alfreda89 | A ghost question -- Part research and part for a friend --

burn sage at the house, but i hear wearing hematite and tiger's eye provides protection for the wearer.

Where are they? Ghost banishing traditions vary. However, salt around thresholds is good, also putting up mirrors that reflect back at doors and windows that are vulnerable. Also, washing floors with salt solution is good.
I can recommend an excellent practitioner who can advise if they wish.
(I don't think it's a crazy question at all.)

I have several friends who see ghosts in various ways, and I feel spirits. So I did not laugh, and said I'd ask around, having friends with various talents! Salt makes sense to me, and so does burning sage.

They're in central Texas, Austin region. I thought I'd collect some suggestions and send them an email.

Thanks for input, folks!

Sage should be good, then. If it was over here, I'd go with sweeping out with birch or willow boughs.

PS I feel ghosts, though I've only seen one. Odd sensation.

Very odd!

There's one particular church I just can't go in. There's something in there that feels wrong, and... My feet won't do it.

I watched that happen to a friend in New Orleans. We'd gone to see the house of the Voodoo Queen, and she literally could not cross the threshold. It might have been better if I had not. I got maybe six steps in there, and the roiling hate was so intense I had to leave without examining anything in the interesting little museum.

We didn't have an audience. It just...happened.

I wonder what lingers in that church?

I don't know: I keep meaning to research it, and the idea slips away. (It's Monks' Kirby, on the Leicestershire/Warwickshire border.)
Shiver: your experience in New Orleans sounds very like ones I've had, too.

Are we all Celts?

My mom and I feel places intensely. Mom was house-hunting once, and had a complete meltdown in an unremarkable suburban living room. Left at speed.

Turns out she was standing where a man had murdered his wife.

We feel ghosts but don't tend to be followed around by them. My grandmother did have visitors; I don't recall that she did anything specific to keep them out. Around here, salt and sage seem to be standard. Also finding out what they want and trying to help them if possible, then encouraging them to move on. But I've never had experience of it so don't know if that's effective.

Speaking of feeling places--Chartres. Kari, have you picked up on what's there?

I'm Scottish, Welsh, English, Irish, French, German & Native American. So, definitely mostly Celtic.

The man has run off two ghosts -- one was a woman who wanted to talk with their 2 year old. It was frightening the child, so his father asked her not to do that, and she went away.

The second was an observant ghost who seemed superficially helpful -- but she started telling the little boy about blowing someone away with a handgun. So Dad asked her to leave, too, and she did.

I was hoping we could come up with warding ideas for them. It may be that both men will need to wear hematite or something, plus occasional salt and sage smudging.

For negative influences, S swears by black tourmaline. Put a piece at each of the four cardinal points, plus one on the hearth, or in the heart of the house. Rosemary is also good for this--plant it around the house or hang it inside. And lavender. Calms and heals.

Sounds as if Dad has the ability to expel spirits. Unfortunately I've heard that if there's a sensitive in the house, they'll keep coming.

The one person in my (very) extended family who does this sort of thing is the husband of my sister's former coworker--John Zaffis. He's very famous and currently would be inundated, with his tv show and all, but since there's a small child involved, he might at least respond to a request for advice. He's a demonologist and has dealt with some awful stuff--has a whole museum of weird objects in CT. When his kids were young he had the house warded up one side and down the other. He would certainly know how to protect your friends' house and child.

Oh, Chartres.... It's many years since I was there, but there is something very unbalancing there. At the time, I remember feeling it was connected to that streak of insanity in the Valois kings.
I am, as you know, a Celt, though I don't know that anyone else in the family does this. I never asked: it's not the kind of thing we talked about. I must ask my mother, though. (My money would be on her father as the conduit, from what I know of him -- he died before I was born, sadly.) My father's side (Anglo-Celtic) runs to dowsers, but only in the men.

I found Chillon Castle very unsettling when I visited as a child. I have wondered if I would have the same reaction if I went there now that I am many decades grown.

Interesting that the gift changes slightly depending on whether it's the male or female portion of the line.

Dowsing is very much a thing in the Herefordshire line in my family. (The joke is that my father does it subconsciously: ever house my parents have had has turned out to have an unmarked aquifer running under it.)

The way the climate is running, his subconscious may just be planning ahead!

googling "Monks' Kirby on the Leicestershire/Warwickshire border", second hit is this:

http://www.ghost-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=514

Orbs are interesting -- I've seen them in aura pics, but not otherwise. Looks like the area is active!

That *is* weird!

I guess the first question I'd ask is what symbol set your friend works with. If someone who doesn't do spiritual work is running into this sort of problem, well, my advice would be to learn some way to think about the world and exert your will on it really quickly. Hey, you have some motivation, right?

I'll note that I've been working with this sort of thing only for about a year. If this happened to me, and I found it bothering enough that I wanted to do something about it rather than just pushing away anything that is too annoying, here are the sort of things I'd think about. First, it sounds like your friend picks up followers while out. So, salt or mirrors may not work as well as you might hope. It sounds like you want to create a ward that you can carry with you. Some object that is a powerful symbol of hey-ghosts-do-not-bother-me. I saw a suggestion of

I might keep hematite with me as a symbol of grounding. Something to grab to break out of a spiritual experience, to focus on myself and my connection to the earth in order to prepare. I've borrowed hematite to use that way and it was quite effective. I think that sort of grounding would work fairly well for detaching from the interest of the spiritual beings as well. You might be able to charge hematite as a ward, so that you didn't have to actively use it. If I were to do that in my symbol set, it would be an almost thermo-nuclear hammer. "When I wear this, I will myself forceably out of the spiritual world; I will not be noticed; I will not interact." Which is to say that would not be my choice of symbol for simply trying to avoid ghosts. I might well attempt to charge a charm made out of sage, focusing on sage's property as a cleansing agent and as something we use to moderate and build space. How you go about creating such a charm is going to depend a lot on where you come from and how you approach magic. For me it would involve a lot of meditation on sage, what my intent was, then creating a sacred space in which I impressed that intent on the sage. For some people, herbs are powerful enough symbols of themselves that they might just be able to wear it.

I believe he's a deist, but don't know for sure. I'll pass on your observations to him. Thank you for writing!

The first thing to try as a rule is to confront them. The vast majority of low grade spirits or ghosts are looking for soft targets. If you stand up to them and tell them to get the heck out here, especially if you're in your own house/vehicle, they will go look for someone else to bother. If you're religious invoking your higher power is a good thing - not because it's necessarily anathema to the ghost, but because you have a lot more confidence if you feel like someone has your back. This is hard to make work if you're frightened by it already, but it's often all you need if you're determined.

Cleaning is good too, especially if they feel it has come into the house. Salt is beneficial, incense can be, and just general house cleaning, showering, etc. with intent to get rid of non-physical cruft as well as the physical type.

The thing to realize is that it's a lot like housecleaning. Doing it once isn't enough. You have to keep doing it regularly.

They should probably look at learning to do some personal wards/shields, to keep from running into trouble outside, but that kind of technique is hard to explain remotely.

Also it's worth considering the idea that these may not be ghosts. There are lots of not too bright spirits which present themselves as ghosts because they've figured out that people respond to that concept. For some people realizing that makes a great deal of difference.

He has confronted them, and seems to have some gift at getting them to leave. I think he'd feel better about things if there was warding involved since his five year old has had them manifest to him.

It hadn't occurred to me that they might not be ghosts, but you're right, that's a faint possibility. See above for the two reported experiences where they had to ask ghosts to leave. I think they left the child ghost, which may be a mistake -- may make others feel as if they'd be welcome?

A child ghost can still be hundreds of years old! They need to be invited to head on toward the Light.

That's what I would have done, but her conversation moved toward the ones frightening her son, which makes sense. Mom did say the little girl ghost was interacting with the furniture in the room, hiding behind a chair and such. I don't know if they asked their son what her clothing looked like. This is a fairly new house, so either something was there before, or the ghost came in from elsewhere.

It does sound very much like they need to learn about wards/shields as well as cleaning. You don't want things just moving in with you, any more than you'd want live people doing that. The principles are similar for both yourself and your home. You want to put up a shield around the person or thing you want to protect that has the following properties:

1. It is permeable by things you want to have pass.
2. It allows things inside to get out. You don't want to trap something unpleasant inside it with you.
3. The energy that powers it needs to come from something besides you.

The person using it needs to find images that work for them. A deeply Christian person might use that imagery. I draw on earth energy for mine. Find something which feels comfortable. Then find an image for the shield that works. My own is energy from the earth coming up into my core and pushing out to the surface of my body, expelling anything that shouldn't be there on the way. The trick is you have to repeat whatever visualization you use regularly, the same way you get up in the morning, put on clothes, and brush your teeth. For my house I visualize it working it's way out from the earth beneath the house, through the rooms and out to the property lines, in a sort of dome.

I've never worked with children, so I'm not sure how effective shielding them can be. I'd try teaching them to do it for themselves as soon as they're able to hold a reasonable conversation with you. I had an eight year old a couple of weeks ago cheerfully explaining to me about her rainbow safety bubble, and the one she had from her Mom on top of it, and one one from her dog, and another from a family friend.

Once you have the hang of basic shielding, it's a good idea to give some attention to how it looks to others who can see it. Shiny barriers or something that looks like Fort Knox on the outside can attract unwanted attention. I add a layer to mine where that earth energy has cooled and is just natural stuff, like the rest of the planet surface - rocks and vegetation, nothing very interesting.

Hope this helps.

It's very interesting, thank you!

I don't know what they may be willing to try at this point -- I am not sure how much of a problem it is for them. Cleaning once a month with smudging may be easier than wards, as long as Dad has the gift of expelling ghosts.

I only know one person I am sure can see auras, and they are not acquainted with each other. (The person who sees auras doesn't "advertise" that fact.) so not sure how they can check out warding. But they may know of someone with that gift, so it's good to remember.

It's also helpful for my next book! Thanks again!

A ghost question -- Part research and part for a friend --

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

spooky!

Re: spooky!

Re: spooky!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject