Andrew Arnett is a writer/researcher and filmmaker in the fields of the occult, paranormal, shamanism and alchemy. Interested in the occult from an early age, his life changed in 1997 when Andrew witnessed a formation of UFO’s fly over the city of Seattle. He has since dedicated himself to uncovering the mystery behind UFO’s. When not investigating the paranormal, Andrew is a culture writer for several esteemed publications.
Driving into the Rocky Mountains, towards the Stanley Hotel, is not unlike experiencing, in real life, the opening sequence to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of horror The Shining. Beautiful and majestic, a sense of dread grows as the road winds further up and away from the familiarity of civilization, towards Estes Park, home of the infamous Stanley Hotel and . . . ghosts?
Not surprisingly, the place is a paranormal hot spot. According to legend, at least, as well as the assessment of hundreds of psychics, who consistently place the Stanley in the top ten most haunted places in America. Surely, hundreds of psychics can’t be wrong. Or can they?
To answer that question, I made the journey up to Estes Park with artist and psychic Sonja Lessley. Our intention – to conduct our own investigation and see what findings we could add to the paranormal lexicon regarding the hotel that inspired the book and movie The Shining.
This week may go down in UFO lore as the week UFOs went mainstream. Kind of like The Year Punk Broke, but with flying saucers instead of flannel and power chords. OK, maybe it isn’t full government disclosure, yet. But it sure makes a good Christmas stocking stuffer for many ufologists who are looking for confirmation, any confirmation, that aliens do in fact exist. Continue reading “UFOs Go Mainstream: The Pentagon’s Secret UFO Program Revealed”→
What’s going on over the skies of Scotland? Are they, by any chance, infested with UFOs? Or perhaps, there is a more mundane explanation, such as a proliferation of drones. Consider the following incidents.
Recently, an Airbus A320 passenger jet had a close encounter with a UFO while landing at Glasgow Airport. The near-miss occurred on May 26 and reported to the UK Airprox Board, which tracks potentially dangerous flying incidences.
According to the Glasgow-based Evening Times, the plane passed within 200 feet of what the pilots described as an “orange light” above the plane while they were coming in for a landing. The crew considered the possibility that the object may have been a drone, but was officially classed as an “unknown object” because no determination could be made.
The UK Airprox Board states: “The A320 pilot reports that he was approx three nautical miles finals for Runway 23 when the crew spotted an orange light ahead and slightly above, which appeared to be traveling in the opposite direction.”
“The light passed about 100–200ft above their aircraft . . . The unknown object was seen in the vicinity of an airfield approach path. The board could not determine the identity or proximity of the object.”
There have been a spate of UFO sightings in the region in recent years. On December 2, 2013, another A320 flew within 300 ft of a UFO while making a final approach to Glasgow Airport. The object was described by the pilot as blue and yellow, and that it “got quite close” and the risk of collision was “high.”
Orange arrow shaped UFO over Glasgow (Photo by Stuart Noble)
On August 14, 2015, The Scotsman published a photograph by Stuart Noble showing an unusual orange object in the skies above Glasgow. Noble was preparing to shoot a meteor shower when this arrow-shaped UFO showed up.
“I was shooting the Perseid shower and just setting my cameras exposure when I caught this,” said Noble, “It shows a strange orange object in the sky.”
And there is still yet one more mystery caught on video over Scotland, this time over the hills across from Gourock. An eyewitness filmed a bizarre set of mysterious lights as he stood on Trumpethill looking towards Kilcreggan.
The unnamed witness told the Greenock Telegraph “I’ve never seen anything like that before. The lights caught my eye as I looked out from St. Andrews Drive.”
Strange lights over Gourack (Photo via Evening Times)
“You can see from the video that there are several flashing lights, then more appear. It’s very strange,” the photographer commented, adding, “I hope someone can help solve this mystery — maybe we can call in Mulder and Scully from the X-Files!”
Might we offer that Scully would determine said lights over Gourack were of a terrestrial origin. Mulder, hence, would evince “the truth is out there.” And so it is.
Again, nobody knows for certain what the hell that was. Surely, some weird things are going on in the skies above Britain. And not all, nor any, can be explained away with mundane explanations, such as “drones.” For now, however, we will just have to classify them as “unknown flying objects.”
You would think that, with today’s proliferation of smart phones and high res cameras, we would have more good quality film and video evidence of atmospheric anomalies like glowing orbs. Turns out we do. Earlier this year, on July 22, a documentary film crew caught some remarkably impressive footage of a glowing orb flying over British Columbia.
“At 10:59 p.m., this huge yellowish white ball of light,” described Rob Freeman in the video’s description, “appeared out of nowhere and then proceeded to go into the woods.”
Rob Freeman and Marcus McNabb had their cameras trained on the Stawamus Chief, a 2,297 ft granite monolith located in Squamish, B.C., when the orb appeared.
“At first we thought it was an airplane,” Freeman told the Squamish Chief. “There was absolutely no sound . . . then we absolutely knew it was no airplane.”
Freeman, a senior field researcher for the Center for the Scientific Study of Atmospheric Anomalies in London, Ontario, acknowledged that this was the best footage he’s captured yet.
“The Chief is a sacred mountain,” Freeman said. “Lights are found in ancient spots like Peru or Norway. Whatever it is, in every single country on every single expedition, we’ve got something.”
According to the Squamish Chief, Freeman and McNabb were directed to the area by ufologist Charles Lamoureux, who informed them of the area’s proclivity for UFO sightings.
The crew entered the forest at night fall, and soon after witnessed the glowing sphere descend from the sky into the woods. “The trees behind the orb were all lit up,” Freeman explained, “that means it was in front of the trees.”
Skywatcher’s Mobile Unit, aka “weapon of mass detection.” (Image from Youtube)
Freeman uses a formidable array of video capturing devices, lashed together in one formidable piece of hardware he calls the Skywatcher’s Mobile Unit, aka the “weapon of mass detection.”
After examining the footage, Lamoureux confirmed the object was not a plane from Vancouver International Airport (YVR), a drone, meteor, nor satellite. The evidence is now being investigated by the Mutual UFO Network Canada as MUFON Case #85446.
As impressive as the footage appears, there are many questions as to what the true nature of the object is. Can we definitively rule out an aircraft of terrestrial origin? If not from YVR, then perhaps traveling to and fro from another airport?
There are other possibilities to consider. One Redditor on r/UFOs commented, “I’m from Squamish. That is most likely a nighttime paraglider going off the Chief. We got nutso adrenaline junkies running rampant in this town!”
Another claims the image is that of the International Space Station passing overhead. This debate, as with all UFO sightings, will rage on for some time yet. We will just have to wait and see what evidence comes next.
Freeman and McNabb are currently traveling the world, producing the documentary film Making Contact: Be Inspired, which endeavors to “take viewers around the world, exploring the mysteries of the universe … and their connections to the human mind.”
What began as a documentary, according to McNabb, has now turned into a movement. “This is such a fascinating path that we are on,” Freeman said. “Most people have no idea what’s happening in the world.”
Here, we are reminded of Shakespeare who, perhaps anticipating the modern UFO wave (he was, after all, a genius) penned the famous lines:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – Hamlet (1.5.167-8)
Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is a centuries old city located in southern Vietnam. Its storied, war torn past and huge population density guarantees it to be a ghost filled wonderland. Explore the ghost towers with BKPS.
Since we are currently touring this region, we thought it apropos to visit the famously haunted Thuan Kieu Plaza ‘ghost towers’ located in District 5. Thuan Kieu Plaza is a $55 million apartment and shopping mall complex developed in 1998 by Hong Kong-owned Kings Harmony International Limited and Saigon Real Estate Corporation.
The 100,000-square meter ghost towers features three 33-story towers containing 650 apartments, a three story mall, and is located on Hong Bang Street in the economically prime downtown area. At the time, it was the tallest residential building in the city and was expected to make a mint for its investors. So what could go wrong?
Thuan Kieu Plaza (Image via Andrew Arnett)
Apparently, a number of things could, and did go wrong for Thuan Kieu Plaza, turning it from an upscale apartment complex into an abandoned edifice riddled with malevolent spirits and bad juju. Locals have reported hearing strange noises coming from inside the building at night, crying from the mall elevators, and encounters with creepy people. A mysterious fire occurred during construction, and legend states that financial shortcuts by management, resulting in fatal accidents, led to workers placing a curse on the building.
Another two fires, in 2004 and 2009, occurred in restaurants inside the mall. Also, a man shot his girlfriend, then killed himself, in one of these restaurants – their ghosts allegedly could be heard still wandering and groaning in the building. Others report seeing a Chinese woman, wearing a cheongsam, moving through the building without touching the ground.
Owners claim to suffer from dreams of fires and ghosts taunting them throughout the night. Some of them have, apparently, become stressed and sickened for days by these encounters. Some locals claim that the buildings themselves collect and keep the ghosts in this part of town. How did such a thing come to be?
Thuan Kieu Plaza (Image via Andrew Arnett)
Approaching the plaza by taxi, one can see its three green ghost towers from blocks away, looming over the older and smaller buildings of Cholon, the mostly Chinese section of Ho Chi Minh City. Right from the start, the towers give off an eerie vibe, their presence certainly imposing. In a way, the structure gives the impression of a large ship. And this, according to some, is one of its problems.
People claim that Thuan Kieu Plaza suffers from an egregious case of bad fengshui. Fengshui is, of course, a Chinese philosophical system for harmonizing architecture with the ‘invisible forces’ of the surrounding environment. Apparently, the architects did reference a grand sailing ship in the design, but its three oversized “masts” made it prone to sinking. In addition, a street bisects the middle of the complex, symbolically sending a torpedo into its hull.
Street runs through Thuan Kieu Plaza (Image via Andrew Arnett)
The plaza’s fengshui problems don’t stop there. The three ghost towers, when viewed from a distance, resemble three large incense sticks. In Vietnam, incense is burned only for the dead and, it is feared, these towers act as a beacon to call, and trap, all the spirits in the surrounding area.
As a result of all this negativity, the project, which promised to make investors bank, fell on hard times. Sure, it started off well. According to local real estate agent A Ly, when the building opened in 1998, many bought apartments and rented shops there. At US$40,000 average per apartment, and VND160,000-200,000 to lease a store, Thuan Kieu Plaza was a good deal.
But soon after, according to Ly, owners began to resell or rented out apartments, complaining of a “stuffy” and “dark” atmosphere” inside the building. By 2006, no one was buying into the complex. By 2009, all the stores in the mall were empty, and two of the three towers were abandoned. The third tower contained at best a dozen inhabitants.
Side entrance to Thuan Kieu Plaza Ghost Towers (Image via Thanh Nien News)
Perhaps, though, Thuan Kieu Plaza’s problems stem less from magical causes and, have more to do with bad economic foresight. Speaking with Tuoi Tre News, architect Luu Trong Hai, one of the original consultants for the project, said the building was built and designed to capture investment by immigrants from Hong Kong who were then expected to flee HK in droves, as a result of the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. But the immigrants never came over.
The building, now ghost towers, was designed smaller than average, at 2.7 meters high, a compact size Hong Kongers are accustomed to. That, and its location in the Chinese hub of Cholon, was the strategy investors hoped would pay off big, but they miss-calculated. To make matters worst, the apartments were overpriced for their target market. Thuan Kieu Plaza was a bust every way you looked at it.
Thuan Kieu Plaza (Image via Andrew Arnett)
Arriving at Thuan Kieu Plaza, I was expecting an abandoned burnt out cinder block but what I encountered was something totally different. The complex today is a thriving, active oasis – most of the shops in the three story mall were open, people were everywhere, and many of the apartments have been renovated and resold to new occupants. And, there were no ghosts to be found anywhere.
It turns out that, after twenty years of neglect, Thuan Kieu Plaza has just recently been bought out by new owners, renovated and reopened. The new owners are An Dong Corp and they have big plans for the future of the complex. Certainly, the plaza was lively and bustling with restaurants and shops. The few people I spoke to had no recall of ghost stories attached to the place. One security guard, however, did explain to me that the new owners had priests come in to dispel the hex that was earlier placed on the property. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake, that magic holds.
If ghosts exist anywhere on this planet, then surely, they exist in Vietnam. Though nowhere near the size of its neighbor China, Vietnam has still managed to embroil itself in more than its fair share of warfare, with the death toll from the Vietnam War (American War) alone, estimated to be in the millions.
Over the summer, at a Brooklyn Paranormal Society Meetup, I was speaking to a gentleman of the Christian persuasion who told me that being drunk was decidedly against the rules of good spiritual conduct, as was related to him in the Holy Book. Drunk ghost hunting is after-all the activity that BKPS began as.
I had to reveal to him, in full disclosure, that what happens at a typical BKPS drunken ghost hunt, does in fact involve drinking, but rarely have any of the participants exhibited tell tale signs of drunkenness, per se.
Beer is served, wine poured, and liquor mixed and consumed (I am often seen with a gin concoction in my hand). But actual drunken behavior, as one would associate with the term? Not a common sight. Truth be told, alcohol is merely the currency by which the true commodity is exchanged, that being, conversation. Preferably, good conversation.
That is the one abiding rule by which all participants are in agreement. Discussion and the lively exchange of ideas, concepts and stories. The more exotic and fantastic the story, the better. Really, we are seeking information upon that nebulous realm — the paranormal.
Alcohol can facilitate the conversation, and even the mere hint of liquor, can engender an atmosphere conducive to the loosening of the tongue. Fact is, some of the participants don’t even drink alcohol, choosing rather, a mocktail, soda or “Rob Roy.” There is of course, no accounting for taste. To each their own.
At that Meetup, while knocking back a UFO IPA at the bar, I made the acquaintance of a gentleman named Mick. Mick, it turned out, wasn’t there for our paranormal gathering (drunk ghost hunt). He had no idea, in fact, what the Brooklyn Paranormal Society was. He was just another patron enjoying a tall glass of malted barley and hops. However, Mick did have a paranormal story he needed getting off his chest.
“If you want to see some shit go down,” Mick told me, “you want to stay at this place in Los Feliz. I can get you the address.”
“You mean in California?” I asked.
“That’s right. I was laying on my couch in the middle of the day. I got this place because it was so close to the studio we were recording in. It was awesome, I was having a blast. There’s like a space between the back of the couch and the book shelf and then there’s a wall. The TV’s over that way and the Wurlitzer and I was just chill in there watching some TV and a bunch of fucking books and some mugs, some Beatles bobble heads, all this shit just went flying off the shelf across the room.”
“Get the hell out of here,” I said. I took a deep gulp from my beer then asked, “Was it an earthquake maybe?”
“No fucking way,” Mick replied. “I’ve been in an earthquake. I was in the North Ridge quake. I definitely know the difference between an earthquake, a tremor. I know the difference between asleep and awake states. The shit flew off the shelf and shit broke.”
“I started cleaning up stuff,” Mick continued, “I gathered up all the pieces of broken coffee cups and the bobble heads but I just couldn’t find John Lennon’s head.”
“Oh shit,” I said, “They decapitated John Lennon?”
“I fucking looked everywhere. I couldn’t find it. I just assumed they didn’t have his head, maybe. I called up the owners of the house and I was like ‘Hey, do you have like, entities living in your house? Because a bunch of your shit just flew off the shelf.’”
“Did they think you were crazy?” I asked.
“They said, ‘Oh yeah, totally. Sometimes it plays the Wurlitzer. We think the ghost is pretty cool, doesn’t seem to be up to anything bad.’ So I asked the owner what kind of liquor the ghosts might drink? I ended up buying a bottle of Jameson and telling the entity ‘No bad vibes. I’m gonna be staying here for a little while.’”
“That was mighty obliging of you,” I offered.
“Nothing else happened there except one of my shirts disappeared. That was really weird because I don’t have many shirts. Good shirts are hard to find. I just didn’t understand how that happened, but what I will say is that shit flew off the shelf right by my head.”
“California is a creepy place,” I said, “All the weird shit happens in and around LA.”
“Sometimes it’s good weird stuff,” Mick answered.
“Agreed.”
“But sometimes,” he added, “the other kind of weird as well.”
“You weren’t stoned, when any of this weirdness happened?” I inquired.
“I know I look like a hippie,” he said, “and I listen to jam bam music, but I really don’t smoke pot that much. I don’t want to engage with the spirit realm, but I guess I really didn’t have a choice this year. I’ve had two encounters this year. The second one occurred back in February, also in California.”
“It was a really nice place,” Mick continued. “Friends of mine were in India for two weeks and they have a big house – salt water pool, pizza ovens and two chicks to take care of their dog and cook breakfast every morning. They invited me to stay there while they were gone so I was chilling and zoning out, no radio, no TV, just smoking a cigarette, and this fucking thing comes into my brain- it was like I could see it in a dream but I was totally awake.
Mutated Guild Navigator from Dune highlighted in our drunk ghost hunting article.
“This thing was like a huge circle, it was a big old round thing. It had a face, which I couldn’t even begin to describe, but it had enough similarities to a face to know that it was. It had a weird little body that kind of hung off on this angle.”
Mick waved his hand over to his left side, indicating where the creature’s body hung.
“It had no topographical features. It struck me as ancient in nature but it was so bazaar it was like something from a DMT trip.”
“Did you say DMT?” I asked. “Terence McKenna talks about that.”
“Yeah, I’ve been to some far out zones,” Mick said. “Let me tell you, it is something worth doing. DMT is awesome. It is very deep and very intense. There’s no way to describe it, but that level of weird? This thing, with the face, was at that level of weird. This thing was real creepy and it lasted for about a minute. It just rocked its head back and forth softly, slowly rotating. Did that for about a minute and a half then it was gone.
“The next thing that happened occurred the next night. This is the cool one. I was down stairs by the pizza oven and I was smoking a cigarette when this thing, this is hard to explain, I didn’t see it but I could feel something coming towards me at an angle, like 11:30 and 2. Does that make sense to you?
“Well, this thing got to me, then I had the best day of the year. It was like I was on fire, I was killing it. I would like, walk down the street and meet a bunch of girls, it wasn’t even fair. The only way I could put it into words is that the Holy Spirit was in me.”
“You mean like spiritually energized?” I chimed.
“Something had happened to me, that day was so powerful. I just wanted to share it with people, people who are interested, like you. And I don’t blame you because I’m interested too, I want to know what that was.”
“Your description of the entity,” I offered, “ reminds me of the Mutated Guild Navigator from the movie Dune. Are you familiar with that?”
“Spice dude,” Mick answered.
“Yeah, they don’t have arms or legs and they just float in this vat,” I said.
“I could see some familiarities,” Mick added. “It was totally bazaar and what was really creepy is that it got in here, inside my mind.”
The Brooklyn Paranormal Society discovered Paranormal Activity Discovered At Fort Greene Park In Brooklyn! The fascinating paranormal encounter was caught and is currently being analyzed for paranormal anamolies.
Last week, the Brooklyn Paranormal Society had the honor of hosting the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s after party at Cherry Tree, with free tarot and psychic readings, a Stranger Things trivia challenge and prizes. At midnight, we hiked over to Fort Greene Park on a “Paranormal Safari” where we roasted marshmallows over a camp fire, listened to ghost stories and conducted a paranormal investigation.
Brooklyn is our stomping ground and this land is rife with history. Some would say, it is sacred ground. Brooklyn, it turns out, was a staging area for the Battle of Long Island, the first and largest battle of the American Revolutionary War. Fought on August 27, 1776, the battle claimed the lives of 300 American soldiers.
BKPS at Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument (Image via Andrew Arnett)
During the battle, a massacre took place after George Washington miscalculated British strategy, allowing his men stationed at the Heights of Guan to be attacked from the rear by 10,000 Hessians and Red Coats. Though they fought hard, thousands of Americans were cut down by British artillery and bayonets. Washington, who looked upon the battle from Brooklyn Heights, could only remark, “Good God, what brave fellows I must lose.”
Our paranormal investigation began at the entrance to the crypt of the Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument. This monument was erected in honor of the 11,500 American Revolutionary War soldiers who died under heinous conditions while kept as prisoners on British ships in Wallabout Bay. The crypt, where the dead soldiers were re-enterred, was built in 1873. A 149-foot Doric column was placed as a monument above it in 1908.
Anthony Long at Fort Green Park (Image via Andrew Arnett)
Anthony Long, Chief Ectoplasm Officer (CEO) of BKPS, started things off with Frank’s “Ghost Box,” a device which scans AM frequencies, allowing one to hear split second snippets from different frequencies. Through this EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), one can ask spirits questions and they can “answer” back.
We began by asking for a name. Surprisingly, the ghost box answered “Rose.” Immediately, upon hearing the name “Rose,” one of our newest BKPS members, an actress named Millie, let out a big squeal. We all jumped, and asked Millie who “Rose” was.
“Rose is a psychic I met about a month ago,” Millie said, “She told me a darkness has been following me.” I asked Millie what she was feeling, and she responded, “Immense sadness.”
Millie explained:
“As we were using the spirit box, I felt someone standing so close to me, I actually though it was Alejandro, so I turned around and there was something, or someone – it didn’t have a recognizable face. It was around my height so I thought it could’ve been a little girl. Then it went right through me, and I was freezing, and that’s when I felt immensely sad. The feeling of it – it was almost the same feeling I had on acid speaking to the ‘Elves.’ But it only felt that way when it passed through me.”
Most likely, the “Elves” from Millie’s psychedelic experiences referred to the “machine elves” of Terrence McKenna lore. Do theses “Elves” exist in a parallel dimension, similar to where the dead abide?
McKenna describes his DMT encounter with the elves as “Holographic viral projections from an autonomous continuum that was somehow intersecting my own. I thought . . . I had broken into an ecology of souls and that somehow I was getting a peep over the other side.”
This was interesting in and of itself but, I needed to know more about this “Rose” character.
“Rose has been wanting me to call her but I don’t know if I should,” explained Millie. “I don’t know how to tell the difference between an actual psychic and a sham. The ‘Elves’ gave me the impression that it’s possible for all humans to be psychic – it is part of our inevitable evolution as a species?”
BKPS at Fort Greene Park (Image via Andrew Arnett)
Certainly, the title Paranormal Activity Fort Greene means something unusual occurred at Fort Greene Park that night, but what did it all mean? Was it the ghost of an American Revolutionary War hero trying to communicate with us, or was it the presence of Millie’s psychic, trolling her for another psychic reading? Maybe, it was a recently deceased spirit belonging to one of many innumerable cases of people who’ve been murdered in the park over the years?
Or perhaps, it could have been nothing at all – just some random and anomalous sound coming through the ghost box with no connection to anything. Perhaps. Who knows for sure? One thing is certain – next time I find myself walking through Fort Greene Park alone in the dark, I’ll be glancing over my shoulders. A lot.
In the end, was Paranormal Activity Discovered At Fort Greene Park In Brooklyn? Yes! The Brooklyn Paranormal Society discovered evidence of multiple hauntings, via EVP‘s and orbs in photographs.
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