History: What is a Ghost?

Today is Halloween. This history story looks at ghosts, and a possible scientific explanation for them, at least in graveyards. However, that doesn’t explain sightings in houses and hotels and other places were ghosts are reputed to be seen. However, the story is very interesting, especially since it was written in 1922.

Rock Springs Rocket, December 15, 1922

Are Ghosts the Real Stuff? – After all, it seems that there really are such things as ghosts. Science at last accords them a somewhat belated recognition— though, course, refusing to acknowledge that they are supernatural. On the contrary (according to the newly accepted theory), they are to be classed as natural phenomena, chemical in character.

Why is it that ghosts, since time immemorial, have been so intimately associated with graveyards? Why is it that the dead in cemeteries are so universally believed to “walk” at night? Why, when specters walk, are they so generally accustomed (in popular belief) to be sheeted—that is to say, clad in winding sheets—though nowadays people are nearly always burled in ordinary clothing? These questions, and others equally interesting, in regard to phantoms, science is now for the first time prepared to answer.

As to the first point, the reputation graveyards have for-being haunted is attributable to the fact that ghosts, of the kind now recognized as real, do actually and not infrequently walk about in such places. They are seen at night (rather than in the daytime) because their chemical constitution is such that they can not be visible except in darkness. Finally, they are (or rather, appear to be) “sheeted” for the reason that the gases of which they are composed— here we begin to come to the explanation—flicker and waver in a fashion suggestive of garments. For some reason not easy to explain, the dead are supposed to be hostile to the living.

Few people there be who would not run, terror stricken, from a ghost, if they thought they saw one. But, making all allowance for this fact, and for the influence of imagination, it still seems strange that the conviction that a graveyard is a dangerous and dreadful place to venture into at night should be so widespread even among educated persons.

Nobody objects to entering, or wandering through, a burying ground in the daytime—rather the contrary, indeed, most cemeteries being attractive spots. But at night it is different. The real cause of this fear lies in the circumstance that phantoms, for reasons presently to be made clear, are, and always have been, haunters of graveyards. People have been frightened by them time and time again, in such places.

Other persons, who have not seen them, and who have professed disbelief, have never the less been influenced by testimony of the sort. Not often has anybody, witnessing a phenomenon of this kind, attempted to investigate it. Much safer does it seem under such circumstances to take to one’s heels. Nothing but the skepticism of science can fortify a man against the terror of such an experience.

But, as it chanced, some years ago, a government anthropologist, of high reputation (now connected with the department of agriculture), Prof. W. J. McGee, had an opportunity to study this matter at first hand. He was living at the time in a small town, in the middle west, where. only a few weeks earlier, a burglar, engaged in the exercise of his hazardous profession, had been shot to death. Hastily buried, he might have been expected to refrain from disturbing the community further—instead of which, he proceeded to”walk,”his ghost being repeatedly seen-by a number of reliable witnesses, stalking about the potter’s field where his grave was located.

Professor McGee, being appealed to on the subject, in his capacity of scientific investigator, finally consented to look into it he went to the potter’s field on a moonless night, sat down a short distance from the grave (carelessly left only half filled up) which had been pointed out to him as that of the late burglar, and proceeded to wait for something to happen.

Nothing did happen for quite awhile, and he was just making up his mind that he had come on a fool’s errand when he descried a dim light immediately over the grave. As he gazed it became steadily more vivid and distinct, appearing to hover in the air— a flame-like, restless thing, about the height of a man and rather strikingly resembling the popular conception of a ghost. When he attempted to approach the strange object it disappeared.

He went back to the place where he had been seated, and it became visible again. Every now and then a gust of wind would seem to”blow it out,”and it would vanish for the moment, presently reappearing. Apparently its movements were caused by the breeze. Its wavering suggesting drapery.

But presently the professor saw another ghost, of similar aspect, not faraway, and then another and another, until there were at least half a dozen. It was not surprising that the people (crediting a report to the effect that the burglar’s wife and children, deprived of the family breadwinner, had died of starvation) should declare that these unfortunates came at night to dance over the graves.

Professor McGee found it impossible to get within a dozen feet of the phantoms, which would always vanish on his near approach. He is unable to explain this circumstance; but he became convinced through careful study of the apparitions that they were nothing more or less than gaseous emanations of a self-luminous character.

In all probability they were largely composed of phosphorus, derived from the dead bodies of people buried in the potter’s field. Here, then, is an explanation of the reason why ghosts haunt burying grounds. They are in fact a natural (not supernatural) product of grave yards, as one might say.

In the body of an adult human being there are 55 ounces of phosphorus, seven-eighths of this quantity being contained in the bones (where it goes to make phosphate of lime), while there are 44 ounces in the red corpuscles of the blood, and nearly half an ounce in the brain. The processes of decay set this phosphorus free in the gaseous state under which circumstances, atmospheric conditions being favorable, it is liable to produce, in the night time, effects such as those above described.

As well known, decomposing vegetable matter in swampy places yields an emanation that is highly phosphorescent, causing the phenomenon termed “will-o’-the-wisp,” or “elf fire.” It is not reasonable to suppose that there is some relation, in respect to cause, between the will-o’-the-wisp (which occasionally misleads unfortunate travelers Into boggy places) and the “corpse candles” said to be often seen moving about in the mysterious and awesome darkness of cemeteries?

The “sheeted dead” are alleged to carry these candles in their ghostly hands when they walk about among the graves at night. The skeleton of an adult human being contains about four pounds of the metal calcium. This, in fact, is the most abundant metallic element of the body structure. In the fluids of the body, also, there is a good deal of it. But calcium and phosphorus, when combined, form a self-ignitable substance. Indeed, water will set it on fire.

If a bit of phosphate of calcium be dropped into a saucer of water It will instantly burst into flame, on which account, in the laboratory, to protect it from dampness, it has to be kept in an air-tight jar. Three other self-ignitable sub stances, all of them metals, are contained in the human body.

One of these (about two ounces in quantity) is the silvery-white magnesium—of familiar use for flashlight purposes by photographers. The other two are sodium and potassium—rather more than five ounces of each. A piece of the former, if thrown into water, bursts into a rosy flame, and swims about violently on the surface until burned out. The latter is like wise set are by contact with water, on touching which it explodes like fireworks, throwing a shower of sparks Into the air.

As for magnesium, it is so fiercely combustible that it has to be kept tightly corked ln glass bottles, to prevent it from igniting. Thus is appears that the human body contains, inconsiderable quantities, quite a number of substances which are self-ignitable, and fiercely so, on coming into contact with water. The marvel is that we refrain from going off by spontaneous combustion, so to speak, while we are alive.

When burned, these substances, of course, convert themselves into gases, which are luminous. Under favoring grave yard conditions (the processes of decay going on very gradually), they pass off slowly, by evaporation, and not in any such way as that above described. They present themselves to the view, in darkness, as mere chemical emanations—luminescent, blown about by light airs, or dissipated entirely for the moment by a passing gust of wind.

In all probability they consist mainly of phosphorus. One cannot capture a ghost of this kind. It cannot be trapped in a box or a bottle and conveyed to a scientific laboratory for examination or analysis. Hence it is likely that the true composition of phantoms will forever remain as much a mystery as it is to-day.

But (supposing the theory here set forth to be correct) it is a comfort to know, in a general way, what grave yard specters are made of. When people are murdered, and their bodies (as often happens) are buried in cellars or other damp places, their ghosts, for the chemical reasons already given, are particularly likely to walk.

So says Prof. Charles E. Munroe, a famous chemist, and dean of the George Washington university, who even goes so far as to declare that he could at a pinch produce in his laboratory phantoms in all important respects corresponding to those which graveyards are popularly supposed to manufacture.

So, perhaps if one sees a ‘ghost’ in a graveyard, maybe it is a natural, not a supernatural, phenomenon. However, if you see a ghost anywhere else, it might be the ‘real thing.”