The Ghost Stories We Tell Ourselves
This is the time of year that people will actually pay to walk through haunted houses, tour asylums, or wander spooky cornfields and cemeteries — chasing the thrill of being terrified or scared. We flirt with this kind of fear in safe spaces, laughing in the dark because, deep down, we feel that true ghosts aren’t “real.” But what happens when they are?
The Haunting Within
What happens when the haunting isn’t around us — it’s within us? When we’re the ones wearing the costume, scaring ourselves with stories that never happened? We do it all the time — crafting mental thriller films about what might go wrong, what people think, what we fear losing. We haunt our own peace with loops of worry, guilt, scary thoughts and imaginary danger.
It’s strange how we’ll pay to walk through haunted houses or watch horror movies for fun, yet spend every day trapped in the far scarier places of our own mind — replaying pain, reanimating the past, or inventing monsters out of misunderstanding. The mind, too, can be a haunted house with doors we’re afraid to open.
Shadow work is the truest exorcism — not of ghosts, but of our illusions. It’s the courage to unmask what’s been haunting you and see that most of what’s lurking in the dark is simply your own unhealed truth asking to be seen.
The Haunted House in Your Head
Take a quiet moment to ask yourself:
Are you narrating a thriller inside your own mind, using ghosts of times past to spook your present life?
What fear are you replaying that has already ended?
What truth is trying to make itself known beneath your worry or your need for control?
And if you stopped hiding behind the mask or costume — what light would rush in?
The Real House Of Horror
What happens when you find yourself standing in a places where real terror once filled the air, where the energy still hums its cords left in the waves of silent trauma, where the haunting isn’t staged but remembered by the walls and earth itself?
That’s what I felt and encountered walking through the ruins of Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova site. It was haunting as hell — not because of jump scares or flickering lights, but because the energy there still breathes something terrifying. You can see and feel the remnants of lives taken, love interrupted, and lights extinguished. You can imagine and smell in your senses the brutality, the agonizing torture, pain and terror lingering in the homes and air. You can sense the land holding stories too heavy for words, but breathing in time. And then there is the hallow echo of sadness.
We seek fake ghosts for entertainment, but the real ones — the left over energetic tar and residue, the grief, the memories, the echoes — they find us when we least expect it. And sometimes, when you least anticipate it, they enter through the body. When we walk through places where cruelty once echoed — where fear and grief still cling to the air — we’re not just visitors, we’re vessels.
The energetic blueprint of that horror lingers, humming beneath the surface, imprinting itself on whoever dares to feel it. The body, ever receptive, begins to translate what the spirit cannot ignore. What I absorbed that day wasn’t just memory; it was the vibration of pain itself, asking to be felt, processed, and alchemized through me.
The Veil Between Worlds
As October deepens, the veil between worlds thins — not just between the living and the dead, but between what we see and what we sense. This is the season of our own shadow work, of honoring those who came before us, and of protecting our light as the dark grows longer. It is ancient magic — but also energetic truth.
People have always known — that Halloween, Samhain, All Souls Day — have never been about the candy and the costumes were actually used to scare away harmful spirits. This was a festival with rituals about communion and protection: Lighting candles for the departed, setting a place at the table for lost loved ones, hanging herbs or carving faces into gourds, pumpkins to keep evil away.
Rituals to Reclaim the Light
As the nights stretch and the shadow grows stronger, this is the perfect time to create your own protection rituals:
Commune: Light a candle for a loved one who’s passed. Whisper their name. Say thank you.
Cleanse: Burn sage, rosemary, or incense — not to chase away darkness, but to invite clarity.
Create: Decorate with intention — carve pumpkins, gather branches, hang mirrors — as symbols of both remembrance and protection.
Contain: When fear arises, don’t push it away. Give it form. Name it. That’s how it stops feeding off your energy.
This Halloween, Ask Yourself:
What are you pretending to fear for fun — and what are you truly afraid to face?
What ghosts walk with you, and what memories deserve a moment of light?
What protection do you need — emotional, spiritual, or physical — to enter winter clear, strong, and whole?
Because sometimes the real horror isn’t what’s hiding in the dark —it’s forgetting that you are the light that keeps it at bay. We’ve mistaken darkness for danger when it’s actually medicine. The dark season is a natural invitation to turn inward — to hibernate, heal, and rebuild roots.
It’s where transformation begins, but only if we’re willing to stop running from the sound of our own heartbeat in the dark. This is the real shadow work — not slaying demons, but sitting with them. Not fighting the dark, but remembering that your light was never meant to shine without it.