When we think of a ghost, the first thing that comes to mind is the spirit of a dead person. The word “spirit” is interchangeable with “soul,” “essence,” and “consciousness,” which many people believe is the part of us that lives on after physical death. Popular belief holds that if a person wasn’t ready to die yet, or died under traumatic circumstances, such as murder or a terrible accident, their “spirit” might not be ready to cross over into the realm of death and leave their loved ones and old life behind. Thus, it hangs around as a ghost that can be seen by the living until it is ready to give up its hold on life (even though its body already has).
In order to believe in ghosts, one would have to also believe in the afterlife, at least if a ghost is the spirit of a dead person. Quite possibly, this would also require a belief in a part of our human “being” that transcends death, such as the mind or consciousness. Most pop culture references to ghosts play upon this explanation, with the ghost as a spirit of someone identifiable who is trapped in a purgatory mid-world until someone comes along to guide them home.
The origins of the word “ghost” are quite telling. The English word “ghost” has roots in the Old English “gast” from a common Germanic “gaistaz.” In Old Norse, the word “geisa,” like the pre-Germanic “ghoisdo-s,” meant “fury, anger … to rage.” The word ghost is synonymous with the Old English “spiritus,” which means “breath, blast,” which then became a part of the more modern meaning as “soul of the deceased” or “spirit of the dead” we have now. But it is interesting how the original association was with anger and rage, as if ghosts are indeed angry at their predicament, caught between the worlds of life and death.
Every culture, religion, and belief system on Earth has a place for ghosts within their ideas, traditions, and rites. Whether or not the ghostly aspect of a human being denotes that person’s actual soul or something else entirely is still up for debate, but the belief in something that transcends death is widespread.
Television shows about ghost hunters have been rising in popularity over the last fifteen years or so.
Recent ghost hunting television shows since the early 2000s have caused our interest in ghosts, which was always strong, to skyrocket, as the possibility of not only hunting them down but communicating with them via a plethora of gadgets and machines meant that anyone could look for a ghost. Proof has been hard to come by, but the chasing is still hugely popular with hundreds of paranormal groups and individuals actively engaging in the sport of ghost hunting at locations with reputations of being actively haunted, such as local hotels, restaurants, mental institutions, prisons, and cemeteries. Some groups even charge people suffering from ghostly activity a fee to “clear” their homes and banish spooky spirits. Others offer the service of assisting the spirits of the restless to find their way across the bridge and into the light, where they may find peace in death or the next go-around at life.
The use of equipment to locate ghosts has created its own cottage industry. Although the equipment has main uses for things other than the gathering of supernatural evidence, those who use it, and even tweak it with their own concepts and inventions, swear it shows something else is out there beyond the realm of the five senses. Using everything from digital cameras, digital tape recorders (to record EVP, or electronic voice phenomena, said to be ghosts verbalizing), thermal imagers, EMF meters to detect electromagnetic field anomalies, barometers, infrared thermometers, K2 meters, and more, those who hunt ghosts look for everything out of the ordinary, usually by taking baseline measurements before an investigation, then comparing them with data obtained during. Other types of equipment include Faraday cages, ghost boxes, dowsing rods, infrasound monitors (infrasound is associated with experiences of paranormal phenomena), and motion sensors. But again, these items operate on the assumption that ghosts operate on our natural laws of physics.
Our passion for the paranormal continues despite not one person “capturing” a ghost in a manner that proves where they come from, what they are, and how they manifest in our world, in accordance with the scientific method. But this type of activity, which is subjective and erratic at best, requires a different type of “scientific proof” because of the nature of its behaviors and characteristics, which may be beyond our current level of understanding. If the soul still has not been proven, and we are still debating whether mind and brain, or consciousness and brain, are the same thing, will we ever know what these spectral visions are?
Of all paranormal phenomena, a belief in ghosts is most accepted mainly because death itself is still a huge unknown. We love to speculate as to what happens to us after we die, and we hope that some part of us continues on, which is at the heart of the love of all things ghostly.
But is this the only explanation possible for ghosts, apparitions, and spirits that millions of people report seeing and interacting with all over the world? Not at all.
First of all, there are different types of ghost sightings reported all over the world.
LIVING GHOSTS
Living ghosts do exist. These are phantom apparitions of people who are alive! They may even be doppelgangers. One potential explanation for living ghosts is the possibility of parallel universes, where we each exist in an infinite number of them. There are times when the veil between worlds is so thin, we see ourselves in another universe or even another person in another universe who is just as alive as they are in this one. Think of how déjà vu feels as though you are experiencing something you’ve done or said before, even at a location you feel you were in before … but you know for sure you haven’t.
Living ghosts can also be associated with time slips and anomalies, where the ghost might be alive but in another timeline such as the future or the past. Might this be what happens when see ghosts of the Victorian age? Clearly, those ghosts would have passed into the light a long time ago and aren’t still hanging on to life! So just maybe, ghosts of another time are not dead at all but alive and well in another temporal dimension where they continue to exist in the same time frame as they had when they lost their lives, dressed in the same clothing, living in the same style houses. This would certainly explain why historical ghosts are seen just as they were when they died and not walking around in modern clothing or driving cars that didn’t exist when they were alive.
It is just as exciting to believe that a ghost is someone living in another parallel world or timeline as it is to believe it is a physical manifestation of the essence of a person after they die. It is encouraging to think that death itself might be like transferring from one state of being to another, or one location to another, where we continue on as we did in this reality.
Living ghosts may or may not be aware of us seeing them. Ghosts can be broken up into two main categories when it comes to awareness.
Imprints or residual hauntings describe ghosts that appear to be energy imprinted upon a particular location. The ghosts are only seen and experienced in that location and appear to repeat a particular pattern of behavior over and over again. Residual ghosts, because they are described as energy imprints, do not interact with witnesses and are totally unaware they are being observed. They may take on the quality of an image projected from somewhere else, as if the witness is watching a piece of film being played over and over again.
Imprints are often associated with trauma, as in the ghosts of battlefields and other major emotional events, that may have caused the ghostly energy to become permanently a part of the location itself. Paranormal researchers believe that imprint hauntings involve the actual absorption of the traumatic energy expended by those who were alive during the event, i.e., a war, terrible plane crash, or major factory fire, and that the ghosts are trapped in a cycle that plays out for anyone who happens to be around to see it.
SENTIENT/INTELLIGENT GHOSTS
Now we have those ghosts that seem to not only be aware of our presence but motion, gesture, or communicate with us in some way. These spirits are self-aware and do not repeat the same behaviors over and over. They adapt and change according to whoever is in their vicinity and appear to have the free will to move around, even though they may stick to a location, such as a house, motel, or basement that was somehow important to them.
These ghosts may have a reason to hang around. Perhaps they died in a way that has never been properly explained. They might have some unfinished business with family members or colleagues and want to “haunt” those persons because of it. Most appear in a human form, but some paranormal enthusiasts believe they can take on many other shapes or even act similarly to poltergeists and move objects on their own, make noises, and toss things about in the air.
Sentient ghosts are the ones ghost hunters love to attempt to communicate with using their various meters with flashing lights or via recorded voices during questioning. The ghosts may be asked their name, why they are hanging around, and how they were killed. The researchers will then play back the tape and listen for ghostly responses.
Often, these ghosts are easy to get along with and are not violent or destructive. They may just be seeking attention and have a desire to communicate information that could help them find the peace they need to move on. Like imprints, sentient ghosts remain in one particular location, but the difference is, they are not just trapped snippets of energy but feeling entities that have a connection to the location and what happened there and have made the choice to remain there.
WHY DO GHOSTS PREFER SAD PLACES?
The question has long been asked why so many ghosts appear in the places that caused them the most suffering. Asylums, prisons, orphanages, hospitals, cemeteries, abusive homes … ghosts are usually found in locations steeped in tragedy, sadness, and death. One might think that the dead would want to hang out in places that bring them peace and joy, such as a tropical island or a beautiful resort, but there is an obvious connection between where someone died and where they linger after death.
We often also ask why there aren’t more ghosts in hospitals than anywhere else on Earth since so much death occurs there and why there are always reports of ghosts at cemeteries when the bodies buried there did not die there. These are questions that haunt paranormal researchers night and day, pun intended.
Paranormal researchers suggest that powerful emotions such as despair, death, and extreme suffering cause imprinted energy upon the environments these things took place in. Like imprint ghosts, the energy remains and acts as a magnet to keep the ghosts fixated there, reliving their suffering over and over again, as if somehow there will be release from it. In life, we often grieve and mourn the deaths of loved ones, or heartbreak, in such ways that we feel trapped by our suffering, unable to begin the healing process, so perhaps the same applies after we die. Psychic mediums claim it is their job to help these ghosts finally break free from being stuck in the places they suffered in life and go on to whatever awaits them, i.e., “going toward the light.” In the case of cemeteries, the ghosts may simply be unable to accept that they are dead and linger where their physical body is, rotting beneath the earth in a coffin, nonetheless.
Ghosts seem to hang around places marked by tragedy and despair possibly because emotions such as pain, fear, and sadness are more powerful and likely to leave a spiritual imprint at locales such as cemeteries, hospitals, and orphanages.
That may be the best reason we have so far to explain the abundance of ghostly activity in dark, sinister places. If there is something to the science of energy remaining in a closed system, perhaps that energy that was a living person stays in that closed system even after it has changed upon their death. It is just simply stuck there until it either dissipates over time or somehow finds a way out of the closed system.
We don’t hear often of happy ghosts that haunt the places they died in unless there is a strong emotional connection to that location that keeps them from wanting to move on. Usually, we assume that happy ghosts want to go on to the next phase of existence and are not trapped by stronger emotions they cannot accept or deal with. They’re ready to go into the light and then some, while those who died under horrific circumstances cannot seem to shake off their past as easily.
HISTORICAL GHOSTS
They can be sentient or behave in a loop, but if there is some historical connection to a famous location or event, these types of ghosts often prove to be the most fascinating. People flock to various locations around the world that have historical significance, and because the buildings or areas are places where many people have perished over time, they tend to get the reputation of being haunted. A historical ghost will appear as he or she lived at the time they died, so they might wander around in Victorian garb or the dress of the 1920s. If the location is a battlefield, the ghosts may be in soldier’s uniforms of the time and carry weapons that correspond to what was used in combat. Places that experienced a great deal of trauma, death, and violence over time are the most haunted, with numerous entities involved, but often, an old house dating back two hundred years can be just as active with paranormal phenomena, although it is witnessed by a smaller number of people.
Historical haunted places often become local, state, or national landmarks, preserved in their original state or restored and renovated to look as they once did when they were functional. Many offer public educational tours that often take place on a date that has special meaning to the location or the event. Because we all know our nation’s history and have been exposed to these locations via movies, television shows, and news stories, these locations and their resident ghosts tend to become as popular as those of the most famous celebrities and movie stars.
ELEMENTALS
Elementals are spirits found in nature and associated with the elements of fire, air, water, and earth. They are often associated with primitive belief systems such as animism, which ascribes a soul/spirit to everything, including inanimate objects such as rocks and waterfalls. More the stuff of myth and legend, there are also elementals that specifically haunt graveyards and cemeteries. Not so much ghosts as entities, spirits, or even beings such as sprites, elementals can be shape-shifters and manifest in forms applicable to the locations they are specifically associated with (water nymph, fire demon, fairy, woodland sprite …).
Many urban legends and Native American legends tell of elementals responsible for the large number of people who go missing every year in forests and mountain landscapes.
APPARITIONS
Though they are really ghosts, apparitions tend to take on a much more ethereal quality and can look like a mist or a fog that has some semblance of shape to it. They don’t have bodies, or even forms, although they can look like a human in the most general sense and are described as transparent. Those who have witnessed apparitions often claim they are disembodied spirits that are of the dead but more of an essence than a form. They can be aware and sentient or behave in a loop as an imprint and often appear as a limb or from the torso up and sometimes appear without their heads. Full-bodied apparitions are a rarity indeed but are sighted on occasion.
Often, apparitions fade into and out of view of the witness, which mimics many UFO sightings. Witnesses often describe them as “flickering,” like an image projected from a movie projector onto a screen, and that they are sometimes accompanied by the sound of static or an electrical pop. Maybe these entities are interdimensional in origin and, when the environment allows, are able to move in and out of our world. Maybe we are doing the same in their world!
POLTERGEISTS
Though normally classified separately, poltergeist is German for “noisy ghost,” and that is exactly what they are. True poltergeists move objects around, break things, open doors, and cause actual physical trouble to those unlucky enough to encounter them. This kind of activity can be traced to a person, usually a teenage girl, going through hormonal and emotional shifts and may be associated with certain parts of the brain that are also involved in epileptic seizures and déjà vu. The repressed emotions, anger, and sexual energy of the human agent could be finding a way to manifest as physical activity within its immediate environment.
Other poltergeists are said to be the spirits of the dead that form groups and cause all kinds of mischief. This activity can start abruptly, and end just as quickly, and tends to be more frightening than the average ghost because of the ability of the spirits to move objects on the physical plane.
The most common poltergeist reports involve persistent knocking, rapping, doors opening and closing, and beds banging on the floor.
Demons can at times take on ghostly forms, behave like poltergeists, or possess people, animals, and objects.
DEMONIC HAUNTINGS
Demons can possess people, animals, and objects, and the result looks like a type of haunting. The demons may take on a ghostly form or move objects about, make noises, and bang items, but usually, this form of activity is more harmful. Though incredibly rare, a real demonic haunting involves the possession of a person, often a child, and requires the assistance of a trained exorcist to put an end to the activity. The demons, often called malevolent spirits, can work alone or in groups and often choose to “speak” through a person they possess.
Demons are far more likely to be reported as shape-shifters and can take on a variety of forms from a dark, shadowy figure to a horrifying beast. They are not associated with a dead person and can follow someone they decide to possess from location to location. Often, demons can appear in the form of “attachments” which latch on to an object such as an old clock or a doll and cause chaos for anyone who owns, or comes in contact with, the object.
The only real correlation between a demon and a ghost may be the fact that they exist in a world alongside our own and have found a way to manifest here that we have yet to understand. Yet, some ghosts can display quite hostile behavior, as can poltergeists, causing danger to witnesses involved, so it can be difficult sometimes to discern a ghost from a poltergeist from a demon.
TULPAS AND THOUGHT FORMS
Tulpas are thought forms or spirits that are created through the power of the mind, often the collective thoughts or intentions of a group of people with the goal of creating their own manifested ghost. The word comes from the Tibetan “sprul-pa,” which means emanation or manifestation and is mentioned in Buddhist texts as “mind-made body,” or emanations that come from the mind, and can travel via the mind stream into heavenly realms. The actual words “thought form” appear in the 1927 Evans-Wentz translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Some Tibetan Buddhists believe that tulpas can possess a human mind, just as a demon might possess a body.
More modern “thought forms” consist of potential apparitions created by groupthink, such as the famous Philip Experiment. A group of Canadian parapsychologists, led by a Dr. A. R. G. Owen, attempted to create a ghost in 1972. The experiment took place in Toronto and involved the members proposing a physical description of the ghost, then using prolonged concentration and focused intention to collectively create the thought form. The ghost even had a background story to make the experiment feel more substantial.
The ghost was named “Philip Aylesford” and had quite a tragic backstory, created in detail, including a tragic death. Using the same techniques as a classic séance, they sat around a table and dimmed the lights. They all had pictures of a castle they believed Philip would have lived in and other objects to add atmosphere. It took a few weeks, but soon, they witnessed an apparition, heard knocks on the table, and got Philip to answer questions that played into his fictional history. Philip couldn’t come up with answers to any other questions, leading the group to suggest he was a figment of their own collective unconscious.
Future sessions ended with the table moving of its own volition and even chasing one of them across the room! None of their hands were on the table when this happened. They never did prove if Philip was a real apparition that took the opportunity to show itself (a playful spirit?) or something created out of their own imaginations or subconscious minds.
Paranormal investigators suggest that the expectations of the investigators combined with that of the witnesses could assist in manifesting apparitions. If enough people believe a ghost exists on the premises, their combined belief and focused thought may have more power to make the ghost more real than they think!
HAUNTED HOUSES AND OBJECTS
The same trauma and emotional distress that may keep a ghost from passing into the light can also keep them entombed within certain objects or locations. We all know what a haunted house is. The house itself is not the origin of the activity (unless the house itself is evil or made from evil wood, plaster, cement, windows, etc.) but harbors the activity within its walls, usually as imprinted energy. A haunted house, or any other building, can be the stomping grounds of ghosts and apparitions that are tied to that building and suffered within its walls. Sometimes, the ghosts are former residents of a house they died violently within. The ghosts may also be tied to the land the house is built upon, which itself can be haunted. It may have once been a cemetery or sacred burial ground or land cursed by Native American tribes. If the house was once something else, say a hospital, prison, or morgue, then the hauntings may come from the older incarnations of the building.
Aside from the misidentification of perfectly normal phenomena, such as creaking wood, hot and cold spots, exposed wiring, EMF fluctuations, faulty lighting, and crooked floorboards, there are hundreds of places the world over with notorious reputations of being home to ghostly activity that doesn’t go away after time. Scientists point to such things as electromagnetic anomalies and the presence of infrasound, both natural things, as having a negative effect on people that could be misinterpreted as paranormal activity, including the sense of being watched, seeing shadow figures, and both visual and auditory hallucinations.
Yet, there is also the mistaken idea that any abandoned, old, ugly house is automatically haunted because often, brand-new homes can harbor ghosts as well, and creaky, century-old homes can be haunted by nothing more than mice, termites, and whatever other critters live within the walls.
Can a ghost live inside a doll or object? Those unlucky mortals who have encountered haunted dolls, furniture, paintings, and other objects say yes! Perhaps they do so in the same way a house can harbor the spirits of the dead; an object can if there was some strong association between the object itself and the ghost of the person haunting it. Demons can possess objects, too. A whole new industry has come from the popularity of haunted dolls in particular, with museums opening all over the country allowing people to view the “damned” objects, if they dare!
Ghosts can remain in places such as houses, where they suffered their demise. Haunted places do not always have to be houses, however. They can be almost any kind of place where a tragedy occurred.
Though a lot of what the public knows and hears about ghosts and haunted locations comes from television shows, novels, and movies, there is a huge body of research and reports by witnesses that makes one wonder … is it all just the workings of overactive imaginations, or are we living side by side with spirits, whether they are trapped between life and death, the residual part of us that survives physical death, or simply living people from another timeline popping into ours to say hello? Find any neighborhood with an old, abandoned building of any sort, and it is sure to be “haunted,” as per the locals. Yet, even brand-new houses can be haunted if they are situated near burial grounds (remember the movie Poltergeist?), cemeteries, or on land that once housed a sinister asylum. The land a house or building is constructed on can harbor ghosts and spirits that are trapped there, unable to move on from whatever torments they experienced.
Stories of ghosts and haunted places are as old as time and humanity. Ghosts appear to people of all walks of life and don’t discriminate based on age, gender, religion, or color of skin. A great experiment in the popularity of the concept of ghosts is to simply ask five people you know if they’ve ever seen a ghost. This author did just that at a recent dinner party and was shocked to find that everyone in the crowded room had a story to tell. Just raising the subject led to excitement, and the ghost stories lasted for hours, as everyone clamored to tell their tales, many of whom had never felt comfortable telling anyone before!
And when the ghosts or locations are famous or have some notoriety behind them, we get even more excited still.
There are several popular “theories” that could describe what ghosts are and where they come from.
•Ghosts are the spirits of dead people, still wandering Earth in a sort of in-between state. To many, this theory is the gold standard by which most ghost hunters and paranormal researchers apply their investigative methodologies. It is by far the most popular way to describe a ghost and, for most people, is the most common-sense explanation and the easiest to wrap their minds around. A part of us lives on after death, and for ghosts, that stays fixed to the earthly plane until they are freed to go wherever their next destination is.
•Ghosts may be demons or entities that have a religious origin or are interdimensional entities that are here to terrorize us. This includes demons, shadow people, djinn, and other spirits that possess humans and objects. These particular beings tend to be evil in nature and clearly harmful, much more so than the average ghost of a dead relative.
•Ghosts are nothing more than manifestations of our own powerful belief or perception and can also be induced via various drugs, especially hallucinogens. The power of suggestion and the power of hysteria could explain the viral nature of ghost sightings and paranormal activity. Could simply telling someone a house is haunted, even if it isn’t, mean that they perceive ghosts and other activity simply because they expect to? This is also known as the “is it all in our heads” theory. Have every single one of these reports, over thousands of years of history, simply been fanciful imaginings or hallucinations? Or, is it possible that our brains are somehow responsible for designing these scenarios based upon an external stimulus or influence?
•Ghosts and other apparitions are created by naturally occurring environmental conditions such as electrical, magnetic, or electromagnetic radiation or a combination of external, environmental influences that also may correspond to internal, physiological influences in the human body to create the perfect storm. For years, ghost hunters have used specific pieces of equipment such as EMF meters, barometers, and thermal imaging devices as a means to measure and analyze environmental factors that might be present during a paranormal event, and current research is focusing as well on what goes on in the bodies of the observers of such events.
•Ghosts are the playback of energy, or stored human emotion, trapped within the building or room and somehow captured or “recorded” into the environment. These imprinted ghosts replicate the same actions continually … like someone pressing rewind and then play repeatedly on a video camera. This theory might also be applied to EVP, or electronic voice phenomena, where words and phrases are captured onto digital voice recorders. The idea is that somehow the ghosts can still speak or that their words have somehow been trapped and imprinted upon the particular location in a never-ending loop.
•Ghosts, spirits, and other “unknowns” are very much alive and active but present in alternate dimensions, parallel universes and timelines, and other realities that exist alongside our own. If there are multiple levels of reality and corresponding forms of life on each of these different levels, we may see so many different manifestations of ghosts, entities, and beings that exist out there in the “multiverse,” a term coined in 1895 by American philosopher and psychologist William James when referring to the hypothetical set of universes and realities. The multiverse theory was expanded by cosmologist Max Tegmark, who postulated a taxonomy of universes beyond our own observable universe, which served as the groundwork for other theories, such as string theory, M-Theory, and Everett’s many worlds interpretation. A ghost in another dimension or parallel universe might not be a dead person but a live person in another reality. Ghosts might also be time travelers in different parallel timelines, the past, or the future, and we get little glimpses of them as they were then or will be someday. This theory could also explain the fleeting images reported of ghost cars, planes, and trains that seem to be operating on another level of reality.
Seeing a ghost or experiencing any type of paranormal activity might then be a matter of whether or not our conscious mind is open to it and has the ability to go beyond the five senses of what we call reality in order to then perceive it as a physical manifestation. But it may be the realm of the subconscious, which is responsible for over 90 percent of our thoughts and behaviors, that determines what we are open to. People who claim they believe in ghosts may not, on a subconscious level, want to see one standing at their bedside in the middle of the night!
IS THERE A SCIENCE TO GHOSTS?
Experiments using photons and other particles on the quantum level have shown that the observer changes the outcome of the results. Until the moment of observation of the particle, there is no real particle to observe. Physicist Paul Davies writes in his book Superforce that “in the absence of an observation a quantum system will evolve in a certain way. When an observation is made, an entirely different type of change occurs. Just what produces this different behavior is not clear, but at least some physicists insist that it is explicitly caused by the mind itself.” This statement was written in 1984, and since then, more physicists and scientists have conceded the role of the mind in creating the physical reality we “observe” on a daily basis. More and more research is coming to the forefront every day that confirms that the outcomes of quantum phenomena can be modified by consciousness.
Some people might be more likely to see ghosts because their minds (and hopes) are more open to the possibility of life after death.
Arizona State University physicist professor Paul Davies theorized in Superforce that consciousness can influence our reality, as evidenced by studies in quantum mechanics.
What is consciousness? A quick look at the dictionary turns up a variety of answers. “Awakened state; the awareness of self and of what one is doing and why; the totality of one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences; a state of knowing the self; cognizance.” Consciousness, then, is a state of awareness, of knowing that one exists. We possess consciousness when we are awake and aware of our own existence.
Consciousness is also described as the ability to think and perceive. Thoughts, perception, and consciousness are the key players in understanding the connections between the paranormal and the normal, just as they are the key players in determining the outcome of a quantum physics experiment. The nonlocality experiments of Alain Aspect and his team in 1982 proved that space is nonlocal and that the world is not made up of separate objects that, when put together, make the Universe as we know it. Instead, these groundbreaking experiments showed that the “observer” and the “object being observed” were connected and part of an indivisible whole, with everyone and everything affecting and influencing everything else.
Some physicists look to the realm of superspace, or the Zero Point Field, as the home of the Cosmic Consciousness that observed, and continues to observe, the universe into being. Linked to this cosmic mind is the mind of the individual human who, on a microcosmic scale, observes his or her own reality into being. And synching of vibrations and frequencies, whether those in the electromagnetic field or the human brain, can certainly lead to an experience of something beyond normal, waking consciousness.
Consciousness is the key, and the observer chooses the branch of experience. Physicist Brian Josephson states in his paper “String Theory, Universal Mind and the Paranormal” that “some aspects of mentality involve a realm of reality largely, but not completely, disconnected from the phenomena manifested in conventional physics.” He points to the informational aspect of life, and there is a biological character involved with the informational processing of organisms, one that sees life “able to shape its environment in a partnership with it.” Two life forms sharing their mental states could account for such phenomena as ESP and telepathy. Many serious parapsychologists suggest greater levels of psi phenomena are reported under laboratory testing conditions when the research subjects have a vested interest in the outcome of the experiments. Implied meaning can often make a big difference. Richard S. Broughton, a scientist and former president of the Parapsychological Association, wrote in his presidential address in 1987 about the importance of meaning when working with test subjects. He proposed that researchers ask the question “Whom does psi serve?” when working with subjects, pointing to the “need-serving” nature of psi phenomena and how it might affect the skill levels of individuals.
Cambridge professor and theoretical physicist Brian Josephson published a paper in which he stated the mind could potentially operate in a realm outside of conventional physics.
Obviously, if there is a greater need, often survival-based, for psi, then the psi will show up in a greater amount in the subject. Broughton stated, “Quite a few experiments in ESP and PK [psychokinesis] can be read as providing support for both the need-serving character and its operation at an unconscious level.” Test results seem to imply that there are psychological and biological implications to paranormal phenomena and that their functioning significance must be considered.
Thus, if one person has a greater need to display PK, they will display it. That does not mean psi only shows up when there is a desperate need for it, Broughton continues, but that researchers must keep in mind that “probably the primary function of psi is to help the individual survive when faced with serious threats to health and safety, and to gain a competitive advantage in the struggle for survival.”
Do we, then, have a choice to be psychic or to see a ghost? Perhaps we do, but on a subconscious level. And when that choice is made on a conscious level, can our brains then sync with the exact frequency necessary to perceive what is considered beyond normal perception? The human brain acts as an amazing filter, accepting and rejecting information and stimuli based upon our survival needs. You could say we operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, with our brain acting as the sentry at the gate, refusing entry to anything that we just plain don’t need to understand. People who are able to shift their perception thus shift their need-to-know basis to include things they did not perceive before. If you don’t need to see it, you won’t see it.
On the other hand, phenomena such as ghosts, UFOs, and other entities that take on a nearly physical form may be coming into our consciousness without our consent simply because they have found the operating mechanism for being able to do so. And, on some level, we must be consenting to perceive their presence, just as we tend to see, or not see, what we want to see in daily life.
THE RAS AND GHOSTS
Does the brain filter away things like ghosts that we simply don’t have a need to know? There is a part of the brain responsible for just that. The RAS, or reticular activating system, is a cluster of nerves located at the base of the brain stem that serves as a filter to keep out unnecessary information and focus our attention instead on what is important. It really serves as a means to allow us to wade through millions upon millions of bits of information coming at our brains at any given time to find the four dozen bits we need for day-to-day survival.
The RAS not only helps the brain focus on what is important, it also seeks out more of that for the brain to register. For example, if you don’t care about pink Cadillacs but then suddenly decide you might want to buy one after seeing one on the road, your brain will now begin to seek out every pink Cadillac it can find, whether on the freeway or in car commercials or ads. This is because the RAS has been activated to filter out all other cars but the one that has now become a priority. Though the RAS was initially probably meant to help humans avoid danger and find the necessary things they needed for survival, such as food, shelter, and allies, it is now attributed with also filtering our beliefs. Another example might have someone deciding to name their baby Ludvig because they don’t know any other babies by that name. Suddenly, they begin meeting other parents with a son named Ludvig or see celebrity couples choosing the name Ludvig. What happened? Nothing, really. People have always been naming their sons Ludvig, and only now did it become important to that particular person, and thus, their RAS made sure to seek out corroboration of that importance. (Don’t be surprised if, after reading this, you start seeing the name Ludvig turn up everywhere!)
If seeing a ghost becomes a priority or if you have seen a ghost when you had no interest in one before, the RAS will begin to filter in more ghostly experiences and items of interest. So, the RAS can both filter out, and filter in, what is important to us at any given time. Like consciousness and perception, the RAS sees what it wants, or needs, to see and doesn’t see what is not important. One can only imagine how most people go through their lives filtering out ghosts, aliens, entities, and the presence of other realities simply because their RASs are not allowing their brains to focus on those very things. Ghosts could be all around us, but until it becomes important that we see and interact with them, we might never know it.
EVP AND TALKING GHOSTS
EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena and is a method used by paranormal researchers and ghost hunters to attempt communication with the dead. EVP works by asking questions on a digital recorder and allowing the tape to continue playing. When the questioning is complete, the recording is played back to reveal potential spirit voices that were either recorded unintentionally or in response to the specific questions asked. The voices, if any, are usually embedded in static and white noise and are often just a word or a short phrase.
Scientists claim EVP is nothing more than auditory pareidolia, which is the interpretation of random sounds as voices based upon the expectation of the person listening. This is similar to people seeing faces in wallpaper patterns or in the shapes of clouds. Sometimes, EVP can pick up radio stations and even CB or ham radio operators nearby.
Yet, those in the paranormal field claim that Class A EVP are distinct, intelligent responses to questions that can even be verified, such as asking the name of a ghost and getting an actual name that can be corroborated with more research. However, is it possible the EVP is picking up the thoughts of the investigators? Yes, that is a possibility being researched. If ghosts can communicate via digital recorders, why not the living?
In 1982, Sarah Estep founded an organization devoted to further research into EVP, the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP) out of Severna Park, Maryland. Modern ghost hunters, seen on television reality shows, use EVP as a standard method of spirit communication, which is a form of ITC, or Instrumental Trans-Communication, a term coined by Professor Ernst Senkowski in the 1970s, that includes all forms of electronic devices used to speak to the dead—tape recorders, fax machines, television sets, telephones, etc.
One might ask why the voices of spirits can only manifest on tape or some electronic device and not be heard by actual sets of human ears, although in many hauntings, the voices are indeed heard without any assistance. Are ghostly voices coming to us on specific frequencies outside of the range of normal human hearing? Or even within the range? If so, why don’t they interrupt our radio and television broadcasts more often? EVP has become so popular, there are few paranormal research groups that don’t use it or some form of it, but what is being captured on the recordings? Voices of the dead, thoughts of the researchers themselves, or scattered bits of captured radio station voices that the human mind then shapes into exactly what it wants, or expects, to hear?
Nowadays, everyone has a cell phone and can readily photograph a ghost or apparition. But ghost photography wasn’t always as easy as point and click. The first ghost photographs were accidental, spotted on pictures of other people or objects as blurred, transparent figures. This was usually attributed to the long exposure time of the film, but it led to an interest in attempting to capture spirits on film.
One of the oldest such photographs is of Prince Arthur, one of Queen Victoria’s children. The photo was taken by a man named Roger Fenton in 1854 and shows the ghostly figure of a woman who was said to be his nurse standing by the boy with her arm outraised, as if to steady the child on the box he was standing upon. After that, ghost pictures were sold commercially and became a huge novelty item, even though no one ever attempted to find out whether or not they were real.
Photographers began speculating on how ghost images were made, using varying exposure times and techniques, and it was only a matter of time before fakes and charlatans began claiming the images were real and that they could take pictures of dead loved ones … for profit, of course. The first serious attempt at spirit photography occurred in the 1860s, when a man named William H. Mumler discovered a technique using double exposure. He began working as a medium who could capture the dead on film and often doctored the negatives. He was busted when he got caught putting real Boston residents in some of the pictures as ghosts!
With everyone these days being an amateur photographer, a lot of “ghost” pictures might be attributed to simply bad technique or deliberate fakery.
The early twentieth century saw spirit photography come of age, with interest by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Crookes. One spiritualist, William Stainton Moses, began referring to the entities in the images as ectoplasm, the fluid stuff that forms into actual spirits. Many early spiritualist photographers were accused of fraud, as ghost photography had a huge and profitable market by then.
Today’s ghost hunters use sophisticated camera equipment to try to capture actual ghosts on film or video. Yet, even with that being said, getting a clear ghost image rarely happens. Perhaps they don’t like being photographed, or their ethereal nature just doesn’t translate well to film.
This portrait of Lady Dorothy Walpole (1686–1726; sister of British prime minister Robert Walpole) is the living image of the woman whose ghost is supposedly that of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall.
There have been a number of famous ghost photos over the years that do challenge skeptics. The most famous is the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, written about later in this book. Her image, floating down a staircase as a full-body apparition, has become iconic in the paranormal field.
Another photo shows the ghost of a man named Lord Combermere, who was killed in an accident in London in 1891. At the time the photo was taken, the Lord was being interred several miles away, but the image, taken in the library of the Lord’s home, revealed a man resembling him sitting in his favorite chair. The figure’s legs were missing, made all the creepier by the fact that Lord Combermere died when his legs were crushed by a carriage.
During a visit to the Bachelor’s Grove cemetery in a suburb outside of Chicago, Illinois, the Ghost Research Society of America took a photo at the abandoned graveyard and captured the image of a woman wearing white, old-fashioned clothing and sitting atop a tombstone. Another cemetery ghost was captured on film, this time in Tombstone, Arizona’s Boothill Graveyard, where an actor named Terry Ike Clanton took a film photo of a friend, who was dressed as an 1880s cowboy. When he looked at it later, he noticed the figure of a man in the background wearing a black hat and rising out of the ground or kneeling, as no legs could be seen. Clanton tried to recreate the image later but never succeeded.
Another famous ghost picture is that of mechanic Freddie Jackson, who served in the Royal Air Force during World War I. He was tragically killed by an airplane propeller in 1919 and, on the day of his burial, his squadron took a group photo. Jackson’s face can be glimpsed behind the fourth airman from the left, in the back row. The photo was made public in 1975 by retired RAF officer Victor Goddard, who had been a member of the same squadron.
One of the most problematic new types of ghost photography involve the infamous orbs that often appear as balls of translucent light in pictures of graveyards or other haunted locations. Though many psychics and paranormal enthusiasts like to believe they are ghost lights or spirits bouncing around in the form of balls of light (and in some cases, they might be!), photographers and skeptics claim they are nothing more than dust or particulate matter captured on camera and are a problem common to digital cameras.
Why is it that most people see ghosts at night? They do appear often during the daytime, but most often, the things that go bump in the night go, well, bump in the night. Is it because we are more afraid when the lights go out and more susceptible to the possibilities of what we might be sharing our space with? Or might there be some actual physiological reasons why things show up when the lights go down? If ghosts and apparitions are translucent and misty, does daylight make it harder to distinguish them from the background?
The human body has long been left out of the equation in terms of modern paranormal research, which has usually focused on external and environmental sources of activity—the actual haunted location, the changes and fluctuations in the electromagnetic field, the weather, and the barometric pressure—and apparitions appear to be totally outside of ourselves in the real and physical sense. Rarely do we think there might be a connection between our own presence, observation, and physiology and that we might play a role in exactly who perceives paranormal phenomena, who doesn’t, and when.
According to most paranormal investigators who are out in the field week after week at various haunted locations, a lot of paranormal activity is said to occur during a four-hour time period, from 11 P.M. to 3 A.M., with heavy activity around midnight to 1 A.M., known as the “witching hour.” This was said to be the time witches and demons, even ghosts, were most likely to show up in graveyards and cemeteries. Witches during Medieval times were the most active then, and it was considered a time when the super-natural broke through the veil into the natural world. The late night/early morning hours were times when most people were in bed, not willing to be out in the dark for a number of reasons! The winding down of daily activity could serve as the perfect time for the brain to relax, the mind to chill, and the body to begin the process of entering into sleep mode and the world of dreams.
The time between midnight and 1 A.M. is known as the “witching hour” because that is when paranormal activities are supposedly most frequent. It also happens to be when our fight-or-flight hormone levels are highest.
Our brains have neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which serve to influence our moods and perceptions, our emotions and emotional states, and even our behaviors and actions. Of those, serotonin is the most powerful, able to change or shift our perceptions based upon existing levels in the body. Serotonin, also known as 5-hydroxytryptamine, is a hormone found in the pineal gland, the digestive tract, blood platelets, and the central nervous system. It is one of the chief hormones regulating cell and organ activity and also regulates our memory, our mode of learning, and, get this, our perception of reality and how we approach it. Altered levels cause depression, even suicidal thoughts, and affect sleep, anxiety, and energy levels. Ninety percent of our serotonin is found in our “second brain,” the gut, although we usually associate it with the brain in our skulls!
While there have been anecdotal links between lower levels of serotonin and a more openness to religious and paranormal beliefs, and higher levels have been associated more with objective, empirical views of religion and spirituality, we don’t have actual studies. We know that our brain chemicals and hormones do affect us and that they are more or less ample during different times of the day and night.
Melatonin, another powerful and important brain chemical, shares a similar structure with the psychoactive compounds DMT (dimethyltryptamine) and mescaline, both of which are associated with visions, hallucinations, paranormal and religious experiences, and altered states of consciousness. Melatonin levels are regulated by our circadian cycle, which governs sleep and waking states. Melatonin also regulates menstruation cycles in women. Because of its molecular structure being similar to DMT, varying levels can produce extremely intense dreams. Lack of sleep can alter melatonin production, throwing us into a slightly altered waking state. When is the body’s peak melatonin production period? Between the hours of 1 A.M. and 3 A.M. Could this have an effect on those up all night in a fearful setting doing a paranormal investigation? If this is when we should be sleeping and dreaming, what happens to that excess melatonin if we don’t allow ourselves to sleep during normal hours?
Because melatonin plays such a huge role in the menses of women, some suggest it might even account for the higher rates of psychic ability in women during times of high hormonal activity such as menses, pregnancy, and menopause. This again is purely speculative until more research can be done.
There are a host of other chemicals coursing through our bodies that could affect what we experience, and because the chemical levels in the person standing next to us are different, they may not experience the same thing. This might account for the many investigations where three people see a ghost, and the other four see nothing of the sort. Our bodies may be directly influencing us to perceive what is or isn’t there, and all of us have different levels of these hormones and neurotransmitters at any given time. The same goes for the pharmaceuticals we take and the recreational drugs we may engage in, many of which can alter our reality, willingly or unwillingly.
Two powerful stress hormones that trigger our fight-or-flight response are cortisol and adrenaline. At night, these levels should lower, allowing us the rest we need and enabling our bodies to go into repair mode. But if we are in a situation where our fight-or-flight responses kick in, say late at night having heard a strange sound in the kitchen or on a ghost hunt at the local haunted hotel, we experience a surge in both hormones, which cause blood pressure to rise, pulse to spike, and a host of other responses that would, on any other occasion, allow us to either fight or flee the threat.
Every single organ in our bodies has its own internal clock, which keeps it on a schedule that best serves our health and wellbeing, unless tampered with. If we look at the witching hours, when brain chemicals and hormones shift down for sleep mode and REM activity, we see that, unless we tamper with them, the parts of the body that are most involved with maintenance, processing and eliminating waste, and removing toxins from the body are the blood vessels and arteries, the gall bladder, and the liver. The gall bladder and liver specifically have the tough job of working between 11:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. to process the waste in our bodies and make sure we can eliminate it in the morning. If we are awake during this time, we might experience such symptoms as stomachaches, anxiety, and edginess.
So, we should be sleeping when instead we are walking around dark places looking for ghosts. Our circadian rhythms are knocked out of whack, and our brain chemicals, hormones, and organ responses are as well. The circadian rhythm or cycle is a twenty-four-hour cycle built into our bodies to regulate sleep and being awake, but we can change it and often do. Plants, animals, even fungi and certain bacteria have a circadian cycle. An interesting aspect of this is what happens between the witching hours.… Between the hours of 11:00 P.M. and around 4:00 A.M., our bowel system slows down, going into maintenance mode. Our melatonin secretion begins as we look forward to the lowest body temperature of the day and the deepest of sleep.
Paranormal activity may be a product of our environment, internally and externally, then. Just as a particular location might encourage activity via close proximity to an electromagnetic field, ground water source, or even seismic activity, our own bodies might be the other half of the equation.
The Internet is filled with pages and pages of images said to be ghosts or apparitions, uploaded by those with cell phones and video cameras, but very few pass muster enough to get beyond skeptics with knowledge of photography, lighting, or image distortions. This doesn’t mean there are no ghosts, only that whatever it is they are made up of is very difficult to capture as photographic proof. That doesn’t stop thousands of people from trying, though, hoping to take that definitive picture that somehow proves the paranormal as real.
GHOSTLY PERSONALITIES
There are three different personalities one might encounter when meeting a ghost at a haunted location.
•Friendly ghosts—These are ghosts that are playful and sometimes even helpful, warning someone of a pending disaster, such as a fire breaking out in the kitchen, or stopping someone from entering a dangerous area. Friendly ghosts can still be frightening to deal with just by the sheer fact they are ghosts, but they do no harm and often coexist peacefully side by side with the living.
•Malevolent ghosts—These are mean, hostile, and sometimes dangerous spirits that seek to terrorize and cause harm. They might be ghosts, poltergeists, or even demonic entities that have the potential to seriously hurt witnesses or destroy homes. They don’t want to coexist side by side with the living and usually make it clear they want the living gone from the premises, if not worse. Their anger and violence can be directed toward specific individuals or just outward in general. In the case of demonic possessions, these types of entities won’t go away on their own without the help of professional exorcists trained by the Catholic Church.
•Neutral ghosts—These ghosts don’t interact with humans at all and instead seem to be unaware of humans altogether. They don’t know, or seem to care, they are being observed and appear to be doing the same things over and over again in the same locations, as if trapped in a loop, totally oblivious to any witnesses. They are not friendly, but at least they aren’t hostile. They are attached to a specific location, building, or even object, but they do no harm to observers.
Not all ghosts are evil by any means. For example, some pet owners feel that their dogs or cats have visited them from the other side.
FAME AND CELEBRITY
As obsessed as we are with ghosts and the paranormal, it can’t hold a candle to our obsession with anything or anyone famous. In today’s world of Internet fame, anyone can become a celebrity for any reason, notorious or otherwise. But what is it about celebrities, whether they are movie and television stars, great athletes, or models and rock stars, that has such a hold on us? Why are we addicted to celebrity? In the February 24, 2012, issue of LiveScience, Stephanie Pappas writes in “Oscar Psychology: Why Celebrities Fascinate Us” that it may be a combination of humans being social creatures and a fixation on those we deem above us, or at the top of the heap, because that is what we collectively aspire to. It also comes from a sense of knowing someone just because we saw them on television or heard them on the radio. We create a sense of kinship with famous people, even serial killers, simply because we feel like we know who they are.
Psychologist James Houran stated, “Celebrities act like a drug.” We get our fix by focusing on what these people are wearing, doing, who they are dating, what they are eating, or any move, big or small, they make. It’s a form of worship, just as we might worship a religious or spiritual leader. We feel like famous people are more important than we are, and we naturally want to dissect their lives to find out why. It also plays on our social tendencies to care about other people, and celebrities are open targets for that care. Sadly, they are also open targets for our consternation and gossip! We have a love/hate relationship with celebrities and successful, famous people.
When it comes to the rich, powerful, and famous, there is a natural voyeur in each and every one of us that wants to see how the “other half” lives, especially since they are rich and beautiful, living a lavish lifestyle we can only dream about. It can fill a void within and give us a sense of identity, especially if we are not following our own goals and dreams and have low self-esteem and a weak identity.
We live in a society in which throngs of people practically worship celebrities from movies, television, music, and sports (actor Will Smith takes a photo with fans here), so when a story comes out about a celebrity ghost, we are even more intrigued.
No matter the reasons why, we hand fame and fortune over to anyone nowadays, including reality stars with no real talent to speak of and criminals who get their own television shows, becoming stars in the process. We love celebrities. We love building them up, and we love tearing them down, all to fulfill deeper psychological needs to fill an emptiness within our own lives. We spend billions of dollars buying gossip magazines, watching movies and television shows, and reading juicy memoirs and autobiographies all to get close to these magical, mystical creatures known as stars.
In the April 2014 issue of Reelrundown.com, author Sheri Dusseault writes that there is a celebrity worship syndrome called Celebrity Worship Syndrome (CWS). Physiologist John F. Shumaker is quoted as saying “CWS is an obsessive/addictive disorder in which a person becomes involved with the details of a celebrity’s personal life.” It’s the stuff of movies themselves, with average citizens living out the lives of their favorite stars and even harming themselves when their favorite celebrity gets engaged or married!
So, we give any celebrity a place at the top of a pedestal, whether the celebrity deserves it or not, and we worship at the feet of the pedestal until we feel the need to knock the celebrity off the pedestal, all of which serves a need to see the best and worst in others and compare ourselves to them. When we fail to measure up, jealousy and envy rear their ugly heads, and we destroy the very things we first worshipped. It must be hard to be rich and famous!
Just as someone might be famous in life, when they die, they take on an almost legendary status in death. Suddenly, the ghost of a celebrity becomes a desirable commodity that people will seek out, and even pay, to see. While your neighbors might pay to see the ghost that haunts the attic of your suburban split-level, who else really cares? But if that ghost was once a president of the United States or a world-famous golfer, you’ve got yourself a bona fide tourist trap.
The long-lost stars of the past are kept alive by the repeated sightings of their ghosts, haunting old movie sets, or stomping around the mansions they once owned. It’s one thing to see the ghost of a total stranger, but to see the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, or Albert Einstein is something special indeed. Sometimes, the mansions these stars lived in themselves become the celebrity, as in the many homes that now give haunted tours to those who hope to catch a glimpse of the former resident, once a glorious star of stage or screen. Buildings and locations associated with events we all recognize also take on famous status simply because they are known to more than just one or two people. The more known the dead person or persons were in life, the more notorious and famous the locations they choose to haunt will be.
A motel on Route Anywhere in Anytown, USA, may have once been just another seedy motel, but after a movie star and her lover were found dead there in Room 15, it becomes a major haunted attraction that is featured in books, movies, and television shows and host to ghost hunters and tourists alike. People will even pay big bucks to stay in Room 15 just in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the ill-fated lovers floating from the bedroom to the kitchenette.
A dusty, musty basement is just a dusty, musty basement, but if a known figure in politics was murdered there, it suddenly becomes a mystical place worthy of being featured on a television reality show, where men and women sit in the dark with various pieces of equipment and hope to encounter, for the cameras, the ghost of the restless celebrity.
It is human nature to love to look up to anyone who has a huge circle of influence, even more so if they are good-looking, rich, and appear on our big or small screens. We think we know these people because we have access to them. Therefore, when they die, we feel just as entitled to have access to their spirits. And just as we are excited to glimpse a star in real life and then tell all our friends about it or post it on social networking, we are thrilled beyond thrilled to glimpse them in death, which brings up the important question—why are there not ghost paparazzi, too?
