The Classifications of Hauntings 101

Hauntings, whether you are a paranormal investigator or a believer even a skeptic you have heard of an alleged haunt. Often in this field that term is thrown around loosely and a lot of the time misunderstood. In paranormal investigations it is necessary to know and understand everything you try to explain to your client the different classifications that exist, simply knowing a word isn't enough you must be able to break that word down to its roots.

A haunting (as taken from the dictionary) is the act of a person or thing that haunts; a visitation. So now lets look at the definition of the term to haunt, to haunt is (as taken from the dictionary) to inhabit, visit, or appear to in the form of a ghost or other supernatural being. As we could clearly see from the definitions listed above a “Haunting” is a ghost or supernatural being that visits, appears or inhabits a location.

Of course there are non-paranormal definitions to haunting and haunt but this site is about the paranormal so we will only look at the those definitions. Now that we have a better understanding as to what hauntings are we can look at some theories as to why these paranormal visitations occur. It is essential that we know these theories before we can begin to classify these spiritual inhabitants.

There are many theoretical “causes” to hauntings that are believed by many investigators worldwide. While these theories seem to have basis and plausibility the truth is that it is simply unknown what truly causes spiritual visitations. Let's look at three popular theories briefly for a better understanding.

One theory is, and is the most widely believed, that the “ghost” has unfinished business with this world and that business has anchored the spirit to a semi-conscious life. This theory while commendable in its assumptions cannot be proved, that is why it is still considered theory. Though this is probably the more accurate of the theories it does weigh in against people's religious beliefs, however most people religious or not accept this theory as fact

The second theory I want to show you is that the spirit of a dearly departed loved one will return to earth as a guardian spirit sent by God. Truly a comforting theory to say the least and the second most popular belief. This theory however doesn't answer the fact that these spirits sometimes will play pranks or interact with you or even cry for help themselves.

The third and final theory that I will be explaining is, these are demons and angels that pose as our loved ones to corrupt us or inspire us. Interesting to say the least but yet not completely perfect. Perhaps all three may combine into an ultimate answer or maybe it is just left to the unknown, the answer to what causes a Haunting may never be truly answered.

What we do know is that natural causes explain over 80% of all claims. lets look at the break down:

Haunting Pie Chart

As you can see the break down (as detailed above) the twenty percent remaining was broken down further into four sub-categories of hauntings. These sub-categories are the meat and potatoes of the paranormal field and knowing how to explain them can boost your credibility exponentially. I will delve deeper into each category individually in later pages but for now I will briefly touch on them and explain how to determine them from the claims.

The four sub-categories of activity are:

Residual

Intelligent

Poltergeist

Non-Human

Residual activity is your basic most common haunt. The majority of actual activity encountered will be residual activity. This makes that twenty percent on the chart above even smaller for the other classifications. This type of haunting is non-interactive and therefore going to present less evidence than the others.

Intelligent activity is the second most common form of haunting. Hypothetically if nine times out of ten the activity is residual then the tenth time it would be intelligent. Logically you will see that while this is still more common than the remaining two classifications it is still somewhat of a rarity.

Poltergeist activity is not common at all as it only comprises a small percent of actual activity. When compared to residual and intelligent hauntings this hides in their shadow. Theoretically certain conditions have to be in place to experience a poltergeist and almost ten times out of ten those conditions are not met.

Last but not least is the classification you all have been “eye balling” since the chart. Non-Human activity is by far the most rare activity out of all the afore mentioned haunts. This classification is comprised of three separate entities:

Angels

Demons

Deities

These non-human class spirits are extremely rare and absolutely impossible to scientifically prove. These spirits are solely based on religious beliefs and as such are sensitive subjects when considering them. As you could already imagine you have a better chance at hitting the lotto then encountering one of these three entities, however most investigators have some religious beliefs and there have been reports of malicious evil spirits and vise versa very polite and good spirits.

Take these classes into your head as knowledge but remember that these classifications are almost never used. These are here to educate you in the possibility of non-human spirits not to give you another quick diagnosis of spiritual activity. In later pages I will delve deeper into these classifications individually to further explain these classifications od hauntings.

Related Articles:

Residual Hauntings

Intelligent Hauntings

Poltergeist Hauntings

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