Did 2009’s surprise blockbuster Paranormal Activity get under your skin?

Did you start to notice an evil presence in your house?

Did you ever catch the evil trying to sniff your hair or put its hand on your leg?

Do you wake up and see a strange figure standing in the darkened corner of your bedroom (and you know it’s not your landlord because he’s masturbating in the other corner)?

Have you heard of Occam’s Razor? If yes, did you apply it and go down to the basement to check for breaks in the runic binding circle that keeps the angry ghosts from the cemented-over slave cemetery restricted to the laundry room area?

Has your significant other repeatedly discovered you sleepwalking around the house or eerily standing over the bed? Did this behavior start before or after the ghost wrote you a prescription for Ambian?

Did a mysterious grease fire break out on your Ouija board even though you specifically remember draining the bacon fat off into the diving tub from Mouse Trap?

Does your cat ever stare off into space at something that isn’t there while the something stares back at the cat and they stay like that for an hour and a half until the something blinks and your cat wins so then all of a sudden your cat’s walking around the house with a “1st Place” medal pinned to it?

Did you buy a protective sigil off eBay that turned out to be a promotional plastic figurine of the stargate? Did you hang it up anyway because, hey – stargate?

Did you create a complex 100-level system to gauge the severity of the haunting, and then conclude that it’s currently at level 72? Did you later rework the system so that instead of boring numbers, it used pretty stars and instead of a 72, the haunting’s a 23 because, seriously, who’s gonna draw 72 f***ing stars?

Do you ever find yourself wishing that there were a show just like CSI except that it takes place inside a mountain and all the detectives are baby animals? Does the ghost know about this wish? If “yes,” has it tried to use it against you (e.g., by granting it, but on a channel you don’t get)?

“Avatar.” Discuss.

All this week: Halloween urban legends – horrific truths, bald-faced lies, wild embellishments and insane speculations. On Monday, Matt explored the panic over tainted candy.

Today: Questing After Haunted House Eden

Like the lost city of El Dorado, or perhaps more appropriately like the profusion of rumored “midget towns” across the country, the ultimate haunted house attraction is an infamous and highly sought after fantasy destination. These rumored Halloween paradises aren’t advertised and move to a different hidden location every year. They’re generally described as multi-floored (anywhere from 3 to 13) warehouses run by mysterious, wealthy cabals. Some allegedly offer full refunds to anyone who can make it through the entire production (sometimes the refund is offered in installments paid out as a participant completes each floor). Of course, they’re so genuinely terrifying that no one has ever managed to reclaim the full entry fee.

Interestingly, unlike the diminutive midget towns, which always seem to be tucked away in unmapped corners of forgotten counties, these Edenic bastions of fright are generally rumored to exist in urban areas – warehouse districts or dilapidated portside neighborhoods. Fueling these stories is a suburban fascination with the city. A panic-tempered awe. A wonder-blanched fear. The middle school kids who look forward to annual jaunts through the plywood corridors of local Kiwanis-run haunted houses construct elaborate fantasies about said houses’ wild urban equivalents. The stories are built from an ingrained hyperbolic vision of the city as a concrete wilderness that’s at once less sympathetic, less polite, less controlled and, most importantly, more grown up than the familiar suburban landscape. Like a profusion of the message board posts debating the supposed locations of these hidden terrordomes state: “Half the fun is finding [the attraction].” By the very nature of the attraction’s non-existence, the search becomes the destination and the “ultimate haunted house” is actually the city streets as seen through the eyes of cul de sac sons and development daughters.

The richest version of the legend I could find was actually the one I grew up hearing: Somewhere in Philadelphia, PA is a 13-floor haunted house called, well, “13 Floors.” The first couple floors are rumored to be laughably standard haunted house fare; subsequent floors give way to trapdoors, complete darkness, live insects and reptiles, and, supposedly, violent physical assaults by masked assailants. Really, the whole thing unfolds into a beautiful allegory for growing up. The horrific, whispered climax of the story? Every year, the one or two participants who manage to successfully soldier on past the seventh or eighth floor are Never. Heard from. Again.

These few fearful, but brave, souls become the ghosts of suburban grade school legend. Neither living nor dead – just lost to the city. They matured into vapor. Grew up into steam. In truth, they are the ones who escaped.

What’s cooler than a giant cave? A giant haunted cave. Mammoth cave, one of the largest cave systems in the world is filled with all kinds of lore. Some say it’s the largest haunted place in the world. Prairie Ghosts has collected several stories of haunting. The spookiest ones are from the rangers and tour guides who work in the caves:

Another story, told by an experienced tour guide named Joy Lyons, tells of a tour that was taken a few years ago in the company of a large group and two guides. When they reached a point on the trail called the “Methodist Church”, they usually turned out all of the lights so that visitors could experience what the cave was like in pitch blackness. She was standing at the back of the group when the lights went out and she could hear the lead ranger talking about the experience. Then, she felt a strong shove against her shoulder. The assault was hard enough that she had to step forward to keep from falling over. She turned to another ranger, who was supposed to be standing next to her and she whispered to him to stop clowning around. A moment later, the lead ranger ignited the wick on a lantern and she saw that the other ranger, she had thought was close to her, was actually about 70 feet away. There was no way that he could have shoved her and then walked so far in complete darkness.

“There was no one near me,” she said, “but it was a playful shove. There are a number of us who feel things in various parts of the cave. It’s not frightening — but it’s something else.”

Cue the spooky music and check out this slideshow of Mammoth Cave from Flickr:

link: Mammoth Cave National Park – a set on Flickr

link: MAMMOTH CAVE: WORLD’S LARGEST HAUNTED PLACE

We’re going a little different this week for our Weirdest Thing in the World hunt and demanding that you send us the oddest haunted structures on the planet. Houses, saloons, trailer parks, they’re all fair game.

The rules are:

- You must have a picture or official illustration.
- Make sure you include a brief background on why it’s so odd.

Your baseline above is the Loveland Castle, as discussed in this week’s monster column by Matt Finley. This ornate structure was constructed by a wealthy Ohio magnate who imported countless artifacts from Europe to decorate his new home. Locals believed that many served as vessels for evil spirits who continue to haunt the countryside.

Email all submissions to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail. I’ll see you kids in the Weird Things TinyChat room at 5:30 p.m. EST where we will hash out the ultimate champion.

photo credit: MaxDug

The life of a truck driver will never be confused for a glamourous one.

Tight deadlines, long hauls and little sleep all make things dicey for the men and women who pilot these freight-toting behemoths across the world’s highways. But in South Africa, it’s even worse. A 2002 report published in the South African Journal of Science found that civil unrest and unkempt truck stops were more prevalent in the historically troubled nation. The industry even has a staggering HIV rate thanks to a reckless promiscuity culture amongst many drivers.

Finally, the government is stepping in to do something about it.

The Letaba municipality in the north of the country will hold a cleansing ceremony aimed at clearing the road of evil spirits that are believed to contribute to the accidents that have claimed many lives in the past five years, this according to local news source Sowetan.

She said the accidents had been going on for some years and it was time that something was done to make sure the carnage stopped.

She said the ceremony, which will include prayers, will be attended by municipal officials, traditional healers, chiefs, pastors, officials from the department of transport and communities from 11 villages.

“The area is quiet at the moment, but the prayer meeting is vital to save lives,” said Kgamedi Seshoka, spokesperson for the Modjadjiskloof police.

You read that, Ghost Road? You’re days of hectoring convoys are over!

American Idol Contestant Allison Iraheta was the latest to be ousted. The judges blamed her performance, but could ghosts keeping her up at night be to blame?

A few days ago Allison claimed that the spirit of a previous inhabitant of the American Idol Mansion had been visiting her in the night, growling in her boudoir and making loud banging noises.

The residents of the house have lovingly dubbed the specter “Phyllis”. Other females that have since left the mansion claim to have caught sight of the ghost themselves, claiming that Phyllis appears as a white shadow. Funny though, It seems Phyllis doesn’t the like the men of the house, because no males in the idol crew have yet to report interaction with the ghost.

Picture of Holton House Bead and Breakfast, the most haunted building in Kansas.

We know you Kansans have been waiting, and finally the Top 5 Most Haunted Places in Kansas have been announced! And unsurprisingly a former mortuary tops the list. Here are the results:

1. Holton House Bed and Breakfast- Holton
2. Constitution Hall- Topeka
3. St. Mary’s Church- Kansas City
4. Hotel Josephine- Holton
5. Holton Country Club- Holton

Hotels, Churches and Old Buildings, just like everywhere else. Now we’re expecting a lot of good investigations and pictures from you Middle of the Country folk, so get hunting. To find the original post on Ghost Tours of Kansas’ website click here.

Workers constructing a Dungeon Attraction at historic Warwick Castle were put off there work by Site Manager Paul Woodfield’s encounters with a ghost. Claiming to have seen a figure of a slender man wandering the grounds, the head of the project ordered his workers to halt construction until the ghostly apparitions could be explained. These reported ghost sightings come during efforts to build a tourist attraction that would include actor’s dressing up as ghosts and the undead to frighten visitors in the “Torture Chamber”. Wait a minute….construction site, spooky castle, unexplained hauntings, actors dressed like ghosts….this sounds suspiciously like an episode of Scooby-Doo.

The Ghost of a pregnant, South African Nun, that haunts a house in Bathurst, has been doling out interior design tips to her earthly hosts. Marilyn Michau, the owner of the home, was reportedly dropping her daughter off for a consultation with a local medium, when the medium approached her and told her that she had a message from the nun. Michau, who had noticed strange and haunting anomalies around her house was not surprised that the nun was trying to communicate with her. According to Michau:

She [the nun speaking through the medium] described the house exactly and asked me to renovate and restore it to its former glory particularly by making the upstairs windows into doors again.”

Michau followed the nun’s advice, though here at WeirdThings, we would be hesitant to accept any fashion advice from a nun. The pregnant nun was said to have offed herself when her illicit affair with a local man was discovered. We’d like to think she would have considered the immaculate conception defense first, but without her sacrifice Michau’s house wouldn’t look nearly as nifty.

-For the full scoop click here.

The new horror flick ‘The Haunting in Connecticut’ claims to be based on the true story of a family that rented a house in Connecticut in 1986, not knowing it was haunted, and became the unwitting victims of demons.
Benjamin Radford over at livescience.com has turned his skeptical eye on this claim. Take a look.

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

I’ve heard of workers striking for better wages and better hours, but never workers striking for a demon free workplace. Indian and Sri Lankan factory workers in Jordan have done just that. Claiming that the Jordanian industrial factories they work in are haunted by evil spirits, they have taken to the streets refusing to work until the factories are exorcised.