What Ghosts Are: Big Muddy Ghost Hunters Association

Paranormal Citings blogger By Paranormal Citings blogger
on March 05, 2011 at 8:00 AM

What Are Ghosts? by Dr. Richard A. Barker, Big Muddy Ghost Hunters Association

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The nature of ghosts, or of any paranormal phenomenon, is the most important and least systematically considered metaphysical issue in the Western world. When English speaking people use the word ghost, they can be referring to a sound, a feeling, a vision, or a smell. A ghost can be a blotch on a photograph, a chair rocking by itself, the sound of footsteps or thumping, an unexplained sighting of an apparition, the smell of perfume or smoke, a light in the forest or in a deserted house, a voice on a recording, a reading on a meter, the unexplained movement of an object, or any of a number of other things.

Read BMGHA’s February post
Paranormal Forensics

There is no widely accepted definition of a ghost. However, there are some good definitions. Ghost Hunter Joshua Warren defined a ghost as "some paranormal aspect of the physical form and/or mental presence that appears to exist apart from the original physical form," and he divided ghostly phenomena into five categories: entities, imprints, warps, poltergeists, and naturals. According to Warren, the key to his definition is the word appears. This, in my view, is as good a definition as any, though I prefer to define a ghost more broadly as a paranormal phenomenon that can be experienced by a living person. Both definitions emphasize experience, but neither specifies what a ghost is. If a ghost is a "thing", then it must conform to certain metaphysical rules.

There are two parts to any metaphysical question about a "thing": the ontological question (is this thing real?) and the epistemological question (what can be known about this thing and how can this knowledge be discovered?) Typically, average ghost hunters do not consider either of these questions seriously. They begin with the assumption that ghosts are real "things" even though they cannot define precisely what they are. Even if the ghost hunters in question are not convinced that ghosts are real, they assume that knowledge can be gained about them by using "scientific" equipment such as meters, photographic devices, spectrum analyzers, etc.

Science is the application of scientific method to specific questions about "things" to test hypotheses about the answers to those questions. Hypotheses are tested by comparing behavior among groups to determine if there are significant differences that support the hypotheses. We can, for example, compare the molecular structure of granite with that of sandstone to determine the nature of each--how they each react to water, acid, compression, heat, cold, and so on. There are no possibilities for predicting paranormal phenomena reliably enough to create and compare groups of phenomena because no conclusive argument can be made that they are "things". Hypotheses can be created to explain paranormal phenomena, but there is simply no way to test them because they are unpredictable and intangible. No piece of equipment can be used to overcome this problem.

We continue to look for evidence that will help us understand paranormal phenomena as real things, but I do not expect to see any kind of verification in my lifetime. Nor do I expect anyone to determine the nature of the phenomena we call ghosts.