Its Halloween again…
It’s Halloween. Here in the UK the days are much shorter now, the darkness of the night creeps up and jumps out on us just as you would expect from any creature of the night. Some are discussing their outfit for the upcoming seasonal party and some are looking for a film to scare their socks off. This time of year often has me engaging in quite a bit more TV watching, looking for something to get me thinking or perhaps even scare me. To date I’ve not really found a film that could scare me to be honest, I often have a tendency to figure them out in advance spoiling it for myself. That will be the investigator in me I guess.
So, whilst on the hunt for something to entertain me, but remain seasonal I began to see social media posts raving about the series on Netflix called ‘The Haunting of Hill House’. So, you’re probably wondering why this post has popped up as a psi theory post? Well I will get to that in good time, but hopefully it will make sense in the end.
Spoilers alert…
Right, I should probably stop briefly to say; there may be some spoilers in regards to The Haunting of Hill House. I need to reveal some bits and pieces in order to explain where I am going with all this, so my apologies now.
So, as many of you probably know by now and for those that don’t, in the series a family move into Hill House with the intention to do it up and sell it on at a profit. A process, which they explain should take them the summer to complete. The problem is that Hill House already has quite a few occupants, but they are far from living. I guess the title was pretty spot on, Hill House was haunted. I know its a little different for me to write about a fictional TV show, but sometimes in fiction we can also find some interesting things to think about, hence the psi theory.
Hill House and its spectral residents…
Back to Hill House and its abundance of spectral residents then. The very concept of a haunted house or more specifically a location being haunted is something we’ve discussed in a previous psi theory. In fact ‘What the Heck is a Haunting Anyway?’ talks about it in detail actually. We often have this perception that just because some anomalous activity occurred at a particular location to someone, then that particular place is then consider haunted moving forwards. However we could equally argue that those experiences may not be related to that location as there is not specific information to make that link. Hill House in its fictional form is of course an exception to this, as the location is communicated as being very much epicentre of the activity. Although it does seem to do something a little fascinating, the activity or spirits from within Hill House reach out across space and time to the family that left in a hurry one night. A night in which their mother lost her life. A night which left the five children of the family full of questions. A night which would shape each of their lives moving forwards.
Is there evidence of spirits reaching out from one location and popping in other places. Well if you know me then you know that evidence is a strong term. That said there has been anecdotal evidence stating that this very thing can happen, but rather than being identified as haunted locations these have been identified as a haunting of a person. This being often associated with poltergeist cases where the individual leaves the location only to find the activity follows them.
Spoiler one – one of the twins…
Okay here’s one spoiler, but equally one that I figured out early on. One of the twins encounters a particular spirit from early on in the series as a child, a spirit that they call ‘bent neck lady’. The very fact that this spirit is given such a name, immediately made me think that this lady must have been hung. In fact as soon as some ropes were highlighted on the libraries spiral iron staircase, I associated ‘bent neck lady’ with a possible suicide hanging. Still something was bugging me about this spirit, which soon made sense. I was sure there was a more specific link between the twin and ‘bent neck lady’. The link being that they were one of the same. The girl was haunting herself throughout her life! Sounds mad doesn’t it? However its not something that should be rejected as a possibility. I have spoken to many people with a more spiritual understanding then me and often I have been told that on the other side there is no time. Which means if there is no time then there is no past, present or future; which must mean once in that weird dimension you could theoretically interact with any time at all. Check out my previous post on Zero Dimensions, which discusses more of this. As far as Hill House is concerned, I liked the inclusion of this concept.
Spoiler two – the heart of the house…
Yet another spoiler for you. This time its the part of the Hill House story where the mother refers to the ‘heart of the house’ or as its presented to us throughout, the room with the red door. We are quickly shown that the red door remains locked, even the house master key can not open it. However its not this inaccessibility that sparked a psi theory thought for me. Now something I noticed throughout the series was that all of the children in Hill House had their own particular room; one had a tree house, one a dance studio, another a games room and so on. The thing that caught my eye though was that each of these rooms had some very similar features; size, window position, certain fittings, etc. It was also evident that some experienced certain things in that room too. It was an intrinsic common denominator. The very room that none of them believed they had access to was actually the very room all of them had at some point accessed somehow. Now all of these experiences in that room may have occurred out of time or perhaps even as a part of lucid dream. This then reminds me of two of previous posts; Is Time Real and Augmented Reality. Both look at time and reality, which it seems that Hill House has equally used as a part of its story line. Good work.
Not a review of The Haunting of Hill House…
This isn’t so much a review of The Haunting of Hill House, a series which is probably well placed this time of year; not at all. This was to basically discuss some of its approaches within its story line, which you may have binge watched the series thinking all you were seeing was complete and utter fiction. However there are some elements of this particularly haunting series that could be more real than you thought. Perhaps that is what often makes shows like this so frightening to some.
Comprehension of reality is something we all seek to know more about, whether its through our understanding of science or our spiritual belief, a framework is often individually built through our lives. It is also possible this individual framework is what presents anomalous activity to some and not others dependant on the local stimulus. As I have mentioned in previous posts, it could be the very act of entering a location where our senses begin to capture data on that environment that also allows us to gain something a little extra. I am talking of course of telepathic interaction, where perhaps that data allows us to link to data telepathically. Information which is then presented in our mind, but can seem like its actually occurring right in front of us. Thus the location isn’t haunted its only a link to information that is stored elsewhere, but where? Often this is where suggestions of the Stone Tape Theory comes into play, but personally I don’t think that is the case at all. I think the clue to where the information is, is simply us. As humans we store a ridiculous amount of information in our minds, which can be obtain from simple experience. We equally learn an abundance of information in our lifetimes too, some of which is often learnt without purposely doing so. This makes it difficult for us to truly prove what we don’t know, so to speak.
Hill House has its own reality…
Hill House obviously in its fictional form places its ghosts and spirits into its own reality, suggesting that something within the walls of that glorious house in the woods lay something evil, something that wanted all those five children back under its roof forever. Yes, its a ghost story and one designed to make you jump or hide behind the sofa, but its only a spooky story well placed just ahead of Halloween.
Although, they do say in every good story, there is an element of truth. Perhaps there could be a true Hill House out there somewhere, waiting to capture you forever!
Ashley Knibb 