Residual Hauntings and The Stone Tape Theory - Unpleasant Dreams 5

Residual hauntings are often explained by the “Stone Tape Theory.” We delve into the history and thinking behind this theory on this week’s edition of Unpleasant Dreams.

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Cassandra Harold is your host.

EM Hilker is our principal writer and researcher with additional writing by Cassandra Harold. Jim Harold is our Executive Producer.

Unpleasant Dreams is a production of Jim Harold Media.

Sources & Further Reading:

The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise by Charles Babbage http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/bridgewater/intro.htm

Manual of Psychometry by Joseph Rodes Buchanan: https://amzn.to/35p9uws

Sharon Hill’s excellent articles on the topic:

The “Stone Tape Theory” of hauntings: A geological perspective

Confusing speculative “language of stone” (Book Review)

Spooky Rocks

Ghost and Ghoul by TC Lethbridge: https://amzn.to/3mhkova

Haunting and the Psychic Ether Hypothesis by HH Price: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24108-8_2

Secret Language of Stone by Don Robins: https://amzn.to/37G0Bl7

For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Strangeries’ Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91nVUot4RcI

Sharon Hill’s Spooky Geology video on the topic : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a32y-vTmhE8

Edge of the Rabbit Hole’s episode discussing Stone Tape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5d0rEJ0iSE

Stone Tape (1972): https://amzn.to/37zePUF

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

A mystery man. Neither interacting with the environment around him nor being affected by it. Almost as if the world around him was merely being replayed. Seen, but not truly there. Such a mysterious figure has all the hallmarks of a residual haunting. The oft-cited Stone Tape Theory is the proposed mechanism behind residual hauntings. The idea is that emotion unleashes energy that is then saved to the most common mineral on earth, quartz crystal. That emotional energy behaves as if it were being recorded on video tape; a recording which can then be replayed under the right conditions. This suggests that apparitions are not classic ghosts in the way that we usually think of them, but a replay that has been imprinted on the objects or atmosphere surrounding the original events.

While it was not always known as “the Stone Tape theory,” the basic framework for this kind of imprinting was in place for nearly 200 years. In tracing this framework, we begin with Charles Babbage, a mathematician known primarily as “the father of computing” and the inventor of the first programmable computer. In 1817, Babbage suggested that each spoken word leaves an everlasting imprint on the air itself. It can only be heard for a short period of time, but the word itself remains there, hanging silently in the air, forever. This suggests nothing about replay, as in the Stone Tape Theory, but brings the idea of events being “stored” into the conversation.

In 1842, physician and physiology professor Joseph Rodes Buchanan introduced the world to the concept of psychometry, or the reading of the past from physical objects. Buchanan felt that all objects radiate an energy, which can transfer the object’s history to a properly sensitive person if they touch the object. He would go on to write in the Manual Of Psychometry in 1893:

The discoveries of Psychometry will enable us to explore the history of man, as those of geology enable us to explore the history of the earth. There are mental fossils for psychologists as well as mineral fossils for the geologists; and I believe that hereafter the psychologist and the geologist will go hand in hand

The linking of geology to psychic phenomena, the persistence of history through physical objects, all seem a clear predecessor of the Stone Tape theory.

An investigative group called The Society for Psychical Research (also known as SPR) was founded on the 20th of February in 1882 , and it continues to this day. Within a few years of its creation, founder and investigator Edmund Gurney, alongside fellow investigator and eventual president of the soci...