posted on Feb, 26 2007 @ 09:46 AM
After reviewing my last post, I realise I was trying to cover too much ground within the character-limit. So, to summarise:
RomanianDacianHun speculated that the reason ghosts manifest may be because they harbour powerful emotions and/or possess a more powerful than
usual spirit. (If I've misunderstood you, RomanianDacianHun, please correct me.)
And in my last post, I was attempting to illustrate that this may not necessarily be the case, because although dramatic and frightening ghosts most
often make the headlines, many accounts tell of loved-ones and family members who simply drop-by to nod or smile, or are anonymous ghosts that appear
momentarily before vanishing again, leaving the witness confused and non the wiser.
Most of us die without ever bothering to manifest as ghosts, I imagine.
It's been speculated there may be a shelf-life for 'ghostdom', during which the ghost becomes more and more faded until it ceases to be.
Yet other ghosts retain their vitality throughout several hundred years, as was the case with the ghost of the farmer who appeared fully life-like
before Matthew Manning and who (though dead for hundreds of years) nevertheless believed himself to still be alive and living normally. This was
followed, reportedly, by the ghostly inscription of several dozen signatures and dates of birth and death on a wardrobe door within a locked room.
Investigators subsequently discovered a number of the signatures belonged to villagers long-dead.
The ghost who appeared before Manning had owned the Manning home hundreds of years earlier. He was indignant to discover the Manning family living in
it -- in much the same way we would if we discovered a family living in our homes. The farmer refused to believe Manning when he told him he (the
farmer) was dead. The farmer thought Manning was the equivalent of a village-idiot for suggesting such a thing.
Manning told him the date (1970s) and the farmer laughed in total disbelief. When Manning told the farmer that the stables no longer existed and that
motor vehicles had long ago replaced horses, the farmer lost his patience: what sort of fool did Manning take him for?
The house had been altered in the many years since the farmer lived in it. Yet on a few occasions, as Manning walked through the altered section, he
found himself seeing the house as it had been back in the farmer's lifetime.
Now, it's one thing to suggest that ghosts might make themselves visible because of intense emotions, etc., but what explanation can there be for the
ghost of a building becoming visible ?
It suggests the existence of multiple 'realities', superimposed upon or within each other, each with its own population which continues to
existas it always did !
But this becomes mind-bendingly complicated.
Why, for example, didn't the farmer's dimension progress technologically (and otherwise) and eventually incorporate motor vehicles in place of
horses, in the same way as actually did occur in our 'real' world?
What happened --- did the farmer continue running his farm, on and on, as he always had, without dying?
And what of all the other people in the farmer's life? Did they continue working for the farmer, on and on, without dying?
How can that be? In 'our' world, the farmer died a hundred years or more before the Manning family bought the farm. And between the farmer and the
Mannings, the farm had other owners. It had been the other owners who'd renovated the building and changed it around.
Yet when Matthew Manning walked towards the kitchen, he felt a momentary strangeness and noticed the layout of the kitchen area looked different. He
saw big old paving stones on the floor and noticed with surprise that doors and windows etc. were in different positions. He finally worked out that
he was seeing the place as it had been over a hundred years earlier.
When Matthew encountered the farmer, the old man was dressed in the fashions of over a hundred years earlier and appeared a hale and hearty, confident
man of means. Eventually, the farmer grew to like Matthew and gifted him with a number of 'apports' which emanated from the air. From memory (for
I haven't read the book for over a decade) these included rolls of bread and numerous coins as well as a book (it might have been Mrs. Beaton's
cookbook, I think). The book was delivered one page at a time ! The bread rolls turned out to be so old and brittle, they disintegrated. And
the coins were genuine old coins from the farmer's claimed era and earlier.
The case of Matthew Manning (to be found in The Link) is deserving, imo, of energetic study.
So there's far more to all this than simply 'ghost stories'.
This is massive ! Yet as Myers said, it's also astonishingly simple.
And somehow it's contained within mysteries of Time.
So many directions grabbing for our attention as we struggle to get a grip on it.
* Could it be that rather than the narrow band of consciousness that we believe we operate within, we instead unknowingly and constantly
surf a limitless ocean of alternate realities with the larger part of our minds --- while our narrow/limited band (brain?) anchors us in
this, 'our' reality, 'our' currently-designated bit of Time and Space ?
Sometimes I have that 'tip of the tongue' feeling, when EVERYthing seems clear to me. But in the instant I attempt to render it comprehensible, the
gremlins run their fingers through it and scramble it to nonsense on purpose. It falls to bits in an instant. It just can't be held together.
'Ghosts' may be nothing more complicated than someone's narrow-bandwith brain failing to follow the large 'surfing' MIND through to the next
level after physical death. The brain (the hardware) still retains all the data it amassed during physical life, but for some reason, it loses
its connection with the Mind (the software) when they both quit the physical body. So the brain, lost and without a rudder, meanders off into space
like one of those beeping, redundant space-probes. Hmmmm? It could account for a lot, including ghosts.
BUT ..... I don't understand HOW or WHY the farmer's gifts of bread-rolls were stale by the time they reached Matthew Manning. Granted, they'd
traversed over 100 years in chronological 'our' time. But ... why stale?
All thoughts and theories welcome, here :-)
[edit on 26-2-2007 by Dock6]