The Sociology of a Haunting

copyright 2000 by Jesse Glass

I've always been fascinated by the story of Borley, but feel that the accumulated commentaries (not yours) have somehow muffled a core of authentic phenomena. I believe the sociology of a haunting is something well worth looking into. I don't know of any author who has really tackled it. So many people who have had poltergeists and other visitors in their homes complain that the boorish behavior of the living was more of a plague than any disembodied energies they might have encountered. Why do people take it upon themselves to villify, taunt, stalk and generally harass people who live in haunted places?

I got to know a family who lived in a rural farm house in Maryland that was every bit as haunted as Borley. The place had once served as a hospital during the Civil War and was the inter-dimensional window of at least five ghosts and one "dark" entity that was at the center of the haunting. When word leaked out of the suffering these people were going through (it had been written up in the local newspaper against the wishes of the family), people took it upon themselves to harass this family day and night by calling, driving past at all hours, parking in the yard at night, etc. I know of another site - a historical society located in a building that had been a doctor's office in the 19th c. - where some spectacular things have manifested themselves, but the whole thing is being hushed up for fear - once again - of the living and not the dead.