Page 24 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

4 Ghosts and Phantoms

Ghost with hand on light and is instantly recognizable as the image of a cises of tossing furniture, objects, and people
bulb. (ARCHIVES OF parent, sibling, or friend. An apparition usually about the room.
BRAD STEIGER) appears at some time of crisis—most often that
of physical death—and usually appears only Accounts of people reporting having seen
once. In the records of parapsychology and psy- spirits of the dead are among the most com-
chical research there are also accounts of exper- monly described ghosts in all the cultures of
imental cases in which individuals have delib- the world. These post-mortem appearances of
erately attempted to make their apparition, the dead, in which a recognized ghostly image
their ghostly image, appear to a particular wit- is seen or heard long after the actual person
ness, as in efforts to project one’s spiritual represented by the apparition has died, are felt
essence during an out-of-body experience. by many observers and researchers to prove
survival of the human spirit beyond the grave.
A poltergeist is a projection of psychic Ghosts or apparitions that habitually appear
energy that finds its energy center in the in a room, house, or locale are known as phan-
unconscious mind, most commonly in adoles- toms, eerie phenomena that often appear over
cents, and emanates, therefore, from the liv- the years to attain a life force of their own, as if
ing rather than from the dead. A poltergeist is they were some kind of psychic marionettes.
a ghost only in common parlance, which links
the two because of the “spook-like” nature of Although people have been reporting see-
the poltergeist that causes the invisible pseu- ing ghosts and the spirits of the dead since the
doentity to prefer darkness for its violent exer- earliest historical records of human activity, the

The Gale Enc y clopedia of the Unusu al and Unexplained