Many A Coloured Lady

There are many accounts of ghosts be described as The White Lady, The Bown Lady, The Green Lady, The Red Lady, Blue Lady and Blue Boy etc. One would assume for a ghost to be given this name, then the witnesses must be able to identify it by it's colour. But in the dark we can't distinguish colour, we need a light source to see colour. So were these ghosts seen with a light source present, in which case it shows ghosts don't just appear in the dark. Are these type of ghosts hallucinations of some type or perhaps they are physically there and have their own light source.

I've always - perhaps wrongly - assumed that the idea of giving a ghost a colour is more reflective of sub-conscious cultural values, rather than the actual physical colour of the ghost.

The colour grey for example, could be associated with dusk, and being halfway between two extremes (black and white) it could be said to represent a state of limbo or as being transcendent of normal parameters.

Other examples include white representing purity, red being associated with blood and anger, with blue being representative of cold and unfeeling.

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I've always - perhaps wrongly - assumed that the idea of giving a ghost a colour is more reflective of sub-conscious cultural values, rather than the actual physical colour of the ghost.

That is an excellent point Neil, some of these ghost would have been given their colourful (thats a pun by the way ) names for other reasons. My question about colour is still relevant though as in some cases people do include the colour of hair or clothes in their description of the ghost they have seen. Such as in Corby Castles Radiant Boy described with golden locks of hair.

If an appartion is not an hallucination and it is seen with colour then there must be a source surely.

By the gods !! I have loads of good thoughts about this but can't manage to write them down without them looking like complete gibberish.

Colour - maybe the colour of the ghost (if it in fact exists) could be due to light and colour frequencies. So we only see something if the frequency is right.

mmm that makes no sense

As to the light source question, maybe they are self illuminating. As energy cannot be destoyed it can only change form (or something like that).

mmm.. more gibberish.

Can anyone sort of see where i'm going with this ?

Going for a long shot, but can it be to do with the garment they were wearing when they died? Sorry that maybe comes across as a bit sarcastic I simply mean that maybe it isn't as mysterious as we're maybe making it to be. Even though ghosts are a mysterious subject in the first place.

err... Ignore me, I'm rambling


Interesting- the Scottish Glaistig, essentially a nature faery (sometimes nice enough to help tend livestock for a bit of milk, sometimes nasty enough to drink the bood of males- a bit harsh!) is frequently named Green Lady.


Wild fawn, wild fawn,
Hast seen the Green Lady?
The bird in the nest,
And the child at the breast,
They open wide eyes as she comes down the dawn-
The bonnie Green Lady,
Bird and child make a whisper of music at dawn,
Wild fawn, wild fawn!

Fiona MacLeod

It's a bit gibberish, but I believe it may refer to a Glaistig. Seeing as Glaistigs were a Celtic piece of lore, it shows that coloured apparitions have been around for a while- could other "colours" correspond to such spirits/faeries?

Your right as well Urisk some of these ghosts could well be named after the colour of the clothing they are seen in. Some witness accounts describe the apparitions they see in colour and many ghosts are mistaken as living people until they disappear.

For our own eyes to percieve colour they need light of some kind, for in the dark everything becomes shades of grey. Therefore if ghosts are physically out there and not hallucinations we would see them with the same biological mechanisms we see everything else.

So, if any of these coloured ghosts are seen in the dark they have to be either hallucinations or have some kind of light source. It would be interesting to hear of any ghosts witnessed with colour in a dark environment. Or whether descriptions of witnessed ghosts change depending upon the lighting conditions in which they are seen. We might have either a grey or green lady depending upon whether someone turned the landing light off.