Friday, June 21, 2013

Tony Soprano's Final Curtain

Ruthless Crime Boss or Loving Human Being?


I would be very remiss in not writing a blog dedicated to the beloved actor James Gandolfini, who played fictional mob boss, Tony Soprano, in the HBO hit series, The Sopranos. I am still in shock over his untimely passing. He was so young, so talented, so respected and touched so many lives. He was very much loved and will greatly be missed.

I first became aware of James Gandolfini when I decided to rent season one of The Sopranos. I don’t have HBO, but heard so many good things about the series that I wanted to try it out and see if I liked it. I didn’t like it… I loved it. I decided to return my rented DVD’s and buy season one. I had to own it. Every year thereafter, when a season ended, I patiently waited for it to come out on DVD, usually at Christmas, and would buy it. Then I would watch two or three episodes every night until I had seen it all. I don’t know how many times I have watched the entire series. I never tired of it. It had some of the best writing and acting I have ever seen. The show’s success was in large part due to James Gandolfini, who played his role as Tony Soprano so realistically and flawlessly.

From the first scene in season one, where Tony is out by the pool with his ducks and has a panic attack, you cannot help but be drawn to his character. He was a ruthless mob boss, but he also had his strengths and weaknesses as a human being. The character had so many dimensions that you couldn’t help but love him and root for him. It takes some special kind of acting to make you feel compassion for a mob boss who not only orders the deaths of his enemies, but those who are closest to him, if necessary. Tony carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. The show never glorified the mob lifestyle. The mobsters had plenty of money and lived a lavish life, with big homes and material possessions, but at what price? They had to live in fear of their enemies, the other mob families, who would try to cut on in their money making operations or put contracts out on their lives. They had to worry about the Feds closing in on them, as they were always the target of law enforcement. They had to worry about snitches, especially those closest to them who would wear a wire and supply the incriminating information that could send them to prison. The wives had to accept the fact that their husbands had mistresses, it went hand in hand with the lifestyle. When Carmela often complained to Tony about his mistress, he would tell her, “You knew who I was when you married me.” The mistresses often were given expensive gifts and money, kept in luxury apartments and taken out to social events. The wives were relegated to taking care of the children and house. The mobsters had two separate lives. Every detail of the lifestyle was portrayed on the show. Somehow, instead of judging and criticizing, we get drawn into the human side of all the characters, especially that of Tony Soprano.

I can’t tell you how upset I was when the series came to an end. It’s silly, I know. All shows eventually run their course, and The Sopranos had a very good run. But, I almost felt like I was saying goodbye to “family.” Family that I would no longer be able to see. And now, it’s time to say good bye again. This time it’s for real. Tony Soprano had many near death experiences on the show, but we knew he would survive. He was the star and could not be replaced. James Gandolfini was not as fortunate as his character. Life dealt him a fatal blow from which he could not recover. It’s so sad, no words can describe such a loss. James Gandolfini is still a star that cannot be replaced. He is a star that has taken on a different form and shines even more brightly than before. He is being remembered as a generous, compassionate, loving human being by all those who knew him personally. And I think that is what made his character, Tony Soprano so endearing. That even with his remarkable portrayal of ruthless mob boss, his true inner qualities still managed to shine through on the screen, and make him lovable and unforgettable.

We have never forgotten Tony Soprano, and now we will always remember James Gandolfini. May God watch over his wife and children, as I am sure he is now doing. May you rest in peace, James Gandolfini.

P.S. It’s no coincidence that I chose the pseudonym “Soprano” to write this blog. I thoroughly loved the show and I suppose I wanted to keep a piece of it alive in a way. It’s the reason I was drawn to Mob Wives in the first place. The Sopranos gave me an more in depth understanding of the lifestyle. It’s not all glamour and glitz, there is a lot of worrying and heartache. So when I watch Mob Wives, I do think of Carmela Soprano, and what she had to endure as a wife and mother. And even now, as I reminisce about the show, I wonder how much more there is to each of the Mob Wives’ history, especially Karen, Renee, Ramona and Big Ang. There must be so much that we can’t see and they can’t tell us. Yes, we see what their lives are today, but I am sure there was so much more that happened that must go unsaid.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

"Paranormal Witness: Curse of the Lonergan Farm" EP Recap

The following events occurred between 1989 and 1991 at Lonergan farm in Nebraska.

Winter of 1989, Dan Dale comes home from work one day to find out his brother Tim, his wife Sydney and his children would be moving into the farm. Tim Dale wasn’t fond of moving back into the farm but after losing his job, he didn’t want his family out in the streets. “I was very young when my parents moved in and it was a bit tight, lots of people living there!” Laura (Tim’s daughter) Dale remembers. Tim’s mother was suffering from lung cancer. Steve Dale was in high school at the time and had a more upbeat attitude. Regardless of the family situation, they stuck together. Vaunette, Dan’s girlfriend at the time, spent a lot of time at the house as well. The family would reminisce about old times and their family tree. “I was becoming more of a family member, so they were telling me more of these stories!” she recalls. They mentioned their Uncle Will and needless to say, Vaunette realized that he wasn’t very liked among the family.

Lonergan farm 
One night, Dan tucked in his mother good night and made sure everything was taken care of. But when he left the room, he felt that something didn’t feel right…but Dale shook the feeling off. The next day, the three brothers took a walk out in the woods, jumping over logs and going through the trees. Once they got in the back of the woods, they came across an old house…Uncle Will’s old house. “The place scared me since I was a kid,” Tim remembers. “There was something there.” Steve recalls all too well the ghost stories connected with the house. For old times’ sake, the brothers walked to the house and went inside. Tim then heard twigs breaking and felt something was there. The house was dark and dusty. One thing that was commonly heard were bells clinging but there were never any bells around. They were almost like spurs on someone’s boots. The brothers then come across the water well that was used for the water. It was about 70-80ft. deep. It took Dan back to the day he went down the well…


Years ago, Dan’s mom told him and his brothers to check the well because an animal was down there. Steve and Tim hooked up a rope to a tier and helped hook Dan up. Dan took a fishnet with him to pick up the animal and a flashlight to help him see. The boys carefully lowered Dan. Dan was especially scared because of how deep and dark the well was. He eventually reached the bottom and saw there was a dead raccoon. He scooped it up and then began to hear voices in his ear…a man’s voice. Dan thought the brothers were joking with him. “As I’m reaching down the net, I heard someone talk in my ear again and it sounded like it was right behind me,” Dan recalls; “I felt I wasn’t alone. I always felt someone was right behind me.” Dan yelled at the boys to pull him up repeatedly. The boys, realizing something felt off, pulled him up immediately.
 
Their mothers’ cancer worsened and Dan was in the room. The mother was in and out of consciousness the entire time. Something woke the mother up and she was pointing at the doorway, as if she had seen something. “She’s looking fully at someone and there was no one there. I was the only one at the room at the time. It was a very eerie moment,” Dan said. The mother had passed away. Vaunette recalls the tremendous grief the family felt. “My mom was an awesome person….I sure miss her sometimes,” Tim said. The brothers continued living on the farm.

Sticking into unseen territory 
One night in October, Dan took Vaunette out into the woods for a walk. He wanted to “initiate” her into the family by taking her on a spooky trip to Uncle Will’s farm. Vaunette laughed at her boyfriend’s attempt to scare her. “The more you walked in, the more light seemed to be sucked out of it. You didn’t hear anything,” Vaunette explained about walking in the woods. “There was all kinds of debris and you really had to be careful.” The couple finally arrived at the house. Vaunette admitted at being a bit scared by the house’s presence. But she decided to go down the basement with Dan, much to Dan’s teasing. Dan led her down the basement. Vaunette saw holes in the basement wall and asked Dan about it. Dan said that that’s where Uncle Will kept his treasures and anyone who put their hands in the holes will lose their hands. Vaunette picked up a stick and poked them into different holes. There was a hole that was a little bit higher. “For some reason, I can’t explain it….I knew I had to put my hand in that one,” she recalls. So she did. But then she felt a “seering hot pain” in her hand and it was spread up to her elbow. She yanked out her arm and discovered human bites on her arm. The couple ran out of the house.

A farm full of menace and evil 
One day, the boys and Vaunette were out hunting and walked through the woods. Tim remembers hearing footsteps and heard the “bells clinging” again. “It was like something was stalking us….” Dan then saw a figure behind a tree. Dan ran to that tree and nothing was there. The figure kept popping up behind the trees and no matter how fast Dan ran, he couldn’t catch up to it. “You had the feeling like someone was watching you but there wasn’t anybody there!” The boys and Vaunette continued back towards the house and were passing the haunted house. Vaunette, growing tired of the walk, stopped to take a drink as the boys walked ahead. She looked up as she took her drink and saw a man hanging by a noose. Vaunette did a double check. She just saw an apparition of a man being hung. “I told myself that I was just hallucinating,” she said.
Then the nightmares began….

A deadly apparition
“It was always in the barn and there was people,” Tim remembers.  They were just laughing at me. Like ‘you’re in trouble boy’. The old guy was deranged looking and I couldn’t get away from him. All the sudden, my mom showed up. She’s pulling at me and yelling at me to get the hell out of there. I woke up outside Uncle Will’s house in underwear, t-shirt, right outside of Uncle Will’s house in 6-8 inches of snow.”

“It felt clearly evil. There was something that wanted to get me. I’m completely terrified. But my mom is there, yelling ‘get out of here, now!’” Dan recalls.

The nightmares weren’t stopping. Tim continued to sleepwalk to the barn. He didn’t sleepwalk since he was a kid. Tim tells Dan about it and they both realize they are having the same dream. They realize that their deceased mother is trying to protect them. It recalled another memory of Dan’s...

Back in their high school days, Dan and Tim took their friends to Uncle Will’s to give them a good scare so they could understand where they lived at. “We saw the ‘no trespassing’ sign,” the brothers’ friend, Aaron recalled. “We can’t trespass if we’re with family, right? It reminded me almost like something you’d see in the Western film. I really wasn’t interested in finding out about spirits and ghosts.”  But the friends proceeded to go to the house. But then, terror began to set in. “We see something on one side of the porch start moving and you can start hearing the boards creaking, and we froze like deer,” Aaron recalls. The deranged old man appears. “A tall man, coming up the path, moving fast!” Tim recalls. “I was moving faster than I ever ran in my life…looked like a human locomotive!” Aaron remembers. “We’ve been chased away by a man that’s been dead for 35-40 years,” Dan said. The brothers are wondering why to this day, they are still being haunted.

Dan and Tim decided to visit their Aunt Mary, who was like a second mother to them. The boys open up about “the man in the moustache” that everyone keeps seeing. Aunt Mary pulled out a photo album to show them pictures of the family. There was a picture of the boys’ great-grandfather and his relatives. They recognize the picture of Uncle Will immediately. Aunt Mary told the men then about the terrible incident that happened on the farm;

A dark family history
Uncle Will was terribly racist and during the early 1900s, a black man working for Uncle Will was caught having a relationship with a white woman and it angered Uncle Will so badly, that him and his men got their hands on the worker and lynched him. No one was arrested or charged for the incident. Dan and the brothers were absolutely disgusted that such a rotten human being was a part of their family name. 

“Growing up at the farm was scary in the dark but for the most part, it was a good place,” Laura recalls. When she was seven-years-old, she shared a room with her sister. But Laura also began having bad dreams. Laura confided in Vaunette about her secrets and her fears and how Laura couldn’t tell if her dreams were really dreams. Vaunette advised Laura to pinch herself and if it was a dream, the pinching would wake her up.


One night, when little Laura was sleeping in her bed, the door creaked open very slowly and she saw someone coming into the room. She couldn’t tell who it was but she knew it wasn’t her parents. Is this a dream? But Laura felt too frozen in fear to pinch herself to see if it was a dream or not. “I had a feeling they were going to take her…I forced myself to pinch myself and I screamed,” she recalls of that horrible night.

“I didn’t know where my baby daughter was, I didn’t even know if she was kidnapped,” Tim recalled.

The police were called and arrived on the scene. The police immediately went to work and called for a search party on the baby. “There were people everyone calling, hollering out for the baby (Melissa) and it started to echo in the trees,” Vaunette recalls. Herman, Tim’s brother-in-law, joins in on the search party once he hears about his niece going missing. The search party closes in on Uncle Will’s area. But they find nothing so they continue on. But Vaunette was haunted by the sounds of bells she heard nearby. “I knew Melissa was out there with the ghost of Uncle Will.” Even more unusual, Herman felt a need to go on a certain trail and reach an area. At that point, Herman sees something….it was the baby. Herman yelled that he found her. The baby is alive. The police were thrilled and while the family were as well, they were still scared because they knew deep down, Uncle Will and his unseen forces were behind this.



In 1999, in an interesting turn of events, arsonists burned down Uncle Will’s house. Not surprisingly, the family wasn’t exactly grieving over the loss of the house, since it was filled with evil, menacing energy. All that was left was the basement. A couple years later, the family put the farm up for sale and to this day, they don’t know why they were being targeted by Uncle Will…


This was NOT how I predicted the show to turn. I assumed it was the ghost of an old man still sitting on his rocking chair outside the barn, equipped with a Remington and going "Get off my lawn, you pesky kids!" but obviously, it was more than that. What REALLY boggled my mind was the incident with the baby. I've heard many ghosts and poltergeist stories but a ghost possible kidnapping a child and leaving it out to the snow is just....why? Granted, with the first episode of Season 3, a demon was targeting two young girls. It is also a theory that "ghost children" are actually demons in disguise. So demon activity involving children isn't a foreign concept. But still. I'm trying to wrap my mind around it.

Because they didn't say the exact location, I had a pretty hard time doing some digging. However, this particular incident just nags at me and here is my own personal conclusion; 

Tim Dale mentioned that he began sleepwalking again. Both Vaunette and Herman mention in their own experiences about being "guided" by some unseen force. The family (from what I assume) didn't tell the police about the paranormal circumstances, obviously for fear or ridicule and being labeled as crazy. But could it be that Tim, possibly possessed by paranormal forces, sleepwalked his way to Laura's room, took the baby and placed her out there in the woods? And could he possibly have left her there and sleepwalk back to bed? But of course, you're not going to tell the cops you took your baby out in the snowy woods while sleepwalking because it won't get looked on to fondly. But was Tim in bed when Laura was screaming when the incident happened? She did mention briefly that when the mystery person came to her room, it wasn't her parents but if this theory were to be true, Tim wouldn't be himself in his awakened state. People do some crazy sh*t during a sleepwalking state. 

What do you guys think? 

Picture Credit: Syfy 
Follow me @janespringfield 

Sunday, June 9, 2013

"Paranormal Witness: The Long-Island Terror" Season 3 Premiere Recap

Jeanette with a picture of her husband, Lt. Meyran
Jeanette Meyran is the proud wife of Lt. Curtis W. Meyran and together, they had two beautiful daughters, Angela and Danine. But on January 23, 2005, everything turned upside down when Lt. Meyran and two other firefighters were responding to a call. The firefighters were trying to rescue occupants in a four-story apartment building but the fire was two intense that the firefighters on scene had to jump from the four-story building. Lt. Meyran jumped to his death. The death rocked the Meyran family to the core. “How do I tell these children that they will never see their father again?” Jeanette recalls. The daughters remember the tremendous grief they experienced from that day.The media had a field day with the incident and “the paparazzi from hell” would hound the family for interviews and pictures. The family just wanted to be left alone to grieve in peace. Jeanette decided to move the girls out of the city to give them a new beginning. Jeanette was attracted to a big, old house with lots of land. Jeanette wanted to rebuild it and had the help of Curtis’ fellow firefighters. Tom, Curtis’ friend, was an anchor for the family. There was a sense of hope for the family. But while the house was being rebuilt, Jeanette was concerned about vandalism so she installed seven security cameras throughout the property.

On the first night of viewing the cameras from her laptop, Jeanette noticed that there was a mystery man standing in the middle of the lot. But then the man disappeared. Jeanette had no clue what she was looking at. Meanwhile, Angela was feeling restless one night in her new room. She began to hear knocking on the walls. “I remember hearing these sounds….they were coming from inside the walls, like thumps of knocking,” Angela recalls. Danine also heard it too and woke up. “Second time I heard it (the knock) was ‘notice me, notice me!’”. The girls continued to hear the knocking inside the walls. Little Danine hid under her covers. “I’d make a little fortress. It didn’t feel safe but it felt good enough to sleep, wake up and it wouldn’t be there,” she said. Angela asked her mom if she was walking around the house and made noise. Jeanette didn’t hear anything but convinced the girls it was just the new house. Jeanette walked around the house to check the heating, the plumbing and to learn “the sounds of the house”. She concluded she just needed to reassure them and not be afraid.

Just a glitch? 
Tony remembered working down on the basement and mentioned that it was a “unique basement with a lot of debris”. During this time, Angela and Danine were outside playing in their new big backyard. “To me, it was like a playground, my heaven!” Danine remembers. “I thought it was really cool we had a backyard back there with all these trees and symbols…we found bones in the backyard!” Angela remembers. The kids spent time playing in the backyard and making maps for their toys, using the marks on the trees as a guide. Meanwhile, in the basement, something caught Tony’s attention and he called Jeanette down. It was an upside-down star in a circle, a symbol for devil worship. Jeanette didn’t want the girls to see it and told Tony and the men to cover it up. The girls didn’t tell their mother about the symbolism in the woods because they didn’t think she would care.

Foul play? 
Angela was left alone in the house and her mom gave her a list of chores. Angela then felt that she wasn’t really alone. When she went to clean the fridge, Angela would look back behind her a few times. All the sudden, all the drawers and shelves burst open and silverware was strewed everywhere on the counter. Angela screamed and ran to her room. When Jeanette came home and saw the mess in the kitchen, she assumed Angela threw a huge tantrum. But when Jeanette saw how terrified she looked, Jeanette then knew that they weren’t alone in the house. Tony and the crew were still working on the basement but were uneasy. One of the men discovered a hole in the wall and found pieces of paper bound together and showed Jeanette. There was writing and drawings. “I saw 1927. The pages seemed to be written by a young girl who was the daughter of someone in this house. Her name was Christina,” she explained. “It was an incredibly dark story….how her father did sacrifices and how she would ‘bleed like they would bleed’”. Jeanette concluded that these were some sick individuals but they were now gone and it was her house. The firefighters finished up their work and left.

Ransacked kitchen 
One day, Jeanette was vacuuming when she heard what she thought was the oil burner backfiring. Jeanette heard the pressure and the thumps coming from the basement. She went in the basement to investigate but as she went down the basement with a flashlight, she felt an incredible sense of evil. She became so frightened that she ran out of the basement. She knew that it was then paranormal.

During a more frightening occurrence when Danine was taking a shower, Angela was in her room when she began to hear voices, like chanting. “I was trying really, really hard to listen…two people talking, almost secretive.” Angela walked down the hallway but didn’t see anything. Meanwhile, Danine heard the bathroom door open and thought it was her mom. But even Danine feels like she is being watched. Angela goes back in her room but still hears the voices and even heard Danine’s name. She listened more closely. With tears in her eyes, Angela remembers hearing what the voices wanted: “They started using my sister’s name. I heard them telling me that…..” but Angela is too shaken up to continue talking about it. Danine then sees a demonic shadow through the door. Danine screams and Angela rushes to the door, terrified that she wouldn’t be able to protect her sister. “He wanted to hurt me,” Danine remembers. As Danine curled up in a corner and screamed for her mom, Jeanette and Angela frantically tried opening the door but it was locked. Jeanette finally opened the door and the women rushed to Danine’s aid. Danine was very shaken up by the “man” that wanted to go after her. Once the three women left the bathroom, all the doors in the room slammed shut. “You can hear this chanting,” Jeanette said. “Sounded like a group of people performing a ritual.” The girls frantically rushed to Jeanette’s room and locked the door, the chanting still going on. Jeanette told the girls to just call their daddy. The girls called for their dad. “I needed him to be there and if he was just there, everything would be fine,” Danine said. “How do you protect your children and fight what you can’t see?” Jeanette said.

Not your average joe....
Jeanette called on Tony to confide in him and to show him the star, the journal and all that went on. Tony went down to the basement but Jeanette refused to go down. “I go down to see what’s down there, she was frightened by the basement. There were few things I fear, besides my father and the dentist!” Tony recalls. “But I remember this pressure, like I had to get out of there. As Tony investigated the basement, he noticed a door and that it was continuing to rattle. But when Tony opened the door, he saw nothing. However…the door slammed shut behind him. That was enough to scare a hardened Tony. The girls then begin to stand guard at the bathroom when one of them took a shower. Jeanette was so conflicted on what to do. She poured so much time, money and energy to build a new safe haven for her and the girls. So Jeanette called a priest. The priest came in, said a prayer and gave holy water to Jeanette.

A resentful cult ready to attack Angela 
Nightfall came and Jeanette filled up a bottle with the gallons of holy water she was given. But Angela wanted out of the house so she went outside the backyard and went on the swing. “It took me away from the house.” Jeanette noticed Angela became more reclusive. Jeanette watched her from the backyard cameras. All the sudden, as Jeanette was watching Angela swinging at a steady pace, a group of cloaked figures appeared behind Angela….Angela felt a really heavy push and flew out of the swing, landing hard with a crunch on the ground. Angela screamed for her mom. Jeanette rushed out and Angela kept crying “we have to leave, they keep hurting us!” A furious Angela sprayed holy water all over, cursing the figures that attacked her daughter. “The war was about to begin!” The attack left Angela with a severely broken ankle.

Jeanette ran errands during the day and left Angela by herself, assuming she would be safe during the day. Angela was okay during the day but she felt more uneasy at night. Angela was reading a book in her room and something knocked on her closet door. The door began to shake softly at first but then it almost was like “someone was in my closet, trying to get out. It was a trainwreck…I couldn’t look away…I saw a black figure that stepped out of my closet…I couldn’t run…..make it to the door….” Angela immediately hid under her bed and saw the figure slowly move. Angela said it smelled like “death”. Angela got the house phone and desperately cried to her mom to come home. Jeanette took off in a flash and rushed home to get home to her daughter, even though she was fourty minutes away. Jeanette told Angela to pray. “I felt like he was going to hurt me,” Angela remembers..

There was a monster-like growl before the phone went dead.

Jeanette rushed home and saw nothing. She kept calling for Angela. Jeanette was desperate to hear her. “I just pictured her ripped apart by this creature,” she remembers. But then Jeanette heard a weeping from under the bed. Jeanette pulled out Angela from the bed because Angela was so weak and begged her mom to make it go away. The priest and holy water were not cutting it. The family had enough tragedy in their lives. So Jeanette took the girls to their grandma’s and Jeanette went through the phonebook and called up Liz Milano, a paranormal investigator. It was around 3-4am in the morning. Liz spoke to Jeanette for about an hour and was more than willing to help the shaken family. Liz called up a psychic medium, Dawn Joly, to help assist her and the ladies were going to do a cleansing and blessing on the home. To two women drove up to the house and Dawn immediately sensed an ill-presence. “It was like a dark cloud over the house,” she remembers entering the house. Dawn sensed the satanic cult coming  from the basement and explained how the demolition in the basement disturbed the energy in that room and that the cult released a demon in retaliation.

A cleanse and blessing to rid the demon 
Liz and Dawn then gathered big boxes of salt and poured it all around the house outside to serve as a “psychic force field”. Dawn then began burning the sage. The three of them went down in the basement, Dawn leading them with the sage and a crucifix. The basement was the epicenter of the activity. The three women recall that it was very intense and frightening with each step they took. Dawn heard chanting and screaming and it was a constant battle. The door then began rattling violently. Dawn opened the door and a fiery demon appeared and burst into flames. But then it stopped and that was the part of the house where the demon was housed.

The blessing worked and the house was rid of the demon.

Jeanette and the girls still live in the house and they enjoy living there now. “it was a battle won,” Jeanette concluded. “WE’ve learned and we’ve grown. It changes you forever.”

No one has seen the demon ever since... 

Picture Credit: NY Times, SyFy

Janes Notes: First off, we all send our condolences to Jeanette, Angela and Danine for their tragic loss. I went to a cop's funeral not too long ago and let me tell you, there is nothing more chilling and heart-wrenching than the community saying "farewell" to one of their heroes. I recently came upon this recent picture of the family at an exhibit full of Lt. Meyran's belongings and honoring his life and legacy. I wish nothing but the best for this beautiful, strong family.


Danine, Angela and Jeanette honoring Lt. MeyranPhoto by Marc Fader
Now onto the haunting....well....Hearing the ghost of Joe Schmoe who used to live in the home knock on the door is eerie and creepy but not terrifying...but an actual demon summoned unleashed in a home? That's a WHOLE new level of paranormal! I actually did some reading on demonology, witchcraft and the occult. While there is some skepticism and logical/scientific explanations on witchcraft from the past, I do believe that there are those who practice satanic rituals for some reason or another and do conjure up evil, negative spirits. The "other side" is just like here on Earth. You got "good" ghosts (angels) and then you have "bad" ghosts (demons). I do sincerely believe that this story is legit. This is a crazy, scary story and was a great choice for the new season. If this episode is a representation of what season 3 has to offer, I might start considering watching these episodes with a light on. I'm SO glad that the show is back on so stay tuned for some more summer scares! 

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Personal Blog: Haunted Happenings