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, then | 40 | 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. Pop | 45 | poor lighting and magnetic fields exciting the | ||||||
singer Kylie Minogue claims she has been | senses. | |||||||
10 | “visited” by Michael Hutchence, a former | 6 | “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 “clear | 50 | Queen Mary University of London. “For | ||||||
signs she wanted to make contact with me”. | example, there are collective cases where | |||||||
3 | 15 | “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-Jumbo | 55 | 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 superstition | 7 | 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 UFOs | 65 | 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 the | 8 | Of course, believers in ghosts can always | |||||
paranormal offer late night entertainment, can | 70 | 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 |