GHOSTS AND SPIRITS

Ghosts are the astral spirits of formerly corporeal beings, particularly human beings, who have died. Usually immaterial, intangible and invisible, they are considered the earthbound energies of human beings who have not passed on to a higher level of existence and have instead remained within the earthly dimension or a plane of existence cohabiting the earthly realm. The exact reasons for this phenomenon are not yet known. It is known that human beings tend to leave psychic and emotional energies on the environment and objects with which they are associated in life, and that these energies are often sensed by psychics and individuals sensitive to such energies. Prone to causing such events such as place memories and poltergeist activity, it is possible that excessive amounts of this energy may be responsible for keeping spirits from passing from this level of existence, but this is unconfirmed.

In their true form, ghosts are typically invisible and immune to harm by any known means. By tapping into psychic and emotional energies of the living, ghosts can take human form, usually a form connected by how they died; i.e. the spirits of people who have drowned usually appear saturated by water and spirits who have died by hanging often appear headless. Over time, ghosts can eventually appear entirely human and have passed as living corporeal beings except vulnerable to certain characteristics. Due to their non-corporeal state, ghosts do not cast shadows and do not eat or drink except when they repeat habits they recall from life. By tapping into ectoplasm, the physical manifestation of psychic energies, ghosts can take a physical form and even perform psychokinetic and telekinetic acts (poltergeist activity). Due to their ability to draw upon human energies, they tend to cause cold spots even to the point of causing ice to appear. Ghosts typically retain their personalities and connections to their environment which they had when they were alive, often to the point they can remain linked to an object taken far from their base of operations. Some ghosts even tend to move between locations they were familiar with in life. Being non-corporeal, they no longer retain the physical restrictions they may have had in life, such as lost limbs or physical injuries. Many ghosts in fact have the tendency to repeat the same duties and responsibilities they had in life often to the exclusion of everything else.

Ghosts have several abilities linked to their ability to control how they are perceived by the living. In their true form, they generally appear as an ethereal fog or mist with varying opaqueness, but with enough focus, they can appear almost humanoid with varying levels of transparency and substance. It should be noted that this form includes the appearance of clothing appropriate to the subject's time period and position in life. Soldiers often appear in uniform pertinent to their country and time period. Particularly powerful spirits can create immaterial objects like rifles and books; however, several spirits working together can even create phantom conveyances, like cars and horse drawn carriages. It is known that ghosts sometimes take a form that is indistinguishable from the living; there are numerous tales of witnesses who have encountered individuals who later turned out to be deceased. Ghosts can also cause poltergeist behavior or psychokinetic activity to occur in the realm of the living. These events are usually limited to the range of probability, like electronic and mechanic failures. Some ghosts can cause a wide arrange of behavior to occur, such as piano playing, doors opening and closing, flickering lights and moving furniture. However, such behavior is rare because of the expenditure of energy required for such feats. Most spirits rarely interact with the material world at all and are only detected after several years of nearly negligible activity.

Spirits typically preside in higher planes of existence tangent but occupying the same physical realm as the Earthly dimension. At death, the passage to this realm usually takes form as that of a tunnel of light while hesitant or confused spirits are often guided by extra-dimensional beings taking the role of a psychopomp. Several such beings have been identified. The most popular of these beings was Thanatos, the Olympian god of death, who chose the spirits of the worshippers of the Olympian gods to guide to the Elysian Fields, the Olympian afterlife. During the Middle ages, Thanatos became known as the Grim Reaper, the physical embodiment of death. It appears that all of the major pantheons of Earth's gods had a death-god responsible for guiding the spirits of the dead to their perspective afterlives as well as demons that claimed the souls of certain mortals. In Judeo-Christian religion, the Spirit of Death was Samael, considered one of God's Seraphim in the Bible. Contrary to belief, psychopomps are not malicious beings and are responsible for peaceful transitions to the after-life.

On Earth, ghosts are often reached from the earthly plane by mystical rituals often by individuals with psychic and/or clairvoyant abilities (mediums). The most popular of these rituals is the séance which can be invoked by several individual working together or assisted by a psychic. Another means is through the use of a Ouija board, a communication device whose origins go back to Ancient China and whose use became prevalent through the Spiritualist movement of the Early Twentieth Century. However, the Ouija board is considered a less precise device prone to attracting negative entities, such as demons, and considered less reliable. Other mystical rituals known for calling up spirits are incantation. Voodoo and Wiccan practices are often used by practitioners of such faiths for calling on spirits, mostly by shamans or priestesses fluent in such arts.

According to belief, ghosts can be repelled by the presence of salt. Salting the soil around a reputedly haunted house is supposed to be able to prevent ghosts from being active, but this process is not entirely infallible. They are not repelled by religious icons, such as the Crucifix, a cross or the Bible, but their ability to communicate with the living can be hindered in their presence. Several churches and cemeteries are known to be haunted by peaceful spirits so the effectiveness of these objects may be relevant to the nature of the spirit involved.

The only known way of removing ghosts from the location of a haunting is by an exorcism. Blessings by priests, ministers or even the shaman of any given faith can often cause a spirit to depart or at least decrease the amount of activity at a location. However, most ghosts do not represent the level of nuisance to require them to be exorcised; most exorcisms are usually performed in the presence of negative or demonic activity. Alternately, some locations, such as Holbrook Hotel in Grass Valley, California are known to be so haunted to an extent that they cannot be exorcised by any means. While most exorcisms are successful to some degree, most of them are only successful to the point in limiting the amount of activity to a more tolerable level.

It should be noted that despite extraordinary evidence to the contrary that the general populace does not readily accept whether or not ghosts actually exist, and the subject of their existence is considered debatable and controversial. It should be noted that most supposedly "haunted houses" are usually discredited for rational and logical circumstances.