A Life of Adventure

Olga Marie asked:

 

The purgatorial train shrieks and rumbles down the tracks by night, rocking side to side, whistle screaming on its journey through the dark abyss of eternity. Packed inside are souls whose trip with this train has no end in sight . . . souls of those who died tragically on the tracks of the Florida East Coast Railroad. Its endless journey through endless time is their punishment for stupidity . . . or was it suicide?

So goes the introduction to the Ghost Train along Fort Lauderdale’s original railroad line, and its tie to its dark past. The tale of this train has been told several times on the History Channel. It is but one of many tales related by the Ghost Tour Guides of the Ghosts, Mysteries & Legends tour of Old Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale’s premier ghost tour.

Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends of Fort Lauderdale meets at the northeast corner of Las Olas and Andrews under the sign of the very modern Museum of Art, in the heart of the city’s restaurant and entertainment district, minutes away from the beach and the downtown and airport business hotels.

With cape, gaucho hat and lamp in hand, Ghost Guides wander off into the night and introduce visitors and locals to Fort Lauderdale’s “other night life” as they walk along the banks of the New River in the city’s historic district.

But Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends is more than just a ghost tour, as Christian Rieger, its managing director tells, “There are more than just ghosts of the dead out there. We introduce our clients to the ‘world of spirits.” Some are spirits locked in time, some are visitors from other time zones, other times, other dimensions and other places on our physical plane. Then there are the nature spirits, the angelic host and guardian angels — all figure into the civilization and culture of the “other side of the veil.” And all watching us. There is no privacy. So get over it. We talk pretty much about the whole pack.”

Fort Lauderdale has two para-normal power aspects which makes it important in its revelations of what is going on in the non-material world. One is the energy that runs down the New River from the Everglades (hoary with antiquity, perhaps three ice ages old). The other is Fort Lauderdale is at the western point of the Bermuda Triangle. The lowest gravitational point on the planet is over its southern point at the Puerto Rican Trench, the deepest hole in the Atlantic Ocean.

A group of Danish scientists who have made it their life’s study, have discovered that the magnetic field of the planet has declined 1 3/4 % in the last twenty years, while in the Bermuda Triangle it has declined by 20%. Mr. Rieger postulates, “We believe that these two important energy aspects contribute significantly to some of the paranormal events that have happened, and people have gotten digital photos of, on our tours.”

Orbs indicate the presence of, or are supposed to be, ghosts. People using their digital cameras on ghost tours everywhere else when they photograph orbs, are content to get what looks like large or small, shiny, bright, translucent ping-pong balls. But here in Fort Lauderdale the guides and the patrons frequently get faces in orbs. One night a man looked at one such very evil-looking wol- face from the depths of hell, and said, “I wished I never saw that.”

“One photograph” adds Rieger, “is of an orb perhaps 10 or 12 feet over the roof of an old hotel. When magnified three times, it show an image of a phantom flying through the air within it. If orbs are supposed to be ghosts, this was proof. As far as Ghosts, Mysteries and Legends knows, no one has taken such a photo elsewhere. We also have a photo of an orb with a square-rigged ship in it, and another of a one-room school house. Both images are connected to the history of Fort Lauderdale and have apparently shown up in the “memory of nature” as recorded by the cameras.”

“We have also photographed the activity of nature spirits,” says Rieger. “Nature spirits are the entities that mystical tradition tells us causes the grass to grow, the flowers to be aromatic and the winds to blow. Frequently, at the beginning of rain storms, photographs will show hundreds of orbs. These will not be seen several minutes later.”

Classic ghost tails include the strange carrying-ons of the Women in the White Wedding Dress, the Mystery of the Wandering Left Hand, Shirttail Charlie, and the Drunk at the Bar.

“It is great family entertainment,” says Rieger, “something for the family besides watch television in the hotel room. It also works great for local families, because ghost tours are a clever way to introduce local history to children – a way of making history interesting and easy to listen to. And be sure to bring your digital camera.” Photographs taken by guests along the tour are at their website, Their MySpace website includes excerpts from a video recorded by PBS Channel 2 in Miami, Florida

paranormal video

Sam Scribbler asked:


 

I am a treasure hunter. I don’t mean that I leave the house each morning armed with a pick and a shovel and an old map marked with an X. No. My tools are the Antique Trade Gazette’s auction guide, my old motor and forty-years accumulated knowledge of art and antiques. I travel the world looking for mistakes made by auction houses and dealers wherever I can find them. I eat most days, but I’m not getting rich.

 

Picture restorer, dealer, Mike Cunningham was one of the greatest treasures I ever found. We clicked from the moment we met and I was sure we would grow old together. When he died in his sleep in 2000 I was more upset than when I lost my Dad. Mike was fifty-two years old, fit and full of plans for the future. He had recently decided to sell his London home and retire to Hastings, on the south coast of England, where he and partner Sue already owned a small house in the Old Town. Mike and I had bought many pictures together over the preceding twenty years, most of them turned over quickly for a profit. But when Mike died we were still half shares in a painting that, if we had some provenance, would have secured our futures and that of a small African nation.

 

Mike bought the picture from some Irish travellers on the Goldbourne Road (off Portobello Road, London) one, very wet, Friday morning in 1980. He paid two pounds ($4.00). He didn’t even know that it was a painting. All he could see in the half-light was a muddy, cupboard door, burned on one side with traces of paint on the charcoal. The other side had old wallpaper stuck to it and a letter attached to the top right-hand corner. He did think the letter looked interesting – although he couldn’t speak French – and he thought he recognised the signature. Later, back at his studio in Fulham he wiped the mud from the charcoal and discovered Picasso’s Guernica – in colour http://www.yopicasso.com.

 

The painting measures 45.5cm x 57.5cm is signed Picasso 1937 in the body of the fallen warrior. The letter on the back was addressed to Gordon Davy of the R.A.E. Cap D’Antibes 2.1.46 and signed Picasso and a footnote – Operation Special Executive Project Design – Guernica. The top left-hand corner of this letter (with “Pour Gordon” written on it) was detached and lost, but a Photograph does exist.

 

In July 1981 Mike showed the picture to Roland Penrose. Penrose liked the picture. He said that he had never seen it himself, but he promised he would make some inquiries. Unfortunately Mr Penrose died, before Mike was able to enter into correspondence with him.

 

It took me a couple of years to persuade him, but, in a moment of weakness, Mike eventually sold me a half share. In 1987 we approached a handwriting expert at New Scotland Yard and asked her to take a look at the letter. Encouragingly she saw no reason to suppose the letter was a fake, although, due to the lack of suitable reference for comparison, she was unable to give a definitive judgment. The hunt began for samples of Picasso’s writing from around the same date, written with a brush and, preferably, written while he was in a similar frame of mind.

 

I had the brilliant idea that we should write to the Picasso committee in Paris and ask for help. This, of course, was a disaster. The committee simply condemned the picture. They had no reference for it and we had no history.

 

We did find some suitable examples of handwriting over the next few years and in 1990 the expert wrote to us saying that: “There are some fairly good matches between the writings but I keep coming back to the letter ‘d’ ” – she was unable to find a match for this letter in the same form. She continued to be encouraging and suggested that we keep searching for painted handwriting.

 

I suppose we did make some effort to find more reference, but not a lot. We were always busy with other things. Mike made a very nice box for the painting and for the next ten years it rarely saw the light of day. I haven’t seen it since the year before Mike died. I don’t even know where it is. I miss my friend a lot more than I miss the painting – I’d rather hear Mike’s voice on the end of the phone with a cheery – “‘ello, mate. You ‘eard the one about the bow-legged vicar and the policewoman?” – than ever have a provenance for a painting – even Picasso’s Guernica in colour.