It is a cold snowy night outside and what better night to write about ghosts. However, it is a subject I have avoided for a long time due in part to the fact I suspected I would not be working on it alone. More than apt to have at least three entities of sorts standing behind me and looking over my shoulder to make sure all my facts were accurate! You see I live in an early 18th Century plantation manor house replete with three leftover resident ghosts. Their wanting to continue to reside here is a real blessing for me, for every plantation home in Virginia has its resident ghosts and the owners treasure and protect them with a vengeance! But I have to admit, they can at times test your fortitude! They never let you forget they are in residence, yet I somehow managed to take the edge and maintain a control of sorts!

In the beginning before I moved here, they went about doing their thing by scaring the hell out of potential buyers who came to look at the old abandoned house. Scaring potential buyers away had its merits for it was now possible for me to buy it! But their efforts backfired on them when I moved in for ghosts be damned, I was now the new owner! Being a seasoned ghost hunter with years of experience in dealing with their unexpected antics would not deter me at all but would in fact keep me entertained! They kept trying to assert their mortmain right to the manor house and I kept doing the same! After they realized I wasn’t going away and was ‘digging in’ for the duration, they relented and things changed for the better. The end result became a symbiotic relationship between the three of them and the one of me! It was the only resolve we had left, or otherwise, no one would ever have known any peace! I could be just as obnoxious as they, but I would have to work harder at it! I think they recognized this and stopped messing with my tools, opening and closing doors, making weird noises, hiding things, etc., and I in turn allowed them unfettered access to any visitors who happened to visit! Everything went like clockwork and I actually got lonely and dismayed if they did not do their ‘thing’ every now and then. There were times when I would cuss a 'blue streak' when they made unearthly noises in the middle of the night but they were just practicing their ‘profession’ so I left them alone. It would damn sure keep the boredom factor down day or night! So here I am, there they are and peace shall reign forevermore! Amen!


Now on to the subject at hand, the ghost and demon pictures on my website! No better way to bring you in line with what you can expect here than to let you view the pictures, tell you what I presume them to be, have you call me a liar, then make up your own mind and try to convince me! Agreed?

The first picture you see was taken in a field where a Civil War skirmish took place. It appears to be two faces or skulls in the grass, still waiting for the ‘Soul Gatherers’ or ‘Keepers of the Dead’ to find them!


The next picture is of some weird contorting ribbon energy. I have no explanation for this one except to say that it is an interesting piece of work and if straightened out it could stretch a mile!


The next one has me completely baffled. It was taken on Christmas Eve at a party at an 1800th Century country manor home. I had been in the parlor photographing the holiday guests along with a plethora of uninvited party-crashing ghostly entities when the roaring fire in the fireplace got to me and I had to step out on the deck for a breath of cool air. I had not been there long when I felt a strange presence and a sinister coolness in the air, but attributed it simply to my getting overheated inside! It was a beautiful night with the light of the full moon shimmering through the limbs of the majestic old oaks and then sliding off across the frosty fields! What a bucolic picture this would make! I pointed my camera and prepared to snap the shutter! However, before I could take the picture, I felt a nudge to my left shoulder. At first I thought it was my imagination, but then I began to feel an intense cold unlike any I had ever felt before in my life--it went clear to the bone. My eyes hurt, the temples on both sides of my head hurt, and my lips felt frozen. I snapped the picture and instantly returned to the comfort of the roaring fire in the fireplace. After I thawed out, I decided to review the picture I had just taken. When the picture came up, I was astonished to see no trees and no frosty moonlit fields but instead, a curtain of Ribbon Energy completely surrounding the entire side of the house. What was even more astonishing was a black demonic shape crossing into and through the ribbon energy on the left! It looked like the Ribbon Energy had even tried to get out of its way! Evidently, this was the thing that had nudged me! With all the strange entities I have encountered over the years, I never encountered one like this and can offer no explanation for its existence. I just feel that some of you more experienced ghost hunters out there are itching to identify this ‘demon’ for me and I am itching to find out what it is, so don’t keep me in the dark any longer, please tell me! Someone told me it was the Shadow of Death looking for its next victim! I didn’t wake up dead the next morning so that theory was shot to hell!


I have simply named the next picture ‘copycat’ energy. I can not think of a more appropriate description. There is another picture taken in this same room with the same entities, but in the other one the only difference is that the three ghosts have ‘water spigot’ heads! Might be a real 'turn-on' to another ‘spigot head’ but a 'turn-off' for me! Look at that poor lonely orb; it does not know what to think of all this ‘turn-on’ and ‘turn-off’ type of carrying-on!


Now, for that footprint on the rug. One of my resident ghosts who fought in the Civil War and lost his leg at the Battle of Hanover Courthouse, came back to his home with a wooden leg. Finding himself hampered and unable to carry on his daily chores, he got up one Sunday morning, took his pistol down off the mantle and blew his heart out. His ‘colored attendant’ Charles, heard the shot and came running. When he saw what had happened he picked up the pistol and blew his heart out. All this trauma took place in my bedroom. For years after that he could be heard walking throughout the house on his wooden leg, ‘thump-scuff, thump-scuff’. When I moved in, I placed Oriental Rugs on the floors. Then, just as he had always done in the ‘old days’, he would climb the stairs and stop and rest for an instant. Only now, as he stopped to rest, his one good foot would be on an Oriental rug. Not long after, this footprint began to grow. It grew to as much as ½ inch above the surrounding nap. Then the ‘warp and woof’ of the rug changed and the footprint became permanent and still exists today. I did get rather upset however, when an apparently identical footprint began to show up on the bedroom wall of a very dear girl friend of mine at her home. It arrived there when I arrived and left when I left. One night she and I got up real close and took picture after picture just to see if we could harass or embarrass ‘his majesty’. The only thing he did differently was to change into an orb and hide in the curtain. How droll, a voyeur footprint! How far will these entities go? It is quite evident that, although he may have ‘crossed over’ to the other side, he damn sure ain’t dead yet!

In one of these pictures where we have a ‘pink’ living room wall, look real close and you will see two very playful ‘snoot-nosed’ ghosts. They constantly play all over this old tenant house on a nearby plantation. It is rare for me to fail to get a good picture of their antics. However, the last time I took a picture they were not ‘in residence’ but instead I got a good picture of a very ‘cool’ portal, evidently the one they were using to go in and out of the house and they forgot to close it!

One of my favorite pictures is of Mr. and Mrs. Ghost, whomever they might be! A rather grouchy old Mr. Ghost and a homely demure Mrs. Ghost looking for all the world like she was worried silly about what she might need to do to please Mr. Ghost and he looking like he could care less!


Now find the picture of a demonic jewel-faced demon. You will have no trouble finding this one. No need to go into detail as he isn’t a ‘diamond in the rough’ or a jewel by no means.


The picture of a pussy cat or a 'doggie' and a seemingly human skull will amaze you. It was taken in the ‘trash pit’ beside an old late 1700’s tavern cookhouse. All the trash generated each day was burned in this pit. How the poor cat or dog ended up here along with what appears to be a human face plus other ghost faces of rats and mice is baffling. In order to see the cat/dog face plain, cock the picture to the left a little and it will pop out as clear as day beside the rock and facing left. Then align the picture straight up and down and back off a little. The incredible face of a human will appear using part of the cat/dog features. It will be facing right forward. A truly outstanding picture and one of a kind!


Now for that awesome Blue-faced Demon. I was out walking around the manor house grounds after dark one night and as I passed the big hedgerow of Austrian Pines something caught my eye moving around in one of them. When I approached for a closer look, there would be nothing there, then I would turn away and it would be there again. So I took a picture! What came up on the view screen gave me the ‘willies’! What kind of paranormal entity had I discovered now? In the natural order of things, your mind dictates that you immediately remove yourself from anything of an unrecognizable or ungodly nature and lay down a slick trail of residue to prevent it from following too closely or gaining on you. It would have been nice to have followed this inclination but various parts of my body were having an identity crisis something akin to my being built wrong, i.e., feet smelling and nose running and bowels not knowing which way to move! I survived, and although I am still at a loss for a sensible identification, this picture is one of my favorites. I truly believe it is a projected image put there by some higher intelligence so as to try to catch humans off-guard and scare them half to death! Imagine meeting a blue-faced demon like that in a hedgerow at night all alone!


Now look for two pictures of a Shirley Temple doll, a before and an after! It is owned by a very good friend of mine. I was photographing at her house one night and she and I decided to take a picture of the doll just to see if it might by chance be one of those ‘cursed’ dolls that always shows up in horror movies! Well, we did, it was, we got ‘em and we left ‘em!


Look at the picture taken in the graveyard. See the bright red creature. He is kind of a handsome fellow in his own right, but on a more closer look you can see two horns on his head and what appears to be fangs. I have no idea what those protrusions are that come out of his shoulders either but they could be the reverse of wings for I truly believe him to be Satan. He appears to be reaching into the graveyard through the chain-link fence and is pulling a young girls head up from the grave. The little girl died in 1908 at the age of 12 of smallpox! A devil of a looking ‘critter’ ain’t he?


My final picture is of the ghost of Arthur Allen who died in 1659. His antics over the years have made him one of the most famous and studied ghosts of all time. He resides in the graveyard at Lawne’s Creek Parish Church, circa 1639, in Surry County Virginia and takes his nightly jaunts to Bacon’s Castle, the home where he lived and died, on the property adjoining the cemetery. He had been exiled to Jamestown in 1643 after he was convicted of killing his brother over the love of a woman. Being a Prince in the House of Hanover in Germany, he could not be put to death but he could be exiled.

This, a most incredible picture, Woman and man ghosts in doorway, could very easy become the most outstanding ghost picture to be taken in years. It is a very distinct picture of two ghosts and I knew one of them personally. It is a she and her husband was a high ranking military official who had been my boss at one time. When he retired they purchased an old historic home and restored it. Part of the home is very old and during the Civil War it had served as a hospital during the bloody skirmishes at Five Forks. My own grandmother had owned the property at one time and I remember all the relics we used to find there when I was a kid. All these facts make for a very hot paranormal location. Today I am very close to one of her sons and his family. I visit often and during one such visit, I was managing to capture all sorts of entities both inside and out the house. I was standing in the kitchen, the oldest part of the house and was taking a picture back into an area currently used as an office. The location had produced some awesome pictures that night but nothing like this one. After I took the picture, I was spellbound. There standing in the doorway next to the kitchen table was the ghost of the deceased wife of this military man. When she died she had been buried in a black dress. She appeared here in this same black dress with her long gray hair. Her face a pallor gray! A burst of radiant energy had passed right in front of her and into the air above as though it was attempting to shield her from view. Then incredibly, another ghost became visible to her left. Her son identified this one as another son and his brother who had died earlier. A family portrait of the dead together in death! Incredible! One thing stood out above all else. She had loved this home dearly and had returned to be with her family to order to continue to enjoy it while watching over them. It gives you something to think about doesn’t it! If I never take another picture, this one was worth all my efforts in the past.

©BNKeys, ParanormalPlus.com 2003