I have a couple problems with residual hauntings.  First off, I've seen all over where people put forth ordinary iron oxide as a storage medium for a RH, and liken the process to an everyday VCR tape.  The playback mechanism is invariably a mystery.  The problem I have with this is that we already have vast repositories of known iron oxide recordings, and they never, ever, mysteriously playback on their own.  If they did every video store would be residually hanted by Sex and the City and Barney and Friends.  Which just doesn't happen, and we can all be thankful for that.

And other people say that strong emotions get imprinted directly onto whatever materials happen to be present at the time.  Besides the playback problem, when you start really looking at things closely, everything is in constant flux.  Say you had a RH in the woods or on a battlefield, and whatever essence which produces it is imprinted onto trees and earth and stones and whatever other outdoor things are there.  But trees and plants die and are replaced, stones are weathered away, worms and other organisms move soil around, rain washes things away, leaves and twigs decay, etc.  Even in, say, a stone building where a RH is supposed to be happening, the air and water permeate and diffuse through the stones, which chemically change over time.  There's a lot going on even if it looks the same.  Anything out in the open like that would make a very poor storage medium, because even if it was certain you could use it for the kind of complex replay of a RH, it would be more and more hopelessly distorted as time went on, and some of these things are supposed to be hundreds or even thousands of years old.

And then there's the theory that RH is somehow imprinted directly onto space-time.  But the earth is constantly moving and the sun and even the whole Milky Way are moving at thousands of miles per hour.  Every point in the whole universe is constantly moving in relation to every other point, so it's impossible to know if you're ever in the same absolute point as you were before.  If a RH was imprinted onto space-time, it would be replaying out in interstellar space somewhere, and nobody would know.

I can't logically reconcile residual hauntings with what I think I know about the rest of the world.

Angelayo1970 said:

If a spirit left an imprint due to the release of adrenaline or energy because of a traumatic or tragic event, is it possible that the "mundane" activity that is imprinted could be a retelling of their activity just preceding the event? Obviously there's no rational way to know that, and of course, to say that it's too traumatic for the spirit to relive the violent event over and again would point to an intelligent haunting.

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The thought of spending the rest of eternity reliving the violent or tragic event leading to my death would pretty much be my best possible explanation of 'hell'. 

Angelayo1970 said:

This is something that I've been thinking about that I've never seen addressed anywhere, and I'd like some other thoughts on this. People have often talked about thermal images of ghosts and how, since ghosts supposedly are indicated by cold spots, they wouldn't leave a heat signature on a thermal imaging camera. My thought is this: if ghosts manifest by drawing energy from things, this would explain "cold spots" to me because they are drawing the heat or the energy away from the location in which they are trying to manifest. And if indeed they are made up of energy, why wouldn't they leave a heat signature on a thermal imaging camera?

This is just something that I've thought about quite a bit and I'm interested in hearing if anyone has any kind of input on this line of thinking. Unlike Ashley on GHI, I'm not very scientific and I'm not sure if "physics" can explain a lot of things (LOL) but this somewhat makes sense to me in a weird, convoluted sort of way.

Thanks for letting me ramble!

No that's actually a very good theory and at least to me, makes sense.I have heard TAPS say on the show, that the ghosts draw energy from the surrounding area in order to manifest themselves. Not that they are experts by any means, but I have also seen other paranormal groups say the same thing.So if a ghost draws energy from its surroundings to manifest, then indeed it should appear warm on the thermal.Now, what law of physics they use, or how it exactly happens,I don't know, but your theory makes sense.

As far as residual hauntings,maybe it's not a haunting per say. Maybe somhow there is a time slip, and events sometimes replay themselves. Let's say you have an old abandoned house in the neighborhood or out in the country, a big house. Then one day, you drive by, and the house looks newly painted and kept up. So you remark to one of your neighbors or old Gerite, the waitress at the local restaurant , about how your glad to see someone fixed up the old Wigglesworth place. How it was all nicely painted, etc. Well everyone there thinks your nuts, cause no one has purchased the property, and it's still run down.So feeling like a fool for people laughing at you, you go and drive past there.As you do, you realize everyone was right.

 However, you still believe you saw the place in it's glory days. That's like under the Cops and Ghosts thread, Hasmat Kid has posted some interesting stories about Liverpool ,England at the TAPS18 Forum. He is a professor at the University of Liverpool. One of the stories is of a ghostly funeral procession that has been seen going down one of the streets, complete with a horse drawn hearse and carriages of mourners. He has mentioned some other things too about Bold St.How visitors and police have reported on occasion seeing people dressed like the 1940s and the shops are different.Very interesting.

 There was a famous english battle, I think the battle of Monmouth, in any case, people in the area were able to watch the battle replay it's self.Many witnesses recoginzed people fighting in this, including Prince Rupert, who was still very much alive at the time.That's why I think it's more of a thing where, for whatever reason, there is some sort of slip , when these events of the past come through from whatever part of the universe they go to,and come back into our world. I'm no expert of course, but some scientists say there are other dimensions besides our own, which is one of the theories that maybe Bigfoot and other such creatures or strange beings like shadow men,etc. are able to come to our world, through holes or portals opening from their dimensions into our own.

Though I kind of put Bigfoot more in the cryptoid realm, as we have foot prints and such.