Throughout history, in all parts of the world, there have been people who claim to have witnessed paranormal phenomena. They believe they have witnessed the appearance of ghosts or spirits and have even managed to capture some reliable evidence of these events. Thus, for centuries and until today, there have even been groups of spiritism dedicated to invoking ghosts through different methods such as the famous güija. There are even those who have organized to “hunt” ghosts in a proactive and organized way.
At the end of the 19th century the Society for Psychical Research was founded in England. Eleanor Sidgwick, who was president of this group, in which even members of the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford participated, became the first ghostbusters. Thus, the tradition that ghosts exist and can be scientifically proven goes a long way. However, this is not the case.
In reality, the existence of ghosts cannot be scientifically proven because there is not even a consensus on what a ghost is to begin with. It is elucidated that it could be the wandering soul of someone who must close his affairs on Earth before definitively fooling himself on his way to the afterlife, but why is it then claimed that there are also ghost objects, such as wagons, towns or buildings?
Also, what is the appearance of a ghost? Are they immaterial, tangible or intangible? Do they have the ability to interact with and touch material objects, open and close doors, go through walls, make sounds? Or are they simply presences?
In fact, sociologists Dennis and Michele Waskul interviewed several people who claimed to have experienced ghosts for their book Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life (Temple University Press) published in 2016 and concluded that even the witnesses themselves did not they were able by themselves to affirm with certainty that what they had seen, heard or felt were in fact ghosts. The experiences were too varied among themselves, the only thing they had in common was that what happened could not be easily explained.
Could ghosts be pure energy?
Some argue that, based on the first Law of Thermodynamic enunciated by Albert Einstein (energy is neither created nor destroyed, but transformed), it would make perfect sense that ghosts existed, since they would be the energy resulting from our to be when it dies, that instead of disappearing, it would acquire another form. However, what happens to the energy of our bodies when we die is that it is released in the form of heat energy through decomposition processes in the environment.
So, at the moment, there is no rigorous scientific evidence that ghosts actually exist. Unless we want to turn the term “ghost” into a disaster drawer in which to put everything that we do not know how to explain otherwise.
