In any number of ways ghosts can be divided into basic types. There are two basic ways of experiencing a ghost:
1. Ghosts you see.
2. Ghosts who see you.
In ways an individual might become a ghost, there are basically two types again:
1. Ghosts who are ghosts on purpose.
2. Ghosts who are ghosts by accident.
10 comments:
You've been positively chatty recently, Ghostie! Nice to see you up and about. Hope your September retreat was as productive as you envisioned, and am looking forward to updates on your project!!!
Way cool picture!
I'm looking forward to your posts. I've seen two ghosts and experienced a third. Can't wait to see where they fall on your list.
This is a topic of great interest to me. I look forward to learning what you have to teach.
Loretta - you have seen a ghost on two different occasions? Wow. Was the third that you experienced a close relative -- or a pet?
Hey, Gordon, thanks for dropping by. I really have not much to teach anyone (sadly, I am a LOUSY teacher). But I do share willingly what I hear from others. Maybe I am a thief.
I have collected a large number of people's expereinces and interactions with ghosts and they do fall into certain categories. It's not so much the type of ghost in these cases. It is more what the ghost is up to.
By far the most common type of ghost experience is a comfort visit from a recently departed loved one. This is so common, in fact, that I am surprised when someone experiences a ghost who is a stranger.
Hi, Beth. Since you write ghosts in your fiction, too, I am wondering if sparkling stars floating around in the basement qualify as a type of ghost. Maybe there are more types than I realize. :-)
Could be, Ghostie! Couldn't pieces of souls be ghostly?
If you go on a Ghost Tour through any of our fair cities, sometimes the guide will have you take pictures with your digital camera, and then point out the white blobs floating across the shots. Are they ghosts? Some say not. I prefer to think they are, until someone proves me wrong. :-)
I did have a strong feeling of presence after my mom died and there was a cold spot (between an electric blanket and an electric mattress pad) after my cat died, but I wasn't counting those (or a handful of other odd experiences I've had) among my "ghosts".
The two I've seen were both strangers and in both cases I believed them to be living people until they disappeared in some impossible way. The most dramatic was in college, when I followed a girl in a blue bathrobe into a small, dead-end shower room about ten o'clock on a sunny, spring morning, only to find the room empty when I got inside. I never learned of any tradition for a haunting in that case.
The other one I saw, just a glimpse, was on the second floor of an historic hotel in Osceola. Someone walked behind me in a broad hallway towards a locked, barricaded French window and when I turned to ask them a question there was no one there. In that case there is a tradition of a haunting, usually connected to a fatal shootout that took place between two Pinkerton men, a local deputy sheriff and two of the Younger brothers on March 17,1870.
The third occasion I mentioned was, believe it or not, a haunted fast food restaurant where I worked for many years. Very few people ever *saw* anything there, but disembodied voices and moving objects were par for the course. Picture three women, alone in a closed restaurant, going around the store in a knot with the phone, hoping the voices we kept hearing were just the ghost and not intruders.
Loretta, I am intrigued by your ghost experiences. Thank you for sending these along. Would you mind if I do a blog entry (on the fonrt page) about these?
The college ghost is terrific!
The old hotel is pretty cool, too. One thing I was totally unfamiliar with, until I started researching stranger ghosts, was how many people die in hotels! It's not something the business likes to advertise. They're almost as bad as hospitals -- esp. resort hotels that tourist to retired, older folks.
Loretta, I'd also like to post on the cold spots you experienced. It is not common for me to hear of loved ones, including pets, as cold spots.
I do hear from time to time of someone experience a ghostly presence as a cold spot -- in these few cases, I'm talking REALLY cold. Literally, frigid!
I'll share one on the top page when I have time.
Not sure if this is the place for this but I am a little confused. Where I lived many years ago I heard footsteps upstairs, already closed windows slamming shut in the middle of the night, and closet doors opening repeatedly on their own. After my mom passed I have seen her a couple of times. I just moved into an old farmhouse and after here for two days I saw a little unknown girl standing by my husband in our kitchen. Noone else saw her. Could I really be seeing her or is it in my head? Everyone thinks I'm wacky. Thank you for any help.
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