Vampires Are Not Real

Vampires are not real.  They do not exist.  If they did exist, they would be some of the most evil, blood-thirsty, gruesome, and smelly (non-living things tend to stink) creatures on the planet.  I'm glad there are no such monsters.

However, books and movies glamorize the vampire.  They are no longer looked upon as fanged, rotting, blood-sucking, red-eyed, claw-nailed animated corpses.  They are considered debonair, aristocratic, charming, handsome, beautiful, sexy, winsome, playful, intelligent, and very seductive entities.

There are people who actually consider themselves to be vampires!

I used to be a Goth, part-time.  I often wore black clothing, I dyed my already nearly black hair blue-jet, I wore dark lipstick (though never ebony, at least not out in public), and I listened to Goth music (still do at times).  I often fantasized about vampires but not to the extent that I thought of them as real, or wished that they were.  I considered vampires 'monstrous' if not wicked, and I knew they were not the types of beings that I should look up to, or idolize, or want to be or be like.

Just after the millennium, I became less interested in vampire novels or movies.  I still don't find them as intriguing as I once did.  And no, I have not watched one movie in the dreadful 'Twilight' series.  I will be 43 my next birthday!  My stars, what do you take me for, an absolute child?!?

I once was so into Anne Rice's vampire novels that I would read them over and over again.  I was almost in love with Louis - forget Lestat, I considered him an arrogant bastard, not to mention that I have never been too much attracted to men with blond hair - and I read every vampire short story I could get my hands on.  Now the only vampire novel I can tolerate is 'Salem's Lot.  And I cannot stand vampire movies anymore.

I once joined such Goth-oriented sites as Dark Side of The Net, Goth Space, Vampire Freaks, Gothic Match, etc.  I had pen pals back in the 90s who sucked their own blood, or the blood of friends, and listened to such bands as Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie & The Banshees, and the Sex Gang Children (of whom Boy George was once a member).  

I'm much too old for that stuff now.  But when I was in my 20s...

These days, I feel sorry for anyone over 30 who calls her/himself a 'vampire' and a 'Goth'.  It's as pathetic as someone my age going to see any of the 'Twilight' movies.  Sure, my brother is just a year my junior and he watches cartoons still - though I never would - but 'Twilight' is definitely for the 13 - 23 age group.  Hell, I'd never watch any of the Harry Potter films (though my brother has), nor would I ever read those books.  I don't even read romance novels anymore...

Just having my say, folks.  Vampires are not real.  And we should all be glad they don't.  Very damn glad.  

Werewolves

I watched a show called Monster Quest recently.  This episode was about the 'American Werewolf'.  As usual, there were attention-seekers claiming to have seen a 'werewolf'...many of them actually passed lie detector tests.  But since polygraphs aren't reliable (otherwise they would be used in court cases) and if one strongly believes something, they will pass a lie detector, I must dismiss the results.  Sociopaths, good actors, and hysterics may pass the polygraph.  These people saw something explainable - a wolf, coyote, even a bear or fox - that they mistakenly assumed was a 'werewolf'.  No wonder the test results were positive!

There are no actual creatures as lycanthropes.

There are, however, people suffering from hypertrichosis.  It is also known as the 'werewolf' disease.
Werewolf Gene

I wonder what is wrong with people.  What makes a person truly believe in skunk apes, ghosts, vampires, chupacabras, werewolves, unicorns, mermaids, etc, etc?  I would not want most of these creatures to exist, with the exception of the unicorn.  I mean, seriously!  If werewolves were factual beings, there would be evidence of them.  EVIDENCE.  Yet there is none.  Absolutely zero.  Same with those other creatures of myth that some (mentally unbalanced) people believe in.  I can understand a child believing in this stuff.  But an educated adult?  Give me a freaking break!

There have been people who considered themselves to be werewolves who attacked humans in much the same manner as a wild dog might.  Werewolf Killers.   A recent example is Wolfie Blackheart, who apparently believes that she is a werewolf.  Why would anyone want to be a werewolf?  I for damn sure don't - and I never truly wanted to be a vampire either, not even when I was a so-so Goth back in the 90s!

Werewolves are hairy, slobbering, blood-crazed critters with nothing about them that speaks of beauty, elegance, or intelligence (even though they are human till the full moon rises, in most horror films that is).  

German 'werewolf killer' Peter Stumpp murdered and cannabalized 16 victims, all women and children (the usual innocent victims); some of his victims were pregnant - ol' Peter ate the fetuses, not leaving anything to waste except perhaps the bones.  Back in those days, killers weren't mollycoddled the way they are today.  Peter was put to death, broken on the wheel where his flesh was torn from his bones, then his bones smashed to bits, before being burnt and buried.  His executioners, convinced he really was a werewolf, were leaving nothing to chance.

In closing, werewolves do not exist.  We already have weird, wild-eyed psychos enough to frighten the rest of us.  Why add to the lunatic fringe?

EVPS are not voices of spirits

Isn't it laughable to see grown men - and women - becoming overly excited when they get a supposed recording of a long-dead person's voice or even that of a demon?  There is even a very long recording of the 'most horrific EVP' ever recorded available for our listening pleasure (listen at your own risk, it's quite nightmarish but not very clear) - http://paranormal.about.com/b/2007/10/14/the-most-horrific-evp-ever-recorded-feature-article.htm.

According to experts, EVPs (electronic voice phenomena is what EVP stands for) are nothing more than transmissions from cell phones, walkie talkies, radio frequencies, satellites, telephone wires, etc. Visit http://www.skepdic.com/evp.html for more information on what EVPs possibly are.  What EVPs are not: the voices of your dead relatives, demons, murder victims, suicides, or any other 'ghostly' or 'spirit' being.  I have an excellent Olympus digital recorder and have tried picking up EVPs in old apartments, houses, parks, and graveyards and have yet to capture anything remotely like the 'voices' caught by ghost hunters on TV (which leads one to speculate on whether or not these 'voices' they so readily capture are faked).

Okay, some of the EVPs on these shows which are declared to be the voices of dead people are validated by some of those being haunted, such as relatives and friends.  I have seen more than a few of these people get quite emotional when they listen to these voices.  However, I still do not believe the EVPs to be the voices of the dead.  These people desperately want answers, and they will hear what they want to.  When my grandmother, with whom I was extremely close, passed away 24 years ago after a long illness, I so wanted to know that she was all right where she was, and had not suffered terribly before dying, that when the digital clock went off like an alarm (not set) and was stuck at 12:00 AM, we all said it was her coming back.  Also, the fire in the wood-burning stove in my great aunt's bedroom (which I shared with her for a time) flared back to life after dying out, and a pattern of what looked like a flying dove was projected on the ceiling.  My great aunt had argued with my grandmother (they were sisters) before my grandmother's death, so my great aunt did not want to hear of any paranormal happenings in her house.  My mother, aunt, and my brother all believed - as I did then - that my grandmother had briefly returned to let us know she was okay.

Back to EVPs...I have heard dozens on various paranormal shows.  Some I can recall: I am the devil.  Dance!  Thank you, Mommy.  I'll kill you!  (I may have heard several variations of the death threat.)  I don't like fish and I don't like birds.  Get out!  (Flashback to the Amityville Horror.)  I hate you!  Goddamn you!  Hello?  The EVPs could go on and on...every episode of Paranormal State, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Lab, My Ghost Story, Paranormal Witness, Haunted Collector, and The Haunted feature some type of EVP, and oftentimes more than 1.  The investigators are usually adamant that these recordings are those of spirits.

At least with Finding Bigfoot (yes, I understand Squatches are not really paranormal beings, but they might as well be), every recording of a 'Sasquatch' hollering in the woods isn't taken as such, especially by the boyish Ranae Holland, the group skeptic.  Every damn EVP the ghost hunters manage to record happens to be that of some poor departed spirit damned to wander earth until they are led the other side!

I just don't believe that the dead are able to communicate with the living.  I don't believe that demons try to 'speak' to us either.  If spirits, demons, angels, and the like can speak to us, why would they need to communicate via digital recorders?  Why is it these 'voices' can only be heard upon playback and usually via enhancements of the original recording?  Why would they even need to 'talk' to us using ghost boxes?  I would think they could simply speak to us without using such paraphernalia.  After all, some of them supposedly materialize without the use of gadgets.  Why not speak to us without employing gadgets?

Finding Big Foot

This is one hilarious show.  3 over-grown men and 1 (lesbian?) woman out there seeking 'Squatches', out in the boondocks howling, yodeling, and making other weird sounds in an effort to draw out the elusive, shy, hairy creature more fondly known as 'Big Foot'.  The YouTube comments are even funnier than the show itself.  So laughable, I sometimes forget to giggle.

According to Matt Moneymaker, James 'Bobo' Fay, Ranae Holland, and Cliff Barackman, 'Squatches' are drawn to human females, they are timid, they live in areas that are predominantly rural and heavily wooded, and they are bipedal.  Oh, yeah?  How do they know what Big Foot is really like, especially since no one has ever photographed, videotaped, caught, or otherwise socialized with such a being?

There is an extremely infamous video, which you may view at your leisure, known as the Patterson-Gimlin film, which purportedly shows a female (or so they claim) Big Foot strolling through a forested area.  She looks at them and keeps on walking...Roger Patterson-Bob Gimlin.  Roger passed away from cancer only a few years after the footage was shot, but Bob was still around as of 2011 and still standing by his story that this was a - gasp! - Sasquatch!  Matt, Bobo, and Cliff all believe the footage to actually be that of a female Sasquatch.  Ranae, the skeptic of the bunch, thinks it is more or less a human, undoubtedly in a costume.  I must state here that I agree with her.

It walks human-like.  Okay, so the 'experts' on various shows I have watched claim that it would be utterly impossible for a man to lope like that wearing an ape costume, but costumes don't have to weigh 20 pounds, folks.  And there are some very strong people out there...and when you toss fame & fortune into the mix, that makes it a wonderful incentive for a trio of guys to get together and perpetrate a hoax.  Hell, I'd do it in a heartbeat myself and who knows, I may buy a Fujifilm or other digital camera with video for Christmas and shoot some hoaxes to post to Vimeo and YouTube and who knows what other video sharing site...LOL.

Back to Finding Big Foot...

I have watched many episodes of both Season 1 as well as Season 2, and these guys are totally trippin'.  There is NO creature known as Big Foot, a Sasquatch, Squatch, Skunk Ape, or anything else of that ilk.  There are primates - us, gorillas, chimps, orangutans, baboons, spider monkeys, etc etc, but no large, hirsute, bipedal creature hiding out in the boonies.

What really gets me chuckling is when they go to the 'town hall' of these little pissant burgs and all the gun-toting, pickup driving rednecks listen attentively (you can tell by the appearance that they are largely uneducated, blue-collar, flag-waving hicks with nothing else to do with their time but attend these gatherings), then raise their hands when asked if any of them have encountered a 'Squatch'.  Anywhere from 25% to nearly 50% of the hands always go up...

These hayseeds live boring, predictable lives.  What other excitement do they get happening in those villages?  There is a great incentive for them to lie...maybe some of them are even confused.  Most just want the attention.  After all, they are getting a chance to tell their story in - drum roll - Animal Planet!

Pitiful.  Pathetic.  I truly feel sorry for Matt, Bobo, Cliff, and Ranae...out there seeking Big Foot when they have to know, in their heart of hearts, that such a creature doesn't exist.  It is only a myth, a legend, a fairy story...heck, I wish there were Squatches around.  Maybe they could be trained to attack Republicans.

Paranormal Reality & the Spirit World Part 2

Some people say that Ghost Hunters is a show of skeptics.  However, I really beg to differ.  Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes, plumbers by day, are apparently ghost hunters by night.  They have several books under their belt, probably millions in the bank by now (Ghost Hunters is one of the more successful paranormal shows on television, if not one of the more boring - in my opinion).  If these guys were such 'skeptics', would they behave the way they do on camera, or would they have written books with such titles as Seeking Spirits: The Lost Cases of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena From The Atlantic Paranormal Society, and even a novel, Ghost Trackers?  These guys are a 2-man money making machine!

As for Paranormal State (one of my favorite shows and the most interesting other than Ghost Adventures, my other favorite), Ryan Buell - now fighting pancreatic cancer - the team sounds as if they are reading from a script most of the time (as with all the shows, I might add.  Except Ghost Adventures - they sound more authentic, sort of like those 'found footage' films that don't use a screenplay ala The Blair Witch Project).  In conversations, people generally use 'fillers' like uh, um, etc, or may nervously use such tag lines as 'you know' and pepper their speech with 'like' and 'whatever' and 'whatnot', among other words.  The people on these paranormal shows rarely do that!  They know exactly what they are going to say and they say it, no fumbling for words, hardly any pauses to come up with anything...just as if they are reading from a script or being cued.

Ghost Adventures sounds more authentic but...Zak, Nick and Aaron are definitely not into ghost seeking to 'help' people, as Ryan Buell's Paranormal Research Society claimed to be.  They are into for the long green and the notoriety, as is true of all these paranormal groups.  Ghost Lab - Everyday Paranormal - are so hyped on these EVPs they get that it's quite laughable.  "Dude, did you hear that?!?"  Gosh, I thought only college age boys and high schoolers talked like that!  Then there is My Ghost Story...does anyone really believe any of that stuff?  I certainly do not.  It is just a bunch of attention seeking White people.  (Have you noticed that there are almost never any Black, Asian, or Hispanic people being haunted or attacked by evil spirits or demons?)  Ditto the ghost seeking teams - with the exception of Everyday Paranormal, which in its first season or 2 featured a Latino man and the Black guy, who is yet with the team so far as I know.

It is my belief that these 'spirits' are just negative energy being given off by the current inhabitants of these supposedly haunted homes, inns, hotels, etc.  Dead people are just that - dead.  We don't come back, I don't care what desperate people want to believe.  There are no ghosts.  There are no spirits.  There are no specters.  There are no angels.  There are no demons.  There are no phantoms.  There are overactive imaginations, negative energy, positive energy, and just people being people - that is, seeking fame and fortune in whatever way they can.  When we die, that is the end, das Ende, la fin...we are gone forever.  We do not come back to watch over, haunt, or otherwise interact with the living.  Many of the people who appear on these shows actually want to believe that a deceased relative has returned - on one of the shows, I forget which one, there was a woman and her young daughter who apparently had snapped a photo of what the woman believed was her mother's ghost, who had passed away from cancer.  This woman so much wanted this 'specter' to be her mother so...she saw what she wanted to see, and got a photo of what she wanted.  The daughter seemed to be more hesitant to believe that the spirit was of her grandmother.

Fact or Faked: The Paranormal Files sets out to prove - or disprove - video (they don't really like to do photos, though they have) footage of so-called paranormal events.  They usually disprove them though there was one that they could not (The Nightcrawler Investigation) and there may have been more but that's the only one that comes to mind right now.  What I don't get about Fact or Faked is why they feel it is even necessary to investigate these videos, most of which are so obviously fake - especially the UFOs and Big Foots - that a child could see through that nonsense.  Did you happen to see the one about the 'ghost car'?  A cop was chasing this idiot in a car going more than 50 miles per hour, and the car evidently ended up on one side of a fence, leaving the cop to scratch his head and wonder how the hell this happened.  According to Fact or Faked, the driver merely drove through the fence, and the bottom part of the fence - which was not stuck deeply into the ground - merely flapped.  You'd have to view this episode to know exactly what I am trying to state here.  

At any rate, there are no paranormal activity, entities, or anything else of a paranormal nature.  However, I find these shows to be awesome entertainment, better than most horror films in fact, and so long as I can view them on YouTube, Hulu, or any other internet channel, I will continue to do so.  I will also critique various episodes, past or present, here.  Stay tuned.

Paranormal Reality & the Spirit World Part 1

Greetings, one and all.  I have created this blog to discount all those 'paranormal' reality shows that permeate  television.  There are no such things as ghosts, spirits, angels, or demons.  There is only energy that we humans either turn into negative energy, or positive.

If you are a person who is mostly negative, any energy that you send out will return back to you in a negative manner.  Likewise for a positive person.  I should know, as my teen years were spent in a shell of almost total negativity.  Ditto for my 20s and early 30s.  It was not until I reached my 40s that I became more positive.  Of course, I still have my negative moments.  However, they aren't as plentiful as they were in years gone by.

Why do certain people tend to get 'attacked' by what they, and those publicity-hungry paranormal groups, call 'evil spirits'?  It is because they live negative lives.  Nearly all the people are contacting what they consider to be the 'spirit realm' (when in reality there is no such place).  Why do people try to contact the spirits of the dead?  It is never for positive reasons.

After my grandmother and my aunt passed away in 1988, my mother and other aunt attempted to contact them via a seance.  They were involved in drugs at the time, and my mother was drinking heavily.  A great deal of negative emotions made the living situation at that time very unhealthy.  I participated in the seance because I wholly believed in the spirit realm then, being much younger and rather naive.  Nothing came of the seance but that did not stop me from delving into the spirit world.  I got into black magick, Voodoo, Wicca, and Satanism.  I became an atheist, then an agnostic, and then an atheist again.  I put spells on people that really worked - mainly due to my strong belief that they would.

Negativity is powerful.  It is just as potent, if not more so, than positive emotions.

I used to hear what I thought was a demon calling my name.  I have not heard this 'demon' since 1990, the last year I dabbled in Satanism.  I bought a Ouija board in 1995 and got into very deeply.  I was convinced that a being was responding to my queries.  My mother, baby sister, and I used the Ouija board to try to hex my sister-in-law, whom my mother did not like because she felt that the woman had tricked my brother into marrying her.  We used my sister's doll to represent my brother's wife, and after the ritual, my mother buried the doll in a weedy lot next to our apartment complex.  Afterward, she claimed strange things started to happen in our townhouse but in hindsight, it was nothing truly out of the ordinary.  A lot of was due to her imagination and probably alcohol-induced - not to mention the drugs she began abusing again.

If you delve more deeply into these so-called cases of hauntings and possession, you will find a shocking amount of mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, emotional and physical abuse, and other negative behavior.

Then there is the fact that these shows: Ghost Adventures, Paranormal State, Ghost Hunters, The Haunted Collector, My Ghost Story, Ghost Lab, The Dead Files, etc, use special effects to trick people.  If you watch certain scenes very closely, you can even spot the fishing line they use to make objects 'move on their own', you can hear the fake EVPs as they record them, and if you watch the eyes/expressions of those that are supposedly under 'spiritual attack', you can tell when they are lying about something.  It is all for attention, fame and fortune.  If those ghost chasers were so serious about 'helping' those under attack, they would not try to get shows on TV.

I will get more into this later.  Check back with this blog often - bookmark it!  I plan to post a podcast soon. Anyone who would like to partner up with me, please feel free to contact me via email with the Subject: I'm a Paranormal Skeptic 2.  Thank you for reading.