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The Attention Of Ghosts

MrRING

Android Futureman
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Aug 7, 2002
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I was watching an episode of the classic (and wonderful) Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) that gave me two ideas about ghost communication that I don't know have been considered (or how the topic might be phrased if it does exist already.

1) We know within our own human lives that our own attention is not always ready to be given. We might be interested in watching TV or reading a book and thus fail to notice that the phone is ringing or the kitchen pot of water is overflowing. We might be deep in conversation with Friend A when Friend B tries and fails to get our attention. We may want our kids to concentrate on their homework, but their mind is focused on beating the next level of the video game they are playing. Examples happen all the time for us. It even happens in the animal kingdom, where much of our attempts at communication is disregarded by all but a few domesticated species.

So with ghosts, what if our attempts to contact them so often fail due to a lack of interest from the other side? We assume that ghosts are always ready for contact on our schedule, in the way we expect... the ghosts should be around at midnight at the abandoned house to communicate to us via EVP. But why do we think that is where and when a ghost would be ready to talk, and talk the way we expect them to talk? Like the episode I just saw where Hopkirk left Randall in the lurch to observe lunch with the Prime Minister at the Savoy - because that is what interests him - why wouldn't ghosts be where the action is at the height of human interaction, excitement, and fun?

If nobody has done it before, it might be interesting to try to search for ghost communication in different cool venues while items of interest were going on to see how (and if) those readings differ from what happens at midnight in the abandoned house.

2) To get the attention of humans, we use items and topics of conversation of interest. For animals, we might use food to attract attention of wildlife (birdseed for birders to attracts garden warblers for instance). If you are looking to contact a specific ghost, why not attract it by doing something they liked in physical life? If they are a gourmet, fix a grand meal at their house and attempt the contact then. If they were a game player, have some folks play a game while others attempt the contact. Even if you aren't attracting a specific ghost with a known interest, perhaps doing something more than wandering a dark building might draw a ghosts attention.
 
I wonder if some ghosts are existing in some kind of dream-like state where the surreality of their situation doesn't impinge upon their consciousness. In that case, most of the time they may not even notice people trying to contact them. And there may be other... things... out there that are just waiting to break through and pretend to be the ghost of a dead person...
 
I also think that ghosts sometimes just want to be left alone.

My friend's Mother worked at a house as a housekeeper and one room was known to be haunted. Also the dog would never go in that room.
When they wanted to decorate, the lady of the house went into the room and explained that they wanted to do so and would they (the ghost) mind moving downstairs to another room during the work.

For that period, the dog would now go in the room being decorated, but not the downstairs one (which it always had been quite happy to do so before).

When the work was complete, things went back to how it had been before.
 
It does make you wonder what they are doing “over there”.

Why do they all manage to converge on a church hall where a medium is putting on a show?

Are they doing any research on how to contact us? What about getting important messages to people who are not at the church hall?

What about some useful information about their circumstances? Are they in some sort of physical reality or some other state?

If they are all so anxious to contact us shouldn’t they be making more effort?
 
It does make you wonder what they are doing “over there”.

Why do they all manage to converge on a church hall where a medium is putting on a show?

Are they doing any research on how to contact us? What about getting important messages to people who are not at the church hall?

What about some useful information about their circumstances? Are they in some sort of physical reality or some other state?

If they are all so anxious to contact us shouldn’t they be making more effort?
I should think that most are not anxious to contact us at all, just wandering around in a confused state.
 
I should think that most are not anxious to contact us at all, just wandering around in a confused state.
Sounds a bit depressing. I've wondered whether time has no meaning at the point of death. One can often have a seemingly very long dream leading up to incorporating a physical event such as an alarm going off, whereas in reality the whole thing can only have taken seconds at best.

If some part of the personality can in some way impact on our existence then it could appear at random times and possibly be confused if it is aware of where it is, rather like waking from a vivid dream. May not be in a good mood either!
 
And some ghosts interact with 'us' in our world ie moving/throwing our things etc but the others only seem live in their world - as it was to them; walking through walls where there wasn't a wall in their time etc.

I wonder what determines which type of spirit you are going to end up as. Is it your choice or a higher beings? And why are some allowed to terrorise us?
 
It could come down to the ghost's attention. Maybe most of them can't sense us. Or, we are not of interest compared to other things in the ghostly plane. When we have sightings, it might be that happy and rare instance of the humans being in the right place and paying attention at the same time that the ghosts are engaging in our world or have recognized us and are attempting to interact.

Thinking this way, that humans may not often have the attention of the ghosts around them, puts a new spin on parapsychological testing. Imagine if we did a marketing survey, but the survey takers were put in a nearly soundproof room facing a public street with a two way mirror that under certain conditions would allow passerbys on the street to see in on occasion. Instead of the thousands of contacts they would normally make for their survey if they were outside on the street, the researchers may only get one or two people who can either notice them through the mirror and/or hear them shouting out questions, much less fully comprehend what the survey questions are.
 
I suppose it depends on whether one believes ghosts are a survival of the personality after death, or something else. If the former, and ghosts are 'sentient spirits' (for want of a better phrase), and from many reports, they do seem to be stuck in some kind of 'limbo' and may not be aware they are dead. The classic 'lost soul', unaware they're dead because of some violent death... until a medium from 'this' side breaks through and tells them to 'go toward the light'. Thinking about it now, maybe there are mediums from the 'other-other' side who are trying to pull them toward them (as opposed to us trying to 'push' them toward the light).
I like the idea that, by and large, whatever's going on in ghost world is far more interesting to them than this world. Maybe it's like waking from a dream, and by and large, dreams become less interesting - certainly less important - the more one gets away from waking.
If there are ghosts (I'm a sympathetic agnostic... I hope there is something to them beyond imagination. I think there is, but...), they might be recordings of course, and have absolutely no sentience at all - this seems unlikely to me given the many tales of interactions of some kind between 'ghost' and 'person'.
Maybe we create the ghosts - give ourselves a haunted place, a few spooky tales - and all this combines to form something. No 'other' side - just 'this' side, and a very confused disembodied personality created from all the combined mental energies of the 'haunted'.
A few vague thoughts anyway.
 
Maybe being a ghost is a little like being stuck in dementia. Where you believe that you are a child, or living in your childhood home, or undertaking actions without really comprehending what you are doing, simply because they are actions you have undertaken regularly throughout your life?
So, sort of going through the motions without really knowing why?
 
Maybe being a ghost is a little like being stuck in dementia. Where you believe that you are a child, or living in your childhood home, or undertaking actions without really comprehending what you are doing, simply because they are actions you have undertaken regularly throughout your life?
So, sort of going through the motions without really knowing why?
Ive sometimes thought that too - that ghosts are lost in sone kind of spiritual dementia - lost in a past no longer happening - and then I get thinking, wjat happens if I'm lost in a past no libfer happening - that I'm a ghost and I just dobt realize it yet...
 
Ive sometimes thought that too - that ghosts are lost in sone kind of spiritual dementia - lost in a past no longer happening - and then I get thinking, wjat happens if I'm lost in a past no libfer happening - that I'm a ghost and I just dobt realize it yet...
Ha, I sometimes think that when I do something stupid and risky, like run across a busy road between traffic, I look back to make sure I'm not lying dead in the road!
 
Usually books, movies, TV make 12 midnight as the witching hour.

But maybe not.

My younger daughter says that when strange things happen in their house it is always around 2 in the early morning.
 
A thought provoking thread.

So many of the better ghost reports seem to be of people who died very suddenly and often violently e.g. the tsumami ghosts, the Heathrow crash ghosts, road ghosts of various descriptions etc. It does seem as if they haven't had the time and/or awareness to transition to 'another place'.

In his one of his two excellent 'Credible Witness' books, Andy Gilbert recounts an experience by two Police officers who were engaged in chasing a stolen car. They arrived on the scene just in time to see the speeding car, which was being pursued by other police cars, leave the road and hit a tree. Both officers then saw and identified a well known local ne'er-do-well lad exit the crashed car and run off at speed. They immediately inform the other police officers at the scene, expecting a man hunt to be initiated. Instead they get a confused reaction as the sole, now deceased occupant of the mangled car appears to be that very same lad, and this is later verified when the fire brigade removed the roof of the wreck

Of course, this is just one of many tens of thousands of UK ghost sightings, but it is somewhat unique in that it is a multiple-witness account of an individual well known to the witnesses. To me, this suggests some kind of soul that didn't know its body had deceased and continued to act on the adrenaline of the chase. The two officers stuck by their account, although one reportedly struggled with the implications of it all. It is not the answer, but I do feel it is a clue.
 
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As far as my younger daughter knows, her house was built on reclaimed farm land and not connected to any burial site or anything unusual.

Beside footsteps on the stairway at night, in the past her family had a musical tea pot toy that kept turning itself on at night.

Her husband waited for the local trash service the next day to make sure that this toy went with the trash pickup.

I agree with everyone ghosts are stupid, they just don’t know they are dead but maybe they figure it out as time passes.
 
It does make you wonder what they are doing “over there”.

Why do they all manage to converge on a church hall where a medium is putting on a show?

Are they doing any research on how to contact us? What about getting important messages to people who are not at the church hall?

What about some useful information about their circumstances? Are they in some sort of physical reality or some other state?

If they are all so anxious to contact us shouldn’t they be making more effort?
According to the Spiricom stories there are indeed a group on the other side who are carrying out research on how to contact us.
 
A thought provoking thread.

So many of the better ghost reports seem to be of people who died very suddenly and often violently e.g. the tsumami ghosts, the Heathrow crash ghosts, road ghosts of various descriptions etc. It does seem as if they haven't had the time and/or awareness to transition to 'another place'.

In his one of his two excellent 'Credible Witness' books, Andy Gilbert recounts an experience by two Police officers who were engaged in chasing a stolen car. They arrived on the scene just in time to see the speeding car, which was being pursued by other police cars, leave the road and hit a tree. Both officers then saw and identified a well known local ne'er-do-well lad exit the crashed car and run off at speed. They immediately inform the other police officers at the scene, expecting a man hunt to be initiated. Instead they get a confused reaction as the sole, now deceased occupant of the mangled car appears to be that very same lad, and this is later verified when the fire brigade removed the roof of the wreck

Of course, this is just one of many tens of thousands of UK ghost sightings, but it is somewhat unique in that it is a multiple-witness account of an individual well known to the witnesses. To me, this suggests some kind of soul that didn't know its body had deceased and continued to act on the adrenaline of the chase. The two officers stuck by their account, although one reportedly struggled with the implications of it all. It is not the answer, but I do feel it is a clue.
Now I'm remembering a similar story, about a woman and her child who were both victims of a horrific traffic accident. I can't bring it to mind but I'm sure it involved the mother having been killed in the accident whilst the child was trapped and injured. Apparently the 'spirit' of the mother managed to alert a passer by (the teller of the story, I presume) to the whereabouts of the child.

If the boy you mention ran off 'at speed' it would make me wonder whether he wasn't quite aware that he was no longer alive. A chilling thought. I prefer to believe that only aspects/emotions or fragments remain after a violent incident - as opposed to the entire consciousness...so to speak.
 
We had a family friend talk about “ ghost chills “ or “ spirit chills” which I have never heard of this term.

The situation is that the person is in a normal, warm state and for no reason this person gets a bad cold chill claiming a spirit or ghost passed through them.

Supposedly, the spirit passing through the person’s body absorbs their energy.

Has anyone experienced this “ ghost chill “ ?
 
We had a family friend talk about “ ghost chills “ or “ spirit chills” which I have never heard of this term.

The situation is that the person is in a normal, warm state and for no reason this person gets a bad cold chill claiming a spirit or ghost passed through them.

Supposedly, the spirit passing through the person’s body absorbs their energy.

Has anyone experienced this “ ghost chill “ ?

I think I know it as "brrrrrrr! someone just walked over my grave."

Which is the other way about I supppose?
 
Maybe we create the ghosts - give ourselves a haunted place, a few spooky tales - and all this combines to form something. No 'other' side - just 'this' side, and a very confused disembodied personality created from all the combined mental energies of the 'haunted'.
A few vague thoughts anyway.

The famous "Philip" experiment suggests that it may indeed be possible for living people to create a ghost.

https://www.liveabout.com/how-to-create-a-ghost-2594058
 
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We also use the phrase 'someone walking over my grave' very regularly.

I think it's a physiological thing, a sudden chill, the opposite of a 'hot flush' (which, disappointingly, nobody has ever had any kind of supernatural theory about_.
 
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