Skeptical of Ghosts and Haunted Places? It’s Okay.

Ghost hunting attracts a wide range of people. Some are believers who just want proof that ghosts exist.

Others are skeptics, and they want to see for themselves how silly and gullible ghost hunters are.

Most people fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Generally, I’m skeptical when I arrive at a haunted site.

Oh, I firmly believe that energy or entities that we call “ghosts” are real.

Likewise, at a haunted location, I’m sure people have experienced something odd there.

I just don’t know what that “something odd” might be, and I’m cautious about announcing that the cause is a ghost.

However, I raise an eyebrow when someone at a ghost hunting event is loudly and obstinately skeptical. I become irked if they insist, belligerently, that an anomaly must have been caused by [add any unlikely explanation here]. Usually, I’ll ask that person to leave.

If we assume that ghosts are real, I can’t imagine how distraught a spirit would feel, not only ignored most of the time, but then dismissed as “a fragment of  underdone potato,” to quote Ebenezer Scrooge.

The facts are:

• We can’t prove that ghosts are real. Currently, beliefs must be founded upon personal experience. No ghost hunting tools can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that apparently ghostly phenomena are caused by actual ghosts.
• We can’t prove that a location is haunted. We can demonstrate that baffling anomalies occur at those sites, and they appear consistent with an explanation involving ghosts.

However, at many haunted sites, I’ll default to Sherlock Holmes.

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

~ Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

And, since Carl Jung could be honest about things he couldn’t explain, I’d hope today’s skeptics can be at least as open-minded.