Specters, Spirits, & Time
May 30th, 2007 by John WolfeWe have all seen our share of ghostly pictures and photographs. Who can forget the “brown lady” standing on the steps of the staircase or the faint image of a face that appears to be staring back at us through an upstairs window of an old abandoned home? Many prefer to blame these images on tricks of light or perhaps on a photographer who was an expert at digital forgery. For those who have experienced this phenomenon in person though, there is no doubt that your perceptions go far beyond folklore and Photoshop. But what exactly is being perceived?
Everyone in some way, shape or form has their own pre-conceived ideas of what ghosts, specters and spirits are about. Some believe they are entities that have passed on from human existence, only to find themselves hung up in a misty world which duplicates their earthly surroundings. Others feel they are produced by latent psychic energy contained within ourselves. Poltergeists are great examples of this type of experience, in which energy within a specific environment seems to be activated by emotionally charged youth and young adults.
Ghostly phenomenon could quite possibly be a combination of both of the above, but it’s the ghost’s interaction within space and time that I find myself most fascinated with.
It’s my personal belief, through my own experiences and through similar accounts experienced by others, that time is not as linear as our physical senses tell us. Without delving into an H.G. Wells (The Time Machine) scenario it is quite possible that many hauntings can be chalked up to an individual’s ability to peer into a fold in space/time. If time is nonlinear, meaning that our present coexists with both our past and future, then we could think of reality as nothing more than parallel lanes on some inter dimensional interstate.
Instead of being a deceased member from the human realm, these entities could in fact be presently living in their own current reality. The concept that their reality may have been some two hundred years ago, from our present point of view, makes little difference in a Universe where time and space are more illusionary than they are static and constant. When a glimpse of these entities’ activities comes into full view, for someone in our present time/space reality, the event could actually be an experiencing of the entities’ “vehicle” slightly crossing over these parallel lanes. In other words, we have the potential to peer into the past and future, either accidentally or through precise honing of our vision due to constructs within the Universe. Who knows how many different times throughout our own lives we have veered into their lanes, exposing our reality to them. It’s interesting when you stop and realize that you have the potential for being viewed as a ghost yourself, by a perceiver in another space and time.
This idea of an interstate would lend itself to explaining why some people claim that the entities they have encountered do not appear translucent or opaque in any way. In fact, I have read accounts that have stated the ghosts in question appeared as real and as solid as any other living human, until they just seemed to fade out of sight.
There is also a second possibility that these entities, when in physical form, were heavy impressers upon time/space, with regards to their emotional energy. The environment in which they were living caused the individual to put forth strong emotional energy that imprinted itself upon the very location during their lifetimes. When certain members of the living happen to rendezvous with this imprinted energy, it’s like turning on a television set and receiving a signal intended for a very specific channel. Now, as long as the imprinted energy and its conduit between the environment and the living individual/perceiver remains, then an image or scenario will be played out before the person’s eyes. In fact, the attention being focused by the living individual, upon the image or scenario, can also be an emotional or energetic investment into the witnessed event. This further prepares the same occurrence to regurgitate itself to another like minded perceiver who may rendezvous with it at a later date.
A third possibility, that can encapsulate every explanation covered here and anywhere else for that matter, is that we are not perceivers at all, but we are actually forecasters. We are projectors of our own thoughts, creations and co-creations. The Universe serves as a giant screen, showing us what we are concentrating upon. This is why there are just as many people that have witnessed ghosts as there are that have not. It doesn’t mean they aren’t real for the people who are actively experiencing them as part of their world. On the flipside though, it also means the Universe is showing non-believers exactly what they project outward as their own aspects of reality. So, they in turn will typically not have encounters with anything that seems paranormal. It boils down to our own individual concepts of reality, how willing we are to stretch beyond its socially implied boundaries and how we project what is occurring within our own consciousness. This third example does not discredit the above possibilities or any other, it simply accentuates them further by showing us why there are so many multiple explanations for ghostly phenomenon.
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