The Never-Ending Forgotten History of the Valley...

After a lot of debate, I decided to bring back the Haunted Cuyahoga section of my website. Yes, a lot of my old research (and some rescued documents from Jaite Mill) were turned over to Jeri Holland of Cuyahoga Valley Paranormal about a year ago. I'm still leaving much of the valley's hauntings in her experienced hands. Still, there's so much I've wanted to write about... and so many corrections to make from the old information I had posted. Most of the old pages hadn't been updated since the time when I started looking for ghosts in the Cuyahoga Valley around 1999. Sadly, a lot of that information was total speculation; a lot of research over the years changed what is real from what is urban legend.

In September, Jeri's book Haunted Akron: Ghosts of the Rubber City will be published by The History Press. In it are a few stories from the valley in the southern part within Akron city limits. Since we both feel passionate about history and tossed tons of researched material back and forth over the last few months, we've both been excited by all the new discoveries in both bizarre local history and haunted places. There was the murder of a mixed-race man in a long-since-vanished town, a gruesome suicide at an old canal lock, and a haunted pond in Green Township. But when I scoured old maps and newspaper articles sent to me by Jeri and pinpointed the real location of the "haunted River Styx railroad bridge," you can't imagine how excited we both were.

And there's so much more to tell about; so much so that Jeri is already planning a second Haunted Akron book. At the same time, we're working together to get a early start on teaming up as co-authors for a book on ghosts in the Cuyahoga Valley tentatively planned for The History Press next year. I'm slowly adding some new discoveries to my site, though a lot of it will remain hidden until the book eventually is written and released (though I may share some stories at library talks before then). It's hard to keep all these stories to myself. I've always know that the Cuyahoga Valley has had some wild tales in its past; I ever expected the list to keep growing.

While not all stories involve ghosts directly, there are plenty of downright creepy sites to see. Along Riverview Road, I found the site of a fatal shooting by an "insane," drunken husband. Near a old canal lock, there are apple trees growing which are likely the offspring of trees planted by French traders in the 1600s. And, of course, one tale is a particular favorite of mine: the railroad station along the Valley Railway built on top of an old Irish cemetery! Yes, the bodies are still there... and I'm pretty sure that no one--not even the National Park Service--realizes it.

Hopefully before the heat of summer dies down, I'll have a chance to check out some of these places and (perhaps) have an investigation or two. This is the one thing I've missed the most: being the first person to look for ghosts in certain locations for many decades. Back when I started exploring the valley, it was like that. As some spots have become extremely popular, it took the fun and excitement out of investigating. I've never been crazy about going places that hundreds or thousands of would-be ghost busters trample to death. I like being unique, and in finding these new places that haven't been exhausted to death is the best way to do that.

Return of the Dead Guy...

Hollywood is filled with stories of death. There is a long-standing history of tragedy on stage and screen. And with it comes ghostly tales from the earliest days to modern times. Yet not every strange story is of the dead and famous. Sometimes it's the celebrities themselves who encounter things that go bump in the night. Even gay ones.

This was certainly true for actor Carrie Fisher, known best as 'Princess Leia' from the original Star Wars Trilogy. A close gay friend, republican operative Robert Gregory Stevens, visited her in February 2005. He enjoyed a good party and was quite fond of recreational drug use, something Fisher had battled in her past. He slept in her bed, allowing his female assistant to have the guest room of Fisher's beautiful old home in Beverly Hills. On the night of February 25, he returned very late and the two fell asleep after midnight. Bruce Cohen arrived early the following day to take Carrie to tango lessons. To her horror, Stevens had passed away in the night. She woke up beside the corpse of her friend.

Being carted away by the coroner was not the final exit of Stevens from Fisher's home. His death sparked a string of strange phenomena in her home leading her to believe his ghost remained behind. There were footsteps and light switches with minds of their own. The activity gave her another breakdown. Drugs seemed to be her only escape. After some time, the paranormal activity ceased, though Fisher can't be sure he has left for good.

Carrie went on Celebrity Ghost Stories during its first season to tell her story. Her experience is followed by a few other noteworthy people: gay cult filmmaker John Waters and Golden Girls star Rue McClanahan. Here's the full episode. Carrie Fisher's story is first. Immediately after it is Waters and his childhood experience.

A Spectral Sapphic Sheila...

I am very happy to say that as of today I officially have my flight booked for December's two-week odyssey in Australia. Those of you who know me will surely remember my unsuccessful past attempts to realize the trip. That's not to say that even this time I haven't hit more than one snag as time passes. But it's happening at long last. As Mikey said in the movie Goonies, "It all starts here."

Originally, my plan was to feature some Aussie ghost stories next month. But why wait? Well, to be honest I stumbled across a wonderfully fitting tale that I couldn't wait to tell. It is the Halloween season, after all. Often the homosexual hauntings I find involve gay men and I do want to better balance the two sexes. So when I stumbled across an interesting story of a ghost hunter and his run-in with an angry female ghost, I couldn't pass it up. After all, it's set in the land which became the penal colony of New South Wales in 1788 (which was Britain's second attempt at creating a place to send its undesirables and criminals... take a wild guess where the first one was).

This story begins in 1992 with paranormal investigator Drew Sinton, proprietor of The Haunted Bookshop, when he received a call from Melbourne asking for assistance with poltergeist activity. The female same-sex couple resided in the suburb of Burwood and had been plagued by falling kitchenware, rattling doors, security alarms malfunctioning, and other unsettling phenomena. According to one of the women, similar occurrences happened at her previous residence which led her to believe it could be the spirit of her uncle following her to her new address. Sinton brought with him psychic medium Kelly Roberts to help find the cause of the supernatural experiences.

Kelly wandered the house picking up objects to sense their energy—a divination technique known as psychometry. After a short time she realized the spirit the women were dealing with was female, not male. As she picked up a small porcelain figurine, she was overcome with a strong sense of resentment. She immediately asked the women who had owned the object, but the couple grew quiet and declined any response. After some time they confessed that it had belonged to the ex of one of the pair, a woman by the name of Beverly. According to Sinton, they told him and Kelly that Beverly "died from a blood clot caused during a jealous rage when she ran into a coffee table and injured her leg."

Upon revealing the identity of the woman who the medium believed was behind the paranormal activity, the atmosphere in the room changed. The temperature quickly dropped nearly 45 degrees. A black shadow appeared, witnessed not only by the four people present but also the owner's cats, and moved from one side of the room to the other before disappearing without a trace. "Many times I have tried to rationally explain what I saw," Sinton recalled in an interview 8 years after the event, "but I have come to the belief that it was definitely a ghost."

Perhaps Beverly never let go of her rage from the day of her death. Or perhaps the new relationship angered the jealous spirit causing her to act out her disapproval. We may never know for sure. Hopefully the couple has found some peace with the former lover. Though it is possible that somewhere in Boroondara there's a lesbian ghost still wandering rooms, seeking some attention from the woman she knew or anyone who will notice her.

When a Boyfriend Brings Dead Baggage...

Nearly everyone I've spoken with over the years has wanted, once they discovered I research the paranormal, to tell me their own personal account of an unexplained encounter from their past. In fact most people have a ghost story to tell but keep it quiet not wanting to be ridiculed by others. Whenever I've given a talk at a library or anywhere else I tend to stay at least an hour after just to field the additional questions and outpouring of tales held within for a very long time. A sympathetic ear can make a huge difference.

One other blogger mentioned many months ago about his own personal experience with ghosts and that he would have to tell me the story some time. Life can get busy for all of us so it kept getting postponed. But Ken (the other blogger) did finally have a chance to share his tale on his own blog, Adventures in Gay Dating. Though it happened 15 years ago, the experience still lives with him.

At the time Ken was living in North Carolina with a new boyfriend named Scott who hailed from California. He was a staunch skeptic of anything supernatural and hardly someone willing to look at ghost stories, UFO sightings, or other strange happenings with anything other than complete disbelief. His boyfriend was a recovering meth addict who had lived a turbulent existence and wasn't very forthcoming about his past. Slowly as the trust developed, he would divulge small windows into his horror story of a life. He has once been involved with (and nearly married) a female, a witch by her own admission, and practiced the occult arts himself though he refused to discuss the matter any further. Ken would soon discover why.

On what seemed to be a normal night, Ken awoke suddenly at 2:20 AM. Before rolling back over to sleep, he caught a glimpse of something dark at the foot of the bed. It was the shadowy form of a man, so black it seemed to radiate the color. He found himself frozen not only by fear but a paralysis rendering him immobile and unable to wake his sleeping boyfriend. There was a choking sensation around his throat. He could feel the anger from the presence who undoubtedly was there because of Scott. He saw a vision in his mind of a hilltop cemetery surrounded by wrought iron fence. The male spirit led him to a gravestone beneath a tree and pointed at it.

Ken struggled to break from the immobilization, murmuring a religious instruction summoned from his Baptist upbringing. “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ Of Nazareth, go!” His eyes followed his outstretched finger toward the window. “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ Of Nazereth, leave through this window now!” He began to recover his movement and looked forward to find the room once again empty. Waking Scott he attempted to explain what had happened in excited gibberish but Scott was too tired and wrapped an arm around him before fading back to sleep.

The following morning, Ken told his boyfriend about his frightening encounter.

"Oh," Scott said nonchalantly, "that's just Steve." Ken was shocked.

“Do you believe a person can be haunted, Ken?”

He was fraught with surprise and bewilderment. “I… I don’t know. Why?”

“I’m haunted, Ken," Scott said in a serious tone. "Just like a house can be haunted a person can be haunted. Trust me on this one, I know.”

Steve's parents were friends of Scott's parents so the two had been occasional friends in Placerville, California before graduation. While Scott was living with the witchy woman in Los Angeles his father called to tell him that Steve had been killed in a car accident the night before. His father sent him the money for a bus ticket to come to the funeral. He was gathered with some old friends on the steps of the funeral home, playing with a deck of tarot cards to show off his psychic abilities when he happened to glance up. There was Steve, plain as day. Horrified, he quickly put away the cards. Steve's specter reappeared that night in his bedroom at his parent's place to terrify him once again. The following morning at the cemetery as they lowered Steve's body six feet under, Scott saw several other ghosts watching him from around the bone yard.

Scott asked Ken to describe in detail exactly what Steve had shown him. He mentioned the cemetery, the fence, the colored marble headstone beneath a tree. Scott clapped his hands with glee and explained that every single detail of where Steve was buried was dead-on.

"Why did he appear to you as himself but I got the whole spooky-figure-cloaked-in-black treatment?"

"He was trying to scare you off," Scott replied.

"So, he 'liked' you?"

"I think he did."

The whole experienced seemed to awaken something inside Ken. Six months after the terrifying night, he saw a little boy in the shop where he worked when he was completely alone. He vanished right before Ken's eyes. It turns out that during construction of the building a large cement drainage pipe crushed a young boy to death at that very site. He was approached by a young, attractive man on a separate occasion several months later asking him for the time at the store. He glanced at his watch and looked back up to find he too had disappeared. But there was something else peculiar about the incident. The man carried a shopping bag for Ivey's--a department store which went out of business in 1985 and formerly occupied the same building he was working in.

Steve made a few more random appearances and seemed to be trying to scare Scott. Ken had enough of the disturbances and researched the paranormal heavily in search of ways to rid their lives of the repeat occurrences. After smudging the house with white sage (while projecting a white light in his mind and singing "Amazing Grace") all activity seemed to stop. Neither of them saw another ghost or had another freaky experience.

What happened to Ken that night is often attributed to sleep paralysis. But how do you explain the vision of a cemetery on the other side of the country? Did he really experience a ghost or was it picking up on Scott's own memories? And best of all, was Steve paying a visit to a past friend or trying to voice his disapproval that  Scott was in bed with another man... and that man wasn't him? We may never know yet the thoughts are certainly intriguing.

Can't You Hear, Can't You Hear the Thunder...

I'm an aussiephile; there's no denying it. So far in my life, I missed out on a chance to attend university in the "land down under" and take a vacation there (after saving the money and wasting it on a bad relationship). The country itself intrigues me to no end, as does the history. Needless to say, I was absolutely tickled pink to find my book on sale at Angus & Robertson. I might not be on the other end of the globe, but some part of me is.

I'm still determined to get there. Most people don't realize how hard I tried to find ONE story from Oz for the book. I gave up after a tiny nibble (a bed & breakfast which might be haunted, but needs to be investigated), but this time I'm more determined than ever. So, I'm asking for a little help from readers. If you're in Australia and know of any possible hauntings (be it hate crime ghosts, haunted gay bars, or anything of the like), I would really appreciate any tips. There has to be at least one LGBT haunting in the country, and I need to hear about it!! I'm about a dozen stories shy of being able to start work on the next book, so any input is much appreciated. Even if they're not from Australia, I'd love to hear from anyone who might have an interesting tale to tell.

Sleeping with a Stiff in St. Louis...

Our next story which fell through the cracks during book research brings us deeper into the center of the United States. This time, the setting is St. Louis, Missouri during the mid-1980s. It centered around a musician named David Udell and an unusual experience which he recalled on his blog.

At this time in his life, David called an apartment on Oregon Avenue his home. It was by no means spacious; with a mock recording studio taking up one entire room, his bedroom consisted of a large converted storage room facing the street, just large enough for sleeping quarters. The streetlights maintained a certain level of illumination on David's bed all through the night. His more-fortunate roommate stayed in a separate bedroom in the rear of the home.

On one particular night in either 1983 or 84, he was settling down after a late night. It was some time after three in the morning when he laid down on his mattress to get a bit of shuteye, his back turned toward the doorway. Moments later, he heard the sound of what he believed to be his then-girlfriend entering his room. He felt some comfort as he felt someone slip in bed beside him, nuzzling up close in a spooning position. Playfully, he reached around and gave her rear a squeeze. For reasons still unknown to him, he felt a compulsion to reach around to the front.

What awaited him wasn't anything he had expected. His hand latched onto something. Something becoming stiff. Whatever was in bed with him wasn't a woman, and it seemed a bit too happy to see him. David yelled and turned around, only to find himself alone. In seconds, he was out from beneath the covers and bounding over studio equipment in a mad dash for his roommate's bedroom. Waking him from his sleep, David told him of his experience and forced him to stay awake with him until daylight came.

When David's roommate asked him if he finally believed in the paranormal, his response was a weak and sheepish "no..."

Love Lies Bleeding in the Windy City...

While researching for Queer Paranormal, I ran across a lot of interesting tales from everywhere. Unfortunately, several stories could not be researched enough to earn a spot in my book. In light of Pride Month, however, I think it's an appropriate time to give some mention to these tales and revive this blog from its coma as of late. And so, I bring you a strange tale from Chicago of a haunted apartment and its gay phantom...

Christina* lived with her roommate on the northern end of Chicago during the 1990s in a run-down, old, inexpensive building. Throughout her five years tenancy, strange incidents occurred that made her question whether they were indeed alone. Footsteps paced the floor between the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen itself seemed to be a hot spot for activity; sounds of a chair dragged across the linoleum floor and silverware being put away were not uncommon. But one incident in 1997 escalated the spooky goings-on to a new level.

One hot summer's day, Christina relaxed in her room, absorbed in a book while stretched out on her bed. She was suddenly struck with unexplainable paralysis. As she looked toward the end of her bed, a shirtless man stood there before her. He appeared to be in his late 20s, with a muscular torso and handsome face twisted into an irate expression. His whole body exuded anger, so powerful that Christina felt the pain in her own limbs. They stared at one another for an agonizing moment before the young man slowly faded into the air. Able to move once more, Christina ran from her room and stayed out of the apartment until her roommate returned. Knowing her roommate's fear of ghosts, she didn't mention the unnerving event.

Two years passed. When the landlord announced the building had been sold, Christina decided to inquire into the strange event. During a conversation with the owner, the owner mentioned that—since they would soon be out of the apartment—she had a confession to make. She had not been entirely up-front about the history of their apartment. In the years before Christina and her roommate moved in, the ground floor space had been rented by a gay couple, one of whom was a very handsome, athletic young man... the other, somewhat older. At that time, the neighborhood was very gay-identified, even having a few bars nearby. Both men were involved in S&M, and consumed a lot of drugs. Perhaps the substances contributed to the constant arguments heard from their apartment. The police were called on many occasions to break up the fights.

On one particular night, the couple returned from a night of heavy drinking and partying. An argument began, and escalated quickly from the alcohol. In a passionate rage, the older man stabbed his young lover to death in the very bedroom used by Christina. the murderer was sent to prison for his crimes, but the landlord remembered the horror of cleaning up the aftermath. Christina asked for a more detailed description, and it matched the apparition she had witnessed perfectly.

Whatever became of the the apartment (or even it's location), as well as the haunting presence of the angry young lover are not a mystery. But undoubtedly, somewhere in Chicago, the wandering spirit of the murdered man still lingers, filled with rage over his life cut short so early.

*Complete name unknown; anyone knowing this person or the apartment, please contact me!

Where Reality and Cinema Diverge...

Last weekend, I went with some friends to see A Haunting in Connecticut, as part of an outing with Western Reserve Paranormal. Honestly, even after recovering from the shock of the $9.00 ticket, my hopes weren't too high that the film would be stupendous. From my experience, movies "based on real events" often end up being more fiction than non-fiction.

I can't go on endlessly about what a fantastic film it was. In my opinion (and I'm by no means some professional critic, nor anywhere near as bitter as most of those people), it was decent. By that, I mean I didn't walk away overly disappointed. It was better than the trainwreck I expected. It's not worthy of an Oscar, but it wasn't a waste of celluloid. Sure, it was very predictable and contrived in parts. Truth was stretched to incredible bounds to tell an enthusiastic, entertaining story. But that's Hollywood.

I have a difficult time dissing directors, filmmakers, and screenwriters simply because I understand the level of work going into a project. So, I have nothing negative to say about the overall product. They did a fair job on turning a true story into something screen-worthy. It won't be making my Top Ten Film list, but it's not lining my trash bin, either. I'd consider buying the DVD, which says enough that I thought it was crafted well. And I'm a sucker for Special Features that dig into the behind-the-scenes work and true story behind the film. If it has those things, I'll be in line for a copy for sure.

Before you criticize the film's expectable scares and altered reality, realize that to tell a story, even true events must be twisted to follow a plot line. Most movies follow a formula not because writers lack creativity, but because we expect films to be done in a certain manner. Anything else is avant garde. To propel a storyline, characters have to be created, changed, and fiddled with. A beginning and end must be formed, with the climactic scene being the pivot point. It's part of the storytelling process that has existed in human consciousness for thousands of years.

For anyone interested in creepy movies, I say it's worth at least a rental. But if you're a history lover like I am, set aside reality for a few hours and just enjoy the ride.