Question about residual ghost theory

Many people believe that "residual" hauntings are simply an "imprint" that replays itself through history, with no knowledge of what is around it.
My question is this - if this is true, why would this be limited to the deceased? Why don't we see ourselves? or other living people? Or possibly this explains other phenomena as well?

reply to post by therealdemoboy


I never thought of those questions before. I know there have been times in my life that were highly emotionally charged....if that's what causes a residual haunting, then those places should be haunted. But as far as I know...they aren't.

I am skeptical about the ghost thing...love reading and studying about the paranormal but I view most things as either misunderstandings of natural phenomena, or deliberate hoaxes. Maybe the top 1% of reports are actually something paranormal. I don't know.

I do have a feeling that as we continue to advance in our understanding of quantum physics, we will discover a lot of the paranormal events we experience are simply interdimensional "crossovers."
s%f

I mentioned this theory in another thread, but apparently there are certain locations that are high in iron content. Iron is used in many recording devices such as dvd and tape players so the logic behind that is that the "residual" engergy is simply energy that has been stored in that particular location of Earth. Thus, its almost like nature's tape recorder. Thats why you get to hear footsteps and see "ghosts" that seem to walk around the same time every day. The only question i still can't answer is why we dont experience it while living but only when youre dead.

'Our minds play tricks on us' Or we just become connected with previous events being played out, because we choose to think about it? Perhaps we can remote view any event that's ever taken place through history? Just under certain conditions. Represented by a hazy visual. How it is cameras pick up ghosts I dunno, but the big foot claim it steals souls..

reply to post by therealdemoboy


The program sometimes creates malformed data, and because the person is no longer living, the malformed data is unable to be corrected. The person is then manifested in the area when the malformed data is used in certain circumstances - such as time of day, correct lighting, etc.

What causes malformed data? Maybe people under high emotional distress or maybe a supernova exploded and caused the program to lag. Can't come up with any one answer for that.

reply to post by therealdemoboy


We do. People have seen ghost dogs and ghost cars and ghost trains. I just listened to an old episode of coast to coast on Youtube about ghost sightings and two or three of the "ghosts" actually turned out to still be alive. You'd think I could find it now? Nope, forgot to bookmark it sorry.

But anyway, one house was haunted by an old lady and it turns out she was still alive, was just in the hospital. Another lady went to buy a house only to find out from the previous owners that she's the one that's been haunting the place. Of course those may have been astral projections too. But I don't know which.

Also people have seen ghost houses only to come back later and they're not there. Some people have had time slips back into the past seeing entire ancient cities only to come back the next day and it's all gone and modern.

It's really the only explanation for why ghosts have clothes really.

I don't believe a residual haunting is the only type of haunting though.

reply to post by tinfoilman


Any cases of people seeing ghosts of themselves? And any opinion on why there is a time delay between when the residual was created and when it is witnessed?

Originally posted by Bleeeeep
reply to post by tinfoilman

 

Any cases of people seeing ghosts of themselves? And any opinion on why there is a time delay between when the residual was created and when it is witnessed?

Its not a ghost, but people do report seeing versions of themselves. Look up dopplegangers if you're interested.

Wilkie Collins, a contemporary author of Charles Dickinson, was a prolific writer during the Victorian era. He's credited with writing the first mystery novel, called "The Moonstone," although he's best known for writing "The Lady in White." Anyway, Collins swore up and down that he had a doppleganger who lived in his house.

Course, Collins was also a heavy laudanum user, so that could explain it...

reply to post by Bleeeeep


Yeah. There's so many cases that there's a whole class of haunting for when people see themselves. It's called a Doppelganger. Doppelganger

Many of them may just be residual hauntings.

I have no idea why there's a delay though. Some theorize it may have something to do with a warping of space time allowing you see into the past. So it may have something to do with the orbit of the earth. May explain why some hauntings always seem to take place around the same day of the year, but I don't know.

Some people say hauntings pick up during rain storms too. But I have no idea how it works.

reply to post by smyleegrl and reply to post by tinfoilman


Oh yummy. I hadn't heard of Doppelgängers before.

The wiki explanation sounds like they could very well be the residual ghosts of pop-culture. And since people do not need to be dead for their Doppelgänger to appear, I can eliminate death as a requirement of my theory, and simplify it to something more easily defined - so a big thanks for that.

If I can pick your brains once more: Do either of you know if here is a word that describes ghost buildings or ghosts of inanimate objects? (Looking for a word besides mirage that would fit into a ghost/residual framework)

Originally posted by blackmetalmist
I mentioned this theory in another thread, but apparently there are certain locations that are high in iron content. Iron is used in many recording devices such as dvd and tape players so the logic behind that is that the "residual" engergy is simply energy that has been stored in that particular location of Earth. Thus, its almost like nature's tape recorder. Thats why you get to hear footsteps and see "ghosts" that seem to walk around the same time every day. The only question i still can't answer is why we dont experience it while living but only when youre dead.

Interesting theory! I have never heard that before.

I think probably any metal has the potential to be used as a kind of "conductor" of whatever it is they are made up of. Kind of makes you wonder about all the old houses with lead paint and copper pipes, ehh?

reply to post by Bleeeeep


The closet word that's not ghost is apparition. But people use that for visions of people and objects and so loosely that it's not much use. As far I know there's no word that defines specifically an inanimate ghost object. They usually just call them ghost objects.

Now that you mention it though, there really should be word for that. Someone should come up with one lol.

Originally posted by therealdemoboy
Many people believe that "residual" hauntings are simply an "imprint" that replays itself through history, with no knowledge of what is around it.
My question is this - if this is true, why would this be limited to the deceased? Why don't we see ourselves? or other living people? Or possibly this explains other phenomena as well?

It takes a lot of things to come together right to bring something like that into manifestation. And not all residual hauntings are alike, or the result of the same sort of confluence of attributes. It can get extremely complicated when you try to unwind the specifics of any one such situation, and ultimately it's impossible to completely quantify the entire composition of such a thing, since it's a 100% physical event that happens when it happens and may not ever happen again in most cases.

It's like trying to perfectly replicate a car accident that has already occurred and therefore established a definitive model for objective comparison. Even if you replicate the cars, the speed, the angle of approach, the environmental conditions, and whatever else you can replicate, you still can't perfectly mimic the impact response itself. And what a residual information manifestation is, is a similar collision of contributing bits and aspects, with a visual or audible display instead of a smash-up as the net result. In the end, it's important to consider everything that occurs in this same light, since doing so will help you better understand just how fleeting material reality actually is.

Even things like barometric pressure and humidity have been noted as being factors that influence whether residual displays like Lincoln's Ghost Train and other famous hauntings will manifest on specific dates or not. Locations that host such snippets generally feature a lot of limestone in the area (who knows why?) and water seems to be a good environmental contributor. Also, these kinds of hauntings seem to have a definite half-life, which suggests that inevitable physical changes in the environment do have a very real impact on whether they occur and how often they occur.

Then, you have to add in the receptivity of the brain that is seeing or hearing what's there. All this stuff has to line up properly to have anything happen. In the case of EVPs and video/photo anomalies, the specific media involved adds another wrinkle to the whole thing. Like I said, it gets really complicated when you start adding up the entire list that needs to be present and in the right balances before a residual manifestation will happen. And this is besides the original information imprint that set the stage for anything to occur. Then again, some residual hauntings are just people walking down a hallway, or working at a lunch counter. That's pretty benign stuff, but the environmental factors alone cause them to manifest, so again, we're talking about a real confluence requirement that isn't overridden by the specific drama within a particular event that happened on a date and time to a unique individual. Most residual hauntings are mundane activity that's sporadically repeated due to the environmental factors of the location itself until the factors shift enough to stop the haunting from ever happening again.

Doppelgaengers (the a has an umlaut) are interesting phenomena from a life science perspective as well. One study, as I recall, involved a person undergoing deep brain stimulation--or maybe it was just surgery, I forget--who suddenly asked to stop because she was frightened.

Long story short, the doctors had stimulated the part of the brain which controls the sense of "self-positioning". Due to the stimulation, she felt a presence--herself--in a position which did not match up with her actual body. The result was the identification of a ghostly apparition of herself!

So doppelgaengers are very real, in a sense, even to skeptics like myself.