Why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets | Hacker News Reader

Why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets

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114 pointssamizdis94 comments

I've only read lightly on the historical literature of ghosts, but I think TFA has some basic misconceptions. Through most of history, ghost sightings appeared to be of regular people, with the witness only realizing later that it was a ghost. The conception of ghosts having ethereal appearance appears to have become widespread in the late 19th century.

Homer describes them as a vapor or smoke I believe

Roman writers used "umbra" or "shadow"/"shade" as a word for specters, phantoms, ghosts, etc. They had many other words, too, but this is probably closest to how dead apparitions were physically perceived.

I remember some tradition that Roman ghosts were often associated with or seen as blue for some reason? That's only my fuzzy and likely incorrect memory though, from when I was studying in college. I have a memory of a play or piece of literature where a candle flame turns blue and it was meant as a cue to what was about to happen.

skia - shade / shadow

The Witch of Endor described Samuel as a "god" coming up out of the earth in the appearance of an old man in a robe.

And in the 19th century with the advent of cameras and their “ghosting” of images with people moving.

See also the rise of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria in the 19th.

I read that they fade over time. A famous one was a lady in red who appeared in a castle in the UK. Over a couple hundred years of sightings the color if her dress faded from deep red through crimson then pink then finally white.

Well, yes, I suppose repeated washings over a few centuries would do that.

Probably dried it on the sun too much.

for me horror movies with ghosts shown as regular people in foggy daylight (for example the kid in the original Omen) are scarier then the ones that fly at night or have heavy makeups with abnormal bodies etc.

There are accounts of spirits/ ghosts much earlier than 19th c that aren't "regular" people.

In Homer's Odyssey (8th c. BC), while in the underworld Odysseus attempts to hug his mother Anticlea but is unable to do so.

Thrice I sprang towards her, and my heart bade me clasp her, and thrice she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream..... “‘My mother, why dost thou not stay for me, who am eager to clasp thee, that even in the house of Hades we two may cast our arms each about the other.... Is this but a phantom (ghost) that august Persephone has sent me, that I may lament and groan the more?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shade_(mythology)

Ancient Romans used "umbrae" (shadows) to refer to ghostly spirits, which for me invokes the figures on the wall of Plato's cave

I'm always leery of translations like this, as they are often translated with the world view of the day.

Interesting regardless though.

The latest translation was made just a few years ago. [1] I wish someone could track down all translations of it and post it somewhere, so one could try do compare different passages through time, the Italian Wikipedia has a good list of international translations.

One should not that Homers dialect is arcane from the start of the Greek golden age, so translation is always going to be interesting.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traduzioni_dell%27Odissea

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_Homer

> HORATIO A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

> HAMLET Pale or red?

> HORATIO Nay, very pale.

~1600

Thanks, that was enlightening.

There's another theory I've heard that goes more into what ghosts are, that isn't in the article: They're not spirits, but more like an imprint on reality. This would also explain why so many just repeat the same actions over and over, and to some extent not just clothes but other things that appear in a ghost-like form they'd interact with. The one missing part of this theory is, it should be possible to create such an imprint with someone who is still alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape_theory

really makes you wonder what Babbage was trying to achieve with his Difference Machine...

The second missing part of the theory, is the lack of existence of its subjects.

It's not a theory, just detailed, more self-consistent fiction. Like Tolkien's very detailed descriptions of elves.

If it is consistent with a set of axioms, then it is a theory.

Consistency with a set of axioms is necessary but not sufficient for a theory.

From Wikipedia: In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with the scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science.

I think this is about mathematical theorems as in if you reject the axiom of choice, you can't use it to prove any other theorems either.

In science a theory refers to a scientific theory. That's a pretty circular definition. Or maybe a tautology.

That’s a great comparison with Tolkien. It’s fun to theorize about nonsense.

> The one missing part of this theory is, it should be possible to create such an imprint with someone who is still alive.

I've read of this idea, it's traditional in some cultures, I just don't remember the name of it. I think it's cognate with ideas of doppelgangers and so forth.

I also think there's often an implicit assumption that whatever it is that causes the "imprint" can only reach a certain necessary magnitude that is commensurate with death or dying.

I feel obliged to note this is not my own perspective on things at all, although I admit I like reading about and thinking about these things sometimes as a kind of psychosocial phenomenon, and think it's worthwhile to engage in metaphysical discussions sometimes just as a kind of check.

In Japanese folklore there's the concept of "ikiryō" (literally "living ghost"):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiry%C5%8D

Ghosts are just your brain breaking down in to schizophrenia.

I really wish it was easier to talk about mental disorders. People with (mild?) mental disorders manage to live ordinary lives just fine. I remember listening to one specialist on a radio show who claimed that at least half the population (in one particular developing country) suffered from some kind of mental disorders but nobody comes for treatment because people think of you are getting treatment for any kind of mental disorders, you must have "gone mad" and are therefore completely unreliable and therefore must lose all your licenses, work privileges, family responsibilities etc. So people are scared to come forward and ignorance rules.

Indeed, many of the successful people I know personally have struggled with some type of mental health disorder, and/or developmental disorder, but find it to taboo - and dangerous for their career to talk about it. I think once it is no longer taboo people will be able to accommodate and manage these situations better, and people with them won’t have to be afraid and secretive that they will be “found out” or aren’t suitable for their jobs, etc.

Just because someone can hide it or still do their job doesn’t make it “mild” either.

I used to be cynical about the existence of ghosts until I saw one. I didn't realise there was such a simple explanation and have wasted the past 15 years of my life thinking otherwise.

https://www.paranormalcatalog.net/ghosts/the-ghosts-of-fligh...

https://annas-archive.org/md5/16e94bf84b997f0233166c401ff047...

The theory ties in with "Morphic resonance", the cool-sounding name of an attempt to rationalise imprints and collective memories among other things.

I don't see the harm in pondering such theories. After all, the fact we're here and living in the universe at all, means there's a whole bunch of things happening behind the scenes we have no idea about. Perhaps one day, "ghost imprints" will be something science can measure. Or other pseudo-science like telepathy or premonitions, may move into actual science with as yet unknown discoveries. I'm not saying will, but they may.

You would think there would be all sorts of ghosts then, from all forms of life on earth.

If ghosts are the souls of deceased people, unless they were nudists, wouldn't they prefer to wear clothes similar to the ones they used when they were alive?

That is, instead of "ghost-seers dress the ghost", it's the ghost that dresses itself. In fact, that whole paragraph even makes sense once flipped that way:

"[...] ghosts dress themselves, automatically, through unconscious processes. And so we see a ghost in its usual dress because that is the mental picture the ghost has of itself, and this choice of garment is most likely to inspire recognition."

"Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different, the plugs in your arms and head are gone, your hair has changed. Your appearance now is what we call 'residual self-image'. It is the mental projection of your digital self."

Lovely to run across a Matrix quote when you were expecting something else. Bravo.

Easier to do optical illusions / alpha blends with white clothes too, so I suspect that tech furtherd the practice.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper's_ghost

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_compositing

Why is the question about clothes? Why not ask why ghosts usually appear wearing skin? Or flesh? I guess these days in common depictions, clothes > skeleton > peeled > nude in terms of frequency. And what about age, or state of injury? It seems more commonly reported that ghosts do not exhibit their fatal injuries, though again it "happens". Or the big question: why should anything be visible at all?

If a ghost is meant to be associated with a spirit or soul, there's no particular reason for them to have any form or be visible at all. But as an exercise in worldbuilding, they can be, and their visual appearance can give all kinds of fascinating clues about their previous existence or the viewers'. I'd rather speculate about that.

When I lived in manhattan I was friends with this hippie spiritual Buddhist woman who was very into reincarnation, she described it as a "glitch in past life memory system". Basically something from the history line accidentally implanted a memory in the current that manifested as the person witnessing a past life component. I always thought that was pretty fun.

The ghost phenomenon is all about information.

When a system has a lot of complexity, it needs a lot of computational resources to be simulated accurately.

When suddenly this complexity is not needed anymore, because the system got "simplified" suddenly. The pockets of available computation diffuse slowly into the environment.

The analog for the scientific person here is like your adaptive grid in the simulation was locally in high resolution because it was needed by the physical process, and suddenly the physical process doesn't need it anymore but the simulation grid stays in high resolution.

When some other high complexity process comes nearby (like another rich soul), it benefits from this increased resolution which usually allows him unconsciously to run his computational wetware in higher gear, like in a form of mildly induced schizophrenia, vivid dreams, or hallucinations.

Brains as general information analyzing devices can perceive the shape of this echo from the past, decoding from the faint ripples the stone that impacted the water.

The mythology of absorbing the essence from the passed is varied across time and places, ranging from soul capturing gems, the fighting to survive against the erosion of time like in Highlander accumulating the energy of your rivals by eating their brain.

Looking at it only as a physical process ("real") will make you miss it. It has to be seen through the lens of the ethereal plane. Information is conserved, but details can be compressed more or less. Degrees of freedom accumulated or used are different things.

I always thought the "white sheet" thing was just about representing funeral wrapping. I found it interesting that the topic goes much deeper than that.

Who does funeral wrapping? I mean, which cultures currently do, or did recently (in the time of ghosts)?

I thought the point of the white sheet trope was that the ghost (whether clothed or not) is invisible, and so they throw a real physical sheet over themselves so they can be seen at all. Although, a ghost that's visible but naked would be just as good justification.

Might dust coverings be also part of this? Not that those are used here, but them being used in some abandoned or less frequented locations with slight movements of air could explain some imaginery. Peeking from windows for example and seeing objects covered in sheets.

That's also my theory: Country houses used to be partially shut down, a whole wing, which may only be required as an accommodation for guests, or the household may contract to a manageable core of room in winter. Every now and then, something from these shutdown rooms would be required and somebody would be sent out into this eerie realm of dust covers. A faint rustle in the dark, there, and again (a disturbed mouse), breaking the silence of these deserted (and supposedly quiet) rooms, could make this quite the challenge for the faint hearted. And what ultimate of psychological horrors could be lurking in the dark, other than these covers coming to life?

However, there's another theory about this (not mine, sadly): "The most common ghosts are the ones that appear dressed in a white sheet with flailing arms. These are people who died while changing their duvet covers and they are condemned to wander in bedrooms forever, trying to find the corners." ;-)

My small experience with seeing a ghost was that it appeared out of a mist. The white sheet could be a figurative way of portraying that. But there was a face too, and that stood out most starkly. And the gaze, when it fell on me, was electrically frightening.

I was probably 2 years old and was fussing loudly in the middle of the night, when a kind lady came through a door and walked over to me and hushed me down. She was in a blue ball gown-like dress. The next morning, I remember looking at the part of the room where she came out of, and there was no door there. Years later, my sibs told me that house was haunted af. I’ve spent my life trying to rationalize this experience.

I have vivid nighttime hallucinations. Sometimes it is bugs or spiders (so many spiders), other times dancing teacups emptying themselves onto my face. I remember a time when my alarm clock was a lion that I had to tame. But a few times it was very much what you describe. In one case, a ghostly looking woman looked me directly in the face from not more than an inch away.

Our minds get kind of funny when we are asleep. They manifest strange and incomprehensible imagery. I wouldn’t make too much of it.

(By the way, I have these much more frequently when I am stressed. Perhaps that was a factor for you?)

You are "explaining" it. The consensual narrative has sprung a leak and you are striving to patch it.

Ghost sightings can cover a wide range of clothes and that is generally because ghosts wear whatever they wore when their mortal form died. The concept of ghosts dressed in white gained prevalence at a time and place when white linens were rapidly becoming common for the average person. The industrial revolution increased the supply of white linen clothes, also white linen bedding, both at homes and in hospitals. Ghost stories gained popularity during this era, which was also a time of growing world population and growing deaths in densely populated areas. This intersection is why ghostly appearances very much fit the description of a nightgown-wearing tuberculosis patient. During the Victorian-era in Great Britain, the medical field was advancing rapidly, so a keener awareness of life and death coincided with customary dress/fashion of the time to produce stereotypical images of ghosts and ghouls.

The white sheet alludes to a burial shroud.

Intellectually the leap to believing in ghosts at all is longer than the mere stutter step to believing then in ghosts' apparel, ghastly accoutrements, and ethereal monocles.

But surely an identity would need to projected onto a ghost to transform it from an unknown haunting in a sheet into a known phantasm recognized by its victim.

Like dimensional digital projectors from our soul or collective consciences onto the sheet to create a ghost seems to be the idea.

Hmm, maybe we can think about it like a "reverse" "residual self-image" from The Matrix. The "ghost" doesn't have a form, but it's interpreted by our brains based on various energy signatures.

But then again, that's all matter (well, waves), isn't it?

More people have died in the last 50 years than in the last 150 before that. The ghosts should be modern, with tape decks or pinwheel hats and mullets.

Now that everyone has cameras on them 24/7 we should see an explosion of ghosts reports if ghosts are indeed a thing. Is there any data about such thing?

Great. After reading that headline my subconsciousness is going to put a whole new weird spin on my nightmares.

All the times an apparition has appeared to me, they were dressed as people.

I just somehow knew they were a spirit.

Its happened a half a dozen times or so for me, since I was a small child.

I always wondered what’s their energy source?

Also when people see them that means photons have had to bounce of them and into the observers eyes. The same goes for the sounds they make, they need to move the air molecules for sound to travel.

Or could it be that it all just happens in the observers mind?

But that doesn’t account for poltergeists.

Any qualified psychologists in the house?

Because this is the color of the natural phenomenon that started the idea of ghosts, a pale white form floating in the dark in total silence seen out of the corner of the eye... a barn owl.

That lead us to a more interesting question, why barn owls are not black?

"You're an adorable little ghost..." https://jimbenton.tumblr.com/post/764044329102852096

Of course ghosts wouldn't appear naked, we can't see beyond the veil

I got an experienced seeing one, at around 8 p.m. at the roof just above a coffin during wake. What I noticed that there is no seams on her white robe suggesting it is not made by human.

Ever see that movie "The Sentinel" (1977)? Ghosts and/or demons scurrying out of Hell. Lots of nude ghosts there. White eyes. Scary.

The Japanese ghost stories recorded by Lafcadio Hearn in the late 19th century are different:

> "For the face was the face of a woman long dead, and the fingers caressing were fingers of naked bone, and of the body below the waist there was not anything: it melted off into thinnest trailing shadow. Where the eyes of the lover deluded saw youth and grace and beauty, there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only, and the emptiness of death." - Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly Japan

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8128/pg8128.txt

The relationship with Japanese and ghosts are on another level. Here in Europe I know nobody who believes in ghosts, but I heard so many ordinary Japanese people telling ghost stories, from scary to quite amusing ones (how about having a ghost as a roommate:) ). That may explain why they are masters in horror movies. I was into Japanese horror until I became afraid to go upstairs in my own house without switching on a light, just like a little child. So maybe it is the other way around: they believe in ghosts because the movies are so good.

There is shopping in the afterlife, duh.

In Chinese culture, people will burn representations of clothes so ghosts can wear.

Usually, it's family members who will do it yearly. In addition, each year during Ghost Month, people will burn offerings to those ghosts who do not have family.

They don't burn actual clothes, but representations of clothes made of paper. They are also burn paper made houses, cars, and money.

clothes are reflection of the of the mind imagining the ghost, not due to ghosts fashion sense.

God likes his thermostat low.

Ghosts maintain some procedure too..like we humans wear clothes ..maybe they have feelings

Ghosts aren't real, but the folklore around them has to conform to acceptable societal norms, particularly in the context of Victorian era Britain where the cultural template for most Western ghost stories originates, so ghosts have to be depicted with the necessary modesty unless offending that modesty is an intentional theme.

Also, clothes are useful for signaling a "ghost's" identity and status.

Is the imagination real? Is it made of fermions or bosons?

Imagination is real; imagined things are not necessarily.

Imaginary numbers are also not real.

The whole situation is quite complex.

I know funny isn't really the goal for comments around here but man that made me laugh. So subtle and obvious at the same time and quite an appropriate response to the posed question!

Complex indeed...

To tack on to the amount of complexity; your brain’s operation allows you to perceive a world outside your brain, but the actual perceiving of it happens inside your brain, which again rests inside the perceived world more or less..

Real gets complicated when human minds are involved :)

“Real” in the sense it exists within your mind, which exists (somehow) within your brain, which is itself likely real. So your imagination must have some physical basis, but it would exist entirely within your brain (or body, to the extent the rest of your body influences the brain itself).

Your brain imagining a specter in a doorway does not mean there is any anomaly within the physical space of the doorway at all that anyone else could perceive or measure - they would need to measure your brain to (theoretically) detect the physical basis of it.

What you see, feel, hear, taste is an interpretation of your physical environment, and may not accurately reflect it at all times.

Are fields physical in your explanation?

Fields are absolutely physical - physical contact is due to the interaction of electromagnetic fields, for example.

It’s interesting, because there are textbooks that say the magnetic field lines aren’t real, but are a good visual of what happens when a magnetic particle is there…

Yes field lines are just an indicator of where the field is - a bit like how maps have contours showing height above sea level; those contours aren't physical things but they describe the physical environment in a schematic way.

Fields and their influence on matter can be detected and measured, and even perceived directly by humans. So, yes.

Maybe its a remnant of the classic geeks- dressing in togas - with the person itself invisible?

From the times of jesus throughtout the middle ages there was no coffin, people were buried in a sheet

Still are in the middle east

> a remnant of the classic geeks

Those ancient and respected forebears of the modern geeks.

Are ghost clothes made from ghost cotton? Or is there a mystical alteration process to convert human clothes to those that ghosts can wear?

Jokes aside, I am wondering if cynicism and humorous over-analysis is a recent phenomena, because the general population is more educated/have basic needs met than those in Victorian times.

An important principle in folklorists study of legends (which many ghost stories fall under) is that the legend cannot be separated from its telling. That means that telling legends is generally a group process. For example, after someone tells a legend someone else might speak up to add some details that they heard; only to be interrupted by someone to contest a point, and so on. I suspect that in that framework there have always been people who play the role of the skeptic who provides alternative interpretations or the practical joker who makes light of the story.

This is what happens when people still have a desire to believe in a metaphysical reality, but want to reconcile that with their understanding of physical reality. It's assumed that ghosts are real actual disembodied spirits of the dead because belief in them serves a cultural need, but in a modern society not entirely governed by magical thinking, such beliefs don't seem practical enough to be comforting. The attempt to move past "superstition" and ground the supernatural in science was the driving impetus behind the spiritualism movement (that and grift.)

You see the same incentives in the modern day with Biblical literalism and flat earth, and UFO folklore where "ultraterrestrial" and "interdimensional" theory shows up. It seems like science if everything you know about science comes from Reddit and TikTok but it's really just three space goblins stacked in a lab coat. Three because, of course, three is a sacred number.

There's no explanation for why ghosts wear clothes that isn't less ridiculous than the obvious, that it's because we imagine people wearing clothes, and ghosts are imaginary people.

Now if we only knew why aliens who've developed the technology to visit earth haven't also invented clothes! Maybe there's STEM funding for that.

The aliens in Star Trek wear clothes.

Folklore suggests that we only meet aliens during probing. Who’s to say they don’t wear clothes the rest of the time?

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