Because we missed a day, today’s post is a double post, with ghosts on the tail of werewolves (yep, I had to. 🙂 ’tis the season XD).
Like the vampires and werewolves, ghosts are a theme that pops up around Halloween until you can’t move for them; but at least with ghosts, there is a bit of reason as to why we connect them to this time so strongly.
The Celtic belief in Samhain had the doors between the worlds of the living and dead open on the 31st (so the night to All Saints in the later calendar, especially Catholic). This meant that the spirits could return to give their loved ones a one-over; see how they were doing, what they were up to and so on. As I have said before, this is possibly one of my favourite festivities, if not the favourite, because of the idea of lighting candles so that they could warm by the fire seems to stem from that time. There is something utterly adorable about the idea, something very sweet and compassionate.
In contrast, I remember reading about a Roman belief while at Uni, which held the dearly departed to be very moody creatures. If you got up in the night (such as the call of nature or presumably that pesky glass of milk or a few cookies), you had to make sure to throw a fistful of black beans over your shoulder, if my memory serves me correctly (because no, I have NO idea where the references for that particular essay are, it has been so many years and I do not own the book in question, and buying it is difficult if you can’t remember the name :P), or they got insulted and could mess your life up quite a lot. I don’t know if this was a belief held in only a specific time or endemic to a specific place, and I do wonder whether it was safer to risk the ire of your ancestors or toeing your way back over all those slippery spilled beans (just sayin’ 🙂 ).
The syncretism of Christianity later drew on many beliefs, including Roman and Celtic, and it is no wonder that there are so many similarities between them and festivities…I have come across information in Slovenia that some believe food should be put on the table in the night on the 31st, as the dead will return and wish to eat at their home table – a belief not unlike the Mexican Day of the Dead (cf. here).
Ghosts and spirits have been with us throughout ages. As with all such beliefs (including therianthropy or shape-shifting), there are lots of archaeological theories just about WHEN the first beliefs pop up, citing cave paintings as a source of inspiration. True – material culture is a huge aid in deciphering what people think or used to think. But – and always remember this – the problem is that, like with the Rorschach test, people will see what they believe they must see in a lot of spilled ink, or, in the case of cave paintings, grave goods and whatnot, what they wish should be there to prove their theory, disprove their colleague’s or, for that matter, prove the humanity of the humans of the past, inclusive of religion. The truth, of course, is that the certainty of many of the cave paintings being representative of whatever it is the particular archaeologist is thinking should be there (or worse, has been trained to see during his or her studies) is far from certain, and therefore, any exuberant conclusions should be avoided.
Descriptions of ghostly beings do go back to the Ancient times, and, like later on, they are either good or evil, depending on the belief and context. Death being a difficult to cope with and difficult to understand event for anyone (including us Westerners today!), while a comprehensible form of end, if you follow me, means that much more psychological confusion for those whom it touches. Seeing someone you have lost, animal or human, is not odd; hearing their voice, even thinking that objects have moved as if someone was involved with them, may simply represent how much you miss them. Science, as a generality, either disputes the existence of ghosts or attempts to classify them as a natural phenomenon, something that makes sense in context. There have even been debates about ghost types, such as ghosts that appear active or inactive, aware or unaware – in short, there is no shortage to ghost stories, creepy or otherwise (as the dualism of ghost-negative ghost-positive still remains today), with different levels of credibility all over the place, and it is actually quite interesting to study them.
Perhaps the most compelling to study are cases in which there cannot have been any knowledge of a person’s death at all from the witnesses in question. I have myself studied a few first-hand accounts, and must conclude that a goodly amount remain unexplained to this date (even by a nasty little sceptic such as myself 🙂 ). Such cases are few and far between, but they do exist – and, as per rule of all science, including and especially forensic, this does not confirm existence of ghosts, it merely means that the cases remain unexplained. I have also myself had a few experiences that, even when looked at from all directions, must remain this way. This does not make me a believer; it makes me very aware, however, of the fact that, no matter how well we research, there will always be cases where evidence is too scarce or perhaps our knowledge too little (before electricity was discovered, lightning bolts still happened, but the knowledge of electricity was unconnected). So perhaps, this is a goodly lesson to take from today’s post – that, as we have said before, when you have excluded everything else, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Odd experiences do happen. Perhaps we lack scientific data as to why or how – perhaps our brain can pick up on messages across time and space in a way we are yet to understand, or perhaps our awareness, our energy, the “us”, in a sense, remains in some form active post physical death (though I must remind you that this has absolutely nothing to do with religion or religious beliefs concerning afterlife – even if it would make sense for a natural phenomenon to be included into one… many have been to this date!). Whatever the truth, ghosts remain the thing to inspire or scare us even today, and haunt our stage, film and stories.