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La Casa de las Caras: Believe it or Not, Something Weird is Happening Here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9lmez_Faces

In 1971, María Gómez Cámara saw a clear face form in her cement floor, seemingly overnight. The Pereira family home at Calle Real 5, Bélmez de la Moraleda, Jaén, Spain, became famous shortly thereafter, with Spanish newspapers coming down on one side or the other regarding the authenticity of the faces. What followed were decades of faces appearing, transforming, and disappearing. The house has been investigated extensively over the years by scientists and paranormal teams within Spain, and unsurprisingly, what determines the true nature of the faces has more to do with one’s openness to paranormal explanations than with any objective truth; when it comes to the paranormal, truth is a mixture of fraud and illumination.

Belmez de la Moraleda
Ty and Kirsten in the “Casa de las Caras”

When we arrived, it was a blustery March day. Snow was whipping through the mountain town, and there was no sign that a famous house with hotly debated paranormal activity was just in front of us. It seemed so ordinary, unassuming, and easy to miss. After calling the number on the door, Miguel informed us that the family had just sat down to lunch, and requested we return at 3:30. If you know anything about Spanish lunches, they can last awhile. So my husband, brother-in-law and myself trudged off to find food and landed at Bar San Antonio, where everyone swiveled their heads at the strangers walking in the door. Indeed, this is a small town.

We found the one, open table and ate plates of habas con jamón y huevo  and flamenquín with a carne en salsa tapa–lots of ham, egg, fried meats and cheese. I loved it, but if you’re not used to Spanish lunch food in a small town, it’s quite heavy. While there, we discussed our hopes for the house and our expectations. My sense is that my cuñado was hoping for something haunted but not expecting it, my husband was already skeptical, and I wanted to believe that something truly weird was happening. Our expectations often color our experience.

Once Miguel arrived and opened up the door to the infamous Casa de las Caras, my first impression is that the house was not haunted, in the classic sense. There was no electric energy, no sense of being watched, no strong emotions connected to the space; it was quiet, like a memorial to a past that had left only traces behind. At first, none of us could see the faces. Miguel, after the obligatory introduction and history lesson, used a pointer to show us where eyes, noses, chins, and hairlines were etched into the cement. For all three of us, there was this moment when the faces started to emerge from the cement like fast-blooming flowers. Where there had been almost nothing before, faces popped out everywhere. I was taking photos all over the two rooms, seeing new faces even as I returned to the same spot I had been moments before.

This was beyond anything I have experienced before. Faces were appearing before my eyes. Not only was I not straining to see anything, I could not keep up with the sheer number of odd forms. Here are some of the photos I took:

THIS IMAGE IS NOT FROM MY CAMERA, BUT IS ON THE WALL AS ONE OF THE ORIGINAL, FAMOUS FACES (and I believe that this image was doctored)

We made a generous donation to Miguel and proceeded to argue about the faces and figures for the next hour as we headed to Jaén. My brother in law swears that his cement floor has faces, too, and that this is all a hyped-up case of “pareidolia” or the human propensity to see faces everywhere (we are hard wired for facial recognition even when there are no faces to be seen). Plus, he said, it’s not haunted. I agree with him on the last opinion, but pareidolia has its limits, too–sometimes, there is a face in the damn floor. My husband remained agnostic on this issue, thinking that fraud was involved, and indeed, there have been accusations of tampering with the cement floor with paints and other chemicals to “enhance” a subtle pattern that might have been there. There was little doubt that some of the historic photos of the faces had been traced with pencil or paint so that they would stand out, but . . .

Some of those faces were neither pareidolia nor produced via fraud. Something strange was happening at that house.

As Ty and I were scrolling through our photos, something odd had happened: the faces that were so clear at the house had vanished in the photos, even though we reviewed our photos at the house and saw the faces more clearly in the photos than on the floor. Where had they gone upon review at our hotel? At least 50% of the photos no longer showed any evidence of the original faces. And weirder yet, as I reviewed the photos today that had “lost” the original faces and figures, I found new faces; faces that I had never seen before. I can see them in the photos above.

Miguel said that the “caras” would transform over time. He swears that one set of figures not only changed over time, but the children grew up between the first photos and the last, taken years later. That strains credulity, I know; however, what does seem to be true is that the faces morph and evolve, appear and disappear, with no known cause.

As is typically the case, you can choose your explanation and be right. Or be wrong. You could call all of this a case of “pareidolia” and be justified in your position. You could say that something authentically paranormal is happening, and you would also be right. You can accuse the family of fraud and profit taking (although the condition of the house and the pueblo in general strongly argues against that), and maybe you would be onto something. Or not. My husband suggests that there is a spirit or paranormal energy in the house that affects what you see and manipulates your senses. I tend to agree with that, because something is altering your perception after a few minutes in that house. Try as I might, I do not see a proliferation of faces in my kitchen floor, or anywhere else. But there, it was a phenomenon impossible to deny. It happened to all of us.

I am actually desperate for comments on this post, as I am still attempting to make sense of what we all saw. I don’t mind skeptical comments, or wild theories, because I have no explanation for La Casa de las Caras.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

The Perils of Paranormal Programming

Cody and Satori, often featured on “Ghost Hunters” and other paranormal shows
Chip Coffey, Psychic Medium
The Infamous Conjuring House
Lorraine Warren, Demonologist and Medium (deceased 2019)

There is one reason that those who are publicly involved in the paranormal must be honest: people take them seriously and often look to them for real answers regarding the afterlife and the reality of the spirit world. It’s a large burden to bear, and if you have a “show” or a “documentary” (the lines are blurred between these two genres, to the detriment of the viewing public), then you must be ethical and responsible in what you do, as the emotional well being of your clients frequently depend upon your good will and transparency.

Paranormal fakers and opportunists can ruin lives by manipulating the emotions and the beliefs of their victims. I have the same message for all the mediums out there, both famous and anonymous: lie to your clients, manipulate their faith and their trust in you, and you will pay the price through eventual online disclosure and the loss of something you cannot regain: your integrity.

It is not an excuse to say that the shows are intended as entertainment. These programs rely on the public taking their work seriously. For every faked piece of “evidence”, for every dishonest emotion, for every capitulation to a director or a producer who asks for “more drama”, I say: you are committing a crime against the people who look up to you, who believe in you, and who come to you for answers. You should never agree to fabricate anything when it comes to something as deeply personal and meaningful as afterlife communication.

I work as a medium in private sessions. I have also been under contract with a studio intending to produce a documentary or a “show” on my life and those of my teammates. We have all agreed to one, basic rule: no faking of evidence. Ever. Once you lose the trust of your audience, it’s nearly impossible to get it back. When I am reading for clients, some of what I do is based on observation: I tell them that. I explain that a successful reading involves observation, reading of emotional energies, deduction, inference, and then the facts and images that I cannot explain. When something I say is not based on paranormal information that I am picking up via processes that are not known to me, I say the following: “What I am about to tell you is based partly on observation and inference. It may or may not have any paranormal source. Sometimes, the source of the information is not even clear to me. I can promise you that I have no intention of deceiving you or pretending that I pick up is the absolute truth that you must follow regardless of how you feel about it”.

Honesty. It’s difficult to maintain when someone is directing you to be more “energetic” or “emotional”; especially difficult when someone above you–a camera operator or one of many people involved in a shoot–might be knocking on the floor or making your EMF meter go wild by pushing the button on the walkie. It takes a tremendous amount of integrity to resist the call to “dramatize” an otherwise mundane investigation, but I can promise you, resist you must. I lost opportunities to be on television (more than once) because I refused to “follow direction”, which amounted to lying. I won’t pretend that a spirit possessed me if it did not happen; someone watching, or perhaps many people watching, would have believed me and possibly prayed for me under false pretenses. Pretending to have experienced something that didn’t happen is a form of mass gaslighting and narcissistic abuse. I refuse to inflict emotional violence on anyone, as I know how it feels to be on the other side of that equation.

I am not accusing anyone pictured above or any particular paranormal program of lying or faking evidence. I am warning them against it. For they are playing not only with the souls of others, but with the ultimate fate of their own. As fun as it might be to watch, this is not a game.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

We Know We Have Died . . . And Then What?

Sam Parnia via the AWARE study determined that there is electrical activity in the brain that suggests (how, I am not sure) that we are aware of our physical death for at least 20 seconds and possibly much longer after our hearts have stopped beating and our lungs have given up the ghost, so to speak.

Sam Parnia, M.D.

Of course, nobody is touting this as proof that our consciousness survives death, as the definition of “death” has become rather . . . fuzzy. If you have electrical activity in your brain, then you are not, technically, dead; and, of course, the assumption here is that the activity that is recorded in your brain is CAUSING your awareness, not simply possibly CORRELATED with it. And as we all know, correlation is not causation. What that brain activity means, and whether or not it is measuring your awareness or creating it, well, who knows. All we do know is what patients who “come back” tell us.

As I have written about before, I was one of those patients who found herself on the ceiling during an operation. This is how I found out that the doctor who had promised not to put me to sleep with a mask had indeed done just that, because I saw it over my face, a fact which upset me no end, even though I was floating above my body. I had no problem with the idea that I was “up here” and “down there” at the same time. I was able, even at five years old, to memorize details of that scene and relay them back to the very befuddled and confused doctor after I woke up from surgery. Yes, I confronted him about the broken promise, and he had nothing to say, of course.

No, I wasn’t ‘dead’. My heart had not stopped, nor had my lungs stopped breathing. But I was still able to experience consciousness without a body, and it seemed the most normal thing in the world to me. I had no idea that my experience was not “supposed” to happen; it did, and it seemed quite ordinary to me. Doctors, scientists, and researchers become quite outraged at the idea that consciousness is not created or caused by brain activity. I am not sure why, except for the purposes of defending a materialist world view. The problem is that we consider ourselves to be “one thing”, one body, one consciousness, some kind of unique awareness that only exists in a particular vessel.

For a while now, I have believed that what is missing is a view of ourselves that embraces the multiplicity and diversity of being, of existing. The Christian concept of the trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is, as I see it, a metaphor for the different aspects of our consciousness: we are soul, spirit, and body. The soul is our essential self, the eternal expression of who we are; it exists outside of space and time as the energetic pattern of our identity. It is not bound by circumstances or events and functions as our ‘blueprint’ for all the incarnations governed by spirit. Our spirit animates the multiple versions of us that come into being via reincarnation or repetition of some slightly different version of us that the “many worlds” interpretation of reality supports (I am me in infinite ways, as every new decision creates another universe where I live out the consequences of countless paths not taken). The body is the vessel, housing and expressing the particular circumstances of one life, the one we are currently aware of, the only one that most of us care about and believe in.

One identity can be expressed in many ways, which explains why I do not believe that the child ghost that cries in a corner of a haunted house is doomed to eternity to relive a traumatic experience. That is one aspect only of that child, that person, and in the Block Universe, that child is in all states of life and death at once, and only this one, particular instantiation of that personality is playing out. Remember, there is no time when we talk about ultimate reality, so that person is also enjoying a college physics class, waking up next to her cat as an old lady, and everything else that the impossibly rich block universe allows her to experience. That “dead” child is also alive in another part of the Block.

However you choose to look at this issue, whether through the lens of physics or Christianity, or any other religion for that matter, the self is not one, not solitary, not a one-time manifestation of a singular personality, but the result of an enormously complex play of consciousness on the backdrop of an infinitely complex universe. I knew that as a child and have forgotten it as an adult. No, not intellectually; I can write to you all day about the multiplicity and the eternity of our selves, our conscious awareness, but I become trapped by a culture that doesn’t “believe” such things and will not, therefore, even consider these points. The idea that we are meat robots, simple bodies animated by random and incomprehensible brain activity, is the most reductionist, sad, cruel, and ignorant of theories that has led to despair and depravity; it’s the philosophy of a reality drained of human experience over millennia.

We contain multitudes. All the major religions know this, but cloak the information behind power plays and fear tactics. Physics knows this, but is terrified of the implications, and often refuses to discuss the existential and ontological implications of their own Block Universe and Multiverse theories. Consciousness is fundamental to the structure of reality, and death does not apply or even have meaning in such a space.

Dr. Parnia is one of many scientists and medical professionals who are daring to step cautiously outside of the materialist paradigm. But he treads with great caution, lest he end up an object of ridicule, as has happened to Eben Alexander and Robert Lanza, both of whom make a strong case for the eternal nature of consciousness, Alexander through a stunning near-death experience and Lanza through a consideration of biocentrism (we create the Universe, not the other way around). I hope that those courageous voices will continue to speak up, for the opposition is fierce.

The truth shall set us all free, and yes, we can handle the truth.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Jack Osbourne’s “Night of Terror”, The Block Universe, and Quantum Weirdness in the Ghost Shows

Well, it has happened: physics (or intimations of it) now needs to be introduced into the paranormal shows in order to sort through the mishmash of theories that are popping up to explain hauntings. Recently, it’s not just about the spirits of dead people engaging in the classic haunt, but “crossing timelines”, “overlapping dimensions,” and quantum queerness. Jack’s show is the first, I believe, to introduce these concepts and expand upon them by inviting a “time jumper” specialist (still not sure what that is or what she does), but he most certainly will not be the last host of a ghost show to start exploring Theories of Reality. He is right to do so, for the traditional concept of the spirit wandering about and creating havoc or messing with our devices to indicate their presence, well . . . perhaps that is finally fading out as the preferred explanation for bizarre phenomena.

The vast majority of the paranormal shows, the books written about hauntings and “ghosts”, and the entire tradition of studying communication with the “dead” assume three truths:

#1: People have bodies when they are alive, but they also have a soul and a spirit. The soul and the spirit persist in an undefined state after the death of the body.

#2: The soul moves on to the Afterlife, and the spirit can haunt homes and buildings, and be either “intelligent” (capable of interacting with humans attempting to contact it) or “residual”, playing out scenes from its life in endless loops (not capable of interaction).

#3: The spirit can be contacted via various devices designed to prove that it is there interacting with us. A medium can “tap into” the energy of the spirit and give us messages from the Beyond that will be consistent with who they were in life.

However: once you understand some very basic points from modern physics, the picture becomes far more complicated. The classic assumptions about what a “ghost” is, should be questioned now, in light of what we know regarding the Block Universe, Eternalism, and General Relativity: namely, that time is either relative to the observer (Einstein), or that it does not exist at all outside of the human brain (Lanza, Barbour, Rovelli) and shared experience. All one needs to do is to remove time from the equation, and you must interpret paranormal phenomena in a completely different light.

First of all, everyone in a timeless universe contains all aspects of their experience, or lives all their possibilities at once. You are only aware of the events and experiences that you can force into a timeline, so that you can preserve such concepts as cause and effect, action and reaction. Without such mental gymnastics, you could not survive in a world where you experience everything at once–your brain must filter, choose, reduce, and organize information AND PERCEPTION in such a way that time appears to pass smoothly from past to present, from present to future. You need to believe that the future is open and can be created, and that the past is over, complete, and unchangeable, even though none of that is true according to our best theories of how reality works.

You are both alive and dead in the Block Universe (see my previous posts). If, as a “dead” person, your consciousness can roam around timelines and spatial dimensions with a special ability to occupy any zone of the Block Universe that it desires to, then you are, for all intents and purposes, a “ghost” to the you that cannot do such a thing given your current constraints of occupying a body and a narrative that “leads” to your death. This explains the apparitions of the living and déjà vu, that sense that you have experienced your current reality before. Every person, then, contains within them their own “ghost”, even if we are not aware of it.

A haunting, then, is not about a separate thing: the ghost or the spirit. It’s all you or all them in all their ontological states at once. It’s an aspect of you or of someone else that we can engage with in the proper circumstances and in an altered state of consciousness, which the effective paranormal investigations induce. But: it’s all NOW–1860, 2025, 2099, 14 BC–these are points in space, not realities that once existed and now do not. The question is how to ACCESS these points in the Block Universe, how to reach them or interact with them, which is what we are actually doing in the investigation, NOT contacting spirits from the past.

We privilege our point of view, our perception, because we are designed to do that as human animals. However, that perception can and does break down all of the time, and then we realize that the “me” that is on my deathbed is right next to the “me” that is playing checkers in the high school gym. The person that is haunting an old building is only aware of themselves in a present moment, and you are the weird intruder, the person out of place, asking truly bizarre and irrelevant questions. The part of you that is already dead co-exists with what you perceive as happening right now, so your consciousness is always truly free to roam around the Block Universe and have infinite shared experiences with all those other points in space that are someone else. And, whether death returns you to the same old timeline or you get a new body, set of experiences, and even a new planet, it won’t matter, because it’s all real right now, anyway. There is no “will happen”, only “is happening”. So reincarnation makes no sense if it depends on a classical timeline. You are currently living multiple versions of yourself, and who knows? Maybe everybody else, too, if consciousness is unitary and we are simply branches of the tree.

These are the concepts, rooted in real science, that the paranormal shows, books, and media need to start exploring with some rigor and curiosity, because the lost spirit stuck in the past looks more and more like a figment of our collective imagination. Kudos to Jack Osbourne’s show for taking some steps in that direction (see the Virginia City episode).

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Ghost Shows and the Terrifying Truths of the Paranormal

Alex, Tanner, Dakota and Chelsea from “Destination Fear”
Kirsten A. Thorne, Founder, International SPR

Winter 2024–the new year has started with a wicked case of Seasonal Affective Disorder and a sense of dread. This is not how I had hoped to begin a new year and certainly not how I wish to start off a blog post; however, sometimes one’s mood is relevant to the subject at hand–the unexplained, the paranormal, and the haunted.

When I am depressed, I tend to binge watch Ghost Adventures and Destination Fear, among others; for awhile, it was Kindred Spirits and then The Dead Files and pretty much any other show that would take me out of this life and into another one. I suppose that is the link to depression: a desire to transcend this reality, to leave the confines of my mind and the dark sense of entrapment that one’s emotional state can create. The problem is always the same, unfortunately: there are precious few real moments of transcendence in the made for television shows that rarely showcase something truly compelling and inexplicable. But, like any other good addiction, you keep pulling the lever and hoping that you’ll hit the jackpot: real emotion, authentic mystery, and genuine evidence for something beyond this world. It does happen, just not often.

There are some assumptions that all ghost trackers/seekers/hunters make regarding the subject of their inquiry. I am going to list these problems, these issues, that strike at the heart of all ghost shows, and indeed, all paranormal teams that I am familiar with.

#1: Just what IS the subject of our inquiry? Souls? Spirits? Demons? Entities? Fairies? Poltergeists? Can we define what we are looking for? Do we know? A bang down a dark hallway has either no explanation or hundreds. What does it mean? Perhaps nothing. There is a blank space at the center of all of our efforts to contact what we call the “other side”, because we cannot define what we seek, cannot name it, cannot understand it, and indeed, cannot relate it to anything human. We simply do not know what we are contacting or if we are contacting anything; the weird noise, the thrown rock, the closing door, could all be random manifestations of energy that mean nothing at all, except to reflect back to us our own desires and fears. In that case, we are hunting ourselves and creating our own paranormal phenomena.

#2: A location with a violent and tragic history does not guarantee paranormal phenomena will occur. Sweet Springs Sanitarium was the most active of the episodes that I have seen on “Destination Fear”, yet was not the site with the most murders, deaths, and human suffering. Waverly Hills is supposed to be the Holy Grail, as is the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, and yet, those sites do not consistently provide the most terrifying experiences. I have had worse experiences in an unassuming, Southern California tract house that was infested with a demon. And this raises another question: why are we so collectively fascinated with suffering and death? Why, as investigators, is it some kind of badge of honor to dig up the most miserable place that we can find? Are we truly looking for evidence of life after death, or are we psychic and emotional vampires, looking to leech off the drama of others’ suffering? Do we want to “investigate” the paranormal, or profit off pain? My advice to paranormal enthusiasts: don’t forget that the most haunted and active sites can be homes, toy stores, or any little, easy-to-miss building with a past. Whatever reaches out to you does not need to come from an asylum, a prison, or a poorhouse. Sometimes, the most terrifying presence hides in plain sight at the house down the block. When someone/something NEEDS to be heard, WANTS to be heard, or seen, they/it will find a way. And my theory is that fewer EVP at prisons is about the people there feeling resentful and uninterested in the trespassers on their pain. They don’t need investigators asking them questions; if they need anything, it’s help. Which leads me to my next issue:

#3: What is our purpose? Are we investigating for our own entertainment, to profit from the fear response in an audience, to rack up viewers, to mess with our fellow investigators, or to actually learn something? Are we investigating because we are bored, need a shot of adrenaline, are looking to impress each other, outdo each other, or maybe to make a professional or romantic connection? Or, as we would like to think, are we truly interested in contacting whatever remains of the human soul or spirit after death? We need to question our motives regularly and be strictly honest with ourselves regarding the “why” of a paranormal investigation. Is it “fun”? Do we love feeling scared? It is better to know that you are asking questions to the dead in the hopes of running screaming down the hallway because it’s cheaper than a ticket to Disneyland than to pretend you are a serious researcher in search of answers when you are not.

#4: Watch out when you feel oppressed and terrified, yet your gadgets are collecting zero ‘evidence’. In almost every case, when the demonic is present at a location, your para toys and most cherished methods of recording communication will stop working. This happens on the ghost shows and has happened to me, personally. When my camera glitches, the recorder stops, the devices won’t spit out words, and you get the sense that you are being watched or observed, I recommend leaving the area. The demonic doesn’t wish to communicate; it wishes to destroy, to demean, to confuse, and to sow doubt and despair. Don’t mess with it. If you feel a sense of overpowering doom or dread, yet can’t find “evidence” to back it up, consider that you are about to be taken over. Your mood will shift, you will feel anger and/or irritation, your personality will shift and alter in ways that negatively affect others, and there will be a sense of illness and weakness that you can’t pinpoint a cause for. RUN. Don’t let that influence take you over, for that is the goal and the primary intent.

Finally, I want to mention that I have nothing against the ghost shows nor the teams that use classic investigative methods to find “something” or “someone” that has crossed over into unexplored territory and has no body or material form as we know it. I simply want to point out that it is a good idea to know what you are looking for, why you are looking for it, and to protect yourself against evil, which exists most emphatically. It’s a good idea to find God before you risk finding Satan, and if that sounds too Christian, then it’s a good idea to have a spiritual practice that grounds and connects you to the Light before you head into the darkness, not knowing what is waiting for you there.

May you enjoy your adventures. Just please, be careful.

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Nobody Cares About Your Ghost Story, Or, Why We Need a Theory of the Paranormal

When I started on the grand adventure of paranormal investigations, I believed that I could change the world with my data, my evidence, for the existence of “ghosts”, spirits, or beings that weren’t supposed to be here, because they were dead. It was so simple then; show the world (and by the world, I meant the six readers of my blog, and all those potential readers of the Paranormal Housewives site, and all those possible readers that I would one day reach). We were all so enthusiastic and naive, charmingly so; but it hurts to think what I thought was achievable and what actually happened.

I made three assumptions: #1–people would take a Spanish and Romance Languages PhD seriously. In a world dedicated to materialism, a non-scientist has no clout. #2–“people” existed who cared about survival of consciousness, the paranormal in general, and all the unexplained manifestations and phenomena out there. Most people had answered the life after death question via religion, science, or some blend of their personal, spiritual beliefs and felt no need to explore these issues further. #3–The Internet and social media turned everyone into experts, and therefore, nobody was an expert. There were millions of opinions and experiences, but no real interest in the idea that an individual or a group could have any authority on this issue due to the work that they invested, the time they spent investigating, or the depth of their passion and research. Truth and entertainment married and produced bizarre offspring. Anything could be faked, nobody could be trusted, and your fabulous EVP could be debunked or safely ignored, because, again, in the age of Instagram everything is equally insignificant: your summer vacation photos stand alongside your paradigm-shaking evidence for life after death. In the end, the Internet made all information equivalent: your ghost photo is cool, but check out this recipe for mango mojitos!

So I stopped telling my ghost stories. I stopped recounting the amazing things that happened to me on investigations, or simply in my own home. I have some kind of bizarre, paranormal experience every week. I would love to share those experiences, but not because I expect anyone to change their ideas, beliefs, or convictions regarding personal immortality or the nature of reality. Heck, most people are just trying to get through the day and don’t need to contemplate the complexities of the Block Universe, the Multiverse, or whether or not we exist in several dimensions at the same time. No, I can’t expect that anyone’s life will change because we recorded a Class A EVP in an abandoned mental hospital, or we were temporarily possessed by a criminal spirit in an old jail. That is now the stuff of entertainment, and the lines have blurred to such an extent that we can’t be sure that the EVP is fabricated or authentic, or if that spirit photo was created by the production team or not.

This is why telling our stories, no matter how compelling, is not going to shake up anyone’s notion of reality or confirm the existence of a Higher Consciousness. Truth be told, I always took my investigations, ideas, and data too seriously. I think that my obsession with wanting people to listen to me had more to do with an upbringing where I had to shout to be heard, and I was mostly ignored and belittled. I should not drag those feelings of resentment and frustration into my research and my writing on these topics. What it has taken time for me to understand is the following: you do something because you love to do it. If nobody is convinced, or even cares much, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have “clout” in the scientific community, you can either be an intelligent layperson with something interesting to say to non specialists, or you can go back the grad school and get your degree in physics (never going to happen). What matters is that YOU care. Your passion matters whether or not others are swept up by it.

On a side note, we need a paranormal community that works together, not in competition. Maybe that already exists, but I have not found it. If you know of a such a thing in California, shoot me an email: kirstenthorne@gmail.com

In the meantime, this site will start considering other issues beyond the classic ghost stories, paranormal phenomena, and all the weird realities that intrude upon our limited, personal perception of the world. What other issues? Theories of reality that would explain the “paranormal” or at least, provide ghost stories with a plausible reason for existing. In the end, the ghost, or spirit, needs to be accounted for by a theory of reality that allows for it. Up to now, it seems that most assumptions center around the body having a soul that survives it and can manifest in physical form given the proper circumstances.

It’s time to consider other theories that are taken more seriously by physicists. Here are three possibilities that I would like to explore more deeply here:

#1–The multiverse. If there are infinite versions of us in the multiverse, then a slip between the worlds could cause us to perceive another version of the person whose spirit we think we are in contact with. It may be that we are simply seeing them in another dimension where they are fully alive and participating in their world, but for reasons unknown, have been able to cross universes briefly to visit this one. And perhaps our will and interest in them is enough to create that rift between worlds.

#2–The Block Universe (either growing or not). In the Block Universe, all events and circumstances are happening simultaneously, but we can only perceive a thin slice of the spacetime continuum that we are aware of. What we consider ‘past’ and ‘future’ are out there in the Block, unperceived by us, but still existing right now. Your “past” and your “future” are already occurring in this moment, but you can’t tap into that, due to the structure of your brain, which, by necessity, has to limit what you experience so that the illusion of time passing allows you to survive, create, reminisce, learn from “past” mistakes, and plan for the “future”. A ghost could simply be a manifestation of someone who has escaped the Block due to a breakdown in your time/space perception that is allowing you to peer into their current reality.

#3–Quantum universes. There are multiple possibilities for everything that happens, including you being both alive and dead. This might be how the Multiverse is created–for every outcome that you are NOT aware of, another dimension of reality is “split off” and becomes another world. So, you are both alive and dead somewhere. Of course, you can’t perceive yourself as “dead” or not existing, so you will always only be aware of being alive in the present moment. Perhaps in this way, you are immortal; but so is everyone else. So that “ghost” is simply the alive version of the person you think is long dead. And that person is alive right now, in 1872.

These theories are taken quite seriously by many scientists, physicists, and deep thinkers on the nature of reality (aka philosophers). Unless we start seriously exploring how these understandings of the universe(s) could explain what is currently mysterious and outside the realms of materialism, we will end up telling ghost stories in the dark. And yes, that’s fun, and I don’t plan to stop telling these stories, but I also want, I suppose, for all of us to be taken more seriously. And that means, my friends in the paranormal, we have lots of research and reading to do. Or just come here, and I’ll do my best to explain it.

With much spookiness and affection,

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

The Damned City of Trasmoz, Spain

Trasmoz, the only excommunicated city in Spain, was damned more than once by Ecclesiastical authorities: Once in 1255 by refusing to submit to the authority of the powerful Monastery of Veruela, and again in 1511 in a conflict with the Superior of the same Monastery over water rights. Trasmoz was officially “cursed” by the Abbott during a ceremony where the Cross was draped in black and Psalm 108 was recited: the one where God damns his enemies. All this is accompanied by solemn bell ringing and incantations.

Wiches coven

Once Trasmoz was excommunicated, only the Pope can undo said action, and so far, he has not revoked Trasmoz’s status. So Trasmoz continues to exist happily with its curse, which brings visitors from near and far to see if it is truly haunted and infested by witches. As I studied this interesting case, I ran across multiple stories relating to Trasmoz’s reputation as a haven for the occult and the paranormal. One source said that Trasmoz was illegally fabricating money, and blamed the noise of the forge on witches making cauldrons for their infamous “aquelarres” or covens. Adolfo Bécquer, the famous Spanish Romantic author and poet, stayed in Trasmoz for long stretches at the Monasterio de Veruela, attracted by the witch lore. He wrote several stories inspired by these tales, including “La corza blanca”, “El gnomo”, and the very well known “Los ojos verdes”, which my students are required to read every semester.

It appears that Trasmoz was simply punished for economic reasons and banned from the Church’s good graces for desiring independence from local rule. I wonder, however, if there is anything to the stories of occult practices and persecution of actual, practicing “brujas”. Even though Trasmoz has made an annual tradition of the “Feria de la brujería y de las plantas medicinales”, or “Festival of Witchcraft and Medicinal Plants”, does that mean that actual ‘witches’ performed magic rituals and dispensed medicine to the populace? Would Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer have spent such a long time visiting Trasmoz and surroundings if there were nothing to these stories?

It is at this point that I must confess my ignorance regarding the actual practice of witchcraft in Spain, Europe, and the United States throughout the centuries (12th–21st century in Europe, 17th century in the States). Women were persecuted for multiple reasons, mostly social, economic, and cultural. Most of us know that one could be denounced as a witch for an unmarried status, owning a black cat, upsetting your neighbors, practicing medicine while female, missing Mass, speaking your mind, or any number of trivial reasons. The Catholic Church was consolidating power through terror campaigns and brutal misogyny.

But the question remains: were there women who actually practiced what today we call witchcraft? And what would that have looked like before it was so horrifyingly punished? At the risk of manifesting my ignorance (and no, I’m not afraid to do so), I am supposing that what the Church called witchcraft was more about traditional medicine, women gathering for support and social reasons, and women playing important roles in the local communities. I am further hypothesizing that Satan and his minions played no role in any of it.

I continue to wonder, though, if magic and transformation were truly part of this reality in Spain, where amazing things happened that have been hidden from the rest of us and buried by the Church. Were ghosts and spirits conjured? Was there communication with the dead? Did Nature spirits come forward, summoned by powerful women, to communicate their secrets and prophecies? Perhaps there is no way to ever know, or no way for someone like me to know, as indoctrinated as I have been by Christianity and its version of history. My curiosity is enormous and pervasive, and I desperately want to know who these “brujas” were in reality, before their way of life was brutally exterminated or driven underground.

To this day, you cannot discuss this with many people in Granada. There are scholarly books on witchcraft, but they don’t address actual practices as much as the cultural and religious hysteria around the concept of dark magic and spells. There is still a great deal of fear and suspicion around supernatural events or the practice of the occult. I spend some of my free time searching the book stores and the local book fairs for anything related to “true” stories of the paranormal or supernatural, and so far, I have found only one book that addresses something that actually happened: Exorcismo del Albaicín. It’s a truly terrifying account of a botched exorcism that resulted in the death of the victim. As far as other true stories of the paranormal, such as haunted sites and ghost stories, there is ONE book dedicated to that topic relating to Granada, and it was banned by the publisher from distribution in this city. There is exactly one copy available in Sevilla, and the price is prohibitive.

The topic of supernatural, occult, or paranormal events outside of the parameters of the Church’s interpretation and control is still largely suppressed. It makes the majority of Spaniards very uncomfortable, because to identify as Catholic or Christian means to repress and deny the extraordinary and the ordinary lives of people who followed other practices, principles, and beliefs; it means that spirits, ghosts, and any number of supernatural beings must hide in the dark and remain unacknowledged, or worse, are branded as devils and evil doers.

Visiting Trasmoz, Soportújar or La Lastra, feels a bit rebellious. Yes, perhaps all of these rumors and tales amount to little, but perhaps not. If there is a reality that is still waiting patiently to be discovered, then I will go and see for myself if the spirits have a story to tell, especially if that story is one of repression, rage, and mystery.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

For more information:

https://www.lavanguardia.com/ocio/viajes/20210409/6634525/trasmoz-unico-pueblo-oficialmente-excomulgado-maldito-toda-espana.html

https://www.lasexta.com/viajestic/curioso/lastra-aldea-fantasma-madrid-castilla-leon-que-dice-que-estaba-embrujada_20230512645e2ba6277db70001556ee5.html

https://www.elespanol.com/curiosidades/espana-pueblos/pueblos-cargados-misterio-espana-historias-fantasmas-paranormales/601690846_0.html

Existential Despair and the Wheel of Existence

The mediums that the Society for Psychical Research studied so extensively from 1881 forward paid a price for their gifts. Even a cursory reading of the SPR’s work with mediums reveals health issues and early death as almost an inevitable result of contacting the dead on a daily basis. Mediums tend to have histories of trauma and health issues. The very act of channeling can bring about a debilitation of the spirit. Eusapia Palladino, Eileen Garrett, and even contemporary medium Tyler Henry, all attest to the rigors of mediumship. As Tyler Henry states,

“I hope I live a really long lifetime,” . . . . “I feel old, though, that’s the thing — like on the inside. And readings make me feel older, and because of that, I can’t envision myself as a 70-year-old because I’m already so tired.” https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/life-after-death-tyler-henry-medium-interview-mental-health

Personal experience bears this out. Although I have always hesitated to label myself as a medium, on occasion, I experience trance-like experiences that I call “meditations”, so that I will not be afraid of what comes through. Most recently, this concerned a ‘vision’ while meditating on a wall by the famous Alhambra in Granada. What I ‘saw’ were men in chain mail and helmets slowly walking up the Cuesta del Rey Chico. They had tunics and helmets emblazoned with a red cross that I had not seen before:

The cross above is quite close to what I saw. The ‘voice’ that informs these meditations said “Calatrava” again and again. I was told (I do not know by whom; this voice simply exists and communicates) that it was the 14th century, or perhaps the 1400’s; and, finally, I saw horses drag up a wooden coffin. The men were exhausted.

I started my research. This was not a simple task, uncovering any possible validity to what I experienced. I finally ran across a paragraph in a PDF that confirmed that the Order of Calatrava was asked to intervene by the Catholic Monarchs in the Conquest of La Alhambra in the 1400’s:(https://www.avghcv.com/gallery/historia%20de%20la%20orden%20de%20calatrava.pdf An image search revealed that I had correctly “seen” their vestments and armor, including the red cross. There was personal information in this session that concerned yet another past life of mine at or near La Alhambra, along with the information that I come back again and again to the same place. “Te conocemos”, I heard, “We know you”.

The next morning, I was utterly depressed, drained, and exhausted. I dragged myself out to tea and following my morning routine; yet, I was unable to shake the distinct feeling of despair, almost a sense of dread. I shared this with my husband, who has seen this reaction before: “it takes a lot out of you”. Yes, “it” does, and I suppose by “it”, I mean a connection with something outside of ordinary experience, with something like a cosmic consciousness. But this “something” communicates with me and with a great many others, as well, and might attempt to reach all of us; my sense is that most people block out the encroachment of the Divine.

“If mind exists, (and I believe it to be universal) the shock of separation from the brain must of necessity . . . within a new vessel experience something akin to a dreaming remembrance of things past. … How much is remembered in the new state of consciousness … does the dragon fly remember his form as the chrysalis of yesterday?” (Eileen Garrett)

I wonder if mediums experience that “shock of separation” of mind from the brain, creating a state of consciousness where everything past, present, and future collide and knowledge is suddenly available. Somehow, this abrupt sense that you have left your body to access the hard drive of the Universe leaves you in a state of overwhelm as you return to your animal existence. It’s a reduction, a tamping down, of what you were in those brief moments when the 1400’s were now.

“I conceive of yesterday, today, and tomorrow as a single curve … time loses reality and the past and present and future are present in one instant … ” (Eileen Garrett)

As this is all quite new to me, at least the conceptualization of one’s consciousness as free from matter during trance states, I am processing how best to handle these alternate realities safely and without losing my sanity in the process. I have enough to worry about with people hearing this and labeling me as weird or crazy. When you access the “single curve” of reality that abolishes time, you are in strange territory, indeed. For it’s one thing to theorize, and quite another to experience; all I can hope for is continued resilience and strength to manage the truths as they come up for me, knowing that I am–and we all are–following a path that leads us to an infinity of possibilities that we barely perceive as we drink our coffees and plan our days.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Connected by Loneliness: Traumatic Bonding in Haunted Locations

One of the most terrifying punishments for human beings is isolation from the group, or from a significant other who instills in us a sense of safety and security only to abruptly remove themselves from our lives without explanation. I think of regressive societies casting out women for adultery or “witchcraft”, relegating them to the streets and a life of despair, of “madhouses” and asylums where the suffering were often tortured and abused. In those situations, one’s fear of isolation becomes a matter of life or death; we depend on one another for our survival, and when we are cast out literally or emotionally, materially or spiritually, we believe we will perish. And so, we adapt, conform, “fawn”, and negate our individuality so that the Other will not relegate us to the depths of nothingness. The cycle of acceptance and punishment continues, with the end goal always the same: to wield power and control over someone. This unhealthy relationship we create with individuals, groups, societies, or institutions, or even the so-called “dead” is “traumatic bonding”, defined by Wikipedia as:

“Trauma bonds (also referred to as traumatic bonds) is a term developed by Patrick Carnes to describe emotional bonds with an individual (and sometimes, with a group) that arise from a recurring, cyclical pattern of abuse perpetuated by intermittent reinforcement through rewards and punishments.[1][2][3] The process of forming trauma bonds is referred to as trauma bonding or traumatic bonding. A trauma bond usually involves a victim and a perpetrator in a uni-directional relationship wherein the victim forms an emotional bond with the perpetrator.[4] This can also be conceptualized as a dominated-dominator or an abused-abuser dynamic. Two main factors are involved in the establishment of a trauma bond: a power imbalance and intermittent reinforcement of good and bad treatment, or reward and punishment.[1][4][5] Trauma bonding can occur in the realms of romantic relationships, platonic friendships, parent-child relationships, incestuous relationships, cults, hostage situations, manager vs their direct reports, sex trafficking (especially that of minors), or tours of duty among military personnel.[1]“[6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_bonding

In the realm of the paranormal, much of the reported activity in haunted locations centers on an unhealthy attachment to a place, a way of life, an old routine, past relationships, and cherished objects. The spiritual energy of the deceased continues to attach to what was familiar, especially if what was familiar is imbued with pain, confusion, or a sense of outrage or injustice. This is why the majority of hauntings do not involve “happy” spirits peacefully cohabiting with the current occupants of a building or a home, but rather frightening manifestations of rage and sorrow. Consciousness is bonded traumatically to history and emotions that were never processed nor released when the relationships were current; pain plays out eternally, searching for understanding and release.

When spirits attach to an object, you find “cursed” paintings, jewelry, or dolls, as those items absorb and reflect a tortured relationship to the things that made one feel safe in the world. When spirits feed off the energies of the living, items in the house may move, cupboards fly open, mysterious puddles appear, and all manner of chaotic manifestations torment the living. The poltergeist has formed a trauma bond with the living, looking to express its intense emotions through manipulation of the environment. The repetitive re-enactment of old routines and dramas is trauma playing itself out like a movie that never ends; the physical environment records, amplifies, and plays back the old energies. Intelligent hauntings often seek a traumatic bond with the living; in the worst-case scenario, this is a possession of one’s very personality and soul. In less severe cases, this type of haunting seeks to absorb the attention of the living, creating an obsession with communication at the cost of the living’s vital energies.

I witnessed these traumatic bonds between investigators and spirit phenomena at the old Camarillo State Hospital (now the campus of CSUCI) during the time that it was slowly transitioning from one identity to another. In fact, I fell victim to it. My theory is that those of us with a background of severe trauma were both easy targets and receptive audiences for the restless energies of the State Hospital. Those of us with the most “success” at recording astounding EVP and finding photographic evidence of anomalies were almost always the same ones struggling with psychic pain involving mental health issues, typically major depression and anxiety. The entities or energies at the old Hospital found a resonance with our struggles and emotional chaos. We were, in a sense, patients that had not been formally admitted. We were seeking to understand ourselves through the trauma of others, and when our energy matched theirs, the contact was often astounding. In fact, that contact was the reward for our dogged return to the scene of the crime.

However, what was good for an investigation was often bad for us. We ended up, many of us, dragging the psychic sludge and overpowering depression back home with us. We had insomnia, headaches, exhaustion, and even hallucinations while attempting to fall asleep. Camarillo affected me on a physical, spiritual, and emotional level, and yet it was difficult not to return. In strange ways, we formed relationships with people we could not see; and often, we could not identify what we were perceiving as patients, or staff, or even as people. The conversations that we all heard down dark hallways had an eerie, metallic quality that made them sound like recordings from another dimension. In what sense was that “real”? In fact, Camarillo made investigators question the very notion of reality, of what was a “person”, and what was a feeling. Do you become a collection of feelings and habits after death? Do you replay certain scenes from your life over and over again? What, exactly ARE you after death?

Those were questions we were unable to answer. For me, there was no cohesive personality with whom I interacted. The fundamental question of “what” or “who” we are contacting remains unanswered. More to the point is how we define personal identity in this life or the next: do we know who we are and what we will become? Are we communicating with fragments of consciousness, a dissociated memory track, or an actual personality that remains intact?

There is no doubt that death can be traumatic. The transition creates an intense need to “hold on”, and this explains the bond between a spirit and its old environment. The replay of pain and the fear of punishment certainly contributes to the perceived negative environment, as does the relationship between the traumatized investigator and the confused, overwhelmed spirit. That symbiotic relationship can become dangerous for the living, however, as those kinds of relationships cannot be healthy or progress to a higher level of awareness.

I remember an investigation at Camarillo where our teammate, who had been there countless times, asked if anyone remembered him. The clear voice on the recorder said, “Is that all you want?” Indeed, no, it was not all he wanted, nor any of us. And yet, we did not really know what we wanted. We had proven that something persists of human personality and consciousness, and that “something” was capable of communication via our devices and our emotions. I am even hesitant to say that it was a human personality that spoke to us that day, for that is an assumption.

I think we all wanted a relationship with that place and the people that seemed to still be there. But why? My theory now is that we were engaging in the trauma bond, reinforcing the unhealthy and painful cycle of the ghost trapped in the abandoned building. We were often hurt deeply by our interactions with the spirit world, but we could not stop pursuing those communications and experiences. Perhaps we ourselves felt like ghosts in an abandoned building, lost in this world as they were in theirs.

I realized that I could not help “them”, whoever they were, and they clearly could not help us, since we were not clear on our motivations and attachments. There is no way to evolve and transcend this dynamic without a thorough understanding of our desire for contact with traumatized energies. If we don’t heal ourselves first, then we are as trapped and unhappy as those left behind in the former Camarillo State Hospital, and everywhere else we go seeking darkness.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD