Season of Shadows Blog

Halloween Preparations

John Wolfe — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:28:23 +0000

Similar to last year, my blogging frequency has been slowing down, over the summer, for this site. I just wanted to let everyone know I’m devoting more of my time to blogging at my new site as well as building a cemetary full of zombies for Halloween. I still plan on posting blogs here at Seasons, but they are going to be far less frequent until after October 31st. The closer we draw to the big night; I’ll also be reviewing some of my favorite Halloween sites on the web.

For your convenience, you can subscribe to this blog, by email, with the form located in the sidebar. Your address is never sold or shared by Feedburner and you’ll always know when posts have been added to this site. This also makes it handy for those interested in knowing when my latest giveaways have been posted. Speaking of which- the Ghost Hunters DVDs will be continuing right on through the summer. And in September and October I’ll be gifting a gift certificate or two to great online Halloween retailers like the Fright Catalog.

As always, I appreciate everyone’s patience with my slow addition of summer time content, here in the blog, so I can gain momentum on my ghoulish, Halloween prop building activities.

The Strange Figure at Jackson Lake

John Wolfe — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:57:23 +0000

Today’s spooky experience once again comes from my uncle’s bag of tales. His various outdoor excursions, over the years, have taken him to the stomping grounds of ghosts and other forms of paranormal activity. The following encounter may not be entirely ghostly in origin, but it appears to have a connection to something ethereal. I’ll let you be judge.

“Many years ago I spent a lot of time hunting for coins at a popular recreational destination- Jackson Lake, just outside Farmington, New Mexico. While locals, flocking to the location, provided a steady flow of dimes, nickels and quarters for metal detector enthusiasts, the lake was always easier to search when attendance was down. The last thing I needed was a bunch of kids and the occasional old man pestering me about how much money I had uncovered.

So, I waited until summer dwindled down, picked an off-season Sunday morning, packed up my detector and cruised down to Jackson. The early morning air, whipping through my half cracked driver’s side window, was crisp and clean. Last night’s rainfall washed away any remnants of the usual Saturday night parties held at the lake. As I pulled into the parking area, I was pleasantly greeted by empty spaces everywhere, not a single vehicle sat in the flooded out lot.

I grabbed my detector with headphones in tow and started the muddy, quarter mile hike. When I reached the lake, there wasn’t a soul to be found. It was extremely eerie, to say the least. In all of my previous trips, I don’t think I had ever found Jackson totally devoid of activity. However, the creepy feeling didn’t last long; it was time to get down to business while the getting was good. I began making my way around the lake to the typical hot spots for lost coins.

After a short while, I noticed something really odd moving through my peripheral vision. I glanced toward the dam and that’s when “he” came fully into focus- a man dressed in a pious looking white robe with a hood pulled over his head. He was outlined by the cobblestone formation of rocks behind him, standing on an overflow pipe that extended through the bank of the dam.

The figure was no more than one hundred and fifty yards from me and I could see he was pacing back and forth on the pipe. He seemed to be performing some sort of ritual; chanting or singing with his hands cupped in front of him. Attire aside, what really struck me as odd was the figure had not been there just a few minutes earlier. And there really was no place he could have come from, without being detected, prior to reaching the position on the overflow pipe. It seemed as if he had just appeared out of nowhere.

I watched him for a short while and then went back to working my detector, this time minus my headphones so I could hear any subtle movement. I also fixed my gaze in such a way I was able to see the ground and maintain a constant bead on his whereabouts. The hooded figured continued his ritual for the next ninety minutes.

And then, the movement completely ceased. I quickly looked up and he was gone. I knew it was utterly impossible for him to have climbed off the pipe without having fully caught my attention. For the last hour and a half I had become intrigued by this strange figure and there was no way I was letting him get away without satisfying my curiosity. I dropped all of my gear and sprinted the entire one hundred and fifty yards, just as fast as I could.

When I reached the dam, I couldn’t locate him anywhere. I then peered down from my vantage point to the parking lot, only to find my lone vehicle. I searched around the entire lake, including the far side of the dam and never found a trace of him, or whatever it was.”

And that does it for another of my uncle’s experiences. Stay tuned, as I’ll soon be featuring a few other family member’s encounters with possible paranormal activity.

If you have any ghostly or supernatural encounters you would like to share, with the possibility of winning a Ghost Hunters DVD box set, be sure to check back for the next Giveaways of Spirit Contest, coming July 29th.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.

Q & A: Do Ghosts Haunt Us While We Sleep?

John Wolfe — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:12:53 +0000

Question: I’d like to hear your opinions and ideas pertaining to ghosts’ ability to interact with us while we sleep. Specifically, I’m curious if they are capable of haunting more than just our physical world? What about our dreams? When I’m asleep, I sometimes have strange haunting encounters with what appear to be ghosts or spirits trying to speak to me. – Lynne R.

Answer: Thanks for your interesting question. I don’t follow commonly accepted psychological or medical interpretations of the dream environment. I personally believe dreams absolutely have a reality and validity that the medical establishment refuses to acknowledge.

On the whole, humanity still knows very little about consciousness, where it stems from and the abilities contained therein. I believe the dream environment is no less legitimate than this physical state we call reality. Dreams represent another way and another world in which consciousness explores itself.

Just as we interact in a consensually agreed upon physical reality, I believe we can also interact in consensually agreed upon dreamscapes. So, if your consciousness is capable of exploring the world you venture into when you close your eyes, it should be possible for other forms of consciousness to do the same thing, right along side you.

Those other forms may be simultaneously attached to a physical body, or they may not be. In other words, some of the beings you encounter during your nightly treks may be other dreamers (like yourself), and then again they may be forms of energy that are no longer “alive” in the way we think of the term.

I used to have several recurring dreams where I found myself walking through strange homes which gave off the impression of being haunted. These locations seemed to have several “nonliving” occupants residing within. Many of them would try and communicate with me in ways that ranged from casual to forceful.

I have even had dreams where these “ghosts” appeared to propel me into out of body experiences just by whispering my name. One minute I was in the dream environment and the next I was fully awake and experiencing symptoms of astral projection- talk about a rude (but interesting) awakening!

Now, even though I feel dreams have a solid validity to them and they absolutely offer the potential for other beings, like ghosts, to interact with us; that doesn’t mean everything is as it appears at that level of conscious exploration. Dreams also have the opportunity to be symbolic representations of things we are experiencing in our physical lives. Then again, our physical world also has this same ability. So, how can you tell what’s “legitimate” and what’s merely symbolic?

Many people believe the way to tell the difference is through the presentation of the dream. I tend to agree with this, as it’s probably the only barometer we have for gauging our experience. I can tell major differences between many of my dreams. Some feel far more real and solid than others. At times, it’s almost impossible, even after waking, to tell the difference between this environment and certain dreamscapes.

To get back to your original question- I do believe the energy, we call ghosts, are capable of interacting in the dream world. I believe consciousness has the means for expressing itself in multiple environments simultaneously. However, most of us, while we are among the “living”, are only capable of zeroing in on two of those means: wakefulness and dream time.

Just because I believe the potential is there for ghosts and spirits to interact with us while we’re asleep, it doesn’t mean we should be frightened. In all of my after hours encounters with “ghosts”, I’ve never had an experience that caused me any serious problems- outside of waking up in a cold sweat.

Often times, the entities we think of as spooky ghosts are nothing more than amiable spirits interested in communicating with us. If we are tuned out and closed off to this potential when awake; they may try when our mind is much more open to the possibility: during sleep. It’s not uncommon for the energy of individuals that have passed on to make contact during the dream state.

If you’re interested in learning more about dreams, altered states of consciousness and astral projection, you may be interested in visiting my new website.

And that does it for this question and answer installment. I would like to thank Lynne 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 this post has been interesting or helpful to you, please share the information and this site with others. Thank you.

The Ghostly Cannons of Fort Craig

John Wolfe — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:26:07 +0000

This visitor’s spooky story was provided by my uncle. You may recall me speaking about some of his encounters with ghosts in a previous entry. I’m not sure if he has a knack for being in the right place at the right time, or if he’s just strange like me! Personally, I’m leaning toward the latter explanation. Either way, he’s had his fair share of run-ins with things deemed supernatural:

“After a long week of work, my dad, his brother and I were all looking forward to getting away for a few days. We loaded up our gear and headed south down interstate 25; destined for the location of some of New Mexico’s fiercest battles during its involvement with the Civil War: Fort Craig.

We weren’t on a relic finding mission, although we had been known to uncover the odd piece of shrapnel every now and again. No, this trip was to practice our wild calls and do a little hunting, if the opportunity presented itself. The location of the old fort is deep in the desert southwest near scraggly volcanic outcroppings and mesas- a perfect location for bringing in coyotes.

As we drove through the last signs of civilization, that familiar lonesome feeling returned. Sand and scrub brush, as far as the eye could see, hinted at the element the confederate soldiers faced while marching northward. It’s impossible to not be reminded of this state’s history as you stare out at the unforgiving landscape unfolding through your windshield. The farther you journey into its back country, the more New Mexico has the uncanny ability for activating the past within you. No wonder ghosts have an affinity for lingering here.

Another quick reminder of civilization appeared on the horizon, momentarily distracting me from my trance like fixation on the scenery. We knew we were getting close as we passed through the city of Socorro and then watched it disappear in the rear view mirror. After leaving the interstate and traveling dirt and gravel packed side roads, we reached our location to make camp, just a short distance from the ruins of the fort.

Rather than bedding down for the night we decided to take advantage of the brisk air by getting some calling in. The three of us hiked out of camp about a mile, stopping sporadically to entice a few coyotes along the way. It was actually quite comforting when someone would break the silence now and again with their call. Being in the middle of nowhere, knowing you were standing on ground where so many men had died, with darkness surrounding you, was a little unnerving.

No sooner had I heard the familiar sound of my dad’s call, when our attention was drawn to the north end of Valverde Mesa. Three successive booms echoed out into the night. These were not the familiar cracking sounds of a rifle but rather an explosive reaction that seemed to be powered by black powder. I have used a muzzle loader before, and these sounds had a much stronger but similar resonance.

The three of us, shining flashlights in one another’s faces, stared dumbstruck. We knew we were the only people out there and we also knew those sounds didn’t resemble anything we had ever heard in the realm of hunting rifles. My uncle suggested dynamite, but I reminded him of the time- 12:35 A.M. And that’s when it hit me! We had taken our trip on February 20th. It was now the morning of February 21st, the anniversary of the Battle of Valverde. The direction in which we heard the sounds was the primary location where the battle had occurred.

I have thought long and hard about that night. I can almost say, without a doubt, no one else was there. This was in 1977 or ‘78, long before civil war re-enactments were popular. Fort Craig is in such a desolate location, not many people would be interested in attending a re-enactment anyway, not to mention at 12:35 in the morning. I would have to say the sounds certainly appeared to be a ghostly form of cannon fire stemming from the original battle in some way.”

An interesting side not to my uncle’s story: A few years ago a ghost hunting group known as the Southwest Ghost Hunter’s Association (SGHA) visited the old fort at night time. While they were there, many members noted smelling “fresh” black powder in the air as well as hearing gun shots near the southeastern edge of the fort. Sounds of gun fire were also detected across the river at a location well known for skirmish activity during the war.

If you have a ghostly experience you would like to share on this site, please contact me.

Ghost Hunters Season 1 Winners

John Wolfe — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:38:52 +0000

Congratulations to Irma Doherty, of San Carlos, California, and to Heather Tarlecky of Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania. They both won a DVD box set of Ghost Hunters: Season 1, in the fifth installment of the Giveaways of Spirit.

I’d like to thank everyone for their participation and for their continued support.

Ghost Hunters - Season 2, Part 1 DVD Giveaway

John Wolfe — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:01:51 +0000

Welcome to the sixth installment in The Giveaways of Spirit. There was such an incredible response to the Ghost Hunters Season 1 contest; I thought I would pick this giveaway up where the last one left off. So, Jason, Grant and the rest of the Ghost Hunters gang are making another appearance! The prizes for this drawing are two DVD box sets of Ghost Hunters - Season 2, Part 1 to be given to two winners. Each set contains the first eleven episodes from the second season.

Here’s a summary:

“The smash-hit Sci-Fi Channel show is back for a second season of spooks, shocks and suspense! Plumbers by day, at night Jason and Grant head up TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society), a close-knit organization of volunteer paranormal researchers; ordinary people who investigate and attempt to debunk claims of otherworldly activity.

“These self proclaimed skeptics have managed to expose some of the most frighteningly compelling evidence of paranormal phenomenon ever seen on television! Season two’s first 11 episodes are packed with even more excitement, oddities, goose bumps, and strange paranormal behavior than the TAPS team has ever come across before!”

Even if you’ve never caught an episode of Ghost Hunters; as long as you’re a fan of the paranormal and supernatural, you’ll feel right at home with this collection of discs.

I wish everyone the best and look forward to contacting the winners!

I’m also planning in advance for the next giveaway in late July. The prizes will be Ghost Hunters related, but the entry requirements will be different. I’m looking for more in depth visitor participation. I’m interested in holding an essay contest, featuring your true encounters with ghosts. So, get ready to tell me all the spooky details.

I’d like to express my appreciation to the Debris Field for featuring a link to the Ghost Hunters - Season 1 DVD Giveaway.

Guidelines for Entering

Please, only one entry per household. Duplicate entries from the same IP will be deleted. This helps to make it fairer for everyone. There’s no catch here, the entire giveaway is free- including payment of shipping and handling- I cover all costs. To be entered into this Ghost Hunters drawing, all you have to do is leave a comment below- such as “Enter me,” “Add me,” “Sign me up,” or whatever you like, signifying your interest.

I have stopped displaying comments, under the post, because of the volume of entries each month. I guarantee all legitimate comments are entered into the giveaway.

When leaving a comment be sure to include your correct email address. The winners will be contacted through the address that’s registered with their comment. I will never share email addresses, provided by entrants, with any third parties and you’ll never receive unsolicited mail when entering any Giveaways of Spirit drawing.

This giveaway will run for six weeks. I’ll end the giveaway at 11:59 pm (Eastern Time) on July 29th, 2008, by closing the comments section on this post. All legitimate entries will then be assigned a number. Two numbers will be randomly drawn to determine the winners of the DVD box sets.

Both winners will then be notified, via the email addresses they provided, no later than July 30th. If one, or both don’t respond (with their shipping information) within a week, then one (or two) more number(s) will be drawn to determine the new winner(s). After receiving their consent, I’ll be announcing the winners’ names.

If you have a website or a business you would like to see promoted through this site, and you’re interested in donating some great paranormal or Halloween type gifts to the Giveaways of Spirit, please contact me.

WindoftheSoul.com

John Wolfe — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:42:07 +0000

I’m happy to announce my new website is officially online! I’d like to invite everyone to visit windofthesoul.com. It contains all of the spiritually uplifting and self-help content I’ve been writing about and recording, here at Seasons, for the last several months. The information is now featured in a softer, lighter, more natural atmosphere.

The relocated blog posts and audio programs will be deleted shortly from this site. While Wind of the Soul will be my new location for featuring information regarding personal expansion and spiritual empowerment; you will still find devotion to everything Halloween and supernatural, year round, right here.

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.

Returning to my Family’s Haunted Home

John Wolfe — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:20:24 +0000

Welcome to the very first reader’s true ghost story entry, submitted by a visitor that wishes to remain anonymous. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

My encounters with the paranormal began in the house as a child. If they had ceased there and were but a distant memory now, I could probably chalk everything up to the product of an over-active imagination. Unfortunately, my adult experiences in the same home prevent that from being an option. The two things I witnessed as a little girl served as a taste of things to come.

The first experience took place late at night in my room. I awoke to a noise and found the hazy outline of someone sitting in the rocking chair at the foot of my bed. Assuming it was my mom; I watched the figure for a minute or so and then fell back asleep. The next morning I questioned my mom about her activities, in my room, the night before. She informed me she had not been in my bedroom.

The next encounter took place again while I was in bed. After the first run in with whatever was in the rocking chair, I began to sleep with my bedroom door open, so the hallway light could shine into my room. This time, I clearly witnessed a woman, much older than my mother, making her way down the hall. This figure was different than the one in the rocking chair. It was more than an outline; it actually had distinguishable features.

Needless to say, I was very happy when my family and I left that house. This is where my story should end, had my husband and I not received a very generous proposal, years later, from my parents.

We were a young couple just starting out and in need of a place to raise our baby. My parents offered to let us live in my childhood home (which they still owned) for free. We would have been crazy to turn them down, or so we thought. I was willing to move back in, despite my experiences, because I was able to convince myself things would be different. After all, I wasn’t a kid anymore. Even though I was satisfied with that explanation, I still told my husband about everything that had happened. He wasn’t a believer, then.

Here’s where the fun starts:

On one of our move in days, I left my husband painting my old bedroom, while a neighbor and I went to the store to pick up supplies. After a short time he began hearing the kitchen cabinets opening and closing; assuming I was already back, he continued painting. The activity in the kitchen progressed to the point the cabinets were being slammed shut. My husband hollered out, asking me what I was doing. The kitchen activity immediately came to a halt. The next thing he knew, the broom that was leaning against the wall, across the room from where he was standing, hit him in the back!

He proceeded to look everywhere in the house for someone that could have thrown it at him. He even went across the street to check the neighbor’s house (the one that went for supplies with me), in case she was responsible. He found no one. I arrived twenty minutes later to find him sitting outside on the porch.

After his encounter, my husband refused to finish moving in unless we had a blessing performed on the house. A woman that attended the same church as his mother came over to conduct the ceremony. Before beginning, she asked for details regarding the house and what I witnessed as a child. As she was doing the walk through, she stopped cold at the end of the hallway (facing the living room).

She then immediately started performing several ritualistic maneuvers, finished up and wanted to quickly get outside where she informed us that she didn’t see a ghost, but rather a shadow in the room. According to her, she was able to convince it to leave. I was pretty doubtful about her claims, but the interesting thing was when I mentioned this to my mom; she told me that her, my dad and grandmother had all witnessed a shadow in the exact same room when they first purchased the house.

So, everything calmed down a little and my husband agreed to move in. A couple of weeks passed and one day, while he was at work, the activity flared up again. I was lying on the couch, in the den, with my baby on my chest watching television.

Sitting at the top of the den steps, which provided access to the living room, was a pack of diapers. All of a sudden, I became aware of the sound of the plastic being rustled on the diaper pack. As soon as I glanced over to see what was causing the noise, the entire pack launched from the top step down to the den floor. Now mind you, this was not a movement associated with something simply falling or sliding down the steps due to its own inertia and gravity. The package moved with enough force, that it appeared to be kicked off the stairs.

At night time my husband and I could hear people talking inside the house. Many times, while sitting in the den we were able to distinguish some type of movement coming from the entry way into the living room as well as the opening into the kitchen. One night in particular, we heard what sounded like a large window shattering from inside the home. My husband had me call the police while he went to investigate. Neither he, nor the police were able to find any evidence of something being broken.

It was at this point I decided to ask a good friend and her boyfriend to move in. I never told her about any of the ghostly experiences because I didn’t want her to think we were crazy. They had been staying with us for about three weeks prior to anything substantial happening. Then one evening, before bed, my friend wanted to take a shower. I started joking with her about how I was going to throw water over the top of the shower on her.

She headed off to the bathroom and within ten minutes we heard her screaming bloody murder. The next thing we knew, she came running out of the bathroom, naked, soaking wet, with shampoo still in her hair. Her boyfriend pulled her to their bedroom and wrapped a blanket around her. He then led her to the den because she insisted that she felt safer there. She was white as a sheet, wide eyed and crying, and I was sitting on the couch just looking at her. I was so terrified to hear what she had to say, that I almost didn’t want to know.

She finally worked up the courage to tell us that while she was washing her hair, she heard something hit the top of the shower door. Thinking it was me, she turned around, fully expecting to see water being dumped over the top of the door onto her. There, with her in the shower, was a shadow that appeared to be trying to wrap itself around her.

As she related her story, I could tell she was embarrassed because she probably assumed we thought she was crazy. It was at this point I decided to fill her in on all the details surrounding the house. As I was telling her about our experiences, she remembered something else strange from the night before.

She said that shortly after her and her boyfriend went to their room, there were two knocks on the bedroom door. She got up (thinking it was me) to see what I wanted. On her way to the door there was a third knock and as she reached for the knob, the door opened partially, hitting her in the face. She assumed it was me joking around with her and went back to bed without pursuing it any further. The only problem was that it wasn’t me.

My husband decided to call his mom and inform her about the recent experiences. She came over to the house and went through a similar ritual that included speaking in tongues near the bathroom, which also occurred during the initial blessing. She then proceeded to beg us to move out. It was all very dramatic and I still am not sure what to make of it to this day.

By now, my friend refused to leave the safety of the den. I agreed with her because I realized I too have always had a better feeling while spending time there. All of us decide to spend the next three nights in the den, while packing our things during the day in preparation for moving out.

After leaving the house we found it very hard to live with other people, especially when our old home was just sitting empty. We decided to have another blessing done (by someone that was said to be even more experienced than the first lady) and then tried moving in once again.

This time around we did some major changes by adding new carpet and plumbing. The first week or so everything went great until we again started hearing people talking. You could never make out the words, but you could definitely tell it was a conversation.

One night my husband got up to use the bathroom. As he came out of our room and started down the well lit hall (we always left our bedroom door open and the hall light turned on), he noticed someone making their way between rooms. They crossed from the room that was next to the bathroom, and went into the kitchen. My husband immediately turned around, came right back to our room and begged me to go with him. I passed on that one.

Two nights after he witnessed the ghostly apparition in the hallway, I was lying in bed, wide awake around 2 or 3 am. Our bedroom was my parents’ old room and it connected to my daughter’s room by a door I left open. I also left a lamp turned on in her room. The lamp sent enough light into our bedroom that you could detect any movement or activity.

As I lay there, I watched several human looking shadows, emanating from her room, cast against our bedroom wall. Right then and there I got up, made my husband grab what he could, got our daughter and left. We went back a week later to collect the rest of our belongings and never went back.

A lady bought the house from my parents five years ago. It burnt to the ground two years back. When my mom met her at the bank to get the insurance pay off, she couldn’t resist asking the woman if anything “weird” had happened while she lived there. The lady simply replied, “No.”

I want to thank the anonymous submitter for sharing her amazing experiences! If you have a true ghostly or paranormal encounter you would like to see posted, please contact me. Entries may be edited for grammar, spelling and flow, but the content will remain accurate to the original submission.

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.

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