Season of Shadows Blog

Mindy stirred restlessly in the bed of her northern New Mexico home. For the last few nights she’d had an uneasy feeling of being watched by something near the doorway of the master bath. Will (her husband) lay sound asleep next to her as she worked to calm her nerves, reassuring herself that the feeling was all in her head. She desperately tried to chalk it up to a case of paranoia due to the other odd events that had been recently occurring around their house. Assuming she had blown them out of proportion until working herself into the frightened state she was now experiencing- Mindy rolled over, turned her back on the bathroom and did her best to relax.

A short while later she was startled out of a light sleep by the same intense feeling of being watched. As she opened her eyes, she realized she had turned over, in her sleep, and was now facing the bathroom entrance. Standing in the doorway was the figure of a young boy (Will and Mindy had no children at this time). The boy was slightly translucent, yet his physical features were very striking and obvious. Mindy’s fears had been confirmed as she jerked the blankets over her head, staying buried beneath them for several minutes. When she was finally able to work up the courage to peer out from underneath the bedding, he was gone.

The above account is taken directly from an experience that occurred in my aunt and uncle’s home during the early to mid 1980’s. I’ve changed their names, since they may not be too thrilled with the reveal of their personal experiences on my blog, however the events are accurate. If you’ve read my fist entry in this series (Family Spirits), then you’re already familiar with the fact that I’m not writing about the ghosts of family members who have passed on. Instead I’m referring to ghostly encounters that members of my family have experienced. For the remainder of this installment I’ll be focusing on “Will’s” and “Mindy’s” encounters in that same northern New Mexico home.

Two of the initial bizarre events to occur, after they first moved in, involved mimicking type effects. Will was alone in the house, talking with a friend on the phone while Mindy had gone grocery shopping. She had only been gone a short while when he clearly heard her voice, inside the house, calling out to their dogs by name and scolding them for barking. Assuming she was back so quickly because she had forgotten something, my uncle hung up the phone and went to find out what was going on. He searched the entire house and couldn’t find Mindy anywhere. He proceeded to look outside, only to find that her car was still gone. She definitely hadn’t returned home, yet he swears it was her voice that he had repeatedly heard reprimanding the agitated dogs. Something within the house apparently had the ability to mimic the identical tone of Mindy’s voice.

On another occasion, Will seemed to adopt the behavior of the previous tenant of the home (which neither he nor my aunt had ever met or heard about). One night he found himself outside sleep walking/running through the yard wearing only his underwear and a sheet or towel tied around his neck like a cape. A short while later, he and my aunt learned from the landlord that the previous renter had exhibited the exact same sleep walking behavior while living there. It was around the time of the underwear sleep walking incident that Will’s strange dream experiences also seemed to intensify. He recalls them being so realistic that they were almost completely impossible to distinguish from his waking states. It was like one solid merging of dream time and waking time.

There were also many occasions in which my aunt and uncle, upon returning home, would find both of their dogs whimpering and cowering behind the washer and dryer. Many items in the home began disappearing as well. This typically happened to random knickknacks that would have no reason to have been moved or even carried around by either my aunt or uncle, yet they would completely disappear, never to be found again.

On one particular evening they had friends over for supper. A short time after the friends left, Will and Mindy noticed strange noises coming from many different parts of the house where there was usually only silence. This continued on and off for the rest of the evening along with the sounds of voices conversing throughout the home, despite the fact that my aunt and uncle were the only ones there. Apparently the visitation by their friends, earlier in the evening, acted as some sort of trigger for the abundance of occurrences that continued late into the night.

My parents and I also visited the home (for a week) when I was about eight years old. The only experience I remember encountering while there were that the dogs exhibited some strange behavior. They both fixated on what appeared to be empty places on the wall and would stare and bark repeatedly at the same location. Outside of that we didn’t come across anything else, yet my aunt and uncle both had very blatant and obvious encounters. A short while later they moved out of the rental and into their present home.

There definitely were several interesting things occurring within that house. It seems that there was some form of a haunting by what appeared to be a young child, along with possibly adult entities as well. Then you also have an interesting tie in with my uncle’s perceptibility (in his sleep) to tap into the previous tenants nightly behavior. Overall, there seemed to be a strong surge of energy flowing into and throughout the home and in its current came many types of experiences and perceptions that both Mindy and Will were tuning into. Even though I believe the earth plane and our entire Universe is contained in a vast sea of energy, some environments definitely appear to be more primed and highly charged than others. Why that’s so, is difficult to answer unequivocally.

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Question: Since you mentioned disembodied voices in one of your recent posts and you’re devoting October blogging to ghosts, there’s something I’d like to get your opinion on. Have you ever noticed that EVPs [electronic voice phenomenon] usually sound very strained and choppy in comparison with how clear disembodied voices sound? I’m not sure if you’re familiar with EVPs, but if so I’m interested in hearing your theories on what could be causing this.

Answer: Electronic voice phenomenon, for anyone that may not be familiar with this term, is an occurrence that can be captured on voice recorders. EVPs are not detected by the human ear (during their actual occurrence), even though people may be at the location at the exact time the voices are being recorded. Later on, when the recordings are reviewed, strange sounds and voices will often appear. Michael Keaton did a movie a few years back loosely based on this phenomenon called “White Noise.”

I’m no ghost hunter, but since I’ve experienced quite a few ghostly encounters, especially with disembodied voices, I’d love to share my opinion on this subject. I too have noticed that most EVPs I’ve listened to (either online or on ghost documentary programs) are very bizarre sounding. They appear to be extremely garbled, almost forced and often times the voices are very androgynous. The sound quality causes many people to automatically interpret the voices as malevolent. They remind me of those murder mystery movies where the killer/kidnapper cuts letters out of a magazine or newspaper to create a ransom note. If you could apply that visual to recorded sound, then I think it would fit EVPs quite well. It’s almost as if EVPs are being roughly cut out and pieced together by whatever form of energy is responsible for creating them.

On the other hand, disembodied voices (that we can detect at the time of occurrence with human hearing) usually have easily recognizable traits and sounds, including quite obvious sexual orientation. The voice quality is almost always far superior to that of EVPs and the force and strain behind the sounds are minimal. These observations could imply that whatever’s responsible for creating disembodied voices is present within our dimensional existence, possibly even imprinted upon it, while whatever produces electronic voice phenomenon may be located at a subtler realm, possibly a dimensional shift away.

Many EVPs appear to be responses to questions that are being asked by human investigators, but it’s quite possible that the responses are being generated by the thoughts that the investigators are thinking and not their spoken words, through a sort of mental telepathy. If the entities that produce EVPs (if they are produced by entities) exist within a subtler dimension, then they could be interpreting the thoughts of human investigators at that level and communicating back in a similar manner, and for whatever reason they are only being picked up by electronic devices.

There’s also a theory I’ve come across, that suggests the investigators themselves are responsible for creating the EVPs, not through methods of intentional trickery but through their own thought patterns. Again these are being somehow recorded through sound waves and imprinted on the recordings of electronic devices. But it’s extremely difficult to say how this would occur.

Another possibility is that EVP production could be directly related to an entities ability or lack thereof, to harness energy. Entities that (for whatever reason) seem to be less capable of communicating in a more purely audible fashion; can only do so through means that vibrationally carry their speech among other sounds. This is why you often hear about hauntings where voices can only be heard while water is running or during other sound interference.

There’s something strange about why EVPs can only be captured and heard through electronic means that have no greater capacity for hearing audible sounds than the human ear. I’m not sure that I’ve shed much light on the subject, but I do believe there is a major reason for the difference in electronic voice phenomenon and your typically audible disembodied voices- I’m just not sure what’s at the root of it.

Question: Do ghosts have the ability to directly impact or affect the lives of the living, through mysterious means?

Answer: You didn’t specify this, but when you say impact, I’m assuming you mean in a negative manner. I want to approach your question from the angle of self empowerment. I feel that if we allow ourselves to reach an extremely vulnerable emotional state then we can set ourselves up for many types of undesirable interactions, which can make their way into our lives. This is true physically as well as metaphysically. It’s similar to the wounded animal scenario. Once you’re down you will inevitably find others that are willing to continue subjugating you. If we allow ourselves to become a victim there will always be someone or something that comes along, obliging us to continue viewing ourselves in that role. “Victims” and “bullies” may appear to be polar opposites, but they have more in common than most realize.

They both are approaching life from a point of insecurity. The bully is only slightly more empowered than the victim, yet they are still matches for one another. Typically most haunting scenarios that seem to spiral out of control, in a negative manner, also revolve around a bully and victim scenario. The first step in ending such scenarios begins with taking control over how we feel and how we see ourselves.

I don’t believe that ghosts have a mysterious ability to leverage some undercurrent for magically controlling our fate. In worst case scenarios you may see extreme poltergeist activity, but on the average ghostly interactions are benign. Although ghosts appear to exist in a misty realm, if they wish to contact us they still have to interact with our awareness through methods that involve aspects of our physical senses, even if it is the sixth one. If we can’t see it, feel it, or hear it, that doesn’t mean it’s not around us; however it does mean that it’s not affecting us. Our reality is shaped through our awareness and if we are incapable of bringing something into that awareness, then I feel its power of influence over us is nonexistent.

And that does it for this question and answer installment. I would like to thank both of the individuals that sent in emails, for their questions and everyone that took the time to read this post. Please keep the spirits and haunting questions coming in, as I would love to do a couple more ghostly Q & A’s before Halloween. As always, your name will be kept private unless you request otherwise.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with others. Thanks for your support.

Related Posts

Family Spirits
Specters, Spirits & Time
Haunting of Ramstein
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Through the Eyes of a Ghost