It’s all going well…
Sarah and I are quickly heading towards taking Supernatural Synchronicity into its third month and I have to admit we’ve already tackled some really interesting points. As Sarah mentioned in her latest post; ‘Getting down to the Soul of it’; the series has presented some new challenges to my writing. Challenges that are of course more than welcome, as they help us discuss more variations of this vast topic that otherwise we may not have focussed on. It’s really amazing to write a post and receive responses on those posts in such a way, which takes a point of what I’ve written about and runs with it.
In ‘Getting down to the Soul of it,‘ Sarah talks about the Soul quite a bit, but she also touches on a particular aspect, which we see in most understanding of ghost hunting or paranormal investigation. And yes, those two things are different, very different! I’m talking about intelligent and residual hauntings.
Haunting classifications…
As Sarah mentions these are reasonably well known classifications in the field. An intelligent haunting generally suggests that the phenomena displays some kind of intelligence. That is, often activity occurs in response to a question or request. I’m sure a few of us have been present in an investigation when we have requested that a spirit moves a trigger object. Then remarkably the object moves by itself. In a similar fashion and as we often see on TV shows, we often see a similar kind of response when devices are used such as KII to communicate with spirits, they light up in response. In more recent times these seemingly simple tests have been presented more often than not as ‘intelligent communication’, which seems to then present a very real possibility of survival for those that witness the event. The problem this presents us with is actually relatively simple, what we thought was intelligent communication, just simply is not! It’s a statement that will probably raise some question and certainly some disagreement, so let me explain.
An intelligent haunting or communication should be something that is ‘water tight’, especially if we are to use it as a possibility of proving survival. So, why am I being a little picky about this now! I’ve often seen groups of ghost hunters become quickly excited and proclaim intelligent communication had been received. In the past I’m sure I have done the same. The problem is we often interpret reactions of devices as some kind of communication, which is an approach that has been highlighted by paranormal TV shows. Actually those devices are just providing readings of the environmental factors they are designed to measure. It’s often these readings that may seem to occur at the same time as we ask questions during our investigations. This happened to my own team during an investigation once too. We attempted asking a few questions out loud whilst in a room of a probable haunted building. To our surprise we receive some responses on a couple of EMF devices. We continued to ask questions; some questions received a single illumination, whilst others received multiple. So, in a classic scenario we thought we had ‘intelligent communication’. However there was something a little off here, which was noticed by a team member that wasn’t listening to the conversation. He noticed that we had a pattern with our responses and more importantly there appeared to be a similar time gap between the responses. This prompts us to stop interaction and see if we get a response without a question – we do of course. We then moved to determine the source, which was an alarm cable that appeared to liven every ninety seconds or similar. It was a complete fluke that when asking a question it would fit in the interval between bursts. The reason we received single and multiple responses to questions was because the individual with the EMF device moved. Its as simple as that and certainly not an intelligent piece of communication.
Ghost hunting tech…
The point is we can often jump to conclusions no matter how focussed we are and how much technology we are using. These days there is a lot more ghost hunting technology on the market and whilst I love a bit of tech; it can equally be a huge misdirection in psychical research. Paranormal TV shows have promoted the concept of reactive investigating, where devices or approaches give an immediate probable response, which in turn allows investigators to ‘react’ during their investigations. The problem is these are clearly designed to make paranormal TV shows more engaging. However its incredibly suggestive and I’m afraid not at all conclusive evidence. Great for a ghost hunt or event, but not so great for a proper investigation. When conducting a true investigation you really need to capture lots of data over set amounts of time, to comprehend patterns and changes from normality. Its also important to comprehend exactly what data you need to capture, which could be determined on a case by case basis.
So, ‘flashy lights’ are not necessarily evidence of some kind of intelligent communication. Surely if an object moves by itself, then that could only be a spirit communicating intelligently with us? Actually it might not be and weirdly this one comes from a couple of lines of experience. The next time an object moves just after you’ve asked for it to do so, ask; “was that power of spirit or power of the mind?” The odd thing is that phrase was passed onto me via a medium, allegedly from spirit! Seems odd they should question themselves or propose that the source should be our own minds, but its a phrase I quite like actually. However it was also this particular phrase that had me re-evaluate an experience I had at Peterborough Museum, where we witnessed an object move by itself. At the time the group were communicating with what we believed to be a spirit child, asking them to move an object. Eventually the object moved much to our excitement. Now when I review those events I am more inclined to state that the evidence points more to probable telekinesis, due to the group being so focussed on the moving of that object. This seems evident when you consider aspects like the Phillip Experiments table tipping and psychic projection experiments.
Psychic projection…
In fact psychic projection highlights other communication often considered to be intelligent, which is of course Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). The history of EVP is very interesting and a concept which has made its way out of the laboratory into the lesser controlled paranormal field. Friedrich Jurgenson is often mentioned as discovering EVP in a sort of laboratory in 1959. However Raymond Bayless was conducting experiments in the early 1950’s in a sound proof studio with Astral Projector Attila von Szalay using good old reel-to-reel recorders. As EVP became more popular the likes of Raudive got involved and this sparked a great debate in regards to its validity.
Now if we re-think EVP and consider the possibility that we are projecting the answers to the questions we ask, psychically onto the devices, then that throws doubt on the source of that communication too. So, this all highlights the need to define the source and question what we believe to be intelligent communication.
There have been some interesting periods of psychical research that could be considered to be ‘intelligent communication’ though. For me these include the Cross Correspondents and the Scole Experiment, both documented heavily by the SPR. The reason these for me are more likely to be probable intelligent communication is down to how extensively they have been documented and researched. They show that there’s something going on or at least the documentation provides us with that as a possibility.
Over to Sarah…
Intelligent communication is an important aspect that many of us investigators continue to seek out. A subject that is both extensive and has a fascinating history too. However this seems like a good time to hand over to Sarah Chumacero. Sarah will then comment on what I’ve written and add her own thoughts too in a post on her website ‘Living Life in Full Spectrum‘, but this discussion shouldn’t end there. Please feel free to get involved and comment below.
Ashley Knibb 