Family Stories: Salt

FAMILY STORIES ON SALT

Salt 1)

            Personal Experience

In the summer of 2012 activity began to stir up in my childhood home in Uncoway. The activity strangely seemed to be targeting me, which made me think it was possibly poltergeist activity. I was 17 at the time and recently graduated from high school. I was struggling with my mental health and decided to take a gap year before going to university. Tommy was working with my Dad that summer and with my Mom also working full-time, I ended up spending a lot of time at home alone. One morning I woke up startled because it sounded like someone had thrown a heavy book on the floor next to my head. The activity seemed to be constantly ramping up that summer, one day in the kitchen I heard the long cord from our 1970s landline that we still had attached to the wall. The cord started banging violently against the wall and I yelled at my kitten, Moishe, to stop playing with it. I got up and was shocked to see that both of my cats were outside, and yet the cord was moving in front of my eyes. I realized that something needed to be done, and being the witch of the family, I started reading the book from Heaven’s Grandmother, Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs, for inspiration on getting rid of this paranormal activity.

I followed Cunningham’s advice and rubbed the walls in the most active hallway with fresh basil leaves from the garden. I burned rosemary and pine needles as incense, but it wasn’t enough. Sitting on the couch in our living room one day watching TV the door to the basement started to slowly creak open. I had passed the point from scared to fed up and started yelling at whatever it was that was invisibly opening the door, “Is that the best you’ve got? Really? You’re going to have to try a little bit harder!” The door seemed to respond to my cajoling and swung completely open before then quickly slamming shut. I returned to the Cunningham’s book and took his advice about spreading salt down the active hallway and at all the doors to the house. Every day I poured salt, rubbed basil leaves on the walls and burned rosemary and pine needles, I created strands of garlic cloves for protection on particularly active days, and I wore them along with my friends who came over. Eventually, the activity did settle down, but to this day our family home in Uncoway goes through periods of strange activity.

Family Stories: Circles & Spirals

FAMILY STORIES OF CIRCLES AND SPIRALS

Circles/Spirals 1)

Memory of Grandpa Sherm

Spirals appeared in my mind as my Grandpa told me stories as a child about the immigrants from Scandinavia who were used to farming on mountains and fjords. Upon first immigrating to the Great Plains, the immigrants were laughed at for continuing to plant their crops in spirals, instead of the long rows favored by US Agriculture on the wide, flat plains of the Midwest. The story always made my Grandfather howl with laughter. When I draw spirals, I think of my Grandfather and how the land influences the people that live on it, and how that memory sustains or changes.

This story supported my thesis question because our conversations reference the cyclical nature of time that is made evident in my video editing. The spirals that my Grandfather conjured in my mind are also reflected through repeated spiral imagery in the cyanotype mobiles and within my videos, in particular the spiral drawn in snow in my video, Pledge Allegiance.

Circles/spirals 2)

Interview with Great Aunt Megan

Discussing our trip to Germany together in 2015, where I visited Berlin for the first time, and we visited extended family in Hamburg and Niedersachsen[1]. We also discussed our visit to the Immigration Museum in Bremen, where the vast majority of German emigrants left from, including our Ancestors. My direct Ancestor, Herman Friedrich Langhorst, left Germany because of changes to inheritance law with family farms. Once the first brother departed for Turtle Island, he eventually wrote his other brothers, Gerhard and Johann, about the economic opportunities available and they later also emigrated.

Once every generation or so, someone in our family from the US takes the trek across the sea to Germany to visit with relatives and, in particular, visit the old family farm and Bauernhof[2] in the small hamlet of Borg and surrounding hamlets where we have Ancestral farms or Bauernhöfe. The tradition in Niedersachsen when a building is constructed was to write on the outside front wall the year it was built and the residents. On our trip to Germany, people were very welcoming to the ”Americans” who had come looking for their Ancestral homes. The trip felt like moving in circles. The last family trip to Germany was taken in 1953, when my Grandmother was a teenager. She travelled with her Aunt Minnie to visit our German family.

While I was in Niedersachsen, visiting family, I began to consider Place-Memory for the first time. In my last conversation with my Grandpa Sherm before his death, he told me that “I thought all my life that I knew where home was-Minnesota. But the first time that I made it to Scandinavia, that was when I realized that my true home.” Resulting from this conversation I began to wonder how Place-Memory would influence my experience on this trip to visit distant family. Initially, I didn’t feel a particular connection to the quiet hamlets and large farms, but one day we went to the house where my direct Ancestor, Herman Langhorst, had lived. This property felt different, somehow it felt charged and oddly familiar. My Aunt Megan, Tante Hildegard and Onkel Hans were walking through the yard, speaking with the current owners while I took photos. I turned around and gasped, the scene in front of me, one that was so mundane, was a location that I was sure I had dreamt about. The familiar scene was an old wooden gate, and beyond that gate a dirt road, a copse of trees casting dramatic shadows and a rolling field behind it. I had dreamt this; I had been here before. This story supports my thesis questions in regards to circles of repeated actions of my Ancestors and Place-Memory. In addition, this story reinforced the way that time moves in a circle; my family trip to Germany in 2015 echoed my Grandmother’s family trip that she took in 1953.

[1] Lower Saxony

[2] German for farm house

Family Stories: Fire

FAMILY STORIES ON FIRE

Fire 1)

Story Grandma Denise, 1906 Earthquake

My Grandma excitedly told me that she had something in the basement to show me. She unearthed a box of China plates that came from John’s store, and I asked her why they were so dirty. “It’s ash chicky!” my Grandmother said with enthusiasm, and she held the soot-tinged plate to my nose and instructed me to inhale the smell of the 1906 Fire. This story inspired me as a child about both history and the transformative effects of fire. It was significant as a family story.

Our lack of records for my ancestor John Dwyer, who immigrated from Ireland to the West Coast, was said to be because of the 1906 Earthquake and subsequent fire. My Grandmother always told me all our family records were burned with John’s store in San Francisco. This also reinforces for me the importance of oral traditions and stories in families. My Grandmother always shared family stories with me and I try to share these same stories with my younger cousins to carry on the tradition.

Fire 2)

Interview with Aunt Linnea

Linnea shared her recollections of September 11 2001 and what it was like to witness the World Trade Center attacks from her job in Manhattan and later near her home in Brooklyn.

“I was walking through Prospect Park and there was cinders, you know like paper, like scraps of burned paper that was floating through the air. That was really surreal. You know, like you were living in a movie. Like an extra in a movie.”

Linnea also talked about “how poorly US citizens and our government responded to the attack”. She describes the “era of atrocities” and how it felt to her to know that her country was committing these acts of great evil around the world. Linnea talked about protests at that time, that “Still, going out and saying that I disagree with this publicly, but it felt so...[ineffective].” We discussed our complicated feelings around 9/11, on one hand seeing the value in these firsthand accounts of major historical events, while on the other hand acknowledging how this event was used as a catalyst for decades of racist laws being enacted that violated basic privacy and constitutional rights and long and horrendous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Linnea says seriously that, “We are conveniently forgetting, our own history.”

The audio from this video was used in the videos Coven and Pledge Allegiance. Quotes included, “Everything, like the emergency vehicles, and the you-know. The sound of the towers going down was so...big...that you know it drowned out anything that I could hear in my immediate.” This interview did not directly support my thesis question but added to the sources about fire as a transformative element.

Family Stories: Stone

FAMILY STORIES OF STONE

Stone 1)

Diaries of Lillian Langhorst Jones

Jones, Lillian Langhorst. The Lifelong Diaries of Lillian Langhorst Jones. Infinity, 2005.  

This diary was compiled and published by my Great-Aunt Megan. Lillian Langhorst Jones is my maternal Great-Great-Grandmother and the book contains her lifelong diaries, and the beginning also contains recollections of family history and immigration as well as Lillian’s personal stories and memories of childhood. Also published as part of this diary are letters from relatives. Stone is mentioned frequently in the diaries and particularly in relation to nearby mountains, as they lived in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. In the story, Jackson’s Peak, Lillian talks about how her Uncle Bernhard became fascinated with the “shaved off peak of a mountain” and took her along to climb the peak with him when Lillian was 10 years old. She discusses the geology that they encountered hiking, “Each of us used a stout stick to assist us in climbing over great lava formations and some slate rock before reaching the top.” This diary was an important source and the book acted as a Portal for me to the lives of my direct Ancestors.

Family Stories: Place-Memory

FAMILY STORIES ON PLACE-MEMORY

Place-Memory 1)

Interview with Kelly

Kelly discussed the energy of her ancestor’s possessions and not wanting interactions with the metaphysical. Kelly talks about her crazy dreams and the advice that she got from a friend’s uncle, who is psychic. Kelly explains that “He said to leave a Post-it note under my pillow that says: DO NOT DISTURB! And I swear it works! But that when the Post-it note falls, then I have a crazy dream”. She also discusses her family history and the relationship she has with land and her Chickasaw Ancestors.

“I feel very connected to being an American, despite all the problems and everything we face here. The land-based thing is, is real, and I’m excited to go because I’ve been to the reservation in Oklahoma but going to where they were forcibly moved. I’m excited to go to Mississippi where they were for thousands of years.”

Kelly talks about how she expects that her upcoming archaeology trip with the Chickasaw Nation will influence her relationship to her Ancestors. This audio was used in the video Pledge Allegiance. Including quote, “It kind of does feel like...loaded energy.” Kelly also discussed the ending of traditions in her family, “They assimilated like everyone else. I think it was about assimilation, more than anything else so. Everything is long gone I would say, centuries gone.” This evidence supports my research question about the link between water and other elements to act as Portals to our Ancestors and the Spirit World.

Place-Memory 2)

            Ninety Years of Memories

Dwyer, Marian Jones. Ninety Years of Memories. Western Printing and Publishing, 1974.

This book, Ninety Years of Memories, Pioneer Living in Plumas County, California was compiled by my maternal Great-Grandmother, Marian Jones Dwyer. The book is dedicated to “Minnie L. Church on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday November 24, 1973” and it also notes in the foreword that, Minnie’s “birth was [being] forecast by Eilley Orrum Bowers, famed Comstock seer, who was a resident at the Twenty Mile House and was hired by some miners to read her crystal ball in hopes they could find the lost gold veins they were seeking.” This book compiles family stories and photos along with a wealth of poetry. The poems are written by Minnie Church, her husband, Theodore, as well as Lillian Langhorst. Place-Memory is present in the poem that Minnie wrote about her father.

My Father-G.A. Langhorst

Long ago and far away

In Bremen, Germany,

A man sailed west upon the sea

In search of liberty

He crossed the growing U.S.A.-

A great expanse of land-

And settled in a timbered spot

Where mining was at hand.

The Twenty-Mile-House, it was called,

A tract with space to spare,

Where stages stopped and freight trains too,

And work was everywhere.

He founded Cromberg post office,

In eighteen-eighty-one,

He pioneered a ranch and store,

No easy goals were won.

Rough miners brought their gold to him

And carried forth their food,

Their lives were filled with loneliness

Combined with fortitude.

My father was a steady man,

His character had bearing;

He spoke with truth and simple faith

Without a word of swearing.

These maxims he was wont to quote

That now are still worthwhile:

“Speak well of neighbors near and far,

Aim high, do not revile.”

He builded well his home and store

Through years of honest dealing;

His word and bond were ever true

And of his worth revealing.

His time he spent, his days he lived

In work and thoughts unchained,

For he could never cease to grow

While life and strength remained.

(June 2, 1952)

The poem invokes his original ancestry in Niedersachsen and his eventual emigration from Bremen. These are both places that I had the opportunity to visit in 2015 with my Great Aunt Megan. It was at the original Langhorst property where I had my first moment that I sensed I had been there before or at least seen the property in a dream. This book helped me answer my research question by providing a wealth of directs texts written by Ancestors while allowed me to view my research question through the lens of Place-Memory.

Family Stories: Spirit World

FAMILY STORIES OF SPIRIT

Spirit 1)

Family Story-Mom

The beginning of my investigations into the Spirit World began before I have conscious memory, starting with my encounters as a two-year-old with the Spirit of my Great-Grandfather, Fred Lincks, “Boppy ie”. When I was 11 my Mom and I would spend Friday nights watching a TV program “Most Haunted" and during a promo they said that the resident psychic used to talk to his Grandfather as a child, ...who died before he was born. I said to my Mom that was too freaky and she proceeded to scare me by telling me that when I was around 2 years old (the time my brother was born),  that I used to tell my parents that I was playing with a really nice old man.

Finally, after a few times they asked me to describe the old man and I apparently described Boppy ie to a tee and even referred to him as ‘Fred’. Boppy ie didn’t go by his first name (George) and instead was called Fred which was a nickname for his middle name. I don’t remember playing with Boppy ie but I remember seeing a large figure made from a bright white/yellow light in my room when I was 6 years old. It woke me from my sleep, and at first, I felt fear, and then a voice coming from down inside me told me that it was Boppy ie coming to say goodbye to me, and not to be afraid. This experience inspired my research into the paranormal and psychic abilities. It led me to seek out other books, TV shows and podcasts that discussed the Spirit World.

Spirit 2)

Personal Experience with a friend

Other friends lived by the Mill River, including a friend Alex, whose family lived in a newly constructed home feet from the river. When I slept over at Alex’s house, it was often with our group of friends, and we would sleep in the basement. One night, I was the only one staying over, so we slept in Alex’s second-floor bedroom with an attached bathroom. We watched as the light switch in the bathroom started moving on and off, and we could see clearly that no one else was in the bathroom with us. After eventually working up the courage to go into the bathroom, we watched with horror as the light switch continued to physically flip on and off. I don’t think I will ever know the source of the haunting in my childhood home or at Alex’s house, but I always theorized it was related to the nearby river. The river is the most ancient thing in Alex’s neighborhood, and through my personal family hauntings in our house by the river it became my theory as to the source of the activity in a relatively new house. This story supports my question by providing more personal experiences from my childhood in a very haunted town on the Long Island Sound. The town, Uncoway, also has a major river and many marshes, which led to my belief that water can amplify the Spirit World.

Spirit 3)

Phone call with my Mother-in-Law, Mary Ross

Mary was searching for Brendan’s great-great- grandfather, Matthew Charles Brown, who was the child of Irish immigrants born in Quebec in the 19th century. Mary told us family stories, in particular ones about Matthew Brown and his children and grandchildren. Mary told us that she had recently had her recurring dream of “Pop”, her grandfather, again.

“You know, the one where he’s not really dead. That he’s alive and that Grandma has been keeping it a secret from me the whole time, and I’m so angry with her…I think it means that he’s really close to me.”

This story supported my questions about dreams as research and the significance of recurring dreams. The audio from this phone call was taken and used in the video Coven. 

Spirit 4)

Interview with Aunt Chrisanne

Aunt Chrisanne discussed the haunting in the Golden Valley house by the previous owner who died there. She recounts finally talking with her partner, Randy about the strange things that she had been experiencing in the house.

“I’ve just started seeing things. I’m seeing a ghost. Have you been seeing a...sensation here? Have you been seeing a ghost? I would this sensation when I would be vacuuming and I would see this sensation of white mist going over the couch. He didn't believe in ghosts or other worlds, but I was a believer. I looked at the ghost and I said this is our house. This is our house, you have to leave. This is our house, In Golden Valley now.”

Chrisanne also told the story of the fire in the Golden Valley home in her ex-partner Randy’s screen-printing studio. Chrisanne also talked about her close relationship with her grandma May, and that Grandma May grew up speaking Finnish, but that when she entered elementary school, she was forced to learn English. This audio was used in the videos Down the Well and Pledge Allegiance.

Spirit 5)

Interview with Lorraine Zinnia Johnson.

Zinnia and I discussed the history of Cape Cod, including theories as to why it is so haunted. We discuss the story of the bridge acting as a boundary for Spirit, and Zinnia reminded me about our visit to the haunted Sagamore cemetery, where many of the bodies exhumed during the bridge construction were reburied (several were buried with the wrong headstones). Zinnia shared personal stories about Cape Cod and paranormal experiences that she’s had, and we discussed experiences that we’ve had together, notably at Pine Grove Cemetery in Truro.

 Established in 1799, Pine Grove is currently located in the middle of the coastal forest of Truro; the church that used to stand next to it has long been reclaimed by the forest. Pine Grove Cemetery is pictured in the video and its nearby vicinity to the Atlantic Ocean and Pamet Harbor confirms my original suspicion that water affects the Spirit World. Pine Grove is most famous for its connection to the media craze of 1969 around serial killer, Tony “Chop Chop” Costa. Tony dismembered and buried his victims at the cemetery and in the woods behind it. The newspapers at this time were quick to mention that behind the cemetery, there is an old crossroads. Crossroads are considered in most European and New England lore and literature as a liminal place of special magical power; that in Europe and the colonies was closely associated with witches and the occult. Only twice were Lorraine and I brave enough to drive the long dirt road through the trees to visit Pine Grove at night. The first time was in 2023, about two weeks before my UAP sighting that November, and as Lorraine recounts.

LZJ: We pull up as we're like driving down this completely dark dirt road...cause it was so dark but the moon was like basically full so you could like still kind of see everything.

JG: It was right before Halloween.

LZJ: Yeah…and I remember like pulling up and then I was sitting there and I had this like nasty feeling in my gut…I remember walking in and as we were getting started, I heard like two men just like talking outside the border…I could swear that I could see it like moving like shadows. I was looking around and I swore I could see people, like looking out from beyond like the gravestones. And it was...full head and shoulders…Just kind of peeking out. And then when I would look at them for too long, they would kind of slink back…It was horrific. I remember you poured libations [herbal tea] and then we ran.

Lorraine’s experience of seeing people who would then hide behind the tombstones was something that I observed as well, the second time we visited the cemetery at night. Pine Grove Cemetery is located near the Pamet Harbor, and not far from the bayside. Pilgrim Springs is only a few miles away, closer to the Ocean, and Lorraine and I have often theorized about the role all this water plays in the hauntings at Pine Grove. There are springs and underground aquifers that supply water on the Cape, and people often say the most haunted buildings on the peninsula are the ones that are located above underground springs. Lorraine Zinnia and I enjoy conducting amateur paranormal research, and we regularly visited haunted places by the Ocean together when I was living in Nauset, including several historic cemeteries. One particularly notorious and historic cemetery, Pine Grove, is featured in my videos, Down the Well and Pledge Allegiance. This audio from my interview with Lorraine Zinnia was also used in the video Coven.

Spirit 6)

Interview with Mom

When I moved to our cottage in Nauset in 2018 I remember asking my Mom how she first came to believe that the cottage was haunted by the former owner, Hattie. Mom said that in the first year that we owned the cottage, my brother and I were trying to sleep in the bedroom, but we were being kept up by the sound of scratching coming from within the walls. The cottage is not insulated; there is no real space in the walls for an animal to be in, the walls are merely constructed out of beaver board. My Mom said that she was telling herself logically that it was some kind of an animal, but she said that Tommy and I were getting increasingly upset. She finally had a moment of desperation, and she burst out, “Hattie please stop! The kids really need to go to sleep, and you’re scaring them!” The scratching stopped immediately, and my Mom had a chill run up her spine.

This story was the first time my Mom believed that we were experiencing interactions with Spirit and it ignited my curiosity in the paranormal at a young age. This experience led me to ask my parents to buy me books that we saw in tourist shops about the history of hauntings on Cape Cod specifically. I also use tell this story as part of the audio soundtrack for the video Down the Well, saying that “All houses on Cape Cod have a ghost. Ours was no exception. Our house was haunted by the former owner, a woman named Hattie Jennings, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in 1999.”

Spirit 7)

Interview with Mom

My Mom spoke about the female Spirit in Boston in Mom’s apartment (in the building that my Dad owned). She describes what the woman looked like and that my grandparents consulted the family psychic, Eve Olsen, who was a Spiritualist medium. Eve told my Mom that she should[GU1]  talk to the ghost and tell her that she is studying for a very important exam and that she needs to get her sleep. My Mom describing the ghost in Boston that, “I opened my eyes and saw what looked like a woman. Like the knees up, or, and I think, she was suspended off the ground.” This story supports my research question through providing personal connection to psychics and the Spiritualist movement. This story also reinforces the importance of including women’s voices in discussions of the paranormal, as Eve Olsen was clearly a powerful medium. The audio from this interview was used in the videos Down the Well and Coven.

Spirit 8)

Personal Experience with Mom

My other Great-Grandmother, Nonnie, also loved Cape Cod, and I have photos with her at Longnook Beach. Longnook is a very sacred place to my family; it is where we spread the ashes of our loved ones and a place we visit to appreciate the beauty of nature. I feel close to my Ancestors there, to Betty, Nonnie and Boppy ie. This story reinforces my ability to attract Spirits and find signs from my Ancestors during daily life. Nonnie and Boppy pie were avid bird watchers, and they particularly loved blue jays and cardinals. Years after Nonnie died, my Mom and I were at Longnook Beach completely by ourselves one beautiful Monday morning in October.         

We were unloading our beach gear from the car when a blue jay flew inside the back seats. Shocked, I tried to gently shoo it from the car, and it then flew into the front passenger seat where I had been sitting. It didn’t want to leave the car or go far from me, as it then landed on the front passenger mirror. It flew around my head and eventually, unable to shake it, we gave up and I walked down the long dune to the beach with a blue jay circling my head. Finally, it flew down the beach before later returning and surprising me by landing on my shoulder for a moment before it left us. One day, I will spread the ashes of other family members here, and maybe they will send me signs in the form of beautiful birds, quiet reminders from the Spirit World that love is immortal. This story supported my thesis question by showing that the messages from the Spirit World are amplified when next to a major body of water, such as the Atlantic Ocean.

Spirit 9)

Experiences with Roommates (2014-2018)

While I was a student at Parsons School of Design, I lived in both of the two apartments in The Trapeze Loft, we referred to them as the front and back apartment and they shared a front door and a hallway.. My Aunt Tanya has had the lease for The Trapeze Loft for 30+ years in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The apartments were just three blocks away from the East River. I first moved into the front apartment at The Trapeze Loft by myself in October 2014. While I lived there, I would hear strange noises that I explained away by inconsiderate neighbors, but there was something that felt unsettling at times. Once I rescued my two cats that December, I felt more comfortable because I could blame the strange noises on them. My roommate Jess eventually moved into the front apartment and told me that she would also hear strange things. Jess said one night she woke up around 4 AM and saw a man with long hair and a hat standing in the kitchen, just meters away from her bed. Jess sat up and said “Hello” to the man and he disappeared before her eyes.

In July 2015 I moved into the back apartment, down the hall from the front apartment of The Trapeze Loft. There was always an uncomfortable feeling in the bathroom, in part due to the skylight in that room. It always felt like someone was staring down at you, angry that you were invading their space. During the first year that I lived there with two roommates, Jess Pantano and Amelia Lintern-Smith. One day Amelia asked me if I had moved her two pill bottles that she always kept on the shared desk in our living room. I told her that I had been washing dishes the whole time in the kitchen and that our roommate Jess, was in her room the whole time. We both came into the living room to help Amelia look but we couldn’t find the pill bottles anywhere. We both returned to the previous rooms when I heard Amelia yelp. I ran into the living room to find her standing shocked in front of the red desk, where her pill bottles had suddenly reappeared. It became harder to ignore the strange occurrences in the apartment but we collectively decided to ignore it.

Once Jess moved into the front apartment, we found another roommate to take her room, for privacy reasons I will call her Colleen. Colleen lived in the back bedroom in our apartment that was a lofted room over the kitchen. The Trapeze Loft was a former warehouse that had 20-foot ceilings and was separated from our neighbors by a maze of temporary walls (a fire would have killed everyone) and strange rooms created from the haphazard design and illegal re-purposing of the building. During this re-design there was a room created in our apartment over the bathroom that was separated from the back bedroom by a wall with a hole in it where a large pipe ran through. Colleen came downstairs one morning and began telling me about the strange, vivid dream that she had the night before. She said there was a very angry woman in the dream who told her that the room over the bathroom was her space so Colleen should keep out!!! Colleen said that this woman didn’t like us and that she wanted us to stay away from her.

A few weeks later when I was in the apartment alone, I accidentally recorded a woman’s voice in a video on my phone, she was cut off at the end, but it sounded like she was asking me a question, “Are you-.” I texted my Aunt Tanya and asked her if there was ever any paranormal activity in the apartments. She replied, “Oh yeah lots, why do you ask?” We met over dinner that week and she confirmed for me that there was a hostile female Spirit living in the room over the bathroom and that there was another male Spirit in the front apartment, but that he was more friendly. My roommates and I always noticed the male spirit on nights when we were throwing a party and joked that he just liked to hang out with us.

I asked Aunt Tanya if she knew who the Spirits were and she told me that she had researched the history of the broom factory that was the original building. Aunt Tanya said that no one had ever died there or been seriously injured, so she thought that the source of the paranormal activity was something older, possibly coming from the land. Aunt Tanya ended our conversation by telling me that, “Don’t forget, the living can leave ties too, you know.”

Family Stories: Portals

FAMILY STORIES ON PORTALS

Portals 1)

 Interview with Aunt Tanya

We discussed aliens, Spirits, and the generally unexplainable. Tanya recounts two significant alien encounters.,, I asked her if she believes that she was abducted when she experienced missing hours/a missing day. I wondered if my UFO encounter happened because I’m a relative of Tanya’s. Tanya and I also discuss the Gagné family and share the information that we’ve found, as well as discussing questions still unanswered, particularly about the two families of Cyprien Amos Gagné. Tanya asked me “Do you know actually? If he was like a...bigamist or if there was some other reason that he had two families?”

This interview furthered my theories about the connections between Portals, time, aliens and the Spirit World through Tanya’s telling of her two alien stories. The first story about seeing a UAP with her babysitter who a few weeks later fell into a coma and died reinforced my theory about UAP’s being connected with bringing Spirits to the Spirit World.

Portals 2)

Family story Mom

One of my favorite family stories told by my Mom is about my matrilineal ancestors. Their surname was originally Wohlmaier; and they lived in Germany. They were known in by their community for having ESP and psychic abilities. My Mom and I coined the term “Meyer moments” to describe our moments of psychic intuition, or downloads, as I often refer to them. I always theorized that this ability was connected to my ability to communicate with Spirits and it was connected to my ability to communicate with Spirits. This story influenced my research into both the paranormal and the human mind. It also inspired my methodology of psychic automatism in the creation of my cyanotypes and the editing of my videos.

Portals 3)

Interview with Laney Skeel, assistance from Mom, in Minneapolis (October 2025)

Laney discusses her relationship with my Grandfather who was a surrogate father for her. Laney is a queer elder in my family, and she discussed a recurring dream she used to have. In the dream “I was falling through the blackness, and there was no one there to catch me. I was outside of my body, and I realized that I could fly.” This quote was inspirational and lined up serendipitously with conversations I had with Inéz and Tavleen about the significance of the color black, especially in relation to Portals and the Spirit World. Audio from Laney was part of my video Coven and also the video FALLING THROUGH BLACKNESS, created for the thesis show of Renata Critton-Papp, Queer Creative Processes.

Laney says in the video Coven, “A new possibility, a new way of looking at things.” Laney’s story inspired my question by providing a first-hand source from a queer Ancestor about recurring dreams. I believe that dreams can also act as a Portal, and Laney’s story furthered my belief.

Family Stories: Water

 Family Stories of Water

Water 1)

Personal Experience

In November 2005, I went on an extended school field trip called “Nature’s Classroom” to Silver Bay YMCA at Lake George, New York. I was staying with a few friends in a corner suite in the notoriously haunted Paine Hall, and the Lake was so close that I believe that we could see it from our windows. The first night, a dark figure appeared behind the bed of my friend sleeping closest to the door. For about three hours, I watched this figure in a long black cloak and a long hood pulled over its face pace back and forth behind her bed. The figure was about 4 feet tall and floating one or two feet off the ground, and no one else could see it.

This intense haunting, so close to a major body of water, inspired me to continue looking for the pattern of hauntings near water. This story inspired me to continue looking for a link between water and Spirit. It did not help me directly answer my thesis question, however it added to a wealth of evidence gleaned from personal experiences.

Water 2)

Family Story-Grandpa Sherm

As a child, I loved hearing stories that my Grandpa Sherm told me about our family after they immigrated to Minnesota and North Dakota in the 19th century. The most abundant form of water in his stories came as snow. My Grandpa told me one time about a horrible white out blizzard that struck a family farm out in the isolated plains, and his Uncle went outside to check on his animals. He didn’t think to tie a rope to the house, but this foresight could have saved him. The white out was so bad that he got lost and froze to death only 100 meters from his house. Water was always presented to me as an element that required the utmost respect. Water gave life, and water could easily take away life. This story didn’t directly answer my thesis question, but it gave me further familial insight into the deadly forces of water.

Water 3)

Interview with Grandpa Tom

In relation to water, we discussed Cape Cod, and specifically Longnook Beach. My Grandpa told me about how both his parents loved Cape Cod and especially the Pamet Valley where Longnook Beach is. Grandpa Tom took his parents ashes to spread at Longnook. This interview influenced the imagery used in my videos, and I added scenes of Cape Cod to the layers. These family stories relating to water acted as a Portal for me to access my Ancestors. I asked my Grandfather many questions about his mother, Betty (Milne) Gagné, who I met as a baby but don’t have memories of. Through my interview with my Grandfather I developed a deeper sense of who she was as a person and he told me, to my delight, that we would have gotten along very well together.

Water 4)

Interview with Dad

My Dad told stories about his childhood going to Nonnie and Boppyie’s house (his grandparents), and the well in their backyard in Pittsfield. My Dad was telling the story of sending his cousin Wendy down the well in a bucket and recollecting that she may have gotten stuck down the well.

“And there was a well, there was a well out back at her house too, crank a bucket down. Don’t go down the well. Nonnie would talk about the well, oh I don’t know. The mysteries about the well, about don’t go down the well.” 

This interview inspired much of the narrative and imagery in the video Down the Well. Audio excerpts from the interview included my Dad also mentioning Nonnie’s stories about the unseen world, “Nonnie would talk about mermaids and stuff like that, fairies. Sometimes she went to the dark place.”

Water 5)

Family Story-奶奶 Yuhuan

奶奶 Yuhuan told me the story of her first husband, who died very suddenly of a heart attack in his 40s when they lived in Beijing with their teenage son, Alex. 奶奶 said her husband’s heart attack happened while he was at work and that by the time they called her, he had already passed. 奶奶 took Alex back home to their family in a village outside of Harbin to decide what to do next, and 奶奶 consulted the village fortune teller. The fortune teller said that Alex’s Father’s Ancestors were angry and that’s why they had taken his father’s life so young. The fortune teller said that to keep Alex safe, 奶奶 would need to send him across not only mountains but the Ocean so that the angry Ancestors could not follow So, Alex was sent to New Zealand as soon as 奶奶 could arrange for him to continue school there. Alex stayed for two decades before it was decided that he was safe to return home to China. This influenced my questions about how our physical world specifically water can have rules for the Spirits who interact here and how water may act as a boundary for the Spirit World.

Family Story of Water 6)

Interview with my Great Aunt Megan

During the interview Aunt Megan talks about moving to Chile in 1965 and what she learned during her time there about US intervention. In the video Pledge Allegiance, Aunt Megan tells me about her experience in Chile with the local history of US aggression.

“Everyone down there knew that the CIA had the president-the democratically elected president of Chile assassinated. And so, he [the president of Chile] was assassinated. I never thought that America was this great, wonderful country, I’m embarrassed by it now, I’m embarrassed.”

Aunt Megan explains the source of the conflict with Chile that led the US through the CIA to assassinate was water and boats. Megan says, “Because the United States wanted United States boats to carry things from Chile to other country, and Chile wanted to use their own boats.” This audio was used in my video Pledge Allegiance.

Family Stories: Witch

Family Stories of Witches

Witch 1)

                  Mary Staples: Uncoway, Connecticut Colony 1653 and 1692

At age 8, I was assigned a project to research a historical figure from Uncoway, Connecticut.  I told my Mom about my project, and she immediately knew who I should research. That weekend we went to the Fairfield Historical Society and told a woman working there that we were direct descendants of Mary Staples and we were interested in the records they had on her being accused of witchcraft. Among those dusty records and hard  to-read cursive, this Ancestor came alive for me. I loved that Mary Staples was outspoken, that she shirked the gender norms of her time; I loved that she would likely be considered a feminist if she were alive today. I related to her; I came from a family of smart, outspoken women who weren’t afraid to tell men when they were wrong.  

The year 1651 brought Europe’s witch hysteria to the new village of Uncoway. Uncoway was valuable for not just the quality of Its soil, but for its proximity to water. Uncoway is on the southern coast of what is today called Connecticut, held in the belly of Long Island Sound. A major river cuts through the town, today called the Mill River, which enters the liminal zone of the marshes, the water becoming brackish before emptying into the Sound. This proximity to water made the fields of Uncoway particularly fertile.  

Despite the fertile fields of this new settlement, famine conditions were beginning, and the mood grew tense in the village. War was threatening to break out with the nearby colony of New Amsterdam. Roger Ludlow, the colonizer who first named this village of “Fairfield,” had begun to feel pressure from England as he had established Uncoway without the permission of the higher-ups, who were beginning to suspect that he might have enough hubris to try and form his own independent colony. Records through the Fairfield History Museum archive and website state that Ludlow had, “After the Pequot War of 1637[1] which reduced Native American power in Connecticut, Ludlow purchased a large tract of land from the local Paugussett tribe in 1639.” The notion of buying land from someone in the decades following The Great Dying, and within two years of the end of a major and devastating war, one that saw many local Paugusset people slaughtered, does not speak to me of being moral and sounds like a decision made under duress.

 It was in this year that, at a town meeting, at a time when a woman speaking in public at all was uncommon, Mary took it a step further. Mary spoke out against Ludlow at this meeting and accused him of being a liar on many subjects. Ludlow countered that it was Mary who “known for telling tall tales” (Boyce) and Mary denied the accusation and set before him a challenge to name a single untruth that she had spoken” (Boyce). Ludlow could not name one lie, and in that moment, the thought must have occurred to him of how to deal with his Mary Staples problem.  

Mary Royce Staples was an English settler of “noble” blood, but her husband, Thomas Staples, was merely a hardworking farmer who was well respected by the other people in their village. At this time, women who were convicted of witchcraft not only lost their lives, but their husbands and families would lose any land they had. Mary and Thomas Staples were landowners with a particularly desirable plot of land, which bordered Roger Ludlow. Mary Staples was not a woman who listened to gender norms of her time; she was, “considered [a] scold[s]; women disrupted societal norms by their behavior or speech” (Boyce) and this was reason enough to imprison her.  

By 1653, the hysteria was doing nothing to slow the gallows pace. At the execution of Goody Knapp, Mary called out that she was innocent, but the townspeople drowned out her cries. When Goody Knapp’s still warm body was cut down from the noose, a group of women circled around to examine her. Adrenaline coursing through her veins, Mary pulled Goody Knapps’ dress aside and admonished the town, saying, “these are no more marks than I myself have” (Boyce). Mary was referring to Goody Knapp’s moles, which had been declared witches' teats and were considered damning evidence of witchcraft. Before they knew it, Roger Ludlow had announced to the town that in the moment before her hanging, Goody Knapp had, ”whispered in his ear that Mary Staples was a witch” (Boyce) and with this lie, Mary Staples was in grave danger. Thomas recognized the mortal threat to his wife and wisely decided to defend his wife’s innocence through the fledgling court system. Thomas’ legal action worked; in 1654, after losing the court case, Ludlow shamefully fled Uncoway and returned to England. 

Witch 2)

Mary Harvey and Hannah Harvey: Uncoway, Connecticut Colony 1692

In 1692, the witchcraft hysteria erupted again in New England. This time famously rearing its head in Naumkeag, which the Pioneer Salem Museum says is the original Indigenous name for what is now known as Salem, Massachusetts. The accusations of witchcraft were like releasing a poisonous gas into the air; this poison spread through the atmosphere and returned in Uncoway. At this time, Mary Staples was a widow, a particularly dangerous time for women to be accused of witchcraft. Mary was, unsurprisingly, once again the victim of accusations of witchcraft, but this time was quite different. Thomas was no longer alive to defend Mary; she was an elderly widow, and she was not the only one in her family accused.

Mary Harvey and Hannah Harvey were Mary’s daughter and granddaughter, and while it wasn‘t rare for multiple family members to be accused, “it was rare to see three generations of women arrested simultaneously“ (Boyce), and the three generations of women awaited their fate in jail. Luckily, the only evidence against Mary, Hannah and Mary was spectral and thus considered inadmissible at this point. The three women were eventually acquitted and released, and it was, "ordered that no evil should be spoken of them again” (Boyce) but life in this colony would never feel quite safe again. This story inspired me to explore Place-Memory as a research methodology and as inspiration to learn more about the rest of my Ancestors. This research was made evident through audio that I spoke in my soundtrack for the video, Witches.

Witch 3)

            Interview with Mom

8 generations after Mary Staples was alive, my Mom found herself the subject of a modern witch-hunt. Mom discussed the Grunseth scandal of 1990 that she was at the center of after she went public that John Grunseth is a pedophile. When my Mom was 13 years old, one of her best friends, Nina Grunseth, disclosed to her that Nina’s stepfather, John Grunseth, had raped was a pedophile who was regularly sexually assaulting Nina. At a 4th of July party at the Grunseth home, he and his friends plied the young girls with alcohol and told them they could only swim in the pool if they were nude. This incident involved Grunseth’s 14-year-old daughter, Nina, and her friends who were 13-14, including my Aunt Liz Mulay, Aunty Lisa Hare and my Mom, Liane. My Mom discussed the emotions involved for her, the media was unanimously saying that my Mom and Aunts were liars, and that this story was a ploy to tarnish Grunseth’s reputation because he was a Republican. Audio clips from this conversation with my Mom was used in my videos titled Witches.

Witch 4)

Interview with Grandma Denise (circa 2021)

My Grandma discusses her Mom and Aunts and the ways in which they were well-educated feminists, who were ahead of their time. Their families sent them to college at a time where many people didn’t expect women to receive any higher education. I compare them to my Ancestors accused of being witches in my video, Down the Well. Grandma says, “They drove their father’s car, and they were allowed to be who they wanted to be.” My Grandma tells the story of her grandparent's relationship dynamic saying that

“Grandma was the boss, but you know he didn’t argue with her. He had been given away to a family when his Father died. Noah Jones was a miner, M-I-N-E-R. He had a mine, and the other-when they found gold. The other guy stabbed him to death with the thing that held light.”

This audio was inspiring in my examination of feminists in my family and was used in the video Down the Well. This story helped me to answer my thesis question by examining more modern female Ancestors of mine who refused societal and gender norms.

[1] The final battle was fought within 5 miles of my childhood home in Uncoway and resulted in a 24-hour long battle at Munnacommuck Swamp

Thesis Research

The crucial part of my research for my MFA thesis involved me interviewing family members and close friends. I am incredibly grateful to everyone who made time for an interview with me.

Dr Liane Nelson, Todd Gagne, Chrisanne Nelson, Linnea Nelson, Thomas Gagne, Megan George, and Tanya Gagne.

I am grateful to my two close friends who I interviewed: Lorraine Zinnia Johnson and Kelly Costello.

Special thanks to the following people who provided audio, records, poetry and photos: Mary Ross, Laney Skeel, Shannon Nelson-Deighan, Patricia Asiel, Toni Taylor, Joyce Varcoe, Erik Hall and Nancy Willis.

I also collected stories for this project, stories told from family members who have passed and my own personal experiences and stories. I am pleased to begin sharing these stories and memories and to continue adding to our family archive.