Haunting Master Class

Last time, we discussed imaginary friends that turn out to be not so imaginary. Yesterday at WraithStop™ while discussing an article titled "Cold Spots: Fort Delaware" I mentioned the "schism in ghost lore where there are photos of half seen figures not seen by the eye, but at the same time accounts of ghostly figures indistinguishable from the living until they disappear or do the impossible like passing into a wall." What I did not mention, because this is the more appropriate venue, is that there is a rules framework that brings together both of these elements and many others that don't necessarily seem to fit together. This does beg the question if it can just be that there are disparate haunting phenomena going on that do not interrelate. The answer is of course, yes, if you want it to be that way.

First let's look at the theories that make for a cohesive set of rules for ghostly manifestations. It starts with the idea that much of it comes down to energy, and some of it to the will of the spirits in question. It starts with a ghost hanging around unseen, watching things happen. At this base state it may or may not show up in a photograph, depending on how much energy it has. When it has enough energy it becomes visible to the naked eye with the translucency depending on how much energy. Other acts such as telekinesis require energy and may or may not impact on visibility. A ghost with enough energy can chose to remain unseen or reveal itself to someone even if it has no control over its current photogenic quality. Overarching, this all may be dependent upon whether it is an active, intelligent, spectre or a residual haunting played on a loop, or not dependent on that criteria at all.

It is certainly an option to have different kinds of ghosts and hauntings that each work off of their own rule sets with as much distance or overlap as desired. Poltergeists can be noisy mischievous spirits or they can be purely psychic effects of the living. Unintelligent hauntings can be echoes of the past or entities caught up in the energy of previous events. Intelligent ghosts can be earthbound spirits or conversely non-human spirits such as devils and non-corporeal species beyond our current understanding. There are other events that can be described as a haunting such as Shadow figures and people, doppelgangers, humans travelling astrally, black eyed kids and people, and watchers and thought forms, which are ghosts created by human belief. As with everything else your setting can incorporate whatever manners and meanings work for you.

Mood: educational.
Music: Thrills In The Night by Kiss and Wake The Dead by Alice Cooper.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #4-8: Industrial Phantasmagoria

Victorian Age horror is rife not only with the supernatural but also the mechanical and the scientific.  Steam locomotives had been in use for quite some time.  Photography came about as the age began.  Gas lighting became widespread.  The London sewer system was built. People were working on and produced motorised vehicles.  The tail end was witness to engineering feats like the Brooklyn Bridge, and modern innovations like the incandescent light and phonograph.  On the science front Darwin published his "On the Origin of Species", and Faraday laid the groundwork for understanding the connection between electricity, magnetism, and light.  Medical breakthroughs brought about surgery with anaesthesia, the creation of vaccines, and the first use of X-rays scans.

These wild and exotic innovations provide great twisting points for horror.  They start at a basic level with the mundane.  The industrialisation of the textile industry, the spread of mining, and the rise of tenements and slums provided hellish environments with dangerous and desperate conditions.  Child labour was an all too common occurrence.  Any of these could be the basis of revenge from beyond the grave or from the living.  As marvellous as the phonograph was there was also much fear over what it implied, which was compounded by later attempts to combine it with spiritualism ideas to build devices that could communicate with the dead.  Such merging of spirits and science owes its due back to Doctor Frankenstein galvanising the dead back to life.

Mad scientists also followed in the perverted footprints of Frankenstein, but with their eyes open, intent on creating monstrosity and working toward world domination--since Britain showed it could be done.  What kind of scientific perversity are they into though?  The process of Eugenics can be used to make super men and women bringing about a master race.  Hybridisation mixes different animals together or men with animals.  Mechanisation is another route.  Tear a subject apart, amputate limbs, remove organs and create openings.  Fill those voids with gears and mechanical assemblies and replace limbs with faster and stronger motor driven parts of cold hard steel.  All of them could ultimately be combined even, with a supernatural element added for extra terrifying potential.

Mood: relieved.

Music: Haunted by Evanescence and March Of The Pigs by Nine Inch Nails.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #20: Things Never Human

There are more things between Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. That is unless you're one of the ones to dream of such things. Or such a thing comes visiting. Once ghosts come up in the setting, especially the more spiritual kind, then another door is opened. The door is a question. What else is out there? Are there demons or devils? Are there things that are neither, or less definable and outside of more religious views? The choice can be to use none, one type of thing, or several things that aren't and never were human in addition to the more human parapsychological beings. Using more than one type immediately spawns a host of questions and decisions about the interaction between the potentially disparate groups.

The author of a setting has to define the inhuman supernatural forces first before getting to the connections and the tangled skein of relationships between entities. Biblical forces of evil are the easiest to make use of since so much information has been written already. Of course literature and Hollywood have their stamps all over the subject as well. There are different tacks to take in dealing with them as story elements. Do such infernal beings act independently or are they forced to work through proxies, including possessed victims? Within possession there are two apparent lines of thought that come to mind. Sometimes there is only one force involved in the possession. In others by default there has to be more than one entity involved in a possession.

The roles played by entities--sometimes identified as their own group--and beings from beyond the realm of human understanding can be the same as spirits, or the same as the psychics. They also can represent yet another layer, or complication to the setting. This new wrinkle has the potential to really make the setting diverge in a different direction, one that the setting's creator may wish to ignore. Some of these creatures may possess magic. Magic is differentiated from psychic ability past a certain level by being able to do just about anything. With the right kind of setting focus magic might also be something available to anyone. It can be an equaliser against the power of psychics. The addition of magic certainly changes the game and maybe in unwanted ways.

Mood: tired.
Music: If That's What You Want by Twisted Sister and Climb by No Doubt.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #18: Not Alone

Another factor in the creation of a psychic setting lies beyond the confrontations of psychic versus normal person and psychic versus psychic. It's almost cheating to neglect this facet. Without it, a key psychic ability if not a whole type of psychic character is forfeit. What is it? In two words, spirit world. The power? In one word, Mediumship. There is less to be considered with respect to the ability of the Medium than there is to be defined for a setting's spirit world. It starts with even asking if there is a spirit world, and more importantly are spirits allowed to roam about and interact with the non-psychic living. There need not be spirits to have ghosts and hauntings. There need only be phenomena with a scientific basis even if they are thus far not understood phenomena.

As far as hauntings and ghosts go the reasoning behind them can be anything from echoes of the past, to lingering personalised energies, to spirits, to entities that are not human derived. Moving past the assumption that the cause of a haunting is intelligent there are a few questions to be asked. Does the ghost recall everything that it knew in life, or the life of the person it is emulating? Even if it is an emulation it may not be for a nefarious purpose per se. It could be the only way in which the being or entity can interact with the physical world. The emulation of a previous--or even currently living--person could be unintentional or forced upon it. This is not to say that the purpose of impersonating some other being cannot be intentional and malicious.

The next question is does the ghost know a lot of other things? It need not be psychic to know enough to seem to actually be psychic in different fashions. This is of course dependent on a few factors, notably speed of movement. Another factor is the ghostly community, if such a thing exists. Also, while a spirit isn't limited by the time constraints of the living such as jobs and relationships it may be limited by energy constraints. That so, it may still have lots of time to investigate what it needs to know to impart to others. It may aid a loved one, a stranger--especially helping to solve its murder--or a medium or other psychic. Then there is the consideration of ghosts with abilities similar to that of psychics. Only some ghosts may have such insights or it could be all of them.

Mood: creepy.
Music: Tier by Rammstein and I Got A Line On You by Kim Mitchell.

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The Ghosts and Me

I don’t think that I've blogged about this before specifically. I believe in ghostly phenomena. Thusly I believe in apparitions. I don't mind the word ghost. I do draw the line at spirits though. I don't believe that people get to wander around after death. It's not that I'm unreligious and don't believe in the soul. I just don't think that you get the chance to fix your life after it's over. It's against my personal religion within my regular religion. I think you're up the creek if you haven't done the things you needed to do. Likewise I don't think the matter of your death matters either. There's only one judgement. If someone is killed that judgement will come when the killer is likewise dead.

Maybe I have touched on this overall subject before. Certainly I coloured my blog about the fear of ghosts with my opinions. I certainly made reference to what I believe back when I talked about investigators of hauntings. Of course what I said there dealt also with more grounded "mythology" of hauntings. For example, going to a cemetery looking for ghosts is almost pointlessly stupid. Everyone in the cemetery is supposed to be laid to rest. They're not to be hanging around. It goes against the grain. It flies in the face of ghost logic. Go look for an accident scene or a crime scene or a hospital. Though of course for safety I advise against hanging around abandoned hospitals.

Over at Artzone I have a new picture in my gallery. It is a ghost, inexplicably enough given what I've said above, in a cemetery. The title of the piece is "I Don't Belong Here". The title has two meanings. If you don't know anything about the whys and wherefores of the picture then the title can be what the ghost is thinking. He doesn't believe he should be a ghost, he believes he should still be alive. Knowing what you know after reading this blog reveals the second meaning of the title. Ghosts don't belong in cemeteries. There can however be a reason for a ghost in a cemetery. Those reasons include murders committed in the cemetery and improper/illegal burials.

Mood: relaxed.
Music: Soul Intruders by Bruce Dickinson and Are We Waiting by Green Day.

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