Ghosts In The Dark: Impossible To See?

[escargot]

If ghosts are disembodied spirits of the dead, though, then all bets are off.

All these possibilities are valid, and as you say, that last one is the biggie.

 

[Min Bannister]

This is an interesting question and I have enjoyed reading the answers. I have been on a few ghost hunts where they have switched all the lights off and I have not been able to see my hand in front of my face and thought that there could easily be a full body apparition of Queen Margaret (or someone) right in front of me and I wouldn't be able to see it! But maybe I could have after all?

 

[AlchoPwn]

If ghosts are disembodied spirits of the dead, though, then all bets are off.

Allow me to chuck in some extra suggestions:

Ghosts as infrasound, triggering subconscious fight or flight response.

Ghosts as a triggering of scent memory. Our olfactory senses carry a powerful ability to trigger memories, and it is possible that rather than a stone memory, that in fact what is being recorded is the hormonal release of a terribly traumatic experience, that then impregnates the local surfaces.

Ghosts as environmental poisoning. Just as poisons can easily make people hallucinate, why wouldn't some local toxin potentially make people hallucinate that they have seen a ghost?

Ghosts as schizophrenic episode. Sometimes brains misfire, and we wind up having waking dreams where we react to things that seem real but aren't there.

Ghosts as electrical disturbance of the brain. The classic example is the 1980s red LED alarm clock that used to cause sleep paralysis, the discovery of which led to the field of Neurotheology.

Ghosts as simulacra. When seen in the dark, sometimes objects in shadow become menacing and take on the shapes of threatening or supernatural things. Our brains, ever vigilant for threats, trigger our fight/flight response, and suddenly we can't see that the leering crone in the back yard is actually an old sack of potatoes in a wheelbarrow.

 

[EnolaGaia]

There's a middle-of-the-road compromise interpretation that's always made sense to me. Setting aside the proposition that at least some ghosts / apparitions may indeed represent spirits of the departed ...

It's not unusual to adopt or accept recognition of a phenomenon or situation our ordinary sensory channels couldn't or shouldn't accommodate. One example is the spooky sense of being watched, as if we could somehow detect another's gaze without seeing the watcher. A more specific version of this is the sense of someone watching you from behind, in which this para- or extra-sensory impression is spatially localized with respect to direction.

Most all of us are familiar with our sometimes high-resolution capabilities for rendering fictive objects as detailed elements within our dreams. These capabilities even permit us to accept and re-interpret external stimuli within a dream context, such as whenever (e.g.) the giant frog with whom you've been debating surrealistic matters suddenly adopts your mother's voice to say, "I said get up! I won't tell you again!"

What if at least some ghosts / apparitions represent vague para-sensory impressions which our built-in imaginative abilities translate into discrete entities / objects with variable precision and detail?