In Pure Spirit

For open minds

Where are the most haunted houses in the USA?

by Leave a Comment

MyBaggage, a site about travel and being prepared for it, has some Halloween content.

Tempted to do something spooky for ghost season? MyBaggage have researched the scariest haunted houses in the USA.

RANKHOUSE NAMESTATE
1Creepy Hollow Haunted HouseTEXAS
2Purgatory Scream ParkTEXAS
3New Orleans Nightmare Haunted HouseLOUISIANA
4House of the Occult at Lemp BreweryMISSOURI
5Netherworld Haunted HouseGEORGIA
6Terror on the CoastMISSISSIPPI
7Statesville Haunted PrisonILLINOIS
8Factory of Terror OHOHIO
913th Hour Haunted HouseNEW JERSEY
10Reapers RevengePENNSYLVANIA

Here’s a brief look at the top five haunted houses that you might include in your travels.

1. Creepy Hollow Haunted House 

The ‘Creepy Hollow Haunted House’ in the southern state of Texas takes the top spot. This not-for-profit house highlights three spooky attractions, using realistic special effects and people in costumes to provide a scary experience. 

Creepy Hollow gives proceeds go to good causes.  

2. Purgatory Scream Park 

The ‘Purgatory Scream Park’ comes second, the largest haunted house in Texas if you dare.

It takes 40 minutes for a terrifying walkthrough, and you’re bound to become immersed in the Halloween fun.

3. New Orleans Nightmare Haunted House

At this haunted house, you’ll find clowns, the walking dead, and even the Bogeyman to keep you up at night. There are three core attractions to pick from to maximise the chances of the hairs on the back of your neck standing up before you escape.

4. House of the Occult at Lemp Brewery

Underground, where no one will hear you scream. At the House of the Occult, you may come face to face with demons, mazes, and the pitch-black cavern. 

5. Netherworld Haunted House

One of the two attractions here is the Monster Museum which features rare movie props that you won’t see anywhere else. 

The other is a 3D experience hosted in a secret facility. 

In Pure Spirit

Where do you think the spookiest haunted house in the States is?

Learn the ninja way and meditate like a monk with an official Japanese live stream

by Leave a Comment

Discover Japan and the iconic Odawara Castle are running two sets of online experiences for visitors around the internet to take part in.

“Japanese Castle and Ninja Culture” and “Mindfulness Meditation with Japanese Monk” start in October and will carry on until March. Neither of the events is free.

Japanese Castle and Ninja Culture

You can find more about this event at the officially run Discover Japan site. That’s also how you can reserve your online spot.

Using Zoom, you’ll meet a ninja scholar and historian for a walk around tour of Odawara Castle. During the session, you’ll learn about the role the castle played in Ninja Culture, the techniques used hundreds of years ago and see some traditional tools.

The session is hosted by Hiroshi Jinkawa, a sensei with years of experience. You can book online.

Mindfulness Experience at Odawara Castle

This 90-minute online meditation takes place with a monk at the top of Odawara Castle, outside of the usual hours, so quiet there.

A chance to forget about your daily burdens, you will spend time together with Tomoni Iwayama, a priest from the Ganshuji Temple. You’ll be with people from different backgrounds and all walks of life, virtually.

With Iwayama’s teachings, you may be able to clear your mind and rediscover human potential. Sign-ups are open at Discover Japan.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think about this use of technology and tours of historic Japanese life? A clever way to support the Castle and its courses through a troubled period, or does it feel wrong?

Stay at home: Tour the world through Magical Mystery Doors

by Leave a Comment

Magical doors that can transport you to places of wonder have been part of our collective imagination of generations.

Mystery door

Doors have a more significant meaning during the Covid-19 pandemic which currently has much of the world in quarantine and stuck behind closed doors. Those doors are keeping us safe, but they’re also keeping us trapped even if its the invisible virus we should really blame.

Climadoor usually sells real doors. This week, though, given we’re all trapped, the focus is on magical mystery doors.

There’s a virtual tour to experience.

Start the magical mystery door tour!

If you’re brave enough to start the tour, then you might find yourself at the door to King’s Landing in Game of Thrones, outside Monica’s Apartment in Friends or even Star Wars’ Mos Eisely.

There’s the spooky door of Hawkins Middle School from Stranger Things, the iconic Baker Street door from Sherlock and – nature always finds a way – Jurassic Park.

In Pure Spirit

If you could step through any virtual door and tour any virtual land, what would it be?

Marry Your Outdoor Indoor Space With Ease

by 4 Comments

When spring finally arrives, and the weather starts to warm up – the bright yellow daffodils bring us lots of visual sunshine, the rays of the sun are warming and not just defrosting the ice, the animals begin to nest and flourish. This is where most of us are excited to get outside and enjoy the new season.

It’s so satisfying to go back into the garden, perhaps tend to the plants, sit on comfortable garden furniture and enjoy a cup of coffee on a nice day. The kids are usually excited to get outside and play too. The garden is our own, little space to recharge our batteries and get some fresh air, all of course, within easy distance of the house. To make this garden to house enjoyment even easier, a lot of people choose to integrate both their indoor and outdoor space.

Many people opt to integrate their outdoor and indoor space, so that there is easy flow and accessibility between the two. There are many different reasons to do this, including:

  • Easy access to the garden, and easy access back into the house
  • A visual effect inside the home that brings the outdoors in
  • The ability, with certain setups like french doors, to open up the living room into the garden, making the indoor space appear a lot bigger
  • Easy ventilation in summer
  • Easy access for entertaining in the garden
  • A great layout for parties where guests are in and out of the house
  • A great way to have double dining options between the living room or the decking
  • Great for kids who like to be in and out of the garden
  • A way to enjoy yoga or exercise on your decking, within easy access of music playing devices, yoga tutorials on the TV, or yoga equipment you may store inside to keep dry

If you choose to connect your indoor and outdoor space, it will enable you to have a living room that appears much bigger, and an indoor space that brings in all the peacefulness and greenery of the garden.

When you decide to bring the outdoors in and connect your living space to your garden, it is important to ensure that you take steps to integrate the two areas together. If you don’t, the look can be disconnected, the maintenance may be higher, and you may not get the practical benefits or the ‘feel’ you were looking for. If you’re considering merging your living room and outdoor space, these useful tips will help you get started:

A Colour Scheme For Both Areas

Ideally, you can have at least one colour or pattern theme that runs from the living room into the garden. Perhaps you have a lot of duck egg blue in the living room, and you could opt for duck egg blue patio furnishings, or garden planters. Just one colour or theme that runs all the way through, and the two spaces will be connected.

Lighting All The Way Through

This is most important when it comes to enjoying the area during the evening, so that you can make the most of the entire space. One lovely thing to do, is add soft lighting all the way down your garden, onto your decking and into your living room. The cheapest and easiest way to do this is with LED lighting like fairy lights, or LED lanterns. With fairy lights you can wrap them around anything and they tend to look pretty. No need for electricians or wiring changes, just make sure you use weatherproof ones in the parts of the garden exposed to the elements.

Flooring From The Inside Out

This isn’t an option for everyone, but it can be a very practical option for some. Floor tiling that goes all the way from the living room and onto the patio really does bring the space together, and adds a practical element in terms of bringing in dirt and mud from outside. You can also do this with wood.

Height Matters

If the living room leads straight onto decking or a patio, make sure the levels are the same height.

Make It Easy To Get Outside

Floor to ceiling doors are a must when it comes to integrating your indoor and outdoor space. External bi-fold doors are perfect for adding light to your living room, and making it easy to open your living room up to your outdoor space.

Keep It Green

Even though you can see the outside from the living room, a good thing to do is to ensure there is actual greenery both sides of the doors. Perhaps use a planter with grasses on your decking, and then have a similar indoor plant on the inside as well. This unifies the two spaces and actually brings the outside in.

Keep It ‘All Weather’

To make use of your outdoor space in all weathers, why not add some covering over the top of the patio or decking. This ensures you can easily sit outside with your partner, with a cup of hot chocolate and a blanket if it is snowing, or perhaps take shelter under a quick summer shower, without having to drag everything indoors. A patio heater is also a great idea to prolong your outdoor entertaining through the seasons.

Take Your Time, And Keep It Unique To Your Family

Hopefully, these tips have given you lots of inspiration for how to integrate your indoor and outdoor space. Remember to take your time, do lots of research, and most importantly – keep it personal and unique to you, this is a special space for your family to spend time in and enjoy, it should be personalised to your needs and tastes.

In Pure Spirit

What tips do you have for bringing outside inside? Let us know in the comments below.

This is a sponsored post. Money goes to hosting costs.

Ghost Train ad banned for being too scary

by Leave a Comment

Thorpe Park have a new attraction arriving next year. It’s Derren Brown’s Ghost Train.

An advert for the new ride was due to be aired on TV on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, before the watershed, but regulators Clearcast have now said it is too scary.

A spokesperson for Thorpe Park told press;

Plans to air our new promo for Derren Brown’s Ghost Train on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day have been changed due to advice that it may not be appropriate for audiences during this period.

The catch? The video is (currently) live on Facebook.

In Pure Spirit

Did it get you?

Too scary for TV or is this whole thing a wonderful piece of marketing for Thorpe Park and their new attraction?

Source: The Drum.

Ordnance Survey releases map of Mars under Creative Commons license

by Leave a Comment

The Ordnance Survey is the UK’s mapping agency. Since 1791 it has helped governments, companies and even individuals by producing and updating maps.

How often do maps need updating anyway? You might be surprised. The OS days they make over 10,000 changes to its database of 450 geographic features every day.

The most recent map from agency is of a 3672x2721km chunk of Mars. The OS used NASA open data and the skills of Carographic Designer Chris Wesson, an appropriate colour palette to draw details on a scale of 1 to 4 million.

mars map

They’ve shared a reduced version of the map on Flickr under the Creative Commons license. This means sites like In Pure Spirit can share it within the rules. You can too if you keep the proper attribution credit.

But why create it in the first place? David Henderson, OS Director of Products, told press;

The private sector and space agencies are currently in competition to land the first person on Mars. Becoming more familiar with space is something that interests us all and the opportunity to apply our innovative cartography and mapping tradecraft to a different planet was something we couldn’t resist. We were asked to map an area of Mars in an OS style because our maps are easy to understand and present a compelling visualisation, and because of this we can envisage their usefulness in planning missions and for presenting information about missions to the public.

In Pure Spirit

If you had the chance to be the first person to visit Mars but risk not being able to come back – would you go?

Image credit: Ordnance Survey on Flickr.

Did Google Streetview capture a ghost on camera?

by 1 Comment

A man browsing Google’s Streetview has found a demonic face appearing out of a window in the Walton area of Liverpool.

He told The Liverpool Echo;

I was looking on Google Street View to find a fish and chip shop in Walton, and I came across The Stuart Hotel.

Something in the top left hand window caught my eye. It looks like a ghostly image of an evil-looking face.

While In Pure Spirit can’t find the original tweet pictures of the ghost-like face are available.

walton-ghost-face

Tom Slemen, a paranormal researcher with experience of Liverpool, confirmed to the paper that The Stuart Hotel is believed to be haunted but wouldn’t vouch for the authenticity of the faces.

According to Slemen one paranormal occurrence in the hotel dates back to 1897 when a scratching noise was heard in the cellar. To begin with the sound was dismissed as being a rat or mice but it became louder and louder. Eventually the neighbours could hear it as well.

Three days later the whole building was shaking to such a degree that the pub windows were left open in case the vibrations shattered the class. After that the noise stopped but a regular drinker knocked three times on the cellar wall and received three knocks back in response. That was enough for the noise to start again. Eventually a priest from St Mary’s Church left a Bible in the cellar and the noise stopped for good.

IPS is unable to confirm whether the Bible is still in The Stuart Hotel.

walton-ghost-face-close

Do you think this is a picture of a ghost

In Pure Spirit

Are you from Liverpool? Are there any haunted pubs or hotels that you know about?

Let’s build a church that looks like a giant chicken

by Leave a Comment

Towering above the tops of the trees in the Magelang Distract in Indonesia is a giant chicken.

The locals call it Gereja Ayam and, sadly, it is decaying rather quickly.

Why did they build a giant chicken church?

Good question. It is said that the building was intended as a prayer house for Daniel Alamsjah after hearing a message from God. It’s supposed to look like a dove, not a chicken. They wanted to build a giant dove church. You decide what it looks like.

The good news is that the building was put to good use for a while – running as a rehabilitation centre it helped look after disabled children, drug addicts and others.

chicken-church

chickenchrch2

chicken-head

chicken_churchSAM_0176

chicken_churchSAM_0181

chicken_churchSAM_0212

chicken_churchSAM_0213

chicken_churchSAM_0250-1

chicken_churchSAM_0252

In Pure Spirit

What do you make of the building? A good idea gone wrong? A wonderful idea? Just… odd?

Picture credits: Punthuk Setumbu, Alex Kurnianwan and This is Colossal.

They call it the Poltergiest House: Is 30 East Drive in Pontefract haunted?

by 15 Comments

Some say that the Black Monk of Pontefract is one of the most violent poltergeists in Europe. Are they right?

It is believed that the terrace house in the Chequerfields Estate in East Yorkshire is built near to where the town once had its gallows. The Black Monk of Pontefract, as identified by author Tom Cuniff, is said to have been a 16th century monk who was found guilty and then hung to death for the rape and murder of a girl.

Modern reports of hauntings and supernatural disturbances began in the 60s when Jean and Joe Pritchard moved in with their son and daughter, Phillip and Diane. One report cites the first instance starting while some of the family where on holiday in Devon but grandmother Sarah Scholes was at 30 East Drive looking after Phillip. First a strange gust of chilling wind swept through the house, then white powder began to fall from the ceiling with, finally, pools of water appearing throughout the house.

During that incident a tea dispenser seemed to work by itself, a plant pot threw itself down the stairs and objects flew out of the cupboards. The water board was called to investigate the puddles but could find no solution.

This video shows a 25 minute investigate by Abandoned Investigated.

Featured in this video are Karen and Alison, both sensitive, Ben and Tom as investigators, Kris as the Medium, Laura on camera and Jess, Ema and Steve as guests.

30 East Drive in Pontefract is now a commercial venue after a film and a second wave of haunting.

The British movie “When The Lights Went Out” is loosely based on the poltergeist occurrence known as The Black Monk of Pontefract. It was made after Colin Wilson’s 1981 book Poltergeist! A Study in Destructive Haunting, Including the Black Monk of Pontefract became popular among supernatural investigators and experts. In the movie Jenny and Len move into the home only for their daughter, Sally, to be terrorised by an evil entity. The movie stars Kate Ashfield, Tasha Connor, Steven Waddington, Craig Parkinson, Martin Compston and Jo Hartley.

A newspaper report by Andy Lea describes how locals noticed an increase in supernatural activity after the film. A neighbour, Carol Fieldhouse, was unaware Pritchard’s had sold the house to movie producer Bil Bungay. Carol said;

“I saw Philip in the front, tidying up the garden,”
“I went out and asked him if he’d sold it to one of his nephews. I thought it must have been one of them because I knew they were deaf and I’d heard the telly blasting out all night.

“He said ‘There’s no TV in there. It’s empty’. Then he turned pale and went ‘God, it’s started again’. I haven’t seen him since.”

Carol later told reporters that she held a séance in the neighbouring house and managed to make contact with the Black Monk.

A Most Haunted Live Halloween special in 2015 hooked cameras up to the Coal Hole, the EVP / Dining Room area and Stairwell and invited viewers of the Really TV channel to watch. In the run up to the night the Most Haunted Crew have already discovered the name “Carl Anthony”, a 52-year-old priest from 1633, who gave them one message: GET OUT.

In the show balls and marbles have moved around, there have been knocks and whispers and a knife dangerously hidden in a sofa.

In Pure Spirit

Have you done what Yvette and Karl of Most Haunted have done and visited 30 East Drive? Let us know if you have and what your thoughts are on the location in the comments below.

Do you believe that Carl Anthony is the Black Monk of Pontefract? Do you believe the death of a young girl during the reign of King Henry VIII at the hands of a priest could be responsible for a Yorkshire haunting that is still in effect today?

The Jorvik Viking Festival 2015 set to be a good one for authors

by 1 Comment

The Jorvik Viking Festival is taking place in York this year from 14th February to the 22nd. The festival is always a good one, I’ve been, a chance to experience history in a way that you don’t often get to.

This year there is no shortage of good news for storytelling, books and authors. Event organisers Danielle Daglan has announced a range of great events.

jorvik-viking-festival

Vincent Atherton kicks off the action with an event on Monday the 16th at 2pm at York Mansion House. Tickets cost £3 or £4 and pre-booking is strongly advised. Atherton is part of the festival to discuss his book “Viking Voices: The Sword of Amleth” and the effort needed to keep fact and fiction apart. The book follows Ragnald, a man who became both king of Dublin and York.

The following day, at the same location, Matthew Townend of the University of York, will be sharing fascinating insight into his new book “Viking Age Yorkshire”. This is the first ever full-length study of Yorkshire’s Vikings.

Children’s author Jeremy Strong is likely to sell out. Tickets are currently available from £7.50 per person (which includes a free child’s ticket to the Jorvik Viking Centre). Strong is at the merchant Adventurers’ Hall on Wednesday the 18th. Visitors will be able to meet the man and get books signed.

On Friday the 18th, bestselling historical novelist Giles Kristain will be talking about his book “God of Vengeance”, a prequel to his Raven trilogy, that follows Sigurd, son of Jarl Harald.

Each day there will be living storytelling taking place at 11am, 1pm and 3pm at the Vikings central camp on Parliament Street. Visitors will be able to see a Viking longship ready for war, learn about Norse weapons and warfare as well as discovering some secrets to Viking health and healing.

This year the Jorvik Viking Festival has the conclusion of the third Bloodaxe Book Challenge. The Festival organisers, York Archaelogical Trust, run this with Explore York Library Service, with the aim of getting children to read over the winter holidays. More information about the Bloodaxe Book Challenge can be found online.

In Pure Spirit

Have you ever been to the Jorvik Viking Festival? Tell us what it was like in the comments below. If not; is this the sort of history-meets-entertainment-meets-education festival you would go to if you could?

Disclosure

This blog discusses ideas and causes. Urban myth, science and faith combine here. So do editorials and technology; In Pure Spirit uses affiliate marketing and some links might earn us money. You can read more about that here.

Policies

Member of The Internet Defence League