What Lies Beyond

I Lived In a Haunted House

  Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay No, really. I used to live in a haunted house. A friend of mine on Twitter, author Aaron Clayton, posted a question on Twitter the other day. He was wanting to know whether or not his followers believed in ghosts. I had to chime in as I know, first hand, that ghosts are real. As I said before, I used to live in a haunted house. When I was about 14/15, my parents moved us into a little apartment building. When I say little, I'm talking about an old house that had been converted into an apartment complex. There were a total of 4 apartments in the whole place; 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs. My parents and I lived in the back basement apartment and some friends of theirs lived in the front part. My brother and his wife were living in the front upstairs apartment, but the back upstairs space was empty. Nothing seemed out of the normal. That was soon to change. About a year after we'd moved in, my sister and her husband moved into the back upstairs apartment. It was the smallest one in the whole place. A single bedroom, the kitchen and living room were pretty much one space, and a bathroom that had originally been a closet. It was tiny. But it's what happened after they'd moved in that caught our attention. It didn't seem like much at first. When they first moved in, little things just seemed to get misplaced. My mom's car keys, the neighbor kids' school books, one of my sister-in-law's glass unicorns. Nothing major, just enough to keep all of us wondering what the hell was going on. Because we were all basically one big happy family, we were always in each other's…
crgraves
a month ago

Mothman and Other Winged Cryptid Legends

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay   Throughout history, there have been tales of large, winged creatures that appear humanoid. One of the most famous of these tales is that of The Mothman. In the 1960s, sightings came to light of a large, winged "man" with red, glowing eyes and who flew faster than a car traveling at about 100 miles an hour.  Not only did this creature become one of the United States' most famous modern myths, it also put the little town of Point Pleasant, VA on the map. According to the legend, Mothman was thought to reside in an abandoned munitions factory leftover from the 2nd world war. This factory helped with the manufacturing of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Once the bomb was dropped, the factory closed its doors. Rumors began to circulate that the creature living within was a mutation created by the radioactive materials still in the factory. For over a year, sightings of this winged beast filled the townsfolk with fear. Then, on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed. The nearly half-mile-long suspension bridge, that connected Point Pleasant with Gallipolis, OH, collapsed in the middle of rush-hour traffic. 46 people lost their lives, 2 of which were never found. Sighting of the Mothman dropped to almost nothing after this event. Some say the beast was the cause of the collapse, others say it was trying to send a warning. Which could be correct? There are several modern stories about humanoid creatures with wings flying around before great catastrophes. In 1926, the Xiaon Te Dam gave way and flooded the area. More than 15,000 people died in the disaster. Many claimed that they had sighted a "man-dragon" flying through the air in the days before the event. Was this the creature…
crgraves
a month ago

The Story of the Three Little Pigs

How the story of the three little pigs relates to the development of Britain Image by ArtTower from Pixabay    I was watching a show tonight that sparked something in me that I didn't expect. I'm a huge fan of ancient history, especially Ancient Britons. One of my favorite documentary series is a show called Mystic Britain. I love that they try to go back as far in time as possible. So how does any of this relate to the story of the three little pigs? Allow me to explain my "epiphany". We all know the story of the three little pigs. They try to avoid the big bad wolf by building houses to keep them safe. There's a house of straw, a house of sticks, and a house of bricks. The last is the only one that isn't susceptible to the wolf's terror. Now, up to the point of watching a particular episode of Mystic Britain, I would have never put these 2 concepts together. But hear me out. The episode I watched was called Ice Age Shaman and it discussed an area known as Star Carr. This site has produced finds that go back some 11,000 years.  One of the things found at Star Carr is signs of holding one of the oldest "houses" in all of Britain. Archaeologists deduced from stains and potholes found in the ground that the "house" was most likely a small, round hut. The show's host and 2 archaeo-architects created what they thought the house would look like, using only materials that would have been available to humans that far back in time. They created a small house made of straw. They estimate the time of the house, and the archaeology around it, to be around 11,000 years old. That would put…
crgraves
2 months ago

Stargate Universe

Image by Xpics from Pixabay You may not know this--and you probably don't--but I'm a huge Sci-Fi fan. I'm not one of those people who is either pro-Star Trek or pro-Star Wars, I love them both. But my all-time favorite is the Stargate franchise. I remember when the movie came out with James Spader and Kurt Russel. I mean, damn, that movie was my "awakening". When Stargate SG1 came out on television, I never missed an episode. I've had a thing for Richard Dean Anderson since his MacGyver days. He's always been yummy in my book. But the whole series was just awesome. As an ancient history fanatic, it spoke to every aspect of my nerd life. Yes, boys and girls, I'm a huge nerd and I'm okay with that. Then Stargate Atlantis came out and I was over the moon happy. I do wish they would have followed the Merlin storyline, but that's a different post. However, I fell in love with the whole story...to a point. As this series wore on, it became boring and I drifted away. If I had known it was going to lead to another series, I might have stuck around a little longer. I am also a huge fan of Lou Diamond Phillips. I follow him on Twitter and was thrilled to find out that he actually interacts with his fans. He's even retweeted a couple of my responses to him. I felt like a rock star. But imagine my surprise when I found out that he was on the series Stargate Universe. Wait, there's a new Stargate show? And LDP is a character? And I missed it? What the hell? Yes, kids, this old broad went and found the show and am in the process of binge-watching it as we speak.…
crgraves
2 months ago

Delving Into the Para-Mythic World

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay Welcome to the world of the Para-Mythic. A mixture of the paranormal and the mythologies that have surrounded mankind since the dawn of time. My name is Christine Graves and I'll be your host on this strange ride. Okay, here's the thing. I started a blog called Para-Mythic on a Blogger site a long time ago. I've updated it here and there, but never really got anywhere. And I have no one to blame but myself. However, I now have a place where I can bring all my blogs together in one showcase and maybe actually get some real stuff up and going. So what's Para-Mythic to me? Oh hey, thanks for asking. I'm a huge mythology buff and I dig a lot of the paranormal stuff. I'm not a fan of horror and all things gory, but I do like to research the strange and unusual. I have a passion for the unknown, the histories and mysteries of our world, and the idea that there might be something beyond what we can see and hear. So come along and let's see where this trail takes us. Will we find a new world? An old myth come to life? Maybe, maybe not. But we'll have a lot of fun on the way.
crgraves
3 months ago