Could You Repeat That? Repetition Versus Novelty in Hauntings

Separating the “residual” (repetitive) from the “intelligent” (responsive) hauntings can be a difficult task for beginners. I like to break it down to the repetitive versus novel events.

Repetitive events include things like footsteps down a hallway regularly, a woman seen at the same window by many witnesses, sounds of voices heard in the back bedroom at the same time of day, and other types of phenomenon which are heard fairly frequently by a wide variety of visitors and residents. These events are often categorized by hunters as “residual.”

There’s a divide in the ghost-hunting world on just what residual is. Some people explain it as a ghost repeating his usual march through his favorite territory over and over again for an eternity. Unless he had some OCD in the prior life, I just don’t see this as feasible. I, however, believe it’s an event that was set down under the right conditions or the right amount of repetition to continue to replay without any spirit involvement whatsoever. It is a "memory" caught in a space and replayed without meaning or guidance or spirit, a sort of sensory blip.

Intelligent hauntings (what I prefer to call “responsive” hauntings) are equated with receiving responses that appear to be interactive, suggesting intelligence. If I ask a question and the KII meter lights up, that could be considered responsive, interactive, even intelligent. EVPs are most often used as evidence of intelligent hauntings, although I don’t put a lot of credence into EVPs because of the fact that recorders are receivers and there’s no exact way to tell if you received an intelligent disembodied voice, a voice that was kept in the environment like the footsteps (above) and randomly plays back, or if you’re picking up a walkie, a cell phone, a satellite phone, or any other transmitter device.

Novel events, are the ones of the most interest. If these events haven’t been reported by occupants before, hunters can be quick to attribute them to intelligent hauntings. I’ve witnessed many novel events in the house where I grew up and I have to say that they happened when things were just weird. The people of the house were unsettled with some kind of ongoing drama, the weather was strange, the air felt weird, and no one was sleeping or communicating well. My explanation would be the ideal conditions of geology, construction, history, as well as geomagnetic activity affecting the occupants of the building, creating a kind of kinetic soup that’s just waiting to fire off, often times creating what is referred to as poltergeist activity or novel events. These periods can come and go depending on the content of the people living within the house and the psychological undercurrents. Emotional energy is a very potent thing and something I believe has a big hand in residual hauntings being imprinted in the first place.

Novelty events can be divided into two categories; responsive and unresponsive. If you ask for a spirit to knock and you hear a reply, ask it again and it does it again, and this sort of answering seems to go on for some length of time, then this is a responsive event. In this case, it's important to ask very specific questions for the knocking response, note how long it takes to respond, and how may questions in a row it will answer. It's very rare when you can get a long-time conversation. The KII session I had a few weeks ago was impressive because the conversation and answering went on with great time-specific replies and lasted for between 8-10 minutes until others entered the room and "scared" it off. If, however, you hear a loud bang, but cannot get it to reproduce, you have an unresponsive novel event. That is the sort of event that can be easily debunked.

Residual hauntings are actually easier to explore because the recurrence of the replayed events usually happens with fair frequency and your chances of hearing or seeing these things are much higher. Some people believe that residual hauntings aren't real hauntings, but I will say that as we use the term in our culture, such as, "that song was so beautiful it haunted me," that yes, this is a haunting. If you're talking about Casper and his other ghostly friends hovering over you then, no, it's not a haunting. I, however, consider a haunting to be any unexplained phenomenon that is witnessed over a good period of time in a location by multiple witnesses. I'll leave the "is it ghost?" or "is it not ghost?" up to others. My quest is to find out if what activates the phenomenon is intelligent, once human, other worldly, or something within our world we simply don't have the senses to note but has always been there. That's the really exciting part of the field today is to throw away Old-World traditional assumptions of what a ghost is and move on to what it isn't and narrow it down further until we have an "Aha!" moment.

Comments

Cemetery Safety Bells, Morbid Death Mementos and Superstitions

(funeral memento - above - with woven hair of the dead included) Giving up our dead is never an easy task and it doesn't matter what region of the world or what era you grew up in, it's full of rituals and also many superstitions. Let's have a look at how we have handled death - (cemetery bell system - above) During the cholera epidemic in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, people feared being buried when they weren't completely dead. Many reported digging up graves of loved ones to find signs they fought inside the coffin to get out. As this would nearly be an impossibility with the weight of the earth on the coffin and lack of oxygen, the rumors did start hysteria. Patents were put out for these bells that would allow the newly awakened buried person to pull a string, ring a bell above ground that the groundskeeper could hear. Imagine how freaking chilling that would be to actually hear one go off? I had an idea for a zombie story about that but never got aroun...

Don Monroe Case Files: Unusual Carving Unearthed!

Life-long explorer, adventurer and researcher, Don Monroe, has a million stories to tell, only he's been on the road nonstop, busy hiking the back country in dozens of countries, climbing the highest peaks and crawling in the deepest caves to understand this natural world we live in. He has hunted, tracked, trapped, cast footprints, talked to Native people, continued several-decade long ongoing research projects, devoured tons of research books, and ultimately sought answers about every aspect of nature and all the mysteries within. During those travels, he came across many unusual things. What I am presenting now is one of them - Don Monroe and a researcher friend named Massey, were up at about 7000 feet on Anaconda Range in Montana. They were tracking a bear when Don noted something sticking out of the ground, just a bit of something, but didn't look like a regular rock. In this remote area at that elevation, the idea of running across something man-made was unlikely. He s...

The Urban Sasquatch Journal: Stick Glyphs

This is the reporting by a Bigfoot researcher of an ongoing study in the Southern part of the United States in a very large park area near homes and urban setting. LINK TO PRIOR INSTALLMENTS STARTING WITH #1 Journal Volume 3 Report #50 Saturday November 26, 2016 I arrived at the park approximately 9:52 AM. The temperature was 65 and cool. It was partly cloudy with high clouds. I had my bike with me and rode the trail first. This took 44 minutes. I was back to back to my car at 10:48 AM. I then got my pack then rode over to the site. The goal of the trail ride was to observe any new tree breaks, twists or limbs etc. broke over the trail. Also to see if any stick signs were along the trail in the grass. I did observe several interesting items on the east end. These I photographed. Trail ride observations with photos. These cover photos 1-8. #1. thru #3. Between mile markers 2.75 and 3.0 , on the north side of the trail, approximately 10' inside the treeline, these possible stick ...

Scary and Precarious Roads!

Summer road trip time - why not consider scaring the crap out of your family? The road to Big Sur (above) is sure to separate boys from men. Highway 1 is an intense cliff hugging drive along the coast for 122 miles from Monterey to Morro Bay. Independence Pass from Aspen to Leadville in Colorado. Highway 82 is a 187-mile white knuckler. And if that's not enough, you take the over 1000-foot tall highest suspension bridge in the world! Great Smoky Mountains National Park "Tail of the Dragon" in North Carolina/Tennessee Highway 129 takes you on 11 miles of awesome views. Clinton Road , Passaic County, New Jersey. Seriously paranormal , " If you are visiting the road at midnight, stop by the bridge at Dead Man’s Curve for a game of catch. Toss pennies into the water, and the ghost of a young boy will toss them back. A gray wolf with red eyes will stalk you from the bushes. Satan worshippers will hang hang up their bloody clot...

Monsters in the Deepest Ocean!

The ocean takes up the majority of the surface on our world and yet so little of what is in it is known to us. Upon occasion, we come across some real mysteries, tantalizing glimpses that make us wonder. For a long time, the giant squid (above) was a legend until it was finally filmed underwater. What other legends might tell us what is in the sea? One creative thinker in 1570 drew up the sea monsters that lay in the waters outside of Iceland. Scientist and artist, Abraham Ortelius had some very fanciful ideas of what awaited the seafarer. He also pondered what might live in the Pacific Ocean. In 1644, another artist/scientist drew up what he thought might lurk in the waters off of Africa. Willem Blaeu had quite an interesting vision. In 1727, Peter Kolb envisioned a sea lion of interesting characteristics - In present day, we still run across things in the sea that puzzle us. Here is one such thing photographed at Hook Island. It was estimated to be 75-80 feet long and to this day the...

Obscure Horror Movies of the 70s and 80s

The 1970s and 1980s were horror movie lovers' heaven! There were movies about nature turning on man because of pollution, witches, devil worshippers, killers, insanity, revenge, demons, families moving into haunted houses, beasts attacking, and teens being slashed. You might have missed some of the more obscure ones in the offering - *Descriptions thanks to my favorite movie site IMDB (The Food of the Gods - 1976) The Food of the Gods: A group of friends travel to a remote Canadian island to hunt, only to be attacked by giant killer animals which have populated the place. The People: Kim Darby and William Shatner star in this 1972 made-for-tv movie. A woman is sent to a secluded valley to teach school to the reclusive residents' children. The citizens start showing some odd skills and pretty soon the teacher begins to wonder if the residents are human. The Initiation: Daphne Zuniga stars in this 1984 slasher that takes place during an initiation sta...

Ghost Ships and Fata Morgana Mirages

Fata Morgana Fata Morgana is a complex superior mirage. In this instance, in the horizon a narrow band seen can separate an image, casting what looks like another image superior to the original object. In the image above it appears as if the ship is in the air. Below, the image shows a repeat of it up in the air. Sometimes, the image can be inverted. This occurs when rays of light are bent when they pass through layers that are different temperatures. Flying Dutchman This legend is talked about among sailors since the late 1700s. The tale says that there was a ship's captain sailing around the most dangerous ocean strait, the Cape of Good Hope. He cursed the elements and swore he would make it no matter what. The ship went down and all perished, but they are said to continue as a ghost ship for eternity in the region of the Southern tip of Africa because of the arrogance. In fact, the legend was picked up and modified for many countries and many sea locations. Perhaps it wa...

Terror of Doll Island!

Photo source Isla de las Munecas or "Island of the Dolls" (popularly coined "Doll Island") is a thing of horror for many. Why would an island filled with dolls for decades, laid to waste by the elements and neglect, be terrifying? Well, let me introduce you to its most unsettling beginnings. Don Julian Santana was unhappy with city life and moved to an island on a canalway south of Mexico City for peace and quiet. It was there that the legend begins and takes on a life that is animated enough to bring the dead to life. Don reported that a little girl had drowned in the canal 50 years ago and he believed her spirit to be troubled and haunting his little island. He said that he was out one day when he saw a doll floating in the canal and scooped it out, hanging it up on a tree near the drowning spot to make the girl eternally happy so she would not haunt and scare him. He then became consumed with finding more and more dolls, fishing them out of the canal, sorting t...

The Most Bizarre Photographic Finds On Mars!

Mars explorers have sent back photos of some rather unusual, sometimes vague, and often times puzzling items on the surface of the "dead" planet. This has us wondering, if our own planet no longer supported life, would all the evidence of our having been here be covered up by a millennia of earth, leaving only the occasional hint someone might have been here? Here's a look at a large gallery of photos from the red planet. You come to your own conclusions.... Th e one above, I will chalk up to optical illusion. The stone is actually on the ground in the distance. In the foreground is a rock casting a shadow. Are we looking at a planet that seems to be dead and yet it has a history of life? What if a civilization that was quite advanced had the opportunity to leave a sick planet for a healthy one not so far away in terms of space travel? Is Mars a planet that never supported life or is it a planet that sustained life long enough to build an entire civilization now buried ...

Present Day Russian Neanderthal?

Regions with Bigfoot-type bipedal creatures have their own local names for these types. In Russia and Siberia, they are referred to as the Almas by the Mongolian people and Almasty by the Russians. These beings are described as between 5 feet tall and 6-1/2 feet tall; much shorter than the typical American Bigfoot. They are said to have reddish brown hair, flat noses, a pronounced brow ridge, and weak chin. This is a classic Neanderthal face. One thing we don't know about Neanderthal is if they were hair covered. With hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to the climate of the Altai mountains and cold northern regions, they likely were. A boy in Russia ( LINK ) found some prints that were attributed to a possible yeti. When you look at it, however, it resembles a Neanderthal print quite a bit with the pronounced inner curve and the angle from big to little. Could Neanderthal still exist in Russia and Mongolia? It would be as likely as my theory that the Bigfoot are d...

GHOST HUNTERS

Search This Blog