How do you know when a spirit is present?
On the most basic level, I just get the sense of a presence, as if there is another person in the room that I just can’t see. Most of the time, I get impressions from this presence: mainly emotions, whether it is hostile or harmless, whether it is trying to get my attention or avoid it. I don’t “see” ghosts exactly, but sometimes they will show up as darker spots to my physical sight, almost like a smudge or blur in reality. I do often get images of them in my mind. If the spirits are human deceased, the image is generally that of the ideal self, a kind of residual image of what the person looked like at the most important time of his or her life. It is important to remember that spirits do not have a set form. They are just energy and as such they are very mutable. Also, non-human entities will often project a very human appearance to you – for good or ill.
Can you hear spirits?
There have been a few very rare instances where I heard a clear and distinct human voice come forth from a spirit, but generally I do not hear spirits the way I hear normal embodied beings. Instead I “hear” a whispering that also leaves a sensation at the back of my head. This is a very distinctive feeling, as though I have an internal ear in the back of my head right at the base of my skull. The communication creates the sensation at the back of the skull and also forms into words in the mind. The spirits are rarely very loud and I usually have to concentrate heavily to understand them. It seems sometimes as if their voices are coming from a great distance and they don’t have the strength to speak above a low whisper.
There are other instances where I “hear” them in the center of my head. This is much more like how I “hear” telepathy. It feels like someone is speaking directly inside my head, about halfway back and just behind the eyes. These voices are always quite distinct and there is no sense of whispering at all, but if I do not listen carefully I will miss some of what the spirit is saying because it all comes thorough very fast. I don’t know how the mechanisms of the perceptions differ although I would hazard that they represent two different psychic senses. As I said, I “hear” telepathy in the center of the head, most often from living people, and so when I feel the whispering at the back of my head I know I am dealing with a ghost.
Can spirits affect the physical world?
Yes, though this depends on the strength of the spirit, how powerful it is, and how badly it wants to get your attention. The most common type of spirit that affects the physical world is a poltergeist. Most poltergeist phenomenon is actually the result of latent telekinetic ability in a human being, known as a nexus, who is usually an adolescent girl. There are a couple of theories about how a nexus works. According to the first theory, the nexus produces a great deal of energy, and this energy attracts spirits who use it to manifest, especially in the form of physical phenomena. The second theory has no ghosts at all. Rather, the physical phenomena become the result of the unconscious mind of the nexus using the excess energy she produces to make things fly about. I believe that both of these interpretations can be correct depending on circumstances.
With or without a nexus to fuel its mischief, a spirit still requires a great deal of energy to affect the physical environment. Spirits that are capable of doing this are either desperate to make their presence known or they are very powerful. It is not uncommon for these spirits to take the energy they need to manifest these phenomena from living people, whether or not the person targeted is a nexus. Most spirits usually don’t waste that much energy without a reason, so if you are ever in a situation where things are moving about, your first response should be to try to communicate with the entity responsible. Most of the time if you can figure out what it wants (and most of the time it simply desires a friendly ear) then it will settle down.