What Are Seances?

Quite simply, a seance, or séance, is an attempt to communicate with the dead, something people have been trying for thousands of years. In Homer’s epic Greek poem, the Odyssey, written nearly 3,000 years ago, the hero, Odysseus, spills the blood of a bull near the entrance to Hades in order to lure out the shades of the dead, several of whom he wishes to speak to. And in the Old Testament of the bible (Samuel 28:7-20), King Saul asks the Witch of Endor to summon the spirit of the prophet, Samuel, in order to ask him about the outcome of an upcoming battle.

Throughout most of history the vast majority of people have been afraid of ghosts, and contacting ghosts intentionally was usually the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. However, this attitude changed a bit in the mid-1800s with the rise of the Spiritualist movement. Spiritualists believe that not only is contact with the dead possible, but that it can also be beneficial, with spirits including those of departed friends, loved ones, and historical figures providing comfort and even practical advice. It was during the early days of Spiritualism that that the term “seance”—French for sitting together or gathering—came into popular use in the U.S. and Britain. [Read more…] about WHAT IS A SEANCE?

Which Country Has The Most Ghosts?

Britain, the nation that invented both the gothic ghost story and the eccentric pastime of ghost hunting, is the world’s most haunted country, with more ghosts per square mile than anywhere else on earth. This of course is not a provable assertion, but the Brits themselves are sure of it.

In the Introduction to his 2007 book, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, writer and academic Owen Davies tells us that in the 1940’s a folklorist in Warwickshire “calculated that there was one ghost to the square mile in his district.” According to Davies, if we assume the same density of disembodied spirits throughout all of England, we’d come of up with a ghostly population of around 50,000. And of course Scotland’s lonely expanses—the setting for Shakespeare’s Macbeth—are no less haunted than England.

“There are more ghosts seen, reported, and accepted in the British Isles than anywhere else on earth,” declares noted British ghost hunter Peter Underwood in his 1971 book, A Gazetteer of British Ghosts. [Read more…] about WORLD’S MOST HAUNTED COUNTRY

Every April The Train Ghosts Through Albany

Following Abraham Lincoln’s 1865 assassination, two coffins—one containing the president’s body and the other bearing the exhumed remains of his young son, Willie, who had died in the White House—were placed on a train pulled by a steam locomotive for transport back to the Lincolns’ home state of Illinois, where they would be buried. All along the route from Washington to Illinois, people lined the tracks to bid farewell to the president who had fought and won the Civil War.

The funeral train was made up of nine cars. The ninth car, which had been built to take the living president and his family on rail trips, was the one in which Lincoln and Willie were carried. [Read more…] about ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S GHOST TRAIN

What Is A White Lady?

White lady ghosts appear to people in cultures all over the world. White ladies are a type of traditional ghost—always female—that is invariably connected with a local legend of great personal misfortune. As the name suggests, they are almost always dressed in white.

Most stories that explain the appearance of white ladies involve romantic tragedies of one sort or another, with betrayals by a husband or lover being the most common, and the untimely death of a betrothed or other lover, or of the young woman and future white lady herself, running a close second.

White lady ghosts are almost exclusively rural manifestations, and they are known to haunt castles, houses, cemeteries, and even entire landscapes that are associated with the terrible loss they suffered in life. [Read more…] about WHITE LADIES

“It Is A Good Idea To Press One Eyeball Slightly. . .”

What should you do if a ghost suddenly looms before you? Right off the top, we can advise that you not scream and run—especially if it’s dark. This is because you could hurt yourself by tripping and falling, or by running into something. If you’re on a stairway, you could even take a neck-breaking tumble—which would no doubt then be blamed on the (probably) innocent ghost.

Also, it’s almost never a good idea to turn your back on something you think might be dangerous, be it a bear or a disembodied being.

Nor should you throw a rock or other object at the ghost just to see if it’s real; your projectile is is likely to travel right through the wraith and break something or injure someone on the other side. And, again, you wouldn’t pelt a bear with a rock, so why would you throw one at a ghost?

Beyond these few safety advisories, noted British ghost hunter Peter Underwood offers some further guidance on what to do if you see a ghost in his 1986 book, The Ghosts Hunter’s Guide. The thing that Underwood stresses most is to stay still and remain calm—ghosts almost never harm anyone. Their boo is worse than their bite.

“There is nothing to fear,” says Underwood. [Read more…] about WHAT TO DO IF YOU SEE A GHOST

Poltergeists Are Playful—But Not Much Fun

What are poltergeists? This is one supernatural question that most of us think we’re qualified to answer—after all, we’ve seen the movies. Therefore you likely already know that poltergeists are those most physical of disembodied spirits—that they are able to make noises, open and close doors, move furniture and other objects from one place to another, throw things, pull blankets off of beds, occasionally pinch, bruise, or even leave bite marks on people’s skin, and in other ways manipulate their surroundings in a playful, mischievous, or destructive manner. Of all the different kinds of ghosts, they’re probably the most worthy of worry—if you believe in them, that is—because they are capable of causing pain and property damage.

What most people might not know is that the term “poltergeist” was first used in print by Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther (1483-1546), who was a firm believer in the malicious activity of evil spirits.

Unlike other sorts of ghosts, poltergeists almost always remain invisible. According to a 19th century tract on ghosts quoted by Owen Davies in his 2007 book, The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts, “A ghost’s power of making noise, and exerting what seems to be great physical energy, is often in inverse ratio to his power to make himself generally visible, or, at all events, to his inclination to do so.” [Read more…] about WHAT IS A POLTERGEIST?

Ghosts, Classified By Kind. Which One’s In Your Attic?

How many kinds or types of ghost are there? Until recently, we would have said one “regular” disembodied type, and a handful of “walking dead” variations. But then we read Roger Clarke’s book, Ghosts—A Natural History: 500 Years Of Searching For Proof—and learned how wrong we were.

Clarke is British, and it turns out that during the mid- to late 20th Century a small group of British ghost hunters threw the same level of passion into classifying ghosts that lepidopterists from Britain once invested in capturing and classifying the world’s butterflies. Except, there are a lot fewer species of ghosts: eight to be exact. Or is it nine? Or twelve?

In a chapter titled “A Taxonomy of Ghosts,” Clarke relies heavily on the work of ghost hunter and ghost-story collector Peter Underwood to describe each of eight types of apparition. He begins with the most primitive kind, which Underwood called an “Elemental.” Elementals are ghosts that move little if at all; instead they glare at passers-by from a single location—often from within an old burial ground. Underwood described them as “race-memory manifestations” in that they usually are dim reflections from the distant mythological past of the community in which they occur. According to Clarke, American ghost hunters might consider elementals to be demons rather than ghosts, as it is not clear whether they ever were human. [Read more…] about THE EIGHT TYPES OF GHOSTS

More Folks Than You Might Think Have Seen A Ghost

Personal encounters with the supernatural are surprisingly common among people in cultures around the world. In fact, an impressive portion of us have had a personal experience with a spook. In the majority of cases, the ghosts are those of departed loved ones, including pets. But a significant number of reported paranormal events involve the disembodied spirits of complete strangers.

In addition, according to a roundup of public polling results published in Psychology Today, belief in ghosts among Americans almost tripled between 1978 and 2005. [Read more…] about HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE GHOSTS?

The Walking Dead: Ghosts You Can Touch And Feel

Acording to European folklore, not all ghosts are vaporous, intangible spirits. Some of the dead return to haunt the living in the same bodies that carried them through life.

From the Middle Ages forward, these material or “solid” ghosts were called “revenants,” a word derived from the Latin word for “returning.” Prior to medieval times, the Vikings talked of animated corpses they called draugar (singular: (draugr or draug) which sometimes guarded buried treasures and/or possessed magical powers. [Read more…] about REVENANTS, VAMPIRES, & ZOMBIES