Beyond Texas: An Aegean Ghost Hunt (Santorini, Greece)

Anyone following this blog might well wonder why I posted to it 10 times in July but not at all in August! The answer is that I took a break from working on this book and spent four weeks making an "Aegean Odyssey" across several Greek islands, in part to do research for a number of projects for Skirmisher Publishing LLC (anyone interested in seeing daily reports of this trip can check them out at my TravelBlogue). 

In the course of this trip I did take the opportunity to do a number of things related to my interest in paranormal investigation, to include studying grave stele and other items associated with graveyards at the various antiquities museums I visited. On the night of August 12, I also ventured out to a small cemetery located near the northeastern edge of the town of Fira on the island of Santorini and, over the course of a couple of hours, conducted a brief investigation of it and took about 220 digital photographs. 

This site was a walled compound that contained two large chapels, a number of mausoleums, and probably fewer than a hundred individual graves. It is probably a private cemetery, appeared to be affiliated with the Greek Orthodox faith, and reflected a certain level of affluence. The gate to the cemetery was not locked and, as always, I showed proper respect for the people interred there and their families and observed appropriate spiritual precautions. 

  

Above left, a structure that might be a smaller chapel, a mausoleum, or both; above center, a view down one of the few relatively long pathways in the cemetery — compare with the image of the same place at bottom, which has a gray mass of some sort in it; above right, the main chapel at the north end of the cemetery, built in a classic Byzantine style. 

 

Above left, a fairly significant orb can be seen toward the left side of this image; above right, this gravesite has one of the lamps that can be seen burning at night. 

One thing that can make Greek burial grounds feel kind of creepy is the practice of keeping lamps or candles burning at many of the gravesites (something that indicates ongoing care and, once again, the financial means for doing so). 

Suffice it to say that the Fira cemetery felt very active to me and that I caught what seemed like a disproportionately high level of anomalies in my photographs. Foremost among these is a virtual cloud of orbs in one of the first shots I took, of one of the two chapels from the roof of an adjoining building (top right); my first assumption is that I was seeing some sort of atmospheric effect but this was belied by the fact that no anomalies appeared in any of the other images of the chapel that I took in a series over a five-minute period (the one of the same thing that appears at the right end of the top row of pictures was taken about a minute earlier). I also picked up individual or pairs of orbs in a number of shots and what may have been a vague gray mass in one (at the center of the image at bottom). There was also one place where I felt very apprehensive about photographing some vaults flush with the ground and opted not to do so — irrational, perhaps, but you have to go with your intuition when conducting an investigation and it is better to be safe than sorry! 

  

Above left, a fairly profound orb appears at the far left side of this image; above right, I was able to see inside of this vaulted mausoleum but did not see anything exceptional in it. 

Above left, this image gives a good sense for the subtropical climate of Santorini, one of the Cycladic Islands of Greece; above right, the second large chapel in the cemetery has a vaulted style that is popular for many sorts of buildings throughout Greece, especially in rural areas; bottom, what appears to be a gray mass that might or might not be indicative of anything appears at the center of this image. 

Annual Halloween Ghost Hunt

Just got back from my annual "world's fastest ghost hunt" at the haunted little German cemetery in the wooded valley below my house and was stunned at how active it was tonight! This is especially striking when compared with last year, when it was almost completely inert, and I am trying to figure out what might be accounting for these differences. 

It was a very dry, clear, cool night, in the 50s, completely moonless, giving perfect visibility of the stars but very little usable light (although I avoided using my flashlight at all). I spent about 20 minutes between the cemetery and the nearby ruined house and during that time took 76 photos. Following are the ones with the most profound anomalies, all orbs as far as I can tell -- some of them very profound. 

This was the second picture I took and initially seemed to confirm my theory that it is sometimes possible to "surprise" ghosts and get images of them immediately upon arriving at a site. I felt a presence and corroborated it with photos, however, throughout the duration of my visit. 

 

Evidence of a spiritual presence is as associated with the trees at this site, at the orb in the upper right corner suggest, as they are with the actual burial plots. 

I have on numerous occasions gotten anomalies around this tree and wonder if it was used for a hanging at some point; it really does almost feel as if a ghost was living in it. 

I heard noises and got a creepy vibe south of the cemetery, toward the seasonal stream that was running strongly as a result of the recent heavy rains, and am not too surprised to have caught these orbs in my photo. 

This shot I took during my departure from the grove containing the cemetery seems to reveal something watching me! As with a number of things associated with tonight's investigation, this was the first time I have noted this happening at the site. 

I was stunned when I saw this image, which almost seems to seethe with spiritual energy! I have never caught anything of note at this ruined structure previously so this came as a bit of a surprise. I did sense some sort of a presence as I passed it during my approach to the cemetery but decided to reserve flash photography of it for my exit from the area. 

A small orb can be seen hovering over the ruined farmhouse in this alternate view of it. 

As is often the case with investigations in which I was exposed to spiritual entities, I was very hungry by the time I made it back home. Also, apropos of nothing peculiar to tonight's venture, it occurred to me that, for whatever reasons, I have never captured a partial orb cut off at the edge of a picture ...