Are ghosts real? Well, there’s as much scientific evidence to support their existence as there is for the existence black holes. Which is to say there isn’t any, really. And we take the existence of black holes as read by now. People claim to have photographed, observed and studied black holes, but they haven’t been tested under laboratory conditions. That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, so it by the same token we can’t dismiss the existence of the supernatural either, right? Probably. We don’t know, we're not Brian Cox. Science is hard. (We got a C at GCSE).
What we do know from science is that it’s much more difficult to prove the non-existence of something that the existence. And also phenomenally more douchey. Yeah, James Randi, we’re looking at you. We’re glass half-full types here at WhatCulture, so we lean towards proving the “existence” side of things. We also like a challenge, which means that having no concrete scientific evidence of spooks and spectres being real won’t put us off trying to convince you about the true nature of things that go bump in the night.
Besides, science isn’t gospel (actually it’s kinda the opposite of that, but shush). Where study of the supernatural began on the fringes, there are actually plenty of respected institutes and university research groups pursuing paranormal entities. To be so interested in ghostly phenomenon hints there might be something to why we pass around spooky stories, see every Paranormal Activity, read MR James stories at Christmas, and have tales from almost every culture since prehistory about spooks, ghouls and spirits from beyond the grave.
It’s good to have a healthy skepticism about the world, but that goes both ways. We don’t think you can necessarily totally prove ghosts are real, but you also can’t just dismiss them out of hand. Especially when there’s so many pieces of evidence that prove ghosts are real – and here’s just ten of the most compelling. We're ready to believe them!
10 Most Compelling Pieces Of Evidence That Prove Ghosts Are Real
Okay so just to be straight up with you guys, the ghosts/black holes comparison was a might disingenuous. You can’t recreate a black hole in a lab – that much is for sure – but that doesn’t necessarily make their existence as dubious as ghosts, since if a scientist told you to look at the place they saw a black hole, it would probably still be there. Ghosts don’t hold up to the same repeatable conditions, but let’s not totally side with those skeptical boffins. They’re still not perfect by any stretch.
After all, whilst many are convinced that ghosts aren’t real, none of them can agree on why exactly so many people are convinced otherwise. In 1813 physician John Ferriar wrote “An Essay Towards A Theory Of Apparitions”, where he put forward his idea of ghost sightings as simply optical illusions. Okay, sure, we can buy that. Plus it’s a physician telling us this, he’s all qualified and stuff, so he must know what he’s on about.
Except since Ferriar there have been many, many more researchers interested in explaining the paranormal, and almost all of them have disagreed with each other. Alexandre Jacques François Brière de Boismont (owner of the Frenchest name in existence) claimed so-called spirits were hallucinations, chemist David Turner suggested they may be examples of ball lightning, Joe Nickell reckons they’ve something to do with the limits of human perception, and IT lecturer Vic Tandy puts poltergeist activity down to humans not being able to process the low-frequency hum of air conditioners properly.
So what does all that tell you? That the scientific community is more divided when it comes to what causes people to experience hauntings than it is about…well, anything, really. Nobody can make up their mind as to a scientific explanation of ghosts, because proving the non-existence of something is hella difficult. And douchey, as we said before. We may not have concrete evidence for the existence of the supernatural, but they have no evidence to the contrary, either. Ha!
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