The Second Ward Pic

The Second Ward Image

The Second Ward Pic

The Second Ward Picture

The Second Ward Pic

The Second Ward Image

Ghost hunting followed a renewed interest in spiritualism caused by two young girls that claimed to speak with a dead peddler. Forty years later one revealed that the noises heard for the duration of his “presence” were fake, but by that time, such a resurgence of interest occurred that no one cared. The firstborn group that devoted it’s time to the search for disembodied souls was a society consecrated to ghosts at Cambridge University in 1851. London’s Ghost Club started 11 years later. These pioneers provided the beginnings for today’s avid ghost hunters.

There are actually only three forms of ghost hunting:

The basi uses psychic methods to make contacts. Sensitive’s walk through a home and make communication with the ghost or go into a trance. Others may use Ouija boards or other channelling tools to make contact.

The second type of ghost hunter uses something known as “ghost buster” tools. These may consist of Infrared cameras, tape recorders and energy measurement tools like the electromagnetic field meter. Pictures of orbs, ectoplasm and spirits represent their proof.

The third type of ghost hunting uses the scientific method. They gather all selective information and proof of a haunting and search for normal, natural scientific explanations. If they may find none, then these investigators look to the paranormal for answers.

In their introduction to ghost hunting, The American Ghost Society tells the future ghost hunter’s that some of the cases that they investigate are frauds and pranks perpetrated to make the ghost hunter look foolish. Other cases without merit are humans that, out of fear, mental impairment of normal physiological function or a heap of other reason, mistakenly believe that their house is haunted. These ghost hunters search for the truth and grasp that the scientific community does not receive their work but make it their obligation to find proof of true hauntings.

Most ghost hunters seek the adventure of the unknown or plainly want answers to age-old questions. Some, however, are more dubious and their desire is for personal fame. With the fame and claims of ghost hunting come the fat cheques for the books they authored, or ironically, had authored by ghost-writers. Television guest appearances and movie contracts add to the bounty. These types of ghost hunters normally have spectacular stories, later debunked by further investigation. The public seldom learns of the misinformation and alternatively chooses the gripping tale told originally.

The adverse effect of the professional attention seeker is that true ghost hunters receive not only a bad name, but further dismissal from the scientific community. Most enthusiasti ghost hunters want significant proof that what they believe they experience while hunting spectre was real. The stories aren’t spectacular but interesting and as any good ghost story, they may send a chill up your spine.

Across the world, humans have the chance to join the ghost hunters by paying a little fee to joining a ghostly walking tour of haunted areas. Many times ghost hunters lead these tours and give indispensable historical info as well as relaying stories of ghost sightings at the web sites that they have visited.

The Second Ward

This is a short story.
Jason is a confused young man who was abandoned by his parents at a mental hospital at the age of nine. He struggles with a reoccurring nightmare that may just be the key to finding his sanity.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #254891 in eBooks
• Published on: 2011-03-26
• Released on: 2011-03-26
• Format: Kindle eBook
• Number of items: 1

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
A captivating drama with just a few flaws
By JJ
Jason has been confined to the Greenview Psychiatric Hospital the past eight years of his life, absent from any type of life outside the hospital walls. He’s forgotten his home, his parents, and most of his memories prior to joining the hospital. He is almost constantly plagued with a recurring nightmare of him driving a car head-on into an 18 wheeler. The problem is that Jason hasn’t been in a car in years much less driven one since he’s still a young teenager. He has memories in this dream, but they don’t correlate with any of his true memories. What does this dream mean? Is Jason simply going crazy?

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent short story…
By Jackie-the-Greyhound
I’d give it a 4.5, with the 1/2 star off for the typos/editing concerns. The story itself is quite compelling and I did not find those concerns enough of a distraction to warrant rounding down. Truly the word I choose for this story is ‘compelling’. There are few stories out there that stay with me over the years and this will be one of them.

The writer draws you into the main character and gradually unfolds the details of how he found himself with limited memories and in ‘the second ward’ of an apparent psychiatric hospital–where he has supposedly resided from the ages of 9 through to near adulthood. As a reader I was tantalized with details–wondering why certain things were a certain way (I don’t want to do any spoilers here…) and everything that seemed ‘off’ in a description was understandable in the end.

This is definitely NOT something I would normally read and yet this will be finding itself in my ‘unexpected gem’ collection on my Kindle.

Highly Recommended (even though I did not chuckle even once!)

JTG

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