Ghost Witchcraft: Working With the Dead
Ghost Witchcraft: Working With the Dead features ghost hauntings, necromancy, and working with graveyard spirits, all accompanied by the Green Hearth Witch! When I was a little girl, my childhood home was haunted, and there began my fascination with the dead. There comes a time when every witch meets a ghost!
My childhood home was filled with ghosts, demons, and dark entities. I remember how terrifying it was to go to sleep at night. I would often feel spirits walking on my body and whispering in my ear.
It took me many years to realize I had psychic abilities and I could see and hear what others couldn’t. I remember overhearing some of my family members talking behind my back, thinking I had a severe form of mental illness.
Eventually, I stopped telling people about my ghost encounters, for fear of judgment. In fact, I even went through a phase where I barely spoke at all.
Sadly, this happens a lot with psychic children. Children are often more open energetically and haven’t quite mastered shielding themselves from the things that go bump in the night. Pets are also highly sensitive to spirits, especially dogs.
As I grew older, I learned to better control my gifts and protect myself. One of the things that helped me through my formative years was the bible. I would read passages aloud, or I would call on the Father, the Son, and the holy ghost to protect me.
It would instantly feel like a warm presence surrounding and protecting me, helping me get through the night. I would often sleep with my bible to feel safe.
I talk a little about Catholic Folk Magic in “The Saint Expedite Candle Magick Spell for Procrastination.” Prayer, bible passages, and rosary beads are all part of my folk magic practice.
Most of the time, I saw ghosts all over that house. I would see them out of the corner of my eye and hear their voices in my ears as I was drifting off to sleep. I never knew what they wanted.
I’ve also since discovered that ghosts are just people who used to live, just like you and me. Many are stuck out of guilt or shame. Many ghosts are imprints left over from the past.
Today, we’re going to dig into all the different ghosts, spirits, and entities, as well as ghost hauntings. I’m also going to share with you how to communicate with the dead and how to set trapped ghosts free.
Ghost witchery is serious business! This is the type of spirit work that requires a lot of protection and defense magick. Many ghost witches enter it hoping to help people, even though those people have already passed away and are still very much part of the material earth.
Graveyard witches also work with the spirits of deceased animals, often spending time in pet cemeteries. These types of witches enjoy helping animals, even in the afterlife. Many of them practice animal witchcraft.
Looking back, I think I was always a witch. All of the signs were there, even as a little girl. Everything from communicating with ghosts to making friends with the fae was a huge part of my childhood. I even remember singing to the rose bush when I was a kid because I knew it enjoyed my melodic voice.
Maybe you have a similar story. Maybe there was a house you walked by as a child that would always give you a bad feeling, or a doll given to you that felt so evil, you wanted nothing to do with it.
Perhaps you’ve lived in a haunted house or near a graveyard with wandering ghost spirits. Maybe you, too, could see, hear, and feel things other people couldn’t.
Maybe you’re in the Halloween spirit, and love learning about spooky things this time of year, and want to approach it with an open mind. It’s okay to be somewhat skeptical. In fact, I think it’s downright healthy.
The veil is thin as we approach the Samhain Holiday, making it the perfect time to communicate with the spirits of the dead. The barrier between the earthly and spiritual realms somewhat blurs this time of year.
It’s time to place pumpkins on the porch for protection, wear a cross around your neck, and light candles for your ancestors. Samhain Season is the perfect time to learn about wandering graveyard spirits!
It’s the only time of year when it’s acceptable to embrace the weird, the strange, and the macabre. Unless, of course, you’re a witch, in which case you can learn about oddities and curiosities all year long!
Ghost Witchcraft: Working With the Dead
Ghost magick includes practices like talking with the dead, ancestor veneration, and seances, to name a few. There are many ways to connect with the spirit of a ghost or a deceased loved one, often involving different forms of divination.
Tarot cards, crystal balls, Ouija boards, and seances are divinatory practices that help a ghost witch communicate with the dead. Communicating with the dead is known as necromancy, which is often used in graveyard witchcraft.
Necromancy involves not only divination practices but also often includes the summoning of the dead to read the future or discover hidden knowledge that’s been locked away. Once you are unalived, you can see things that weren’t previously available to you.
This is because the life we live, with our souls encased in a physical body, is only a glimpse of what we can actually see. In the afterlife, we can see everything we couldn’t see before, and gain understanding and wisdom from the life we once lived.
We live on this earth for a short time, but our presence here makes a huge impact! We’re here to learn lessons, make connections, and change the world through kindness, technology, and advanced medicine. Our legacy lives on long after we do!
However, we should never, ever wish to become a ghost. Some people become ghosts because they loved this life too much. They loved it so much that they never, ever want to leave.
What these ghost spirits don’t realize is that they’ll most likely be back again to begin another life journey in a brand-new body. This is so the soul can keep evolving, growing, and learning more lessons.
Of course, a soul can also choose not to come back and become a spirit guide for the living. Spirit guides, much like the ancestors, were once living people. They choose to share their knowledge and wisdom by guiding a living person on their personal journey.
There are also people who become ghosts because they have a strong ego. These are often the people who live in fear-based thoughts and are eternally trapped in hopeless situations. I almost became one of those people at one point in my life.
It was during a dark period in my life when I was going to commit suicide because I was trapped in a hopeless situation and was detached from the rest of the world. I was lonely, isolated, and experiencing dissociation.
Dissociation is when someone with borderline personality disorder detaches from reality as a coping mechanism. It’s a strange and disturbing feeling that makes you feel like you’re not real.
I believe some people who choose to end their lives become ghosts for this very reason. By no means do I believe all people who commit suicide become ghosts. Some happily slough off their bodies and pass into the afterlife, happy to be free.
But many, like myself, can end up sticking around out of the fear, guilt, shame, and hopelessness that caused them to commit suicide in the first place. Fortunately, someone stepped in, and I got the help I needed. If not, I’m quite sure it would have taken me some time to pass to the other side, and I would have been stuck in that apartment for what would seem like eternity.
When I left my apartment, I truly believed I had left an imprint behind because of my hopeless state of mind. I was a ghost, without actually being dead. Therefore, I believe we can leave imprints on our environments even while we’re still alive.
We are all still spirits, after all. We’re just spirits that happen to have physical bodies. This is also why we’re able to communicate with spirits on the Other Side. This is why we must show kindness, compassion, and empathy to the deceased who need our help and guidance.
This is why many witches become ghost witches. The ghost witch is essentially a death witch whose primary spirit work involves helping the dead, whether human or animal.
The ghost witch not only communicates with the dead but also helps trapped spirits cross into the afterlife with ease and grace. They also practice graveyard witchcraft and spend a lot of time in graveyards and cemeteries consorting with the dead.
The graveyard witch often collects graveyard dirt from their local graveyard with the gatekeeper's permission; the gatekeeper is also a ghost. They can work with specific gravesites or the spirit of the graveyard or cemetery.
Graveyard spirits are those who have their final resting place in a graveyard or cemetery. Just like living humans, ghost spirits can be good, bad, or downright malicious. This is why this type of work requires a lot of protection and defense magick.
This type of witch will often put up protection before, during, and after practicing graveyard magick. If you want to work with graveyard spirits, you might be interested in building a rapport with the Greek Goddess Hekate. She is the goddess of graveyards, crossroads, witchcraft, and liminal spaces.
She can offer you an extra layer of protection while working the graveyard shift. She can intuitively lead you to the grave spirits that would be happy to work with you in exchange for offerings and upkeep.
If you’d simply like to work with the dead from the comfort of home, Hekate can protect your home by filtering out dark entities, poltergeists, and mischievous spirits who may wish to trick you.
I would also recommend working with the baneful moon, also known as the waning moon, which is a phase known for left-handed magick. This will be an especially auspicious time for death witchery!
If you’ve made it this far, you may have what it takes to work with the dead. The dead include loved ones, pets, ancestors, graveyard spirits, and ghosts. Let’s talk about how to become a ghost and why you should never, ever want to become one.
I’ve already mentioned how it can happen, but let’s delve into the nether regions of the underworld, the plane where the dead ones exist in the afterlife. I’ll also touch on demon witchcraft and dark entities.
Signs of Spirit Attachment
Not all ghosts are malicious, but not all ghosts are kind either. It’s important to remember it’s their ego keeping them in the earthly realm, which means they will often attach themselves to a human as a spirit attachment.
Spirit attachments latch onto a living human spirit to sustain their life force. This often disrupts the living person’s life. A spirit attachment often occurs because a spirit is confused or attracted to your energy's vibrational match.
A person who is vulnerable, for example, would be somebody a ghost can latch onto. This is especially true of anyone who has severe mental illness, suicidal ideation, or even a small child with psychic abilities.
For the most part, this is not something most people have to worry about, but as a hedge witch, someone who walks between worlds, this is something that can happen, but only if you don’t take the proper precautions. Now, I don’t believe in fear-mongering, but I’ve always believed in the power of protection and preventative measures.
Do you leave your doors unlocked when you go to bed each night? Probably not. This is just practical magic at its best. You always work with the mundane first, then set up magical protection from there.
In other words, it’s better to be safe than sorry! When you dabble in ghost work, you dabble in darker forces. You are working with the unseen world, which can be unpredictable at best.
That being said, let’s talk about the signs of spirit attachment. This can work for you and all of your loved ones, too. Before jumping to conclusions, be sure to look into the mundane first.
Feeling emotionally and physically drained for no apparent reason
Feeling cold spots out of nowhere
Brain fog and fatigue
Erratic mood swings that come out of nowhere
Recurring nightmares (dreaming about someone else’s life)
A feeling of constantly being watched
Inexplicable thoughts that don’t feel like your own (hearing voices, intrusive thoughts, etc.)
Disappearing or moving objects
Changes in your pet’s behavior
Distortion of space and time
The inability to focus or concentrate
Again, many of these signs can be connected to the mundane, so it’s important to eliminate those first. Mental illness is the first thing you should look into when considering many of these signs.
I would also consider the situation you’re in. Are you living in a house with paranormal activity? Do you live near a graveyard? Is there something in your life that is haunting you?
Many signs can be attributed to emotional trauma that hasn’t been dealt with. When trauma happens, haunting can come from within, as parts of you break off and become fragmented as a form of protection.
I’m of the mind that, 9 times out of 10, you’ll know if a spirit has attached itself to you, especially if you’re a witch who works left-handed magic. Which, let’s face it, most of us do. Not everything in witchcraft is light and fluffy.
Working with ghosts, doing spirit work, and necromancy are considered to be advanced-level witchcraft, but even so, I always recommend dipping your toes in the water. As long as you have an understanding of protection magic and grounding, I see no reason why a beginner couldn’t explore this field of study further.
Start slow and move with grace. It’s important to remember that ghosts are real people who used to live. They should be treated with the same kindness, compassion, and respect as living humans.
I can’t emphasize this enough, but protection and home defense are your most important allies when dealing with the spirits of the undead. Put your protections up, and then add more locks, security cameras, and an alarm system, so to speak. Just like you would with your home and family, lock all the doors!
Most of all, keep in mind that ghost magic is something that should be taken seriously and considered carefully. When you work with a deceased spirit, you automatically open a door. Just make sure to close the door behind you and lock it.
Ghost magic is something that helps people, both living and dead. Messages get passed from the dead to the living, which often brings a sense of closure and peace. Oftentimes, the ghost witch is able to help the spirit pass into the light, and what could be better than that?
“You can find more ghostlore, including my personal ghost stories in The Cottage Grimoire! Enjoy reading my antique, handwritten spellbook during all of the changing seasons. xo”
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