Talking to Ghosts
During my research, I was reminded of an incident in my psychology class that led me to write about this topic. It was a Friday and I walked into my psychology class thinking we were going to prepare for our upcoming class, but I was all wrong. My professor walked in and claimed he had ESP, which is extrasensory perception. He said that he could read people’s minds and know what we were thinking. My teacher asked us to write anything simple on a piece of paper and fold the paper in half. My classmates wrote a message on the paper and handed the papers to him. One by one he read them and had most of my classmates, including me believing he could do that. To my surprise, what he said was completely false and he went on to say how there is no such thing as ESP and psychics because there were not any tests to prove that there were. By this time I was upset because I couldn’t argue my point and I knew other wise to his theory of there are no psychics and no ESP. If psychics were false and ESP was false than what could be said about a renowned psychic, Sylvia Browne and one of my best friends, who as of right now will be known as “Bob”.
My friend “Bob” and I have known each other for a year now. I never truly found out about her special gift till we started talking and realized that we were exactly alike. See my friend told me that she can talk to ghosts and spirits. She has instances where she is not herself, but someone else from a different time and a different place. She, my friend, trusted me and knew I wouldn’t treat her like a crazy person who needed psychiatric help.
Before I get to her story, I should probably explain the difference between ghosts and spirits and to do that I went to books I own by Sylvia Brown. In Sylvia’s book The Other Side and Back ghosts were explained as people who do not realize they are dead. Ghosts are earthbound because they either committed suicide, have regrets of their mistakes they made, feel the need to stay behind for loved ones or they just died so quickly that they have not realized the truth.
In the book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne there are many characters who have committed sins. In Puritan community they followed the word of god and banned all sins. These sins in The Scarlet Letter were look as The Black Mans work meaning satans work. The sins committed were harmful and hurtful to people and their souls. Hester and Mr. Dimmesdale committed adultery with bearing a child named Pearl. But Roger Chillingworth committed the worst sin by using his gifts for evil.
First off, a general understanding of how the common ghost story got started needs to be in place. It is speculated that the tale of Anne Boleyn was the first recordation of ghostly happenings. Boleyn was the mother of Queen Elizabeth I and the second in a whole series of wives by King Henry VIII. She was executed after being tried and found guilty of a whole slew of charges. There are tales that Boleyn haunts the grounds in which she lived, and was ultimately executed some four-hundred years ago. It is speculated that when a person dies with “unfinished business” they haunt the place where they lived or spent their last hours, as with the story of Ms. Boleyn. Tales of ghostly happenings have circulated the world since transcontinental communication became prevalent. If given a second thought these stories can be disproved simply by following any of the preceding methods.
Like all the best ghost stories, this begins with the most innocuous of introductions: “…life is complicated”, a quote by Patricia Williams that Gordon will remind us repeatedly is “the most important theoretical statement of our time” (3). What obscures, obfuscates, thwarts and yes, haunts us and our work, she argues, is not what is seen but what isn’t, the notable absences out of the corner of our trained eye, those ghosts who may be invisible (especially to the discourse) yet still exact attention from their hidden presence. Perhaps anticipating the confusion of my book’s previous reader, Gordon patiently (and poetically) expands on her conceptualization – ghosts are those whom, through the “complicated relationship between reality and its mode of production” (11) have been relegated to that void between the s...
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet’s father is intended to be seen as a real ghost. Around 1600, when the play Hamlet was written, many people believed in mystical creatures like witches, monsters, and most importantly: ghosts. With so many people believing in these characters, it makes sense that Shakespeare portrays the ghost of Hamlet’s father as a real figure. Many examples support this, such as when the guards in Act I scene i see the ghost, which proves it’s not just in Hamlet’s imagination. But some people can not see the ghost, such as Hamlet’s mother in Act III scene iiiii. Hamlet sees the ghost but she can not. This could be used as evidence to say the ghost is not real though. Shakespeare shows us though this information, the high complications oh having ghosts in a story.
My Surbaban Pittsburg, Pa HAunted House. (2014, April 24). Retrieved from Your Ghost Stories: Http://www.yourghoststories.com
Haunting is an adjective that simply means hard to forget or ignore. One of the first sightings of a haunting was in first century A.D. (Television, 2014) not cited correctly. A guy by the name of Pliny the Younger wrote about his early sightings in a letter which later became a part of his life account. There are many different types of hauntings. They include traditional, residual, poltergeist, and inhuman. The traditional haunting is a haunting that deals with one or more ghosts that are interactive. Traditional haunting are usually connected with an area or a person in that area (Danhausen, 2012). Most of the time the ghosts have the same type of personality traits, hobbies, and knowledge the person the used to be. Residual haunting has to deal with a certain energy that is left in a location or area (Danhausen, 2012). Residual haunting occurs when a big event happens in a loca...
A ghost is a soul that appears as a dead person or is against a living person. Most people still believe in ghosts even though they have not seen one. The first sightings of ghosts date back to 856 A.D (Stories, 2014). Ghosts mostly make loud noises and disturbances to let people know that they are in the midst. In the first century A.D., the great Roman author and statesman Pliny the Younger recorded one of the first seen ghost stories in his letters, which became noticeable for their bright story of life during the peak of the Roman Empire. The world around us has become more technical with the findings and history of ghosts not cited correctly (Stories, 2014)). The place ghosts come from or occupy varies depending on their spiritual abilities. Ghosts feel more comfortable in a place that is unrestrained and enables them to move freely (Zamora, 2014).
First, it is important to include an in-depth description of the storyteller in order to fully analyze the meaning of the tale. My story was narrated by an 18-year-old woman. She was born in Poland, and at the age of eight moved to the Frederick. She is from an upper-middle class family; both her mother and father are chemists. The story was obtained late one night while working on homework and casually conversing. The topic of ghosts and the supernatural arose, and she informed me that she once saw a ghost firsthand. I inquired about her experience, and she willingly explained what had happened.
Nathanial Hawthorne, an American author during the 19th century witnessed the power of sin to wreak havoc not only to an individual but a whole community. His novel The Scarlet Letter expresses this very idea by exposing the follies of mankind and the potentially detrimental effects of sin trough Hester Prynne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth who all affected by sin in different ways. Utilizing powerful symbols and light/dark imagery, Hawthorne conveys to the readers, through these characters, the power of how one’s response to sin can positively change an individual or gradually destroy one by spreading like a contagious disease and ultimately consuming the victim.
Discuss the ways in which The Red Room, The Signalman and The Inexperienced Ghost create and sustain atmosphere and tension. It is clear that atmosphere and tension are of fundamental importance to the success and effectiveness of a ghostly tale. As Susan Hill, a prolific writer of ghostly tales, says ‘one thing a ghost story must have is atmosphere’. Also it is clear that ‘The Red Room’, ‘The Signallman’ and ‘The Inexperienced Ghost’ create tension and atmosphere at varying degrees. The role of the narrator is of fundamental importance when creating atmosphere and tension in the ghostly genre.
As of 2002, more than 430,000 people every year die from use of tobacco- more than AIDS, alcohol, drugs, abuse, car accidents, murders, suicides, and fires COMBINED (“Cigarette Smoking” 2). Scary, isn't it? That even though cigarettes can cause that many deaths, people still smoke them? Cigarette smoking is a serious problem in the United States. Especially when it is done in public. Public smoking should be banned because it is a hazard to the people around.
a dull grey colour as if it had lost the will to live and stopped
Pearl is a representation of the dark and wild nature of sin. This is shown in her many descriptions, where she is referred to as an elf-child, nymph, and sprite. She is continually referred to as an otherworldly creature, giving the important repetition that cements this fact. This quality ensures that she is separated from the Puritan community. Poor Pearl never has a friend, and passes the time with make-believe weed enemies, and even her own reflection, as a substitute to human companionship. “...except as Pearl, in the dearth of human playmates...The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon’s teeth, whence sprung a harvest of enemies, against whom she rushed to battle.” (Pg. 87) She is further shown to be separate from society by disregarding basic social rules, and commits acts such as dancing on graves and yelling and flinging mud at her Puritan antagonizers. This chasm is clearly a result of the concealed sin of her father, because while remaining unacknowledged, she can’t assimilate into the community.Pearl also represents a physical manifestation of her parent’s sin. The novel describes “ the child’s whole appe...
The tobacco industry is important to the economy. In 1991, worldwide tobacco sales exceeded $59.8 billion and in 1992 the industry was rated as one of the top one hundred advertisers (Pechmann and Ratneshwar, 1994). However, there are high prices to pay - socially, economically, and personally - as a result of this industry. Annual mortality figures indicate that cigarette smoking is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States. An estimated 390,000 people die each year of smoke related illnesses, which is greater than the combined mortality for cocaine, crack, AIDS, homicide, suicide, and alcohol abuse (Botvin, G., Baker, Botvin, E., Dusenbury, Cardwell, and Diaz, 1993).
In today’s society, Technology is the main player in the way we communicate. Cell phones and social media made the communication easier for people to contact each other. It extends time less to connect between long distance friends. Also, it helps people to spread and enlarge circle of friendships around the world. However, people are losing the way of face-to-face conversation. Sherry Turkle is an expert on culture and therapy, mobile technology, social networking, and sociable robotics argued in her article “the flight from conversation” how using technology can affect our behavior in conversation.