| Welcome to the new issue of the newsletter... we have a number of things that we want to pass on to you before departing for the American Hauntings event in Gettysburg this coming weekend, so let's get right to it... SPECIAL OFFER FOR APRIL 30 BUS TOUR IN ALTON!
We have just a few remaining seats of the special Alton Hauntings Bus Tour this weekend in Alton, Illinois and have a special offer to anyone who snaps up those last seats! We only offer a few of our extended bus tours in the spring and summer each year, which take you to locations NOT feature on the regular tours -- so don't miss out! Sign up now for one of the last seats on the April 30 tour and we'll give you a FREE pass to any of the Haunted Lebanon Tours this spring and summer! Don't miss this special offer -- sign now at the Alton Hauntings Tour Page! (And don't worry; if you already signed up, you'll get a pass too!) MAY 7 AT THE ROCKFORD PUBLIC LIBRARY!
Hope you'll come out on May 7 for my presentation on "Weird & Haunted Illinois" at the Library in Rockford, Illinois on Saturday afternoon, May 7 at 2:00 PM. I'll be talking about my favorite ghostly tales, weird places and personal experiences (plus signing some books) that day. Every presentation is a little bit different, so I hope you'll make it out to this weird and haunted afternoon! HAUNTED AMERICA CONFERENCE!
For those of you still waiting to get signed up for the Haunted America Midwest Conference in June, don't wait any longer! You don't want to pay the higher registration price at the door, so make your reservations in advance because this event does look like it will be selling out! Also, just to pass on the news -- this will be our FINAL Haunted America Conference for 2011. Due to some other events that have come up, we will not be offering a third conference in 2011. We do hope you'll look forward to some conference surprises for 2012, though! So, don't miss out on the last great conference for the year, get signed up now at the Haunted America Midwest Conference Site! FREE AVON THEATER SPOOKSHOW ON MAY 27!
By popular demand, I'm bringing back another of the FREE late night spookshows at the haunted Avon Theater in Decatur, Illinois on Friday night, May 27! What a cool way to kick-off the Memorial Day weekend -- at a haunted theater seeing one of the classic ghost films of all time, THE UNINVITED! No longer available on DVD, this is one of the best ghost stories ever put on film and you'll have to chance to see it on the big screen -- for FREE! The show starts at 10:00 PM with my intro to the movie, followed by a screening of the amazing film. Don't miss out! SPOOKAPALOOZA 2011! 
This is your first look at the Spookapalooza Event for October 2011! This year, American Hauntings is sponsoring a Halloween Party and Masquerade ball to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital! The event will be FREE (donations welcome) and we'll be hosting Central Illinois' biggest Halloween party at the haunted Lincoln Theater in Decatur, Illinois! The night will include live music, drawings for great prizes, ghost hunts and more! Here's a first look at the new website for Spookapalooza!
Enjoy the rest of the newsletter and I'll hope to see you at one of the events that we have coming up in the near future! Happy Hauntings! Troy Taylor
Bump in the Night Newsletter  Thanks for the great response that we had to the new events that were added to the roster in early April for American Hauntings. Believe it or not, we have even more! To see everything we have to offer, go to the American Hauntings Tours Page!
NEW! NIGHT AT MANTENO STATE HOSPITAL!
This one is already filling and we hadn't even featured it in the newsletter yet!  | NIGHT AT MANTENO STATE HOSPITAL
AUGUST 20, 2011 Join American Hauntings for a chilling night at this infamous insance asylum, located about an hour south of Chicago in Manteno, Illinois. Are you brave enough to spend the night inside this haunted place? Click Here for Details & Reservations! | NEW! NIGHT AT THE SEDAMSVILLE RECTORY!  | NIGHT AT THE SEDAMSVILLE RECTORY
SEPTEMBER 3, 2011 Join us for a night at the haunted Our Lady of Perpetual Help Rectory in Sedamsville (Cincinnati), Ohio as we search for the lingering spirits of some of the past occupants of the building. Has the recent restoration help stirred up the ghosts? Find out for yourself! Click Here for Details & Reservations! | FILLING UP FAST! FIRST EVER GHOST HUNT AT THE AVON THEATER!
Join Troy Taylor as he opens the theater to ghost hunters for the first time!
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| NIGHT AT THE AVON THEATER JULY 2, 2011 Join author Troy Taylor as he opens the Avon Theater for the very first time to ghost hunters and offers a guided tour and ghostly hunt of this very haunted theater -- from the darkest confines of the building to the place where Troy met the deceased former owner face-to-face! Don't miss out on this night -- limited spots remain! Click Here for Reservations! | And we have many other ghost hunt experiences available for the summer and early fall. We'll be adding more locations in the coming weeks but you have to plan early for these events because they do sell out in advance! Don't miss out! HAUNTED AMERICA MIDWEST CONFERENCE -- COMING SOON! Tickets are on sale for the biggest and best ghost conference of the summer -- and they're going fast! For the first time since 2006, we have a limited number of seats available for the event and if you don't register soon, you are running a risk of not getting into what's going to be far and away the best conference of the year. As of now, we are already over half filled for the June event! Local advertising has started in the downstate Illinois area, so it's your best plan to make your reservations now -- before it's too late! Forget all of the cheap imitation conference, this is the ORIGINAL American ghost conference, now in its 15th year, which is something that NO OTHER imitation conference can say! Join host Troy Taylor in the historic town of Jacksonville, Illinois at haunted Illinois College for a ghostly weekend of spirits, phantoms and the unexplained. We have an unequaled number of tours, ghost hunts and after-hours workshops and events and of course, the infamous raffle that gives you a chance to take home a piece of haunted history! PARANORMAL CLASSICS BY MICHAEL WINKLE
A collection of the Weird, the Strange, The Unexplained & the Haunted from the Annals of the Supernatural in America & Beyond! |  | The Vortex in the Bed Category: Space-Time anomaly From: London Times; Davies, pp. 116-119 Where: The Victoria Hotel, Bristol, Avon, UK When: About 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., Tuesday, December 9, 1873 Who: Thomas B. Cumpston and his wife, Ann Martha Cumpston How close to source: Contemporary newspaper and census accounts Phenomena: On December 8, 1873, Mr. and Mrs. Cumpston, of Virginia Road, Leeds, were traveling from Clifton to Weston-super-Mare. They decided to stay overnight in Bristol and continue to Weston-super-Mare in the morning. They checked into the Victoria Hotel, just across from the Bristol & Exeter Railway station, and went to bed about midnight. At about 1:00 a.m. the Cumpstons sought out the landlady, Mrs. Tongue, and complained of voices that seemed to be emanating from the next room. Naturally, there was nothing to hear when Mrs. Tongue entered their suite. The traveling couple went back to bed, but sometime between 3:00 and 4:00, according to the usually conservative London Times, they were disturbed “by terrible noises which they could not explain, and which frightened them very much.” The bed seemed to open beneath them “and did all sorts of strange things” that are not elaborated on. Ann Cumpston testified later that “The floor seemed to be giving way. It certainly opened, and her husband fell down some distance, and she tried to get him up.” Besides the other unspecified noises, “What they said was repeated every time they spoke.” After helping her husband out of the black void in the bed and floor, Mrs. Cumpston asked him to fire his pistol. He shot into the ceiling, but the terrifying noises continued. The frightened couple climbed out the window and dropped twelve feet to the yard below. Mr. Cumpston fired off his pistol again, then the couple fled to the railway station in their nightclothes. The Times account continues: “Mr. T. Harker, the night superintendent on the Bristol and Exeter Railway, said the parties rushed into his office partly dressed, crying out ‘Murder,’ and they were in a terrible state of excitement. They told him they had escaped from a den of rogues and thieves, and they had to defend themselves.” They asked Harker to search the waiting room to make sure no one was following them. Harker called for a constable, who searched Mr. Cumpston and found, not only the pistol, but three knives on his person. The Cumpstons were promptly taken into custody and brought up before the Bristol Police Court later that same Tuesday. Oddities: Accounts of disappearances are sort of “negative reports.” Instead of someone seeing or experiencing a strange phenomenon, there is simply an emptiness where someone or something used to be. Observations of actual “openings” into which people or things might disappear are rare but not unknown. Ending: The Cumpstons told their story to an incredulous court. Mr. Cumpston, who possessed a speech impediment, could barely talk due to his distraught state. Fortunately, a telegram had been sent to a Mr. Butt, presumably at the Cumpstons’ request. Mr. Butt appeared at the hearing and “in reply to the Bench said the parties occupied a very good position in Leeds. He offered to take proper charge of them if they were handed over to him, which was ultimately done, the defendants being discharged from custody.” (The Times article) Legend: Nothing like this seems to have ever happened to the Cumpstons or the Victoria Hotel before. Explanation: The prosaic London Times concludes: “No explanation can be given of this strange affair, and the belief is that it was an hallucination.” The Bristol Daily Post of December 10 mentions that police scoured the hotel room and found nothing out of the ordinary, so they echoed the Times’ sentiment. In the century and a half since, others have speculated that the Cumpstons barely escaped falling into some sort of opening into another dimension. Comments: Some writers have wondered why Mr. Cumpston carried a revolver and three knives with him on this excursion. The fact is that Victorian England was not all that safe a place. British author Rodney Davies explains that it was still legal in Great Britain to buy handguns over the counter in 1873. Davies, with a little help from Elizabeth Shaw of the Bristol Central Library, uncovered a few facts about the Cumpston case. The Victoria Hotel (Josiah Brown, proprietor) was located at 140 Thomas Street and became the Bute Arms in 1876. It was torn down in the 1920s. The railway station across the street is now called Temple Meads. Charles Fort, in Chapter 18 of LO!, calls the Cumpstons “an elderly couple.” Thomas Cumpston, however, was only twenty-five at the time of the incident. He and his wife lived at Number 35, Virginia Road, Leeds. According to the 1881 census Thomas was a “linen manufacturer employing about 90 persons” – the “very good position” alluded to by Mr. Butt. Ann Cumpston gave birth to two boys and a girl in the years between 1876 and 1879. In 1988, the Society for Psychical Research called for reports of apparitions and psychic phenomena from the public by distributing "A Questionnaire on Psychic Experiences." The results were published by D. J. West under the title “A Pilot Census of Hallucinations.” One account, designated “Case 0878”, was sent in by a twenty-one-year old woman, a student nurse who wished to remain anonymous: “It was roughly 8.0 a.m. I was sat [sic] in my room having a cup of tea. (I’d been awake for about an hour and had had a bath and dressed.) Suddenly a large hole appeared in the floor -- it took up most of the floor and the edges looked as if it were a rocky formation. Although I couldn’t see to the bottom of the hole I knew it was very deep. A voice [said] to me to ‘jump in’. The hole and the voice disappeared. I’ve not had this experience again.” Like the Cumpstons a century earlier, the young nurse heard a mysterious voice from the opening, and, as the English couple’s experience was dismissed as a hallucination, so too did the woman send her account to the “Census of Hallucinations.” Suppose these events were not illusions? What would have happened if Mr. Cumpston or the nurse jumped or fell into their respective openings? One can only wonder. Davies, Rodney. Supernatural Vanishings (New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1996). “Extraordinary Hallucination.” London Times, December 11, 1873, p. 11. West, D. J. “A Pilot Census of Hallucinations,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. 57, Part 215 (April 1990).  APRIL 2011 April 29-30: Haunted Weekend in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania -- Come back for another of our guest's favorite trips as we explore of the country's most haunted locations! SOLD OUT! April 30: Night at the Hannah House -- Indianapolis, Indiana -- Join us for a night at one of America's most haunted houses! SOLD OUT! MAY 2011 May 7: Weird & Haunted Illinois with Author Troy Taylor -- Lecture and Booksigning at the Rockford Public Library in Rockford, Illinois -- 2:00 PM May 7: Night at the Villisca Ax Murder House -- Villisca, Iowa -- Private all-night ghost hunt at the site of an unsolved mass murder and one of the most haunted houses in America -- SOLD OUT! May 13: Night at the Lincoln Theater -- Decatur, Illinois -- Overnight ghost hunt at one of America's most haunted and terrifying places! SOLD OUT! May 14: Night at the Hockenhull Building -- Jacksonville, Illinois -- Private ghost hunt at the haunted scene of a deadly 1966 fire! Reservations! May 21: Night at the Squirrel Cage Jail -- Council Bluffs, Iowa -- Private ghost hunt at one of the most unusual -- and haunted -- jails in the country! SOLD OUT! May 28: Night at the Brumder Mansion -- Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- Private ghost hunt at the most haunted house in Milwaukee! SOLD OUT! JUNE 2011 June 10-11: Haunted America Midwest Conference -- Haunted Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois -- Join us for our 15th annual event as we gather speakers, authors, presenters and ghost hunters from around the country for the biggest event of the year. America's Original Ghost Conference -- Accept No Imitations! Reservations! June 25: Night at the Brumder Mansion -- Milwaukee, Wisconsin -- Private ghost hunt at the most haunted house in Milwaukee! Reservations! June 25: Night at the Villisca Ax Murder House -- Villisca, Iowa -- Private all-night ghost hunt at the site of an unsolved mass murder and one of the most haunted houses in America -- SOLD OUT! JULY 2011 July 2: Night at the Avon Theater --Decatur, Illinois -- For the first time, we are opening the Avon Theater for ghost hunts! Join us for this rare, private event! Reservations! July 2: Night at Black Moon Manor -- Greenfield, Indiana -- Join us for another chilling night at one of the most mysterious and haunting houses in Indiana! Reservations! July 9: Haunted Overnight at the Mansfield Reformatory -- Mansfield, Ohio -- Our second overnight ghost hunt of the year at one of America's most haunted prisons! SOLD OUT! July 15: Join Author Taylor on Chicago's Original Resurrection Mary Tour and Go in Search of the City's Most Famous Ghost! Join Troy Taylor & Weird Chicago on Chicago's infamous Archer Avenue as we hunt for the history of this haunted region and discover the true idenity of Chicago's most famous ghost, Resurrection Mary! This is a night not to be missed as the true story of "Mary" is revealed! Limited Spots Available -- See the July schedule! Reservations! July 16: Night at Rolling Hills Asylum -- East Bethany, New York -- Join us for a private overnight at this haunted insane asylum in upstate New York! Reservations! July 16: Night at the Old Funeral Home -- Jacksonville, Illinois -- Join us for another private ghost hunt at one is becoming one of our most popular locations! Reservations! This electronic message is intended for newsletter subscribers. Please note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication, or the information it contains, is strictly prohibited without the express permission of the sender. Any use of this communication without permission is unlawful and a violation of federal copyright standards. If you have received this communication in error, please return it to the sender. © Copyright 2011 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved | 
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