Apparitions, Poltergeists, Phantoms, shades, specters, spirits

Though there are many terms for this, however; the most common one is Ghosts. They all seem to have the same general definition to all of them; an appearance of a dead person. They can also be defined as the “soul” of a dead person, usually viewed as the person themselves but translucent, usually they wouldn’t look exactly like another human being. Sometimes a ghost can just be an invisible presence of a soul. They are usually known for haunting the living as they are known for more evil than good.

In movies they are usually in the genre of Horror, terrorizing the living, but in some rare cases, they could be comforting the living.

A 2013 Harris poll gave results that 42% of Americans actually believe in ghosts. There are a million of YouTube videos, pictures, and TV shows of people sharing their stories or experience of this figment. Sometimes they even have video or photo “proof” which in a lot of cases is a bit of a stretch to say it were a ghost.

Ghosts are believed to be the soul of a dead person that is wandering around because they have unfinished business and cannot rest in peace, thus the haunting of others. Some believe that ghosts can even enter your body, especially religions, thus exorcisms. People even think there are ways to communicate with ghosts and have games such as the Ouija board in an attempt to let the “spirit” communicate with the living. On the bright side, some are comforted by ghosts, usually from a loved one reassuring them that they are okay or that they will be watching over them.

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However, the most common belief of ghosts is that they are all evil and thus most people actually have a fear or phobia of ghosts, and it continues as more horror movies come out with more horrible ideas, that these figments can do just able everything. They can go from simple things such as; moving things around, changing the temperature in the room (usually cold), making noises, opening and closing windows or doors to; wanting to haunt and kill everyone because they are an angered spirit who was done wrong, being able to move objects that could possibly hurt the living, being able to suffocate or throw the living, close doors and trap them in a room, drag them, climb on ceilings, drop things on them, and enter their bodies and completely taking over.

However, in the article titled Ghost by Robert Todd Carroll, gives some other explanations to some of these events that people swear it could have only been due to a ghost. Such as haunted houses, ghosts can be believed to just be wandering around but most likely be attached to a place or a home, usually somewhere where they were murdered or was their own home when they were alive, thus haunted houses and buildings. Carroll gives other insight about these buildings like how they are usually old buildings, which can explain why things fall apart sometimes, random noises and creaks, a lot of old buildings have drafts which can bring the temperature down and move things. A random swift of wind tends to freak people out believing it was an invisible figment, and the draft can also do such things as closing or moving things.

The author of this article even mentions that some information was given from scientists who have actually investigated haunted places and they were able to give actual evidence for the temperature changes and sounds, which were usually drafts from things such as empty spaces behind walls. Infrasound waves were also brought into some explanations as they are low-frequency sound waves that can be felt and even cause things to move or vibrate. Also, an interesting idea was made by the author that never occurred to the mind was that most ghost stories seem to happen at night time, never daytime when everything would be much clearer. In the nighttime, since its dark it is very easy to deceive others and for people to see things that aren’t really there as they cannot see what is actually going on.

In an article titled Ghosts at a Shaker Village, Nickell tells the story of a “haunted” farm, Deacon’s Shop, at Pleasant Hill which was built in 1809. The women who people claimed were the ghosts haunting this area were called Shakers because of their trembling during worships as they were a religious group. Thomas Freece gives insight to the misunderstanding of Shaker ghosts in this area as he was a singer at the Pleasant Hill in 1996. Freece had stated that a lot of the reports of people saying they saw these ghosts, were usually confused with Pleasant Hill employees who happened to wear the style of clothing Shakers wore, to match the theme of the building as it was popular for being the Shakers building back in the day. There were also reports of other strange activity that the maintenance worker helped clear up as well such as the weird noises, it was a very old building and he assured that’s old pipes moan too, not just ghosts, also the creaking sounds because once again, very old buildings.

Other strange happenings such as pots rattling and doors closing were due to forceful wind, and during storms when people reported a repeated sound almost like a knocking or banging, could have been a loose shutter. There was also a guest who had stayed overnight and claimed to have felt “heaviness” and seeing a “series of faces” when she woke up around 3 AM; she also described it as “watching an old movie reel”. Nickell then goes to describe that she is giving a description of “a common ‘waking dream’ that occurs in the twilight between being fully asleep and awake. The heavy feeling is due to the body being still in the sleep mode, and the hallucinatory imagery is common to the experience”. Another man stayed overnight at that same place and reported the exact same thing and compared it to the last guest’s experience. Another article by Nickell, speaks about another haunted area, the ghost town of Bodie, California. The place apparently is filled with haunted houses and other creepy places such as the cemetery. As mentioned with the other haunted house, there were also overnight guests in one of the homes in this ghost town and this woman too felt pressure on her, feeling some kind of presence, fighting against it. However, she too could have just been in a waking dream and had sleep paralysis.

In another article but found on CSI, talks about ghost-hunters on tv shows and their misinterpretations of ghosts along with their illogical actions and reasons for the ghosts when hunting for them. One of their main points was about how the ghost-hunters or investigators were not qualified to be investigating such things and giving proper knowledge. Radford uses the TV show Ghost Hunters and begins to explain how the two men who investigate the scenes work as plumbers during the day, with is a completely different field, and suddenly become investigators at night. And to top it all off, neither of them have any experience in learning or training with any field subjects that investigating these types of scenes would be needed such as science, investigation, forensics, and such.

Radford then speaks in whole for all ghost-hunters about how they use improper investigation methods such as doing the investigation with the lights off, making it much harder to actually observe something and eliminating all logic, and he even mentions that humans rely on light for our visuals, so why are you investigating in the dark? This makes it much easier to deceive people than to have lights to actually let them observe their “proof”. Another main idea presented in this article was that the hunters usually only go to the haunted place for a couple of hours or overnight for an investigation, however; Radford stresses how important sampling is. The hunters go there and see or hear activities such as strange noises, however; they cannot find the extraordinary without knowing the ordinary.

They don’t know what the usual is, maybe the house makes noises due to something specific to the area maybe the doors are opening because of a draft, they don’t know because they don’t take time in investigating the ordinary and staying there for more than just a couple of hours. In another article Radford goes into more detail as to why their shows are usually in the dark and exposes them even more. He compares ghost hunters to magicians, saying they know how to make people view something and being able to make them misperceive things by the angles and lighting. Some ghost hunters even use the excuse that it helps to get the ghosts to come out, however; that is completely untrue when looking at ghost reports as most ghost sightings actually don’t happen in the dark.

There are psychological reasons for why people believe in ghosts, why they swear they just saw something or heard why they think they feel a presence among them, and such. One of those reasons are mental or perceptual sets, this is shown throughout a lot of the articles mentioned as it’s basically when someone sees what they want or expect to see. With the information given, they will see exactly what they expect and the other information pointing to anything else is completely ignored. This is seen in the Shakers article as people heard creaks and other noises that made sense because it was an old building, but assumed it was ghostly moans when they were just pipes. Or when the employees were dressed in Shaker’s clothes to follow the theme of the building as it was owned by them back in the day, but automatically thought they were the ghosts of the shakers because ghosts are what they expect to see in a place known to be haunted.

This goes hand in hand with the tendency to jump to conclusions when we are uncertain, as they would jump to conclusions about them being a ghost or not. Though jumping to conclusions is critical for our survival, like avoiding a situation that doesn’t look good or not eating something that might hurt us, in this case, it just leads to superstition without evidence. Something happened that startled them, and they were too scared to investigate further (as humans usually do) so they jumped to the conclusion of a ghost. A better example for this term would be the repeated knocking when it could be a loose shutter on storm nights from the same article, they were uncertain what else could have caused the noise and were too scared to investigate so they jump to the conclusion, and of course the easiest conclusion as it was already known as a haunted house which somewhat overlaps another term, Availability heuristic.

This is when you use information that is the easiest conclusion to come to react to something that has happened. So, when anyone ever heard a weird noise in any of the haunted houses, the easiest thing to blame it on was the ghosts rather than the house being old, pipes being old, the storm outside, a draft, and then they will avoid the area being too scared to interact. Ghost hunters usually use this to their advantage on their TV shows because they jump to that quickest paranormal solution and they make sure to spook the audience enough so that that’ll be what they’ll jump to as well. Ghost hunters are also very guilty of Confirmation bias along with a lot of people who report ghosts as well. This is when one only takes in the information that they want or already support and ignore any other information that could possibly go against their belief since that’s all they are searching for is what can back up their point further.

Ghost hunters deliberately go to a haunted house and investigate only the paranormal side of things and ignore that other information is possible such as a draft in the house moving something. Lastly, visual illusions can always be a reasonable explanation as our “eyes” can be easily tricked, especially when it is dark. When saying our “eyes can be tricked” it isn’t exactly our eyes fault, it is actually the way your brain and visual system perceived that image and the way you interpreted an image. So really, your visual system in your brain is playing tricks on you, but that’s not as fun of a statement to say. So for an example, if one reported they saw a face in a tinted room, it is very dark and so that object is very shadowy, your eyes take in that image of the shadow just how it is, however it is up to your brain to determine how you’re going to perceive that object and may shape that object more into a face because of your thoughts than really it just being your garbage can in your room.

To conclude, there is always a different perspective for things however scientific evidence seems to be the most logical as it can be backed up rather than just “I saw something”. Our minds can so easily be tricked or even trick themselves without us even being conscious of it, so can we really trust that we just saw a face in that dark room appear? Or that random sound made in your house is there really no other explanation to come from that noise? There’s always a reason for something happening and until something is proven by science, we will never fully accept it, because science uses logic.