In a study of neural activity, Harris and colleagues discovered that believing a statement requires less effort than disbelieving it. And, in the dark, where it might be difficult to see properly, our brain makes the best inference it can, which will depend on what we think is likely – and that could be a ghost.Īccording to the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, belief comes quickly and naturally, whereas scepticism is slow and unnatural. This is an example of top-down perception in which what we see is influenced by what we expect to see. If you believe in ghosts, you might interpret what you saw as a ghost. The idea that this could be a supernatural visitation is easier to understand when you think that when we believe in a phenomenon, we are more likely to experience it.Ĭonsider what might happen if you were in a reputedly haunted house at night and you saw something moving in the corner of your eye. This temporary paralysis is sometimes accompanied by the hallucination of a figure in the room that could be interpreted as a supernatural being. More recent research suggests that a majority of elderly bereaved people may experience visual or auditory hallucinations of their departed loved ones that persist for a few months.Īnother source of hallucinations is the phenomenon of sleep paralysis, which may be experienced when falling asleep or waking up. The SPR, founded in 1882, collected thousands of verified first-hand reports of visual or auditory hallucinations of a recently deceased person. Looking at how the brain works, the experience of hallucinations is a lot more common than many people realise. This view of ourselves makes it easy for us to entertain the idea that our mind could have an existence separate from our body – opening the door to believing that our mind or consciousness could survive death, and so perhaps become a ghost. Body and soulīelief in ghosts finds support in the longstanding philosophical idea that humans are naïve dualists, naturally believing that our physical being is separate from our consciousness. We seem to enjoy the illusion of danger and ghost stories can offer this kind of thrill. Halloween TV schedules are full of films where a group of (usually young) volunteers spends a night in a haunted house (with gory results). Many cultures around the world have had beliefs that the dead can communicate with the living, and the phenomenon of spiritualism supposes that we can communicate with the spirits of the dead, often through the services of specially talented spirit mediums.Īnd we love to be scared, as long as we know we aren’t actually in danger. Belief in ghosts also appears to be global, with most (if not all) cultures around the world having some widely accepted kind of ghosts.īut many people also like to believe that death is not the end of existence – it’s a comfort when we lose people we love or when we face the idea of our own mortality. Recent studies by YouGov in the UK and the USA show that between 30% and 50% of the population says they believe in ghosts. Unlikely as it might seem in the cold light of day, ghosts and hauntings are a mainstream area of belief. Pink himself never wavered from this explanation, stating: “I was fully convinced that my father’s spirit had visited me for the purpose of explaining some mistake.” The court found in Pink’s favour and, thanks to the publicity, the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) investigated, finally coming to the conclusion that Pink had indeed been visited by his father’s ghost. The case went to court and, as you’d expect, the newspapers of the time went mad for the story. A year later Marshall died, so the house and 120 acres of land went to Marshall’s widow and son.īut four years later, his youngest son James “Pink” Chaffin started having extraordinary dreams in which his father visited him and directed him to the location of a second, later will in which Chaffin senior left the property divided between his widow and the surviving children. James L Chaffin of Monksville, North Carolina, died after an accident in 1921, leaving his estate in full to his favourite son Marshall and nothing to his wife and three other children. Halloween seems an appropriate time of year to share the story of the Chaffin family and how a ghost helped decide a dispute over an inheritance.
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