Ghost stories and spirits - Do they really exist?
In the spirit of Halloween coming up, I thought I'd do a post or two about ghosts, spirits and otherworldly things.
There are many, countless stories, tales, and movies about the paranormal so, it makes one wonder; is it real? Have you ever had an encounter with a spirit? Was it kind, mean, frightening? Do you believe in ghosts? Or, do you think that those who do believe should be in a straight jacket?
There has to be something to the 'other side' and 'spirits', there are too many stories and people who say they've seen ghosts for it not to be real; right? People say that children are the most powerful to be in tune with the other side. I am wondering if there's any truth to that? Are imaginary friends actually spirits as people say they are? Could kids be seeing friendly spirits and thinking they're imaginary friends because we adults have programmed them to think this way?
Death can't be the end of it, can it? Do we get just one shot at this? That can't be right. We're born, we live, we die, that's it? Then what's with the deja vu? Doesn't it mean anything? Let's see what others think about this.
According to Real Clear Science, it's not, in fact, anything to do with the afterlife, past life or spirits. Read their article below. NOT MY ARTICLE, I take NO CREDIT FOR BELOW WRITING.
January 10, 2013
Why Does Deja Vu Happen?
By Amy Reichelt
Have you ever experienced a sudden feeling of familiarity while in a completely new place? Or the feeling you’ve had the exact same conversation with someone before?
This feeling of familiarity is, of course, known as déjà vu (a French term meaning “already seen”) and it’s reported to occur on an occasional basis in 60-80% of people. It’s an experience that’s almost always fleeting and it occurs at random.
So what is responsible for these feelings of familiarity?
Despite coverage in popular culture, experiences of déjà vu are poorly understood in scientific terms. Déjà vu occurs briefly, without warning and has no physical manifestations other than the announcement: “I just had déjà vu!”
Many researchers propose that the phenomenon is a memory-based experience and assume the memory centres of the brain are responsible for it.
Memory Systems
The medial temporal lobes are vital for the retention of long-term memories of events and facts. Certain regions of the medial temporal lobes are important in the detection of familiarity, or recognition, as opposed to the detailed recollection of specific events.
It has been proposed that familiarity detection depends on rhinal cortex function, whereas detailed recollection is linked to the hippocampus.
The randomness of déjà vu experiences in healthy individuals makes it difficult to study in an empirical manner. Any such research is reliant on self-reporting from the people involved.
Glitches in the Matrix
A subset of epilepsy patients consistently experience déjà vu at the onset of a seizure – that is, when seizures begin in the medial temporal lobe. This has given researchers a more experimentally controlled way of studying déjà vu.
Epileptic seizures are evoked by alterations in electrical activity in neurons within focal regions of the brain. This dysfunctional neuronal activity can spread across the whole brain like the shock waves generated from an earthquake. The brain regions in which this electrical activation can occur include the medial temporal lobes.
The electrical disturbance of this neural system generates an aura (a warning of sorts) of déjà vu prior to the epileptic event.
By measuring neuronal discharges in the brains of these patients, scientists have been able to identify the regions of the brain where déjà vu signals begin.
It has been found that déjà vu is more readily induced in epilepsy patients through electrical stimulation of the rhinal cortices as opposed to the hippocampus. These observations led to the speculation that déjà vu is caused by a dysfunctional electrical discharge in the brain.
These neuronal discharges can occur in a non-pathological manner in people without epilepsy. An example of this is a hypnogogic jerk, the involuntary twitch that can occur just as you are falling asleep.
It has been proposed that déjà vu could be triggered by a similar neurological discharge, resulting in a strange sense of familiarity.
Some researchers argue that the type of déjà vu experienced by temporal lobe epilepsy patients is different from typical déjà vu.
The déjà vu experienced prior to an epileptic seizure may be enduring, rather than a fleeting feeling in those who don’t have epileptic seizures. In people without epilepsy, the vivid recognition combined with the knowledge that the environment is truly novel intrinsically underpins the experience of déjà vu.
Mismatches and Short Circuits
Déjà vu in healthy participants is reported as a memory error that may expose the nature of the memory system. Some researchers speculate that déjà vu occurs due to a discrepancy in memory systems leading to the inappropriate generation of a detailed memory from a new sensory experience.
That is, information bypasses short-term memory and instead reaches long-term memory.
This implies déjà vu is evoked by a mismatch between the sensory input and memory-recalling output. This explains why a new experience can feel familiar, but not as tangible as a fully recalled memory.
Other theories suggest activation of the rhinal neural system, involved in the detection of familiarity, occurs without activation of the recollection system within the hippocampus. This leads to a feeling of recognition without specific details.
Related to this theory, it was proposed that déjà vu is a reaction of the brain’s memory systems to a familiar experience. This experience is known to be novel, but has many recognizable elements, albeit in a slightly different setting. An example? Being in a bar or restaurant in a foreign country that has the same layout as one you go to regularly at home.
Even more, theories exist regarding the cause of déjà vu. These span from the paranormal – past lives, alien abduction and precognitive dreams – to memories formed from experiences that are not first-hand (such as scenes in movies).
So far there is no simple explanation as to why déjà vu occurs, but advances in neuroimaging techniques may aid our understanding of memory and the tricks our minds seem to play on us.
This can't be right, can it? There has to be more than brain function, short circuits and science to it than this... Let's see...
Déjà vu or Past Life? As said by Deborah King:
I take NO CREDIT for BELOW WRITING. Here is the LINK I got the article from https://deborahking.com/deja-vu-or-past-life/
Have you ever walked into a restaurant that you know you’ve never set foot in before, and felt an intense sensation of familiarity? Have you ever met someone for the first time, yet felt like you two go way back? Have you ever been in a fresh conversation with someone and felt like you already experienced this exact conversation before? Have you ever felt moments in your life that you dismissed as “coincidence”? Can’t shake that nagging suspicion of “been there, done that”? Well, maybe your familiar hunches are more than just feelings — maybe you have actually been there and done that! What if your feelings of déjà vu and coincidence were genuine memories from a distant past, perhaps even from a previous life you experienced?
The term “déjà vu” was coined by French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac. The literal translation of the French phrase means “already seen.” Some refer to the expression as experiencing the past in the present. Common among both children and adults, it is reported that 60-70% of people have experienced this uncanny feeling that they have already experienced something that is being experienced for the first time. Déjà vu can be triggered through any of your five senses, it is not necessarily just something you physically “see” – it can be a familiar smell, taste, sound (pitch of voice, background noises), or feel/touch of something that triggers a past memory. Perhaps you are recalling a familiar smell from your childhood that comes rushing back to you, or maybe the sight or mannerisms of someone you are speaking with reminds you very clearly of someone you once knew and cherished. While déjà vu has been documented in studies as early as the 1800s, it remains today a paranormal mystery that has not yet been solved.
One theory worth exploring is that this phenomenon is a message from your higher self. What if your cosmic self is recalling a memory from a previous life? This moment can be a powerful, miraculous glimpse into your own soul if you are aware enough to notice it. This experience can help you in your current emotional healing if you are mindful enough to recognize it. Your soul on the subconscious level may be sending messages to your conscious mind. These messages may be the very same déjà vu moments you are experiencing.
Too often, we dismiss these signs as ‘coincidences’ and miss their underlying significance. Yet perhaps their significance is their very synchronicity and feeling of familiarity, which is letting you know that you are exactly where you should be, when you should be, and with whom you should be. These moments are signs that are telling you that you are on the right ‘path’ for your soul.
At the same time, know that you do not need to act on your past-life déjà vu moments every time you notice them. You are not obligated to form a bond with someone in this life simply because you may have had a connection in a previous life. If you are aware enough to notice the connection, then you are already acknowledging your path and can view the knowledge as another window to a higher self.
Each time you notice this paranormal phenomenon, you are thereby increasing your ability to tap into this higher self and higher consciousness. You will be connecting with your soul on a deeper level. This heightened state of cognizance can help you see your current life more clearly and can help you make the right decisions and changes you need to unblock the challenges that lie in your path.
These moments of déjà vu may very well be your soul sending you clues on how to handle the challenges taking place in your current life. There is much we can learn from our past, so why not use these glimpses of your past – even past lives perhaps – to increase your understanding, heighten your awareness and learn how to better handle your current challenges? Pay attention to the signs on the map with which your soul is guiding you!
You may just find a much smoother, more harmonious life in the present, all thanks to these glimpses of déjà vu from your past!
So, Deborah King thinks that there is more than brain function, science and tall tales to deja vu and I have to agree with her. I've only experienced deja vu once in my life so far and it was strange. One of the strangest feelings I've ever experienced.
I was sitting at the top of a double-sided staircase (split in two with a wall), as I sat at the top of the stairs a friend of mine came running up the one side of the stairs, patted me on the top of the head, ran down the side I was sitting at the top of, went through the door to the right at the bottom of the stairs, poked her head back out the door, laughed and ran back away. I sat there in shock and confused as I could have sworn she'd done this to me before though, I knew she hadn't as I had never sat there like this before. Not in this lifetime. So it got me wondering, are there past lives? Do we live more than one life? I believe we do.
There has to be some truth to us living more than one life. Most religions believe in reincarnation, which means more than one life. It means when we die, we come back as something or someone else and try again. It got me curious and I found this:
Is There Physical Evidence That We Live More Than One Life? Evidence of reincarnation Author Roy Stemman.
Not only do many world religions embrace the concept of reincarnation but New Age followers with no religious affiliations are increasingly adopting it into their personal philosophy of life. This means that around half of our planet’s inhabitants — including Hindus, Buddhists and Jains — believe we live more than one life on Earth. But where’s the evidence to support that belief?
It is surprisingly abundant, as I have set out to show in The Big Book of Reincarnation (Hierophant Publishing, June 2012). The book is the culmination of 50 years of study, during which I have not only researched the history of belief in rebirth but also met many individuals who are convinced they can recall one or more past lives. I’ve also interviewed most of the leading scientists involved in reincarnation research and twice visited Lebanon, during the making of a British TV documentary, to investigate cases within the Druze community, for whom reincarnation is the cornerstone of their religious beliefs.
There is no shortage of reincarnation cases to investigate if you know where to look. Nevertheless finding the perfect case — one that satisfies the most diligent of researchers as well as hardened skeptics — has been proven next to impossible, until now. There are some extremely impressive cases which, although not watertight, are very difficult to explain persuasively with any other theory.
Much of this evidence revolves around children who begin talking about a previous existence almost from the moment they can speak. Some chide their parents for not having things they enjoyed in the life they claim to remember: perhaps a car, servants, fine food and clothes or good schooling. A few even try to run away to find their past‐life family.
Toran “Titu” Singh, born in a village close to the Taj Mahal in northern India, was typical of such children. He began speaking at the age of one‐and‐a‐half, sooner than his five siblings, and early on he demanded, “Tell my grandfather to look after my children and my wife. I am having my meals here and I am worried about them.”
Asked by his mother who he was, Titu replied, “I am from Agra. I don’t know how I came here.” Later, he admonished his mother with the words, “Mummy, please don’t go out in those clothes. I feel embarrassed by them. My wife had a beautiful saris.” He also told her: “Your house is dirty. I will not stay. My house is very big.” When expected to walk or take a bus, he complained, “I used to go by car. I will not go on foot or on a bus.” As he grew older, he would cry almost every day saying he wanted to “go home”.
There is no shortage of reincarnation cases to investigate if you know where to look. Nevertheless finding the perfect case — one that satisfies the most diligent of researchers as well as hardened skeptics — has been proven next to impossible, until now.
He recalled many details of a previous life when he was Suresh Verme and owned Suresh Radio, a shop in Sadar Bazaar in Agra. Suresh, who was also a noted smuggler on the black market, was shot dead on August 28, 1983. Titu’s memories were so accurate and detailed that his past‐life wife and parents accepted the boy as Suresh’s reincarnation. As a journalist, I realized when I encountered these stories — minutely researched and carefully documented in scientific and parapsychology journals — that they deserved a wider audience. I launched a magazine, Reincarnation International, in 1994 to share some of these reports with a wider public. The publication also examined the similar memories that are often recalled by adults under hypnosis, though I view these with far more skepticism for the simple reason that their minds have already been exposed to a wealth of information from books, movies and television that could influence or even produce the dramas they recall during a hypnotic regression.
Reincarnation International later evolved into Life & Soul Magazine whose editorial scope broadened to look at other evidence of an after‐life. But, like so many specialist magazines, it eventually ceased publication in 2001, as the impact of digital publishing began to make itself felt.
However, with a wealth of material that was unpublished and with fascinating new reports and researches continuing to appear in academic journals, it was time to put all this information together into a single volume that sets out to answer many of the questions that puzzle those who delve into past lives.
As a journalist, I realized when I encountered these stories — minutely researched and carefully documented in scientific and parapsychology journals — that they deserved a wider audience.
Do we all reincarnate? Do we return to the same sex? What role, if any, does karma play? Do we have soul mates? Are we part of a group soul? Do animals have souls? Where do new souls come from?
A total understanding of reincarnation is only possible if we can provide answers to most of these questions, but acceptance of reincarnation for most people will depend on far more than philosophical conjectures.
Fortunately, reincarnation research has taken us beyond that with impressive new evidence that some individuals are not only born with memories of a past life, which are subsequently verified, but also bring with them into their new life physical evidence that appears to corroborate those claims, in the form of birthmarks and birth defects. For example, scars on his head, coinciding with the entry and exit of the bullet that killed him in his previous incarnation, are also a notable feature of the Titu Singh case mentioned earlier.
I have dedicated The Big Book of Reincarnation to the memory of the late Dr. Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry whose ground‐breaking, two‐volume study of such cases has added considerable weight to the already impressive volume of evidence collected over several decades. My book deals with some of these cases in detail and also provides an overview of his work.
Stevenson was a cautious scientist who, for most of his career, referred to his special area of interest as cases suggestive of reincarnation. This reflected the fact that none of the cases he investigated provided 100-percent evidence. However, it is clear that he eventually accepted reincarnation as the best explanation for some of the claims he investigated.
It’s a view I share. In presenting the case for reincarnation, I have also been at pains to explore alternative theories and to dismiss some claims that can be interpreted adequately by more mundane explanations.
Fortunately, reincarnation research has taken us beyond that with impressive new evidence that some individuals are not only born with memories of a past life, which are subsequently verified, but also bring with them into their new life physical evidence that appears to corroborate those claims, in the form of birthmarks and birth defects.
However, even if we refute some of the evidence as wish fulfillment, forgotten memories or other psychological aberrations, we are still left with an important residue of cases which indicate some individuals appear to have been born with memories of a former life and that cannot be explained by normal means.
When a child is able to describe a previous existence and name the key players in that life, even directing his new family to the village in which he or she was born and identifying the former home and various relatives, it either challenges our understanding of human perception and memory, or points very clearly to the possibility that a soul is not destroyed when the body dies, but continues to exist until a new “home” is available for it to occupy. And when that new child — animated by an “old” soul — is born, displaying marks and defects that, it soon transpires, mirror wounds or injuries from that previous life, then it is time for humanity to ponder the enormous implications of that discovery. It is easy to dismiss such cases as oddities that simply cannot be explained — and do no more about them. But they have occurred for centuries and show up in most cultures. The numbers are small but sufficient to be recognized as a phenomenon that deserves intense study. After all, they could provide the answer to the age‐old question, “Do we live after we die?” The numbers are small but sufficient to be recognized as a phenomenon that deserves intense study. After all, they could provide the answer to the age‐old question, “Do we live after we die?”
According to Roy and religions, the afterlife and reincarnation is real. If there are this many who believe in it, it has to be true, right? What do you think? Are you a believer?
Back to my first question; are ghosts real?
10 Most Compelling Pieces Of Evidence That Prove Ghosts Are Real - Thomas Baker
Are ghosts real? Well, there’s as much scientific evidence to support their existence as there is for the existence of black holes. Which is to say there isn’t any, really. And we take the existence of black holes as read by now. People claim to have photographed, observed and studied black holes, but they haven’t been tested under laboratory conditions. That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, so by the same token we can’t dismiss the existence of the supernatural either, right? Probably. We don’t know, we’re not Brian Cox. Science is hard. (We got a C at GCSE).
What we do know from science is that it’s much more difficult to prove the non-existence of something that the existence. And also phenomenally more douchey. Yeah, James Randi, we’re looking at you. We’re glass-half-full types here at WhatCulture, so we lean towards proving the “existence” side of things. We also like a challenge, which means that having no concrete scientific evidence of spooks and spectres being real won’t put us off trying to convince you about the true nature of things that go bump in the night.
Besides, science isn’t gospel (actually it’s kinda the opposite of that, but shush). Where the study of the supernatural began on the fringes, there are actually plenty of respected institutes and university research groups pursuing paranormal entities. To be so interested in ghostly phenomenon hints there might be something to why we pass around spooky stories, see every Paranormal Activity, read MR James stories at Christmas, and have tales from almost every culture since prehistory about spooks, ghouls and spirits from beyond the grave.
It’s good to have a healthy skepticism about the world, but that goes both ways. We don’t think you can necessarily totally prove ghosts are real, but you also can’t just dismiss them out of hand. Especially when there are so many pieces of evidence that prove ghosts are real – and here’s just ten of the most compelling. We’re ready to believe them!
10. Scientists Can’t Make Up Their Minds
Okay so just to be straight up with you guys, the ghosts/black holes comparison was a mite disingenuous. You can’t recreate a black hole in a lab – that much is for sure – but that doesn’t necessarily make their existence as dubious as ghosts since if a scientist told you to look at the place they saw a black hole, it would probably still be there. Ghosts don’t hold up to the same repeatable conditions, but let’s not totally side with those skeptical boffins. They’re still not perfect by any stretch.
After all, whilst many are convinced that ghosts aren’t real, none of them can agree on why exactly so many people are convinced otherwise. In 1813 physician John Ferrari wrote “An Essay Towards A Theory Of Apparitions”, where he put forward his idea of ghost sightings as simply optical illusions. Okay, sure, we can buy that. Plus it’s a physician telling us this, he’s all qualified and stuff, so he must know what he’s on about.
Except since Ferrari, there have been many, many more researchers interested in explaining the paranormal, and almost all of them have disagreed with each other. Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont (owner of the French name in existence) claimed so-called spirits were hallucinations, chemist David Turner suggested they may be examples of ball lightning, Joe Nickell reckons they’ve something to do with the limits of human perception, and IT lecturer Vic Tandy puts poltergeist activity down to humans not being able to process the low-frequency hum of air conditioners properly.
So what does all that tell you? That the scientific community is more divided when it comes to what causes people to experience hauntings than it is about…well, anything, really. Nobody can make up their mind as to a scientific explanation of ghosts, because proving the non-existence of something is hella difficult. And douchey, as we said before. We may not have concrete evidence for the existence of the supernatural, but they have no evidence to the contrary, either. Ha!
9. And Some Scientists Are Looking For Them
Alongside their more cynical peers, there are scientists that are actively trying to figure out what the deal with ghosts is, and not just running around making educated guesses having already made their minds up. Paranormal research is a serious business, undertaken by respectable colleges and universities worldwide using scientific methodology and equipment. Now the scientists doing this research aren’t outright believers, but they are a little more open-minded than their rationalist pals.
Depending on the researchers in question, you may get some who are a little too open-minded. There are some paranormal investigators who go in hard with the belief in spirits, meaning they’re less rigorous about sticking to the scientific method. That shouldn’t discount everybody who classes themselves as a ghost hunter, though, especially when they use equipment like digital thermometers, infrared and night vision, digital video and audio recorders, and computers, which are all things used in the study of subjects that aren’t derogatorily classed as “pseudosciences”.
That there are people who not only try to apply the rationalist, strict methodology of traditional sciences to something which isn’t generally considered a science should tell you something, and so too should the fact that they keep at it in the face of such criticism. Whilst these paranormal researchers have yet to reach definitive conclusions from their studies, they are getting ever closer, and they couldn’t keep looking if they weren’t onto something, right?
8. Oh So Many Creepy Photos
There are plenty of dubious “photographs” of otherworldly apparitions, oftentimes attached to a similarly outlandish story of how the subjects weren’t visible when the pictures were taken, the ghostly photobomber appearing only when the shots were developed. If those pieces of evidence weren’t suspect enough, they’ve become even more so with the advent of Photoshop and other image-editing software that makes doctoring in a translucent guy in a white sheet into your holiday snaps literal child’s play. As in, kids can (and do) do it.
Of course, ghost photography existed long before Photoshop reared its extortionate head, and there are plenty of pics that couldn’t have been so convincingly doctored in the eras they were taken. Putting aside “orbs” for a moment – because, c’mon, we all know they’re just bits of light or dust or reflections from a camera’s flash – there are numerous photos purporting to show ghoulish visitors that are beyond explanation. There’s the above snap of the Brown Lady taken at Raynham Hall in 1936 which, if it’s a fake, is a flipping convincing one. There’s the group photo of an RAF squadron, where they were joined by what looked to be their mechanic who had died two days prior in a freak accident:
There are countless other photographs that have been proven to be fakes – through tricks or double exposures, or other things we don’t really understand but still believe in (LIKE GHOSTS) – but almost as many like these few examples, where the person who took the picture wasn’t up to any shady business, and can’t explain the half-visible interlopers. The tales which accompany the pictures often consist of the most purple prose imaginable, but don’t let the spooky stories deceive you – the photos themselves are legit and legit scary. And possibly also actual evidence that something ghostly exists.
7. Einstein May Have Proven Their Existence
We get the feeling that anybody who’s scientifically inclined might think we’re totally trolling them with this article. And that’s only half-true, but this next part may be a bit of a leap, even for them. So Albert Einstein – the E = mc2 guy with the hair, if you’re somehow not familiar – had this Theory of Relativity which postulates the existence of an infinite number of alternate realities, which itself began as a fringe theory and has since become a widely accepted part of quantum mechanics.
Extrapolating the Theory of Relativity, and the Many Worlds Theory, you could argue that the sightings of “ghosts” aren’t necessarily the generally agreed upon restless souls of the dead. They could be beings that live on some different plane of existence, or an entirely alternate reality, who sometimes bleed through into our reality, or whom we get a glimpse of for some other reason. Which leads us onto Dr. Henry Stapp.
A quantum physicist who worked with Heisenberg (no, the one he’s named after), Stapp’s beliefs about quantum mechanics and life after death neatly dovetail with those of Dr. Stuart Hameroff and his physicist friend Roger Penrose. Hameroff and Penrose suggested that a “soul” was simply the quantum processing in our brains that produced consciousness. So when we die, all that quantum information is simply released into the world from the brain.
Stapp agreed with the theory that consciousness could live on as a “mental entity” once the brain it had previously lived in had died, and even went so far as to suggest that if these entities could somehow make their way back to the physical world, then possession and channelling could be possible. Note he wasn’t saying this was what possessions and channelling actually was, he was just spitballing. But when quantum physicists spitball, you treat them with a little more respect than, say, Derek Acorah.
6. The Stone Tape Theory
Speaking of wild scientific theories, we come to one that originated in a BBC TV show and has since been taken up as a legit explanation of haunted houses. Writer Nigel Kneale has covered paranormal activity from a rationalist angle in many of his works, most notably the Quatermass serials and films about the titular scientist coming into contact with aliens, cults and ancient evils. With The Stone Tape, Kneale turned his attention to ghosts, with the story of a group of researchers setting up shop in a renovated Victorian mansion they’ve adopted as their new based on operations. A renovated Victorian mansion with a history of hauntings, natch.
As the story progresses, the scientists begin to formulate their “Stone Tape theory”, which suggests the ghosts they’re seeing are “residual hauntings”; not the traditional lost souls roaming the Earth, but “recordings” of traumatic events that have imprinted themselves onto the environment where they happened, playing on an infinite loop. These ghosts aren’t dangerous necessarily, or even self-aware. But they are super spooky.
Widely celebrated at the time of transmission in 1972, the residual hauntings hypothesis has been taken up by paranormal investigators as an actual thing. The real Stone Tape theory, named for the TV show, has it that moments of high tension or stress in a person’s life (or even death) can cause a great amount of energy to be released. That energy is then absorbed by the inanimate objects in the surrounding area, ready to be released and replayed.
Some of the earliest research relating to this theory was…iffy, to say the least. But once people stopped believing in the hippy-dippy ideas of “psychic energy” getting stored in chairs and such, they made some decent headway, no least in discovering that minerals which exist in VHS videotapes and allow them to record stuff exist pretty much everywhere in the natural world, too. It’s an untestable theory, but a fun one!
5. Hauntings Affect House Prices
That makes it sound like we’re being a bit glib, but we’re totally not yanking your chain, man. Documented histories of hauntings have a real, tangible effect on property prices, and there as a case in America where a realtor was found liable for not informing a customer that the house they were being sold was already home to some spectral squatters. Like, that was an actual case that went to trial and found in the resident’s favour, meaning that there’s a documented moment in the history of US law where the existence of ghosts was, if not confirmed, then at least heavily implied. One in three people in a 2005 survey admitted to thinking their homes were haunted. In the UK this could conceivably be avoided by citing the 1991 Property Misdescriptions Act, which “creates a general duty to avoid making false or misleading statements” in real estate agents. Of course, you’d have to be the one to bring up in court that you think you should’ve been warned about the ghost in your bedsit, and the courts here may be a tad less open-minded than across the Atlantic. A history of hauntings, whilst not proof of ghosts, does have an undeniable effect on things in the physical world, however. It can go either way; Nicolas Cage shelled out a few million for a mansion that was purportedly the most haunted building in New Orleans, because he’s Nicolas Cage, and he might be an immortal vampire himself anyway. He was probably just hoping to reconnect with some old pals who weren’t signed up to Friend Reunited. Similar spooky stories have helped boost the value of old, crumbling country manors that might otherwise have gone for bargain-basement prices. It works both ways, of course, since not everyone is quite as enthusiastic about sharing their living space with the tormented souls of the dead given corporeal form (or beings from an alternative universe, or whatever we decided on a couple of points ago). There’s the case of people who have fled from homes, too terrified by supernatural visitors in the night to stay another minute, whose stories will bring the cash they recoup from the haunted house being far less than if they had kept their mouths shut. Or if they hadn’t been trying to sell their house as quickly as possible to escape the bad mojo.
4. The Testimony Of Dr. Peter Fenwick
Peter Fenwick is a respected neuropsychiatrist (read: proper smart brain doctor), which means that you can believe his theories on near-death experiences and the afterlife more than the story from your Nan about how she saw a ghost one time when her oven was leaking carbon monoxide. Dr. Fenwick has decades of experience in and understanding of human behaviour and the brain, working in hospitals and psychiatric wards across the UK. In his book The Art Of Dying, he makes the argument that the brain and the mind are two separate entities, and upon death, they become very much separated.
Which is pretty much what Hameroff, Penrose and Staff were talking about a few years ago, to a similar sort of reaction. Fenwick himself was just as skeptical about near-death experiences when he first read about them in 1972, but he was inspired to begin his own research after one of his own patients came to him with the sort of compelling stories spiritual oddballs give about “stepping into the light”, speaking to dead relatives and all that. One of the things that have most caught his eye – in studying over 300 examples of near-death experiences, in people who are very ill or actually dying – is that so many of the experiences were similar, in people from all sorts of backgrounds, cultures and belief systems.
His biggest interest is in cardiac arrests, where the heart stops and – presumably – the brain stops working too since there’s nothing to keep it going. The fact that people still have “experiences” during these instances to him proves that consciousness and the brain can exist independently of each other, which in turn suggests the theory of hauntings and ghosts that Quantum Mechanics give. It’s not so much a person’s soul trapped on Earth, but consciousness without a shell, given free rein to…appear in photographs and knock things over, we guess?
3. Their Prevalence In Popular Culture
Listen, we’ve all had fun with the Paranormal Activity jokes (they were fun right? Right??) and such, but the dominance over tales of horror and fright ghosts have should probably tell you something. Especially since they’ve been used to scare people in stories in pretty much every time period on record, from the stories of MR James right up until the shaky-cam antics of Micah and whatever the lass was called. Where other great monsters in horror history have been used to express a contemporary fear – Dracula=syphilis, Frankenstein’s monster=science overtaking religion, zombies=consumerism, the conservative right, basically anything you want – hauntings have remained part of popular culture simply as they are: scary, unexplained things.
Part of the reason that films like Paranormal Activity are so frightening is that it taps into some primal, core fear we all have within ourselves. That fear of the unknown, both of what happens after we die and also regarding what the heck ghosts are. Plus the found footage thing makes it look like home movies we’re all familiar with. Stories of ghosts and ghouls are grounded in this way by having them affect fellow human beings, like us, but also because they have a grounding in human culture going back centuries.
The sort of scary stories shared around a campfire belong to an oral tradition (steady) that’s been around for eons, and the appearances of ghosts within these stories down the years is rather telling. Like we told you at the start of this bit. Why would we continue to tell these stories – in books, films, TV, games, comics, even those campfire tales – if there wasn’t something to them, a kernel of truth, which causes them to be popular and terrifying even now when we’ve got most things figured out when the structure of a ghost story is obvious even to a six-year-old on his first trip with the Cub Scouts? We’ll tell you why, dear reader: because ghosts are real. Or something like them, at least. Else whoever invented them should be receiving royalty cheques to the end of time for their creation.
2. The Sheer Number Of Ghost Sightings
Something even more prevalent than the knowingly fictional stories of ghosts is the ones that are defiantly non-fiction, the sort which has been rendered dubious by our culture of cynicism and, well, all the phantoms we see onscreen and in the pages of books. Anecdotal evidence isn’t enough to sway a hardline scientific skeptic – and nor should it, lest we start believing the testimonies of otherkin – but there’s been so many first-hand sightings and experiences of ghosts that you can’t really ignore it, or suggest they’re all just hoaxes, hallucinations or people unable to tell the difference between a semi-transparent human being and a dusty lampshade.
Everyone and their dog has a story of a time they encountered something paranormal, whether it was a simple feeling of dread in their home or coming face-to-face with a fully-fledged phantom. There have been multiple explanations given for this, from the hallucinations and optical illusions from before and even mass hysteria, suggesting that a significant percentage of the population is plain crazy-go-nuts. Which seems more of a stretch than just believing in ghosts, to be honest. Would you rather we were a species that frequently invents stories about otherworldly beings, often without even realizing it or that life after death is real?
Again, the reason anecdotal evidence is so rarely relied upon is that it’s subjective. The appearance of ghosts, like black holes, cannot be repeated in laboratory conditions, or even be relied upon to pop up where you claimed to see them originally. When somebody tells you they saw one, you have to not only believe them but also their critical faculties, senses and the like. All of that said, we’ve built up such a huge library of subjective data at this point that surely, eventually, it passes into something a little more objective? Like, how can there be these many instances of people seeing ghosts and there not be something to it?
Of course, when you look at it that way, you have to start thinking the same way about other stuff. Like people who claim to have met Bill Murray. Or aliens…
1. How They Persist Through Human Culture
In fact not only do ghosts occupy a privileged and recurring position within popular culture, but within the culture as a whole – in fact, all cultures, throughout history, have had their own versions of ghost stories. The only concept that is more persistent throughout human history is of God (and maybe cats, everybody loves cats). The idea of a God being real is another that fits neatly into the “you can’t prove it doesn’t exist!” argument we somewhat arrogantly used for the existence of phantoms at the top of this article, but ghosts actually give a little more wiggle room than Gods do.
Where almost every deity going has some certifiably impossible actions attributed to them – omnipotent powers and “miracles”, mostly – ghosts don’t tend to have any immediate effect on the world around them. We can see that there’s not a God making burning bushes talk or whatever, but we can’t see the effects of ghosts on the world, because they don’t have any!
At least not physically, because the concept of the supernatural has imprinted itself onto human consciousness since time immemorial. There are apparitions all over Shakespeare’s work (most notably in Macbeth, cos SPOILERS a lot of people die in the Scottish Play); references to ghosts in the ancient religions of Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria; the “gibbering…whining” vapours in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad; the Spiritualism craze of the early 20th century; the fear of Ouija Boards that still exists, even. The idea of ghosts as restless dead spirits, or even of demons or souls in purgatory, really took off with the rise of Christianity in the Middle Ages, but people were already “aware” of these otherworldly visitors long, long before that.
You’ll even find evidence in the cave paintings of Horseshoe Canyon in Utah, dated to between 7000 and 9000 BC, which some have taken to depict a Holy Ghost of sorts:
In fact not only do ghosts occupy a privileged and recurring position within popular culture, but within the culture as a whole – in fact, all cultures, throughout history, have had their own versions of ghost stories. The only concept that is more persistent throughout human history is of God (and maybe cats, everybody loves cats). The idea of a God being real is another that fits neatly into the “you can’t prove it doesn’t exist!” argument we somewhat arrogantly used for the existence of phantoms at the top of this article, but ghosts actually give a little more wiggle room than Gods do.
Where almost every deity going has some certifiably impossible actions attributed to them – omnipotent powers and “miracles”, mostly – ghosts don’t tend to have any immediate effect on the world around them. We can see that there’s not a God making burning bushes talk or whatever, but we can’t see the effects of ghosts on the world, because they don’t have any!
At least not physically, because the concept of the supernatural has imprinted itself onto human consciousness since time immemorial. There are apparitions all over Shakespeare’s work (most notably in Macbeth, cos SPOILERS a lot of people die in the Scottish Play); references to ghosts in the ancient religions of Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria; the “gibbering…whining” vapours in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad; the Spiritualism craze of the early 20th century; the fear of Ouija Boards that still exists, even. The idea of ghosts as restless dead spirits, or even of demons or souls in purgatory, really took off with the rise of Christianity in the Middle Ages, but people were already “aware” of these otherworldly visitors long, long before that.
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