Phantoms and Monsters

Alien Abductee: Let Me Introduce Myself
Search For Pennsylvania Bigfoot, Mountain Lions Gains Momentum
Photo: Haunted Skillman Institute, New Jersey
Haunted Earth: The Mummies of St. Michan's Church, Dublin

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 02:23 PM PST

About a week ago, I posted a few UFO videos taken by 'alienphotog'. I started to look at his other videos that referenced his contact with extraterrestrials. Intrigued, I forwarded an invitation for him to present his story. The following is his introduction along with a series of videos. The plan is to post installments where 'alienphotog' will go into more detail of experiences.

* * * * * * * * * *
On paper I'm your average about 30 year old guy. Kids … dog … wife … My alter-ego however, well he is a different cat altogether. An alien abductee he proclaims through my very lips … a hybrid too. That's right we're both part alien. People like Jesus and Mohammad were as well. Which is really quite obvious to anyone paying attention to their stories.

But I'm not alone … and boy was that a pleasant surprise the day the my friends above informed me of that. Apparently it has more to do with this recent surge in population we have seen on this would have ever imagined. Some would say just in the nick of time too!

This 2012 stuff ain't Y2K again.

That's right. Folks like Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, Billy Jo Armstrong of Green Day, Jimi Hendrix and Dave Groehl of the Foo Fighters have a good hunk a' alien in them as well. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Which again, is really quite obvious if you are paying any attention to their story. So few people actually listen …

But a few do, so here I am. Your average everyday guy … I do dishes, walk the dog, then talk to aliens telepathically. They're angels you know? I mean … who else did you think the angels would be? So all this "listening to voices in your head" is actually a more successful method of this "prayer" stuff we've been doing for so long now … and almost no true understanding of the dynamics of the whole thing. Like yelling in a tin can with a turnip tied to the other end of the string.

So that's why I'm here. To explain some of the dynamics. Enjoy. Soak it in and use it and let's move forward … improve this place a little. Bit of a mess isn't it? That's my only agenda.

I want to tell you all I appreciate you listening to what I have to say. That means a lot to me.

Oh and for the non-believers …well … any parent knows full well I have better things to be doing than just making crap up with 2 kids. So maybe you can give me the benefit of the doubt for a few minutes? See what happens. Aw, come on! It'll be an adventure.

I'm legit. Simple as that guys.

Thanks Again,

-AlienPhotog

P.S. Feel free to email me if you have any questions. I'm always happy to help people sort their experiences out.

AlienPhotog@Gmail.com

Search For Pennsylvania Bigfoot, Mountain Lions Gains Momentum

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 12:27 PM PST

pennlive - Eric Altman is awaiting test results on "some possible hair samples" he collected recently in Pennsylvania's "hot area" for bigfoot reports, Clearfield and Jefferson counties.

That part of the state accounts for most of Pennsylvania's creditable reports of bigfoot, or sasquatch, sightings each year, explained the director of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society.

In Central Pennsylvania, he said, Adams and York counties, "areas that are more remote, a little more wooded," provide some reports, but nothing like the dozens that have come out of the state's northcentral wilds.

In addition, Altman noted, investigators for the society have recorded "some unusual footprints that we can't really say are bigfoot."

Pending the test result on that hair or the discovery of better tracks, he said "the witness testimony is the best evidence that we've collected" in support of bigfoot's hidden presence in Pennsylvania. The society maintains a database of the reports, collected through an extensive survey form employed on each reported sighting or evidence.

In that database are reports like the following from Adams County.

"Feb. 15, 2007, Caledonia State Park: Witness was leaving work around 3:30 a.m., driving down Rt. 30 and took a right turn onto Rt. 233 north through Caledonia Park. After going about two miles, he grazed a deer and stopped to see if there was any damage.

"The witness could hear something big moving around and then heard the loudest cry or howling he had ever heard in his life. He jumped in his truck and drove away from the area. The witness stated he knows wildlife screams and sounds, but had never heard anything like this before."

Loren Coleman, one of the world's most published cyrtozoologists (researchers in the study of hidden species), said, "I'm very cautious of sound sightings." He noted that even the white-tailed deer is capable of producing vocalizations that most people do not recognize.

However, he believes there is something real causing some of the bigfoot reports. In the past month, he said, he's heard of at least 10 legitimate reports, in the northwestern U.S., not in Pennsylvania.

And, Coleman expects a bigfoot-type hominid - the orang pendek - to be documented in Indonesia in the foreseeable future by a well-funded, scientific team that has been searching for the species more than 20 years.

In Pennsylvania, he believes it's more likely that some unknown species of "mystery cat" will be documented, and even more likely that some smaller cryptid (hidden species) will be found.

Chad Arment, a Lancaster County man who writes and publishes books on cryptozoology, also expects a Pennsylvania discovery to involve something smaller than a bigfoot or a mountain lion. He noted the discovery in just the past 10 years in New Jersey of the largest terrestrial leech in North America.

Like most cryptid enthusiasts, however, he does not completely rule out the presence in Pennsylvania even of bigfoot.

Arment said, "There are some interesting old stories, particularly in Central Pennsylvania, of gorilla-like creatures.

"In Pennsylvania it would be a longshot. We do have so many people here, but at the same time we do have a fair amount of habitat."

Scott Weidensaul, a Friedensburg nature writer who researched cryptozoology for parts of his 2003 book, The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species, said, "It breaks my heart to say it, but I just don't think it's true. We would have had a body by now.

"There is something fundamental to our make-up that makes us believe in big, hairy monsters in the woods. Almost every culture has legends of large, hairy men in the woods. I want there to be big, hairy men in the woods."

Altman, on the other hand, commented, "I used to be about 85 percent positive that there was something out there. I still think that there's something out there. I believe people are seeing something they can't explain. But, most cases can be ruled off as misidentifications."

After 13 years of bigfoot evidence collection and investigation, Altman now places his confidence level at about 75 percent.

The stigma attached to reporting a sighting of a bigfoot hinders the search, he noted. "A lot of people who have these sightings don't want to be made fun of. A lot of people would like to keep a low profile.

"People often come out of the woodwork 10, 15, 20 years after the fact, when they finally feel comfortable enough to talk about it."

Such was the case in the wake of trail-camera photos that circulated on the Internet in fall 2007. Many claimed the images from Allegheny National Forest showed a bigfoot crawling about on all fours. The Pennsylvania Game Commission said it was a bear that had lost much of its hair to mange.
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pennlive - Any day now, e-mailboxes, Internet chat rooms and forums likely will begin buzzing about a mountain lion killed somewhere in Pennsylvania, complete with photos of a giant cougar.

If the past repeats itself, the photos will in reality show a mountain lion hit by a pick-up truck on a highway near Flagstaff, Ariz., and subsequently put down by an officer of the Arizona Department of Public Safety, or a giant cat from Washington state that was reproduced without permission from an issue of the Boone and Crocket Club's magazine.

Such hoaxes have surfaced at least once or twice each year for decades, and they have become more frequent with the spread of the Internet.

However, some, more legitimate reports of sightings continue to surface, including hundreds every year in Pennsylvania.

While they're not intentional hoaxes, most of those reports subsequently provide no physical evidence to prove the claim or are shown to be cases of mistaken identity involving bobcats, housecats, coyotes and other species.

None have produced the evidence to confirm a modern-day, naturally occurring population of mountain lions.

"Pennsylvania's last known wild eastern mountain lion was killed in Berks County in 1874. And, except for Florida, the eastern mountain lion is believed to have been extirpated from the East Coast of the United States by 1900. But, over the years, mountain lion sightings have been reported throughout the state," said Jerry Feaser, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

"The overwhelming majority of cases we investigate are proven to be mistaken identity based on examination of tracks, photos or other physical evidence. Some cases are inconclusive.

"And, while some believe mountain lions exist in the wilds of Pennsylvania, we have no conclusive evidence to support such views."

He continued, "We have hundreds of thousands of hunters who are in the woods each year and no one has brought out a dead mountain lion yet. Trail cameras have only captured photos of bobcats, fishers and coyotes in areas that were alleged to be inhabited by mountain lions. No conclusive tracks, scat, hair or carcasses have been found.

"If someone does encounter a mountain lion, the most logical explanation would be that the animal escaped from or was released by someone who either legally or illegally brought the animal into Pennsylvania."

However, said Loren Coleman, one of the world's leading cryptozoologists (researchers of hidden species), "Pennsylvania is one of the better states" as a probable home to the mystery cats. "You have a tremendous deer population and then you have an amazing amount of terrain" that holds habitat perfect for large cats.

He prefers to call them "mystery cats," rather than mountain lions, "until we identify what they are," but believes "there's certainly some kind of large cats in your state that haven't been identified yet." He said he's seen the tracks and the claw marks left by the cats on sheep pens.

Coleman warned, "It's going to take a lot of evidence" to prove their existence. "It's a political issue, as well as a zoological issue."

Mystery cats are the most reported cryptid species in the eastern U.S., but they've escaped full detection and classification because they exist in the "very low numbers of an apex predator, and it's part of feline behavior not to be seen. Also, humans tend not to look up, while felines want to be above," he said.

In addition, Coleman noted, "cryptids often hide as dopplegangers to a known population. In Pennsylvania, the mountain lion reports are there historically, but I think there is another mystery cat, another population of cats hidden in the mountain lion reports."

Scott Weidensaul, a Schuylkill County nature write with some familiarity with cryptozoological research among his credits, commented, "If you asked me 20 years ago, I'd have said no. If you ask me today, I'd say it's highly unlikely, with the exception of a released or escaped pet."

Pointing to the huge amount of roadways crossing nearly all parts of Pennsylvania and yet never accounting for a documented mountain kill road-kill, he said, "Roads are a very effective way of sampling mountain lion populations."

On the other hand, asked Chad Arment, a Lancaster County cryptozoology author and publisher, "Is there stuff off there that haven't been discovered because no one's really looking for it?"

Photo: Haunted Skillman Institute, New Jersey

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 02:46 PM PST

This is the original text (unedited): My roommate went to the abandoned insane asylum town in Skillsman, NJ today and took about 50 bazillion photos for one of her classes for a project. She showed uploaded them all on facebook and her friend who went with her pointed out something very odd in one photo of a rundown building. And my roommate didn't notice it at first, but it looks like two school children looking out the window. It sent chills down my spine when I saw it, and she didn't even say look at the window. I immediately saw this and got creeped out, and I'm the last person who believes in this type of stuff.

Here's the original photo she emailed to me. It's actually creeping her out pretty good, so if anyone can tell me any logical explanation, I'd love to tell her it's something else so she's not freaking out about it. She won't even look at the rest of her photos now.

Someone she knows pointed out that it may be the old screens in the window fading in color or something since they're old. But I haven't a clue!

NOTE: After some digging, I have learned that the buildings on this property were supposed to have been razed...though, the claim here is that this photo was taken of a building on the original property. This photo and the interpretation may be a stretch, but I have little doubt that the Skillman location is (or was) haunted. Please read the accounts below...Lon

UPDATE: 'SW' sent me an image (below) of one of the other windows on the original photo.

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The Snake Pit Called Skillman

In Montgomery Township is a facility unique among New Jersey's abandoned mental hospitals, as it was not originally conceived as an institution to house the mentally ill—its original purpose was the research and treatment of epilepsy. Over the past 100 years, the facility has been referred to by several names, such as Skillman, the State Village of Epileptics, and most recently, the North Princeton Developmental Center. Perhaps most telling of all of the institution's nicknames though, is the moniker it earned in the local press at the height of its operation: "the Snake Pit of New Jersey."

The original property—the State Village for Epileptics—operated as a complete, self-sustained village, including hospitals, housing, farmland, cemeteries, a power plant, and a wastewater treatment facility.

The State of New Jersey closed the North Princeton Developmental Center in 1995, and the last patients were removed in 1998 and the complex was closed for good. Afterwards, the property went into disrepair and many of the buildings were left vacant and not properly maintained, and the place rapidly deteriorated. Up until recently, the many buildings of the vast complex stood vacant, derelict, and ramshackle.

The State of New Jersey closed the North Princeton Developmental Center in 1995, and the last patients were removed in 1998. After its closure, the property went into disrepair and many of the buildings were left vacant and not properly maintained, so the place rapidly deteriorated.

Montgomery Township purchased the 230-acre property, which borders Route 601 and Burnt Hill Road, from the state in January 2007 for $5.95 million to create Skillman Village. Demolition and asbestos cleanup began in early July 2007 and at this writing, over 93 buildings on site have been taken down, with about 10 buildings being saved for their historical importance.

Demolition started only after county officials eased local residents' fears about exposure to asbestos and other harmful substances by claiming demolition would not begin until after the school was over and would be completed by early September before school began again. Environmentalists were on site re-testing for any contamination and the township was happy to report that the health risks were minimized.

The Courier News (9/11/07) reported that Montgomery Township Mayor Cecilia Xie Birge said the site was "'beautiful' once the buildings disappeared – a far cry from the property once being a hangout for vandals and visitors after it was publicized in a state magazine as being haunted."

But then again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Weird NJ was invited to photograph the property one last time before the bulldozers and environmental crews began dismantling and clearing the site. These are the last pictures taken, and a few remembrances from the files.

Freaky Poetry and the Morgue at Skillman

One of my friends was determined to find the morgue, so we did. It was small: only four drawers. It smelled like the inside of a mausoleum. There were burnt candles on one of the trays.

A locker room we found looked like people had been in a mad rush to leave. Family photos, cans of food, hospital gowns, and freaky poems were all scattered about. I usually don't scare easily, but we heard noises so scary that we fled the building. –Karen W.

A Cold Slap in the Face at Skillman

Immediately after entering the building there was a feeling of dire mistake. Bam! It was like a slap in the face: pure darkness and extremely cold. My feet instantly lost feeling. Goose bumps formed that were so hard it was like my arm had Braille on it.

"We shouldn't be here," I thought.

The halls contained hundreds of doors, all wide open. We turned the corner and found ourselves inside the morgue. I stepped into the room, and the smell of stale air was inescapable. To my right on the counter were full bottles of formaldehyde and embalming fluid. The drawer where the body was kept was wide open.

Down the hall we found a room with a bed that had restraints on it, and in the closet we found patient files, a blood stained nurse's gown, and an EKG machine that still had lines on the printout from the last patient it was used on. –Brittany G.

Some Skillman Memories

When my dad was a kid, he got into a lot of scuffles in the schoolyard as well as into fights with his brothers. My grandpa deemed him "unruly," and sought help from the state to control him.

When my dad was 10, in 1965, he was sent to Skillman and stayed there for just over a year. Now, I always knew my dad was institutionalized as a child, but it wasn't until recently that he mentioned the name "Skillman." I showed him Issue #17 of Weird NJ, with the pics of Skillman, and he got chills. He can show me the window where his bunk was. He says he really wants to go there – he thought it was still operational until he read the story. I advised him not to go and get himself arrested.

The following is a first-hand account:

In your bunk, you had your bed and a little metal cabinet in which to store your belongings. My dad figured out a way to rig the door on the cabinet so he could quickly release it and use it as a shield at night, because often while you were sleeping another patient would try to attack you. He remembers several people, whose names I won't mention, but they sound like people straight out of a movie.

There was a doctor there that took blood work from my dad–he had no fingers, only thumbs. I asked my dad how the hell he could control a syringe, and he said he placed it between his palms and operated the plunger with his two thumbs.

There was a kid there that carried a suitcase wherever he went. It was filled with plastic bugs. He'd ask everyone if they wanted to see his bugs (they were REAL to him!). A girl my dad's age stabbed him in the back with a fork because he didn't want to be her boyfriend. My dad used to purposely put small splinters in his fingers on the playground because they would send him to see a cute blonde nurse.

My dad tells me there was a wing devoted to deformities, or so it seemed. And there was one boy in particular that he remembers had an oversized head. He said when he looked in the kid's eyes he could tell he was totally normal – his head was just huge, and my dad felt really bad for him.

One of the kids in my dad's bunk had fashioned keys from coat hangers for the massive doors. So he and my dad wandered the halls late at night. My dad also rigged his window. The nurses would unlock it during the day and while it was open he jammed the lock so that when they locked it, it sounded locked, but it wasn't. Then he could sneak outside some nights.

My dad said there was a 10 or 12-year-old boy that all the orderlies hated. And one day, he mysteriously drowned in the tub, but he never understood how because you weren't allowed to bathe without a nurse being present. Then he said – speaking of tubs – they would fill two tubs, one with scalding hot water, one with freezing water, and they'd put a child back and forth in the tubs as punishment. He said the place creeped him out then – there was always an eerie feeling. And looking at the pictures gave him the same feeling all over again.

He said something that broke my heart, too. All of the nurses and doctors told him he didn't belong there. He eventually was allowed to go home on weekends. He showed me a window in the basement, on the picture. He said that was their "day room." When my grandparents would drop him off on Sundays, he would watch through that window until he couldn't see their car anymore, and he would always get a lump in his throat knowing that they were leaving him there once again.

Skillman's Phantom Harmonica Player

This story is 100% true, completely legit, and not exaggerated by any means.

About two years ago, a few of my friends and I heard about the Skillman Asylum and agreed to go check it out. When Erin, Luis, Tony and I first got there, we took note of the "No Trespassing" signs, but being young and reckless, we decided to go anyway. We simply stepped over the chain that was blocking off the driveway to the asylum and walked about 20 or so yards until we got to the first building on the premises.

Looking at the building, we automatically got a sense of (for lack of a better word) "weirdness." We entered and immediately noticed the place was in ruins. There was graffiti everywhere, broken windows, holes in the wall, and everything was simply coated with a layer of dust and grime. Regardless, we continued along.

Eventually, we found the stairs to the basement. We walked down the stairs and immediately came face to face with one of the longest hallways I have ever seen in my entire life. It's probably one of the creepiest images I have in my memory. I just knew that this wasn't a place we should stick around.

We slowly walked down the hallway, repeatedly shining our flashlights behind us. We get to the end of the hallway, which ends in a T, and all of us sort of breathed a sigh of relief that we haven't yet been murdered. That's when the two guys in the group decided it would be hysterical to grab the flashlights and run. So they did.

At first, Erin and I started to freak out, and we were just about to go run after them when I decided to play my own little joke. I convinced Erin that all Luis and Tony were going to do was hide around a corner and scare the shit out of us when we came running after them. Instead, I said, "Let's wait here and hide from them. Eventually, they'll get bored once they realize we're not following and start looking for us."

Erin and I used our cell phones as pseudo-flashlights. We began banging on pipes in some feeble attempt to scare the boys. That's when we heard shuffling coming from one end of the hallway. Thinking it was the boys coming to find us, we got really quiet, with huge grins on our faces, thinking we were just about to get our revenge.

That's when the music started to play. At first, I tried to convince myself that it was some form of ring tone, but I knew it wasn't. It sounded like a harmonica, and I'm not gonna lie: it sounded pretty good. So Erin and I were pretty much freaking out when we realized that this was probably an elaborate plan the guys cooked up earlier in the night. We eventually get bored waiting for them and we walked back upstairs and outside to wait for them. Five minutes later, the boys came outside and they seemed kind of nervous, but in good humor all the same. "That was really funny with the harmonica shit, guys, you scared the crap out of us," said Luis.

Wait, what? Apparently, the guys were on the third floor of the building the entire time. While we were down in the basement banging on pipes, the guys were upstairs throwing around furniture to try to freak us out. Neither of us heard the commotion the others were making, but we all seemed to hear the music as if it was in the room right next to us. Erin and I even went as far as to do a (almost) full body search to try and find a harmonica on the boys, but no such luck.

To this day, they swear on their lives it wasn't them. And I sure as hell know it wasn't us either. -Lauren Maxwell

Ghosts Of Skillman Institute

I worked at the Skillman Institute for 15 years and was one of the last employees to leave. I live only five minutes from the Institute, so I'm very familiar with the area. I believe it is haunted, and I have seen and heard things myself.

On days when we used to work OT on the weekends, we would hear people walking and especially doors slamming. There was only one person in our office who was not afraid to work alone until one day when she heard someone walk into her office and close the door. She looked up from her desk to say "hello," and no one was there. She then saw a dark figure moving back out the door. She packed up her things and left immediately. This was a person that did not, in any way, believe in ghosts and always told us we were crazy when we talked about what we saw and heard. After that day, she never worked alone in the building.

On another occasion, two of us were there and heard keys jingling, a door opening and closing, and footsteps. We had been expecting a third coworker to arrive so I walked down the hall to greet her, only to find no one there. We both knew we heard her come in, so we looked in the parking lot, expecting to see her car, only it wasn't there. A half an hour later she arrived for work. There were many occasions where this sort of thing happened. The scary thing is that when we heard a bang or a loud noise, we would look at each other because we both heard it. It's not like only one of us heard it and it was just our imagination – it was real – we heard it!

Our building had three floors. The attic housed records from long, long ago and had little side rooms. There were beds in the little rooms, and little doorways – we had to duck under to get through them. Who slept there? We never really knew and never ventured up there alone.

The institute has its own graveyard, which is creepy, and it had a morgue too. When it was closing down, there were several auctions/sales for items that they wanted to get rid of. They were actually selling medical equipment and scalpels, and they even had an electric shock therapy machine. My husband wanted to buy it, but I refused to let him!

I have driven through the grounds several times since the closure and feel sad that it finally closed its doors. But in my heart, I do know that the ghosts are still living there. -Terrilk

Sources:
www.weirdnj.com
www.abovetopsecret.com

Haunted Earth: The Mummies of St. Michan's Church, Dublin

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 10:11 AM PST

Click for video

Chris states: Recently I visited in company with fellow team member Sean Dalton a most unusual and historic church in Dublin, Eire.

St Michan`s Church and crypt was first built in 1095 AD by early Danish settlers.

The church was totally rebuilt (using the old foundations) in 1685, and was later renovated in 1825.

The church has many famous associations, and not least that George Handel the famous composer first performed his iconic work, the Messiah by playing it on the church`s organ in 1724.

But the real interest is the original Danish catacombs below which contain a number of mummified bodies of which four are currently on public display. These bodies are naturally preserved by the dry magnesium enriched limestone that forms the bedrock of this structure.

Two famous Irish Protestant revolutionaries the Sheares brothers are entombed here after being executed in 1798 by the British, with the death mask of another, Theobald Wolfe Tone who was executed the same year placed on display.

Another famous connection is that the author Bram Stoker drew inspiration by visiting the catacombs for his novel, `Dracula`.

The main reason for our visit was the catacombs, and here is my report.

NOTE: another excellent production from my friend Chris Halton of Haunted Earth Paranormal Investigations. Take some time and review Chris' investigation videos...I'm sure you won't be disappointed...Lon

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