THE HAG GODDESS AND HER DAUGHTER

In Celtic cultures, the goddess of winter is the Cailleach, the old hag. The Cailleach is a wrinkled old woman with blue skin, rust colored teeth, and one immense eye in the center of her forehead. Her hair is long and wild and bone white. The goddess of winter appears at Samhain (Halloween) and rules until Beltane (May Day), when she is superseded by her daughter, Bride, the goddess of the spring.

By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14566397697/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/wondertalesfroms00mack/wondertalesfroms00mack#page/n28/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43940524

As Patricia Monaghan writes in The Goddess Companion, quoting a Scottish song about the Cailleach:

“Her face had the blue-black shine of coal.

Her one bony tooth was red like rust.

Her hair was thick and dense and gray

like brushwood in a dying forest.

In her head was one eye like a pool,

swifter than a star in the winter sky.

That one stone eye in the hag’s head

moved quicker than mackerel after a lure.”

The Cailleach is more than a weather witch. She is a Neolithic Scottish creation goddess, a sort of giantess with amazing size and strength. The hag fashioned the Scottish mountains with her hammer. The goddess made the islands by dropping chunks of peat and rock from a basket on her back. Hikers see her hand print or footprint on rock formations.

Along with deliberate landscape fashioning, the winter goddess sometimes created land features by mistake. For example, after a long day of milking her deer herds, she lifted a rock on the side of Ben Cruachan to reveal a spring of fresh water to drink and bathe in. She was so tired, and the water was so refreshing, that she fell asleep without replacing the rock cap. When she awoke, the waters had rushed down the side of Ben Cruachan to form Lake Awe, the largest fresh water lake in Scotland.

The Cailleach, also known as the “Veiled One,” functions in many roles, including as a kind of wise old grandmother goddess. The hag crone gently encourages those whose earthly time is ended to cross to the spirit world while she stretches her veil across the winter landscape. Her association with Bride, however, indicates the promise of rebirth. She is a guardian and midwife of spring, for she protects the seeds so that they may sprout when her daughter comes to power.

The hag goddess of winter rides a wolf and has a particular affinity for black cats. She is also a fierce protector of all animals, especially horned animals such as wild cattle, goats, and deer. When her singing is heard in the forest, Scottish hunters give up their quest, knowing there will be no meal to catch.

Once, a desperate man with a large family to feed kept on searching until night fell, though not a deer was to be found. Eventually he built a fire, and inspired by the Calliach’s tune ringing through the forest, he sang a song about her clever ways. When he looked across the fire, the old hag was there with a twinkle in her eye. She explained that her herd was growing too large and she could use a brave hunter to cull it. If he would follow her song the next day, she would lead to him a deer he could shoot. From that time forth, he was always a successful hunter, thanks to the Cailleach’s respect for his cleverness in calling on her by singing her praises.

As the goddess of winter, the hag brings the wind, snow and ice. She plunges her staff into the ground to freeze it. Her magic can thicken lakes into icy slabs by dropping her plaid into the water. The Cailleach is also the goddess of the harvest, urging folk to gather in the crops when her gusts turn cold and the morning fields are rimmed with frost. In some places, a farmer’s wife makes a corn dolly, tossing it onto the field of a neighbor who has not finished his harvest. That neighbor, in turn, finishes and tosses it to another. Farmers are in fierce competition to not be the last to have the corn dolly, for then they will have to keep it throughout the winter, meaning they have to feed and house the winter hag all season as well.

As a goddess, the Cailleach has many complicated qualities that can be called upon by the worshipper. She has fierce strength, the power to both destroy and build, the power the protect life, whether of the animals or of the seeds, the power to grant the rejuvenation of deep sleep.

Deep in Glen Lyon, inaccessible by car, lies the tiny Glen Cailleach where an ancient indigenous shrine to the Cailleach can be found.

Tigh nan Cailleach, near Glen Lyon in Perthshire, Scotland By Richard Bisset - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10530829

Legend has it that if the small stone statues of the Cailleach and her husband and children are placed carefully inside this small turf roofed stone hut at Samhain (Halloween), the land will prosper. These same statures are brought out into the meadow in front of the hut at Beltane (May Day) to protect the land during the spring and summer months. The local people re-roof her hut at this time in a ceremony of gratitude to the Goddess. Researchers think this ritual has been performed at this site for thousands of years, and it is still performed today.

Matriarch of the glen: walking the Highlands’ hidden pilgrim trail

A walk to a remote pre-Christian shrine leaves our writer reflecting on the power of a mythical Highland woman – and how she is the perfect role model for our times

www.theguardian.com

The Cailleach has a famous daughter, the beautiful spring goddess Bride (known as Brigid in Ireland). The Cailleach is threatened by her daughter’s beauty, for it is so great that she is able to make ice melt and flowers grow merely by her glance. The Cailleach’s fear forces her to keep Bride imprisoned on the top of Ben Nevis, Scotland’s tallest mountain. Every day the hag forces Bride to do impossible tasks, and then punishes her when she fails.

One day, while Bride is trying unsuccessfully to wash the Cailleach’s plaid in the lake, a kindly old man appears. He is sympathetic to her plight and hands her a bouquet of snowdrops, suggesting that she show them to the Cailleach. The girl, determining she has nothing to lose, does so. The Cailleach, who knows that the flowers mean her power is beginning to wane, is furious. She rides to every corner of Scotland, shaking her staff and burying the land in snow, ice and frost.

Ben Cruachan, highest point in Argyll and Bute, home of the Cailleach nan Cruachan, By Graham Lewis - Ben Cruachan, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26172267

The kind old man turns out to be Angus, the prince of summer, in disguise. He rescues Bride from the imprisonment of the Cailleach and flies with her to the Isle of Summer. They dwell there happily, but the goddess Bride misses Scotland, so the couple returns to visit again and again. Each time, the sun shines brighter, the earth warms more, the trees bud and leaf, and the flowers grow more plentiful. The winter goddess throws wind and cold at them with less and less success, until finally the Cailleach gives up in exhaustion on Beltane (May Day), going to sleep again until Samhain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joKYWzzjuro

Bride, the Celtic goddess of spring, is welcomed across Scotland and Ireland on Imbolc (February 1) because Angus first rescues her then, and also because it is when ewes first give milk. Bride is not only the goddess of spring, but also of fire, of the forge, of light itself, of dawn, of fertility, of healing, of water (she has many holy wells and rivers associated with her), and of inspiration, especially for writing poetry. She is also associated with serpents, because they shed their skins and are thus symbols of regeneration.

Bride is a liminal goddess, meaning that she reigns over the in-between. Spring is a slow and subtle time between winter and summer. Dawn is a subtle time between night and day. Bride, according to legend, was born in a doorsill, thus neither inside nor outside.This goddess governs becoming, emerging, forming. She governs the forge, in which metal is formed, and poetry, in which meaning and image are formed. She governs water, which is the original womb of all life on earth.

One of her most ancient names was Breo-saighead, the fiery arrow, the goddess who brings light from darkness. The season of Imbolc does not bring the bright sun of summer, but rather the subtle shift of the angle of the sun’s rays slowly marches toward the equinox and eventually the summer solstice. Once again, she is a subtle goddess, the slow birther.

Labbacallee wedge tomb or "The Hag's Bed", near Glanworth, County Cork, By VisionsofthePast - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35693041

As a goddess associated with light, Bride is involved with spiritual wisdom, truth, healing, prophecy, and divination. These arts grow slowly to fruition, though their ultimate flowering may appear as a sudden burst. This is also true of the plant and animal kingdoms, where the slow period of gestation ends with the sudden birthing of a baby animal or a flowering tree. She is thus associated with healthy livestock and crops.

Fire, of course, melts snow and warms things. The Druids, who worshipped Bride, are said to have kept a perpetual fire alive in her honor. Such fires may have been burned for her up to the fifteenth century, by which time she had been conflated with Saint Brigid of Kildare and had found favor with nuns. The Druids also associated the goddess with their important bardic traditions, which preserved history through the recitation of poetry.

Today in Scotland, it is common to leave a strip of cloth or a piece of clothing outside on the eve of Imbolc so that it collects dew overnight. Bride bestows this dew as a blessing for the health and well-being of the family. People fashion special “Bride’s crosses” (AKA “Brigid’s Crosses”) from reeds or straw and hang them on the door for protection. Traditionalists eat special bannocks (Scottish quick bread), and may drink the milk of ewes if it is available. They cleanse the hearth of old ashes and lay a new fire for Bride. In homes lacking a hearth, people light candles in her honor. Young girls make Bride dolls of straw or reeds and carry them from home to home to bring blessings.

The weather on Imbolc determines the length of remaining winter. If the weather is sunny, the Cailleach is gathering a large amount of firewood and winter will be long. If the weather is foul, she gathers less and spring will come sooner. This Scottish tradition is the precursor to the American tradition of Groundhog Day. In this small way, the goddesses of Scotland still influence those of us in the “New World.”

When Someone Appears: The Mystery of Crisis Apparitions

A quiet presence in an ordinary room, the kind many crisis apparition experiences begin with. People sometimes describe a moment that only feels strange afterwards. Nothing dramatic at the time. A sense someone is nearby. A quick impression. Occasionally a voice, or the feeling of being watched.

Then life carries on.

The phone rings later. News arrives. A death. An accident. Something serious.

Only then does the earlier moment return and feel different.

Accounts like this turn up everywhere. Different cultures, different periods, very similar descriptions.

What are crisis apparitions?

Researchers eventually began using the phrase "crisis apparitions" for experiences reported around moments of danger, trauma, or death. The definition is simple, but the timing is what draws attention.

Most reports are spontaneous. People are not trying to contact anyone. They are going about their ordinary routines when something interrupts them. Often the person involved is emotionally close. The experience tends to feel unusually clear compared to daydreaming or memory.

Not everyone interprets these moments the same way. Some treat them as coincidence. Others see them as psychological responses. Parapsychology tends to step back and look at the pattern rather than the explanation.

Early Psychical Research

Early psychical researchers began collecting firsthand accounts in an attempt to understand these experiences rather than dismiss them.

​By the late nineteenth century, people had started writing these experiences down more deliberately. Instead of passing them along as stories, they were being collected, compared, and discussed.

The Society for Psychical Research, established in 1882, became one place where this happened.

The aim was cautious. Members were less interested in proving survival after death than in asking a simpler question. Did these reports appear often enough to take seriously?

One ‘but project’, later known as the Census of Hallucinations, asked large numbers of ordinary people whether they had ever experienced a vivid impression of someone who was not physically present, particularly around important events.

Some investigators felt a pattern might exist around moments of crisis. That suggestion has never been fully settled, but the material itself continued to be referenced.

The Admiral Tryon Case

A distant ship fading into mist, echoing the sudden loss at the heart of many crisis apparition reports.

​One example often mentioned in this context is the death of Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon in 1893. Tryon led the British Mediterranean Fleet. During naval maneuvers off the Syrian coast, a command resulted in a collision between HMS Victoria and HMS Camperdown.

The ship sank quickly.

In the period afterwards, a number of people connected to Tryon reflected on impressions they had experienced around that time. The accounts themselves were understated. What drew interest was when those impressions were said to have occurred.

Researchers approached the case carefully. It was not treated as evidence on its own, but as a reminder of how these accounts tend to surface and how difficult they are to separate from memory, coincidence, and grief.

Patterns Across Reports

Across many reports, certain tendencies appear. Emotional closeness shows up repeatedly. Experiences involving strangers do occur, but far less often.

Timing is harder to assess. Many accounts are described after the person learns about the crisis. Memory shifts in those moments. Meaning settles in quickly. Researchers have always acknowledged that problem.

Closeness appears again and again in these reports. Experiences involving strangers do occur, but far less often.

The repetition is not dramatic. It is simply persistent, which is part of why researchers keep returning to the subject.

Psychological Explanations

Psychology tends to begin from connection. People remain mentally oriented toward those who matter to them. Worry, expectation, coincidence, and memory can overlap in ways that feel striking afterwards.

Another factor is reinterpretation. Moments that seemed ordinary at the time may be reconsidered once new information arrives. Memory adjusts quickly in those circumstances.

Experiences of presence after loss are widely reported and do not necessarily indicate anything unusual in a clinical sense. For many people they are part of ordinary grieving. Crisis apparitions may represent an earlier point along that same spectrum.

Parapsychological Perspectives

Parapsychology approaches the question from a different angle. Rather than dismissing the experiences outright, it asks whether extreme situations might coincide with unusual forms of information transfer.

Some researchers describe this in terms of spontaneous telepathy or emotional signaling. The idea remains tentative. If anomalous communication exists, moments of crisis would be the most likely place to look.

That position does not resolve the question, but it keeps inquiry open.

Modern Research and Experience Studies

Modern research methods often rely on experience surveys rather than individual case investigation. Large collections allow researchers to look for recurring features even when verification is difficult.

Online reporting has changed the landscape. People share experiences quickly, sometimes before timelines are clear. That creates both opportunity and complication.

Crisis apparitions now sit alongside research into bereavement experiences, deathbed visions, and anomalous perception more broadly. The boundaries overlap but the timing element remains distinctive.

Why the Topic Persists

Reflecting on experiences that resist simple explanation is where crisis apparition research often returns.

These experiences sit in an awkward space. They appear too often to dismiss entirely, yet not with enough consistency to explain comfortably.

For many people, the meaning comes first. Explanation follows later, if it comes at all. Even those who lean toward psychological accounts often note how distinct the experience feels.

Researchers, meanwhile, focus on recurrence. Patterns raise questions even when answers remain uncertain.

A Quiet Mystery

Crisis apparition reports are rarely dramatic in presentation. They are brief interruptions. A sense of presence. A glance. A moment that only becomes significant later.

The Tryon case shows how these reports enter discussion. It is not unusual in structure, which is precisely why it is referenced. The details matter less than the pattern it reflects.

What keeps the subject alive is not spectacle. It is repetition. People continue to describe moments in which someone seems to appear at exactly the point something changes.

The explanation remains unsettled. The pattern does not disappear.

Further Reading

Phantasms of the Living — Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, Frank Podmore (1886)

Census of Hallucinations report — Society for Psychical Research (1894)

Apparitions — G. N. M. Tyrrell (1943)

New Frontiers of the Mind — J. B. Rhine (1937)

The Founders of Psychical Research — Alan Gauld (1968)

Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century — edited by Etzel Cardeña, John Palmer, David Marcusson-Clavertz (2015)

A Truck driver's dashcam catches a ghost on Highway 87, sparking a frenzy in paranormal interest;

During the footage on YouTube, there were several comments that reported similar incidents along highways. One person remarked that the highway in question, route 87, was “incredibly creepy” at nighttime.

A video which has hit over 1.7 million views on YouTube shows a truck driver's dashcam footage of a ghostly figure walking along Arizona Route 87. The interest in the footage has sparked a debate over the supernatural and hauntings along highways in America.

Back in March, truck driver William Church was driving late at night when his dashcam captured a white figure standing on the side of the road. Church, whose truck was traveling between Phoenix and Payson, was near the 200-mile mark when he noticed something resembling a person but with a “bright glare.” Later, when he checked his dashcam, it confirmed what seems to be a white ghostly figure.

The truck driver said that there “Were no other vehicles on site” and “you (could) see the lines on the road through the figure's legs”.

Historical Ghost On Highway 87 Still Haunts

In 1926, US Route 185 was formed and extended from Route 85 in Cheyenne north to Orin. In 1936, it was changed to the southern extension and realignment of the US 87. This originally ran from the Canadian Border at the Piegan Border Crossing. In 1934, it was routed via Glacier Park, and then in 1945 extended to the current northern terminus in Havre, Montana. The route is 3215 km long and runs through five states; Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. In the early '50s, a Maricopa County supervisor named Jim Hart, who had a cabin in Payson, persuaded the Salt River Pima and Fort McDowell Yavapai tribes to give up a diagonal right-of-way across their reservations. That's how the highway got its name. The shortcut made it a beeline from Phoenix to Payson.

Route 87 has been the centre of many missing people over the years, the first one back in the 70’s, when a hitchhiker was reported missing and has never been found. Most recently was the discovery of twin brothers, who were shot and set on fire along the Beeline highway. Other incidents along the beeline part of Route 87 include; A shooting spear in 2017; James David was arrested after killing one and leaving several injured. In 2022 an 18-year-old; was charged with killing four people after causing an accident along the highway.

During the footage on YouTube, there were several comments that reported similar incidents along highways. One person remarked that the highway in question, route 87, was “incredibly creepy” at nighttime.

Another was quoted as saying;

“Seen a ghost standing next to a small drainage bridge. We investigated any accidents in that area when we got home and a guy died in a car accident a day before at that location. The picture in the paper showed the guy in a red shirt and blue jeans. When we saw the apparition, it had a red shirt and blue pants. Real freaky”

While another comment went on to say

“Most definitely, he caught a spirit apparition. If you look closely, you can see what looks like a foot that appears first, then the rest of the body. That stretch of highway has seen so many accidents with fatalities. Sometimes when you die, suddenly, your spirit is stuck in that place where you died. Driving down that stretch at night around 3 am is really creepy, and I have seen stuff like this alongside the roads. There is so much stuff we can't explain.”

The clip has started a discussion on the many incidents that have happened on highways all across America. Many paranormal activities happen during the night in these places. None of the comments or reports confirms the sighting as a ghost, but many suggest that they agree with the truck driver's conclusion.

It is apparent from the comments that there is still much debate about paranormal activities in general. It would be interesting for media outlets to report more on these sightings. There is a correlation between incidents of horrific deaths and paranormal sightings. With many missing person reports, deaths by car accidents, and murders happening along Route 87 and other highways, this should be investigated further. Have you seen the ghost on highway 87? We want to know.

https://knewz.com/truck-driver-claims-to-see-ghost-on-notoriously-spooky-arizona-state-route-87/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_87

https://www.wptv.com/news/palm-beach-county/region-n-palm-beach-county/suspect-guilty-of-murder-after-twins-found-burned-along-beeline-highway-in-2017#:~:text=Jullian%20Cathirell%20is%20one%20of,Highway%20on%20March%2015%2C%202017.

https://eu.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/crime/2022/04/19/plea-deal-beeline-highway-crash-killed-4-rejected-lenient/7335529001/

Ghost? Glare? Arizona trucker shares footage of chilling sighting

The Staring Studies: You Really are Being Watched from Behind

Have you ever had that feeling of being watched? In the late 90s, biologist Rupert Sheldrake searched for a psi experiment that was simple enough to be carried out at high school level. His thinking was that such an experiment could introduce young adults to the concept of psi research and teach them a little science along the way. It would be an easy way to show that psi was real. So the ‘being watched’ experiment was evolved.

The Staring Studies Are Simple

What he came up with was a staring experiment. It’s not only a simple concept, but the execution of the experiment is also straightforward. You have one person designated as the starer and another person designated as the subject who cannot see the starer. The starer then randomly stares or doesn’t stare at the subject and the subject records whether they thought they were being stared at. The subjects are given from 10 to 20 seconds to make up their minds.

If you do this enough, you find that people correctly guess that they are being watched or stared at, at much better than chance levels. In some experiments, it was as much as 10% better, and in an Internet experiment, it was only about 3%. (The advantage of an Internet experiment is that you can do a lot more trials.) It’s not something that people get right all the time, but it is definitely a testable effect.

It’s like that in most psi experiments and why statistics are necessary most of the time to discover an effect. If psychic ability was so easily replicable that we didn’t need statistics, we wouldn’t have the present controversy. Nevertheless, it was a successful experiment by any sane standard.

The Devil is in the Details

Even with a simple experiment like this one, the devil is always in the details. You begin staring studies research by surveying general populations to determine whether it’s even a thing. Sheldrake referred to three different surveys: (Braud, Shafer & Andrews, 1990; Sheldrake, 1994; Cottrell, Winer & Smith, 1996) to show that a large number of people, 70-97% of the population, claim to have experienced psychically knowing that they were being watched or stared at. This alone made it worth checking out.

There are several ways to conduct this experiment, depending on budget. You can do it via CCTV, where the starer does their work via a live feed from the participant. Therefore, you can measure galvanic skin response and do away with participant reporting, or do it on the cheap and have the starer and the participants in the same room and just make sure that the participants keep their backs turned and self report. Try blindfolding the participants, or you can do a combination of the above, depending on how strict you want the experimental controls to be.

It’s useful to do staring studies several different ways, because this tells you if the extra controls are necessary. If, for example, you do one experiment with CCTV and another experiment where people just have their backs turned and the results from the two experiments are similar, then it’s highly likely that the additional step of using CCTV was unnecessary. (That’s what happened, by the way. The CCTV experiments did not have results much different from the less well controlled experiments.)

Controls and Potential Problems

Experimenting with controls is also easy. A group of people have their backs turned and are never stared at. (The controls guess at rates that are strictly at chance levels.) Still, even in something as simple as staring studies there are a number of things to watch out for. Someone may try to peek. Or they might hear something from the starer that cues them. If so, this problem would show up in the control experiments as well, which it didn’t.

Peeking requires a turning of the head. People cannot see directly behind them, even with peripheral vision, so this would be an obvious move that would alert the experimenter to the problem. If you think hearing is the problem, you can also use a video feed and stare from another room.

A more difficult possibility is when feedback is given, participants might pick up on subtle sensory cues and get better at guessing when they’re stared at. Then there is the possibility of outright cheating. (This can be prevented with better controls.) If sensory clues were the problem though, the CCTV experiments would have had different results. This didn’t happen.

There is also the possibility of faulty recording which a problem encountered in all research that relies on humans recording their experiences.

And the last is the experimenter effect. This particular problem is the most interesting thing to come out of the staring studies. You see, because this experiment was so inexpensive, more than one skeptic tried their hand at replication. And a strange phenomenon popped up. They were unsuccessful even when another person reported positive results with the same group. More on this later.

Crossing the “t’s” and Dotting the “i’s”

All of these issues were brought up and dealt with in various papers written on the study. This is typical of parapsychology experiments. Scientists must be extremely thorough because they can and will be criticized for everything, no matter how trivial. Skeptics will breathe fire on them if they butter the wrong side of the toast.

Overall, the experiments were successful. Like most psi experiments, the effect wasn’t particularly large, but thousands of trials demonstrated a very real effect. Sheldrake received more staring studies than the ones he included, but some didn’t get published because they didn’t follow the rules. A rather obscure problem can result from publishing the results of every study submitted. It’s known as the “file drawer effect” (the fancy pants name for this is “selective reporting”).

“File drawer effect” refers to studies that were completed, but never published. If only positive studies are published and studies with no effect are buried, it can skew the results of a meta analysis to a false positive. This was certainly a possibility in a situation like this. Schools which performed the experiment and didn’t get positive results might have failed to submit those studies. If all Sheldrake got back were positive studies, but there were also a bunch of failed studies that never made it to him, then the combined results would not show what really happened.

Sheldrake solved this problem with pre-registration He had an experiment registry and the experiment had to be recorded in it before it started to be included in the overall assessment.

Being Watched and Skeptics

Skeptic Problems Of Being Watched or Stared At

Skeptics did their own experiments, but as usual, even when they got the same result, tried to explain them away: (Wiseman & Smith, 1994, Colwell, Schröder & Sladen, 2000). Wiseman and Smith claimed that the results were due to "the detection and response to structure" present in the randomization. In other words, the subjects were correctly guessing what was coming next because they saw a pattern in the randomization.

What makes this particularly idiotic, in my opinion, is that the particular randomization process used by everyone was one that Wiseman and Smith had themselves suggested. (Counterbalanced randomization: there are the same number of hits on both sides.)

In any case, this complaint was a nonstarter because if it were true, then the subjects would have learned equally well in staring and non - staring trials. This didn’t happen.

There were other cases where skeptics hypothesized alternative explanations, but failed to follow up on them, apparently not caring whether they were right or not, as long as they could find a way to explain away positive results. I don’t know why anyone bothers with these people.

Being Watched - The Experimenter Effect

The experimenter effect was already a known problem in scientific experiments, but this particular staring study highlighted it in a very clear way. When skeptics themselves were the starers, they tended to get chance results. In one case, this occurred even though the skeptic was side by side with a parapsychology researcher, Wiseman & Schlitz (1997). In that case, Wiseman, someone who has a public persona as a psi skeptic and enjoys the spotlight, and Schlitz, an enormously competent psi researcher who has stayed mostly out of the spotlight, could not have been more different in their motivations and intent.

Getting positive results and admitting the reality of psi would have marginalized Wiseman and hurt his public persona. (In 1997, this happened to everyone who took psi research seriously.) Schlitz? Not so much. By staying under the radar and avoiding being in the middle of controversies, she was free to scientifically explore and learn. Hers was a much better psychological position to be in for psi experiments.

If you were aware of this backstory, then the rather dramatic results of the experiment, where Wiseman could not beat chance results at all while Schlitz made it look easy under the same conditions and using the same participants, would be the expected outcome. It also explains why this experiment struggled with replications. It would be difficult to find people quite as different as these two.

The Staring Studies Were Consistent With Other Experiments

There isn’t a lot more to say about the staring studies. It was a simple experiment, the skepticism was weird and unhelpful as usual, and just as importantly, the results of these experiments were consistent with other research.

At the end of the day, the staring experiments are just another replicated experiment confirming the existence of psychic ability. If you need evidence, well then, there it is, along with all the rest. So the question is now answered; can you sense if you are being watched? The answer is yes!

The Ghostly Children of Bedern, York

Anna and I recently went to film an episode of Anna and Amy Investigate around Bedern, York. The lanes are now framed by modern housing, but it wasn’t always so salubrious. Bedern is Anglo Saxon for ‘house of prayer’ and was home from the 13th century to the medieval Vicars Choral of York Minster. The hall, chapel and gatehouse are all that survive of the college.

Dare to venture from Goodramgate, and you’ll find the gateway to the formerly enclosed religious precinct, with its chapel bowing gently onto the cobbled lane. Proceed a little further and Bedern Hall is quietly waiting for you in all its restored glory.

The hall was once used as the Vicar’s Choral refectory before being converted into housing in the 17th century. With the religious community now gone, Bedern slipped seamlessly from sacred to slum. Crime and prostitution became synonymous with the area, and those with a delicate disposition or sense of self-preservation, thought it best to avoid. This sorry reputation persisted until it was finally regenerated in the late 20th century.

You may assume ghostly vicars drew Anna and I to this once colorful area. The Vicars Choral busied the lanes for centuries - it’s not unreasonable to expect the odd spectre in robes unsettling the good folk of York. Disembodied chanting, or religious forms hurrying towards the minster wouldn’t be out of place at Bedern and yet they are oddly absent.

Ghostly Children

In fact, it was a tale of ghostly children rumored to haunt the ancient cobbles that prompted our visit. We cut through Andrews gate to reach Bedern Hall, which was saved from ruination some thirty years ago. Tucked away in a sea of red brick, the hall is a striking symbol of York’s medieval past, and the place of the alleged atrocity.

The Ghastly George Pimm - Fact or Fallacy?

George Pimm is the villain of the tale - a parish beadle who ran York Industrial Ragged School in the mid-19th century. He is said to have ill-treated the children in this orphanage workhouse, and many died of starvation or disease as a result. Pimm received an allowance from the church for each child he took in, so any deaths resulted in loss of income. Now, a villain wouldn’t stand for that! Pimm hid the dead in and around the school, apparently concealing up to 13 children in the eight years that the school was open.

Pimm started to complain of being plagued by ghostly wailing – I doubt the stench of death helped. Drink failed to drown out the screams and Pimm’s paranoia worsened. The church was finally alerted; of course, it didn’t take them long to make their grim discovery. A grislier version has Pimm losing control and murdering the remaining children in his ‘care’. The school was closed and Pimm admitted to York Lunatic Asylum. Tortured by the screams of desperate children, he hung himself four months later.

The souls of those desperate ghostly children are said to linger in Bedern, tugging on clothing as people wander the lanes. Some have even heard youngsters playing when no children are to be seen. It certainly perturbs those using the lanes at night. Paranormal activity was thought to have faded over time but it made a resurgence when the area was regenerated. Did the building work awaken the children?

Anna and I filmed close to Bedern Hall, yet Anna felt nothing. No little hand strayed her way in need of affection. I asked her to ‘touch’ the building in the hope she may pick up on any residual energy - she didn’t feel any negativity connected with the place.

I was surprised by Anna’s reaction, or lack of, to Bedern, considering the intensity of the rumor. It prompted me to trawl the internet in the hope of learning more. My search did turn up evidence of a York Industrial Ragged school, which opened in 1848, but this was on College Street by York Minster, not Bedern. Apparently, it was the successor of a Sunday school, which opened in Bedern the year before.

This Ragged school was governed by a Board of Trustees and Acting Committee and managed by a Master and Matron rather than a one-man band like the rumor suggests. The school was relocated to the old workhouse on Marygate in 1850, after outgrowing the property on College Street. Marygate is nowhere near Bedern but is interestingly the site of Anna’s ‘Woman in White’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ANvg--kfY). If George Pimm had an eight-year involvement with the Ragged school, childish ghosts would surely be haunting Marygate not Bedern.

The Bedern National School was built in 1872, and could accommodate up to 570 pupils, so this doesn’t fit with the rumor either. George Pimm is said to have committed suicide four months after his admission to York Lunatic Asylum, but I couldn’t find his name on York’s Death Register.

So, is there really any truth to the story, or is it simply the product of a vivid imagination that has grown in the telling? An Angels of Mons moment, if you will. Anna’s failure to connect with the alleged activity suggests it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny reinforced by my challenging of the facts!

"A Murky Path Down Archer Avenue" Short Documentary

Few things make me happier than figuring out how to construct documentary projects through research and shooting plans.  Everything is safely practical during those planning stages but, once the production actually begins, it's an entirely new reality of headaches, revisions, and inevitable screw-ups.

I have an independent horror film coming up later this year.  It involves an updated camera hard drive and constant editing learning curves.  Doing documentary projects can be relaxing experiences in the best scenarios so, I figured, what a better way to try out some new horror-centric content than to do a documentary revolving around real, creepy, pre-existing scenes?  I didn't want this documentary to be too easy since it's a sort of drill for that bigger shoot.  A few years back, I had done a short doc about the spirits of Detroit--it's literally called "The Spirits of Detroit"--and I wanted to do something in a similar vein in my usual home city (I was born and raised in the metropolitan Detroit area and I now live in Chicago).

Chicago has too many ghosts.  Doing a documentary about the spirits of Chicago would encompass too much so I decided to stick to one general area.  Archer Avenue isn't one spot, per se; it's a far-reaching street that begins in the South Loop district and stretches beyond the city limits into the southwestern suburbs.  Slicing through hundreds of years worth of multi-layered, unpleasant history, the road serves as a microcosmic sample of what this American region represents.  A well-worn Native American route collided with European immigrants and the psychospiritual baggage that they dragged along with them.  The result is a very long, appropriated, and renamed boulevard lined with myth-drenched cemeteries and woodlands.  The Archer Avenue area is absolutely beautiful and you can feel the history surrounding you.  

This sinister little project was designed to be speedy so I did the best that I could to rush viewers through a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride-inspired jaunt mixing the archived past with a large helping of urban myths and local pop culture.  Whatever's going on with Archer Avenue has staying power.  These are old tales passed down through generations, constantly being remixed and updated.  

Are there actually haunted places on Archer Avenue?  People swear that there are.  The energy in these places, speaking through firsthand experience, seems to back this up.  Did a couple of weird things happen?  Yes.  But I made this documentary to reflect Archer Avenue's potent mesh of history and paranormal rumors, not to present some kind of video diary.  It's an old-fashioned approach: location cinematography and actors in costumes used as live-action illustrations, fleshing out stories.  The supposed scenarios revolving around Archer Avenue and its various locations read like fragmented scripts from B movie horror films.....so why not offer a glimpse at these scenarios utilizing some custom-made B movie horror film fragments?  It makes perfect sense.  Research, narrative compression, and a little bit of technical exercise for me and a thoroughly unnerving, quick, paranormal history adventure for viewers.  If you enjoy the possibility of running into monsters, dead monks, and cursed damsels, there's a few places in Chicago that you may want to visit.  All that you have to do is take a trip down a specific street.

"A Murky Path Down Archer Avenue" is a short documentary by Derek Quint via Addovolt Productions.  This project is narrated by Michael Marius Massett and features music by Andre Almaraz and Michael Marius Massett.