G is for Ghost.....

I guess you really can't have a blog-theme covering the supernatural without addressing the quintessential supernatural creature--- the ghost.... There are so many kinds of ghosts, ranging from the innocently mischievous to the destructively violent. They haunt, they possess, they moan, and wail, and depress. They have unfinished business. They died tragically or wrongfully. You name it, and I'm sure someone's seen the ghost of it.

The stories are on the lips of every man, woman and child--- the scary stories in the dark, the porch-side memories of battlefield phantoms, the terrifying initiations involving spirit summoning.... if we can't scare the crap out of ourselves, then we really aren't happy, are we??

So, basic definition--- the soul or spirit of a once living person or animal that can manifest itself, either visibly or in some other form, to those still alive. 

I'm sure I don't have to go into much more detail, as 'ghosts' have always been a hot item, the stories of spirits and spectres ranging back to Biblical times. They range in size, shape and intent--- most considered evil, though some modern incarnations have shown these once-alive-now-no-longer-living-half-formed-entities as good (i.e. Casper the Friendly Ghost, Ghost, Ghost Dad).

These see-through or invisible, yet still disturbing, entities go by several different names: apparition, bogey, familiar spirit, haunt, phantasm, phantom, poltergeist, shade,shadow, spectre, spirit, spook, sprite, vision, visitant, and wraith---- just to list a few of them :-)

Whether you believe in ghosts or not. Whether you only believe in them on Halloween. Or, if you subscribe to the notion that ghosts MUST exist as the explanation to what happens to the electrical energy firing away inside our skulls after we die---see, First Law of Thermodynamics---you cannot deny that the idea of (and perhaps even a tear-drop of  skeptical belief in) ghosts has been indelibly burned into your very being. 

Raising Spirits

Listen to the rattling moans, 

hear the shaking of the bones,

the chains that quake at their stance,

fall away as the ghosties dance.

Fear, or fear not, but don't turn away,

they've only come to sneak and play,

they were here first, or didn't you know,

you're sleeping where they slept long ago.

Don't be surprised if they won't let you be,

your home was their home, or can't you see,

they tire of those who refuse to believe,

they'd rather not be here, they'd rather you leave.

                                                                                                                ---e.a.s. demers