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

May 24th, 2008 by John Wolfe

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.

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2 Responses to “Q & A: Are Ghosts the Energy of the Deceased?”

  1. Ian Stone Says:

    Interesting, maybe I can shed some light on this subject. Ghosts are the spirits of dead people; but they are only one of the spirit beings of dead people; there are also Spirits and Angels these tend to be just energy and are generally not visible. Spirits beings of animals and dinosaurs are still trapped in the Earth Realm but there are a lot less of them and a slightly different form. If you focus on ghosts and very are aware of them you are probably a highly developed Soul and they are coming to you for help, to be healed and released to the Spirit World.
    Ian Stone – Founder of HEART Energy Healing, Human Energy Assessment Release Treatment
    Metaphysical Institute - Ghosts & Spirits

  2. John Wolfe Says:

    Ian,

    Thanks for your comment. I tend to view all energy as stemming from the same source without any major metaphysical classifications. We each maintain our own awareness and can take our own paths (even after we cross over), but I don’t feel there are major categories of difference in our core. In my mind, the need to classify in terms of different categories comes more from our human desire to label than it does from our source or that of nonphysical perspective.

    You mentioned dinosaurs and animals being trapped in the earth realm, but said they are of different form. Do you consider domesticated pets to be of this same form? If so, then it still doesn’t quite explain why we witness their energy (after they pass) but we don’t see the energy of prehistoric creatures.

    I absolutely appreciate your comment and respect your opinions and ideas on this subject. I look forward to hearing back from you.

    All my best,
    John

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