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Do Creepy Buildings Create Ghosts?

BlackPeter

BlackPeter

Ancient Badger
Joined
May 5, 2006
Messages
449
I have worked for the last twenty years in a building that is ‘haunted’, by this I mean that a whole range of phenomena--- ranging from poltergeist type movement of objects to aural and visual ‘phantoms’ – have been observed by a number of people (including myself!). Now the general wisdom seems to be that buildings are haunted because of some traumatic event that has occurred there, this does not appear to be the case here as the building is only forty years old and nothing tragic (certainly not a death) has ever happened there. A study of old maps shows that prior to the building this was an open field. So there seems no reason for a ‘haunting’, however the building (which is a kind of natural history museum) has no windows and a generally very spooky air and I’m wondering if peoples expectations (possibly subconscious) of a building like this actually create ‘ghosts’. I don’t mean by this that people start to imagine things (I have seen and heard enough to convince me that something is genuinely happening here) but that ‘ghosts’ may actually be created by the nature of the building.
 
I was wondering maybe if it is something to do with what was on the land before the building was constructed? Do you know?
 
Or possibly that those places which make you feel generally uncomfortable, also make you more aware and alert, thereby making you more likely to see small things that you would otherwise miss (shadows, odd lighting effects, etc) and allowing your mind to extrapolate out from there, to guage potential threats?
 
As far as I can trace there have never been any other buildings on the site --the oldest Ordnance Survey maps show it as a field belonging to local farm (some distance away). I like your idea CygnusRex but I can't see how it covers actual movement of objects (in one case a very heavy photocopier that moved itself from the top of a table to the floor every evening for a while!)
 
Is it possible that buildings are like cameras and with the pyschic energy inside them can create past scenes from the past?
 
There doesn't have to have been a building there before in order for something awful to have happened. Think of all the tragedies that happen in the open air - rapes, murders, suicides, hideous accidents. Think of phantom hitchhikers, black shuck, ABCs, pookas, hairy hands, fang babies, banshees, La Llorona, trooping fairies. What happens when you build in an area where such entities/forces carry out their natural impulses? Also, in 40 years a lot of quiet tragedies can occur. How many people broke their hearts, lost their careers, threw away their marriages, destroyed their rivals, poisoned themselves with tobacco and carcinogenic sweetener, or otherwise undramatically built up residues of misery in that building? If my psychic energy lingers in my workplaces, the restrooms of every place I ever worked will be haunted (because that's the only place you can cry, scream, or kick walls in peace).

This is not to say that you're not on to something. If you use the term ghost in the general sense of "supernatural effect that needs a label," then a building that is constructed in such a way as to resonate with spooky expectations, or if the machinery and walls interract to set up the wrong vibrations, or if the atmosphere is generally down and depressing, then the building itself can be said to create a haunting, though whether there would be an entity at the core of it would be problematical.
 
There's a post in the IHTM board - I think it's in the "What was it" thread where someone discusses the possibility of underground streams, particularly converging ones, attracting or causing paranormal phenomena. Apparently it is a common thought that water and the paranormal go together.

Perhaps there is a river or stream underneath the building in this thread.

I do wonder whether it is something to do with the land itself rather than buildings. Perhaps buildings trap and record the playback type hauntings, like visions of people in Victorian dress and so on, whereas physical phenomena (poltergeist type activity etc) are caused by the landscape.

My old family home was demolished and two houses were built on the vacant block - one was sold and we lived in the other. After about 5 years of being in the new house, which was on the rear of the block where our old backyard was, I started to experience a few discomfiting things. Nothing that is definitely paranormal I have to admit, but still I find the atmosphere in the new house more oppressive by far than it ever was in our old 90 year old house.

Sometimes I wonder whether the land doesn't "like" being built on.
 
I think PeniG is right to bring up the matter of fairies. If you look back at the old folklore surrounding the way fairies behaved when they invaded peoples homes, the accounts are very similar to those of modern poltergeist outbreaks. Any farmer who was foolish enough to build on one of the 'fairy paths' was guaranteed to be plagued by doors slamming on their own, crockery breaking, and objects mysteriously disappearing then reappearing. (See also Icelandic elves)

Alternatively, there's the parapsychological theory that poltergeists are the manifestation of psychokinetic energy centered around a single individual. Does the phenomena you report appear to 'attach' itself to anyone in particular? Does it always stop when a certain staff member takes their holidays? Does it usually happen during periods of tension between staff members?
 
lardfan said:
There's a post in the IHTM board - I think it's in the "What was it" thread where someone discusses the possibility of underground streams, particularly converging ones, attracting or causing paranormal phenomena. Apparently it is a common thought that water and the paranormal go together.
Click to expand...
I think that's an idea pioneered by TC lethbridge.

With regard to the original post, I think that's an excellent idea. I think that hauntings may have a lot to with human projections, and the place. When I first moved to this house i was pretty sure it was haunted, and saw/heard ghosts, and so on. Now I'm pretty comfortable here, and I don't.
 
One of the things which convinces me that the 'haunting' may be created by the building is the fact that it is surrounded by many other buildings that also belong to my workplace that have no 'symptoms' but they are ordinary non-creepy buildings with windows! for the same reasons I find it difficult to accept arguments about previous events on the site and the emotional residue of past workers (interesting idea though PeniG) as they would presumably apply to our other buildings as well

P.S. no running water we're on top of a hill!
 
PeniG said:
There doesn't have to have been a building there before in order for something awful to have happened. Think of all the tragedies that happen in the open air - rapes, murders, suicides, hideous accidents. Think of phantom hitchhikers, black shuck, ABCs, pookas, hairy hands, fang babies, banshees, La Llorona, trooping fairies. What happens when you build in an area where such entities/forces carry out their natural impulses? Also, in 40 years a lot of quiet tragedies can occur. How many people broke their hearts, lost their careers, threw away their marriages, destroyed their rivals, poisoned themselves with tobacco and carcinogenic sweetener, or otherwise undramatically built up residues of misery in that building? If my psychic energy lingers in my workplaces, the restrooms of every place I ever worked will be haunted (because that's the only place you can cry, scream, or kick walls in peace).

This is not to say that you're not on to something. If you use the term ghost in the general sense of "supernatural effect that needs a label," then a building that is constructed in such a way as to resonate with spooky expectations, or if the machinery and walls interract to set up the wrong vibrations, or if the atmosphere is generally down and depressing, then the building itself can be said to create a haunting, though whether there would be an entity at the core of it would be problematical.
Click to expand...

Yeah, also buildings or things that are built on Leylines.
 
Check out the work of Richard Wiseman and several others. This correlates aleged ahutnings with particualr physcial characteristics of builidings - ceilinge height, relative light levels, presence of infra sound amplfying areas etc. Ricahrd has carried this out at Hampton Corut and Edinburgh.

Gordon
 
And didn't some boffins at Warwick Uni create a room where they could induce feelings of being watched, produced from extra low frequency vibrations? I seem to recall the original idea was sparked by people feeling nervous and experiencing phenomena (or believing they did) in a room where new air-con had been installed, and it was found to be vibrating at a really low resonant frequency. Turn the air-con off - hey presto, the room was "cleansed".
 
What I can tell you is that I've spent time in houses inhabited by highly neurotic families, in a few cases generationally, and they have been "sick" houses, physically sick, as though those neuroses impregnated and saturated every wall, floor, ceiling, curtain and piece of furniture.

But none of them, interestingly enough, has shown the slightest sense of being evil.
 
(Going back to the water conversation, by lardfan, apologies)
The last pub my parents owned was a few hundred yrs old, and it was riddled with "activity" (specifically, a girl, mid-twenties, in a long straight black dress)

My folks decided to build an extension on the back to house a darts room (mum being very keen on competitive pub sports...lol)

They had plans going back to god-knows-when and cheerfully started digging. To their shock, they found a covered well which did not appear on any of the original plans. The well caused a great deal of extra expense, but also made us wonder if it was in some way connected to the activity in the pub.

We all secretly wondered if the girl who was seen so often by so many had expired there.... who knows?
 
MaxMolyneux said:
Maybe theres nothing there to feed off negativity.
Click to expand...

Possibly. But I wonder if there may be neurosis or depression pheromes as well as purely sexual ones and that these pheromes could over time impregnate walls and furniture.

It's been observed for many decades that neurotics and depressives tend to marry each other, which may well indicate special pheromes.
 
Do Creepy Buildings Create Ghosts?

id say its more of - PEOPLE believe creepy buildings have ghosts and put any strange events down to a ghost!
 
RealPaZZa said:
Do Creepy Buildings Create Ghosts?

id say its more of - PEOPLE believe creepy buildings have ghosts and put any strange events down to a ghost!
Click to expand...

Possiblely due to paranoia of people feeling that their being watched maybe?
 
RealPaZZa said:
id say its more of - PEOPLE believe creepy buildings have ghosts and put any strange events down to a ghost!
Click to expand...

Maybe. But people also experience hauntings in buildings which aren't especially creepy and without being aware that the property has any previous association with hauntings. (And for that matter in buidings with NO previous spectral history - there has to be a first time for everything.)
 
It's Fengshui of course. Any dark building with odd corners has bad fengshui and attract bad vibes. In my country Chinese business people are very particular about bright lighting on their business premises - for example a factory will have a few bright lights on even when closed for the night.

The office building where I work was built in 1996 - we moved here in 1997. In 1998 a woman cleaner who worked on the 4th floor died suddenly after a short illness. After that there were stories of her ghost being seen cleaning the toilets at night. No one dared work overtime after a group of 4 staff met "her" in the lift one evening!

When I arrive early in the morning there would be few staff sitting in the well lit reception area refusing to enter the main office to switch on the lights. The light switches were located at the back and no one wanted to traverse the inky blackness to get to them. Except me of course :D
I would swiped my access card, say loudly "Hello ghost!" and walk in. This would scare the others very much....but nothing has happened - to my disappointment. Nope, not even a mist have I seen, it's August 2006 already.
 
Further to my original posting (I really must post a proper account of this on IHTM !!) I had assumed that the 'haunting' had ceased however this morning I opened up the building and was in process of de-activating the alarm when out of the corner of my eye I saw something running towards me which I initially assumed was a mouse, however on closer inspection it proved to be the top from a bottle of Dr Pepper rolling on its side! Has the 'haunting' re-activated because I have mentioned it on this thread!!??
 
Playin' the Angles

It's been claimed, and if I remember correctly Shirley Jackson based THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE on the premise, that if you purposely construct a house with all the angles a half inch out of true (walls, floors, doors, windows and so on) you can drive the future inhabitants of the completed building hopelessly nuts.
 
Re: Playin' the Angles

OldTimeRadio said:
It's been claimed, and if I remember correctly Shirley Jackson based THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE on the premise, that if you purposely construct a house with all the angles a half inch out of true (walls, floors, doors, windows and so on) you can drive the future inhabitants of the completed building hopelessly nuts.
Click to expand...
A Pedant writes: Who measures angles in inches? 8)

Interesting idea, though. I've lived in a few wonky houses - might explain a lot! :shock:
 
that if you purposely construct a house with all the angles a half inch out of true (walls, floors, doors, windows and so on) you can drive the future inhabitants of the completed building hopelessly nuts.
Click to expand...

Every council house I've tried decorating has borne that out. :(
 
So if the angles are somehow wrong the result is madness.

H.P. Lovecraft the D.I.Y. guru?
 
Having had a great deal of experience of working with builders over the last few years (I and my partner are renovatng an old house) I would love to meet one who could work within a tolerance of two let alone half an inch!!!
 
There isn't a right angle or vertical wall anywhere in my house, yet it remains unhaunted as far as I know, and I'm still more or less sane.

The point of the distortions in the rooms in The Haunting of Hill House was that everything was off just slightly enough that you didn't notice you were being steered north-by-northwest instead of north, so that your internal compass was constantly being misled and you were never where you thought you were. Hill House was big enough that startling effects could be achieved.

This may work in a coordinated, orchestrated puzzle house. It must've been a nightmare dealing with the contractors, though. The lack of right angles in my own house is higgledy-piggledy and they cancel each other out.
 
Re: Playin' the Angles

rynner said:
A Pedant writes: Who measures angles in inches? 8)
Click to expand...

Individuals such as myself who are absolute idiots when it comes to mathematics and geometry.

I have quite enough trouble understanding what a trapezoid is.

As in "The daring young man on the flying...."
 
For years I assumed that the "angles" which brought evil and/or outre entities into chambers in Howard Lovecraft's tales were nearly-impossible ones which could only be accidentally-obtained and those very rarely indeed. But what he actually seems to have been talking about are the three-sided pyramids that occur at least eight times in the average room, where walls and ceilings or floors meet.

Lovecraftian Pyramid Power!
 
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