Dead Files Episode 5

White Widow

Hello wonderful people

Are you ready for a completely insane story? Today’s episode is set in New Orleans where random people like to play trumpet while walking down the street. Steve, Matt, and Amy are in New Orleans to investigate the legend of Louisa Clay who supposedly hanged herself in 1888. The ghost of Louisa appears (in the form of apparitions) and heard around the two-hundred year old house that a woman and her son now occupy. This episode has something none of the others has; Amy isn’t the first person to say something evil is there.

Before I get to some more important stuff, I need to nitpick at what Steve says in his introduction. He says, “My name is Steve DiSchavi, I’m a retired New York City Homicide detective and I know every house and every person I see…” claiming that he knows every person and every house he sees. That made sense when their cases were only in New York, but this man does not know every single person and every single house that he sees just from being a homicide detective in New York City. I take that back it doesn’t make sense anymore because there are districts and he would have handled the homicides reported in his district, borough… thing… What the hell is Steve trying to say here?

The clients in this episode are Marcus, the son who is ten years old and his mom. They’ve been living there for three months and he’s hearing footsteps and seen locked windows blown open for no reason. That is all Steve says before Amy comes in with some random background information about her past. She also reassures us that she has no communication with Steve so she knows nothing about the house. Matt is also explained again for some reason they felt this was completely necessary as if they release the shows in final edited form one after another so they can get feedback from the audience which I know is lies because Paranormal shows take a LONG time to complete. They have to find the place; the researchers have to research it somewhat, they have to get to the location, which could take days, and then the actual stuff for the show itself happens in the form of interviews and the investigation, which also takes quite a while. Therefore, the constant attempts to reassure skeptics that they are a legitimate show and they really don’t communicate when they’re not supposed to and whatnot is highly annoying and makes them seem like they’re trying too hard for no real reason.

Amy’s walk through:

Arrival

I have decided to try something new with this review. I will break the parts of the show up as they appear. If they are interrupted, they will get their own… ‘Section’ for lack of a better term, like if Steve shows up in the middle of Amy’s walk it’ll be labeled as Steve’s Interview or something like that.

Amy, how do you know about the tragedies, why are the entities fighting and who is crawling on the floor? Why aren’t you asking the spirit why it is crawling on the floor?

Steve’s Interview:

Lorelei

This is where the episode starts to get insane. There is a legend going around about a creole woman who hung her dog and then hung herself. (For those of you who don’t know what creole means and are too lazy to Google it, here’s the definition for this usage of the word: various distinct ethnic groups; mix of culture.

The Louisiana Creole people refers to those who are descended from the colonial settlers in Louisiana, especially those of French and Spanish descent. The term was first used during colonial times by the settlers to refer to those who were born in the colony, as opposed to those born in the Old World. After the Civil War, some, like the Creole scholars Charles Gayarre and Alcee Fortier, began to assert that the word Creole referred exclusively to people of European descent…

I know people go insane sometimes but how you do look at someone in your family be it animal or human and cause harm to them? I know people can suck sometimes but pets don’t suck as much as humans do. They can be annoying at times, but honestly I think they’re better companions than humans the only downside being they can’t talk… they don’t have motives, they don’t abuse their owners, they are so completely different from people that it’s hard to picture someone completely snapping and killing their pets.

On the flip side, this is the legend, meaning it might not be true it’s just what people say. Meaning that the story has probably been changed over time and has been twisted into what it is now and it could be a complete sack of crap for all we know at this moment of the show. What I am curious about is the point in time where the story changed from the truth to possible fiction and where they got the part where she hung her dog. 

Two things I forgot to mention, one was another interaction from Matt with Amy when he asked what was happening when Amy was mentioning something was crawling on the floor. The second was I actually agree with Steve when he said, “That ain’t right” about the legend. I know it’s shocking I actually agreed with something Steve said in the episode. The legend claims that she hung her dog and herself in the attic where her son sleeps. Marcus doesn’t know about the legend (but he will once he sees this episode and end up traumatized for the rest of his life) also the previous tenants refused to go into the attic.

Lorelei all you need to hang yourself is for your feet to lift off the ground so you’re not on your toes or anything so you can’t support your body weight anymore. The height is just for… well I’m not even sure what the height is for I guess it just reassures people that they aren’t on their tippy toes and faking they are dead so they can run away later if the person was hung from a gallows. It’s common sense, or so I thought it was… 

Another thing I have noticed about paranormal shows when families are involved, people will tend to jump to the conclusion that it’s all fake, overactive imagination, the inability to adjust to a new house, blame the age of the house itself, or just say the person is crazy and proceed to have them checked out at random doctors. Especially children, I feel so bad for anyone growing up in a haunted location with parents who insist they are lying and have some form of mental disorder and have them put on all these medicines, or try to have them heavily medicated but there are tests to see if the person has the symptoms of a mental disorder. I think it is horrible how some parents will assume their child is going insane rather than accept the fact they are completely normal and telling the truth.

In addition, I must restate the fact THIS LADY HUNG HER DOG! I’m going to move on to something else not so horrible…

Amy’s Walk Through:

The backyard

Amy senses two men in the corner of the backyard where Lorelei’s dog would go crazy. She says he has been there for quite a long time, looking, waiting, and watching, but doesn’t state anything else useful about these two men’s spirits creeping in the backyard. She only explains one guy after stating there are two men there so I guess the other guy is hiding or he doesn’t have a description.

The First Floor

When Amy walks into the house, I honestly expected her to say Uh-oh spaghetti-oh. I don’t know why I thought she would say it but I just expected it. There are more INTERACTIONS FROM MATT in this part of the walk though. Good job for not being so silent, and don’t shush him Amy let the man ask the questions you aren’t answering, like why there is so much anger there, where did the other guy go, what made them so angry, and who are they talking about when they say they are in the house and backyard to hurt someone. There were two people attacked? I thought you said there were two people in the backyard who were creeping. I am confused…

Steve’s Interview:

Marcus

I hope this interview goes better than it did with Salem. His attitude is completely different he seems more interested in Marcus’s story than he was with Salem. He seemed ready to jump the gun and judge the poor girl for no reason meanwhile with Marcus he seems more accepting of his story. I smell sexism!

Amy’s Walk Through:

The Attic

This interruption is one of the clips the editors throw in to confirm or deny something a client just said or to contradict things they’ve said in the past. Amy explains again that dead people have the ability to present themselves in the way they want to be perceived. However going back to the Death and Dolls, Amy was creped out by the fact that this one spirit was manipulating their appearance so she could see him how he wanted himself seen. She didn’t like him and wanted nothing to do with him because of many reasons, but that was one of the main reasons she didn’t like the spirit. Now she’s saying it’s something that happens sometimes with spirits. Way to flip on your opinions Amy… 

Steve’s Investigation

First off, I must say at one point when I paused the video at some point to let it load and this happened: 

 

I just thought I should share that with you all. Second point I must make is this: the house over 200 years old and the statistic is a family moves every five years. How is it unusual that each of its residence only lived there for no longer than 7 years at a time? You just said a family moves every five years so each person who lived in the over 200 year old house and the max number of years lived there is seven what’s wrong here. Nothing is wrong with any of that, I swear Steve just makes shit up to be concerned about sometimes.

Also, I would like to know how an entire town changes addresses overnight. How is that even possible who decided that and did the townspeople complain about it? I know I would if I woke up and all of Barnegat was changed.

Amy’s Walk:

 On a staircase

When Amy is attacked claiming she can’t breathe I honestly think someone might have been strangled there. Hey look, a set up for a random joke! When Amy says he’s a bad, bad, bad, man all I heard was John Cena’s song from his rap album he released forever ago, Bad, Bad Man. This person who is hurting Amy is a complete asshole. She’s reliving what’s going on with the murder and he says this, “didn't know this was gonna go like this no we didn't..." he's mocking her and the physical pain he's putting her in.” When Matt asks who is talking all she says is, “this is the bad person,” We know that Amy we can see you’re in pain and hurting you.

I love how Matt asks Amy what she’s scared of, he’s just like so simple and he sounds like he doesn’t care much at all.

Steve’s interview:

Finding Theresa

Steve drives through a neighborhood that he was directed to go to by Kathleen was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, when he gets to Theresa’s house; it’s nothing but a foundation. However, he has connections since he’s a former cop and he found her current location. He goes back to the house with Theresa and she gets very emotional obviously because of the memories it brings back. In the personal interview, he calls her ‘Ter-es-a’ and I don’t know why he says it like that when he said it right the first few times...

I’m not sure what she described with her mother being on the staircase, I think what happened was she was on the stairs, she saw an apparition and tried to run but she was too slow and the apparition caught up with her. It went through her body and ‘sucked’ the life out of the baby causing the stillbirth is what she’s trying to imply.

Theresa, a catholic priest told you to leave the house because of an ‘evil presence’ is he best friends with Amy? Seriously, what happened was he got spooked by something, he didn’t want to do his job right and fully bless the house. If he did, then he would have done something to make it go away.

The brief interruption with Amy in the attic, I have to comment on how she says ‘the last thing they heard was the snapping of their neck when they hung themselves.’ That has to be the worst thing to hear when you die, the cracking of your own neck even though they hung themselves and it was no one else interfering via hanging for a crime or something since it was the 1800s or something like that.

The Conclusion

We end this episode with very little answers. Louise Clay is the woman who haunts the place because she died from throat cancer and William Houstin is the man who hung himself. A woman never hung herself or her dog. There wasn't an evil presence that catholic priest was wrong. The house is a residual haunt not intelligent, they can’t verify the murder, and everything else left unanswered will remain unanswered until someone else decides to investigate this house. The answers we are given do not back up any claims of the negativity or confirm any of the other entities Amy encountered. It just proves records can be easily erased and removed from history just as easily as they can be written up.  

Dead Files Episode 4

Death and Dolls

Hello wonderful people!

The show Dead Files has to be the most draining show I’ve ever watched. We’re four episodes in and every time I finish a review, I get a massive headache, which is why there’s been a delay on these reviews. Now I am quickly going through the notes I took forming coherent paragraphs and calling it a day. It’s quick and painless and I can get some more posts up for the Paranormal Blog (that’s collecting dust until I finish reviewing Ghost Adventures.) I also get need to get around to raging about how Ghost hunters and how royally screwed up their investigation of Bobby Mackey’s Music World. Ruin my dream of seeing the epic things they’d capture, and called everyone associated with that place since about 1991 (when Bobby Mackey, his Wife, and Carl appeared on Springer to open up to the public about the club) a complete liar) that’s a smart idea…

With that said, let us get on with this episode-taking place at a private home in Cramerton, North Carolina. This episode reassures the world that dolls are creepy and when your house is filled with rows upon rows of dolls you have no right to complain about your child’s interest with war history (as well as death) and people complaining they don’t want to be in your house because of the dolls. Yes, that’s the focus of the episode; a woman calls them because she’s concerned about her daughter being so interested in war history as well as some paranormal stuff going on. The woman also claims that her daughter is interested in yellow fever and then says she’s interested in death but I don’t remember Salem stating she is interested in those specifically and I feel like this mother is highly judgmental considering how many creepy dolls she has littered all over the house.

In some cultures it is believed dolls are vessels for the dead… if that’s true then what the hell is Barbie and Ken and Kelly and their various family members and why the hell are they marketed for children?

 

Why is there a vampire doll and who wanted that to exist? 

I love vampires but I wouldn’t go near that doll 

even if I was paid to go near it.

Amy and Matt time and this episode features INTERACTION FROM MATT! I think I’m going to make that a game to go along with the how many negative words and synonyms can Amy say within five minutes of walking into a location. Now to be all-negative about Amy’s walk through there would be a girl in the closet who wants something bad to happen to the people living there this doesn’t surprise me at all considering the fact there are dolls that look like something out of horror movies. 

 

 

That face…

there are no words…

What is with the dead knowing they're dead but not liking the people who live in the house when they weren't even originally there but brought into the house in this case because of the massive collection of dolls this woman has all over the place. If someone has an answer for me please email me or comment on it because I’d really like to know.

 

 Amy explaining dolls are vessels for the dead

 

That’s the corner of Salem’s Room…

Going back to the daughter being ‘weird’ first off she’s like ten years old it’s obvious why someone would label her ‘weird’ because what ten year old girl is into war history. Not many girls at age ten were into war history or war at all, from what I recall from being ten years old. If you want to be sexist that’s usually a boy thing at that age. My point is that there’s nothing wrong with being interested in war history it’s a great way to educate yourself on things the textbooks twist and bend to make a reality. Steve on the other hand acts like this is the end of the world and that he can’t handle the fact a small child likes learning about wars and has Amy talk to her because he’s a coward and can’t accept the fact Salem is different from other children.

Steve: “Does it scare you [to see the apparitions]”

Salem: “When I was little, it did because I didn’t understand but now that I’m older I understand … ghost can’t hurt you only the living can.”

Salem you have so much to learn about the paranormal… just go watch Ghost Adventures and you will see there is a side of the paranormal that wants to hurt the living. However, I believe the spirits you are dealing with are just lost souls as well as souls who were inside of the dolls. They might be annoyed they haven’t moved on yet but they won’t hurt you.  On that note what is with the dead knowing they're dead and realizing here are living people inside the place but then they won’t like people who are there. In addition, the ghosts weren’t originally there but brought into the house. If you don’t like it there then leave it’s not your house to being with, you were brought there. Find a way to get out of the house by any means necessary and if you can’t then don’t hate the living because they live there. Not everyone goes into a house and is like I wonder who could be haunting the place and if they want me here. 

Now to addressing the World War II thing: Her mom started it by watching movies about Anne Frank therefore; Salem was introduced to it by her doll-obsessed mother ironic isn’t it. The woman who is like ‘my daughter is taking interest in weird things’ is the person who introduced her daughter to the World War II stuff. 

 

Salem states she wasn’t there in the 1940s when all that stuff happened, which was part of what sparked her interest in the wars. That’s normal human behavior to be interested in something you don’t know about and weren’t there to experience. You want to see what it was like through other people’s eyes via books, journals, news articles, whatever you can find that will inform you about the topic. She also has an interest in the Civil War because what’s not interesting about any countries civil war. Their internal structure is falling apart the citizens are angry and they’re at war with each other, not an external enemy. Like she says, it is scary but cool at the same time, how can a place get into such bad shape that people who live there will go to war with each other.  That is what she’s curious about the mechanics of the war itself not the death or disease aspects but how the war works and what went on during the wars.

Steve you have no reason to be concerned for Salem she’s perfectly fine, if you want to be concerned about someone worry about the wife. She has thousands of dolls stacked on each other all over the place. I think she’s the one with the problem.

During another part in Amy’s walk through, she enters the basement and sees bodies stacked to the ceiling dead from disease there is also a woman being tortured by some creepy man the woman is dead and the male is apparently poking her. I think the basement is the only doll free area of the house… the stereotypical creepy room of a house is the one place that doesn’t have a visible mountain of dolls. 

This is where I feel slightly bad for Amy, it’s never a good thing to see room bodies stacked to the ceiling of death in disease when you walk into a room. My sympathy goes away when she mentions a woman how is constantly being poked or tortured by a man but doesn’t give any explanation because she apparently doesn’t like to converse with the spirits.

It’s time to go back to Steve, who is on the hunt to find Larry Nichols, he wrote a book on the history of Cramerton. Yes, it was discovered there was a plague in 1902-1903 that lead to the house being used as pest house to segregate the sick and house the dead bodies from the public… Steve goes to see another historian Dr. Alan May he is a local historian who knows more about the plagues than Larry did, (and yet he flipped out because Salem likes war history.) Cramerton had two plagues one when the Native Americans inhabited the land and the other in the 1900s. 

Switching gears back to Amy and Matt, Amy has been drawn to the backyard specifically the edge of the woods. The first thing she says after standing there for a while is, “they’re going down” and my reaction is this: 

Basically what Amy describes (after saying they're going down) are souls being sucked into the Earth and there used to be water there but the water disappeared. I don’t know how they can come crawling back out of the water once their dead bodies have been thrown into it… unless it’s playing like a movie and the people coming out of the water are the living members of the tribe who were putting the bodies into the water. The historian (Steve talks to shown in a clip that plays during Amy’s walk through of the backyard) says that there was a river near that house and it was used to by the Native Americans for the remains of the dead to get it out of the community. Well throwing things in the river would infect the water and spread the disease that’s always a good idea, but to be fair they probably didn’t know that it would infect the water. 

 

 

Matt's thinking this is crazy, why do I keep doing this?

 

After examining the edge of the woods Amy and Matt move on to other parts of the backyard she says that a man comes up to her and was trying to touch her. She claims he’s not a good person because he’s super tall and it doesn’t look normal to her. This also leads her to wonder if he’s super manipulative because he looks so strange and he looks sort of like a mortician. Maybe he has giant-ism or something similar to it. Don't be a bully about his looks just because he's dead and looks a little creepy, humans who are alive can look creepy too. He's an abnormally tall and lanky mortician who is for some reason obsessed with someone he had to prepare for death or whatever morticians do. It is perfectly normal for someone to want you to see them in a way other than they see themselves... it's called public image. 

There’s a rule breaking going on here because apparently despite all the stuff I stated before, Steve still has problems with Salem and out of the blue, she apparently has an infatuation with death and that's a problem. Meanwhile her mother has millions of dolls and has problems with people who don’t want to be inside her home because the dolls scare them and Salem is the one with the problem. Priorities, you’re doing it wrong. 

 More odd dolls…

 

Salem’s mom is oblivious, she’s like my family is fine with the dolls but you can clearly hear how uncomfortable Salem is with them. She hates the dolls but then again parents seem to think kids are okay with everything they do and won’t even consider asking their children about their new hobby. 

 

Now is time that we can see the drawing of the man as well as any other evidence they have stumbled across. Unfortunately, we don't find out why the man was tormenting the woman, nor do we find out the woman’s identity. Hang on were there two separate men in the house, one in the basement and one outside or was it the same man who traveled from the basement to the backyard. 

 

Oh my god what’s wrong with your face?

Well mainly his nose is weird.

 

Honestly, this is going to sound mean but lady your husband probably didn’t want to listen to you because you have mountains of dolls stacked in your house from the floor to the ceiling in layers. How can you take anything serious when you’re surrounded by trillions of pairs of eyes that don’t blink? They constantly are watching your every move even though they don’t have a living brain to register what’s going on and react to it, but the thing is you wouldn’t want to feel like someone’s watching you all day long, no matter where you go you can’t escape the dolls eyes.  

 

Seriously again with the fascination with death, if Salem explained this during one of her interviews then fine, but the editors forgot to put that clip in somewhere so the rest of the world is informed that yes she is validating the fact she is fascinated with the dead. Since that clip was never aired it makes them all look like they’re pulling this fact out of thin air and it’s highly annoying. This poor child is now misunderstood for the entire world to see and it sucks nobody stopped to correct themselves when they kept insisting she likes the dead when she didn’t say she likes the dead. She said she wasn’t scared of the apparitions she sees anymore because she understands it better now than when she was younger. That doesn’t mean she’s fascinated by it all it means is that it doesn’t scare her anymore. Amy I also don’t remember anyone stating they wanted the dead to stay there. From what I’ve seen the living want them out and the dead want the living out.

It’s not scary and you can deal with it, just get rid of the dolls and move on with life or just ignore your family. They don’t like the dolls because there’s too many of them and everyone who was trapped there has an even worse chance of moving on because of the amount of dolls. The parents act like the world is about to end because of the results given to them at the end of the reveal. The world won’t end just pack up some of the dolls and fill the space with something less creepy, like family photos on the walls of some of the open rooms. Maybe get some wall paper or learn how to paint designs on walls just do something to fill up the empty space. Who knows maybe you could even sell the dolls and get some good money off them because they have to be collector’s items by now therefore they are expensive. Buy something amazing with the money or save it up for something else. Do a search on how to fill up space in your house or ideas to decorate your house. I shouldn’t have to tell you these things it’s common sense.

Although I stopped expecting anything good to come out of this episode, I must say I was shocked when at the end of the show it said she got rid of some of the dolls and the paranormal activity has died down. I really thought this woman wasn't going get rid of her dolls in any way, shape, or form. I thought she was going to keep them and find other ways around it or make things worse but she started selling them. Good job Salem’s mom I am proud of you for using your brain.

Dead Files Episode 3

Terror in the Shadows

Hello wonderful people!

Dead files, episode three is called Terror in the shadows and since episode two was oh so wonderful, I figured I’d give this episode a look and see what happens.

For episode number three, the three paranormal investigators (I guess that’s what I should call them) travel all the way to Acampo California and they still feel the need to explain who they are via voiceover and I don’t think they plan on stopping this any time soon. They are in Acampo because they received a call from an elderly woman’s children about their concern for their mom living alone in their haunted house. They say that while growing up in the house, they were tormented by a black shadow figure…

It’s now time for Amy’s walk through and within two minutes she hints at something being wrong as well as something evil. I like this game someone should pay me a dime every time those words come out of her mouth during her walks. The next minute of her walk includes her stating something disturbing and dark but no explanation into any of this so the show turns to Steve because it’s tired of Amy. However this goes by with nothing for me to comment on so it’s back to Amy for a brief moment. I don’t trust her definition of evil… not after the previous episode when they went to Asbury Park and that thing was in the basement… I still stand by my initial statement of the thing being a poltergeist. Also if you feel like big hands are pulling you in somewhere maybe you should tell them to stop since you are obviously uncomfortable with this happening to you.

The show throws two last things at you without explaining them before switching back to Steve… who talks to the most ignorant woman I’ve ever heard of… She just ignored everything her children told her about the paranormal events happening to them… they must have felt like crap. She even doubted her husband’s stories (when he was alive.) Oh look we’re switching back to Amy… who isn’t sure what’s happening why she can’t just ask the spirits in the house what is happening I don’t know… Now back to Steve… see this is really annoying isn’t it… this is the format they are sticking with and so I shall review the show in the same manner that they edit their episodes and hope (if I ever get popular) people will complain this constant change from person to person is giving them whiplash.

The mom apparently claims to have only “seen a few things” around the house but we all know she’s lying. Placing the blame on the children won’t help you lady, we all know you’re lying about what you’ve experienced just admit it. By the way her name is Lorraine. I don’t have anything more to say about this portion of the interview with Steve and Lorraine so here’s a brief rant on Amy’s walk through.

As usual she’s going on and on about something but won’t mention what it is and to that I say: What is this ‘something’ you keep mentioning and why can’t you learn to tell stories in a linear fashion?

Now for a brief moment to rant on Steve and Lorraine: she tried down playing all the paranormal activity she did see as just simple little shadows… News flash Lorraine, simple little shadows wouldn’t have your children worried sick about you living alone in that house. If it was just a harmless shadow then they’d be like ‘oh okay it’s just a simple shadow it doesn’t do much of anything and we don’t feel threatened so we’ll just let it go about its business and we’ll go about our lives.’ Also when the show goes back to Amy she mentions or goes to some area of a house but fails to tell the audience what part of the house is being focused on… and she gets freaked out by seeing her own shadow in that unmentioned room.

The best example of Lorraine’s ignorance or just sheer derp moment was when she every so calmly explained how her son when he was four years old would sit up on the end of his bed, his eyes would be rolled back speak in tongue and convulse like he was having a seizure in the middle of the night. She claimed she didn’t know why he was doing it as if the shadows and whatnot they’d try to tell her about weren’t the cause of this… when she knew they were possessing her son and making him do those things because four year old children don’t just get up and do that in the middle of the night.

This episode decides to take a random turn and give you random back story for Amy. When she was a small child, she saw shadow people in her room and they convinced her they’d be her friend and that she could go be with them… if she bit the electrical cords in her room. I honestly do feel bad that happened to her but seriously if you’re at the age where you’ll stick your finger in an electrical socket then why the hell are there chords in your room that you can access to a point where you can put your mouth on it and bite down? Wouldn’t the parents hide it or just not have anything in your room that needs to be plugged in reachable?

Later on they break protocol because of the intensity and potential danger of the case. Honestly Amy sounds like she could care less about Lorraine who is the person that is repressing some feelings causing the poltergeist Amy felt when she walked out of the house to get away from the shadow people.

Over all the house is drowning in negativity and they all need to work on communication with their feelings. Maybe then some of the activity will die down. I can’t say much about the shadow people since not much is known about them but the poltergeist is sometimes caused by sensitive repressing emotions and it coming out in psychokinetic ways often ‘forming’ a poltergeist for lack of a better term.

Honestly as much as I yelled at this episode it was better than the previous episodes by a landslide. It kind of gives me hope that they can produce good episodes… story wise… everything else just made me angry however there is still time for the show to grow and develop so maybe future episodes will learn from its previous mistakes and not be so annoying.