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shyscyberchamber.com
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GHOSTS |
Date
Added |
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Animate or Inanimate
Phenomena? |
October 2002 |
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It is often said that
the British Isles is the most haunted country in the world, and
perhaps more books have been published about British phantoms than
those from anywhere else. However, there are ghosts all over the world
and Britain probably owes its status to its large number of old
buildings.
The typical ghost story is a combination of dramatic legend associated
with a building or place, unusual experiences (from cold spots to
visions) reported by those who have stayed there over the years, and
popularization of the story through repeated retelling to cement the
bond between myth and reality. Visual sightings are less common than
might be imagines and good hard evidence rarer still. Most of these
stories require time to take root, so the older a building the more
opportunity for spectral legends to attach themselves.
There does not seem to be a time limit to legends of this kind.
Stories of what appear to be ancient Celtic ceremonies, witnessed as
if being re-enacted at stone circle sites, could be ghostly hauntings
dating back thousands of years. The famous story of a ghostly Roman
legion marching through a York cellar, as witnessed by a workman there
1900 years after such an event took place in reality, again crosses
the ages with apparent ease. On the other hand, some researchers
believe that hauntings 'lose energy' and gradually fade from a clear
image of a dead person to become sightings of spectral lights or white
masses, and eventually no more than odd feelings or noises. Sightings
of recently deceased people are common, as if they are paying one
lingering farewell before being wretched away to heaven.
However in 1993 an interesting case from Los Angeles illustrated
another problem. A woman was seen as a ghostly form wandering around
an old house, and after much research she was discovered to have been
someone who had once lived there but moved away half a century
earlier. It was speculated that, although the woman had not died in
the house, she might have come to haunt it because of her
well-attested love for the place. But a major problem with this theory
soon arose. The was traced many miles away, elderly, ill but still
alive! In fact she was in a coma, and quite possibly reliving her
earlier days in the house - 'dreaming' of a place that had been most
dear to her. After a time the woman's condition improved, and her
apparitions stopped appearing in the distant house.
This poses a dilemma about the nature of ghosts that continue to
dominate the field. Are they animate or inanimate phenomena?
There are relatively few cases where ghosts appear to interact with
living people by carrying out meaningful conversations, for instance.
Most often they seem like projected images on a screen, playing the
same scene over and over. This has led to the belief that they are
like a video tape on constant replay - perhaps an emotive moment in
time trapped by the surroundings, and run every now and then for an
attentive audience. This would help explain the theory of hauntings
'running out of energy' and fading from full-blown visions across the
centuries. Such a ghost would not in any sense be a living, thinking
entity.
Such an idea might also explain why ghostly images of inanimate
objects can be seen. The spectral coach and horse is familiar, but
there have also been ghost plant pots, houses, even buses and trains.
These presumably cannot have souls, making the traditional theory of a
ghost as the spirit of a deceased person more difficult to sustain.
Some cases challenge the view that ghosts are images held over from
life rather than some soul or spirit of a post mortem existence - for
instance when a ghost passes on knowledge that it could only have
learnt after death. An alternative theory sees the apparition as an
interaction between the mind of a deceased person and that of a living
witness. The result would be a hallucination planted in the mind of
the percipient by some surviving aspect of a once living person.
We still do not know whether this requires a dead person to continue a
thinking existence in some other realm, or whether the witness might
manufacture the ghost out of information picked up telepathically from
the environment or other living people. It may be that ghosts will
tell us a lot more about the living and how consciousness operates
than they do about life and death. |
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