Soothsay, you say? Well, OK.
Everyone experiences hauntings. It does not matter whether they believe in ghosts or not. How can this be? It hardly seems fair. But it's true. A lot of people seem to operate under the impression that there is a non-believer loophole: "I don't believe in ghosts ergo...I don't have to deal with hauntings."
Hoodwink yourself if you like, but we are all haunted on a daily basis. People who say they don't believe in hauntings might as well say they don't believe in regrets. Actually, I have heard people say just that. I used to be one of them. It seemed like a good philosophy. It's just a little unrealistic. As long as there is regret, there are ghosts. Everyone knows someone so weighed down by regret that they have become a ghost in their own life.
People often conjure their own hauntings. In this respect, hoarders are experts. They prefer to live their lives surrounded by shades of the past. Psychologist David Tolin, PhD, writes that 2-5% of the American population are hoarders*. That may not sound like a lot, but it is enough for everyone to be affected by it. This statistic means that everyone has a family member, neighbor, or acquaintance who is a hoarder.
You may have no idea that someone you know is a hoarder unless you go inside their home. Most hoarders keep their problem hidden from others. Accessing their homes can be like trying to get into Fort Knox. Often you will be met with an artillery assault of excuses and prevarications. Gain entry and you will be left feeling as though you have entered a bizarre fugue state. Prepare to be met with a cloistered, airless, and tangibly depressing state of affairs that will suck the air from your lungs and the will to live from your marrow. As an added bonus, it will also likely be infested with all manner of blackness.
The problem is that we all have this in us. Our consumer culture, which so eloquently confuses wants and needs, also contributes. At the heart of this problem is a refusal to let go. If we cannot let go of what is broken, damaged, or no longer useful, then there is no room for anything new. The future recedes and the past becomes all-encompassing. Most hoarders will forgo making new memories to hold onto torn scraps from the past.
I know it seems like I pick on hoarders. But hoarding and hauntings go together like cheese and crackers. Unfortunately, the people who suffer the most are too often thrown away. They become just like the junk they believe is precious. And that is wrong. This compulsion is a silent killer. It creates an insidious, property-value-diminishing void of darkness that affects more than just the hoarders. I would dare anyone to walk through the cramped, chaotic, smelly rat tunnels of a bad hoarding and declare the area a 'haunting free zone.'
Hoarding is a great way to generate hauntings. If you spew enough despair into the environment, ghosts will make their presence known. It is nearly impossible to neutralize a haunting from a property that has suffered a hoarder. The walls might as well be painted with blood. The stuff may go, but the ghosts remain. Sometimes the home cannot be saved. It takes a special piece of property to come back from this sort of trauma. Most of the others fall into utter disrepair or ruin.
There are other times when we may encounter a haunting that we had nothing to do with creating. Even if the environment supplies a ready-made haunting, it won't matter. The results will be the same. You will get stuck dealing with it. Unfortunately, there is no Court of Paranormal Justice where you can go and claim that these ghosts are not your problem. No spectral judge will sentence the ghosts to go and haunt the idiot who lived there before. You know, the one who held seances every other Tuesday night and made do with a Ouija board the rest of the time. Hopefully, you have read this blog and, at the very least, understand what not to do. However, most people will do everything in their power to make the situation worse.
Hauntings are tough to shake. Ghosts are dead energy, unresolved from the past. Energy can never be destroyed, but it can die. It can also become stuck in its death state. Positive energy disperses and regenerates. It does not hang around, toiling with anger and regret for eternity. This is why ghosts are portrayed with chains. They do not show up to clean your house. They hang around to rattle their chains. And when they are done making noise, they get hungry.
More on that later...
*webmd.com
