Midwest Preternatural Research
How Can We See Ghosts?by Matt
In order to see something with your eyes, it needs to first have matter. Ghosts don't have matter so how can we see them?
One theory is that when someone sees a ghost, it's telepathy. The ghost
consciousness projects itself to a person and then their brain creates
the image of a ghost. The reason ghosts wear clothes could be because we're
seeing them the way they see themselves. When you close your eyes and
picture yourself, don't you imagine yourself wearing clothes? Also,
most people when they picture themselves don't see themselves right
down to their feet, which could be why most, but not all, ghosts are seen not having any
feet. (Auerbach) It must be noted that there are some people who DO picture their feet -- these are people who have a complete sense of self, and if they appeared as a ghost in theory they would have feet.
Why do ghosts appear in pictures? One theory is that it's
Psychokinesis (PK), or "mind over matter". We know from experiments
that PK affects film, so that could be what the ghost uses to appear in the
picture. "In their lab the Soviet scientists [Sergeyev and Ivanenko]
had observed that while making objects move, [the subject] Kulagina
caused exposurelike effects on sealed photographic film. Moved objects
actually left distinct traces across the sealed film." (Broughton,
p.142) Sometimes the ghost may only project itself to one thing at a
time, which could be why we get something in a photo that we didn't see
with our eyes. However, just because you didn't see it with your eyes
when you were taking the picture doesn't make it paranormal. It could
be a camera defect. It could be dust illuminated by the camera flash.
It could be the camera strap or a finger in front of the camera, etc,
etc.
Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs), or disembodied voices caught
on tape, could be PK too, in theory. The ghost doesn't have a mouth or vocal cords to
make speech, so it has to manipulate the voice recorder using PK. The
reason ghosts are able to "hear" our EVP questions when they don't have
ears could be telepathy. But you don't die and just suddenly you are able to
do all these things. They might have to be learned, like Patrick Swayze in
the movie "Ghost". That could take forever, which is why older
hauntings are sometimes more active. (Auerbach) Some may never learn
how to do it, or it might be really hard, which is why we can't sit
down with a voice recorder and have a whole conversation with a ghost.
They might not even be able to hear us.
If a ghost can manipulate a voice recorder using PK, then living people should be able to do it too, if ghosts were once living people. And if we were capable of something like that, then who's to say that EVPs aren't just our own subconscious thoughts projected onto the recorder and not ghost voices at all? Maybe it's just your expectations to find something, or the client's desire or fear that you'll find something?
That probably is what's happening in some EVPs, I believe. However, if you capture an EVP that said something that nobody living at the time could have possibly known (but somebody who had died would have known), and can verify it, obviously something else is going on.
References:
Classes on Parapsychology taken with Loyd Auerbach
Broughton, Richard. "Parapsychology: The Controversial Science"