In recent weeks it has come to my attention that certain parties are using my ghost stories and those of my contributors as references for their own commercial enterprises.  If you or someone you know is writing a book on ghosts in the Pacific Northwest, PLEASE DO NOT!!! copy or use the following stories or any other materials within this website as references.  

Jefferson Davis (25 April 2003)

What's New

 In 2021, I was in Alaska as a guest expert on the new show, Alaskan Killer Bigfoot; which I will shorten to AKB for this essay.  I was excited to take part for a number of reasons.  Perhaps the top of the list was the well documented history of the abandonded of the fishing village of Portlock, Alaska.  Next was the history of the area.  Written records go back into the 18^th century, while Native culture goes back thousands of years.  My research allowed me to dip into my anthropological and archaeological training.  Plus I went to Alaska and talked to the real stars of the show.

From the early 1900s until the 1950s, the village of Portlock Alaska was home to a seasonal fishing and cannery operation that employed at least 100 people.  However, as operations expanded and the population grew, several people vanished, mostly when hunting in the woods.  Over two dozen of them.  After rain and snow melt, some of their bodies eventually washed into the lagoon near Portlock.  The villagers believed the people were killed by Nantinaq, a supernatural being, which might have been related to what we know as a Bigfoot or Sasquatch.  After the entity entered the village at night, almost the entire population left in a mass exodus! 

By 2021, the nearby Native population were outgrowing their settlement, and decided to investigate Portlock, and perhaps resettle there.  That is the premise of AKB.  I did some of the research behind the history of Portlock, as well as legends recorded by anthropologists.  It turns out that both Spanish and English explorers visited the Portlock site in the late 1700s and found it abandoned.  According to archaeological evidence, the land had been occupied by Native peoples, then abandoned several times.

In addition to the historic logs, which were translated and published, there were archaeological and 19^th century articles, documenting strange happenings in the Portlock area.  Among the artifacts found were Spanish coins, which may date to the 17^th century.  This hints at much earlier visits from Europeans.  Oh, and the team which visited Portlock in 2021 encountered what they believed were paranormal forces.

If you are interested, here is a link to AKB on IMDB.  At this point the show is only available on Discovery+.  Here is a link to watch AKB.  I was spoke with the stars, Ash and Keith, in episodes 2 and 7.  However, I appear in flashback-form in several more episodes.  I have to say, that Ash and Keith are real people and just what they claim to be.  They are not actors.  The history of Portlock is also real.  You will have to make up your minds about the rest of the show.

Record Appearances on The Dead Files?  Posted 7 April 2022

If we apply ourselves and never stop learning, over the course of a long life, we can pick up a lot of diverse skills and interests.  In my case, I have served as a soldier and worked all kinds of civilian jobs, such as archaeologist, historian, author, and paranormal researcher.  Oh, and handyman.  One of the more interesting jobs I have had is that of guest expert on several television shows.  Usually I am there as a historical expert, but I have also acted or been an extra in a few movies.
 
It is unusual for someone to appear on any single paranormal-based reality tv show more than once.  In 2022/23, I was lucky to make my 7th and 8th appearances on The Dead Files.  It is quite a compliment, being asked back on any television show, much less one you like.  I asked one of the producers, why so many times?  He answered that I was easy to work with, and I knew my facts.  I was surprised that this was the secret to being asked back, so I put the same question to another producer friend.  He replied that it was true, not everyone who is a guest on any tv show is consistent, and a producer who has someone they can depend upon allows them to rest easier at night.
 
I remembered a quote from director-producer Joss Whedon, who once had three television shows on the air at the same time.  He liked having actors appearing in all three of his shows, which he called a Hat Trick.  His rules to being asked back were, show up to work on time; know your lines; and don’t hit on the women!  Recent complaints suggest while Whedon may have forgotten his own rules a time or two, they apparently work for people like me.
 
So, for people reading this essay, who want to be on a television show, that is my advice.  Show up to the location on time.  You do not have to ‘know your lines’ reality shows are unscripted, but know what you are going to talk about.  And don’t hit on anyone; treat everyone you meet, the crew as well as the cast with respect.  Try to be agreeable and work within the rules of the show.  You are not the star.  You are a guest, helping the cast and crew get the word out to the audience.  Remember that, and you might get asked back.

 Oh, some other thoughts.  Someone asked me about my claim to being the guest with the most returns on The Dead Files.  I may not be.  There is an artist who sketches ghost images for Amy.  He usually says, “Is this what you saw?”  He may hold the record.  If you are interested in seeing which shows I have appeared in, please visit my IMDB account and follow the links to the various shows.

The Oregon Ghost Conference took place on the weekend of 25 – 27 March 2022.  Because of covid, it was the 10^th, or was it the 11^th, or maybe the 12^th year of the conference.  That depends on whether you count the cancelled conference in 2020, or the Zoom-driven conference in 2021.  This year though, it was a real live conference on death!  For me, it was a bit like time travelling, catching up with people on three years of their lives, in a matter of minutes.  As you might expect, there were some surprises.  I remember visiting with a young couple in 2019, and asking the pregnant wife when she was expecting.  The two of them stopped by my sales booth in 2022, with both of their toddlers!  And I also paid respects to several people who will never attend another Ghost Conference in bodily form.

 
I admit, I stole this picture from someone else's website!

As I expected, fewer people passed through the doors of the OGC as attendees, however, the conference team made sure there were plenty of activities for those who did.  There were psychics to do readings; vendors selling their wares; to experts speaking on subjects as diverse as tombstone design to hypnosis, to developing your own psychic powers.  After the main conference hours, there were ghost walks of Astoria and Seaside.  There were also investigations of several haunted locations in and around Seaside as well.  For more information on the conference, please visit the Facebook page for the conference, as well as their website.

I just watched ParaSense – The Naked Experiments.  I am sure that many people reviewing this show begin using phrases such as, ‘it’s very titillating,’ or ‘ghost hunting – the bare naked truth!’  Many people can only talk about embarrassing subjects using jokes.  Discussing the paranormal is something of a taboo subject.  What about taboo subjects, within the taboo?  The truth is, people have reported paranormal activity in places like bathrooms, or in a nude or sexual contexts for years.  However, few authors or television producers will document these incidents seriously.

I have researched and written about the paranormal for many years, and sometimes I encountered stories of ghosts in bathrooms, or some kind of sexual/sensual setting.  After attending one of my ghost walks, one of my clients reported that somehow her bra had become unsnapped.  I know, kind of funny.  However, after the chuckles and giggles end, how can I explain what happened?

In the case of Para-Sense – The Naked Experiments, Ross Allison and his team treat the subject seriously.  Their experiments are not just about sexual ghosts, but also about using the entire human body as a sensor.  Their test subjects are naked, where their entire skin is exposed to the local environment, without clothing interfering with their sensations.  What happens?  Watch and find out.  Feel free to giggle every now and then, but also consider the evidence seriously.

I have had the pleasure of knowing Genvièv St. Clair for over a decade..  Genvièv has studied at the Sorbonne in France, and lived all over the world..  She is a Forensic and Clinical Hypnosis practitioner based in Portland, Oregon..  She holds national qualifications as a Master Hypnotist and Instructor in Emergency and Pain Control Hypnosis..  She is Board Certified and a Certified Instructor with the National Guild of Hypnotists. She has served as the president of the Oregon Hypnotherapy Association and recipient of the National Guild of Hypnotherapists President’s Award.. 

Genvièv specializes in recovering memories from past trauma, to aid people recovering from physical or mental injuries.Genvièv specializes in recovering memories from past trauma, to aid people recovering from physical or mental injuries.  She was reluctant to come to the Oregon Ghost Conference because she thought all anybody would be interested in was past life regression sessions.  I persuaded her to come regardless, knowing that there were other reasons paranormal investigators would attend her training sessions.

For instance, conducting a paranormal investigation is rather like watching a car wreck or natural disaster.  Every observer has a different recollection of what happened, based on their physical location and personal perspective.  Having someone hypnotize observers to retrieve memories of past paranormal encounters would be ideal for later discussion.  Plus, everyone needs help learning to center themselves at one time or another.  Such as, after a particularly scary paranormal encounter.

I attended her presentation on forensic hypnosis; how it worked and what it could and could not do.  She was clear and direct, and her audience was riveted.  And, more people attended her presentation than came to my own… I also had the sales table next to her information table in the Vendor’s Room.  Many people who were counselors came to speak with her, remembering taking her training sessions in prior years.  Clearly Genvièv has a lot to teach people.

Informal Paranormal Pub Schedule Posted 30 March 2022

Fortunately, The Underbar has weathered covid with all its health and financial dangers.  They have reopened with increased energy and open hours.  In 2022, we will have the Informal Paranormal Pub every second Sunday of the month, from 3 - 6 PM, and afterward.  That means we will have the pub on:
10 April 2022
8 May 2022
12 June 2022
10 July 2022
14 August 2022
11 September 2022
9 October 2022
13 November 2022
11 December 2022
We schedule our guest speakers about 2 to 4 weeks out, so please check on The Underbar webpage, or at the Facebook group page for information.  You can join the Paranormal Pub by following this link: Informal Paranormal Pub

The year 2020 has been stressful for most people, mostly due to Covid and all its restrictions.  For me, the threat and thought of getting covid and dying (myself) was overshadowed by the long illness and death of my father in 2020.  As I waited for him to pass, I had a lot of time to think, especially at 2 AM.  I thought mostly about how our society now does death backward.

Until the 1990s, it was generally a surprise when someone died of illnesses.  By that, I mean although many people were diagnosed with terminal illnesses, or chronic health problems, medical science was not advanced enough to predict how long someone had to live and diagnosis happened close to the point of death.  In the last few decades, diagnostic medicine has become quite precise.  Medical tools and technology have also become efficient at staving off death from various causes.  However, early diagnosis and new, innovative procedures are usually not a cure.  Instead, they let us know quite early that someone is dying, and then prolong the illness, merely delaying death.

As in the case of my father, he had heart valve replacement in 2014, followed by a cancerous kidney removal, cataract surgery, pacemaker installation, increasing dementia, and so on.  Between dietary changes and nine different medications, he survived into 2020 until his heart finally failed and he died in his sleep.  It was a long time to watch him fade away.

In the past, someone with my father’s medical conditions would have probably been diagnosed with his health issues, and within a few months, he would have died.  That person’s family would have had some warning, but they would have been hopeful of recovery and probably been surprised when the person died, quite suddenly.  When that person died, then the family would have grieved, perhaps for months, even years.  That was the natural order of things.

Now, in many cases, we know years ahead when someone is going to die.  It is a terrible burden for the sick person.  It is just as severe for the family, in a different way.  For me, the grieving process began in 2014 and continued to the day my father died.  When he finally died, it was a relief to me on so many levels.  I hope people reading this article are not offended.  If you are, you have probably not lost someone to a prolonged illness.  After my father died, I spoke with some people, many of whom went through the same experience as myself, and they echo my sentiments.

In the future, we are all going to have to get used to the new order of death and grieving.  If you are on the outside, please do not judge any of the reactions of the surviving family too harshly.  If you are one of the family members who has passed through this ordeal, please do not judge yourself too harshly either.

For myself, when thinking about my future ending, I am not sure if I would want to know years in advance.  Maybe it would be better to simply keel over, a surprised look upon my face?  Or, I could simply not go at all…

Were I to write about my father’s death as a screenplay, it would be a combination of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Wizard of Oz.  Or maybe Joel Orton’s Loot.  Please believe me when I say that I am not intentionally singling out anyone in this comedy of errors.  I blame it on the Covid crisis and various government agencies trying to find new ways of doing things.

My father died in his sleep in the morning of 29 April.  However, I did not get his death certificate until 12 May. Dad was in an adult group home.  He went to bed for a nap at 11:30 am and when the care giver came in to wake him up for lunch at 1:30 PM, she found him dead.  Or rather, not breathing, with no heartbeat. It obviously happened some time earlier and there was no reviving him. She was not a doctor, and so could not pronounce him dead.  She immediately called me and I called 911, who sent the paramedics. I arrived and they agreed he was dead, but did not have the legal authority to pronounce him dead either. Neither did the police officer who arrived about 30 minutes later.  It reminded me of the Collector of the Dead from Monty Python and the Holy Grail crying, “Bring out your dead!”  And the one plague victim saying, “I’m not quite dead yet!”

The police officer called the coroner's office, who finally agreed (around 3:30 PM) that Dad was dead, but was could not come out to sign any paperwork.  You see, he may have been biologically dead, but legally he was not quite dead yet. The holdup was the death certificate. Because of Covid, there was no coroner on the scene. They did all their work from home.  This hiccup reminded me of the Wizard of Oz, when the munchkins are thanking Dorothy for killing the Wicked Witch.  Right after the song, “We represent the lollypop guild”, the coroner comes out waving a death certificate, and pronounces the witch, “not merely dead, but most sincerely dead.”  The magic was in the piece of paper.  Too bad it was not as quick for my father.

In the meantime, I contacted a funeral home and made arrangements for them to pick up my father at 4:30 PM.  The driver got lost or turned around and did not arrive until closer to 6:00 PM.  They held his body at the funeral home until nearly mid-May, waiting for the death certificate.

I arrived at my home around 7:30 PM.  I put a few of my father’s belongings in the back bedroom, fed my two cats and sat down on the couch in the living room.  I put my feet up and sat in silence.  About a half hour later, I noticed something very strange.  My two cats were sitting at the entryway between the living room and the family room.  They were sitting next to each other, looking intently into the family room, or down the hall, at the end of the house.

This surprised me for many reasons.  At that point, the two cats did not get along.  My senior cat, Lucifer was the alpha male of the house.  He was easy going, but did not have personal boundaries.  My second cat, Ping originally belonged to my father, I adopted her about three months earlier.  My father LOVED cats and Ping was his last surviving pet.  She was a typical ‘fraidy’ cat, and hissed at Lucifer whenever he got within three feet of her.  I was startled to see them both sitting, shoulder to shoulder, looking down to the far end of the house.  I watched them silently for several minutes.

Slowly, Ping got up and walked almost hesitantly into the family room.  She disappeared from my view, but I am guessing she went all the way to the end of the house, where the back bedrooms were located.  I am sure of this, because I heard her rapid footfalls, and saw her suddenly appear, galloping through the main portion of the house, where she nearly crashed into the refrigerator.  Then, she walked back to the family room entrance and sat down next to Lucifer. 

A few minutes later, he got up and walked into the family room, and suddenly reappeared, running just as Ping had done.  Then he returned and sat down next to her.  They both repeated this performance twice more, then walked away to other places in the house.  The next time they came near each other, Ping hissed at Lucifer again.

So, what does this all mean?  Could it have been my father, returning home to try to contact me?  At one point Dad lived in the house with me, and his bedroom was the same one at the back of the house, where I stored his clothing.  What would have happened if I had the energy to get up and go into his old bedroom again, following the cats?  Or was he saying goodbye to Ping?  Sometimes he preferred his cats to humans.  I do not know.

There are a couple more mundane explanations for what happened.  Cats have a very powerful sense of smell and when they want, empathy for their owners.  Did Ping smell my father’s clothing, including some pheromone that warned of his death?  I read about a nursing home, where the facility cat jumped on the beds of several patients, who died shortly after the feline visit.  On the other hand, could my cats smell pheromones from me, after going through the ordeal of having my father’s body taken care of, following it on the clothing I stored in the back bedroom? 

The incident was never repeated.  It was another four months before Ping would let Lucifer come within six inches of her.  Now they have a feline friendship and look out for each other, within limits.  It’s just the three of us right now.  Ghosts, or cats smelling death and despair, I am not sure which I would prefer.

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