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
Interesting regardless though.
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
See also the rise of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria in the 19th.
> HAMLET Pale or red?
> HORATIO Nay, very pale.
~1600
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.
It's not a theory, just detailed, more self-consistent fiction. Like Tolkien's very detailed descriptions of elves.
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 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.
Just because someone can hide it or still do their job doesn’t make it “mild” either.
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."
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 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.
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?)
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." ;-)
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.
But then again, that's all matter (well, waves), isn't it?
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.
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.
That lead us to a more interesting question, why barn owls are not black?
> "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
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.
Also, clothes are useful for signaling a "ghost's" identity and status.
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.
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.
Those ancient and respected forebears of the modern geeks.
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.
Imaginary numbers are also not real.
The whole situation is quite complex.
Complex indeed...