The Presence in the Basement
I have always believed in ghosts.
Our new office in the heart of Fremantle was once a majestic old manor, constructed in the 19th century it stands to date as an architectural monument to times gone by. We moved in in July, and from the minute I stepped into the place I figured there was probably something there. Nothing got to me right away, even the basement in all its creepy glory didn't entirely make me want to cry (of course I refused to go down there ever alone; there seemed no use encouraging anything when the light hardly works and the door can't be opened from the inside). So for the most part despite the creepy basement and the crumbling old manor exterior I decided I rather liked the new place, I'd even been alone in the building before.
Until today.
Sitting at my desk at six o'clock, I decided to keep on for another half hour before heading home. I had a little bit of work left, and figured I could knock it off quickly. I phoned the security company to say I'd be another half hour before engaging the alarm, and settled in to write. Everyone had left already, the last person leaving a full hour earlier, and so I was - not for the first time - totally alone in the building.
Deciding to get rid of my coffee cup sooner rather than later, I took it to the kitchen to rinse out and standing at the sink my hackles rose like a shot. My heart started to pound, my breath became shallow. I couldn't turn around, knowing almost for sure that there was something behind me in the kitchen. I made crappy work of the cup, just needing to get away, and raced back for my desk to try to calm down. But I couldn't - my heartbeat didn't even out, my breathing wouldn't return to normal, and try as I might I couldn't concentrate on the work I had been doing. After all, how hard would it have been for something to follow me from the kitchen?
The sun had started to go down, the feeling intensified until I could no longer stand it. In about sixty seconds I had snapped shut my computer, thrown everything into my bag, pulled the blinds down, engaged the alarm and raced out the door and halfway down the street away from the building.
It took most of the drive home to calm down entirely.
Ever since I can remember I've believed that there is more to death then simply ceasing to exist, and whilst I'm not religious at all, I'd call myself spiritual or a believer.
But the reason I believe in ghosts so passionately is because of the way I feel; I tend to feel things very deeply, whether it's a crush, or taking a mean word too much to heart, or an incredible happiness. Indeed, I am passionate in all ways, good or bad, and I think I can be very empathic. But when it comes to the spirit world being empathic is very risky.
For one thing I'm not cut out for being a mediator or making friends with Casper. I'm no Cole Sear, I don't communicate with the dead or see dead people on a regular basis, but what I do do is feel them.
There have been times when I've been somewhere, usually alone, that the hair on the back of my neck has suddenly begun to rise and my heart has begun to race. I'll be calm and collected, but suddenly I'm heading for a cold sweat and I can't breathe - a panic attack will start to rise in my throat and I need to put distance between me and wherever I was. I may have been there for hours, but surrounded by people, and as night has descended or people have left, it's opened the door for something else to join me.
Other times It's happened immediately; I've tried to walk into an old building, or into a room and I've stopped in the doorway, or at the base of the staircase unable to physically make myself go any further. Sometimes I'll think I'm being silly, laugh at myself and try to shrug it off, tell myself just to go there but every time I'll stop at the same spot and not be able to keep going.
I've seen things before, not regularly, although it isn't that I see things that makes me so nervous. I almost want to see something because it would be a greater proof to myself that I wasn't crazy, that what I am feeling is most definitely real because I know it is. It has happened too many times, in too many places, for it to be just in my head.
I can't make you believe me, or make you understand - some people just don't believe in spirits and never will - but what I can say is this: I firmly believe that there is more to the world than most people see, seeing is not always believing, and just because you can't see, touch or hear something doesn't always mean that it isn't there.
I've watched a lot of shows on the topic from Ghost Hunters to Ghost Adventures, the Dead Files to Scary But True, and I've done a lot of research as well, but no amount of information can really prepare you for the reality. In fact, with so many conflicting theses and treatises circulating the globe, it's difficult to even know what to look for or what you're looking at. Scientific attempts to explain the after life have given us the impression of electro-magnetic forces causing cold spots, dramatic changes in temperature, or remnant signatures of human activity leaving an impression on a place the way a fingerprint would. Or, in a different context, the supernatural presence of spirits may be caused by unfinished business or confusion; victims of murder or similar violent crimes may wander looking for understanding, resolution or revenge.
Even the types of spirits vary depending on who you read or what you watch: remnant signatures may simply play out a scene, reliving the same moment over and over again like that of the ill-fated Catherine Howard. There are the poltergeists, often created by a strong emotion that affects the real world, or mischievous spirits like Peeves. And, of course, there are the sentient ghosts who range greatly in terms of what it is they want, how they act and to what extent they can manipulate electro-magnetic or kinetic or whatever kind of energy to cause trouble for the living.
Even, sometimes, demons or other such negative entities that may not have ever actually been alive. Shadow men, or spectres.
People have tried to capture them on film or record EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), communicate using Ouija boards, and summon them using psychics, mediums or seances. Technology is evolving all the time to accommodate for the ghost hunters that make it their mission to prove the existence of spirits to the world once and for all, debunking all they can along the way. Zak Bagans and Nick Groff, for example, never give up on their quest to capture evidence. Or even Ed and Lorraine Warren, who dedicated their lives to helping people haunted by the things that can't always be explained or defined. Even I and those with me at the time have felt something, seen the corresponding photography that couldn't be justified as something normal - a photo I still have that mirrors the feeling of terrified unease I had Hampton Court when the sun began to set.
I am not alone in believing. You don't have to agree, but it doesn't make me crazy or naive or stupid or imagining things. There may well be more out there than we know, it's a big world. There's still so much we don't understand.
I can feel it.
Our new office in the heart of Fremantle was once a majestic old manor, constructed in the 19th century it stands to date as an architectural monument to times gone by. We moved in in July, and from the minute I stepped into the place I figured there was probably something there. Nothing got to me right away, even the basement in all its creepy glory didn't entirely make me want to cry (of course I refused to go down there ever alone; there seemed no use encouraging anything when the light hardly works and the door can't be opened from the inside). So for the most part despite the creepy basement and the crumbling old manor exterior I decided I rather liked the new place, I'd even been alone in the building before.
Until today.
Sitting at my desk at six o'clock, I decided to keep on for another half hour before heading home. I had a little bit of work left, and figured I could knock it off quickly. I phoned the security company to say I'd be another half hour before engaging the alarm, and settled in to write. Everyone had left already, the last person leaving a full hour earlier, and so I was - not for the first time - totally alone in the building.
Deciding to get rid of my coffee cup sooner rather than later, I took it to the kitchen to rinse out and standing at the sink my hackles rose like a shot. My heart started to pound, my breath became shallow. I couldn't turn around, knowing almost for sure that there was something behind me in the kitchen. I made crappy work of the cup, just needing to get away, and raced back for my desk to try to calm down. But I couldn't - my heartbeat didn't even out, my breathing wouldn't return to normal, and try as I might I couldn't concentrate on the work I had been doing. After all, how hard would it have been for something to follow me from the kitchen?
The sun had started to go down, the feeling intensified until I could no longer stand it. In about sixty seconds I had snapped shut my computer, thrown everything into my bag, pulled the blinds down, engaged the alarm and raced out the door and halfway down the street away from the building.
It took most of the drive home to calm down entirely.
Ever since I can remember I've believed that there is more to death then simply ceasing to exist, and whilst I'm not religious at all, I'd call myself spiritual or a believer.
But the reason I believe in ghosts so passionately is because of the way I feel; I tend to feel things very deeply, whether it's a crush, or taking a mean word too much to heart, or an incredible happiness. Indeed, I am passionate in all ways, good or bad, and I think I can be very empathic. But when it comes to the spirit world being empathic is very risky.
For one thing I'm not cut out for being a mediator or making friends with Casper. I'm no Cole Sear, I don't communicate with the dead or see dead people on a regular basis, but what I do do is feel them.
There have been times when I've been somewhere, usually alone, that the hair on the back of my neck has suddenly begun to rise and my heart has begun to race. I'll be calm and collected, but suddenly I'm heading for a cold sweat and I can't breathe - a panic attack will start to rise in my throat and I need to put distance between me and wherever I was. I may have been there for hours, but surrounded by people, and as night has descended or people have left, it's opened the door for something else to join me.
Other times It's happened immediately; I've tried to walk into an old building, or into a room and I've stopped in the doorway, or at the base of the staircase unable to physically make myself go any further. Sometimes I'll think I'm being silly, laugh at myself and try to shrug it off, tell myself just to go there but every time I'll stop at the same spot and not be able to keep going.
I've seen things before, not regularly, although it isn't that I see things that makes me so nervous. I almost want to see something because it would be a greater proof to myself that I wasn't crazy, that what I am feeling is most definitely real because I know it is. It has happened too many times, in too many places, for it to be just in my head.
I can't make you believe me, or make you understand - some people just don't believe in spirits and never will - but what I can say is this: I firmly believe that there is more to the world than most people see, seeing is not always believing, and just because you can't see, touch or hear something doesn't always mean that it isn't there.
I've watched a lot of shows on the topic from Ghost Hunters to Ghost Adventures, the Dead Files to Scary But True, and I've done a lot of research as well, but no amount of information can really prepare you for the reality. In fact, with so many conflicting theses and treatises circulating the globe, it's difficult to even know what to look for or what you're looking at. Scientific attempts to explain the after life have given us the impression of electro-magnetic forces causing cold spots, dramatic changes in temperature, or remnant signatures of human activity leaving an impression on a place the way a fingerprint would. Or, in a different context, the supernatural presence of spirits may be caused by unfinished business or confusion; victims of murder or similar violent crimes may wander looking for understanding, resolution or revenge.
Even the types of spirits vary depending on who you read or what you watch: remnant signatures may simply play out a scene, reliving the same moment over and over again like that of the ill-fated Catherine Howard. There are the poltergeists, often created by a strong emotion that affects the real world, or mischievous spirits like Peeves. And, of course, there are the sentient ghosts who range greatly in terms of what it is they want, how they act and to what extent they can manipulate electro-magnetic or kinetic or whatever kind of energy to cause trouble for the living.
Even, sometimes, demons or other such negative entities that may not have ever actually been alive. Shadow men, or spectres.
People have tried to capture them on film or record EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), communicate using Ouija boards, and summon them using psychics, mediums or seances. Technology is evolving all the time to accommodate for the ghost hunters that make it their mission to prove the existence of spirits to the world once and for all, debunking all they can along the way. Zak Bagans and Nick Groff, for example, never give up on their quest to capture evidence. Or even Ed and Lorraine Warren, who dedicated their lives to helping people haunted by the things that can't always be explained or defined. Even I and those with me at the time have felt something, seen the corresponding photography that couldn't be justified as something normal - a photo I still have that mirrors the feeling of terrified unease I had Hampton Court when the sun began to set.
I am not alone in believing. You don't have to agree, but it doesn't make me crazy or naive or stupid or imagining things. There may well be more out there than we know, it's a big world. There's still so much we don't understand.
I can feel it.
Sam xox
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