Witnesses or Lack Thereof For Hauntings

Most people when they have to deal with a haunting can simply spend a day or night away from the haunted location. They can even move out and leave it behind forever. What happens when you are the one haunted and the disturbances occur wherever you go? That was the situation I hinted at last week. Since then I see two different scenarios. In one the haunting manifests itself physically and anyone may witness it. In the second only the person who is haunted sees the ghost. The physical scenario may have an apparition or not and the ghost seer's ghost may affect physical objects or not. There are a lot of options these open up for a character and its growth. With either scenario the haunted person is in for a terrible time and the haunting will take its toll. Each scenario has its advantages though.

A haunting involving moving objects that can be witnessed by anyone is likely the more desirable of the two scenarios, if there is anything to be desired about the situation at all. It has the benefit of being verifiable by some at least. There may still be the ridicule of the uninitiated until they are affected by it directly. The degree of directness is variable and can be, in all cases, either finding objects moved when there was no one around to move them, or out of reach and no evidence of trickery to be found, up to actually seeing the object in transit. The disadvantage of course is that objects become misplaced, the phenomena seriously freaks people out, and it can be a case where people are injured by the haunting. The frequency and insistence can really wear on the subject of the haunting, and no amount of frustration, anger, or curses will dissuade a persistent poltergeist.

People who are the only ones to see an apparition can hold themselves together and keep it a secret with a little practice. That in and of itself is a benefit to these kinds of occurrences, if they can pull it off. That is as long as there is no physical component to the haunting otherwise it is much as above except for the addition of the visual manifestation. There are the usual cliché responses to seeing a ghost that others do not see such as seeming crazy for reacting or worse interacting with nothing there. The ghost may be friendly or it may be wicked either in line with or at odds with its appearance. It's sudden appearance and activities may be just as dangerous as objects flying around. Consider the ghost appearing with a menacing shout at the top of the stairs or appearing in the middle of the road while driving. At least additional witnesses to a physical assault can step in and lend a hand.

Mood: driven.
Music: Timelessness by Fear Factory and Basket Case by Green Day.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #15: Leaving Traces

It's a general truth that nothing can be done that doesn't leave some kind of evidence behind. There is always something left behind in some sense. The perfect crime could be committed yet something remains whether it is something missing with a robbery, or a body with a murder, or again the person missing. The only question is how much evidence is left and can it be connected to the perpetrator. The same is true when the focus moves to the psychic criminal or hero doing their respective things. The evidence they leave behind tends though toward more intangible types, or the kind that can only really be investigated by another psychic. Additionally, whether a suspect in some act, criminal or not, is normal or a psychic is another bit of evidence in and of itself.

The first question to be asked when setting up a psychic horror setting with this context in mind is this. Can a psychic know that another psychic is involved in a situation? If the answer is yes, the second question must come immediately. How much can a psychic tell about a psychic event not of his or her doing? The answer to this question spawns new powers, new uses for existing powers, and further questions regarding the affect of all of this on the mood of the setting. If the mood is already established for the setting then the pros and cons should be weighed more carefully. If the mood is not set, or the requirement that the setting needs--for a short story, a novel or series, a movie or TV show, or a game--then there is more leeway and the impact may be significantly less.

When everything is weighed and considered then it comes down to determining the factors involved in identifying psychic involvement. The first obvious power to be included is the ability of a psychic to spot other psychics upon meeting them. This can be a feeling or something visible, likely in the person's aura, or something completely different. Next would be to tell if someone is under the control of another psychic or a power. This is much the same as the other sense though tends more toward the aura, in fiction as it stands. Then comes what can be the deal breaker power, the ability to determine the identity of the psychic responsible for a psychic event or result. Such a fingerprint, or at least the ability to see and put it to use, leads to the next topic, next week.

Mood: happy.
Music: Slip Slide Melting by For Love Not Lisa and Dead Souls by Nine Inch Nails.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #6: Body of Evidence

Learning important crime fighting, terrorist thwarting, and life saving information by the use of psychic powers is great if it can be done. It could be a vital and vibrant part of the criminal incarceration process. It would put the right people in the right position to best defuse situations, and prevent loss of life at many levels of scale. Once the bad guys are stopped then comes the next stage. That stage is putting the villains away in jail for a long time, or depending on what almost happened a well deserved death sentence. Here is where the powers of psychics may come up incredibly short. It is not necessary that they fail, but that determination can be hard even if good sets of procedures and laws are put in place to accommodate for this new information stream.

In some cases the use of a psychic power, like for instance precognition, will lead to the discovery of hard, easily understood and established, evidence. Such an example could be explosive devices and building schematics. Is that evidence admissible in a court of law though? When does a psychic have the right to invade the privacy of another individual? That question should be answered in the world that has verifiable psychics that are recognised by the powers that be. However, what happens in a world where the psychics aren't recognised, and/or are in hiding? Right here the distinction should be made, that for a horror setting, that the psychics in question indeed are hiding, and therefore their knowledge is of no value to a court or a jury, directly.

How then does a psychic go about putting their information to use? The answer to that is that there are many different options. There is of course the eponymous anonymous tip. The psychic could be a police informant, having proven themselves to, likely, an individual officer, or a prosecutor. What happens though when there is no physical evidence? How then does a psychic go about preventing a disaster? Let's say the psychic has a vision that a neighbour is going to snap and kill his wife with a baseball bat. Until the neighbour is about to commit the crime there is no crime as far as the law is concerned. Even if the neighbour is a wife beater the police can't do anything until they catch him being violent, which will generally be too late. This is especially true if the psychic cannot nail down a time for the event.

Mood: stressed.
Music: My Global Mind by Queensryche and Picture Elvis by Moist.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #5: Psychics Versus Technology

Back in part #3 it was mentioned about the discovery of evil plots, and predicting events, through analysis involving traditional data gathering and spy work. The information put together, looked over, and interpreted is more and more done by technological means. At the least it involves tools that are used in the legwork of the old school kind. Whether it be listening devices or parabolic microphones, or wiretaps and keystroke loggers, technology is the spy's best friend. That is until the psychics become involved. Need to know what is happening in a room? Thread in a fibre optic camera, or hide a bug in the room. Or get the remote viewers and astral projectors to do the work. It's all a matter of options at this point.

A number of psychic powers fall into the category of fantastic replacement for a piece of technology. As loaded a word as fantastic is in that sentence it covers things nicely. Not only will that power replace that piece of electronics but also it will do everything that the device does, and likely much more. For instance, take the lie detector as an example. The lie detector shows when a subject's answer is not truthful. A psychic interrogator will not only know when the answer to the question is false or misleading, but will also likely be able to read the real answer from the subjects mind. Alternatively, the psychic might be getting the answer from other sources than a direct answer out of the mind. Such sources can include the subject's emotions leading to answers more in line with the lie detector.

In a way there might be a couple advantages that the tech route has over the psychic one. The first is in quantity of information. The information that a spy is looking for may take only a couple of minutes to be passed along, a couple of minutes out of hours to days of surveillance. It could become worse yet with multiple subjects being surveilled at once. How about if there isn't a subject to be watched, such as when they monitor Internet or phone communications for keywords? There is however the possibility of the psychic finding out the information after the fact rather than at the time it's divulged. The second advantage that technology has comes into play when it is time to take the evidence of malfeasance to a court or other governing body. More about that in the next article.

Mood: thrilled.
Music: Train of Consequences by Megadeth and Loco by Coal Chamber.

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