About the Author
T.V. Weber is a lawyer, who has written a number of legal and public policy articles. He wrote several articles for the now-defunct National Trial Lawyer, a publication that presented legal analysis for the professional in terms that could be understood and appreciated by the laymen, such as clients in the waiting room or the staff at a law firm. His editor described him as having "an ability to explain complicated legal issues in layman's terms and to demystify the law."
In addition to writing articles about the law for popular consumption, he was an assistant editor for his school's law review. One of his academics projects, Privacy at Risk in the Age of Information: Does the Social Security Number Reveal Too Many Secrets, was published in the November 1993 issue of National Trial Lawyer. He also was awarded his Juris Doctor, cum laude in 1993. He was an adjunct professor at Governor's State University in the spring of 1995.
He has developed an oral presentation entitled Law School in an Hour, which provides a brief synopsis of each class in the basic course of study offered at most American law schools. He has appeared as a guest lawyer, answering questions on radio talk shows in both English and Spanish.
Currently, he writes a column for the Serbianna website entitled Asidewith T.V. Weber. Formerly, he and his wife Alida M. Weber (nee Jatich) wrote a column for Serbianna entitled Jatich and Weber. During the Kosovo War and its aftermath, the Webers wrote numerous articles that were published and made available to the press via the Internet. Some of their work has been translated into various languages and has run in several foreign publications.
Prior to entering the law, his businesses ventures regularly took him to the proverbial "Main Street, U.S.A." He lived for many years in Kane County, Illinois, where he became involved with local politics.
His interest in unexplained phenomena began with an argument with an eighth grade history teacher. His teacher had refused to approve a research paper topic because it was "too closely related to Canadian and European, rather than American history." Given that several biographies of Hitler were approved, as well as other topics that that were clearly foreign but may have indirectly affected United States history, it was obvious that the teacher had a topic in mind for Weber to "choose." As the paper was a standard requirement for graduation and the major factor in the final grade for history class, such "suggestions" to choose a specific topic must be taken very seriously. With a very straight face and in a very serious tone of voice, the history teacher recommended that he write a paper on Unidentified Flying Objects.
Undaunted, the young T.V. Weber accepted the project and eagerly began to research the history of UFOs. Weber's paper, a joint assignment of both the history and English department, was a success according to both teachers. The English teacher, an ardent skeptic, and the history teacher, a true believer, were both very impressed with the project.
The unintended consequence was that Weber acquired a reputation as the "juvenile expert" for all unexplained phenomena. After graduation, his eight-grade English teacher asked him to interview and help evaluate the progress of a student who was working on a project concerning the Yeti, the so-called "abominable snowman" of the Himalayas. Weber reluctantly agreed to interview the student and discovered that his project omitted any mention of the North American legend of the Sasquatch. The student believed the American tale to be either pure folklore, or wild conjecture based upon encounters with "run away circus apes." So, apparently, the U.S. History-only-ruled applied only to Weber.
Neither a skeptic nor a true believer, Weber open-mindedly investigates the claims of encounter with the unexplained. Science discovers a massive amount of new information ever year. New creatures are "discovered" in both the plan and animal kingdoms on a fairly regular basis. However, many of these new "discoveries" already were well known to the people who happen to live near, the area where they were discovered. Why should new phenomena be any different? On the other hand, the human mind is ripe for imagination and, of course is all too capable of creating hoaxes. Therefore, each topic, and each incident, should be evaluated as an independent occurrence.
He has a daughter, Becky, and lives with his wife, Alida, in Chicago, Illinois.
ARE GHOSTS AFRAID OF PEOPLE?
By: T.V. Weber
The television came on in the middle of the night tuned to a station that I had not been watching that before going to bed. That is the one thing that I can never get out of my head. If I had been watching that channel, I might have forgotten and fallen asleep with it on.
I awoke in small town in Indiana, in a motel that was not fully modern. Remote control for television was a luxury item, in those days. It was rare to have a modern hotel or motel with remote control then. How could that television have come on? Was someone else in my room?
I first check the locks on the door. All of them were firmly locked. I looked around the room in case some prankster had slipped in and waited for the middle of the night to start playing jokes. There was no one in the room. So, as a final quest for a logical explanation, I check the room for a second entrance. There was none.
So, somehow in the middle of the night I had been awakened by a loud television, much louder than I would have had the volume set. So unless there was some sort of master control, or I was on Candid Camera, something really strange had happened.
I could not call the front desk, as the switchboard to the hotel had been closed for hours. I could only wait until morning and to ask what might have happened.
"Ring, Ring." The phone was working. Maybe there was a fire or another disaster. That must be it. I thought. First the television is turned on in every room and then the front desk calls everyone.
I answered the phone, but no one was there. I looked outside and all the other rooms seemed to be dark. A dim light shown through a few of the curtains, but that would have been normal. I had been awoken in the middle of the night, at enough hotels, in strange towns to know what to expect.
When the phone rang a second time, I answered it as before, expecting to find an answer to this strange set of circumstances. Again, no one was there. This motel did not have automated wake-up calls. I doubt that such a device was in operation anywhere in those days.
Perhaps it was just insanity. Vincent Van Gogh seemed to do pretty well. Maybe this was the career break that I needed. Maybe I had just gone nuts! A great artistic future must await this young traveling salesman self of mine.
I cannot remember in which little town in Indiana town, that I had had this strange encounter. I do remember the outskirts of that town where the motel was located. There were two relatively inexpensive motels almost next door to one another. They both had outdoor swimming pools, but the other one was a little more expensive. Since, I paid my own traveling expenses, this motel was the natural choice.
I always liked to stay in that town. There was a restaurant with an awesome name within walking distances. I think it had been there long before Arlo Guthrie released his song about a restaurant with a slightly different spelling.
Alyce's Restaurant was nothing like the one in the song. It was a modern coffee shop with a brown motif. The booths, the carpets, the counter, the sign outside and everything seemed to be brown, or trimmed in brown. It had everything you would expect to have in a coffee shop.
The only strange thing was that no one who worked there ever seemed to know about the Arlo Guthrie song. I would make jokes about it, but no one every got them. Perhaps there is just something so conservative about rural Indiana that forces people to block Woody Guthrie, Arlo's father, from the collective Hoosier mind. "This land is your land, this land is my land, except for Indiana . . ."
If I had gotten much sleep that night, I might have been able to convince myself that the whole weird incident was soon sort of dream. I was not much of a believer in anything in those day, nor was I much of a skeptic. I just took things on a logical vs. illogical basis.
The U.F.O/Flying Saucer debate found me with the believers. It seemed extremely likely that there was intelligent life on other planets. It seemed fairly likely that many of those civilizations were more advanced than we were. It seemed somewhat likely that enough of them had developed the ability to travel great distances in space and would be studying Earth. It even seemed that a technical malfunction might, occasionally, allow humans to view them. Of course, it was, also, possible that we were not ever visited by extra-terrestrials.
Ghost and other spirit beings were in the illogical category. True, their existence was possible, but that made very little sense. If the dead stayed on Earth and it was common knowledge for centuries, why would modern man so universally reject it? Why would science not attempt to prove or disprove their existence? It wasn't like the U.F.O. phenomena, something new, with a logical explanation.
Of course, the major religions of the world seemed to not include ghosts. They may have angels, saints, reincarnation and a whole host of other possibilities, but not ghosts. So, with both science and mainstream religion omitting ghosts, I pretty much had them written off.
I stopped at the motel office in the morning for a cup of their complimentary coffee and told them about the television. The only explanation was that sometimes they have power surges in the middle of the night. I asked about changing the channel and the explanation got weirder. To accept that explanation, I would have had to have forgotten what channel that I had been watching. I would have had to have forgotten that the television just went off on its own and never bothered to turn it off myself.
I asked about the phone calls. The desk clerk assured me that such a thing was impossible with the switchboard shut down for the night. He offered to move me to a different room, but I had been planning on checking out that morning anyhow.
There is no such thing as being "too clean" when one is calling on the public. I used to call on doctors at their offices, so I was always trying to look my best. I showered every morning before leaving for the field. I spent more than half my time on the road. So, more than half the mornings of my life started with a shower in a motel. This was no different than any other morning in that respect.
The water was running and I was about to get in. Wouldn't you know it! The maid was trying to get in to do the room. Darn. I got dressed and went to the door. There was no one there. The locks were all still locked. One of those locks activated a small "Do Not Disturb Sign." I checked to make sure that it was working properly. With everything locked, I again checked around the room.
I was ready to take a shower in peace. Again, I heard noise, but then I knew the noise was coming from outside my room. Then the firmly locked door seemed to open and close. Things in the room seemed to rattle. It was like something, or someone was moving around. Could a stray cat have joined me?
So, I got out of the shower, got myself partially dressed and investigated the inside of the room. I clearly was alone. What could it be?
I needed to shower much more than I needed quiet. I decided that audio illusions were O.K. I would deal with this all later. So, as I showered, I entertained a new theory. The shower must have been activating something in the pipes. The vibrations of the hot water must be doing something to the room. So, I attempted to block it all out of my mind and then I felt a gust of wind!
Let's just recap for a moment: I literally lived in strange hotel and motel rooms. This particular motel was one of my regular "haunts." The television and the telephone were in business for themselves the night before and the motel office had no good explanation for it. I had been trying to take a shower and someone rather no one was disturbing me.
With wind blowing around the room, a door or window had to be open. It was a fairly strong wind, so the weather must have turned in the last twenty minutes or so. I may have lost count of how many times that I had stopped my shower and had gotten dressed to investigate some unexplained phenomena. I checked the entire room and the best explanation was that the air-conditioner had been on full blast and now it was off.
That was it, I got back into the shower and I was not about to come out if there were an earthquake. The wind was back and so were the noises. Then I could hear radio type music. I turned off the shower and the music was gone. I had had enough . . . in fact, far too much.
"I don't know who you are or what you are!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. "If there is something you want to talk to me about, fine! I will be glad to listen to you! But wait until after I finish my shower! I will talk with you the whole day if you like, but after I finish my shower."
There was no wind. There was no music. The only noise was that of the shower. It was a perfectly normal day. However, there was no question in my mind what had happed the last six or eight hours.
Emerging from the motel bathroom, clean, shaven and almost fully dressed, I asked an empty room; "Is there something that you wanted to talk to me about?"
The room was silent. There was no one there. I have only two explanations for that encounter. The first was that I experienced "temporary insanity" and a scream brought me back to sanity. The other is that someone or something really was there and decided not to mess with an angry young man who stood over six feet tall and was not afraid of ghosts.
After that experience, I never missed an opportunity to spend a night at the motel. Of course, I was not afraid. What is there to be afraid of? If the same thing happened, I would talk to whoever or whatever it was. I would scream again, if necessary. But, I was so curious. I wanted to know if anyone else ever had a similar experience.
No desk clerk ever admitted that there had ever been a problem, but they were always quick to make sure I did not get the same room, or even one near it. No one who stayed there before ever heard of anything like that every happening before.
Finally, a family from India bought the motel. I spoke with several of them and they had never heard of any similar experience. It was roughly a seven-year period from the first encounter with the unexplained until the final time that I stopped there during my travels.
I would probably have let the whole thing drop. Whether or not ghosts exist is not a very high priority in my life. But then I had a daughter. She is the type of child that always seems to wise beyond her years and a child at the same time. She follows current events like an adult, yet in some ways acts like any other child.
My new wife and I live in a relatively large home, two stories plus. It is over fifty years old and it is the type of home in which one would expect ghost to congregate. I don't know whether there are such things, as ghosts. But if there are ghosts in this house, at least they are quiet. So, if there is an unexplained noise, it is not much of one. If I feel a presence and it is not a cat, I don't worry about it very much.
But to my daughter, it is a different story. She dreams of ghosts. She fears ghosts. Sometimes she thinks that this house has ghosts. I have told her my motel story many times. She is always impressed. I would be happy to know that it was something other than a moment of insanity.
She is not a very gentle child. She can be clumsy at times. She tends to want to run in the house and she makes much more unnecessary noise than any spooks that may or may not be here could ever make. No matter what her stepmother and I say, she does no seem to want to slow down and be careful.
Then one day I told her, "Stop scaring my ghosts!"
It worked. She calmed down. So, I have used it ever since as my parental scheme of last resort. I am not sure where I got the idea, but it makes her take notice. She asks me not to remind her about ghosts. But she does mind me whenever I bring it up.
So, I wonder: are there such things as ghost, beings who fear us more than we fear them? It would sure explain why they are so hard to detect.
If you are in a haunted habitat and you are in fear of ghosts, try screaming at them. Don't scream out of fear; scream, at the ghost, to stop doing whatever it is that is bothering you. It shouldn't hurt. You can even scream that you are acting on my advice.
For example: "On advice of counsel, I want you to stop haunting my kitchen!"
While it may not do a bit of good, I have yet to hear of anyone being sued by a ghost. Like most lawyers, I find preparing to defend against a lawsuit a lot scarier than seeing a ghost!
