This is a very interesting article which has been brought up a few times recently by various people, including Aaron on the Mysterious Universe podcast.

The word “scientific” is thrown around several times on late night ghost hunting shows, but it’s often a given assumption in this world of eerie lights and sounds, that any equipment that is used with several figures in the price tag makes the study more scientific. Of course the field of paranormal inquiry cannot be judged based on television programs whose bread and butter are entertainment at the cost of objective analysis, even if they are good fun.

But where on the spectrum of scientific analysis are television programs that take anecdotal evidence consistently at face value at the expense of substantial inquiry in a field everyone, in the end, knows little about truly? Of course the concept of ghosts in the media is still stuck in a sort of black and white neo-spiritualist modality where ghosts are simply mysterious ethereal people who have departed and cannot, for whatever reason, be seen by the living. But as analysis into the collective unconscious of humanity seems to indicate a network of thought far surpassing the simple five senses, it seems a logical conclusion that “ghosts” as we know them could be ephemeral glimpses at the consciousnesses that have passed on, and are attuned to certain experiences (ie. being in a specific haunted house) as opposed to actual physical beings that inhabit merely the world around them.

Of course in order to believe this we would have to disregard the body of evidence showing faint wispy figures dancing in front of the occasional camera lens transparently. And we would have to consider the dubious assumption that anomalous electromagnetic energy in haunted houses came as a result of immaterial beings interacting with and changing the physical world on a quantum level.

It doesn’t seem impossible that these wispy figures are not residing in the space around us, but within the folds of unexplored grey matter between us where shadows of once living beings have returned to the whole only to manifest in memory. Pair the level of research into psychic activity as a demonstrable phenomena with the anecdotal belief that all humans have a latent psychic talent, and you immediately have a web of minds connecting to one another. But what happens when one of the “servers” (ie brains) goes down due to death? Does the information it was sharing immediately shut down and disappear? Or does that information, that thought process, continue to travel through this web drawn by different forces to those who are “open” to the experience of their existence post mortem? Could this be a physical and scientifically confirmed means of tracking life after death and the phenomenon of ghosts?

Read more:

Unexplainable.net: Is the Paranormal Beyond the Scientific Method?

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The paranormal is a topic that has long persisted not only because of the overwhelming amount of first hand accounts of the bizarre, but because of a leap of faith on the part of those willing to believe. The paranormal, in that regard, is a two way street. So where are we in regards to putting our belief aside and focusing on the science. Likewise where are we in regards to letting ourselves use our subjectivity and passion to fuel our research?

More and more I see a great divide in the paranormal community between those willing to believe and those looking for a reason to believe. One question however lingers with me: Does our search for answers and our reliance on specific research techniques actually affect the phenomena in such a way that the evidence is only there because of our belief in the methods we use to acquire it? In other words, do EMF detectors register spikes because we believe they should? If that is the case, we might be looking at a greater problem in environment vs. activity.

The EMF meter or “detector” has become a staple in the ghost hunter’s arsenal. Fluctuations in the electromagnetic field can be both artificial and natural, and can be attributed to such common items as simple household appliances and power sources. Now the average ghost hunter will measure the field around them and, if no artificial source or other source is apparent, assume that a spike on their meter indicates the presence of a spirit. I believe the bulk of the ghost hunting or paranormal investigation community is comprised of intelligent, thoughtful individuals, but I also believe that the origin of the EMF meters role in investigation has been slightly skewed, however.

Read more:

The Parafactor: Is the paranormal a victim of our own “quantum belief”?

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Rocketboom’s Ella Morton interviews Dom Villella and discovers the paranormal side of New York City.

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Paranormal NYC
http://www.paranormal-nyc.com/

For more info, including video and images visit http://rocketboom.com/paranormal-nyc

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Fire has been indespensible to the progress of man, yet seldom has anything been more violently destructive too. Sometimes however, it seems that fire ceases to be man’s servant and seems to acquire a spirit and will of its own. Incredible, but true!

Flames

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Read about other mysterious fires of unknown origin:

Far Shores: Electrical energy or the Devil: Sicily’s Mystery Fires

Ghost Theory: Experts baffled by paranormal activity in Czech house

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