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Other (Supernatural) Explanations For Ghosts

Rappinghood

Rappinghood

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Oct 14, 2021
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161
Always been interested in other potential ideas about what ghosts might be if not spirits of the departed.

Not the psychological, mental, drug induced and cultural explanations, I accept they will explain most of them but a preternatural alternative.

A Catholic priest once told me there are entities which the church don't fully understand but are apparantly harmless if you ignore them but thrive on attention and that they might be "ghosts."

Other examples I've heard over the years
are

  • Time travellers using some invisibility tech or some kind of esoteric future ability to interact carefully with the past.
  • Time slips, physical or like a movie playing.
  • Some kind of interdimensional interaction.
  • Entities that actually share earth with us but are somehow hidden.
Any other ideas or strange tales that suggested something exotic, sinister or cool?
 
I've heard mention that ghosts could be entities that imitate the departed to confound the living, which I never took too seriously until I came across poltergeist cases with apparitions imitating living people who were elsewhere at the time. Now I think it's as good a theory as any. I've mentioned it before but I'll mention it again - The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher was an eye opener with regard to entities imitating the dead at seances.
 
There is also the theory that generic ghosts along the lines of "the white lady", "the grey lady", "the green lady", the ubiquitous phantom monks etc. represent genii loci. Their interpretation as the spirit of someone long dead could be purely cultural - usually they are pegged onto some local legend of a tragic death centuries ago because there is, generally speaking, nothing else to attribute them to in modern culture - a couple of centuries ago they might have been called fairies. Perhaps the infamous road ghost of Blue Bell Hill could fall into this category as well, especially since it has been reported in various forms (young woman and old crone of blatant folkloric aspect).
 
SimonBurchell said:
I've heard mention that ghosts could be entities that imitate the departed to confound the living, which I never took too seriously until I came across poltergeist cases with apparitions imitating living people who were elsewhere at the time. Now I think it's as good a theory as any. I've mentioned it before but I'll mention it again - The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher was an eye opener with regard to entities imitating the dead at seances.
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That's actually really interesting and new to me. Very disturbing and strange implications.
 
SimonBurchell said:
There is also the theory that generic ghosts along the lines of "the white lady", "the grey lady", "the green lady", the ubiquitous phantom monks etc. represent genii loci. Their interpretation as the spirit of someone long dead could be purely cultural - usually they are pegged onto some local legend of a tragic death centuries ago because there is, generally speaking, nothing else to attribute them to in modern culture - a couple of centuries ago they might have been called fairies. Perhaps the infamous road ghost of Blue Bell Hill could fall into this category as well, especially since it has been reported in various forms (young woman and old crone of blatant folkloric aspect).
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Part of my interest in supernatural comes from this idea. What the Romans, Greeks etc might have saw or misinterpreted was through their cultural lense and ours is very different.



European folklore of witches etc is still inbuilt in us all but what would these folkloric creatures appear to be to a modern day teen who experiences reality through a smartphone?
 
SimonBurchell said:
I've heard mention that ghosts could be entities that imitate the departed to confound the living, which I never took too seriously until I came across poltergeist cases with apparitions imitating living people who were elsewhere at the time
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This is partly where the US fixation on demonic entities comes from (that and the more religious bent in the society as a whole) - the UK being more secular generally regards ghosts as not necessarily having a moral polarity.
 
SimonBurchell said:
I've heard mention that ghosts could be entities that imitate the departed to confound the living, which I never took too seriously until I came across poltergeist cases with apparitions imitating living people who were elsewhere at the time. Now I think it's as good a theory as any. I've mentioned it before but I'll mention it again - The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher was an eye opener with regard to entities imitating the dead at seances.
Click to expand...
[Tangent]
Similar to the idea that "skin walkers" and "wendigos" imitate the cries of their last victim to lure others to them. Complete BS but the human brain loves to imagine this kind of stuff.
 
Rappinghood said:
Always been interested in other potential ideas about what ghosts might be if not spirits of the departed.

Not the psychological, mental, drug induced and cultural explanations, I accept they will explain most of them but a preternatural alternative.

A Catholic priest once told me there are entities which the church don't fully understand but are apparantly harmless if you ignore them but thrive on attention and that they might be "ghosts."

Other examples I've heard over the years
are

  • Time travellers using some invisibility tech or some kind of esoteric future ability to interact carefully with the past.
  • Time slips, physical or like a movie playing.
  • Some kind of interdimensional interaction.
  • Entities that actually share earth with us but are somehow hidden.
Any other ideas or strange tales that suggested something exotic, sinister or cool?
Click to expand...
What about the multi dimensions theory..?

Us humans have been given by nature to know of four dimensions and four only. What if there are always several dimensions around us at all times, but we don’t know of them because nature hasn’t given us the tools to do so.

What if when we humans die, the hardware has come to the end of the line, but the software, or consciousness floats off into another dimension. We could be surrounded by the afterlife but we can’t normally pick up on them, and then somehow through a dimension slip people occasionally see ghosts.

Maybe that explains mediums and physics etc. Has nature has given them a gift to see beyond the 4th dimension that most of us don’t have, a bit like Tiger Woods being given the gift to play golf, or Messi being given the gift to play football etc.

It’s an interesting concept, or have I had way too many lunch time beers and talking bollox lol.
 
Dick Turpin said:
What about the multi dimensions theory..?

Us humans have been given by nature to know of four dimensions and four only. What if there are always several dimensions around us at all times, but we don’t know of them because nature hasn’t given us the tools to do so.

What if when we humans die, the hardware has come to the end of the line, but the software, or consciousness floats off into another dimension. We could be surrounded by the afterlife but we can’t normally pick up on them, and then somehow through a dimension slip people occasionally see ghosts.

Maybe that explains mediums and physics etc. Has nature has given them a gift to see beyond the 4th dimension that most of us don’t have, a bit like Tiger Woods being given the gift to play golf, or Messi being given the gift to play football etc.

It’s an interesting concept, or have I had way too many lunch time beers and talking bollox lol.
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Why not?
I'm a skeptic by nature but I've always thought that if there are any genuine supernatural happenings they likely all stem from the same source - that's kinda what you are suggesting there.
 
Dimensional and quantum stuff is being used more and more as a glib explanation (not having a go at you, Dick Turpin) for all manner of Fortean stuff, esp Bigfoot and UFOs. Whilst we can't completely discount it in all cases, it's become a very convenient deus ex machina for a number of researchers to avoid having to come up with more rigorous explanations.
 
stu neville said:
Dimensional and quantum stuff is being used more and more as a glib explanation (not having a go at you, Dick Turpin) for all manner of Fortean stuff, esp Bigfoot and UFOs. Whilst we can't completely discount it in all cases, it's become a very convenient deus ex machina for a number of researchers to avoid having to come up with more rigorous explanations.
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If you speak to anyone in that field and bring it up they just look at you.
They deal with disconcerting stuff but it's more on the "How are we ever supposed to understand this" level and the idea some ghostly happenings are connected doesn't really make sense.

Yes, i once spoke to a Quantum Physicist!!

In a cathedral.
 
What a brilliant topic!

I tend to shrug and give it the 'dunno' treatment. But when I try to stretch my brain to think about the idea of ghosts, I do find the 'simultaneous universes overlapping' idea quite persuasive. That there may be universes which intersect with our own but in a different phase space (as Doctor Who would say) so we are usually invisible to one another. But in weak spots or where there's some kind of energy that we don't quite understand, things can leak through, or come into phase so we become visible to them, or they become visible to us, or sometimes both.

But generally? <shrugs> Dunno.
 
A ghost needs a source of energy.

Where does a ghost gets its energy ?

I don’t know, but are ghosts feeding off our on body energy as people claim to be very cold around ghosts ?

I know I was extremely cold the one time I thought a ghost was in my bedroom and it was like the North Pole.
 
What a great topic! I personally accept some of the following, which links to the thoughts expressed by @Dick Turpin, @catseye, and @charliebrown.

The categories of 1. originating or 2. not in physical forms, and 3. complete or 4. partial consciousnesses can encompass many types.

Originating in physical forms:
- Astral projection of complete consciousness of living beings from earth: people, animals, whatevers.
- Parts of living beings, which have detached from the main etheric body.

Originating in nonphysical form (this would include the beings @Rappinghood referred to as “entities which the church don't fully understand”):
- Living, noncorporeal beings which have never been in physical form: God, so-called demons, so-called angels, aliens (hey they can astrally project, too!). These can be either complete or partial.

I view the so-called demons and so-called angels as being in the same category, but with different outlooks and goals, just as human beings are all the same category of "human", but individuals can be differently good or bad.

I have, with multiple witnesses, seen entities which seemed to be not ghosts, but rather entities not originating in physical forms. We were all staggered to realize we were all perceiving the same thing, in the same location, at the same time. We concluded that the entities were attracted to spiritual gatherings and could cause behavior problems in some individuals. Once we banned the entities from approaching closer than a set distance, the people who were having some behavior problems settled down, even though they did not know that we had banned the entities, or even that any entities existed! We never told them.

Not conclusive evidence, but not easily dismissable either. For an ad hoc action, in a real-life setting (not in a laboratory), I did what I could to control for biases and midstream changing of the stories among the 3-4 people who with me had perceived the entities. I talked with them separately so they could not unconsciously match their stories, etc. The Wiccans concluded the entities were there for a free all-you-could eat smorgasbord of psychic energy. WTF!

ps - I do appreciate how completely batshit this all appears to someone who has no experience with it. Really I do.
 
Rappinghood said:
A Catholic priest once told me there are entities which the church don't fully understand but are apparantly harmless if you ignore them but thrive on attention and that they might be "ghosts."
Click to expand...
First thought would be Genii.

After that, following the thread, I've often wondered if some of the stuff we see is somehow projected from other's dreams. It would certainly account for the common aspect of "things" being related to new events. That is to say, there's a Bigfoot flap somewhere, and it may be that someone or several someones were dreaming of the thing that people claim to have seen, but it happened all at the same time due to...hear me out...coincidence.

This works even weirder if you take precognition into dreams. "We" all dreamed of a "Mothman" that night and the next week, the Silver Bridge collapsed....
 
It also interests me that people seem to 'get the ghosts they expect'. So those with belief in demons see entities with evil intent, get scratching, destruction, voices etc. Those who have lost a loved one get familiar perfumes, a comforting touch, an air of just 'knowing' that person is present. Those with belief in aliens have abduction or visitation experiences. Vague, floaty shapes seem to come with either a 'White Lady of XXXX, ghost of a serving girl who got pregnant and drowned herself' or 'and then we found out that people had died in the house a century ago'.

So do we experience what we are primed to experience? Is it all something happening in our minds that is triggered by something unknown? Or is the 'paranormal' a huge subset of experiences that don't have one single explanation?
 
I’ve often thought an explanation for most supernatural phenomena could come down to one source. Discarnate and vague in intention, it is little more than a wandering form of energy until it is encountered by humans where it has an identity pinned to it and it becomes that thing. The projected appearance is of course based on the cultural influences and expectations of the witness - likely prompted by a little local knowledge. There can’t be many people who’ve hiked in the woods of N America and haven’t had thought and image of Bigfoot flit through their mind at some point.

Ghosts have changed appearance over thousands of years but there’s also the past cultural history of pixies, fairies, and more mythical trolls now overlayed as Bigfoot, Grey Ladies, and ultimately UFOs. Jaques Vallee points to this transference and overlaying of cultural typical belief in Passport To Magonia.

What if it (or they) is just one thing that doesn’t know what to be until we clock it?
 
The phantom hitchhiker type of ghost fascinates me as there have been many cases in the UK where the witness has come forward despite the the very real possibility of scorn and ridicule. These cases suggest that a 'soul' or residual 'energy' will try to complete a journey interrupted by a fatal accident, perhaps because that is all "it" is able to comprehend of its situation. Likewise the Heathrow airport ghost seemingly lost following the airport's only fatal crash:

https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/b...ow-airport-spooky-briefcase-carrying-21654155

I have also read of the ghosts of passengers from this crash knocking on the doors of nearby mobile homes and then vanishing.

Also the ghosts of the Japanese tsunami:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/tsunami-spirits

And the tragic 2004 Boxing Day tsunami:

"Spooked volunteer body searchers on the resort areas of Phi Phi island and Khao Lak are reported to have looked for tourists heard laughing and singing on the beach, only to find darkness and empty sand.

Taxi drivers in Patong swear they have picked up a foreign man and his Thai girlfriend going to the airport with all their baggage, only to then look in the rear-view mirror and find an empty seat.

Guards at a beachfront plaza in Patong told AFP one of their men had quit after hearing a foreign woman cry "help me" all night long, and similar stories abound of a foreign ghost walking along the shoreline at night calling for her child."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-01-14/thai-tsunami-trauma-sparks-foreign-ghost-sightings/618946

To my mind there is a suggestion here that death is sudden and violent then the 'spirit' or 'soul' is either caught unawares and unable to transition to elsewhere, or leaves a 'trauma memory' of the event
 
I've been thinking about what this fortean phenomenena can be. Tulpas and interdimensional beings sounds plausible in addition to ordinary ghosts. Many people report shadow people in places you don't expect to be haunted, because it's newly built or without any traumatic history.
 
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I have known people who had no imagination at all much like knowing a brick.

I assume one has to accept the idea that ghost could exist, and then if religious, all that gets mixed into the equation.

Is it possible our brains are playing tricks almost making us think we are seeing a ghost ?

Just as I think certain people are predisposed to UFOs, I think it takes a special person to see a ghost.

Then ghosts also cold be stuck time cycles replaying over and over ?
 
Xanatic* said:
There is also the Stone Tape hypothesis, that ghosts have no independent existence, but are a form of recording being played back.
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always a fan of the stone tape theory where natural if uncommon forces combine to record the event literally in stone where it can replay

silica and quartz could be excited during sun storm eg
 
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