Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf

by Christopher Balzano

  Ten years later, the boy died in a fiery car crash, and from that day forward, any paintings of him carried his curse and ignited into flames.

  In later years, the newspaper tried to prove the reason the prints didn’t burn in the fires was due to the string that was used on the back of them: once the string ignited, the print would fall to the floor and remain unharmed. That may explain how the paintings survived the fires, but it cannot explain how the fires started.

  Perhaps whatever caused that orphan boy so much pain and suffering still burns inside his restless spirit today.

  One of the variations of “The Crying Boy.”

  Poster Child

  Posters are snapshots of the trends that mark our lives. They are time capsules we tear down as we find new interests and replace with new definitions of ourselves. They are literally pictures into our hearts and desires. The best ones are framed behind glass, but most are stuck to walls with push pins and globs of putty.

  Posters can also be a focus for energy left behind, a way for specters to communicate with us. While few people admit a poster is powerful enough to call them back from the dead, stories do exist about ghosts offering their opinion on the way we decorate.

  Dodie, from the story on P. 24, whose house featured more than one spirit and who had her hands full with some haunted dresses, also dealt with an offended art critic. Her teenage son had placed a revealing poster of some women on his wall. The spirits, perhaps those of the little girls who had died in the house, didn’t care for his choice of artwork.

  “He woke up and [the poster] was thrown against the opposite wall,” Dodie said. “The tack that kept it up was still in the wall. It’s impossible that it just fell. He put up a nice one of some cars (instead).”

  Paranormal investigator and author Thomas D’Agostino had his own poster experience when he and his wife, Arlene, moved into new living quarters. In a house where the walls are covered with swords, old instruments, gargoyles, and other eclectic artifacts, the poster should have fit right in.

  “My sister bought us an original poster from the movie, Night of the Living Dead, from 1968,” D’Agostino said. “It was quite a macabre and grotesque piece of art, fashioned in black and white. The poster definitely put across the frightening aspect of the movie.

  “We decided to hang it at the top of the stairs in the old house we were renting. The house was already haunted, but the spirits liked what we had done to the rooms and we had no problem until that night.”

  It seemed the spirits did not like the D’Agostinos’ poster. “All during the night, we heard restless shuffling and banging around upstairs. I finally went to the stairs to see what the din was, and the upstairs had a yellow hue to it. The poster, at the top of the stairs, was within the distinct discolored air. Arlene and I would hear the noises all night, and upon examining the second story, found it heavy with energy and the strange hue in the air.”

  While not scared, they decided the poster had to go. There was no reason to upset the balance they had struck with their unseen housemates. “In the morning, we took the poster down. At that point, the hue cleared up and a peaceful silence came over the upstairs once again. We can only deduce that the other inhabitants of the house did not like that poster at all and were very animated in letting us know.”

  There is one story about a haunted poster that is so disturbing, I hesitate to even tell it. It feels like someone else’s secret, and in many ways it is. It involves one of the most infamous suicides in modern-day American history, a moment that defined the angst of Generation X and was blamed for the teenage violence that would follow it.

  This story was shared with me years ago, and while I remember the details clearly, I can’t confirm any of them. Looking back on it now, the story has too many holes, yet at the same time, is entirely too neat. I will share the story as it was told to me by a friend, who heard it from someone who was friends with the teen who experienced it. It will sound like an urban legend, but there are already so many legends surrounding this incident that I feel one more can’t hurt.

  A 1968 Night of the Living Dead poster similar to the one at the center of a paranormal stir in the D’Agostino household.

  On Jan. 8, 1991, Jeremy Wade Delle stepped into his English class and committed suicide while his classmates watched. The event took place before the rise of gun violence in schools that has marked our culture since, and the students at Richardson High School in Richardson, Texas, saw their lives changed forever. There has been much written about the details of that day, especially after the band Pearl Jam made the story famous with their hit song, “Jeremy,” and its graphic video.

  Though the room where the tragedy occurred was reopened as a classroom, it eventually was turned into a storage area for old desks. Several students reported that some time after the shooting, after school hours, a gunshot could be heard coming from the room, and at times desks stored there would be overturned or thrown against the wall.

  The story I heard, which involved Jeremy’s best friend at the time, was told to me by a friend of that teen’s girlfriend. The news has always painted Jeremy as a sad child, and while the press and the band have stressed this, he did have a few close friends.

  Jeremy and his closest friend had made a suicide pact, and while Jeremy lived up to his end of the bargain, the other teen did not. This friend was consumed by guilt and rumored to be under the influence of drugs. He kept hearing Jeremy’s voice asking him why he had not killed himself yet. He even once saw the outline of his friend against a steamy bathroom mirror.

  One night it all came to a head. He laid in bed, staring at a poster he and Jeremy had hung on the ceiling. The poster featured a popular band they both liked. Before Jeremy’s suicide, the two would often gaze at it and talk about music and life.

  As the boy thought about Jeremy that night, the four thumbtacks used to attach the poster to the ceiling fell on his face, even the tacks that should have naturally fallen near his feet. While he watched the poster hang in midair, his old friend’s voice continued to ask him why he was still alive. After more than a minute, the poster floated down and spread out like a blanket over him.

  The teen did not kill himself as Jeremy urged. At the time I heard the story, more than 15 years ago, he had turned his life around. The girl who told me the story hasn’t talked to either the boy or his girlfriend since. I am not sure what happened to him after that, although it seems the final communication from his departed friend had the opposite effect than what was intended. The teen and his story—much like Jeremy, whose pain became a hit song—is now part of the landscape of rumor.

  Getting Attached

  The blanket that Grandma made for you when you were a baby. The doll that always sat on a chair in Aunt Mary’s bedroom. Grandpa’s favorite pipe.

  When someone dies, it’s not unusual for those left behind to want a keepsake, some sort of physical object that reminds them of the deceased. It may be an item that was given to them by a loved one or that belonged to the loved one, a reminder to the living of the person who is gone. It can be as profound as wanting to move into their house or as mundane as wanting a simple tchotchke. Some of the keepsakes may seem strange to the outside observer, but they may have deep meaning to the person in mourning and help with the grieving process.

  And apparently, it works from the “other side” as well.

  Sometimes those who have died are not ready to give up a special object. They still want to own it, cling to it, or perhaps even use it as a conduit to stay connected with those they’ve left behind.

  Paranormal researchers often talk about “attachment theory.” This is not to be confused with the work of psychoanalyst John Bowlby, who devised his attachment theory regarding the interactions between human beings. Instead, the paranormal theory is more about entity or spirit attachment—the ability to imprint energy on people, places, or things. Whether to the living or the deceased, these objects matter. They take on a significance that goe
s beyond just material possession. The most inconsequential trinket can become a means to connect with the Great Beyond.

  Most cases of attachment to an object turn out to be nothing more than a residual haunt; that is, it’s just the leftover energy of a person that is attached, so it is unable to interact with the living. But there are plenty of instances in which it is an intelligent haunt, and therefore, communication or interaction with the spirit is possible.

  The concept of spirit attachment leads to a debate among paranormal researchers when it comes to the idea of a haunted location: We look for factors in the location that can explain why it is haunted, such as a quartz rock in the foundation to retain energy or nearby running water to charge the ions in the air and amplify the energy. But isn’t it possible that the spirit has just chosen to attach itself to the spot? Isn’t a building nothing more than a large object?

  Attachment isn’t limited to just objects, either; it’s just as likely for a spirit to attach itself to a person. This can happen either intentionally or by accident—many paranormal investigators have reported “bringing home” spirits who’ve become attached to them during an investigation. Some will even say a protection prayer or conduct a ceremony before investigating, in order to keep any spirits from attaching to them purposely or inadvertently.

  Some people believe spirits can move between our dimension and theirs, bringing and taking objects with them.

  Even if an object doesn’t attach itself to a person or an object, it can still focus on one. A reported sign of spirit activity is a phenomenon known as apportation, in which objects mysteriously appear or disappear through the influence of spirits. Ever wondered why your car keys are never where you left them, or why that one sock keeps disappearing in the dryer? The answer might not be as simple as you think. Spirits that can manipulate objects may be moving them in order to capture attention or announce their presence, putting them somewhere other than where they were last seen. One theory suggests that spirits can actually bring solid materials into their own dimension, thus causing them to outright disappear, before bringing them back into this plane.

  Another side of apportation involves the spirit bringing an object through to our world that might not have been here previously. One example in this book, on P. 142, involves the St. Christopher’s medal that appeared out of nowhere to help a family through some trying times. It was not their medal and never had been, yet it showed up when they most needed it. Did the spirit bring it into creation, or was it apported from some other location? The jury is still out on that, but the stories in which the phenomenon occurs continue.

  There’s one more concept of how material objects relate to paranormal activity, called a trigger object. Trigger objects are designed to get a “rise” out of a spirit, through some sort of connection the spirit has with it or a similar item. It’s an experimental way to make contact; the spirit doesn’t have to be actually attached to the object in order for it to work. For example, if a young woman who has died was fond of a certain doll, bringing that doll into a location she is suspected to haunt might entice her to make herself known.

  Just as they can be susceptible to spirit attachments, people, too, can serve as trigger objects—especially when the spirit is considered to be dark or even evil in nature. When investigating an old prison and trying to make contact with the spirit of a serial rapist, a woman might be placed alone in his former cell in order to serve as the trigger object and draw him out.

  Trigger objects don’t have to be physical items, either; sometimes playing music of a certain era or speaking in a particular language or dialect can serve to activate paranormal activity.

  For all the research that has been done on attachment theory in recent years, it’s still unclear how or why it occurs. The best guess, however, is that most spirit attachment happens because the spirit wants it to happen. That gives a whole new meaning to the expression that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

  Hands–on Experience

  Psychic medium Pam Patalano has been touched with a gift, and touch is a big part of how she uses it.

  “You’d be surprised what’s haunted and what’s not,” she said. “It’s all in how you handle it.”

  “Handle” is the operative word. Pam practices psychometry, a type of extra sensory perception in which touching and holding an object can reveal its history through psychic means.

  The term psychometry was coined by Joseph Rodes Buchanan in 1842. Buchanan, a physician and professor of physiology at the Eclectic Medical Institute in Covington, Kentucky, used psychometry as a means to “measure the soul.” It was embraced by the Spiritualist movement beginning in the late 1840s, and although Buchanan himself was a Spiritualist, he believed that spirits do not come into play when practicing psychometry. Instead, it centers on the psychic abilities of a person to perceive the soul; as the “psychometer,” this person is responsible for measuring and interpreting whatever energies might be attached to an object.

  Nearly 170 years later, Pam agrees.

  “Basically, I refer to it as ‘object recognition,’ ” she said. “Touching an object is no different than touching a person’s hand. If there’s an emotion attached to it, I can pick up on it.”

  Although the object is the focus of her attention, it’s not the physical item itself that carries the spirit.

  “Everything in the universe has an energy field that radiates all around it,” she said. “These emotions, these impressions, they are absorbed within that energy field. It’s not necessarily inside the object, but it exists in that energy field. I read that energy.

  “I pick up an object, close my hands around it, and I start getting images. If there was an emotion attached to it—if somebody loved it, used it to kill somebody, whatever—I can see it. Sometimes I’ll hear a message without seeing anything, but more often it’s like seeing a film.”

  But unlike a residual haunting, in which the same scene plays over and over again, the images often change using psychometry.

  “It’s not the same thing all the time. I can pick up different ‘movie clips’ from it, so to speak,” she said. “It’s not the same picture over and over again. There’s a story attached to it.”

  Yard sales can be a battleground of haunted objects.

  Each time Pam holds an object, she might pick up a different “movie” of a different person who owned the object, discovering more of the item’s back story in the process.

  “Objects are coveted by people,” she said. “The strongest emotion they had in relation to the object is what I pick up on. It doesn’t matter if 20 people have owned that object since; if someone carried it around with them everywhere they went, that is what I’ll pick up on. It doesn’t matter if she was the fourth person out of 20 who owned it, that’s what comes through.”

  This was especially true of one experience illustrating the awesome power of psychometry. Pam’s friend, Emily (not her real name), invited Pam and her partner in paranormal investigation, Andrew Lake, to help her understand the hauntings in her Massachusetts home. The friend was upset because her young son was having a difficult time dealing with the ghostly activity.

  During the course of the investigation, Emily handed Pam a gold bracelet that her boyfriend had given to her.

  “Rings and other jewelry usually have something happening, gold rings in particular,” Pam said. “Gold (which is known for its electrical conductive properties) holds on to energy the best out of any metal that I’ve every touched.”

  Emily said that every time she wore the bracelet, she felt awful and didn’t know why. Knowing Pam practiced psychometry, Emily wanted to know if Pam picked up anything from the bracelet.

  Pam held the bracelet and closed her eyes. Her consciousness was transported to a lake.

  “I could see the man the bracelet had belonged to, and then I was seeing the scene through his eyes,” Pam said. “He took me into the boat with his two friends with whom he was fishing on th
e lake. Then suddenly, the boat tipped over and it was as if I was actually being pulled under the water myself, drowning, feeling my feet stuck in the muck at the bottom of the lake and unable to get free. I could look above me and see his friends trying to get to him, but they were too late.”

  As she was viewing this, Pam began to feel as if she, too, were drowning. She began thrashing around, having difficulty breathing. After the vision ended, she explained to her bewildered friend and fellow investigator what she saw.

  Emily called her boyfriend to find out where he had gotten the bracelet.

  “He told me it had come from his friend, Ken, and that he had drowned in a fishing accident,” Pam said. “He essentially described for me the entire ordeal, and it was exactly as I’d seen it.”

  Pam also received a message from Ken while holding the bracelet; he was worried about his son, who had developed a drug problem. Ken told Pam that he intended to stick around to keep an eye on his son.

  “Sometimes I get just a few images when holding an object, but sometimes I get whole stories. That was one of the most vivid experiences I ever had,” she said.

  Another time, Pam was in a marketplace and picked up a pretty necklace. As soon as she did, she was hit by the image of a horse-draw carriage riding by a streetlamp with snow on the ground.

  “Although I don’t know how I knew this, I felt it was someplace in Europe,” she said. “I could see a girl of about 14 or 15 with a long dress on, wearing the necklace. I asked the man selling it if he knew anything about it, and he reiterated back to me everything I had seen.”

  While the ability to utilize psychometry gives her a different perspective on many items, it’s not always a good idea to get the complete story behind every object she encounters. Pam goes through a special procedure in her mind, allowing her to turn her psychometric abilities on and off as she needs them so that she’s not inundated with visions while perusing a flea market or yard sale, for example.