Part IV - A Spirited Debate: What are Ghosts Anyway?

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

 Included in Part III are the opinions of Rob Conover, Paranormal Investigator and former Ghost Buster, Dr. Robert Baker, Professor Emeritus at University of Kentucky.

 Few questions are like to elicit a stronger response than the question, “do you believe in ghosts?” The naysayers will quickly and adamantly deny any such possibility and call you a fool for asking. The non-committal’s will shrug and move on to another, more comfortable topic. And the dabblers and the believers will expound for long minutes recalling odd experiences they have had.

Truthfully, few topics are as divisive as this one. Those who deny the possibility often do so from vehement religious beliefs.  And, make no mistake, science became the religion of the 20^th century, with its scriptures as dogmatically adhered to by its followers as any religious zealot.  Proponents of science vehemently defend the notion of science being able to answer all questions with a rationale answer. The world around us, they tell us, is the only reality, and anything unexplained simply a riddle not yet solved. 

On the other hand, those who believe in the paranormal have a vested interest and will fight to support their beliefs just as strongly.  After all, a belief in spirits is a belief that the soul survives death. And that is a very attractive notion.

Whether you’re a believer, fence sitter or fierce non-believer it is undeniable that people have been seeing (and hearing, and smelling) ghosts since the dawn of mankind.  Not every person among them is a fool, charlatan or notoriety seeker. Indeed most people who experience something paranormal are absolutely normal. Many are reluctant to even talk about their experience, afraid of being ridiculed.  The paranormal knows no class bounds. Emperors and peasants, politicians, and garbage collectors, a paranormal experience can happen (and has) to anyone.  (See my series on famous people and the paranormal to find out what the many of the greatest minds thought on the subject.)

So what is the explanation for these odd events?  There are as many answers to that question as there are people who have experiences.  Compiled here are the opinions of many experts both within and without the field. These are the words of writers, thinkers, scientists, college professors and lifelong investigators.  This is what they have to say about the possibility of ghosts. 

Pros

What Are They

A former Private Investigator, Rob Conover started his career with the paranormal as a non-believer. He set out to disprove a haunting at a building, and quickly changed his mind. “I was very sure there was nothing there and things started to happen to prove otherwise. And as I walked through the door, and as I did it felt like thousands of little, cold icicles blew through me and it got quiet, and I said, ‘they’re gone. And at that point I said, ‘there is something to this.’…. When I walk into an area where there is a spirit there is a feeling that comes over me that is very hard to describe. The nearest I can get is to say is that it is like a cool electrical shock without any pain from toes to head….….When you come face to face with it, then you have to deal with it as reality, because when you’re face to face with something it is reality.”

Rob Conover

Paranormal Investigator

Cons

University of Kentucky Professor Emeritus, Robert Baker (now deceased) was an avowed ‘ghost buster’ believed, “there are no haunted places, just haunted people (Bernstein, 2005).” He argued that in his 50 years studying ghostly phenomena, he came across nothing that deterred him from that stance. According to Washington Post writer, Adam Bernstein, Baker was first and foremost a skeptic, but a skeptic that worked with people who believed they were being haunted or tortured by “unexplained forces.” Baker believed that one should start from a position of non-belief when dealing with unusual phenomena – “ghosts, UFO abductions, lake monsters, remembrances of past lives (Bernstein, 2005).” 

Instead, Baker thought that odd experiences were better explained as “mental states.” For example, he felt hallucinations could explain alien abductions, or "waking dreams," might explain ghostly phenomena seen, “in the twilight zone between fully awake and fully asleep (Bernstein, 2005).” Quoted in the 1997 documentary Hauntings, Baker concludes that ghosts are “an invention of the human mind. And they have invented ghosts because they provide a great deal of psychological satisfaction in people who believe in them. It fills a gap, a void in their lives (Hauntings, 1997).’”

Robert Baker, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Noted “Ghost Buster”

Resources

Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook; Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press, LLC. Dallas, Texas.

 Documentary Produced by The History Channel (1997) The Unexplained: Hauntings.

Conover, Rob. A former private investigator turned paranormal Investigator http://robconover.net/default.aspx

 Steiger, Brad (2003) Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, MI.

 
Taylor, Troy (2007) Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings. American Ghost Society. White Chapel Press: Dark Haven Entertainment. Decatur, Illinois.

Part III - A Spirited Debate: What are Ghosts Anyway?

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

 Included in Part III are the opinions of Brad Steiger, Author, and Michael Persinger, Ph.D.in Neuroscience, Laurentian University.

Few questions are like to elicit a stronger response than the question, “do you believe in ghosts?” The naysayers will quickly and adamantly deny any such possibility and call you a fool for asking. The non-commital’s will shrug and move on to another, more comfortable topic. And the dabblers and the believers will expound for long minutes recalling odd experiences they have had.

Truthfully, few topics are as divisive as this one. Those who deny the possibility often do so from vehement religious beliefs.  And, make no mistake, science became the religion of the 20^th century, with its scriptures as dogmatically adhered to by its followers as any religious zealot.  Proponents of science vehemently defend the notion of science being able to answer all questions with a rationale answer. The world around us, they tell us, is the only reality, and anything unexplained simply a riddle not yet solved. 

On the other hand, those who believe in the paranormal have a vested interest and will fight to support their beliefs just as strongly.  After all, a belief in spirits is a belief that the soul survives death. And that is a very attractive notion.

Whether you’re a believer, fence sitter or fierce non-believer it is undeniable that people have been seeing (and hearing, and smelling) ghosts since the dawn of mankind.  Not every person among them is a fool, charlatan or notoriety seeker. Indeed most people who experience something paranormal are absolutely normal. Many are reluctant to even talk about their experience, afraid of being ridiculed.  The paranormal knows no class bounds. Emperors and peasants, politicians, and garbage collectors, a paranormal experience can happen (and has) to anyone.  (See my series on famous people and the paranormal to find out what the many of the greatest minds thought on the subject.)

So what is the explanation for these odd events?  There are as many answers to that question as there are people who have experiences.  Compiled here are the opinions of many experts both within and without the field. These are the words of writers, thinkers, scientists, college professors and lifelong investigators.  This is what they have to say about the possibility of ghosts. 

Pros

No Justification Necessary

Brad Steiger, author and co-author of some 150 books on the subject of the paranormal, says, “After researching the paranormal for more than 50 years, I spend little time these days theorizing about what ghosts may be. I accept the reality that within each of us there is a spiritual essence that is imperishable and eternal. I completely accept the existence of spirit phenomena, and I contend that it is extremely multifaceted. While I believe it may be difficult to separate ghostly manifestations into definitions of type and purpose that are truly distinct from one another, I submit that real ghosts and restless spirits often fit into the following categories: spirit residue, spirits of the dead, poltergeists, spirit parasites and spirit masqueraders (Steiger, 2003).”

 What They Are

However, Steiger presents a theory for ghostly activity that he borrows from his colleague Brian A. Schill of the American Society for Paranormal Research and investigation and author of the book entitled The DNA of Ghosts.  Schill attempts to explain the existence of ghosts in scientific terms.  The body, Schill explains, has a “bioelectric cycle” functioning at 60 Hz. This cycle allows our nervous system, brain, heart and organ to both function and communicate with each other within the organism itself.   If one considers the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed, “we are able to recognize that two-thirds of our total existence is in the form of intangible energy (Steiger, 2003).” What then happens to this energy (which cannot be destroyed but only transformed) when we die?

Schill says that when we die the bioelectric energy is released out of the body into the environment, where one of two things happens.  This “unconscious energy” may disperse freely into the environment and cause no manifestation thereafter. Or the energy may, “through covalent bonding” attach itself to an object or building to which the person was attached and remain in the environment. This covalent bonding can occur anywhere, according to Schill, that has an “electron deficit” which Steiger contends is the reason for repeat hauntings. This is likely to occur when the energy is quickly released (as in an accidental or tragic death). The energy “coagulates” within, “’the local environment over a short period of time, maybe only a couple of minutes or so, and amass to such a degree that the greater portion that was originally in the body has now become self-aware outside of the body.’ Psychological forces of conscious will may also trigger this type of reaction.  When self-awareness occurs, there is generally a degree of confusion because of the new form that the person is in, one of pure energy rather than a physically manifested body (Schill, Steiger, 2003).”

Steiger suggests that there are three striking similarities that paranormal investigators have documented over the years that rather verify Schill’s theory.  First, most haunting phenomena involve low-level electromagnetic field disruptions, generally falling within 3 to 100 mill gauss (Mg).  The low-level disturbances are caused, according to Steiger, by the “intangible bio-magnetic field that makes up the ghost (Steiger, 2003).” He also contends that this bio-magnetic field causes hiccups and malfunctioning of electric devices within the environment.

A second similarity is the occurrence of “cold spots.”  Steiger suggests that air temperature drops somewhere between 10 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit during paranormal activity.  These drops are thought to be due to the “unintentional attraction and condensation of free electrons in an environment.  The condensing of an energy field leaves a momentary void of heat in the area (Steiger, 2003).”

And the third similarity is that many ghostly phenomena is caught using devices that measure in the infrared spectrum  a lower level energy spectrum – which lies just below the visible spectrum of energy and light which we can see with the naked eye.  This lower level of electromagnetic energy seems to be the area of the spectrum, “where the greatest number of manifestations take place (Steiger, 2003).”  Because this lower spectrum borders the lower portion of the visible spectrum where we see red, orange and yellow, he feels that is might explain why entities are often caught only with our peripheral vision versus our “direct line of sight.” “Manifestations seen with peripheral vision also attract the attention of our unburdened subconscious rather than our conscious mind, which bears the fears of social restriction and repression when we experience something that is out of the ordinary (Steiger, 2003).”

Brad Steiger
Author

 Cons

 

Geophysical Forces

Neuroscientist, Michael Persinger suggests a more natural explanation for feelings associated with a haunting. He suggests geophysical forces cause the feelings of a haunt. “’When you have geophysical forces focused, even small ones, even tiny ones in the view of geophysical forces, and you focus them into a small space for a brief time, you can get tremendous magnetic fields generated. If that takes place you can get fluorescent and light thresholds generated much like the will-o-the-wisp or electro-static discharges.  And if they are above the illumino-static threshold you can photograph them just like any other electrostatic phenomena.”

 Persinger goes on to say that these geophysical anomalies occur at many supposedly haunted locations, often intersecting with the brainwaves of those in the area.  He has tested this theory in his laboratory with some success “Many of the kinds of patterns of fields that are generated of haunted areas that we have found are very complicated, brief transient fields of erratic forces. If these forces stimulate the brain you can have feelings of a presence, sounds of footsteps or movements or voices, and of course that ever-present feeling that there is something looking at you (Persinger, 1997).” He concludes that highly creative individuals are more sensitive to these electrostatic forces, which causes them to report more haunting phenomena (Hauntings, 1997).”

Michael Persinger, Ph.D.
Neuroscientist, Laurentian University

Resources

Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook; Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press, LLC. Dallas, Texas.

Documentary Produced by The History Channel (1997) The Unexplained: Hauntings.

 Conover, Rob. A former private investigator turned paranormal Investigator http://robconover.net/default.aspx

Steiger, Brad (2003) Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, MI.

Taylor, Troy (2007)  Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings. American Ghost Society. White Chapel Press: Dark Haven Entertainment. Decatur, Illinois.

Part II - A Spirited Debate: What are Ghosts Anyway?

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

Included in Part II are the opinions of Dr. Loyd Auerbach, Parapsychologist and Professor at JFK University, Dr. Robert Baker, Professor Laureate, University of Kentucky and Dr. Ronald Finucane, Historian.

Few questions are like to elicit a stronger response than the question, “do you believe in ghosts?” The naysayers will quickly and adamantly deny any such possibility and call you a fool for asking. The non-committal’s will shrug and move on to another, more comfortable topic. And the dabblers and the believers will expound for long minutes recalling odd experiences they have had.

Truthfully, few topics are as divisive as this one. Those who deny the possibility often do so from vehement religious beliefs.  And, make no mistake; science became the religion of the 20^th century, with its scriptures as dogmatically adhered to by its followers as any religious zealot.  Proponents of science vehemently defend the notion of science being able to answer all questions with a rationale answer. The world around us, they tell us, is the only reality, and anything unexplained simply a riddle not yet solved. 

On the other hand, those who believe in the paranormal have a vested interest and will fight to support their beliefs just as strongly.  After all, a belief in spirits is a belief that the soul survives death. And that is a very attractive notion.

Whether you’re a believer, fence sitter or fierce non-believer it is undeniable that people have been seeing (and hearing, and smelling) ghosts since the dawn of mankind.  Not every person among them is a fool, charlatan or notoriety seeker. Indeed most people who experience something paranormal are absolutely normal. Many are reluctant to even talk about their experience, afraid of being ridiculed.  The paranormal knows no class bounds. Emperors and peasants, politicians, and garbage collectors, a paranormal experience can happen (and has) to anyone.  (See my series on famous people and the paranormal to find out what the many of the greatest minds thought on the subject.)

So what is the explanation for these odd events?  There are as many answers to that question as there are people who have experiences.  Compiled here are the opinions of many experts both within and without the field. These are the words of writers, thinkers, scientists, college professors and lifelong investigators.  This is what they have to say about the possibility of ghosts. 

Pros

The Psi’s Have It

Loyd Auerbach has a Ph.D. in Parapsychology and is a professor at JFK University in Northern California.  He is an author, long-time paranormal investigator and a mentalist performer.  In his book, A Paranormal Casebook: Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium he makes the same point as does Taylor.  He notes that the term ghost is used broadly and generically to describe a whole host of phenomena. He lists three broad categories that he says parapsychologists agree to use, although he concedes that sometimes activity can indicate a combination of the three. He lists apparitions as the first category. “An apparition is our personality (or spirit, soul, consciousness, mind, or whatever you want to call it) surviving the death of the body, and capable of interaction with the living (and presumably other apparitions). It is pure consciousness….Apparitions are seen, heard, felt, or smelled…by people through the process of telepathic communication (Auerbach, 2005).”  Because the entity has no form, they must send information telepathically to a receiver, whose brain’s process the signals and interprets them.

Hauntings are the second main category Auerbach describes. He says hauntings are recorded stimuli which become embedded in the environment - what parapsychologists refer to as Place Memory. Visual images, smells, sounds and emotions all appear to be able to embed themselves into a location and those who experience phenomena are doing so telepathically (psychically). “Objects we’re told, ‘record’ their entire history, and some can decipher that with psi [the new term for telepathy] (Auerbach, 2005).”  While the stimulus radiates and is perceived and interpreted by the receiver, the ‘haunting’ is without consciousness.

 
The third category of ghosts are poltergeists (a German word meaning noisy ghost).  Auerbach takes the popular view that poltergeists are not ghosts at all but disturbances caused by the psi ability of a living agent. In poltergeist cases the main phenomena are physical effects – knocking sounds, objects levitating, objects appearing or disappearing, unusual behavior of electrical appliances etc.  “The model we work from is called recurrent spontaneous psycho kinesis, or RSPK.  It is PK (psycho kinesis) that occurs without conscious control…It doesn’t come from a ghost or apparition but someone living or working in the environment… (Auerbach, 2005).”  Poltergeist experts agree that the human agents in poltergeist cases are most often psychologically distressed teenagers.

Justification

According to Auerbach, only apparitions are a soul or consciousness of the departed.  He says that the theory of the apparition depends on the belief of consciousness.  “Unfortunately, the existence of consciousness and an understanding  of what it is or might be is still up in the air as far as mainstream science is concerned….If we can’t prove consciousness in the body/brain where we assume it is, how can we prove the existence of consciousness outside the body?”  Auerbach sidesteps the issue of needing to prove the existence of ghosts scientifically by stating that parapsychology is primarily a social science, though parapsychologists do bring in instrumentation to measure activity.  “The best evidence,” he says, “comes from people (witnesses). The best cases are those where there are multiple witnesses and information is provided by the ghost that can be verified later (Auerbach, 2005).”

Loyd Auerbach, Ph.D.

Professor and Parapsychologist

Cons

 Human Constructs

Dr. Ronald Finucane, Historian, has an unusual take on the whole ghostly debate. He says essentially that ghosts are a construct created by grieving people as a defense mechanism.  However, he’s says that simply because they were created by the mind doesn’t mean that for that person (people) they don’t exist.

“Ghosts can be used by particular members of the family as a method of self-defense…psychological self-defense, when things are going badly in the rest of the family’s existence. Perhaps this is a way of seizing upon a certain amount of certainty for the people involved, or the individuals involved….In a sense ghosts are in people’s heads, but in another sense, culturally and emotionally, they do exist for them. Indeed for many other people in our society, they are a human construct, so is music, so is poetry. I mean we have to accept these things, these ghosts are a construct of the human mind (Hauntings, 1997).”

Ronald Finucane, Ph.D.
Author of Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead & Cultural Transformation
Professor of Medieval History

 University of Kentucky Professor Emeritus, Robert Baker (now deceased) was an avowed ‘ghost buster’ believed, “there are no haunted places, just haunted people (Bernstein, 2005).” He argued that in his 50 years studying ghostly phenomena, he came across nothing that deterred him from that stance. According to Washington Post writer, Adam Bernstein, Baker was first and foremost a skeptic, but a skeptic that worked with people who believed they were being haunted or tortured by “unexplained forces.”

Baker believed that one should start from a position of non-belief when dealing with unusual phenomena – “ghosts, UFO abductions, lake monsters, remembrances of past lives (Bernstein, 2005).”  Instead, Baker thought that odd experiences were better explained as “mental states.” For example, he felt hallucinations could explain alien abductions, or "waking dreams," might explain ghostly phenomena seen, “in the twilight zone between fully awake and fully asleep (Bernstein, 2005).” Quoted in the 1997 documentary Hauntings, Baker concludes that ghosts are “an invention of the human mind. And they have invented ghosts because they provide a great deal of psychological satisfaction in people who believe in them. It fills a gap, a void in their lives (Hauntings, 1997).’”

Robert Baker, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Noted “Ghost Buster”
 

Resources

 Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook; Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press, LLC. Dallas, Texas.

 

Bernstein, A. (2005) Obituary: “Psychologist, ‘ghost buster’ Robert Baker.”

Washington Post, August 13, 2005 12:00 AM.

Documentary Produced by The History Channel (1997) The Unexplained: Hauntings.

Conover, Rob. a former private investigator turned paranormal Investigator http://robconover.net/default.aspx

Steiger, Brad (2003)  Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, MI.

Taylor, Troy (2007)  Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings. American Ghost Society. White Chapel Press: Dark Haven Entertainment. Decatur, Illinois.

Part I - A Spirited Debate: What are Ghosts Anyway?

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

 Included in Part I are the opinions of Troy Taylor, ghost hunter and author, Leon Lederman, Nobel winning Physicist,

Few questions are like to elicit a stronger response than the question, “do you believe in ghosts?” The naysayers will quickly and adamantly deny any such possibility and call you a fool for asking. The non-committal’s will shrug and move on to another, more comfortable topic. And the dabblers and the believers will expound for long minutes recalling odd experiences they have had.

Truthfully, few topics are as divisive as this one. Those who deny the possibility often do so from vehement religious beliefs.  And, make no mistake, science became the religion of the 20^th century, with its scriptures as dogmatically adhered to by its followers as any religious zealot.  Proponents of science vehemently defend the notion of science being able to answer all questions with a rationale answer. The world around us, they tell us, is the only reality, and anything unexplained simply a riddle not yet solved. 

On the other hand, those who believe in the paranormal have a vested interest and will fight to support their beliefs just as strongly.  After all, a belief in spirits is a belief that the soul survives death. And that is a very attractive notion.

Whether you’re a believer, fence sitter or fierce non-believer it is undeniable that people have been seeing (and hearing, and smelling) ghosts since the dawn of mankind.  Not every person among them is a fool, charlatan or notoriety seeker. Indeed most people who experience something paranormal are absolutely normal. Many are reluctant to even talk about their experience, afraid of being ridiculed.  The paranormal knows no class bounds. Emperors and peasants, politicians, and garbage collectors, a paranormal experience can happen (and has) to anyone.  (See my series on famous people and the paranormal to find out what the many of the greatest minds thought on the subject.)

So what is the explanation for these odd events?  There are as many answers to that question as there are people who have experiences.  Compiled here are the opinions of many experts both within and without the field. These are the words of writers, thinkers, scientists, college professors and lifelong investigators.  This is what they have to say about the possibility of ghosts.

Pros

Justification

Long-time paranormal investigator, Troy Taylor, is the author of 50 books on the subject of ghosts, and founder of the American Ghost Society of Illinois.  With his vast experience investigating he admits that he has experienced events that defy rational explanation.  He understands that science mocks any hint of the supernatural, but says that this doesn’t mean that hauntings are not real. “Unfortunately, the supernatural does not conform to the idea of repeatable experiments. We can measure, document and record, but ghosts do no perform on command, which is what scientists demand….Thanks to this, science tells us ghosts cannot exist (Taylor, 2007).” 

 Taylor points out that, despite the stance the scientific community takes, many Americans believe in the possibility of the supernatural.  “Nationwide polls tell us that more than 1 in 2 Americans believe that houses can be haunted and more than 20% believe that people can communicate with the dead (Taylor, 2007).”

He goes on to point out that people have been reporting experiences from before written history, and that they still occur today in our so called ‘modern age.’  This he says makes the scientific community uncomfortable, “Not because they are afraid of ghosts but because they are afraid that the grip they have tried to impose on society, demanding that we not believe in anything supernatural, has started to slip once again (Taylor, 2007).”

The scientific stranglehold on reality slipped once before, with the Spiritualist movement of the 1800’s.

“Angered that new innovations in the scientific world had  started to break the monopoly that superstition and religion had on society, they immediately set about to debunk everything possible…And while many hoaxes were exposed there were just enough genuine mediums…to send many of the scientists back to their universities and laboratories in fear (Taylor, 2007).”

And a notable few, such as Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge, actually became spiritualist converts using their private time and resources to investigate paranormal phenomena – often to the detriment of the professional reputations. While most people believe that investigators have done little to prove the validity of ghosts in the 150 years of research, he says he disagrees with that assessment, because while we cannot scientifically prove the existence of ghosts, he says we can verify hauntings historically.

What Are They?

So what are ghosts? Taylor points out that paranormal events are extremely varied, making one simple explanation impossible. He does explain that most ghost ‘experts’ do not believe that ghosts “are literally the ‘spirits’ of people who have died and have remained at a location.  This is not to say that they reject the possibility that some hauntings are caused by the activities of the dead, though they don’t believe that the ghosts themselves are the actual forms of the dead.” While this may be a popular notion for novices, Taylor explains that most ghost hunters believe that haunting are not the doings of the dead. Mainly they scoff at this notion because many locations leave no historical evidence of past tragedies or deaths. Therefore, why would the “dead person” be hanging around? “And they also add that no evidence exists in many locations to say that any past personality is present there (Taylor, 2007).”

However, Taylor says he disagrees with this theory:

 “…I agree that many locations do not boast events that might spawn ghosts, but isn’t it possible that the ghost may have stayed behind for other reasons altogether?....There are likely many reasons for hauntings….Just like the theory about what causes a place to become haunted, the idea that a ghost (or type of haunting) could be a single all encompassing thing is a nice idea, but an unrealistic one (Taylor, 2007).”

He explains that the word ghost is an umbrella term in the field of paranormal research, a term that is used to describe both spirits (actual human personalities) and apparitions (recordings of past events) [his terms]. Because of the wide variety of activity, he concludes that “no one theory can be used to describe them all adequately (Taylor, 2007).”
Troy Taylor
Author and Paranormal Investigator

 Cons

Paranormal Phenomena Fail to be Scientifically Verifiable

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist, Leon Lederman scorns the whole notion of ghosts, primarily from the standpoint that the paranormal fails to produce in a laboratory setting. “’You don’t have haunted houses. You have either gullible people or some dishonest people who are making this all up. Science has no room for ghosts.” No ghostly phenomena, according to Letterman, are scientifically verifiable, nor do the claims meet the demands of the scientific method. “The claim that I see it, I have to prove it. It goes beyond I can see it to I have to prove it. The burden is on the owner of that site or the writer of that book, and in 400 years of innumerable claims no one has succeeded in convincing the scientific community (Hauntings, 1997).’”

Leon Lederman, Ph.D.

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist

 Resources

Auerbach, Loyd (2005) A Paranormal Casebook; Ghost Hunting in the New Millennium. Atriad Press, LLC. Dallas, Texas.

 Documentary Produced by The History Channel (1997) The Unexplained: Hauntings.

Conover, Rob. a former private investigator turned paranormal Investigator http://robconover.net/default.aspx

Steiger, Brad (2003)  Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. Visible Ink Press. Canton, MI.

Taylor, Troy (2007)  Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook: The Essential Guide to Investigating Ghosts & Hauntings. American Ghost Society. White Chapel Press: Dark Haven Entertainment. Decatur, Illinois.