Tradition Has It That Mischievous Ghosts And Fairies Are Out And About On The Shortest Night Of The Year

To this day, in some parts of northern Europe Midsummer still is observed with bonfires and revelry. The custom goes back at least as far as the time of the ancient Druids, who on each solstice entreated the spirit world for help in keeping livestock healthy and producing an abundant summer crop. Sacred rituals—which sometimes included the sacrifice of live animals and even people—were held at numerous religious sites, including England’s Stonehenge.

In later centuries, christianized Europeans continued the celebrations, often on St. John’s Day, which usually falls a couple of days after the year’s longest day. And while the cooperation of pagan spirits no longer was enlisted, the spirits themselves continued to haunt people’s minds. Midsummer was thought to be one of a handful of days each year when the boundaries between the natural and supernatural realms faded, allowing ghosts, fairies, trolls, and even dragons to cross over into the living world, often to do mischief or harm. It was no accident that Shakespeare decided to set his most magical play on a Midsummer night. [Read more…] about MIDSUMMER SPIRITS

Ghost Food

What do ghosts eat? It depends on where in the world you are, and what millennium you’re in.

The ancient Greeks believed that the spirits of the dead descended to Hades, a very dark and bleak underworld, with some neighborhoods darker and bleaker than others. While military heroes and people who were especially virtuous ended up in the relatively penthouse-like Elysian Fields, the vast run of ordinary Greek ghosts found themselves wandering the sunless Meadows of Asphodel. Asphodel, a flower whose gray-white color represented death to the Greeks, was often planted on graves. In addition, poorer Greeks in the ancient world ate parts of the asphodel plant because it grew abundantly in the wild and they didn’t have to cultivate it or pay for it. So the Greeks believed that unless a person did something particularly heroic or otherwise notable in life, his or her spirit was destined to wander through, and dine on, white asphodel for the remainder of eternity. But this was at least a better fate than that of the spirits of criminals and cowards; post-death, bad or disreputable people found themselves in the deep, dark precinct of Hades known as Tartarus, where there was nothing to eat at all.

In contrast to ancient Greeks ghosts, spirits in the Buddhist and Taoist parts of Asia have usually been offered decent table fare. At least since medieval times—if not much earlier—many Asian peoples have made a periodic practice of setting out favorite foods and drinks for the spirits of their departed ancestors. And in some areas, this generosity sometimes extends to ghosts who are not even part of the family. For instance, in China, Thailand, and other countries, the midsummer month is called Ghost Month, and people make a special point of feeding wandering hungry ghosts during this period. On the 15th night of Ghost Month, people celebrate a special Ghost Festival. [Read more…] about WHAT DO GHOSTS EAT?

What Is It Like To Meet A Ghost?

If you’ve seen, heard, or felt a ghost, you are far from alone. Plenty of people in our own time as well as throughout centuries past have reported some sort of contact with a disembodied spirit. For just one example, around 80 percent of elderly people who have lost a spouse say they’ve seen their dead partner at least once since she or he passed away.

In addition, scientific research tells us that most people’s haunted experiences share many similarities with those of others. The research, conducted in the form of surveys taken by Britain’s Institute of Psychophysical Research in the late 1960s and early 1970s, reveals broad consensus concerning what it’s like to see a ghost, hear a ghost, or be touched by a ghost. [Read more…] about EXPERIENCING GHOSTS

The Ghosts Of Pets And Other Animals

Acording to scientific surveys of people who have experienced ghosts, more than four fifths of all apparitions are of men, women, and children who have died. However, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of disembodied spirits reported to British researchers were manifestations of animals.

The ghosts of pets are the non-human spirits that most frequently make themselves known to people. In fact, visits by dead pets to their former owners seem to be a fairly common occurrence. People who responded to two surveys taken by Britain’s Institute of Psychophysical Research reported more apparitions of cats than of any other animal. Ghost dogs were next, followed by the spirits of horses.

Other ghost animals that popped up either in the British survey or in other types of reports including the media include bears, pigs, poultry, hares, deer, and birds. In his 2012 book, Ghosts—A Natural History: 500 Years of Searching for Proof, author Roger Clarke mentions “a couple of phantom bears in London,” a 17th century preacher in Cornwall, England, who supposedly returned in the form of a “demonic black rooster,” and a white bird that purportedly appears to the inhabitants of Arundel Castle in Sussex, England, when one of them is about to die. Clarke adds that headless dogs and horses were a frequent theme of 19th century ghost stories. [Read more…] about ANIMAL GHOSTS

Marathon Dancing To Bring Back The Dead

The Ghost Dance was a short-lived religious movement that swept through Western Native American cultures during the years that straddled the final two decades of the 1800s. The Movement came along following an extended period of disease, displacement, starvation, and genocide visited on the Indian tribes as a result of the relentless westward expansion of white settlers backed by the deadly force of the U.S. Army. Native American spiritual leaders told their followers that the Ghost Dance would reunite them with the spirits of their dead, bring back the buffalo, which had been slaughtered to the point of near extinction by European Americans, and usher in a new era of prosperity, cooperation among the tribes, and an end to European-American encroachment.

The ritual, which involved ceremonial dances that lasted for five days, originated around 1870 among the Paiute tribe of what is now Nevada. In the late 1880s, preached and promoted by Paiute holy man Wovoka, the Ghost Dance began catching on rapidly among Native groups from Oklahoma to California. The ceremonial movements themselves were based on the circle dances that many groups had performed since prehistoric times. [Read more…] about GHOST DANCE

People Who Sense Ghosts Don’t Always See Them

Although most people who have had a paranormal experience report visual contact with one or more disembodied spirits, a significant minority say they sensed a ghost with faculties other than their eyes.

Out of 1,800 people who told British researchers they had encountered ghosts, 84 percent said they had seen the ghost or ghosts. However, 34 percent said they had heard a ghost speak or make some other sound—and of these, only 14 percent said they’d seen it at the same time. [Read more…] about SEEING AND SENSING GHOSTS

Can A Ghost Touch You—And What Does If Feel Like?

Are ghosts able, as in the illustration above, to put a hand on your shoulder and make you feel their icy grip? Or maybe we’re assuming too much, and their grip really isn’t so icy. . . .

Researchers Cecilia Green and Charles McCreery report in their scholarly book, Apparitions, that of 1,800 people surveyed concerning their paranormal experiences, 15 percent said that a ghost had touched them. And while in some of these cases interviewees claimed an apparition had placed cold hands on them, others told investigators that the touch had been warm and comforting. A number said a ghost’s clothes had brushed against them, and that they felt like ordinary clothing. [Read more…] about CAN GHOSTS TOUCH PEOPLE?

Can A Ghost Talk? And If So, What Do They Say?

In their book, Apparitions, Celia Green and Charles McCreery conclude that it is rare for a ghost to say anything during a manifestation. Of the 1,800 people who in two British surveys reported that they had experienced a ghost, only 14 percent claimed to have heard it talk as well as seen it. Another 14 percent said they had heard a ghost make some sort of sound—though not usually speech—without actually seeing the ghost. (In only 36 percent of the cases in which ghosts were heard but not seen did they actually speak.)

Rarer still is it for a ghost to speak at length.

Nonetheless, some respondents told researchers that they had held lengthy conversations with ghosts. A handful even said they had talked at length with a ghost while not even realizing it was a ghost until later learning that the person they’d spoken to had died days or weeks before the conversation took place. [Read more…] about DO GHOSTS SPEAK?

What’s The Reason Ghosts Come Clothed?

On first thought, it seems to make little sense for ghosts to wear clothes. After all, one advantage of being disembodied is that you wouldn’t have the physical needs of finding food to keep from going hungry, or wearing clothes to stay warm and otherwise protected from the elements. Then there’s the metaphysical conundrum of the ghostly clothing itself. Where would it come from? Are the garments ghosts in their own right, as well?

In his book, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, author and academic Owen Davies gathers several centuries of debate on this interesting issue. He quotes 19th century writer and hauntings expert Catherine Crowe as pointing out that there are other reasons for clothing aside from warmth and sex appeal. She adds that if ghosts are able to recreate the images of their living selves in order to appear before their survivors, there is no reason they couldn’t also recreate their clothing: If a spirit could “conceive of its former body it can equally conceive of its former habiliments, and so represent them, by the power of will to the eye, or present them to the constructive imagination of the seer.” [Read more…] about WHY DO GHOSTS WEAR CLOTHES?

What Does A Ghost Look Like?

Aalthough we don’t know for certain whether ghosts are real, we do know what they look like thanks to scientific surveys of 1,800 people who claim to have seen them. The surveys were conducted in 1968 and 1974 by Britain’s Institute of Psychophysical Research, and the results were reported in the 1975 book Apparitions, by Celia Green and Charles McCreery.

The researchers found that over 80 percent of ghosts were in the form of people, with the remainder taking the shape of animals and, occasionally, inanimate objects. The vast majority of animal ghosts were cats.

One surprising result of the surveys was that, rather than being transparent or translucent, most ghosts were described by people who had seen them as opaque—in other words, solid enough to block the view of whatever was behind them. The majority of apparitions also contained some color. However, a minority of ghosts are translucent or transparent, and it is also common for an opaque ghost to fade to transparency as it begins to disappear. [Read more…] about WHAT DO GHOSTS LOOK LIKE?