Ghosts and Hauntings: An Afterlife Investigator’s Perspective!

How novels, movies, and television shows have misled us to feel fright in the night.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and founder of the directory of credible and reputable psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash

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If there are two subjects where movies and novels have misled people, it would be ghosts and hauntings. I don’t blame the screenwriters or authors. These subjects are prime real estate for engaging stories. Ghosts and hauntings are a screenwriter’s and novelist’s dream for an audience that craves mystery and menacing antagonists. I’ve been tempted to write fiction on these subjects myself, but I could never justify the harm I would do in misrepresenting the afterlife by writing such a story.

Melissa and I watched Ghostbusters: Afterlife this weekend. Considering we watched the first Ghostbusters movies in the 80s, it was fun entertainment for a Saturday night. I don’t think movies like these are responsible for the misunderstandings around ghosts and hauntings, mainly because the ghosts (who are more like monsters) are clearly unrealistic. I’ll place the blame for misinterpretation on movies like those Melissa and I watched together as teenagers: The Amityville Horror (1979), The Shining (1980), and Poltergeist (1982). Indeed, there were many more before these and plenty of others since, but those movies made ghosts and hauntings terrifying.

In the early 2000s, reality TV shows became popular. On this subject, I’m referring to all the paranormal investigator shows, like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State. Even more than movies and novels, these shows have contributed to people’s confusion about ghosts and hauntings. I’ll explain the most significant reason behind this in a moment.

Movies, TV shows, and novels do what they’re meant to do—entertain. And who among us didn’t enjoy a haunted house during Halloween or at the theme park? Especially as teenagers with wild imaginations, most of us had a love-hate relationship with stories about ghosts and hauntings. Nevertheless, we paid a psychological price for what these stories taught us, which I intend to offset in this exposé.

As always, please don’t take what I or anyone else says about this subject as truth. You get to choose for yourself what is true. Nonetheless, it’s always good to see all sides to a case before drawing your conclusions.

Ghosts

As a result of my afterlife investigation, I consider the words “spirit” and “ghost” to have the exact definition, meaning I use the words interchangeably. While I don’t typically use the word ghost, I see no difference between the two words.

In my experience, people who see ghosts are merely seeing spirits and become frightened because they expect ghosts to be scary and possibly evil. Fearful beliefs, when strong enough, can lead folks to draw all kinds of inaccurate conclusions.

From the evidence I've uncovered, ghosts (spirits) are not scary or evil. They are just our loved ones in spirit trying to communicate that they still exist, are okay, and are watching over us. However, television shows, movies, and novels are responsible for much of people's fear and beliefs about ghosts, so I understand why so many people fear them.

You might not recognize the person in spirit, which could explain why they scared you. Perhaps your grandfather died before you were born. Maybe you see your friend’s mother (and your friend in the same room can’t see her), yet you never met the woman. It makes sense that you’d be afraid of seeing a spirit you don’t recognize, but only your imagination can make that experience scary.

I’ve heard stories where a person died, and new people purchased the deceased person’s home. It’s not uncommon that the deceased person is seen or felt (intuitively) by the new homeowner. It’s not that the spirit of the deceased is stuck in the house or tethered to it in any way. It’s simply that the spirit once loved and cherished the house, and they are grateful to the new homeowners for caring for it in the same way. This is why they pop in now and then to say hello. Yet, when the new homeowner sees or feels the spirit, it’s understandable that they might be frightened, considering they don’t know the person.

Casper the Friendly Ghost is one fictional character who more accurately paralleled my investigation of the afterlife. Casper was a friendly child, unlike the adult ghosts who liked to haunt houses and scare people. Casper’s challenge was that most humans feared ghosts, so whenever he tried to make friends with people and animals who were alive, they became frightened and ran away from him.

Hauntings

Hauntings are generally unexplained paranormal phenomena. Someone may have seen an apparition, heard an unexplainable noise, or claimed to have seen a chair move or a door close without cause.

This subject naturally leads us back to ghosts. As mentioned, my investigation into the afterlife has led me to conclude that ghosts are just spirits, but it’s important to add that people in spirit do not “haunt” places, at least not in the scary way we think of it.

With this base understanding, I separate hauntings into three categories.

First Explanation of Hauntings

My first explanation of hauntings is that the witness to the phenomenon is merely getting an after-death communication from a loved one in spirit. Still, they interpret that phenomenon as scary or evil, and understandably, they would. If it’s late at night and the room is dark, and you hear a voice or see an apparition, that’s likely to scare the bejeezus out of you. But just because someone becomes scared doesn’t mean the spirit behind the communication is evil.

I’ve heard many stories of people feeling like a spirit sat beside them on the bed or sofa. Often, these people said they saw the impression on the bed or sofa move as if someone sat on it. Some people have seen spirits after waking up, often at the end of their bed. And many folks have felt a spirit gently brush their arm, cheek, neck, or hair. A woman I know personally heard her deceased husband walking up the stairs, and when she went to the stairs to look, she saw his spirit.

If you’ve just watched The Amityville Horror the night before, these experiences might lead you to run down the street screaming. In contrast, if you just read one of my articles or watched Afterlife TV the night before, these experiences will likely be heartwarming and comforting.

We get scared by people (friends and family) all the time, even when they don’t mean to scare us. This is when we usually say, “Oh my goodness, it’s you. You scared me. Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Rather than assuming what you’ve seen or heard is a scary ghost, you could tell your loved one in spirit, “Hey, that scared me! Don’t do that to me again.” Perhaps suggest a less scary, more appropriate way for them to let you know they’re around. Speak out loud to them (they can hear you). Our loved ones in spirit will always abide by your wishes.

Second Explanation of Hauntings

My second explanation of hauntings offers a practical reason behind whatever someone heard or saw. It might be a mouse, a strong breeze, an electrical surge, a faulty wire or appliance, squeaky floorboards, wind blowing into a bottle, or shadows caused by trees outside the window. I’ve seen all these things misinterpreted as hauntings.

I know some folks will accuse me of being the eternal skeptic here, but if you’ve read my articles, you know I’ve seen more evidence of an afterlife than most people will ever see. I’m certainly not skeptical about spirit sightings. They happen all the time. It’s just that I’ve investigated several alleged hauntings where I found practical explanations behind them, as have many ghost hunters.

So we can’t discount the fact that little things torment many people due to an overactive imagination, but even these only account for some of the reported hauntings.

Third Explanation of Hauntings

My third explanation of hauntings is an energy imprint—this type of haunting accounts for most of the scary stuff.

When a tragic event such as a deadly accident, murder, or suicide takes place in a home, a tavern, a ship, or someone’s property, that event can leave an energetic scar in the aura of that site. Even though the people who died now peacefully exist in the afterlife (you might say Heaven), the tragic event itself can leave a mark on our physical dimension.

It doesn’t always happen in response to these events, but when it does, people experience it like a haunting. It’s a memory in time that keeps playing like a video on a loop. When this phenomenon occurs, anyone sensitive or intuitive is likely to feel the negative vibration of that energy imprint and be affected by it—hence, the ghost or haunting interpretation.

A typical ghost story told at numerous locations is the sighting of a woman wearing a white gown or dress roaming the halls of an inn, tavern, or hotel. Using “the lady in white” as an example, we don’t know why she was walking in the halls of this structure, but hypothetically, it could be that she was worried about her son fighting in the Civil War. Perhaps she had already lost her husband in the war, and now she was pacing the halls at night in her white nightgown, worried about her son. That emotion and repetitive behavior could have left an energy imprint in her home that has now become an inn.

Now, anyone with enough sensitivity to this energy who is sleeping in this inn might dream about the woman pacing the halls or even see her. It’s not that the woman is sentenced to an eternity of pacing her hallways. It’s that the memory of this emotional pattern is imprinted within the energy of the structure.

TV Shows

Because I promised to discuss TV shows, I’ll explain why ghost hunting and paranormal investigator shows mislead people the most. Let me begin by saying that I get the entertainment value of these reality shows. However, it doesn’t take a lot of research to discover that “reality” shows are anything but real.

Behind every successful TV show are experienced producers who know why viewers are watching their show. When it comes to shows about ghosts and hauntings, they know that their audiences want to believe in paranormal phenomena. Consequently, they pressure their talent (the investigators) to sensationalize the filmed events.

I’ll give you a classic example. A common scene in paranormal shows involves one of the main characters being in a dank basement at two o’clock in the morning. It’s completely dark, and they’re armed with an infrared camera to capture footage of the ghost haunting the place. Suddenly, just as the episode begins to get boring due to the lack of evidence, the person in the basement screams out that something touched him!

Focus is now on his handheld infrared camera, which he’s swinging around in chaos and fear. Ignore the music track in the background; it’s there to raise your heart rate. After a few minutes, the whole paranormal team of investigators has converged in this room to examine the evidence. Heaven forbid they turn on a light. This is when the viewer is shown replay after replay of the moment the actor, I mean the investigator, screamed.

I know I sound a bit cynical, but I’ve watched many of these shows, attempting to give them the benefit of the doubt. I already had my suspicions, but then tell-all interviews with a couple of these investigators (after the show was canceled or the investigator left) revealed the pressure producers place upon the talent in front of the camera—pressure to sensationalize and entertain.

Final Thoughts

It’s natural to fear bumps, howls, and flashes in the night. The good news is that if we experience an after-death communication from a deceased loved one, we can tell them to stop doing whatever it is that’s horrifying us. They will abide by our requests. And if we’ve tapped into an energy imprint in our dreams or intuitively, those imprints can be cleared from the energy field of the structure.

If you’re into horror films, it’s not my intention to ruin your fun. Let your imagination run wild during the movie. I get the entertainment value. But if it’s freaking you out when you’re home alone at two in the morning, this article is intended to eliminate the fright from the night.

While no movie is one hundred percent accurate, I’ll finish with a few that got most of it right. I’ve already written about Hereafter with Matt Damon. In terms of ghosts, I’ll point out that the filmmakers presented a realistic portrayal of spirit communication between the two young brothers.

Just Like Heaven (2005), starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, presented an interesting take on this subject. Without giving the ending away, even the twist at the end fits in fairly accurately with what I’ve learned. It’s an excellent example of the psychic connection between us all.

Ghost (1990), with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze, did a great job portraying spirit communication. Even Whoopi Goldberg’s representation of a medium was reasonably accurate, even though it was a bit exaggerated.

P.S. I Love You (2007), starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler, Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) with Sally Field and James Caan, and Ghost Town (2008) with Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni, and Greg Kinnear all do a decent job presenting ghosts with some realistic characterizations.

If you haven’t seen one of these films, I recommend them.

I’ll leave you with a true ghost story from my youth. When I was in high school, my family moved into an old house after the previous owner had died. Soon after moving in, the phone would ring without anyone on the other end, cans would inexplicably fall out of an upper cupboard while we were gone, and the upstairs toilet would flush on its own.

We later learned from a neighbor that he had found the previous owner, Grace, after she passed away (on the second-floor toilet). Consequently, whenever the toilet would flush on its own, or the phone would ring without anyone on the other end, we’d shout, “Hello, Grace!” And when we returned home to find cans on the floor from the upper cabinets, we’d shake our heads and say, “Oh boy, looks like Grace had quite a party today.”

Love,
Bob

“Leave a comment. I love hearing from you.” ~ Bob

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His latest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.

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