For five years, while I was married, I was a member of a paranormal investigation team in Colorado. My ex-wife started the club because she was really into those ghost hunting shows that were really popular at the beginning of the 2000s. She even got a TAPS affiliation, which meant that the group was referred to by people with cases they got from Colorado for the show that they didn’t want to come out and produce. But they didn’t want to look like dicks for ignoring either.
After five years of weekends sitting in cold, musty basements, hanging out in dark rooms in people’s houses, and listening to anecdotes of hauntings, it is my experience that people might have had weird things happen that are difficult to explain, ghosts are 99% not the explanation. Maybe even 99.99999999999999999% not the explanatioin.
The majority of what I saw out in the field was the majority of people being mentally ill (diagnosed much of that time and on medication–like hard core psychotropics), lonely, bored, or just businesses looking to get attention because they had a ghost story with a little provenence.
Probably the most valid reason for a “haunting” was living near high-test powerlines, which can really screw with your body’s fight or flight reactions and in worst case scenarios cause halicinations.
You know what else causes people to see ghosts? A whole team of people running cables and cameras through their house, asking questions to the open air to play back on a voice recorder, and even the biggest crock of shit ever…the ghost boxes that pick up electromagnetic fluxuations and spit out random words. Note too that the words are always spooky words.
There’s all sorts of cool things that might explain ghosts. Quantum entanglement is one. So is “place memory” but that seems a little bit more woo-woo than it probably deserves credit for. Basically the entire world has the potential to be a big memory stick that can play back events on a loop, like Princess Leia asking Obi-Wan for help.
I love the idea of a good ghost story though. The thought of it gives me chills. But after seeing so many people out there who needed help in other ways and instead got a bunch of nerds with cameras validating their halucinations, I’m not a fan anymore.
I live in a 110 year old house, which my aunts, my grandma, my cousins, etc. claim was haunted. It’s not. Like many of the “clients” I see a couple generations of people who needed attention for those stories and also needed to feel important, like they were chosen by the ghosts who revealed themselves unto them. The house is not haunted. It’s just old. It was practically built old.
The only thing that haunts it is my aunt who acts as though everyone within a mile vicinity of her has to do everything she tells them to do. Because she will throw the biggest fit if they don’t. She’s the originally flopper. The original “Karen.” She called the police on me the other day for putting a lock on the back gate while I was doing laundry so she wouldn’t accost me. Unfortunately she still lives next door. She respects no boundaries, digs through my trash and tools, and cries to the police about it when I object to these shenanigans.
Much like people with religious hysteria, it stems back to a need to be important. These are the same people who have told everyone in town for the last 70 years that they are Native American, even creating a myth of “Grandpa Whitefeather” when the DNA results always come back the same. You are NOT Native American.
From my mom’s side of the family–you know, the side that was always looked down on and treated like trash–I do get some Native American DNA. That and $5 will get you a coffee at Starbucks. They also went around for a time telling people they were Irish and that’s why they were “fighters.” Again, Maury Povich would say their DNA is about as Irish as my DNA is American Indian.
I ran DNA and geneology a long way back, but nobody seems to care about facts. They just care about their narrative. Just like with hauntings. And other BS people will die on their hills for.
I’m tired of dealing with people who pull this crap. It makes me so tired.
Scooby-Doo was right all along, people. There are no ghosts. Probably. Only people with nothing better to do that cause drama with glow in the dark Halloween masks, bed sheets, and old film projectors. Most hauntings are just a means to get someone’s way. If there is anything supernatural going on, you can bet what people are capable of is much worse.
Now, shop elves, the fae, and other things…well, there’s some reason you can never find that 10mm socket.
Wendigo Mountain 