Mind fields: are "ghosts" glimpses of parallel worlds?

A reader called Val B. wrote in to ask do we think 'ghosts' are glimpses of other dimensions, say of parallel worlds or alternate realities, as it were.

Apparently it was this post that triggered your question, Val.
I am glad. Because in that post we broach - ever so lightly and superficially - the question of the nature of "ghosts" (expounded also in this post).

Personally I find "ghost" to be a catch-all term that catches precisely nothing.
In all too many people it seems to be an automatic response (never a good thing, not in my book) to all sorts of unexpected or "illogical" apparitions.
Even worse, underlying there seems to be a deeply rooted but mindless preconception that "ghosts" are: a) dead people, who b) ended, usually tragically, in c) the place where the apparition occurs.

Really?
How do we know that?

We don't.

I understand the need by many people to feel there is an existence beyond death. Who wouldn't?

But such apparitions rarely prove - or disprove, for that matter - anything of the sort.
Besides... I firmly believe that the truth, and only the truth, does set us free.
And stereotypical thinking - jumping to conclusions - is by definition removed from the truth. It disregards the truth, whatever it may be. Even worse, it disregards the need to quest for truth.

It would be interesting and very useful to compile a classification of different types of apparitions.
In fact, am sure it's been done, but I have yet to find a good compilation of the sort.
However, they can be roughly divided in two main categories: apparitions where perception seems to be unilateral; and apparitions where perception seems to be mutual.

There are a number of instances that would certainly seem to indicate that certain apparitions are glimpses of perfectly ordinary, banal moments in a long-since-deceased person's life.


What's puzzling about such cases, if you think about it, is that the vision isn't reciprocal. In other words, the "apparition" doesn't seem to notice the person who can see her or him.

Then, there are cases - they seem to be much rarer - where the vision is, or seems to be, reciprocal. (Here is one such case.)


Regarding the first type (which could be further subdivided into various categories), I am increasingly leaning towards the tentative conclusion that there probably is an all-pervading "medium" - something akin to what the ancients called aether - that absorbs and automatically records everything that takes place, reflecting it back when the circumstances are right.
(Or perhaps everything is there all the time, but we can only occasionally catch a glimpse of it.)

Everything, every single molecule of our physical (and possibly para-physical) world, seems to be composed of this mysterious film-like subtle substance, or somehow partaking in it.

That could explain visions such as the Roman legion marching endlessly through a cellar in York. That was clearly a vision - not a recreation of that event. In other words, it was like a tape playing on TV - not a reoccurrence of an ancient occurrence.
How do we know?
Because the lower part of the legs and the feet of the soldiers were not visible.
They were following a road, the level of which was in those days much lower than today.

In other cases, it seems as if the individual memory of a person, long gone, is the source of visions. It is as if it created a field of experience - or, more accurately, as if it projected its own field of experience remembered for others to, literally, step in.

Still other apparitions, especially recurring and unchanging visions (i.e. the various "white ladies", "grey ladies", etc.), may be the result of cumulative collective imaging (which is not exactly the same as imagining). In other words, they may be externalised mental "growths", fed by the collective mind of their environment, including the mind fields of those who have long since died.


But it's the "mutual" apparitions that puzzle me.
In such cases one could speculatively surmise that a two-way glimpse of parallel timelines is taking place.
If all time is happening all the time - only our minds are adapted to a "tunnel vision" that helps us remain relatively stable in an endless, timeless ocean of apparent chaos - then it's not outside the realm of possibility that occasionally the "veil" should part for a few instants, perhaps ruffled by the breeze of some unusual electromagnetic activity influencing our brain and our mind, affording a mutual view of what is, only perceived by two individual (i.e. limited) minds as two different points in spacetime.
And that might be true even for the realm of what could have been.
(Ask Michio Kaku - or almost any of the authors featured in the side bar - to explain it to you. :))


Final conclusion?
None can be made at this point, by anyone - except, maybe, to conclude that we know nothing about the nature of the world and of our very lives, and should proceed accordingly.


And isn't that a gloriously liberating acknowledgement? :)



P.S. I can tell this post is going to be SO edited in the future.
So please, do come back at a later time.