I was thinking about blogging about something about the married life, but how different is it?  I was already living with my wife-to-be for a year, and we’d been dating two years before that, and we’d been friends two years before that.  So it’s not as if this came out of the blue.  And it’s only been a week since I tied the knot.  So nothing too exciting there.  Nothing worth posting about.

Instead, I’d like to talk about reality ghost hunting shows.  I haven’t done that in a while.  

Why do I watch these shows?

It’s a legitimate question.  What can these shows offer the skeptic?  If I don’t believe in the paranormal, if I’m pretty well convinced that ghosts and evil spirits belong in the same dustbin as faeries and medieval medicine, then why do I watch?

It’s not an easy question to answer.  Because I have a lot of reasons.

I suppose the easiest is that, of course, I’d like to believe in the supernatural.  A big part of the reason I write about vampires, monsters, and magic is that I like those things, and I think it’d be cool if they actually existed.  I like the idea of the fantastic, although I also know that, by definition, the only line between the fantastic and mundane is how often we encounter it.  If my next door neighbor was a minotaur, I’d no doubt get used to it pretty damn quick and stop finding it interesting soon enough.

Ghosts as a phenomenon can be interesting.  But current ghost research (and notice how I was nice enough not to sarcastically italicize research because I’m polite like that) has fallen victim to dubious facts and accepted practices that have made hunting for the supernatural less of a scientific process and more of a game played by its own peculiar rules.

That’s a big reason I watch these shows.  It’s amazing to me how certain practices have just become standard in the world of ghost hunting.  Even though none of these have proven reliable or particularly compelling.  Yet for those who pick up the ghost hunting banner, there never seems to be any doubt that what they’re doing is scientific.  They think that because they are using scientific instruments that they are doing science.  But all they’re doing is running around, chasing shadows of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Electromagnetic fields, for example, are hypothesized to be created by ghosts.  Notice how I did italicize hypothosize because, contrary to common perception, a hypothesis is more than just a random guess.  You can say high EMF = ghostly activity all you want, but I could just as easily say high EMF = invisible leprechauns.  Neither one of us can prove the other wrong, but it doesn’t mean either of us are right.

Detecting a high EMF doesn’t prove anything other than a high EMF.  Just as hearing a horn blare outside your window doesn’t mean a car accident.  Although at least we do know cars exist, and why people generally honk their horns.  Even this sort of comparison shows how weak most ghost hunting logic is.

Scientifically, ghost hunting shows demonstrate just how badly mangled the term “scientific” is.  This is bad science in its truest form.  An obsession over anomalies without any control groups.

Here’s a great experiment I would like to do.  I would love to pick five random locations, perhaps with only one or two “genuinely” haunted.  I wouldn’t give the ghost hunting team any clue as to which was which.  I would simply give them the addresses, allow them to do their thing, and see what happens.  If ghost hunters could actually pick the “haunted” location, it wouldn’t necessarily prove anything, but at least it would be something of a test.

Of course, I’m already sure of what would happen.  If the “haunted” location was not discovered as haunted, then it would be considered just a quiet night.  And if any of the non-”haunted” locations were discovered to have ghosts, then this would only mean that no one had noticed them before.

But pseudo-science isn’t why I watch ghost hunting shows.  Nor is it the startling lack of evidence for the supernatural that these shows have produced.  And please don’t give me that absence of evidence argument.  It has some merit, but if literally hundreds of thousands of footage have yet to produce a single worthwhile apparition, then I think it’s all right to call it a day.  At least until some different detection technology comes along.

I think the biggest reason I watch these shows is because of how they reflect human behavior.  How we react and overreact.  How we view our own unreliable senses.  And how we are able to believe what we want to believe with the slightest justification.

 To a ghost hunter, a garbled audio recording is inexplicable, possibly supernatural.   Every sound can be the undead roaming the halls, and every creaky door just might be proof of the supernatural.  To a ghost hunter (indeed, to most people) the improbable is proof of the impossible although it’s almost always a form of the impossible that they’ve prepared for in advance.

I can’t help but marvel at how readily we accept some absurd realities and reject others.  Most of us believe in ghosts.  Very few believe in invisible leprechauns.  Yet both dwell in an unproven realm of pure possibility.  There’s no reason to not believe that leprechauns are playing jokes on us, pretending to be ghosts, shaking doors, creaking stairs, and otherwise pranking us, laughing at us the whole time while we think we’re talking with the dead.

But if I tried to sell a show to Syfy called Leprechaun Squad, I doubt I’d get very far.

This is assuming that the “proof” caught on these reality shows needs explaination in the first place.  Other than human imagination, that is.  And that’s an awfully big assumption.

But the most obvious intersection between the paranormal and human psychology is that people seem to find the ghosts they are looking for.  Different ghost hunters tend to find different ghosts.  Take it from a guy who has watched way too many of these shows.

The Ghost Adventures dudes are wannabe daredevils and sure enough, they run across spooky spirits that freak them out.  The Ghost Hunters are wannabe scientists.  They’re far more likely to run across anomalies and scientific proof.  The Most Haunted crew are such big babies that it’s hard to imagine it’s necessary for ghosts to scare them at all.  And let’s not forget the intrepid do gooders of Paranormal State, who believe it is their duty to protect people from the supernatural and hence, are constantly running across demonic entities and terrifying powers.

Movies like Paranormal Activity demonstrate, in a fictional way, just why these shows fail so badly in their quest for the supernatural.  I don’t expect anything quite as dramatic as levitating babies or footprints appearing in powder, but that nothing even remotely as interesting has ever been captured on film should tell us something.  It’s true that reality is not fiction, but it’s worth asking.  With nearly every person in the civilized world walking around with digital cameras in their pockets, why hasn’t anyone caught anything definitive?

Not that it matters.  Believers will believe.  All it takes is one weird noise, one strange feeling, one goosebump, one jump of a needle to persuade them.  And maybe I’m of the opposite problem.  Maybe nothing would convince me.  Although I’d like to think that if someone caught some bleeding walls or a wailing banshee on tape that I’d be more inclined to accept their proof.  But who knows?

But do you really want to know how I feel?  I’m not wrong on this.  Just as you’re not wrong for rejecting invisible leprechauns or mole people. 

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Bottom Line:  I wasted way too much time writing this to just let it go.  So maybe if you’re really bored, you can read it.  Or not.  It’s your call.

I should be writing.  I’m behind in my latest manuscript, and I’d like to get it done soon.  But it’s late.  I’m tired.  And so in an effort to fool my brain into thinking I’m productive, I’m going to write a blog entry instead and then go to bed.

As any regular reader of these posts knows, I’m a skeptic.  In particular, I think ghosts and the paranormal are complete bunk.  Nonsense.  Balderdash.  Foofurall.  You get the idea.

Still, I find myself watching “reality” ghost hunting shows in whatever form they appear.  There’s the pseudoscientific approach of shows like Ghost Hunters & Ghost Lab.  There’s the supernatural evil approach of shows like Paranormal State & Extreme Paranormal.  There’s the scaredy cat, run from spooky noises style of Most Haunted & Ghost Adventures.  The style may differ a bit, but the message is always the same.  Ghosts are real, and these folks have proof.

Sort of.  It all depends on what you consider “proof”.  If a weird sound caught on garbled audio recordings or a shadow you can’t readily identify qualify as “proof”, then they’ve got you covered.  If you want bleeding walls, geniune apparitions, or even a single levitation or bent spoon, then you’re outta luck.

So let’s just assume for a second that there are no such things as ghosts and that the paranormal is just a figment of our collective imagination.  I know.  It’s a stretch, a leap of faith.  So many people believe in ghosts, have had unexplained encounters, have experienced the paranormal on a personal basis.  They can’t all be fooling themselves.  They can’t all be mistaken, can they?

But what if they are?  What if the spooky feeling we get in a darkened room is just a trick of our paranoid, reptillian brain?  What if cold spots are just cold spots?  What if EVP is just our fevered intellect trying to make sense of confusing sensory experience?  And what if every scary “true life” ghost story you’ve ever heard, seen, or read is either a lie or a mistake?

That, to me, is scarier than any ghost or goblin.

My theory on human behavior (which I assume is hardly original and has probably been thought up ages ago by people far smarter than me) is that most of us are incapable of accepting the possibilty of self-deception.  Not just in ourselves, but in everyone.  Especially anyone we trust or who seems trustworthy.  We believe people can lie.  We know people can lie.  Because we lie.  All of us.  All the time.  Most of these are harmless, and that’s no big deal.  But we do know that people can lie and do so regularly.

But the idea that someone might think they’re telling the truth and just be wrong is different.  It’s not something we like to think about.  On a primal level, I think it’s because we have to trust our senses because, for the most part, they keep us on track.  It’s my sense of sight that lets me see the words I write right now, and my fingers feel the keys as I type.  I don’t usually walk into walls.  I know if my milk has gone bad after a taste.  And while I have a lousy sense of smell, if something catches on fire, I’ll usually smell the smoke.  Without our senses, we’re just a lump of fat squished in a stumbling, bumbling cage of meat.

But let’s talk about something deeper than just a trust of our senses.  What we’re really worried about is trusting our judgment.  Because without judgment, how can we really trust anything.  A failing of judgment is what separates fears from phobias.  If you get put off by spiders, you’re normal.  If you huddle in the corner and shriek at the mere sight of one, then you’re not.  If you believe that Jesus loves you and going to church is good for you, you’re normal.  If you think Jesus loves you and wants you to kill French Canadians, you’re not.

We do understand crazy people because there are enough examples.  Extreme, bizarre, and unconventional behavior distinguishes itself in the looney category.  It’s weird, sometimes unsettling, but since it’s clearly looney, it’s no big deal.  If you’re best friend came to you and said he was King of Atlantis and was preparing to wage war on the USA with his magic spatula, you’d probably back away slowly.

But what if your friend told you they saw a ghost?  Not so easy, is it?  Because even if your friend is mistaken, they’re not really acting crazy.  Until they start blowing themselves up or drinking poison or wrestling bears for kicks.  Then they cross a clear line.  It says, “This person is unstable, confused, and dangerous”.  And it’s easy to identify.

But when I watch the ghost hunting shows, I find myself thinking more and more that these people are just a little looney.  They have convinced themselves of something that isn’t there.  Perhaps it’s because they place too much faith in their senses and the senses of others.

Rarely in these shows does the possibilty of self-deception ever come up.  The usual course of investigation is to ask yourself if someone or something you know caused the phenomena (I use the term loosely).  Then you ask if someone is faking it.  But hardly ever is the question asked, “Are we misinterpreting this data?”

Watch a ghost hunting show.  Really.  Do it.  Just once.  Even if you don’t believe in ghosts (and even if you do).  And notice how rarely the participants ever suggest this possibility.

Because to believe that is against our natures.  More importantly, to believe that is to question our judgment at its core.  If ghosts are not real and merely a shared self-deception of most of the terran species, even otherwise perfectly sane and functional human beings, then all bets are off when you think about it.

Most everyone on these ghost hunting shows seems normal.  They are normal.  In most everyday situations, they function fine.  The Ghost Hunters are plumbers with families and homes and ordinary lives outside of their ghost hunting activities.  The demon fighters of Paranormal State seem like nice, congenial kids.  The Ghost Adventures dudes are goofballs, but they aren’t dangerous goofballs.  And if they weren’t lucky enough to get paid to run around empty buildings, jumping at shadows, I’m sure they could be productive members of society.  Well, not willing to bet on it, but let’s just assume they could hold a job and manage not to walk into traffic.  The people who believe in ghosts, tarot, astrology, psychic powers, and holistic medicine are a varied lot, and in most situations, they are indistinguishable from people such as myself (aka The Skeptics).

But what if they’re wrong?  What if in this one area, they’re mistaken?

And just to play my own devil’s advocate, what if I’m wrong?  What if astrology works?  What if germ theory is incorrect?  What if evolution is just a big wrong track?

I don’t believe this to be true, but this belief is only as sound as my judgment.  And the one thing my judgment can never really judge is itself.  Whoa.  I think I just went zen there.

My point (and I do have one finally if you stuck with this long enough) is that a healthy questioning of our own perceptions is important, even necessary to be a functional person.  We must never take our assumptions for granted, always be ready to discard old ideas, no matter how sacred.

If you think about it, this is a constant process throughout our history.  The religions of today are not the religions of yesterday.  The science of old has been replaced with more up to date knowledge.  Theories of government, biology, human behavior, astronomy, etc., etc., etc. have all evolved.  This is undeniable, even if you don’t believe in evolution.  And this is a good thing, and the world is a better place (overall) for it.

Skepticism is important.  Skepticism works.  But it works best when we’re willing to admit that we have to even be skeptical of ourselves.  Unless you take it too far, I suppose and refuse to take anything for granted.  In which case, you’re a looney.  Or living in the matrix, although for that to make any sense your body would have to produce enough energy to power a giant robot and that would violate the laws of thermodynamics.  Personally, I find that harder to believe than ghosts.

But that’s just me.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The newest addition to the ghost hunting reality shows is Ghost Lab on Discovery.  This is a real shame.  It’s one thing when Syfy or Travel Channel puts on a ghost show, but it’s really something else when a channel devoted to science wastes its time with this nonsense.  A bit disenheartening that this sort of pseudo-science is getting any legitimacy at all.  Maybe that’s a bit harsh, but as a guy who appreciates the geniune wonders of science, it’s sometimes hard to realize that we are still bound by superstition.

And right now, someone who has had a “ghostly encounter” will just write me off as a closed-minded skeptic.  They might even be right.  I can’t disprove ghosts.  I can only say that the evidence for ghosts and the paranormal has continued to become sketchier and sketchier with each passing year.  As science reveals more of the natural world, we discover it is stranger and more wonderful than we imagined.  But most of us would be content believing in ghosts than bothering to read about physics.  Because ghosts are easy, and physics is hard.

Although I do wonder if any of these ghost hunters have ever read even a high school science book.  The way they get so damned excited about electromagnetic fields, cold spots, and EVP, it’s like they barely understand human technology.

But this is more than just a question of science.  It’s a question of media.  Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, people lived in isolated villages.  They knew almost nothing about the world outside of those villages.  So if someone came to them and said there was a land where people had faces in their chests or that dragons swam the oceans or that ghosts and vampires (which were originally just another form of ghost though we tend to forget that now) were real, it wasn’t hard to believe them.

But this is the information age, gang.  Almost everybody on the planet has a camera or a recording device.  My cell phone is a piece of crap, but even it can take pictures.  People post pictures of everything happening to them every day of their life, often in the most minute and excrutiating details.  But we still don’t have a decent photo of a ghost, bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster.  Somehow, even though cameras are everywhere and ever present, even though there are at least eleventy billion ghost hunting crews equipped with all manner of recording devices, we have even less evidence of the paranormal than we ever did.

This absence of evidence is pretty convincing if you ask me.  I figure if someone actually captured a good ghostly image on video, it’d be the most popular viewing on Youtube in no time.  If Discovery had a banshee wailing while blood dripped from the walls, I don’t think they’d fail to present the footage.

On the latest episode of Ghost Lab, the investigators are in a haunted hotel.  One investigator tries to get a key card to work on a door several times.  Then he tells the ghost to let him in, tries the card, and is amazed when it works.

The last hotel I stayed in had a key card system.  It was hardly reliable.  In fact, Sally and I made a game out of it where every time we went back to our room, we’d take turns trying to use the card to open the door.  It could take anywhere from 1 to 7 tries.  There wasn’t a predictability about it.  It just wasn’t a reliable system.  Yet never once did it occur to me that a ghost could’ve been responsible.

Ghosts could exist.  I concede this point.  They could be electromagnetic fields and cold spots, EVP and spooky sensations on the back of your neck.  But if this is the best they can do, then I say it’s time to move on.  Maybe if we go back to ignoring the supernatural, it’ll possibly get off its lazy butt and do something.  What’s its motivation now?  Why go to the trouble of levitating children out of their beds and possessing people when all you have to do is mumble on a recording to get some attention.

I say we tell the paranormal it’s time to put up or shut up.  I’m not asking for anything big here.  Just a levitation caught on film.  Maybe a spooky transparent, yet readily identifiable, figure on video.  Heck, at this point I’d settle for a spirit that would reliably flick a light off and on when asked to.

As for Bigfoot, I bet if we just ignored him long enough his need for attention would cause him to come stomping out of the woods, write a tell all book, and go on Oprah.  (Uh, that wasn’t an intentional Palin jab, but now that it’s there, I’ll leave it.)

Now, the chupacabra will probably be more stubborn because he’s not in it for the fame or the chicks.  He is (and always has been) in it for the goat sucking.  And good for him.  If you do what you love then it’s hardly working at all.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee