Paranormal Dispatch from The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum: 18 September, 2026
The equinox lands next week, and you know what that means...
Autumn and Halloween season! We're prepping a perfectly haunted extravaganza for the month of October, so stop on by the museum!
While you wait, here's the paranormal news that’s been floating around this week.
1) New Loch Ness monster sighting! Felix Tiekemeier, visiting Loch Ness from Germany, reported that at 11:58 a.m. on August 21 he saw a black object about six meters long some 300 meters out. It stayed on the surface for about twenty seconds, appeared to have a head, and then went under. He photographed it from shore. The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register accepted the report; 2026 is already in the mid-teens. A dark shape on dark water is thin evidence. I still log it. Our reservoir visitors describe the same silhouette every summer, and showing them the Harker lead has never once closed the subject.
2) Police in Damariscotta, Maine, took about half a dozen calls on the first day of school
after residents spotted a Sasquatch-like figure on Main Street and near morning drop-
off. Officer William Smith found a man in a very convincing costume sitting on the
sidewalk. No charges. Chief Erik Josephson posted that after a lengthy investigation
Bigfoot is not real, and that the creature remains at large provided he puts the suit back
on. Some callers were amused. Some were not. We get the same split when a tour group
meets our upright-canine mannequin.
3) Does your pet wake up when you stare at it? Biologist Rupert Sheldrake published a fresh round of cases arguing that sleeping people and animals often wake when stared at, even without sound or movement. He cites a 1996 film study of geese in a Rome park—ten wakes during stare trials against three when watchers ignored the birds—and more than two hundred owner reports, including a deaf spaniel named Honey. The work sits in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, which is not a settled finding. I remain unconvinced and still catch our
museum cat looking at the doorway before I do.
4) Marina Weiler and colleagues at the University of Virginia asked twenty-one
experienced out-of-body practitioners to describe a hidden image on a laptop seven
meters down a hallway. None identified the target. Two of them, unprompted, described
the researchers’ positions in the next room—one reading in a corner, another taking
notes—and those descriptions matched arrangements that were not the usual ones. The
team called the extras anecdotal and asked for prospective tests. I understand the
caution. Visitors who linger at the Shore Watch later insist they saw the dock from the
water. The mind is generous with vantage points.
5) The Monster of Lake Ontario! Researcher Susan Demeter returned to an 1882 Lake Ontario report from Garrison Common in Toronto: workmen and a boy watched a bluish-grey mass with an eel-like head, beady eyes, and a mane of stiff bristles. After several minutes it woke, wagged a tail, barked, and left a half-mile wake of foam. Demeter is not arguing for a misplaced dinosaur. She reads it as a water spirit or guardian, kin to Anishinaabe stories of beings such as Mishebeshu. A barking lake is stubborn folklore. I keep a typed copy of the 1882 description behind the Harker lead. Guests who read it look at our reservoir photograph
longer than is strictly necessary.
Readers who like these kinds of cases may enjoy the Perfectly Proper Paranormal
Museum cozy mystery series, which draws from real museum stories, names changed and
endings adjusted. The books are available wherever books are sold and in the museum
shop.
While you are here, try the UnTarot deck, a playful variation on the usual seventy-eight,
useful when a standard spread feels too sure of itself. The shelves also hold objects that
never found a tidy category. Browse. Most of it is harmless. Most.
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