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Ghosted!

Who doesn’t love a good ghost story? I came up with this idea because until yesterday I hadn’t written a blog entry in weeks. I felt bad because essentially I ghosted my lovely readers. I promise it was not on purpose! My business, Magical Musings Writing Services has gotten off to a lovely start! I’m an art columnist for Spiral Nature Magazine, and I’m working with another client on a BIG project. As soon as I can tell you guys about it, trust me I will! I’m very excited to be working with this individual, and the project we are working on is incredible. But anyways, ghosting my blog gave me the idea to write about ghosts! So here we go!



Mabon is around the corner, and then comes Samhain. I don’t know about you guys, but I can already sense the Veil starting to thin. It’s like the air is charged with static electricity. In light of this transition period, I thought I’d tell you about Spirits today! I’ll share my personal ghost stories, which range from boring to freaky, and then will talk about Genius Loci, which have had more influence on my life than I realized. The closer we get to fall the more I notice them. I think because the Veil is thinning, my psychic senses are heightened, so I’m noticing everything. (BTW-Subscribe to Spiral Nature Magazine so you’ll be notified when my article about Dumb Suppers is posted!)

Ghostly Encounters

I saw my first ghost when I was about 14. My mother, brother, mother and step dad and I moved into this house when I was 9, and I had never had any issues before. I found out years later that my mom heard music playing every night, but could never find the source. I would keep my door locked (I never had a door with a lock before and liked being able to keep my brother out) but never paid much attention to how my tv would turn off, or on in the middle of the night – same with my stereo. I started noticing when I was a teenager and saw who was turning my electronics on and off. I knew that my room used to belong to the previous owners daughter, and that the previous owners wife had died in a horrible freak accident. When I saw the ghost, I knew it was her. I woke up one morning, and saw a woman that couldn’t have been more than 5’3 or 4″. She had long blonde hair, was wearing a yellow coat and light blue jeans. She was just watching me, serenely. I rubbed my eyes to make sure it wasn’t a dream lagging into my waking consciousness, but she was still there. I didn’t really know what to do. I didn’t want to turn my back to her, but I wasn’t really frightened either. Since her legs disappeared into nothingness, I knew she wasn’t a real person. I found out years later that she was not an intelligent spirit. That is, she was stuck on repeat or a time loop. She died so instantly that it’s possible that she didn’t even know she died. I’m sure at night her daughter would leave her radio playing, so she would go up and turn it off. Even though she was watching me I think I saw her spirit when she would watch her daughter sleep. 


The next encounter I had was in the same house, almost ten years later. This was a series of incidents, and it was not the same spirit. It actually wasn’t a ghost at all but a poltergeist. Poltergeist means noisy ghost, but the entity is actually negative energy that was created by a surly teenager. I moved back in because my step dad had his hips replaced and my sister younger sister was 13 and was in need of a woman role model. (Our mother had moved out years before and lived about 5 hours away). The disturbances started out small – squeaks and creaks that could have been attributed to an old house settling. The sound of footsteps on the stairs – again my step dad blamed the house settling. After a while I started hearing footsteps every night. One night I was particularly restless, and put on the tv in defeat. I heard my sister’s door open and heard her go downstairs, so I went out to call down to her to ask her to bring me a glass of water. When I got to the balcony (the upstairs was loft style so there was a guard rail that overlooked the downstairs living room), she was no where in sight. I whispered her name – if she was in the kitchen she would have heard. Nothing. I opened her bedroom door and looked in. She was sound asleep, curled up in bed. Hmm.. ok. I went back to my room, closed my door, and got back in bed. Only minutes later I hear her door open again, and footsteps on the stairs. I jumped out of bed and yanked open my door. NOTHING. What the heck was going on?! I closed my door, went back to bed. Minutes later I heard her door again. I ignored it. Then I heard my sister and my stepdads voices – I couldn’t make out what they were saying but it was their voices. I went out to the hall to ask them why they were up chitchatting at 3 am. No one was out there. I was starting to feel spooked. I went back to bed, and put on some home improvement show -the least scary thing ever. A few minutes passed and dammit that door opened again! or sounded like it. And footsteps again! But not on the stairs…in the hall…towards my room. They stopped right in front of my door. I heard my sister’s voice say my name. I jumped out of bed and yanked the door open. NO ONE WAS THERE. I was done. I slammed the door, locked it, got under my covers and called my best friend. I was 24 years old and scared shitless. She calmed me down, and reminded me that this was just picking on me because it can, and to tell it to leave me alone. And try to help my sister work through whatever shit was making her create this thing. 

The last ghost story I’ve got is short but freaky. It was last summer, I went to the White Mountains with my step mother and my son. He was sleeping in his playpen at the end of my bed, but against the wall so there was enough room for me to stand between my bed and his playpen. My bed was closer to the wall, and my step mom had the bed by the door. The first night nothing happened, but the second night once everyone else went to sleep, and I just started to doze off, it felt like someone bumped into my bed. I woke up, looked around and shrugged it off. I pulled out my phone and put on some Netflix show to watch until I fell back to sleep, and felt another bump. I asked my step mom if she had gotten up, or maybe threw a pillow or something. She was asleep, and didn’t answer. I shrugged it off, turned back towards the wall where I had my phone propped against the other pillow and saw it: a middle aged man laying next to me in bed. He had blonde hair, striped pajamas and made a 30 year old woman sneak in bed with her step mom because she was so scared haha. Silly, I know but would you want to sleep with a strange ghost in your bed!?

Types of Hauntings

Thanks to TAPS coming to my college back in 2008 (or 07? or 09? IDK exactly, but around that time), I learned that there are three types of hauntings: Intelligent, Residual, Poltergeist. 

Intelligent: An intelligent haunting is when the soul of the deceased person is, well, intelligent. They know they’ve died, they know where they are, they know what is going on around them in the present time. Some are nice, others, well, not so much. If your home or place of work has an intelligent haunting there are a few things you could do. The first is you can just let them be – if they aren’t hurting you, and aren’t causing any damage, then why bother them? Their soul is there because they were not ready to cross over, so if they aren’t interfering with your life other than the occasional awkward encounters in the hall way then leave them to try to resolve their shit. The other option is to help them resolve their shit by communicating with them and finding out what it is they need to do in order to cross over. If they are mean then you could try communicating with them that you are the new owner of the home/office/location, and that they are not welcome. That could work, or it could blow up in your face. I would recommend getting ahold of some experts if the ghost is really nasty. Find a psychic medium or a paranormal research team – the TAPS team advises that you not hire anyone that charges you money to help. I’m a psychic medium, and I may ask for gas money if you live 3 hours away but I’m not going to charge someone to help. (Please don’t ask me to get rid of your ghost though, I don’t have enough experience). Cleansing your home with sage and putting up protective measures could solve the problem too. I sage my home every couple weeks, but I sage the rooms my altars are in every couple days. Places where you do magic generate a lot of energy,  which could attract spirits like a flame attracts a moth. I also have a crystal grid protecting my home, I have mirrors facing every entrance and most windows, and I use Hecate black salt over the thresholds. The last place I lived in had such negative vibes, I always had nightmares, and I didn’t want to chance it with this new place. My new home feels light, and clear. I have not had a single creepy experience here, and its’ because I protect it, cleanse it, and keep it clean. (Cluttered homes tend to attract nasty entities too, because clutter = chaos and they thrive on that shit). 

Residual: A residual haunting is energy from a traumatic event is trapped in an object at the location, and the energy replays a certain aspect of the traumatic event. I think this type of haunting could occur when someone dies suddenly and doesn’t realize it, or if the energy is trapped in the home itself. The spirit I encountered when I was a kid did the same thing over and over again. She could have been tied to an object in the basement, where some things the previous owners left behind were stored, but I don’t know for sure. This entity will not interact with you. They do the same thing like they’re on a time loop. For example, the spirit always walks up and down the stairs and then it sounds like they turn on the shower. The shower will not actually turn on, it’s just the sound. If you remodel your home and the stairs are moved or changed into a slide (silly IK but I couldn’t think of another for instance so shush) you will still hear the sound of someone climbing stairs. The spirit doesn’t know that the stair case has changed, they don’t think or know anything – that we know of anyways. It’s just energy that’s stuck. The TAPS team says to resolve this type of haunting you must remove the object that the energy is tied to. So if you buy an antique rocking chair, and shit starts getting weird then put the chair on the curb with a “Free but haunted” sign. Someone will pick it up. 


Poltergeist: Not actually a ghost, but an energy mass created by the human subconscious- most commonly created by adolescents- usually kids that are starting puberty, are struggling with emotional traumas or depression, and all of that plus crazy hormones results in the type of freaky shit I told you about above. The person does not realize they are the reason for the disturbance. Also, poltergeist may not bother the whole family. They often ‘choose’ one person to ‘pick on’. The events are sporadic, you may have a bunch of activity one afternoon (or in the middle of the night), and then hear/see nothing out of the ordinary for weeks to months. The only way to resolve this type of haunting is to get the person into counseling. I wouldn’t tell the kid they are emitting such intense energy they’ve created an entity that’s scaring the shit out of the family BTW. That won’t help their situation, life is all sorts of messed up for them already. 

Genius Loci

Genius Loci are not ghosts, per say. They’re hard to define. I will be honest, I spent hours researching this, because my experiences aren’t enough to summarize them as a whole. Genius Loci translates to “protective spirits of place”. This could mean spirits that were once human, but they aren’t lost souls. Their spirits are dedicated to protecting the land. If you guys have read my blogs you’ll know Stephanie Woodfield is my favorite author, and I had the honor and pleasure of “meeting” her online. I asked her about them, and she told me that they see the land as it was hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, and see humans as temporary beings on earth. We haven’t been around long, and who knows how long we will be here. The sense that I get when I connect to the Genius Loci in my home – which isn’t easy. This was something else Stephanie told me, and I knew already. As a medium, I’m used to spirits coming to me. I had to spend time working on gaining their trust. I planted a garden, I picked up litter, I spent time admiring the beauty of the land. That was finally when I connected. The Genius Loci of my home were human, I believe. They appear to be Native Americans, but we didn’t discuss that. We didn’t talk at all actually. It was one man, and he just made himself known as the protector of the land. He doesn’t like having a big apartment complex plopped on his land, but he appreciates those who spend time outside making it beautiful with flowers and those that tend the grass and feed the birds and squirrels. There is a faery tribe (two actually but one is on the other side of the field behind my house and they made it clear they have no interest for humans, and that the row of trees is the border, so I never let my son venture past there.) Stephanie and I talked about whether faeries are genius loci, and it’s a debated topic. I think they could be protective of their land, but they aren’t specifically Genius Loci. I will leave the determination up to you guys though. When I don’t know enough about something I will be honest with y’all!

If you try connecting to Genius Loci and feel resistance, negativity or anything else that makes you uncomfortable, then stop the session. Don’t push it. My advice is the best way to win over a Genius Loci is to take care of the land. Pick up litter, water the plants, etc. Sometimes people never win over the Genius Loci of their property, and sometimes they are forced to move because the Genius Loci make them feel depressed, isolated, unwelcome and oppressed. That was how I felt at my last apartment, but at my new home, only 1000 feet away, I feel creative and strong and inspired.

If you would like to share your own ghost stories, share them with me on Twitter! @Deebaby709 #Ghosted!

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amandawilsonwitchwriter

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