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What are we really looking at when we see a ghost?

In a more scientific view, according to Brian A. Schill of the American Society of Paranormal Research and Investigation, “When a person dies the bioelectric energy is released from the body into the local environment where it may perform one of two actions. The unconscious energy may dissipate into the local environment and there will essentially be no manifestation thereafter or it may, through covalent bonding, remain in the local environment and attach itself to a certain place or object that the person was attached to in life or any place that has an electron deficit (this is the theory behind ‘repeat’ hauntings). The energy may, upon rapid release from the physical body (such as in accidental death, tragic situations, or rapid release etc.) coagulate within the local environment over a short period of time, maybe only a couple of minutes or so, and amass to such a degree that the greater portion that was originally in the body has now become self-aware outside of the body.”¹

In theosophical terms a genuine ghost is a ‘kama-rupic shade’ which has a strong attachment to the physical plane. The strong physically-based desires, impulses, and appetites of these shades keep them bound to physical spheres which are congenial to them. They pose a real danger to the psychological health of the living because they are ‘soulless’ as the higher soul qualities of the departed person have moved on to more spiritual inner realms of being. Also, they are in-filled with energies of a depraved and ignoble type. They comprise embodied emotions whose energies are heavy and dense. Their bonds of attraction to the physical world slow down the dissipation process of the ‘kama-rupa’ in the lower reaches of the astral world. There are numerous examples of ghosts showing up in photographs as they are dense enough to record on film in the proper light whereas we cannot see them when the picture is taken. – Andrew Rooke ²

Excerpts from: The Astral Body by A.E. Powell

When the astral life of a person is over, he dies on the astral plane and leaves behind him his disintegrating astral body, precisely as when he dies physically he leaves behind him a decaying physical corpse.

In most cases the higher ego is unable to withdraw from his lower principles the whole of his manasic (mental) principle: consequently, a portion of his lower mental matter remains entangled with the astral corpse. The portion of mental matter this remaining behind consists of the grosser kinds of each sub-plane, which the astral body has succeeded in wrenching from the mental body.

The astral corpse, known as a Shade, is an entity which is not in any sense the real individual at all: nevertheless it bears his exact personal appearance, possesses his memory, and all his little idiosyncrasies. It may therefore very readily be mistaken for him, as indeed it frequently is at séances. It is not conscious of any act of impersonation, for as far as its intellect goes it must necessarily suppose itself to be the individual: it is in reality merely a soulless bundle of all his lowest qualities.

The length of life of a shade varies according to the amount of the lower mental matter which animates it: but as this is steadily fading out, its intellect is a diminishing quantity, though it may possess a great deal of a certain sort of animal cunning, and even quite towards the end of its career it is still able to communicate by borrowing temporary intelligence from the medium. From its very nature it is exceedingly liable to be swayed by all kinds of evil influences, and, being separated from its higher ego, it has nothing in its constitution capable of responding to good ones. It therefore lends itself readily to various minor purposes of some of the baser sort of black magicians. The mental matter it possesses gradually disintegrates and returns to the general matter of its own plane.

3. The Shell.-A shell is a man’s astral corpse in the later stages of its disintegration, every particle of mind having left it. It is consequently without any sort of consciousness or intelligence, and drifts passively about upon the astral currents. Even yet it may be galvanized for a few moments into a ghastly burlesque of life if it happens to come within reach of a medium’s aura. Under such circumstances it will still exactly resemble its departed personality in appearance and may even reproduce to some extent his familiar expressions or handwriting.

It has also the quality of being still blindly responsive to such vibrations, usually of the lowest order, as were frequently set up in it during its last stage of existence as a shade.

4. The Vitalised Shell.-This entity is not, strictly speaking, human: nevertheless, it is classified here because its outer vesture, the passive, senseless shell, was once an appanage of humanity. Such life, intelligence, desire, and will as it may possess are those of the artificial elemental animating it, this elemental being itself a creation of man’s evil thought.³

Virtually all cultures have believed in the ability of ghosts of the dead to return to the world of the living in either a benevolent or malevolent manner at one time or another. What do you believe?

^{1 Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places, Brad Steiger, pgs. {x} – {xi}}

^{2 http://www.theosophydownunder.org}

^{3 SOURCE: http://www.linda-goodman.com}