I read a recent post on a forum of a person who writes they hear knocking and being touched by something unseen. They write they are scared to the level of being terrified. I wonder what there is to be terrified of?
If someone knocks on a wall from the next room is that scary? If they touch your leg and you did not seen them is that scary? If there is really something close to him (as he thinks there is) he can not see, is that a good reason to be scared?
The majority thought of what is happening to him is collectively it is something bad. He hears some noise he can not find the source of. He feels something touching him he can not see. He sometimes feels a presence next to him that he can not see or touch, but it does not feel normal. He knows it must be something out to harm him. All the replies he received to his post were about various ways to either protect himself, or make it stop.
He is scared because this is something foreign to him. Why he would remain scared is conditioning he learned growing up. What we as humans usually do that other large animals do not is we rarely transfer out of our fear state soon enough.
If you have a pet, or know someone who does, pay attention to what the pet does in a new situation where the pet is initially scared. When something happens that scares your pet, they react with fear as a healthy normal response.
After a few seconds if nothing hurtful happens, curiosity takes over and the pet becomes more interested in what is happening. It calms its fear because it understands fear is no longer an appropriate response.
The pet becomes curious as it tries to understand the new situation. What is in it for the pet, is there food, or is it something to play with? We humans on the other hand, stay stuck in a fear state knowing it must be something bad.
 We allow ourselves to remain afraid even though nothing happens to be afraid of. Fear is a healthy emotion and has contributed to our being alive, however it is an emotion we overuse and abuse.
Unlike a normal animal, the poster won’t let go of his fear. He is more comfortable remaining in a state of heightened fear, than embracing the possibility of having nothing to fear.
One of our former Presidents in his Inaugural Address repeated an old quote, “[The] Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself“. Fear leads to inaction. Inaction does not contribute to our health and wellbeing. Inaction caused by fear leads us down the path to victimization.
Fear stops us of thinking of other possibilities. This poster, hearing noises and being touched is terrified. Perhaps there is a good reason for this happening. Maybe the poster’s attention is wanted, and this is the only way it can be garnered.
What would the poster have written for example, if the first time he heard the knocking and felt something touch him, he awoke and his home was on fire? What would he be writing then? I doubt it would be a fear based post about how terrified he is. The poster would have posted about how fortunate he is that something touched him, waking him up from a sound sleep, and saving him from a horrible end.
The Poster and his fear based state, who is the main subject of this post aside, it is time to change the focus to us. How many fears do we carry around, allowing them to shape the direction our life, and keeping us from what may be the best changes we ever made in our life?
Some amount of fear is good. Fear is a healthy emotion when used correctly. Allowing fear to take over our life, fear becomes a debilitating disease. We allow ourselves to become so overwhelmed with fear we cease to make choices we know are best for us.
As for the poster, what is causing his fear may have stopped already, or it may be with him for the rest of his life. To the end of his post, nothing had happened that could even be vaguely dangerous to him. Holding a detached view at what is happening to him, there is no reason to be terrified. Annoyed, upset, or angry are possibilities, but fear is not.
For a more in depth reading of our new fear based culture, here is a good read on the subject: The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself, a PDF file, which can be viewed in your web browser with a plug you may already have installed.
In Elementary school my class had to do a individual demonstration. As I remember the topic did not matter as long as it was something we were interested in and was appropriate for our age. For most of the kids in the class, we had the opportunity to show off something we were interested in.
I would be fibbing if I told you what I did for a demonstration. It may have been fly tying most likely, but for now it has slipped away into the mish mash of experiences in a young life. What I do remember is what a boy named David did for his project. David performed a seance and wanted to invoke the spirit of the assinated president, John F Kennedy.
David explained to the class that he would have some people sit around a table holding hands like we all have seen in the movies. Instead of drama and special effects, David used a candle. A candle was lit and placed in the center of the table, and the lights in the class room were turned off.
David started asking for the spirit of John Kennedy to make itself known by directing the candle flame. After a few minutes the candle flame started responding intelligently to questions by moving in the appropriate direction for yes, no, or maybe.
 View from the other side? We kids were both awed and sceptical at the same time. One kid who was not part of the seance said the kids around the table were causing the movement of the candle with their breath. Almost half the class agreed.
David had everyone move away from the table, sitting or standing no closer than ten feet to the table. The candle flame continued to respond, but we all seriously doubted a dead president of the United States had nothing better to do than entertain us. A few more questions confirmed our suspicions when the candle flame movement changed to the ‘no’ position when asked if it was really the John F. Kennedy the former President, and after that answers became nonsense.
At recess I remember talking with friends about it. Someone ventured, “We might have created a spirit.” Another responded, “If we did where does it go and what happens to it?” We thought that was a great question. We decided it was possible with our combined energies we may have created something that moved the candle flame. Where it went and what happened to it was an unsolved matter.
I know now we did not create something, we attracted something. Across all cultures and religions candles are lit as part of an invocation ceremony. Whether it is a prayer request in a church, or a pagan ceremony, lighting of candles or making a fire is part of the process.
What happens to what we attract depends on what we do next. Once we attract something, it could be bribed, trapped, but most likely it scares us. Not everything we may attract plays well with others. When that happens, people, houses and places become haunted. People are terrified and harrassed by something they can not see.
I have come to think of these things as ‘fear thought probers’. They probe our minds for our deepest darkest fears and project them back making us really scared. Invoking thoughts or visions that absolutely terrify. They mix thought and vision, making you think you almost see or hear things that are not really there.
These ‘thought probers’ as I think of them have no ability to do anything other than effect thoughts – unless you feed them. Media is filled with stories of people bitten, pinched, or levitated. Items in homes flying across rooms and smashing into walls. Terrified people fleeing for their lives barely escaping what is attacking them.
What really happens only happens in your mind. You are seeing images of what could be. You are hearing noises having thoughts projected with them at the same time. What happens when you take a shower. Don’t you sometimes here a voice, knocking on a door, phone ringing, etc. Yet when you turn off the water, there is nothing.
It would take an enormous amount of energy to do any of the things you see or read about in a haunting. If anything had that much energy (power) would they waste time scaring you, or would they do something? When, or if this happens to you, think of being at the Zoo reading one of the signs posted everywhere, “Do not feed the animals”. They feed on fear using your imagination. Once they realize they won’t get fed by you it will soon stop.
 I heard it as I walked. I saw its shadow slide into dark corners when it thought I was not watching. Every now and then I could see it move from the corner of my eye. It followed me for blocks as I walked down one dimly lit street after another.
I wanted to walk faster to get away from it, but I knew that was impossible. It was keeping a distance from me so maybe it was not sure yet. Maybe it was waiting for a moment when there were no lights and no cars.
Then it would strike. The noises it made grew louder as it grew bolder and moved closer. It was hurrying to get into position to strike. Now almost beside me. No, wait it was to my right. A few seconds earlier it was on my left. It can move very fast when the streets are dark.
I walked faster. It was no longer trying to be sane. It knew I heard it. Had it decided I was it? I could feel the hair on the back of my neck starting to stiffen. I wanted to yell out, but who would hear?
If they did hear would they bother to go to a window or door and look out? I doubt it, they would not want to be involved. They would choose to remain distant. They and theirs were safe and accounted for, what did I matter.
It was a mere feet behind me now. My heart was beating wildly, and I was beginning to pant from moving ever faster. My feet seemed to barely touch the ground, but it wasn’t fast enough. I could hear it catching its feet on the uneven surface. Maybe it wanted to raise my fear level a little higher?
Through the fog of my panic I had a thought. They don’t like the light, and they don’t want to be seen. If I could just make it to the light I would be okay. Only another one-hundred feet and I would be safe. Could I make it? It sounds like it is right next to me!
I gave up walking fast and started to run. I could hear it starting to move faster too. Its feet hitting the pavement as it hopped towards me. Only another few seconds, that is all I need to get to the light!
I reached into my jacket, pulled out my cell phone, and fumbled trying to open it. In mindless terror I pushed the camera button. It was taking forever. It was inches away from me. I could feel its closeness like hot foul breath on my neck. I threw my arm backwards and prayed I pushed the camera button to make the flash go off.
It hissed loudly sounding only inches from my ear! The flash worked! It slowed and loped off into the darkness. Temporarily blinded by the light of a neon flash on a cell phone! I made it to the light. Traffic was picking up, and I knew I could get away from it before its eyes healed from the flash of light.
As an after thought I looked to see if I got it on camera. The rational part of my mind said it was the leaves falling from the trees. The rest of my mind knew what it really as because it remembered ten thousand years worth of well founded fear.
New age, paranormal, or occult as it is known comes and goes, cycling through our lives, much like our taste in books, movies, and food. Everything has its season and the paranormal is no exception. Every generation has some people who want to be known as discovering some new or long lost knowledge. Bad news, there is no new knowledge when it comes to certain subjects, only knowledge that has not been passed on for any number of reasons.
It certainly is funny to listen to people talk about any experiences they may have had with something they do not know how to explain. If they are not scared someone in the group they are talking to probably is. I have trouble with the fear part as it is self generated fear and really has no basis in a rational thought process. If someone who is a Christian calls upon God, or asks to have angels sent to complete a task, and it happened no one would blink an eye.
We seem to think that God just sits wherever God sits and waits for us to command something. We think for any number that this thought is completely rational and viable. We pray, implore, beg, or command, and God of course complies with our request. We have this thought so ingrained into our psyche, that in a prayer circle, if a number of Angels showed up and told the group they were going to do what was asked, most of the group would be nonplussed. After all that is how religion works.
Take the same group of people and put them in a new environment and let them hear, say scratching on a door from a room they know no one is in and panic erupts with fear coming a close second. If someone experiences something that does not fit into their idea of life, it must be the work of some unknown evil entity. There is no room in most peoples thinking that allows for something to exist that is neither there to help nor hinder, but it must always be one or the other.
The more rational people of times passed understood that not everything in the world of the unseen was either good or evil from their personal perspective, but in our fast paced life where we file and catalogue everything we have lost most categories of anything past the first two. Those two categories being either good for us or bad for us. We have not left room for very much in between those two places.
Most people over the course of a lifetime experience something occult or paranormal. Whether it is a ghost, noises, vision, or visitation, very few people are immune from the paranormal. A few people will have many such experiences, and most of them come to understand and accept there is a lot in the world that they know very little about.
In most cases when you find yourself in a position of experiencing something you have never experienced before, the first thing to remember is not to panic or get scared. Once panic or fear rules, rational thought goes out the window. Once rational thought goes out the window, you are no longer in charge of yourself. Once you are no longer in charge of yourself, you have opened a door that you may prefer remain closed.
Try to remember to not to jump from an adult orientation to a child mindset. You need the adult part of yourself active and functioning. Keep calm, and observe whatever is happening. In scary movies people become frightened of the silliest things. It could be something as inane as a glass sliding, or a picture moving, or something floating. Really what is so scary about those things other than you have never experienced them before?
If you feel you can not control your emotions, then pray. It does not matter what you pray about as prayer has a calming effect on us. If praying is not part of your makeup, simply downplaying whatever is happening, and focusing on something else has the same effect.
One more thought to remember, probably the most important idea, one which you have been told since you were a child and have forgotten is this. Anything you experience can not harm you in any way unless you give it permission to (let it). A feeling of something unseen touching your shoulder is just a touch, no more, no less. There is no reason to lose control of yourself over the situation because there is nothing you can do about being touched, it is already in the past.
Now that I have your attention I want to mention in passing that the above ideas work just as well in our everyday lives too. Stay within yourself, and do not get rattled every time something changes in your world that you do not like and probably can not control. Nothing stays the same, and never has. Change what you can, and let the rest take care of itself.
Usually I enjoy talking to people. I talk to people in line at the grocery store. I talk to the people that check me out at the cash register. I talk to the people who are making my lunch if I can. I talk with the people out walking if I walk up to them, I like to share a few minutes with them chatting about the walk, and what else they do for exercise.
It is getting harder though. We are so wrapped up in fear of another human being, it amazes me sometimes how scared some people get from the idea of talking to a stranger! When I was a kid, it was Nakita Khrushchev, and the nuclear bomb or missile dropping on our home or school. They used to show him at commercial time during the family hours television. The commercial would be a upper body shot with Mr. Khrushchev telling me, he was going to bury us. It certainly caused me to have some worries, and I took the drills at school more serious when we went to the gym, or took cover under our desks.
I remember most of the grownups were worried too. Adults took the threat seriously too. I felt a little safer because we lived close to an Air Base, and they were tied into the early warning system of the time, and they had planes to help defend us. Some people had bomb shelters built on their property. Other people remodeled their root cellars to take on a more shelter like function. I could not imagine spending more than a day or two in one, but at the time they thought they may be in their shelter for weeks to months. I am not sure what they thought they would climb into when they left their shelter, but there were some definite concerns that it could happen.
Later the threat changed to communism in Vietnam. The older people were very concerned that the communists would be right in our town if we didn’t stop them in Vietnam like we did in Korea. More fear, but it was a distant fear of something we at home could not really quantify. We knew it was out there, but our individual lives had changed little.
Somewhere along the proceeding years, thanks in part to technology, our fear shifted once again. This is our biggest and vaguest fear. We have this now almost ingrained fear of anyone we do not know. We find it hard to talk to neighbors, and other people we interact with only occasionally. Once we get outside our group of friends, our world becomes a cold, hostile, dangerous place.
Our world has become filled with sexual deviants of a criminal nature. Many women walking by a strange man alone somewhere almost have panic attacks on the spot. Men and too a lesser extent women are extremely cautious even about dating because the person who has an interest in us is probably a stalker, or a psychopath waiting to enter our lives and wait for us to let our guard down. It is not uncommon these days for a paid search to be ran on a perspective date before committing to a cup of coffee at a local coffee house.
Now, on top of that we have the fear of terrorist activity happening in our town. I have heard people from a few very small town express fear that they feel too vulnerable. Too many people in general are scared to talk to strangers any more. If they aren’t a sexual deviant they may be a terrorist. If they are not a deviant, or a terrorist, they are probably looking for someone to stalk. Now Global warming has appeared on the horizon, if our current fears are not enough.
This individual isolationism needs to stop. We are growing a second generation of children who do not have the tool required to make their way in a world of face to face interaction and communication. The new generation is so hardwired into electronic communication, some can not carry on simple conversations in a face to face meeting of two people. How can we, with our children so isolated expect them to some day, leave home, go out and find a job, and be successful when they have been told all their lives not to talk to strangers?
A number of years ago I was fortunate enough to find myself in a small town in England. What a sense of history! I travelled around as much as was practical, and I had many unusual experiences.
Some I have had other places here in the US, but this one has only happened in England. I was telling some friends about it, and they thought it would make a great blog post? I have my doubts, but then thought, why not? So here is a short version. Enjoy, and do not let it scare you if things like this normally do scare you, as I am still here to talk about it.
I was with two other people (1981), and we were walking across the Green (a town square, sort of) on a path that met with another path in the middle of the Green at right angles. Think of two sidewalks crossing each other like streets do. There was a woman with a child of two or three years of age to our left, walking to my right. On our right were two teenage Girls of about fifteen, or sixteen years old walking from the right, laughing and giggling as Girls do. At this moment we were all about twenty-five feet apart walking towards the intersection.
In mid-stride, the two teenage ‘Girls’ appearance changes to something almost exactly what Dean Koontz describes in Odd Thomas. Between lifting one foot up and placing it down they changed from Girls into emaciated Werewolf like creatures. I could see no teeth, or claws, but their body structure was changed into that of a large dog walking, and their red eyes were glowing. They walked, and looked like a very large dog would on its hind legs. Even their appearance is hard to detail well. They kind of blurred into brown fuzz at the edges and center of their beings. They walked two to three steps in this Werewolf form, and just as suddenly, within a step, they turned back into normal teenage Girls.
When the ‘Girl’s’ changed appearance into this other state, the child of the Woman on our left started to run towards the ‘Girls’, calling out something. The Child’s Mother with a terrified look, ran forward, and roughly grabbed her daughter by the arm and yanked. She swung her daughter about three feet into the air, and walked a wide detour around the Girls, staring at them in fright, or downright fear, or maybe both as she did. I had no doubt that the woman at least saw these two Girls change into whatever they were/are, and then change back into girls again in the space of three steps. The woman’s daughter also saw them change be her reaction, but it may be she saw something other than we did, as she ran towards them.
Of course I saw this happen, and when I looked at the person with me, they also saw something from the shocked look on their face. When I asked after the Girls passed on the path, I heard a description of exactly what I saw happen, the Girl’s changed into something that looked like Werewolves for about three steps, and then changed back into young girls.
I filed this experience away as one of those things – not knowing any different at the time. By this time in my life seeing strange things for me, was not all that strange anymore. Then this last summer (2004) when I was reading Dean Koontz – Odd Thomas, the memory of that day came back when Koontz gave described his creatures in the book.
I can only surmise either Dean Koontz has seen these beings, read of them, or it is only a coincidence they ended up in his book? If you have experienced anything like this, I would like to read about it? Please leave a reply, or send me an email. Me email address in my about page.
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We allow ourselves to remain afraid even though nothing happens to be afraid of. Fear is a healthy emotion and has contributed to our being alive, however it is an emotion we overuse and abuse.