by Editor
on November 10, 2014
The Ruins Of Carscreugh Castle In Scotland Are Said To Be Haunted By The Spirit Of A White Pig. But The Horses Are Real. Photo: David Baird
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. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on November 9, 2014
The Train That Carried Lincoln’s Coffin. The Train Itself Became a Ghost.
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. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on November 9, 2014
“I See Dead People”: The Sixth Sense
No collection of classic ghost movies would be complete without The Sixth Sense, the 1999 supernatural thriller that catapulted M. Night Shyamaian into prominence as a director. The movie stars Bruce Willis as child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe and Haley Joel Osment as Cole Sear, a boy with the ability to see the spirits of the dead. Crowe sets out to try to help Cole with his unusual problems, but by the end of the movie it becomes apparent that the boy has been helping his doctor at least as much as his doctor has been helping him. The boy also provides assistance to numerous other disembodied beings along the way.
Although the movie itself is not particularly chilling, the line, “I see dead people,” which Cole whispers to Crowe, became an instant classic in its own right and has remained in popular use ever since—often being employed in a humorous or ironic context, such as when people are driving past a cemetery. [continue reading…]
by Editor
on November 9, 2014
La Llorona—Latin America’s Most Famous “White Lady”—in la Plaza de Santa Catarina, Coyoacán, Mexico. Photo: Sandrajd01
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. [continue reading…]
