(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Mostly.)
Prompt: Would I stay in a Haunted House? Why or Why Not?I would. It's not something I would seek out, but I absolutely, 100% would. About the only reason I wouldn't stay in a haunted house is if I had some reason to believe that an actual, living human being was planning to murder me there. That would probably put me off.
So yeah, if I needed a place to stay and something was the best available choice except that it was supposed to be haunted, I'd settle in. No problem. If someone offered me a cash reward to camp out overnight in an abandoned sanitarium, I'd probably sign up. I'd take precautions against possible intrusions by living humans, but I wouldn't be worried about the ghosts. (In fact, if you watch a random selection of Urbex -- Urban Exploration -- videos on YouTube, you'll run into several where somebody exploring an "abandoned" building found that it was haunted by people who actually lived there and weren't too keen on random tresspassers with cameras. It's a whole thing.)
Now for the second half of the prompt. Why? Well, mainly because I exist in this weird liminal space between I don't believe ghosts exist and even if they somehow do, they don't actually seem to be that much of a danger or we'd know more about it by now. After the Victorian Spiritualism craze and decades of ghost-hunters, there'd be some kind of overarching hypothesis, some quanitified collection of events and measurements. But mostly I come back to If ghosts were really a thing, we'd know a lot more about them by now. Like, you want to convince me that they're mysterious and hard to gather data about? Okay, but we know about things that are absolutely wild in terms of being hard to study. We know about the bacteria that live around the edges of volcanic vents so deep in the ocean that there's neither light nor oxygen to speak of. We've found ways to study particles that are incomprehensibly small and even some that only exist in momentary bursts. If ghosts were a real-world phenomenon, surely by now we'd at least be comparing data over competing theories of how they worked.
Yes, I think my own impending murder might put me off, too, Michael. 🤣
ReplyDeletePossibly!
DeleteI've seen some of those urban exploration videos -- humans can be even more unsettling than spectres!
ReplyDeleteForgot to sign in, but that was me!
DeleteThey really can.
DeleteI’ve never seen an urban exploration video end that way. Granted, I don’t watch them very often. But that is still very funny. Those poor folks who just needed a safe place to stay.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yeah, if ghosts were real I think there would be a lot of hard evidence for them by now.
It's not half as funny as the group that was exploring an old, abandoned farmhouse at night... and then had to explain themselves to the owners, who were sleeping in the bedroom.
DeleteI've seen some really cool urbex videos, and some that were less cool. I'm always torn about the idea because it's incredibly interesting to me to see how a place has deteriorated, but at the same time, it's trespassing.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's an interesting take on the lack of data about ghosts.
Yeah, with a very few exceptions it definitely is.
DeleteI've been intrigued by Victorian Spiritualism. I'm amused to no end by the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of the most logical of detectives) was deep into spiritualism whereas Harry Houdini (a famed magician) was a complete rationalist. Apparently they met once in NYC. There's no record of what they said to each other, but I read a fictional novel based on that real life meeting called The Man from Beyond.
ReplyDeleteOh, that sounds like a fun read. And yeah, that's a really funny juxtaposition.
DeleteI think you're right, but my imagination manages to have me freaked out if I watch something with *one* creepy scene in it or if I read something remotely scary, so while logically yes, in reality, no thank you!
ReplyDeleteThat's completely fair. There's a reason that ghost stories remain popular.
DeleteGeneral nervousness can make any place harder to sleep in, agreed! I've never seriously imputed it to ghosts but I've lost sleep because of things like a creepy security light flashing on whenever the wind blew, or was-that-the-house-settling-or-someone-else-in-the-house....or just being a little too close to the weirdness of exotic nature. Like there's nothing remotely scary about *my* house snake, but I might not want to share a house with some *other* snake.
ReplyDeleteAnd i've never felt creeped out by the sinister spirit of Stachybotrys mold, but I've seen otherwise intelligent people go into real panic attacks when it was present. Worked in an infested building once. Six friends said they'd take turns and work with me. None ever did; if they came in they wanted to leave in an hour. "Why not hire a laid-off factory laborer? They're desperate. They'll do anything." Not if it involves coping with black mold, they won't. People's reactions just include waves of unpleasant emotion they often call anxiety. Nobody had ever died in that building yet, it blazed with lights and buzzed with people, but shoppers would wail "Ohhh, it's like being in a cave, a coal mine." The owners ended up knocking down the building.
So I can imagine how people who don't believe in ghosts could feel--admit it, delightfully--scared and haunted...
PK (back to life in cyberspace!)
Good to see you!
DeleteI can remember an episode of Haunted Highway where a supposed haunted location turned out to have a random stranger living in it. As I recall it was the only episode where anything genuinely scary actually happened.
ReplyDeleteI can see where that would tip it over from "scary" into "absolutely terrifying" even if no actual harm was done.
DeleteHumans are always far scarier than ghosts. People always make rude comments to me when I talk about my handful of experiences with ghost encounters, so I'm not going into detail. I'll just say I've seen some shit and leave it at that.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in the supernatural. If ghosts exist, they're a natural phenomenon. I think there are two types of ghosts. The more common sightings are simply energy impressions with no personality attached. The person who left the impression has long since moved on. The second and much rarer type of encounter involves an actual discarnate person or animal.
I once saw an interesting documentary where an old school was turned into condominiums. The residents experienced phenomena such as hearing laughter, voices, and footsteps in the hallways but when they opened their doors, nobody was there. The speculation was there were energy impressions left behind by the kids who had attended the school. It was a harmless phenomenon.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.
Yeah, I would be completely willing to accept it as as natural phenomenon, but there ought to be something measurable going on that people could collect data on. Which is not to say that there isn't; new discoveries are made every day.
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