Answers provide more questions…

There’s an awful lot of what we do during an investigation or ghost hunts that we accept as being, let’s say reality local to us. In fact a lot of what we often seek, is based on what we believe. Further more, its equally based on what we believe we see, hear or experience.

Confused? Bear with me on this.

Over the years I have attended quite a few paranormal investigations, ghost hunts and related events. These have all been interesting in their own ways and each have provided different understandings of the paranormal as a whole. It’s the age old scenario, each time you manage to answer a few questions, ten more questions arise from those answers. I’m sure that is something that each person that’s taken it upon themselves to take a line of enquiry regarding the unknown has concluded at some point.

However over the years there have been some interesting moments when certain things have come to light, which have made me question things on a completely different level. Oddly for me these have all highlighted the simple fact that more of what we experience could be related to our own abilities internally, in a psychical manner. Now I that may sound a little radical or out there, but as a matter of fact there has been a lot of research to back this up in regards to telepathy for example.

Is it power of spirit, or power of mind???

This concept for me has actually popped up on numerous occasions over the years during my own investigations, research and explorations of the paranormal field. There was even one particular point where a medium asked me directly on behalf of spirit; ‘is it power of the mind or power of spirit?’

This to me was fascinating given that we were sat around a table in a group discussing the possibility of asking spirit to move an object for us. Indeed the question was extremely on point and resonated with me straight away. If we sat around this table and all focused on asking a spirit to move an object on the table. Then if the object moved would that be due to the spirit moving the object following our request or would it be more likely to be a form of psychokinesis generated from the groups thought activity? These kind of questions have developed over the years for me within the paranormal field and in a way formed the basis for the Psi Theory blogs.

Another great one that I received whilst conducting an investigation at the Royal Oak, was the phrase ‘communication is perception, perception is communication.’ This was uttered by a Medium whilst in trance allowing a spirit to communicate through him. This is a phrase that has remained with me for a number of years now and in my opinion has such philosophical meaning. You see we often quickly conclude minimal information from random sources within an investigation as having a direct relation to a probable spirit as a source. We make the connection between the smallest piece of information and the consciousness of an individual that has passed away, without really assessing truly the relative value of that information.

This is often seen with EVP work and mediumship. EVP work is probably the best example as I am sure we have all had that single piece of audio, which could be a single noise or even just one word, but we immediately jump to the conclusion that we are dealing with an intelligence. This generally occurs because we spend so much time looking for something that when we get it we elevate its status, probably unknowingly too. I remember doing something similar once when we had an object move by itself right in front of us at Peterborough Museum. As I recounted the details moments later, the distance the object had moved had increased dramatically, in reality it was only a few centimetres. Our own excitement (me included) of a situation can often lead us to elaborate its reality a little. Something that shows our own memories on occasions can not be trusted.

Psychic projection rocks the boat…

However it was one of my most favourite experiments, that Brian J Cano introduced me to that throws the concept of an EVP being related to an intelligent spirit completely out there. I am of course talking of the Psychic Projection Experiment. In this the group focus their thoughts on the digital recording device with the hope that they will be psychically projected onto the device. My own experience of this at Fort Horsted with Brian J Cano and Sage Paranormal, was actually relatively successful. This little experiment that only took a few minutes to complete, changed a perception. If our thoughts could be projected onto a digital device, then our psychical abilities are likely to outweigh the possibility of spiritual communication!

Now don’t panic, I haven’t given up on or suddenly decided to completely discount the possibility of spiritual communication here. I have just come to the conclusion that perhaps we need a little more to confirm survival of human consciousness.

Let’s just think about that little experiment for a moment though! If we can actually record our thoughts on a digital device designed for capturing audio, then there could be real potential there. It was little experiments like these and becoming a member of the SPR that open my eyes to a whole new possibility of paranormal research related not to ghosts, but to our own abilities. This for me meant that a field that was already huge, just grew to about ten times the size!

However it soon became apparent that telepathy played a huge part in all this. Now its probably important to explain that when I discuss telepathy, I am not talking about mind reading. That is considered completely different from the concepts I am discussing, but often I know that many perceive telepathy to be quite simply mind reading. See perception again!

“Telepathy – The communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of recognised channels of sense.” – FWH Myers

What is very important to recognise here is that Myers defines telepathy as ‘one mind to another’; this doesn’t in my opinion mean one human mind to another though, it perhaps just defines the possibility of transference of information independently of normal senses. That in itself is very important, the possibility of information having the capability to be transferred or indeed ‘picked up’ in places is where we begin to see this possibly generate new explanations for paranormal activity.

Thinking about information transfer…

The transference of information or indeed thought is often something that is not taken into consideration whilst we investigate possibly haunted locations. There are often some variables we just don’t take into consideration, like ourselves! This was something that I began to think about quite a bit when I realised a few mediums that I have worked would provide some very interesting pieces of information, but quickly follow it up by stating; ‘how could I have known that?’ It was always a valid question of course. How could they have known it? There were two obvious answers; 1) fraud – they had done a little research (not likely for the Mediums I worked with); 2) they were conversing with spirits – could this be true? However there was another possibility now, the information could have been received from someone else alive either local or non-local to the investigation, or even obtained at a different time too! This is where my own Theory of Telepathic Interaction (recently published in the ASSAP Journal Vol. 49, P.83) came into play. The ideograms within that theory  helped me to reach a logical possible source for the information. Often this would be defined as being from a local source too. This made perfect sense to me. Especially as many investigations that I have been on have involved a group of people, some with knowledge of the locations history and activity and indeed some without knowledge. Thus it would be logical to assume that the information could be obtained from those with knowledge locally.

There is so much more to this and something I believe needs further exploration in order to allow us to fully understand what is really going on here. Source of information and how its received is becoming the key questions within the paranormal. Understanding this will allow us to better comprehend the source of information and then if there could be survival beyond death.

Is this a ghost I see before me???

This all leads me back to the title of this blog. Is this a ghost I see before me! Our senses and indeed our memories can not be trusted, this is something we know now. Yet the concept of seeing a ghost is still reported, I have said many times in the past that I have seen an apparition and explained the experiences of others that have also seen apparitions too. However the question now arises, are we actually seeing these apparitions? Especially when I have read accounts from some that explain how they saw an apparition, but someone in the same space didn’t see what they did. This in my opinion presents the possibility that we can individually receive information which in turn can be comprehended as something we see, when in reality its likely to be comprehended in our mind, but overlaid into the environment we are physically looking at. Strange as it may seem, I am suggesting that the apparitions we see may not be seen, but interpreted information within our minds. There is a lot more to learn about this area and comprehend before we truly understand how it all works. As long as we look into other possibilities I am sure we will eventually discover other explanations.

So, you see or perhaps we don’t, but the ghosts we experience could be our interpretation of localised or indeed non-localised information, rather than something that has materialised right in front of us.

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