In recent episodes of Saint Michael’s Journal, we have reported on the curious hearings held by Congress on the subject of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, Extraterrestrial Aliens, and the threat these unknown entities might pose to National Security.
We have previously noted the irony in that, even hard-core UFO believers—those that want nothing more than to prove the existence of extraterrestrial entities—are skeptical of the many startling revelations made by whistle blowers during their testimony.
As we have also observed that there is indeed, a choir of voices, one that is rising to a crescendo, that insist that these sightings of the strange and unusual are not indicative of extraterrestrial visits, but rather a continuance of the ages old harassment and oppression from Satan himself.
In this episode we will look at these claims as well as other possible explanations for the Continue reading →
In this Potpourri of Paranormal, a bizarre anthology, we begin by the way of an addendum to our previous presentation, Close Encounters of the Paranormal Kind, in this current episode we would like to share with you several more recent developments regarding topics mentioned in that previous work.
We examined how that Mr. Steven Speilberg, has not only produced great work in the Science Fiction genre, but he has been involved in several projects in the Horror category as well.
In that episode of Saint Michael’s Journal we noted Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the movie Poltergeist, both works in which Speilberg played a significant role, but very recently we learned that he had a certain degree of involvement in another classic horror film as well.
Writing for 24SSPORTS.COM, Dustin Huang [1] resurrects a 2009 Los Angeles Times article [2] that outlined how Speilberg came to suggest that Oren Peli reconsider the ending of his haunting story of a demonic invasion of a suburban tract house and it’s occupants.
Reportedly, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, the film shot in just seven days on a meager budget of $15,000, produced, written, directed, photographed and edited by Oren Peli—an independent film maker—was making its rounds through the film festivals when it fell into Speilberg’s hands.
A mythology has grown around the original found footage movie that spawned several sequels, a video game and digital comics, a legend that insists that Speilberg had taken a copy of the film home to watch and decide if he wanted his Dream Works production company to get involved. Other legends insist that Speilberg is no stranger to spooky events, those events that in our previous episode we referred to as close encounters of the paranormal kind, and it would seem that in the case of Paranormal Activity, Speilberg endured such a close encounter.
Supposedly, while the copy of Paranormal Activity was in his Pacific Palisades estate, the door to an empty bedroom closed by itself and locked Speilberg out, forcing him to call a locksmith.
In both the Times article as well as Huang’s recent piece, this event in 2008 so rattled Speilberg that he wanted nothing to do with the project, but did make suggestions on how Peli might improve upon the film.
Peli re-shot the ending in four days and the rest is history.
Fans of Paranormal Activity no doubt think that the original work could not be improved upon, but we have to wonder if it might have been even more spectacular had Speilberg taken the project on, futher improving Peli’s original work.
A question more pressing is why did he pass, only making a suggestion about the major re-write of the final scene?
If you are familiar with his work, you know Speilberg is gifted, he can spot a gem of a story and refine it into a blockbuster. So why would he pass on something that might have made him millions? What was it about that incident of the bedroom door closing and locking itself that frightened the man so bad that he passed up the opportunity to earn millions of dollars?
It has been said that Speilberg alludes to prior life experiences as being the inspiration for his work; could he have suffered through an experience some time in the past, something eerily similar to the plot of Paranormal Activity?
Or perhaps was it a bad experience from his days working on the Poltergeist project that led him to avoid being involved in Paranormal Activity?
Perhaps it is nothing more than the publicity department generating rumors to pique moviegoer interest, but perhaps, just like the movie The Exorcist, Poltergeist is in fact plagued with an evil curse.
The internet site, Biography writes;
“The majority of the fuel for the alleged curse stems from the deaths of multiple cast members. In total, four cast members died during and soon after the filming of the series. Two of these tragic deaths were highly unexpected and puzzling, leading many fans to speculate on the trilogy’s eerie implications.”
Heather O’Rourke who was only six years old when she played the part of Carol Anne Freeling died just a few years after the first movie was released.
Dominique Dunne, who played the original older sister Dana Freeling, was murdered by her boyfriend in November of 1982 just months after the Summer release of Poltergeist.
Julian Beck, the evil preacher Kane, and Will Sampson the Native American Shamen both died not long after completion of Poltergeist II The other side, of more natural causes. Beck from stomach cancer and Sampson from a heart-lung transplant which at that time had a very slim survival rate.
The author of the Biography piece, Micah White writes;
Cast deaths were not the only agents of the curse’s proliferation, as other peculiar and creepy legends surround the film franchise. JoBeth Williams, who played mom Diane Freeling in the first two films, claimed that director Spielberg insisted on using actual human skeletons as props in an attempt to save money (at the time, they were cheaper than plastic skeletons). Williams’ claim has never been verified, but it persists to this day in the lore surrounding the films’ curse.
Perhaps you remember the scene in which Williams falls into the swimming pool full of skeletons, as I recall, those skeletons looked very real to me.
If the use of real skeletons wasn’t bad enough Sampson, who in real life was a Native Spiritual leader and who passed away due to circumstances mentioned previously, performed an authentic exorcism one night after shooting wrapped up.
Other cast members have had close calls with death over the years, some such as Lou Perrymen who played the small role of Pugsley in the original film, were not so fortunate. Perrymen was 67 years old when a recently released ex-convict killed him in his own home with an ax.
So who knows, perhaps Speilberg felt he had pushed his luck a bit far enough with his previous work. So we have to ask is it possible that a fear of what might happen, should he take part in Paranormal Activity, was this underlying fear and apprehension so great that he turned down a project that could have made him millions?
Moving on to our next topic, in Close Encounters of the Paranormal Kind we reported about the ex New York City Police Officer who gave up his badge and gun to fight—not human criminals—but criminals of the demonic variety. Chris DeFlorio, a 19-year-vet of NYPD continues to make headlines.
Alex Mitchell writing for the New York Post in an article dated 13 July of this year, reports DeFlorio expresses his concern that something sinister is going on. The ex-cop turned demonologist told reporters:
“There are just too many coincidences of identical incidents from different towns across the country … The claims must be seen as credible until proven otherwise, It doesn’t get more serious than this — when children are the targets.”
James Liddell, the US Audience Writer for the British publication, The Star, reported on 8 Jun of this year that while DeFlorio was serving as a law enforcement officer in New York City, he was also doing Christian ministry work in Africa where he first met a man he thought was demonically possessed.
Liddell reports that DeFlorio told the following hair raising story:
The Man was slithering around the floor like a snake making unusual noises. We locked eyes, and I saw what I perceived to be pure evil. It was an evil that even with all my years in law enforcement, I had never seen this sort of evil before. I saw a battle between God and the devil, good and evil.”
DeFlorio then recalled another memorable case:
This case in Connecticut involved an elderly woman and her four-year-old granddaughter when they moved into their “dream house”. Little did they know, the property was previously owned by a “satanic witch”, DeFlorio said.
The grandmother could hear walking and banging in the middle of the night, waking up to “markings” and “bloody hand prints” all over the walls – along with “animal skulls” nailed around in a ceremonious circle.
DeFlorio discovered that the child had a “relationship” with the creature, which she could draw and even mimic the sounds it made. After using his cop skills to investigate the property, they went to the attic to perform a Catholic ritual. In the Attic they “recorded some horrific activity”. DeFlorio said
“There was a smell coming up from the ground as I was reading and the family recorded downstairs a growling, roaring sound around the entire house. At the same time as the ritual, while fighting against this demon who she called her friend, the little girl was apparently giving a play-by-play of what was happening.”
Believe it or not, what DeFlorio claims to happen during an Exorcism of a locale, is not that unusual. This sort of paranormal phenomenon, at times, is routine to those experienced in demonic warfare.
Another topic we covered in Close Encounters of the Paranormal Kind is that of the seemingly total reversal of the media and powers that be, who have now embraced those who they castigated not so very long ago.
The media now seems anxious to flock to individuals who claim to have witnessed unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, that phenomena that most of us think of as UFOs. Those who once were social outcasts are now the favorite cause célèbre as the media flock to anyone willing to be interviewed as they tell their out of this world story.
Almost on a daily basis, we see yet another report of a whistle blower stepping forward to say he or she has knowledge of information that the authorities—diverse government agencies—who have colluded with each other to cover up the information that the public demands to be released.
Ironically, when most of these so called whistle blowers are vetted, we find that they have no first hand or even second hand information but rather they only contribute hearsay that can not be confirmed.
Mark Gollom, published a piece on July 30 at the CBC news site, titled So, about that UFO testimony … how seriously is Congress taking it? And should we? [5] Gollom wrote:
When renowned skeptic Michael Shermer watched the recent U.S. Congressional House committee hearing — which included shocking testimony about UFOs, alien spacecraft and alien remains — he was, perhaps not surprisingly, unimpressed.
Indeed, what was more amazing to Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, was the fact that such a hearing was even taking place.
“It’s astonishing it’s come this far without any real evidence, without anybody in the scientific community making an appearance,” said Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine. “We are still seeing not a shred of physical evidence.”
Likewise, the Kansas City Star ran the headline on 26 July which read;
‘Have you seen alien bodies?’ Missouri lawmaker wasn’t convinced after hearing on UAPs
The KC Star reports:
In a congressional hearing about the existence of unidentified anomalous phenomenon — the most recent term for what have long been called UFOs — Rep. Eric Burlison passed on a question for a witness from a Missouri constituent.
“Have you seen alien bodies?” asked Burlison, a freshman Missouri Republican.
The witness, David Grusch, was a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force who worked as an intelligence officer and worked with the Department of Defense office in charge of investigating UAPs, called the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. He has claimed the government is covering up their knowledge about “non-human aircraft” and “pilot bodies.”
“That is something I have not witnessed myself,” Grusch responded. He also said he couldn’t reveal any non-human aircraft he’s personally witnessed in a non-classified setting.
[…]
“I’m pretty skeptical about this,” Burlison said. “As I said before, I think the idea that an alien race would travel hundreds of light years, or thousands, or whatever it takes to get here, and is capable of traveling at that speed, and get here is not capable of surviving our atmosphere and surviving this planet. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
The honorable gentleman from Missouri has a point, how could such an advance alien race arrice here only to crash land?
Newsweek opted to roll out a scientist for his observation:
Leading scientists have reacted with skepticism to claims espoused in a special hearing that alien life not only exists, but has traveled to Earth and specimens are held by the U.S. government.
In a session of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, part of an investigation of claims regarding UFOs, witnesses testified that the government had been aware of non-human activity since the 1930s.
“I watched a few clips and saw some people who seemed to believe stuff saying extraordinary things without presenting extraordinary evidence,” reacted physicist and broadcaster Brian Cox on Twitter. [6]
If you care to peruse the diverse publications distributed by the various groups and agencies who want nothing more than to find the truth about UFOs and UAPs, true believers if you will, you will find that a surprisingly large number of people in those groups are as equally skeptical of the testimony given at these congressional hearings.
We are even seeing on TikTok and other media popular with younger people, an emerging trend in which the creators of the video presentation rhetorically ask;
“Aren’t there more important issues for Congress to investigate, like the economy, government corruption, etc etc etc?”
Others are wondering if these hearings are nothing more than a distraction, a shell game so to speak in which their intention is to get us to watch what they want us to see and not what they don’t want us to see.
However, if the report by Art Levine published by the Washington Spectator is in fact credible, the real reason for these so called whistle blowers to step forward and claim knowledge of secret government activities, may be nothing more than the hopes of hucksters seeking to defraud the taxpayer of even more money.
Levine’s work titled Spaceship of Fools [7] appears to connect the proverbial dots between purveyors of paranormal snake oil and the fleecing of the Treasury. Levine writes:
Behind every conspiracy theory lies a golden opportunity for companies and hucksters to make money. UFOs are no exception. That’s becoming clear once again as a former intelligence agency official, and self-identified “whistleblower,” David Grusch, came forward last month with startling and increasingly bizarre new claims.
Buoyed by largely uncritical media hype, he’s asserted that the government has been hiding a secret alien crash retrieval program; the pope tipped off the United States to a UFO retrieved by Mussolini (a long discredited hoax); alien corpses have been recovered by U.S. officials; and humans have been killed by aliens. Grusch’s UFO craft recovery tales spurred calls for yet more congressional hearings on UFOs, with the next one scheduled before a House Oversight subcommittee on July 26. Expect documentary films, a book deal, and lucrative offers on the lecture circuit to follow.
We’ve been here before. Two former Defense Department officials, Luis “Lue” Elizondo and Christopher Mellon, came forward a few years ago to expose what they deemed a government cover-up of UFOs.
Now the Securities and Exchange Commission is apparently poised to initiate a fraud investigation of the company they helped launch in 2017, To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences (TTSA), following its multimillion-dollar pleas for investment. The potential for an investigation is also driven by concerns raised in an extensive whistleblower complaint by a skeptic, as well as the substance of a previous SEC lawsuit against the company that was aborted in 2019. (Documents relating to this lawsuit have been obtained by The Washington Spectator.)
TTSA made a host of pseudoscientific claims following its public launch with a news conference in October 2017—while seeking $50 million in investment. Among them: executives promised to build a Star Trek–style spaceship to travel “instantly” through the cosmos. This project was based in part, they claimed in solicitations to investors, on (nonexistent) warp-drive technology—“reverse-engineered” from likely alien materials recovered from crashed UFOs. The company’s CEO, Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge, even declared: “I have alien artifacts.”
Prominent among the proponents of such far-fetched claims were those former influential DOD officials, Elizondo and Mellon, both of whom had joined DeLonge’s company. These same individuals laid the groundwork for the UFO media firestorm that began at the end of 2017, new defense legislation that was passed in December 2021, and Senate hearings held this past April. These developments in turn effectively nurtured the bonanza of publicity and congressional interest that have greeted David Grusch’s purported revelations.
Could these skeptics be correct in their supposition that all the out of this world hype and bluster, insinuations that aliens who have traveled millions of light-years across space have crashed here and their fantastic space ships routinely harass our most advanced military aircraft, could it be that all this is nothing more than an elaborate set-up, a means to get Congress to appropriate millions, if not billions of dollars on a fools mission?
On that note, I leave you with the following question;
“What do you think, are the hearings productive—revealing the truth of UFO phenomenon—or are they simply an engineered distraction designed to take our attention away from the real truth, while hucksters defraud the American people out of even more money?”
According to statistics, there few if any humans on Earth who have escaped this all too common phenomena. Undoubtedly, at some point in your life, you have picked up some mundane everyday item—car keys, the remote to your television, or some other innocuous object—turned around to attend to some miscellaneous distraction, such as a phone call and laid the object in your hand down, with the intention of picking it up again a moment later.
When finished with the interruption you return to pick up the item in question, only to find that it is not where you had put it.
How frantic the ensuing search becomes is directly proportional to the importance of the item that now appears to have vanished into thin air.
Later, perhaps minutes, hours, or even days, the object is found somewhere where you would not have routinely left it. Sometimes it never turns up.
However in historic cases of this phenomena, objects that went missing in this manner sometimes inexplicably turn up miles away.
Commonly known as Disappearing Object Phenomenon or D-O-P the subject has received attention by writers and investigators alike. Those professing to be utilizing pure science, often dismiss the phenomenon in this manner, “No one knows for sure what causes Disappearing Object Phenomenon but we think……” How many times have we heard researchers attempt to dismiss phenomena that has
been witnessed multiple times by credible individuals, implying that no one for sure knows but we think we can use a logical and scientific explanation to define an experience that defies logical and scientific explanations.
Some of the learned men and women of academia, try to say that DOP is naught but a hallucination, the victim only believes that he or she can not see, or even feel that which is still in plain sight. Then they try to explain away the object being moved by saying that you or another family member, did in fact move the object, but wiped the memory of doing so from your mind. Frankly considering the possibility that some sort of creature did it seems more plausible than mass hallucination and an involuntary act of wiping memories from the minds of one or more family members, especially when there are reports of such event in which the object turned up miles away and not one family member had made the trip required to physically move the object.
Other authors have written about the subject, perhaps in the interest of understanding that which yet defies rational explanation. Mary Rose Barrington wrote one such book titled: JOTT: when things disappear… and come back or relocate – and why it really happens. Perhaps the term J-O-T-T or just one of those things reflects Ms. Barrington’s frustrations in not finding a rational explanation for the phenomenon while conducting her own research, writing the subject off as Just One of Those Things.
A book review published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration has this to say about Barrington’s book;
This book accomplishes the nearly miraculous achievement of being both substantive and highly entertaining. According to Barrington, “JOTT,” derived from “Just One of Those Things,” stands for a kind of “spatial discontinuity”—namely, a motley class of events in which objects appear or disappear in mysterious ways. For example, some can be classified as “Walkabouts,” in which “an article disappears from the place where it was known to have been and is found in another place.” Similarly, in “Comebacks,” “a known article disappears from the place where it was known to have been and later is found back in the same place.” And in “Turn-ups,” “a known article from an uncertain location appears in a place where it is known not to have been before it was found there.” The other primary categories in Barrington’s taxonomy are Flyaway, Windfall, and Trade-in (the reader might be able to guess what these are).
Later in the review the author makes the following observation;
Barrington, in her book, plays this crucial role of the parapsychological naturalist, by looking at some unheralded peculiar events and then trying to incorporate them into the big picture. She focuses on a class of ostensibly paranormal phenomena that have received much less attention than, say, cases of apparitions and poltergeists. And she’s clear about why that is. The phenomena typically and all too easily get dismissed as merely a nuisance and are readily put out of mind. They’re not as dramatic and conspicuous as a table levitation, and we can, without much difficulty, churn out counterexplanations which at least superficially satisfy us, even if they wouldn’t withstand greater scrutiny. But, Barrington urges, the best of these cases present real puzzles with serious ontological implications, and they force us to attend more carefully to the many other cases that are less initially compelling. She writes,
. . . when all known or imagined forms of eccentric behavior are considered, there remains a hard core of cases that cannot be reasonably explained away in mundane terms, and eventually an attempt must be made to explain them using broader concepts.
Robert Charman in his book review of Disappearing Object Phenomenon: An Investigation, by Tony Jinks, Charman shares some of the cases Jinks wrote about.
One evening in August, 2008, Kate drove home after work to her small suburban house situated in a quiet residential street. With her car key on the same ring as all her other keys she selected her front door key and opened the door at the same moment that her telephone rang. Knowing who it would be she left the door open and dropped her bag to run down the hall to answer the phone.
After the call she went back to take the ring of keys out of the door lock and pick up her bag. The bag was there with contents intact but the ring of keys was not there. She searched and searched in vain, eventually concluding that someone must have entered the porch and snatched the keys although the street was empty and there seemed to be no one about. Unable to find them she was faced with the inconvenient and expensive business of getting a new car key and changing the locks of her front door, back door, garage and mailbox and cutting a new key for her office. Within the year she moved to a new job in another city and bought and thoroughly renovated an apartment close to the city centre. One evening she returned home, placed her new set of keys in the hallway drawer as usual and then went into her bedroom only to see her old set of keys on the same ring on her pillow. As she said to Jinks she felt ‘nauseous and giddy’ with shock as no one else could have entered her apartment during her absence.
Assuming that this victim named Kate was not suffering from mental disorder, how did the missing keys find their way to her new apartment and place themselves in her pillow?
Charman writes:
After years of personal investigation into these claims Jinks decided that these unexpected, inconvenient and unwanted object disappearances, reappearances and so on could not be attributed to forgetfulness, unaware misplacement, faulty memory, in-attentional blindness or perceptual blindness while thinking of something else to an object in plain sight, hallucinatory error, deliberate deception by themselves or someone else, fugue states, altered states of consciousness and so on. What was being repeatedly and independently described seemed to be a genuine phenomenon despite being considered as completely impossible as far as science and everyday common sense is concerned.
With the prior research and classification of some 185 cases of the same phenomenon by Barrington as his guide. Jinks decided to submit his much larger database to a thorough statistical, tabled, analysis as to the objects most frequently involved such as jewellery items as in rings, brooches and necklaces, single food and beverage items, keys, items of clothing, small computer items such as USB sticks and ‘mice’; television remote controls, grooming items such as combs, brushes, hair clips and tweezers, kitchen utensils such as knives and forks, wristwatches, wallets, credit/debit cards, individual coins, stationery, small tools and so on.
He found that in order of jott activity the most common behaviors were disappearance and later reappearance of that object, often in the same place but sometimes elsewhere in the house, the unfamiliar appearance of a new object that could not be accounted for, and unrecognized similar type of object replacement and sometimes disappearance for good.
Another website offers more in depth details of Barrington’s work such as an explanation of the terminology she—in many cases—coined herself. This reviewer reported that:
Barrington classified this weird occurrence into two different categories:
Jottles: This is the more common of the two where objects are displaced either via teleportation, poltergeist phenomena or an apport (a spirit moving an object).
Oddjott: Miscellaneous weird episodes that have no rational explanation
Jottles are then further broken down into subcategories:
Walkabout. This is the most common jottle, where an item disappears from a known location and is found later in another and often bizarre location, without any sort of explanation as to how it got there.
Comeback. An item disappears from a known location and anywhere from minutes to years, reappears in this very same location.
Flyaway. An item disappears from a known location and never reappears.
Turnup. An item that appears in a location that it couldn’t have been in before.
Windfall. An unknown item to you randomly appears.
Trade-in. An item that disappears and never comes back, but a similar item appears instead
Some of the cases Barrington wrote about are cited in the review as examples of the aforementioned categories and subcategories.
One such event, categorized as a Walkabout goes like this;
“It happened…on the 24th November, 1982, in the afternoon. My wife went for her glasses which she left on the kitchen table. They were not there.
When our visitor left, a full-scale search was made, but without result. Outside the house we have a large sink, not used as such, but filled with earth, which is used for raising seedlings and small plants.
On the following morning, the glasses, neatly folded, were found, obviously carefully placed on the soil in that sink, between two plants. They were not folded when they disappeared.” It has to be said that the visitor was Melvyn Harris, a well-known paranormal denier, and I have to wonder if he organized a psuedo-jottle. Such things have been known. But speaking from personal experience, this was not a house in which visitors were entertained in the kitchen. Tea was served in style.
Presumably the event was a formal afternoon “Tea” in which the visitor was entertained somewhere other than the kitchen where the wayward glasses had been left. Obviously the visitor could not have—without being noticed—purloined the glasses and left them in the garden. The question then arises how did the glasses manage to relocate elsewhere?
The reviewers of Barrington’s work always note her sense of humor used while writing about very unusual cases. They also mention that they are sad to report that Barrington will not grace us with another such work as she passed away in 2020.
That which Barrington categorized as a Windfall in which an unknown item suddenly appears can be very disconcerting especially to those experiencing night terrors or sleep paralysis as we discussed in Episode 4:ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS. In these events the victims report waking up the next morning after they thought there was an intruder in the room and they find objects moved or in some cases that which Barrington characterized as a Windfall, the sudden appearance of an unknown object.
Although terminology used to describe this phenomena such as we have reviewed here, is rather new, however the events—as described by Barrington and other contemporary researchers—are not a recent development. That which is described as Windfalls today were also known in the past as, Apports;
Like today’s Windfalls, an apport was described in the past as an item that seemingly appears from nowhere. We find it was said to be a common place practice in the 19th century spiritualist era, for a medium to be able to produce an object out of what seemed like thin air during a seance.
One very famous British author wrote:
There is no more curious and dramatic phase of psychic phenomenon than the apport. It is so startling that it is difficult to persuade the sceptic as to its possibility, and even the Spiritualist can hardly credit it until examples actually come his way. The author’s first introduction to occult knowledge was due largely to the late General Drayson, who at that time—nearly forty years ago—was receiving through an amateur medium a constant succession of apports of the most curious description-Indian lamps, amulets, fresh fruit, and other things. So amazing a phenomenon, and one so easily simulated, was too much for a beginner, and it retarded rather than helped progress. Since then, however, the author has met the editor of a well-known paper who used the same medium after General Drayson’s death, and he continued, under rigid conditions, to get similar apports. The author has been forced, therefore, to reconsider his view and to believe that he has underrated both the honesty of the medium and the intelligence of her sitter.
The preceding observation is attributed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an excerpt from his History of spiritualism Vol II.
Doyle is more readily recognized for his books about the fictional character Sherlock Holmes.
These so called Windfalls, Apports and Tradeins, the latter being cases in which something disappears forever but an unknown object appears in its place, have a certain degree of similarity to tales of mythical creatures of ancient legends.
The Europeans have long maintained tales of little people, Elves, Fairies, Leprechauns and the like. All of these creature reportedly had a propensity for mischief that far exceed their shortness in physical stature.
Imagine their surprise when they traveled to the new world and the indigenous first peoples of America shared similar tales of enigmatic little people.
It would seem that the first peoples of America were not immune to JOTT or DOP
Various groups of the Eastern Forest Dwellers told stories of things going missing, tales that are uncannily similar to the modern day phenomena. They attributed these disappearances to the little people, creatures said to be no more than knee high in most oral traditions.
One elder writes the following:
Cherokee tradition tells of Little People who are a race of Spirits and live in rock caves on the mountain side. They are little fellows and ladies reaching almost to your knees. They are well shaped and handsome, and their hair so long it almost touches the ground. They are very helpful, kind-hearted, and great wonder workers. They love music and spend most of their time drumming, singing, and dancing. They have a very gentle nature, but do not like to be disturbed. When a hunter finds anything in the woods, such as a knife or a trinket, he must say, ‘Little People, I would like to take this’ because it may belong to them, and if he does not ask their permission they will throw stones at him as he goes home.
It would seem that every tribe of native Americans have oral traditions in which there are spirits that are usually benign but often mischievous spirits, just as their counterparts did in Europe and other regions of the world. Indeed these tales of spirits that have a predilection for things that do not belong to them seem to be universal across the face of the earth.
When one arrives at the realization of how wide spread the Disappearing Object Phenomena is and how long it has been recognized by various cultures, the question that come to mind is, “Are the ancient legends of thieving spirits just a tale made up to help explain the phenomena, events that are natural but continue to defy logical explanation? Or is there something living among us, something in the shadows that derives great pleasure through befuddling humans by instigating the mysterious disappearance of our possessions?
Listen to the above and our piece: The Skinny on skin Walkers at:
Sources in order of appearance
Book Review by Stephan E. Braude~JOTT: When Things Disappear . . . and Come Back or Relocate—And Why It Really Happens by Mary Rose Barrington Journal of Scientifi c Exploration, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 128–131, 2019 https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/volume-33-issue-1-2019
A note from the Bishop: In recent years, I have tried to segregate topics that I write about across four different blogs and now three podcasts.
Saint Michael’s Journal has become the home of all things related to Exorcism and the paranormal. Saint Michael’s ministry was intended to be a place to minister to those suffering from Demonic Oppression, Saint Michael’s Chapel is a general church ministry and Episcopis Comtemplationes is a channel for opinions and editorials.
I have tried to keep these topics separate so as not to alienate any of my readers. however sometimes, one finds that a topic transcends those categories and is important enough that it deserves to be addressed across all platforms. The following is one of those that address political and societal concerns but also are relative to the subject of Exorcism. So if you came here for news of Exorcism please bear with me until the end.
Last night during her rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union Speech, Governor Sanders of Arkansas stated that the conflict in our country is no longer between the right and the left, but now it is between the “normals and the crazies!” I assume that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was referring to those who can not focus on anything other than the total destruction of all that mankind has accomplished.
Hold that thought while we look at another interesting editorial published today. Continue reading →
If are you like those of us here at Saint Michael’s Journal in that you intently watch the Internet for particular keywords, such as Exorcism, then undoubtedly, you have been very busy reading the sensationalized details of a recent event that involved an Exorcism at the home of a famous person.
On the weekend of Halloween 2022, the media was ablaze after David Depape allegedly broke into the home of the, at the time, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. So far we have not been told of an exact motive for the break-in and subsequent assault of Pelosi’s husband, so it is only speculation that, it being the weekend of Halloween he chose to commit the crime, Depape was looking for a witch.
In all seriousness, the accused at least appears to be a good candidate for Continue reading →
As I have mentioned in the past, at Saint Michael’s Journal, we take advantage of one of Google’s many products and services in order to find reports regarding Exorcism and the other subjects we report on. We have the product programmed to send St. Michael’s an email when the Google search engine crawls across the net and stumbles onto the phrase Demonic Possession. Most usually this system fails to turn up anything usable of the Journal, but on occasion, the Google product delivers something really interesting.
This particular message Google sent us was a link to a post on ricochet dot com, that which appears to be a conservative, subscription based, alternative to reddit. Apparently on ricochet, you can comment on other peoples posts, or submit one of your own, for about five dollars a month.
It would appear that someone using the handle or pseudonym “God-Loving Woman” had posted her concerns regarding a situation with her daughter. In a second post she wrote; “Acting upon the suggestions I received from some of you regarding my daughter, I found myself placed in a new spiritual proximity to vibes and tensions and thought-patterns any sane person should want to avoid.”
God-Loving Woman, or GLW, explains that she is not Catholic, but apparently is curious Continue reading →
Michael Taylor’s story is one of the most widely known cases of demonic possession on record due to the fact that it was documented extensively at every step by both medical professionals and clergymen alike throughout its duration from 1975 to 1976. During his ordeal, Michael exhibited superhuman strength which could only be subdued with sedatives or holy water as well as speaking in tongues and displaying knowledge about things that no human being should have known about such as events occurring hundreds of miles away at that very moment.
Occasionally, Michael Taylor would suffer from depressive episodes. He would become withdrawn and refuse to interact with family and friends. Family would later say a back injury earlier in life, which caused issues with Michael finding full-time employment, was to blame. Nevertheless, Michael was by all accounts a caring father and husband.
Writing for the National Catholic Register, Bree Dail goes on to report:
Terese Piccola suffered under so many secrets.
“On the outside, I was the perfect mother, the perfect wife,” she said. “Inside, however, I was broken — and what is worse, I thought I deserved it.”
Speaking exclusively with the Register over the last three months, Piccola related details of her life growing up in an Italian-American home in the suburbs of New York, her marriage and motherhood raising four children, and her activism in the pro-life movement and in her parish — all while quietly enduring years of psychological and emotional torture and unexplained physical ailments.
Her world was turned upside down when extraordinary diabolical phenomena began to manifest themselves as attacks not directly on her, but initially on her children. Her plight ended only after an excruciating year and a half-long battle under the guidance of a clinical psychologist — an expert in possession cases — and through the solemn rite of exorcism.
According to Dail, Ms. Piccola relates how she was sexually abused at a young age, then repeatedly raped when she was thirteen. Apparently–like too many victims report- Continue reading →
I have no doubt that those of you who follow this journal have noted an absence of reporting on the subjects these pages are dedicated to illuminate; demonic possession, oppression, and Exorcism. Those inclined to question why, might ask, “Why does the Bishop not publish more stories and articles about Exorcism and posssession? Surely there are reports of such what with all the evil present in the world!”
Of course the answer to this proposed question is, yes there is a huge demonic presence on the face of the Earth and there are reports of exorcisms and possession aplenty, but, finding credible reports and bringing them to your smart device—phone, tablet or computer—is difficult at best.
St Michael’s Journal is not an official clearing house or data base to which Priests and Continue reading →
The Watseka Wonder Possession, by Temperance Dawn 8 March 2022
We’ve all heard tales of spiritual possession. Most of the time, the stories we hear are of malicious, demonic entities hell-bent on controlling the living. Frightening and ghastly visions come to mind when we think of them. But what if some spirits are only looking for a way to communicate. In the form of a living person, a vessel to help them find closure to a life cut short? Or, to help bring peace to their own family, whose grief is so deep, they’ve taken to rituals to communicate with the other side? So was the story in the historical, haunting case of the Watseka Wonder.
The Watseka Wonder is credited as the first well-documented case of possession in the United States. It has inspired a movie, and it was so profound that the physician, Dr. E. Winchester Stevens, who witnessed the phenomenon first hand, wrote a book documenting the case.
To understand this mysterious story, we must first visit the heartland of America, Watseka, Illinois. Here, an ominous-looking home stands. Built, in 1868, the long, narrow, arched windows and brick exterior give this Victorian, Italianate style home a Gothic mood. Known today as the Roff House, it was constructed by Asa Roff, a prominent member of the Watseka community in the mid-eighteen hundreds, and has remained a mystery in the paranormal world since the Roff’s occupied it.
Source: Read More At Paranormal Daily News
A note from the Bishop: In recent years, I have tried to segregate topics that I write about across four different blogs and now three podcasts.
If are you like those of us here at Saint Michael’s Journal in that you intently watch the Internet for particular keywords, such as Exorcism, then undoubtedly, you have been very busy reading the sensationalized details of a recent event that involved an Exorcism at the home of a famous person.
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