I think with haunted houses a couple things make sense. An unnamed sort of energy or some such a thing that in effect the surrounding mass has sort of recorded that we can in fact pick up on (same way you sometimes know you’re being watched without any real indicators) and or simple psychology.
The most intriguing stories to me are ones that seem not to make any sense given the surroundings.
It’s no surprise to me if people claim to see ghosts of civil war soldiers in a house in Charlotte that was a hotel from the time period.
It’s more surprising to hear stories like people seeing a woman in white jumping from the roof of the Ironton prison ( an abandoned men’s prison last operating in the 1950s)
Or it would seem surprising to hear of a native American ghost marveling at a watertower.
Whatever the answer most hauntings seem far more association driven. You don’t really get ghosts walking on stairs beside an intersection where a house used to be.
There also seems to be somewhat of a time limit, you never hear about ghosts In loincloth and Spears. Even 1000 yr old castle ghosts seem to be somewhat more ambiguous… Disembodied lights and such.
I am absolutely positive that there will always be things that science doesn’t have an explanation for at the time. It’s like the number of bugs in a program - once you come up with an explanation for something, that will introduce another dozen things you don’t understand.
I’m also 95% sure that there are things which will not be explainable by science because they are too damn rare. Hard to study something that only happens for a few seconds to only a few people and only every once in a while.
I am also 100% sure that there is no one person right now that can explain everything that can now be explained by science. As such, if you tell me that “science can’t explain it”, I call BS. You can’t speak for science, only for your own understanding of science. You think that people are going to lengths to find rational explanations for something that happened? That’s what scientists do. You want to prove something is outside of scientific understanding, first you gotta let the scientists attempt to explain it. Because if they can explain it and you still hold on to it being “outside of human explanation”, you’re just deluding yourself.
I want to believe. But before I can believe an “paranormal” explanation, I want to make sure there isn’t a normal explanation.
I would love to believe in ghosts and related phenomena but the more I learn about physics, human perception and psychology, the more I find for mundane explanations for these.
I’ve been at the entrance to the chapel at Hampton Court. That area is seemingly chillier than the surrounding area. I’d love to see the physics to explain that (that’s an honest statement - I’m betting that there’s some sort of heat map of the Court which shows that every spot meeting certain criteria are cooler than surrounding areas). That’s as close as I’ve been to an actual haunting.
I’d like to believe that after my father died, he exerted some influence that led me to leave the toxic relationship I was in, and find a much healthier relationship. But honestly, it was more a matter of me learning the lessons I needed to learn, and predictable events happening from there.
Pareidolia is by far the best explanation of most “paranormal” events - we are designed to see patterns, especially certain patterns like human faces and human shapes, and our “software” to do so is far more likely to err on the side of seeing patterns where none exist rather than not seeing something we need to see.
Ursula Vernon has the absolute best argument against Sasquatch. By now, someone would have shot him or sold him weed.
PSA - if you are ever in a situation where you think the house you are in is haunted, get a carbon monoxide detector. CO poisoning at subclinical levels produces fairly realistic delusions.
There is an episode of This American Life on NPR regrading that. In the early 20th century, the family in a house heard furniture moving, and had ghosts sitting on their bed and talking to them.
They had gas lights. Carbon monoxide poisoning produces auditory hallucinations.
This is the problem with things like ghost lights.
You got two factors working against figuring out what they are. First is they are so rare, they are hard to study.
But I feel the second factor is even more the problem. The people best equipped to find the cause believe the lights are a hoax, so they won’t spend any effort to figure them out. Or, they wouldn’t want their reputation ruined by being seen investigating “ghosts”.
I believe there is a perfectly rational, science based cause for ghost lights that makes perfect sense and explains everything, and someday, just like the alternate ending to Big, someone will find it.
The actual problem is that no amount of investigation will dispel beliefs in things like ghosts and/or ghost lights because the believers will say either that the “debunkers” didn’t do it right, or that while they may have disproved one case, all the others haven’t been disproved so it is best to keep an “open mind”. Any claim that serious study into paranormal claims is needed is quickly followed by these excuses when a serious study is put before them.
Oh, I almost forgot the other excuse used by true believers: Skeptics have their own paranormal ability that blocks paranormal and/or psychic events.
My point was that if ghost lights science based caused is discovered, then they won’t be paranormal any longer! They’ll be like St Elmo’s Fire. Scientific, repeatable, understandable.
Anybody that would still believe they are paranormal after that can be dismissed like your average moon hoaxer.
You mean like when the people behind the “Bigfoot” hoax confessed, and everyone agreed that it proved that actual Bigfoots(Bigfeet?) didn’t really exist?
Sorry, but woo doesn’t work that way in most cases.
I had a dream where Elvis Presley had died. I believe I was working night shift at the time, so slept in the day time. The dream consisted of me reading the newspaper headline and it saying that he had died. The next day, either my mom reading the newspaper or we was watching the news (forget which now) we learned that he had died. I told my mom that I dreamed that very thing. I was blown away…for about 10 seconds, anyway. My mom solved the mystery when the first thing she asked was, "Did you have your radio on?
Since the discussion is broadening, I think this deserves a response.
First, on the question of humility. What changed in the Enlightenment was that we refused to continue to be cowed by those making dogmatic claims, those arguing from authority; we would no longer be bullied by bullshitters and we would challenge delusion - including self-delusion. And those who view scientists as arrogant are always those who lack evidence to support their claims. But the essence of the scientific method is to be ruthlessly humble in the face of evidence. And that’s the kind of humility that’s worth having - it has given us modern medicine, space telescopes and iPhones, not to mention a true understanding of where we came from and the nature of our universe.
Second, the widespread misconception that scientists are resistant to the idea of anything that doesn’t fit the current paradigm is unfounded. Data that doesn’t fit current theories are what scientists live for - Nobel Prizes follow from anomalous results. A skeptical urge to find convincing proof should not be mistaken for lack of enthusiasm for the anomalous.
Third, if you think scientists lack the imagination to countenance the bizarre, take a look at quantum mechanics. QM is far weirder and more profoundly counterintuitive than any proposed paranormal phenomena.
