What Are Residual Hauntings?

www.netplaces.com If the same apparition is seen over and over again, doing exactly the same thing, if the same sounds are heard at the same time of day, if the same scene plays out over and over again over a period of years or even centuries, it is a residual haunting. Also called energy remnants and memory imprint, the apparition in a residual haunting never interacts with onlookers, but rather seems totally oblivious to them. What Are Residual Hauntings? Perhaps residual hauntings are simply playbacks of past events. The apparitions involved may not even be actual spirits but just impressions or recordings of events that were so traumatic that they have become imprinted on the very materials of the space in which they occurred. There are many theories regarding residual hauntings. One of the first to offer a possible hypothesis of how residual hauntings occur was Thomas Charles Lethbridge, in his 1961 book Ghost and Ghoul. His theory is that just as audiotapes and videotapes record sounds and images, certain materials used in the construction of older structures may record impressions of events. If a traumatic, emotionally charged incident occurs, these materials record it for future playback. The event can suddenly occur and play out without an apparent cause. Sometimes there is no visual component to the event, only repetitive sounds, such as footsteps, breathing, or smells that have no apparent cause. No one knows what triggers the playback of these recordings. It ...