“Entity continuity” refers to recurrent transcendent experiences related to certain places (“hauntings”). The experiences are often interpreted to be due to discarnate spirits or folklore entities. Although the entity continuity experience can be regarded as religious experience, they have yet to be fully explored in science of religion.

The purpose of this paper was to describe entity continuity experiences and map out the scientific discussion in order to provide a psychology of religion that provides an understanding of the phenomena. For this purpose a literature study of theories of jungian psychology, parapsychology, and described experiences was undertaken. The material was thereafter analyzed comparatively.

The results show that entity continuity experiences can be understood as a form of animism and that the experiences are colored by culture, context, and visual impression. The material also shows that experiences at locations that have played host to entity continuity and poltergeist experiences are equivalent. An altered state of consciousness, a special type of personality, and distinctive environmental stimuli, the atmosphere or “feeling”, is necessary for the occurrence of these experiences. The “percipients” and/or “agents” psychic material is reflected in the atmosphere and becomes expressed as psychic manifestations in the form of entity experiences.