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Tag: ghosts

morning computer mood swings

Published December 2, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Bea Scaccia: Mood Swings

When the combination of inside temperature, outside temperature, number of plays, distance travelled, the moon & the mood is right the car will eat the tape, as it should; it is foretold.

So true, and why I will not entertain this “tape cassette revival” bullshit. Been there done that lost too much.

The internet encourages a form of assemblage, where users collect images, memes, and bits of information under particular themes. In the Tumblr era, this practice was referred to as a user’s “aesthetic”; more recently, on TikTok, this indexing is marked by the suffix “-core” (as in cottagecore). This impulse finds its outlet on every social media platform, from Instagram’s “saved” tab to platforms dedicated to such collections, like Are.na or Pinterest. To see someone else’s curated hoard is a very personal kind of poetry. It’s also a kind of folk art: There are recognizable forms, a movement for a certain kind of reference. And yet, these aesthetic assemblages aren’t often critically examined. Few, if any, are questioning the message embedded in a mood board. What is its history, context, medium, or intent? 

If you’re heading into a haunted site with a historical story attached, ask three simple questions:

  1. Which parts of this tale are documented history, and which are tour-script lore?

  2. What here might be stagecraft, mood, or expectation at work?

  3. Am I treating someone’s tragedy with dignity while I investigate?

If your answers stay honest, your methods will too. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy ghost stories – but this is a way to enjoy them responsibly, while honouring the dead.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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morning computer ghost fires

Published October 8, 2025 by Warren Ellis

“Ghost Fires,” Hayv Kahraman.

Ghost shark has teeth on forehead

  • The Dash was a privateer schooner that vanished in 1815 and soon entered local legend as a ghost ship.
  • For over two centuries, eerie sightings of the Dash have tied it to omens of death and supernatural lore.
  • By blending history, poetry, and folklore, the ship’s story has become one of New England’s most enduring maritime hauntings.

    • Here’s a “Dr. Strangelove”-sounding idea: drop three consecutive nuclear missiles on the same target.

    The Chinese military simulated this shock and awe scenario in a miniaturized lab experiment in order to see what kind of damage would happen, according to the South China Morning Post, and published their findings earlier this month in the science journal, Explosion and Shock Waves.

    They found that striking a target with multiple nuclear munitions in rapid succession leaves a bigger crater and causes way more destruction than a single detonation — duh — but the scientists claim that the research is relevant because it’s the first laboratory test to accurately simulate the damage from such a brutal attack.

    But the true value from this test is probably that the military could glean data from the paper to build better bunkers that could withstand such an apocalyptic situation — a matter that’s on everybody’s mind as China and the United States size up each other’s weapons arsenal amid rising geopolitical tension.

    morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

    My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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    AI Voice Hallucination / Electronic Voice Phenomenon

    Published July 26, 2024 by Warren Ellis

    What grabbed me here was the accidental voice reconstruction.

    The project group used machine learning voice changing software, off the shelf, made for streamers.

    The scratches and taps on the metal were transformed by the proto-AI into fragments of voice: burbles and syllables that sound something like a person speaking, but not quite. You strain to hear.

    (I didn’t ask but I got the impression that the group didn’t originally intend for this to be part of their project, even though it was part of their demo by the time I spoke with them. That’s what you get from working directly with material.)

    And this is something new:

    Where does the voice come from?

    Novelty in the signal.

    This is essentially Electronic Voice Phenomenon.

    Within ghost hunting and parapsychology, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices. Parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive, who popularized the idea in the 1970s, described EVP as typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.[1]

    Enthusiasts consider EVP to be a form of paranormal phenomenon often found in recordings with static or other background noise. Scientists regard EVP as a form of auditory pareidolia (interpreting random sounds as voices in one’s own language) and a pseudoscience promulgated by popular culture.[2][3] Prosaic explanations for EVP include apophenia (perceiving patterns in random information), equipment artifacts, and hoaxes

    Those babbling voices from the sheet metal are not noise in the signal. They’re the point. Sources of creation are rare and here’s a new one!

    What would happen if we listened to the voices?

    Old radio in new graveyards.

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    Corpse Flightpath and Stile Divination

    Published July 6, 2024 by Warren Ellis

    Spirit tracks.  Spirit roads.  Ghost roads.  Corpse roads.  Lych ways.  The Leichenflugbahn, which means, gorgeously, “corpse flightpath.”

    Ghost roads appear, quite simply, to be the paths through which dead bodies were carried to cemeteries.  But, even as digital cities will be built atop the base matter of the contemporary city, ghost roads were superimposed over old geographies.  Corpse roads took the paths that ghosts and other numinous beings were already known to pass down.  Spirit tracks, in German folklore, were imbued with “the magical characteristics of the dead.”  

    Spirit tracks.  The roads of ghosts.  Magical characteristics.

    These haunted streets could be interrogated, too.  Devereux writes of a crossroads in Iceland where the interested hauntologist could “summon the spirits of the dead from the church cemeteries and they would glide up the roads to the crossroads where the seer could divine information from them.”

    He also notes my favourite, “stile divination”.  In Cornwall, apparently, ghosts liked perching on country stiles in the path of spirit roads, and one could sit there and interrogate them as they go.  A stile is an RFID reader for dead people.

    Originally written May 2011

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    Shooting Ghosts: Vancouver Island Murders And Hauntings

    Published March 3, 2023 by Warren Ellis

    St. Andrew’s Cathedral was believed to be haunted as early as 1890. Construction had only just begun on the new cathedral, when a lone gunman shot and killed an innocent man—David Fee—as Christmas Eve Mass was letting out. According to court records, during the subsequent trial, the defendant’s lawyer argued that his client had mistaken David Fee for “a ghost.”

    I just found this story buried at the bottom of my email – seems I sent myself the link at some point.

    It wasn’t long before Francis Fuller—the Irishman—began to demonstrate symptoms of “insanity.” By today’s standards, Fuller would have likely been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He heard voices, for example, saying that his travel companions were part of a conspiracy to kill him. When the French labourer disappeared, the priests believed that he had simply become tired of Fuller’s increasing instability. In later years, reporters would speculate that he might have been Fuller’s first victim.

    Bishop Seghers believed he could control Fuller, despite the concerns of the other priests. Frustrated with the situation, the bishop sent the priests on a side mission while he and Fuller carried on with three First Nation guides. One of the guides left the party at a trading station. The remaining members continued on their way. Fuller began to act more and more erratic.

    On the morning of November 28, 1886, Fuller shot Bishop Seghers through the heart as he leaned over to gather his gear. The man died instantly in front of the two horrified guides. Fuller immediately began to act even more bizarre, shaking one of the guide’s hands while expressing to them that “the man” needed to be killed. The guides wrapped up the body and left to get help with Fuller accompanying them willingly.

    The party reached the village that day. No one knew what to do with Fuller. He wasn’t immediately incarcerated, but was instead sent to another village for the winter, away from two local white women who had expressed “terror” at being in his presence. Fuller continued to act strangely over the duration of the winter, apparently changing his story as to what had happened several times.

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