Firefighting and the Paranormal

“Have you ever had an experience you just couldn’t explain? Perhaps you’ve walked into an empty room at the firehouse and had the inexplicable feeling that you weren’t alone. Maybe the air felt strangely cold. Did you glimpse a face in the window when you knew no one was there?”

Many firefighters experience strange phenomena that leave them feeling just a little spooked. If you’re looking for someone with extensive knowledge in the field of the paranormal and the extra-terrestrial, talk to Micah Hanks. Whether or not you’re a believer, you’ll be guaranteed an interesting conversation that could cover topics ranging from life after death to future-forecasting dreams, and even out-of-body experiences.

Micah, host of the Micah Hanks Show podcast and a prolific writer and lecturer, tells CRACKYL that he always starts his investigations of strange sightings and events at the most basic level: culture. If someone asks him to look into a peculiar occurrence and report his findings, he’ll begin by considering the folklore and culture that surround it.  He points out, for example, that almost every culture around the world has stories that involve life after death, people restored to life, communication with the nether world and so on.

Equally common are reports of dreams that foreshadow strange events or convince the dreamer of the return of a dead loved one. Some cultures even believe that unborn children appear first to their mothers in dreams, asking to be born into this life. All of these experiences are things Micah would categorize as spiritual phenomena and he finds them fascinating.

Common manifestations experienced by firefighters in a firehouse can include seeing or hearing the voice of what they perceive to be a colleague lost in the line of duty. Micah mentions that the family of the deceased may also experience similar physical or auditory phenomena as well as dreams in which the lost one appears as they work through their grief. 

If a firefighter is at a call when someone loses their life, might that spirit attach itself to the person who was with them in their last moments? According to Micah, in many cultures, people believe that spirits do attach themselves to living people, particularly during disasters.  What if a firefighter senses some sort of paranormal activity following a fatal call? Where does this come from? Micah acknowledges that many people do come away from witnessing a tragic death in, for example, a fire, feeling that they’ve been accompanied or visited later by those who perished.  

Attaching yourself to someone while you’re alive, after all, is not unusual behavior. We human beings are social creatures who want to talk and share our feelings.  If someone has experienced bodily death but some part of his spirit remains, Micah thinks it makes good sense that the firefighter who was there in the last moments might experience some kind of a connection.

Why do some people experience paranormal phenomena while others never see or hear a thing they can’t explain?  People can be more receptive or less, but Micah feels that may be the result of interpretation. If you live in an old house, for example, and hear noises when no earthly agent seems to be responsible, a receptive person might wonder about spirits, while a less receptive person will blame the cat or chalk the sounds up to the settling-in-for-the-night creaks and groans of old buildings.

If you’re worried about something you’ve seen, heard or experienced but can’t adequately explain, speak to a professional to help you learn from and process it in a positive way.  If such issues aren’t dealt with properly, they can become burdens. What if, on the other hand, you’ve had such an experience and are eager to learn more about what happened? Where can you look for help? Micah recommends the Rhine Research Center, founded at Duke University in 1930 and today a reputable, independent organization that studies all paranormal experiences that relate to consciousness. The Psychic Experiences Group (PEG) meets every month at the Rhine as well as in independent chapters across the United States. Says Micah, “It’s important to talk about those experiences. Why does our materialistic culture stigmatize them? We find evidence of paranormal activity in the earliest writings of almost every culture around the world, but we seem to think we should make fun of them.”