Troy Taylor shares his journey from writing the first of 118 books in 1993 to his successful Haunted America Tours and the upcoming 20th Anniversary Haunted America Conference on June 24th – 25th 2016!
Pssst… Want to leave voice feedback? Use the SpeakPipe Link!
Paranormal Researcher, Richard Estep, gives us a peek into his book, In Search of the Paranormal: The Hammer House Murder, Ghosts of the Clink, and Other Disturbing Investigations. We also talk about the paranormal field in general, theories, favorite gadgets, and an interesting behind the scenes look at his Boulder County Paranormal Research Society (BCPRS).
Pssst… Are you looking for the SpeakPipe Link?
Get to this episode in iTunes!
Direct Download Link
In an upcoming episode of Syfy’s 10th season of Ghost Hunters, T.A.P.S. visits a city I love and know well — St. Charles, Missouri. I’ve been waiting patiently for this special episode, and I’ll give you a heads up on the locations and stories you’re likely to see. Also, check out “Ghosts of St. Charles“, a great book by Michael Henry!
Psst… Are you looking for the SpeakPipe link?
Get to this episode in iTunes!
Direct Download Link
Do you like ghost tours? Are you a fan of the kind of paranormal history that… goes bump? Diane and Denise from The History Goes Bump podcast take us behind the scenes of their ghost tours for the theatre of the mind.
Psst… Are you looking for the SpeakPipe link?
Get to this episode in iTunes!
Direct Download Link
In Part 2 of 2, Edwin F. Becker shares his story of the very real haunting experiences that he and his family experienced in 1970. The story, which involves the very first televised exorcism by NBC, and was featured on an episode of Paranormal Witness, is told in his bestselling book, True Haunting.
Get this episode on iTunes!
Direct Download Link
CLICK HERE for the 1971 televised NBC coverage of the famous exorcism on YouTube.
Check out my review of Edwin’s book, True Haunting.
For More on Edwin F. Becker, visit:
Miss Part 1? Click HERE!
Thanks, Edwin!
The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!
I was very honored that Debbie Black and Thomas Spychalski invited me to be their very first on-air guest for Episode Two of the brand new podcast, The Kiwi Psychic and the Midwest Ghost! I was very nervous, but excited. (Sometime I’ll have to tell you a funny behind-the-scenes story that happened while recording.) Both Debbie and Thomas have been great supporters and followers of this blog, and I thank them for giving me the opportunity. The YouTube video of the episode is below. The episode can also be downloaded HERE.
If you’d like to listen and follow along, the links to many of the topics and stories that I discussed in the episode can be found below.
My post on How To Record EVP
Final Report from the Friedens United Church of Christ investigation. The “It’s all over me” EVP is covered in the video at the top of the page, or you can scroll down through the report and find more details and further discussion just below the first picture of the fellowship hall.
My initial post on the “Can You Help Me” EVP and the Investigation Report from that undisclosed location. Also, here is the original, unenhanced audio and the enhanced audio.
A look back on my visits from the “Rapper” (with transcripts and audio examples) – My Rapper: Missing you, old friend…
Some spirit box examples: Belvoir Winery: Audio Highlights of Spirit Box and Flashlight Communication, and 200th Post and Fort Chaffee Prison Spirit Box Session.
For several posts about the Ouija Board, visit the Ouija Category Archives.
For a free download of Audacity, visit audacity.sourceforge.net.
All of the Belvoir Winery Posts:
Audio Highlights of Spirit Box and Flashlight Communication
The Brilliant Britt Griffith!
Ghosts can do that? The Evidence… Sort of… (Discussion of the mysterious disappearance of the video.)
Amy, Adam, Britt, and Chip!
New Friends!
The Photos
I’m Baaaaaaaaaack!
TAPS and Chip Coffey at Belvoir Winery in March!
For my cemetery photography, you can find most of the cemetery albums on my Flickr page, or visit the Cemetery Category Archives.
Adopting Graves 2013: My Thoughts and a Look Back on a New Tradition
Here’s Thomas’s very popular Amityville Ghost Boy Post
Facebook for Kiwi Psychic and the Midwest Ghost
YouTube Page
Twitter: @Kiwi_Psychic
Thomas Spychalski’s Blog – News From the Spirit World
Debbie Black’s Blog – Spirits and the Paranormal (debbiedakiwi.com)
Yesterday I watched Session 9 (from my list of movies I plan on checking out this fall), a movie filmed on location at the Danvers State Hospital/Insane Asylum in Danvers, Massachusetts. I’m not sure where I was when this film was released in 2001, but I was a different kind of nerd then, and this film just wasn’t on my radar, I guess. I enjoyed it, though I have to tell you it put me in a funk for a few hours. It belongs in the psychological horror genre, but less emphasis should be placed on the horror and more on the PSYCHOLOGICAL! The plot of the film, according to the movie’s IMDb page: “Tensions rise within an asbestos cleaning crew as they work in an abandoned mental hospital with a horrific past that seems to be coming back.” But the cool thing is that the parts of the story that pertain to the hospital itself are loosely based on real history and events.
For most of the movie, like a true paranerd, I couldn’t stop obsessing about the building, wondering what they added, what they didn’t, etc. I also couldn’t get my mind off of the fact that the place doesn’t exist anymore (more on that later.) If you’re brave, continue reading the somewhat bi-polar thoughts that came out of my fingers after the movie and after researching Danvers State Hospital all day.
Construction on the site began in 1874 and opened to patients in 1878. Like most asylums and hospitals of this type and age, it has a complicated, sad, unbelievable, and depending on the decade, even a criminal history. Most of the infamous and inhumane treatments and methods were practiced here at one time or another, including shock therapy and lobotomies.
By the 1960s, a combination of controversy and budget cuts caused Danvers to begin shutting down sections of the hospital. For the most part, by 1985 the whole campus was closed and abandoned.
In the DVD’s special features, Brad Anderson (writer/director) and Stephen Gevedon (writer) explain that they had Danvers in mind before they even started writing the script. They also mentioned that they racked their brains trying to figure out exactly how they were going to tell the story in this building, meaning why in the world would anyone be in an abandoned asylum? This is a great example of life just before, or at least in the infancy of what I’ve always referred to as the great paranormal craze. How quickly we paranerds forget what life was like before Jay and Grant and the T.A.P.S. team. It is difficult for me to comprehend this, but Ghosthunters didn’t premier on SyFy until 2004. Clearly, if this script were being written today, asbestos would still be an issue, but they would have used a paranormal investigation team, armed with plenty of night vision and oxygen masks, to tell the story.
**RANT WARNING**
Now I know, I know… I’ve mentioned this before, but every paranormal investigator in the world likes to claim that Ghosthunters on SyFy had no influence on what they do in the field. I’m here to tell you that 99% of them are lying. It is accurate to say that paranormal investigation was not invented by Jay and Grant. It is accurate to say that a few of you may have been in the field before 2004 (like 2 of you, perhaps). However, it is also correct to say that approximately eleventy-thousand new paranormal teams and paranormal television shows have popped up since Jay and Grant popped on the scene. Whether or not the craze is truly a great thing is a topic for debate. I’ve got to be honest, though. I owe them a lot for really changing my life and my interests, and I’m giving them props where props are due. **RANT OVER**
Now cut to December of 2005, four years after Session 9 was released. Despite a brave fight by local groups and community members trying to preserve the enormous acreage of the Danvers hospital campus and its unique history, demolition began. In its place is now an Avalon apartment community. Can you believe it?!
I can’t help but think that perhaps if they would have been able to hold off for just another year or two, enough interest would have grown to somehow save this strange, embarrassing, yet fascinating and physically beautiful landmark. Now days all it takes is a visit from SyFy or the Travel Channel to put a place back on the map, turning it into a paranormal tourist spot. Many similar locations have been saved, at least for now, by funds that are raised by leading tours or by paranormal groups paying to investigate. See Waverly Hills Sanatorium as an example. I have mixed feelings on all of this, however, and I know it hits some ethical nerves of some of my readers. In my opinion, the great paranormal craze has its side effects, one of them being tons of paranormal groups trampling through historical buildings, tearing things up, and riling up spirits. These groups will leave their trash, their “trigger objects”, and their energy behind. (I have to include myself in “these groups”, by the way. I told you this was somewhat bi-polar.) And then 30 years later, will we be investigating an old asylum or a historic former paranormal training facility? What about the investigators who will have died during that time period? Those paranerds LOVE these places and the memories they made there. Are they now hanging out there for eternity too? Ha! I know I’m being silly, but it all just gets weird for me. But… at least this way a historic location has a fighting chance, right?
Hollowed out facade of the central part of the main Danvers building.
So let’s get back to the demo and that mean old Avalon company and the apartment community, which I believe was completed in 2007. Interestingly, of the massive hospital campus, which consisted of an enormous main building (shaped like a bat) and several outer buildings (click HERE for an aerial photo), the facade of a small central portion of the main building was saved (see photo to the right). Though this portion was hollowed out, leaving only the front face of the building, I have to say, what they attached to it looks pretty cool to me. There are several other buildings and typical apartment units now on site, but apparently some of them are in the ominous “new” asylum building. Check the Avalon site HERE for cool interior photos. (On a related note, check out the former Michigan Insane Asylum, which is now residential condos, office, and retail space.) Part of me thinks it is completely annoying and greedy for a company to come in and do this and then fake us out with a phony tiny portion of a Danvers building. But that’s silly, right? Why should a place stay abandoned, damp, and dark, with endless walls of peeling 1960s hospital green paint? Another part of me thinks it’s a really cool way to preserve at least a portion of Danvers, in a way that only a big company with big money can do. Another part of me thinks ARE THESE RESIDENTS CRAZY?! WHO WOULD MOVE IN THERE?!
………………………..and then the last remaining part of me wants to move in there.
The new Avalon community building attached to the facade.
Clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’d REALLY love to hear from residents of this new Avalon community. What are the chances of this post finding someone who lives in the new faux Danvers building? Contact me!
My resources for this rambling post:
Session 9 DVD Special Features & Commentary
http://www.danversstateinsaneasylum.com/home.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danvers_State_Hospital
http://www.avaloncommunities.com/massachusetts/danvers-apartments/avalon-danvers/pictures/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261983/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_9
Rosemary’s Baby (1968 (Big Séance)
The Milton Schoolhouse, Alton, IL (Big Séance)
Papa Jack’s Pizza: Final Investigation Report (Big Séance)
There’s Just Something Romantic About a Staircase (Big Séance)
Since the first part of July of this year, a lot of my blogs and reading have had to do with either the House of Darkness House of Light trilogy by Andrea Perron or The Conjuring movie. Even though the movie is based on the investigation case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, Andrea, the eldest real life Perron daughter, tells the story of the very real events in her books. Though I have not seen or read the actual case files, after reading Andrea’s first two volumes, I’m fairly confident in saying the movie is VERY loosely based on the events from that farmhouse outside of Harrisville, Rhode Island during the 1970s. I didn’t have knowledge of just how loosely it was based when I wrote the review of the movie. At the time, I was very excited about researching the back story and seeing an advanced screening of the film. I’d read that Lorraine Warren was pleased with the final product (she also makes a very brief appearance that many people, including myself, missed). Also, in a YouTube video Andrea reviews the film and states “I expected something entirely different. I expected Hollywood to do what Hollywood does, and yet in some ways this is a very quiet and studious film. You would never know that from the trailers, but that’s their job… to entice an audience. It’s also about the love of a family. It’s also about people who came to help, who felt that this was the most significant and compelling, and dark and disturbing story that they had ever heard in the course of a fifty year career.” She also mentioned that the film “truly captured what we endured.”
I really did love The Conjuring and I think it’s truly a new classic, but after reading volume one and two, they don’t seem to be connected. You know how it is when you get sucked into reading a novel AFTER you watched the movie it inspired? Do you allow yourself to visualize the setting and the actors in the situations you saw in the film? I usually try to shake the temptation, because as soon as I allow myself to watch the movie in my head while reading, something ends up being slightly or majorly different. Once that happens I’m hopelessly confused till the very last page. Well… let’s just say I didn’t have this problem with House of Darkness House of Light.
At around 500 pages each, volume one and two aren’t for light and quick reading. Volume one had my intense attention for most of the book. I really enjoyed how detailed Andrea was. I don’t think there’s any chance of her leaving out any of the details. After a blogger and Big Séance reader commented on my review of volume one, mentioning how the book jumps back and forth in time, making it very confusing, I had to agree. Though it didn’t bother me as much in the first book, I frequently got lost in the timeline of the story in volume two. Not only that, but you have to try to keep track of the five siblings, the order of their ages, and how old they are at that particular moment. Was this chapter before or after a particular event I just read about? Had the Warrens been there yet? In my opinion, even though I think Andrea is a fantastic writer, and I very much enjoyed the books, the back and forth in time thing is the biggest flaw in these two volumes. With that being said, perhaps an explanation for this style has to do with these events lasting a whole decade. It may have been impossible to get points and information across in a simple chronological style. The reader might also want to be aware that Andrea writes in a very flowery and poetic style, which might not be something everyone resonates with.
By the time I got midway through volume two, it had my serious attention, just as volume one had. It was the moment the Warren’s arrived on the scene (their involvement is only hinted at in volume one). They made several appearances in the book, but the infamous séance chapter, which I can only assume was the direct inspiration for the exorcism portion of the film, was so very powerful. Dramatic and intense, after being carried away with real life and reading short chunks at a time for a week or two, it brought my focus back to the book. This was the height of the supposed “oppression” (making its way to “possession”) of Carolyn Perron (the mother). Before the séance was over, Roger Perron (the father), who incidentally is painted horribly in the books, ended it all and threw all non-family members out of the house.
Speaking of being painted horribly, what I didn’t know and was surprised to find out, was that the Warrens aren’t portrayed at all to be the saviors that they are in the movie. In fact, the family seems to end their relationship with the Warrens on bad terms. For the most part, they’re blamed for making everything worse. Prior to their first visit, Carolyn took quite a few notes on her early haunting experiences at the house. She did lots of research on the history of the farmhouse and the residents that appear to be haunting them. Apparently the Warrens either lost these documents or just never returned them. Possibly the biggest strike against them was the fact that they apparently broke their confidentiality agreement with the Perrons, discussing details of the fascinating haunted Harrisville farmhouse in the talks they gave around the country. For a while the Perron family’s privacy was continually violated by curious travelers dropping by to catch some kind of paranormal activity first hand. Ironically, the popularity of the movie caused the same thing to happen for the current residents. I sincerely hope that problem is old news by now.
In the remainder of volume two there are some very heartfelt moments, some incredible stories involving the sisters, and a big life-changing realization by Carolyn. The paranormal activity (which isn’t always negative) apparently got milder as the family learned to give respect and practice “live and let ‘live'”. In the end, Roger and Carolyn split up, though it’s unclear to me whether this happened before or after they move out of the farmhouse for Georgia, leaving a decade of haunting experiences behind. I’m only guessing this will be cleared up in the last volume.
Volume three has not been released yet, but I imagine you’ll hear from me at some point after it arrives and after my bookmark has the chance to make its way through the pages.
Children who have spirit friends
House of Darkness House of Light, Volume One, by Andrea Perron
Flies and Hauntings: “You can’t really kill what’s already dead.”
Andrea Perron’s House of Darkness House of Light Trilogy
The Conjuring, a film that has now grossed over 125 million dollars, has been ranked by Box Office Mojo as #6 for top grossing horror films of all time. Last month I had the opportunity to see an advanced screening of the film and was researching the story to write my review. In my research, I quickly became fascinated with learning about the very real family behind the true story. This led me to Volume One of Andrea Perron’s trilogy, House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story.
The author, who is the eldest Perron daughter, writes in a beautiful style that leaves no detail behind. After all, volume one alone is 504 pages. As I’ve mentioned before, she puts you in that house with the characters. Roger and Carolyn Perron, along with their five daughters, moved to the infamous farmhouse (built in 1736) in Harrisville, Rhode Island in 1971. They remained there for nearly ten years. For decades, the world knew very little about the incredible events that happened in that farmhouse. What little we knew was probably due to the fact that the famous Ed and Lorraine Warren, pioneers in the field of paranormal investigation, came to the aid of the family and documented their experiences. This was all before the famous Amityville case that involved the Warrens as well.
Forty years later, the family’s story is finally told.
The book begins with the Perron family in their former suburban home, before they even knew the farmhouse existed. But fate seems to take over and leads them there, like it or not. They experienced paranormal activity in the farmhouse from day one, and even though it is hard for the reader to believe, the family’s acceptance of their reality – the fact that they share their home with others – is a slow and gradual process.
As a reader, I felt I had the opportunity to get to know each of the seven members of the Perron family. Mrs. Perron (Carolyn) seems to have experienced the worst of the activity, having been directly attacked by a jealous ghost named Bathsheba, the nastiest and most complicated spirit (with quite a history) in the farmhouse. Mr. Perron (Roger), a hard worker who spent much of the time traveling to provide for his family, for the majority of the book is in complete denial about the activity in the house. This causes a lot of friction in the family, and it frustrated me to no end. One of my favorite moments involved an incredibly brave and blunt Nancy, the second daughter, who finally had enough and told her father what was what. Everyone else knew and accepted it. It was time for him to wake up. That seemed to be the beginning of his awakening, and also the moment that I tried to silently cheer in the middle of the night while the rest of the world was asleep. Roger Perron’s family was indeed learning to survive in an incredibly haunted house.
Another character that I felt like I got to know and related to was Cindy, the 4th daughter in line. Growing up in the house, she experienced hundreds of visits from the spirit of a little girl. She was always crying for her mother. As she grew older, the little girl didn’t. Cindy cared for her, giving her space whenever she came around, and even letting her play with her toys.
We occasionally get bounced around in time when it is necessary, and the Warrens never make an official appearance, but I have no doubt that by the third volume (not yet released) we’ll know it all.
Author, Andrea Perron
It is important to note that Andrea Perron began writing the trilogy in 2007 and this volume was released in 2011, well before the movie. It also must be noted that the movie is based on the case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren and not Andrea’s books.
Visit the author’s website at houseofdarknesshouseoflight.com
Also, learn more about the book on Facebook.
Flies and Hauntings: “You can’t really kill what’s already dead.” (Big Séance)
The Conjuring Movie Review (Big Séance)
You’ve heard me blab about it for weeks. My paranormal investigation team, Missouri Spirit Seekers (MOSS), investigated an abandoned farmhouse in Silex, Missouri. It was built in 1901 and has been abandoned officially since 1983. There was a death recorded on the property in 1947.
I’ve worked really hard on this one and I think we learned a lot. Now the investigation report, complete with audio, video, and evidence, is posted on our site.
Feel free to question or comment.
Now… moving onto my Fort Chaffee Prison evidence! 🙂
Peace!
