Ghost blog.

I have been thinking about ghosts a lot recently for a number of reasons, and our conversations about interruptions have fueled my theories about their existence or non-existence. A few years ago I began seriously considering a possible explanation for the existence of the paranormal, fueled partly by my recent introduction to the study of physics but mostly from my then recent encounters with possible ghost activity. I have always been curious about ghosts and the like considering that, of all the myths and legends humans believe or argue about, paranormal encounters seem to be the most prevalent across cultures. Think about it, how many people have you met in your life who have had some form of paranormal encounter. The frequency of these encounters leads me to believe that at least a small portion are probably accurate, and with my experience now counter among them, I am even more of a believer.

I had volunteered on a film shoot that took place at Northern State Asylum, the abandoned mental institution in Sedro Wooly. The history of this place is as crazy as the people who once occupied it; fire, flood, one of the first places to experiment and perfect full frontal lobotomies, mass graves and the general mistreatment that came hand and hand with early 1900s asylums, all supporting evidence for the theory I will get to in a moment. My two months there had many strange and difficult to explain occurrences, sudden power outages, camera audio pops (a hard wired camera mic would not pop in this manner unless there was a very power wireless power signal next to it, and since no one was holding a cell phone directly next to the mic it doesn’t seem like any of the crew could have caused it), strange shadows, noises, voices, sudden temperature drops, places in the building where our walkie talkies would just go straight to static even though they worked just fine in the same locations days before. Yeah, you get the point lots of odd happenings that scared the pants off most of us. After this I really began thinking about possible reasons why such occurrences would happen, accepting the paranormal.

First, could there be a scientific explanation for why spirits or ghosts exist? Consider that, at our base, we are just a collection of atoms and, if you accept string theory, we could be considered as energy waves. When we die its not as though these atoms automatically disperse from the are or lose charge, so, given an a certain set of circumstances, is it so unlikely that your atoms may energize in a manner that may form a version of “you” or interact with objects in small amounts in rare occasions? Perhaps it would require, as it seems to be the case in most reported paranormal events, that the death of the individual would have to be a situation in which said individual was in a lightened state of alert; fear, self defense, extreme pain etc. This brings me to my consideration of our in class discussion.

The energized atom argument seems like it would be applicable to any dead thing. However, as mentioned it only seems like those who die in heightened emotional or traumatic states that reappear as sprits or general “hauntings.” The traumatic states could play a role but more importantly I believe they remain in a state open to being partially re-energized because their deaths were a particularly unexpected and unwanted interruption in the continuity of their existence. Is that not basically what we seek in life? An existence that conforms to our vision of what it should be without interruption? There are many interruptions, bad jobs, school, annoying friends, anything you can think of but ultimately, though they are interruptions, we can assimilate them into some context in which they cease to be interruptions and more stepping stones or “challenges” for us to best and as a result improve. A murder or other violent death is the last, worst interruption of an existence, and leaves the victim with no chance to put such an interruption in context. That, I think, is the ultimate reason why trace elements of what these people once were may still linger beyond their deaths.