What is the most convincing genuine haunting you know of?

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For me personally, I have two favourites which I recall learning about. One from an old History Channel documentary, and another from one of my all-time (and highly recommended) paranormal TV shows called Paranormal Witness.

The documentary in question can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHSTCsclO5U. You can also find details of the haunting here: http://www.riseupparanormal.com/database...unting.htm 

One segment tells the story of the Batzel family, who suffered strange paranormal phenomena in their homes for many years, as the family believe they were stalked by a malevolent force. The show discusses theories from skeptics, parapsychologists and ghost hunters while explaining the events. The events they describe frighten me to this day, especially when the show recreates them. These phenomena included:
  • A lit cigarette drifting down from the ceiling
  • A knife found impaled in a doorframe 
  • Kitchen utensils floating across rooms
  • The smell of rotting flowers permeating the rooms
  • Crude scribblings of death threats, swearing and crucifixes covering the walls, made via lipstick
  • A bath tub stopper seemingly materializing in their living room and was thrown at them during a get-together, as though it had been held and then thrown at them
  • A psychic conducted a seance there, apparently channeling the spirit of 'George Baxter' who bought the house in 1872, which turned out to be true once Beth Batzel checked the local records (though this could have been a hot reading).
The worst part? All that was only in the first house. The Batzel's moved homes not once, not twice, but eleven times, in a desperate attempt to escape whatever was haunting them, losing friends along the way. They finally had to settle in a home they built from the ground up. The most notable occurences that followed between movings included:
  • Beth, as well as her husband Bob and daughter Lea, were pushed by an unseen force down the stairs 
  • The daughter had a nightmare of the family cat being strangled in the doorway with its eyes gouged out
  • A glass picture frame had exploded downstairs for seemingly no reason
There was a high concentration of ions reported in the basement of one of their homes apparently, which might explain some of the experiences of the daughter specifically, who lived there until 1999. Some parapsychologists who have commented on the case believe it may have been an unintentional case of psychokinesis, or Beth and her family being 'magnets' for negative forces. Leon Lederman, a Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, dismissed their case as being either just another bunch of 'gullible or dishonest people', which isn't a very scientific or rational answer for a case like this imo. They also interview psychologist Karl Schlotterbeck, who investigated the house and helped Batzel co-author a book Lion of Satan, Lion of God, about her experiences. He believed confidently that something paranormal was going on, and he noted recordings were fainter in some rooms than others. Parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach, who happens to be a mentalist but still a believer, believed it may have been some kind of psychokinesis. Here is his profile from the Parapsychological Association website for those interested: https://www.parapsych.org/users/profparanormal/profile.aspx

Kentucky Psychologist Robert Baker, who claims to have investigated dozens of cases of ghosts, simply argues it's an invention of the human mind because it provides 'psychological satisfaction', even though the Batzel's were initially skeptics  (or so they claim). They also bring on a historian, who suspects that it was Beth's way of 'dealing with stresses in the family' after her divorce, but then what about the other witnesses, such as the husband, duaghter, guests etc.?
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The next one is known as the San Paulo Hernandez Haunting of California, which is a gem because it's one of the few episodes of the TV show Paranormal Witness that includes not just eyewitness testimony for the recreations, but also photographic and even video evidence, with the most infamous photo being found here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2326946/?ref_=tt_mv_close. Many details of the haunting are described in this 1993 article by the LA times: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-...story.html. The activity seemed to be concentrated around the attic of the home belonging to Jackie Hernandez, hence the title of the episode, The Man in the Attic. Jackie Hernandez thought at first she was hallucinating due to her pregnancy at the time, but she quickly came to the conclusion she was not, especially since the activity still continued after her daughter was born.

The phenomena there included:
  • Multiple family members claiming to see an apparition of a gnarled old man peering at them from the attic door
  • A trio of glowing orbs floating on the ceiling of the kitchen beneath the attic
  • Smelly, blood-like liquids oozing from the walls
  • Hernandez recalls dreaming vividly of a younger man who was clubbed to death with a lead pipe and being drowned
  • A paranormal investigator team, who admit that most of the hundreds of cases they looked into were 'duds', were hired to investigate. They said during interviews with the family, what sounded like a '200 pound rat' was heard scurrying about in the attic. When one of them went up into the attic, the camera he was holding was wrenched from his hands. Another went into the attic and was photographed being hung by his neck by a clothesline that had somehow wrapped itself around his neck and tried to hang him from a protruding nail. 
  • The investigators admit that, though they are convinced, they don't expect everyone else to be since stuff can be too easily staged or faked these days.
Jackie Hernandez would later move homes. Not long after her husband left her, the activity manifested again. She described seeing the same old man appear on their TV screen. When the researchers/investigators were called again, none of their video cameras would remain turned on for more than a few seconds. Something kept switching them off. They apparently conducted a Ouija board session that 'informed' them of how the ghost who answered was indeed the man she dreamed of being drowned, which they verified with newspaper reports. However, Jackie believes the old man she saw was not the drowned victim, but the builder of her bungalow. This ghost never bothered her again after it allegedly appeared to her as a ball of light that lead her to a gravestone with the builder's name. Hernandez claims the other ghost has stopped bothering them as frequently. The family babysitter seemed traumatised by the events, but fortunately her children were rarely targeted and only her son has recollections of seemingly paranormal phenomena.


Edit: I'd like to add that the documentary does discuss other hauntings, one of which features a paranormal investigator called Rob Conover, who was a private investigator who went from a skeptic to a believer in ghosts because of his own experiences. He states in this documentary that he has had to debunk alleged hauntings before and explain the cause of the phenomena, but other times he has had to help deal with a 'spirit' haunting a home. Here is an article from 2009 explaining his change in mindset to the subject of ghosts: https://www.pekintimes.com/article/20091.../310319997. Conover believes that real ghosts are made of energy and electricity, comparable to 'ectoplasm', a term he uses for, what I can tell, the sake of simplicity.
(This post was last modified: 2020-07-01, 10:12 PM by OmniVersalNexus.)

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