Here is another email I received tonight that I’d like to share, along with my response to it. It’s from a fellow who has experienced some ghostly goings-on at his homestead:

Now my problem; my wife and I live on ten ackers and there have been some “occurances”,both my wife and I have heard voices in the house and outside. we have both felt a “presence” in our bedroom and in the woods on the property. my wife has heard the screams of both a younger female as well as an older one. I may have photographic evedence of something as well, one photo of me in ritual attire seems to have a “orb” in it, and a photo of my wife has something that looks like a white strand running across the corner of it. both are also on the negatives of each photo. I have begun experiments with a tape recorder but I am unsure where to begin looking for evedience of anything that may have occured here on the property. Any advice?

First of all, I find it really hard to give advice on cases like this, because there are always sure to be mitigating factors that I’m never going to know about, not having known this person a long time, nor knowing the circumstances of their experiences. I address this question somewhat on my FAQ page, because I get it a lot. I’m generally of the mind that the objective reality of the phenomenon is of secondary importance. What really matters is that people are actually having some kind of experience - whether it be supernatural, psychological or otherwise. I have no way of knowing what they are experiencing, but a lot of subtle clues are placed in the letter about the importance of the experience to him and to his wife.

Most striking to me is the way that he characterizes the interactions of both him and his wife to whatever is going on. For his wife, she has heard screams of both a younger and older female. The fact that they are female as is she also seems important, as does the fact that they are screams - screams being a primal emotional response, and women generally being more emotionally sensitive. An unfounded hunch also asks me whether or not perhaps the screams she has heard are somehow coming from within her, as suppressed emotional content being spontaneously released.

The husband’s interaction with the phenomenon is not so much emotional though as it is technical, or perhaps intellectual. He has been following the path of “evidence” rather than emotional “resonance” that his wife is taking with whatever it is that they are going through. He seems to be trying to nail it down, and possibly prove it.

For me, the whole idea of proving things like this is not very interesting. The fact is that something is going on no matter whether you can “prove” it or not. Rather than trying to prove it, I’m going to recommend that he and his wife try to fuse these two tracks that they seem to be on, in order to help them explore the phenomenon and what it could possibly mean for them, as well as desired outcomes. Saying he could prove it was objectively real (ie, the Holy Grail of ghost research), what does that mean? Does that mean that he wants to be rid of the phenomenon? Most likely not, since it would be very intellectually stimulating for him - but of course, it would be still causing emotional disturbances for his wife. My instincts say that whatever is happening is intended to be a challenge for them - whether it’s to understand the world of the supernatural, and move past mundane fixations, or else to understand one another better, and how each of them responds to events and situations in their relationship.

Here is what I ended up writing to the guy, after the above brainstorming session:

thanks for your email. thats a really exciting and intriguing topic that you’ve got on your hands there. it seems like the kind of advice you’re looking for has to do with how to capture evidence of ghosts, am i right? i’m personally not particularly interested in that, so much as i’m interested in looking at the people and how these types of experiences affect them. if i were to put on my occult investigator hat and offer you advice, it would probably be more in that direction. i hope that’s okay.

there are a number of things that jump out at me about your email. most notably is the different descriptions you give for your own and your wifes interactions with the ghostly phenomena. it seems like you’re a bit more interested in the intellectual side of it, in terms of understanding it, tracking it down and possibly even documenting evidence of it. whereas your wife seems to be more in tuned with the emotional charge of the situation - she is resonating with it. it seems significant to me that she is the one who heard the two screams, and it also seems significant that they were both female, and so is she.

from my perspective, it seems like the best bet you’ll have with coming to terms with whatever is going on is for you to be able to combine these two types of approaches into some kind of complementary whole. i would also challenge you both to consider what your desired outcome may be. for her, i’m guessing she wants the phenomenon to stop, as it must be rather emotionally distressing. but for you, it feels a bit more like you’re kind of curious to have it continue, so you can find out more about it and gather evidence. i think if you can come to terms between you on how you’d like the situation to be resolved, you’ll have much better luck.

anyway, i’m not really sure if this was the kind of advice you were after, but it’s what struck me most vividly from your letter. i hope you’re able to find something in it all that helps, and i’d always be willing to talk more about it if you like.

PS. Fantastic Planet also brought up this excellent point that I neglected:

here’s another question for the guy– he mentions, “one photo of me in ritual attire seems to have a “orb” in it.” what ritual attire would that be? when you’re performing any kind of ritual, you’re messing (for good or ill) with energies that aren’t usually associated with every day experience. what kind of rituals does he do? is he summoning stuff? is he a freemason? rituals can be powerful stuff (again, whether it’s objective or subjective is moot).