Yes, I was a haunted house and I know there are more of you out there just about dying to stand up, step forward, clear your throats and beg to go first. You just have to wait.
I want to clear something up.
Not every house is haunted. Not every haunted house is haunted. Last, it doesn’t take long at all for a house to become haunted. A brand new home, smelling of preservative, can be haunted. Well, except they aren’t really haunted. Most of the time anyway.
Let’s talk about Spirits.
Spirits attach themselves to the oddest things. Some are weak, sort of like fondness’s, they aren’t going to frighten anyone. Spirits come to linger over a stereo system, an old antique brush and mirror set, a lamp, even. But they have no real form.
Think of being touched lightly, stroked even then the breath of a sigh follows and the feeling dissipates. That’s how a spirit is, mostly.
Some spirits are better formed – but very fleeting.
These move into a house connected to wonderfully pre-owned furniture.
These are the things that go bump in the night as they explore strange land they have been moved to. These spirits are fleeting – because once they get their bearings, they can leave, they go on outward to find their other bits of well loved furniture.
We had two of those here.
One came with a small couch and the other came with a cabinet. One came back regularly, stayed a little while then would go off again like a tom cat.
Let me tell you about a fair number of the folks who are recently dead.
Yes, we are moving along to the recently dead. Are they really haunting the house?
Some of the recently gone over are frightened and confused. They don’t show up in a house sometime for months.
You need to understand that a newly crossed spirit is confused. Especially if they were terribly ill or suddenly taken, murdered, or hit by a truck.
Like I started to explain – they tend to hang out with their bodies at the funeral home. They aren’t well formed till later, but they even though they see their own funerals, they can’t gather themselves enough to really hear it or see it. These are scattered, blob like and sporadic.
Later these ghostlike become more self aware and less confused and begin to pull themselves together.
They tend to start out with a not so healthy or integrated form of their recent selves but with some calmness and acceptance, they take a younger form. Once this is done, they travel here and there, darting in and out of childhood homes and schools, bar haunts of adulthood.
The newly dead as time goes on may return to see the humans they left behind but that can be rather frustrating, at this point the dead can hear and see but they still seem unable to interact.
I have to tell you at this point, because I didn’t before. Not all spirits are dead. The ones attached sentimentally to an object are not always dead. In life there are a lot of strings attached.
Okay, back to the dead ones.
They may haunt a house. They may sweep through and stay a bit but mostly it is abandoned houses that have the more stay at home ghosts.
It isn’t all that much fun to hang around with the living.
A ghost seems to be bound by its own imaginings, its own particular hells. Doubts and regrets can chain a spirit just as much as the fellow who wore the chains he forged in life.
Then there is true evil, the flip side of sentimental elements.
Evil is more than a wistful thought.
It is sort of like anger that accumulates, much as the fear and confusion of the newly dead. But anger has harder edges. Evil is more defined than fear and confusion. It doesn’t ever get itself together. It doesn’t evolve or calm down.
Evil is not observant and although it does have boundaries, it isn’t aware of them.
Evil is the spirit that comes into a house maybe attached to a found object brought in by one of the family, or it may attach itself to the victim of opportunity.
To let evil in you have to have a place for it to attach. It needs a weakness in character, a grudge, some kind of helplessness.
Evil creates a general feeling of unrest in the house. Without people it doesn’t stay. While evil is the uninvited guest, it can make a family behave out of character.
Where evil comes from is a matter for debate.
I think evil is a bit like a strong magnet that farmers put into the stomach of cows. A cow magnet collects things of metal that the cow eats. Why or how a cow eats lengths of fence wire and nails, I may never understand. But over time, when the cow is taken to slaughter, all sorts of things are stuck to that magnet.
Evil tumbles unconfined by a cow’s stomach. It attracts more negative thoughts and echoes of deeds and can become quite large and it has attraction but not direction.
Evil will leave when a house has no more human unrest to offer or sometimes it leaves on the coat tails of a guest. Evil does like company, something to feed from.
A real ghost is different. A human ghost the way we tend to imagine them happens after a person has been gone long enough to get itself together.
A ghost, a human ghost likes an empty house, people are like static cling and a ghost would rather be alone. They drift according to their own time.
Sentimental spirits can linger for a very long time and like I said, they aren’t attached to a dead person.
I see you over there on the corner, you want to object, don’t worry, you will get your chance. I heard a rumble over there behind me, I suppose you have your own opinion. I still stand by my claim that houses aren’t really haunted, things are, spaces are but unless it is a sentimental element it isn’t a twenty four seven sort of thing.
-Haunted House? Nah, who believes in ghosts?
Come back next Friday when a new house steps into the spotlight.
Don’t touch anything sharp!