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Different Types Of ‘Ghost’

MorningAngel

Justified & Ancient
Joined
May 14, 2015
Messages
3,183
I believe what we call ghosts are not one thing but many. There are spirits that visit and history being played back.

I also have a theory that sometimes we see through time or to a different reality we shouldn’t see. That the reality we know is many layers. For example animals and children I believe can see more layers than we do as adults. Maybe it’s frequencies, animal can hear things we can’t and hearing frequency changes with ages maybe what you see does too.

Maybe the layers of what we think is reality wear thin in places and time slips happen or you get a peak to a parallel universe.

I think that’s enough rambling from me. What do others think?
 
I believe what we call ghosts are not one thing but many. There are spirits that visit and history being played back.

I also have a theory that sometimes we see through time or to a different reality we shouldn’t see. That the reality we know is many layers. For example animals and children I believe can see more layers than we do as adults. Maybe it’s frequencies, animal can hear things we can’t and hearing frequency changes with ages maybe what you see does too.

Maybe the layers of what we think is reality wear thin in places and time slips happen or you get a peak to a parallel universe.

I think that’s enough rambling from me. What do others think?


It's a good point that young children seem to experience a lot more than adults due to the elasticity of their brains.


This sort of shuts down as the brain needs to establish it's various pathways the older you get. I wonder if this is a good thing or an evolutional thing.

Skeptics obviously would just dismiss it.
 
Windows and mirrors trap people’s souls.

Have you seen someone looking back at you in your bathroom mirror ?

Have you seen a spirit trapped in a house window looking at you ?

Onetime when my bathroom mirror was fogged up, I felt like someone on the other side was drawing a picture of a face in the foggy moisture.

This only happened once to me.
 
It's a good point that young children seem to experience a lot more than adults due to the elasticity of their brains.


This sort of shuts down as the brain needs to establish it's various pathways the older you get. I wonder if this is a good thing or an evolutional thing.

Skeptics obviously would just dismiss it.

Interestingly I’m on a Facebook group where people recount their paranormal experiences. There was a man that had a brain injury and now he regularly sees ‘dead people’ going about their business. So it seems he’s had some kind of reset. But what I wonder is if theses are what we would call ghosts or if he can see echos of the past.
 
Windows and mirrors trap people’s souls.

Have you seen someone looking back at you in your bathroom mirror ?

Have you seen a spirit trapped in a house window looking at you ?

Onetime when my bathroom mirror was fogged up, I felt like someone on the other side was drawing a picture of a face in the foggy moisture.

This only happened once to me.

Brings to mind the phenomenon of Lightning Daguerreotypes.

Here's a 2016 article on it from the Fortean Times, kindly provided by Magzter.com -

The Face In The Window - Windowpane Ghosts And Lightning Daguerreotypes

(I have added paragraph breaks.)

“The object was found to be the image, or rather a photograph, of the young lady’s face impressed on the glass, and so distinctly as to be recognized by all who had seen the original, as that of a young lady by the name of Lula Thayer… who… was in the habit of sitting at the window for hours at a time, looking out upon the street, and the photograph so represents her.

The image is so perfect and distinct as to be visible at a distance of several rods in a moderate sunlight. That it is nothing more nor less than a photograph, the result of moisture, light and chemical action, there can be no doubt. It was so pronounced by the artist, Mr Epler [a local photographer], and others who made a close examination.

The image is not visible from the inside of the window, though quite distinct to the eye at a distance of not more than a foot on the outside. It cannot be rubbed off, as was thoroughly tested by several.

It was also found that the placing a black cloth back of the pane increased its distinctness very materially. All these facts clearly prove that it is a genuine photograph, though taken by nature and without the aid of the artist…”

This face bore the hallmarks of the classic face-in-the-window phenomenon: a sudden appearance, visible only from the outside, apparently embedded in the glass, and resistant to cleaning.

The example I was looking for was when a windowpane was struck by lightning and 'etched' a man's reflection into it, possibly in the 1930s.
This was in the magazine years ago.
 
In the 'Unwhinge" thread I posted about the old pub my friend manages. It dates back to the 1480's and has been added to and altered a bit over the years, a main refurbishment being in the 1700's when it changed from a private house to a pub.

I hang out there a lot and do the odd shift behind the bar or help out when busy as glass collector. There are two spaces in what would have been the back wall of the original building which lead to what is now the bar.

One night I was musing on the theory that time isn't linear, that everything that has happened/will happen is occurring 'now' and I wondered if there isn't a medieval servant, regency rake, 1920's flapper etc turning to their companion and saying "I just saw a ghost walk through that wall!"
 
And as "reality" is really just a construct based on perceptions and subjective sensory experiences, perhaps you are just tapping in to another individual's sensory experience across time at that specific moment and place. like running a piece of software. "Time slippage" events might occur in this manner too. Sheldrakian.
 
Also if the multiverse idea has any validity - you might have lot's of parallel Universes that are similar to our own but are at a different "moment" in time or have developed along divergent paths. So, the Roman soldier "ghost" someone see's might be either a window onto a "current" moment in a parallel Universe where time moves at a slower pace or the Roman Empire never collapsed in that reality and thats a glimpse on things as they are "now".
 
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I believe what we call ghosts are not one thing but many. ...

Your initial post prompted me to reflect about 'ghosts' in a somewhat different direction. In the wide (nether-) world of Fortean / paranormal phenomena there are reports of various dimly- / peripherally- / fleetingly-seen figures and entities whose visibility casts the observer into the 'uncanny valley' of seemingly disrupted or interrupted reality.

We don't treat all these figures as representing the same sort of thing, and the different spins we put on our interpretations of these observed (detected; sensed; whatever ... ) figures and entities have led to the formulation of different categories into which we sort them. As time has gone on, these categories have become relatively fixed points of reference to which we map new observations and encounters.

Consider how many varieties of anomalous entities we recognize, such as (e.g.):

- Ghosts (as in 'residue or remnant of a deceased person');
- Spirits (ephemeral entities who may or may not be associated with known departed);
- Elves, faeries and other folkloric beings;
- Tulpas (generated as projections of will or emotional statse);
- Poltergeists (who may or may not be associated with known deceased);
- Humanoid cryptids;
- Extraterrestrial aliens;
- Time travelers;
- Trans-dimensional visitors;
- Shadow people;
- and so forth ...

If you stop and think about it, at some level the observational reports are quite similar in describing these observed entities. The diversity or variety comes primarily from the manner in which we interpret them.

How can we know how many categories are actually in play? How and why do we select among all these traditional categories in identifying what we've just seen?
 
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The thread, so far, lacks the international angle.

When I hear accounts of violent or raping ghosts, I associate them with non-European cultures. This seems to hold up, when we get such reports from unexpected places, tied to the backgrounds of the victims of these horrid hauntings.

It may all hinge on language problems, where Ghost = Geist = Spirit are approximations.

Our own dear Poltergeists, despite their German name, are traditionally violent and noisy but rarely cause serious harm or injury, hence their association with attention-seeking children. The monky-nunny-contemplative apparitions of Merrie England are probably derived from Gothic literature - which is not to say they don't exist. :ghunt:
 
Keep thread going plus have we actually seen Ghosts etc but have not realised thinking just normal people dressed a little different.

Certainly. There's a thread on here of seeing people 'disappear' - how often might that happen and we just aren't looking at the right place, at the right time?

From my own research and experience, a lot of ghost sightings are surprisingly mundane. It's not a cowelled monk or grey lady in Victorian dress, more often than not its a person in completely ordinary or nondescript dress - someone you just wouldn't pay that much attention too.
 
Certainly. There's a thread on here of seeing people 'disappear' - how often might that happen and we just aren't looking at the right place, at the right time?

From my own research and experience, a lot of ghost sightings are surprisingly mundane. It's not a cowelled monk or grey lady in Victorian dress, more often than not its a person in completely ordinary or nondescript dress - someone you just wouldn't pay that much attention too.
We also have a thread on seeing people after they are dead, but you don't yet know, so they look normal.
 
If you stop and think about it, at some level the observational reports are quite similar in describing these observed entities. The diversity or variety comes primarily from the manner in which we interpret them.

How can we know how many categories are actually in play? How and why do we select among all these traditional categories in identifying what we've just seen?
The various phenomena do have some similarities—they are fugitive and not persistent for example, but they are also different in many ways, and the categories might have grown out of their specific characteristics. Certainly in the case of nature spirits there are doubtless a lot of names for the same entities, and there is a lot of overlap with humanoid UFO occupant cases too, as Vallee and many others have noted. But the phenomena described as “ghosts” often seems to be associated with a specific locale –a structure or road or something associated with a past events / or person, and the phenomenon often shows periodicity, in situ. There is the more nebulous phenomenon of Gbost Lights –those can often be similar to UFO descriptions. The portion of encounters with “ghostly” phenomena that seem to be from independent sentient agencies is another category, though things like “poltergeist” activity are not just associated with ghosts. In the case of UFOs –they operate in the oceans, atmosphere, etc. and exhibit independent agency and appear to be a technology of some sort.
If one believes UFOs are the creation of an advanced intelligence, one must wonder how much they know about the universe and therefore “paranormal” phenomena as well. If paranormal phenomena exist, one would not be surprised if the mechanism, or aspect of the universe they operate in was also mastered, in addition to the ability to create physical UFOs..
 
I believe what we call ghosts are not one thing but many. There are spirits that visit and history being played back.
An interesting view MA.
Would there be enough variation in hauntings to support a similar classification to the old Hyneck / CE scale? Like nocturnal lights or daylight discs, landed craft and the like.
And I guess the follow on question would be ‐ is said phenomenon sufficiently consistent to allow classification?
E.g. "Ah yes the old MacGuffin place. Mostly a type 1 footsteps with occasional type 2 whispering"
"Wasn't there a report of a type 4 doorway peeker too?"

Edit - just some general thoughts and questions, by the way :)
 
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An interesting view MA.
Would there be enough variation in hauntings to support a similar classification to the old Hyneck / CE scale? Like nocturnal lights or daylight discs, landed craft and the like.
And I guess the follow on question would be ‐ is said phenomenon sufficiently consistent to allow classification?
E.g. "Ah yes the old MacGuffin place. Mostly a type 1 footsteps with occasional type 2 whispering"
"Wasn't there a report of a type 4 doorway peeker too?"

Edit - just some general thoughts and questions, by the way :)

I don’t know because it’s hard to categorise. For example how do we know if something is a stone tape play back or a time slip? Some might be easier than others. If your granny came back from the dead to say hi, that would be a spirit rather than some kind or replay. But then you get things like poltergeists, which could be energy coming off someone (often pubescent kids) or just as very unpleasant entity.
 
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