If you look long enough any unexplained light or noise might be evidence of ghosts. That vague criteria for ghostly happenings is part of the reason why myths about the afterlife are more alive than ever. One difficulty in scientifically evaluating ghosts is that a surprisingly wide variety of phenomena are attributed to ghosts, from a door closing on its own, to missing keys, to a cold area in a hallway, to a vision of a dead relative. When sociologists Dennis and Michele Waskul interviewed ghost experiencers for their book " Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life " Temple University Press they found that "many participants were not sure that they had encountered a ghost and remained uncertain that such phenomena were even possible, simply because they did not see something that approximated the conventional image of a 'ghost.
Thus, many people who go on record as claiming to have had a ghostly experience didn't necessarily see anything that most people would recognize as a classic "ghost," and in fact they may have had completely different experiences whose only common factor is that it could not be readily explained.
Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter. Part of the difficulty in investigating ghosts is that there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of what a ghost is. Some believe that they are spirits of the dead who for whatever reason get "lost" on their way to The Other Side; others claim that ghosts are instead telepathic entities projected into the world from our minds.
Still others create their own special categories for different types of ghosts, such as poltergeists, residual hauntings, intelligent spirits and shadow people.
Of course, it's all made up, like speculating on the different races of fairies or dragons : there are as many types of ghosts as you want there to be. There are many contradictions inherent in ideas about ghosts. For example, are ghosts material or not? Either they can move through solid objects without disturbing them, or they can slam doors shut and throw objects across the room. According to logic and the laws of physics, it's one or the other.
If ghosts are human souls, why do they appear clothed and with presumably soulless inanimate objects like hats, canes, and dresses — not to mention the many reports of ghost trains, cars and carriages? If ghosts are the spirits of those whose deaths were unavenged, why are there unsolved murders, since ghosts are said to communicate with psychic mediums, and should be able to identify their killers for the police? The questions go on and on — just about any claim about ghosts raises logical reasons to doubt it.
Ghost hunters use many creative and dubious methods to detect the spirits' presences, often including psychics.
Virtually all ghost hunters claim to be scientific, and most give that appearance because they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, Electromagnetic Field EMF detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras and sensitive microphones.
Yet none of this equipment has ever been shown to actually detect ghosts. For centuries, people believed that flames turned blue in the presence of ghosts.
Today, few people accept that bit of lore, but it's likely that many of the signs taken as evidence by today's ghost hunters will be seen as just as wrong and antiquated centuries from now.
Other researchers claim that the reason ghosts haven't been proven to exist is that we simply don't have the right technology to find or detect the spirit world. This assertion is repeated by many top experts in the field.
For example, ghost researcher John Kachuba, in his book "Ghosthunters" , New Page Books , writes, "Einstein proved that all the energy of the universe is constant and that it can neither be created nor destroyed. So what happens to that energy when we die?
If it cannot be destroyed, it must then, according to Dr. Einstein, be transformed into another form of energy. What is that new energy? Could we call that new creation a ghost?
This idea shows up — and is presented as evidence for ghosts — on virtually all ghost-themed websites as well. For example, a group called Tri County Paranormal states, "Albert Einstein said that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. When we are alive, we have electrical energy in our bodies. What happens to the electricity that was in our body, causing our heart to beat and making our breathing possible?
There is no easy answer to that. In fact, the answer is very simple, and not at all mysterious. The percentage is similar in the United Kingdom, where 52 percent of respondents indicated that they believed in ghosts in a recent poll. In the U. While the terms spirit and ghost are related and even interchangeable in some languages, the word ghost in English tends to refer to the soul or spirit of a deceased person that can appear to the living.
In A Natural History of Ghosts , Roger Clarke discusses nine varieties of ghosts identified by Peter Underwood, who has studied ghost stories for decades. It seems that belief in ghosts is even more widespread in much of Asia, where ghosts are characterized as neutral and can be appeased through rituals or angered if provoked as opposed to our scarier depictions of ghosts in the West , according to Justin McDaniel, a professor of religious studies and director of the Penn Ghost Project at the University of Pennsylvania.
In China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand, the seventh month of the lunar calendar which falls in August this year ushers in the Hungry Ghost Festival , when it is believed that ghosts of the deceased are temporarily released from the lower realm to visit the living.
In Taiwan, some people believe that the presence of wandering ghosts during Ghost Month can cause accidents to the living.
At least one study has shown that people avoid risky behaviors during this time, including those in bodies of water, reducing the number of deaths by drowning. In places like Japan where secularism is very strong, the belief in ghosts is still high. Even hypermodern and liberal Scandinavia has a high percentage of people believing in ghosts.
It turns out that a significant number of people report having personally experienced paranormal activity. In a study published in , A study found that believers in ghosts were more likely than nonbelievers to report unusual phenomena while touring a site in Britain with a reputation for being haunted.
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