The bedsheet ghost – that common visual representation of ghosts in Western popular culture. And what better illustration for one than a Scooby Doo villain – Phantom from “Hassle in the Castle”, Season 1 episode 3 “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?”
(12) GHOSTS & GHOST LORE
Boo!
Ghosts – shades, shadows, apparitions, haunts, phantoms or phantasms, poltergeists, spectres, spooks and wraiths – the stuff of folklore, as belief in ancestral spirits or spirits of the dead is nearly universal in world folklore or mythology. I aways recall Pascal Boyer in his Religion Explained proposing the origin of such beliefs (and in part religion itself) to the persistence of dead people in our dreams. In which case I am haunted by the ghosts of people who are still alive – not to mention haunting the world as a ghost in turn.
Although there are many more rational explanations for ghosts and haunts, essentially most involving brain states or phenomena conducive to ghost-like hallucinations – once again including toxic and hallucinogenic plants or substances, some of which associated with necromancy and the underworld. Ah yes, hallucinogenic plants – is there nothing they can’t do?
And yes – ghost lore is the term used by Wikipedia for ghost foklore, albeit perhaps more in its modern context.
“Ghostlore is still widespread and popular… It might be expected that a rational age of science would destroy belief in the ability of the dead to return. I think it works the other way: in an age of scientific miracles anything seems possible”
Although I’ve always wondered that ghosts seem remarkably narrow-minded, apparently moping around where they died or other familiar haunts, when they are literally without any corporeal limitation, and could be anywhere or do anything. I’d at least want to haunt the space station for a bit. Not that it stops me, like most other people, being fascinated by ghosts and ghost stories.
Not all ghosts are equal. There’s nice or benign ghosts – something you might expect for your own ancestral or familial spirits. And some ghosts are just a**holes. I guess being dead can do that to you. Japanese ghosts – those stringy-haired ghost girls – are particularly nasty, attacking people for no particular reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And then you have the weirder, otherwordly “ghosts”, that aren’t even people but things – haunted houses or locations (which are ghostly entities of themselves, apart from any individual ghosts that may be hanging around), ghost ships, ghost trains, and phantom vehicles.
I mean – how do objects have ghosts, or be ghosts? For that matter, how do ghosts have clothing or any other objects? Shouldn’t all ghosts be naked? Although that starts to get towards spectrophilia. And yes – that is an actual thing, an attraction to or arousal by ghosts. Hello, White Ladies and Ladies in Red…
RATING: 4 STARS****
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