Scientific studies on Spirits

[SabahTheLoner]

TED Talk on hauntings and what most of them actually are.

 

[SabahTheLoner]

What's scientific about it?

Some of this stuff is actually testable. Others are theories for now but if we can find a way to test it, we might be on to something.

 

[SabahTheLoner]

Interview of Voodou Priestess, brief history of Hatian Voodou and real-life ritual practice (no blood or cursing involved the ritual).

 

[Quintessence]

This is something I'd actually be interested in hearing from our resident scientists about. How would you actually go about testing for something like ghosts?

As far as I am aware, it can't be done because of the nature of the subject. Ghosts are supposed to be entirely intangible. I translate that into lacking in any mass or energy, and therefore non-existent to any empirical measures. It seems that they are, at most, ideas. Ideas are very powerful, but the study of ideas is not a science. And it doesn't have to be. It's not as if the sciences are the sole purveyors of truth and wisdom, and it's not as if the sciences determine all value. Well, perhaps it does for adherents of Scientism, but those people are... well... let's just say that philosophy manages to irritate me as a scientist and as a mystic all at the same time.

 

[Jeremiahcp]

Mainstream Science is mostly financed by multinationals and governments; i.e. those who rule the World. Both wouldn't like common people to get out of wage slavery. That's why they don't want us to know too much. Notice I said "know" and not "believe". They will give scientific proof of spirituality once they're sure it will represent no danger to their interests (maybe never).

They don't want common people to know that we are an immortal spirit, an eternal individual with unlimited potential; that there's more in life than working for them 9 to 5 for a miserly salary, just to come back home to distract ourselves instead of solving our problems. Imagine millions of people being sure of the power of their own spirits and not being afraid of death. Millions everywhere making defensive witchcraft against the abuses of those in power. They didn't burn witches for nothing in the past! Now we grow up learning that we're just biological machines and witchcraft is only in fairy tales, so you believe you have no power. We even grow up believing meditation and prayer is useless, so we don't even call for a higher power to help us against them! Or people is raised in religions where you are taught you're just a powerless sinner.

They even hide evidence of physical things as UFOs and the existence of intelligent life in other planets. What if common people would start contacting those aliens and getting liberating knowledge? (spiritual or not). Imagine if we had the technology to materialize things instead of producing them and buying them. Or of getting energy in free, non-polluting ways. Or of healing ourselves without medications. All of that is against the interests of big corporations.

This post is a joke, right?

 

[George-ananda]

Which article defines "spirit"?

I'm not sure off hand. But to me I would just say any non-physical living entity qualifies as a spirit under the colloquial use of the word.

 

[Erebus]

As far as I am aware, it can't be done because of the nature of the subject. Ghosts are supposed to be entirely intangible. I translate that into lacking in any mass or energy, and therefore non-existent to any empirical measures. It seems that they are, at most, ideas. Ideas are very powerful, but the study of ideas is not a science. And it doesn't have to be. It's not as if the sciences are the sole purveyors of truth and wisdom, and it's not as if the sciences determine all value. Well, perhaps it does for adherents of Scientism, but those people are... well... let's just say that philosophy manages to irritate me as a scientist and as a mystic all at the same time.

I suspect you may be right about them being impossible to properly test for, at least insofar as what I imagine a lot of us think of as ghosts are concerned.

Incidentally, that leads to another issue. "Ghost" is something of an umbrella term. In Britain, it was used almost interchangeably with spirit, fairy, elf, demon and goblin at various times throughout history. European folklore in general tends to have a lot of crossover in terms. This is before we even get into using the term as a description for things as distant and distinct as Japanese kami and Algonquian wendigo. Sometimes even the corporeal walking corpses of various cultures' folklore have been categorised as ghosts.

I would suggest that before we even think about trying to pin down whether or not ghosts can be said to exist (in any sort of physical capacity at least) we would first need to nail down what a ghost actually is.


The other issue I personally see, and I'll admit to not having expert knowledge in the matter, is that groups/individuals who have attempted to find ghosts typically go about it with a specific conclusion in mind. Often, this is to assume "ghosts exist" to begin with and attempt to find evidence from there, making anything they may or may not find extremely suspect. I've seen the inverse of this too, wherein somebody begins with the conclusion that ghosts can't possibly exist and absolutely nothing would serve to make them suspect otherwise.

 

[osgart]

either there is a spirit reality or all life goes out of existence forever. I thought Plato's Forms was an interesting way to look at possible realities; with knowledge itself being a form of existence, as well as other conceptualuties.
Too me it seems two realities converge, a primitive wild, intelligent spirit reality, and raw, brute physics. I don't think there is anything magical about physics that it would produce living creatures; after all it's just mindless stuff.

You can think physically about life all you want but that never can make the jump to life itself. The formation of creatures has a desperate simple logic to their bodies. Any tool takes a mind to create it; the hand, and eye. It's a natural inference to see intelligent agency in a spirit reality existing.

Science itself is loaded with non physical phenomenon, that they somehow physicalize, and naturalize. non locality, dark matter, dark energy.

it's all about how you want to word it, but non physical phenomena does exist, scientists just glaze over those evidences and reduce everything to mindless physics.

 

[Quintessence]

I would suggest that before we even think about trying to pin down whether or not ghosts can be said to exist (in any sort of physical capacity at least) we would first need to nail down what a ghost actually is.

Yes, that is another significant issue. It's not a term that I use in my path at all, as I view the term "ghost" hailing from ideological traditions that I do not share in. More specifically, the typical understanding of ghosts in my culture relies upon accepting Western dualism as well as... hmm... un-animist ways of approaching the topic in general. A lot of the lore is also heavily influenced by Christianity and their ideas about souls and afterlives.

The other issue I personally see, and I'll admit to not having expert knowledge in the matter, is that groups/individuals who have attempted to find ghosts typically go about it with a specific conclusion in mind. Often, this is to assume "ghosts exist" to begin with and attempt to find evidence from there, making anything they may or may not find extremely suspect. I've seen the inverse of this too, wherein somebody begins with the conclusion that ghosts can't possibly exist and absolutely nothing would serve to make them suspect otherwise.

This makes me think of another matter that is worth mentioning. I did actually do a sort of experiment with an occult group related to the topic a number of years back. We did several hundred repetitions between the group of us, and ran it through some basic statistical tests and everything. The results were not statistically significant, but even if they had been, there would be no way to eliminate other possible explanations. The idea that spirits of some sort were responsible for the values would still be ultimately unverifiable. Falsifiability is very important to the sciences, and I don't think these explorations have that quality either.

 

[Corvus]

Con-spire means 'Breath together', so gather a bunch of people, light up a bong and breath the psychedelic gas (Spirit) , now that's a real conspiracy.

Hell, I am all for that ****, pass it over bro.

 

[Corvus]

I would suggest that before we even think about trying to pin down whether or not ghosts can be said to exist (in any sort of physical capacity at least) we would first need to nail down what a ghost actually is.

A good starting point. I heard someone say once that 'they' are imprints in the fabric of reality, echoes of previous life. I could be persuaded to consider that, however then of course we would have to qualify what exactly is being imprinted upon, a known physical field, such as the magnetic field or higgs field? Spacetime? Something else? This subject is more uncertain and open to speculation than British weather.

 

[Polymath257]

From the article I linked:

"The answer was that they could make these shimmering 'orbs' appear again, but only - absurd as it may sound - if they 'asked' the apparitions to make themselves visible to the camera. And they found this method worked particularly well when the couple photographed spiritual gatherings.

What on earth was going on? Again, a maverick technical glitch seemed the obvious answer. Such anomalies happen frequently in digital photography. If you accidentally jog a camera while a picture is being taken, especially in dim light, you can easily get a double image.

But again, Prof Heinemann ruled out a technical fault. 'We were quickly able to eliminate the common problems associated with photography - such as dust particles, water droplets, reflections and a host of other likely causes.'

Yet the orbs still kept appearing. And the more images he took, the more he was able to study the bizarre properties of these shimmering lights.

Heinemann set up dozens of experiments using two cameras on static tripods under controlled conditions. His early experiments found that orbs can move very fast, up to 500mph or more."

Anyone with a camera can do these sorts of tests. And it'll be interesting to see if more than one sceintist can confirm that not all of the orbs are light refractions off dust and water particles.

There are many situations that give out-of-focus light disks. Water on the camera is a typical one (the picture of the man with an 'orb' above his head is likely to be such). Others are reflections
(the one with the dog watching is one).

It's amazing what shysters can convince people of.

 

[Erebus]

Yes, that is another significant issue. It's not a term that I use in my path at all, as I view the term "ghost" hailing from ideological traditions that I do not share in. More specifically, the typical understanding of ghosts in my culture relies upon accepting Western dualism as well as... hmm... un-animist ways of approaching the topic in general. A lot of the lore is also heavily influenced by Christianity and their ideas about souls and afterlives.




This makes me think of another matter that is worth mentioning. I did actually do a sort of experiment with an occult group related to the topic a number of years back. We did several hundred repetitions between the group of us, and ran it through some basic statistical tests and everything. The results were not statistically significant, but even if they had been, there would be no way to eliminate other possible explanations. The idea that spirits of some sort were responsible for the values would still be ultimately unverifiable. Falsifiability is very important to the sciences, and I don't think these explorations have that quality either.

That makes sense
You're certainly right on the Christian influence too. I mentioned that "demon" came into the interchangeability of the terms, the reason for which is fairly obvious.


Agreed. It sort of reminds me of the various curses supposedly surrounding certain things. Anything from Egyptian mummies to the film 'Poltergeist' have been thought of as cursed due to people involved with them dying. Of course given a long enough time-frame, everybody dies. We've also dug up a lot of mummies and made a lot of horror films, so at least some of them are likely to coincide with untimely deaths too.

Then again, maybe there were curses? It's impossible to establish clear cause and effect with something like that.

A good starting point. I heard someone say once that 'they' are imprints in the fabric of reality, echoes of previous life. I could be persuaded to consider that, however then of course we would have to qualify what exactly is being imprinted upon, a known physical field, such as the magnetic field or higgs field? Spacetime? Something else? This subject is more uncertain and open to speculation than British weather.

I love your allusion to British weather I'm with you on that one!

You're quite right of course, without a solid idea of exactly what's being tested, the field is wide open to speculation.

An example that I think ties into what both of you are saying is the popular notion that the presence of a ghost coincides with a drop in temperature. Okay ... that's something that can be measured, certainly. Establishing that it's a ghost that caused a decrease in temperature is far less straightforward. Haunted Victorian manor houses aren't typically what you'd call sterile lab conditions

 

[SabahTheLoner]

There are many situations that give out-of-focus light disks. Water on the camera is a typical one (the picture of the man with an 'orb' above his head is likely to be such). Others are reflections
(the one with the dog watching is one).

It's amazing what shysters can convince people of.

Yes. I am aware of that. I myself never have taken a picture with an orb because I keep camera lenses relatively untouched and high light concentrations in pictures upset me. But I have seen pictures of the orbs, and some of them are quite interesting.

Here is an article with a few interesting photos: What Are Orbs in Photos? Spirits? Dust? - The Epoch Times

This picture is actually an oddity, because a shadow seems to be cast on the orb.

 

[Polymath257]

Yes. I am aware of that. I myself never have taken a picture with an orb because I keep camera lenses relatively untouched and high light concentrations in pictures upset me. But I have seen pictures of the orbs, and some of them are quite interesting.

Here is an article with a few interesting photos: What Are Orbs in Photos? Spirits? Dust? - The Epoch Times

This picture is actually an oddity, because a shadow seems to be cast on the orb.

So, first of all, there are clear diffraction rings in this image. That shows that the light was from a small object or location initially. My guess on this is a small imperfection in the lens on the *flash* for the camera.

Again, these sorts of things are very common and are purely optical issues. A little experimentation will usually allow the culprit to be tracked down.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

As someone who was possessed/psychotic (pick which one) I prefer to think I was rather just psychotic. Otherwise we are all doomed to hell. Lol.

I cleared up once I got put on anti-psychotic meds. But I still remember the nightmares.

That's good! Don't get me wrong I'm not in doubt of possession however I am merely wondering how one can differentiate between actual spiritual possession and simple bout of schizophrenia or dementia.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

You have a point with that. I often wonder of a belief that spirits can possess others actually have an effect on the brain. Voodoo practitioners actually believe in spirit possessions and will drink and smoke heavily during rituals, claiming that they won't get cancer or other problems doing so because the spirits "are using my body to smoke" (quoting a woman from a video on YouTube). Personally I think that's not entirely how it works but I think more research should be done regarding spirit possession and a belief in it.

Well yeah...You can say the same for Native Americans with the use of psychedelics and their experiences regarding "spirits." It would for them in some of their rituals to achieve connection with the metaphysical, the use is necessary.

 

[Milton Platt]

Please share anything related to this topic if you can think of anything. Otherwise politely discuss the topic based on other findings and related knowledge. The articles below are to start a conversation about such studies.

Electronic voice phonomena (EVP) might explain voices "in people's heads": What You Need to Know about Electronic Voice Phenomena

A decade-old old article based off experiments surrounding orbs in digital pictures. It has some good points that are still relevant: Is this the proof that spirits DO exist? | Daily Mail Online

Einstein's Laws and the existence of ghosts: Do Einstein's Laws Prove Ghosts Exist?

Chakra science based off quantum physics: Chakra Science

Chakras in neuroscience: The Anatomical Proof of the Existence of the Chakras

Near-death experience studies: New Evidence Suggests that the Near-Death-Experience is the Spirit Leaving the Body and Not Just a Dying Brain

Feel free to offer other explanations or provide counter-claims that can be supported scientifically on the topic of spirits existing. If you must dispute with another person, take it to a different thread. This thread is for discussing scientific opinions and proof (or lack thereof) for the spiritual. Opposing claims here should be talked about in a respectful and knowledge-based way, not used as emotional ammo against each other.

Near death link: The writer states, "She accurately described the 20 doctors, nurses, and technicians in the room, 17 of whom she had never met...."
I must call into question the veracity of this article because of this statement. Surgeons, nurses, and technicians are fully gowned and masked. I can tell you from working in a hospital that there is no way this is true.
Furthermore, if this had been true, it does not follow that there is a "spirit" that leaves the body somehow. It would simply be a mystery. To support a "spirit" you have to actually demonstrate that it exists. Only then can you explore what it can and cannot do.

For some reason, the links have become inactive and I cannot explore them from the reply window, so i will stop here for now.

 

[agorman]

how one can differentiate between actual spiritual possession and simple bout of schizophrenia or dementia.

Many times I've encountered people on the streets talking or screaming to someone invisible. I sent them light with a prayer and they calmed down and shut up. So I think what Science thinks are "insane" people, are really ones who have opened their channels of extrasensory perception somehow and can't cope with what they're seeing from higher dimensions. Some of them may have opened their channels due to meditation or due to accidents, illnesses or maybe they were just born that way due to spiritual practices in previous incarnations.

The prayer is "I am Presence, make me a vehicle of light to illuminate (person full name or description goes here) in a good way." e.g. "I am Presence, make me a vehicle of light to illuminate John Smith in a good way." Or "I am Presence, make me a vehicle of light to illuminate in a good way that guy who's talking alone.". It's repeated 3 times.

The "I am Presence" is your own higher self, considered as your guardian angel by some people (or the buddha nature). In other words, it's a prayer to emit spiritual light from your higher self, send it through your bodies (physical and subtle) and then to the receiving person. I've learnt it in a Saint Germain metaphysics course on 2006. It's good whenever you need to help somebody. Light normally wards off evil entities, so it has sense to send it to people who is harassed by them. Many Buddhists also have the habit of sending light by lighting a candle or by visualizing, etc. And I even have a friend who says light hurts him because he's "dark".

 

[Epic Beard Man]

Many times I've encountered people on the streets talking or screaming to someone invisible. I sent them light with a prayer and they calmed down and shut up. So I think what Science thinks are "insane" people, are really ones who have opened their channels of extrasensory perception somehow and can't cope with what they're seeing from higher dimensions. Some of them may have opened their channels due to meditation or due to accidents, illnesses or maybe they were just born that way due to spiritual practices in previous incarnations.

The prayer is "I am Presence, make me a vehicle of light to illuminate (person full name or description goes here) in a good way." e.g. "I am Presence, make me a vehicle of light to illuminate John Smith in a good way." Or "I am Presence, make me a vehicle of light to illuminate in a good way that guy who's talking alone.". It's repeated 3 times.

The "I am Presence" is your own higher self, considered as your guardian angel by some people (or the buddha nature). In other words, it's a prayer to emit spiritual light from your higher self, send it through your bodies (physical and subtle) and then to the receiving person. I've learnt it in a Saint Germain metaphysics course on 2006. It's good whenever you need to help somebody. Light normally wards off evil entities, so it has sense to send it to people who is harassed by them. Many Buddhists also have the habit of sending light by lighting a candle or by visualizing, etc. And I even have a friend who says light hurts him because he's "dark".

I do not discount your views and your sincere and noble prayer (I encourage you to send one my way) however, as a person of science I feel a lot of times we tend to confuse psychiatric illness with some spiritual phenomena. My question is how do we discern the two? When you send prayers after someone stops shouting to themselves is it just coincidence, or does it truly work? The same can be said of the psychiatric patients I see at work, when we give them medications for their psychosis and they stop, is it the medication help their neurotransmitters? Or is it some spiritual battle going on? You know we in medicine cannot tell the difference we can only go by the observable behavior, that is, what we see but how do we know if someone is under attack by some spiritual force? If medication along with behavioral therapy helps how do we truly know it is a spiritual battle, and not some sort of behavioral issue? That is my dilemma