Every society or culture has certain degree
of fascination with the notion of afterlife. The belief in the existence of an
afterlife, as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead is widespread,
dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. The idea
of ghosts can be considered a tradition for certain cultures. Many believe in
the spirit world and often try to stay in contact with their loved ones.
Certain religious engagements—funeral rites,
exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically
designed to rest the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as
solitary, human-like essences that haunt particular locations, objects, or
people they were associated with in life, though stories of ghostly armies and
the ghosts of animals rather than humans have also been recounted.
In many cultures malignant, restless ghosts
are distinguished from the more benign spirits involved in ancestor worship.
Ancestor worship typically involves rites intended to prevent revenants,
vengeful spirits of the dead, imagined as starving and envious of the living.
Strategies for preventing revenants may either include sacrifice, i.e., giving
the dead food and drink to pacify them, or magical banishment of the deceased
to force them not to return. Ritual feeding of the dead is performed in
traditions like the Chinese Ghost Festival or the Western All Souls' Day.
Magical banishment of the dead is present in many of the world's burial
customs. The bodies found in many tumuli (kurgan) had been ritually bound
before burial, and the custom of binding the dead persists, for example, in
rural Anatolia. Although the human soul was sometimes
symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other
animal, it appears to have been widely held that the soul was an exact
reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person
wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such
works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which shows deceased people in the
afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of
dress.
While deceased ancestors are universally
regarded as venerable, and often believed to have a continued presence in some form
of afterlife, the spirit of a deceased person which remains present in the
material world (viz. a ghost) is regarded as an unnatural or undesirable state
of affairs and the idea of ghosts or revenants is associated with a reaction of
fear. This is universally the case in pre-modern folk cultures, but fear of
ghosts also remains an integral aspect of the modern ghost story, Gothic
horror, and other horror fiction dealing with the supernatural. Another
widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy,
or subtle material. Anthropologists link this idea to early beliefs that ghosts
were the person within the person (the person's spirit), most noticeable in
ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates
appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the
metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the
Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma, which by analogy became extended to mean
the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as synthesizing Adam, as a living soul,
from the dust of the Earth and the breath of God.
In many traditional accounts, ghosts were
often thought to be deceased people looking for vengeance (vengeful ghosts), or
imprisoned on earth for bad things they did during life. The appearance of a
ghost has often been regarded as an omen or portent of death. Seeing one's own
ghostly double or "fetch" is a related omen of death. There are many
references to ghosts in Mesopotamian religions – the religions of Sumer,
Babylon, Assyria, and other early states in Mesopotamia. Traces of these
beliefs survive in the later Abrahamic religions that came to dominate the
region. Ghosts were thought to be created at time of death, taking on the
memory and personality of the dead person. They traveled to the netherworld,
where they were assigned a position, and led an existence similar in some ways
to that of the living. Relatives of the dead were expected to make offerings of
food and drink to the dead to ease their conditions. If they did not, the
ghosts could inflict misfortune and illness on the living. Traditional healing
practices ascribed a variety of illnesses to the action of ghosts, while others
were caused by gods or demons.
The Hebrew Bible contains few references to
ghosts, associating spiritism with forbidden occult activities cf. Deuteronomy
18:11. The most notable reference is in the First Book of Samuel (I Samuel
28:3–19 KJV), in which a disguised King Saul has the Witch of Endor summon the
spirit or ghost of Samuel.
There was widespread belief in ghosts in
ancient Egyptian culture. The soul and spirit were believed to exist after
death, with the ability to assist or harm the living, and the possibility of a
second death. Over a period of more than 2,500 years, Egyptian beliefs about
the nature of the afterlife evolved constantly. Many of these beliefs were
recorded in hieroglyph inscriptions, papyrus scrolls and tomb paintings. The
Egyptian Book of the Dead compiles some of the beliefs from different periods of
ancient Egyptian history.
Ghosts appeared in Homer's Odyssey and
Iliad, in which they were described as vanishing "as a vapor, gibbering
and whining into the earth". Homer's ghosts had little interaction with
the world of the living. Periodically they were called upon to provide advice
or prophecy, but they do not appear to be particularly feared. Ghosts in the
classical world often appeared in the form of vapor or smoke, but at other
times they were described as being substantial, appearing as they had been at
the time of death, complete with the wounds that killed them.
By the 5th century BC, classical Greek
ghosts had become haunting, frightening creatures who could work to either good
or evil purposes. The spirit of the dead was believed to hover near the resting
place of the corpse, and cemeteries were places the living avoided. The dead
were to be ritually mourned through public ceremony, sacrifice, and libations,
or else they might return to haunt their families. The ancient Greeks held
annual feasts to honor and placate the spirits of the dead, to which the family
ghosts were invited, and after which they were "firmly invited to leave
until the same time next year". The 5th-century BC play Oresteia contains
one of the first ghosts to appear in a work of fiction.
In the New Testament, Jesus has to persuade
the Disciples that he is not a ghost following the resurrection, Luke 24:37–39
(some versions of the Bible, such as the KJV and NKJV, use the term
"spirit"). Similarly, Jesus' followers at first believe him to be a
ghost (spirit) when they see him walking on water.
In the 5th century AD, the Christian priest
Constantius of Lyon recorded an instance of the recurring theme of the
improperly buried dead who come back to haunt the living, and who can only
cease their haunting when their bones have been discovered and properly
reburied.
One of the first persons to express
disbelief in ghosts was Lucian of Samosata in the 2nd century AD. In his tale
"The Doubter" (circa 150 AD), he relates how Democritus "the
learned man from Abdera in Thrace" lived in a tomb outside the city gates
to prove that cemeteries were not haunted by the spirits of the departed. Ghosts reported in medieval Europe tended to
fall into two categories: the souls of the dead, or demons. The souls of the
dead returned for a specific purpose. Demonic ghosts were those which existed
only to torment or tempt the living. The living could tell them apart by
demanding their purpose in the name of Jesus Christ. The soul of a dead person
would divulge their mission, while a demonic ghost would be banished at the
sound of the Holy Name.
Renaissance magic took a revived interest in
the occult, including necromancy. In the era of the Reformation and Counter
Reformation, there was frequently a backlash against unwholesome interest in
the dark arts.
In modern times, the fanciful concept of a
mummy coming back to life and wreaking vengeance when disturbed has spawned a
whole genre of horror stories and films. White ladies were reported to appear
in many rural areas, and supposed to have died tragically or suffered trauma in
life. White Lady legends are found around the world. Common to many of them is
the theme of losing or being betrayed by a husband or fiancé. They are often
associated with an individual family line or regarded as a harbinger of death
similar to a banshee. Legends of ghost ships have existed since the 18th
century; most notable of these is the Flying Dutchman. This theme has been used
in literature in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge.
The realm of the dead has not escaped the
scrutiny of the scientific community. Limitations of human perception and
ordinary physical explanations can account for ghost sightings; for example,
air pressure changes in a home causing doors to slam, or lights from a passing
car reflected through a window at night. Pareidolia, an innate tendency to
recognize patterns in random perceptions, is what some skeptics believe causes
people to believe that they have 'seen ghosts'. Reports of ghosts "seen
out of the corner of the eye" may be accounted for by the sensitivity of
human peripheral vision. According to researchers, peripheral vision can easily
mislead, especially late at night when the brain is tired and more likely to
misinterpret sights and sounds.
Some researchers have speculated that
changes in geomagnetic fields (created, e.g., by tectonic stresses in the
Earth's crust or solar activity) could stimulate the brain's temporal lobes and
produce many of the experiences associated with hauntings. Sound is thought to
be another cause of supposed sightings. Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have
concluded that infrasound can cause humans to experience bizarre feelings in a
room, such as anxiety, extreme sorrow, a feeling of being watched, or even the
chills. Carbon monoxide poisoning, which can cause changes in perception of the
visual and auditory systems, was speculated upon as a possible explanation for
haunted houses as early as 1921.
Nietzsche argued
that people generally wear prudent masks in company; but that an alternative
strategy for social interaction is to present oneself as an absence, as a
social ghost – "One reaches out for us but gets no hold of us.” The debate
over what lies beyond our known universe is expected to continue for quite some
time.
[SUBHODEV DAS]
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