Anniversary Ghosts?

[gattino]

A random musing. On one of the other threads I noticed someone speculating whether some ghost or spirit in a particular instance might be appearing on the anniversary of her death or other significant date.

The idea is certainly a well established one. "It was 30 years ago tonight!"

But what would be the implications of spirits attaching themselves to dates? On the personal and familial level you might think ok , the surviving loved ones will be thinking more intently of the deceased on the first few anniversaries and that might attract them.

But when you widen it out to longer periods, even over decades and centuries, or more detached hauntings like "spirits" of particular buildings ...what possible awareness could a presumed ghost have of the date?
Surely it would mean they had access to and were watching the calendar? But a calendar is very much a real world construction for the convenience of the living. Written dates surely don't have a precise analogue in the world at large. Throw in changes to calendars, time zones and leap years and the dearly departed would surely have to be spending their time hovering around your shirtless pics of Cliff Richard on the wall to know when it's time to show up. Wouldn't they?

Alternatively does it suggest individual dates have an objective individualised quality that reverberates through the halls of eternity?

 

[CharmerKamelion]

That is a very good question.

Another good question is : how did you know about my Cliff Richard calendar?

 

[NomDeGuerre]

I can recommend the book Almanac of British Ghosts by Ruth Roper-Wilde, which chronicles ghosts that appear on certain days / times.

 

[DrPaulLee]

I think I came up with several hundred anniversary ghosts for my app. The most prevalent time of year was Christmas time.

I made the following points in 1998:

"The last point I wish to refer to are those periodic phantoms; the ghosts that such re-enact some event on a regular, periodic basis (comparatively rare)- for Royal phantoms (say) that appear on the anniversary of their execution in the middle ages is bizarre, since with the 10 day shift in dates when Britain changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in the mid-18th century, not to mention the various leap days added to the years by now, such sighting should be days or even weeks away from their expected appearances - But they aren't! Nature itself does not operate on a weeks, months, years system- this a purely human invention for the convenience of keeping appointments etc. Surely this must mean some form of human (perhaps psychological) trigger for such periodic events to take place? I have a theory about the seeming fondness for ghosts to keep to such appointments: humans, it must be noted, have a predilection towards observing anniversaries and tend to congregate then, making sightings of ghosts that would have occurred anyway, more likely.

An interesting tale is regaled in the book "Ghostwatching - The Ghosthunter's Handbook": a family were regularly disturbed just before midnight by the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, even though there was no-one there. ASSAP were called and various sensors were placed in locations around the flat; an infra-red sensor was situated on the staircase. Nothing was seen or heard though. The next day, however, upon reviewing the output of the sensors, it seemed that at about five minutes to eleven, the sensors on the stairs were activated and continued to relay data for several minutes. What is interesting in this case is that a few days before, there had been a change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. As "Ghostwatching" notes: "The implication was that the sensor had triggered at close to midnight, but midnight British Summer Time. The ghost had 'ignored' the change-over to Greenwich Mean Time"."