Are there ghosts? Stories from people's lives

If you believe in ghosts, you are not alone. People all over the world believe that a person's soul goes to another world after death, but can sometimes return to earth. In fact, of all the paranormal phenomena, people most often believe in ghosts.

The idea that the dead remain with us in the form of spirits is a very ancient one, appearing in countless stories, from biblical parables to Shakespeare's Macbeth. This belief even gave rise to a special folklore genre: ghost stories. Ghost stories are part of beliefs about the paranormal, including near-death experiences, life after death, and communication with spirits. It is not difficult to understand why this idea has become so widespread among people - many do not want to believe that deceased family members have left them forever, and therefore prefer to think that they can return to them from time to time.

Communication with spirits

At all times, people have tried to communicate with spirits. In Victorian England, for example, it was fashionable for ladies to hold such sessions after tea with friends. Moreover, many prestigious universities, including Cambridge and Oxford, have founded special clubs dedicated to finding evidence of the existence of ghosts. In 1882, even the most prominent organization was created called the Society for Psychical Research. Its president and first researcher was Eleanor Sidgwick. She can be called the first female ghost hunter. In the late 1800s in America, many mediums claimed they could speak to the dead, but were later exposed as frauds by skeptical researchers such as Harry Houdini.

Ghost Hunt

However, ghost hunting has become widespread throughout the world relatively recently. This is largely due to the release of the television series Ghost Hunters, which led to many imitators. Frankly, it's not hard to see why this series became so popular: it convinced millions of people that anyone could see a ghost. This means that you do not need to be a scientist or even have any training in science and research. All you need is some free time, a dark place and maybe a few gadgets from the electronics store. If you search long enough, any unexplained light or noise can be taken as evidence of ghosts.

Difficulties in studying ghosts

Why is it so difficult to study ghosts scientifically? First of all, because they are credited with many different abilities. Doors opening on their own, lost keys, unexpected cold - all this is called the work of ghosts, not to mention their ability to appear out of nowhere in the form of a blurry figure. In addition, many people, when faced with some inexplicable phenomena, do not know how to explain it. This happens especially often if these phenomena do not fit into our ideas about how a ghost should behave.

Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter entirely. Another difficulty in the study of ghosts lies in the fact that there is still no one universal definition of this phenomenon. Some believe that ghosts are the spirits of the dead who, for some reason, got “lost” on their way to another world, and are therefore left to wander the earth. Others claim that ghosts are telepathic entities projected into the world by our minds. Still others create their own special categories for different types of ghosts, such as poltergeists, residual ghosts, intelligent spirits, and shadows of people. Of course, trying to categorize ghosts is the same as creating different races of fairies or dragons: each person can name as many types of ghosts as he wants.

Controversies

In addition, ideas about ghosts have many contradictions. For example, whether they are material or not. Can they move through solid objects without destroying them? Or are they able to open and close the door and throw objects around the room? According to logic and the laws of physics, one contradicts the other.

If ghosts are human souls, then why do they appear dressed in supposedly soulless objects such as hats, canes and dresses? Not to mention the numerous evidence of the existence of ghosts of trains, carriages and ships.

If ghosts are the spirits of those whose deaths remained unavenged, then why are there still many unsolved murders, because it is generally accepted that these spirits can communicate with living people, which means they should have long ago sent the police on the trail of the killer. There are a lot of unanswered questions like this, and they all make us doubt the existence of ghosts.

Spirit Detection Methods

Ghost hunters use a variety of creative (and rather dubious) methods to detect the presence of spirits. Almost all of them claim to have a scientific basis for their “work”, and therefore use high-tech scientific equipment, for example, Geiger counters, electromagnetic field detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras and sensitive microphones. However, all this equipment has never actually helped anyone detect ghosts. For centuries, people believed that candle flames turned blue in the presence of spirits. Today, few people accept this idea. Thus, it is likely that after a few decades or centuries, our methods of detecting ghosts will seem ridiculous and ridiculous to posterity.

Why do so many people continue to believe?

Most people who believe in ghosts do so because of some personal experience. For example, they grew up in a home where the existence of friendly spirits was taken for granted. The second example is that they had some kind of stressful experience in so-called “haunted houses.” However, many people believe that proof of the existence of ghosts can be found in modern physics, namely the first law of thermodynamics, which was formulated by Albert Einstein. If energy is neither created nor destroyed, but only changes its form, then what happens to the energy of our body when we die? Could she somehow manifest as a ghost?

This seems like a reasonable assumption, but only if you don't understand basic physics. The answer is very simple, and it is not at all mysterious. After a person dies, the energy from his body goes to the same place where the energy of all organisms is directed after death: into the environment. It is released as heat, and the body is processed by the animals that eat it (that is, wild animals if the person was left unburied, or, most often, worms and bacteria if the body was buried), and plants that absorb these remains. Thus, there is no bodily "energy" that remains after a person's death that can be detected using devices popular among ghost hunters.

Believe it or not?

If ghosts are real and are some kind of as yet unknown energy or entity, then their existence will (like all other scientific discoveries) be confirmed and tested by scientists through controlled experiments. After all, despite mountains of controversial photographs, audio and video, modern evidence for the existence of ghosts is no better than it was a year, ten or even a hundred years ago. There are two good explanations for this.

First, ghosts do not exist, and evidence of their appearance can be explained by psychology, mistakes and hoaxes. The second option is that they do exist, but ghost hunters are not competent enough to bring more science to their search.

It's up to you to decide which of these explanations you want to believe.

No child questions the existence of ghosts. But with age, people stop believing in otherworldly phenomena. Denial of the existence of another world continues until a person encounters something unusual and unknown. And this makes him question whether ghosts exist or not.

Nature of the phenomenon

There is no effect without a cause. If a person encounters a ghost, there must also be some logical explanation for this. And it will depend on general views of the world.

• Skeptics. People who deny the existence of otherworldly phenomena consider ghosts to be an ordinary hallucination. The vision does not have to be caused by illness. Hallucinations also occur periodically in healthy people. If a ghost is seen in a photograph, skeptics claim that it is nothing more than a film defect. With the advent of graphic editors, it has become even easier to depict a luminous silhouette in a photo. The suspicious creatures in the photo are just fake. The skeptic also believes that lack of education forces people to see the unusual in completely explainable phenomena.
• Scientists. The words “skeptic” and “scientist” cannot always be considered synonymous. Some very educated people take ghosts and apparitions seriously and study the nature of this phenomenon. However, scientists have still not been able to establish the exact cause of the visions. According to one version, people see creatures from another dimension. These creatures probably see us too and consider us ghosts. According to some scientists, ghosts may be aliens from distant planets.
• Mystics. These include psychics, magicians, parapsychologists, believers or simply superstitious people prone to mysticism. These people don't question whether ghosts exist or not. Visions, from the point of view of mystics, are explained simply: we observe the souls of the dead, creatures from the higher (angels) and lower (demons) worlds. At the same time, to the question of how to relate to incorporeal creatures, each representative of this category will answer in his own way. The opinion will depend on religion or belonging to any mystical movement.

Of course, visions cannot be explained only by a morbid imagination, increased religiosity or lack of education. Official science recognizes that psychic energy cannot be destroyed. Knowing this, we can assume that after the death of a person, a certain energy structure remains, which religious people call the soul.

Meetings with the unknown

Explorers of the other world not only are not afraid of ghosts, but also deliberately seek meetings with them. To do this, they go to anomalous zones. This could be an old building, such as a castle. Stone fortresses built centuries ago often keep terrible secrets. The walls of the castles remember the inhuman tortures and executions to which the feudal lords subjected prisoners, servants, or even their own relatives.

The ghost of a little boy haunts the Swedish castle of Haringe, built in the 11th century. Axel Horn (that was the child’s name) froze to death under the walls of the building. According to legend, the boy was left to freeze on the street by his own aunt. Today, the castle houses a hotel. One of the guests of Haring claims that, having woken up at night, she noticed a figurine of a boy near her bed, whom she mistook for her nephew. The woman invited him to lie down next to him and was very surprised to feel an unnaturally cold body next to her. In the morning it turned out that the nephew slept all night in his bed and did not go to his aunt’s bed.

In March 2011, an earthquake occurred in Japan, which was accompanied by a tsunami. Thousands of people became victims. At the same time, unusual incidents began to occur with taxi drivers working in the earthquake area. Drivers have encountered customers asking for rides into dangerous areas, despite warnings from taxi drivers not to go there. Along the way, strange passengers suddenly disappeared right from the car.

In his book “Far Journeys,” parapsychologist Robert Monroe suggested that our visible world is surrounded by several layers of subtler worlds. In the layers closest to us live people who have never been able to accept their death. They try to return to their former life, often feeding on the energy of the living. It is these deceased who have not found peace that from time to time come into our world in the form of luminous silhouettes, translucent figures, etc.

Whether ghosts exist or not, modern science is unable to answer. Not every “sensational” photograph of a ghost should be taken as evidence of the existence of the other world. However, one should not completely reject the presence of other dimensions with its inhabitants. Perhaps scientists will be able to answer all questions in 200 - 300 years.

In our age of reason, few people already believe in ghosts. Science has come to the aid of skeptics - scientists have found seven convincing explanations for why we see ghosts.

Physicists vs. Mediums

In the 19th century, even the most educated people believed that there were mediums capable of communicating with the afterlife. The simplest method of such communication was a Ouija board covered with numbers, letters and whole words. Participants in the session placed their hands on a small tablet, and otherworldly forces allegedly made it move and point to answers. This hobby did not spare even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - the literary father of the famous Sherlock Holmes, a doctor by training, organized spiritualistic seances.

But among scientists there were also those who considered mediums and spiritualists to be scammers. Physicist Michael Faraday put an end to this dispute. He proved that the movement of hands on the Ouija board is explained by the ideomotor effect. Simply put, people expected the board to start moving, and subconsciously moved it. Most spiritualists were not scammers. Their muscles only did what their brain unconsciously ordered them to do.

Ghosts in the stomach

One day, physicist Vic Tandi, during an experiment, saw a gray shadow near his desk. At first he was afraid that his laboratory was cursed, but then he found a rational explanation for this fact. The fact is that he worked with infrasound below 19 hertz.

The human ear is unable to hear sounds above 20,000 hertz and below 20 hertz. We can nevertheless feel everything that goes beyond this range. This is where not only the notorious “butterflies in the stomach” come from, but also an unreasonable feeling of anxiety. It's all due to high and low vibrations. Sometimes they even cause panic attacks in animals and people.

But where did the ghostly figure come from then? Tandi explained this too. Low vibrations caused the scientist's eyeballs to vibrate, and they created images that could be mistaken for ghosts.

Cold spot

Imagine: you are exploring an old mansion, at night, of course, and suddenly the air around you becomes colder. You take a few steps left or right - and the temperature returns to normal again. Parapsychologists say: in order to get into the world of the living, a ghost spends a lot of energy. In order to somehow replenish it, it takes heat from everything that surrounds it (including people). Ghost hunters call the places where such ghosts appear “cold spots.”

But physicists found a rational explanation for this too. Cold air most likely enters the room through holes in the roof, broken windows, or the chimney. If all these options do not apply, there is another scientific hypothesis. It is based on a process called convection. All objects around us conduct heat differently. Because of this, some surfaces heat up more, some less. In order for the temperature in the room to equalize, some objects give off heat to the external environment, while others, on the contrary, take it away. This is where the “cold spots” come from.

Shining balls

Many paranormal investigators proudly display photographs of strange glowing objects. These are supposedly the souls of the dead who cannot find peace. Maybe they have unfinished business or want to expose their killer. It’s a pity, these strange objects can only be seen in photographs - they are not visible to the human eye.

Skeptic Brian Dunning claims that anyone even slightly familiar with photography can understand where these glowing ghosts come from. Any small object, insect or falling leaf that happens to be in front of the camera at night is illuminated by the flash. It’s just that the camera doesn’t have time to focus on them. This is where these mysterious blurry spots come from. An even more common cause of blurry spots in photographs can be a speck of dust or water on the lens.

So if you often find yourself photographing a ghost, here's a tip from Brian Dunning - clean your lens!

Carbon monoxide

In 1921, ophthalmologist William Wilmer published a fascinating article in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. This article talked about the curse hanging over the “X” family.

At first they began to hear strange sounds: someone was walking around the attic or slamming doors. Then one of the children was attacked by an invisible stranger. And finally, the mother of the family, waking up one night, saw a ghostly couple at the foot of her bed, which, a second later, disappeared into thin air.

It turned out, however, that only their stove was cursed. When fuel burned, it produced carbon monoxide - CO, also called carbon monoxide. Instead of releasing this gas through a pipe, it regularly supplied it to the house. Carbon monoxide poisoning causes death, but first you will experience nausea, dizziness and hallucinations. Here is the solution to the mysterious family curse.

And all for one...

In June 2013, 3,000 workers rioted at a textile factory in Bangladesh. They did not demand higher wages or better working conditions. All they asked the director was to invite an exorcist to expel the evil spirit from the factory.

A similar story happened in one of the schools in Thailand. Twenty-two students were hospitalized after encountering the ghost of a hideous old woman.

Modern paranormal investigators sometimes call on physics to help them. For example, an ion counter has become a common tool in their arsenal. An ion is an electrically charged particle in which the number of protons and electrons is unequal. If a particle gains an electron, it becomes a negative ion; if it loses it, it becomes a positive ion.

So, ghost hunters count ions in cursed houses. But how to interpret the results? Some believe that where ghosts appear, the normal amount of ions in the atmosphere remains, others argue that ghosts absorb the energy of the ions at the moment of their appearance.

Physicists answer both: the presence of ions in the atmosphere is a natural phenomenon, the same as weather or solar radiation. And you shouldn’t give this any mystical meaning.

But it turns out that ions can still become an indirect cause of various mystical phenomena. Negatively charged ions calm us down, while positively charged ones, on the contrary, cause anxiety, irritation, and headaches. But this is exactly how the residents of “cursed houses” describe their feelings.

Ghosts are the restless souls of people who have died. Most often these are people killed or died due to injustice. They end up in our world because they refuse to go to that one. They remain here because of some unfinished business, tied to some personal object or place. They can also be dark substances that arise in places of common human grief, such as mass violent death or torture.

Do ghosts exist in real life?

Many people admit to seeing something that looks like a ghost. Most often, a person sees deceased relatives or acquaintances. Because of this, it is impossible to understand whether ghosts really exist or are just figments of our imagination.

Christianity does not believe in the existence of ghosts of dead people, but it does not deny the existence of demons who pretend to be ghosts. Therefore, you cannot call them or, because these are not real dead people, but demons hiding behind them.

Experiment with ghosts in laboratory conditions

Recently, scientists have attempted to prove that ghosts exist. There are people who can feel the presence of dark ghosts born in fear and in. This experiment created a laboratory ghost. To do this, scientists examined and scanned the affected areas of the brain in patients with neurological diseases. These were the areas that were responsible for coordination of movements, correct perception of time and space, and self-awareness. After this, they invited 28 volunteers, who changed the neural signals entering a certain part of the brain and closed their eyes. Then they were asked to manipulate a special robot, and ten people felt the presence of a ghost next to them.

Although there is some knowledge, the question of whether ghosts exist remains open and there is no absolute evidence or refutation of their existence.

Most people have never encountered ghosts and are sure that the reality of their existence cannot be scientifically proven. Nevertheless, the same majority of people believe that after the death of the body the soul continues to live in some form. Against this background, the reality of ghosts no longer seems so impossible.

It is impossible to deny that in our time there are a great many unexplained paranormal phenomena. Of course, none of the evidence you read in this collection, in itself, proves that ghosts live near us. But together they look more convincing.

You can be skeptical about spiritualistic seances, because history is replete with examples of fraud. However, a hoax does not prove that it is impossible to establish a connection with dead people. It only proves how much humanity has succeeded in lying. Harvard graduate Dr. Gary Schwartz teaches at the University of Arizona and conducts interesting experiments.

Glowing orbs fall into the category of photographic facts in favor of ghosts. Although with them everything is not so simple. Indeed, in the classical presentation, a ghost looks like a translucent human figure, and not a ball of light.

Of course, a similar effect in a photograph can occur due to many reasons: dust particles, drops of water or insects flying by. However, there are several examples that show the ball casting a shadow. Or when the ball is partially hidden by another object in front of it. Or when the ball is too far away to be just dust or water droplets on the lens.

8. History

If ghosts were a relatively recent discovery like UFOs or Yeti, then they could be attributed to the rich fantasy of modern culture. But ghost stories are thousands of years old. Mentions of them can be found not only in the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but even in the Old Testament. Of course, this also proves nothing, except that we were not the first to come up with stories about the dead returning to haunt the living.

One of the immutable laws of physics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only pass from one state to another. Human consciousness is also energy, therefore it is eternal. And if consciousness is no longer in the brain after death, this does not mean that it cannot continue to exist in another form that scientists have not yet discovered.

Some 200 years ago, science rejected the existence of viruses and bacteria, since they were invisible to the naked eye. And then scientists improved the microscope to such an extent that they could see them. Maybe it’s the same with ghosts and there’s no suitable equipment yet?

It's amazing how many people around the world claim to have seen ghosts. According to surveys, 25% of Americans (in other countries the percentage is approximately the same) have personally encountered ghosts or spirits. That's 75 million people in just one country.

Even if we subtract cases with wild imagination, errors of perception and outright charlatanism, there will still be a large number of real encounters with something otherworldly. Moreover, many eyewitnesses claim that they did not believe in ghosts and spirits before, and certainly did not expect to see them. This means that their stories are not fiction.

Anyone who has ever watched the reality series “In the Wake of Ghosts” knows that ghosts signal their presence by interacting with electronic devices. Using a special device, you can measure the electromagnetic field of the surrounding space.

Of course, all electrical appliances, wiring, and the Earth itself have an electromagnetic field. But sometimes the measuring device detects electromagnetic radiation where there is no equipment or wiring. Evidence of a ghost? Not necessary. But this is evidence that something invisible is interacting with our world.

The electronic voice phenomenon is the appearance of otherworldly sounds on an audio recording that were not audible during recording. These sounds can be very different: voices, noise, growling, footsteps. They can usually only be heard once after recording. Naturally, the sounds may simply be extraneous noise. But there are times when full meaningful sentences are heard on the recording, which had nowhere to come from except from the invisible world.

While extraneous sounds in audio recordings can only be heard during playback, there are also sounds that everyone can hear in reality. Usually these are footsteps, slamming doors, knocking, growling, disembodied voices, laughing or singing. If we exclude the possibility of extraneous noise, then these strange sounds may be evidence of the presence of ghosts or spirits.

2. Conversations with incorporeal beings

Extremely rare, but still there are documented cases of conversations with ghosts. Surprisingly, these conversations are very similar to ordinary conversations between living people. This suggests that consciousness after death retains the same abilities as during life.

One example is a series of videos made by physicist Peter Jason. In them, he has conversations with the ghost of a little girl named Jackie, who drowned in the liner's pool. Queen Mary" And this is either a very good deception of all witnesses to the conversations, or the best proof today that consciousness continues to live after the death of a person.

1. Photos

Most ghosts in photographs turn out to be camera errors, errors of perception, or deliberate hoaxes. Convincing evidence of the existence of ghosts would be their appearance in the photo after printing or loading it into a computer, provided that no one else got into the frame during the shooting.

With the advent of digital cameras and Photoshop, it has become very easy to fake such photographs. However, there are photographs of ghosts taken on film many years ago. They are the best proof today that the dead sometimes come to us.

An interesting selection of videos and photo evidence of the existence of ghosts. Children should not watch!