It's been awhile since my last post. In all honesty, my "sabbatical" was on purpose and with good reason. As anyone involved in the field knows, paranormal drama manifests itself more often than any actual entities and I needed a breather. But I've taken my deep breath and am jumping back in cannonball style and hoping to not be eaten by sharks. And while my K2 will continue to stay on the shelf a little longer, I thought I'd bless the world with my poor and pointless ramblings once again. In personal news, since I have left the following changes have been made: my email address is now haleyhaunted@yahoo.com and my blog subscribers has increased by 1.
However, some things have changed in the internet and paranormal world around me so I did some research on the events since I left...
*Of course the news that has everyone abuzz: Grant Wilson has left Ghost Hunters, a blow to fans everywhere.
Watch his last show this week on SyFy
*Amy Bruni is pregnant. A blow to male ghost hunter fans everywhere.
*Facebook has a new layout and it sucks.
*I'm still getting added to facebook groups I have no interest in despite my many pleas to stop. Seriously, cut the shit.
*"Breading" has become all the internet rage. This of course is when people put their cat's head through a loaf of bread.
*We still haven't found Bigfoot.
*The Booth Brothers are still wearing whacky hats.
*I still don't know how to make pictures smaller
*Still no chupacabra.
*Scott Gruenwald continues to make us laugh with his paranormal parodies.
*And sadly, an investigator in North Carolina was killed while investigating a "ghost train" on the anniversary of a tragic crash. Please exercise safe investigating!
Now that I'm all caught up and back in the loop, stay tuned for more bad reviews and sarcastic sightings!
This was just brought to my attention via facebook. I would love to hear what people think of this video either via comment or through my email: Haleyhaunted@yahoo.com
The theory that is presented through the caller (former Area 51 worker) is one that I have heard before (in fact, on this radio show I believe), but I just don't know how to take it.
Some of the video footage looks very fake and the message seems to be a little over the top, but then again... I just don't know. Reminds me of "Incident at Exeter" (not far from my house BTW).
I just made myself an adult beverage by combining:
and
and after taking a drink and not tasting any alocohol, I added more. And more. After still not tasting anything I thought, "Wow. This is dangerous".
Then I got to the bottom. Apparently my boy Jerry doesn't automatically mix as well as his Naval superior Captain Morgan. I was holding my drink and shuffled in my socks down to my bedroom and grabbed the doorknob. Immediately following the static shock, I kid you not, the drink burst into flames.
I apologize now for any future facebook statuses, myspace rants, and twatty tweets. It's going to be an ineresting night.
This is my actual horoscope via Twitter for today...
(I wish I was making this up)...
"Sexy Venus is flirting with Uranus in your sign today, tempting you to say yes before you even know where you're going.
You may be seeing green lights, but keep in mind that things could change instantaneously if you don't stay aware of everything that's happening around you. Avoid any unpleasant surprises by focusing on the present moment throughout the entire day, instead of always thinking about what's next."
Listen Twitter...
A. Exit only.
B. Maybe YOU should focus less on my sex life and more on the fact that "ParanormalBlacktivity" is actually a trending topic at the moment.
Three Chimneys Inn Event in Durham NH April 22nd and 23rd Come investigate this historical (and very active) inn!
Come and learn the history and haunts of this 1649 Inn and see why it is considered one of New Hampshire’s most haunted hotels!!
Event will include a lecture and introduction to the world of paranormal investigation brought to you by Jeff and Lisa of Northern Paranormal Research Society and Chris ("Haunted New Hampshire") and "Haley Haunted" (that's me!) of Chronicles of the Haunted...
...as well as exclusive access to the hotel for an overnight investigation!!
Event tickets are $50 for the lecture and investigation and dinner tickets CAN be purchased separately if you are not planning to stay at the Inn.
However.
The rooms look like this...
My room has an actual knight in it and many of the rooms have jacuzzis.
This weekend my parents gutted the attic and in doing that, I was reintroduced to boxes and boxes and boxes of my childhood. The GIANT bin of books didn't surprise me, I've always been a huge nerd. However, I guess I never realized how long I really have been into the paranormal.
I give you... the first paranormal investigation team ever formed by Haley Haunted:
The G.H.G.P., or Ghost Hunters/Ghost Patrol (yes we even had an acronym) was started in 1993 and had seven active members. The picture above is the cover of our logbook which contains member information, logged activity, investigation notes, investigative methodologies (surprisingly scientific), and legitimate research on theorized historical spirits, demonic names and characteristics and our town history of deaths and tragedies. I was incredibly thorough. And I was seven years old.
The majority of the rest of the bin was filled with books about hauntings, UFO's, ESP, myths and legends, and OBE's. All between 1991-1994 (ages six to nine).
First of all... who lets their first grader pick up a book like that, but more importantly what little kid would want to study the possibilities of psychic phenomenon?
I guess I was just born to study the paranormal. No turning back now, I'm screwed.
One of my favorite YouTube videos of the moment is "Eat Like Snake", a supposed Burger King Commercial from Japan. My boyfriend introduced me to the odd and surprisingly racist spoof and a few hours after seeing it, while looking for my next movie to review, the title "SnakeEater" immediately caught my eye. As soon as I read the info on it, I was sold. I don't know that it's considered a horror movie, but it is absolutely necessary that I review it. Watch this trailer and you'll understand:
The movie SnakeEater made its assumably sell-out debut in 1989. I'm not even going to bother with actor names, but will say that the "supporting" actors were reused as different characters often throughout the movie so do watch for that. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to recycle these actors as they are TERRIBLE. While watching the opening scene, I actually reconsidered my movie choice, not knowing if I would make it through. Thank God I waited it out. Not only did this movie feature cheesy catchphrases, feathered hair, and a Harley Sportster made into a jetski, it had more masturbation references than I knew what to do with.
The plot of the movie goes something like this: "Soldier" is an ex-marine that was part of a special ops group called the "SnakeEaters". However, Soldier was too much of a rebel to stick to government protocol and spent the opening scene as an undercover cop on a drug bust.
You'll want to pay attention to this scene as it will feature the only bra in the entire movie.
The drug bust turns into kind of a weird sex scene. Maybe I'm being overly romantic, but being in an abandoned, grimy warehouse with a man about to sell me some crack is not exactly on my list of sexual fantasies. I will give them credit for this gem of a line though:
"What do you think I'm going to hide a wire in my underwear?" "Honey it looks like you got the whole radio in there."
I think this may have been an illusion though as his underwear looked to be the same make and model as hers.
Ooh la la.
Thankfully they didn't show any down and dirty details, but the sneak peaks they did show made me want to take a shower.
But it's a good thing Soldier rigged the entire area with booby traps both Data and Macaulay Culkin would be envious of because low and behold... the sex was a trap (it always is fellas) and two very handsome characters bust in to steal the drug money!!!
Blah blah...
Ok so cut to a girl in a bikini sunning herself on the front of a boat. In the dark. On a boat that can only be described as a motorhome that floats. And it's floating down a river that just may be the same location filmed on "Swamp Loggers". Exactly where you'd take your family on vacation to right? Ugh.
Suddenly, the boat is overtaken by a wild gang of my ex-boyfriends
who steal the girl and take her back to their shack where they lock her in a shed to be reproduced with later. This really upsets the bandits' sister who is used to being the only hen in their henhouse. The boat scene is also the first (but far from the last) appearance of an unnecessary hard hat.
Now, I'm not sure if this is an extremely overlooked mistake in the movie, but sitting right behind the hillbilly shack is an enormous colonial style house. It's fairly obvious in multiple scenes. I would think that having neighbors would prohibit a kidnapping and later multiple homocides. I found other mistakes throughout the movie too, like someone drinking from a ketchup bottle that was very obviously filled with water, and various sound effects for no actions. I think maybe the editors of the movie saw the errors, thought back to the quality of the movie and just said, "ah, screw it".
Anyway, it turns out that the girl that is kidnapped is Soldier's sister. When he gets word of his family's attack, he sets out to find out who is responsible. Somehwere around this part in the movie is where you meet my favorite character, "King", the local marina owner.
King is my favorite because he is always drinking from a brown paper bag and used the word "fart" twice in one scene. He also comes crashing through the boat house on his harley and flies directly into the river.
Ol' Boy King is who we have to thank for the Harley Jetski...
When King presents this horrible defacing of a great Harley to Soldier, he warns that "You'll thank me later". The foreshadowing of this line kept me in suspense until the bitter end. Actually, I think the director forgot to follow through on this line as the only benefit I saw was that 70 miles of river goes by awfully fast when you're on a Harley jetski.
Now it wouldn't be the 80's without a slow motion shot of a woman running through the water in a white shirt, and this movie did not disappoint. I'm just glad that despite running from a band of hillbillies, participating in hand-to-hand combat, being hung from a sleeping bag cocoon, and bathing in a river, she managed to keep her slip-on flats firmly on her feet.
I absolutely LOVED the last scene where Soldier returns to his job as an undercover cop. In fact, I really enjoyed the whole movie. Despite my heckling, I would own this movie. And if there were a SnakeEater shirt like the one Soldier wears available, I would absolutely rock it with pride.
I gave this movie a 23 for the amount of teeth I think the entire cast put together has and for using the phrase "diddling his fiddle".
Unfortunately, there were only two references to a snake which throroughly disappointed me. And for that I give you... "Eat Like Snake"...
So before I dropped off the face of the Earth (in the blogging world anyway), I had read about the movie "Inception" in some sort of nerdzine. For anyone that knows me or follows my facebook or twitter, you may know about my RIDICULOUS dreams. So when I heard about the premise for this movie, I instantly marked it's release on my calendar. And now, five months after it hit theaters, I have finally seen Inception. So here we go...
So to start off, Leonardo... yum. But don't roll your eyes fellas, as the cast was also joined by Marion Cotillard (a popular choice in many horror movies and an absolute babe) and the one and only Juno. The rest of the cast was also highly recognizable, but I don't feel like naming them.
The movie was good.
...Initially, that was going to be my entire review. That it was good.
It's just that it's so damn long. And not only is it long, but there's like 93 different lines and layers of plot going on at the same time, which really gave me the time to have an internal argument of whether I loved or hated the movie. An argument that may remain unresolved. I have decided to agree to disagree with myself.
Due to the complexity of the movie itself, I have decided to express my feelings toward it by comparing it to this diagram of radio waves that I drew. And by "I drew", I mean that I stole from google images:
In looking at this diagram, I feel that the top wave (the black "signal" line) represents my attention span throughout the movie. In the moments when the line is the highest, I was on the edge of my seat and ready to declare this in my top ten. When the line declined, I downloaded three different novels to my nook and purchased a new domain name.
The red line (the "AM" line) represents my ability/inability to understand what the hell was going on. But let's be honest, this line doesn't vary much from my understanding line of "Lady and the Tramp".
And the third line, represents the volume that I had to keep the movie at to understand the dialogue while avoiding blowing my eardrums out.
I was a little disappointed that no images from my own dreams were present, although I can't really say I'm surprised. I don't think zombies that can only be killed by dish detergent is a common theme in the dream world.
I did recognize one theme though, that is probably very popular in the dreams of many of my fellow bloggers. The guys anyway.
Layer three of inception...
looked remarkably similar to a certain video game my boyfriend has become obsessed with as of late.
Just sayin.
I give this movie a three. For the amount of confusing layers, the amount of times I debated the fast forward button, and the amount of times I'll have to see the movie before I understand it.
For anyone that enjoyed this movie or is interested in Dream themed topics, check out the book "Dream Science" by Thomas Palmer. It's one of my favorite books, is hard to find, and will make your brain explode.
So the movie stars Jodie Foster, an astromer researching intelligent life on other planets. Using satellite dishes, she searches for radio signals in space. Everyone thinks she's out of her melon, until she finally gets a signal back.
Alright, that's not at all the signal she gets, hers was more of a THUMP THUMP THUMP, but if you can translate that binary code, you deserve what it says.
I was very excited to see that the co-star of the movie was Matthew Mcconaughey and that he was rocking a borderline mullet. I was not excited about the love story, unnecessarily intertwined throughout the plot. Come on, I'm a chick and even I was annoyed with it. Why do movies do that? And not only that, but the star of the movie is Jodie Foster. Witnessing Jodie Foster being intimate with another person really made me consider celibacy.
In her defense however, I learned through this movie that she does in fact possess the ability to look female.
After a brief screen appearance from Hitler, chaos ensues and the fanatics set up camp around the satellites. Enter creepy, albino, religious fanatic from Utah (because where else would he be from?):
Turns out, for being such a man of God, the guy's a real dick.
And now the task of dicphering the mathematical message that they receive from outer space. Luckily for them, Mr. Hadden saves the day. Despite Mr. Hadden's generosity in "Ellie"'s work, if I were her I would definitely look into a restraining order and possible stalking charges. Just sayin.
And another thing I didn't understand is if he's so smart, you would think he would know that the "Six Flags Guy" look is not flattering.
(I had planned to do a side by side of the two so you could see how much he really does look like him, but apparently the guy that decodes the message and saves the whole story isn't important enough to have a screen shot of him on google images. Guess you'll just have to watch the movie).
It all came together though, when I realized that the space travel machine that E.T. instructed them to make looked a lot like a carnival ride.
More flags, more fun!!
(I drew that picture myself)
At some point during the movie I wrote the Aurora blog and so I missed about ten minutes of plot, but let's be honest, I wouldn't have understood it anyway.
And then it happened. After a few scenes of science fiction genius... just as I was about to mark Contact in my top ten... it happened. An epic display of terrible plot twist. I will say that the movie did somewhat redeem itself as it went on, but I never did fully recover from my disappointment.
I have to say that even though I disapproved of the ending, I really liked this movie a lot. I like any movie that combines science and religion and defends alternative sciences. There is a great scene where Ellie is defending her research to a panel of snobby investors who call her work crazy and useless. She comes back at them that almost every major discovery in history was at one time thought a crazy idea. Although I am no expert in the field of paranormal studies, I have found myself defending the field many times to professors, scientists, even religious people, and pointing out to them that at one time everyone swore the Earth was flat.
Another thing I liked about the movie was their discussions of faith. Specifically, faith without proof. A quote that I liked was "Did you love your father? Prove it."
There were some undertones of cheese, but it was bearable. Ooh, but bad green screen alert for sure. It also took me the entire movie to realize that one of the main characters is blind. And the ending left me wondering..
Who's Carl?
I would have to give this movie three and a half stars. Three and a half stars connected by a wormhole of death and disfigurement.
According to my local news, tonight was one of those rare nights when the "Northern Lights" would be visible from my backyard.
Northern Lights (or auroras) are natural light displays in the sky which can be seen (in different shades, degrees, and intensities) all over the world and even on other planets.
For fellow nerds out there, click here to read more about the causes and different effects of Northern Lights.
This is a time lapse video of Northern Lights in Canada in 2006.
Unfortunately for me, it was very cloudy in NH tonight, so this is what I saw:
And so I have given up and am now watching "Contact" and preparing for nightmares. Of Jodi Foster's career. I mean. Of aliens.
What better time to watch the movie 2012 than during a tornado warning in New England? I know, 2012 came out a year ago now. I'm a little behind on the times. On the upside, that means that I'm probably not spoiling it for anyone.
I think the first few minutes of a movie tell a lot about what's to come, so I made a few observations about my initial impressions. Here are my notes from the scenes previous to the title page:
1. Time moves REALLY fast in this movie. It's only been ten minutes, and I've already aged three years.
2. With the amount of insane special effects and CGI I know will be in the movie, I would've thought they'd do better with the font of the subtitles. I know I'm no spring chicken, but the movie's barely started and I already have a migraine from squinting so hard.
3. According to Dr. So and so and Dr. So and so, something very sciencey is going down and it's kind of a big deal. It's also very hot. Something about the center of the Earth turning into a giant easy bake oven. Wait. Maybe it was a microwave. [After watching the movie, I would like to confirm that it was in fact a microwave because it ended up turning the Earth into a giant hot pocket - bursting into flames in some places, still frozen in others].
4. Kindle's come in WAY bigger sizes than I ever imagined. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any video clip or screen shot of what I'm talkinga about so I guess you'll have to watch the movie again.
5. I think my next post should be on research on the paranormal phenomena that is John Cusack. It has come to my attention that he doesn't age.
(Twenty years. TWENTY YEARS!)
Even though I am probably the last person to have seen this movie, I still refuse to give away any portions of the plot just in case anyone is even further behind in the times than I am.
What I will point out is that there were a lot of product endorsements. Every scene seemed to be a commercial for something, at times it was beyond ridiculous.
Case in point, the last line of the entire movie.... "No more pull-ups."
Really?
The only product endorsement I was excited to see was the adult beverage chosen by Charlie, the crazy conspiracy theorist living in a van in yellowstone park. I didn't put together this montage so it has some extra stuff in it, but does show Charlie in all his whacky, science fiction loving, good beer drinking glory.
There were many parts of this movie that made me laugh. I think most were put there intentionally but I'm not sure that they all were. One part in particular happens at the very peak of all anxiety. I was at the edge of my seat, the fate of the world was within seconds of being destroyed... and then the reaction of one man sent me from anxiey to hysterics. All I will say is, when you start getting to that point, keep your eyes on the guy with the glasses, squishing his head.
I liked the nods to certain Biblical stories. The first scene that hints at that made me smile. It reminded me of a certain song by the Staggers. Unicorn. Download it.
Overall, I loved this movie. I wasn't fully prepared for the amount of times I had to reach for a tissue, but in hindsight, I should've seen it coming with most of the world dying. I really wish that I could've seen it in theaters, especially in 3D if that was an option. I normally hate CGI and tend to scrutinize the hell out of it, ruining the movie for myself and everyone around me. But that wasn't the case with 2012. I actually didn't even notice the parts that were done with special effects (which was most of the movie), and didn't find myself questioning it once.
So if you haven't seen 2012, do it up. It's free on On Demand right now anyway, so the only thing you have to lose is the time. All in all, I give this movie two PBR salutes and a two tissue rating.
I went to a wedding this weekend in Newport Rhode Island and on our way back, my boyfriend and I took a shortcut through Taunton, MA. Being from NH and surprisingly unknowledgeable about paranormal places in my general area, I had never heard of the Taunton State Hospital and was especially surprised to hear it was still in operation. Of course, I made him bring me to it.
Taunton State Hospital opened in 1854 and was the second state hospital (after Worcester) in Massachusetts. It was originally called the State Lunatic Hospital at Taunton. The building, like most Asylums of its era, is architecturally breathtaking.
While browsing the Kirkbridge site (creators of other well known asylums like Danvers State), I found a little blurb posted by a reader about a patient at Taunton State named Jane Toppan.
"Jane Toppan of Bourne was arrested in 1901 for more than a dozen murders committed while she was working as private nurse and in several hospitals. Rather than caring for her patients, she poisoned them with overdoses of opiates. Tried in Barnstable, she was declared insane and sent to Taunton State Hospital until her death in 1938. She eventually claimed to have murdered more than 31 people as a type of euthanasia for people whose life was not worth living in her mind. Dubbed "Jolly Jane" by her patients before her crimes were known, her name on her birth certificate from 1857 was Honora Kelley. She changed her name in 1864 after she was taken in by the Toppan family. By all accounts, she suffered an unhappy childhood and mental illness afflicted her family. While at Taunton State, she was thought to have set fires to the main building more than once, and she often refused to eat the food, ironically claiming that it was poisoned."
Longer and more detailed articles on Cape Cod's first serial killer can be found here and here.
In 1975 the hospital, like all of its kind during that decade, was abandoned. In 1999, the large highly recognizable dome that towered over the administration building collapsed. And then on March 19, 2006 the building (including the adminstration and theater) caught fire.
Although I'm sure the fire probably started from curious teenagers or homeless residents, I like to think it was Jane Toppan, causing mischief even after death.
Most of the sites I have found state that demolition of the property has (or will, in some of the older publications) take place, however it didn't look to me that anything had been removed. Although a few of the buildings did still appear to be boarded up, the property was surprisingly active and populated. I found a few contradictions about what the buildings are now used for but the consensus seems to be that the site is still a mental hospital, with 10 wards and 2 child/adolescent wards. I couldn't seem to find any information about when the hospital re-opened after it was abandoned. The sites that confirmed it was still in use spoke nothing of it ever being abandoned and the sites that talked about it being abandoned showed no signs of it being used today. When we were on the grounds I had no idea of its use, just that it definitely was being used for something. To my knowledge, institutions were shut down in the 70's and (beyond temporary stays at a mental ward in a regular hospital or mental help facilities) nothing of their kind have existed since. I'm blaming TSH now for me still being awake and googling mental health history five hours from now.
As we left the property through the winding road surrounded by cornfields, we saw an old man in overalls walking slowly down the side of the road toward the urban streets outside the gates. Making jokes about escaped patients and murderous hitchhikers, we slowed down to eye the walker. Not taking our accusations seriously, we were a little surprised when just as we approached, the man turned to face us and offered his empty water bottle to our closed windows while muttering to himself. From the rearview mirror, I watched as he continued to shake the empty bottle at us and my mind wandered to all sorts of unlikely scenarios...
Finding pictures of Taunton State Hospital was surprisingly difficult, no matter what name I searched under. The few that I did find gave me a hard time about posting them via html, but I thought I would post some links if you are interested in seing more.
Flickr accounts can be foundhere and here. Also once under flickr, if you do a general search for the building you will find more.
For Jeremy Harris's album from Taunton State, click here
And for another site with awesome photography of Taunton State Hospital, as well as other abandoned buildings in New England, click here
I didn't exactly get advanced permission for the use of the pictures I did find, but have tried to give proper credit and link and promote each of their sites as much as possible. If any of these are yours and you're pissed, let me know and I'll take them down. If anyone has more pictures to share, also let me know.
Haley@QueenCityGhosts.com
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Due to my recent unemployment and chronic insomnia, I've been getting sucked into hours and hours of internet and youtube loops of research. I'm sure everyone's been there. You start off with a random curiosity on a subject, you do some reading, you find a video, that video brings up a link to an equally intriguing subject, and then next thing you know the sun is on its way back up. And here I am. Tonight started with watching a few old Paranormal STU clips, then split into researching Andy Coppock and the Wolfe Manor at the same time, which led to full spectrum cameras, then back to the Wolfe Manor, then Waverly Hills, The Trans-Alleghany (however the hell you spell it) and ended with documentaries on asylums.
I never get tired of old footage and stories about old state hospitals. It's not even so much the paranormal side of it, I just find it unbelievable that people were really forced to live in places like that and endure some of the treatments that existed. I'm a psychology major and entering the field of helping adults with developmental disorders so a lot of this really hits close to home. Anyway, I know it's a pretty common interest among all us ghosties, so I thought I'd share a good documentary I found while in my black hole. It's nothing breathtaking, and there's not a whole lot of connections to the paranormal (besides a few tidbits from a researcher in the area), but it is very interesting, shows a lot of old pictures and facts, and is very well put together. It's in 3 parts, but they're not overwhelmingly long.
I found a tiny ad for this new fan made by Dyson in Better Homes and Garden tonight and was so intrigued I had to google it. Does anyone else find this insane?!
It made me even more excited when I found this video:
I know I'm fairly new to the world of Geek, but it just seems like this fan may open doors in other areas of technology. Obviously, at "200 pounds" per fan (what the hell does that even convert to anyway?), I don't think the Dyson Multiplier will be making an appearance in my house anytime soon. But damn.
When do we get those flying cars we all pictured in our future when we were little?
Don't watch this video. Seriously. Don't press play. It's not hilariously funny at all. You won't love it. And whatever you do, don't watch Paranormal STU at http://www.paranormaltvnetwork.com/channelSTU.html Fridays at 11:30 pm (EST).
and 
