On Ghosts

''This document was copied from the archives of the Gaslight Society, and is an amazing read for all agents about the nature of ghosts. The author is Martin Sneed. --Templar Maggie Uquidez''

Ghosts are the world's true immortals, and in this day of high technology where every phone has a camera and every television station has a reality show focusing on the hunt to prove the existence of the ghost, the phantasm has never been more alive. Wraiths have a greater vitality than ever before. They are far more numerous than at any time in the past, and people are much more interested in them. There are persona that claim to be acquainted with certain specific spirits, to speak with them, to carry on correspondence with them, and some that even claim to be the personal administrative assistants to the departed. Others of us mortals, more reserved, are content to keep such distance as we may from the world of the specter and its cohorts.

But there is no getting away from ghosts today. Even if you close your eyes you stumble over them in literature and film, posted videos and stage plays, and you hear them from the lecture platform. Even a lodge in the vast wilderness may be crammed with spirits. Man's love for the supernatural, which is one of the most natural things about him, has never been greater than now. One may conjecture numerous reasons by this heavy influx of ghosts.

Perhaps the shades of the dead are like small boys rushing to a fire, eager for a chance to see everything and experience new or lost sensations. We mere mortals are drawn to them because we seek to live vicariously through them, t have new experiences of our own, and though some take a very dim view that interaction with a spirit is no mean thrill, others are more professional and complex and seek through investigation to glean as much information about what happens after death as they do to identify the haunting force.

Ghosts have always haunted us, and doubtless always will. Specters never seem to wear out or die, but renew their tissue both of tissue and raiment, in spectacular fashion, so that their number increases with Malthusian relentlessness. There is no further use in trying to banish them with mere disbelief, for they are ready to counter such notions as never before.

Whereas the ghost of a hundred years ago was content to slink around a corner and rattle a chain, today's wraiths are eager to show themselves in horrid forms or with diverse abilities of moving objects, screaming and crying, causing blood to flow down walls, or blocking windows with live earthworms. Wraiths now have a rambunctious vitality and self-assurance that are astonishing. Even the ghosts of folks dead so long they have forgotten about themselves are yawning, stretching their skeletons, and starting out to do a little haunting.

Spooky creatures in such a wide diversity are abroad to-day that one is sometimes at a loss to know what to do "gin a body meet a body." Ghosts are entering all sorts of activities now, so that mortals had better look alive, else they'll be crowded out of their place in the shade. The dead are too much with us! Modern ghosts are less simple and primitive than their ancestors, and are developing complexes of various kinds.

They are more democratic than of old, and have more of a diversity of interests, so that mortals have scarcely the ghost of a chance with them. They employ all the agencies and mechanisms known to mortals, and have in addition their own methods of transit and communication. Whereas in the past a ghost had to stalk or glide to his haunts, now he limousines or airplanes, so that naturally he can get in more work than before. He uses the wireless to send his messages, and is expert in all manner of scientific lines. In fact, his infernal efficiency and knowledge of science constitute the worst terror of the current specter. Who can combat a ghost that knows all about a chemical laboratory, that can add electricity to his other shocks, and can employ all mortal and immortal agencies as his own? Science itself is supernatural, as we see when we look at it properly.

The wraith of the present carries with him more vital energy than his predecessors, is more athletic in his struggles with the unlucky wights he visits, and can coerce mortals to do his will by the laying on of hands as well as by the look or word. He speaks with more emphasis and authority, as well as with more human naturalness, than the earlier ghosts. He has not only all the force he possessed in life, but in many instances has an access of power, which makes man a poor protagonist for him.

Spirits of evil, for example, have a more awful potentiality than any living person could have, and their will to harm has been increased immeasurably by the accident of death. If the facts bear out the fear that such is the case in life as in fiction, some of our social customs will be reversed. A man will strive by all means to keep his deadly enemy alive, lest death may endow him with tenfold power to hurt. Dark discarnate passions, disembodied hates, work evil where a simple ghost might be helpless and abashed.