Things that go bump in the night

The paranormal has always interested me ever since I was a child. Used to love reading ghost stories, especially the tales of M.R. James and I remember the BBC used to do a ghost story at Christmas. Curiously we've been watching them recently and most of them are still spine-tinglingly good. And by paranormal I'm mostly talking about ghosts here.

One book I read a lot as a child was Harry Price's The Most Haunted House in England which was published in 1940 and was one of a very few books on the paranormal our local library had. It was his account of ten years of investigating Borley Rectory. I'm not going to go into all the problems associated with his investigations here, and there are plenty.

Peter Underwood was another favourite author. I have no idea how many books he published but it seemed never ending. He would describe hauntings across the country as well as investigations and what equipment was needed.

There were also a lot of television programmes that seemed infused with the paranormal, if not always overtly, when I was growing up. Doctor Who often had elements of it (although it was usually revealed to be aliens up to no good) but one of my favourites was Sapphire and Steel with David McCallum and Joanna Lumley. It was never revealed who they were or where they came from.

When I was in my early teens, in the early to mid 80s, a few friends and I used to go ghost hunting. We had read Peter Underwood's books and knew what to do. This was before digital equipment became available (or if it did exist was far too expensive).

So our equipment consisted of tape recorder, string, talcum powder, notebook (and pencils), camera (a friend had one, lucky bugger), torch and trigger objects (crosses etc). We also had walkie-talkies so we could stay in contact with each other!

We investigated various allegedly haunted places around where we lived and came away with very little in reality. We heard bangs and footsteps, which were captured by the tape recorder. Cold spots of course. But not much else.

Then we grew up and the world became more cynical and demanding as the years passed. I miss those days (don't we all though?) but I never lost my interest in the paranormal although it has become infused with a healthy dose of scepticism.

I've witnessed probably a dozen occurrences in forty odd years which I'm happy to put in the paranormal camp - that isn't to say there isn't an explanation but these occurrences really do baffle. Also they were with witnesses who saw and heard the same things. Ironically these happened between ten and twenty years ago and long after my ghost hunting days were over. Just ordinary days.

I know, I know, scientists would (and the majority do) say the paranormal can't happen (specifically ghosts). Just because you can't explain it doesn't mean there isn't an explanation. This is true. The big argument against the existence of ghosts is the Laws of Thermodynamics. Ghosts, they say, break those Laws and in reality nothing can and even the universe is bound by those Laws.

To play devil's advocate here, do ghosts break the Laws of Thermodynamics? Here's the thing. It is not uncommon for stories of ghosts to show they diminish over time, eventually disappearing. Sounds like the second Law of Thermodynamics in action.

The problem is you've got to be able to prove what ghosts actually are. Are they the souls of the dead or are they recordings (the stone tape theory)? Are they a mixture of the two? Or are they delusions? More exotic hypothesis would have it that they are extensions into our world of inter-dimensional beings and similar ideas.

The onus is on those claiming the paranormal exists to prove it in a manner that is acceptable. If your evidence cannot stand the test of investigation or there are too many areas of doubt and uncertainty then it is not reliable evidence. It might be interesting and lead to other areas of enquiry but it in itself is not proof of anything.

There are too many assumptions (or at best presumptions) made in the paranormal world many of which are dubious to begin with. The idea that there is an afterlife. Just because religions say there are, mostly, doesn't mean it's true. It may be comforting for many but no one actually knows. And which afterlife? All of them? Some of them? Only one of them? What is the soul? Does it really exist? What is consciousness? How does it work? Is consciousness the same as the soul? And so on.

The other problem facing those who believe in the paranormal is the proliferation of YouTube videos purportedly showing paranormal activity and the satellite channels have a myriad of paranormal TV shows. We all know the TV shows are nothing but entertainment (stretching the word somewhat) and cannot be trusted, too many have been called out and shown to be fake, although that doesn't seem to put their core fans off. As for YouTube videos, yeah right. The problem there is the majority of them are obvious fakes. Fun but rubbish.

My big problem with these TV shows in particular isn't that they may be fake (I take that as read) but the amount of useless gadgets they use. They go in armed like the Ghostbusters with gizmos with flashing lights and that make bleeping noises and think they're being all scientific about it. Ha ha ha ha (ironic laughter there).

No, no you're not being scientific. Using a calculator doesn't make you a mathematician. You are using equipment designed for particular purposes, one of which isn't ghost hunting. The one which really bugs me though is the EMF meter.

The most popular meter in use is, apparently, the K-II. The problems with it being used in paranormal investigations are numerous. What exactly do you think you are measuring? These meters are designed to only read a small fraction of the EM field. You get a fluctuation and it's "oo, oo, a ghost.' No, no it isn't. It's a natural fluctuation in the EM field but because you are only measuring a small part of that field you aren't seeing the larger picture. Also the K-II is a single-axis meter so you aren't reading the other two axes.

It also amazes me that these people on the TV haven't actually bothered learning what the electro-magnetic spectrum actually is. They go in and glibly say "we've taken base readings of the place." Really? You spend, what, an hour maybe taking readings? You know it can take months to get an idea of what a locations base reading is. Oh, apparently not.

Another thing they say is "I'm getting strong reading here, yet there's no electricity." Um, there's your camera equipment, sound equipment and all the other gadgets you're carrying. They also appear to be unaware that everything gives off an EM field. Your body, your clothes, grass, stone, trees, buildings, everything. You are picking up readings from everything and everywhere. Switching off the electricity is not going to do much.

Bottom line is throw the K-II away. It's useless.

EVPs are always interesting, but not necessarily always for the reasons paranormal investigators think. They don't seem to realise that digital voice recorders can pick up radio transmissions. Some would say that the voices seem to answer the investigator's questions. Well, fine. I'm not dismissing EVPs completely but you have to be aware of the possibility of picking up radio transmissions. Also, I see some of these TV and YouTube shows and they play an alleged EVP and say "did you hear that?" excitedly. Er, no. No I didn't. All I heard was white noise and an electronic burbling noise which frankly could be anything.

If you are going to use equipment to try and detect paranormal activity then actually learn about the science behind it, the limitations of the equipment, the many problems of interpreting what that equipment picks up.

This is where assumptions come in. Many, not all, but many ghost hunters go in already convinced a place is haunted and with their preconceived theories and ideas.

I can't be bothered talking about all the other paraphernalia they take, the ghost boxes and the like. Most of the problems with them are obvious but there's plenty of sites that explain it.

One area which I do find interesting is the whole time-slip thing. Where people see objects, often buildings but sometimes other things, that no longer exist. In East Anglia there are a few accounts of people seeing an old Tudor building, or whatever, that had been destroyed centuries before. They had no knowledge that a building existed there yet upon investigation it turns out there was. There have been reports of people observing future events. Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard is a famous example of someone seeing future events, his account can be found all over the internet.

There's nothing I've read in physics so far which says such events are impossible (improbable maybe) and since the nature of time is under constant scrutiny who can say? These cases probably don't really belong under the paranormal category but that's where they are often to be found.

Now it could be argued that ghosts are the same thing, time-slip events and maybe this is the case. That ghost walking down the corridor isn't the soul of the dead but a living person experiencing some time anomaly. It sounds interesting and like the time-slips above can't be proved. They remain personal experiences and interesting, but not concrete evidence. Assumptions again! Maybe there was a time-slip or maybe it was a delusion of some kind. I don't know.

Do ghosts and the paranormal exist? I don't know. I know strange occurrences happen. I've experienced a few myself but I don't know what they are. I've seen objects move on their own when everything around them doesn't. I don't know why and I can't explain the mechanics of why one particular object would move several inches yet everything else stayed motionless.

There is, of course, a difference in a physical act and merely feeling that a place might be haunted. A physical act can be recorded, tested and hopefully repeated. The problem with feelings is they are personal and there are many natural phenomena which can cause someone to think they are not alone or even see a ghost, which isn't picked up on any equipment. Infrasound can induce feelings of discomfort, hearing and seeing odd things. This has actually been proved (this is the original paper on it [pdf]. There have been others since). There is research that suggests EM fields can induce the same feelings although this is still very much debated. So are you experiencing a paranormal event or is it the natural (or man-made) environment?

Until there is actual proper scientific research done on the subject of hauntings it's always going to be a case of personal belief. There's nothing wrong with having a personal belief of course but it doesn't equal evidence or proof.

Regardless, the paranormal remains something I find interesting, whatever it actually is.