Saturday 22 March 2014

EPIC NEW DOCUMENTARY FROM HAUNTED EARTH



After many delays through the stormy English winter, our first epic documentary production is finally completed.
The documentary focusses on what was originally a D shaped blockhouse gun platform, and built by Henry VIII on the site of a former hermitage in Tilbury, Essex to repel raiders and invasion by foreign forces along the river Thames corridor to London.

The fort that we see today, was largely the work of Sir Bernard De Gomme, architect to Charles II, and was completed in 1682.

Walking away from the rear of the Water Gate and 17th century chapel
During the 19th century, further modifications and improvements were added by General Charles Gordon, and the only casualties of war during it`s long history was the shooting down of a First World War Zeppelin, and the destruction of an 18th century barracks block by the Luftwaffe in WW2.

For the very first time we have incorporated aerial footage which will become a standard of all future presentations.

Another first, is that we are using increasingly new and original music composed by Chris Halton which has afforded two new aspects. One is that the music is written to actually fit the mood and direction of the presentation, and the other is that it should be free of copyright issues through Google.

Unfortunately it hasn't helped the latter, and there have been issues with the use of my own work and that of some others which has forced me to re-consider being with Youtube.

 I have reluctantly decided to make this my last sharing through their network.

I have other free to use sites where you will be able to view my new releases without restriction. The Google Youtube account will remain to ensure that my earlier work is still available to view, and of course, the Vimeo account will always be available and used.

On this video:

We were very fortunate that English Heritage through their manager, Kevin Diver, had allowed us free and unrestricted access to film - often in places not open to the public. We were unable though to shoot in the magazine tunnels because of excess floodwater from earlier storms.

Leaving the raised `Dead House` - A temporary mortuary
As a bonus at the end of the main presentation, we carried out an investigation in a building called, `The Dead House`. This was built in the 17th century and was used to store bodies from frequent illnesses and accidents on site. Malaria was a huge killer of both soldiers and civilians at the fort, and was rampant until the late 19th century when the cause of the disease was tracked to water storage tanks on site. After filtering the water, the mosquito spread infections came to an end.

Inside this almost forgotten room, we picked up some paranormal activity which is shared in this production.

On behalf of Haunted Earth tv, we hope you will enjoy this presentation.




Please note: The Vimeo link will be available when ready.





Wednesday 19 March 2014

THE GHOSTS AND HAUNTINGS OF OLD PRAGUE

Ghosts & the Supernatural - Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. It is the fourteenth-largest city in the European Union. It is also the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava River, the city is home to about 1.3 million people.

Founded during the Romanesque and flourishing by the Gothic and Renaissance eras, Prague was not only the capital of the Czech state, but also the seat of two Holy Roman Emperors and thus also the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. It was an important city to the Habsburg Monarchy and its Austro-Hungarian Empire and after World War I became the capital of Czechoslovakia. The city played major roles in the Protestant Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War, and in 20th-century history, during both World Wars and the post-war Communist era.

Prague is known for its mysteries and paranormal happenings. The Golem of Prague was created by Judah Loew. The Golem was to protect the Jewish people. Even though this story is far-fetched, I still feel that there is some truth to this myth.

The Headless Knight’s Templar

While in Prague, I went to the mystical labyrinth of this ancient city. There is a story that there was once a noble Templar Knight who rode a fanciful white horse and this is one of the most popular ghosts of Prague. The Headless Knight’s Templar reminds me so much of Sleepy Hollow’s Headless Horseman. If you have the chance of encountering this famous ghost, you will see the bright red cross on the Knight’s torso and in his hand, he is carrying his head! Many citizens have claimed that they have seen this ghost trotting down the cobblestone streets. Many citizens who have seen this ghost say that he is merely serving his ghostly servitude.

Legend has it that to rid this ghost from Prague’s cobblestone streets, you must be brave and strong and seize his noble horse and then grab the knight’s sword and pierce it through the heart of the ghost. The Headless Templar can be found wandering on picturesque and positively creepy Liliova Street between midnight and 1 a.m. It is a mystery on why the Headless Knight’s Templar lost his head.

While trying to conduct an EVP session, I felt something kick me in the back of the leg. I feel like I have a sprained ankle and I have been limping. I have a huge bruise on my foot. Could I have provoked the Headless Knight’s Templar horse to stomp on the back of my leg? I have learned from experience that ghosts overseas don’t mess around.

The Murdered Nun
St. Agnes Convent in Josefov
Around the area of St. Agnes Convent in Josefov there lurks a ghost that is known as The Murdered Nun. She appears only at night. She is known to be a moody and is seen sometimes covered in blood and crying hysterically. She is known also to smile and stare at loving couples on a bench. She was a child of a wealthy nobleman. She fell hopelessly in love with a desolate knight. Her noble father of course refused to give his consent for marriage and as her payment for her unforgivable sin she was to be sent to live in St. Agnes convent, where she still resides today but only in esoteric form.

The night before her transfer to the convent she decided to follow her heart and met with her beloved. Her father went psychotic and stabbed her repeatedly for shaming the family name. The Murdered Nun has been haunting the area of St. Agnes ever since. Legend has it that this ghost once appeared to a girl who wished to poison herself because of a tragic love affair. The Murdered Nun grabbed the poison from the depressed girl’s hand and placed a bag of coins in it instead, enabling her to live a happy and prosperous life with her true love.

The Murdered Nun and the Headless Knight’s Templar are the only ghosts I investigated due to time limitations, but Prague has many ghosts and they are so colorful! Like the Drowned Maid that is seen dripping wet with drooping hair. She has chattering teeth and crying eyes and she can be found haunting the House of the Golden Well. Yes! She was murdered! Many of the ghosts in Prague have colorful names and it appears that everyone knows the legends of these ghosts.

There are: The Iron Man; The Ghost of Miller’s Daughter; The Obese Merchant; The Begging Skeleton; The Mad Barber; The Fiery Turkey – yes, it’s a ghostly turkey that looks like it’s on fire; the Ghost of the French Major; the Headless Lady; The One Armed Thief; the Fish Eater of Stromovka Park and let’s not forget Karbourek the Water Sprite!

To fully enjoy the benefits of ghost hunting in Prague, you will need to spend 6 months there just to investigate everything!

By Paul Dale Roberts, HPI Esoteric Detective

Source: CostaRicaTimes

THE TALE OF THE `MOURNFUL NURSE GHOST`

The window from which the ghost nurse has been seen jumping
Gordon Buchan and his wife Sylvia arrived in Sheringham in September 1976 to take up posts as senior house parents at the Break charity’s Rainbow children’s holiday home, on Hooks Hill Road.

Mr Buchan, 72, who says he has experienced “time slips” since he was 18 months old, claims that he first encountered the Rainbow ghost the day after he started work.

During the two years the couple spent at the home, Mr Buchan said he saw the ghost every two or three days.

And he claims that – although it was never seen by his wife – one other staff member and scores of children staying at the home also saw it.

“She was a First World War nurse, wearing the uniform of the time. She used to follow me round the corridors. I put her age in the early 20s. She was slim with auburn hair and always looked mournful,” he remembered.

On many occasions children had reported seeing a woman throw herself out of a first-floor bedroom window, according to Mr Buchan.

“Dozens and dozens of children saw her – they were petrified – and I believe, while we were there, an exorcism was carried out, although that had nothing to do with us.”

One day a child’s grandmother had visited the home from Norwich and told Mr and Mrs Buchan that she had worked in the building during the 1914-1918 war when it had been a convalescent home for troops.

She said a young nurse had cared for, and fallen in love with, a corporal who had been injured. He had recovered and been sent back to the front where he had been killed.

In her grief, the nurse had thrown herself out of a window to her death on the ground below.

“We have wondered about it ever since,” said Mr Buchan, who now lives with his wife in Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria.

“While it was still operating as a children’s home we didn’t feel it would be right to go public about it but now it’s closed we would like to know more – has anyone else heard this story and does anyone know the nurse’s name?”

Break shut Rainbow as a children’s holiday centre in October 2012 after nearly 40 years.

Sheringham historian Peter Cox said he was aware of the story but had never found any evidence to substantiate it.

Before Break, the house had been run as a children’s home since the 1920s by the charity NCH, according to Mr Cox.

And before that it had been a private house. He added: “Many large private houses were requisitioned by the military.”

Source:  EDP24


Friday 14 March 2014

TWO IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS REGARDING HAUNTED EARTH TV

Some news!


Haunted Earth have been approached by the Community Channel to host some of our documentaries for a series to be broadcast on their channel in June 2014.

The non-profit, Community Channel broadcasts on digital and terrestrial channels and is supported by the BBC and independent networks.


The channel is available in 13 million homes to 36 million people. BARB research (the TV industry Gold Standard) shows that approximately 1.3 million people tune in every month.

As well as television viewers, every week there are 10,000 individual responses to the Channel through the website, telephone lines and email.


It`s programme content is a mixture of mainstream and small independents like myself with the emphasis being on community based interests.

As a channel, they do not ordinarily share paranormal related material, but in the case of these documentaries, they have allowed for the videos to be shared in their entirety.

For my work, this is an excellent platform, and I am very pleased they have chosen a number of my videos for broadcast under an umbrella programme called, `Great Getaways`.

Closer to the month I will share broadcast times and dates for each shared show.

I`m personally very pleased, as this will garner more interest in my work, and hopefully it will draw interest from other channels too.



Lastly, I was hoping that my current production which is in post edit, would be available to view this coming Saturday, March 15th, 2014.

Due to the amount of material shot for this production, and some new technical improvements, the entire show has been delayed, and will not now be available until 10pm (GMT) on Saturday March 22nd, 2014.

My apologies, but you will be more than compensated by the content in this (for us) groundbreaking programme which has new music additions scored by myself, to work around Youtube copyright restrictions. An example below is a piece I created for the end credits entitled, `Tilbury March`.






Announcements and advertisements for the show will be circulated during next week.

Thank you for being patient. I`m currently a `one man band` on the production side, and fitting all my other responsibilities together, leaves little time for myself.

Chris Halton


Thursday 6 March 2014

A MESSAGE TO A SCEPTIC


Recently, a close-minded sceptic posted a long wordy piece on my page which suggested (amongst other things) that the paranormal exists only in our minds, because human minds are flawed - unless you are a close-minded sceptic, of course.

The poster later deleted the post, and so I am not at liberty to discuss it further, but instead received correspondence from another close-minded sceptic, who reiterated part of the earlier poster`s comments with this message:

`I was shocked to see that you deleted the post by Xxxxxxx.  Don`t you allow free expression?  Science has proven that what you call ghosts are nothing more than the figment of your mind. Stop lying to these people, and accept science has all the answers`.

My reply:

`I didn`t delete the post. I responded to the comments he made, and because he didn`t like my response and had lost the argument, he deleted the post himself. This often happens when close-minded `sceptics` cannot accept that their arguments are flawed. It hurts their fragile ego.

What irritates me the most, is that people like you quote science as though it stands firmly on your side. 

It doesn`t. 

What you and others are suggesting is that science has reached it`s limit on paranormal research, and because of that, any further research into this subject is pointless because science has spoken.

Science is all about discovery and enlightenment. The two very same reasons I have dedicated my time to studying it. To suggest that science has drawn a line in the sand is ridiculous at best, and at worst, it is an attempt to control our beliefs and to hold back any opportunity of science actually proving you wrong.

I find people with close-minded attitudes to be less than scientific. In fact I can compare people like you with the religious zealots of old that imprisoned or executed scientists for suggesting that the world was round. 

Thank god that there are many people who view the subject quite differently. If there wasn`t, then I`m sure a group of people like you would be calling at our homes to burn us at the stake for heresy. That`s how I view you. Yesterday`s people trying to control the future. And I`m afraid that this isn`t going to happen.

Science is organic, it has a ceaseless quest for knowledge, and not as you would like to think, the last word on everything.`

Chris Halton


Wednesday 5 March 2014

NOEL COWARD - THE AFTERLIFE AND THE WRITING OF `BLITHE SPIRIT`

Anna Eva Fay
In 1911, the famed American medium Anna Eva Fay held a public seance at the London Coliseum, inviting audience members to ask questions that she would answer by channelling the dead. Seated in the auditorium was Violet Coward, whose beloved 11-year-old son, Noël, had just begun his stage career after Violet spotted an advert in the Daily Mirror looking for a "talented boy" to appear in a play called The Goldfish.

Violet was ambitious for her child and the Coward finances were precarious, so Noël's debut was welcome. But had she done the right thing in putting him on the stage so young? Violet decided to ask the opinion of Fay and those in the afterlife. The answer was unequivocal: "Keep him where he is! He is a great talent and will have a wonderful career!"

The prediction was spot on. Noël Coward went on to become one of the most successful playwrights, actors and entertainers of the 20th century.

One of his most enduring hits is Blithe Spirit, which has just returned to London in a production starring Angela Lansbury. In this "light comedy about death", as Coward put it, theatre and spiritualism meet head-on. Written in just five days, and premiering at the Piccadilly theatre in 1941 when a Britain at war seemed to be staring defeat in the face,

Blithe Spirit is a delicious comedy about a writer called Charles Condomine, who recently remarried after being widowed. His first wife, Elvira, comes back to haunt him and his new partner after a seance conducted by the eccentric medium Madame Arcati, played by Lansbury. "I shall be for ever grateful," said Coward, "for the almost psychic gift that enabled me to write Blithe Spirit during the darkest days of the war."

Noël Coward 
So Coward's theatre career was founded on advice from the deceased, delivered by a medium who may have been every bit as delusional about her gifts as Madame Arcati. Throughout her career, Fay was denounced as a fake, most notably by the escapologist Harry Houdini, who claimed she once confessed her fraudulence to him. Whatever the truth, there is no denying that Fay was a consummate show-woman, well aware that seance was a form of theatre, a visual spectacle.

This made her a natural successor to the Fox Sisters, her fellow Americans and the founders of modern spiritualism, who in the mid-19th century were engaged to perform three times a day by the impresario PT Barnum.

The medium's task was to make visible what is invisible. Often they drew on music hall and popular theatre, using songs, ventriloquism, puppetry and comedy. There are clear parallels with later 20th-century performance art, with their use of their own bodies and their manifestations of ectoplasm.

Helen Duncan
A few months after Blithe Spirit opened, a medium called Helen Duncan held a public seance in Portsmouth, in which she apparently made a dead sailor from the HMS Barham materialise before the audience's eyes. Given that the Barham's sinking had not yet even been made public, this brought Duncan to the attention of the authorities, who brought her to trial on a charge of falsely claiming to procure spirits.

It's a charge that could perhaps have been laid at the door of Madame Arcati, although her sincerity is never in doubt in Blithe Spirit in the play: she escapes lightly, cycling blithely away from the Condomine house and all the troubles she has unleashed. Duncan was not so lucky: she was the last person in England to be prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, receiving a nine-month prison sentence.

Despite this, many people in the audience believed what they saw and heard at Duncan's seances, according to theatre and social historian Simon Featherstone, although he says what they actually witnessed was "a theatrical process". He compares Duncan's act to "that of an old-fashioned variety artiste, designed to meet the needs of the audience". In a blitz-shattered London, Blithe Spirit was doing exactly the same in theatrical form, even if the novelist Graham Greene dismissed its "bad taste" in making light of death.

 The original 1941 production of Blithe Spirit. 
But then, theatre has always been a place to raise the dead and let ghosts walk, from Hamlet's father on the battlements to Banquo at the feast – and there is hardly a theatre in the country that doesn't claim to be haunted. "Reinventing the dead is one thing theatre and spiritualism share," says Featherstone. "They both involve the suspension of disbelief and the creation of illusions." He points to magicians Maskelyne and Cooke, who took Victorian London by storm with their staged supernatural happenings involving theatrical trickery: "It was as if people wanted and enjoyed being deceived." That willingness to believe was played upon by mediums, many of whom saw spiritualism as just another branch of show business, involving curtains, props, misdirection and in some cases machinery – the very paraphernalia of theatre itself.

Simon Higlett, the designer of this new Blithe Spirit, has firm views on how to make ghosts walk. "The more technology involved, the worse the effect often is," he says. Every time I've worked on Blithe Spirit, there has been a conversation about whether you make Elvira look grey and ghostly. But in my experience, the less you do, the more effective it is." Although Higlett knows how to make rose bowls fly through the air, or books tumble from shelves, he says such trickery "fills me with dread, because modern audiences are always looking to see how it's done. In the past, people were happy not to know, to just wonder and believe."

When Coward wrote Blithe Spirit, the need to believe, particularly in an afterlife, was strong in a world that was being touched daily by death. The audience for early performances had to pick their way round a bomb crater to enter the theatre. Margaret Rutherford, who played Madame Arcati on stage and on screen, was herself a believer and initially refused the role because she saw the play as an attack on spiritualism. The producer Binkie Beaumont eventually persuaded her, but Rutherford always insisted that Blithe Spirit had to be taken seriously. "I regard this as a very serious play," she said, "almost a tragedy."

While Blithe Spirit is an outlandish comic fantasy, it has its origins in a bizarre true-life situation. In her book Kindred Spirits, Terry Castle traces Coward's friendship with the lesbian author Radclyffe Hall and her lover, Una Troubridge. The two women were involved in a ghostly menage a trois, having begun an affair while Hall was still in a relationship with the salon singer Muriel Batten. When the spurned singer died suddenly, the pair – out of a need for forgiveness, perhaps, or mere curiosity – tried to contact Batten via seances conducted by Gladys Osborne Leonard. This woman may have been the inspiration for Madame Arcati.

Hall never saw Blithe Spirit. She was already ailing on its premiere, and died in 1943. But had Hall managed to catch a performance, says Castle, "one hopes she would have been capable of seeing the love – as well as the joke".

Source: TheGuardian



Tuesday 4 March 2014

DOUBLE FEATURE DVD WITH HAUNTED EARTH TO BE RELEASED IN NORTH AMERICA AS A COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION BY A MAJOR RETAILER


A major retailer with the biggest online retail presence are releasing this double show on DVD in the US and Canada on June 17th 2014 as a commercially manufactured boxed production.

A British and European release is planned later.

As a joint collaborator of both projects with the Irish director, Jason Figgis, `Cathnafola` is a terrifying account of an investigation shot at the ruins of an old Irish country estate which has something very dark attached to some very unpleasant history. This investigation was spawned from some compelling footage shot in Ireland, and concerned a terrifying event that some amateur ghost hunters caught on camera.
My later follow up visit triggered an event that I and the team was not prepared for......

`Leap into Darkness` is a free additional investigation of a visit to Ireland`s notorious Castle Leap.
All that Leap is reputed for happened during the all-night vigil, which includes some fantastic footage of events captured there ....

This is a fantastic step forward, and I hope this video presentation will prove to be very popular with American and Canadian audiences looking for something more ethereal than that normally shared to television viewing audiences.

I cannot give you a price as yet, but I will update you all nearer to the date.

This should give a much wider platform to the work and investigations carried out by Haunted Earth.


Saturday 1 March 2014

ELLEN DEGENERES` NEW HOME IS HAUNTED


Ellen DeGeneres' house is haunted.

The talk show star and her wife Portia Di Rossi bought The Brody House in Los Angeles' Holmby Hills area for $40 million in January, but haven't been able to get a good night's sleep thanks to apparent ghostly goings on.

A source said: "The house has been remodelled, so Ellen thought it would have no trace of the former owner. But she was wrong. Within a few nights of moving in Ellen started hearing random noises including footsteps and doors opening and closing.

"Then, in the middle of the night she heard a woman's faint cry. Ellen totally freaked out. She hasn't had a solid night's sleep ever since she moved in."


The 13,000 square foot Brody house was built for property developer Sidney Brody and his wife Frances in 1951.

Sidney passed away in 1981, but it is the spirit of his wife, who died in 2009, that is said to haunt the property and friends have convinced Ellen and Portia to take drastic action to cleanse the property of the spirit.

The source added to National Enquirer magazine: "Friends have convinced Ellen to conduct a spiritual cleansing ceremony in the house. She doesn't want her new home to have any bad energy, and she's not going to share it with Frances Brody."

Story: IrishExaminer