Steemit Virus Contest: A Ghost In The Forest

Hello friends! I will be doing another picture interpretation in the Steemit Virus Contest. In the last contest, i interpreted picture of a 'caged'lady (read more here).

Credit

Join me in this journey as i attempt an interpretation this picture!

Just like me, you are wondering, what could this picture signifies? What could this 'being' be? A ghost or a living being costumed in that manner? I know most people like fiction and ordinarily the image gave us an idea of a ghost in the forest.

I shall be using African conception of ghost to interpret this picture. I hope you learn one or two things from how we conceive ghosts!

Firstly, from that picture i see a ghost looking so lonely and confused! Confused by the look of how his arms are so calmed in the 'ghost cloth'.

Secondly, i see a wandering ghost. A ghost wanders due to so many factors. In Africa for instance, we believe that when someone dies before his right time, the spirit of that person wanders on the surface of the earth until it is his time to die. In this case, it could be that the person died during accident, robbery or mysteriously. There are many cases of wandered ghost. We have heard of cases where a supposed dead being reappears in another place. Some of them marry again and start new life until their time to die is up. You might be wondering if that is possible but in Africa, ghost is 'real'!!

Thirdly, i see a ghost who is watching over or protecting his family closely. I see a ghost guarding his compound just to make sure that his loved ones are doing fine and great. Ghosts are believed to be part of human beings as death is not the end of existence to Africans but transition to another world. So it could be that the dead man has been venerated and in return, he is protecting his family. It is believed that ancestors are to be venerated so that they can protect their families from evils.

Fourthly, i see a ghost who was in love but dies prematurely and he is revisiting his wife to see how she is doing. There are different tales of how ghosts have been able to monitor their loved ones. Here in Africa, some women/men cannot successfully marry another men/women because it is believed that there 'heavenly husband/wife' (dead) are monitoring them. In this case, a sacrifice is done to chase the ghost away so that those people can have a happy home.

Lastly, I see a disturbed ghost who was woken up by a powerful priest to revenge and evil done to him. It is not new that here in Africa, people who believed their deceased did not die a natural death request for the services of powerful priest to demand for justice by asking the ghost of the deceased to revenge his death. If you are familiar with Nollywood, you would have seen this in action. While Nollywood is just a movie, the things displayed are real! In some cases, they give the ghost knife, some case machetes and in some cases pestle. They ask the ghost to kill the person that killed him. So it is believed that after 21 days (or so), anybody that dies with mark of what was given to the ghost is responsible for the death of that ghost!

So in all, that picture is about a wandering ghost who:

1) Is Lonely or

2) Died prematurely or

3) Is protecting or watching over his family or

4) Is in love, sad for his loved one or 

I hope you find all my interpretations interesting? While some people do not believe in ghost, I think they are real because my philosophical teachings suggest that we have METAPHYSICAL beings. And also, my class knowledge on the philosophy of witchcraft suggest ghost are real beings!

Thanks for reading my blog once again and thanks to @steem-virus and @gbenga for the opportunity once again!

Its your boy @smyle the philosopher.