By Robin
M. Strom-Mackey
Included
in Part I are the opinions of Troy Taylor, ghost hunter and author, Leon
Lederman, Nobel winning Physicist,
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).”
Troy Taylor
Author and Paranormal Investigator
Cons
Resources
Documentary
Produced by The History Channel (1997) The
Unexplained: Hauntings.
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 20th
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).”
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
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
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.
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