Speaking Of Ghosts

MORE OF SAM'S OLD ART

I may have received 3 visits -- that I recall -- from a ghostly visitor or visitors.  Either that, or I have experienced three extraordinarily vivid and realistic hypnagogic hallucinations about ghostly visits.

[Henceforth I will use the term 'ghost' to refer to disembodied spirits in general]

According to my dream log, the first incident occurred in April, 1998.  The third incident was in June, 2008.  Oddly, I could not find any record of the second, but as I remember all three 'visits' were fairly similar in nature.  I am not going to describe them in detail, except to say that even though each incident commenced while I was in bed and in a near-sleep state, while it was happening I was completely alert (so it seemed to me) and aware of what was going on.  When the 'ghost' touched me it was absolutely real;  I felt the mattress sag under its weight (ironically, I suppose this detail could actually argue against it being a real ghost -- would a ghost have weight? -- although you could always cover it by supposing encounters with ghosts happen in some sort of non-rational, alternate reality where inner mind and external reality blur into each other^).

The first visit was briefly alluded to in a previous entry as an example of consciousness maintained into the hypnagogic stage (more happened than that little detail in the description, however).  And after the second visit I actually considered the possibility that I had really been visited by the ghost of someone with whom I had had a relationship some years before, and whom I knew to have died recently of illness.  But after reflecting on the details of the incident I eventually decided if it really was a ghost, it probably was not that person.

One thing that I will mention is the fact that throughout the duration of all of the incidents I kept my eyes closed, even thought I was dying of curiosity.  Why did I not open my eyes and look, and prove to myself whether there really was a ghost there or not?  Because of the sheer reality of the situation -- it all felt so real that I was actually afraid to look! Specifically, I was thinking of one of the episodes in the Japanese movie 'Kwaidan' -- an anthology of ghost stories originally collected and published by Lafcadio Hearn, a Greek-Irishman who settled in Japan and became a naturalized citizen in the 19th century -- which concerns a selfish husband who abandons his wife and goes away to marry a rich lady;  some years later he returns and is welcomed back by his wife, who seems strangely glad to see him despite his disgraceful treatment of her.  They spend a night of passion together, and in the morning he awakens to find -- that he had slept with the moldering skeleton of his wife, in the rotting ruins of his old house.  And I was afraid that if I forced open my eyes and looked, I might see something along the same lines, like this detail from a painting I did in graduate school (the skull is actually copied from a photograph of a ceremonial object used in Tibetan Buddhism):

Anyway, if these events were all subjective experiences with no supernatural input, I can well see how back in the days of the witch hunts people could become convinced of the most farfetched things.  If one of these visits had happened to, say, a peasant farmer in Germany in the early 1600's, he would absolutely have believed that he had had a real encounter with a succubus or some such demon.  He would have told someone, word would have spread, suspicion of commerce with the Devil would have been aroused, and before he knew it he would have been clapped in irons and carted off to the witch prison in Bamburg.  Or perhaps a country parson in 18th century Ireland, told of a similar visit by a girl in confession, might have taken a kinder view of things and told her it might have been one of the 'Good Folk' who had taken a fancy to her or something -- alarming, and still unholy, but at least not a capital offense like being a witch.  And of course, a 21st century UFO conspiracy theorist might well believe that he had been abducted by space aliens, who did unspeakable things to him before returning him to his bed, with his memory incompletely erased.

I am sorry, though, to have concluded that these 'visits' probably had nothing to do with my poor J___e,  It would have gladdened me to believe that her ghost had come to visit me.