We’ve all heard so many stories about ghosts whether it’s from our friends, documentaries on discovery channel, or even our own experiences. When I moved into Tener Hall a few weeks ago, I heard people in my building talking about the “Tener ghost.” The story consists of a student at Penn State who committed suicide by jumping off the 8^th floor. Since then, the building has been said to be haunted which got me thinking, do ghosts really exist?

After doing some research, one of the many interesting articles I came across was Benjamin Radford’s. He made a very good argument when it came to the existence of ghosts. He says, “Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter.” The problem with the existence of ghosts is that there is no scientific evidence that proves that such phenomena exists. There have been numerous stories and reports of people who claim to have seen ghosts, yet scientists have not been able to accumulate enough, if not any, scientific information. The things about ghosts is that there seems to be to  many “types of ghosts.” Radford himself examines many ghost stories and finds many contradictions within them. For example, people have claimed that ghosts can appear and go through solid objects, yet others have seen ghosts opening doors or picking up solid objects. Logically, it cannot be possible for both of these cases to occur. It must be one or the other.

Infrared Motion Detector

According to Brian Dunning, ghost hunters use many equipment to detect ghosts. Some of this equipment includes infrared motion detectors, particle detectors, EMF meters, cameras, audio recording gear, dowsing rod. But with all this technology, ghost hunters have not been able to find scientific evidence that prove ghosts exist. However, others claim that people have not been able to find scientific evidence because we do not have the adequate technology. But this cannot be the case! Radford states, “Either ghosts exist and appear in our ordinary physical world (and can therefore be detected and recorded in photographs, film, video and audio recordings), or they don’t.” There are so many videos on YouTube of people who claim to have caught ghosts on camera, but if it’s that hard to catch them on camera, then these videos and their ghosts cannot be real. Not to mention that with all the video effects and technology we have today, anyone can create a video which makes it appear as if a ghost was caught on camera.

So if ghosts don’t exist, then why do people believe in them? Christopher French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the University of London, had much to say about this topic. He believes that those who have stories and claim they have seen ghosts, have truly seen shadows or heard noises that have lead them to believe otherwise. Christopher justifies these stories by something called sleep paralysis. During sleep paralysis the body is essentially paralyzed, but a person may experience some hallucinations. An article based on sleep paralysis states, “It is estimated that somewhere around 1 in 5 isolated sleep paralysis experiences are accompanied by dream-like hallucinations, almost always manifesting in negative or frightening forms, projected on the hallucinater’s actual physical surroundings.” French basically believes that the idea of ghosts is all part of our imagination and that part of the reason we want to believe in ghosts is because we fear what might occur after death. He states, “Most of us desperately want to believe in life after death – and the idea of ghosts, however scary, seems to offer support for such a notion.”

After gathering all the evidence that I could, I came to a conclusion just as Benjamin Radford, Brian Dunning, and many others have also come to. Either ghosts don’t exist and ghosts stories are simply part one’s imagination, hallucinations, or misunderstandings, OR ghosts do exist, but ghost hunters are not succeeding at finding proof. People have been on the hunt for ghosts for centuries, and I’m sure it will continue for many more. Who knows, maybe we’ll never know the truth, but at least we can get some good entertainment out of it!