Is That a Ghost I Smell?

There are such things as clairvoyance, the ability to see, and clairaudience, the ability to hear...ghosts. To put it another way, the ability to perceive the supernatural whether through sight or sound: two ways to connect with beings from another dimension. But I sometimes wonder, is there such a thing as clairolfactance? (I've just coined that non-word and am already wondering if the maker of Clairol hair products had the idea of their product being clear-smelling when they chose that name.) But back to the topic: I mean for the term clairolfactance to indicate the ability to smell the paranormal.

Sounds wonky, right?

But if you read enough about the paranormal, you know that some hauntings include smells as part of the experience. I'm currently reading a book about real-life hauntings and one location includes a centuries-old ship that now serves as a museum. In the galley, a place where no one has done any kind of cooking for literally hundreds of years, visitors are frequently greeted with the smell of freshly-baked bread. As paranormal experiences go, that doesn't sound too bad.

Then there are the haunted hotels where overnight guests will sometimes smell traces left by former, and now-deceased, fellow guests. These smells run the gamut from cigar and pipe smoke to fresh flowers, and all the way through women's perfume. 

But then there are the smells that no one ever wants to run into because they signal the presence of malevolence, malice, and possibly just plain evil. Those are smells like rotting meat, rotten eggs, sewage, and sulfur. Demonologists will talk about smelling something foul when they run into a negative or downright evil entity of some kind. 

In my brushes with the supernatural, I have never encountered a particular smell and I hope it stays that way. I don't even care if it's a benevolent smell like fresh bread or lilacs; I would rather not run into that particular type of haunting. And I can't even tell you why.

Maybe it's the fact that as far as hearing things goes, I've almost (ALMOST) gotten used to that. Yesterday while I was getting things done around the house, I couldn't believe how much I was hearing from the other rooms, or down the hall. There was so knocking, banging, shifting, rustling, and other hard-to-ignore sounds that I was amazed that I wasn't sitting at the keyboard writing a ghost scene with Cassie and Michael. Perhaps that was someone telling me to sit down at the keyboard and write a scene or two. Then again, maybe it's just because of the nature of our hallway. 

When it comes to seeing, the two phantoms I glimpsed during the summer of 2017 would have been enough for me, but there are other presences that pop up at the edge of my vision, from the lady out in the front yard going around the corner of the house, to the one who hangs around in my laundry room by the garage door (Why? I ask myself. I can't imagine hanging around someone's garage door, but then I haven't had occasion to haunt anyone so I can't guess at the logic behind that kind of behavior.) So, no, I"m not as acclimated to seeing these things as I am to hearing then. If you can get acclimated to that sort of thing.

But smelling something that shouldn't be there? Somehow that seems more "wrong" than visits that involve my sense of sight or hearing.

Anyone who's read Stephen King's The Shining will remember that Hallorann would smell oranges before he had one of his clairvoyant events. Maybe for some folks, clairolfactance is a real thing, their own particular hallmark and entryway to the generally inaccessible. But no thank you, I'd rather not experience that myself.

On the other hand, when it comes to the other senses? Tasting something paranormal? Can't even imagine what that would be about. The sense of touch, though --  I know people have been touched, stroked, even slapped or scratched. Hmm. Maybe smelling something unseen (as opposed to being touched by something unseen) isn't so bad after all.

Clairaudience - It's a Thing

When I was growing up, I had a really good friend who was/is an artist. She's the ultimate foundation of every artistic character I have ever written in my books, and I learned a great deal about art and the minds of artists during our long-running friendship. 

She knew my house had issues. Okay, that's a euphemism. She knew my house was fricking haunted. Undaunted, she stayed overnight frequently and at one point, during our college years, moved in for a few weeks due to circumstances. She told me, after she moved back out, that she didn't sleep much while she was there. My bedroom was on the second floor, just to the left of the top of the staircase. At night, while I was out like the proverbial light, she said that she would hear the basement door almost directly my room swing open, and then she would hear footsteps that came from the basement stairs, walked through the hall to the staircase leading to the second floor, climbed those stairs, and then arrived right outside my bedroom, where they would STOP. She assured me that I slept through this every night, and she heard it just about every night. One time when she felt that whatever was out there was trying to enter my room, she woke me up and heard me say, "It's okay. Just go back to sleep." And so she did. The only problem is that she found out later, while talking about to me, that I had 1) never heard her call my name that night and 2) never woke up to say any such thing to reassure her. WEIRD.

When we got to college, she started at the same university in Chicago that I did, but eventually went out to school in California for a degree in art. And she told me that the apartment she rented "had issues." (We know all about those.) She heard voices. Now, before you decide this was schizophrenia or anything related to psychosis, let me assure you that her mental health was just fine. But she did hear voices. They called her name. They had conversations in the next room that she could only just hear. They freaked her out. And that was when she introduced me to the concept of having clairaudience. "It's like clairvoyance, but with hearing instead of sight," she explained.

If you Google "clairaudience" or "clairaudient", you will find a whole slew of articles that come up on the topic. Some of them include indicators that you might have the ability. For instance, talking to yourself is a big indicator. So is having a deep connection to music. And so is hearing footsteps and knockings and things like that around your house. Hmmm. All three of those fit me pretty well. I just never thought of myself as having that ability. And thank God I don't hear someone calling my name, because that would be about my limit. Yes, I survived seeing a dead Union soldier, and yes, I deal with the noises and restlessness in the house when I'm working on my books. But having someone call my name would result in me pulling a J.K. Rowling and writing the rest of my work at a crowded coffee shop in braod daylight. Seriously.

There are noises around my house that I can't explain. Even Jim has heard them. My daughter and I (she of the clairvoyance, when it comes to dead people) frequently hear the same thing, like the footsteps of a child running through the house when there was no child around to do so. There were also noises in the house where I grew up; those were a given. Whether or not I would attribute clairaudient  ability to myself, well, the jury is still out on that.

I'd put the links to some of those relevant articles into this blog, but I haven't learned how to do that yet on Blogger. (Can we say "Techno-doof"?) But if you go and read any of them, you might be surprised at how many of the signs and symptoms of clairaudient ability fit you, too. 

So, if you do Google the topic and read the articles, and if those indicators match up with you, come back and let me know, and we can swap stories!