[Donna]

Originally Posted by Sidney Lanier

Had just posted this on Rokinronda's thread on 'Just for fun':

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We had friends in our town in the Hudson Valley (now retired and moved away) whose house had a ghost. He (former IBMer) never saw him, but she (musician, church organist, my fellow Hospice volunteer trainer) and all their three sons frequently did to the point that they named him 'Flash' for his penchant to suddenly appear and disappear. He appeared to be an older, white-haired man dressed in a red flannel shirt and jeans, never said or did anything, was just visible and then not. The house is next door to our local library where we held our Hospice training sessions and we would often walk to their house to view training films as the library did not have a TV/VCR at the time. I never saw Flash.

They once had another couple visiting to play bridge, and at one point the woman went upstairs to use the only washroom in the house, came back downstairs and gave the homeowner a playful smack on the back of his head as she walked back to her seat. 'What was that for?' he asked, and she replied, 'For scaring the heck out of me upstairs.' All three swore to her that no one had left the room during her absence, so it had to have been Flash, following her description.

After they sold the house, they came back from time to time to visit. My former fellow volunteer told me that the first time their buyers saw them, they took them aside and said, 'There's something we need to talk to you about....' Evidently Flash belonged to the house rather than to our friends who had sold the house. He's still there!

Sidney,
Sounds to me like Flash was a Residual Haunting..
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed -- but it can be left behind. There is a direct connection between a tragic, violent or untimely death and a haunting. An untimely passing robs the victim of a future, stops him from fulfilling his goals and dreams, cuts his life's plans drastically short, rips him away from his soul mate. He doesn't even have a chance to say goodbye. The shock of this sudden and unexpected departure is so intense that it leaves an imprint on the location, which results in a residual haunting.

Residual hauntings are by far the most common, and are often compared to the data stored on a video recorder. The extreme energy emitted at the time of the tragedy is recorded onto the environment. When you experience the sound of phantom footsteps, images, apparitions or scents, what you are actually experiencing is a recorded playback of what happened in the past. There is no interaction with the living -- the ghost does not see or hear you because the ghost is not actually there. Only his energy remains, it is a remnant of his living form that you are seeing, just like when you watch a video. This cycle continues in the same place at usually the same time of day or year indefinitely until the energy is exhausted or diminishes to a low enough level that it is undetectable by human perception.

http://www.chipsparanormal.com