Among people who claim to have had a supenatural/ghost experience, do any claim to have been injured by said ghost/supernatural force? How many/what type of injuries have been claimed, if any?
And what did you say to your insurance company?
Hmmm… maybe no one is responding because they can’t come in here guns a’blazin and insult me for assuming that ghosts exist rather than answering the question.
Or maybe people aren’t answering because they don’t know. Just a thought…
What’s the “different take” here?
I don’t know. 70 minutes and only one reply. Maybe it’s a conspiracy. Or maybe the ghosts got 'em.
toad: different from the hugely hijacked other thread
While there were a lot of posts which didn’t answer the OP in the other thread (just like in this one), I really think that if someone had the type of answer for which you’re looking, they would have put it there.
While there were a lot of posts which didn’t answer the OP in the other thread (just like in this one), I really think that if someone had the type of answer for which you’re looking, they would have put it there.
Well it isn’t really me that is looking, I was just trying to make a thread that would focus on the topic.
I agree with what Achernar said said.
I have never founf any statistics on the number of injuries from ghost encounters, in fact I have never heard of any accounts of a “ghost” hurting someone. I have heard about poltergeists hurting people. Some say poltergeists are ghosts. Others say they are physical manifestations of someone in the house under stress. Here are some links. Whether any of these are true or not I have no diea. There are entertaining at the least.
Sutherland (pushed down stairs)
I had seen a story on sighting one day while channel surfing where a family was beign terrorized by some sort of ghost or poltergeist. The Husband had recieved large scratch marks on his back while the camera was on him. He had his shirt on, so nobody seen the marks being made. If anyone knows a link to that story that would great.
This is the sort of thing I was getting at in my admittedly jokey post.
Acts have consequences. If people really suffered injuries or places accrue damages because of ghosts, don’t these need to be reported? To insurance companies, or policemen, or firemen, or doctors, or emergency rooms?
Was the Husband above seen by a physician? Did anybody try to ascertain how the marks were made and if there was a perfectly mundane explanation for them? Did they look for particles of skin under his fingernails, for example? Did they give up and say there was no possible explanation for them? Was the camera really on him every minute? (Many ghost hoaxes were disproved when it was discovered what had taken place out of camera range.)
You would think that this would be the minimum expected of anybody submitting a tale of ghostly attackers. People who tell tales that never get examined should expect suspicion to fall on them.
I have no idea the details of the story I seen on Sightings. They may have done all of that. You’re right though, nobody seems to ask the obvious questions.
Okay, let’s talk about folklore. That way, nobody gets upset, but the question still gets answered.
In the traditonal folklore of many cultures, ghosts are powerful entities that have the ability to harm the living. They must be either placated or avoided. There are many rituals that can be performed to prevent ghosts from harming someone; covering mirrors in a house after a death, stopping clocks, etc. If these rituals are not performed, the spirit of the deceased was believed to return and harass the living, often by sitting on the chest of sleeping people and suffocating them. (See David Hufford’s book on ‘the old hag syndrome’.) Ghosts were also believed to manifest as the victims of a plague, and thereby return to infect the living, often family members.
Many other folkloric ‘monsters’, such as vampires, witches, and fairies share common characteristics with ghosts in their supposed ability to harm the living. Many beliefs existed about such creatures and how they may be avoided/placated/thwarted, such as the English custom of ‘laying the ghost’, in which a ritual or exorcism is performed by a minister, and the ghost ritually banished, or sealed in a container. Such stories abound in British folklore. Irish folklore metions the efficacy of carrying iron to thwart both ghosts and fairies; gold will also work against ghosts, but not fairies. Ghosts, as well as vampires, are often said to be unable to cross running water, or sometimes even property boundaries.
In later folklore, many stories of ghosts injuring people came about, although usually the harm was sustained by being so badly frightened as to die or lose one’s reason, along with the old canard about one’s hair turning white over night. I am massively lazy this evening, but a google search on Berkely Square in London will surely reveal at least one ghost website about the supposed haunting there in the 1850’s, in which several people staying in what was then an abandoned house at No. 50, Berkely Square, were supposedly frightened to death by ghosts. Another google search on Scottish ghosts will most likey bring up the story of the Mackenzie poltergeist in the Covenanter’s cemetery in Edinburgh, which is said to be still active today, and it has been claimed that tourists going through a certain vault on the grounds are accosted by this poltergeist, and have been kicked, punched, bitten, and scratched, along with what is often termed ‘psychic oppression’, although the objectivity of such a claim can of course not be verified, as such an ‘attack’ would leave no physical evidence. Alas and goddamn.
In oral traditon, ghost stories were passed about for generations, often altering in detail, the names of prominent persons and historical figures sometimes being added, and the stories themselves often carried a moral. It was widely believed that ghosts had the power to harm the living, and a whole subset of traditon on how to avoid this sprang up. My knowledge is mainly of western European traditons regarding this, although the continent of Asia and its cultures seem to be particularly rich in this sort of traditon. Again, a google search would be most helpful, but perhaps some Dopers familiar with Asian folklore will come by and enlighten us.