- WHAT'S IN A NAME DEPARTMENT -
Are Ghosts Earthbound Spirits or Just Spooks?
According to a recent poll by
Associated Press and Ipsos, 34% of Americans believe in ghosts. A
2005 poll found that 32% of Americans believed in them. I suspect
that the pollsters did not define the word “ghost” and that many who
said they don't believe in ghosts probably had in mind a human figure
draped with a sheet, or perhaps Casper the Friendly Ghost.
I further suspect that a fair percentage of those who said they don't
believe in ghosts said so because they felt that it was the
“intelligent” response.
Wikipedia defines ghost as the “apparition of a deceased person, frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places she or he frequented, or in association with the person's former belongings.” However The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research states that there is a difference between a ghost and an apparition. A ghost, it says, is usually less purposeful and more somnambulistic than an apparition, and an apparition may be of a living person. Two other words for apparition are phantom and specter, although these words can take on different meanings.
My dictionary's first definition is that a ghost is “the soul of a dead person.” But that leads to the question of whether soul and spirit are the same thing. Some references give those two words different meanings - soul referring to the guiding principle of the spirit body. The word “ghost” is apparently an old Saxon word somehow derived from the Hebrew nephesh and the Greek pneuma, both meaning breath, life, spirit, and living principle.
The spirit body is sometimes referred to as the etheric body, astral body, double, and doppleganger, although these words can also take on different meanings. The double or doppleganger can also be associated with a living person. Some esoteric schools hold that there are several bodies of different degrees of refinement which are cast off as the spirit awakens. When a person “gives up the ghost,” the spirit body is released from the physical shell, i.e., the person dies. In the “second death,” the spirit, having already released the physical body, may then release another body for a more refined one.
In the Halloween tradition, a ghost seems to be more of an “earthbound” spirit, or a spook, if you will. That is, it is a deceased person who has not fully awakened on the other side. Numerous messages coming from the other side suggest that we awaken on that side in proportion to the degree of enlightenment and goodness realized on this side. “The duration of the state of confusion that follows death varies greatly,” explained Allan Kardec, the pioneering French psychical investigator of the 19th Century, in The Spirits' Book. “It may be only a few hours, and it may be several months, or even years. Those with whom it lasts the least are they who, during the earthly life, have identified themselves most closely with their future state, because they are soonest able to understand their new situation.”
A very similar message comes from the extensive writings of medium Alice Bailey and her teacher, the Tibetan master, Djwhal Khul. “In the case of the [spiritually] undeveloped person, the etheric body can linger for a long time in the neighborhood of its outer disintegrating shell because the pull of the soul is not potent and the material aspect is,” we read in Death: The Great Adventure. “Where the person is advanced, and therefore detached in his thinking from the physical plane, the dissolution of the vital body can be exceedingly rapid.”
As set forth in God's Other Door, Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet,” said that “many an individual has remained in that [state] called death for what ye call years without realizing it was dead!” Cayce further explained that the “entity” becomes conscious gradually and that this is contingent upon “how great are the appetites and desires of a physical body.”
In effect, some earthbound spirits don't seem to know they are “dead.” They are stuck in some kind of bad dream. It is a “fire of the mind,” what some religions call hell or purgatory.
Other earthbound spirits may realize they have passed from the earthly realm but they are somehow tied to it by a strong emotion. “My own conviction is that in the life of each such discarnate entity there has been developed a nucleus of emotional intensity so potent that not even the dissolution of death can completely dissociate the consciousness from the field of its most poignant life-affinities,” Eileen Garrett, the renowned Irish medium, offered in her 1949 book, Adventures in the Supernatural. She goes on to say that they often seem to be held back because of some moral injury or wrong that has been done to them which they can neither forget nor forgive.
Garrett mentions several cases from her mediumistic experiences. In one case, a widow experienced strange poltergeist phenomena around the house - loud rappings and other disturbances. Through Garrett's mediumship it was communicated that her deceased husband was very upset about her having squandered what money he left behind to care for her and his daughter by living a “gay and frivolous” lifestyle with the lawyer who handled the estate.
In another case, a retired British Navy officer was extremely upset when his youngest son began reporting strange sounds from his closet and saying that his shoes were being disarranged by some mysterious force. The admiral sent his son off to a boarding school. However, the admiral's wife then began to hear strange footsteps, and then one day, while the admiral was sitting alone, his glass began to mysteriously move away from him. The older son also experienced things similar to his brother. Finally, Garrett was called in. Through her, the wife's brother, who had died two years earlier, communicated that he was very upset about leaving the greater part of his estate to his cousin rather than to his wife. He explained that he was not mentally competent when he made a second will in favor of his cousin and that he wanted his widow to have most of it. He pointed out that he had made an earlier will, which left most of his estate to his wife, but he could not remember where he left it. Some clues, however, resulted in the earlier will being found in a cupboard. Fortunately, the cousin turned over the estate to the wife without any litigation. The brother was not heard from again in the admiral's house.
Sometimes, spirits are held earthbound because of crimes committed. Garrett recalled the case of the youngest son of a family reporting seeing a “dark, swarthy, threatening man” about the house on a number of occasions. The boy would frequently run from his room “screaming with shock” in the middle of the night. Through Garrett's mediumship, it was determined that a distant uncle who had lived in the house several generations before was responsible. He said that he had killed his brother over a treasure, which he had buried in the garden and suggested that some digging would verify his story. A number of old coins and some human bones were then unearthed, although it could not be verified that they belonged to the murdered man. But the ghost was not repentant. He said the house was his and he resented other people living in it. Eventually, however, he was persuaded that he was “dead” and that he had to move on.
Garrett noted that all the communications from the ghost were given in a spirit of braggadocio and boasting. “That's the kind of man he was in life, and that's the kind of ‘ghost' he was,” she wrote. “He loved himself and he loved his life, and he clung to it decade after decade of our time though time as we understand it would not seem to exist outside of bodily sensation. Those who return in such fashion would appear to be in a half-world of confusion - a world caught between waking and sleeping, where the dream experience becomes a reality and too often a nightmare.”
Through this experience and many others, Garrett came to realize that “the ghostly visitant can be released from the world of substance not by force of any kind, but by patient suggestion coupled with loving reasoning.”
Source: Zaadz
http://metgat.zaadz.com/blog/2007/10/are_ghosts_earthbound_spirits_or_just_spooks
Wikipedia defines ghost as the “apparition of a deceased person, frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places she or he frequented, or in association with the person's former belongings.” However The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research states that there is a difference between a ghost and an apparition. A ghost, it says, is usually less purposeful and more somnambulistic than an apparition, and an apparition may be of a living person. Two other words for apparition are phantom and specter, although these words can take on different meanings.
My dictionary's first definition is that a ghost is “the soul of a dead person.” But that leads to the question of whether soul and spirit are the same thing. Some references give those two words different meanings - soul referring to the guiding principle of the spirit body. The word “ghost” is apparently an old Saxon word somehow derived from the Hebrew nephesh and the Greek pneuma, both meaning breath, life, spirit, and living principle.
The spirit body is sometimes referred to as the etheric body, astral body, double, and doppleganger, although these words can also take on different meanings. The double or doppleganger can also be associated with a living person. Some esoteric schools hold that there are several bodies of different degrees of refinement which are cast off as the spirit awakens. When a person “gives up the ghost,” the spirit body is released from the physical shell, i.e., the person dies. In the “second death,” the spirit, having already released the physical body, may then release another body for a more refined one.
In the Halloween tradition, a ghost seems to be more of an “earthbound” spirit, or a spook, if you will. That is, it is a deceased person who has not fully awakened on the other side. Numerous messages coming from the other side suggest that we awaken on that side in proportion to the degree of enlightenment and goodness realized on this side. “The duration of the state of confusion that follows death varies greatly,” explained Allan Kardec, the pioneering French psychical investigator of the 19th Century, in The Spirits' Book. “It may be only a few hours, and it may be several months, or even years. Those with whom it lasts the least are they who, during the earthly life, have identified themselves most closely with their future state, because they are soonest able to understand their new situation.”
A very similar message comes from the extensive writings of medium Alice Bailey and her teacher, the Tibetan master, Djwhal Khul. “In the case of the [spiritually] undeveloped person, the etheric body can linger for a long time in the neighborhood of its outer disintegrating shell because the pull of the soul is not potent and the material aspect is,” we read in Death: The Great Adventure. “Where the person is advanced, and therefore detached in his thinking from the physical plane, the dissolution of the vital body can be exceedingly rapid.”
As set forth in God's Other Door, Edgar Cayce, the “sleeping prophet,” said that “many an individual has remained in that [state] called death for what ye call years without realizing it was dead!” Cayce further explained that the “entity” becomes conscious gradually and that this is contingent upon “how great are the appetites and desires of a physical body.”
In effect, some earthbound spirits don't seem to know they are “dead.” They are stuck in some kind of bad dream. It is a “fire of the mind,” what some religions call hell or purgatory.
Other earthbound spirits may realize they have passed from the earthly realm but they are somehow tied to it by a strong emotion. “My own conviction is that in the life of each such discarnate entity there has been developed a nucleus of emotional intensity so potent that not even the dissolution of death can completely dissociate the consciousness from the field of its most poignant life-affinities,” Eileen Garrett, the renowned Irish medium, offered in her 1949 book, Adventures in the Supernatural. She goes on to say that they often seem to be held back because of some moral injury or wrong that has been done to them which they can neither forget nor forgive.
Garrett mentions several cases from her mediumistic experiences. In one case, a widow experienced strange poltergeist phenomena around the house - loud rappings and other disturbances. Through Garrett's mediumship it was communicated that her deceased husband was very upset about her having squandered what money he left behind to care for her and his daughter by living a “gay and frivolous” lifestyle with the lawyer who handled the estate.
In another case, a retired British Navy officer was extremely upset when his youngest son began reporting strange sounds from his closet and saying that his shoes were being disarranged by some mysterious force. The admiral sent his son off to a boarding school. However, the admiral's wife then began to hear strange footsteps, and then one day, while the admiral was sitting alone, his glass began to mysteriously move away from him. The older son also experienced things similar to his brother. Finally, Garrett was called in. Through her, the wife's brother, who had died two years earlier, communicated that he was very upset about leaving the greater part of his estate to his cousin rather than to his wife. He explained that he was not mentally competent when he made a second will in favor of his cousin and that he wanted his widow to have most of it. He pointed out that he had made an earlier will, which left most of his estate to his wife, but he could not remember where he left it. Some clues, however, resulted in the earlier will being found in a cupboard. Fortunately, the cousin turned over the estate to the wife without any litigation. The brother was not heard from again in the admiral's house.
Sometimes, spirits are held earthbound because of crimes committed. Garrett recalled the case of the youngest son of a family reporting seeing a “dark, swarthy, threatening man” about the house on a number of occasions. The boy would frequently run from his room “screaming with shock” in the middle of the night. Through Garrett's mediumship, it was determined that a distant uncle who had lived in the house several generations before was responsible. He said that he had killed his brother over a treasure, which he had buried in the garden and suggested that some digging would verify his story. A number of old coins and some human bones were then unearthed, although it could not be verified that they belonged to the murdered man. But the ghost was not repentant. He said the house was his and he resented other people living in it. Eventually, however, he was persuaded that he was “dead” and that he had to move on.
Garrett noted that all the communications from the ghost were given in a spirit of braggadocio and boasting. “That's the kind of man he was in life, and that's the kind of ‘ghost' he was,” she wrote. “He loved himself and he loved his life, and he clung to it decade after decade of our time though time as we understand it would not seem to exist outside of bodily sensation. Those who return in such fashion would appear to be in a half-world of confusion - a world caught between waking and sleeping, where the dream experience becomes a reality and too often a nightmare.”
Through this experience and many others, Garrett came to realize that “the ghostly visitant can be released from the world of substance not by force of any kind, but by patient suggestion coupled with loving reasoning.”
Source: Zaadz
http://metgat.zaadz.com/blog/2007/10/are_ghosts_earthbound_spirits_or_just_spooks
-
NIGHTLIGHT OF THE GODS DEPARTMENT -
Oklahoma's Spooklights' Source Still Unknown
Oklahoma's Spooklights' Source Still Unknown
Floating lights that bounce up into the treetops, appear to be about the size of a basketball and frequently are seen in pairs haunting the area where Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri converge.
The lights can be seen from a country road known as Spook Light Road many times of the year -- especially at this time of year.
Sightseers in hundreds of cars will be driving two roads -- E40 in Hornet, Mo., and E50 in Miami near Quapaw -- trying to get a glimpse of the light that some say is rectangular and others claim is spherical.
Theories have been offered over the years to explain the strange phenomenon -- some require a belief in the supernatural, some are more scientific and some claim that the lights are just plain hallucinations. Some, as the name implies, claim that they are ghosts -- but the lights' source remains a mystery.
An Army Corps of Engineers unit from nearby Camp Crowder, Mo., studied the spooklight for several weeks during 1946 and concluded that the phenomenon was "a mysterious light of unknown origin."
Similar spooklights found in many other parts of the world have baffled observers for centuries. Glowing in the night with an eerie, soft color, they sometimes pulse, sometimes dance about, usually near the ground or horizon. Their source is a mystery.
The phenomenon known as the Tri-State Spooklight, the Quapaw Spooklight, the Joplin Spooklight or the Hornet Spooklight caused panic in the small Missouri community of Hornet when it was first noticed by settlers in the late 1800s. Many area residents packed up and moved away.
But the Quapaw Indians reported legends about their ancestors seeing the lights in the early 1800s. Among the earliest legends was that a handsome young American Indian man fell in love with a beautiful woman and eloped after her father refused to allow them to marry.
Fearing they would be captured, the couple committed suicide by jumping from a high bluff overlooking Spring River known as the Devil's Promenade. According to the legend, the light burns as a symbol of love between the two young lovers.
At least three early legends involve people using lanterns to search for their heads after being beheaded. A Quapaw legend involves an old Indian looking for his head, which his wife had cut off. A similar story involves a miner who was decapitated in an accident and is using a lantern in his search.
Another early legend is about an old sergeant who was captured during a Civil War battle and was executed by using a cannon to shoot off his head, which was never found. The old sergeant's ghost somehow obtained a lantern and since then has been searching for his head.
A Joplin librarian said in 1997 said she always figured it was an accumulation of gases and you saw it when the time was right.
A Spooksville Museum was operated for several years but it has been closed for some time. It displayed photographs and a collection of stories about the light as well as a viewing platform. It also offered for sale pamphlets about the spooklight.
Some experts claimed the light is simply the glow of minerals and gases in the area. UFO experts have claimed the light is a "controlled machine from outer space -- flying saucers from other worlds."
Popular Mechanics magazine sent a reporter and photographer to the area in 1965 to investigate the light and a number of theories concerning its cause.
The reporter later wrote in an article published in the September 1965 magazine that the light was produced by automobiles traveling east on U.S. 66 about 10 miles from the point where sightings of the phenomenon had been reported. The magazine said the light's unusual shimmering effect and the golden hue were caused by layers of air with varying temperature.
But area residents pointed out as soon as the magazine was published that the light was seen long before there were automobiles or highways in the area.
Source: Tulsa World
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=071030_1_A4_spanc63203
-
PHANTOMS WITH BENEFITS DEPARTMENT -
Sex With A Ghost Can Be Quite Spirited
Sex With A Ghost Can Be Quite Spirited
In the 1981 horror movie “The Entity,” Barbara Hershey’s character, Carla Moran, is repeatedly assaulted by a sex-hungry ghost that invades her Los Angeles home and plunges her into a nightmarish world full of paranormal hanky-panky.
At the time of its release, the movie was banned for its overly sensational sexual aspects, which included a spectacular shot of Hershey’s breasts pulsating rhythmically, as if being fondled by unseen spectral hands.
Compared to alleged real-life sexual encounters with ghosts, however, “The Entity” is pretty tame.
In 2001, the BBC reported on wild rumors flying around the islands of Zanzibar that a sexually voracious ghost, known locally as “Popo Bawa,” was invading people’s homes in the middle of the night and sodomizing them. Not fun.
For some, however, including the late model, pole-dancer and reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith, sex with spirits was hot stuff, indeed.
In 2004, for example, Smith revealed to FHM magazine that: “A ghost would crawl up my leg and have sex with me at an apartment a long time ago in Texas. I used to think it was my boyfriend, then one day I woke up and found it wasn’t.”
At first, said the tragic blonde, she was terrified by the experience; however, when the sex became “amazing,” she quickly embraced the touch of her spectral stud-muffin.
And while most of us might be surprised to learn that the afterlife is packed with hot and horny spooks whose idea of entertainment is to invade our bedrooms in the middle of the night and engage in a bit of phantom fun, for professional ghost-hunter and paranormal expert Joshua P. Warren it’s all in a day’s work.
Warren is the author of numerous successful books on ghostly tales, including “Pet Ghosts,” “How to Hunt Ghosts,” “Plausible Ghosts” and “Haunted Asheville” – the latter being a study of paranormal activity in his hometown of Asheville, N.C.
“I’ve investigated six or seven cases of people claiming to have had sex with ghosts. All but one centered on women,” Warren says. “None of the women actually wanted the activity; but the one guy I spoke with was like: ‘Oh, yeah, I love this!’”
As Warren explains, your average ghost is a pretty discernible soul and tends to focus almost exclusively on hot babes: “The women who describe this are primarily attractive, young women. In the cases I’ve investigated, they ranged in age from early twenties to about 40.”
He continues: “Mainly, it’s male ghosts having sex with females. I’ve tried to find cases of ghostly girl-on-girl sex, but unfortunately I’m still looking.”
The full-time ghost hunter reveals one of the more harrowing cases from his files.
“This is a very typical one: a young, attractive blonde woman told me how she had moved into an alleged haunted house and began to see the silhouette of a large man moving around the rooms.
“Then, after a while, she began to experience what she thought at first were very vivid, sexual dreams. She started dreaming that a large, powerful presence was on top of her and that it was undressing her. There was sexual activity, always in the missionary position; and she would wake in the morning covered in bruises and scratches.”
Warren undoubtedly became the envy of all his ghost-hunting buddies in his League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained Phenomena Research group (LEMUR), when, in his own words, the girl “asked me if I wanted to see her inner thighs and private areas.”
Despite the temptation, Warren says in deadpan fashion: “I felt I might be overstepping my boundaries as a paranormal investigator if I agreed to examine her vagina.”
Somewhat harrowing encounters aside, what of those cases where the participant found the experience to be pleasurable?
“The only person I’ve ever interviewed who claims to have enjoyed sex with a ghost is a man. Men don’t seem to report their experiences as much though – maybe they blow it off as a wet-dream,” Warren says.
“He was in his mid-to-late 30s and was a person who had been actively studying the paranormal for a long time. He felt he had exposed himself to a lot of ghostly activity and that something may have followed him from the other side.”
According to the man’s story, Warren elaborates: “The first time this happened, he woke up in the middle of night to see a tangible form with long hair above him, giving him oral sex. Like many people, the first time it happened, he thought it was just a dream.
“But, eventually, he could go into his bedroom and speak to the entity and say something like: ‘I’m open to having an intimate encounter tonight. I’ll be naked here tonight, so if you want it, come and get it.’”
But for the most bizarre story of all that Warren has personally investigated, we have to turn our attention to the case of the “ghostly werewolf.”
He says: “This story blew my mind. It came from a woman whose property was being haunted by wolf-like animals. She went to sleep one night and woke up in the middle of the night. Standing next to her was this huge, ghostly wolf-man-type figure.
“It was large, tall, and had a big, erect penis. Well, she was instantly horrified; and when she locked eyes with him, she was petrified and couldn’t move. She told me the wolf-being said to her, in a distinct gruff voice: ‘Suck on this.’ She quickly rolled over and hid under the covers, with her heart pounding. She thought the covers would be ripped away from her and she would become his little sex toy. But he quickly vanished from the room.”
Warren has an interesting theory to account for such stories: “I’ve always wondered if these things could be energy vampires – not necessarily men or women at all, but more like incubi and succubi creatures that have been reported for thousands of years. Whereas we might eat meat and vegetables for energy, they are paranormal creatures that come into your room in the middle of the night and take energy via sex.”
As Warren notes, one of the biggest challenges facing an investigator of this particular controversy is trying to convince the victims to discuss their experiences.
“This is one of the most complex and obscure areas of paranormal research. And the reluctance that many people have about speaking with us is purely and simply due to the stigma surrounding a discussion of personal sexuality.”
And not without some justification, he adds: “You can imagine how difficult it would be for an attractive young woman to pull down her skirt and panties and show a room full of geeky paranormal investigators her vagina.”
But how would Warren himself respond if he came face to face with a she-ghost demanding sexual satisfaction?
“Well, it would depend on how she looked. But given my keen interest in the subject, I would have to go with the experience – purely in the interests of research, of course. If the day comes, I hope she’ll be a hot woman.”
Source: The Naughty American
http://www.thenaughtyamerican.com/2007/News/Sex/10/26/
Sex-With-A-Ghost-Can-Be-Quite-Spirited-478.html