The Haunted Formula

Most of you know that I’ve been working on finding physical commonalities between haunted sites. When we think haunted sites, we usually think they’re haunted because someone died there. Yeah, that’s true, but not always. Some cities, regions of towns, streets, and plots of land seem to be more haunted than those nearby that saw the same action. If death meant hauntings, then everywhere that a Civil War soldier died, there’d be a haunting. But, that’s not true.

So, I began with a simple list of 50 haunted places. From there, I began to study the geology of the land, composition of the building, location in relation to moving water, railroad tracks, age of the building, and history of death/trauma. I’ve also added into that some other factors that can accentuate the haunting, such as being in a round building or near a cemetery.

It breaks down like this:
1 point for being within a mile of running stream/ocean/river
1 point for being constructed with stone/block
1 point for being within a mile of railroad tracks
1 point for being over 50 years old (more inhabitants, more history)
1 point for being the site of death/trauma
1 point for good geology (sedimentary rock, limestone, shale, schist, sandstone, granite, quartz)

A score of 5-6 means the place is haunted
A score of 3-4 means the place could be haunted in the future should something traumatic occur there
A score of 1-2 means it will likely never be haunted

It’s my hope that as I go along with my research and uncover the actual hard proof of hauntings these locations have and rate their “haunted-ness” with a similar scoring, I can compare their conditions to their actual proof of haunting and find “hard haunts” or places that can be so ideal in location and proof of haunting that we can go ahead and mark those down at genuine active spots. I hope, as I’m learning more from this research, that theories can arise and this formula can be punched into any haunted site in the world to decide just how likely the place is to be haunted. Hopefully, too, I can find out if geology is more important than construction of the building or if train tracks do in fact have a strange way of being present near hard hauntings.

Some people have asked about the significance of train tracks and it's one that's puzzling but also undeniable. It's uncertain if train tracks just appear in older developments where there were earlier settlers and more history and hence more hauntings or if train tracks actually can help a region to be more haunted. I can't think of any jump of the imagination as to why that is, but they do seem to show up at a ridiculously high incidence which makes me wonder what their role is. Some people have supposed it's the stretches of iron, others have suggested that in a feng shui way, energy follows tracks and roadways, others believe that they change the energy of the land. Hopefully, I can narrow down just how far from water and a train track a place needs to be to be "hard haunted." Also,what geology seems the most ideal.

I suppose the next question is whether or not these are all conditions related to residual hauntings (history replaying itself in a loop) versus intelligent hauntings. I've often wondered if the play between a person and an intelligent haunting isn't dependent on the person being communicated with (the living person). Some folks seem ideal to make communication a possibility, others not so much.

You can see how the more I learn, the more questions I have, but hopefully you'll be alongside me and helping me to sort it out and see it from many perspectives. If any of you punch in your own information about your home, I'd love to hear your score and whether you have activity or not. I'm actually having a very hard time finding a site that's haunted but doesn't have a high score!

I’ll continue to put more of the sites and their scores on this blog and when I’m done with the research, we might have some very surprising findings. Thanks for keeping up with it.

Comments

  1. Thanks for your nice comment. You are right about my mother. But she knows that i gained weight recovering from bulimia. So her unacceptance towards me brings a lot of pain. She should be helpful and yet she is like the disease impersonated. I am not angry anymore but i do have to protect myself from her.
    Blessings..

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  2. Hm, interesting... We have a large area - half of the *inner* city actually - where almost all buildings would come up with a 4 to 6 points: sedimentary limestone, calc sinter, and shale in the ground, a river running through the city, the railroads passing by, buildings built in stone and usually between 100 and 300 years old, and definitely a lot of violence all over the place (Weimar in Germany). I think I am going to draw a circle on the map were both river and railroads are close enough and see what comes out. :)

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  3. Greekwitch
    I can so relate. My sib's had eating disorders and there was a constant battle. I was tall and really skinny, so mom would feed me McDonald's and fuss over my eating and my two sisters were overweight so mom fed them diet pills and restricted their eating. It set us up for a lot of issues. Mom's have their hearts in the right place, but most of them gave up a lot of dreams to take care of everyone and as they get older they realize they might have lost the best years and don't want their daughters to do it. Just know it's not your issue, it's hers.

    Mike-Julie; Thanks ya'all. I'm glad you're liking it. The more I research, the more I can pull up the cities that will be most haunted. It's exciting!

    Kantorka;
    It sounds like you have a great cluster of potential hauntings. I can't wait to apply what I'm learning to other areas. I believe that Germany and England will be off the scale in the haunted formula. They are rich in history/violence and the geological conditions and age of the buildings and waterways make them the perfect mix. I'd be excited to hear more about what you find when you map it up. I like your idea. We have some areas with clusters of hauntings like in New Orleans and I'd like to map that out and see if it correlates with being parallel to water or if it's strongest where it's surrounding by train tracks. This is really fun to uncover and I can't believe I haven't heard about anyone else actually mapping it out and looking at the conditions. I should be able to name some top haunted cities in the US soon. Keep watching for more.

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  4. p.s.
    I think it' might be interesting to learn if there are leylines along these areas too, but it would take some folks with dowsing rods to probably uncover that. Next time I'm at some famously haunted sites that are near each other, I'm going to try using the rods from place to place to see if there's some connection.

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  5. "Hard haunted", sounds like another erotic horror novel! (yeah, I'm horrible, I know!)
    But seriously, you hit on something I've always wondered about: Why aren't there more hauntings and ghosts than there are? I mean, the dead vastly outnumber the living, and even if we narrow it down to those who died untimely deaths, or violent deaths, or who died with unfinished business, it would seem that there should be waaayy more documented activity than there is.
    Your research into the factors contributing to hauntings is giving me some food for thought.

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  6. I think you have done a superb job with this haunting scale Autumnforest!! you are so right if all it took were death to make a haunting so many places would be haunted -best to you as always!!

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  7. Gummerfan;
    Thanks. I hope to refine it during the phases of research. My first research is just to give them a score for their conditions. The second set of research will be into how much reliable evidence they have about hauntings there so I can determine just how haunted the place is compared to its conditions. I can adjust the conditions depending on what I find and look for commonalities, like poltergeists occur along train tracks or on top of limestone... My biggest question at the end of all of this is, are hauntings simply residual memories imprinted or can there be actual soul-identified hauntings? I'm hoping this research can help in that. I know the house I grew up in had a great deal of residual and even had some residual of our own inhabitation--occasionally I heard my sister banging on the wall and screaming--something she did when she was angry, but heard it replayed when she had moved out... This is all really exciting and I'm hoping to find some nice geologist who can talk to me a bit about the factors of sedimentary rock and what it might mean to have rock made of biological breakdown from plant/animal/marine life.

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  8. Devin;
    Thanks! When I was a kid, I remember visiting my dad's friend's house and it was this huge old house, just like ours, and had a history very similar from the Civil War with lots of death and several owners in the past who died there, as well. The place had absolutely nothing to hint at a haunting. Not even creaking stairs. I always wondered why that was. I wish my dad was around to tell me who the people were. I can't remember where they lived--you know as a kid you just get in the car and go and don't pay attention. I'd like to find more places like that, ones that have a history but no haunting.

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  9. Thanks for explaining the significance of train tracks! I was wondering after I'd asked you if maybe something in the material might matter, but the feng shui explanation was also interesting. Could be something to that too! Very, very, very cool what you're doing with this research.

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  10. Hey there, I'm back! :-)
    I did a rough mapping of our inner city according to your criteria and thought you might want to see the result. I found it quite interesting. In my imagination, the reulsting area looked a lot bigger, but we tend to forget how small a mile is in comparision to an entire city.
    Here's the map, with a rough one mile radius in yellow around the river Ilm and a rough one mile radius around the tracks. The red circle marks the area where both meet within a mile.
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3547/3635953423_bebc47f0ea_o.jpg

    Three interesting points:
    A) It is a smaller area than I would have thought, really! It is just one inner city hot spot. I'll take a close look at the nearby villages cramped between the tracks and the river, if that's interesting to you I'll come and post a link here.
    2) It is seemingly a relatively empty spot within a lively city. There are geographical oddities that might keep you from building there, but they didn't in similar areas all over the city. Then again, tracks wouldn't be built through a traditionally lively area, would they? But who knows - maybe there is a pattern of people avoiding settling in hot spots?
    3) This may be a bit morbid, but the point where the tracks and the river cross is a huge equaduct bridge that has been attracting more suicidal people than any other spot in the area. Most of them did end up killing themselves because no one would see you in time to convince you to back off. :(

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  11. Okay, how embarassing... I just realized that I messed up the "foreign" metric system - a mile is a lot bigger than what I mapped out. Here I go again...

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  12. Here you go. It's very roughly done, mind you. But it does definitely include a few very interesting buildings.
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3373/3636071915_74c0a6b833_o.jpg

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  13. This is fascinating research.

    Columbus, Ohio in general scores 5/6, with many individual haunted buildings being 6/6. The death/trauma aspect is the 1913 flood. I've counted over 50 known haunting in the city just in a preliminary count. I am going to have to apply your scoring system to certain areas in the city where the hauntings are more concentrated to see just how close they are to the various aspects as opposed to the other parts of town.

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