sign in sign up
<<
Home , Ghost, Poltergeist, Precognition, Spirit (animating force)

THE COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF A ENCOUNTER

By

RANDY POWER

Integrated Studies Project

submitted to Reinekke Lengelle

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

August, 2007

Abstract

The primary goal of this endeavor was to research some of the common elements of a ghost encounter (GE). The topics covered include: electronic voice phenomena

(EVP), appearing in photographs, the ‘cold spot’, psychoactive drug induced encounters with the , emotional state of the witness, haunted buildings, and memorates or first-person retellings of a GE. I have taken a grounded theory approach throughout my study which allowed me to be lead by the research as opposed to focusing steadfast on any one area. In this essay evidence from academic journals published by various experts in the fields of and paranormal research is provided. I have avoided the more mainstream or pop-culture oriented books simply because most of these authors have not demonstrated rigorous enough inquiry into the subject. The academic journals will be complemented by the experiences recounted by close friends whom I interviewed. As opposed to proving the existence of ghosts I feel I have accumulated a repertoire of common characteristics of a GE; thereby substantiating the possible existence of such an experience. It is my hope that by bringing to light the characteristics of this experience further research may be undertaken in this area.

Things that go ‘bump in the night’ have plagued and excited humankind throughout history. While scientists have become far more adept at explaining previously unexplained phenomena (i.e. like Haley’s comet, which in earlier times might have been viewed by people as an apparition or spiritual ‘sign’) they have not been able to explain away so-called paranormal phenomena – like that of the ghost encounter (GE). However researchers have been able to find common characteristics associated with the GE and this paper intends to describe each of these in depth and provide examples. There are many unexpected phenomena that have not been explained by scientists. For instance, the persistent reports of objects in our sky, such as UFOs, or the presence of spectral entities1 in old buildings continue to defy explanation based on science2 (Butler, 2002, p. 215).

People from all over the world have reported encounters with ‘ghosts’ or reported bizarre and terrifying experiences that many claim are linked to those who have gone before.

Yet, it is a leap of for many of us to say that such seemingly common events like hearing inexplicable voices and seeing shadowy forms may be caused by ‘spirits’. Todd

Shy (2007), a book reviewer and critic of paranormal research, says: “People still believe in ghosts, of course, and most of us, if pressed, would confess to experiencing the . accumulate a little too frequently; our seem smarter than our waking worlds; we feel acted upon by things we can’t explain” (p.36). In 2005 a

Gallup poll was released which stated that three in four Americans believe in the paranormal. This statistic has changed little since 2001 where 38% of Americans believed in the paranormal. In 1998 a MORI poll was conducted which showed that 13%

1 For the purpose of this paper a spectral entity or specter is synonymous with ghost or apparition. 2 The term “paranormal” refers to anything beyond the normal scope of scientific explanation and therefore not possible to explain using current scientific laws. Ghosts and unidentified flying objects (UFOs) fall into the category of the paranormal. of Americans reported having an encounter with a ghost (MORI, 1998). While many of these supposed encounters and experiences have proven to be artifacts of our everyday technology or to simply originate from such mundane sources as solar activity or distant lightening, many have remained unexplained. For example, lightening can make lights flicker which could also be misinterpreted as being caused by a playful .3 It is not my goal to try and figure out exactly what the unexplained occurrences are, but rather to make a summary of what many of these experiences have in common and to give examples of what has been reported about these encounters, using from both the literature as well as from personal experience and from private conversations.

Although I am aware that the latter sources constitute anecdotal evidence, my reports will be substantiated by the work done by experts in this field. Cold spots, electronic voice phenomenon, photographs of spirits, and actual hauntings are the characteristics of a GE I will attempt to explain. In addition, I will be looking at how drugs may induce a GE, as well as the emotional states of witnesses prior to a ghost encounter.

It is debated whether or not the ghost encounter is actually a confrontation with a once living person or of some other origin, such as a or . Evidence from the article, “Electronic Voice Phenomena: A Tool for Validating Personal

Survival”, from The Journal of and Psychical Research suggests that the GE does exist and originates from some form of intelligence. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that the events described below could have occurred without some kind of intelligent

3 Such playful or childlike paranormal occurrences, such as lights flickering on and off and cupboard doors suddenly flying open, have been attributed to a particular class of entity – the . communication fueling the event4. Whether or not this intelligence was once of origin is more of a battle of than fact; one would have to question whether or not our living intelligence is carried over to the spirit world.

EVP is a scientific, technology-based, method for recording the sounds of entities.

A definition of entity is an -bound form of an intelligent being; for the purpose of this study I will say that the intelligent being was once a human being. EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena whereby one uses a microphone, a means of recording, and a computer program with the ability to segregate noise variants, such as background, foreground, and sound which does not register in the range of normal human hearing - anyone can record these unknown voices. Tom Butler, in his article “Electronic Voice

Phenomenon: A Tool for Validating Personal Survival”, claims that when someone conducts an EVP experiment there are a of common characteristics that emerge. First,

EVP has a distinctive frequency and volume merged within the background sound.

Second, EVP are complete words or phrases lasting approximately two seconds in length and which are not truncated at the beginning or end. Third, EVP are always in the language of the experimenter. For example, Alexander McRae, a leading EVP researcher, has conducted experiments in a place which has only Spanish radio and television stations yet when his recordings are examined it is found that the EVPs are in English, which happens to be his native tongue. This is especially intriguing and might serve as evidence that no matter the situation, an entity is trying to communicate with the one observing the phenomena. This might convince even the most stalwart critic of ghost encounters or it could give those critics reason to believe that the observer is in some way

4 In cases of EVP there are recordings of answers to specific questions and personalities which I believe must come from an intelligent source. influencing the results. Fourth, EVP are appropriate to the circumstance, for example there are numerous cases where a direct response to an observers question has been reported. Finally, EVP experimentation have been known to produce the voices of deceased loved ones (Butler, 2002, p.216). The EVP experience proves to the believer that ghosts can be recorded no matter how elusive they may be; however to the skeptic it proves little more than the ability to record low-frequency radio noise. Regardless, without the use of modern technology the EVP experience would never be known. Afore mentioned research has shown that each EVP tie the researcher to the environment or

“circumstance” in which it is confronted. Before moving on, an interesting hypothesis for

EVP has been suggested by Butler. He states that there are many levels of energy and . There is the physical form which has become our ‘reality’; however there are also levels of ‘life’ which go beyond the physical. “Physical is when a Self transitions out of a physical lifetime into a nonphysical lifetime” (Butler, 2002, p. 223). The Self is considered the and personality of the person which does not die with the physical body, but continues to live on a different level of reality in energy form.

Another characteristic of a ghost encounter is the phenomenon of ghosts appearing on photographs. I have found that photographs play a very important role in exploring spirit phenomena. While doing a study of ghost encounters at Memorial

University I had the opportunity to interview a childhood friend. For the purposes of this retelling I will call him Dave. He claimed to live in a house haunted by his grandmother.

He claimed that his grandfather had murdered his grandmother by shooting her in the head with a shotgun. One Christmas, when Dave was still a child, he and his family were opening gifts around the tree and had stopped the frolicking long enough to pose for a family picture. Dave was holding a favored toy and the dog was sitting in front of the family. When the picture was finally developed, the background showed an image of the deceased grandmother wearing the nightgown she had been murdered in – her head was missing. Strangely the family dog seemed to be looking at the specter bearing its teeth.

Another example I came across while being a participant of the St. John’s

Haunted Hike, hosted by Dale Jarvais, a Graduate from Memorial University, concerns the Basilica Church in St. John’s, Newfoundland. When the church was being constructed a workman fell from a scaffold to his death. Upon completion of the project the workmen took a congratulatory picture to commemorate the occasion. Standing there with the rest of the workers was the poor man who fell to his demise.

Alex Imich, a famous and renowned parapsychology professor and investigator had a similar experience when studying a medium who claimed to have the power to converse with the dead.5 The medium stated that she would attempt to make contact with

Imich’s deceased wife. While she was meditating and going into her Imich’s assistant took a picture of the medium’s face. When the picture was developed, instead of seeing the face of the medium, Imich saw the face of his dead wife, Wela (Imich, 2007, p.

32). Furthermore he says, “To confirm my impression, I made copies of the photo and sent them to five nieces and nephews of my wife. Two of them called and excitedly declared: ‘This is Wela,’ the name of my wife” (Imich, 2007, p.32).

My research has not revealed any theory as to why a ghost makes him or herself visible in a picture. My personal belief is that a spirit has the same intelligence it had when in the physical body. Granted some spirits may be confused or unable to accept

5 A medium is a person who supposedly has the power to enter a deep trance and then speak with the dead. In some cases, the medium claims to have the spirit enter their body. their , as was postulated by Dutch parapsychologist Van der Zeeuw (Van der

Zeeuw, 1977). However, once they learn to manipulate energy sources and to use energy around them to become ‘visible’ then it is just a matter of who they choose to show themselves to. If I look at the example of Dave it could be that his grandmother was watching the family that Christmas morning and decided to show herself in the picture.

The reasoning behind this can never truly be known. It is akin to wondering why a complete stranger acts the way they do. However another possibility may be that a camera is able to pick up on light signals that the human eye cannot. Maybe in that instance of flash photography the spirit is able to absorb that blast of light energy long enough to become visible and be caught in the eye of the camera. Sadly, I have found no theories to back up my own and I will leave my musings here.

Eerie sounds and ghostly photographs are all common elements of a ghost encounter. However, I have discovered through my research that psychoactive drug-use may be able to induce such a experience. Granted one may claim that those on drugs are more likely to hallucinate, there is some evidence that suggests that the use of these drugs may actually ‘open’ one up to see other levels of reality. In David P.

Luke’s (2007) article, “A Preliminary Survey of Paranormal Experiences with

Psychoactive Drugs”, he states very clearly that the term hallucinogen would not be favored to label certain drugs studied in his experiments simply because it would detract from, or taint, the actual experience of some his informants. He feared that would be considered the experience as opposed to the actual paranormal experience (p.

306). Of particular interest are the types of drugs discovered to possibly produce a GE.

The occurrence of ‘entity’ encounters and a sense of presence are associated with two groups of psychedelic drugs: dissociatives and the dimethyl group of tryptamines - the latter in particular. These experiences may also occur with other tryptamines, such as

LSD, but not so prominently as with DMT (N-dimethyltryptamine) and its related substances (Luke, 2006, p. 308). Without wading deeper into the murky waters of chemical terminology, I will say that these drugs alter consciousness and are used throughout the world; most notably by African tribe members to induce so-called

‘spiritual’ experiences. As mentioned above, it could be that the conscious-warping ability of these drugs can make a person more susceptible to the alternate level of reality where spirits dwell. Aboriginal people for centuries claim to have used psychedelic drugs to speak to spirit animals and other manifested messengers; of course this reaches into another area of research which I do not cover in this essay although Luke (2006) comments:

“There is also a healthy body of folklore and first-person reports of encounter experiences with plant spirits or intelligences - what Letcher (2004) calls "animaphany" - with the use of naturally occurring plant psychedelics such as Psilocybe mushrooms, Salvia divinorum, and peyote, to name a few” (p. 308).

In addition, DMT has been linked with the ability to speak with the dead and has been used by shamans in a variety of cultures. This plant has been called the “vine of the dead” or the “vine of the ”. Furthermore, Luke’s questionnaires, distributed to participants, showed that DMT was the drug which produced the greatest number of entity contacts and respondents time and time again claimed that they felt as if they were with “a universal energy” when such encounters happened (Luke, 2007, p.314). This “universal energy” may be the key to understanding the drug induced encounter. If spirits dwell within a realm of energy then it could be possible that DMT, or other psychoactive drugs, actually serve as a conscious ‘groomer’ preparing the individual to receive sensation and stimulation from a different realm of life based solely on energy and beyond the physical. Granted such statements are difficult to substantiate and can therefore easily be thrown aside or ridiculed, however of utmost importance is the fact that certain psychoactive drugs, like DMT, can produce a reported ghost encounter which has the same, if not very similar, characteristics with a ghost encounter where drugs did not play a role. Luke admits that the comparison between paranormal experiences brought on through chemicals and that of a genuine paranormal experience is open to heavy debate simply because of the limited research and experimental data thus available

(Luke, 2007, p. 321). However, from my own research over the years I have discovered that psychoactive drugs have been used to attempt to transcend or alter one’s reality, such as in deep meditation. Therefore I will hold to the possibility that certain drugs, like

DMT, may have the power to make our more receptive to a GE.

The cold spot is another characteristic of the GE, in fact it has become a hallmark of the ghost encounter. Very often a noise is reportedly heard in a part of a building; for instance a voice, a thud, a cry, a bang…and upon closer investigation a mysterious cold spot remains. When President Truman thought he heard the ghost of Abraham Lincoln in the House he opened the door, perhaps expecting to see the hazy image of the

American founding father, but instead was confronted with a chilling cold spot behind the door. Susan Martinez, paranormal researcher and author, states that the “Cold Wind” is inherent in thousands of cases of hauntings and ghost encounters (Martinez, 2003, p.

183). Martinez reports that the American Civil War has laid ground for a multitude of places where these cold spots occur. In Cedar Glade, a national park for the Stone River

Battle Field in Tennessee, she postulates that perhaps there is a rendezvous point for slain soldiers who return to the area in spirit form. She claims that this area is privy to unusual cold spots even in the dead heat of a Tennessee Summer (Martinez, 2003, p. 184). She also says that in the areas of the worst recorded killings there is an unnatural cold.

However these cold spots are not a rarity to researchers of the paranormal. There is a manse near Nashville that is reportedly haunted. It was used to house severely injured and dying soldiers during the Battle of Franklin on November 30, 1864 (Martinez, 2003, p. 185). Claims have also been made that there is a “weeping maiden” housed in the mansion. Reports have been made of her gliding effortlessly from room to room on the second floor or softly weeping for a love, likely lost. An encounter with this particular entity has been linked to the presence of a “cold and wintry air” (Martinez, 2003, p.185).

Even in the Christian there is some evidence of the cold spot:

“…the time of the birth of the child was three days after the descent of a heavenly ship from the throne of . And many of the Es’eans looked up and beheld the star, and they felt the cold wind of the higher fall upon the place and around about the tent where the child was born…” (Martinez, 2003, p. 186).

Regardless of one’s religious beliefs this example shows that the ‘cold spot’ has been linked to the supernatural or ‘other world’ since the time of . At the very least this may be evidence of the longevity of the characteristic. This is not to say that baby Jesus was a ghost, but based on this example there may have been some ‘unseen witnesses’ to his conception. To further the ‘cold wind’s’ role in religion we need only refer to India’s

Capilya for it reiterates this tableau: “…And when they were thus standing, Jehovih sent a cold wind, and there came down from an abundance of Ahaoma, sufficient to feed the whole of the people for many days” (Martines, 2003, p. 186).

Thus the cold spot has been reported by of more than one culture. If, as most religions claim, there is an , one might postulate that the cold spots that observers experience are in fact some form of spiritual presence. I feel it is plausible that our energy remains and it is this energy which causes the cold spots that we feel in our physical, material world. Here is an explanation that Martinez offers, but more research would have to be done: she refers to an apparition’s need to absorb energy from its surroundings in order to attempt a manifestation. The spirit absorbs heat energy leaving a cold spot in its wake.

In addition, the people of the Chuuku state, Federated States of Micronesia6, believe that the body has two spirits a good and a bad. In life, a person’s good soul

(ngúnúééch) could leave the body and travel around periodically. Some continue to believe that dreams are the manifestation of the good spirit’s wanderings (Mahony 1969).

Good spirits depart the body about four days after death, and thereafter are referred to as sootupw. They drift around the Chuukese cosmos, traveling back and forth between the land of the living and the land of the spirits. They continue to intervene in human affairs, being both supportive and punishing. One’s bad soul (ngúnúngaw), on the other hand, was believed to be circumscribed by the body, being forever tied to it. Thus when a corpse was buried, the individual’s ngúnúngaw hovered around the grave for , being malicious and frightening. It would indiscriminately attack people, making them

“act strangely or go berserk,” and was characterized by cannibalistic tendencies

6 The Federated States of Micronesia is an island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, northeast of Papua New Guinea. (Mahony, 1969, p.135). Hence we see a distinction between good and bad spirits. To draw a connection back to the common elements of EVPs it is interesting to note that many EVPs that are taken in and around often evoke malicious voices demanding the investigator to leave immediately or in some cases horrific growls and frightening screams can be heard. This would seem to coincide with the Chuuku’s belief that the evil spirit of a person tends to hover around their site. As a result, we see some common characteristics within belief systems emerging.

Many people in various cultures believe that an emotional or psychological state can produce a ghost encounter. The Amazonian Wari’7 for instance, recognize that spirits of the dead do not appear at random, but only to those who dwell on their memories.

“Memory itself attracts ghosts” (Dernbach, 2005, p.101). In many cases of ghostly encounters the one who witnesses a manifestation or other form of contact is enduring long-lasting . The ‘grief factor’, as I will call it, is a prevalent motif of the ghost encounter. For example, Sara Greene, one of my informants, says that after the death of her grandmother she would spend countless hours weeping and this loss. After nearly a month of heartache she began to smell her grandmother’s perfume about her bedroom during times of severe sorrow. She said that the smell would come from nowhere as if on a gentle wind and would always make her feel better (personal communication, 2007). Similarly, informant Muriel Lane recalls the memory of her father’s death when she was a small girl. She would often lie awake at night feeling utterly alone in the world. She remembered feeling a hand touch her cheek on certain occasions and she knew it must have been her father comforting her (personal

7 These people are native to the state of Rondônia, Brazil and were first seen by European settlers at the shores of the river Pakaa Nova, which is a right-bank-tributary of the Mamoré River. communication, 2007). My own mother has had a similar experience. When my grandmother passed away about fifteen years ago, my mother went into a state of depression for months. My grandmother lived with us and was like a second parent to both my sister and me. After her passing, my mother simply could not let go. She would spend countless hours weeping; shutting out all who were around her. Months later when she finally came around and back to herself she told me that my grandmother had helped her through the grief. She said that she could feel her presence and smell her perfume at times. According to anthropologist and author Beth Conklin (2001), “This process of detachment may include various “tie-breaking” that mourners in many societies engage in, where reminders of the dead are destroyed, discarded, given away, or otherwise transformed.” Grief is a universal feeling and like the Amazonian Wari’ we in our culture are not immune to it. It would seem that strong, enduring grief can elicit a ghost encounter in some form – be it a simple feeling or presence, a gentle touch, or a comforting smell.

Many ghost encounters occur in a so-called haunted building. Ghost encounters have been reported in homes but are not limited to homes. Churches, hospitals, airports, train stations, warehouses, and schools can ‘house’ a spirit. While doing a Folklore course called “Folklore and the Supernatural” at Memorial University I learned there are all kinds of ideas about why a ghost might occupy a certain space. Ideas around this include: if a person is murdered the spirit may remain trapped because of a sense of revenge or to set right the wrongness of their death. If a promise is left unfulfilled a person may remain in a localized area seeking to complete their quest. Furthermore, the spirit of a victim may remain in a restless state of torment. Granted these are all theories and speculations and have to be taken with a grain of salt. However, the fact remains that bizarre events do take place in buildings and these events may be classified as GEs. In addition the events which occur in reported haunted places share a fascinating commonality with one another. Paranormal investigator, (2003), says that in cases of alleged hauntings a large number of seemingly trustworthy witnesses consistently report experiencing unusual phenomena (e.g. apparitions, sudden changes in temperature, a strong sense of presence) in certain locations. Through my own research I have found this quality in informants as well. People who experience a GE, for the most part, are ordinary people. Granted some folk are considered mystics and eccentrics who claim to have extra sensory powers or , but a proponent of ghost encounters could just as easily say that some people are simply more attuned to such entities.8

During ghost encounters there can be a torrent of stimuli including apparitions, unusual odours, sudden changes in temperature, and a strong sense of presence (Lange,

Houran, Harte, & Havens, 1996). These occurrences are further backed up by Martinez

(2003):

“In the corpus of parapsychology inquiry there is usually a barrage of stimuli which accompanies a ghost encounter. It may include the auditory, such as sounds of rattling or peels of thunders, or the olfactory, such as smells of sulfur and violet” (p.185).

These occurrences are anything but subtle which leads to another set of queries as to whether or not a ghost has the ability to plan an encounter with an individual and if a spirit retains the intelligence it had while still alive. However a ‘haunting’ is a very

8 During the Cold War Russia was investigating people who supposedly had the ability of precognition, and . They planned on using such ‘mystics’ for military advantage. For further information refer to Len Kasten’s, Discoveries Since the Cold War. special kind of ghost encounter. The encounter is not an isolated event happening to just one person, but rather an experience which happens to many people over many years, sometimes hundreds of years – it is only then that a building or area establishes a reputation and is labeled a haunted spot (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe,

2003). It is believed that may happen for a variety of reasons, for example a spirit may wish to resolve problematic or unacceptable social situations left in the wake of his or her death. The spirits of (mostly male) “suiciders” (by hanging), often want to communicate with their relatives in order to reveal the reasons why they killed themselves, to vent their feelings of anger or sadness, and to say goodbye to their loved ones (Dernbach, 2005, p. 116).

Two very interesting case studies of alleged hauntings surround the Hampton

Court Palace, in England, and the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Paranormal researcher Richard Wiseman and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments within these two assumed haunted places. Firstly, Hampton Court Palace is frequently referred to as ‘one of the places in England’ and allegedly contains the ghost of Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII (Wiseman, Watt,

Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe, 2003). Fifteen months after her marriage to the King in

1540, Catherine Howard was found guilty of adultery and sentenced to death (Thurley,

1996). Legend suggests that upon hearing the news, Catherine Howard ran to the King to plead for her life, but was dragged back along a section of the Palace now known as ‘the

Haunted Gallery’ (Guiley, 1994; Underwood, 1971). By the turn of the century, the

Gallery had become associated with various unusual experiences, including sightings of a

‘woman in white’ and reports of inexplicable screams (Law, 1918). Secondly, the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh, Scotland is the home of the second study. Edinburgh’s South

Bridge was constructed in the late 18th century to aid transportation problems in the city.

The Bridge consisted of nineteen huge stone arches supporting a wide road laced with several three-storey buildings. A series of ‘vaults’ (i.e. small chambers, rooms and corridors) were built into the Bridge’s arches to house workshops, storage areas and accommodation for the poor (Henderson, 1999). However, ineffective weatherproofing and overcrowding meant that by the mid-19th century the vaults had degraded into a disease-riddled slum. The area was vacated during the late 19th century, but rediscovered and opened for public tours in 1996. During some of these tours, both members of the public and guides have experienced many unusual phenomena, including, for example, a strong sense of presence, several apparitions and ‘ghostly’ footsteps (Wilson, Brogan, &

Hollinrake, 1999).

To find out more researchers had a barrage of volunteers scour the area in search of any evidence of ghostly phenomena. Within Hampton Court Palace, a total of 462 participants ventured into its many rooms. To break this number down further there were

36 groups in total who were then further divided into 18 groups who went their separate ways inside the Palace. In the depths of the South Bridge Vaults participants were self- selecting members of the public who had seen the experiment listed in the programme of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. Participants took part in one of six daily sessions held over the course of 4 days. Each session involved a maximum of 10 people.

(Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe, 2003). No one was given background information so that the results would not be contaminated by ‘wishful’ occurrences in certain areas of each location. Some researchers have argued that the witnesses involved in alleged hauntings may have had prior knowledge about which parts of a building were

‘haunted’, and that this may be responsible for them reporting a disproportionately large number of unusual experiences in these areas. There are several ways in which this may happen. For example, witnesses’ prior knowledge about a ‘haunted’ area may cause them to assign special significance to any unusual phenomenon experienced in that area, therefore increasing the likelihood of them telling others about their experience

(Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe, 2003).

Furthermore, the results of the participant interaction within the environments are quite interesting and have similarities with other GEs. Participants at Hampton Court

Palace reported a total of 431 unusual experiences: 189 (43.8%) of these experiences were reported in the Haunted Gallery and 242 (56.2%) in the Georgian Rooms; 215

(46.5%) participants reported at least one experience. Approximately two thirds of these experiences involved an unusual change in temperature. The remaining one third involved a mixture of phenomena including, for example, a feeling of dizziness, headaches, sickness, shortness of breath, some form of ‘force’, a foul odour, a sense of presence and intense emotional feelings. When asked whether their experiences were due to a ghost, 8 (3.72%) participants indicated ‘Definitely yes’, 22 (10.23%) ‘Probably yes’,

80 (37.21%) ‘Uncertain’, 87 (40.46%) ‘Probably no’ and 18 (8.37%) ‘Definitely no’

(Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe, 2003). Wiseman and his colleagues note that it is possible that the participants may have been swayed into entering a state of heightened sensitivity or proneness to stimuli. However, in my opinion the characteristics experienced provide more evidence that may support a common body of ghost encounter phenomenon; especially the drops in temperature.

Coinciding with the experiences of the participants in England, the participants in

Scotland reported very similar, if not identical encounters: Participants reported a total of

172 unusual experiences. Whereby 95 (43.58%) participants reported at least one experience. Again, the majority of these experiences involved an unusual change in temperature, but also included descriptions of apparitions, a strong sense of being watched, burning sensations, strange sounds, and odd odours. When asked to rate whether experiences were due to a ghost, 1 (.67%) experience was rated ‘Definitely yes’,

4 (2.67%) ‘Probably yes’, 58 (38.67%) ‘Uncertain’, 65 (43.33%) ‘Probably no’ and 22

(14.67%) ‘Definitely no’ (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe, 2003). The results of both experiments are highly consistent, with around 45% of participants in each experiment reporting at least one unusual experience. Some of these experiences were powerful for participants and were interpreted as being due to a ghost. Regardless of their interpretation by participants, all of these experiences are important and relevant to the question of the phenomenology of haunt experiences, as they give an indication of the incidence and nature of unusual experiences under controlled conditions in a potentially haunted location while providing a bank of commonalities to the experience (Wiseman,

Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keefe, 2003).

Over the years I have sought out numerous people to share their memorates with me. A memorate is a first hand account of a ghost encounter. I have interviewed and recorded two close friends of mine in the past and deposited the sessions in Memorial

University of Newfoundland’s Folklore Archive. My good friends Dale Meaney, Cory

Earle, and Paul Blackwood have all had encounters with spirits; oddly enough none of these experiences were pleasing. However, within all three memorates are common characteristics. Cory’s encounter happened at a friend’s house on numerous occasions about a decade ago. While visiting this friend, Cory would sometimes here babies crying from behind walls, would see , “blacker than black” he would say, creep across a wall, and he even had an encounter with an apparition of a large gentlemen in the workroom of the house. Cory described the gentlemen as being about six feet tall and wearing old fashioned “English style” clothing (personal communication, 2007).

Furthermore, Cory would feel a threatening presence in the downstairs basement. In addition to Cory’s experience in this home I have had one of my own ghostly experiences. A friend and I were in this same basement, which I might add always gave me the creeps because of a damp coldness and a sense of always being watched, but on this particular occasion the drum set which was in the corner of the room beat three times. I remember feeling terrified and running from the room

Similar to the experience Cory had of seeing the tall, dark gentleman in the workroom, my very good friend Paul Blackwood reported a terrifying encounter with a spirit in his grandmother’s home one night. Paul described several strange encounters with the inexplicable, but this one he admits as being the most terrifying. Paul remembers being around the age of fourteen and sleeping in the downstairs spare bedroom in his grandmother’s house and being awakened by footsteps coming down the stairs which were right outside his opened bedroom door. Naturally he stared toward the door to see who was coming downstairs at such a later hour. Coming from the stairs and slowly entering his bedroom was an old woman engulfed in a dull white glow (personal communication, 2007). He recalls being terrified and screaming out for his stepfather

John. John ended up running into the room and straight through the apparition which vanished all at the same time. I asked Paul why he felt afraid and he could not answer me, he simply said that he knew if the old lady made it to his bed it would not have been good. Oddly enough I have an inexplicable experience with Paul as well in a house he lived in with his mother many years ago. We were both teenagers at the time, perfectly sober I might add, and we were listening to music in his room. Before this night Paul had told me about feeling a presence in his room and even hearing scratching noises on his door during the night. I did not pay much attention to this. However that night we were enjoying a song by the Pixies. The name of the song is “Monkey Gone to Heaven” and in the lyrics it says, “…and if the devil is six then God is seven…” The words “and if the devil is six” is repeated in the song in sequence. On this night, however, while the song was playing the words, “and if the devil is six”, was repeated an extra time and in an incredibly deep voice. I did not even notice the occurrence until Paul jumped up, said something like, “Holy crap did you hear that!?” and stopped the cd. Paul said that the deep voice that said the extra lyric should not have been there and sure enough when he skipped the cd back to that particular section of the song the deep voice was not there.

Hence in these two memorates we have some very similar characteristics; namely seeing an apparition, hearing inexplicable auditory phenomena, and feeling a presence. Likewise the General Wayne Inn in Pennsylvania has its own share of encounters. For example a hostess recounts setting up for dinner and hearing a voice call her name. When she looked to the direction of the voice she saw an apparition on the stairs: “I would say it was three-dimensional.... The figure that I saw on the stairs was not transparent. I couldn't see through the figure, and that’s what startled me so...” (Maher, 2000). Furthermore the

Inn’s maitre d’ reported hearing inexplicable auditory phenomena: “I heard footsteps, just as if somebody was walking down the entire length of the bar, all the way down. And the people sitting in the bar stools felt the boards moving. And I was facing the direction that...the footsteps were going down. And I did not see anybody. All I heard were the footsteps. I heard them loud and clear. And they went the entire length of the bar and when they got to the end of the bar they stopped” (Maher, 2000).

As we have learned from this essay not all ghost encounters result in actually seeing or hearing an apparition. In fact some ‘encounters’ are associated with other strange happenings. For instance: the disappearance of keys, slippers, or food, and their reappearance a few days later (Imich, 2007, p.31). Dale Meaney, a childhood friend and one of my first informants, moved into a home which he claimed to be over 100 years old in Bedford, Nova Scotia. He recalls smelling toast at times when there was no one making toast, smelling roses and coming home to inexplicable messes. Back when these occurrences took place, Dale was pursuing a degree in computer and he recalls having piles of “still frame” pages stacked about in various rooms of his house (personal communication, 2007). One day he came home from work to find his neatly stacked pages scattered all about the floor. There was no one else in the house and he could not find any reasonable explanation, such as an open window. On another occasion he came home to find all the books from his book case removed and stacked up his staircase, a few on each stair all the way the to the top. These occurrences coincide with happenings at the general Wayne Inn. A waiter recalls the staff preparing for a large wedding reception that would be held the next day. He says that the staff set the tables for the more than three hundred guests the night before. However the next day they found that all the napkins from every table were thrown on the floor. Nothing else was touched, just the napkins (Maher, 2000). As to why a ghost chooses to show itself, why it makes noises, and why it chooses to make a mess is a question we will likely never be able to answer.

Maybe these spirits are trying to get our attention, trying to alleviate some of their own boredom, or maybe crying for help. In any event the common elements, as bizarre as they may be, are there and are known to exist.

It would be an error to assume that all reported ghost encounters are legitimate.

To the contrary, even though I may be considered a believer, I am always looking for other possible explanations for peculiar phenomenon, for the paranormal. Only after examining all other possibilities will I consider a memorate plausible.

(1996) gives the example of seeing a hazy image in the deep dark words. He says that based on our anxiety level, the environment, and our past experiences and knowledge we are prone to believe certain things. These “things” are not always rational nor are they always true (p. 64). I would have to agree. People make mistakes and human error undoubtedly has created many a fantastical ; when in fact it was simple misinterpretation of stimuli. However, this does not count for the torrent of ghost stories from around the world, many sharing common characteristics as I have described above.

Some 200 years ago, the science of Biology was much more primitive than today.

According to the prevailing of that time, caterpillars were born from the hives, and flies from rotten meat. Diseases were caused by miasma, or bad air (Imich, 2007, p.33). The science surrounding the paranormal is at best a step above primitive in my opinion and is akin to studying bacteria with a very ancient microscope. However, it is clear that reported GEs have common elements. There are inexplicable cold spots, there are apparitions, and we can sometimes replicate a ghost encounter by conditioning our brain with psychoactive drugs. ‘Ghosts’ appear in our photographs and on our recordings; they seem to be able to respond to us and some might say they even have their own

‘personalities’. These experiences are so common that they should be given more serious consideration and be researched thoroughly in the . After all, it could become the greatest discovery in human history to prove that our physical lives are merely a stepping stone to another level of existence. Then again Freud may say this is just wish fulfillment; our natural defense mechanism ready to stave off the of death with hope for a continued life.

Reference List

Alcock, James E. (1996). “The Propensity to Believe.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: Phagocytes: Biology, Physiology, Pathology, and Pharmacotherapeutics, V. 775, 64-78.

Butler, Tom. (2002). “Electronic Voice Phenomena: A Tool for Validating Personal Survival.” Journal of religion and Psychical Research. 25(4), 215,12.

Conklin, B. (2001). “Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society.” Austin.

Dernbach, Katherine Boris (2005). “Spirits of the Hereafter: Death Funerary Possession, And the Afterlife in Chuuk, Micronesia.” Ethnology. 44(2), 25, 99-123.

Guiley, R. E. (1994). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. London: Guinness Publishing.

Gallup Poll, 2005.

Imich, Alex. (2007). “My Life with Parapsychology: The Most Important Science.” Journal of and Paranormal Studies. 30(1), 30-35.

Law, E. (1918). The Haunted Gallery of Hampton Court. London: Rees. Henderson, J. (1999). The Town Below the Ground. London: Mainstream.

Letcher, A. (2004). Mad thoughts on mushrooms: Discourse and power in the study of psychedelic consciousness. [Audio CDROM]. Paper presented at the internadonal conference “Exploring Consciousness: With What Intent?” Bath Spa University, UK.

Luke, David P.(2006). “A Preliminary Survey of Paranormal Experiences with Psychoactive Drugs.” Journal of Parapsychology.

Maher, Michaeleen C. (2000) “Quantitative Investigation of the General Wayne Inn.” Journal of Parapsychology. 64(4).

Mahony, F. (1969). “A Trukese Theory of Medicine.” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.

Martinez, Susan. (2003). “The Cold Wind.” Journal of Religion and Psychical Research. 26(4), 183, 6.

Mori Poll, 1998.

Shy, Todd. (2007). “Ghost Hunters: and the Search for Scientific Proof Of Life After Death.” The Christian Century. 124(4).

Thurley, S. (1996). Hampton Court Palace. London: Historic Royal Palaces Agency. Wilson, A. J., Brogan, D., & Hoflinrake, E (1999). Hidden and Haunted: Underground Edinburgh. Edinburgh: Mercat Tours. van der Zeeuw, Gijsbert. (1977). “The Man in the Yellow Robe; Lessons by and Experiences With the Masters of Mystery. or law: 1, Exposition Press, Hicksville NY.

Wiseman, Richard, , Paul Stevens, Emma Greening and Ciaran O'Keeffe. (2003). “An Investigation into Alleged ‘Hauntings’.” British Journal of Psychology. 94(2).