Over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, I spent time in Massachusetts visiting family. It was an enjoyable break and I found myself with a lot of free time to relax and watch TV, a rare treat given my normally hectic schedule. I noticed that on several channels over the course of several hours each day there were shows about hauntings and supernatural manifestations in people’s homes. Of course I devoured all of these shows for hours on end and I realized that hauntings are something that we have not discussed on this blog and they are actually a very big part of the work I do. In fact, at least once a month I am contacted by somebody who is experiencing some form of paranormal activity in his or her home. Usually I offer some spiritual advice which is enough to calm the situation and it more explore cases I have have to travel to the location in question to conduct a more in depth investigation and offer deliverance services to set the haunting spirit free. The people who contact me do so with a range of emotions, sometimes mere fascination and curiosity other times in sheer terror. In any case, it’s important to understand the different types of hauntings and how to handle such situations if they ever arise.
The first type of haunting that I would like to discuss, or rather spiritual manifestation since it can’t properly be called a haunting, is an apparition. An apparition in simple terms is a ghost or the ghost like appearance of a spirit in the image of a person. While often a fundamental component of a haunting, an apparition differs in that it may occur only once and the spirit in question is not necessarily earthbound or troubled in any way. Oftentimes the apparition has a message to convey to the person or people to whom it appears. As a spiritually awakened person, I see and communicate with spirits almost on a daily basis, but witnessing an apparition is different. In such circumstances you see the spirit in question in solid, or near solid, physical form with your actual eyes and not through psychic perception. This has happened to me a handful of times in my life, usually during investigations into hauntings or spiritual disturbances, but one instance was particularly memorable as the spirit in question personally sought me out. I was visiting some friends who lived in a centuries’ old farm house in New England and long after they had gone to bed, I sat watching TV in the living room. As I stared at the TV screen, I felt a presence in the room and turned to see a woman dressed in Victorian garb standing in the middle of the floor smiling at me. At first I thought it was one of the people staying at the house who had tried on a costume, but I quickly realized that I did not recognize her face. In a light, bubbly, friendly voice she said “You have something that belongs to me.” I sat up, shaken and responded. “I’m sorry but I don’t know you. I don’t have anything that belongs to you.” She put her hands on her hips and said, “Yes, you have my stories.” Then she vanished into a fine mist. The following morning I asked my friend if they had ever experienced anything supernatural in the house, and they said they had not and over the years I have tried to use my skills as a medium to establish contact with this woman but I have not been able to and to this day I am still not sure what she was trying to tell me.
In my opinion, a haunting occurs when a spirit is trapped or bound to a certain location or person out of a sense of obligation due to a traumatic event such as a violent death or emotionally taxing incident that occurred at the location in question or because the entity feels a need to warn or possibly exact revenge on living people. Many times the spirits in questions do not even know they’re dead. In such cases where a soul remains earthbound and refuses or feels it is impossible to move on to the other side, then what we are dealing with is a ghost. As I will explain further on, it is easy to perform a deliverance service to help an earthbound spirit or ghost transition to the other side. It is important to say that there are two main types of hauntings, residual hauntings and active hauntings. The former usually occurs when a traumatic event happens in any given space and a psychic imprint remains and plays itself over and over again like a recording. The spirit in question has long since moved on but the event that transpired there tends to repeat itself on an energetic level sometimes with witnesses. An active haunting simply means that an earthbound spirit or “ghost” is present and able to interact with the living often in frightening or unsettling ways. Poltergeist activity, a common term in parapsychology, simply means that the entity in question, possibly the ghost of a once living person or an elemental spirit made of raw energy, acts out in physical ways such a breaking household items or physically touching or even throwing living people. The term comes from German and literally means “noisy ghost.” I consider demonic possession or infestation to be an issue separate from a haunting so we will not discuss it here other than to say that if you find yourself under demonic attack, you should first pray for deliverance and protection. Recite the St. Michael the Archangel prayer and seek competent spiritual help immediately from a priest or leader of your particular spiritual tradition.
An example of a residual haunting that happened to me personally occurred one early spring day when I was fourteen. It was one of the first warm days of the season and I was staying at my grandparents’ house in a rural New England town and I decided to take our dogs out for a long walk. I walked through forests and down dirt roads until arriving at a historical section of town and found a beautiful church that has been built sometime in the early 1800’s. I looked through the stained glass planes that served as windows on the front doors and was delighted to see that the church was filled with people wearing period costumes complete with cloaks, capes and bonnets. I tried to open the church door and enter but it was locked. I found it odd that the door was locked as I assumed they were having some sort of historical reenactment. I looked again through the glass trying to get somebody’s attention, but to my amazement the church was entirely empty! Then I realized that I had looked through a window to another time! This makes sense as the church in any rural community was the center of people’s lives for centuries and it was a place filled with hope, love, joy, sadness and inspiration so it stands to reasons that psychic imprints would have been left there for the occasional passerby to witness, especially those who are psychically sensitive.
An example of an active haunting happen to my friend Sarah when she moved into a new home in Deerfield, Massachusetts in the early 2000’s. That area of New England is known to have been the sight of bloody conflicts between the Native-Americans and European settlers in the 18th century and there are many accounts of supernatural activity no doubt unleashed by the senseless and horrific bloodshed during colonial times. Shortly after moving in, Sarah began to smell wood smoke when there were no fires anywhere around and she would hear voices outside her window speaking in a language unknown to her. One day she saw and Native-American man dressed in traditional garb standing on the edge of her property for a new moments before vanishing into thin air. Sarah was not at all shocked, having a solid belief in the supernatural she knew what to do. She immediately make a large spiritual feast of Indian pudding, cornbread, rice, flour dumplings, coffee, beer and boiled beans and squash and placed them outside on the edge of her property along with a candle. She told the spirits that she wished to share this land with them in peace and that she would continue to make offerings to them and to respect and care for the land itself. The Native-American spirits quickly became her personal spirit guides and she has lived in harmony with them ever since. I hesitate to call this a haunting since in traditional Native-American culture and religion the Earth is sacred so the spirits in question may not have in fact been “earthbound” but instead chose to remain on the land that they loved and that was sacred to them, but it is a beautiful example of how we can live in harmony with the spirit world and how it is important to show respect and kindness to the souls that have walked the Earth before us and to the land on which it is a privilege for us to make our homes.
Hauntings can manifest in many ways. There is often a feeling of an unseen presence in the home which can progress to physical items being moved. For example, I have an aunt who often returns home to find her perfume bottles placed in different locations throughout the house when nobody else has been there. Then is more extreme cases an actual ghostly apparition will occur. I do not recommend trying to communicate with the ghost and under no circumstances should you use a Ouija board or similar device as they can often serve as a portal of entry to all kinds of nasty entities. I would light a white candle and simply pray for the deliverance of the earthbound spirit in question. Pray first in your own words and then you can accompany this by prayers from your particular religious tradition for example the Our Father Hail Mary and Glory Be would be helpful or reading a few verses from scripture. In 99% of cases, this will be enough to help the earthbound spirit move on, but if the ghostly manifestations persist, I would advise seeking the help of a professional.
I hope you have enjoyed this article and if you have had any experiences with hauntings or ghosts I would love to hear about them. Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and as always I wish you peace, happiness and abundant blessings!
