Poltergeist? Who me?

Hey everyone,

I wonder if anyone can give me some insight into whether I might have been the agent in some poltergeist-like phenomenon.

When I was a child I used to hear a kind of rapping in the walls and ceiling of my bedroom, especially in the evening when I was in bed. When I asked my mother about it, she said it was just the house settling. (We lived in a fairly large wood frame house that was about 50 years old.) I accepted that explanation and continued to apply it even after I left home and continued to hear rapping sounds in the different places I lived. At one point I began meditating and noticed that I often experienced a kind of increasing, tense, anxious energy just before the rapping sound would appear in the room I was in. Again, I assumed a simple physical explanation- like maybe I was picking up some subtle vibrational energy in the framing just before it got released. As to why it should manifest as anxiety I couldn't explain.

But later when I read about poltergeists and the link to individuals with unconscious emotional conflicts, I started to wonder. Without going into details, it turns out I fit that profile as a child and young adult. (But, thankfully, not anymore.) What do you think? Was this poltergeist activity? Has anyone tried to determine if wood frame houses make those rapping sounds as part of a simple physical process?

Ben

Believe it or not, this is fairly common phenomena with people who meditate, or are 'aware' goers-to-sleep. I believe I put forth an explanation that makes sense to me (the reaction of certain materials like wood to energy body expansion) but I'm not sure where. I'll see if I can dig up some links to these threads.
The short answer is- we're all crackin' poltergeists, we just notice it more than other folks.
I'll be back with links to support my opinion.

All of the houses I lived in since I was about 6 or 7 years old haved made a lot of crackeling noises. I have been around the building trade since I was a child, and I can tell you houses do "settle". Wood ages and creeks and moves with the shifting plates. When this happens, the nails or screws that were driven through the wood make a squeeking sound.

Cf, are you saying that our energy causes the wood to move and make the noise? Or do you mean we are making the noise with our energy bodies?

I have found since I moved to Germany (where they do not build houses with wood) that all the noises have gone away. I know my energy body has not changed or calmed down in any way, but the building materials have changed.

I know wood houses settle and agree about that. I know the effect from wooden furniture that does the same.

However, when I meditate softer materials around me seem to expand and contract more, making noises the same as with heat/cold expansion/shrinking. Like an empty plastic bottle making a noise, or the nearby aluminum lamp.

I always have these noises when I go to trances and when I meditate, just recently I caught myself being irritated about it in the sense of "Why always exactly when I meditate?" Made me wonder.

I always attributed it to effects such as expansion/shrinking, but the coincidences are too striking.

I read that our emotional bodies can be easily big enough to encompass a full house.

Oliver

Well, the idea came to me because I had read various posts and threads in various forums related to metaphysics in which people wondered why they heard creaks and pops when they were about to go to sleep. The first explanation that comes to us is of course, 'astral noise' such as the case in the "Things that Go Bump in your Head" in this forum, in which energy body expansion or projection causes popping or cracking noises. However, in most of the posts I had been reading, the people offered that sometimes their spouses also heard the cracks and pops, so that it had a physical reason. The 'most logical' expected answer would be- in the evening materials contract or expand, causing the noises. However, these noises usually happened as the people were going to sleep, and this startled them awake (causing annoyance) making them realize that this happened regularly. It made them take notice of this. So as I mulled over this, as skeptical as I am, I decided to observe. So I lay there in bed, started to relax deeply, and 'crack'. My husband was also startled by it, confirming that it was physical, and upon investigation we found that there were two spots that 'cracked'- the more frequent one was the wall to the outside of the house which is right besides a glass window. We commented on this, both observed this to see if we were only reacting to expectation, and found that it seemed like the house seemed to decide to settle as we were going to sleep, or meditating (in my case).

So, like in all other 'discoveries' I got bored with my 'experiment' of observation, and forgot about it until about a year later.

I was reading to my son, and was waiting until he fell asleep (ok, I spoil him) to leave the room. It seemed that as soon as he fell asleep- 'crack' . And in his room, it was the same spot. The wall next to the glass window. Now, our house is wood and stucco, so there's lots of reasons for settling and contraction- lots of 'different' materials together, making for a noisy house. When my son turns to me and says- "You know, every time I start falling asleep the wood cracks and startles me awake." It was then I realized that it didn't matter what time it was -where we live the sun sets earlier or later depending on the season, so the 'house cooling' theory doesn't wash, because it only happens as the person in the room is falling asleep, regardless of the time.

So I thought about it some more. What happens to your energy body when you fall asleep? According to Robert, the energy body expands so that you project into your immediate surroundings (your dream environment). What if it happens all of a sudden, in one 'explosion of expansion''? What if some materials (wood & glass come to mind) are audibly reacting to this expansion? Maybe there is a displacement that is hard to detect by our senses (especially if we're going to sleep) but that definitely causes sudden pressure differences?)

I think this would be an interesting phenomenon to study and test, whatever the conclusions.

It is very interesting. Great post CF!

Meth addicts experince this, must have something to do with the expanded conciseness. Every present and past addict hears the expanding board phenomena,(that i've talked to) like someone is walking above you. I had a friend that was hooked pretty bad and he thought he had kids on his roof messing with him :roll: Seemed like he was chasing after them every few nights :mrgreen:
But they were always to fast, because nobody was ever there :idea:

Me it sounded like somebody was following me around from the upstairs apartment :? Like i had a stalker.

That sounds more like astral noise, which I had, too. That sounded like someone was moving heavy furniture every time I tried to project, and I thought "WTH is wrong with my neighbours?!?"

I don't have anyone that could actually be a witness to which sounds very objective and which subjective, as I tranced best when alone.

Oliver

Great series of observations, CF. I also subscribed to the "expansion and contraction due to temperature change" theory for a while, but I could never find a correlation with time of day or movement of clouds or anything like that.

Then I thought maybe it's more a function of shifts in my awareness- like when I'm just going about my day I don't notice the noise because my mind is occupied with other things. But when I meditate I'm more likely to become aware of unexplained sounds. Or when I'm falling asleep then maybe I'm susceptible to being startled by a sound that I otherwise might not even notice. But the correlation to body energy is hard to explain away, especially in cases like your example of the sound occuring just when your son falls asleep.

Mishell- in your experience could a wooden beam in a house make a sudden noise by itself due to normal stresses in the building? The sound I've heard isn't like a grating or creaking sound of two object moving against one another, but more like a single object undergoing a sudden "popping" or "cracking" due to some kind of pressure on it. I'm not sure of a good analogy, since I've never heard wood do this during normal handling. Maybe something like an icicle exploding due to trapped air being heated by the sun?

Ben

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eisenstein99163

Mishell- in your experience could a wooden beam in a house make a sudden noise by itself due to normal stresses in the building? The sound I've heard isn't like a grating or creaking sound of two object moving against one another, but more like a single object undergoing a sudden "popping" or "cracking" due to some kind of pressure on it. I'm not sure of a good analogy, since I've never heard wood do this during normal handling. Maybe something like an icicle exploding due to trapped air being heated by the sun?

Ben

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Yes, it can sound like cracking. I grew up where it was very hot and dry. I know that had a lot to do with it. We were also over a fault line. Not that we had a lot of earthquakes, but the ground shifted a lot.

We did have poltergeist activity when I was growing up, it just took the form of papers flying around and things being moved. There was 7 of us in the house, so it could have come from anyone. I have read that it happens most often with children who are in the middle of hormonal changes. That describes 3 of the 5 kids in my family at the time.

All the other ideas in this thread sound reasonable to me though.