Folklore: Ghosts

Subject: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 22 May 08 - 11:36 AM

On another thread, UFOs in the news, I've just asked myself a question I can't readily answer: ...ever watched Most Haunted or any of the such-like programmes that litter the sky-channels these days? I used to believe in the supernatural until I started watching those...

That said, from where comes our ability to fear such things if they don't exist?

Oo-er. Now, I know May isn't exactly the traditional time to be talking of ghosts & hauntings, but it might be interesting to share some ideas & experiences in this respect. After all, most everyone I know has experience of the supernatural in one form or another...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Paul Burke
Date: 22 May 08 - 11:41 AM

from where comes our ability to fear such things if they don't exist?

Imagination. The knowledge that your beliefs about reality could be wrong.

I've never experienced anything that I interpreted as supernatural.... except once, ill in hospital, I dreamed that a dying old man in a nearby bed was trying to steal my body.....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 08 - 01:00 PM

He probably was, Paul.

Imagination is one source of fear, yes, but it doesn't account for the huge differences in the amount of emotion that can be invoked by imagining different things.

There are also other things at play in the responses, Horatio.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 May 08 - 01:03 PM

Tell me, just what is Folk? :)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 May 08 - 02:59 PM

Fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable because it's unknown--some or any kind of uncontrollable-because-unknown--is the omnipresent condition of life. The belief that there is (or just might be) some sort of supernatural face that can be put on the unknown, while uncomfortable, is incomparably more acceptable to many of us than just an empty, perilous, chance universe. At least then we can imagine that we know something about whatever may threaten us.   Ghosts and other bogeys actually help us have a handle on things, and to a degree calm our fears.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 May 08 - 06:39 PM

Some of it is no doubt due to our own fears/guilts that the things we do will come back to get us.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Hawker
Date: 22 May 08 - 06:45 PM

Ebbie,
Ghosts are some of the stuff folklore is built around, some of the best folk songs involve appearances of dead loved ones. It may at face value appear to be a subject which is a little off track - but more on it than little green men!

Sedayne......Oh! But the DO exist.................don't they? ;0)

Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 May 08 - 07:18 PM

Ah, Lucy, I'm one of those who not only believes in ghosts - with good reason - but is of the opinion that 'ghost' is too broad a brush. There are a number of entities and designations for them.

I said that about 'folk' only because ghosthood (!) is another of those open-ended, controversial concepts.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Sorcha
Date: 22 May 08 - 07:37 PM

Yes, I've had my 'experiences' but they were all entirely subjective....so I can't say one way or the other.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 May 08 - 07:50 PM

I am not sure it is an ability to fear...rather an innate sense which may have been passed down for thousands of years, through the collective genes and, yes, about anything which is unknown, uncontrollable, new, etc.

I've written of some of my experiences before on Mudcat and had some published. I'll see if I can dredge up one or two from the d-e-e-p, d-a-r-k dungeon of ye olde threads.**bg**

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: frogprince
Date: 22 May 08 - 07:55 PM

No personal experience with ghosts, and I'm very skeptical, if only from pretty heavy conditioning. But I've known a good number of people by now, neither stupid, unstable, nor gullible, who have had "ghost" experiences I can't discount. Not one of the alleged
"entities" in these cases has appeared to be the least bit malevalent.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 22 May 08 - 08:17 PM

I have felt the hair standing up on the back of my neck, the goose pimples on my arms, the overwhelming urge to get the hell out of dodge! It wasn't a ghost in this case, just an unknown animal that had scrabbled up onto the rear porch roof (made of tin)and was making a screaming noise like I've never heard before (and hope to never hear again!) I did manage to get outside to look but it was already gone.

I guess you could categorize that as more of a ghoul than a ghost. Couldn't have been a banshee, my blood didn't freeze!

On another night (in the same house) my golden retriever heard something that my wife and I didn't and bolted up from sleeping into a four point stance and let out a "WOOF!" that was far bigger (and deeper)than she was. I saw it start at the tip of her tail and travel through her body! Didn't scare me as much as the first event did but it made us jump badly.

My mother and Grandmother were watching an old vampire movie in the dark one night when my Grandmother's cocker spaniel decided to go down the staircase (behind them) one step at a time, forefeet then backfeet. Thump thump, pause thump thump. I wish I could have seen their faces!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 May 08 - 12:07 AM

That must've been a surprise! Here's a little bit I wrote about being a kid and reading Dracula late at night in a big old house:

Mentally she told herself to go back to sleep and forget the horrors of the book she'd just read. Just as she was drifting off again, she heard a thump above her head. She drew the covers tighter about her, and lay stiff with fear, heart beating rapidly. There it went again, a thump and a sort of drag, followed by footsteps. Even though she knew it couldn't be, she imagined Dracula's minions dragging his coffin across the attic floor above her. It couldn't be she told herself. It just couldn't! All she could do was lie there, tensed with fear, waiting for daylight to break the spell of Stoker's tale of vampires, to bring her back to the real world of her family, pets and friends. Eventually, she did drift off to a troubled sleep, a wariness keeping her alert, even in sleep, ready to scream, run, or fight if the need arose.

(As it turned out, my brother was in the attic, going through an old trunk!)

HERE is one of my true ghost stories.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 May 08 - 01:14 AM

I too have had a number of 'incidents'. Just about all my life, actually, but the most recent sequential events were since I've come to Juneau, Alaska.

Here's one I like to dwell on.

I was the caretaker/docent of a house museum for a number of years and among other oddities was this:

All summer my first year there I was frequently aware of a male form seated behind a large desk that faced the door. Each morning I would glance into the library and if I saw 'him', I'd smile and say internally: Good morning, Judge.

(This house was the Judge's retirement home where he died at the age of 82 in 1939, after a long and influential career in turn of the century Alaska.)

Time went on and in late September the Judge's wife's niece died. This woman was the one who had preserved the house and promoted the Judge's career and Alaskan history. She had sold the house in 1984 to the state of Alaska and moved across town. During that summer she would come up and have tea with me and discuss the house, its collection and always, her beloved Judge.

She had had a brief marriage- he had died, in the house, as it happens - within five years of cancer.

And then she died. And I never saw the man at the desk again. I no longer feel that it was the Judge, it was Jack all along. Waiting for his Ruth.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Anne Lister
Date: 23 May 08 - 08:30 AM

I've had a few experiences that are hard to explain in logical terms,and when I was working in prisons I heard several tales from prisoners in different prisons which were also hard to explain - and from people who said they didn't want to believe in ghosts but it was the only explanation.
OTOH, my husband works in (and takes ghost tours around) a building supposedly one of the most haunted in Wales and he's a confirmed sceptic. Partly at least because of some of the dottier "medium-or-rather-large" types who turn up and claim to be in contact with an event or a person that has nothing to do with the (fully known) history of the house. There's a webcam set up each night at the house, courtesy of the BBC, and some of the images spotted by the credulous are not exactly convincing evidence!
My own experiences are only unnerving because there is no obvious explanation for them, and a lot of people are scared of ghosts because of the various media depictions of vengeful nasties.

Anne

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Jeanie
Date: 24 May 08 - 05:20 AM

My most recent experience, like Ebbie's, was in a museum: in this case the museum is a former school that has preserved one of the rooms as an authentic Victorian classroom that is visited by 21st children in costume, who have a lesson taught by a "Victorian teacher".

I had gone there to watch a lesson, as I had just been taken onto the team of Victorian teachers. There were three of us in the classroom - the museum director, the teacher and me, waiting for the school group to arrive. No other visitors in the building at the time. Suddenly we heard, apparently outside the window ( in the former school's playground) the familiar sound of chattering, excited children. "Ah, they've arrived !" ....This burst of sound then suddenly stopped as abruptly as it had started. We looked out of the window...down the corridor....nothing.   

The children's bus pulled into the car park over the road 10 minutes later.

I have heard an explanation for this phenomenon being that walls or objects can act as some kind of sound recording devices (rather like magnetic tape), and that under the right circumstances, what they have recorded can be heard being played back. Whatever it was, three of us heard it very clearly and at the same time. Those walls would certainly have absorbed a great many children's voices: it only closed down as a school in the 1980s.

In that classroom, and also some years previously when I was acting as an Anglo-Saxon at the West Stow living history reconstructed village, I have had the very strong feeling of a presence of people who are very happy to see and be around something familiar - like I am being welcomed by them as an old friend.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Darowyn
Date: 24 May 08 - 07:33 AM

Our last house, before we moved down here to Malvern had originally been an extension to the Victorian House next door. Our (wonderfully grand) sitting room/lounge had originally been built as a small ballroom, and we did a lot of work exposing the original wainscotting and restoring the ceiling.
I used to enter the house, when the house was empty and I was alone and very often, as I opened the front door, I could hear the sound of a piano playing in the lounge.
We didn't have a piano, nor did any of our neighbours. Not in the twentieth century anyway.
I liked it, whoever it had been, they were good! The repertoire was not what I would have chosen, parlour ballads and some light operetta, but it was music for parties, and the house always felt like a happy place.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 May 08 - 09:51 AM

I love it. Whenever I 'tune in' to a previous time it reminds me of how connected we all are and therefore how connected we will remain into the future.

Often when I came home at night at this same house museum, just before I put the key in the door I listened to an animated dinner party going on inside. I heard the murmur of voices, both talking and laughing, and the clink of china and silverware. When I turned the key, all was silent.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: topical tom
Date: 24 May 08 - 12:01 PM

My paranormal experiences have had to do with unexplained noises in
houses and voices of people who could not be there.
   I have an open mind on this subject.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 May 08 - 12:59 PM

Topical Tom, you seem to be about where I was, for years. And then one day I wondered: Just how much information do I require?

So now I freely admit that I am convinced.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Sedayne (Astray)
Date: 25 May 08 - 12:44 PM

So what are we dealing with here - a truly supernatural sentience, or something more scientific? Or rather something that might be explained one day, rather like that classic old Nigel Kneale story The Stone Tape in which a bunch of scientists came acropper trying to find new recording medium whilst fetched up in in a haunted house...

So is it a case of more in heaven & earth than is dreamt of in philosophy? Or more in philosophy than is dreamt of in heaven & earth?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 May 08 - 12:55 PM

"So is it a case of more in heaven & earth than is dreamt of in philosophy? "

Sedayne, I think you've got it. My belief is that it is a normal phenomenon that most people just don't accept. I also believe that way back into the ages it has been recognized and utilized.

I believe that the shamans of native cultures all over the world and the priests of more prosaic organizations have always known it, that it was taught down generations to the select few.

It is my contention that there is no reason why the common hordes should not know this. There will always be people, I think, to whom the thought never occurs but the converse is also true: There are many people who accept it and search for more.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Amos
Date: 25 May 08 - 04:18 PM

I had an odd slightly extranormal experience today. We were at a nice little brakfast restaurant chowing down with a friend and I noticed our waitress, a pleasant young lady, getting a hug from another woman who worked there. I heard the older girl say to the younger, "I forgot to wish you happy birthday!". Being a social sort of beast, when next the young lady came around, I asked her if it was her birthday, and wished her a happy one. She was kinda dumfounded and wanted to know how I knew it was. She was really surprised that I had known it was in fact her birthday.

When I told her I overheard the older gal wishing her a happy birthday she looked at me most strangely, and swore the lady never said such a thing. No-one else heard it, either.

Bizarre coincidence between my haphazard delusions and the real world? Maybe. It wouldn't be the first time they coincided!! :D


A

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 25 May 08 - 05:49 PM

Perhaps these are recordings as we all emit an electrical field and when taken together, or in a very stressful moment when that field might be more intense, could impinge itself upon whatever material might be changed by it.

Maybe these are areas where alternate dimensions come in contact with each other and the aether is thin.

maybe some of us are more attuned to these things where some of us are just plain "deaf"?

Does it hurt to wonder?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Bill D
Date: 25 May 08 - 09:32 PM

It doesn't hurt to wonder....but guess who has never had anything even slightly resembling a paranormal experience? *grin*
...and up until about the age or 18 or so, I tried!

I sure wish I knew what wiring was different between you 'sensitive' folks and dull, unreceptive li'l ol' me.

I suspect it is extra neurons in the sub-parietal synermelding compaction lobe...sort of a "Photoshop for concepts".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 May 08 - 10:33 PM

"Perhaps these are recordings as we all emit an electrical field and when taken together, or in a very stressful moment when that field might be more intense, could impinge itself upon whatever material might be changed by it." The Chief

Maybe so- b, although I don't know about others, I seem to have no control whatever over it, it shows up when and why it wishes.

Bill D, how about when you have fallen in love? Didn't that feel somewhat paranormal? I think they are related.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Bill S from Adelaide
Date: 26 May 08 - 08:57 AM

In 1975, I bought a larger old terrace house in Cheadle Hulme, 8 miles south of Manchester, as far away as you could live and travel for free on the train if you worked for BR.
We decorated and furnished the front room, but the back living room was never furnished, except for an antique settle. M was never comfortable with the room, but we used it When we had a painter and decorator moonlighting for us, he wouldn't even go through to get to tke kitchen, he brought his .own tea.
In 1974, I went to Sidmouth Folk Festival for a week, M was working in a nursing home. She wasn't feelng too well and compared notes with one of her work colleagues who was pregnant at the time. She managed to convince herself she was expecting which put her in an irrational panic while she waited for me to get back. She also polished of most of a bottle of gin. I came in and could hear her talking to someone. The followng day she told me that she had been desperate for someone to talk to and was reciting Shakespeare when a lady came in from the back door, sat down and listened, getting up and leaving when I arrived. I admit I credited this to the gin and forgot about it. As well, the next day I got a testing kit which gave the all clear.
A couple of weeks later, we were coming into the room from the kitchen, when she stopped and said ''she's here''. ''Who?''"'The lady I told you about''. I couldn't see anyone, so I said ''describe her''. This she did and we decided to ask one of the neighbours if she recognised the description. She knew straightaway and told us about a midwife who had lived there many years before. She had moved on and hadn't died there or anything. Odd, one must admit.
If it is relevant, the cat was in the room but not acting abnormally. I couldn't see or feel anything.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Linda Kelly
Date: 26 May 08 - 04:24 PM

My old school was a former mansion house with a grand staircase and two floor of galleried rooms with a central atrium. In the early 1900's a servant girl clled Ermine fell to her death from the top floor landing on the hall floor, where her bloodstain could still be seen. Several teacher's and a caretaker have all seen Ermine over the year, and when i was at school quite often as you passed by one of the downstairs rooms we would catch sight of someone staring out of the window only to find it was an empty room.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 26 May 08 - 04:44 PM

Bill D,

These are just suppositions, I haven't had anything that might be called paranormal happen to me although the little lizard in my brain has told me to run quite a few times.

Could be that you're just not in the right place at the right time.

If it weren't for Kirlian Photography most of us wouldn't believe in auras. I can accept that some of us might have stronger auras that might interact with "whatever" under the right conditions. I don't know if they even have an idea what generates or influences the bodies' electrical field.

Considering basic biology and evolution, since we supposedly were at one time basically fish, it might just be an evolutionary adaptation of the lateral line which give fish a sense of their surroundings/schools.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Hawker
Date: 26 May 08 - 04:52 PM

At Bude FF this last weekend, on the Saturday at the storytell there was a small group of us - smaller than I would have liked really, but it was special because of that, as there were hardly any takers, we fell to talking of strange things, Anne Lister (tabster) told a story in song, about one of the women she met at her prison workshops and it was incredibly moving, we then were treated to a wonderful mermaid story from Alan Woolard's other half, who embarassingly my brain has erased the name of. Half the people in the room were moved to tears. I then sang my mermaid song - unaccompanied, half way through, I was delighted to find myself being accompanied by Anne Lister on guitar. When I opened my eyes, however, Anne's guitar was on the floor beside her. Cats (Kathy Wallis) also heard guitar music whilst I sang - I dont know what it was nor do I have any explaination, but it was a strange experience. Anne - did you hear it? I never got the chance to discuss it with you.
Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Bill D
Date: 26 May 08 - 04:56 PM

Ebbie..."Didn't that feel somewhat paranormal? I think they are related."
Ummm...no, it didn't. It felt nice...and eminently reasonable. Maybe I didn't swoon hard enough..*grin*.."related" only applies IF you can show that the same linguistic norms apply to both.

Chief...Kirlian photography has been explained quite easily by non paranormal physics. Those who continue to choose to believe otherwise are doing just that...'choosing', because it is more interesting than changes in moisture (which may reflect changes in emotions), barometric pressure, and voltage.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 May 08 - 05:11 PM

Bill, up top womewhere someone mentioned that his aura - which he has never seen - has been repeatedly - and similarly - described by various persons.

I don't usually 'see' auras(Although I have a brother who does).   

Once however, I was with another woman and a man and we talked about bunches of esoteric things. We got into discussing auras.

They agreed that mine was kind of an apple green. I can report that I saw Ann's aura- a deep turquoisish shade- Emory's, however, I saw as an unpleasant and disturbing muddy pinkish brown. Bad enough that I never told him or his girlfriend.

It wasn't until several years later that I discovered that Em (who has since died) had a mental problem- one of those who sees the FBI behind every bush and after him on every road.   A great pity; he was a sweet man.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 26 May 08 - 05:38 PM

I didn't know their was an explanation for Kirlian Potography to tell the truth. I'm out of my league in this one.
I do still know that we generate an electrical field and that they are currently trying to use brain waves to activate control devices, especially for quadrapalegics (Lord only knows what the Military/Intelligence community might be up to).
My Grandmother used to destroy watches just by wearing them. It wasn't what she was doing or anything in the house because everybody shared out chores and nobody else had the problems she did with watches. Was it something to do with her body? Don't really know.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:54 AM

I do the same, Chief. I haven't tried wearing one in oh, probably 30 years now but I have left a trail of ruined watches in my wake. Including a very pretty one that my first boyfriend gave me.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Jeanie
Date: 27 May 08 - 03:47 AM

With regard to auras: when I was very young, I went through a phase of drawing people with what appeared to be Christmas trees, complete with brightly coloured lights, on top of their heads. I don't know how old I was - certainly very much pre-school. I remember very clearly a conversation with my parents when they asked me what these things were and I couldn't explain or even understand why my parents were asking: as far as I was concerned, these lights were just there, and real. I remember being very confused by *their* confusion and I think I stopped putting them on my drawings after that.

I'm pretty certain that I was drawing what I was at that time physically seeing, and that these lights were people's auras. Around that time, and for much later after, I knew that there were lots of people in the house (apart from our family) who I could not actually "see", and I used to try and catch them out by hiding behind the bannisters on the staircase and suddenly popping my head over the top. I never did see them - but I knew they were there. I think that what is "matter of fact" for children can so often get drummed out of them by the so-called "real" world as they grow up.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Jeanie
Date: 27 May 08 - 03:48 AM

Forgot to add: everyone's contributions to this thread are so interesting and thought-provoking. Many thanks !

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Anne Lister
Date: 27 May 08 - 07:43 AM

Picking up on Lucy's question about the mermaid song - I do remember having an almost overpowering urge to pick up my guitar and play along with the song, but resisted because it seemed like an intrusion. So maybe somehow my urge to play became transmitted?

I have, over the years of running my storytelling workshops and being requested by children to tell ghost stories (which I generally turn around very quickly by asking them to tell ME ghost stories - and they always have them) collected a lot of very convincing tales told by people who were reluctant to believe in ghosts before they experienced something inexplicable. One school in London, for example, where one night in a staff meeting they all heard footsteps crossing the assembly hall outside the staffroom, and then going upstairs and crossing the equivalent space a floor above. They then heard the piano being played for a while. Except that there was no access to the equivalent space a floor above (the stairs led to a few small rooms used as staff toilets) and there was certainly no piano up there. And, as the entrance to the school was closed there was no way for anyone outside the staff to have gained access anyway.

I do think that collecting ghost stories from prisons would be fascinating, because again many prisons have additional inhabitants, it seems. If anyone would like to hear my song "The Ghost", about the story I was told in a women's prison, you can always sign up to be an angel
for my new CD!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 27 May 08 - 10:09 AM

Forgot to add: everyone's contributions to this thread are so interesting and thought-provoking. Many thanks !

Absolutely, Jean - not least your own of course.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: *daylia*
Date: 27 May 08 - 11:19 AM

My belief is that it is a normal phenomenon that most people just don't accept.

I've found that most people do accept the existence of subtle phenomena like ghosts, ESP etc. Admitting it in public is a different story though. Why?

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." Albert Einstien

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Wolfgang
Date: 27 May 08 - 12:59 PM

My belief is that it is a normal phenomenon that most people just don't accept. (Ebbie)

Wrong level of argument, Ebbie. I for instance, like most skeptics I know, accept the phenomenon. People have unusual experiences, people see something for which they know of no natural explanation, people feel a shiver of cold in some spots in old buildings etc.

My experience, however, is that many people often do not accept normal explanations for such phenomena.

I like the quote from Einstein (don't let McGrath see this or he'll tell you about Gandih). However, we now know much more about intuition and its neural basis than Einstein could.

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." (Einstein)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Anne Lister
Date: 27 May 08 - 01:14 PM

My experience is that when people offer "normal" explanations for phenomena the explanations often simply don't fit the situation, which is why they're rejected. To take my example story - What can explain the footsteps across a space which is inaccessible, followed by the playing of a non-existent piano? Heard by a group of people, none of whom had any reason to imagine it?
The only reason I accept the existence of ghosts (and of other "para" normal events) is that I've either experienced something odd myself or that I've heard a story that convinces me. I'd be very happy to hear a good explanation for the various events I've experienced but so far haven't, despite living with someone who doesn't want to accept the existence of ghosts. And it's an obvious truth that only people who have experienced something odd are convinced by what has happened to them - I've yet to hear of a sceptic seeing something odd and successfully explaining it away for themselves. I have, however, met several people who have said they didn't believe in ghosts until they had their own experience.

On the other hand, I have absolutely no wish to convert anyone to my own point of view (unlike the sceptics). If you haven't had anything odd happen to you, just be thankful that your life has been uneventful! (I did meet someone once at Findhorn who was terrified of what she couldn't explain. At the end of their "Experience Week" she confessed that she had prayed NOT to see any nature spirits or devas, and she was all the more convinced that they existed because they'd answered her prayers and stayed hidden from her!)

Anne

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: paula t
Date: 27 May 08 - 07:19 PM

I can't say I've ever seen a ghost, but I have had one or two strange experiences, as have most people.One particular experience was a number of years ago when we were househunting.We had gone to an "open house" event to see an absolutely beautiful old house which I loved as soon as I saw it. We were feeling pretty happy on a beautiful sunny and warm day.We had admired the lovely garden and pretty setting and I was getting more and more excited as we went towards the house.However, as I stepped over the threshold I was hit by a feeling of overwhelming sadness.So much so that I had to stop to gather myself and wipe my eyes.The feeling got worse as we walked around - until it became too much and I went outside.I found one of the estate agents and asked him about the house. He said it had belonged to an old man who had lived the last years alone after the death of his wife.Apparently he had not really mixed with the people of the village after her death.
Needless to say , we didn't buy the house. I still feel sad when I think about it.Any explanations anyone?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 28 May 08 - 08:45 AM

It is interesting that several people have refered to not experiencing something that other people in the same room have.

Is it possible to acquire the ability to experience these things? I never had util meeting my first wife. During the few years before her death I experienced more and more oddities and most of her family were used to them and had tales to tell of footsteps they had heard in inaccesble rooms (Heage Hall, Derbyshire), being beckoned across a field by a deceased relative during WW2 (a bomb promptly landed where the narrator had been standing) and we had a spectral cat in our house from time to time. There are too many to relate them all here.

My abillity to detect these things has gradually decreased since she died but at least now I am more aware of their existance. If I had not met my first wife would I have ever become aware of them? Some of them were too obvious not to. I'm sure that I would have noticed that the clock beside our bed at home stopped at the time that she died.

I have no explanations for these things I just know what I have seen.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: JennieG
Date: 29 May 08 - 03:25 AM

paula t, there seems to be such things as "happy houses" and "sad houses" - when I was a sweet young thing, my best friend's mother always referred to the house in which they lived as a house that had never been happy. When Himself and I bought our current house 21 years ago it just felt happy as soon as we walked in, so of course we wanted it. And we have been happy here.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 May 08 - 04:24 AM

During our recent house-hunting we've had some interesting discussions with various estate agents, one who was especially sensitive & picked up immediately on a sadness in one particular old property, though in my case it actually make me giddy to be in there! Being drawn to old properties with as many original interior features as possible is a double-edged sword, for there is always going to be something or other lingering in the wainscotting. I remember an interview with The Watersons from many years ago in which Lal said that the old songs were like old houses, that on one level we were taking care of them before passing them on & on another had to be respectful of all the others who'd lived there in different days and eras.

Odd in this respect that some songs seem more resistant than others. For the past two weeks I've been working up a version of Butter & Cheese from the singing of Peter Bellamy (Won't You Go My Way? circa 1970) but for the life of me couldn't get it down.   As a storyteller who tells who only traditional tales, I believe that they carry various levels of meaning & experience that ultimately only the listener might ever become aware of, and even then not necessarily on a conscious level; something of a collective meme however so subjective the experience. This is also why I only sing traditional songs, feeling that they too carry some hidden something or other that is very often the catalyst for a more eldritch communion. In the case of Butter & Cheese it has haunted my dreams this past fortnight, waking me up in the dread dead of night with frightful images & delirious repetitions as if therein is encoded some quite frightful incantation that I might be best leaving alone after all. However, in my dream last night, it revealed another side - burlesque, erotic, and quite startlingly vivid. I think Butter & Cheese and I are going to be good friends from now on.

An old woman once told me that ghosts were people who didn't realise they were dead, who couldn't let go of life for whatever reason; and that there was no such thing as a happy ghost, only sad ones, lonely and cold and desperate for attention. She offered this in explanation of how Spiritualist Mediums worked, saying there were always plenty of sad old ghosts desperate for any sort of attention at all. And on one memorable occasion I recall the Scottish storyteller Stanley Robertson regaling us with some true ghost stories after a gig in Byker. He said if you meet a good ghost, the shivers go up your spine, but if you meet a bad one, the shivers gan doon. Or was it the other way round? In any case, I think I had shivers going both ways that night!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: *daylia*
Date: 29 May 08 - 09:53 AM

He said if you meet a good ghost, the shivers go up your spine, but if you meet a bad one, the shivers gan doon. Or was it the other way round? In any case, I think I had shivers going both ways that night!

lol

I've never noticed whether the shivers go up or down, but feeling a cold draft is different than a disembodied entity. The former is like a cool breeze brushing the skin, and usually the whole room feels cold too -- the latter is like being flooded from the inside out with liquid ice, even in a warm room, even while standing next to a roaring fireplace. Turning up the heat, closing windows, wrapping self in blankets, even taking a hot bath doesn't help. As long as the "presence" is within your bioelectrical energy field (aura), it sucks your physical energy in a process rather like osmosis. Hence, the coldness. Doesn't necessarily mean the entity is malicious though -- its more like putting a
frozen (ie "dead") blanket over a hot (ie "living") one. The cold one will continue to "suck up" the heat, automatically, until both blankets are the same temp.

If the entity is malicious, other "symptoms" will manifest such as a bad smell, unexplained sudden pains etc in the body, burning eyes, pounding heart, butterflies in the stomach, bursts of dread, panic, despair, nightmares and night terrors, unfamiliar obsessive thoughts etc etc.

Anyway, enuf of this lifeless nattering! My hands are strangely FREEEEEEZING now    ;-)   -- and I'm going for a walk in the sunshine instead. After I change the strings on my guitar! Best to all,

daylia

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Bruce Michael Baillie
Date: 30 May 08 - 03:26 AM

...There are no haunted houses, only haunted people!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Ghosts
From: GUEST,Joe
Date: 30 May 08 - 08:20 AM

Its funny when I think of ghosts and read stories such as those above, I am filled with a wam feeling. I am taken back to an old house our family owned. Several people talked of unpleasant experiences there. All I remember is being in the attic on a warm afternoon, it being very quiet, and suddenly feeling in touch with the place, totally separated from the rest of the world. There is something about older houses that is special, be it in the method of construction, the flow of air or the sheer number of people who have been there through the years leaving some part of themselves imprinted, who knows.