An extension of the reports of
poltergeist activity, specifically
psychoelectric spectral activity. If
ghosts can manipulate electrical systems as these stories claim, what is to stop them from using computers? A
chat room becomes a complex
ouija board. Not only that, but departed spirits find themselves treated as living humans, as long as they don't blow their cover by actually confessing their true identity. Can you really prove that the person on
ICQ,
Instant Messenger, or
Chatterbox is
alive or
dead?
More importantly, Can you still node after death?
A girl I took a philosophy class with once claims that she once spoke to the ghost of a child that lived in her house through a word processor.
This theory is explored to some extent in the anime Serial Experiments Lain, where the spirits of the departed continue on in the Wired, a world of information parallel to this one that can be accessed through a number of technologies. Lain receives an e-mail from her recently deceased classmate, Yomoda Chisa.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, materialism was just starting to achieve popularity among the general populace. Is it any wonder then, that spiritualism, with its ideas of the spirits of the dead affecting the material world, became quite popular around the same time? In the same way, the notion of Ghost in the Chatroom is a symptom of living in the information age. It is the idea that some part of us is information, and can survive our physical death, and interact with the recently "discovered" world of information.