GHOST

In folklore and mythology, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead human or animal that can appear to the living. Descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to realistic, lifelike visions. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a decesed person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a ritual/scance.

The belief in manifestations of the spirits of the dead is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to rest the spirits of the dead.
Ghosts are generally described as solitary essences that haunt particular locations, objects, or people they were associated with in life, though stories of phantom armies, trains, ships, and even the ghosts of animals have also been recounted.

 The human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it appears to have been widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress.

While deceased ancestors are universally regarded as venerable, and often believed to have a continued presence in some form of afterlife, the spirit of a deceased person which remains present in the material world (viz. a ghost) is regarded as an unnatural or undesirable state of affairs and the idea of ghosts or revenants is associated with a reaction of fear. This is universally the case in pre-modern folk cultures, but fear of ghosts also remains an integral aspect of the modern ghost story, Gothic horror, and other horror fiction dealing with the supernatural.

Another widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma, which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as synthesizing Adam, as a living soul, from the dust of the Earth and the breath of God.

In many traditional accounts, ghosts were often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance (vengeful ghosts), or imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of a ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own ghostly double or "fetch" is a related omen of death.

White ladies were reported to appear in many rural areas, and supposed to have died tragically or suffered trauma in life. White Lady legends are found around the world. Common to many of them is the theme of losing or being betrayed by a husband or fiance. They are often associated with an individual family line or regarded as a harbinger of death similar to a banshee.

There are many references to ghosts in Mesopotamian religions – the religions of Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and other early states in Mesopotamia. Traces of these beliefs survive in the later Abrahamic religions that came to dominate the region.^[26] Ghosts were thought to be created at time of death, taking on the memory and personality of the dead person. They traveled to the netherworld, where they were assigned a position, and led an existence similar in some ways to that of the living. Relatives of the dead were expected to make offerings of food and drink to the dead to ease their conditions. If they did not, the ghosts could inflict misfortune and illness on the living. Traditional healing practices ascribed a variety of illnesses to the action of ghosts, while others were caused by gods or demons.

Although parapsychologists prefer the word “apparitions” to “ghosts”, many colorful terms are commonly used to describe specific types of ghosts:

Apparition: defined as something that unexpectedly appears or becomes visible, the preferred term of parapsychologists. Synonymous with phantasm (fantasm) and phantom (fantom) and specter (spectre).

Doppelgänger: in legend, the often sinister ghostly double of a person that haunts its living counterpart.

Gjenganger: a spirit that has returned from the “other side”.

Poltergeist: An invisible and mischievous ghost that makes its presence known with noises, wrappings, and quick manifestations of psychic energy such as movements of objects

Spook: From the Dutch, synonymous with the word “ghost”.

Wraith: From uncertain origin, 10 another word for ghost that bears many contradictory definitions from “guardian” to “omen of death”.

Ghost hunting

Ghost hunting is the process of investigating locations that are reported to be haunted by ghosts. Typically, a ghost hunting team will attempt to collect evidence that they see as supportive of paranormal activity. Ghost hunters often use a variety of electronic devices

 the EMF meter, digital thermometer, handheld and static digital video cameras, such as thermographic (or infrared) and night vision digitalaudio recorder; and computer.

Traditional techniques such as conducting interviews and researching the history of a site are also employed. Some ghost hunters refer to themselves as a paranormal investigator. Ghost hunting has been criticized for its absence of scientific method; no scientific body has been able to confirm the existence of ghosts. Ghost hunting is considered a pseudoscience by a majority of educators, academics, science writers, and sceptics.

The Internet, films (like Ghostbusters) and television programs (like Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters, The Othersiders and Ghost Adventures), along with the increasing availability of high-tech equipment, are thought to be partly responsible for the boom in ghost hunting. Despite its lack of acceptance in academic circles, the popularity of ghost-hunting reality TV shows have influenced a number of individuals to take up the pursuit. Small businesses offering ghost-hunting equipment and paranormal investigation services have increased in the last decade. Many offer electromagnetic field (EMF) meters, infrared motion sensors and devices billed as "ghost detectors". The paranormal boom is such that some small ghost-hunting related businesses are enjoying increased profits through podcast and web site advertising, books, DVDs, videos and other commercial enterprises.

The Ghost Hunter’s Tool Kit

Electromagnetic-field meter
Digital sound recorder and audio software
Camera or video camera
Thermometer
Infrared camera
Night-vision goggles
Thermal-vision camera
Geiger counter.Ghost hunters claim to have captured one of the most "impressive" and "clear" photographs of an apparition ever.

The paranormal investigators say the image shows the eerie figure of a man sat in an old community venue and they are insisting that his appearance is proof that ghost exists. Jodie Carman, who was on the ghost hunt with her local club, says the figure's head and shoulders can clearly be made out in the chilling picture. She says he was sitting a few rows in front of her at the venue, even though no one else was in front of her at the time the photo was taken. Shocked at what she had captured, Jodie and fellow ghost hunter Chris Hudson shone a torch where the figure had been - but no one was there. Full time mum-of-one Jodie, 34, claims the photo was taken not long after midnight in the old community centre in Norwich, which the group are allowed to use.

A squadron of the Royal Air Force assembled to take a mundane photograph, but after the picture was developed the squad quickly realized that this was no ordinary picture. Standing behind one of his mates was the two days deceased Freddy Jackson. Jackson was a mechanic for the Royal Air Force and served onboard the H.M.S. Daedalus. He had been working when we was killed in a freak-accident by an air plane propeller, but Jackson did not let his death get in the way of him showing up on time for the group photo two days later. Several of the other men in the photo confirmed that it was in fact Jackson’s face in the background of the picture.

On November 19, 1995 Wem Town Hall in England caught on fire. The fire raged on all through the night until the building was nothing but rubble. As firefighters battled the flames, a local citizen, Tony O'Rahilly, decided to snap some pictures of the event. In one of his photographs there appears to be the clear image of a little girl standing in front of the inferno. No one remembered a young girl being at the scene and there was definitely not a young girl in the burning building. Some believe this is the ghost of a young girl named Jane Churm who, in 1677, accidentally started a fire that destroyed many homes in the town. Jane also died in the fire. Perhaps the photo is just smoke creating the amazing illusion of a girl or perhaps it is a real ghost.

In the summer of 1954, Reverend K.F. Ford was taking pictures of his church that is located in England. While snapping pictures he accidentally captured one of the most famous and perhaps undeniable pictures of a ghost ever taken. In the picture is what appears to be a monk with a ghastly face. The photo has been examined and it was determined that it is neither a double exposure nor had the negative been tampered with.

 

Scientific view

The physician John Ferriar wrote an essay towards a theory of apparitions in 1813 in which he argued that sightings of ghosts were the result of optical illusions. Later the French physician Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont published On Hallucinations: Or, the Rational History of Apparitions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulismin 1845 in which he claimed sightings of ghosts were the result of hallucinations.

David Turner, a retired physical chemist, suggested that ball lightning could cause inanimate objects to move erratically. Joe Nickell of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry wrote that there was no credible scientific evidence that any location was inhabited by spirits of the dead. Limitations of human perception and ordinary physical explanations can account for ghost sightings; for example, air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, or lights from a passing car reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes people to believe that they have 'seen ghosts'. Reports of ghosts "seen out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of human peripheral vision. According to Nickell, peripheral vision can easily mislead, especially late at night when the brain is tired and more likely to misinterpret sights and sounds.

According to research in anomalistic psychology visions of ghosts may arise from hypnagogic hallucinations ("waking dreams" which are experienced in the transitional states to and from sleep). In a study of two experiments into alleged hauntings (Wiseman et al. 2003) came to the conclusion "that people consistently report unusual experiences in ‘haunted' areas because of environmental factors, which may differ across locations." Some of these factors included "the variance of local magnetic Žfields, size of location and lighting level stimuli of which witnesses may not be consciously aware".

Some researchers, such as Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada, have speculated that changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Sound is thought to be another cause of supposed sightings. Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the visual and auditory systems, was speculated upon as a possible explanation for haunted houses as early as 1921.

Explanations of ghosts supposedly dodging physical laws (like being semi-transparent or able to pass through walls) date back to Cambridge Platonist Henry Moore in the 17^th century who suggested that souls (and therefore ghosts) are essentially four-dimensional beings, an idea that Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner promoted in the 19^th century. Using Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland as his foundation, Carl Sagan in the print version of Cosmos stated:

“If a fourth-dimension creature existed it could, in our three-dimensional universe, appear and dematerialize at will, change shape remarkably, pluck us out of locked rooms, and make us appear from nowhere.”

-Carl Sagan.

The problem is that most ghost lovers go the easier 'doesn't follow physical laws' route and call it a day. In reality they (though they don't realize it) mean 'doesn't follow three dimensional physical laws'.

Apophenia (seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data) in conjunction with strong emotions can explain many ghost sightings. This combination was used by Carl Sagan to explain the Martian canals seen by Percival Lowell:

"There is no doubt that the Mars canals of Percival Lowell were of intelligent origin. The only question is which side of the telescope the intelligence was on. Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves."

                                                                                                                                     -Carl Sagan.