The Paranormal Blog

I've kind of made fun of this in the not so distant past... but recently, I was tweaked to thinking about the upcoming point of this post... just not in such "snarky" terms...

I won't re-tell my own tale with too much detail, (click the upcoming link if interested,) but in my research looking into an event that happened to me just outside St.Brides' church in London, England in 1995, I was reading a fun little "ghost tour" book of London (Walking Haunted London by Richard Jones, which I do recommend as it was a fun read,) and it re-told the story of "George", for whom I might have run into while he was on his way to work!

Now, the most important bit about my possible run-in with "George" on his way to his pub...

WAIT! Before continuing and also before anyone writes me, YES, I'm being facetious! I did have the experience, but I couldn't say what caused it and I am certainly not sold it was indeed "George"...

Where was I?

Oh yes...

The important bit of my experience to me was not how the "George-Like-Maybe" fellow scared me... because he didn't... it was how my gut instinct in that second or two of experience was to move out of the way because I was *in* the way. No fear, no "shiver up my spine", no hair standing on end... but a genuine (and typically Canadian) sense of feeling bad about being a burden to someone in a rush as I was standing in their path.

I should point out that I have to consider myself, at the time, not a corrupt target. I was most certainly not expecting to trip over any experiences and was not at St.Brides, nor London in general that year, with the "paranormal" in mind... I was being a tourist only. (Okay, we did take ONE walking tour, but that was AS a tourist!!!)

Boringly back to my point... to be frank, when remembering "George-Like-Maybe"... he could have been any person... living and corporeal... and my initial reaction when he passed was that it was a man in fancy dress and I was being a ninny for being in his way... well... that was my thought until (a) I realised he could not have "disappeared" from view so quickly in any normal means and (b) my partner didn't "see" him as such at all... but heard me "excuse" myself and pondered why I would do so and glance back immediately with no visual on the full "apparition", if that's what "George-Like-Maybe" was.

It would have been easy for many folks to shake this off as a "trick of the light" and that their mind having a game with them... but I'd been in "odd" situations before, mostly thanks to never hiding my early experiences. Most of my friends and acquaintances knew I was "interested" in ghostly phenomena and as such, I'd been trotted out to many "haunts" to have a look around... Using my "going to the woods to see a wild bear" analogy, if you go to enough "haunted places" with any frequency, you will eventually (most likely) have... um... odd experiences... so the run-in with "George-Like-Maybe" although unexpected, was quickly calculated in my noggin... although I wish I knew then what I know now... I could have done a LOT more with that experience then I did... but I digress.

...anyway...

The important bit was my reaction initially was NOT one of "Egads! I'm seeing a ghost!"

Cut to today... and the usual flood of reports that pile in around Hallowe'en time... and noting that out of the thirty-two reports I've seen over the last four weeks, (Sunday-to-Sunday,) only three of them involved a witness being "frightened". Two of those, the witness hypothesized that the experience was "demonic" and "evil" and the other was a concern over possible violence based on the "feeling" of the "energy" when the experiences happened... but thankfully, there had been no directly attributable physical violence from a "paranormal" situation to date.

Now, this is *not* a purely scientific work (it's a blog post,) but to work in general terms, much like 99.999% of sighted apparitions tend to be "solid" (rather than translucent or "see-through",) it seems to me that the vast majority of first-hand experiences tend to be not-all-that-scary...

I've often said, for most people, the first experience is more "off-putting" or "unsettling"... a second experience is usually problematic at worst... by the third and/or fourth experience, the witness or "experiencer" is running TOWARDS the phenomena trying to explain or capture it rather than running away from fear of it.

We often have to tell people not to be too concerned if they are contacting us about "something" in their home or business, because, quite honestly, I can only cite two cases in the last two-hundred years where POSSIBLY the situation grew violent and the "experiencer(s)" were put in a physically dangerous situation that caused a visit to a physician or hospital for wounds "caused by" ghostly(?) phenomena. The most common reasons for physical harm from the paranormal are bumps and bruises from people occasionally trying to "escape" an initial encounter and, sadly, there is a tangible body count attributable to would-be exorcists who have killed their charges by beating, starving, or dehydrating the people they're saving "to death". (One could also possibly add the fiscal damage done by would-be house-clearers who are often only interested in clearing their mark's bank accounts.)

Ounce for ounce, most "ghosts" seem to eventually get on quite well with their house-mates... and indeed, in reading the aforementioned book about "George" and a run-in with a painter working in the basement who raced upstairs concerned about being watched by the spectre, you can see how people can, if given a chance, become rather accepting of their resident phenomena...

"Oh, I shouldn't worry about him," said the landlord reassuringly, "That's the ghost. My wife sees him all the time."

There have been many times when bar staff changing beer barrels in the cellar have turned to see the ghostly cavalier standing in the shadowy recesses. He is accepted by the staff as a harmless fellow resident...

This sounds like a "story"... and it likely is to a degree... but the "attitude" of the staff is probably spot-on with the tale.

So, to you thrill seekers out there... those who are hoping one day for a good scare that might indeed lead to a scatological incident, take note...

...ghosts, often, just aren't all that scary.

Think about what the famed author Isaac Asimov once said...

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny ..."

Take it from someone who's done a bit of legwork in the field... the same can be said for ghostly experiences... it's RARE to find a case that began with a scream of terror... but not at all unusual to find cases that start with the phrase, "That was weird."