More about MinimandaRuths Ghost

MinimandaRuth is my daughter, and she is convinced that a ghost, spirit whatever is living in her bedroom, and although I am skeptical, I am willing to listen.

There is an area with a unique history - our front road (Buckley-Sumner Highway) used to be the main Seattle Yakima highway back in the early settlement days, and was used extensively by the military. I am fuzzy on the details, but an early Native American leader, Chief Seattle and his brother got into some trouble not of their making, and there was trial (trumped up murder charges) in Olympia way back when. I believe there was some sort of incident either on the way or back from the trial, either a ambush or last stand by the Native Americans, and many on both sides were killed. Across the road there is an old monument put up around 1900 with the names of the white soldiers that were killed, but none of the Native Americans.

History has shown that Chief Seattle was clearly innocent, and not too much is known about the incident that was thought to have happened 150 feet from my front door, as far as who was the instigator. (I have my suspicions). It is known as the battle of Connells Prairie if there are any local WA history buffs around.

The thing is, my husband and I have walked over there and analyzed this many times, and we truly believe that the battle took place in our yard, mostly due to the topography of the land, age of trees, where the forest stops, and our belief that the highway was re-routed slightly for the homes and farms that popped up here about that time.

So I am not sure if she is really encountering a spirit or a "bad vibe". I keep telling her if we explore the history of the Native Americans in our area in a truthful way, and let the spirit know that we respect him and will do what we can to exonerate him, maybe add something to the monument about the Native American lives lost, that should help. Are there any Native Americans on the board with some advice. Thanks from both of us. I would really like her to start sleeping in her bedroom again.

But that is a pretty interesting story.
I know a lot of people don't believe in "ghosts" or "spirits", but I have had enough experience to know with 100% certainty that they exist.
Looking into the history of the area could give you a lot of insight into what you might be dealing with there. Have you or anyone else besides your daughter had any "strange" experiences?
If this is one of the "settlers" and not an American Indian spirit and you show that you are sympathetic to the Indian, it might make the "settler" spirit angry. I don't know enough for sure, but that would seem to make sense.
Trying to gain as much information about your house and the land might help you determine what the spirit is that is there, if there is one there.

...I have had enough experience to know with 100% certainty that they exist.

Wow! Please go to this site immediately. There's $1 million just waiting for you:

http://www.randi.org

:rofl:

No matter what you do, say or show a skeptic, they will never believe something if they don't want to believe.
There is no need for me to prove anything to anyone, and even though he claims he will give you 1 million dollars, he will never hand that out because he refuses to take any evidence into consideration.

The person being tested even helps to design the test protocol. But only after you and Randi agree on exactly what AmaZiNg pSykiK PoWer it is that you're trying to prove.

Of course, this eliminates any possibility of cheating or changing the rules later. That's why Woo-woos always throw out the "won't accept evidence" canard. The Million Dollar Challenge relies on scientific evidence, not personal, anecdotal, just-pulled-it-outta-my-bunghole types of evidence.

Or to put it another way: there's a very good reason why seances always take place in a dark room...

This was about "ghosts" and that was what my comment was about.

"Most hauntings occur in old buildings, which tend to be drafty. Scientists who have investigated haunted places account for both the temperature changes and the sounds by finding sources of the drafts, such as empty spaces behind walls or currents set in motion by low frequency sound waves (infrasound) produced by such mundane objects as extraction fans."

http://skepdic.com/haunted.html

http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranormale/Ghost/very_low_frequency.htm

http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranormale/Ghost/ghosts_created_by_low_frequency.htm

Our old house (90+ years) was said to be haunted, but all of the manifestations turned out to be natural. Old plumbing can make an amazing variety of noises when it's on its last legs, let me tell you. :) And old attics and chimneys can harbor all sorts of wildlife with interesting sounds. The previous owners told us that their dogs would bark at unseen spirits. As we discovered, their dogs were barking at unseen opossums and squirrels lurking in the rafters.

I mean, I love a good ghost story and all, but for the most part, there's always a logical explanation.

And low frequency sound definitely does mess with you. The first half hour of the film Irreversible has a low frequency sound designed to induce vertigo in viewers. Makes the first half hour almost unbearable to watch. (Good film though, haha.)

A lot of people have lived and died on that land in the thousands of years since the ice receded. It seems kind of presumptious to think it must be a Native American or Settler spirit. And just so you know, not every Native American tribe shared a belief in human ghosts and hauntings, and some might very well be offended by the implication.

I think it's easy to ascribe a supernatural explanation to odd events, and tempting, too; we know that something big and terrible happened at or near a specific place in the relatively recent past, and the idea of a haunting gives us a connection. We just moved out of a "haunted house" where we lived for six years. Our land was right in the path of Union soldiers heading toward Atlanta. Union and Confederate soldiers battled and fought over every square inch of our town, including my backyard (on more than one occasion, my dogs found minie balls and once even an old button). The previous owners assured us the house was haunted because of the terrible moans and creaks and coldspots. Turns out the plumbing was totally shot and the transom windows were unweatherized. Once that was fixed, no more ghosts.

Now, I'm not saying your daughter didn't experience something odd. But I do think it's wise to eliminate all natural possibilities first. A number of us mentioned sleep paralysis on her thread (a condition I myself have experienced many times). There are other explanations, too, such as an actual living human prowler. Eliminate those causes first.

i.e., why there was an automatic assumption that the Ravening Spirit was "Indian" or "Settler." Couldn't it just as easily be some old coot who died in the house fairly recently while sitting in his Barca-Lounger watching TV?

I think this is a natural human trait: always look for the coolest explanation first.

You could also call it "Shirley MacLaine Syndrome." I've noticed that the woo-woos who believe in past lives always see themselves as an advisor to Cleopatra or an illegitimate child of Henry VIII or some such nonsense.

Unfortunately, even in the past royalty was far outnumbered by barrel makers, blacksmiths and fish-wives. But nobody ever seems to "channel" them in a past-life regression.

and i tend to believe the sleep stress is caused more by physical causes, either something that is going with her or our house.

The thing is, she thinks there is a ghost/spirit in her room, and although she is generally pretty level headed, I wanted to at least attempt some understanding.

The first thing that came to me was, as you call it, the "Shirley McLaine Syndrome", due to the interesting past of our area.

The spirit probably is a dairy farmer upset about all the developments going in here, not to mention the elimination of milk subsidies. :D :D

happening? What specifically does your daughter report? And have you or your husband seen or experienced anything unusual?

the Native American Group, I'm sure you'd get a better response there.

Other than that, I agree that showing respect and adding something to the monument may be a good idea.

I used to get weird vibes in a lot of areas of WA, particularly the woody areas of Snoqualmie and Okanogan.

All of those who died should have a monument.

It's upsetting that in all this time nobody has added to that monument to honour the Native Americans that died there as well.

Living in the New Orleans area, I have not infrequently encountered friends and acquaintances who have had issues with ghosts or other entities in the home.

Most entities can co-exist in peace and probably don't even know that you are there. The people I know have used different, but simple, home methods to clear or purify the air. Even though it is not the Southwest, a couple of my Native American friends will use sage to purify the room. I've known other people to use simple New Age methods, such as white candle and incense. A friend who is a fundamentalist Christian believed that she could not do this procedure herself, so she asked her minister to do the purification ritual. She was surprised that he did light white candles in the rooms in question and said a few simple prayers -- not a bit different from what her New Age friends suggested.

In all cases, the entity either went on its way to the next stage of existence or else what remained was a harmless and fun visitor that played only harmless tricks.

I don't believe hostile entities should be tolerated in the home. If you try a purification ritual and perhaps add your own monument to the old monument across the street, and your daughter or anyone else in the room still has problems, then it might be time to do a more forceful exorcism ritual to send the hostile entity on its way to a better plane of existence. I used Edith Fiore's words in The Unquiet Dead with great success with a negative entity, but you would need to re-phrase a little, since the hostile visitor seems to be attached to the room rather than to your daughter.

The usual caveats about making sure there is no underlying medical cause for the sleep disturbance holds true, and my personal experience is that hostile visitors are very rare. Most ghosts seem fairly clueless rather than out to cause trouble. But "rare" is not the same thing as "nonexistent." Have you tried sleeping in the room yourself to see if you are affected?