ectoplasm and tinfoil hats

It can be frightening when things go bump in the night, and your floors creak with the sound of footsteps coming from someone who most definitely is not there. And maybe that one room at the back of the house is just a bit colder than all the others, and you’re always bothered with the notion that there are eyes on you, only you’re standing in there alone. But how much of this is paranormal activity? Is that really a ghostly orb floating around in your thanksgiving family photo, or is it just a speck of dust that got caught in the flash of the camera? Is that bedroom in the back of the house supernaturally air conditioned, or are your windows just improperly sealed? In this post, I am going to cover many of the common signs of paranormal activity, and some of the perfectly mundane reasons you may be experiencing this phenomena.

You probably don’t want to hear that your house is haunted, because having extra residents, especially those of the dead - or undead variety, can be unnerving, and if those spirits think the same of you, then things can get hairy fairly quick.

You probably also don’t want to hear that your house isn’t haunted, because when somebody else confirms that the activity is paranormal, it’s validating, and puts your mind at ease that you’re not just imagining it. And believe me, you’re not imagining it. You are most definitely experiencing weird phenomena. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of this weird phenomena is... not really all that weird. And maybe debunking some of these claims can help put your mind at ease that there are logical explanations for some of this activity, and you’re not going to find yourself the star of the next Exorcist movie.

Now, yes, there is a lot of paranormal activity that cannot be explained. When I was a young tween of roughly eleven years old, I experienced a fold-up metal chair slam open and closed three times before throwing itself across my sister’s bedroom (I have theories about this to come in an upcoming post), and more recently, a full-on shadow figure darting down the hallway on all fours. I can say for certain that a small window draft cannot throw a chair across a room like a rag doll, nor can the headlights of a car project the shadow of a person who is not there down a hallway without any windows or in direct view of any windows. But other little things, such as my mom’s things constantly moving by themselves on one of her bookshelves, could almost immediately be debunked as just being vibrations from a severely off-balanced fan that sat not three feet in front of this shelf.

Disclaimer: These are all legit, valid, examples of paranormal activity in a home or residence. Just because there is a possible mundane explanation does not mean that your extra-cold bedroom isn’t haunted. If you’ve explored mundane causes for your unexplained activity and it still doesn’t check out, you should contact a paranormal investigation team for further investigation into the matter.

( for when everything seems to be paranormal... )