Just because a building is old, doesn't mean it is haunted

1st February 2018. Reading Time: 3 minutes General, Paranormal Investigation. 2103 page views. 5 comments.

As investigators, one could be easily fooled into thinking that the older the building, the more likely it is to be haunted. It couldn't actually be further from the truth.

A lot of people interested in the paranormal are just as equally interested in history. There is history everywhere we look. The older the better. A lot of investigators are also somewhat urban explorers where again ….. the older the better. The same however does not apply to paranormal investigating. Just because a building is old or looks spooky and run down, doesn’t mean it is haunted.

The older is not necessarily the better

Particularly here in Australia, we struggle to keep a lot of our old buildings in tact and standing. When a building is heritage listed, it becomes extremely expensive to maintain. Even to hang a picture on the wall requires a specially trained and qualified tradesman with a heritage qualification to hang it on the wall. Not to mention the value of the land that it sits on. Development is big business these days. With our population growing, older buildings which have no commercial use are being demolished. Here in Victoria we have lost several old mental institutions which have been knocked down or turned into apartments. Even Pentridge prison has been redeveloped. We have very few ‘old’ buildings left, so we flock to whatever building we can that is over 50 years old. The ones that are left, may be over a century old, but they are not necessarily haunted. Last year for example, I had the opportunity to investigate some of Victoria’s most well known iconic older properties, including what is considered to be the oldest homestead in Melbourne. They were beautiful properties with fascinating history. They have been restored in immaculate condition and are a beautiful nod to our past. In most cases, though, there was nothing going on. We did several investigations and we didn’t even get a hint of even a residual energy. The buildings looked the part, but there was nothing going on.

A new property could have something going on

We don’t know exactly what causes a haunting and we don’t know exactly what a ghost is. Again we speculate. One of the possible explanations we talk about is residual energy. It is thought that this could possibly be a reason for people in new developments experiencing activity. Just because the building has been renovated to an apartment, doesn’t mean the energy has gone away. Perhaps an intelligent energy is connected to the land somehow so in cases where a building has been knocked down and something put in it’s place, it haunts whatever is on the land.

Maybe it is the person that is haunted, not the building

I have heard this term before. Do you ever hear of private cases where people claim that some kind of entity keeps following them from house to house. It is because they feel that they themselves are the ones being haunted and not the house. I have even on occasion been on investigations where activity seems to be directed and centered around a particular person with evidence suggesting that what is communicating with us has come with this particular person instead of already being at the property.

Hollywood has given a very false illusion as to what a ghost and a haunting is. The typical signs of haunting often include an abandoned old looking dark building. Maybe a beautifully renovated house with a white picket fence and a new family moving in and encountering something dark. With the same misconception that you will only experience a haunting at night, it doesn’t matter how old the building is. Some of the oldest buildings in Victoria have nothing going on yet brand new buildings have some strange happenings. When choosing a location, you need to look at the history and the personal experiences being reported. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket just because a place is old or looks spooky. The saving grace is however if you find there isnt much going on at an old property and you don’t get any activity, you can still get some pretty cool looking photos.

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Comments

  • Liam Baker 6 years ago

    Love this blog article! You've thrown caution on some of the big questions & misnomers, here - what if your new residence is 'haunted' because of what lies beneath (a regular occurrence here in Aus with our knock-it-down-redevelop-it mentality)...or, more pertinently, what if that old homestead isn't actually 'haunted' itself, but some fitting or piece of furniture brought in for historical affect has artificially dragged in some form of energy with it from a previous location!? Keep critically posing those big questions, Sarah!!

    • living life in full spectrum 6 years ago

      Thanks Liam you make some excellent points! I could talk about this topic all day ... and sometimes I do LOL

  • karin backstrom 6 years ago

    Couldn't agree more! I often say the same about old items! Just because they're old doesn't mean they're valuable!

    • living life in full spectrum 6 years ago

      This is also a very good point!

  • Ashley Knibb 6 years ago

    Great post and reminds me of some of my own thoughts around this area too! The comprehension of a haunting is still theory and ghostly explanations are really related to our belief systems rather then solid fact. I mean what the heck is a haunting anyways ??