Welcome to the Tuesday edition of the Coffee Hour at Street Prophets. This is an open thread where we can discuss what’s happening in our lives, what we’ve been working on, and our opinions on current events. How do you feel about ghosts?
In some cultures, the dead can appear to the living in the form of ghosts. Ghosts are sometimes viewed as supernatural beings who were once human and have not gone on to an afterlife following death. In many cultures these spirits who have chosen to remain after death are feared as it is sometimes felt that they want to harm the living.
In some cultures, ghosts are viewed as solitary essences which haunt particular locations. Houses, hotels, cemeteries, churches, rectories, castles, prisons, and other places are sometimes viewed as haunted. These haunted locations sometimes attract visitors and reality TV programs who are seeking to document the presence of these manifestations.
In protohistoric Japan, for example, the spirit of the dead person might be unwilling or unable to leave this world and might be vindictive toward those who still retained the gift of life. The malevolent spirit, ikiryō, is capable of doing great harm to rivals and enemies. This spirit can cause illness and can be driven out with an exorcism ceremony.
In traditional Japan there are also wandering spirits (meun-botoke and gaki) who have several origins. If a person dies while in a state of jealousy, rage, resentment, or melancholy, then the spirit will be condemned to wander the earth unless a living person intervenes. In other instances, as Robert Smith points out in his book Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan:
“Other wandering spirits are thought to be the souls of those who are not worshipped by their descendents; they are engaged in an endless search for food and comfort.”
Because wandering spirits have the power to enter the body of the newly dead, a bladed object such as a knife, dagger, or sickle will be placed by the pillow or on the chest of the corpse.
Regarding the Manus, Paul Bohannan, in his book Social Anthropology, writes:
“Ghosts continue to live in their own houses, to be the same kind of ‘people,’ and to follow the same interests as they followed when they were alive. But there is one significant difference: as ghosts they can know the deepest secrets of living people.”
With regard to ghosts in Thai village societies, James Stanlaw and Bencha Yoddumnern, in their chapter in
Directions in Cognitive Anthropology, write:
“Ghosts may be used to symbolize or anthropomorphize particular problems confronting someone.”
Thus, things such as gambling losses or lack of fish may be attributed to ghosts.
Among the Nyoro in Africa, ghosts are the disembodied spirits of dead people and they are generally felt to be maleficent. Ethnographer John Beattie writes in Bunyoro: An African Kingdom:
“Ghosts are never seen, though they may manifest themselves in dreams; they are thought of rather as immaterial forces diffused through space. They are associated with the underworld, and with the color black.”
When people become sick or when misfortune befalls them, ghosts are sometimes seen as the cause. Beattie writes:
“If ghostly activity is diagnosed as the cause of misfortune, the agent is most likely to be the ghost of somebody who has been wronged or neglected by the ‘victim’ and who has died with a grudge against him.”
To determine why the ghost has a grudge, a spirit medium—a person who has gone through a lengthy initiation into a spirit possession group—may be consulted. Representing the “victim,” the medium allows themself to be possessed. Beattie reports:
“The directions given by the ghost usually include an instruction to build a small hut or shrine for it; it may also demand the sacrifice of a goat. Ghosts conventionally express their resentment at neglect in terms of food; they say that they are hungry and want meat.”
Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour, an open thread. How do you feel about ghosts? Have you ever encountered one?
If you don’t feel like talking about ghosts, then talk about pets, food, politics, religion, or ??????