I see dead people...
Like the line from the movie The Sixth Sense, Orange Park based Executive Editor Melody Bussey of the ethereal magazine Ghost! wants you to believe that ghosts exist and you can see them too. The magazine which is available on the Internet is a hodge podge of New Age mysticism, ghost stories, ghost hunter club and ghost tour information, "scientific" sounding lingo and bad jokes (This is not an insult. The editors even admit it themselves).The quality of the writing is uneven at times, but for the most part the magazine is well written. The look of the magazine is glossy and professional. Many stories appear to be well researched and often interesting. With about 10,000 subscribers nationwide, this magazine is likely to be somewhat influential in defining the nature of ghost hunting among its enthusiasts. The magazine's creative team includes veterans of the New Age movement and the mass media. With all of this going for them, why am I not on board as an enthusiastic supporter?
Despite all of their attempts, the editors of the magazine do not make a particularly compelling case for life after death and ghostly visitations. While astounding anecdotes, ghostly pictures and EVP sounds may sell out the magazines, they do not hold up very well in scientific circles. First, I only have the memories of the authors when it comes to the details of the anecdotes found in the magazines. Not being a primary witness myself to the events described in the stories, I can only hope that I have all the details that I need to understand what transpired on that day. As any police detective will tell you, the facts of the case are often filtered through the beliefs, prejudices and perspectives of the witnesses who are telling their versions of the story. Since police cannot always rely upon the witnesses to provide to them an unadulterated version of the truth, they also have to consider the physical evidence available at the crime scene. They have to look for inconsistencies in the witness testimony. They have to compare witness testimony to known facts to find details that are unlikely to have occurred (i.e. convicted child murderer Susan Smith tripped herself up when she claimed that she was carjacked after stopping at an intersection with no other car around. The traffic light at the intersection at which she was allegedly carjacked stays green when there is no car in the cross street so she would not have stopped at the intersection under those circumstances). Anecdotes cannot be taken on face value. No matter how intriguing they may sound, they only point to something that needs to be studied under better controlled circumstances.
Second, pictures and sounds are equally unreliable. When I see pictures or hear sounds on the Internet or in print, I usually know little about the quality of the recording process involved in creating the pictures and sounds. What type of camera or voice recorder was used? Under what conditions were the recordings made, i.e. poor lighting, noisy surroundings? Under uncontrolled settings, visual and aural illusions are possible. Dust and other airborne particles near or on the lens can become orbs. Lens flare can become ghostly apparitions. Sound recordings that are barely audible can be interpreted as words to the true believer who turns up the volume high enough. Do not even get me started on the number of computer programs that you can use to fake ghostly pictures and sounds. I would not trust any picture/sound evidence unless I could verify its authenticity and conditions under which it was made.
Beyond that, I have found little in the magazine to justify belief in ghosts. Granted, the magazine was clearly for those already convinced about the reality of the paranormal. It did not appear to harbor any ambition about convincing skeptics like me that ghosts exist. But where is the science in ghost hunting? It takes more than fancy equipment to become scientists. It takes a mindset geared towards rigorously gathered observations under controlled circumstances and careful conclusions that do not stretch the evidence to its breaking point. It also requires duplication and peer review of experimental results by other scientists.
Detecting a cold spot in a cemetery and immediately concluding that you are in the presence of a ghost is hardly consistent with the scientific method. Could there be other possibilities? A cold draft of wind? A malfunction or misuse of the thermometer? Would it not be wise to look at all possible explanations and consider the explanation that best fits the data?
The way that scientists determine which theory is the most valid is to test predictions made by the theory. I am not talking about making predictions about the future like psychics claim to do. Instead, scientific theories claim to explain natural phenomena. If a specific theory truly understands the phenomena, it should be able to tell us what will happen under certain circumstances. An experiment that manipulates these circumstances and measuring the resultant effects of this manipulation will tell us if the theory's prediction is correct. If a theory's predictions fit the data better than other theories, it becomes the leading theory that explains the phenomena. This is what ghost hunters need to do if they want their ideas to be taken seriously by science. If they can establish a theory that explains the phenomena found in haunted houses better than the theories provided by skeptics, then scientists will take notice of their claims. I read a lot of scientific sounding speculation in this magazine, but certainly not a scientifically testable theory.
I am amazed at lack of scientific thinking found in some of the articles in the magazine. One author contends that a spirit is made of electromagnetic energy that escape from someone's bodies at death and carries an imprint of his or her personality. Granted, electromagnetic energy can be used to transport information (video, music) from one location to another. This is how radios and televisions work. But can electromagnetic energy can store our personalities and memories? Can it store intelligence and problem solving ability? Can it store creativity and morality? Even if it can store all this, what is the mechanism for bringing to life the personality stored in the electromagnetic energy? Even a radio signal needs a stereo receiver if you want to hear music on your favorite radio station. You really have to think out these things before you say them. Besides, electromagnetic energy is not stationary as anyone knows when he or she turns on a lamp in a dark room and the room is suddenly flooded with light. Does the ghostly electromagnetic energy run around in circles when it haunts a particular room in a house?
Equally troublesome is the assertion that since energy cannot be destroyed and "transcends" our death, our emotions survive death and affect our appearance when we become ghosts. This is similar and is about as plausible as the claim by psychic consultant Jill Cook-Richards that since we are energy and since energy cannot be destroyed, the energy of our spirit is not destroyed upon death. Yes, energy cannot be destroyed. However, it can change form. The chemical energy contained in the food that we eat ends up as heat energy to keep our body temperature stable or kinetic energy when it powers our muscles in motion. When chemical energy changes its form, the transformed energy loses its usefulness to the human body after it has accomplished its task within the human body. It does not hang around looking for something else to do. There is certainly no basis to believe that it automatically becomes a ghost upon death. This is why we have to continue to eat food. We need to replenish the energy that has transformed itself into obsolescence once it has done its job.
In yet another article, the author suggests that the eleven space dimensions of the string theory allow the ghost to occupy one of these dimensions and still interact with us in our three space dimensions. This is what I find maddening about New Age thinking. Sometimes, it would be better that New Agers dismiss science altogether instead of wrapping scientifically valid ideas around unproved paranormal phenomena in ways never intended by the originator(s) of the ideas. The same problem is found in the association by New Agers between quantum entanglement and ESP. It does not matter that quantum entanglement does not allow the sending of information from one point to the another as expected with ESP. I guess if the concept is useful for promoting the paranormal, the details are unimportant. In this case, string theory is not even proved yet, but it somehow holds the key to the existence of ghosts for some reason.
If this was not enough, another article talks about the association between auras and orbs. Auras are another paranormal silliness that has yet to be detected by science. To associate them with ghosts was the last straw for me. I have said in a previous article that I believe that if the supernatural exists, it can be studied like any natural phenomena. However, New Agers have to drop their fuzzy logic and their endless need to believe without adequate proof. I also believe that scientists have to be willing to consider non-natural explanations if they are confirmed by the scientific method. Until both sides of the paranormal question give in a little and decide on a common set of experimental protocols to verify the existence of paranormal phenomena, the stalemate will continue and we will never get closer to the truth. As for the Ghost! magazine, it has yet to understand science and how science arrives at a greater understanding of our universe. Until it does so, it offers us no great insights on whether there is anything beyond our mortal existence.
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© 2005 Curtis Wolf"