Phenomena
Santa Claus, et al...
Excerpt from the GHOSTVILLAGE.COM NEWSLETTER #122 - December 16, 2011_
By Jeff Belanger
The holiday season is here! When you have a four-year-old, like I do -- it's magic. It’s supernatural. It’s awesome. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Santa Claus these days. My friend Al told me recently that he was struggling with telling his four-year-old daughter about Santa Claus. “It’s the only lie I’ve ever told her,” he said. I was quick to respond that Santa is not a lie. He’s a legend. All legends have a solid foundation in someone’s reality. From there the story grows and evolves; it becomes part of a collective human experience. Legends are real. The point can’t be argued.
Of all the legends in America, there can be none as prominent, or as real, as that of St. Nick. Like Bigfoot, I don’t have to tell you what Santa looks like, where he’s from, or what he does. The very name is synonymous with his deeds, but before there was the holiday hoopla, there was a man—a regular man who was the foundation of something extraordinary.
Nicholas lived in the land of Myra around 300 A.D. He was the only child of a wealthy family and was orphaned at a young age. A true philanthropist, and inspired by a person named Jesus who lived long ago, Nicholas gave away his wealth. He left gifts for children in their shoes, he was known to toss small sacks of gold through open windows, and to lavish affection upon the poor.
The Catholic Church canonized him shortly after his death, making him St. Nicholas. Incorporating Nicholas and his spirit of generosity into the Christmas season was a natural fit for the Church.
Over the centuries, Nicholas’s story was passed around through a natural folklore process. He was copy-catted by others who took joy in giving away money and toys to poor children. As the centuries passed, his legend grew to mythic proportions and took on supernatural attributes.
The Dutch people called this figure “Sinter Klaas,” and brought him over to New York when they arrived in the seventeenth century. Washington Irving wrote about this figure in his History of New York where he described the arrival of the Saint on horseback, but it was a poem penned by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823 that defined Santa Claus, his sled, the reindeer, what he looks like, and his chimney-arrival behavior. That poem is called “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” and in 1931 the Coca Cola Company made the figure of Santa in a red suit with white fur trim a cultural icon as part of their advertising campaigns.
The first time a child meets Santa Claus, it’s like meeting the world’s biggest celebrity. Most of us never forget the racing heartbeats, the giddy excitement, or maybe even the fear of meeting this omniscient, supernatural being who can lay your most desired toy under the Christmas tree, or crush you with lumps of coal and sticks in your stocking.
As we get older, our ideas of Santa morph and evolve until many of us actually become Father Christmas—either at the office holiday party or when we have children of our own. The Santa experience offers genuine miracles on both sides of the fluffy white beard in a world where most mysteries are dying off at an alarming rate.
I don’t care if you’re Christian or not. I'm a paranormal guy. I believe in possession. In Judaism there’s the concept of the “Dybbuk,” which is a type of spirit possession. This possession can be a bad thing: like if you're inclined to drink too much or do drugs, a spirit that did that in life may cling to you and push you over the edge; or it can be a good thing: you're trying to get healthy and exercise and a spirit who did that in life may be drawn to you to help. We get possessed by good ideas, gut instincts, and inspiration all of the time. We also get inspired by great legends... like Santa Claus.
Santa's legend and story has spread throughout the world. Each Christmas we get inspired... nay, possessed by this good spirit. I'm thrilled my daughter is eagerly awaiting St. Nick visiting our house in a few weeks.
By carrying on these traditions which were based on a real man, I become part of the legend. I write myself into the story. I write my daughter into the story in the hopes that one day she too will become possessed by the spirit of Christmas. That she will be reminded to behave because someone is out there watching, that she will feel the urge to give to charities a little more, that she will know there’s still magic in the world.
Believe in Santa, Al. His legend is real. He’s real. He’s you. He’s me. He’s a bit of all of us. And next year he’ll be back, because we’ll never stop needing him.
By Jeff Belanger
The holiday season is here! When you have a four-year-old, like I do -- it's magic. It’s supernatural. It’s awesome. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Santa Claus these days. My friend Al told me recently that he was struggling with telling his four-year-old daughter about Santa Claus. “It’s the only lie I’ve ever told her,” he said. I was quick to respond that Santa is not a lie. He’s a legend. All legends have a solid foundation in someone’s reality. From there the story grows and evolves; it becomes part of a collective human experience. Legends are real. The point can’t be argued.
Of all the legends in America, there can be none as prominent, or as real, as that of St. Nick. Like Bigfoot, I don’t have to tell you what Santa looks like, where he’s from, or what he does. The very name is synonymous with his deeds, but before there was the holiday hoopla, there was a man—a regular man who was the foundation of something extraordinary.
Nicholas lived in the land of Myra around 300 A.D. He was the only child of a wealthy family and was orphaned at a young age. A true philanthropist, and inspired by a person named Jesus who lived long ago, Nicholas gave away his wealth. He left gifts for children in their shoes, he was known to toss small sacks of gold through open windows, and to lavish affection upon the poor.
The Catholic Church canonized him shortly after his death, making him St. Nicholas. Incorporating Nicholas and his spirit of generosity into the Christmas season was a natural fit for the Church.
Over the centuries, Nicholas’s story was passed around through a natural folklore process. He was copy-catted by others who took joy in giving away money and toys to poor children. As the centuries passed, his legend grew to mythic proportions and took on supernatural attributes.
The Dutch people called this figure “Sinter Klaas,” and brought him over to New York when they arrived in the seventeenth century. Washington Irving wrote about this figure in his History of New York where he described the arrival of the Saint on horseback, but it was a poem penned by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823 that defined Santa Claus, his sled, the reindeer, what he looks like, and his chimney-arrival behavior. That poem is called “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” and in 1931 the Coca Cola Company made the figure of Santa in a red suit with white fur trim a cultural icon as part of their advertising campaigns.
The first time a child meets Santa Claus, it’s like meeting the world’s biggest celebrity. Most of us never forget the racing heartbeats, the giddy excitement, or maybe even the fear of meeting this omniscient, supernatural being who can lay your most desired toy under the Christmas tree, or crush you with lumps of coal and sticks in your stocking.
As we get older, our ideas of Santa morph and evolve until many of us actually become Father Christmas—either at the office holiday party or when we have children of our own. The Santa experience offers genuine miracles on both sides of the fluffy white beard in a world where most mysteries are dying off at an alarming rate.
I don’t care if you’re Christian or not. I'm a paranormal guy. I believe in possession. In Judaism there’s the concept of the “Dybbuk,” which is a type of spirit possession. This possession can be a bad thing: like if you're inclined to drink too much or do drugs, a spirit that did that in life may cling to you and push you over the edge; or it can be a good thing: you're trying to get healthy and exercise and a spirit who did that in life may be drawn to you to help. We get possessed by good ideas, gut instincts, and inspiration all of the time. We also get inspired by great legends... like Santa Claus.
Santa's legend and story has spread throughout the world. Each Christmas we get inspired... nay, possessed by this good spirit. I'm thrilled my daughter is eagerly awaiting St. Nick visiting our house in a few weeks.
By carrying on these traditions which were based on a real man, I become part of the legend. I write myself into the story. I write my daughter into the story in the hopes that one day she too will become possessed by the spirit of Christmas. That she will be reminded to behave because someone is out there watching, that she will feel the urge to give to charities a little more, that she will know there’s still magic in the world.
Believe in Santa, Al. His legend is real. He’s real. He’s you. He’s me. He’s a bit of all of us. And next year he’ll be back, because we’ll never stop needing him.
Do loved ones bid farewell from beyond the grave?
(CNN) -- Nina De Santo was about to close her New Jersey hair salon one winter's night when she saw him standing outside the shop's glass front door.
It was Michael. He was a soft-spoken customer who'd been going through a brutal patch in his life. His wife had divorced him after having an affair with his stepbrother, and he had lost custody of his boy and girl in the ensuing battle.
He was emotionally shattered, but De Santo had tried to help. She'd listened to his problems; given him pep talks, taken him out for drinks.
When De Santo opened the door that Saturday night, Michael was smiling.
"Nina, I can't stay long," he said, pausing in the doorway. "I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for everything."
They talked a bit more before Michael left and De Santo went home. On Sunday she received a strange call from a salon employee. Michael's body had been found the previous morning – at least nine hours before she talked to him at her shop. He had committed suicide.
If Michael was dead, who, or what, did she talk to that night?
"It was very bizarre," she said of the 2001 encounter. "I went through a period of disbelief. How can you tell someone that you saw this man, solid as ever, walk in and talk to you, but he's dead?"
Today, De Santo has a name for what happened that night: "crisis apparition." She stumbled onto the term while reading about paranormal activities after the incident. According to paranormal investigators, a crisis apparition is the spirit of a recently deceased person who visits someone they had a close emotional connection with, usually to say goodbye.
Reports of these eerie encounters are materializing in online discussion groups, books such as "Messages" – which features stories of people making contact with loved ones lost on September 11 – and local ghost hunting groups that have sprung up across the country amid a surge of interest in the paranormal.
Although such encounters are chilling, they can also be comforting, witnesses and paranormal investigators say. These encounters suggest the bond that exists between loved ones is not erased by death.
"We don't know what to do with these stories. Some people say that they are proof that there's life after death," said Steve Volk, author of "Fringe-ology," a book on paranormal experiences such as telepathy, psychics and house hauntings.
Scientific research on crisis apparitions is scant, but theories abound.
One theory: A person in crisis – someone who is critically ill or dying – telepathically transmits an image of themselves to someone they have a close relationship with, but they're usually unaware they're sending a message.
Sometimes you just sense the presence of someone close to you, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere.
Others suggest crisis apparitions are guardian angels sent to comfort the grieving. Another theory says it's all a trick of the brain – that people in mourning unconsciously produce apparitions to console themselves after losing a loved one.
A telepathic link between loved ones
Whatever the source for these apparitions, they often leave people shaken.
Nor are apparitions limited to visions. The spirit of a dead person can communicate with a loved one through something as subtle as the sudden whiff of a favorite perfume, Volk says.
"Sometimes you just sense the presence of someone close to you, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere," Volk said. "And afterward, you find out that person was in some kind of crisis at the time of the vision."
Many people who don't even believe in ghosts still experience a mini-version of a crisis-apparition encounter, paranormal investigators say.
Did you ever hear a story of a mother who somehow knows before anyone told her that something awful has happened to her child? Have you ever met a set of twins who seem to be able to read each other's minds?
People who are extremely close develop a virtual telepathic link that exists in, and beyond, this world, said Jeff Belanger, a journalist who collected ghost stories for his book, "Our Haunted Lives: True Life Ghost Encounters."
"People have these experiences all the time," Belanger said. "There's interconnectedness between people. Do you know how you're close to someone, and you just know they're sick or something is wrong?"
An eerie phone call at night
Simma Lieberman said she's experienced that ominous feeling and has never forgotten it – though it took place more than 40 years ago.
Today, Lieberman is a workplace diversity consultant based in Albany, California. In the late 1960s though, she was a young woman in love.
Her boyfriend, Johnny, was a mellow hippie "who loved everybody," a guy so nice that friends called him a pushover, she said. She loved Johnny, and they purchased an apartment together and decided to marry.
Then one night, while Lieberman was at her mother's home in the Bronx, the phone rang and she answered. Johnny was on the line, sounding rushed and far away. Static crackled.
"I just want you to know that I love you, and I'll never be mean to anybody again," he said.
There was more static, and then the line went dead. Lieberman was left with just a dial tone.
She tried to call him back to no avail. When she awoke the next morning, an unsettled feeling came over her. She said it's hard to put into words, but she could no longer feel Johnny's presence.
"Several hours later, I got a call from his mother that he had been murdered the night before," she said.
Johnny was shot in the head as he sat in a car that night. Lieberman thinks Johnny somehow contacted her after his death – a crisis apparition reaching out not through a vision or a whiff of perfume, but across telephone lines.
She's sorted through the alternatives over the years. Could he have called before or during his murder? Lieberman doesn't think so.
This was the era before cell phones. She said the murderer wasn't likely to let him use a pay phone, and he couldn't have called after he was shot because he died instantly.
Only years later, when she read an article about other static-filled calls people claimed to have received from beyond the grave, did it make sense, she said.
Johnny was calling to say goodbye.
"The whole thing was so bizarre," she said. "I could never understand it."
He had a 'whitish glow'
Josh Harris' experience baffled him as well. It involved his grandfather, Raymond Harris.
Josh was Raymond's first grandchild. They spent countless hours together fishing and doing yard work in their hometown of Hackleburg, Alabama. You saw one, you saw the other.
Those days came to an end in 1997 when Raymond Harris was diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors gave him weeks to live. Josh, 12 at the time, visited his grandfather's house one night to keep vigil as his "pa-pa" weakened, but his family ordered him to return home, about two miles away.
Josh said he was asleep on the couch in his home around 2 a.m. when he snapped awake. He looked up. His grandfather was standing over him.
"At first, it kind of took me by surprise," said Harris, a maintenance worker with a gravelly Southern accent. "I wondered why he was standing in the hallway and not in his house with everyone else."
His grandfather then spoke, Harris said.
"He just looked at me, smiled and said, 'Everything will be OK.' "
His grandfather then turned around and started walking toward the kitchen. Harris rose to follow but spun around when the phone rang. An aunt who was in another room answered.
"When I turned back around to look, he was gone," Harris said.
As if on cue, his aunt came out of the room crying, "Josh, your pa-pa is gone."
"No, he was just here," Harris told his aunt, insisting that his grandfather had just stopped by to say everything was OK. He said it took him a day to accept that his grandfather had died.
"Honestly, before that, I never believed in the paranormal," he said. "I thought it was all fake and made up. But I just woke up and I saw him. It couldn't be my mind playing a trick. He looked solid."
Fourteen years after his grandfather's death, there's another detail from that night that's still lodged in Harris' memory.
As he watched his grandfather walk to the kitchen, he said he noticed something unusual.
"It looked like there was a whitish glow around him."
I never believed in the paranormal... but I just woke up and saw him.
'Can you come out and play?'
Childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence, a time when thoughts of death are far away. But crisis apparition stories aren't confined to adults and teens.
Donna Stewart was 6 years old and growing up in Coos Bay, Oregon. One of her best friends was Danny. One day, Danny had to go to the hospital to have his tonsils removed. Stewart played with him on the morning of the surgery before saying goodbye.
She said she was in her bedroom the next day when she looked up and saw Danny standing there. He wanted to know if she wanted to go out and play.
Stewart trotted to her mother's bedroom to ask her if she could play with Danny. Her mother froze.
"She went white," Stewart said. "She told me that wasn't possible."
Her mother broke the news. Danny had an allergic reaction during surgery and died, Stewart said.
"When I went back to my room, he was gone," she said.
Stewart, now an Oregon homemaker and a member of a paranormal investigative team, said the encounter changed the way she looked at death.
"These experiences have made me believe that those we love are really not that far away at all and know when we are not doing as well as we could," she said. "Just as they did in life, they offer comfort during crisis.''
Still, Stewart often replays the encounter in her mind. She asks the same questions others who've had such encounters ask: Did my mind play tricks on me? Could he have been alive? Did it all really happen after he died?
De Santo, the former New Jersey hair salon owner, has taken the same self-inventory. The experience affected her so much she later joined a group that investigates the paranormal.
She said she checked with Michael's relatives and poured through a coroner's report to confirm the time of his death, which was put at Friday night – almost 24 hours before she saw him at her salon on Saturday night.
She said Michael's body had been discovered by his cousin around 11 Saturday morning. Michael was slumped over his kitchen table, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.
De Santo was baffled at first, but now she has a theory.
Michael started off as a customer, but she became his confidant. Once, after one of her pep talks, Michael told her, "You make me feel as if I can conquer the world."
Maybe Michael had to settle affairs in this world before he could move on to the next, De Santo said.
"A lot of times when a person dies tragically, there's a certain amount of guilt or turmoil," she said. "I don't think they leave this Earth. They stay here. I think he kind of felt he had unfinished business. He needed to say goodbye."
And so he did, she said. This is how she described their last conversation:
As they chatted face to face in the doorway of her shop, De Santo said they never touched, never even shook hands. But she didn't remember anything unusual about him – no disembodied voice, no translucent body, no, "I see dead people" vibe, as in the movie "The Sixth Sense."
"I'm in a really good place now," she recalled him saying.
There were, however, two odd details she noticed at the time but couldn't put together until later, she said.
When she first opened the door to greet Michael, she said she felt an unsettling chill. Then she noticed his face – it was grayish and pale.
And when she held the door open for him, he refused to come in. He just chatted before finally saying, "Thanks again, Nina."
Michael then smiled at her, turned and walked away into the winter's night.
It was Michael. He was a soft-spoken customer who'd been going through a brutal patch in his life. His wife had divorced him after having an affair with his stepbrother, and he had lost custody of his boy and girl in the ensuing battle.
He was emotionally shattered, but De Santo had tried to help. She'd listened to his problems; given him pep talks, taken him out for drinks.
When De Santo opened the door that Saturday night, Michael was smiling.
"Nina, I can't stay long," he said, pausing in the doorway. "I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for everything."
They talked a bit more before Michael left and De Santo went home. On Sunday she received a strange call from a salon employee. Michael's body had been found the previous morning – at least nine hours before she talked to him at her shop. He had committed suicide.
If Michael was dead, who, or what, did she talk to that night?
"It was very bizarre," she said of the 2001 encounter. "I went through a period of disbelief. How can you tell someone that you saw this man, solid as ever, walk in and talk to you, but he's dead?"
Today, De Santo has a name for what happened that night: "crisis apparition." She stumbled onto the term while reading about paranormal activities after the incident. According to paranormal investigators, a crisis apparition is the spirit of a recently deceased person who visits someone they had a close emotional connection with, usually to say goodbye.
Reports of these eerie encounters are materializing in online discussion groups, books such as "Messages" – which features stories of people making contact with loved ones lost on September 11 – and local ghost hunting groups that have sprung up across the country amid a surge of interest in the paranormal.
Although such encounters are chilling, they can also be comforting, witnesses and paranormal investigators say. These encounters suggest the bond that exists between loved ones is not erased by death.
"We don't know what to do with these stories. Some people say that they are proof that there's life after death," said Steve Volk, author of "Fringe-ology," a book on paranormal experiences such as telepathy, psychics and house hauntings.
Scientific research on crisis apparitions is scant, but theories abound.
One theory: A person in crisis – someone who is critically ill or dying – telepathically transmits an image of themselves to someone they have a close relationship with, but they're usually unaware they're sending a message.
Sometimes you just sense the presence of someone close to you, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere.
Others suggest crisis apparitions are guardian angels sent to comfort the grieving. Another theory says it's all a trick of the brain – that people in mourning unconsciously produce apparitions to console themselves after losing a loved one.
A telepathic link between loved ones
Whatever the source for these apparitions, they often leave people shaken.
Nor are apparitions limited to visions. The spirit of a dead person can communicate with a loved one through something as subtle as the sudden whiff of a favorite perfume, Volk says.
"Sometimes you just sense the presence of someone close to you, and it seemingly comes out of nowhere," Volk said. "And afterward, you find out that person was in some kind of crisis at the time of the vision."
Many people who don't even believe in ghosts still experience a mini-version of a crisis-apparition encounter, paranormal investigators say.
Did you ever hear a story of a mother who somehow knows before anyone told her that something awful has happened to her child? Have you ever met a set of twins who seem to be able to read each other's minds?
People who are extremely close develop a virtual telepathic link that exists in, and beyond, this world, said Jeff Belanger, a journalist who collected ghost stories for his book, "Our Haunted Lives: True Life Ghost Encounters."
"People have these experiences all the time," Belanger said. "There's interconnectedness between people. Do you know how you're close to someone, and you just know they're sick or something is wrong?"
An eerie phone call at night
Simma Lieberman said she's experienced that ominous feeling and has never forgotten it – though it took place more than 40 years ago.
Today, Lieberman is a workplace diversity consultant based in Albany, California. In the late 1960s though, she was a young woman in love.
Her boyfriend, Johnny, was a mellow hippie "who loved everybody," a guy so nice that friends called him a pushover, she said. She loved Johnny, and they purchased an apartment together and decided to marry.
Then one night, while Lieberman was at her mother's home in the Bronx, the phone rang and she answered. Johnny was on the line, sounding rushed and far away. Static crackled.
"I just want you to know that I love you, and I'll never be mean to anybody again," he said.
There was more static, and then the line went dead. Lieberman was left with just a dial tone.
She tried to call him back to no avail. When she awoke the next morning, an unsettled feeling came over her. She said it's hard to put into words, but she could no longer feel Johnny's presence.
"Several hours later, I got a call from his mother that he had been murdered the night before," she said.
Johnny was shot in the head as he sat in a car that night. Lieberman thinks Johnny somehow contacted her after his death – a crisis apparition reaching out not through a vision or a whiff of perfume, but across telephone lines.
She's sorted through the alternatives over the years. Could he have called before or during his murder? Lieberman doesn't think so.
This was the era before cell phones. She said the murderer wasn't likely to let him use a pay phone, and he couldn't have called after he was shot because he died instantly.
Only years later, when she read an article about other static-filled calls people claimed to have received from beyond the grave, did it make sense, she said.
Johnny was calling to say goodbye.
"The whole thing was so bizarre," she said. "I could never understand it."
He had a 'whitish glow'
Josh Harris' experience baffled him as well. It involved his grandfather, Raymond Harris.
Josh was Raymond's first grandchild. They spent countless hours together fishing and doing yard work in their hometown of Hackleburg, Alabama. You saw one, you saw the other.
Those days came to an end in 1997 when Raymond Harris was diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors gave him weeks to live. Josh, 12 at the time, visited his grandfather's house one night to keep vigil as his "pa-pa" weakened, but his family ordered him to return home, about two miles away.
Josh said he was asleep on the couch in his home around 2 a.m. when he snapped awake. He looked up. His grandfather was standing over him.
"At first, it kind of took me by surprise," said Harris, a maintenance worker with a gravelly Southern accent. "I wondered why he was standing in the hallway and not in his house with everyone else."
His grandfather then spoke, Harris said.
"He just looked at me, smiled and said, 'Everything will be OK.' "
His grandfather then turned around and started walking toward the kitchen. Harris rose to follow but spun around when the phone rang. An aunt who was in another room answered.
"When I turned back around to look, he was gone," Harris said.
As if on cue, his aunt came out of the room crying, "Josh, your pa-pa is gone."
"No, he was just here," Harris told his aunt, insisting that his grandfather had just stopped by to say everything was OK. He said it took him a day to accept that his grandfather had died.
"Honestly, before that, I never believed in the paranormal," he said. "I thought it was all fake and made up. But I just woke up and I saw him. It couldn't be my mind playing a trick. He looked solid."
Fourteen years after his grandfather's death, there's another detail from that night that's still lodged in Harris' memory.
As he watched his grandfather walk to the kitchen, he said he noticed something unusual.
"It looked like there was a whitish glow around him."
I never believed in the paranormal... but I just woke up and saw him.
'Can you come out and play?'
Childhood is supposed to be a time of innocence, a time when thoughts of death are far away. But crisis apparition stories aren't confined to adults and teens.
Donna Stewart was 6 years old and growing up in Coos Bay, Oregon. One of her best friends was Danny. One day, Danny had to go to the hospital to have his tonsils removed. Stewart played with him on the morning of the surgery before saying goodbye.
She said she was in her bedroom the next day when she looked up and saw Danny standing there. He wanted to know if she wanted to go out and play.
Stewart trotted to her mother's bedroom to ask her if she could play with Danny. Her mother froze.
"She went white," Stewart said. "She told me that wasn't possible."
Her mother broke the news. Danny had an allergic reaction during surgery and died, Stewart said.
"When I went back to my room, he was gone," she said.
Stewart, now an Oregon homemaker and a member of a paranormal investigative team, said the encounter changed the way she looked at death.
"These experiences have made me believe that those we love are really not that far away at all and know when we are not doing as well as we could," she said. "Just as they did in life, they offer comfort during crisis.''
Still, Stewart often replays the encounter in her mind. She asks the same questions others who've had such encounters ask: Did my mind play tricks on me? Could he have been alive? Did it all really happen after he died?
De Santo, the former New Jersey hair salon owner, has taken the same self-inventory. The experience affected her so much she later joined a group that investigates the paranormal.
She said she checked with Michael's relatives and poured through a coroner's report to confirm the time of his death, which was put at Friday night – almost 24 hours before she saw him at her salon on Saturday night.
She said Michael's body had been discovered by his cousin around 11 Saturday morning. Michael was slumped over his kitchen table, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.
De Santo was baffled at first, but now she has a theory.
Michael started off as a customer, but she became his confidant. Once, after one of her pep talks, Michael told her, "You make me feel as if I can conquer the world."
Maybe Michael had to settle affairs in this world before he could move on to the next, De Santo said.
"A lot of times when a person dies tragically, there's a certain amount of guilt or turmoil," she said. "I don't think they leave this Earth. They stay here. I think he kind of felt he had unfinished business. He needed to say goodbye."
And so he did, she said. This is how she described their last conversation:
As they chatted face to face in the doorway of her shop, De Santo said they never touched, never even shook hands. But she didn't remember anything unusual about him – no disembodied voice, no translucent body, no, "I see dead people" vibe, as in the movie "The Sixth Sense."
"I'm in a really good place now," she recalled him saying.
There were, however, two odd details she noticed at the time but couldn't put together until later, she said.
When she first opened the door to greet Michael, she said she felt an unsettling chill. Then she noticed his face – it was grayish and pale.
And when she held the door open for him, he refused to come in. He just chatted before finally saying, "Thanks again, Nina."
Michael then smiled at her, turned and walked away into the winter's night.
French village seen as threat from Apocalypse sects
(edited for length)
By Vicky Buffery – Thu Jun 16, 4:30 am ET
PARIS (Reuters Life!) – The tiny southern French hamlet of Bugarach has drawn scrutiny from a government sect watchdog over droves of visitors who believe it is the only place in the world that will survive a 2012 Apocalypse.
A report by the watchdog, Miviludes, published on Wednesday said the picturesque village near Carcassonne should be monitored in the run-up to December 21, 2012, when many believe the world will end according to an ancient Mayan prophecy.
Miviludes was set up in 2002 to track the activity of sects, after a law passed the previous year made it an offence to abuse vulnerable people using heavy pressure techniques, meaning sects can be outlawed if there is evidence of fraud or abuse.
Surrounded in legend for centuries, Bugarach and its rocky outcrop, the Pic de Bugarach, have attracted an influx of New Age visitors in recent months, pushing up property prices but also raising the threat of financial scams and psychological manipulation, Miviludes said in its report.
Bugarach, with a population of just 200, has long been considered magical, partly due to what locals claim is an "upside-down mountain" where the top layers of rock are older than the lower ones.
The Internet is awash with myths about the place -- that the mountain is surrounded by a magnetic force, that it is the site of a concealed alien base, or even that it contains an underground access to another world.
And now many have seized on it as the ultimate refuge with Doomsday rapidly approaching.
Alerted to an influx of visitors by the mayor of Bugarach, Fenech said he recently visited the area, and found six settlements in the surrounding countryside set up by members of the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment.
Other "gurus" and messianic groups have been organising fee-paying conferences at local hotels, according to Fenech. "This is big business," he told Reuters.
Aside from the risks in Bugarach, the Miviludes report also warned of the danger of increased activity by Apocalyptic groups across France in the run-up to 2012, particularly in the wake of recent disasters which could be interpreted as omens.
Climate and environmental fears, anxiety over pandemics after the 2009 swine flu outbreak, and the earthquake disaster in Japan are all reinforcing the idea of the Mayan calendar, Fenech said.
Among the groups highlighted in the report, the Ramtha movement is said to be focussing on southwestern France to spread its message, the report said.
Founded by J.Z. Knight, the group claims to follow the mystic teachings of Ramtha, a Lemurean warrior who fought the residents of the mythical Atlantis 35,000 years ago, and is said to have discovered the secret of immortality.
Other groups being watched include the Raelians, founded by a former sports-car journalist who claims to have had repeated encounters with aliens.
The report says its aim is not to stigmatise movements but to inform the public about "groups or individuals whose doctrine or discourse follows an "end-of-world" theory."
(edited for length)
By Vicky Buffery – Thu Jun 16, 4:30 am ET
PARIS (Reuters Life!) – The tiny southern French hamlet of Bugarach has drawn scrutiny from a government sect watchdog over droves of visitors who believe it is the only place in the world that will survive a 2012 Apocalypse.
A report by the watchdog, Miviludes, published on Wednesday said the picturesque village near Carcassonne should be monitored in the run-up to December 21, 2012, when many believe the world will end according to an ancient Mayan prophecy.
Miviludes was set up in 2002 to track the activity of sects, after a law passed the previous year made it an offence to abuse vulnerable people using heavy pressure techniques, meaning sects can be outlawed if there is evidence of fraud or abuse.
Surrounded in legend for centuries, Bugarach and its rocky outcrop, the Pic de Bugarach, have attracted an influx of New Age visitors in recent months, pushing up property prices but also raising the threat of financial scams and psychological manipulation, Miviludes said in its report.
Bugarach, with a population of just 200, has long been considered magical, partly due to what locals claim is an "upside-down mountain" where the top layers of rock are older than the lower ones.
The Internet is awash with myths about the place -- that the mountain is surrounded by a magnetic force, that it is the site of a concealed alien base, or even that it contains an underground access to another world.
And now many have seized on it as the ultimate refuge with Doomsday rapidly approaching.
Alerted to an influx of visitors by the mayor of Bugarach, Fenech said he recently visited the area, and found six settlements in the surrounding countryside set up by members of the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment.
Other "gurus" and messianic groups have been organising fee-paying conferences at local hotels, according to Fenech. "This is big business," he told Reuters.
Aside from the risks in Bugarach, the Miviludes report also warned of the danger of increased activity by Apocalyptic groups across France in the run-up to 2012, particularly in the wake of recent disasters which could be interpreted as omens.
Climate and environmental fears, anxiety over pandemics after the 2009 swine flu outbreak, and the earthquake disaster in Japan are all reinforcing the idea of the Mayan calendar, Fenech said.
Among the groups highlighted in the report, the Ramtha movement is said to be focussing on southwestern France to spread its message, the report said.
Founded by J.Z. Knight, the group claims to follow the mystic teachings of Ramtha, a Lemurean warrior who fought the residents of the mythical Atlantis 35,000 years ago, and is said to have discovered the secret of immortality.
Other groups being watched include the Raelians, founded by a former sports-car journalist who claims to have had repeated encounters with aliens.
The report says its aim is not to stigmatise movements but to inform the public about "groups or individuals whose doctrine or discourse follows an "end-of-world" theory."
A possible explanation for strange goings on? Here is the opinion of a long ago guest on the Coast To Coast AM radio show; Red Elk. this was posted on his now outdated website some time ago:
URGENT! ALL visitors .... READ THIS:
Due to the upcoming Earth Shift, there is an event that has recently started that, if you are unaware of it, may cause you mental distress ... even Madness.
Our inner Earth's plates are grating, creating a vibration that is now opening, or thinning, various "veils". All will be experiencing mental/body "shifts" due to this.
The veils will get thinner and much more frequent as time goes on. These veils will reveal phenomena, such as visually seeing Angels, Demonic Beings, various Inner Land Beings, more UFO sightings, etc.
Parallel Time Shifts will take place as well. We are made of the Earth, and are thus attuned to it. What has already started, and will get stronger, is as natural as breathing. By BEING AWARE that these things are before you, you will not be as anxious. We serve an awesome Heavenly Father.
This knowledge alone will allow you to accept and understand. BE NOT AFRAID!
Again, THIS IS NATURAL, and happens at each earth flip.
Bend like a green reed and you'll be safe.
HO
Red Elk
What do you think?
URGENT! ALL visitors .... READ THIS:
Due to the upcoming Earth Shift, there is an event that has recently started that, if you are unaware of it, may cause you mental distress ... even Madness.
Our inner Earth's plates are grating, creating a vibration that is now opening, or thinning, various "veils". All will be experiencing mental/body "shifts" due to this.
The veils will get thinner and much more frequent as time goes on. These veils will reveal phenomena, such as visually seeing Angels, Demonic Beings, various Inner Land Beings, more UFO sightings, etc.
Parallel Time Shifts will take place as well. We are made of the Earth, and are thus attuned to it. What has already started, and will get stronger, is as natural as breathing. By BEING AWARE that these things are before you, you will not be as anxious. We serve an awesome Heavenly Father.
This knowledge alone will allow you to accept and understand. BE NOT AFRAID!
Again, THIS IS NATURAL, and happens at each earth flip.
Bend like a green reed and you'll be safe.
HO
What do you think?