Ghost

Theatre productions sometimes feature ghosts. There are many other stories with girls as protagonists in the Shōjo style of manga, which is targeted to girls as an audience. Benson. Most of the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki feature a young girl as the hero, as in Majo no takkyūbin (Kiki's Delivery Service). F. In Japanese manga and anime, girls are often protagonists. Wakefield, and E. Franco-Belgian comics with girls in a central role include Isabelle (by Will) and Sophie (by Jidéhem).

R. The most famous Flemish comic strip is Spike and Suzy (Suske and Wiske), about the adventures of a boy and a girl (each about 10 years old); it was translated from Flemish into French and English. Sheridan Le Fanu, H. In the Peanuts series (by Charles Schulz), girl characters include Peppermint Patty, Lucy van Pelt, and Sally Brown. James, J. In superhero comic books, an early girl character was Etta Candy, one of Wonder Woman's sidekicks. R. There have been many American comic books and comic strips featuring a girl as the main character, such as Little Lulu, Little Orphan Annie, Girl Genius, and Amelia Rules.

Other authors in the field include Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost, 1887), M. Books which have both boy and girl protagonists tend to focus on the boys, but important girl characters appear in Knight's Castle, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Book of Three, and the Harry Potter series (by Book 6, Harry Potter's social circle includes 1 boy and 2 girls, although newcomer Ginny still isn't let into secrets like Ron and Hermione are). Algernon Blackwood was a British writer who is well known for writing ghost stories. Children's books about girls include Little House on the Prairie, Eloise, Pippi Longstocking, Dragonsong, and A Wrinkle in Time. Boag-Munroe is the fictional ghosthunter from A Haunted Man by horror writer Stuart Neild. European fairy tales include some memorable stories about girls, including Goldilocks and the Three Bears; Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, The Little Mermaid, and The Princess and the Pea; the Brothers Grimm's Little Red Riding Hood; and others. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn visit a haunted house in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Most early children's stories focused on boys, with the notable exception of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, whose photographs of little girls are part of the history of photographic art.
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Other famous ghosts in fiction include the Headless Horseman, who appears in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Other novels include Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which has a young girl as protagonist; and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, about a girl subjected to sexual abuse. In the controversial BBC film Ghostwatch, a ghost invades the world of the living. Examples include Jane Eyre, who suffers ill treatment; and Natasha in War and Peace, who is sentimentalized. In Ghost in the Shell, ghost is a word used to describe a person's inner being, similar to the concept of a soul. Many novels begin with the childhood of their heroine. In the Ghostbusters film and television cartoon, the protagonists use special technology of their own design to hunt and capture/exile the ghosts they encounter. As in art, portrayals of girls in literature can reflect the social norms of the time at which they were written.

Despite his ghostliness, the good-natured Casper tries to befriend people rather than scare them. Only Sappho's poetry includes love poems addressed to girls. Casper the Friendly Ghost is a cartoon character from Harvey Comics. Ancient Greek classical art and literature paid scant attention to female children, though there are many poems about boys. Finally, in the play Richard III, the title character is visited by the angry ghosts of those he has killed, foretelling his doom and blessing his opponent, Richmond, later to become Henry VII. Egyptian murals included sympathetic portraits of young girls of royal descent. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the title character believes he sees the "blood-bolter'd" ghost of his former friend Banquo sitting in his chair during a feast. Portrayals of girls may reflect their standing in the artists' culture, and a brief overview of different views of girls in different art periods gives a sense of girls' roles in societies around the world and at different points in time.

Julius Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar to warn Brutus of his impending defeat. The slang word "gal", as in "Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight", is a variant pronunciation of girl. When Hamlet sees the ghost, he is not sure if it is in fact his father's spirit or a demon whose aim is to deceive him. The word girl has many synonyms, including "belle", "chick", "doll", "gal", "lass" or "lassie", "maiden", and "miss". The ghost exhorts Hamlet to take revenge on Claudius. While outsiders might use "girl" or "girly" as a pejorative to refer to a gay male, within the gay community it is used as a term of endearment. The ghost says that he was in fact murdered by his brother Claudius, who now (by virtue of having married Hamlet's mother Gertrude) occupies the throne. Calling a male a girl often serves as a provocation to fight (see fighting words).

In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, a ghost taking the form of Hamlet's recently deceased father appears to Prince Hamlet one night. The more insulting "girly-boy", which originated in 1589 as "girle-boy", is used to indicate a weak or "sissy" male. Ghosts in the novel are also keen on having a Deathday Party on the anniversaries of their deaths. Using the word "girl" to refer to a male is usually meant as insulting, such as "You throw like a girl". In the fictional Harry Potter, there are a number of ghosts including Nearly Headless Nick, The Bloody Baron, The Fat Friar and the Grey Lady, who might be based on Lady Jane Grey. The term "young woman" is sometimes used in the period between childhood and full adulthood. In many stories, ghosts are often depicted as haunting the living until a certain desire is met or some grievance was settled by the haunted. In modern usage, "girl" is properly restricted to mean a human female who has not reached adulthood, and some would restrict the usage to prepubescent girls.

(See Horror fiction for more on the haunted/ghost-driven fiction.). There is a parallel objection to use of the word "boy" to describe a male over the age of puberty. After Edgar Allan Poe, the "ghost story" began an independent generic history, and today the genre of Horror continues the use of ghosts as villains in fiction. With the rise of feminism, the use of "girl" applied to any adult female became offensive to many, especially given the fact that the word was so often used to indicate low social status, low morals, weakness, or homosexuality. Horace Walpole's 1764 The Castle of Otranto was among the first to set up the rational but malign actions of a ghost to create an atmosphere of foreboding, mystery, and fear. But social shifts generally permit only the female gender group themselves to use such terminology without giving offence. However, the haunting and mystery/adversarial acts of the ghost appears later in the "ghost story." Hauntings feature in Eyrbyggja Saga for a section of the work, but the "Gothic novel" and later "Gothic fiction" introduced the use of ghosts for fear to literature. Adult women will sometimes refer to themselves as "girls", as in "We're having a girls' night out" or "It's a girl thing".

In the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, the vengeful ghost is a commonplace who sets plots in motion. A woman of a certain age might be called a girl to suggest that she looked younger than she was, or a group of women might speak of themselves as "us girls", though all were well over the age of maidenhood. The malign ghost whose intent is either to set right an injustice or to be avenged upon the living, either in general or on a specific person, features in many fictions. In America today, the word "girl" is often used as an intended compliment or used humorously. Such gnomic or oracular statements reward the reader with knowledge greater than the fiction's participants. In England, the word "girl" was also used as a euphemism for "prostitute", as for example by Richard Steele in The Spectator. Such a ghost in disguise usually, in fiction, offers statements or visions that are relevant to the plot, but not in a way comprehensible to the characters. In England, a "girl" was often a serving girl, while in America a "girl" was often a sweetheart or "girlfriend", for example, in the lyrics of the popular song "The Girl I Left Behind Me".

Additionally, some urban legends, such as the "Hitchhiking ghost," turn upon an anonymous stranger (or Elvis Presley in a common variant) who is revealed to be a ghost in the clinch of the story. By the 1700s, there was a difference in some uses of the word between England and the Americas. In folk music, there are songs featuring lovers and objects of affection who must leave before dawn (a variant on the Cupid and Psyche story) because they are ghosts. Note the parallel shift in the meaning of the word "maid". A character otherwise regarded as living turns out, in the fiction's denouement, to be a supernatural agent. In 1668, in his Diary, Samuel Pepys uses the word to mean a female servant of any age: "girl" = "serving girl". Finally, the ghost messenger features in fiction as a ghost in disguise. Within little more than a century, however, the word began to take on implications of social class.

Such ghosts can either act as a deus ex machina by resolving plot points with supernatural power or as a mentor who offers sagacity to the characters with a limited point of view. There are manuscripts dating from 1530 in which the word "girl" is used to mean "maiden" (also originally applied to both genders), or any unmarried human female. In some fictions, a departed relative (usually) or friend guides the living to either a moral or material benefit. Like many other words that originally were not gender specific, "girl" gradually came to be used primarily and then exclusively for one gender. However, the ghost messenger can also act as a way reminiscent of the guardian angel in fiction. A male child was called a "Knave girl"; a female child was called a "gay girl". In each of these cases, the fictional ghost offers counsel to the living and thus acts as a messenger from the implicitly greater world beyond. While there is no general agreement about the etymology of "girl", it is found in manuscripts dating from 1290 with the meaning "a child" (of either gender).

Further, he finds that the ancestors of many great lords and ladies of his day were stable boys, servants, etc. The Anglo-Saxon word gyrela = "ornament" may have given rise to the modern pronunciation of "girl", if the change in meaning can be explained. Jonathan Swift satirized the genre in the third book of Gulliver's Travels by having Gulliver summon the ghosts of former kings and great conquerors and finding, instead of nobility, petty, childish, and stupid people who possessed no wisdom and who accomplished their great deeds for mean and selfish reasons. The word "girl" first appears during the Middle Ages. The genre was most popular in the 18th century, and examples were written by many. Relatively few girls become engineers, though in the USA, more do become doctors. These "ghosts" were under control of a great sorcerer or otherwise compelled to speak. However, their choices afterwards in postsecondary school are often very different and lead them to less socially recognized professions.

In the Dialogues of the Dead genre, authors would somehow contrive a device for summoning the dead to a character who would then speak with them and ask them questions about philosophy or current events. Several studies, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment of the OECD, have shown that, in developed countries, girls usually obtain better scores than boys do in secondary schools in Literature and Language, boys on the other hand tend to score higher in mathematics. In Odyssey, Odysseus travels to Hades and sees the shades of his former colleagues, including some he did not know were dead, and pours out fresh blood, which the dead hunger for, until he can find Tiresias and get guidance on his voyages. This conflict is often called nature versus nurture. These were based upon the Witch of Endor story and the visions of Hades found in both Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. Some feminists deny this, but many feminists agree that both biology and upbringing have an influence on gender roles, with the question being the relative importance of each. A popular genre of literature from the early Renaissance to the early twentieth century was the Dialogues of the Dead. The biological viewpoint of gender roles is not that all gender distinctions result from biology, but rather that biology has an influence.

New Orleans' ghosts include pirates from the 18th century, through 20th century spectres. Due to the influence of (among others) Simone de Beauvoir's feminist works and Michel Foucault's reflections on sexuality, the idea that gender was unrelated to sex gained ground during the 1980s, especially in sociology and cultural anthropology. The city of New Orleans is sometimes called 'America's most haunted city' with numerous ghost reports, especially in the French Quarter which remained largely undamaged by Hurricane Katrina. On the other hand, feminists have argued that gender roles are the result of stereotypes and socialization rather than any innate biological differences. The former prison island of Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco is said to be home to a number of ghosts of prisoners that died there. Simon Baron-Cohen, a Cambridge University professor of psychology and psychiatry, argues that "the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, while the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.". The prophet's spirit gives the king no assistance, but rebukes him and foretells his doom instead. For example, the need to take care of offspring may have limited the females' freedom to hunt and to assume positions of power.

In the Biblical account of the Witch of Endor, King Saul of Israel has the witch conjure up the ghost of the prophet Samuel to consult him on his precarious situation. The idea that differences in gender roles originate in differences in biology originates from 19th-century anthropology; more recently, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology have turned to this problem to explain those differences by treating them as evolutionary adaptations to a lifestyle of Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies. The ghost of the Roman Emperor Caligula was said to haunt the Lamian Gardens of Rome, where his body had been hastily and unceremoniously buried after his assassination. The reasons for this perceived difference in the behavior of girls and boys are a controversial topic in both public debate and the sciences. The White House in Washington, D.C., is said to be haunted by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln and by several lesser spectres. Girls, as a group, may be perceived as being more docile than boys, and as being less capable of rational decision making and more governed by emotional responses. Indeed, the presence of many centuries-old buildings has given England the reputation of the most haunted country in the world. Sometimes boys are presumed to be more responsible than girls, except in the cases of caring for younger children, which is sometimes thought to be instinctual in girls.

The cities of York and Derby in England are also reputed to be a center of ghostly manifestations; consequently, they both thrive on hugely successful ghost tour industries. Girls are less often encouraged to pursue sports, with the exception of those that might be considered "feminine," such as figure skating or gymnastics; or those considered "gender-neutral," such as tennis.^[1] They may be prevented from participating in many of the same activities that boys participate in at the same age, as a matter of protecting them from perceived outside dangers, such as boys and men, or anything that may cause physical injury. Several other ghosts are said to make the Tower their home; phantom troops of soldiers reportedly appear there, as well as a lady in mourning with no face. Girls have traditionally been associated with playing with dolls and toy cooking and cleaning equipment, while boys have been associated with toys and games that require more physical activity or simulated violence, such as toy trucks, balls, and toy guns. It seems likely that the building with the most distinguished ghosts as rumored tenants is the Tower of London, which is reported to be haunted by:. In almost all cultures, girls have been socialized into gender roles. The earliest literature to rationally discuss the issue comes from the Chinese philosopher, Mo Tzu (470-391 BC). This disparity is targeted to end under the Millennium Development Goals and has closed substantially since 1990.^ .

Certain images such as paintings and movies might "program" a person to automatically associate a certain structure or area as haunted because of what he has seen in the movies. 65%). Many people exaggerate their interpretation of their own perceptions, either when visiting a place they believe to be haunted, or when visiting a site which they know has seen unpleasant historical events. 74% for boys) or secondary education (59% vs. Psychological factors may also relate to ghost sightings. Although the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights specifies that "primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all", girls are slightly less likely to be enrolled as students in primary (70% enrollment vs. Often, videos of paranormal investigators will show them using E-field or B-field detectors and finding "ghostly" results near wall outlets and electrical appliances. From birth, girls are a slight minority due to both natural factors (the human sex ratio has been observed since the 1700s as approximately 1,050 boys for every 1,000 girls) and due to sex selection on the part of parents.

Sometimes ghosts are associated with electromagnetic disturbances, which suggests that they might be attributable to the electromagnetic field and not to a presently dead person. UNICEF, 2004) aged 18 or under in the world, for a total of more than one billion living girls. Also, sound waves with frequencies lower than 20 hertz are called infrasound; they are formally inaudible, but British scientists Richard Lord and Richard Wiseman have concluded that infrasound can cause humans to feel a "presence" in the room, or unexplained feelings of anxiety or dread.[1]. There are 2.18 billion people (est. Any random motion outside the focused view can create a strong illusion of an eerie figure. . Also, the peripheral vision is very sensitive to motion, but does not contain much color or focused shapes. Images of girls in art, literature, and popular culture often demonstrate assumptions about gender roles.

Ghosts are often associated with a chilling sensation, but a natural animal response to fear is hair raising, which can be mistaken for chill. An ongoing debate about the influences of nature versus nurture in shaping the behavior of girls and boys raises questions about whether the roles played by girls are the result of inborn differences or socialization. Human physiology may make us more susceptible to ghost sightings. Historically, girls faced discrimination and limitations on the roles they were expected to play in their societies, and the United Nations targeted discrimination in schooling to end by 2010. A society could have elaborate setups with members of that community playing ghosts. Usage in the sense of (romantic) "sweetheart" arose in the 17th century. It can also discourage new tenants from living in an apparently abandoned house. Subsequently, it was extended to refer also to mature but unmarried young women since the 1530s.

For example, the telling of ghost stories might be a way for secluded communities to scare off intruders. During the 14th century its sense was narrowed to specifically female children. Again, the reasons could be popularity and income; but fear might also factor into the motive. The English word from 1290 designated a child of either sex. A hoax or con might also be getting played on the reporting person themselves. The age at which a female person transitions from girl to woman varies in different societies, typically the transition from adolescence to maturity is taken to occur in the late teens. Also, a person might claim a haunting for personal popularity and income. A girl is a young female human, as opposed to a boy, a young male human.

Ascribing such motives and powers to dead people could be interpreted as a scare tactic. For example, lingering of ghosts is typically associated with seeking justice or revenge. They might make up a haunting for a personal reason. Occasionally, the sincerity and motive of the claimant will be questioned.

They are also keen to note that most ghost sightings happen when our senses are impaired, and that the evidence is unreliable because it doesn't occur when we have full use of our faculties. They may suggest that, since few to none of us have ever had an interpersonal relationship with a ghost, but most or all of us have had an experience of self-delusion or have attributed a false cause to an event, that these options should be preferred in the absence of a great abundance of evidence. Skeptics often explain ghost sightings with the principle of Occam's razor, which argues that explanations should maximize parsimony with the rest of our knowledge. For example, the vast majority of the scientific community believes that ghosts, as well as other supernatural and paranormal entities, do not exist.

While some accept ghosts as a reality, many others are skeptical of the existence of ghosts. Asuras are also referred to as "fighting ghosts". Sentient beings in that realm are referred to as hungry ghosts because of their attachment to this world. Buddhist Samsara includes the concept of the hungry ghost realm.

They often wear the sort of clothing in which they would have been seen when alive. Such places are known as "haunted"; the rounds they go on are known as "hauntings". They may wander around places they frequented when alive or where they died. Both the West and the East share some fundamental beliefs about ghosts.

How ghosts fit into this worldview is shown here. Very detailed information about ghosts is given in Garuda Purana, a scripture from Vedic (Hindu) tradition. During the time of feast, those relatives amongst the living are not allowed to leave their bedrooms regardless of how much noise the ghost makes. An older ritual is for the living family to prepare a grand feast for their dead relatives "returning" home.

The ritual consists of burning Hell Bank Notes and other luxury items made of paper mache as well as pouring wine three times on their grave and leaving food. Also in China, particularly in the Guangzhou area, the Chinese people usually hold a Chinese version of Day of the dead ritual for their ancestors in autumn. The victims of such paranormal "murders" are called tìsíguǐ (替死鬼), literally "substitute death ghost" or "substitute devil" which in Chinese is a synonym for scapegoat. The Chinese also believe that some ghosts, especially those who died of drowning, kill people in order to rob them of their rights to reincarnation.

In Chinese tradition, apart from being reincarnated, a ghost can also become immortal and become a demigod, or it can go to hell and suffer for eternity, or it can die again and become "ghost of ghost". Exorcists can either help a ghost to be driven away or reincarnated. Ghosts are those souls that refused to be "recycled" because they have unfinished business, similar to those in the West. In Asian cultures (such as China), many people believe in reincarnation.

However, it may be possible that enough of a dead person's psyche might be imprinted on an environment so as to give the likeness of thought or autonomy. Theories from this approach often encounter difficulties in explaining ghosts that appear to be sentient, such as those which answer questions or react to specific actions from people present. This way of thinking classifies ghosts in the same category of preternatural unexplained phenomena as poltergeists/telekinesis, ESP, and telepathy. They assert that traumatic events (such as a murder or suicide) cause mental energy to be released into the world, where it may be experienced by other people who are sensitive to its presence.

Those who follow this approach most often believe that ghosts are not actual disembodied souls or spirits, but rather they are impressions of psychic energy left behind by a deceased (or in some rare cases, still living) person. Some ghost researchers approach the possibility of ghosts from a more scientific standpoint, seeking to find correlations and causal relationships between recordable phenomena and the supposed presence of ghosts. It is worth noting that while mainstream Protestants and Evangelical Christians believe in the existence of principalities, they do not believe in ghosts (as spiritual manifestations of the dead) and would generally attribute more violent ghosts, such as poltergeists, to the actions of demons. It is sometimes held that ghosts reside in Limbo, a place, according to nonorthodox Catholic doctrine, between Heaven and Hell where the souls of unbaptized infants go.

Criminals sometimes supposedly linger to avoid Purgatory or Hell. The inability to find rest is often explained by unfinished business, such as a victim seeking justice or revenge after death. In the West, those who believe in ghosts sometimes hold them to be souls that could not find rest after death, and so linger on Earth. Sometimes they do not manifest themselves visually but in terms of other phenomena, such as the movements of an object, spontaneous throwing of a light switch, noises, etc., which supposedly have no natural explanation.

Ghosts do not have a physical body like human beings, but only a subtle astral body. Ghosts are often depicted of a human size and shape (although some accounts also mention animal ghosts), but typically described as "silvery", "shadowy", "semitransparent", "misty" or "fog-like." Parapsychologists refer to the "substance" of which ghosts and other spirits are made of as "ectoplasm". . Every culture in the world carries stories about ghosts, but they vary across time and place, with disagreements both as to what ghosts are and whether they are just figments of imagination or a part of reality.

According to some beliefs, a ghost may be the personality of a person after his or her death, and not tied directly to the soul or spirit. It is often thought to be a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person which has remained on Earth after death. A ghost is an alleged non-corporeal manifestation of a dead person (or, rarely, an animal). Norman Leslie, a fallen World War 1 soldier who appeared when his great niece was looking for a missing document that proved that Castle Leslie belonged to her family.

Barquest, a giant spectral dog believed by the French to haunt graveyards. A troupe of ghosts who allegedly reenact the execution of Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury;. The ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh;. The ghost of Lady Jane Grey;.

The ghosts of King Edward V of England and Richard, Duke of York, the "Princes in the Tower";. The ghost of Thomas Becket, which allegedly appeared during the construction of the Traitor's Gate;. The headless ghost of Anne Boleyn;.