Daily Strange's Fearless Friday: Spectral Incursions

"i get to be angry too" Photo By Daniel Danger

Those who scorn the idea that spooks and specters prowl and shimmer through the world do so because no one has so far caught a ghost in a bottle, because they are skeptical by habit, or because they resist the notion that death may not be final For many the word ''ghost'' conjures up an anonymous white-robed figure, a spirit who has come back from the grave to haunt the living. But in the annals of ghostdom, spectral beings come in a variety of forms and shapes, and some never put in an appearance at all, although they make their presence felt. Ghosts also differ in behavior — they may be aimless, purposeful, playful, angelic, and even demonic.

There are three lines of explanation for ghostly phenomena: the spiritual, mechanical, and psychological.

The most firmly established is the spiritual thesis, which holds that ghosts are intelligent beings. The first version of this idea is that ghosts are the spirits of dead humans. They continue to resemble their earthly forms in appearance and dress and are found reenacting things they did in the past, bound to their haunting grounds by guilt, remorse, desire, or habit. They may be malevolent, kindly, or indifferent toward human beings. People who take this view of ghosts regard them as marking time in a spiritual halfway house between this world and heaven, purgatory, or hell.

According to another version of the spiritual view, a ghost's resemblance to a formerly living person or animal is actually a masquerade adopted for its own purpose, the real appearance of ghosts being quite different. Some ghosts, for instance, appear as vaporous columns or clouds of light.

In the third view of ghosts as a spiritual phenomenon, these apparitions are not beings in either of the senses described above. Instead, they are illusions created by powerful classes of angelic or demonic beings for the purpose of helping or harming those who see them. Miracles are an example of intervention by angelic or enlightened powers, while most poltergeist episodes are held to be demonic.

In the psychological view of the phenomenon, ghosts reveal a spectrum of powerful but not yet understood capacities of the human mind. In these terms, some ghosts are the product of telepathic powers, as when a relative or friend appears to another at the time of death; others — poltergeist phenomena—suggest unwitting and uncontrolled psychokinetic abilities. And some — the appearance of phantom doubles — suggest that out-of-body experiences may sometimes be manifest to others.

In fact, most believers in ghosts are probably willing to accept all of these theses as helping to explain a complex and varied phenomenon. Skeptics, on the other hand, resorting to the dry but sturdy arguments of what they consider to be common sense, are apt to maintain that stories of ghosts are lies, hallucinations, or earnest reports of misperceptions. But the most convincing evidence of the existence of specters still seems to be their appearance on the scene.

#hallucinations #ghost #poltergeist #phenomena #spirit #spectralincursions #fearlessfriday

Daily Strange's Tricky Tuesday: A Feeling of Terror and Panic...

Daily Strange's Trikcy Tuesday: A Feeling of Terror and Panic...

Hereward Hubert Lavington Carrington (October 17, 1880 - December 26, 1958) was one of the pioneers of psychical research in the United States, a tireless investigator of telepathy, mediums, poltergeists, and hauntings. He claimed to have “witnessed highly curious and inexplicable phenomena in haunted houses ”on several occasions. He chose the following account as one of the most striking:

Motorists whose cars crashed at this London corner explained that they swerved to avoid a mysterious red bus. It had hurtled toward them, they said, and then suddenly vanished.

On the night of August 13, 1937, a party of seven of us spent the night in a reputed “haunted house,” situated some 50 miles from New York City.... The group consisted of the former occupant [who had rented the house and left before his rental expired, because of the disturbances], two of his friends, two friends of our own, my wife and myself. We also brought with us a dog which had lived in the house while it was occupied, and which, according to reports, had behaved in an extraordinary manner on several occasions.

Hereward Hubert Lavington Carrington

After having spent years investigating psychical phenomena in England, Dr. Hereward Carington came to the United States in the 1920's to continues his research. It led him to one of the most terrifying ''hauntings'' he ever experienced.

Carrington suggested that the house, which was lit from top to bottom upon their arrival, be explored to make sure that it was not practical jokers, cats, bats, rats, or mice that were causing the disturbances:

Examination of the cellar and the ground floor revealed nothing unusual. On the second floor, however, two or three of us sensed something strange in one of the middle bedrooms. This feeling was quite intangible, but was definitely present, and seemed to be associated with an old bureau standing against one wall....

Walking along the hall, we came to a door which had escaped our attention the first time we had passed it.

''Where does this lead?'' I asked.

''To the servants' quarters,'' Mr. X. replied

''Would you like to go up there?''

''By all means,'' I said, opening the door.

Glancing up, I could see that the top floor was brilliantly lighted, and that a steep flight of stairs lay just ahead of me. Leading the way, with the others close behind me, I ascended the stairs, and made a sharp turn to the right, finding myself confronted by a series of small rooms.

The instant I did so, I felt as though a vital blow had been delivered to my solar plexus. My forehead broke out into profuse perspiration, my head swam, and I had difficulty in swallowing. It was a most extraordinary sensation, definitely physiological, and unlike anything I had ever experienced before. A feeling of terror and panic seized me, and for the moment I had the utmost difficulty in preventing myself from turning and fleeing down the stairs! Vaguely I remember saying aloud:

“Very powerful! Very powerful!” My wife, who was just behind me, had taken a step or two forward. She was just exclaiming, “Oh, what cute little rooms!” when the next moment she was crying, “No! No!” and raced down the steep flight of stairs like a scared rabbit.

Carrington pointed out that both he and his wife were seasoned investigators, “accustomed to psychic manifestations of all kinds,” and that neither had previously experienced a comparable moment of terror. He went downstairs to make sure that his wife was all right and found her sitting on the porch “slowly collecting her scattered faculties.” She reassured him. The group, whose other members had all been strongly affected, then gathered in a circle in one of the bedrooms. The lights were turned out, and they waited, cameras and flashbulbs ready.

After passing an uneventful hour they ascended the stairs again, and“ this time not a sensation of any kind was to be felt! The room seemed absolutely clear of all influences, clean, pure and normal... Even the dog, which had growled and bristled like a cat and refused to be coaxed upstairs on the first occasion, now ran up quite willingly, with its tail wagging.

It was only after Carrington and the others had made their original inspection of the place and experienced their“first violent reactions” that the former tenant told them “a suicide had actually been committed on the upper floor, and that these rooms were thought to be the seat’ of the haunting.”

Source: (Hereward Carrington, Essays in the Occult, pp.19-25)

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