Jock Brocas is a spiritual author and teacher with books published internationally. Jock is also the president of the charity organization assmpi and works tirelessly to he others develop spiritually and live a more rewarding life. Join Jock Brocas on a spiritual journey.
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Relela Police officers of a small police department in South Africa have had to flee its premises after paranormal activities harassed them so much it became unbearable.
Within the village of Relela, a South African community. The small local police department has been experiencing strange paranormal activities for some time. While in the day, no events occur.
The building was like any other small town place, quiet and unsuspecting. The paranormal incidences occurred only during windy or rainy nighttime shifts. With reports of unexplainable wind coming through the building, lights flickering on and off and howling animal noises outside the windows. Before the escalated paranormal activities, most reports happened near the toilets in the back of the building.
Paranormal Activity Inside The Relala Police Department
However, over the weekend, the paranormal activities escalated so much that the cops hastily vacated the building. Speaking in a trembling voice to a local media output, one of the police officers stated,
"Ghosts invaded our cop shop". He added, "They usually start unleashing their reign of terror behind the station and in the toilets." With his voice trembling, he continued to explain that they could hear "loud footsteps" noise similar to that of an elephant. Finally, the officers confirmed they checked the outside area and found no explainable source for the footsteps.
The ghosts were said to have become aggressive this particular evening of paranormal terror. This led the police officer to leave the building.
History
Relela has been the centre of many incidences over the years. In 2014, over 1500 people were part of protests. They began after a child was found murdered in the back of a local businessman's car near the village. In 2018 three people, along with a local musician linked to an 88-year-old woman shot dead at her home in Relela. These are just two of many similar incidents in the village over decades, including riots, robberies, assaults, and murders. Despite these incidences, the village has been building a more peaceful surrounding. In 2019 the local school helped build a library for children and adults. The objective was to give people something to do and take the youngsters off the streets. Furthermore, in 2022 the community centre was finally built, bringing activities to the people of the village.
With so much violence in the area, the local police force is trained for violent crimes. While the area's crime levels have lowered in recent years, the officers are still highly trained and vigilant. Whatever the ghostly activities were, the effect on the highly trained police officers was so extreme that they left their position unmanned.
Graves under police station
The police building is built near a grove of mango trees in Relela village near the bus stop. Local reports show that the place had been built around the graves of locals whose families have now moved across town. It has been common knowledge in the area that ghosts have been haunting the police station in recent months. However, the locals who spoke to the nearby media outlet could not explain why the ghostly activities should start or why the ghosts had been unsettled at this moment in time.
With all the incidences over the years, some of which have been blamed on the police, perhaps the spirits have had enough of waiting for justice. But it is still being determined why the incidents suddenly began; there have never been previous reports of ghostly activities. However, it is undoubtedly a place where paranormal activities could happen, with so many murders and traumatic events happening.
There has been no comment from the local police department. It is unknown if the police have returned to their post at the building. So Relela can now add to its record of sinister goings-on to events in the area's paranormal world.
It will be interesting to see if there are any further reports in the police station of more paranormal activities being recorded.
I’ll get to Wikipedia in a moment, but first a little background. One of the more depressing aspects of my job as a Parapsychology journalist is dealing with the skepticism. It’s not that skepticism isn’t warranted when dealing with the paranormal, it absolutely is, it’s that the vast majority of skepticism is just . . . bad. Any open minded person arguing with people who are strongly skeptical quickly realizes that their claim to being tough minded and objective is really just stubborn people never admitting to being wrong. It’s not critical thinking, it’s just . . . tedious.
Where skepticism really goes off the rails is when it becomes a belief system. This is what I documented in my book PSI WARS: TED, Wikipedia and the Battle for the Internet. The skepticism has become more of a fringe atheist religious-like crusade to bring rationality to an increasingly irrational world, it seems like it should be a good thing. Who doesn’t want more rationality? Amiright?
Pseudoskepticism
In practice, what they do is properly called pseudoskepticism, which isn’t a careful analysis of specific objections, but rather a general dismissal of both people and subjects that they disagree with. Even the word “rationality” becomes a sort of dog whistle.
In their case rationality refers to a very specific belief system that these skeptics fully embrace: They believe in a material universe. (This is increasingly up for debate as quantum physics repeatedly demonstrates that the universe is entangled and not locally real. As Rovelli pointed out, even physics itself is relational.)
This materialistic belief, which is at the core of this true believer skepticism, leads to assumptions about reality which these skeptics hotly defend. They believe that psychic ability can’t possibly exist and its study is pure pseudoscience (another skeptic dog whistle); holistic medicine is nonsense and is also pseudoscience. One finds this all over Wikipedia now. Reddit User Hastener_Of_Days wrote this assessment.
The way the terms "pseudoscience" and "fringe" are used on Wikipedia, is now akin to jewtagging. It's really quite disgusting. In the Wikipedia coverage of any of these areas, most notably Homeopathy, readers are treated like children, and are quite literally beaten over the head and forced to a conclusion. This is distinct from the original Wikipedia model of neutrality, where you simply present the facts, in due proportion to their reliability, and trust the reader to come to the right conclusion.
Weird Skepticism
When you travel down the rabbit hole of this organized skepticism it gets really weird. Congratulating children on discovering that Santa Claus isn’t real; attacking naturopathy, (the science of promoting self healing in the body. It’s a licensed profession found in many hospitals); licensed chiropractors (found everywhere, accepted by insurance companies) are also apparently pseudoscience to them for . . . reasons. Religion is an infantile belief that does more harm than good. Religions are responsible for most wars.
And now that we have that out of the way, it’s time to discuss Wikipedia and the Paranormal.
Bias and Lack of Scholarship
If you concentrate on Wikipedia articles about holistic medicine, or the paranormal, you’ll find that most of the articles are not just written from a skeptical point of view, but one that is strikingly similar to that of a particular skeptic organization.
Wikipedia, for example claims the following about parapsychology:
Criticized as being a pseudoscience, the majority of mainstream scientists reject it.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Parapsychology has also been criticised by mainstream critics for many of its practitioners claiming that their studies are plausible in spite of there being no convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research.[1][10][11]
What is wrong with this? What’s not wrong with it? Parapsychology isn’t a pseudoscience. The Parapsychological Association is an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Here is a quote from a paper by a very skeptical critic who has worked with parapsychologists and is familiar with the research:
Parapsychology at its best—as exemplified by, for example, the articles in the Journal of Parapsychology—appears to meet most if not all of the benchmarks of true science as opposed to pseudoscience.
His views are shared by other skeptics familiar with the research such as Richard Wiseman and Susan Blackmore. When you limit your search to the tiny handful of critics who actually engage with the research you come away with an entirely different take on this scientific field.
Bad Citations
Some of their citations to back up this Wikipedia article are over over 30 years old, others are just someone’s opinion that they wrote down, unsupported by evidence. One says the opposite of what they’re claiming. This isn’t what valid citations look like; it’s just Wikipedia editors scrounging up whatever they can find to support their weak argument.
And lastly, we see the claim that there is no convincing evidence. Here is a paper that Wikipedia editors seem to have mysteriously failed to cite despite the fact that it’s extremely well known within the field:
Parapsychology is an area of expertise for me; I can see the flaws in articles like this because I know what’s missing and where the editors are making claims that I know aren’t true. I have read many of the documents they’re referencing, I know who’s who in this field, when someone is just a poser and who is the real deal.
It’s Worse than Mere Incompetence
The Wikipedia editors had to go out of their way to make this article as blatantly false as it is. This isn’t incompetence; it’s deliberate. And it isn’t a one off either. The vast majority of articles related to parapsychology of any substance are treated this way, including biographies.
This extends into articles about the paranormal, including psychics and mediums and also pretty much any holistic medicine or holistic medical practice you care to name. They are so littered with references to criticism that you’d think this was a gossip column and not an encyclopedia.
To understand why Wikipedia is horrifically inaccurate and/or misleading about paranormal topics and holistic medicine, you need to understand the connection between the editors and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).
The Link between Organized Skepticism and Wikipedia
CSI is an organization dedicated to skepticism. They publish the Skeptical Inquirer and came into being at a convention of the American Humanist Association in 1976. It was founded by Paul Kurz and Marcello Truzzi. Truzzi left the organization after realizing that impartiality wasn’t the goal.
Because the organization is driven by a non mainstream atheistic belief that the paranormal is impossible and that they, the chosen few, are providing rationality to an increasingly superstitious and irrational world, this has led to their never ending battle against an increasingly convincing body of scientific evidence, with at least one of their leading skeptics grudgingly conceding first that parapsychology is a real science and then that the results of some of the experiments are valid.
And as I said earlier, they dismiss chiropractic care, naturopathy, acupuncture and other generally accepted holistic medical practices as pseudoscience. For those interested in a longer read of their history, here is an article by the late Guy Lyon Playfair. (here) There is also an accounting of their deliberate attempt to suppress the results of an experiment they conducted when they didn’t get the results they wanted. (here)
This cultist skeptical organization and others like it, form an echo chamber where they cherry-pick their way to conclusions they want, often relying on their own members to form the arguments and then citing those as proof. They pounce on positive portrayals of psychic ability or holistic medicine, making sure to write articles and then seek media attention to promote their viewpoint.
The Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia
Out of this toxic stew, the Guerrilla Skeptics of Wikipedia was born. I first found out about them after I’d finished reporting on parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake’s dust up with TED talks and had started writing my book about the controversy in 2013.
Sheldrake, at the time, was the subject of a great deal of controversy after his TED talk was banished to the hinterlands of an unsearchable corner of TED. He is notable enough to have a Wikipedia page written about him and his Wikipedia page got worse in proportion to the increase in fame he was experiencing. A few Wikipedia editors with an agenda had targeted him and were making changes to his biography to portray him as a pseudo scientist and quack.
It was strongly suspected by journalists who cover this subject, Greg Taylor of the Daily Grail, myself and Robert McLuhan, who works with the Society for Psychical Research, that the Guerrilla Skeptics had a hand in this. They never admitted to it and they operate in such secrecy that this could never be factually established. Susan Gerbic, founder of the Guerrilla Skeptics wrote in the Skeptical inquirer:
Plus, when asked, I always refused to offer transparency of who our members are, what conversations we have been having, or what pages we have worked on.
The Problem of Secret Editing Groups
Except for Gerbic herself, who uses her real name on the platform and personally operates in the open, no one really knows who they are or what they’re doing. That this has been allowed to exist on Wikipedia is a clear demonstration of the flaws inherent in the platform. So what is the problem of an organization like the Guerrilla Skeptics? A reddit user familiar with Wikipedia outlined the issues:
With the advantage of being able to coordinate in private without anyone on Wikipedia knowing these people are acting as a group, it is if course suspected that GS [Guerrilla Skeptics] breaks any number of really quite important Wikipedia rules. Rules against canvassing, rules against vote stacking, rules against using blocking powers in your own interests, and rules that say you must declare any relevant conflicts of interest.
The rules that essentially ensure that Wikipedia is a level playing field for all editors, equal under the wiki law, given the same opportunity to propose and defend their edits as anyone else, and letting the benign force of consensus result in the best edit for Wikipedia.
Even other Wikipedia editors are sick of them and put them on trial. But on a platform that allows anonymous editors, all kinds of shenanigans can take place which cannot be prevented. This includes individuals being both editors and their own administrators under different names, organized editing to capture administrative positions and control arbitration processes.
If they have succeeded at this, they can then ban other editors over disagreements by misusing Wikipedia’s own rules. A product of anonymous editing is that a secret group can gain de facto control over information on sections of the encyclopedia.
Wikipedia Cannot Prevent This
Wikipedia’s enforcement abilities are limited to banning specific editors. Even if they had decided to ban the Guerrilla Skeptics entirely they could not have done so. They don’t know who the members of the organization are; nor would it help if they did know. Banned members only need to come back under a different name. They can ban IP addresses, but it’s easy enough to get around that.
I see little reason to doubt that they are behind the steady degradation of paranormal topics on Wikipedia. when one sees the Wikipedia treatment of various paranormal subjects, one finds many references to articles by CSI fellows, Skeptical Inquirer articles and other sources that are unique to the skeptic community. Various members of CSI and their editors have favorable Wikipedia pages, while their paranormal and parapsychology counterparts are either omitted or their Wikipedia pages contain a lot of skepticism. This type of editing is literally their mission.
Guerrilla Skeptics = The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
If one needed further proof of the connection, one needs to look no farther than the Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine of CSI. Gerbic writes for it and they have a page for her. She’s described as their Wikipediatrian. It’s safe to say that her views and theirs align.
The result is that there’s a never ending stream of edits to paranormal articles on Wikipedia that all look like they were written by people from the same group with the same agenda. It might be acceptable if it was all out in the open, but the fact that it’s being organized by a group that claims to be benign, but collaborates in secrecy creates serious credibility problems for Wikipedia.
Their secrecy is a double edged sword. On the one hand they have plausible deniability, but on the other hand there is absolutely no reason to trust anything Gerbic says. “We operate in total secrecy, but you can trust us.” is not convincing to any objective party.
Fair Minded Scholarship is Missing From Wikipedia
For many of these articles, particularly for anything related to parapsychology, there are a number of knowledgeable people who could contribute sufficient documentation to balance the articles, but have been shut out of the process. They have run into coordinated efforts that rebuffed their attempts and in some cases, kicked them off Wikipedia, solely for scholarly disagreement. They are simply shut out of the process. I documented a couple of these cases in my book, and I know of others.
You have to be organized to do that. It takes several people working together to kick someone off that platform. And the only organization that exists on Wikipedia with the means and the motivation is the Guerrilla Skeptics. It would also partly explain why they operate in secrecy because ganging up to kick people off the platform for the kind of disagreement that is supposed to be a normal part of the Wikipedia process is frowned upon, to say the very least.
Wikipedia Can be Fixed
All of this could be fixed with a couple of changes to how Wikipedia is edited.
Require people to use their verified real name to edit. So many problems can be solved by just this one thing. When people are tethered to their online behavior, they tend to be less obnoxious.
Ranking by real world expertise. Once Wikipedia limits people to using their real names, they can be ranked by their real world expertise and removed from discussions where they have nothing important to contribute. If an area has a governing body, they have the final say. Encyclopedia articles are supposed to tell you about the subject matter and the best people to do that are those that are experts in that field. True experts generally know what the evidence is, both for and against their subject.
Do those two things and many of Wikipedia’s worst problems will go away. People with actual expertise will be able to edit and trolls will be powerless to stop them.
Was a Demon really caught on camera? “It seems we weren’t alone on our early morning walk in Clumber today!” Those were the words Hannah Rowett posted on her Facebook page on December 7th, 2022. She also posted photos and a video clip. At the time of writing this article, the post has gone viral with 660 likes, and 1.9K comments. It’s been shared 2.8K times.
On the morning of December 7th, 2022, local pub owners Hannah and Dave Rowett took their dogs to Clumber Park in Nottingham, United Kingdom. In the early morning darkness, 52-year-old Hannah stood alone outside while her husband was still getting one of the dogs out of their car. She claims that while she waited for him, she felt that they were not alone. As reported in Britain’s The Mirror newspaper, Hannah is no stranger to this feeling. She said that she grew up seeing the ghost of an old man in her childhood home.
Image: Kennedy News and Media
Hannah Rowett pointed her flashlight ahead towards the forest path. Then, she captured something strange on her cell phone camera. She claims that the footage is of a demonic figure crawling across the path in front of her.
What do you see in the photo above? What do you see in the moving clip on her Facebook page? Is it something sinister?
Hannah Rowett is not the first person to have reported sightings of ghostly figures in Clumber Park. Purchased by the National Trust in 1946 and preserved on the register of Historic Parks, Clumber Park is a tourist attraction. It’s a place enjoyed for trail walking, camping, and events, but it's also a place visited by those who have an affinity for haunted locations.
Apparently, the Grey Lady of Clumber Park roams the grounds in a long grey cloak. The Nottingham Post reports that misty days are best if you want to see her and watch her vanish into the haze. Is it possible that Hannah’s perception was motivated by this legend, making her vision suggestible to seeing a ghost?
According to weatherspark.com, the temperature in Nottingham, United Kingdom at 6:30 am that day was below freezing, hovering at -2 degrees Celsius. The wind direction was to the West at 9.26 km/hour. The cloud cover that morning is documented as “mostly clear.” It was cold enough to see your breath outside or the exhaust from Rowett’s vehicle. Is that what she actually saw? Or was it in fact a spirit caught on camera?
The Perfect Setting for a Ghost Story
Violence. Divisiveness. Arson. Political tension. These things plagued the 17th Century property owned by the Dukes of Newcastle in Nottinghamshire, England. The land known as Clumber Park was carved out of the legendary Sherwood Forest in 1707 by the 1st Duke of Newcastle. Sherwood Forest is well known in British folklore for its ties to the outlaw Robin Hood.
Image: Clumber Park NT Facebook Page
Sometime between 1760 and 1770, a mansion was built on the grounds for the 2nd Duke. Originally a hunting lodge in a private hunting park for Queen Anne, Clumber House was remodelled into a 105-room lavish country home. The property was endowed with 3-mile-long double rows of lime trees and an 87-acre man-made lake.
In 1831, an angry mob fuelled by political strife burned down the house. It was rebuilt but in 1879, an accidental fire destroyed it. Several other fires subsequently occurred and Clumber House was eventually demolished in 1938.
The photo above is the footprint of the home, its walls revealed by parch marks during a heatwave in 2018. The chapel commissioned by the 7th Duke of Newcastle remains standing today. The historical site has been disturbed by archaeological digs, the last of them was in 2018, which uncovered the cellars of Clumber House and various artefacts.
With a history steeped in bad luck, it’s no wonder that tales of the paranormal are part of the local folklore. But, that’s not all.
Image: Lime Tree Avenue, Clumber Park, Source: Mick Garratt, Geograph.org.uk
Murder Amongst the Lime Trees
On July 24th, 2022, the body of Henry Thwaites, an 85-year-old retired man, was found on Lime Tree Avenue, close to Clumber Park. Two people are charged with this gruesome murder. Two others are charged with assisting the alleged offenders.
Did the news of this recent local murder influence what Hannah Rowett perceived? Or was it the ghost of Henry Thwaites running from his attackers?
Demon Caught on Camera! An Evidential Medium Adds a Layer of Potential Explanation
There are so many questions about what Hannah Rowett alleges to have captured on camera on the morning of December 7th. The following is an examination of the reported event by PDN’s Editor-In-Chief and Evidential Medium and researcher, Jock Brocas.
Perceptions and Persuasions
Do your eyes trick you? Actually, most of the time. You can be duped by your own mind and your perceptions, and what you see may be an illusion and far from the truth. When I first saw this, I was intrigued but did not get swayed by the hype. In all paranormal occurrences, you must look toward the natural, environmental and scientific. Only when you have ruled out these three basics can you then suggest there may be another explanation that needs to be investigated.
Many people do not question what they see with their own eyes, but the reality is that your eyes can deceive you all too easily.
Paranormal bias
This may come as a shock to some, and others may scoff, but we are extremely biased as a species because of how we learn and how others see us. The media has a role to play in our bias, including religion and family mechanics. Our own egos play a controlling role upon our bias, and we often fall into the pattern of self-serving bias - especially mediums. What we desire to see, we will see, even if it is not there.
If you are an individual who has an interest in the paranormal, then you are prone to this bias. Sitting at home watching Most Haunted or engaging in the lore and scary stories of old already sets a seed of bias within you. As you will note from my colleague above, this pattern of bias in the environment and with all probability the alleged apparition is somewhat biased.
We all love a good ghost story and even the most ardent skeptic loves to listen to those stories, even if there is no way they would believe in them. As a human species we are developed to tell stories, it is how we learn. These stories that have been told over and over and these same stories make us yearn to believe in them.
Environmental Factors
Our environment plays a fundamental role in how we perceive things. Environmental conditions such as temperature, wind, moisture, light, sound and energy are all contributing factors to our environmental conditions. They also play a pivotal role in how our senses perceive information and how we discern that information is indeed an underdeveloped skill. Without the ability to recognize subtle changes in the environment or energetic patterns, it is easy to fall into the paranormal bias or pareidolia effect based on your beliefs.
The Pareidolia Effect
Unfortunately, pareidolia is rife within the paranormal, afterlife and spiritual communities. In fact, daily I am plagued by claims of the paranormal and the afterlife that are clearly pareidolia and have no evidence to come to a specific conclusion. Signs of spirit and of loved ones are often exaggerated by those who have little understanding or wisdom of the mechanics of divine law.
Image: Author, Mary Kay Ranger
What do you see in the image above? It’s a photo taken of evaporating puddles in the co-author’s driveway. Do you see two angels? This is an image that my colleague Mary Kay posted on social media. As I watched the post, i could not help but notice who was responding in amazement. I wanted to reply to give an explanation of the pareidolia effect and suggestions, yet, I did not want to spoil their excitement. It did make me contemplate on how the power of perception whether truth or lie guides our personal realities and bias. This is nothing more than a natural phenomenon that occurs because of the conditions. Yet, so many will claim this as something supernatural as validation of their personal bias.
Pareidolia is the tendency to attribute meaning to a random pattern within your perception. As an example, one could see a pattern in smoke or a cloud and claim they could see an angel or demon. Recently I was sent some images of a cloud formation that was claimed to be demonic. It was not. In fact, the individual was probably more religiously biased. Believing that demons could be seen everywhere, she saw them in clouds.
This same example also happened after 9-11 when the towers fell. There was an image going around claiming that Satan was in the cloud of smoke. This of course is ridiculous, but the sad thing is that many people fall into that trap. Many mediums will attribute signs to something that is normal and is not of a supernatural nature. This is further proliferated when you have media sensationalizing a natural occurrence into something unexplainable. This further fuels expectations and beliefs of those who soak up the hype.
Thoughts from a Medium
As I have mentioned before, there have to be patterns and evidence within the claimed phenomena. Think about storytelling and how that story has a pattern. This is the same with evidence from potential phenomena. Without evidence or storytelling, one cannot conclude there are real paranormal phenomena going on.
Demonic Claims
In the footage, the claim is that a Demon was caught on camera crawling across a path. You can thank the media for that! I am not one to assume that Hannah actually claimed it was Demonic. However, one has to be able to understand the modus operandi of a potential demonic presence or be able to discern its truth from a lie. The evil intelligence that has existed since the beginning of time and has intelligence greater than man in the material world - will not run over a path and be seen. That battlefield is one of the mind and rarely comes to fruition in the material realm. To suggest that a being of that intellect allowed itself to be seen in a situation such as this is rather foolhardy.
Is the Footage Real Paranormal Phenomena?
It is very hard to tell based on what was shown and without any real background story or evidential patterns. Furthermore, the power of suggestion feeds the seeds of implanted bias. One may suggest that something is experienced and that person that is within earshot will concur with the claim. This is apparent in paranormal investigations where one person will suggest or offer a proposal of a particular perception. This is a psychological method of guiding another’s thoughts, perceptions or behavior. The result is that everyone else begins to believe in the suggested thought or experience. This is the power of suggestion.
However, I am inclined to refute the claims of anything paranormal in this story. Not because I do not want it to be right, but because I, like many researchers, really want the phenomena and the evidence to weigh up, so it warrants further investigation. As a professional medium with many years of experience, however, I would have to say that this is one of those mysterious natural environmental anomalies that have more normal than paranormal explanations.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes we can’t stop ourselves from believing everything we see or think we see. As human beings, our brains are wired to look for familiar patterns in the ambiguous in order to make sense of what we are seeing. Given that our minds can be said to be relatively untrustworthy through bias or suggestion, the potential non-paranormal explanations offered above are worthy of evaluation.
We know that Hannah Rowett was already a believer in the paranormal. Does that mean she was primed to interpret the images as a ghostly figure? The alternative explanations may provide more insight into human psychology than support or refute Hannah Rowett’s claims in Clumber Park.
What did Hannah Rowett really capture on camera? You decide.
I am the science editor for Paranormal Daily News, and I am also a licensed California General Building Contractor and I’ve done a lot of handyman type work over the years. What I want to address today are some of the normal things that occur with buildings that have to be taken into consideration when examining a potential haunting or ghost.
I’ve run into a quite a few stories of people claiming that something paranormal was happening in their home that were head scratchers for me. “No,” I’d think to myself, “I’ve run into that kind of problem before and I know what causes it and how to fix it.” So I’ve made a little list of stuff that I’m familiar with. There are other things that paranormal investigators should be aware of, of course, but I’m only addressing things that might be related to a haunting that are within my area of expertise.
This is in no way a debunking of paranormal investigations or their findings. However, in any quality paranormal investigation, ordinary causes have to be either completely ruled out or accounted for, otherwise an investigation will leave questions on the table, ripe for criticism. Here, I am going to address the things that someone in construction will run into from time to time.
Haunted Houses Have Personality
Houses are systems and they have their own personalities. They have water, electrical, sewer, heating and often gas and air conditioning. They have a variety of passive mechanical systems, such as door knobs and locks, hinges and drawers, electronic and electromechanical systems, such as ovens, dishwashers, garbage disposals, washers, dryers etc. At any given moment, these parts of the house are in various states of repair and are subject to the vagaries of their initial installation and general wear over time.
In addition to this, houses have consumable items, such as light bulbs and air filters that wear out.
The building may have been remodeled at some point or have various other idiosyncrasies. Every building is different and some of the things that go on in houses can seem paranormal to people who don’t see this stuff happen on a regular basis.
In addition to this, I don’t think it’s enough just to provide a list, but also how to check for these things. Many of these strange things can be tested for relatively easily.
Lights that go on and off or flicker for seemingly no reason:
There are lots of things that can cause this. While it is possible for the house wiring to be the problem, it’s far more likely to be coming from a switch, the light or the light fixture. This kind of thing is on my client’s fix it list often enough that I would be very reluctant to ever ascribe it to anything paranormal.
Electrical Paranormal Quirks
If the light is fluorescent, this can be caused by a failing transformer or light. They tend to flicker when they’re failing. Fluorescent lights often have a dark spot near the base when they start to go bad, and they tend to make a buzzing sound and don’t put out much light. It’s all fairly obvious if you take off the light cover and look at them directly.
Some light fixtures (very common for recessed lighting) have thermal sensors that shut the light off if the internal temperature is too high. (More common in summer on hot days when the attic temperature is quite high) This occurs where the socket is, high up in the fixture. The most common cause of this problem is recessed lights covered in insulation in the attic. You can test for this problem, but it takes awhile. Leave the lights off for an hour so that they have a chance to cool down, then turn them on. All the lights should come on, and then once they heat up, they will randomly turn off for a while and then come back on again after they have cooled down.
It can be loose wiring, which randomly makes contact due to environmental changes. You can’t tell without exposing electrical boxes. Leave that to the electricians. This is pretty rare in comparison to other problems.
It can be a failing switch as well. You can test switches by very slowly turning them on and off. They should be either on or off. If you can find a spot where the light flickers, the switch is failing.
Any light with electronics (usually LED) is vulnerable to weird failures. Speaking of LED’s, they draw very little power, so it’s possible for them to be on when there is effectively no power in the house. They’re running off a trickle of electricity that’s still running through the line.
Mind and Matter
Having said that, scientific studies into mind/matter interactions, (aka telekinesis, aka psychokinesis), which is what this is, requires lability (unstable or easily changeable). So it is possible that an ordinary failing electrical connection could provide an environment suitable for the paranormal. Context is important.
Weird Knocks, Creaks, Groans:
These do exist as paranormal things and unlike weird lighting issues, I don't see a lot of these things, except for water hammering. It's pretty easy to figure out.
This can be nail pops. A nail somewhere nearby is pulled by bending wood, usually warping slightly due to temperature changes until it pops up a little bit. They can be quite loud and are a distinct, short, sharp sound that comes from inside the walls and echos around, making it impossible to determine where they can come from. They can occur at all hours, but more typically, they come during temperature changes outside.
Water hammering, which is more of a thump sound. It’s caused by a sudden change in water pressure in a pipe that’s not securely fastened. The most probable cause is water shutting off abruptly somewhere in the house. Usually this is faucets, but can also be washing machines. The cause and effect are fairly obvious, and it’s fairly easy to test for this and rule it out. Usually the occupant will know what this is.
Plastic drain pipes can also rub against wood, making noise as they expand or contract, if they’re wedged in a particular way. I’ve seen this happen exactly once in 20+ years, so it’s not likely at all.
Floor squeaks: While this is usually screamingly obvious, step here and get a squeak, step there and nothing happens, house settling or temperature changes can cause squeaks as well. We’re all familiar with that sound.
Creaking and groaning: This is usually caused by the building settling. This is dependent on the soil that the building sits on. Wood buildings on mostly clay soil will experience soil expansion during wet weather as the ground expands due to moisture, and shrink during summer due to drying out. Changing seasons is what’s relevant here. A building sitting on concrete posts deep in the ground probably won’t have this problem.
Scratching Sounds, Movement in attic: You probably guessed this just from the description and I debated with the editor whether to add this at all because it’s fairly obvious what’s happening. It’s rats. Except for the occasional squirrel, and bats, it’s always rats. They need an opening the size of a quarter to get in and if an opening is not big enough, they can chew the rest of the way, even through concrete in some cases. It’s not entirely impossible for a raccoon to get into some attics. Sometimes the roof framing is sloppy and leaves larger gaps where rooflines meet. Rats, squirrels and raccoons commute, meaning that they have certain hours of activity in a home, and they’re away the rest of the time.
Cold air, weird smells
Houses are rarely airtight, so random air from outside can drift through from outside even with windows shut and doors closed. I’m trained by my job to notice this stuff and I can often identify what type of smell I’m picking up, or that cold air is blowing around.
Air can drift through leaky air ducting.
it can drift through chimneys.
and poorly sealed doors and windows with air gaps.
It’s the kind of thing that people don’t normally pay attention to, but people who are actively ghost hunting would be far more aware of these changes and looking for that sort of thing, so they would be more likely to notice.
Things to check for are: Does the house have ducting running through a crawl space or basement? Can you feel cold air blowing through the vent? Are the doors and windows airtight? (This can be really hard to check for.) What time of year is it? How cold is the weather outside? Is a whole area cold? Or is it near the ground? Cold air traveling nearer to the ground is almost definitely an ordinary cause, but a whole cold spot area is less likely to be ordinary.
If a house has a basement or crawlspace then in some situations air can come up from gaps in vent pipes, lending a musty smell to the air. This would be more common in areas where dry rot can occur, such as near exterior doors, bathrooms or near an interior crawlspace access. It tends to be stronger in wet weather.
Doors randomly opening
I say opening and not closing, because most people can think of the ordinary causes for a door closing on its own and it’s not worth discussing. But a door randomly opening is harder to explain. However, it is possible under a very specific condition, so that’s what I’m going to address. This is quite rare.
If the gap between the door and the frame is wide, so that the door barely latches, then temperature and/or humidity changes can affect the door enough to spring the latch. It’s fairly easy to check this and it’s something that should be ruled out as an ordinary cause. So check to see whether the door is barely latching and then see if it naturally swings open when it’s unlatched. If both are true, then there’s your most likely cause.
Carbon monoxide poisoning
You may have read about this already, as this makes it through the news sometimes. Carbon monoxide is caused by fuel burning appliances in your home. This could be an oven, dryer or forced air heater or some other gas burning fixture. At some level in between getting a headache and killing you, it can cause hallucinations. This is quite rare. About 1.4 people in every 10,000 get sick enough from carbon monoxide to go to the hospital in the U.S.
You can test for this with an inexpensive carbon monoxide detector for as little as $20.
Just to sum this up, I do think that hauntings and ghosts exist and that they are explainable. But I’m also so familiar with houses that my go-to explanation for most of the things that go bump in the night is that something probably needs to be fixed.
The relationship between a paranormal team and a sensitive (a.k.a. psychic or medium) is often difficult, and sometimes dangerous if not handled well. Some teams won't even consider using sensitives, while those who opt to use them may place too much weight on their contributions or else none at all. But is there perhaps an ideal option where the two parties work hand in hand to serve the greater good?
I believe the answer to this is yes, and I would like to use my personal experience to shed a little light on this potential.
Ghost Society For Paranormal Investigators
In 2010, I was invited to join the Washington State Ghost Society, a rather active group consisting of local individuals interested in exploring the paranormal. I was a newly emerging psychic medium and wanted to join a group to help expand my skills. Although my initial role was to serve in an investigative capacity, after a bit of experience I quickly expanded into the role of a team sensitive. What I quickly realized, however, was just how much further I needed to hone my abilities.
You see, mediums and psychicsYou see, psychics and mediums usually work with sitters - people who reach out for private sessions to connect with departed loved ones or to get personal guidance. But what happens when you thrust a sensitive into a situation where they now must assess situations, locations, buildings, land, spirits (if present), residual energies/imprints, time bands, as well as the energies and issues of the living?
Historical Places
For example, until I had access to historical places, I had no opportunity or need to learn how to use the energy in these spaces differently. Two particular locations had 100-year-old histories that left different imprints from different time bands. Patrons of one of these locations often heard music playing while dining. This particular imprint occurred during a specific time in the location's past, while other experiences occurred as a result of different time frames.
According to parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach, these types of residual energies are also referred to as place memory, psychic imprints, residual haunts, or hauntings. This occurs when the location ‘records’ the activity of the events, memories, emotions, and people who once or currently occupy them. For those who are sensitive, these recordings can be discerned via psi. However, place memory or hauntings do NOT involve consciousness, even though they can be perceived by consciousness. See the following PDN article for more on why Your Reality Is In Fact A Conscious Universe.
Paranormal Investigators and Residual Energy Discernment
While understanding these various imprints may offer an investigative team little more than small details to assist in location research, the team may not be able to find what they are looking for if a sensitive is not careful to properly discern these variations. Paranormal Investigators must understand these variables and also provide opportunities to help promote sensitive development with these variations.
The impact of sensitive discernment becomes even more crucial when dealing with residential cases: Those that involve real people having real issues.
One example is when our group was called in by a family we had previously assisted. They had recently moved into a new home and were concerned that activity had followed them to the new location. While I was not involved in the first investigation, I was the sensitive in the second investigation with other paranormal investigators.
Upon walking into the home and working with the energy of the space, it became clear that one room was full of unique energy patterns. I worked my way through the home, but I kept being pulled back to one particular space. Taking my time, I sat in the room working my way through what I was feeling until I realized that it was coming from the person who occupied it. To understand what was then creating the energy, I sat with it further until I could begin to discern the cause.
Supporting Evidential Data
With a possible cause and source in hand, we sat down with the family and I started to provide evidence to support my research. I first described the person who occupied the room and then described the emotional and physical concerns that I felt this person might be having. Finding that these assessments were correct, I began to suggest that the living child who occupied the space caused the energy in the space. There were clear medical and emotional concerns about the child. Because of this, we explained that the potential events may be based on the child's personality rather than the actual spirit.
Rarely are psychics and mediums given access to these types of scenarios. Certainly, some well-trained energy workers may have quickly been able to discern this issue. Then again, many energy workers are also not mediums. How do we know what will be encountered when working on these types of more intimate cases? It can be a real mixed bag.
As you can see, all of these variables, along with others, can cause an investigative team to simply avoid working with sensitives altogether. Sometimes it just seems easier, but by doing so, we are missing out on what may be going on in many of these cases: psi-based events.
Psi Events
If psi is the foundation for much of what is explored in an investigation, then at the very least, shouldn’t we use psi detectors? Sadly, this will not come in the form of technology. No device we currently have will detect spirits, consciousness, or subtle human energy patterns related to consciousness. This leaves only those tools that do – sensitives!
For those teams that want to use these human detectors, then a set of good standards must be set up, and a process should be followed to make sure the system works well. But this alone may not be enough. Sensitives also need exposure to various environments and scenarios in order to hone their skills. Simply working with sitters in the traditional way just doesn’t compare to the environment surrounding investigations. I am not saying that a well-trained psychic or medium will not be of value, but the more a sensitive is exposed to these things, the more they can learn from them.
Encouragement
I highly encourage psychics and mediums to work with the right investigative team. Doing so was one of the biggest skill-developing experiences of my life. However, be selective about the group and ask questions. They should have standards for how you will work and yet still be open to your needs. They should not discount everything you say, but neither should they worship the ground upon which you walk. Their role is to be objective, not to take your word as gospel.
Sensitives also need to be willing to admit that these scenarios may be new and foreign. Be open to learning and remain humble. The investigation is a collaborative effort for the good of the clients and the advancement of knowledge. It’s not a showcase. Know your limitations, work to discern more, learn some basic parapsychology, and be dedicated to the task for the right reasons.
Paranormal teams and field investigators who are willing to work with psychics and mediums may want to consider a sensitive who meets the right requirements. While this may not be the team's main goal, what can be achieved through this partnership can offer long-term benefits to everyone involved. It can offer opportunity and expansion for the sensitive. It can offer better insights and awareness to the investigators as well as clients. It can also continue to shed light and understanding of the use and applications of psi. After all, we’re all searching for answers. So wouldn’t it make sense to start working together to create better results and opportunities for everyone?
