Ghosts: If there aren't any, how do we explain all the sightings?

Great Debates
1

There are people on SDMB that believe in ghosts, and others, more it seems (or at least more vocal ones) who are adamantly opposed to the very idea that there’s such a thing. So who better to debate this question?

When people ask me if I believe in ghosts, I wish I could respond with a tidy “yes” or “no.” I guess my most honest answer to this is “yes, but not in the traditional sense.”

I love the idea of sentient spirits, who can’t rest due to “unfinished business on Earth.” I like the idea of malevolent ghosts, and will happily dissect a movie or book in regards to whether or not the author/director followed the “rules” (ex. A ghost can’t physically harm someone, but might drive them to self injury like falling out of a window to avoid a ghost.) Hauntings are a fascinating plot device, and I’m a sucker for those previously mentioned books and movies on the subject. I also love the idea of vampires. I don’t believe either exist, though. As cool as a spirit, malevolent or friendly, that can interact with its environment, and the living is, would be, I am highly doubtful of their existence. There’s a certain wrongness about them that clashes with my beliefs about the afterlife (we rest until judgment day, if there’s any such thing as an afterlife).

However, despite my disregard of sentient ghosts, there is a type of ghost I do believe in, and feel will eventually be explained away by science, probably by physics: residual ghosts. Rather than being the spirits of the formerly living, residual ghosts are believed to be an energy imprint left on an area after something (usually tragic) occurs. This impression is played back on a loop, seeming to reenact the event over and over again for years, and for different living spectators. The impressions aren’t always of humans, as animals and various forms of transportation are frequently also reported.

Given the film-like nature of these ghosts, it goes a long way towards explaining why people who have never met will frequently give identical reports of “behavior” and appearances of the ghosts they’ve seen. If the ghost is a playback, if you will, it stands to reason that they’d be seen the same way by whoever sees them. It’s also for this reason that I doubt that the sightings are hallucinations or a mere trick of the imagination, since hallucinations are a fairly personal and unduplicated thing, even if from the same cause.

I realize however, that there are many people who vehemently resist the possibility of the existence of any types of ghosts at all. How then does one account for the sightings of “ghosts” by millions of people, in every culture, over the course of human history? Is it truly easier to believe the vast hoards have imagined the same, sometimes identical, things than to believe that they must have seen something? To believe that a hundred or more individual sightings of the same thing (which is often the case in more famous hauntings) by unrelated persons is a mere coincidence requires far more suspension of disbelief than I’m capable of.

2

The number of sightings is nothing if the quality of the sightings is very poor (and from what I’ve seen of the evidence, they ARE generally very poor). For instance, photo artifacts fool many people into thinking they’ve captured ghosts at work. If there are hundreds of instances of people mistaking these artifacts for ghosts, does that make the reality of the camera taking a picture of a ghost more likely? No: it’s the same mistake every time.

So we really can’t get into this subject without some actual cases to consider the validity of.

The possibility of residual images has long been an interesting speculation, but not one that has much serious support as a reality. First of all, how are the images captured? how are they replayed. It does not good to just say that they are “energy”: that could mean litterally anything, and energy doesn’t normally just sit around in one very specific area for no reason.

3

Yes.

4

BBC ran a couple interesting articles on the perception of ghosts this week:
Ghostly magnetism explained
Ghosts ‘all in the mind’

5

One time I thought I saw the Virgin Mary floating before me, but it turned out to be just an eye-booger.

6

This is a great theory, as long as you accept it without asking any more questions about it. Upon closer examination, it’s just the same assertion (ghosts exist) abstracted into scientific terms. That is in fact usually enough to head off any further questioning… ghosts are sexy, physics isn’t. Nevertheless, it’s still an empty assertion… ghosts exist, a mysterious form of energy exists. The devil (as such) is in the details… what are ghosts made of? What kind of energy?

I like it better when people don’t even attempt to explain ghosts in scientific terms. Ghosts are a manifestation of the spirit of a dead person. What could be simpler? If you believe in God, it makes sense, if you don’t, then it’s a no go. And we can all get on with our exploration of the boarded-up mansion on Graveyard Road on this fine Halloween night.

-fh

7

If millions of people are actually seeing ghosts, then it stands to reason that we’d at least have thousands of reliable photographs of them that can be shown not to be faked. The way we “see” things is by photons hitting receptors in our eyes. The way a camera works is that those same photons hit a piece of film. So where’s the evidence? The amount of objective evidence we have for ghosts is barely enough to fill up a cheesy 1-hour TV special on Fox, and all of the evidence that does exist is highly dubious.

As for the “lots of people have seen them” argument, it’s called argumentum ad populum, and is a common fallacy. Lots of people believe lots of silly things, but that does not necessarily make them true.

8

Of course, this is a very long-standing debate, and one I’ve been very familiar with for a long time.

One really helpful move, that cuts through a lot of pointless debate and argumentative detritis, is to realise that there’s no debate whatosever about whether people have what we can call a ghostly experience. It is undeniably and irrefutably the case that millions do, in every era and every culture.

The real debate is whether ghosts are in front of the eye or behind the eye. Putting it another way, is the ghost in the world or in the mind?

The hypothesis that the ghostly figure is in front of the eye of the witness, and is perceived in the same way that he might perceive the wall or a teacup, is consistent with many faiths and beliefs (which posit a tangible form of life-after-death) and is also consistent with, and supportive of, many emotional feelings and needs.

However, it is not a hypothesis which is well supported by any kind of evidence which can be corroborated independently.

This hypothesis is also plagued with internal inconsistencies - why can a ghost be seen by one person present but not another when both oberservers are identically well-placed to see the figure? Why would light reflect off the ghost (rendering it visible) one moment and not the next? If the ghost is solid, how can it pass through walls or evade touch? If the ghost is not solid, how can it reflect ambient light? Why does the ghost’s appearance almost always coincide with cultural expectations and received errors, even when these are at odds with known facts?

This last point may seem a little opaque, so let me elaborate on it briefly. Good research points to several cases where ghostly visions correspond to what the observer thinks a ghost would or should look like, rather than anything that would correlate with the afterlife-survival theory. For example, a person stays in a haunted house and is told the 17th century Baron who used to own it was cruelly stabbed to death and still haunts the place. The witness duly reports seeing the ghost - but with a very wayward notion of how people dressed in that era. Or without realising that the Baron was actually only 18 years old when he died. Or when the truth is that the house is only 50 years old.

The ghostly appearance of clothing and artefacts is also rather difficult to fit into the afterlife-survival theory, unless clothing and knives and suchlike also have souls.

Subscribers to the ‘ghosts are real’ theory have answers to all of these points. It is up to you whether you find these answers convincing or not. I personally do not… but YMMV.

It is worth mentioning that many ‘ghots are real’ theories require the concept of a ‘soul’, and that this is in itself fraught with philosophical and logical problems, if you want to get into it. (You can read books like ‘Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Parapsychology’ edited by Anthony Flew if you really want to.)

Conversely, the hypothesis that the ghost exists in the mind, and is a mental construct rather than a visual perception, is much more well supported by evidence and entirely consistent with all of the above findings.

I think it makes sense to say that ‘ghosts’ are in the mind. They are an expression or symptom of an emotional response to a place or an event, or a projection of an emotional or mental state. It’s a perfectly real experience, and can be important to the person perceiving the ghost. But not a perception of an external thing, like seeing a wall.

Incidentally, the BBC once made a play called The Stone Tapes which was based on the idea that buildings can act like tape recorders - ‘recording’ imprints of very traumatic events and ‘replaying’ them when the appropriate factors trigger a playback. For it’s time, it was a very good play, and you can still buy it on video from the BBC.

9

One problem with such matters is they tend to be culture-specific. If ghosts were an established fact, we’d expect to see them occur uniformly, including in areas where people do not believe in departed spirits of the dead. Instead, they occur in areas where belief in ghosts are strongest, suggesting that the belief leads to the sightings, rather than the other way around. For example, in the United States, not many people believe in the “little people” of Irish myth, yet in Ireland (so I’ve heard) they’ve gone as far as to reroute major highway projects so as to not disturb them.

Note how the sightings of flying saucers peaked after WWII and have since tapered off.

10

I never thought about that aspect. Heh. Clothing souls.

11

I explain a lot of sightings the same way I explain the voices people hear in their heads. And I explain plenty more the same way I explain how it is that friends of mine can be completely convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that some hottie wants to be more than just friends. And the way I explain that in high school I really believed certain horrible bands had talent. Factors include the following and combinations of the following: Wishful thinking, confusion, hope, peer pressure, and outright mental illness.

Until further evidence appears, that’s my explanation. Given the amount of time we’ve spent working on the problem, I’m not holding my breath for that further evidence.

12

Ghosts arehuman projections of human fears…they have no physical basis. I’m puzzled as to why England, Scotland, and Ireland seem to have the most haunted houses…must point to some cultural thing.
Anyway, I’ve lived in old houses all my life…including one where a murder was committed…haven’t seen a damn thing yet!

13

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I have no idea what this is and wish I’d never seen a reference to it. :frowning:

14

They’re kinda like Weapons of Mass Destruction.
If there aren’t any, how do we explain all the intelligence?

15

<< To believe that a hundred or more individual sightings of the same thing (which is often the case in more famous hauntings) by unrelated persons is a mere coincidence … >>

No, not mere coincidence, but culture-related. The people who think they see ghosts have already heard stories, seen movies and TV shows, read other accounts of what ghosts “look” like. Thus, when a person has a “sighting”, it’s based upon a prior bias of what they “should” see. In short, these sightings are NOT independent.

And, of course, please note that many sightings are outright frauds, for publicity or money or some psychological gain or whatever.

16

I’ve heard numerous reports that around 10% of American students, when asked to locate the United States on a map, choose the wrong location. Of these, the majority Australia.

Now, is it truly easier to believe the vast hoards have made the same, sometimes identical, mistakes rather than to believe that they must have knowledge of a real, secret, ‘shadow America’ hidden away in the remote regions of Australia and guarded by rabid kangaroos flying black helicopters?

To believe that a hundred or more individual instances of the same mistake (which is often the case in many of these tests) by unrelated persons is a mere coincidence requires far more suspension of disbelief than I’m capable of.

17

Of these, the majority choose Australia.

sheesh.

18

Verbs our friends.

19

Damn…the secret’s out now.

('Cept our 'roos don’t have rabies.) :smiley:

20

Also remember, some people still believe in God too (and claim to have seen him / her / it). The only thing that is infinite is human stupidity…