Smudging & Ritual Incense Use

Tradition behind smudging
Many ancient cultures believe in using incense in a ritualistic manner in order to spiritually cleanse a person, place or thing. The concept is simple. An incense-like substance is blessed and burned. The resulting smoke is also blessed and acts as a physical representation of divinity; driving out negativity (evil) where ever it goes. Perhaps the best-known example of this is Native American smudge sticks in which Sage, Cedar or Copal (substances sacred to these cultures) is combined or used on it’s own as incense. Taoist, Buddhist, Catholic and many other religious cultures use the same basic concept of burning incense to drive out negativity and anchor divine energy. This process is known as “smudging”.

Smudging is a simple yet very powerful spiritual practice. There is really no right or wrong way to perform a smudging ceremony (detailed later) but rather it is the INTENT of the person performing the ceremony that matters most. If the intent is pure and good and the mind is focused and clear and the ego is removed to allow for divine intervention then the elements of divinity will follow your lead and bless your intentions. Don’t pre-occupy yourself with whether you are doing something right or wrong, simply follow your instinct and exist in the moment. Smudging is really a ritualistic prayer with the smoke as a representation of divinity (God) so there’s nothing you can do that’s wrong aside from perhaps setting something on fire if you’re not careful with the incense. In fact, one doesn’t even have to use incense, a lit candle, a feather or even your hand will do just as well, though may not be as fragrant. The focus is on the intentions, not the actions.

There are basically 3 steps to a simple smudging ceremony, just as in any prayer.

Invocation – This is a grounding and connection to God or divine energy and calling forth the presence of divinity; an opening prayer.
Blessing – This is the act of blessing the object, person or area to be smudged or cleansed.
Closing – This is a closing prayer to thank divinity or God for blessing you and your subject.

We will run through a basic cleansing ceremony for a house and then give a brief description of how the same ceremony may be used for an object or a person.

The Invocation:
Take a moment to clear your mind of whatever may be running through your head. Your mind should be quiet and focusing. A common visualization to help with this is to stand up straight but relaxed, close your eyes and imagine the divine light of God emanating from within you and clearing out any negativity and spreading peace and relaxation throughout your body.

A standard invocation often used is a either the Lords Prayer or perhaps the Light Invocation by Dael Walker:

I invoke the light of God within.
I am a clear and perfect channel.
The light is my guide.

As you say your invocation prayer picture in your mind’s eye the light of God spreading from your soul (inside your body) and growing in intensity as it envelops you and your smudging tool. You may want to repeat your prayer 3 times to help build the visualization and focus your mind on the task at hand. Remember to exude peace and serenity from your being.

If you are using a standard smudge stick light the stick now and let it burn for a minute. Blow it out and as you do imagine the divine light of God flowing from your breath into the smudging instrument and thereby sanctifying it. Imagine the smoke as a physical representation of the divine light of God, cleansing everything it touches and driving out negativity. You may have to blow on the smudge stick for a few minutes to really get it smoldering. A good smudge stick is actually hard to keep going, you often have to stop and blow on it to keep smoke flowing. If it goes out just stop for a moment and re-light it.

If you are using a candle or standard incense stick, light the candle and bless it with the holy symbol of your faith or simply mentally infuse it with divine energy. A feather or your hand can simply be held in front of you or to your side as you visualize charging it with divine white light. Some people prefer to use a feather in conjunction with a smudge stick or incense wand so that you may fan the smoke and thereby direct it to the desired location and at the same time, stoke the burning embers. Essentially, it doesn’t matter what you use, it’s simply a focusing tool. You can put a colander on your head and use a kitchen spoon and it will accomplish the same thing as long as your intent is focused and you have faith and believe in what you are doing.

The Blessing:
It’s very important to remove ego from the situation as you are performing this ritual. That may seem a bit odd but the concept is for you to “get out of the way” so that the divine energy may flow through you. You are not doing the cleansing; the spiritual energy of divinity is doing the work. You are simply a channel through which it is flowing. Do not worry about if you are doing it right or wrong or how you look when you’re doing it or if it’s working. Simply allow yourself to exist in the moment, devoid of judgment and ego. If your mind and heart is open and you have invoked your opening prayer with sincerity the rest is almost automatic. You just have to continue to channel the energy of God and direct it where it is needed. Trust your intuition. If something doesn’t quite seem clean stay and work on it until it feels right.

This is the active portion of your ritual. Generally, you should always start with yourself and then move on to your target. Wave the smudge stick over your feet with the visualization and intent that the smoke is purifying you and driving out all negativity. You may even want to blow or fan the smoke a bit. This is fine but watch for flying embers. Continue up your body and focus on your visualization. If your mind begins to wander just bring it back to the task at hand as soon as you notice. (this is also the same technique for smudging another person)

Make sure all the doors and windows are open in your house so that the smoke has a way to escape eventually and you might want to cover your smoke detectors if you have them.

Start at the center of the house and work your way out. The object is to drive out the negativity and infuse the area with divine energy, not block in the bad stuff. Start in the center of a room or the central hallway and blow or fan smoke gently in the air as to fuse divine energy into the air itself and everything it touches. Don’t forget to get in closets and under cabinets as well. If you realize later that you forgot a space don’t make a big fuss about it, simply open the area to the residual smoke into the area and back it up with your visualization. You might try saying a small prayer of thanks after each room is smudged to give that room a feel of finality.

If you are using another tool that doesn’t have smoke like a feather or your hand simply wave it the direction and imagine divine light flowing through you and emanating from the tool to infuse the air and the area with God’s presence and sweeping away negativity.

You might pay special attention to smudging doorways and windows (as these are common portals for entrance and exit) and any area that doesn’t feel quite right. Simply increase the intensity of your visualization and pour in more smoke (to a reasonable degree) until you are satisfied that the area is cleansed of negativity AND that it is infused with divine energy.

Work your way toward the exits to the room like a window or an outside door as if you were sweeping or herding the negativity out. If the house is more than one story simply pick the top or bottom floor and gradually work your way through the structure so that you sweep out negativity and infuse divine energy everywhere. Remember to hit spots that people don’t go very often like attics, basements, cabinets or even air conditioning vents. A quick and efficient way to smudge the entire air conditioning system (assuming the building has central air) is to blow smoke into the air intake for the system so that it is diffused throughout the building. This can even be used to smudge the entire house from one spot if you are confident enough in your skills to do it all from one location.

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As you work you may try chanting a mantra or prayer or other positive affirmation like:

We ask that all forces not working from the light (or God) be excluded from this place.

Or

By the divine nature of God we anchor sacred light to this place and sweep away negativity.

Go with whatever feels natural. Don’t force anything and don’t let anything break your focus. If it does, simply stop and re-center and continue what you were doing. If you feel resistance in an area or feel something lash out at you simply reinforce your visualization that you are infused and emanating divine light and that shadow (negativity) cannot exist in the presence of light.

Closing:
After the entire area has been smudged take moment to say a prayer of thanks to God or whatever form of divinity you recognize for empowering you to do this work. A good example of a closing prayer might be:

We thank the forces working for the light and the divine presence of God for your assistance with open hearts and sincere gratitude.

Follow Up
Don’t allow the air in the house to stay stagnant, the smoke should be allowed to leave and fresh air to enter. The smoke is NOT the divine energy it can leave. It was just your focusing tool during the cleansing, nothing more. Let fresh air blow through and sunshine in.

You may want to repeat this simple ritual on a regular basis (every week, month, six months, year, etc) in accordance with need.

James S. -

And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

Free Deliverance While Supplies Last

We've recently began working with a new client for our group. They're the proto-typical modern family and just generally all-around nice people. Rick is a CAD draftsman and his live-in girlfriend, Jerri, works for a bank. The couple recently bought a house together. They have no children together as of yet, but Jackie has an adorable 6 year old daughter from a previous marriage named Lisa that stays with them for two weeks at a time. While we were working with the family Lisa was staying with Rick and Jerri.

The house they recently bought was a foreclosure and was no doubt part of the cascade of foreclosures sweeping the country recently. It's 10-20 years old and only had one previous owner, another family. To our knowledge nobody had died in the house and there was no abnormal spiritual activity in the house prior to the clients moving in.

The house itself needed a lot of work and the family has been putting a lot of energy into remodeling such as pulling up carpet and putting down wooden flooring, repainting, etc. Rick was initially very uneasy about the house and confessed at one point that his instinct told him not to buy it, but it was such a good deal financially they bought it anyway. Luckily for them one of our team members, a medium who just started working with the group and a previous client, was living on the same cul-de-sac as them. Literally two houses down.

My wife and I spend a lot of time over there with Tony and his wife, Kim, both discussing and working on cases and just generally hanging out as friends in our down-time. Rick and Jackie were new to the neighborhood and decided to come over and visit as we were all hanging out in Tony's garage one evening having a few beers and socializing. During the course of conversation Kim and Tony relayed the story with their house, which I discuss in the section titled "The Soul Collector". This prompted Rick and Jackie to share some of their experiences thus far in the new house which mainly included an intense feeling of being watched and that they were not alone. At one point it bothered Rick so much so as he was working in the garage that he just left the property and came back later to finish up what he was working on.

Tony and I both confirmed that we had felt a presence in the house from the street, but that it didn't seem to be anything to be concerned about. As we continued the discussion I naturally began to tune in on the spirit in the house and began to describe them as both male with one being in his 30's or 40's and wearing a red plaid shirt or coat and old faded and worn jeans. He struck me as a bit of a no-nonsense kind of small town guy, maybe a bit gruff but generally harmless. The other spirit looked to be in his 20's. I didn't get much of a visual picture of him other than he was wearing predominantly blue, possibly blue plaid. The two spirits LOOKED as though they could have been related, but I got more of a feeling that they were friends and not related. The younger one struck me as a bit of a trouble-maker, kind of a "rebel without a clue" mentality.

I tried to focus a bit and maybe pick up a name if possible and was relaying what I was picking up to the Rick and Jackie when I felt a presence standing behind me and slightly to my right. It was the younger spirit and I got a mental image and sensation of him reaching out and slapping me in the back of the head and saying, "my name is Brian" with a tone to suggest that I should have known his name all along because "everybody knows my name." I laughed a bit to myself. I always like seeing spirits with a little personality. I relayed the name to the group and Tony spoke up saying he had picked up on a spirit named Brian nosing around too and wasn't sure who it was.

Rick and Jackie seemed like they weren't quite sure how to take all of this information. It was a lot to throw at someone all at once so we gave them the standard speech about claiming their spiritual authority in the house and while it was entirely possible to live peacefully with the spirits they should make every effort to declare the fact they they now own the house and the spirits could stay but needed to play by some ground rules if they were going to stay such as not messing with the family members when they're sleeping, etc.. We eventually worked the conversation over to the top of beer, something Tony and I can both talk about for hours since we're avid home brewers, so as not to overwhelm our new friends on the subject of the paranormal.

Over the course of the coming days and weeks both Tony and myself talked with Rick and Jerry off and on. They indicated that they were still having a sensation of being watched and that their garage door opener had been opening and closing on it's own. They also reported that other doors would open and close on their own. They even went so far as to put a jug of windshield washer fluid in front of a door to see if it would still open. They came home and the door to their garage was indeed open and the jug has been pushed out of the way. We generally re-iterated the advice about setting boundaries with the spirits and generally trying to peacefully co-exist while at the same time maintaining a firm stance that they now owned the house and they were in charge of it.

Apparently, Brian and his buddy didn't particularly care for them or what they were doing with the house. A few weeks after our initial meeting with the clients they contacted us again saying that they were having trouble sleeping in the house to the point that Jackie mentioned she was contemplating taking her pillow and blanket and sleeping in the car at one point. Rick also reported seeing what he described as a beam of light moving in his house from room to room. It stopped at his bedroom as if looking in and then went on it's way. At that point both the clients and our group decided it was probably time to look further into what was going on in their house so we decided to do a walk-through of the house and give them our feedback.

Tony, an outstanding medium and former client, and his wife Kim conducted a walk-through of the house while my wife and I interviewed Ricky and Jackie in their driveway to get the full story on what they'd been dealing with. Tony again confirmed that there were two spirits in the house as I had described and that the younger one seemed to be the troublemaker. He described their attitude and disposition as belligerent, uncooperative and down right rude. At point one of the spirits flipped him the bird and called him an asshole. When Tony asked for a name they dropped a series of random names. Tony asked for some cooperation and for the spirits to give him a sign that they were present. The spirit responded by giving Tony a nasty scratch on his foot.

At that point we firmly established that these spirits, though Tony and I both perceived them as human, were generally up to no good and needed to leave this family in peace. We began to council Rick and Jackie on how to push the spirits out and claim the house as their spiritual refuge, thereby re-asserting their authority over the property / space which would keep any unwanted "guests" at bay. Ultimately we left the decision up to the client as to whether they were going to do that and when and told them that we would be happy to coach them through the process if they decided to go that route.

Two or three days passed and we got word from the clients that they had enough of not being able to sleep and feeling uneasy in their home and they were ready to be done with this whole business. We packed up the little recording gear we use during investigations, a sage stick and headed over to coach the clients through a smudging / house blessing.

Jackie had taken her daughter out of the house for a few hours. Our group has a fairly strict policy of not confronting spirits in the presence of children when at all possible for safety reasons. Things can get violent in a hurry if the spirit becomes resistant. So, the blessing was up to Rick with Tony and myself as coach.

We had Rick read over a standard article titled Smudging and Ritual Incense Use I have all clients in this situation read over. It introduces them to the concepts of visualization during the ritual and making themselves a clear and perfect channel for God's light and the importance of visualizing the smoke as the light of God touching, blessing and sanctifying everything.

We opened up with the Prayer to St. Michael and I stepped back with Tony to read the situation as Rick proceeded throughout the house blessing and cleansing the corner of each room, one at a time. He was nervous at first but with a little coaching he found his connection to the light and you could feel the positive energy emanating from him as he went from room to room. We made sure to hit every corner of every room, including the garage and all the closets. Tony and I could feel not only the positive well of energy coming forth from Rick but we could also feel the spirits of the two ghosts moving further and further away from Rick trying to keep their distance.

As Rick finished out the first floor the spirits were above us on the 2nd floor and had a decidedly nervous energy that can only be described as rats scurrying from a sinking ship. As Rick cleansed the hallway with the smoke from the sage stick and his own prayers calling out to God to bless and protect his house and drive out the spirits Tony and I both sensed them pressing toward the back of the send floor trying to get as much space as possible between them and Rick. He finished a utility room and bedroom on the first floor and suddenly I realized I couldn't feel the spirits in the house anymore. They were gone.

We coached Rick through smudging and blessing the attic (always a key place to hit because spirits can easily lay claim to it since it gets so little traffic from residents) and remaining bedrooms and to seal the house in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and by the Blood of the Lamb.

We were done for the night. Rick had very successfully reclaimed the house, but we cautioned him that while he had pushed the spirits out for now the ordeal was likely not over and to expect to have to cleanse and bless the house a few more times before the spirits couldn't enter anymore. The first house blessing usually gives the clients a reprieve for a few days, but as soon as they let their guard down most spirits will try to push back in. We cautioned Rick and Jerry to be optimistic because they had scored major victory but the war wasn't over.

They slept well that night. The house was peaceful and quiet, but the next morning Tony's wife, Kim saw both spirits standing on Rick's front lawn looking at the house as if trying to figure out how to get back in.

The following night the noises returned and Rick reported that he had been touched that night as he was trying to sleep. In the morning we got messages from both Rick and Jerry telling us that their "guests" were back. We re-iterated the need to continue blessing the house to push them out and to claim their spiritual authority over the property, but decided it was best to wait until the following Sunday when Jerry's daughter went to stay with her dad for two weeks. That would be the perfect time to get down and dirty with the spirits just in case they decided to get violent.

The following morning the family found something very interesting. The names and phone numbers for Tony and Kim had been scribbled through in what looked like child's hand writing. The scribbling had completely covered up Tony's name and phone number, while leaving Kim's marked through and relatively visible. There was also what appeared to be some indecipherable drawing on the paper that vaguely resembled two figures fighting.

I suspected that their daughter, Lisa, had done this under the influence of the spirit, but I didn't want to alarm the family so I kept that to myself. Of their own accord Rick decided to write my name and number down on a similar sheet of paper and leave it laying around the house to see what happened.

Not 3 hours later the family was in the living room when Rick and Jerry both witnessed Lisa stand up and walk over to their kitchen counter island and reach out with a pencil and start scratching on the piece of paper. It should be noted that Lisa had payed no previous attention to the paper and in fact it was above what you would consider her normal light of sight to even see it. She had to stand on her tip-toes to scribble on it, with almost no chance of seeing exactly what she was drawing.

Rick and Jerry tried talking to her but Lisa was completely unresponsive as if she couldn't even hear them speaking to her which was abnormal behavior for Lisa. Rick finally reached out and held her hands still and prayed over her for a few minutes. When he stopped Lisa dropped the pencil and went back into the living room without missing a beat. My name and number had been scratched out just as Tony and Kim's had been. Apparently we made an impression on the spirit and they clearly didn't want our continued involvement in the case.

I was due over at the house anyway to pick Rick up and get some supplies for the next round of house blessing. They showed me both sheets of paper and said they had talked to Lisa about what happened. She remembered doing it but wasn't sure why she did it. When asked what the figures were on the bottom of the first sheet she said it was two people with electricity going between them. Unknown to her, Tony had pushed the spirits out of the house by sheer force of will on a previous visit and had pushed the same spirit out of his own house when it came to pay him a visit. This could easily be imagined as two people with electricity between them. Or, perhaps she was depicting Rick pushing the spirits out of the house with a blessing. Given the fact that she had scratched Tony's name and number out on the same sheet of paper I'm inclined to believe the figure on the left that most closely resembles a person is Tony.

We decided to set up the next blessing for the following day after Lisa was due to leave the house. We got the supplies needed, a powdered mixture of Myrrh, Frankensense and Copal since my local supply shop was out of the sage sticks I prefer and finalized plans with the family for the following evening.

That night Tony and I arrived and discussed our initial feelings about the house. We felt the presence of one of the spirits back in the house, but very very faintly as if he was trying to behave himself and knew what was about to happen. It was the spirit that identified itself to me a Brian in Tony's garage. The older spirit was gone, nowhere within my range.

We talked Rick and Jerry through the process of the blessing. Rick had already been through it once before, but Jerry hadn't. I stressed the importance of visualizing a connection to God and visualizing yourself becoming a clear and perfect channel for his light and his will. That is the key to making the ritual powerful, being able to see what's happening on a spiritual level clearly and believe in it through to your core.

Tony and I sat back and let the couple start, beginning with the prayer to St. Michael again as last time. About 10 seconds into it the hair on both mine and Tony's arms stood on end and it felt like the room filled with static electricity as a wave of bright light welled up around Rick. He had made himself a clear and perfect channel to divinity. As he continued on with clearing the first room my inner sight registered what could only be described as wave after wave of bright near blinding light wash out of him filling the room and spilling through the walls of the house. Even though it wasn't light that I was seeing with my physical eyes it was so bright I couldn't help by squint and I reflexively turned away and gave myself a moment to adjust to the new brightness level.

Tony and I looked at each other with wide eyes as if to say, "holy crap, I think he's got it!" I had seen this before, but not to this level of intensity. Even when I do the ritual myself it's not as intense as what I was seeing there. Rick began to expand on the blessings calling for the doors and windows to become sealed. As he did each door, window and wall of the room my inner sight would become blocked. I couldn't see past the blessings he was putting in place. As he finished the first room and moved on to the next I stood in it marveling at the intensity of the warding / seals he had put in place. As he continued I could literally see and feel each room close up.

At one point as Rick neared finishing the first floor he called out for God to reach out and send help, to send his army and angels. About 5-10 seconds later it felt like a great hole had ripped itself in the sky and what I can only describe as a swarm of winged beings, glowing brightly, circled far over the house. There was a multitude, beyond my ability to count. As they slowly descended into the house it seemed as if the very walls bulged with their presence. The quiet psychic background filled with a constant chorus of voices all speaking to one another. It suddenly felt like there were 300 people in the room with us all talking, but not in an unpleasant way, just letting us know they were here.

The presence of the spirit that identified itself as Brian was gone from the house. The moment the choir of voices (what I can only describe as angels) entered the house Brian was summarily and un-ceremoniously ejected from the upstairs not unlike a champaign cork shooting out of a bottle. A few minutes later we heard and felt a pounding on the wall of the house and got a distinct impression it was Brian trying to get back in but was completely and utterly unable due to the new spirits occupying the house. My mind wandered for a moment to the lyrics of Closing Time by Semisonic, "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here."

Rick and Jerry were well on their way through finishing up the blessing upstairs. Tony and I stayed downstairs since they had the situation well in hand. I called to him at one point to reach over and put his hand on a wall and channel the light through the wall and then the next and the next, pushing the light throughout the whole house so as to leave no place for an unwanted spirit to hide. As he did that and worked himself up again chanting, "holy, holy, holy, thou art holy" for a brief moment I could see the wall in front of me ripple as if coming alive with divine energy.

They finished up the blessing shortly thereafter and Tony and I sat down with them to give them our feedback. Keep in mind that they were focused on doing the ritual and weren't as sensitive to the spiritual world as a Tony and I had become so they really had no idea how effective what they were doing was. As we relayed everything we had felt and saw during their blessing Rick began to cry in thanks that his prayers had been answered.

However, Tony got a distinct message to warn them that they would likely see and experience more even more activity than they had the night before, but of a completely different nature. Tony and I went back to our homes, but I got a text message later that evening that the house was crawling with activity and Rick had even felt something brush his foot. I explained again that we were given the message that there would be a lot of activity, but that it was essentially the help he had requested. I got the distinct impression that the spirits were going about the business of repairing the house on a spiritual level and officially making it Rick and Jerry's home.

The next morning I spoke to them again and both reported sleeping peacefully, and Rick was even touched by one of the spirits in the house in what he felt seemed more like a healing "laying on of hands" and was entirely peaceful and non-threatening.

James S. -

And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

The Soul Collector / Harvester

This was an email exchange between a client in our group and myself. I'm including it because I think it might be helpful for someone.

Client Email Starts:
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So, let me run this by you and get your opinion on this......

Yesterday was a fairly active day, and had been an active 24 hours. I had seen a full-body apparition walk out of the kitchen the night before last, and the house was restless all day long yesterday. Kim had caught my mother-in-law's dog following something around the master bedroom & bathroom, and we were getting cold spots all day long. Last night, when we were all sitting at the couch talking about the day, I couldn't quit squirming because my senses were firing off that they were sitting with me while we spoke. Kim even felt one side of her get cold, like one had taken a seat right next to her. We weren't worried about it, since we had gotten used to them coming up to us since we've been acknowledging them.

Last night, when we went to bed, Kim & I decided to make one more attempt at an EVP session, since the house had been so active, and we were still wondering the reason behind the "help" we heard on the previous session. We asked them to identify themselves, and asked what it was they needed help on (note: I just finished listening to
the recording, and there's two spots where a male voice is definitely talking, and pretty extensively - it's just too low to filter out and make out what's being said...). Now the fun part. Before I go into what happened, keep in mind two things about me: I never remember my dreams, and I never dream the same thing twice, especially in one night.

As we went to sleep, mine was restless. By the time around 1:00 am had hit, I had already woken up twice, from the same dream having to do with the house, and the same two words ringing in my head --
LOUDLY...........

Soul Collector..........

I thought it was weird, and something in me was telling me to look this up as soon as I got up. I brushed it off and went back to sleep, and was startled awake promptly at 1:30 by two things: One of my dogs was going batshit crazy in the living room barking a protective bark like someone was in the house that didn't belong, and the following words ringing in my head -- again, LOUDLY......

Soul Collector's here.........

The dog barking woke Kim & I both up, and I walked the house to make sure everything was alright. As I walked into the living room, the dog was in the middle of the floor barking. As soon as she saw me, she stopped & went back to the couch and laid down next to the other dog, that wasn't doing anything. The house was clear.

As soon as I got up this morning, I went over to the computer and googled the words. I had never used that terminology to my knowledge, and aside from maybe seeing a movie title by that name a long time ago, It's never been used in any conversation that I've had. Needless to say, it was very interesting what I found out.....

The house has been completely quiet today. When I brought this up to Kim, we called her Mom into the bedroom & I told them what had happened. After we had been talking a few minutes about it, I noticed something: there was no presence with us as we spoke, which has been the case every time since we acknowledge that they were here. We also found out another interesting tidbit: Kim's Mom & Dad never heard the dog. At all. It may be a bad pun, but that dog was barking loud enough to wake the dead, and they never heard a peep.......

Sorry if I ran on too long. I can get carried away sometimes.....lol. I thought this was very interesting though, and wanted to get your take on it. I almost posted it on the group page, but decided to get your take on it first. Let me know!


My Response:
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I was honestly wondering when/if this scenario was going to play out with you guys.

I've never heard it called a "soul collector", but at some point in active hauntings if they get active enough something will show up to "clean up the mess" so to speak. It's very similar to the process of calling down the "light of god" which is essentially creating a portal to the other side or some other spiritual place that's much further out of synch with our reality. I've always considered that other place the "real" reality. That's where spirits SHOULD go to continue the process of their evolution.

It seems that a spirit can stay here for a myriad of reasons but basically they're putting their spiritual evolution on hold while they stay here with us. If they have a good reason to stay here their force of will can allow them to stay or if they're just confused/scared they may elect to stay. The point here is that sooner or later, for their own good, they really need to move on to that other place.

It's possible that these spirits just wanted to make themselves known. They may have called this soul collector to take them, someone in the house could have subconsciously called him or the activity in the house just may have gotten so intense that it just popped up on his radar. I've always looked at this entity very similar to the concept of "death" as portrayed in the movie "Meet Joe Black".... sort of a bus driver from here to there.

Don't be surprised if the same spirits show up back at your place again later. They can and often will come back for short visits, but almost never show up for very long, almost like they've taken up residence on the other side but will pop over here when needed. The way I've seen this play out in the past has always lead me to believe that when these entities are taken to the other side someone sits them down and reminds them that the spirit world is their real home and they get the "big picture" back where they realize that we're only alive for short spurts in our spiritual evolution, basically when we need to "go to class" to learn a few more lessons.

Your experience and what you describe is quite normal for those sensitive to the spirit. The fact that you heard this speaks very clearly to your own medium ability. It leaves me wondering if recent events haven't played out with the intent of putting you on our group's radar to use that talent for the greater good.

This explains something to me too that you may find valuable. I'm much much more sensitive than I let on. I keep this ability very low profile because I tend to use it to check other mediums. It also allows me to sort of scan new clients and see if they're yanking our chain or not. The truth is we are ALL mediums to the extent that we allow ourselves to be. We all have the ability to sense spiritual energy. It’s a matter of getting comfortable with the idea and exposure.

At one point in the conversation you came out and admitted that you have that ability to a lesser degree but every time you tried to minimize the description of your own ability what I can only describe as your "aura" (if there is such a thing) would spike in such a way that you were not being truthful, but at the same time you would still maintain an overall feeling of complete honesty. I see this type of thing a lot with people who know they need to make a change but they're just not ready to make that change on an emotional level so they're rationalizing their situation.


Client's Response:
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It's interesting that you said harvest. I heard another voice during that process last night call him a "harvester", and almost put that in when I googled the phrase this morning......

It's funny, I've always known that I have some kind of ability, but the combination of keeping it at bay out of denial and that good ol' fashioned Bible-Belt Southern Baptist upbringing I was put though always made me put it to the side. Any time I've talked to anyone about it, up until I met Kim, always would look at me like I was crazy or full of shit, so I would always shut it down.

I've always thought of my abilities as being very slight, mainly instinctual more than anything, and never really "stretched my legs" so to speak, to see what I can really do. I would still imagine that, despite having a very open mind, my age and experiences would still be a little bit of a hurdle (at least I say that - I still learn things at a near geometric rate). Like I said before though, I'm always open to learn new things, and I think you may be right that this has played out like this for a reason. Maybe I just need my "doors blown off", perception-wise, to kick this thing in gear, since I know belief & perception can help or hinder.

Funny, Kim & I were just talking early this morning before I sent you the note, & she said that she thought that I may have more of a "gift" than either one of us has thought, and asked me what I thought about exploring that. She looked right at me and did a big "see....I told you so!" after reading your response. She's behind me 100% to try and see....

A Family for Eric

So an investigation this weekend really hit home for me.

For those of you that don't know, a group of friends and I run a group you might call a paranormal investigation group (http://houstonghost.com).

A man emailed us last week, who obviously seemed very stressed by what his family had been experiencing. He was approaching our group for help, which is ultimately why our group exists. Working with clients is always a learning experience for us, that's what we get out of the situation, but more importantly our group facilitates a much needed support / consultation function for families having this particular issue.

After gathering some initial information it was apparent the family really had an issue (you might be surprised how many hoaxes/idiots we get emails from). The information he provided in our initial online "interview" form contained some subtle hints that this was a family in genuine need, not someone looking for entertainment.

Initially we offered them an investigation spot/schedule a few weeks out, but they asked if we could meet sometime sooner since they were experiencing some fairly traumatic events. Among them were disembodied voices calling the names of family members, kids (pre teens and teens) afraid to sleep in their rooms or go into certain parts of the house and both the mother and father experiencing a sensation of being held in place while their whole bed shakes violently. The father had begun to verbally challenge the entity to call it out and demand that it leave his family, especially their children alone. In response, the entity had started to toy with him by opening every cabinet in the kitchen on a regular basis so that only he saw what was going on.

When we arrived early Saturday afternoon we had a little trouble finding the house because of lack of house numbers, but we had a strong suspicion what house was involved, because you could literally feel something was going on in the house from the street. Our medium, a very very talented woman, was already a bit on edge that morning because she had some very disturbing dreams about the client's house the night before centering on some fairly disturbing issues/imagery involving the elderly.

We eventually found the client, introduced ourselves for the first time and our group split up, as has become our normal procedure. One group member sits the clients down and interviews them, going over their initial report, our procedures, how our group works, what the client can and cannot expect from us, etc. while the mediums and note takers that accompany them tour the house on their own, getting their impressions and readings.

During this investigation I served as the interviewer / case working talking to the clients and essentially keeping them busy while the rest of the group does the job we came there for, figuring out what's going on. The clients mainly re-iterated their initial complaints about the bed shaking, cabinets opening on their own, little things in the house being molested/moved, a general feeling of being watched and a few other of the usual complaints for cases like this. Chief among them was the obvious concern for their children and the wife was newly pregnant so they felt they needed to get a handle on the situation now, before things got out of hand. In talking with them my heart really went out to both of the clients. I know what it's like to feel like something may be threatening your children and you feel almost completely powerless to protect them. Truly, that's one of the worst feelings a parent can ever experience.

Once the rest of the team was finished touring the house we all sat down in the living room and the mediums shared what they were getting. Keep in mind that our group has a VERY strict policy of not allowing the mediums to have any background knowledge on a client or activity happening in the house at all until after the medium has finished sharing their readings with the client.

As the medium started talking about one event after another that the family had been experiencing in great detail (without any previous knowledge i might add) and what/who was behind it you could literally watch the borderline fear, worry and anxiety on the faces of the clients melt into understanding and compassion. The medium started talking about the long black haired girl named Samantha that was hanging out with and talking to the teenage girls in the family. She would follow them back and forth between their house and client's X wife's house. The clients had just described her in our interview not an hour earlier and their own children had described just such a girl named Samantha. There the medium was telling them about a girl with the exact same description named Samantha that was just hanging out to be out with girls her own age. Samantha knew the girls in the family could see (the children were also mediums, which is very common) her and she apparently enjoyed that interaction.

Then came the story of Eric. Eric was a 9/10 year old little boy who was just essentially pissed at the world because nobody was paying any attention to him. He could see everyone, but apparently nobody could see him. He was so upset he was almost to the point of wanting to hit and scratch people to get attention. We strongly suspect that Eric is responsible for the bed shaking incidents the family had described and was doing nothing more than trying to get someone to acknowledge him, to the point that he was literally screaming at the mediums. When they initially asked him what his name was his response was, "what does it matter? nobody pays any attention to me anyway?!"

He could see the father in the family and had started what Eric described in his own words as a "tit for tat" confrontational game with the father. Eric would do something and the father not wanting to acknowledge that what was happening may have been the spirit would blame whatever was happening on the cats. This, in turn, would only make Eric more angry so that he would act out, eventually doing things like opening all the cabinet doors in the kitchen, but only when Chris would see it. It was sort of their own little Father/Son war, only the father wasn't really aware he was playing the game with the equivalent of a ghostly son.

We explained that there was nothing inhuman in the house and that though there were multiple spirits involved there wasn't much to worry about. Their best practice was to address the spirits when they were being bothersome just as they would address one of their own kids. The only difference being it was a little more difficult to ground the kids without a physical body. The point though was to talk to them and acknowledge them and also to take up a few spiritual practices like smudging the house to keep any negative spirits from just wandering in and trying to make a nest.

Once all this was explained and we identified and fixed a few other issues in the house that was contributing to the anarchy in the house the family seemed much more at ease, if not a bit overloaded. It was a lot of information to take in, even for a family that had been dealing with these events on a daily basis for months. The group shook hands and exchanged hugs with the family and we went our separate way to have dinner and a few rounds of margaritas. I was happy that we had brought the family some measure of relief to what was initially a very tense situation.

I gave the clients about 24 hours to process the information they were given and I gave them a follow-up call on Sunday just to see where they were at and if anything had developed. The father said our visit had indeed helped them understand that there wasn't anything to be afraid of in their situation and in fact their hearts went out to the little boy in their house. The father confessed that he had cornered himself in a bathroom and had a conversation with the boy, somewhat of a father/son talk.

He asked that if Eric could hear him and wanted to pray with him then to move the left curtain in the bathroom for no and the right curtain for yes. Low and behold a few seconds later the right curtain moved ever-so-slightly. The father took that as a sign for yes and began to pray. At some point the father felt an icey chill on his left hand and he took that to mean the boy had taken his hand. The father said that from that moment on the whole atmosphere in the house had changed. He even told Eric that if he wanted to he could come to work with him whenever he wanted. How's that for some interaction for Eric? :)

As I'm about to go to bed tonight I sit back and think how blessed I am to be in a position in such a team of friends in our group that we are able to help a family achieve understanding in their difficult situation. Not only have they made a major step toward resolving their problem but in a very real way their family just got a couple of souls bigger. I'm happy and very thankful I could be a part of that.

Note: incidentally, the medium's dreams about the elderly being abused and housed in deplorable conditions was confirmed. The family had bought the house they were living in VERY cheap because it used to be an assisted living facility. The family had remodeled it extensively, but in the father's own words, "There was blood and feces all over the walls when we moved in." You should have seen the medium's face when he said that. It was like everything she had seen the night before made sense. I wonder now if Eric didn't somehow find himself abandoned in that house somehow when it was a nursing home, or perhaps he was one of the previous residents that had simply regressed to the state of a 10 year old. Maybe he was just wondering by and found himself there one day. Who knows.

James S. -

And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

ghosts vs demons in a negative haunting

Been thinking about this subject off an on for a while, but it's especially been at the forefront of my mind for the last few days since watching the new movie Paranormal Activity.

It occurs to me that maybe we put too much emphasis on whether a haunting is "caused" by a ghost or a demon. There's usually a lot more anxiety if it's determined there may be a demonic presence. Really, in many ways I think that extra anxiety is pointless. What does it matter? The effect, danger level and often the treatment is all the same.

Fundamentally does it matter if your arm is being torn off by a mountain lion or a bear? The real issue is the fact that you're being mauled. You need the mauling to stop. Once a harmful/malicious intent has been proven by the spirit does it really matter what it's genealogy is? Does it matter if Hitler is german or polish? He's still Hitler right?

What's in a name?

One can argue that demons are more powerful and therefore more dangerous... To some degree I can see that point, really depending on how you define "demon". I know many christians that would say any/all spirits we encounter are demons and still others that would say any spirit that's not a ghost (disincarnate, or spirit of a now deceased but once living human) is a ghost. Technically I would personally say to be qualified as a demon by the standards of most mainstream christianity the spirit would have to have been born/created as an angel and then been cast out with Lucifer assuming you're down with that mythology. And, like it or not, christianity is a mythology just like any other religion. It just happens to be the dominant mythology of the day.

That doesn't account for a myriad of spirits with different origins according to other mythologies / religions. Nature based religions like my own and many other religions on the planet recognize a whole legion of spirits that have absolutely nothing to do with angels/demons in the classic christian sense.

It eventually all boils down to is this thought again... you're being mauled. You've got a hostile spirit harassing / doing harm to you and yours. Does it matter if the entity can present an ID card and pedigree as to what it really is and where it really came from? No... not at that point in time it doesn't. Your main focus is dealing with the entity.

Now, someone at some point is going to argue this, "Yes, it's important to know what it is because if it's this kind of spirit you're supposed to do this and if it's that kind of spirit you're supposed to do that....". That's a valid argument. Really it is, but not for the reasons you might think. and I'll get to that in a moment, but first we have to go somewhere else to lead up to that.

What's the treatment?

In my experience both academically and with hands-on trial and error in these situations I can tell you this. A buddist family doing a spiritual cleansing or a native american family doing their ritual or charismatic christians doing their thing all have 1 thing in common. It works. No matter what the origin of religion / mythology if the people participating believe in the event believe it will be effective, eventually it will be. I have no way of proving this to you though other than to submit that this is my own experience and from what I've seen this is true. I could illustrate further why I believe this to be true but ultimately it would get us away from the topic at hand and this is all theoretical metaphysics anyway. Very little of anything in this arena can be "proven" in the traditional sense of the word.

The statement still stands though for the sake of argument that most means of exorcising / cleansing will be effective so long as the participants and the family/people involved have faith. This works for ghosts and demons alike as far as I can tell. I say this because i have yet to have a spirit walk up to me and produce official state / otherworld issued identification cards stating they are indeed a ghost or demon. All I can tell you is I've encounter many spirits in many haunting situations and so long as the correct methodology is imposed by people of faith that results will be achieved from what I've seen.

That, again, leads me to the statement that if the treatment is the same for both then why draw the distinction between ghost/demon?

Communication

Here is the only scenario I can see where it would make a difference. I said earlier I'd get to this and here it is. It comes down to motivation. What is the motivation of the spirit? If the spirit is acting up / lashing out because it's angry about something within your control to fix then perhaps a compromise can be reached. The spirit of some old lady is scaring the crap out of you because a piece of her favorite jewelry ended up in your hands and she wants it to go somewhere else? Well, if you can find out what they want done with it and do it maybe it'll resolve the conflict. There are any number of situations where some kind of action can be taken to resolve the conflict behind why the spirit is upset. Stop renovating the house the spirit loves. Deliver a message that they need delivered, etc.. That may in itself resolve the haunting.

The above scenario is for a spirit that wants something you can do. Something that's within your power to help with. What about a scenario where the spirit just wants to torment or demoralize as is the case with demons in christian mythology? Or even the spirit of some ghosts that's so enraged that they just want to lash out at anyone and everyone? No amount of communication in those situations will be helpful. The spirit in that scenario has no motivation at all to resolve the conflict.

That's not to say trying to communicate is bad, but it has it's risks and in the end may resolve the situation, may further complication the situation or make may it generally worse depending on the motivation of the spirit involved. I may be in your best interest to try and communicate just to see if you can figure out the motivation, but...

Here's the catch.... If you're not a psychic medium and don't have access to one you trust then how in the world are you going to get that information? How are you going to open a dialog with the spirit? In many cases you simply can't. You could go the ouja board route, but honestly I don't endorse that. If you really don't have much expertise in these issues and you happen to be dealing with a wolf in sheep's clothing situation where a really really negative spirit is pretending to be nice opening further communication with it can be disastrous.

Here's something else to chew on, especially from the perspective of the christians. If you do open a dialog the spirit may not be telling the truth. There's nothing at all in the rule book stating that the spirits can't mislead you. What if the spirit tells you or the psychic that it's actually the ghost of a lost little girl just looking for a family to live with. You might then be tempted to tell the spirit it can stay so long as it behaves. But, in reality the spirit is a big nasty wolf hell bent on causing chaos in your family. If you invite it to stay you're only going to allow it to root deeper into the situation which will make it that much more difficult to remove later.

Your best and safest course of action is commence some sort of exorcism / cleansing ritual yourself or to get the assistance of clergy / experts that know what they're doing. If it's a negative spirit and they know what they're doing you will likely see results. It may take time and things may get much more intense before they get better, but eventually you'll likely see positive results.

You do the heavy lifting

As a general note though, I strongly recommend to most of the people I've worked with in these situations that they themselves take responsibility for whatever cleansing / exorcism ritual they decide to go with under the GUIDANCE of someone who can advise them. You don't want to put yourself in a situation where you're having a long drawn out spiritual battle with some entity in your house and you have to continually call Father Frank from the church down the street at 3am because there's a bowl of butterscotch pudding floating through the living room again. You want to take charge of your situation. Most likely it's your house, your family and your life that's being messed with. An outsider to the situation will not have nearly the emotional investment and eventually faith needed to deal with the situation at hand.

I say this from personal experience. I've tried to be the "call me day or night anytime you need me to come over" consultant and you know what, they will call you day or night. They (clients) will become dependent on you. They begin to see in you their salvation and they expect YOU to handle the situation when in fact what needs to be happening is they need to take control of their own lives and deal with the situation themselves. You have to tech them to fish, not bring fish to them at 3am. They're the ones that have to keep up the sometimes daily exercises / prayers / chicken foot shaking that is required to drive out a negative entity.

What's really happening in a cleansing / exorcism

I believe this is what's really going on in these situations. The folks conducting the rituals / prayers / blessings or whatever are anchoring massive amounts of positive energy to the location / people involved. This makes any negatively oriented entities very uncomfortable. You keep anchoring more and more positive energy to the place where the negative entity decides to hang out and eventually they'll find some place else to hang out. It becomes a contest of wills, and sometimes a violent contest. A negative spirit / entity that's been picking on a family for a while and calling the shots is likely to get madder than a hornets nest when you start poking him with a stick trying to get him him/her/it out. Hence the, "it's liable to get worse before it gets better" scenario.

Even in the case of a catholic exorcism where (in theory) you're driving out a fallen angel from a human body it doesn't work the way most folks think of it. It's not like you do the ritual and then it's over. Anyone who's done more than 5 minutes of serious research into exorcisms the way the catholics do it will know that an exorcism can go on for days or weeks or months. The priests are not doing the ritual just once, they're doing it over and over and over again. If it were just a simple matter of saying the ritual once and the demon/spirit had to obey then no ritual would take more than 10 minutes, just enough time to recite the prayer.

No, that is not the case. These are long drawn out ordeals where the priests are invoking powerful symbols of positive spiritual energy and beating the demon over the head with it over and over and over again until at some point the demon decides it's not worth the fight anymore and leaves. Did you catch that... The demon DECIDES it's not worth the fight anymore. It's their choice to leave or not. If you make them uncomfortable enough they'll leave. Even in christian mythology when Christ himself cast out demons there was supposedly a dialogged involved that suggested the demons would voluntarily leave (very quickly though) simply because they wanted no part of messing with Christ. If I was a demon come face to face with someone as obviously spiritually awake / alive as christ I don't think i'd want to slug it out with him either. Again though, this seems to imply choice on the part of the demon.

Eventually if you keep chugging away and make the situation so incredibly uncomfortable for the entity they will eventually go away. Well, that's how we hope it works out. Other possible outcomes are in the realm of possibility, but we'll get into that in a bit.

Why should you take any haunting seriously?

The fool that first said ghosts can't hurt you is a greater fool than the fool that followed the first fool. All you have to do is apply a little common sense. Any spirit that is capable of moving objects and/or touching you or effecting the environment is potentially dangerous. A ghost that can move a child's teddy bear from one side of the room to another is just as capable or any number of things like... floating a knife above you in your sleep, turning on/off a stove, placing a flammable or explosive object on top of said stove. I recently watched video documentation of an entity putting a box of bullets on top of a stove burner. If that's not dangerous I don't know what is.

I don't think anyone would disagree that whatever type of entity you classify as a demon can be dangerous, but there is nothing in the world stopping a normal every day ghost from being dangerous as well. It all boils down to their motivation. If they want to kill you in your sleep they can. The fact that you woke up this morning to be able to read this article is a testament to the fact that you probably dont have to worry about that. That doesn't, however, mean that the entity isn't or can't at some point become dangerous.

So, we've established that both ghosts and demons can be dangerous and that the treatment is ultimately the same. Why bother with making the distinction at all? The only thing you're going to do is freak people out using the D word. A negative haunting is dangerous no matter what type of entity is causing it. If the entity has proven itself to be malicious or negative then the clear course of action is the same no matter the origin of the spirit.

James S. -

And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

EVP Research - Notes from the spiricom manual

Spiricom Manual:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/259140/Spiricom-Technical-Manual

The spiritcom manual is a notebook detailing experiments from an authentic and genuine scientific approach on the subject of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), aka communication with the dead. It details information gathered through the course of the project from both traditional research from books and other mundane sources of information but also contains a significant amount of information channeled through mediums.

The basic premise is that living physical scientists are working in conjunction with deceased scientists in the spirit world in order to establish a method of two way communication. A traditional spirit medium is used for more direct communication during phases of the project to facilitate collaberation, but the overall goal is to be able to communicate effectively with the spirit world without the use of a living medium.

Interesting notes from original review of the material.

A significant amount of knowledge in electronics is needed to build the devices carefully detailed in the manual.

Direct Voice Mediumship: A method by which spirits may use spiritual energy to fashion a sort of "spiritual machine" that will produce an audible voice without the active participation of a medium. This phenomenon has apparently been documented extensively.

A spirit is required to meet 3 criteria in order to successfully imprint EVP or use Direct Voice Mediumship.

1. Have a desire on the part of the speaker (spirit) to communicate.
2. Move the "lips" of the spirit as it is talking in the same manner that it did when it was alive (corporeal).
3. Think what it is it wants to say just as it did when it was in it's physical body.

Supposedly those are the 3 key criteria that allow a spirit to imprint (or impede) evp upon a medium.

It is apparently easier for a spirit to modulate a constant tone/signal such as a musical tone or even white noise than it is to speak "normally". By comparison it could be said that normal voice living beings use to communicate is nothing more than modulated air.

It is apparent that frequency (vibration rate) is a key denominator, possibly in all of creation. This seems to jive with modern physics research as well. After an individual dies they seem to operate at a much higher frequency than they previously did. That frequency seems to increase as their "evolution" increases. Tuning a carrier wave for communication to a specific frequency that the entity can interact with seems to be critical.

Apparently spirits can build "machines" or some sort of constructs out of energy. It makes me wonder if "magick" and/or prayer is not the same sort of construct of spiritual energy.

Music in particular (or perhaps more acutely the vibration there-of) seems to resonate across multiple dimensions / frequencies. A tone at a frequency audible to us on the physical plane also resonates many octaves higher and lower than the tone we perceive. Therefore music, most notably specific tones in music can carry across multiple planes of existence / dimensions / frequencies.

Mediums can apparently communicate with spirits because they have a different frequency structure than most people, especially when in a "clear" or "open" state of mind. They are apparently easier to "resonate" with.

Mental & Causal planes can communicate in the 12000 MHz range

Middle Astral and 25-35 MHz range

A great many factors can influence reception and overall communication efforts including but not limited to solar activity, lunar cycle, other forms of Electromagnetic interference, etc.

There may be a relationship between positive spiritual contact (good quality evp/communication) and lunar cycles in the format of more reflected solar light (more moonlight) seems to promote better quality communication. This may perhaps explain strange happenings during the full moon.

Is low or high solar activity preferable?

A Faraday cage can be used to effectively screen out some EM interference and does not seem to hinder spiritual frequencies.

spiritual beings exist as a specific wavelength of light.

more to come....

James S. -

And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference