Around this period, one of the most famous spirit photographs was taken. It is said to be the ghost of Lord Combermere — who had recently died in a riding accident and who was being buried at the time the picture was taken.
The photographic exposure took an hour — leading many sceptics to suggest that a servant had entered the room and briefly sat in the chair whilst the exposure took place.
The sense of loss felt in many countries after the war led some to desire a reunion with their lost relatives and friends. Englishman William Hope, by then already an established spirit photographer, was one of those very willing to put his expertise forward. William Hope created double exposures that made it look as if there were ghosts in the frame Credit: National Media Museum.
Like Mumler, Hope was dogged by claims of fraud, and an investigation by the Society for Psychical Research — led by famous paranormal researcher Harry Price in Unlike Mumler, Hope continued to practise as a medium and spirit photographer after the exposure, supported by many of his ardent followers. More than a decade later, Price also investigated a more baffling case. In , two men from Country Life magazine were pictured standing at the bottom of a grand staircase in Raynham Hall, Norfolk, England.
Photographer Captain Hubert Provand and his assistant Indre Shira had been about to take a snap of the main staircase when Shira suddenly saw "a vapoury form gradually assuming the appearance of a woman" heading down the stairs towards them. Seconds later, a photo had been hastily captured. Some believed it was the figure of Lady Dorothy Townshend, who was said to have haunted the hall since her mysterious death in The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall: The ghostly form seen here was thought to be caused by the camera being shaken during a long exposure Credit: Captain Provand.
People who experiment with psychoactive drugs like LSD and magic mushrooms frequently report spiritual fantasies. Furthermore, psychiatrists have deemed many visions the result of sleep paralysis, a poorly understood condition in which the afflicted wake up and find themselves unable to move.
Scientists have yet to pinpoint the roots of this phenomenon, but some think it occurs when the brain crosses wires between conscious awareness and the dream-filled REM stage of slumber. According to a survey in the International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research , at least 8 percent of the general population and around 30 percent of people with psychiatric illnesses have reported having one of these nighttime episodes at some point in their lives.
Many cultures even have a specific name for the ghoulish occurrence. Sometimes people experience an otherworldly encounter simply because something in their environment is making a strange noise that sends their bodies into disarray. In the early s, British engineer Vic Tandy was working in the research lab of a medical supply company when a strange feeling came over him. All at once he felt frigid and overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom. As he paced around the room to calm down, he suddenly sensed an ethereal presence.
Moments later, he was sure he saw a gray apparition in his peripheral view. When he whirled around, the specter was gone. The culprit turned out to be a fan that hummed at a rate of Waveforms that dwell around this acoustic sweet spot and below are known as infrasound. In fact, after Tandy published his findings in in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research , For Tandy, the fright left him more curious than ever about ghosts.
Consider the rural town of Anson, Texas, where locals long believed that if you drove out to the crossroads nearest the local cemetery and flashed your headlights, a mysterious flicker would bounce back at you. Legend held that the blink came from the lantern of an ill-fated mother searching for her son.
This, however, may depend upon how religious you actually are. With most religions populated by an impressive cadre of prophets, gods, spirits, angels and miracles, the tenets of religious faith might shape what you see.
For example, in Medieval Catholic Europe, ghosts were assumed to be the tormented souls of people suffering for their sins in purgatory. But during the Protestant Reformation, since most Protestants believed that souls went immediately to heaven or hell, paranormal activity was thought to be the work of angels, demons or other decidedly nonhuman supernatural beings.
While most Protestant sects today are largely silent about the existence of ghosts, Catholic theology remains amenable to the existence of ghosts. Catholics typically believe that God may permit dead individuals to visit their counterparts on Earth, but the church has traditionally condemned occult activities such as seances and Ouija boards.
In some religions, such as Voodoo, spirits and ghosts play a central role. Religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism support a belief in ghosts, but ghosts play only a minor role in the religion itself. For Hindus , ghosts are the souls of individuals who suffered a violent death or of people who were not accorded the appropriate and required death rituals.
Buddhist ghosts are reincarnated individuals who may be sorting out bad karma. Belief in ghosts also appears to be global, with most if not all cultures around the world having some widely accepted kind of ghosts.
The existence of a ghost as an incorporeal bodyless soul or spirit of a dead person or animal is contrary to the laws of nature as we understand them, so it seems there is something here that calls for explanation. We can look at the worlds of literature, philosophy and anthropology for some of the reasons why people are so keen to believe. The desire for justice and the belief in some form of supernatural protection which we see in more major religions address basic human needs.
Ghosts have long been thought of as vehicles for justice. In Macbeth, meanwhile, the murdered Banquo points an accusing finger at the man responsible for his death.
This idea has its equivalents today in various countries. In Kenya, a murdered person may become an ngoma , a spirit who pursues their murderer, sometimes causing them to give themself up to the police. Or in Russia the rusalka is the spirit of a dead woman who died by drowning and now lures men to their death.
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