The Apocalypse

My husband and I returned from Spain on December 11th, 2024. My parents caught Covid. At 85, that remains a frightening diagnosis. I watched them carefully for signs of low blood oxygen or dramatic fatigue. During that time, the wildfires in Los Angeles started. I had thought that there was some hyperbole attached to the warnings, but I was wrong. Our house in the middle of nowhere lost all power for many days, and even when the power was restored, it would flicker off an on, rendering our internet useless and working from home impossible.

We were in the middle of moving from our tiny condo to a less tiny rental apartment, and ash fell around us as we lugged boxes from one place to the next. I had strange, physical ailments that I am still recovering from–headaches, respiratory issues, and eyes that won’t focus correctly.

The day before Trump’s inauguration, in the middle of packing and running from fires, a member of our family had a complete breakdown and was admitted to the hospital. On Inauguration Day, he was admitted to a “behavioral care facility”, or what used to be called a psych ward. As he ruefully put it, “they should turn off the news. That’s what landed many of us here in the first place”. And he does not exaggerate, really, for he and his fellow patients are in the target demographic for Trump’s hatred and lack of compassion: gay, trans, and non-binary kids who now feel utterly betrayed and unsafe.

While we were back and forth to the facility where he stayed for a week, we were packing and navigating fires and poor air quality still; and then, on a Sunday, I received frantic messages from my husband. He had fallen off a ladder while packing up his workshop, smashing the back of his head and lower spine. When I saw him, I almost passed out. He was covered in blood and unsteady on his feet. I drove like a maniac to Urgent Care, and they sent him to the emergency room, which, of course, is where I should have gone in the first place. I was out of my mind with fear and panic.

We moved to the rental apartment, the fires were extinguished, the family member went to an outpatient program, but the fallout continues. The damage from the fires is hard to describe; entire neighborhoods disappeared. The damage to my family member is ongoing, as well, as he calls almost every day in a state of anxiety and despair. My husband’s broken scalp is recovering, and the fact that his concussion was fairly mild is a miracle. And for that, I am grateful.

The damage that Trump seeks to inflict on the Constitution, on democracy, and the whole concept of federal government, is just starting. His fans are seeing his actions as exciting and bold, without really understanding the consequences. This is not about politics anymore, but about remaking the United States into an oligarchy, an authoritarian state. That seems to be just fine for some; but for most of us, that is absolutely terrifying. Our country, the one we have known since we were children, is under attack. The climate is changing so fast that we barely have time to recover from one disaster before another one hits.

When you combine the small-scale tragedies with the large-scale ones, mental health declines across the board, leading to a paralysis that the current Administration is counting on in order to crush the opposition and drain us of any fight. It seems to be working, so far.

The Apocalypse is not a big, showy battle between warring forces; turns out, it is the gradual loss of willpower and the sense of defeat that turns into depression, resulting in good people giving up and handing power to the demagogues and grandiose narcissists. It’s family in the psych ward, unable to connect to a reality that is far too painful to manage; it’s accidents and fires and floods, sapping our vitality and courage. It happens when there is nothing left to do but try to survive.

Spirituality, a sense that there is something far larger than this, might be the only way to survive. But right now, in spite of the purpose of this blog to discuss and analyze all things non-material and mysterious, all I can feel is darkness and limitation.

Comments would be most appreciated.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

They Want Us Stupid and Addicted

This isn’t about politics. In fact, I think perhaps politics might be the greatest distraction ever invented. The “culture czars” tell us how to spend our time, what we should care about, and treat us as stupid children, because we have become exactly that by consuming the products that they are selling.

Social media and “news” have become the single, greatest evil in my life. I don’t write because I am scrolling; I don’t engage with people or pursue my passions because I am worrying about my skin, my turkey neck, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, whether or not my wardrobe matches, fires around my house, air quality, face yoga, the climate tipping point having been reached and surpassed, the best cat bed (and I don’t have a cat), the end of democracy, and the “what kind of witch are you” quiz. Everything is presented in quick sound and vision bites that make everything seem equal in importance. There is no sense of urgency or outrage about Gaza because right after gazing at the dead bodies of children, we see ads for workouts and shoes, and because social media is designed to distract and addict us, we forget the horrors of war. AND THAT IS PRECISELY THE POINT.

What better way to keep a population apathetic, unengaged, and uninterested than creating an addiction to quick information, shiny objects, and scrolling, repeating, memes? It rewires your brain fairly quickly, to the point that you can no longer read novels (the attention span is gone) or anything longer than one paragraph.

Worse than that, social media and infotainment create a low-level anxiety that feeds the addiction. You keep scrolling to soothe yourself, but the effect is to amp up that anxiety to the point of anguish for people already susceptible. Over the long haul, depression emerges, as nothing about the smart phone is truly engaging on a human level. Our brains are not designed for this onslaught of distracting images and sounds contained in a tiny screen, and we suffer for it.

This is the express intention of the social media/tech billionaires. This is how they maintain and grow their empires, gain and abuse their power, and control our attention spans. In my life, the effect has been catastrophic for my mental health, my creativity, my happiness, and most of all, for my spiritual life.

This is ironic, of course, as I need to depend to a certain extent on social media to advertise a post; however, I don’t write much because I am glued to the horror stories online, and terrified of my own aging and mortality, because the messages I receive daily are: be afraid, very afraid, for the world is in a death spiral, and that death spiral includes you. And, if you do nothing to save the children of Gaza, you are not only apathetic, you are evil. What ensues is guilt over the effects of war and a total inability to act, due to that guilt and the continual distraction of social media that tells me, daily, that I am fading away and dying, and the solution is face cream that costs $250 a month. I learn that I am a bad person for not saving the world, and that I must spend a great deal of money if I don’t want to age and die.

Of course, death is everywhere, all of the time. It dances along with life, zig-zagging from one side to the other. Another odd effect of social media is the total denial of death while at the same time, stoking an extreme fear of it. S0cial media exists to maintain a constant, low-level hum of fear and anxiety, and that has the effect of destroying one’s spiritual life, distancing one from a sense of community, and draining all the joy and excitement of the world outside of the screen. I have found myself too distracted to meditate, to pray, or to write. I careen from one disaster to the next, not even sure what is true, or real, or something that I can do anything about. If it’s not fear and loathing, it’s guilt; what a perfect combination for depression and inaction. Our crippled mental health, however, is exactly what maintains the billions of the trio above and their godfather, Trump, among, of course, many others regardless of their politics.

So now, to save myself, I must disconnect from all of it. I will advertise this post, because for anyone to read what I am saying, I have to use the tools of the oppressor. Outside of that, I am forcing myself to break the addiction, the trance, the stupor, of social media and the ridiculous pretense that it is useful for engaging with world conflicts and tragedies.

I have few friends, am losing my ability to focus, to create, and to engage, exactly what the elite social media gurus wanted to happen all along. But that stops today, right now. I refuse to sacrifice myself and the years I have left to an addiction that paralyzes me. This is about the human spirit, after all–the greatest victory for those who made their billions from social media and news is to know that they have bought our souls.

The purpose of this site and soulbank.org was to explore and illuminate the life of the spirit. I will return to that mission and break the addiction, if not for others, than at least for myself.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Is the Paranormal a New Religion? Peter Laws and the Spiritual Quest Culture

Peter Laws

I rarely ask anyone to watch a video, but if you are interested in the paranormal, if you consider yourself to be on a spiritual quest, if you are neither religious nor atheistic but consider yourself spiritually inclined or fascinated by the supernatural, then please, watch the video below. In it, Peter Laws talks about the “in betweeners” who do not attend formal church services, but also do not consider themselves “disbelievers”. They are open minded, curious about what lies “out there”, and seek evidence for their beliefs instead of relying on faith. Ironically, states Laws, this is the group of people most likely to fear death. Committed believers of all faiths do not worry about death, as their faith in the afterlife is strong; committed atheists do not attach meaning or transcendence to the biological processes of birth and death, and are therefore unconcerned about moral and/or ethical belief systems that require codes of conduct and adherence to rites and rituals. It is the vast numbers of people who don’t identify with either extreme who fear death the most, and they are the ones most likely to pursue interests in the paranormal and other spiritual topics.

Peter Laws argues for a more inclusive community that both embraces traditional religious systems and beliefs while simultaneously opening up to the many people who are looking for answers that can be verified, or at the least, for which evidence can be found. The ghost hunt might be the new Mass, but that idea for most Christians is repellent and ‘sinful’. That disdain that organized religion proclaims for anything paranormal is reflected in the paranormal communities’ distrust of anything religious. For them, God is a ridiculous fantasy, but fairies and Slender Man are quite real (Laws).

I encourage all of you reading this blog to please watch all of Law’s video, as I truly believe you will find it fascinating; and also, more importantly, because this topic is truly important for all spiritual seekers, regardless of how we find transcendence. I will be writing much more about Law’s video in future posts.

Abandoned: Why We’re Haunted by Ruins

An abandoned ‘carmen’ in Granada, Spain

Around the Albaicyn in Granada, about 20% of the homes are abandoned. Some are waiting for restoration, for a future, while others are disintegrating beyond all repair. As I walk through these tiny, winding streets, I seek out the desolate places, the homes that have withered for decades under the harsh sun of the Andalusian summers, and the punishing cold that descends upon Granada every winter. These homes are lost to time, their windows like dead eyes staring into the nothingness.

La maleta is an abandoned private residence that was also a sanitorium. It is famously haunted and although only a two-minute walk from our home in Granada, is impossible to enter

There are property disputes that are never resolved here. The parents pass away, and the children cannot agree on the fate of the house. The homes are held hostage to angry siblings who, instead of working together to either save or sell the property, decide to let their childhood home succumb to the elements.

A “palacete” that was once home to aristocrats is now home to a large cat colony.

Some homes have caught fire or suffered some irreparable damage, and there is no assistance coming from the local government. There are cat colonies that wander through these places, staring out from the dark and dusty rooms, too wild to come close and too hungry to resist a plate of food. Other buildings are illegally occupied by “okupas”, who, while they have no legal right to live there, are almost impossible to dislodge due to local rules that grant them certain rights. Still others are a magnet for the homeless, the addicted, and the desperate. I stay away from places that have human occupants, but the vast majority do not. In those cases, the most I can do is take photographs, since there are too many neighbors close by who will ask you what your business is peeking into doorways and windows. Trespassing, even when a place has been abandoned since the 19th century, is very much frowned upon here. Ghost hunting in such a Catholic country as Spain not only is a bizarre activity, but directly contrary to the beliefs of the Church.

“Casa del miedo”, Granada

I am drawn to the beauty of these places, to the way they gracefully disintegrate and retain their former elegance if only in the memories they still embody. These homes are more than buildings; they are grave markers, reminders of a time long past, and the guardians of their former occupants’ lives.

Even buildings that are not abandoned in Granada feel haunted. There is something about the history of the entire area that repeats itself every time you walk through the streets. The Romans built a road through the Bajo Albaycin, and after that, the Arabs and Mozarabs added aljibes, or wells, storage areas for grain, more streets, places to barter, spice stores, baths, and tea shops. The Catholic Monarchs claimed it all in 1492, sending the Arabic princes, dignitaries, soldiers, and families into the surrounding hills and towns, where inevitably, they were slaughtered or forced to convert to Christianity.

A newly abandoned home in Armilla
Iglesia de San Pedro y San Pablo, Granada

Granada is a haunted city. There are so many layers of history, of lives lost in battle, of anarchists and communists and protesters shot up near my neighborhood at the end of the Spanish Civil War; the Inquisition marched heretics and enemies of the faith around the Albaycin in tunics and pointed hats before torturing them to death in the name of the sanctity of Catholic doctrine. And more recently, there are the ghosts of someone’s elderly parents who died in their homes or left to live in the “residencia” while their children fought among themselves regarding the fate of the family home, or simply, there were unresolved legal issues that left the apartamento or the carmen in a state of eternal, legal limbo. Or there was no money for needed repairs and upgrading, and the family simply had to leave.

Abandoned house in the “Realejo”, a neighborhood in Granada

And while the Ayuntamiento (City Hall) wrings its hands about the number of empty and decaying buildings in the city, the ghosts of the past settle in and peer out the dark windows. There is no rush to leave, no need to move on, and nobody to send them away. Granada holds them all, memories and emotions long lost, and all the ghosts of history–recent and ancient–continue their silent vigil.

Time, Ghosts, and the Haunting of Corriganville

Corriganville Ranch/Park is hidden in the east hills around Simi Valley, in a gulley between mountain ranges. It was a movie ranch, a theme park, and finally a regional park. The opening of Disneyland in 1955 killed off the theme park, and fires, distance from Los Angeles, and complicated land negotiation deals prevented any further development or recreations of what it once was. See: https://obscurehollywood.net/corriganville.html for more information.

Corriganville currently adds something else to the history of the area, and that is a reputation for strange apparitions and a feeling that one is under observation from the boulders and outcroppings of enormous rock formations. The area was home to the Chumash tribes long before Hollywood involved itself with Western theme parks or movie sets.

Chumash art near Simi Valley
Part of a set built for underground filming at Corriganville Regional Park

There are so many layers to the history of Corriganville and the surrounding areas–known for cults, plane crashes, Western movie sets, the Manson family caves, the hanging tree, the oldest stagecoach road in California, and so much more–that time seems to warp and overlap when walking around the enormous sandstone boulders and meandering down the many trails, some hundreds of years old.

When I received the following email from Megan, I asked her if I could answer her on this blog, since what she asks about is something I believe we have all had experience with: time slips and alternate dimensions of realities invading this one:

Hi Kirsten,

I’m reaching out to you because I have a question for you about the paranormal events in this area. I’ve spent a LOT of time walking, hiking and running through the trails and hills of Corriganville and the Santa Susana mountains. I live about a minute walking distance to Smith Rd. along the Allied Studios.

Yesterday, I went out at 5:30pm for a hike and run. As I was cutting through that corner dirt lot and at the edge of the dirt and where it spills off into the road, I saw a tall very slender man, very tan looking. White hair, longish, white shirt (like a men’s undershirt – crew neck) and short shorts colored red and some white and maybe green. it was a half circle red pattern (remember Dolphins shorts from the 80’s). I watch him cross over the road from the homes to the tree-lined fence. I am watching him the entire time for safety reasons and I was planning to stay on the opposing side of the road. as he goes in between the trees, I don’t hear crunch noises of the leaves and bark. Then he disappears. Completely dissipates into nothing. I inspected the fence and the trees and there was no way he could hide or get through anywhere else.

I was so shaken about it that I turned around and went back to my neighborhood on Katherine and finished my exercise there. I went back this morning before work to inspect again and I’m stumped.

I’m wondering, are you familiar with any ghostly figures that may resemble this man or thing I saw? I’m trying to find answers and I am completely shaken by it still. I’d like to hear your opinion on what this may have been. I know Corriganville is known for activity, but I’m curious who or why this spirit thing was there.

Thanks

Megan

What I have experienced personally at Corriganville is more along the lines of occult activity, evidence of rituals or ceremonies, and a strong sense of indigenous presences from the rock outcroppings. And, I suppose I should be rigorously honest here, I have felt “nature spirits”, along the lines of small creatures that seems to be connected to certain oak trees. It hurts me to admit that, since my academic background and skeptical nature make such statements anathema to serious investigation, but to hide the fact that I saw and felt presences around those trees seems dishonest. The sensation was one of constant surveillance and curiosity; and the certainty that I was being followed by someone, only to turn around quickly and see nothing.

I also feel the layers of history and time overlapping there. As I have written about extensively in this blog and on the sister site, soulbank.org, time as we experience it is a biological phenomenon and not an independent, existing, quality of reality. All events in what we call “past” and “future”, co-exist along with a possibly non-existent experience we call the present (see: https://iai.tv/articles/ethics-death-and-the-block-universe-nikk-effingham-auid-2461). What that means, simplified, is that everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen, is mapped out in space, but not time; it’s ALL occurring NOW. We don’t have access to the point in space where we had dinner with our grandparents that summer in 1977, nor can our conscious experience live the events of our 76th year where there was a surprise party on the Queen Mary, but all those events are “out there” in the Block Universe. They are real. We simply cannot perceive them, because our brains have been designed to interpret reality as successive events that “happen” and then fade away. We create chronology, as we could not function as biological beings if we could experience everything, everywhere, happening right now. Our brains organize, erase, remember, create, and narrate our lives in what appears to be a certain order.

However . . . there are moments when the brain goes offline, or there is a change in consciousness for whatever reason, and our finely-tuned, story-making machines relax just enough to allow one of those events from what we call the “past” to slip past our guard gates into our conscious reality. Hence, we see a jogger from the 1970s or 1980s who used to make that run on a regular basis, and he sees us, wondering where we came from. He won’t remember ever seeing us, and we don’t remember ever seeing him, as he belongs to one layer of reality and we belong to another. The brain mechanisms that prevent us from witnessing something that doesn’t belong in our point in space either fail or shut down momentarily, and we are allowed to see an event from another perspective in the Block Universe.

This, I believe, is a partial explanation for ghosts. “Ghosts” might simply be people inhabiting another dimension of spacetime that slip through the guard gates of consciousness. I think we see them all the time without realizing it, because these layers of reality are more porous than we think. How do we know that everyone we see belongs to our current reality?

That would be my explanation for the runner in the park who vanished. He slipped into our present moment from what we call the past, which is just as “present” as what we are experiencing right now. The person who saw him could have been a vision of the future for him; but both realities are equally valid–they are on the same ontological footing, so to speak, one not privileged over the other; we are simply used to thinking that what we perceive is the Ultimate Reality of Right Now, when in reality, it’s the partial point in space of one layer of the Block Universe that our brains have turned into the only possible reality. Sorry, brains. We are no more “real” to the jogger from 1980 than he is to us.

I also found this video on Corriganville and the paranormal happenings around the park:

There are many differing perspectives on the “paranormal”, but I think it’s a good idea to consider that what we call paranormal is simply the superposition of different points in space, creating a multilayered reality where then is now, now is then, and what will be has already happened. You died in the Block Universe already; you just haven’t experienced it yet. This view of reality allows for the weirdness of Corriganville, but perhaps does not explain nature spirits, aliens, and other entities that would not classify as human. For that, I need another blog post and more energy!

Thank you to Megan for allowing me to answer her questions, at least in part. Although, it occurs to me that I did NOT answer her original question, which was about the identity of this man and if anyone else has seen him. So, I open up this post for comments on his possible identity, if anyone else has run across him (pun intended).

Thank you for reading.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Bullies, Attachments, Devils and Sociopaths: Is Protection Possible?

Let’s imagine a purely hypothetical situation: you have a bully at work. He’s been after you for years and years. When you threaten his power, he reminds you in many ways that he is a man capable of subduing you. He places his hand on your shoulder when he wants to get a point across or change your mind about something. He makes disparaging remarks regarding your professionalism, your competence, your sanity, and your work ethic. He always makes sure that you are alone with him and never answers your emails, because he knows better than to leave a digital paper trail or involve witnesses. When he makes comments about your appearance or stands too close to you, you don’t dare ask him to back off; the last time you did that, he retaliated by ignoring your requests, belittling you in front of coworkers, and increasing his attacks on your character.

Imagine that you dared run against him for an important position; you notice that you are losing friends, that people who used to chat with you avoid you. Eventually, a kindly colleague informs you that you have been painted as a lunatic (paranormal investigator becomes psychotic unhinged witch; an interest in the metaphysical means that you need to be institutionalized) and an incompetent fool. The road back from this ugly slander is a very long one, indeed; you must endure years of isolation as a result of these attacks, and eventually, other colleagues (all women) step forward into the privacy of your office with their own stories of harassment. Vulnerable people in the organization tell you about their own abuse, some of it criminal. Let’s say you make the mistake of reporting this to your superiors and it gets all the way to the Human Resources department.

Imagine that the result of you doing the “right thing” is that your bully gets a slap on the wrist and decides to REALLY bring you down. He takes over projects that belonged to you; he leaves you out of important meetings; he schedules you for conferences you cannot attend–he knows this, because you wrote to him about it multiple times, but he never answers your emails–and when you don’t show up for something you told him you could not attend, he makes notes that you “refused” to work on a required project, or seminar, or whatever that important thing might be. He piles up demerits against you, and you have no idea what is happening because he never tells you anything. He never responds to your entreaties for information. You don’t know what is happening, ever, because he has cut you out of his loop and is carefully overseeing your downfall via machinations that you couldn’t have imagined.

Imagine that karma catches up to your demon. He attacks the wrong person. He is discovered stealing a project from you. His evil plans crumble as one by one, people start to see through the superficial charm to the relentless narcissism that lies beneath. So, let’s say that your bully has to go away for awhile, and someone else steps up to run your department. Joy! Relief! Problem solved.

But not for long. Because like all attachments, all demonic entities. he returns. Not riding the coattails of victory, but because nobody wishes to run against him for a position with some power. And just like that, he is back. People scatter like rats on a sinking ship. Some head into Administration to escape his department; others quit outright; still others hunker down and get ready for the coming storm. And there are those who find alternate employment. Some decide that the only way to avoid another bruising and punishing round with this minor devil is to perform their work remotely.

Now, imagine that you have opted for that last option in order to save your soul from torment. You write the emails to the right people, you consult lawyers, you state your case, and you even beg for mercy. And the deafening silence engulfs you like a wave of futility and pointlessness. People just want you to go away; they don’t want to deal with this situation or even think about it. When you turn to the Department of Last Resort, you are told, finally, to ask for disability status and request an accommodation. For that, you need a medical professional to attest to the fact that you cannot currently perform your job due to a disability that could be either physical or mental.

In other words, in order to be protected from this demon, this pathological entity, you must say that you yourself are the sick one, not him; not it. You have cracked and broken and can no longer perform your job in person due to YOUR PERCEIVED INABILITY, your deficiency, and your “issue” that you simply cannot manage. It has nothing to do with the fact that you have been tormented for years by a bully; no, it’s turned into YOUR problem that you need assistance in managing. Just like the person who can’t lift more than ten pounds, or the person who can’t stand for too long, you are unable to perform your work duties because you are limited in some fundamental way that requires, for example, remote work.

Imagine that people have asked you to file a formal grievance and start a long process of dragging your bully into meetings where he will be confronted with his execrable behavior, his macho posturing, and his gender-specific power plays. Imagine that you spend the next several nights unable to sleep, drenched in panic, struggling with migraines, bleeding hands from self-inflicted wounds, stomach pain so intense that you can’t get off the floor, and a creeping depression that threatens to keep you trapped in bed. This demon didn’t keep a paper trail; he never responded to emails or requests for this very reason: there is no hard evidence against him when nobody else dares to come forward. His confrontations were in private; his accusations were never documented. His power plays and manipulations were just on the razor edge of permissible, barely allowed, not recommended, frowned upon, yet not strictly “grievable”. He knew the ins and outs of the company policies so well that he could quote chapter and verse of all the employee handbooks, so he also knew how to subvert all the weaknesses in our contracts. He learned how to retaliate without anyone being able to prove it.

When he finally got caught, he learned how to up his protection game, how to never allow it to happen again.

When you report someone like him, he learns from the experience. He learns more about your weaknesses, your fears, your deepest anxieties, and he takes note. He figures out how to become even more difficult to pin down, he ups his defenses, and he makes sure that no matter what, it will boil down to “he said, she said”, and he will win. In the end, that’s all he cares about. The devil, the bully, the attachment, the lower-level demon, the narcissist, the sociopath, they want to hurt you because hurting you is fuel for their psyche; it feeds them to see you in pain, to witness your desperation, your fear, your puny desires that justice be served.

Maybe in the end, in some cosmic sense, justice will be served. And how I wish that I could be the superhero of this story, the one who revealed the banal evil that exists in all institutions, in all places humans gather for whatever purpose. But sometimes, when you tangle with a devil, a bully, a very bad man, you lose.

And then you file for disability and admit that, in the end, you were bested, beaten down, and defeated. And all you can do is wake up screaming and and carry your diagnosis into that dark night, knowing that your accommodation is a far cry from justice, but it was the best you could do to save your soul.

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

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