I recently read about an interesting haunting case in the US. It was very frustrating. There was some interesting photographic evidence that could easily have been tested to eliminate natural causes. Instead, it was just accepted at face value! The 'investigators' just talked about entities, as though a few fuzzy photos taken in unknown, uncontrolled cirmustances proved anything!
It is such a shame because hauntings are very interesting, even if you think there are no ghosts involved. The wrong people investigate hauntings!
But does that stop the right people from investigating hauntings?Originally Posted by Mulder
I don't much care if the wrong people investigate hauntings, I do care if the right people don't.
To be brutally honest, I concur. Groups who go on investigations and collect "evidence" usually have no idea what constitutes good evidence (or indeed any evidence at all) then they have taken their images, footage, evps etc thats as far as their "investimagation" goes. They dont perform interesting experiments, they do not understand how to eliminate bias from the results etc. It just seems like a complete waste of time, because nothing seem to come from this except reinforcement of bias.
A few 'right' people investigate but they are in a tiny minority. Better than nothing, I suppose. I just get upset at all those wasted opportunities!
The big problem is that because they don't know how to investigate properly at all, if anything truly unusual or significant occurred, they wouldn't know how to spot it!
The most ardent ghost enthusiasts are probably the people least likely to discover a ghost (or whatever) should they exist!!
Of course, ghosts most likely don't exist. However, this still means that ghost and haunting experiences need investigating and who knows what interesting results they may throw up?
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I think most if not all are probably psychological in nature, or perhaps misatributation due to lack of understanding of the stimuli. I do hope theres at least one "real ghost" though, I mean how sweet would that be?
Does anyone know of any proper scientific investigations into ghosts and hauntings? Psychic ability has been tested and the books by Richard Wiseman demonstrate his investigations into everyday events that could otherwise be interpreted as paranormal. I am not aware of any bone fide scientific group doing any such studies into ghosts but this is the place to be put right on that one.
Wiseman has done ghosts. Hampton Court and Edinburgh.
The problem with "scientific" investigation of ghosts is that you don't find anything. Since every ghost sighting is either misinterpretation of data or hoax, there's nothing there if you do research properly. And who wants to spend week after week, month after month, visiting "haunted houses" only to find nothing at all.
I am reminded of one occasion when I was on the Kilroy TV show, subject "Ghosts". One of the skeptics pointed out that every story so far in the programme had involved someone waking up, or being in bed in the middle of the night. A woman said: "Well I certainly wasn't asleep when I had my experience ... blah blah ... and I was so frightened that I jumped out of bed at 2 in the morning!" There wasn't a single story with anything remotely resembling evidence to be investigated, there wasn't a single story that couldn't be explained away as dreaming and imagination. A couple of the "witnesses" very clearly had mental issues and should not have been exposed to ridicule on TV.
Generally, apart from obviously fake photos, the only "evidence" for ghosts these days are photos of "orbs", or "specks of dust" as people who aren't idiots call them.
We need some evidence that there is something there to investigate at all before talking about proper scientific investigation. If ghosts are worth bothering with then what about the tooth fairy? Why no proper scientific investigation of that, eh? Or the giant purple walrus that lives in my garden? Is the only reason we don't know much about it because nobody has conducted a proper investigation using real experiments?
A disturbing amount of people are prepared to do just that. However possibly you might be underestimating the appeal of hanging around for hours in the dark with members of the opposite sex for those with who may not stand up to much scrutiny in the daylight and who have time on their hands...And who wants to spend week after week, month after month, visiting "haunted houses" only to find nothing at all.
Exactly. Fairies are shockingly neglected by paranormalists and parapsychologists and in that Water Intention Experiment no one except Bunny and I are sparing a thought for the water pixies...
It's a travesty!!
Last edited by dalriada; 17th June 2008 at 04:12 PM.
Point taken. (dalriada - perhaps we should leave the water pixies to take care of themselves?)
As for investigating haunt reports, I like this idea: http://www.assap.org/newsite/articles/Xenonormal.html
Most haunting reports are probably due to mundane factors but there must be some that require a much deeper investigation and understanding.
I like this because the idea is to look for natural, even if highly unusual, causes for these experiences. It is the correct way to do it IMO: understand and account for natural causes before assuming paranormal ones.
If hauntings are genuinely paranormal then this approach will also stand the best chance of discovering them as such in the same way that science hones in on 'truth' by attempting to falsify hypotheses and theories.
Here's an excellent example of research into a haunting that came up with a strong case for complex magnetic fields playing a part in inducing or enhancing haunt-type experiences: http://ejp.org.uk/ExampleArticles/Br...send_EJP20.pdf
I don't know how much other work of this quality is being done. A few examples would be nice if anyone has any.
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As someone who has investigated many hauntings (with at least with some semblence of scientific objectivity), I cannot agree with this! I would say that MOST cases are misperception, a few are hallucination (eg sleep paralysis), a very small number are hoaxes (far fewer than you might imagine) while a small number remain unexplained. That isn't to say they won't be explained in future, either as science moves on or more information about the case becomes available. However, to say "every ghost sighting is either misinterpretation of data or hoax" does not accord with my experience nor that of other serious researchers.
When you get several independent witnesses (unaware of each other's reports or the reputation, if any, of a site) reporting the same thing in the same place over a period of time, it clearly merits investigation. Such cases do, indeed, deserve months of research.
However, many 'cases' these days are of the variety where it is unlikely that any serious case can be made to investigate a place on the basis of ancient, doubtful and inconsistent witness reports. Worse, it may be on the basis of previous extremely doubtful 'investigations'! These, I agree, are generally not worth the effort.
Last edited by Mulder; 2nd June 2008 at 02:08 PM.
The problem with ghost investigations that has been pointed out to me, and I have been persuaded by the argument - is why ghosts in particular? For ghosts to exist, then the laws of science as we know them would have to be so severely modified that such a supernatural phenomenon would be virtually impossible. Ghosts therefore, are surely in the same category as fairies, unicorns and wardrobe monsters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvIy_...eature=related
and so why not investigate these as well, just as vigourously?
I don't investigate ghosts specifically, I investigate hauntings. I would define a haunting as a specific location where several anomalous phenomena have been reported over a period of time. In fact, only a minority of hauntings involve sightings of ghosts. Most hauntings involve seemingly pointless, unexplained sounds, odd lights, odd sights, occasional apparent object movement ('apparent' because the objects are usually found to have moved rather than been observed so to do) and sometimes apparitions. There is, thus, not much to connect ghosts with hauntings.
The idea that ghosts cause hauntings is deeply ingrained in popular mythology. This is exploited by the TV ghost hunting programmes who use 'investigation techniques' based on that assumption. This is then imitated by ghost hunting groups.
Regarding fairies and so on. I would gladly investigate such phenomena. However, like UFOs they generally occur one time only at a particular location. Hauntings, by contrast, don't move.
Apparently one of the most the important things to remember when investigating ghosts is To Never Inhale.
Seriously. This sort of careless breathing activity could get you well-and-truly haunted- at least according to the Parascience Website
(C)"How then can these imprinted memories be replayed, this could be by a reverse of the recording mechanism for example - the witness has the correct brain physiology and is able to read these recordings as they are played back. Perhaps more simply, the witness may inhale a droplet of water vapour from the air that contains a memory imprinted within it - as this molecule reaches the brain it triggers a wave of copies across the Cerebral Spinal Fluid and thus the brain sees the event as a playback of the encoded events. "
I dread to think of the consequences of swallowing.....
Last edited by dalriada; 16th September 2008 at 01:53 PM. Reason: The original Wacky article has now been modified...heheh
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