The Angry Ghost of Weber State

I am a wanderer. I've always been a wanderer.  I was born in Detroit and stayed there with my dad on and off all my life.  My mother moved to Ogden, Utah where I grew, partly.  Ogden is a beautiful city placed in a scenic valley in the Rocky Mountains.  I remember that scenery like an old painting now.  It is more beautiful and more brilliant because of the passing of time.  I remember growing up wild and climbing up the mountain that our house sat perched on the side of.   I climbed up scree and played in dried out stream beds.  I built fortresses out of snow and turned the lonely landscape into my own wonderland.  I did all these things while my mother studied Geography at Weber State University.

My mother didn't tell me many ghost stories when I was little, but Weber State University is one of the more haunted University campuses in Utah.   The Social Science Building at Weber State University was the site of violent stand off between a student and the police.  Apparently,  a male student who was angry at his girlfriend thought the best way to express his anger would be to start shooting into her classroom.  He started shooting and the police were callled.  The police gunned the student down, but he has never really left.  His ghost has stayed in the social science building and made it his own.   Students still report hearing the sounds of gunshots at 1:30 every day.  They also report seeing strange lights and hearing  odd noises.  Most of all, they describe feeling ill at ease, as if they were being watched.  The shooter remains, watching over the students, holding onto his anger and waiting for a moment when he can vent his rage again. 

The Cave of Ghosts

They don't tell you about the ghosts on the tour of Cathedral Caverns. They talk about the cave's history and about Mr. Gurley who discovered the cave.  Although, Cathedral Caverns are ancient,  the enormous mouth of this cave was completely hidden from human view by thick overgrowth and enormous trees.   It was first discovered by Hans Kennamer in 1803 but it wasn't until Mr. Gurly discovered in 1952 that the cave became famous.  Of course, the tour guides don't tell you this either.  In fact, most of what the guides tell you is not true at all.  A cave statistical site I visited confirmed that much of the information you will hear and find about the cave is false.  This false information may be entirely believed by the tour guides, but it is still untrue.
For example, the cave is advertised as having the widest commerical cave entrance in the world, which is a record held in reality by Deer Cave, 100m wide and 120m high, and the largest single cave passage in the world,

As you sort through the many lies and tall tales and strange fantasies your tour guide will tell you about Cathedral Caverns,  you will eventually begin to tune the guide out and study the beauty of the cavern itself.  The cave is incredibly beautiful and doesn't need lies to capture the imagination of visitors.   The caverns are hauntingly beautiful and if you can sense the otherworldly you will feel a chill run down your spine.  You'll know that there is more to Cathedral Caverns than you can see.  If you pull the guide aside,  you'll find the mysterious and true story of the ghosts that wander this cave.  The ghosts that hide here are not human.  They don't speak or interact with visitors.  For the larger part of Cathedral Cavern's history, it was not a place for humans.  It belonged to the animals and when the lights shut off and darkness settles back on the cave, the ghosts of dead animals retake this ancient cavern.  According to one guide I spoke with,  every morning he sees footprints leading back into the darkness of the cave, but none come out.   He also reported strange noises and movements when he is alone in the cave.  Yet despite this, no animals are ever seen in the cave and the cave is far to dark for any animal, except bats and a few bugs, to be able to navigate alone.  The footprints change in shape and size, but every morning they are there,  serving as a reminder of  a time when the cave belonged to the wild and not to the tour guides.

A Phantom in the Woods

The woods near Oscoda, Michigan are filled with legends.   Oscoda is a small town near Saginaw bay by Lake Huron.   Many of these stories surround Lake Solitude.  Lake Solitude used to to be attached to Lake Huron, but the years have cut it off, isolating it and now only a trickle of water connect the lake to the larger body of water.  Near the lake are the ruins of  Au Sable, the region's oldest settlement.   Over the years this area has become associated with witchcraft and ghosts and there are tales of many local ghosts.  

The story of one of these resident ghosts was told best by a group of hunters that once got lost wandering the shores of this lake.  The hunters had gotten seperated from their group and lost their bearings.  They spent hours wandering through the woods in a desperate attempt to find anything that looked familiar.  But all their attempts were in vain and they were unable to find any help.  When they had finally given up and sat down,  a young woman seemed to appear out of nowhere.  She was lovely and amiable and the group immediated trusted her.  She explained to them that she was a local farmer's daughter and that she knew the woods very well.   She guided them back to the safety of town.  The hunters were so greatful that they turned to thank her and then they watched her vanish into thin air.

When they got back to town,  they went to the local bar to have a beer and relax.  As they drank, they told their story to the bartender.   He knew the story well.   The ghost was well known in those parts.  The young woman's name had been Leona and her family had once had a farm in those woods. Back in 1929, Leona had been shot and killed by a hunter who mistook her for a deer. Since then, her spirit had been seen many times, usually leading lost people out of the forest.

Living in the Shadow of Evil: Living in the Homes of Serial Killers and Murders

I ran across a story about Jeffrey Dahmer's house in  The Paranormal Daily News.  It was a copy of an interview on NPR with the current owner of the home.  It was an interesting story and it got me thinking about a conversation I had with a friend a few weeks ago.  My friend's relative had moved from California to Huntsville, Alabama and purchased a house that was a wonderful value.  The realtor told her a murder had occured in the house, but since the woman wasn't superstisious she ignored it and paid the very small ticket price for a house that had been on the market for ten years.

Of course, the family all knew why the house had been on the market for ten years.  Jeffrey Franklin had  axed his mother, father, baby brother, and two sisters  in this home.  No one wanted to live in a house where something like this had occured.  It was too late to stop the purchase, so the family all quietly ignored the house's history and my friend got to have Thanksgiving dinner standing over the very rug that had once been saturated in the blood of small children.  She describes the experience as surreal and disturbing, but saw no ghosts.  She felt something dark there, but couldn't say what and was very glad she didn't have to spend the night in the house.  She still avoids the house when possible and says that she rarely visits anymore.  She describes the house as if an emotional impression was left that can never be removed.  The house is stained.

In his interview with NPR Chris Butler is much more lighthearted, however even this nonbeliever reports feeling a bad vibe in the house.

“I bought Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood home in Bath, Ohio – Let that sink in for a second,” writes owner Chris Butler for NPR. “If your first reaction is “eeewwwww,” that’s perfectly understandable.” “Dahmer was one of America’s most notorious serial killers; his rampage lasted from 1978 to 1991. He confessed to killing at least 17 young men – Many of these murders involved torture and cannibalism,” reports Butler.


“I bought the house, though, not for some kind of perverse, Goth thrill, but because I needed a place in woodsy-suburby Northeastern Ohio where I could make a loud musical racket and not bug my neighbors,” reports Butler. “I was instantly charmed the first time I pulled in the driveway… Charmed turned to creeped-out when 24 hours after I first saw the place with my real estate agent, Greg Greco, he told me of the house’s grisly provenance.”

“Dahmer did commit his first murder here — a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks whom he lured back to the house with promises of drugs and alcohol, and then clubbed with a barbell after Hicks said he wanted to leave – Dahmer later dismembered Hicks’ corpse in the house’s crawlspace,” reports Butler.

“The vibe here is fantastic – The house didn’t kill anybody, and I didn’t see any ghosts. I’m not superstitious or a believer in the paranormal, but after months of people freaking out about where I was living, I did begin to wonder if there might be some leftover bad business in the place,” reports Butler.

Both of these accounts describe the same feeling.  There are no ghosts, but there is an emotional residue that can't be erased.  The evil that happened in these houses lingers leaving a feeling of darkness and bad business.  Locations can't let go of the evil that has lived in them. 

Ghosts and the Physiological Response to Fear

As a child, I was fascinated with horror movies and ghost stories and the reactions they created in me.  I enjoyed being a little afraid and did crazy things like reading The Exorcist in the most haunted room in my grandmother's house.  As an adult, I have questioned the nature of fear and wondered where it comes from and why some people are more responsive to different stimuli that others. I've sought to understand what makes us afraid. I have done much of my research on physiological responses to fear. My thesis was called Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Reactions to Fearful Stimulus in Those Suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is a disorder found most commonly in returning war veterans, victims of rape, and childhood abuse. It is a reaction to being exposed to so much terror that your sympathetic nervous system is thrown off kilter. The sympathetic nervous system is the system that deals with our basis fight or flight responses. It tells us how to deal with fear. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for normalizing the body after the fear response is completed.


In my research, I found that the body feels fear before the mind can process it. That means that if I expose you to some stimuli which your find frightening, your heart rate will increase before you can cognitively tell me that you are afraid. Our awareness of fear is based on our physiological reactivity and not vice versa. This is why panic attacks are so difficult to treat psychotherapeutically without drugs. The body has learned to be afraid of an irrational stimulus and will react before the mind can tell it that the fear it is having is irrational. In order to treat panic disorder, the body has to be retrained, not the mind. Exposure therapy is a way of doing this slowly over time and Submersion therapy or flooding is the fast and difficult way of doing this.

For me this is interesting for ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts, because we often say we feel something. We say that we feel a presence. That feeling is not rational. We don't think about it. We just know something is there and that produces a fear response. I believe this is a physiological response to something that our normal senses can't perceive but that our body is aware of. Perhaps our sympathetic nervous system is able to sense something that we are not cognitively aware of and this produces a feeling even when there is nothing we can see with our senses. Cognitively, we aren't aware of anything scary. But our body feels that fear. Our body knows there is something there even though we can't see it.   The fear fealing in the presence of the supernatural is an adaptive response to an unpercievable stimulus.

Armargin Lawyer

From: Lawrence Armargin
Subject: Registering Our Interest
Date: March 2, 2010 4:38:19 AM PST
To: tiago.decosta@armarginindustrialco.net
Reply-To: sales@armarginindustrialco.net


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Warmest regards,

Lawrence Armargin
sales@armarginindustrialco.net
Armargin Industrial Co.
Building 301,Rua Vergueiro 2740,
Sao Paulo, BR, 04102-001
Tel:+55-1137119206
Fax:+55-1137119207

Three Caves

I have been trying all week to find any shred of evidence that Three Caves is haunted.  They should be haunted.   Three Caves is located in Huntsville, Alabama at the base of Monte Sano Mountain.  It is, as the name would imply,  three very large caves in the woods.   The caves are man made and were used as a limestone quarry until 1955.  When the quarry closed the land was donated to the Huntsville Land Trust.
Since that time these very accessible caves have become a local haunt for wierdos, wiccans, and spelunkers.  The caves are quite large and go back over a mile into the ground and have ceinlings of up to 40 ft.  Three films have been shot in these caverns.

In the seventies and eighties, the caves were also quite popular amongst wiccans and satanists and were the site of many dark rituals and summonings.  They have also been the site of at least five suicides and many accidental deaths.  Inexperienced spelunkers often crawl into the caves and find that they didn't know what they were up against.  Despite all this, the caves are still used by many nature lovers and urban adventureres.

I have dug and looked and researched and found nothing to indicate that these caves, filled with darkness, satan, ghost summoning rituals, and death, have even a whisper of a ghost.  So this brings me to the question,  if death, darkness, and black magic can't summon a haunting what is it that causes hauntings.  It can't just be the presence of tragedy and horror alone.  There has to be other qualities in the location that create a more suitable location for a haunting.  I have heard many theories about geomagnetic and solar activity and hauntings, but I tend to veer away from these thinking that the supernatural would have its own laws that would not be governed by the rules of our world.

My favorite book is Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hillhouse".  It is the best haunting book ever written and if you have seen the terrible movie made several years ago based on this book, please try to forget the movie.  The book is singular in its subtle and completely psychological description of a haunting.  In this book,  Shirley Jackson says that some places are just "born bad".  She says that the very soil is evil.  I wonder if there isn't a seed of truth in this.  Horrible things happen every day without leaving a whisper of a haunting behind them, but a peaceful death can leave a violent haunting.  Perhaps some places draw these ghosts and hold them.  Apparently three caves isn't one of these places, because no matter how many people call forth the demons of hell in the mouth of these caves, the spirits seem to avoid it like the plague.