Paranormal Magazine

The Editor recalls his own experience of the paranormal: as the focus of a poltergeist when he was a boy. The house where these incidents occurred is still the home of his elderly mother, so locations have been suppressed.

I can remember screaming. Screaming with the full force of my lungs and swearing, too.

I was lying in the intensive care ward of the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool. The previous day I had undergone a five-hour operation. My ribs down my left-hand side had been cut through with an implement of cold metal, a saw or shears. Then my 11-year-old body had been prised open like an oyster and rubber-clad hands had forced their way inside me.

My stomach had become displaced during birth and was now situated too far up inside my thorax. There had been no noticeable effects of this deformity until my body began to grow at puberty. Then the increased pressure on my heart and lungs had made me very ill indeed. There was only one thing that could be done: my stomach had to be manoeuvred down to its correct position.

With broken ribs and manhandled guts, it’s no wonder I was in agony for a long time afterwards.  I cannot, of course, remember the pain itself - memory, though a miracle, spares us that ability - but I remember the result of it. I was on a morphine drip to kill the pain but the effect of the drug would dissipate an hour before the dose could be repeated. I had to endure several hours of agony every day.

On one occasion the nurses missed the dose. Perhaps I used to count every second as the pain kicked in, but somehow I knew the dose was late. I began to shout. As the pain got worse, I shouted louder. Eventually, I was like an infant bawling, without meaning or consciousness, just a storm of rage and pain. As nurses hurried past the end of my bed ignoring me, I yelled abuse. I think one nurse yelled abuse back.

My ordeal came to an end at last when a tired, drawn middle-aged woman ambled over, adjusted the drip and instantly transformed my life. I floated above the bed and lay back on a cloud of joy and tranquillity, as the child who had just died on the other side of the curtain beside my bed was discreetly wheeled away.

I was discharged from hospital three weeks later. There was the usual period of convalescence, but for a further month or so I was still too weak to spend more than a morning at school (and my friends made a great show of carrying my bags about while I was there).  I spent the afternoons sleeping or reading or watching ‘Mr Benn’ and ‘Crown Court’. Occasionally I’d put some languid effort into the homework my teachers set for me.

It was all very pleasant and indulgent. During the day. But my nights were filled with fear.

One odd side-effect of the trauma of the operation, and one which may have some relationship to the frightening phenomena which followed, is that during my first week or so back home I sleepwalked. I would wander about in an almost hallucinatory state, existing in a dream world yet also aware of my everyday surroundings. I can remember one of these incidents clearly. I strode into my parents’ room and woke them up with imperious demands for a sword I could see hanging from their wardrobe. After some sleepy curses and mutterings, my father, no longer fazed by this sort of behaviour, reached up to where I was pointing and handed across the bed an invisible something. I grasped the air and stomped back to bed, where, presumably, I continued my dream, which now had me wielding the imagined sword.

Although I can remember many such incidents and impressions from this time, I am hazy as to chronology: what happened when and for what duration. I can’t say for certain how soon after the sleepwalking it all began. Nor can I recall how I reacted the first time it manifested. I can guess my response, however: I would have kept it to myself. My home felt no longer my home because of this secret. Almost every night, a stranger found a way into the house and then invaded my bedroom. While my younger brother slept in the next bed, the intruder tormented me.

It never physically abused me. It used instead a variant on the Chinese water torture. It would tap… tap… tap… on the wall a few inches above my head. The rhythm was so loose as to be almost random but I feel sure it conformed to some strange, endlessly looping pattern. Each tap was precise yet muffled, as if the bricks of the wall were being rapped beneath the wallpaper and plaster.

No human hand caused the tapping. Nothing visible ever appeared. I soon recognised the intruder for what it was and named it accordingly: ‘the Poltergeist’.

You can read the rest of this feature in issue 27 of Paranormal magazine

The power to curse isn’t limited to witches or magicians - anyone can do it, given extreme circumstances. At least, that’s what many people once believed, as these old stories gathered together by RICHARD HOLLAND show.

‘Through God we shall do valiantly,
For He it is that shall tread down our enemies.’

So ends Psalm 108, the so-called ‘cursing psalm’. Centuries ago it was believed that when read backwards, this Psalm - which calls upon God to vanquish a foe - would bring doom to one’s enemy. However, one had to be careful. When a wicked woman, Quendrida of Mercia, attempted to use the cursing psalm in the 8^th century, ‘her eyes burst from her head, her blood drenched the psalter and she died in agony’.

Belief in the power to curse dates back as far back as the belief in witchcraft - perhaps, therefore, for as long as mankind has existed. But it was not just witches who were believed to have the power to curse: ordinary people could do it too, in extreme circumstances. Stories are told throughout the British Isles of ‘dooms’ announced against wicked landowners or grasping relatives.

Even holy men could pronounce a curse. When Henry II and his Archbishop, Thomas Becket, were at loggerheads, the men of Strood in Kent cut off the tail of the priest’s horse to teach him a lesson. In response, Beckett pronounced that their children should all be born with tails, which, so legend has it, came to pass. In a similar story, when the 8^th century Bishop of Worcester was jeered at after telling off the men of Alcester, in Warwickshire, for working on a Sunday, he cursed them - and tails immediately sprouted out of their backsides.

When King Henry VIII deprived the Church of a grand house, Marwell Hall in Gloucestershire, presenting it as a gift it to the Seymour family, the local priest cursed them, saying they would not hold Marwell long. Henry was furious and had the priest put to death. Nevertheless, his curse held: the Seymours only survived for two generations at the house. One of the victims of the curse was Jane Seymour, who died a year after marrying the king.

You can read the rest of this feature in issue 27 of Paranormal magazine

An 11-year-old “werewolf” boy who desperately seeks a cure for his condition is baffling medical experts.

Pruthviraj Patil is one of 50 in the world who suffers from hypertrichosis, a rare genetic condition known as Werewolf Syndrome.

As a result his face and body is covered in thick, matted hair. But he is hoping doctors will one day find a cure for his ailment.

Born in the Indian district of Sangli, near Bombey, he hardly ever leaves his village because of his fear of being traunted by strangers.

The only parts of his body that are not covered with hair are the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.

The son of a well off farmer, his parents have tried homeopathy, traditional Ayurvedic remedies and laser surgery. But none of them have worked.

“Why did God do this to us,” his 32-year-old mother Anita pleads. “He looks so odd and whever we go people throng to see him.”

Pruthviraj says he is anxious to get the hair removed but even after laser treatment it simply grows back. The doctors don’t have any answers to his predicament.

He appealed to the doctors to help find him a permanent cure.

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A tribe of subterranean creatures who surface on Cannock Chase in the West Midlands to hunt for food could be behind a rash of ‘werewolf’ and Big Foot sightings near Stafford.

And the mysterious beings could also be responsible for a string of pet disappearances, it has been claimed.

West Midlands Ghost Club, the area’s top paranormal investigation group, say they have been contacted by a number of shocked eye-witnesses who claim they have come to face to face with a ‘hairy, wolf-type creature’ at the beauty spot.

A scout leader and a local post man are amongst the ‘credible’ witnesses to contact the club. Theories behind the sightings range from a crazed tramp to aliens.

But now another paranormal expert has put foward the theory the sub-human beast is not a werewolf at all - but a Stone Age throwback.

The investigator, who wishes to remain anonymous, told us: “Strange sightings in this area have been made over many years by civilians, military, police, ex-police and scout leaders on patrol.

“Some incidents have been reported and logged but others not - some people don’t want to be classed as ‘mad’.

“The strangest rumour has come from a senior local resident who believes the mysterious intruders to be subterranean,” he told us.

“The creatures have made their way to the surface via old earthworks to hunt, for example, local deer.”

And, on the surface, the far-fetched tale could be easily dismissed. However, our expert added: “It’s a fact that there has been significant mining activity under Cannock Chase for centuries. And it’s a fact there is a high rate of domestic pet disappearance in the area - especially dogs off the lead…just ask anyone who walks their dog near the German War Cemetery…”

Nick Duffy, a lead member of West Midlands Ghost Club, told us he was intrugued by this new theory: “It’s as likely as any of the others - so it could well be,” he said.

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West Virginia prides itself as a land of majestic mountains, sparkling streams, coal to feed hungry power plants, a unique place in American history and a fiercely independent people accustomed to overcoming hard times with a resiliency unrivaled by anyone else.

Now add another chapter to the 35th state’s storied history — more documented UFO activity than any other place in America.

Even eclipsing Roswell.

For proof, author-researcher Frank Feschino points to his exhaustive study that revealed three separate alien aircraft crash-landed a combined 10 times on the historic night of Sept. 12, 1952, the benchmark of the UFO phenomena, when the “Flatwoods Monster” was born.

All of the craft escaped, although heavily damaged by hopscotching across the rugged terrain of West Virginia, flying low to avoid radar detection, he says.

“They were damaged and puddle jumping, and taking off — that’s what they were doing,” Feschino says.

On a steep hillside, a bevy of youngsters drawn away from a game of sandlot football, along with some adults, were shaken out of their shoes by the spectacle of a 12-foot, metallic object that emanated a pungent odor of sulfur and made sounds that reminded one witness of bacon sizzling in a fry pan.

Feschino has two books published on the Flatwoods incident, and a third is a work in progress to be titled “The Flatwoods Monster — From Myth to Reality.”

Come Sept. 12 — the 56th anniversary of that riveting episode in Mountain State folklore — Feschino and renowned UFO researcher-lecturer Stanton Friedman plan to headline the opening of a two-day, second extravaganza, this one set in St. Albans, where the author says a craft landed in a frenzy of activity half a century ago.

This year’s show is titled “Flatwoods Monster meets Mothman,” the latter a reference to a bird-like creature said to have haunted Point Pleasant just before the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge. A key player will be Freddie May, one of the youngsters lured from a pickup game of football back in 1952 and a surviving witness to the “Flatwoods Monster.” An illess kept him from appearing at last summer’s first such event.

Feschino gleaned up to 70 percent of his findings in plowing through the Air Force’s official document on unknown aircraft, titled “Project Blue Book,” and finds its amazing that Roswell, N.M., for all its reputation, is covered very little in government papers.

“You have some newspaper reports that say the Army captured the saucer, but as far as the case itself, the official standing on the Roswell case is that it didn’t happen,” he says.

Based on “Blue Book,” 1952 was the high water mark for UFO activity, with 1,501 reports and 303 officially listed as “unknowns,” and the largest concentration — 1,134 reports — came in the summer months of July, August and September.

Officially, the government uses the term “flap,” describing it as “a condition, a situation or a state of being, of a group of persons, characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not quite reached panic proportions.”

For some reason, Feschino says, no one paid any attention to Flatwoods, but the author invested 17 years of his life digging into the story, learning of 100 different locations where suspected alien craft were spied in nine states, largely along the Eastern Seaboard.

“There were thousands of people who saw these things, up and down the East Coast,” he says.

“What I did was to figure out the flight path trajectories. I worked with all types of people — aeronautical people, pilots, astronomers, scientists, jet people, police officers, Air Force people. They helped and assisted me by putting this whole mess of sightings together.”

Using his own master map, he pinpointed the flights unearthed by exhaustive research.

“And over all the years researching the story, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Feschino said.

“By using the ‘Blue Book’ as my primary source, I would go into local newspapers and just pick up the trails. When I figured out what direction these UFOs were flying, I would go from the Baltimore area and through Maryland, West Virginia and Ohio, and I picked up the trail these UFOs were flying that night.”

On the critical night of Sept. 12, Feschino says, he learned of 21 hours of sustained UFO activity, and West Virginia was the hub of it all.

“There were 10 actual crash landings that night in West Virginia,” he says. “They’re all documented. This is what took 17 years to figure out.”

In order, some of those landings occurred when the first spaceship crashed at Oglebay Park near Wheeling, at St. Albans, in Charleston, then up in a suburb named South Hills, back into the Watt Powell Park area of the capital and in Cabin Creek, where the same UFO landed five times, the author says.

A second craft buzzed the nation’s capital, flew over Virginia, then landed in Flatwoods at 7:25 p.m., where the local denizens christened it the “Green Monster,” Feschino said.

Finally, a third ship hit the earth in a community called Holly, just outside Flatwoods, took off and crashed a second time in Sugar Creek along the Elk River, lifted off again and then went into a third tailspin at Frametown, the author said.

Some debris was scattered at the Flatwoods crash site and was shipped off by an Air Force officer to Washington, including pieces of metal and chunks of an unknown, plasticlike material.

“I suppose if you went digging through some of these areas, you might find something,” Feschino speculated.

Feschino cannot say if any effort was ever made by any of the alien invaders to make contact with West Virginians or other earthlings, but says their ships ranged from the standard saucer-shape model to the round ones with a flat side, to ones that resembled cigars.

Yet, his long-running and exhaustive research have convinced him that he has unearthed the truth.

“I actually re-drove and re-enacted that whole night, driving all through Braxton County,” he said.

“It took me years to do it. It was a cold case and I reconstructed it.”

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Issue 27 of Paranormal magazine features an article on the notorious South Shields Poltergeist. Shocking video footage has now been released to The Sun newspaper showing the malevolent spirit in action.

You can see the video footage here.

BARELY a week has passed this summer without one national newspaper or another carrying a story about UFO sightings across Britain.

And now UFOs are claimed to have been spotted over Royston, Hertfordshire too.

The Crow was contacted by paranormal investigation group Scope Paranormal, which said that four employees on the York Way industrial estate had spotted an unusual object in the sky at 1am on July 25.

The witnesses said that they saw a “bat-winged” shape with an orange circle of light in the middle hovering silently over the industrial estate for about 20 seconds. It then disappeared at speed.

And when Scope Paranormal decided to visit the industrial estate to investigate further, we went to meet them.

Sharon Chesterman, one of the group’s investigators, said that most of this summer’s sightings can be dismissed as Chinese lanterns, which are often lit and released into the night sky at parties and barbecues.

But she does NOT believe that Chinese lanterns are responsible for the sightings in Royston.

“We are taking this sighting seriously because the shape of the bat wings is very rare and there was also more than one witness,” she said.

“Out of hundreds of sightings nationally this summer, we believe this is the first bat-winged object.”

According to information released by the Ministry of Defence, the last reported UFO sighting over Royston was on September 2, 2001.

The report states that a witness saw a rectangular-triangle shaped object with a white pulsating light moving north-east.

Scope Paranormal was founded in November 2007 and offers a free, confidential investigation service for all things paranormal, including UFO sightings.

Trevor Shreeve, one of the co-founders of the group, said: “We use scientific techniques to try and prove or disprove whether something is paranormal or a natural or man-made occurrence.”

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