A new paranormal television talk show from the warped mind of Jeff Belanger. Live Thursday nights at 8 PM. View the live stream or watch previous episodes online for free. If the truth is out there… 30 Odd Minutes will only find it by sheer accident. http://www.30oddminutes.com/

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Dear Ghostvillagers,

Happy 100th newsletter! 2009 has been a year of milestones for us in so many ways. It was our ten-year anniversary (six more years until Ghostvillage.com can legally drive a car!), we published more feature articles than any year prior, and in 2009 more than 1.3 million unique people passed through our village. Our mission today is no different than it was all of those years ago: we want to be a central repository for all things ghostly. We welcome all viewpoints, research, and discussion of this incredible topic. In 2010, I can tell you we’re planning some big additions and redesigns of the Web site that will make your experience in our village even better.

As 2009 goes into its death throes and gasps for its final breath, I can’t help but reflect on the “spirit” of the season. 2009 has been good to Ghostvillage.com and to me personally (I discovered a few years ago that my life and the life of Ghostvillage.com have become intertwined), and there's many many people to thank. I’d like to thank all of our sponsors and advertisers who supported Ghostvillage.com this year. If you see an advertisement on our site, please click on it and at least check out what our sponsors are selling. These are the folks who keep us going and growing. I’d like to thank all of the great conferences who had me out to speak at their events. It was also great meeting so many amazing people who I share this journey with. Everyone makes some kind of impact on me, and my deepest regret is that I can’t remember everyone by name (one of my New Year’s resolutions is to get better with names). I’d like to thank my book publishers who keep my work out there. And I’d like to thank the cast and crew of the Ghost Adventures television show (shameless plug: Friday nights at 9 PM on the Travel Channel) who brought me on as their researcher and writer on the first episode last year and have utilized me for every episode since. It’s been an amazing experience working on that show and I hope for their continued success (Friday nights at 9 PM… you’re all watching, right?). I’d like to thank the cast and crew of my paranormal television talk show, 30 Odd Minutes (shameless plug: Thursday nights at 8 PM at www.30oddminutes.com), it’s an honor to count myself as a fellow oddball along with: Matt, Andrew, Andy, Sarah, Rob, and Cameron. In 2010 you can expect a lot more episodes, more great guests, and more fun with the paranormal. I’d like to thank all of you Ghostvillagers for all of the emails, great feedback, and for visiting the site as often as you do. Without you, this would just be a big, empty space. Finally I’d like to thank my family for putting up with me, my job, and my life. I know it would have been easier if I still had some 9-5 corporate job, but we wouldn’t have anywhere near as much fun or as many great stories to share.

Okay... sorry if I’m getting mooshy. Hang in there. We’re almost through. 'Tis the season of giving, and I wanted to tell you about another project I was a part of. Those of you who read all of these newsletters may recall that last December I wrote a song called "My Christmas Tree is Haunted." Fortunately I have some really talented friends and family who could piece this sucker together (thanks to John Judd for all the music and to Robert Peckman for the vocals). Over the summer I get a call from my buddy Tim Weisberg at Spooky Southcoast radio who asks if I'd be willing to donate my song to the annual Rock 4 Xmas charity CD. Other artists on the CD include Rick Derringer, Terry Ilous from XYZ, Cheap Trick, and Eddie Money to name just a few. Holy cow, my song along with those guys? Too funny. Of course I said yes. It’s a great cause that helps needy families, and I get bragging rights for life. So this month’s newsletter prize is a copy of said CD. At one of the benefit concerts I had a couple of the guys autograph it. So if you win, it has the signatures of Terry Ilous, Eddie Money, and yours truly. I’m willing to bet you that this may be the only item ever that will have both my autograph and Eddie Money’s. And I'm giving it away. But please do check out Rock 4 Xmas and buy a copy of the CD even if you don’t win. Because you never know when your Christmas Tree will be haunted.

Okay, 2010 is coming quick and I’m already booked up for many great events around the United States (come on South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia – when are you going to have me come out?). There’s a few coming up soon that you need to check out. For all of your writing/reading fans, check out Velocicon (I’m also the MC) in Red Bank, New Jersey March 6th, come to the Queen City Paranormal Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, April 9, and see the list below for many other great events.

From our ghostly family to yours, may 2010 bring you good health, many laughs, and some great ghost experiences that we can talk about for years to come!

Enjoy the rest of the newsletter below!

Supernaturally yours,

Jeff Belanger
Mayor of Ghostvillage.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/ghostvillager

Jeff Belanger's Upcoming Events

This is the place to find out where author and Ghostvillage.com founder Jeff Belanger will be speaking on the subject of the supernatural. If you're interested in booking Jeff for a conference or other event, please email us for more information.

Events Scheduled:

Velocicon 2010 - Red Bank, New Jersey - March 6, 2010
The Queen City Paranormal Convention - Historic Music Hall - Cincinnati, Ohio - April 9, 2010
Beyond Reality Events - The Mt. Washington Hotel - Bretton Woods, New Hampshire - April 23-26, 2010
Darkness Radio Events - Waverly Hills Sanitorium - Louisville, Kentucky - May 2-4, 2010
Ghost Adventures Crew and Darkness Events - Eastern State Penitentiary - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - June 3-5, 2010
Beyond Reality Events - The Stanley Hotel - Estes Park, Colorado - June 13-16, 2010
Private Lecture - Newburyport, Massachusetts - July 28, 2010
2010 Haunted America East Coast Conference - Cape Cod Community College - West Barnstable, Massachusetts - August 28, 2010

Monthly Contest

Congratulations to Erin Smith of Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, Canada, who was last month's winner of an autographed copy of the new DVD: Dark Matter: Conspiracies of the Mind, a Ghostvillage.com window sticker, and a Ghostvillage.com t-shirt!

How to win: Entries will be accepted up until 5:00 PM (eastern time) tomorrow (December 17, 2009). At 5:00 PM, we will draw a winner at random from the correct entries that have been received. You no longer have to be the first, but you only have until 5:00 PM to get your answer in. If you click on this link: http://www.ghostvillage.com/index.shtml#winner, you see today's date, and "We have a winner!" that means the contest has ended. Sorry, please try again next month. To submit your entry, simply reply to this email with the correct answer.

On to this month's question: This question can be answered by reading a page on Ghostvillage.com. Remember, reply by 5:00 PM today to be eligible to win.

What's the name of the United Nations staff member in Bahrain who experienced some unexplained phenomena in his office?

At 5:00 PM tomorrow, we will announce the winner on our home page. Good luck! (Only Ghostvillagers who have not won a prize from us in the last year are eligible.)

This month's prize: We're giving away an autographed copy (Eddie Money, Terry Ilous of XYZ, and Jeff Belanger) of the new CD: Rock 4 Xmas: Volume 2, a Ghostvillage.com window sticker, and a Ghostvillage.com t-shirt!


Didn't win? Want to buy a copy? Click on the graphic.

Supernatural Calendar

The Supernatural Calendar is the place where thousands will learn about your events of interest to the supernatural world. The service is only available to registered members of the message boards, and it's free! Ghostvillage.com now syndicates our calendar of events so other Web sites can also display these supernatural happenings at no charge! To learn more about installing our calendar of events RSS feed, please visit our syndication page. Adding your own local events to our calendar is more important than ever!

December 19: The Yuletide Fayre
January 9: Jordan Hollow Paranormal Investigation
January 17: Jeff Belanger on ILPRS Radio

Who's Who in the Village?

Get to know some of your fellow Ghostvillagers.

>>CaveRat<< - Ghostvillager since April 20, 2008

What is your name?
Jim Brown

How old are you?
59

Where do you live?
Smithfield, Pennsylvania, in a rural area about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

What do you do for a living?
Electronics Specialist. I maintain the electronics systems needed to keep the Rapid Transit system running for West Virginia University. I have been there 29 years going on retirement soon. In addition I also do specialty electronics design for clients. That involves developing systems a client might want but are not commercially available. In other words a source for that one-of-a-kind project someone may need.

What got you interested in the paranormal?
I have not directly had any paranormal experience personally. But I have seen and been present when others have in the course of my investigations. Originally my interest stems from the UFO flap of 1973. Locally many reports came in and I began to wonder what these people were seeing. I contacted a few and began to see certain similarities and my interest simply grew out of that. Only more recently did I branch into the ghost and haunting side of the paranormal after noticing that there were also similarities between apparition reports and those claiming aliens and hooded entities. Today after comparing notes I question whether some of these may in fact be the same phenomena, the difference being a matter of interpretation on the part of the witness.

What's the most compelling paranormal evidence you've ever captured?
Probably the EVP evidence I captured on an investigation involving a child and an invisible friend. (The entire case is outlined on my website). The EVP itself was simply a command, "Leave me alone!" But along with this, at the same time a lamp was thrown from a dresser against a wall over the sleeping child's head. Three investigators were present as were her parents, so no possibility of a hoax exists. The EVP was captured on high quality audio equipment, in stereo, thus equipment anomalies can be discounted. So while the EVP is itself impressive, it is the supporting evidence that lends even more credibility to it. It is my belief that as investigators we were interfering with something whatever was responsible had in mind for the child. The message was directed at us. (We are still involved in this case, I am lead investigator.)

Do you have any holiday traditions in your family? If so, what are they?
No real special traditions. Just what many others do. The family will come in, we'll enjoy each other's company, have a nice dinner and open presents.

Features

Our "Features" section is a place for editorials, research articles, open letters to our readers, and other content of interest to Ghostvillagers. If you have a topic on your mind, agree or disagree with something you read recently, we want to hear from you! For guidelines, click here.

New features added since our last newsletter:

Psychic Vampires with Michelle Belanger By 30 Odd Minutes December 10, 2009 [VIDCAST]
Rosemary Ellen Guiley - Ghost Chronicles December 9, 2009 [PODCAST]
Astral Projection with Robert Bruce By 30 Odd Minutes December 4, 2009 [VIDCAST]
Four Predictions for the USA in 2010 by Lee Prosser December 3, 2009 [COLUMN]
Secrets of the Holy Lance - Ghost Chronicles December 2, 2009 [PODCAST]
Investigating the Gettysburg Engine House - Ghost Chronicles November 18, 2009 [PODCAST]
The Hindu Perspective on the Paranormal by Deonna Kelli Sayed November 17, 2009

Last Month's Theme - Featured Content

Our last month's theme was the Stone Tape Theory. Here's what you missed if you haven't checked in since last month:

Features: What are Ghosts? by Rob Conover and Brad Conover
Features: Ethnoarchaeoghostology: A Humanistic-Scientific Approach to the Study of Haunt Phenomena by John Sabol
Features: The Residual "Jiggle" by Jack Roth

Shopping at Ghostvillage.com

Have you checked out our Ghost-Mart and Ghostvillage U.?

Ghostvillage U.: "Professor Paranormal" Loyd Auerbach and the HCH Institute's Distance Learning Certificate Course on Parapsychological Studies is now available through Ghostvillage.com. Ready to take paranormal investigation to the next level? Check out the online courses.

Ghost-Mart:
Digital Voice Recorders: Going for EVP? Think DVR.
Paranormal Books: Ghost-Mart has many of the leading paranormal titles.
EMF Meters: Check out our line of EMF meters from cell sensors to tri-field.
Closed Circuit TV: From inexpensive to the high end, we have them all.

Supernatural Library

Ghostvillage.com's book reviewer, Lee Prosser and the staff have brought you new book reviews and author interviews since our last newsletter.

This past month's Library additions:

A History of Ghosts by Peter H. Aykroyd
Your Neighborhood Gives Me The Creeps by Adam Selzer
True Ghosts compiled and edited by Andrew Honigman

Recent Encounters

We receive personal encounters from all over the world. Many are scary, some are touching, but they are always profound. If you would like to share your own experience, please click >>here<<. Since our last newsletter, we added the following new encounters:

Gliding White Specter - Singapore
Haunted by Bobby - Marinette, Wisconsin
The Entity in My Brother's Basement - Yardley, Pennsylvania
The Ouija Board's Warning - Langley in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
A Family of Angels - Huntington, West Virginia
Evil-Looking Apparition - Eagle Lake, Texas [PIC]
Monster Holding Me Down - Houston, Texas
Laugarvatn Cave Anomaly - Laugarvatn Cave, Iceland [PIC]

News

This is the place to find news items on paranormal happenings around the world. If you have a news item you'd like to submit, please see our guidelines.

From the Desk of Christopher Balzano, News Editor
Winter is a great time for a ghost story. There is something about curling up with a good book that creates an unnatural shiver as the snow falls and the fire crackles. Some of the most enduring paranormal tales were born and are retold in the winter months, the most notable being the chronicles about Scrooge and his four dead teachers.

But the winter brings on the true ghost stories as well. People who research and investigate ghosts will tell you there is a spike in reports during the craziness of the Halloween season, but there are flares again in January and February. Some say those long cold months are magnets for tragedy and the spark for a haunting later. Others say the time indoors forces you to get reacquainted with that failing water heater that makes the loud banging or those ancient pipes which always freeze as the snow begins to pile up.

At Ghostvillage News we generally avoid stories of personal hauntings, mainly because there are so many that could be covered. This season, enjoy our large camera on the changing field and those stories having an impact on the whole community, but save a little time to look for some local stories in your town’s paper. They are out there and will find their way into print. It is the small story that builds the foundation our larger themes are based on. They might just satisfy your craving for ghosts while you wait for the snow to melt so you can get back out in the field yourself. Besides, most of those paranormal shows are into reruns around this time anyway.

Be sure to send me stories you think are especially interesting or relevant. Just make sure they are enough to give me the chills here in sunny Florida.

Investigated ghosts disappear The Register Citizen Barkhamsted, Connecticut- December 5, 2009 [EXTERNAL NEWS]
Haunted Rentals: Advertising a ghostly roommate Tuscon Citizen Tuscon, Arizona- November 22, 2009 [EXTERNAL NEWS]
How to die on Facebook The Globe and Mail Toronto, Canada- November 21, 2009 [EXTERNAL NEWS]
Ghosts, monsters, dragons: What to tell kids CNN November 14, 2009 [EXTERNAL NEWS]

WANT THESE HEADLINES ON YOUR SITE FOR FREE? Syndicate our news! If you have a Web site or blog, you can syndicate our news feeds to your site for free. Join the growing list of Web sites who carry our news by visiting our syndication page.

Hot Threads and the Ghostvillage.com Community

In the past month, hundreds of new people registered for free to join our supernatural discussion! Have you?

If you have registered for our message boards but haven't validated your account yet, it's simple to do! Look for the email that was automatically sent to you when you registered and click on the account activation link in the email (note: some bulkmail filters may block this email, so you'll need to check your bulkmail folder if the validation email didn't immediately come through). There are always great discussions going on in our huge message board community. We hope you'll get involved. It's free to register if you're not already a member. Here are some of the hot topics this month:

Personal Encounters
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29452
Pennies.

Skeptics Forum
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=18168
Skeptics vs. Believers

Paranormal Books
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29416
Stephen King is working on the sequel to The Shining.

Paranormal Movies
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29132
Blood and gore or mind games... what frightens you most in movies?

Spiritography
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29375
Can knowing ways of spoofing spirit photographs help us in evaluating real ones?

EVP
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29513
EVP taken in damckie's bedroom.

Spirit Video
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=28974
Was this a spiit?

Urban Legends
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29450
The Island of the Living Dead Dolls / La Isla de las Munecas.

Haunted Land
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=13174
Dice Road Cemetery, Saginaw.

Haunted Dwellings
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29507
Postans Farm - Rockingham.

Haunted Water
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=22149
Ghost ships.

Regional Hauntings
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=11048
Hell House - Connecticut.

Spirit Communication
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=28393
Contacting my dad.

Beginner's Block
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29310
Investigation - things to note.

General Board
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29378
Charging money for ghost hunts - a discussion.

Real Life Occurrences
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showtopic=29467
Cancer - reach out.


Board of the Month -- Holiday Spirits
http://www.ghostvillage.com/ghostcommunity/index.php?showforum=27
What are your traditions, your holiday ghost stories, and your thoughts on the "spirit" of the season?

Ghostvillage.com Advertising Opportunities

Each month Ghostvillage.com reaches tens of thousands of people interested in the paranormal. We offer the most effective and best-valued advertising and sponsorship packages of any paranormal media outlet. Please visit: http://www.ghostvillage.com/advertising.htm for details.

If you're ready to put Ghostvillage.com to work for your company or organization, send us an email to get started.

Ghostvillage.com Quick Stats:

305,694 Posts in the Town Square Message Boards
26,817 Members in the Town Square
939 "Personal Encounters" published on Ghostvillage.com
1,417 Paranormal Web sites in the Ghost Links directory
30,426 Subscribers to this newsletter
4,988,529 Total Web site "hits" for Ghostvillage.com in November

Support Ghostvillage.com

Ghostvillage.com is the Web's largest supernatural community, the central place where people come to share their experiences, thoughts, and research. Please help us continue to grow by buying a copy of The World's Most Haunted Places, Communicating With the Dead, The Encyclopedia of Haunted Places, The Nightmare Encyclopedia, Our Haunted Lives, Ghosts of War, The Ghost Files, Weird Massachusetts, Who's Haunting the White House?, or shopping in Ghost-Mart. Every little bit helps run our servers and helps the site get bigger and better! Please also click on our banner ads and support our advertisers -- when you do business with someone who advertises with Ghostvillage.com, let them know you saw their ad with us and thank them for the support.

Please email us anytime at info@ghostvillage.com. Your comments, questions, and feedback are always welcomed.

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