Ostara Ramblings
First off, I want to apologize for posting this one a little later than I normally would. Normally I’ll have these written up and scheduled to post at least a week in advance, I’ve just had a bit of writer’s block this past week or two.
If you’re signed up for and receiving my monthly updates, you’ll know that today’s post was going to focus on spirit boxes, estes sessions, and the reliability of the other side. While today’s post will still contain some of that material, it’s no longer the main focus. The idea of whether or not we should trust whatever or whoever it is we’re making contact with is something that I find incredibly interesting. I want to speak about it at length (and I will do so more in depth in the future), it’s just a topic that I need more time to develop and incubate than I normally am able to devote to these posts.
When the podcast starts releasing (which is going to happen after the show starts releasing), there’s a very good chance that part of its initial focus will be estes sessions. I just get the feeling that that particular format lends itself very well to exploring a topic like that at length.
Ostara
Spring is finally here!
There’s a tendency among the pagan community to want to say that their practices and ideas date all the way back to the earliest beginnings of human religion. Of course, this isn’t really true. Most of what makes up modern magickal practices is fairly new (1). This isn’t to say that it should be taken as less valid due to this, we just need to remember what the point of all of this really is (generally, bettering ourselves and the world around us).
The basis of Ostara, like most pagan holidays, comes from bits and scraps of surviving traditions. These bits and scraps also find themselves consolidated into the idea of Easter (rabbits, eggs, and flowers don’t have much to do with the Christian faith, after all). What’s important to note is the coming of the spring equinox. Ultimately, this is what both of those religions are really about (2).
Now is the time, as our part of the world reawakens and seems to come fully back to life, to begin working on our own self-actualization. Plant those seeds, make those moves, do what you need to to make the changes you want to see in your life a reality!
At GHPR, we’re doing just that!
Recent Investigations
If you follow us on our socials (which, if you aren’t already, you should) you’ll know that we had a pretty major investigation last week! I’ve done more investigations over the years than I can count, but I’ve never had the opportunity to check out a place like this before.
As GHPR grows and changes, as we’re working on Signal & Noise and trying to expand our reach and influence in the community, we’ve been able to do some things that we’ve never been able to before. On March 13th, we were allowed full, after-hours access to Sam & Greg’s downtown. This might not sound so interesting at first (if you aren’t familiar with the area, that is) — Sam & Greg’s operates out of a building that’s part of the oldest section of the downtown square. In fact, this particular location was built in 1873 and has remained relatively unchanged throughout the years!
We had a fairly eventful night, after a certain point. Initially it seemed like we weren’t going to have much, if anything, to speak about following the investigation. As has become something of a regular occurrence, however, once we start our estes session for the night, that has a tendency to very quickly change. I want to speak a little about this, but I can’t share too much, since this investigation is going to featured in an episode of our show.
We were in the middle of something like a synchronicity storm. This is something that tends to happen whenever we’re out filming. Normally, we find ourselves coming across blue stars and blue lights. This all comes after a conversation we had during the night of our UFO investigation concerning the star Sirius. For more information on this connection we’re making, I’d recommend reading Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson.
When we first began filming outside of the property, we couldn’t help but notice the change in their outdoor lighting. Their outdoor eating area has a series of twinkle lights strung across and over their section of sidewalk. As we approached the building, they all turned off at once, save a single blue light (the closest light to where we stood) before coming back on.
Towards the end of the investigation, we started our estes sessions. Unlike most investigations, we had two sessions this night. The first was held in the basement, where scorch marks from a fire in the early 1900s can still be seen on the walls. Here, we seemed to make contact with a human spirit that ultimately told us it was having trouble communicating with us and we needed to move upstairs where there were “less walls”. Keeping a story that had been related to us earlier in the evening in mind, we chose a table that sits right against the railing on their upper balcony. Here, according to locals, is where an apparition can be seen leaning over the balcony to look down on people as they walk in.
Immediately, we’re struck by another synchronicity. For one, the lamp hanging above the table is a blue UFO. The upper floor, actually, has a whole alien theme going on. Of note, though, are the tables. Each table at Sam & Greg’s has a different theme and is covered with different decor. This table, and the one next to it, immediately catch our attention. This table is fully decked out in ancient egyption iconography (again, this stems from conversations that are featured in the show). The table next to it? Comic books (and, ya know, we do all work at a comic shop). It acts like a little signpost for us: sit here!
So, this table will be where our second estes session is had. What follows is one of the strangest estes sessions I’ve ever been privy to.
Estes Sessions
If you’ve ever used a spirit box and received an apparent response, you’ve probably immediately tried to figure out who or what it is that you’re speaking with. I can just about guarantee, after that response, your next question of this entity is some variation of “Who are you?” or “What is your name?” If you’ve gotten a name or a backstory, have you ever tried to research them? Have you ever tried to find their story? If you haven’t, give it a shot some time. Here’s the weird bit: it’s probably a dead end.
In our own sessions, we’ve received name after name after name. Sometimes, when you poke and prod a bit, you can even get a back story. For example, we spoke with an entity at a house near Huntsville Hospital that was very interested in finding out whether we had pets. When asked if it was animal lover, it said yes but, sadly, it had only ever had pets via The Sims while it was alive.
This is an incredible response. We would go on to get the entity’s name, that he had lived in the area, and a general timeframe for his death. He had no interest, it seemed, in reliving or relating the exact details of his demise (who can blame him, though). Instead, he said many “cute” things, peppering our conversation with anecdotes similar to his Sims story. Again, who can blame him? I’m certain that if I were in his shoes I would much rather speak about the things that were important to me or that I enjoyed. What makes it weird, though, is that when I decided to investigate a little further, to link his story to a person who had actually lived in the area where we were speaking, I couldn’t. I could find no record of someone with his name who had died in the time period he claimed that had lived in that area.
That it’s own probably doesn’t mean anything. For all I know, this guy might just have not been very well-known or well-loved. It’s sad to think about, but it’s possible. If he didn’t have an obituary, if no one really cared that he died, it can make it hard to prove that he existed.
As we go on more and more investigations, the more I start to think that there’s something stranger than we realize going on here. I, for instance, have a tendency to receive names during estes sessions of two varieties: names that are similar to those of people I know, or names that have some connection to the alien abduction phenomenon. That last variety is something that I hadn’t put together until a day or two ago. There’s a female name that keeps showing up during our investigations and, during a conversation with one of our other members, realization struck: this is the name given to a contactee in the ‘60s.
Taking that into consideration, along with that very strange estes session had on the second floor of Sam & Greg’s, I find myself considering a thought that I have from time to time much more seriously. It kind of goes back to one of the overarching themes of Signal & Noise. What if the names we’re receiving from these sessions, these entities that we’re speaking to, aren’t what we think they are? What if the reason we can’t find evidence of their existence is because they don’t or didn’t exist like we think they did?
I’ve mentioned from time to time how, if you’re doing a session right, you enter something like a meditative state. Once you’re really in it, that’s when you get the good stuff. During this state, if you’ve actually achieved it, you can tell. In the one in the basement, I noted to the camera afterwards that I felt like I was lifting out of my seat to a degree — I felt like I was having an out of body experience. In the upstairs session, Robbie noted a very similar sensation.
This leads me to believe, then, that the reason we get names and topics that are familiar to us has something to do with us tapping into either our own subconscious or, otherwise, some collective unconscious that seems aware of our belief system, our expectations, our life experience.
I can’t speak too much about the details concerning this (again, because this is part of the big idea behind the show) but I really think that ghosts and the paranormal aren’t as cut and dry as we think they are. I think there’s something bigger at play.
I’ll leave you with a single quote from whatever it was we spoke with on the upper floor at Sam & Greg’s.
When it asked it’s name, it responded, “We are I am”.
(3)
Stay weird!
-Scott
(1) By fairly new, I mean dating back only to the past couple centuries. In the grand scheme of human history, this is incredibly recent.
(2) I promise I’m not trying to anger anyone in how I’m speaking about Easter and Christianity. The fact of the matter is that Easter is a celebration of the equinox that was absorbed by and consolidated into Christian practices as it made it easier for early proponents of Christianity to further the spread of the religion amongst a population that was already observing equinox related celebrations.
(3) There was something else I wanted to talk about but it messed with the flow of today’s article whenever I tried to include it. You’ll notice, if you scroll down, that the ticker that runs across the page footer has been updated. I do this pretty regularly, I just wanted to expand a bit on the reason for this update. In short, on March 29th, we’ll be at an undisclosed location on the edge of the Wheeler Preserve investigating (and attempting to instigate our own) bigfoot encounters. This is going to be filmed for the show, but since it won’t be the main focus of the bigfoot episode that we’re working on this footage won’t be under the same lock and key that I place most of our data under.
As you know, each month I post new footage or data. This month’s will be the footage from this upcoming event. Given that it’s taking place the day after I would normally post on the blog, the 3/28 data post will be pushed back to either 3/29 or 3/30 so that I have time to edit the footage into something consumable. This will probably be a pretty big video, so expect the blog post to just push you towards our youtube channel.