Season of Shadows Blog » Questions and Answers

Halloween Q & A, Shout-Outs

John Wolfe — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:28:08 +0000

Recently, I spoke a lot about overcoming fear in pursuit of your goals (specifically Halloween related goals) in my entry Achieving Halloween Dreams. A few days after writing that post, I realized I wasn’t taking my own advice in one specific area — a fear of speaking in front of a video camera. I can make podcasts and narrate videos ’till the cows come home, but I’ve always had a strong fear of stepping in front of the lens and speaking (when potentially thousands of people can see it).

So, I decided to create the video featured in today’s entry in an effort to not only work on overcoming that fear, but also to give a little love back to my visitors and fellow haunters. I’m hoping to make these video appearances a somewhat regular addition to the site. Hope you enjoy it or at least the inspiration behind it.

Underneath the video, you’ll find links to all the sites (if the person has a site) and projects I spoke on.

Haunt/Dark Ambient Music

raison detre
Sephiroth (via the Coldmeat Industries search section under information)
Kammarheit
Johnny Hollow

Shout Outs

Alien Paranormal UFO Casebook
Autumnforest Ghost Hunter
Ghoul Friday
Pumpkinrot
Through the Patch
King Unicorn
Ghost Droppings

Q & A: Can Hauntings be caused by Dark Energy?

John Wolfe — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:28:53 +0000

Question: I read your post called The Dark Side?, so I’m familiar with your stance on the often over-used concept of negative forces. Do you also believe hauntings aren’t ever caused by brooding, dark, negative forces? – Sandra K.

Answer: I’m not sure we can ever state, one hundred percent for certain, what’s responsible for haunting any location, let alone make the determination that it’s definitely being caused by an “evil” or dark entity. While there have been some great advancements in the field of ghost hunting (not that the scientific community acknowledges any of them, but that’s ok) it’s still anyone’s guess as to the true nature of this type of activity.

With all of that being said, I really have a difficult time buying into the concept of a concentrated force of eternal evil existing “out there.” I believe that energy moves through stages of vibrational resonance. This is similar to how we, as humans, experience shifts in our moods and attitudes.

Every thought and emotion we experience is accompanied by an electrical impulse or charge in the brain. Similar emotionally, energetic charges may be what ghosts or spirits are using (minus the physical body or brain) to interact in this plane of existence. And just like a person, they may have the potential to shift out of one emotional state and into another.

A lot of ghostly legends and lore are quick to imply many hauntings stem from an eternally dark or demonic origin. I believe that the energy responsible for a haunting may simply get caught up residing in a “bad” emotional place. It may lash out because of this, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s inherently dark or demonic.

People love to entertain the idea of evil entities interacting in haunted locations. These ideas conjure up images of villainous devils and boogey men lying in wait. To many, this concept appears far more fascinating and dramatic than understanding that disembodied energy may be capable of moving through its own array of emotions, just as we do.

Now, we all know certain people that tend to be in a bad mood quite frequently. For some, it becomes their predominant way of being. They may lash out verbally and physically, but we don’t mistake them for being “demonic”; cruel and hot-tempered maybe, but not evil. Yet, if we encounter something that appears to be supernatural and extremely agitated, we’re quick to assume it’s evil to its core. This reaction is understandable, since the phenomenon of ghosts is already so mysterious to begin with. If someone comes across an aggressive form of a haunting, then they may be likely to call the energy dark.

However, I tend to lean away from the concept of energy being eternally dark or evil. It may exhibit tendencies that we label as being just that, but we have to remember two things: labels come from the human experience only and nothing remains static in this Universe. All things shift and change. Conscious energy that doesn’t appear to be utilizing a physical vehicle is no different. It has the potential to change and move beyond the emotional place in which it predominantly resonates. Just as we can be emotional chameleons, so can spirits and ghosts.

Some people may disagree with my stance on disembodied energy, but if we continue to interpret things we don’t understand as dark, devilish or evil; we continue to close our minds off to more enlightening possibilities. For me, it’s far more empowering to explore the idea of the energies of ghosts as possibly being our nonphysical counterparts, who may have issues with their emotions; as opposed to assuming some are eternally dark and out to get us.

And that does it for this question and answer installment. I would like to thank Sandra for her question, along with everyone that took the time to read this post. If you have any paranormal questions you’d like to see addressed, please contact me. As always, your name will be kept private unless you request otherwise.

If you enjoyed this post, please share the information and this site with others. Thank you.

Q & A: Are Ghosts the Energy of the Deceased?

John Wolfe — Sun, 25 May 2008 02:58:40 +0000

Since I’m shifting the focus of the blog section to featuring strictly information on ghosts and the paranormal, I decided to dust off some old questions that visitors sent me back in October of last year. October ‘07 was my “ghost month” here in the blog, but with all the Halloween preparations, I didn’t have an opportunity to address several of the questions that were being emailed to me. My apologies, but I’m going to play catch up over the course of the next several posts.

Question: Do you believe ghosts are actually the energy of the deceased? And why are most ghost sightings only associated with things we are familiar with, like people and pets?

Answer: I have mixed emotions regarding hauntings. I believe they most definitely have the potential to be a form of the conscious awareness of a deceased person. However, I also believe they are somehow tied into or stemming from the unified field of consciousness, in a manner we cannot quite understand.

In other words, hauntings may require our attention to intercept or perceive them. Otherwise, they would cease to be. It’s a lot like the age old question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, will it make a sound?

Conversely, if no living person is focusing their attention upon a haunted location will an apparition still appear or will a disembodied voice be capable of speaking? This attention doesn’t have to be provided in person either. Even if someone focuses on audio or video footage, recorded in a haunted location, they are still providing the conscious means.

There appears to be a certain level of our focus needed to elicit the response of whatever’s causing ghostly activity. And if this is a correct assumption, then that may indicate hauntings are stemming as much from within our awareness as they are from an external source, like a deceased individual.

This may sound silly, but I often ponder why we don’t run into the ghosts of many of the prehistoric creatures that once roamed this planet. Dinosaurs, for example, spent hundreds of millions of years on the Earth, yet I’ve never come across an account of someone witnessing the apparition of a stegosaurus or triceratops. In contrast, humankind has only spent the blink of an eye on this planet and we appear to have left our ghostly marks everywhere.

Think of the immensity of the energy fields of creatures the size of most dinosaurs and their emotional investment, based upon the severity of their life experiences. Shouldn’t these factors be enough, considering the usual explanations for hauntings, to generate large occurrences of “dino” ghosts?

Yet, we hear many accounts of people seeing ghostly apparitions of comparatively tinier animals, like dogs and cats. Why do some species appear to be capable of ghosting while others do not?

I believe the reason is because we (as the witnesses) have a reference point and an emotional soft spot for domesticated animals and (sometimes) fellow humans, so it makes it more feasible and possible to occur. We have zero reference points (outside of fossils and artists’ renditions) as to what an actual living, breathing dinosaur looked like.

Then there are the accounts of ghost ships, and ghost cars, along with ghost guns and weapons included in battle scene “reenactments.” Since most ghost investigators believe a soul is a prerequisite for an interactive, intelligent haunting; the above inanimate items are usually allocated to the category of residual haunt.

I believe our entire life experience is actually occurring inside a vast sea of energy. Everything, even inanimate objects are made from the same conscious “stuff” humans and animals are made from. While there does appear to be enough of a difference in haunt styles to warrant two separate categories (residual and intelligent); I don’t think a soul is the deciding factor as to why some appear more interactive than others.

The interesting trend, if we stop and think about it, is that the only things capable of appearing as ghostly are those which we have a conscious awareness of. If something doesn’t seem to be very familiar in the world of mass human consciousness, it also seems to have zero chance to manifest as a ghost; even spirits that appear more shadowy or ectoplasm-like always seem to take on a slight humanoid form.

There’s also another possible explanation for why many species and things outside the human realm of awareness do not show up as ghosts: perhaps, the phenomenon of ghosts didn’t come about until mankind made its presence known on this planet. There’s something about our specific energy that appears to be responsible for contributing to the phenomenon of hauntings.

It seems the more species and items we, as humans, bring into our fold, the more those same things become “tainted” with the potential to show up as a ghost. I mentioned there are no ghosts of dinosaurs roaming around, well there also seem to be few, if any, tales of modern wild animals showing up as spirits either. Of course, many native tribes have wild animals as their totems, but these aren’t seen as lost or confused specters. They are seen as intelligent spirit guides, flourishing in the afterlife.

Domesticating animals appears to imprint something from our energy upon them, causing the potential for some to hang around after crossing over. Should that really surprise us? Humankind approaches death in so many fearful ways, it’s quite possible we have managed to not only carry that fear with us into our own transition; we have handed it over to the animals we consider our pets as well.

While I don’t deny there appear to be factors of consciousness at play, in hauntings, which are external from our input; there seems to be much that’s simultaneously contingent upon our awareness. No matter what explanation we choose, we appear to be involved to a certain degree and/or partially responsible for what does and does not show up in a haunting, even if it’s at a level of believability that’s based in our collective subconscious.

And that does it for this question and answer installment. I would like to thank the individual that sent in the above question and everyone that took the time to read this post. If you have any paranormal questions you’d like to see addressed, please contact me. As always, your name will be kept private unless you request otherwise.

If you enjoyed this post, please share the information and this site with others. Thank you.

Q & A: Seeing Body Doubles in a Haunted Location

John Wolfe — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:26:06 +0000

Question: My husband and I used to live in a home where many strange paranormal events took place, including a lot of ghostly activity. The most striking of these events included seeing my husband in essentially two places at once, on two separate occasions.

One evening, as I was headed for bed, he passed right in front of me on his way to the living room. I turned the corner to our bedroom and there he was, again, making the bed. The only problem with this was he would have had to pass by me a second time to get back to our bedroom and he never did.

On another occasion, I was talking to him for several minutes in bed and never received any response. He was just lying there, staring in my direction with a strange, empty look on his face. I got up and went to the bathroom to find him standing at the sink, fully dressed for work and brushing his teeth! It was a straight shot from our bed to the bathroom and he would have had to pass by me again to beat me there.

Each time this occurred I was visually aware of his features and mannerisms, so there was no way I was seeing shifty shapes that I mistook for his presence. Do you have any idea what could cause these events or what their meaning could be? Do you believe they are connected to the haunting in any way?

Answer: Thanks for the great question. Now, I can’t be one hundred percent positive on an explanation about your circumstances. But I do have an idea based on some of the clues you gave and on my own personal encounters with homes that appear to be haunted.

In my experience, there always seems to be an increase in overall psi type phenomena (not just ghosts) in a location that’s believed to be haunted. Whether one is responsible for the other remains to be seen, but I do believe they are connected. However, I don’t believe every strange event at these locations can be attributed to a ghost or what’s believed to be a conscious spectral entity that’s separate from our own point of awareness.

There appears to be something unique about the mixture of energy, from both the location and its occupants which brings out these psi events. If one is not in the presence of the other, then the recipe could be lacking the proper ingredients. Yet, when both are in the same vicinity, interesting things begin occurring. This may also explain why some people can encounter phenomena at a home and others do not. It takes the proper mixture to elicit a response.

I believe the type of phenomenon, specific to your question, had something to do with a breakdown in the normal perceptional flow of reality. Whenever I write or speak about ghosts or apparent haunted locations, I can’t get away from the knowledge that we are reality affecting and reality making “machines.”

Every time we peer out upon the world we are bringing the existence of our lives and everything around us into sharper focus and further being (including that which is deemed paranormal). We don’t always realize this, let alone see it develop in front of us, but when everything is lined up properly, as it was in your home, the potential is there to see how reality is not the solid, chronological construct; independent of our interaction and observation that we’ve been taught.

Based on your description, I believe you perceived multiple interpretations of reality overlaying on top of one another. The reason your husband appeared to be in more locations than he possibly could have been, simultaneously, was because you were witnessing multiple events involving his behavior. These events could have been from the “past” or from the “future,” yet they were being perceived in your present, all simultaneously. It’s like multiple realities colliding at once.

You mentioned that he was not responding when you tried talking to him in bed and he stared right through you as if you weren’t there. Your description shares much in common with the description of people that believe they’ve encountered a residual haunting. A residual haunt is one that’s characterized by repetitive behavior and a lack of acknowledgment by the entity towards the home owners. And often times the entities involved look solid, real and lifelike; not at all ghostly or spectral. Now, I’m not saying one of your husband’s images was a ghost, but neither are a lot of the “ghosts” that appear to be residually occupying a location.

They too are constructs from another place in time that is colliding with our chronological version of the present unfolding moment. This is why they (along with your husband) don’t interact with those that witness them. It’s because the witnesses may not have been present when that actual event was/is unfolding in space and time. But it doesn’t mean the event is of a ghostly nature and it definitely doesn’t mean that specific version of reality is ceasing to be, just because it’s perceived as past history. All events that have ever occurred or that are ever going to occur continue to unfold in a setting that we would call real (if we were submersed in them). It’s simply a matter of finding the way to consciously access the events.

Your husband may have been acting like you weren’t there in that moment because you actually weren’t, not from his point of awareness anyway. From his perspective that event in your bedroom may have taken place while you were not even in the bed. He may have been staring at something else that just happened to be in your direction. Yet, from your perspective he was seemingly staring at you.

A friend of mine, in El Paso, Texas, encountered a similar situation many years ago. One minute he was looking through his clothes, in the closet, and the next he was witnessing an event from the town of El Paso, over a century before. He said it was like the wall to his room just faded away and he became aware of a street scene that was straight out of the 19th century. The people were real and lifelike, yet none of them even noticed he was watching them.

I believe he too was tapping into the true nature of reality and its timelessness. His present experience and something that we believe to be from a bygone era merged together. The key in these experiences appears to lie with the witness. Whoever is seeing the unexplainable events unfold is usually a bystander, but nothing more. This comes back to our ability to collapse multiple potentials and possibilities into one construct that we call reality. Even though some individuals have peered into these other forms of reality, it doesn’t mean the participants contained therein can peer back and see the original witness.

I know your experiences were unsettling, but I don’t feel you were encountering anything to be frightened of. I believe you were actually witnessing the abilities we each have for affecting and interpreting reality, in an extremely acute, conscious way. As Clarence, from It’s a Wonderful Life, told George Bailey, “You’ve been given a great gift- a chance to see what the world would be like without you.”

Only you were seeing the truly timeless, non-sequential nature of reality and its limitless potentials; based on your incredible power for observing them into being. The only reason I would assume this hasn’t continued happening to you, has something to do with the fact you are no longer living in that location. There is definitely something a foot regarding certain locations and our abilities for experiencing more pronounced psi phenomena when we are occupying them.

And that does it for this question and answer installment. I would like to thank the individual that sent in the above question and everyone that took the time to read this post. If you have any questions you’d like to see addressed, please contact me. 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.

Q & A: Haunting Voices & Ghostly Leverage

John Wolfe — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:04:34 +0000

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.

Unleash the Ghosts

John Wolfe — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 15:46:40 +0000

With Halloween quickly approaching, I’ll be dedicating all of my blog posts to the topics of ghosts and hauntings during the month of October. I plan on sharing more experiences, along with my thoughts and ideas on these subjects, but I’m also looking for your participation. If you have any questions about hauntings, poltergeist activity, ghosts or anything related to this subject matter, I would love to hear from you. I will do my best to provide answers, in upcoming posts, all next month.