Haunted Scents



This is the second in my series about the senses and debunking. Scent is one of the most common reported haunting features. The smell of cigar/pipe smoke, rosewater cologne, and sulfur are three frequently reported scents. People most often report sulfur as the smell of rotten eggs or the scent of a recently lit match. A popular theory is that’s the smell of evil, as in “fire and brimstone.” Biblical themes aside, that is a very offense and distinct smell that makes most people back off real quick. The smell of rosewater is associated with female ghosts and its origins come from the a popular fragrance historically. Cigar and pipe smoke are most associated with male ghosts.

The issues I have with scent are that they are very subjective. If you’ve ever had the chance to get a full neurological workup, they actually wave scents under your nose when your eyes are covered. Without the context of being able to see an object and anticipate its scent, it’s actually kind of a weird thing to do. I had someone conduct the test on me out of curiosity. I thought the smell of rubbing alcohol was ammonia and the scent of coffee was chocolate at first, then I backtracked and came up with the right name, but without seeing it, I didn’t know what would come next. When you walk through a building, it’s very much the same. You aren’t expecting to be assaulted by scents and sometimes they can go by so quickly that you don’t realize what it was.

Scent also can be absorbed in woodwork and fabrics and released with the right humidity or physical contact. My mother was a smoker and when I would visit her home where she hadn’t been able to go upstairs for years because of her ailing health, the woodwork up there smelled like smoke if you rubbed your hand on it or scuffed your feet on the floorboards. The oils from tobacco smoke can really stain the surroundings for years and years, penetrating far into the wood and wallpaper. Scents can be carried through bathroom vents, oven hoods, and like in my neighborhood, the dryer vent that goes outside, making the neighborhood smell like—gag—synthetic dryer sheets all day long. Rose scents, as well, can be caused by cleaning agents or other forgotten scents like plug-in's and air sprays.

This story is about one of those situations.

I was invited to a baby shower and it ended up being a very small group of women, about 5 of us all together. The woman having the baby was in her mother’s house for the shower and she said she didn’t like being there. She thought it was haunted.

I looked around the nice home and found it hard to believe, but then it was about 30 years old, certainly old enough to have history, and it was on the foothills of a rocky mountain, so it might have had some geological issues.

Taking the request seriously, I listened to her tell me that she was accosted by the scent of roses and worried it was her grandmother, a woman from the Old Country that she was frightened of as a child. The woman practically bathed in rosewater. I asked if grandmother had ever been to that house and she said that she had spent her last months there before she passed on.

So, I had a place with potential good geology, relative who died there, someone who wore rosewater. I tried not to get excited. These things have a way of explaining themselves and then I feel foolish, but I couldn’t resist, so I pursued a cursory investigation.

I walked around the room where she caught the scent. She pointed to the areas in the room she smelled it. I stood there and paced between the spots and looked around. This was a huge living room and there were no cleaning agents, no plug in scents in the walls, and her mother never used air sprays because her sinuses were sensitive to aerosols.

Hmm…

I walked up to the wall and studied the air-conditioner vent. The family had put an open bookcase in front of it, perhaps to hide its ugliness on the wall. I studied the pictures and godawful chachki’s and thought to myself, “Feng Shui alone, this place should be haunted.” I fingered a picture on the shelf.

“That’s her.” The pregnant woman shuddered.

I sighed. This was looking promising, but why would the woman just be leaving her scent in the living room? Shouldn't it be the room she was convalescing in?

“Where did she die?”

“The hospital. Near the end, my mom couldn’t take seeing her pass, so she had her go in the hospital where they could give her the pain meds.”

Hmm…

I lifted the items on the shelf, opening a little glass container that had a key inside. I didn’t see anything that could be causing the scent. I thought after seeing the vent in front of the bookcase, I had solved the puzzled. Then, my fingers grasped the edge of a basket that looked empty. I pulled it down from up high and felt something shake inside of it. I looked in to see it was filled with seed pods and rose petals. I inhaled.

Potpourri!

“Oh.” The woman blushed as I held the basket out for her to smell. She shivered. “Yeah, that’s it.” She nodded briskly.

We put the basket on the shelf which was directly in front of the vent, and turned on the air conditioner. Wham! Within a few minutes, the spots in the center of the room where the air was directed carried the scent.

My suggestion to her to feel more comfortable there and change her mind's associations? Put grandma’s scary picture up on a higher shelf (she was a petite woman so she wouldn't be able to see it) and fill the potpourri with something not floral, maybe a cinnamon or pine scent.

It’s not always this easy, but perseverance is key. It had all the elements for a real haunting, but I tried not to let myself get too excited. Sometimes people put things together to make them fit. When she smelled the rose scent, she thought of grandma, and then she remembered she was there when she was dying and all the feelings associated with that. Hence, the scent had to be grandma.

First, we work in the physical world we’re acquainted with and when we’ve tapped that, we can start to explore the paranormal world for answers (at least, that's my method).

I have had some of those phantom scents completely out of the proper setting. But, it’s a very difficult thing to detect because they are fleeting and because air can carry scent amazing distances in the strangest conditions, mixing with other local scents and creating something out of place.

My advice? Keep your nose to the grindstone when debunking a haunting. Scent is very low on my list of proof of hauntings, but if you’re lucky it might be in a place that divulges other activity, so don’t stray. Investigate vigorously once you’ve found there’s no other possible source for the scent. This can sometimes be your place marker for a haunted spot.

Comments

  1. I have smelled the perfume before, but i have also many times smelled what a funeral home smells like . What are your thoughts on that?

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  2. Very good points. I hadn't thought of the fact that it could seep into the wood and then the humidity could bring it out. I'll definitely keep that in mind in the future.

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  3. Ella; The perfume one is very common. Because these scents are so fleeting, you really have to go over the room and the vents first before deciding you might be onto something. A real haunting scent isn't usually in the exact same place. If a scent is smelled in the same spot all the time, it's probably something environmental. Phantom scents don't usually have an exact location but sometimes a room or an area of theh ouse. Funeral home smells are not too cool, but then again if I don't empty the garbage or clean out the garbage disposal in the sink, I can get that smell too. One time, I woke up to smell rotting flesh very strongly. I kept searching for the source. It was absolutely retched smelling and everyone in the house was feeling ill from it. I went to prepare supper and opened the oven and there it was. Somehow in my sleep I managed to put a packaged chicken in the oven still in the wrapper. That's the freakiest thing I've ever done in my sleep and I've done some freaky things! If you smell the scent in lots of places and not just one area, I'd consider that you might have a hypersensitive nose. Some folks can scent things in the wind like a bloodhound and even a tiny bit of the scent can have them discerning it. My son has a supersensitive schnaz and I'm amazed at how he can find linger scents days later. In the paranormal realm, the smell of rotting flesh would usually be associated with a negative entity, perhaps that association is made by corruption of the body, corruption of the soul. And, as strange as it sounds, there are folks who are olfactory psychics. They can smell phantom scents that help them predict things. Some folks are auditory, others visual, but there are still some who are olfactory. I'd wonder if the scents ever line up within a few days to events that are occurring. you might consider keeping a log.

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  4. I smelt cigar odor in the famous "Alberts corner" on the fourth floor at the Copper Queen Hotel. Our room was right by that corner.

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  5. Cooper Queen--awesome place. Almost always guaranteed a bad night's sleep--hee hee. Next time I go there, I'd like to stay in that woman's room where she pulls the covers from your feet. Set up a camcorder for the night and see what happens. I enjoyed seeing it on that episode of Ghost Hunters when Grant's feet were uncovered. That place really has a very strange vibe to it--I think it's super energized by the mining lands there and the basic geology of the place, making it a kind of a "ghostie magnet." (you like my technical lingo?)

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  6. If there is any doubt in your mind about the power of scent, its effect on our minds, bodies, or its relevance to ghost and haunting phenomenon, or for that matter about the importance to the human organism from a survival perspective read this article. Frankly, I think it is the best hypothesis yet proposed for ghosts and hauntings. thatwhichremains.com

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  7. I smell roses and smoke every so often. Tonight we both smelled the roses in the bedroom and no one had roses anything with roses in it. I think the roses are from woman who use to live here before her passing and same with her husband I have smelled smoke as if someone was smoking next to me. The old owners died young in their 50's and when I smell the smoke or roses smell I say hi to them.
    They didn't die here they died at the hospital. Do they just want to make sure everything is alright at the house or something??

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    1. It's hard to tell when a scent is related to an actual active haunting or a memory left in the environment from the person's time there. I would say if there are other signs of haunting, there might be lingering, but if scent is the only thing and it's always smelled in the same location, it's probably a residual memory playing out and not attached to a traditional spirit form.

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  8. I truly believe my house is haunted in some way. I see dark shadows almost every night. I see one small shadow quite often, and I saw the outline of the thing one night, and it looks like a demonic creature of some sort. It is short with what looks like spikes on it's back. It always shows up at my bedroom door, like it's watching us.

    One night I was in the shower and a dark 'mass' came up over the shower curtain and down at me. It was so real I actually ducked down in the shower so it wouldn't hit me. I have also seen a ball of light zoom across my livingroom and hit the wall that leads down to the basement. It even made a noise as it hit the wall.

    My 3 year old (at the time she was 3) and I were in the kitchen one day and she said 'mommy, that daddy is going to scare you'. I said 'what daddy? What are you talking about?' she said 'that daddy that's standing next to you'. My 13 year old had a dream that a man in a long black coat with one of those old black hats came and got her and took her upstairs into my youngest daughter's bedroom. She said there were people in the room and they were all dressed in black and they were all kneeling and praying. She asked the man what the people were doing there. He said 'this is were people come when they die before they go to Heaven' and she said ' who's coming here next?' and the man said 'you'.
    In the same dream my daughter stated that there was a women in the bathroom at our house and the woman said her name was Madam Ira. The woman told my daughter 'I like to sing, but I used to hum'.

    The weird thing about the name Madam Ira- the morning after my daughter had this dream and she told me of the dream, I got online and looked up the name Madam Ira. I found that a porn star named Madam Ira had died the night before (the same night my daughter had this dream) in some sort of accident while on location for a photo shoot or something of that nature. I didn't think it was related to the dream since the woman was a porn star but now it just dawned on me that the old man told my daughter that 'this is where people come when they die before they go to Heaven'.

    This is only a very few experiences we have. We live on and old Indian road, and close to the Trail of Tears, also there is a Church with a cemetery right across the road from our house and shop.

    The reason I came to this site is lately I have been smelling the strong odor of Pine, as in a Pine tree or a Pine tree spray. My daughter and I both smelled this very strongly on our front porch about a week ago, now in the last week on 2 separate occasions, after everyone in the house is asleep except for me, I will get up from my desk to go do something and when I come back to my desk in my bedroom the pine smell is at my desk. It is very strong and it's only right at my desk and computer. The smell lingers for a couple of minutes and disappears.

    Anyone heard of phantom pine scents?
    Thanks!

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    1. That's quite a lot of interesting events going on, but they all seem to carry the classic earmarks of shadow people. These are usually short-lived events. The scent of pine in only one specific area is unusual. You might put your nose to the desk, the floor, the walls, and such and try to note if it happens when the air is running or only certain times of the day when it's warmest in the room. Also, note if you have any accompanying feelings when you smell it, like a sense of being watched or goosebumps. I always tell people to journal things. Keep an open notebook to jot times and conditions down so you can look for any patterns.

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  9. Actually I had it wrong about the Madam Ira comment. Madam Ira wasn't the porn star that I found online.

    My daughter had another dream not long after the dream I mentioned in the earlier post and there was a woman in the dream and she said her name was Valentina. She even wore a necklace with the initial V. She told my daughter that she was going to die soon, she said she was going to die from a disease. She told my daughter in the dream that she was going to give my daughter everything she owned. She took my daughter to her 'beach house' and she told my daughter she was going to give her the house and she opened her closet in the house and there were a bunch of beautiful evening gowns, and she told my daughter she could them also, she told her 'some of these will fit you'.

    I looked up the name Valentina the morning after my daughter had this dream and that's when I found that there is a Valentina in the adult entertainment industry and she had fallen off of a cliff to her death the night before (the same night my daughter had this dream).

    I forgot most of this as it has been awhile but my daughter refreshed my memory after i made my first post here. Only my daughter doesn't know the Valentina I found was an adult entertainer. She wouldn't even know what that is. LOL

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  10. All the contents you mentioned in post are too good and can be very useful. I will keep it in mind, thanks for sharing the information keep updating, looking forward for more posts.

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