The Meaning Of Ghosts

1736511887172.png


Always a fascinating, layered story ~

Hinton Ampner: the True Story of Turn of the Screw:

'Mary Ricketts’ account begins with a note to her children and a brief history of the Hinton Ampner estate, and then continues to retell her experiences in detail, noting that ‘Soon after we were settled at Hinton I frequently heard noises in the night, as of people shutting, or rather slapping doors with vehemence’. Initially the family had assumed it the staff who were responsible. However, after making his own investigations, Mr Ricketts could find no evidence of this.

William Henry Rickets spent a significant portion of his time in Jamaica. In 1769 he travelled without his wife and children, leaving them at Hinton Ampner, and it was during this absence that the disturbances became more terrifying and frequent: 'Vanishing’ figures, slamming doors, footsteps at the ends of beds, chilling cries and moans...'

https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2021/10/hauntings-at-hinton-ampner-.html
 
I can't recall if this has been mentioned before, as I forget what I have only thought and not actually said (or read) sometimes, but thinking about it again yesterday- can it be possible to 'haunt' somewhere when you're still alive?

What I mean by this is, let's say for example you had a traumatic experience in a particular place like a house and years later having moved away, you were thinking about this house and picturing the layout and arrangement of the rooms in detail and getting very angry over whatever it was that has caused you this distress.

Could that cause any unaccountable events for the people now living in your old house?

No way to prove it I suppose unless you knew the new occupants and they mentioned something happening at a particular time and date.

I mention this thinking about the time I was a teenager and very angry about something and the light started to flicker quite violently.
 
Floyd said:
I can't recall if this has been mentioned before, as I forget what I have only thought and not actually said (or read) sometimes, but thinking about it again yesterday- can it be possible to 'haunt' somewhere when you're still alive?

What I mean by this is, let's say for example you had a traumatic experience in a particular place like a house and years later having moved away, you were thinking about this house and picturing the layout and arrangement of the rooms in detail and getting very angry over whatever it was that has caused you this distress.

Could that cause any unaccountable events for the people now living in your old house?

No way to prove it I suppose unless you knew the new occupants and they mentioned something happening at a particular time and date.

I mention this thinking about the time I was a teenager and very angry about something and the light started to flicker quite violently.
Click to expand...
That's a very good question. There is anecdotal evidence that this may be the case. There was a brief discussion (I think over on the Modern Ghosts thread) about a location that was haunted by a young woman in modern clothing, seen by various witnesses. The follow-up indicated that it was a "ghost" of a living person, who often daydreamed about a place where she had been very happy.
 
SimonBurchell said:
That's a very good question. There is anecdotal evidence that this may be the case. There was a brief discussion (I think over on the Modern Ghosts thread) about a location that was haunted by a young woman in modern clothing, seen by various witnesses. The follow-up indicated that it was a "ghost" of a living person, who often daydreamed about a place where she had been very happy.
Click to expand...
Right.
Thanks Simon.
 
I've also had this thought. If intense emotions at death (whether anger, surprise or just plain confusion) are supposed to give rise to ghosts - what about all those people who feel those intense emotions but without them leading to death?
 
catseye said:
I've also had this thought. If intense emotions at death (whether anger, surprise or just plain confusion) are supposed to give rise to ghosts - what about all those people who feel those intense emotions but without them leading to death?
Click to expand...
Interestingly (well I think it is interesting anyway), some highland Maya of Guatemala have a traditional belief that if you receive a great shock or fright in a location, you leave your soul there, and you need to go back to the place and call your soul to yourself three times, for it to return to your body (I know, commas all over the shop; forgive me!). I had never thought of it in relation to haunting by the living before, but suddenly it makes a kind of sense.
 
RE: Floyd's interesting post ~

If we take out the personal factor then, possibly, hauntings - even by the living or what may appear to be living apparitions - might happen anyway. Maybe the 'mechanism' that creates hauntings is still the same and is in fact the opposite of something I've long suggested: that consciousness is a vital and necessary part of causing ghosts to be witnessed and, effectively, created.
 
Last edited:
Maybe I am going too far, but what if ghosts were the work of a "global" consciousness ?

I mean, if the universe, or what we call reality, was actually the dream of a greater consciousness (or incousciousness, if one doesn't considers a dreamer "conscious"), ghosts could simply be the memories of the great dreamer manifesting in the course of his dream.

In such a hypothetical model, each of us would be an expression of the global dreamer's stream of thought. As such, we would relate directly to whatever has happened and whatever will happen in this global stream of thought we are part of and to which source we can connect to, thus enabling us to get some glimpses of past happenings, as if we were "remembering" things from the global history (who didn't necessarily "personally" happen to us as characters of this history), when the proper conditions to access this data are met. I mean if my hypothetical global dreamer has access to his memories and if we are but parts of him, we too could access this data.

And even better : if we're are but "ideas" in a greater mind, we do not die as long as if the idea comes again to this mind. Therefore, a man who died in 1443 could also be somewhat reactivated as a "living" idea in 1979 or 2025. As long as the "dreamer" reminds something, this something integrates itself in the flow of the dream and acts again as a living person, maybe even with its own free will. However, as some memories are clear, others can be blurred. That would account for foggy ghosts or immature poltergeist ... Incomplete data.

So we could have passive ghost replaying their daily chores (flash backs and memories in the dream) and active / interactive ghosts (reactivated ideas / characters in the great dream).

The so called "simulation theory" is a variant of this vision, even if it does not traditionnally deals with ghosts. However, in it ghosts could represent improperly erased or even corrupted data in the great "program" : in other words glitches. And gods, demons and ufos (why stop at ghosts) might be security programs ...

I never enjoyed the "stone tape theory" very much but in the end my dream theory is not so far away from it, apart from the fact it doesn't require "stone" at all. In it, we are the stone and we are the tape.


I don't know how this could be put to the test. But there is in life a kind of dark humour, and some extreme coincidences, like getting from your very environment an incredibly precise answer to a question you've just asked yourself, or finding some info you desperately need precisely when you need it. It happened to me so many times, I am inclined to believe we can tap to some universal source of data. Not because we are "special", favoured by some "god" or by a deceased ancestor, but because we relate to this data, because for a second we go back to the source, the "dreamer" and influence the dream I return.

That's my hypothesis. Sorry if I wrote gibberish. It's getting late in Paris, and I'd better go to get some rest.
 
AmStramGram said:
Maybe I am going too far, but what if ghosts were the work of a "global" consciousness ?

I mean, if the universe, or what we call reality, was actually the dream of a greater consciousness (or incousciousness, if one doesn't considers a dreamer "conscious"), ghosts could simply be the memories of the great dreamer manifesting in the course of his dream.

In such a hypothetical model, each of us would be an expression of the global dreamer's stream of thought. As such, we would relate directly to whatever has happened and whatever will happen in this global stream of thought we are part of and to which source we can connect to, thus enabling us to get some glimpses of past happenings, as if we were "remembering" things from the global history (who didn't necessarily "personally" happen to us as characters of this history), when the proper conditions to access this data are met. I mean if my hypothetical global dreamer has access to his memories and if we are but parts of him, we too could access this data.

And even better : if we're are but "ideas" in a greater mind, we do not die as long as if the idea comes again to this mind. Therefore, a man who died in 1443 could also be somewhat reactivated as a "living" idea in 1979 or 2025. As long as the "dreamer" reminds something, this something integrates itself in the flow of the dream and acts again as a living person, maybe even with its own free will. However, as some memories are clear, others can be blurred. That would account for foggy ghosts or immature poltergeist ... Incomplete data.

So we could have passive ghost replaying their daily chores (flash backs and memories in the dream) and active / interactive ghosts (reactivated ideas / characters in the great dream).

The so called "simulation theory" is a variant of this vision, even if it does not traditionnally deals with ghosts. However, in it ghosts could represent improperly erased or even corrupted data in the great "program" : in other words glitches. And gods, demons and ufos (why stop at ghosts) might be security programs ...

I never enjoyed the "stone tape theory" very much but in the end my dream theory is not so far away from it, apart from the fact it doesn't require "stone" at all. In it, we are the stone and we are the tape.


I don't know how this could be put to the test. But there is in life a kind of dark humour, and some extreme coincidences, like getting from your very environment an incredibly precise answer to a question you've just asked yourself, or finding some info you desperately need precisely when you need it. It happened to me so many times, I am inclined to believe we can tap to some universal source of data. Not because we are "special", favoured by some "god" or by a deceased ancestor, but because we relate to this data, because for a second we go back to the source, the "dreamer" and influence the dream I return.

That's my hypothesis. Sorry if I wrote gibberish. It's getting late in Paris, and I'd better go to get some rest.
Click to expand...
If this is what you write in a second language when you're tired, I'd love to see what you write in French when you're fully awake!
 
I never play devil's advocate but, as I've mentioned before now, I'm really wary of humanising this mystery; not least because I'm as prone to doing this as anyone. By which I mean, I'm wary of anthropomorphising virtually every aspect of that mystery. For all we know - and can know - the cause of what we call hauntings could be totally devoid of any human influence or human intelligence or human motive; and the historical aspect of hauntings, that so often fascinate us, may be just a framework of ours in which to construct stories or to attempt explanation or reason for ghosts being witnessed. For instance, these events might be caused by a kind of fluke to which we happen to bear witness and/or else caused by some 'power' that possibly knows nothing of us or cannot communicate with us even if so inclined. The central point of my post possibly holds, of course, for both living and deceased human beings.
 
Is it really likely that ghosts interact with the living? I don't ask this in a sceptical way - my first instinct is to believe that witnesses are telling the truth - but in a critical manner. We have an understandable habit of assuming that ghost-sightings have some significance to the living witness(es) and, sometimes, we assume that there is a personal significance - even if such sightings are merely deemed to be a way of the ghost wishing to be remembered or borne in mind. Also, and though I'm not here discussing the scientific unlikelihood of such interactions, do we assume that a ghost sees as we do? And sees what we see (the present-day surroundings etc etc)? After all, I bet that the pet owners amongst us overlook the differing visual and aural abilities of their pets compared to their own abilities, in spite of the owners being well aware that there can often be great differences. And of course we frequently assume that - for instance - our pets think, and express emotions, in the manner of human beings. Is all of this - regardless ghost-sightings - a mistake, fellow-feeling or wishful-thinking, or simply the 'complacency'/evolutionary prerogative which demands that everything experienced in our lives refers to us and our concerns?
 
Steven said:
Is it really likely that ghosts interact with the living? I don't ask this in a sceptical way - my first instinct is to believe that witnesses are telling the truth - but in a critical manner. We have an understandable habit of assuming that ghost-sightings have some significance to the living witness(es) and, sometimes, we assume that there is a personal significance - even if such sightings are merely deemed to be a way of the ghost wishing to be remembered or borne in mind. Also, and though I'm not here discussing the scientific unlikelihood of such interactions, do we assume that a ghost sees as we do? And sees what we see (the present-day surroundings etc etc)? After all, I bet that the pet owners amongst us overlook the differing visual and aural abilities of their pets compared to their own abilities, in spite of the owners being well aware that there can often be great differences. And of course we frequently assume that - for instance - our pets think, and express emotions, in the manner of human beings. Is all of this - regardless ghost-sightings - a mistake, fellow-feeling or wishful-thinking, or simply the 'complacency'/evolutionary prerogative which demands that everything experienced in our lives refers to us and our concerns?
Click to expand...
It seems to me to be consistent in human nature to want to anthropomorphise things that aren't human - even including inanimate objects like dolls or stuffed toys sometimes. So it isn't really surprising that we would assume 'ghosts' think/see/feel like we do, particularly as they usually appear to be human-like in form. But you're right that it is quite possible that they - whatever they are - have no more humanity than a film image or a shadow or an echo.
 
Steven said:
Is it really likely that ghosts interact with the living? I don't ask this in a sceptical way - my first instinct is to believe that witnesses are telling the truth - but in a critical manner. We have an understandable habit of assuming that ghost-sightings have some significance to the living witness(es) and, sometimes, we assume that there is a personal significance - even if such sightings are merely deemed to be a way of the ghost wishing to be remembered or borne in mind. Also, and though I'm not here discussing the scientific unlikelihood of such interactions, do we assume that a ghost sees as we do? And sees what we see (the present-day surroundings etc etc)? After all, I bet that the pet owners amongst us overlook the differing visual and aural abilities of their pets compared to their own abilities, in spite of the owners being well aware that there can often be great differences. And of course we frequently assume that - for instance - our pets think, and express emotions, in the manner of human beings. Is all of this - regardless ghost-sightings - a mistake, fellow-feeling or wishful-thinking, or simply the 'complacency'/evolutionary prerogative which demands that everything experienced in our lives refers to us and our concerns?
Click to expand...
Thinking of my two most powerful ghost encounters (note that in neither of these did I actually see an apparition):

The first, the haunting involved auditory phenomena - the sound of someone doing dishes in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards etc. when no-one else was home, and crying coming from a room, that ceased as soon as the door was opened, and resumed when it was closed again. At first glance, no interaction at all except there was a powerful sense of being watched in my bedroom, the bathroom and on the upstairs landing, strong enough to drive me from the rooms. So it wasn't as if I was observing something, rather as if something was observing me. Crucially, at the time I didn't really have an idea that the house was haunted - I didn't learn about the terrible tragedy there until later - but I knew that I hated being on my own upstairs, and was very puzzled by the things that I would hear. On one occasion, a book disappeared from my bedroom desk after I left the room for a few minutes. No-one in my family admitted to having moved it, and it reappeared back on my desk after a few days absence. I have to assume that at times the "ghost" could perceive me, due to the powerful sense of being watched. Could it actually see me? Probably not in a physical photons-and-eyes manner, but in some sense. At other times, I think it perceived its surroundings as they were when the woman was alive, opening and closing cupboards and moving crockery etc. Why I should hear that, I don't now. And when I heard her crying, something that I still remember and still bothers me, that crying was coming from the room she killed herself in. I wonder if that was the crying after she had killed her kids, and before she killed herself? Wretched. Again, why would I hear it? And was she back in time, reliving that moment? Questions, questions...

In the second, I entered into the chancel of a church and felt a hostile, cold presence all around me - I left the chancel, just a normal country church - back in the chancel a feeling of cold, and energy, almost expectancy, as if something was about to happen, and hostility. Later, I was down the far end of the church taking a phone call and something shouted at me from the chancel - a gruff, unintelligible man's shout. Something could perceive me, and wanted me to leave, I have no doubt. Did it have significance to me as a living witness? Well it certainly engaged my Fortean curiosity. The whole encounter seems based around the fact that something perceived me, and regarded me as an intruder in its personal space. The hostility came from the chancel, where there were a couple of Renaissance tombs - and the shout came from the direction of the later of the two tombs. Should I associate the hostile presence with the owner of that tomb, Sir Thomas Neale? It seems strange for someone to haunt their own tomb - or perhaps that is my perception. Perhaps the church meant a lot to the haunter, and the presence of the tomb is incidental.
 
Last edited:
CharmerKamelion said:
It seems to me to be consistent in human nature to want to anthropomorphise things that aren't human - even including inanimate objects like dolls or stuffed toys sometimes. So it isn't really surprising that we would assume 'ghosts' think/see/feel like we do, particularly as they usually appear to be human-like in form. But you're right that it is quite possible that they - whatever they are - have no more humanity than a film image or a shadow or an echo.
Click to expand...
And likewise, any 'communication' between ghost and observer could be the viewer's need to feel that there is some kind of intelligence/need to communicate. Maybe, sometimes, the ghostly would quite like to say 'hang on, I'm not talking to you.'
 
Steven said:
Is it really likely that ghosts interact with the living? I don't ask this in a sceptical way - my first instinct is to believe that witnesses are telling the truth - but in a critical manner. We have an understandable habit of assuming that ghost-sightings have some significance to the living witness(es) and, sometimes, we assume that there is a personal significance - even if such sightings are merely deemed to be a way of the ghost wishing to be remembered or borne in mind. Also, and though I'm not here discussing the scientific unlikelihood of such interactions, do we assume that a ghost sees as we do? And sees what we see (the present-day surroundings etc etc)? After all, I bet that the pet owners amongst us overlook the differing visual and aural abilities of their pets compared to their own abilities, in spite of the owners being well aware that there can often be great differences. And of course we frequently assume that - for instance - our pets think, and express emotions, in the manner of human beings. Is all of this - regardless ghost-sightings - a mistake, fellow-feeling or wishful-thinking, or simply the 'complacency'/evolutionary prerogative which demands that everything experienced in our lives refers to us and our concerns?
Click to expand...
Great posts.

Personally, when people talk about ghosts I believe there are three Fortean phenomena at play:

  • stone tape type apparitions that do not interact with the witness and often fade in and out of existence. Despite myths often being attached to such apparitions (eg the woman who flung herself off the tower after being jilted) I do not believe they are sentient in any shape or form but rather more akin to a mirage (but one generated by an as yet unknown Fortean mechanism).
  • poltergeists that definitely have an intelligence, but is it the intelligence of the human who is unconsciously creating the poltergeist (itself a Fortean phenomenon) or is it an external intelligence interacting with us, albeit in a childish manner? The one big takeaway for me is that poltergeist activity always seems to take place within buildings that have foundations and never in temporary structures such as tents (or caravans for that matter), there has to be a clue in there somewhere...
  • ghosts that do interact with people: these always seem to be solid apparitions that could easily be mistaken for living people if its weren't for them being out of place. Very often the witness beats a retreat when the 'ghost' interacts with them by turning to look at them or being startled by their presence. There are two great example of this from Uncanny: the old man with the candle who is startled by the witness (TV episode) and the Elizabeth Dacre dinner party manifestation. For me these have to be time-slips as the 'ghosts' are demonstrably alive in their own time and the witness is the intruder.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
The one big takeaway for me is that poltergeist activity always seems to take place within buildings that have foundations and never in temporary structures such as tents (or caravans for that matter)
Click to expand...

I didn't know that! I wonder what it means (so to speak)?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
The one big takeaway for me is that poltergeist activity always seems to take place within buildings that have foundations and never in temporary structures such as tents (or caravans for that matter), there has to be a clue in there somewhere...
Click to expand...
I have a vague memory of a poltergeist, I think in Australia, that drove the victim from his home - the victim went to a caravan and the poltergeist followed. However, the memory is pretty vague, and I may be wrong - it might have been a shack.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Great posts.

Personally, when people talk about ghosts I believe there are three Fortean phenomena at play:

  • stone tape type apparitions that do not interact with the witness and often fade in and out of existence. Despite myths often being attached to such apparitions (eg the woman who flung herself off the tower after being jilted) I do not believe they are sentient in any shape or form but rather more akin to a mirage (but one generated by an as yet unknown Fortean mechanism).
Click to expand...
These 'mirage' ghosts with a backstory... I wonder if they are somehow created because we feel they should be there? So someone sees...something, optical illusion, sun in their eyes, reflection, something similar, but not a ghost. Someone creates a backstory to explain why there might be something to see - jilted woman throwing herself off a tower (something that I believe to either never have happened in real life or to have happened so vanishingly rarely that it's almost non existent, but it makes a good story). That story creates the expectation, and then people begin to see what they expect to see. Like a sort of Tulpa or thought form, created by expectation?
 
catseye said:
These 'mirage' ghosts with a backstory... I wonder if they are somehow created because we feel they should be there? So someone sees...something, optical illusion, sun in their eyes, reflection, something similar, but not a ghost. Someone creates a backstory to explain why there might be something to see - jilted woman throwing herself off a tower (something that I believe to either never have happened in real life or to have happened so vanishingly rarely that it's almost non existent, but it makes a good story). That story creates the expectation, and then people begin to see what they expect to see. Like a sort of Tulpa or thought form, created by expectation?
Click to expand...
Also folk love to romanticise hauntings and weave the into the tapestry of the location just as they would with an ancient oak or yew tree. Staying in a large country house is more of a thrill if there is the chance of encountering the ghost of a former resident who died in tragic circumstances., it taps into the history and romance of the place.

However, there are a large number of clear eyewitness reports in which they must have seen a manifestation of a person (or sometimes animal) for it to be more than just an illusion in many cases.
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Also folk love to romanticise hauntings and weave the into the tapestry of the location just as they would with an ancient oak or yew tree. Staying in a large country house is more of a thrill if there is the chance of encountering the ghost of a former resident who died in tragic circumstances., it taps into the history and romance of the place.

However, there are a large number of clear eyewitness reports in which they must have seen a manifestation of a person (or sometimes animal) for it to be more than just an illusion in many cases.
Click to expand...
This is just it, I think they do see 'something'. But in some cases I think it's an actual form that has been created by the weight of past stories, past experiences and also expectation. So it's like people are 'creating' the ghosts, built on stories they've been told.
 
catseye said:
This is just it, I think they do see 'something'. But in some cases I think it's an actual form that has been created by the weight of past stories, past experiences and also expectation. So it's like people are 'creating' the ghosts, built on stories they've been told.
Click to expand...

I believe more and more that tulpa may be the closest we have to a grand unifying theory.
 
Floyd said:
I can't recall if this has been mentioned before, as I forget what I have only thought and not actually said (or read) sometimes, but thinking about it again yesterday- can it be possible to 'haunt' somewhere when you're still alive?

What I mean by this is, let's say for example you had a traumatic experience in a particular place like a house and years later having moved away, you were thinking about this house and picturing the layout and arrangement of the rooms in detail and getting very angry over whatever it was that has caused you this distress.

Could that cause any unaccountable events for the people now living in your old house?

No way to prove it I suppose unless you knew the new occupants and they mentioned something happening at a particular time and date.

I mention this thinking about the time I was a teenager and very angry about something and the light started to flicker quite violently.
Click to expand...
That then could leaning towards paranormal poltergeist phenomena I'd imagine?. Especially the teenager age factor and the cause being intense emotion.
 
Swifty said:
That then could leaning towards paranormal poltergeist phenomena I'd imagine?. Especially the teenager age factor and the cause being intense emotion.
Click to expand...
I don't go with that - I think the intense emotion might attract something else. Poltergeists being an external effect produced by human psychology arose out of parapsychology trying to establish itself as a respectable science and doing away with any suggestion of external entities.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top