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disclaimer 1: the thin veil investigators know what the hell they are doing; monty wolf has not a clue what the hell he is doing. therefore, do not endeavor to reenact, recreate or otherwise attempt to come face-to-whatever with any spirit, unless of course you know what the hell you’re doing!
disclaimer 2: since we all agree that i do not know what the hell i am doing, i may unintentionally pass along inaccurate or misinformation. i’m learning fast, but there is so much that you don’t know, when everything you know is wrong. nod to the firesign theatre - phil, pete, dave and phil; there will be more, dear friends. see?
disclaimer 3: being a storyteller, i occasionally am prone to minor-exaggerations. but, i am not hotdogging you on any of the things of which i have written in this telling.
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i’m a member of an online dating community, of which i am not honorary mayor.
like most of us, i assume (so, you know what that makes me) that i have “felt” something or somebody at one time or another with me in an empty room and just shaken it off, or got a sudden chill and turned up the heat, or watched one of the myriad ghost hunting tv shows, which brought up some kind of personal reaction: “hell, i’d do that!”; “are you out of your mind?”; “that is so bullshit!”; “this scares the hell out of me!”
i did think that if i ever had the chance to go on a ghost hunt i would do it, but never thought of it as something that might really capture more than just a small corner of my substantial imagination.
well, it’s like i’ve always known/said: things happen for a reason!
sandie has been reinforcing that by showing me how people meet other people who have met other people so those people have the opportunity to meet other people.
so, it came as no surprise, but with much excitement, that i would go on my first ghost hunt.
i previously have had a few paranormal experiences. about one of which i have already blogged, something that happened at jim britton’s pad way back in the 70s that was rather interesting and i did a thing with the amazing kreskin one morning while i was getting ready for work when he was on the regis and kathy lee show. this was back in the 80s when i lived in freeport, maine and we were getting the show live: regis picked a card at random and hid it from view in his pocket; kreskin picked an audient and asked the audient to call out the first card that came to mind; i thought, “i wonder how many people go for the obvious ‘ace of spades?’”; kreskin said, “stop! you were thinking of the ace of spades! clear your mind and give me the name of the first card that comes to mind.”; i thought, “queen of clubs”; the audient said, “queen of clubs”; regis had the queen of clubs!
i also had in interesting experience with, what i can only describe as, an invisible ball of energy in a room that is allegedly one of the most haunted rooms in one of the most haunted buildings in the silver state: the goldfield hotel. on that trip, i stayed in the haunted mizpah hotel in tonopah without anything to report, except it is a crime that this property is now just sitting there, abandoned and beginning a sad decline into a ruin!
i even attended a few minutes of a ghost hunting conference in virginia city, where i interviewed several ghost hunters for a series of ghost stories for koh, which would become some of my favorite material at a station where i was encouraged to use my storytelling creativity.
but, i’ve never been presented with something that has made me say: “holy mudhead, mackerel!”
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stewart indian school was one of the boarding schools the feds whipped up as another means of carving a new life out of the american indian.
actor, and semi-reoccurring character ‘one-who-waits’ from my all-time-favorite tv show – northern exposure, floyd red crow westerman was quite vocal about how he was taken away from his family and the life he knew to get a new name, new language and a new set of torturous memories.
listen to this short npr story (including red crow’s comments and a bite from a song in which he displayed a voice quite similar to gordon lightfoot) about the affects of indian boarding school on some students:
as with any institution of power and authority, and the general consensus being that all injuns is savages, there was a lot of abuse, rape, torture and even death in a mandated effort to make them better americans.
i’ve heard stories of fingers being removed as a form of punishment for not using english, healthy children boarded with terminally ill children and really sick kids not being fed or medicated since, well... they’re going to die anyway... as sadistic means of adjusting the natural attrition rate.
built of native stone in colonial style, the compound offers a foreboding appearance without one knowing anything about the school’s infamous history. some of the older admin buildings are being used by the state prison system and some by the department of public safety; i find both quite ironic. but, about half of the buildings are boarded-up.
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july 1, 2010
we arrived at the stewart indian school scant moments before sunset.
throwing me into the deep end of the spiritual pool, sandie took me directly to the athletic field, where in the days before the field was leveled, several kids who were either intentional or unintentional victims of murder at the hands of administrators and/or teachers were buried in random, unmarked graves.
on the drive to the school, i regretted taking sandie’s advice to wear long pants and bring a coat. when we got out of the car, the wind picked up and the temperature plummeted and i was happy to be wearing the additional clothing.
sandie quickly announced that the spirits were active.
really?
ok. well, i’m not tuned into this stuff, so i’ll go with it; i’m here for experience.
walking into the field, my attention was drawn to a cluster of sagebrush for no real reason. right after that, sandie started talking to a little girl she said was hiding in the bushes where i had been attracted.
hmmm!?!?
she talked with the little girl for a while, learning that she thinks she is 5-years-old and she was scared to come out and talk or walk with us. but, she did tell us that there were a couple of boys there that wanted to follow.
i made a couple of awkward attempts at speaking with them, but really wasn’t expecting a result and we both took pictures in the general direction of the little girl’s hiding place, but sandie said she held little hope of getting anything since the little girl’s energy was not strong enough to render an image.
my picture of "the burial ground"
from there we walked passed a group of shops where sandie was laughing at a spirit she calls “the junkyard man”, whom she said was yelling at us to get away.
i didn’t hear him nor did i feel any sort of attraction toward (or distraction against) him or the shop. since she was laughing at him, i believe him to not be an evil spirit, just a crotchety old curmudgeon (i’m consulting with the department of the redundancy department on that previous statement).
the junkyard man's domain
from there we walked over to one of the boys dorm areas; a quad, where we took a few pictures and hung out with an owl (great horned?) for a while.
"hoo dat?"
our next stop that night would be the old infirmary.
a year ago when they were out here, sandie and other members of the thin veil investigators were observing the area and a tree limb fell quite near them.
sandie says there is a spirit she encounters at the infirmary that is a kind of nurse ratched and joseph mengele mixed together with a perverse bit of pol pot. it hurts me to think about what might have taken place in this small building; i’ll leave it to your imagination; mine is just too vivid.
nurse ratched was there, according to sandie. but, so were several children who were just curious about us. i would learn more about some of them in a couple of nights.
the rear of the infirmary
sandie, again, invited the young’uns to join us in our adventure, but none of them followed as far as i know.
our next and final stop of the night was across from the old admin building, which is now a small museum, where sandie and her friends from the thin veil say there are several “shadow people”.
sandie set up a video camera and we stepped back a few yards to talk while the tape rolled for a special project. eventually, we gave up due to the wind and cold and split. as we left the grounds, the wind abated and i presume the temperature increased as well.
admin building
it would not be the last visit i would make it to the school this week.
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on the next day, sandie started sending me pictures from the previous night, several of which had orbs in them. she would also return photos that i took that would also exhibit orbs.
this is the same image as seen a couple of frames above. it has been lightened and the orbs have been circled.
look closely at the previous picture without adjustments and you will see the orbs.
there seems to be a lot of controversy over orbs between those who are believers in spirits and those who say they are nothing more than just dust particles.
well, i will tell you that the sprinklers were running all over the place and the wind was blowing like crazy. so, i personally find it hard to believe that the images in the pictures are dust particles.
in one picture in particular, there are several orbs that appear to be hovering at various positions while one is definitely in movement. i remind you that the wind was blowing. let’s assume for a minute that the orbs are no more than just particles of dust. then why are all of the particles in all of the pictures from that night seemingly static except that one?
the moving (bottom left)
the moving orb
the picture that i took in the athletic field, which i have been calling “the burial ground”, shows nothing unusual: no orbs; no unexplained anomalies. the picture that sandie took has something in it that she says is the little girl’s flickering image as she tries to make herself visible to us.
the little girl hiding in the bushes
admittedly, the image is rather abstract and inconclusive. but, sandie did tell me that the little girl probably didn’t have enough energy to give any visual indication she was there. so, with that in mind (and i’m trying to keep an open one), i can allow myself to believe that if there are spirits here in this world, that anomalous image could be the flickering spirit of a little girl caught in mid-pulse.
the same picture i took of the admin building seen above with highlights
so, now my curiosity is piqued!
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a couple of days later, i visited sandie at her store, where she gave me an apache tear that she blessed to protect me while i’m on the hunt and keep ghosts from following me home and a pair of dowsing rods with which i will be able to communicate with the spirits.
my old friend and prospecting partner, charlie, had a few sets of rods tuned for precious metals. i one time had him hide a silver dime while we were out on the infamous 40-mile desert while i did something else. when i returned, i was able to find the dime in fewer than 5-minutes.
so, equipped with my talisman, rods and just enough knowledge to be dangerous, i was quite excited for my next ghost hunting adventure, this time with a squad of experienced ghost hunters and psychics.
all these dance partners and i don’t even know how to ghost dance!
