Archive for April, 2010

>Titanic exhibit in Atlanta

Posted by Jessica Jewett 1 Comment »

>Today, in honor of the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I’m lifting a blog from my old website about my visit to the Georgia Aquarium in 2009. There was a special exhibition that summer of artifacts from the Titanic wreck site. Here is what I experienced.

Saturday was one of those amazing days that teaches you what’s really important as far as being around people who really understand you and accept you unconditionally. Michael and I spent the day with our friend from high school, Lindsey, and her husband, Paul, who I hadn’t met before but turned out to be exceptionally awesome.

Our plan was to go to Gladys Knight Chicken and Waffles to eat lunch and then go to the Georgia Aquarium for the afternoon, but when we got to downtown Atlanta, we realized the parking garage was too far of a walk from the chicken and waffles place. Lindsey is seven months pregnant, so I kind of eye her like a ticking time bomb. We ended up cutting through the park by the CNN building to go to Ted Turner’s restaurant. I think it’s called Montana or something. They serve bison instead of beef there and apparently bison is supposed to be healthier for you. I ate bison pot roast, which was shockingly good. It only tasted a tiny bit different than beef.

After lunch, we cut back through the park and walked to the Georgia Aquarium, slower since we were full from eating so much. I was pretty surprised at how crowded the aquarium was because I had read in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that attendance had dropped by 37% since it opened in 2005. You would never know it by the lines on Saturday to get tickets. Most of the tickets for the Titanic exhibit were sold out so we had to wait an hour and a half just to get into it. We were going to do the Titanic exhibit first and the regular aquarium afterward but we didn’t count on the Titanic exhibit being so popular. I do love this aquarium with or without special exhibits. It’s the biggest one in the world with animals like four whale sharks (which average at about 30 feet each) and three beluga whales (about 15 feet each). I have a special attachment to Nico (pronounced like Jon Knight’s Nikko), which is the male beluga whale, because he plays with us at the window the most. I had very high aspirations of being a marine biologist throughout my childhood and the first book I ever wrote was a guide to whales and dolphins. I’ve been to this aquarium enough now that I could probably give a tour on my own.

The Titanic exhibit itself was stunning, by every meaning of the word. The only fault I found with it was how crowded it was. They had us crammed in there like sardines so I didn’t get to have a close look at every display. I understand how popular it is and how they have to try to get to everyone but cramming so many people into it might be a little dangerous for the artifacts if somebody bumps into a display too hard or whatever.

Before we went into the exhibit, aquarium workers handed out faux tickets for the ship. We were each given a different passenger with a little biographical information and at the end of the tour, we were to find out if our passenger was a survivor or victim. I was given a second class passenger by the name of Mrs. Irene Corbett and this is what I found about her on the internet:

Mrs Walter H. Corbett (Irene Colvin) was born in 1881/1882, the daughter of Bishop and Mrs Levi A. Colvin of Provo, Utah. Irene was married to Walter Corbett and had three children. She had travelled to London in the winter of 1911-1912 to study nursing while her children stayed with her parents.

Irene’s parents received a letter from her on April 15th in which she said she would take passage on the Titanic. She said several Mormon elders were taking passage on the ship, however it was later uncertain as to whether these elders had actually travelled on the ship. Irene Corbett boarded the Titanic in Southampton.

After the sinking, Bishop Colvin telegraphed New York to find out what had happened to his daughter. He received in answer two telegrams on the afternoon of April 19th. The first stated: “New York, April 19, Levi Colvin, Provo, Utah. Neither the name of Mrs Irene Corbett nor anything like it appears on the Titanic’s second cabin list of passengers as having sailed from Southampton. WHITE STAR LINE.” Minutes later the second telegram arrived: “New York, April 19, Levi Colvin, Provo, Utah. Now find name of Mrs Irene C. Corbett is on the list of passengers having sailed from Southampton, but regret is not a survivor on Carpathia. WHITE STAR LINE.”

Irene Corbett was one of 14 second class women who perished in the sinking.

The exhibit took you through the conception of Titanic, into building it, through the journey to New York, the sinking and the rediscovery of the wreckage by Robert Ballard in the 1980s. There were replica cabins set up with some real artifacts in them to show you what first class and third class were like. I read that the cost of a first class suite would be the equivalent of something like $40,000+ today and a third class cabin that you shared with four other people would be the equivalent of something like $400 today. It was especially interesting to enter the corridor built to replicate the third class corridor because you could feel how cramped it was and how starkly bare it was compared to first class. The replicated third class had ambient noise like what you would have heard and felt being so close to the ship engines and it was loud enough that children on the tour were getting scared and asking what the noise was. It was an absolute eye opener to be amongst the finery in first class and then, boom, thrown into the bareness of third class. Interestingly enough, the accommodations we had on the NKOTB cruise with Carnival were much closer to third class on the Titanic than first class and that was a little shocking to me, considering we are supposed to live in this advanced modern society.

A lot of people were asking me what I felt in the exhibit as far as spirits go because my Ghost Hunters guys investigated there earlier this year (or was it last year?). Nothing in particular struck me about the reconstructed cabins themselves and that tells me there were not many things in them pulled from the actual wreckage. There were a few things in them but no real energy attached to them. It was mostly the pieces of clothing that had the most energy attached to them. Before I got to the clothing, though, I do remember a display with items of a lady’s toilette (like beauty stuff) and it was the hairbrush that grabbed me. It was too crowded for me to feel out anything specific about the residual energy from the owners of these things though.

The last room was what grabbed me the most. There were a lot of things in one room that had been excavated from the wreckage and it was like coming into a space with a lot of different confused energies. There were two shirts in separate display cases in the middle of the room. One was mostly white (it might have been another color but faded to white) and the other was a blue and white striped shirt. I never got close enough to read the plaques because it was so crowded so I don’t know to whom the shirts belonged, but the closer I got, the more I felt that brick in my stomach before my panic attacks hit. Both of the men who owned those shirts, or maybe it was just one man, did not survive and he knew long before he died that he was going to die. Excuse my language but you’ll never experience a mind-fuck like that unless you are empathic or spiritually sensitive in similar ways. Feeling the lingering affects of fear that intense was actually far worse than the feelings I’ve picked up from Civil War uniforms. The difference between a soldier and a passenger on a ship is the soldier lives every minute of his life knowing he might die but dying never enters the passenger’s mind. A disaster and facing death is much more of a shock for the passenger and there is absolutely a distinct difference in energy between a soldier and anyone else.

All in all, the Titanic exhibit was well-worth the money. I just wish tourists would learn to heed the “no photography” rule at these things. There was a lady in front of me taking a million pictures with a camera that had a huge bright flash and I wanted to pummel her. Not only was her flash, flash, flash distracting for me and others around her, but the flash of a camera is actually damaging to artifacts. There is a reason why the “no photography” rule exists at historical exhibits. Artifacts – especially paper and fabric – are extremely sensitive to light, temperature and humidity. Too much exposure to any of those things will cause fading and disintegration, the same as touching any artifacts with bare hands. We all have oils in our bodies that will destroy artifacts, no matter how often or how well you wash your hands before you touch anything. So next time you’re at a historical exhibit, please remember that the “no photography” rule does exist for a reason and you should never, ever use a flash with artifacts.

I did not get any pictures, obviously, but I found some pictures from some media outlets online of what I saw. There are objects in these pictures that I talked about already. Enjoy.

 

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>The Haunted Plantation Part II

Posted by Jessica Jewett 1 Comment »

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(Note: the house on the left is not the plantation. It’s just a spooky picture.)

Last night we went back to the plantation (see the previous blog) because there was supposed to be a meeting of a paranormal investigation group that my local friends know. We got there before the others did but they were going to be really late so we decided to go to the cemetery instead. Gretchen thought she had located L’s grave and we had a few other dearly departed to examine as well. The cemetery wasn’t anything very remarkable as far as paranormal activity goes, except when we found L’s grave, the battery in Gretchen’s camera almost completely died. It was full beforehand and all the sudden it drained to almost nothing. We weren’t sure if that was some sort of sign or just a camera malfunction, so we chalked it up to coincidence and headed back to the plantation.

The others still had not arrived by the time we got there but it was getting dark fast and the house has no electricity, so we had to get me upstairs before it got too dark to see anything. The energy in the house was different last night than the previous time we had been there. I felt like it was overwhelming and edgy like the entities there were anxious. I explained to V that I didn’t have her doll yet because we decided we were going to get her one in Charleston today (I’m writing this as we’re getting ready to go). As the paranormal investigation team arrived, I noticed that V and L were not really eager to cooperate with them, mainly because they were loud and those ladies were not welcoming of a bunch of strange men in their home. Gretchen looked at her camera and noticed that the battery was suddenly full again. V hid in her room and L hid on the front porch a lot. Dr. Evil was especially annoyed and I made sure to be clear that I was unwilling to go anywhere near his part of the house downstairs. That was something the other medium agreed with and I later found out that it was a very smart decision.

The level of anxiety rose among V and L, which made me direct the investigators to go outside while I tried to calm them. The other medium, my two friends and me went to L’s room first and the energy was so overwhelming that the other medium and I were shaking uncontrollably. We realized that the night vision camera set up in the room was giving them a source of energy that they didn’t ordinarily have because the house has no electricity. The other medium and I began making comments about how obviously haunted the house would be if there was electricity for them to draw from throughout the place and I made a comment that it would not be inhabitable so long as the doctor was there. At that point, we felt and heard growling from the room directly below L’s room coming through the floorboards and the mood in the room became threatening and black. The room directly below L’s room was the room where she was killed by the doctor in childbirth and where he considers his territory. We got out of that room quickly because we felt very threatened by, apparently, my suggestion that Dr. Evil should be removed from the house.

We moved on to the front room, which was like a common room, public room, parlor, whatever you want to call it. It was as far from the doctor as we could get within the house. We regrouped and sat still for a while. The other medium was starting to feel very drained, so he wanted to take a break and go outside for a while in the back on the other end of the house. I stayed in the front room with my two friends and our dogs. Alone, we were talking to each other and communicate with V and L. V was scared so I told her to cuddle with my friend’s dog because he would protect her. Once she calmed down, I noticed that L was weeping in the adjoining room, feeling guilty as if her illegitimate pregnancy and murder had caused all of this misery. Her personal misery was so present to the point of almost feeling like tangible thick air. The other medium briefly popped in to check on us and made a comment that V was lying on the dog and petting him nervously, something he could not have heard me say from outside on the opposite end of the house. He left us to our own devices again. That was when things went black.

I got slammed by this dark, taunting, angry wall of Dr. Evil’s presence even though he was downstairs on the other side of the house. He made it clear that he was picking on me because I was just a tiny defenseless woman and my response was to become angry and forceful. I threw up more spiritual walls to block him and keep him from rushing upstairs. He was taunting me by showing me the path he was going to take through my side of the house up the bathroom and into the front room. He did not expect me to be able to hold him back. This isn’t my first trip around the psychic block and I knew that even if he could mimic demonic behavior to scare people, he was really just a coward with a chip on his shoulder. My impression of him coupled with my ability to restrain his energy made him all the more angry and he set his sights on physically attacking me. His burst of strength took me off guard and I started shaking, sweating and generally showing signs of physical distress with the amount of effort on my part that it took to restrain him. My friends started yelling for the other medium, saying I needed help. He didn’t come right away and I started to lose control of the situation.

When the other medium finally came, he too was sweating, shaking and looking like he had just been in a fight. He was very amped up, saying that he was going to find a way to get rid of that son of a bitch if it was the last thing he did. He said that he ran into the doctor on the staircase as the doctor was trying to rush up to my end of the house. Again, he was not with us and could not have heard about my struggle, especially since I was not verbally announcing most of it. It took the other medium asking the other entities in the house, my former husband Lawrence, all the soldiers on the land, etc., to help him push the doctor back into his room on the bottom floor. Without communicating at all, the other medium and I had put up spiritual blocks on both sides of the house and engaged in a struggle with the same entity, and did not compare notes until the house was safe again. This was not a coincidence. We both described the same things and he described Lawrence’s mannerisms in such a way that he could only have done that if he knew him in life or saw him in spirit.

After a while of making sure the house was temporarily safe and V and L were as calm as they could be, we went home for the night. My adrenalin subsided and I realized that I was in severe pain across my kidneys. As we left the property, severe stomach pain set in, as if I was feeling the pain of labor or miscarriage. It was so bad that I could not move by the time we got back to my friend’s house. We suspect that I was physically attacked and I didn’t feel it right away because I was so concerned about making sure everyone else was safe.

A word to the wise: a lot of black, evil events took place on a lot of plantations. They look pretty but please don’t get a cavalier attitude about messing with the bad people still lingering in them if you have no training or experience with a medium. Now we are involved too deeply to let this go. I cannot, in good conscience, allow an innocent lady, child and other entities to be held hostage by this doctor for long. The other medium and I have years and years of experience in these things though. I do not advise that average people provoke these things at all.

Off to Charleston we go to buy V a pretty doll.

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>The Haunted Plantation

Posted by Jessica Jewett 2 Comments »

>Out of interest for the organization that owns the plantation, I can’t name the place without knowing for sure if they would be okay with exposing the “other” residents. When local kids catch wind of any haunting, they tend to break onto whatever property is in question in order to try and see a ghost of their own. I don’t want to see that happen to this plantation. It’s already delicate and in disrepair. The souls there are some that I feel protective of as well. They need help breaking free from the control of another very angry soul there too. He’s downright evil. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

The first night I visited the plantation, we were there with some friends who try to give the place an inhabited impression to keep lookie-loos off the property. I settled by the bonfire and immediately felt the prickling on my skin that I get when souls are in the vicinity. I looked at the main plantation house and noticed the silhouette of a young lady near the building who seemed very interested in what we were doing. Her countenance was kind, lonely and thoughtful. She was desperate to come see what we were doing by the bonfire so I invited her to join us. She could not move beyond the immediate vicinity of the plantation house though. She was afraid and I couldn’t figure out why because she was too far away and too quiet for me to get a solid lock on her energy. I felt bad for her but there was nothing I could do at that moment. I gave my attention back to my friends.

A little while later, my conversation was interrupted by a violent feminine scream. I spun around toward the woods and asked if anybody else heard that but it was quite evident that nobody else had heard it. When you’re just hanging around your friends, you don’t immediately jump to the ghost conclusion. I thought for sure someone was being attacked out there because of how clear the scream sounded. Since nobody else heard it, I calmed myself down and considered the situation from a medium standpoint. The information I received was that a slave woman had been killed back there and I asked if there were slave cabins back there. My friend exchanged looks with my other friend and said that she thought the same things as what I was telling her. I purposefully went to this plantation with no historical background so that I could stretch myself as a medium. I also had impression of a lanky man with coveralls or funny looking suspenders. Again, everybody looked at each other and said that he was a well-known figure to them as well.

A few nights later, my friends introduced me to another medium friend of theirs. We kept silent on our previous experiences at the plantation until we got there and went through it room by room. On the property itself, I had dueling impressions of Revolutionary War soldiers and Civil War soldiers on the land. As I told the story of what I was seeing, the car got silent. I wasn’t sure of my accuracy until I asked if anything I said made sense to them and the things they had seen there matched up with my impressions almost dead on correct. I felt myself getting back into the swing of being a medium, something I had set aside in order to do past life and tarot readings for people. These things all utilize different intuitive skills but being a medium was where I began as a child. I felt like I was getting back to my roots. The sun began to set as we made our way into the abandoned plantation house.

The first room I encountered was so dark and heavy that my fellow medium had long since abandoned his previous attempts at entering the room. I wanted to know what had him so uneasy about it so I had my friend push my wheelchair up to the doorway and as soon as I hit the threshhold, I made her stop. I could not go inside either. I saw a scene from approximately the early 1840s with a bed against the far right wall. A young woman was in labor with a doctor positioned to receive the baby. I realized there was blood everywhere – on the bed, splattered on the far wall, etc. – and then I realized the doctor was a murderer. He cut her and let her bleed to death. As the horror sank in for me, the doctor looked at me and said, “You get out of here now!” My friend’s dog ran right into the room toward the doctor’s image and I snapped, “Hampton! Come here!” I left immediately. Despite being a medium and used to all sorts of entities, I take threats seriously and I don’t mess with any entities that threaten me.

We moved toward the front parlor area of the house and at that point, I encountered the young lady who wanted to join us at the bonfire before but could not. I soon realized that she was the lady in labor in the vision I saw at the back of the house (it was not literally in front of me but a visual impression). She was clearly controlled by the doctor entity. I had heard of other entities being controlled in a house by a dominant, dark, angry entity but I had never personally encountered it. The young lady stuck to me as we moved through the house and I felt physical touches on my bare arms like she was petting and being affectionate. The other medium reasoned that I reminded her of a friend that she had in life. I was able to converse with her, receive a name, confirm things for one of the caretakers, and so on of things that I could not possibly know. Through the house, I got from her that she had an illegitimate child and was sent to relatives at that plantation to give birth. The doctor killed her for some unknown reason and she doesn’t know what happened to her baby. I expect that is a big reason why she never left and when the doctor died, his anger toward that incident tied him to that plantation and he is the dominant force there, although the other entities try to contain him to that back room.

We moved into the kitchen area behind the parlor and found “the caretaker” that everybody knows. He’s playful and enjoys touching women, something I was not as prepared for before I arrived as I thought I was. He tickled my knee, touched my thigh and put his hand on my chest in the time that I spent in the house. He’s a protective figure who makes his rounds around the property a lot during the night. I quite enjoy souls with a fun sense of humor despite their desolate situations.

We went upstairs and L (I don’t want to write out her whole name) was eager to show me the room that she had claimed as her own in life and death. I followed her to the room and the bad energy of the bottom floor no longer existed. She gave me visual impressions of her pretty things that she had been so proud of, how her room was arranged and so on. Everything I said matched up with what the other medium had said before and we seemed to connect based on seeing and experiencing the same things. She missed her silks, so we promised to bring her a silk pillow for the room (there is nothing in it right now). Despite her fading energy by that point, the offer made her so happy and I felt like I had done something to relieve her situation a little bit.

In another part of the upper floor, we found a child that was from another period than L. I will refer to her as V. She was about five, blonde and had a big bow like you see in Edwardian photographs. I felt like she died of a disease like scarlet fever and I was told that there were indeed epidemics in the area. V hardly ever ventures downstairs because of Dr. Evil. We had dogs with us and they apparently saw the other residents as well because my friend asked her dog, “Where’s V? Go get V!” and the dog ran to the room where the child dwells. A while later, we were talking in another room, and the dog sat in the doorway very still and relaxed, the same way he looks when he’s getting a good scratch. V and L both enjoy it when we bring the dogs to see them. Animals have the uncanny ability to not only see entities but to treat them no differently than the living, which is something that I think bonds entities and animals. As with the living, animals know when entities are evil and they will growl and bark at seemingly nothing, which is what dogs do near Dr. Evil’s territory.

So while L wants the silk pillow we offered, V wants a doll, which is what we’re going out to get later tonight. She was very specific about how the doll should look to the point that the other medium and I were talking over each other saying the exact same things. V teases me about looking like a doll because I’m tiny and she sees my wheelchair like a baby carriage stroller thing. She wants to play with me and named me Molly, which is why we decided we needed to bring her a doll of her own. It will be interesting to see if the doll or the pillow move around at all in the house without us doing the moving.

This is why plantations need to be rescued from decaying into history. Old buildings may look abandoned but they are most certainly not. This place is still home to V, L, the caretaker and Dr. Evil, among so many other soldiers and slaves. They can’t move on until Dr. Evil releases his choke hold on them. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. While we have the ability, we will work to make this plantation comfortable for them, preserve their stories and help them understand that we do care and they are remembered. We are close to having enough historical documentation to back up our medium impressions as well. It isn’t a game. It isn’t a flight of fancy. These people are quite real and still feel quite deeply.

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