In this issue are the following articles - click underlined text to go directly to the article of your choice:

• Art, religion, psychology & the occult in the 19th & early 20th centuries. By Brandy b Stark

• Ghost & gallows, a spectre filled walk in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. By Judy Farncombe

• Goldrush fever & baudy bordello's: a ghost hunt in Jackson, California. By Paul Dale Roberts

Brandy has been writing our series on the history of the paranormal since issue one of the ezine. Here she brings the story up-to-date with looking at the immediate eras of the nineteenth and the twentieth century and how they affected our consciousness of the occult.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a time buffeted by radical changes. The works of Darwin were published and the theory of evolution began to eat away at the long-believed ideals of Creationism. The first steps into the academic study of religions had begun; the Bible was no longer sacred scripture but analysed literature. Christianity, which held the world together through the Medieval Period, was losing its place as an undisputed certainty.

Modernism was in the process of shaking itself into a new manner of being with ideas pulled from the past but juxtaposed with the future, creating a present comprised of uncertainty and chaos. It is natural that these emotional, cultural, and social changes are expressed through the remarkable talent of artists. The strange alacrity of the time period became the artist’s domain, and he kept pace.

Though Modernism spewed forth schools of artistic thought, two hold strong clues into the developing human psyche of this time: Symbolism and Surrealism. Correlating with the rise in new ideals, both art movements turned to radical new ways of understanding perception. As the power of the human mind slowly replaced the mystery of the Godhead, it is little wonder that both cultural and artistic interest started to turn towards what was once forbidden: the occult.

The occult was, and still is, a topic of great debate. However, throughout history it found a home within the fringe of society. Now, it was expressed more openly as it was an answer to the question ‘how can the human mind replace God?’ Accordingly, the brain had many untapped secrets, supernatural powers, and an expansive ability that eclipsed the small percentage of the mind that civilized man utilized.

As a result of a huge migration from country to city, the views of death transformed. The old ways continued to die out while crime rates rose and sanitation could not keep up with demand. Epidemics swept through the cities, and nearly every family felt their touch.

Youthful death became the romanticized ideal. Repressed within a confined and highly structured lifestyle, emotional outlets often manifested through literature. Many of the best authors of the time wrote emotional short fictions known as Gothic horrors, which turned to the ideas of ghosts, spirits and angels for resolution.

The Darkened Room, by Alex Owen, a study of Victorian spiritualism and women from Amazon.co.uk. It looks at looks at the central role played by women as healers, mediums, and believers in the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian period. In so doing she provides new insights into the gender dynamics of Victorian society.
Click on image and pick text to visit Amazon.co.uk, prices range from £12.00 for new and £8.91 for second hand copies.

The Darkened Room by Alex Owen at Amazon.comClick here to visit Amazon.com. Prices range from $19.00 new to $18.94 for used.

The stories primarily focused upon the middle class, which continued to gain in strength during this era, and who had a pre-established belief in ghosts.

The lower class, by comparison, was often regarded as superstitious in this class-conscious era. The wealthy, on the other hand, did not partake of such interests. In combination with the rising interest in organized science, several chapters of the Society for Paranormal Research (SPR) were formed. This organization served as a way station for all things occult, from haunted houses to automatic writing, telepathy to meditation, apportation (phenomenal movement or manifestation of items done by a supernatural force) to divination.

The organization was humanistic, and it aimed to be scientific and objective. Part of its continuing mission was to remove the ideas of religiosity and superstition from its ranks. It courted politicians and scientists, while calling for carefully monitored polls dealing with the public’s interactions with supernatural phenomena. In spreading information of the paranormal, it brought the occult ideals from the fringe of society to the forefront of conversation.

Public demonstrations of amazing paranormal abilities became much more commonplace, inspiring careers for both mediums and skeptics. It was during this time period that the Fox sisters, regarded as a major force behind the start of Spiritualism, started their renowned world tours. The two young women allegedly established contact with the ghost of a man killed in their home. The entity communicated with them through a series of otherworldly knocking. When it became apparent that the ghost “followed” the sisters they decided to tour the United States showing their amazing abilities. In addition to “Mr. Splitfoot”, their own ghost, the sister also conjured up the spirits of audience members’ long dead relatives as part of the entertainment.

The flames of curiosity were further fanned by contacts with primal societies. Fraiser’s book, The Golden Bough, broke down the barriers between cultivated society and the “proto-society” that Victorians associated with the Tribal cultures. The writing was a serious study of the tribal religions, filled with shamanism, spirits, and divination. Seeing within these “primitive” people their own past, Victorians had a fascination of the Tribal religions and art. Both became standard objects of study within society and stirred awake the long-repressed imagination of the Victorian mind.

With these elements combined, the definition of the human being grew more complex in its make up. It was tripartisan, comprised of body, soul, and spirit. Exploration into the three rose with Spiritualism, a religious philosophy that believed that the spirit could exist without the body. In addition, while the spirit was free of corporal existence it could, in unusual circumstances, manifest as the ‘unseen presences of the dead among the living.’ In other cases, it could produce the so-called “living apparition” in which the spirit existed outside of the body as an ethereal aspect of the living. The ghost, therefore, became less of an alien presence and evolved into a newly discovered limb of the human psyche. The father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, was, himself, interested in the occult. As with other occultists, he found within the study an invisible world that supported the visible one. He was fascinated with dreams, the uncanny, and telepathy and he wrote several papers on the subjects.

His research into Franz Anton Mesmer’s works helped Freud develop the medical applications of hypnosis. It was one of his greatest achievements, though it drew the attention of occult thinkers, theosophists, and faith healers who transformed the process into “mesmerization.” Freud, fearing that his works would fall into the realm of superstition, began to remove his studies from the occult. He broke with his foremost student, Jung, when the younger man refused to end his studies into “that black tide of mud,” the supernatural.

Through his works, Freud continued to internalise the aspect of the ghostly in his work Mourning and Melancholia. Here, Freud proposes that ghosts are a psychological entity, a process that allows the mind of the mourner to let go of the past and the recently deceased. But, for some of the grieving going through this process, the dead person was internalised. These internalisations were, according to Freud, a psychological reaction to guilt and emotions that should be forgotten. They were fragments of memory to which the living, through attachment, refused to let go. Ghosts did not exist externally; they were figments of the mind.

From this, scholars argue that the nineteenth century is the time period when ghosts lose their external influence and become a part of the mental landscape. They are psychological projections: fears and desires that manifest in our innermost selves. Therefore, modern man is haunted not by an outside force but by himself.

Freud, On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia (Penguin Modern Classics Translated Texts).Written against a backdrop of war and racism. Freud sought the sources of conflict in the deepest memories of humankind, finding clear continuities between our primitive past and civilized modernity. Click image or underlined text to visit Amazon.co.uk. Prices range from £9.99 for new and £5.03 for used.
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Freud on murder, mourning and melancholia (Penguin modern classics....) at Amazon.com Click underlined text above to visit Amazon.com. Prices range from $14.67 for new and from $13,64 for used.

Yet, the metaphor that it represented continued to exit. Expanding upon the idea of socio- political turbulence, Buse and Scott write that the ghost secretly represents a merger of time:

…past and present cannot be neatly separated from one another, as any idea of the present is always constituted through the difference and deferral of the past, as well as the anticipation of the future.

This can be shown through the example of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, in which he states that a “spectre [sic] of communism” haunts Europe. It is a juxtaposition of time. He observes the economic strife of the past – the struggles and abuses between the classes -- to come up with an idea for the idealized future: a class-less society. Yet, when he writes, Communism is just an aspect of his own mind; it manifests through a series of turbulent revolutions. When communism becomes a reality, not merely a figment of imagination, it is still ghostly: it is only partially what Marx had envisioned.

Within the world of the arts, the Symbolists quickly absorbed Freud’s revelation of the laws of psychic experience. They believed that reality, expressed through life itself, was mysterious. This paralleled the Freudian theories that the mind was a mystery to itself. The idea that the greater portion of the mind was closed from consciousness confirmed the Symbolists’ conviction that there was more to life than could be explained through science. Access to this higher awareness could be found only through extraordinary means, such as dreams, drugs, or alcohol-induced images.

As with other Symbolists, Gustave Moreau sought an antithesis to the excesses of materialism and the rapid stress of social change through occult philosophy. It encompassed eternal truths, and created a sense of exclusive, though universal, community. The artist transformed into priest, the work became a vision. Convinced that the unconscious was the source of both creativity and occult vision, certain artists now assumed the role of a medium in culling forth those images.

Many of his works derive from the “hallucinatory” paintings of the 1860’s and contain a strong pre-Surrealist feel to them. The shading and modelling of the pieces creates a hazy atmosphere, as if reflecting the viewer’s inability to contemplate the entire meaning of what the works depict. Floating heads, foreign landscapes, strange demonic creatures, and sexual allusions fill the images. Perhaps one of the most spectral of Moreau’s works is the one aptly named “The Apparition”, 1874 – 76. It is, indeed, nearly surreal in nature. An erotic Salome stands above a puddle of blood, reaching towards the floating head of John the Baptist whose life was forfeited for her dancing. The impact of John’s head, dripping with gore, surrounded by a halo and containing a serene expression, is countered by the meek reaction of Salome. She is composed, serene, and subdued as she bows slightly before this manifestation. The remainder of the room is still and gazes at the scene with statuesque silence. They are within a transposed reality and it is as if they are all drugged. The overwhelming nature of this miraculous event has little to no effect upon them.

Gustave Moreau's 'Apparition', you can see it at Musee Gustave Moreau, Paris.

Edvard Munch also delved into the internal workings of the mind with his expressive and violent works. The origin of many of his works may be traced to the illness, death and religious obsession of his childhood. He later joined with the “Christiania’s Bohemia,” an avant-garde group in Norway. The artists involved were influenced by a series of political, social, and ethical questions which were expressed through several plays, one fitting the aptly named title, Ghosts.

Munch saw a much darker side to human evolution. Science, especially through the use of psychiatry, had uncovered humanity’s motivations through subconscious instincts. Humans were victims of their own biology. Munch saw them manifest through stages of life that involved isolation and loneliness, desire, disenfranchisement, illness and love. These tensions can never be resolved; the only way to deal with them is to face them directly. This he expresses through his eerie and frightening work, In Hell.

His age at the time of the painting, in 1903, was 40; this paralleled Dante’s age in the Inferno. For Munch, like Dante, his mid-life was the perfect time for a journey into Hell. Here the artist depicts himself, a naked soul in a naked body, staring out from the canvas. Around him curls black smoke and fire, flames spurt around his head. This is the world of reality for him. It is the psyche within which he resides. He stares defiantly out from the image, his eyes locked with the viewer’s; he is facing his fears and stands defiant and triumphant.

A third Symbolist, Dutch artist Jan Toorop, shows life beyond the grave with his work O Grave! Where is Thy Victory? Born and raised in Java, his figures take on the images of Javanese paper puppets: long, emaciated, ethereal, and almost skeletal. The work takes on morbidity; the entire canvas is painted in a series of monotone shades of brown, with only the sky beyond a shade of deep blue. The willowy figures of two ghostly women seep out of the earth, flowing out and above the grave as if they were wind-born.

Edvard Munch's self portrait 'In Hell', 1903. It is in the Munch Museum in Oslo.

To the far right of the work are a series of angry, clawing hands. They appear to grab at the ghosts, trying to pull them back into the ground. It is, again, a battle between the spirit and the body; the way things were and the way things are. It is as if he questions the power of death, perhaps in the ideas of modern science, with the freedom of the soul.

The father of Surrealism’s two manifestos, Andre Breton, certainly saw his own ideas evolve with these times. As a spokesperson for the newly evolved movement, he represented the driving force against the rationalism that pulled Europe into World War I. Fearing what he perceived as the stagnancy of creativity, a true threat to humanity, he believed that the world needed a new outlook.

Influenced by the works that preceded him, he sought to find a form of artistic automatism, a pure expression for the human psyche. He sought to combine the conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dreams and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world. It would be "an absolute reality, a surreality".

Breton believed that Surrealism was the most extreme expression within the power of art. However, to get to those depths artists had to abandon traditional methods of viewing the world. Drawing upon the theories of Sigmund Freud, Breton believed that there was an untapped realm located in the unconscious mind. If properly tapped, it could become the source of limitless imagination.

In addition to Freud's works, Breton relied upon the practices of the occult. He and other Surrealist artists worked with automatic writing, self-hypnosis, séances, and trances. Chance and spontaneity became opportunities to break down logic and reason to access the unconscious mind.

Dreams also relate heavily in the world of Surrealism. It is the other great psycho-analytic tool that Freud declared ‘the royal road to the unconscious.’ Dreams are important to both the world of the unconscious as well as to ghosts. While dreaming, the subject is in an altered state of consciousness. A ghost is the altered state defined. Ghosts and dreams relate as far back as The Epic of Gilgamesh, where a dying Enkidu experiences a foreshadowing of his own death experience through a dream. Here, again, we find a relationship connected between the world of the psyche and the world of the spectral.

So powerful were dream images that the Surrealists gathered for daydreaming sessions. Louis Aragon was an active participant in the dream sessions. He records within his thoughts in Une Vague de Reves, 1924 that ‘the inspired character of the spoken dreams that paraded past me’ forcibly struck him. He also acknowledges that “nocturnal dreams” were also discussed at length. Though Breton mostly worked with poetry, he was a strong critic of other Surrealist artists. His commentary could bring artists into the fold, or cast them out for non-Surrealist indiscretions. He kept a close eye within the art movement, and added his comments on the works of each artist. Paul Delvaux creates a beautiful painting in Sleeping Venus that combines the dream, the Danse Macabre images from the Middle Ages, and the world of the surreal.

An image of death and the maiden, and in an effort to show a ‘picture for contrast and mystery,’ Delvaux shows a world that is dying. Women scream for help from the heavens as a standing skeleton walks into the canvas. It is the momento mori as the revenant approaches the sleeping Venus. Her only guardian is a dressmaker’s dummy that stands mute, pointing the way to the woman. Delvaux’s work shows that the descendants of the Danse Macabre still remain in the modern world. Despite humanity’s advancements in fields of science and medicine, Death still remains an elusive element to life, ready to strike at any time.

Paul Delvaux's Sleeping Venus, 1944. This painting nis at the Tate Gallery in London, England.

Edward Burra, also features the revenant, or walking corpse-like apparition, with the work John Deth. Utilizing copious amounts of red for his backdrop, the figures dance inside a striated room, perhaps the inside of a corpse itself. Outside is the classic moon image, complete with scattered clouds and a dark castle. Within the party itself we see a mixture of living and dead. Several of the partygoers have blank pupil-less eyes. The two couples within the foreground each feature one living and one dead partner. To the left is a man in a party hat; his eyes roll back into his head as he tries to support the literal dead weight of his skeleton-faced partner. He frowns as her arms, filled with diamonds, embrace him. To the right stands a red-clad skeleton with his arm casually draped around the shoulders of his date. The scythe held loosely in his hand rises above her head. From her head hang various fruits and flowers; she is the epitome of life embraced within the form of death. Her eyes lock with the viewer’s; in her naivety and youth, she is oblivious to the danger.

With the works of Jorge Camacho, he comments on the “virtue of the dialectical process which forces a confrontation between Eros and the death instinct” combined with the “chances of survival of the human species suddenly appeared crazily uncertain.” He believes that Comacho’s works come from this ideal, for the artist was entrenched with the Cuban revolution. Comacho, one of the later Surrealist painters, produced The Night Skull in 1964. Though little else is written about the work, its power is in its stark simplicity. A skull sits grinning on the ground, empty eye sockets turned toward the viewer. A waft of smoke emerges from its left eye, perhaps an allusion to the airy quality of the soul. It merges with the tendrils that rise up from the top of the skull, looping around a diabolic creature standing in the background. The creature is skeletal, frowning, and spewing forth substance from its mouth. A spiked form sits in a nearby doorway and humanesque figures sprawl across the top and side of the image. This is the Thanatos urge made manifest; it is the inevitable acceptance of death that every living creature must face.

It is time to diverge to one of the better-known names within Surrealism: Salvador Dali. As with the artists mentioned above, Dali also has ghostly visitors within his works. The first is The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table, a dreamscape based upon Dali’s Paranoiac Critical Method. Set in Port Ligat, a man kneels in the sand; he is morphing into an inanimate object, the table. As based upon the title, it is an obvious reference to the paintings of Jan Vermeer whom Dali greatly admired.

Life around the turn of the century was hard and often short. War, epidemics, crowded conditions, and insecurity with long established beliefs created the need for a belief in an afterlife. Utilizing the experimental nature of the occult, a rich and fantastic ideology formed. It created an idea of a world mixed between that of the supernatural and natural. Unlike prior eras, the stage for both worlds was contained within one area: the human mind. However, the belief in ghosts managed to unite both realms, the external world of reality and the inner world of mystery and emotion, giving them a common over-lapping element that allowed for interaction between them. It is a tidy solution for a unique dilemma found in human history since the times of antiquity.

The ghost of Vermeer of Delft, which can be used as a table, by Dali. Painted in 1934. You can see this painting in the Salvador Dalí Museum, in St Petersburg, Florida, USA.

Modern art of the twenty-first century faces a multitude of factors when dealing with occult images in art. The definition of death and the afterlife are much more complex today with the influx of new religions and philosophies, the rise of secularism, and the continued ebb of members from the mainstream religions.

Science also adds in new equations to the answer. With the rise in the use of clones, genetic manipulation, and continued increases in technologies, death is a far more remote creature than the Victorians knew. Nonetheless, those works produced today and studied by our descendants will tell the tale of our cultural view of death and the afterlife. To the Moderns, death and the supernatural hold a great deal of interest. It is a safe wager to bet that the same will be true for human descendants for hundreds of years to come.

© 2007 Brandy B Stark, of Stark Images

To visit Brandy's own web sites please access the LINKS page.

Bibliography:

During 2005 our intreped editor went on a tour of Canada. She took in a few ghost walks along the way. Here is her report on the Ghost and Gallows walk in Ottawa run by Haunted Walks Inc. of Canada; preceded by a ghostly encounter at the restaurant Friday's Roast Beef House.

Ghost walks can be interesting, intriguing and often educational, but rarely do they involve a real encounter with a ghost. Our evening started with a bang in the ghostly sense. The restaurant we dined at before going on the ghost walk to Carleton Gaol turned out to be haunted.

It was my turn to choose a place to eat and as we had to get to the start of the walk by 9 in the evening, I chose Friday's Roast Beef House on Elgin Avenue. It was a one minute walk from there to the assembly point for the tour. I had no idea that it was haunted until I noticed a lady standing on the stairs. She was wearing a Victorian dress, in black bombazine to be more accurate, and had chatelaine's keys dangling from her waist. I nudged Martin as we were shown to a table and whispered "did you see that, the ghost on the stairs?" He indicated that he had noticed something, but what it was he did not know. Once we were settled, she decided to pay us a visit. Ghosts are often aware when they are noticed by the living and try to establish contact. So, in between reading the menu and ordering our food I struck up a conversation with the resident ghost.

She informed me that she had been housekeeper to the family that owned the place. The reason she was still there was that she felt responsible for a child's death. The nursemaid had to go out to deal with some personal business (the ghost referred to it as 'stepping out') and left the little girl in her care. She was about three years old. But as the ghost was a housekeeper and not a nursemaid, she did not pay attention to the child. Instead of keeping an eye on the girl she had got on with her own duties. The child had left the nursery area on the upper floors and had fallen down the stairs, killing herself in the process. Although she had not pushed the girl she felt the child's blood on her hands as her neglect had allowed the child to wander to her death.

During her own life time there had been no question of blame attached to her, but her sense of guilt weighed upon her soul. As she had never asked absolution from the church during her lifetime; she was still waiting for it now she was dead. She was scared to go the 'the light' because she felt guilty of murder. She felt Hell was her destination without proper absolution for her sin.

Friday's Roast Beef House on Elgin, Ottawa.
Click on the image to visit their website.

The history of the house suggests that the child might been of the Grant family; as I am currently based in the United Kingdom it will be up to Canadians based in Ottawa to verify whether there is any truth in the communication I had with the ghost. We did ask our waitress if the house was haunted, and if so, who by? Her answer was that it was haunted; they all thought it was by Dr. Grant.

I researched Dr Grant on the internet and discovered that he had married in 1856 to Maria, daughter of Edward Malloch. They had had twelve children, seven of whom survived them. Could the child who died by falling down the stairs have been one of the five that had not? Only searching the local records and newspaper reports can verify the truth of my ghost's assertions. Any wages bills for the Grant family might bring up the name of the housekeeper. If you find the answers to my questions, please let me know. My email address is available on the Links Page.

"Sir James married, January 22, 1856, Maria, daughter of the late Edward Malloch, who represented Carleton in the Canadian Parliament for many years. At the recent celebration of their sixtieth wedding anniversary, they were the recipients of felicitations from friends in every part of the world. Lady Grant is very popular in Ottawa, where they have resided since their marriage, and has been active in many philanthropic and charitable organizations. In connection with the Ottawa Humane Society, she was one of the first to offer a silver medal for bravery to one who had saved a life from drowning. Sir James and Lady Grant attend the St. Andrew 's Presbyterian Church, Ottawa, of which they have been members since 1854. Of twelve children, seven survive: Mrs. George Major, Niagara; Mrs. Harry Cassells. Montreal; Miss Harriet; Dr. James A. Grant, Ottawa: Dr. H. Y. Grant; E. C. Grant; and W. W. Grant."
Quote taken from www.electricscotland.com. To find the original article please refer to the resources links at the end of this article.

Carleton Gaol and the Ghost & Gallows walk

Any North American who loves ghost stories will have heard of Carleton Gaol (or Jail - the choice of spelling is optional but the Canadians use Gaol in the name of this building). It has made numerous appearances on programmes dedicated to telling ghostly tales. I am going to concentrate on only one aspect of the ghost walk and the jail.

We arrived at the corner of Sparks and Elgin at 9pm, the meeting point for the Ghost and Gallows walk run by Haunted Walks Inc., of Canada. When the full complement of nineteen 'ghosters' had assembled, our guide for the evening, Karin, gathered us together and led us off for our tour. She was easy to identify as she was dressed in a flowing black cape and toted a lantern; a nice conceit and hallmark attire for all Haunted Walk Incorporated's guides.

The tour commenced from there as it allowed our guide to start telling us the story of Patrick James Whelan and the murder of Thomas Dárcy McGee. McGee was assassinated on the 7th of April, 1868. He had friends in high places and was involved in the confederation of Canada, so the search for his murderer became a political imperative. McGee was considered too ugly to have a paramour and so jealous husbands were crossed off the list of possible perpetrators. That left politics as the motive. At that time Fenians were agitating in Canada for political freedom in Ireland from the British Crown. McGee had spoken out against them and had received a death threat for his pains. The end result was that he was shot outside his boarding house. There were no witnesses to that event. Our starting point was very near to the boarding house where the assassination took place.

Patrick James Whelan, image taken from one of the information boards at Carleton Gaol.

We then left that location and were led across busy roads, stopping from time to time at other places where we were told more ghostly tales. After about half an hour we fetched up at Carleton Gaol, like flotsam and jetsam brought in by the tide. The building was lit up like a Christmas tree, lights in almost every window. It had been converted into an International Youth Hostel after being decommissioned as a jail in 1972. Some official must have had a sense of humour - where else to bed down the travelling youth of the world but in an old jail? We waited patiently outside for our turn to enter the building. Apart from all the youth hostellers there were endless streams of ghost walk groups waiting to enter. Karin told us many tales of apparitions and ghostly encounters experienced by those that stayed there as we stood outside. My favourite one was of some German students who after spending a ghost free night at the hostel were demanding their money back, only to watch bemused as a coin floated up in the air behind the person manning the desk and hovered behind the clerk, unheld by human hand. Needless to say, the German students slunk off without further demands for repayment as they had now had their ghostly encounter!

Finally, our turn to enter the building arrived. We trooped up the stairs behind our guide, and reached the most ghost-ridden part of the premises; the eighth floor. Now my own psychic senses switched into over-drive. Karin stopped in front of one of the small cells that had housed the prisoners and I noticed a tall male ghost with a huge ginger beard peer over her shoulder. She then proceeded to tell us the second part of Whelan's story.

McGee's murderer had to be found, at all costs. One of the costs could have been the life of an innocent man, one Patrick James Whelan. Whelan was known to be a Fenian. There was nothing to tie him to McGee's murder, but charged he was. A maid spoke in his favour at the trial; but another man, Jean Baptist Lacroix, spoke against him (some thought he did so for money). The end result was Whelan was found guilty of the crime and was to hang for it. He spent his jail sentence on the eighth floor, waiting to go to the noose. I bear testament to the fact that he is still there; I could see him listening intently to Karin as she told his story. When it was done, she left us to wander around, read the information boards, take photographs and generally soak up the atmosphere. Meanwhile, I told Martin about the man I saw and noticed he was a dead ringer for the reproduction photograph of Whelan on the information boards! Until that moment I had assumed he could have been any one of the prisoners who had resided there.

The entrance to Carleton Gaol, photograph by Farncombe Publishing, © 2006 Farncombe Publishing.

Karin gathered us up and ushered us to Death row. I was pole-axed by stomach cramps and sweating as I passed through the grey door that led into it. I had to sit down. It seems that I was not the only sensitive to feel so suddenly ill in that part of the jail. Karin made a point of mentioning that many people felt similar symptoms when they came into Death row. She told us of moving beds, banging doors and other ghostly phenomena that had taken place there. I just felt ill and wanted to leave. I was too dizzy to concentrate on ghosts. I zoomed out of Death row like a bat out of hell and left Martin to take photographs. I dashed passed the hanging spot, literally dancing from foot to foot with impatience, wanting Martin to hurry up, torn between waiting for him and getting away from that nasty place. He was so busy taking pictures that he did not noticed I had gone. After all, I usually hung around talking to spooks! This time I wanted to leave as quickly as possible.

The most ghost-ridden part of the premises; the eighth floor. This was where Judy Farncombe sensed the ghost of Patrick James Whelan.
Photograph by Farncombe Publishing, © 2006 Farncombe Publishing.

After descending the stairs we all congregated in the garden and heard how there were many unmarked graves where we were standing, all from those who died in the jail. Even Whelan was buried under the sod. I used this time to gather together my trembling self and told Martin about what I had felt in Death row. Meanwhile Karin recounted more tales of misery and death to our group. Then she led us out of the garden and onto more locations; but my thoughts stayed with Whelan in Carleton Gaol; not because of any Fenian leanings (I have none thanks to living through the IRA bombing campaigns in Britain) but because of sympathy for a man hanged for political expedience rather than proof of murder, and who haunts the jail to this day.

Finally, those of you who know me well know I do not believe ghosts can be caught on film. I tend to dismiss orbs as being dust motes bouncing off light from the flash, back to the camera. That night, when we returned to our hotel room, we down-loaded the photographs Martin took onto his lap-top computer. As we looked through them I pointed to one in particular. There was a face clearly visible on the wall in Death row. See what you think of it - I for one finally believe that you can catch a ghost on a camera!

The ghostly image on Death Row, Carleton Gaol, taken by Martin Farncombe.

"This is a photo of 'death row' in the old prison in Ottawa taken about 10 p.m. local time on Friday 29th July 2005. The two barred doors on the left are Cell 6 (nearest) and Cell 5 (by the far wall). It was taken with a Fuji S602 digital camera with 1 Mb resolution. I had been using the flash earlier in the evening but it was bleaching everything out, so I switched to programmed auto/aperture priority and braced myself against the wall when I wanted to take photos - you can observe slight blurring from camera shake. The camera log shows this photo was taken with an exposure of about 1/3rd of a second (0.323s) using F2.8. The contents of the camera were downloaded onto my Mac using iPhoto later that evening, This photo was renamed to make it easier to find in the album but it has not been altered in any way. The size of the photo is 1280 by 960 pixels/357693 bytes." Martin Farncombe July 30th 2005
This image was taken by Martin Farncombe. We added the copyright notice by adding a layer to the original image and sized the original digital image down to fit the page, otherwise it is untouched by any other Adobe Photoshop processes.
You can clearly see a face by the opening of the first cell door.

© 2007 Judy Farncombe, Farncombe Publishing

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In this issue we welcome a new writer to Psychic-tymes. Paul Dale Roberts lives in California and has recently gone on his first ghost hunt with Haunted and Paranormal Investigations of Northern California. He describes the his experience at The National Hotel, Jackson, CA.

On Saturday, January 20, 2007, I found myself arriving at The National Hotel, 2 Water Street, Jackson, California. This was my first time experiencing a true paranormal investigation; call us ghost hunters, ghost busters, ghost tracers, but to be more formal, we can be called paranormal investigators. The outfit is called H.P.I. (Haunted and Paranormal Investigations) of Northern California. The president is the lovely Shannon McCabe. This talented woman seeks the truth of haunting and maintains a sceptical mind on all events that are witnessed by her outfit H.P.I. She seeks a scientific explanation, and when all scientific possibilities are eliminated, it leaves only one answer - the paranormal. The roll call for H.P.I. Investigators that do not mind having their names disclosed are: Shannon McCabe; Brian Colbert; Julie English; Paul Dale Roberts; Mary Casiano; Anne Temple (Spiritual/Psychic Reader); John Wachter; Jonathan Russell; Alicia; and Michelle Paykel. There were 28 H.P.I. paranormal investigators and the other names are withheld for their privacy.

The National Hotel in Jackson, dates back to the 1800s. Guests of the hotels have witnessed many paranormal events. The total number of entities in the hotel has been documented to a large 30. When I arrived there was a band playing and patrons gyrating on the dance floor to rock and roll and R&B. One of the buzzed patrons yelled out "happy ghost hunting!"

The HPI investigators were setting up video cameras in locations of all the floors of the hotel. The lap tops were turned on to analyse electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). In one recording you could distinctly hear a female voice say the word 'chill'. I became familiar with a Gauss aka E.M.F. (electro magnetic field reader). Brian Colbert, another paranormal investigator, briefed me on a Tempgun which detects the influx of temperature. It is very good at reading 'cold spots'.

When the band and patrons left the lights went out and the investigators had access to more rooms. In one room called 'The Bordello' I felt a thickness in the air. After leaving this room I returned perhaps an hour later and the thickness was gone. Armed with my digital camera I took pictures of various areas of the hotel. The method is to take two pictures of each area, so there is no misinterpretation of the picture taken. The spirits must have been attracted to Julie English. She took many photos with her digital camera and picked up many 'orbs' in her photographs. At 1:52am Julie English took a photograph of a bath towel in Room 55 and an orb appeared in the photo. She snapped another photo of the bed in Room 55 and another orb appeared. I snapped photos of the same areas and no orbs appeared on my photographs.

Photograph of room 55 with the orb clearly visible at the top and centre of the image, this was taken by Julie English. The photograph has been resized from 300dpi to 72dpi for ease of viewing on the internet. In the photograph at the Psychic-tymes office the orb is clearly defined. Copyright of this photograph belongs to either Ms English or HIP. Please use the links page to contact copyright holders for further information etc.

The same room minus the orb. This photograph was taken by Paul Dale Roberts. In the Psychic-tymes office this, too, was reduced from 300dpi to 72dpi. Copyright of this photograph belongs to either Mr Roberts or HIP. Please use the links page to contact copyright holders for further information etc.

This is a close-up of the orb using the full 300dpi of the original image. Psychic-tymes has not altered the image in any way except to clip it. It shows the beauty of the orb.
Copyright of this photograph belongs to either Ms English or HIP. Please use the links page to contact copyright holders for further information etc.

One unsubstantiated claim was that intuitive Anne Temple claimed that a little girl made her presence known and followed John Wachter. During this incident an electronic magnetic field monitor device was used and witnessed by Michelle Paykel. The little ghostly spirit of the girl that followed John Wachter whispered 'Cindy'. Some of the patrons of the bar were curious on what H.P.I. was doing and one patron, name unknown, claimed he was a psychic and said an angry male entity was walking up and down the hallway; he was mumbling gibberish and was completely incoherent. The patron claimed this was a troubled spirit. Anne Temple followed up to say that he smoked a cigar and that he was yelling 'get out'. The patron psychic said he was 5' 10", an average aged man with an ethnic background. Observing the psychic patron, I detected that he was somewhat intoxicated. There was a time he was glass-eyed and standing up against the wall. Shannon McCabe asked him...'what's wrong?' He later told me that he receives headaches when there are too many ghosts around. One of the investigators asked him to leave because we felt he was hindering on our investigations.

Shannon McCabe showed me around various rooms. She is a seasoned investigator and as we sat in the dark she would ask any spirit to show itself. While Shannon was trying to detect any Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) she would make the comment..."someone's footsteps are being heard" or "Paul's coughing", so there is no confusion on what those noises were at a later date. Shannon enticed a spirit named "Jeffrey" to respond and I snapped one photo over the bed area and captured 2 orbs on my camera. I snapped again, in the same direction of the orbs and there were no more orbs present in the 2nd photo. This was in Room 52 of the hotel.

One of the lady workers of the hotel related all kinds of ghost stories to us. She told us how a crashed echoed throughout the hotel sounding like broken glass or broken wood and when walking into the room where the sound came from, no broken glass or wood was found. She explained that rooms with many sightings were numbers 61, 47 and 45. In one room a cowboy male ghost was seen and that this ghost once told a little girl with a video camera...'run bitch!' Shannon and about 4 other paranormal investigators sat in that room trying to attract the cowboy ghost; we had no results from this attempt. I later sat in this room by myself and felt no presence.

I dared to sit in dark closets by myself and even investigated the attic and had no results. One unidentified woman paranormal investigator took a photo and got a misty white cloud on her digital photo. Michelle Paykel took a digital photograph of the staircase and a white blob appeared on the digital photo. At 4:20am more digital photos were taken in Room 60 and orbs appeared on the photographs.

The final story for this evening occurred in Room 47, the infamous 'Bordello Room' with its lavish provocative maroon decor and mirrors. This story was related to me by Mary Casiano, Jonathan Russell and Anne Temple, the Spiritual Reader of www.Bluepantherspirit.com. They witnessed, or experienced, everything from a poke in the neck, whispering, hair pulling, tugging on hair, a touch or brushing of the face, hands feeling cold, and hair pushed back. Jonathan Russell claims he was sitting on a chair and felt a pressure on his lap and said that it felt like he was being groped. I went into the 'Bordello Room' by myself and sat in the same chair as Jonathan. I sat in there for a good 20 minutes and experienced nothing. The only thing I experienced i n this room was earlier in the evening when I felt a thickness in the air.

Overall this was a fun learning experience and I hope our next investigation into a haunting will produce some exciting results. All digital photographs and Electronic Voice Phenomenon will be analysed; the results are pending. For anyone interested in this field - like the patron told me...."Happy Ghost Hunting!"

© 2007 Paul Dale Roberts

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