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HOW TO REPORT A GHOST

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Tell your own ghost story
Ghost Corridor. Photo: Otello Amaducci

Seen A Ghost? Who You Gonna Call?

So, you’ve seen a ghost—you’re sure of it. And you’re dying to talk about it, but you’re afraid people will just laugh. Worse, they might think you’re off your rocker. How can you get someone to just listen?

Fortunately, as with so many things, the internet holds the answer. The popular website Your Ghost Stories really wants to hear about your real-life interactions with spooks. Right at the top of their home page you’ll find the following friendly invitation:

“Your Ghost Stories is a place where you can find all kinds of resources regarding real ghosts and true hauntings cases, but more importantly, it is a site for publishing, sharing and reading real ghosts experiences from real people like you. It has come to our attention that many people have had this kind of unexplained experiences, and it makes for wonderful readings, maybe at times disturbing, but most often, leaving you wondering what is happening on the other side of material life and our physical senses.” [Read more…] about HOW TO REPORT A GHOST

THE EIGHT TYPES OF GHOSTS

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How Many Kinds Of Ghosts Are There
Ghosts Of A Feather . . .

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

CREEPY PASTAS

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Anonymous Chalk Drawing Of Creepy Pasta Character Slenderman. Photo: mdl70
Anonymous Chalk Drawing Of Creepypasta Character Slenderman. Photo:MDL70

Creepy Pastas—AKA Contemporary Urban Ghost Lore

Ghost stories have taken a number of different forms over the centuries. Here in early 21st Century America, the newest incarnation is the “creepypasta,” a scary tale that circulates on the internet. Creepypastas usually originate among amateur storytellers who are fascinated by the supernatural; often these writers have been influenced by popular horror movies and online games. Creepypasta characters and other story elements frequently are shared and recycled among people who create them.

As with any creative undertaking practiced by large numbers of enthusiasts rather than by professionals, quality among creepypastas varies widely. Some are well written; many are not. Some are entertaining, while a sizable percentage suffer from predictability. [Read more…] about CREEPY PASTAS

THE SPIRIT OF THE DEAD WATCHING

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A ghost painting
Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Painting “The Spirit Of The Dead Keep Watch”

Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Ghost Story On Canvas

French post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin worked in Tahiti from 1891 to 1893 and then returned to Paris with a trove of canvases. Among them was The Spirit of the Dead Watching, or The Spirit of the Dead Keep Watch, which was inspired by an uncanny event Gauguin said he experienced with his 14-year-old Tahitian mistress. According to the artist, he came home late one night to find the girl nearly out of her mind with fright at what she believed to be the presence of a ghost in their house. Afterward, Gauguin decided to paint the scene more or less as his lover had described it, with the greenish spirit of an old woman sitting woodenly nearby as the girl lay on the bed, petrified with fright.

Gauguin reported that he chose his colors specifically to recreate the girl’s feeling of dread: Purple on the wall for its unsettling effect, the glowing yellow of the bedclothes and the eyes of the ghost for its eeriness, and of course the ghastly, unnatural complexion of the uninvited spirit. [Read more…] about THE SPIRIT OF THE DEAD WATCHING

HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE GHOSTS?

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Do Ghosts Exist Only In Our Minds?
Do Ghosts Exist Only In Our Minds?

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?

HOW THE OUIJA BOARD KILLED ITS MAKER

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Though William Fuld Did Not Invent The Ouija Board He Was The Game's Marketing Mastermind. Photo: Courtesy, WilliamFuld.com
Though William Fuld Did Not Invent The Ouija Board He Was The Marketing Mastermind Behind The Game’s Popularity. Photo: Courtesy, WilliamFuld.com

Did The Ouija Board Cause William Fuld’s Death?

William Fuld did not invent the Ouija board; that credit belongs to Charles Kennard, another Baltimore businessman who came up with the idea of commercializing the “spirit board,” a previously homemade divination tool or toy used by spiritualists in the late 1800s. Nor did Fuld name the Ouija board. In fact, the Ouija board apparently named itself.

However, Fuld was the great entrepreneur who took control of Kennard’s company in 1892, the year after the Ouija business started, and ran it for three and a half decades. In the interim, Fuld successfully promoted his talking board, popularizing it until it became a bonafide international craze. [Read more…] about HOW THE OUIJA BOARD KILLED ITS MAKER

FIRST GHOST IN A STARRING ROLE

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Clytemnestra's Ghost Is Standing On The Left. This Period Illustration May Look Tame—But An Audience Member Died Of Fright At The Play's Premiere
Clytemnestra’s Ghost Is On The Left. This Period Illustration May Look Tame—But Legend Says A Female Audience Member Died Of Fright At The Play’s Premiere.

Before 458 BC, Literary Ghosts Played Minor Parts

Elsewhere on this site, we’ve discussed ghosts who played “walk-on” roles in Homer’s epic Greek poems, the Illiad and The Odyssey. We also mentioned the one significant—though very brief—ghost story in the Old Testament.

It wasn’t until about four centuries after Homer that Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright known as “the father of tragedy,” gave us one of the first fictional works in which a ghost took a central dramatic role. The work is called The Eumenides, and it is the final play in a trilogy collectively known as the Oresteia, all of which deal with the murder and its aftermath of King Agamemnon by his wife, Clytemnestra, in the wake of the Trojan War. [Read more…] about FIRST GHOST IN A STARRING ROLE

HOW OUIJA BOARDS GOT NAMED

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A Modern Commercial Ouija Ouija Board Intended As Entertainment. Photo: Visitor7
A Modern Commercial Pre-1966 William Fuld Ouija Board Intended As Entertainment. Photo: Visitor7

The Story Of The ‘Mystifying Oracle’ That Named Itself

The story of how the Ouija board was given the name Ouija (wee-ja) board actually is more amusing than it is mysterious. Many people assume that Ouija is a combination of the French (oui) and German (ja) words for “yes.” But it is not.

According to Ouija historian Robert Murch, the board suggested its own name one day in the early 1890s while it was being used by Elijah Bond, one of the original investors in the company that manufactured it, and members of Bond’s family. When the group asked the board what they should call it, it spelled out, “Ouija.” When they asked what Ouija meant, the board reportedly told them, “Good Luck.” [Read more…] about HOW OUIJA BOARDS GOT NAMED

MY OWN PERSONAL GHOST STORY

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An Indigenous Village In The Amazon Region. Photo: Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre
Dwellings At An Isolated Indigenous Village In The Amazon Forest, Similar To The One That Burned. Photo: Gleilson Miranda/Governo do Acre

I Didn’t See Her. I Saw Proof Of The Fear She Caused.

In the Peruvian rain forest, while working as a travel journalist the late 1980s, I saw vivid, concrete evidence of the power with which the ghostly had gripped the hearts and imaginations of a community whose members still lived by the rhythms of their most distant ancestors. I was ascending the Amazon River by paddlewheel boat from Leticia, Colombia to Iquitos, Peru in the company of a small group of other American writers, all of us traveling at the invitation of a Peruvian adventure-tour operator. From time to time the boat would pull to the riverbank and we would disembark either to search for wildlife or to visit villages on or near the edges of the river. Some of these villages belonged to native groups that only a few decades previously had experienced their first contact with Europeanized Peruvians.

One afternoon, as our boat churned toward the landing for an Indian village set farther back in the jungle, our Peruvian guides pointed out an unusual and disturbing sight: Wispy columns of gray smoke were rising from the forest canopy directly above the place where they knew the village to be—much more smoke than a few cooking fires ever would produce. Also strange was that, even after the crew had dropped the aluminum ramp down which we all trooped to shore, not a soul came to greet us. The forest before us was dead quiet. [Read more…] about MY OWN PERSONAL GHOST STORY