Attachments; What.The.Ph...
This is a pet peeve of mine: we speak the same language, so we should be able to understand each other, right? Wrong.
In the paranormal community...wait. In the what? What is that? What is meant by "paranormal community"? I see it written and hear it said all the time. Paranormal means experiences that lie outside the range of normal experience or scientific explanation. So, does it mean that there is a community of other-worldly people? I don't think so. I think that it probably means people who study the paranormal as a hobby and as a vocation; people who investigate the paranormal, talk about it, write about it, study it, or are involved in the subject in some way. That is a lot of people and it is so general, it could almost apply to anyone. So, it's nearly meaningless. I have also noticed that the word "community" when used in this way usually applies to people who use the internet to communicate. So the paranormal community could mean those who write, facebook, tweet or blog about the paranormal online. I guess.
But I digress. What I was going to say is the paranormal community, whatever and whomever that is, use a unique language; a particular vocabulary unique to the field. This vocabulary is banded about by both the experts and the amateur as if they understand clearly what the words mean. They don't. And they don't agree. And they don't even know that they don't agree. So, it's a big mess to decipher and understand what the heck people are talking about sometimes.
I was in the middle of an investigation with a group a long time ago. It was and still is a great group, by the way, in case you guess that it's you. It was the middle of the night and we were starting to get tired. Someone mentioned the word "attachment", suggesting that we might be dealing with an entity that had attached itself to a person or an object in the house. I decided to ask what they meant by the word "attachment" in relation to entities, objects and people. I knew what he meant. I just wanted to give him a hard time, because I knew that no one in the paranormal community had clearly defined what they meant by attachment either. So I was curious. Had he heard it used and started using the term because it sounded cool? A lot of people do this. Have you ever noticed that a word will suddenly become popular, like a rock star? Suddenly everyone is using this popular term. (like elemental. That's a hot word right now.) Before you know it everyone is using it and it starts becoming monotonous, really irritating. I am an artist. Artists are so very guilty of this. When I was in graduate school in Baltimore earning my MFA the word "juxtapose or juxtaposition" was used as a catch word for everything. Everything was juxtaposed, everyone had a juxtaposition. Agh! There is even an art magazine titled, Juxtapose. Of course there is.
So with the word attach or attachment. Go with me into my very weird imagination and try to follow along with what I imagine an attachment to be, to look like. It can be some sort of ghost or entity, demon or elemental, large or small, human, formerly human or non-human. It decides to follow and cling to a person or an object. It walks up to a jewelry box and sucks it with it's mouth. Or it grabs onto the handle with its spiritual, invisible hands for dear unlife. Or it clings and attaches like clothing out of the dryer without cling-free. It snaps, crackles and pops when you attempt to "pull" it free, and it generates static electricity, sparks, even EMF. Who knows. If the person or object moves, it grabs on harder, sucks the life out of it, digs its claws in and attempts to stay with it. It is always there. For some reason, this entity, being, ghost, whatever, has an effect upon the house in which it resides, and upon the people. It is blamed for creating paranormal activity in the form of "energy", "EMF" or even apparitions, shadow people, knocks, foot steps, voices. The poor thing. It is doomed to just hang around. Does it rest? Sit? Does it ever un-attach itself to give itself a rest? How long will it stay? Forever? Why in the otherworld has it decided to attach itself to a floor board/wooden box/silver spoon/piece of rope/old dress/cloth doll/pewter knife/wooden cabinet/china cup/yadayadayada, to begin with?
Ok. I do get emotionally attached to objects. I have pictures of my son, my dad, my grandmother, that I keep within sight in my home. They comfort me. They provoke thought. But if I were dead I would gladly leave these pictures behind me to go find the real thing. Why do these entities hang around, sucked fast to a hunk of wood? Forever?
I like to think that the universe makes some sort of sense. I have faith. I am a believer. The universe includes, to me, the unseen, the afterlife, the unknown. And even if I cannot see it or understand it, I like to think that it has an order to it, reason, logic. Reason and logic exist in my world, why not in the next? So WHY IN HELL ARE THEY ATTACHED TO MY JEWELRY BOX? !!! UNSUCK AND GET OUT!!! LEAVE!! MY GOD MAN. You may go. go. Go!
What.the.ph...
Part Two: Energy.
Have you noticed, oh ye of the paranormal community, faceless and voiceless, oh ye who NEVER comment on my posts. I wish you would... that the word energy is a catch-all for, well, all? Everything that is unexplained, vague, mysterious, odd, creepy. It is also used by people who do not ascribe to any organized religion or established faith. Since they can't use words like spiritual, or being, or Angel or God, they use the word energy to refer to anything of the paranormal spiritual realm. Since this sort of energy cannot be measured or quantified, it's easy to ascribe just about anything to the "energy" and it has to be believed, right? Here is what I mean. I was investigating a location where there was a repeated haunting with very specific phenomena happening over and over again. A self proclaimed psychic-medium arrived one night and started talking about the energy in the house. "I feel an energy here, it is an evil energy." What is evil energy?
When I am confused I look to science to help to clarify things for me. So too with the word energy. Lets see what the physicists have to say about it.
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity which comes in many forms, such as kinetic, potential, or radiant energy, and many others.
The question "what is energy?" is difficult to answer in a simple, intuitive way, although energy can be rigorously defined in theoretical physics. In the words of Richard Faynman, "It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount."
However, it is clear that energy is always an indispensable prerequisite for performing mechanical work, and the concept has great importance in natural science. The natural basic units in which energy is measured are those used for mechanical work; they always are equivalent to a unit of force multiplied by a unit of length. Other equivalent units for energy are mass units multiplied by velocity units squared.
Wow. Who knew? Scientists still don't know what energy is. Great. Now what do I do? That makes it doubly difficult to try and nail it down in the paranormal realm, and gives para-people the permission, even right, to use it to mean..whatever. If scientists don't know, well..hey.
So, I guess we are all doomed to listen to people describe their energy fields, their psychic energy, the positive energy in the room, the negative energy in the house, the energy trapped in a place, the energy built up in a place from repeated evil events, a "holding onto" the energy from an object used for evil purposes, and on it goes. In Paranormal TV reality shows, investigators are often guilty of this assumption. When a client shows them an object, or they tour a location, they will often, inevitably say, "This could be holding onto negative energy".
Is this the attachment in reverse? Has the object now grown claws, hands, and suckers and is grasping onto the energy?
I'm so confused.
What.the.ph...
Source: Science-based facts and information from Wikipedia
P.J.
In the paranormal community...wait. In the what? What is that? What is meant by "paranormal community"? I see it written and hear it said all the time. Paranormal means experiences that lie outside the range of normal experience or scientific explanation. So, does it mean that there is a community of other-worldly people? I don't think so. I think that it probably means people who study the paranormal as a hobby and as a vocation; people who investigate the paranormal, talk about it, write about it, study it, or are involved in the subject in some way. That is a lot of people and it is so general, it could almost apply to anyone. So, it's nearly meaningless. I have also noticed that the word "community" when used in this way usually applies to people who use the internet to communicate. So the paranormal community could mean those who write, facebook, tweet or blog about the paranormal online. I guess.
But I digress. What I was going to say is the paranormal community, whatever and whomever that is, use a unique language; a particular vocabulary unique to the field. This vocabulary is banded about by both the experts and the amateur as if they understand clearly what the words mean. They don't. And they don't agree. And they don't even know that they don't agree. So, it's a big mess to decipher and understand what the heck people are talking about sometimes.
I was in the middle of an investigation with a group a long time ago. It was and still is a great group, by the way, in case you guess that it's you. It was the middle of the night and we were starting to get tired. Someone mentioned the word "attachment", suggesting that we might be dealing with an entity that had attached itself to a person or an object in the house. I decided to ask what they meant by the word "attachment" in relation to entities, objects and people. I knew what he meant. I just wanted to give him a hard time, because I knew that no one in the paranormal community had clearly defined what they meant by attachment either. So I was curious. Had he heard it used and started using the term because it sounded cool? A lot of people do this. Have you ever noticed that a word will suddenly become popular, like a rock star? Suddenly everyone is using this popular term. (like elemental. That's a hot word right now.) Before you know it everyone is using it and it starts becoming monotonous, really irritating. I am an artist. Artists are so very guilty of this. When I was in graduate school in Baltimore earning my MFA the word "juxtapose or juxtaposition" was used as a catch word for everything. Everything was juxtaposed, everyone had a juxtaposition. Agh! There is even an art magazine titled, Juxtapose. Of course there is.
So with the word attach or attachment. Go with me into my very weird imagination and try to follow along with what I imagine an attachment to be, to look like. It can be some sort of ghost or entity, demon or elemental, large or small, human, formerly human or non-human. It decides to follow and cling to a person or an object. It walks up to a jewelry box and sucks it with it's mouth. Or it grabs onto the handle with its spiritual, invisible hands for dear unlife. Or it clings and attaches like clothing out of the dryer without cling-free. It snaps, crackles and pops when you attempt to "pull" it free, and it generates static electricity, sparks, even EMF. Who knows. If the person or object moves, it grabs on harder, sucks the life out of it, digs its claws in and attempts to stay with it. It is always there. For some reason, this entity, being, ghost, whatever, has an effect upon the house in which it resides, and upon the people. It is blamed for creating paranormal activity in the form of "energy", "EMF" or even apparitions, shadow people, knocks, foot steps, voices. The poor thing. It is doomed to just hang around. Does it rest? Sit? Does it ever un-attach itself to give itself a rest? How long will it stay? Forever? Why in the otherworld has it decided to attach itself to a floor board/wooden box/silver spoon/piece of rope/old dress/cloth doll/pewter knife/wooden cabinet/china cup/yadayadayada, to begin with?
Ok. I do get emotionally attached to objects. I have pictures of my son, my dad, my grandmother, that I keep within sight in my home. They comfort me. They provoke thought. But if I were dead I would gladly leave these pictures behind me to go find the real thing. Why do these entities hang around, sucked fast to a hunk of wood? Forever?
I like to think that the universe makes some sort of sense. I have faith. I am a believer. The universe includes, to me, the unseen, the afterlife, the unknown. And even if I cannot see it or understand it, I like to think that it has an order to it, reason, logic. Reason and logic exist in my world, why not in the next? So WHY IN HELL ARE THEY ATTACHED TO MY JEWELRY BOX? !!! UNSUCK AND GET OUT!!! LEAVE!! MY GOD MAN. You may go. go. Go!
What.the.ph...
Part Two: Energy.
Have you noticed, oh ye of the paranormal community, faceless and voiceless, oh ye who NEVER comment on my posts. I wish you would... that the word energy is a catch-all for, well, all? Everything that is unexplained, vague, mysterious, odd, creepy. It is also used by people who do not ascribe to any organized religion or established faith. Since they can't use words like spiritual, or being, or Angel or God, they use the word energy to refer to anything of the paranormal spiritual realm. Since this sort of energy cannot be measured or quantified, it's easy to ascribe just about anything to the "energy" and it has to be believed, right? Here is what I mean. I was investigating a location where there was a repeated haunting with very specific phenomena happening over and over again. A self proclaimed psychic-medium arrived one night and started talking about the energy in the house. "I feel an energy here, it is an evil energy." What is evil energy?
When I am confused I look to science to help to clarify things for me. So too with the word energy. Lets see what the physicists have to say about it.
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity which comes in many forms, such as kinetic, potential, or radiant energy, and many others.
The question "what is energy?" is difficult to answer in a simple, intuitive way, although energy can be rigorously defined in theoretical physics. In the words of Richard Faynman, "It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount."
However, it is clear that energy is always an indispensable prerequisite for performing mechanical work, and the concept has great importance in natural science. The natural basic units in which energy is measured are those used for mechanical work; they always are equivalent to a unit of force multiplied by a unit of length. Other equivalent units for energy are mass units multiplied by velocity units squared.
Wow. Who knew? Scientists still don't know what energy is. Great. Now what do I do? That makes it doubly difficult to try and nail it down in the paranormal realm, and gives para-people the permission, even right, to use it to mean..whatever. If scientists don't know, well..hey.
So, I guess we are all doomed to listen to people describe their energy fields, their psychic energy, the positive energy in the room, the negative energy in the house, the energy trapped in a place, the energy built up in a place from repeated evil events, a "holding onto" the energy from an object used for evil purposes, and on it goes. In Paranormal TV reality shows, investigators are often guilty of this assumption. When a client shows them an object, or they tour a location, they will often, inevitably say, "This could be holding onto negative energy".
Is this the attachment in reverse? Has the object now grown claws, hands, and suckers and is grasping onto the energy?
I'm so confused.
What.the.ph...
Source: Science-based facts and information from Wikipedia
P.J.
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