Author: SPI Agent - Mathwizard
February 2003
 

“Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof.” Book of Job 4: 14 – 16.

The above statement shows how ordinary human fears the unknown, and in particular, ghosts. For them, it is a horrible experience when they come face to face with a ghost. In fact, the word “ghost” was derived from an ancient word which means “to be feared”. Despite the fear, we must try to understand the phenomenon scientifically. Ghosts are actually not as frightening as those Hollywood movies let us to believe. Hopefully when our understanding about them increases, we will become less afraid of them.

Many people do not believe in ghosts, even when they see ghosts with their very own eyes. This is due to our behavior that tends to ignore anything that we cannot comprehend. There is no doubt that ghostly phenomena, if not ghosts themselves, exist. It is therefore our responsibility to study them, not dismiss them as mere hallucination. As Bertrand Russell, a mathematician and also a philosopher once said, "What we need is not the will to believe but the will to find out."
In this article, we shall discuss various theories about ghosts. They might all be correct, in the sense that different haunting may require different explanation.


Crisis Apparition

Crisis apparition, as the name implies, means an apparition that appeared when the subject is dying. For example, a mother may see the apparition of her son when the son is hit by a car and is dying at the scene of accident. Crisis apparition is in fact, the most widespread type of ghostly phenomena. Oddly, the apparition appears in his or her usual form, i.e. the recipient will not see the real situation experienced by the dying relative or friend. The mother, for instance, will not see the son dying on the road, but only his usual self without any injury. Crisis apparition may not have anything to do with soul or ghost. It has been suggested that the cause of crisis apparition is in fact, telepathy.

This hypothesis holds that when the subject is in danger, he or she somehow subconsciously sends a telepathic message to other people, usually relatives or friends to inform them of the incident, or even to ask for help. This theory is possible since most subjects do not die after all, and yet the recipients claim to have seen their “ghosts”.

The telepathic hypothesis also explains the case of the “living ghosts”, i.e. the ghosts of people who are very much alive at the time of the sightings.


Post-Mortem Apparition

Post-mortem apparition means an apparition that appears after the subject is dead. It is possible that the telepathic hypothesis can still account for this type of phenomena: it is just a delay of the telepathic message sent before the time of death. However, this seems to be unlikely in the case where an apparition is seen many times by many different people long after the death of the subject.

So another hypothesis was suggested to explain this type of phenomena: Perhaps the surrounding area acts like a recorder that can record images and sounds in three dimensional holographic forms and played back under certain circumstances. Ghostly apparitions that don’t seem to interact with recipients are generally believed to be this kind of recording rather than lost souls roaming the earth. If this hypothesis is true, the images may not be eternal; on the contrary, it may disappear over time. This is just like the quality of a video tape will eventually decrease after many times of viewing.

Andrew Green, in his book Ghost Hunting, quotes an interesting case of a woman in red shoes, red dress and a black head-dress reported to haunt a mansion in 18th century England. When she was seen in the early 19th century, she was no longer wearing the same clothing. She was reported to be in pink shoes, pink dress, and even a grey head-dress. Then in the middle of the 19th century, her shoes and dress were in white. In seems that her color is fading away! She was not seen after that. But just before the Second World War, it was reported that there was “a sound of a woman walking along the corridor and the swish of her dress”. The last time people ever heard about her was in 1970, shortly before the demolition of the mansion. Workmen felt “a presence in one of the old corridors.”


Problem With Ghosts

Although some ghosts can be well explained by the above two hypotheses, there are many cases where the hypotheses simply cannot explain. These cases involve the conscious ghosts (some people call them spirits rather than ghosts, but we shall not distinguish them here and will use the word ghost in either situation), i.e. ghosts that interact with the surroundings and the recipients. This is actually what people mean when they mention the word “ghost”.

If the two hypotheses mentioned cannot explain the conscious ghosts, what are they? Should we believe that they are in fact, human (or even animal) souls? If we accept this hypothesis, then we must deal with some problems. The biggest problem is why then inanimate objects are also reported in phantom forms? These include ghostly vehicles like airplanes, ships, cars, trains etc. For example, the junction of St. Mark’s Road and Cambridge Gardens in Kensington, London, are quite famous in the 1930s because of the sightings of ghostly double decker bus that traveled at great speed in the middle of the night when no buses were in service. Numerous accidents had happened when drivers tried to avoid the bus. According to witnesses, the bus had neither driver nor passenger. Even the local transport official had seen the phantom bus. The sightings eventually died out after the local authority straightened the road.

Another example is the Tay Rail Bridge disaster in Scotland in 1879. The bridge collapsed in a storm, leaving the oncoming train to plunge into a river below. No one survived. Since the bridge was repaired, ghostly train was seen disappearing near the middle of the reparations. Another famous example is Abraham Lincoln's funeral train that was said to pass along the original route taken by Lincoln's funeral train, complete with a skeletal band on one of the wagons, playing an unidentified tune.

If ghosts are souls, are we to deduce that trains and buses have souls too? Are we to believe that inanimate objects have souls, like the ancient Japanese who believed that anything can possess a soul if used for a long time?And for that matter, why do almost all ghosts are seen with clothing on? If inanimate objects do not have souls, then shouldn’t ghosts be nude?

In fact, some people believe that ghosts do not exist because of this contradiction. This logic has been around since ancient Chinese!


It’s All In the Brain

I believe that the skeptics are right when they claim that ghosts are only in the mind of the recipients. But this does not mean that they are hallucinating but rather something caused them to perceive ghostly images.

How do we see things? It happens when photons deflected from the surface of the objects enter our eye and strike our retina. The cone cell and rod cell will then undergo chemical changes and electrical signals are produced and travel along the neurons to the brain. The brain will of course interpret the signals. This is how we see things. So it is the brain that sees, not the eyes. Thus it is possible to create images inside the brain directly and made the recipient “sees”. It is well known that through hypnosis we can induce a state of mind in the subject and then suggest to him or her that he or she will only see the hypnotist. Even though there are people around and the subject is fully conscious, he or she will not see them until be told otherwise by the hypnotist!

So it is very possible that apparitions too are simply images in the mind. But what is the source? Surely there are no hypnotists around? The answer may well be EMF or electromagnetic field. It is well known that EMF causes hallucination. So area with strong EMF usually has many reports of paranormal phenomena, including UFOs, ghosts, monsters, alien abductions etc. So it makes sense why ghost hunters and paranormal investigators use EMF meters to detect the presence of ghosts. It makes sense that ghostly activities increased before a storm or during full moon since magnetic field is increased. It is also not a coincidence that melatonin (In lower vertebrates causes aggregation of pigment in melanophores and thus lightens skin. In humans believed to play a role in establishment of circadian rhythms) secreted by the pineal gland, also known as the Third Eye, is affected by the presence of EMF. The Third Eye, although believed by many to be able to see ghosts and aura, might really be the remnant of a real biological eye, which still possessed by some reptiles.

So all ghostly images seen, or ghostly sound heard, even ghostly smell can be explained by they are all just in the brain!

A question remains: do EMF causes people to hallucinate about ghosts or do ghosts produce EMF so that people can “see” them? From many paranormal cases, it is reasonable to conjecture that ghosts do exist. And if that is so, it is also reasonable to conjecture that they produce EMF, or they can only be seen in the presence of EMF. However, these remain as conjectures until we can offer conclusive proofs of the existence of ghosts. In the discussion below, we will assume that ghosts do exist, and proceed to explore their properties.


Into the Quantum World

If ghosts are purely energy, then it seems not reasonable for it to exist for long. Since energy in open space will soon dissipate. So personally I believe that ghosts consist of some unknown particles. Quantum physics is still a growing field, and physicists are discovering more and more particles that have some very curious properties. For example, neutrino, which possibly has no mass. It also has no electric or magnetic field. So neutrinos rarely interact with matters. It travel at high speed and can pass through solid objects. In fact, millions of them are passing your body right now. Assuming that ghosts are actually made of particles, what are the properties of these particles?

Some people conjecture that ghosts can travel at high speed, perhaps beyond the speed of light. There are 3 types of particles: tardyons, luxons, and tachyons. Tardyons are ordinary particles that have mass, such as neutron and electron. These particles cannot reach the speed of light. Luxons are particles that can travel at the speed of light but not beyond it, for example, photons and gravitons. Tachyons (‘Takhus’ is a Greek word for swift) are speculative particles that when created, already possessed speed that is faster than light. It cannot travel at or below the speed of light. It has many strange properties. For example, the more you increase your speed to catch up with it, the greater its speed will be relative to you. This is similar to luxons, which remain at the speed of light regardless of what your speed is. You can read more about the properties of tachyons on a separate article. It is suffices to say that tachyons cannot interact with normal matter like ghosts do. Hence ghosts, if they exist at all, are certainly not tachyons. Furthermore if ghosts are souls, and ghosts are tachyons, we will all have tachyons in us! That is certainly unimaginable.

Ghosts cannot be luxons too since that will mean they can only travel at the speed of light. Obviously sightings of ghosts show otherwise. So ghosts can only be tardyons, just like us. Their mass is probably very light and therefore it is not surprising to see orbs travel at high speed (if orbs are ghosts). Ghosts may be able to pass through ordinary matters, depends on the properties of the particles that made them.


We shall summarize our hypothesis so far:

1) Conscious ghosts are made of particles.
2) These particles may have EMF of their own, or somehow capable of manipulating surrounding EMF.
3) EMF makes people “see” ghosts in their mind.


True Form of Ghosts?

If ghosts are not human-like, what is their true form? Paranormal investigators have taken many photos with unexplained images on them. Sometimes, the ghosts do look like human, which may be the result of a form of psychokinesis called “thoughtography”, i.e. the ghosts projected the images onto the film or the crystal display (for digital camera). We will discuss about psychokinesis later. For now, we will deal with other types of anomalies.

The terms “orb”, “vortex” and “ectoplasm” etc was coined in around 1996, by the IGHS (International Ghost Hunters Society). The terms are now being used by almost all ghost hunters around the world. I will assume that all of you are familiar with the terms and will not define them here. What are these anomalies? Are they the entities themselves or just the by-product of the manifestation of the entities? We do not know. But this is not the most important question. The question is: If we can’t see them, how could we photograph them?

Some people claim that spirit matter is invisible to the eye. In that case, it should also be invisible to the cameras, which are designed to capture light in the exact spectrum that human eyes see. Even if cameras are more sensitive, it does not explain why human eyes cannot see any of the anomalies, especially those anomalies that are obviously very bright. Some even cast a shadow when the flash is used, which means that they are in fact, quite solid. For example, this is a photo taken by me on 3pm, June 8, 1998, inside a dark room of a restaurant reputed to be haunted. The ectoplasm emitted greenish light but I didn’t see anything there by naked eyes, why?

This is another photo taken on May 30, 1999 in a classified location. The orb was so bright that it caused a cross-like reflection, and yet I saw nothing when I took the photo. It also cast a shadow on the elliptical white object (white orb?) If the white object is also some sort of spirit substance, then this is the first photo that I have ever seen that shows a spirit matter cast a shadow on another spirit matter.
So why can’t we see spirit substance? There is a hypothesis which claims that human brain filters out the ghostly images. In other words, the eyes see the ghosts in their true forms, but the filter mechanism inside the brain somehow “deleted” the images because the information is not vital for the survival of our species. I do not know how true this hypothesis is.


Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis or PK is the ability to affect objects with the mind, i.e. mind over matter. There are different abilities of PK, such as bending metal objects, moving objects, levitating, burning objects, and even teleporting. Some people had demonstrated their PK abilities for scientists to study. However, it has yet to be accepted by mainstream science. PK is also linked to poltergeist phenomenon.

Poltergeist means “noisy spirit”. It causes a lot of destruction in the house by moving things and throwing things like big heavy furniture around, or burning stuff here and there but rarely harms the occupants. Some parapsychologists suggested that this is actually due to the release of psychokinetic energy from one of the occupants. Therefore moving houses in trying to escape from poltergeist will not work – the “entity” will follow.

It is also well documented that the occupant who seems to be the center of the activities are normally teenagers who just begin to mature sexually. It is therefore suggested that PK energy is associated with sexual desire. Since the energy is not controlled by the centered human, it is also called RSPK (recursive spontaneous psychokinesis).

Here is a case that describes a haunting caused by PK energy, which is also described by Andrew Green in his book Ghost Hunting. It happened in a bakery in England which was purchased from a local family who had operated it for several generations. After moving in, the wife of the new owner started to feel the presence of someone or something. Soon doors were seen to open and equipment was moved. Sometimes, she even felt the entity pushed her. However, the former owners claimed that the place was not haunted and nothing strange happened before. The new owner and his wife noticed that during the visit to the previous owner, ‘the old man’ had said little during the conversation and ‘seemed half asleep most of the time.’ The haunting continues for two years and the place seemed to be ‘different’ on a Tuesday. There were no more incidents after that. It turned out that on that particular Tuesday, the old man had passed away. It is possible that the old man had nothing to do most of the time except thinking about his former job in the bakery. His PK energy somehow caused the haunting.

However, not all poltergeist cases are caused by RSPK. A few years ago, there was a family in Malaysia who was haunted by a poltergeist that set fire all over the places. Two girls appeared to be the center of the phenomena. They have to stop going to school when the “fire” follows them everywhere they go. It was a big news on the media and many people offer their own explanations. Bomohs and exorcists were called but the phenomena got worse. Even the Tung Shu was burned spontaneously! The problem was eventually solved by an exorcist who did not want to mention his name at the time. Only recently he revealed that the phenomena were caused by little ghosts that were sent using black magic. He was able to negotiate peacefully with the ghosts. I do not know how true the claim of this exorcist is, but in some cases, it seems doubtful that human PK energy is responsible for all the manifestation that sometimes include levitating and throwing large heavy objects. This is because psychic who demonstrated their PK abilities can only move small objects!

Psychokinesis energy can explain a lot of things besides poltergeist phenomena. For an example, EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomena. Ghosts might use PK to “imprint” any voices they want on the tape or digital recording device. They can also made a phone call using PK. This phenomenon is not widespread compared to EVP, but it did happen. Usually people who claimed to receive phone call from the dead reported that there were static noises and usually the conversation doesn’t last for long. The PK theory is supported by the case where people reported to have received phone call from their friends (who are very much alive!), but their friends were merely thinking about making the phone call at the time.

The question is what exactly is psychokinesis, is it electromagnetic in nature or is it a form of unknown energy? How do ghosts produce PK energy? Is it possible that they absorb radiation and heat or even electricity (ghost hunters often experience lost of power in their new batteries) from the surrounding and then convert it to PK energy? Could this cause a cold spot as by-product? What about hot spot? Is it produced when the ghosts emit unused heat energy?


References:

Ghostly Transport: http://www.paranormality.com/ghostly_transport.shtml

The Book of Great Mysteries, Colin Wilson and Dr. Christopher Evans, 1986