Weird fact of the day, the idea that ghosts look like this,
where the kind of translucent and float,
is extremely recent, and it came about for an extremely specific reason.
Now, almost every culture in history has ghosts,
but prior to the 19th century,
they were never described as this.
They either just looked like normal,
solid people. In some stories,
the ghost would physically attack you,
or they would open doors or break down doors.
And while they had the ability to disappear
or suddenly appear in a room,
they were never described like this until this invention came along.
Back in the early 1800s, before cinema,
when people were extremely bored,
they invented this device
which could project a still image onto a screen.
And this gave rise to horror shows called phantasmagoria,
where the audience would gather in a darkened room
in a screen would be lowered,
and they would project onto the screen
skeletons and monsters and all sorts of other scary things.
But because of the technical limitations of the technology,
they could only be portrayed as floating.
They couldn't walk around the floor.
And because of the screen and the projector,
they were always translucent.
And according to this book by Susan Owens,
the Ghost A Cultural History,
it was only after those shows became popular
that you started to see the translucent ghost turn up in stories.
This was also around the time of the dawn of photography.
And then back then, Because of the technology,
you used to have to sit perfectly still for a very long time
for to develop properly on the film.
This is why people rarely smiled in those photos.
You couldn't hold a smile for several minutes.
If you got up early or if you moved,
it would accidentally create this ghostly image.
And it did not take long for photographers to start selling
ghost captured on film pictures.
And from then on, when people claim to see a ghost in their home,
they would see this, the thing from the fantasmagoria,
the floating, translucent spirit.
I feel like this is incredibly important to understand.
Not only did media influence and totally alter our concept
of what a human soul or spirit looked like,
but a physical and technical limitation in that media did it.
But 500 years from now,
people will probably still be seen this kind of ghost because of it.