Book Review: Confessions of a Reluctant Ghost Hunter

The other day I was looking through book reviews in back issues of The Cauldron and saw one that caught my eye.  Confessions of a Reluctant Ghost Hunter: A Cautionary Tale of Encounters with Malevolent Entities and Other Disembodied Spirits by Von Braschler was the book.  The title sounded like it was right up my alley and The Cauldron rarely steers me in the wrong way.  I wasn't disappointed.

The problem I have with most books about ghosts, hauntings, and ghost hunting in general is that they either make all ghosts seem as friendly as Casper (Oh, all ghosts want is to be loved and acknowledged.  Please, feel free to go and try to hug the angry elemental.)  or they make ghost hunters look like white knights fiercely laying to rest malevolent monsters that lurk in every corner (An evil demon, fear not! My mighty flashlight and salt shaker shall save you!).  I was delighted to find that this book did neither of those things.

This is, quite possibly, the most realistic book I've ever read on what encountering spirits and other metaphysical beings is actually like.  At first I was skeptical.  Braschler explains that his "training" to "de-ghost" houses consisted of two meetings with a cheerful new-ager who said to talk to the spirits and get them to move on, and to simply "stake and salt*" the house if it didn't want to go.  As you might imagine, this did not inspire my confidence in the tales to come.  However, Braschler then details just how insufficient that information was and how problematic it made his later encounters. 

The encounters described in this book will be instantly recognizable to anyone experienced with the paranormal as residual hauntings, intelligent hauntings, spirit flight, and non-human hauntings - though Braschler never describes them as such.  The details of the hauntings Braschler experiences are incredibly authentic in their sheer banality.  Most hauntings that you read about in books are fairly spectacular (books flying off shelves, screaming in the night, scratches on the unwary etc.), but the average haunting is just not that interesting.  Real hauntings are made of fleeting images out of the corner of your eye, odd chills at unexpected times in unexpected places, and utterly unverifiable "coincidences" that make you think you're losing your mind. These are the hauntings Braschler describes, with a few exceptions.  

The thing that most struck me about Braschler's tale that make me actually believe him is the way he describes his experience of the paranormal.  He doesn't talk about glowing lights or strange writing, he talks about having to ground and center himself and deliberately open his mind to the frequency where the paranormal can be perceived.  He doesn't describe it as easy or natural, but as a skill that requires practice and effort.  He talks about freaking himself out when going into a building that he's been told is haunted, but never really perceiving anything there that can make him confidently say the place is or isn't haunted.  He doubts his perceptions and he doubts his ability to do anything about what he perceived.  That is the reality of dealing with the paranormal: thinking you probably understand what's going on but always doubting and always needing more proof.

 There are, of course, exceptions to the normally dubious veracity of the paranormal.  I've come across the undeniably paranormal (think demons trying to eat your head) two or three times.  Braschler deals with it twice.  This is totally believable, unlike those ghost hunters who claim to banish demons every damned day.  In the last encounter described in the book Braschler gets called in by a friend to de-ghost their trailer and ends up facing down a dark non-human entity that he's woefully unprepared to deal with.  It doesn't go well. This should surprise no one.  It takes a trained and experienced practitioner to deal with the nastier dark entities. 

If you're interested in dabbling in the paranormal I highly recommend you read this book first.  Read about what actual encounters are like before you go into that purportedly haunted house.  If you recognize yourself in the stories then do yourself a favor and get some solid defensive training before you hurt yourself.

Experienced practitioners that enjoy tales of the paranormal will enjoy this too.  I know I did.

*Braschler describes the process of staking and salting a property as driving four large iron spikes (think railroad size nails) into the ground at the cardinal points of the property and calling the watchtowers to guard the property, then to create a line of salt as a perimeter to keep the spirits out.  Yes, these actions can be a part of a successful banishing but alone they're not going to do much against something that really wants to stick around.

Urban Offerings

Here in the States it's almost Thanksgiving; that wonderful time of family "togetherness" and gorging yourself until you pass out.  I'm not always as grateful for my family as I feel like I should be, so I like to look at Thanksgiving more as a time for making offerings - particularly to the spirits of the place where I live.  It's fairly easy to remember to make offerings to the beings that we ask for help, but it can be quite difficult to remember to also make offerings to the spirits that just happen to be where we spend our time.  The spirits inherent to the places where we live and work can make our lives easy or difficult, almost without being noticed. 

I live in the suburbs and work downtown, so I like to make three special offerings around Thanksgiving: to the spirits of the area where I live, the spirits of downtown Seattle, and the spirits of I-5 (on which I travel every day). 

The easiest offering for me to do is always the one to the area where I live (a slightly betwixt and between bit of Snohomish County). The spirits of the place where I live are used to me and I don't really have to go out of my way to get their attention (doing magick in any place for a prolonged period of time draws spirits like moths to a flame).  It's also easy because I can give the same kind of offerings that I usually do, since I have an altar on which I can burn incense, place sacred objects, etc.  I also have the good fortune to have a yard so if I want to make offerings of food or flowers outside I can very easily. 

However, I do like to make a little extra effort when giving special offerings by trying to make them more relevant to the spirits I'm making the offerings to.  I try to think about what spirits are in the area and what they'd like.  The area where I live used to be quite rural (it was chicken farms when it was first settled and forest before that).  There aren't a lot of ghosts that live near me (fields and forest don't exactly hold on to human energy), but there are some nature spirits and the spirit of the land itself is fairly strong.  One of the things I've done as a sort of permanent offering to the land is to promise not to use chemical pesticides or fertilizer in my yard, making it more hospitable to nature spirits, as well as slowly replacing the plantings with native species. 

For Thanksgiving I like to put out a small offering of organic, local fertilizer in the part of my yard where I do workings.  It's a large clear space under some big cedar trees and I put the fertilizer right in-between them.  I'm always careful not to put it right on the trees as some fertilizers can actually burn plants in high concentrations.  I also try never to user too much, since I don't want to encourage weed growth - they do that well enough on their own thank-you.  Although it would make sense to make an offering of food (like home baked bread) I have to be careful not to put out too many offerings of food because my area has a bit of a rodent problem that I don't want to encourage.  I also tend not to make offerings of bird seed because I have an outdoor cat that is a ferocious hunter - the birds do not need to be brought to her.

Making an offering to my city is always a bit more challenging.  I do a fair bit of work with the spirits of my city's founders, so I like to go up to Lakeview where most of them are buried and give them some attention.  Most of them are fond of offerings of whiskey and the rest enjoy a good cup of coffee, so they're easy to appease.  I also like to make an offering to the spirit of the city itself, which is a little more complicated.  Sure, I could do a symbolic offering of incense or flowers on my altar but that doesn't really do much to help the city itself (it's spirit is well fed and doesn't really need it).  I prefer a more direct approach for offerings to my city.  If I were less lazy going out and doing charity work in the city would be an ideal offering, alas I am not less lazy.  So I like to give donations to the local food banks.  Many food banks get the majority of their donations during the holiday season, so I make sure whatever I give has a really long shelf life (I tend to go with canned fruit and big bags of rice - lots of nutritional value and very shelf stable).

Offerings to the spirits of I-5 is also a little funtastic.  The interstate is an interesting beast because it's energy is so fluid, influenced by the people constantly moving on it - never staying in one place for more than an instant (unless there's gridlock).  There's also a fair amount of negativity on I-5 from road rage and accidents.  Although I take the bus for my commute, I do drive on I-5 several times a week.  The best offering I've been able to come up with is to make a drive where I'm particularly attentive to being a polite driver and where I have a good time on the drive.  Putting out a little positive energy on the road is really the best thing I can do, so that's what I go with. 

Why Ghosts of Children are the Worst

It's no secret that I'm not exactly the motherly type.  I don't like children.  I really don't like children.  One of the few things I like less than living children are the ghosts of children.  Oh, but aren't they sad little darlings who need love and acceptance to be shown into the light you ask?  Not so much, at least not in my experience.

Almost by definition, all ghosts of children died untimely deaths.  The death of any child is a terrible tragedy; an unthinkable crime against the natural order of things.  However, the incredible bereavement of a family is not what creates a ghost. Children can become intelligent ghosts (as opposed to mere residuals) for lots of reasons, but the grand majority of them were children who were murdered or mistreated in some horrible way.  This does not necessarily create the most sane and stable spirits.

Children do not have a fully developed sense of morality.  The younger they are the less likely they are to understand the difference between right and wrong, the difference between innocent play and a horror show.  Anyone who's watched a five year old pull the legs off a spider one by one knows this.  Children who have been mistreated their whole lives are even less likely to understand good behavior verses bad behavior.  Do you think this gets better when they die?  Nope.  So now, rather than having a mistreated and slightly feral child, you have a mistreated and slightly feral ghost who no longer has the constraints of a physical body nor the slightest fear of punishment for any action.  Darling little angels my ass.

The ghosts of children are much, much more likely to engage in poltergeist activity and to scare the living daylights out of you; largely because they think it's fun and have no idea that they shouldn't.  The ghosts of children will move objects, follow you down hallways, pinch, kick, push, and generally make your life hell.  Sometimes it's because they desperately want attention and acknowledgment, but sometimes it's just because they think it's funny.  The spirit of an adult can be reasoned with, placated, threatened, or cajoled; not so much with children.  The ghosts of children either quiet down when they get a little tlc or they run amok until their banished.  I really, really don't like dealing with them.

Another huge problem with the ghosts of children is that just because something says it's the ghost of a little child doesn't mean it actually is one.  There are lots of very bad things out there that will pretend to be the ghost of a child because people usually won't put up protections against what they think is an innocent.  What are you more likely to let into your life, something claiming to be a five year old that lost its mother or something claiming to be a non-human that wants to eat your life force? Hmmmm?  How do you know the difference?  Honestly, if you can't feel energies are aren't psychically looking for masks I don't know. 

If you think you're in the presence of a ghostly child you need to put up all the protections you would for any other unknown metaphysical being.  Unless you're an expert you really don't know what you're dealing with, and even if you are you still probably don't know for certain.

I really, really hate dealing with dead kids.

Eastwood Cemetary

A few weeks ago a friend and I were traveling through Medford, Oregon and decided to spend our evening exploring their old settlers cemetery, Eastwood Cemetery. 

Entrance to Eastwood Cemetery

It was just an hour or so before sunset when we arrived, the side light giving the place quite an other worldly atmosphere.  Near the entrance is a little outbuilding with information on notable people you'll find in the cemetery.  We noted that there were more than an couple notorious people, so we figured we were in for an interesting time.  We weren't wrong.

One of the oddest things we experienced was the presence of a white cat.  Yes, yes I can hear you thinking, "What on earth is so odd about a cat?" Well, you kinda had to be there.  This was a pure white cat with gold eyes that sat calmly be the entrance of the cemetery, then led me off to a corner of the graveyard where it promptly sat under a tree and just stared at me.  It didn't hiss, meow, or run away when approached.  It just sat there calmly looking through you. It set of all my spidey sense and if I had to guess I'd say it was actually a Fay taking the shape of a cat.  It's hard to describe the energy this "cat" emitted, but as someone with three cats I can safely say it wasn't normal.

An interesting feline.

It even went back to the entrance as we left to see us off.

Another odd experience happened in the back of the cemetery, a little off to the Northwest. I was wandering around, and suddenly smelled smoke.  The ground was incredibly dry, so I worried that something might have caught fire.  I looked around and didn't see anything so my next thought was that maybe I was smelling someone's grill (as this part of the cemetery was very near some houses).  I wandered around a bit trying to find the source of the smell and came to the odd realization that I only smelled the smoke when I stood directly in front of a particular tombstone.  I had my friend Rae come over and check if it was just me, but she had the same experience.  Makes me wonder if this person was a firefighter or perhaps died in a fire (or maybe was just a big pyro).  Who knows?  Gotta love phantom smells.

When I stood directly in front of this tombstone I smelled smoke.

However, undoubtedly the most disquieting experience I had started just as the sun finally sank behind the hills.

Sunset

I was moving through the back of the cemetery when I began to get the distinct impression that I was unwelcome.  I heard the voice of a little girl saying, "No, no, no.  He's a bad man! A bad, bad man!"  Not the most comforting thing to hear I must say. I could feel the spirit of the little girl leave and something much darker take her place.  It felt heavy and wild.  The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up and then I felt a sharp pain on the back of my hand.  It was the first time I had ever been physically scratched by the unseen.  Now, I was not going to take any of that nonsense so I quite firmly stated that if whatever it was felt the need to do that again I would smack it into the next world.  It didn't touch me again, but I could feel that it was angry and did not like my being there. I'm not sure if it was a ghost or something darker.  I get the feeling it saw itself as some kind of guardian, so perhaps it had a good reason for wanting me out of there.

 

I decided it was time to head out and leave the shadows in peace.  We walked out under the mistletoe infected oaks and bid farewell to the not quite cat. 

Mistletoe growing on an oak tree.

Quite the kitty.

Protection at Work

If you work full time you probably spend more time at work with your co-workers than at home with your family.  As a result, the energies in your work environment can greatly affect your well-being.  Most of the practitioners I know have good solid shields for when they're at work, but that's all.  If you work in a high stress environment, like say a high volume law firm, then shielding alone might not be enough for you.  In that case, you might want to take some more active protective measures.

If you have a permanent workspace (desk/cube/office/etc.) then you can set up basic wards on your space.  Traditional wards are often worded along the lines of "nothing intending me or mine harm may pass these bounds."  This type of ward really only works if you have absolute control of your space; if you don't necessarily have control over who comes into your space (like your belligerent boss or conniving co-worker) then other wording is necessary.  I find that my work wards are most effective when I'm reasonable with them.  Rather than saying "Co-worker X cannot come into my space and spew negativity on me," I would say "Limit co-worker X's entrance to my space to when it is absolutely necessary to complete a work task and s/he will depart as soon as our business is concluded."  Part of being an adult and holding a job is learning to deal with people we don't like.  To have our magick geared to make everything go "our way" all the time is tantamount to having a magickal tantrum - no wonder it's ineffective.  I have wards on my desk to keep a particular co-worker from stealing my pens (and chewing on them like a beaver - so gross!) worded as "When Y needs to use my pen he will use it, not chew on it, and then put it back."  I could have worded it as "Y shall not touch my pens!" but I really don't care if he uses them as long as he doesn't chew on them and walk away with them. I like to keep my wards at work to the bare minimum necessary to meet my needs because I really don't feel that I have the right to put my needs above the genuine needs of my co-workers. 

Another reason to be minimal in your office protections is because many companies actually have office spirits.  By that I don't mean that they're haunted, but that the culture and ethos of a business can actually create a thoughtform that embodies the espree d'corps of that business: its spirit.  The older and more established the business, the stronger its corporate culture, the stronger its spirit will be.  If you model your protections so that they work for the good of the business (e.g., asking for the ability to maximize your efficiency or to get critical work done before being bothered with the less important - thus minimizing your stress and making you a happier and better worker), you can tap into the power of this spirit, making your protections stronger and more effective.  You can take further advantage by giving specific offerings to the spirit of your office.  I've found that work spirits seems to really love offerings of service like bringing in cookies for the office, being the one to always make a fresh pot of coffee, or other "extra mile" services that make your office a more pleasant place to be.

I like to enhance the protections on my workspace by filling it with subtle, yet powerful objects that give me positive energy and a sense of refuge.  One of the most important objects I have at my desk is my mini-altar.  To the casual observer my mini-altar is nothing but a tin of altoids.

However, when you open the tin it's a very small altar geared towards protection.

It has a tiny candle, match, an obsidian, a small vial of salt, and a small vial of war water. It's nice to know that should an emergency ever arise I've got everything I need to do a full protective ritual; though I hope to never really need it. (A big thanks to Moonwriter for teaching me how to make tiny altars!)

The other thing I keep on my desk is a large stuffed bat.

His name is Bert (don't ask me why, it's just what came to me) and he sits with my tea.  He was given to me by my husband and I find that giving him a squeeze is a great stress reliever.  He may not be strictly magickal, but anything that can give me a sense of love and well being just by looking at it is magickal enough for me. 

It's possible to have many seemingly mundane objects in your workspace that do double duty in both strengthening your magickal intentions and making the space your own.  Pictures and postcards, stuffed animals, quirky coffee mugs, tea jars, pretty rocks (aka crystals), desk toys, hand lotions, lip balms, snacks and candies, pens, etc., can all be imbued with intent and can serve as reminders of your intent or even charged anchors for spells.  Get creative with bringing magick into your workspace as subtly as possible.  Even if your co-workers are open and understanding of your practices, subtle is better.  Other than making certain muggles uncomfortable, having your magick out in the open can actually drain it of its power.  Of course, you also don't want to be so subtle that your objects get fiddled with or thrown away by well meaning co-workers.  Use your common sense; you know what is and isn't acceptable in your workplace, and if you don't check with your supervisor.