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The Psychology of Ghost Hunting, by Brandon Alvis

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Death is an inevitable part of life. Reminders of our own mortality surround us everyday. Any time we read a newspaper, turn on the news, or consume media, we are shown heartbreaking stories of a tragic loss of life. As the old saying goes, "If it bleeds, it leads." At some point throughout our lifetime, we will experience the loss of a loved one, a friend, an acquaintance. With each passing, we are faced with a question: What happens when we die? I was first faced with that question on September 8th, 1995, when my oldest brother Eric passed away from cancer at the age of 24.

Learning About Death
I was only eight years old at the time of my brother's passing. The concept of death was a lot for a third grader to take in, let alone understand.

It confused me.

Much of my childhood was spent at the cemetery where my brother was laid to rest. The more time I spent surrounded by tombstones, the more I started to comprehend what death was and how we would all meet the same end. As my mother would visit my brother and grieve, I did what any eight-year-old kid would do: explore. I'd walk around the cemetery. I'd read the grave markers, the names, the dates of birth and death. I'd speak with the groundskeepers and ask them questions about their job. What was it like working in the death industry? I watched as they would prepare the ground for upcoming burials, the funerals taking place close to my brother's gravesite. I would listen to the eulogies and observe how others handled grief. This is macabre, but it helped me begin my own grieving process. As the years passed and I grew older, thinking of our ultimate end became easier for me. In 2002 my grandmother passed away, peacefully in her home at the age of 73. She was ill in the later years of her life. During our final conversation before her passing, I knew her time on earth was coming to an end; and while I fought to cherish the little time she had left, I was prepared to grieve for her once she took her last breath. However tragic death was, I readied myself for this anguish.

I was confident I could properly grieve for my grandmother. Death wouldn't catch me off guard.

But in 2004, my brother Gary took his life. I couldn't see it through the rage I felt at that time, but my way of thinking about our final end would change forever.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
?Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Nameless City

Paranormal Investigation as Grief Therapy
There are many reasons why people get involved in the search for ghosts and hauntings. Some are looking for an adrenaline rush, some for notoriety. One common reason is the passing of a loved one. In my 17 years of research, I have met hundreds of individuals who are willing to journey into the dark for answers about the afterlife, just as I was after the death of my two brothers. Many paranormal investigators have found a sense of peace in trying to communicate with those that have come before us. After hearing countless stories from those in the field, I realized that the act of paranormal investigation was a form of grief therapy. I only ever made that connection when I read a book titled Corpses, Coffins and Crypts: A History of Burial by Penny Colman, which showed up on my radar for a research project I conducted many years ago. In chapter two of Colman's book, she cites a study performed by psychologist Maria Nagy in 1948:

"The children, who nicknamed Nagy 'Auntie Death,' had discussions with Nagy and drew pictures. In addition the older children followed Nagy's request to 'write down everything that comes to your mind about death.' Nagy studied their responses and concluded that some children go through three stages in understanding death. The youngest children aged three to about five tend to be curious about death and ask matter-of-fact questions about funerals, coffins, and cemeteries. To them, death is a continuation of life but at a lower level: dead people can't see and hear as well as living people, they aren't quite as hungry, and they don't do very much. And they might return.

Younger children appear to think that death is at best not much fun and boring and at the worst lonely and scary. Beginning at about the age of five or six, children tend to realize that death is final and move into what Nagy named Stage 2. Although at this stage, many children realized that death was final, some of them thought that they could escape death if they were clever, careful, or lucky. Christy Ottaviano remembers thinking like that when she was in elementary school. 'I had to walk past a cemetery to get to school,' she recalls. 'I thought that I wouldn't die if I held my breath the whole way. So I did until I was about nine or ten years old.' Christy may have stopped because she moved into what Nagy identified as Stage 3 in understanding death. This is when children tend to realize that in addition to being final, death is also inevitable. Everyone dies, even clever, careful, and lucky people. Or people who hold their breath when they walk past a cemetery. 'Death is destiny,' wrote one ten-year-old child. Another ten-year-old wrote, 'Everyone has to die.' According to Nagy, Stage 3, which starts at about age nine or ten, continues throughout life." (Colman 29, 30, 31)

Death and the Final Frontier
Reading Maria Nagy's The Child's Theories Concerning Death completely transformed my thought process. Having basically grown up in a cemetery and losing someone so close to me at such a young age, I made the jump from Nagy's proclaimed stage 2 to stage 3 in a more advanced timeframe. Other studies have shown that, "children who experienced a parent's death, who are dying themselves, or who have witnessed violent, traumatic death will perceive death in an adultlike manner at much earlier ages than children who have not had such experiences." ("Death—The Development Of A Concept Of Death—Children, Dead, Nagy, and Age - JRank Articles") These experiences of the human condition led me early on in a lifelong pursuit of finding answers about the possibility of retaining consciousness after the brain dies. Like many others in the study of ghosts and hauntings, I have found comfort in journeying into the dark, and I carry this into every investigation I conduct, into every bit of research I perform, and the hours upon hours of footage I review. And I will continue to do so, until I meet my own ultimate end.

References
Colman, Penny. 1997. Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History of Burial. N.p.: Henry Holt and Company.
"Death—The Development Of A Concept Of Death—Children, Dead, Nagy, and Age—JRank Articles." n.d. Social Issues Reference. Accessed December 4, 2021. https://social.jrank.org/pages/186/Death-Development-Concept-Death.html#ixzz7E9jWV4N5.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2022. All rights reserved.

I've been seeing an acupuncturist for healing for almost a year now. From the beginning of our relationship, I had a strong sense that there was a connection between the two of us. He felt very familiar to me, and there was a definite sharing of energies between the two of us. From the first moment we met, my intuition began telling me that he was attracted to me. We quickly bonded emotionally and had some very intimate conversations. It was several months before I could admit that I was attracted to him as well. I began to have dreams about him on a nightly basis, and I decided to mention the dreams to him as a way to talk to him about my feelings for him. He immediately got defensive about his healing methods, and began to challenge me by telling me that my feelings for him were not love and that we were not soul mates because he did not believe in soul mates. I have discontinued my acupuncture appointments with him but I still feel a very strong connection to him. Now I am left feeling sad, manipulated, and betrayed. I also feel like my intuition failed me. Was I imagining the emotional connection and intimate nature of our relationship, or was my intuition correct all along?

Emily

Susyn:

People often get emotionally attached to individuals they see for healing and guidance. It's perfectly natural for these attachments to form as we interact with people who guide, nurture and support us with our goals and dreams.

Whether they are in conventional medical or holistic fields, health care professionals must maintain strong boundaries with their clients. Given the intimate conversations you shared, it doesn't sound like your acupuncturist did this. I doubt your intuition was off when you sensed he was attracted to you. However, even if he was very attracted to you, he could not act on his feelings. Since becoming involved was not an option, anything he said or did that led you on was a lapse in integrity.

When we keep these kinds of emotions or attractions to ourselves, they tend to take on a life of their own, growing stronger as we wrestle with ourselves to make sense of them. This is a one-sided phenomenon that unfortunately can drive us to entertain fantasies that may not have any basis in reality. In that regard, you allowed your feelings to get the better of you.

Ethically, if this acupuncturist had feelings for you, he should have advised you that he could no longer treat you. That would have freed the two of you to explore your mutual attraction. Because you were the first to address these feelings, you put yourself at risk for rejection.

Men have more experience with this than women. They tend to handle it better and do not succumb to shame, embarrassment or the sense that they have been betrayed. This is more of a female experience, which is why it is always wise to let the man come to you instead of putting yourself out there first.

In the future, if you engage the services of anyone you find yourself attracted to, you should discontinue working with them and find a different practitioner. If there is real attraction between the two of you, let them be the first to express it.

Feelings and intuitions can conflict with each other. The best way to tell them apart is by evaluating how they feel. Intuition will come as a thought or action that is unemotional; it is designed to alert and direct you when you reach a crossroads or need to be aware of your options. When what you are feeling has a strong emotional charge, it is unlikely to be your intuition. If you feel an intense feeling of fear, desire, or some other emotion, you're not dealing with an intuition and are probably too emotional to hear your inner guidance clearly.

*****

Oceania:

I'm not so sure your intuition failed you. It's very possible that you and your acupuncturist were attracted to each other. There will always be people in your life with whom you share mutual attraction, but that doesn't mean you have to act on it. There are times when acting on attraction can do more harm than good.

Your feelings sound normal under the circumstances. You're feeling sad as you grieve the loss of your healer and your dream of sharing something deeper with him. You're feeling manipulated and are perhaps wondering if he misled you to ensure your loyalty as a client. You feel betrayed that he seemingly led you on and then denied his feelings and discounted yours.

In general, when a healer of any kind helps remove blocks and frees us to expand on a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual level, we DO tend to feel like we're falling in love, but it's the energy flow and increased sense of well-being that we are really in love with!

Healers, being in a professional role, carry power and authority. The dynamic between a helper and a client is similar to that of parent and child. Whenever we feel dependent upon someone, it stirs up feelings from our earliest life, when we idealized our parents and felt in love with them. This phenomenon is known as transference, and tends to happen in almost every therapeutic and teaching relationship to one degree or another.

It's possible your acupuncturist DID feel attracted to you, which is known as countertransference. In the course of therapy, be it massage therapy, acupuncture, psychotherapy, etc., the healer can't possibly come to know a client fully as an individual in the context of normal life, so any feelings that arise are NOT completely based upon the actual client but are usually mixed in with feelings for someone in the healer's past.

Your acupuncturist may have denied his feelings because he felt uncomfortable acknowledging them. Perhaps he did not have proper support or training in how to best manage feelings for a client. If he engaged in intimate conversations with you, it's possible he crossed a professional line. His defensiveness may indicate that he felt guilty for doing so.

It's a good rule of thumb to steer clear of entering personal relationships with our teachers and healers unless the professional relationship is terminated and time is invested in getting to know each other in a natural context. Until that takes place, feelings of attraction or connection should always remain suspect.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.