Cameos

So it seems that while I have a huge engineering project and this wise project to do, I also have been helping bunches of other people with their projects. Most predominately, I'm walking in Lina Lee's fashion show and modeling her outfits, and yesterday was spent training the rest of her modeling how to properly walk on the runway. It fine, I consider it part of my duty as a model to do this, and Lina is my best friend. Besides that, I've helped do makeup for Aidan Bate's film, and helped my freinds Noa Davis and Jelle Shukken film on countless days. It always turned from " Katie can you hold this for a second?" To, " Katie can you get a nice panoramic shot of this?" And me fling for the next three hour block. Plus, Mr.Reiff will probably notice my small cameos in the videos, as serial killers and reporters etc. Pictured below is a fitting for Lina's fashion show. 

My mind is on WISE

Today's agenda contains me evaluating Kathleen and Lauren's presentation, this will be the second out of six presentations I will be attending, and the first I am evaluating out of four. Why does everyone want me to evaluate them? Hopefully seeing all of these presentations will give me better insight into how I should structure mine. Thinking of hosting it at my old house in the old meat locker if my mom permits it. 

Ithaca gun factory

So as I said I've been exploring lots of abandoned places, the old Ithaca gun factory is one of them. Seems to be a popular place for kids to go get stoned. This place has also been where I've been practicing the majority of urban artwork. Unfortunately, not too many actual buildings remain, just one and the smoke stack. It would be interesting to come here at night and take some EVPs. 

Have you found any ghosts?

This question always cracks me up. It seems to be the only thing anyone ever asks me. To be blunt, the answer is no, I have not. I have been relying on the use of my photos and film to try and capture something, as I do not have acess to professional equipment. What is a ghost anyways? What are you people expecting from me? So far this project has been me wandering and photographing abandoned buildings and contemplating the existence of ghosts, and that's basically what I expected. You people you don't even believe in ghosts, why are you badgering me about them. 

Here's a photo of a goose I took. 

Ghost Stories of Willard

Willard is famous for its hauntings, which is easy to believe. The buildings architecture just screams "creepy abandoned place", and its probably one of the most reportedly haunted places in the state of New York. I had the rare opportunity to hear firsthand stories from the staff, things you cannot find on the internet. Most of the people, if not all, who work there are volunteers with a love of history. These people are more skeptics than believers, but they all have their fair share of stories to tell. Most often they involve objects moving, footsteps one the second floors of buildings when no one else is there, and dark shadows moving through rooms. One woman recalls being upstairs in one of the condemned buildings, she had ventured up there without the rest of the staff, probably out of curiosity. All of the sudden, a rocking chair stared moving back and forth. Others then experinced the woman running down the stairs yelling " Who's fucking with me?!?" Nobody has confessed to fucking with her yet. 

Conditions at Willard

While on my tour of the facilities, we were assured that this was a cruelty free hospital, and that this was one of the first psychiatric hospitals to focus on rehabilitation on patients rather than locking them away. I can't seem to agree with this statement. The buildings that we were taken inside of were ones that were actually still in use, meaning they were nice and displayed qualities of psychiatric hospitals today. I on the other hand, was able to climb through the window of a condemned building to get an actual look at what they didn't exactly want us to see. My first post about willard contains my photographs from this experience, and in my next post I will upload the footage I took. What I saw were restraint  chairs, electrodes for electro-shock therapy, and restraint bath tubs for hydro-therapy, in which you were stuck into a boiling hot bathtub and left there. What I saw was actually strikingly similar to season two of American Horror Story: Asylum. My other reason for my disbelief is the Willard cemetery down the street. Over 7,000 Willard patients are buried there, each with only a small piece of metal with a stamped number to signify that they were there. No way to tell who they were or when they died. These patients were probably not even put in caskets. The morgue on campus still reeks of formaldehyde, a smell I'm all too familiar with from my AP biology dissections, and is full of refrigerators for bodies. Just the fact that over 7,000 people died there, over a short period of time, offers proof of the cruel treatment of the facility. Mental patients, even up until the 70s, were treated like animals, and locked away to die out of the eye of the public.

Reflections on Willard

As far as trips to Insane Asylums go, I guess this could be considered ideal. While the immense amount of people there wasn't perfect for investigation, I did get in on a legal basis. I found that most of the tourists were from out of state, and unfortunately rather out of shape. This worked in my favor though, as I was able to walk at a steady pace to the front of the group of about one hundred people, offering me the opportunity to actually talk to the tour guide. He was a volunteer who worked with the historical society, and seemed a bit overwhelmed by the number of people and the chaos they were causing, but was happy that I was asking real questions about the place. First I had to ask about previous investigators that had been there. He told me that in the past, people from the Travel channel had come to investigate, but unfortunately got into some actual records of people staying at the Drug Treatment Center nearby, a violation of HIPPA. Thus, quacks like these people are not ever allowed back, meaning that this would be my only chance to actually be inside these buildings, unless I were to sneak in ( which I wouldn't).

Willard Insane Asylum

Last weekend I had the unique opportunity to take a tour of the infamous Willard Insane Asylum, an experience I especially value now knowing that they will no longer be giving tours due to the incredible amount of people this year, and not to mention the damage they did...
Here are some rare photos I took from the inside of one of the condemned buildings.

Pictured here is a stray gurney among the peeling halls of the asylum, surrounded by several rooms, most of which were crumbling, but some of which still had pieces of furniture such as restraint chairs.

Here is one of the crumbling rooms, obviously destroyed by both time and trespassing visitors

A large eerie room, with nothing but part of an open desk, was probably used as a common room.

A room labeled as a treatment room, featuring two restraint chairs, commonly used on electroshock therapy, in which two electrodes are attached to the temples and various shocks are administered, usually in an effort to subdue bad behaviors.

lastly for this post, a lone television, dating from the 60's-70's sitting in the hallway in front of an empty treatment room.

Earliest Memory of a Haunting

Upon entering WISE class on this fine tuesday morning, Mr.Reiff alerted us of a Tuesday bonus post, in which we should tell of our first experience with our WISE topic. For me, that would be my first experience with the paranormal, or things of a haunted nature.

As I mentioned earlier I've been interested in the paranormal since I was in third grade. When I moved into the old Turback's mansion I had my first real experiences with things from the other side, or so I thought. I recall being spooked by the house since I moved in, maybe it was just the vast emptiness of the house, or maybe I had read too many ghost stories, but I never quite felt alone. The rooms were huge, and the light switches were always on one side of the room but not the other, so to me that meant turning the light off at night and sprinting through the dark room to get to the next one. It was always incredibly dark, due to the fact that there were no other houses outside to light up the area.  I had often pictured hands reaching out from the dark to grab me, but the majority of my experiences have actually taken place with the lights on. As it turns out, ghosts don't really care about the dark.

I often saw a bright blur go around a corner as I entered a room, but it became so common that I learned not to mind it. It was the other experiences that were out of the ordinary for me, one of the most vivid I remember was in the middle of winter in the master bedroom upstairs. There was a large window facing towards the back yard, and looking out into the forest behind the house could give anyone the creeps. But I recall the first time I saw a bright glowing orb outside. I had been sitting at the window staring out for no particular reason, when a bright ball of white left up in front of me, illuminating my face. It then floated a bit down and disappeared into nothing. My first thought was that it was a firefly or something, but the ground was completely covered in snow making it too cold for such  thing. After that I camped out under the window occasionally. Usually nothing happened, but a few times, when it was just late enough, I'd see it dance across the window, moving in zig-zag like patterns. I still have no idea what it was, but it continued to show up, move around for a bit, then disappear into thin air. That was probably my first real experience with the paranormal.

House of Eleven Gables Part 2

With all my talk of this house, I thought I'd gradually add more and more of my pictures from the site, pictured above is an "unfinished" part of the house, featuring a rather large hole in the ceiling and some original furniture that has been stored over here for whatever reason. There's dust and spiders absolutely everywhere, and even an old meat locker to my left. I shall be reporting back soon with some more photos.

What is Happiness?

During WISE class, we examined an an article that revisited the idea of happiness. Aristotle once said that above all else, men and women seek happiness, and everything we seek is only because we expect it to make us happy. Aristotle had a good idea going there, because I will admit yes, everything I do can be connected back to my own well-being an happiness, even things I don't particularly enjoy doing I do because I will supposedly reap the benefits of it later. For example, I don't exactly enjoy taking tests, and besides the fact that I have to, I take them because it is (supposed to) improve my grade, furthering my education and bringing me one step closer to graduating and being able to be on my own and free. As I said, it can all be connected somehow. But, the author of this article revisits this idea and adds his own interpretation: He states that when we are so occupied by something that we do not have to think of  how it will make us happy in the end, we are experiencing real happiness. The idea is called "flow", and you can't work for it, or try to find it, it happens on its own when one's skills and challenges are at an equilibrium.

This brings me to the first question: When do you feel the most happy? If I had to pick a situation above all others when I felt happy it would have to be when I was with my best friend. Just when we're together by ourselves we both seem pretty damn happy, and in those moments I am not thinking of anything else besides being with that person, I'm not even thinking about how happy it makes me until afterwards, in the moment I'm just feeling it and letting it happen. We don't have to entertain one another, we don't even have to talk to each other, there's just a sheer contentment that exists. True friendship is when you don't have to bore one another with small-talk, and you can both just shut up and live in the moment. Yet being around him is something I work hard to set up, we have to make plans to be able to hang out with each other, which arguably is me working towards happiness, so in some ways I disagree with the author, because happiness can be worked towards, all that matters is how you feel in the moment. Pictured on the right is me with my horse Annie, riding horses has always been another thing that distracts me from everything else in life and arguably brings me happiness.

In terms of my WISE project, I'm very content when I'm out in the field doing work with my partner, yet that takes a lot to set up, and can bring lots of stress. I guess that my challenges certainly do outweigh my skills in this situation because that's the whole point of a WISE project, earning new skills and using them to make a final product. To try and achieve more happiness in my project, I must work on improving my skills, both my investigation skills and WISE blogging skills etc. It was a lot easier earlier in the year when the deadlines were farther away. Anyways, I continue to seek happiness like the rest of the human race, and I'll probably never be able to really explain what it is, nor will I be able to tell you when I find it.

A Review of Some Interesting Photos

Trap cameras have been used since the 90s for capturing photos of wildlife without disturbing the animal or frightening it away. Because of this, paranormal investigators have often used them in hopes of capturing rare glimpses of spirits. Often, the images captured resemble blurs, and to many people seem to be significant evidence of life on the other side, but to determine the validity of the use of these cameras, one must first understand how they work, and what, in theory, we are(trying) to capture on film.

A trap camera works by utilizing a motion, infrared, or light beam trigger. When something moves, the beam is triggered and activates the shutter. Although this is very effective in photographing wildlife, even the smallest movements, such as a leaf moving in the wind, can set off the camera.  This means, that for the camera to be set off, something of matter has to move, and depending on your definition of a spirit, it may or may not contain matter. The solution to this problem is an infrared trigger. It is hypothesized among the supernatural community that spirits give off unusually hot or cold heat signatures, this a sudden gust of cold air could set off the infrared trap camera. While Ghost Hunters of the Fingerlakes do not elaborate on what type of trap camera they used, they have provided images that were captured by trap cameras.

In this first photo on the left, a psychic that had been brought in reported a large black mass floating above them. Later, this was caught on a trap camera. The black mass does not appear to represent any type of form or figure, but the fact that it is so solid and appears to be moving could confirm that it is not a simple out of place shadow. Although, one can investigate the various plausible options for this occurrence, such as a small bug such as a fly, flying in front of the camera. A bug would theoretically be going slow enough to trigger the camera, but fast enough to not appear properly rendered on film, thus creating a blur. Then again, the shape that is being formed by whatever the object is, is very sharp and geometric, and even a creature going very fast would still form a somewhat organic shape. Conclusion: not enough evidence to be pronounced a supernatural occurrence, but no obvious natural explanation.

Next we have a photo of a room in a notoriously haunted house that was snapped by a team member and not a trap camera. As you can see, there appears to be a small string of white light above the window towards the right. This has an obvious explanation, and can be attributed to a small piece of dust floating trough the air close to the lens. Often dust is clumped together in very small strings, as one can see when bright light shines through a window into a room. Dust floats just slowly enough that is can be captured on film as it floats by, and due to its minuscule size and the camera being focused on the room, it appears as a string of white light. While I may be wrong, the explanation for this seems obvious to me.

What we have next is probably the most interesting of the photos, and certainly raises the most questions. This set of three photos in a row was taken by a trap camera, and appear to be taken right after one another. Although, the differences in lighting in the photos could indicate otherwise. First we see a plain empty room, and it is unclear what set off the trap camera. In the second photo, there is a very clear image of a woman sitting as if at a desk, even though she is not facing the desk that is actually there. In the third photo, an investigator moves over to the laptop, seemingly intersecting her, as she looks like she is beginning to fade away. The clarity of the figure in these photos is impeccable, and rather surprising, as photos of "spirits" are often too blurry to make out. This though, is clearly a woman. Because the investigator moved over to the laptop, it is obvious that she was not visible to him, which indicates that she is indeed not made out of  matter, which begs the question, how did this figure set off the trap camera? As I mentioned earlier, the camera could be using infrared triggers, but it is not clear. Some theories state that spirits can be made out on film and not to the human eye, which begs yet another question, what does the camera see that we do not? No matter what the scientific basis for these photos, they are extremely interesting and are enough evidence to lead to further investigation of the site.

In Mulder We Trust

If you have ever watched " The X-Files" you know that agents Mulder and Scully are juxtaposed to show the contrasting beliefs of fanatics and skeptics. This eventually leaves all of us fans wondering, "Am I Mulder or am I Scully?". In reality, we'd all like to be Scully. Sure, who wouldn't want to be a sexy paranormal investigator from the 90's, but thats not the real reason we want to be her. She represents the skeptics among us, and in many ways we'd all like to believe that we're rational, and scientific. Who wouldn't want to be logical? But, you'll find that the majority of people out there have mindsets more similar to agent Mulder, we want to believe, and often we're driven by our own personal reasons to do things. After some soul searching, it has occurred to me that the reason I am doing this project is because I want to find something. Thats much more exciting than making some good scientifc observations about things that can be explained by ordinary events. No matter how scientific I try to be, I'll always end up looking for something fantastic, which means I'll be inherently biased. I'll just have to keep that in mind when investigating.

What Am I Doing

Deadlines? Oh boy. This, is indeed a topic that I have much experience with, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm good with them. My relationship with deadlines could be described as chaotic, disorderly, unpredictable, and entropic. I recall my early years of high school, in which my ability to meet these looming endpoints called deadlines was pretty straightforward. Be given an assignment, be told when the assignment is due by,  do the assignment by that date, and hand it in. As my years in this penitentiary have passed, the deadlines became looser, and my ability to meet them became more and more relaxed, until senior year when it seemed I had dug myself into a grave and promptly sat in it waiting for someone else to start shoveling dirt onto me. I've found that this is what it feels like to be behind. I've spent many hours contemplating as to why I would do such a thing to myself, surely I have enough free time to complete things. Much of my time from elementary school to now was spent being praised for being a prodigy, which unfortunately gave me the idea that I was above doing the menial tasks I was presented in school. An existential crisis did not help this situation, as I was left asking questions such as "why am I doing this?", "what is the point?", and of course " We're all gonna die anyways, why should I waste my time working on these mediocre assignments for someone else when I could be enjoying my time here on this rock floating through space we call Earth?". Perhaps I had spent too much time around stoned college drop-outs. Yeah, that was probably it.
The point is, deadlines remained important even though my views on them deemed them unimportant. Now that I've been accepted into my top school, I've started to realize that I really need to stop fucking around with deadlines. They're here for a reason, and they'll probably be here for the rest of my miserable life. As Mr. Carver says, "You know you're an adult when you're miserable all of the time." Though I would probably never admit it to Mr. Carver, this statement really helped me realize that I am not the only one on this Earth that feels things such as this, and this is all inevitable so I should really stop fighting it. I've found that it helps me to divide my work into smaller tasks, and create checklists out of them. If you look at all your work as one big task, you'll probably be too overwhelmed to do it. But, if you can complete one part of the task at a time, it feels as though you're completing more tasks than you actually are. Thus, an increase in one's self esteem and ability to complete work. Even though every single student hates to hear these words, you can do so much if you just apply yourself and stop spending all of your time watching Breaking Bad.

House of Eleven Gables: Part 1

Ithaca may not be as notorious as Gettysburg for its hauntings, but there are some places that I know of that might capture the interests of the curious few. I'm sure that there exists many houses that people believe are haunted, but what about more public and well known places? The first place that comes to mind is the Babcock mansion, formerly a residence, before that the restaurant known as Turback's, and countless other things. This house is well over 200 years old, and rests atop a small hill, looming over route 13 towards Elmira. If you live in Ithaca, I'm sure you've passed this house plenty of times, maybe even trespassed on the property. It was nicknamed " The House of Eleven Gables" for its striking architecture, but the name evokes thoughts of Salem's infamous House of Seven Gables. Whether or not the house has any history with witches is undetermined. I originally discovered this name after being in the back of the house before the owners bulldozed what was there. Behind a small grove of pines behind the house was the ruins of the old farm's slaughterhouse, and the foundation of the burnt down barn. The forest itself was littered with rusted playground equipment and overrun by lilac bushes. One day as I made my way through the mess, pushing aside the lovely flowers, I discovered a huge wooden sign, with peeling green paint that read "House of Eleven Gables".  Being young and having no familiarity with Salem, I simply assumed it had to do with the gables on the house, and quickly put it out of my mind. But now that I can see the connections between the two places, I begin to wonder if they have any connects through history as well.
I'll be adding to this story regularly, so be sure to check back for updates.

A Trip to the Graveyard

 My partner and I ended up taking a trip to the large graveyard up by College-town, in which we wandered and started to film. I've decided that we will be filming most of our endeavors and arrange all of the footage into a documentary of the sort detailing our experiences. Recently, we have had much inspiration from watching the X-Files, and have deeded to try and solve things through scientific means. Who is Mulder and who is Scully has yet to be determined.

While noting particularly exciting happened at the cemetery( maybe because it was broad daylight) we did find a fallen flag pole in the Veteran's section, as seen above. As you can see the pole fell and landed directly in front of the headstones, narrowly missing them. If one were to calculate directly where this flagpole would have landed, it should have hit the headstones, most likely breaking them. My background as an engineer has been helping me through these sort of situations, and to notice what others might see as purely coincidental. As a skeptic it is my first thought that the winds were strong and not included into my calculations, and that could have caused the pole to fall in such a way. Nonetheless, it is very intriguing to imagine that there were paranormal forces influencing it.

To the right is a headstone with nothing except my name on it. These were very common in poor folk who could not afford headstones with their full name and date of death on it. Due to the weathering, I would say that this dates to around the Civil War era or so, as this practice fell out of style later. I must say though, seeing my own name like that did intrigue me.

Upcoming Plans

This coming weekend my team and I will be doing a graveyard investigation, we'll probably bring a DSLR camera and video recorder to try and capture evidence, and maybe an EMF detector plus whatever else we can get our hands on. As this is our first outing, we're going to keep it simple and see what happens and try and format the rest of our outings based on what happens at this one. I'll have a detailed report out of our experience and many new pictures to post within the next few days.
                                                                                             

Who inspires me?

Inspirational figures come rarely for me. Most often I feel a sort of disdain for people, especially the ones in the media, but every so often one comes along that seems to inspire me. Take for example Natalia Vodianova, Russian supermodel. Natalia was born into a hard life, and found her big break within her looks, but she was not content with simply being well-off, she wanted to help others like her as well, so she started a huge charity in Russia for orphaned children and continues to be one of Russia's most prominent Philanthropists. As a model this in particular stands out to me. I mean, this industry is cutthroat, its aimed towards the betterment of oneself, and to see someone within the industry acting selflessly inspires me to do the same.
But that has nothing to do with ghosts.
Now that I think about it, this project has nothing to do with the betterment of others, its more about my own curiosity, and need for adventure. Maybe I should have chosen a more selfless path, but I guess it will be nice after all this time to just focus on something "fun", if you can define ghost hunting as fun. We'll see how this plays out.

An introduction of the sort

When my friends Laura and Melody first pitched me the idea of creating a paranormal investigation service, I thought yeah sure, that sounds fun, but we know nothing about this. Which is true. And even if we did, by some miracle, manage to start one, there is only a small minority of people that believe in ghosts enough to hire us, and we're not even professionals.  If you were to ask me my scientific opinion, when we die we get buried in dirt, and thats the end. Its all blackness from there on out, and you decompose until not even your memory remains. Thinking in such a way is often called "pessimism". Yet, the naive side of me always had a this incredible longing to believe that something greater happens, that part of us still exists after we're long gone. You have to remember, matter is never created or destroyed, so we could still leave physical imprints on Earth long after we're dead. I guess this is more optimistic. It gives one more of a sense of purpose to think that there is something greater going on around them, you don't feel so mortal after all. It was this way of thinking, along with some of my firsthand experiences with the paranormal, that decided to make me go for it.

Although I've been more logical and straightforward as a teenager, as a child I was infatuated with ghosts. This obsession started at the age of 8 or so, when I saw the show "Ghost Hunters" on tv. From there I explored the depths of the internet, looking for videos, evidence, of life on the other side. Even during recess I would hang out in the library scouring the shelves for books on ghosts. Granted, this wasn't a normal obsession for a little girl to have. Most of my friends we're interested in Club Penguin and jump rope, but I earned the reputation as "the weird ghost girl" that brought a ouija board to school. I didn't mind though, as a very small and fragile child I enjoyed the intimidation that my hobby invoked in others.

As I got older, and became more self-aware(sorta), I tried harder and harder to keep my interest in the other side under wraps. I would pretend to be disinterested in the subject, as to not tarnish my reputation. As a teenager everything matters, and everything could possibly be the end of the world. Though as of recent, this has begun to die down. I realized that I simply do not give a fuck about others opinions anymore, and that I am going to pursue what I enjoy. So to anyone reading this, thinking that I'm crazy for starting a paranormal investigation service, I don't care, have your laugh or whatever. When my good friend came up to me, asking me to join her in exploring the paranormal, I gladly accepted, hoping that my years of knowledge on the subject could help us. Not to mention, the thrill of encountering a ghost is comparable to nothing else. So no matter what you believe, I invite you to join me in the investigation of the possibilities of life after death.