How could one prove the existence of ghosts?

Undesired Walrus

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Undesired Walrus
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Let's say I have ghosts in my flat. What would be the most I could prove, and how would it be done?

Could I ever prove they were dead people who had returned from the grave?
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Let's say I have ghosts in my flat. What would be the most I could prove, and how would it be done?

Could I ever prove they were dead people who had returned from the grave?
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The bigfoot and UFO threads have much information about collecting evidence on things that don't exist. :)
 
You could no doubt prove there was a phenomonon, or group of phenomonon that are at work and often referred to as "ghosts" or "a ghost". But, proving they were dead people returned from the grave would be tricky.

First you would have to define what effects can actually be noticed. Changes in temperature, and so forth.

Second illiminate all known phenomona that cause "hauntings", such as low frequency sound, light flickering at set frequencies, changes in temperature and air pressure, certain forms of magnetic field,psychological effects, marsh gas, and more.

Third, you would have to hypothosise the cause of these effects and test. Make a further hypothosis based on the results and test again, until you can find an observable and testable cause, that endures the null and falsifying.

Then base a theory on the evidence.

The issue comes woth proving "dead people" are "coming back". Before you can even hope to prove a wandering soul, lingering mind, or what ever, you would have to prove there was a soul to be left behind. You would have to prove the manifestation is an active intelligence and not a "recording", and that is incredibly unlikely.
 
That's a hard one. The first question you should ask is actually not "how can I prove it" but "how do I know it". If you got good reason to believe that there are ghosts, then whatever it is it should also be good reason for others to believe in ghosts. If you don't have any reason to believe that there are ghosts in your flat that would convince sceptics, then you don't have a good reason to believe there are ghosts in the first place. If you do have good reason to believe there are ghosts, then the only question left is how to transfer that information, which isn't nearly as big a deal.

In order to have good reason to believe that there are ghosts in your flat, you would have to have Bayesian evidence that points in favour of the ghost explanation to a greater extent than the evidence that points in the direction of alternate explanations. The scientific method would be to come up with experiments which you can reasonably expect to turn out one way if ghosts are the right explanation, or the other if it's something else. An obvious one would be to put a ghost on tape: Assuming that the ghost is clearly visible, that is evidence of the ghost hypothesis. However, that wouldn't yet show that it is actually the spirit of a dead person. In order to do that, you would have to present Bayesian evidence stronger than the huge amounts of evidence we already have that says human consciousness can't exist without a brain. In order to do that, you could spend years experimenting and revealing weak evidence that gradually shows that ghosts are the most likely explanation. However, you would have to take into account that humans are unreliable: even if you collected such a mountain of evidence, the most reasonable conclusion (for both the sceptics you are trying to convince AND yourself) would still be that you misjudged the evidence entirely and ghosts do not exist. You would have to put several independent teams of scientists to the task, each of whom would come to the same conclusion. As such the simplest way might be to do something extraordinary like capture a ghost and reveal it for everyone to see and experiment on. It would still be very hard to show that it actually is a remnant of the dead, then, but people would certainly take the ghost hypothesis seriously at that point.

So in conclusion: it wouldn't be easy. ;)
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Let's say I have ghosts in my flat. What would be the most I could prove, and how would it be done?

Could I ever prove they were dead people who had returned from the grave?
Click to expand...

You need
1. an old fire station
2. a proton pack
3. a pk meter
4. a ghost trap
5. A refitted hearse with the registration "ecto1"
who ya gonna call
;)
 
Do you have the co-operation of the ghosts? If you do then everything is easy. Like getting them to tell you things only their family would know. Or get a friend in the room. If they cannot see the ghost, the ghost reads a book that is not in your view and then you repeat what the ghost says.
 
The ghosts would have to mainfest themselves in the presence of a group of skeptics and stay around long enough to explain who and what they were and where they came from. They would have to do this often. Unless the ghosts willingly participated there would be no way to prove it. Reliable videos and a skeptics such as Randi observing and communication would be a great help.
 
People have claimed they've seen ghosts, heard them, seen them move objects and so on. The evidence so far consists of claiming explicable things were ghosts: fuzzy images on film and video tape, recorded noises and static people claim contain words, cold and warm spots, and electric fields.

So to ask what would prove a ghost existed one would need to start with a viable hypothesis, and the hypotheses so far consist of totally making up things the ghosts are supposed to do or look like. Why would a cold spot be a ghost? There is no reason other than someone made up a silly explanation for temperature variation in a room. Same with the rest of the claims.

If someone existed outside their body there have been experiments designed to test this hypothesis and those experiments have not turned up valid evidence. Houdini tried to contact the dead and failed multiple times.


The bottom line is, what do you hypothesize a ghost should be able to do or what do you hypothesize you would see if you saw a ghost? This is quite a hurdle to start with since you have nothing to go on.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
People have claimed they've seen ghosts, heard them, seen them move objects and so on. The evidence so far consists of claiming explicable things were ghosts: fuzzy images on film and video tape, recorded noises and static people claim contain words, cold and warm spots, and electric fields.

So to ask what would prove a ghost existed one would need to start with a viable hypothesis, and the hypotheses so far consist of totally making up things the ghosts are supposed to do or look like. Why would a cold spot be a ghost? There is no reason other than someone made up a silly explanation for temperature variation in a room. Same with the rest of the claims.

If someone existed outside their body there have been experiments designed to test this hypothesis and those experiments have not turned up valid evidence. Houdini tried to contact the dead and failed multiple times.


The bottom line is, what do you hypothesize a ghost should be able to do or what do you hypothesize you would see if you saw a ghost? This is quite a hurdle to start with since you have nothing to go on.
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Theres a woman in Conyers Ga who used to work in a now defunct restaurant called Michaelangelos on Railroad street. She was working a second job there and she told me she saw a man wearing a tux complete with top hat walk up the stairs. She cried bloody murder and several other employees came running. The apparition was gone before they got there.

I don't believe she saw a ghost. I believe the fact that she had been working long hours after finishing her job at a hospital mixed with the stories told about this large old two story home caused her to hallucinate. She saw her concept of a ghost. Ghosts are figments of our imagination.

Still the stories about this house persist. I actually contacted ghost hunters who didn't return my e-mail. Ghosts make good stories and the world would be a more interesting place if they existed but they don't. We'll all just die and stay dead.

Incidentally The Pointe bar just down the road from this old house has a ghost. Toilets flush when no ones in the restroom, voices upstairs when no ones up there etc. I believe the toilet flush is explainable as it is an automatic flushing device. The voices come from outside etc but here again the stories persist.
 
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I wrote a story once about someone trying to get empirical evidence of a haunting. It wasn't easy and I suspect I hobbled myself by actually trying to tell a story too...

Proving the phenomena is one thing; proving the provenance is another thing entirely. I suspect you'd need to be able to establish verifiable two-way communication to even make a start.
 
I've had this very discussion in a serious manner with self-proclaimed "professional ghost hunters" before, and I'll say the same thing to you that I've said to them.

1. You must provide an operational definition of "ghost".

2. You must provide a plausible physical mechanism (or mechanisms) by which a "ghost" can interact with the universe around it.

3. You must provide a set of protocols which can be used to distinguish a true "ghost" signal from any other kind of well-known physical phenomenon which could generate the same kind of signal in your detection equipment.

In other words, you have to do science. Sadly, every time I have put these conditions to these "ghost-hunters", they either roll their eyes or openly admit that they (and the "ghost-hunting" community at large) have not seriously considered these criteria.
 
Well, I have an easy test for you:

1)A person is selected.
2)The person gets to pick something at random, let's say a card from a deck.
3)The person shows the card to the objective observer.
4)The person then picks a gun and shoots himself in the hand
5)The person manifests itself and tells you the card he picked.
6)If you can tell the card that a dead man picked at random in a controlled environment I think your odds of winning the MDC and giving credence to ghosts would be quite good.

Of course I am not seriously suggesting that anyone kill themselves...

But I don't see any other possible way for a test to prove ghosts.
If you just channel a ghost, then either the answer is something that we can verify, which means you coudl have known it beforehand and if you can't verify it... then neither can we and we can't determine if it's true or not.

Only if we pick something that we can verify and you can't and the only way to do that would be if the subject drops dead insantly.
 
First step would be a testable,measurable, repeatable method of quantifying what you think is a ghost or the energy it manifests. Once you have established that you can physically masure these ghosts with more than random chance you need to determine how or if you can interact with the energy. Does it have intelligence? If you succed with this interaction you again need to test in a blinded method what you are interacting with. If you can do this with repeatability then I think you have succeeded. Good Luck as you are going to need it. p.s.- The methods in use now by ghost hunters leave much to be desired and too much in the way of false evidence or wishful thinking.
By the way, with the exception of psychic mediums opinions, I think orbs are the singular most stupid piece of evidence ever presented.
 
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Ghosts are a cultural thing, too. Take in example the ghosts in Japan. Over there, ghosts do not have legs.
 
Proof of ghosts is a feeling of spookiness, coupled with cold, clammy skin and creaking doors, especially attic or basement doors.
 
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