Historic Ghost Sightings

Ghosts are referred to as an essence of any organism, particularly a human being. The most likely meaning of the word ghost is an illusion of a dead human being. However, a spirit or a ghost is not always a foggy form of a dead person. Some religions believe that the soul or the spirit of a person wanders away from the body of the person during unconsciousness and sleep. Some religions also believe that the spirit remains near the body of the person and that is why they place food and clothing along with the dead body in the grave.

The Tower of London is the place where many people were executed because of adultery, treason and murder. According to many books, the common people were executed in public through the use of axes, guillotines and burning while royalty was executed using a sword or an expensive axe. Many ghosts have been known to pass the halls of the tower at night and many ghosts have been seen in the Bloody Tower that was built by the well-known Bloody Mary, Daughter of Henry the Eighth. One of the most famous ghosts is the ghost of Lady Jane Grey.

Although the British ghosts are extremely old and illustrious, Australian ghosts are also known to have caused disturbance in many cities including Perth, Brisbane and Sydney. The following are the most famous ones:

Brisbane has a beautiful mall in the centre of the city and the ground floor cuts between two streets. However, the second floor consists of a balcony that runs all the way round the building. Rumour has it that a ghost of a shopkeeper walks around the balcony of the arcade. She has been seen and chased by many guards but she always disappears around the corner. After her death, her shop had closed down but it seems that she is still watchful of the place!

The Plough Inn is a pub that lies near the south bank of east Brisbane. It was built in the 1800s and has been one of the best nightclubs in Brisbane. The people believe that the ghost haunting the pub is that of a girl who was strangled to death sometime in the 1920s. Although no one has actually seen her, people claim to have heard her voice in the seventh guest room.

The crash of Eastern Airlines Tri-Star jetliner, Flight 401 was one of the most tragic events that took place in 1972. The pilot, Bob Loft, and flight engineer Don Repo, were two of the 101 people who died in the air crash. Not long afterwards, the ghosts of Don Repo and Bob Loft were seen by many people onboard other Eastern Tri-Stars, especially those that were fitted with the parts from the Flight 401 wreckage. Their ghosts were also seen in planes, which had been piloted by Repo and Loft. There were more than twenty occasions when these ghosts were seen and both the ghosts were identified as the pilots of Flight 401. Unfortunately, further research could not take place because the airline refused to co-operate with the investigators.

Singapore is not only Asia's tourist attraction, but also an attraction for ghost hunters. Strange lights flicker through Hougang School, near East Coast Beach. People are slapped by an unseen presence at the Changi Beach Houses. A ghost that calls for help and then runs away haunts St. John Island. The apparition of a screaming lady haunts the Hou Gang Tenements, and a ghost in Bedok Tenant House reportedly killed a person. In the Fort Sentosa district, a whole family who committed suicide together haunts the Punggol White House, while headless spirits terrorize passengers as they pass through certain MRT mass transit stations in the city.

In India, it is said that Brahmadaitya is ghost of an unmarried Brahmin monk who resides in a tree, and he will break people's necks if they trespass his territory. Pretas are the roaming ghosts of Hindu men who died by violence and whose corpses were not burnt ceremoniously.

Mount Everest is known to be haunted by Andrew Irvine who died while trying to reach its peak in1924. The ghost was first reported by Dougal Haston and Doug Scott in September 1975 and has been seen several times since.

For over 300 years, the Cape Town Castle ghost is seen walking along the battlements. It is a tall lanky figure that haunts the castle built in 1665. The ghost of one of the men, who died building an underground tunnel in Johannesburg, haunts the dark passageway to this day. A haunted car is seen racing down the Port Elizabeth Highway causing numerous accidents.

Even to this day, no one can describe what ghosts really are and why they are there. No one knows if they are real or just a work of the imagination. The idea of ghosts has existed throughout the Greek, Shakespearean and Elizabethan times. The Elizabethans believed that the spirits of men who had committed suicide and those people who were murdered mercilessly haunt the world because they can't enter the afterworld. They are condemned and as a punishment, have to wander about in the world forever. In the movie, The Sixth Sense, it has been shown that one of the reasons that ghosts exist is because they have something to impart and some secret to share. Perhaps ghosts exist because they are too possessive about what they have left behind in the world. Maybe ghosts are just a force that connects this world from the other. We may never know for sure. Today, photographs of ghosts are abundantly available on the Internet but it is impossible to tell if they are fake or real. It's easy to create fake ghost photos so we might never know for sure...