In my early years I read all that I could on the subject of ghosts and hauntings. I looked up to the leaders in parapsychology, following their theories with great enthusiasm. It wasn’t until many years later when I started conducting field investigations and experiments that I ran into trouble. I wanted to learn how they manifested, where they existed, and most importantly I wanted to know what combined elements formed what we perceived as an apparition. The trouble came as I tried to fit old theories into what my observations and data were telling me. There seemed to be some great conflict. When I compared the theory to the observation, logic was nowhere to be found, this became a perplexing conundrum. Was there no room for logic within parapsychology? Why? How could I continue my work, how could I apply any type of scientific method without its basis in logic? How could this happen? It took me more than a year to finally come to the conclusion, that I had been led astray. I was discovering that most of these theories were indeed wrong, or simply misguided. I found this somewhat disheartening and yet at the same time quite exciting. It was a long road to discovery to understand why those before us would have led us in the directions that they did. Looking back it was these trusted people within society, pillars of the community who were being called upon to answer impossible questions by the general public at a moments notice. We have to understand that most were practitioners within the local church and had a predisposed ideology of what was occurring prior to even looking into the occurrences. In order to maintain their standing they had very little choice but to provide some reasonable explanation as to what they thought was taking place. Imagine for a moment that there was a cry for help going out to some of the most revered people within the community and the response was “We just don’t know” They had to provide an answer. It was within those answers that became the beginning of the modern spiritual movement, and it was within those answers that theory was now being built upon. What came next were those who felt they could earn a living working in the field of parapsychology, turning out book after book on the subject, they ran with old theory, casting them in stone without any proof what so ever. This caused great harm as they professed these theories without any evidence and the scientific community turned their back on the entire subject. For those who wanted to do work in parapsychology there seemed to be but one starting point, the old theories. From them we compiled what looked like new theories, which were only extensions of the old ones, distorted and twisted to fit like a square peg into a round hole. This just added to the confusion and deepened the mystery. This was conformity at its best, it helped sell books and one never had to step out on to a ledge or take chances of ridicule from other paranormal investigators. Most sit on the fence and silently wait for some trend to appear on the horizon, then like the wind they promote this idea as if it were their own. If you follow some of the bigger web sites you will see this trend quite clearly. They sell the idea brought up by someone in the field and then as the trend subsides and something new comes into view they change directions and the old idea is attacked as if they knew it just didn’t make any sense to them. In any event it doesn’t take much to see the ridiculous state of affairs we are left in. The best example of the confusion we are faced with that I can give is what we call spirit energy. Entities, ghosts, spooks, specters, shades, apparitions, spirits, shadows, the list goes on and on. Even the term Poltergeist has its own distinction. Each name carries with it its own attributes. Logically, if what we are studying is the soul of those departed, and every person acts and reacts completely different from each other then how can we assign names, which distinguishes each by their actions. Judging by the list, it is either incredibly too long or extremely too short. I will always maintain people are people, dead or alive they will act and react, as they are accustomed.

We are the sum of our memories and emotions; memory is the building blocks of our mind and forms our personality. Memory is a collection of things learned about who we are and about the world which we live in, what we like or dislike, what our passions are, to the very fundamental of where we live and work and how to get there each day. Memories have a very close attachment to our emotions. Emotion varies in degrees and is greatly influenced by memory. For example you run into that old friend from school you once had a crush on, the instant memories will bring a flood of emotions back from the past when you were once close. Or you see someone approaching who has caused you trouble your emotion will determine if you stand your ground and give them a piece of your mind or find an escape route. When we die our personality remains, carrying all of its memories and emotions with it. Although the spirit exists beyond our perception, it is those memories and emotions that cause locations to be haunted, and the causes of a haunting are as plentiful as those individual’s memories and emotions. It could be that the spirit simply has a story to tell or possibly they were a victim. Have you ever reacted to a situation or witnessed someone react to an event that was purely an emotional outburst without any or very limited thought behind it. Most emotional outbursts are involuntary, namely witnessing an event and reacting to it. It can be as simple as hearing a song in the present that triggers a deep emotional memory from the past.

In one such case in 1998 just before Christmas, I was working with a family in their home who were experiencing ghostly phenomena. The family and I were sitting in the kitchen having tea. In the adjacent living room (this is an open concept living space) there was a mixed tape of Christmas music playing on the stereo, mid way through the tape came a song (Ave Maria) a spirit of a small child (female) started to sing along from across the living room. Not only was it a moving experience, we were all witness to this spirit manifesting in sound brought on by her own personal emotional memories of this song and what it represented to her during the holiday season.

After years of research, observation and experiments I have formed a theory which I call The Memory Matrix.

It would seem that when we die we develop a completely new reality derived from our own memories. This reality is built of pure memory and will encompass where we lived, played and worked, it will also include all the people not only that were close to us but also everyone we ever met, living or dead. This new reality may not be a perfect representation of the individual’s life history but rather as it was remembered by that individual.

It is how the Memory Matrix is built from the individual’s state of mind at the time of death that will determine if a haunting will commence.

There are many variables which play heavily in the development of the Memory Matrix. The major factors are either positive, where as the individual has no lingering issues, they are content and satisfied with their life, they have no ill feelings with regard to anyone then they will revert to a deeply beautiful point of time in their past life that brought them the most joy, they will be peaceful and the living will never perceive them. On the other hand it could be negative, where the individual had caused harm to others and feels they may face persecution, committed suicide, was a victim or held a deep obsession regarding a relationship, money, property or things they were involved with that were unjust or unresolved. Because most of these negatives remained deeply seated at the end of their life will allow them to maintain a new reality within their own Memory Matrix that exists very close to our own reality and therefore can cause ghostly activity which can be perceived by the living.

The dead who are negative may cause hauntings for many reasons, such as they have a story to tell about being a victim, they may not like us in their home or they may simply be exorcising their morals on us, for example; someone who had died back in the 40s or 50s who belonged to a church and felt they had a deep grasp of that era’s standard morals may be upset with a unwed couple moving in and sleeping together. They would find it difficult to communicate their feelings, so they would simply use methods available to them to evict you, this normally translates into terror for the living.

But how do they manifest?...

To be Continued...

Written by: Richard Palmisano

Copyright 2010 Richard Palmisano. Used with permission