Merry meet all,
The next turn in the Wheel of the year is Yule, or the Winter Solstice. I will post more about that later. For now, I am posting about ghosts and if they are real. It’s hard for people to believe in ghosts and it’s not hard to see why. I found an article about the paranormal in India that presents a balanced, skeptical perspective about the paranormal. I hope you enjoy it, dear readers.
In search of the unknown: The tussle between paranormal researchers and rationalists
Ghost hunters and paranormal researchers are trying to find the science behind paranormal occurrences.
ET BureauA techie, working in the San Francisco Bay Area, received a call from his home at Shivaji Park, Mumbai, just after the lunch hour. The techie was taken aback because it was three in the morning back home, and that was not the time his aged dad and mom ever called. It was his mom on the other end. “Why are you calling me so early in the morning? Is everything ok?” the techie asked.
The old lady spoke to her son in chaste Telugu: “Why? Can’t I call you now? Can’t I speak with my son when I want to,” the lady shot back angrily, and slammed the phone down. The techie was worried as his mom never spoke to him so harshly — and that too in Telegu, a language rarely used at home.
He called back, and this time it was his father who answered the phone — after five to six rounds of rings. He told his father about mom’s phone call a few minutes earlier. “No, she didn’t call you… She’s sound asleep. Besides, it’s early morning here,” the dad said.
The techie was quite alarmed; he had clearly heard his mom on the other end. He sent a screenshot of his mobile call log to his father on WhatsApp. But his father — and now the mom was also fully awake – denied having made any call to the US at that hour. The next day, the techie’s father visited the local telephone exchange to get a copy of his recent call-log. Upon checking the records, he found no calls were made to US from his home for over a week.
The family decided to pass off the incident as a “telecom glitch”, but a few more bizarre incidents over the next two weeks forced the family to consult a psychologist first, and a psychic healer later, when the shrink failed to solve the problem. Constant ringing of the doorbell at dead of night — and pounding and banging of bedroom doors — made the family believe their house was haunted. “That place had a lot of electromagnetic
swirling around … These energies were causing such actions,” explained Akshai Sthalekar, founder of India Paranormal Team, which conducted a series of “cleansing rituals” (with water, crystals and pranik and reiki healing) to deviate or clear-off bad energies from the techie’s family home.
BUT WAS THAT A GHOST?
“We don’t call them ghosts … we call them energies. It could be energies let out of dead people, too. Energies cannot be created or destroyed; it just get released into the lower cosmic strata,” said Rahul Kumar, a trained allopathic doctor and founder of Bengaluru-based Spirit Hunting & Research in Paranormal.
Ghost hunters and paranormal researchers are trying to find the science behind paranormal occurrences. “Metaphysics and parapsychology form the basis of all things that cannot be explained by science,” said Kumar. But anti-superstition activists and atheists are not willing to buy these theories.
“This is all pseudo-science … Paranormal researchers use scientific terminologies to mislead people. They just cheat people with scientific mumbo-jumbo,” said Avinash Patil, state executive president of the MaharashtraAndhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti.Neither pure sciences nor paranormal research have managed to pierce the veil of the unknown. But paranormal researchers are having a field day finding solutions to the problems of the “other realm”trying to unravel the mysteries of the “other realm” – and also make some money off it.
BIG SPOOK BUSINESS
India’s top spirit hunters such as Akshai Sthalekar, Waqar Raj, Rahul Kumar and Shishir Kumar attend to 20-30 cases every month.
“Most paranormal cases are misunderstood … in fact, 99 out of 100 cases we attend to pertains to psychological disorders or external energy influence,” said Shishir Kumar, head of Team Pentacle, a group specialising in paranormal activities and UFO sightings.
By external energy influence, Shishir means the presence of an electronic device which emits a lot of electromagnetic waves (EMWs). Higher levels of EMW exposure leads to incurable headache and auditory hallucinations, researchers say.
Most paranormal researchers advise their clients to approach a psychiatrist prior to opting for a psychic investigation. Only when the shrink fails, the psychic healers start investigating the phenomenon.
Paranormal investigators charge about Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 for primary investigations.
The remedy part could get expensive as it may entail a series of cleansing or healing processes and religious rituals. Psychics may charge anywhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 1 lakh to exorcise, deviate or neutralise “bad energy” or negative vibrations.
“We come across a lot of such cases every month… our clients come from all backgrounds… Bollywood stars, politicians, rich socialites, slum dwellers — everyone comes to us when they’re left with no other option,” said Sthalekar of India Paranormal Team, a member organisation of the Secret Society of the Paranormal.
“We’re flooded with panic calls when horror movies such as Conjuring get released in India,” he added.
Waqar Raj, who heads the Indian Paranormal Society, has a word of advice: “There’s a lot of fraud happening around paranormal sciences … Lot of people are entering this field to make money. I personally feel paranormal researchers should not charge money for investigations. It should be seen as pure research.”
A few paranormal research groups have also started offering certification courses in paranormal sciences. They charge Rs 50,000-75,000 for three to six-month courses.
DECODING GHOSTS THROUGH SCIENCE
The red needle on the electromagnetic field meter (EFMs) jumped to life, swinging wildly towards the extreme right end of the monitor. The static sound flowing out of a digital voice recorder is interrupted by a short crackling sound and a prolonged hum. It turned cold suddenly — the reading on the thermometer dropped to 22 degrees Celsius, from 29 just a few minutes earlier.
A team of paranormal researchers, spending a full moon night at Kuldhara, an abandoned village in Rajasthan, was scared and elated at the same time. It was the first time all their scientific “ghostbusting gadgets” reacted concurrently to the presence of “supernaturals”.
“Kuldhara is a haunted place … there’s no electricity in that place, but still your EFMs come to life; sometimes it scales to as high as 20-30 milligauss. Now such high levels can’t be the effect of the earth’s geomagnetic fields alone,” said Waqar Raj.
Many a time, clients approach paranormal experts when they stumble upon “white patches” or “white apparition forms” in photographs clicked at home.
“They believe their house is haunted then … But many a time, these are just orbs resulting out of humidity in air or dust particle on lens. We use photo detailers to inspect these photographs and report back,” said Sthalekar.
Several “poltergeist actions” also come up on the tables of most paranormal researchers.
These include beds and chairs getting picked and dropped or dragged, incidents of stone throwing and crockery breaking. “But poltergeist actions are not actually classified as paranormal activities … some people have “high levels of brain power” to move things, without actually touching them,” said Raj. Then comes cases of apparition sightings.
“It will require a lot of energy for a ghost (or a spirit) to appear as an apparition…,” says Rahul Kumar, the allopathic doctor-turnedspirit hunter. “So most of them time, an apparition you see is the result of a weak mind. Prolonged exposure to EMWs could weaken your mind; it maysetoffboutsof hallucination or even turn you a schizophrenic,” he added.
Cases of ghost possessing — where the ghost is believed to have entered a living person’s body — always accompany tales of the afflicted physically “bending and twisting” in unimaginable ways. This, according to Kumar, is a case of ‘Rubber man syndrome’, a rare medical condition. Cases pertaining to people speaking a foreign language never learnt or even heard by them relate with another medical condition called ‘Foreign accent syndrome’. A person suffering from ‘Alien hand syndrome’ would hit or harm people sitting next to him without really meaning to do so.
“Many a time, all the above cases are misunderstood as a demonic possession or haunting,” said Rahul Kumar.
“Ghosts or spirits are intelligent energy sources … They’re not like what they show in movies. These can’t enter human bodies in normal courses,” said Shishir Kumar of Team Pentacle.
Sthalekar added: “Psychics try to communicate with energies and try to send them away … If the lingering energy is of a dead person, we tell the energy source it is dead and it has to move on. We help them to cross over to the other realm.”
According to Waqar Raj, the problem of “bad energy” only compounds when people use these powers to harm others. “These powers may not affect you, if you’re not scared of them … But if you start worry about them, they’ll make you a nervous wreck, make you depressed or start suicidal tendencies,” he added.
These words do not mean much for the non-believers though. “This is purely superstition … We challenge them to prove their theories. These people should be prosecuted under anti-superstition laws,” Patil of Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti said.” End of article.
I disagree that an ‘energy’s is responsible for the angry prank calls late at night in the article. I need way more proof to be able to believe that. I find it very hard to believe. I am sure that someone got hold of the phone, a living person and is the one responsible for the calls. No ghost could do that. Someone broke into the parents’ home and did the prank calls. The phone was slammed down too. Right. If those people are willing to blame it on a ghost or energy, then they are in dire need of a good head check. It would take a huge amount of energy on the ghost’s part to do that. I welcome your opinions in the comments below.
There will always be believers in the paranormal and skeptics. They are both entitled to their beliefs. They work best when balancing each other out. A good dose of skepticism can actually be of help when dealing with the paranormal. There just may be a rational explanation for creaking floorboards. If you believe it’s ghosts for every single time your cat Fido stares at the ceiling, your doors creak open from an open window, or your hat keeps falling to the floor, you will have serious health problems to deal with. Paranormal investigators first rule out possible solid scientific and rational explanations for occurrences.
Yule is almost here! I hope you’re looking forward to it!
Blessings, Spiderwitch
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