Hi Russell,

I've had this exact conversation before. What it seems to boil down to is what someone is willing to consider as worthy of scientific investigation. I also believe there is a degree of closed-mindedness in some people which can be fronted with every skeptical argument in the book, thus explaining all "paranormal" experiences away as wishful thinking, delusion, etc. And to an extent this is necessary because yes, wishful thinking and delusion do happen. Interestingly, I often see these attitudes in ex-creationist-turned-atheists: people bitter about the pseudoscience they were taught all their lives and who want to distance themselves from that as far as possible. IMO it is the area between both polarities which tells us the most about the world we live in.

Notice you will not see me using the word "supernatural." I pointed out in my previous post that I think phenomena like ghosts are natural but unexplained. IMO the "supernatural" is a term which applies to the spiritual -- gods, souls of dead people, etc. I don't know if ghosts are the souls of dead people, I don't know what they are, but I think there's plenty of evidence of their existence, and that is something physical which can be studied. It's possible that at least some of the phenomena are generated by the minds of living people in some unconscious way, and it would be interesting to find out how that might occur.



I'm sure they must have appreciated being told that it's all in their heads and that you cannot accept their testimony

My husband's family's account is an interesting one. Unfortunately when I describe it to self-proclaimed skeptics, after some discussion they all decide that they won't accept the possibility that this is what really happened and they use all old excuses on the list, which is OK for them if they don't know the people involved. I do, and I've listened to all of their accounts, and I think something unusual did happen. I would probably be told I'm being too gullible or that I am employing wishful thinking. I would in turn say that an absolute denial of the possibility of such things is closed-minded dogmatism. At the end of the day, though, if a few people are allowed to study these phenomena seriously and without ridicule, it will do no harm and could possibly enhance our understanding of the world. People like James Randi and his own agenda don't help matters.



If such a phenomenon could not currently be detected by scientific instruments, this would not be proof of its non-existence. It is also entirely possible that the intruments we do have could give us some helpful information if they were actually in use when a ghostly experience occurred. Unfortunately, when someone experiences a ghost, it is usually an unexpected event and they usually don't have scientific instruments to hand to grab and use.

"Recordings ghosts" have been reported for millennia. These are cases where different people witness non-interactive ghostly scenes which are the same time after time, like a film being played back. One of my favourites is the Roman army observed in the York Treasurer's House. The young man who saw them most recently described their uniforms and his claims were initially dismissed by historians who said that he'd made some mistakes. Upon further research, it was discovered that the uniforms of the soldiers in that particular area were unusual, and that the description given by the young man actually was accurate. You could easily explain it away if you wanted to, you could claim that the young man knew all along what he was doing and that he was out to deceive. I think that's unlikely, but at any rate I would not hold up a single case as definitive proof. When you get thousands of similar cases, then it's maybe time to admit that something interesting is going on and that someone should try to study it.

How to study? It's a difficult one, and I'm not a scientist so I'm not the best person to ask. I did what I could myself, by going out and trying to find physical evidence -- but these kinds of phenomena don't tend to appear on demand.

I wouldn't mind seeing an old-fashioned table-turning seance set up in a lab. Under controlled conditions you could observe what happens, maybe measure people's brain waves, take EMF readings. I'd also be interesting in what happens to the body and brain of a poltergeist "focus" in their own house, while events are occurring. Also, the areas in which hauntings have repeatedly been reported could be investigated. They may have some similarities. Again, an idea of mine is that EMFs could somehow be involved, and possibly water. It's a shame I don't have the means or the knowledge to investigate these things myself. I am not mechanically inclined.



OK, accusations that he is a "crackpot" because his research is not mainstream, aside, it is incorrect to say that the evidence does not support his conclusions. He is a methodical and thorough scientist and has published all of his results and how he arrived at them. If you like I can give you some links to look up. He has had to be as transparent and painstaking as possible, in his randomization methods for instance, because he knows that he will be under intense scrutiny from "debinkers" wanting to rubbish anything "paranormal." All "paranormal" researchers deal with this kind of scrutiny and few other fields endure it in quite this way.

Why don't you look into one of Sheldrake's longest-running bodies of research: animal telepathy, the best known one being "dogs that know when their owners are coming home." Robert Wiseman, a self-proclaimed skeptic, has repeated the experiments himself and has come up with similar results to Sheldrake. He denied it at first and publicly lied that this was so -- which he retracted only a few months ago, after the world had already heard him declare loudly that it was all nonsense.

As for NDEs, that is an area I don't know a lot about, but again why dismiss it out of hand if there's a possibility of something to be learned? Maybe, maybe not, but we don't know until we investigate. Upon doing a search this morning, I found this site, which I thought was interesting. It mentions the idea of memories possibly being stored outside the brain and doesn't reference Sheldrake directly, but this is one of his studies as well, which ties into the morphic fields idea.

I have a bad habit of making these kinds of conversations get longer and longer until they are unwieldy for all involved, so I will stop there. I suspect we're never going to agree on this but what I would at least ask is to see a little bit of open-mindedness, a willingness to entertain the possibility that some of the phemonena often referred to as "paranormal" might be worthy of serious investigation, even if the result of the investigation is only to confirm that nothing unusual at all is happening and everyone involved really was deluded (which I freely admit can happen).