On Ghosts

It strikes me as a good day to contemplate the supernatural: the sky overcast, the streets slick with rain, and the faint whistle of wind outside my apartment window. Perhaps the most notable relation ghosts have to color is that such apparations often (if not always) are described as appearing either white or black. They can be opaque, transparent, mist-like, having a shape that merely suggests the human figure, or fully formed and detailed images.
It does not matter whether the account is given by the person who saw the ghost or by a friend-of-a-friend, passing on the story in one of the rawest forms of oral tradition...the color never varies between white and black.
It's likely that this has to do with the stereotypes of white and black that strongly persist in modern North American culture. Women apparitions are the ones often appearing in white; usually clothed in a white gown of some kind, tragically killed on their prom night, wedding day, or before their debutante ball. Men who held some kind of power during their lifetime: high-ranking soldiers, judges, or barons take the form of black mists, angered by those who dare enter their house and otherwise intrude upon their property.
Black and white are colors associated with mystery and intrigue as much as they represent evil and innocence. Few people can tell you the true definition of either white or black. Even if you choose to consult different color theories upon the matter, each one seems to disagree with the other. Are they the presence of all colors? The absence or absorbtion of all light? It may be for this reason that black and white have been inextricably linked with the unknown, the ethereal. Certainly there are other colors that could also do the duty of representing these spirits: green is often associated with power, greed and force, purple denotes things of a spiritual nature, and it seems more likely that red would be the color of choice for those who met a violent and untimely death. Still, black and white elude definition in all but the wildest depths of our imaginations and persists to manifest as otherworldly forms.