Ghosts and Hauntings

Description

A ghost is commonly described as the spirit of a person who has died, and a haunting as a place where such a presence is believed to linger. People who report a haunting usually describe a mix of experiences rather than a single sighting: footsteps and voices with no one there, a sense of being watched, objects disturbed, and occasionally an apparition seen as a mist, a light or a human shape.

• Activity tied to a particular building or room rather than to a person.
• Sounds such as footsteps, knocking or voices, more often than sightings.
• Apparitions described as mist-like, translucent or partly formed.
• Places with a long or troubled history, as told by neighbors, records or local stories.

Episode Appearance

In the Season 2 premiere, Halloween Special, Daniel recalls a house in rural Maryland that neighbors said had been a speakeasy, a barbershop and a Civil War hospital. After a year of activity his family concluded they had a ghost; a woman who said she was psychic named three presences, and his mother and sister say they once saw a vaguely humanoid mist in his room, staring at his bed. Leafy says he has lived in a haunted house for about six years, with footsteps and other activity he cannot explain.

Folklore and Background

Belief in the spirits of the dead returning to familiar places is found in cultures around the world, and haunted houses are among the most common subjects of paranormal stories. Some paranormal investigators distinguish a haunting that seems to repeat like a recording from one that seems to respond to the living.

Theories and Analysis

Skeptics look to old buildings, suggestion, misperception and coincidence, and to the way a house’s history can shape what its occupants expect to experience. Hauntings are not established fact, and the accounts on this page are the guests’ own.

Related Sightings

The Codex also records specific apparitions reported on the show: the Ghost Girl, seen by Derreck in Episode 10, and the Woman in White from Episode 1.