A Trace

Victorian Ghosts

I can tell you something interesting about ghosts that you may be able to add onto historically. Picture the stereotypical victorian ghost. As you see science developing, people are very interested in consciousness, life, how does it work? The formal idea of a soul was developed in this time. Not just energy, but the soul. It became separated from the so called spark of life, and it took on a life of its own. The real answer of course, is in the in between, as it usually is. Now victorian ghosts, why are there so many? It's this idea at the core I believe. In the late 19th century is when people were just dying to know (pun intended). To go further you need to know the two kinds of hauntings most easily perceivable by the living, there are intelligent hauntings, think smartghost 2.0. They watch us, they usually know if they're dead, and if they don't, they tend to be fairly emotional, and out of their own control. Sometimes they are perfectly aware, and perfectly at peace with this. In this case they are usually curious, and willing to interact, though more subtly, as a ghost who can't control their etheric body is to be a bull in a china shop. The second kind of hauntings is the opposite entirely. A non-intellegent haunting is generally stationary, and fixed in a house, an object, or land itself. However there must be powerful emotional energy and circumstance, projected by the living; which imprints itself into the given artifact (right word?) Then in order to recall this energy into a state of replay, a living person must trigger the event that had imprinted itself in the first place. This is called the stone wall theory, and you could Google it, there's interesting stories of it. You see it a lot with old battle grounds, or places of trauma. With victorian ghosts, there are both, but more intelligent hauntings than not.

Essentially, the majority of Victorians had it wrong. If you remember hearing about victorian seances, they were mostly just parlor tricks. However the curiosity was still there, the only problem is that people will always take advantage of that curiosity. This lead to chaos as far as true mediumship and psychic abilities go. No one really knew what was going on, or understood the Ether. This is what lead to some very clumsy ghosts, of course. They lack the understanding that they are no longer physical, therefore do not move in a physical way. In death, they become emotional bodies, so they propell themself with emotions; they push energy to do what they need to do. I hold the belief that some ghosts don't mean to scare us, for they themselves are scared. Imagine being propelled by fear through space, lost and unsure of what's happening to you. This is how they often must feel. The fear manifests in a variety of ways, human expression, voices, air pressure changes, environmental temperature changes, even poltergeist activity. Since ghosts vibrate at a much higher frequency than us, they sound distorted in recording, they appear as orbs of light, or blurry messes in photographs. However the air still moves around them. When they manifest physically, it takes a lot of effort. Sometimes a ghost will manifest in "dirt form", which is the decomposing carcass that is currently their body. This is usually considered a young ghost, which could have died fifty years ago, and still had not figured it out. This is stemmed from a fear of death, as well as an attachment still to the body. Fear in general will have them appear this way, and it's not that they don't know they're dead, it's simply what is on their mind, and they have become a manifestation of the mind, because that's what they are after all. It shows in a well matured ghost, who appears however they may like to, often very similar to who they were in life. This is what we call an ability of Glamour. It is same for an astral traveler, if they have developed their emotional control, they may possess Glamour, it is one of the least challenging skills to learn, as it's a natural expression of the self through the manifestation of the mind. Glamour is not just for vampires, and is not like hollywood portrays it.

If a ghost is well in control, it will work itself into your dreams, into your life, in order for you to find their living self, and conclude that you have been contacted. They will work gently with you. I didn't know Monsieur as a poet until I was in my early twenties. However I had fully embraced his words and philosophies in my late teens. There was a period of five years that I knew his words, but did not know him. There was a time before that where I had developed, in full, my philosophy of how the world works; and by world, I mean the world of what we cannot explain. When I found a roughly translated quote of his, it was as though someone knew what I was talking about- finally. So I held onto it, close to my heart. This time for me was filled with angst, and upheavals, changes, earth quakes in my life. I knew it would not change, but I was being born into it. Transformation is a firey process, it will always hurt very much. My nature is Plutonian: that of transformation. I had no choice but to become tolerant. I was not alone in this, however. There were two musicians I went to, in order to get advice: Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead. If I had a problem, in their songs was the solution. I didn't know this, but in order to soften the blow, Monsieur was selecting things I needed to hear, and pushing them out into the universe for me to stumble upon. This is no different than any other kind of witchcraft. When I began to read the tarot, there was one friendly energy who was always on the other line. Sometimes I would pull from the strings of fate, but I mostly called upon my friend: Monsieur. He challenged my scepticism at this point, giving me responses that were not only accurate, but also well formulated, symmetrical, as if cards could rhyme; like poetry. It was almost like a game. 

As a child, I found two things interestingly related to Monsieur. When I was four, I was incredibly disappointed to be a girl. I had understood that women are not treated fairly. I remember being scared by this. I wanted to be an important member of society, I wanted to be listened to. As a woman, I knew I would have to fight for such a thing. The second thing is that I was a baby french nationalist. I was dissapointed that I had no French blood when I learned my heritage. I wanted to learn french as I learned english, however my parents discouraged this, saying it would confuse me. I did pick up some french though, from nowhere, nursery rhymes mainly. I always felt like a foreigner in my own country, although I am American, fully. There's also an odd comfort I get to see a house with a French flag. There was a house on the corner of Ramona and El Verano that I would ride past on my bicycle everyday, I always wanted to stop and speak with them, but convinced myself that it would be weird of me. In high school I got the opportunity to take a french class. My dad didn't want me to learn french, he wanted me to take spanish, saying I could use it more. I felt no connection to the language though. I fought with him for months about it, and eventually just disobayed. He had no good reason anyway, I was able to understand spanish and Italian with my french as I became proficient. It also did not take me long to develop a "french" mannerism, I loved to spar with people in such a way. It didn't matter how sharp their tongue was, mine was sharper. Another rather strange thing which connects me to Monsieur would be my love of botany. As a child I would talk to plants, in fact I still do it, plants are delightful. We have many common interests and mannerisms. Our lives parallel in a variety of ways. So it's no surprise that I find it hard to tell if he was a past life, or at least a physical component of it; or if he's been courting me, and growing me all my life like an apprentice. He wrote once that with poetry, the paranormal was his great work, the psychic world. He said he would continue until he couldn't anymore, then the horrible workers will come to take over from where he left off. 

When I saw his face I was overwhelmed, it was familiar. I wasn't sure how, but I knew I had seen him before. I almost cried in fact, as though seeing the face of someone you've missed so very much. I decided that I needed to look into him, and I found a poem he'd written called, Sensation. This poem shot me into a vision, almost a memory. A first person view of the grasses, the narrow dirt path, then a hill. There was a soft wind I could feel on my face, slightly warm. I smelled the freshness of the land around me, soil, trees, fresh shoots of grass. Then I was struck with a terribly bittersweet emotion. I bust into wailing tears, as though in shock of something startling happening. However it was the feeling that made me cry. It was so free and yet, so alone. Like the realization that I would never ever be able to share this feeling with anyone. I thought this was a past life regression, because I've been known to spontaneously do so with a random trigger, I never see it coming. However taking into account Monsieur's way of life: there was nothing more he wanted to do than to be free, to go where he wanted, to say, and be who he wanted, and for someone to love him and understand him for that. He had ideas that could not easily be articulated, and he walked a lonely path. He desperately wanted companionship but would not dare settle, lest something better comes along. He had impossibly high standards for companionship. He wanted someone with an individualistic mind, creative, intuitive, and certain. He wanted someone who could think for themselves. He wanted a partnership, true companionship, equal parts who make a better whole. Since woman could not be this for him, he would find himself a man. He didn't care about gender, because he likely understood the soul to have no gender. This is why I believe he could have shared this imagery with me, to allow me to understand better. To share something he had been dying to share for ages. After that we've been fairly inseparable. I consider him a part of me, even if he's not the energy of a past lifetime.