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Are Ghosts Scared, Too?

Yeah, I've read some of his too, but the word "immeasurably" cries out to be read aloud by Richard Burton.
 
"If I died tonight and woke up tomorrow with awareness that I was now a ghost I would be terrified. Truly, truly scared."

The theory goes that ghosts are dead people who don't yet realise they are dead. Someone who is knocked down and killed crossing the road on their way to work could (if you subscribe to this theory) carry on walking to work in their spirit form, where sensitive or attuned colleagues may catch a glimpse of their ghost. Once the ghost realises they are dead, then they move on to the next level/dimension/vibration/heaven and cannot be glimpsed by the living ever again. Persistent ghosts are those in denial that they are dead and will only move on after being convinced by a séance/medium that they are dead.

Obviously, if you tend towards the stone tape theory (as I do to explain the one ghostly experience I had a few years ago) then ghosts are mere recordings that may occasionally be replayed, given the precise combination of surroundings and a sensitive listener.
 
Obviously, if you tend towards the stone tape theory (as I do to explain the one ghostly experience I had a few years ago) then ghosts are mere recordings that may occasionally be replayed, given the precise combination of surroundings and a sensitive listener.

I think there was a case of a haunting which according to historical accounts was quite vivid but by the twentieth century had 'faded' to almost being hardly there at all, manifesting as faint shadows and general feelings of uneasiness in witnesses. This was used to support the Stone Tape theory in that the 'content', if you like, was degrading.
Would help explain why we aren't still being haunted by the ghosts of cavemen and dinosaurs. Or are we?
 
Ghosts of animals only seem to occur when the animal had a close relationship with a human - hence IHTM accounts of a much-loved pet returning to its home and master. For that reason, I wouldn't expect to see a ghostly sauropod plodding around England today. There have been accounts of ghosts appearing to be dressed as Roman legionaries marching along stretches of Roman roads. As for cavemen though well, given that the human population was minuscule compared with today, one would expect proportionally fewer ghosts. This eerie bearded visage seems a bit too good to be true:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...erie-caveman-image-Britains-oldest-ghost.html
 
"If I died tonight and woke up tomorrow with awareness that I was now a ghost I would be terrified. Truly, truly scared."

The theory goes that ghosts are dead people who don't yet realise they are dead. Someone who is knocked down and killed crossing the road on their way to work could (if you subscribe to this theory) carry on walking to work in their spirit form, where sensitive or attuned colleagues may catch a glimpse of their ghost. Once the ghost realises they are dead, then they move on to the next level/dimension/vibration/heaven and cannot be glimpsed by the living ever again. Persistent ghosts are those in denial that they are dead and will only move on after being convinced by a séance/medium that they are dead.

Obviously, if you tend towards the stone tape theory (as I do to explain the one ghostly experience I had a few years ago) then ghosts are mere recordings that may occasionally be replayed, given the precise combination of surroundings and a sensitive listener.

This is why I haver between "stone tape" & "can't move on". For a few years we owned a Victorian mid-terrace in Blackpool. Half of the 2nd bedroom had been converted to an indoor bathroom. Our cat used to sit at the foot of the stairs, fascinated and very wound up, looking up at the landing between the main bedroom and the bathroom (which used to be 2nd bedroom), looking left to right, right to left, for ages at a time. Occasionally the cat, who had been mooching around upstairs, would come hurtling downstairs and hide. Lots of research (including EVP sessions) revealed a young lad named Paul had lived, played and died in those 2 rooms in Victorian times. Was our cat watching him flit between rooms?
 
You know, I do cringe at making these posts that make me sound like a raving lunatic but here goes another one-

Since I've had a number of experiences of (what I perceived to be) ghosts, which (I perceived as) wanting to communicate something...that is to say (I'm going to be very exact here) I felt strongly as if a person had come up to me, was gesturing frantically and talking, perhaps even shouting, but I couldn't see or hear them in a conventional way, aside from some buzzing, crackling and squeaking sounds, a feeling of vibration, and maybe some distortion in the air in the area where they should have been standing...I would say they were scared or distressed, but not of/at the living.

When this happens, I will shift my "hearing" about one inch or so above my physical ears, and then it's possible to hear what they are saying. However, because this then becomes something more in the realm of the "telepathic" and not conventional senses, I'm loathe to trot this out as any kind of fact to those who haven't had a simillar experience.

Anyway, if you do accept this telepathic hearing as valid, then what usually seems to be going on is:

1. They don't know they are dead, and are scared and shouting because no one seems to hear them and they don't understand what's happening.

2. Know that they are dead, but just like the old stories, have some unfinished business. This is more often the case with those who are newly "crossed over" and worldly things are still important to them.

3. Have died while in a negative emotional state, like a suicide, and are distressed and usually very angry to find that there's been no relief from that emotional state. Basically they are still stuck in whatever led them to suicide in the first place and don't realize they can move on. The angriest spirits I've ever dealt with are young men who've done themselves in (but even they will calm down and move on once you acknowledge them and tell them they are free to go.)

Just once, I came upon a a case of "didn't know he was dead" that had been wandering so long (150+ years, I gathered, from the things he was saying) that he seemed very dim and didn't seem to interact much with what I was saying. That one made me sad.

These all probably sound like things from a Globe Mini-Mag about ghosts, but they do come from my own experiences (whether or not I'm bat-shit insane, I'll leave up to you to decide. ;))

So, to wrap it up - no, I don't think they are scared of us in the sane way we are scared of them.
As for the stone-tape kind of ghosts, I don't think they are able to notice us at all.
 
My take on the Stone Tape is that it's only going to work under very specific circumstances and with a certain type of person.
There have been accounts of ghosts appearing to be dressed as Roman legionaries marching along stretches of Roman roads
Maybe there is more 'power' in a road, making for longer lasting ghosts.
 
My favourite (read: the one that frightened me and almost convinced me) is the story of the chap who saw a Roman legion walking, but only from the knees up, because the old Roman road was lower than the ground now. In York (a place saturated in ghosts, I think) I seem to recall.
Yeah, I remember that one too...

 
Is there any evidence, anecdotal, probably, that ghosts get scared? If they have any consciousness, it must be pretty frightening, depending on whether they know why they're hanging around on Earth. That might explain why they often vanish quickly after being spotted.
 
Is there any evidence, anecdotal, probably, that ghosts get scared? If they have any consciousness, it must be pretty frightening, depending on whether they know why they're hanging around on Earth. That might explain why they often vanish quickly after being spotted.

There are those timeslip stories of people from the past being terrified of cars.
 
Is there any evidence, anecdotal, probably, that ghosts get scared? If they have any consciousness, it must be pretty frightening, depending on whether they know why they're hanging around on Earth. That might explain why they often vanish quickly after being spotted.
Most ghost tales dont involve them hanging out at length, but there are some where a ghost moves away from the viewer extremely quickly, which I suppose could be interpreted as a sign of fear by the ghost.
 
`My mams old street had stuff which I mentioned before( the reoccurring smoke mist in my bedroom) of what I saw and a neighbours Real like Viking dream but another as I mentioned it before said that when she saw some little bald man in old fashioned cotton suit 1930s for a brief second she said his reaction was he saw her and jumped in shock with a paper rolled up in his hand meaning some workman in the 1930s was working on the house where he sees this tall women with strange clothing.A bit like that excellent BBC show the Living and the Dead which sadly the stupid BBC never recommissioned :(
 
I think they may be scared of teenagers and dogs.

I keep telling people - manifestations are afraid of an absence of energy transfer, so if you want to spook a ghost then get a bucket of liquid helium (or liquid nitrogen if you're on a budget).
 
`My mams old street had stuff which I mentioned before( the reoccurring smoke mist in my bedroom) of what I saw and a neighbours Real like Viking dream but another as I mentioned it before said that when she saw some little bald man in old fashioned cotton suit 1930s for a brief second she said his reaction was he saw her and jumped in shock with a paper rolled up in his hand meaning some workman in the 1930s was working on the house where he sees this tall women with strange clothing.A bit like that excellent BBC show the Living and the Dead which sadly the stupid BBC never recommissioned :(

Excellent DVD
 
A bit like that excellent BBC show the Living and the Dead which sadly the stupid BBC never recommissioned

I LOVED that!

how could it be developed? for example are you thinking about the way American Horror Story is framed?
 
Is there any evidence, anecdotal, probably, that ghosts get scared? If they have any consciousness, it must be pretty frightening, depending on whether they know why they're hanging around on Earth. That might explain why they often vanish quickly after being spotted.

This reminded me of something I once posted on the Odd Experiences: As A Child Versus As An Adult thread (#6):

...When I was at university the room I occupied in a shared house was intermittently plagued by a knocking sound, just as if someone were gently tapping picture hooks into the other side of the party wall – which, at first, is what I thought it was, until it started moving around the room.

This went on the whole time I was there – not constantly, but regularly - and I never came up with a satisfactory explanation despite trying many for size: some kind of insect infestation; mice in the rubble fill; nutty neighbours who hung a lot of pictures, or just liked making tapping sounds at odd hours of the day and night; bored parrots (honestly, a mate of my dad inherited an insane parrot that used to hang upside down off the light fittings squawking abuse, tap his beak violently on the furniture to get attention, and occasionally hide behind things in order to ambush whoever came into the room next).

Anyway, none of the explanations I played with fitted the bill, and very soon I just stopped worrying about it. My housemates, after I'd introduced them excitedly to my tapper, were initially spooked but, like me, eventually just got used to it. (It didn't affect the rest of the house, but at least one of the girls I shared with told me that she used to hate walking past my room when she was alone in the place because she was convinced that on a couple of occasions the tapping started up in response to her presence.)

Once or twice I tried rapping back, following the sound as it appeared to move along the walls. I even had the odd drunken conversation with it - one-sided thankfully, I'm not sure I'd have been as sanguine about the affair if I'd actually got a response.

In fact when I think about it now I can’t help feeling I got rather attached to the oddness of it all. We had a party one night, during which about twenty people crammed into my bedroom in complete silence waiting for the tapping to start up - it actually did, and the resulting cheer appeared to instantly silence the noise, which left me considering the intriguing and oddly satisfying possibility that we may actually have managed to scare the shit out of a poltergeist...

I probably wasn't being entirely serious when I wrote that last sentence - but, when you actually think about it...who knows?
 
I LOVED that!

how could it be developed? for example are you thinking about the way American Horror Story is framed?
I don't know how it could of panned out but I'm sure it had a few series in it.
I haven't seen American Horror Story any good.
 
I'm hoping that the writer and director get other projects on the same theme :)
 
I keep telling people - manifestations are afraid of an absence of energy transfer, so if you want to spook a ghost then get a bucket of liquid helium (or liquid nitrogen if you're on a budget).
If you choose to go with the helium, don't forget to hold the bucket upside down
 
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