The Weekly Vibe
This week: a deep dive into ghosts, spirits, hauntings, and some of the most common questions people ask about the spirit world, plus your weekly tarot, astrology, and the State of the World.
First of all, I want to say that none of these questions are stupid.
They are thoughtful questions. They are common-sense questions. They are the kind of questions people ask when they are trying to make sense of ghosts, hauntings, spirit communication, and all the strange stories we have been handed by movies, television, religion, paranormal shows, and other people.
A lot of mediums and psychics have addressed these questions over time. Sometimes we agree. Sometimes we don’t. So what I am giving you here is my opinion, mixed with what I have learned through my work as a medium, what I have experienced myself, and what I took from my near-death experience.
This is not me saying I have the final word on every ghost, every haunting, or every strange thing that happens in somebody’s house at two in the morning. I do not believe anyone has that. But I do think a lot of what people believe about ghosts is shaped by fear, storytelling, and Hollywood more than actual spirit communication.
So let’s go through some of the questions people ask, because honestly, they are not stupid. These are the questions a lot of people are already thinking.
Question 1: Why are ghosts always dressed up for history documentaries?
When people see ghosts, if a ghost does show itself, it is usually going to show up in something that is most associated with its life. It could be what they wore during their lifetime, or what they wore at the time of a significant moment.
But the clothes themselves are not transferable. We do not bring our clothes to the other side. They are no longer physical items. What they are is part of consciousness. They are part of memory. They are part of the way that spirit, or your own mind, gives form to something you can understand.
If a ghost is showing you themselves in certain clothes, they may be evoking that memory. They may be showing you the image that makes the most sense for who they were, or how you are able to perceive them.
And sometimes your own mind may fill in the details.
If you are in an old Victorian house and you see a ghost, who knows? Your mind might put that ghost in a Victorian outfit, whether that is what they were wearing or not, because that is the simplest way for you to perceive it. Maybe your mind makes sense of it that way.
Not all ghosts appear that way. There are spirits I connect with where I can sense clothing from the ‘60s, ‘70s, or ‘80s. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it does not. A lot of the reason people think ghosts are always wearing old-timey clothes is because television has portrayed the past as being more mysterious than the present.
As far as I am concerned, there are real ghosts, and there are spirits who will show up in a certain outfit from their time. I believe that. I would be stupid to discount that.
But a lot of what you see on TV shows and in stories is sensationalized. The past looks spooky on television. That does not mean every ghost is walking around dressed like they are waiting to be interviewed for a history documentary.
Question 2: Where are all the ghosts who died in the 1900s?
I guess what people are really asking is, why do so many ghost stories seem to involve older spirits?
The first thing I would say is that most ghosts do not really stick around.
A ghost is not automatically something trapped. That is one of the biggest lies human beings have been told about this subject. It is fear sensationalism. It is a fear tactic to get you to read something, watch something, or feel sorry for the poor trapped ghost.
There is nothing stuck in this world in the way people usually mean it. There is nothing held back by anything. “Earthbound” is a term people use, but nobody is literally bound to the Earth.
Your spirit, or consciousness, has free will no matter where it is, no matter what plane it is on. Sometimes you may not know you have that option. That is pretty much what I have discovered. Some spirits may not realize they can move on, or see somebody there, or see something else, and that is why I believe they seem stuck.
Some ghosts do stick around because they have unfinished crap. I know it is their choice, and they may feel like they cannot move on or let go of this physical identity until something is satisfied in them. Maybe they have trauma. Maybe they are confused.
A lot of ghosts from a long time ago, because of religion, had this hell crap, this hell bullshit, constantly drummed into them. When they die, if they do not drop that belief, that may be the first place they think they are going to go.
Or sometimes that is where people actually do go, but only for a moment. Once they realize, “I do not like this,” they immediately shift into something different.
It is different than here. Here, you have to go from one place to another. In life after here, or however you want to describe it, everything is a thought away. If you do not like something, a new thought can literally take you to a new environment. That is just how it works.
Nobody is ever stuck in hell unless they believe they need to be in some place called hell, and then hell is a reconstruction of their own consciousness. It is not an actual tangible place.
A lot of hauntings, including things connected to people who died in the ‘1900s or any other time, are not necessarily conscious spirits at all. They can be residual energy.
We leave energy behind, and other people can pick it up.
I’ll use my own house as an example. I have cats here. I live alone. I have a lot of cat energy in this house. Later on down the road, after I leave this house, whether I die here or just move away, somebody might walk in and feel something. Even if they never smell cats or see any evidence of them, they might realize there is a certain feeling or emotion left behind here.
That would be residual energy.
If I died here, that could be part of it, too. You could feel my residual energy even though I am nowhere to be found. A lot of times, people mistake residual energy for an actual spirit that is stuck.
Question 3: Why does every haunted house seem to come with a woman in a white dress?
The woman in the white dress is a widespread cultural archetype. People call her the white lady. Mediums often link that kind of figure to emotional imprints from women who died in grief, betrayal, childbirth, or loss.
I do not know every case, obviously. But again, this goes back to the first question.
Not every house has one. Not every house has something in it. But feminine energy can be very, very strong. I believe that, especially when you look back at times when women took care of the house, raised families, birthed children, and often died during childbirth. That is strong energy from very strong women, so of course, some of that can stay around.
The same goes for men, too.
But I think the white lady thing is often more of a storyline. I am not saying it is not out there, because I am sure it is. But it is not everywhere. People make it seem like it is everywhere because it is an easy ghost story. That is all it is. Not all of it, but most of it.
Question 4: If I die tomorrow, am I supposed to immediately switch to Victorian clothing?
No.
Listen, never mind your age at death. It does not work like that.
Some mediums will say that you appear in clothes that feel like you from your life, or in a way that shows how you want to present yourself. So if I died and somebody connected with me, I would probably portray something I normally wore.
If I died soon, I would probably show up in sweats and a T-shirt, because that is what I look like most of the time. I look like a surfer the other half of the day, so I might show up in those kinds of clothes. You show up for somebody else in whatever way would make sense to that person.
Outside of here, you wear whatever you want to wear. Your mind or consciousness will make up whatever you want to wear. That is, even if you are seeing yourself as a body at all.
Some spirits do not go around as a body. In my near-death experience, I did not really pay attention to my body. I do not even know that I had one. All I know is that I recognized people, and they recognized me. Whether I had a body or not didn’t matter because we were not recognizing physical things all the time. We were recognizing emotional things, or vibration.
Question 5: Why don’t ghosts ever complain about Wi-Fi?
I guess the idea here is that spirits operate on a different energetic frequency, so why would they care about Wi-Fi?
Technology can sometimes be part of a sign. Lights flickering, electronics glitching, Wi-Fi acting weird, things like that. But spirits are going to adapt to the world we are living in. We have technology now. We have lights, phones, remotes, internet, and everything else. Spirit knows how to get attention through what we have around us.
If you get a sign through your Wi-Fi, or a light blink, or some kind of glitch when you are thinking about a certain person, and it means something to you, I would take that as a sign.
And maybe, even if it was not a sign, take it as one. You never know. If it struck something in you, if it made your heart feel something, if it made you happy when you saw it, why would you try so hard to dismiss it?
That is crazy to me. When you try to dismiss everything and lock it all up in logic, you are going to miss a whole lot of signs.
So do not worry about technology. Ghosts and spirits can adapt to it. They know how to get your attention.
Question 6: If spirits can move objects, why is it always a door creaking open and never the TV remote?
Moving objects takes focused energy. Doors and cabinets are simpler things. That can be air manipulation. And yes, I think they could use remotes. I think they have used technology, and they do.
But a lot of people, including a lot of mediums, talk about objects from the physical point of view. Always the physical point of view.
I do not always have the physical point of view anymore because of my near-death experience. It opened up a lot of things for me.
A lot of times, I do not think it is even a manipulation of the actual physical thing here. I think it can be more like a suggestion put into your mind that you are seeing it, because we create everything.
If a ghost wants to show you something, it can give you the thought pattern. Your thought pattern creates it, and then you see it because this is your world. They can change technology, and they have.
Remotes may require more control, and they are not always relevant to a spiritual message.
When people ask a question like this, I think they are usually asking from the physical sense. But remember, ghosts are now consciousness, and so are you. Consciousness can be manipulated without using the physical body at all. You can perceive whatever the ghost needs you to see if you’re willing.
So most times, I believe the ghost is suggesting that you see something rather than actually standing there shutting a door like a person.
It is not like the movie Ghost all the time. There is not some spirit running around exactly like that. I know a lot of people like that movie, but I think there are a lot of flaws in it.
Question 7: Why do ghosts supposedly spend 150 years walking down the same hallway?
They don’t!
There is no time. Ghosts are not aware of time the way we are. We are the ones aware of time.
What people are usually describing there is most likely a residual haunting. It is not a conscious spirit that is trapped. It is more like an energetic imprint, or a recording of a traumatic, emotionally charged moment embedded in the environment.
It is like a tape, like an old cassette tape or a film. It is just looping back over and over.
The spirit is not aware. The spirit is not suffering. It is an echo. They are probably not even there. You are just seeing the energy of it.
Question 8: If a spirit wants to communicate, why would it choose knocking noises over plain English?
Knocking, or raps, are low-energy ways to get attention without a full manifestation.
If you look at mediumship history, spirits used codes. One knock for yes, two for no maybe, things like that. But we also know some of that was fake. We know that for a fact. IE the Fox sisters.
Spirits communicate telepathically, or through feelings and symbols. That is how mediums do it. Some of us, including me, can hear phrases in our head. We can hear them pretty clear.Thats called clairaudience. Sometimes you can hear them outside your ear too. That is called objective hearing, where you hear it outside yourself.
I have had a more than a few times where I heard it on the outside and my ears tingled. But a lot of people are not open to hearing through telepathy.
Once we leave here and no longer use a voice box, the only way to talk to somebody is to talk to them within their mind. If people have too much going on in their head, or they are not paying attention, or they have zero belief in it, then any thought that comes to them is something they are going to blow off anyway.
That is why it is harder.
Sometimes giving you a knock, a scent, a smell, a bird, or a butterfly is a lot easier than trying to get you to drop all your belief systems so you can hear them speak.
Mediums do not believe that you can’t hear spirits. We believe you can. That is why we can hear it. That is why we can sense it. It does not make us special. It just means we have dropped that belief system.
If everybody could drop that belief system, we would all be on the same wavelength pretty much. We would just be doing it in different ways.
Question 9: Why are cemeteries supposed to be haunted? Nobody actually lives there.
They are not haunted.
I am a strong believer that cemeteries are not haunted in the way people think they are. They hold strong emotional energy from grief, sad farewells, and transition, but there are not spirits just hanging out in graveyards waiting for people.
Very few, anyway.
Some might hang out there. Maybe some are fascinated by it. Who knows? But most of what people feel there is the mourners’ energy and the residual feelings, not actual spiritual residents.
When your loved ones come through, spirit has always told me, “Tell them not to worry about going to the graveyard when it rains and all that, because I am not there. I only go there because you go there.”
Most spirits only show up there when you go there. They are not hanging out there waiting for you. What a miserable existence that would be.
They go there with you, and they understand why you are going, and they love that. But it is also OK if you cannot go, or you do not go, or you have moved away. They do not need anything. They do not need you to go there physically.
They can be with you wherever and whenever they want to. Whenever you say their name, they are with you.
Question 10: Why do people assume every unexplained noise at 2 AM is a ghost instead of a house being a house?
Most noises are just normal.
They are settling. Animals. Wind. Pipes. A house being a house.
True activity feels very distinct. It often has an emotional charge or a pattern to it. You need discernment on this one because not everything is paranormal. I wish people would stop insisting that it is.
Genuine signs usually come with a sense of presence or personal meaning. If there is none, then most likely it was just something in your house. It was just the house creaking.
And today, we have so many subconscious suggestions put in our minds from movies, shows, and stories. We hear knocks, and we think they mean something. We hear a noise, and we think it is a ghost. That is what we have been trained to believe.
Most times, that’s all it is.
Question 11: If ghosts are everywhere, why do they always seem to hang out in places that sell tickets?
Ha ha. Wow.
Commercial haunted spots are layered with emotional history, so the imprints can be a little stronger. But I do not believe spirits are hanging out there all day like employees waiting for the next tour group.
Every day, spirits are more subtle.
A lot of times, we see more things in those places because that is what people are putting there. You do not have to have a spirit there. A lot of places are haunted because somebody said they were haunted, and then a million other people believed it, and that belief created the experience.
I always use my own house as an example.
Once again, I am a medium. I am a psychic. I have weird boho-looking decorations all over. I have cats in the house. I feed cats outside.
Saylets just say that one day I mysteriously die. Maybe it is in the paper, maybe I die of natural causes. Somebody walks in here afterward, maybe breaks into the house, and they hear a cat meow or hear a noise and get freaked out.
Then the story starts.
“I was in David’s house, and I heard the noise of a cat. I heard him say something, and I am pretty sure he was calling his cats, looking for his cats.”
Then that person tells four people. Then those people tell more people. Then people start coming here to investigate the story because they heard it from so many people.
Meanwhile, this place now has emotional energy, not put here by me, David, but put here by the first people who made up the story. That energy is here.
So now this becomes a haunted house haunted by David, even though in the afterlife, I am probably like, “I am not there, you dumbasses. That is stupid. But enjoy. Have a good time. Maybe I will come in once in a while and move a lampshade for you just for shits and giggles.
I believe a lot of ghosts and spirits would do that as well, and probably do. Why not have a little fun at the living’s expense?
Question 12: Why do ghosts sound or act completely different depending on what country you’re in?
Spirits are energy manifestations. They can adapt to cultural expectations and beliefs.
A lot of mediums, including myself, believe that how a spirit appears or behaves is filtered through the living person’s mindset and the collective cultural template they are living in.
So a grieving mother in one culture might appear differently than a grieving mother in another culture. The core idea is similar. The lingering message is similar. But the details will vary.
That is what it is. It is all consciousness.
Question 13: If spirits are all around us, do you think Hollywood got almost everything wrong.
Yes. This is a big one.
Hollywood dramatizes things for fear and entertainment. Trapped ghosts, screaming spirits, chains, curses, all that shit.
Most of us believe there are some people out there who use those ideas because they are just trying to make a buck. But the consensus is that most spirits are peaceful. They are crossed-over loved ones who visit out of love.
Hauntings are often misunderstood. Residuals are misunderstood. Maybe some “earthbound spirits” need some gentle help to move on, if that’s even a thing, or maybe not. I dont know if that could even be accurately validated.
I have not come across that yet, but who am I to say? I am not going to say one way or another. I know there are rescue mediums out there. I have never come across it, but that does not mean it does not exist. I cannot be that person who says it does not.
But a lot of this is misunderstood.
Communication with spirit is about comfort, guidance, and signs more than it is about chains and screams. Hollywood amplifies the dramatic minority.
That is also why I did not include much in here about paranormal investigators. Not that they are all like this, but so many out there sell fear.
I have seen it. I have worked with paranormal investigators who will hear something and tape it, and then they say, “Oh, listen to it. This is what it says.” GET OUT”, “MURDER!”
Well, because they told you what it says, everybody is going to hear that.
If they tell you it says “get out,” almost everybody is going to hear “get out” because they heard you say “get out,” or because they put the words on the screen saying “get out.” That is what your brain is going to hear. That is just physical science stuff. That is how that goes.
My solution for any paranormal people, especially if anyone is reading this, is to get your EVP or voice recording and play it for about 20 people. Just ask them to write down what they heard.
If you have a big majority of those people all hearing the same thing, then you have your answer.
But to tell somebody what it says, or write it on the screen, does not do anything. You are going to hear whatever somebody told you to hear, just like you are going to see whatever somebody told you to see.
You are going to believe any story about a haunted house that somebody told you about, and most likely, you are going to have that kind of experience. That does not mean it is actually happening. It means that your brain and your imagination are very strong, and they are giving you a wonderful experience, or a scary experience, because that is what you are expecting and wanting.
That is why I think discernment matters so much.
Not everything is paranormal. Not everything is fake, either. There is a place in the middle where you can trust your experience without turning every sound, every shadow, and every old building into a horror movie.
These ideas come from my experiences, from repeated themes in mediumship, and from what I have learned through my own spiritual work and my NDE in 2015. The experiences vary by individual spirit and individual perceiver, but the patterns hold across most of what I have seen.
Most spirits are not trying to scare us. Most signs are not dramatic. Most communication is not about proving something to a camera crew.
It is usually quieter than that.
It is love. It is memory. It is consciousness. It is a feeling you cannot quite explain, a sign that shows up at the right time, a thought that does not feel like your own, or a presence that reminds you someone is not as far away as you thought.
So no, I do not think these are stupid questions.
I think they are human questions. And if we can get past the fear, the Hollywood version, and the stories people keep repeating because they sound spooky, we might actually understand spirit communication a little better.
David Hanzel
No meditation this week. This article ended up being a lot longer than I planned, and it didn't really call for one. If there's a meditation you'd like to see connected to ghosts, spirit communication, the afterlife, or anything else we talked about here, leave a comment or send me a message. I may turn it into a future meditation.
If you ever want a quick, intuitive check-in, I do offer short $10 email readings.
You can find that, along with my other resources and freebies: They Whisper To Me
