My Little House by the Railway
My home used to be an unfortunate mess of detrimental energies and wandering earth bound spirits, until I figured out why.
I live in an old schoolhouse from the 1920’s and my front door is 65 m from the Canadian National Railway, previously known as the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. In addition my front “boulevard” is accessorized with a railroad crossing (hello train horns), and a switch or turnout for passing trains to pullover, or park. Living here is a contrasting experience of quiet country living with the occasional heavy metal concert.
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway - B.C. Canada
“The great peace, which filled all this valley, was to be torn asunder ruthlessly to let in the noise and clang and clatter of westward moving civilization. Those little parties which passed through the valley before the turn of the century were only forerunners of what was to come.” -Ilse Read, in the Women’s Institute History of Dunster
When I decided my home needed healing, I had to identify exactly what was wrong. I would learn that the railway in itself, is a detrimental feature in respect to the health of the land (and ultimately my home). I also learned that earthbound spirits had found a comfortable place to hangout in my house. They weren’t connected to the home’s history but rather rode in on the train. The switch on the tracks in front of my property is where the trains coming from both directions stop frequently, and idle sometimes for longer periods, or park. Wayfaring spirits onboard the train have time to stop, look around and evidently, see the lights on in my house so to speak.
Earthbound spirits gravitate to physical places that they lived in their lifetime. For good or bad, something about a location during their earthly life left a strong connection after their transition. For folks around here that was, and still is, the railroad.
Tiny scattered communities dot hundreds of kilometers of railway with their churches, schools, homesteads and cemeteries built right along the tracks. Aside from the cords of history, there is an aura to train tracks that would satisfy the energetic needs of an earthbound spirit. Unfortunately ghosts or spirits that are stuck in middle earth require an energy source, because they are not connected to THE source. This is often why problems arise for people and pets who co-exist in their company.
In Western geomancy a railway is considered to be a line carrying Sha Qi, or detrimental energy which can also be referred to as geopathic stress. As an energy worker and intuitive living next to the railway, I can attest to this.
An active railway is like a vortex of energy, spinning and travelling in a bidirectional linear fashion across the landscape, picking up energetic debris and dropping it off as it goes.
A vortex can be considered a node where two energy lines cross. If an earth energy line intersects something like a railway, what happens? The nature of a railway makes me think about how its construction would have severed much of the existing earth energy lines on the land, and/or giving them a “negative” charge. Imagine a severely deep cut on your arm for example, and how all the meridians running through the arm are affected. The land is much the same.
Train tracks carrying Sha Qi.
Active railways are an energetic cocktail of history, distorted earth energy lines and unhealed trauma.
It is known that railways were constructed over existing indigenous routes, at least here in B.C through the Yellowhead Pass and beyond. These foot paths were ancient and would have been an energy line in their own way, following the serpentine banks of the Fraser River. Years and years of travel by foot, similar to the Holloway tracks in Britain. It also begs the question of the chicken or the egg. Before the railway took over, did these indigenous travel routes follow existing earth energy lines? Or was it the long term use of the same path that eventually gave shape to it’s energetic signature?
I don’t know for sure. If I had to guess, my bet is the ancestors of this land followed existing energy lines, like other ancient cultures all over the globe.
What happens when you place a highly conductive, linear steel construct on top of an existing energy imprint?
Then layer it with the emotional trauma of displacing populations of indigenous people who cursed its construction. Layered with the decades of settlers living and dying along this railway, clinging to it as a lifeline while trying to carve out a living in the rugged B.C. mountains. The layers start piling up.
Another consideration , or energetic layer to the railway is the geology of the local landscape. There are many silica mines in this valley due to the high concentration of quartzite. Quartz has a powerful piezoelectric quality, and many sacred sites or power spots have an element of quartz rock. When you take a railway, an already powerful layered energy line, and course it through a tunnel of pure rock, I imagine the energy doing WILD things. A great example of this is the Othello Tunnels in Hope, B.C.
This location is a provincial park with a deactivated section of the Kettle Valley Railway, now used as the Trans Canada Trail. It includes a series of five tunnels constructed through granite rock, an incredible engineering feat in the early 1900s.
Grahame Gardner wrote a blog post about his visit to the Othello Tunnels with a group of dowsers, to experience the energy in one of the tunnels they call a “Time Portal”.
Othello Tunnels in Hope, B.C.
It is worth noting that the Othello Tunnels are just above the Coquihalla River. The railway travelling past my home also follows the Fraser River closely. Rivers are another huge energy feature and certainly interact with the energy of the railway, but I will save that for another blog post.
Aside from the physical railway construction, there is the train itself. If you visit my home it is impossible to ignore the train horns as they pass by the road crossing. Noise Sha is another detrimental feature of the railway and refers to the disruptive sound of the horns. For context, a train horn can measure at 150 decibels while a quiet study room should measure 20 decibels.
“Hot metal screaming through the valleys, echoing loud enough to wake the mountains” - Wet’suwet’en poet, Jennifer Wickham
The sound of a train horn bellows loudly at a low frequency, which allows the sound to be carried a farther distance as a safety feature. At home when I am standing down at the river, I can hear the train’s echo far and wide across the valley and through the mountains. Just a thought, but imagine if we replaced standard train horns for large bells emitted high frequency sound?
We know that sound, frequency and vibration affects water. WE are made of water. Trees and vegetation are made of water , and of course we have the water features themselves. How does the sound, frequency and vibration of a passing train affect the landscape?
I decided to ask the spirits of the land where I live. I applied the same process I follow for my property readings and journeyed into a meditation to learn more.
During my journey I was provided a visual metaphor for how the passing train impacts localized earth energy:
Imagine walking through a muddy section of earth with lots of puddles. As you step into the pools of water, the water is immediately displaced and shoots outwards into the little cracks and crevices' of dirt around. The train is like the boot stepping into the puddle. As it travels down the tracks it sends a shockwave outwards, displacing the natural Qi or earth energy present in an area. By time the area attempts to equalize again, the next train passes going the other direction. Hence the railway being considered a geopathic stress feature, it displaces Qi from the area and doesn’t allow it to accumulate.
The squirrels that dwell in the row of spruce trees between my home and the tracks showed me the powerful shockwave of a passing train, and how it penetrates every molecule of the tree.
I’ve always likened this row of spruce to a line of soldiers guarding my home from the railway. I honestly can’t imagine losing them, they are such devoted land guardians and an integral protective barrier.
Spirits of the land working together.
I realized how selfish I was in my thinking, because the squirrel reminded me that these trees are working for ALL the beings as an energy shield. The squirrels actively work with the tree elementals to assist the spruce in maintaining their strength and vitality.
Interestingly, it was also shown to me that in certain spots, the trees have started working together to reweave the earth grid where the railway had disturbed it.
Despite the wide width of the railway clearing, the trees are using their roots and branches to keep grid lines connected from one side to the other.
The power of trees.
The local deer take advantage of the railway in a surprising way. In another area between my property line and the tracks is a thick forested strip of mature spruce trees. Aside from seeing the deer in here myself, I was shown in my journey that they like this spot for its protection. They take advantage of the train, knowing that it naturally deters other transient wildlife like predators.
One day in the field near my house I witnessed a coyote chasing a doe. She lured him towards the train tracks, away from her fawn who stayed hunkered down in the field. A little while later she looped back around to get her fawn. It seemed that her strategy with the railway worked, as it was clear the coyote lost her trail.
Keeper of the Land.
Trains are a supply chain backbone, and in Canada alone railways move 70% of inter-city freight and 50% of exports. Try stopping ALL trains for a day and you can imagine the chaos.
Blood sweat and steel built the railroad. It’s history is the foundation on which our modern day sits, and that history comes with a lot of scars. Those scars continue to echo down the tracks today and can occasionally derail into a nearby home, such as my own.
Through my own research and personal experiences, I believe railways to be a conduit for paranormal activity and a textbook example of geopathic stress. During my research I was able to find another blog post supporting this topic: Train Tracks and Paranormal Activity – Ghost History Medium
Energy of the railway.
As an Earth Tender and grid worker, my work includes healing scars on the land and the homes impacted by Sha Qi features like the train tracks. Without adequate energetic protection, they can wreak havoc on our homes by invited in unwanted energy and disturbing healthy Qi. My house being a prime example!
Looking back, healing my home from the implications of the railway was truly a gateway to the work I do today.