CHASING THE GHOSTS OF PLACE

We live in landscapes filled with ghosts.The scenes we pass through each day are inhabited, possessed by spirits we cannot see but whose presence we nevertheless experience.

What I am describing  is a common feature of human experience of place for both modern and traditional peoples.

The meaning of a place, its genius loci,depends upon the geniuses we locate there.

Ghosts of the living and the dead alike,of both individual and collective spirits of both ourselves and our own selves, haunt the places of our lives.

Places are in a way 'personed' - even when there is no one there.

by Michael Mayerfeld Bell

Theory and Society

Vol. 26, No. 6 (Dec., 1997)

As anyone who has been on a haunted site and has felt the presence of someone there you will agree with the words of Mayefeld Bell.

Bell goes on to say that it isn't always about memories and that sometimes these ghosts are alive and playful and are rooted to their space - immovable.

This is something to REALLY think about as a ghost hunter.

Do we really have a right to move place ghosts 'on'?

Do we have a right to bring in psychics or mediums and ask them move on ghosts that may have been the custodians of a site who have been there for a very long time.

An example for us in Australia are the Arunta people who live near Alice Springs experience the sacred presence of their ancestors in certain rocks on the landscape. The rocks and stones are considered the bodies or body parts of the ancestors whose memory they keep alive.(The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Durkheim) We are on their land yet do we consider that we should be more aware of their energy on site? Are they not also custodians of their sacred spaces and sites?  

We can also have a sense of special objects that seem to have been imbued with  life because they  have special meaning for us.They could be gifts from people who are no longer with us, they may be heirlooms passed down from generation to generation or things we have made by hand and spent time putting our own energies into.

Ghosts of place come in many guises.They can be found everywhere.

Most cultures believe in sacred spaces and that ancestor spirits inhabit special areas.

Ghosts are often energised by our presence on those sites.

They are what keeps a place alive and literally breathing and there is often what Bell calls a 'quickening' when a person comes onto a space and gets a sense that there is more there than they can see....

We may sense ghosts as frightening to us because the energy they exude may be quite unlike us. They may have a different character which could feel stronger than we used to, they may have different desires which may be at odds with who we believe we are.

As social creatures we experience these ghosts through the reactions of others. We may feel frightened because socially we are told that we should be frightened of them.

We may feel a reverence to all spiritual energy because we are taught to be so by our shamans or healers or priests.

We may be repelled by them through religious teachings.

But if we only took time to understand the essence of these ghosts of place we may learn a lot more than we every thought we could - not only about them but also more importantly about ourselves and where our society is at.

The more we turn away from feeling that everything is sacred the more we think nothing of destroying that which we no longer care for.

Our ancestors knew that everything was previous because their lives depended on balance.

Our lives our now disposable.

So therefore so are our ghosts.

Just get rid of them.

This, dear friends, in my opinion is a bad mistake.