{"id":3708,"date":"2023-07-10T14:10:17","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3708"},"modified":"2023-07-10T14:10:17","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T14:10:17","slug":"spooky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=3708","title":{"rendered":"Spooky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I suppose I should be writing this around Halloween, but it\u2019s July and we were at a party a few days ago and the subject of ghosts came up. Actually the conversation wasn\u2019t particularly interesting \u2014 that\u2019s too bad, because I think ghosts are<\/em> interesting. I\u2019ve had a few personal experiences related to \u201cghosts\u201d and maybe I\u2019ll put them on my list of things to blog about.
But I thought today, I\u2019d just talk about ghosts in general\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientist say there is no evidence that ghosts really exist, but there are plenty of people that think they are real.\u00a0
There are different types or forms of ghosts \u2014 I\u2019m sure there are some\/many that I don\u2019t know about but I know there are (supposedly) ghosts that appear as floating balls of light \u2014 they\u2019re called Orbs. Poltergeists are noisy ghosts that can touch (and often break) objects in the physical world \u2014 they like to make noise and mischief. Some ghosts appear as mist or fog and ghosts known as funnel ghosts show up as blurry spots in photographs. Casper cartoons show ghosts that look like bedsheets with eye holes \u2014 I\u2019ve never heard of a bedsheets ghost, but who knows?
The word ghost comes from the Old Germanic word gaistaz \u2014 meaning soul or spirit. It also shares a root with the word gasp. Maybe that\u2019s why some people gasp when they see a ghost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arguably, the place with the most ghosts anywhere is the Tower of London. The place is nearly a thousand years old, so I guess there\u2019s been plenty of time for ghosts to take up residence. Some of its ghosts include the wife of Henry VIII, Lady Jane Grey (the nine days queen,) and even a bear. The tower used to have a zoo, so that probably explains the bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the ancient Romans wanted revenge on someone they didn\u2019t like, they believed they could get a ghost to do it for them. They could do that by writing a curse on something called a curse tablet and putting it into a grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Ghost hunters and paranormal scholars agree that ghosts prefer to haunt at night because there is less commotion and electronic disturbances. The witching hour is the time during the night where supernatural and paranormal happenings are more likely to happen. Ghosts and demons are said to be at their most powerful during the witching hour. I\u2019m not sure exactly when the witching hour is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official term for the fear of ghosts is phasmophobia \u2014 a phobia that is also linked with the fear of the dark. It\u2019s one of the most common fears for both children and adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are lots and lots of ghost stories \u2014 probably one of the most famous is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by ghosts of the Christmas past, present and future. But the first ghost story appears to have been written in the first century AD, by the Roman author Pliny the Younger. He described a ghost he saw in his house in Athens, Greece. The ghost was an old bearded man fully shackled in chains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So \u2014 maybe you believe in ghosts or you don\u2019t\u2026 maybe people who say ghosts don\u2019t exist are just afraid to admit that they do. Or maybe Stephen King had it right when he wrote \u201cMonsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.\u201d
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose I should be writing this around Halloween, but it\u2019s July and we were at a party a few days ago and the subject of ghosts came up. Actually the conversation wasn\u2019t particularly interesting \u2014 that\u2019s too bad, because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3709,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3708\/revisions\/3709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}