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?

What Color Is A Ghost?

No, ghosts are not always white, or black, or translucent—and they’re certainly not always invisible.

And how do we know, one way or the other? Because, regardless of whether ghosts are “real,” thousands of people have seen them, and some of those people have shared the details of their experiences with scientific researchers. Between 1968 and 1974, the Institute of Psychophysical Research in Britain interviewed 1,800 people who said they had seen one or more ghosts. The fascinating results were published in the 1975 book, Apparitions, by Celia Green and Charles McCreery. [Read more…] about WHAT COLOR ARE GHOSTS?

Did Ghosts Form The Basis Of All Human Thought?

In several of his books, the so-called father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, speculated about the role that ghosts played in the human psyche, as well as in our development as a species. And while we now know that much of what Freud said about human sexuality was probably wrong, many of the things he wrote about the ghostly still seem accurate.

In The Uncanny, for instance, he remarked on the powerful grip in which the ghostly continues to hold us in spite of all our technological advancements: “To many people, the acme of the uncanny is represented by anything having to do with death, bodies, spirits, revenants, and ghosts. . . . in hardly any other sphere has our thinking and feeling changed so little since primitive times or the old been so well preserved, under a thin veneer, as in our relation to death.” [Read more…] about SIGMUND FREUD AND THE GHOSTLY

When We Began Talking To Ghosts

Acording to the central belief of the religious and philosophical movement known as Spiritualism, not only is it possible to contact the spirits of the dead, but such contact can be beneficial, with the living receiving comfort, information, and advice from the departed. These communications frequently are exchanged through the intercession of facilitators known as mediums—people who have a special sensitivity for talking to, hearing, and even seeing spirits. Traditionally, spirits speak through a medium during a ceremony called a seance, which usually involves several people including the medium sitting around a table in the dark. However, contemporary mediums can give “spirit readings” in almost any setting, and people can even contact spirits on their own through such means as a Ouija board.

Spiritualism traces it roots to the Rochester area of upstate New York, where in 1848 three sisters, Kate (1838–92), Leah (1814–90), and Margaret (or Maggie) (1836–93) Fox, began claiming they could communicate with people who had died. Kate, the youngest Fox sister, was the most prominent medium of the three, and she allegedly received paranormal messages through coded knocks or “rappings” that she elicited from spirits during group sessions in houses that supposedly were haunted. These sessions—the first seances—became extremely popular, and soon a number of charismatic mediums including the Fox sisters were making a living traveling the country and helping people speak to the dead. By the early 1850s, seances had caught on in other English-speaking countries as well, especially in Britain, and the simple “table rappings” soon evolved into elaborate performances involving musical instruments that played by themselves and visible spirits who floated in the air. [Read more…] about SPIRITUALISM