How 20th-Century Philosophers Explained Ghosts

Matyas Moravec: Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts.

Many of these philosophers, including Henri Bergson and William James, were interested in what was called “psychical research”. This was the academic study of paranormal phenomena including telepathy, telekinesis and other-worldly spirits.

These thinkers attended seances and were attempting to develop theories about ghosts, life after death and the powers exhibited by mediums in trances. My recent archival research has been looking at how these topics shaped 20th-century philosophy....<<<Read More>>>...

Why Ghosts Wear Clothes Instead of Appearing in the Nude

 When you think of a ghost, what comes to mind? A ghastly, mouldy winding-sheet? A malevolent pile of supernatural armour? Or a sinister gentleman in a stiff Victorian suit?

In 1863 George Cruikshank, the caricaturist and illustrator of Dickens’s novels, announced a “discovery” concerning the varied appearance of ghosts. It does not seem, he wrote:

“That any one has ever thought of the gross absurdity and impossibility of there being such things as ghosts of wearing apparel … Ghosts cannot, must not, dare not, for decency’s sake, appear without clothes; and as there can be no such thing as ghosts or spirits of clothes, why then, it appears that ghosts never did appear and never can appear.”

Why aren’t ghosts naked? This was a key philosophical question for Cruikshank and many others in Victorian Britain. Indeed, stories of naked or clothesless ghosts, especially outside folklore, are exceedingly rare. ...<<<Read More>>>...

The Night I Saw a Ghost

 I used to be very sceptical about ghost stories until ….

A few years ago I found myself staying in the Hilton Hotel in Barbados on my own, for work. Before anybody says this was a rum induced experience half way up Mount Gay, let me assure you (and myself) that for once it wasn’t. I was half way through a month off the booze – just to prove to myself I could. I had retired to my room early as my work companions weren’t as angelic and were at the talking scribble stage, so I left them to it. I’ve never had trouble sleeping – drinking or not – I put it down to a clean mind and a clear conscience! Naturally.

So off I go to sleep. In the middle of the night I came awake with a start. I’d better explain that my room was a ground floor one in a two story wing of the main hotel which extended a long way sideways. Room 110 I’m pretty sure. I remembered that number for next time. Although the curtains were blackout ones and were drawn, the hotel grounds outside were pretty well lit and the room wasn’t that dark when your eyes got used to it.

I opened said eyes and saw there was somebody in the room, silhouetted again the curtains. The room had a sliding glass door onto a small balcony, and previous colleagues staying in this part of the hotel had had problems with break-ins, so I was very wary about moving before I had assessed the situation. The other person hadn’t moved. Was just standing there as if he’d just come in through the sliding door. Because of the history of theft, I’d made damn sure it was locked and chained before I went to bed.

So what to do? I was wide awake by now. He still stood motionless. Then I noticed something I hadn’t before. He had a strange head. He was just a dark shadow and I couldn’t see details, but he seemed to be wearing a tricorn hat of the kind that 17th & 18th century sailors wore. Apparently they got wet a lot and the hat acted as a sort of gutter and kept the rain and sea out of their eyes as they were working. Pirate? In my room? God knows there were enough of those around Barbados, but not in the 20th century, as this was at the time.

Nothing happened, so I decided to make something happen. He was still the other side of the quite large room. I worked out where the bedside light was, and after several very deep breaths, I lunged at it, turned it on and leapt out of bed shouting anything that came into my head, but very loudly. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m going to have that phrase put on my gravestone, I think.

The light came on and I was halfway across the room, stark naked, but I’ve never been one to worry about that sort of thing unless there’s a knife involved! There might well have been, but there was absolutely nothing. No knife; no man in a tricorn hat either.

I thought he may have slipped out the same way he had presumably come in, so I armed myself with a fairly dangerous looking fruit bowl and appraised the curtains. Strangely they were still tightly drawn. After a bit of prodding I found no lumps behind the curtains so opened them to find the sliding door still locked and chained. I couldn’t believe it. I checked by unlocking and unchaining and went onto the balcony to look around. I’m not sure what I expected to find. There were a few people around who might have been slightly surprised to see a very shaken naked bloke leaning over the balcony and looking up and down the property. A passing security guard in a peaked hat sauntered by and wished me good night. With a grin on his face. It was that sort of hotel. Things were gotten up to. Especially with my colleagues. The hotel tended to put us as far away from the normal holidaying punters as they could.....<<<Read More>>>...

Ghost woman with a scary face was caught on a camera in a truck

 On the night of March 31, 2024, a truck driver was traveling along the highway to Saltillo, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, unaware that a ghostly presence occupied the passenger seat beside him.

During the journey, the driver received a call from his transportation company, asking whom he was giving a ride to. Dismissing it as a joke, he ignored the question.

However, upon arriving at the company base, he was shown a chilling photo taken by a surveillance camera inside the truck. The image revealed a female figure with an eerie, unnatural face seated next to him. The woman’s dress appeared to be from the late 19th century.

The company employees questioned the driver, highlighting that their rules strictly prohibited giving rides to hitchhikers or strangers.

Surprised and swearing that no one had been in the cab, the driver insisted he had not picked anyone up. This led to the conclusion that he had been accompanied by a ghost....<<<Read More>>>....

Why Is the Vatican Addressing UFOs, Aliens, and Apparitions Now?

The Vatican has always been an institution shrouded in mystery. Recently, it has made headlines by deciding to issue new guidelines on aliens and how it will deal with potential encounters in the future.

This sudden move has raised many questions about why the Vatican is choosing to address this topic now and what hidden meaning it might have for our understanding of extraterrestrial life and supernatural phenomena.

Historically, the Vatican has maintained a cautious stance on the topic of extraterrestrial life. The last time the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued norms for evaluating alleged apparitions and reports of supernatural events was in February 1978.

At the time, the prefect, Cardinal Franjo Seper, said the norms were necessary given how news of alleged apparitions spreads rapidly thanks to the mass media....<<<Read More>>>....

Tesla car display showed ghosts in a cemetery

 A frightening video has gone viral on social networks in which a Tesla car drives into a cemetery at night and its display shows figures of people appearing and disappearing next to it.

Typically, Tesla’s display shows objects closest to the car, including pedestrians walking on the sidewalk next to the road. But in this case, when the car stops at the cemetery, only tombstones and no people are visible outside the window.

Off-screen, the car’s passengers can be heard laughing nervously and saying, “What the hell is this?” as figures of moving people appear and disappear on the display....<<<Read More>>>...

 

What was that? Fresno driver films eerie anomaly on foggy road

 A Fresno driver had a spooky encounter as she was driving home from a casino. She filmed the foggy road with her cell phone and later discovered a mysterious anomaly that crossed in front of her car, reports coasttocoastam.com.

The video, which was sent to a local TV station, shows a dark and misty road with patches of fog. As the driver turns a corner, a white shape appears out of nowhere and seems to move across the road before disappearing.

The driver said she did not see anything at the time and only noticed the anomaly when she watched the video....<<<Read More>>>...

The new owner of the cursed British painting: “It’s real”

 In August 2023, the first article about a cursed painting of a young girl was published in the British media. Now, this story has continued.

It all began when a Briton named Zoe Elliott-Brown saw a mysterious painting at the Hastings Advice Representation Center art shop in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex.

There was a note attached to the painting stating it might be cursed, as a previous customer had returned it, claiming it had ruined her life.

When Zoe showed a photo of the painting to her mother, she seemed spellbound and urged Zoe to purchase it. They hung the painting in their house, and thereafter, Zoe’s mother fell “under the influence of the painting,” experiencing various strange occurrences at home, while even their dog began to growl at the painting.

Subsequently, Zoe returned the painting to the store, then reclaimed it, and ultimately returned it again. The painting was eventually sold for £1,680 to another buyer, James Kislingbury....<<<Read More>>>...

 

Couple took a selfie and caught a ghostly figure in military uniform

 Georgia Renshaw-Smith and her boyfriend Ross Cheeseman celebrated Georgia’s birthday at London’s Quaglino’s restaurant and happily photographed themselves on their phones, taking selfies.

But when they began to look at the photos, in one of them they saw an eerie male figure, whose ribs and spine seemed to be visible. The figure seemed to be dressed in military uniform, and the face was somehow distorted, pale and with an open mouth.

“I took one or two photos, but my girlfriend didn’t like them, so I took another one. And in this photo, when we looked at it, you can see what looks like a ghost in the background. I think the ghostly figure looks like an ex-military man with broad shoulders and a uniform,” says Ross.

When they showed this photo to Georgia’s relatives, they initially thought that they had simply asked someone to stand there or had done something else for fun. But then they looked at other pictures on Ross’s phone and believed it was real....<<<Read More>>>....

One in five people in the UK insist their house is haunted

 A recent poll has unveiled a surprising prevalence of supernatural beliefs among the British population. While you might think that a small minority would admit to experiencing ghostly phenomena at home, the reality in the UK appears to be quite different.

Based on a survey of 2,000 Brits, one out of every five respondents believes that their own home is haunted, and one in twenty claims to sense a spectral presence in their workplace.

What’s even more intriguing is that nearly 70% of those surveyed admitted to believing in the existence of ghosts, and almost 40% claimed to have personally encountered paranormal occurrences.

Among those who reported paranormal experiences, approximately half described the presence as benign. Geographically, the survey unveiled regional variations, with 75% of Londoners acknowledging a belief in the supernatural, while that figure dropped to 47% in Edinburgh....<<<Read More>>>...

 

“Shadow being” caught on surveillance camera in Costa Rica

 A surveillance camera installed at an intersection in the city of San José, Costa Rica, captured a strange “shadowy spot”, similar to the shadow of a person, that moved on its own.

A strange shadow appeared at an intersection in the San Cayetano area around 4:00 am on May 26, 2023, suddenly appearing in the middle of the intersection and quickly “running” from top to bottom, and then from bottom to top.

Then the shadow comes back and starts wandering on the left side. In total, the shadow spot moved under the camera’s sight for 36 seconds.

At some point, its movements look very similar to a human figure, but there were no people or cars at the intersection at that moment....<<<Read More>>>...

‘Ghostly female figure’ spotted floating off UK coast

 In the UK, a ghostly figure has been observed floating in the air and shrouded in mist.

According to an eyewitness, ghostly figure hovered over the water near Cleethorpes Beach, Grimsby, reports dailystar.co.uk.

In the midst of heavy fog on Thursday evening (May 11), a ghostly apparition has been spotted off of a UK coast, leaving one woman “absolutely stunned” by the appearance of a seemingly spooky vision.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, claims that the figure looked like a “ghostly female figure” floating above the water in the distance.

“I spotted this strange looking white figure floating round on the beach on Thursday evening. I was absolutely stunned so I quickly took a couple of photos and hopped into my car.

“The gloomy and foggy nature of the evening just made it even stranger.”

It is reported that this is not the first time that ghostly figures have appeared in the UK. Such phenomena have long been of interest in the scientific community, however, so far no reasonable explanation has been provided for such phenomena....<<<Read More>>>....

Ghost? Glare? Arizona trucker shares footage of chilling sighting

A truck driver passing through Arizona says his dash cam appears to have caught what looks like a ghost – but of course, that's unconfirmed. William Church said he was driving on SR 87 around 2:30 a.m. on March 11 when he passed by a transparent figure standing on the side of the road. Church says he was between Phoenix and Payson with no cars in sight. He described the figure as "just standing in the roadway as I passed by looks like you can see the lines through the legs making the figure." SR 87 has seen its fair share of deadly car crashes as it's one of the state's main highways to get to and from mountain communities. What do you think?

Truckers Beware: Spooky Story From The Road

 Almost everyone has a scary story to tell. For truck drivers, many of those stories come from their time spent on the road. From haunted truck stops to creepy highways, there are a lot of places that might make even the most seasoned truck drivers jumpy.

The story that you will read below was told on Reddit by a trucker who, after the experience, seriously thought about leaving his job.

“I have no idea where exactly to start this story but I have to tell someone. This happened 5 days ago, last Friday. I have told no one. Not my girlfriend, family, friends, coworkers, boss, anyone.

“So I haul feed for farmers in central Illinois. I’ve been doing this job for about 3 months and I have had no issues until Friday. I like to get my day started early so I usually wake up around 230 and I’m in the truck and off to get my first load by 3AM. I’m usually unloading my first load around 530-6 am which currently due to winter is still pitch black outside.

“I’ll be honest, I’m not usually one to be freaked out easily but certain secluded farms do kinda freak me out a little so I’ll usually just do what I need to do outside the truck as quickly as I can and spend my time waiting to finish unloading sitting in the truck....<<<Read More>>>...

 

Baby monitor captures dead father’s spirit stroking baby’s head

 On the screen of the baby monitor, the woman saw a strange phenomenon. Something faint and gently glowing, moving smoothly around the head of her little child, lying in his crib in the nursery.

Mother-of-two Whitney Allen posted a curious baby monitor video to her TikTok account, which quickly gained more than 3 million views and more than 8,000 comments.

“I saw his spirit soothe our baby – the one he never met,” Allen wrote.

In the video, Whitney holds a baby monitor in one hand while recording the screen with the other. In the crib lies her 3-month-old son Leo, who, it would seem, is fast asleep, and an incomprehensible light clot gently moves next to his head.

An incomprehensible clot becomes a bit like a translucent human hand, which gently strokes the baby on the head....<<<Read More>>>...

 

The night guard let the ghost into the building

A strange video captured by a security camera at an Argentine hospital-hospice shows doors opening and a night guard encountering someone unseen. But the guard himself claimed that he clearly saw this woman when she entered. The eeriest thing is that when he later named the woman he let in, it turned out to be a hospice patient who had died a few hours earlier. It turns out that the guard saw either some kind of astral double of the patient, or her ghost.

CCTV camera in the house filmed a ghost that looks like a sinister clown

 Amanda Pitt, 34, with her husband Jeffrey, and their four children live in Pennsylvania, USA, in a rented private home they moved into in 2020.

The house has a surveillance system that automatically sends security alerts to your phone when it detects something suspicious. And over the past two years, Amanda regularly received such messages, while no traces of strangers entering the house were found, reports nypost.com.

This could be attributed to some kind of technical glitch, suggesting that the camera might be reacting to family members or their dog, but the messages came even when no one was in the house.

Also, in the house and around it, some incomprehensible screams were constantly heard. Once the camera filmed how, during the absence of the family in the house, the door to one of the rooms opened by itself. Another time, in an empty house, the water faucet in the kitchen turned on by itself.

However, all these were only “flowers” in comparison with the recent incident. On October 21, 2022, Amanda woke up at 3:40 a.m. to an incomprehensible noise – as if someone was walking around their house, stepping heavily on the floorboards....<<<Read More>>>...

Ghost Story of The Wickerham Inn

 One of the more convincing arguments for cemeteries as haunted places are the stories that come out of locations that people don’t know are burial grounds until later. The following is a case in point…

Built in 1801, the Wickerham Inn is one of the oldest brick buildings in Ohio. As such, it should come as no surprise that rumors of ghosts swirl about the place.

The Wickerham didn’t have to wait until it was old to acquire it’s haunted reputation, though. That happened when it was still a shiny new burnt orange rectangle on the wild, Ohio frontier.

As the story goes, it was late one evening in the autumn of 1804 when a stagecoach pulled up to the inn. The driver, who was unknown, made straight for the sleeping chambers without uttering so much as a word.

When he didn’t come down the next morning a boy was sent to fetch the sleeping man. Instead he found a gruesome scene that was presumed, based on the sheer volume of blood, to be evidence that a murder had been committed.

An investigation was conducted but neither a body nor a suspect could be found.

The inn keeper, Peter Wickerham, had the contents of the room burned in an attempt to be done with the affair, but word of the incident spread across the countryside. Then a strange, headless figure began appearing at the tavern....<<<Read More>>>...

CCTV camera caught a ghost appearing out of thin air and walking through a wall

 The Humansville, Missouri Paranormal Society’s Facebook page recently posted a video reportedly filmed by a local convenience store’s security camera.

The camera filmed how a shapeless whitish cloud or haze forms in the air of the utility room, which takes on a human form in a couple of seconds. This figure moves forward towards the wall, then “enters the wall” and disappears.

The witness stated the following: “This video is from a Dollar General Store in Humansville, Missouri around 2 am. My Wife Katrina used to work there, she said they would often hear the cooler doors banging shut.

“Humansville has a lot of History including the Battle of Humansville. Our town is very haunted, that’s why I stick with a two-county area.”...<<<Read More>>>...

A woman bought a lottery ticket on the advice of a ghost and won

 In North Carolina, US, a woman bought a lottery ticket minutes before the draw and became rich thanks to advice allegedly given to her by a ghost, reports mirror.co.uk

Stephanie Israel, 39, claims she was lying in bed late at night when she suddenly heard a ghost talking to her.

She told the North Carolina Lottery: “It was late at night and I was lying in bed and the spirit just told me to go online and buy one.”

Stephanie, 39, added: “There was only four minutes left until the drawing.”

In the morning, the woman received a notification that she had won 501 thousand dollars.

“When I saw this, I screamed for about 20 minutes. I think I scared the family a little,” Israel recalls.

Having visited the headquarters of the organizer of the lottery, she received 356 thousand dollars (23 million rubles) due to her after taxes....<<<Read More>>>...