We get so angry when ghosts don't move objects, turn on lights, slam doors or finish the damned "shave and a haircut" tapping routine.
Every time I'm on a hunt, I think of Christopher Reeve. He was about the ideal example of the thing that a spirit would be up against. An active mind, memories, thoughts, but no body to carry it out. Every day, we think to ourselves about what we'll do later today, tonight, what we'll eat for supper, yada yada yada, and all those thoughts are followed by action. The combination of thought and body make is ideal for living in the mortal plane where we must feed ourselves, sleep, find shelter, mate, et cetera. In the spirit world, without the needs of the body and its DNA-driven animal-based needs, what do we develop?
Think about it. Christopher Reeve was paralyzed. He had to develop a whole new spirituality to deal with having thoughts and being unable to act upon them. He had to find something bigger than his immediate issues or he would go out of his mind. A blind person develops a sense of smell and hearing that is acutely developed.
What does a spirit develop? What would be critical in a spirit form when you no longer have to worry about moving a body, you can simply think and be there. If you don't need to worry about possessions, your weight, what others think, your health, feeding yourself, getting rest...what the hell is your main focus?
If we are to approach ghost hunting as hunting spirits, then one way to focus on it is to focus on where a spirit is coming from. I have to admit, I would not haunt the earth. Why? Because you realize that none of that was important. All of it was temporary. This spiritual form is permanent. Would I miss my loved ones? Why should I? They too are spirits-only held in physical vessels.
I am reminded of a famous saying "We aren't human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings have a human experience."
So, here is the question: If we are spirits in a physical form and the dead are spirits with no physical form, the only thing keeping us apart is our physical trappings that limit our senses. We are seeing, hearing and sensing with a human's limited capabilities. Are practices such as meditation and astral projection and remote viewing just ways of exiting physical form and lingering in the spiritual form and, if so, would that not be the ideal way to communicate?
Can a spirit with no physical form manipulate objects? Knock on walls? Close doors? Show itself in a shadowy form? If this is possible, it would suggest that telekinesis is definitely possible and that even a human being in physical form having a spiritual being inside should be able to manipulate objects, as well.
So, what do you see as the obstacles for the living to interact with the dead? Is it our physicality? Is it that we aren't thinking like a spirit form and what its priorities are? Is is that we are just not receptive to that higher spiritual part of ourselves except in those moments of prayer and meditation?
"We aren't human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings have a human experience."
ReplyDeleteNice way of looking at this thing we call 'life'.
Are you really a Ghost Hunter?
The real irony is that, now, Christopher Reeves may actually BE a ghost. (insert groan here)
ReplyDeleteAnd welcome, Alphabeta!
(Hey look, a newbie!)
Alphabeta;
ReplyDeleteYou get the award for the best profile pic ever! Yeah, I'm really a ghost hunter but it's probably a bad term for the process but it sounds much more cool than paranormal observer which is probably a description.
Eric;
I just hope that Christopher and his wife have better things to do than haunt us, huh?
sounds like spirits are even worst then ghosts.
ReplyDelete……. Most salient points you raise in today's thought-provoking Mind Fuck Tuesdays' blogticle … Kudos, m' dear … Good citation of tragic Mr Reeves' plight … it's like w/ Rhed's & my choice of a horror gem last night's DVD selection, this mortal coil?
ReplyDeleteBest ghost-hunting wishes from the Old Dominion,
Anadæ Quenyan Effro (von Thüringen)
Hello Bror;
ReplyDeleteThanks, big brother. You and Rhed have a nice walk around the grounds with the pups for me and say hello to the trees. I so miss them!
……. DAMN! … did I fuck that comment up! … I meant to say … is it all of ours' ability to exert our disincorporated minds on our once corporeal nuts-&-bolts reality once liberated from this mortal coil? Or only those seeking justice to an egregious wrong, as in 1980's amazing ghost/hiorror movie, The Changeling, which was Rhed's & my DVD pick just last night?
ReplyDeleteBestest wishes,
Bror ~ (•8-D
I have a question that maybe you can help answer actually. Why is it more often than not children tend to stay behind? It seems like 2/3 of the cases I hear about are child spirits with the other third consisting of victims of violence or broken hearted women. You probably have access to more accurate statistics than I do, but this seems to be the case.
ReplyDeleteI have had my own experiences that I don't really talk about. But this one fact has always disturbed me, especially now that I am a father. I have read over alot of your blog and haven't seen any fluff, and you really seem to be sincere and knowledgeable.
Aaron;
ReplyDeleteGlad you found content. I tend to think along very organized and logical virgo-minded lines. My take on the weeping women and proliferation of children isn't what most people are going to think. There is no specific reason why a child or a grieving woman should haunt more than anyone else. In fact, men on a battlefield might have the most anguish--dying painfully away from family or in moments of anger and retaliation. So, why are we hearing so many wailing women and playing children?
Here's some of our possible culprits:
1. People are romantics when it comes to ghosts and the woman awaiting her soldier lover to return from battle is a poignant scenario. Too, the loss of children long ago was a very common thing. It was very usual to lose at least one of your children in childhood to polio, flu, infection. No one deals well with the loss of a child. That the child still haunts a place is comforting for families and once a family has an "invisible" child, that story might move on with the next owners and the next.
2. The things associated with these haunts are most often sounds of crying and children laughing. These are sounds easily found in buildings by the squeak of doorways, the groan of floorboards and the cooing of pigeons.
3. It is entirely possible that moments of time in which humans feel strong emotions, they leave an imprint in the environment, a woman weeping, a child giggling, all could leave a residual haunting in which it recurs over and over. Is this recurrence the actual event? Spirits? My guess is a sort of sensory moment left there, whether it's a scent, a full-body apparition or a sound--it replays like something on a projector-not associated by spirit.
4. If we assume that these occurrences are actual hauntings and a high proportion of women and children, it may have more to do with the times they were in. Children would seek the home they knew, women would await their husband and children. This is where they would be bound to await further instruction.
I hope these helped you. One of them will ring true for you. I use logic to come up with possibilities but it will take actual field research 24/7 for long periods of time in a haunted location to start to knock some of those possibilities off the list. That's my ultimate dream.
I like all of the options presented actually, and would further compliment you on your knowledgeability and perspective. The first one on your list is an angle that I would not have thought of, but the child mortality rates in days past was abhorrent. And you are right in saying that children in general are raw emotion and therefore would more easily make an imprint in an area.
ReplyDeleteVery thoughtful and through, I'm glad I am following this blog.