May 26: X-Men: The Last Stand

The cult hereos can shrug off their superpowers and return to normal society, if they want. This movie is the final and much-anticipated installment of the trilogy.

June 6: The Omen

I’ve seen the “You’ve been warned” sign on a billboard near my husband’s business, but knew what the advert was about. However, this has triggered frantic 911 calls in Florida and Arizona. I’ve seen the original movie, which I thought was well done. Although I’d like to see this movie when it is released, I don’t relish the thought of standing within a huge crowd. So, I will wait until the following week.

7/07: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Jack Sparrow tries to settle his blood debt to Davy Jones, the captain of the ghost ship the Flying Dutchman. I never saw the first movie, and am wondering if the sequel is a stand-alone.

7/21: Lady in the Water

M. Shyamalan latest movie involving a woman who has come from a parallel reality of bedtime stories. She’s trying to return home, but creatures from the shadows of bedtime have trapped her. I’m leery of spending any money to see this movie after watching The Village, which wasn’t the horror story I had expected it to be. I’ll wait for some reviews to filter in before I make my final decision.

Located east of Santa Barbara, it is known for antique shops and galleries. During the town’s early years, the community was comprised largely of Spiritualists, who held seances to communicate with departed spirits and experience other pyschic phenomena. Spiritualism faded with the discovery of oil. But you may encounter a few spirits, especially at The Big Yellow House restaurant.

Can a deceased loved one visit you in your dreams? Many people claim that they have experienced dream visitations. In these dreams, the spirit of a loved one appears suddenly and unexpectedly either during or after a normal dream. Often their image will be brighter, and their surroundings quite vivid.

Why do they come?

I think they come into our dreams because we shut them out when we’re awake. The majority of us are taught that ghosts are the products of the crazy and delusional. They come to us through our dreams because we are in a more “open” state when we are asleep.

Quoted from Esoteric Dreams:

Deceased relatives are certainly frequent visitors in these kinds of dreams. They may come to comfort the dreamer, to let him know that they are all right, that death is not what it seems, not the end. They may come to give some helpful advice, or to set the dreamer straight. Sometimes they will even come to ask a favor of the dreamer. (In one case, a murder victim appeared to the dreamer, and revealing the identity of the murderer, seemed to ask the dreamer to see to it that justice was served.)

Are they real?

Skeptics will have you believe that these visitations are nothing more than the biproduct of a distraught mind. While that may be true with many cases, I feel that we have no solid clues about the afterlife. For many of us, seeing is believing.

Visitations: After-Death Contact Investigative Files
Visitations from Beyond the World

“It didn’t look like a ghostly figure. She just looked like a normal person. I think it was a ghost because of the dress she was wearing and the way she had her hair.”

Helen Grant believes that she spotted a ghost in a window of Spalding’s Ayscoughfee Hall on Wednesday. The woman, she said was wearing a cream-colored period dress with blue flowers and a high, scalloped neckline.

Museum personnel stated that none of employees were wearing period clothing at the time of the sighting, which lasted seconds. The Hall (which used to house servants) has no documented cases of hauntings. So what did Helen see? Perhaps an optical illusion of the painting of the ghost as she and her partner walked through the garden?