Archive - September 2009
Dream Meanings
Dreams we all have them. But what do they mean?
Here’s a quick guide to some common dream themes:
A forest
Symbolises the unknown and unconscious
Numbers
Indicate a need for balance or a problem to solve
Kitchens
Signify a need for emotional nourishment
The police
Represent safety and control
Grandparents
Suggest wisdom, tradition and intuition. Their appearance in a dream
may suggest you need guidance.
You may also enjoy reading: click: The advantages of keeping a dream diary
Posted on Mon 28th Sep 2009 19:12:28
Britain's Top Ten Most Haunted Locations
Here's a list of what are considered to be Britain's most haunted locations. Definately not for the faint hearted to visit! Happy spook hunting.
1. Highgate Cemetery, London
By night, Highgate Cemetery is like something out of a horror movie. Eerie crooked gravestones, headless angles covered in ivy, dark overgrown passages between the tombs, it's no wonder this is Britain's number one ghost spot. Despite its chilling atmosphere, by day Highgate Cemetery showcases some of the Britain's most spectacular Gothic architecture, offers fascinating guided tours and is also the burial place of Karl Marx.
2. Borley Rectory, Essex
The stories of Borley Rectory mainly come from the work of famous 18th-century ghost hunter, Harry Price. Price got involved in a case at the rectory after a newspaper ran a story about a phantom nun in 1929. His investigations led to the rectory being named 'The Most Haunted House in England'. The building was destroyed by a fire in 1939, but this has done nothing to dispel stories of spooky happenings, or deter ghost hunters from visiting the site.
3. Pendle Hill, Lancashire
The area known as Pendle Witch Country in the Lancashire Pennines is dominated by the dark brooding mass of Pendle Hill. Nearby is the site of Britain's most famous (and most grim) witch trial – the case of the 'Witches of Pendle'. In 1612 ten so-called witches were hanged at Lancaster Castle and they are said to still haunt the local area. The hill itself has even featured on Living TV's Most Haunted.
4. Red Lion, Avebury, Wiltshire
Pubs in Britain are often said to be haunted. This might be because they are often in ancient buildings, or it could just be that ghosts like a pint as much as the rest of us. The 400-year-old Red Lion Inn in Wiltshire is one Britain's most haunted pubs and is actually situated inside Avebury Stone Circle – the largest stone circle in Europe and a World Heritage Site. The pub is never short of weird shadows, orbs or light, ghostly figures, sudden cold spots and unexplained noises in the night... should you dare to stay over.
5. Ancient Ram Inn, Wotten-under-Edge, Gloucestershire
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, a trip to the Ancient Ram Inn is an unsettling experience. Its creaky floorboards, cold bare walls, musty smells and dimly lit nooks and crannies epitomise everything a haunted house should be. And the stories attached to this creepy building are not for the fainthearted: Murder, satanism and child sacrifice are just a few of the dark deeds said to have occurred here, oh and did we mention apparently it's built on a pagan burial ground?
6. Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland
The spires, turrets, towers and statues seize your attention immediately. Glamis Castle is one of Scotland's most impressive castles, but not just for the amazing architecture and 600 years of royal history. Glamis is also one of Scotland's most haunted castles. Among the many spirits said to inhabit the place is the ghost of the Monster of Glamis – a hideously deformed child who was kept locked up in a hidden room his entire life.
7. Tower of London, London
Not only is the Tower of London a World Heritage Site and one of the capital's favourite attractions, it's also home to many inhabitants of the undead variety. Which is no surprise really when you consider the number of beheadings, hangings and tortures that have gone on there. Some of the most-sighted ghouls include the Princes in the Tower, allegedly murdered by their uncle Richard III, Anne Boleyn and the White Lady, who apparently brings a strange perfume smell with her on her hauntings. Click here to watch video about the man ghost of the Tower of London.
8. Culloden Moor, near Inverness
On the 16 April 1746 the last-ever battle to take place on British soil was fought on Culloden Moor. Here the Jacobite rebellion, vastly outnumbered, was massacred there on the moor. And as you might think, any battle as bloody as this is bound to leave a few tormented souls. Legend has it that every year on the battle's anniversary, war-cries can still be heard as the warriors battle on in the after world.
9. Llancaiach Fawr Manor, near Caerphilly
The peaceful, rural setting of Llancaiach Fawr Manor gives no clue to the turmoil of its history and the bloody civil war that was fought there. And these great battles have left no shortage of spectres wondering around the manor. In fact, strange things have been experienced in almost every room, along corridors and on stairs. Things seen, heard or felt, or sometimes odours in the air of violets or lavender - and on some occasions, roast beef!
10. Berry Pomeroy Castle, near Totness, Devon
The 14th-century Berry Pomeroy Castle has two famous female ghosts; the White Lady and the Blue Lady. According to legend the White Lady is the spirit of Margaret Pomeroy, who starved to death while imprisoned in the dungeons by her jealous sister. Apparently she haunts the dark dungeons and rises from St Margaret's Tower to the castle walls. The Blue Lady is not confined to specific areas and is supposed to lure people into hidden parts of the ruin. Apparently it's a very bad idea to follow her!
Posted on Mon 28th Sep 2009 11:57:10
Pete Doherty: My House Is Haunted By Partying Ghosts!
He's more used to hosting parties that never seem to end than being kept awake at night by partying ghosts!
But wildman of rock Pete Doherty reckons he's heard ghosts living it up in one end of his rented country retreat.
The Babyshambles frontman has been living at the 250-year-old property, Sturmy House, for over a year.
He said: 'My house is definitely haunted. All of a sudden you hear a mad party going on in the west wing.
'It used to be the servants’ quarters, which is creepy. When I hear it I just hide.
'It’s uncomfortable but I think if I don’t bother them, they won’t bother me. Half the time I’m in my own world anyway.'
The nine-bedroomed red brick house in Wiltshire is owned by the Earl of Cardigan, but Doherty has made the home his own.
The self-confessed drug addict has been taking time away from the limelight in recent months to gain some 'peace and quiet' in the Wiltshire countryside but it seems the resident spooks have other ideas.
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Posted on Thu 17th Sep 2009 22:27:58
Star Trek Captain Sees Ghost On Stage
Patrick Stewart famous for his role as the capable, Captain Jean- Luc Picard, in Star Trek the Next Generation, says that he saw a ghost in what is said to be one of Britain's most haunted theatres.
He saw the apparition while performing recently in Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellen.
Stage hands believe he saw the ghost of John Baldwin Buckstone, who was actor-manager of the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the mid 19th century and a friend of Charles Dickens.
When coming offstage for the interval, Stewart told his co-star that he saw a man standing in the wings wearing what looked like a beige coat and twill trousers.
Sir Ian asked him: "What happened, what threw you?"
"I just saw a ghost. On stage, during Act One," Stewart replied.
The episode was related in a documentary about the Theatre Royal Haymarket, produced by television channel Sky Arts.
But, it appears cameramen failed to capture images of the ghost itself.
Buckstone had a long association with the Theatre Royal, first as a comic actor, then as a playwright and finally as its actor-manager from 1853 to 1877, during which time it put on some 200 productions. The house became the leading comic theatre of the day.
He did not die in the building, passing away peacefully at home in Sydenham, Kent, after a long illness in 1879 aged 77. But theatre lore professes that he nevertheless haunts the place to the present day.
Nigel Everett, a director of the theatre, said: "Patrick told us all about it. He was stunned. I would not say frightened, but I would say impressed."
Appearances of Buckstone were not that frequent, Mr Everett said, with the last being by a stage hand about three or four years ago.
He added: "The last time an actor saw him would have been I think Fiona Fullerton, playing in an Oscar Wilde, 10 or 12 years ago.
"The ghost tends to appear when a comedy is playing."
While he said he did not consider Waiting for Godot to be a comedy, he thought their production did have comic aspects.
"I think Buckstone appears when he appreciates things," he added. "We view it as a positive thing."
Source Daily Telegraph
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Posted on Sat 12th Sep 2009 16:51:00
Joanna's Absolutely Haunted House
When “national treasure”, Joanna Lumley first saw the beautiful 18th century Parsonage, she felt sure it was the home for her.
But a series of supernatural events changed her mind after she and her husband moved in.
The 63-year-old actress who recently hit the headlines for her successful campaign for the Gurkas right to UK residency, claims that during her three years at the house in Goodnestone, near Dover, she became convinced it was haunted after a series of extraordinary goings-on.
It began on the day she moved in when she was in the dimly-lit cellar and met what she assumed was an 'ancient' removal man. He thrust his face close to hers and growled to her: "Leave this place."
"He wore an old leather jerkin, the type that coalmen have, and a whitish shirt and a flat cap," she said.
"I couldn't see him very clearly by the dim light of the single bulb hanging on its stem."
Miss Lumley decided to report the man to his employers and pursued him upstairs but he had vanished.
"When I got up to the front drive where the removal lorry was parked there was no man dressed in that way, no man in a cap."
The star who shot to fame in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous says she became increasingly distressed when she discovered lights turning themselves on and off, footsteps but no people, a freshly-dug grave that disappeared overnight, and gusts of coolness even on hot days.
She had a sense of being 'watched' and of someone "waiting for me to leave".
Then she discovered that MR James, the writer of ghost stories, had been born in the house in 1862. "I think the house had some effect on him," she said.
"Houses, like people, have their own characters and the impact of the character of the Parsonage was undeniable - thrilling but turbulent."
Miss Lumley viewed the house with husband Stephen Barlow, the opera director and conductor, on the day after the great storm in October 1987.
"We experienced many strangenesses," she wrote in her memoirs, No Room For Secrets.
"Lights that turned themselves on in the attic no matter how often we turned them off; footsteps across the big spare room when we had friends to lunch in the kitchen below.
Lights turned themselves on
"They all heard them but when Stephen went to look there was no one there.
"My watch vanished from the bedroom and was found in the wastepaper basket in the other end of the house."
She also discovered a secret tunnel led from the cellar to the nearby graveyard.
Miss Lumley, who in 1986 played the ghost Elvira in a West End production of Noel Coward's play Blithe Spirit, adds: "Once on a freezing night I was woken up by moonlight.
"I got out of bed and stood at the window, looking down on the rough grass below the soft tennis court, and saw a freshlydug grave. The earth was heaped up by the side ... there was no mistaking what it was. The next day it was gone."
As the actress sat alone one night, watching television, she claims a man in a white shirt passed the window in the darkness. She later realised the window was too high above the ground for anyone to walk past.
Chill
On other occasions a chill would descend. "Coldness would suddenly occur in the middle of a sunny day. Once the kitchen seemed to be filled with a great chilly darkness so I couldn't even see across the room.
"I could sense someone waiting or watching, hidden in the silence of empty stairs and landings, waiting for me to leave."
It finally became too much and she persuaded her husband they should sell up. But even then she was not left in peace.
When a family came to view the property she led them into the 'normally immaculate and cool' larder to find it "screaming with a cloud of bluebottles".
Miss Lumley says the family hurried out of the house and she returned to the larder with a dustpan and brush only to discover there was not a single fly.
"I went downstairs to the cellar and stood amongst the wood and coal and said very loudly, 'We're leaving.' At once the most delicious scent of roses filled the dark rooms, so thick and strong I almost fainted."
Miss Lumley is convinced it was delivered by the 'removal man' as a reward for leaving. "He gave me the scent of a thousand roses to thank me."
She now lives with her husband in a five-storey Victorian mansion in South London.
The current owner of the Parsonage, says they have suffered no problems.
She said: "Disappointingly things have not gone bump in the night. But the village gossip was all about ghosts. Maybe they liked Joanna more than us."
Source Daily Mail
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Posted on Sat 12th Sep 2009 11:33:35
Keanu Sees Dead People
In an eerie echo of the movie The Sixth Sense, Keanu Reeves says he can 'see dead people'.
The Hollywood star revealed his ghostly experiences in an interview in 2005 following the making of his supernatural thriller, Constantine.
In the blockbuster film the heartthrob actor plays a modern day exorcist.
Keanu said that he has seen ghosts on at least two occasions.
Once, he was lunching with a friend in Austin, Texas, looked round and saw a ghost appear behind him.
He recalled: 'I said: 'Did you see that?' And she said: 'Yes.' 'But that was different from when I was five. I was sitting on my bed, my sister was asleep and our nanny was there - and through the doorway came this white double-breasted suit.
'No body and no legs - just a suit. And then it disappeared.'
He doesn't regard the experiences as special, saying: 'I've known many people who have seen ghosts and told ghost stories.'
That may be why he was so comfortable taking on the role of exorcist John Constantine in his the spooky film, based on the cult comic book series Hellblazer. Even though he is dying, Constantine investigates supernatural mysteries and battles the forces of Satan.
He starred with half-Scottish Bush singer Gavin Rossdale and Rachel Weisz, who played a psychic police detective trying to discover the truth behind her sister's death.
It's a dark tale Keanu wanted to bring to the screen for years.
He was initially approached about making this movie when he was in the middle of The Matrix trilogy.
But in some parts of the world it appears that Constantine is too hot to handle. The film has been banned in Brunei because of the way it depicts God and Satan.
Keanu, though, had no qualms over controversial material. 'I relate to John Constantine,' he says.
'I love his humour. He's dying and he gives the finger to the Devil. I also liked his anger. I could relate to that. It reminded me of school.'
Keanu - his name is Hawaiian and means 'cool breeze over mountains' - left home in Toronto for Hollywood when he was only 20.
His role as supercool hero Neo in The Matrix movies made him one of Tinseltown's top earners, worth well over $200million.
Posted on Fri 11th Sep 2009 11:01:06
Pop Star Robbie Williams Haunted by Ghost of Henry VIII wife
Flamboyant pop singer Robbie Williams says the £7 million mansion he shares with his girlfriend Ayda Field is inhabited by the spirit of Catherine Parr, the sixth and final spouse of infamous womaniser and Tudor King, Henry VIII.
But while he often "feels the presence" of Catherine – who once lived on the estate in Wiltshire, South West England – the 35-year-old singer says he’s never frightened.
He said: "I think there are ghosts. I haven't seen or heard anything. I've definitely felt something but it's not scary. I'm very, very pleased to say.
"It's Catherine's Parr's old house. In fact, we're actually not in the old house, we're in her barn."
Robbie and Ayda moved from Los Angeles to Britain earlier this year to prepare for his musical comeback.
The former Take That front-man is enjoying his new lifestyle, but admits he wouldn't have ever imagined himself living in the countryside a few years ago.
Robbie said: "I can't even believe that a 35-year old me has bought a 500-year-old place. Because at 26 or 27 there's no way that I would have chosen to be there or go anywhere near it.
"But it's lovely and the people have been great with us."
It's not the first time Robbie's house has been linked to paranormal activity.
The star reportedly purchased the property because it is crossed with 'ley lines' - invisible energy routes believed to attract aliens.
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Posted on Wed 9th Sep 2009 14:10:56
Tap Into The Power Of The Egyptian Gods
The Egyptians believed in the preventative power of magic and created charms and amulets to keep them safe.
They incorporated symbols associated with the gods, and inscribed them with hieroglyphs, using sacred stones to bump up the power quota, and often wearing them as jewellery.
Tap into the power of the gods by using the stones connected with them. Choose one that suits your needs and either wear it as jewellery, or keep it in a velvet pouch. Write your desire on a piece of paper in red ink and then add it to a charm bag.
CARNELLIAN: Red and orange were the colours of power, heat, fire and passion. This stone was associated with the goddess Sekhmet. Use it to restore vitality and give you strength when stressed. It helps to boost confidence and personal power.
JADE: Used in statues and artwork, jade was thought to embody perfect harmony. It was also used in protective amulets. Hold a piece of jade for happiness, balance and to promote good health.
LAPIS LAZULI: This stone was often used to make scarab amulets. Its colour matches the deep blue of the sky, and it was thought mediating with it helped commune with the gods. Use lapis to tap into your higher self, and receive psychic messages.
MALACHITE: This green stone is associated with pleasure and the goddess Hathor. Use malachite in charms for good fortune and abundance.
PERIDOT: The Egyptians referred to this as the ‘gem of the Sun’ because of its startling colour when held up to the light. This green gold stone was believed to keep away evil spirits. Wear today to inject playfulness into your life and as a form of protection.
TURQUOISE: This stone was prized by the Egyptians who loved to make jewellery from it. Turquoise brought great joy and was associated with the goddess Hathor. Wear as a pendant to improve communication skill and stimulate new ideas.
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Posted on Mon 7th Sep 2009 10:17:16
Feng Shui Love Tips
Looking for a partner? Then these feng shui love tips could give your love life a boost.
Attracting a partner obviously needs some work on your part – he or she won’t come knocking if you’re just sitting at home every evening – but if you need some motivation and inspiration, these remedies will bring your intentions to the fore, which will subconsciously help to attract a mate.
These ideas all apply to the bedroom, as this is obviously the most conductive place for love and romance in a relationship. Try and introduce these elements.
Sand, earth, charcoal or two pebbles
Two rose quartz crystals
Two terracotta pots or vases with yellow flowers or two yellow/peach roses.
Light two candles each evening; red for passion, peach for romance and yellow for communication.
Hang a picture of two people in love, if possible where you can see it while you are lying in bed.
Ornaments of birds/animals that mate for life i.e. swans
Some downward lighting (or candles) as this grounds, stablises and introduce an intimate setting.
Some luxury, eg beautiful cushions, a ‘throw’ for the end of the bed, a soft rug.
Avoid
Photographs of family, friends and pets
Pictures of one person
Storing electrical items or clutter under the bed
A heavy light fitting over the bed
Leaving cupboard doors open to display contents – often untidy
Before you place any of the enhancements, the area needs to be physically cleaned. When ready, give yourself time to think about why you are putting the remedies there, one at a time, then enjoy each of them.
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Posted on Wed 2nd Sep 2009 11:27:21
Assert Yourself Magically!
Bring a touch of magic into your day.
Girdle of fire
When you feel under stress and need to assert yourself, use this girdle of fire magic tip and your detractors will be eating out of your hand
Picture a belt of fiery flames sitting upon your waist. It extends out, giving you space to breathe, and keeping any harmful comment or thoughts at bay. The girdle supports you, its heat stirring the fire in your root and sacral chakras, so that you are quite literally ‘firing on all cylinders!’
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Posted on Tue 1st Sep 2009 13:13:56