How To Exorcise Your House
Supernatural Cleaning Methods
THE chill of autumn has arrived, and it's fourth dimension to make your home cozy and snug. Supersede those broken shingles, seal the window frames, start the water boiling and throw in some scented nutmegy things, or a rabbit if you've been disappointed in love.
Just what to practice most that ghost that has been making such a racket, scaring the guests and making it impossible to sleep? Certain, you can kid yourself that information technology'southward a squirrel on the roof or a rattling pipe or a fog that comes upward from fourth dimension to time. (On Narragansett Bay? Sure, pal, that'southward credible.) Merely eventually, when guests and family members become truly frightened, something must be done.
Such was the case with Kathleen Whitehurst, an artist in Arnaudville, La., who scoured the countryside to salvage materials with which to build her home and guest house, the picturesque l'Esprit des Chenes. Visitors complained of creaking stairs, sounds in the night. Some fled in terror. Finally, Ms. Whitehurst called in a specialist.
"She came all the way from Arkansas," Ms. Whitehurst said in a telephone conversation. "She sat on my couch, and within xxx minutes she says, 'Yes, you practice have a ghost in your firm.' She goes into a trance, she came back to her torso, and said, 'He's a Baptist minister, wearing a white robe, and he's roaming the house.' "
The reason for this trouble, incredible as it may seem, was recycling. Ms. Whitehurst had found three Gothic windows in a junk pile at a demolished church, and the ghost had come along with them. The specialist did what is oftentimes recommended in these cases, asking Ms. Whitehurst and 2 friends to make a circle with her around the lost spirit, and tell it, sympathetically only firmly, that information technology was time to movement forth.
"All of a sudden, you could feel the electric energy moving — information technology was so intense that all the hair on the back of my neck and easily was continuing up," Ms. Whitehurst said. "And when she said the last words" — Go, go! — "we got that zapped feeling. And he went up, and he's never been dorsum since."
You don't believe in ghosts? So yous are either tragically out of footstep with the times or perchance a slovenly spiritual housekeeper looking for an alibi to avoid tidying upward. A recent Google Internet search for getting rid of ghosts yielded nigh two million hits. By comparison, a search for cleaning rain gutters yielded 191,000.
In a Harris poll terminal yr of ii,000 adults, 41 percent said that they believed in ghosts. Although the National Association of Realtors says that information technology is not the legal obligation of a real manor agent to tell a prospective buyer nearly alleged haunting, many agents, similar Diane Ragan of Keller Williams Realty in New Orleans, feel that if they hear of something that may distress a buyer, they have the duty to pass it on.
"But last week I got a call from a past client who was calling for a friend who'd leased a place and wasn't happy considering it was haunted," she said. "He wanted his deposit back. I told him the best thing his friend could do was plead his case."
Can These Stubborn Spiritual Stainbuckets Never Be Removed?
Before attempting to cleanse a household of ghostlike sounds and scents, the homeowner must commencement determine whether such sounds and scents are actually of the other globe. Happily, at that place is no shortage of instruction manuals on the subject. I, an e-book called "Is My House Haunted? A Practical Guide," was written by Bonnie Vent, the medium who founded the San Diego Paranormal Enquiry Project. Those who dismiss the paranormal may wish to check out her Spider web site, sdparanormal.com, and read the transcript of her conversation with the comic George Carlin, which occurred after his decease. (Few were as skeptical of the afterlife as he.)
Ms. Vent's guide, which costs $vii.97, contains a paranormal activity log in which to record such things as electrical devices going on and off, unexplained noises and cold and hot spots. It lists common misconceptions, including the notion that "paying someone to spread lotions and potion all over the business firm" volition make the spirits go away.
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"What does piece of work? Advice!!!" writes Ms. Vent, who is i of those people who is paid; her cleansing services price $125 an 60 minutes. "This does not necessarily mean that they will leave, but y'all should exist able to work out a livable situation."
She also offered a word of alert: "There are people who will take reward of others by using holy h2o, burning sage and spreading salt around the perimeter of the business firm. Spirit people are people — these things have no effect in the long term. Y'all really have to get to the root crusade."
Also, as His Intimates Knew, Uncle Fred Never Flushed
With ghosts so plentiful, information technology is reassuring to annotation that most haunting sites, even those with logos dripping blood, take their responsibilities seriously, reminding homeowners concerned about paranormal activity that they should get-go seek more mundane reasons for strange activity. The tools may include tape recorders, video equipment and infrared photography.
Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, the stars of the "Ghost Hunters" program on the Sci Fi Channel, have been helped past their expertise as plumbers.
"Nosotros had one case, somebody'south dead uncle Fred was a plumber and they idea that he was giving them a sign because every morning at 2 a.m. their toilet would flush," Mr. Hawes said. "Come up to find out, they would go to bed at virtually 11 at dark and they had a leaky flapper in their toilet. Eventually, subsequently two or three hours, the toilet would drain down enough that the fill valve would kicking on, so it would audio like the toilet would flush."
Whatsoever other examples?
"We dealt with a instance where a guy was really seeing apparitions in his business firm," Mr. Hawes said. "Information technology was happening only to him, nobody else was having problems. We plant out he was on two medications, including an older one his new doctor didn't know about, and they were making him see things."
Mr. Wilson added: "Some other reason we knew it wasn't paranormal was the things he was seeing fabricated no sense. There were grotesque things: flowers wandering across the room, faces turning inside out. Paranormal activeness isn't similar that. Seeing flowers turning inside out indicates medical or drug problems, not a person without a body walking around your habitation."
For Minor Hauntings, Do It Yourself
Many hauntings are then slight that the homeowners may feel equipped to handle the trouble themselves. This was the experience of Leslie Castay Burkey, a one-time Broadway actress, and her husband, Bryan Burkey, a commercial lensman, who bought an one-time New Orleans abode from the manor of a deceased couple a few years ago. The lady of the firm, Ms. Burkey had heard, was "tough, cold and devoted to the house above everything."
Bug began with the restoration of the former primary sleeping room. Ms. Burkey spoke of bad odors and lights going on and off. Her husband recalled "a definite presence."
"When we started ripping stuff out, it was like the house was maxim what are yous doing, and would get really persnickety," Mr. Burkey said. "When we started to take upwardly the carpet and put downward a wood flooring, all sorts of things went crazy."
Incredible! How could anyone accept anything confronting a wood flooring?
"What we heard was she had a white carpet in that sleeping room that she was very much in honey with," he said.
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White rug — the decorating equivalent of falling in love with a married man, an enterprise doomed to failure and heartbreak.
The couple's solution, which proved constructive, was to cleanse the home with sage they bought at Marie Laveau's Firm of Voodoo in the French Quarter.
"The salesperson suggested you burn down it and carry it through the firm, especially through the doors and windows, and make your own incantations telling the spirits they were free to leave," Ms. Burkey said. "A friend of mine in Connecticut got the idea she should do information technology in the shape of a pentagram, but that was besides black magic for me."
The Daze of a Mao Jacket Might Have Killed Him
Guy Clark is an interior designer who restores and sells erstwhile properties. Spirits do non trouble him. His electric current home is a stone house in Bullville, Northward.Y., which was once owned by the makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin, who died in 2002. As he was lying in bed soon subsequently he took possession, Mr. Clark had a vision.
"I opened my eyes for a second and someone passed over my head through the window in a bluish cabana suit, blue shorts and a shirt, similar what people wore in the '60s," Mr. Clark said. "You can't make these things up. I didn't know the man, but I think it was probably Kevyn. He was airlifted out of his front k and passed away from a brain tumor."
How did Mr. Clark deal with the spirit?
"I said: 'O.K., this is my house. If yous need anything, I'thou hither, simply you lot don't live here anymore, move on.' "
Even so contradictory the message, the ghost patently understood, for Mr. Clark never again had a problem.
Enough! At present, Let a Hardened Realtor Set the Record Straight
"I've had ii properties that fall into that category," said Judy Moore, a broker with 23 years of experience who works with ReMax Landmark Realtor in Lexington, Mass.
"The first one was the former parish business firm where the priest stayed, and it came up at the endmost. The home'south owner said, 'I just want you to know that there is a priest who haunts this business firm,' and went on to tell the story that she grew upwards in the firm, and one time her sister had makeup on height of the dresser and he swiped them off. I was horrified. The buyer could have but said, 'That'south information technology, I couldn't alive there' — but he was a artistic blazon; he was fine with information technology.
"The other time was really freaky. This is a business firm that never did sell. It was built in the 1600s, nobody was living there. The first thing that happened when I walked in, my electronic record stopped working, and I had the funny feeling that in that location were spirits in the firm, and I don't imagine these sorts of things. I was staging it, there were things that would move, but the worst affair — the really freaky affair — I was putting some dried flowers on the end of this former table and I saw something on the table that was vivid cherry-red simply watery. It looked like blood, but information technology was too thin, everything on the tabular array was dry out. That was the creepiest thing that has e'er happened to me in this business."
Suddenly, a Reporter Is Aware of Her Psychic Gifts
It should be noted that when the New England real estate agent mentioned above was reached on her cellphone, it was almost half-dozen in the evening.
Epitome
"So, are you driving down the Mass Turnpike in pitch-blackness?" she was asked in an effort to fix the mood.
"Oh my God — how did you know?" Ms. Moore said.
October Afterwards Oct, Reporters Trudge to His Door
Joe Nickell, the ghost hunter for the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Kentucky and was one time a professional magician. He has, he says, been investigating stories of ghosts for decades.
Ever catch i?
"I have not."
Ane common reason that people believe they encounter ghosts is that they are experiencing lifelike dreams, Mr. Nickell said. This is why such visions oft occur at bedtime. Also, many people enjoy the notion of being haunted.
"Unfortunately, most people are looking to have their beliefs confirmed, so they bring in ghost hunter types who believe they can get an electromagnetic field meter from RadioShack," he said. "They go into a place and the meter starts going off, whereupon they think they are detecting a ghost. First of all, there is no bear witness ghosts exist. Second, there is no evidence that if ghosts exist, they are electromagnetic. These people have no knowledge of microwave towers or faulty wiring in the house or other sources of electromagnetism. It's just too silly for words and it oughtn't be featured on major television set shows. It's an embarrassment."
Give us an example of someone who was tricked.
"A young mother called me once very concerned about the possibility of ghosts," he said. "She was getting strange photographs — a sort of curvy stripe, very white and vivid. They have since begun calling those ectoplasmic strands. I looked at her camera. Her wrist strap was dangling. The flash was reflecting back the wrist strap, and it produced a great number of these."
Frankly, the Believers Tell a Much Improve Story
Brenda is a social worker with a master's caste from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives with her husband, two young children and four ghosts (two adults, 2 children) in a 99-year-sometime house in Altoona, Pa. (Later on receiving death threats when she went public nigh her dwelling, she prefers that only her outset name exist used.)
The odd happenings in her household began when her daughter, Anna, 6, was a toddler. Anna sometimes laughed and giggled when nobody was around. "I figured it was an imaginary playmate," she said. "I was not really thinking paranormal."
About this time the name Katie would just popular into her head for no detail reason, she added. "I was potty training Anna, she was sitting with her volume. I stepped away for five minutes and I hear her fighting with somebody, saying, 'Information technology's mine, it's mine!' I turned to become dorsum, the book was levitating to a higher place her head similar it was being held up by somebody a fiddling flake taller."
"That book was huge, a big Christmas flip volume," she continued. "She said, 'Mommy, mommy, I'g sharing! I'm sharing with Katie!' And then it clicked. I'1000 trying to remain calm because we're potty training and annihilation can throw that off. I said, 'Anna, who's Katie?' She said just a little girl who lives here."
A month or and then later on, on a Saturday morn when Brenda was doing some dishes, she heard giggling and footsteps effectually her and saw the daughter ghost.
"She had blond pilus parted downwards the middle, the first piece tucked behind her ear similar Marcia Brady," Brenda said. "She was groovy equally a pin, in a little calico print apparel that had a pinafore, off-white, all starched, kind of like Laura Ingalls. She had some kind of stockings, boots — that's how long I had to notice what this girl had on. And a Peter Pan collar."
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Brenda said she had been doing the dishes, but could she have fallen asleep? There is this dream state an skillful mentioned.
"No, no, admittedly not," Brenda said. "The skeptics will pull out every little piddling affair they tin. There is no gas leak, nosotros are not sipping gas methyl hydride, our furnace is cleaned faithfully."
Brenda now feels it is fourth dimension for her spirits to be on their way. She has dutifully told them to go to the light. She has tried burning white candles for purity. She even had the people from "Ghost Hunters" in, actualization on their first flavour. How almost sage? Did she try sage?
"I actually take a friend who is a Reiki master who said she would do a business firm cleansing," Brenda said. "I would rather have somebody come in to guide them."
Ever Notice a Spirit Never Washes A Dish or Takes Out the Garbage?
The meticulous housekeeper has past at present noted that as with then much else, the globe of the paranormal is specialized. Ghost hunters oft phone call in others to rid a habitation of ghosts: so-called firm cleaners, mayhap, or, in some cases, demonologists.
Patty A. Wilson, 43, the writer with Mark Nesbitt of "The Big Book of Pennsylvania Ghost Stories" and a founder of the Ghost Enquiry Foundation, is both. Ms. Wilson, who says she has been sensitive to the paranormal since childhood, kept quiet near her gifts for much of her life.
"I didn't desire to be the crazy lady in the caftan," she said.
The fourth dimension for homeowners to call for professional person intervention, said Ms. Wilson, who does not charge for her services and is suspicious of those who do, is when they feel frightened or threatened.
Ane such case she had, she said, involved a Penn State student who had written an article about Ms. Wilson for the college newspaper. The girl chosen her almost five or six years ago in an agitated state, proverb that the house she was renting with several other girls was haunted past an "obese, overweight black shadow figure," she said.
"He was kind of aggressive, stepping out into the hallways in front end of them and then they would have to walk through him," Ms. Wilson added. "He physically touched ii of the girls. One was sitting on her bed in her underwear. She jumped up screaming, and so he let her solitary. He also seemed to be around them when they were unclothed."
Talk about your unnatural acts! Are black shadow ghosts considered to be particularly dangerous?
"Some are very ambitious," Ms. Wilson said.
She advised the immature woman to do some research on the house, and it was discovered that it had in one case been owned by two spinsters. They had taken in a neighbor who died of obesity at age 23.
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"I idea that kind of fit the bill," Ms. Wilson said.
The business firm never did get cleaned. The higher student'south mother moved her out of the house, and that was that.
Does Ms. Wilson recall her name?
"Marianne," she said, adding that she was unable to recollect her final proper noun.
Where might she exist now?
"She joined Barnum & Bailey, in publicity."
"Ghost stories are non swell and clean," she added. "Everything doesn't always get pigeonholed properly. They're real stories about existent people."
After intense corporeal, electronic and audio investigation, Marianne, whose final name is Ways and who did local publicity for the circus as a college intern, is tracked down. At present 28, she works equally an associate booker at the Comix comedy social club in Lower Manhattan.
She tells a story that confirms much of Ms. Wilson's. Her roommate did see the shadow of an obese homo, and he did pop upward as the roommate was coming out of the shower.
Ms. Means never saw the dark shadows herself, but she sometimes heard weird noises and footsteps, and felt as if someone had cleaved into the business firm when no one was in that location, and information technology frightened her. One day when she was feeling especially anxious, she asked the person who lived in the adjoining apartment if anything weird had e'er happened there.
"You hateful, similar, is information technology haunted?" the woman said.
Did Ms. Ways always endeavor to get rid of the ghosts?
"No," she said. "I simply left."
Practise Not Exist Fooled by Cheap Imitations
THE concerned homeowner will know by now that there is dispute about how best to rid the habitation of spirits. Some tools that the uninitiated might feel would be constructive are not. The Ouija board, for example, is considered by many to be a magnet for spirits, the equivalent of spreading a trail of crumbs if yous are plagued by ants.
Megan Hoolihan, 28, director of Marie Laveau's Firm of Voodoo, has studied the occult for eighteen years and seems to have her calling seriously. She says many people in the Due south believe sage has cleansing properties.
"I recommend making a mixture of powdered sage, holy water and cedar oil, some water from a church building or that has been blessed by someone."
What if you're an atheist?
There may be something to this occult stuff, because suddenly the reporter feels a deep chill.
"Cedar oil has cleansing properties," Ms. Hoolihan continued, ignoring the question. "You can also utilize lavander oil or violet oil. The smells are soothing; it'southward a comfort."
A bunch of sage costs about $9 at Marie Laveau's. Couldn't y'all use the stuff from the supermarket instead?
"You can utilise it; I don't recommend it. Information technology'southward the aforementioned family, but not the same plant. The sage nosotros carry is white sage or gray sage, and is grown organically."
How To Exorcise Your House,
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/garden/30haunted.html
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