in rocky soil or gravel. The trees start producing resin when they are about eight to 10 years old.[2] Tapping is done two to three times a year with the final taps producing the best tears due to their higher aromatic terpene, sesquiterpene and diterpene content. Generally speaking, the more opaque resins are the best quality. Fine resin is produced in Yemen and along the northern coast of Somalia, from which the Roman Catholic Church draws its supplies.[3]
Recent studies have indicated that frankincense tree populations are declining, partly due to over-exploitation. Heavily tapped trees produce seeds that germinate at only 16% while seeds of trees that had not been tapped germinate at more than 80%. In addition, burning, grazing, and attacks by the longhorn beetle have reduced the tree population.[4] Conversion (clearing) of frankincense woodlands to agriculture is also a major threat.
History[edit]
Indirect burning of frankincense on a hot coal
Frankincense has been traded on the Arabian Peninsula and in North Africa for more than 5000 years.[6] A mural depicting sacks of frankincense traded from the Land of Punt adorns the walls of the temple of ancient Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut, who died circa 1458 BC.[7] The charred remains of frankincense, called kohl, was crushed and used to make the distinctive eyeliner seen on ancient Egyptians.
Frankincense was one of the consecrated incenses (HaKetoret) described in the Hebrew Bible and Talmud used in Ketoret ceremonies.[8] The frankincense of the Jews, as well as of the Greeks and Romans, is also called Olibanum (from the Arabic al-lubbān). Old Testament references report it in trade from Sheba (Isaiah 60:6 ; Jeremiah 6:20). Frankincense is mentioned in the Song of Solomon (Song of Solomon 4:14).[9]
It was offered on a specialized incense altar in the time when the Tabernacle was located in the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. The ketoret was an important component of the Temple service in Jerusalem. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible book of Exodus 30:34, where it is named levonah (lebonah in the Biblical Hebrew), meaning "white" in Hebrew.[8] It was one of the ingredients in the perfume of the sanctuary (Exodus 30:34), and was used as an accompaniment of the meal-offering (Leviticus 2:1, 2:16, 6:15, 24:7). When burnt it emitted a fragrant odour, and the incense was a symbol of the Divine name (Malachi 1:11 ; Song of Solomon 1:3) and an emblem of prayer (Psalm 141:2 ; Luke 1:10 ; Revelation 5:8, 8:3). It was often associated with myrrh (Song of Solomon 3:6, 4:6) and with it was made an offering to the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:11). A specially "pure" kind, lebhonah zakkah, was presented with the shewbread (Leviticus 24:7).[9]
"While burning incense was accepted as a practice in the later Roman Catholic church, the early church during Roman times forbade the use of incense in services resulting in a rapid decline in the incense trade."[10]
Frankincense was reintroduced to Europe by Frankish Crusaders, although its name refers to its quality, not to the Franks themselves.[1] Although it is better known as "frankincense" to westerners, the resin is also known as olibanum, in Arabic al-lubān (roughly translated: "that which results from milking"), a reference to the milky sap tapped from the Boswellia tree. Some[who?] have also postulated that the name comes from the Arabic term for "Oil of Lebanon" since Lebanon was the place where the resin was sold and traded with Europeans.
The lost city of Ubar, sometimes identified with Irem in what is now the town of Shisr in Oman, is believed to have been a center of the frankincense trade along the recently rediscovered "Incense Road". Ubar was rediscovered in the early 1990s and is now under archaeological excavation.
The Greek historian Herodotus was familiar with Frankincense and knew it was harvested from trees in southern Arabia. He reported that the gum was dangerous to harvest because of venomous snakes that lived in the trees. He goes on to describe the method used by the Arabs to get around this problem, that being the burning of the gum of the styrax tree whose smoke would drive the snakes away.[11] The resin is also mentioned by Theophrastus and by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia.
Southern Arabia was a major exporter of frankincense in ancient times, with some of it being traded as far as China. The Chinese writer and customs inspector Zhao Rugua wrote on the origin of Frankincense being traded to China:
"Ruxiang or xunluxiang comes from the three Dashi countries of Murbat (Maloba), Shihr (Shihe), and Dhofar (Nufa), from the depths of the remotest mountains.[12] The tree which yields this drug may generally be compared to the pine tree. Its trunk is notched with a hatchet, upon which the resin flows out, and, when hardened, turns into incense, which is gathered and made into lumps. It is transported on elephants to the Dashi (on the coast), who then load it upon their ships to exchange it for other commodities in Sanfoqi. This is the reason why it is commonly collected at and known as a product of Sanfoqi."[13]
Quality[edit]
Frankincense comes in many types, and its quality is based on color, purity, aroma, age, and shape. Silver and Hojari are generally considered the highest grades of frankincense. The Omanis themselves generally consider Silver to be a better grade than Hojari, though most Western connoisseurs think that it should be the other way round.[citation needed] This may be due to climatic conditions with the Hojari smelling best in the relatively cold, damp climate of Europe and North America, whereas Silver may well be more suited to the hot dry conditions of Arabia.
Local market information in Oman suggests that the term Hojari encompasses a broad range of high-end frankincense including Silver. Resin value is determined not only by fragrance but also by color and clump size, with lighter color and larger clumps being more highly prized. The most valuable Hojari frankincense locally available in Oman is even more expensive than Somalia's Maydi frankincense derived from B. frereana (see below). The vast majority of this ultra-high-end B. sacra frankincense is purchased by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said the ruler of Oman, and is notoriously difficult for western buyers to correctly identify and purchase.[citation needed]
Currently, there are two dissertations which may enable the identification of a few Olibanum species according to their specific secondary metabolism products.[14][15]
Uses[edit]
Boswellia sacra tree, from which frankincense is derived, growing inside Biosphere 2
Frankincense is used in perfumery and aromatherapy. It is also an ingredient that is sometimes used in skincare. The essential oil is obtained by steam distillation of the dry resin. Some of the smell of the frankincense smoke are products of pyrolysis.
Frankincense is used in many Christian churches including the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Catholic churches. According to the gospel of Matthew 2:11, gold, frankincense, and myrrh were among the gifts to Jesus by the biblical magi "from out of the East." The Judaic, Christian and Islamic faiths have all used frankincense mixed with oils to anoint newborn infants, initiates, and members entering into new phases of their spiritual lives.
Conversely, the growth of Christianity depressed the market for frankincense during the 4th century AD. Desertification made the caravan routes across the Rub' al Khali or "Empty Quarter" of the Arabian Peninsula more difficult. Additionally, increased raiding by the nomadic Parthians in the Near East caused the frankincense trade to dry up after A.D. 300.
Traditional medicine[edit]
Frankincense resin is edible and is used in traditional medicines in Asia for digestion and healthy skin. For internal consumption, it is recommended that frankincense be translucent, with no black or brown impurities. It is often light yellow with a (very) slight greenish tint. It is often chewed like gum, but it is stickier.
Frankincense olibanum resin
In Ayurvedic medicine Indian frankincense (Boswellia serrata), commonly referred to as "dhoop," has been used for hundreds of years for treating arthritis, healing wounds, strengthening the female hormone system and purifying the air. The use of frankincense in Ayurveda is called "dhoopan". In Indian culture, it is suggested that burning frankincense daily in the house brings good health.[16]
Frankincense essential oil[edit]
Frankincense (Boswellia carteri) essential oil in a clear glass vial
The essential oil of frankincense is produced by steam distillation of the tree resin. The oil's chemical components are 75% monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, monoterpenoles, sesquiterpenols, and ketones. It has a good balsamic sweet fragrance, while the Indian frankincense oil has a very fresh smell. Contrary to recent claims, steam or hydro distilled frankincense oil does not contain any boswellic acid as these components (triterpenoids) are non-volatile and too large to come over in the steam distillation process. The chemistry of the essential oil is mainly monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes with small amounts of diterpenoid components being the upper limit in terms of molecular weight.[17][18][19]
Perfume[edit]
Olibanum is characterized by a balsamic-spicy, slightly lemon, fragrance of incense, with a conifer-like undertone. It is used in the perfume, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries.
Medical research[edit]
Frankincense
For therapy trials in ulcerative colitis, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis there are only isolated reports and pilot studies from which there is not yet sufficient evidence of safety and efficacy. Similarly, the long-term effects and side effects of taking frankincense has not yet been scientifically investigated. Nonetheless, several preliminary studies have been published.
A 2008 study reported that frankincense smoke was a psychoactive drug that relieves depression and anxiety in mice.[20] The researchers found that the chemical compound incensole acetate[21] was responsible for the effects.[20]
In a different study, an enriched extract of "Indian Frankincense" (usually Boswellia serrata) was used in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study of patients with osteoarthritis. Patients receiving the extract showed significant improvement in their arthritis in as little as seven days. The compound caused no major adverse effects and, according to the study authors, is safe for human consumption and long-term use.[22]
In a study published in 2009, it was reported that "Frankincense oil appears to distinguish cancerous from normal bladder cells and suppress cancer cell viability."[23]
A 2012 study in healthy volunteers determined that exposure to 11-keto-β-boswellic acid (KBA), a lead boswellic acid in the novel solubilized frankincense extract Boswelan, is increased when taken with food. However, simulations based on a two-compartment pharmacokinetic model with single first-order absorption phase proposed that the observed food interaction loses its relevance for the simulated repeated-dose scenario.[24]
In a 2012 study, researchers found that the "behavioral effect [of insensole actetate] was concomitant to reduced serum corticosterone levels, dose-dependent down-regulation of corticotropin releasing factor and up-regulation of brain derived neurotrophic factor transcripts IV and VI expression in the hippocampus. These data suggest that IA modulates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and influences hippocampal gene expression, leading to beneficial behavioral effects supporting its potential as a novel treatment of depressive-like disorders."[25]
Chemical composition
Structure of β-boswellic acid, one of the main active components of frankincense
These are some of the chemical compounds present in frankincense:
"acid resin (56 per cent), soluble in alcohol and having the formula C20H32O4"[26]
gum (similar to gum arabic) 30–36%[26]
3-acetyl-beta-boswellic acid (Boswellia sacra)[27]
alpha-boswellic acid (Boswellia sacra)[27]
4-O-methyl-glucuronic acid (Boswellia sacra)[27]
incensole acetate
phellandrene[26]
Blood serves as the life supply line in your body, delivering nutrients and oxygen to your cells and transporting waste products away from them. It also plays a role in maintaining body temperature and is important to the immune system. As an adult, you have about 4 to 5 quarts of blood, made up of over 4,000 different components. The four most important are red cells, white cells, platelets and plasma.
Balanced Diet
Your blood is no different from any other part of your body in that it needs balanced nutrition, including protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Some absorption disorders, such as celiac disease or Crohn's, can interfere with a person getting needed nutrition regardless of how healthy the diet is. If you are a vegetarian, you also run the risk of missing some specific nutrients needed for healthy blood, including iron and vitamin B-12. And if you don't eat dark green vegetables, you may become deficient in vitamin K, another important nutrient for blood.
Iron-Rich Foods
Iron is a vital component of hemoglobin, a molecule found in red blood cells. Hemoglobin carries oxygen to the cells and carbon dioxide away from them. Two kinds of iron are available in food. Heme iron is found only in food from animal flesh, such as meat, poultry and fish. Non-heme iron is found in foods from plant sources, as well as in eggs and dairy products. Your body absorbs heme iron easier than non-heme, making iron-deficiency anemia a possibility if you are vegetarian. Good sources of non-heme iron are beans, whole grains, oatmeal and spinach. Because vitamin C helps the body absorb non-heme iron, eat a food containing vitamin C -- for example, strawberries, citrus fruit or tomatoes -- with your vegetables, legumes and grains to help your body absorb the iron found in the plants. Another way to increase iron is to cook foods from plant sources in cast iron cookware.
Vitamin B-12-Rich Foods
Vitamin B-12 is necessary for the formation of red blood cells and a healthy nervous system. A deficiency can cause anemia and permanent nerve damage. Vitamin B-12 is naturally present in food from animal sources, including meat, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy products, but the elderly are sometimes unable to absorb vitamin B-12 from animal sources. Bread, cereal and food products made from soy are often fortified with vitamin B-12 in a form that can be easily absorbed. If packaged foods are fortified, it will say so on the ingredients label. If you are vegan and do not eat fortified foods, you need to take a vitamin B-12 supplement to avoid the serious consequences of a deficiency.
Vitamin K-Rich Foods
Vitamin K is a critical component of coagulation, working with platelets and and other blood-clotting factors. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin that your body can store in your fat tissue and liver. Good sources of vitamin K include beef liver and green tea. In plants, it is chlorophyll that provides vitamin K, so green vegetables, such as broccoli, kale, spinach, cabbage, asparagus, turnip greens and dark green lettuce, are good plant sources of vitamin K.
by Ann-Marie Imbornoni
Joanne Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter series of books, was born in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol, in southwest England. Her birthday, as true Harry Potter fans know, is July 31, the same as her famous boy-wizard hero.
J.K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Source/AP Photos
The family, including her parents and younger sister Di, lived in Yate and then Winterbourne, also near Bristol. Her father worked on airplane engines for Rolls Royce. When Joanne was nine, the Rowlings moved to Tutshill, near Chepstow, England, close to the border of Wales.
School Days
Joanne—called Jo by her family and friends—did well in school, and in her senior year was the top girl in her class. In fact, Rowling has said that as a child she resembled Hermione Granger, Harry's obsessively studious friend, whom she modeled after herself. Although, Rowling notes, "I was neither as clever or as annoying (I hope!)."
At school, Rowling's favorite subjects were English and foreign languages. She particularly enjoyed reading books such as Manxmouse by Paul Gallico, about a creature with a mouse's body, rabbit's ears, and monkey's paws, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and other books in C. S. Lewis's Narnia series.
Test your knowledge with the J. K. Rowling Quiz.
A Storyteller from the Start
After graduating from public school with top honors in English, French, and German, Rowling went on to study French at the University of Exeter. She earned her degree in 1986 and over the next several years held a variety of secretarial jobs, including one at a publishing firm, where she had to send out rejection letters to prospective authors.
What she really wanted to do, however, was write. Rowling wrote her first story, Rabbit, about a rabbit with measles, at age five or six. Later, she tried her hand at writing novels, for adults. But she never finished writing any novel before she wrote the Harry Potter books.
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Harry Potter Is Born
Rowling started writing the first Harry Potter book in 1990. The idea for Harry—a lonely, downtrodden 11-year-old orphan who learns he is actually a wizard when he is magically invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—came to Rowling while she was stuck on a delayed train between Manchester and London. Although she left England a short time later to teach English in Portugal, Rowling continued to flesh out Harry's story.
Rowling returned to Britain in 1993, settling in Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near her sister. Divorced after a brief marriage in Portugal and now with a baby, she suffered through a period of poverty and depression while she struggled to earn a living and take care of her daughter, Jessica. It was during this difficult time that she finally completed Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the U.S. edition. When her publisher suggested she add a middle initial to her name, she chose that of her grandmother, Kathleen.
Success at Last
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Following its publication in Britain in June 1997, the book quickly became a hit with children and adults alike and won numerous awards, including the British Book Awards' Children's Book of the Year. Rowling always envisioned the book as part of a seven-volume series—one book for every year that Harry spends at Hogwarts—and a new Harry Potter book appeared every year for the next three years. These were Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000). These were followed by two short books from Harry Potter's world, Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001). The profits from those two went to a British charity, Comic Relief.
Rowling's road to fame and fortune may have been a bit rocky at times, but her success has been sure. In 2000, the 35-year-old author became the highest-earning woman in Britain, netting more than £20.5 million (about $30 million) over the previous year. She received an OBE (Order of the British Empire), a medal of achievement awarded by the queen, in March 2001. At the end of that same year, she married her second husband, Dr. Neil Murray. On March 23, 2003, Rowling's second child, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born. She gave birth to a baby girl, Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, on January 25, 2005.
Not Just Another Best-Seller
On June 21, 2003, three months after David was born, the fifth book of the Harry Potter series was released. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix broke—no, shattered—no, obliterated—the previous record for first-day sales by a book, which had been set by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The fourth book sold 372,775 copies in the United Kingdom the day it was released; the fifth one sold almost 1.8 million. The United States sales figures were even more impressive. All told, Order of the Phoenix sold about seven million copies the day it was released.
The Harry Potter books have been translated into more than 60 languages, and it has been estimated that more than 300 million copies have been sold around the world. The first four books have been made into films: Sorcerer's Stone made more than $950 million; Chamber of Secrets, more than $850 million; Prisoner of Azkaban, more than $780 million; and Goblet of Fire, more than $890 million. All four are among the top twenty highest-grossing films of all time.
In February 2004, Forbes magazine estimated that Rowling had £576 million, or more than a billion dollars. This would make her the first person ever to become a billionaire from writing books.
On July 16, 2005, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released, destroying the previous book's sales records; on the first day of sales, it sold 6.9 million copies in the United States alone. That's about 80 copies per second!
Some of the earliest evidence of Ritual Vampirism comes from Tartaria in Transylvania and stems to the fifth millennium BC. Remains of a human body were found buried in a fire pit along with clay tablets upon which were inscribed the names of the ’Sumerian’ god Enki and the ranking number of Father Anu. The language was subsequently termed ’proto-Sumerian’ and represented some of the earliest written artifacts yet to be found.
The descendants of these early vampires were the Sacred Ubaid Race who, one millennium later, settled Mesopotamia and founded the Anunnaki religion of the Sumerians in 3500 BC. Their Transylvanian ancestors were the Anunnaki Gods themselves.
Various suggestions have been proposed in an attempt to explain the origin and meaning of the word vampire. One recent suggestion was that it was applied to a group of ’Watchers’ (Seers - Derkesthai: Dragons) who had occupied a settlement near "lake Van", in Urartu - Armenia. The original location - Greater Scythia - is faultless, the association is without error but the etymology is unresearched and the philology is completely absent.
Although that author’s suggested identification between Watchers and Vampires is absolutely correct, the word vampire does not in any sense relate to their former geographical location or origin but, as we shall see, rather to the vampires’ social and spiritual identity and status within a given cultural framework, which in this instance was Scythian, overlaid on Celtic.
In the journals of the 17th century cleric, the Abbé Calmet, the word vampire is transliterated into its most common, and its earlier, central European form which is spelt either oupire or oupere. These spellings are common in literature of Calmet’s time and represent the original form of the word vampire.
When the word migrated into Latin from Anatolian the u became a v because, as we will recall, there is no u character represented in the Latin alphabet. If there had been, then the Latinized western European construction of the word would have been uampire. By now bells should be ringing in the readers’ heads as they remember hearing about wampires somewhere or another, perhaps in a humorous context.
The Romans didn’t have a w and this letter appeared in clerical Latin during the medieval period as v v, as presented in the ridiculous phrase mortvvs svm. The vv being used then as a long vowel sound to differentiate between u and v sounds which were both represented by the Latin v.
So to recap, let’s have a look at the linguistic migration so far: oupere - oupire - owpire - ovpire. At this point we must remember that the word migrated from one language into another at a time when the most commonly used form of transmission was oral. This was bound to lead to confusion when the word was written down for the first time, as it has in numerous other instances.
By now we should be asking "If the word vampire was originally spelt oupire, where on earth did the ’m’ come from?" All the author can say is thank heavens for the anomalous ’m’ because it is this component that really confirms the origin and meaning of the word vampire, according to currently accepted scholarship.
Philologists would agree that the word vampire, as oupere, in its present form originated from the Turkish word uber, which means ’witch’. This would appear to present even more problems because in addition to an anomalous ’m’, we now also have a ’b’ to explain away! Nevertheless the author promises you that tenacity and perseverance will bring its own rewards, so be patient and do try and keep up.
Leaving the ’m’ aside for a moment, there would seem to be a serious linguistic problem in that oupere is spelt with a ’p’ and uber is spelt with a ’b’, which the reader might suspect would undermine the connection between both words. Especially as vampire or oupere is European and uber is Turkish and thus from a separate language group. However, this is not so.
As the Turkic-Uralic language is very different from Indo-European, it would appear that the word vampire in its original form is not Indo-European, but an Asiatic word that has changed in spelling and pronunciation during the passage of time and its migration northward.
It might then appear that the central Asian word for a witch - uber - would mean something entirely different to the European meaning of the word ’witch’ and would therefore bring with it an entirely different set of cultural and mythic associations. However, what the reader might not realize is that modern Turkey and its language is, like any other, an evolutionary compilation of historical, linguistic and cultural influences.
Prior to being named Turkey, Asia Minor or Anatolia was the centre of the eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium. At the heart of Asia Minor, contemporary with Rome but originating from an earlier period still, was the vast region of Galatia at the heart of which was a region occupied in the Persian era by the Cimmerians of Scythia, at a time when Galilee, Gilead and Gaulatinis in northern Israel were Scythian territories named after their language.
As Galatia spread northwards it bordered upon Phrygia and Troy and reached out further still to become Galati as it crossed the Bosphorus and encompassed Transylvania. On its westward marches Galati assimilated both Bulgaria and Gaul.
In consequence of this, a massive proportion of what is now called Turkey was in fact, along with most of Europe, a Gaelic or properly a Goidelic speaking, Scythian/Celtic civilization, comprising of independent tribal groups who spoke a number of Gaelic dialects, amongst which and most notably are what we now know as the so called ’P’ and ’Q’ or ’K’ Goidelic language variants.
The P and Q variants in Brythonic-Cymric (Welsh) and Goidelic-Scotic (Irish Scots), as an example, mean that the word ’son’ will be spelt map in Cymric and mac in Scotic. Furthermore there is a sub variant in this language group where ’P’ and ’B’ sounds also become interchangeable, as in the Welsh pen as in the mountain - Penllithrig’y’wrach - meaning "the slippery hill of the witch" in Snowdonia, and the Scots ben as in Ben Nevis in Scotland - both of which mean ’head’ or ’peak’. The Cymric language was originally Cimmerian or northern Scythian, whilst Scotic is a southern Scythian dialect.
The Galatian word uber is from the Scythian goidelic group whilst in Russia and Poland, which was influenced by the Cimmerian or Brythonic group, the same word for vampire is spelt upyr and upior respectively. There have been numerous Scythian migrations over the millennia and the Gaelic language has been carried across the Eurasian continent to influence the languages of many peoples. The Trojans who lived next door to the Galatians and were themselves Scythians moved to Italy and became the Latines.
As we can see by this example, the b has consistently become a v and this is how we know that the word for a vampire uber, is not a Turkish word at all but Gaelic or Galatian. Remember the anomalous ’m’ in vampire? Well it just so happens that in dialectic Gaelic the consonant group Mh is pronounced V. The ’h’ became discarded over time and left the ’m’ in vampire where the ’u’ or ’v’ should be. If spelt literally vampire would be uavber, uauber or uaupir, which is the central European oupire or oupere.
These variants stem from the Sanskrit upari (Up-Ari or Up-Arya, meaning Over-Lord) for which the Greek is uper - uper - which, as we have already seen, is a component of super in Latin. Over (ME - ouere) began as a graphic variant of uuere which translates into the dynastic name Vere with the Latin V being interchangeable with the double U or hard Germanic W which became V - rendering Ver or Were. This is pronounced as a soft F, which we find in the Norse Yfari and the old English Uffara or Yffera.
The Turkish, or properly Galatian word Uber, meaning ’witch’ therefore linguistically corresponds to the foregoing variations found in Gothic, German, Dutch, Norse English, Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, where finally, as Upari, we discover that originally Uber - Vampire - meant Overlord. In the following paragraphs we shall investigate the cultural background behind the word ’witch’ as uber, and discover that what holds true linguistically is supported by cultural and social evidence.
Contextually, when applied to an individual as a ’witch’, the word uber would suggest that the person referred to was in some way ’over’ or ’above’ others, as in the German ubermensch or uberherren. The Germanic languages, as with the others sampled here, are all Indo-European and the Sanskrit in particular, being of Aryan or Scythian origin is closest to the Galatian, and we shall see that the argument for overlordship is exactly the case.
From a cultural standpoint, we read the word ’witch’ and with it comes a large trolley of baggage that we have inherited from the popularly reinforced understanding of the word, influenced heavily by fairy stories and biased histories told from a protagonistic point of view. Today the specifically Saxon word ’witch’ tends to conjure up images of old hags prancing about on dark, spooky moors and cackling into cauldrons.
Witch is derived from the Saxon root word wicce (feminine) or wicca (masculine) and the Saxons used it to describe a class of persons whom they thought were inhabited by an intelligence or spirit - a daemon or genii - usually evil, because the Saxons took up catholicism pretty early on in their careers and were consequently biased.
Conversely, some people today would like us to believe, however, that ’witch’ meant a "wise one" and say that witchcraft, or in Saxon - wiccecraeft as they like to call it - means craft of the wise, failing completely to realize that the word wise in Saxon is wita, not wicca or wicce.
Wicca is actually related to both ’wicker’ and ’Viking’ or Wiking as the Norse would pronounce it. In Russia the word Vikhr meaning whirlwind, is a title of the Zmei Dragons, sons and daughters of Zmei-Tiamat. This confirms that the link between Sumaire, Zmei or Zumei and Sumeria was also known in Russia, once a Viking province.
It also demonstrates that the Danish Vikings, witch lords, were sons of the Dragon and the Scandinavian Tuadha d’Anu. In Ireland the Zmei Lord or Vikhr is known as the Dark King - the Whirlwind, meaning he was sumaire or vampire and via Uber, a Witch Lord or Wicca. As the Willow (wicker) bends and yields to the whirlwind so the witch (wicca) yields to the Sumaire, the ancient vampire legacy within him or her, a legacy that is awoken during the Mass of the Phoenix, when the primordial ancestors rise from the dead to take possession of the witch’s soul!
Wicca, derived from the same Saxon word as Willow, means to "bend or yield" ones spirit to that of a daemon (Greek, meaning praeter human intelligence or inspiration), giving the christian idea of possession, though erroneously. The witch was indeed possessed by a daemon and that daemon was certainly praeter-human and not of this world.
Any spirit, including the archangels, conjured by the witch or magician (the distinction, like that between pagan and christian, is fallacious), as in ceremonial magic, was actually the ancestor (antecessor) of the witch her or himself. It was a denizen of the ancient dragon itself - but it was carried in the witch’s blood which, the purer it was through unbroken descent from the Dragons, the stronger would be the return of the ancestors within. The Stronger the blood the stronger the invocation and the more complete the possession. With Mixed blood there was weak inspiration and little discernible presence. "The Blood is the Life".
The witch was possessed by this daemon, because the witch by descent and heredity was that daemon itself. It was his or her genetic inheritance and part of his or her racial consciousness, and to that the witch would yield, when occasion necessitated, placing the witch and the words wicce or wicca firmly in the tradition of the trance seer (derkesthai), a practice rooted in Scythian shamanic culture.
This is confirmed in the word genius, meaning inborn intellect or inspiration. Closely related to this word is genie, meaning a spirit, as in genius loci - ’a spirit of place’. In Arabic the jinni is a spirit of fire or inspiration. The Latin genius, in Greek, is a daemon or inspiring intelligence and the root Latin gens signifies birth, origin and especially blood. The daemon or genius of the Dragons was inherited through the blood. Witches are born, not made by silly playacting initiation rituals.
A seer in Gaelic was called a Merlin and in the tripartite Aryan-Scythian caste system which overlaid that of their clients, the deeply religious Celts, the Merlin was a Druid Prince. Either side of the Druidic caste were the castes of the warrior aristocrats and the craftsmen and although they all tended to behave as equals in this king tribe system, the druids were senior in rank.
Each caste attended to their allotted tasks and the study, teaching and practice of shamanism and magic were strictly the province of the Druids and Druidesses, forming part of a vast storehouse of knowledge and experience in the crafts and sciences, and in statesmanship and lore.
The Druids were responsible for bringing into being gods for the Celts to worship and though they themselves were not religious, scholars agree that Druidism was the "religion" of the Celtic world. So we can see that although the Celts had their own caste system with their own burgh kings or chieftains, above them were the Scythian kings, and above the Scythian kings were the Elven Druids, the Priest Kings who stood above all others, the ultimate Overlords of Eurasia.
In the Scandinavian countries the craft or ability to gain wisdom or power (Sanskrit - Siddhi) by yielding to daemons or intelligences (ancestral god spirits which were part of the practitioners’ own genetic inheritance and make-up) through trance or dream states was considered to be shamanic and was called Siddir, whilst those who practiced this art were themselves called Siddirs. The Siddir knotted together the web of dreams and loosened those knots to release power and knowledge.
In other words they brought together and spoke or gesticulated a series of mnemonics that would trigger off precontrived, imprinted states of consciousness that acted as doorways into deeper seats of consciousness. In Gaelic Scythian this ability and the name corresponding to it was called the Sidhe, a term used to describe and name the Irish fairies, the Tuadha d’Anu or Tuatha de Danaan as they were later called, a race of priest kings or druid princes.
The Web of Dreams relates to both the witches’ knotted ball and the Web of Wyrd or Fate (fata-fairy) and in the Scythian and Celtic cosmology, the power associated with it was thought to reside in the Otherworld, the realm of the gods (druidic ancestors) which was entered via trance or dream states, achieved whilst the druid or druidess occupied the fairy hills, the mortuary raths where the forefathers were buried.
The witch, as a seer or Merlin in Scythian culture and society, consequently belonged to an exclusive genome within a distinct holy and royal caste of overlords, which is reflected in the Gaelic word for a witch - Druidhe - which is pronounced Drui and is related to Draoi and Dracoi, meaning a dragon. Drui itself means Man (or Woman) of the Tree (not men of the oaks, as some have suggested) and is also related to the Sanskrit dru, meaning to run. This is associated with the ritual of running the labyrinth, with which we will deal in due course.
Therefore in Galatia, which had its own druids and was the site of the Nemeton, the largest regular gathering of druids in Europe, the term for a witch was Uber meaning Overlord, whilst in the Gaelic west the term for a witch was Druidhe which meant the same as Uber - An Overlord.
In summary vampire in its earlier form - oupire - derives ultimately from the Galatian Uber, which itself is derived from the Aryan Upari and linguistically and contextually the Vampire - the witch or druid - was a Scythian High Queen or King: an Overlord.
It is interesting to note in this context that when he compiled his journals in the 17th century Calmet, who had traveled extensively throughout the Austrian empire as an official vampire investigator accompanying imperial officers and soldiers, wrote that he had found no evidence whatsoever to support any notion that vampirism was either a supernatural phenomenon committed by praeter-natural beings - which he utterly refutes - or that it ever occurred in any form, either as a cult or in any isolated incidents, amongst the lower strata of society.
Without exception the enlightened Abbé was able to discover perfectly ordinary explanations for the incidents he had investigated, which in his day was quite remarkable, as the Church in past times had actively promoted vampire paranoia.
As Professor Margaret Murray discovered herself, vampirism was not the prerogative of the merchant or peasant classes, but was a cultic observance confined to the environs of the nobility, often as an adjunct to rites of the Noble and Royal Witch Covens of Scotland.
We can say with confidence then that real vampirism was indulged in by living beings who, unerringly, were members of the pre-christian and anti-christian high nobility and royalty. The most famous vampire stories, those of Dracula, Bathory and de Rais, support this conclusion. The historical evidence therefore supports the etymological origin of the word ’vampire’ - An Overlord.
Vampirism, up until the early 1700’s, by which time it had been in decline for several centuries, was not merely or solely the practice of a few isolated, high-born opportunists seeking some form of personal advantage or satisfying private perversions. Vampirism took two forms and the bloodline descendants of the ancient vampire lords had, in Britain, set the practice within an overall, multi-faceted social and cultural framework, stemming from the Iron-Age, that never gets an airing in the Gothic novel.
Vampires weren’t just vampires, as the penny dreadful would have us believe, they were individuals and families who used the practice to achieve specific aims and thereby fulfill those specific social obligations which, since the Scythian-Celtic period of the High Dragon Kings, were equated with their rank and position as leaders and overseers.
The Scythians
Throughout this discourse it must be borne in mind that when we speak of the Scythians as ’fairies’, ’dragons’, ’vampires’ or ’elves’, we are not talking about either the client races of the Scythians, or the ordinary Scythian citizenry, but of ’Royal Scythians’.
As we have discovered, the vampire - as a "witch" - belonged by genetic inheritance, to a distinct royal caste in Scythian-Celtic society, that of the priest-king or priestess-queen, the prince and princess-druids who had evolved very early on in human social history and who belonged to a Eurasian-wide hereditary priestly community which had originated with the Scythian-Aryans. The name Scythian was originally spelt Sithian in 16th century England, and it is from this tribal name that we obtain the word scythe, denoting a curved bladed agricultural tool, so named because of its similarity in shape to the Scythian sword.
The Scythians weren’t however named after their use of a curved sword. The name Sithian is related to a group of words that appear in Indo-European languages which are found as far apart as Eire and Northern India, indicating that they had a common Aryan origin in Scythia. These include - Sithia, Sidhe, Siddir and Siddhi.
In Cymric ’dd’ is pronounced ’th’, whilst in Irish and Scots the ’th’ is spelt dialectically ’dh’ whilst the ’s’ beginning a word is pronounced ’sh’. As we have related, the Siddir in Danish society were witches who practiced the art of knot tying and loosening.
These Siddir were directly related to the mythic Norns, the Mori or Fates who were said to be responsible for the fate of mankind by the patterns that they wove in the way that they tied and loosened the knots of the Web of Wyrd. The Siddirs, as well as being seers, could control such power as to influence the outcome of human affairs and in this respect their name reflects their abilities which, in India, were called the Siddhis, a word used to describe the powers of the Yogi who had self-realized.
The curious Irish word - Sidhe - pronounced ’shee’, ’sheeth’ or ’sheeth-ay’, attributed to the fairies and meaning ’powers’, is therefore identical to Siddir (sheeth-eer) and Siddhi (sheeth-ee) and is derived therefore, from the people of the powers - the Scythians or Sidheans (sheethee-ans). In Scotland the royal fairies were called the Seelie or Sheelie and their princesses were related to the sculpted Sheelagh Na Gigs over church doorways, who do NOT depict ancient goddesses of fertility, but were the royal Grail Maidens of the Elven kings and queens.
The Sheelagh na Gigs were goddesses of sovereignty and transcendence, and their place over the doorways of churches, many of which were built on the sites of ancient sacred groves, indicated that in entering these buildings one was entering through the vulva of the maiden into the otherworld, the realm of Elphame and the Kingdom of Heaven.
They were permitted above church doorways because the early church itself wanted to be identified with the old ways, firstly because it was in fact, at least in the beginning, part of the old ways and later, when catholicism took over, the Sheelaghs remained in place - in order to attract and convert "pagans".
Along with the Irish Sidhe, the Seelie and the Seelie Court of Scotland had a distinctly royal origin in the Tuadha d’Anu who when asked, like their Pictish descendants in Scotland, said of themselves that they were Scythian, as Canon Beck himself has insisted.
Some people tend to think that the word sidhe means a hill and therefore that the Irish Danaan, as the Sidhe, inherited this name as a consequence of fleeing into the hills after their defeat by the Milesians. As we can see this is not so and the fairy "hills", where the Aes Dan or Danaan, the gods of the Irish, were said to live, weren’t all Sidhe hills.
These - the power hills - were the sacred temple-mortuary raths and barrows, the creachaires or tomb-sepulchers, that the Danaan priest-kings were wont to ritually occupy for millennia before moving to Eire, and centuries before their Iberian kinsmen, the Milesians, came looking for a fight. The Sidhe, the Fairies, were the ’controllers of the fate of mankind’ and so named in remembrance of, and in identification with, their ancient Anunnaki (Anunnagi) ancestors.
In pre-christian history, although some practiced agriculture for a while, according to Murray-Hall M.A. they abandoned it for their traditional way of life and many of the Scythian clans remained solitary and insular nomadic pastoralists - horse lords who ranged across large tracts of Europe and Asia for centuries. Others opted late for a more settled existence and mixed settled agriculture with pastorialism, a system that can be found in both Takla Makan, where they built fine cities, and in Ireland, where they became know as the trooping fairies.
In general they were usually tall, pale skinned, with golden red hair and green eyes, unlike the Celts, who were stocky and squat, with ruddy complexions and dark hair, and practiced settled agriculture from a very early period.
The recent and rather unfortunate propagandist depiction of the Aryan (Scythian) as a tall, ruddy complexioned blonde racist yeoman-farmer-warrior-god has no basis in truth. In pre-christian history an Aryan was a High King, a warrior was a warrior and a farmer was a farmer and ne’er the three e’er met. The real Aryans of fact were red haired and green eyed, their hired military help, derived from their lower Ksatriya caste who were not Aryan were, sometimes, blonde and blue eyed.
The Aryan royal families didn’t intermarry with other tribes or castes but, with the development by many of their clans of settled city-states such as Scythopolis (30 AD, on the banks of the River Jordan just south of Galilee) nevertheless they became urban multi-racialists and appreciated cultural diversity.
The Aryan Hittites in particular were close allies of the Jews whose Draconian royal family, the House of David, made the Israelites, in a cultural sense, an early Aryan nation, and the Scythians and the Aryan Scythian Gaels had numerous settlements either in or adjacent to Israel and Judea.
The comparatively early use of the horse and of horse related technology separated the Aryans from the other tribes that occupied the middle-east and Eurasia. In Mittani, Mesopotamia, Akkad and Anatolia the Hurrians (whom in the 1920’s B. Hrozny described as the earliest Hindus) were the absolute Overlords and their supremacy is credited to their early use, like the Kurgans, of horse-drawn chariots.
The Hur syllable in Hurrian has been asserted by scholars, including G. Contenau (’La Civilisation des Hittites et des Hurrites de Mittani’) to be Har or Ar, meaning that the Hurrians, like the Scythians were Aryans with an Aryan Vedic royal-sacral family of gods.
These they bestowed upon the Hittites whose culture they dominated, (as the Hurrian or Aryan Mittani did in Mesopotamia) and the Hittites, in turn, provided the Greeks with these red-gold haired gods, including Zeus or Dyas Pater - the Jewish Jehovah, whose ancient symbol, shared with the sacred dynasty as a whole was - ironically - the swastika.
The early "Scythians", the people of the powers, occupied a region spanning The Balkans, Transylvania, Carpathia, the Ukraine and later, Siberia and Takla Makan where the Tocharians, as the Elves were mistakenly called by early linguists, spoke a ritual language which is now called Tocharian A but which originated in Thrace in 1800 BC and thus had connections with the Fir Bolg and consequently with the Tuadha d’Anu as a whole, who began migrating from Central Europe to Ireland at that period.
Over the centuries, from 5000 BC onwards, the Scythians had also migrated into the middle-east and had provided ruling families for many tribes and nations along and beyond the eastern Mediterranean coast.
In the ’Annals of Irish History’ the Scythian ’Tuadha d’Anu’ who had migrated farther still, to the islands of the north, were described as a tribe of deific queens, kings, princes and lords and were noted for having druids of their own. In Japan’s North islands there lives a shamanic tribe called the Ainu whose early writing style has been identified as being Gaelic Ogham!
As a noble tribe, a sect of the Aryan peoples who, during various migrations, had also wandered east several centuries before the d’Anu displacement and their reputed first journey to Eire in 1500 BC, the Aryan-Scythian horse lords, traveling south-east via Persia (Iran) from 1800 BC onwards, had entered the Indus Valley and intermingled with the Dravidian population.
This migration was to lands already formerly under Sumerian and consequently Ubaid control. The westward migration of the Scythians or Sidheans also included these very same Dravidians who, so British traditions state, were the messengers and summoners or ’fetches’ of the Merlins.
These curious and delightful beings were also known as brownies, for obvious reasons and adopted the habit of body tattooing in emulation of their Scythian lords, who in Britain and Ireland were known as the Pixies, which is a name derived from Pict-Sidhes or painted fairies.
The confusion which arises when the Picts are described as being short and brown may be clarified when we remember that the Scythian Caste System consisted of three closely interknit, co-operating races, whose traditions and practices would inevitably become, to a certain extent, common to all within the system by a natural process of social osmosis.
From this encounter arose the eastern branch of the Aryan, Vedic "Hindu" religion, with its druids or magi - the Brahmins - and a pantheon of gods who were virtually identical with the Sumerian, the Egyptian, the Hittite, The Irish, the Gaulish, the Danish and the Greek, all of which stem from this early family of Elven goddess-queens and god-kings whose first home was to be found in The Balkans, Transylvania, Carpathia and the Caucasus regions of Greater and Little Scythia.
Within the Brahmin caste special Tantric rites were and still are studied and practised. Evidence suggests that these ancient rites were brought to India from Sumeria. This accords with the assertion that Qabalah itself originated there also and the author has long maintained that Tantra, particularly the Kaula Vama Marg and Esoteric Qabalism are simply variations of each other. The Tree of Life symbol and its hidden meanings appears in Druidism and given the evidence to date, we can confidently say that Tantra and Qabalah are descended from ancient Ubaid Druidic philosophy.
The right hand path version of Hindu and Buddhist Tantra concerns itself with studying and practicing sexual rites that one might find associated with the Kama Sutra. This form of Tantra promotes penetrative intercourse as a method of changing consciousness and has attached to it various commentaries on right-living and right-thinking. This was thought by some Indian scholars to have originated with those who were depicted by one Indian scholar as the animistically minded, sex mad weasels, the Dravidians. The left hand path however is somewhat different.
This discipline can be found in both Hinduism and Buddhism and concerns itself with the practice of vampirism. This alone is sufficient evidence to allow one to ascertain that the ’Black’ or Left Hand or Kaula Path preceded the later right hand path which, though joyously tactile and self indulgent to begin with, appears many centuries later to have been somewhat sanitized for public consumption. The yogic disciplines associated with the Kaula Path, originating with the Scythians, are intended to lead the practitioner to what one might call ’union with godhead’.
This psychological condition is manifest in mystical christianity as being the perception by the devotee of ’the kingdom of heaven’. That few christians ever achieve such a state is not to be wondered at, as christianity is also a royal blood tradition, exactly like its brother and sister, Druidism and Witchcraft.
Many christians haven’t got a clue about this aspect of Jesus’ teaching and are in any case not encouraged to explore its possibilities because such union leads to physical and psychological freedom, the very last thing that the established churches wish to encourage in the masses, even though Jesus himself preached it.
Union with Godhead, dwelling in Elphame, realization of the Buddha or whatever one likes to call it is accompanied by a range of powers which were catalogued by the amazing Edwardian lady explorer Alexandra David Niel, who witnessed the performance of these remarkable powers or Siddhis by Buddhist monks in Nepal and Tibet, whose ritual and philosophy owed much to the indigenous religion Bon-Po which ethically followed the same path as Kaula Vama Marg.
In the west we call it magic but, as we have seen, it was also known as the Sidhe. Kaula Tantra is dedicated to the Goddess Kali who is associated with both creation and destruction in the Hindu pantheon. Kali is a lunar deity who, like Tantra itself, moved east from Sumeria. As a moon goddess she is associated particularly with moon blood and the essences of the female organs of generation.
So what can we say of the nascence of Vampirism so far? Principally that it originated, not surprisingly, in Transylvania and the Central Eurasian region known as Scythia and that its practitioners were of a distinct race, the Elves, the high goddess-queens and god-kings of the Arya or Aesir.
Vampirism was the central feature of a philosophy based on endocrinology, rather than occult mumbo-jumbo and used the consumption of female blood and mumae to enhance awareness and lead the practitioner to union with godhead.
The powers accompanying such an elevated state of consciousness were called the sidhe or siddhi and were, with vampirism, the foundation of the cults of Druidism, Tantric Kaula Yoga, Qabalism, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism and Witchcraft.
Kali, like all the Ubaid Deities was a flesh and blood being. She, Kalimaath or Kali Marg, was a daughter of Lilith and Samael, son of Anu, who appears in the Aryan pantheon as Ahura Mazda and in Iran as the Medean god Zoroaster. Anu himself was the god who gave his name to the Tuatha de Danaan and as Sitchin has suggested the definition of the word god itself is ’descended of Anu’.
Based on the spelling ’Tuatha de Danaan’, some have suggested that these Irish elven folk derived their name from an Irish mother goddess named Dana. If they had checked the earlier spelling - Tuadha d’Anu (Tribe of Anu) - they would have discovered that the Scythian Sidhe were the sons and daughters of Anu and the Ubaid gods and goddesses.
To recap then we have a clear connection between the words siddhi and sidhe both of which originate from a Scythian or earlier proto-Aryan-Ubaid root. The Scythians, as the Aryans of Persia and Asia provided the people then with their religious and social structures and mores and spread their wisdom and overlordship, mostly by invitation from prospective client tribes, throughout Britain and Europe.
The Scythian Aryans, as the ’Danaan’ settled in Eire and Scotland whilst in Wales they were known as the House of Don (Dan) or the House of Gwynnedd. This house sired the line of Llewelyn Princes, whilst in Scandinavia the Danaan became the Danes or Vikings and produced a junior cousin line - the Svei or Swedes - from which descended the Ruotsi clan who founded Russia. In Denmark the Sidhe was present as the Siddir, a class of seer or witch who were later separated from the Godthi or Gothi, the Danish Druids.
The Scythian Danaan in Eire, as in the rest of Europe, were a race apart, a ruling caste within which, like the original race of the Gods from whom they descended, there were further caste classifications.
In Denmark these were later named the Jarl, Carl and Thrall castes whilst in Eire they were broadly speaking the Druids, the Kings and the Warrior Smiths. In India they are still defined as the Brahmins, the Ksatriyas and the Sudras.
The original castes of the Gods were:
a) the common gods - gods of Earth
b) the gods of Heaven and Earth
c) the gods of Heaven
The first class were what we might call jobbing gods who became the genii locus or pagan spirits. The second class - the gods of Heaven and Earth - were the Titans, the Repha’im and Morrighans, the Angels and Valkyries who interceded between the transcended gods, the divine ancestors - the gods of Heaven - and man.
Heaven was the otherworld, not a place up in the stars, but a state of being which was adjacent to our own dimension - called sometimes the mirror-world, most competently described, more than once, in the Mabinogion - which could be freely entered and left by the gods of Heaven and Earth, the Portal Guardians. In this place, also known as Elphame, Hades, Hel, Caer Glas and Tir Na n’og there dwelt the essences of the previous gods of Heaven and Earth who had passed on to become the transcended ones, the ’antecessors’ or ancestors of the later witches.
By dwelling in tombs the gods of Heaven and Earth, the Danaan Queens and Kings, made contact with their ancestor Gods and passed their wisdom and edicts on to mankind. Today we might call this process invocation.
These gods are carried in the blood and by invocation, we bring their qualities and identities to the forefront of conscious being and give them voice. These druidic gods and goddesses of Heaven and Earth were effectively the highest overlords on Earth, the elven rulers of the human kings and queens who ruled beneath them.
Often we find mention of the fairy blood in the medieval era in connection with the ruling nobility of the time. We might then be tempted to come to the logical conclusion that all nobility and royalty was thus of Fairy origin. However this is simply not the case. Despite the usurpation of the original fairy families by the church sponsored new nobility, the previous kingly and noble dynasties were essentially human anyway.
The fairy blood at that time, the dark ages and the medieval period, was carried by the descendants of the Archdruidic dynasties who formerly ruled over the contemporary Celtic and Eurasian kings and lords, it was not carried by any or all of the royal or noble families of the time simply because they were the heads of their castes, because over such class distinctions were positioned additionally, the castes of the elven god-kings themselves.
The gods of Heaven and Earth - the Archdruidic caste - dwelt in Barrows and Bergs which in Eire were called Raths, meaning a ’royal seat’. These Raths were the holy shrines and sepulchres built by the Danaan - the original Gods of Ireland according to the ’Annals of Irish History’ - to house the mortal remains of their ancestors and act as royal palaces for the Portal Guardians. In specific cases these Gods are named, and we learn, for instance, that Newgrange was the shrine occupied by Nuadha and later Oengus.
The devotional and holy nature of these places has led some scholars and commentators to believe that, because they were tombs and temples, then those said to occupy them must be purely spiritual entities, gods of an ethereal nature. Originally nothing could have been farther from the truth. Both Nuadha and Oengus were kings of the Danaan and contemporary descriptions of them and their kin leave us with the picture of the Danaan as a race of people with prodigious and very earthly appetites.
From their kinsmen in Siberia we know that, by our dubious standards, they were complete junkies and imbibed any form of drug they could get hold of. These would have included cannabis and cocaine, prevalent in Egypt and the Levant at the time, as well as the drugs classically associated with the druids and the elves such as Amanita Muscaria and Psylocybin, the fairy mushrooms of children’s picture books everywhere.
The Danaan were hardened drinkers and unscrupulous womanizers, whilst accounts of their princesses relate that they often mated in public with the highest nobles of their clan, to prove or reiterate their social standing to onlookers. (Heroditus: The Histories).
Counterbalancing this view of them, born of our own hypocritical conditioning, the Danaan, whether in Eire or mainland Europe or Asia, were the finest smiths, jewellers, poets and musicians of their time, they were the Lords of fearless warriors and gifted horsemen and, despite what we might think of the foregoing, they were a righteous, meticulous people who maintained standards of conduct in areas of their social life where such standards were considered essential for the harmonious order of society.
Great emphasis was laid upon honesty and truth in one’s words and one’s dealings, the maintenance and conservation of the natural environment was paramount, and infractions, such as the cutting of trees, could mean death. Emphasis was also laid on hospitality and courtly behavior to one’s peers or guests, the honoring of one’s ancestors and heroes, and the maintenance of extended family ties through fostering.
They weren’t bothered about the petty morality we imbue our sexual behavior with but would kill a man for breaking his word or lying. They were an heroic people and, compared with us today, a far more moral race whose standards of conduct, not invested or centered on our kind of childish taboos - but placed where it matters - puts us to shame.
They were a race centered on their spirituality which itself was centered on gnosis and transcendent consciousness. This made them, like their later royal Viking cousins, a fearless people much loved and also much feared in turns, by all who knew them, whether in Eurasia or the British islands.
In about 500bc the Milesians entered Ireland from Iberia. Having defeated the Danaan tribes they put many of them to flight. It was during this period that the Danaan became known as the Daouine Sidhe - the people of the hills - an erroneous use of the word sidhe.
One group, the tribe of the Danaan king of Ulster, Bruidhne (mistakenly called Cruithne by the Romans), fled to Caledonia where they became known as the remnant of Cruithne or the ’Cruithainn’.
Other Danaan clans fled to Wales and the south west of mainland Britain. Several centuries later, when the Romans were unfortunate enough to encounter them in Scotland, they referred to these Danaan as ’Picts’ and it is this word that has adapted itself to become one of the names we use to describe the elven peoples - the pixies - or properly the Pict-Sidhes as we have already seen.
These being also came to be known as the Leprachauns and the etymology of this word, though thought to mean ’small-bodied’ actually means ’scaly-bodied’ from the Latin word lepra as in leprosy - scaly skinned.
The scaliness referred to was derived from the fish -scale style of armour which was common to the draconian Dacians, the Zmei, the Danes and the Danaan, all of whom originated in the region now known as Greater Scythia.
The scaly, twin-pronged tail of the wouivre or mermaid was also derived from the use, by grail maidens, of fish-scale plated leggings. When worn with the swan’s or raven’s feather cloaks, we have the classical image of the Harpie, reproduced in medieval depictions of Melusine.
Pict or Pictish means ’painted’ and the Danaan earned this appellation by virtue of their use of tattoos or woad to decorate their bodies with totemic or magical markings, the favorite being the labyrinth or spiral whorl.
The ancestors of the Irish Danaan - the Ubaid Danaan - had been using tattoos and woad since 4000 BC and examples of it can also be found in depictions of the Egyptian god Osiris or Asher as he is also known, and in the depictions of the Hindu gods Vishnu and Siva. Kali herself was also known as Kali Azura - the Blue Kali.
The spiral or whorl - the labyrinth - is the subject of a later essay in which it and its painted or carved symbol, lie at the centre of vampire and elven tradition. The spiral can be found carved into the rock at Newgrange in Ireland and also featured as a sacred design associated with the dwellings of the related Kassite Danaan clans who migrated to Britain.
In the Gaelic language we find two words specifically defining ’vampires’. The first - Creachaire - means a sepulchre, a tomb, a shrine and a temple, indicating that the character we later become familiar with as the "vampire" of Gothic legend was in fact a "dweller in the tombs", a druidic priest-king or priestess-queen - an Uber or Witch Overlord.
In Eurasia, particularly in the permafrost of Siberia and the arid wastes of Takla Makan in China, the mummified bodies of Scythian Chieftains and Shamankas or Priestess queens have been found. In Siberia the frozen remains of a male were unearthed. He had been tattooed with animal designs reminiscent of the totem Pictish salmon often found carved on stones in Scotland.
In the same region a shamanka had been unearthed who had been tattooed with the spiral labyrinth design. She, like her counterpart in Takla Makan, wore the conical headress of the Anunnaki gods of Sumeria that is also associated with medieval witchcraft. This same headress is depicted in bas-relief on the walls of the palace of Darius as being worn by those Scythians who brought him gifts in 500 BC.
The Takla Makan mummy, excavated by the Chinese in the 1960’s had red-gold hair and was buried adjacent to a cache of tartan plaid cloth and spiral painted pottery, similar to that found at Al’Ubaid in Syria. In the same region caves have been discovered where the walls are painted with devotional Buddhist pictures featuring the Tocharians, as they are known, conversing with Buddha.
Geoffrey Ashe states that the western Druids were interviewed by Buddha who claimed that they, the Druids, had established Shangri-La in the west. This should give the reader some hint as to the general thrust of druidic philosophy and of the hidden nature of that promoted by Jesus, whom St Columbus clearly stated was also a druid and magus himself.
by Dee Finney
The phenomenon of the eclipse has in mythology been connected with the upcoming end of the world and/or drastic change approaching. The John’s Revelation claims that an eclipse of 3 days will preceed the end of the world. Also the famous fortuneteller Nostradamus predicted an eclipse of 3 days introducing the end of all times. This way, the eclipse has taken the role of the herald of doom. (After all, who wants to stay around when the seven sigils are broken?)
The same symbol can be found as a wall-painting at a military bunker from WWII at Hamburg below the statue of Bisbarck, thus it was concluded that the symbol of the Black Sun was incorporated into the ideas of some sort of "occultist" movement/ideology during the Third Reich. Although this speculation is somewhat reasonable, I have not been able to find substantial proof for verifying this rumor, since information about this subject is scarce and shady, and mostly overshadowed by prejudice against the "pseudo-cultist activities" of the political elite of that time and the SS especially, in case it is mentioned anywhere at all.
Yet it might bear some significance possibly that in the Germanic mythology, the wolf Fenriz is said to swallow the sun after being released at the beginning of the Wolf-Age, causing the sky to darken. The symbolism of the Black Sun is the subject to fear for the powers of stasis, since it indicates drastic and terminal change. How can it be applied in a sensible way by the Setian, or does it bear positive significance inherently already?
Peter Moon tells us in his book ’The Black Sun’, on page 172 -
"The Vril Society began around the same time as the Thule Society when Karl Haushofer founded the "Bruder des Lichts", which means Brothers of the Light. This organization is sometimes referred to at the Luminous Lodge. This group was eventually renamed the Vril-Gesellschaft as it rose in prominence and united three major societies:
the Lords of the Black Stone, having emerged from the Teutonic Order in 1917
the Black Knights of the Thule Society
the Black Sun, later identified as the elite of Heinrich himmler’s SS
Whereas the Thule Society ended up focusing primarily upon materialistic and political agendas, the Vril Society put its attention on the "Other Side."
A local medium named Maria Orisc began getting messages in an unknown language and couldn’t transcribe them, so began meeting with key members of these societies, along with another medium named Sigrun. Accordingly, the messages were coming from a being from the star Aldeberan, which has two planets which form the ’Sumeran Empire’. In the Sumeran empire were two classes of people - the Aryan or Master race, and a subservient race which had developed in a negative fashion as a result of mutation from climatic changes.
Peter Moon goes on to say,
"A half billion years ago, the Aryans (known as the Elohim or Elder Race) began to colonize our solar system as Aldebaran’s became uninhabitable. Marduk, existing in what is today the asteroid belt , was the first to be colonized, then Mars. When they came to Earth, these Aryans were known as the Sumerians.
(Note: Here we are coinciding with the work of Zechariah Sitchin)
Shambhala
From some of the accounts available, Shambhala appears to have been a centre of spiritual enlightenment, very reminiscent of James Hilton's ’Shangri-La’, but others say that it was a centre of occult power and arcane teaching. Its leader was thought variously to be either an evil, tyrannical Sorcerer-King or a God-like ’Lord of The World’.
We seem to be left with a choice as to which story we prefer to follow, and evidently which Path one desires to follow, too. The evil Left, or the good Right!
Apparently there were two factions (as in Hyperborea), one of which followed the Golden Sun, and the other the Black Sun. (The ’Black Sun’, incidentally, was as prominent an emblem of the Nazi mythos as was the Swastika!) According to Jean-Claude Frére, author of ’Nazisme et Sociétiés Secretès’, the people of Hyperborea, after migrating to the Gobi Desert over 6000 years ago, founded a new centre, which they named Agartha. It became a great centre of world learning, and people flocked there from all over the world to enjoy its culture and civilization.
However, a huge catastrophe supervened, and the earth's surface was devastated, but the realm of Agartha somehow survived, under the earth.
The legend continues to relate that, as with the original Hyperboreans, the Aryans now split into two factions:
one group heading north-west, hoping to return to their lost Hyperborea
the second going south, where they founded a new secret centre under the Himalayas
Jean-Claude Frére concludes:
The sons of the Outer Intelligences split into two groups, one following the ’Right Hand Path’ under the ’Wheel of The Golden Sun’, the other the ’Left Hand Path’ under the ’Wheel of the Black Sun’. The first preserved the centre of Agartha, that undefined place of contemplation, of the Good, and of the Vril force.
The second supposedly created a new place of initiation at Shambhala, the city of violence in command of the elements and human masses, hastening the arrival of the ’charnel-house of time.’
According to Peter Moon, in his book ’The Black Sun’, the ultimate concept of Thule is well represented in the myth of it as the capital city or center of Hyperborea, a word which literally means ’beyond the poles’.
As it is beyond the poles, Hyperborea is positioned as being outside of this dimension. Thule, being in the center, is positioned as the source of all life on Earth. In Greek mythology, Pythagoras was taught sacred geometry by Apollo, a god who was identified as a resident of Hyporborea. In Pythagorean teachings, the Earth itself geometrically unfolds from a void in the center. This void has been recognized by many ancient groups, including the Sumerians, as the Black Sun. In this sense, Thule is synonymous with this Black Sun.
The word Swastika itself is means ’source’ amongst other definitions, and represents eternal cause or the fountain of creation. Accordingly, the Thule Society used the swastika symbol in their log to represent this idea.
The Black Sun is an even more esoteric concept than that of Thule. Represented as the void of creation itself, it is the most senior archetype imaginable. Thus, this namesake was reserved for the elite of the Thule Society. The Black Sun was actually a secret society within the Thule Society.
It was senior to other societies.
The various ways in which the Swastika is depicted. It is revered by Hindu and ranks second only to OM. Today, the Swastika is known the world over not as a religious symbolism of the Hindus but as the Nazi emblem. Hitler’s use of the Swastika on the flag of National-socialist Germany has besmirched the Swastika. But the Swastika continues to hold a religious significance for the Hindus. Like OM, the origins of Swastika are lost in the misty realms of the past and they can only be guessed by piecing together of the surviving clues.
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The Swastika Stone near Ilkley in West Yorkshire (England) The stone overlooks the valley of the River Wharfe, and is identical to some of the ’Camunnian Rose’ designs in Val Camonica, Italy - nine cup-marks in a cross shape, surrounded by a curved swastika- shaped groove. The Ilkley carving also has an ’appendage’ off the east arm - a cup surrounded by a curved hook-shaped groove. It is unique on the moor (which is covered in hundreds of cup-and-ring type carvings) although there is an unfinished swastika design (more angular, without cups) on the nearby Badger Stone.
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We find here the Aztecan calendar cycle of 52 uncorrected years represented in the form of a left rotating "swastika". The wheel starts with the year 1 Acatl, then turns left to 2 Tecpatl, 3 Calli, 4 Tochtli, 5 Acatl, etc. There is a good explanation of the whole composition in Duran and Seler. The question is, did the Hopi have a real writing system like the Aztecs and did they share the same calendar around the year 1000? Why do they not have a developed writing in the 17th century?
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This is from a Russian website
(click images to enlarge)
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After World War II and the subsequent occupation of Germany, Allied military commanders were stunned to discover the penetrating depth of the Nazi regime’s state secrets.
The world’s best intelligence organization was not the least of these revelations. Also discovered were massive and meticulous research file on secret societies, eugenics and other scientific pursuits that boggled the imagination of the Allied command. Even more spectacular was an entire web of underground rocket and flying saucer factories with an accompanying technology that still defies ordinary beliefs.
A missing U-boat fleet possessing the most advanced submarine technology in the world left many wondering if the Nazis had escaped with yet more secrets or even with Hitler himself.
Behind all of these mysteries was an even deeper element: a secret order known to initiates as the Order of the Black Sun, an organization so feared that it is now illegal to even print their symbols and insignia in modern Germany. The Black Sun probes deeper into the secrets of the Third Reich and its Tibetan contacts than any other previous attempt.
The Black Sun is an adventure in consciousness that reveals a vast array of new information.
From the German flying saucer program to the SS mission into Tibet, we are led on a path that gives us the most insightful look ever into the Third Reich and the holy relics they sought in their ultimate quest: the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.
A Book Review
from FSReview Website
In the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, there were a variety of secret /occult societies in Germany, the main ones being, The Bavarian Illuminati, The Freemasons, The Rosicrucians, The Thule Society and The Vril Society.
Each of these five societies, although based in secrecy and mysticism, had its role and function. Of these five, two were especially noted for their occult connections, The Vril Society and its purely German offshoot The Thule Society.
The chief architect of the Thule Society was Baron Rudolph von Sebottendorff, sometimes referred to as Rudolf Glauer. Sebottendorff / Glauer possessed a wide knowledge of Islamic Mysticism in all its aspects, encompassing the Dervish sects and particularly the cult of Sufism which differs markedly from mainstream Islamic teaching.
THULE
The name, Thule, refers to the capital of the legendary polar country Hyperborea.
Also referred to as ‘Ultima Thule’, it was supposedly the gateway to another world. Thule was therefore recognized as a place where humans could, by whatever means, ‘leave the earth’, it also reputedly stood at the portal of the ‘Hollow Earth’.
Interestingly, the major players in the 20th century, the USA and the Russian Federation have ELF - extra low frequency - transmitters sited in this area. These transmitters are supposedly used to communicate with submerged submarines, but worryingly, they broadcast these messages at brain-wave frequencies, around 18 to 20Hz.
Traditionally, the Hyperboreans were in contact with extraterrestrials or ‘alien cultures’, in some versions of this, there was interbreeding. In common with the legendary inhabitants of Atlantis, they engaged in war with neighbouring civilizations. This escalated into the use of atomic weapons, resulting in a pyrrhic victory for the Hyperboreans, who, as well as defeating their enemies, virtually destroyed themselves in the process. In common with radiation damage in recent times, the surviving Hyperboreans were soon faced with the prospect of mutated and otherwise damaged offspring.
Showing remarkable resolve, those who had not sustained any apparent genetic damage, banded together and effectively removed themselves from the gene pool, a variety of self imposed quarantine.
Any ‘damaged’ offspring from this group, were neutered. This early example of eugenics was practiced until they were sure that any defective genes had been bred out. The other mutated group eventually died out, whether they were ‘assisted’ in this, is open to debate. This may seem like, and indeed is, a harsh, clinical line to adopt, but being faced with the extinction of their entire race, they had little other option.
The descendants of this seminal ‘Mother race’ were the Celts who, like the ripples on a pond, spread out, colonizing various northern areas of the planet. Scots, Irish, Basques, Spanish, Scandinavians, Icelanders and the Portuguese, all these peoples are of Celtic origin. These disparate nationalities have one common genetic trait, a large percentage of RH-negative blood types, which, according to the beliefs of the Thule society was a characteristic of the Hyperboreans and their extraterrestrial associates.
In recent times, the majority of alien abductees are reportedly from RH negative blood groups, is this a possible indication that UFO cultures are tracking their cross-bred progeny?
Other races and peoples who posses a positive blood type were considered to be racially impure, as positive blood is thought to be contaminated by contact with the ape evolved strand of human DNA.
"In Germany at the turn of the century and particularly after WW I many secret societies developed. One of these groups was the Vril Society.
"In 1917 four people met in a cafe in Vienna. There was one woman and three men. The woman was a ’spiritual medium’. They met under a veil of mystery and secrecy.
"They discussed secret revelations, the coming of the new age, the sphere of destiny, the magical violet black stone, and making contact with ancient peoples and distant worlds.
"Their source of power was the Black Sun, an infinite beam of light which though invisible to the human eye is real and there.
"The Vril emblem was the ’Black Sun’ - a secret philosophy thousand of years old provided the foundation on which the occult practitioners of the Third Reich would later build. The Black Sun symbol can be found in many Babylonian and Assyrian places of worship. They depicted the Black Sun - the godhead’s inner light in the form of a cross. This was not much different from the German’s Knight’s Cross.
"With supposed channeled information from ET’s, the Vril society built the Vril Machine. It was saucer shaped. It was supposedly an interdimensional or time travel machine. The first piloted flight was in 1934.
The Vril Force and the Black Sun
In Lytton’s The Coming Race, the subterranean people use the Vril Force to operate and govern the world (a few children armed with vril-powered rods are said capable of exterminating a race of over 22 million threatening barbarians).
Served by robots and able to fly on vril-powered wings, the vegetarian Vril-ya are - by their own reckoning - racially and culturally superior to everyone else on Earth, above or below the ground.
At one point the narrator concludes (from linguistic evidence) that the Vril-ya are,
"descended from the same ancestors as the great Aryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant civilization of the world."
The Vril Force or Vril Energy was said to be derived from the Black Sun, a big ball of "Prima Materia" which supposedly exists in the center of the Earth, giving light to the Vril-ya and putting out radiation in the form of Vril. The Vril Society believed that Aryans were the actual biological ancestors of the Black Sun.
This force was known to the ancients under many names, and it has been called Chi, Ojas, Vril, Astral Light, Odic Forces and Orgone.
In a discussion of the 28th degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry - called Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept - Albert Pike said,
"There is in nature one most potent force, by means whereof a single man, who could possess himself of it, and should know how to direct it, could revolutionize and change the face of the world."
This is the force that the Nazis and their inner occult circle were so desperately trying to unleash upon the world, for which the Vril Society had apparently groomed Hitler. A manifestation of the "Great Work" promulgated by the Adepts of secret societies throughout the ages. The Vril Society latched on to a very old archetype already in the minds of alchemists and magicians, which was only re-interpreted, by Lytton, in light of that age of occult revival and scientific progress.
The idea of mutation and transformation into a higher form of a "god-man" was envisioned, through the Vril-ya, in Buller-Lytton’s The Coming Race.
Lytton, himself, was an initiate of the Rosicrucians and was well versed in the arcane-esoteric philosophies (and of course the greatest advances in the sciences of his day).
"Through his romantic works of fiction he expressed the conviction that there are beings endowed with superhuman powers. These beings will supplant us and bring about a formidable mutation in the elect of the human race."
(J. Bergier)
This is where the philosophy turns dangerous.
The moment we speak of an elect and "illumined" class which is above the general populace, you inevitably encounter racism and classism - with fascism in due course.
"We must beware of this notion of a mutation," Bergier warns. "It crops up again with Hitler, and is not extinct today."
Bergier and Pauwels were writing in 1960, but today this philosophy is, sadly, once again in the forefront of popular culture.
The New World Order, so vehemently opposed, is under the direct influence and guidance of the New Age Movement. A hodgepodge of occult doctrines and dangerous socialism, which hides under a cover of "spiritual enlightenment." Theosophy is considered the main foundation, and its founder, Mme. Blavatsky, was a great admirer of Lytton’s.
In The Occult Conspiracy, the excellent researcher, Michael Howard, writes about the compatibility of the two philosophies:
Blavatsky had read Bulwer Lytton’s novels and was very impressed by their occult content, especially Zanoni and the Last Days of Pompei. The latter was published in 1834 and dealt with the time between early Christianity and the Mysteries of Isis in Italy in the first century A.D.
Blavatsky’s esotericism was virulently anti-Christian... The racial ideas of Madame Blavatsky, concerning root races and the emergence of a spiritually-developed type of human being in the Aquarian Age, were avidly accepted by the nineteenth-century German nationalists who mixed Theosophical occultism with anti-Semitism and the doctrine of the racial supremacy of the Aryan or Indo-European peoples.
Shambhala
From some of the accounts available, Shambhala appears to have been a centre of spiritual enlightenment, very reminiscent of James Hilton's ’Shangri-La’, but others say that it was a centre of occult power and arcane teaching. Its leader was thought variously to be either an evil, tyrannical Sorcerer-King or a God-like ’Lord of The World’.
We seem to be left with a choice as to which story we prefer to follow, and evidently which Path one desires to follow, too. The evil Left, or the good Right!
Apparently there were two factions (as in Hyperborea), one of which followed the Golden Sun, and the other the Black Sun. (The ’Black Sun’, incidentally, was as prominent an emblem of the Nazi mythos as was the Swastika!) According to Jean-Claude Frére, author of ’Nazisme et Sociétiés Secretès’, the people of Hyperborea, after migrating to the Gobi Desert over 6000 years ago, founded a new centre, which they named Agartha. It became a great centre of world learning, and people flocked there from all over the world to enjoy its culture and civilization.
However, a huge catastrophe supervened, and the earth's surface was devastated, but the realm of Agartha somehow survived, under the earth.
The legend continues to relate that, as with the original Hyperboreans, the Aryans now split into two factions:
one group heading north-west, hoping to return to their lost Hyperborea
the second going south, where they founded a new secret centre under the Himalayas
Jean-Claude Frére concludes:
The sons of the Outer Intelligences split into two groups, one following the ’Right Hand Path’ under the ’Wheel of The Golden Sun’, the other the ’Left Hand Path’ under the ’Wheel of the Black Sun’. The first preserved the centre of Agartha, that undefined place of contemplation, of the Good, and of the Vril force.
The second supposedly created a new place of initiation at Shambhala, the city of violence in command of the elements and human masses, hastening the arrival of the ’charnel-house of time.’
According to Peter Moon, in his book ’The Black Sun’, the ultimate concept of Thule is well represented in the myth of it as the capital city or center of Hyperborea, a word which literally means ’beyond the poles’.
As it is beyond the poles, Hyperborea is positioned as being outside of this dimension. Thule, being in the center, is positioned as the source of all life on Earth. In Greek mythology, Pythagoras was taught sacred geometry by Apollo, a god who was identified as a resident of Hyporborea. In Pythagorean teachings, the Earth itself geometrically unfolds from a void in the center. This void has been recognized by many ancient groups, including the Sumerians, as the Black Sun. In this sense, Thule is synonymous with this Black Sun.
The word Swastika itself is means ’source’ amongst other definitions, and represents eternal cause or the fountain of creation. Accordingly, the Thule Society used the swastika symbol in their log to represent this idea.
The Black Sun is an even more esoteric concept than that of Thule. Represented as the void of creation itself, it is the most senior archetype imaginable. Thus, this namesake was reserved for the elite of the Thule Society. The Black Sun was actually a secret society within the Thule Society.
It was senior to other societies.
by Tracy R. Twyman
from ImplosionGroup Website
October 28th, 1998, a number of newspapers across the country ran an Associated Press article entitled "Presidential Hopefuls Share Blue Blood Lines."
The article, based on information put forth by Burke’s Peerage, claims that every single President of the United States has had a notable amount of royal European ancestry, and in each Presidential race, the one with the most royal genes is the one who wins - every single time. This tendency has been noted in supposedly Democratic European politics as well, prompting some to charge that a global conspiracy exists to keep power within the hands of a specific gene pool.
This charge is not entirely baseless, and many books have been written tracing the modern aristocratic bloodlines back to the royal houses of Israel, Egypt, Sumer, and beyond. The charge is further supported by the fact that many of the supposed conspirators proudly boast about the ancient origins of their ancestry. The traditional explanation for why power is passed down through the ages by blood has been the mystical Divine Right of Kings.
This dates back to the 17th century and states that a king is created by God, and kingly authority resides in the blood irrespective of anything else. Many have claimed that there is a genetic characteristic carried in the blood itself which makes this so, but what would it be?
Is there a legitimate physiological reason behind the Divine Right of Kings?
Fields of the Nephilim
The all-important element of the Divine Right is that it comes from God, or "the gods," alternately. And who were these gods? Authors such as Zecharia Sitchin, Sir Laurence Gardner and Nicolas de Vere are authoritatively convinced that kingship was created by an advanced race of beings called the Anunnaki, also called the Nephilim in the Old Testament.
These were the ones who created the human race and interbred with a portion of it to create the kingly caste which until this day has still maintained control over the Earth.
These celestial creatures have been variously identified with:
Dragons
Elves
Fairies
Gnomes
Leprechauns
Sprites
Nymphs
Pixies
Angels
Demons
Devils
Witches
Giants
Vampires
Werewolves
and just about every mythical being you can imagine
Some, like Gardner and Sitchin, claim that they come from another planet. Others, like de Vere, say that they’re multi-dimensional, or that they’re from the Hollow Earth.
Some, like David Icke, say that they are humans inhabited by the spirits of multidimensional reptiles, capable of shapeshifting into reptile form at any time. Still others claim that they were humanoid, but more than human, with pale white skin. The human hybrid offspring that they created as the Royal/Priestly caste was, according to most, the Aryans, who usually had red hair with green eyes - in stark contrast to the traditional Hitlerian vision.
Nicolas de Vere, the leader of an organization called The Dragon Court which claims to represent this royal Aryan caste, writes,
"the depiction of the Aryan (Scythian) as a tall, ruddy-complexioned blonde moist ’ yeoman-farmer-warrior-god has no basis in truth."
He further suggests that the "yeoman-farmer" Celtic, Gaulish and Pictish tribes which we now think of as Aryan were actually of a different race, but had hired the extra-human Aryans to be their leaders.
These Aryans were also the masterminds behind the Indian, Hittite, Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, Sumerian and Pre-Sumerian Ubaid civilizations. Many believe that their descendants can be found amongst the segment of the population with the RH Negative blood type, roughly 5% of the Earth’s population, most of them Europeans.
These people are often born with:
an extra vertebra
have a lower than normal body temperature
can rarely mate with one another successfully, which suggests that they may indeed be a hybrid species
Conspiracy enthusiast Arizona Wilder takes it a step further by stating:
"The Aryan bloodline is alien to this planet... There are 13 bloodlines from this kind of stock (the Merovingians being one), and all of them have to a greater or lesser degree the capacity to play host to the Shape Changer reptiles."
The other 12 families have been identified as Astor, Bundy, Collins, Dupont, Freeman, Kennedy, Li, Onassis, Reynolds, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Russell, and Van Duyn, with the rest of the European Royal Families being categorized as Merovingian.
These are the people referred to by the fanatical group, the Sons of Jared, when they,
"pledge an implacable war against the descendants of the Watchers, who as notorious pharaohs, kings and dictators, have throughout history dominated mankind.. like super-gangsters, a celestial Mafia ruling the world."
The Book of Enoch says that the sons of the Nephilim, are destined to,
"afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle and work destruction on the earth."
Nicolas de Vere, himself a Prince of the Dragon Blood, sees it quite differently. He sees them as the rightful shepherds of the human flock. He states:
The fairies were tuned to a higher frequency of perception and activity generally. In the past, therefore, because the Fairies were, for millennia, physiologically bred and exhaustively trained to operate at a higher level than men, humans often invited them to become social navigators... A dragon was one who saw clearly, and the clarity of vision engendered was always classically associated with wisdom, which itself produces power....
The Anunnaki and their quasi-human offspring are attributed with remarkable traits. They lived for thousands of years, were capable of levitation, dimension-hopping, clairvoyance, and other magical powers, all a product of applied eugenics.
De Vere explains:
"Selective unions gave the race the opportunity to breed outstanding magicians whose gift of natural perception and understanding and whose ability to access the ’Otherworld’ helped to produce and guide brilliant kings who ruled with elegant aplomb.
The ability to perform magic was carried in the blood and of that blood," and "the Elves were relied upon by their client races to be able to see things and perform feats that these client races couldn’t."
Laurence Gardner, himself a former member of the Dragon Court, concurs:
"hi short, these people were bred to be leaders of mankind, and they were both mentally and physically maintained in the highward state."
But what property did they inherit in the blood which makes this possible?
The experts are nearly unanimous about the fact that the answer is endocrinology. Says de Vere:
"hormonal levels [are] influenced by genetic inheritance and that hormones [affect] the individual’s perceptions, psychological unicameralism and the subsequent ability to transcend and perceive the intricacies of the cosmos. Elven blood [is) rich in these substances."
Starfire bloodfests
"The best blood is of the moon, monthly..." Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law.
The beneficial effects of the hormone melatonin have been part of the health supplement scene for some time, for high melatonin production is known to be synonymous with a high immune system, a low cancer risk, long life, energy, stamina, and according to many, enhanced spiritual awareness.
Perhaps it is fitting then that this hormone is secreted by the pineal gland, a mysterious little item long believed by mystics to be the "Seat of the Soul," "Me Third Eye," and the organ through which psychic powers are exercised. In fact, it actually functions as an organ of sight in some reptiles, and it still seems to possess some sensitivity to light in higher mammals, since melatonin production increases when the person is exposed to darkness (thus melatonin means "night worker!")
Writes Laurence Gardner:
High melatonin production thereby increases the facility for receiving and transmitting high-frequency cosmic and local broadcasts, and leads to a greater state of cosmic awareness - a state simply of ’knowing.’
In this regard, it is interesting to note that the Pineal Third Eye has been found to contain very fine granular particles, rather like the crystals in a wireless receiving set.
Many magical rites and meditation techniques are aimed at gaining control of this organ and the fluid it produces: the live melatonin.
Rumor has it that the members of the supersecret society Skull & Bones, to which both George Bush and his son belong, engage in a ceremony called "The Obscene Rite," which involves the consumption of the live pineal gland of a human or animal sacrifice in order to get the fresh secretions.
Supplements bought over the counter are ineffective because, as Gardner explains,
"their inherent secretions are obtained from the desiccated glands of dead animals and they lack the truly important elements which only exist in live human glandular manufacture."
Aryan bloodline is alien to this planet... There are 13 bloodlines from this kind of stock all of them have a greater or lesser degree the capacity to play host to the shape changer reptiles.
But the Aryan overlords who ruled over mankind in ancient days had a simpler way of acquiring this fluid. Their ancestor-gods, the Anunnaki, had endocrine systems that produced large amounts of this and other beneficial substances, so they drank it straight from the source: the menstrual blood and vaginal fluids of the goddesses themselves.
This they referred to lovingly as "Starfire" and drank in a ritual ceremony called the Black Mass, after which the Catholic Mass is said to have been modeled. Later, as direct contact with the Anunnaki ceased, the fluids were collected from sacred priestesses referred to as "Scarlet Women," or "Grail Maidens."
Readers will recognize the Scarlet Woman as the Whore of Revelations, as well as the title which Aleister Crowley gave to all of his sex magick partners.
"These sacred, royal princesses" writes de Vere, "virgins of High Birth and Pure Blood, at an optimum age would be chosen to act as feeding females," whose essences contained such valuable substances as, "oxytocin, prolactin, melatonin, seratonin, adenosyne triphosphate, dopamine, telomerase, and retinol."
There is another important ingredient in the mix here. De Vere explains,
"many think that only men have semen when in fact women also have it."
And so a Starfire ritual involves the use of a golden straw.
Stich a device would have been inserted into the virgin’s urethra to the depth of about one inch, whilst the partner in the rite inserted his or her finger into the vagina and massaged the "roof of the mouth" or uppermost wall of the canal nearest the open or ’mouth’ of the vagina, behind the pubic bone.
After a few conducive moments perhaps, orgasm would occur and the fluid from the gland would discharge itself through the straw, either into the waiting mouth of the recipient, or onto a "grail platter" or dish held next to the vulva.
Keen readers will recognize this as identical to a sex magick ritual advocated by Aleister Crowley for members of his Order or Oriental Templars (OTO).
The only difference is that his rite also involved the use of male semen which was called the "Red Tincture" or "coagulated blood," while the female fluids were called "Gluten" or "The White Tincture."
Together they made "The Elixir of Life," and in alchemy blood and semen are the primae materia or first matter of the great work.
*"this is the true Key to Magick," writes Crowley. "That is, by the right use of this secret man may impose his Will on Nature herself."
Monatomic Gold: the substitute
According to de Vere and others, ingesting the fluids of mundane women has only a slight effect, certainly not enough to maintain a royal Dragon family in the manner to which they’re accustomed.
And after a few thousand years the genetic purity of their Grail maidens began to deteriorate, so the Starfire lost it’s potency. This reportedly began around 1960 BC and is equated with the time that an edict was handed down to Noah by God demanding that the consumption of all blood cease immediately. (Gen. 9:4)
Thus, a substitute had to be found, and so the alchemical process was created as a means of artificially creating the Elixir of Life, the Philosopher’s Stone, also known as "potable gold." This is created using a black powder known as occultum, the universal solvent which has the power to transmute metals.
When placed against gold it converted it into a white powder which could be ingested.
It is said to cause nothing less than immortality, as it sets off a self-correcting mechanism in your DNA that lasts for thousands of years. It also bestows the enhanced melatonin production and magical powers associated with Startfire, including clairvoyance, dimension-hopping and flying capabilities. It is believed that this "white gold" is the same as the "Shew-bread" and "Manna from Heaven" mentioned in the Old Testament.
Today, there are those who publicly proclaim knowledge of the Philosopher’s Stone. A man named David Hudson claims to have created a technique for manufacturing this white gold, which he’s patented as ORME (Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements).
Ormus is a name associated with the Holy Grail, and so readers may not be surprised to learn that Hudson himself is related to the Merovingian Grail family through Claude de Guise.
Basically, the powder is created by putting gold into a higher atomic state through a series of intense heating and cooling sessions, during which it loses and gains weight radically, as though portions of the mass were being transferred into another dimension.
David Hudson describes the magical quantum properties of his white gold:
These M-state elements have been observed to exhibit superconductivity, superfluidity, Josephson tunneling and magnetic levitation...
They may enhance energy flow in the microtubules inside every living cell. Ingesting in-state gold has different effects on the body than the effects of ingesting metallic gold. At 2 mg. it totally has gotten rid of Karposi Sarcomas on AIDS patients.
Within 2 hours, their white blood cell count goes from 2500 to 6500...
Stage 4 cancer patients have taken it orally, and after 4 5 days have no cancer left any place in the body. It’s been used on Lou Gehrig’s disease, it’s been used on MS, it’s been used on MD, it’s been used on arthritis. It literally corrects the DNA.
Sympathy for The Devil
All of this puts a nice, friendly face on the whole thing, which is currently a secret power held only by an elite caste of Aryans who use it to lord themselves over the rest of the human population.
And there are those who have said that the "substitute" white gold never did away with the original practice of blood-drinking as a method for obtaining the substances they needed.
David Icke and his associate, Arizona Wilder, have campaigned the globe to inform its citizens with Chicken Little-like hysteria that most of its financiers, politicians and aristocrats are actually under the control of Reptilian beings from another dimension, who are inhabiting their bodies.
Icke states:
"To hold their human form, these entities need to drink human (mammalian) blood and access the energy it contains to maintain their DNA codes in their ’human’ expression. If they don’t, they manifest their reptilian codes and we would all see what they really look like."
Icke believes that most of this blood is obtained in human sacrifice rituals engaged in by the Satanic Illuminati.
He explains:
"From what I understand from former ’insiders’, the blood (energy) of babies and small children is the most effective for this, as are blond-haired, blue-eyed people. Hence these are the ones overwhelmingly used in sacrifice, as are red-haired people also."
His compatriot, Arizona Wiilder, goes into a bit more detail when she writes,
"They have a hypnotic gaze which fixes the victim - in a trance of terror - which promotes secretion of the pineal gland - at that point, they cannot hold human form any longer and begin to shapeshift in anticipation of supper."
Wilder claims to have witnessed Laurence Gardner drinking blood and shapeshifting during a sacrifice at Montauk, New York, as well as a number of others who were transformed during similar bloodfests, including,
Bush and his two sons
Albright
Kissinger
Reagan and Nancy
J. Rockefeller
Ford
Carter and LB Johnson
Queen Mum
Queen Liz II
Princess Margaret
Charles
Tony Blair
Prince Philip
Zecharia Sitchin
She acknowledges that Starfire rituals go on as well:
In the underground vaults of his castle in the Alsace Region of France, green glowing fluorescent rocks tam stored menstrual blood black to be used at that special ritual. All the British House apparently have jewel-encrusted goblets to drink the blood from the symbolic female grail and a symbolic dagger to give it a bit of a stir.
Some Spencers were at these rituals, but Diana would not attend... the smell of Diana’s periods would have caused Charles to shapeshift - especially whilst sleeping because the reptiles cannot retain their human form without concentration.
This may shed new light on Prince Charles’ reported desire to become a tampon. Aware of these charges, Laurence Gardner and Nicolas de Vere have tried to clear the record.
They’ve acknowledged that vampirism does take place at their rituals, but maintain that they only drink the blood of their own family members, who participate willingly.
"You cannot take the essences by force, they are only given in love," he says, otherwise, "their systems will react by producing chemicals during one’s assault upon them that will completely knock out the chemicals traditionally required."
They claim that vampirisin was originally the purview of a few noble families who practiced it in order to maintain their powers.
"The most famous stories," writes de Vere, "those of Dracula, Bathory and de Rais, support this conclusion."
He and Gardner enthusiastically embrace Dracula as one of their own:
"This Sacred Prince, a Hermetic scholar and initiate, a student of magic, Magus, Witch Lord and Dragon Prince, counterbalanced the bloodlust of his forebears with a refined knowledge and advanced practice of Grail procedure."
This is because he was a member of Sigismund’s Dragon Court in Hungary, and therefore of the Grail blood, who also attended a hermetic academy called the Austrian School of Solomon.
"The orthodox establishment’s fear of Dracula," writes, Gardner, "was not his treatment of enemies but his in-depth knowledge of alchemy, kingship and the ancient Star Fire customs."
As for the claim that they use these rituals to conjure up dragon ancestors from another dimension, de Vere calmly admits that this is the case, and that the participants have their bodies taken over by these spirits, who "rise from the dead to take possession of the witch’s soul!"
He further explains:
Any spirit including the archangels, conjured by the witch or magician was actually the ancestor of the witch... It was carried in the witch’s blood which, the purer it was through the unbroken descent from the Dragons, the stronger would be the return from the ancestors within.
In other words, they brought together and spoke or gesticulated a series of mnemonics that would trigger off precontrived, imprinted states of consciousness that acted as doorways into deeper seats of consciousness.
The charge of Satanism is not entirely refuted either, but de Vere proffers that they are not worshipping Satan so much as honoring one of their forefathers, who they stick right in the family tree along with Jesus, David and the rest.
"The Sabbatical Goat of the Black Mass was Chem Zoroaster," he writes, "one of the early ancestors of the ancient Dragon Families," and, "Satan was also called by the witches ’Christ, son Dei.’ ...Jesus’ heredity and the descent of the druidic dynasties... was devilish, because the descent of both bloodlines was from the Sumerian Enki who was the Akkadian Samael: the Roman Lucifer and thus the Catholic Satan."
But the Dragon Court members make no apology for this, because,
"to any intelligent person, to any true seer, concepts like white or black magic or good and evil are irrational, childish nonsense; both in terms of logic and actual fact."
Every Elf for Himself
"This is our Law, and the Law of the Strong. " -- Crowley, ibid.
To the charges of "conspiring to take over the world," the Dragons deny that they give two licks what the rest of humanity does with itself.
Their primary concern is,
"the restoration of their own Tribes, their own Nation and their own Homelands.... the foundation of their own distinct society.. re-introducing their old social structures and values."
This results in "The Grail Code," a system of Egalitarian, Chivalric ethics that govern how dragons treat other members of their race. However, "it is not the code that efficiently orders the behavior of the Dragon Families in their dealings with those not of the Grail Blood."
They acknowledge and defend their own elitist attitudes towards mankind, whom they regard as,
"thoroughly stupid and dimwitted, with a clear indication that this condition is genetically inherited."
Whereas in contrast,
"The Elves were naturally transcendent of spirit and their queens and kings were insulated from the common round of nuisances and petty concerns by minds which were bred for deeper matters."
Despite their hatred of humanity, they will kindly agree to be the guardians of our governments again (if they aren’t secretly doing so already), should the population choose to accept them, and offer them the thrones of the Earth, which de Vere and friends indicate are rightfully theirs anyway.
They are just waiting for mankind to realize it again. We will have to deal with the fact that these "Elves" seem to be in possession of a material that bestows long life as well as fantastic physical, mental, and spiritual powers, giving them a distinct advantage through which they are clearly attempting to lord over us, while they allow our populations to wallow in disease, death, and spiritual degradation.
As an excuse, de Vere and Gardner claim that the Starfire and White Gold are only effective for those already of the Dragon Blood anyway, because the rest of us,
"won’t have the right blood serum or the right connections in their cerebral lobes."
De Vere denies the claims of most people who believe themselves to be of this bloodline.
"Some people argue that because of the outbreeding of the old families, there must be millions of people ’of the fairy blood’ living today: but such a statement flies in the face of accepted facts of history.
The genuine old royal families rarely outbred at all, whilst the later, fake parvenu, tinker nobility whom people now confuse with them often did."
So that leaves little hope for you and me of ever obtaining the fruits of this magnificent "Philosopher’s Stone," which "gives youth to the old" and is described as "the summation of the heart’s desire."
And if such a substance were available to the public,
How much would it cost?
Would it be obtainable by everyone or only the rich and privileged?
What if it could be administered for free in the water supply or was available in tablet form at your local pharmacy, covered by your health insurance policy?
What would happen to our already exploding population?
As a species, mankind will have to decide how to deal with the information - provided that the information is aired in public someday, and provided our "thoroughly stupid and dim-witted" populace can figure out what to do with it.
Will we take advantage of what could be our greatest opportunity to advance as a species, or will we allow it to be used against us by a caste of Aryan overlords who despise us (and who are literally the spawn of Satan!)
Then again, will we perhaps wish to accept their rule, and the benefits of being led by an advanced race whose powers and insight are greater than our own.
After all, there are those who believe that civilization is created by and can only be maintained by an established elite. Would we want to meddle with that, and allow positions of power to be overrun by inferior men?
Perhaps it is worth considering whether an elite can truly be made by enhancing human faculties, or whether such powers are purely in the blood sources.
The Kindred are humans infected with one of five strains of a mutagenic retrovirus called the Kindred Virus. Although they call themselves Kindred, they are commonly known as "vampires." Due to an anemia caused by genetic damage from the virus, vampires feed on the blood of uninfected humans. Vampires are known to mainly bite a victim's neck, extracting the blood from the carotid artery. They use the term "Kindred and Kine" to refer to all of humanity. The Kindred are also known for their enhanced physical capabilities, longevity, and lethal reaction to sunlight.
Pathology
The Kindred Virus is not related to any known genus of virus or viroid. Due to its unique structure and protein composition, it is believed that the Kindred Virus is of extraterrestrial origin - brought to Earth by either a comet or meteor. It is a very old and well evolved symbiotic retrovirus which benefits its host in many ways rather than killing it. Newer viruses like the Ebola virus show their lack of adaptation in the fact that they destroy their hosts thereby running the risk of destroying themselves. A successful virus seeks symbiosis with it's host, not destruction.
The complexity of the virus is staggering. The Kindred Virus in many ways resembles a very primitive virus called a prion. Most viruses cause disease by infiltrating the host's systems then attacking specific cells and replacing the DNA of the cell with a copy of their own thus creating more viruses which then attack more cells and so on. The body of the host then recognizes these infected cells as foreign matter and the immune system works to eradicate them. The Kindred Virus works in much the same way except that the virus attacks nearly all of the hosts systems and works to adapt rather than change the DNA within the cells, adding extra 'mini-chromosomes' called plasmids to the human DNA rather than replacing it completely. This means that the host's immune system is partly fooled into believing that the adapted cells are still normal and are less aggressive in their removal of them, giving the virus more time to spread through out the body's systems.
Though technically a retrovirus, the degree to which it rewrites its host's genetic code puts it in a league all its own. Most viruses are highly specific in what type of tissue they target. The Kindred Virus, however, is capable of infecting virtually every cell in the human body.
Biology
The transition from human to vampire takes place over a period of 24 to 48 hours during which an individual undergoes neurophysical, anatomical, genetic and even behavioral transformations.
Blood Diet
Modifications to the area of the brain responsible for the sensation of hunger gives every vampire an overwhelming hunger for human blood instead of ordinary food. This blood hunger is a somatopsychic reaction of the brain in response to an inherent anemic condition in Kindred physiology.
During the change from a human to a vampire, functional changes to certain genes drastically reduces the body's production of red blood cells. However, physical modifications enable Kindred to receive blood transfusions by merely ingesting blood. A modified immune system allows them to accept any blood type.
Due to a functionally restructured stomach, vampires absorb the blood directly into the bloodstream with absorption in the inner tissues of the body via the restructured stomach lining instead of actually going through the process of digestion that would brake the blood cells down. Kindred must periodically drink small amounts of human blood to replace functioning cells. Animal blood is of no use because it would be rejected by the immune system and therefore its red blood cells would be destroyed. The modifications to the stomach happens to include enzymes that stop blood from curdling. This prevents any possible vomiting from ingesting blood, which is what happens when normal humans drink a large amount of blood.
Because of the altered stomach, Kindred are incapable of eating food, vomiting it up within seconds. Fortunately for them, the Kindred Virus causes the efficiency of all metabolic functions to be altered and enhanced to such an astonishing degree that vampires require far less nutrients than uninfected humans. As a result of this, even the minimal amount of iron, carbohydrates, fats, glucose, amino acids/proteins, and vitamins contained within human blood is actually enough to adequately meet the nutritional needs of a vampire. Modifications to both the circulatory system and metabolism allows the body of a vampire to use these substances without them being digested. Therefore, vampires are able to survive solely on a diet of human blood.
Photosensitivity
One of virus's most dramatic effects is on the biochemical makeup of a vampire. Certain new enzymes are produced that protect DNA from damage, however these enzymes possess chemical properties that are extremely unfortunate for vampires. A sufficient amount of ultraviolet radiation causes a chemical reaction within the enzymes that makes them ignite and burn the vampire's cells into ashes. Direct exposure to sunlight for more than a few moments will cause a chain reaction that will incinerate a vampire. However, this biochemical process is inhibited by a certain volume of blood in a vampire's system. Therefore, Kindred can move about in daylight for several hours if they have recently fed.
Longevity
Another profound effect of the Kindred Virus plasmids is to switch on the gene which controls the production of telomerase (an enzyme that prevents chromosome degeneration) and to boost its effectiveness with a version of its own in the packet of genetic material that fuses with the host's chromosomes. This suppresses cellular senescence and therefore vastly increases the replicative lifespan of cells. Genetic alterations also result in a biochemistry that is extremely efficient in protecting the cells from ionization damage to DNA caused mainly by natural oxidation, primarily free radicals. So as a vampire lives, cell division can continue almost indefinitely allowing cell damage to be repaired effectively giving them a vastly increased longevity; they are able to live for hundreds of years, and in rare cases, thousands.
The Brain
Along with the blood drinking instinct, the introduction of the Kindred Virus in to the host makeup produces a number of other effects in the brain. Blood flow to various areas of the brain is increased and the production of certain neurotransmitters is stimulated. The areas most affected are the amygdala and the visual cortex (the areas around the brain stem and outer-back of the brain). The amygdala is the most primitive part of the brain, linked mainly with the powerful fight-or-flight reflex. A vampire will suffer increased aggression and reactions, particularly to physically threatening situations. Arousal of a combative nature will have a greater effect. There is also personality changes because of the specific neurochemical changes that each strain of the Kindred Virus causes.
The changes to the visual cortex cause vision to become more acute. Processing of images proceeds faster. Nightvision is enhanced within certain parameters. The eyes themselves undergo no change, but a large part of human low light sight deficiency is due to the time it takes the brain to process darkened images. The information collected by the eyes is unchanged, but it is processed better.
The size of the corpus callosum increases by ten percent. This enables high-speed broadband communication between hemispheres. Their motor neuron nerve axons become almost twice as thick, which gives vampires faster signal transmission and faster reflexes than humans. Kindred also have enhanced intelligence because of an increased the potency of neurotransmitters involved in memory and cognition. Neurotransmitter potency is also responsible for enhanced senses of hearing and smell in vampires. They also have double the receptor cells in their noses and ears compared to humans.
Basic Anatomy
Along with the vastly increased lifespan, genetic changes also endow a vampire's cells with the ability to access the genetic blueprint to a greater extent than human cells, enabling the vampire body to perfectly recreate missing tissue. As a result cuts, burns and abrasions heal spontaneously without scars, severed limbs can be reattached, etc. In fact their bodies spontaneously heal almost any injury that does not dismember or disintegrate them (i.e., a chainsaw or a consuming fire). All vampires enjoy a more efficient metabolism than normal humans. Because of this, their bodies are able to perform more efficiently than normal humans. The augmented strength and stamina that vampire display is a result of a higher production level of the contractile proteins of musculature. The fact that their muscles heal at an accelerated rate and therefore are able to operate more strenuously also adds to a vampire's physical strength. Due to the greater pain threshold, considerable strength, enhanced immune system and extraordinary regenerative capabilities, Kindred are exceptionally difficult to kill.
Kindred are the very model of good health. They have low cholesterol and blood pressure and no heart disease. Because of the perfect cellular replication and no added damage to DNA, it is impossible for a vampire to develop cancer or a degenerative condition. During the vampiric transformation, the upper canine teeth experience growth. Additional enamel is also deposited on the crown of those teeth, slightly elongating and sharpening their tips into subtle fangs. Although they are not as quite pronounced as popular mythology claims. The genetic transformation process also causes the gonads of vampires to be rendered nonfunctional. As a result, Kindred are universally sterile.
Strains/Clans
The Kindred are divided into five distinct clans, which are based on the five strains of the Kindred Virus. The specific differences in the strains are the specific pheromonal signals they cause a vampire to emit and the specific neurochemical balances they induce, which cause specific personality types for each strain. The Nosferatu Strain causes physical differences as well.
In every region, each clan is lead by a Primogen. The Primogens meet to advise the Prince, to consult, and to present grievances. They often have their own agendas and seek to promote their own clans.
Brujah
The Brujah are outspoken, turbulent, and defiant, and in human terms, often criminal. The least civilized of the clans, they are also the most recent to come into being. Brujah are perhaps most descriptively thought of as mobsters. Many refuse to abide by both human and Kindred laws, and they are the most likely of all the clans to be led by ambition and greed for money and power. They see what they want and take it by force. The Brujah are the seedy underbelly of Kindred society. They are the Mafia of the Kindred world.
Gangrel
The Gangrels are individualists who sneer at the constraints of society. They are ferocious fighters, proud, hot-headed, and street smart. They tend to drift city to city much more than the other clans. An ancient hatred between the Gangrels and the Brujah keep the rivalries churning up dissent. The Gangrels are loyal and trustworthy. They make excellent bodyguards because of their incorruptibility -- they can't be bought. Unfortunately they have deep difficulties with authority. They have a strong tendency toward rebellion, and struggle to follow even their own leaders.
Nosferatu
The Nosferatu tend to live below ground. They collect knowledge as well as secrets that can add to their power. They embody the features that humans imagine as vampire. The Nosferatu are the most subtle and cunning of the clans. While other Kindred retain their human countenance, Nosferatu are distorted by the Embrace. Grotesque, they are often scorned by other Kindred, and certainly unable to move freely among humans. Often called "Sewer Rats," they have mastered skulking and eavesdropping. They can blend into shadows. Yet, they are level-headed and practical. Since they appear the least human, and have to remove themselves from human society to protect themselves, they are the best advisers to the Prince, being objective and dispassionate in their political judgments. They are also natural enforcers, able to remove emotions from their decision-making. The Nosferatu are neutral in many Kindred conflicts.
Toreador
The Toreador are elegant, flamboyant, creative, and most of all -- passionate. They savor their immortality, yet are most connected to the mortal world. They use their vampiric powers to increase art and protect artistic geniuses. They are closely connected to the realms where creativity comes from -- as well as other, darker impulses. For these reasons they are subject to madness. Vincent Van Gogh, for instance, was embraced by the Kindred when he decided he couldn't live among human beings anymore. Of all the Kindred, they are the most likely to fall in love with humans. Toreador Kindred have worked themselves into positions of influence in the world of popular culture. In the past, they have also used their creative bent and influence to promulgate a false mythology of "vampires" -- the same mythology we know from the Bram Stoker novel, for example -- so that actual vampires will appear normal and human when compared to the fictional.
Ventrue
The Ventrue are the rich, powerful and elite of vampire society and they share a love of high society with the Toreador, not for its pleasures, however, but for the sheer challenge of running things. They are industrialists, leaders, aristocrats. They have a Blue-Blood bearing and are often found in positions of power, where they can shape destiny. They are educated and trained by elite human institutions, which is why the Ventrue are the most human in their attitudes and behavior. In fact, they are the "Brahmin" caste of Kindred society. They strive to keep control over the Camarilla. It is for these and other reasons that Princes tend to be Ventrue.
Nosferatu Strain
The strain of the Kindred Virus that causes transformation into Nosferatu has two differences to the others. It has a less effective camouflage against the immune system and is itself a more aggressive strain. This means that all through the transition period from human to vampire, the individual's body is ravaged by the war between the virus and the immune system. As a result, those who become Nosferatu Kindred are scarred by the ordeal their anatomy has gone through.
The Nosferatu are unpleasant to look at. They have a bald head which is usually criss-crossed by a network of livid veins and there is a subtle extension of the brow ridges. They also have no eyebrows. Their ears have a pronounced point and the hands too show the signs of the Nosferatu with sharply pointed and discolored nails.
Pheromones
All vampires emit pheromones that are specific for each strain of the Kindred Virus. Because Kindred have an enhanced sense of smell, they detect these pheromonal signals instantly and therefore will know a vampire's clan instantly. The pheromones cause certain reactions within the brains of Kindred. Contact with the pheromones from someone of the same strain will cause a vampire to feel an instinctive sense of camaraderie with that other vampire.
Due to a biochemical quirk, the pheromones of the Gangrel strain causes a negative reaction within members of the Brujah clan and the pheromones of the Brujah strain causes a negative reaction within members of the Gangrel clan. The quirk causes the pheromones to simultaneously stimulate the region of the brain involved in aggression response and recognition of people, thereby making Gangrel and Brujah feel an inherent hostility to each other. As a result of this, an ancient enmity simmers at all times between the Brujah and the Gangrels. Because Gangrels and Brujah can detect each other instantly, they will automatically dislike each other upon meeting.
The Masquerade
For countless centuries, Kindred prospered and pursued their own schemes and desires. They were invincible, standing above humans in their understanding and awareness of the true nature of the world. They lived openly and arrogantly among mortals, relying on their power and human superstition to preserve them. Then came the Inquisition.
With the Inquisition, Kindred faced an enemy that studied both superstitious belief and scientific observation to identify Kindred, the demons of the dark. With maddening thoroughness, the Inquisition devised methods to rid the world of these creatures, along with witches, warlocks, heretics, the feeble, and the politically inconvenient. As for Kindred, the Inquisitors were diligent in their efforts to trace bloodlines and purge the creatures by the flame. Those Kindred who survived swiftly learned secrecy and stealth. They learned to band together in loose networks. Vulnerable for the first time, the five clans united. They called themselves the Camarilla, and this collective group existed first and foremost to enforce its first law, a law most sacred -- The Masquerade.
This law demands that the knowledge of Kindred be kept from humans. To make the law effective, Kindred set about to erase evidence of their kind, instilling doubt that they had ever existed, finally leaving behind only a myth of such creatures. It was safe to hide behind the myth. Through adherence to this law, Kindred were able to hide in plain sight within human society.
The Masquerade ensures the continuance of Kindred through secrecy, and any Kindred who breaks the Masquerade, who reveals the existence of Kindred -- that Kindred is outcast, even hunted down.
Principality
The Prince is the Kindred who has the power to hold domain over a city, set its laws, enforce them, and maintain peace. He is the judge who settles disputes among Kindred; he grants permission for another Kindred to embrace a human. A Prince also influences human matters and uses this influence to guarantee that the Princehood is not lost. But most of all, the Prince is concerned with the Masquerade and preservation of Kindred law.
The Embrace
In human myth, the dead who succumb to the treacherous bite of a vampire rise from the grave to become yet another predatory creature of the night. On the contrary, the act of transforming a human into a vampire requires conscious effort. In order for a victim to become a vampire, their immune response would first have to be severely weakened and then they would have to be exposed to a large dose of the Kindred Virus through injection or consumption of the vampire's fluids (usually blood). During the Embrace, a vampire drains a person's blood to the point when the immune response is lethally depleted and then replaces it with a small amount of Kindred blood. After being embraced, the new Kindred will take on the characteristics -- psychological and physical in the case of the Nosferatu -- of the clan that embraced them.
Before a human can be embraced, the Kindred who wishes to "Sire" that human must get permission from the Prince. Embracing a human without permission -- which endangers the Masquerade and can be very cruel to the human -- is a serious offense, the Prince has the right to destroy both the errant vampire and the erstwhile human.
The reasons a Kindred embraces vary. Some do so out of spite or vengeance, forcibly embracing the human, stealing the mortal innocence. Some embrace out of love or desire, even lust. And others seek reprieve from their loneliness, wanting to share their long existence with a creature dark and beautiful, like themselves.
Society
There are Kindred in every walk of life. Kindred pass legally as human with the help of fellow vampires working inside various agencies responsible for the creation and authentication of documents -- birth, death and marriage records, etc. However, even these ties sometimes don't suffice -- for instance, when a Kindred has lived too long in a community for his lack of aging to escape notice. In these cases vampires may migrate to new cities to establish new identities. The Kindred don't recognize human boundaries of state, religion, or culture. They have their clans and that's all they have.
Although a Prince is typically a Ventrue, leaders of all the clans covet the position, and conspire constantly to seize it. The peace between the clans is always tenuous, and it is only through the skill and strength of the Prince that peace is kept. This peace is all-important, because without it the Masquerade is doomed.
Killing a vampire is of course forbidden, but punishment is more variable, since Kindred are often ordered killed by the Prince in order to protect the Masquerade. When such sanctioned "Final Death" is ordained, it is called a "Blood Hunt", and can only be decreed by the Prince, typically after a "Conclave" is held among the leaders of all the clans.
History
Since the dawn of time, the Kindred evolved alongside humans. Wherever there were humans and hominid creatures, the Kindred preyed upon and fed off them. In ancient times, the Kindred were savage, merciless killers who hunted humans at night. Among their unspeakable atrocities was the practice of stealing babies and draining their blood.
The first strain of the Kindred Virus to evolve was the Nosferatu. Eventually the virus mutated into new strains, starting with the Gangrels, who were quickly followed by the Ventrue, then the Toreador strain came, and finally the Brujah were the last clan to evolve. Because they are averse to each other on a pheromonal level, the Brujah and the Gangrel quickly became mortal enemies. The Nosferatu came to rule the other strains/clans, who feared them for their power. At some point the Toreador created music.
Around the year 3000 B.C., the Nosferatu took sides in a Kindred war for the last time. They decided to stay neutral for their own survival. Around 1000 B.C. regional populations of Kindred began being ruled by Princes. This system survives to the present day; there is a Prince in every city, and he is the leader of all local Kindred. In 996 A.D. the Nosferatu allowed the Ventrue to live above ground and to become bankers and politicians so that they could gain power.
In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV authorized the Spanish Inquisition. Humans captured and tortured the Kindred because they were thought to be evil. Kindred were hunted down and burned alive by those who feared them and called them monsters. As a result of this persecution, the clans joined together to create the "Masquerade," a set of laws punishable by death that were intended to keep the Kindred from being seen as anything other than human, and the Nosferatu were able to live peacefully out of sight of humans below ground. A central tenet of the Masquerade was that Kindred must follow the Laws of Man. This rule began as a practical way of preventing Kindred from being imprisoned or otherwise subjected to scrutiny, but over time, it has taken on a more purely moral agenda.
Although each clan went through various names throughout the centuries, in the early 19th century the modern names of the clans were settled on. Over the last few hundred years, the Kindred (primarily the Toreador) propagated myths about vampires, which include the notions that they sleep in coffins or dirt, come from Transylvania, have two big fangs or barbed tongues, are invisible in mirrors, that they can be warded off with silver bullets, garlic strings or crosses, bats flying around, and so on. This was part of the Masquerade, and it kept humans occupied looking for those signs as Kindred walked among them posing as normal humans. The Toreador even hired storytellers to spread these falsehoods.
It is that time of year when baking and cooking always seems to taste better when everything is fresh and available.
In a very large casserole dish:
Place whichever type of chicken you prefer, boneless, breasts, or drumsticks, thighs, etc. in the bottom of a deep buttered casserole dish.
Slice up potatoes, after scrubbing them really well, cut them uo into large pieces. I also add 2 Sweet potatoes to this also for added flavor and vitamin richness to the body. Place the potatoes over the chicken. You may also add fresh pumpkin here if you wish.
Slice 3 large onions, and then place on top of the potatoes.
Peel and slice about 5 carrotts, and then place over the onions.
Sprinkle Lawry's Seasoned salt, and California Blend Garlic salt over the top.
One bottle of Vidalia Onion Salad Dressing poured over the entire mixture or until the pan sides are at least 3/4 full.
Cover with foil, and bake at 375 degrees for one hour. Check for doneness. If the vegetables are still a bit crunchy, return to oven uncovered for another 1/2 hour.
I serve mine with homemade rolls, or garlic roast. It is delicious and very easy. Everyone who has ever tried it always asks me for the recipe, so enjoy!
Blessed Be!
~Morganna777
The day was a busy one to say the least, but still feel the need to get a message out there to the ones who are listening...
Since I was a child I have been having a recurring dream. This dream is a prophecy, an "insight" into my own future if you will... I am nursing many wounded, mostly friends and family in a bunker, with cots and chaos just outside the walls. There is blood everywhere, people being brought to me through a secret code, one which I will not reveal. They are brought to me to be tended medically and fed after many hours or days of fighting. The world on the outside is not as it is now. It is pillaging, looting, burning and loud with gunfire and death. The only law we have is survival of the fittest. The bunker is set up on the inside as if it were a log cabin, with many rooms, a wood stove, and the bare essentials to the naked eye. In separate rooms there are food storage, rations, medical supplies, weapons of all sorts and dry clothing and bedding. All of these other rooms are locked and I am the only one with the key. I have set up underground passageways to the local hospitals where I can get my supplies and medical personnel if I need them. The loss is astronomical. Yet, I keep trudging on, hoping to save yet one more person. My magick is working, and for those with the will strong enough do make it. Others are buried by the light of the moon. Eventually, and the dream goes on, the noises stop. I am then given the time and luxury to wash up, dress properly in a long black gown with black and wine lace trims, and attend to my followers. They await me in the largest bunker room. I am escorted by my own guards to a throne where my equal greets me, and sits with me. The reports from the army before me are staggering. They are asking me to make a decision as they kneel down before me and ask...
Today when I got home, on the news was the first of many signs to come. A Government shut down. The Naval shipyard workers were sent home without pay, and no idea as to when they may return to work. Some would say that I am irrational, flying off the handle and panicking. I can assure you, I do not panic easily. I heard news of a "Bank Bailout". Veterans who were honoring their fallen comrades in arms today had to break into their own cemetery because the Federal workers shut the place up tight. They got in anyway.
An SUV was run down and chased, then held at gunpoint by a bunch of people riding motorcycles, and all over a parking spot. There is much more of this chaos to come. Money will no longer be useful when the need is for warmth, food and clothing. Bartering will come again. I have even heard veterans in my industry say that we are headed for another Civil War. Who would know better than someone who had a thorough knowledge of it? It is almost surreal to think of my young age, and of which I choose not to reveal, that it has begun. The vibrations today from the Universe was so high it was almost deafening. Yet people continue to go about their daily business without a care in the world. I do not expect you to drop your life and head for the hills, but I hope that my Journals and channeled entries have not fallen on deaf ears or in this case, eyes. That you would take the necessary steps to keep yourself and your loved ones safe when such a time truly does come to fruition. I have no doubt that we are headed for simpler times, and of the day of Reckoning is upon us. In a short time, all of us with gifts will be looked to for help as they know not. I could post all of this information that I share on a public website such as FB, etc, but frankly, and forgive my arrogance, but WHY? Would they listen?. Probably not. So, I take the time to post here, as I know that there are genuine people on here with a desire to make a difference as they should. I cannot do this alone. I cannot save all as I would like to. It simply isn't possible. So, I challenge you, If I am wrong, what will you have really lost in preparing for the worst? If I am right, and you do prepare, then I have saved your life and those you love. The spirits continue to come to me, and they all have the feeling of deep concern. They know it is not far, and well, I AM LISTENING.
Have a talk with your family, talk about a plan, and what you would do if such a day/night comes...I talked with mine again tonight. It is a work in progress, but at least I know that I can hold my own at this point. Can you? Start small, print them out, check them off, and know that you are doing something proactive now. Then move onto the next. When you are done, you will have something far more than anything money can buy... the knowledge that you are READY FOR ANYTHING and you and your family will have a chance at survival. Peace of mind is priceless.
Blessed Be!
~Morganna777
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