Hi Russell,



With respect, what conclusions do I seem to be leaping to? I think it's safe to say that if a phenomenon like ghosts has been reported regularly for thousands of years, something is going on here. That doesn't mean we can be sure we know what ghosts are or what physical rules are involved in their manifestation. They could simply be psychic imprints on some kind of invisible medium which sensitive people can "pick up." (Though personally I think there's more to it than this because a number of manifestations are interactive.) I would like to see scientific investigations into this area but it's a tricky one because you can't make a ghost appear inside a lab at will.

I've attempted to do my own part by going on "ghost hunts" with small, serious groups of people, hoping to get physical evidence. I personally did not succeed with that and in fact it honed my skepticism because I learned that "orbs" and "vorteces" which are reported on some websites as paranormal phenomena, are dust specks and camera straps respectively. It's going to take cleverer and more technically-minded people than me to study these things properly.



I would claim that black holes break the rules as we understand them. No one is able to describe what a singularity is, and all equations break down when one is reached. I don't see many people claiming that black holes are therefore impossible though. And heck, string theory -- where's the evidence for that? Why do some people accept string theory as a possibility yet reject something like the possibility of the existence of ghosts?

Maybe ghosts would help us understand more about how the world works. Maybe our picture isn't complete. Science has often advanced by doing this -- adding to the picture of what we already know. I don't believe ghosts are magical any more than I believe that the rotation of the earth is magical. They are a natural phenomenon which we do not understand. I don't have a problem with saying this because I've spoken to people I know well or can trust about experiences they've had, and I've done research, and I do not believe that 100% of these people are mistaken or deluded. Even if all of them but one are . . . that one should be enough to spark serious investigation.



I've also spoken with self-styled skeptics who think that accepting the existence of ghosts, or NDEs, or telepathy, is on a par with believing in Santa Claus or purple unicorns. It's frankly an insult to people's intelligence. There is evidence that the former three things occur and they don't have to involve magic, scattered and strewn laws of physics, or wishful thinking. I've heard it all and what it seems to boil down to is that some people will not accept even the possibility of these phenomena being real. And I don't think I can say anything to persuade them otherwise. For my own part, I'm simply happy to watch and learn and hope that some open-minded scientists will get some answers.

Rupert Sheldrake has done some interesting work on telepathy in humans and animals. He is a scientist and a fellow of Cambridge University. Dawkins and other self-styled skeptics hate what he does. I think he has the necessary open-mindedness to make some interesting contributions to science. I recently wrote to him regarding his morphic resonance idea, because I thought that the local synchronisation of flying ants emerging from their nests might be an example of it. Funny little things like this, which are difficult to explain, could end up telling us a lot. I got a reply from him, which I didn't expect, and he said it was an interesting phenomenon which to his knowledge has not been investigated.



What I'm talking about, though, is the simple acceptance of reported phenomena as genuine and not all hallucinations or mistakes. If you wanted to claim that a ghost was the spirit of a dead person, then that is a belief. A flat earth was also once a belief, but the observations this mistaken belief were based upon were empirical, e.g. it's difficult to see the curvature of the earth without rising high above it, and it's impossible to measure the curvature without the right mathematical and geographical tools. The earth really did look flat, and that is not a mistake because it still does look flat to an ordinary person on the ground.

In other words, in the days when this belief was common (and no one had yet circumnavigated the globe or looked through a telescope), it was not the observations but the interpretation of those observations which was at fault.



I thought like this for a time. It wasn't wishful thinking that changed my mind. That's the nice thing about life, it's all about change and learning.

By the way, what interests me about NDEs is that some people who have had them have accurately described what people in the room were doing, and others have also been able to describe what people in other rooms were doing. These claims were confirmed by the people present, who also confirmed that the person experiencing the NDE was unconscious with their eyes shut. Even if they were "peeking," they would not have been able to describe events in adjoining rooms. The only way you can "get around" this interesting phenomenon is to dismiss it as delusion or lies in 100% of cases. I do not believe that is logical.