GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

THE GHOST OF CLYTEMNESTRA WAKING THE ERINYES, DATE UNKNOWN
By Eumenides Painter – User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-07-21, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2453109

A series of posts about important people long ago whose names are either forgotten, or were never well-known in the first place. The posts may also deal with little known aspects of the lives of famous people no longer alive.

This post is about keyboard instruments and the ghosts that play them. A keyboard instrument is very flexible – one can play either a Nazi March or a Civil Rights anthem on the piano. A patriotic American can be expected to experience strong emotional feelings of pride if she hears The Star-Spangled Banner performed by a large military band backed by an enormous choir surrounded by a great many swirling American flags and renditions of the Statue of Liberty. Canadians have ‘O Canada’, The British have ‘Rule Britannia’ and the French have ‘La Marseillaise’. Most national anthems highlight the wonderful aspects of their nations conveniently neglecting to mention the shortcomings, some of which may be horrendous.

Then there is this most dynamic rendition (it builds and builds), of the most political of songs, performed on the piano (to start with). The piano player is Liu Huan who, in his prime, was as popular in China as Michael Jackson was in his prime in the United States. The male singer in white is Nan Sun. At the 4 minute 43 second mark is Cui Jian listening – he is the most important, most subversive Chinese rock performer of the last hundred years. At 5 minutes 7 seconds is Paul McCartney’s old mate Peter Asher who used to perform in the pop duo Peter and Gordon – his sister Jane was engaged to McCartney at one point – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQFxUdzT-m0&ab_channel=race_to_the_bottom

Here are ten short profiles of incredibly talented and in some cases charismatic keyboard players who are no longer among the living. A range of musical styles are covered here.

1. JON LORD (1941 – 2012)

Jon Lord was co-founder and dynamic keyboardist and composer with the heavy metal band Deep Purple but as he progressed musically he began composing lengthy complex Third Stream music for rock band and symphony orchestra (e.g. Concerto For Group and Orchestra, and Gemini Suite). He was wonderfully likeable as a person and, to my mind, he was hands down the greatest of the rock keyboardists. Three very different tracks:

1. Unsquare Dance – this track, just for fun, is in the unusual time signature 7/4, and is arranged by Lord but composed by one of Lord’s heroes, Dave Brubeck – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VACwF7djomQ&ab_channel=GorGhazaryan
2. Cologne Again – this is also in 7/4 time, arranged by Lord, who plays both piano and organ. His organ solo starts at the 3 minute 34 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVgXI-Ye_dw&ab_channel=Normallhuman
3. Green Onions – Jon Lord is in Australia here playing with The Hoochie Coochie Men and his amazing extended solo begins at the 1 minute 58 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz0cc9dUnJc&ab_channel=BobDaisley

2. JAMES BOOKER (1939 – 1983)

New Orleans voodoo pianist Dr. John described James Booker as “the best black, gay, one-eyed junkie piano player genius New Orleans has ever produced.” Yes, he could play New Orleans blues with the best of them, but he could also flawlessly play difficult classical works by the likes of Chopin and Beethoven. Despite his great natural talent he died alone of a drug overdose waiting for medical assistance in the Emergency Room of a New Orleans Hospital at the age of forty-three. He does some complicated things with his left hand, and other skilled New Orleans piano players who have tried to duplicate his playing report that what he did was impossible. Both his playing and singing are of the highest quality: Please Send Me Someone to Love – at the 2 minute 44 second he rips into an incredible solo (his left hand is doing some particularly interesting things) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ckKtyOiMU&ab_channel=BluesyGibby

3. DAVE BRUBECK (1920 – 2012)

I find that much of what Brubeck recorded is quite boring, however, over his seventy year career he did two revolutionary things. First of all he recorded with world class symphony orchestras playing his own compositions designed to allow jazz musicians to weave intricate improvisations in and out of carefully constructed classically scores. The second thing he did was to become comfortable composing and improvising naturally in challenging time signatures. His quartet included three of the most skilful musicians in the business. Examples of their work in 5/4, 7/4, 11/4 and 13/4 time can be found in a later post on ghost drummers. He also recorded ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ which is in 9/4 time but broken down in a 2 2 2 3 beat pattern instead of the standard 3 3 3 beat pattern of Western music. He composed this while touring Turkey in the 1950’s (something no one else from the West did back then). His composition ‘Tritonis’ is not only in 5/4 time but for the pianist the left hand and the right hand are in different keys, which is ridiculously difficult to pull off.

It also should be mentioned that early in his career his quartet had an incredibly important chance to play live on television but just before air time he found out that the camera people had been given instructions to be careful to avoid recording the bass player, Eugene Wright, who was the black member of the quartet. Brubeck simply refused to play when he heard this, even though it was live, and so he paid dearly for his refusal. Here are two examples of Brubeck’s work:

1. Forty Days – After a short intro in 4/4 time, the piece is in 5/4 time, and the melody is one of the most haunting I have ever heard – Brubeck’s solo starts at the 2 minute 31 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbdpQ2pPlD8&ab_channel=dizzyhole
2. Bluette – From the 3 minute 17 second mark to the end the piano and sax (played by Paul Desmond) create an impressive improvised contrapuntal section together – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX6CRLt6CLE&ab_channel=TamunaZurabishvili

4. LEON RUSSELL (1942 – 2016)

Leon Russell’s sixty-year career as a session musician then as a solo artist included over 430 songs recorded in a variety of musical styles. He had six gold records and two Grammies, had been inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and was a major performer at George Harrison’s Concert for Bangla Desh. He could sing, and play keyboards, guitar, trumpet and bass, and was an excellent arranger. Two tracks:

1. A Song For You – with a wonderfully under-stated brass arrangement and Russell’s unusual vocal style; this song has been covered over 200 times – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKnb5IEATg&ab_channel=LeonRussell-Topic
2. Shoot Out on the Plantation – George Harrison (guitar) and Ringo Starr (drums) of The Beatles are also playing on this track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJJp_X4ckCo&ab_channel=LeonRussell-Topic

5. OSCAR PETERSON (1925 – 2007)

Peterson released over 200 recordings, received seven Grammies, but most importantly was called ‘The Maharaja of the Keyboard’ by the great Duke Ellington himself. Art Tatum in his day was the most technically brilliant jazz keyboardist around, until Peterson (who admired Tatum greatly) came along and surpassed Tatum. Peterson also had an extensive schooling in the classics and his speed and intricate chord changes are breath-taking. He was also not afraid to stand up to racism. He tells the story of playing a gig in his home town of Montreal, Canada as a young musician late one night, and after the show as he was about to get into a cab an older white man pushed into the cab ahead of him, calling him ‘nigger’ and telling him to get out of his way. Peterson, a large man of considerable strength, grabbed the man, took him aside, and beat the shit out of him. End of story. Here is Hymn to Freedom, composed by Peterson; notice his incredible technique starting at the 3 minute 10 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCrrZ1NnCuM&ab_channel=dgbailey777

6. GARY BROOKER (1945 – 2022)

Gary Brooker was the leader for over fifty years of Procol Harum, the group that invented symphonic rock, but he started out as the leader of a great Rhythm and Blues band called The Paramounts. Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones was a great fan of The Paramounts and they toured with both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles back in the early sixties. Brooker wrote the music for almost everything Procol Harum released for decades, and he was also a great musical arranger. One of Brooker’s best tracks, called ‘Ghost Train’, can be heard on a later ghost story on ghost drummers because of the superlative drumming of B.J.Wilson on the track.

1. Gary Brooker with Procol Harum live at the Union Chapel – Simple Sister – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosQB-bxtAU&list=PLCWR7cftUj6SF9CfcUP-p92bw0efk9o7g&index=7&ab_channel=SilverBell
2. Gary Brooker with Procol Harum – A Whiter Shade of Pale, performed with the Danish National Concert Orchestra and Choir in 2006. The song was an international Number One hit in 1968, co-written by Brooker, one that has been covered over one thousand times. Brooker plays the piano and takes lead vocals – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St6jyEFe5WM&ab_channel=Widespreadpanic41

7. OSCAR LEVANT (1906 – 1972)

Concert pianist, composer, conductor, author, radio personality, television personality and actor, he was known as much for his skilful playing as he was for his wit. As an aspiring pianist he was good enough to study with the eminent Arnold Schoenberg who was greatly impressed by the lad. Levant was a major actor appearing in the feature film ‘An American in Paris’ with the revolutionary dancer / choreographer Gene Kelly. Levant was also known for his interpretations of Gershwin’s works. Tragically he was also a heavy smoker all his life, and was addicted to pharmaceuticals. He talked openly about his neuroses, and on several occasions he was committed to psychiatric hospitals. He was known also for his outrageous comments, for example, after Marilyn Monroe married noted playwright Arthur Miller and converted to Judaism, Levant commented “Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her.” In the following clip notice his facial tics and nervous mannerisms – note also the sad way that he ends this short but famous Etude Opus 10 No. 3 by Chopin – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8fA8j5JpHI&ab_channel=drewsaur

Here is Levant playing a short excerpt from Gershwin’s Concerto in F, a work which I think is one of the great musical works of the twentieth century – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIqnqabXCiQ&ab_channel=s006221

8. TEDDY WILSON (1912 – 1986)

In November 1935 young Benny Goodman accepted a lengthy engagement in Chicago playing with the Fletcher Henderson Band. The engagement included periodic ‘rhythm concerts’ which featured the Benny Goodman Trio with Benny and Gene Krupa (both white) and a black piano player, the first time in the United States that a racially integrated group performed to a paying audience. The piano player was Teddy Wilson, who had a reputation as an elegant musician. Wilson was also known as the ‘Marxist Mozart’ because he chaired the Artists’ Committee to Elect Benjamin J. Davis as a New York city councillor and as a member of the Communist Party. He also played benefits for the New Masses, an American Marxist magazine, and for Russian War Relief back when Russia was an ally of the United States. Wilson eventually led his own orchestra, and recorded with such jazz giants as Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne and Billie Holiday. Here is Teddy Wilson as part of The Benny Goodman Quartet in 1937 – Avalon played at breakneck speed – Wilson’s solo starts at the 32 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBs9gZQX7lQ&ab_channel=harryoakley

9. JESS STACY (1904 – 1995)

This is an excerpt from the Louis Prima arrangement of ‘Sing Sing Sing’ performed by The Benny Goodman Orchestra at Carnegie Hall 1938, the night jazz became respectable. At the beginning Benny grabs the house mike and says “Yeah Jess” to start it off. This solo by Stacy is as close to the Platonic absolute of improvisation as I’ve ever heard anyone get – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGdD0NztzsA&ab_channel=Cmisner

10. GLENN GOULD (1932 – 1982)

Gould was a Canadian pianist with an international reputation for his superlative interpretations of Bach, achieving both speed and clarity, but he was also a composer, conductor, writer and broadcaster. He travelled to Russia in 1957 to perform at the height of the Cold War, the first Western performer to play in Russia since World War Two. He refused to concertize after age 31, and was known for his eccentric behaviour and compelling personality. He died nine days after his fiftieth birthday. He exploded on the scene with his brilliant 1955 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. In 1981 he reinterpreted that original recording, as heard here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7mcfzm300&ab_channel=Jastermereel18

The next Ghost Story will focus on female piano-playing ghosts. The one after that will be about important living keyboard players.

OTHER GREAT KEYBOARDISTS, DEAD AND ALIVE:

1. Steve Allen
2. Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day)
3. Johann Sebastian Bach
4. Tony Banks (Genesis)
5. Count Basie
6. Boris Berezovsky
7. Eubie Blake
8. Victor Borge
9. Ray Charles
10. Frederic Chopin
11. Van Cliburn
12. Nat King Cole
13. Fats Domino
14. Dr. John
15. Keith Emerson (Emerson, Lake and Palmer)
16. Bill Evans
17. George Gershwin
18. Emil Gilels
19. Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead)
20. Nicky Hopkins
21. Vladimir Horowitz
22. Byron Janis
23. Billy Joel
24. James P. Johnson
25. Jerry Lee Lewis
26. John Lewis (The Modern Jazz Quartet)
27. Ramsey Lewis
28. Liberace
29. Franz Liszt
30. Little Richard
31. Richard Manuel (The Band)
32. Ray Manzarek (The Doors)
33. Dudley Moore
34. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
35. Andre Previn
36. George Shearing
37. Horace Silver
38. Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith
39. Fats Waller
40. Richard Wright (Pink Floyd)

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES:

1. Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/
2. The Power of the Spirit – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/
3. A Slaughterhouse, a Melancholy Dane, an Impossible Cat and a Cambridge Apostle – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/12/02/ghost-story-3-a-slaughterhouse-a-melancholy-dane-an-impossible-cat-and-a-cambridge-apostle/

GHOST STORY 3 – A Slaughterhouse, a Melancholy Dane, an Impossible Cat and a Cambridge Apostle

THE GHOST OF HAMLET’S FATHER – by HENRY FUSELI, 1796
By Robert Thew – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3c15274.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6451951

A series of posts about important people long ago whose names are either forgotten, or were never well-known in the first place. The posts may also deal with little known aspects of the lives of famous people no longer alive.

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES:

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

Here are four remarkable descriptions of the lives of four remarkable people.

RICHARD BURTON (1925 – 1984)

Take a look at this, if you would –

This is from an excellent film called The Spy Who Came In From The Cold based on an excellent book of the same name by the excellent writer John LeCarre. Shall I tell you what I really think? I am at a disadvantage. These posts are supposed to be about little known people. As far as I’m concerned Richard Burton is the greatest male actor I’ve ever seen, and when I was young he was the most visible actor on the planet. But that was hundreds of years ago. I can’t really tell how well known he is today, or how accurate the average twenty something’s knowledge of the man is. So, I’m including him here, with information about him most of you are probably unaware of.

In the middle of the twentieth century Laurence Olivier was hailed as the greatest living male actor on the planet, followed by Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Michael Redgrave and Sir John Mills. Then young Richard Burton came along and eclipsed them all. Other great male actors of Burton’s day included these young lions – Alan Bates, Christopher Lee, Oliver Reed, Sidney Poitier, Peter O’Toole, George Segal, Sir Alec Guinness and Tom Courtenay. Have you heard of more than one or two of them? How much can you tell me about them? Russell Crowe came later, Idris Elba later still. Daniel Radcliffe is in his thirties for heaven’s sake. There have been some great female actors as well, of course (Vanessa Redgrave, Julie Christie, Natalie Portman, Emma Thompson and so on).

In his prime Burton was the highest paid actor in the world and he was considered to be one of the best looking. He married Elizabeth Taylor, twice, who was herself a great actor, as well as being one of the most beautiful women of her time. That was why their starring roles in the tour de force Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was so amazing – they played two rather physically unattractive people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEPIUVCzFvQ&ab_channel=filmschoolsecrets .

Burton, whose real name was Richard Jenkins Jr., was born in Wales, in poverty, the twelfth of thirteen children. He was a great boxer, and a rugby, tennis and cricket player of some skill. He was also a member of the Royal Air Force. He established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor with a highly praised interpretation of Hamlet produced on Broadway to great acclaim in 1964. His father, Richard Jenkins Sr., a coal miner, however, led a less than successful life. He would go off on drinking sprees for weeks. Burton’s father refused to acknowledge Burton’s great accomplishments and Burton refused to attend his father’s funeral. Burton’s mother died when he was two.

RICHARD BURTON 1953
By http://www.ebay.com/itm/wd/160807164651?hash=item2570da9aeb, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20451162

As Burton began to make a name for himself as an actor, a friend of his, Humphrey Bogart no less, was one of his biggest supporters. Burton could play a wide range of roles and was a highly-disciplined well-prepared actor with a magnetic personality and a powerful voice. He was even honoured with a CBE (Commander of the British Empire). Burton was married five times and at one point was engaged to Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. Burton was a lifelong socialist, playing Communist leader Leon Trotsky in 1972 (in the film The Assassination of Trotsky) and Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Tito in 1973 (in the film The Battle of Sutjeska). At one point he called himself a Communist specifically, explaining that his considerable wealth didn’t come from exploiting the working class so it was all right.

On stage and screen Burton was very professional. Off-screen he was not. He was a heavy smoker and drinker. Creditable sources say that he smoked 60 to 100 cigarettes a day and, at his worst, three to four bottles of hard whisky a day. He suffered from kidney disease, arthritis, bursitis, and cirrhosis of the liver, and walked with a limp. He died in his fifties leaving an estate of twelve million dollars (thirty million in today’s money). Some talk about how tragic it was that someone with his talent wasted it by his reckless behaviour though I wonder if he could have produced the great work that he did if he hadn’t had the personality that he had. People behaving recklessly often do so in order to cope with some pretty frightening inner demons. Think of the great tragic comics who died relatively young (e.g. Peter Cook, Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock) not to mentions dozens of great but troubled musicians who also died before their time (e.g. Judy Garland, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Sandy Denny).

FRANK RAMSEY (1903 – 1930)

FRANK RAMSEY
By Cambridge Wittgenstein archive, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28706638

Take a look at this photo of Frank Ramsey. Though he looks somewhat unsettled and worried his intelligence and innovative thinking must have been prodigious. Ramsey made fundamental influential contributions to the fields of Mathematics, Philosophy and Economics. He was a student of John Maynard Keynes and a friend of the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein; he translated Wittgenstein’s monumental ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ into English. Ramsey was also a member of the secret society The Cambridge Apostles (whose members included logician / mathematician Bertrand Russell, philosopher G.E.Moore, economist John Maynard Keynes, poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, and psychoanalyist Lionel Penrose who was the father of the great mathematical physicist Roger Penrose). Ramsey’s wife described Ramsey as “a militant atheist” while his brother Michael Ramsey became the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Here is a listing of just some of Ramsey’s achievements whose descriptions alone are beyond my comprehension but it’s worth reading over at least once to understand the enormity of the work initiated by this man. Most importantly, as you read these, keep in mind that Ramsey died at the age of twenty-six.

1. Frank Ramsey’s pioneering work in mathematical logic led to the creation of an entirely new branch of Mathematics called Ramsey Theory.
2. Ramsey’s Theorem states that, in Combinatorial Mathematics, there are monochromatic cliques in any edge labelling (with colours) of a sufficiently large complete Graph. Frank Ramsey proved this theorem in 1928 and he used it to solve the decidability of the Bernays-Schonfinkel-Ramsey class of first order logic. These proofs were highly influential in the area of mathematical logic.
3. In 1926 Ramsey came up with the Simple Type Theory which was used by Kurt Godel to prove his First Incompleteness Theorem which in turn was the most earth-shattering single theorem of twentieth century Mathematics. Godel was considered to be the twentieth-century’s greatest logician despite his mental instability which led him to commit suicide in a most bizarre manner (but that’s the subject of a separate post).
4. In the area of Philosophy, in 1927 Ramsey proposed a redundancy theory of truth, and he was the first to propose a reliablist theory of knowledge. His subjective interpretation of probability theory was also enormously influential
5. Ramsey’s papers on subjective probability and utility, on optimal taxation, and on one-sector economic growth proved to be of fundamental importance in the field of Economics.
6. Ramsey’s paper ‘A Mathematical Theory of Saving’ using the calculus of variations has been described by that giant in the field of Economics, John Maynard Keynes, as “One of the most remarkable contributions to Mathematical Economics ever made”,

Think what Ramsey could have done if he had lived as long as, say, Bertrand Russell who lived to be ninety-seven.

KURT VONNEGUT JR. (1922 – 2007)

“We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death . . . and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm” This was how Lothar Metzger remembers the bombing of the city of Dresden, Germany on the night of February 13, 1945, as British and American bombers reigned firebombs onto the civilians living in one of the most culturally important cities of Europe, with its beautiful churches and bridges and museums. 25 000 people (at least) died that night. American Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was there that night as well, and he survived because he was sitting inside a meat locker three stories underground.

THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN 1945
By Deutsche Fotothek‎, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7937338

The Germans were responsible for some horrendous acts of violence before and during World War Two, and our side firebombed Dresden to the ground, razed Tokyo with similar firestorms, and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Vonnegut wrote several science fiction novels in his day but his most celebrated and popular one was an antiwar work called Slaughterhouse Five about the firebombing of Dresden (and other things). The book went to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List at a time when there was enormous popular organized opposition to the War in Vietnam.

Vonnegut studied mechanical engineering in the Army, and in 1943, three months after his mother had committed suicide, Vonnegut was sent off to Europe to fight Hitler, was captured at the Battle of the Bulge and was imprisoned in Dresden during the firebombing. Returning to he U.S. after the war he gradually carved out a writing career (including two Hugo Awards) until finally the success of Slaughterhouse Five left him financially comfortable the rest of his life. Salughterhouse Five has been objected to or removed from various institutions eighteen times and has been called “Anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy”. I suggest you read it and decide for yourself.

KURT VONNEGUT JR. 1972
By WNET-TV/ PBS – eBayfrontback, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38530410

In is later years Vonnegut’s marriage ended when his wife embraced Christianity (Vonnegut was an atheist), his son Mark suffered a nervous breakdown, and Vonnegut himself suffered from chronic Depression to the point of attempting suicide in 1984. He soldiered on, however, dying at the age of eighty-four in 2007.

NIELS BOHR (1885 – 1962)

A cat that is neither alive nor dead, a subatomic entity that is simultaneously a wave and a particle – welcome to the world of Quantum Physics. The two greatest theoretical frameworks in physics in the twentieth century centred on Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, and on Quantum Physics pioneered by Niels Bohr. Both frameworks embraced some extraordinary concepts and realities which nonetheless have been confirmed by a large collection of experimental evidence.

According to Quantum Physics a quantum entity such as an atom or photon can exist in something called superposition meaning that it can exist in more than one possible state but that it doesn’t exist in any state until it interacts with the external world. The physicist Erwin Schrodinger came up with an example of this circumstance as a way of mocking the theory which he rejected vigorously. He said that if Quantum Theory was correct then you could imagine a cat in a locked box whose state depended on an external source, namely a radioactive atom. If, as soon as you placed the atom inside the box, the atom would either begin decaying or not. If it did it would activate radiation detected by a geiger counter connected to a hammer causing the hammer to break a flask releasing poison into the air that would kill the cat. If the atom did not start decaying, the geiger counter would detect nothing and the hammer would not release the poison and the cat would live. However, and this is often misunderstood, in Schrodinger’s thought experiment, until the atom either began decaying or did not begin to decay, the cat was NEITHER DEAD OR ALIVE.

WHEN DOES THE SUPERPOSITION CEASE AND THE WAVE FUNCTION COLLAPSE CAUSING EITHER LIFE OR DEATH FOR THE CAT?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat#:~:text=By%20Dhatfield%20%2D%20Own%20work%2C%20CC%20BY%2DSA%203.0%2C%20https%3A//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php%3Fcurid%3D4279886

The concept of Quantum Entanglement also depends on the concept of superposition. Two sub-atomic particles can be part of a single quantum entangled system and yet be separated by a vast distance. If one observes the state of the first particle this somehow causes a wave form collapse and the particle takes on a particular state while its partner immediately takes on the opposite state, something that sounds impossible given the distance between them. Einstein, like Schrodinger, rejected Quantum Physics, and it was Einstein who referred to Quantum Entanglement as “spooky action at a distance”. Einstein was wrong about Quantum Physics. Bohr, who proposed the idea, was right. The two had a lengthy debate on the subject.

Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 (and one of his sons, Aage, was also awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1975). Bohr came up with the Bohr model of the atom, and with the idea of complementarity which explains how an entity such an electron can behave as both a wave and a particle, as impossible as that sounds. The element Bohrium is named after him. Bohr was also interested in Philosophy and he was a great admirer of the Christian existentialist philosopher Kierkegaard, so much so that it influenced his approach to science. The only thing he disagreed with was Kirkegaard’s Christianity. Bohr was an atheist. Soon after the Nazis invaded Denmark (at which point Bohr had his famous meeting with Heisenberg), Bohr fled for his life to Sweden then on to Britain. His work revolutionized twentieth century physics and its theoretical ramifications are still being felt today.

The four ghosts described in Ghost Story 2 had one thing in common. They were all deeply religious. The four ghosts described here also had something in common.