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Ghosts & Entities Moving In A Jerky / Disjointed / Clumsy Manner

McAvennie

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 13, 2003
Messages
3,998
In movies the sort of ghosts that creep me out most are those ones who move in a jerky motion as if crunching broken limbs back into place.

The most obvious is Sadako in the Ringu films and I guess the trend in recent US horror films is just a rip-off of the Ringu idea. Also another trend Ive noticed in recent horror films is peoples faces turning into dark eyed melty faced demons.

My point is...is there any recorded claims of people seeing these really quite scary ghost visions. Most that you read about are more traditional shadowy figures so are these kind just 'Hollywood' ghosts or are they based on any actual recorded incidents?
 
Not entirely relevant but I initiated a very short lived thread regarding the rare and truly bizarre occurence of "sprinting" ghosts. I'm pretty sure that a witness to one of the phenomena that have been documented with regard to events around the Stocksbridge bypass described the running ghost in this incident as moving in a jerky and disjointed manner as if the limbs were not connected properly.

I'll try and dig up the thread.
 
McAvennie_ said:
My point is...is there any recorded claims of people seeing these really quite scary ghost visions.

There are accounts of indiviuals reporting hideous facial changes in living people, including personal friends and family members.
 
The reports of 'boneless' ones get to me. Read a book as a youngster about a woman in a car seeing a waving figure and getting closer and seeing it moving in an impossible way. Could be a very good break dancer I suppose.
Also the Stocksbridge Bypass report where the figure moved instantly around the police car from one side to the other. I like my ghosts to stick to the rules.
 
Here's a short video clip (probably posted before) of a ghost walking across the road seen from within a car.

Green Cross Ghost

Actually it's just a dirty snudge on the windscreen - but still looks creepy!
 
McAvennie_ said:
In movies the sort of ghosts that creep me out most are those ones who move in a jerky motion as if crunching broken limbs back into place.

I remember how disappointed I was in the 1950s when I saw two or three official United States Air Force films of UFOs cavorting above Air Force bases in the western US.

These weird lights in the sky moved ("jerked" is a much better word) up, down, sidewise (at right angles!) and diagonally.

It wasn't until the 1990s when I could view these films again and again, at leisure, that one thing became clear to me - these things weren't obeying anything even remotely close to the accepted laws of Newtonian physics.

Perhaps ghosts also act independently of Newtonian laws?
 
While in no way tarring the whole UFO phenomenon with the same brush, some aerial 'objects' behave like reflections in the way they move at outlandish speeds and crazy angles. I'd mistrust pretty much anything photographed through glass or perspex in the same way I'd be wary of people who photograph absent spaces into which ghosts 'happen' to walk.

The apparent intelligence and capriciousness of sky born activity seems nearer the ghostly/demonic than space ships a lot of the time.
 
colpepper1 said:
The apparent intelligence and capriciousness of sky born activity seems nearer the ghostly/demonic than space ships a lot of the time.

I think you're likely right. Unexplained lights in the sky = alien space ships always struck me as a real s-t-r-e-t-c-h anyway (without totally rejecting the possibility).

Even so, that "capriciousness" may be from our perspective only.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
colpepper1 said:
The apparent intelligence and capriciousness of sky born activity seems nearer the ghostly/demonic than space ships a lot of the time.

I think you're likely right. Unexplained lights in the sky = alien space ships always struck me as a real s-t-r-e-t-c-h anyway (without totally rejecting the possibility).

Even so, that "capriciousness" may be from our perspective only.

Fair point. If ghosts can dissemble horizontally, walk through walls and the like it seems reasonable to assume some might inhabit the upper atmosphere and not only in ghost planes.
The scanning/buzzing tendency of UFOs seems observational, sometimes even playful in nature but not necessarily of a nuts and bolts space craft variety. We're back to flying saucers from hell I suppose ;)
 
colpepper1 said:
The scanning/buzzing tendency of UFOs....

Are you using the word "buzzing" here as a verb ("the novice pilot buzzed the tower") or as a noun ("the buzzing of bees")?
 
The former OTR, the idea that UFOs accompany aircraft.
One of these days a proper old fashioned metal disc will land on the Whitehouse lawn, the steps will descend and a man in a bacofoil outfit will say 'Take me to you leader' and shock the hell out of us all.
 
I'm more afraid that he will say "Bow down! I am your Leader."
 
Back on jerky-motion ghosts. I regularly shoot super8 cine film and the results of that can often be fairly similar to the jerky-motion ghosts pretty popular in cinema of late.

The effect is more pronounced when a figure is walking across the screen/field of view, rather than moving towards/away from the camera. Once developed and fired through a projector, you get the very endearing and quirky motion of a early silent movie.

So could this connect with the notion that ghosts are somehow recordings that are replayed on primitive projectors?
 
HenryFort said:
So could this connect with the notion that ghosts are somehow recordings that are replayed on primitive projectors?

As the jerky ghosts are outnumbered by the non-jerky kind, that may only be true for a small percentage.
 
The only ghosts my wife and I may (or may not) have seen were entirely life like, standing by my car but looked wrong in some indefinable way and talking about it since we both agree on the essential details. They were more like totems or equivalents of people, oddly still as though we were meant to read them as people, not still as in cardboard cutouts but not 'complete' somehow. We looked away for a second as we approached them and they'd disappeared without the time or getaway route to do so.

Reading other's anecdotes it seems to fit, glimpses of figures that may as well be living entities but are read as ghosts immediately. We're generalising here, there are crisis apparitions that seem wholly living and communicate but that wasn't our experience. We knew something was 'up' without any communicable way of being able to know.
 
HenryFort said:
So could this connect with the notion that ghosts are somehow recordings that are replayed on primitive projectors?

I think the "stone-tape" theory explains many paranormal events, but it doesn't explain how and why Aunt Rosalinda, unexpectedly dying in a hospital a thousand miles away, drops by go say "Goodbye" at the moment of her passing.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
I remember how disappointed I was in the 1950s when I saw two or three official United States Air Force films of UFOs cavorting above Air Force bases in the western US.

These weird lights in the sky moved ("jerked" is a much better word) up, down, sidewise (at right angles!) and diagonally.

It wasn't until the 1990s when I could view these films again and again, at leisure, that one thing became clear to me - these things weren't obeying anything even remotely close to the accepted laws of Newtonian physics.

Perhaps ghosts also act independently of Newtonian laws?

Sorry to go off topic, but which films are you referring to? And when you say that you can now view these films again and again, is that because they are available on-line, or do you just have personal copies? I am curious!
 
Comptroller, one is the "Utah Film" and I believe the second is the "Montana Film." I first saw them in a UFO documentary released theatrically in 1956, but they should be available online.
 
Here's an analogy which might be more correctly described as a model:

In the days of silent motion pictures cameras and projectors ran at 24 frames per second. With the coming of sound films this was increased to 36 frames per second, still the standard today. (That's the reason silent movies often seem so "speeded up" when watched today - they're simply being projected one-third faster than intended.)

Because of that slower speed important pictorial elements were occasionally lost between frames. This would be caught when the rushes were viewed, or in editing, and the scene would have to be reshot.

But the great silent film comedian Buster Keaton learned to use these "missing frames" to his advantage. Keaton became famous for making impossible "right angle" turns while running. What he'd do is to perform the same running gag 20 or 30 times until the actual turn occurred on a "missing frame."

When we see "jerky" ghosts are there a lot of "missing frames" even ghost-seers simply can't perceive?

CAVEAT - I got the speeds wrong but the ratio right. James Whitehead sets me straight below.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Comptroller, one is the "Utah Film" and I believe the second is the "Montana Film." I first saw them in a UFO documentary released theatrically in 1956, but they should be available online.

This wasn't an early Sunn Classics (or equivalent) "documentary" was it?
 
gncxx said:
This wasn't an early Sunn Classics (or equivalent) "documentary" was it?

I don't believe so, but it wouldn't matter if it was. The specific short films in question had been shot by the U. S. Government.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Here's an analogy which might be more correctly described as a model:

In the days of silent motion pictures cameras and projectors ran at 24 frames per second. With the coming of sound films this was increased to 36 frames per second, still the standard today. (That's the reason silent movies often seem so "speeded up" when watched today - they're simply being projected one-third faster than intended.)

Because of that slower speed important pictorial elements were occasionally lost between frames. This would be caught when the rushes were viewed, or in editing, and the scene would have to be reshot.

But the great silent film comedian Buster Keaton learned to use these "missing frames" to his advantage. Keaton became famous for making impossible "right angle" turns while running. What he'd do is to perform the same running gag 20 or 30 times until the actual turn occurred on a "missing frame."

When we see "jerky" ghosts are there a lot of "missing frames" even ghost-seers simply can't perceive?

Silent films were hand-cranked at speeds usually between 16 to 26 fps. 24 fps has been standard speed since sound came in. Since projectors were also hand-cranked, the speed of the action was regarded as an expressive variable. Under-cranking while shooting fast action could produce the erratic changes of direction noted without any necessity of doing twenty takes just for that reason, though Keaton was certainly a perfectionist.

Silent Film Speed

Not sure where that leaves the ghosts. Cosmic jokers undercranking their stone tapes for special effects on replay? Ghosts using a flawed technology? What it does point up is that ghosts usually seem to obey a certain decorum: no prat-falls, custard pies or banana skins. Neither do there seem to be reports of ghosts indulging in sexual or violent behaviour. Movement is often reported, often the traditional floating or gliding. While darting, erratic movement is a well-established attribute of will-o-the-wisps or flames. :?:
 
ComptrollerAlpha said:
Looks like this would be the one, as it apparently features the Utah & Montana UFO footage at the end:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131627/

OTR, thanks for info.

Yes, that's the animal. Glad to have been of service.

But as I said earlier the specific short UFO films should also be available online in the archives of various UFO organizations. Being Goverment films they won't be subject to copyright.
 
James, you are of course right and I am wrong. I thought I remembered my silent movie studies better than I actually did.

But the ratio remains about the same and I think the analogy/model still holds.

That is, if the movements of ghosts are in any way in "frames," there may be many more frames than we can perceive. And even the most accomplished ghost-seer may not register all of them.

And thanks very much for the link.
 
This style of movement is used VERY effectively with one of the
demon's in "Pan's Labyrinth". Truly creepy.

Watching the program "Ghost Hunters", the entity in
the Florida Lighthouse moves incredibly quickly up a staircase.
Then it pauses and appears to peer over the railing.
It appears to move quite fast, then reverts to "normal" speed.
Hence, a jerky-sort of motion.

Could it be that some ghosts realize that they are no longer
limited by the physics of "human motion" and take full
advantage of their etheral bodies?
Or is time that different after crossing over so they are moving in
a normal manner, but we perceive them as being ultra-fast?

TVgeek
 
McAvennie_ said:
In movies the sort of ghosts that creep me out most are those ones who move in a jerky motion as if crunching broken limbs back into place.

Damn, those really get me too. The lamest ghost movie can give me the creeps with "freaky walking", especially backwards walking which has been reversed into forward motion. Yuck.

Remember Blair Witch 2? Yeah, t sucked, but damn that creepy backwards walking girl ghost got me.
 
On the subject of horror cinematography, I always found the vampire girl sequence compelling in Coppola's Dracula.
Basically the actress moved backward towards the coffin and the print was reversed in post production. It lends it a vaguely impossible feel as she climbs out that dreams take on with a high fever (or is that just me?).

David Lynch certainly used the technique previously and, though I haven't seen it for a while, Carl Dreyer's silent stunner 'Vampyr' has some marvellous effects, changing focal length, position and even the mise en scene during cross cutting. Truly unnerving.

Spielberg's beach footage in 'Private Ryan has mileage as a horror device being, as I understand it, a combination of an undercranked camera with overprints at the negative stage filling the time gaps. That's before we get onto bleached and flared film stock and a host of other jiggery pokery. It's interesting to wonder to what extent the technical conditions of an era have conditioned popular reponses to what's horrible.
 
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