on stage wierdness

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: GUEST,JohnB
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 12:32 PM

The stage one's are relatively easy to explain. It's the sound guys fault. If you look at the back of the board just below where the leads plug in, you will see a switch marked "Phantom Power" just make sure it is switched "OFF" JohnB

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: GUEST,djh
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 11:16 AM

My story has nothing to do with performing, it happened when I was a child. I was 10 or 11 and I shared a room with my younger brother who was 9 or 10 years old at the time. One summer night something supernatural set out to scare the bejeezus out of us or maybe instill a sense of wonder in us.
My dad went out to buy more beer or smokes shortly after we went to bed, with Dad out of the house I was the oldest person at home. Our bedroom was almost directly over the driveway. Car headlights would run across the ceiling to the far wall entering or exiting the driveway. It was a hot summer night so both windows were open and as soon as my Father's headlights disapeared back out the window a wind that seemed as forceful as a tornado blew threw the windows and it continued for maybe 15 or 20 minutes until the instant the headlights made their way back across the ceiling.Fortunately the all-night convienant store was mercifully close by.
We lay still paralyzed with fear not exposing so much as a toe from under the sheets. I remember having to cling to the sheet to keep it from blowing off me. We called out to each other periodically to make sure the other was OK, at no point did either of us think this was just wind, It was something else entirely. Every loose item in the room and some not so loose items ended up in a pile in the center of the room. Every picture and poster was torn from the walls and deposited in the pile.
We didn't get out of bed to tell Dad, it was over and that was enough. Oddly, neither of us thought for even a moment that it would ever come back, we knew, as a matter of fact, it was an isolated one time thing. In retrospect, we think that is one of the oddest things about the incident.
We thought it was the coolest thing that we had evidence the next morning, the pile in the center of the room. We didn't bother telling many people about it, especially not adults. It happened. We knew it.We didn't need to prove it.
We still ponder what it was sometimes, no answer has ever sufficed.

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 09:30 AM

Ah, well, then it MUST have been the Nittingsgill Poltergiest!

- LH

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Jim Cheydi
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 08:42 AM

Little Hawk - Quite possibly. If it was BDiBR he must be a good shot as I was in Yorkshire at the time!

JC

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 08:33 AM

Jim Cheydi - Don't you mean on the way to "causality"? :-) I figure it was either the Nittingsgill Poltergeist who nailed you with that bottle...or...if you were in North Ontario at the time it was probably Blind DRunk in Blind River who did it. He's physical. Almost exclusively so, in fact.

- LH

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: pavane
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 07:05 AM

Harvey - Maybe it was that soldier in your song (See last week's threads on the subject)

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Jim Cheydi
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 05:43 AM

Once while playing on stage I developed a sharp pain just above my left eye which was soon followed by intermitent blindness. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I'd been hit in the face with a bottle. How we all laughed on the way to casualty.

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: paddymac
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 12:14 AM

Some folks seem impelled to deny the mere possibility of events such as those described above, while others rush to accept machinations of all sorts or charlatans. Most people, or at least so it seems to me, are somewhere in the middle. My own view is that there are a number of different realities which may be within our collective ability to perceive, but beyond our present ability to measure. Many people have had "experiences" which they are not able to "explain". Sadly, most of them simply lock them away in memory out of fear that they would be considered "wierd", or worse, if they ever tell another person about them. Seems like the only useful approach is to simply keep an open mind. The odd thing is that many religions seem to accept such things rather easily when couched in some sort of "holiness", but yet deny the possibility of such things outside the religious realm of perceptions.

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Justa Picker
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 12:11 AM

Yes...there were two psychics working with the science guys and they were able to help Robert and his wife move on. Gary's brother stayed in the apartment for another two months and then moved.

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 11:46 PM

JP, did anyone figure out how to help Mr. Ecklestone and set him to rest?

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Justa Picker
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 11:04 PM

I was a cynic and a skeptic for a long time until I had a personal experience with poltergeists and the paranormal about 20 years ago...mind you I'd always been fascinated and intrigued by the subject. Still I'm a "show me" kind of person, not given lightly to believe in others experiences of this nature unless experienced first hand.

I was doing a gig with my band in Thunderbay, Ontario, and one night during dinner we got onto the subject of ghosts, hauntings, out of body experiences, etc...and the drummer (Gary) tells me if I really want to have an "experience", we should go visit his brother in Winnipeg. His brother had recently moved into a new apartment (which happened to be directly across the street from an old cemetery) and that there were very strange, unexplainable things happening to him since he'd moved in. (What we were to experience had already been happening to his brother. Keep reading.)

Gary said if I was interested, he could arrange for the two of us to visit his brother and stay for a few days. As we had a two week lay over till our next gig, I decided I'd rent a car and the two of us would head to Winnipeg, while I sent the rest of the band along with the equipment back to Toronto via my van.

We get to Winnipeg and arrive at the apartment. It's around noon when we get there, and it's summer. We get into the apartment, meet his brother (who looks like he hasn't slept in a week) and I see all these devices like tape recorders, cameras on tripods, and a bunch of other techno looking stuff . Apparently his brother had been in touch with an organization in the U.S. that investigates paranormal activity, and they'd come by to set up some equipment, and would be back in a few days to bunk in, and see what if anything turned up. In the meantime, his brother was instructed on where to set mics and how to use the recording equipment.

Shortly after dumping our stuff off at the apartment we all decide to go out for lunch and pick up a case of beer on the way back. When we get back to the apartment I put the case of beer on the kitchen counter (flat and horizontal side up.) Gary went into the bedroom to unpack, and his brother went to the washroom. I leave the beer on the counter and go into the living room and unpack my some of my stuff as I've opted to crash on the couch. (All the kitchen cupboards and drawers were closed.)

Took me no more than 3 minutes to get out a few things, and then I go back into the kitchen to put the beer in the fridge. (No one had been in that kitchen since we'd gotten back from lunch except me.) I go back into the kitchen, and now the beer case is standing on its vertical end, with the bottle inside facing sideways. And, several kitchen cupboards and drawers are half open. I never heard a sound out of the kitchen while I was in the living room unpacking. I called Gary and his brother and told them what just happened. His brother just shrugged and said "oh yeah...shit like that's been happening. I've gotten used to it."

That very night, after the other two have crashed, I'm lying on the couch on my back nodding off. Suddenly I feel two sets of hands on me - a pair holding down my shoulders and a holding down my ankles. I start yelling "knock it off guys", and I cannot move nor get up. I'm paralyzed. This lasted for about 2-3 minutes. Then I see the lights in the bedrooms come on and both emerge asking me "what's up"? It was only then that I realized they were sleeping, with their bedroom doors closed and these hands which were on me did not belong to either of them. Again his brother is somewhat non-chalant about it, and just said, "that's happened to me as well. Freaky eh?"

Couldn't sleep after this...so I got up turned on a table lamp, and put the tv on at low volume and started watching. The brothers returned to bed and closed the bedroom doors. About 45 minutes later, I become aware of some mild perfumed fragrance which I can clearly smell..but was not previously there before. Then I feel a hand lightly stroking the hair on the top of my head, and then, a soft female voice whispering in my ear "turn out the lights". At this point I mute the tv, and just sit there with every hair on my body standing on end. Again, the voice says "turn out the lights". Instead I turn on all the lights, and then a minute later the tv "automatically" switches itself off. I turn it back on, and again a few minutes later it turns itself off. At this point, I was believing, and instead of fighting it, I decided to relax and accept it, and once I did that, the voice disappeared and the tv remained on.

The following day, we're sitting around and have the recording equipment going, and we're sort of monitoring the VU meters on the tape recorders. We remain quiet while we're doing this, and after a while we notice the meters going right off the scale. We wait till the VU activity stops. We play back the recordings and clear as a bell hear a male voice say, "I'm Robert Ecklestone. Please help me." We saved this recording, for the science guys who were coming back in a couple of days. We decide to head out of the apartment (early evening at this point) and go over to the cemetery to check out the names on some of the gravestones. I'll be damned if after a while we didn't discover a husband and wife "Robert and Mary Ecklestone", buried in that cemetery. Both had died on May 17, 1924. The fact that they had both died at the same time indicates that it must have been an accident or some sort of foul play.

The freakiest part of all of this, was that these poltergeists didn't remain in the apartment all the time. Gary's brother claimed that they'd be in his car with him when he'd have to go some where and both the female and male would talk and touch him while he was driving. The scientific guys, gathered lots of data after we left, and verified 100% that the apartment was very much haunted.

While I never personally saw any physical manifestations of ghosts, I absolutely and unequivocally experienced their presence and some of their shannanagans, and for me the trip to Winnipeg was absolutely worth the time and expense to be there. I've never doubted the existence of "another dimension" since, and in a way I found the experience reassuring, in terms of knowing for certain there was definitely something that transcends our reality as we know it. I'd also like to state that at no time was I high or inebriated when I experienced any of these things.

Since that time, I've had other experiences, but aren't appropriate to share here. They were more of an intense personal nature and experience.

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 10:33 PM

I was performing at the Shannon Pub, Buffalo, last week and fellow catter KT was in the audience. A family had brought the recently cremated ashes of their grandmother to the pub and set them in an urn on the table. They told me that old Gran had been a fan of mine and they asked me to do some songs that she liked, which I did, and I also played a jig to which one of her granddaughters danced. They were having a fine time. At my first break, the family went out to the patio, where the dad took some photos with a new digital polaroid camera. He took three photos in succession of the group in essentially the same pose. The first and third pictures were perfectly clear, but the middle one had a misty haze in front of the group. It wasn't smoke, mist or fog, and they reckoned it was Granny having a final bash with the family and her own ashes! I'd heard of pix like this, but I'd never seen one myself till that night. KT saw it too.

Seamus

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: bill\sables
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 10:19 PM

When I was 15 years old my brother, who was producing a variety show staring Mark Winter(Does anyone remember him) at the Victoria Theatre, Salford, Manchester, UK, asked me to help him with the show as he was a bit behind with the pre show scenery. I arrived in Manchester on the Sunday and the show was due to open on the Monday so I went straight to the theatre and started working with the stage crew and my brother puting finishing touches here and there. At about 1am we were all quite tired and stood in the middle of the stage discussing what we still had to do, There were about eight of us there. There were no lights on in the auditorium and only stage working lights lit on stage. The heating was still running to warm the place up for the audience next night. We all saw the swing doors swing open at the back of the auditorium and a sort of luminous mist floated down the aisle but we could hear footsteps as of high heels. This mist floated up onto the stage and went behind us and the steel fire door backstage slammed shut. One of the old flymen who had worked there for decades said it was only Nancy, and that we should follow her. Not wanting to be left alone I followed the others to the fire door and heard the footsteps climbing the stone stairs leading to the dressing rooms, We entered each room but found nothing. The old flyman then told a tale of a Victorian girl who had had an affair with an actor and was pregnant and rejected by him. One night she jumped from the upper circle to try to reach him on the stage and fell to her death in the orchestra pit and she has been there ever since. During the rest of the week I never went anywhere alone but sometimes felt a very cold chill.
I dont normally believe in these things but that is what I experienced.
Cheers Bill

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Bert
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 09:57 PM

Well I'll fill in for Spaw while he's under the weather and take a guess that you were wearing a silk shirt and that you farted and it was the fart trying to escape that you felt.

Ah well, it's not up to his standards, I know he will be much more eloquent when he gets back on line.

Bert.

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 08:05 PM

You tell 'em Little Hawk. Anyone who is so dedicated to being a meat-head fanatic that they think it's the same think as rationality defined, deserves to be haunted by high-density displaced victims of sudden and distressing decapitation with slime exuders flaming! :<)). Seriously, the last time I consulted the authoritative dictionary of English language, "rationality7" was not defined as "limited to mechanical or material data only". And thereby hangs one helluva tale.....

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 04:35 PM

Yeah, Harvey, there are definitely ghosts out there in certain places. They aren't the whole being that passed over (in my opinion), but rather a partial thought-form remnant, an emotion-based fragment, you might say. They inhabit the astral, which is a dimension very close to the physical, but it isn't physical...it's more subtle in a sense. Most of what is in the astral is unapparent to our physical senses most of the time, but is easily accessible in the dream state. Sounds like your particular ghost really goes for sad songs in a big way.

- LH

p.s. Man, I can just hear the skeptics going ballistic over that...."Gimme my meat and potatoes lifestyle and go away," Little Hawk!!! "Rationality forever, rationality forever, rationality forever, and the Ego marches on!"

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 04:23 PM

jeezus Harvey!

No one is more sceptical than me (maybe) about stuff like that. Hell I even check out the "sceptics webpage" and one of my real life heroes is James (the amazing) Randi, a magician who has devoted his life to unmasking frauds like Uri Geller, greedy mediums, "Ghost hunters" and Evangelists who get their healing info straight from God (through radio transmitters)....so I know that when YOU go through something like this, it bears investigatin'. I'm gonna do some reading on that building.

Rick

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Mudlark
Date: 20 Jun 01 - 01:52 AM

Yikes! What a pro, tho, to go on performing, sure you had a bat crawling around on you!

Spooky, weird and interesting...

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 05:47 PM

Macbeth!

LOL!!!!

Subject: RE: on stage wierdness
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 05:29 PM

Sounds as though someone found your singing very *touching*....wow, seriously, though, very interesting! Did they have any idea who it might have been? How old is the theatre, what does its performance history include, any clues?

I had some experiences with a house we lived in, in CT. If I can find what I wrote in the threads, I will link it to this thread.

Thanks for sharing.

kat

Please click here for the article on the old house.

Subject: on stage wierdness
From: GUEST,harvey andrews
Date: 19 Jun 01 - 05:07 PM

Just thought I'd throw this in. I'm mr sceptical but this is the honest truth...I was on stage at a very old theatre in Bridgnorth, England, a few days ago. Iwas singing a song called "fading voices",about the singer's who have left the planet in the last few years, when I felt the back of my shirt being tugged. I thought at first it must be someone behind me, but the audience showed no reaction. I carried on singing and felt it again moving across my back from left to right. I thought a bat or a bird was on me as it had that sort of light weight to it. It went down my back and i felt it moving around to the front. I was cetain a bat would crawl out under my right arm!! I finished the song and swung round to the audience to ask if anything was on my back. Nothing. In the interval I was approached by two of the Theatre's volunteers who asked what had happened. They then explained that ghosthunters had been in only that week. People reported strange things on stage, particularly when a sad song was sung. I don't know...except it happened!! Anyone else had spooky experiences? I repeat..I'm an absolute sceptic, but I can feel that tugging now.