Paracelsus and the Elementals

How about a somewhat odd topic?  ELEMENTALS.  In our current Western Culture, we tend to think that all paranormal experiences or contacts are with residual energies from past events or the disembodied souls/spirits of the dead.  But, I've always been interested in older and more diverse theories describing beings or energies other than the dead.

I'm going to be borrowing from this wikipedia page.  Feel free to go read it, if you are interested:

The idea of elementals is often described in occult and alchemical writings originating during the European Renaissance.  An interesting fellow named Paracelsus wrote about them in the 16th century, and many writers and philosophers followed up on his theories with variations and extensions of their own. 

Undine Rising from the Water

Paracelsus suggested that there were four types of elementals:  Gnomes (earth), Undines (water), Sylphs (air), and Salamanders (fire).

Paracelsus is drawing on a number of much older traditions, but he is building something expanded and new upon the foundation that came before.

"The elements of earth, water, air, and fire, were classed as the fundamental building blocks of nature. This system prevailed in the Classical world and was highly influential in medieval natural philosophy...The homunculus is another example of a Paracelsian idea with roots in earlier alchemical, scientific, and folklore traditions."

"He noted that undines are similar to humans in size, while sylphs are rougher, coarser, longer, and stronger. Gnomes are short, while salamanders are long, narrow, and lean. The elementals are said to be able to move through their own elements as human beings move through air. Gnomes, for example, can move through rocks, walls, and soil. Sylphs are the closest to humans in his conception because they move through air like we do, while in fire they burn, in water they drown, and in earth, they get stuck. Paracelsus states that each one stays healthy in its particular "chaos," as he terms it, but dies in the others."

You can get more details from the article, or hunt down some of the sources cited by the article.

I suppose what interests me about this topic, is Ghost Vigil went on an investigation in southern Missouri some years ago, where a man living in the woods was plagued by what he described as "elementals" or "salamanders."  He used both terms, interchangeably.  And we had at least one other investigation back then, where elementals were blamed by our client for the paranormal experiences they were having.

For me, it is a reminder that we don't have a perfect (or even a good) understanding of all of the mechanisms at work in the paranormal field.  And cutting your learning and explorations short at "dead people" is selling yourself short.  There is more out there than we understand, or possibly even comprehend.

Definition of Psychometry

PSYCHOMETRY - The supposed ability to discover facts about an event or person by touching inanimate objects associated with them.

Theoretically, this may depend on a similar mechanism as "recordings" on an environment that result in hauntings in a building or physical location. The person using psychometric uses psi abilities to read or access the "recording" on the physical object.

A possible alternative to this theory is that the person using psychometric is using the object as a focus to view events that happened in the past within the presence of the physical object. Rather than observing some sort of psychic recording, in this case the viewer is actually looking backwards in time.

Mark Stinson
Ghost Vigil Investigations

Haunting of Hill House - Sleep Paralysis

This is my second post here about the Haunting of Hill House. But, the Netflix Original Series is being viewed by an enormous amount of people, and since it involves the paranormal, it will to some small degree the mainstream cultures's view regarding supernatural topics.

One such topic is Sleep Paralysis, or as some refer to it, the Night Hag phenomenon. Again, I don't want to spoil this for anyone. I will speak very generally, but if you absolutely don't want any potential spoilers about the Haunting of Hill House, stop reading now.

The character Nell experiences Sleep Paralysis in the show, from childhood up through adulthood. As an adult, she actually pursues medical treatment or counseling for the condition. It being a horror movie, the counseling seems to work for a bit, but in the end, the supernatural nature of her affliction overcomes in the most horrible ways.

If you have never experienced Sleep Paralysis, it can be enormously terrifying to experience. If it is accompanied by the visual of someone or something holding you down, the terror increases exponentially.

The scientific explanation of Sleep Paralysis, in very simple terms, involves a natural process in sleep where the mind in deep sleep cuts off the connection between the mind and body (paralyzing the body) to prevent you from moving around violently as you dream. An abnormal sleep cycle or an interruption of the sleep cycle at a very specific time can cause the mind to wake before the mind has been reconnected with the body (releasing the paralysis). And this results in a person who is awake by paralyzed for a time.

Probably the oddest thing about Sleep Paralysis is the visual component of the experience. Often the paralyzed person sees and feels someone holding them down. Sometimes they see a hag-like woman on top of them, holding them down. Other times, people see a dark figure, someone they know, or even something as odd as an alien. Science explains this as the mind, only recently woken, creating a plausible explanation for the paralysis. Nothing more than a visual hallucination.

This scientific explanation can be comforting for some. For others, the intensity of the experience and the utter reality of their experience leaves the scientific explanation a little empty.

I personally have experienced the phenomenon several times. Everytime, it was enormously frustrating and scary. There is a sense that if you could just move your hand, or turn your head, or scream out that you will be free. But, try as you might, you can't move or call out. Eventually you do...and the whole experience ends. But, it can be quite unsettling.

I was impressed with how the Haunting of Hill House handled the phenomenon. Especially how they explained it scientifically, and had Nell seek out and receive counseling.

Mark Stinson
Ghost Vigil Investigations