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Ghost Evolution

BS3 said:
This also brings into play the idea of 'ghost' sightings of people who are still alive - I've read a few examples on this forum.
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Isn't that getting into the realm of things like the vardoger, doppelganger and fetch?

I was on my way home one evening and saw myself walking towards me at the station, even down to the colour of the coat I was wearing. It obviously wasn't a harbinger of doom as I'm still here some thirty years later. There was no reflective surface at the ticket barrier so I've no explanation for it.
 
Erinaceus said:
Isn't that getting into the realm of things like the vardoger, doppelganger and fetch?

I was on my way home one evening and saw myself walking towards me at the station, even down to the colour of the coat I was wearing. It obviously wasn't a harbinger of doom as I'm still here some thirty years later. There was no reflective surface at the ticket barrier so I've no explanation for it.
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Well, it's all a question of terminology I suppose. What do we do when faced with a phenomenon that behaves exactly as we'd understand a 'ghost' to, but seems instead to be a mirage of a currently living person, than one of a dead person? How about things like the often reported 'ghost' vehicles? They were never alive in the first place.
 
To go back to my earlier point about underlying religious frameworks, I think another reason ghosts have had to evolve is that without Purgatory we've had to come up with new reasons for them to appear. As representatives of souls in Purgatory, they could warn us or (a typical medieval interpretation) serve to remind the witness to say a Mass or two for the souls of the departed, as this would help speed them into Heaven (and presumably stop hanging around as a ghost). But without this we've had to come up with other motivating forces: habit, for example. People somehow not realising it was time to move on. Unfinished business, etc.
 
BS3 said:
To go back to my earlier point about underlying religious frameworks, I think another reason ghosts have had to evolve is that without Purgatory we've had to come up with new reasons for them to appear. As representatives of souls in Purgatory, they could warn us or (a typical medieval interpretation) serve to remind the witness to say a Mass or two for the souls of the departed, as this would help speed them into Heaven (and presumably stop hanging around as a ghost). But without this we've had to come up with other motivating forces: habit, for example. People somehow not realising it was time to move on. Unfinished business, etc.
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Wanting that career on TV they never had when they were alive. :)
 
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I only heard of this today, but it is an interesting concept.
There is an infrasound frequency, thought to be 18.9Hz thatc asues the eye to resonate in a certain way that can produce images.
It also produces an unsettling feeling, sweating, trembling and general unease.
There's a decent report of it here, from the Grauniad.

It sounds very like the effect described by some researchers with certain types of geology before an earthquake.

Anyone head of it?
 
Erinaceus said:
Isn't that getting into the realm of things like the vardoger, doppelganger and fetch?

I was on my way home one evening and saw myself walking towards me at the station, even down to the colour of the coat I was wearing. It obviously wasn't a harbinger of doom as I'm still here some thirty years later. There was no reflective surface at the ticket barrier so I've no explanation for it.
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There's also the 'crisis apparition'. Where someone close to the experiencer has an accident or illness hundreds of miles away, but appears to the reporter usually looking 'preoccupied' or ill and it's only later that they realise what they saw.
 
Something else I thought of: ghosts probably not only evolve as a phenomenon, but individual ghosts evolve too.

An example I mentioned on another thread: "Lindholme Willie", who seems to have originally had his roots in a 17th and 18th century legend of a hermit, William of Lindholme, who lived on an 'island' in the middle of Hatfield Waste and about whom "romantic and incredible tales" were still current locally in the early 19th century (and who might be identified with an actual hermit mentioned in a will of 1407).

But by the 1950s, following the construction of an RAF airfield in the area, the name - and ghost? - had become conflated with a story of a Polish WWII airman whose aircraft had crashed into the marshes, and who staggered back to the airfield before expiring. What's more the story has continued to accrue new elements as the years go on: for example following the discovery of the remains of a Polish airman on Hatfield Moor in 1987, this has been incorporated into the tale by having the ghost sightings apparently cease after 1987. So here's one ghost that has evolved out of all recognition.

I think this is related to the kind of commemorative function ghost stories have for a community. At Lindholme they perpetuated the memory of a 15th century hermit for many hundreds of years (at a time when he was no doubt the most interesting thing to have happened in the area) but later they served to keep alive the presence of a group of foreign servicemen - 'outsiders' who nevertheless sacrificed everything in defending Britain during a stressful time.

I've actually seen this process of evolution first hand with a ghost story local to the area I grew up in - this was,
in 20th century oral versions of the story, associated with a 19th century suicide, but in the 19th century exactly the same story, and ghost, was recorded associated with the suicide of a (named) 18th century person. So clearly the community kept the idea of a 'ghost' going for all that time, but happily changed the timescale and other details.
 
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Ascalon said:
I only heard of this today, but it is an interesting concept.
There is an infrasound frequency, thought to be 18.9Hz thatc asues the eye to resonate in a certain way that can produce images.
It also produces an unsettling feeling, sweating, trembling and general unease.
There's a decent report of it here, from the Grauniad.

It sounds very like the effect described by some researchers with certain types of geology before an earthquake.

Anyone head of it?
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Yep, I've heard of this before, same report. I've no idea if the eyeballs do vibrate in this way at this frequency. That said...

Typically ≈40ms optical events are 'subliminal' and can only be subconsciously noted and ≈60ms and up being 'supra luminal' or consciously noticeable. There’s a gap in there that varies person to person.

A 53ms (18.9Hz) wobble on the eyeball might well produce optical artifacts that are not consciously visible, but are subconsciously registered by the brain and it seems as if we can take in sufficient information at this level to (for example) determine whether a face that appears for this type of time period can be interpreted as smiling or fearful.

So in this instance non-existent optical artifacts might well present as something that creates unease. Might also explain why some individuals give off a bad vibe - micro-expressions that are below the liminal span still register with the unconscious. The natural variance in the liminal threshold might explain why some people are more sensitive to such things.

An experiment on this, see if people who 'see things' more often have a different liminal threshhold to those that don't, might be interesting.
 
Coal said:
Yep, I've heard of this before, same report. I've no idea if the eyeballs do vibrate in this way at this frequency. That said...

Typically ≈40ms optical events are 'subliminal' and can only be subconsciously noted and ≈60ms and up being 'supra luminal' or consciously noticeable. There’s a gap in there that varies person to person.

A 53ms (18.9Hz) wobble on the eyeball might well produce optical artifacts that are not consciously visible, but are subconsciously registered by the brain and it seems as if we can take in sufficient information at this level to (for example) determine whether a face that appears for this type of time period can be interpreted as smiling or fearful.

So in this instance non-existent optical artifacts might well present as something that creates unease. Might also explain why some individuals give off a bad vibe - micro-expressions that are below the liminal span still register with the unconscious. The natural variance in the liminal threshold might explain why some people are more sensitive to such things.

An experiment on this, see if people who 'see things' more often have a different liminal threshhold to those that don't, might be interesting.
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I never used to have visual disturbances before a migraine. I just used to get The Headache. However nowadays, no idea what has changed, age and hormones probably, I sometimes get visual auras and stuff instead of the headache. The first time it happened I absolutely panicked, I had no idea why I was 'seeing things'. It was only when someone who was with me at the time asked if I got migraines that it sort of clicked into place. However. If that person had not been there, and/or if I had no history of migraines - I may stil be reporting very strange occurances where I saw 'things' that couldn't be there (last time it was strange black square shapes, like cut out holes, when I was walking in the dark).
 
catseye said:
I never used to have visual disturbances before a migraine. I just used to get The Headache. However nowadays, no idea what has changed, age and hormones probably, I sometimes get visual auras and stuff instead of the headache. The first time it happened I absolutely panicked, I had no idea why I was 'seeing things'. It was only when someone who was with me at the time asked if I got migraines that it sort of clicked into place. However. If that person had not been there, and/or if I had no history of migraines - I may stil be reporting very strange occurances where I saw 'things' that couldn't be there (last time it was strange black square shapes, like cut out holes, when I was walking in the dark).
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I get this occasionally, but with light artefacts, I'm not sure but LED lighting and/or rapid changes of light levels seem to set it off.
 
Ascalon said:
I only heard of this today, but it is an interesting concept.
There is an infrasound frequency, thought to be 18.9Hz thatc asues the eye to resonate in a certain way that can produce images.
It also produces an unsettling feeling, sweating, trembling and general unease.
There's a decent report of it here, from the Grauniad.

It sounds very like the effect described by some researchers with certain types of geology before an earthquake.

Anyone head of it?
Click to expand...
I've never heard of infrasound/hallucinations before an earthquake and I've been through most of the literature on that topic. Can you point out the researchers you mention?
 
Braithwaite and Townsend note that the Tandy story, even though widely repeated, was anecdotal and was not replicated.
This is from the J. of SPR.
Screen Shot 2022-05-23 at 12.28.23 PM.png
 
Sharon Hill said:
Braithwaite and Townsend note that the Tandy story, even though widely repeated, was anecdotal and was not replicated.
This is from the J. of SPR.
View attachment 55561
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To turn this on its head, what if the souls of the dead utilise infrasound to manifest, much like, for example., the BBC use a radio carrier wave to transmit pictures to my tv…?
 

Sharon Hill said:
I've never heard of infrasound/hallucinations before an earthquake and I've been through most of the literature on that topic. Can you point out the researchers you mention?
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The theory goes that certain geological formations, as they undergo the kinds of stresses that are seen before earthquakes, particularly subduction types, produce some kind of ionisation that results in positively charged ion fields. This is theorised to give animals the warning that something is wrong. There are scientifically observed cases, as well as much folk reporting, of animals fleeing ahead of earthquakes.

It is also thought that infrasound emanations from pre-earthquake stresses might contribute to this effect. It could be that some elements might be around that 18.9Hz range that causes mammalian discomfort and alarm.
 
DrPaulLee said:
I might be misremembering but the ultrasound/eyeball theory only accounted for phenomena in peripheral vision.
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I recall this also.

Really just providing a potential casual mechanism, by suggesting that the frequency was in the right range to cause artefacts in vision if the eyeball was vibrating in time, that would be on the sub-liminal/supra-liminal border and that might be weird in its own right.

That said, if it was true, then it would be easy to set up an experiment.
 
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Ascalon said:
It is also thought that infrasound emanations from pre-earthquake stresses might contribute to this effect. It could be that some elements might be around that 18.9Hz range that causes mammalian discomfort and alarm.
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I don't think that's frequency is mammal specific, rather the frequency reported in the original article that just happened to make eyeballs allegedly vibrate. Other animals' eyeballs might be affected in a completely different way...never mind their brains' processing of optical artefacts.
 
It has been a very long time since I read anything concerning the infrasound theory. But the gist I get from my memory, and reading discussions like this, is that while it probably was the cause of Vic Tandy's experience (in other words, a specific case), it can't really be applied to more general observations.
[ My memory is very poor on this, but I think within a few years of Tandy's hypothesis, an experiment had been performed in a cellar somewhere that was supposedly haunted to try and detect infrasound? I think this might have been in an SPR publication? And wasn't Tandy in the Haunted London Underground TV documentary? I really must re-watch it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. ]
 
DrPaulLee said:
Yes, but as the curator remarked, they have ghosts other than the Romans.
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I'm an arch-skeptic, but I did feel an eerie, disembodied presence in the Treasurer's House. Not a humanoid ghost, or even a shadow, but a totally invisible cold patch in midair. I don't even know if it was a Roman presence, or a medieval one, or just a 21st century draught.

Perhaps ghosts are getting increasingly elusive and difficult to see as we move into the future, otherwise we'd catch them on CCTV and smart phones more often.
 
I don't know, it might just be the psychosocial ufologist part of me talking, but I find the idea of trying to scientifically 'prove' the existence of ghosts, or come up with a mundane physical explanation for them, a bit...quaint. Like a lot of Fortean happenings they exist in the sociological sphere, as much as the physical one. I suspect people will go on experiencing inexplicable things, or interacting with the 'dead', for the foreseeable future. And the phenomenon may well change along with us.
 
DrPaulLee said:
What I'm seeing large amounts of are black shapes or figures, usually seen out of the corner of the eye. By coincidence, I interviewed the manageress of a London pub this afternoon and this is one of the phenomena she reported.
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Do you have any feel for how many of the people making those reports were staring into a mobile phone just before seeing the dark shape? As it seems to me that a shadow seen out of the corner of the eye could easily be an after effect of having just looked into a bright screen.

Mobile phones are probably a greater candidate than even computer screens for causing this effect as they are commonly carried around and looked into while the carrier is doing something else. And their presence might be missed in the report too. Thus if you asked the witness what they were doing just before they saw the ghost they might say "I was walking down to the cellar" or something but omitted to say they were checking their notifications as they went since it is just something they do, like breathing.
 
I don't know but a few I am certain were not caused by staring at mobile phones. At Brodick Castle, the lady curator was talking to someone and noticed something out of the corner of the eye and turned in time to see the black shape disappear into a room; others have seen it too. At the Llindir Inn, the landlady and at least two farmers at the bar saw something big, black and fast rush into the bar and disappear into a room at the back, where there was no trace.
However, a fair amount seem to be "corner of the eye" effects. I did think about Vic Tandy and his infrasound hypothesis as the effects he described were in the peripheral vision too.
 
These guys should do reasonable business considering the decline in and fading of old favourites...


 
Min Bannister said:
Do you have any feel for how many of the people making those reports were staring into a mobile phone just before seeing the dark shape? As it seems to me that a shadow seen out of the corner of the eye could easily be an after effect of having just looked into a bright screen.

Mobile phones are probably a greater candidate than even computer screens for causing this effect as they are commonly carried around and looked into while the carrier is doing something else. And their presence might be missed in the report too. Thus if you asked the witness what they were doing just before they saw the ghost they might say "I was walking down to the cellar" or something but omitted to say they were checking their notifications as they went since it is just something they do, like breathing.
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Don't think mobile phones can be implicated here.

The energy levels emitted by mobile phones, even when held to the head, are so small as to be insignificant. I vaguely recall one study that said for the radio waves to have an effect severe enough to cause damage to cells, it would have to be used 24 hours a day for decades.

As mobile technologies have progressed, the signals have become narrower, lower energy and more dense, so don't think they can be figured here.
 
DrPaulLee said:
Min wasn't talking about the effect of EM radiation on the brain, but the effect of staring at a bright screen and then looking away, an after image being imprinted on the retina temporarily.
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There is also the fact that a certain number of people walk along streets, and through buildings looking at a phone or tablet, when in the past they would have been looking around them.
So if anything does happen these days, they might just miss it because they are looking at social media.
 
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