Yesterday I was browsing through the news when I came across a fascinating article from London’s Daily Mirror. The article is about an archaeological dig on a tiny island off the coast of Portugal, where a burial sight was found containing three bodies that are presently believed to be members of the Knights Templar. Nestled amongst these bodies was what was described as an ornate box that contained a single nail that is believed to date back to the time of the Crucifixion. This would not be altogether noteworthy as these nails are fairly common in the world given the fascination that the Romans had with that particular means of torture and execution, but what does make this find potentially remarkable is that this particular nail was seemingly being guarded by three members of the organization that is said to have tasked itself with the protection of the some of the most important relics of the Christian religion, including portions of the Holy Cross, the Holy Grail, as well as a variety of decapitated heads and other materials.

The fact that this nail was found in such company shows that it was held in reverence, and quite literally so; The nail is worn smooth, likely from being handled by countless people over centuries. Acids from their hands would gradually wear down the rough surface of the iron, polishing it into what it is today. That this particular was passed from person to person while under the watchful eye of the Order of the Temple, should mean something if its authenticity is verified. Even if it is truly deemed to be from that time period, there’s really no tangible way to prove that it was used in Crucifixion, but alas, that’s where the matter of faith comes in.

Reading this article instantly brought to mind a few classics, movies such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and books such as The Da Vinci Code. Not to mention the whole Arthurian legend of Galahad, son of Lancelot (which believe it or not, I live on a street called Lancelot Lane, with Galahad Drive intersecting two houses down from me). I decided to watch the Last Crusade today, as it’s been a couple of years since I’d last watched my favorite archaeologist in action. Through the course of the movie, our faithful protagonist leads us on an adventure from a stormy Pacific Ocean off the coast of Portugal, to a college campus in the U.S. of A, and across to Venice, Italy where we encounter our first member of the Knights Templar: The tomb of Sir Richard, whose shield holds a clue to the location of the Holy Grail.

As Indy continues his adventure through Austria, Germany, and down to what is now a part of modern day Turkey, my own anticipation and I’m sure yours as well, grows as though I myself am getting closer and closer to the legendary artifact. When we do eventually arrive at the hidden temple, we follow as Indy successfully passes through the final tests, and eventually comes across the final Knight Templar guarding the Holy Grail, kept alive by its restorative properties. Indy and his German enemies are posed with the task of picking the correct cup from a selection of many, and the Nazi representatives pick the solid gold, gem encrusted goblet, believing it be “fit for the King of kings.” Of course, the choice is wrong and Indy chooses the correct, humble looking chalice as the cup of Christ, which he uses to save his father’s life. The Holy Grail is then lost into the abyss during the penultimate scene, as an Earthquake swallows the German contingent whole.

The beauty of Indiana Jones (minus the Temple of Doom) is that it never gets old for me, it will always be an amazing series of adventures, and that some of the most time tested paranormal themes in our culture are the primary focus points of them.

The real Holy Grail, of course, remains a mystery. Some people believe that it resides in the United States, secreted away to some cold, isolated location in Minnesota or Wisconsin, and protected by Irish partisans. Another belief is that it lies buried in Oak Island, in Nova Scotia. Yet another belief is that the cup itself is in use to this very day out in the open, in a cathedral in Valencia, Spain, and was most recently used by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006. If that is indeed the case, then we can likely hang our heads and do away with the fantastical legends of eternal life springing from a simple chalice.

There can be hope, however, that the Grail of legend does exist. If this Holy Nail proves to be genuine, then it must lend a bit of optimism to the historical romantics, as there is no telling what else can be found buried under the eternal watch of the Knights Templar.

Perhaps it’s not buried at all. Maybe it’s right out in the open, where we would least expect to see it.

Here is a video clip from the show.

In this video you will see myself and L.E.M.U.R. Hall of Fame inductee Brian Irish analyzing the video that Dean Warsing captured in front of the National Geographic cameras while observing the Linville Gorge. Also seen in the clip is L.E.M.U.R. historian Vance Pollock, investigators Forrest Connor and Micah A. Hanks, Shelley Wright, and L.E.M.U.R. founder and president Joshua P. Warren.

Naturally, what got me thinking about this was when the antagonist in the Predator movies, that frighteningly toothy hunter of an unnamed alien species, began picking apart Arnold Schwarzenegger’s team of commandos in a Central American jungle. If aliens would indeed be similar to humans, which group of humans would they most likely fit in best with? Watching this movie and the second one gave me pause, and I began to consider not the most popular ideas about alien interaction with Earth–such as abducting us for science experiments, taking resources from deep under our feet, or even living among us without us being wise to their shenanigans–but perhaps one that is not as widely known, except for those familiar with aspects of John Lear’s ‘Dark Side Hypothesis,’ that they are indeed here, but they’re instead using us for a whole different game.

The earth has about 57,506,055 square miles of land surface, which contains an estimated 6.7 billion people. I can’t even begin to comprehend these large numbers, so to put it in perspective for what I’m going to be talking about, as of January, 2008, there were some 96 million heads of cattle in the United States, of which 34.4 million were commercially slaughtered. We then produced 26.56 billion pounds of beef, and consumed 27.3 billion pounds (imports from Canada and South America taking up most of the excess). Simply put, we love to eat our livestock.

In our modern world, most of us don’t need to hunt anymore; We have more than 2 million farms in the United States, with almost three quarters containing cows numbering from single digits to the thousands. These farms are dedicated to feeding us, so that we don’t necessarily need to get our long guns (or bows) and go out in the woods to bag ourselves dinner. However, if you look at it from the standpoint of someone who wants to eat a specific kind of meat that isn’t raised on farms, the individual usually has to go out and get it themselves, or hire someone else to do it for them.

Humans, for the most part, are not raised on farms. We are a free range species in most of the world, and that requires a bit of work to get us on the dinner table. Is it entirely impossible that an alien race just sees Earth as one big hunting ground? Every year, large numbers of Americans and Europeans go on hunting expeditions in the jungles of Asia and the plains of Africa, seeking a variety of elusive prey. They will hunt, they will kill, and they will take a trophy; A head to mount on the wall, or maybe the fur to make a rug out of.  This is more akin to what the Predator does in the movies, as he hunts the most dangerous game around: Humans.

So, perhaps we are an alien delicacy, or perhaps we are no more sophisticated or useful than the big game in Africa. It is a daunting thought, and one that I’m not thrilled to consider a possibility, but nonetheless. unlike some alien themed movies, it doesn’t seem very far beyond the realm of possibility, if we accept the idea that there is indeed alien life out there. Of course, all of this hinges on aliens existing, and having similar personality traits to the more hunting-minded people in our society. It could be that they do not exist, and it could also be that they do exist, and share personality traits with a… different group of people. For example, hippies. Take a roaming band of yesteryear’s flower children, stick them in a VW Bus, and send them from Washington D.C. to San Francisco, and there you have the same mindset of the traveling aliens.

Take me to your leader, dude.

With this skepticism in mind, I walked into the theater and took a good seat, flanked by my girlfriend, mother, and sister. The film came on after the usual ridiculous amount of trailers, and the ensuing hour and a half left me suitably impressed. I had heard the comparison to The Blair Witch Project, but I, as well as everyone else I personally know, found it be far superior in every way. But this is not a movie review; The purpose of this post is to take pieces of the movie and relate them to real life.

Whether you believe in ghosts (and all of the sub-classifications therein) or not is irrelevant, because millions, if not billions, of people do in some way, shape or form. We may never know what this actual occurrence is; Whether it’s some sort of strange mass-illusion, or if it is some strange rift in dimensional integrity. Maybe it’s simply what so many generations have thought it to be: The living energy of the deceased. I would never claim to have anything more than an opinion, and I’ll leave the responsibility of answering this timeless question to people who have a greater understanding and knowledge base than my own.

What I can comment on with some certainty, however, is the process in which investigation teams use to look for evidence of activity. While teams around the world differ in many ways, with some opting to go with more subjective “hands on” approaches, and others doing their best to remain as objective and detached as possible, there is usually an underlying connection between their methods in the equipment used. Almost everyone uses cameras, and that is the focus point of the movie Paranormal Activity. The leading male actor, Micah, gets a brand new video setup and uses it to record the bedroom in nightvision while he and Kate, his significant other, are asleep. He would then take the recordings and play them back on his computer the next morning, to see what, if anything, significant happened during their slumbering hours. Indeed, strange things did begin to happen, and got progressively more bizarre and nerve-racking as weeks passed.

Things such as shadows moving against the wall, doors slamming shut, sounds of stalking footsteps, sheets being pulled off the sleeping protagonists, and eventually even people being pulled off the bed. The house would go bump in the night, causing a chandelier to swing violently back and forth from the ceiling. All in all, there was some creepy activity going on. To be perfectly honest, most of these things do not happen during any investigation or video recorded moment, with the exception of some things moving around once in awhile. So of course, that is where the similarities between real life and fantasy end. The time that they merge together, however, is interesting.

I have been participating in investigations for five years, so I’m not an old salt by any means, but I have had the good fortune of traveling to some incredible locations that most people will never go to in their lifetimes, including the Amityville House, the Charleston Jail, the Old San Juan Cemetary, and Mayan pyramids in Belize. In all of these investigations that I’ve taken part in, cameras and video recording have been involved. This comes as no surprise to anyone, but it’s the simplistic nature of this that makes Paranormal Activity compelling to me. Instead of relying on a pulsing soundtrack or blood and gore, this movie relied upon anticipation and subtlety to make it’s mark, which is precisely what goes on during an actual investigation. For hours, we sit in the dark, silent, waiting, watching. The anticipation of some kind of activity keeps us interested, until finally some barely noticeable subtle event happens, that sends everyone into a frenzy. Replaying tape back, taking a look at still frames, and trying to decipher exactly what it was. In this respect, the movie was a great representation of what an accurate “ghost hunting” documentary would look like.

There have been many people over the years who have turned camcorders on to record their surroundings while they sleep, and most of them have turned up nothing, but I am taken back to a story that I heard from an associate last year; This fellow and his wife would be asleep in bed every night, and then at some point, she begins waking up every night around the same time, feeling that there is a presence with her. This is not a unique occurrence, but the story got stranger when she and her husband told me that after awhile, there actually WAS a presence to go along with this feeling. It was a little girl, maybe 5 or 6 years old, with long dark hair and wearing a sleeping gown. She would appear at the side of the bed, and appear to be trying to interact with the wife. As this continued, the wife eventually tired of it and simply requested that the girl leave her alone. Sure enough, the presence seemed to cease making itself known, and she returned to a regular night of sleep. Not quite the shocking ending of Paranormal Activity, but as usual, the roots of fantasy are sprung from the nutrients of reality. What would they have seen had they set up a camcorder to record them as they slept? Would there have been something to go along with the apparition of the little girl? Would it have captured nothing at all?

No one can tell at this point, but that is another thing that makes the subject of the paranormal so engrossing: Mystery.

Stay tuned for another installment of Popular Paranormal!

This has been an installment of Popular Paranormal, and I thank you for reading.