Have you ever visited a place that gave you the creeps or literally made the hair on your body stand on end? Maybe it was a house or a hospital or even a cemetery? If you are clairsentient or you are an empath, you may have had this experience multiple times since you’re likely able to pick up on the emotions around you.
Understanding the emotions of a place can help you create boundaries between your own feelings and the feelings that are not yours. It can also give you insight into the history of that location and people who came before you. If you have to be in that location, understanding the emotions behind it can make it bearable if you’re picking up on past emotional pain.
Why places carry emotions
There are a number of possible reasons why a certain location may carry emotions. Here are a few that I know of.
The energy had nowhere to go
Energy is all around us. Thoughts create energy, actions create energy, violence creates energy. Physics teaches us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, which means that when there is an abundance of energy it doesn’t really go away. Rather, it often seeps into the surroundings.
When someone has expressed strong emotions in a certain location, the energy from those emotions can linger. Someone who is senstive to emotional energy may be able to pick up on it. That’s why an empath can walk into a building and feel emotional and sometimes physical pains that took place there years before. That’s also why it’s a good idea to smudge and do an energy clearing ritual when you move into a new home. If there is an abundance of excess energy in your new home, the ritual would help to clear it and send it on its way.
A spirit connected to the location is attached to those emotions
Those who have the gift of mediumship know that death isn’t an ending, and those who die often continue to spend time in our physical realm. In fact, spirits who are not ready to cross over to the other side can become attached to a certain location, particularly if they were connected to that location when they were alive. (We call these spirits ghosts.)
Sometimes spirits don’t want to cross over because they believe they have not completed something they wanted to finish. Others don’t want to cross over because they feel that death came to soon. No matter why a spirit has chosen not to cross over, that spirit may be attached to the emotions that they most commonly felt when they were alive. If that spirit and that attached emotion are in a certain location, you may pick up on it.
A traumatic event left so much energy that it made an imprint on the location
We all experience ups and downs and every location that has people has been filled with happiness, sadness, anger and likely grief at some point. None of those emotions are unusual. But sometimes events occur that are out of the ordinary and they carry with them energy that is much more potent than your average occurence. I’m talking about murders, violent and unexpected deaths, wars, multiple deaths… you get the picture.
There is a reason why it’s sometimes challenging to sell a house where someone was murdered. There is also a reason why ghost tours tend to center around certain types of locations.
Ghosthunters tend to visit places such as war battlefields, hospitals and sites of murders because they know that when many people died in a particular location or someone died violently there, they may be more likely to happen upon a spirit or at least sense something paranormal. Empaths and others sensitive to energy may pick up traces of the emotion that accompanied the event since it is likely very strong.
How to increase your chances of sensing the energy of a place
So if you are an empath or you want to test your ability to sense the energy of a place, there are a number of places you should visit to see if you pick up on anything. You want to go to places that are likely to have an energetic footprint. Here are some suggestions:
- A cemetary.
- A battlefield.
- A hospital.
- An old house (older houses are more likley to have been the location of a multitude of experiences including violent ones).
- An old church. Churches were often the centerpiece of community living and it’s where people turned when emotional things happened such as violence, death and illness.
Before you arrive to such a place, set the intention that you will be open to any energy that exists. It may be helpful to meditate to clear your mind.
Once you get to such a place, allow yourself to sit and be still and notice what feelings come up. There’s no one way to feel; when I’ve picked up on the energy of a place, I’ve felt at different times:
- Claustrophobic
- Hot
- Cold
- Tired
- Nervous
Other feelings you may experience include:
- Fear
- Anger
- Unsafe
If you do feel unsafe or overwhelming fear, don’t torture yourself and stay in that location. You may have to build up your own energetic barriers so you don’t feel too much too fast. You may also need to start small and spend only a few minutes in this location and then come back another time and spend more time then.
As you spend time and note your feelings, take notes of how you feel. You may realize that you’re picking up on the location’s past history, and perhaps you’ll come away with some lessons that you can apply to your own life today.