I love teasing Nancy because on her business card it lists her as having her BS, and MBA. She is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program as well. On top of that she is the founder of “Hugs For Humanity,” and she teaches Kundalini yoga; she’s a Clinical Aromatherapist, Reiki Master, crystal technologist, and master energetic healer. So I’m always asking her about her “37 jobs.” 

Did I mention she’s also a psychic?  She is, in fact, my favorite go to psychic when I want a reading. Since the fair was slow, I asked her for a reading. 

Nancy normally works with cards when she does a reading, but as with most good psychics, she operates on an intuitive level as well. When she laid out the cards after I shuffled them several times, the reading she gave me just floored me! 

I didn’t tell her about this project I’m working on, but she did tell me about it. She told me that I would be working in a “partnership”  with a large corporation. She said I wouldn’t be working “for” the corporation, but that they would be paying me while I do my own thing. 

“I want to say it’s a publishing company,” she said. “Are you thinking of writing a book?” 

After the reading, I told her I am and but I didn’t give her details. I only told her I was trying to determine the identity of an individual who was alive at the time of the Salem witch trials. I started to get out of my chair when I told her this. 

“Is he German?” she asked. 

“What?” I asked wide eyed, sitting back down. The name, D*****n, from my research seems to come from Germany. 

“Is he from Germany?”

“Why do you ask?” 

“I don’t know, it’s what I’m getting energetically,” Nancy explained to me. Then she started giving me more of her impressions, which she told me she was receiving “energetically.” 

Suddenly, much of the reading she gave me made more sense. At one point she said that my family lineage would come into play with what my future holds. I told her about how the skull was supposedly passed down from generation to generation. 

“No,” she insisted, “the card is about your family lineage.” She described his personality as a “sword personality,” meaning that he spoke the truth as he knew it. Throughout the reading, cards with images of swords kept coming up. I mentioned this to her. 

“Could the person I’m researching have been me in a past life?” I asked. 

Now it was Nancy’s turn to become wide eyed. “I don’t know! Maybe! Let me check energetically.” She closed her eyes and sat silently for several minutes. “What I’m getting is that you lived around the same time he did, but he didn’t know you as someone else; so yes, you could be him!” 

She gave me some more avenues to investigate. “I don’t think you were him. I’m getting the feeling you were more like his son, or grandson. I think you were his grandson.” 

Now, I’m not sure what I believe about reincarnation, but I couldn’t help but wonder if this is the reason I have the skull and am supposed to write this story. 

“I don’t think that this person was part of the family you mentioned had the skull all these years. I think that they were just the caretakers. You are it’s guardian. You are the one who’s supposed to tell the truth of this story.” 

Nancy’s website is, www.thewakingsoul.com

 In 1598 the land in and around salem was almost bare from settlers. As time went forth, Puritan’s took over and a town was born. Ever since the settlers moved into this part of the country strange things began happening in the woods not far from town. Outside of Salem was the town of Andover. This would be the town Martha Carrier was born. Best remembered in popular lore as the ‘rampant hag’ described by Cotton Mather, Martha Carrier was a victim of Salem’s outbreak of witchcraft. Carrier was accused of being in league with the devil by the circle of “afflicted” girls, neighbors and even her own children, and hanged as a witch on August 19, 1692. Like many of accused witches, Carrier was a poor, disagreeable woman, for whom this was not the first accusation of witchcraft. 

  Born Martha Allen, daughter of one of the original founders of the Massachusetts town of Andover, in 1674 Martha married below her station to a young Welsh servant and father of her illegitimate child, Thomas Carrier. Living for a few years in Billerica, the couple returned to Andover in the 1680′s with very little money and four children. Martha’s independent spirit and lack of deference seem to have quickly alienated her from the rest of the community. The turning point came in 1690 when a smallpox epidemic erupted in the town.

Although her family, particularly the men, accounted for 7 of the 13 who died of smallpox in the town, the community of Andover blamed Martha for the tragedy.

Martha was forced to give up her account of being a witch or at least having participated in witchcraft…faced with death, she confessed about the witch who taught her witchcraft, who lived in the woods of Andover, a male witch. (His name cannot be spoken ever! Only the one who possess’ the skull and amulet of the male witch my say his name, for this person now owns the right of spell’s that have been cast and are awaiting to be cast.) 

D*****n, the male witch practiced witchcraft for ages, no one knows when and were he was born but was believed to lived over 100 years. He taught Martha everything he knew, at least as much as she could handle at such a young age. She then went forth and taught the other girls of Salem. 

D*****n was torn from his home, a cave in the woods, and dragged to death behind a horse drawn carriage. His head was chopped off and put on a stick, placed on the roof of the court house in Salem, better known as the witch house. His body was burned. After the death of D*****n, in the cover of night Martha dug through the ashes of the cremation and recovered the amulet and ring D*****n wore. She immediately buried them both for safe keeping. 

Martha also climbed to the top of the court house and took down D*****n’s head and rapped it in butcher paper. She also buried it. Martha inherited all the power ofD*****n and his spell’s followed.

Carrier’s reputation as a witch found new expression two years later when the outbreak in Salem began. As the testimony of the circle of accusing girls reflected, the Salem community was well aware of Andover’s gossip. Susan Sheldon, Mary Walcot, Elizabeth Hubbard and Ann Putnam screamed before the court that they could see the 13 ghosts of Andover. Other neighbors accused her of maleficium, testifying that after harsh words from her, evil things like sick or dead animals or strange illnesses befell them. During her courtroom examination, however, Carrier stood her ground and boldly asserted that those who accused her lied. Asked if she could then look upon the girls, seemingly possessed, without their writhing in pain, she said she would not, for “they will dissemble if I look upon them.” Later, she admonished the magistrates, saying “it is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks that are out of their wits.” 

Accusations of witchcraft extended beyond Martha to the rest of her family. Her sons Richard and Andrew, ages 18 and 15 respectively, were tied neck to heels until blood was ready to come out of their noses. Under such intense pressure, Martha’s own children, including seven-year-old Sarah and ten-year-old Thomas, Jr., testified against her and confessed themselves to be witches. Young Sarah told the court that she had been a “witch Ever Since She was Six years Old that her Moth’r brought a red book to her and She touched it.” The assistant minister Thomas Barnard who was responsible for these confessions, managed to get confessions from all but two of accused witches, including Martha, who were also members of his congregation.

D*****n’s skull, amulet and ring have been passed down in our family, witch to witch, there are no longer any witches’ living in our bloodline. The only reason the skull was given up was for someone to care for it that better understands the strange happenings it creates.

-Blessed be with you always…

I currently possess the skull, amulet and a ring which supposedly belonged to D*****n. It’s my intent to find out the truth behind this story. This blog will chronicle my efforts up to this point, and the research I do from this point on.

The Restless Spirit Hunter

Phyllis (not her real name) is a registered nurse who worked in the psychiatric ward at the time the picture was taken. Because of this, she and her co-workers in the ward were allowed to wear costumes, but not masks. 

Phyllis brought a digital camera with her to work and put it on a computer monitor. Setting the timer she and her co-workers posed for a picture. Phyllis didn’t like the picture so she asked everyone to pose again. Again, she wasn’t crazy about the picture quality, so she took two more pictures herself.

A CNA from another ward walked by and Phyllis asked her to take a pic of the group. The CNA agreed, and everyone posed yet again. The nursing assistant took the picture, handed the camera back to Phyllis and walked away. 

Phyllis looked at the image in the LCD. Behind the group of nurses in the image was someone apparently wearing a mask. 

“Who has the mask?” she asked. A mask, especially one like the one in the picture could easily frighten one of their patients. It looked like something out of the movie, “The Creature From the Black Lagoon.”

No one admitted to having one, so she asked them to take their costumes off, and even checked the purses of the two female nurses she worked with. She was frustrated when she couldn’t find it. She showed them the picture on her small camera and no one could believe what they were looking at. 

When I saw the picture I told her it was obvious to me that someone was in the hallway in the picture, and simply walked up behind them when the picture was taken.

“Anthony,” Phyllis responded, “that’s not a hallway. It’s a small office. No one could have gotten in there without us knowing about it.”

I conducted an investigation in order to try to determine how this image showed up in the picture. I blew up the picture and I could sit that there was a face under the mask. I could even see the skin fold under the eyes. There were eyeballs, but what disturbed me was that there wasn’t any sclera (white) in the eyes. 

As I interviewed the nurses on duty that night in that particular ward. One of them, Tony, asked me if I thought that the necklace he was wearing might have been the source of whatever was in the picture. Tony was dressed as a vampire and the necklace he was wearing was on loan to him by a friend of his who bought and sold antiques. 

“She told me she bought the necklace in West Hollywood from a woman’s estate in 1962,” he told me. “She also told me she’s only worn it twice since then.” 

Could the necklace be the source of the image? I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out. I bought the necklace, and had my own experiences with it. That led me to want to investigate more objects that were supposedly the source of paranormal activity. 

That led me to eBay.  It was on eBay that I found the skull and “amulet” two years ago. 

The skull is supposedly of a man who was killed in Andover, MA before the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria. He is purported to be the first witch of Andover, and the allegedly taught Martha Carrier the “Craft.” The “amulet” is what he allegedly used to cast his spells. 

This blog will document my search for the truth behind this story. 

Restless Spirit Hunter