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Are There More Ghosts From Certain Periods In History?

Stormkhan said:
I'm afraid I've always doubted the existence of a "Unified Theory" of what a ghost is, considering the wide-range of phenomena claimed.
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Agreed- much like fairy sightings, ghost sightings appear break down into several quite distinct 'types' of sightings, so 'vague shapes', solid representations of people, translucent figures). You'd probably be able to extract some interesting patterns to sightings by tabulating them, adding columns for features of the 'sighting' and also adding in stuff like weather, location, time of day, some info about the witness etc. etc.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
As did Gary Numan. The person you saw may not have been dead but rather time-slipped from their time to yours then back again
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Or astral travel. On another thread, I relayed the experience I had at 7 or 8 when I saw my youngest brother standing, clear as day in his pjs, at the side of my bed looking down at me early one morning. He might have been 1 1/2 to 2 years old because he was walking. This was not an uncommon thing for him to do as he'd join me and my sister in bed. I whispered his name, and he slowly disappeared. Was he astral projecting? I was not dreaming because I had woken and then dived right under my covers when he disappeared.
 
Didn't want to start a brand new thread to post this, so after a (perhaps not thorough enough search) decided to post this here.

The New Dark Histories podcast "The Haunting of Hinton Ampner" presents a very juicy series of hauntings reported there and discusses how the type of sightings and sounds heard predate the era where such style of hauntings became "all the rage for Victorian readers."

S07EP19 – The Haunting of Hinton Ampner at https://www.darkhistories.com/
 
An interesting OP!

If what we call 'ghosts' are related to traumatic events, then we'd see lots of battlefield and murder ghosts.

If related to numbers of deaths, then we'd be seeing large numbers of Mediaeval Black Death victims, pople who perished in other pandemics such as 1918 Spanish 'Flu, WWII ghosts (conservatively estimated total at c. 50,000,000 total deaths) and previous/latter genocides.

If related to locations, then presumably something had to have happened there at some point in past history, to indent the figure of a person at the locations - and there are many green fields and seemingly 'empty' spaces that used to hold villages and settlements, now lost.

I've never knowingly seen a 'ghost' but I have heard some very odd things, many years ago, all in relatively old houses 250+ years old.
 
AnonyJ said:
An interesting OP!

If what we call 'ghosts' are related to traumatic events, then we'd see lots of battlefield and murder ghosts.

If related to numbers of deaths, then we'd be seeing large numbers of Mediaeval Black Death victims, pople who perished in other pandemics such as 1918 Spanish 'Flu, WWII ghosts (conservatively estimated total at c. 50,000,000 total deaths) and previous/latter genocides...
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As someone who is pretty open minded when it comes to the subject of the phenomena we call ghosts, this area is always a major stumbling block for me. If we suspend any disbelief for a moment, and accept it all as real, then trauma cannot be a major establishing factor - because, if it were, the world would be utterly overtaken by the ghosts of the dead. And really, the same goes for all the other reasons.

Like you @AnonyJ my own experiences have been of an aural nature. I am more or less convinced that at least two of these actually happened, and are not a product of my imagination - but, despite that sureness, the 'why' is completely beyond me, and I've never heard a convincing reason.
 
Thing is, if a ghost represented a group of people who died of the plague or Spanish 'flu, then their clothes wouldn't really give a clue. Especially at the burial ground - they'd already gone through the trauma of death, see, so wouldn't they appear where they died rather than where they were buried?
 
Spookdaddy said:
As someone who is pretty open minded when it comes to the subject of the phenomena we call ghosts, this area is always a major stumbling block for me. If we suspend any disbelief for a moment, and accept it all as real, then trauma cannot be a major establishing factor - because, if it were, the world would be utterly overtaken by the ghosts of the dead. And really, the same goes for all the other reasons.

Like you @AnonyJ my own experiences have been of an aural nature. I am more or less convinced that at least two of these actually happened, and are not a product of my imagination - but, despite that sureness, the 'why' is completely beyond me, and I've never heard a convincing reason.
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I guess there could be two reasons and sightings do fit into two categories, there are those that are like timeslip cases where the image is just going about life and those were the image appears to be sentient to it's surroundings

Perhaps when most souls depart this mortal plain they are quite glad to get away from earthly bondage and finally see the life they had just lead as all part of a divine play, they move on without giving a thought to the past onwards and upwards as they say, and then there are some who just can't accept the fact they are dead or have such strong attachments to this life that they find it hard to move on
 
IbisNibs said:
Didn't want to start a brand new thread to post this, so after a (perhaps not thorough enough search) decided to post this here.

The New Dark Histories podcast "The Haunting of Hinton Ampner" presents a very juicy series of hauntings reported there and discusses how the type of sightings and sounds heard predate the era where such style of hauntings became "all the rage for Victorian readers."

S07EP19 – The Haunting of Hinton Ampner at https://www.darkhistories.com/
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Visited there this very lunchtime.
Well the new Hinton Ampner house anyway, which dates from 1865 or so, with a significant rebuild following the catastrophic 1960 fire.
The original Tudor house, that featured in the Dark Histories podcast was some 60 yards to the north, located approximately where I took this photo from. One of the NT guides in the house told us that the original house had a very unsavoury reputation.
I saw no sign of any spooks, but it was an impressive place to visit, in the beautiful countryside of the South Downs.
The 2nd photo is the view from the master bedroom.

hinton.jpg


hinton2.jpg
 
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Coming back to this thread after having listened to 'A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England'. That book contains a traumatic (to me) chapter about the Black Death and its arrival in 1348. There's a lot of detail of mothers having to bury their children with their bare hands, people dying in the streets, entire families dying one by one...

how can that level of trauma NOT have led to ghosts? I know if I'd have to face that level of unhappiness, and knowing that they died without the intervention of the all-powerful Church - you can bet my trauma would impress itself on any and all of the local geography. All right, a lot of time has passed since the first incidence of the plague, but it did come and go for a LONG time. So where are the ghosts? Not necessarily the dead themselves haunting the plague pits, but the relatives who went through unspeakable levels of PTSD as a result of losing everyone and having to carry out burials themselves?
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Next visit to a National Trust property will probably be Ham House in Richmond.
According to this article, it's one of the most haunted places in England.
Will let you know if I spot the Duchess on the Stairs, the Lady in the Mirror, The murdered Husband, The Suicidal Lover or the Happy Countess.

https://www.tripsavvy.com/englands-haunted-ham-house-the-complete-guide-4150607
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It's a beautiful house. I think they sell a little leaflet or booklet on the ghosts, I think I have a copy somewhere.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Next visit to a National Trust property will probably be Ham House in Richmond.
According to this article, it's one of the most haunted places in England.
Will let you know if I spot the Duchess on the Stairs, the Lady in the Mirror, The murdered Husband, The Suicidal Lover or the Happy Countess.

https://www.tripsavvy.com/englands-haunted-ham-house-the-complete-guide-4150607
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My daughter (who lives in London) and I were discussing a possible visit and she said she'd take me to Richmond (oddly, for someone who has hung around London a fair bit, I've never been to Richmond). I might angle for a visit to Ham House!
 
It's a great place to visit, very atmospheric.
However, beware that lovely corner where that white car is approaching. Last time I was there, that was the route from the car park to the interior; they may've changed it since then.
Another pub in the area that was a great place to go - and historic - was Jack Straws Castle. Sadly, it was turned into expensive residential property a while ago. And the Flask (in Flask Walk) was a nice local for me.
 
Stormkhan said:
It's a great place to visit, very atmospheric.
However, beware that lovely corner where that white car is approaching. Last time I was there, that was the route from the car park to the interior; they may've changed it since then.
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The small building opposite reminds me of when we used to go to a pub as teenagers - er, I mean young men above the legal drinking age - which had been turned into a chip shop (I don't recall what the building used to be, but I think maybe a toll collection point perhaps).

Around 10.30pm - out the pub and across the road (which is only slightly wider than this one), for fish, chips and 'scraps', which were eaten in a conveniently placed bus shelter next door (thus contradicting my hatred of eating in the street), then back into the pub before last orders.

I can't remember if there were any ghosts around there pubwise, but just up the road there was allegedly one of a young girl who had thrown herself from the cliffs after a failed romance (one for @catseye).
 
Delightful said:
Why are there never any dinosaur ghosts?
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Maybe - and this is a total guess - it's because they lacked sufficient consciousness*?


* Of course, this guess posits that emotion and intelligence are major reasons for the phenomenon of ghosts; which is only one of many possible explanations, and a conclusion which 'ghosts' of buses, cars, planes (and other animals besides dinosaurs) argues against.
 
Delightful said:
So did ancient people see ghosts of prehistoric people and animals? I don't know anything about ancient ghost reports.
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I think that one of the earliest ghost reports comes from classical antiquity and described an apparition of a person appropriate to the time and place. I can't remember if it was Greece or Rome, but have a feeling it was a Greek philosopher. I'm sure someone on here knows the report I'm talking about.
 
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Delightful said:
So did ancient people see ghosts of prehistoric people and animals? I don't know anything about ancient ghost reports.
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It's all conjecture anyway, but a bit of Googling suggests that the "lifespan" of ghosts can be measured in a few centuries.
The earliest recorded account of a ghost that I can find was by Pliny the Younger in 1st century AD. A house in Athens had a resident ghost of an emaciated man wearing shackles and chains on his hands and feet - presumably a slave. On excavating an area where the ghost would disappear, apparently a skeleton still wearing rusted shackles was discovered. After a proper re-burial, the ghost no longer appeared. So, if you take this story at face value, the ghost was that of a prisoner or slave who died long enough before Pliny's time to have become skeletonised. I'm not aware of anyone claiming to have seen the ghost of say a Neanderthal or Homo Erectus, let alone a dinosaur.
If you subscribe to the Stone Tape hypothesis, then ghosts can fade just like old recordings on magnetic tape.
If you reckon ghosts are spirits of the dead, who still feel they have unfinished business on Earth, then maybe they no longer manifest themselves after deciding or being persuaded to move on?
 
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Stormkhan said:
Take a read of Canterbury Tales in the original middle English, unedited. You might pick out 3 out of 10 words you recognise but if you take the words as phonetic, you might recognise a couple more. But, yeah - it sounds like a really, really thick accent.

I'm afraid I've always doubted the existence of a "Unified Theory" of what a ghost is, considering the wide-range of phenomena claimed.
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But take it back just say another few hundred years and only a handful of people could understand it. I have 3 dead languages and so I might be OK on that score. So long as they spoke slowly...
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
But take it back just say another few hundred years and only a handful of people could understand it. I have 3 dead languages and so I might be OK on that score. So long as they spoke slowly...
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Plus local accents and dialects. I have read that people from the south used to think that people from northern England were French, because they couldn't understand them (this is medieval times, pre-Chaucerian English, but post Conquest). So even if the language was comprehensible, the dialect and accent might render it completely foreign.
Delightful said:
So did ancient people see ghosts of prehistoric people and animals? I don't know anything about ancient ghost reports.
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They may have done, but if it was early enough for ghosts of dinosaurs to be around, then they would have had no method of recording their sightings. Of course, some of the cave paintings could be of 'ghost animals' - we don't know.
 
Sightings of dragons could be dinosaur ghosts but remember they died out 60 million years ago (I know, birds, etc.) so their ghosts would really have to persist! Mastodons, smilodon, etc. would be more likely if we are looking at fading with time. Also ghosts seem to be associated with places they lived and given how the continents have changed the areas could be very different. If you apply the stone tape theory to that then remember the rocks themselves have changed in that time. Being smacked by an effing great asteroid may not have helped either.
 
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