In current time, especially in the United States, there are several organizations named as paranormal researchers or ghost hunters which consider some particular characteristics to ethereal beings.^[19]

Focused on investigations of haunted sights, the alleged conclusion is that some spectral beings seem to be nourished by energy provided from electronics devices, natural sources, and also from living organisms such as a human or an animal. Emotional energy, fear, and common negative feelings appear to be preferential sustenance of ethereal beings, namely those known as poltergeists.^[19][20] Temperature measurements taken from haunted places reveal abrupt and inexplicable drops. According to some proposed explanations, the ethereal being absorbs environment's energy to self-manifest in a perceptive way to humans. That is to say ethereal beings usually have so little energy that humans cannot perceive them, although pets seem able of doing it.^[21]

“Residual ghosts evoked by bells at cathedral in Edinburgh”.Saint Giles, his bells by C. A. Doyle, 19th century.

The “ethereal being phenomenon” is basically classified on two branches by ghost hunting: "residual energy" and "interactive energy".^[20]In other words when the ghost “answers” requests from ghost hunter, he would be an intelligent ethereal being, while if not, a "residual ethereal" or "site memory" (not really alive in that last case).^[22][23]

A regular procedure for ghost hunting is, through gadgets, the tape of “electronic voice phenomena” (EVP) which essentially are sounds recorded from “unperceptive source”. However, as claimed by some paranormal investigators, the perception of ethereal beings through electronic apparatus constitutes an established field of communication between people and them.^[24]

Denominated as "instrumentally assisted trans-communication” (ITC) occurrence, it consists in receiving voices, text and images from supposed friendly ethereal entities, which purportedly originate from diverse immaterial planes by way of computers, radios, televisions, telephones and other devices.^[25][24] According to parapsychologist Swiss Theo Locher, the contacts with such ethereal entities and results of these transmissions rely on common qualities, beliefs, thoughts and good intentions of experimenters and not only on instruments.^[26]

As stated by these interchanges of information, as for their time of life ethereals live hundreds of thousands of years. They, as “higher beings”, can incarnate like humans to demonstrate spiritual ways and not necessarily as a conspicuous person. They have no human emotions but can learn about them. The ethereal entities possess abilities regularly above normal humans as to foresee the future, although they are not supreme beings who could not fully avert disasters. They would not be flawless; they would be evolving over time like the human being.^[26][27]

On the other hand, ITC allows too the manifestation of “dark spirits” which oppose the “high ethereals” who assist the humanity.^[26] Under ITC messages some ethereals alert that merely opening the door to the spiritual worlds may be dangerous.^[26][28]

In the nineteenth century the French occultist Eliphas Levi defended the idea that temperature drops, chill, noises and shots heard in haunting places are promoted by creatures denominated elementals or fluid maggots (lately known as thoughtforms). He declares these astral entities as begotten from humans by mean of intense disoriented imagination and nightmares with sexual context. Like parasites these ghosts drain vital heat from people, debilitate individuals with fragile health and imitate like shadows theirs human creators. Besides they act as astralvampires consuming the astral steam provided in blood shed from accidents, deaths and sacrifices.^[29]

Levi and likewise after the English C. W. Leadbeater sustain that every person has an astral body and in death, the soul may leave this one behind. The astral body retains the living memories and personality, still seeks its passions, wants return to life, feeds on energy of spilt blood and floats about the places where its life elapsed. But over time the cosmos absorbs it; its intelligence fades away; its memory gradually vanishes and all its spectral being dissipates. So, while available, it is this astral entity that is driven by Necromancy, the art of evoking the dead.^[10][30]

Inward this prospect, Leadbeater sees a miscellany of cases ranking them, for citing some pertinent ones, as shades, etheric doubles, thoughtforms, degenerated souls and so on. All them may be deemed astral parasites because whenever they have the opportunity they prolong their existence by draining away the vitality from humans whom they find themselves able to influence.

A "shade" is a residual astral not conscious of any act of impression, a soulless bundle of all lowest qualities, which bears personal appearance, possesses memory and all idiosyncrasies of a dead person. It is still able to communicate by borrowing temporary intelligence from the medium.

The stuff that dreams are made of byJohn Anster Fitzgerald, 1858.

An etheric double is the shell, the etheric mold, one of subtle bodies which constitute living beings. The etheric shell is devoid of consciousness and intelligence; has a bluish-white misty form remaining near the decaying physical body.

A Thoughtform is a vitalized etheric shell, an artificial elemental animated by life, intelligence, desire, and will from a creation of man's evil thought. It is a malevolent being, a tempting demon.

Degenerated souls comprise men whose earth-lives have been extremely low or brutal then they are liable to recoil into evil ghostlike entities. As well black sorcerers, in an attempt of stretching out their lives, transform themselves in ghostly bizarre beings. Pisachas, incubus, succubus, and the demons of gluttony, lust, avarice and wickedness drawn by tempting devils of ecclesiastical literature, represent this class of creatures.^[10]

Thereof, as a matter of fact, retrogressing to 16th century the physician and occultist Paracelsus already appreciated those phenomena. In his alike words a man after death leaves a sidereal or astral body having no soul upon Earth. This sidereal body brings his thoughts and the heart’s desires of the dead man; it keeps itself in the neighborhood of that place where his cravings has been stayed. In all these things the soulless being performs for the desires of that heart, and it does the same thing in a shadowy manner after death, until, as the physical body is consumed, the sky devours that ghost. Partaker of that it is the necromancy, which grounds around the philosophy of sidereal beings, states the occultist.^[31]

Regarding the concept of shade of the departed, this also was the term used in Roman mythology for a class of beings of the underworld. Shades, in turn, split between the harmful lemures or larvae, which haunted the former home, and the beneficent lares, which protected the house. In more recent esoteric interpretation, a shade belongs to the astral body. It gathers the "kama treat", which it is connected with desire principle, the propelling vital force, and the higher parts of the human constitution, which have separated from the shells. In depth, Kama in Hinduism personifies the god of love, he is similar to the Greek Eros, both source of motivation and desire of life.^[32][33]

Dreamcatcher for keeping away bad dreams.

According to Native Americans and other shamanic traditions, an ethereal being could be an ancestor spirit from a former living human or animal, or else just an entity with the human look or not.^[34][35] Within that first outlook, the western modern view, based on some religious beliefs, puts ghosts as human spirits waiting the moment to be freed and leave definitely the Earth.^[36]

On the second possibility alluded by natives, the Christian religion defines that type as demon^[37] regardless of the entity may be helpful. But Native Americans deem these sorts of ethereal beings, with human aspect or not, simply as spirits where they can be good such as the protector manitou or evil like the predator wendigo from Ojibwa and Creemythology.^[38][39] Among the peoples Coast Salish and Okanagon from Washington some of those spirits act as guardians chiefly protecting the children and shamans. According to these peoples such ethereal entity is called "power animal" or "animal totem", though sometimes it can have human form. In point of fact this guardian spirit, which is calledarutam wakanl by Jivaros, uses to appear as human in dreams, while under shamanic vision has an animal shape.^[40] The shamanic tradition regards spirits as something indispensable for everyday life of man, when it is absent then must be rescued by a shaman through his magic arts, like in this Siberian chant translated in 1894:^[41]

Come, oh come spirit and ally. If you do not come, I will go to you.
Awake, oh, awake spirit and ally. Now I came to you, and I wake up you from your dreams.

The importance of such spirits also can be seen in some American tribes, which believe if a newborn does not find a "power animal" until six days after the birthday, the child will die right away, and hereof an adult can routinely fall sick when he is deprived of his guardian spirit. Whereby certain line of thought claims that the western belief in angels it is derived from archaic shamanic traditions.^[41] But not solely protection, likewise powers exclusively accessible through those spirits are delivered. In this same category, argue some scholars, are the familiar spirits in Europe, which are reasoned as an inheritance from those shamanic traditions.^[42][43]

And like in any animismic tradition there are different characters of them. For instance among the Lakotas the benevolent power animal can friendly speak, while other kind can be a maleficent being which may cause illness, and yet other variety harasses the person during the sleep provoking bad dreams.^[44] Hence, originated in the Ojibwa Nation, to protect the sleeping person there is the indigenous and magic artifact called dreamcatcher, which according to the legends was given in dreams by Gitchi Manitou, the Great Spirit.^[35][45][46] These nightmarish spirits find some similarity at western culture with the wicked beings calledincubus, but otherwise the latter entities could make the individual become ill or die.^[47]

Japanese scroll which describes the realm of the hungry ghosts and how to placate them. Picture from 12th century at the Kyoto National Museum.

Regarding the energy subject where it is absorbed by ethereal beings, the occasional interaction of ethereal beings when a person or animal dies, performs an especial case. From that situation may emerge an anchimayen crafted by the entity, while in Chinese tradition would be a particular case of an hungry ghost, in Tibetan tradition a tulpa and in Western Tradition, a thoughtform or a kind of familiar.^[48][49] These anchimayen ethereals suck in the whole psychic, mental and bodily energy released during the process of death.^[50][51] Masked by the taken energy, the ethereal being frames the visual form, behavior and many times even the personality of the dead person, or animal once in a while.^[52] Similarly as thoughtforms, the ethereal creature would remain in this human or animal form and slowly would weaken until the absorbed energy was all spent meanwhile producing the reported haunted places for centuries.^[29][30][53]

Bagua, Tibetan symbol for protection and use with Feng shui.

It is relevant point out that the Chinese feng shui philosophy embraces the idea that the arrangement and shape of landscapes, buildings, rooms and furniture can bring good or bad energies (Ch'i energy) to the environment. In fact, on eastern, particularly in China the matter is very serious for builders, to the point that ignoring it may cause consequences such as a haunted house.^[54] On western perspective, the base of that knowledge dwells on esoteric idea of radiation of form waves, which also makes strong grounding in Radiesthesia, sigils, amulets, and also as source of power of the Runic letters, for example. The French author Roger de Lafforest widely explained this concept^[55] claiming the shape of buildings and objects as capable of making people ill, to protect or kill them through the emission of "form waves". Lafforest affirms that ancient Egyptian priests protect pharaoh's tombs creating their own ethereal beings as product of magic. These ethereal beings were thoughtforms and the magicians to protect themselves from these ghosts, used sigils, which on the other hand may be used for the creation of thoughtforms as well.^[55][56]

In addition the French Jean Gaston Bardet^[57] and Jean de La Fye developed a system consisted of Hebraic letters as source of "form waves" radiation. This system lately was improved with contributions added from 777, work by Aleister Crowley.

Thereby according to that knowledge, once the environment’s structure is stocked of residual energy, or has the favorable shape (for generating energy), the ethereal being haunts the place for long periods. Thus when an area resident makes a reform or restoration (in a supposed haunting place) altering the shape of the rooms and furniture, he is changing the Ch'i energy flow.^[54] Consequently ghost manifestations, would be more likely in this altered conditions.