Stone Tape Theory and Apophenia
Stone Tape theory is a parascientific speculation that attempts to explain phenomena like ghosts and hauntings without reference to spiritual beings, such as the ghosts of the dead. Rather, it suggests that it is possible for the environment (stone or other material) to preserve impressions of past events, perhaps especially highly emotionally charged events, which can be perceived by later visitors to the site of the event. In this view, ghosts are not conscious beings, even in a reduced state, but more like a video or phonographic recording, hence the name of the theory.
The problem with Stone Tape theory is that there is absolutely no evidence for it, and no mechanisms have been proposed that are not pseudoscientific or disproven. I would like to suggest an alternative hypothesis, which also has no supporting data and is equally speculative, but possibly more plausible.
Apophenia is when the mind over-interprets impressions or events as having more meaning or connection than they actually do. Some types of apophenia are part of normal brain function. We're all familiar with pareidolia, the experience of seeing faces or other recognizable shapes in random surfaces, like rocks or clouds, or in unrelated patterns, like floor tile. Other types of apophenia include hearing music in random noise or seeing patterns in random numeric sequences (as in gambling or finance... but I repeat myself). So far, so normal, but excessive apophenia can be an early sign of schizophrenia, as when the paranoid constructs a meaningful narrative out of completely unrelated real events.
Intentionally self-inducing apophenia is one of the core techniques of chaos magick. Skeptics often attempt to explain ghost phenomena in terms of normal apophenia and pareidolia.
But in normal pareidolia and similar forms of apophenia, you can point to what provokes your recognition of a face or whatever it is. These curls in Queen Elizabeth II's hair look like eyes, that like a hooked nose, and those like a thick-lipped mouth (on the 1954-1955 Canadian "devil's face" dollar). But in ghost phenomena, it is much harder to see what might be causing the anomalous perceptions. Nothing about this cemetery resembles floating lights; nothing about this hallway resembles a woman in white.
My proposal is something in between Stone Tape theory and skeptical explanations of hauntings through apophenia. I suggest that there is another unrecognized type of apophenia, where some physical characteristics of a particular location, some arrangement of visual stimuli, some combination of light and shadow, some sounds, infrasound, ultrasound, scents, magnetic fields, and other stimuli perhaps below a conscious threshold, which, importantly, do not directly resemble the perceived phenomena, nevertheless consistently provoke similar impressions in different observers. There is, further, a kind of resonance, reflection, or synchronicity between the impressions produced by these places, and people or events formerly associated with the place. I cannot say whether the causality of that resonance goes forward or backward. That is, whether the past events somehow set up the conditions for these impressions, or whether the conditions are in fact totally independent of past events and people, but in another incidence of apophenia, in a place with a long history, there is always some story to which the phenomena can be retroactively associated.
This is as much speculation as Stone Tape theory is, of course, but in my opinion, it has the advantage of being speculation involving unknown reaches of human psychology, rather than the well-known physics of stone and soil.
Stone Tape Theory at Wikipedia
Replies
Nothing to add, just thanks for initiating a rather interesting exchange read!
Interesting. I have also, on my own, thought about the "stone tape theory" as a possible explanation of such phenomena. I would venture a slightly different take which is not too far from the one you are suggesting.
The western mystery tradition (the "occult") holds that physical reality is the outer manifestation of a slightly different kind of matter, the so-called 'ether'. The notion of 'ether' is slightly different from the historical conjecture about an all-permeating 'ether'. The ether I am taling about, while still material, is non-physical, it is also called the "astral plane", the hindu cosmology has a similar concept, that of subtle matter, of which the conditioned mind is an expression. In fact, the very mystery tradition on the west claims that the jungian so-called 'collective unconscious' is part of this ethereal plane.
Now whereas matter appears to be discrete -neatly differentiated molecules, functional parts, individuals-, this ethereal, or astral, plane is continuous. That is how our own individual minds, while still sticking out as relatively autonomous, also share in the common pool of the collective unconscious. In fact, our own personalities are not at all clear-cut. We are the combination of our culture, environment, our parents, those people closest to us, etc.
Of course this is just a very rough exposition (and perhaps a somewhat inaccurate one, as I am not very versed in the subject, either) of an 'alternative' kind of ontology of reality, one that goes well beyond scientific capacity and wouldn't be --cannot be-- backed up by scientific method.
I hope you can already see where this is going. The 'stone tape' theory here I would replace for an 'ether tape' theory, where the impressions are left in the underlying astral 'body' of objects and places, such that individuals who are particularly sensitive to this shared plane of experience would be able to perceive, more or less strongly, the impressions left by passing events or people in the "immaterial" (actually material, non-physical) fabric of reality, at that region in space.
Interesting. Almost like the dead haunting the materials around us. I do not believe (in most things) but the concept of objects, buildings retaining energy, this is very true in a big way.
I lived in Midtown STL for a year. I would go out at night, no cars or people on the streets, and I could FEEL high energy levels all around me. Some describe this as a nefarious-ness in a/the city. Some say they are logically fearful for the potential dangers of anything/everything in the night, but I consider this off-putting perception as that of unnatural perception(s) - think about it: the streets are filled with cars and people all day, they leave at night, I go out (alone) at night, and the permeable and resonating energy of a vibrating town remains (or hasnt yet tapered off). So I KNOW no one is there, but I still SENSE energy. Nowhere in nature does this occur. cities, and towns, and infrastructure, cars, manmade buildings/structures are all absent in a/the natural world, so the ying-yang of high/low energy is not a common perception.
Just my take
Source