Post by auntym on Apr 14, 2013 12:11:06 GMT -6
www.ufodigest.com/article/homes-fit-phantoms0414
April 14, 2013
Homes Fit For Phantoms
By Edward Crabtree
Where do ghosts live, and why do they need homes?[/color]
The hairs on the back of my drinking partner’s hands stood on end as he told the tale. He was a Canadian who had had a misspent youth. A friend and he were somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia on the lookout for drugs. They came across a deserted house. When they peered through its window this is what they saw: a huge, transparent entity making its way down the stairs towards them. They fled....
Despite being from the haunted Isle of Britain, my own take on this was that their subconscious minds had together conjured up an image to warn them away from drugs. My shivering narrator was having none of this.
It was only much later that I would ponder over the strangest part of his story. Why should a ghost need to come down, or even glide down, the stairs? Ghosts can walk through walls, right? In fact why should a ghost need to live in a house at all?
A stay-at-home-phenomena.
Indeed ghosts generally seem to be bound to geographical locales: buildings in particular. Whilst their sister phenomenon – UFOs –can manifest anytime and anywhere, like the Starbucks of the paranormal world, ghosts, like us, seem to need dwellings. The verb `to haunt` implies a kind of residency, after all. An old Anglo Saxon poem called `The Ruin` refers to this: `Wraith-like is this native stone’ [Ackroyd, p-2].
Britain has a home-loving culture as expressed in the saying `An Englishman’s home is his castle`. It is tempting to use this to account for the preponderance of spooky reports from the British Isles.
Ghoul Britannia.
Writers often remark that Britain is the epicentre of ghostly activity. This assumption is regurgitated by the cultural historian Peter Ackroyd. In his recent book The English Ghost: Spectres Through Time (2011), the first line reads: `England is a haunted country`.[Ackroyd, p-1]
In fact, yes, ghosts are indeed an institution in my home country. Where would a walking tour of the Tower of London be without the ghastly tales of the re-appearance of Lady Jane Grey or the Earl of Northumberland? Where would English Literature be minus the input of the Ghost Story tradition of the Nineteenth Century? Put a group of British teenagers together and ask `Do you believe in ghosts`? and lo!-you have an instant discussion. The same does not work so well with teenagers from other lands.
Britain may have lost its Empire but it still leads the way when it comes to night-frights! Then again, perhaps ghosts are nothing more than a fey Britishism?
Global hauntings.
Just how sustainable is Ackroyd’s assumption? From Amityville to the Whitehouse we know that North Americans are just as prone to being spooked as the Brits are. What about Britain’s rational neighbours, the French? An apparition of their national scribe, Voltaire was said to appear at a Swiss Chateau in Nyon [Tulleken, p-113]. Guy de Maupassant not only penned unsettling ghost tales but had his own real life ghost story to tell [Tulleken, P-97]. The Germans? It is enough to say that the spooky words `doppelganger` and `poltergeist` are German terms which we have not even troubled ourselves to translate.
Actually, the first known mention of poltergeist activity comes from the Romans [Randles, P-111]. Contemporary Italians, meanwhile, have made tourist capital out of alleged haunting at Castello de la Rota, a castle in Northern Italy. [Tulleken, P-124].
Many modern Africans blend a belief in ghosts with Christianity, but the former has its roots in their much earlier tribal cultures. South East Asian art, religion and folklore are suffused with spectres. In Japan it is a part of the Shinto faith and despite the best efforts of the Communist authorities to dispel it ghost fearing is still common among the Chinese.
CONTINUE READING: www.ufodigest.com/article/homes-fit-phantoms0414
April 14, 2013
Homes Fit For Phantoms
By Edward Crabtree
Where do ghosts live, and why do they need homes?[/color]
The hairs on the back of my drinking partner’s hands stood on end as he told the tale. He was a Canadian who had had a misspent youth. A friend and he were somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia on the lookout for drugs. They came across a deserted house. When they peered through its window this is what they saw: a huge, transparent entity making its way down the stairs towards them. They fled....
Despite being from the haunted Isle of Britain, my own take on this was that their subconscious minds had together conjured up an image to warn them away from drugs. My shivering narrator was having none of this.
It was only much later that I would ponder over the strangest part of his story. Why should a ghost need to come down, or even glide down, the stairs? Ghosts can walk through walls, right? In fact why should a ghost need to live in a house at all?
A stay-at-home-phenomena.
Indeed ghosts generally seem to be bound to geographical locales: buildings in particular. Whilst their sister phenomenon – UFOs –can manifest anytime and anywhere, like the Starbucks of the paranormal world, ghosts, like us, seem to need dwellings. The verb `to haunt` implies a kind of residency, after all. An old Anglo Saxon poem called `The Ruin` refers to this: `Wraith-like is this native stone’ [Ackroyd, p-2].
Britain has a home-loving culture as expressed in the saying `An Englishman’s home is his castle`. It is tempting to use this to account for the preponderance of spooky reports from the British Isles.
Ghoul Britannia.
Writers often remark that Britain is the epicentre of ghostly activity. This assumption is regurgitated by the cultural historian Peter Ackroyd. In his recent book The English Ghost: Spectres Through Time (2011), the first line reads: `England is a haunted country`.[Ackroyd, p-1]
In fact, yes, ghosts are indeed an institution in my home country. Where would a walking tour of the Tower of London be without the ghastly tales of the re-appearance of Lady Jane Grey or the Earl of Northumberland? Where would English Literature be minus the input of the Ghost Story tradition of the Nineteenth Century? Put a group of British teenagers together and ask `Do you believe in ghosts`? and lo!-you have an instant discussion. The same does not work so well with teenagers from other lands.
Britain may have lost its Empire but it still leads the way when it comes to night-frights! Then again, perhaps ghosts are nothing more than a fey Britishism?
Global hauntings.
Just how sustainable is Ackroyd’s assumption? From Amityville to the Whitehouse we know that North Americans are just as prone to being spooked as the Brits are. What about Britain’s rational neighbours, the French? An apparition of their national scribe, Voltaire was said to appear at a Swiss Chateau in Nyon [Tulleken, p-113]. Guy de Maupassant not only penned unsettling ghost tales but had his own real life ghost story to tell [Tulleken, P-97]. The Germans? It is enough to say that the spooky words `doppelganger` and `poltergeist` are German terms which we have not even troubled ourselves to translate.
Actually, the first known mention of poltergeist activity comes from the Romans [Randles, P-111]. Contemporary Italians, meanwhile, have made tourist capital out of alleged haunting at Castello de la Rota, a castle in Northern Italy. [Tulleken, P-124].
Many modern Africans blend a belief in ghosts with Christianity, but the former has its roots in their much earlier tribal cultures. South East Asian art, religion and folklore are suffused with spectres. In Japan it is a part of the Shinto faith and despite the best efforts of the Communist authorities to dispel it ghost fearing is still common among the Chinese.
CONTINUE READING: www.ufodigest.com/article/homes-fit-phantoms0414