What is a Haunting?

What is a Haunting?

A haunting is the repeated manifestation of strange and inexplicable sensory phenomena at a location. Not all paranormal activity is related to a haunting. There are also many types of hauntings. There is no one pattern to hauntings, and not everyone who lives or works in a reputedly haunted location will experience phenomena.

TYPES OF HAUNTINGS

Intelligent Haunting

This is the type of haunting that most paranormal investigators are pursuing. This type of haunting involves a spirit that can interact with the living and respond by giving signs, such as moving objects, responding on EVP, etc. In these cases it is usually believed that they have a connection to the site, or people, that they are haunting. It is speculated that they stay in a spot because of a strong connection coming from unfinished business, or because something traumatic like an accident, suicide, or murder, happened at the loction. In the case of the some spirits, for instance children that remain, it may be that they did not understand what happened to them when they died, and consequently, they did not know how to move on. The intelligent haunt is commonly believed to be made up of the energy that once made up the personality of the person who has passed. While some spirits are malevolent, most are not. Sometimes it is just the opposite, and the subjects of the haunting might experience only the occasional presence of a spirit. That may be someone they were connected to is just sort of stopping by to say hi, and check up on them, or maybe trying to warn warn about that something is going to happen in their near future.

Residual Haunting

This is the most common type of Haunting. Much more common than most people realize. A residual haunting does not seem to have any intelligence connected it to it. It is more like an imprint; it has been likened to a recording or video that plays over and over again. Somehow an event, or series of events, imprints itself into a location, and then unexpectedly replays itself at random times. This is the type of haunting most often thought to be occurring at places like battlefields and crime scenes. But this does not occur only at places where violence occurred, it can also be related to a place where the same series of events has happened over and over again, like people walking down a staircase, somehow that repeated action seems to leave a sort of lasting impression. A residual haunting is actually your best chance to see the manifestation of a ghost, because the images of the people in the activity often get imprinted just like the actions. It is just like watching a part of the movie though, in that you cannot interact with the image, there is no intelligence there. The residual haunting will occur whether there is anyone there to see it or not.

Poltergeists

Poltergeist activity used to be believed to be a malevolent spirit or demon, but researchers now lean more to believing that most of these events are created by a “human agent”. It appears that in many cases this “agent” is an adolescent girl around the age of puberty. (Remember there are no set patterns for any paranormal activity that apply all the time, but there have been enough documented cases of this type of activity now, to bear out that this is what seems to be happening in many cases.) For some unknown reason it appears that some girls in their young teens, develop an unconscious psycho kinesis (PK). This PK will begin to manifest when the girl is in some type of emotional turmoil, and suddenly phenomena will begin to appear, lights going off, objects moving by their selves, and even more dangerous things like fires starting spontaneously, to name a few. The girl does not even know that she is creating the activity in most cases, and is therefore not able to control it either. The good news is that these cases are usually short-lived. The activity can peak to a frightening level to be sure, but then begins to dwindle away. Once the human agent is identified, counseling and resolution of the "agents" problems can be pursued and this often helps to end the activity.

One more note here before I move on to the next, some ‘Intelligent Haunts’ can have poltergeist-like activity associated with them. In my opinion, intelligent spirits retain their personalities. A gentle spirit was probably a gentle person in life, and an aggressive angry spirit was probably that way in life as well. I believe that is one of the reasons that the experiences of Hauntings are so varied, because you are dealing with those diverse personalities.

Death Bed Visitation

Many people have experienced this type of phenomena, where a friend or loved one appears to them, and they find out later that the person has died. It is as if they came to say good-by.

Waking Dreams

Another common type of phenomena is the “waking dream”. You are sleeping in your bed and suddenly you have the full sensation of being wide awake. Often in these dreams, you are interacting with someone that has passed, but it feels very real when it is happening. Then you awake in your bed, and think that it was a dream. Many times people are presented with specific messages that the spirit wants to relay them, and sometimes it is just a good visit with someone we have missed in our lives. Researchers are mixed on what these dreams are, some believe that it is a trick of our own minds using our imaginations to create a visit with someone that we have deeply missed, while others theorize that it actually might be some sort of telepathy between us and the spirits that is made more possible by the relaxed environment of the dream state.

One thing to keep in mind when dealing with a haunting or other paranormal activity is that it is rare for anyone to get hurt by either the paranormal activity or the ghost. The majority of the time, there is nothing to fear.