Saturday, January 24, 2009

Could Ghosts Be Time Travelers?

Assume for the moment that ghosts are real, in the sense that they represent an anomalous, paranormal phenomenon (or at least some of them do). As with UFOs, that begs the question: what are they?

Again, as with UFOs, there may well be myriad answers. The one that most people latch onto right off the bat is that ghosts are the spirits of deceased people who remain in touch, somehow, with our plane of existence. The other popular answer that I hear most often is that what we think of as ghosts are, in at least some cases, demons of some sort.

Perhaps. But what if ghosts are something else? Could it be possible that what we see or experience as a ghost represents a break in the continuum of time? In other words, if we view time as not a linear construct, but rather a wave, or even a loop, could we be looking backwards (or perhaps even forwards) in time when we observe a ghost, or similar phenomena? The person we see or experience, assuming that they are from the past, is in all likelihood dead (although if it's the recent past they may well still be alive, in our time), but as we observe them it is as if through a portal, fleeting though it may be, to the past - in short, they are still alive when we are looking at them, at least in their time.

This strikes me as just as plausible an answer for ghosts than the "spirits of the dead" idea (although the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Religious scholars have always spoken about some manifestation of an "eternal now". Scientists now openly speculate that human-initiated time travel in some form or another might be possible. But what if the "time travel" is occurring naturally, as opposed to the human-created forms we usually dream about?

Maybe, just maybe, when we see a manifestation of someone dressed as if they were in the 1890s, they really are still in the 1890s... even as they are, for a moment in time, also in 2009.

Paul Kimball

7 comments:

  1. I cannot agree more. This just makes way more sense than any crazy "ghost" stories. Time is a circular, or spiral entitie. We just overlap the past again and again so time is built ontop of itself, maybe sometimes things from another time can just be observes slightly at the present time.

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    1. As they say, history repeats itself.

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  2. Paul,


    I have come to the same independent conclusion. And I think time travel explains much of what I have experienced. I had the unique experience of renting a former home that was haunted with numerous indpendent accounts. I believe that time is a variable and it is the context of sequential events that is a constant. In other words you can change time as long as you do not influence events in any way. This prevents future travel as your knowledge of the future could influence it... if that makes sense.

    I am thinking of purchasing that old house again to try a few experiments. Please let me know if you are interested.

    you can e-mail me at astormchaser2002@yahoo.com

    -art

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  3. I have often thought about this and think that your theory is fantastic! It is not all that bizarre, scientist will never fully understand space and time etc, you never know what could be possible. If people are willing to believe that 'spirits' of dead people can walk among us, why not believe this? When as you say it is probably much more plausible! I have witnessed some strange things in my own home, which have all turned out to be one offs, if hauntings were real surely the things I experienced would have been repeated? I am open to the idea that maybe some how our time and another time had crossed over and maybe they could hear me too and wondered who or what the hell I was!

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  4. I just came up with this same theory and googled search anyone else who had.
    Watching an old episode of Ghost Hunters, they appear to have a conversation with a ghost.. The ghost actually sounds suprised, like shes sitting in 1908 hearing the ghost hunters from 2008. What if Solar flares or something reacting to minerals or rock in the earths crust creates some sort of disturbance that opens such an event... people always talk about houses being haunted.. when in fact it could just be due to where the house is. built above granite or quartz. highly interesting theory.

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  5. Im not sure if I agree entirely with this, although I could be wrong, but I have a similar theory (sadly with no evidence).
    When we talk about is time travel possible, the obvious question is "well,where are the time travellers then?". Perhaps what we think of as ghosts could be time travellers from the future? Work is already been done on invisibility (metamaterials etc).

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