For decades, paranormal investigators and ghost hunters have been exploring the unknown. Storytelling and research are part of the process. We learn about the legends and lore behind haunted locations and other ghost stories. These elements go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly. Or, chicken nuggets and barbecue sauce. And, now I’m hungry.

Our minds are powerful tools. Is it possible to simply manifest your own thoughts with a self-fulfilling prophecy, or completely create your own entity? For the sake of sanity and keeping track of my own thoughts, let’s move forward with the idea that spirits exist in some form.
Stories, Legends, & Lore

We need the stories and the historical context to better understand what’s going on behind the reports of alleged hauntings. Is it be possible that as more people learn the stories, all of that energy collects and creates a haunting? This could very well explain activity from the ghost of a person who never existed. Let’s consider popular locations that host investigators almost every night of the year. Each night, we tell the same stories. Perhaps that expectation is what is actually haunting us instead of a spirit?

Take Gettysburg as an example. People visit the battlefield, and history is on repeat. From reenactments to films to paintings to ghost walks to museums to even just sitting in a restaurant, Gettysburg’s story is on repeat. That energy has not had a chance to just rest in over two hundred years. Could it be possible that the apparitions that we see are merely from our own minds?

Manifestation & Intention

The manifestation of thoughts and intentions is becoming widely popular these days. On social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok especially, there are creators providing exercises and meditations for the manifestation of intentions. While paranormal investigators aren’t necessarily going through this intense process, many do set their intentions ahead of time of what entities they want to engage with. They may picture specific people in their heads or just a general idea of who they want to interact with.

Thoughtforms and Tulpas

Several years ago, I want to say 2011, I was made aware of the theories of thoughtforms and tulpas. I actually covered this subject quite extensively in my book, The Haunted Actor, where I theorized that hauntings come from people, especially emotionally powerful people like actors. To put it simply, all tulpas are thoughtforms, but not all thoughtforms are tulpas. Clear as mud, right?

This is where I derail the idea that hauntings are tulpas. Tulpa is Tibetan word for a being that was created by mental discipline. It takes intense thought and concentration to manifest an entity. There is a specific intention behind a tulpa, and its creation is not an accident. I’ve also read that tulpas are created through dismantling one’s own psyche. Meaning one creates a tulpa together by piecing together parts of yourself to create this being. Essentially, a tulpa is your own creation from parts of yourself.

Thoughtforms seem to happen with a similar intention but seem to be more accidental. Also, there doesn’t seem to be parts of yourself being used for creation. For example, a bunch of people investigating the ghost of little Sally at the haunted asylum may be unintentionally creating Sally herself. Sally could very well be a real person, but her spirit isn’t what is haunting the asylum since she crossed over decades earlier.

Fun fact: I’ve also read that elementals are thought-forms. But that is a discussion for another time.

The Phillip Experiment

The Philip experiment was conducted in 1972 in Toronto, Canada by Dr. A.R. George Owen and the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR). The experiment was to determine whether subjects could communicate with fictionalized ghosts through human will. According to Dr. Owen, he believed that “Ghosts have an objective reality, but they are created out of the minds that see them.” Dr. Owen, who is a mathematical geneticist, lead the experiment while it was overseen by a psychologist named Dr. Joel Whitton.

The idea of the experiment would be that participants would make up a fictionalized ghost, and then try to make contact during seances. In case you’re wondering, yes, the 2014 film, The Quiet Ones, is loosely based on the Philip experiment.
The Participants

The participants of the experiment included eight participants, one of them being Dr. Owen’s wife Iris Owen. Other participants included:

    Margaret Sparrow, former chairperson of MENSA
    Andy H., industrial designer
    Lorne, Andy’s wife
    Al Peacocok heating engineer
    Bernice M, accountant
    Dorothy O’Donnel, bookkeeper
    Sidney K., sociology student

All of the people who participated were members of TSPR.

Creating Philip

First, the group had to agree on a backstory for their ghost. They decided that the ghost’s name would be Philip Aylesford, and he would live in the 1600s during the time of Oliver Cromwell. He was an aristocrat, married to a cold woman named Dorothea, with whom he had a daughter. One day, Philip rode by a gypsy encampment and fell in love with a woman named Margo. He brought her back to secretly live in his gatehouse, and they had an affair. Eventually, Dorothea found out and accused Margo of witchcraft.

Afraid of losing his status and possessions, Philip did nothing. Tragically, Margo was sentenced to death and burned at the stake. Burdened by guilt and remorse, Philip committed suicide at the age of thirty.

Contacting Philip

The group started meeting weekly starting in September 1972. They would have informal gatherings where they discussed Philip, meditate on him, and visualize him. This went on for about a year with no results. However, it should be noted that the room was fully lit. Sometimes, the participants said they felt a presence in the room, but there was nothing extraordinary that would make them think it was Philip.

Then, the group decided to change the dynamics of their atmosphere and recreate a traditional seance environment. Dr. Owen dimmed the lights. They sang songs and pictured where Philip would have lived and what he looked like. Also, they managed to get antiques from the time period.

This seemed to have worked. Philip made himself known through a distant rap on the table. In traditional seance fashion, the group had Philip rap once for yes and twice for no. Eventually Philip was able to dim the lights on his own, create a cold breeze, and other incredible psychokinetic phenomenon. The group even did a demonstration in front of 50 people, and Philip delivered. However, the group was never able to make Philip materialize.

Continuing the Experiment

TSPR was so impressed with their results with the Philip Experiment, they attempted the experiment a few more times with different spirits. They managed to create and contact a French Canadian spy named Lilith. Instead of taking over a year to make contact, Lilith made herself known in just five weeks. The group also created a man from the future named Axel as well as a medieval alchemist named Sebastian.

In Australia, a group conducted what became known as the Skippy Experiment. With six participants, the group created the ghost of a 14-year old girl named Skippy Carmichael. According to the group, Skippy communicated mainly using raps and scratching sounds.

Final Thoughts

Even after all this, I’m not 100% certain what we’re communicating with in these haunted locations. Are we truly talking to a sentient beings created from our own minds, or are we talking to the souls of those once lived? Thanks to the Internet, these stories are more readily available than ever. This means that we will continue to read, meditate, and regurgitate these stories until we join the other side.

Even if we set up our intentions, could it be possible that we’re creating our own ghosts? Given that I can’t manipulate a K2 meter or a REM-Pod with my own mind, I have a hard time believing this. This is why I find equipment so faulty. If it is our consciousness that is manipulating the equipment, how come we can’t do it right now when we’re alive? What changes once we leave our physical body?

Source: The Spooky Stuff
https://alexmatsuo.com/are-paranormal-investigators-creating-their-own-ghosts

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- IN YOUR FACE DEPARTMENT -

Toddlers Filmed Talking to "Monster" on Bedroom Wall
By Tim Binnall

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- BECAUSE IT'S CHILLY IN HERE DEPARTMENT -

Why Are Ghosts Seen Wearing Clothes?

A question that ghost researchers often are confronted with concerns the fact that ghosts are most often seen wearing clothes. It is also a question that skeptics raise to support their argument that ghosts are figments of the imagination. But it’s a perfectly legitimate question. If ghosts are human spirit energy, why do their manifestations include the manufactured convention of clothing? After all, clothes are not part of our bodies, our spirits or our “souls”.

Or are they? I posed this question to a number of respected paranormal researchers.

TROY TAYLOR
American Ghost Society

Why do ghosts need clothes? No one really seems to know, but it’s possible that in most cases, ghosts seen wearing clothing are simply “residual” images – imprints or memories that linger on the atmosphere of a place like a recording.
A ghost of this sort would have no “personality” and is simply like an old movie that just keeps playing.

But what about ghosts that are not merely imprints? What about those which are true, traditional spirits who died and stayed behind? Many researchers feel that ghosts are made up of electromagnetic energy. This energy, inside of the body, forms what we call our spirit, soul or personality. Now, science cannot prove this energy or personality actually exists, yet we know it does. If it can exist inside of our bodies, then why can’t it exist outside of the body, once the body itself stops functioning? It’s possible that it does and that this electromagnetic energy contains our personality and is what we think of as our spirit.

It has been shown through scientific experiments that exposure to high levels of electromagnetic energy can cause people to have vivid dreams, nightmares and even hallucinations. In other words, people are seeing things as a result of exposure to this energy. If spirits have any sort of control over the energy they are now comprised of (or even if their personalities are somehow manifested in the energy), then I would think it possible for the witness to see the spirit as the spirit sees itself. If the personality really does remain, the spirit would visualize itself as it was when alive, appearing as a living person and wearing clothing.

This could be a totally unconscious effect of the energy on the living person, or it could be a manipulation on the part of the spirit itself, perhaps causing the person to see what it wants them to. To understand this, I suggest that you close your eyes for a moment and then visualize yourself in your mind. How do you appear to yourself? Most likely, you were wearing clothing in your imagination. With the idea that a ghost appears looking in the same way that he sees himself, this might explain why so many ghosts that are seen are not only wearing clothing.

RICHARD AND DEBBIE SENATE
www.ghost-stalker.com

Ghosts and the clothes they wear have long been a snickering question. It’s a sort of “gotcha” question debunkers use, and it tells more about the way ghosts are interpreted than anything about them. Ghosts appear as wearing cloths because that's how they appear to us. In our era, clothes are part of what we are. They are part of how we see ourselves and this mental image is the one projected and picked up. In fact, clothes can many times give us information about who the ghosts are and what lives they had. There are some reports of nude ghosts, but they are few and far between. Ghosts tend to be seen in the garments they are buried wearing. In many ways the clothing helps us to indentify who they are.

JEFF BELANGER
Founder of Ghostvillage.com and author of The Ghost Files

In many cases, a ghost is a projection of a person. Whether that projection is coming from our own heads, some intelligent energy swarming all around us, or imprinted on the location itself, I don't know. Consider this: If you were to picture yourself somewhere, it's likely you would envision yourself wearing clothes, looking comfortable, yet presentable, and maybe you'd even drop a few pounds in your "projection" (hey, it's cheaper than liposuction, so have at it).

Very few people would picture themselves naked (though there's usually one exhibitionist in every crowd). If you could project any image of yourself that you like, maybe you'd project yourself bleeding from the gunshot would you sustained in your last moments of life in order to make a point to whoever receives that projection. The apparition is always a representation of something/someone else. It's not an entity unto itself; otherwise it wouldn't be so fleeting.

STACEY JONES
Central New York Ghost Hunters

I believe that ghosts can show themselves in whatever form they want. If a spirit were more comfortable at a certain age, they may show themselves at that time. I'm not too familiar with any person who is comfortable showing themselves in the nude, therefore they wouldn't want to show themselves au natural in ghost from.


These are all very good points. If ghosts are manifestations of the energy of human consciousness, then that consciousness would include clothing since, as stated by others above, that is how we think of ourselves. Or as esoteric author Richelle Hawks put it, considering that humans are far more than just their bodies: Why wouldn’t they be wearing clothes?

Source: Paranormal.about.com
http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghosthuntinggeninfo/a/aa042708.htm

Indonesian police are investigating the strange case of a 25-year-old woman who claims that she gave birth just an hour after a gust of wind got her pregnant.

The young woman, identified as Siti Zainah, ahs become the subject of widespread ridicule in Indonesia after claiming to have been impregnated by a gust of wind, on February 10. Furthermore, Zainah added that she gave birth to a baby girl just an hour after the alleged impregnation. According to several Indonesian news outlets, the 25-year-old was relaxing at home in Cianjur, West Java, with her first child, when she felt the wind enter her body. A few minutes later, she went into labor.

“After Zuhr prayer, I was lying face down on my stomach, then suddenly I felt wind enter through my vagina,” Siti allegedly said. “A moment later, my stomach ballooned, then it shrank back to normal. Then it grew again.”

Her stomach allegedly started growing about 15 minutes after the mysterious gust of wind, and as she started feeling pain in her stomach, she realized something wasn’t right, so she asked a relative to take her to the Cidaun Community Health Center. Doctors there told her that she had a baby in her womb, and that it was ready to come out…

“I was shocked,” Siti Zainah said. “I was shocked that my stomach could immediately get pregnant and that I was giving birth to a baby.”

Siti’s explanation stunned everyone and word of her “miraculous” pregnancy spread like wildfire, so when she came home, there was a crowd waiting to see her and her baby daughter. Police also visited the woman and asked her questions about the pregnancy, after her gust of wind explanation made national news headlines in Indonesia.

Eman Sulaeman, Head of Cidaun Health Center, said that Siti’s explanation of her pregnancy was impossible, from a medical perspective. However, she didn’t accuse the young woman of lying. Instead, he said that this was likely a case of “cryptic pregnancy”, in which the mother didn’t realize that she was pregnant and only found out when it was time to give birth.

Sulaeman added that cryptic pregnancy can be caused by the shape of certain organs, or a history of birth control use.

Interestingly, this isn’t the first such case in Indonesia. In fact, just last year, a 30-year-old woman named Heni Huraeni made news headlines in her country for claiming that she gave birth just one hour after experiencing pregnancy symptoms.


This story is reminiscent of a story from an 1874 article which ran in "The American Medical Weekly." The author, Dr. LeGrand Capers, claimed that he witnessed a pregnancy caused by a bullet wound.

During the American Civil War there was, so he said, a house which was very close to the Confederate lines.

According to Capers, a bullet hit a soldier, "carrying away the left testicle," before continuing along it’s path into the house.

At the same time, coincidentally, one of the daughters of the house was struck by a stray bullet which hit her somewhere in the abdominal cavity.

As Capers was stationed with the army nearby he was able to check on the wounded girl several times over the next few months.

Around 6 months later he found that the girl was pregnant and a few months after that she gave birth to a baby boy who weighed in at 9 lbs.

Being 1874, the girl’s family were extremely embarrassed by the fact that their unmarried daughter had had a child, even though she declared that she had never had sex.

Doctor Capers duly examined the girl and was able to confirm that she was indeed a virgin.

Shortly after his birth the baby boy was taken ill and he had a large amount of swelling around his groin.

When the doctor operated he pulled out a bullet!

From that he deduced that the bullet must have acquired an amount of semen from the soldier’s testicle which had then managed to impregnate the girl when it buried itself inside of her stomach.

The story then continues to say that the girl wound up marrying the soldier and that they went on to have another 2 children.

It's a great story, however, Dr. Capers had made the entire tale up in order to poke fun at some of the more ridiculous medical stories that were emanating from the battlefields in those days.

Of course that small detail was of little consequence as the story was believed and was even re-told in the New York State Journal of Medicine in 1959.

Source: Oddity Central
https://www.odditycentral.com/news/indonesian-woman-claims-gust
-of-wind-left-her-pregnant.html