Doing an EVP session Below Pasadena's Suicide Bridge
More Steve pics
The "Old Fart" of the bunch, Steve has had paranormal experiences for over 40 years, and began studying the paranormal in 1996 after an event at the Queen Mary in Long Beach (story below).
Steve began seriously studying ghosts and
such in earnest in 1999, and Claranormal has well over a century of paranormal
experiences behind it.
Steve has appeared on "Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood" along with Scott
from Claranormal.
Steve is the chief editor of Claranormal, and a lead investigator. He also hosts
the Claranormal Talk Radio
show, heard on BlogTalkRadio.
Steve:
I've had paranormal experiences throughout my life,
but never really gave them
much thought until 1996. An avowed skeptic up to then, I put down that which seemed paranormal as imagination, coincidence,
trickery or foolishness, especially ghosts, even though I had had experience so
very much in this field. My belief has always been that there
is life after death, but that people on the other side surely would have
better things to do than haunt places and / or people, and I wouldn't believe in
any ghost's existence until I actually saw one with my own eyes.
Then I did. Face to face.
Still to this day I think that most sightings and reports of sightings are
largely mass hysteria, imaginations run wild, and as above, foolishness and
trickery. In other words, most can be explained as terrestrial events. However,
I also believe that there is a small percentage of true, real encounters with
the other side.
That's what we seek.
I like to go into a investigations with an expectation of finding
something, but I do so in a respectful manner, with a positive outlook. I
believe that alive or not, the other side deserves the same respect that one
would afford a living being.
About me? I'm just a self employed
business owner who rarely has extra time on his hands, so you won't often see me
out on investigations, though I am, along with Justin, a founder of Claranormal. I do work on
sifting through evidence though, as I feel that objective eyes and ears (ones
that were not at the investigation) are the best for picking up on anomalies.
This information is then checked and verified with the members who were on scene
before it gets moved onto the next set of eyes and ears.
I hesitate to say this, because I'm not the kind of person to read tea leaves, I
don't believe in the usefulness of tarot cards, I hate Ouija boards, I don't sit
naked on blankets in meadows and chant at the moon or anything like that, but I
am a little bit of a sensitive. I sometimes get flashes of things future and
past, but as a talent, it's a very weak one, and completely random. I guess I'd
call it
"third eye" myopia. I have been known to sense things in our surroundings and
direct cameras to the spot where I sense things, and have been spot on many,
many times. If you look at our grave yard ghost lady picture, you'll see an
example of this. I was asked recently how this works, and the only parallel I
have is this: You know that feeling you get when someone's watching you? You can
feel their eyes boring in? It's a little like that, except I feel sort of a
tugging sensation, or that something in my vicinity is out of place, doesn't
belong. However if the disturbance on my right side within 8 to 10 feet, I can
draw a bead on what it is and what it's doing or thinking.
~~~~~~~~
How
Steve got involved in the Paranormal
Queen Mary, Long Beach, California
The back story.
I have been a fan of the Queen Mary for a very long time, and used to take trips there just to walk around the ship long before I ever heard about it being haunted. Back "in the day" it was free to board her, if you knew how to do it, and a couple times a month I'd go down there just to walk her decks, her allure being almost magical. Top to bottom, day or night, I could board and go pretty much anywhere I pleased. You can't do that these days, but we do have a member of our group who's a financial contributor to the Queen, and thus pretty much has free access any time.
The back story.
I have been a fan of the Queen Mary for a very long time, and used to take trips there just to walk around the ship long before I ever heard about it being haunted. Back "in the day" it was free to board her, if you knew how to do it, and a couple times a month I'd go down there just to walk her decks, her allure being almost magical. Top to bottom, day or night, I could board and go pretty much anywhere I pleased. You can't do that these days, but we do have a member of our group who's a financial contributor to the Queen, and thus pretty much has free access any time.
In about 1990 or 1991, I saw an "Eye on L.A." piece that publicized the "fact" that the Queen Mary was haunted, but I took that with a grain of salt, not really believing in that sort of thing. I'd always been of the mind set that if I actually saw a ghost then maybe I'd believe they existed, but until then such stories were more or less entertainment. I'd have a chance to change my mind in a few years.
In 1996, I took a trip down to the queen with a friend of mine.
As he'd never been aboard, I thought it best that he take the guided
tour so that he could get as much information about Her Majesty as
he could. I went on the tour too, and even though I'd been on tours
of the queen many times in addition to my lone travels, I knew that
I'd probably pick up info I hadn't heard before.
What's interesting about the guided tours is that each time you take
one, you'll almost certainly be introduced to a part of the ship
you'd not seen before, or get a piece of information you didn't
already know. The ship is so large, and under nearly constant
renovation, that there are new things available season to season.
They keep the tours fresh, in other words.
On the 1996 trip, the tour ended in the engine room area, just forward of the rudder control box. The guide finished her spiel, and invited all in attendance to feel free to mill around, explore the rest of the ship as we pleased, or disembark if we wanted. In this area there are hundreds of gauges, switches and levers, and being a sort of a freak about these sorts of things, I began toying with several dozen of them. So caught up with absorbing the history of these switches and levers and their uses was I that I failed to realize that everybody had left the area. I was completely alone, save for one pair of legs disappearing down the port side passageway toward the aft.
The guide had led us into this area down the starboard passage and I noticed that when we went into this area, the port side passage was both roped off with a courtesy rope, like you might see forming lines at a bank or a theater, and it was dark, illuminated only by red emergency lights above the passage. The same was true on both the forward and aft entrances to this passage. At the time I thought nothing of it, that maybe they were doing work back there, so roped off meant No Entry. When I realized that I was totally and utterly alone, a chill came over me, as I watched the legs disappear. I did a double take, taking notice that the courtesy rope on the forward end of the port passage was now hanging slack, no longer barring entry to the port side passage. "Cool," I thought, "They've opened it up! It must be OK to go through there now. I saw somebody enter." I knew better, deep inside. A tourist had simply unhooked the rope and entered. I didn't listen to that little voice though, because I wanted to know what was down that passage. That, and I was suddenly uneasy standing there all alone.
My decision made, I walked into this dark passage, lit only by the overhead red lights, and reflecting back, I should have realized that not all was well, as the pair of legs I saw vanish down that corridor didn't seem to belong to anybody. There was nobody else in this long passage. I suppose, at the time, I thought that they must have run through and already exited. Wrong. Also, I felt very uncomfortable, like I was being watched, but I ascribed this feeling to simple paranoia, exacerbated by the dark conditions.
As I walked through this passage, I passed through a doorway. Not
knowing anything was sinister about this area until much later, I
passed through just as I would any door. Just as I went through, I
spotted somebody on my right, toward port, OFF the walkway to my
right, 3 to 4 feet away.
He was NOT happy. Eyes wide, leering and bearing his teeth, hands
splayed to either side of his face as if he were going to jump me,
his dive would be coming from an elevated position. I'm 6' 2" tall,
and his head must have been at about 7 feet high, so either I was
being jumped by a white NBA star, or he was standing on something
that would definitely allow him to clear the railing as he leaped
over the railing that he was on the other side of. "Oh great, I'm
going to be fighting for my life in a small, confined area" I
thought. "This must be the person who's legs I saw walk down this
passage, luring me to get jumped," flashed through my mind as I spun
into a fighting stance.
I reacted pretty quickly, spun to my right with the railing to my
back, pistoning my right hand back while making a fist, and bringing
my open left hand into a defensive position sort of in front of me.
I reasoned in that instant that I assumed this posture that if his
dive was off to my left, I'd be able to deflect him off to my left,
pushing him over the railing that was to my back, while landing a
blow with my right fist that would likely keep him from grappling me
and pulling me over with him on his trip to the bilge. If he hit me
dead on with his leap, I would spin him to the railing, or push him
off so I'd have fighting space. If he dived off center to my right,
he'd be greeted right between the eyes by my now cocked and ready
right fist. As I finished bringing my right hand back and prepared to
shift my weight forward in anticipation of the blow I was sure was
coming, I blinked. "Huh?"
My assailant was gone. I blinked again, then a third time, looking
to my left, then to my right. "Where'd he go?," I quietly thought. I
stood there looking and listening for four or five seconds, and no
sounds betrayed any movement, so I got while the getting was good. I
didn't run, but walked briskly the rest of the way through the
passage. I wasn't going back the way I came, even if it was closer
to relative safety than continuing down this passage alone. For one,
I'm stubborn and dislike backtracking, for two, I was not going to
be going through any more doors. As I fast-walked though, I spun to
my rear time and again, hands at the ready in case he were to "pop
up" again, but nothing that I could see followed me out. Had
somebody run up behind me and yelled "BOO," I probably would have
soiled myself.
When I reached the aft area where the escalators or stairs are (it doesn't much matter, as I pretty much flew up these) I hurried up to the next deck. I found my friend, and most of the group we'd been with, and when he saw me walking up (fast), he said "What's a-matter? You look like you've seen a ghost!" Perceptive bastard.
"Yeah, I think I did" I deadpanned. "Come on, left me show you" I said as I led him back to the scene of the almost crime while describing the circumstances. I had no problem returning there with someone else, especially this guy. He's an enormous bear of a man, much larger than me, so the two of us would have no problem dealing with anything natural there. I still wasn't too sure about the supernatural.
When we got back to where I'd had my fright, we noticed that there was nothing but air on the other side of the railing toward port for somebody to stand on in which to elevate and or to leap from. Also, there was an (about) 8" to 10" white pipe that came up right there from under the walkway / catwalk we were standing on, and had I swung first, I probably would have broken my hand on it.
My friend asked if the pipe is what I saw. "No, pipes don't have
close set eyes, mouths, teeth, hands and combed back hair, and pipes
don't disappear."
"Hmph. OK. Well let's go" he said. What-a-guy.
On May 27, 2001, I returned to the Queen with my wife and family, with a friend of my step-daughter's in tow. We took dozens of photos around the ship, caught dozens of orbs (in daylight conditions, which is unusual), many of which were obviously in motion at high speeds, as they were elongated. Most of the time orbs are nothing but dust or insects being picked up in low light conditions, so catching any in broad daylight is unusual. It also happened to be the 65 anniversary of the Queen's maiden voyage.
We also went to the infamous water tight door 13, which I now new a little about. John Peddar was crushed by this door in 1966. Thinking that it was probably John I'd seen back in 1996, I decided to try and bait John into showing himself as we shot picture after picture down the passageway. We only caught one thing this time in that area, and that was a picture of a very angry entity rising out of the walkway, pivoting at the waist, like somebody sitting up in bed. His face was covered in angry colors of red, violet, blue. Apparently my baiting worked. Later I saw a person's rendition of John, or at least a witness's drawing of what's thought to be John's ghost, and it's definitely NOT the ghost I looked at straight in the eyes in 1996. I'll have to get back there in the near future and apologize to John for baiting him in such a rude manner.
