GHOST PAINTINGS SHOWN IN TAIWAN EXHIBITION

This photo shows a supernatural-themed painting by Puru (溥儒),
depicting a meeting between a recently deceased spirit
and a longtime ghost.
Puru playfully rendered the newcomer
in full human form, while only an ethereal skeletal outline
 remains of the veteran ghost. (CNA)

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Supernatural Tales of Gods and Ghosts: Paintings from the Museum Collection (神鬼傳奇) exhibition began on July 1 at the National Palace Museum (故宮), and is set to run until the end of September, offering the public a chilling glimpse of the underworld in the scorching summer season.
The National Palace Museum exhibition coincides with the forthcoming seventh lunar calendar month. Known as the Ghost Month, the period marks two major festivals of Buddhist and Taoist traditions, where the gates of the underworld are opened to the living world, with wanting spirits to be quelled with offerings.

The exhibition features an extensive collection of 31 paintings from the five dynastic periods, and the early 1900s. Most notably, 8 works by renowned painter and calligrapher Puru (溥儒) will be featured in the exhibition. Incidentally, Puru is the cousin of Puyi (溥儀), the final ruler of the Qing Dynasty, and the last Emperor of China.

Purus supernatural-themed paintings are characterized by his minimalistic brushwork depicting lurking ghosts and spirits in desolate mountain forests. However, his rendering of ghosts and spirits are not of grotesque menace, but lithe ethereal beings, symbolizing that once departed, a person is free from the burdens experience during life. Puru's also displays his more playful side in certain works, rendering humorous circumstances in a number of paintings, such as the meeting between a recently departed spirit and a longtime ghost, and of a love-spurned specter jumping off a cliff in a fit of rage.

Source: SouthChinaPost

CHILDREN WHO SPEAK TO THE DEAD

                                     Sixth sense: Jadon, Pam, Lucy and Emily Billington try to contact spirits

The thought of seeing a ghost may terrify most children, but for Jadon Billington and his little sister Lucy, it is part of everyday life.
The siblings regularly talk to dead people at their home in Cheshire, and have made friends with more than 10 spirits - including their own grandmother - over the last year.
Jadon, aged 10, chats to a ghostly American couple called Sam and Simon Crease and an angel called Michael, while eight-year-old Lucy has befriended a young spirit girl called Rose.
Mum Pam Billington says her kids talk about their spooky pals so much it feels as if they're part of the family.
“It all started a couple of years ago when Jadon told me he had been visited by an angel in the night,” she said.
“At first I dismissed it as being the product of an overactive imagination. But when Lucy started talking about it too I started to listen.
“Its a gift and you either have it or you don’t. It isn’t a hoax, I really believe my kids can talk to spirits.”
The paranormal activity began in 2011 at the Billington’s former home in Manchester, where the children said ghosts lived among the family and even in their attic.
In March this year, the family moved to a new home in Sandbach, Cheshire - but it seems the spooks have relocated too.
And full-time mum Pam, who has another daughter Emily, 14, says she’s now a believer after having a spooky close encounter of her own.

I see dead people: The children have even befriended the spirits

She said: “It sounds crazy but since then I’ve been able to experience some of what they tell me too.
“One night I was watching TV and I said to Jadon if they are really here now ask one of them to tug at my trouser leg. Jadon asked, then a few seconds later I felt something prod my leg and I saw with my own eyes my trousers move.
It’s incredible. Now, they touch me all the time. They’ll poke me in the arm and touch me on the leg. I’ve even been poked in the eye by a ghost.
“They also made the television go fuzzy when Jadon asked one to prove that he was there.
“You have to experience it to understand. I’ve always read things but I didn’t have a true appreciation of it until I went through it with my children.”
She added: “I love having spirits in the house, I think it’s great. I think it shows that anything’s possible and it gives me hope for when I pass away.
I know that this is not the end and we carry on.”
Pam, an atheist, says she didn’t raise her children to believe in ghosts and has not nurtured their psychic ability in any way.
But the children, who are home-schooled, are convinced.
Among the spooky guests are an American couple called Sam and Simon Crease, who Jadon talks to, along with an angel called Michael.
Lucy has formed a bond with a young girl called Rose.
And, at her new home in Cheshire, she says she has seen a ghostly woman in a neighbouring garden, believed to be the spirit of an old woman who recently passed away there.
Jadon said: “I used to have trouble sleeping because I always felt like someone was watching me.
“I would wake up in the night and run into mum and dad’s room.
“Now when I see spirits I talk to them  and they talk back. I see them during the day and night.”
He added: “Mum and dad asked me if I was making this up and I’m not – there really are ghosts in the house.”
Although Lucy is used to her ghostly friends she admitted she still got ‘freaked’ out by their late-night antics.
She said: “I used to get scared. When I first saw them I didn’t know whether it was a spirit or my imagination.
“Now I see lots of them not and I’m used to it.”

(Para)normal: Older sister Emily (c) does not have the gift

While Pam is convinced her children have a special gift, Daron, who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, is still skeptical.
The 40-year-old health and safety advisor said he had never experienced a ghostly encounter of his own.
He added: “I was raised in a religion that is definitely against things like spirits.
“I am still a little bit cautious with my children when we talk about ghosts but they seem okay and it keeps them happy so I leave them to it.
“I reacted with disbelief at first and a few times I thought they were based on imaginary friends. But the children went in to so much detail when they were talking about them that as time went by I started accepting it.”
He added: “I’m still not really 100 per cent convinced but I think there’s a little bit of truth in it. My kids aren’t liars and if you listen to how they speak they tend to be quite believable.”
Pam and Daron’s eldest, Emily, is the only child in the house not to have picked up a talent for talking with ghosts and has not seen any spooky goings on.
She added: “I don’t mind them but I haven’t seen them. If I did I think I would freak out.”

Story: DailyMirror

RETIRED DETECTIVE CALLS IN GHOST HUNTERS TO HAUNTED PUB

Seven Stars Inn Robertsbridge East Sussex

A LANDLORD called in a paranormal investigator after discovering his new pub contained more spirits than just the ones behind the bar.

Ray Braiden took over the Seven Stars in Robertsbridge on June 3 and moved in to the High Street property with wife Michelle, daughters Hannah and Emily and Emily’s partner Ben.

Days after the family moved in, strange incidents were reported in the top room, occupied by Emily and Ben.

Items were moved around and a small dish sitting on a speaker was seen to be ‘skimmed’ through the air across the room.

And one night the couple woke to find the mattress they had been sleeping on had been moved. Emily and Ben have since moved out of the pub.

The Seven Stars has a reputation for spooky goings-on and was previously named one of the top ten most haunted pubs in the country.

Ray, a retired detective sergeant with Sussex Police, said: “You hear all these stories from people who have lived here.

“Some of my regulars have had sightings of shadowy figures, people have heard footsteps and doors rattling in the night and televisions coming on after the switch has been thrown off.

“And of course there is the presence of the Red Monk who is alleged to have haunted this building.”

Ray contacted old friend and paranormal investigator Rob Foster.

Ray said: “This spirit was here long before I moved in and I’m happy to coexist with it, but I do not want my family scared.”

Rob and daughter Tanya run Hidden Worlds Paranormal Support Group, a confidential group for people who have been affected by paranormal activity.

They visited the Seven Stars and saw first hand the work of the pesky poltergeist.

The pair had their equipment pushed over and Tanya was ‘poked’ a number of times.

Audio equipment recorded strange footsteps and doors rattling.

Hastings-based Rob said: “We are trying to find out what it is in a bid to coexist with it and find out whether it’s harmful. At the moment the jury is out on that.

“We are going to come back and do a full investigation shortly and establish exactly what is here.”

Rob believes that several spirits inhabit the 14th Century pub, with previous incumbents reporting sightings of mysterious figures in the bar and items flying off the shelves in the kitchen.

Rob said he was able to communicate with one of the spirits using electronic equipment.

By asking closed questions and measuring the response, which sounds like radio static, he says the ghost gave its name and claims he was buried in Salehurst churchyard in the 1600s.

Rob is carrying out additional research to discover who the spirits are.

Rob and Ray are also keen to locate the opening to a shaft, apparently hidden in the building, which is rumoured to lead to a hidden cellar, which dates back several centuries.

Rob is asking members of the public who have had their own encounters with the paranormal at the Seven Stars to come forward with their stories to help identify the spirits.

Rob said: “It’s about trying to find answers as much as we can.”

Anyone who has experienced paranormal activity at the pub can email robf1@talktalk.net or visit www.facebook.com/hiddenworldspsg



Source: Rye&BattleObserver

UNIQUE LIFE-FORMS DISCOVERED DEEP IN LAKE VOSTOK

NASA image of Lake Vostok

Scientists have discovered more than 3,500 unique gene sequences in Lake Vostok – the underground Antarctic water basin isolated from the outside world for 15 million years – revealing a complex ecosystem far beyond anything they could have expected.

"The bounds on what is habitable and what is not are changing," said Scott Rogers, Bowling Green State University professor of biological sciences, who led a genetic study of the contents of half a liter of water brought back from the lake after it was drilled by Russian scientists last year.

"We found much more complexity than anyone thought," Rogers said. "It really shows the tenacity of life, and how organisms can survive in places where a couple dozen years ago we thought nothing could survive."

There are few places on Earth more hostile to life forms than Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in the Antarctic, and initially Rogers believed that the water from it may have been completely sterile.

Water is located 4,000 meters below the ice, which completely blocks sunlight, and creates huge pressure on the liquid. It is also literally located in the coldest place on Earth: the world’s lowest temperature of -89.2C was recorded at Vostok Station above the reservoir.

But after using bleach to remove outer layers of the ice (the form in which the water was extracted from the lake) which could potentially have been contaminated during the drilling, and conducting RNA and DNA testing, thousands of microscopic life forms, predominantly bacteria, were detected.

Many had expected that if any life forms were to be found in the frozen crypt, they would be uniquely adapted to the harsh environment, and perhaps entirely different as a result of being shielded from evolution of life elsewhere on the planet for millions of years.

Rogers, who has just published his findings in PLOS One magazine, says this has not turned out to be the case.

"Many of the species we sequenced are what we would expect to find in a lake. Most of the organisms appear to be aquatic (freshwater), and many are species that usually live in ocean or lake sediments."

A handout photo provided by the Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute taken at the Vostok station in Antarctica on February 5, 2012, shows Russian researchers posing for a picture after reaching the subglacial lake Vostok (AFP Photo)

Rogers’ team believes the relative ordinariness of the organisms discovered may be due to the fact that they are left there as a legacy of when Antarctica had a temperate climate 35 million years ago, rather than as a result of evolution inside the lake.

Some of the organisms found in Lake Vostok commonly exist in ocean environments (in the digestive systems of fish and crustaceans) suggesting that the reservoir was once connected to a bigger body of saltwater.

But Rogers believes “two huge drops of temperature” cut it off and conserved it in its present state.

Yet the study is not excluding the possibility of startling discoveries.

"It's a very challenging project and the more you study, the more you want to know. Every day you are discovering something new and that leads to more questions to be answered,” said Yury Shtarkman, who conducted many of the analyses, and believes it could take a lifetime to untangle the secrets of the lake.

Source: RT

GHOSTLY FOOTSTEPS AROUND INVESTIGATORS IN OLD MEDIEVAL RUIN AND THREATS ..

On Friday, our monthly magazine of investigations and events, compiled as the, `Haunted Earth Show` was released to the public via our Youtube and Vimeo platforms.
For those who may have missed it, here is the link to the viewing area:
THE HAUNTED EARTH SHOW - JUNE 2013

Within the show was an investigation at Alresford Church, a ruin of a medieval building which was sadly burnt down in 1971.

What was really interesting, (apart from the EVP - one telling us to `Get out`), was right at the end.
There were only two investigators during the investigation, myself and team-member Deanne, yet clearly there was someone or something walking around us as I gave an end of investigation talk.
Add further a woman talking in the background as I spoke, then this was quite a catch.

An interesting footnote was the fact that the footsteps were on gravel. We were away from any gravelled area, and standing on grass.

As part of my policy to share significant incidents through our series, `Paranormal Shorts`, here is an abridged version below.



It is worth seeing the whole segment of this investigation from the main show video as included was something strange which occurred earlier at this location during our day visit.
As we were wandering around the ruins, at one spot we could smell something like mint, although it wasn`t quite mint. In a way, it smelt like a cross of odours between mint and cannabis.

Paranormal People - a Facebook based group later informed us that this too had been experienced by them on earlier visits. They ascribe the smell to a lady presence. Could it have been the same one that visited us at the end of the night shoot? To view the segment start at 40:23 in the main show here:



For those who may have missed this, I hope you enjoy.

Chris Halton