Sometimes things happen which there doesn’t seem to be any explanation for. You may not say anything about it, because you don’t want to look foolish. Then something comes up and you mention it and you find out quite a few other people have had the same experience. When I was running the About Facts website many years ago, I decided to mention a strange thing that happened to me. It’s old hat by now, but I am repeating it for those who haven’t heard it. I was asleep in my bedroom with the lights out and the blinds closed. There was no light of any kind in the room and it was completely dark. I woke up and when I did I noticed the darkest shadow I have ever seen in my life. It was as black as black ink and so dark it could easily be seen in a dark room. As I watched it slowly traveled across my back wall and into my closet. At the time I thought if I mentioned it people would think I was crazy, so I didn’t say anything to anyone outside my family for years. One day I decided to mention this fact in an article I wrote and to my surprise many people got back to me telling me they had the same experience. Then I found out there was even a name for this, the shadows were called shadow people. I have never seen one since, but this did leave a lasting memory with me.

When it comes to the paranormal there are probably more hoaxes, mistaken sightings and lies than in any other subject. There is a very long history of people pretending to be able to contact the dead, so they could suck the money out of people’s wallets. Houdini spent many years debunking these people when trying to make contact with his deceased mother. Because the paranormal is so riddled with fraud and deception it is hard to take the word of just one witness to an event. I was the only witness to the shadow in my room, therefore I cannot blame others who don’t believe it. I think it is important to only examine multiple witness cases and then try to eliminate any hanky-panky. Stories of ghosts have been around forever and human beings are a superstitious race. We may not be as superstitious as our ancient ancestors, but underneath there still lurks a desire to find out what happens after death. If this wasn’t true none of those paranormal television programs would exist.

Before I talk about these types of cases I want to let you know I do not consider UFO sightings  as part of the paranormal, even though many others do. There are places where many different people have reported seeing apparitions and sometimes these reports go back hundreds of years. There is a castle in the United States named Bellport Castle. It was built in 1894 by Oliver Belmont who the Belmont stakes were named after. Belmont must’ve been incredibly rich, because the castle cost him what would be in today’s money about $100 million to build. Once he built the huge castle he toured the world looking for artifacts to put inside the castle. To bad eBay wasn’t around, it would’ve made his life a lot easier. There is a theory that is told by paranormal investigators which states objects can be haunted not only places or even people. It has been said there is a haunted suit of 15th-century armor in the castle and every March people have heard it letting out a blood curdling scream. Supposedly March is the month when its owner had a spear penetrate his visor going to his eye.

In the 1970s an English family was being tortured by a poltergeist. They were fine until one night in August a radio with the volume all the way up turned on inside the house waking the entire family. The program was in a foreign language. After that things started to happen which they had no control over. As they watched, a lampshade was repeatedly knocked to the floor and yet they could see no one doing it. During Christmas season one of the Christmas ornaments was thrown at the husband hitting him in the head. A week later the family could hear footsteps throughout the house and a man dressed in old-fashioned clothing threatened their son and disappeared. The family had friends over one night and as they all sat in the living room they heard a pounding on the front door, the door flew open and all the lights in the house came on. There was nobody at the door. In desperation the family had the house blessed, but it did no good. Crashing noises could be heard throughout the house, but nothing had fallen. A figure of an old woman started to follow the wife when she went up the stairs and when the wife turned around the woman would fade into nothingness. Finally the family had to move and then all the activity stopped.

Poltergeist cases are probably one of the scariest types of paranormal activities. The reason for this is obvious, the poltergeist can hurt you. The word comes from the German around 1840. Polter means to make noise, knock and rattled while Geist means ghost. It seems to me the definition should be amended to reflect the fact a poltergeist can hurt you according to many of the reports I have read. There are those who believe there may be something even worse than a poltergeist haunting and it is a demon possession. Many an exorcism has been performed on people who seemed to have turned incredibly evil and gained some powers ordinary human beings don’t have, such as levitation and being able to travel on walls and ceilings and even spin their heads around. When you say these things it sounds incredibly laughable, but the Catholic Church has exorcists on hand for when these things happen. Those that have seen them are scarred for life.

A woman in Indiana had some strange things happen to her three children and reported it to the police. When the police Captain heard her story he was very skeptical to say the least. She told him there were dark entities hanging around her children and the three children ages seven, nine and twelve were having strange things happen to them. Their eyes were bulging out, they had evil smiles and their voices had become extremely deep. The mother reported in the middle of winter a swarm of flies had gathered outside a window. After that she began to hear strange sounds and saw shadowy figures which left wet footprints on her floor. Once she went into the oldest child’s room and found her levitating over her bed. The mother called in more family and friends and they prayed for the girl and at that point she descended back into her bed and had no memory of the levitation. A headboard then smacked her in the head causing her to get stitches. Her seven-year-old boy was thrown against the wall from the bathroom into the living room. The nine-year-old boy had a nurse and she reported seeing him walking up a wall backwards to the ceiling. A Catholic priest was called in to perform an exorcism, but he was wounded in the middle of the rites and required stitches. Three Jesuits then came to the house to perform an exorcism and as they conducted it words started to appear on the boy’s body which stated “hell” and “evil”. These words appeared as wounds. It took 30 exorcisms before the demon was driven out of the home. The Indianapolis Star ran this family’s story.

Are there shadow people, spirits, poltergeist and demons? What do you think?