Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition - Issue 2 - Phantom Cover by Phantom Encounters Newsletter

Issue 2: April 2011

phantom encounters Quarterly Edition

Phantom Birds

It’s a plucking mystery!

Author Neil Arnold looks at the mysterious avian spectres of London

ZOMBIE INVASION

Neil Arnold takes a look at some of the lesser known inhabitants of South-East England. Ask yourself, ‘How dead...is dead?

Inexplicable Tales

Higher education

Who was Arthur Findlay? Jason Day find out!!

The last laugh

Mike Hallowell joins the team

Black stick men

Jason Day takes an in-depth look at the ghosts of The Comedy Store

PLUS: Threat? Mystery? Fiend? Sara Kettley finds out more!

Sarc-astrology The Witch’s Kitchen Book Reviews And much, much more...

Returning to the airwaves July 2011

The UK’s Best Loved & Most Successful Paranormal Radio Show Returns For It’s Extraordinary Fifth Season

Issue 1: Oct-Dec 2010

phantom encounters Inside This Issue

Quarterly Edition

Phantom BIRDS OF LONDON - Author & Zooform specialist Neil Arnold investigates the strange legends and curious tales of London‘s avian spooksters. ~ Page 7

UFO‘s: Objects of mystery– Tim Jones looks at the mysterious nature of Ufo sightings ~ Page 17

Ghosts of the Comedy Store– Jason Day takes an in-depth look at the not-so-funny side as he examines the ghosts of The Comedy Store in Los Angeles. ~Page 19

Black stick men– Sara Kettley reports on the odd phenomena of Black Stick Men~ Page 27

from Beyond: My Fort PaulL experience Phantom Encounters guest Hayley Grant takes you through her emotional and enlightening experience on her first Fort Paull event.~ Page 31

Zombie Invasion– Neil Arnold takes a look at some of the lesser known inhabitants of South-East England. Ask yourself, ‗How dead...is dead?‘~ Page 33

Higher Education– Jason Day looks at the man behind the largest spiritual education facility in the UK; Arthur Findlay~ Page 38

Regular Features Inexplicable Tales Mike Hallowell takes a look at the weird and wonderful

Phantom Encounters event Listing Your first look at the latest locations and events

UFO Watch See what‘s creating a buzz in UFO circles

Book Reviews Add these to your Summer Reading List We take a look at the latest Paranormal Book releases.

SARC-Astrology Your Spring Stars We take a light hearted look at your Spring Stars‘

From The Witch‘s Kitchen DO try this at home. Herbal fun from the Witch‘s Kitchen?

Have something you think might fit our magazine? Feel free to email the team for article submissions, advertising or with any suggestions you have for next Quarters articles!

HISTORY COMES ALIVE AT

FORT PAULL NAPOLEONIC FORTRESS, East Yorkshire

Take a walk through East Yorkshire’s historic past at Fort Paull. Child friendly atmosphere: Play area, jungle gym and more. Budget Friendly Meals: Stop at The Dukes of York Bar for a meal. Delve into the location’s historic past, with trenches, vaults, tunnels and more… And stay for an overnight ghost hunt...if you dare!

Admission Prices: Adults £6 Children £5 Family Ticket £18 Open from 10am—6pm daily. Ghost Hunts by Arrangement with Phantom Encounters Ltd.

A message from::

The Phantom Encounters Team Spring has Sprung, The Sun Is Ris‘...I Wonder Where ‗Dem Spookies Is? Welcome to the second Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition! With 2011 flying by at an alarming speed and the very welcome return of the warmer weather, the team has new ventures (and adventures) in the works. Some we can talk about, others remain hermetically sealed to prevent the inevitable ‗leveraging‘ that comes with being part of this field. Jason has been hard at work finishing the last details on his ‗Haunted Grimsby‘ book for The History Press and has been commissioned by them for yet more work; it appears I shall be a ‗writers widow‘ for a while longer as his muses take him away. All is not lost however, as it gives me time to work on two ongoing projects, one for Phantom Encounters and one personal that shall see us having a very exciting 2012. Sorry, no details; as Dr River Song would say ‗Shhh...Spoilers!’ As an events company 2011 has seen us introducing our clients to more fantastic locations. Phantom Encounters are thrilled to be working closely with the team at Fort Paull in East Yorkshire to provide overnight ghost hunts in their historic Fort. Our February event was a sell out sensation and the response from those who attended has been phenomenal. It‘s going to be a location that sells out quickly, with June events already more than half booked with people no doubt taking advantage of our fantastic group booking discounts. This year will also see us conducting events in Summer at Mistley Place Park in Essex, a fantastic outdoor location that has never disappointed when it comes to activity. The exclusive Phantom Encounters location is the very site of the horrific witch duckings by The Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins during his reign of terror in 1645 and it‘s not one for the feint of heart! August will see the team take on a new location to the Phantom Encounters team, but one that is no doubt familiar to those of you who are fans of Most Haunted & Most Haunted Live...the infamous Morecambe Winter Gardens in Lancashire. Tickets for this event went on sale this week , so those of you who wish to sample the dark delights of this haunted theatre will need to book quickly to avoid disappointment. Remember, a £10 secures your place on any Phantom Encounters event. We‘ve had emails from some of our regular listeners and we are pleased to confirm that July will see the return of the UK‘s highest rated and best loved paranormal radio show ‗White Noise Paranormal Radio‘ in its new format and new home. Jason and I will be back after our much needed break with news and interviews with all of your favourite ‗para-celebs‘, competitions and perhaps a few surprises, but again...‘Shhh...Spoilers Sweetie!‘

See you on the Spooky Side! Kelly McKenzie-Day Editor

The Phantom Birds of London From The Poultrygeist and the Bird of Death to the Winged Wotsit and the mysterious terroriser of Lincoln’s Inn, Author and full time Monster hunter Neil Arnold takes a look at The Phantom Birds of London For centuries, the darkest corners and smog-ridden alleyways of the capital, have hidden a feast of fluttering phantoms. Terrifying, as well as quirky tales of spectral birds said to have flitted through ivy-strewn graveyards, historic hallways and village squares. Of all the yarns spun through the years pertaining to ghost stories relating to apparitions of birds, one stands above all others, but not because it is scary, but simply because it is amusing.

The ‘Poultrygeist’! This bizarre ghost story originates from around 1626 when Sir Francis Bacon, philosopher, was travelling with friend and physician to James I, Dr Witherborne, through Highgate in North London. During their journey the gentlemen discussed Bacons idea of preservation by refrigeration

which Witherborne laughed at. So, to prove a point Bacon halted the carriage at Pond Square and ran to purchase a hen. Once prepared, he stuffed the chicken with snow, bagged it and packed it with ice, thus creating the world‘s first frozen chicken. Unfortunately Bacon died shortly afterwards of pneumonia, but there were numerous reports of a ghostly chicken wandering the square, its eerie shrieks heard on several occasions. The most documented cases of the ‗poultrygeist‘, as it was to become known, emerged during World War II when air raid wardens often saw the phantom, with one man actually attempting to catch the ghost and eat it! A Mrs Greenhill, after seeing the spook, commented, ―It was a big, whitish bird…it would perch on the lower boughs of the tree opposite our house.‖

The Phantom Birds of London In 1943 a half-plucked chicken was seen on the road through Pond Square by a British airman Terence Long who was strolling through the area. The witness heard a sound of horses hooves and then a frightful shriek, and suddenly a half-bald chicken appeared, shivering under the glow of the moon. In 1969 the bird was observed by a motorist who‘d broken down and was distracted by the frenzied phantom which vanished as he approached, but it seems that the last recorded sighting was in 1970 when a couple, cuddling in a doorway observed the squawking apparition.

...suddenly a half-bald chicken appeared, shivering under the glow of the moon The Horror Of Lincoln’s Inn In the Chambers’ Guide To London The Secret City by Michael Chambers, he writes of several ghosts of Lincoln‘s Inn Fields, stating that the area in the eighteenth-century was, ‗…a rough and dangerous place, frequented by wicked and disorderly persons, where rebellious assaults, outrages and enormities have been and continually are, committed.‘ However, despite listing a handful of spectres, he fails to mention the hideous wraith once said to have haunted the area in Central London. On November 29th 1960 J. Wentworth Day, for The Age, wrote a fascinating article ‗The Ghastly Bird Of Lincoln‘s Inn – Two men sat at a green baize card table in a room blindingly lit by bare electric-light globes. They talked quietly about everyday things. On the table stood a bottle of whisky, a siphon of soda, a packet of sandwiches and a pack of cards. The two men were waiting for something worse than a ghost. The floor of the room was powdered thickly with chalk. It shone with ghastly whiteness. No pictures hung upon the walls. No blinds or curtain hid the bare windows. The outer door was locked on the inside. Two doors leading into two other rooms were shut but not locked. No furniture, other than the card table and two chairs, was in the room. The walls and ceiling were whitewashed. Electric light was at this time – the early days of this century – a new thing. Not one house in a thousand in Britain had it. The light bulbs which dangled from the ceiling of the room in a barrister‘s set of chambers, high above the silent lawns of Lincoln‘s Inn, were the first that had ever been introduced into the building

The two men were old friends, both newspapermen. They were waiting for Something. They did not know quite what it would be. All they knew was that, for years past, a ghastly presence was said to visit that room at midnight. The building was in a dim Johnsonian corner of London, where Charles Dickens was still a living memory, where gaunt cliff faces of smoke-grimed Georgian brick rose shuttered and eyeless into the night sky of London. A macabre background for an uncanny experiment. There had been a lot of talk about the visitations. Seven or eight tenants had left quickly within the past two years. Finally a writer took the rooms at an absurdly low rent. He became fidgety, suffered from nerves and finally was so terrified that he left in a hurry. He told a friend, the news editor of the Daily Mail, of uncanny happenings which had driven him out of his home. Hence the two men in the white and silent room on the night I speak of. One was Ralph D. Blumenfeld, until lately editor of the New York Evening Telegram, and at that precise moment the editor of the Daily Mail. He was to become one of the greatest figures in modern journalism and chairman of the Daily Express group of newspapers. He told me this story and said it was true. Blumenfeld‘s companion that night was Max Pemberton, an M.A. of Cambridge, and well known author, later a director of Northcliffe Newspapers, who was later knighted. Blumenfeld had been to Lincoln‘s Inn and taken a 24-hour lease of the chambers. He had the furniture cleared out, the curtains stripped and the windows barred. On that night of Saturday, May 11th 1901, not only was the floor of the room in which they sat white with powdered chalk, but the floors of the two other rooms which opened out if were powdered likewise. Blumenfeld and Max Pemberton made a thorough search of the whole place. They found nothing an no-one. The room in which they sat had no cupboard, recesses or sliding panels.

A macabre background for an uncanny experiment ―Even a black beetle could not have escaped unobserved‖, wrote R.D.B. in the Daily Mail on May 16th 1901, when he described in detail their experiences. Outside was a full moon. The trees at Lincoln‘s Inn stood still and brooding against the stars. The great clock of the inn began booming the resounding notes of midnight. And nothing had happened.

The Phantom Birds of London ―Well it looks as if the visit is off‖, said R.D.B. ―Yes‖ said Max Pemberton. He spoke with an almost comic relief. But at 12:43 am one door leading to a small room which had no other exit opened.

Charles Appleby, a young barrister, lay dead on the floor covered in blood.

The latch clicked, the brass handle turned and slowly the door swung back to its full width, wrote R.D.B. in the Daily Mail. At 12:56 am the other door clicked and then opened slowly to its full extent. R.D.B. and Pemberton got up and closed both doors. They felt no resistance at all. No-one was in the other two rooms and no marks were visible in the chalk on the floors. They felt no draught or movement of wind. At 1:32 am the right-hand door clicked again. It took exactly 11 seconds to do so. They timed it by their watches.

R.D.B. and Max Pemberton stayed quietly until 2:30 am. Nothing more happened. The doors remained open. Then they got up from their chairs and as R.D.B. wrote in the Daily Mail, ―This broke up our sitting. We raised our voices to normal pitch, measured the footprints, made a sketch of them, lighted our pipes. Then we went home. On the Embankment we were greeted by an exquisite opal and mother-of-pearl sunrise.‖

At 1:37 am the left-hand door also opened slowly. They could see clearly into both rooms. They were empty. Three minutes later at 1:40 am both doors closed, slowly and gently, to within eight inches of their locks. Then they slammed shut suddenly. Between 1:45 am and 1:55 am precisely the same thing happened again. The final opening and shutting took place between 2:07 am and 2:09 am. In those minutes they saw suddenly, clearly marked in the chalk on the floors the footprints of a great bird. There were three footprints in the left-hand room and five in the right-hand room. Both sets of prints converged diagonally across each floor towards the centre room in which they were sitting. The footprints were three-toed, with the mark of a short spur behind each foot, ―…like a turkey‘s footmark‖. Each was 2 ¾ inches long.

That I believe was the last time anyone saw the footprints of the ghastly Bird Elemental. The building was pulled down afterwards. No trace or sign of the Elemental which haunted the old building has been seen in the new one. Years later R.D.B. told me this story at the dinner table when I told him that I was going to write a book on ghost stories. ―You can put that one in it, my boy‖, he said. ―You can quote me and you can quote Max Pemberton. We both heard what we heard, felt what we felt and saw what we saw – but don‘t ask me for the explanation. I have heard a lot of ghost stories in my life and sent a lot of reporters out on assignments to haunted houses. I don‘t believe in ghosts one way or the other. But I do know that this Thing happened. Vikas Khatri‘s True Ghosts & Spooky Incidents also mentions a terrifying incident involving the bird phantom. ‗A group of men were standing near the lodge of the legal offices at Lincoln‘s Inn, on the evening of 25th February 1913 when they heard a terrified scream. They looked up and saw, silhouetted in a window, the figure of a man fighting off an invisible assailant. They rushed up the stairs to the first floor office but they were too late – Charles Appleby, a young barrister, lay dead on the floor covered in blood. In the months that followed a number of tenants occupied the offices but they all left because of the evil atmosphere that was present. A short while later, another barrister, John Radlett, was found hanged in the same office where Charles Appleby had been found. There were deep scratches on the inside of his locked door, they looked as if they had been made by the claws of an enormous bird.‘

The Phantom Birds of London The Bird Of Death The following obscure tale echoes the horrors of the Lincoln‘s Inn apparition, and concerned a Lieutenant James Morgan who came to Soho, in November of 1940, to visit his lawyer. The blackout had made London seem like an impenetrable maze as Morgan traipsed through the fog to locate the new premises of the firm. After what seemed an eternity Morgan found the Georgian building, entered via the heavy front door and made his way along a dimly lit hall where he came to a mural on the wall. The image depicted a house about the same period as the one he was now in, and a couple stood proudly in the doorway. In the top right-hand corner of the mural there was a coat of arms. Moving on swiftly upstairs Morgan was met by Mansell the lawyer. They shared a drink and Morgan enquired about the mural. The house was certainly the one Morgan had now set foot in, but depicted only a year or two after it had been built. After a couple of hours the business side of things was concluded and Morgan reluctantly got to his feet and told Mansell he would now have to find a hotel, to which Mansell shook his head and offered a room at the house. Morgan was to sleep on the second floor. The room was hardly welcoming, it was bereft of carpet and the dingy brown décor was hardly inspiring. A blackout curtain seem to produce an air of oppression in the rooms Morgan pulled it down and cast it to the sofa. He sighed, but at least it was a room for the night and so Morgan decided it best to make the most of it rather than to trudge around pitch black London. The bed was actually quite comfortable but Morgan could not drop off, probably due to the unfamiliar surroundings and the chimes of the clock. Or maybe it was the light of the moon beaming in through the window. Morgan then fell asleep but not for long. He found himself awake, and disturbed. There was a tense atmosphere and suddenly the beating of great wings in the darkness, from the direction of the sofa, but nothing seemed to stir visibly.

Morgan looked up at the ceiling, and then back to the sofa, his gaze meeting the most dreadful sight. Where the curtain lay a black form rose like a column of smoke but slowly it transformed into the shape of an enormous bird, more than half as tall as a man. Its large wings beat hard, and Morgan, scuttling from his bed in terror found himself in the centre of the room. The glow of the moon seemed to highlight the black feathers on the creatures flapping wings and suddenly it came at him, the beast rearing up like a fighting cock, lunging back and forth, pecking and attempting to slash with its sharp claws at the end of those spindly legs. Morgan‘s only escape route was the bedroom door, but every time he motioned towards it, the hideous bird seemed to cut him off. Although terrified beyond belief, Morgan noticed how the creature, despite its confrontational behaviour, never actually struck his own body with a blow, but every time the bird attempted a swipe, Morgan could feel the draught caused by its limbs and beak. The monstrous bird made no sound, but the appearance of it was enough to kill a man dead in fright, but, Morgan, thinking quickly, and believing this spectre to be of supernatural nature, found himself reaching for his coat and suddenly, in panic, bringing his garment down over the apparition, similar in a way a person would corner an escaped, smaller bird and gather it in a tea-towel. Morgan brought his coat down over the bird, and despite a few seconds of fluttering, the coat became still. Morgan waited, and bravely released his hold on the coat but found there was no evil bird, just the dark pattern of the sofa, as if the spectre had melted into the blackness. Moments later, the door opened and Mansell peered into the gloom, keen to wander what the fuss was all about. After a short chat Mansell began to recall a legend of a bird-like form said to have haunted the place. The property had stood derelict for more than fifty years after the original owners left. Judging by rumours the bird always appeared before a death in the house, but it had not been seen for many years as no-one had stayed in that room where Morgan had encountered the creature. Mansell stated that the image in the mural was not a coat of arms, but in fact an early depiction of the fearsome creature. This sent a chill down Morgan‘s spine, and a more severe scare was soon to follow. Morgan left the next morning, and sailed back to his destination where he received a letter from a firm of solicitors who stated that Mansell had died just a few days after his visit. A bomb had landed on the property. Although Morgan was named as Mansell‘s heir, he was clearly disturbed that he‘d become part of the legend pertaining to the bird of death.

The Phantom Birds of London The Winged Wotsit Of West Drayton One of the oldest records of a spectral bird was mentioned in Reverend F.G. Lee‘s 1885 work Glimpses In The Twilight. Since this case of the flapping horror many more recent versions of the tale have painted the winged creature as a bat-like monster, although judging by what was originally written it seems that the following account concerned nothing more than a bird, such as a raven...albeit a ghostly one! Lee wrote: ‗In the middle of the last century, circa 1749, owing to several remarkable circumstances which had then recently occurred, a conviction became almost universal among the inhabitants of the village, that the vaults under the church of West Drayton, near Uxbridge, were haunted. Strange noises were heard in and about the sacred building, and the sexton of that day, a person utterly devoid of superstition, was on inquiry and examination compelled to admit that certain unaccountable occurrences in regard to the vault had taken place….Others maintained that three persons from an adjacent mansion-house in company had gone to look through a grating in the side of the foundation of the church – for the ventilation of the vault, and from which screams and noises were heard constantly, and had there seen a very large black raven perched on one of the coffins. This strange bird was seen more than once by the then parish clerk pecking from within at the grating, and furiously fluttering about within the enclosed vault. On another occasion it was seen by other people in the body of the church itself. The wife of the parish clerk and her daughter often saw it. The local bell-ringers, who all professed to deny its existence and appearance, one evening, however, came together to ring a peal, when they were told by a youth that the big raven was flying about inside the chancel. Coming together into the church with sticks and stones and a lantern, four men and two boys found it fluttering about amongst the rafters. They gave chase to it, flinging at it, shouting at and endeavouring to catch it. Driven hither and thither for some time, and twice or thrice beaten with a stick, so that one of its wings seemed to have been thus broken and made to droop, the bird fell down wounded with expanded wings, screaming and fluttering into the eastern part of the chancel, when two of the men on rushing towards it to secure it, and driving it into a corner, vaulted over the communion-rails, and violently proceeded to seize it. As the account stands, it at once sank wounded and exhausted on to the floor, and as they believed in their certain grasp, but all of a moment – vanished!‘ The wife of ex-vicar R.L. Burgh penned a letter to Reverend Lee in reference to the anomaly, stating on July 16th 1883, ‗It was many years ago; and I had quite forgotten it until I got your note. I can remember feeling persuaded that a bird must have got into the family vault, and in going outside to look into it through the iron bars to try if anything

could be seen there, the sounds were then always in the chancel in the same place.‘ A record of the strange bird also exists from 1869 when two sisters whilst visiting the church claimed to have seen an enormous black bird which they believed would have looked more at home in the Zoological Gardens. On a less sinister note, at Great Russell Street in the Borough of Camden, a spectral magpie was once said to materialise every morning between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 am. The fluttering menace often taps on the window of a particular house, before materialising inside the property. The bird then appears on a floating twig, possibly a ghostly branch, before vanishing into thin air.

For more information on Neil or his work, click any of the images of his written work or head to any of his websites: Kent Big Cat Research , Beasts of London , Monster: A Blog , Kent Monsters

"It‘s Only A Movie…Isn‘t It? Is a creepy concoction of urban myths, facts and fantasy surrounding the films we all know and love. For anyone who loves the paranormal this is a ‗must add‘ title to your library" ~ Jason Karl, Paranormal Researcher, Author and Television presenter.

The Movie You Are About To Watch, Is Based On A True Story... Have you ever watched a movie that was based on a ‘true story’ and wondered just how true the story really was? If that movie was based on a subject such as a violent haunting, alien abduction, demonic possession or even a monster; you may have been comforted by the fact that such things don‘t exist, that it couldn‘t possibly be a true story...could it? In this book British paranormal researcher, investigator, broadcaster and author Jason Day delves into the paranormal movies that make these bold claims. Enlisting the help of paranormal investigators, monster hunters, ufologists, sceptics and mediums Jason compares the movies to the stories they are based upon and then investigates just how true the stories are themselves. With expert opinions from James Randi, Jason Karl, John Zaffis, Alexandra Holzer, Phil Whyman, Lara Wells, Mike Hallowell, Darren Ritson, Neil Arnold and many more professionals in the paranormal field this book sets out to answer the question we have all, at one time or another, asked ourselves after watching films such as The Amityville Horror, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, Fire In The Sky and The Exorcist:

It’s Only A Movie...Isn’t It? You can Get your signed copy now -Just in time for SUMMER BEACH READING!

Order a signed copy here

April Book Reviews Abraham Lincoln

Vampire Hunter Author: Seth Grahame-Smith Format: Paperback ISBN: 9781849014779 From the deliciously twisted mind of Seth Grahame-Smith, author of the blood smeared romp ‗Pride and Prejudice and Zombies‘ comes Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. In what can only be described as a revisionist masterpiece, Graham-Smith takes the reader through the life, times, trials and inevitable Buffy worthy vampire slaying skills of the United States sixteenth President. The true art of Grahame-Smith‘s work is the interweaving of fact and total fabrication leaving the reader with a sense of having learned something of Lincoln‘s real life; even whilst enjoying his fictional extracurricular activities. The book is being worked into a movie, thankfully with a screenplay penned by Grahame-Smith. Read the book before you see the movie! All good bookstores for RRP £7.99.

The Borley Rectory Companion Author: Paul Adams, Eddie Brazil & Peter Underwood Format: Hardback ISBN: 9780750950671

There are few tales of hauntings that have stayed in the minds and hearts of the English public for as long as those of Borley Rectory. The rectory which stood in the tiny village of Borley in Essex was the scene of one of the first publicised investigations into paranormal phenomena and the making of the now (in)famous paranormal investigator Harry Price. The Borley Rectory Companion is essential reading for any paranormal enthusiast, it is, in short the definitive guide to the where‘s, why‘s and how‘s of Borley Rectory‘s fascinating paranormal history. The Borley Rectory Companion is published by The History Press and is available in all good bookstores & Amazon for RRP: £25.00

‘I wish I had possessed a copy of this book when I was conducting research for my DVD Ghosts of Essex’ ~ Richard Felix (Most Haunted)

Join journalist, broadcaster and paranormal investigator Jason Day on a tour around one of England's oldest and most paranormally active counties. Visit the 'Most Haunted House In England' in Borley, encounter the terrifying 'Black Shuck' on the Essex border, witness an RAF pilot's shocking near miss with a UFO over the skies of Southend, and find out how the infamous 'Witchfinder General' served as judge, jury and executioner in Manningtree. With accounts of hauntings, Ley Lines, UFO's and Big Cats, this extensive collection of paranormal reports includes previously unpublished accounts from the author's personal case files. "Paranormal Essex" will delight all lovers of the unexplained. Paranormal Essex Retails for £9.99 at all good bookstores. Or purchase a signed copy from the author

phantom encounters Ghost Hunting Events Schedule

Mistley place park, essex Saturday 21st May 2011 Spring equinox in the witches woodland Join the team as they take on the spooks and spectres at Mistley Place Park in Essex Can you brave a night in the Witches Woodland? Tickets for this event are £25 (Remember, discounts apply when you book 5 or more tickets!

Old Nick Theatre, Gainsborough Saturday 28th May 2011 Brave a meeting with the Judge, and get banged up for the night at The Old Nick Theatre in Gainsborough. Tickets for this event are £35 (Remember, discounts apply when you book 5 or more tickets!

Haunted Fort Paull

Saturday 4th June 2011

Join the team as they take on the spirits of Haunted Fort Paull in East Yorkshire. This event is close to selling out— LIMITED TICKETS Tickets for this event are £35 (Remember, discounts apply when you book 5 or more tickets!

Haunted Fort Paull

Saturday 25th June 2011

If you missed out on the 4th June, join the team as they take on the spirits of Haunted Fort Paull in East YorkshireAgain, this event has LIMITED TICKETS Tickets for this event are £35 and selling FAST! (Remember, discounts apply when you book 5 or more tickets!

Haunted Fort Paull

Saturday 30th JuLY 2011

Celebrate the start of Summer with a night in the chilling depths of Haunted Fort Paull in East Yorkshire. Again, this event has LIMITED TICKETS Tickets for this event are £35 and selling FAST! (Remember, discounts apply when you book 5 or more tickets!

Morecambe winter Gardens

Saturday 13th August 2011

Join Phantom Encounters at Morecambe Winter Gardens Theatre in Lancashire. This fantastic theatre is infamous for its paranormal activity, with recent visitors reporting being touched, pushed and hearing voices! Some of you will no doubt remember this from Most Haunted‘s visit in October 2009 for their Most Haunted Live event ! Tickets for this event are £45 (Remember, discounts apply when you book 5 or more tickets!

UFO Recent

si ght i ngs

WATCH f r om acr oss

t he UK

April 2011: Date of Sighting: 7 April 2011 Location: Cardiff Time: 20:30 Witness Statement: I was looking up at the sky when I witnessed what I first thought was a star in the sky. After scouring the sky for a while I noticed the original star was moving at a consistent pace towards the ocean. It had no distinct colour and just looked like a star. I then considered that it may be a shooting star, but after watching it more I began to notice that it wasn‘t moving in a straight line. It seemed to be curving from side to side. I also noticed that it seemed to stop, go backwards and than go forward again. As I watched it I started to notice as it moved closer to another star, the other star started to move too. They appeared to get very close and then both started moving in the same direction. One was much faster than the other. This all seems very far fetched (even to me as I am not really a believer in UFO‘s myself) but I know what I saw was no plane purely by the lack of flashing lights and the obvious distance from us. Source: www.uk-ufo.co.uk Date of Sighting: 23 April 2011 Location: Ramsgate, Kent Time: 21:00 Witness Statement: At approximately 9pm the wife, myself and the dog was sitting in our conservatory, when the dog looked up at a yellowish bright light in sky. The light looked similar to a bright headlight beaming down, but as it carried on going over us the light faded (as if it was fixed to its projection). You could see the shape of the object, which was a round disc shape, and there was a kind of red LED light going around the edge of it. The light circled the edge of the object a full 360 degrees then stopped for a fraction of a second and repeated itself. The object had no wings or rotor blades, made no noise, moved fairly slowly and was at a height of approximately 4000 feet. The object travelled from the North in a Southerly direction. I was not drinking and no it was not a Chinese lantern. For the record I also do not believe in little green men from mars. Source: www.uk-ufo.co.uk

Date of Sighting: 12 April 2011 Location: Lyme Regis, Dorset Time: 22:30 Witness Statement: I Looked at the sky to observe Lyrid meteors and noticed an irregularly blinking orange light at the apparent centre of a faint triangle, near Regulus in Leo. The object moved North across the sky with a high cloud for about a minute before disappearing behind trees in the North West. There was little or no wind at ground level. I could not rule out the fact that it may have been a single Chinese lantern but the appearance, and fairly rapid movement of the object suggests this was not the case. Source: www.uk-ufo.co.uk

Date of Sighting: 20th April 2011 Location: Beeston, Leeds (facing North towards Leeds/Bradford Airport) Time: 20:45 Witness Statement: From the bay window of my house, to the left of the airport, I observed a large deep red object pulsating in the night sky .I couldn‘t make out a definite shape; I can only describe it as looking like as if you had pushed the two corners of a cardboard box together but with a misshaped edge. I called my wife to our front door and showed her the object. I then sent her to get my Sony Handy cam, which is old but works perfectly, so I could film the object . She was only gone a few seconds. We both saw a smaller red object leave the ‗Mother ship‘ and descend gently earthwards. I had aimed my camera at the objects only to find that even though the battery was fully charged, I could not record the event and the mystery deepened. When looking through my view finder my tape stated it was cleaning the tape and was working in reverse. Source: www.uk-ufo.co.uk

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or ‗flying saucers‘ as they are popularly known have been the subject of interest to the human race since time began. Is it really possible that, as so many claim, we are being visited by beings from another planet? Some even claim that we are merely an experiment of a more advanced existence of an extraterrestrial race. It seems that with all the recorded sightings and experiences people have had with UFO‘s the interest in the subject has grown. We see films on TV, old classics like ‗E.T. The Extraterrestrial‘ and more recently ‗The Fourth Kind‘ which made an attempt at recreating first hand experiences with aliens and UFO encounters. For us to understand UFO‘s further we need to understand what a UFO is. An article written in 2010 by Nick Redfern (Paranormal Magazine, August 2010) has helped me answer that very question and truthfully, it‘s all theory. Sometimes the best way to find out what‘s going on is to go out there and ask people. Some of

the answers Nick came up with were: Extraterrestrials, Home grown aliens, plasmas & earth lights and even secret weapons. The latter suggestion being somewhat interesting as if indeed the government had found real life E.T.‘s then maybe it would make sense to keep any aircraft they arrived in as a way to advance our own technology…but then again that does indeed sound like a bit of a conspiracy theory from myself. But what is the real truth behind the human race‘s experiences with UFO‘s? Are they merely brushed under the carpet or is there a fundamental truth behind what people say they are experiencing? It is well known that governments around the world document such experiences and then keep them quiet and out of the public eye but the question is, why? Why have people had so many first hand experiences? Many people will be aware of the famous Roswell case, but more

‘Nomads with a view to conquer and colonise ‘ recently there have been a number of people that have spoken out about UFOs and aliens, people such as prominent astrophysicist Steven Hawkins who mentioned in his TV show on the Discovery Channel ‗Into the Universe with Steven Hawkins‘ that such beings could visit Earth and become nomads with a view to conquer and colonise the planets they visit.

Tim Jones has had a keen interest in the paranormal since his teens, reading various books on the paranormal world. In 2008 Tim set up his own paranormal investigation team and has been actively pursuing paranormal activity ever since. Tim has appeared on many internet radio shows for interviews and perhaps most memorably was interviewed with his team on Kerrang radio in 2008. Tim, along with his partner Sara, run the group ‗Lightseekers‘.

Closer to home the current Prime Minister was reported by the BBC in January 2009 to be ‗frank and open‘ about UFO‘s. So where does this leave the people who have, or believe they have had, an experience of alien beings or sightings of a UFO? One would think they would now be in a position where they can once and for all be open and feel comfortable with their story. In recent years the paranormal (on a whole not just UFO‘s) has become more of a comfortable topic for people to talk about, with more experiences than ever being told and even reported in the press. If we look closer to home especially with UFO‘s the UK Ministry Of Defence have released files of sightings on the following dates: May 2008 / October 2008 / March 2009 / August 2009 /February 2010 /March 2010. More files have been released recently, the files themselves varied in detail and talked about the encounters that people had from encounters with aliens to seeing UFO's and also being able to draw these unidentified object. An article published by Nick Pope (The Real X-Files Ministry of Defence UFO Files, UFO Matrix Volume 1 Issue 1) would certainly indicate that indeed people have seen UFO‘s with 643 reports being investigated by the M.O.D. Sadly, there was a very good reason why this number was so high and it would come in the form of every farmer‘s nightmare - Chinese lanterns. However it is interesting that after 60 years on the 1st December 2009 the M.O.D would then decide to terminate the UFO project. My question is why? Surely if people were having experiences then it would be wise to continue to investigate these claims? Whatever the truth is, it will remain a mystery; it will also raise many questions as to why the M.O.D would release files of sightings and then suddenly choose to cease to investigating reports of sightings. Indeed some may say that it‘s just a cover up for them to continue in an attempt to throw people of the scent of what the M.O.D do. I guess the real truth is out there!

Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition is now looking for talented writers for the magazine. If you think you have what it takes to write for us in the Sceptical, Spiritual, Mystical, Historical, UFO, Crypto or Ghost Hunting fields then we’d love to hear from you. Send an email to: editor@phantomencounters.co.uk with a bio, picture and an example of your work.

Screams of Laughter The Ghosts of The Comedy Store Jason Day takes a look at the ghosts and spectres ruling one of the USA’s happiest places. When all is said and done...who is having the last laugh? For many of us watching a performance by a stand up comedian is highly entertaining and very amusing. Some people would even go as far as to say ‗that was a scream‘. So it stands to reason that employees and visitors to the world famous Comedy Store in Hollywood, USA should expect every day to be a scream. According to some of those involved there have been many a scream at the Comedy Store, but not all of them have been caused by amusing anecdotes. Some of the screams have come from the terrified witnesses who have encountered the ghostly spirits that are said to dwell within the building alongside their earthly counterparts. Apparently the greatest performances take place at the Comedy Store long after the stage lights have gone down and there‘s barely a living soul left in the building. The Comedy Store is a comedy club located on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California, USA. The building began life in 1939 as a nightclub called Ciro‘s. The club was the conception of publisher Billy Wilkerson. Wilkerson owned a string of nightclubs on the Boulevard and before long Ciro‘s began attracting the elite of Hollywood clientele. During its

golden age in the late 1940‘s and into the 1950‘s the club became the playground of movie stars such as Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Tyrone Power and Lucille Ball. Regulars making appearances on stage at Ciro‘s included Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. As the place became Hollywood‘s number one hotspot, celebrities were not the only people attracted to the club at the time it would seem. Author Laurie Jackson explained: ―Ciro‘s was the most popular nightclub in Hollywood and when a nightclub is that popular the mob is often involved.‖ Mickey Cohen was the most notorious of the club‘s gangland regulars and it was during this period that the management at Ciro‘s was said to be more than a little controlled by the mob. It has long been rumoured that a few unfortunate souls that had had a run in with ‗the management‘ came to a sticky end in the basement of the club. As the 1960‘s rolled around Ciro‘s became a rock and roll club and bands such as the Byrds were discovered at the club in 1964.

Screams of Laughter

The Ghosts of The Comedy Store The Comedy Club opened its doors in April 1972. Comedians Sammy Shore and Rudy DeLuca ran the show at Ciro‘s and eventually the last owner of Ciro‘s, Frank Sennes sold the building to them in 1976. Sammy Shore‘s ex-wife Mitzi Shore later gained ownership of the club in a divorce settlement. In 2005 Sammy Shore‘s son Paul Shore took control of the Comedy Store and attempted to revitalise it to its former glory. During the Comedy Store‘s 37 year history the club has played host to comedians such as Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg and many more illustrious names. According to many witnesses the Comedy Store has been haunted for decades by the former residents and visitors from the ‗old days‘ of Ciro‘s. Former employee of the Comedy Store and author Laurie Jacobson recalled her time at the club: ―This place is haunted from the basement to the rafters. When I was a waitress here waitresses would have to set up the showroom, put tablecloths on tables and put an ashtray on every table...we would set up an hour before the customers were due to arrive. On occasion girls would set up the room, leave for a moment, come back and everything would be put back. The tablecloths would be refolded and put back and the ashtrays would be stacked. We all knew exactly what we were dealing with here. What was happening in those rooms, with those tables being set and then unset, was being done by ghosts.‖ The waitresses at the club were not the only ones to witness paranormal phenomena; comedian Joey Gaynor encountered his fair share of unexplained encounters during his time there. Joey began his career as a doorman at the Comedy Store and as a consequence, most evenings he would be the last person to leave the building. It was on one of these occasions that Joey had one of his first experiences of the ghostly activity that occurred within the club's walls. Joey explained: ―It was about 3 o'clock in the morning and everybody had left the building. I went to get my coat and there were two candles lit on the table. I blew them out, turned around, and they were lit again. I went back over to the table and I thought 'man'. I blew them out again; I thought maybe I hadn't blown them out properly the first time. I started to go down the stairs and it was freezing all of a sudden. I turned around and the candles were lit again. So I said 'ok, stay lit' and I split. I didn't want to hang around and find out why. It wasn't a figment of my imagination, I wasn't drunk, I wasn't high, I didn't get hit in the head with something. It's easy to know once you've seen it, you believe it.‖ This was to be one of many pranks the spirits of the club were to play on Joey during his late night routines. ―One night I was going to shut the lights down in the building. It takes four to five seconds tops.‖

„This place is haunted from the basement to the rafters..‟ Joey went across the stage, behind the curtain and switched off the lights. As he came back from behind the curtains, an unnerving sight greeted him as he stood on the stage. Joey recalled: ―I walked back out and there were all these chairs just piled in the middle of the isle. I never heard anything; nobody could have come in and done that in five seconds. Even if it had been ten seconds, if you can stack eight to ten chairs in that amount of time you should be in Vegas, because that is pretty amazing.‖ Another doorman at the club was having similar encounters with the disembodied jokers around the same time that Joey Gaynor was. Blake Clark, who has gone on to guest star in such American television sitcoms as 'Boy Meets World', 'Home Improvement' and 'My Name Is Earl', was also working as a doorman at the Comedy Store whilst starting his career as a comedian. One of Blake's first experiences, like Joey's, happened when he was checking the main room for 'stragglers' after the club had closed. Blake explained: ―I was coming in to lock up the main room and I heard a noise.‖ As Blake walked through the tables his attention was drawn to the stage and the noise coming from that area. To his amazement he discovered the noise was being caused by a stool moving around the stage of its own accord. ―It was moving like somebody was just dragging it across the stage except there was no-one there. I'm not a scientist, but it wasn't an earthquake, it wasn't wind, it wasn't a person, it was some supernatural or as yet unexplained force.‖ Seeing the chair slide twenty feet across the stage as if guided by an unseen spirit was enough for Clark, an ex-Marine, to make a hasty exit. Soon Blake Clark and Joey Gaynor were to begin witnessing the paranormal phenomena at the Comedy Store collectively. The first instance of this took place whilst they were moving chairs in the main room one night. Blake and Joey were discussing the misadventures with the supernatural that they had both had at the club when Joey challenged the ghosts to show themselves. All of a sudden an ashtray began to levitate in front of them and hover for a second or two. The ashtray then shot across the room toward Joey and narrowly missed hitting him before thudding against the wall and falling to the ground. Blake Clark recalled: ―I saw this ashtray just go across the room and burst onto the wall. So Joey said 'did you throw that at me?' and I said no it came from over there.‖ Joey Gaynor added:

Screams of Laughter

The Ghosts of The Comedy Store ―It was like 'zoom'. To see it come up and take off is what was scary.‖ This wasn't to be the last time the spirits actions changed from almost benign pranks to malevolent attacks. Blake Clark seemed to receive a warning in a later encounter, which was also witnessed by another co-worker. One evening, whilst locking the building up with a colleague, Blake heard a 'growl' coming from the basement. As the men walked down the corridor to confront whoever or whatever was making the noise they were met by an incredible sight. The basement was locked shut with a metal gate and it appeared that an unseen force was trying to push the gate open. The gate was 'pulsating' and almost bending into the corridor. Blake Clark described the event: ―We looked back and saw the gate and it just started bending out into the hallway, making a creaking noise. As I was looking at it I thought, this is certainly approaching the boundaries of physical possibility, that something can do that.‖ Author Laurie Jackson has her own theory as to what was behind the gate of the basement that night: ―Most of the ghosts at the Comedy Store are not dangerous at all, however there is something in the basement that is very terrifying and you'll have a hard time convincing people to go down there, at least alone.‖ Frustrated by their numerous encounters with the restless spirits within the club, Blake Clarke and Joey Gaynor decided to brave an after hours foray into the clutter of the Comedy Store basement in search of answers. As the men rummaged amongst the clutter on the shelving units a dark figure materialised in the middle of the basement and floated in front of them. Joey Gaynor said: ―It had no features, no features at all it just moved and started to snake upwards and down towards us.‖ Joey and Blake stood in frightened awe. Joey kept asking the figure what it wanted. The figure just continued to float in front of them before suddenly flying past the men. Joey and Blake took their opportunity and sprinted up the stairs and out of the cellar. Blake Clarke said: ―Spirit, demon, whatever. Whatever was down there in that basement just didn't like us.‖ Performers at the Comedy Store were also antagonised by the entity or entities that resided at the club. Comedian Sam Kinison was routinely plagued by lighting and audio malfunctions during his routines on the clubs stage. Kinison once even battled an increasingly loud, disembodied buzzing with his trademark scream during a performance. Witnesses claim to have heard voices chanting 'it's him' within the buzzing noise. Kinison finally challenged the ghostly tormentors to show themselves one night and the room fell into complete darkness

„“Spirit, demon, whatever. Whatever was down there in that basement just didn't like us.”

Who are the ghosts of the Comedy Store? There are at least two encounters with the spirits that frequent the building that may be able to shed some light on the dark happenings within its walls. One afternoon, whilst at the club, Blake Clark sensed that somebody was watching him. From the corner of his eye he saw a man in a brown leather bomber jacket standing just off to his side. When Blake turned to face the man, the man became transparent and faded away. The apparition was witnessed later the same day cowering in the third floor office of a female assistant before vanishing again. When Clark and the woman compared details of what they had seen they were convinced they had both seen the same man. Another daylight sighting also helped employees at the Comedy Store to draw some conclusions as to what was behind the haunting. Michael Becker, a former Vice President of the Comedy Store, claimed to have encountered a phantom during an important telephone call. Becker was in his office when another member of staff at the club was using his telephone. Needing to make an important call, Becker walked outside to use the telephone that was situated just outside of his office. As he stood there talking a ghostly figure walked past him and into the office. Becker recalled: ―As I was standing there I saw someone in kind of a 1940's jacket walk right into my office. There was nobody there except the guy that was on the phone originally, and to top it off the guy that was on the phone didn't see anything. So it was not a guy but it was something that walked into my office. I was always sceptical because we are talking about comedians telling stories. However, I did see it, there's no doubt about it in my mind.‖ Some believe that the spirits who haunt the Comedy Store were victims left over from the old days of Ciro's and the mafia ran club that it was in the 1940's. This theory was born out to some extent when a team of parapsychologists from UCLA were invited to investigate the club in 1982. One of the psychic members of the group felt a sense of searing psychic pain whilst in the basement and traced the experience back 'psychically' to the 1940's. Michael Becker thinks that there may be something to the UCLA team's findings: ―It kind of all fits together that something happened back in the forties, perhaps because it's never like a hippy looking guy, or it's never somebody from the eighties or something like that. The clothing is always forties, every time I've ever heard a story.‖

Screams of Laughter

The Ghosts of The Comedy Store The more sceptical amongst us may think that the former 'mob' connection to the club and subsequent explanation for the haunting may seem a little too convenient. There was however another incident that lends weight to this theory. In 1994 a local news crew were filming a television segment at the Comedy Store. One of the original UCLA investigators from 1982 was present at the filming. The investigator noticed a group of three men in 1940's clothing, complete with wide lapelled suits, who were watching the news crews‘ activities intensely. When the parapsychologist approached the men they simply vanished. Dr Barry Taff, the witness to this event commented: ―Once you rule out all the prosaic explanations such as a hoax, a fraud, misinterpretation of natural events…you are left with something that is totally inexplicable in terms of modern science.‖ It would seem the paranormal activities at the Comedy Club have even turned some of the most hardened sceptics into ardent believers. Blake Clark stated: ―I was a person who did not believe in ghosts. Absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably, did not believe in any sort of paranormal manifestation…until I started working at the Comedy Store.‖ So far author Laurie Jacobson has documented more than fifty unexplained events during her research into the alleged paranormal activity at the Comedy Store. Perhaps, in the case of this venue, the saying ‗life‘s a scream‘ could also extend to ‗the afterlife‘s a scream‘ too.

‘I wish I had possessed a copy of this book when I was conducting research for my DVD Ghosts of Essex’ ~ Richard Felix (Most Haunted) Jason Day is a Director of Phantom Encounters Ltd & your host on Phantom Encounters events. Jason is also a prolific author with three paranormally focussed books in print, two more in production & a further three commissioned! Jason has written for magazines internationally, with his work appearing in FATE, Paranormal Magazine and Ghost Voices. For more information on Jason, head to: www.jasonday.co.uk or click the picture.

Other titles by this Author...

New to Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition this month is The Witch’s Kitchen column, headed by our ‘really trying to be good but ever so slightly failing’ resident witch Prudence Snarkington. Brightest Blessings to you all and welcome to my first column in Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition. I thought we‘d start off easily this time, bearing in mind that some of you are non-magickal folk and therefore utterly useless with a wand. Unlike some potions masters at a certain prestigious school of magic (who shall remain nameless—guess who, don‘t sue!) we shall be focussing on low budget, family friendly recipes for you all to enjoy. There will be no exams and at no point will I be purring at you to ‘...turn to page 394.’ Now, without further ado, take out your Size 2 pewter cauldron and let‘s begin...

Summer Heaven Sugar Scrub

Recipe for Bath Bombs

If you‘ve ever been on a Spa retreat then you‘ll be familiar with the heavenly softness that a decent exfoliation can bring to tired, Winter stressed skin. So, fresh from the Witch‘s Kitchen, here is the recipe for a sugar scrub to banish the winter skin blues!

   1.

   

1 cup of white sugar ½ cup olive oil 5 drops essential oil or scent of your choice. Kilner Jar to store your scrub in.

Mix the sugar and oil together until they form a paste. Add your essential oil/fragrance. And you‘re done! To Use: Wet body in shower/bath Rub sugar scrub into the skin, Wash off. Scrub will last about a week in the jar, take my advice, make small amounts and use as necessary.

3. 4. 5.

1 cup bicarbonate of soda ½ cup citric acid 20 drops essential oils Mix the bicarbonate of soda and the citric acid together in a bowl, make sure you get rid of any lumps. If you are adding colourings, clay, carrier oils, cocoa butter, or dried herbs or flowers add these now and mix again thoroughly. Add your essential oils and mix again thoroughly Press mixture into muffin tins/moulds be as firm as possible. Leave overnight then remove from the tins and place on a hard surface for another day until the bath bombs are hard.

A couple of combinations to try: * Vanilla and Sandalwood * Lavender and Geranium * Rose and Ylang Ylang Try not to make your bath bombs too brightly coloured; it‘s murder on your bath tub and can stain delicate porcelain. Less is more...and plain, is GOOD!

WARNING: Under no circumstances should you use essential oils if you are pregnant or breastfeeding. Although using naturally derived ingredients ALWAYS conduct a ‗spot test‘ for allergic reactions before using any new product. In the case of an allergic reaction, seek medical advice immediately.

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I've been researching the paranormal – or the supernatural, if you like – for over forty years now. My first dip into the world of strange phenomena was at the age of eleven, when I subscribed to a mail-order only UFO magazine, Flying Saucer Review. Since then, weird stuff has had me hooked like the proverbial fish on a line. Truth to tell, I wouldn't have it any other way. I openly confess to being obsessed with preternatural events, which is better than being addicted to heroin, I guess, but they're every bit as addictive. Some researchers are fascinated by a particular phenomenon; ghosts, psychic phenomena or maybe UFOs. I'm more interested in cases than genres, and don't really care what particular cubbyhole a story fits into. Its the tale itself that I go for, and not the type. Today I may stumble across a UFO encounter that gets my investigative juices well and truly surging. Tomorrow I may come across another that simply leaves me cold. Why? I haven't a clue; its just the way it is. Each strange story or inexplicable tale is, methinks, a world in itself; it contains a setting, a set of characters and a series of events. The ―weirdness factor‖ is what insulates the story from the rational, workaday world beyond its parameters. Each strange tale is a vignette, a moment in the historical timeline which has never be satisfactorily explained. Once a story grabs me, I'm there for the duration until I either get to the bottom of it or, just occasionally, throw my hands up in defeat and move on. In my experience, its often the bizarre tales that are hard to categorise that are the most fascinating; odd events which truly stretch the bounds of credibility and are unlikely ever to be repeated. I've also found that it is these stories – sometimes called Random Anomalous Phenomena, so I suppose they do have a cubby-hole after all – which seem to disturb the sceptics more than others. Carl Sagan was, allegedly, the chap who coined the phrase, ―Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence‖; a maxim with which I wholeheartedly disagree. Claims, extraordinary or otherwise, require evidence, pure and simple. ―Extraordinary‖ is a subjective term and is impossible to quantify. What is extraordinary to one person may be quite mundane to the next. Personally, I think that sceptics use this rule-ofthumb when it suits them; they'll raise the bar and demand ―extraordinary evidence‖ when confronted with something that disturbs their weltanschauung and in which they'd much rather not believe. Let me give you an example. I was once asked to give a lecture by a psychologist to a group of unemployed men on the benefits of doing voluntary work in the community. On arrival, however, he asked me if I'd mind changing the subject of my talk and speak about paranormal phenomena instead. I thought this was odd, but didn't mind in the least. During the Q&A session at the

end, he asked me to relate to the audience the first ―paranormal event‖ I'd ever experienced. I did, and was rather perturbed when my host shot to his feet and shouted, ―That couldn't have happened. Its physically impossible!‖ I've always operated under the belief that attack is the best form of defence, and so I asked the psychologist if he was calling me a liar. ―I'm not saying you're lying‖, he retorted, ―but I am saying that what you've just said can't be the truth‖. No, I couldn't make sense of it either. Some time ago, a correspondent who reads a newspaper column I pen contacted me with his own, inexplicable tale. He'd purchased a set of scented tea lights from a store on the request of his wife. They were blue in colour. He took them home, and his missus lit two of them. That evening she asked him where the second set of tea lights had come from. He didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but she promptly presented him with a bag, identical to the first, containing lots of tea lights. They weren't blue, though, they were pink. Neither the man nor his wife had the faintest idea where this second bag had came from. Stranger still, they'd been in the same cupboard where the first bag had been placed. The first bag was now missing. My correspondent told me that they counted the tea lights in the bag, which should have contained a compliment of thirty. There were twenty-eight. This wasn't exactly a surprise, for the bag had been torn open, indicative of the fact that someone had used two of the lights contained in it. His wife had lit two tea lights earlier, of course, and at some juncture the thought crossed their mind that maybe the chap had brought home pink tea lights after all by mistake. The problem was that both were absolutely certain they'd been blue. They checked the now extinguished lights that the woman had lit earlier. To their astonishment, the vestiges of wax in the bottom of each metal holder were distinctly and unmistakeably blue. They searched the house – they were the only two occupants, by the way – and couldn't find the ―other‖ bag of tea lights. In fact, the husband became convinced that there wasn't a second (or first) bag, but only one. Somehow, the tea lights inside it seemed to have changed colour.

Of course, this incident didn't exactly turn their lives upside down, and in terms of importance can hardly be equated with the sacking of Rome, the bombing of Dresden or Neil Armstrong's first tentative step upon the moon. But they were, understandably, well and truly baffled. Working out what had happened to the tea lights became almost an obsession, and it isn't hard to see why. The incident was so trivial that a rational explanation should have presented itself pretty quickly, but it didn't. The more they tried to fathom the mystery out, the more baffling it became After the chap told me about their odd event I gave it some thought, and came up with a possible solution. It wasn't brilliant, but it was, I reckoned, just plausible. Was it possible that two blue tea lights had accidentally found their way into a bag of pink ones during the packaging process at the factory? Had the man purchased a bag of pink tea lights in error? Could his wife, purely by chance, have then picked these two blue lights out of the bag of pink ones and lit them, thereby not realising that all the other lights in the bag were of a different colour? No, they replied. The chap was absolutely certain that all of the lights were blue when he'd bought them. Further, his wife was equally certain that when she'd removed the two lights from the bag the others had all been blue. It also has to be admitted that the chances of her picking the only two blue tea lights out of a large bag of pink ones by chance was pretty remote.

Another possible explanation had already crossed their minds. Was it possible that when the two lights had burned the heat had caused some sort of chemical reaction in the wax and turned it blue? This idea didn't fly either. They lit a third tea light and let it burn out. The remains of the wax in the bottom was pink. The mystery was never solved. Bizarre though it seemed, the only solution that seemed workable was that the remaining lights in the bag had somehow changed colour. What can we learn from this event? Quite a lot, I reckon. Despite its largely inconsequential nature in the grand scheme of things, the enigma is probably of profound significance. Actually, it demonstrates that not everything in our world goes according to plan or follows the dictates of accepted science. Sometimes, out of the blue (or the pink), events occur which cannot be explained. If the laws of physics – at least as we understand them - can be ―broken‖ once, then there's no reason to think they can't be broken a multitude of times. Academics of a sceptical hue can't accept this, of course, for it will ultimately lead them to

the most horrible of conclusions; they really don't know everything. If we accept that our universe regularly hiccups and precipitates ―impossible‖ events, then we no longer live in a safe, predictable place. Who knows, tomorrow it might not be a tea light that changes colour but an ocean that turns into custard. Those who believe in the reality of supernatural phenomena cope with this possibility far better than most academics and scientists do, for they have a built-in programme which not only allows them to embrace the inexplicable but positively welcome it. Me? I don't give two hoots whether Random Anomalous Phenomena truly break the laws of physics or only seem to. Neither do I give a toss whether rational explanations can be found or not. It doesn't matter. What happens happens, and there's not much we can do about it except observe in awe and wonder. As that great, fictional detective Sherlock Holmes once noted, ―Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth‖. Somehow I think even the late Carl Sagan would have bowed his head in acknowledgement of that pearl of wisdom, colourchanging tea lights not withstanding .

Mike Hallowell is recognised as one of the UK’s leading experts on paranormal phenomena. He has written over a dozen books and one thousand articles on everything from ghosts and UFOs to mystery animals and poltergeists. Mike also runs Thunderbird Craft and Media, focussing on the creation and restoration of photo media. For more information on Mike, his work and upcoming appearances, please go to: http://www.mikehallowell.com

The Black Stick Men Elemental Spirits, mysterious shadow dwellers or figment of the imagination? In her first article for Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition Sara Kettley takes a look at the mystery surrounding a phenomena known only as The Black Stick Men. The subject of Black Stick Men is one of the most mysterious and intriguing phenomena in the paranormal field, having only recently come to light. Flat Black Stick Men (not to be confused with the shadow people has they are not similar in any way, shape or form) are much stranger and have been reported the world over by differing cultures, age and socio-economic groups. After doing research on the black stick men and reading witness accounts & reports, it appears that there was a sighting in Maid stone, Kent on 31st October 1978 and still further reports from across the United Kingdom. Black Stick Men are said to be tall with long arms, and believed to appear has 2 dimensional. With no recognizable features to them at all, they are 5 feet tall, appear rather quickly and can frighten anyone who witnesses or experiences them. They have been described by witnesses has a silhouette such as those seen to identify gender on bathroom doors, witnesses have also said that they feel that these creatures are male mostly because some are seen to be wearing a top hat. These Black Stick Men are also supposed to pose a threat to anyone who stares at them.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s believed if anyone or the creature itself gets too close to a human, it gives off a disabling yet rather powerful electric charge. The Black Stick Men are believed to be sighted during the night and at dusk, walking along side roads, most bizarrely wearing a top hat. They appear to be walking much like lolloping and if they catch sight of anyone, it is known for them to follow but do appear to be leisurely when approached by anyone. I am rather skeptical on this creature existing; has any photographic or video footage of these creatures existing been made public? I was made aware a few years back of two videos that were uploaded to YouTube which claimed to have repeatedly captured the Black Stick Men, these videos are no longer available to view and pictures over the net of these Black Stick Men and their existence are hard to find. It was therefore my great pleasure to contact a possible witness who allegedly had an experience with Black Stick Men in London, England. I emailed the witness last year; for the purposes of this article we shall call him Andy, who fortunately was willing to answer a few questions I had for him on the Black Stick Men he and his friend had seen. Andy stated that although he wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t sure what he

The Black Stick Men had actually seen, he knew what he had seen was ‗not right‘. He was genuinely horrified of what he and his friend had witnessed. Andy explained that the creature had to be flat, two dimensional much like the silhouettes you see on a bathroom door. It had no facial features but appeared to be lolloping towards Andy and his friend. This happened at dawn in London on Tresillian Road in Brockley. The last they saw of this creature was as it pressed up to the glass door of the property he lived in at the time. Andy himself has a theory that the creature is more of an elemental spirit – native to our world but existing in different planes of reality. For me to understand and accept such a creature, I shall have to witness it with my own eyes or see actual evidence. To date none exists, and with today‘s technology, anything could be faked. Sadly nothing more can be found on the internet in the form of evidence, apart from those two videos which were uploaded to YouTube some years back now, no longer exist. Perhaps including something along the lines of ‗If you have had an experience with Black Stick Men, I would love to hear from you – you may email your experiences, pictures or videos to me at saraparanormal@live.co.uk‘

Sara Kettley is a paranormal investigator and researcher from Dudley in the UK. She has a keen interest in all facets of the paranormal, from the ghostly to the cryptozoological and everything in between. Sara and partner Tim currently run Lightseekers in the Dudley region and have raised a considerable amount of money for charitable causes conducting overnight events. For more information, see the website: www.lightseekers.webs.com

From Beyond

My Fort Paull Experience Phantom Encounters recent guest Hayley Grant writes in to Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition to share her emotional and exciting overnight ghost hunting experience at Fort Paull, East Yorkshire in Feb 2011. My sister and I booked this event as a different night out. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ve had a few past experiences, but always tried to find logical explanations, Hannah was a sceptic. We arrived at Fort Paul, which was plunged in darkness, our first vigil was in the vaults. As soon as we entered we were naturally scared as it was pitch black; as we started getting braver, guided by the team leaders, we called out. We heard footsteps in the corridor of the vaults; I clearly heard the name Pippa, which was of no relevance to me or any other people I came with. We moved around the vaults but all the noises came from the same corridor. We ventured into the corridor on our own, suddenly, there was a clicking noise and a gust of wind and it felt like someone had run past. It was amazing! None of us could believe what we had

encountered and as the adrenaline kicked in, proud of how brave our group had become, we set out to enjoy the night ahead. Our next vigil was on the Bomber, most of the group had gone upstairs into the aircraftâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s jump deck, myself and two others stayed down. We heard a rustling at the back of the plane, so we went down however there was nothing there. We then heard footsteps coming up into the plane; again there was nothing visually there. All of a sudden at just over arms length, there was something' moving about at the back of the plane, as clear as day. This was too close to comfort; we screamed and made our way out of the aircraft. Realising what had happened, and with no explanation, we had to go back onto the Bomber to prove ourselves wrong. As soon as we got back to our position, scratching was heard, again at the back of the aircraft.

From Beyond My Fort Paull Experience At that point I realised I was being summoned to go upstairs, where my sceptical sister and others where doing a Ouija board vigil. I knew before my name had been called that I needed to go upstairs. The message that came through on the Ouija board was a personal message for both my sister and I*; it has changed all my beliefs and I will remember this forever. It‘s a special experience which has been shared with my family; the messages that where sent touched a lot of sceptical hearts, most of whom had not been there on the night.

This was the most amazing night and I would recommend it to anyone. I know it has changed Hannah‘s perception on the paranormal, and made my beliefs stronger. We have already booked, along with friends two more dates and I can‘t wait. I wonder who else wants to pay us a visit- bring it on!

Hayley (Right) with her sister Hannah (Left)

EDITORS NOTE: The Ouija board session in the plane, taken just moments before Hayley was called upstairs.

After the next break, we then moved onto the Victorian hospital, and did a human pendulum experiment. We established the energy with us was a nurse and had worked there; her energy was pushing Ian (the volunteer pendulum) to and fro, when we were calling out. The group we had now joined was different to the one in the vaults, and Ian had not been with us. I shouted out the name I heard in the vaults: ―Are you Pippa?‖ Ian was pushed forward for ‗Yes‘ and someone else asked did you follow is in the vaults, again the answer was ‗Yes‘. After a little while Pippa left and another energy came through. The atmosphere changed dramatically; Ian‘s face had changed and we quickly found out that the other group had encountered this energy in the vaults; he was a murderer and an officer/ guard from Fort Paull. He was asked in no uncertain terms by Kelly, to leave immediately. We were all stood in shock and then the other group told us there findings from earlier in the night in the vaults where a male spirit had come through and admitted to killing a young nurse who worked at the Fort..

A HUGE thank you to Hayley for sharing her exciting and emotional experience on her recent Phantom Encounters event at Fort Paull. *Interestingly, the group that was conducting the Ouija session was not related to Hayley in any way; the session that provided the information that was passed through was conducted by a group who had never met Hayley or her sister previously. Paranormal? You make up your own mind!

EXPERIENCE THE EXCITEMENT BOOK YOUR FORT PAULL EVENT NOW ! It appears the word is out about the spooktastic time people are having at our Fort Paull events...and they‘re selling out! If you would like to book a place on one of the future Fort Paull events , all you need to do is pay a deposit. See our DEPOSIT page on the Phantom Encounters website for more information.

Ever thought things were a little ‘dead’ in South-East England? From Highgate’s famous cemetery to busy Sussex & placid Tunbridge Wells, Neil Arnold has a tale that will put the shivers through you and asking ‘How dead...is dead?’

Alongside the vampire and the werewolf, the zombie is the most celebrated figure in the world of the horror film. Flesh-eating ghouls have risen from the grave on celluloid for almost a century. From the creaky black and white White Zombie to George A. Romero‘s frequent forays into the world of the undead – Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead, Day Of The Dead, etc. And not forgetting the more down-to earth, and closer to home 28 Days Later, and the humorous Shaun Of The Dead. The archetype zombie instils fears mainly due to the fact that these lumbering corpses, albeit clumsy and bereft of intelligence, are, in film anyway, able to take over the world, and of course can only be killed by taking a bullet to the head. In folklore the zombie is confined to the darkest corners of Africa, where such monsters are said to exist in countries such as Haiti. Locals believe that the dead are indeed able to walk, and so rituals are performed to protect certain areas from these walking cadavers. Fear of such decomposing apparitions mirror the same dreads conjured in European folklore, where for centuries, particularly in countries such as Romania, there has been a strong belief in vampires rising of a foggy night. In Germany, and other countries across the European continent, there is also a fear of werewolves which appears to have spread to more modern day America. In Britain there has never been a need to fear the vampire, werewolf or zombie, except in those atmospheric Hammer horror movies. For many, those gut-wrenching zombie splatter movies are so far removed from reality, that the closest we can actually get to encountering such mumbling corpses is through the comfort of the television or cinema screen behind a tub of popcorn and bottle of fizz. The last place you would expect to see actual zombies is in the south-east of England, especially as zombies, as we‘ve already discussed, aren‘t real…or are they ? Glad Wish Wood at Burwash, situated between Tunbridge Wells and East Sussex is the area Rudyard Kipling spoke of as the place, ‗…full of a sense of ancient ferocity and evil‘, and the encounter of an Arthur Warnford seems to echo Kiplings words, and also the fear of the locals in regards to the unnatural setting. Mr Warnford spent much of his time strolling around the local fields and woods, and Glad Wish Wood always tempted him to within its grim and wiry framework, a place of dread, atmosphere and history. On one particular evening in the September of 1956 Arthur walked along the edge of the wood, dusk had yet to fall, the birds were still happily singing in the tall trees, and all was calm as he swung his ash stick merrily through the wood. Arthur had strayed slightly from his usual path, and suddenly, despite his own annoyance towards himself for day dreaming, the air became heavy, menace seemed to enshroud the thicket, and a heartjolting screech pierced the air. It could have been an owl or a rabbit Arthur thought to himself, nothing at all to worry about, as he was quite familiar with the sounds of nature and also the unpredictable atmospheric changes in the intriguing woodland. Arthur strolled on, aware that dusk was hanging in the air, and after half a mile he stumbled into a patch of thicket that seemed eerily quiet, and then there was the presence, as if someone, or ‗thing‘ was also in the wood. Surely nonsense, he thought to himself but why the very strange feelings ?

‘…full of a sense of ancient ferocity and evil’ Again, Arthur walked on, slightly worried at the lack of a pathway before him and the clawing brambles and snagging vegetation. Again the shriek filled the evening air. Fox ? Rabbit ? Bird ? And then the noises as if something larger than fox, rabbit or bird was lumbering through the woods. Arthur began to panic, aware that the path he required was possibly nearby yet out of view amongst the spillage of greenery and thorny foliage. He wasn‘t sure if he‘d walked in a circle, or where he was actually going, and he was angry at himself for his unusually poor navigational skills. He sensed the dread within, disorientated, the sweat forming on his forehead. Was it the heavy oppression of dusk or the sudden wall of fear encasing him causing his senses to become confused ? Yet there, behind him, something crashing through the scrub…a person….no,…a figure most certainly, was it a ghost ? Darkly adorned the being emerged from the shadows and bracken, stumbling, faltering, awkward, maybe limping, and jerking and that awful wheezing, rasping gurgle from the oesophagus, a dying, mournful gasp. Are they wings flapping by its side ? Or maybe arms in spasm, ragged in unkempt, tatty cloth ? Yet the figure comes closer still. Arthur trembling as its legs catch on the brush, pulling nettles and ivy from their root. And the face. Oh no, the face of the thing. Merely a jaw-dropping skull, rotten, with deep, sunken, barely visible eyes, yawning from the chasm of the sockets. The face of decay, a putrefying ogre from some indefinite place. Was this a nightmare ? How could Arthur wake as the monster from the worst of ill dreams smothered the air, reached for him, its black eyes searching him, its putrid head bobbing, twitching, the yawning cavernous mouth babbling and choking on the evening air. Then the humanoid was upon him, but with all the strength he could muster in the sapping dusk, Arthur cracked his walking stick over the cranium of the being, and then darkness… Arthur stirred. He was on the ground amongst the greenery. The evening seemed still, calm and how it should be. No sign of the nightmarish phantasm that had invaded his privacy. Had he imagined it ? He looked quickly at the stick by his side. It was indeed broken, but where was the creature he‘d struck so heavily with one mighty blow ? Was it an apparition of the undead ? Some flesh-eating marauder from the very depths of Hell ? A formidable spirit ? Hallucination ?

Rumour has it that what Arthur encountered may well have been the spectre of a man named David Leany, once hung in the area yet wrongly convicted of murder in 1825, who, before his death, warned all his accusers that he would return from the grave and forever haunt the area. Whatever the ghoul of Glad Wish Wood was, whether a ghost, zombie or winged entity we‘ll never really know, but I‘m pretty sure that such a presence remains in that wood, albeit dormant, awaiting another hour of reprisal. In 2008 the Bexhill-On-Sea Observer spoke of a ‗zombie‘ said to haunt the water treatment plant at Prince William Parade in Eastbourne. An employee, who‘d been stationed at the plant since 2000 claimed he‘d seen a strange apparition in 2008 in the control room. A fellow worker commented, ―I believe in ghosts and I‘m sure there‘s something in there. I dread doing the night shift. It‘s not funny going to work and worrying that a zombie might be around the corner.‖ Eerie voices and ‗humanoid‘ shadows were recorded at the building during an investigation. A Southern Water spokesperson stated: ―He (Mr Wey) organised this psychic investigation as part of his ghostly hobby and we hope the findings weren‘t too frightening.‖ There is another zombie legend from the south-east and concerns a vile undead ghoul known as the ‗Bogman‘. This is a bogeyman rarely spoken of, a true zombie from the closet who has trickled through Kentish folklore. Legend states that during the early 1930s a mummified corpse was discovered in a peat layer on the marshes at Upchurch, near Sittingbourne. At the time local police were investigating the disappearance of a schoolgirl but instead unearthed the remains of a Neolithic hunter who, it was believed, had been murdered. However, the remains of the being provided a connection to the schoolgirl, as well as an incredible twist to the mystery for it was said that a shoe belonging to the missing girl was found in the hand of the hunter! The police prized away the fingers to reveal a red sandal. Several years later it was said that the body of the girl was found by a local gamekeeper beneath a vegetable patch. Investigations revealed that one item of clothing was missing, one of the victims red sandals! Some say, or so the story goes, that the gamekeeper was never questioned but had perished at the hands of the girls aunt who had poisoned him. Is the tale of the Upchurch Bogman merely ghost story for cold nights by a campfire ? Possibly. Mind you, it was even once claimed that the remains of the Bogman were once housed at Rochester‘s Eastgate Museum (now Eastgate House). Some say the Bogman rose from the dead, and as a zombie, prowled a huge territory, ranging from the dank tunnels beneath Fort Amherst and Fort Pitt in Chatham, to the marshes further North. Such was the potency of the legend that the fiend was said to have caused hysteria locally around the time of the Second World War and during the 1950s the zombie was said to regularly attack local school girls who described being assailed by a mud-caked phantom.

Investigations revealed that one item of clothing was missing, one of the victims red sandals!

Of course, the reality of the bog zombie is dubious to say the least. Descriptions vary of the monster but one intriguing description states that the fiend, whilst on the roam, is always accompanied by two spectral hounds. Those who have heard of the undead being claim that his head is almost hanging off, due to the fact he was sacrificially murdered by strangulation, or that its head sits atop his shoulders facing backwards. The Bogman may have a tattoo of a gallows on his left arm, he may have bright red hair, and no-one really knows how old the Bogman is or whether an exorcism was really performed on the marshes in the ‗50s to rid the spirit , but one thing‘s for sure, zombies are real! Highgate Cemetery, in north London, was once said to be a hotbed of vampire activity. During the late 1960s and early ‗70s a tall, dark, red-eyed figure was said to haunt the North Gate of the Western Cemetery. However, during 1967 it appeared that zombies were also prowling the ivy-strewn pathways of Highgate. Two sixteen-year old girls, named Barbara and Elizabeth, were walking home one night through Highgate village. Their journey took them down Swains Lane which runs alongside the cemetery. As they strolled by the gate they noticed in horror that amidst the crooked gravestones, the undead were rising. Sean Manchester, in his book The Highgate Vampire, wrote, ‗Elizabeth Wojdyla, one of the schoolgirls, gave me the following account some months later – ―We were not talking, just walking. And the graves were opening up; and the people were rising. We were not conscious of walking down the lane. We were only conscious of the graveyard scene.‖ The following account was sent to me by a friend named Sally McConnell. ‗It was a November evening (4:30pm) in 1982, I was alone in the house (at Rainham, in Essex) and I went up to the loft extension at the top of the house to my brothers bedroom. I was looking for a record and had my back to the bannisters when I heard a rustle movement at the bannisters ( you could see the back bedroom as the stairs turned the corner). I looked around had a feeling something was watching me! The smalll creature was hooked by his claws (peering over the bannister) looking at me, the mouth was very threatening and he was hissing at me but the eyes were distant and had no feeling to them, they were black as black !! I could see the skull through the thin transparent skin, his cheeks were sunken and he had no visible hair. It looked like a zombie and a vampire at once. I froze, my heart tightened and I turned away. I felt so sick and with that ran like hell down the stairs. I had to pass where he was but didn‘t look to see if he was still there.

I put every light on in the house until all the family came home from work which was about 6:00 pm. I had the music on really loud so if he was there I couldn‘t hear him scurrying about ! Two days later my brother who had originally laughed at me with the rest of the family wanted me to tell him the story again, it was just us alone in the house, it was a Saturday and as I was telling him we jumped like mad when a brass plate that was positioned on a ledge up the stairs was thrown (or fell?) down into the hall. We searched the house (reluctantly) but found nothing phew !! Nothing has been seen since in that house and my parents still live there.‖ So, are zombies real, or are they confined to the imagination but occasionally stirred by pop videos such as Michael Jackson‘s Thriller ? Who knows, but one thing is for sure, there‘s nothing more alive than the legend undead.

The antiquated town of Rochester is riddled with tales of phantom monks, eerie tunnels, romantic spirits, dark apparitions, and eerie history, but pick up any book pertaining to ghost lore and you will find only a handful of tales from Rochester, which has become a much ignored haven of spiritual activity. Now, however, comes a unique volume which proves that Rochester is in fact one of the most haunted places in Britain. Its High Street alone harbours over forty ghost stories, whilst its surrounding schools, houses and pubs are home to many obscure spectres. The atmosphere described by Charles Dickens many years ago can now be seen in a more chilling light, so read on to discover the ghosts of Rochester's past.

Neil Arnold is a full time author, monster hunter & public speaker. His opinion on sightings of big cats, monsters and Zooform phenomena has been sought by media the world over. Neil conducts regular ghost walks at Kent’s infamous Blue Bell Hill: See his website for information: http://www.bluebellhillghostwalk.blogspot.com Kent Big Cat Research , Beasts of London , Monster: A Blog , Kent Monsters

Haunted Rochester Retails For £9.99 from all good retailers.

‘If you haven’t read any of Arnold’s books then you’re not half as informed as you think you are! Haunted Rochester shows again why Arnold is hard to beat when it comes to making the paranormal world accessible to the masses.’ - Kelly Day Other titles by this author...

First look...

Morecambe Winter Gardens When the lights go out at Morecambe winter gardens On 13th August All the world becomes a paranormal stage! For the Phantom Encounters Team.

Morecambe Winter Gardens Theatre, originally known as the Victorian Pavillion Theatre was built in 1897. Situated on Morecambes Central Promenade it has borne witness to the acting talents of some of the most famous names in entertainment history. After closing its doors to the theatregoing public in 1977, it languished in decline until 1986 when the Friends of the Winter Gardens Charity was formed and commenced on their mission to restore this fantastic building back to its former glory. It is not however, the beauty of the building that will be drawing the Phantom Encounters team and their intrepid guests to Morecambe Winter Gardens but the ghosts, ghouls and spectres said to inhabit the dark corners and dusty backstage areas of the theatre itself.

in particular the stairwells which lead down into the basement area. One of the spirits lurking in these stairwells is said to be that of a woman who plummeted to her death after an argument. Her forlorn figure is said to linger in the stairways, pleading for help from those who venture into her path. Remember Phantom Encounters has a new group booking discount! For every five paying guests your bring with you, your ticket is free! So in a party of six...one goes free! As if you needed any more incentive to book a night out you‘ll never forget….TICKETS ARE £45.00 FOR THIS EVENT.

Like most theatres, Morecambe Winter Gardens is said to host a number of spirits, those who have worked there…and those who may have died there! A room, that used to be the ladies toilets on the first floor is the site of numerous muttering noises and where shadowy presences are felt by female guests. The dressing room, once a hive of activity is said to be home to the spirit of a seamstress and aspiring dancer for whom fame never came. Her frustration can be keenly felt by those with a psychic disposition. On the darker side of things, the bar is said to the home to a dark entity; who is not fond of people tarrying in his domain. A number of the stairwells in the building are said to be haunted

Reserve your ticket now! Book via the Phantom Encounters Limited website or call us direct on 0845 463 6693; please do not contact the location for tickets.

Higher Education The Arthur Findlay Story Jason Day takes a look at the story behind one of Essex’s most famous spiritualist centres and the man who, with his generosity, made it all possible. Arthur Findlay is a name synonymous with the world of spiritualism and mediumship. Arthur was born in 1883 and by the age of seventeen he had developed an interest in the field of comparative religion. Findlay became an accountant, stockbroker and magistrate and by 1913 had been awarded the Order of the British Empire for his work with the Red Cross during World War I. His extensive research into religion and beliefs continued throughout this period. By 1919, Findlay had become a believer and practitioner of spiritualism and a year later he founded the Glasgow Society for Psychical Research. Much of Findlay‘s interest and belief in the paranormal came from an encounter with a Scottish medium called John Sloan, an encounter that would change his life. Findlay first entered a spiritualist church on Sunday, 10th September 1918. At the end of the

service he questioned what he had just witnessed, the spiritualist at the church told Findlay that he did not expect him to believe without proof. He added that he could provide him with the proof he needed and arranged for Findlay to attend a séance held by John Sloan the following evening. John Campbell Sloan was born in Dalbeattie, Scotland. According to those who knew him, although he may have had a rather unwelcoming demeanour he was in fact a very humble man. Sloan claimed he was able to communicate with spirits through the practice of ‗direct voice communication‘; where the spirit uses the medium‘s vocal chords to convey their messages. This was said to be achieved by Sloan‘s ability to create ectoplasm. This type of spirit communication is referred to as ‗physical mediumship‘ and involves the medium producing a substance

Higher Education The Arthur Findlay Story

from orifices on their body which spiritual entities are said to shape, enabling them to interact in our physical universe. Most instances of this type of interaction would involve spiritual entities draping this substance over their nonphysical body to ‗show themselves‘ to people. John Sloan is said to have used this phenomena in a rather different way. Sloan would produce the ectoplasm which was then ‗moulded‘ into a voice-box through which spirit voices could be heard again in our world. Sloan's séances would take place in a darkened room to help the subtle ectoplasm to form properly and during the proceedings expert stenographers recorded in shorthand everything that was said. Sitters at his séances relayed that it was not uncommon for several spirit voices to speak at once, in different parts of the room. Sloan‘s abilities were hailed by those within the spiritualist community and his ‗gift‘ was often regarded as astonishing. Findlay studied Sloan‘s abilities for five years and produced several volumes of his findings in book form. During Findlay‘s first meeting with Sloan at the séance in September 1918 he believed that his father‘s spirit came through to him. Findlay was so convinced by Sloan‘s abilities that night he said: ―…No spy system, however thorough it was, no fraud or impersonation by the medium or anyone else could be responsible for what I had experienced.‖ Findlay thanked Sloan for his hospitality and asked him if he could come back again, as he was anxious to know more about what he had experienced. Findlay went on to study Sloan‘s abilities for five years and produced several volumes of his findings in book form. Sloan continued to practise mediumship for over forty years, giving his services free of charge to all his sitters

‘...no fraud or impersonation by the medium or anyone else could be responsible for what I had experienced.” By 1920 Findlay had founded the Glasgow Society for Psychical Research and in 1923 he took part in the Church of Scotland's enquiry into psychic phenomenon. In the same year, he retired from his professional business and purchased Stansted Hall in Essex, a manor house built in 1871. Findlay had now devoted his life to spiritualism and in 1932, he became a founding member of Psychic News, a Spiritualist newspaper, along with Hannen Swaffer and Maurice Barbanell. Findlay first mooted the idea of a Spiritualist College at Stansted to the Spiritualists' National Union in 1945 (An organisation that Findlay himself would become an honorary president of). After personal contacts with three successive Union Presidents a will was drawn up and in 1954 the National Council accepted the proposed bequest of Stansted Hall with an endowment. This was followed by a later gift in the form of stock to be used for furnishing and decorating, and in 1964, a year after the death of his wife, Mr Findlay transferred the Hall, grounds and endowment to the Union. Arthur Findlay himself died in July 1964. Findlay‘s vision of a Spiritual College had become a reality. Holding over 60 Courses every year, The Arthur Findlay College (formerly Stanstead Hall) is now a residential centre where students can study Spiritualist philosophy, healing, mediumship and psychic abilities. Courses, lectures and demonstrations are all offered by leading exponents, together with the additional features of a library and museum making Stansted Hall the world‘s leading facility for the advancement of Psychic Science. For more information on Arthur Findlay or the Arthur Findlay College in Stansted, Essex head over to their website: www.arthurfindlaycollege.org Or call them on 01279 813636

Jason Day is a prolific author with three paranormally focussed books in print, two more in production and a further three commissioned!

The enigmatic John Sloan. His alleged abilities were the focus of Arthur Findlay ‘s research for five years.

Jason has written for magazines internationally, with his articles appearing in FATE, Paranormal Magazine and Ghost Voices. For more information on Jason, head to: www.jasonday.co.uk

Sarc-astrology A sarcastic look at Your SPRING stars There was an overwhelming response to our Christmas Stars feature, with many of our readers asking us if it was going to become a regular feature of the magazine? We are delighted to announce that our resident part-time astrologer/ full-time smartarse has consented to provide astrological pearls of wisdom to the masses in every issue… You have been warned!

Aries: So it hasn‘t been the greatest couple of

Leo: Newsflash Leo: no one cares what you‘re going

months for you, well join the queue! Really, you are fast becoming the poster child for the astrological equivalent of an ASBO! When things don‘t go your way stop stamping your little whiney lamby foot and just get on with it. Alternatively you could just run back to Mummy and hope she fixes it all.

to be doing in Benidorm in three months time. In fact, if they could club together the money, most people who know you would pay to have you permanently exported to Spain! As much as you think people love to bask in the rays of your Day-Glo orange tan and miasma of Britney Spears latest perfumic monstrosity, most people are counting the days until you leave so they can enjoy a few blissful weeks of Leo-Free silencio!

Taurus: Try to overcome that bull headedness and accept the drastic change that this season brings. Because you‘re organised people (wrongly) assume you‘re available and make massive demands on your time; if you can‘t say ‗No‘ then the smart thing to do is blackmail a Virgo into sharing the workload – they‘ll just think you‘re being friendly!

Virgo: Well, well, well aren‘t you an cranky little camper this month? You know, nothing gives the rest of the Zodiac quite as much pleasure as watching Virgo‘s trying to get used to the change in Daylight Savings. Twice a year we get to watch as you run late, arrive early and exhibit a level of dishevelment that would make a Pisces proud. Thanks for cheering us up Virgo.

Gemini: Thinking about a career change Gemini?

Libra: What to do, what to do? Having another crisis

It‘s a time of restless energy and feeling dissatisfied with your lot in life so do something useful with it. Turn your love of gossip, subterfuge and dressing like a tart into a new career as a Private Detective or join MI6. That way when you walk into a room looking mysterious and slightly dodgy there will at least (finally) be a reason for it!

are we Libra? How delightfully predictable. I‘d love to think that your crisis involved something ‗substantial‘ like how to fix world hunger, clothe Tsunami victims or prevent disease but it is far more likely to involved clothing, perfume, shoes or a combination of all of them. Solution? Go naked and give us all a laugh!

Cancer: It‘s called Spring for a reason; so instead

Scorpio: A Scorpio on the hunt for a new job is one

of moping around in bed moaning about how crap your life is, how about dragging your arse out of bed and doing something constructive...like cleaning! Strictly speaking mould spores are not ‗house plants‘ and no matter how virulent the strain Staphylococcus can not be called a pet! Get scrubbing.

to be wary of indeed. Try and avoid occupations where making people cry is a ‗bad thing‘ like care homes, funeral directors, orphanages etc. On the upside, your fab Scorpio social skills uniquely qualify you for work as a prison guard, S&M dungeon master and a reporter for the Daily Mail.

Sarc-astrology A sarcastic look at Your Spring stars

Sagittarius: There is a difference between honesty and ‗truth‘. Truth is absolute, honesty requires tact to impart— learning the difference between these two things is your Spring mission as it will save you from a bruising, meaning this year you are in with a shot at being able to wear short sleeves like the rest of us.

Capricorn: Hiding away in your study will not change the fact that Summer is on it‘s way. Time to throw open the windows, grab the paint tins and make your home look respectable. Just a tip: If the paint in the can is solid, no amount of thinner will sort it out; you‘ll just have to drag your wallet down to B&Q and buy some more. Feel free to moan about it, at length, to the person behind the paint counter and spare the rest of us your ‗When I was a lad paint only cost £2.00‘ speech ...please!!!

Aquarius: Ah Summer, the season when Airy types get to wear suitably ‗floaty‘ clothing, advertising their astrological status to the world. This Summer, Aquarian‘s will either: A) Be found parading down the beach wearing nothing but strategically placed cheesecloth and eco-friendly sunscreen whilst advising beach donkey owners on the rights of their animals...or B) In the A&E department suffering from hypothermia and suspected beating by donkey owners.

Pisces: ‗Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swim, swim, swim, swim...just keep swimming‘. The wisdom of Dory is not lost on you this season Pisces; it seems your battles are never ending. Well, when in doubt, do as Gwyneth does and Yoga your way into a good mood. Remember, there is nothing a fat-free tofu ice cream can‘t fix...except maybe your obvious These stars were compiled without the benefit of an ephemeris or any real astrological knowledge; although a large degree of random personality typing was used. Although it should be totally obvious, it must be stated that these stars are for entertainment purposes only

Phantom encounters Group booking discounts

Got a group of 5 or more people and want to experience the thrill and adrenaline rush of an overnight ghost hunting event? Phantom Encounters is now offering a discount for all bookings of five or more tickets on any event. .For every FIVE paying customers, a SIXTH person goes ABSOLUTELY FREE! Remember, Phantom Encounters Ltd can organise private events. If you have a birthday coming up, hen’s night or need a team building event for work why not contact us about planning a private ghost hunt?

Call us on 0845 463 6693

phantom encounters Quarterly Edition

Article Submissions If you would like to submit an article for publication in Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition we would love to hear from you.

Have you Been our guest?

The general public, paranormal groups and teams are welcome to send in their articles for consideration.

If you have been guest on a Phantom Encounters event and would like to share your experiences with the world, then we would love to hear from you!

Professional event companies wishing to submit an article or promote an upcoming event will need to contact the Phantom Encounters team for submission guidelines and protocols. Whilst we are ( in the spirit of cooperation) happy to promote other event companies in the newsletter, we do reserve the right to refuse submissions at any time.

It doesn‘t matter if it‘s an in-depth article or perhaps some pictures and personal experiences from your night in a haunted location with us that you‘d like to share—we‘d be thrilled to hear from you.

If you are planning on submitting an article, please ensure that your work has three things: 1. Your name on it. 2. Correct spelling, grammar & punctuation 3. Supporting pictures if possible. Feature articles should be between 1,500-3,000 words Regular Pieces should be between 500 to 1,000 words Filler pieces should be 500 words or less.

Local paranormal news! Heard about UFO‘s in your county? Perhaps a spook has been seen in your street? Email the Phantom Encounters Limited team with your local paranormal news and you could be in the pages of the next Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition!

Pictures and personal accounts can be email to the team at: events@phantomencounters.co.uk We‘ll be adding a gallery feature in our next edition in March, so get your pictures in soon!

copyright warning All work submitted for publication to the editing team at Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition must be your OWN work. The Phantom Encounters team will check all submissions for plagiarised content (including images) and will take action should it be necessary. If you suspect an article in Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition has been plagiarised from your work, contact the team immediately on 0845 463 6693. Likewise, no content from Phantom Encounters Quarterly Edition may be reproduced in it‘s currently presented format without the express written permission of the PE team. Authors retain all right to their own work.

Overnight ghost hunting events Could you survive a night in a haunted location? Find out, with Phantom Encounters! Face your fears on a thrilling Overnight Ghost Hunting Experience! With our skilled team leaders, you & your friends could be taking part in experiments such as sĂŠances, table tipping & Ouija Board work. Use our extensive array of divination and tech equipment or search the inky darkness with our special Night Vision Cameraâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s! The choice is yours... Contact the Phantom Encounters Ltd team now for information & bookings:

0845 463 6693 Discounts for groups of 5 or more...