Ever wonder why the shapes of the ghosts in each country or continent are very different? If you think about it, these “spirits’’ does not precisely need to apply for a visa to travel the world. So how come the same type of ghost always hang around in the same region? Some said that these spirits are bound to wander around where they have “unfinished business,” but” they can walk through a wall, but can’t get on a plane?
Before we continue this, I am not a skeptic, I believe that there are other beings, and for me, it is too arrogant to say that we are the only being that exists. But I am cursed with an endless curiosity and always seeking answers. Suppose you notice Asian ghosts, most of them in the form of a woman with long hair and a long white dress, as most people wear in the hospital. I remember having this conversation with my philosophy lecturer, who told me that this belief is formed by society because of how men back in the day had this habit of cheating, leaving, and abandoning their pregnant wife and their newly born babies. This type of ghost in Asia hangs around on a big old tree because of two factors; strong animism and dynamism beliefs that most Asian still have, and the other reason these women used to wait for their husbands to come home near the trees.
Westerners, on the other hand, believe in monsters or half animals half human forms of a ghost; that is because, in most Asian countries, we have different perspectives in looking at nature like lakes, forests, and/or animals; in Asia, we believe they are our guardians, and we look at natural disaster as a typical god temper rather than a mystical being that is going to hurt us. I know it does not make any sense. Still, in my country, we have this kind of people who are the mountains and volcanoes guardians who rather die in volcanic eruptions because they believe that it is their fate to take care of the volcanoes, even in their worst temper.
Whatever it is, I see that both beliefs are beautiful and romantic in many ways; they explain our respect towards something that we could not comprehend; it shows unconditional love and affection. It does not need logic, but we leave it there with or without our imagination.
I will end this article with quotes from Edgar Allan Poe – The Raven.
“Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before”…Have a Spooky Holloween, Everyone!
By: Mutiah Fauzan