These Are Histories Most Haunted Places On Earth | Our History

[Music] in the state capital of alabama did an awful spectre terrify this man there was no expression on her face at all it was just a kind of a blank stare in a photograph of an empty room what explains this ghostly figure and was the sale of this haunted house obstructed by real spirits from the past in the days of the british empire here in the highlands of sri lanka the members of the hill club used to while away their evenings in this reading room tonight as i sit here in their place every nook and cranny speaks of the past presences from the 19th century seem to lurk in the shadows all around me colonial adventurers tea planters map makers and surveyors hunters weary from the pursuit of elephants leopards and deer in fact i'm surprised no one has ever claimed that this room is haunted as far as i know it fits the traditional picture of an abode of ghosts perfectly yet the more i investigate reports of hauntings the more i realize they come from the most unlikely places the alabama state capital dates back to before the civil war and needs skilled craftsmen to maintain its traditional beauty james gamage is a specialist in restoring old buildings one night he was working late alone in the rotunda when he got the fright of his life i've been through quite a few things close calls in cars i've been in a few war zones been on board a few airplanes that have come close to going in but this i put at the top of the list this is one of the most frightful things i've ever had happen the glossy sheen of the metal doors acts like a mirror intent on his work james thought he saw the reflection of a person behind him he turned to speak but his uninvited visitor was not of flesh and blood what i saw was a lady she was dressed in civil war period dress the dress she was wearing was not a heavy duty hoop type skirt but it was out of ways and it went down ways it was an opaque white type image it definitely was the figure of a lady there was no expression on her face at all it was just a kind of a blank stare and she moved across and went into the back direction back here behind me and then when she came back she had the same expression it was nothing changed like i said she took no notice for me whatsoever but i did take notice of her and i thought that it was about time to leave the next morning james went to his boss he insisted he could no longer work alone at night in the capital bill woodsmall was sympathetic he's somebody that i would depend on when he tells me something i'd believe it he was very agitated he was nervous he couldn't keep his hands still you could tell something that happened the night before that it affected it my own custodial staff has talked about seeing shadows move through the building when they know no one's there at night hearing doors slam closed when they know they're the only ones in the building at night so we have heard stories like that at the time of the civil war many southern soldiers died on the battlefield it is said that the ghostly woman is a distraught wife searching the capital for news of her husband when i explained it to mr woodsman the following morning he kind of laughed about it and told me you're not the first one and you saw her you saw her come through i said yes i did and i said i don't believe that i'll be doing any more work at night you will have to experience what i did you may make your own decision as far as your disbelief or whatever but i have experienced it and now i believe in it [Music] from blue bell hill in southern england come reports of a bizarre modern ghost she appears at random on this road and leaves her victims shaking with terror ian sharp was driving home one night when a girl appeared from nowhere the lady ran in front of the car i hit her on her left hand side as i hit her she turned ahead and she was looking at me she went down under the front of the car now she had shoulder-length hair rolled inwards fair hair a fringe with big eyes she had a round face she had a high neck jumper thing on or something and a light colored coat i was terrified i didn't know what to do all i could think of was this lady under the car i then had to look under the car i bent down and looked under the car [Music] and there was nothing there now my brain is going i don't know what to do ian managed to call the police who raced to the scene i was still shaking like a loop looking for the body or the person who i had hit we couldn't find anybody and then it was then that the policeman told me we've got to put this down to another sighting of the ghost of blue bell hill which i had never heard of before the hauntings are thought to have begun after a fatal car crash on bluebell hill every year produces new witnesses one is chris dawkins the girl ran out and sort of said he turned towards me as i hit her she was wearing like a white or cream top like jumper pillow type thing i just stopped and got out and ran about in the state of panic i mean i thought i'd actually kill someone and when you actually get out and find that there's no one there um you know you start getting very wild about it we actually found chris sitting in his car at the telephone kiosk sitting in a passenger seat very shaken very scared and he was absolutely adamant that he'd knocked somebody over and so we checked all over his car we checked around it underneath it there was no signs of any damage to the car um nothing that would suggest that he'd hit anything we then carried a thorough search out of the village itself where it exactly had happened the gardens the road and we found absolutely nothing whatsoever i can't begin to explain what happened to chris that night he dealt with something or hit something that night which i'm no expert i just can't explain [Music] even in the early days of psychic research at the end of the 19th century investigators called in physicians and psychologists to help explain the phenomena being reported from apparently haunted places today experts agree that hallucinations and illusions often occur in the weird transition period between sleep and wakefulness they can be caused by images from dreams lingering on or thoughts assuming a solid form as sleep approaches these may account for the spooky experiences sometimes described by people lying in bed captain barney concannon is an experienced airline pilot one of his regular overnight stops has been an airport serving the northeast of england at t-side the crews were always booked into st george's hotel right by the airport when the building belonged to the royal air force the hotel was the office's mess in 1951 a small plane crashed on landing careered across the car park and smashed into the wall of the mess the pilot was killed by falling masonry the mess was rebuilt and is now part of the hotel there are stories of a ghostly airman seen in its corridors captain concannon was skeptical until the night he was booked into room 62. i came into the room got undressed as normal put my raincoat on the bed because it was so cold there were four or five blankets on the bed already and lay down on my stomach wrapping the blankets around me just leaving my nose so that i could breathe and i must have been lying there for five minutes when i felt a sudden pressure on my legs on the back of my legs as if somebody had walked into the room and sat on my lower legs it only affected me from the knees down i thought to myself the story of the ghost came back to me at that time and i wondered whether i should put the light on or what i should do and i decided not to decided to brave it out in fact and i turned around and i said go away but in much stronger language and it went immediately as soon as i said go away it disappeared i didn't even put the light on afterwards the room became warmer i was quite comfortable and i went to sleep unaware of the stories on her first night in the hotel stewardess lisa cox settled down for a good night's sleep i woke less than an hour later and there was the weight of a heavy person lying on me from the top of my head all the way down my body and it took me just a couple of seconds to realize that i wasn't at home and that i was in the hotel and of course then i was petrified i couldn't move and i realised that it it just must be a ghost there was no other explanation and i was wide awake i couldn't move an arm or a leg i was pinned down and the only thing i could hear was my heart beating and whilst i was pinned down i could see movement and when i moved my eye to look towards my left the curtains which are very heavy and are drawn open we're moving upwards from the ground not blowing outwards as though in a breeze but as though somebody had put two hands underneath them and was lifting them up they were crumpling and they were about a meter off the floor after a couple of minutes the weight left lisa she fled the room too terrified to return real as such experiences seem to those who suffer them some scientists suggest they are caused by a condition known as sleep paralysis some people think that this sort of thing happens with particularly airline people who are flying all over the world different time zones and so on uh getting very tired and they when they go to sleep they enter a state of semi-consciousness neither sleeping nor waking in which things like this can occur but my answer to that would be i've flown all over the world i've stayed in hotels all over the world i've never had any problem with this sort before i know the st george's hotel is haunted i'm 100 sure because it happened to me it wasn't a dream i know that i was wide awake and that's why i was so frightened i was petrified sometimes stories of hauntings clash with the hard commercial realities of the modern world can the alleged presence of ghosts affect house prices well it's a question lawyers have had to take seriously in italy in 1960 this paranormal problem was the subject of a learned treaties and more recently in the united states the courts have tried to untangle the answer niacc is a comfortable suburb of new york on the shores of the hudson river one property has more to offer than most the house's owner for 23 years mrs helenacli now lives in florida she and her husband brought up their three children in the house with ghosts for company my house was haunted by three different ghosts that we could say for sure one was an older gentleman one was a young girl and one was a young navy lieutenant oh i love the ghosts all of them they were there i could feel them but however they did not intrude upon me but they were there if i needed them and there were times i called on them and it seemed as though they understood and tried to help helen's friendly feelings towards the ghosts are confirmed by her neighbors across the road the ursula family were close friends of the athletes james ursula grew up alongside helen's son william he remembers spooky incidents william had a habit of every night going down into the basement and locking up making sure everything was secure and this time he saw something white outside glowing and he had no idea what it was and his eyes shot up and he saw this revolutionary war ghost and he was panic-stricken and he turned around and ran right into one of the walls in the basement and he came upstairs and his mother saw him and helen and she just started laughing because she knew he had seen the ghost for the first time the athletes really felt that the ghosts were part of their family i'm sure because they never had any fear there was never anything negative in fact it was as though they were sort of guardian angels or something in the family the time came when widowed mrs ackley had to move from the 18 roomed house she wanted to join her son who had set up a business in florida with regret she put the house up for sale the estate agent was richard ellis he was worried about mentioning the house's extra features we kind of took a deep breath and we approached the buyer on it and he laughed about it he just joked about it and then a couple of weeks later he called us and was very serious about the whole thing and at that point we set up a meeting for him to meet with mrs ackley and she spoke with great enthusiasm about the ghosts and at that point i think he became very concerned and shortly after that meeting he decided he did not want to buy the house the buyers had put down a substantial deposit but they now wanted to cancel the deal a dispute arose over who would keep the money the case ended up in court the judge threw out the buyer's claim saying it was too late for them to change their minds [Music] the buyers took the case to the appeal division of the supreme court of new york the presiding judge was israel rubin the basis of the appeal was that mrs ackley was not fulfilling her obligation to leave the house unoccupied it was still inhabited by the ghosts we had a balance off whether a ghost should have been disclosed as against a theory or principle of law that is almost universal in the united states that is caviar emptor let the buyer be aware that the buyer has to be aware of what they're buying and has to do a adequate search and once they do that search they're actually stuck with what they are purchasing judge rubin's ruling was that the deposit should be equally divided and that the unhappy buyers would not be held to their purchase he took practicalities into consideration when making his decision when you purchase a house you usually have certain inspections made of a house if you want to check on the construction of a house you call someone that's an engineer or someone that's an expert in construction if you want to check for termites you call someone in that's a termite inspector so this i want to call so we said in this kind of a case we quoted ghostbusters we said who you gonna call the immediate result of the case was that the presence of ghosts had to be revealed before a sale but since then in new york the view has softened estate agents are not obliged by law i think i would probably bring it up to a potential buyer as a matter of conversation but we do not have to disclose it on the other hand we cannot lie about it either i mean we have if we're asked directly do you know of a ghost that's in this house or have you heard of anything we have to disclose that to a fire the ursula's worried that the ghosts had not been consulted james thinks they weren't best pleased the first christmas that the ackleys weren't here we had a lot of bells hanging around the house and for some strange reason they just started ringing [Music] and we thought they were because of the wind in the house we'd move them and they'd still ring and i i i just thought it was so creepy that that would happen i really think the ghosts were trying to express themselves and say we've had something happen here and we really don't like it our friends have gone and we're really upset about it hauntings are never easy to investigate by the early nature they're fleeting and elusive and the people who believe they've seen weird phenomena are often too frightened to provide rational testimony so it's not surprising that explanations may take a long time to emerge in fact more than a century later we're only just beginning to understand some famously spooky cases from victorian england this fine mansion in cheshire was the seat of lord combermere it boasts a splendid library in 1891 a miss civil corbett took a remarkable picture her technique intrigues photographic expert adam hart davis she exposed it for an hour long long exposure between two and three in the afternoon and you can see the sun is streaming into the the room here it's lovely and when she came to develop the photograph she was amazed to find that in this chair on the left there is a sort of shadowy figure sitting and she was rather surprised by this and she consulted her sister and one of her sisters said that's lord kampamir absolutely positive she was absolutely certain there is a slight difficulty though because lord company was dead he'd been run over by a cab in london a few days earlier and he died from his injuries and he was while this picture was being taken he was actually being buried in the graveyard a few miles away and so that of course made everyone think it's got to be his ghost it must be his ghost sir william barrett a pioneer of psychical research was not convinced he wrote an article suggesting that a footman had strayed into miss corbett's photograph taking an illicit rest in his master's chair there are various things that support this one is that the figure is quite well lit on the side where the light is coming from so you can see one hand but he's very poorly lit on the other side you can't see the figure's legs at all and there's a very neat point here all across the picture all the bright lines are doubled there's a there's a bright one and then a very slightly less bright one beside it which suggests that the camera was moved during the exposure now miss corbett herself says that she was out of the room so somebody jogged to the camera during the exposure could it be this person came in sat down moved a little bit suddenly realized he was on camera rushed out kicking the tripod as he went out of the door it's possible anyway to test the theory adam has set his modern camera for an exposure of two minutes his wooden study seat stands in for his lordship's armchair and as an extra gesture towards authenticity a footman's coat seems appropriate garb i'm going to have to sit here for a minute but i don't want to be completely still the right hand is still the left hand must move about a bit i have to move my legs so they don't register on the picture and i need to move my head from side to side and up and down so that it'll register as a blur but still a head shaped blur the experiment's result is gradually revealed in the glow of the dark room there it's beginning to appear it's the blacks that come up first and the ghost of shadow is so it'll come up last if it's there at all i can see the books i can see the chair yeah there's definitely something there there's a right hand yes there's a ghost there look look i'm in it terrific it's worked so maybe maybe we've solved the mystery here's the kampermere photograph and here's my photograph and mine's like a sort of section out of this a sort of small section blown up if you like and if you look over here on the left there's a chair and over here on the left of frame there's a chair and here there's a shadowy figure you can see a sort of blurred head and here there's definitely a shadowy figure and you can see a blurred head which doesn't look right like me i have to admit and everyone need come with me a photograph there's a rather sharp right hand and arm and that's exactly the same here sharp right hand and arm but there is no left arm or hand although there's a slightly blurry bit on the hand dress dresser and here there is no left hand although there's a slightly blurred patch just on the hand rest so so far we're doing quite well and here we've got no legs at all the sharp edge of the chair no sign of legs and here sharp edge of the chair no sign of any legs this could still be a ghost i can't disprove that it's a ghost but it seems to me that i've made a pretty fair representation of it myself just messing around in my own sitting room i reckon that there's something like an 80 or 90 chance that this was just somebody who wandered into the picture and wandered out again [Music] most of us know a place that seems to be haunted i certainly do when i was a child living on an old farm in the west of england the bells once used to summon servants would ring from rooms that we knew for certain were empty in the end we put it down to rats in the wiring that experience taught me the power of suggestion an ancient building empty rooms the dark shadows of night conspire to create a ghostly scenario but all too often a rational explanation comes only with the cold light of dawn so i am very skeptical about haunted places but i must confess that i have a sneaking sympathy with a man who said i don't believe in ghosts but i'm scared of them you

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Id: JajiiBd5ZB4

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022