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Seeing ghosts: it's the spirit of the age

Seeing ghosts: it’s the spirit of the age

The need to believe in ghosts may be an instinct designed to help us cope with the idea of death
 
Last week it was revealed that more people than in the 1950s now believe in ghosts. This is less of a
scientific age than we think, says Tessa Mayes
 
1    If you’ve ever thought a bump in the night    in the British Journal of Psychology, the first
 was the sound of your long-gone time a serious scientific journal had published
 grandmother haunting the attic, then40 such a paper. His research team had organised
 you’re not alone. According to a survey more than 450 people to walk round haunted
5 for UKTV, 42% of us now think ghosts exist, sites. Wiseman concluded that people
 compared with only a third of people in 1954. genuinely experience something but these
2    And there’s no shortage of folk willing to feelings are the result of phenomena such as
 go public about their ghostly experiences. Pop45 poor lighting and magnetic fields exciting the
 singer Kylie Minogue claims she has been senses.
10 “visited” by Michael Hutchence, a former6    “I don’t think all apparitions are just
 lover, who died in 1997. And Russell Grant, creations of the mind,” argues Bernard Carr,
 the astrologer, has talked of being visited by professor of mathematics and astronomy at
 Princess Diana in a dream and feeling “clear50 Queen Mary University of London. “For
 signs she wanted to make contact with me”. example, there are collective cases where
315    “The e 15 nthusiasm for things like ghosts, several people see the same apparition at the
 horoscopes, angels and pixies reflects a back- same or different times. There are also cases
 to-the-past frame of mind,” says Francis where the apparition gives information that
 Wheen, author of How Mumbo-Jumbo55 was unknown at the time but later verified.
 Conquered the World. “It does seem odd that Although we don’t fully understand these
20 the extraordinary technological and scientific phenomena, scientists should investigate
 developments of the modern age have been them.”
 accompanied by an epidemic of superstition7    That a fascination with the paranormal has
 and pseudo-science.”60 risen as there has been a decline in support for
4    Groups of paranormal enthusiasts are traditional religion is of no surprise to Philip
25 emerging all over the country. “These things Corr, a psychologist at the University of
 come in cultural fashions,” says David Wales. He says it is part of our survival
 Taylor, the chairman of Parasearch, a group instinct. “Psychologically, the death of others
 of ghost researchers. “First it was UFOs65 is a highly emotional experience,” he says.
 following television programmes such as The “The belief in ghosts and religion in general
30 X Files and now it’s ghosts because of may well help people cope with the
 programmes about haunted houses.” realisation that death is inevitable and final.”
5    But while television shows on the8    Of course, believers in ghosts can always
 paranormal offer late night entertainment, can70 ask non-believers for proof that ghosts don’t
 the investigation of ghosts ever be taken exist. But nobody can prove a negative.
35 seriously? In 2003 Professor Richard 
 Wiseman of Hertfordshire University revealed The Sunday Times
 his investigations into paranormal experiences