Of course, establishing one has a haunted house is the most important step and that will involve bringing in a team. I'd honestly suggest a team that was established pre-TAPS era (2004). Really look over the team's website. You want to know what their take is on the paranormal. Many teams are like TAPS and go in to disprove a haunting and then up occasion find conditions that leave them with the "haunted" option, but don't offer much for homeowners except to have a little discussion with the invisible occupants and tell them basically that their lease is up. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but if you have a religious background or are a very spiritual person, this process is one that should involve some symbolic ritual for cleansing or blessing. If this is the case, ask the team if they offer such services.
I'm very rational/logical person, so when I'm stuck in a situation that I can't do anything about, I learn to reframe it in such a way that I can make it easier to live with. We do this every day that we go to a job with a boss who's real asshole. We learn to say, "They pay me to be in the same building with him for 8 hours, but when I leave here, he can go to back to hell where he resides the other 16 hours of the day."
First, you ask yourself if anything that has happened is threatening to your or others. We're talking about physical, not mental. Mental is a whole different issue we will deal with next. If there is something that has been physically threatening, then it is time to consider a spiritual ceremony, however, you also want to take into account the potential religious background of whomever might be haunting the place. It needs to be something that would sing to a Catholic or Native American or whoever else might be the culprit. If you truly believe it might be demonic, your best bet is probably someone with a Catholic background or even Lutheran or Episcopal.
If there are no physical threats, but you personally feel threatened, it's time to have a look at your own internal process. If the sense of being watched gives you the willies, it's probably because your internal dialogue is going something like this, "Something is here with me. I can feel it watching me. What does it want? Why is it watching me?" Paranoia ensues. Another person might enter the same place and think, "Wow, this old building has a really creepy feel," and then they would look at the antique moldings or the antique furnishings and attribute it to the way the place visually appears. Two people having the same feeling and two completely different takes on it.
The key is to stop your inner dialogue and how you describe things because terms like "I can't take this," and "it's after me," are going to produce a new interpretation on anything that occurs. I knew one woman who was tormented by her toilet's leaky valve and certain that it was a ghost trying to communicate ever time she came into the bathroom. She made assumptions that someone died in the bathroom and that every time she entered, it wanted to make its presence known. It wasn't until a friend visited her and used the restroom and came back to announce he'd fixed her leaking valve that the ghost magically disappeared, but the woman had spent the past four months certain she was in constant threat. It may seem funny, but when you look for evidence of something, you can usually find it, so definitely check out your explanatory story. I discuss this a lot in my book, Was That a Ghost?
When I was growing up, my parents had a good attitude. "The soldiers died here during the Civil War. They just keep walking the halls guarding our family since they no longer are with their families."
I had one client who was in a situation in which there was no option of moving and the spouse was not cooperative about accepting the haunting. My suggestion was to keep in mind that there was nothing threatening occurring, simply sounds and cold breezes and doors opening and closing. It was random, but hardly an actual threat. So, I suggested keeping a diary of events to look for correlations with who was in the house, the emotional content of the people inside the home, the areas of the home, the times of the day, looking for patterns and information. When you can't do anything but be a victim, instead become a researcher. That shift in knowing this person could contribute to the field and research, made it actually an exciting thing whenever events occurred just to be able to record them. This is taking back your power in any way that you can. It's sort of like the neighbor with the barking dog. You can whine and complain, but if you start recording the events, you might have a case against them and feel justified in your annoyance once you see it written down. You take back a bit more of your power by making the event accountable.
The final chapter in my book does discuss this issue and what also what you can do when you have experienced the paranormal, the potential changes that could occur in your life as a result from research to creative outlets. Haunted homes happen, but wise people learn to coexist with the unexpected as much as the unexpected patterns of the living people within a home.
When I was a kid, one of my dad's best friends shot himself in the head and succeeded in ending his life. I think he hung around our house for a while. He never did anything mean or scary - that just wasn't him. I could just feel him there. All of us felt him there. It was kind of comforting.
ReplyDeleteStrange how that works, huh? I think it helps to be very compassionate. I just feel for everyone having the human and afterlife experience. I believe in being understanding and forgiving. Sometimes, someone like that just needs to know you don't hold a grudge and you get why he reached that point and he's forgiven.
ReplyDeleteI think my dad was drunk - that is his thing. And that is another story for another day. As for my mom, brother and me, we lost a member of our family and never felt anger toward what he did. Just sadness. Which is why it was comforting.
ReplyDelete"... but when I leave here, he can go to back to hell where he resides the other 16 hours of the day."
ReplyDeleteLMBO!!!
~shoes~
nope nope nope and nope. There is no way I want to live in a haunted house!! lol.
ReplyDeleteZombie--what if it was haunted by a sex crazed girl?
ReplyDeleteabout what percentage would you guess threatening hauntings occur versus nonthreatening ones? It would seem to me that the nonintelligent hauntings wouldn't be a threat at all unless you somehow try to interfere with their routine? Have you ever been on a case where the residing entity actually got violent? LOL, I know that it's a lot of questions in one dosage but I'm pretty curious.
ReplyDeleteIf there is a ghost, I'm bailing straight up.
ReplyDeleteAaron;
ReplyDeleteI've heard a lot of secondhand stories about injuries, but from the actual person it was inflicted upon, only 2 cases in over 100 and one was purely hysterical--he managed to injure himself because of fear. The other one had a sense of being slapped and scratches. I have a bit of trouble with scratches simply because, in any given day, I look down and find scratches and bruises I have no freaking idea how I got, but I make an assumption it has something to do with me multitasking all the time and ignoring pain. If I lived in a home and felt threatened by something unseen, it would be a ghost that did it. If I thought I'd been abducted by aliens, it would be implantation of a tracking device. This can go many ways. I absolutely and truly believe that a person cannot be possessed or taunted by demons other than those he creates with his own belief system and way of interpreting things. Anyone who has seen someone speaking in tongues knows the power of the human mind, including the ability to lift a car when a child is trapped. I'm not popular for not believing in demons, noncorporeals and possession, but I have seen the human mind in some extreme conditions including mental illness, religiosity, and plain old panic and phobias. If we could truly be harmed and possessed, we'd all be fucked. It'd be like the final scene in Ghostbusters. We'd be messed with all the time and it'd be a real nasty world like something out of Keanu Reeve's Constantine. I'd like to witness a case of true injury, but I have yet to. I think such an interaction is highly improbable for the simple reason that it's nearly impossible to get spirit form to make a sound or knock on wood.
Me and the ex-hubby lived in a haunted house for 12 years. It was a bit strange at first, it didn't like us there to begin with, but then things settled down. Things would happen. It was all good! We had more than one entity. Inside and outside the home as well as a couple of shadow animals that only I saw. Was really cool. Wish I had "done more" about it so to speak when we were there!
ReplyDeleteLil Sis; That did sound like an active home. I had a friend who expressed an interest in buying a haunted home as a second home and doing an ongoing study in it. I'm encouraging him and, in fact, found a building I'd love for him to purchase. I'm going to hopefully check it out soon when I'm in that town and see if it's still for sale. It was an historic old building in a dead town that had a nasty history. Oh how delicious!
ReplyDeleteI used to tell my mom that "when I grow up, I want to live in a haunted house". Fast forward about 15-20 years, hubby and I toured an old home, felt the presences as we walked through. We bought it, that was 23 years ago. We're still here, and so are they. We have at least 2 men and 2 women who have been seen or felt, not only by us, but by visitors. They're especially curious when we have overnight guests.
ReplyDeleteWe have at least 2 ghost cats. We've had 2 cats pass on here, but the ghost kitties were here before the they passed.
Nothing malicious, just footsteps, doors closing (slammed the front door once, giving us all a start), faucets turning on and off, the smell of cigarette or cigar smoke in the upper hallway, a woman on the balcony who is fond of gardenias (we and others have smelled it).