Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay

Within the world of the paranormal, there are many different types of ghosts and hauntings. Some ghosts are not associated with a house or a place but are associated with an object. The object type of haunting occurs when a ghost is attached to an object and the object is brought into a house or a different place. This is not to say that every object has a spirit attached to it or that every haunting is associated with an object. The object could range from anything from a piece of jewelry to furniture. The connection to the object in life is why there is the connection in the afterlife. An object type of a haunting usually starts unexpectedly and can be one of the easiest to types to resolve. Here is an example of this type of haunting. The names have been omitted and replaced with initials.

After the passing of my grandmother, the family divided all of her personal belongings between her sons and daughters. My aunt “W” got most of the kitchenware including an old cast iron skillet that was mostly used to make cornbread. This particular skillet was passed down to my grandmother by her mother-in-law when she had passed and was my grandmother’s favorite skillet. This skillet was coveted by all of my aunts because they all learned to cook cornbread with it when they were growing up. My grandmother was a very good cook and all her daughters inherited her culinary abilities and were also good cooks. For a year, there was some dispute between my aunts about this skillet. My Aunt “I” thought it should have gone to her because she was the oldest daughter. During one of our family reunions, my Aunt "W” gave the skillet to my Aunt “I” and I did overhear Aunt “I” say that the skillet was ‘rightfully’ hers. My Aunt “W” before this time did not let on that she had the skillet and that she had tried to use it with unsatisfactory results. I heard her tell my Cousin “J” that she did not know what the big deal was and that the skillet did not seem to “cook right” anymore anyway.

I asked my Aunt “W” what she meant when she said that the skillet did not “cook right” because a cast iron skillet only requires that you keep it greased so nothing will stick. There are no moving parts that can go bad. She said that it was always sticking and would never cook even and also that it must have been off balance or not level because it would rock back and forth sometimes in the oven. It had even fallen out of the cupboards several times.

I dropped by my Aunt “I’s” place one day around two weeks later because I was curious if she was having any problems. I also made sure that my time of arrival would be around dinner time (I did say they were all good cooks!). She was in the kitchen cooking up a storm and of course, she asked if I would stay for dinner. For dinner, she made some cornbread and I asked her if she had cooked it in grandmother’s skillet. She said yes. She also added that she did not know what Aunt “W” was making such a fuss over because the skillet was working fine and the cornbread was great and turned out just like grandmother used to make it. 

The moral of this story is that my grandmother was very old fashioned and wanted her favorite skillet to go to her oldest daughter and it finally did. When it was rightfully placed the problems stopped!

Place hauntings could be linked to a death that occurs in an area or a place that was a favorite spot in life. The departed will continue to visit their favorite spot after they pass. Here is an example of a haunted place. I have many friends that work in the law enforcement field as officers and they know that I have done paranormal investigation. One of the stories that several different offices have told me about regards a parking lot where strange things happen. Officer “B” said there was this parking lot that he would pull into at night so he could sit and work on some of his paper work and still be in the area to take calls. He said that his radar would go off showing speeds from 20 to 32 miles an hour and then a few seconds later the signal would be lost. He said that there was nothing in front of him except a hill and he said that it kept doing this even after he checked different things out in the car to make sure that there was no interference. He said that it continued to do this every 4 to 5 minutes until he left the area.

I asked him to repeat the whole story including location and he mentioned the parking lot was an old rural church parking lot that he was sitting under a big tree. I asked him if when he moved the car around in the parking if the radar was triggered and he said no and that it only happened when he was sitting under the tree. I asked him to check the next time he was up in that area if there were any power lines in close proximity to the lot and if his experience was repeated. He agreed to check

Two weeks latter Officer “J” asked me if I knew anything about the old church. I relayed “B’s” story to him and he said that he had some similar things happen to him when he was at the lot and that during the day he had checked the area out for power lines both underground and above ground. He reported that there were no power lines near the tree. He also said that when he would get out of his car the doors would lock if he walked away from the car. I started to think that the two officers were trying to pull a fast one on me with the two stories so I drove up there to check it out for my self.

I parked my car under the tree and got out to walk around when I saw a caretaker cutting the grass in the cemetery. I walked over to talk to him making sure that I did not lock my car. After a little small talk, I asked him what he knew about the church and the area. He asked me if I was a local person and I was honest with him and told him that I was not. He said that he did not think that I was because I would have known the story of the preacher who had hung himself in the tree where my car was parked. Then he asked me if I had my keys and when I said “yes,” he said that was a good thing. I had a feeling that he was going to tell me what Officer “J” said about the car doors locking of their own accord and he did. He said that every time he would park over by the tree his doors would lock while he was working. I said my goodbyes to him, went back to my car, and found the doors locked. By the way, I did not have power door locks… they had somehow manually locked!

I decided to do some research into the story that the caretaker told me and also returned to take some pictures. I talked to several different people from around that area at one of the convenience stores and they all knew of the preacher who had hung himself. They believed the tree was haunted. From my conversations, I figured out an approximate time when this preacher probably hung himself and went to the library to see if I could find out anything more but I found nothing. I did find the obituary of the preacher but there was nothing else of great importance. I picked a night that Officer “B” would be working so I could find out who would be working in that area while I was taking  more pictures. I arrived there around 9:00 pm and started taking pictures all around the area. At 9:30 pm, I moved my car under the tree and got out to take some more pictures. When I took a picture moving back toward my car, my horn beeped which mad me jump.

It was around 10:00 pm when Officer “B” came by with another officer and they both parked their cars so that their headlights would shine on my car and the tree. I had taken one roll of 35 millimeter and 20 or 30 digital photos by the time that the officers arrived so I was thinking of calling it a night. We were all standing near my car looking at the digital camera screen to see if we could see anything when the battery went dead. I went to rewind the film in my 35 millimeter camera and the battery was dead also. I changed the batteries in the digital with a spare set of alkaline batteries and the camera turned on and then the batteries went dead. So, I called it a night and moved over to my car to find my doors locked. I unlocked them and started my car startled by the sound of my radio being turned up all the way and the fan turned on full speed. I quickly turned the radio down and fan off with both officers looking at me like I was crazy. They both just opened their car doors and had no changes to the settings inside their vehicles.

It took me two day before I had a chance to view the digital pictures and found that out of 25 attempts to take a picture I had only 5 pictures that were in focus or had enough light to see any thing. All of these were pointing away from the tree. I had to get some more batteries for my 35 millimeter before I could get the film developed so it took a week to get the pictures back. The only thing that developed was unexplained reflections from the flash and some shadows that were different from the other shadows. There was nothing to jump up and down about so I decided to go back the next new moon and bring my night vision video camera and set it up on a tripod and so it could run while I took the other pictures.

There a bad storm before the new moon and the tree was damaged and removed from the property. I did not know this until I had returned to the church. So I decided to take the pictures anyway with no strange events occurring — my doors stayed unlocked and the film was devoid of anything unusual. It seemed that removing the tree from the parking lot stopped the unexplained events.

The tree could be considered as the object that had an attachment to it, which could make this an object haunting instead of a place type haunting. There is so much we do not understand about how or why ‘spirit’ attachments are made. It is important to look at the history of a new object that may have been brought into a house or area. This is why it is always important to understand ‘why’ a haunting is happening not just to prove it is happening!