Are ghosts real? Am I imagining that paranormal activity?

Host, John Moore, discusses ghosts and all things that go bump in the night. He talks about his own paranormal experiences and looks at them through a shamanic lens.

This show also discusses what you can do if you're being bothered by spirits.

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:45

Hello everybody.

I'm gonna wish you a good morning as I usually do when I record this in the morning even though you may be listening to this at any time of the day, I don't know, wherever you are in the world.

Today's topic I'm hoping will be a little bit fun and a little bit useful and give you some knowledge and give you some practical things to do as well. But today I'm going to talk about ghosts and hauntings and paranormal activity. Sounds spooky. Um, one of the reasons this topic came up for me is that as I record this, we are going in from summer into fall and a couple of weeks we will be into fall season. Um, where I live in the in the northeast of the United States it's a pretty like it gets very dark very early as it doesn't many northern parts of the world the leaves change color and event ventually fall off and the trees are bare. And of course we have Halloween which is a big holiday here for children to collect candy but amongst other things you know recognized as salan in the Celtic cycle and you know, around the same time as All Souls Day and Dave the dead if you If so, it's it's a time where in many cultures, the veil between worlds gets thinner. And the belief is that spirits of our ancestors can return and have dinner with us and celebrate and that's super common. You know, in Celtic times they would set out feast for ancestors you know, Day of the Dead in Mexico they have the offer and does where they offer up food and you know candles and flowers and things and so it's a time that you know, we associate here with spooky things and scary things and you know, jack o' lanterns which were lit originally to scare off the quote unquote evil spirits while welcoming the lovely spirits in because not all ghosts were scary to to ancient peoples. But we've you know, we've made a whole industry and horror movies and ghost stories and that sort of thing. And you know, depending upon where you are in the world, there are different traditions around this and around that sort of thing but but where I live, Halloween is celebrated. People love to get scared around Halloween, they love to watch horror movies, they dress up in scary ways they have parties if you're not familiar with the tradition of trick or treating, which not not everywhere in the world celebrates children dress up in costumes and go from home to home. And people generally give them candy and things like that. And you know my kids are now getting a little you know, getting too old to trick or treats but think last year might have been their their final year doing that but we'll see. But I used to love taking them out going door to door and people loved seeing the kids and handing them candy. So anyway, we're it's that it's that time of year where I'm going to talk about ghosts and paranormal activity. It may it may pick up if you are living in a culture that believes that you know the veil between worlds is thinner and you know at a specific time or day that you know that it allows spirits to come through more easily. Um, the other reason that I'm talking about this is that paranormal stuff has been coming up for me a lot. I, you know, and I'll tell some stories today, too. I have, I was a guest on a podcast recently, where, you know, I told the story that I'll tell today and this was a paranormal podcast, by the way. And the person said, oh, gosh, that's, that's extremely frightening. And I thought, well, is it? I mean, is it really frightening, I, you know, I didn't find it frightening that there are spirits around.

Um, and doing stuff and, you know, witnessed by, you know, 20 plus people. But, uh, you know, some people still have this fear of Spirit because it's, it's the unknown, it's things we, you know, the invisible things we can't see. From a shamanic perspective, because I practice shamanism. We are constantly surrounded by spirits, you just don't, you know, we don't see them in Normal Reality, like, you know, if you're sitting in a room, somewhere, or, or out in nature, or whatever, you're surrounded by spirits all the time. So having one act up a little bit is not incredibly scary for me. You know, having them having them affect physical reality is still a little bit can be a little bit surprising. Shocking, sometimes. But not like, it doesn't, at this point in my life doesn't make me afraid. Um, so there, you know, I will definitely talk about there's some, there's some paranormal activity happening around me at this moment, and, you know, it's not, it's not frightening me or anything. Sometimes it's a little annoying, sometimes it you know, wakes me up at night, or, you know, wakes up other people or stuff shows up in my house that shouldn't be there or otherwise. So let's talk a little bit about that. I will also talk about some things you can do, if you feel like you have a mischievous or bothersome spirits, around you in your home. Sometimes they gravitate towards homes, sometimes they gravitate towards people. So moving might not help too much. If, if you have a spirit that is following you around. So, you know, it should be fairly obvious from the way that I talk that I do believe in an afterlife. And I do believe in a spirit and soul that is separate, but associated with the body. And you know, at the time of death, the soul separates from the body completely. And we, you know, we pass on because there's nothing, there's nothing animating the body anymore. You know, that's it, you know, that's regardless of the way in which a person actually dies, if they're sick, or you know, injured or what have you. You know, which might be the cause of death, right, the thing that stops you from breathing and you know, your soul can no longer hang on to this body because it's not operating anymore. The soul separates from the body, and that is spiritual death. What I will say in my experience is that for most people, the spirit will hang around on this plane, which in shamanism we call the middle world, which is the spiritual version, or the spiritual overlay of the 3d world that we live in. shamans recognize multiple worlds really infinite levels, but we you know, to really generalize, we talk about upper world lower world and middle world and this isn't Heaven, Hell on Earth. You know, the lower world is not hell in from a shamanic perspective, it's where we do a lot of work, healing work, meat, power animals, that sort of thing. And it's actually pretty beautiful place. It's a very natural kind of place. And then there's the upper world and that's where we meet sort of upper world teachers. And so I, you know, I also I will talk a little bit about my experience of where souls go when people die, right. So, you know, a lot of, you know, systems, religions, spiritual beliefs center around punishment and reward Heaven and Hell, purgatory, you know, all of these things. That's just not reality in my experience, and I won't, are you, I won't argue with your beliefs or my beliefs, you know, you're welcome. You're welcome to them. But I have done a fair amount of work with death and dying. And,

you know, what I've experienced is that people kind of go, because spirit is formless, where you go after you die is formless. But consciousness can represent that as a place and you as having, you know, a body, even though you don't have a physical body. You know, it really differs depending upon the person. And, you know, so your expectations, when you're living towards the end of your life, matter a whole lot to where you wind up. You know, and absolutely, reincarnation is a thing as well. So some people come back, some people do not come back. All kinds of things happen, there's all kinds of crazy things that happen. If you think crazy things happen when you're alive, you should see what happens when you die. So I have, I have on occasion, you know, gone to where people go when when they die in in journey and shamanic journey, gotten information from you know, these spirits that I could not have gotten any other way. So to me, it was really confirmation that I was not making this up. So for example, somebody said, I want you to contact my, my aunt and see how she's doing. And so I journeyed for that person, and went to their aunt in the in, you know, in the afterlife where they were, and, you know, came back and could describe what the aunt looked like described that she was a painter, I didn't know that before he journeyed, that she was visiting, and playing cards, the grandmother so spirits can visit other spirits in the afterlife and have a social life and really have a wonderful life. And, you know, My take is that the whole heaven and hell and purgatory thing is just a method of control as a lot of organized religion is it's a way to control behavior. Right back before we had police departments and things like that, you know, we controlled people's behavior by threatening them with hell and promising them heaven. If they behaved according to our rules. That's my take, you might differ with that. And that's okay. That's totally fine. But obviously, you know, I'm going to present my viewpoint. So, you know, I've done a lot of that work. And I've done a lot of what we call psycho pump work, which is helping spirits move to where they're supposed to be. Psycho pump comes from the Greek and it basically means guide of souls, or, you know, and it's a type of work that a lot of shamanic practitioners do. All over the world. shamans are, you know, work soon, after somebody dies frequently to help them ease the process of crossing over. And, you know, we treat these we treat these spirits as clients, we give them respect and understand that if they're stuck, they're actually suffering. Imagine living in a world where you can't really affect much, and all you can do is observe, you know, over time, that's, you know, that's not fantastic. And so, really, you know, when you cross over, it's a beautiful thing. And you know, you're in it's been, you know, described as a place of just absolute warmth, comfort, love and welcoming. And, you know, I don't at this point, I don't have an opinion about where terrible people go, when they die if they experience a hellish world or who makes that decision or, you know, what have you. You know, I don't know what happened to Hitler, for example, in the afterlife, and I don't have much interest in visiting him. So I'm probably not going to do that. Any, anytime soon out of intellectual curiosity kind of thing. But what happens for most people when they when they cross over is, you know, a lot of stuff gets stripped away that's closely associated with the body, for example, trauma gets stripped away and wounding gets stripped away. And, you know, so people do change. When they cross over, they become more quote unquote, angelic, and,

you know, beneficence. So, some people, when I teach shamanism, we get upper world helping spirits, which sometimes are humans that have crossed over, that come, you know, that want to continue to work with us. Sometimes those are people's ancestors, like a father or grandfather or grandmother who have passed away. And sometimes those people weren't very nice people in their lifetime in in 3d reality, while they were still alive. And that can be a hard, hard truth to except for some people. In the, you know, what I tell people, when that happens is that this is sort of a purified version of that person, right? This is the person like, who all of the cruelty, meanness, narcissism, ego, all of that stuff was stripped away. Some people call that going to spirit school. And so they're coming back as a beneficence being who only has good intentions, and is not cruel or harmful or anything like that anymore. So that's what happens when we cross over. Now, if you haven't crossed over, if you're stuck here, if you're stuck in the middle world, you know, things are a little bit different, because you haven't gone through that process yet. And that's what we call ghosts. Ghosts are generally speaking stuck spirits. There, you know, that being said, there are a lot more spiritual beings in the middle world than just ghosts. In fact, most spirits in the middle world are not, in fact, discarnate human beings. So a lot of the stuff that we experience, if you experienced Paranormal Activity might be nature spirits, or what I call spirits of place. Spirits get a lot of spirits get very strongly associated with a place and that includes buildings like homes, especially if your home has been there for a while, get of house spirits. These were called house demons in Greek times, they had helping spirits that watched over the home and protected the inhabitants and that sort of thing. But, you know, so all you know, but a lot of sort of bothersome paranormal activity can be stuck spirits, because they're trying to like reach through communicate their suffering, you know, sort of desperate for attention. Imagine if you were ignored by the entire planet for, you know, years decades, and couldn't really, you know, had a really hard time affecting physical reality, if you could all of a sudden get the power to get some attention affect physical reality, you might, you might act up a little bit like a child who acts up in a negative way to get attention. spirits can kind of do the same thing. And sometimes it's a cry for help. And I believe that one of the reasons I experienced a significant amount of paranormal activity in my life is that spirits can sense when people have when people can help them. And given that I have training, a lot of training in sort of psychopomp work and have a lot of experience doing that kind of work. I think spirits kind of come knocking on my door when they encounter me. I also think that certain types of activities make people kind of light up on the you know, what you might call the astral plane or the theory plane or you know, other planes and I've done a tremendous amount of spiritual work. Besides shamanism, I've done a lot of ritual work that is designed to sort of affect my aura in sort of protective ways, and you know, to draw luck into have harmonious relationships and that sort of thing. So when you do that, if you do any sort of ritual work, whether that is in doesn't really matter what the tradition is, if it's designed to

affect, energize or change your aura in some way, or your THEARC body or what have you, you're on the astral plane, you know, that's can draw the attention of spirits, and they can kind of act up a little bit. So I will give, I'll give a few examples. So, you know, one of the reasons why I have theorized that there's paranormal activity around me, because of my training and experience is that, you know, things really kind of ticked up for me, when I was going through certain shamanic training with some different teachers that I trained with, you know, I was trained in deep possession work, which is, you know, you might think of the word exorcism, we don't use that word. Because it's much less violent, and we don't treat treat spirits as enemies, would treat them as clients. And so as training and the possession or training and psychopomp, and death and dying work, and had a bunch of really weird paranormal activity, which brings me to my story. So you know, this was a number of years ago, when I was going through an apprenticeship in shamanism and then follow that up with some advanced training in psychopomp, work and curse unraveling and all kinds of stuff. So there was a significant amount of activity around me, and I will describe some of that activity. And some of it is a little bit hard to believe, and I understand that. But, you know, I had some typical stuff going on, like I, my office used to be in the basement of the house that I lived in, and I would be the only person in the house, my kids would be at school, my wife at the time would be traveling, you know, away on business. And I would hear heavy, heavy footprints above me on you know, on the first floor of the building, and I thought somebody had broken into the house. I, you know, ran upstairs, I think I grabbed a stick or something in case there was a burglar in my home. And nothing, nobody, nothing. And that started happening almost every day. And I would, I would come back from a training. And, you know, the woman I was married to at the time, would wake up in the middle of the night and see somebody standing at the foot of our bed. Looking down on us freak out, wake me up. There was nobody there. You know, and some of the stuff, some things a few things you could sort of say, Well, you know, maybe they were maybe they were asleep. And I didn't believe any of this stuff was really happening at first, I should say I was not a strong believer and ghostly activity or paranormal activity. When I started out even though I was training and spirituality. At the time, I thought Most of it was rubbish. And people were experienced, not making things up but experiencing other things that they just hadn't looked into enough to explain. So, you know, the foot, the footsteps, the you know, my wife and my kids, seeing people both seeing strange, you know, shadow people in the house and that sort of thing. And me catching things out of the corner of my eye and doors opening up on their own and, you know, all kinds of stuff. And then it started to really intensify. And it intensified in a really strange way. Things rather large things in my house would disappear. So they would be gone. And they would show up in really weird ways. And it wasn't just at my house. So the first thing was I went to a I went to a training, shamanism training with my teacher. And I have a little bear Totem that I bring with me that I placed on the altar when I do training or when I'm teaching. And I've had it for a long time. You know, it's carved, you know, it's carved in actually carved into a fossil. You know, and it's a it's a precious spirit. Will item to me. And, you know, when I got home that was missing. And I remembered packing it into my bag. So I thought, well, you know, I probably dropped that. So I emailed everybody in the class and said, you know, anybody happened to see or pick up?

My bear Totem, and it looks like this, and I described it, and nobody had seen it. And somebody even volunteered, who lived close to go back to the place where the class was, it was about, you know, a little over an hour from where I lived, go back and look for it. And she did and didn't find it. And I even drove back, you know, with my kids, and with a flashlight searched the driveway area of the building, we were we were training and not to be found. So I thought, well, you know, I dropped it somewhere weird, and maybe it'll show up, and maybe it won't, maybe it's just lost at this point. So about a week later, and at this time I was driving, I was driving a certain car. And we had two cars at the time, I was driving certain car, and I hadn't driven the other car at all. And about a week later, I went to get into the other car. And there was something sitting on the driver's side, seat floor, wrapped up in some papers, and I unwrapped it. And sure enough, it was my bear. And it was wrapped in papers that had printing on them. And I have never seen that in my life. And nobody had been in that car. Since I had been at training, it had been locked in my driveway. Um, so how did it get there? Unknown, Unknown, right? So my laptop disappeared from my desk. I went downstairs to work on my laptop, and it was missing. And it went missing for a couple days. And I was really frustrated. And I was going through. I think it was going through D possession training at the time. And this wasn't the only thing lots and lots of things would disappear in my house and then show up again, in weird ways. And so I, you know, I went upstairs to take a shower one day. And there was a, you know, bookshelf next to the bathroom, master bathroom. And I had I remember placing my hand on top of the bookshelf. And looking at it, and I don't know what I was thinking. But I went in, I took a shower. And I came out and my laptop was sitting right where I had placed my hand and there was nobody else in the house. Um, so how did how did this happen? Well, I'll talk about that in a minute. There's, you know, there's more to the story. So I was, you know, taking my daughters to out to dinner to go get some pizza at a pizza place. And it was summertime. And my daughter was wearing sandals, and she kicked them off in the back of the car. And then when we got to the restaurant, I said, Okay, you know, you know, parked in the parking lot. Nobody got out of the car, the windows weren't open, we had the air conditioner running. And my daughter looks down and says I can't find my sandals. And I was like, well, they must have, they must have gotten under the seat or something. We tore that car apart and never found those sandals. They absolutely disappeared into thin air. There was no way they could have gotten we looked under every seat, we pulled up the rugs. The window had not been open, the doors had not been open. Nothing, they were just gone. just gone, never returned. So you know, so we had to actually drive. Because at least in the United States, I don't know how it is everywhere else, but you can't you can't go into restaurants without shoes on. So we had to go had to run to a store and buy her some sandals. So we can go out to eat. So that happened, you know, these are just a few examples. So a lot of the stuff happened. So I went to this training and was training with this teacher from the west coast and, you know, I was talking to her before the class I'm like, you know, all this stuff is disappearing. And you know, I don't know what's I don't know what's happening. I you know, I don't get it. But, you know, I'm hopefully, you know, it's become kind of an annoyance. You know, I can't have my laptop go missing for three days or, you know, precious spiritual items or my daughter shoes while we're on our way somewhere. So, and this teacher is like, Well, you know, It's really hard for spirits to do that sort of thing. So I think something else is going on, like, somebody in your house is moving your stuff, or you just haven't noticed or whatever. And I thought to myself, okay, well, you know, that might explain some of it, I don't know, I don't know. But it was, you know, things like the examples I've presented over and over and over and over again.

So then, you know, we're the, you know, the class starts and we're in the, in the training, and the teacher is going to demonstrate something to us. So we're, we're all sitting on the floor, in this very tight circle, almost shoulder to shoulder, and all of our things that we bring in, if you ever do training, in shamanism, there's a lot of stuff, you know, you have drums and rattles and stuff like that, all of my stuff is behind me about 10 feet behind me and including my rattle, which is sitting on a cushion. And, you know, the teachers teaching and all of a sudden, the rattle starts to shake itself, and you know, audibly and visibly shake, so you can hear it and see it and there's nothing else, there's no tremor in the room, nobody else's rattle is moving. Nothing else in the room is moving. There's not an earthquake, there's no wind blowing through the room. There was nothing physically touching the rattle that could have been moving it or no physical phenomena that could have been causing that to happen that anybody could observe. The person sitting next to me turned around and saw it, and then looked at me with the widest eyes, and said, and I will paraphrase a little bit here because of the expletive, what the f is that? I'm just like that, or I'm like, Man, it's my rattle shake in itself, don't worry about it. And I think that's funny, right? Like, I actually think some people are frightened by this story. This is a story I told on another podcast. And some people are really frightened by that I wasn't particularly frightened, frightened by it, and annoyed by some of the things that were happening. So finally, this teacher who witnessed the rattle shaking on its own, as did you know, 20 other people in the room, looked at me and said, Okay, I believe that what, you know, I believe what's going on is happening. And so we did a little work in the class, and we did, you know, I did some work on the side to sort of make some peace with make some peace with spirit that was, that was taking moving my stuff, and, you know, sort of found out who, who it was and what was going on. I won't, you know, I won't, I'm not going to talk about who it was or what was going on, not that it wasn't anybody famous or anything like that. But, you know, I'm, I'm respecting my spiritual clients privacy at this point. But, you know, that was spiritual activity, and it did calm down for a while, you know, and a lot, you know, other things happen, you know, certain things will happen around me, like electronic devices will start to fail around me in weird ways, like, you know, my phone will die all of a sudden, or, you know, one of the things that happened during this time was the radio in my car started tuning itself to different stations. And it was it had, this was an older car, and it had a manual dial, and that was actually turning itself to tune to different channels. So the, you know, physical phenomena, electrical phenomena. You know, the, the sounds of the heavy footprints about footsteps above me, all that stuff is going on. You know, and so that's one thing. That's one thing that happened, and, you know, I might attribute some of that to my imagination if it hadn't been witnessed by other people, a lot of other people. And, you know, if it were a couple of incidents, I might say, Okay, well, you know, I don't really know if something's going on, but there's was a lot of incidents a lot, a lot, a lot of incidents, all in a really short period of time, all very similar, you know, and in, in journey, you know, turned out to be a particular spirit, who had some power because to make something disappear, and show up somewhere else. That's not an everyday activity. I can't do that, unless I you know, physically pick it up and carry it somewhere. You know, that is a, you know, it was a spirit who had some skill during his lifetime in spiritual stuff and

could affect figured out how to affect material objects. On the physical plane. So, anyway, yeah, I mean, I tell the story to some people and they're like, Oh, that's, you know, that's really freaky. Well, you know, my friends to me enough now that that story doesn't really freak me out. And, you know, sometimes another thing that's happened happened really weird is, I found things in my house, that don't belong to anybody and didn't have a way of getting into my house. Weird Japanese key chain was on my living room floor the other day, I found a padlock under my bed that didn't belong to anybody. And I don't keep anything under my bed. And I don't have you know, any reason to have a padlock there, and I showed it to everybody who had been in the house, and nobody recognized it, so stuff like that. So let's talk a little bit about what you can do if you have troublesome spirits in your environment. Because I want this to be sort of useful. And this, you know, particularly this will work in you know, home or an office or what have you. So, you know, one of the first things I might do is to try to make peace with the spirits that are there. And the reason is that it might not be a stuck spirit, it might be a nature spirit, or what have you, or an Ancestral Spirit coming back, coming back from across the way. Um, the way to tell if it is a stuck spirit really, is you've got to seek the help of a practitioner who has skill in this area. So you can seek out a shaman, you can seek out a medium, you know, certain people have clairvoyant abilities, they can see, see, or hear or talk to spirits, you know, so you know, you've got to seek out some, somebody who has some skill in that area, it's a little bit hard to differentiate yourself. But the first thing you can do is you can try to make peace. And if you think about it, like any kind of relationship, you know, it's a healthy thing to do in relationships, to set boundaries, right. So if I have a, a relationship, like a romantic relationship with somebody, and something, you know, they, they're, they're doing something that is hurtful to me, you know, I have a right to say, That's hurtful to me, and that's not okay. And then the sort of, but loving way. So the same thing is true for spirits, whether they're in your home or your business, or they're following you around as a person. You know, in my case, because the spirit was active, everywhere I went, it was following myself and another family member around. So and, and actually, you know, sort of feeding off our energy as well. And, and using that energy to affect the physical matter. I won't get into the whole spiritual physics of it, but you know, anything that does anything is energy, right? The ability to do anything is required, you know, requires energy. Energy is the capacity to do work. That's the physics of it. So, you know, one way you can make peace with spirits in your home or business or whatever it is, you can talk to them. Most spirits cannot read your mind. Um, you know, there certainly are spirits that can you might be able to communicate with telepathically, but if it is, you know, a ghost or stuck spirit or, you know, certain nature spirits or whatever. They don't generally read minds, and so you have to actually talk out loud. And that might feel a little bit weird unless you're a person who normally talks to spirits or talks to themselves or what have you. And people might look at you a little weird. So you this might be something you want to do on your own when you're alone.

But one way and this was taught to me by somebody who practices the art of conjurer which is, you know, comes from African American folk magic is to you know, you you sit at table and you light a candle and you have a glass of water next to it and a glass of water is, is a form of offering, it's a form of nourishment, so you're not going to drink the water afterwards. Generally, it's a good idea to dispose of it out side after afterwards, and, you know, like water, a plant with it or something like that. So you light a candle and set a glass of water next to it, and you sit and you just speak to the Spirit. And, you know, introduce yourself. Hi, i'm john, I noticed you're in the house, I noticed you're doing this and that. And, you know, set some boundaries, you know, you're scaring my family. And that's not okay. So, you know, I need you to stop that. Um, you know, and sometimes they will hear you and understand. And that's a good, that's a good starts, right? And if things don't come down, or if they intensify after that really good idea to seek the help of a practitioner who's good at clearing space, or working with nature spirits, or you know, doing psychopomp work. Anybody who's a shamanic practitioner of any kind should be really good at this type of work. So another, you know, another way to sort of make and keep peace with spirits in the home is to, is to make offerings. And I did a whole podcast on offerings before. And the best use of use of offerings is to, you know, to pacify mollify spirits. You know, there's some complexity to that. So I would check out like, if you're, you know, if it's, you know, check out my podcast on offerings or read something about how to give offerings. But basically, if you come from a culture that makes offerings to the dead, do that in the culturally appropriate way that you would do that? You know, so if you're, you know, if you're come from a culture that has an offer ENDA use that if you're from another kind of culture, and you do offerings a different way, do that. Because chances are, that spirit probably associates with the culture that you associate with. Exception might be if you're living somewhere that's not native to you, or, you know, you're living on land, where there are not, you know, your people didn't occupy beforehand. So for example, I live on land that was previously occupied or close to land that was previously occupied by Native American tribe. And so some common offerings might be cornmeal, for example, something that they understand from their lifetime, understand and respect. So I might make an offering of corn meal out on Ivan outdoor altar, on the spirits of the land for the spirits of the land here, which includes, you know, potentially Native American spirits of, you know, a tribe that lived here before my ancestors settled in the area. So, you know, honor respect relationship. So shamanism, which is my path is all about being in relationship to spirits. And, you know, that's a really good way of thinking about it. So, when people sometimes they'll have, they'll need a power animal, some people might kind of think of that as a spirit animal or Totem animal, they're, they're different things. So power animal is a particular animal spirit that works with an individual, where a spirit animal is more like this is an animal I identify with.

You know, a breed of animal or a type of animal or species of animal that I identify with, very strongly identify with the qualities and the totem animal is usually an animal that's associated with a clan or a tribe, you know, that sort of thing. I might belong to the bear clan. And so the totem for my clan is, is bear. But if I have a bear power animal, that is a one on one relationship with a spirit of a bear. So some people get their power animal you know, we do something called power animal retrieval to reentered. Somebody power animals in them. And you know that the, you know, sort of the beginning of a relationship. And some people get an animal that they have a fear of, you know, spider or snake or bat or you know, sometimes crow I love crows. So I don't know why that would be. But I've had people like, crows yuck. And that's not a good way to begin a relationship. Imagine meeting somebody in a dating situation for the first time. And I'm like, oh, yuck. I don't like your kind of people. probably not a good way. Probably not a healthy way to begin a relationship, a strong relationship with somebody, that's not going to do you much good. So, when you think about it that way, entering into relationship with spirit. And so when we do offerings, when we talk to spirits, that sort of thing. It's important to be respectful. And yes, this is, you know, this is my house. And I can assert, you know, I can assert certain rights to my house. But I understand that I'm not the only resident here. And I can assert boundaries, certain types of behavior is not acceptable. Don't wake me up in the middle of the night. I need my beauty rest. You know, don't steal my stuff. I'm happy to give you an offering. But, you know, there are certain behaviors that are that are not going to be okay. Taking in hiding my things, I mean, not okay. Scaring my children. Not, not really okay either. You know, might be unintentional behavior on their part. So you can certainly set boundaries. Now hauntings? You know, hauntings can be in my experience, and I'll talk about sort of why spirits get stuck here in the middle world, and not move on. Um, hauntings can be pretty challenging. So generally speaking, hauntings happen. You know, a stuck spirit is a human being. That, so I'm separating that from activity of other types of spirits, nature, spirits, spirits of place, things we might consider gods and goddesses or helping spirits, we're talking about stuck spirits. And they get stuck for a few different reasons. So these are generally human beings and my experience. Animals don't really become stuck spirits. And there's a couple of reasons for that. So, you know, although people might see ghostly dogs or you know, that sort of thing, I think they're probably nature spirits at that point, I think they're probably not, they're appearing that way. But they're probably not actual dogs that that passed away. We tend not to get, they tend not to get stuck. In my experience, I have not encountered ghost animals. People though. So what happens that causes somebody to be stuck. So this is usually a death, where the death comes as a shock, or a surprise, some sort of traumatic death. Not always, but most of the time. So the things we think about are like, murder and suicide are a good example to that. And I realized that suicide isn't necessarily shocking or surprising.

But it is such it's an act where a person is in such horrible pain to end their life at that point that sometimes they get, sometimes they get stuck. And there's some other stuff that goes on with suicide, you know, with soul loss when one wishes oneself dead or thinks one's better off dead, the soul kind of separates from the body becomes dissociated a little bit and you know, that can cause some pretty severe soul loss and then you know, when, you know when, if somebody, you know, complete suicide and unfortunately dies. They can wind up being stuck here because there's so much soul loss. It is very sad and I really you know, if you, if you in any way ever feel suicidal or like you need help, I hope that you reach out for Have the help that you need? It's not. It's not, it's not a good thing. And it's not necessarily. It's, it's not, it's not an it's really not an answer to anything. And I recognize how much pain people are in when they're when they're going through that, and how crowded are thinking becomes, and the types of thoughts that go through people's heads, I do understand that. So, if you're considering if you ever consider that or you feel that way, or you have thoughts that are overwhelming, and you can't control them, please, please, please reach out for help in your area, call emergency services, or call a suicide hotline, and, and get the help that you need. So murder and suicide are are ways that spirits get stuck here. You know, things like accidents and natural disasters, so car crashes, plane crashes, tsunamis, that sort of thing. Any kind of mass casualty event, you know, could be a fire or, you know, anything like that we're, you know, the death is either violent or surprising or shocking. Um, human spirits can get stuck. And, you know, I have I have theories about that. I don't know 100% why that is. But I think it has, I think it has to do with the shock. And that the the soul, the consciousness is not accepting that it's in fact dead. Or there are other reasons why it gets stuck here. And so these, you know, these spirits get stuck animals don't. Animals don't really have an ego in the same way that people do. I'm not saying that animals are not conscious, and they're not and don't have souls, they are absolutely are conscious, and they absolutely have souls. But they don't get stuck here. And I think it has to do with ego structure. So, you know, it is what it is, I don't, you know, I'm theorizing at this point. But in my experience, animals don't become ghosts and don't become stuck spirits. I could absolutely be wrong on this. But I've run into a lot of spirits. And that hasn't hasn't been an experience of mine. So, you know, so. So these beings can get stuck. And what practitioners who are trained in psychopomp work can do is help them move to where they're supposed to go. And we do that with the help of our helping spirits. And we do that with a full conviction of where they're going next is going to be a wonderful place where they're going to feel at ease, and there will be no suffering. And they're, you know, is going to be a beautiful welcoming place for them, and help them move to that place. It takes a fair amount of training to be able to do that work, I don't recommend that to people who haven't gone through, you know, the stages of training that are required to do that sort of work. So anyway, that's, that's psychopomp work. So you know, if you have if you have a condition like that, you can call in somebody who's helpful at helping souls crossover. And, you know, not just sermonic practitioners can do that. But people who are mediums sometimes can, can do that. I'm not a huge fan of exorcising spirits, that's sort of a combative way of approaching it.

And, you know, again, if it's a suffering spirit, practice, you should treat that as a client the way you would somebody with a body. So, from the shamanic perspective, there are lots and lots of spirits in the world. Some of those spirits have physical form, some of them do not. Right. So when when you when you die, you're not really attached to your physical form anymore. So your your spirit is sort of formless but your consciousness still holds a form for it right? Your soul body still holds a form, which is why when, you know if people see spirits or you know, an ordinary reality, and they're not in trance, they might see them as just shadowy or translucent, or, you know, sort of a morphus foggy balls of light, that sort of thing. And that, you know, is a little bit Spiritual energy bleeding through into the physical realm. And, you know, most spirits can't, can't do that, or requires too much energy to do that, or they don't know how or, or they just don't want to, they just don't have an inclination to take on physical form physical forms hard, you know, I, you know, I've, I've got aches and pains, I'm sure you do, too. I mean, physical bodies hard, it is a blessing, though, it is a blessing to have a physical body to be able to work in this plane. But understanding that there are many, many, many other planes. So it's important to treat your body Well, it's important to take care of it and, and that sort of thing. And I realized, I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, but that's a normal thing for me. So as we come into the darker months, at least, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, you know, something to think about. And I, I did another podcast on ancestors, and I did another one on on setting up altars, you know, and having an ancestor altar is another good way to sort of, maybe calm the spirits in your home, because the ancestors will take care of your home and sort of keep things in order, you know, their, their spirits can can cross over, particularly if they're honored here. So, you know, you might, if you again, if you live in a culture where it's traditional, to have an ancestor altar, keep that up. You know, that's a fantastic lineage to have. And if not, you can certainly find ways to keep an ancestor altar could be, you know, photographs and candles, and you make offerings of flowers and that sort of thing. And that can exist in your home, without appearing too shocking to people who are, who might not understand or might be opposed to any sort of spiritual work. Or might think you're worshipping the devil or something, I don't know. I think you know, certain people, when they find out what I do, I think, you know, might might associate what I do with some kind of dark magic or some, you know, something evil or something, and quite the opposite is true, I assure you, but you can keep an ancestor altar that is fairly low key. And my one recommendation for that, if you set up an ancestor altar is to not keep it in a bedroom where people are sleeping, because it can become quite an active location and can kind of mess up your sleep a little bit. So, you know, I keep mine in my dining room where my family eats and where we, you know, use the dining room table to play games and have lots of family activity. And I just consider it like, you know, these are these are deceased people, but they're people that are still part of my family and I'm including them in activities that my children are taking and hopefully they take some joy from that and will in return Watch out for the my children and and watch out for my home and keep us all safe. And that sort of thing. And also maybe kind of keep the spirits a little bit calm around me make sure they're not stealing my stuff. Or, you know, destroying my electronics or you know, waking me up at night.

So with that, I will end this podcast. I hope this has been interesting. I hope I have left you with some useful information. As always, if you have suggestions or things that you're interested in, you can feel free to contact me through my website, which the URL for is announced at the end of every episode. I hope you'll subscribe wherever you get podcasts and listen to me some more. I love talking to people all over the world. I love and appreciate you and I hope that you and your loved ones stay healthy and happy and loving

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact John go to MaineShaman.com that's maineshaman.com