Up to this point, we have chosen one specific phenomenon to discuss in the training pages at a time, but today we will look at similarities between very different cases. The obvious scenario involves the similarities between the common poltergeist, a house haunting and other, less common paranormal occurrences that share universal characteristics.

There was once a joke, which today loses something in translation that Scott Rogo will always be remembered for; it went something like this, “When is a duck, not a duck?”  Answer: “When it is a Mack Truck!”  Yeah, I know, you don’t get it either, right?  The joke revolves around an unrelated study that several people saw as proof of something else.  The point was simple.  If you study ducks, your data relates to ducks, not something else, like a Mack Truck.  To draw similarities from one to the other in order to prove a totally different phenomenon is impossible. Nevertheless some people will try.

In the majority of reported poltergeist cases worldwide, there is a correlation between rapping, banging or tapping sounds early on in the phenomenon, that suggests that virtually all poltergeist  cases unfold to the observers in that way.  Could a poltergeist manifest without the bangs, rapping and tappings when it begins?  Certainly, the old adage that exceptions to any rule are proof of validity comes into play here.

Ironically, when Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist he began his exploration of the phenomenon with the family attempting to deal with what they thought were rats in the attic of the Georgetown townhouse.  The story did not begin one morning with the full blown manifestation of a little girl’s possession, but rather the subtle sounds of something scurrying around the attic.  Blatty did his homework, the taps and raps that are almost always present in such cases, were a nice touch to add to the realism of an otherwise exaggerated account of demonic infestation and possession.

But, those very same noises are found present in virtually every poltergeist case as well in its early stages and is not uncommon in early haunting.  So, should we just sign off on the presence of these sounds as common paranormal events they all share, or very different phenomenon that seem to share similar outward appearances.  In other words, should we treat them all as ducks, or be aware that one might be a Mack Truck?

To answer that question, we have to first prove the existence of our ability to perceive auditory phenomenon.  It is not enough to make note of a sound, you have to be able to demonstrate that it was real.  The obvious case in point is the common EVP.  Field Investigators come back from cases and scrutinize their recordings, often finding voices on them that were not made consciously by the team members.  Is that real?  Can you say something is real, if in fact you did not hear them with your own ears when the recording was made in the first place, but do report them later from the tape?  What if you have a very clear recording, but the primary, stand-along recorder in the same room fails to record it?  When is a voice, simply not a voice?

If you have a grin on your face because you think this is a trick question, stop laughing, it is a very real concern in our field.  Noises are all too often reported that have not shown up on the recording equipment, almost as commonly as the reverse is true and recording things that were not heard by human ears at the time of the recording.

To deal with this, we have embarked on a new method, involving the simple footstep. Hearing footsteps in a hallway or staircase is not unusual in cases of the paranormal; the history goes back countless centuries.  But are they real?

To answer that question, we have begun a new strategy.  Using the simple geophone technology utilized on a battlefield to detect the movement of troops, we are not beginning to place similar devices in areas of reported activity, where we also have tape recorders, IR cameras, etc.  When the phantom footsteps begin, we should have the audio recording, as well as a reading from the geophone, from the vibrations of those footsteps, even if we do not see the perpetrator on video.  But here is the rub, what do you do when you have the recording, but no seismic activity to confirm the physical action of a foot on a floorboard?  For that matter, what if you fail to get all three or even two reactions to your instrumentation?  What if you still audible hear the footsteps, but fail to record them or register them with the geophone?  Or, can you photography something that fails to make a sound, trigger a motion sensor or be detected seismically?  In other words, when is the duck, not a duck?

As you may have already guessed, the technology we are now using is relatively new, but the concepts and questions are very old. It wasn’t all that long ago that some rash young investigators began to ask these question when before, it was assumed that the laws of physics had to be in play, even when dealing with a ghost.  That is simply not the case today! The old rule book is out the window, open minded scientists have abandoned hope of being about to prove the existence on many things paranormal, to the empiric standard.  Likewise, fewer and fewer look at any case expecting what they see is what they have or judge it on its merits alone. We are babes in the woods in the most delicate cases, when it is so tempting to run in like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

This leads us to a new method, requiring basic research first, after collecting the eyewitness accounts. I am intrigued by the Hinsdale (NY) case for exactly that reason.  A generation ago two well known and respected investigators went to the aid of a family who were experiencing all kinds of paranormal activity.  They came to the case with their notebooks and little else. Today, we would go in ready for anything…video, audio, geophone, etc.  The phenomenon then was extraordinary; comprised of what looked like a poltergeist (although we have no idea who the focal point was) several manifestations inside the home and several apparitions outside the home as well.  Today, we would have IR CCTV covering the house and grounds. Geophones to catch any motion that could cause rapping and tapping in the house, as well as the sounds of someone unseen walking. There would be multiple stand-along DVD cameras, IR cameras and regular still cameras, tied to motion sensors.

So, with that arsenal installed, would we come away with proof that any of this exists?  There is no way to tell without trying to be frank, sounds to us are vibrations created at one place and bumping into air until it reaches our ears, where the sound waves hit the little drum inside our ears where the sound is then reproduced; images are reflections of light that reach our eyes, where the image is translated for the brain to “see.” But have ever been in a truly soundproof room?  We did some testing at the IBM lab in Poughkeepsie NY years ago in their sound chamber. The sound emitted from your mouth, even when screamed, can be soaked up by foam cones in this room, so that someone even a foot away would have problems understanding the most simple sentence.  The point is that when dealing with physics, there are many ways to bend the rules. We must address those variables in our work as well.

We are working with variables without understanding the rules. We see a phantom, he speaks but he makes no sound.  We see an apparition, but his footsteps are not heard. Yet we also record voices we do not here and record the presence of someone walking on a floor that is devoid of human interaction.  Why? What are we doing wrong?  Well first off, we are attempting to apply the rules of physics we all learned in childhood to what we see, hear, smell, and taste.  We are attempting to apply rules to something that is not bound by our understanding of nature.

Let’s drop back a few years and see what our fellow researchers thought.  I once again drag you back to the world of I wish to start in the recent historical record, in the work of Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969) who is credited with the creation of a flesh and blood Tulpa. She was a Belgian-French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most known for her visit to Tibet in 1924, when such a trip was impossible for westerners. David-Neel wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels. David-Neel brought the least understood Buddhist practices to western culture, but she will be remembered among paranormalists for her experimentation in what can only be called the “mystic arts” from Tibet.  It was widely recognized that she was successful in willing the creation of a Tulpa in the form of the least threatening imaginary figure she could think of, namely a rather rotund, jolly Friar.

Here is how she explained the experience.  “Allowing for a great deal of exaggeration and sensational addition, I could hardly deny the possibility of visualizing and animating a tulpa. Besides having had few opportunities of seeing thought-forms, my habitual incredulity led me to make experiments for myself, and my efforts were attended with some success. In order to avoid being influenced by the forms of the Lamaist deities, which I saw daily around me in paintings and images, I chose for my experiment a most insignificant character: a Monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.

“I shut myself in tsams and proceeded to perform the prescribed concentration of thought and other rites. After a few months the phantom Monk was formed. His form grew gradually fixed and lifelike looking. He became a kind of guest, living in my apartment. I then broke my seclusion and started for a tour, with my servants and tents.

“The Monk included himself in the party. Though I lived in the open, riding on horseback for miles each day, the illusion persisted. I saw the fat tulpa; now and then it was not necessary for me to think of him to make him appear. The phantom performed various actions of the kind that are natural to travelers and that I had not commanded. For instance, he walked, stopped, looked around him. The illusion was mostly visual, but sometimes I felt as if a robe was lightly rubbing against me, and once a hand seemed to touch my shoulder.

“The features which I had imagined, when building my phantom, gradually underwent a change. The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control. Once, a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a living lama.

“I ought to have let the phenomenon follow its course, but the presence of that unwanted companion began to prove trying to my nerves; it turned into a "day-nightmare". Moreover, I was beginning to plan my journey to Lhasa and needed a quiet brain devoid of other preoccupations, so I decided to dissolve the phantom. I succeeded, but only after six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.

“There is nothing strange in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that have been created.”

Modern students of thought-forms or Tulpas concede that David-Neel’s Friar was unique, but the concept is rather simple.  First, David-Neel, an adept at meditation as learned in Tibet, creates the image of her entity in her mind, then projects it consciously and with great difficulty then gave it a life of its own.  In the case of the Monk, David-Neel admitted that in time, he transformed himself into a totally different character and personality and according to her account of the transition, eventually had to be destroyed.  Nevertheless, David-Neel’s account gave relative support to the creation process, at least in the Eastern and Buddhist cultures and some believe opened a floodgate for experimentation by others.

I am certain that her fellow travelers  saw the rotund monk as very real, but I am equally sure that being a thought form, he neither left footsteps in the snow or sounds audible to those around him. Why, because he was “real,” a creation of David-Neel’s mind, it did not really exist totally in her world.  Unfortunately, she did not write about how she destroyed the Tulpa, which would be helpful today, but her observations were as well formed as her creation.

In the final analysis, we have to admit that SOMETIMES we can record a paranormal event, but being fair, we sometimes fail miserably.  I do not think this has anything to do with the presence of the phenomenon, so much as where the phenomenon calls home.  When you can hear, record, see am apparition, it is most probably in residence in our world. When a phantom can’t be captured in a photo, recorded or heard, he is probably somewhere in between our world and somewhere else.

Returning to the original question of rapping and tappings however, we confront a major test of our theory.  Why, for instance in poltergeist cases, does the phenomenon always begin with just those sounds?  The answer to that can be found only if we focus field investigations on those particular phenomena. We simply have not had, to this point, the technology to find out, but now it is possible with the use of our latest tools.

We must always be aware that raps and tappings may be a mental construct.  However, we should also realize that while long ago, there were only ducks to be considered in our field, now we are learning that there are numerous other creatures in the paranormal pond, so keep your eyes open, ask questions, question everything and most important, watch out for that Mack Truck!

© 2009 Rick Moran and the ASUP, Inc. All rights reserved.  Republication with permission.