Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ghosts. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 December 2013
Saturday, 30 November 2013
Wednesday, 30 October 2013
Ghost-proof your home: Paranormal experts offer tips to clear the air!
It’s tough to get a stench out of your home.
Even worse? Ghosts.
They’ll spook you without notice, knock stuff on the ground, and just make your abode feel abnormal.
Before pesky poltergeists become a problem, ghost-proof your home with these expert tips.
Avoid locations, locations, locations
If you’re not yet a homeowner, there’s still time.
Unless you want that 30-year mortgage to feel even longer, avoid putting stakes down in areas attractive to apparitions.
Like the living, ghosts are attracted to the water, says Susan Bove, one of the founders of the Gloucester City-based South Jersey Paranormal Research.
“Water is a great conductor of energy, so if water runs under the house, it’s probably a very active house.”
A granite foundation is no safer, she says.
“Different stones mean different things,” Bove states. “Granite is a stone that retains energy.”
That also means to think twice about installing that granite counter top.
“I don’t recommend that at all,” she says.
Air it out You might think leaving your doors or windows open may pose a security threat. And in a world where criminals and rodents exist, you’d be right.
But the supernatural may feast on a shuttered lifestyle, says Bonnie Sauter, owner of Good Vibrations New Age & Metaphysical in Blackwood, N.J.
“Ghosts are attracted to negative emotions or negative feelings, so if you’re keeping everything shut, not letting fresh air in or light, right there you’re creating an environment that could attract negative energy,” Sauter says.
Bove says to trust your sixth sense over your first.
“If you felt someone walk in a room, you turn around and don’t see anyone,” Bove says, “but in reality someone did walk in the room and because your eyes didn’t see it, you dismissed it.”
Call a medium Still unsure of whether your property has a poltergeist?
Before you phone Ghostbusters, summon a practicing ghost research group in your state -- South Jersey has 500.
But be careful: Many are untrained “fly-by-nighters” influenced by sensational supernatural shows like Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures” and Syfy’s “Ghost Hunters.”
“Any reputable ghost hunter will not walk in their (home) and ask to be tossed around or have their hat knocked off,” Bove says. “We call that provoking. A lot of it has to do with intentions.”
With respect, these paranormal investigators inspect the homes, using gadgets like modified cameras and electronic magnetic field meters. An investigation in the wrong hands can anger the spirits.
“We have to do a cleanup investigation,” observes South Jersey Ghost Research President Dave Juliano, whose group works for free. “. . . Some groups are a little overeager for the experience of it, and to get actual evidence,” Juliano says.
“They kind of forget that sometimes there are people who live in those houses.”
Cleanse, cleanse, cleanse Even after taking these measures, you might find a ghost roaming your home.
Fear not. You can expel that apparition, Sauter assures.
As owner of F&F Pest Termites Control in Turnersville, N.J., Sauter has experience ridding unwelcome guests from homes.
“I consider it another type of house cleaning,” she says with a laugh.
A standard ghost cleansing involves white sage, sea salt and a bell, both Sauter and Bove say. Sauter, a former member of South Jersey Paranormal Research, says to first open every door, then sprinkle sea salt along each doorway.
Rock out While holding a bowl of white sage, “go clockwise in each room, all the way from the basement to the attic,” Sauter says, and then show the ghosts the exit.
“It sounds very simple but with a respectful tone, you want to say ‘This is my home, I don’t want you here and you have to leave,’” Bove says. “You don’t say ‘please’ because you’re not asking them, but you’re telling them in a way that’s not offensive.”
In her dozen or so house cleansings, Sauter has somebody by her side.
“I have another person with me who rings a bell,” she says. “The idea of the bell is to raise the vibrations. And then you would use sea salt and what that does is absorb the negative energy.”
Brighten up If you sense negative spirits, perhaps you ought to exorcise your own negativity .
“A lot of times negative energies are attracted to people who are depressed, that’s just the way it is,” Sauter says. “If that’s the case, I recommend they do something with that.”
Then again, an unhappy life might not lead to poltergeists.
Sauter adds that, according to shamanism, depression is caused by the parasitic “spirit attachment.”
“Spirit attachment comes first and then it attracts negative energy,” she says. “It’s almost like the snowball effect.”
If you burned the white sage and still feel spooked, herbs like mugwort and palo santo also have been known to have a cleansing effect, Sauter says.
For extra protection against negative forces, work in some obsidian crystals or hematite rocks into your decor.
“Pretty much black crystals have a protective power,” she says.
Search your soul Not all hauntings are negative or problematic.
A pesky poltergeist might be simply a late relative looking to connect, Juliano says.
Ghosts can make their peaceful presence known in many ways.
“Maybe they try the pipe smoke . . . then they try the footsteps,” Juliano says. “The person still doesn’t pay attention. Finally, they may throw a glass and be like, ‘Hey, explain this away".
Barnidge: Ghosts, goblins and things that go bump in the night
Say hello to another Halloween, a day famous for ghosts, goblins and things that go bump in the night. That makes it pretty much like any other day for Phyllis King and Loyd Auerbach.
King, a psychic who lives in San Ramon, discovered her portal to the afterlife more than three decades ago when a deceased teenage acquaintance made a startling appearance in her room. She since has helped dozens of clients communicate with dead friends and relatives.
Auerbach, a parapsychologist who lives in Martinez and teaches at HCH Institute in Lafayette, is a specialist in paranormal investigations. He's studied more than 1,000 apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists in a career spanning more than 30 years.
Neither attaches any mysticism to Oct. 31, but the occasion does provide a dandy excuse to explore a world they have embraced and most of us prefer to ignore.
Paranormal experiences run the gamut, Auerbach said, from the explainable to the otherworldly. He cites as an example of the former his first investigation, in 1979, when a Petaluma woman reported seeing household objects moving, windows opening and closing and a ghost clad in black armor.
"There were no ghosts," he concluded after extensive study. "What the woman was seeing was an unconsciously created image of physical stuff happening. It was my first poltergeist case, caused by her unconscious ability to do mind-over-matter tantrums."
A less explainable phenomenon came years later in Livermore, where four family members saw a female ghost move about their house but never discussed it among themselves until a 12-year-old in the family volunteered that he knew everyone was seeing a ghost.
"His mother asked, 'How do you know that?'" Auerbach said. "He said, 'The ghost told me.'"
When asked about the spirit who had talked to him, the boy shared details of the ghost's long-ago life, which he had no way of knowing but were later confirmed by her surviving relative.
Both Auerbach and King say spirits sometimes simply "hang around" a location for reasons unknown. King experienced such a presence in the company of six psychics during a convention in Long Beach. In a stateroom aboard the Queen Mary where cigar-puffing Winston Churchill was known to have stayed, they all heard indistinguishable chatter, on and off, accompanied by the smell of cigar smoke.
King reaches out to the dead only at the request of clients. She can sense a spirit's willingness to be contacted by a change in the "texture" of the energy or by a sudden chill that makes her "goosebumpy." Her clients mostly are women. Men tend to be disbelievers.
Auerbach, who said hauntings can involve people who are still alive, recalled one in Westchester County, just north of New York City. A couple who'd lived in their house for only a few months reported hearing noisy groaning and moaning that sounded like amorous activity in the next bedroom at 3 a.m. nearly every night.
Auerbach discovered that years before, when windows were left open on spring and fall nights, the young couple who previously owned the house often had awakened the next-door neighbors with their enthusiastic cavorting in the wee hours.
"Somehow," said Auerbach, "that young couple had left a real significant, positive imprint on that location."
It seems not every bump in the night has to be something bad.
Contact Tom Barnidge at tbarnidge@bayareanewsgroup.com
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