What is Ectoplasm?

Picture this: you are a disembodied spirit. You wish to make your presence known to a group of people in a room. You can't speak because you don't have any vocal cords. However, even without eardrums, you can somehow hear the people in the room asking questions, hoping you (or some noncorporeal entity at least) are there and willing to answer, but not really knowing whether that's true or not. You see the bell on the table, the flickering candles, the planchette on the Ouija Board, the table on which rest the hands of all the gathered people.

from http://ghosthuntnow.com/seance/

If only there were some physical material you could inhabit, a temporary body that would allow you to interact with the material world!

In most séance rooms, alas, you are out of luck. You drift from one to another over the course of your rather long afterlife.

Then one day it happens! This time, no candles or lights of any kind are present. However, since you are not bound by the physical requirement of light in order to see what's in the séance room, you can observe what the seated participants cannot. Joy and wonder, you behold a substance flowing from the medium (person who conducts the séance) that seems just perfect! It is only substantial in the darkness, which is why you never saw it at any previous séance (more on this later), but you intuit that there is no spirit moving this new and highly ephemeral matter. It is, however, organic in nature so you further intuit that you may be able to infuse it with your own spirit self, at least temporarily!

from http://davidjaher.com/photos

You have found the rare spirit medium capable of producing ectoplasm.

Now, you can go on to do all the many things that you, in your now-bodiless state, have desired so much to do whenever you have seen hopeful people gathered around a table asking for signs of spirits. You can ring a bell, move objects on the table, and even (could you have imagined a more inspired way to spend your afterlife?) cause the table itself to tip or rise up a few inches.

With a truly gifted medium providing enough ectoplasm for your brief use, you can lift the entire table from the floor! But only if you have studied physics and are able to conceive of a cantilever system that will allow you to apply the limited strength and force available to you when Madame Spooky “pulls aside the Veil” between the hours of nine and midnight through her generous offering of ectoplasm for your temporary use.

You remember being in Dr. Newman's Physics 211 class and you will never forget, even when you no longer have a physical brain, that:

F=ma

You know that in order to shift that table, you have to overcome the force of its mass being accelerated by gravity toward the floor. You also remember from lessons on torque that a lesser force applied at some distance on a moment arm can effectively overcome the full weight of the table! With these simple but vital concepts in your insubstantial hand, you can cause delightful mayhem in the dark séance room.

The afterlife is suddenly so much more fun, now that people are exuding this new temporary substance for your entertainment! And remembering your physics class makes all this fun possible.

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