We go out in the dark of night with our flashlights and equipment in the hope of recording some sort of evidence that may give us an insight into paranormal phenomena in a quest that essentially looks to prove ghosts are real. What if we are looking at it in the wrong way? What if we are the ghosts?

A lot of the research that I have been doing over the last 12 months is more focused on the human mind and how it processes information. I am no expert in the matter. I haven't studied psychology at an academic level, however there are things I have observed and I have learnt during my own research which has made me wonder. Exactly how much is the human mind capable of? Are we the ghosts? This article is more me just asking some questions and looking at some different thought processes so I am not by any means saying 'hey this is it guys!'. We ultimately believe in different things and these beliefs do have an effect as to how we investigate on both a conscious and sub conscious level. I like to look at different things, not just the popular opinion. It is asking the question: What if? So I am putting it out there. I know I am not the only one that is leaning in this direction, but

Are we the ghosts?

This is a concept that I have been thinking about a lot lately. In fact a lot of my belief structure when it comes to paranormal research is now focused on that perhaps we are creating our own haunting.

I don't think we are deliberately trying to deceive ourselves, but perhaps our brain is smarter than we think and if it is potentially capable of things like ESP, it is capable of 'creating a ghost'.

There is obviously a lot of interest in the matter and has been for decades. You have dating back to the 1930's when J.B Rhine studied subject's potential ESP and telepathic abilities using Zener Cards. While the scientific community have never really accepted ESP as being a real phenomenon, the studies continued. You have the Ganzfeld experiments which again while widely criticised worked with the same concept. To test if a person was capable of telepathy. What was interesting in these studies is that they did not test people who were psychic mediums. The tested what they considered to be every day people that could have varying abilities or varied sensitivity to the paranormal. In the trials, results usually came in above the benchmark figures, but were discounted because of issues with controls. If we look at the Phillip Experiment, you have a group of parapsychologists who said let's see if we can create our own ghosts if we all think about it at the same time. They believe they were successful. While the method of investigating the claims is often criticised, they believed it to be a success. They believe they created their own ghost using their minds. Maybe they are onto something. Maybe our mind is capable of changing things.

Affirmations

Let's look at something that is not the in general scope of paranormal for a moment. What is an affirmation? It is a process where a person consciously controls their thoughts. A lot of life coaches and counselors like to have people use affirmations to improve a person's confidence and make positive changes in their life. While the figures vary depending on the research, it is said that we have up to 60,000 thoughts in one day. Around 80% of these thoughts are supposedly negative. They are at a sub conscious level. Affirmations are positive and things that you consciously tell yourself. Things like I am successful, I deserve happiness, I am strong and confident etc.

By affirming these things to yourself, you become more and more conscious of your thoughts.

It allows you to tackle those negative thoughts and kick them to curb. You believe the positive things that you are telling yourself. You tell yourself something enough that you start to believe it. It then follows onto a person taking more charge in their life and accomplishing the things that they want to do. They are essentially making it happen just by changing their thought process. The way to do this is just by being aware. While there is nothing about this that is paranormal, it shows us how powerful our thought process is. Which leads us to the Power of Suggestion.

Power of Suggestion

Of course by telling yourself that something is going to happen, you have that pesky power of suggestion that comes into play. When you are telling yourself that something is going to happen, you then expect it. You start to over anaylise things and can at times misinterpret things going on around you. If you tell yourself, I am going to experience something paranormal tonight, you may misinterpret something because you have already told yourself that this is going to happen. You may feel a cold breeze and feel that it is a spirit when it could just be draft. You may hear the building settle which has a creaking noise but you feel it is footsteps coming towards you.

You are making your paranormal experience happen, because you are expecting it. Your brain is telling you that it is happening.

When we link it to the same thought process you use for affirmations, just being aware here can help you with the power of suggestion. Awareness of your thoughts and addressing them can help you with the power of suggestion. It can help you to look at a situation more critically and really determine what is going on.

Psychic Projection

While we may trick ourselves into thinking that something paranormal is happening, what if in fact it is us that is making something happen just by thinking about it. Much like the Phillip experiment, are we creating a ghost just by thinking about it? Can us changing our thought process actually change the environment around us? I have said this before and it is something that I have observed from conducting many paranormal investigation tours. I have also attended other investigations run by other groups as well. There is always a common scenario. You go into a room and you are told this is Bob's room. "Bob was a ........ fill in the blanks here. Bob liked to play sports. Bob died when he is X years old and loves to have a chat. Let's see if we can get Bob to communicate with us? Bob if you are in here with us can you give us some sort of sign of your presence?" The guests are encouraged to ask Bob questions based on the quick spiel they have been given. You have a room of 10-20 people sometimes even more suddenly focused on the story of Bob. They are thinking about Bob and things he might have liked or disliked. They think of a question that would be relevant to Bob that he would want to answer. Suddenly, equipment lights up indicating that Bob is with them. Putting aside the debate on electronics and it's validity it would seem Bob is talking back.

The question here I ask is this. Is it really Bob in the room communicating with the group? Or have the group focused their collective energy together in a small space and created their own ghost?

Did they conjure Bob in the same way the parapsychologists possibly contact Philip just by thinking about it? Even a sub concious level, a person is thinking about Bob and his life without even realising it. Here in lies where I am going with this whole thing. What if we are making things happen without knowing it?

Energy Imprints

I have spoken many times about the Stonetape theory. While the theory itself has it's flaws, the premise is a little more simple and may have merit. Can we leave behind our own energy? Is it this energy we are picking up when we do investigations? If we are investigating the same location week in and week out, are we communicating with energy we have perhaps left behind? Mediums often talk about how they like to pick up and hold the item of someone who has passed as it allows them to tap into that person's specific energy. People claim certain objects are haunted again retaining energy. People who have empath abilities can tune into another person's energy and feel their emotions just by talking to them or being around them. Energy is so much more complicated than what we can even imagine . The human body itself is said to vibrate to a frequency. We all vibrate at different frequencies. A lot of people believe that when a person is full of negative energy they are vibrating to a lower frequency. When a person is more positive, vibrate to a higher frequency. It is often believed particularly in the paranormal field that like attracts like so if you are vibrating at that higher frequency, you will attract spirits in the same frequency. If you are vibrating at a lower negative frequency, you are likely to attract spirits in the same frequency which themselves would be negative and what some would label a nasty spirit.

If a person leaves behind energy and we as humans with some sort of empathy can pick up energy, what if a person who is creating a negative energy around themselves is actually creating this 'nasty spirit'?

When you look at a lot of private cases, often when there is someone that is in need of help, they themselves are not usually in a great place in life. There was a call out I was involved in many years ago with and the client was deeply troubled. Just being around her made me feel anxious because it felt like all of this negativity was circling around her. I am not an empath or overly sensitive when it comes to the paranormal but I could feel it. She had not opened the windows to her house in a year. The energy had nowhere to go and just built with every negative thought and emotion. It was like there was a dark cloud of energy throughout the house. The house was cluttered and had not been cleaned for some time. Everything just felt negative. When you walked in the room it felt heavy like you could not breathe. When all was said and done, I don't believe she was being haunted by anything paranormal so to speak. There was no denying the bad feeling you got when you walked inside and the heaviness, but was this caused by the negativity? When people clear a house, they often clear out the negative energy or spirit but tell you that unless you fill the space with love and positive energy, the negative energy or spirit can return. I know myself in the past, when I have been in not so great places, this is when I feel like I have had stuff happening around me in my home. Was I creating a ghost from my own energy? Is it when you are feeling that low that it may be easier to blame things on the paranormal instead of having to take a look at yourself. Pretty deep I know, but sometimes the paranormal can be used as a deflection to the real problem at hand.

Of course I don't have the answers here and there isn't really one size fits all when it comes to the paranormal. Maybe a ghost is many things. Maybe it is nothing but our minds. Maybe it is someone who has passed away or maybe it is something else. We simply won't know unless we research and ask questions. I would rather ask a question and be wrong than to never explore another possibility. I could be completely wrong about all of this, but it is just me asking some questions. So this is what I am researching at the moment and when I am out in the field again early next year, the methods I will be using are more tailored around this line of thinking. I have experienced things that I cannot explain and witnessed things that have made me question everything. Investigating is about asking questions. Not just questions to the spirits, but questions to ourselves. What is it we believe?

I would love to hear your thoughts? Have you ever thought in some situations it could be us that were the ghosts? Tell me your experiences and thoughts on the topic in the comments below. There is no wrong answer, we are all just asking questions.

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