Proof of Vampires - Paranormal Documentary

A Burning Question

On April 14, 1985, about a thousand people gathered at the California Institute of Technology sports field in Pasadena to see a demonstration of one of the most mysterious of human feats – walking on red-hot coals. By the end of the afternoon 125 of the audience had themselves walked through a pit of fire with a temperature that reached 1,400F.

None had any special training or preparation for the event. None had been hypnotized, and none were in a state of religious or mystical ecstasy. They were just ordinary people.

 

Traditionally, matters have been rather different at fir walks. All over the world, from India to Japan to Sri Lanka, Spain to Bora Bora, fire walking  has been a high point of intense religious ritual. The mystery has always been how the human body can withstand the high temperatures involved, how  fire wa;kers emerge unscathed from the burning pit with no apparent sensation of pain.

The usual explanation has been that the powerful rituals preceding the fire walk and the unshakable religious beliefs of the participants have somehow created the conditions for mind to control matter. In this case the matter is human flesh, which the mind makes fireproof.

Citing this premise, a number of self-help groups in the United States and in Europe have proclaimed that they can train people to have total mental control of the body. The results, they claim, include the ability to defeat cancer without drugs, to cure impotence, defeat depression, or restore failing eyesight. What is the proof that such miracles are possible? The fact is that people have ben seen to gain such remarkable mental control that they can walk over coals unharmed.

Strangely enough, it was to disprove such claims that two University of California scientists, Dr. Bernard Leikind, a plasma physicist, and Dr. William McCarthy, a psychologist had arranged the demonstration at the sports field in Pasadena. They said that anyone can fire walk,and that paranormal powers have nothing to do with it.

 

Leikind believes that the secret of fire walking lies in the difference between the temperature of the hot coals and the amount of heat, or thermal energy, they contain. He explains this crucial difference by pointing out that if you put your hand into a hot oven, the air inside does not burn you. But a cake pan in the same oven will burn you at once. Both are at the same temperature, but they contain different amounts of thermal energy.

Leikind insists that the coals used in fire walks are more like the hot air in an oven than like the cake pan. They simply do not contain enough thermal energy to burn the soles of the feet in the short time it takes to walk the length of the pit. He points out, too, that fire walkers frequently perform with wet feet; the dampness acts as an extra insulation against burns.

Not everyone, however, is convinced by this explanation Commentators have pointed out that, like the self-help groups and the priests at religious rituals, Leikind first persuaded his audience in California that walking on fire was easy. Although he used the language of science, whereas others have used psychological and emotional terms, he was still aiming to induce a “fireproof” mentality in his audience. Leikind may have succeeded in a way that he did not intend.

The Sinister St. Luke’s Abduction

The following weird tale took place in Liverpool, England in the early 1990s, and it has never been explained. It all started in one foggy December evening in 1991.

 

On the evening of Friday, December 20, 1991, at 7 p.m., the Edwards family of Dovecot decided to go and do a bit of late Christmas shopping in Liver pool city centre. Mr. Edwards drove his wife and four lids to  town in his old Volvo estate, and as usual, finding a place to park proved to be a real pain. Mr. Edwards drove about, searching desperately for a parking space as his three sons and daughter gazed at the spectacular Christmas lights and decorations lining the streets. The youngest of the Edwards children was Abbey, who was only six years old. She loved Christmas, and for days she had been pestering her mum and dad to take her to see the big fir tree covered with coloured lights in Church Street.

As Abbey’s dad was grumbling about finding a place to park the Volvo, her Mum suddenly pointed to a secluded side-street called Bold Place, which runs from Berry Street, past the back of St. Luke’s Church, up to Roscoe Street.

“You’re a genius.” Mr. Edwards complimented his wife and he turned left and drove up the poorly lit cobbled road, which was on a bit of an incline. As soon as the car was parked up, the kids eagerly jumped out the vehicle and all four of them started asking their parents what they were getting for Christmas. Meanwhile, an icy fog rolled down the street.

Mr. Edwards checked the doors of the car were locked then had a quick discussion with his wife about where they were going to first. He wanted to go to a shop in Bold Street to buy his father a cardigan, but Mrs. Edwards insisted upon going to Dixons first to buy a CD player for her sister. Then the children started arguing too; they wanted to go to various toy stores first. Mr. Edwards shouted, “Awright, wil you all just shut up!”

The family were about to walk off when Mr. Edwards suddenly noticed something – and his heart skipped a beat. With a look of dread he glanced about Bold Place and muttered, “Where’s Abbey?”

Everyone looked around. Mr. Edwards anxiously looked through the windows of the car, but his little daughter wasn’t there. “Where’s she gone?” Mrs. Edwards asked with a tremble in her voice. The three boys looked about, but the street was empty.

Then they all heard a faint voice scream out in the distance. “Daddy!” The voice sounded like Abbey, and it came from the top of Bold Place, towards Roscoe Street. The Edwards family rushed up the cobbled road with the father leading the way. “Abbey!” Mr. Edwards shouted, “Where are you?”

The gates at the back of St. Lukes were open, and Mr. Edwards surmised that his daughter had wandered into the precincts of the old church. He hurried into the grounds followed closely by his wife and their sons, and once again they all heard Abbey cry out for her father. But the little girl was nowhere to be seen, and the fog was getting thicker by the minute.

Mr. Edwards didn’t want to alarm his wife and kids, but he wondered if some prevented lunatic had grabbed his daughter and taken her into the ruins of the old church. He handed his wife the car keys and told her to go and bring the torch from the vehicle. She did this and Mr. Edwards climbed up onto the ledge of a church window and shone the flashlight into the deserted church ruins. The interior was deserted with nothing but rubble scattered about Mr. Edwards knew that the church of St. Luke had been gutted by an incendiary bomb in World War II during the Blitz. Only the shell of the building survived, and the church had been left that way to remind the war. And yet it sounded as if Abbey’s voice had come from inside the church.

As Mrs. Edwards helped her husband down the window, she said, “Listen!”

It was the faint eerie sounds of a church organ, and it seemed to be emanating from the church.

Mr. Edward said, “Sound can play funny tricks at night. Come on, let’s go to the police.”

 

Mrs. Edwards started to cry, but her husband said, “It’ll be all right. We’ll find her love. She can’t have gone far.”

The family went to the police station in Hope Street and told the desk sergeant about their lost daughter. The sergeant alerted all the patrol cars in the area, and told officers on the city centre beat to be on the lookout for the girl. The Edwards family then rushed back to Bold Place to resume their search for the girl. They searched the grounds of St. Luke once again, and after twenty minutes, they were about to return to their car, when something happened which continues to puzzle the Edwards family to this day. A tall man wearing a top hat and a long black coat came out of the grounds of St. Lukes and walking with him little Abbey, holding his hand.

When Abbey saw her mum and dad she ran to them and started to cry as her father picked her up. The sinister man in black looked like something out of the Victorian age. He had long bushy sideburns, a pallid face, and staring ink-black eyes. He stood outside the gates of the church, and in a creepy low voice, the outdated-looking stranger said, “Please accept my sincere apology for any distress caused.”

He then turned and walked silently back towards the rear of the church ruins.

Mrs. Edwards grabbed Abbey from her husband and said, “Are you all right? Where have you been?”

Abbey just said, “I’m fine mummy.”

Mr. Edwards  was furious, and he shouted after the man, “Oil! Who are you? What’s your game, eh?”

Then a police patrol car came tearing down the road, and Mr. Edwards told the officers in the vehicle about the stranger who had returned his daughter. Three police officers bolted from the car and rushed into the grounds of the church wielding their batons.

But the police found no one. The grounds were empty. More police turned up and the grounds were searched again with powerful torches, but the place was deserted. However, several police officers also heard the faint strains of a church organ playing nearby somewhere, but they never determined just where the strange music was coming from.

One of the policemen asked little Abbey where she had been, and the child gave a strange account. She said an old woman in a shawl had grabbed her hand and dragged her into the church, where a mass was being held. In the church, there were many people dressed in old-fashioned clothes. The women wore big hats, and the men were all dressed in black. Abbey had screamed for her father, but the old woman had put her hand over the girl’s mouth to silence her. Sometime later, a tall man came into the church and pulled Abbey from the old woman’s clutches.  He had been the man who had taken Abbey back to her parents.

The intrigued policeman continued to interrogate the child, and he asked her if theman had spoken to her about the strange incident. Abbey shook her head, then said, “The man said he had been dead for a long time, that’s all.”

A cold shudder ran up everyone’s spine when they heard the child’s reply. Since that strange incident, the Edwards family refuse to go anywhere near St. Luke’s Church, especially during the Christmas period.

The Snow Witch

 

One blazing hot day in July 1815, a sailing ship named Lothair arrived at Liverpool Docks from North America. Among the gaggle of passengers who disembarked from the trans-Atlantic vessel were a rich Scottish merchant named John Allan, his wife Frances, her younger sister Nancy, and the couple’s sickly-looking six-year-old foster-son Edgar. At Liverpool, the Allan met Thomas MacKenzie, a cousin of William Mackenzie, the Scottish railway engineer entombed in the famous pyramidal tomb on Rodney Street. Thomas MacKenzie found two trustworthy and hardworking Liverpool maidservants. Isabel Cook and Joan Slaidburn, to accompany the Allan family to Irvine in Scotland. Isabel’s seven-year-old sister Mary went to Scotland as well, and became a playmate for little Edgar, the Allans’ adopted son.

Just a week before Christmas, little Mary decided she would go out in the nearby woods one snowy afternoon to collect holly and ivy to decorate the Allans home. Young Edgar accompanied the Liverpool girl, and somehow managed to slip out of the cottage unnoticed. The two children collected holly, ivy and pinecones, and placed them in Mary’s basket, but during their stroll in the Scottish countryside, a strange incident occurred. A trail of arrows was mysteriously drawn in the snow on the ground, before the children’s astonished eyes.

 

Mary and Edgar followed the etched arrows, and at one point, Mary wrote ‘Who are you?’ in the snow with the tip of her umbrella, and the invisible doodler crossed out the question with three lines.

The arrows continued to appear, one after the other, and so the children followed them out of curiosity, until Edgar realized he and Mary had been lured onto the thin ice of a frozen lake. As the ice creaked, ready to give away, Edgar seized Mary by the arm and dragged her to safety. The children then heard the voice of an old woman cursing them, but they could see no one, so they ran home and told the adults what had happened. When Mary’s seventeen-year-old sister Isabel went to investigate the arrows, she saw that they really did exist, and when she tracked them to the lake, she recoiled in horror. Barely visible under the thin icy layer of the lake, was the face of a child, and the sight of it sent the servant running for help.

Police later discovered that the unfortunate child under the ice was six-year-old Carol McClean, a farmer’s daughter who had gone missing days before. John Allan opined that the arrows had been drawn in the snow by the evil spirit of a witch known as Old Nelly, who had been drowned in the late by the local villagers a hundred years ago. A total of nine children had drowned in the lake since, most probably lured to their deaths by Old Nelly’s evil sorcery. Mary Cook and Edgar Allan were therefore warned to stay well away from that lake. Incidentally, Edgar Allan later grew up to become Edgar Allan Poe, the most famous horror story writer of all time.

Judgment Days

Labour leader John Blackman of Eastbourne, England, had no intention of paying the alimony his wife had demanded. And those who tried to make him pay put their lives at risk.

 

Blackman’s stubbornness first brought him into court in April 1922. He was sent to jail. Shortly afterward one of the magistrates, John Duke, died.

Blackman again failed to pay and was again sentenced. After the hearing, Major Molineux, one of the magistrates, fell seriously ill and soon died. A few minutes after sentence was passed at Blackman’s third appearance in court on the same charge, magistrate H.D. Farnell suffered a seizure and died without regaining consciousness. Still refusing to pay, Blackman was again arraigned in October 1923, this time before Judge MacKarness in the Eastbourne County Court. The judge once again sent himto prison. Blackman finished his sentence in time to attend the judge’s funeral. Late in July 1924, Blackman received his fifth sentence. By September one of the magistrates present at that hearing, J.T. Helby, was dead.

Blackman’s comment on the five deaths was this: “It may be an insignificant coincidence. I bear them no ill will.”