Have you ever stopped to wonder what you are doing when you go out looking to catch an EVP, an orb, or an apparition? Exactly what is it that you expect to find? What are you trying to capture on your audio recording equipment?
People who go to graveyards are obviously trying to contact someone who is dead, right? But do you always get a dead person? How do you know?
Have you ever considered the possibility that you may be picking up a passive haunting? Voices that just recur, saying the same thing; apparitions or orbs that never change from one visit to the next; these are not what they appear to be. But what then are they?
Excerpt from AAPI presentation-Hauntings-2008
In its most basic form, there really are only two types of Haunting. Lesson One for beginners, the most rudimentary lesson, is to determine which type of haunting they are experiencing. After that things will get a bit more interesting, more convoluted and subjective, but one must always start with the simple and move toward the more complex to gain better understanding.
First of all, we need to define the term “Haunt”. Hauntings are recurring anomalous paranormal activities in one localized area. They may encompass an area as large as several square miles, as in the Custer Battlefield in Montana, or the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg. They may only encompass a small portion of a building or other physical site. Haunted places generally, but not always have strong emotional histories; these may be filled with joy, pain, fear, or death, and sometimes there is no obvious connection with the haunting and any emotional or traumatic event. Cemeteries can be used as an example of the un-obvious haunting. After all, why would anyone who knows they are dead and buried want to hang around in a graveyard when they could be off gallivanting elsewhere? This is the most common definition, but it isn’t the only definition.
It is possible for things smaller than a house to be haunted. Individual items can be haunted, and they can run the gamut from the rare and exotic through the historic to the mundane. (In recent years there has been a trend toward collecting “Haunted Dolls”.) As with geographic locations it is most common for haunted items to have a ‘history’ or an association with strong emotional, mental, or physical discomfort. Sometimes this is only in the eye of the owner and sometimes it is obvious to everyone who comes in contact with the item.
After all, it’s not just the deceased that comes to the graveyard. Today there may only be one trip made from the funeral home to the gravesite / mausoleum / crypt. Even if it is a small funeral, say 20 mourners, there’s a lot of emotion and feelings of regret, grief, loss, anger… you name it, among the graveside attendees.
Where does all this energy and emotion go? Does it just evaporate up into thin air after all is said and done? Do they somehow suck it all back into themselves before they leave? Does it magically turn into a bunch of dragonflies and butterflies and flowers that will stay in the area? More likely it gets absorbed: people absorb some of the energy, the emotions and sorrow, and the tears of one become the tears of many. But it also gets absorbed into the surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Plants can absorb emotional energy, in fact some studies suggest they can be “aware” and feed or deteriorate in the presence of varying types of energy from humans and other animals. The headstones, the ground, the building, the urn, the plastic flowers, any trinket or memento left for the deceased, all of these will absorb some of the energy around them, just as they would take up infrared radiation and warm to the touch. And they radiate this energy out again the same way, over time, the higher the energy input, the longer the output – the ‘imprint’, if you will - remains.
In the old days, people visited the dead more often and there was a different attitude about going to the graveside of a passed person to visit, picnic, and remember. That may be why some of the oldest graves and gravestones have the most activity. But there are a few newer ones like that, too, where people care so much for their passed relative that they visit regularly.
These are all Passive Haunting phenomena, just energy of events gone by radiating out into the world and eventually to fade away.
Sometimes, rather rarely, you will get an Active Haunting in a cemetery, but these are rare. These are the ones that answer questions and may try to show you something in response to a request with EVP, orbs, EMF, flux, temperature changes, etc. And some of the reasons they are there, should they answer your inquiries, might surprise you.
- Some of them don’t know they’re dead or don’t want to accept it. These don’t usually stay in graveyards, but more commonly are associated with the sites where they perished.
- Some know they are dead but are afraid to move on; usually they are found elsewhere as well, but sometimes they follow the funeral procession and end up staying near their grave because they don’t know what to do next, or are afraid to do it.
- Some, the surprising ones, know exactly why they are there: they are waiting and they will tell you that, because they were the first to pass and they have no intention of moving on alone; they wait for a partner (husband, wife, child, friend) so they can go together.
- Finally, some are just passing through and you don’t even know if they are human or not. Sometimes you will pick up what might be considered an Elemental or an Earth spirit that is associated with the site itself and has nothing to do with anything else. Sometimes you may pick up things that would more often be associated with vortex and dimensional anomalies.
When you do catch something in a cemetery it is often pretty interesting, but, personally, I wouldn’t go hunting for intelligent ghosts there, they don’t tend to hang around much unless there’s a reason for them to be there. Cemeteries are good place to train the new ghost hunter on standard safety protocols and how to use their instruments, and contrary to popular belief, you don't always need to go at night in order to get something on camera or recorder.
