A Ghostly Glossary |
AFTERLIFE
The place to which the human soul is believed to go after
the body dies. Many people believe that a soul in the
afterlife can contact the living, although it does not
haunt the Earth.
APPARITION
This is the term used by professional ghost researchers
to describe all kinds of ghosts no matter whether they
are human, animal or objects.
ARTIFICIAL GHOSTS
Magicians of the Middle Ages tried all sorts of ways to
contact the dead. Many French alchemists thought they
could
create ghosts out of human blood. They carried out
experiments with heating samples of blood in charcoal
burners. A number of doubtful reports claim that ghostly
shapes really did appear in the clouds of steam.
CORPSE LIGHTS
Flickering flames that are seen at times in graveyards.
They are caused by gases seeping through the earth from
corpses buried in shallow graves.
CROSS-ROADS GHOST
Cross-roads were a favourite place to hang criminals
whose ghosts remain.
DOPPLEGANGER
Also known as a fetch, this ghost is supposed to be the
double of a living human being. If people are unfortunate
enough to see their own doppelganger , it can be an omen
that they will die in the near future.
ESP
These initials stand for Extra Sensory Perception. Sight,
sound, smell, touch, taste are the five known human
senses. Other possible senses such as telepathy or
psychokinesis are classed as ESP.
EXORCISM
A ritual usually performed by a priest to drive out a
spirit from the place it is haunting.
FADING GHOSTS
A haunting ghost often fades away with time. But there
are stories of ghosts of Roman legionaries which have
been haunting for at least 1,600 years.
FOLKLORE
The fairy tales, legends, beliefs and superstitions in
which people over the ages have believed. Many are still
believed in today.
GALLOWS GHOST
This name is given to the ghost of a person who had been
hanged for a crime. The ghost is said to hover near the
place of death.
GHOST DANCE
Ceremony performed by the Plains Indians of North America
in the late 19th century. The dance was performed by
Indians wearing 'ghost shirts'. The Indians thought that
spirits would help them drive the white settlers from
their territory.
GHOUL
An especially nasty and evil looking kind of spirit.
Ghouls are supposed to feed on the dead.
GRAVEYARD GUARDIAN
The ghost of the first corpse to be buried in a cemetery.
It protected the bodies buried in the graveyard from
damage and evil spirits.
HALLUCINATION
An image which seems real, even though it does not
physically exist.
HAUNTING
A situation in which a particular place is visited over
and over again by the same ghost. Hauntings may happen
anywhere from castles and houses, to shops, ships,
motorways and airports. The cause of a haunting is
usually some kind of tragic event, often a death, that
occurred at the place where the ghost appears. The ghost
is a kind of 'visible memory of the event.
MARSHLIGHTS
Shimmering, moving flames that are sometimes seen at
night in marshes and other wet areas. They are also known
as Will-o'-the wisps. Marsh lights are caused when the
gases of rotting vegetation begin to burn of their own
accord. It was once said that they were the tiny ghosts
of young children.
NOISES OF GHOSTS
Traditionally, ghosts are not supposed to speak. But
folklore is rarely consistent and some legends claimed
that ghosts made feeble squeaking sounds like the
chirping of birds. The Romans and Greeks believed that
ghosts made strange gibbering and muttering sounds.
MEDIUM
A person said to have psychic powers than enable him or
her to contact the spirits of the dead and to receive
their messages. A medium is often consulted by friends
and relatives of the dead.
OPTICAL ILLUSION
An instance in which people's eyes play tricks on them.
What they see at that moment is not really there at all.
An example of an optical illusion is the case of a
ghostly car that was reported travelling the wrong way
down a section of motorway. People imagined they saw the
headlights of another car coming towards them. In fact, a
combination of motorway lights, car head lamps and mist
had created an optical illusion.
PHANTOM
Another term for a ghost. Yet another word for a ghost is
spectre.
POLTERGEIST
Thought to be a psychic disturbance, during which objects
are launched through the air and a tremendous amount of
noise is made. One explanation is that poltergeist
activity is the result of psychokinesis. The word is
German, meaning a noisy spirit.
PSYCHIC
The word used to describe forces which have no physical
explanation. It includes ESP, ghosts and other
supernatural events.
PSYCHIC RESEARCH
Investigations that are made by specially trained people
trying to find the reasons behind reported ghost
hauntings. Investigators sift through the evidence
sorting the natural causes from the supernatural ones.
The aim of all psychic research is to discover what the
forces are which produce ghostly events.
PSYCHOKINESIS
The ability to harness psychic forces and direct them at
objects to make them move without touching them.
Psychokinesis, or PK, is a completely unknown kind of
force. Few of the people who have experienced it can
control it at will.
SHADES OF THE DEAD
A term to describe the dark, shadowy forms in which the
spirits of the dead sometimes appear.
SHROUD
The white flowing robe that a ghost is said to wear. In
fact, shrouds were the sheets in which corpses were
wrapped for burial. The ghosts that are most likely to
wear them, therefore, are graveyard spirits. Most other
ghosts however appear in normal, everyday clothes.
SOUL
The spirit of a person. It is not part of the physical
body and it cannot be touched or seen. It is believed to
be immortal, surviving after the body dies. It used to be
thought that a soul that could not pass into the
afterlife remained to haunt the Earth as a ghost. One
theory imagined that the shape of a soul in the afterlife
was that of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
SPEAKING TO A GHOST
In the 18th century it was said that a ghost could be
commanded to speak if it were addressed firmly. It could
be ordered to identify itself and declare its business,
among living people.
SPIRITUALISM
A religious cult which believes among other things that
the living can communicate with the spirits of the dead.
This is done with a properly conducted ritual called a
seance. The seance is led by a medium through whom the
spirits can contact the living. Spiritualism began in
America in 1848.
SUPERNATURAL
Those events, and the forces that create them, which seem
to defy the laws of nature and which are, at present,
impossible for science to explain. Ghosts and spirits
certainly fall into the realm of the supernatural as do
telepathy, PK and other psychic forces.
SUPERSTITION
A not always rational belief that certain objects and
actions have supernatural meanings and in some way can
bring about unlikely events, or good or bad luck. One
example of a superstitious belief is that if a coin is
placed on a tombstone and is danced around seven times,
the ghost within can be enticed into revealing itself,
reaching out to snatch the money.
TELEPATHY
The mysterious ability to communicate thoughts from one
person to another over any distance without using
physical means.
