Hiya Everyone,
I’m busy converting the website over to host comics and become a center of all publishing activities that I do. So hold onto your hats, change is a-comin’!
Hiya Everyone!
The weekend of Halloween 2015 was a rather spooky one for the ParaView Crew and the Ghost Soldiers– we spent it at the Antietam Battlefield, topping the weekend off doing a live show at the haunted Pry House Museum. We spent a lot of time that weekend hiking the trails around the Antietam Battlefield, Cat and I spotting ghosts every once in a while which we would turn around and describe what they were wearing to Pat and Doug who would either say “yeah, that could be something,” or “nah, that wouldn’t have been here.” Personally, I don’t look up the history of locations (if I can avoid it) before walking through to play “ghost spotter.” That way, when I do run into a resident spirit, I can describe who I am seeing to people who do know the history so my vision can be validated. This worked well at Gettysburg 2 (April 2015) where I saw three very distinctive spirits and described them to Pat who backed up that they would have been there. The first two in Gettysburg that I witnessed were two Confederate soldiers who were wearing gray jackets with gray capes which both had red piping lining. Apparently, this was the piping markers for Confederate artillery! Had no idea! The third spirit I ran into was a Union officer, whose hat looked floppy, and he was wearing a dark blue jacket and pants with gold piping. What I described there was something to what Union officers would have worn at the time. Yet again, I had no idea what the different piping, colors, or badges mean on military clothes. Still really don’t to this day since military history doesn’t interest me.
Henry, Tabby Cat Gasch, and I received our official “breakfast food” nicknames during that weekend. Pat McCormick, Doug McReynolds, and Craig Rupp already had existing breakfast food names; “Waffles,” “Syrup,” and “Pancakes” respectively. Henry gained the nickname of Molasses, because he walked so slowly around the battlefields, much like Doug, so they are slow going breakfast toppings. Cat Gasch is “Fruit-loops” or just Fruity, while my official breakfast nickname is “Fruity Pebbles” or just Pebbles, mostly because with my red hair and short height, I look like Pebbles from the Flintstones.
We met up Friday night to hang out, and it turned out that the hotel were Doug and Pat were staying was haunted! Some poor drowning victim kept bothering Cat! Saturday morning we spent roaming the battlefields, seeing a few interesting (paranormal) sites along the way.
Our first stop was at Dunker Church, where we chatted with a local police officer! Dunker Church saw a lot of Confederate fighting and is located West of the Bloody Lane. Cat and I got the sense that were was a female spirit there.
This is the West Woods, where Pat and I ran into a bunch of Union soldiers and crossed over quite a few! The interesting difference with the spirits here versus Gettysburg, is that not too many crossings, times were those who are sensitive help lingering spirits cross over to the other side, happen. In Gettysburg, there are soldiers who are ready to cross and willing to do so when given the oppurtunity. Antietam, on the other hand, the soldiers are very suspicous of spirit mediums trying to cross them over. A Union officer, with a big bushy white beard and white tuffs of hair on his head, told me they were from Maryland when Pat was starting to cross over spirits. We hadn’t seen the Maryland monument yet, we were a few meters in front of it and only saw the marker and the information board later!
Funny thing, there were a small group of very young (18-20 year old) Union soldiers who were absolutely not going to cross. They hid from us in some out houses…
Our next spot was the Joseph Puffenburger Farm, where Cat had a very profound experience. We also hiked around the farmland, which is where Henry got the nickname of “Molasses.”
Henry taking a call from Walgreen’s (again) while visiting the Bloody Lane!
The Sunken Road, aka the Bloody Lane was a massacre, and ghosts were seen while we were there (mostly to the North as we hiked the ridge.) When we walking the ridge with the group, I saw someone on their stomach, army crawling, looking at our group and then ducking down again. The man was located at the top of hill, looking down onto us walking up the hill from the Bloody Lane. I quickly mentioned to Pat what I had just seen, and Pat explained that there were snipers from New York State who picked off the Confederate soldiers standing on the Bloody Lane. Also, while hiking around the top of the hill, I looked North and saw a Union Officer on horseback. He crossed a path, and disappeared.
We broadcast live from the Pry House Field Hospital Museum. It was an eventful night, and you can listen to the show here. We really could feel the energy of all the emotions and personalities who had walked the hall of the Pry House, especially on the second floor. We heard people talking on the second floor, the apparition of a woman has been seen looking out of the second story window after a fire had engulfed the house, and I watched a shadow person run by me, in a brightly lit hallway, on the second floor. Also, at the end of the broadcast the lights in our room (the kitchen) started to turn on and off on their own. There is a motion sensor for the lights (they automatically turn off if no one is moving for a certain amount of time), I was sitting right in front of it! So, given that I am a living being and squirm around in my chair, I doubt the light would time out and turn off as long as someone was sitting there. The lights turning on and off were really odd.
Super creepy wax dolls at the Pry Museum!
The barn was very creepy and during the battle, it was a medial triage center for the Union Army. In it we encountered many Union soldiers’ spirits and attempted to cross some of them over. Cat witnessed two apparitions who were glowing white, and I saw a white glowing orb, roughly the size of the moon, floating outside the barn. Funny thing is, it was an overcast night and while we were out in the barn, it began the rain. So no, it wasn’t the moon that I saw.
It was an interesting trip, and I’m looking forward to going again!
Cheers,
Kat
On this upcoming Saturday’s show, the ParaView Crew will be joined by returning guests Pat McCormick and Doug McReynolds of the Ghost Soldiers plus we welcome back paranormal author Cat Gasch to the show! We’ve reviewed our photos and audio from our weekend at Antietam Battlefield and the Pry House Museum, and will be sharing it with the listeners of the Paranormal View!
8-10PM EST February 20, 2016 at http://para-x.com/
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.
Please join me at this awesome event! 
[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 un
expected 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!
