Interested in touring the country to see America’s most haunted vacation spots? Click on the “Spooky” button below to view some of America’s most haunted locations. Thanks to our reader, India, for the submission!

Ghosts have haunted us, it seems, for as long as we have been able to worry about the afterlife. The ghost of Achilles wails to Ulysses, “I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house and be above ground, than king of kings among the dead.” Nowadays even our computers’ spellcheckers may be haunted, at least according to a footnote within “A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof” (Particular Books) by columnist Roger Clarke, who grew up in a haunted house and was the youngest person ever to be invited to join the British Society for Psychical Research. In 1998, the SPR investigated the case of a report being typed about a particular ghost named Prudentia, and the spellchecker highlighted the name and suggested that “dead,” “buried,” and “cellar” be considered for alternatives. Ghosts, you see, go through their fashions as much as do we living. This ought to tell us more about people than about ghosts, and Clarke’s book is a wonderful entertainment, with plenty of spooky stories, frauds, pranks, impossibilities, and seemingly inexplicable events. Clarke is obviously fascinated with his subject, and is able to convey the fascination. He has a good reporter’s distance on the stories he covers here, with an appropriate skepticism that makes the tales more, not less, fun.

Before investigating what ghosts do, it might be best to consider the big question: Do ghosts exist? You won’t get an answer here because Clarke is dismissive of the question, one that he says belongs in a London of the nineteenth century. “In a basic sense,” he writes, “ghosts exist because people constantly report that they see them. This is not a book about whether ghosts exist or not. This is a book about what we see when we see a ghost, and the stories that we tell each other about them.” The most famous of the ghost stories told here is that of the Cock Lane Ghost, referenced plenty of times by Dickens and even by Melville in “Moby Dick”; Hogarth included a reference in his picture “Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism: a Medley.” Part of the reason for its fame is that Samuel Johnson himself was on a committee to investigate the ghost, and his committee spotted a hoax, but not before what Clarke says was the first ever media circus. The other famous haunting covered here is more recent, one that continued into the twentieth century: Borley Rectory, often called “the most haunted house in England.” One of the reasons it was called that is that Harry Price, an investigator within Clarke’s Society for Psychical Research, made it so. Price was sometimes a diligent and serious investigator, and sometimes a promoter of belief in the supernatural beyond what the evidence showed. One of the ways people used to celebrate ghosts was by what we would call now “flash mobs.” In 1868, for instance, a body was fished out of the Thames, and before an inquest could be held, rumors spread that the body was walking all around the churchyard at night. “In consequence, an estimated two thousand people congregated nightly outside. Efforts by the vicar and parish officials to disperse the crowd were entirely in vain; as the police arrived, one James Jones, aged nineteen, climbed up onto the railings and shouted at the murmuring, agitated crowd, ‘Don’t go – there it is again – there’s the ghost!’ He was promptly arrested.”

Clarke examines the haunting of Hinton Ampner, which may have inspired Henry James’s story “The Turn of the Screw”, the Victorian craze for seances, the Angel of Mons that was (never) seen by soldiers in World War I, and the class-consciousness of ghosts (with headless Anne Boleyn haunting stately homes and highwayman Dick Turpin sticking to pubs). He has comments on the gadgetry now trained on catching ghosts, and on the television shows that promote such technology. Suffice it to say that the new ways of hunting for ghosts have failed to clear up conclusively even their existence. They have infested us living people for millennia, and my guess is that we have cleared up their mysteries just as much as we ever have or ever will.

The good folks over at SyFy have sent us some more information about the upcoming piece regarding aliens on the moon. Take a look!

ALIENS ON THE MOON: THE TRUTH EXPOSED will be a SYFY Channel World Premiere on July 20th to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Full details about the 2-hour SYFY event documentary special are attached. Shocking highlights from the special will include:

• Never before seen footage that will show evidence of alien structures on the moon
• Female alien being purportedly found on the moon
• Aliens seen in the cockpit of a flying saucer
• Exclusive interviews with Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin!

A TWO-HOUR SYFY EVENT DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL

LOS ANGELES (July 07, 2014) – Syfy will host the world premiere of ALIENS ON THE MOON: THE TRUTH EXPOSTED, a two-hour event documentary special on Sunday July 20, 2014.

July 20, 2014 marks the 45th anniversary of man’s first landing on the Moon.  We’ve all seen the footage and know the “official” story from news reports, the Internet and for younger viewers, from the history books.  But what haven’t we been told about Earth’s closest neighbor?  What really happened on that historic day?  What did our astronauts encounter on the lunar surface?  And what don’t our world’s governments want us to know?

In this controversial special we will look at compelling evidence – including
never-before aired NASA photos showing gigantic artificial structures – suggesting the Moon is being used as a base, and possibly a staging area, by a mysterious race of alien beings.  We will hear from experts, as well as astronauts who have walked on the moon, and we’ll reveal new facts and proof for the first time anywhere. Also, viewers will see dramatic 3-D flybys of the lunar constructions derived from the actual NASA data, and get an exclusive look at footage of a purported “female” E.T. supposedly recovered during a secret U.S.-Soviet mission to the Moon in the 1970s.

Among the many shocking topics covered in the Special will be:

• Photos showing the undeniable existence of what look like installations, factories, saucers, hangers and huge satellite dishes, possibly trained directly on planet Earth.  Viewers will learn that many of the extraordinary signs of an alien lunar presence exist hidden from view, on the far side of our Moon.
• A gigantic structure resembling a “Nuclear Power Plant Cooling Tower” rising from the floor of a perfectly round crater or “dish.”  Located nearby, another large structure with a mile-long “pipe” extends out of it on a 45 degree angle and casts an obvious shadow.
• Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s startling interview where he reveals that a UFO followed the spacecraft for three days on its way to the historic moonwalk, and that a baffling “Monolith” has been photographed by NASA on Mars’ moon Phobos. Aldrin also assesses some of the lunar photos that strongly suggest alien structures have been detected on our Moon.
• Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s adamant contention that he knows for sure UFOs are real, that there is an alien presence visiting the Earth (and the space around us) and the U.S. government has been aware of it for several decades.
• Unidentified objects (dubbed “X-Drones” by researchers) that appear to be carving long, deep tracks many miles across the lunar terrain.
• Other “towers” that rise many miles up from the lunar surface (higher than anything made on Earth), photo evidence of a massive excavation operation on the Moon and telltale signs the picture may have been altered to hide the truth.
• Extensive “pipelines” crossing over the crater rims, in and out, and bridges spanning massive lunar canyons.
• A riveting Apollo 8 film showing what appears to be a huge “Smokestack” on the Moon – thousands of feet tall – releasing a “jet-like” cloud as the spacecraft passes over it.
• Russian Space Agency lunar orbiter photos of a 20-mile high “spire” clearly sticking straight up from the Moon’s surface, as well as a partially destroyed “dome.”
• Former NASA Photo Manager and “whistleblower” Ken Johnston’s claim that he screened an Apollo 14 film for a NASA astronomer showing five domed lights inside a crater, with one releasing a plume of steam.  He says the key sequence was later spliced out!  Johnston also reveals that during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, astronaut Neil Armstrong switched over to the medical channel to alert mission doctors, “Alien spaceships are parked around the rim of a crater, watching us!”
• Oil company executive Vito Sacchari’s exclusive TV interview where he tells his dramatic story of how he pressured NASA into letting him study 2000 lunar photos in 1979 which clearly contained massive alien structures on the moon.
• Defense Department expert Dr. John Brandenburg’s warning that all the pictures of “constructions” on the Moon presented in the Special – including a miles-wide rectilinear “Complex,” a “Capsule,” and gigantic “wheels, huts or domes” with a platform above them – are more suggestive that “someone” is building a forward “base” than the photos that triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis.  He adds the U.S. military must perceive this as a real threat, so close to us.
• A mysterious film reportedly showing a “female” alien aboard a landed lunar module after allegedly being recovered during a secret U.S.-U.S.S.R. mission to the Moon to examine an enormous fuselage-like structure photographed by Apollo 15.
• The Special also features intriguing evidence that there could be a wider alien presence, such as footage of UFOs in our skies and in space, a gigantic “planet-sized disc” pulling plasma from the Sun, a “Lunar Factory” reportedly photographed by a Chinese Satellite in 2011 and images of a possible “Alien Moon Base” that made world headlines earlier this year.  Also, a lunar “pyramid” photographed by NASA that’s almost identical to those found in ancient Iraq will be analyzed, as will the possibility the same alien race that might have helped ancient cultures advance could be the ones who erected structures on the Moon and are monitoring mankind for some unknown purpose.

ABOUT SYFY

Syfy is a media destination for imagination-based entertainment. With year round acclaimed original series, events, blockbuster movies, classic science fiction and fantasy programming, a dynamic Web site (www.Syfy.com), and a portfolio of adjacent business (Syfy Ventures), Syfy is a passport to limitless possibilities. Originally launched in 1992 as SCI FI Channel, and currently in 96 million homes, Syfy is a network of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies.  NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.(Syfy. Imagine Greater.)

I was recently emailed by Space Enigma Studios about an upcoming videogame that sounds interesting. Here’s what they had to say.

New files have recently been discovered that are of KGB and GRU
(soviet military intelligence agency) origin – the contents of said
files talk about extraterrestrial life. These files where given to
cosmonauts who are now developing a video game called Space Pioneer.
Space Pioneer will be based on scientific facts, hypotheses and
theories – one thing that our game addresses is the possible
existence of advanced alien civilizations, and we want to accurately
represent that within Space Pioneer.

Read the rest of this entry »