“When I’m gone I want to be in the water with the fish.”

Gary Levine, 58, who used to build docks and seawalls is shelling out $10 million to build this underwater cemetery and scuba attraction. Located 3 miles off the coast of Key Biscayne, Fla., Atlantis Memorial Reef is scheduled to open in July and eventually hold the remains of up to 80,000 people whose families are willing to pay between $900 (for the El Cheapo plot) and $50,000 (The Family Plan).

Once complete, the site will span 15 acres of ocean floor and consist of five concentric circles, based loosely on an account of Atlantis in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. It will contain 40 themed sections, including love, education, the military and the zodiac, all overseen by a bronze display of winged lions and three dolphins pulling a chariot of the Greek sea god, Poseidon.

What you won’t find are busts of men’s wives, diamond eyeballs or German shephard statues. I guess everybody’s got their limits.

Source: Forbes

John Holland, a well-known psychic and author, stars in The History Channel’s upcoming Psychic History. The show is scheduled to premiere on Saturday, July 8, 2006 at 5pm EST.

Holland’s ability to reveal past events (some of which occurred 100 years ago) made him a desirable candidate for this show. He will walk blindfolded through the infamous Branch Dividian compound in Waco, Texas to determine who fired the first shot and whether or not David Koresh’s followers were held against their will.

Holland claims that he has very little knowledge of this disaster, as he rarely watched the news at that time. I can’t help but feel skeptical since everybody was talking about it, but it will be interesting to see what he reveals. The show’s producers also take him to the basement of the Dallas Police Headquarters, where Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald.

Quoted from Seacoastline.com:

“I raise my energy, up goes the antenna, the aura goes out and it starts to permeate into the atmosphere and if there was a tragic event that happened, the more emotional or tragic event, the more I can get it.”

Holland has been psychic since he was a child, but suppressed this ability because he was afraid of ridicule. A car accident heightened these abilities to the point where he couldn’t ignore them. Since then, he’s traveled all over the country to help people deal with bereavement.

“I try to be so specific with evidence. There’s no frou-frou stuff like who had cancer or who’s married. I’m specific.”

Holland hopes this show will take off and take him to some historical places that are steeped in mystery, such as the Stonehenge. Tom Seligson, the executive producer of “Psychic History,” hopes that Holland can provide some answers that have eluded us about our history.

–By Scott Nicholson, Photo by Marie Freeman

On a ridge overlooking the town of Blowing Rock, NC, is the estate once called Flat Top Manor, now known as the Cone Manor.

The Colonial-revivalist structure was built in the late 1800’s, and has been uninhabited for about a half a century. However, there are those who say that the manor has never been completely devoid of human activity– or perhaps, inhuman activity.

Moses Cone made a fortune as an industrialist in the North Carolina Piedmont, married Bertha, and later visited the mountain area and fell in love with it. He began buying up land around what is now the Blue Ridge Parkway outside Blowing Rock. Cone built the manor as a summer retreat, often employing the very people whose land he had bought.

Cone didn’t get to enjoy the manor for very long, as he died at a relatively young age. Bertha lived on for several decades, and willed the land to Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, NC, which then deeded it to the National Parks Service. The manor is now operated as a crafts center, but some say that the previous owners haven’t entirely given up their claim.

According to one story, Moses Cone’s body was disinterred by a would-be thief. Rumor had it that Cone was buried with some jewelry, and that may have been what the thief was after. One version of the story is that Bertha herself found the body at the gravesite on the hill beyond the manor. The body was said to be propped up against the large tombstone by thieves angered by not finding any jewelry.

There’s even a hinted legend that Cone was moved to a different gravesite. The official line is that Cone still sleeps in eternal slumber at the marked site, but others say he lies elsewhere.

For a long time, separate portraits of husband and wife hung face-to-face on opposite walls. One industrious decorator moved the portrait of Bertha to an adjoining wall. The next morning, the portraits were found to have fallen off the wall. The strange part was they had fallen so they were leaning against each other.

In 2000, the portraits were moved again. So far, no mystery movements have been recorded. All of the existing furniture was willed out to various relatives after Bertha’s death. In the early days of the craft center, craftmakers would stay overnight in the manor due to the poor condition of the roads. Some of the guests reported the sound of furniture moving around on the floor above them in the middle of night, even though the upstairs was empty.

One craftmaker supposedly stayed in the master bedroom that belonged to Moses and Bertha. He heard the door open, so he got out of bed, and closed it, assuming the house was out of level. The door opened again, and he repeated the process. The third time, he propped a chair against the door. He awoke in the morning to find the door open and the chair on the other side of the room.

One woman who didn’t believe in ghosts pooh-poohed the stories and dared to stay overnight by herself. When she got out of a hot shower, she saw a hand print in the steam on the mirror. That was her last day in the manor.

The Cones were fond of piano music, and the soft sounds of piano notes are sometimes heard wafting in the stillness of night.

The kitchen door was traditionally kept closed at Bertha’s insistence. Some crafters showed up early one morning and were moving some heavy items inside via the back way. They heard the heavy door slide closed behind them. They tried to discover who had played the trick on them, but the house was empty.

A park ranger was staying in a nearby house about a decade ago, and the newly-installed alarm system at Cone Manor went off. The ranger circled the house to investigate. He saw no signings of breaking and entering. When he turned around after unlocking the door, he saw a young girl standing on the stairs.

The girl turned around and looked at him, then ran up the stairs. The ranger chased her, and couldn’t figure out how she outran him. She went into the left room at the top of the stairs and slammed the door.

After a long struggle, the ranger finally got the door open. The room was empty.

Whether the Cones still walk the halls of the manor that bears their name, or whether the legends are due to overactive imaginations, the stories linger. And so, perhaps, do the spirits of the Cones.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

“A smoothly engineered supernatural entertainment in the more rambunctious American style of Stephen King.”– New York Times Book Review

“Scott Nicholson is my favorite new horror author. His books are entertaining, well-written, and most importantly, scary. I’m a huge fan. Nicholson, like Stephen King, has a true talent for terror.”–Bentley Little, author of The Resort

“Scott Nicholson is one of the new breed of horror writers who have taken up the mantle of King and Koontz with his modern day gothic horror thrillers that are chillingly filled with things not of this world visiting our realm with malicious intent.–Baryon Online

“Offers plenty of faith-challenging questions as the tale moves briskly to its unexpected conclusion.”– Publishers Weekly on “The Home”

“Scott Nicholson is on his way to the front rank of genre writers, but don’t be surprised if he–like Koontz and King before him–becomes a genre unto himself.”–Page Horrific

“Nicholson proves himself to be a legitimate voice in the horror field, combining sympathetic characters and a compelling story with enough nerve-numbing moments to keep any horror fan happy.”–The Horror Channel

Synopsis

Katy Logan wasn’t quite sure why she left her finance career in the big city to marry religion professor Gordon Smith and move to the tiny Appalachian community of Solom.

Maybe she just wanted to get her 12-year-old daughter Jett away from the drugs and bad influences. Maybe she wanted to escape from the memories of her first husband. Or perhaps she was enchanted by the promise of an idyllic life on the farm that has been in Gordon’s family for 150 years.

But the move has been anything but stress-free, because the man she married seems more interested in the region’s rural Baptist sects than in his new wife. The Smith family secrets run deep: Gordon teases Katy and Jett with a story about a wicked scarecrow that comes in from the fields at night to slake an unnatural thirst. Gordon’s great-grandfather was a horseback preacher who mysteriously disappeared while on a mission one wintry night, and some say a rival preacher did him in.

Gordon’s first wife Rebecca died under equally mysterious circumstances, and Katy’s starting to believe Rebecca’s spirit is still in the house. The scent of lilacs drifts across the kitchen, doors slam shut with no one else home, and the kitchen curtains flutter even when the windows are closed. Katy becomes obsessed with Rebecca’s recipes and clothes, and she finds herself driven to find out more about Rebecca to emulate her and therefore please Gordon. To make matters worse, Gordon’s herd of goats watches Katy every time she leaves the house, fixing their rectangular pupils on her as if waiting for some silent command.

Jett is worried about Mom, but she has worries of her own. A Goth girl in a rural elementary school, she gets teased for being different. She misses her dad, and feels guilty because her drug abuse forced Mom to enter a hasty marriage with Gordon. The pressure leads her back to drugs despite her promise to Mom. Now she fears the drugs are blowing her mind. She’s starting to hallucinate, and the goats, scarecrows, and a strange man in a black hat are all part of her madness.

But the residents of Solom know all about the man in the black hat. They whisper the legends around the pot-bellied stove at the general store, they pray for protection from him in their little white churches, they think about him as they gather hay, harvest corn, and work their gardens. The brave ones talk about him, believing him dead and buried, but nobody dares to utter his name.

The Reverend Harmon Smith has come back more than century after his last missionary trip, and he has unfinished business. But first Katy and Jett must be brought into the family, and the farm must be prepared to welcome him home. Gordon has been denying his heritage, but now it’s time to choose sides. Does he protect the ones he loves, or surrender to the ancestral urge for revenge?

Read the excerpt of The Farm.