Chapter 7: When Is a Ghost Not a Ghost? — from Online Courses by Thomas Cooney
Not every apparition is a spirit with agency. Field lore and some researchers describe psychic projections or energy imprints (sometimes called residual hauntings): a scene “recorded” into a place under extreme stress and later replayed for a sensitive witness.
Example: a man sees a translucent woman at a window, hears sobbing, watches her cross the room and fade. Terrifying—yet the scene may be a decades-old crisis burned into the environment, not a person still present. In the classic telling, the woman in the imprint might even still have been alive when the “recording” formed; the point is that what you see is not necessarily who is “there” now.
How to tell imprint from interaction
An imprint does not respond as an agent. Shout, block its path, speak to it—the scene plays out anyway, even through you. A responsive spirit notices you. When you see a figure, test for reaction before you write “intelligent haunting” in the report. This single distinction prevents a lot of overclaiming.