The problem of ghosts of the living

[Magical Realist]

https://ashleyknibb.com/2025/04/07/under...hauntings/

"However, as I reviewed a book for the SPR Website recently, I was reminded of a case I read about many years ago. It was a case that left me slightly perplexed and potentially provided me with a slightly different understanding than some of ghosts. The case in question was one of Andrew Green’s and initially seemed quite a tame and simple case. It referred to someone who had recently moved to a new home and whilst in the garden had encountered the apparition of someone. I do not recall how Green became involved, but he did and began his investigation. However, what was odd was that the new owner identified the previous owner as the apparition they saw in the garden. Which in our understanding of ghosts would make perfect sense if the previous owner had passed away. In this particular case though they were very much alive. So, the new owner had encountered an apparition of the previous owner who was alive and well.

It maybe possible that some traumatic event had taken place in that garden imprinting the old owner on the location; as the Stone Tape Theory would have us believe. Green ruled this out too though. Could it be that they were simply happy in the garden and left a part of themselves there? We often lean towards more sinister explanations when it comes to events such as these, but what if there are other explanations?..."
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"kiryō (生霊, lit. "living ghost"), also known as shōryō (しょうりょう), seirei (せいれい), or ikisudama (いきすだま),[1] is a disembodied spirit or ghost in Japanese popular belief and fiction that leaves the body of a living person and subsequently haunts other people or places, sometimes across great distances.[2][3][4] The term(s) are used in contrast to shiryō, which refers to the spirit of those who are already deceased.

The popular belief that the human spirit (or soul) can escape from the body has been around since early times, with eyewitness accounts and experiences (hauntings, possessions, out-of-body experience) reported in anecdotal and fictional writings. Vengeful spirits (怨霊, onryō) of the living are said to inflict curses (祟り, tatari) upon the subject or subjects of their vengeance by means of transforming into their ikiryō form. It is believed that if a sufficient grudge is held, all or part of the perpetrator's soul leaves the body, appearing in front of the victim to harm or curse them, a concept not so dissimilar from the evil eye. The ikiryō has even made its way into Buddhist scriptures, where they are described as "living spirits" who, if angered, might bring about curses, even just before their death. Possession is another means by which the Ikiryō are commonly believed to be capable of inflicting harm, the possessed person thought to be unaware of this process.[6] However, according to mythology, the ikiryō does not necessarily act out of spite or vengefulness, and stories are told of the ikiryō who bears no grudge, or poses no real threat. In recorded examples, the spirit sometimes takes possession of another person's body for motives other than vengeance, such as love and infatuation (for example the Matsutōya ghost below). A person's ikiryō may also leave the body (often very shortly before death) to manifest its presence around loved ones, friends and/or acquaintances."---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiry%C5%8D

[C C]

https://ashleyknibb.com/2025/04/07/under...hauntings/

[...] what was odd was that the new owner identified the previous owner as the apparition they saw in the garden. Which in our understanding of ghosts would make perfect sense if the previous owner had passed away. In this particular case though they were very much alive. So, the new owner had encountered an apparition of the previous owner who was alive and well.

It maybe possible that some traumatic event had taken place in that garden imprinting the old owner on the location; as the Stone Tape Theory would have us believe. Green ruled this out too though. Could it be that they were simply happy in the garden and left a part of themselves there? We often lean towards more sinister explanations when it comes to events such as these, but what if there are other explanations?..."

There are time-travel accounts, too, like the Moberly–Jourdain incident. But it's uncertain which party would have made the temporal slip: The narrator(s) or those observed by the narrator(s)?

Time-travelers being rendered into the equivalent of "ghosts" might even be a remedy for paradoxes. But their repetitive slash ritualistic and limited behaviors (if they were non-folklore) seem to suggest such "phantoms" would indeed be more along the line of displaced "recordings" imprinted on the environment.

And a simulated reality would permit all sorts of anomalies and glitches, since it is ultimately a hidden provenance that is responsible for such a generated world, rather than the apparent causes and lawful principles that the science of its inhabitants abstract from their perceptions and instrument-measured events. (Any kind of stone tape theory and so forth would have to rely on a prior-in-rank level like that, since it conflicts with the regularities of the accessible stratum.)

How time might flow differently for the dead
https://medium.com/@gtaitz/how-time-migh...e74df99529

INTRO: What if the dead don’t experience time like we do? Picture a ghost, long detached from the physical world, lingering in an old, forgotten house. To us, centuries might have passed, but for the ghost, it could feel like only a few hours. As we welcome the spooky season, let’s explore the possibility that ghosts might experience time in a completely different way — one that defies the laws of nature as we know them...

[Magical Realist]

As we welcome the spooky season, let’s explore the possibility that ghosts might experience time in a completely different way — one that defies the laws of nature as we know them...

If the afterlife is beyond our spacetime, or at least in its own transcendental quasi-spacetime, then we are all dead and in the afterlife already, perceiving ourselves "down below" as atemporal wholes. It also means that before we were born, we were also in the afterlife, entailing that there was never really a time when we didn't exist, all beginnings and endings being mere mortal perspectives from being inside spacetime. This jibes well with Jung's idea of the Higher Self being the archetype of God or a higher Mind watching over and guiding our lives. It also suggests the possibility of causal agency of the Higher Self in our lives wherein certain levels of indeterminacy or randomness occasionally allow for meaningful synchronicities to happen without violating the physical order of things.