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.

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~tatterdemalion wrote (thread):

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I believe that the impressions you are referring to have been called the Akashic Record. I'd be interested in some explanation of what you mean by "material but non-physical". Epicurus believed consciousness to consist in very fine or subtle matter, but this was still physical: it is composed of atoms that are smaller, smoother, and easier to set into motion than the atoms of familiar matter, and interact normally with common matter; their motion is eventually transferred to, e.g., the limbs of the body.

In my own case, I'm always trying to reconcile my interest in the occult with my belief in a universe that is not only purely physical, but strongly deterministic and intrinsically meaningless. I could also see impressions in a place as being made upon the noösphere, in the memetic or social-psychological sense, and persisting over time culturally though possibly sub-consciously. This is quite similar to your 'ether tape', except that the actual encoding occurs physically in human brains, though the information content can be described independently of its physical substrate. I have a related theory of demonic possession which I have not fully written up.

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