One of my favorite theories about ghosts has to do with overlapping time-space phenomena. Michael Talbot goes into it at some length in his book, Holographic Universe; I was also just reminded of it by an article from paranormal investigator, Brad Steiger. If you don’t know Steiger’s work, I really like it. He has something like 150 books in print, and they cover all kinds of paranormal and spiritual topics, and are filled with case studies and anecdotes from people. They’re written in a really nice straightforward style, which I really appreciate.

Anyway, Steiger’s article relates some stories by people who experienced phantasms from other time periods. About.com’s Paranormal section also has some really good articles on time/dimensional phenomena. I guess there are a couple different variations on the theory, from what I’ve read. One is that some ghost encounters are sort of temporal mix-ups, where two separate time periods cross in one spatial location. In these types of cases, you see a ghost and react to it, but the ghost also reacts to you (possibly similar to one of my own ghost encounters). That is, the ghost is actually a real person in another time period, who is seeing you as a ghost. The other variation which Michael Talbot explores a bit more is that locations can sort of make holographic recordings of people and events which occur - especially ones which are psychically or energetically significant. (For more on the holographic universe theory, check out my recent article on it.) Then these recordings get sort of etched in physically to the location, like grooves in a record, and are repeated ad nauseum, and can be picked up by those sensitive to these vibrations. Something like that.

Neil Gaiman also has a variation of this idea in one of his Sandman comics, “Soft Places,” which suggests that there are locations where the barriers between realms are much more permeable than others. Here’s a cool article about just such a location that may exist near the border of Mexico and south-eastern Arizona. Anyway, this is probably one of my top-ten favorite weird/paranormal topics, like freaky shit about time