Dark Matters: The Search Continues

The current series of Paranormal Witness on Really television channel (UK) is just about to conclude. Once more, I am shocked by the vivid accounts of eerie and horrible happenings as told by credible witnesses. Again, my mind is at work, trying to reconcile the known laws of physics and chemistry with the instances of haunting and other unexplained happenings. On this occasion, I have to concede that there are more things on Earth and just above it than we can fully explain. I am also convinced of the existence of ghosts, real spiritual manifestations, as opposed to stray electromagnetic energy or dark matter.

The ghost of a young bride who had died young, decades previously, haunted an old house occupied by a woman and her two teenage daughters. This woman worked as a nurse in an emergency room, and was not given to incursions of imagination and flights of fantasy. Moreover, she needed a full night’s sleep in order to do her job, and did not appreciate being awoken in the early hours, the ghost of the dead bride pressing down and trying to suffocate her. But it happened again and again. Her daughters were also disturbed by dark shadows, voices whispering their names and other nightly manifestations. The desperate family finally called in a psychic who “cleansed” their house. The ghost – what else was it? – did not come back.

In another instance, security guards who worked in a theatre by night were terrorised by an elevator that worked seemingly of its own accord, whizzing up and down between floors and opening at intervals to let someone or something unseen, in or out. The same men heard loud bangs without source and witnessed objects that had been solidly secured moved around, again by this something unseen. Since these instances happened only at night, the day staff at the theatre stopped their ears when the security men tried to report what was happening.

One security guard, a tough, hard-working person, was so unnerved that he had to resign from his job. All of this begs the question: what are ghosts, and who do they haunt some places and not others? After all, people are dying all the time, everywhere and in every circumstance. Logically, there should be ghosts all over the place, yet very few people actually encounter one. Again, I believe that physical conditions may affect even spiritual hauntings.

In one terrifying episode of Paranormal Witness, a divorced woman was trying to make a new life for herself and her two children (one yet unborn) when she moved into what looked like a comfortable little house. The woman soon found out why the rent was so “reasonable”. She was disturbed, day and night, by noise coming from her attic. A search of the place revealed nothing, yet the disturbances continued. Then, she began to see occasional glimpses of a strange man in the house. She called in a priest, but he seemed to blame her lifestyle, single Mom with two children, for her troubles. A group of psychics arrived and agreed that her house was haunted, but could do nothing to help her. The woman took to sleeping in the living room, her children beside her, but the haunting continued.

One night, she was so convinced that the “man” was trying to harm or even kill her, that she called the psychics back. Three of them arrived at the house and in the dead of night; they all climbed into the attic. In a flash, one of them found himself with a noose of electrical cord about his neck. Just in time, the others saved his life, but not before one of them saw a strange man crouching in the corner of the attic. This time, everyone fled the house, the psychics, the woman and her children.

It didn’t want me there, the woman said, finally. There was something else living there, and it didn’t want me.

But what was “it” and how could it “live” there? When the woman first moved into the house, she had a babysitter looking after her son when she went to work. One day, she and the babysitter, a local young woman, were in the kitchen talking and drinking coffee. Suddenly, the babysitter drew her attention to what looked like balls of light floating above their heads just below the ceiling – and underneath the attic. The babysitter tried to photograph the lights, but her camera malfunctioned. While watching this, I remembered the many past episodes of Ghost Hunters, also on Really, where the hunters continually describe a ghost as electromagnetic energy. Could this have been what the women were seeing, when they saw the balls of light?

Wait a bit - electromagnetic energy is not able to hang a man, now is it? No, the ghost or entity in that flat was much more physical than that. The time blip experienced by the psychics affords a clue. Their number was hoisted into the noose in the blink of an eye, impossible under normal physical conditions. There exists in time and space a phenomenon called a gravitational ripple, an irregularity in the force that we call gravity. I’m unable to do the math, but I do know that gravity distorts matter, time and even light. It could be that this was an actual physical man, suspended in a “ripple” in the attic, repulsing everyone who came near him. The balls of light were a manifestation of the energy given off by the gravitational irregularity.

It could be that certain places are susceptible to these ripples, explaining why some places are haunted while most are not. What has struck me again and again, on watching Paranormal Witness, is the refusal by subjects not involved directly with the incidents, to accept the reality of the unexplained events. They turn away, even in the face of the suffering of family members and friends who are affected. Here, I think especially but not exclusively of the men working in the theatre.

Surely, the best way to deal with a problem is to admit that it is there? As long as we remain in denial about supernatural and supernormal events, we will never uncover the truth about hauntings, and the victims will go on suffering. It had been my intention to end the Dark Matters series with this feature. However, there is just too much material to work with; and much more research and writing to do. My investigations will continue for some time, yet.

Sources: Colliers Encyclopedia