Ghosts



Do ghosts exist?



I used to be firmly on the skeptical side until I unambiguously saw what I can only describe as a ghost and it has forced me to eat a lot of humble pie on the subject.



I was driving along a street in the south west of Sheffield (England) in November 2006 with my wife. We turned a corner on a narrow, winding, road and about 70-80 yards ahead was a dimly-lit object in the middle of the road. My initial thought was that it was a keep-left sign, I applied the brakes, then realised it wasn't solid, and a second to two later we drove straight through it. I exclaimed to my wife immediately "what on earth was that!" (the fact that no bad language was used shows how shocked I was!), I turned the car around as soon as I could for another look, but it had gone.



It was about the height of a typical person, and was very similar in shape and luminosity as this most famous ghost photograph taken at Raynham Hall in Norfolk. Whether this photograph is genuine or not is irrelevant - it is the closest picture I can find to what we saw. The only difference is that our sighting did not taper towards the bottom but went straight down from where the shoulders might be thought of as being straight down to the floor, as if it was a woman wearing a long dress.

We both agree on what we saw. I have tried to think of every possible logical, rational explanation, but I just can't. It was NOT a column of mist because it didn't disperse as we drove through it, there was a light wind that evening yet the "ghost" did not change shape at all in the several seconds we were witness to it. It was NOT a trick of the light as, again, it did not change it's shape or form, even as we drove though it. It has resulted in a major shift in my opinion on the paranormal. I simply can not deny what I saw. I have taken a big interest in tv shows such as Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted. The latter employs psychics and mediums to assess an area before doing their own investigations.



A feature of nearly all the supposedly haunted locations is the presence of "orbs" of light. If such orbs of light were observed as frequently at locations not believed to be haunted then we might take this phenomenon to be just a mis-understood phenomenon, rather like ball lightning. But the statistical significance of them occurring only at said locations should have alerted the curiosity of the scientific community. However, as with Weatheraction, mere statistical significance is not enough and the scientific world seems to require a valid theory to take such things seriously. Surely the correct approach is to verify, in a controlled manner, the existence of such things at haunted locations, test this against non-haunted locations, and then seek to find an explanation if there is a statistically significant correlation.



Skeptics are some of the most bigoted and un-scientific people out there. At least respected Psychologist Hans Eysenck took the paranormal question seriously; indeed, he regarded the outright dismissal of the paranormal as fundamentally anti-science. Skeptics would not believe in ghosts until one materialised in front of them and punched them in the nose, and even then they would probably attribute it to 'mass-hysteria', infrasound or some other such unsubstantiated nonsense.



The Medium, Derek Acorah, who was part of the Most Haunted team for several series was caught out when he revealed a ghost called Kreed Kafer in a particular location, which was, in fact, an anagram of Derek Faker which was written on a piece of paper left lying around prior to the programme being filmed. However, he got so many things amazingly accurate in earlier episodes that I think this could be attributed to him losing his abilities for a time and being forced to make things up. We don't know how many times in the earlier series the resident skeptic had laid traps that were not followed through. The programme began in the pre-wikipedia days when information was not so easy to come by. A skeptic would have to believe that the whole programme was an act, or that Mr Acorah went to the local library for days before and researched everything about the locations and not once ever bumping into the historian the programme employed to research the locations. Sometimes he, and the psychic David Wells, came out with things that only later turned out to be correct. If the whole show was a fake then that would almost certainly have been revealed to the world by now.

What could ghosts actually be?



Some kind of electromagnetic phenomenon that is not understood?



If so then there may be a connection with Weatheraction here; both poltergeist activity and the Weatheraction SLAT method involve magnetic energy being able to move non-magnetic objects, or in the case of Weatheraction, the non-magnetic atmosphere. There may be a whole new branch of physics waiting to be understood.



Are they interactions with parallel universes?



Are they some form of pathway through to other dimensions? There are apparently 11 dimensions to the universe and we only perceive 3 of them, but maybe we have a presence in them all that sometimes carries on once our 3-dimensional bodies are no more.



It is extremely arrogant of scientists to assume that they know everything about the nature of the universe. All I know is that ghosts do exist, but that I also believe in science and therefore I believe that one day they will be explained; for now they remain an intriguing mystery.