My Paranormal Podcast

A very touching and bittersweet story surfaced of a a grief-stricken electrical engineer who believes he has found a way to communicate with his dead daughter eight years after her death through devices he created himself.

While using his expertise to design and build a series of electromagnetic detection devices, Gary Galka claims to have even recorded his eldest daughter Melissa on the “Spirit Box”, saying, ‘Hi daddy, I love you.’

As one can imagine, Galka was devastated by his daughter’s sudden death from a car accident back in 2004 at the age of 17. It was then though that Galka and his family started to experience unexplained phenomena at their Connecticut home days after the fatal accident according to the Hartford Courant.

“She started doing things like ringing the doorbell, changing TV channels, turning lights on and off,” Gary Galka said Monday. “Then one time she came into my room and I felt her sit on the edge of the bed.” Now Galka has a thriving trade in paranormal detection devices, launched as a result of those eery events. Galka, an electrical engineer who owns a firm that distributes test instruments, began developing hand-held devices that purportedly can detect unusual vibrations in a room, temperature variations — “hot and cold spots” — and other effects associated with the paranormal.

Galka also created a voice recorder, the “spirit box,” that he says can record responses from any “spirits” that might be present. He said he has sold thousands of the devices, which range in price from $79 to $350. “I’ve created over 30 different products for paranormal research. No one was making products for these people,” Galka said.

This past weekend the family was featured on the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures. Through one of the devices, a voice is heard on the show saying, “Hi daddy, I love you.” To watch that full episode of Ghost Adventures, tune in below:

The Galkas insist Melissa’s presence around them is absolutely real, and that Gary Galka’s instruments show it. When she was sitting on the bed, he said, “I felt her lay her head on my chest.”

Galka’s wife, Cindy, and his two daughters, Jennifer and Heather, have also experienced similar phenomena, either seeing Melissa or hearing her voice. “I’ve never seen Melissa,” said Galka, “but my younger daughter Heather has seen her three times.”

The crew of “Ghost Adventures” used several of Galka’s devices in the show, including the Mel-Meter and the SB7 Spirit Box. They also use the devices in other episides.

“With his devices, he’s captured voices of her. His family, even people that aren’t related to him, have seen her at the house,” Zak Bagans, the show’s host, said on the Travel channel’s website. “Gary is a very, very talented electrical engineer and he’s helped companies, massive companies, in that aspect in order to do things better.”

The father’s most recent invention is a device that he says can detect shadows in the dark. According to Professional Measurement, the Mel meters can pick up electromagnetic field activity and are specifically designed for paranormal investigators. Raised a Catholic, Galka admits he believes in the afterlife and donates one-third of the profits from the sale of his paranormal detectors to bereavement groups.

Addressing anyone who is skeptical about his family’s experiences, Galka hopes that everyone can keep an open mind. “I feel compelled to help other bereaved parents, to show these parents that they can live beyond the grief and the be comforted knowing their child is in a good place, to show them they can have hope.”

To read more of the story and the encounters the family has had with Melissa, check out the Hartford Courant.

Men in Black. Fact or fiction?

Hundreds of witnesses across the United States and world believe them to be real. These smartly dressed spin-doctors routinely visit the homes of those that have recently claimed to see a UFO or had an alien encounter of another kind. Their aim is to hide the truth about UFOs and alien abductions while encouraging civilians to keep their experiences secret. Their methods are a combination of intimidation, manipulation and confusion — they do not erase memories, like most would believe as shown in the Men in Black films.

Reported encounters with the MIB are often bizarre and vary so much so, that gathering any useful information about them is virtually impossible — which is exactly what any secret group would want. One theory explains that the MIB’s strange behavior as an attempt to hide their own existence, making reported MIB encounters seem too incredible to believe.

A typical MIB scenario goes a little something like this: someone sees something strange, perhaps a mysterious object floating through the sky, followed by what appears to be military aircraft. This person would go home, eager to tell family and friends of the incredible sight but before he gets the chance to tell anyone, he’s visited by odd-looking men that tell him the smallest details about his experience, even though he has yet to tell anyone. Reports have noted that the Men in Black have sometimes posed as salesmen or something else not very threatening in order to ease in with the witness and make it clear to them that what they saw, must keep to themselves and not shared. They will then erase any evidence of the strange activities that have occurred, and leave.

Some cases through the years have seen an ex-Air Force member being gassed and interrogated by the Men in Black after he learned about classified NASA secrets, while another saw a teenager being threatened for capturing close-up photographs of UFOs, with another case one finding the MIB being sighted in the lobby of the US State Department.

Most recently, a case was released about two witnesses standing outside their hotel, overlooking the Falls and the Niagara River, watching as a large, slow-moving triangular craft with three white lights on all three sides, pulsing red in the middle moved from east to west. The unidentified craft moved approximately a hundred feet above the 32 storey hotel and continued west until it was completely out of sight. To read further case details, be sure to check out the release from the API Team.

The hotel lobby surveillance cameras showed shortly after the sighting of two men dressed in black, wearing trench coats and fedoras entering the hotel where it was reported they harassed hotel staff for information. A video on YouTube, which can be seen below shows the two men entering the hotel. The video, obtained by the investigators with the witnesses’ permission, over-dubbed his voice recording of the MIB incident portion of the interview, maintaining the witnesses’ identities.

It was a few years ago that actor, Dan Aykroyd mentioned his own experience with the Men in Black in his documentary, Dan Aykroyd: Unplugged on UFOs. He mentions about the time he was talking on the phone to Britney Spears, who had asked him to appear on the episode she hosted of Saturday Night Live when all of a sudden, he noticed the MIB with a black car, observing him but looked back a moment later to realize they were gone. Shortly afterward, the producers of the program he was taping for, a sci-fi paranormal series diving into UFOs and the unknown was ordered to shut it all down. A seemingly unremarkable coincidence until you realize that the show itself was about to blow the lid with valuable information about UFOs and government conspiracies. To hear that encounter and Aykroyd’s other UFO encounters, watch the video below:

Disclose.tv - Dan Aykroyd: UFOs, Alien Spirals and Men In Black

Psychometry is a psychic ability in which a person can sense or read the history of an object by touching it. Such a person can receive impressions from an object by holding it in their hands or, perhaps touching it to the forehead. Such impressions can be perceived as images, sounds, smells, tastes and even emotions. Many know about the supernatural phenomenon through works of fiction over the years but none more popular than, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone along with the parody sketch of the film, starring Christopher Walken as Ed Glosser: Trivial Psychic on Saturday Night Live, as seen below:

Psychometry is a form of “scrying” which is the psychic way of seeing something that is not ordinarily seeable. While some people can scry using a crystal ball, black glass or even the surface of water, psychometry is available through touch. For instance, a person who has psychometric abilities (also known as a psychometrist) could hold an antique glove and be able to tell something about the history of that glove, about the person who owned it, about the experiences that person had while in the possession of that glove. They may be able to sense what the person was like, what they did and even how they died.

Perhaps though, the most important sense a psychic can experience is how a person felt — the emotions of someone at a particular time. It’s known that emotions are most strongly “recorded” in an object. The psychic may not be able to do this with all objects at all times and, as with all psychic abilities, accuracy can vary, but the ability is available to the psychic.

It is commonly offered as psychic fairs as a type of psychic reading and while the phenomenon has claimed to help visitors “meet the dearly departed” (a form of spiritualism), a majority of police departments polled do not use psychics and do not consider them credible or useful on cases. However, some authors write that psychometry and psychic detectives are used by law enforcement agencies on specific cases.

The term, psychometry was coined by Joseph R. Buchanan in 1842 and is from the Greek words, psyche, meaning “soul,” and metron, meaning “measure.” Buchanan, an American professor of physiology, was one of the first people to experiment with psychometry by using his students as subjects. He would place various drugs in glass vials and then ask them to identify the drugs merely by holding the vials. Their success rate was more than chance and he published the results in his book, Journal of Man. To explain the phenomenon, Buchanan theorized that all objects have “souls” that retain a memory.

Intrigued and inspired by Buchanan’s work, American professor of geology William F. Denton conducted experiments to see if psychometry would work with his geological specimens. In 1854, he enlisted the help of his sister, Ann Denton Cridge and wrapped his specimens in cloth so Ann could not see even what type they were. She then placed the wrapped package to her forehead and was able to accurately describe the specimens through vivid mental images she was receiving.

From 1919 to 1922, Gustav Pagenstecher, a German doctor and psychical researcher, discovered psychometric abilities in one of his patients, Maria Reyes de Zierold. While holding an object, Maria could place herself in a trance and be able to state facts about the object’s past and present, describing sights, sounds, smells and other feelings about the object’s “experience” in the world. Pagenstecher’s theory was that a psychometrist could tune in to the experiential “vibrations” condensed in the object.

In the later nineteenth century, demonstrations of psychometry became a popular part of stage acts and séances; with participants providing a personal object for “reading” by a medium or psychic.

Sidenote: We, at My Paranormal Podcast had the opportunity to interview psychic detective, Chuck Bergman, a former police officer who assisted in police investigations. To hear that podcast episode, be sure to check out our post with the free podcast stream here on Tumblr.

New Jersey couple, Josue Chinchilla and Michele Callan are suing their landlord of their three-bedroom ranch house in Toms River, New Jersey claiming it’s haunted. As soon as the family had settled into the three-bedroom ranch at the corner of Terrace and Lowell avenues on March 1, they began to suspect they were not its only tenants.

The family would come home and find their clothes and towels ejected from the closets and strewn over the floors. Doors would creak open and slam closed in unoccupied areas of the house. Lights switched on and off without human intervention. At night, footsteps could be heard from the kitchen after everyone was tucked in and unintelligible whispering seemed to fade in and out of thin air, according to the couple. 

Backing up their claim is Marianne Brigando, co-founder of NJ Paranormal Investigators of Old Bridge, who tells the Asbury Park Press that their investigation shows that the house is the site of an active or intelligent haunting, one level above a residual haunting. The investigator goes onto saying that a personal haunting could suggest the work of a demon — which is the worst kind of haunting but there is no indication that a demon is present and the family is certain that nothing followed them to the motel, where they are currently living.

Callan’s convinced there is a demon in the Terrace Avenue home along with consulting pastor, Terence Sullivan of the Element Church in North Brunswick who has counseled the family through the ordeal and even blessed the house, but concluded that the house has been subjected to “demonic possession”. The most disturbing and consistent paranormal activity they experience is claiming the sound that comes through the vents to the basement, a muffled din of something lumbering seven feet below their feet.

Nick Carlson, an investigator with the Shore Paranormal Research Society of Toms River, said the results of their investigation into the house on Terrace Avenue are inconclusive. While there is evidence of paranormal activity in the home, based on the data his team collected, the facts suggest a residual haunting from the past associated with a significant release of psychic energy, but not an intelligence.

The image above is a screencap of The Shore Paranormal Research Society’s investigation of the haunted home in Toms River. See the footage here.

In response to the claims, orthodonist Dr. Richard Lopez, who owns the house, has filed a countersuit charging that the couple is using the specter of paranormal activity as a cover for personal financial troubles. In short, he claims they can’t afford the place and want their money back.

The 1,524-square-foot house was built in the late 50s and has had three different owners, according to the municipal tax records. It’s been noted that the last tenant, before Chinchilla and Callan, lived in the house for about one year before moving out. The house sits across the street from Monsignor Donovan High School and St. Joseph’s Grade School in Toms River, which is part of the parish grounds of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. The property is on one of the busiest jughandles in Toms River, merging eastbound traffic on Route 37 with northbound traffic on Hooper Avenue. 

In the late 70s, George and Kathy Lutz stirred up similar skepticism over their motives when they claimed that supernatural forces drove them from their new home in Amityville, N.Y., after 28 days. A book about their experiences entitled, The Amityville Horror was later turned into a 1979 movie starring James Brolin and Margot Kidder.

Welcome to our new followers! If you haven’t already heard our podcasts, you can do so by checking our Podcast Feed out which is found also on our site’s right hand side along with other links! 

We’ve added a new page called Your Stories and we want you to share your paranormal stories with us! It could be anything that encompasses the paranormal; it could be a reading you did with a medium/psychic, an investigation done by you and your friends or a ghost story from your neighborhood or town. This is not a fan fiction opportunity, we want to share actual things that are mysterious, supernatural and unexplained — things that you’ve encountered and have happened. 

To submit a story, you can either fill out our Contact Us form on our website (right side panel), message us privately at our Facebook or email us at Google+. We have a couple so far from our days investigating as GPIG, Goshen Paranormal Investigations Group so be sure to check them out. We would love to share more and we hope to hear from you!

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Picasso said paintings are just another way of keeping a diary…or in this case, holding a bizarre mystery, rather, a paranormal one.

Two paintings have created quite the buzz in the paranormal world with the strange occurrences that take place around them. Beliefs in cursed objects are real and portraits or human likenesses, whether carved or painted frequently become the focus of such legends. In folk belief, the notion of a picture falling from a wall is an omen of impending death — particularly if it’s a portrait and remains one of the most widespread modern superstitions. Similarly, eerie portraits whose eyes “seem to follow you wherever you go” have become a staple scene-setter in numerous horror flicks. 

THE CRYING BOY

This painting’s tale came out of the blue one morning in 1985 when The Sun reported that a firefighter from Yorkshire was claiming there were undamaged copies of the painting of a boy with teardrops rolling down his face found quite often amidst the ruins of burned houses. He stated that no firefighter would allow a copy of the painting into his own house and over the next few months, The Sun and other publications ran several articles on house fires which suffered by people who had owned the painting. By the end of November, belief in the painting’s curse was widespread enough that The Sun was organising mass bonfires of the paintings, sent in by readers. It was said to lift the curse, you must give the painting to another or reunite the boy and a girl and hang them together.

The painting, which was created by Spanish artist, Bruno Amadio in 1969 was said to have painted a deaf and dumb Spanish street child by the name of Don Bonillo, who was between the ages of three or five years old at the time. Found in Madrid, the orphan boy had run away after seeing his parents die in a blaze and never spoke again. Strangely enough, wherever the boy settled, fires would mysteriously break out and he became known as Diablo or the Devil by the locals. Warned by a Catholic priest that the boy was jinxed, Amado nevertheless insisted on painting the boy and is rumoured to have tried to beat the curse out of him. When the artist’s studio burnt down in a blaze, he blamed the orphan and his career was likewise jinxed for evermore as no one wanted to buy his works. Years later, it has been said that Don Bonillo at the age of 19 died in a car accident, which exploded into flames. Nobody came forward to claim the body.

The Crying Boy paintings were mass reproduced in the 1980’s and made readily available in places like Woolworths and Boots.

THE HANDS RESIST HIM

In February 2000 the sudden appearance of a rather strange painting made its internet debut on eBay.com with the accompanying title of “Haunted Painting”. A title like that definitely attracts attention and it’s still discussed to this day whether the painting is genuinely haunted or not but even stranger though, is the reactions that the general public had when viewing the photos of the painting. The painting, which is not overtly Gothic or frightening does have a tinge of creepy to it and reports began coming in of strange reactions upon viewing the pictures. These included people growing violently ill or fainting, children screaming upon seeing the painting and observers being gripped by an “unseen entity”. 

How did the painting end up on eBay? It was reportedly found abandoned behind an old brewery where a family took it home and hung it in their 4-year-old daughter’s room. One morning their daughter complained that the two children in the painting were “fighting” and “coming into the room at night.” Alarmed by this story, the father set up a motion-triggered camera in the room for the next three nights and while the camera shot several photos, one of them showed the little boy “seemingly exiting the painting under threat.” There is no firm evidence to substantiate these claims, but what is without doubt is that the bidding price of the painting shot up from a first bid of $199 to a final price of $1,025 in just 30 bids and viewed 30,000 times.

The Hands Resist Him was created by Oakland, Californian artist Bill Stoneham in 1972. The painting showed a little boy and little girl standing in front of a door. Disembodied hands floated in the blackness behind the door. In addition, something about the little girl is not quite right: her joints are hinged like an old-fashioned doll, and she is holding an object with wires sticking out of the top. Could it be a weapon? According to Stoneham, the boy is based on a photograph of himself from the age of 5 and the doorway is a representation of the dividing line between the waking world and the world of fantasy and impossibilities, while the doll is a guide that will escort the boy through it. The titular hands represent alternate lives or possibilities.

The painter had no idea his painting would spark such a ghost-storm. He admits, when he painted it, he said he had deliberately used Jungian and metaphysical symbolism. The door represented a gate to possibilities, and the hands represented “other lives.” He never intended it to be spooky, supernatural or even particularly disturbing. As for the “weapon,” he said it was a dry-cell battery with wires coming out the top, like the ones he used as a kid for his model planes. However, since the painting resurfaced with a new fanbase, his life has changed in many ways and inspired him to paint again for the first time in more than a decade.

With the release of Titanic in 3D this past week, news has surfaced of a couple in England who are hoping to sell their home where the Titanic’s captain was born — despite it being haunted by the doomed vessel’s skipper. 

The 19th century Victorian property which was the birthplace of Captain Edward John Smith is reportedly haunted as per what the former residents have to say. They were convinced they’ve seen the ghost of the ship’s captain in the bedroom. Previous owners have long gone to say that there was a mysterious flood in the kitchen and an icy chill in the dining room.

Captain Smith was among 1,500 people who died when the Titanic met its fate and struck an iceberg a century ago. Smith lived in the house until he began his naval career as a teenager but Neil and Louise Bonner, who rented the house out for the last decade have reported a number of ghostly sightings.

Mr. Bonner shares with the Daily Mail, an instance when a resident lived there and rang them up, convinced he had seen the Captain:

“Some years ago we had a single chap living in there and he rang up one day convinced he had seen the ghost of the captain. He had been at sea himself and said he was in bed when he saw him drift across the room. The ghost wasn’t in a naval uniform or anything but he was certain he had seen him. It hasn’t caused anyone to move out, but without doubt it could be haunted by the captain’s ghost because other people have reported spooky goings-on. We’ve heard of things going bump in the night from other tenants. Some have said they felt a really cold chill passing over them - as cold as an iceberg.”

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the disaster, the couple who live in Baswich, Staffordshire are now putting the house back on the market for an approximate $127,000 USD.

To read more of this story and the hauntings reported, check out the Daily Mail.

Could this residence actually be haunted by the ghost of Captain Edward John Smith or is this just great timing?