There’s something uniquely horrifying about any place that requires you to wear color-coded robes “for optimal vibrational resonance.” Welcome to the Hollow Valley Spiritual Compound — home of spinning, chanting, dubious science, and more white linen than a Renaissance Faire at laundry day. Hollow Valley, according to the enthusiastically photocopied brochure I was handed at … Read more
If there’s a cheaper shortcut to pretending you have psychic abilities than swinging a rock on a string, I have yet to find it. The concept is simple enough: dangle a pendulum — usually a crystal, a ring, or whatever happened to be lying around in the back seat of your car — over a … Read more
Shudderton, Nevada — population 3,947 if you believe the sign, which I don’t — is one of those towns that clings to its ghost stories like they’re on the payroll. You can’t walk five feet without someone offering you a brochure for a haunted mine tour or a cursed saloon experience. So it’s no surprise … Read more
Cemetery ghost tours have a certain morbid charm, in theory. The promise of tragic love stories, unsolved mysteries, shadowy figures lurking just beyond the flicker of a lantern — it’s all very atmospheric if you squint hard enough and forget that ninety percent of cemetery ghost tours take place in cemeteries where the only spirits … Read more
The world, in its infinite descent into half-baked wishful thinking, has embraced energy healing like a drunk clings to the last stool at a bar at closing time. Somewhere along the line, we collectively decided that physics, biology, and chemistry—disciplines built painstakingly on centuries of blood, sweat, and Nobel prizes—were simply too stressful, and it … Read more
Tarot cards are beautiful. Gorgeously illustrated, richly symbolic, dripping with history. A deck of miniature works of art, each whispering vague, universal human experiences. And yet somewhere between admiring the artwork and flipping the final card, we decided that these painted rectangles could predict the future. Modern fortunetelling with tarot follows a simple formula: you … Read more
Once upon a time, you could call a 1-900 number, fork over five bucks a minute, and some stranger wearing pajama pants and fuzzy slippers would tell you that “great changes are coming” to your love life. Ah, the good old days, when hope was expensive and delivered in fifteen-minute increments by people who failed … Read more
If there’s anything more tedious than an alleged haunting, it’s an alleged poltergeist. Unlike your standard-issue Victorian ghost — the sad lady in white, the mournful child clutching a toy drum nobody asked for — poltergeists don’t bother with melodramatic sob stories or half-hearted spectral appearances. They just throw things, slam doors, knock over bookshelves, … Read more
Catfish Jack’s bills itself as “the most haunted watering hole on the Mississippi.” Based on the smell alone, that seems entirely plausible. When I visited, the building looked like it had been condemned twice and then lost the paperwork. Faded neon signs buzzed half-heartedly in the cracked windows, and the floor inside had the sticky … Read more
Of all the charming invitations extended to me over the years — psychic conventions, ghost hunts, aura detox seminars — few sounded more ludicrously promising than an overnight stay at Ironford Penitentiary, one of New England’s most notoriously “haunted” abandoned prisons. A place where, according to the marketing brochure, “the walls still remember the screams.” … Read more