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I'm haunted by the ghosts of my dead lovers. It's very disconcerting to talk to them in my dreams and then wake up and remember that they're dead now.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Genuine question here for the believers, based on my own perceptions.

Whenever I see an American account of a ghost encounter, more often than not the ghost resembles someone from the mid 1800’s. Is this significant? Is it down to civil war “bad vibes” causing so many ghosts to be from this period? Or is it just a convenient case of old enough to be removed from anyone still alive but still modern enough to have pictures or accounts of the people available?

I hardly ever seem to see stories about Native American ghosts, or redcoats haunting an old fort for example. Why is the mid 1800’s so, for want of a better word, popular?

Battleground, Indiana is named after the battle between William Henry Harrison's forces and a native uprising force. Supposedly, in a spot on the memorial site, you can hear the natives marching out to the battlefield. Haven't experienced it, but heard several people in the area who claimed to.

Did they hear it before or after being told about people hearing it?

I'll get around to asking anyone who will admit to experiencing it, but I'd wager that SOMEONE had to experience it first. At any rate, it appears to be more of a residual haunt than anything intelligent.

 Just Tony wrote:
... but I'd wager that SOMEONE had to experience it first.

That is not necessarily true. Someone could have just read something about people hearing things somewhere else with a similar history, then told someone else about it, who then told someone else and over all the retellings it morphed into people hearing it at this location. That is just as plausible an explanation.

When you tell someone that a specific sound can be heard, they become much more likely to hear that sound. Just look at the old backmasking hysteria, especially the Judas Priest court case.

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Genuine question here for the believers, based on my own perceptions.

Whenever I see an American account of a ghost encounter, more often than not the ghost resembles someone from the mid 1800’s. Is this significant? Is it down to civil war “bad vibes” causing so many ghosts to be from this period? Or is it just a convenient case of old enough to be removed from anyone still alive but still modern enough to have pictures or accounts of the people available?

I hardly ever seem to see stories about Native American ghosts, or redcoats haunting an old fort for example. Why is the mid 1800’s so, for want of a better word, popular?

There's lots of areas that are said to be haunted by Native Americans, usually areas that were once burial grounds or sacred areas. There's a local burial ground near me that was paved over for a road and there's an abnormal amount of fatal accidents along that stretch of road and lot of people have claimed to have swerved and lost control because they suddenly saw people standing in the road at night. It passes right through a prairie/wetland preserve which tends to generate a lot of fog in the late hours so it could be a more normal explanation but a lot of local people say the road is haunted. There's a subdivision that was built over what used to be tribal land and a number of people living there report seeing native people. I've never seen any of it so I can't comment firsthand but I've heard a lot of secondhand accounts.

Huge stretches of our country wasn't settled much before before the early 1800's, assuming people are seeing actual ghost the earliest period would be late Colonial early 1800's for seeing non-native people. In Europe people have been living there for several thousand years so a haunting could stretch back much further. But who knows maybe there's a time cap on how long spirits can reside somewhere before they fade away? People that study hauntings generally find that they are tied to the inhabitants of the houses or buildings at the time (and likely died there or had a strong emotional connection there) We don't have too many buildings that go back more than 200 years.

If ghost are connected in part to the physical buildings where they lived & died in it might explain why native ghosts are less common in people's homes as they didn't really leave permanent buildings or structures behind the way we do. People still report seeing native ghosts but they tend to be seen more often at outdoor locations, or areas that nowdays seem empty because whatever tents or temporary structures have long since disappeared.