The Meaning Of Ghosts

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'd like to believe this theory. But it doesn't account for poltergeist where no teenager is present, nor the many millions of teenagers who feel intense emotion without it leading to poltergeist activity. And if it IS linked to teenage angst - why only young people? Many older people also suffer intense emotion, why should the teenagers get all the fun? It's either in us, or it's not...
 
catseye said:
I'd like to believe this theory. But it doesn't account for poltergeist where no teenager is present, nor the many millions of teenagers who feel intense emotion without it leading to poltergeist activity. And if it IS linked to teenage angst - why only young people? Many older people also suffer intense emotion, why should the teenagers get all the fun? It's either in us, or it's not...
Click to expand...
I can't remember her name now but there was that secretary in Germany sometime in the 60's or 70's who wasn't a teenager and she had intense activity happen that was recorded around her including ceiling light fittings swinging when she walked under them. Can anyone here remember who I'm on about please?.

edit: she was a teenager being 19 ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosen...etails and avoiding naturalistic explanations.
 
Swifty said:
I can't remember her name now but there was that secretary in Germany sometime in the 60's or 70's who wasn't a teenager and she had intense activity happen that was recorded around her including ceiling light fittings swinging when she walked under them. Can anyone here remember who I'm on about please?.

edit: she was a teenager being 19 ..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenheim_poltergeist_claim#:~:text=Bender alleged that electrical and,details and avoiding naturalistic explanations.
Click to expand...

I think I read about her in The Unexplained.
 
catseye said:
I'd like to believe this theory. But it doesn't account for poltergeist where no teenager is present, nor the many millions of teenagers who feel intense emotion without it leading to poltergeist activity. And if it IS linked to teenage angst - why only young people? Many older people also suffer intense emotion, why should the teenagers get all the fun? It's either in us, or it's not...
Click to expand...
The teenage girl and emotions during puberty explanation gained a lot of traction during the 70s and 80s, not least because of the Carrie movie, however on closer inspection it doesn't fit as there are well documented cases without teenage girls present (the Cardiff lawnmower repair shop poltergeist ring a good example).

But again, they are always linked to buildings and if they are alleged to have 'followed' someone away from a building they certainly started within bricks and mortar. This has to be the biggest clue but what does it imply?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
The teenage girl and emotions during puberty explanation gained a lot of traction during the 70s and 80s, not least because of the Carrie movie, however on closer inspection it doesn't fit as there are well documented cases without teenage girls present (the Cardiff lawnmower repair shop poltergeist ring a good example).

But again, they are always linked to buildings and if they are alleged to have 'followed' someone away from a building they certainly started within bricks and mortar. This has to be the biggest clue but what does it imply?
Click to expand...
Aren't there incidents that happen outside buildings? I seem to remember stone throwing from Australia and the US, where the locus seemed to be beyond the building but throwing objects AT the building?
 
catseye said:
Aren't there incidents that happen outside buildings? I seem to remember stone throwing from Australia and the US, where the locus seemed to be beyond the building but throwing objects AT the building?
Click to expand...
True, but I would argue there is still a building involved. Are there any cases from people sleeping in tents, field craft shelters in the woods or in caves? I suppose Bigfoot believers make claims of things being thrown at them. but isn't that exclusive to North America?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
True, but I would argue there is still a building involved. Are there any cases from people sleeping in tents, field craft shelters in the woods or in caves? I suppose Bigfoot believers make claims of things being thrown at them. but isn't that exclusive to North America?
Click to expand...
I would say that there would almost 'have' to be a building involved, just because random items moving about /being thrown if it's purely outdoors, could well result in animal or meteorological interferences being blamed. But I take your point about tents or field shelters, although here animals, weather or other natural explanations would be harder to rule out. In houses it's practically certain that a sudden gust of wind or badgers aren't going to be the culprits.
 
This is interesting, I think. What I assumed would be a film review actually ended up as an examination of 'felt presence' generally:

'Presence feeds on our cultural intuitions and beliefs about ghostly entities (which are still, many suggest, more prevalent than many people might realise). But the director is also tapping into the mechanics of real-life experiences of “felt presence”, or the sensation that someone is close by without clear evidence. Far from just ghost stories, presences are a regular occurrence in sleep paralysis, bereavement and certain mental health and neurological conditions (such as schizophrenia, or Parkinson’s). Like other unusual experiences – such as seeing or hearing things that others do not – presences can occur frequently for many people without need for psychiatric care.'

'In psychosis, feelings of presence are often difficult to disentangle from a wider paranoia that people are close by and surveilling you. In Parkinson’s this can occur as “Phantom Boarder” syndrome, in which people have a distinct feeling that someone is upstairs, or in another room. The fact that this occurs almost solely in homes and intimate spaces shows how entwined presences are with perceived spaces of safety.'
-----

Are you being watched? Soderbergh’s ghost voyeur movie taps strange truths
Presence, the story of a family haunting where the camera’s eye is the spectre’s point of view, draws on what are for many people all too palpable phenomena ~

https://www.theguardian.com/film/20...rghs-ghost-voyeur-movie-taps-scientific-truth
 
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 am re-reading The Mystery of the Mayanup Poltergeist by Helen Hack, an account of an Australian poltergeist in the 1950s that had many witnesses- I would recommend the book to anyone interested in poltergeists.

I came across an interesting, if frustratingly brief, snippet on p26, referring to Sir Henry Wilcox:

"Sir Henry was a farmer in Bridgetown but during his service in the Middle East in the Second World War, he had witnessed poltergeist activity first-hand as stones fell inside a military tent."

So poltergeists do happen in tents, if this is to be believed (and I see no reason why not).
 
SimonBurchell said:
I am re-reading The Mystery of the Mayanup Poltergeist by Helen Hack, an account of an Australian poltergeist in the 1950s that had many witnesses- I would recommend the book to anyone interested in poltergeists.

I came across an interesting, if frustratingly brief, snippet on p26, referring to Sir Henry Wilcox:

"Sir Henry was a farmer in Bridgetown but during his service in the Middle East in the Second World War, he had witnessed poltergeist activity first-hand as stones fell inside a military tent."

So poltergeists do happen in tents, if this is to be believed (and I see no reason why not).
Click to expand...
Thanks, has reminded me that poltergeist that are external seem to take the form of stones manifesting and then being thrown, have often come across accounts of this. Feels like something rather ancient to me, so are poltergeist knocks inside houses also stone being manipulated in some way?
 
Paul_Exeter said:
Thanks, has reminded me that poltergeist that are external seem to take the form of stones manifesting and then being thrown, have often come across accounts of this. Feels like something rather ancient to me, so are poltergeist knocks inside houses also stone being manipulated in some way?
Click to expand...
Page 62 of the same book describes another poltergeist outbreak at an aboriginal camp at Pumphrey in 1957, ten miles from Popanyinning in Western Australia, with stones falling on and around the tents.

One witness crouched in one of the tents and witnessed stones falling through the fabric of the tent without leaving a hole. The stones fell for 5 days, then the Aborigines packed up camp and moved to a nearby creek, but the falling stones followed them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top