Happy New Year everyone! I am to announce that I will be leading a manga workshop from 5:30-7:30PM EST at the Rockland Memorial Library in Rockland, MA (20 Belmont St, Rockland, MA 02370) on Wednesday January 13th, 2016. I will be sharing my experiences submitting to Weekly Shonen Jump, adventures of self publishing, and giving workshops on drawing hair and clothes for characters.
[This is a two-part article, part 1 is about the history of the ship while part 2 is about our ghost hunt.]
Last night I got the opportunity to ghost hunt on the USS Salem, a Des Moines-class heavy cruiser which was in service in the 1950s. A few weeks ago, almost immediately after moving to the Rhode Island, I discovered Legend Trips which is a company which is a planning organizer for events who uses ghost hunts as a way of raising money for preserving historic locations. So far, Legend Trips has raised over $26,000 for this cause! I should also note that Legend Trips is hosted paranormal authors and media personalities Jeff Belanger, Tim Wiesburg, Andrew Lake, and Matt Moniz. If you have the oppurtunity to do one of these events, I really urge you to go! I had a blast and it was wonderful meeting a whole bunch of paranormal enthusiasts in the area! A lot of the participates have done multiple events with Legend Trips because they enjoyed the events so much.
The History
The last all-gun heavy cruiser to enter commission, the USS Salem was built between 1945-1949 in Quincy, Massachusetts (where she is now docked.) During her decade-long service career she never saw battle, but instead served as a flagship of the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and of the Second Fleet in the Atlantic. Often she relieved the ill-fated USS Newport News which also was a Des Moines class heavy cruiser.
She was integral as an emergency support ship during the 1953 Ionian Earthquake. The USS Salem was the first American ship to reach the devastated Greek Ionian Islands Kefalonia and Zakynothos, which was still suffering from aftershocks of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake. The USS Salem brought victims to be treated on board between August 13th-17th, 1953; which included several which were badly injured from severe burns. Many victims, all Greek civilians, reportedly died on board.
The USS Salem hosted many heads of state such as the US Ambassador to Spain, John D. Lodge, the Honorable Thomas S. Gates who was the Undersecretary of the US Navy, Admiral Arieigh A. Burke, the Shah of Iran, the President of Lebenon, and the King and Queen of Greece.
Before being decommissioned in 1959, the USS Salem was featured in the 1956 film The Battle of the River Plate where she portrayed the German pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee. When the USS Salem was finally decommissioned, she stored as part of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet (and can technically still be brought out of retirement.) In 1994 she returned to Quincy, MA where she was constructed and where she is docked today. Now she is used as a museum ship, housing several Navy museums within her haul
An interesting connection
Things took an unexpected turn for me yesterday after I had started the tour. After the welcoming dinner but before our ship tour, I had posted a selfie of myself in front of the rear gun turret. While my phone was in air plane mode during the tour (there was no signal in the hual, and I wasnt going to waste battery power trying to find one) people commented on the photo. One of the comments was from my mother who casually mentioned “Oh, your grandfather was on that ship.”
Two hours later, after a tour and the first hour of ghost hunting where Andrew Lake and I had an interesting experience in the petty officer’s quarters, we take a break on the quarter deck and I turn my wifi back on. Immediately my phone begins to blow up with notifications, during which is when I find the news! My paternal grandfather was rather secretive about his Navy career which started during WWII and lasted into the 1950s. We know he was in Cuba for a while, and the USS Salem routinely did training around Guantanamo, Cuba. Since my grandfather passed away in the 1960s, I can’t ask him about his service. No other family member knows enough to be able to piece together this puzzle, so I’ll be researching more into it. However, it would explain some things that happened while on the ship that night.
Up next, Part II: the ghost hunt!
Hiya Everyone!
As promised on last night’s Paranormal View Radio Show, I would write up my story at the Aokigahara (Sea of Trees) at the base of Mt. Fuji and links to the various Japanese ghost stories I shared on last night’s show.
Before we begin, here is a link to last night’s show! You can also listen to this show, and all the older shows, in our iTunes archive! Or, you can listen to Geoffry’s archive of the show on his webpage, here.
What I talked about last night was Beppu City Hot Springs0 and Mt. Osore (Mt. Fear) (恐山 Osore-zan) as the gateways to Hell. Also the Sanzu River that runs off of Mt. Osore being seen as one of the rivers to Hell all ghosts must cross. The Bodai Temple ((菩提寺 Bodai-ji) that sits on Mt. Osore has an annual festival called the Itako Taisai Festival, where the traditional blind mediums called Itako channel spirits. This practice is called kuchiyose (口寄せ kuchiyose) or translated to summon. At the moment there are approximatly only four such itako left in the world who are all advanced in age, three of them died in 2009 alone. Although seen as folk shamen from Northern Japan, the government hasn’t been supportive of them and have discouraged the practice. The fate of the itako looks much like the fate of onmyoji, or occult Shinto divination, which also has been phased out of popular culture in Japan.
Many who visit Bodai-ji report the heavy sensation of being watched by not just a few souls- but thousands.
Beppu City (gee I love that name, it’s so fun to say) is a very popular hot springs resort area in the country. It boasts hundreds of natural hot springs, called onsen, and bath house resorts where bathers can go and relax. Plus, the output of natural hot spring water is only second to Yellow Stone National Park. However, there are a few hot springs that are simply too hot for humans to use, and thus they are for viewing only. This group of eight hot springs are called jigoku or “Hells,” and are located in two districts of Beppu City; Kannawa and Shibaseki District. Kannawa District is home to the umi jigoku (ocean hell), Oniishibozu jigoku (bald monk hell?) because the thick, muddy water creates large bubbles on the surface that look like Monk’s heads bobbing up and down. There is shiraike jigoku (white late hell) for the milky-white minerals in this hot spring’s water, kamado jigoku the “cooking pot hell” where a statue of an oni (loosely translated to demon, troll, or goblin but don’t act in the same manner as the Western idea of demons) stands with a cooking supplies, yama jigoku or “mountain hell.”
Over in Shibaseki District are the Tatsumaki jigoku or “spouting hell” because a natural geyser spouts from this hell every 30-40 minutes for a duration of 6-10 minutes at a time. But, the one hell that really is thought to be a gateway to hell is the final hot spring- Chinoike jigoku, or “Bloody Pond Hell.” As you can see from the photo above, this pond is blood red (because of the minerals in the water) but also is a constant boiling temperature of 78C (172.4 F) which is enough to “boil your hyde right off” as Henry put it. Along the natural rock wall, images of demons have been carved. This particular hotspring has a rather tragic reputation too, it used to be a site of torture and execution by the local warlords hundreds of years ago. Manage to make the wrong person mad? They could torture you by placing a hand, arm, or leg into the scolding water. Really make them upset? They’ll throw you right in to boil to death.
There are no associated ghost stories that I could find for this gateway to hell, but wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few only passed around by the locals.
Our next stop isn’t a gateway to hell, so to speak, but a popular suicide destination- the Tojinbo Cliffs of Fukui Prefecture. I’ve personally been to these cliffs, but at the time of my visit I had no idea of their deadly reputation as a suicide spot. On the show I shared a story about using a toilet at their visitors center, but you’ll have to listen to the archive to hear it. (^_~) It’s a little after the first commercial break I think.
Anyway, the cliffs are natural basaltic rock which have been worn away over the past centuries, but this has created a plunging 90 degree drop into the Sea of Japan off the cliffs. I shared to origin story of the cliffs’ name on the show, and a few ghost stories. On average 25 people a year take their lives off of these rocks. One retired policeman, Yukio Shige, became distraught with the amount of bodies being pulled from the cliffs each year. So, he started patrolling the cliffs for people who were potentially going to commit suicide, and convince them to reconsider. Since he started patrolling in 2003, he and his group of volunteers estimate that they have convinced over 500 people to not commit suicide. The group also keeps in touch with the people who they have stopped from jumping.
However, there are still the spirits of those who passed before Shige and his group started their patrolling duties. The most reported paranormal sighting at the cliffs would be shadow people apparitions replaying their deaths or full bodied apparitions of the deceased looking over the cliffs to the sea beyond. Every August during Obon time (when the spirits of the dead are said to return to earth to visit) stories of ghosts at Tojinbo spread around the entire country.
Tojinbo Cliffs remains a popular natural feature to visit however, there is a visitors center, restaurants, and gift shops not too far off the main cliff hiking area.
Yureizaka is the name of our next destination, it liturally translates to “Ghost Hill.” There are many ghost hills around Japan, but the most notable one is in Minato Ward in Tokyo. Kit Nakamura wrote a wonderful article about the mystic Ghost Hill for the Japan Times, and I encourage everyone to read it. I learned about the Ghost Hill thanks to Haunted Tokyo Tours, a ghost tour group run by an American named Lilly who has lived in Tokyo for 30 years and is an paranormal investigator.
The final ghost story I shared was about Japan’s first samurai, Taira no Masakado (903-940AD.) He lived during the Heian Era, when the capital of Japan was in Kyoto, not Tokyo as it is today. At the time Tokyo was a fishing village called Edo (pronounced Eh-do). Masakado wasn’t a fan of the ruling Imperial Government, and decided to create his own kingdom in the area known as Saitama today, and then declared himself the new Emperor of Japan. The still ruling Emperor, however, didn’t take this too well, and ordered for Masakado to be caught and executed. It only took two months for his command to be fulfilled. Masakado’s head was brought back to Kyoto and put on display to the public. However, Masakado’s spirit wasn’t at rest and one night in an eerie green light, possessed his head once again, and flew it out of Kyoto back to his home near Edo. Witnesses reported seeing his green-glowing head float along the countryside of Japan looking for his body. Meanwhile, his body reanimated and hobbled along trying to find his head! It must have walked into the sea however, because his body was never seen of again.
Masakado’s head however, tired for flying over the country in search for his body, eventually crash-landed on a hill in Edo. The terrified fishing village locals found his head, washed it in a nearby pond, and them buried it in a tomb to honor his spirit. The hill where his head landed was named Masakado no Kubizuka or “the hill of Masakado’s head.” It lay in that burial tomb until the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Now, that little fishing village of Edo had transformed into the Nation’s capital of Tokyo in those intervinigng years, and now Masakado no Kubizuka was located in the growing Otemachi district of Tokyo. The Ministry of Fiance was transforming that area of the city into the financial district, and Masakado’s head was taking up prime real estate. So, the Ministry of Finance attempted (somewhat successfully) to flatten Masakado’s Hill and fill in the pond where his head had been cleaned nearly a thousand years prior. The Ministry built an office building, but less than a two years working in the building, 14 employees had died of either accidents, illness, or other incidents with many other employees reported injuries to their legs, hands, or arms. Because of the mounting fear of the building being on cursed ground, the Ministry of Finance razed the part of their building that was located on Masakado’s ground. His tomb was rebuilt and incorporated into and is honored today as a revered spirit. A side note here, Kanda Myojin Shrine has been around for 1,270 years, but on that exact spot. It was moved by the military decree of Shogun Tokagawa Ieyasu when he built his castle in Edo/ Tokyo. It is said that whenever Kanda Myojin gets into disrepair, as what happened several times before and after WWII, Masakado’s ghost would appear until the shrine was cleaned up.
During the occupation of Japan after WWII, American forces attempted to raze Masakado’s Hill yet again. The American forces wanted to build a motor pool for their military vehicles, and decided that this hill was a good central point to do it. While a bulldozer attempted to dig into the hill, it flipped over killing the driver. More mysterious things happened to the American forces while they attempted to raze the shrine, such as accidents to soldiers and other misfortunes. After this string of accidents and following pleas from locals and local officials, the American forces decided to give up the project.
And that’s it my friends! I hope everyone enjoyed last night’s show and all these photos to go along with it!
Cheers,
Kat
Hiya Everyone,
Tonight, 5-27-2015, I will be a guest on my friend’s radio show program, Sit, Chat, & Laugh with the Lynch’s on Z Talk Radio.
The show runs from 8-10PM EST, and I’ll be on from 8:30PM. I’ll be talking about my adventures in Gettysburg, my previous book Haunted Hoosier Halls: Indiana University, and about my upcoming book, Ohio’s Haunted Crimes.
Come join us!
Tonight on the Paranormal View we have guest psychic Lynne Bell. Henry and I have worked with her on previous investigations. Join us from 8-10PM EST at http://para-x.com/