Phasmophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of ghosts, spectres or phantasms. It derives from the greek words phasma meaning apparition and phobos meaning fear. It is often bought about by experiences in early childhood and causes sufferers to experience panic attacks.

It is categorized by a series of symptoms that the sufferer experiences when they think they have seen a ghost, or apparition. The sufferer usually experiences intense feelings of terror or dread and are often prone to panic or have panic attacks, these symptoms in turn result in an increased or rapid heartbeat. Another common symptom, typical of a majority of specific phobia, is attempts by affected individuals to completely avoid a situation in which one may think they are prone to encountering what they perceive as a ghost.

Phasmophobia is similar to other specific phobia in that it is the result of the unconscious mind acting a defence mechanism to try and avoid a certain situation or object and is thus classified as a type of mental health disorder. It is often brought about by a person believing they have had an encounter with a ghost, most often at an early age, but can also be caused by television and films. When brought about by the latter it is often temporary.

Although the actual existence of ghosts is debated, the fear of ghosts only requires a person to believe they have had an encounter. For example, in an attempt to recall certain events pertaining to a possible encounter with a ghost, a hypnotist might use hypnosis to retrieve the lost memories of the event. Research studies have found that these hypnotically refreshed memories typically combine fact with fiction, but would convince a patient of the realness of their encounter.

There is also the psychological factor of entering a premises in which one already possess prior information that it is suspected as being haunted or is similar to other supposedly haunted places, the psychological impact of this alone can cause the anxiety brought about by phasmophobia.

Due to the nature of the condition, sufferers are not necessarily afraid of ghosts or other apparitions but rather what they perceive to be a ghost, or to enter into a situation in which they feel they are likely to encounter a ghost. For example, a sufferer of cynophobia an abnormal fear of dogs is afraid specifically of canines, rather than a situation in which they could encounter a canine.

The fear itself is also prone to inflame itself, in that due to the onset of panic caused by the phobia, a sufferer is severely impaired in terms of judgment, therefore when a sufferer sees or experiences what they think could be a ghost, their ability of rational thinking is eliminated and so the urge to find the true nature of the experience is lost and instead a fully fledged panic attack is often triggered.

The afterlife is the proposed continued existence of the soul, spirit or mind of a being after physical death. The major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics. In many popular views, this continued existence often takes place in a spiritual or immaterial realm. Deceased persons are usually believed to go to a specific realm or plane of existence after death, determined by their actions during life.

In metaphysical models, theists generally believe some sort of afterlife awaits people when they die. Atheists generally do not believe that there is an afterlife. Members of some generally non theistic religions such as Buddhism, tend to believe in an afterlife but without reference to God.

Many religions, whether they believe in the soul’s existence in another world like Christianity, Islam and many pagan belief systems, or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that one’s status in the afterlife is a reward or punishment for their conduct during life.

An afterlife concept that is found among Hindus, Rosicrucians, Spiritists, and Wiccans is reincarnation, as evolving humans life after life in the physical world, that is, acquiring a superior grade of consciousness and altruism by means of successive reincarnations. This succession is conceived to lead toward an eventual liberation or spiritual rebirth as spiritual beings.

Some practitioners of eastern religions follow a different concept called metempsychosis which purposes that human beings can transmigrate into animals, vegetables, or even minerals. One consequence of the Hindu and Spiritist beliefs is that our current lives are also an afterlife. According to those beliefs, events in our current life are consequences of actions taken in previous lives, or Karma.

Some Neopagans believe in personal reincarnation, whereas some believe that the energy of one’s soul reintegrates with a continuum of such energy which is recycled into other living things as they are born.

Many Wiccans, though not all, profess a belief in an afterlife called the Summerland, a peaceful and sunny place where the souls of the newly dead are sent. Here, souls rest, recuperate from life, and reflect on the experiences they had during their lives. After a period of rest, the souls are reincarnated, and the memory of their previous lives is erased. 

The book In the Light of Truth, offers new insight concerning the process of reincarnation. The human spirit is understood to have repeated earth lives and experiences all of which are necessary for its eventual return to the spiritual realm. There, man began his journey as an unconscious spirit seed. Urged by his wish for self consciousness, he descended into the world of matter to gain experiences essential for his development, just as a seed falls to the earth in order to grow and mature. As a single earth life cannot provide the full range of experiences, a human spirit generally reincarnates many times upon the earth among different peoples and cultures.

Christian Science teaches that the after death state consists of a form of spiritual development whereby the experience of the deceased is in proportion to their ability to avail of the unlimited love of God. Consequently, a person dying in a state of sin would experience God’s love as suffering, while someone who passed on in a state of spiritualized consciousness would experience a corresponding level of happiness.

There is no concept of eternal punishment in Christian Science. Hell and heaven are both states of thought that correspond to the presence, or absence, of self centredness that characterise the individual undergoing the experience of death. A person who seems to die does not go anywhere. One simply adjusts to another level of consciousness which is inaccessible to those they have left behind.

The ultimate, and inevitable, goal of all of us is the experience of divine love. Death is not necessary for the experience of heaven. It can be experienced here and now to the extent that one’s thought is elevated to a spiritual level. Indeed, Christian Science teaches that death itself is an illusion, and that it will be ultimately conquered through good.

A power animal, is a shamanic concept that has entered the English language from anthropology, ethnography and sociology. In the traditional world view, everything is alive and carries with it an inherent virtue, power and wisdom. 

According to shamanic understanding, we each have a number of power animals, for they are patterns of natural abilities and potentials that are inherent within us. A principal power animal is one that has prominence.

Power animals are endemic to shamanic practice. They are the helping or ministering spirits or familiars which add to the power of an individual and are essential for success in any venture undertaken. Stated another way, power animals represent our strengths, our qualities of character, and our power.

In the shamanic worldview, it is commonly held that everyone has power animals. They are animal spirits which reside with each individual adding to their power and protecting them from illness, functioning in a fashion or manner attributed within the Christian tradition to a guardian spirit. The power animal may also lend its ward or charge the wisdom or attributes of its kind. For example, a hawk power animal may provide its charge with attributes of the hawk such as enhanced vision.

Nicholas Noble Wolf provides the definition that a power animal is an aspect of self that is represented by an animal. The aspects of that animal apsect can be empowered and encouraged such that it assists you in your life. A power animal is not a separate spiritual being.

A power animal is an energy pattern, or energy system, that appears in animal form and possesses sensation and the power of voluntary movement to carry out its inherent ability to perform the specific work it characterizes. A power animal is the very energy pattern of an ability or abilities that the animal form characterizes.

The Rainbow Serpent is an important mythological being for Aboriginal people across Australia, although the creation myths associated with it are best known from northern Australia.

The Rainbow Serpent is seen as the inhabitant of permanent waterholes and is in control of life’s most precious resource, water. He is the underlying Aboriginal mythology for the famous Outback “bunyip”. He is the sometimes unpredictable Rainbow Serpent, who vies with the ever-reliable Sun, that replenishes the stores of water, forming gullies and deep channels as he slithered across the landscape, allowing for the collection and distribution of water.

Dreamtime stories tell of the great Spirits during creation, in animal and human form they molded the barren and featureless earth. The Rainbow Serpent came from beneath the ground and created huge ridges, mountains and gorges as it pushed upward. The Rainbow Serpent is known as Ngalyod by the Gunwinggu and Borlung by the Miali. He is a serpent of immense proportions which inhabits deep permanent waterholes.

Serpent stories vary according to environmental differences. Tribes of the monsoonal areas depict an epic interaction of the Sun, Serpent and wind in their Dreamtime stories, whereas tribes of the central desert experience less drastic seasonal shifts and their stories reflect this.

It is known both as a benevolent protector of its people and as a malevolent punisher of law breakers. The rainbow serpent’s mythology is closely linked to land, water, life, social relationships and fertility. There are innumerable names and stories associated with the serpent, all of which communicate the significance and power of this being within Aboriginal traditions.

The myth of the Rainbow serpent is sometimes associated with Wonambi naracoortensis, a large snake of the now extinct megafauna of Australia.

The soulcatcher was an amulet used by the Medicine man of the Tsimshian, Haida and Tlingit tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast of British Columbia and Alaska. It is believed that all soulcatchers were constructed by the Tsimshian tribe, and traded to the Haida and Tlingit tribes.

Soulcatchers were constructed of a tube of bear femur, incised on one side, and often ornamented with abalone shell. Bears have powerful shamanic connotations among the people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Soulcatchers were decorated with  a serpent, land otter, or bear head at both ends of the tube, and an anthropomorphic face in the middle. This form may represent a mythological land otter canoe, imbued with shamanic power. The soulcatcher was plugged at both ends with shredded cedar bark, to contain the lost soul or hold the malevolent spirit of a patient. The amulet was usually worn as a necklace. They range in size from six to eight inches in length.

Sickness incurable by secular herbal means was believed to be caused by soul loss. Dreaming was thought to be the soul leaving the body and traveling to the spirit world. If the soul was unable to return to the body by morning due to disorientation or supernatural interference chronic illness would follow.

To cure the patient the shaman would wear the soulcatcher as a necklace. He would then travel to the spirit world by calling helper spirits using trance music and employing helper spirit masks and staffs. Shaman would also work in groups, constructing a representation of a land otter canoe of shaman and spirit boards or flat totems as a vehicle to travel to the spirit world. Once the missing soul was located, the shaman would suck the soul into the soul catcher, and return to the patient. The soul would then be blown back into the patient. Another use of the soulcatcher was for sucking malevolent spirits out of a patient in a similar manner.

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from those they originally held.

A common type of cultural appropriation is the adoption of the iconography of another culture. Obvious examples include tattoos of Hindu gods, Polynesian tribal iconography, Chinese characters, or Celtic bands worn by people who have no interest in or understanding of the original cultural significance. When these artifacts are regarded as objects that merely look cool, or when they are mass produced cheaply as consumer kitsch, people who venerate and wish to preserve their indigenous cultural traditions may be offended.

African American culture has been the subject of aggressive cultural appropriation, especially elements of its music, dance, slang, dress, and demeanor. Artists such as Eminem, a white American who adopted a traditionally African American music and style, may be perceived this way.

Another prominent example of cultural appropriation is the use of real or imaginary elements of Native American culture by North American summer camps, by organizations such as the Boy Scouts of America, or by New Age spiritual leaders. Many summer camps, and many age segregated groups of campers within summer camps are named after real Native American tribes. Tipis are common at summer camps even at an enormous distance from the Great Plains, and rituals often evoke Native American culture. The Boy Scout honor society is called the Order of the Arrow.

Cultural appropriation may be defined differently in different cultures. While academics in a country such as the United States, where racial dynamics had been a cause of cultural segmentation, may see many instances of intercultural communication as cultural appropriation, other countries may identify such communication as a melting pot effect.

It has also been seen as a site of resistance to dominant society when members of a marginalized group take and alter aspects of dominant culture to assert their resistance. An example were the Mods in the UK in the 1960s, working class youth who appropriated and exaggerated the highly tailored clothing of the upper middle class. Objections have been raised to such political cultural appropriation, citing class warfare and identity politics.

The history of almost every society that comes into contact with other societies is filled with examples of what may be described as cultural appropriation, often learning from other cultures, taking parts that are useful, aesthetic, or agreeable, and incorporating them into their own. For instance, it is arguable that the Islamic civilization appropriated the cultural and intellectual heritage of the Greco-Roman civilization during the Islamic Golden Age. They then used this knowledge, combined with their own talents, to rise to a level of greatness comparable to the days of the Romans themselves.

Justin Britt-Gibson’s article for the Washington Post looked at the appropriation of his African-American culture as a sign of progress:

Throngs of dreadlocked Italians were smoking joints, drinking beer, grooving to the rhythms of Bob Marley, Steel Pulse and other reggae icons. Most striking was how comfortable these Italians seemed in their appropriated shoes, adopting a foreign culture and somehow making it theirs. The scene reinforced my sense of how far we’ve come since the days when people dressed, talked and celebrated only that which sprang from their own background. For the first time in my life, I was fully aware of the spiritual concept that we’re all simply one.

Last month in a Los Angeles barbershop, I was waiting to get my trademark Afro cut when I noticed a brother in his late teens sitting, eyes closed, as the barber clipped his hair into a frohawk, the punk inspired African American adaptation of the mohawk. Asked why he chose the look, the guy, without looking up, shrugged, “Something different.” Immediately, I understood. Minutes later, his different cut became my new look.

Guy Warren Ballard was an American mining engineer who became, with his wife Edna Anne, the founder of the I AM Activity. Ballard visited Mt. Shasta, California in 1930, where he met another hiker who identified himself as Saint Germain. Mr. Ballard’s experiences take place within the larger North American mountain ranges. Guy Ballard, his wife Edna, and later his son Donald became the sole Accredited Messengers of Saint Germain. Their teachings form the original nucleus for what are today called the Ascended Master Teachings.

The doctrine of the I AM Activity has its roots in theosophy. Its teachings were not new, but the publicity the Ballards achieved spread their teachings into the developing New Age movements in the United States. Many New Age movements now involve the Ascended Master Teachings.

The movement believes in the existence of a group called the Ascended Masters, a hierarchy of supernatural beings that includes Saint Germain, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Maitreya, and thousands more. These are believed to be humans who have lived in physical bodies, become immortal, and attained their ascension. The Ascended Masters are believed to communicate to humanity through certain humans, including Guy and Edna Ballard. Because Jesus is believed to be one of the Ascended Masters, making the Christ Light available to seekers who wish to move out of darkness, many of the members of the I AM Activity consider it to be a Christian religion.

The movement teaches that the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent creator God is in all of us as a spark from the Divine Flame, and that we can experience this presence, love, power and light through quiet contemplation and by repeating affirmations and decrees. By affirming something one desires, one can cause it to happen.

According to Los Angeles Magazine article, in August 1935, the Ballards hosted a gathering at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles that drew a crowd of 6,000. Guy Ballard spoke under the pseudonym he used in authoring his books, Godfre Ray King, and his wife used the pseudonym Lotus. Their meetings included teachings they described as being received directly from the Ascended Masters. They led the audiences in prayers and affirmations including adorations to God and invocations for abundance of every good thing, including love, money, peace, and happiness.

The Ballards founded a publishing house, Saint Germain Press, to publish their books and began training people to spread their messages across the United States. Meetings became limited to members after hecklers began disrupting their open meetings. Over their lifetimes, the Ballards recorded nearly 4,000 messages which they said were from the Ascended Masters. Guy Ballard, his wife Edna, and later his son Donald became the sole Accredited Messengers of the Ascended Masters.

Ballard died in 1939. In 1942 his wife and son were convicted of fraud after a government audit found that they had stored up $3 million from donations and what it called a retail racket by false statements of their religious experiences which had not in fact occurred, based on their claims of miraculous communication with the spirit world and supernatural power to heal the sick. A landmark Supreme Court decision overturned the conviction, ruling that the question of whether the Ballards believed their religious claims should not have been submitted to a jury.

A psychomanteum is a mirrored room specially set up to communicate with the spiritual realm. Reflective objects or surfaces, such as blood or water, were considered a conduit to the spiritual world in ancient times.

Sometimes described as an apparition booth, the psychomanteum dates back to ancient Greece, where a person would gaze into a still pool of water. This silent and steady gazing into a reflective pool would produce apparitions or visions. In 1958, the Classical Greek archaeologist Sotiris Dakaris found accommodation near the Dodona oracle spoken of by Homer and Herodotus, where supplicants would wait their turn at the oracle in complete darkness. An extensive maze led to a long central apparition hallway where the experience took place. There Dakaris found the remnants of a bronze cauldron ringed with a banister which made it appear that the people who were seeing the apparitions would be gazing at the cauldron.

The room is set up to optimize psychological effects such as trance. Its key features are low light or near darkness, flickering light, and a mirror. The dimness represents a form of visual sensory deprivation, a condition helpful to trance induction, the undifferentiated color without horizon producing the Ganzfeld effect, a state of apparent blindness. The Ganzfeld experiment replicates the conditions of a psychomanteum where a state of trance may be induced by a uniform field of vision. In the way of strobe or flashing light, stimulus is provided by indirect, moving light in the psychomanteum. Flickering candles or a lamp are sometimes recommended to induce hallucination. It is supposed the indeterminate depth of the mirror’s darkness allows the eyes to relax and become unfocussed, a state that reduces alertness.

Dr Raymond Moody, author of the 1981 book about near death experiences Life After Life, included the psychomanteum in his research in trials of 300 subjects which he recorded in his 1993 book, Reunions. Moody viewed the room as a therapeutic tool to heal grief and bring insight.