Things That Go Bump In the Night

   When I was in high school, I worked at Seabreeze, a water park in Rochester.  I was a lifeguard which I, at the time, thought was the coolest job known to man.  I accumulated a gaggle of friends, all of whom were native to the area but hailed from different schools.  I went to one of the three private high schools so my selection of friends was limited at best.  In reality, I hated everyone that went to my school. Being the only hockey-playing-1996-Oldsmobile-driving girl amongst hordes of BMW-driving rich football players and cheerleaders made me a little bit of an outcast.  I had a small group of close friends but this job made finding people I could actually stand relatively easy. Hence, I took advantage of this heaven-sent situation by blindly following whomever told me to go anywhere. 

   One night in late July, one of my new compatriots rallied a bunch of us to visit White Lady's Castle.  This infamous spot lays just outside of our work, about 5 minutes up the creepiest hill I had ever seen. The story went that in the 1800's a woman's daughter was brutally raped.  The girl disappeared without a trace.  Her mother, obviously distraught, searched high and low for her offspring but never found anything. The White Lady soon gave up hope and committed suicide by jumping off the hill that we had just walked up.  It was said that people have seen the White Lady walking with her two German shepherds late at night- searching for the daughter she had lost.

   I'm terrified of my shadow, let alone ghost mothers and her canine companions.  Therefore, with quaking knees and a gigantic amount of regret, I allowed my friends to drag me into the forest where The White Lady's house actually stood. Given that I was underage, stupid and care-free, I also accepted offerings of alcohol.

   Alcohol + Ghost stories + Being where said stories took place + Being creeped out by all things supernatural= A very freaked out future huntress

    We stayed a couple of hours.  Besides the boys running around to spook us delicate girls into emitting high-pitched pig squeals, nothing much happened.

   Years later, DU and I set up the trail cam in order to scout out The Owner's land.  I briefly wondered if we would see anything unexplainable.  Months passed and besides a 7-point deer who absolutely loved the camera, he showed up in 76% of the photos, nothing of any weird quality appeared.

   I figured that nothing shows up in trail cams except deer and a random squirrel here or there until today. Hard at work, I noticed the following picture on one of my friend's Facebook walls:

  Obviously, as with anything weird or creepy- I was originally a tad squeamish.  But when I got to looking at it, the thing seemed a little fake... or is it?



  Once I was interested and those pesky GREs that I should be studying for suddenly seemed a lot less important,  I started searching creepy trail cam pics.

  This was one that was posted just a few days ago.  Apparently, a hunter sent this to his buddy who posted it.  The pictures he extracted from the cam were normal until this barefoot woman stood in the middle of the mud, walked around a little bit and disappeared.

Full story and picture source here:

 Creepy girl stands in middle of woods

   I showed these pics around at work and one of our graphic designers showed me this:

  She said she had found it a couple days after I mentioned something about trail cams. Obviously this is some sort of picture of a ghost and a deer looking at it. As one who works primarily with image-altering computer programs, I asked her what she thought of the quality of the pictures.  She said it was difficult to decipher and could not make a judgment call. I want to say it's fake because I'm a cynic but I'm not completely convinced.

 And then there's this monster caught mid-hunt on camera- it boggles the mind to figure out why she was in the middle of the woods, in full camo, with a bow in her hand.

  Then again, trail cams can capture non-paranormal images that boggle the mind and pose the age- old question:  Do deer dance? And if so, how well?

   After mulling all this over, I got to thinking that there must be millions of trail cams that run at all hours of the day in small corners of the world across the globe.  So, those bogus ghost hunters who make millions faking being scratched by spirits should be setting these things up all over the haunted woods in order to catch glimpses of real paranormal activity. Just think- had people had advanced trail cams back when Big Foot was huge news-instant evidence!

   Now I haven't seen anything abnormal on my trail cam- but have you?