What About Evil Spirits?

The bulk of my work as a medium is about connecting spirits back to their friends and loved ones here on earth; to help in the healing process and to demonstrate the eternal nature of our loved ones on the Other Side, as well as our own immortal souls.  Additionally, I also employ this gift in paranormal research – exploring haunted locations and businesses in order to better understand why some spirits choose to remain earth-bound or visit certain places over and over again, or to uncover the history of a particular geographical location. 

From time-to-time, I will occasionally get requests from people who express that they are experiencing negative events with spirits.  The descriptions can range from the mild sense of a heavy presence, to full-blown physical attack and the sense of a spirit trying to possess them.  These are quite frightening and harrowing experiences, to be sure, so how to deal with them? 

Typically, if the interaction is severe, I would recommend handing it off to a team of experienced and knowledgeable paranormal researchers, who can perform the right kind of interview with the client and analysis on the environment to better uncover the many possible factors which can contribute to the type of events.  I think these things require more consideration than a medium “simply” coming in, linking with the negative energies, and convincing them to leave.  There are usually factors hidden with the client that need to be examined and addressed, as there are no coincidences in life, and things of a spiritual nature are never by “happenstance.”  It becomes even more complex when a client believes they are at the mercy of many evil spirits (not just one) – as if they have been targeted by a legion of demonic forces bent on ruining their life and trying to take over their body.  It’s a tall order to ask anyone to address the situation, especially a single medium who may be walking into an extremely complex environment of energies, expectations, and beliefs. 

I recently received a request along these lines, where the client felt they were surrounded by a host of evil spirits and that these forces were trying to possess her.  Instead of forwarding her situation onto a paranormal organization outright, I contemplated what other alternatives might exist.  At a loss within my own mind, I turned to my spiritual guides and asked for their opinion.  What came through was incredibly profound.  I shared it with a few of my colleagues and they felt it was so important that I should post it in my blog and also my website.  I do believe every paranormal case is unique, yet I also feel there may be some generalities common to most experiences, and I believe this is what my guides were pointing to, and how to address them.  

I started writing as soon as the information came in.  Here is what they said:

“One must recognize that though negative spirits exist, even more equally and en mass are those spirits who are loving, protective, and nurturing.  These are even greater in number than those considered as ‘negative’ or ‘evil’ and they often exist within the same spaces.  Unfortunately, thought and power is directed more toward what is negative – which evokes the law of attraction – what we focus on expands.  In order to break the cycle, one must lift one’s mind to the higher frequencies.  Start focusing equally on the reality of love and nourishment, and those forces and spirits are equally within your space and in reach.   Until you ‘make room’ inside your consciousness for them, you will unfortunately not become aware of them; you are giving too much belief in their opposite.  (Personal note:  However, if you have a general distrust of spirits or spirit interaction, reaching out to higher spirits could be problematic, based on your beliefs).  

"Also, become aware of your views on the nature of your experience in your daily life.  Are you feeling and telling yourself such thoughts as ‘bad things always happen to me’ or ‘it feels like the world is out to get me’ and ‘I am an outcast and don’t feel I belong.’  Such thinking also invites events and circumstances which reinforce those beliefs, as if you are victim of all things bad.  These are limiting and incorrect beliefs which create quite negative and unhealthy experiences.  Again, you must switch your focus and look in the opposite direction.  Results will follow, but only if you accept within yourself the validity of goodness and your own ability to grasp such goodness.  Wonderful spirits are here for you, and you must allow them in through the same belief processes as you have the bad, for until you recognize such possibility, you will not see it in your experience no matter how hard the good spirits themselves try to make themselves known.  (Again, if you distrust spirits as a base belief, this will be problematic).

“Also, and even more important, you must understand the vitality and validity of your own spiritual being.  No spirit, loving, evil, or otherwise, has any direct power or control over your experience unless you give it that power.  This is the law, as every spirit is a spark of autonomous divinity within the great cosmic ocean of God’s being.  That is, your soul carries the same light, life, and vitality as any of the spirits surrounding you.  Claim that power which is yours by birthright and heritage.  You exist beyond Time and Space, yet you place divisions upon your consciousness which deny that reality and begin to create experiences and circumstances to mirror your limited perspectives.  Accept and give yourself the permission to experience the love, compassion, and good things in life which are equally yours.  Do not tell yourself the world is saying “no” to you, for the world is saying no such thing.  Start telling (and feeling) life and the world saying “yes” to you, for that is really the case.  If it weren't, you would not have been born into it in the first place.  Realize your negative thoughts and expectations are about reality, but are not of reality; they are merely a filter of one’s focus, like sunglasses altering the light of the sun. However, what you focus on expands – whether that focus is right or wrong, true or false.  Start moving your focus to the goodness in your life and the life in the world, and you will see it come rushing back into your reality.

“In matters of spiritual possession, it is equally important to realize that no spirit can control or take over your body.  Your body is specifically tuned to the frequency and vibration of your own indelible and unique spirit.  Contrary to Hollywood and tales of possession, a spirit cannot break the bonds which your soul connects the body with.  This is not to say you cannot feel spirits affect your aura, or even telepathically your mind, but they cannot remove you from the body and take it over, for (despite what most believe) the body is not a glove or shell that easily comes on or off; it is an intimate outgrowth of the spirit made flesh.  The best any spirit can do is blend into your aura, which can have some physical results, but they cannot take over the body in the way most people believe.  It would only be in the presence of your own fear that your mind would say “this spirit is taking me over and I am powerless to stop it” and so you acquiesce your mental and spiritual strength to the energies of the spirit.  However, you equally have the mental and spiritual strength of a superhero, as well as a posse of loving, nurturing protectors in those higher spirits also surrounding you.  Again, accept and move your awareness to their goodness, more importantly be open to it within yourself, and you will find the mists of evil quickly dissipate in the light of the angelic sun.

“One can seek out help, such as a shaman or other person to come and ‘cleanse’ the space or perform some ritual to take the spirits away.  This can work.  But unless you recognize and claim the validity of your own soul and the power of your own conscious spiritual being and your connection to those positive forces that equally surround you, you will not necessarily remain free from experiencing such events again in the future – and in fact may remain fearful that they could happen again.  It is only in realizing your own sacred divinity, power, and strength, will you be assured 100% that you are immune to such forces.

“To begin, all you need to do is affirm that goodness exists within your experience, in the world, and that you can grasp it in the air before you, both from yourself and from those positive forces of spirit.”

Hopefully, the words of my guides can help when it comes to negative and evil spirits.  Again, every situation is unique, but personal empowerment will always outrank someone coming in and taking care of things for you.  I have been dealing with spirits for decades, and since adopting my own awareness as a divine spark of creation, I have never had any problems with negative spirits.  When you account for your own divinity and being in touch with those spirits who are positive and are around, negative spirits cannot touch you.  I’ve had a few try, but they quickly back away when they realize they don’t have my express permission -- or any of my fear.  

Ghosts Are People Too

Last weekend I participated in an overnight investigation in a grand old theater that had been built in 1928. The Washington State Ghost Society had been there once before and recorded several EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). Members also reported having personal experiences, such as seeing shadows and feeling a sense of presence, and the theater owners talked of hearing voices and seeing objects move. We decided to head back and see what else we could uncover.

On the drive down, I carpooled with the Society president, Dave K. and we got talking about how interacting with spirits had become so normal and commonplace in our lives, that we had forgotten it was not a typical pastime for everyone else. It had occurred to us, rather humorously, that we take for granted our ability to dive into locations where most people fear to tread. To us, our experiences have shown that ghosts are not something to be feared, and that such encounters are really to be embraced. So we asked the question: why are people afraid?

The answer seemed quite simple, but it was worth examining. We started with the usual – Hollywood. The movie industry has done a fantastic job coloring our perception of what spirits can and can’t do. For the entertainment crowd, moviemakers would love to have us believe spirits can do ANYTHING! And that they are always out to FRIGHTEN US! This is actually further from the truth. Naturally, the other culprit in making us fear so much about ghosts is that spectre referred to as “the unknown.” Because we do not fully understand the nature of the phenomena, the missing puzzle pieces could – could (gasp!) – represent something nefarious. At least, I think that is what we sometimes tell ourselves. We as humans have this tendency to apply fear to things we do not fully understand because we assume our lack of knowledge just might lead to our downfall in connection with it. In other words, it’s hard to look out for Number One – personal self-interest – when you do not fully comprehend what you might be going up against. It’s a logical conclusion, but life rarely ever turns out to be so clean-cut.

The realizations Dave and I (and many of our investigator friends) have discovered over the years of coming face-to-face with the spirits of those who have remained behind stands in stark contrast to what we’ve been taught as a civilization over the centuries. It is in direct contradiction to what Hollywood would have you believe – and in many cases, counter to what a lot of the paranormal “investigation” television shows air. (Let’s face it, when you’re dealing with T.V., you’re dealing with RATINGS, competition, etc.). So in this blog, I would like to clear up a few things about ghosts and hauntings that I’ve learned over the years, to hopefully give people the sense that it is okay to actually NOT be afraid when you encounter a spirit.

1) Ghosts are there to frighten you. Nonsense. Only on very rare occasions are ghosts trying to deliberately scare the bejeezus out of you. 9 times out of 10, they are just trying to get your attention (and in some cases, may not even be aware of you or that their actions are affecting you). There may be any number of reasons why a ghost might want to make contact (and all of them non-threatening) – The ghost might be a relative of yours that is trying to tell you they are okay; It might be a former owner of the house you just moved into, letting you know you are welcome and watch out for the occasional leaky faucet; and believe it or not, the spirit might be trying to get your attention to warn you of danger, such as a loose floor board on the staircase. Yes, sometimes they might be wanting to make contact to see if you can help them get free of where they are at, or provide some kind of closure to their lives, or just have fun because they think you are such a cool person. Sometimes they might NOT LIKE how you’ve position a piece of furniture and are wanting to tell you that – but that doesn’t make them evil. Sometimes they just want the honorable acknowledgement. Are they really hanging out in the corner asking themselves “How can I torment this person?” No.

2) Ghosts can do anything. No, they can’t. Yes, they can move objects – but then again, so can you. But they don’t move them nearly as often and to the magnitude Hollywood shows you. The amount of energy a spirit has to gather in order to move something as light as a pencil can be quite draining. The opening of cabinet doors, the rolling of a ball, tapping you on the head, all can take place. But they can’t take place in a non-stop every-moment-of-the-day fashion. They will only happen sporadically, and at the expense of the ghost’s energy. Once they have opened that cabinet, it’s going to be a few minutes to several hours before they can do anything like that again. They certainly don’t have the energy to levitate your entire house and consume it in a ball of fire over the graveyard your home was unwittingly built over. We may not know everything about what spirits can do, but this much we can more or less agree on.

3) Because we don’t fully understand the phenomena, it could be dangerous. Yes, the phenomena could be, but that doesn’t mean it will be. I have interacted with spirits for decades, and the more I talk to them, and the more my Society investigators interact with them, the more we have come to realize they are actually more benign than they are malevolent. To me, this knee-jerk reaction of fear has got to be a result of cultural conditioning – starting from the summer campfire tales of restless spirits designed to frighten children, to the Hollywood hit designed to startle you and hopefully curl you up into a fetal position in the chair.

What most of us have forgotten is that ghosts were at one time people too. They got up in the morning, put on socks, went to a job, ate dinner, stubbed their toes, and occasionally had indigestion, then keeled over and “died”. This does not make them demonic entities bent on making your life a living hell. As ghosts, they are still those same people, albeit with a form we typically can’t see, with some occasional enhancements we in the slow-moving atomic suit don’t have. But this doesn’t make them evil, suspect, or worthy of fear. And in my experience, it isn’t the need to create fear in an unsuspecting person’s life that drives them to be ghosts. They, like us, are still searching, expressing, and living life in their own way, from the perception of their own environment. And we on occasion have moments of sharing that with them in an apparent bridge-gap between the world of spirit and the world of flesh and bone.

When it comes to interacting with spirits, we should take the same attitude and ethics as we would with our fellow neighbor: Honor and respect them. After all, that is what they are: fellow neighbors from a different time that have moved on from the physical world. If they have a message, through honor and respect, they will deliver it in a way that will not be frightening. It might startle you – only for the fact that it’s not “normal” to receive information from ghosts (The startle-effect pretty much goes away after doing it for several years though). Through honor and respect, ghosts will take an interest in answering your questions sincerely, versus an adversarial relationship oftentimes created by other ghost investigators who choose to harass – and then wonder why they walk away with little to no evidence, or a real reason to be scared. Through honor and respect, the ghosts will reciprocate your humbleness and sincerity. There have been a few occasions where I have encountered a “negative” spirit, but when I tell them I honor and respect them and are not there to “fight” or “combat” them, they will relax and a real dialogue will open up. Either that, or they simply leave me alone because they know I at least acknowledge them and won’t be frightened by them.

Honoring and respecting the spirits goes a long way, because they usually honor and respect you back. Why? Because as I said, they were once (and still are) people too.

Encountering spirits, to me and my brethren, has been an opportunity to learn more about the continuity of life. What can we expect when we leave the body? What are some the circumstances and dramas that can continue for our existence once we shed the mortal coil? These questions can’t be answered in a state of fear, they can only be addressed through genuine curiosity and honest inquiry. And to date, our answers have been astounding.

Ghost investigating isn’t about confronting demons and things that frighten people; it isn’t about going in and kicking something out and hoping to get a thrill in the process. It’s about learning more of who and what we are and gaining a better understanding of the human condition – inside and outside the body. It’s about answering questions of life, joining the hands of those that have left the body before us, and who have made their presence known to us here. And one of the questions we’ve answered in our travels is: Ghosts really aren’t scary. They’re just people. Honor and respect them as such.

P.S., And if you think you are not being respected or are otherwise harassed, give the Washington State Ghost Society a call, and we’ll try to find out why. Check us out on Facebook