25 Interesting Thanksgiving History Facts

1. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.

2. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.

3. The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.

4. The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.

5. The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.

6. The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.

7. They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.

8. They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

9. The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.

10. The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.

11. The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.

12. The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.

13. The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.

14. President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.

15. The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.

16. Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.

17. Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.

18. President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and thus stimulate the economy of the state.

19. Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

20. Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the United States. But it was Thomas Jefferson who opposed him. It is believed that Franklin then named the male turkey as ‘tom’ to spite Jefferson.

21. The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade tradition began in the 1920’s.

22. Californians are the largest consumers of turkey in the United States.

23. When the Pilgrims arrived in North America, the clothing of the Native Americans was made of animal skins (mainly deer skin).

24. On December 11, 1620 the first Pilgrims (or Puritans, as they were initially known) landed at Plymouth Rock.

25. By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.

The Hanging Tree Ghost

A French couple touring the Highlands claim to have photographed a ghost on the former site of a hanging tree.

United Kingdom – The couple claim the spooky figure appears in a photograph they took in the High Street in Fort William, in the West Highlands.

The site – the location of the Old Fort’s hanging tree – is said to have been known for ghostly appearances since the tree was chopped down in the 1970s.

Sophie Mager, 32, and Remy Puckey, 40, from Jaux, just north of Paris, did not see the apparition in front of them but were baffled when it appeared in Sophie’s picture.

They were spooked further when locals explained the spot was the site of the hanging tree, and there had been previous unexplained goings-on there.

The night-time image shows the bright lights of the houses in the town. In front, just before the camera lens, there is a white mist or smoke-like veil blocking the view.

But the couple insist the sky was clear at the time and they have not altered their image in any way.

Ms Mager said: “It was amazing and I swear that it is not a picture with special effects.

“We didn’t see the ghost on the spot, but discovered it when we looked on the picture. Many strange things are happening in Fort William.”

Mr Puckey, who had looked forward to the five-day visit to Scotland because of his late grandfather from Aberdeen, said: “We showed it to the staff of the West End Hotel in Fort William, where we were staying. They too found the apparition intriguing – but scary.”

The hanging tree had been utilized in the 18th century by successive governors of the fort for the execution of Highland clansmen who fell foul of their regime.

The tree, which had stood outside the fort walls for 300 years, was felled in the 1970s to make way for the town’s new library and for an outdoor equipment store.

When it was cut down, local people claimed that its demise would bring with it the Gaelic witchcraft prophecy of the “Buidseachd” – pronounced “Bootchach” – a curse of ill omen.

On the morning after Fort William Library was opened alongside where the hanging tree had stood, staff claimed they came in to find the front door ajar, despite having locked it the previous night.

They claimed books, paintings and pot plants were strewn over the floor, empty toilets were flushing, and there were the sounds of canine snuffling noises, although there was no dog on the premises.

Meanwhile, an electric typewriter was working on its own but printing characters upside down. Staff were so frightened by this scene that they fled the building.

Source – http://www.stv.tv/

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Alice Cooper Got His Name from a Ouija Board

Source : http://newsblaze.com/story/2009112203014700002.ba/topstory.html

 

Alice Cooper took his stage name from a message his mother received from a Ouija board.

 

The rocker originally performed under his real name, Vincent Furnier, until his mother’s dalliance with the occult led him to adopt the name of the group he was singing in.

 

He explained: “My mother did a Ouija board session and asked, ‘Who is Alice Cooper?’ It spelt out ‘Vincent.’ “

 

Although the ‘Poison’ hitmaker got his stage name from his mother, he got his love of music from his pastor father.

 

The singer explained: “My dad and I were the best of friends. He dug music a lot. He loved the British invasion in particular. And he listened to our music too. He knew Alice Cooper wasn’t Satan.”

 

However, the pair eventually drifted apart because of Alice’s rock ‘n’ roll behaviour.

 

He explained: “He couldn’t condone the lifestyle of sleeping with every woman in Los Angeles and being an alcoholic.”

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Michael Jackson’s ‘face’ on baby scan: Mystical 7th Child ?

Posted by Ivica Miskovic  http://www.aroundglobe.net/2009/11/michael-jacksons-face-on-baby-scan.html

 

An image captured in a baby scan has been claimed to be the ‘double’ of Michael Jackson.

 

Parents-to-be Dawn Kelley and William Hickman were looking at the ultrasound scan of their unborn baby when they realised it looked like the late pop singer.

 

Mr Hickman, 29, a window cleaner, said: “I showed my daughter Ami, who’s six, and she saw it straight away, so I thought ‘well if she can see it too it’s not just me seeing things’.”

 

Mother-of-six Miss Kelley, 34, went for her 20-week scan at Sunderland Royal as normal last month, but doctors could not see the foetus’s stomach or diaphragm.

 

A few weeks later she was sent to Grindon Lane Walk in Centre for a closer look.

 

The more powerful scanner there is normally used to examine internal organs so the images it produces much more detailed.

 

Mr Hickman said: “We were looking at the pictures again, and I just saw Jacko there.

 

“None of us are really Michael Jackson fans. I mean I like him, but we’re not crazy about him or anything.”

 

The children Chris, 16, Amanda, 15, Jason, 13, Alisha, 10, Ami-Lee, six, and Kye, four, all see the famous singer’s face in the scan photo too.

 

But the new family member will not be called Michael – the couple already know they are having a girl.

 

Miss Kelley is 24 weeks pregnant and due to give birth to her daughter in March. She said: “I’ve had plenty of scans before and none of the photos have ever looked like this one. It’s a bit spooky really.

 

“But it is my seventh child, and they say seven is a mythical number.”

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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Ghosts Are On The Square

One historic location is said to have entities roaming the rooms and halls of every house and building on the grounds.

McKinney, Texas – Ghost stories are nothing new to McKinney. Practically every old building, house or structure in the Downtown Square and historic district has more than a few haunts.

In fact, Chestnut Square Historic Village alone has a ghost or unexplained entity roaming the rooms and halls of every house and building on the grounds.

“We heard noises in the previous group,” curator Korrie Everett told a group touring the Dulaney House during last Saturday’s Ghost Walk. “We heard a group of children laugh and we asked if they were any children in the group there and they said, ‘No.’ Some people said they heard footsteps upstairs. One gentlemen said they could feel someone touch the back of their neck.”

But this year instead of just telling the stories that have been passed down and around through word of mouth or letting guests experience things that may or may not have been a paranormal presence, Chestnut Square called in the professionals.

The Texas Paranormal Advanced Research Team(TEXPART) conducted extensive investigations and research into Chestnut Square and several buildings on the Downtown Square including the McKinney Performing Arts Center.

The group not only presented their findings to the people who braved the weekend Ghost Walk at the historic village last Saturday, but also set up additional experiments during the Ghost Walk.

Mana Sage, co-founder and photographer of TEXPART, said even though the group wasn’t able to find full body apparitions or concrete evidence of ghosts, several buildings at the historic village and around the downtown area are “very active.”

Team members set up cameras and recorded areas of the buildings about a month before the Ghost Walk, some of them staying out until 4 a.m. in the morning to capture evidence of paranormal activity.

“We got a lot of good stuff,” Sage said.

Several members caught samples of electronic voice phenomenon, more commonly known as EVPs. Recordings picked up small but fairly distinct voices and whispers calling out what appeared to sound as complete sentences and answers to questions provided by the investigators in order to provoke the spirits out of hiding.

For example, one recording made at Churchill’s on N. Tennessee Street picked up a voice that said, “I need a fork.” Another recording of the MPAC building, formerly the city’s old courthouse, caught strange voices answering three distinct “Yeses” to an investigator asking “Are you a judge here?”

Sage said the team also brought some psychic mediums, part of the group’s “X-Team,” to feel for any strange presences in any of the buildings.

“We didn’t tell them a thing about the history,” Sage said. “They were able to pick up relatives and names of the Johnsons, names that Korrie thoroughly researched.”

Some members of the team even felt a physical presence. Ty Phillips, a case manager with TEXPART, spent a night investigating the old county jail on S. Kentucky Street, when he felt something grabbing his throat.

“There were bruises there afterwards,” Phillips said. “I could feel the pressure on my throat. The psychic that was with me said he had my hand on my throat because he wanted me to feel what it was like to be hung.”

The team even caught physical evidence of movement in the Taylor House at the historic village that could not definitively explain.

“We have video footage of a heavy rope that is swinging,” Sage said. “It was swinging at a good pace, maybe for a good 10 minutes. This was a big thick rope that we tried to recreate by jumping up and down. It was a tight space, so we tried bumping it and see how long it would swing. We could only make it swing for no longer than two minutes.”

Does all this mean that downtown McKinney and its neighboring historic districts are haunted? The team seems to think so.

“I think it’s haunted because if I go into the same places and hear all these intelligent EVPs, then that’s neat,” Phillips said. “Sometimes we’ll go into a place and a lot of times, nothing happens.” – Danny Gallagher

Source – http://www.scntx.com/

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Dr. Ryles’ True Paranormal Life Story

A haunting tale that begins with a mysterious disappearance

Chico, California – A terrified mother pulls her daughter out of her apartment and runs out into the darkness. It’s 3 a.m. and the clocks in the house are spinning forward, the lights are flashing and an Ernie doll is yelling, “I feel great.”

This was no electrical anomaly. It was a haunting.

Jodi Foster, a Chico resident, had learned to live with the odd occurrences in her home, including dreams and ghostly sightings, but this incident was more than she could take.

When Foster and her daughter moved into their apartment on Parmac Road in 2000, she had no knowledge of the previous inhabitants.

Odd things started happening as soon as the two moved in. The heat would come on while the air conditioning was running and all the TV’s in the house would turn on.

All of this could have been blamed on wiring problems, but then Foster’s 3-year-old daughter started seeing a woman in the house.

“She’d say to me, ‘Mommy, I like your friend,’” Foster said.

What Foster’s daughter said she was seeing was a woman in white, who would walk around the apartment and sometimes kiss her head before she went to sleep.

“I would say, ‘fancy imagination you have,’” Foster said.

The electrical wiring in the house was checked, but the occurrences continued to happen and Foster started having dreams.

“I was having specific, detailed dreams where I was seeing someone being tortured,” she said. “I dreamed of a mountainous location where a girl was taken and buried.”

When Foster would wake from these dreams the lights would be going on and off, she said.

She began to think she was crazy and had friends come stay at the house who would experience the same occurrences.

Foster moved into a different apartment in the same complex in 2000 and tried to forget the incident, until she talked to a man who had lived in the haunted apartment before her.

He told Foster about the Marie Elizabeth Spannhake case.

Spannhake, a Chico State student, had lived in the apartment and had gone missing in 1976, Foster said.

In 1977, a couple was charged with abducting a woman from Paradise, and keeping her as a sex slave for seven years. The circumstances were similar to the Spannhake case and the couple was allegedly connected to Spannhake’s disappearance.

Another coincidence involves drawings made by Foster’s daughter. She would draw the woman she saw in the house.

Foster began researching the case and came across articles in the Chico Enterprise-Record. These articles included photographs of the couple and Spannhake, who Foster thought resembled her daughter’s drawings.

Foster has recently been called by management because new tenants are experiencing odd activity, she said.

“The ghost is afraid that if she rests right now justice won’t be served, so she keeps trying to get someone’s attention,” Foster said.

In the four years Jim McLaughlin has been a manager for the complex, he has not witnessed any events, but has heard about them from his tenants.

“I moved this girl in there and never thought nothing about it,” McLaughlin said. “She called me that night, hysterical.”

The people who have reported similar paranormal incidents in the apartment didn’t know each other, McLaughlin said.

“I’m not a believer in ghosts, until now,” McLaughlin said.

Odd occurrences have not been limited to that one apartment, either. Idalmis Herrera lives in the same complex and has experienced paranormal activities, as well.

“I had my place blessed because I couldn’t sleep anymore,” Herrera said. “I would feel like someone was around me.”

Herrera hasn’t seen any of the occurrences in Foster’s apartment, but has heard about it from other tenants.

In 2007, Foster went to the police and was able to provide them with information to the unsolved case.

“They did believe me when I contacted them,” Foster said. “I had way too much information.”

After going to the police with information, Foster decided to write about her experiences. The Perfect Miracle was scheduled to come out this Halloween.

However, because of the nature of some of the content, it was postponed until the end of January, which will be around the time Spannhake went missing. – Bianca Hernandez

Source – http://www.theorion.com/

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True stories of the Paranormal

Dr. Ryles’ True Paranormal Life Story