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| | A local pub has called in a medium to investigate a ghost that appears to have been pinching women's buttocks in the establishment. Employees of the century old Cornwall Arms reported that there have been several encounters with the pinching ghost. Lisa Porter claims to have been pinched several times by the ghost since taking over the pub with her husband, Craig, some six months ago. She noted that it gets very cold and then it feels as if someone is brushing up against to you, touching your rear end. The owners have called in Gayle Force, 52, a local medium - who now claims the ghost is a former chef.
GHOST EXPLANATIONS:
Natural:
Science does not acknowledge the existence of supernatural phenomena, which also include “classical” ghosts. Particular cases are explained, depending upon particular features, because of one or the other natural reasons, often by one or several of the following:
* Hallucinations. The people, who claim to see the dead ones, are even mentioned by Hippocrates. There are a considerable number of mental conditions and diseases in which people can experience hallucinations: people, animals, even mythological beings. This is possible, for example, in alcoholism, also known as “delirium tremens”, or under the influence of psychoactive substances.
* Illusions, connected with the features of illumination, unusual combinations of visual images, sight of objects, earlier not seen in the given perspective and so on. It is very well-known, that one can see the images of objects in the clouds, smoke puffs, blots on paper and cracks in stone. The prominent feature of such illusions is that, if the observed image of an illusion remains the same, then after it arises once, it would very easily be observed next time. The person, who has seen the face of a deity on the cracked plaster of a wall, will see it next time very clearly. Unlike hallucinations, optical illusions can be fixed technically.
* Mirages can be considered as a special case of illusions, with the difference that the object observed by the viewer is real, but its image because of one or the other optical effects “is shifted” there, where the observation of the object in usual conditions is impossible. A mirage can also be fixed by technical means, as it is quite real, though the image of a real object can be distorted, that creates difficulties in identifying the Mirage and its image object.
* Defects of photo-films, equipment, glares of light and similar artifacts. The majority of ghosts, documented by photos or video, can be easily explained as glares of light from the sources of light directed towards the objective lens, but out of its field of view and defects of the emulsion layer of the film.
* Conscious hoax. At least part of available information and documentary proof about ghosts can be the ordinary faking of facts, fabricated for publicity of certain places or attracting attention to particular people (usually the creator, claiming to be the eyewitnesses). It may be noted, that most of the materials on the given topic never have passed a professional review.
* Legends. The information about ghosts can emerge spontaneously in the society. The mechanisms of appearance of sustained legends, rumors and fairy tales have been repeatedly investigated by psychologists. For example, the legend about the appearance of a ghost can be a result of persistent news and often not at all a mysterious event, from person to the person by means of “defective telephone”.
Supernatural and para-scientific ghost explanations:
Parapsychology (from the theory of Charles Gustav Young) considers ghosts to be a bye-product (both conscious and unconscious) of the activity of the individual or collective human reasoning. At the same time it draws a precise boundary between the concepts of “ghost” and “vision”.
A vision (apparition) is not linked to a place and is generally with a particular purpose: it informs about the death of loved one, warns about imminent danger, and sends an SOS for help. A vision is always “human”; it is incapable of frightening us. A ghost is not something from this world. An encounter with it leads to a sort of sepulchral cold, horrifies us: if a vision supports a sparkle of life, then the ghost is a moving form… The most terrible thing in a ghost is its obedience to some un-clear purpose: not a bit of human mentality can live in this, but a certain lifeless fixed idea.
Variants for explaining the phenomenon of ghosts from this point of view are many, though none of them even attempts to prove the physical nature of ghosts and describe the mechanism of their occurrence and existence:
* Dead people. From this point of view the ghost is a person, who after death still remains involved in the material world and is considered to remain close to its ethereal body. There are different reasons for such conditions. It is quite often that the human being simply refuses to acknowledge the fact about his own death (or actually they do not at all understand this in sudden deaths) and continues to live in the conditions that are common to him, as if nothing has happened. In some cases, he cannot get used to the idea of parting from the items, events and habits from his lifetime. In some rare instances, the dead person understands what has happened and wants to change the situation, but he does not know at all how to make it possible, therefore he decides to “wait” in the expectation of someone or something.
Examples of reports about the ghosts
* It was reported that ghosts frequently visit the London underground. There are many different witnesses and stories about such visits. One of the most famous stories is about the ghost of Anne Neilor, killed in 1758, that ostensibly visits the Farringdon station at night. People assert that they have heard her screams, echoing through the entire station.
* There are a lot of stories about ghosts appearing in metros and underground engineering construction sites.
* In the para-psychological writings, the “case of Lady Harris” has been repeatedly described, in whose house there was a ghost: a bearded figure, looking for something in the bedroom. After inquiring, the mistress found that the previous owner of the house had a long beard and before going to bed, he collected his beard with a rubber ring at the chin. Lady Harris found such a rubber and in the evening she put it on the chest of drawers. Next morning it was found that the rubber had disappeared, and since then the ghost never appeared.
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