Our Ghosts Have Been With Us Since The Beginning

Humankind has been haunted from the start—or at least for as long as we’ve been able to think, and to imagine. Tens of thousands of years ago, among our first thoughts not related our own physical needs were our speculations concerning what became of us once we were no longer alive. In stone-age cultures across the world, people concluded that the essence of a person survived beyond death. Ghosts—mostly but not always invisible to the living—became an important component of our humanity.

A ghost is an (usually) intangible remnant or reflection of a person’s individuality or consciousness that dwells on after that person has ceased to exist in the physical sense. The difference between a ghost and a “soul” is that, while a soul is usually thought of as a traveler to an otherworldly realm such as paradise or Hades, a ghost is earthbound, continuing to move among those it left behind. [Read more…] about WHAT IS A GHOST?