Author: Richard Falconer

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What are Ghosts?

By Richard Falconer

Excerpts from More Ghosts of St Andrews by Richard Falconer. Available now from Amazon

There are many aspects of reality under the umbrella of paranormal phenomena. For ghosts there are two main types. Once you know their traits you will begin to distinguish which grouping paranormal testimonies fall into and what can and cannot occur in that locality as a consequence. They are:

Group A: Impressionistic Phenomena

Group B: Intelligent Spirits – of the deceased

There is also a third group to understand:

Group C: Empathic residue.
This is both a category – natural ambiance, and a subcategory of A. & B., where every action and emotion leaves behind an energetic residue. If the conditions are met, they are both symptomatic of unaccountable empathic feelings. This is easily one of the most common and misattributed forms of paranormal manifestation.

Moving back to Group A and B:

Group A: Impressionistic Phenomena
Ghosts in this category are not aware of you. There is no interaction, so there is never any poltergeist activity when this is the only phenomena associated with a location. It represents a snapshot of an earlier time and can be accompanied by the whole scene being transformed to an earlier period. What you are observing is still taking place. It is like looking through a corridor or window through time, and it is more often the same sequence that is observed, like a segment of time in a loop.

Group B: Spirits of the deceased
In many ways Group A. is more complex to understand, while this grouping is more complex to explain. It is typified by:

  • The manifestation or partial manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.
  • Poltergeist activity caused by a spirit of the decease looking to make itself known.

There is also Psychokinesis, manifesting with the same characteristics but from a living person. This can either be consciously induced, or unconsciously manifest through one predominantly going through puberty and rarely lasts beyond their teens. There are also other aspects.

Attributes of Group B.

      1. They are intelligent.
      1. They have an awareness and are aware of us. Like the rest of us, they have an inquisitive nature – they silently observe us.
      1. They are ever present, but they are not always active.
      1. They defy the laws of physics and defy any assumptions we may have about the nature of death.
      1. They are aware of physical space but are not confined by it.
      1. They have no sense of time, or at least not in the way we observe time. What appears to be a few years to us can be moments to them.
      1. They don’t like change. They tend to become more active, perhaps unsettled and agitated when their environment changes. Moving furniture or redecorating, structural changes, moving in or out of a place can all do it.

         

      2. The only physical harm is localised to bite marks, wheel marks, scratches, slaps, bumps or taps. On brushing past, they can cause rashes to appear, as can Group A. Both can cause mild psychological disturbances, but nothing to match the malign potential created by the naivety of our mind.
      1. Contrary to mistaken belief, never in the history of the paranormal has anything flown across a room and intentionally hit anyone. If anything, they could aim to miss in looking to attract your attention.
      1. We can think of them as being good, bad, evil or indifferent, but they are primarily neutral, and they are not trying to kill you. They are not even trying to scare you. We do that suitably ourselves as we overlay our prejudices and assumptions on their reality. We live in our heads, and the world we inhabit bears less resemblance to the reality we perceive than we would like to think.

Confronted with an incident defying the laws of physics such as a coffee cup moving from A to B, we can use our imagination as a scapegoat to deny it happened, or conversely, we can read too much into it and conjure our favourite horror film as a qualification for what could happen next. In this regard it must be understood, the paranormal and the imagination have never gone hand in hand.

For all the imagination we think we have, we need a trigger to activate it, otherwise it is not your imagination at play. Therefore, during or after an experience the imagination can go wild, but not before the onset of phenomena, that is very important to remember. The phenomenon occurs, the imagination then goes crazy, never the other way around. Once phenomenon has occurred it becomes fair game, and we can conjure things that are far more disturbing, violent and damaging than spirits of the deceased could ever wish for or conceive of.

Why are Ghosts here?

By Richard Falconer

Continuing with Group B. Spirits of the deceased

Why are they here?

This is the most common question I am asked. There are those who say we arrived in this world with nothing and we leave with the same. This is not true. To give a riddle in a similar vein as the Sphinx – there is one thing we each arrive with when we are born, and one thing we leave with when we die… What is it?

The answer is our spirit. The spirit drives an awareness partially recognised by our subconscious and far more profound than physical consciousness can comprehend. Following death, our awareness is imbued with the culmination of everything experienced whilst alive. Unless our death is premature at birth, we will always leave with more than we arrive with.

We are intelligent (apparently), and like the meditative state, this is awareness without thought, it is a knowing, but it is not gnosis. As with our arrival in this world, and contrary to popular belief, there is no immediate enlightenment following death. The existentialist questions dwelt upon in life are not met with anything other than our awareness of a seamless continuation in death. A juxtaposition as natural and automotive as breathing. When we die the spirit naturally progresses to the next stage of our existence. However, there are anomalies. The first is where the spirit, given particular circumstances, returns by merging through the vibratory planes to the physical, resulting in personal visitations to subtly notify continuation to loved ones, to watch over, to protect, or for unfinished business etc.

The second is a very rare anomaly whereby the continuation or progression of the spirit following death has been suspended ‘between worlds’ so to speak. Those in this state have slipped through the net of the dynamics dictating this natural progression experienced by the majority. A jarring of the spirit has occurred, whereby: 1/ the energetic impact on the locality of death, 2/ reinforced by a mix of energetic mental stimuli (perhaps generated through circumstance), and 3/ often coupled with the natural energy already present in the physicality, 4/ have all transpired to hold the energies of the spirit in a form of vibratory stasis, 5/ a suspension of our state of being in what could be deemed a flux of intelligent vibratory energy held in the physical, 6/ thus preventing its immediate progression.

There is no telling who it might happen to, and we are not given a choice per se as to whether we are going to remain in the world we inhabited when living. If we find ourselves held by such a circumstance, we are tied to the environmental location or specific area that has a personal association for us. This is our sphere of involvement, and is generally where we met our end or lived out our days. This sphere can cover quite an area and its scope is very involved, albeit restricted. Like the ghost of Lady Kinkell who roams her former estate by St Andrews, or the neighbouring ghosts of Kingask (Fairmont) for the same.

Operating through laws unimpeded by illusory physical constructs, there is no dependency on any currently known laws of physics. They are no longer part of the same physical vibratory frequency, which is why they do not share in the same physical space. The only physical quantification of their existence is through our observance of their influence. They interact with physical reality by altering the vibratory nature of the physical in conformity with their will – rather than thought. This is instantaneous, but there is little control once initiated.

A peaceful death and weak spirit can be held energetically just as readily as the violent energies of a fatal situation; a sudden death typified by suicide, murder or accident for example. The former is subtle, the latter more stereotypical when it comes to mundane attempts at explaining their nature.

When experiencing phenomena, an energetic link is created. Any attempt at understanding their nature through the physical or psychological state alone, to put a finer point upon it is futile. These are not theoretical constructs I speak of. Some will recognise it as coming through experience in the spirit.