Ghosts, Poltergeists, & the Lost Secret of Death
by Peter Novak


People all across the globe once believed virtually the same thing about what happened after death - that human beings possess not one, but two souls, which were in danger of dividing apart from one another when a person died.

After leaving the physical body, one of these souls was often expected to reincarnate, while the other was believed to become trapped in a dreamlike netherworld. Some of these cultures believed that the afterdeath division of these two souls could be prevented or reversed, while others saw the division as being inevitable and permanent.



The most extraordinary thing about the ancient world's binary soul doctrine is that it seems consistent with the latest findings in a number of areas of modern scientific research. For one thing, these cultures' descriptions of the two souls are strikingly similar to modern science's 'right brain/left brain' descriptions of the conscious and unconscious halves of the human psyche. Even more interestingly, the BSD also seems to anticipate, even predict, many of the conditions being described in modern reports of near-death experiences, past-life regressions, after-death communications, ghosts, apparitions, poltergeists, and other afterlife phenomena. If the conscious and unconscious halves of the human psyche were to divide apart at death, virtually all modern and classic descriptions of afterlife phenomena would be explained.

Modern reports of ghosts and poltergeists fall right in line with the expectations of the BSD. The vast majority of haunting ghosts go through the same motions again and again, virtually oblivious to the presence of the living. Each time they appear, these specters look the same, wearing the same period clothing and hairstyles, often standing in the exact same spot or traveling along the same route. In buildings whose floor plans were changed at some point in their past, ghosts are sometimes observed moving along those previous floor-plans, traveling through doorways or along staircases that no longer exist.

Haunting ghosts often seem to be unconsciously sleep-walking, acting out emotionally traumatic memories from their past. They seem permanently frozen in time, oblivious to the present-day, just doing the same thing again and again down through the ages. Noticing this, the famous parapsychologist F.W.H. Myers sug­gested that they are not actually sentient beings at all, but just the unconscious dreams of the dead; others have ­suggested they are meaningless psychic recordings running on automatic, pos­sessing no more independent awareness than a videotape of a man on TV. Pointing out that many ghosts seem to be enacting particularly unpleasant scenes, some theorists have suggested that emotionally traumatic events can somehow record themselves upon a physical location. However, emotionally traumatic memories are not the only thing ghosts are seen acting out over and over; many of these 'tapeloop' ghosts seem to re-enact common, drab, humdrum actions, and others even re-enact quite happy memories. Several people, for example, have reported seeing one phantom playing the piano at the Captain's Museum in Brownsville, Nebraska, and another has been repeatedly seen riding a certain roller-coaster at the King's Island amusement park in Cincinnati.

For nearly a century, many ghost researchers have concurred that these 'tapeloop' ghosts were not really souls of the dead at all, but just some bit of discarded psychic rubbish left by the soul's passing into the next world. However, modern research into Alzheimer's Disease has raised some doubt about this time-worn conclusion. The behavior of Alzheimer's patients seems to have a great deal in common with the behavior reported about these sort of ghosts. It is also very common for Alzheimer's patients to wander mindlessly through their old behavior patterns, endlessly repeating old, habitual actions for no apparent reason. When they are in the middle of such 'spells', they don't seem to realize that they are lost, they don't respond when addressed, and they seldom seek help on their own. These multiple parallels are suggesting to some modern ghost researchers that these tapeloop ghosts may not be empty images after all, but the mentally ill ( i.e., mentally dysfunctional) souls of the dead.

Despite the sounds that sometimes accompany hauntings, when these ghosts visibly appear they are usually completely silent and almost never verbalize any intelligible speech. The vast majority of ghosts make no attempt to communicate with others, ­­acting as if they are entire­ly unaware of the pres­ence of the living. And when communication is received from ghosts, it is almost always entirely 'subjective' in nature, using gestures, signals, images, and symbols - classi­c right-brain formatting of informa­tion. There is a very long history of the non-verbal nature of these entities; even the souls of the dead in Homer's Iliad are portrayed as being unable to speak properly. Haunting ghosts virtually never use left-brain communication techniques such as codes or spoken or written language, or any sort of linear message format.

While the average person usually can't communicate with ghosts at all, some psychics maintain they can. In fact, psychics tend to divide haunting ghosts into two groups - those they can communicate with, and those they can't. Those they can't, psychics often claim, are not real beings at all, but merely non-sentient memory-recordings. But to the average person, these two categories of ghosts seem indistinguishable - both appear at the same place every time they are seen, always wearing the same thing and doing the same thing, both seeming equally caught up in their emotional memories, attitudes, and behaviors from the past. It seems unlikely that two entirely separate kinds of phenomena could look and behave so much the same. The binary soul doctrine, of course, would suggest that both categories are living sentient beings, but the non-communicative ones are functioning more exclusively through the right-brain unconscious half of their minds, which would cause them to have less objective awareness and be less able to interact with others. Such ghosts would be quite like a comatose patient - still alive, but imprisoned inside their own unconscious.

Many ghosts are reported to have haunted the same locations for 200 years or more, apparently never realizing that they are dead or that time has moved on. This suggests, of course, that somehow they've lost the ability to make even the most elementary logical deductions. Ghosts can apparently have the most obvious clues staring them right in the face for centuries, watching their hands, legs, and bodies pass thru solid objects, without it ever crossing their mind that they might have died. These haunting ghosts just can't seem to figure this out on their own, exactly as if they'd lost their own logical and analytical intellect.

How long would it take normal people to watch their hands pass through solid objects before it dawned on them that something odd was going on? It would take about half a second while we're awake. But while we are asleep and dreaming, we might see it as the most normal thing in the world, never making the logical leap to the obvious conclusion. During sleep, we are functioning through the unconscious, not the conscious, and so all sorts of strange and bizarre things can occur and we just take them all in our stride, never analyzing them logically. If in a dream, a milkman arrives at my door with two full grown cows for me to milk, I would probably just think, "Oh, what a bother!", and it wouldn't ever cross my mind that this would never happen in the real world.

The vast majority of ghost reports describe beings suffering from a pronounced diminishment of reasoning ability, cognition, and objective awareness. What's lost always seems to be the capacities of the left-brain conscious mind, and what's retained always seems to be more of the nature of the right brain unconscious mind - emotions and memories - which usually seem to be magnified beyond normal levels. These conditions are found again and again in the reports of many ghost researchers. The haunting ghost closely fits the ancient binary soul doctrine's expected profile of a disembodied unconscious mind that has lost its conscious half. It would be trapped in a fixed dream world formed out of its own memories and emotions, and would not have any objective awareness, analytical reason, or ability to communicate verbally.

The poltergeist seems an equal-but-opposite version of a haunting ghost. While ghosts are more frequently seen than heard, poltergeists are more commonly heard than seen. People often mention how strangely quiet the air seems to get when a ghost appears; and when a ghost does make audible sounds, they are usually nonverbal whistles, chirps, screams, or moans, all of which are subjective right-brain sounds that need to be interpreted by the listener. The poltergeist, on the other hand, seems to be more of a no-nonsense left-brain communicator; many have been known to employ a sophisticated linear communication code consisting of knocks, raps, and scratches, and a number have even been known to use language, sometimes speaking and occasionally even using the written word. While haunting ghosts' communication attempts are usually limited to nonverbal signals, gestures, and images, poltergeists virtually never resort to symbol or metaphor to get their messages across; they're just not that subtle.

Whereas the haunting ghost seems to be caught up in their own subjective memories and emotional turmoil, the poltergeist usually seems quite objective, extroverted, and other-oriented, not particularly interested in its own memories or emotions at all, but very attentive to the memories, emotions, and reactions of others. While most haunting ghosts never notice the presence of others, poltergeists always seem to be aware of what's going on around them in the real world. While the haunting ghost is known for its fixed and consistent behavior, poltergeists are known for being unpredictable and inconstant. Ghosts tend to be seen again and again at the same place, doing the same thing in the same clothes; many even adhere to a specific timetable, appearing at regular intervals, or on the same anniversary date year after year. But poltergeist manifestations tend to be erratic, appearing suddenly, carrying on for anywhere from a few weeks to a year or two, and then inexplicably stop just as suddenly, usually never resuming again. Poltergeists, in short, seem to exhibit much more free will than the typical haunting ghost does, and that is exactly what the BSD would predict, as free will is exercised by the conscious mind, not the unconscious.

Clues to the poltergeist's nature and identity are usually absent. While a haunting ghost gives every indication of having a clear and definite identity, poltergeists often seem to have no clear identity of their own, sometimes presenting no identity at all, and other times offering a variety of different, mutually exclusive identities. In one study, more than 80% of poltergeists did not present any clear personal identity. This too is exactly what one would expect from a separated conscious mind; without the unconscious, it would have no memory.

This, of course, is all exactly what one would expect from a disembodied conscious mind that had lost its unconscious. Just as the behavior of haunting ghosts matches up perfectly with the BSD's expectations for a disembodied unconscious mind with no conscious, so too the behavior of poltergeists matches the BSD's expectations for a disembodied conscious mind with no unconscious.

My book "The Lost Secret of Death : Our Divided Souls and the Afterlife" is the culmination of a fifteen year effort to track an archaic belief-system with extraordinary connections to modern afterlife research, neuropsychology, ancient history, and a remarkable number of contemporary religions. This ancient belief, the binary soul doctrine (BSD), is probably as close as the human race has ever come to having a single world religion.

Interested readers can learn more about my research into afterlife phenomena and the binary soul doctrine at http://www.divisiontheory.com, and in "The Division of Consciousness" and "The Lost Secret of Death".