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. 1. 1. They are intelligent.

1. 1. 2. They have an awareness and are aware of us. Like the rest of us, they have an inquisitive nature – they silently observe us.

1. 1. 3. They are ever present, but they are not always active.

1. 1. 4. They defy the laws of physics and defy any assumptions we may have about the nature of death.

1. 1. 5. They are aware of physical space but are not confined by it.

1. 1. 6. 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. 1. 7. 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.

          

      8. 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. 1. 9. 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. 1. 10. 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.