Ethnoarchaeoghostology

[Mulder]

Just in case you don't know what 'ethnoarchaeoghostology' is (where have you been?), here (http://ghostvillage.com/resources/2006/features_06192006.shtml)is an essay on it.

[Trinoc]

Just in case you don't know what 'ethnoarchaeoghostology' is (where have you been?), here (http://ghostvillage.com/resources/2006/features_06192006.shtml)is an essay on it.
???

[bobdezon]

Its a bit daft isnt it? I mean its literally mumbo jumbo. Although I was aware of cultural differences in "ghosts" I was not aware it was a "field". Bit sceptical of that to be honest :-[

[Trinoc]

I smell a Sokal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)-style spoof. Maybe Poe's Law (http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Poe%27s_Law) applies here.

[Mulder]

I don't think it's a hoax. The guy has written loads of similar articles. inventing an entire vocabulary to describe his work. If ghosts really are 'recordings' or 'spirits' then they would indeed provide us with primary historical / archaeological evidence of how people once looked, dressed, behaved, etc.

The trouble is, real haunt experiences are far too fleeting and ambiguous to provide any such information, whatever their cause. And in the vast majority of cases, mundane causes are found for haunt experiences. Only those who investigate with lots of prior assumptions and doubtful techniques 'discover' what they are looking for - but then they would anyway, with or without ghosts being present.

[Trinoc]

I don't think it's a hoax. The guy has written loads of similar articles. inventing an entire vocabulary to describe his work. If ghosts really are 'recordings' or 'spirits' then they would indeed provide us with primary historical / archaeological evidence of how people once looked, dressed, behaved, etc.
Trouble is, ghosts are almost invariably reported as looking the way the observer expects someone from that era to look, not the way they actually looked. Odd that the spirits should be so considerate, isn't it? There's no good reason why a disembodied spirit should look anything at all like the entity it is supposed to represent ... not to mention questions like how you get a disembodied spirit of an inanimate object, or why human spirits wear clothes.

[Mulder]

There's no good reason why a disembodied spirit should look anything at all like the entity it is supposed to represent ... not to mention questions like how you get a disembodied spirit of an inanimate object, or why human spirits wear clothes.

I was thinking here primarily about the 'recording' (or 'stone tape') idea of ghosts popular among some ghost researchers.

I have a number of problems with recordings anyway. Assuming such recordings are possible - why only people, why not a record of the whole area? If you video someone you don't just see them and nothing around them. And why record people particularly? A handful of dubious cases apart, not many witnesses bump into 'recordings' of places.

If recordings were real, it would be fascinating - like video fossils in space-time. Alas, the evidence is poor.