Have you ever heard of an urban legend about where you live, or a story about a haunted bridge or cave that you have wanted to visit or have on your bucket list? According to sociologists, a sizable 75.9% of the United States now actually believes in paranormal occurrences, like ghost appearances, alien contact, and demonic possessions. America is a country rich in folklore, a place where cautionary tales have always been mixed into the pot and sprinkled into our collective nightmares and memories. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with paranormal investigator and author, Jeff Davis about BUCKET LIST OF THE DAMNED.
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https://aftermath.media/podcast/9-21-23-bucket-list-of-the-damned-w-jeff-davis/
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I am excited for the Halloween viewing season as horror movies and documentaries are soon going to be streaming on TV and theaters of course will also be showing some terrifying stuff for the season.
I have been needing to get to a documentary that has been produced for MGM about the Amityville horror house.
It is being produced as a true crime account undefined and since I have no spoilers or anything to go on undefined I am curious if they will include the paranormal stories about how the home was cursed because of the murders that took place there.
It has been shrouded in mystery since 1974 when Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered six of his family members at 112 Ocean Avenue. Just one year after the murders, the Lutz family purchased that same home and moved in. It only took a month for the Lutzs to leave, driven out by alleged bouts of terrifying paranormal activity.
That fascinating story has inspired countless supernatural theories, books, and movies—including the 1979 blockbuster film, The Amityville Horror.
But like any paranormal story there are the facts and then there are the myths that are spun by Hollywood, and the skeptics that jump on board to try and debunk a good urban legend.
But like any paranormal story about a place or an area, legends die hard and the fascination still continues after years of horrific accounts.
I remember reading about an absurd legend that later after seeing the film Donnie Darko undefined I realized that it would be terrifying to experience. Many who have seen the movie remember the terrifying appearance of Frank the rabbit. Frank is simply analogous to the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Standing at the entrance to the rabbit hole undefined a sign of danger and intrigue,
There is a story that a man dressed as a bunny haunts the residential neighborhoods around our nationundefineds capital. Silly as this may sound at first, the Bunny Man has been a fixture of local legend for at least 30 years.
By 1973 the so-called undefinedBunny Manundefined had been reported in Maryland and the District of Columbia. His infrequent and widespread appearances tended to occur in secluded locations and usually tell of a figure clad in a white bunny suit armed with an ax threatening children or vandalizing property.
By the 1980s the Bunny Man had become an even more sinister figure with several gruesome murders to his credit. Although he has been reported as far south as Culpepper, Virginia. his main haunt has been the area surrounding a railroad overpass near Fairfax Station, Virginia frequented by partygoers, the now infamous undefinedBunny Man Bridge.undefined
Have you ever heard of an urban legend about where you live, or a story about a haunted bridge or cave that you have wanted to visit undefined or have out in your bucket list?
Being a paranormal researcher, I have had many experiences in haunted locales- but there are still a few places I wish I could visit.
I have been to Roswell, the forests of the Pacific Northwest, home of Bigfoot sightings and the tales of D.B. Cooper. I investigated the Martinez Gazette where the ghost of the Zodiac killer allegedly haunted the building undefined The staff has now left the building undefined they are now an online newspaper.
I have been underground in the Shanghai Tunnels under the city of Portland which is a very haunted locale undefined Maury Island the place of the massive UFO sighting that predated Roswell undefined and the Shanghai tunnels undefined where people were murdered and kidnapped.
I was one of the first reporters to investigate the Sherman Ranch undefined which is now called the Skinwalker Ranch.
I have not visited Rachel Nevada home of Area 51 but it is on my bucket list.
I have wanted to visit Point Pleasant undefined home of the Mothman undefined so far that too is on my bucket list.
So many weird locales undefined so little time.
There have been many stories about places on planet Earth that defy explanation.
Last year we reported that a killing stone said to contain the spirit of a thousand-year-old demon has split open in Japan. Japanese legend has it that anyone who comes into contact with the rock will die. According to mythology, the volcanic rock – officially called Sessho-seki – is home to Tamomo-No-Mae, aka the Nine-Tailed Fox.
The demon apparently took the form of a beautiful woman, Tamomo-No-Mae.
It would be interesting to visit that particular site -as would the suicide forest near Mount Fuji.
Aokigahara in Japan, also known as the Trees of the Sea, is a 35-square-kilometer forest that lies at the northwest base of Mount Fuji. The density of the trees is so massive that you can wander in pitch-black darkness during the day. Due to the wind-blocking density of the trees and the absence of wildlife, the forest is also known for being extremely quiet.
It certainly a peaceful site the only problem is that hanging from the trees are decaying bodies, and on the ground are rotting corpses and skeletal remains of those who decided to shake this mortal coil and commit suicide.
The forest has a historic association with demons in Japanese mythology and is the second most popular place for suicides in the world right after the Golden Gate Bridge. Almost 100 people a year wander in the forest never to return again.
More than 500 people have committed suicide there in the last 50 years. Japanese authorities have a hard time finding and removing all those bodies. Every year, they do a sweep of the area in hopes of removing the bodies and it is becoming more of a task as the suicides are increasing.
There are even stories of investigators that have gone to the site to do stories there -and for some reason are compelled to kill themselves.
This brings up an interesting thought undefined can there be places where paranormal activity happens all the time?
Are there weird locales, that are cursed, or are doomed to be haunted like many areas where the Civil War have been fought?
People are rationalizing that the world around us is changing rapidly and previously held truths are actually not as factual as we once thought, so why wouldn’t it be possible for the supernatural to be real, too? Why couldnundefinedt there be places that are haunted, or otherwise sacred or cursed?
As we edge closer to Halloween, there are stories that are creeping into the news that get my attention undefined and this time I got wind of a new poll from Chapman University about what people are secretly afraid of.
While many Americans said that they feared the end of the world, what was most surprising is that many Americans are no longer afraid of organized terrorism
The other fear that afflicted small-town America was paranormal activity.
According to sociologists at Chapman University, a sizable 75.9% of America now actually believes in paranormal occurrences, like ghost appearances, alien contact, and demonic possessions.
More Americans now believe in various spooky concepts, from ghosts to extra-terrestrial creatures. More than 41% of respondents said they believe in ghosts, and 26.5% said they believe the living and the dead can communicate with each other through inventions like ghost boxes, electronic voice phenomena or the less sophisticated Ouija board.
There was a small amount of those surveyed that have called upon a member of the clergy or a paranormal investigator to rid their homes of demons or ghosts and another small percentage that believe that their homes even their neighborhoods are haunted by tragic histories and urban legends.
Recently there was a report about how people have been disappearing at a higher rate in the mountains, on hiking trails, and in our national parks.
There have been countless stories and numerous cases where, in National Parks, children have disappeared within feet of their parents only to be found miles away sometimes even over mountain ranges with no recollection of how they got to that location.
In other cases, he has documented cases where people simply vanished leaving their clothes in a pile as if they were snatched from within their clothes. Their clothes were simply piled where the person had been standing. In both cases dogs were unable to pick up the scent, which is strange, it was as if the person just dematerialized.
When people inquire with the National Park Service about the disappearances, they are stone-walled and told the National Parks Service does not keep records of disappearances.
Many people are unaware that horrifying stories from road trips to the mountains or the woods are not all that rare; in fact, people have been known to file police reports on all sorts of things that appear in the shadows on the road.
Most cops will tell you they’ve seen it all. It’s the nature of the job to be exposed to virtually everything people have to offer, from the weird to the hilarious to the disturbing, however, it is the disturbing that seems to be the norm.
I am sure that someone you know or perhaps you yourself have had an experience you can’t quite describe accurately as it is so bizarre it defies explanation. We have covered stories dealing with ghosts and demons and all of the things that can keep you awake at night.
People find that haunts and ghost encounters usually happen in confined spaces. They usually experience poltergeist activity in homes or in abandoned buildings but there is one particular space where people have terrifying encounters and that is on the road.
I suppose that it can be stated that by some quantum joke science can bait us with dimensional theories that point to the possibility that there are areas of the planet where the veil is thinner or that there is some extra-dimensional vortex where a second genesis occurred parallel to our own.
There are locations throughout the planet that are suggested to be the most powerful due to their position on the globe undefined these are known as Ley lines.
One of the most prolific lines is the 33rd parallel. Giving special occult attention to a place or location is called Mystical Toponymy.
Mystical Toponomy is the notion that there are powerful and sacred places on the earth. There is a theory based on coincidence that many events on earth, those events that result in mass death, societal upheaval, or change happen at the 33rd NORTH parallel.
Many occult scholars have created the notion that in the realm of dark forces, a bloody sacrificial ritual performed at the 33rd parallel has more power than rituals performed elsewhere. Throughout history, the 33rd-degree parallel has been the place for what can be called the “sacrifices” of human life.
One of the biggest sacrifices of life of course was addressed in the summer blockbuster Oppenheimer. the bomb was tested and dropped on the 33rd parallel.
The Atom Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima Japan. It is situated very close to the intersection of 33°30’E longitude and 33°30’N latitude. Nagasaki is near the 33°30’N, as is the White Sands Testing Range in New Mexico, that same parallel where the atom bomb was first tested and detonated.
The Roswell Incident in 1947 where it is believed an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed is on the 33rd parallel. John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Texas near the 33rd-degree parallel.
President Kennedy was shot in Dallas Texas undefined Dealy Plaza sits on the 33rd north parallel.
Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 near the 33rd parallel. The Waco compound where the Branch Davidians were murdered was near the 33rd parallel.
David Koresh died at age 33 on that site.
The space shuttle Columbia broke up over the 33rd parallel.
The “Heaven’s Gate” cult committed suicide from almost exactly the 33°30’N latitude in “Rancho Santa Fe,” North of San Diego. The group committed suicide after a number of strange events occurred.
First the Hale-Bopp comet was said to have had a companion “ship” following it and at the same time a large UFO was seen over Phoenix Arizona at about 33.24 – 32.34 North latitude.
Many places where history has been made including the wars in the Middle East happened on the 33rd parallel.
Legends, myths and other written accounts of the paranormal proliferate all parts of history. In all cultures creatures of twilight exist and persist. They drift about and manifest sending many people to unknown ends to find the answers and in many ways, we see that the paranormal can be similar to a rainbow’s chase.
But there are moments that happen in places with greater frequency undefined that when discovered trouble the Human spirit.
I have always wanted to do an investigation into the small town of Stull Kansas as one of my old producers from Lawrence Kansas told me that Stull was a portal to hell.
There was once an old stone church wall that crumbled in 2002 in the small town’s cemetery.
It is located in a part of Kansas where the first three numbers of the zip code begin with “666,” and the road leading to the cemetery was called “Devil’s Lane” until it was changed in 1905.
Many of the gravestones have the name “Wittich,” engraved on them and one is said to be occupied by a “Child of Satan” born of a witch and the Devil. The child was said to have been severely deformed and lived only a short time.
Not only was the cemetery on land where witches were hanged – there is an area where the church crumbled that has a staircase that goes deep under the cemetery where people have disappeared, rumored to have gone into hell.
In a bizarre urban legend it is said that when Pope John Paul II visited Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado for World Youth Day in 1993, a rumor surfaced about his fear of Stull, KS. It would only be natural for the undefinedVicar of Christundefined on earth would avoid Stull, being that Stull is the supposed location of a undefinedgateway to hellundefined. The urban legend would cite a Time magazine article stating that Pope John Paul II requested his plane fly far around that section of Kansas because he did not want to fly over undefinedunholyundefined ground.
America is a country rich in folklore, a place where cautionary tales have always been mixed into the pot and sprinkled into our collective nightmares.
These stories were able to travel faster than most internet stories and now that the internet exists they can remain in our collective memories for a long time.
Stories that will freak you out no matter where you live.
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SHOW GUEST:
Jeff Davis was born in Vancouver, Washington, and has a BS in Anthropology and an MA in Archaeology. He lived in England for nearly a year, while working on his Masterundefineds Degree on the Vikings in Greenland. He also worked for several years as a Pacific Northwest field archaeologist. Jeff has written several books on military history, ghosts, mythology, and archaeology. His most popular books were Weird Washington and Weird Oregon. Jeff has been a guest expert on numerous radio shows, the History Channel, Haunted History: Northwest, Alaskan Killer Bigfoot, Ghost Adventures, The Dead Files, and more. You can find out more about Jeff on his website: www.ghostsandcritters.com.
