Ghosts....?

[Robert]

Bunny, R Chetwynd Hayes wrote a story in which he theorised that many of the passengers riding the London Underground are ghosts. In the story, a man's wife dies. She seems to want him to follow her because a few days later he sees her sitting opposite him in a tube train. He declines to die, and so the next time he sees her, her mother is sitting next to her....

[louisa]

If we are to believe that ghosts are simply the souls or spirits of dead people then how do we explain their clothing....or chains, or whatever? Clothing and chains have never had a soul so why should they be there?

[Robert]

I've been wearing an anorak so long, it probably has a soul by now.

[Rubyretro]

[QUOTE]

I've been wearing an anorak so long, it probably has a soul by now.

My shoes have souls.

hahaha (sorry. soreeeey. still pining for Trent).

[Archaic]

Naked Ghosts

If we are to believe that ghosts are simply the souls or spirits of dead people then how do we explain their clothing....or chains, or whatever? Clothing and chains have never had a soul so why should they be there?

Hi Lousia. I remember having this discussion with a friend about a year or two ago.

I asked her why ghosts wear clothes at all? Doesn't being dead let you finallyget over the dorky self-consciousness you had in life?

How come no one ever reports a stark naked ghost?

Or even a ghost that's half-dressed... like maybe they died while dressing or something. Why no ghosts in their underthings, or wearing socks without shoes?

What about if someone dies in the bathtub, does their ghost get issued phantom clothing?

That's always baffled me.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Beowulf]

A very interesting story, Beowulf. Well, if it was your sister, I don't think she'd have meant for you to count the revolutions, or anything like that, in order to decipher some sort of code. Not unless she was a Ripperologist!

Lol. Even then, there would be some discussion as to exactly what it might mean.

[louisa]

Beowulf - your post #13 is an interesting one and it's one that can be believed because it sounds like the kind of thing that could actually happen, if indeed there were such things as the spirits of the deceased.

I am far more sceptical about the people who say they 'keep' seeing ghosts. Human spectres wearing clothes, that kind of thing. The mind can play tricks on people.

Poltergeists are another thing altogether. This seems to be a form of energy which has nothing to do with the spirit world. This kinetic energy comes from people, certain people in particular. It stems from a restless kind of anger or strong emotion that the person has within them. Teenagers seem to have this more than adults.

The story of Annemarie Schneider is possibly one of the best documented accounts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenheim_Poltergeist

[kensei]

On ghosts wearing clothes and soforth- consensus among researchers seems to be that ghosts can project themselves in whatever form they wish to, and tend to adopt whatever appearance was most pleasing to them in life. Some even appear looking younger than they were at death, in the prime of life. Or in one case I experienced, older. A young woman I used to be friends with had an abortion, and subsequently claimed to have communication with the spirit of the child, a little girl who would appear to her looking somewhere from two to four years old. She said the child did not act upset about having been aborted, but would appear whenever she was dating someone new and act excited about another chance to be born.

[harry]

I once cornered a ghost but it slipped through my fingers.

[louisa]

[QUOTE=kensei;223312]On ghosts wearing clothes and soforth- consensus among researchers seems to be that ghosts can project themselves in whatever form they wish to, and tend to adopt whatever appearance was most pleasing to them in life. Some even appear looking younger than they were at death, in the prime of life...QUOTE]

If that's true then why do some 'ghosts' appear without a head?


Sorry but regarding ghosts, I am a sceptic, through and through, but open minded enough to accept there are things that happen that cannot be explained by normal means.

I am adamant on one thing though.....people who claim to have been in contact with spirits 'from the other side' are complete frauds and should be ashamed of themselves.

However, I truly believe that some people are gifted with powers of clairvoyancy. These people are able to 'see' scenes from other people's pasts, almost like looking at a snapsnot. Unscrupulous clairvoyants claiming to be 'spiritualists' will use this gift to gain the confidence of gullible people, giving them enough accurate private information so they believe the 'medium' is in touch with the spirit of their deceased loved one.

[bolo]

Hi all,

perhaps the essay On The Theory Of Ghosts (taken from Adorno/Horkheimer Dialectic of Enlightment) may be a good addition to this thread:

http://sadpress.wordpress.com/2011/0...ory-of-ghosts/ .

Regards,

Boris

[Beowulf]

Hi all,

perhaps the essay On The Theory Of Ghosts (taken from Adorno/Horkheimer Dialectic of Enlightment) may be a good addition to this thread:

http://sadpress.wordpress.com/2011/0...ory-of-ghosts/ .

Regards,

Boris

I actually had a hard time following that. Maybe I'm just tired.

I found Elliott O'Donnell's ghost theory to be intriguing, as it seems to reflect a bygone era, namely that of the 20's, and the whole idea of the 'ether'. It is in his concluding chapter to Haunted Britain. I am typing it here right from the book itself:

"Whether all the phenomena that occur in reputed houses and places are really due to entities from another world or plane is, in my opinion, very debatable. Even granting they are not due to trickery, illusion, hallucination, or hysteria, there is still the possibility that, at least, a percentage of them may be due to some quite natural cause. A deeply emotional thought, for example, may have capabilities little dreamed of by its conceiver; effects not merely transient nor confined to a lifetime, nor limited to any definite number of years nor to any limited space.

Thought has been defined as an embodiment of ether, and also as an impression in ether, suggestive of matter, and just as matter is indestructable, so may it be with thought.

Continuing analogizing, as matter may exist in some invisible form for an indefinite time, so may thought exist in some distinctive shape or form for an indefinite number of years. Hence the term "Thought-form", which can be defined as an arrangement of ether suggesting, but not actually proving, the possession of intelligence in various degrees.

There seems to me to be but little doubt that the air is inhabited by multitudes of thought-forms, radiated not only by the brains of the living but by the brains of those who died in long ages past. Thought is quite possibly imperishable. A question arises as to whether thought-forms retain indefinitely the shape originally conceived, whether they may not be affected in some measure by the vibrations which are constantly taking place in the ether.

It seems not unlikely that a thought-form might, in course of time, become altered to an extent that would render it unrecognizable by its conceiver; or, on the other hand, in the absence of any vibratory motion or other obstructing and affecting agency, a thought-form might undergo little, if any, change.

A contorted thought-form might be an explanation of some of the grotesque and alarmingly fantastic phenomena supposed to be what are popularly classified as elementals."

I'm not saying I subscribe to this theory. I have never heard of it, but it was so creative, and to me reflected a man honestly seeking to understand ghosts, but from the point of view of his era. His theory has the stamp of the 1920s popular idea of the 'ether'.

Whenever I try to understand ghostly phenomena, I ask myself, am I projecting my thoughts from theories of my own time? The problem with this obviously will be the obstruction of reality.

[Rixa]

I don't consider this to be anything but a trick of the half-asleep mind, but it's the closest I have.

I wake up in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Barcelona. The room is dark, but I clearly see a human figure standing next to the bed. I assume it is my concubine with whom I was sharing the bed with. I keep my eye on the figure as I ask why she's up. There is no answer at first, but then a muffled answer of "huh, what?" comes from right next to me in the bed. It's her, and she was still sleeping, and I woke her up. Somehow, without anything actually changing, the figure I had my eyes on the whole time is gone. I say, "nevermind, I just saw a ghost", and go back to sleep. "okay." is the answer I get, and she does the same.

[bolo]

Hi Beowulf,

Whenever I try to understand ghostly phenomena, I ask myself, am I projecting my thoughts from theories of my own time? The problem with this obviously will be the obstruction of reality.

That is why I thought that Adorno's text on ghosts (or his enhancement of Freud's idea to be precise) would fit in here as it is not as time-specific as Eliott O'Donnell's book. Still, the spiritual side of the ether concept O'Donnell wrote about in his epilogue is somehow related to C.G. Jung's collective unconscious, which in itself is interesting enough to give O'Donnell's variant a lot more actuality than some output of his contemporaries in the wild 1920s.

I think this is the core of Ad/Hork's thoughts:

"At the stages of humanity in which death appeared as the direct continuation of existence, the desertion in death necessarily seems to be a betrayal, and even the enlightened individual has not completely overcome the old belief. It is not possible for the consciousness to conceive of death as absolute nothingness, since absolute nothingness is inconceivable. If the burden of life weighs on the living, the position of the dead may easily seem preferable. The manner in which many people reorganize their lives after the death of someone close to them as an active cult of the dead, or as rationalized oblivion, is the modern counterpart of the belief in ghosts which lives on in unsublimated form as spiritualism. Only the conscious horror of destruction creates the correct relationship with the dead: unity with them because we, like them, are the victims of the same condition and the same disappointed hope."

In short, Ad/Hork say that ghosts are projections of the minds of those who are subconsciously unable to cope with the loss of a friend or family member and then fill in the gaps so to speak with apparitions of dead people and/or sublimate the experience via parapsychological means such as spiritism. The process is non-linear, meaning that if one "tends to see ghosts", he or she may not necessarily see deceased family members but ghostly apparitions in general, including non-visual contacts (acoustic phenomena, etc.).

Regards,

Boris

[Cogidubnus]

As my old mother would've said "Blimey Charlie, (she never could remember my name) watch out there's some clever buggers on 'ere"...

All the best

Dave