LiveSciFi Zozo Investigation Day Two Live Blog

So here's what sucks about falling asleep. You miss stuff. 

I was up early yesterday, had a conference with my literary agent, then wrote my column, and all that fun stuff. On top of that, considering the pain level a chronic pain sufferer deals with, the medications totally knock you out. Unthinkingly, I took my meds at the regular time last night. So by the time we started hitting 3:30 - 4 am, I was pretty much done for the night. 

I kept waking up when things would happen, but then dozed back off. My own fault. Should never have said, "I'll just lie down for a while." 

So now I'm hours behind, and will have to watch catch-up footage here in a bit when it's posted. My own fault. 

That being said, though, right now the house is empty and for the past hour it's been echoing with bangs and snaps and clicks on a fairly constant basis. To me this is compelling because there is literally no one there. 

10:56 HUGE bang in an empty house. Something feel somewhere.

11:12 Another huge bang followed by what sounded like a cough.

11:30 in the past half hour, we witnessed extensive tampering with the camera system in an empty house. IR lights going off and on, cams switching from day to night vision, and all accompanied by significant noises. This house isn't just haunted at night. It's haunted by day.

11:49 One of the things that makes a live streamed investigation interesting is the simultaneous chat. Even when the investigators aren't in the house, there are hundreds of people still monitoring the equipment. This serves a couple of purposes. First off, it keeps people engaged in the event. It also leads to an ongoing dialogue about what's happening. Sure you get your kooks talking about orbs or claiming to have seen stuff that isn't there. Middle school kids need hobbies too and for the most part that seems to be annoying grownups. But if something significant happens, like a loud noise, the chat rooms dissect it the same way investigators do. But second, those transcripts provide time stamps to evidence. The team can go back later and match up the video with the log the chat room creates, and that can lead to evidence they might otherwise have missed.

Although probably not in this house. No way to miss what's going on now.

12:36 If you talk on speaker phone during a live stream, the entire world hears your conversation. And nothing else. That is all.

1:03 If the tornado siren test is going on, it's probably not the best time to do an EVP session. Mostly because you can't hear anything. Just sayin', Darren.

1:47 Okay, I'm going to be a little stern here because I'm seeing things I do not like. First off, the only reason a paranormal investigation has any validity at all is through the strict adherence to protocols and running a controlled experiment. You eliminate as many external influences as possible. You turn off your phone. You create a control. You document any changes you observe, like something falling over. You use your own equipment. You handle other people's equipment with care. If a session is disrupted by outside sources, you end the session and discount any potential evidence.

For almost an hour and a half, I and the rest of the chat have watched in horror as all of the above strictures have been ignored. YOU DON'T HANDLE SOMEONE ELSE'S PERSONAL EQUIPMENT OR POSSESSIONS CARELESSLY, like holding an antique doll by the head or so roughly a limb falls off. You don't try to use someone's personal technology.

How do I know this? Because I did my first investigation in the late 1980s and multiple ones since. Pretty much the last two hours and counting can be tossed out the window because someone who doesn't know what he is doing is destroying the validity of the investigation with every step and decision he makes.

It's a damn shame.

2:27 And the torture continues, unabated. Talk about a room of pissed off viewers. Good lord.

The thing I've always liked about LSF is the interactive nature of their live streamed investigations. Evidence captured in a totally silent house while the investigators are asleep or out. All of that has been destroyed. We went from a morning of continuous activity, to an afternoon of absolute bullshit. What makes that even worse is that the LSF team isn't there and all this destruction is coming at the hands of a guest to the investigation who is trying to force activity when he didn't need to.

Paranormal investigation is about creating a situation in which activity can happen, not bombarding the place in the middle of the afternoon with frantic trigger object shifting and blaring music and constant movement. One of these dolls could get up, walk down the stairs, and dance a jig in the middle of the living room floor and it couldn't be construed as evidence because of what's going on around it.

3:45 and all's well. Torture has stopped--mercifully--for the time being. I'll be glad when the investigators get back and turn this back into a serious attempt to capture paranormal activity.

LIVE BLOG UPDATED EVERY 20-30 MINUTES

LiveSciFi Zozo Investigation Night One--Live Blog

October 21, 2016 (7:00 pm EST) So what am I doing, you ask? 

Tonight at 10 pm EST, the LiveSciFi paranormal investigators will kick off a three-day ghost hunt at a residence in Oklahoma City that is purported to be haunted AND oppressed by a demonic entity known as Zozo. Now, if you read my last blog post, you know that I did a lot of research and wrote a few articles ahead of this upcoming investigation...and that the nasty critter set off a chain reaction of paranormal activity around my house and particularly around my computer. 

Ergo...I figure this is a safer and more fun way to take notes during the investigation. Blogger will automatically back my stuff up, and I can jot down observations, opinions, and instant reactions to what happens during the lockdown. So take that, Zozo! 

And here's the kicker. Although I enjoy paranormal investigations, I am also seriously skeptical. I don't put much stock into orbs, or creaky noises, or random lights. If I see something that might be paranormal, I'll jot down what I saw and an approximate time so I can go back once that block of video is done and go through it. 

But if I think something is out and out hokey horseshit, I'll jot that down too. Sorry kids--just the way I roll. At the end of the weekend, I'll put it all together in a followup article and we'll see what we've got. See something you think I should look at? Leave me a comment (time stamp or approximate time place) and I'll take a look at it. Sound good? 

Lay in the snacks, kids. Going to be a long night.

8:35 pm --dangit, isn't this thing started yet? Viewers are starting to show up on the LSF website chat and the YouTube chat. Seems to be more anticipation for this investigation than I've seen in quite some time.

9:00 The normal plethora of trolls and spammers are showing up now. Guess there's not a middle school in America that has homework over the weekend anymore.

10:03 So far, my "live feed will start 5 minutes late" bet is still alive.

10:04 still alive

10:05 c'mon man! It's ten bucks!

10:20 Time is money, guys. Time is money.

10:38 So yeah. I totally lost the start time betting pool.

Okay so it's 11:00 and time for the first Ouija session. Why you ask? Because Zozo is the Ouija board demon, and that's how the entity selects its victims and stalks them.  That whole thing about opening a door? Yep. Ouija. Spiritual door opener.

11:10 So the Ouija session has kicked off pretty darn quick. If nothing else, Zozo is predictable. According to what's coming through, it seems pretty happy to have company. Especially this company since it's spelling out H-A-H-A-H-A

11:14 Zozo just claimed it was a friend. Not sure to what, but there you have it.

11:19 Well, Zozo at least can tell a bad joke. "Saint Zozo" smfh

11:25 Zozo just said it would make a noise/create a disturbance at 1:34. I will be watching, and if that doesn't go down, I will totally call it out as a liar. I ain't playing.

11:28 Sure would have been nice to get the answer to Nicole's question about the possessed woman in SF who went after Tim, but Darren decided to pull the focus instead of letting that line of questioning proceed for some reason.

11:29 Doesn't take Zozo long to get back into its MO. All the laughing and joking aside now, and we're to gloating over a dead cat and threatening to kill Tim.

11:40 End of the first hour-ish. I think the strongest takeaway I have at this moment is that the Ouija session was moving much faster than normal. Also, getting the loud growl on the EVP session fits entirely with Zozo's recent interactions with Tim on the Ouija board. And that's disconcerting. For that EVP to have occurred so early in the live stream can only mean bad things are ahead in the next two night. Craziness.

11:46 Tim's first scratches of the weekend and it's not even midnight yet.

See, here's the deal. Coming up on ten years of dealing with the Zozo entity for Tim, and thirty-five years of dealing with the entity for Darren. This is like an all-you-can-eat spiritual buffet for it. When you're working in this field and you already have a paranormal attachment or you're sensitive to paranormal events, in a charged location and with another person present who suffers the same thing the entity is pulled in like a magnet to iron fillings.

11:51 For a guy who didn't want to say the word "Zozo" an hour ago, he sure is saying it a lot now.

11:53 So Darren is wearing a shirt with a skull on it, is looking into a scrying mirror and he sees...a skull. Wow, dude--really?

11:56 All right--let's talk research. The "14th century source" Darren Evans cites for the Zozo entity being known as a demon isn't a 14th century source. It comes from an 1876 issue of the Catholic Review, and it's referring to a sermon St. Bernardino preached regarding gambling with dice. The term " commune omnium daemonum" is a generic term of the medieval church. And if you want to check out that source, head here and look for yourself. I asked Darren for the original 14th century source when he questioned me not citing that story as fact in my articles. He did not provide me with that source. That does not mean the source doesn't exist. The Catholic Review has access to Vatican documents and this article could very well have been taken from such a legitimate source. But you cannot call a 19th century source a 14th century one just because it refers to something that happened then, and particularly with a church document from that time because all that stuff was edited heavily to fall into political lines of necessity.

That's not how source citation works. That would be like me saying I know JFK was killed as the result of aliens because I read somewhere once that's what really happened. Without that source, I could be referring to the National Enquirer for all you know.

In proper research, the word Zozo being mentioned like that five hundred years later is secondhand--kind of like hearsay. This isn't a reliable or valid source citation, so much as it is forcing something totally unrelated and MAKING it sound like a source. Want to convince me? Show me a literal, physical source from the 14th century, not an article from a journal 400 years later.

And then, too, the source isn't about a demon named Zozo. It's about a sermon preached by a saint where he substitutes gambling terms for the items used in a Catholic Mass. It's about how to take a sermon and relate it to your audience in terms they understand and relate to--a sermon used as an example of how to create an effective Catholic Mass during the season of Lent. It has nothing to do with demonology, and it doesn't chronicle or identify a demonic entity. It's an allegorical tale, created by a priest to demonstrate the evils of gambling. (BTW St. Bernardino didn't like much of anything. Even hear the phrase "bonfire of the vanities"? That's where people take the things they enjoy or that give them pleasure out into the street and throw them on a fire. This guy is the one who started all that crap)

The earliest source this Latin, Greek, and French-reading writer with mad Google-fu skillsfound in my research is the 1818 Dictionairre Infernal, regarding an event in France two years earlier. And THAT source can be found here. At the end, I have to question this as being presented as fact, because it's not. And it bugs me that it was presented as such.

12:03 So Darren refuses to touch the Ouija board, but he'll confront the entity, and look in scrying mirrors for it, and scribble things on paper in an attempt to summon it? I am confused. And that Z-word he didn't want to say is now being used every other word. I wonder...how long will it take him to touch the Ouija board? Hmm... Earlier he said it had to do with intent, right? So here's my question--what's so different about intent in why he wouldn't say Zozo early on in the investigation, but will now?

12:13 Hard to do an EVP session in the house when someone is in the other room bellowing like a drill sergeant.

12:35 EVP session not in your skill set man. Ask a question, give them 30 seconds to answer. then ask another question. Don't tell it stories.

12:38 we are now winding down the second hour of this investigation. The last 40 minutes has been the Darren and Zozo show. Unfortunately, even Zozo appears to be dozing off.

12:52 Getting creeped out off a letter--rare.
Just turning on the Ovilus for the first time and it says "Z" when you're investigating the Zozo house? --priceless

1:04 Okay the voice that Ovilus generated is uber-creepy. Also find it interesting that it said "birds" considering the connection that's come up with birds before in both Tim's and Darren's history with the entity. And yes, the South Park version of R. Kelly's In The Closet is now stuck in my head. Travolta and all.

1:10 'abort' 'sharp' and 'cross over' rapid fire on the Ovilus. Again...interesting.

1:14 setting up for a Ganzfeld experiment--whenever sensory deprivation is involved, the paranormal activity seems to get more intense. Also, keep in mind Zozo's promise of activity at 1:34

1:34 Since this moment occurred during the Ganzfeld experiment, it's hard to say if Zozo kept his promise. Did I notice paranormal activity? No. Did Tim act totally bizarre all of a sudden? Yes. But was it what Zozo said it would be? No. So yeah==> so totally unimpressed Zozo. A demon should do better.

1:36 Things not to do on an investigation 101--never rip ping pong balls taped over your co-investigator's face. Be gentle and kind to his eyes.

1:36 "DO YOU HAVE A HEADACHE" is probably not the thing to
yell into someone's face if you think they have a headache. Just sayin'.

1:45 The third hour is in the books and we have a couple of good EVPs. Not bad, but not exactly burning down the house here, either.

6:30 AM, October 22-- I'm not sure what to make of this place. That there's paranormal activity seems completely undoubted. As the night went on the activity increased and even when the house is empty, there's nearly constant noise. I personally don't trust my eyes after being up all night, so I'll wait until I can go back and see the footage for myself after some sleep but--this is beyond creepy. That being said, this place is loud.

Zozo Investigation and that Demonic Haunting Story I Never Told You

So you guys know I'm normally keeping myself pretty busy, and especially at this time of year. Not only is football season in full swing, which means writing for the Orange & White Report and my weekly Fact or Fanatic column, but I'm in the middle of publishing eight novels (two more to go in digital; six more in print). And because I just cannot be too busy, this month is also October which means my mind turns none-too-gently to the paranormal world. 

We spent October of 2015 shredding the abysmal A&E television show Cursed: The Bell Witch and the absolutely execrable Destination America Exorcist Live! and putting together my blog series The Real Bell Witch, all of which you can see by going to the Paranormal, Bell Witch, & Zozo page tab at the top of the blog. 

Wait...you noticed the extra name, didn't you? Well, that's because this year, I'm trying something different. 

I've been working with Tim Wood out at LiveSciFi on a series of articles about an investigation they're doing this weekend in Oklahoma City--an investigation into an entity known as Zozo or the Ouija board demon. If you've never heard of that name, do a quick Google search. You'll turn up over 34 million results. 289,000 of those results are YouTube videos. And Tim is the king of paranormal on YouTube with over 400,000 subscribers and 68 million views--and counting. This weekend, LSF is working with a guest investigator, Zozo expert Darren Evans. 

Let's link everything up real quick so that you can go see my articles, the Blogcritics interview, the LiveSciFi site, and Darren's blog and new book, just released in May, about the entity. That's my formal work. But this is my blog, so here I get to tell you about some of the crap that's gone on since I started doing interviews and crafting articles last week--and that leads me to a story I've hinted about, but never told before.

It's your lucky day.

Last Thursday, the three of us talked on a three-way call just as a preliminary. and you know me--I was taking serious notes. First off, I find paranormal things pretty fascinating, but primarily I was noticing similarities in Tim and Darren's stories. Not the 'they talked ahead of time' similarities, but elements that popped up in both their experiences that have also popped up, frighteningly, in mine.  One of the articles I did, Ouija Board Demon Zozo--Connecting The Dots outlined those similarities. What I neglect to include in the story was how I shared many of those characteristics, and they stem from my adolescence and two hauntings. One, of course, is the Bell Witch haunting in Adams, TN. You guys have heard all about that. The other was the demonic oppression of a friend of mine in college--an oppression that manifested in activity right before my eyes that absolutely could not be explained.

This is the story of that incident--an incident I referred to last year but did not tell. Seems appropriate to do so now. All the names, naturally, have been changed, and bear with me: by the end of this post, it'll all make sense.

My friend's oppression began after the death of his younger brother in a mysterious car wreck. The brother had been involved in a high school "coven" with nine friends. Of those ten kids, eight died: four in the same car accident, two by suicide, one murdered, and the last of some totally bizarre infection. I have no idea what happened to the other two. After his brother's funeral, the entity hopped to my friend, Jeno. 

Jeno was a smart, good-looking boy--football player and brain, infectious grin, and a sweet personality. I'd known him since high school, when he'd been in the same class I was. His family was Mormon and in every aspect he was just a normal, happy guy. But after his younger brother's death when we were both in college, everything suddenly went wrong. He literally started to almost wither into nothingness. Within a month, he looked gaunt and uptight. Our mutual friend Rob, Jeno, and I would hang out some nights. We usually would go to this bizarre park in the middle of Clarksville right off Crossland Avenue down this crazy steep hill. That park was basically some fifty year old swings and a parking lot, but behind it were a few trails and a creek. We liked it there. People rarely went there during the day, much less the night. 

On one of those nights that fall of my sophomore year in college, we went to that park. It was September, and still warm. Despite that, Jeno was wearing a turtleneck sweater. And as we sat in our usual spot in a clearing tucked out of sight of the road, Jeno told us what was happening. 

His house was haunted, he said, since his brother's death a few months earlier. He would wake up in the middle of the night, fighting with an unseen force pummeling him in the bed. Things would fly off his wall. Drawers would open and crash into the opposite side of the room. Voices would suddenly issue in an empty room, and terrible smells would emanate from his younger brother's closed and unused room.

I was fresh off my first investigation of the Bell Witch Cave and the Edens farm, where I'd experienced things much like what Jeno was talking about. In fact, I'd stood outside on the front porch of Bims Eden's empty house and listened as the living room furniture was rearranged--things that neither Rob nor Jeno knew about. So I was able to take Jeno's story at face value.

But what I didn't expect was the condition of his body. 

The first time he lifted his shirt and showed the massive bruising on his torso, I was startled--and I couldn't help but be slightly skeptical as well. What I couldn't figure out was a trio of scratches that started on the right side of his neck and continued in an unbroken, continuous diagonal across his chest and finally terminated on his left hip. It was like someone had taken one of those little three-pronged gardening forks down his body, but the cuts were too deep and sharp-edged for that. They had scabbed over, and even the scabs were precise and identical.

For a few days after, I tried to figure out if there was some way to do that to oneself. It was so weird because the scratches were the same depth, the same width, and completely seamless. On top of that, Jeno was right-handed. There was no way he could have done that to himself in such a perfect symmetry. But I didn't say anything to him about it at the time. When you're nineteen and a good-looking guy is telling you he's being attacked by a ghost his dead brother's coven conjured up, you figure it's probably not a good idea to comment but just to be supportive. 

A few weeks later, we were hanging out in the same park. It was October--my birthday weekend, in fact--and it was one of those perfect, crisp autumnal evenings you get in Tennessee when the season is changing. We weren't even talking about the haunting at the time; we were planning a road trip as I recollect. Jeno didn't drink, I couldn't drink, and Rob...was Rob. He was drinking, smartalec thing that he was. At any rate, we were laughing one minute and the next minute, Jeno screamed and fell backwards, landing basically on my lap. Instinctively, I grabbed his shoulders and his body was so hot (temperature) that I could feel the heat baking through his jacket and sweater.

The next thing I knew, three burns came up on the side of his throat. Each burn was as wide as my thumb. Rob pulled off Jeno's shirt and those burns followed the exact same path as the scratches had. 

I saw those burns pop up. If you're a woman and have ever burned the side of your neck with a curling iron, that's exactly what it looked like. Except Jeno was six feet tall and those burns crossed his body like a sash and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans while he was wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and a Member's Only jacket. (dated myself there) And these weren't surface burns either; they were second degree burns. We took him to the ER--I don't even remember the BS story we told to try to spin the whole mess. That night after he was released, we took him back to Rob's place, figuring he might be able to rest there. Jeno pretty much passed out as soon as we tucked him up on the couch, exhausted as he was and full of pain meds, while Rob and I sat across the room trying to figure out what in the hell we'd just seen. 

I had been at the Bell Witch cave just a few days before, and had gotten several EVPs (my first ones, actually) before the cave suddenly went spook-monster on me and drove me out. Ultimately I had been dive-bombed by crows on my way back up the cliffside trail. Creepy birds and animals tried to get hit by my car the whole twelve miles home--which has happened to me more than once on that winding country road between Adams and Clarksville. There is a strong voodoo element in the Bell Witch legend due to the fact the Bells owned slaves. The story is full of strange-looking black animals, blackbirds, dead men's lanterns, and "witchballs"--a kind of fetish the slaves made to protect themselves from the entity. So I was already a tad...jumpy and Rob knew this. But as we sat there trying to rationalize what had happened, the lightbulb in the hanging lamp over his kitchen table exploded. like--literally exploded, glass shattering, sparks in the wiring, sounding like a pop gun kind of exploded. 

Rob and I just stared at each other over all that glass, and Jeno said suddenly from the couch, "It followed me here." 

My first thought at the moment was uncharitable to say the least. Thank you so fucking much for bringing your pet ghost, Jeno isn't the best retort in such a moment. But Jeno's voice was hard to describe--terrified and quiet all at the same time--and it made such an impact on me that I couldn't say a word. Rob, bless him, instantly popped up with, "Man, we need to take you to a church." 

That's when we found out that the Mormon church in town had excommunicated Jeno. He'd gone to them for help when all the manifestations began after his brother's death, and they had literally shunned him. 

Rob and I were both Catholic. Clarksville is a military town. Rob's mother was Spanish; mine was French. 

So we loaded  Jeno into the back seat of my Bug (yes, I was a vintage VW kind of punk girl back in the day--a 1972 Superbeetle, Tennessee orange of course) and took him to the rectory next to the church both our families attended. Our parish priest was a great guy--a chain-smoking, Scotch-drinking, honest-to-God Irish lean whip of a man who had baptized, christened, and First Communion-ed me. The trip over lasted maybe five minutes, and it was the longest five minutes of my life. After what we'd already seen happen that night, and the knowledge of how Jeno's brother had died, a VW Bug didn't seem like the safest place in the world to be. On top of that, it was three o'clock in the morning, and we were going to wake up a priest. 

It's a testament to who Father Mike was that we didn't even hesitate to go to him though. This was the same priest I argued reproductive rights with, the same one who always told his congregation that if they were in spiritual trouble to come to him. I figured this would qualify, and all I wanted to do was to get Jeno to someone who knew what to do. 

The rectory is a sold-looking Victorian building next to the original Church of the Immaculate Conception in Clarksville. Rob, who was quite a bit smaller than Jeno, was literally hauling him up the front porch steps while I banged on the door and rang the doorbell. The porch light snapped on and Father Mike peered out when he opened the door. He took one look at me, then on to Rob and Jeno, and immediately pulled us all into the house.

And what happened from that point on is something I don't talk about. There were further occasions when Jeno was attacked in front of me--the worst happened one night after he'd been kicked out of his parents' home and was living in a small apartment right off-campus.Jeno had two couches in his shabby living room. I was asleep on one and he was on the other when suddenly he screamed. I jumped up like a scalded cat and he was fighting for his life against something that was only visible because it was under the blanket with him, like some huge freaking guy had crept up on that couch with him and crawled under the quilt to strangle him. I hauled Jeno off the couch into the floor, the blanket went flat, and the attack stopped.

We sat up the rest of the night in the floor with every light in the house on and my rosary beads around his neck.

But there was nothing else I could do. I couldn't help him and organized religion wouldn't. The response of both the Mormon and Catholic Churches to Jeno's situation made me angry--angry enough to forego religion for a long, long time.

As in decades. Father Mike protested on Jeno's behalf, and was moved to another parish within six months.  Before he left, he told me that it was dangerous to spend so much time with Jeno trying to help him and told Rob the same thing. But being know-it-all twenty year-olds, we ignored him. Unfortunately, Rob told Jeno what the priest had said.

Six weeks after that, Jeno left Clarksville and I never heard from him again.

So how does this all tie back to the Zozo investigation? 

Several elements of my story--French background, involvement with slavery, voodoo, blackbirds/crows, creepy-acting animals, death in a suspicious car accident, demonic oppression of friends or associates, Ouija boards, and paranormal activity--line up exactly with the similarities between Tim Wood and Darren Evans as I outlined in that Connecting the Dots article. 

All that is history. Let's talk the present.

Since last Thursday after I hung up the phone and began to research and write the articles surrounding this weekend's upcoming investigation of the Zozo house, I've been getting poked paranormally in my house. The notes I took that night and Darren's phone number mysteriously disappeared from my computer, even though I had saved my work (being a writer makes you autosave-suspicious) and turned off the computer that night. A pair of lights in my living room blew within three minutes of each other. One lamp fell from the end table for no reason--I watched it fall and there wasn't a cat near it or under it. My mother's rosary beads disappeared from my closed jewelry box in the bedroom. (found it under the living room couch)  Had a few random bangs on the front door and one from inside the linen closet in the hallway. (I live in a century-old house). I spent three days looking at the TV or computer screen with one hand over my eye due to an almost incapacitating migraine that wouldn't respond to any kind of migraine medicines. And one of our cats, a perfectly healthy eight-year old with no health issues, died for no apparent reason. Despite all this, I managed to get four articles and three press releases done on top of my normal, everyday workload.

Here's the thing. I know there are no coincidences when it comes to paranormal activity. For decades, authors working on the Bell Witch have reported losing their entire manuscripts. I know a writer who lost their entire book--back when writing a book required a typewriter and lots of Liquid Paper. Film crews would find their equipment malfunctioning inside the Bell Witch cave or the landing outside it--but it all worked perfectly on top of the cliff. This happened famously during the late 1980's when the show Unsolved Mysteries tried to film there. Also, when you're writing about the Bell Witch your source materials and research--particularly the Ingram book--disappear. So I know the history involved with writing about paranormal entities and resultant paranormal activity that interferes with that.

For the same thing to happen here makes me suspicious.

This weekend, Tim and his team along with Darren are investigating the house now infamously known as the Zozo house in Oklahoma City. Starting Friday night at 10 pm, they're going to live stream the investigation for the whole 72 hours. If you read my other articles, you'll see the history both Tim and Darren have with this entity. The chances of the entity not showing up for this investigation are practically non-existent. And it's fairly obvious to me that for some reason, I am being discouraged from writing about all this.

That never works.

So, I intend to live blog the investigation while it's ongoing with my thoughts, my observations, and how what occurs ties into the history I've uncovered and the theories currently percolating in my head. As you'll know from my blogs last October with those two aforementioned hokey 'reality' shows, my opinions will be unvarnished and blunt. If I think something is horseshit, I'll say so. If I think it's intriguing, I'll admit that too. And in the process, I'm hoping to create a unique narrative to accompany the investigation.

Plus I'm going to do a follow-up article to the interview piece I sent to Blogcritics.

I have to admit. This Zozo thing has me intrigued. Not in a "I want to play with a Ouija board!" kind of way, but in a "this history and entity makes me want to learn more" kind of way. So we'll see what happens. Check it out starting Friday night at 10 EST/9 CST, and join in what should be one of the craziest paranormal investigation events of the year. I'll be interested to hear what you think as well.

Author's note: Just as I hit send on the Twitter link to this post, Voodoo by Godsmack came on the radio. Think something's sending me a message? Timing is everything, isn't it?

ZoZo Ouija Demon House LIVE 72 Hour Broadcast

If the Southeastern Conference Won't Act, Then Fans Need To

Let’s be frank: the SEC has totally dropped the ball and exhibits no interest in the fact that multiple schools just got screwed over by Florida.

I have no problem with Florida-LSU not being played in Gainesville. Let’s be honest, the weather in Gainesville wasn’t the issue. It doesn’t matter if it was 90 and sunny on Saturday afternoon. What does matter is that there are disaster areas close to Gainesville, the millions of people and businesses without power, the potential for not having drinkable water, the police and first responders needed elsewhere, and a highway system that will be packed with refugees returning to find out if they have a home left. 

That’s why the game wasn’t played. 

What the rest of the SEC should be taking objection to is the way that Florida pulled a fast one over on both LSU and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. 

Outgoing athletic director Jeremy Foley coordinated an obfuscation ploy that completely blindsided the SEC, and made Sankey look like a short-sighted girl who got jilted by her prom date. Not because an act of God made the game into a logistical nightmare, but because Florida is giggling all the way to Atlanta if they pull this off and the cards fall right. 

Florida CB Jalen Tabor was certainly aware of it, judging from his tweets during the Tennessee-Texas A&M game. CBS interviewed Sankey during the UT game, where he admitted the game “has to be played” and that Florida and LSU “need to come together” and make that game happen.

Then he disappeared faster than Where’s Waldo in Tokyo.

All of football knows that Florida was staring down the barrel of a potential beating at the hands of a re-invigorated LSU this weekend. That loss would have sealed Florida’s fate in the SEC East and given LSU a desperately needed SEC win — something Tigers fans know will be essential in the talent-stacked West. But Florida doesn’t want to face LSU’s offense right now (it set a school record for yards in a game against Missouri last week) and certainly not later, when Leonard Fournette rejoins the mix. 

But if this game isn’t played at all? Think of the ramifications. Florida could back-door its way into the SEC Championship game, and LSU could jump one of four current candidates for Atlanta in the West. 

Fact of the matter is that everyone knew for a week that Florida was the likely target zone for Hurricane Matthew. This game could have been moved to a neutral site days ago — Georgia Dome comes to mind — and the proceeds could have remained as they would have for a Gators home game. Or, conversely, as late as Wednesday night the game could have moved to Baton Rouge — where LSU had offered Florida their planes, their buses, lodging, and meals. LSU athletic director Joe Alleva basically begged Florida to come to Baton Rouge and Foley refused. Last year, LSU pulled the same feat off for South Carolina during the catastrophic flooding in Columbia— and gave the Gamecocks the gate. 

Is there a more generous and understanding athletic department than LSU’s? 

Certainly not in Gainesville. 

But by hemming and hawing and stuttering through the first half of the week, Florida made those options impossible, thereby conveniently nullifying both the potential LSU loss and potentially the Vols’ victory over Florida in Neyland two weeks ago. 

All that being said, if Vols fans are irate? Think about what’s going on in Tuscaloosa right now. Or College Station. Or Little Rock. The SEC East might not be as important to Sankey and his flunkies but the West certainly is. No one wants to annoy the seismic temper of the league’s primary cash cow, and Nick Saban is one hundred percent guaranteed to blow his top if this game isn’t played. 

Right now, the rest of the SEC and its fans should be outraged — not because the game ‘could have been played’ in Gainesville, but because that game can be played on November 19 if either LSU or Florida is willing to make the concessions necessary to make that happen. South Alabama and Presbyterian can be paid off and meet each other instead, while LSU and Florida meet in Gainesville. 

And the SEC needs to foot half those payouts, to compensate for the league being hoodwinked by Foley and a cagey Florida, giggling like Wile E. Coyote, Supergenius right before Roadrunner drops a boulder on his head.

So, time to drop the boulder.

There’s no need to be upset that the game wasn’t played yesterday. There’s every need to be upset that the SEC is letting Florida get away with such a transparent ploy to avoid the consequences for SEC losses. It doesn’t matter that UT has the tiebreaker. It doesn’t matter that Florida is almost guaranteed to lose 1–2 more games. What matters is that the SEC and Sankey were standing by silently while all this went down with fingers up their rears instead of exercising their authority over the situation and ensuring fair play for all SEC schools.

Today, there are allegedly negotiations ongoing between LSU and Florida and the SEC to schedule a make up date. I sincerely hope that's true, but in the end it doesn't matter. Greg Sankey has proved himself inept as SEC Commissioner in this matter from day one. Moving forward throughout the athletic year, that's not a good thing.

For ANY school.

So it seems only fair after a week of not hearing from Sankey and the Southeastern Conference about this situation to turn things around and let them hear from us.

If the Southeastern Conference wants fair and equitable treatment for all SEC schools, now’s the time to prove it. And if they don’t want to? They deserve to be inundated with the outrage of fans from every single other school.

SEC Offices (205) 458–3000

SEC Office contact page 

Greg Sankey Linked-In

Greg Sankey Twitter @GregSankey

SEC Network Twitter @SECNetwork

SEC Twitter @SEC

Pass those on to all your friends, from every SEC fan base. Express your displeasure. It doesn’t matter that the point will be moot in the end. What matters is that Florida disrespects the SEC and its opponents so much that they think they can get away with it.

Let’s make sure they don’t.