What are some ectoplasmic phenomena?
In essence, any physical movement that is caused by a purportedly spiritual entity (ghost) needs a physical way to implement said movement. Ectoplasm is the hypothetical physical substance that allows for physical interactions by decidedly non-physical beings.
In other words, any movement caused by ghosts is evidence for ectoplasm.
Common movements attributed to ghosts include but are not strictly limited to:
-ringing bells, plucking guitar strings, or otherwise playing musical instruments
-thumps, raps, bangs, or speech
-touching people
-moving small objects (including the planchette on a Ouija board to answer questions)
-moving large objects such as the table around which the séance occurs
And that last phenomenon is the primary one that I will focus on for this web page.
Table tilting and lifting is by no means confined to Western ghosts, which is part of why I find it such a suitable subject for the investigation of ectoplasmic phenomena. In Charles Emmon's book Chinese Ghosts and ESP, we see that table movement is a common sign of ghostly presence in Eastern experience of ghosts, as well as Western. That said, all the other references I have managed to find are about events in the West, and there really isn't time or space to devote to an ethnographic comparison. Suffice to say that I find it very interesting that distinctly separate cultures have found such similar evidence for the presence and antics of spirits.
Ron Martin, a
professional tarot reader, records in his rather exclusive Tarot
Reader's
Notebook that when he was a boy, his spiritualist family
used to conduct seances at which the only physical manifestation
was
the movement of the table. Whole words and phrases were spelled
out
by a simple code, consisting of the table rising and falling to
tap the floor,
with one tap being the letter A, two the letter B, and so on.
As one
might expect, it took quite some time to get any detailed
answers to
questions. It does, however, illustrate the potential usefulness
of
table lifting or table tilting for something other than simple
evidence of the presence of spirits who have nothing better to
do
than move tables. Alas, Miss Goligher did not seem to have
any visiting ghosts with messages for the living, only those who
wanted to move her table around.