Role of geology?

In addition to the whole geotectonic thang, I've been thinking about the role that the types of rock play in haunted locations. It's purely speculative, but a cursory glance at a geological map of the UK reveals a surprisingly high amount of famous haunted places - Woodchester, Alton Towers, Galleries of Justics - set on a form of sandstone or similar. Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts as to whether this type of rock would have some influence on hauntings?

Woodchester is on oolitic limestone, surely?

Several problems here - firstly you need a large scale map to find out precisely which rock a location is situated over. There can be small outliers and inliers not shown on small scale maps. Secondly, in many cases, there may be layers of 'drift', sometimes tens of metres thick, above the bedrock, not shown in 'solid' geology maps. If the bedrock has any affect on ghosts, such a layer of drift may dimish it because of the increased depth. Thirdly, and the most difficult, you need to have a standard definition of whether a place is haunted or not. For instance, would three independent reports of the same ghostly phenomena at a single place do? I think the fact that a place has featured on Most Haunted, for instance, is no proof that it is haunted at all.

There's certainly issues with how you'd form a solid theory from this. The intention of my post was more to provoke debate about whether geology in general, beyond the well-worn issue of geomagneticism and "stone tape theory" may have some influence on hauntings.

It seems you're right about Woodchester - it must be the sand I always get in my hair after visiting that skewed my memory.

I can't think of any obvious role for geology in hauntings. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't examine the data to see if there's a link. If a link is found, then we can start to speculate about how it might work.

Some people, for instance, have suggested a link between hauntings and underground streams though I'm not sure any it has been demonstrated well.

I've always found it interesting that people remark the building at Woodchester feels alive in some way, and wondered whether this has something to do with the type of stone it was built from?

Maps can be obtained from BSG (British Geological Survey). I have some 1:625 000 which is good for general rock type in a given area but I think we would a better scale for specific locations. I can't see any particular reason that the rock type would have an affect but I agree it may be worth looking into.

Maybe the sort of thing that would be worth compiling on a GIS database. You could layer haunting on top of rock type and see if there is any sort of pattern. Of course that could be taken further by adding in types of haunting, last seen, etc

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Maybe the sort of thing that would be worth compiling on a GIS database. You could layer haunting on top of rock type and see if there is any sort of pattern. Of course that could be taken further by adding in types of haunting, last seen, etc

The new version of Mysbrit will have longitude/latitude points for each gazetteer entry and they will be overlayed on a county by county map. So if you know the rock type under a certain location you could certainly make a start on something that.

We should keep in mind that we need people to witness phenomena for it to be reported and therefore we are likely to get it populated areas. These may have grown due to a geographic or geological (mining etc) factor.

The Russians have a very comprehensive body of literature on the matter. Not only that but their whole geological school is built on entirely different lines than our own. I am pretty sure they investigated this matter quite extensively.
Two problems though. First one, as you may well imagine, nothing has been translated except, and I am not so sure, a few books in German. Second one, there are only a very few "Westeners" (Europeans and Americans) schooled in their theories and they are all invariably trained in the so-called "abiotic oil theory". Also since the Putin administration took over some topics (mainly raw material location) have become covered by State secret so don't even bother to ask.