Scientists and believers have been debating ghosts for a long time. On one side, the rationalist has a thousand questions that need to be answered before they can even begin to tackle the question ‘are ghosts real?’ and on the other side there are those ‘ not necessarily religious ‘ who feel that there is something after we die and that spirits are remnants of that

1. Argument from History

Humans have always claimed to see spirits of the dead right back until we began to write our experiences down. Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and beyond all have legends of ghosts acting as portents of things to come or to haunt a wrongdoer. Ghosts are so much part of our human psyche that we have a natural propensity to ‘ if not believe in them ‘ to accept the possibility that millions of people throughout history reaching similar conclusions can’t all be wrong

2. EVP

One of the strangest aspects of this modern technology-driven age is the mass of recordings of voices on electronic equipment ‘ known as EVP. Though there are many people claiming to have recordings of dead celebrities, far more often every-day people claim to hear ghostly voices on their ipods, through their computer equipment and as interference on their televisions. Though some are indecipherable, some people hear warnings and act on them. EVP have been subject to many studies and most have been indecipherable

3. Ghosts of the Living

Those people who reject the notion that the soul can survive after death, and therefore reject the notion that such apparitions are spirits of the deceased, have another conundrum to explain away. Thousands of people every year claim to see ‘ghosts’ of people who are still alive. There are many reports of people seeing somebody who is known to them approach and them and then disappear. Others report seeing images of themselves acting out past events. In Germanic folklore, these are Doppelgangers though the term now generally means ‘body double’

4. Photographic Evidence

Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, a claimed ghost photograph by Captain Hubert C. Provand.

Though even the most hardened believer in ghosts knows that it is easy these days to fake a ghost picture and will always set out to debunk even some of the best examples, there are still a number of photographs ‘ some decades old and therefore not created using modern technology – that have stood the test of time and have never been proven fake. One of the best examples of a ghost photo that still baffles the experts is the Newby Church Ghost ‘ a figure dressed in black and either wearing a long white mask or the face has been distorted

5. The Lutzes

The most famous family ever to reside in Amityville wrote several books about their experiences in the house that went on to spawn several books and a film series that first followed their stories but later diverged into Hollywood horror fare. They were a very real family who eventually fled the house in the middle of the night after months of terror. The previous family who lived there, the DeFoe’s, suffered a tragedy when the eldest boy Ronald killed six other family members. The Lutzes claimed to have seen and heard some of the dead children

6. Orbs

Though the skeptics amongst us might dismiss orbs as merely dust or insects, some of them defy explanation. A good number appear to cast shadows ‘ which mean they have their own source of light and not merely reflecting moonlight or the illumination of the camera or other equipment. Some do not move like dust or insects. Others are quite large and are far away from the camera and have yet to be dismissed with other explanations.

7. Recurring Stories

Many people who do not know each other and having the same experiences must count for something. Fortunately, there are many instances of people reporting the same incidents over time. At Hampton Court in England, many visitors and staff report having seen and heard the spirit of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Catherine Howard. Sightings became so prevalent that the gallery where the experiences occur has been named ‘The Haunted Gallery’. On occasion she can be heard pleading for her life

8. OBE

One phenomenon that might explain reports of seeing ghosts of living people is this curious experience shared by so many. Often in a relaxed state, on that boundary between sleep and waking, or sometimes for patients comatose and close to death, it seems that some have inadvertently left their bodies and gone for a walk. Many who have the experience report looking down at their bodies, passing loved ones in the room and even leaving the building before being pulled back to their body.

9. The Warrens

The most famous paranormal investigators the world has ever known looked into a large number of paranormal cases across the US ‘ they were present at the Amityville investigation and famously had in their care the haunted doll known as Annabelle. Several films were made about their experiences including Amityville Horror, The Haunting in Connecticut and The Haunted. Ed died in 2006; in 2013 Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga portrayed one of the pair’s most famous cases ‘ the Perrons ‘ in the film The Conjuring.

1o. Einstein’s Theory

Einstein hypothesized that the level of energy in the universe is constant ‘ that it never rises nor drops. Therefore, what happens when we die? Where does it go? Some believe that Einstein was looking for answers to these questions right up until his death in order to prove that ghosts had a scientific basis that could be satisfactorily explained in terms of the level of energy in the universe. As far as we are aware, he never found an answer but some are still trying to discover whether he was right.

Conclusion

Whatever we might think of ghosts, and despite the fact that even the most hardcore believers accept that there is a lot of misidentified material and outright fraud available, there is compelling evidence in some quarters that is still worth investigating concerning the widespread phenomena of ghosts and other apparitions