Blog Entry Saturday: Do We Haunt Ourselves While Alive?

I asked a friend recently when we were playing 20 questions, "do you ever daydream about an alternate life?" 

His answer was simple, "I contemplate if I hadn't taken the course in my life that I chose."


It had me thinking about when my marriage was at its worst. I would lie in bed beside my husband thinking of how I knew how each day of my life would be for the rest of my life. I thought about all the things I would never know, never experience. I felt an alternate life out there as if it were a phantom limb. 

We get a kind of psychic prodding from ourselves, warning us about eating another bag of chips when we were going to change our diet, or regretting taking the expressway when we ended up in a fender bender. Sometimes, we daydream about what would have happened if we told our boss we deserve a raise or possibly how we would react accepting an award for something we've done. 

Even though we live in this path we chose with a hundred decisions that day, from what we ate to whether to pick up the mail going out or coming home, we have to wonder what if I went right instead of left? Is there another me lingering in the ethereal realm taking another path? 

Psychiatrists might call it the Id or conscience when discussing the part of us that haunts ourselves. A minister would say our soul is crying out to listen. Many lay people would say that they have a "gut" instinct. 

In ghost investigating we often work through the evidence to see if any of it can be explained by PK - psychokinesis (the ability of the mind to move an object). 

My life-long encounters with object movement had me pondering this, as when I hold in anger, I tend to act as a magnet for metal in the oddest ways. So, what can I project? The sound of a voice calling my name? Can I affect an EVP session? 

One time, I watched these UFO lights in the sky with a friend and I got this welling of excitement because I felt as if somehow I was willing them to turn on, like sometimes I can have a session with a KII meter and swear I willed when the lights would go on. What are the effects of a human on the environment?

When I was a kid, my mom found my sister's cigarettes and took them away and my sister pounded on the wall and yelled. Years later, when she had moved out, occasionally it would re-sound again. She was alive, but she was haunting the place.

We project very real worlds in our dreams, but even awake we can create physiologic responses to thoughts. If we think enough about what an ass the man in the car in front of us is, we can work ourselves up, blood pressure rising, face flushing, fists tightening on the steering wheel. If I imagine biting into a lemon, my salivary glands react. But, it's not actually happening. What are we capable of in leaving an imprint, haunting a spot even while we are alive?

As a psychometrist, I run into this all the time. Julie Ferguson and I made two books based on it. She did the photography and I did a psychometric read on an object in an abandoned site. It seemed to be so dead and remote and yet all the info was still there to be released. ("Abandoned Places: Abandoned Memories (Desert Edition)" and "Abandoned Places: Abandoned Memories (Appalachian Edition)")

And, this brings me back to what made me decide to officially enter research. I went to a housewarming party for my ex-husband's friend's girlfriend. I didn't know them, but I went to meet them. The woman took me aside, said she heard from someone I was psychic and she thought the house was haunted. She heard footsteps in the hall and someone crying in the bathroom. I walked the house with her and a friend of hers. I rattled off about each room, who was in it and what they did in great detail. 

When I was done the friend said, "I've lived next door 25 years and you are 100% accurate." She went on to tell me about the people I described and the events, very odd things that I had just revealed. I thought it was an amazing read and was relieved, but then she shocked my world when she said, "they are all alive, living across town." 

It had me pondering, what is haunting? Can it be intelligent or is it residual replaying of the past? Can we leave a psychic "tag" everywhere we have been that somehow remains forever? If a soul has no limits is part of the universal collective, can it cause havoc wherever the living body has been? 

So, as you ponder your life and your decisions, also ponder the amount of your life that is still in the past and even the amount that is in the future, as the soul does not adhere to time as a constraint. We have many intentions for the next day and replay the last day in our minds and miss the present moment often.

I hope that has you pondering on this lovely weekend in which many are reflecting on historic events and their significance. We do not die. We are reborn.