Do Ghosts Go Woo?
Do ghostly apparitions actually make a noise? If they are physical manifestations of a lost soul or some sort of hallucination, it should not preclude them from being accompanied by some sort of noise, or even a smell. Do ghosts go WOO? I’m probably wrong, but I can’t remember coming across an apparition that was both seen and heard or smelt.
Do ghostly apparitions actually make a noise? If they are physical manifestations of a lost soul or some sort of hallucination, it should not preclude them from being accompanied by some sort of noise, or even a smell. Do ghosts go WOO? I’m probably wrong, but I can’t remember coming across an apparition that was both seen and heard or smelt.
Do Ghosts Go Woo?
Neither can I. Ian, how do get these questions? Do they just come to you while eating your corn flakes?
Do Ghosts Go Woo?
Are talking about a distinct noise every single apparition makes or just in general?
There are a number of ghosts which are supposed to make particular noises or to leave peculiar smells.
I have already in the past the (Continental) Celtic legend of the Santa Compana, the souls being led to the afterlife who are supposed to either pray or sing and accompanied by the smell of burning candles (old tallow candles being rather more unpleasant than the modern, scented ones).
In Rome there’s a place near the Aurelian Walls where prostitutes, thieves and other "unwanted" persons were buried. According to local tradition the souls of two revolutionaries beheaded in 1825 (buried here because they refused the Final Rites) walk near the old cemetary on certain nights, a terrifying sight. Yet they are harmless and if somebody will approach them on friendly terms they will even tell him the numbers to score a lotto win!
A much better researched case (again by the same CNR team which investigated the Hessdalen Lights and other cases) comes from a castle in Romagna. Here the ghost of a child, lost and never found, is accompanied by sobbing sounds, cries and the sound of distant bells (of course there are no bell towers nearby). The CNR mounted three expeditions in 1990, 1995 and 2000 and in each occasion extremely interesting sound recordings were obtained.
I’m currently looking for a link: they are quite interesting…
Of course there are
Of course there are numberous cases of people seeing ‘phantom’ aircraft and hearing engines, and occasionally tales of them hearing the engines and not seeing anything. Afraid I can’t quote any specific cases.
Do they see the phantom
Do they see the phantom plane and hear it’s engines at the same time? Do you think there coul dbe differences between appartions of people and those of vehicles?
Personally I’m quite
Personally I’m quite skeptical at the cases where people see the plane and hear the engine, or just hear the engine. That to me indicates a real plane, maybe an old one, but a real one. I seem to recall one in the letters or ‘happened to me’ section of FT a good few months ago. Admitedly the plane ghosts don’t really hook me because I’m not convinced they are real.
Do Ghosts Go Woo?
I was talking to my father the other day about the only ghost he has ever seen. It happened within the last two years. He was awoken by the sound of his bedroom door opening, then he say what he thought was a hoodie that had broken in. It moved down the side of the bed and vanished into thin air when challenged. The bedroom door though was already open when he went to bed, so he didn’t hear the actual door opening and scraping on the carpet. The figure itself made no noise whilst moving. Are we looking at two seperate components of an experience, a noise that woke him up followed by a silent figure, or do you think the figure may have made the noise that woke him up?
Spooky pick-up line?
Many years ago, camping and walking in Scotland with a friend, we met two girls. On discovering that we had a spare tent they asked if they could borrow it, as they didn’t like the B&B they were in. We thought that a bit odd, but we gave them the tent. They later told us that in their B&B they had been awakened several times at night by the sound of their door opening. On investigation, there was never anyone there or in the corridor outside.
They decided that the door must be swinging open by itself, so they lifted an old and very heavy wireless set from a table and placed it on the floor to hold the door closed. Later they were awakened by the sound of the radio being pushed slowly across the floor by the opening door. Again on investigation there was no-one to be seen outside or in the corridor beyond.
Of course this might all have been a story to get our tent and make our acquaintance (we were all about 18 at the time), but they did seem quite genuinely scared.
Hi Vronsky
Thanks for that
Hi Vronsky
Thanks for that account, can you remember where the B&B was?
Hello Vronsky and welcome to
Hello Vronsky and welcome to the forum. That is a great account. One of the cases I have been involved in investigating does a door that opens by itself, though we have now been measuring the drafts under the door and are satisfied that there is a natural explanation. But to move a heavy radio? Obviously it is hard to comment without actually checking the site out itself.
Something must had unnerved them to want to move from a B&B into a tent 🙂
It would seem that the
It would seem that the Barnoldswick Phantom Bomber would support the theory that apparitions are silent.
September 15, 1997 Abandon
September 15, 1997
Abandon Erie – Lackawannock Line
Information: Locals report sounds, lights, along abandon branch line of former Erie – Lackawannock Railway. Gary and Colin sent to aquire landowner permission, find best spot to set up.
Conditions: Abandon rail bed: dry. Totally surrounded by bogs, marshes and Nashannock creek. Warm night, no percipitation, breeze in swamp, stronger at higher elevations, clear to slightly cloudy by morning.
Investigation: 4pm to 7 am.
Team: Chad, Colin, Gary, Ian
Equipment: Motion Activated Cameras (three), starlight monocule, red lens flashlights (six), boat, hip waders, rope, audio recorders.
Location Selected: Sunken Station Platform?. (note: occasional telephone/graph poles? sticking out of marsh pools plus ground fog give definate creepy atmosphere. High chance of false sighting/swamp gas.) Square hole in swamp filled with water. Set up on small grassy area opposite railbed here.
Audio: Nothing out of the ordinary
Cameras: two deer, one racoon, one heron. No trains.
Experiances: Colin and Gary both claim that they did hear something like a steam engine when out with land owner on opposite (high) bank of creek comming from this direction. Reported sound of steam piston, as though train backing up at station. Were unable to find cause of sound, though wind on high bank at time makes audio recording they tried to make near useless, though a faint sound is audible.
Notes: Campers further down the track line reported hearing it that night, approx 3 am. Possibly just in the wrong spot.
Conclusion: Inconclusive.
That”s pretty much all I have on ghost sounds that our team directly experianced. This one we really didn’t follow up on, due to the onset of the local hunting season.
Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima
Woo Woo
Sounds good Baronlveagh and I agree that you do get audio based phenomena during hauntings. But as with your case above, you didn’t get an apparition being seen and being the cause of said noise. So, are appartions silent or have they been seen making a noise, rattling chains etc.
That sounds like a good case above. I am sure Dan knows someone who heard a phantom steam train on a now removed stretch of rail. It had been used to ferry prisoners of war to the nearby camp during and just after World War II. I assume the experience took in the late 1960’s.
I’d have thought a phantom steam train blowing it’s whistle would go "Woo, Woo". lol
I have had people
I have had people I consider reliable tell me of one case with both an audio and visual component at once: They were restoring a house known as the Rhodes Farm (sp?), at Gettysburg, which had been a field hospital during the battle. In exchange for doing light reconstruction work on the place, they were given full, round the clock access. (These were NOT ghost hunters; they’re historians, historic preservationists, and amateur archeologists)
Anyway, they noticed something odd going on (things moved, etc) and suspected that someone was messing with the site at night. So out come the volunteers to spend the night. They reported the usual assortment of noises (footsteps, knocks, etc.) However, the most unusual thing they described was just after dawn. In the back bedroom, the light coming in threw a shadow on the wall of a woman rocking in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, and what drew them to the room was they could hear the chair rocking. The problem? There was neither a woman, nor a chair, in the room. This phantom, according the people I talked to, lasted long enough for the first person to run away and bring back some others to see it before fading away, approx five minutes.
Woooh!!
I am sure I have read or heard reports of a phantom roman legion or a part of one, that can be heard as it marches, footsteps and the noise of their livery, also they march at a different level to the ground so have only been seen from the knees up? Not sure where I have got this from will try to find the reports.
Apparently the report I had read concerned the Treasurers House in York, old faithful York, in 1953 a workman was working in the cellar when he heard the sound of a trumpet, followed by Roman soldiers appearing through the wall!! Aparently the soldiers appeared weary and battle worn, they were seen only from the knees up, during later excavations it was found that the cellar had been built over a Roman road, which lay approximately 18" below the cellar.
still think I have read of the sound of marching though.
Hmmmm….
I wonder. Remember that many animals were traditionally taken for spirits/ghosts/monsters because of their noises and calls.
Tawny owls for one go "wooo" or "hooo" when staking a territory (I think? the whole "twit" "twoo" male/female thing is a misconception… they both make each noise far as I recall).
Barn owls hiss quite harshly, and i think they might screech too?
Lapwings make a very melancholic wail when disturbed.
There is one bird… I can’t remember if it’s guillemot, skua or other such bird, but people used to think they were lost souls.
Of course, we can’t forget the nightjar which has been since immortalised by H P lovecraft (albeit the American variety- the "whippoorwill").
These can all be heard on the RSPB website, so judge for yourself.
Perhaps the notion that ghosts go "woooooo" didn’t come from ghosts lore itself, but from the animal side?
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
In 1993 a potential apparition of an aircraft triggered a series of noise sensors around an airport in Orange County.
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/hauntings/donald-kent-%E2%80%9Cdeke%E2%80%9D-slayton-john-wayne-airport.html
Moaning
Many ghosts seem to make a "Woo" noise because it is the sound of moaning
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
The nearest I’ve known to a ghost or ghosts making noise is one of the hauntings here in New Orleans. We have a large and quite old Cathedral here and there’s tell that on a foggy night if you walk quietly along one of the alleys along side the church you can hear priests or monks chanting the “Kyrie”. I’ve yet to know of a foggy night ahead of time to then drive over to the French Quarter to investigate. 🙁
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
But do you actually see apparitions of monks chanting or is it just the voices. Do we ever get an apparition being seen to create a noise?
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
They’re only heard.
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
This one is absurdly old, but I did run down some of the witnesses who are still alive.
Seems back in the early 70’s near Petersburg a group of people saw an apperition that also made a noise. They were exploring the battlefield when they came across a trench filled with bodies (or so they say) and it immediatly became very dark. In this darkness they could see lanterns bobbing around and the sound of voices calling out the names of regiments and people in the dark, as though these people were lost.
They left post haste, and returned with more people. Surprisingly, the trench was there, though quite empty. The people I spoke to about it were quite adamant to this day about what they saw, but I was not able ot track down any further information. Battlefield ghosts are not uncommon, however, and the struggle for Petersburg left more then one mass grave that was dug up for reburial after the war.
Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
Now, are you differentiating between sounds made of their own accord (i.e. something akin to speaking) and sounds made from movement (i.e. walking or opening doors)?
I think a ghost that is visible and “talks” and/or smells funny is going to be a rare thing. Energy is required to manifest in any form and though I’m no scientist, it seems to me that there should be a finite amount of energy to be used in one area. I mean if energy could be drawn from far away sources I think more ghosts could be seen/heard/smelt.
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
[quote=Andrasta]Now, are you differentiating between sounds made of their own accord (i.e. something akin to speaking) and sounds made from movement (i.e. walking or opening doors)?[/quote]
I am not really differentiating between noise from movement such as walking and other noises such as speaking. I am just trying to guage how rare apparitions that are seen and heard at the same time are. For instance, there are many stories of apparitions giving spoken messages to people but could that really happen? Does it really happen?
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
One would suppose it would depend on the nature and, for lack of a better term, power, of the apparition.
Just as not all apparitions would seem to recreate past events or send objects hurtiling through the air, some might be capable (assuming they were so inclined) of speaking while others might not.
I can say that the only time I’ve been able to get first hand accounts of such a thing as a visable apprition speaking was the above mentioned, though I’ve heard plenty of accounts of hearing voices but not seeing, or seeing and not hearing.
There was an account (though I consider it dubious since I’ve never interviewed the people in question) of a ghost manifesting and speaking at Gettysburg during a Civil War reenactment. Amusingly, the witnesses mistook him for a fellow reenactor until he abruptly vanished.
Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
What does a silent ghost tell us? That it is too weak to manifest visually and have full audio? Does it say anything about the possibilities of it being or not being a spirit? If they are hallucinations of somekind surely we’d have more people hallucinating both audio and visual.
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
I don’t think it actually tells us anything Don and if anything it may just be an observation.
Re: Do Ghosts Go Woo?
No, I don’t think the purpose of this discussion is to determine what, if anything, these noises – or lack thereof – tell us.