Some interesting if slightly alarming stuff.
At the time I started this topic here I also discussed it with some other online correspondents. Here's a few random points that cropped up in that chat:
Correspondent 1: I have sometimes wondered if "ghosts" are what happens when different times on the same plane bleed into each other, allowing a ghostly view of someone in another when but in the same where as the viewer. If this is the case, it would be interesting to view a "haunted" location over long periods of time to see if this bears out. If this is indeed the case, then one might actually have the chance to see oneself in a "ghostly" form, which would be very strange indeed.
It would also be interesting to map out these areas that "overlapped" or whose time planes are "thin" to see if there is some natural cause for bending and/or wearing the fabric of time in those spaces.
IW: There's a substantial body of lore about people seeing ghosts of themselves - the origin of the term doppleganger. The old English term was a "fetch". Such an ancounter was often seen as a warning of coming death. There's also plenty of accounts of ghosts of the living, people seen or even talked to when they were somewhere else at the time. Those kind of accounts would be the start to the kind of mapping you posit.
I'm also interested that ghosts are often associated with drops in temperature or air pressure; the classic ghost-hunter's kit includes mechanisms to measure both along with some kind of vibration sensor. If there is some condition which predisposes people to perceiving ghosts then some of these physical changes may be as important as the venue or the percipient.
Correspondent 2: I believe ghosts are merely mental manifestations. Reports of alien abductions/visitations where little green men sit on the victim's chest are surprisingly reminiscient of ancient reports of "Little People" (part of the legend of leprechauns). Altered states of consciousness are also the recent explanation behind the Oracle of Delphi. Apparently the subterranean caverns there emitted volcanic gases that could mess with perception.
IW: There's a documented sleep state which involves paralysis and a feeling that someone is crushing the chest - the classic nightmare/incubus scenario - which might also explain some alien abduction experiences.
Regarding the Delphic Oracle, as I recall the original oracle there was a giant snake. It's been suggested that a priest or priestess actually allowed themselves to be bitten so that the venom-induced dreams could be interpreted as visions. When the patriarchal Greeks arrived at Delphi the former earth mother deity was supplanted with the worship of Zeus and Apollo and the snake was replaced by a woman who breathed the vapours; she was officially known as the Pythoness.
Anyhow, you're right to point to the use of mind-altered states as being a key part of the shamanistic prophetic process, whether that alteration came from drugs, sex, exhaustion, pain, or eating the yellow snow.
Correspondent 3: Ghost Hunting Tools of the Trade - Why the use of electronic equipment by TV ghost hunters is so stupid
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4081
IW: I largely agree with the article but I think they've overlooked two uses that such kit can have if used properly. First, they can help to detect fraud or natural causes. If the ghost is a hoaxer, or if the strange sounds are caused by exdpanding heating pipes or whatever good equipment can quickly explain what's really happening. Second, good physical measurements can help to spot trends that might allow some kind of hypothesis. It's the aggregation of trends and identification of anomalies that allow science to begin to bite on any unknown subject.
Correspondent 4: I believe there are things that happen that we can't explain, but I don't believe that means they have to be supernatural in origin. I don't think everyone who's ever claimed to see a ghost or hear a ghost is lying, but I am completely open to the possibility that, at this moment, we lack an understanding of what those people are truly experiencing and so the default position is "ghost" and not "acute retinal hemorrhaging" or whatever. I haven't had any personal experience or seen any convincing evidence of the idea that "ghosts" as we understand them exist.
IW: This is very close to where I stand. Additionally though, I'm amazed at the paucity of proper study into one of two phenomena. Either (1) there are ghosts (whatever they turn out to be) or (2) there aren't ghosts but people still see them for some reason. Each of these things seems worthy of proper study to me.
Not since Jung published his seminal work "Flying Saucers" has mainstream psychology really tried to understand why people see things like ghosts (as far as I know). Likewise I've not heard of anybody trying to apply modern quantum physics to issues of perception of matter across time and space with respect to ghost encounters.
In short, everything people believe about ghosts, most of the ways ghost
reports are investigated or ignored, most of our paradigms for what ghosts may be, even the cutlural way we treat alleged incidents, is rooted in medieval supersition and pre 1950's scientific doctrine. When does this very old subject get a chance to have some 21st century techniques and insights shone upon it?
Correspondent 5: I do like watching "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel
Channel, because those guys are just goofy.
IW: It is interesting how we automatically try to attach "stories" to
ghosts; by which I mean that when somebody claims to see something spooky the first response is often to try and "explain" an origin for the apparition. We seem to need to rationalise even the impossible - maybe especially the impossible - by putting it to a narrative. We want to know that it's the spirit of a serving girl who got pregnant and hung herself that's knocking in the attic, as if that somehow helps deal with whatever is that's claimed to be happening.
Meanwhile in fiction, all our ghosts have to make perfect narrative sense (as they rarely do in real life reportage) and they often serve as
denouement or motivator of the stories in which they appear.
Correspondent 5: Carl Sagan wrote a great book, “The Demon-Haunted World,†that went into great detail about it. In short, I’d say that it’s a big ol’ world, and nobody can explain everything in it, so we apply our socio-cultural worldview to try to describe things we don’t understand. If I had a worldview that had an underlying assumption that the supernatural exists, it would make sense for me to ascribe things I didn’t understand to the spooky ones.
IW: To that we can adduce the trends in alien visitors, with the growing popularity of "greys" edging out the 90s reptiloids and the 60's Aryan star children, not to mention the eponymous little green men.
Then there's the "light at the end of the tunnel" experience reported by so many people suffering near death or temporary death. Many interpret it as leading to a place of peace and happiness - heaven perhaps. The impression is common enough to posit that there's a physical perceptual process taking place at the moment of termination that gets interpreted as that kind of vision. The "explanation" varies by expectation.
As an aside, many people suffering near death experiences also have apparent out of body experiences where they perceieve themselves floating above their bodies watching medical teams work on them and so forth. One enterprising surgeon has taped pictures on the top of the operating theatre cabinets to see if anybody experiencing this phenomenon can actually describe them afterwards.
It's long been a point of debate amongst folklorists that there are such pointed similarities between fairie abductions and alien abductions (lost time, physical examinations, gifts, revelatory knowledge etc). I'm not sure of their views on cattle ripping.
Correspondent 5: Me, I’m a big believer in Occam's Razor.
IW: Occam's razor only seems to cut in the world of macrophysics though. Many of the microphysics particle interactions and descriptions seem very counterintuitive and, assuming current theory is correct, run quite contrary to the "simplest route".
And of course, the problem with reductive reasoning, effective as it usually is, is that some folks fall into sloppy thinking that "if it could be explained like that, that must be the explanation".
Many sceptics, and especially capital-S Skeptics espouse the maxim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". I think that's poor science. All claims equally require proper evidence, with the same standard for all. The problem with much that is "supernatural" is that it's a one-time event unlikely to leave verifiable traces and unlikely to be repeatable under lab conditions. That means that scientific method is limited in its capacity to examine ghosts.
All that said, I'm really playing devil's advocate here because I agree that the perception of ghosts tends to be cultural and associative, that simple mundane explanations tend to be better than complicated occult ones, and that there's no physical evidence for supernatural events that I'd consider really solid without knowing a lot more about the circumstances of the evidence being gathered.
Correspondent 6: It's in our genetic make-up to do so? Self-awarenes and the ability to ponder infinity are recent achievements, so I'd wager we're still working out the kinks of this higher thinking thing. Fear of the dark and wanting the acceptance and protection of the pack are hard-wired into our primitive brains.
IW: One interesting theory is that over the last two or three thousand years the right/left brain divide has closed up, leaving us with brains that are physically wired differently to those of our ancestors. It's the interaction at the gap which may be responsible for altered perceptional states, for ecstatic trance, for shamanistic visions. As that gap is more strongly bridged and then paved over we may no longer see things the way our forefathers once did.
To put it another way, you can't see fairies when you're grown up.
Correspondent 6: I don't necessarily want to stir up a religion discussion, but there's very little difference in my mind between believing in ghosts, leprechauns, Osiris, Yaweh, or Thor. If we mature enough as a species, eventually we will outgrow all of them. Or some other species will replace us as dominant life-form on the planet. Whatever. If we're worthy, we'll survive and grow up.
IW: You make that grand sceptical statement then throw in that last statement of faith at the end!
I think there is a difference between ghosts and leprechauns on the one hand and religious beliefs on the other. In most modern deity religions the practioner is required to have faith (St Paul defined it as being "sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see") even when the world seems to contradict their beliefs. With ghosts or leprechauns the percipient sees something, or believes they have, then adops a belief to explain their experience.
Even as I wrote that paragraph I started thinking of exceptions and caveats because there undoubtedly is an overlap in belief and folk explainations - I had a grandmother who quietly put out milk for the little people sometimes "for luck", which isn't too far from prayer or bribe. But I feel there's a qualitative but also a categorical difference between an apparently physical-based event like seeing a ghost and a spiritual and emotional event like an encounter with God.
Correspondent 6: I have a friend on faculty here who studies NDEs, and the light at the end of the tunnel thing is also very culturally related.
IW: Is it the explanation of the light and the tunnel which is culturally related or what people perceive altogether?
Correspondent 6: And a quite Freudian professor I had believed that man alien abduction stories were actually repressed memories of childhood abuse.
IW: I think there's a worrying crossover with "recovered memory syndrome", where therapists use techniques including hypnotism to encourage patients to recall "lost" incidents. Those lost incidents often include alien impregnation or demonic cult abuse and are occasionally linked to actual or alleged childhood events.
The problem comes when those "recovered" memories are then used to prosecute real criminal cases. There are several people still serving time pending appeals based on prosecutions for ritual satanic abuse on the basis of such hypnotically assisted recollections. It's one step up from the "dream evidence" used in Salem to hang witches.
Another feature of alien abduction stories is that they are now part of popular culture, reflected in everything from movies and comics to jokes in the Simpsons. That means that there is already a template in Western society for how any such scenario should play and that surely contaminates any future claimed experiences.
How would your Freudian professor interpret the belief of people who claim to have alien implants, I wonder?
Correspondent 6: Yeah, but if you tell me that you believe in ghosts because you saw one, you’re putting me in a pretty awkward position…
IW: I'm afraid not. I'm just having a lazy day off and I felt like a little bit of discussion.
I think Elvis may be knocking over my bins every night.
IW before: Is it the explanation of the light and the tunnel which is culturally related or what people perceive altogether?
Correspondent 6: What they perceive all together. Buddhists never meet Jesus, for example.
IW: But are the light, tunnel, and sense of transition common?
IW before: How would your Freudian professor interpret the belief of people who claim to have alien implants, I wonder?
Correspondent 6: I think he’d say they’re bonkers.:)
IW: I'd suggest there's a relationship with those people who feel they're being monitored by the government or controlled by an external force like possession. There's a sense of abnegation of responsibility, a sense of paranoia, but also a desperate need for self-validation; if the aliens thought you were worth kidnapping and implanting you must be something special after all. But implants also have Freudian associations with impregnation, pregnancy, sexual domination, body control and so on.
There's also a link with people who self-diagnose imaginary tumours or pregnancies, with folks who self-harm but believe they've been attacked by others, and with people who believe they are a "chosen" group with a special destiny.
Finally, they seem to me to be part of that section of paranormal percepients who feel the need to validate their experiences with physical proof. If the x-ray shows an alien gadget in their ear then they weren't imagining it all and their mocking friends were wrong. A little "evidence" goes a long way to validate a treasured belief system.
IW before: I think Elvis may be knocking over my bins every night.
Correspondent 6: That would be awesome, if true!
IW: Danged dead rock stars need to get off my lawn!
and so on...
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