Our species has a nearly insatiable desire to categorize things. Scientists divide animals into varying classes and subclasses, and even the slightest difference can spark debate over a creature’s name. Chemists break the universe down into elements, and a substance that doesn’t fit into an elemental category prompts great concern, experimentation, and eventually, the naming of the unknown element. Even your local library has books broken down into the complex letter and number sequences of the Dewey Decimal System.
Parapsychologist have not escaped this urge to name phenomena. If you hang around with ghost hunters or watch paranormal TV, you will almost certainly come across something called a residual haunting. A residual haunting, also referred to as a psychic impression or imprint can be defined as a type of haunting where a specter, apparition, or paranormal event repeats a specific action or scene from the past, much like a recording or film loop, with no evidence of intelligence, awareness, or interaction with the living or its surroundings (definition from a Perplexity search).
One of the popular theories is that emotions have run so high in a particular area that they have caused a scene or series of scenes to be imprinted on that mysterious substance that Spiritualists and magicians sometimes call the ether. This certainly seems to be the case in this episode which comes from Jenny Randles’ book Encyclopedia of the Unexplained.
In 1939, Elinor De Torri Hudson was touring with an opera company amongst the small, often poor town in South America. In one of those small towns, she found herself with some free time as neither she nor the prima ballerina of the company, Inez Bertolli, were performing in a show that day. The two women decided to explore their current stop, the town of Santa Maria in Argentina.
It was a hot, sunny day as the two wandered over to a local park and sat, watching the children play on the swings for a while, before deciding to explore the open space beyond the park. Pushing through trees and shrubbery, the pair found themselves staring out at an unexpectedly empty, weed-choked lot.
As you would expect from this series of posts, the two ladies also noted “an eerie silence and stillness” creeping over them. “All sounds, of children laughing, birds singing, indeed everything, had just ceased. It was as if they were on another world.”
Inez grabbed Elinor’s arms and stated that she “felt awful” but, even as they stood there, a sound intruded on The Silence. “It sounded like a cart rolling toward them across the empty pampas. They heard it clearly – including the snorting beast that pulled it, the creaking wood and rattling wheels.” The sound almost seemed to pass over them as they stood, rooted to the ground, but they could see absolutely nothing.
The two were so convinced that they were about to be run down by an invisible cart that they moved aside and, as they did so, they heard a sharp cry of “Vamos! (Spanish for let’s go)” and the crack of an invisible whip. Inez, the more superstitious of the two, convinced herself the entire episode was a death omen and wanted to flee the town. Elinor’s cooler head prevailed, and the two continued their tour without further incident.
The two ladies mentioned the strange land (it’s not clear that they told the complete story) to their hotel manager. Not surprisingly, he informed them that people from the current village did not go there and related that many years before, another village had stood on that eerie plot of land. Plague struck hard and the old village was razed to the ground by fire. People removed the many plague victims in “heavily laden ox-led carts”.
Given the terror evoked by the plague in earlier times, it is easy to see why this terrifying event might have imprinted itself on the land where it occurred. But what of The Silence that accompanied this event?
As with the UFO case in the previous blog, we cannot rely on an apex predator to explain the eerie stillness that served as a precursor to this event. There is not even a structured craft to hang a theory on. Instead, we find ourselves facing a wholly paranormal event that has no certain explanation.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the blog, the theory in these residual haunting cases would be that the trauma of the plague sweeping through this unfortunate village imprinted itself on the “ether” of this area. Inez and Elinor were sensitive enough to experience the strong psychic impression left on the land.
In Spiritualist and magical thought, the ether or etheric realm is a level of creation that interfaces directly with our physical world. You might think of the etheric as the energetic framework on which our physical reality is built. You might think of the etheric as an energetic lattice that supports the physical. I believe that The Silence in this case resulted from these two women touching the one of the Otherworlds (the etheric realm). The Silence descended and when the psychic energy stored there began to play out for the two; they experienced the sound of the cart in exquisite detail.
In other such hauntings, people actually witness full-scale apparitions, sometimes with sound and sometimes without. I know of no theory that accounts for the differences between one residual haunting and another, but perhaps it has to do with the magnitude of the event or the psychic sensitivities of those involved. In any event, this is a clear case of The Silence being related to an Otherworld incursion of very short duration.
In my next blog, I will present a case with a clear Otherworld presence.