Tag Archives: paranormal investigation

My Paranormal Investigation of Thompson Park, Watertown, New York

Alien abduction is fun! And a little sunburn…

So last June I investigated the “interdimensional vortex” in Watertown, NY’s Thompson Park.

Dear Watertown, NY: If you are going to name something after a supernatural phenomena, please get it right. You claim that there’s an “interdimensional vortex” in your park.  Vortex refers to a mass of whirling fluid or air. People disappearing from one spot and ending up in another sounds like stepping into a portal. 

Secondly, if you’re going to have a freaky park located on a road called Gotham Street, why not work in a Batman statue or two? Are you just going to ignore the marketing possibilities of marrying Batman and an interdimensional portal in your park? 

I spent 90 minutes walking around this Batman-less park hoping to accidentally step into a portal that would drop me on the other side of the universe or maybe even just the other side of the park.

At dinner prior to the park, I did have a large glass of water. When will I ever learn? A little while later I was wandering down a trail in the woods of this park and I felt the call of nature. I needed to pee and I was about a mile from the nearest restroom. So, I did what was necessary and I thought to myself, “How cool would it be if I peed into the vortex/portal and on the other side of the universe it landed on some aliens head?”  Sure it might cause an intergalactic war, but also it might be best practical joke ever, right? Then I saw these: Portal potties!

Yes, I was dying to write that joke into this post.

Also, Watertown, NY, if you’ve got one of these towers in your freaky park, why not paint the top of it like a UFO like the Flushing Towers in Men in Black I ? You’ve got a freaking Area 51 sign in the park! For cripes sake, if I can think of these things, why can’t you guys hire a marketing genius to figure this sh*t out?

People have claimed to lose time and/or be transported from one place in the park to another? I did lose 90 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back, but there was no teleportation involved. I decided that this is just the place that teenagers go to have sex and when they come home too late they tell their parents they got teleported to another universe for a couple hours.

One odd thing was that after 90 minutes of walking around and taking pictures on my phone, it was still at 98%, so maybe those elevated electro-magnetic fields kept my phone charged. No portals but a free phone charge, so I’ll call that a win.

Just because nothing weird happened to me in that park doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened to others. That’s one part of paranormal investigations that you never see on those ghost hunting shows. In paranormal investigations, there’s a lot of quiet waiting around that you can’t edit out when you’re the one investigating.

Thanks for reading and happy Thursday! ~Phil

My Favorite Paranormal Podcast

To be clear, the podcast is not paranormal. No one is sending it to me psychically. The podcast in question is Greg & Dana’s Haunted Objects Podcast. Over the last several months I have tried several paranormal podcasts. Some are of the “tin hat” type of crowd and others are very knowledgeable and experienced, but the paranormal investigators are not always great broadcasters. Greg, Dana, Connor, and Keelin are anything but boring.

The name of the podcast is misleading. It is about so much more than haunted objects. Greg and Dana are a couple. She’s a self-proclaimed witch and paranormal investigator. He is a paranormal investigator and multi-media producer. Together with their fun loving crew they are producers of some of the most interesting and entertaining paranormal content online, in podcasts, and on TV.

Greg and Dana are also the curators of The Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult. They have an advisory board that includes many of the most experienced and erudite paranormal minds in the business.

On their podcast, they essentially do what I did over the past six weeks with my blog posts, introducing a wide variety of paranormal subjects and exploring the history and science of each different type of paranormal phenomena. They intersperse funny stories from their travels and investigations, and sometimes do experiments to prove or disprove certain phenomena.

The time they went Bigfoot hunting with Jeff Goldblum

Above is a picture from Season 2, episode 5 of Jeff Goldblum’s show The World According to Jeff. That’s the only litmus test that I need. If Jeff Goldblum likes them, then I’m all on board.

If you have a sense of humor, like podcasts and the paranormal, then you need to listen to Greg & Dana’s Haunted Objects podcast.

Also, I would highly recommend that you check out Hellier,  a docuseries on Amazon Prime,  that they produced a few years ago. It follows their several years long paranormal investigation that has some truly bizarre turns. It is so much more fun than those ghost shows.

Also keep your eyes open later this summer for The Unbinding, which chronicles their harrowing experience with a haunted/cursed relic that they discovered in the Catskill region of New York.

 

Hey Greg and Dana, if you ever see this blog post, I’d love to interview you for my blog! Email me Authorphiltaylor@gmail.com or on Twitter @ThePhilFactor

Have a great weekend! ~Phil

My First Solo Paranormal Investigation: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I have been on a paranormal investigation before. Communicated with some ghosts, and enjoyed the vibe. Over the month of May, I featured posts here focusing on the paranormal. Ghosts, psychics, witchcraft, UFOs, and demons. As I researched for my posts and interviewed some of the best paranormal people out there, I started to think to myself, “Maybe these are my people.”  Don’t worry, I’m not turning The Phil Factor into a completely paranormal blog, yet…

I enjoyed my month of learning how wide-ranging the paranormal specialties are and how often paranormal things intrude into our world. I decided that when I travel for work I’m going to look for opportunities to find the paranormal in the towns and cities I visit.

Watertown, NY‘s Thompson Park is located about a five-hour drive upstate from New York City. Watertown is a small military base city that is literally just a short drive from Canada.

The interesting paranormal phenomenon that allegedly occurs in Thompson Park is that people believe there is an interdimensional vortex. People have reported instances of losing time, getting disoriented, disappearing from one spot and turning up in another, or not turning up at all…

Science fiction has been rife with vortexes or portals since the genre originated. People have long fantasized about a doorway to another place. Teleportation if you will. Is there any chance something like this could be real?

Plasma physicist and NASA-funded researcher Jack Scudder from the University of Iowa has figured out how to find these portals. “We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions. They’re places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the Sun’s atmosphere 93 million miles away.”

 

Thompson Park has a long history of paranormal reports that real paranormal investigators like Greg Neukerk have checked out. Investigators have found very high electromagnetic fields, which are often typical in areas of high paranormal activity. If you look back at the comments from the NASA scientist, he mentioned the magnetic fields of two places connecting. What if some localized electromagnetic fields connected? Couldn’t that create a short portal or vortex phenomenon?

Do you know what is also often found in close proximity to paranormal events? Military bases, like the one in Watertown, New York. Even more odd is the fact that the government’s code name for the infamous Area 51 in Nevada is “Watertown.”  I don’t suppose that’s an accident. With New York state ranking 5th among the states for UFO/UAP sightings, maybe something interesting is going on at the Fort Drum military base that may be bleeding over into the park.

Picture from Lite87.com

So this evening, I’m going to walk around Thompson Park and see what happens. Then, when I get back to my hotel, I’ll sit down at the hotel bar and chat up the military contractors that are always there, and ask them if they’ve seen anything unusual when they’re at the base.

Also, I’ll come back here and add an addendum to let you know that I returned safely from the vortex. If I disappeared after writing this blog post, how weirdly creepy would that be?

Addendum: I made it back safely without teleportation. Look tomorrow morning for my write up of the “investigation”.

Thanks for reading and wish me luck! ~Phil