Supernatural Science: Do Ghosts Really Exist?

Most people love a good ghost story, as the growing number of television shows devoted to the supernatural attest to. The paranormal investigators in programs such as Most Haunted and Ghost Adventures use a vast array of high-tech equipment to try and measure supernatural phenomenon. EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) record disembodied voices. EMF detectors measure electro-magnetic fields. Motion detectors and thermal cameras can also supposedly indicate when a ghost is nearby.

While it may be exciting and spooky to watch ghost hunters grope through pitch black rooms armed with their EMFs, thermal imaging cameras and night visions goggles, as they scream or startle in response to each unexplained noise and sensation, actually proving the existence of ghosts is as much of an apparition as the spirits themselves.

Tweet's From the Grave

Now the dead are even using the internet. On October 30th, the first "Tweance" will take place in which participants can tweet the dead, using Twitter and the talents of self-proclaimed medium Jayne Wallace. The public will nominate their favorite departed stars and Wallace will ask the dead celebs questions, relaying their responses in tweets. Is Wallace going explain the 160 character limit to spirits, question only the more taciturn ghosts, or perhaps just abridge their responses? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

A Million Bucks if You Can Prove the Paranormal

With all of this interest in, and exploration of, the supernatural, you'd think that there would be some scientific evidence to show for it. Yet, if there were, someone would be a million dollars richer. Here's why.

In 1964, James Randi-magician, escape artist, and one of the world's most persistent investigators of paranormal claims-offered up $1,000 of his own cash to the first person who could provide proof of the paranormal. As Randi's challenge became more well-known, others began donating money to the cause. Today the James Randi Educational Foundation, a non-profit learning resource aimed at promoting critical thinking, offers a prize that has grown to more than one million dollars. The JREF is not directly involved in the testing procedure, other than helping design the testing protocol with approval from the applicant. To date, no one has even passed the preliminary tests in order to be considered as a serious claimant.

Science and the Supernatural

Will there ever be scientific proof that ghosts exist? The term "supernatural" itself, describes something beyond nature, and science is a tool used to explore the natural world. Still, fans and devotees of the paranormal need not lose faith quite yet.

Multiverses, collections parallel universes or alternate realities, previously a topic of fiction and philosophy, are now being seriously discussed by quantum physicists. The basic argument (minus all the complicated mathematics) goes as follows: If the universe is infinite, there must be alternate earths and alternate "yous" somewhere out there.

Yesterday's science fiction often becomes today's science. So perhaps there is not proof of what we now consider the paranormal because we still lack the scientific tools to measure these phenomena. We'll just have to wait, search and enjoy our ghost stories for now.

Sources

James Randi Education Foundation website

Nova, October 2003, The Elegant Universe

Note: The author, Tami Port, a scientist and teacher, is going to the Ghosts of Kalamazoo Tour this weekend, and, as a child, was so scared by the article photo (said to be Lady Townsend the "Brown Lady" ghost of Raynham Hall), that she may have wet her pants upon first seeing it.