Spectral Evidence

I know that at this time of year I rarely talk about the subject of ghosts, however, there have been some pressing investigations as of late where the paranormal activity once again is heightening and the year is still very young.

It seems we have been inundated with e-mails and letters from people who have haunted houses and in even one case, the house has been called a den of demons. In fact, the unfinished house is so haunted that construction has been delayed and many of the workers on the housing project have walked off the job frightened for their safety.

It has also been proposed that the building should raised and rebuilt thinking that any ghost or demon inside it will flee from the site.

When I am faced with the idea of talking about haunted houses, there is often a tendency to go straight for the sensational angle of playing Electronic Voice Phenomenon and trying to snap pictures or video. This of course, is all part of the showmanship and many people need to see or hear it to believe it. The best thing is experiencing it.

Sometimes, a real ghost investigation tells you not only about the ghosts that haunt an area, but it also tell you a lot about you and where you see yourself in the world of spiritual phenomena and the dimensional matrix.

There have been a lot of people that I have talked to over the years about how their houses are haunted and while they say they don’t mind their restless spectral occupants they most certainly wish they were made aware of the ghost prior to buying, and of course, the sordid details of why the ghost is there in the first place.

Most real estate laws require sellers to disclose “material facts” such as structural concerns, the age and condition of the roof and shingles, leaks in the foundation and walls, existing mold and mildew, and total square footage. Material facts can also include other items that affect the house’s value such as the amount of property taxes, details about individuals who claim to have an interest in the house, or overlaps on adjacent properties.

Items not considered material facts include personal information about a seller, such as pending foreclosure or divorce, illnesses of the seller, and the seller’s reasons for moving. What if the seller’s reason for moving involves the paranormal?

In the strange case of Stambovsky vs. Ackley, Helen Ackley tried to sell her overtly ostentatious mansion in Nyack, New York, to Jeffrey and Patrice Stambovsky. The Stambovskys put down a $32,500 deposit. All appeared to be going well, until an architect mentioned to the Stambovskys in passing that they were buying “the haunted house.” Indeed, several print articles in the the New York Times, and Reader’s Digest had covered the house as haunted. This particularly upset Patrice, who refused to move in to the house. The Stambovskys sued, claiming Ackley should have warned them about the haunting like any other home defect, and demanded their deposit back. The state trial court dismissed their claim, and the Stambovskys appealed.

The appellant court ruled in favor of the Stambovskys’ specifically, that the Stambovskys’ claim for rescission should be reinstated in the state court without them having to pay the filing fee again, the parties then settled out of court: the Stambovskys paid Ackley $5,000, and she let them out of the contract.

The state Supreme Court declared it legally haunted in 1991.

The majority of the New York State Supreme Court held:

“Having reported the ghosts’ presence in both a national publication… and the local press… defendant is stopped to deny their existence and, as a matter of law, the house is haunted”.

There are many stories about realtors who have heard the real estate they are peddling is haunted and yet they neglect to say anything about it fearing a potential buyer will opt out of purchasing it.

A real estate agent in Fort Wayne, Indiana was asked by a woman to sell her furnished but otherwise empty house. The neighbors had to react to the proposed sale by volunteering the information that the house was haunted. The neighbors had insisted they had looked through the windows and saw mysterious objects moving throughout the house.

Upon investigation, the house was filled wall to wall with black mold. While he was looking through the home and attempted to prepare it for potential buyers, he often heard weird moaning sounds that he could not attribute to anything in the home.

Later, the plumbing had burst which flooded the basement. Furniture was moving in the water and so the real estate agent had decided that the whole ghost rumor was nothing more than neighborhood gossip and that there were logical explanations for the so-called haunting.

He then called for the repairs and was satisfied that the ghostly activity would be put to rest.

The national president for the Council of Real Estate Brokerage Managers came into the same home and recalls showing a woman the house. When they arrived in one of the rooms, there were no ghosts, no strange sounds or movements. There were only odd behaviors being shown by the woman.

The woman was going into what appeared to be a seizure and suddenly she leapt to her feet and demanded that she leave. The realtor escorted her to the lawn. She then explained how sorry she was for her behavior, however when she walked into the room she said all she could see is red and she had the feeling that she wanted to kill herself.

The seller was then called in for a meeting with the seller of the home and later asked if there were any strange histories with the house.

The seller admitted that a murder had taken place in the house.

More than 20 states, such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have laws that say agents and sellers won’t be held liable for failing to mention any strange activity or dark histories surrounding a home that is for sale.

In some cases, like in Oklahoma, it gets complicated because you have to ask in writing if the house is haunted or psychologically affected in another way, and then in writing, the seller is required to furnish the facts of the matter. Other states, however, do have laws that require that potential prospects be notified.

You may be legally required to say something about your haunted house and subject to a possible lawsuit down the road if you don’t; you may be able to say and do absolutely nothing.

There are arguments that say that a house’s value is based primarily on its structural integrity and not on its residual psychological history.

After all, when you are admitted to a hospital and are given a bed to rest on, does the doctor or even a nurse tell you that many people have died on that bed? I mean, chances are there have been 100’s of thousands that have died on the bed you would be sleeping on in the hospital and no one is afraid of sleeping on those beds.

That is why when I watch ghost hunting shows, I often watch with skepticism when a caretaker who speaks of some uneventful death, as the sole reason for a haunting. Hauntings have histories and many of these histories are mired in powerful rage, or, criminal behavior.

Rarely do we find that something as simple as grandma dying in a bed is the only reason a house is haunted – there are many reasons why. If grandma carried a secret to her grave, or is attached to an inanimate object like a china cabinet or a doll, then we certainly have a reason to either investigate or ask a psychic to perform psychometry on the object to see if there is a residual haunting happening with an artifact and not the whole house.

Speaking of inanimate objects… it has been found that haunted houses which experience poltergeist activity do so because of inanimate objects like crosses and dream catchers that are hanging on every wall or in every room.

Now remember what I just said carefully, no one is saying that a cross will not work in warding off a ghost.

One cross hung on a wall does not create a ghost fest, one dream catcher is harmless but some people in a panic go overboard and many crosses on every wall becomes bait especially to chaotic spirits. Hanging a cross in front of an adjacent mirror is also an attractor to unwanted spirits.

As much as one would want to believe these things ward off ghosts, they seem to attract most ghosts and some like the poltergeists aren’t as peaceful as the majority of ghosts that are active in homes.

Another way to tone down ghost activity is to leave non perishable food on a table or in a room that the ghost occupies. This practice goes back to ancient Europe, and is also part of the Dia de los Muertos festival where food is left at the table for a deceased loved one.

Say a prayer to bless your house daily.

Call and ask around for a paranormal investigator to come in your home and run some tests. Be very careful about who you allow into your home. Most investigators are brought in by word-of-mouth and really don’t have their name in the phone book.

If all of these things still not work, you may want to hire a religious authority to perform some sort of ritual to banish the ghost or demon. You can call upon a Wiccan priestess, wizard, Shaman or a Curandero if you do not wish to have a Christian leader do the banishment.

The supernatural world view is changing and two-thirds of the American people give respectful consideration to the paranormal and many of the things that were once dismissed as hallucinations or mental abnormalities are now being accepted as unexplained phenomena that seems to replicate or increase.

Cultural anthropologists no longer dismiss these experiences as mere mental illnesses. In fact, there has been a consistent appearance throughout history of various satanic panics. Granted, many of these panics are connected to mass hysteria and group think. There are now actions and intentions where antiquated ritual and intent have been involved in creating the social trance needed conjure various demons and entities.

Cultural anthropologists have a term for the intentional ratcheting up of opposition to an idea or an experience, it is called “schismogenesis.” In fact, cultural anthropologists have acknowledged the paranormal experience is part of the human experience and is far more normal than paranormal and should not be dismissed as some psychological disorder.

It can be said that Americans now have been forced into a sort of schismogenesis in all matters. We are divided politically, religiously and even with matters of paranormal activity.

It is like there is this ongoing battle for superiority and conflict which breeds the same toxic environment of confusion and by some sick irony, the environment is a hive for all kind of chaotic and misguided thought. It’s the same environment that true believers say demons dwell in.

We can’t simply draw lines in the sand and say the human experience is not full of unexplained or supernatural activity. Everyone has an experience that they can’t explain. Some deny it and others embrace it.

Ghosts are never proof of vacancy but spectral evidence of unwanted occupation. They haunt humans in their homes in order to somehow review thoughts and memories. They long for their lives that have been cut short and the comforts their home once provided for them in life. It is believed that perhaps ghosts live in a time frame that is simultaneous and they are not aware of what time they are in.

For them, nothing is ever past, and sometimes they appear to test the limits of death or its meaning in a world of terror.

The many forms of the dead in the twenty-first century ask us to look again at the way the paranormal invades the homes of the normal.

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