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Can Ghost wear Clothes or be Naked?
What do you picture when you think of a ghost? A horrible, moldy wrapping sheet? A scary pile of magical armor? Or a frightening man in a stiff Victorian suit?
In 1863, George Cruikshank, a caricaturist and artist of Dickens’s books, told of a “discovery” about how ghosts can look. It doesn’t look like it, he wrote:
“That anyone has ever thought about how ridiculous and impossible it is for there to be things like ghosts of clothing…” For the sake of decorum, ghosts must not and cannot show up without clothes. Since there is no such thing as ghosts or spirits of clothes, it looks like ghosts never showed up and never will.
When ghosts aren’t naked, why? This was an important psychological question for Cruikshank and many others in Victorian Britain. Stories about ghosts nude or without clothes are uncommon, especially outside of mythology.
Or the buried body is covered with clothes and settled down in earth.
Both skeptics and people who claim to see ghosts have enjoyed thinking about how ghosts could have shape and power in the real world. What kind of stuff do they have that lets them live on the same level as us, without any special rules?
The ghost as a figure in a white winding sheet, also called a burial shroud, has been a famous picture for hundreds…
