The problem with ghosts and science?

komodosp

For example graveyards are often thought of as prime real estate for hauntings. Why? And if an observer went to to this graveyard and got freaked out and left the graveyard and went to the movies or something, why couldn't these ghosts who haunt there leave the graveyard as well? If you were a ghost would you hang around a graveyard?

To paraphrase the Fermi paradox, "If ghosts exist, why aren't the obvious" why aren't they picking up cars and twirling them around at night time? Are they not strong enough? Do they need to draw on the "energy" of a crowd of people? Why can't they do something spectacular like that to many eyewitnesses or on film? Why must it always be the half seen shadow, the illegible writing on scrawled on a wall or the static muttered into a tape?

You can't really use the Why don't ghosts do this, why would they do that as an argument though... It's like the old "Why do aliens only kidnap rednecks" or "why haven't we seen time-travelling tourists from the future".

Without further information there is no way of knowing the logical mind of a ghost. Ghost proponents don't make definite claims about the motives of ghosts (well sometimes they do, but when they are arguing that they exist). Simply that they are real is enough.

Like if everything is made of molecules, why doesn't everything collapse in a heap like a pile of sand? If gravity pulls everything together, why hasn't the universe collapsed into a single lump of matter?

iamhunted

Standman wrote: »

Well thats the first time i've heard that explanation being given for EMF meter use. A quick look on the TAPS official website says otherwise: http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/articles/technical/emfintro.html , specifically

and





I never mentioned nor do I know what ectoplasm is!

EDIT: After checking some other sites i see that there are people who also use EMF meters for the reason you explained

As a TAPS Family member, I can tell you that the reason most of us use EMF meters is to find natural reasons. In reading this thread I think a lot of people could do with some basic education in what paranormal research is about, and not get it confused with the 'ohscaremeplease' ghosthunting fraternaty.

iamhunted

diverdriver wrote: »

Interesting thread. I am in general a skeptic, no after life, no spirits coming back etc.

Hate to bring this old chestnut up again, but isnt that basically the definition of a cynic? A skeptic might not think theres much of a chance of the after life etc etc but is still open to the idea that they could be wrong. Someone who claims 'no after life, no spirits coming back' sounds pretty certain these things cant happen - which is cynical.

Just a passing comment thats all.

iamhunted

totally agree about the graveyard mention there - but then again, how many paranormal researchers hang around graveyards? Answer - not too many. Plenty of 'ghost busters' do though.

diverdriver

but isnt that basically the definition of a cynic?

No, not in this case. I can be pretty cynical about life but not death. It is with a bit of sadness that I say I don't believe in an afterlife. It's an attractive idea, hence the extent of the belief in it. People don't like to believe it all ends just like that. 'Surely' we think, 'I simply cannot disappear just like that'. We do in my opinion. The example I would give is when I was under general anaesthetic. One instant I was awake waiting the operation, then without transition, I was awake after the operation feeling sick and in pain. Instantaneous, no dream, no blackness, no consciousness. I suspect death is as simple as that. Nothing to look forward to, life is what it's all about.

Hence my belief in ghosts as a phenomenom that can be explained as an image of a living person not the teturn of a dead person.

Briany

you are referring to is the stone tape theory

Never heard of that. In fact I came to the conclusion independently only to find out that others had thought of it too. I'm no original thinker it turns out.:( What drew me to the idea were tales of Roman soldiers marching through a cellar in England. Their feet were unseen because the Roman road was below the level of the cellar and of course the cellar didnt' exist when they marched through. To me that implies an image rather than an entity. Perhaps when they marched conditions were conducive to recording, say fog or moisture or thunderstorm activity, whatever. The cellar then provides the stone tape idea.

But what troubles me with that theory is the ghost phenomenon is not just limited to apparitions, what about so called "Intelligent hauntings" where the ghost can apparently interact with the physical world

This doesn't trouble me at all, as far as I'm concerned a lot 'intelligent hauntings' are simply embroiderment of the sighting. We all know the how people see things differently, how witnesses are often highly unreliable. The famous man in the monkey suit video being a case in point. Even in my own example, I rationalised my experience and assumed that it was a a person passing outside. Others might well describe how the ghost, looked at them or smiled or whatever. When you're half awake and see something unexpected your reaction is going to vary. Some people see ghosts, don't think much of it until it's brought up later as 'the ghost'. Again my own experience is a classic. None of us thought 'ghost'. In retrospect, we now know it was.

Also you cannot underestimate people's ability to produce images. I have vivid dreams, remarkably detailed fantasies. Sometime when half awake I can virtually conduct dreams and visions. Consider someone who is wired up differently to most of us, people for whom there is a crossover between fantasy and reality. They will see things that are not there as vividly as the rest of us see reality. Another possibility strictly in the science fiction verging on fact is that interactions are some form of time shift. Quantum physics fully accepts the possibility of alternative universes all around us but out of phase. Again this idea has been used in science fiction. Notably Doctor Who recently. That's an alternative you have no doubt considered.

I'm not going to try and explain everything away. I do believe there things we don't and may never understand. But quite a few can be.

On the point of graveyard hauntings, I think there would a serious lack of ghostly images in graveyards because of course no one lives there and you're well dead by the time you get there. So if you follow my theory of images not returning spirits then you won't get many ghosts.

TV shows like 'Most Haunted' for all their technology and effort have quite frankly produced zero evidence for anything. Feelings and intepretations of mediums are quite frankly for the most part BS. We all know the power of suggestion. Anyone been to Knock recently?

briany

This doesn't trouble me at all, as far as I'm concerned a lot 'intelligent hauntings' are simply embroiderment of the sighting. We all know the how people see things differently, how witnesses are often highly unreliable. The famous man in the monkey suit video being a case in point. Even in my own example, I rationalised my experience and assumed that it was a a person passing outside. Others might well describe how the ghost, looked at them or smiled or whatever. When you're half awake and see something unexpected your reaction is going to vary. Some people see ghosts, don't think much of it until it's brought up later as 'the ghost'. Again my own experience is a classic. None of us thought 'ghost'. In retrospect, we now know it was.

Well when I was talking about "Intelligent hauntings", I was thinking of poltergeist activity and some of it's more extreme manifestations in particular i.e. possession, writing and/or images scrawled or appearing on the walls, physical assaults, levitation of objects in front of witnesses and other things of that nature. The last two could be explained away as a strong gust of air or getting cut and not quite realising how it happened combined with a subjective memory, they would be within reason I reckon but the first two, what could be causing them? Are we talking fakery? Hysteria? If your house is supposedly haunted and you are finding writing on the walls it's simply a case of someone is doing it for a hoax/prank/mental illness or they are not and the same for possession. What else could it be? Those kinds of cases could prove profitable for the people that they are allegedly happening to in monetary terms or just for the attention and that undermines the validity of those cases for me but it still comes down to an either/or for me though I guess you could say that of most things.

As for my point on graveyard hauntings that's attracted some debate, well I know as little about the "motivations" of ghosts as anyone else. I was really wondering why ghosts are always seem attracted to a certain place, maybe a certain person, from a living persons logic I would have thought that being a ghost would have been a great chance to go anywhere and see anything, so why hang around a graveyard or not even a graveyard, let's say your old house or the place where you died in that horrible fire. That was my thought on that, maybe a thought many people have had. The stone tape theory would be a great way of explaining apparitions in such places, it would be fantastic in fact, the roman footsoldiers being a good example. But poltergeist activity doesn't fit in with that theory for me unless you factor in the possibility that the two phenomena are in fact no way related, that is if you believe in poltergeist activity in the first place. Quantum mechanical theories are fascinating but totally totally speculative but then again this is a speculative thread.

diverdriver

James Randi never had to part with his million dollars. He was comfortable enough that it would never be claimed. Not least because for the most part most so called paranormal activity is nothing of the sort. A lot of it is hoaxing, fakery and hysteria. I don't believe in poltergist activity but if it exists as such. There may indeed be other explanations than the spirits of the dead or psychic abilities.

You may or may not believe various paranormal events. But the one consistent factor with plausible ghost stories is that the repeat themselves, the same actions over and again usually in the same place. Different people seeing the same thing. The face in the window. Mostly the ghost as such ignores the viewer. To me that is a replay not a sign of intelligence from beyond the grave. Thus the ghost has no motivation to return to a spot because it's simply an image.

briany

Diverdriver, if you type "Stone tape BBC" into youtube you will find a pretty entertaining BBC drama/horror from the 70's or 80's maybe called "The Stone Tape". Maybe you've seen it already but for anyone who hasn't, it's about a group of scientists working in an old mansion researching a new recording medium; images and sounds recorded in stone that replay themselves like a hologram under the right conditions. Anyway, things go a little pear shaped as you can guess but I won't give too much away.

diverdriver

Maybe I did watch it at the time but don't remember and maybe just maybe that's where 'my' idea came from. Which is interesting in that it shows how an idea can be placed in your mind but consciously forgotten only for it to surface much later and be mistaken for an original OR an experience you once had. It might be relevant to the whole ghost thing. I'll look it up and see if it stirs any memories.

espinolman

I think it is good that most scientists don't believe in spirits and ghosts and stay away from the subject because if they did , you know what they would do don't you , probably try to capture them and then do all sorts of grotesque experiments and they would probably end up hooking them up to the grid and use them to power the country or something sickening of this sort .

mcmoustache

But how to begin?

By that, Briany, I assume you are asking how to scientifically test the existance of ghosts.

I would think it's pretty straight forward. First of all we don't need to be prejudiced too much by what it is we think we are measuring. What we all can agree on is that people see, hear and feel ghosts (whatever "ghosts" are and for loose interpretations of "see", "hear" and "feel"). For this post I'm only going to discuss the appirition type. Not the poltergeists or those assholes that hold you down during sleep paralysis. Just the ones that appear to people and walk through walls and don't say anything.

OK, now that I've defined the kind of ghost I'm talking about, we need a test or some way to measure the phenomenon. What do we know about them? Well, people "see" them. Two things can happen when people see things. It could be a hallucination or they did really see something.

If it was a hallucination, then there is nothing to test except a person's head and we can go no farther. If they did see something, then several things happened. The ghost either emitted photons or photons got reflected off of it. Those photons were then detected in the eye of the witness. That's what seeing is. Our eyes are photon detectors. Not very good ones either. There's a huge part of the spectrum which we just don't see. But if someone saw something, then photons entered their eyes. It's as simple as that.

This means it's a fairly straight forward test. Set up cameras (multiple wavelengths, not just visual) monitoring a particular room where the phenomenon has been heavily reported. Have the cameras installed and maintained by people without a vested interest in the result to prevent tampering. It's very important that the cameras (by "camera" I mean multi-wavelength photon detector) are tamperproof because otherwise you'll have skeptics like myself calling foul. Having the live feed available to many people would help.

In summary:
If people see 'em, they emit or reflect photons. Go detect those photons.

P.S.
If people say that ghosts exist another dimension, they might as well say that they exist inside their heads. A dimension is not a place like heaven or Dimension X. That's a gross misuse of the scientific word for axis of space-time which probably originated in Hollywood. The same for different universes. They cannot be measured. However, at some point, if they exist, these ghosts came from wherever the hell they're from to this universe/dimension/whatever, reflected or emitted(with ramifications for conservation of energy) some photons and went back. If a person can catch them in the act, then a scientist can theoretically detect them.

mcmoustache

James Randi never had to part with his million dollars. He was comfortable enough that it would never be claimed. Not least because for the most part most so called paranormal activity is nothing of the sort. A lot of it is hoaxing, fakery and hysteria. I don't believe in poltergist activity but if it exists as such. There may indeed be other explanations than the spirits of the dead or psychic abilities.

I saw a conversation between Dawkins and Randi once. Here 5 mins in. Dawkins made a good point about what happens if something pseudo-scientific passes the the test and becomes established science. It's not inconceivable. Take telepathy for example. I know brainwaves don't transmit that far but they can be picked up by electrodes. One current use for this is for paralysed people to "think" letters and have them appear on screen. It's never going to be telepathy simply because the "signal" is too weak, the inverse square law and interference by too many other EM-waves but the basic scientific principle is there. Waves radiate from people's heads. Never mind the encoding or signal strength for now. I'm not saying telepathy will be scientific but it's fairly possible for something pseudoscientific to be researched and validated after propler research.

diverdriver

I'm not saying telepathy will be scientific but it's fairly possible for something pseudoscientific to be researched and validated after propler research.

That's true, the problem of course is that because thing like ghosts are lumped in with all the other paranormal ideas. This is the paranormal forum not the science forum. Any scientist who wishes to keep his credibility is going to touch any of this.

mcmoustache

diverdriver wrote: »

That's true, the problem of course is that because thing like ghosts are lumped in with all the other paranormal ideas. This is the paranormal forum not the science forum. Any scientist who wishes to keep his credibility is going to touch any of this.

That's partially true. If the science is done properly with double-blind experiments and if the experiments can be verified, then a solid case could be made. But it would be difficult (not impossible) to get a peer-reviewed, scientific journal to even consider reading it.

Still. Nobody can hold out against reproduceable experiments for very long. Here is an example of something (brainwaves + telepathy) which may have lost a scientist his credibility previously but it is now fairly mainstream. I don't know a whole lot about it but it is real science.

briany

James Randi never had to part with his million dollars. He was comfortable enough that it would never be claimed. Not least because for the most part most so called paranormal activity is nothing of the sort. A lot of it is hoaxing, fakery and hysteria. I don't believe in poltergist activity but if it exists as such. There may indeed be other explanations than the spirits of the dead or psychic abilities.

That makes for very very interesting reading. I love the idea of putting that kind of money on the line and asking the people making paranormal claims to put up or shut up. I think what should happen or what I wish would happen is the money pool could be contributed to to drive the stakes ever higher, a bit like a lottery. There's probably something wrong with that idea not least due to the fact that it's his personal money but I'd love for the money to be driven up to really tempt someone to come forward with something. But if they really had something, wouldn't a million be enough? I have a feeling that if that money is ever given out, it could end up being controversial to the point of it being the the subject of a panorama/horizon doc about some very clever fraudster.

iamhunted

i dont think it is his personal money. Isnt it bonds promised by investors?

briany

Oh it's not? Don't know where I got that idea from. Well I really wish they would raise the stakes then. That said, there probably aren't any real psychics or whatever anyway which is why no one is claiming the prize.

mcmoustache

They can convince people who are less intelligent than themselves that they have special powers but they can't convince scientists or people who question things. It's disgusting really but that's how "Most Haunted", Johnathan Edward, Joe Coleman and David Icke make so much money. Look up PT Barnum and something that's born every minute.

iamhunted

David Icke? :pac:

getz

paranormal,term used to describe phenomena that are not within the range of,or explicable by established science, well i often i know when i will get a phone call ,and i know who will be ringing,more than once i have picked up the phone and said hallow ..... and frightened them half to death.recently in ireland, in a old cottage i have seen two young victorian girls,and within a few seconds they have vanished,i often get the feeling when my spirit guide [victorian lady]is with me,there are many things about that can be considered paranormal, i have a dog that when he starts to get agitated i know my son is going to pay me a visit,and sure enough he will turn up.budists for over a thousand years have been saying you can see a aurora around a living person,even the early christian church believed in a saintly halo/aurora, now science has confirmed that part is true,dont knock anything as yet.