Ridge Paranormal Happenings #4 - Some History

Tales of paranormal events, ghost sightings, and fictional ghost stories go back to the beginning of recorded history.

In Egypt, archaeologists discovered 4,000-year-old pottery fragments with a written ghost story on them. In this story, a high priest encountered a restless spirit whose tomb had collapsed. Tombs were maintained because they were considered the houses of the spirits of the deceased. While not “horrified” by ghosts, the living still wanted the dead to stay content so they would leave the living in peace. The high priest promised to build a new tomb. The end of the story is missing but let’s assume he kept his word.

The famous Roman statesman, lawyer and writer, Pliny the Younger, reported over 2,000 years ago that the specter of an old man with a long beard, rattling chains, was haunting his house. Over 1,000 years ago, a German family reported being terrorized by a poltergeist throwing stones and starting fires in their farmhouse.

Every culture and every nationality, and even religions, have their versions of ghost folklore. EVERY one. From the Japanese to Nigerians to Native Americans to Tibetan Buddhists to the Vikings, there are stories of the paranormal.

Witchcraft trials leading to the execution of tens of thousands of people accused of interacting with demons occurred throughout Europe from the 1300s to the 1600s. In the United States, twenty people were put to death in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692-93. Testimony used against them included “spectral evidence” – their own comments about dreams that they had had. The hysteria that led to these executions showed just how seriously and to what a dangerous extreme people took the idea of demonic possession and interacting with spirits. The trials and executions stopped when the wife of the governor was accused of being a witch – then the governor decided enough was enough.

Saints and other religious personalities often claim paranormal experiences – apparitions, dreams, messages from the spirit world, etc. These occurrences, especially messages and directions, are sometimes incorporated into a religion’s dogma.

My favorite story about a saint and his “paranormal” experience is just a little trivial piece about St. Paul of the Cross. Paul was born in 1694 in Italy. A series of visions led him to found the religious order, the Passionists.

Paul claimed that demons in the form of cats often walked across his bed while he was trying to sleep, keeping him awake.

Well, I have cats, and anyone who has cats will tell you, this is the kind of thing cats just do.

I asked my brother, a Catholic priest, “My cats walk across the bed all the time when I’m trying to sleep. How did Paul know these weren’t just regular cats?”

And my brother replied, “How do you know your cats aren’t demons?”

Hmmm … something to ponder.

Fiction, as well as true, ghost stories were very popular in Victorian England during the 1800s. There are some famous ghost and “psychological horror” story writers from this period. Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James, and Algernon Blackwood are just a few recommended authors. (Don’t they have cool names? Perfect for ghost stories.)

In the United States, we think about haunted houses and ghost stories at Halloween time. Actually, Halloween came over to America in the 1800s with the immigrants from Ireland. For the English, the holiday most associated with ghost stories was Christmas.

The most famous fiction ghost story of all time is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, published in 1843. Its full title is “A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.”

This story is well known. Spiteful, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is nasty to his employees, relatives, and, well, everyone. He especially hates Christmas. But then one Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his old partner Jacob Marley, and by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Thanks to the intervention of these spirits, he changes his ways to become a good, generous, caring man. This plot has been adapted over and over for books, movies and TV shows.

We can easily envision Scrooge’s experience from Dickens’ descriptions.

It starts as Scrooge comes up the walk to his front door and sees Marley’s face in the door knocker, a common object he has looked at thousands of times. Scrooge is unsettled. He goes in and checks every corner, looks under the bed. Nothing. He puts on his night clothes.

Then the tiles around the fireplace all start to look like Marley’s image. Scrooge feels he is being watched. “Humbug,” says Scrooge. It must be his imagination, there is no such thing as a ghost.

An old disused servants’ bell on the ceiling begins to ring on its own, followed by a clanking noise from the wine cellar below. There is a line in the book: “Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.”

The cellar door flies open with a bang. There is a “chilling influence” in the air. At last the phantom of Marley appears in the room. Scrooge can see right through to the back buttons of the ghost’s waistcoat.

This apparition talks. Marley tells Scrooge that people who do not create happiness while alive are doomed to wander forever as spirits when they die. They have lost the chance to save themselves, they can only watch but can no longer help others.

The ghost begins his exit; the window flies opens by itself, there are confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, sorrow and self-accusation. The ghost floats out through the window and Scrooge feels compelled to look.

“The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.”

Fictional ghost stories were often written not only to entertain and thrill, but to educate and deliver a moral message. “A Christmas Carol” certainly continues to deliver on all counts.

The descriptions of hauntings through the ages consistently show the same signs as people experience today. In the next blog we will look at the signs a haunting may be happening.