User:Ebg1721/sandbox

Origin
The words “flimmern” and “geists” originate in Germany and together mean "flicker-ghosts" or "flicker spirits". This phenomenon was first explained in the 16th century by a German alchemist and Christian mystic by the name of Jakob Bohme.

What They Are
The word geist translates from German to English as meaning “ghost,” but more specifically, a geist is believed to be an individual spirit that at one point in time used to be a ghost. In order to make this transition from ghost to spirit, it is said that the ghost must give up their mortal identity. As anew spirit, they represent and embody the ideas and images that accompany their own deaths. They become a personification of specific aspects of death that can be observed by people who are still alive.

A flimmern-geist was described by Bohme as a shadowy figure briefly seen via peripheral vision. It was most commonly associated with death or the dead in the 16th century. The appearance and behavior of these flimmern-geisten is generally consistent. They tend to flicker in and out of vision, People have described them as human in shape and typically dark and very agile. They are also associated with sensations such as shivers, chills and the feeling that something strange has happened.

People commonly describe their first encounters as being with figures that are cloaked or shrouded. They are frequently described as blurred outlines. Some suggest that the idea and image of the Grim Reaper, the personification of death, was inspired by flimmern-geisten since the reaper is claimed to be a dark shadowy figure that appeared before a person died.

Are They Real
There is still a question of if whether ghosts and spirits actually exist or not. Some people have documented their own encounters with these mysterious phenomena and truly believe in their existence. Modern science, however; has a much more difficult time in proving that ghosts and spirits do exist. They also cannot dis prove the existence of paranormal beings. This is because science can only function within the natural realm and natural laws. The question that asks “if science cannot prove something, does that mean it does not exist,” is simply no. Specifically, scientists have described the encounters with flimmern-geists are simply a “trick of the eyes,” but again cannot explain how or why. The idea of this phenomenon certainly is a mysterious, unexplained and has not been explored at great measures, but its validity remains at the individual’s discretion.

Scientific Doubts
A literary work written by a physician named John Ferriar titled An essay towards a theory of apparitions in 1813 argues that when people claim to see ghosts or spirits, it is actually a result of optical illusions. There was also work published by a French physician named Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont that came after John Ferriar’s essay. It was titled On Hallucinations: Or, The Rational Historyof Apparitions, Dreams, Ecstasy, Magnetism, and Somnambulism and released in the year 1845. Unlike Ferriar, Alexandre’s work explained that the appearance of ghosts or spirits were a result of hallucinations, not optical illusions.

Another member of the scientific community – Joe Nickell from the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry, was very much into the idea of needing scientific evidence to prove the existence of ghosts and spirits. He noted that there was no scientific evidence that any certain location was occupied by spirits of the dead. Claims by people to have seen any of these paranormal beings can simply be explained by limitations of human perception and also ordinary occurrences that can happen in nature. An example of this would be a door slamming due to a change in the air pressure in a room. Another explanation of ghost and spirit sightings can be explained by Pareidolia. This tendancy occurs when people are observing random perceptions and suddenly identify some of the patterns they see as ghosts. In the case of flimmern-geists, the figures seen out of the corner of the eye, some scientists explain this as being a result of the sensitivity and touchiness of human peripheral vision. Nickell adds that in addition to peripheral vision being very sensitive, as the brain begins to tire, its ability to identify sights and sounds becomes less sharp. This can lead to misinterpretations by the human peripheral vision.

Another researcher by the name of Michael Persinger from the Laurentian University speculates that the reason people claim to see paranormal beings is a result of a change in geomagnetic fields. The changing of these fields causes the brain’s temporal lobes to fire which creates many of the sensations, sights, and sounds that have been associated with experiencing ghosts and spirits. Richard C. Lord and Richard Wiseman were two scientists that explored the role of sound when dealing with the paranormal. Their studies found that infrasound has the ability to cause a number of differenct sensations in the human body including anxiety, chills, sorrow, and also a feeling of being watched. These feelings are all commonly associated with and described by people who experience ghosts and spirits. As early as 1921, an explanation for sightings came from carbon monoxide poisoning. People who experienced this poisoning were subject to many changes in their body such as their perception of the visual and auditory systems.