Mystery Martini
Ingredients:
1 Part Absolut Wild Tea
½ Part Lime Juice
¼ Part Simple Syrup
4 Whole Blackberries
Directions:
Muddle blackberries in a shaker. Add Absolut Wild tea, simple syrup and lime juice. Fill with ice cubes. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a blackberry and let the spirits flow.
Both the guest blog post below and the delicious Mystery Martini above are by my new friend, Lisa Lloyd. She has a fascinating story and a very interesting blog. You should check it out! Thanks, Lisa!
Mysteries over Martinis: Spellbinding Spirits Served with a Twist
My name is Lisa Lloyd. I write a blog called Mysteries over Martinis in which I combine my passion for storytelling with my allure for unexplained phenomena and serve it up with a mystery-themed cocktail. It’s a recipe for intrigue!
I was born and raised in Iowa City, IA. My fascination with mysteries began at an early age. My favorite past times were telling stories, playing Clue, searching corn fields for crop circles and helping Scooby Doo and the gang solve mysteries. The introduction of the television show Unsolved Mysteries opened my eyes to a variety of unusual phenomena. The bizarre cases intrigued me and fueled my curiosity to make sense of it all. I often tried to seek out books, programs and anyone who could offer insight into possible explanations.
The passing of several family members peaked my interest in life after death. This prompted me to experiment with the Ouija board as a young adult. One particular occasion seemed to indicate that I was communicating with several of my deceased family members. My mother is the youngest of 14 kids so my extended family is enormous but also very close. My mother, aunt, two cousins and I took a girls trip to Lake Okoboji where my cousin had a cabin. After a day on the lake, we returned to the cabin for a few cocktails. My cousin brought out her Ouija board and we thought it would be something fun to do. We went into it thinking it would be entertaining and probably not much more.
We began with a prayer to protect ourselves from any negative entities. My cousin and I had our hands on the planchette and asked if a spirit wished to communicate. At first the planchette moved slowly and didn’t make much sense but then it began to move more fluidly. A spirit claiming to be our grandmother began communicating with us. She had died in 1968, long before my cousins and I were born. She said she was, “proud of her babies” which would have been directed at my mom and aunt. She went on to give us her birth date and date of death. This was interesting because my cousin and I didn’t have that information other than perhaps the years in which those events occurred. She then told us our aunt wanted to step forward. After our grandmother said goodbye, the energy of the planchette changed which surprised us. It became sharper and the spelling wasn’t as good as it had been with our grandmother. Our aunt was sarcastic much like she was in life. To try and validate that we were speaking with spirit, my mother asked her where their aunt’s quilt was located. My mom knew the answer but the rest of us did not. The board revealed that it was in a special box under her bed. My mom confirmed this to be true. She then revealed that my cousin, who was pregnant at the time and living in Wisconsin, would move back to Iowa because her husband would have a “water opportunity.” She then said her baby would be a boy and the next baby would be born in Iowa. All of this came to fruition. She even chimed in saying, “Lisa knows more than most, strong ties to the paranormal.” It seems this was some foreshadowing of where my path would take me. We ended up speaking with 4 departed loved ones during that session, each one demonstrating a different kind of movement with the planchette. The information was incredible and the experience left me with more questions than answers.
In 2006, a sudden illness landed me in the intensive care unit. My fight for life resulted in what I can only explain as a near-death experience. At the time, my condition baffled the medical staff. My organs had begun to shut down and I was in excruciating pain. I was struggling to breathe because my lungs were filling with fluid. Suddenly, everything went dark. I thought the doctor’s had sedated me but I discovered later, this was not the case. The darkness quickly transitioned into a beautiful golden light. Being engulfed by the radiance was the most euphoric moment of my life. Within a matter of seconds, I was physically pulled away. I was back in the hospital bed enduring horrific pain and watching the medical team frantically work on my body. Soon after I was stabilized, everyone left the room. I was lying in bed and as I scanned the room, I noticed a familiar shadow being cast on the wall. It was the profile of my aunt who had passed away years before. This was the same aunt who said I had strong ties to the paranormal. When I did a double take, the shadow was gone. I felt this was her way of letting me know she was watching over me. This event thrust me into a world of strange phenomena and made me a magnet for those who are a part of it. I never advertised my beliefs in the paranormal but I also never denied them. I think of myself as pretty easy to get along with. I believe that my open mind and friendly disposition have made me somewhat of a paranormal therapist. I attract people who want to tell me about their encounters or who want to learn more about specific topics. I found myself almost counseling friends and family by trying to help them make sense of their experiences. Even those who don’t believe in the supernatural would ask me to recount stories just because they found them interesting. Many of which would say that the way I presented the information at least made them think. I found these instances incredibly gratifying.
Having my own near death experience, encounters with spirit communication along with a wealth of other strange occurrences has escalated what was a simple interest in the unexplained into a personal quest for purpose. I moved away from my hometown in December of 2013. I created Mysteries over Martinis as a way to stay connected with those who utilize me as a resource. Not only do I want to help but I want to educate and provide a platform in which people can share their own brushes with the bizarre. My blog can be found at www.mysteriesovermartinis.com. If you’ve had a mysterious encounter you’d like to share, please e-mail me at mysteriesovermartinis@gmail.com. I can also be contacted via the Mysteries over Martinis Facebook page. Be sure to ‘like’ it when you stop by. Weirdness is always welcome. Cheers!
How to Evaluate the Authenticity of an Observer’s Supernatural Encounter
Tonight I wanted to share an article written by David Almeida, a fascinating person who I’ve had the great opportunity to chat with online recently. You can catch his bio at the end of the post. After some discussion, he directed me to this article. He has kindly given me permission to share it with you. It just happens to fit in with discussion I’ve had with a few of you in the comments to some recent posts. Thanks, David!
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I wrote this article to address the use of objectivity in evaluating a witness’s account of a supernatural event. In a sense, almost all of our judgments are based on our experiences. They may also be grounded (in part) in what other people have told us about the world. For example, there are endless degradations of color and sound. If a person says “The apple is red.” What shade of red is it? For this reason, I believe that an objective statement can be construed as opinion.
This article is only addressing certain kinds of paranormal experiences such as hauntings and physical paranormal manifestations. It’s difficult to assess out of body experiences and other psychic or mental occurrences using this method.
Before asking the reporter (observer or witness) a slew of questions, I let the person tell his or her story with minimal interruption. Constantly breaking into the reporter’s story can lead the person losing his or her thoughts, which can result in the unintentional omission of important details. A witness will typically give the investigator all of the answers he or she requires during the interview process. In fact, I’ve found that most witnesses give more information than they need to.
If the investigator chooses to use this interview method, it’s essential to ask the reporter to start at the beginning of the story and guide him or her through it. You have to keep the reporter focused. A person will often become excited and jump all over the place while relating his or her story. This leads to confusion and pertinent details may be inadvertently skipped over.
It’s advisable that the investigator ask the reporter to use descriptive (objective) words to relate the experience. You don’t want the reporter making subjective statements like “The shadow person was big, bad and scary. That description doesn’t help anyone, although the investigator may want to get the observer’s impressions at the end of the interview.
A person may describe a flower as beautiful. Everybody has their own conception of a beautiful flower. It would be better for the person say “I saw a flower.” It is helpful if the person can identify the type of flower. “It was a rose.” If that is not possible, the person should describe the qualities of the flower.
Whether the investigator is interviewing a witness to a crime or conducting a paranormal investigation, the interviewer will find information that appears false or contradictory. These discrepancies need to be clarified before the interview is completed. An investigator might ask questions such as the ones that follow if the reporter has not provided this information in his or her statement:
How long did the incident last? “I saw it for about two seconds.
How far away were you? “I was ten feet away?”
What did it look like? “The thing was approximately six feet tall. It had a round head and a broad boxy build. It looked like a dark shadow. It made no sound, and it moved quickly” Etcetera.
“Where did you see it?” “I was in bed sleeping, and I saw it in the doorway”
“When did you see it?” “It was last Tuesday, June 25, 2013 at midnight.”
Some other questions you might ask would be:
Are you taking any medications or illegal substances?
Do you have a medical condition?
Have you been sick recently?
What is your opinion of the supernatural? The answer to this question is significant to the investigation. The reporter may say “I feel that the Exorcist was the best movie ever made!”
Have you ever had a paranormal experience? Here again, the answer is important. “I am visited by the shadow people at least twice a week.” “When the moon is full we have a party.” I’m just kidding.
I have learned through personal experience that when two or more witnesses to a crime describe a suspect, each witness will provide a different description. That’s why we have lawyers and jury trials in this country. Does anyone remember the movie, My Cousin Vinny? It’s essential to get to the bottom of things and determine what happened. It does little good to tell someone that you saw a ghost without elaborating on the event in a rational manner.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to describe something that a person has never seen. I saw something in an out of body experience once that I cannot describe at all. It’s hard enough to describe an out of body experience. It’s easy for a skeptic to say that I was just dreaming. When we listen to these stories we have to keep an open mind. I can tell a person that I observed my body from outside of myself while it lay sleeping. Once again that’s easy to refute. If five million people have had a similar experience, does that mean it is true? Maybe not. Most people also dream. Hundreds of thousands of people thought that the Earth was flat at one time (I realize this is a widely used example). Are there really shadow people, or is this phenomenon a mass hallucination? Maybe people want to believe in it, so they conveniently see it.
In my own mind, I can confidently state that the shadow people exist. I had no prior knowledge of shadow people when I observed it. Not to mention that two people saw it at the same time. Does that fact change things? I don’t know. It may make the event more credible. If I could have caught the thing in a net for scientists to examine, that would have made the encounter much more conclusive. Unfortunately, such events rarely have such an outcome.
Explaining a metaphysical theory is different from a scientific theory in that researchers are using known scientific principles. It’s difficult to positively answer a metaphysical and philosophical question such as: “What is consciousness?” We only know that consciousness exists by the fact we that we are animated beings, who have an awareness of our existence. Then again, I’m not a proponent of the big bang theory (I don’t mean the TV show). I feel that this theory has no more basis in fact than some of my own theories. I say this with the understanding that scientists claim that they have reasonable evidence to support their theory. I am more inclined to accept the unfashionable steady state theory of the universe, which states that the universe is continuously expanding.
I claim that Arthur Edward Waite contributed to my theories. Is that reasonable statement? It depends on who you ask. The six or seven mediums who evidently communicated with him might lend their support to my claim. If a person does not believe in mediumship, then what I say about A.E. Waite would be of little value to him or her. A metaphysical theory is one of those things that a person accepts because it strikes a chord in his or her inner being. Such theories typically have insufficient (if any) evidence to lean on. This does not mean that the theories are devoid of truth. It’s just that humans have not discovered the necessary tools to conduct a proper examination of these advanced theories. Metaphysical theories generally involve arcane mystical principles, unknown energies, and references to strange dimensional locales that we cannot verify using modern scientific protocol. That day will come.
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