I Was Healed By A Ghost...and there's a photo to prove it!

A woman believes she was healed by a ghostly apparition known as the White Lady as she visited a church during a family summer holiday.

Diane Berthelot had been unwell for months after having her gall bladder removed and was taking antibiotics for an infection when she went into Worstead village church in Norfolk to rest and escape the heat.

While she sat on a pew close to the font and prayed for a full recovery, her husband Peter and son David wandered around the empty church taking photographs.

Mrs Berthelot remembers vividly tingling all over and feeling “warm and comfortable” while sitting on the wooden bench with her eyes closed and head bowed.

When she felt better the family left the church and did not think about the incident until six months later when the camera film was developed and they held a slide show of their holiday snaps for their lodger at their home in Chelmsford, Essex.

One photo clearly showed a woman wearing a bonnet and dressed in light-coloured, old-fashioned clothes, sitting facing Mrs Berthelot on a bench directly behind her.
She said: “When we saw the white figure sitting behind me on the projector screen, we just stood there with our mouths open.

“My feet started to tingle. This sensation eventually engulfed the whole of me. It was a pleasant, comforting feeling.” Her husband added: “I had been walking around the church looking at various things.
“I came back, saw Diane sitting there and took the photo. I couldn’t see anyone behind her but it’s so clear on the image. It’s incredible.”

The following summer they went back to St Mary’s Church in Worstead and showed the slide to the vicar, who told them about a local legend that the White Lady was a healer who appeared when there was sickness.

The folklore also said that a man climbed into the church belfry on Christmas Eve in 1830, boasting he would kiss the White Lady if he saw her.

His friends later found him huddled in a corner whispering “I’ve seen her, I’ve seen her,” before dying. However, Mrs Berthelot, now 81 and living in North Walsham, Norfolk, believes her contact with the ghost was a positive experience which has boosted her health and spiritual well-being throughout her life.

And for decades after that first encounter on Saturday, August 2, 1975 she experienced the same tingling sensation every time she looked at the photo. She explained: “I always felt it was a blessing because my whole life seemed to change after we realized the White Lady had sat behind me. It inspired me to write poetry.

“I can remember the sensation that engulfed me sitting on that pew as if it was yesterday.”

Mr Berthelot, 82, said: “Every time we have been back to the church, it has been a very calming experience. I definitely believe in ghosts.”

Firefighter Captures Ghost On Camera

Firefighter captures ghost on camera before battling house fire in Indiana!

A firefighter may have captured proof of the paranormal after he took some photos of a burning house. When he posted the images on his Facebook page, his wife noticed a strange shadowy figure engulfed in flames in one of the windows of the home.

Firefighter Douglas Tipold was called to a house fire in Gary, Indiana and when he arrived he took some photos of the property. As Tipold was waiting for his partners to unravel a hose he snapped a few shots of the burning house with the camera on his cell phone to document the scene. Later that night Tipold's wife Donna noticed something strange in one of the photos after he posted it to his Facebook page.

"This is a photo taken from my husband's camera phone. He doesn't know how to photo crop. I only believed it when I looked it up myself on his phone. The picture you see is exactly how the picture was taken. I still don't believe in this stuff, but I will say it is pretty creepy!" Donna Tipold said in a comment on Facebook.

In the photo, an eerie dark figure can be seen in the left window of the house and it is engulfed in flames. A ghost of a child can be seen in the doorway of the home.

Paranormal investigators from the Illinois Paranormal Research Association believe that the photo is original and has not been doctored. According to Tipold, the original image is still in his cell phone.

What exactly is the eerie figure in the photo? Is it a hoax? Could it actually be a shadow figure or a ghost? 

The Number Of Haunted House Is Rising!

If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, you’re probably going to call your landlord about it. But how do social landlords deal with reports of things that go bump in the night? Nick Duxbury investigates… cautiously!

Do you believe in ghosts? While you mull this question, let me tell you a ghost story.

It starts with a family contacting a local authority because their 14-year-old daughter’s bedroom seemed cold and strange noises were heard in the room. The daughter was so scared by what she was hearing that she started to sleep on the floor in her parents’ room. The stress of the experience mounted to the point that two members of the family were prescribed tranquillisers and developed stress-related psoriasis.

A priest had visited the home in Fareham and confirmed he could feel a presence in the house - in particular, in the girl’s bedroom. The priest carried out an exorcism but the family did not feel it had helped. The teenage daughter was so terrified she was on the verge of moving in with her grandparents. Support was provided from the family doctor and the council housing department even agreed to help the family with a priority move if it would help. Fortunately the family found another tenant to swap homes with and were able to move out within a few weeks. The family that moved into the property has not reported any problems.

Though all hallows’ eve may have just passed, this story is not a Halloween wind-up. It is taken from a log entry from the tenancy service department of Fareham Council, in Hampshire, obtained by Inside Housing under the Freedom of Information Act. It is also not a one-off. FOI requests to all councils in England and a survey of 100 housing associations reveal many more.

Sheffield Council alone has experienced an astonishing 47 separate, unrelated reports of ghosts or hauntings in its homes since 2003. Broxtowe Council has received two reports of hauntings in its properties over the past decade; phone logs reveal that just last year a tenant complained he had been experiencing ‘paranormal activity’ at his property, where boxes had been ‘flying around the room’.

Similarly, Bromsgrove District and Redditch Borough Council had a property exorcised in January 2007 after a mother believed her child had been possessed. And the list goes on. Mid Devon Council has received two reports of hauntings, arm’s-length management organisation Hounslow Homes has received three, Whitefriars Housing Association has had two, and Six Town Housing has also had two. There are more: in fact, Inside Housing has uncovered 73 separate instances in which tenants have claimed their homes are haunted (see table below). The scary part? These reports come from just 16 social landlords. Three organisations even reported that their own offices and buildings are allegedly haunted. (see box below for Nick’s encounter)

No protocol
The true scale of alleged hauntings in social housing is likely to be far larger. Responding to the FOI requests for information on hauntings, the vast majority of councils said the information was not available because either it had not been recorded, or there was no relevant complaint category in their computer systems. Others cited data protection of tenants’ personal details and the prohibitive costs involved in finding the information. As a result, just eight councils and arm’s-length management organisations produce details of haunting-related complaints. Similarly, of the 100 associations surveyed, just 15 responded - eight of which had received reports of paranormal activity.

It is likely then, that tenant complaints about paranormal activity are in fact widespread across the hundreds of councils unable to produce data, the 85 associations that declined to respond to the survey, and the hundreds of others that were not asked. So, with this in mind, are landlords dismissing these complaints off-hand, or choosing to entertain the existence of ghosts?

As it turns out, councils and housing associations have dealt with these complaints very  eriously indeed. Inside Housing’s investigation reveals that social landlords have frequently contacted exorcists and spiritual mediums, in some cases moved people up the housing list, and even transferred tenants into alternative accommodation to deal with the problem.

None of the 15 housing association respondents had a policy for dealing with complaints of paranormal activity. Yet, without exception, all said they would deal with tenants’ concerns about ghosts sympathetically and seriously. In nine cases spiritual mediums or exorcists had been called to visit properties. And six said they would consider transferring - or in several cases had transferred - tenants into new properties.

One such example was when a tenant of Wales and West Housing reported that a ghost army of Roman soldiers had marched across the living room of his home in Brecon, south Wales. This was just one of a series of troubling ‘supernatural’ complaints. Shortly after, a friend visiting the property complained she had seen black dust fall on her arm and was then ‘bitten on the arm by the ghostly spirit of a girl dressed in a hessian garment’.

Wales and West sent site supervisor Brian Pritchard to investigate. His report stated: ‘All of a sudden it looked like a ripple appeared on the right-hand corner of one of the beds and kids started to run over them.’

Similar incidents were reported in other surrounding Wales and West properties. A medium visited at the tenant’s request and claimed to sense the ghosts of 250 families were ‘trapped in limbo’. It later emerged the site on which the homes were built was a former Roman slave camp. The family was later transferred to another home for health reasons - and no problems have been reported in the property since.

Serious concern
Similarly, when a tenant of 66,000-home Circle asked to be re-housed because of an alleged haunting it was treated as ‘a very serious and delicate matter’. Why? Because ‘the customer involved was badly affected by the experience’.

‘The customer was dealt with sensitively and taken seriously, as we would with all customer concerns - I understand an exorcism was offered,’ a spokesperson says. ‘The customer in question found alternative housing in the end. I am told it later turned out that someone had previously committed suicide in the property.’

Even landlords that have not received reports of the paranormal say they would take complaints of this nature seriously and investigate the underlying cause. Several say they would also consider moving tenants. Orbit Group says it ‘may facilitate a transfer or a management move if the issue was unresolvable and it was causing distress’. Similarly, 12,000-home Contour Homes says it would investigate complaints, potentially using recording equipment, and ‘if there was no possible resolution other than moving the tenant, this would be considered’.

So, why do landlords take complaints about ghosts so seriously?

For a start, as charitable organisations, housing associations must be more sympathetic than other businesses with regard to religious beliefs. And while entertaining the existence of ghosts might not be religion-related, a sizeable proportion of the population is spooked. A YouGov Global poll of 2,400 people in 2011 by psychologist professor Richard Wiseman found that around 25 per cent of the UK’s population believes in ghosts.

Perhaps more significantly, though, complaints of hauntings and paranormal activity could be a product of social landlords’ sometimes vulnerable customer base. Tenants reporting hauntings could be mentally ill, victims of drug and or alcohol abuse, or just reacting to high-stress situations, all of which require sensitive handling.

A few years ago, Tony Brandon, a revenue officer at 14,000-home Thames Valley Housing, had to deal with a tenant complaining that a shadowy presence was attempting to violate her.

‘The lady I dealt with had quite severe mental health issues and was very reclusive,’ says Mr Brandon. ‘Her religious beliefs were also strong. She felt that a neighbour was trying to rape her spiritually. She claimed he was sending his “shadow” - his ghost - down [to her flat] to rape her. Any form of rape is clearly upsetting, and she was convinced this was going on, so she was very distressed.’

Mr Brandon got in touch with the local priest and asked him to bless the property. ‘I thought that if she felt protected that would help,’ he adds. ‘I wanted her to engage with other religious people to help her with the reclusion. She is still reclusive, but I think it did help.’

Curo Group has also been faced with a mentally ill tenant who believed she was being haunted by two relatives. The woman was so scared that she occasionally slept rough rather than stay in her house - but would refuse all offers of counselling. Faced with this kind of harrowing situation and its very real consequences for the tenants concerned it is hard to imagine not taking a complaint - however apparently far-fetched - seriously.

On a separate occasion, however, 12,000-home Curo was faced with another tenant who was neither obviously mentally ill, nor especially religious. Nonetheless, he was adamant an ‘angry spirit’ had been throwing plates and ashtrays around the property. A housing officer, who does not wish to be named, says the tenant claimed another spirit regularly walked through the walls when he was trying to watch Match of the Day.

‘He refused to use the upstairs of the house because of “other more evil spirits” that were haunting the first floor. In response I went to the house and spent two hours with him including time upstairs on my own in the property. I did not experience anything other than the house being cold. I did not attribute this to anything paranormal as the heating was not on.’

The tenant could not show any evidence of the incidents and refused the offer of approaching a church or a local medium and transferred out of the property soon after. A spokesperson for Curo says the only cost has been housing officers’ time.

But time is money. No organisation was able to calculate how much investigating these cases has cost them. However, Redbridge Council said dealing with the two complaints it has received in the past 10 years used around 50 hours of staff time. That could certainly add up for the taxpayer.

So, with ever increasing pressure on housing, how should landlords work out whether citing ‘ghosts’ is a genuine complaint or an elaborate ploy to get a new property?

‘It’s difficult - especially as sometimes people use things to put pressure on landlords to get priority for a move,’ says Phil Oliver, a senior communications advisor at Gentoo Group, who spent 10 years as the 29,000-home organisation’s chief lettings officer and encountered around four alleged hauntings.

‘Sometimes people will use these links to medical conditions to get up the (transfer) list - a doctor’s letter can make all the difference. With paranormal activity, it is obviously very difficult for a tenant to provide evidence or quantify the problem.’

Eye witness
Of course, landlords do also have to consider the possibility that tenants’ homes could actually be haunted. Documents from Sheffield Council reveal that in January 2008, a housing officer was so scared by what she witnessed at a private sector one-bedroom flat that she fled the property. The officer had visited a tenant - a mother with two children - who had asked to move into a council house due to an ‘overcrowding priority’ - but on arrival it emerged there were also more sinister reasons for her desire to leave the flat. She claimed the family had been woken in the night ‘by something strangling’ them and that something had ‘pulled her hair’ and ‘lifted her off the bed’. She also claimed to hear voices and banging and see ghosts of children, an Afro-Caribbean man and an old man with a beard. The family said they were so scared they had decided to move into a hotel.

The officer’s report to the council states that while discussing the family’s options she experienced ‘a tapping sensation on her shoulder’ and heard ‘voices and whispering’ coming from the lounge. She also heard loud banging and the room became icy cold. The officer then witnessed ‘a thick rope hanging in mid-air in the doorway [to the living room]’ which then ‘dropped to the floor’. The officer asked to go into the kitchen as she was too frightened to continue with the visit. But in the kitchen she could still hear the whispering and banging and there ‘was a horrible feeling of foreboding’. The officer left the property and the family packed their bags and followed soon after. The tenant was later awarded a council house.

So, do you believe in ghosts? Because, even if you don’t take the existence of paranormal activity seriously, it is likely your employer does.

A Broxtowe Council report on paranormal activity in one of its tenant’s homes

5 Weird Things That Happen After You Die

The grave, gross facts about how your body decomposes.

Nature isn't kind to the human body after death. Thankfully, the days of natural decomposition have been replaced by decidedly modern rituals of death. We can choose to delay the decomposition process by being embalmed, where our bodily fluids are replaced with preservatives. Or we can be cremated, where we are cooked at temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours while we turn to ash.

 

While our modern disposal rituals might not sound appealing, the process of nature composting us back into the Earth is even less so. Even earliest man knew how to put some distance between himself and his decomposing dead. In 2003, archaeologists found evidence of ancient humans who had buried their dead in northern Spain about 350,000 years ago.

 

So what happens during decomposition? Here are five weird ways our bodies de-construct after death.

 

Your cells burst open. The process in which the human body decomposes starts just minutes after death. When the heart stops beating, we experience algor mortis, or the “death chill,” when the temperature of the body falls about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit an hour until it reaches room temperature. Almost immediately, the blood becomes more acidic as carbon dioxide builds up. This causes cells to split open, emptying enzymes into the tissues, which start to digest themselves from within.

 

You turn white — and purple. Gravity makes its mark on the human body in the first moments after death. While the rest of your body turns deathly pale, heavy red blood cells move to the parts of your body that are closest to the ground. This is because circulation has stopped. The results are purple splotches over your lower parts known as livor mortis. In fact, it is by studying the markings of livor mortis that the coroner can tell exactly what time you died.

 

Calcium makes your muscles contract. We've all heard of rigor mortis, in which a dead body becomes stiff and hard to move. Rigor mortis generally sets in about three to four hours after death, peaks at 12 hours, and dissipates after 48 hours. Why does it happen? There are pumps in the membranes of our muscle cells that regulate calcium. When the pumps stop working in death, calcium floods the cells, causing the muscles to contract and stiffen. Thus, there is rigor mortis.

 

Your organs will digest themselves. Putrefaction, or when our bodies start to look like extras in a zombie movie, follows rigour mortis. This phase is delayed by the embalming process, but eventually the body will succumb. Enzymes in the pancreas make the organ begin to digest itself. Microbes will tag-team these enzymes, turning the body green from the belly onwards. As Caroline Williams writes in NewScientist, “the main beneficiaries are among the 100 trillion bacteria that have spent their lives living in harmony with us in our guts.” As this bacterium breaks us down, it releases putrescine and cadaverine, which are the compounds which make the human body smell in death.

 

You may be covered in a wax. After putrefaction, decay moves quickly to turn the body into a skeleton. However, some bodies take an interesting turn on the way. If a body comes into contact with cold soil or water, it may develop adipocere, a fatty, waxy material formed from the bacteria breaking down tissue. Adipocere works as a natural preservative on the inner organs. It can mislead investigators into thinking a body died much sooner than it actually did, as was the case of a 300-year-old adipocere corpse recently found in Switzerland.

 

In the end, we all return to the Earth: it’s just a matter of how. But whether it’s by composting or the fires of cremation, we all turn to dust and ash — and in some cases, wax.