Jocelyne LeBlanc March 7, 2021
While a woman was out for an evening walk, she snapped a photo of what appeared to be a ghostly face in the window of an old 19th century mill located in Hessle, Yorkshire, England.
The woman, who remained anonymous, described her experience, “Visiting Country Park Hessle Foreshore and the mill seems to have a ghost in the window.” “I did take a picture on my phone shown to a few people who have all agreed.” “We were having dinner in the car. I just said to my husband [there is a] face there. He doesn’t believe it but I can see it.” “Other people have said the same [and] also said, if you look closer, [you] can see more spirits in the picture.”
You can decide for yourself as the picture of the alleged ghostly face can be seen here.
(Not the photo from Hessle Foreshore Mill.)
Interestingly, another creepy photo was previously taken in the woods of Hessle. Back in 2013, Hannah Butler was out for a ghost walk when she took a picture that seemingly showed a young girl with dark hair and white clothing standing next to a tree.
Hannah explained that her friend wanted to do a ghost walk so she decided to join along. “Our guide showed us this tree, and told us that some people had seen the ghost of a little orphan girl there who is looking out to sea waiting for her daddy.” “I just snapped away at the tree, I must have taken about ten photos. I was wandering around, looking through them, and then I saw it.” “I thought I had just imagined her. It wasn’t on any of the other photos. Then I started freaking out. I was so shocked.” In fact, she was so scared that she stayed at her friend’s place for a few days after the ghostly encounter.
However, she believed that the ghost girl (believed to be about 5 or 6 years of age) just wanted to be her friend and Hannah was full of guilt because she responded by running away. That’s why she returned to the site the following week (but during the daylight hours) with her friend and the guide.
(Not the photo that Hannah took.)
They created their own “yes” and “no” board (what could possibly go wrong with a homemade spirit board…?) and the guide asked if the spirit wanted to be Hannah’s friend. They received a “yes” response.
Hannah claimed that ever since her encounter, the ghostly girl has appeared in her dreams on a regular basis. It sounds like the spirit may have attached herself to Hannah as she stated, “I don’t think she will ever leave me. I felt guilty for leaving Hull and moving away. But (I) feel like she could be anywhere around me,” adding, “If there was a dark room, I would always be scared that she was there in the corner, and I still feel like that at times.”
The picture that Hannah took of the ghostly girl can be seen here.
Call This Vicar to Deliver You From Ghosts, Demons and House Haunters
Paul Seaburn March 5, 2021
If there’s such a thing as a ‘celebrity exorcist’, the title might appropriately be bestowed on Reverend Jason Bray, an Anglican minister of Wrexham in northern Wales and a Diocesan Deliverance Minister – the Church of England’s preferred non-horror-movie-reminder name for ‘exorcist’. Reverend Bray is well-known to the British media and the regional possessed, and has been interviewed recently to discuss the spirit that forced him to exorcise his own house and to promote his new book of experiences titled, appropriately enough, “Deliverance.”
“I felt my body somehow arch backwards, as if it were being stiffened and straightened by forces beyond my control. I almost felt as if something was travelling through my spine, and contorting it. But that was nothing compared with what happened next.”
What happened next, according to The Mirror, is that Reverend Bray did what he was called in to do – he and the family who brought him into their dark, icy cold house opened their eyes and found it was now well-lit, warm and apparently demon-free … causing Bray to admit, “I was utterly astonished.” That seems surprising, since he says in the book that his encounters with the paranormal are “surprisingly common.” Despite his avoidance of the job name ‘exorcist, Bray says he dresses the part, wearing a long black coat and a black wide-brimmed hat while carrying a black bag containing a cross, packs of blessed salt for making holy water, a communion kit with bread and wine, and a holy water sprinkler.
“I was about to open the door and there was this guy glaring at me through this wooden mask with eye holes. Glaring straight at me. I knew instinctively he was a priest, and there was quite a lot of hostility towards me. So yeah, courage in both hands I opened the door, nothing there of course, and then sort of threw myself under the blankets, and Laura said ‘OK, you need to do something about this.” Bray is also a non-denominational exorcist. Back in 2018, he gained some fame for helping a Muslim family which was experiencing “low-level poltergeist activity“ (objects moving, loud noises) they believed was caused by the ghost of a monk. That was an instance where he claims both he and the family saw the spirit as he said the prayers to evict it.
Whether you’re a believer or skeptic, Anglican or otherwise, it sounds like “Deliverance” has some interesting stories about the experiences of deliverance practitioner Reverend Jason Bray. Just don’t get the book confused with the movie of the same name or you might need to call him to exorcise your mind.
‘Laura’ is Mrs. Bray and that demonic experience occurred in their own home soon after they moved in about 20 years ago. They already had a prior experience with a mysterious cold spot over their baby’s bed, but Bray was unprepared for what happened a few days later, long before he had a black bag filled with ‘deliverance’ tools. He told the hosts of “This Morning” that this scary bathroom visit (no, he doesn’t say if the ‘urge’ suddenly went away) prompted him to call his boss, who came over and delivered them from evil – inspiring Bray to become a deliverer/exorcist as well.
“No, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes you can get situations where it’s not that at all. In the book I describe going back to see somebody repeatedly, and we bless the house and it’s quite clearly not a paranormal presence. It’s something that’s going on in her life.”
While the book is obviously filled with Bray’s successful deliverance tales, he admitted in the talk show interview that he doesn’t always remove the ghost or demon and readily admits that many of these experiences are psychological or spiritual dilemmas where he performs the more conventional tasks of a vicar – counseling, prayer and recommendations to seek psychological help.
Bray is also a non-denominational exorcist. Back in 2018, he gained some fame for helping a Muslim family which was experiencing “low-level poltergeist activity“ (objects moving, loud noises) they believed was caused by the ghost of a monk. That was an instance where he claims both he and the family saw the spirit as he said the prayers to evict it.
Whether you’re a believer or skeptic, Anglican or otherwise, it sounds like “Deliverance” has some interesting stories about the experiences of deliverance practitioner Reverend Jason Bray. Just don’t get the book confused with the movie of the same name or you might need to call him to exorcise your mind.
MU
A Murder, a Haunting, and the Mysterious Death of Grace Brown
Brent Swancer March 4, 2021
Located in the picturesque Adirondack Mountains in northeastern New York of United States is a large, fairly remote lake called Big Moose Lake. Covering a total of 1265 acres, it is a scenic spot among the rugged scenery, and a popular destination for tourists who don’t mind getting out into the boondocks a bit. Here one can enjoy fishing, sailing, rowing, and other water sports, staying at rustic, historic lodgings at the former hunter outpost and nearby settlement of Big Moose, but beyond the scenic beauty here lies a dark tale of murder and hauntings
Grace Mae Brown was born in 1886 to dairy farmers in South Otselic, New York, and at first had a rather mundane and unremarkable life. In her adult years she became a textile factory worker at the Gillette Skirt Factory in Cortland, where she toiled away day in and day out, and that might have been the way her life would have turned out if she hadn’t met the nephew of the owner of the company himself, a man named Chester Gillette. Although he was considered a big shot in the company from a super wealthy family and Brown was just a factory worker, she managed to catch his eye and the well-known womanizer and playboy became smitten with her. At the time, the rich, handsome heir to the Gillette fortune was considered a very sought-after, eligible bachelor, and he swept Brown off her feet, he himself becoming quite infatuated by her as well, much to the raised eyebrows of others in high society.
Chester Gillette and Grace Brown
Brown and Gillette would have a bit of a whirlwind romance, with Brown getting a taste of life as a wealthy socialite and finding it intoxicating. It was somewhat suspicious to her that Chester didn’t seem to want to take her out in public, but she was so in love and so excited about it all that she didn’t care. In 1906, Brown became pregnant with Gillette’s child, and at the time he seemed very understanding and noble, offering to support her, although in the meantime there were rumors that he was seeing several other women on the side, something she chose to ignore. As this was going on, Brown was practically begging him to marry her, and he arranged for the two of them to have a romantic getaway in the Adirondacks. Along the way, they ended up staying at the Glenmore Hotel, at Big Moose Lake, where Brown was hopeful that he would finally propose and they could start a life and family together. However, this was to be far from a romantic dream trip.
On July 11, 1906, the couple rented a canoe on the lake from a man named Robert Morrison, who didn’t think much of it at the time. To him this was just another pair of lovebirds going out on the lake, but by that evening they still hadn’t returned. When they still had not come back the following day, Morrison put together a search party to look for them, only to find the canoe overturned and bobbing aimlessly about in the water. Authorities were notified, and they would find Brown’s body washed up on the shore, with scratches and bruises on her face and head that suggested that she had been struck with a blunt object. There was no sign of Chester anywhere, and questioning of Morrison turned up some suspicious clues. For one, while Brown had left all of her belongings behind, Gillette had taken his whole suitcase full of belongings aboard the canoe, among these a tennis racket. It hadn’t struck Morrison as so odd until she had turned up dead, and the working theory at the time was that Gillette had smashed her over the head with the racket and pushed Brown, who didn’t know how to swim, into the water to drown, possibly because he had wanted to get out of the relationship and preserve his reputation in light of the news of her pregnancy.
Police would later find Chester Gillette staying at the nearby Arrowhead Hotel, where he had suspiciously booked a room under the name “Carl Grahm.” Also suspicious was that he at first denied even knowing Brown at all, before changing his story to claim that it had been an accident. His story would be very inconsistent, to say the least. He at first claimed that she had accidentally hit her head and fallen in, before finally settling on the story that she had thrown herself into the lake to commit suicide after he told her he didn’t want to marry her after all. He claimed that he had tried to save her but that the boat had then capsized to leave him frantically paddling to shore, losing her in the process. Too bad for him, there was plenty of damning evidence against him, including a series of letters Brown had written to Gillette, in which she pleaded with Gillette to accept responsibility for her pregnancy and threatened to expose the whole affair if he didn’t. They also managed to find his tennis racket in the lake, which was broken in the way one might expect it would be after bashing someone over the head with it, his clothes had been bone dry, and there was also the fact that he had not reported the death and had simply taken off to stay at another hotel under an alias. The trial, which was becoming a media circus, came to the understandable conclusion that he was guilty as hell, leading to his conviction and subsequent execution in 1908 by electric chair.
That was the end of Chester Gillette, but according to the lore of the area, Grace Brown has never really left. One of the most popular tales is that she can be seen wandering around the lakes shore, sopping wet and looking distraught. She is also sometimes seen thrashing about in the lake as if drowning, before vanishing, and she is sometimes even seen eerily lurking under the surface. Brown’s ghost is also said to wander around nearby resorts and settlements, even seen in hotels and homes, where she will strangely turn off all of the lights. Brown’s restless spirit has become rather well known for being constantly wreathed in a cloud of absolute crushing despair, that can leave witnesses speechless, breathless, or in sudden, unexplained terror. One witness named Rhonda Bousselot saw the ghost and experienced this sense of despondency along with three friends as they were staying at the Covewood Lodge on Big Moose Lake. She says of what happened:
I walked into the staff lodge, straight up the stairs with my hand out, reaching for the string, which is how to turn on the light. As I approached the top of the stairs and just before I was ready to turn on the light, a feeling came over me that somebody was right there. More or less, I stopped in my tracks and really just didn’t move. I didn’t have an overwhelming feeling of fright, but something definitely or someone was there, and it just kind of took my breath away. All three of them (the friends) had the same exact story. It lingered for just a few seconds, and then moved away. All three of them saw the ghost. I didn’t see anything myself, but I felt that somebody was right there, and it was just a strange feeling.
There is no doubt that Big Moose has a tragic history. It is horrible what happened to Grace Brown. No matter what Chester’s motivations were, there are certainly traumas and reasons for why her spirit might want to stay behind. Is she still there wandering about, perhaps looking for something, an answer to why she is in this predicament? Does she even know she is dead at all, or is she merely a place memory, a so-called residual haunting, her last moments permanently etched onto the landscape through means we may never understand like an image on film? Or is this all just spooky lore surrounding a very real tragedy? Grace Brown certainly did die under brutal circumstances out on that lake, but whether her restless, possibly vengeful ghost still lurks about is saved for the realms of speculation and paranormal investigation.
MU
