The Paranormal Blog

A colleague shared an online article with me a few months back - that he was slightly poking fun at (justifiably) - that told people who to "call" if their home was haunted.

Now, the reason I tossed in the (justifiably) is because, *insert gasp of shock here*, the best thing to do was to contact the author of the article's own ghost hunting group to come in and tell you if it is or isn't... then the piece goes into something like an article written by a fictional story teller on demonic entities and the like that, if you didn't contact this group, things would cause you no end of grief. (I will cover this bit in detail below...)

Anyway, more recently, another colleague posted up a link to a video on "How To Tell if Your House is Haunted" on YouTube ... and it reminded me of my thoughts on this matter from the first article sent to me...

Sure, with a "homeowner" or tenant, anyone can tell them how to seek "natural" rather than "supernatural" causations to the reported phenomena... and if all reported phenomena is effectively answered via natural causes, voila! (Well, as "voila" as one can get in these cases...)

...but what about historic sites with multiple witnesses over a long time... and as such, most likely have had many attempts to "debunk" or refute the claims of the paranormal in them that were either not complete or outright failures?

...what about public places that are considered "haunted"?

Sure, one could qualify them via the idea that there's ongoing reports of "ghostly doin's"... but how can you be sure? How do you know the witnesses aren't "corrupt"?

Okay, NOT "corrupt" as in wilfully lying, but corrupted in terms of being so 'tuned in' to the idea that the MUST experience SOMETHING in a place that... well... they do. That shadow MUST be the "headless ghost who wanders the halls"! That wee glimpse of something? "I'm certain it was a woman in nineteenth-century dress"! This doesn't mean they're naive of hoaxing, just... well... keyed up and "expecting" things, so their minds fill in certain blanks. (The link is NOT directly related to this, but does demonstrate how the mind fills in certain things in terms of perceptions...)

...and even then, let's say that thousands of people over "X" number of years go into a place with this mindset... Could they "create" a haunting? Could some form of PSI or "Tulpa" or similar thing create what they experienced... and now others do? If this is the case, does this mean the site isn't haunted?

...just WHAT is a "haunted site"? What is the qualification for that title? How does one "quantify" haunted or not haunted?

There is a simple answer... and some people won't like it... but it's true.

What makes a site haunted is if people say it's haunted.

Now, this is NOT to say I could randomly point at a house or the like and say, "That one! It's HAUNTED!" and (again) Voila!

...but...

One person says so...

...the another person experiences something, so they say so...

...and by the time you have three or more unrelated people saying so, the bargain is struck.

About the ONLY ways (and really, there are only two...) one could say a place is "Not Haunted" is if EVERY experience is explained as a natural (and obviously mistaken) incident that is replicated and the witnesses all agree that this is the case... and the other is if EVERY witness comes forward to claim they were hoaxing... or, in the same vein, enough evidence is provided to show that there has been a fraud or hoax perpetrated.

As an example of this, many people feel the "Blue Ghost Tunnel" in the Niagara Region is a "ghostly" hot spot... but have a read of this article (click here)... Now, we have (honestly) no evidence to support that this "tunnel" was a known ghostly site prior to it's initial online publication. There are no books with it in it, no newspaper articles, no "scribbled notes" on a student's yearbook or the like to say that the initial report is incorrect. In fact, the version you see has been effectively fact-checked by people who really wanted to prove it completely incorrect... but it's stood the test of time.

Now, is the "Blue Ghost Tunnel" haunting a myth?

Perhaps initially... but how do you explain so many people having experiences AFTER the initial report? Were they all lying?

I hardly think so.

So, what's there? Is there a ghost? Is there a spirit? Is there a "tulpa"? Is it RSPK?

Honestly, we don't know...

Like it or not, people have reported experiences there... and although it's history is muddied beyond recognition in most cases, it's a place where people now say they have "odd things happen".

Can I *prove* that these experiences are from some unknown entity? No.

Can I *prove* that every reported event was a mistake? No.

Can I say it certainly seems like many of us were "around" and watched the genesis of this site in terms of it's legends? Yes.

Does this make it "not haunted"? Doesn't seem so.

Now think about all this... just what does make a "haunted site"?

Seems to me, there's two things...

First is people genuinely experiencing things that seem ghostly that defy "normal" explanation...

Second is the people say it's a haunted place.

Meet either of these two prerequisites, and you have a haunted place on your hands!

Want to get rid of an entity of some sort?

A while back, on a "staycation" at home, I did a quasi-study over a week which was based on a selection of my own cases (one hundred reports selected randomly) and literally over five-hundred case studies of ghost reports based on a database of books and reports from other sources (again, randomly selected)... I did remove case studies by paranormal groups that did not follow up with a physician or at least an accredited third-party expert in medicine and of course, because of the taint, I removed any case by The Warrens so no one wonders about "Amityville" or the like... I found nothing... Not ONE case in my random selection where a witness or experient needed medical attention for a physical injury caused by a "ghost". On a secondary glance through my books, I found only TWO cases where a person was reported to have been physically hurt and requiring medical attention by an "unseen entity"... and one is from the early 1800's... the other from the 1970's. Upon review of a few articles, I can state that of the two, only one of these cases is relatively not questioned by people other than the usual suspects (CSICOPian types)... Now, considering Torontoghosts, Ontarioghosts, ParaResearchers, and PSICAN proper have over five-thousand, five-hundred reports online and over 63,000 reports offline... and not ONE requiring a witness to seek hospitalisation or help with an injury from a physician, and add to that an interview with the late Tony Cornell from The Society for Psychical Research claiming pretty much the same numbers in his studies...

DOING a quick estimation (using Google, I admit...) of active paranormal groups, areas that are currently covered, population and relative reports (and assuming every internet group only has fifteen reports,) I'd reckon your chances of being hurt or injured by an "entity" are ROUGHLY one in well over two-hundred thousand... and that's using only people who have "experienced" a ghost or entity.

Effectively, when looking at the population, your chances of winning over $1,000,000.00 in a standard-form forty-nine number lottery... twice... are a much better.

Your chances of needing medical attention at any level from some sort of "attack" from a ghost or entity is, as slightly stated above, almost zero... and when I say almost zero, I mean two potential (but argued cases,) in the last two-hundred and fifty years in Western Europe and North America... think about that. This means, without a lot of math, your chances of being hit by lightning twice and surviving are considerably better!

HOWEVER...

You don't need to do an indepth study of this... "Google" the following..

+dead +from +exorcism

Select "News" if you'd like.

It's a frightening statistic...

Now, again, you probably don't need an indepth for this either... How many people do you think have suffered fiscally because of fraudulent or worse "house clearers" or dodgey psychics?

What does this all prove?

HONESTLY, you have FAR more to fear from people who say they can "help" you get rid of a "ghost", "spirit", or "entity" then of the thing itself!

So, if you found this page looking to "rid" yourself of something unwanted, PLEASE remember...

FIRST: You have very little to be very worried about... honest.

SECOND: Remember, you're MUCH more likely to be hurt "running away from" or trying to "escape" a ghost then you are by the ghost itself.

THIRD: Make it a mantra... "I Will Not Open My Wallet or Chequebook For Help."

FOUR: Do not believe someone who tells you that THEY must help you... for a fee.

FIFTH: Read this page (click here) for some ideas and suggestions... and even a contact if needed.