Calls from the Dead

So it’s not secret by now that I find subjects like this very interesting, apart from EVP’s and videos of bizarre interferences I find any electronic signals to be interesting, such as numbers stations for example. I realise that one of the ones I had not raised here was the concept of being called beyond the grave.

Is the telephone a way to make a last goodbye? To give a deceased person a change to make one last communication before moving on? Quite extensive research has been made, Phone Calls From the Dead (1979) by D Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless, was the result of their two year research into the matter. In 2012 another book by Callum E Cooper also picked up the subject.

The types of calls appear to fall into three main categories and one is where the witness receives a call from someone who died, sometimes not that recently but either way for the most part the witness knows that the caller is dead and it is rare that they are not aware of it when the call comes in.

Another variation is that the witness gets a call from the deceased but discover their death afterwards. Often it seems to come from the phone of a relative or friend and they did not call, but for an unknown reason had thought about calling them, the voice is unusually strong compared to the faded static type. Some witnesses said it was odd because that person sounded quite mechanical or possibly even drunk.

A rarer but report case is also noted of people calling to the deceased, not intentionally, to find that the conversation they’d had should not have been possible. The person that answered was dead or perhaps the person they should have been talking too was not even in that place at the time.

One of the most famous incidents of this type is by Charles E Peck’s calls on 12^th September 2008. At 4:22pm a commuter train with 225 people on board collided with a freight train in San Fernando’s Valley, California, and the 49 year old Charles Peck was on board. 25 people died, 135 were injured and of the injured they sent 87 to hospital, 46 were in a critical condition.

Peck had been travelling for a job in another area, he could then plan his wedding to his second wife once they were closer together, Andrea Kalz was his fiancée and from his prior marriage he had three fully grown children. Andrea heard about the crash on the radio whilst heading to the station to collect him. Peck;s parents and siblings already lived in the area and they came to join her whilst they waited for news.

In the first eleven hours of the wait there were calls from his cellphone suggesting that he was alive. Calls were made to his son, brother, stepmother, sister and fiancée. In all there were 35 calls and they would answer to hear static, understandably they would call back but the call then went to voicemail. The calls meant that the crews were prompted to use his signal to aid in the search, they looked again into the location and at 12 hours after the crash they found him.

Peck was deceased, declared dead on the scene and the resulting investigations showed he had died on impact. Long past his death his cell phone had carried on reaching out to loved ones. Unfortunately they were unable to retrieve the phone or there is no evidence that it was found.

Interestingly enough in regards to the Peck case, it seems that Snopes have decided that there was enough evidence to class this as true.

An Article on that matter

Russian UFO Crash 1989

(Sorry about the cheesy image I had nothing else)

Near to Prohlandnyi at 1am on the 10^th August, 1989 a report came in about a Soviet Military radar picking up an unidentified flying object.

An attempt to contact the occupants of the aircraft was made but they got no response and it was declared hostile. MIG-25’s were put into the air to identify the UFO and they were authorised to use weaponry if it was deemed necessary.

The UFO then ditched over mountains so a retrieval team was dispatched. The area was completely cordoned off to everyone other than military personnel. The object was 20 foot long, 10 foot tall and shaped like a long cigar. There was a small amount of radiation and some members of the team were affected. The object was moved back to Mozolok Air Base, a scientific team was sent out. By then a KGB cover up was supposedly in action and yet it seems details were still released by unknown sources.

By crashing, the door to the UFO fell open and inside were three alien bodies. Two were dead and one was barely alive, the deceased two had been killed by equipment falling on them and the third they tried to save but he could not be helped. The aliens were said to be 3 ½ foot to 4 foot tall and grey outwardly. Underneath their outerwear the skin was a blue-green colour, they had no hair, large black eyes with a protective lid, web fingers and slender arms.

Due to a further lack of information this seems more like some strange local story than fact, but I found it interesting none-the-less.

PD Info:

This image is licensed under Public Domain. Released to the Public Domain by author.

Manly Quarantine Station

(Sydney, Australia) As people arrived to colonise Australia it was important to minimise the disease, smallpox, plague etc.. reaching the island. A quarantine facility was implemented and an act passed in 1832 meant the quarantine station was there to protect the people for over 100 years. 1828-1984 the station was open in some way or another.

At peak times people would run out of space, camps would be made outside for residents. It could be a miserable experience and healthy people would help with cleaning and constructions just to break the monotony.

Lady McNaughton was a typhoid riddled ship which came with 54 dead in 1837. A further 13 died in the station. Captain Stokes of the Beagle also wrote that it was possible to identify the station by the White Crosses littered around it.

It is still like a city in itself and there are regular tourists, and not surprisingly there are ghost tours in operation.

There are stories of doctors, nurses and disembodied patients that return to haunt the place. There are three cemeteries that now are overgrown or demolished and no doubt some of those buried suffered as they passed from awful sicknesses too. Cold spots and feelings of being touched are reports that have come back.

Park rangers have historically reported ghostly lights or figures in unoccupied hallways and rooms of the building, they have then gone into to investigate only to find that there is no-one there. A common tale from visitors is about a little girl who sometimes holds a tourists hand, or people can join the group, only to later realise that no child was in the tour group.

Another story from the Australian Ghost Hunters Society was that a woman on the tour went to the mortuary with the group. She looked pale and concerned at the end of the tour and when asked why she said she had seen a body on the slab. It was not a prank, she said only she had seemed to see it, and he turned to her. He said “Look what they’ve done to me! Look what they’ve done to me!” he then exposed an incision from his throat to his naval. It was an experience she would never forget.

Clairvius Narcisse

He was born in 1922(ish) and the Haitian man is said to have been turned into a zombie by a combination of drugs. He been of interested both in folklore and for those that have an interest in how his condition came to light.

It’s believed he was drugged by puffer-fish venom and toad venom, it induced a coma that mimicked the appearance of death. The general belief is that it the poisoning was done by his brother when they had quarrelled over land. 

He was then returned home, where he collapsed and seen as dead, he was then buried. The Bokor (sorcerer) then retrieved the man who was, in effect, buried alive. Once retrieved from his grave he was given a drug known as datura, which causes memory loss and hallucinations He was in a zombie-like compliant state and this meant he worked subserviently for two years on a sugar plantation. The owner of the plantation died and Narcisse was left to wander free, unaware of the death of his brother he slowly began to regain his senses as the drug left his system.

According to the interview with American Scientist after 18 years of being presumed dead he came back to his village, he managed to convince his sister and some of the villagers about who he was. After the hallucinogen worked it’s way out if his system the former was restored to his natural mental state. One of the things that is frustrating is that there are not enough notes, from Wade Davis who explored the case, to determine the actual neurotoxin used. 

Here is the account.

Mary Shelley and the heart

Mary Shelley is best known in history as the creator of the novel Frankenstein. She died 1^st February 1851 and despite never having lived in Bournemouth requested she was buried there. Her wish for this and her deceased parents to join her was met, her parents were buried with her. 

Mary Shelley had lost three of her four children to illness and when her husband died she was in the process of recovering from a miscarriage. Her son, Percy Florence, had purchased land there and was arranging to build Boscombe Manor for his sick wife and Mary, his ailing mother. She died before it was completed but she was buried in Bournemouth anyway.

In 1822 Mary’s husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, had died during a boating accident out in Italy. The body washed ashore on a beach near Viareggio and due to quarantine laws it was cremated on the beach. A friend saw this and the heart did not seem to be burning very well, he was able to take it from the pyre and passed it back to Mary Shelley. It sounded like a very bizarre and romantic thing to do but most likely Edward John Trelawny was more interested in the object for his own collection. He was eventually persuaded to hand the heart to Mary Shelly and the heart then ended up at Boscombe Manor for many years.

It is worth noting that it was not customary for the wife to attend such a thing either, and that the picture below isn’t quite right because of that. It is also worth noting it was a hot day and not so bleak as the picture shows, his body was doused in wine  and the head was intense from the weather and fire. The corpse fell open and from there the heart was laid bare, it was surprising to see that it remained in tact and 

When her son, Percy Florence Shelley, died he was buried in the family tomb. At the same time the heart was slipped into the tomb. The two were finally united.

“Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or not.” – Courier of London

Mary Shelly on Find a Grave

Louis Édouard Fournier, entitled The Funeral of Shelley.