Proof Of Survival: Ed. Andrew Honigman

[poliphilo]

Two reasons for believing people when they say they've had ghostly encounters:

1. Ghosts IRL are not very much like ghosts in fiction. If people were making things up you'd expect them to import fictional tropes: you know, sheeted spectres, blood-curdling laughter, all that Scooby stuff- and they don't.

2. There's a consistency about the reports. Ghosts have limited energy; they don't persist, they're accompanied by a drop in temperature, they can affect the physical environment- but not very much, they have an affinity with children, they can hack the telephone. There are things ghosts can do and things they can't. The evidence is anecdotal but it feels like a real phenomenon is being described.

And here's a third reason, of sorts: ghosts are common. When you deny their existence you're saying you think a very large proportion of your fellow humans- the people who say they've had ghostly encounters- are lying, delusional or stupid- and I'm just not that much of a cynic.

I've never seen a ghost but I've frequently brushed up against the odd. I don't have any difficulty believing the  "reality" we inhabit is permeable. 

Comments

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

Well, I have seen a "full bodied apparition" up close and personal. It did not speak to me. I have also seen other "things" which I don't know how to classify. I have heard and even smelled things that cannot possibly be "real."

I think I told you the story of the ghost lady I saw floating in my college boyfriend's bedroom when I went down to Tennessee to meet his parents. I'll tell it again, if you want me too, just tell me.

As a young child (between the ages of 6 and 10), as I lay in my bunk bed which faced the doorway through which I could see the stairway, I watched many, many pulsating, faintly glowing, tinkling glob-like "orbs" float up from the bottom of the stairway, make the turn at the landing, float just a bit higher, and *pop* (like the sound you can make by putting your finger in your mouth and popping it out), and vanish.

In my old house, I would wake in the night to smells of bread baking or roast beef and potatoes or bacon and eggs. Sometimes I would say aloud, "If you are going to cook in my house, you could at least offer me some!" There was never any response. I also often smelled cigarette smoke, especially when I was at my desk working on my computer. It felt as if someone were leaning over my back, reading over my shoulder, while smoking a cigarette. When I was trying to go to sleep, it was as if someone were sitting on the edge of my bed, smoking, and blowing the smoke in my face. I defeated that by putting mentholadum under my nose.

Frequently, while I was either lying in bed or sitting on my front porch (an enclosed one), I would hear the distant murmur of a group of people. It reminded me of times in childhood when I'd be upstairs in bed while my parents had people over to play cards. You could hear the conversation but it would be faint and distant. I couldn't make out words, even when I listened very closely, but I could hear the murmer and occasional chuckles.

I am not a compulsive liar, nor am I delusional or stupid. In fact, I am pretty smart. :)

Also, I think that the ability to experience this kind of thing may be genetic, as all of my siblings and some of my nieces and nephews have also seen and heard and felt things that cannot be explained. While he was in the army in Germany, my brother experienced an aggressive encounter with a spirit. My sister Kim saw a small creature with a body that appeared to be made of tree bark rifling through her laundry with long, thin fingers that looked like twigs. When it realized she could see it, it scampered up the stairs and disappeared before it reached the top. Upon hearing noises in her house in the middle of the night which were keeping her awake, she grumpily told whatever it was to "shut the fuck up." This pissed it off, and all the doors and drawers in her upstairs began openning and slamming shut again, which continued until she began to pray the Lord's prayer.

My niece Sadie, when a very small child, possibly 2 or 3, would come into my sister Tammy's room at night, complaining that she couldn't sleep, and could Tammy or her husband Bert please tell the people in her room to be quiet. "They want to play with me," she would say, "and I am tired and want to go to sleep."

So Tammy would go in and scold the spirits and say, "She is just a little girl and she needs her rest. Leave her alone."

I don't understand these things, but I know they are real. Mostly they are confusing. My sister Kim was afraid during her experience, and my brother was afraid for his experiences too. I never really felt threatened and therefore didn't feel terrible afraid, just confused.

I get irritated with the ghost hunter people on TV who go looking for ghosts and then freak out and shriek and act ridiculous when there is a thump or bump. Idiots. I do not go looking for ghosts, but if I experience something, I get quiet and listen and observe. I don't hoot and howl and run away.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your stories. I don't remember the one about the ghost lady. I'd love to read it.

I've never seen a ghost myself, but I've been around when other people have. A girlfriend and I were staying in an old hotel in London when she woke in the middle of the night to see a woman in 19th century costume standing by the window looking out. I wish she'd nudged me in the ribs. As it was I didn't find out about her experience until the following morning. When I researched the hotel afterwards I discovered the dreary little park the woman was looking out at had been the cemetery of a church that was flattened in the Blitz.

I get annoyed by those TV ghost hunters too.