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Here is the thing and it will be with you for the rest of your life
As I go on disorganizedly tracking the emergence of tropes that interest me, tonight in proto-Stone Tape we have Joseph Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story (1937):
"Now if, by your expression spooks and ghosts, you imply conscious emanations, aftermaths of physical existence capable of independent functioning of a semi-earthly character, well, then I probably do not believe in that sort of thing. There are others, of course, whose opinions I respect, who disagree with me. They consider that you, sir, are doomed to exist perpetually in some form or other. That is, perhaps, a depressing thought. But if, by spooks and ghosts, you imply emanations recreated by acute living sensitiveness or intelligence from the inexhaustible store-houses of the past, then I do believe in that sort of thing. Inevitably. [. . .] What is a simple gramophone record but a record of the past?" he demanded, tapping the bore on the knee. "Caruso is dead, but we can hear his voice to-day. This is not due to invention, but to discovery, and if the discovery had occurred three hundred years ago I should not have to travel to Naseby to hear Charles the First's voice—if, that is, I am to hear it. But Nature does not wait upon our discoveries. That is a thing so many ignoramuses forget. Her sound-waves, light-waves, thought-waves, emotional-waves—to mention a few of those which come within the limited range of our particular senses and perceptions—all travel ceaselessly, some without interruption, some to find temporary prisons in the obstructions where they embed themselves. Here they may diminish into negligible influences, or—mark this—they may be freed again. The captured waves, of course, are merely a fragment from the original source. Potentially everything that has ever existed, everything born of the senses, can be recovered by the senses. Fortunately, sir, there will be no gramophone record of your recent expletive; nevertheless, in addition to its mere mark on memory, your 'Bosh' will go on for ever."
Since this novel also contains psychometry (a bed, a chair, and a hammer all contain imprints of their associated deaths, imperceptible to most but distressingly present to the psychically sensitive chorus girl who makes up one-sixth of the small snowbound cast of this supernaturally tinged mystery), I'm starting to wonder if that's the actual origin of the idea of ghosts-as-recordings, generalized from individual objects to buildings and landscapes. Then again, maybe it particularized the other way round. Or they evolved independently and dovetailed. Really the problem is that I'm trying to answer this question without a deep dive into the history of parapsychology and I might have no alternative. It just interests me so much as an idea that so thoroughly permeates the field I read and write in, I can't remember where I first encountered it. Anyway, I don't just want to know when it entered parapsychology. When did it become one of the recognized literary modes of ghost?
"Now if, by your expression spooks and ghosts, you imply conscious emanations, aftermaths of physical existence capable of independent functioning of a semi-earthly character, well, then I probably do not believe in that sort of thing. There are others, of course, whose opinions I respect, who disagree with me. They consider that you, sir, are doomed to exist perpetually in some form or other. That is, perhaps, a depressing thought. But if, by spooks and ghosts, you imply emanations recreated by acute living sensitiveness or intelligence from the inexhaustible store-houses of the past, then I do believe in that sort of thing. Inevitably. [. . .] What is a simple gramophone record but a record of the past?" he demanded, tapping the bore on the knee. "Caruso is dead, but we can hear his voice to-day. This is not due to invention, but to discovery, and if the discovery had occurred three hundred years ago I should not have to travel to Naseby to hear Charles the First's voice—if, that is, I am to hear it. But Nature does not wait upon our discoveries. That is a thing so many ignoramuses forget. Her sound-waves, light-waves, thought-waves, emotional-waves—to mention a few of those which come within the limited range of our particular senses and perceptions—all travel ceaselessly, some without interruption, some to find temporary prisons in the obstructions where they embed themselves. Here they may diminish into negligible influences, or—mark this—they may be freed again. The captured waves, of course, are merely a fragment from the original source. Potentially everything that has ever existed, everything born of the senses, can be recovered by the senses. Fortunately, sir, there will be no gramophone record of your recent expletive; nevertheless, in addition to its mere mark on memory, your 'Bosh' will go on for ever."
Since this novel also contains psychometry (a bed, a chair, and a hammer all contain imprints of their associated deaths, imperceptible to most but distressingly present to the psychically sensitive chorus girl who makes up one-sixth of the small snowbound cast of this supernaturally tinged mystery), I'm starting to wonder if that's the actual origin of the idea of ghosts-as-recordings, generalized from individual objects to buildings and landscapes. Then again, maybe it particularized the other way round. Or they evolved independently and dovetailed. Really the problem is that I'm trying to answer this question without a deep dive into the history of parapsychology and I might have no alternative. It just interests me so much as an idea that so thoroughly permeates the field I read and write in, I can't remember where I first encountered it. Anyway, I don't just want to know when it entered parapsychology. When did it become one of the recognized literary modes of ghost?
no subject
no subject
Your phrasing made me realize that I may have encountered this idea first in Diana Wynne Jones' A Tale of Time City (1987), which doesn't have ghosts in the sense of spirits of the dead, but is full of ghosts as marks on time:
"They happen because the City keeps using the same piece of space and time over and over again. If a person does the same thing often enough, they leave a mark in the air, like the ones you just saw. Habit-ghosts, we call them. There's another kind called once-ghosts—I'll show you some of those later . . . [They] happen when whatever they're doing is so important or so emotional that they leave a mark like the habit-ghosts."
I want to say one documentary might have mentioned the idea of these ghosts as "imprints" on the locations originated with the inventor of the phonograph, or with some kind of wax roll sound recording technology, but I can't swear to it, and I recall no names.
I appreciate the suggestion nonetheless and I'll let you know if I find anything that supports it!
no subject
That doesn't answer the part of the question where it entered into the literary field and made itself comfortable, but it might give you a timeframe. I don't recall seeing it in the genre I've read from the 19th century, but it might all have been too early. I recall the documentary linked that type of "haunting" not only to ancient places that have seen continuous human use, but to archaeological dig sites and battlefields. Maybe adventure fiction of the very late 19th/early 20th century might be a useful genre to explore, in addition to the detective fiction and ghost stories?
no subject
See above to
Maybe adventure fiction of the very late 19th/early 20th century might be a useful genre to explore, in addition to the detective fiction and ghost stories?
I mean, I don't see how it can hurt me.