Paranormal Dispatch from the Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum! 4 September, 2026

--By Maddie Kosloski of The Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum

Photo by Jon Sailer on Unsplash

The Last Watch is back in the east alcove this week. At its center sits the Finch death-bell, a small brass call bell from the night ward of San Benedetto Cottage Hospital. In 1914 a nurse wrote that an orchardist sat up, smiled at an empty chair, and asked her not to ring. She rang anyway. He died before dawn, and three other patients later swore they heard the bell after it had been locked in a drawer. Come see it if you like. Visitors tend to lower their voices near the glass.

Now for the paranormal news that's been floating around this week.

1) Colombian soldiers on a jungle patrol said a presence followed them for several nights: women's laughter with no source, tents that shook, the feeling of being watched after searches turned up no one. The account escalated when something unseen tried to drag one soldier into the undergrowth. He shouted. His unit pulled him back. There is no official explanation and no recording I have seen, only the men's report.

2) In El Corpus, Choluteca, Honduras, children coming home from a football match told adults they had seen a woman with a distorted face and a duende in a tree. Nine minors were taken to Hospital General del Sur after fainting and panic on a hot bus. A hospital spokesperson later said the patients treated—five of them, ages ten to seventeen—had heatstroke and dehydration. Staff ruled out intoxication. The visions still traveled farther than the diagnosis. We get a version of that after school tours: one child names a figure in a case, and by closing time half the group has seen it too.

3) Kenneth M. Coon, a nuclear-power investigator with decades in root-cause work and health physics, published a brief report in the Journal of Near-Death Studies proposing an experiment on deathbed visions. He wants hospice collaborators to test whether figures seen by dying patients can convey hidden information. A press release this week promoted his 246-page book as a blueprint.

4) Psychiatrist Mitchell B. Liester, writing in Psychology Today, asked a plain question: when you are dead, will you know? He walks through prospective work—Pim van Lommel's 2001 Lancet study of 344 Dutch cardiac-arrest survivors, Sam Parnia's AWARE project, Bruce Greyson's case files—and notes that a minority report lucid scenes during clinical death. The papers do not prove a soul. They do show that "the lights went out" is an incomplete sentence. I think of that when visitors ask whether the orchardist in 1914 knew who was sitting in the chair.

5) In southwestern Pennsylvania, researcher Stan Gordon logged fresh "Little Bigfoot" reports in August. A woman at an Indiana County farm described two figures about three and a half feet tall, light-brown hair, almost no neck, cooing like a baby, until she sneezed. The next evening a driver in Westmoreland County said a five-foot charcoal-grey figure lost its balance and turned in a strangely mechanical way. Gordon has taken such calls since 1969 and still has no photograph, hair sample, or body. The older name in the state is Albatwitch, a small hairy figure along the Susquehanna. San Benedetto has its own short shadows at the orchard edge. No one has measured them either.

Readers who like these kinds of cases may enjoy the Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum cozy mystery series, which draws from real museum days, 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. The shelves also hold other museum-themed objects. Browse. Most of it is harmless. Most.