So I’ve been meaning to get started with the paranormal posts, but as you’re about to find out with a big set of announcements next Monday, I’ve been really busy.  Plus it’s about time to start getting ready for the tarot book release and I have a few mini projects coming soon too (that’ll be part of the Monday announcement) so I’ve been tied up.  But, here we are, ready to get started talking about the things that are apparently going bump in the night for a lot of people.  I get so many questions about these things and I have a bit of a different perspective on them thanks to my own personal experiences and my time studying and becoming a CPI (certified paranormal investigator).  The first thing that I wanted to talk about is something that can help you with determining if you even have a haunting or a situation of concern on your hands.  We’re going to talk about residual hauntings.

A residual haunting, also sometimes called psychic recordings, imprints, or place hauntings.  These types of hauntings are the result of very strong and deep human energy connected to a specific event becoming trapped, or imprinted, on a location.  The energy from these events can become trapped in the land as well as the physical buildings on the land.  Some people who experience these types of activities will do things like attempt to demolish a location and rebuild only to find that it doesn’t help matters because the energy is in the land too. The imprint is not only part of the energy of the land and the physical place but also on time and space.  And because of this it makes dealing with a residual haunting very difficult.

What happens in a residual haunting?
A residual haunting is identified by the same events happening over and over again in the exact same way, at the exact same time, or with the exact same triggers. This could be that every day at 5pm you hear a train whistle go by outside your kitchen window when there haven’t been train tracks there for 100 years.  Maybe every Christmas Eve you hear the sounds of the thumping feet of children in the middle of the night going down your stairs when your own children have been long out of the home.  These events had such large amounts of emotion and energy behind them that the event left a mark on the space and time where it happened and now the event plays on a loop, over and over, like a DVD on repeat.

These events are always happening.  The children running down the stairs is replying constantly but the energy was most pitched on Christmas Eve so that’s when the ripple in time, so to speak, is strong enough for us to perceive it.  Some residual hauntings have events connected to them that have them reply only at certain time of the year or, like the train whistle, every day.  Each residual haunting and psychic impression is going to be different.

Both tragic and happy events can leave imprints but we seem to mostly notice the tragic ones.  One of the biggest known residual hauntings in the United States is on constant repeat is at Gettysburg.  Thousands of people who visit the site each year come away with stories of hearing cannons go off or hearing the sounds of soldiers screaming in pain.  There are no spirits there to be afraid of (at least in this instance) because the majority of what is being experienced on the battlefield is just an imprint playing on loop. 

How do you know you’re dealing with these kinds of events?
The first thing to understand is that there are two general categories that paranormal events are classified under; intelligent and non-intelligent.  What this means is either the ghosts involved can communicate with the living or they can’t.  In the cast of a residual haunting, because it’s the result of an energy imprint, we’re dealing with a non-intelligent haunting.

The next thing to keep in mind is that with non-intelligent hauntings no harm will come to you.  The ghosts and the energy related to the events are not able to connect to or communicate with the living, so there is nothing to be afraid of, it just becomes an annoyance.

So if you’re experiencing something that you notice every day at the same time or in some sort of regular pattern, and the event is always the same, you’re likely dealing with a residual haunting.  If you know that every Wednesday at 10pm you’re going to hear a scream and dishes smashing on your kitchen floor, prepare to try and interact with the energy one week.  Go into your kitchen with a voice recorder and run it starting about 5 minutes before you normally experience the activity.  After it happens give yourself a minute and then call out to the spirits or ghosts that you feel may be there.  Do you notice any changes in the atmosphere?  Do you hear anything?  Do you sense anything?

After about 5 to 10 minutes turn off your recorder and listen to the playback with headphones on. You may need to re-listen a few times to be sure of what you’re hearing.  Was anything picked up on the recording in response to your attempts to communicate?   If no, for the sake of being sure, try this experiment again two more times.  If you still get nothing and everything seems to happen in the exact same manner each time, it is safe to say you’re dealing with a residual haunting.  If you do get any sort of response, then you’re dealing with something else and we’ll talk about intelligent hauntings in the future.  But chances are if you’re experiencing anything like what is described here, you’re dealing with a non-intelligent residual haunting.

How do I get rid of it?
In the case of a residual haunting, because it’s not creating energy or able to interact with the energy of the living, there is nothing to be worried about and nothing to be afraid of.  But, as the same time, there is also little that can be done to get rid of it.  The long and short of it is there is nothing that can be done to get rid of a residual haunting.  Much like a horror movie that might be scary to watch or hear, it’s just a movie and it can’t hurt you; there is nothing to truly fear.  That’s the same here.  These types of hauntings can’t hurt you because they aren’t “real”, in way, and they can’t interact with you.  There are no actual ghosts or spirits attached to it.  All we can do with these types of hauntings is learn to either live with them, ignore them, or move away from them.

The energy of a residual haunting is often what makes up the feel of a place or it’s part of it’s history and legend.  Without the events and energy still playing over and over at Gettysburg there would be so many people that wouldn’t have such great stories to tell about their trip there.  People go there because they know they’ll experience this and they expect it.  If you have this sort of thing going on in your home, take some time to visit the town hall or local library and find out if there might be some sort of lesser known but interesting story to the events in your area.  Maybe there is some great urban legend attached to that phantom train whistle after all!