I include this page not to convince anyone of any particular perspective, but to provide some insight as to what led me to some of the conclusions espoused in this site. These are some background incidents that indirectly resulted in the writing of this book.

By and large, the must stunning experience involved the The Ghost Photo, which I'll not reiterate here, but urge you to check out the above link.

A Ghostly Visitation?

Although the ghost photo described above is certainly the most tangible of my paranormal experiences, it was not the first.

Back in the mid-1970s, my wife and I lived on a 42’ 1916 Grover sloop in Gravesend bay, just south of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in Brooklyn, New York. As we relaxed one evening below decks, there came a horrendous pounding from above that sounded as if someone was banging on the hull with a sledgehammer. I immediately went up to investigate, but as soon as I cleared the companionway hatch, the sound abruptly ceased. I walked around the decks, checking for loose rigging or signs of intruders, but found nothing that could explain the racket. The air and the water were both dead calm.

As soon as I returned to the cabin, however, the pounding returned. Stranger still, my wife, who had remained below, reported that it had never stopped! This time we both went up to look around. I even held my ear against the hull to determine whether, perhaps, it was something below the waterline. I heard nothing.

We both returned to the cabin, somewhat uneasy, but the sound did not return. Several hours later, my parents showed up to deliver the news (we didn’t have a telephone) that my mother-in-law had committed suicide earlier that day.

A Conjuring Experience

The following is another true experience, which happened to me in the late 1960s. It is related with greater detail, in fictional format, in my short story “Subtle Shades.”

At the time, Marty, my closest friend, and I had been dating two girls who were similarly close friends. When Marty began seeing someone else, the state of affairs threatened both friendships. Lynn (the girl Marty had been seeing), convinced Elaine (my girlfriend) and myself that a love/seduction spell would be just the ticket for remedying the situation.

My recollection of the details of the magical operation are a bit sketchy after all these years. I do recall that we had a curious old book called The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, which we had found in an old Hassidic bookstore, as well as a copy of The Black Arts, by Richard Cavandish.

Elaine lived in an old three-story brownstone in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. It had a rather deep sub-basement below the walk-in, and that was where we set up to perform our ritual.

We lit candles, burned incense, drew magic circles, and muttered incantations. It was a pretty high-octane spell--all kinds of stuff about anyone coming between the intended lovers being struck down by hellfire, and stuff like that. Suddenly, the basement was filled with a stench the likes of which none of us had ever encountered. We also all saw something . . . it looked sort of like an upside down top, spinning near the ceiling at the far end of the basement. We tried reading a dismissal invocation, but nothing happened. We tried it several more times, then we just ran. We walked the streets for several hours, not wanting to go anywhere near Elaine’s house. At last, Lynn and I both called our parents, made some excuses, and went home with Elaine--none of us wanted to be alone.

When we got there, Elaine’s mother--an old Sicilian lady--had called in a priest to bless the house. She was frantic about there being “something evil in the house.” (In all honesty, she was in the habit of having the house blessed on a regular basis anyhow.)

Later that evening, as we listlessly sat over dinner, Marty called. (Not finding me at home, he’d reasoned I’d probably be with Elaine.) It seemed that his new girlfriend had suddenly been stricken with an acute bout of appendicitis, and had been rushed to the hospital.

After a quilt-ridden conference, we decided that we’d better come clean and let Marty know what had transpired. He thought the whole thing was pretty cool, and wanted to try another spell with us. Reluctantly, we agreed. The next day, when Elaine’s mother had gone off to the lampshade factory where she worked, we all met once again in the basement.

We tried a different spell this time, and the effect was even worse. (If you want details, I recommend reading “Subtle Shades.”) In any case, we ran around for weeks with the feeling that something was stalking us. The strange part of it is, there was never any real resolution. It just ultimately seemed to just fade away.

Recently, when I showed my ghost picture to a psychic of my acquaintance, she immediately said that what I saw in the picture had been following me for a very long time. . . .

I guess the only thing I can say in conclusion is that if I were concocting a story from imagination, I would certainly have come up with a more exciting ending. Nevertheless, I do have a nagging feeling that the final chapter has yet to be played out.