Jessica Penot's Blog, page 13

Spells to Drive Away Ghosts and Prevent Hauntings.

This summer has been insane and my blog posts have become less and less frequent.  I apologize for that.  Work and life have kept me busy, but I always try to save some time for reading and working on my next book.  I am currently working on my next book about a witch.  This book has required more research than usual because I didn't know much about witchcraft.  One of the wonderful books I got was call The Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells by Judika Illes.  This is a wonderful book for me because I can find all kind of magical mischief for my protagonist.  It is also wonderful because it offers a vast collection of  spells and folk remedies to prevent and end hauntings from around the world.    I thought I would put a couple of these wonderful spells here for all those who are struggling with a haunting and looking for a supernatural remedy.  If you want more remedies, you'll have to buy the book because it has enough ghost away spells to clean out a cemetery.  These few are just the tip of the iceberg.



*  Get Away Ghost Bistort Spell

1.  Burn bistort, waft the fragrance through the home and reserve the ashes.

2.  Pour boiling water over the powdered herb.

3.  Sprinkle the bistort infusion throughout the home

4.  Sprinkle the ashes over thresholds

5.  Repeat regularly- at least once a week



* Mesopotamian Ghost Spell

1.  Braid a strand of unbleached wool and a strand of red wool together.  Use red wool that will not bleed into the other strand.  The finished strand should be long enough to tie around your forehead.

2.  Make seven knots in the braid, while focusing upon your desires. 

3.  Bind the braid around your forehead, while chanting an incantation like this:

      "Until red turns white and white turns red,

        that ghost that haunts me can't come back again."

4.  Sleep in the braid overnight

5.  Afterwards, carry it as a talisman, in a charm bag.



* Ghost and Poltergeist Protection Spell

1.  Maintain fresh bay laurel branches and leaves within the home

2.  Replace them as their green color fades



*Haunted House Prevention Spell

1.  Sprinkle a strong infusion of bayberry inside and around the perimeter of a house to exorcise existing ghosts and repel new ones.  For added power, asperge with a bay laurel branch.



* Rest in Peace Spell

1.  Place a small doll in a tiny coffin.

2.  Have a great send off for the doll.

3.  Bury the coffin in a remote area or in a cemetery.

Chasing Skulls in Hogsmeade

Last week I went to Orlando.   I am not a Disney girl.  In fact, Disney is a special kind of hell to me.  My favorite part of Orlando is Universal Studios.  I love Harry Potter.  Any children's book that places the central characters in a haunted castle has a special place in my heart.  Seeing Universal's Hogwarts and Hogsmeade was a delight for me.  This delight was made even more special by the number of skeletons and skulls that hung in every corner of this dark, wizarding world.  I didn't find ghosts, but  I was able to bring home one skull for my skull collection.

The Moving Doll of Allaire House

My family house finally sold and I have been thinking about it a lot lately.  This is the blog post from my last trip to the house.  I will miss it.



For the last week, I've stayed in my family home.  My family home, The Newton-Allaire House, in Cheboygan, Michigan has served as my inspiration for many years. It has always been my favorite place, and, as a child, I would have prefered to stay in this ghostly mansion than take a trip to Disney World. The old mansion is filled with ghosts and ghost stories and if you scroll down you'll find some of the many ghost stories that I grew up with. Lately, the ghost stories from this house have been few and far between. It has sat empty since my grandmother died and my family decided to sell the house. For many years, the house didn't sell and sat in silence, as if waiting for something. I always prayed that it wouldn't sell, although I know the rest of my family has prayed it would. The rest of my family sees the house as a decaying burden that serves no purpose. I have always seen it as a link to our family history. This week, if all goes well, the house will sell. I will say goodbye to the beautiful mansion that inspired so many of my ghost stories and will always haunt my dreams. Such is life, but as the house vanishes from my life, I've caught my first glimpse of paranormal activity here that I've seen in years.



On Tuesday, my boys played tricks on each other in the upstairs bedrooms of the old house. My older son moved a doll from room to room and tried to convince his younger brother that the doll was evil and moving on its own. After my younger son came screaming down the stairs in terror, I decided to put an end to this game. I went upstairs with my angry face on and found a mound of what looked like a small child beneath the covers in one of the bedrooms. The mound was moving and I could see it shifting beneath the sheets. I could even see a hand moving under the sheet.  I assumed it was my eldest son, waiting to leap out at his youngest brother and scare him to death. I pulled back the covers and found the large plastic doll under the sheets staring out at me with glassy eyes. I have never been afraid of strange events in this house, but I knew if my sons found out about this they would  be sleeping on top of me so I have kept this event to myself. It is the first unexplained event in this house for many years and I think it means that even though I won't be here anymore, the house is awake again.  The pictures I took of the house this trip have a few orbs in them.  The house is a dusty old lady, so they could be tricks of light and dust, but I'm glad to see some sign of ghosts again.  I'm also glad for the chance to say goodbye to the house I've loved my entire life.






















This is a crooked picture of the giant doll I found beneath the sheets.

 

 



Cheboygan on Dwellable

Do Ghosts Set Off Smoke Alarms?

For the past week,   our smoke alarms have been going off every night at 9:00pm.   Nothing has been on fire.  There has been no smoke.  The alarms just go off.  We live in a new house we purchased from the builder 5 months ago.  The smoke alarms are brand new, but every night the alarms go off.  This is a huge pain in the ass.   It is loud and wakes up the baby and it creeps out the kids.   Everyone panics and runs around like idiots.  You never realize how hard it is to stop those things from going off until you try to get them to shut up.  I knocked the things off of the ceiling and they still went off in my hand.  I mashed the button.  I took the batteries out.  If one goes off,  they all go off.  It is maddening.



This maddening smoke alarm behavior got me thinking about whether or not a ghost could produce this type of behavior in a smoke alarm.  My preliminary research showed that many people have this problem.   I found countless message boards where people have asked if a haunting could produce an alarm going off every night at the same time.   One person hypothesized the following on a yahoo message board, "If the theory about ghosts being a collection of energy is true, then yes, they could manipulate electrical equipment to do such things, powering if from their own energy."  This made sense to me.  This theory is supported by the large number of people that describe this type of  smoke alarm activity in haunted locations.    Stories like this one from Castle of Spirits http://www.castleofspirits.com/stories03/smokedet.html are prolific.    Another interesting smoke alarm ghost story can be found a http://www.yourghoststories.com/real-ghost-story.php?story=3449.  My husband used to work at the morgue and every night the smoke alarm went off  in front of the cooler where the bodies were kept at 3am on the nose.  It was like clockwork.  It went off for five or ten minutes and then went quiet.  It was more than creepy, especially when you are spending the night alone at the morgue. 



So, theoretically a passing spirit or ghost could produce the type of behavior we've observed in our smoke alarms here.  This smoke alarm behavior is made even more frustrating by the fact that it only seems to happen when my husband is gone so the only person that knows what they are doing with the smoke alarms isn't present.   I also wanted to investigate non supernatural possibilities for my faulty smoke alarms.   I did my reading and found that there are many things that can contribute to smoke alarms going off at the wrong time.  Many modern smoke alarms are also triggered by intense heat.  So, if it is very hot and your attic is excessively hot sometimes that will heat the ceiling and trigger the smoke alarm.  Also, if  hot steam from a shower rises up this could trigger the smoke alarm.  It is also always possible that the things are broken and need repair.  I could easily rule out the smoke alarm being broken by talking to my builder.  I could also rule out the attic heat hypothesis by going up into my attic and finding that it was not really hot up there.   That left the steam possibility.  My son does shower every night around nine and after examining his behavior, I think he was setting off the alarm by opening the bathroom door and releasing all the hot steam onto the smoke detector.  



Our house is not haunted, but that doesn't make the number of cases of smoke alarms going off without any reason less interesting.   I have never found an explanation for the alarm that went off at the morgue.   The alarm was a hospital alarm that was checked regularly due to tight hospital regulations.  It was in front of the cooler and the air around it was cooler than the rest of the hospital and since the morgue was in the basement there was no attic above it.   My husband and I still tend to believe that the phantoms of the dead locked up in that rancid smelling cooler drifted out late at night, setting off the alarm.

The White Queen of Chenonceau

During my castle tour of the Loire Valley, I listened to many audio tours and studied the history of each castle. There was no mention of anything supernatural. The tours contained only the facts. Interestingly, my son's audio tour of the castle of Chenanceau was quite different from mine. It was designed for young children and told a detailed account of the ghost that haunts the castle.



Chenanceau is one of more stunning of the castles in the Loire Valley. It is a beautiful Renaissance castle that stretches across the Loire-Indes River. It was constructed in phases and is a uniquely feminine castle. All of it's owners and occupants have been women and the castle itself seems to whisper this character. The castle was taken by King Henry II in 1517 for his mistress Diane de Portier. After the king's death, his wife Catherine de Medici, took the castle back from Diane and began the elaborate construction of the gallery that stretches across the river. It was completed in 1577.



It is this gallery that is haunted by the ghost of the White Queen. The White Queen was the wife of King Henry III. Following his murder, she retired to Chenonceau and clothed herself only in white. She spent the rest of her life mourning his loss. Even her bedchamber reflects her sorrow. It is black, painted with white flowers.



According to my son's audio tour, her ghost still wanders the halls of the chateau forever mourning her lost love. She is seen by many visitors as a white clad specter weeping in the hall. Many have also reported seeing images of her in pictures taken of the hall. I have included the pictures we took of the gallery. It may be my imagination, but I always think I see a soft white form by the window.

Amazon Giveaway!

It is give away time again!  A couple of times a year I giveaway free books and prizes to my readers.   This time I'll be giving away kindle copies of all of my books and a ten dollar gift card to amazon.com.  If you would like to win this lovely amazon gift basket follow me on Facebook or twitter and comment about it below.  I will pick one lucky winner!  Good luck! Here are the links!



http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Penot/512746908786746?ref=hl



https://twitter.com/Jessica_Penot














 











 

 

Deep South Paranormal

 

I met Benny Reed at my first book signing.   He was a fan of my writing, so I loved him
immediately.  I would have liked him even
if he hated my writing, but I do love fans.  
Interestingly, Benny was also part of DOA paranormal   http://www.doa-paranormal.com/.  He and his group were involved in a plethora
of interesting investigations which had me intrigued.  He invited me to join his group several times
and I am utterly depressed that each time he invited me I was always doing
something else.  I had to work or have a baby or something distracting like
that.   However, I was honored to be
invited and I watched his group and their investigations from afar knowing they
were awesome.



 Apparently, I wasn’t wrong about Benny being awesome because
the SyFy network recently cast him to be part of their new show, Deep South
Paranormal.  I love this show not only
because it has Benny in it, but because it has a little bit of that Southern
charm that makes Southern ghost stories so beautiful.   The South positively crawls with folklore
and fables and old history filled with tragedy and plantations and white ladies
and dark stories.  For example, episode 2
of Deep South Paranormal was filmed during an investigation of an old
plantation rich with Southern history that couldn’t have happened anywhere else.   Episode 3 featured the investigation of a
cotton gin in Prattville, Alabama.   The
episode started with an old Southern remedy used to drive off evil spirits
involving sucking the breath from frogs and storing it in glass vials.  I love these little Southern traditions and
they make the show much more engaging.  The show does tend to play to Southern stereotypes, but stereotypes are what makes parts of the South fun. 





I don’t watch that many television shows.  I watch American Horror Story, The Walking
Dead, Parks and Recreation,  Dr. Who, and Vikings.  I’m not a television
fan overall, but I know I’ll be adding Deep South Paranormal to my list this
season.  The show is great fun for any lover of Southern folklore and ghost stories. 
Deep South Paranormal is on at 9 central time and 10 eastern time on the
SyFy channel on Weds nights. 



http://www.syfy.com/deepsouthparanormal/about

The Haunting on Larrabbee Street


This haunting story has always been one of my favorites because it does not have a history. The haunting on Larrabbee Street has often been compared to the Amityville case, however, the house on Larrabee Street didn't have the history the Amityville house had. It is a haunting that is unexplainable. The spirit that haunted Allen and Deborah Tallman came from nowhere.

The Tallman's moved into the house on Larrabee Street in Horicon, Wisconsin in 1986. At that time, they had a little girl and a boy who was about 6 years old. Deborah Tallman was pregnant. The Tallman's loved their new home and began a fairly typical America life in their new home. Although they loved their new home, The Tallmans immediately began having difficulties in the house. They were plagued by a rash of sicknesses and their cat went crazy, climbing the walls and screaming all night. Deborah was close to her family and her family usually spent a considerable amount of time visiting Deborah. These visits began to decrease in frequency following the Tallman's move into their new home. Both Deborah's mother and sister indicated they felt sick in the Tallman home. They felt sick and suffocated.



It took more than a year for the haunting to escalate and culminate in the events that lead to the Tallman's fleeing their comfortable home. Deborah had her baby girl and the children began to complain more and more about things in their room. The little boy said that a hideous, diminutive, old woman would come into his room at night. The little girl was plagued by visions of monsters. The Tallman's grew more and more tired as their children kept them up night after night. Even their attempts at time away from home were thwarted when the babysitter saw furniture moving on it's own.



The children's nightmares could be brushed off as childhood fancy, but when Allen began to hear things and see things the Tallmans called their preacher. The preacher came into the home and told the Tallmans that their home was in the grips of something from the devil. He told them that the only way to dispel the evil that had been growing in their home was to go to church more. The Tallman's listened to the preacher to no avail. Things got worse. Windows in the basement relocated on their own, the refrigerator door remained open on it's own, the children continued to be visited by nocturnal terrors. Allen saw the garage catch on fire and when he rushed to extinguish the flame he saw a green eyed demon above the door. Allen even saw a full bodied ghost that rose from the floor in a a kind of fog and took form just long enough to tell him that he was "going to die."

Desperate, the family called the preacher again. The preacher came and told them to play church music all the time. The family listened. They listened and their was a brief reprieve before the entity came again. This time the entire family and the babysitter saw the specter just long enough to turn them all white with fear and send them fleeing into the night.



After the Tallman's left their home, the house became a local sensation and lines wrapped around the neighborhood with curious spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of some random terror. Many spectators claimed to have been successful in their desires. Many claimed to see snow blowers running up and down the driveway by themselves and furniture being flung around inside the house. Of course, none of these stories have ever been confirmed, but the stories themselves turned the Tallman house into a local legend that grew with time. Stories of the house being a gateway to hell and blood dripping from the ceilings proliferated and a media frenzy swept incidents out of control.



Despite this, and despite accusations that it was a hoax on the Tallman's part, the Tallman's have shown nothing but the desire to stay out of the spot light. They've turned down interviews and even rejected Oprah when she invited them to be her guest. They seem happiest forgetting the horror on Larrabee street.

Black Eyed Children

Black Eyed Children are the cause of much debate.   They appeared, as if from a vacuum, in 1998, and since that time the Internet has been crowded with stories of their appearance and activity around the world.  In 1998, a reporter named Brian Bethel was working in his car.  He was sitting in his vehicle alone at night and everything around him was quiet and dark.   Out of this darkness, two children emerged.   The reporter rolled down his window to talk with them.  The children told the reporter that they had been dropped off by their parents to see a movie, but they had no money and had begun the walk home.  The begged the reporter to help them and let them into his car with him.  The reporter was somewhat put off by the appearance of the children in the night and although his first impulse was to let the children in, something in his gut told him not too.   The longer Brian put off letting the children in the car, the more persistent they became.  Finally Brian peered into the darkness and noticed that the children had black eyes.   Their eyes were entirely inky black with no white or iris.  Brian became terrified and was driven by an overwhelming panic and need to run away.  The children sensed his fear and became even more aggressive in their pleas to enter the vehicle.  Finally, Brian abandoned the eerie children and went on to tell his story.



Since Brian's encounter, countless other stories like this have peppered the Internet.  One story I read on the Internet was told by a young man who skateboarding in the dark.  He was approached by two young children who claimed they were lost and asked if he could take them to his house and let them use his phone.  He offered his cell phone, but the children insisted they use his home phone.  The young man noticed the children's eyes and asked them why they were wearing contacts.  He then declined the children and went home on his own.  He was scared of the children and wanted nothing more to do with them.  When he looked out his window later that night, the two children were still watching him from the front yard.   Another story was told by a woman who was awoken in the middle of the night by two children asking for help.  They wanted to use the phone to call their parents.  The woman was overwhelmed by fear and didn't let the children in, but they stayed at her door for hours begging and pleading.



These Black Eyed Kids or BEKs  have stayed on the fringes of the paranormal and have remained so because no one really knows what to make of them.  Some people believe BEKs are part of an elaborate Internet hoax and that those telling the stories speak out on the Internet as part of this hoax.  There are others that believe the BEKs are the ghosts of lost children who wander the earth searching for safety.  Others believe they are lost souls trying to gain entrance to our lives.  Another theory states that the BEKS are demons trying to con their way into people's lives and yet another theory says they are vampires, who must get permission before entering to feed on their victims.  A final group of people argue that BEKS are the product of some bizarre alien human mating.  Whatever the truth is, the stories about these phantom, black eyed horrors are enough to send chills down your spine on the warmest nights.

The Spirit Gallery

Whenever I imagine a medium at work, I think of the mediums of the Spiritualist Movement of the turn of the 20th century.  I imagine women and men sitting at old wooden tables talking to the dead.  I also view mediums with skepticism.  I tend to think that in any money making venture there's always an angle and sometimes people stretch the truth for the profit.  I guess I am saying that I think most mediums are full of it and I've never seen a medium that's made me believe otherwise.



Last night however,  I joined medium, Tracy Farquhar, for a spirit gallery at the Lowe Mill and she managed to change my mind.  The Lowe Mill is an old Mill in a minor state of decay.  It has been revamped and turned into an art center.  There are concerts there and many artists have studio space in the Flying Monkey portion of the Lowe Mill.  Beloved Books is in a corner of the Flying Monkey and is one of those last corners of the world that still pays tribute to the written word in the form of purely paper books.  There are no kindles or nooks there.  There are only shelves of old books surrounded by paintings and chairs.



The Spirit Gallery was in Beloved Books and music from the concert below made the floor boards vibrate as the medium spoke.  Dogs barked in the distance and the sound of frolicking people surrounded the darkened book store.   Tracy Farquhar paced in the dark and  said that there were many spirits in the store with us.   She didn't ask any questions.  She just called out a name.  She said there was a Robert or Roger with us  and he was someone's uncle.  She said he died 5 years ago from something having to do with his brain.  She said she saw an old family house by the lake.  She said  Robert/Roger liked fishing.  It was at this point that I admitted that I did have an Uncle Roger who passed five years ago.  He wasn't my favorite uncle so I wasn't overjoyed to talk with him again, but I was intrigued by the accuracy of what she was saying.  She said the family house had just changed hands and that although it was still in the family it wasn't with us anymore.   The house was crumbling.  The foundation was sinking.  There was an old tree in the yard that Roger had buried something he valued by when he was a boy.   Roger saw me as a girl.  I was a little girl to him and he wanted me to remember him taking me someplace.  He also felt bad about some falling out he had with my father.  I thought she was talking about my biological father who had divorced my mother so they didn't talk anymore.  He also said he was worried about a girl, whom the psychic called my daughter.  I told her I didn't have a daughter.  She said it was a young girl who was or had been in school but was leaving because of social problems.  He wanted her to go back to school.  My sister did just drop out of college last semester because of problems with social anxiety, although I didn't tell the medium that.  I tried not to tell the medium much.  She continued to say I had some kind of foot or heal pain and he said I should take care of that. I do have plantar fasciitis and I hate taking care of it because that involves wearing ugly shoes, my nemesis. 



The medium moved on to another spirit and I was left vaguely stunned and trying to figure out how she could have possibly guessed all of that information.  I still can't think of a way,  I am assuming that she did somehow reach the spirit of my Uncle Roger.  I later learned that my step-father and my Uncle Roger had a huge falling out right before he died and that my Uncle had a favorite tree by our old family house where he built a fort and buried his treasures.  The psychic had known things I didn't even know.



The Spirit Gallery ended in many tears and people being reunited with long lost loved ones.  Lots of people were crying.  I was just stunned.  I guess if I believe in ghosts it isn't that much of a stretch to believe in a medium, especially in one who knew more about my family than I do.