Are there any scientific/natural explanations for ghosts/spirits?

Question

I was just wondering if there are any plausible explanations for ghosts, spirits, spiritual possession (which is apparently somehow different than demon posession, according to my fiancee)? My fiancee believes in these things (but not "demon possesion" because she doesn't believe in demons), and she gets offended when I say they don't exist because she has experienced ghosts/spirits and says that I'm calling her crazy when I say they don't exist. And she isn't crazy. So I'm gonna look into ghosts/spirits, with an open mind. I will accept the possibility of ghosts/spirits if I can find a natural/scientific explanation for ghosts that does not require supernatural explanations, like "god".

Anyway, please give any plausible scientific/natural explanation you know of, no matter how improbable it is, and lets discuss ghosts/spirits!

Answer 1

I would recommend that you speak directly to your girlfriend and ask her to help you to understand exactly what she experienced.  Did she see something?  Did she hear something?  Did something move around without being touched?  Was it just a sensation that she had?

If you need a more scientific explanation, look into what actually happenned.  There are descriptions of ghosts that encompass philosophy, physics, and/or religion.  Some of them have been mentioned above, but if you go to this site, you'll see a bunch of possibile reasons for ghosts:

http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranormale...

In order to believe in ghosts, as opposed to demons, you have to believe that the human spirit survives beyond the physical body.  If you can't accept that as a real possibility, you're never going to accept ghosts.  (And your girlfriend will probably think you're a jerk.  *JK*)

Answer 2

I for one am an atheist...however paranormal stuff has always been an interest. But, I personally do not feel that it's in anyway connected to 'gods' or religion, or anything related to that. And why should it have to be. Who knows, maybe it's something very natural that we don't understand and is just a part of this world.

Answer 3

There is still no scientific support for people's claims of the paranormal. I think it's just a case of people strongly wanting to believe in something, and they don't need support. They'll just go right ahead and believe. :)

Answer 4

First Spirits and Ghosts are different, A spirit is someone who went to the other side and on occasion will drop by for a visit, known for the familiar smells and electronics turning on or off. Ghosts well, they just don't get that they are dead or they just don't care and don't wanna move on. It's not spiritual possession, there is no good possession. You can however channel spirits, in other words stepping aside and letting them use your body to communicate. Demons, Poltergeists and Dark entities are real, just come to my house I will prove it! lol

Answer 5

This site explains how ghosts and hauntings can manifest from your imagination with p-roof.

Answer 6

Your assuming these things are real.They are not.It's not a open mind situation.When a three year old say's there's a boogeyman under his bed.Is an open mind called for?Good luck!!!

Answer 7

"I will accept the possibility of ghosts/spirits if I can find a natural/scientific explanation for ghosts that does not require supernatural explanations, like "god"."

So, you are not open to theories or anything that might be beyond our current understandings of nature and how it works? Please keep in mind that Einstein called Entanglement "Spooky Science" and it has since been confirmed by experimental observation in quantum physics that Einstein was wrong. At the Einstein's time there was no natural explanation for this effect.

Is ESP considered supernatural now by you (after years of supporting evidence) because you don't understand the mechanism?

So with your "open mind" I present the following:

Many people (25%) suffering from bereavment (grief) see images of their deceased loved ones. This is considered an hallucination.

There are reports of people experiencing "crisis apparitions" seeing someone's image when they are in physical danger, this usually suggest ESP.

The best book written on the subject was published (sadly) in 1901 "Human Personality and It's Surival of Bodily Death" by  F.W.H. Myers before scientist retreated into the lab to study human experiences.

There is a book called "Reunions" written by Dr. Raymond Moody that details his experiments of creating halluicnations (or ghosts) of people's deceased loved ones to study that part of NDE's.

A good test would be if the ghost tells the person something the person seeing the ghost does not know but later is found to be true like where the true will is hidden. Skeptics dismiss this as "remembering information" Unfortunately, lab experiments (like the areas of sociology and anthropology) are usually not possible to study this area of human experience.

Michael John Weaver, M.S.

Answer 8

there are no scientific explanations, it is beyond our understanding.  i am not saying that they do not exist, not by a long shot.  what i am saying is that anyone who pretends to be able to scientifically explain them is either a loon or a liar

Answer 9

Demon possession is throughout the old and new testament of the Bible, which is good enough for me to believe it.

There are many natural things that can cause ghosts. Here are a few.

Infrasound

Sleep Paralysis

Narcilepsy

Halucinegenic drugs

There are also a number of seemingly reasonable explanations for some of the harder to explain phenomenon.

For example, time/light ripples could be caused by extreme emotional distress. Thus you periodically see an image through the ripples, like looking at light from the past. Its a little crazy, but not really so far fetched. This would account for the figure that people occassionally see looking out the window of a house, or walking down the hallway.

I absolutly do not believe that dead people are stuck on earth roaming around scaring living people. This is not supported by my Bible, and doesnt really make any sense to me anyway.

Answer 10

In 1958, Werner Heisenberg stated the following; "The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior." Heisenberg’s statement seems to imply that QM does not explain subatomic particles, but rather explains our "knowing about" their behaviors. Over the past seventy years, a number of different QM theories have been developed. Each is viable based on what we can observe about the behavior of subatomic particles. Classical QM interpretations suggest that conscious observation is a critical factor influencing the behavior of these elementary particles. Other interpretations attempt to explain quantum behavior as a product of material causes only, not involving the function of consciousness at all. And there are yet other interpretations that question the existence of any truly objective material world altogether, leaving nothing but consciousness itself to account for the explanation of experience.  

All QM interpretations agree that what we see as an objective physical reality evolves according to a pre-existing probability structure that is elegantly and precisely modeled by the Schrodinger wave equation. Although the Schrodinger waveform equation describes probability, it does not describe how that probability becomes a discrete manifestation. One class of theories postulates that a "collapse" of the waveform results in the actualization of discrete particles from a condition of prior probabilities. In addition, the QM principle of "entanglement" between subatomic particles and their associations with atoms causes an extended "collapse" of the probability wave into the discrete objective world we experience through our physical senses. In the case of waveform collapse, the hard question has to do with just what causes the collapse to occur.

Waveform collapse is modeled by a function called the measurement postulate. QM theories that include consciousness suggest that collapse occurs when an experimental observation is made. This line of reasoning lead to the proposition that the ultimate observation-measurement apparatus is the mind of the observer. This concept was first suggested by Darwin in 1929 and later publicized through the works of von Neumann (1932) and Wigner (1962). This interpretation postulates that a conscious observation collapses the waveform.

Now, if our consciousness, our being, is part of the Schrodinger Wave of the universe than we will have the ability to constructively interfere or destructively interfere with other consciousnesses.  But what happens when a particular wave is no longer being generated, but has been lost forever?  The effect on the current universal wave WILL STILL EXIST!  And it is quite possible that "resonance" with individual elements could result in a "mini-collapse" of reality, resulting in the observation of spirits or ghostly phenomena.  That's the best I can do, I really don't believe in the spirit world.

Answer 11

You've already got some pretty good answers here, and few weird ones, too.  But, since I'm a scientist, I'll add my two-cents worth for you and I'll try to keep it brief.

There is NO scientific validity for any known claims of paranormal activity.  Period.  But...and it's an important "but"...people do experience odd events that seem unexplainable and attribute them to supernatural or paranormal influences.   I have had such experiences myself, but I do NOT believe in the supernatural.

Almost all claims, upon investigation, are revealed to arise from either psychological (psychosocial and religious) sources, or indeed shown to be an explainable physical phenomenon.  This is not as mysteriously intriguing nor as much FUN as the seductive alternative...and that's the point.  People, myself included, LOVE the mysterious, the unexplained!  Heck, it's Fun!

The science sort of takes the fun out of it.

Arthur C. Clark had a great explanation for ghosts that has to do with your mind playing tricks with you (look him up).  Objects CAN move "by themselves" under the right physical conditions owing to forces requiring little more than high school physics to understand.  No one, and I mean NO one has EVER demonstrated genuine PSI ot TK abilities. "Orbs" have been known about and explained by high-end camera & film corporations for years!  They arise from static charges that mess up CCD's and camera film--a problem that's hard to correct.  There are even some fairly lucid explanations for EVP that, personally, I think are pretty weak--but are at least sane.  And premonitions have been pretty much explained as a not too uncommon glitch that we all experience in our temporal lobes once in while. Etc., etc., etc...

See what I mean?  It's b-o-r-i-n-g.  The supernatural alternative is MUCH more fun!

Finally, there is an American magician, James Randi (aka, The Amazing Randi) who has a website offering a $1 Million reward to ANYONE who can demonstrate REAL paranormal ability.  You may have seen this guy on PBS debunking fakes like Uri Gellar, etc.  Anyway, the million bucks is still there and has been for about 5 years now.  If anyone out there could do anything genuinely paranormal, they surely would've scored that cache of cash.

So, go get some popcorn and a coke and tune in for TAPS.  It's great fun.  Just don't take it seriously; it's purely entertainment.

Answer 12

Well, let me put it this way: there is absolutely nothing in science which leads to the hypothesis that ghosts exist. Science deals with nature, with that which can be tested. Science requires the formation of falsifiable, testable hypotheses. This squarely leaves out the paranormal as a hypothesis, since by definition it cannot be tested or falsified.

So no, there is no plausible scientific theory which would imply the existence of a spiritual universe in which ethereal entities float about.

It's good that you're keeping an open mind.... but what is an open mind? Many people think that an open mind is immediately accepting the possibility of anything that can't be rigorously proved impossible. That's not open-minded... that's simple-minded! I can't prove that leprechauns aren't having a  jamboree under my porch, but I'd be a simpleton to argue that it could be happening. No, an open mind is being open to the possibilities that make sense given what we know of the universe around us, and rejecting the absurd. That tends to leave out ghosts, leprechauns, fairies, etc., in my opinion.

Your girlfriend isn't crazy. Many people believe in ghosts, and it's much like a religious thing. You can't really argue religion with people, you just have to go with it.

Answer 13

There is a knack to seeing ghosts that you can learn. The way you look at a 3D magic eye picture is the same with seeing spirits according to Psychic Medium and British Ghost Hunt host Sue Treanor. Here are Sue’s top tips for ghost-hunters: http://www.psychic-junkie.com/real-photo...

Answer 14

Science is beginning to speculate that we live in a larger universe than we believed.

Quantum physics is telling us that we live in a multiverse with 10 or more dimensions. Those paranormal encounters are where beings from those different dimension interact temporarily.

I remember reading a book on the Kabbalah years ago that supposedly explained how the universe was made of 10 dimension (one for eacg of the Sephiroth) on the tree of life.

Answer 15

What do you think the Northern lights were thought to be? Before science  explained to" MODERN " people? Ghosts /

Spirits / Mother Earth? I don't think there was any questions about it at all then. There are unexplained Aztec carvings - cave paintings. Even Leonardo da Vinci has painted some questionable  things in his paintings (space ships). True most of these things have not been proven to your standards but think about it how Meany things do you take as fact  That may not be. Nothing To religious I hope

Happy Caving Carroll

Answer 16

I watched this interesting doco on TV about people who have gone into other dimensions. Scientists claim this is a 3 dimensional world but there are at least 10 other domensions. There was this fellow in Russia and he was considered dead. They put him in the morgue for three days. Now on the other side of the town a family He knew had a baby and this baby was in pain, doctors did not know what was the matter. This fellow was able to visit this family in his mind and found out that the baby's hip was twisted. Mean while the people at the morgue were going to conduct an autopsy when this person flinched as the knife cut his skin. He was in a coma and came out of it a couple of weeks later - the first thing he did was contact the family with the sick baby and tell them and the doctors the child's hip was twisted. It was and they were able to help the baby. This guy eventually migrated to America where he became a priest (he was an athiest) prior to this experience. Another lady was walking along and people were bumping into her. It was as if she was "invisible". What scientists saud was her body had gone to another dimension but not her mind!!

The fact is that if scientists actually agree that this is a 3 dimensional world and that there are 10 other dimensions than why cannot other entities live in these dimensions?

The fact is ghosts, spirits and other entities cannot be proven and they cant be disproven. As for a scientific explanation - why do you want one. If your girlfriend says she saw a spirit or has had paranormal experiences she probably has had these experiences and the fact is yuo have not is simply because you dont believe. Simple as that. I personally do believe and I have had many experiences but other skeptics simply dont believe.

I don't believe you can convince a true skeptic ever. I think they will always find some way to dismiss any claims of anything outside the cenventional thinking.  To simply not believe is not where the conflict is but in the skeptic that has closed their mind to the possibility at a point where they go out of their way to not only state their own opinion but also insult the believer by calling them crazy or delusional.

The fact is its a very complex world 400 years ago we thought the world was flat, we thought we could cure mental illness by cutting out a part of the brain and only recently in the past 20 years do we understand genetics more clearly. There are far too many things that happen that can not be explained to just out-right deny someone their opinion. I have never seen a true believer crush the opinion of a skeptic but i have seen many skeptics crush the opinion of a believer.

Regardless their intent, there is no reason what-so-ever to not respect the people and their choice to have their own opinion.

I welcome any skeptic to prove to me that the paranormal does not exist, if they can do so without insulting my own opinion. And since i know for a fact that they can no more convince me as I can them then they should be willing to respect my opinion as i respect theirs.

Answer 17

Ghosts , spirits, demons , angels, etc. are all figments of peoples imaginations.  The scientific evidence is the human brain.

Answer 18

When a person dies their spirit is gone but their energy remains,this is the electrical field left by the cells,elec. current in the heart, etc. This is what we see and some times feel. My mother swears up and down she saw my dad after he died and my daughter also. After my dog died I would feel something at my knees brushing against me. I was still morning his loss so I let go told him good bye and I would be seeing him someday.I have been able to sense this phenomena for many years and this is the first time I have said anything publicly.

End of discussion.

Answer 19

Yep.  They don't exist.  Really.  Almost all ghost stories occur when someone is just falling asleep, actually asleep, or just waking up.  Or high, of course.  There's a reason that ghosts have been rumored for hundreds of years and no one has ever been able to prove it.  They don't actually exist.

Keep an open mind of course - I'd love to see someone's evidence.  But not photoshopped pictures or blurry video.  Send me a ghost.

You can always tell the credulous - they bring up 'they thought the world was flat!' as if anyone ever did.  Anyone with half a brain watching a lunar ecplise knows the Earth is round.  Oh, and they ask you to prove them wrong, as if that's logically possible at all or as if it was up to us to prove them wrong as opposed to them offering any evidence for their claims.

Answer 20

human mind is very powerful machine, u may have seen ppl. turning iron bars just by looking on them etc etc.

mind work like recording machine also.

some time it copies some event or talk even out side the mind on some other material like wall or door, what ever , when the frequency of other peron going by some how become equall to the frequency of this recording , it starts playing and making real life affect on the surronding.

like three dimensional images.

so these ghost are also recording of old persons who are passed away but left behind these recordings.

that's why you see ghost or events from past not current or future