The Angel of Death

      Accounts of the angel of death have appeared many times throughout the ages.  Sometimes this being is perceived as evil, othertimes it is portrayed as simply carrying out the job at hand. Lets take a closer look at the many interpretations of this mysterious figure.

The Death Angel and Major World Religions

     The term "angel of death" can be found in nearly every culture in various forms. However, their are many accounts of angels, both good and bad, specifically found in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. For example, the book of Isaiah in the Bible includes an account of how 185,000 Assyrians were slaughtered by an angel of God. The book of Genesis recounts the deaths of the first born of Egypt that many people believe were also delivered by an angel under the direction of God, although it may have been God who actually performed the act. Both of these accounts fit the general description of a death angel, although there doesn't seem to be a single angel that officially carries such a title. The thought of an angel that brings death is an ominous one indeed, and it's small wonder that such a figure might be associated with an evil nature given many people's fears about what happens after life ends. This has led some people to a belief that there is a close link between the death angel and the figure of Satan. However, there is no Christian biblical reference that Satan and this figure are one and the same.
     The Islamic and Jewish faiths are bit more specific about naming a death angel. Islam speaks of Azrael, while Judaism has no less than 14 death angels.

Throughout Fiction

     The death angel is represented in many forms throughout classic and modern fiction. The most well-known version of this angel is in the form of the "Grim Reaper" in novels such as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, where the last spirit which appears to Scrooge is the terrifying cloaked figure of the grim reaper. Today, this dark being remains one of the most popular subjects for modern fiction, such as the examples below.

• Angel of Death by Charlotte Lamb
• Death Angel by Martha Powers
• The Goddess of Love and the Angel of Death by Tom Slattery
• Angel of Death by James Anderson
• The Angel of Death by P.C. Doherty

In the Media

     The death angel is represented in a very wide range of forms throughout the media such as television and movies. The television show Touched By An Angel had a character named Andrew who was the one who delivered the death sentence. His character was kind hearted, and his role was simple to escort the person's spirit into the afterlife following death. More evil characters representing "Death" showed up in television shows like Charmed, or as a dark, misty and foreboding creature in the video game The Sims 2. There are also humorous examples of the Grim Reaper, such as in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, or in South Park and Family Guy. Regardless of the medium, it's clear that the mythology of the Grim Reaper representing Death has permeated throughout all aspects of modern society. This particular "angel" is recognized in almost every country and throughout every culture.

In Real Life

     While many recognize that people often claim visitations by guardian angels, or sometimes possession by demonic spirits, a less common story told by witnesses is a visitation by a dark entity. However, these accounts do exist, and the stories are often told by people who have witnessed someone else's death. The following examples are a small sampling of true stories by people who have witnessed what many would consider visitations by the Grim Reaper himself.

• Angels & Ghosts featured a story by a man named Jeff who, through astral projection, came to believe that he was his own "messenger of death" when his own father passed away.
• Your Ghost Stories.com published a story about an assisted living worker at a private home for the elderly who experienced a dying man talking to a woman dressed all in black asking him to go with her. The man died shortly after the experience.
• Ghost Village.com featured a story from an Israeli in 1997 who claimed he was woken up by the touch of a bony finger on his lips, and upon waking, actually seeing this angel that represents death.
• Another demonic tale comes from a visitor of Your Ghost Stories who believes that the "shadow person" who visited him when his grandma died in her sleep was a demon.

     Given the variety of story themes and characterizations of "death", this particular angel is one that does not follow a common theme for all people. For some, this entity represents an evil or demonic force. For others, it is a good being that is assigned to carry out the painful but necessary task of escorting human souls over to the "other side". Still others view death as a the classic figure with large bony fingers and a dark, hooded profile. Whichever way you view the Grim Reaper, the one thing that is clear is that it is one of the few angels that have captured the imaginations of a very large number of people around the world, religious and non-religious alike.

What do you think?

Camera Phone Ghosts

Ghosts seem to be popping up more than usual these days. You can see various websites dedicated to the paranormal that are constantly screaming "ghost" in every picture they take. Common sense and reading up on photography makes no difference to these amateur ghost hunters. Since camera phones are very easy to carry and manage, they appear to be very popular for the wannabes out there. Words and phrases like low resolution, slow or fast shutter speed and even “hold the camera steady” mean nothing for these intrepid photographers. They point and shoot and if they see a smudge that they think is not accounted for, they say it’s a ghost. They are oblivious to pareidolia (matrixing) and fail to understand even the simplest rules of basic photography.


     “The term pareidolia (pronounced /pæraɪˈdoʊliə/), referenced in 1994 by Steven Goldstein, describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse. Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces”. (Definition taken from "The Paranormal Dictionary")

Very recently we conducted an experiment on the site. People were asked to take pics with their camera phones and then shake the camera around to see what popped up in the picture. To our surprise, not only did the picture turn out strange, but also appeared to have certain faces in it. Had we unwillingly captured the image of a ghost?

On investigating further, we came to understand that when the area of a photograph is blown up to the max, we can see faces in the pattern. These are not real faces, nor ghostly ones. They are merely our brains straining to make sense of the anomaly we see. Thus, by cropping a small portion of the pic, and zooming in on it (blowing it up) we join and connect the dots and form a face or several faces depending on the shot. This is especially true if we over enhance the pic.

 

We also have to admit that there are some great programs out there for ‘enhancing’ photographs. Indeed, Photoshop is the greatest program for creating ghost images. By applying certain filters one can get astounding results. Take the photo below for example. This was taken by one of the members of the site. It is a picture of her computer screen monitor. She moved the camera phone on purpose to get the blurred effect:

 

If this picture is cropped, so that the screen monitor becomes less noticeable you can get this one below:

 

 



If you look at this picture, you have a perfect example of a picture of a ghostly apparition. Furthermore, if you combine this picture with another one of a cemetery and use layers you can get a fabulous ghost picture, as demonstrated by another member with this picture below:

 

 

 

What people don’t seem to realize, is that light plays a very important part in camera phone pictures. They take the pics and don’t care if there is little or no light in the room.

Another factor that people fail to consider when taking a cam phone pic is that if you enable the zoom in feature, you are invariably going to take grainy pictures, thus resulting in even more anomalies which can be mistaken for faces. If you add to this a shaky hand, the results will be even more confusing.



There  are many more pictures that our members have taken using their camera phones to experiment how easy it is to get anomalous results. We urge you all to click the links below and take a look at the results as well.

A word of advice to all when looking for ghost pictures on the net: When you come to a site that advertises having taken real ghost pictures or pictures of demons using a cell/camera phone, do your homework first. Read up on the different features that a camera phone uses, and use your common sense when you are looking at the pictures. Not everything is as it seems, and certainly not everyone is for real. Not even the ghosts or demons in the pictures themselves!

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it would be interesting to research on the history of Halloween and its origins, as well as popular celebrations.



      The name HALLOWEEN is the shortened form of All-hallow-even, because it is celebrated on the evening before All Hallows Day or All Saints’ Day, which is a religious festivity. However, the origins of Halloween have nothing to do with Christianity.

      Halloween first was celebrated by the Celts, who lived around 2,000 years ago in northern France, Ireland and the United Kingdom. It was not known by this name, however. The Celts celebrated their new year on November the 1st. According to their beliefs, this date marked the end of summer and the beginning of the long, hard winter. On the eve before the new year, they thought that the boundaries between the living and the dead intertwined and this enabled the dead to make themselves known to the living. On that night, they would dress up in costumes consisting of animal heads and skins and built bonfires where they attempted to predict their futures, as fortune telling on this night was easier because of the presence of the dead amongst them. The festival was called Sahmain. They would light a huge sacred bonfire which symbolized protection from the coming winter. After extinguishing it, they would take some coals to relight their hearth fires, thus culminating their celebration.

      After the Romans had conquered Celtic territory in 43AD, they incorporated two more festivals into the celebration. The first one, known as Feralia, was celebrated a day in late October to commemorate the passing of the dead. The second one celebrated the goddess Pomona (goddess of fruit and trees) and this is probably where bobbing for apples originated from.
     How did Halloween get its name then? With the coming of Christianity, and in the attempt to eradicate Pagan beliefs and celebrations, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, to honor all Christian saints and martyrs. The name Hallows, means Souls, or Sacred, and Een, short for Eve, and we have the name, “Halloween”. Furthermore, to confirm and reinforce Christianity, November 2nd was turned into a celebration of the Day of the Dead. Indeed, the Mass carried out on October 31st was called Hallowmas, and the celebrations of the three days had people dressing up as angels, devils and saints, and lighting up bonfires as well, just as the Celts had done thousands of years before.

      According to many European cultural traditions, Halloween is a night when the dead are more likely to interact with the living and a night when magic is more powerful. This gave way to tales of witches meeting on this night and consorting with the devil. 

      Today, Halloween is celebrated in many parts of the world. In Ireland, adults and children alike dress up in costumes of ghosts, witches, ghouls, demons and vampires among others. In Scotland, Halloween is mixed with their belief in fairies, and children often carry a around a ‘Neepy Candle’ a devil face carved into a hollowed out Neep, or yellow turnip, which is lit from the inside, in order to frighten away the evil faeries. In the UK, pumpkin carving is widely practiced and children and adults enjoy carving out scary faces on pumpkins. In Germany, traditional Halloween decorations are becoming popular as part of fall decorations, and witches and jack-o-lanterns are frequently seen.

      Halloween celebrations in the United States did not start until the 19th century, perhaps due to a strict puritan observance that lasted till the 1800’s. The most popular time for Halloween in the States, therefore, was between 1905 and 1915, when some companies began making Halloween cut outs for decorations. Trick or treating did not become popular till 1950, and Halloween costumes only started appearing in stores in the 30’s! However, nowadays, the most popular Halloween costumes are witch, pirate, vampire, cat and clown, in that order!


      Whether you go on a haunted ghost tour, which are extremely popular, visit a cemetery or just dress up in a spooky costume to open the door for trick-or-treaters, Halloween is a cheerful festivity that will continue to excite and enthrall us for many more years to come.

Dreams: A door way to future dimensions.

     While we are awake, we experience reality through our fundamental nature. We judge our environment based on rationale and logical thinking. In fact, most of the time while we are fully awake we tend to judge this reality with our five senses that shape our view of this reality. However, still there are things that seem unable to be explained which do not get along with our fundamental thinking that leads us to disregard it as non-existent. Perhaps, dreams are the doorway to explore the reality of the unseen world.

     Meanwhile, some of us will give personal interpretations and view dreams according to one’s perceptions and beliefs. However, scientific belief interprets dreams as the subjective experience of imaginary images, sounds or voices, words, thoughts or sensations during sleep, while some interpret as a series of images, ideas, and emotions occurring in the mind during the 5th stage of sleep known as the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage.

However, it is widely believed that dreams are visions meant to guide us. Moreover, Freud and Jung have compared dream material with its symbolic content that have became psychotherapy’s most important aid in the exploration of the unconscious.

 

     Therefore, I believe that dreams also may have links to the existence of parallel worlds too. Perhaps, to dream is the easiest way for an ordinary person to experience the existence of parallel worlds as Reader’s Digest (1979) has suggested in How to Interpret Your Dreams, where it is believed that dreams are the gateway to an inner world, a world just as real as the one outside. Furthermore, Reader’s Digest had added,  “What is outside is also inside; what is inside is also outside."

 

     Interestingly we believe that dreams can aid us to continue our existence and even before we see the future dimension, but there are still sceptics who ignore dreams and label them as fragments of images that play while we are asleep that are not more than just the reflections related to our daily activities. Therefore, according to them dreams are not more than just brain activities.

 

     However, I believe that there are things that we can learn beyond dreams. In fact, dreams may also enlighten our personal emotional burden. Therefore, dreams perhaps is a doorway to search for personal problems that we are not able to solve in reality. In fact, dreams are as real as how we experience in reality. Furthermore, I would like to point out my own personal experiences on getting clues and answers to a certain personal difficulty. I realise, every time I could not solve any difficulties or I really needed an answer for a certain doubt, then my inner soul will search and resolve the difficulty through lucid dreams.

 

     Finally, one may find dreams to be a vision that might happen in future but personally for me, dreams are like a doorway to the future dimension where is our inner self has already experienced the future to give us the opportunity to learn and prepare ourselves before those foretelling happen in reality, or we may even be able to alter future dimensions that may benefit us through our positive attitude and visualization.

The History of Withcraft

Depending how witchcraft history is defined, it has existed as a religious practice since ancient times and continues to exist in a greatly evolved form today.
     Witchcraft is a poorly understood word. Although contemporary witches or "pagans" believe that witchcraft history, in its modern form, pre-dates Christianity itself, most historians and theologians disagree. The disagreement is centered on how historians, and pagans themselves, define Witchcraft.
     Pagans connect modern witchcraft with a number of ancient, pre-Christian pagan faiths. However, historians and scholars define modern witchcraft as an invention of the Christian Inquisition, in which the Church redefined all pre-Christian faiths throughout Europe. The historical definition is the more accurate one, because it recognizes that before the Christian Church grouped all non-Christian faiths into one category, all of these religious practices were very different from one another.
Understanding Witchcraft History
     Ancient tribal witches within most cultures across the world, from the Celtic druids to the Native American shaman, consisted of spirituality and "Magic" centered around herbology, affecting weather patterns, offering blessings or bestowing curses. These practices remained, in one form or another, until the Christian Church gained enormous control and power throughout the world. The Inquisition and the Crusades transformed all non-Christian practices into one category, which later generations have come to call "Witchcraft"
Paganism before Christianity
Much of Paganism originates with the ancient Greeks, and elements of those traditions exist throughout Greek mythology. These traditions, including the use of magic, herbalism and divination, existed well into the Middle Ages. Pagan cults included their own priests and priestesses, such as the Celtic priests who were called "Druids". This Celtic cult was a very common European paganism centered around the worship of trees. Many of these religious communities had mystics, temples, and even religious statues. The term "Wizard" has its roots in the Pagan priests who had gone into hiding, yet traveled the countryside to perform services for practitioners scattered throughout the land.
During this time period, a "Witch" was a person who used herbs, roots and other natural elements to either heal or hurt others through the use of particular magical concoctions, practices and rituals. Much of the folklore that forms current images of the "Old Hag" witch comes from the old female peasants who continued using pagan ceremonies and spells into the first few centuries of Christianity when pagan practice was not yet a crime. In some parts of Europe, Pagan ceremonies and practices were still common, although historians agree there is no evidence of an organized cult system that connected all pagan religions across the continent. For the most part, these practices were rooted in old tribal beliefs centered around nature, weather and primitive spiritual practices.

Christianity Turns the Primitive "Pagan" into a "Witch"

The founding of the Inquisition and the Crusades were initially directed against Muslims, but then became focused on "Heretics" within the Church's own ranks. From the 11th century to the 14th century, Inquisitors and nobles confiscated property and persecuted those who were deemed to be a heretic by the Church leaders. As heretics became more difficult to locate, Pope Innocent VIII eventually sanctioned adding those who practiced "witchcraft" into the same category as heretics, and made them subject to arrest and trial. Church leaders taught that witches worshiped a false deity called Satan. Through this new definition, Church leaders essentially invented an entirely new form of witchcraft that never existed before, known today as Satanism or "Devil Worship". During this time period, the Church grouped all religions, including Pagans, Jews, Gypsies and others, under a category called "witchcraft." The Inquisition included horrific actions against anyone suspected of being a witch. Men, women and children were tortured and killed in unmentionable ways. By the time this dark period of witchcraft history was over, over 50,000 people were murdered for being labeled a "heretic" and a "witch."

1900s: Witchcraft is "Reborn"

From the '20s through the '50s, a new form of "witchcraft" was created from remnants of those earlier primitive pagan beliefs and practices. As scientific psychic research became more popular within European culture, intellectuals throughout Europe began attempting to develop explanations for these phenomena, and in the process created a new religion called "witchcraft."

• 1920s: Margaret Alice Murray - Margaret Alice Murray published "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe", and "The God of the Witches", in which she claimed that early Pagan beliefs were focused on the worship of the same Goddess and Horned God. Most scholars disproved Murray's theories by showing how varied Pagan and folk religions practiced throughout Europe.

• 1930s: Gerald Gardner - A man named Gerald Gardner recreated a new Pagan tradition of witchcraft. He created rituals, meditations and other writings. Various covens started throughout the UK. By 1949, when Gardner published "High Magic's Aid", he was a member of Aleister Crowley's O.T.O. system of occult theory. During the '50s, after the "Witchcraft Law of England" was repealed, witchcraft expanded into a much larger movement across Europe.

• 1960s: Witchcraft Comes to America - In the 1960s, the counterculture within America picked up on the European movement, and a number of "Gardner Covens" began operating in the United States and Canada. The late '60s brought hallucinogenic drugs and an interest in the mystical. The "Hippie" of the '60s and '70s created intense interest in mysticism and psychic phenomenon. At this time, new pagan traditions based on Gardner's writings were formed throughout the U.S.

Today, throughout the world, witchcraft remains a practice that is both growing in popularity, but also greatly misunderstood, even by those who practice it themselves. Today, practices including divination, clairvoyance, herbology and other activities now termed "New Age" have a witchcraft history that originates from the new "witchcraft" that was reborn throughout the early 1900s.

So what do you guys and gals think about this?

Ghost Flames

Ghost flames are a mysterious phenomenon also known as will-o'-the-wisp, spook lights, ghost lights, corpse candles or orbs. Throughout the centuries, these lights have been attributed to fairies, elementals, ufos and ghosts.
Examples of Ghost Flames:
     The way ghost flames are reported depends upon the location and time period when the sighting took place. For example, R.C. Maclagan wrote about such ghost lights in the Scotland Highlands in 1897 where lights were seen prior to deaths occurring at those locations. In these stories, the lights were referred to as "corpse candles" or "death candles". In 1902, newspapers reported a ghost flame appearing over a mountain where a woman's body was earlier found in a barrel. The people who lived in the villages and towns across the world where this phenomenon took place often attributed the flames to fairies. In other locations and throughout the years, these flames were also attributed to the following causes.

• Ghosts who were carrying lanterns
• Fairies
• Angelic apparitions
• UFO sightings
• Ball Lightning
• Swamp Gas
• Tectonic stress "earth lights"

     The following are some of the more famous examples of ghost flame sightings.

The Big Thicket Light of Texas

     The Big Thicket light, also known as the Saratoga Light, appears to travelers along Old Bragg Road in Hardin County, Texas. The road was originally a rail bed for a train that traveled from Bragg Station to Saratoga from 1901 through 1934. Lights were reported almost as soon as people started traveling through the area, and news reports about the lights started to increase starting in the 1960s. The National Geographic even published an article on the ghost flame in October 1974 with an actual photo of the light.
     As is the case with most ghost flame sightings around the world, locals and investigators all offer their own theories. Skeptics believe that the light is nothing more than car light reflections or swamp gas. Others believe that the light could be the ghosts of Spanish men coming back for buried treasure, the ghost of a man shot by Confederate soldiers or the apparition of a railroad man who was decapitated in a terrible train accident along this stretch of track. Although no one has been able to identify the source of the ghost flame, the photographic evidence and witnesses prove that the light is real.

Silver Cliff Cemetery Lights

     Silver Cliff is a very old mining town within Wet Mountain Valley just west of Pueblo, Colorado where strange ghost flames have been seen as early as 1890. Witnesses report lights floating throughout the Silver Cliff cemetery, and they describe the flames as glowing many different colors. The lights were witnessed so often that National Geographic published an article on the graveyard lights in August 1969. In the article, the author described seeing blue-white lights appear between the graves. As the lights were approached or a flashlight shone upon them, they disappeared. The National Geographic investigation revealed no explanation for the ghostly lights.

Yakima Indian Reservation Ghost Flames

     Yakima Indian Reservation is located in the southern part of Washington state and covers roughly 3,500 square miles of both forest and flat land. The first reports were made by forest rangers in 1960, and most impressively Chief Fire Control Officer Bill Vogel reported a ninety-minute sighting of a mysterious ghost light in the sky over Toppenish Ridge. The officer reported that the light had a teardrop appearance (like a flame). Air Force investigators also became involved and gathered information on the light including photo and video footage. The lights attract both ghost enthusiasts and ghost hunters. Campers and Rangers observed and reported the greatest level of activity throughout the 1970s, and a number of witnesses even reported receiving telepathic messages from the lights as well as electrical devices failing.

The Hornet Spook Light

     Near the village of Hornet, Missouri, a remote road cuts through the countryside. This road is where witnesses have reported a mysterious light as early as 1866. The light is described as a ball of fire that travels along the middle of the road and also rises into the sky or waves left and right along the road like a lantern. The local history of this area is used to provide an explanation for the light. Some observers believe that the light could be a ghostly member of one of the local Indian tribes that were killed in the area long ago. Other historians believe that the light may be the ghostly lantern of a local miner whose children were kidnapped by Indians, and the miner's spirit continues to search for his lost children for eternity.
     A number of writers and researchers have investigated and photographed the light through the years. A number of skeptical observers speculated that the light is likely caused by the headlights of cars traveling along a remote highway seen diffused through the trees. However, this theory doesn't explain why the light has been seen as early as the 1800s before cars were invented. The most significant investigation was conducted by author Raymond Bayless who, in October 1963, set up a telescope and camera to closely observe the light. Raymond and his team observed through the telescope that the edges of the light appeared to change color and shape like a "flame".
     Whether they are described as UFOs, fairies or ghosts, ghost flames have been witnessed and reported across the world and throughout history. So far, no researcher has been able to conclusively explain what causes the lights. Some of the leading theories involve some kind of earthly geological phenomenon that generates the ghostly flames. However, just as many people believe that the spooky lights that dance across the land are, in fact, the lost spirits of the dead who roam the earth for eternity.  What do you think?