Ghost Post!

Nerd Alert. This one's a bit on the professory side. So beware. But you know what? I'm a PhD now, so this is just how I roll. Ok, not really. But right now, here's some ruminations on ghosties and why I find them so interesting:

Some of you may be familiar with my ghost stories. I am fascinated with the paranormal and the idea that there are forces we can’t see at play. I tend to read a lot of paranormal literature, but not a lot of it really involves ghosts. Television programs featuring ghosts, ghost hunters, and stories of hauntings, though, are favorites of mine. Big time. I’ve been watching a lot of them lately and have started to think about the place of these stories in our culture.

I know that for individuals involved, and even for some in the audience, the idea that these experiences are true and validating them as true is important. I think that though there are obvious fakes on these programs, and possibly a lot of instances of people jumping to paranormal conclusions, I am still fascinated. I even still get freaked out when I know it's probably fake. I started to think about why.

Most of these stories told on these haunted/ghost hunting shows are tragic tales of murder, suicide, accidental death, and lives cut short too early. Brides whose husbands murdered them on their wedding night, girls who committed suicide upon finding they were pregnant, prisoners tortured by their jailers. Some of them are linked to important historical moments such as the Battle of Gettysburg, or an historical phenomenon like the lunatic asylum. These places and events are powerful reminders of the horrors we have inflicted on each other both large scale and small. That these shows retell these stories is perhaps an important reason why these shows are popular. Regardless of whether there is paranormal activity going on, we are haunted by the story itself. It is almost a way of sustaining the history of a given place by retelling these ghost stories. A place that may not be important in the grand scheme of things, a person who most likely would not be documented in a history book, a non-descript building that bears the scars of past events. They become important, valued, and revered as part of the ghost story. They get the justice they deserve in that way.

Ghost stories, though they are about death, are really about keeping history alive. Subconsciously, perhaps, we will these stories to return by associating everyday anomalies, such as a old house’s creaks and groans, with what we know to be true about the people that inhabited that home years before us.

Sociologists and cultural analysts have examined why ghost stories are meaningful. Most of them argue that there is a component of social control to the most oft-repeated stories. Like other stories handed down through the ages, they are parables of sorts. Don’t venture off to the woods. Don’t pick up a hitchhiker. Pay your debts. Clear your conscience. And my personal favorite, don’t prevent a couple from getting married/don’t force a couple to get married. Ghost brides have been popular for centuries. Some of these stories are used to scare children into good behavior, some to remind women of the importance of sexual and moral purity. Some to remind men that their misdeeds will follow them even if they leave town. After examining patterns of popular ghost tales and urban myths, one study found that the stories were altered over the years to reflect the loosening and tightening of social rules.

That's where a lot of the academic literature on ghosts tends to focus: ghost myths or legends. But I’m not as interested in repeated tales as much as I am interested in the one-off experiences. I like to hear how the paranormal touched individual people and how they deal with it. Which explains why I like those shows which tend to be filled with interviews and re-enactments of individual experiences.  Do I just want to hear other people talk about something similar to what I experienced? Or is it something more? Do I want somehow to find answers about it through watching these shows?

You can’t really take a scientific approach to these things, because no scientist would come to a “ghostly” conclusions. A scientist would say “not yet explained” before saying “ghost,” and there are good reasons for that. But you can explore what makes people willing to believe in ghosts. Our need to explain things, our fear of forces beyond our control, our fear of death, and for some, the fear of an afterlife. I don’t presume to know how it all works. I also don’t really want to venture a guess as to why otherwise normal people experience apparitions of the dead, hear their voices, or witness ghostly events. The rush to debunk a lot of these experiences can be just as clumsy as instantly declaring a ghostly presence. I only know the fear involved with confronting the experience. Maybe not everyone fears the idea of a ghostly encounter, but I did.  And do.

From 12-17 years old, and each time it happened,  I thought I might be crazy. Laughing it off or finding fake explanations for it were part of the way I sought to pretend I wasn't crazy. "Don't freak out, that's just a squirrel on the roof." Or, "I didn't hear anything."  Even when other people experienced things with me, I still came to that conclusion of craziness because they tended to be related to me. "It's genetic. We're all freaking crazy."

At 12, the times I heard/saw things by myself, I was paralyzed with fear. Do you know what that feels like? I wanted to move, my mind was repeating "move move move close the door lock it move move" and my body was completely unwilling to move a millimeter.  Closing the door and locking it presumably does not prevent a ghost from entering my room, but in my mind, it was an intruder and closing doors is how you keep them out.

Regardless, my body betrayed me. I live with the fear that it will do so again. I'm lucky enough to have been spared violence in my own life. I'm lucky enough to have never experienced an intruder (a real, live one). What if I close down? There's flight or fight, but am I going to be the one idiot who does neither and stands like a deer in headlights? Maybe since I'm no longer 12, I will react differently. But it's a memory I can't shake. Hearing the footsteps coming up the stairs, creaking each stair. The tap tap of the footsteps on the wood floor. Wondering "why aren't my parents waking up? It's walking right in front of their open door?" No matter how you cut it (dream, hallucination, ghost, creaky house), that is an effed up experience.


So how does watching every single episode of Ghost Hunters help? It helps me understand that once you've gotten it in your head that there is a ghost, you pretty much interpret every anomalous experience as paranormal. Creak in the ceiling? Ghost. Some shadow from the tree outside you catch out of the corner of your eye? Ghost. I find myself wondering what I would do now, if I were in the same position, and then I totally take it back for fear it will call into existence a situation that I could really just never ever have again and be fine with.

 So, I'm haunted by my haunting. And I'm interested in how other people dealt with it when it happened to them. Why are you interested in it? Why do you like to be scared? Comment or take the poll on the right. I'd love to know what you all think.