What the Fetch? What IS a Fetch?

How They Met Themselves
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1864)
Source: WikiPedia

What the fetch?? How's that for a throwback? The catch-phrase uttered by OG TAPS member and star of the original Ghost Hunters television show, Grant Wilson, was presumably a family-friendly (ratings friendly) way to say something a little more colorful. But, what if the meaning behind the phrase was actually paranormal in nature?

According to the Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology, edited by Leslie A. Shepard, in Irish folklore, a fetch is an apparition of a living person. Very much like a doppelganger, the fetch is generally regarded as a bad omen for the person who it represents.  Although occasionally it will appear exactly like the person in question, other times it will appear shadowy and ethereal in appearance...like a ghost. But, unlike the doppelganger, the time of day the fetch is seen COULD mean the difference between life and death. If the fetch is seen in the morning, that's actually a GOOD sign, meaning a long-life for the living counterpart. However, if the fetch is seen in the evening, a death is surely imminent. 

Etymologists aren't 100% sure of the origins of the term fetch, but one possible explanation may come from Richard Stanyhurst's 1583 translation of the Aeneid. The book mentions psychopomps, which are entities (creatures, spirits, angels, demons, etc.) that act as guides, escorting the living to the world of the dead.  In other words, psychopomps FETCH the souls of the dying. Since the fetch is seen as a harbinger of death, I guess it has been interpreted that it could be seen as a type of psychopomp, come to 'fetch' the soul of the living. 

Like many here in West Virginia and elsewhere throughout Appalachia, I've got quite a fair amount of Scots-Irish ancestry, and growing up I was both fascinated and horrified by some of the spooky tales told by older generations of my family. I don't remember all of their stories, traditions, and superstitions, but one belief that always stuck with me was the idea that seeing the ghost of a living person, especially if it was of YOURSELF, was a very, very bad omen, most often resulting in the death of that person. As I got older and started studying paranormal phenomena, I just tended to lump these types of stories and experiences under the term of doppelganger, but now I know that fetch is probably a little more culturally accurate! 

Luckily, I've never had a personal experience with a fetch and/or a doppelganger, but I HAVE had plenty of run-ins with another member of the doubles family---a strange thing known as a Vardoger. You can read about those experiences HERE. If you've had any experiences, good or bad, with any member of the doubles family of apparitions, I'd love to here them. You can comment down below, or find me over on Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State FaceBook page. Stay spooky, ya'll! 

6 MORE Commonly Misspelled Paranormal Words

I swear I'm not a spelling/grammar Nazi; anyone reading my work can attest to the fact that my lack of sleep and neglectful proofreading have led to some very unprofessional looking blog and social media posts over the years!  However, I do make it a point to learn (and practice) the proper spelling of commonly used words in the paranormal field.  It all started several years ago when I got banned from a Facebook paranormal group by telling a guy that he shouldn't call himself a paranormal expert until he could consistently spell 'paranormal' correctly.  That led to my fairly successful blog post, 6 Commonly Misspelled Paranormal Words.  I had fun writing that post, and wanted to share a few more words that I'm constantly seeing people in this field slaughter.  This post isn't meant to be mean or condescending. Instead, I hope you'll find it a light-hearted and fun way to bring attention to the issue of misspelled paranormal vocabulary.

1. Poltergeist: Ah, those noisy ghosts!  Whether you feel that poltergeists are an actual independent entity or a manifestation of RSPK (or some other explanation) there is only one acceptable way to spell the word, as far as I know.  There are no poltregeists, poltergiests, potergeists, or poultergistes  here!

2. Amityville:  Place names, especially if you're unfamiliar with them or if they're a little wonky sounding to begin with, can be difficult to spell correctly.  However, with all the movies, books, websites, and articles about this famous, yet controversial haunting, you'd think it would be more ingrained into the brains of paranormal enthusiasts. However, I can totally understand this one...my spell checker is telling me its spelled wrong when I KNOW its spelled correctly...

3. Ouija:  I used to think that 'Ouija' was a fairly straight-forward word to spell.  It is just 'yes' in French and German, smooshed together.  However, I am constantly seeing people on paranormal social media platforms spell this with a 'Q.'  WHY?!?  What am I missing?  Please let me know in the comment section below if there is some actual reason why so many people spell it 'Quija.' I'm assuming that the 'Q' replaces the 'O' because people just assume that a 'Qu' should go together at the beginning of a word.  Bonus Fun Fact: Do you know how the Ouija Board got its name?  "Helen Peters Nosworthy is the woman responsible for giving the Ouija its mysterious name. Her identity was rediscovered by TBHS founder Robert Murch in a series of letters printed in the Baltimore Sun when the founders of Ouija took their grievances with each other public. Letters from Charles Kennard, the man who claimed to invent the Ouija board and his friend and business partner Elijah Bond, the man who patented it, stated that a woman by the name of “Miss Peters, Bond’s sister-in-law” who was known as a “strong medium,” asked the then-unnamed talking board what it would like to be called. The board spelled out O-U-I-J-A, and when asked what the term meant, it responded “Good Luck.”"

4. Believe:  Whether you believe in the paranormal or not, you should be mindful that you're 'believing,' and NOT 'beleiving.' The whole "I before E, except after C...etc." thing can get super complicated with its many exceptions, so be careful with this one...especially if 'believe' is used as part of your investigation/research/social media group's name.

5. Spirit: This is another one that I used to think was pretty straight-forward.  It is spelled just about how it sounds, but I keep seeing people write 'sprit,' which could be a simple typo, and also 'sprite.' Now, there is a being in paranormal lore known as a sprite, but too often when I see it spelled that way, its obvious that 'spirit' is the actual word the writer is looking for.

6. Zak Bagans:  Out of all the words on this list, I see Zak's name slaughtered most often.  There are plenty of ways to spell 'Zak', and the para-celebrity in question, known for his work on Ghost Adventurers and his Demon House documentary, does use a fairly unpopular variation.  Still, if you're going to write about a person, its always nice to look up and verify the correct spelling of his/her name.

Matrixing the Man in the Rock

Matrixing. If you've done any reading/research into the paranormal in the past 10-15 years, you've almost certainly heard this term being thrown around, especially when it comes to analyzing potentially paranormal faces/apparitions appearing on still photos and video. But what exactly IS matrixing?                                                                                                                                                         Matrixing is a term popularized by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, known more commonly as the stars of SyFy's Ghost Hunters.  However, I prefer to call the phenomenon by its slightly more scientific name:  'pareidolia.'

Pareidolia comes from the Greek words para (meaning faulty, wrong, instead of) and eidolon (meaning image, form, or shape). Merriam-Webster defines pareidolia as "the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern."  In laymen's terms, it means the tendency to see faces, animals, and other familiar images in random patterns. Have you ever gazed up at the clouds and thought they looked like bunny rabbits? You've experienced pareidolia. Have you ever sworn your bathtub has 'seen things, man?' You've experienced pareidolia. Have you ever taken a Rorschach inkblot test? Well, you get the picture. 

Many photographs that claim to contain evidence of ghostly or supernatural figures can be explained by pareidolia. If you're unsure whether or not a spooky face could be attributed to pareidolia, try to change up your perception. Turn the photograph upside down. Examine each half of the figure by itself and compare; are there any signs of symmetry (or lack thereof)? Does the image still make sense as a figure when looked at a piece at a time? What happens if you enlarge (or shrink) the photo? Does the image distort to the point where it is no longer recognizable as something familiar?

By definition and popular usage, the term pareidolia is used most often to describe visual phenomenon. However, any of the human senses can be perceptible to pareidolia. We might interpret two unrelated scents as being another scent altogether. As we listen to potential EVPs, we might take missing sounds and even whole syllables not heard by our ears and have our brain fill in to make recognizable words. As a result, a good tip when analyzing EVPs is to NOT tell others what YOU hear, at least at first, and let them listen without bias.

Pareidolia falls under the larger umbrella of the phenomenon of apophenia. Apophenia is defined as "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena." It was coined by German neurologist and psychiatrist Klaus Conrad, whose research focused on the finding of abnormal meaning or significance in random experiences by psychotic people.                                                                                                                                                                                                The human brain is hard-wired to make sense out of stimuli. We want to find patterns and correlations in an otherwise chaotic world, and there's not too many things more confusing and chaotic than trying to make sense out of the paranormal! It may also be an evolutionary issue. If we can spot facial features of hidden predators, we have a greater chance of survival. Similarly, could we be applying that same principle to our interactions with the unknown?

Whatever the reasons behind the phenomena may be, apophenia and pareidolia are two issues that every paranormal investigator and researcher needs to be familiar with. Luckily, there is no shortage of articles and examples available out there to illustrate just how fascinating these concepts can be.

A great local example of matrixing, or pareidolia, is Fayette County's "Old Rock Head." This unique cliff face (pardon the pun) can be found on Route 21 at Honey Creek, right near the Chimney Corners area, where the Route 60 intersection is located. It doesn't take too much of a stretch of the imagination to see the outline of a man's face in profile, coming out of the rock.  Oddly enough, this isn't West Virginia's only rock face! While its much harder to access and, in my opinion, MUCH harder to see, there's a nearby cliff where, in 1901, railroad workers in the area claimed to see the image of President McKinley appear. Their superstitions of this death omen were realized when news that the President had been shot arrived shortly after. Please see President McKinley's Death Omen blog entry for more info! 

Photo from WV History on View

Photo by Robert W. McKinnon, courtesy of WV History on View

*Bonus Vocabulary Lesson!*

Simulacrum: "An image or representation of something." Simulacrum is sometimes confused with pareidolia, but unlike pareidolia, which happens naturally, simulacrum is when someone intentionally designs something to look like something else. While the rock formation above occurred accidentally, this example in Jackson County, WV, was carved to look that way by Otis Shinn. More information available in this Gazette article.

The Vardoger: A Norwegian Doubles Phenomenon Explained

Have you ever heard the term, 'vardoger?'  

Quite literally, the term "vardoger" is a Norwegian word defined as "a premonitory sound or sight of a person before he arrives."

Vardogers are a class of paranormal "doubles," a class that includes doppelgangers, crisis apparitions, and bilocation.  In fact, it is believed that the vardoger is simply an example of bilocation. 

Those who experience a vardoger "haunting" generally describe the phenomena in an almost identical manner.  Generally, the witnesses are at a location, most often home, waiting for a friend or loved one to arrive.  About 15 minutes to a half hour before the scheduled time of the person's arrival, the witness will hear the sounds associated with that person coming home.  They will hear a car in the driveway, hear doors opening and closing, and even the footsteps in the entry way.  Rarely, the actual car or the form of the person will be seen in solid form, indistinguishable from a real person.

My family went through its own period of vardoger hauntings in the late 1990s/early 2000s, especially concerning the arrival home of myself or my sister.  In one specific textbook example, my mom and I were in the bedroom, waiting for my sister to come home from work.  We heard the garage door open, a car door open then close, the garage door being lowered, and then the kitchen door being opened and closed.  The dogs rushed out of the room towards the kitchen to greet my sister, and after calling to my sister where we were...my mother quickly followed, only to find that no one was there.  No car was in the garage.  After precisely 15 minutes, my sister did indeed arrive home, none the wiser to what had just occured.

It is theorized that in these vardoger cases, the spirit of the person, eager to arrive, does in fact leave the body to arrive early.  And, although in a similar paranormal class, vardogers are distinctly different from the more widely known concept of a doppelganger.  In classic doppelganger cases, the person himself often sees his own image.  The doppelganger seems as flesh and blood as a real human, identical in every way save for one or two slightly different details to the "host."  It is considered extremely unlucky, and even is seen as a death omen in some cultures, to see your own doppelganger.  Vardogers, on the other hand, are benign and not associated with luck, good or bad.

Lincoln photo above from Chris Capps' site, Unexplainable.Net