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It seems Danielle Niblett of Pasadena, Maryland has captured what appears to be a spirit on her photo taken after a tragic accident which happened. Unfortunately accidents do happen quite frequently from people not paying attention, text messaging or on their cell phones yapping about something.
The details of the accident are still unknown and how it happened, but something compelled Danielle to photograph this scene. She was amazed at what the picture showed. Perhaps it is a dirt spot on the camera, or it could be something supernatural.
“I took this photo while passing a crash site on my way home from college. I didn’t notice the ghostly image until a friend of mine told me that they could see the wrecked SUV behind the firefighters.
I zoomed into the right side of the photo for a closer look and I was a little freaked at what I saw. I showed it to my family and my grandmother then mentioned that I should share it with those that would appreciate it most.
What we see in the picture is what we believe to be a spirit leaving the accident scene. If that is the case, I think your viewers would appreciate seeing it too.”
“It looks like a spirit exiting the accident scene to us too or possibly a guardian angel on the scene. We also see what appears to be a protective glow surrounding what seems to be a spirit body within and lastly, the spirit seems to be trailing away as if moving up and away from the location,” Eaton said in response to the photo.
This happened in Pasadena, Maryland an area which has a population of around 25,000 people. The image captured in the photograph could be the spirit of the accident victim ascending to heaven in the afterlife. What do you all think?
In the afterlife, sometimes a spirit is gravely disturbed. It seems there are many different types of situations where they will return to haunt a particular area.
After a grave desecration, a specter will return to this world. Acting out different emotions, these versions of ghosts will appear visually to people and unlike other spirits – the person is still there influencing them. Sometimes they will act out their grudges to such an extreme. The specter will dissipate only after the possession is clearly over. Usually if a haunting continues, there is a reason for it.
If there was a certain object with some hidden meaning or otherwise, it will act as a link to this world for the specter to return for and haunt a person or place. They are also known as possessive type ghosts, they will even take over some else’s body in some situations to do their bidding. With a supernatural power they are able to possess people with intense feelings specifically feelings of betrayal, anger and/or revenge.
The host of this intense spirit is left with memory loss and a feeling of sickness and dizziness. Usually only short-term memory loss is prevalent. People can only vaguely recall any much detail in what really happened. When these spirits possess someone, it will share knowledge and influence.
What seems to fuel these spirits is when a person has plenty of rage and if they have little then they won’t exist for long. Unlike other ghosts, a specter doesn’t take physical form, and is forced to possess others.
One extraordinary story was about a young couple who was vacationing. They were high atop a scenic overlook. After a great day of scenic sights, they wanted to get a picture of themselves at this spot to remember the moment.
They suddenly noticed a woman walking by; they decided to ask her for help to take a picture. She had a determined look on her face and slowly turned to face them with a rather eerie smile upon her face. She continued to walk by them.
Only then did she continue on where the trail of this overlook ended. It was then they were shocked to see her jump off the cliff onto the water and rocks below.
What freaked them out the most was not seeing any body lying on the rocks. It seems this lady was a secret specter spirit trapped between both the land of the living and the dead. Perhaps her rage lingered from being murdered or from a suicidal regret. This specter kept her secrets to herself.
Ghost Hunting: The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia, rumored to be haunted, is the site of Saturday night ghost hunting tours.
Everyone has a ghost story, or at least that’s how it has always seemed to me. My mother’s best friend used to tell a doozy about a soldier she met when she was a bookkeeper in the Air Force. He claimed to be a ghost, then proved it by walking into the middle of a moonlit airfield and disappearing before her eyes. Another friend of my mother’s used to bring over a Ouija board when she baby-sat for me. As that plastic pointer whizzed around the board (with seemingly little help from her fingers), she spoke of the messages that the spirit world sent to her on a regular basis.
The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, W.Va., was built between 1858 and 1881 to serve as a mental hospital.
A group visiting the recovery room of the lobotomy ward.
The ghost hunter, Greg Graham, known as Copperhead, leading a tour.
Blame my mother’s friends, blame the hundreds of people who have since answered my favorite question, “Do you believe in ghosts?” with tales of lost loved ones appearing at the foot of their bed or disembodied voices heard in some shadowy hallway. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve been desperately searching for my own ghost story to tell.
That is how I ended up listening for suspicious sounds in the middle of the night at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, W.Va. The building is rumored to be a hotbed of paranormal activity, and it is easy to understand why. Constructed between 1858 and 1881 to accommodate 250 patients, it housed nearly 10 times that number by the 1950s. They were a discontented bunch, and not just because they were in a mental hospital — many had been severely mistreated by other violent residents and a few were eventually murdered by them.
The place closed in 1994 (a more modern facility was built in the state), but Weston Mental Hospital, as it was known, has been reborn. Inspired in part by the demand created by popular shows like “Ghost Hunters” and films like “Paranormal Activity,” the asylum has for the last six years offered public tours with increasing frequency. A sample includes “October Ghost Hunt” (six and a half hours for $100), “Medical/Forensics/Geriatrics Ghost Hunt” (six and a half hours for $100) and even the fast and budget-friendly “Flashlight Tours” (30 minutes for $10).
There were so many options that I called the phone number listed on the asylum’s Web site, trans-alleghenylunaticasylum.com, and asked Rebecca, the rough-voiced woman who picked up, which tour would give me my best chance of encountering a spirit. “The 9-to-5 tour,” she said. “That’s when the best stuff happens around here.”
For $100, overnight visitors break into groups and are assigned a guide to tour the four floors and multiple wards of the asylum, attempting to make contact with the spirit world along the way. As if that wasn’t promising enough, in the wee hours of the morning, visitors are allowed to wander free, staying up until dawn, in search of ghosts.
Enthralled, I asked Rebecca if there was anything more I could do to up my chances, before spitting out an idea, “What if I brought someone with me, and we camped out in the most haunted part of the building?”
“I’d know just where to put you,” she said, giving me an offer that she said was exclusive. “The ward where patients recovered from lobotomies. It’s off limits to everyone else. No electricity. No running water. I’m going to make you sign a waiver, cuz if one of you breaks a leg running from a ghost, I ain’t going to be responsible. Got it?”
I pretended to think things over, though the truth was Rebecca had me at lobotomies.
A week later, the gothic asylum loomed before me as I rolled up the long drive toward the front doors. Beside me, my boyfriend, Thomas, made the sign of the cross for easily the fifth time since we’d left Manhattan early that morning. When I first told him about the trip, he made it clear I’d have to find some other sucker to come along. Like everybody else, Thomas already had his ghost story — something to do with a door inexplicably slamming in his father’s basement. But after I ticked down a roster of friends, all of whom flat-out refused, Thomas reluctantly agreed to come along. To keep us safe, he brought a pendant blessed by Mother Teresa.
We arrived hours early, and the place was mostly deserted. Waiting for us on a rocker outside the entrance was Miss Sue, a nurse who actually worked at the place from 1966 to 1990. As if to prove it, she wore an old nurse’s uniform. Instead of taking us to the lobotomy recovery room, she deposited us in a former office that was freshly painted and had electricity. No self-respecting ghost would be found there, I thought.
When evening finally came, we met our guides, who gathered in a paranormal-free area on the first floor of the asylum that could very well have been a waiting room in any hospital. They showed us their vast array of tools, including electromagnetic frequency meters, motion sensors and something called a spirit box, which mostly seemed to record a lot of static and occasional voices from a nearby radio station. As if that wasn’t enough, some of my fellow ghost hunters had apps on their iPhones, like Ghost Radar Classic, that were sensitive to spectral vibrations. And someone carried along a Raggedy Ann doll that was supposed to light up when it sensed paranormal activity.
Our little group would be led around that night by Copperhead, a man with shock-straight hair that looked as if it belonged on Gwyneth Paltrow and tattoos up his arms. The tools that he first chose in our hunt were relatively old-fashioned: flashlights. He led Thomas and me, as well as another couple, down a dark hallway, where he lined four of them on the floor, about 10 feet apart and facing the ceiling, all turned off. When it came to communicating with the beyond, I expected some sort of special language, but Copperhead began speaking in a tone one might use to coax out a recalcitrant teenager who locked himself in the bedroom. “Eddie, I know you’re upset with me,” he said, “but I’m hoping you’ll come on out.”
This one-sided conversation carried on for some time, until, at long last, Eddie, a former patient who had a penchant for playing poker, made the flashlight closest to us blink on and off. For one glorious moment, I felt that I was living my very own ghost story. But as Copperhead and Eddie kept shooting the breeze, the skeptic in me surfaced. I found myself wondering if perhaps that flashlight was placed on a specific floorboard with some sort of control hidden beneath it, or if maybe he had a miniature remote.
When Eddie grew tired of chitchat and the flashlight stayed dark, Copperhead relocated our group to a dingy room with mountains of cigarettes on the floor. This, I learned, was something of a tradition: visitors bring smokes to the ghosts in hopes that it might lure them out. When no ghost reached forth from the beyond to communicate with us, or at least to toke on a Marlboro Light, he even pulled out the big guns: “We’ve got a girl with us, Fred, and I know how you like the ladies.”
Amy, the sole woman in our group, later told me that she hadn’t felt vulnerable, sitting on the floor in the dark with four men, being used as ghost bait. Not that she’d been in much danger. She was a brunette, and that ghost is said to prefer blondes.
By 2 a.m., I was getting sleepy, and my hopes of coming face to face with a spirit were fading. It was time for Copperhead to take us to the lobotomy recovery room. He led us along a warren of hallways, through a locked rusted cage door and down a flight of stairs. When we stepped into the room, I shined my flashlight to reveal platter-size slivers of paint peeling from the ceiling and shattered glass on the floor. Even though the only ghost I sensed in that room was the Ghost of Asbestos Past, I heeded Thomas’s objections to the place, and we settled on a hallway that led to dozens of isolation chambers instead.
As soon as we set up our cots, a strange noise — like something heavy being dragged across a floor — started coming from a distant part of the asylum. Thomas sat up and asked if I had heard it. At first, I told him that it was coming from that ghost-free waiting area, which was not far away. But then we heard the sound again, this time unmistakably coming from the space near that rusted cage door that led to the lobotomy area. When we heard the sound a third time, louder than before, Thomas bolted.
He returned with Copperhead. The three of us walked quietly with our flashlights through a series of rooms, some with old hospital equipment still in them and bars on the windows, until we entered a room that had what looked to be roofing material on the floor. Copperhead stepped on it with his boot, and we heard that distinctive dragging sound. We were in the off-limits part of the asylum, where no one else was supposed to be, so that meant the noise we had heard had to be otherworldly. I couldn’t help but feel as if we were in a “Scooby-Doo” episode, and at any moment we would figure out who had been trying to scare us away.
But Thomas had no interest in speculating. He soon gathered his things and headed out to the rental car, refusing to come back inside. Eventually I got in the car too. As we pulled out of the driveway, I looked back at the dim lights of the asylum and thought of all the people I knew who had a ghost story to tell. If only I could make myself believe it, I would finally have one too.
John Searles is the author of the new novel “Help for the Haunted.”
A version of this article appears in print on October 13, 2013, on page TR10 of the New York edition with the headline: Getting Into the Spirit.
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The concept of spirit children is a belief held by many ancient cultures. The belief is based on the idea that a spirit child selects his parents before or at the time of conception. Along with this idea it is only reasonable to assume the parents would also have to agree to this arrangement.
This falls in line completely with the concept of free will, which we all possess. Nothing is done in our life or pre-existence without our consent. Free will has a play in every aspect of life, one simply cannot have free will in choosing whether to have a hamburger or fish sandwich and not have free will in choosing every aspect of our life. Free Will is a law of Nature and thus cannot be changed.
The Aborigines of the Australian out back were and still are firm believers of the spirit child theory. They accept it unequivocally, even going so far as to accept the child if the known father is someone else than the mother's mate. In aborigine custom, the father has to dream of the child before it can be his. The dream actually has more to do with parental lineage than sperm.
Many times a male aborigine will dream of his child many years before conception. Many times the dream occurs during periods of hunting or isolation from their families. In a representative dream, a small dark-skinned spirit-child, two to three inches high, reveals its name and expresses a desire for birth. If the man has several wives, he chooses the most appropriate mother and describes her whereabouts to the spirit-child. Often times the spirit child will tell the father of another soul desiring to be his spirit child and that such child will arrive in so many years.
Even after the aborigines learned of the concept of conception, they still held to the belief that it wasn't necessary for the birth of a child. This idea could even have a bearing on the idea of an immaculate conception held by many religions.
The aborigine way of life is mainly a spiritual way of life, everything is centered around the dream time. They believe we "dream up" every thing before it actually can happen in the physical world. Thus the dreams of the individual are very important as they are an indication of things to come.
After they began to adopt the white man's ways, the birth rates began to drop in many of the tribes. A missionary's advice, "Increase sexual contact with your wives," fell upon deaf ears. The Worora knew that conception depends upon a spirit-child's will to be born. The physical sex act was "more or less insignificant," even though the men had been educated about male sperm.
To me this only strengthens the belief there has to be a spiritual bond between mother, father and child to create a bond that will last through eternity. As is the case in every aspect of life, if there is no spiritual connections, there is no connection.
I have traversed the globe in search of truth, my truth, during which time I have had an opportunity to study with Aborigine elders, native American Indians, and some of the world's finest intuitive. All of this has lead me to better understand our world and all things therein contained. I have created a blog to share some of my adventures and knowledge as I see it.
A reader named Irene sent me the following story and asked a question that I think is pertinent to people (regardless of age) who have seen ghosts. Spirit visitations similar to this one occur quite frequently at the time of death.
Irene's older brother Harold had cirrhosis of the liver and was admitted to the hospital five days before Irene's birthday. Harold called Irene complaining about the hospital food and wanted her to bring him some rice and beans.
Later that evening, Irene visited her brother. He somehow managed to surprise her with a piece of cake and a candle. His kind birthday gesture touched her heart but she still had to explain about why she could not bring him the rice and beans he had asked for. When speaking to his nurse, Irene was warned not to bring him anything because his liver wasn't filtering and any food could be toxic to him. The brother and sister spent hours that night giggling and talking about Thanksgiving dinner, which was just a few days away.
On November 27, Irene had a dream in which Harold came to her room dressed in his hospital gown and said, "I just came to say goodbye, Sis." He kissed her hand and left.
When she awoke at six o'clock the next morning her room was freezing cold and smelled like a hospital. Everything felt weird and off key but Irene got up, took a shower, and carried out her normal work routine. That afternoon she called the hospital to see how her brother was doing.
"You need to come in immediately," the nurse said.
When Irene arrived at the hospital, she was told that her brother was dead.
"How come no one called me?" she asked.
"We called at about 6:15 this morning," said the nurse. The phone must have ringed while Irene was in the shower. She didn't have an answering machine.
"What time did he die?' she asked.
"He went into a coma at about 5:45 this morning and his heart stopped. We tried to resuscitate him but we couldn't bring him back."
Irene was puzzled as to why and how her brother's spirit was able to come to her house before the angels took him to heaven. Did they allow pit stops?
To answer Irene' question, I must first of all note that this is a Christian family. Modern-day Christianity's interpretation of the Bible causes people to believe some things that do not align with what we now know regarding the afterlife. In an age when life support and life-prolonging measures are available, people are known to have died and then be brought back to the body. We call these events near-death experiences (NDE). Since there is no literal place known as heaven or hell (other than what we create in our minds), some souls do not know what to do once they leave their body. It seems that our beliefs are taken with us into the afterlife. Those who expect to see Jesus or to reunite with loved ones on the other side tend to have those occurrences during an NDE.
Upon death of the body, some souls seem to depart and are never heard from again. Some seek familiarity and choose to hang around their loved ones. In my counseling I've heard many people tell me they have felt, heard, or seen their loved ones ghosts near the time of death, during the funeral, and for several days or weeks afterward. It has become more common for people to hear from the deceased loved one than not to hear. Once the soul acclimates to being bodiless, it may move on to other realms. However, some stay around indefinitely. We call them earth-bound ghosts or disembodied spirits. This doesn't seem to be the case with Irene's brother. He knew he was leaving and seemed ready to venture on to new activities in the afterlife.
I liken this post-life condition to the adjustment period that a newborn baby goes through as it gradually becomes aware of its new surroundings. There may be some lingering in the spirit realm when a soul is entering a new body; and vice-versa as the soul leaves the dying body. The departing soul may hover while the body remains in a comatose state. Those who recover from comas or near-death experiences many times report having traveled to other parts of the hospital (or beyond) or into spiritual dimensions as if in exploration.
Another woman shared a story with me in which her beloved uncle's spirit came to her while his body was in coma. She had agreed to play and sing at his funeral so he dropped by to give her a list of the songs that he wanted featured. After the funeral her aunt told her that the songs she played as the prelude were her uncle's favorites.
Hospice workers have noted a common occurrence while tending to the terminally ill. Patients report seeing or talking to deceased relatives, hearing angels, seeing a great light, or visiting other realms. Hospice terms this the "beginning of transition" and use this as a marker in estimating how near the end may be for the patient.
Having a loved one's spirit visit a family member just before, at the time of, or just after death is a very common occurrence and truly a blessing to those who are open to this phenomena such as in this case where Harold loving said goodbye to his dear sister. Irene found it comforting to know that her brother cared enough to come by and tell her goodbye. The fact that he didn't return again later may indicate that he felt Irene was able to handle her brother's departure, or that he visits in her dream state and she doesn't consciously remember it. Or, he may be giving Irene signs that she's not recognizing. Most don't rattle dishes in the cabinet or move things around. They leave subtle signs as reminders of their love and presence.
Spirits communicate with us through all senses and they give us signs such as leaving an object in your path about which you might say, "Oh, my aunt loved [name the item]." Or you may smell something that no one else around you smells but you recognize as your grandfather's cologne. The fact that you are being reminded of him is a good indication that he is popping in to check on you. You may want to read Denise Linn's book, the Secret Language of Signs to learn more about the signs God, angels, and loved ones use to communicate with us.
It's good to know we can communicate our love from either side of this earth plane-human to spirit or spirit to human. If you've had an experience such as this one, I would love to hear about it.
