Phantoms and Monsters

A Haven For Lost Spirits
Bull Shark Found in the Ohio River Near Olmstead, Illinois
Girl's Body Generated Two Kidneys That Replaced Failing Pair
Unusual Atmospheric Formation...Cloud? Portal?

Posted: 17 May 2010 12:16 PM PDT

cbs2 - Rialto, Ca - On the corner of Riverside Avenue and Second Street there is a historic cornerstone of the Rialto community -- the First Christian Church of Rialto.

"It was built in 1906-07."

The original handcrafted pews line the chapel and the same stained glass windows shed light on some spooky stories.

"You're being watched."

Floating around…

"You could see objects behind her, they said, and no feet."

Parapsychologist Tom Hagman believes the kitchen of the church is the portal for the ghosts, where they come and go."

"I feel about three entities are here right now -- one man, two women."

Neighbors have had their own encounters.

"There's a girl with her hair down to her shoulder."

Perhaps the most popular reported paranormal sighting is the one about Kristina Hendrickson.

"We've had three séances to try to get her released."

Kristina's father bought the church so it wouldn't be torn down. In 1967 at age 12 Kristina died of Leukemia. The building is named after her.

"He brought her ashes here, displayed case in her memory."

Decades after her death, there have been reported sightings of a girl ghost fitting Kristina's description.

"A young girl about 11 or 12."

There is a photo of a staircase inside the church, next to Kristina's belongings.

"There was an image, some kind of ghostly shape or something on that picture that wasn't there when I took it."

A group of children touring the church saw something on the same stairs.

"Couple little girls started screaming and said they had seen a ghost."

But the kids had never seen the photo before the tour.

Those who visit the church religiously say Kristina's spirit hasn't been seen since her father passed. But some believe the church's eerie elegance will always attract ghostly gatherings.

"There is a long time energetic environment that has been built here from the years and years and years of people praying; people praying for souls. So they find their way here."

Click for video

Click for cbs2 video
____________________

THE LITTLE GIRL IN THE WINDOW

This building is the home of the Rialto Historical Society and I am the historian of the Historical Society. The photographer, Rich McInnis, did not see anything on the stairway when he snapped the photo. He was shocked to see the image after taking the film to a one-hour photo development service. A few days after this photo was taken, I was leading a tour of elementary school students through the church. I had not told them about the image in the photo, but four girls began screaming that they had seen the ghost of a woman with black hair and a white dress standing in the exact same spot where the image on the photo appeared. The entire class panicked and the teacher had a fit after seeing her normally well-behaved class go completely out of control.

I have spent 20 years at the intensely haunted old church building that is now occupied by the Rialto Historical Society. I have a Ph.D. in soil science from the University of California at Riverside, did scientific research for years, always ridiculed any suggestions of the supernatural, and I was a life-long atheist until the foundations of my belief system were blasted to pieces by my experiences with ghosts. I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would ever believe in something that seemed so ridiculous to me as ghosts. The stories began with the discovery of a very appealing little girl ghost whose ashes had been kept in the church. She was sent on her way after three very emotional seances, but other ghosts remain to haunt the church. Two different pairs of Rialto policemen have told me of encountering the ghost of a woman in a Victorian dress on two different occasions after answering a burglar alarm after midnight. Both of these encounters occurred at the base of the same stairway that is shown in the attached photo. Dozens of other people have also convincingly told me of their ghostly experiences in the church.

I have written a book about my experiences in the church that is called "The Little Girl in the Window: A True Ghost Story." It was published in June 2008 and is available on Amazon.com. My ghost book tells of scores of extraordinary ghostly encounters that I experienced along with other witnesses. I have recorded minutely detailed notes of every incident and I have written the book with the greatest care to describe exactly what happened. Some of the incidents are similar to those commonly described in ghost stories, such as the sound of footsteps without a visible person to make them, but other bizarre things have happened that I have never seen mentioned elsewhere. One example is a drinking glass that disappeared from beside my dinner plate only to instantly reappear from thin air several minutes later at the same spot where I had last seen it. I am not crazy because there was another witness to this event. I was also dumbfounded to learn that genuine psychics truly exist. I invited many people to investigate the church, and two of them, a man and a woman, proved to have astounding agreement with what I knew about the ghosts and with each others' observations. They had certainly never met when I first learned each ones conclusions about the ghosts and realized that they agreed as closely as if they had both been describing living people rather than unseen spirits. The man, Tom Hagman, is a ghost investigator of more than 30 years experience who had made many visits to investigate the ghosts in the church and to attempt to send them on their way. The very psychic woman, Cathy Mancinci, became a close friend of mine and of Tom and has since helped him many times in his work in the old church and in other haunted buildings. The old church building is a very unusual haunted structure because of the discovery of a ghost portal in the kitchen area. This was reported in precisely the same location on three separate occasions by psychics who came to visit the old church without hearing what others had to say about it. They concluded that this allows ghosts to enter and leave the church and accounts for the large number of ghosts there.

The ghosts in the church have been discussed in large newspaper stories in three different inland Southern California newspapers and the haunted historical society building has become well known in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties. This has drawn many people to our museum.

John Anthony Adams, Historian of the Rialto Historical Society - www.arizonashaunted.net

NOTE: A reader sent me an account on the location a while back. She stated that the apparition on the stairway had been debunked by an investigative team though other groups have had witnessed paranormal activity on the same stairway. The reader pointed out that she had witnesses several apparitions and strange activity in the kitchen area...Lon

A Haven For Lost Spirits

Bull Shark Found in the Ohio River Near Olmstead, Illinois

Posted: 17 May 2010 11:13 AM PDT

wlwt - A commercial fisherman said he found a shark in the Ohio River.

The fisherman found the two-foot bull shark already dead on a boat ramp Thursday morning in Olmsted, Ill. It appeared the shark washed up after flood waters receded.

Bull sharks can survive in fresh water and have been known to travel up the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico.

"(It's) pretty much the only species that can get that far up river," said Chris Pierson, director of husbandry at the Newport Aquarium.

But Pierson said it's unlikely that this shark swam all the way to Illinois.

"My guess with this shark, it probably didn't swim up there. It was probably left there," Pierson said.

As for the potential for attacks, Pierson said you shouldn't worry too much about it.

"Stories of people being attacked by bull sharks in rivers are very unusual," he said. However, "The story that started 'Jaws' happened in 1916. And it was all based on facts of people being attacked by a shark in a river in New Jersey. It probably wasn't a great white shark. It was probably a bull shark."

But Friday afternoon, Tony Gerard, a biology professor at Shawnee Community College, said he physically observed the shark Thursday and said it is a spiny dogfish shark.

Gerard told KFVS-TV that it was more likely that a boat worker caught it in the Gulf of Mexico and dumped it in the Ohio River. He said the fin was cut off, which is common in the Gulf where people catch them and cut them off to avoid injury.

Gerard told the station that this is not a freshwater-tolerant shark and if it were alive at some point in the Ohio River, it would be the first time he knows of this type of shark living in the area.

Bull Shark Found in the Ohio River Near Olmstead, Illinois

Girl's Body Generated Two Kidneys That Replaced Failing Pair

Posted: 17 May 2010 10:51 AM PDT

dailymail - A girl left seriously ill when both her kidneys failed astounded medical experts by growing two new ones.

Angel Burton suffered from painful kidney infections from birth to the point where she required surgery at the age of five.

But surgeons were amazed to discover the little girl had four kidneys, with two new fully-formed organs sitting on top of her old ones.

Angel Burton now aged eight. Her mother Claire said: 'It's a real miracle. It's absolutely amazing that none of her earlier scans picked the extra kidneys up. We're just so grateful to have Angel back to her happy, healthy self'

And the new ones had taken over the role of the others, meaning she was effectively 'cured' of kidney failure.

Now, three years on, Angel, now eight, is fighting fit and her family are still thankful for the miracle that changed her life.

She has an rare condition known as 'duplex kidney' - common to just a handful of people in Britain.

A duplex kidney is fused to the other at the centre and may share or have an independent ureter draining urine to the bladder.

In Angel's case both her kidneys are 'duplex' and fused to the other. Each has a separate ureter, meaning that she has four kidneys and four ureters.

Doctors believe the initial scans missed the extra kidneys because they sat immediately on top of each other and would have shown up as one.

Angel's mother, Claire Burton, 32, from Louth, Lincolnshire gave birth to her daughter in 2001 but within months her baby's health started to decline.

Doctors performed tests and she was diagnosed with bilateral reflux, which meant that the valves to her bladder weren't working properly and urine was getting into her kidneys, causing infections.

Angel's condition continued to be monitored and she was regularly screened for infections and given kidney scans.

On one check-up it was revealed her kidneys had suffered serious scarring and she would have to have an operation.

She underwent surgery at Sheffield Children's Hospital in October 2007 to create an artificial valve but during the operation doctors spotted the extra kidneys.

Mrs Burton, who has two other children with husband of ten years, Michael, said: 'They'd been in there an hour and a quarter when the surgeon came out.

He said: 'We've found something very, very strange considering the amount of scans Angel's had this year.'

'He went on to explain they'd put a camera in Angel's bladder so they could repair the valves. They'd found the two openings that were supposed to be there and they'd gone ahead and repaired the two valves.

'But then they'd found two more openings and when they'd put the camera up, these openings led up to two more perfectly healthy kidneys, just sitting on top of the other ones.

'He said: 'They are totally independent. We are just stunned that these have never been picked up on a scan. She's been having intensive scanning for five years and they've never shown up. It looks like the healthy ones have taken over.''

She said: 'It's a real miracle. It's absolutely amazing that none of her earlier scans picked the extra kidneys up. We're just so grateful to have Angel back to her happy, healthy self.'

With her extra kidneys doing all the work of her old ones, Angel, now eight, is fully recovered and looking forward to a healthy future.

Prasad Godbole, consultant paediatric urologist at Sheffield Children's Hospital who operated on Angel said: 'I was surprised we had one (a duplex) in Angel because none of the previous x-rays had shown that. Sometimes you could miss it but I was surprised because looking at all the previous x-rays there was no suggestion of this. Her kidneys are working fine.'

Girl's Body Generated Two Kidneys That Replaced Failing Pair

Unusual Atmospheric Formation...Cloud? Portal?

Posted: 17 May 2010 10:01 AM PDT

MUFON witness statement: During the afternoon of May the 15th, 2010 a few friends of mine took some pictures of this strange formation in the clouds. They said that this long cylinder formation did not seem to be moving and after about 5 minutes or so slowly dissipated. From their description of the event it did not sound as if it was some kind of craft but I found the pictures so interesting that I wanted to find out if this is a naturally occurring event. So far I have not been able to find anything like it. Take a look at the pic and see for yourself.

NOTE: this was seen in an undisclosed location in Virginia. Very interesting...especially with the description of not moving then dissipating. Possibly a portal? Any thoughts? Lon

Unusual Atmospheric Formation...Cloud? Portal?

Have you had a close encounter or witnessed something unusual?
Send us an email

Become a fan of 'Phantoms and Monsters' at Facebook

Listen to our segment
'Strickly Paranormal: For Those Seeking the Truth!'

Anomalist Books - works on maverick science, unexplained mysteries, unorthodox theories, strange talents, and unexpected discoveries. Please check out their excellent and diverse catalog