April 6, 2007

The Witchcraft Connection: Metaphysical Investigations into the Paranormal

Part Eight of Belle Gunness: McClung Road and the Blood Farm Horror
By Marcus Foxglove Griffin

Domesticated Spectral Entities? As we rejoined Sampsun and Amber in the Garden of Memories, we discovered that they were hunting cats, not just ghosts. They had repeatedly heard a cat meowing somewhere nearby, but were unable to locate it, and so I made the halfhearted suggestion that maybe it was a ghost cat. Amber and I set off in search of spectral critters. After several minutes, Becca and Sampsun rejoined us, and they didn't look very happy. Becca informed us that she and Sampsun had heard a loud growl directly behind them, but when they turned to investigate nothing was there. At least nothing that could be seen with the naked eye. Even our resident skeptic, Sampsun, said it was the most unearthly sound he had ever heard and that he was certain whatever had growled at them was not of our world. The look on his face as he spoke was enough to give me goose-bumps.

Although neither Amber nor I heard the growl, I've heard otherworldly growling in the past, and I can tell you from experience that it's very unsettling. I don't personally believe in the existence of demonic entities in the satanic sense, but I've seen enough to know that not everything prowling the netherworld is friendly or good intentioned. There are entities lurking in other worlds that we should be cautious of.

We were unable to locate a cat, spectral or otherwise. It was getting very late, and we were starting to talk about wrapping up and heading for home. It was an hour and a half drive back to our base of operations, and we had many hours of audio and video to examine, not to mention hundreds of digital photographs. I was about to instruct the team to pack up their gear when once again the dead began to speak again.

Becca and Amber were leaning over a grave smelling a basket of fresh flowers when they started hearing the voices. Then Sampsun and I heard the voices. The four of us stood in silence, listening to the sounds of the night. Were the dead really speaking? The answer was yes. Although faint, the voices were close: Very close. There was no doubt in our minds that the voices were those of ghostly entities and not the living. We slowly prowled the gardens of the dead, asking the ghosts questions and attempting to record their voices. We soon came upon several fresh graves, and as Amber read the name Robert Boardman aloud from one of the headstones, something spoke the name back. Suddenly, I heard a faint growl and the meow of a cat. The growl and the meow were unlike any earthly sound I had ever heard.

We're attracting too much attention, I thought to myself. We're drawing in too many questionable entities. I was starting to worry about the team's safety. Although I felt confident in our ability to fend off any troublesome spirits, whatever was growling at us felt dark and angry. It felt as though we were being stalked. I was considering suggesting that it might be a good idea to cast a protective circle, when all at once the air seemed to lighten and we could no longer sense the presence of unseen entities. Had the entities picked up on our intentions and fled? One of the most popular theories about ghosts is that they must draw upon a source of energy other than their own to be able to manifest and/or communicate verbally. When WISP goes into protective mode, our energy patterns change drastically, and even though we hadn't actually cast a protective circle, I was able to theorize that the subtle changes in our energy patterns alone might have been enough to repel the ghosts of Patton Cemetery. No longer sensing any unusual activity in the gardens of the dead, we retreated to the van and made the long drive home, wondering at what we had experienced during the investigation.

When we started sifting through the evidence, we were overwhelmed by what we had captured during the investigation. Our audio recordings were littered with the voices of the dead.

Next Month: The Evidence Revealed!

Marcus Foxglove Griffin has been a student and teacher of the occult for over twenty years and is the creator and lead investigator for Witches In Search of the Paranormal (WISP). He is High Priest for the Temple of Aradia located in northern Indiana and teacher in the temple’s school. Under the penname Lord Foxglove, he is the author of Advancing the Witches’ Craft (New Page Books, 2005) and numerous articles in the areas of Witchcraft and metaphysics. "The Witchcraft Connection" is Marcus Foxglove Griffin's monthly column on the metaphysical and paranormal.