Paranormal news on the hour, “Ghost” DJ’s, interviews about UFO’s and promos featuring the “voice” of Elvis – it’s all part of the world’s first paranormal radio station, soon to be broadcast out of Perth.   Melenie Ambrose meets the couple behind the plan to stream the spirit world to a computer near you.

 “This stuff follows me everywhere” says John Ramses in his laconic American drawl. Overhead, thunder erupts as a summer storm brews over Perth. “I was born at exactly midnight in Salt Lake City, Utah during the worst storm of the year and ever since, wherever I’m at, it’ll often rain”.

I’m not arguing. The black skies are a perfect backdrop for a meeting with the creators of Haunted Australia, one of the country’s biggest paranormal websites and its soon-to-be spooky spin off, Ghost Radio Australia. 

As I make myself comfortable for a walk down paranormal lane, I ask John’s wife Lia, a former hairdresser and mother of three about her first ghostly encounter.   

“I was 10 years old. We were living in an old house in North Beach. Every night, I would wake feeling a presence in my room; like eyes boring right through me. We later discovered there had been three deaths in the house. A man hanged himself in my walk-in-robe, an old lady died in her sleep and a soldier shot himself in the lounge room. It was plain weird and pretty scary”.

Over the years, Lia’s interest in earth mysteries has gathered momentum. Now a Paranormal Investigator, she started to question life, the universe and everything in earnest when her eldest son Gary was diagnosed with autism in 1995

“That’s when the shift really started” she says. “I have always been a very spiritual person. My mother, Anne, a nurses’ aide went to spiritualist churches and loved having her cards read. But when Gary was diagnosed, I began searching for answers and opened my mind to what else could be out there”.
 
John too has had his fair share of bizarre encounters including “aliens appearing in my room”. But he wants the math along with any specters and in true Fox Mulder style, he knows the truth is out there and is hell bent on finding it. 

“I was raised Mormon, Luther and Catholic” he says with a laugh. “We read the bible every night after dinner. I had to memorise it by the time I was six. My stepfather (his parents divorced when he was 5) was very open-minded and introduced me to books on mysteries like the Bermunda Triangle. It totally opened my eyes to the real enigmas out there and it’s been a never-ending search for the truth ever since”.   

Now Lia and John Ramses hope thousands more will join them in their quest to unravel those tricky paradigms of the paranormal.

On April 1, they begin streaming Ghost Radio, 24-7 from their Kingsley home via US-based servers. It will be Australia’s first and the world’s only dedicated paranormal internet radio station, pumping out top-40 hits along with haunting homespun tunes with spooky advertising to boot.

“We’ll feature ads promoting paranormal seminars, books and music” says John an IT specialist and web designer. “Just don’t expect us to sell you a car”.

“Not unless it’s haunted” quips Lia. 

Forget all those hackneyed radio slogans you’ve heard in the past – Perth’s Best Music; More Talk Less Music and Perth’s Best Mix. Why not “Come on over to the other side” with a radio station that’s “Streaming the paranormal to this world and the next”?

Of course don’t expect your usual news fodder. Ghost Radio’s hourly bulletins will feature the latest supernatural happenings around the globe. There’ll also be live and pre-recorded interviews with world renowned experts on the paranormal, and psychic and medium nights as well as talkback from listeners wishing to share their own tales of the unexpected. “Ghost” rather than “Guest” DJ’s will occasionally liven up the action.
 
“We’re going to have a lot of fun with it” says John who has previously produced radio programs in the US. “It’ll be like the old days of pirate radio. Five years ago it would have cost thousands of dollars to start a radio station. Only in this day and age do we have the technology to be able to do something like this”.

Adds Lia: “It will be like preaching to the converted. These people WANT to know how many UFO’s were sighted this week, is the Mayanup poltergeist freaking everyone out and has the Alkimos done anything usual “

If public interest in their website, www.hauntedaustralia.com.au is anything to go by, the Ramses could well be onto a winner. In January alone they say some 270,000 people logged on to check out their site and its many paranormal articles and personal stories.

So what’s with the public’s ongoing fascination with all things spooky?

“From my research there seems to be a trend throughout history that whenever we have uncertain times there is an upswing in this type of genre. After the  (Boxing Day) Tsunami, there were SO many reports of UFO’s and ghosts and more people want to research them. We embrace shows like Medium and Supernatural almost as if to say, we need hope that there’s something out there” muses John.

Lia believes movies on DIY-ghost hunting techniques are also to blame. Following on from the 2005 film, White Noise with Michael Keaton, she says many have tried their hand at EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) recordings.  The aim of the game is pick up voice messages from your dearly departed or any other spirit that’s hovering around. All you need is : a tape recorder and some background static.
 
It’s a popular technique the Ramses will “totally play on” for Ghost Radio. Standby for the King to be resurrected as an impersonator declares (through white noise) “When I’m on the other side, I listen to Ghost Radio. Thank you. Thank you very much”. Even the Ramses 12 year old daughter Jacqueline, a wanna-be actress, gets in on the EVP act. She whispers haunting messages including “Listen, I’m here” and “I love you” though undulating static. 

“White Noise has already offended anyone it’s going to offend” says Lia to any potential detractors. “We do have to be careful though. We won’t be crossing into any religious beliefs or getting personal like saying so-and-so’s mother has just contacted us from the other side, not unless we have their permission”.

An unlikely candidate who has sought the services of Haunted Australia in recent times is Rosita Valladares, a councilor with Friends of the Art Gallery of WA.  (FOAG)
After a strange encounter in the art gallery last September in which an “unexplainable” force pullied her back, FOAG councilor Rosiita Valladares asked a colleague whether the gallery was haunted. “Yes’ was the reply.
 
Chatting to staff, Rosita discovered the spook was legendary and had the name, George. His favourite hangout was the Centenary Galleries that house the old Police Courts, built in 1905. Over the road had been a tree for hanging prisons sentenced to death.

Security guards spoke of hearing footsteps up and down stairs after closing time, doors slamming and creaking floorboards as well, lights being turned on and off. 

“I thought, what am I going to do with this information?” says Rosita  with the germ of an idea, she called the Perth festival’s Monica van Buerle and she was put in contact with Lia Ramses to see if she knew of a Medium who may be able to communicate with George. An EVP session in one of the old holding cells followed along with a few surprises.

“The ghost is apparently an old prison guard and stays around to look after prisoners who were hanged and have not moved on” says Rosita. “The EVP captured a big dog barking, like a guard dog, and it turns out the name of the ghost is Harry not George”.

So what do you do when you have evidence of a ghost of a ghost in one of Perth’s major public buildings and a population smitten with the paranormal bug? Throw a party of course and invite the specter himself and that’s exactly what’s happening on Friday when FOAG and the Friends of the Perth Festival join forces.

“We’re calling it The Ghost and Mr Dodge party” says Rosita with a smile. “The title is based on the 70’s TV show, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir but in this case it’s Mr. Dodge after Alan Dodge, the Art Gallery’s Director.

Not surprisingly the councilor has come in for a little flak
“People have said Imcrazy” that church will be onto me” but it’s all in good taste. It will be a fabulous party and we hope Harry may even make an appearance”.

Lia and John Ramses of course are thrilled to have helped out. It’s all a part of their grand plan to prove ghosts are more than people’s wild imaginings.
“Understanding the mysteries of death, unltimately help us understand the mysteries of life,: says John. “I believe the two should go hand in hand.”

WA’S MOST HAUNTED
WA is home to many reports of unexplained ghostly phenonema. We asked Lia and John Ramses to pick the best out of a spooky bunch.   
 
THE ALKIMOS
Wrecked on Eglington Rocks, south of Yanchep in the early 1960’s the Alkimos has been surrounded by bizarre tales and many believed it to be cursed.

Lia: “The Alkimos is certainly in Australia’s top five Most Haunted and number one for WA. Many claim to have encountered the ghost of Henry, a smuggler who haunts the ship and some call it cursed because those who’ve inhabited the ship go on to have many strange and unfortunate events befall them. A Canadian girl was raped and murdered on it and a pregnant woman miscarried while she and her husband were caretaking the ship. Only recently a couple who took home some of the ship’s debris had their 4WD burst into flames. The insurance company still doesn’t know what happened. Jack Sue, a diver and co-author of Ghosts of the Alkimos is extremely cautious of the ship. He was in the Special Forces in Borneo during the war, yet after he spent some time on the ship, he was very happy to leave”

John: “This is definitely the “Christine” of the haunted ship movement (a reference to author Stephen Kings novel on a demonically possessed car). I don’t think there’s any spirit on there, I just think the ship has an energy all its own. From the moment it was put together, it had problems. The liberty ships during the war were built in 10 days and they were just slapped together. A lot of workers got trapped in them.,a workman and his apprentice  did get trapped in the Alkimos’s hull. It also ended up having one problem after another and it took something like 30 days to build. There is something about this ship that begs respect and although I’m a researcher of the paranormal, I have no intentions of going down there”.  

THE MAYANUP POLTERGEIST

Weird yet well documented case from the 1950’s that occurred in Mayanup, near Boyup Brook in south-west of WA. For three years, people were pelted by showers of stones. The rocks would materialized out of thin air; on rooftops, dining room tables and appear on the inside of hurricane lamps. Seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses, the case attracted worldwide attention for the Aboriginal, Smith family and their white employers, the Hacks.

Lia: “I’m not an expert on aboriginal tradition but Boyup Brook’s name stems from the aboriginal word meaning “place of big stones. People would arm themselves with shotguns and set traps to try to catch it. The entity was never really violent. Although some of the rocks were twice the size of a shoe, no-one ever got hurt. There was also flying junk. In one case a wayward boot kicked a man in the butt!  

John: One guy threw some of the rocks into the bush but they would bounce right back at him. They ended up painting them for identification They ended up painting them for identification The night it all started the dogs went nuts and there was a high wining sound in the air. Lights appeared and the dogs broke loose. Shortly afterwards, the sounds quit and the lights went out and that’s when the rocks started falling. There were so many people out there; sometimes up to 50 people would experience it. People would flock to the town to see the phenomena. Because there was a sound of whining and the dogs went nuts in the initial event and there were strange lights, it almost sounds “alien”.

GREENHILLS GHOST
 
Claimed to inhabit the Greenhills Inn near York,. In July 2005, Brad Simpson took a picture with his digital camera of his girlfriend Abbey standing outside the magnificent old  hotel. After looking at the photo they were perplexed to see something or someone in the top window.
Lia:. Brad believes the figure at the window may be an Aboriginal woman, perhaps a maid, or domestic worker who used to work or live at the pub. The room is the owner’s bedroom and off limits to the public. A previous manager had told the new owner the building was haunted. He said something had frequently opened the door on the second floor as if it wanted to go out to the verandah. Brad and Abbey went back to the tavern and stood in the room to see if there could have been a picture or print reflecting an image. There were no prints or mirrors in the room and no-one was in there at the time.
John: The picture shows an apparition of a woman looking out, with her hair up in a towel or sheet. I don’t know what nationality or origin she is. What we also found is that over her shoulder, way in the back of the room was a young man in his 20’s also looking out of the window . A copy of the picture now hangs in the tavern.

MIN MIN LIGHTS
 
Considered the “grand-daddy” of all anomalous lights they have been seen by station owners, police officers, ministers of religion, school teachers, and bushmen. Most describe the Min Min as a round or oval ball of light traveling up to two meters above the ground either in a straight or undulating line. They are common to the Nullabor in Western Australia. 

Lia: Some people swear they are marsh gas (CH4) or phosphuretted hydrogen, the gas that escapes from decaying animal matter. Others say they are simply headlights reflected off trucks, but the thing is these lights CHASE people down the highway! They interact with people. They literally follow people for miles and miles and miles. People slow down to let these things pass and they slow down too and it frightens people. So many people have gone to cop stations to say there was a big blue light that followed me for the last 10 km’s. They have files upon files upon files. 

John: They seem to be an entity or an energy all of their own. Scientists now have good photographs and film of these things occurring but I don’t know what they are. They are SO strange that they don’t fit into a description of a ghost or alien or anything. Nevertheless people are seeing them and they can’t be explained. Sometimes they’re at ground level and creep around and sometimes they’re up in the sky. They seem to have an intelligence but there are no reports of any space ships landing. They don’t throw shadows which is odd. They are just a light energy.

Ghost Radio begins broadcasting from April 1 at www.ghostradiox.com.au

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