Why do many people always seek a scientific explanation for ghosts? Is it fair or indeed, correct, to reject their existence or that of anything paranormal or supernatural because they are bereft of a scientific explanation? After all, the yardstick of a scientific explanation is missing in so many, many phenomena, yet their existence or their “happening” cannot be denied. For example, in January this year, Business Insider carried an interesting story titled “9 phenomena that science still can’t explain” and went on to describe them as “some of the most confounding mysteries scientists are working to solve” and “nine mysteries of life that still stump experts everywhere…
“Scientists still aren’t sure why people yawn, for example, or why one type of mushroom only grows in two places on Earth: Texas and Japan…Recently, the scientific community has moved toward the idea that yawning is a thermoregulatory behavior that cools down the brain, but its true biological function is still unclear. What’s more, scientists aren’t entirely sure why it’s contagious among social animals like humans…”
Yet yawning, even without a scientific explanation, is an accepted fact that nobody questions. In marked contrast, the existence of ghosts—a worldwide phenomena backed by an astounding body of testimony from an equally amazing range of sources—continues to be scoffed at and often dismissed outright for lack of a scientific explanation. If one goes by the logic of a scientific explanation, eye witness accounts and personal experiences of a host of luminaries and people from all walks of life would have to be discarded and aspersions cast on their integrity. For instance, in November last year, People ran a story titled “20 Celebs Who Have Had Actual Ghost Encounters”. Lydia Price wrote: “Don’t try and tell these stars that ghosts don’t exist, because they’ve seen all the paranormal proof they need to believe.” The list of 20 celebs included Chloë Sevigny. ‘Years ago, Sevigny and a boyfriend spent the night at the Massachusetts house where Lizzie Borden allegedly killed her father and stepmother with an axe in 1892. “I kept hearing all these weird moaning and groaning noises, but there wasn’t anybody else in the house. It was terrifying. It was pretty early and [my then-boyfriend] was like, ‘I have to leave,’” she told Entertainment Weekly. The eery experience inspired Sevigny to produce and star in Lizzie, the 2018 film that re-imagined the infamous crime.
Richard Gordon, with 37 years of experience in the field of energy medicine and best selling author of Quantum-Touch: The Power to Heal, and The Secret Nature of Matter, raises some revealing questions: “I find it telling that very few universities around the world are open to researching psychic phenomena and the idea of mind over matter, despite thousands of studies showing a small and consistent bias towards the existence of these abilities. Is it a case of not looking for something you don’t believe is there?”
Obviously and fortunately, there is a substantive segment which has the vision to look beyond any currently available scientific explanation at dimensions which offer exciting possibilities and useful truths. Just last year, for instance, BBC’s Future thought fit to re-publish an article by Tok Thompson which originally appeared on The Conversation.
Titled “Why we should believe in ghosts” with an intro which says “Telling tales of ghouls and spectres can have a surprising benefit by encouraging people to change the way they behave”, the article offers wide ranging, information packed insights. Tok Thompson writes: “As a mythology scholar at the University of Southern California who has studied and taught ghost stories for many years, I have found that ghosts generally ‘haunt’ for good reasons. These could range from unsolved murders, lack of proper funerals, forced suicides, preventable tragedies and other ethical failures.
“Ghosts, in this light, are often seeking justice from beyond the grave. They could make such demands from individuals, or from societies as a whole. For example, in the US, sightings have been reported of African-American slaves and murdered Native Americans. Scholar Elizabeth Tucker, from Binghamton State University of New York, details many of these reported sightings on university campuses.”
Such sightings, Thompson points out, are often a reminder that ethical lapses can carry a heavy spiritual burden. In this way, ghosts reveal the shadow side of ethics. Yet ghost stories are also hopeful, he says. “In suggesting a life after death, they offer a chance to be in contact with those that have passed and therefore a chance for redemption—a way to atone for past wrongs… you may want to take a few minutes to appreciate the role of ghosts in our haunted pasts and how they guide us to lead moral and ethical lives.” In Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, author Colin Dickey explains that we tell stories of the dead as a way of making a sense of the living. More than just simple urban legends and campfire tales, ghost stories reveal the contours of our anxieties, the nature of our collective fears and desires, the things we can’t talk about in any other way. “The past we’re most afraid to speak aloud of in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.”
“No, spooks don’t scare me.”, notes Ellen Hopkins, “Gauzy apparitions might prank your psyche or agitate your nightmares, but lacking flesh and blood they are powerless to hurt you—cannot hope to inflict the kind of damage that real, live people do.” In “The Neverending Story”, Michael Ende says “Maybe all the people who say ghosts don’t exist are just afraid to admit that they do.” And in “Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife”, Mary Roach observes: “It’s possible that the reason I’ve never experienced a ghostly presence is that my temporal lobes aren’t wired for it. It could well be that the main difference between skeptics… and believers is the neural structure they were born with. But the question still remains: Are these people whose EMF-influenced brains alert them to ‘presences’ picking up something real that the rest of us can’t pick up, or are they hallucinating? Here again, we must end with the Big Shrug…” For those who insist on a scientific explanation as a pre-condition for believing in ghosts, a popular Thai saying contains meaningful advice: “Do not believe—but do not offend—the spirits”.