Around 1 in 5 Americans say they've seen a ghost. I'm not one of them, and I probably never will be. I blame my brain.

Let me explain. No one can say definitively that ghosts exist, but many people believe they do. Roughly three-quarters of Americans believe in some form of paranormal activity — not only ghosts, but psychic abilities, precognitive dreams, mediums and anything else that conventional explanations can't account for.

As a psychology professor, I often think about the subjectivity people use when interpreting experiences. I wonder, then, if there are perfectly ordinary explanations for seemingly extraordinary experiences. Maybe a perfect storm of everyday factors can converge and trigger the sensation of a paranormal experience.

In my new book, "Science of the Supernatural," I explore the idea that the human brain might be creating an experience of the supernatural by misinterpreting the external world. Here are three factors that might trick your brain into creating a fake ghost:

Haunted factor #1: Environmental stimuli

Anyone who's ever watched a ghost hunting show has seen the paranormal investigator mutter something like "The EMF's going crazy" when there's purported supernatural activity afoot. Electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, are invisible areas of energy created by electrically charged particles.

At present, there is no direct evidence that humans can consciously sense EMF the same way we can touch, see or hear things in our environment. But with a handheld device purchased at a local hardware store, you can measure them anywhere. An EMF detector picks up electrical or magnetic activity, whether human-made or otherworldly. But do EMF fluctuations relate to paranormal activity?

The scientific method might help answer this question. In one study, conducted in the South Street vaults underneath Edinburgh, Scotland, EMFs fluctuated more in areas with a history of ghostly happenings. Another study found greater variability of EMFs in the more "haunted" areas of Hampton Court Palace in England.

People might unknowingly be detecting changes in environmental stimuli, like electromagnetic fields. The question then becomes: Did the ghost cause the EMF, or did the EMF cause the ghost?

To date, only one research group has attempted to experimentally manipulate environmental factors, including complex EMF, and measure subsequent perceptions of the paranormal.

Participants did report many peculiarities, ranging from feeling dizzy to feeling like they were detached from their bodies and even sensing a presence — but these experiences didn't correspond to how the researchers varied environmental conditions, like EMF intensity. Interestingly, the people who described anomalous experiences were the same people who believed more strongly in the paranormal.

Do environmental factors like EMF lead to perceptions of the paranormal? On the one hand, there is a correlation between reportedly haunted places and EMF variability. And there are some indications that humans can detect magnetism. On the other hand, experimental manipulation of EMF did not relate to weird perceptions in a lab setting.

I think we need to look into other haunted factors.

Haunted factor #2: Neurological mix-ups

By applying a small electrical current to the side of the head, usually to evaluate a patient for a clinical procedure, researchers have observed some strange effects. One case study described a patient who experienced an "illusory shadow figure" that was mimicking, and even interfering, with their movements. Other people have reported out-of-body experiences.

Experimental evidence suggests that this brain area, the temporoparietal junction, is probably crucial for the feeling of embodiment — that you inhabit your own body. Disrupting this brain area seems to trigger a sensation of disembodiment.

Neuroscientists aren't completely sure how the sense of embodiment is built in the brain. The brain probably integrates bodily senses, like balance and position, with other internal processes, like a sense of self and agency. When this integration is altered, a person will experience very strange sensations.

Sometimes, misinterpretation of sensations from the body can happen during sleep, when your brain shuts out the external world. During rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, when most vivid dreams occur, the brain sends messages that prevent movement of skeletal muscles. This inhibition causes complete paralysis during REM sleep. It is a neurological safeguard; without it, you would be likely to act out your dreams.

Some people, though, wake up during REM sleep and find that they cannot move. They may simultaneously experience rich hallucinations — the remnants of their dream. This experience passes quickly. But in that moment of sleep paralysis, the neural signals that control skeletal muscle movement are inhibited, resulting in a mismatch of feedback from the body to the brain. Most people respond to the missing sensory information with fear, which makes them more likely to experience the sights and sounds from their dreams as reality.

Haunted factor #3: Personality traits

Living through a paranormal encounter requires that a person label their experience as such. If a believer were exposed to fluctuating EMFs, for example, they might be quick to categorize the strange sensation as paranormal. A skeptic might note they felt weird or off, but probably not point to a paranormal explanation.

There's a growing body of research that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal.

For instance, some people are hyperaware of unconscious perceptions and ideas, which then permeate their consciousness. Often, these traits are associated with magical thinking, distorted or unusual thoughts, disorganized behavior and, sometimes, trouble forming close relationships.

Psychologists refer to this set of traits as schizotypy. They're related to schizophrenia, although being high in schizotypy doesn't mean you will be diagnosed with the disorder of schizophrenia. People with high levels of schizotypy are more likely to believe in the paranormal. They're also more likely to experience disembodiment and spontaneous sensory perceptions and have trouble discriminating between self and others.

All of these traits relate to the function of the temporoparietal junction — the brain area that helps you know you're located within your own body.

When haunted factors add up to a ghost

While I cannot say for sure whether ghosts exist, I can propose a plausible explanation for why some people might be more prone to apparent paranormal experiences than others.

Consider a person who believes in paranormal phenomena who experiences a natural change in electromagnetic fields or an episode of sleep paralysis. Those experiences induce unusual sensations that this person cannot explain. Searching for meaning in ambiguity, this person distorts their distinction between internally and externally generated sensations. They settle on the only explanation that makes sense to them — that this strange feeling they experienced was a ghost.

My guess is that belief in the paranormal is the glue that holds the haunted factors together to create the (mis)perception of a ghost.

One experiment asked participants to walk through a disused theater in Decatur, Illinois. Some were told that the theater was haunted, and some were not. Several participants noted weird sensations that they attributed to paranormal activity — but only those who believed that the theater was haunted reported these sensations.

Belief alone might not create a ghost, but belief combined with at least one haunted factor — environmental stimuli, neurological hiccups or psychological conditions — might be enough to make a ghost real.

This becomes a chicken-or-the-egg riddle — or in this case, the ghost or the EMF. Someone who is more likely to be sensitive to environmental factors or who experiences sleep paralysis might create belief from their experiences. When someone cannot explain these experiences with any "natural" explanation, a supernatural explanation might be the only one that makes sense.

I've never noticed EMF. I've never experienced sleep paralysis. I'm pretty sure I don't have personality traits like schizotypy. I don't believe in the paranormal. And I don't think I'll ever see a ghost.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Summerville, South Carolina, has been haunted by mysterious "ghost lanterns" for decades. Now, a scientist thinks she's finally worked out what the floating orbs are: Turns out, they could be linked to tiny earthquakes.

Local legends suggest the mysterious balls of light, which are often spotted near old railway tracks, are lanterns carried by the ghost of a woman who lost her husband in a train accident.

It is not clear exactly when the floating orbs were first seen in the area, but references mostly date back to the mid-20th century. The lights are described as small, glowing spheres, often in blue or green, seen floating above a narrow stretch of Sheep Island Road, where an old railway line used to run. Witnesses also reported cars shaking violently, strange whispering and, occasionally, "ghostly" apparitions.

In the surrounding area, locals have described slamming doors, the sound of footsteps, disturbed animals and birds, and objects moving as if of their own accord.

Now, Susan Hough, a seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has extensively studied these reports and concluded that the mysterious orbs may be explained by a rare geological phenomenon known as earthquake lights.

Related: Scientists find hidden mechanism that could explain how earthquakes 'ignite'

According to USGS, earthquake lights are glowing spheres, sparks and streamers thought to occur in an area before, during or immediately after earthquakes.

"They have never been studied or confirmed systematically because virtually all of the data/observations are anecdotal, but lights during earthquakes have been reported for many years," Hough told Live Science in an email.

One of the most widely accepted explanations for this phenomenon is the ignition of underground gases, such as methane and radon, as they seep out of the ground during increased seismic activity. All that's needed is a spark, generated by static electricity or moving rocks.

Hough said that this explanation was particularly appropriate for the Summerville ghost. Her findings were published Jan. 22 in the journal Seismological Research Letters.

Could Summerville's ghost lanterns be caused by earthquakes?

In August 1959, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake was recorded 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) from the stretch of road where the majority of the Summerville sightings were reported. By the end of 1960, two smaller earthquakes had also been reported in the same area, Hough wrote.

It is possible that even smaller earthquakes have occurred since but were not recognized as such.

Seismic activity would also explain many of the other "paranormal" activities reported in the area, Hough writes. For example, shaking cars, swinging doors and moving objects can all be attributed to small earthquakes. Birds and animals may also get spooked by the movement, no matter how small.

As for the ignition spark, Hough said that steel rails and scrap heaps are commonly found at the sites of old railways, which when shaken may create a spark. Hough noted this would explain why similar ghost lights are often seen near disused railway lines.

While this hypothesis remains speculative, Hough said that it could be tested by measuring gas emissions from the ground in areas where the "ghosts" are seen. Sensors could also look for active faults in the region.

If confirmed, these sightings could help seismologists learn more about America's geology. "Understanding earthquakes in central and eastern North America has been challenging because we have so little data to investigate earthquakes and active faults," Hough said. "This might be the most interesting implication of my little study, that friendly ghosts are illuminating shallow faults along which gases are released."

Chances are, you know someone with a killer ghost story. You might even believe you've encountered a ghost yourself. However, considering there's no scientific evidence that ghosts exist, why do some people think they've seen or heard them?

Christopher French, a professor emeritus of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, recently wrote a book about the science of the paranormal and said ghost sightings are often "sincere misinterpretations of things that do have a natural explanation."

"Just because you can't think of an explanation doesn't mean there isn't one," French told Live Science.

French is a skeptic who explores non-paranormal explanations for ghostly encounters. These explanations include hallucinations, or perceptions of things that aren't there; false memories, or recollections of events that didn't happen; and pareidolia, or the tendency to see a face or something significant in an inanimate object or random pattern.

The human brain is prone to missing things and misremembering events, and it can jump to conclusions when trying to understand an ambiguous experience. This is especially true when a person wants to believe they've seen a ghost or another legendary creature, Live Science previously reported.

Related: Are ghosts real?

There are also some medical conditions that make perceived ghostly encounters more likely. One area of study for French is a disorder called sleep paralysis, in which people think they've fully woken up but are unable to move, often while sensing an evil presence.

"It's as if your mind wakes up, but your body doesn't," French said. "You've got this interesting mix of normal waking consciousness and dream consciousness, and the contents of the dream are coming through into waking consciousness. The results can be absolutely terrifying."

French noted that if someone gets sleep paralysis without having any prior knowledge of the disorder, then it's not irrational for that person to assume they've had a supernatural experience. However, even during sleep paralysis, when humans are at the mercy of their dreams, the presence people encounter is often a shadowy figure in the corner of the room.

Movies depict ghosts as full-bodied translucent humans, but these kinds of sightings make up only a small minority of perceived paranormal reports. Johannes Dillinger, a professor of early modern history at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. is working on understanding the types of ghosts people have believed in over the centuries in Western society and culture. He said that the most commonly reported haunting is an unseen poltergeist.

"Many, many ghosts over the centuries were mere poltergeists, meaning they remained invisible throughout," Dillinger told Live Science. "We only think they are there because we hear strange noises, usually at night, that are difficult to explain."

Dillinger found that prior to 1800, people believed that ghosts had important unfinished business, but in a much more literal sense than we might think of today. "Ghosts usually wanted people to find their treasures and put them to some good use," Dillinger said.

Perceived ghosts have become more personal since then. The 19th century marked the rise of spiritualism and a belief that humans could communicate with ghosts and spirits, according to the Science History Institute, a nonprofit that promotes the history of science.

Dillinger noted that people's beliefs changed from ghosts demanding things of the living to the living expecting to be consoled or comforted by the dead. However, throughout all of this, ghosts have remained, above all else, an explanation that people readily accept for strange noises in the dark.

"The ghost is really that thing that goes bump in the night," Dillinger said.

You don’t need to believe in ghosts to enjoy a ghost story about some of the most haunted places. The tales that have grown over generations around reputedly haunted houses can take on a fantastic life of their own in folklore, and the stories that surround a place can influence our experiences of them. All it takes is a creepy place, a touch of imagination and a glimpse of something unexpected, only half seen. So prepare to suspend your disbelief for this countdown of the histories of 11 of the most haunted places in the United States.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium

This grim, bat-winged building is the archetype of the haunted hospital or insane asylum. The first hospital on this windswept hill on the edge of Louisville, Kentucky, was built in 1910 to treat victims of the "white plague" of tuberculosis that was ravaging the country.

At the time, there was no known cure and the disease was often fatal. In some cases, doctors tried experimental methods to help ease the symptoms, and stories emerged of illicit medical experiments in which the cure often proved as fatal as the disease. Certainly the sanatorium was the scene of many deaths over the years, although claims that more than 60,000 patients died there are exaggerated, according to surviving records from the hospital. Historians say the real number was likely closer to 8,000, with a total of 152 deaths in 1945, the worst year of the epidemic.

Waverly Hills served as a geriatric hospital from the 1960s until the 1980s, and several stories about the spooky old hospital are based on rumors from this time that patients were mistreated, including claims that radical treatments such as electroshock therapy were used.

In the years since Waverly Hills was closed for good, wanderers, thrill-seekers and ghost hunters who found their way inside the building have told of slamming doors and strange noises in the deserted building. Others reported hearing footsteps and the screams of patients have from empty rooms. Ghostly, shadowy forms have been said to gather in the building's dark recesses and are said to follow visitors through the narrow corridors. Phantom footsteps and voices reportedly echo along the "death tunnel," or "body chute" — an underground tunnel that leads from the hospital to railway tracks at the bottom of the hill, to transport the dead away from the hospital where the living patients would not see them.

Several stories center on the fifth floor of the hospital, where tuberculosis patients with mental disturbances were reportedly treated. In particular, Room 502, where two nurses are said to have killed themselves — one by hanging, the other by jumping to her death — is said to be haunted. Some visitors claimed to have seen mysterious shapes moving in the windows, or to have heard voices telling them to "get out."

New Jersey's Pine Barrens

The vast forested region now known as the New Jersey Pine Barrens thrived in the colonial period, when it was home to several saw mills, paper mills and towns for the people who worked in them. But its prosperity and population declined sharply when coal was discovered in nearby Pennsylvania and people moved there instead. The remains of several "ghost towns," as well as more than a few ghost stories, survive. The spirit of the pirate Capt. William Kidd, who frequented New Jersey's Barnegat Bay, has sometimes been seen there, and a ghostly black dog is said to roam the beaches and the forests of the coast.

One of the most famous supernatural stories of the Pine Barrens is the tale of the Jersey Devil. According to the State of New Jersey, the creature was born in 1735 as the 13th child of Deborah Leeds, the wife of a rival of Benjamin Franklin (who may have contributed to the tale); some versions of the story say she was a witch and that the father of the child was a devil himself. According to the legend, the baby was born with leathery wings, a goat's head and hooves; it reportedly flew up the chimney of the room, where it was born and has been killing livestock in the region ever since.

By the late 1700s, what was then known as the "Leeds Devil" had become a popular ghost story in the southern New Jersey area, and by the 19th century, it had grown into a local legend. It was supposedly seen by Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and the former king of Spain, who had built a mansion in the Pine Barrens, where he lived after his exile in 1813. In the 1840s, the creature was blamed for attacks on livestock that were accompanied by bloodcurdling screams, and it began to be spotted regularly in the area. The largest spate of sightings came in 1909, when newspapers published hundreds of claims by people who said they'd encountered the "Jersey Devil" in several parts of South Jersey and in Philadelphia. The widespread newspaper coverage prompted several schools in the Delaware Valley to close and workers to stay home, while vigilante groups roamed the countryside in search of the beast.

Savannah, Georgia

Home to dozens of celebrated haunted houses and hundreds of ghost sightings, Savannah is often called "the most haunted city in the United States" — especially by its many ghost tour operators, who often begin with a visit to the city's historic Bonaventure Cemetery, a tangle of stone tombs, eerie statues and spooky trees laced with Spanish moss. Among the cemetery's resident ghosts is that of Gracie Watson, a 6-year-old who died of pneumonia in 1889. Her ghost is said to haunt the life-size statue that stands over her grave, which like several other funereal statues in the cemetery are sometimes said to move as if they were alive, while the sounds of children playing or crying is sometimes heard nearby. 

Savannah's Hampton Lillybridge House was built in 1797 and was relocated to its current location several years later — despite the discovery of a mysterious crypt beneath the new property, which has never been opened. Since then, no fewer than 26 families who have lived in the house have complained of various ghostly goings-on that forced them to move out. These strange encounters included furniture moving around and doors locking themselves.

The most famous haunted house in Savannah may be the Sorrel-Weed House, which appeared in the opening shots of the 1994 film "Forrest Gump," directed by Robert Zemeckis The Sorrel-Weed house is said to be haunted by at least two vengeful ghosts: the wife and the rival lover of shipping merchant Francis Sorrel, who built the house in the 1840s. Francis' wife, Matilda Sorrel, allegedly jumped to her death when she discovered her husband’s infidelity — but historical researchers point out that by the time of her reported suicide in a "moment of lunacy," the Sorrel family had moved out to another property next door.

The White House

The most famous address in the United States — 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C. — is also famously haunted. Since 1800, the White House has been the home of the president of the United States, starting with the second president, John Adams — and the ghost of his wife, Abigail Adams, has been seen there, sometimes walking through walls or carrying laundry to dry in the East Room, according to History.com. The ghost of the third president, Thomas Jefferson, has been heard playing the violin in the Yellow Oval Room. The ghost of the seventh president, Andrew Jackson, is said to have been seen lying on his old bed, while the sound of his "guttural laugh" has often been reported, including by first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. The ninth president, William Henry Harrison, is said to haunt the attic of the White House, while the 10th president, John Tyler, is said to haunt the Blue Room. 

Many of the ghostly sightings and events revolve around Abraham Lincoln; the ghost of the assassinated 16th president has been reported so many times that the phrase "Lincoln's ghost" has become well known. Some of the most famous of these events are multiple sightings in 1940 by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was spending a night in the Lincoln Bedroom. Churchill claimed to have just climbed out of the bath, naked but smoking his habitual cigar, when he encountered Lincoln's ghost leaning on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, according to a blog entry by the National Constitution Center, a U.S. nonprofit. Churchill said, "Good evening, Mr. President; you seem to have me at a disadvantage," and then the ghost smiled and disappeared. (Churchill said he then moved to a bedroom across the hall.) 

Two years later, in 1942, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands reported seeing Lincoln's ghost, dressed in a top hat and frock coat, standing at the door of her bedroom during a visit to the White House — and fainted at the sight. Many others — including U.S. Presidents Harry S. Truman and Theodore Roosevelt, first ladies Grace Coolidge and Eleanor Roosevelt, and dozens of White House aides and staffers — have reported seeing apparitions or hearing ghostly footsteps or knocks that they have attributed to Lincoln's ghost..

Whaley House

Whaley House in San Diego is "[t]he most haunted house in America," according to Life Magazine. The home was built in 1857 on the site of a former graveyard and gallows. Over the years it has served as a family home; a grain store; the San Diego county courthouse; the city’s first commercial theater; a ballroom; a billiard hall; and a school. It subsequently opened as a museum in 1960.

The oldest resident ghost at Whaley House is said to be the convicted robber "Yankee Jim" Robinson, who was hanged in 1852 from a gallows that stood on the property before the house was built. According to a newspaper report, as the wagon holding him beneath the gallows moved away, Yankee Jim dragged his feet on the wagon for as long as possible, before swinging like a pendulum and slowly strangling to death.

Although Thomas Whaley, a settler and merchant, witnessed Yankee Jim's gruesome execution, that didn't prevent him from purchasing the property a few years later and building a house there. But within a few weeks of moving in, the Whaley family reported hearing heavy footsteps, as if made by the boots of a large man.

The reports of footsteps and other sounds have persisted for more than 100 years: The youngest daughter of the family, who lived in the house until 1953, was reportedly convinced that it was haunted by the ghost of Yankee Jim, and visitors to the museum in the 1960s also reported hearing a phantom walking noise.

Other visitors say they’ve seen the ghosts of the Whaley family themselves, and the ghost of a woman in a long skirt in the former county courtroom. One parapsychologist reported that he saw a phantom dog running inside the house, similar to a fox terrier — the type of dog owned by the Whaley family.

Bachelor's Grove Cemetery

This small cemetery in a forest on the outskirts of Chicago has earned a reputation as the most haunted graveyard in the United States, thanks to more than 100 documented sightings of ghosts, strange lights and other suggestively supernatural episodes.

During the 1950s, after an outbreak of vandalism at the remote site, several people claimed to have seen an entire phantom farmhouse shimmering above the graveyard, which receded as they approached it. Others say they have seen the ghost of a farmer and his plow horse who died when they were dragged to their death in a nearby pond.

Some people driving on the roads near the cemetery at night have reported encounters with a phantom 1940s "gangster"-style car that appears on the road in front of them, before turning off the road and disappearing. Others claimed to have crashed into the phantom car at a sharp curve in the road — but after the shock had passed, there was no damage, and no other car. 

In 1991, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper ran a celebrated photograph taken by a visitor to the graveyard, showing what appeared to be the semi-transparent form of a woman in an old-fashioned dress sitting on a gravestone. The photographer, part of a paranormal research team, claimed that the woman was not visible when the photograph was taken. The figure in the photograph has become known as the "Madonna of Bachelor's Grove," and may be linked to the legend of the "White Lady," the ghost of a woman buried next to her young child, and who is said to walk through the graveyard on nights of the full moon, with the infant wrapped in her arms.

Colorado's Stanley Hotel

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, is famous as the remote mountainside "Overlook Hotel" featured in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick movie "The Shining." It was also the inspiration for the Stephen King novel that was made into that movie, supposedly after he'd spent a night there during a snowstorm. 

The hotel was built in 1909 by Massachusetts inventor F.O. Stanley, who moved there with his wife, Flora. Flora Stanley was an accomplished piano player, and according to myth, her ghost sometimes can be heard playing the piano in the music room at night. F.O. Stanley is sometimes out of place in old photographs — a spooky trick that inspired the last scene of the movie. Staff at the hotel also say that ghosts have unpacked the bags of visitors and turned lights on and off and that the ghostly laughter of children can be heard in the hallways. 

The hotel's infamous Room 217, which features in both the book and the movie, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a maid who was reportedly blown out of a window there — but not killed — in a gas explosion in 1911. That's the room that King and his wife spent the night in, according to his later interviews. But while the hotel is undoubtedly creepy, the gruesome events suggested in the book and movie seem to be entirely derived from his imagination. 

It's now possible to book Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel, among other rooms. "The Shining" plays continuously on one of the in-house television channels, and the hotel conducts a thriving ghost-tour business. In addition to the ghosts of the Stanleys and the maid, a spooky cowboy is said to haunt Room 428, and hotel staff say ghosts have been seen in the tunnels under the hotel that staff once used to navigate the immense property.

New England's Covered Bridges

New England's historic covered bridges have accumulated stories of ghosts over the years. One of the best known is Emily's Bridge in Stowe, Vermont, about 30 miles east of Burlington. The spooky-looking covered bridge was the scene of a young woman's suicide by hanging in the mid-1800s, supposedly after she'd arranged to meet a lover there to elope but he didn't turn up. According to Atlas Obscura, Emily's ghost is now said to haunt the bridge, leaving claw-like gouges on passing cars and scratching the backs of people who cross the bridge on foot. Strange noises, including the sound of a woman screaming, have also been reported there. Emily's Bridge is now a fixture of Vermont's ghostly tourism industry. (However, the town of Stowe has enacted an ordinance to keep people away from the bridge at night to avoid disturbances by would-be ghost hunters.) Despite its fame, however, the story of Emily might not be true, according to the blog Obscure Vermont. 

Another haunted bridge is the Eunice Williams Covered Bridge in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It's named for Eunice Williams, who was killed in 1704 after she'd been taken captive during a raid by French and Native American forces on the English settlement at Deerfield; 47 villagers died in the assault, and the survivors were forced to march for nearly 300 miles (480 kilometers), according to a local museum in Massachusetts. Williams, the wife of a local clergyman, had reportedly given birth only a few days before; she collapsed as the captives were marching by the Green River, and was killed by a tomahawk blow. Legend has it that Williams now haunts the covered bridge that was built at the spot; her ghost has been seen near the water under the bridge and supposedly has mistaken passersby for members of her family.

New Orleans

The paranormal has a distinctive local flavor in New Orleans, which vies with Savannah for the title of the Most Haunted City in America. One of the city’s most infamous haunted houses is the LaLaurie Mansion in the French Quarter. The mansion is the former home of Madame LaLaurie, a wealthy widow and prominent socialite. In April 1834, after a fire at the house, rescuers found bound slaves in a secret torture chamber in the attic who had been horribly tortured over a long period, and there were signs that others had been murdered there. When the discovery became known, the house was raided by an outraged mob of citizens, and Madame LaLaurie fled the city. Later occupants of the building have claimed it is still haunted by the ghosts of her victims.

The St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans has something of a reputation for the dead not staying in their graves — among them Marie Laveau, the city's historical "Queen of Voodoo," who died in 1851 but who is said to materialize above the crypt where she is buried each St. John's Eve (June 23).

The Myrtles Plantation, at St Francisville just outside New Orleans, is rumored to have been built on a Tunica Indian burial ground. At least 12 ghosts are said to haunt the plantation grounds and buildings, including Chloe, a slave who was accused of poisoning the family of the plantation owners. The ghosts of her victims, a mother and daughter, are reported to be trapped inside a mirror in the main house.

The ghost of a later owner, William Winter, is said to haunt the main staircase of the plantation house. Winter died in 1871, after being shot by a stranger who approached the house. Winter staggered inside and climbed the stairs to the 17th step, where he died in his wife's arms. It is said his phantom footsteps can sometimes be heard on the staircase, climbing to the 17th step before stopping. 

Gettysburg

The largest and deadliest battle of the American Civil War took place at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1863. More than 8,000 combatants were killed at Gettysburg, and in the years since the bloody battle, an uncommon number of ghost stories have been linked to events and personalities on the battlefield. Several visitors to what is now the Gettysburg National Military Park have reported hearing sounds of battle, including phantom cannon fire and the disembodied shouts or screams of ghostly soldiers.

At a high, rocky outcrop on the battlefield called The Devil’s Den, where heavy fighting took place on the second day of the battle (July 2, 1836), several visitors over the years claim to have heard the sound of drum rolls and gunfire. Devil's Den is also said to be haunted by the apparently friendly and sometimes talkative ghost of a soldier wearing buckskin clothing, a large hat and no shoes. 

Several ghost sightings have also been reported at the hill called Little Round Top, where Confederate troops were forced back from an assault on the flank of the Union forces, also on July 2, 1863 — an event regarded by many historians as a turning point in the battle. It has been claimed that some Civil War enactors who worked on the 1993 film "Gettysburg," a dramatization of the battle, met and spoke with a man in a shabby Union Army uniform who gave them some musket rounds, which they assumed were movie props — but which they later learned were Civil War rounds in pristine condition.

Legend tells that three Confederate soldiers were hanged at Sach's Bridge, a covered bridge a few hundred yards west of the Gettysburg battlefield. Some stories say the soldiers had deserted from their unit, while others say they were hanged as spies. The bridge is now a favorite site for ghost hunters, and some claim to have heard sounds of loud gunfire and galloping horses, while others reported seeing strange moving mists and inexplicable lights. Sach's Bridge was on the line of retreat for Gen. Robert E. Lee's defeated Army of Northern Virginia after the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the smell of smoke from the general’s pipe has sometimes been reported nearby.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

St. Augustine's Light Station may be the best known of the hundreds of lighthouses in the United States. The first permanent lighthouse beside what is America's oldest city was built on Anastasia Island in 1824, and the current lighthouse tower was built in 1874. Tragedy struck that year when the teenage daughters of Hezekiah Pity, a man employed on the rebuilding project, were playing around a cart used to carry building materials to the site. The cart broke loose and slid down the hill, and both girls were drowned. It is said that the laughter of the two girls at play can be heard around the tower at night; and the ghost of the older girl is said to have been seen, wearing the blue dress and blue hair bow that she was wearing when she died.

The ghost of the original builder of the St. Augustine's Light Station is also said to haunt the garden beside the tower, roaming in fury after a land dispute with the city government in the early 1880s, according to the St. Augustine Light Station & Maritime Museum. Additionally, the ghosts of at least two former lighthouse keepers are said to tread the steps and gantries of the tower late at night. One of the ghosts — that of lighthouse keeper Joseph Andreu, killed in the 1850s when he died in a fall from the tower — is said to leave a trail of cigar smoke as he makes his rounds.

Local legend holds that the island is also haunted by the ghosts of 13 pirates who were buried around the tower. But while there haven’t been any pirate graves found at the site, an archaeological team based at the St. Augustine Light Station discovered a number of historic shipwrecks nearby and other maritime remains, including traces of the wooden watchtower that served as Florida's first lighthouse. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Ghosts are both everywhere and nowhere, stories would have us believe. Their existence is constantly being investigated, but highly doubted, yet despite that healthy scepticism ghosts feature prominently in our culture. They are in television and film, from "Harry Potter" to "The Sixth Sense." Ghost stories are told around campfires and found on bookstore shelves, in both fiction and nonfiction sections. Around Halloween, pop-culture images of ghosts haunt nearly every store, and hang as decoration in homes.

Ghosts even influence some of our everyday customs, in ways we may not recognize. "People used to believe a sneeze caused someone to expel their soul out of their body, and so 'God bless you' or 'Bless you' was used as a protection against the devil snatching your soul," according to MIT. Here are some of the most famous ghosts of all time.

King Hamlet

Though ghosts appear in several of Shakespeare's plays (such as "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar"), King Hamlet, often referred to simply as 'Ghost', is among the better known of the Bard's ghosts and plays an integral part in "Hamlet." His son, Prince Hamlet may be the central character in the play named after him, but without his father's ghost, there would be no story.

King Hamlet appears three times in the play, each time during the night. The ghost tells Hamlet that he was murdered by his treacherous brother Claudius, and asks Hamlet to avenge his death.

"The Ghost himself says he is on a visit from Purgatory (1.5.9–13), returning to the world of the living in order to right a wrong; that the Catholic position on ghosts," wrote Tzachi Zamir, philosopher and literary critic, in his book "Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives" (Oxford University Press, 2017).

The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman, the world's best-known non-human ghost, is a seventeenth-century merchant ship said to haunt the high seas. According to sea lore, the ship, which often appears as a hazy image or a strange light, is said to be a portent of bad luck and doom.

The story has been adapted many times, but one of the more common versions tells of a Dutch captain, named van der Decken, refusing to take safe harbor during a storm while traversing the Cape of Good Hope despite pleas from the crew and passengers. Instead the impudent captain challenged God to take them down. The ship was promptly cursed and in its ghost form is damned to never find port again. The "ghost ship" has been reported on the ocean from time to time, including appearing off the coast of South Africa in 1923. The Flying Dutchman most recently appeared in movie theaters across the country in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, captained by Davy Jones.

"The tale of the doomed Dutch ghost ship stems from a British literary tradition (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries)," wrote Theo Meder in "The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands" (Libraries Unlimited, 2007) and is likely tied up in the trading company competition between Dutch and British businesses in that era.

The Bell Witch

The events that allegedly happened at John Bell's Tennessee farm between 1817 and 1821 are said to be one of the classic American ghost tales. Bell shot at a strange animal on his farm, but the creature disappeared before it could be harmed. Several weeks later, the Bell family was tormented by a ghost that made terrifying sounds, shook the house, and physically attacked Bell's daughter Betsy. The spectral assaults continued for several years, and at one point Andrew Jackson is said to have dabbled in ghost hunting and did his own investigation.

Though some authors recount the Bell Witch tale as a true account, there is little evidence that it is anything other than a ghost story. Jackson, for example, never mentioned the Bell Witch case at all; it seems that the future president's role was created from thin air, possibly to lend the appearance of reality to the fictional tale. "From the late 1810s until the 1830s, Jackson's every move is fairly well documented," wrote KyL T. Cobb, Jr. in his book "Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch" (Lulu.com, 2016). This casts further doubt on his involvement.

Casper

While Bloody Mary spends her time in the ghostly realms waiting to be summoned to dark bathrooms so she can scare kids, Casper, who is best known as "The Friendly Ghost", is the white-outlined, smiling ghost who tries not to scare people.

Casper was created by Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo in the 1930s, later gaining fame in the Harvey comic book series. Casper was often joined by friends such as Wendy the Good Little Witch and Hot Stuff the Little Devil. The characters were made benign and kid-friendly with the addition of "good," "friendly," and "little" to their names. Even so, the topic of death in a property aimed at children has been questioned, even when Casper enjoyed a revival with a self-titled 1995 film, starring Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci.. "Critics questioned how appropriate it was to run moments of comedy and slapstick alongside issues of death and the afterlife," wrote Zachary Graves in "Ghosts: The Complete Guide to the Supernatural" (Canary Press, 2011).

Bloody Mary

"Bloody Mary...Bloody Mary...Bloody Mary..." With those words, many schoolchildren had their first experience with a ghost. According to folklore, Bloody Mary is a ghost of a woman who murdered her children long ago. If you want to see her, go into a bathroom (usually at school), turn the lights off, stand in front of a mirror, and repeat her name three times.

The 'game' of summoning Bloody Mary is particularly associated with teenagers. "Three functions of the ritual are identified: to actively challenge and conquer fears; to allow opportunities to increase peer group status; and to develop a mechanism for coping with the supernatural," wrote Gail de Vos in "What Happens Next? Contemporary Urban Legends and Popular Culture" (Libraries Unlimited, 2012).. Many either stare at their scared reflection in the dark mirror or lose their nerve after saying the second "Bloody Mary" and run from the bathroom. "Numerous students related their experiences, both positive and negative, with great glee while others hid their heads in terror at the very thought of calling her."

An updated version of the Bloody Mary legend was made into a horror film series "Candyman," recently remade in 2021, who is similarly summoned by repeating his name three times.

The Drury Lane Ghost

There are many theaters in the Covent Gardens district in London's West End. Plays have been produced in that area for over 300 years, and some of the world's greatest actors have appeared there. Yet one theater is better known more for its ghost than its productions.

There is actually more than one ghost said to haunt Drury Lane's halls and wings, including those of several actors. The most famous, however, is a "Man in Grey" seen as a nobleman carrying a sword. It's not uncommon for a theater to claim a resident ghost treading the boards, and the Drury Lane ghosts carry on their part of theater tradition.

"Everyone in the theatre had some kind of experience. They think they saw the Man in Grey, or they heard a door slam when there was no one in the building. Roger [Clarke, professional ghost hunter] took those stories more seriously than the ghosts: he did think the building had something going on, although it was difficult to say what," said actor Nigel Planer to journalist Andrew Dickson, writing for "The Guardian" in 2015.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

A classic example of modern folklore, often associated with the United States, but with parallel tales elsewhere in the world, the Vanishing Hitchhiker is often depicted standing by the roadside and disappearing without a trace not long after being picked up. One classic version points to the hitchhiker being the ghost of a local resident, killed not far from their home, but it has likely changed over the decades.

"It acquired the newer automobile motif by the period of the Great Depression, and thereafter spawned a number of subtypes with greatly varied and oddly interlocking details, some of which themselves stemmed from earlier folk legends," wrote Jan Harold Brunvand in "The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings" (W. W. Norton & Company, 2003).

Sometimes the hitchhiker is imbued with the power of prophecy or is on an endless quest, not unlike the crew of the Flying Dutchman. "Updated and localized treatments of the legend continue to flourish in modern folklore, suggesting that the old ghost tale must have some important appeal to contemporary folk," wrote Brunvand.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

In Charles Dickens' famous novel "A Christmas Carol," cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge has a change of heart after being visited by several ghosts representing different eras of his life's Christmases (Past, Present, and Yet to Come).

Ghosts are often associated with life lessons and morality tales, and these spooks are no exception. The Ghost of Christmas Past sets Scrooge out on the road to rehabilitation by showing him visions of his past Christmases. 

Dickens is credited with helping to establish the concept of a Christmas spirit and may have been drawing on his own past and feelings about children and Christmas for this character. "Dickens had warm memories of his own childhood Christmases and, now the father of a young family […] made the annual event a merry holiday. Feasting, games, and domestic dramas were the order of the ‘twelve days of Christmas’ in the 1840s Dickens household," wrote John Sutherland, professor of Modern English Literature at University College London for The British Library in 2014.

The Murdered Peddler

One day, in the early 1840s in Hydesville, New York, a young peddler arrived at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Bell to sell his housewares. He was invited into the home by the Bells' housekeeper and in fact stayed for some days. The maid was shortly dismissed from service but abruptly rehired a week later. The peddler was gone, but many of his items were now in use in the Bells' kitchen. The maid thought little of it until she began experiencing strange, ghostly phenomenon, only to find out from the peddler's ghost that he had in fact been murdered in her absence.

At least that was the story told by two sisters named Maggie and Katie Fox, who claimed to communicate with the ghost. Years later, the sisters admitted it had all been a hoax; there was no murdered peddler, and the spirit communications had been faked. Still, the sisters had inadvertently founded a religion called Spiritualism, which is still practiced today. The Murdered Peddler is the only fake ghost whose presence started a real religion.

"When Spiritualism began, with its murdered peddler and its poltergeists, it had fed on an older fascination with occult powers. But Spiritualism as shaped by and in response to the Fox sisters had emerged as something sunnier, more democratic," wrote Barbara Weisberg in "Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism" (HarperOne, 2005). "One gathered a group of friends or hired a large hall to welcome the immortal beings. While benign spirit guides weren't necessarily unknown in other parts of the world, they descended like uninvited but cheery guests on nineteenth-century Christian America."

Slimer

Slimer is the grotesque green ghost featured in the "Ghostbuster" films and cartoons. He's characterised by his bright green appearance, obnoxious and slovenly behaviour, and his ability to spew slime. Slimer proved to be so popular with kids that he got a starring role in the spin-off cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters." A reformed evil ghost that joined the Ghostbusters team, Slimer's voracious appetite and guttural burps make him among the most memorable cartoon ghosts.

Originally referred to as 'Onionhead' in production of the original movie, Slimer was likened to an actor known well by the film's writers and stars Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis. "Ivan [Reitman, director] remarked that the character was sort of like Bluto in Animal House – like the ghost of John Belushi, in a way, Danny, who was obviously a good friend of John's, never argued with that. Even so, we never officially said that and we never mentioned it in the script. It was just one way to look at the character because Onionhead's grossness is like Bluto's in Animal House," said Joe Medjuck, producer of Ghostbusters, in "Making Ghostbusters" (New York Zoetrope, 1985), edited by Don Shay.

Additional resources and reading

If you would like to learn about some 'real' ghost ships that have risen from the ocean you should read about these WWII ships that arose after a volcanic eruption.

And you'll find out that telling ghost stories really is something that goes back to the earliest human settlements as shown by this Babylonian exorcism tablet, identified in 2021.

Bibliography

"Why Americans say “Bless you!” when they hear someone sneeze," MIT
"Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives" by Tzachi Zamir (Oxford University Press, 2017)
"The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands" by Theo Meder (Libraries Unlimited, 2007)
"Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch" by KyL T. Cobb, Jr. (Lulu.com, 2016)
"Ghosts: The Complete Guide to the Supernatural" by Zachary Graves (Canary Press, 2011)
"What Happens Next? Contemporary Urban Legends and Popular Culture" by Gail de Vos (Libraries Unlimited, 2012)
"Inside the world's most haunted theatre," by Andrew Dickson, "The Guardian"
"The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings" by Jan Harold Brunvand (W. W. Norton & Company, 2003)
"The origins of A Christmas Carol," by John Sutherland, The British Library
"Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism" by Barbara Weisberg (HarperOne, 2005)
"Making Ghostbusters" (New York Zoetrope, 1985), edited by Don Shay

The 16th-century courtier John Dee, a scientific adviser to England's Queen Elizabeth I, was also deeply involved in magic and the occult, and he tried to commune with ghosts, using a so-called spirit mirror made of polished obsidian. 

Now, a new analysis of Dee's infamous mirror has finally traced its origins — not to the spirit world, but to the Aztec Empire.

Obsidian mirrors such as Dee's were known from Aztec culture, but there were no records on his mirror's origins. However, geochemical analysis enabled researchers to link the mirror's obsidian — a type of volcanic glass — to Pachuca, Mexico, a popular source of obsidian for Aztec people. This finding indicated that the artifact was Aztec and not a copy made from European obsidian, and Dee likely acquired the mirror after it was brought to Europe from Mexico, according to a new study.

Related: Archaeologists are hot on the trail of these 16 spectacular mysteries

Though Dee was a scientist and mathematician, his interests also swung toward the magical and mystical, and in addition to the spirit mirror, he owned other objects related to astrology, divination, alchemy and the exploration of "demonic magic," scientists reported Oct. 7 in the journal Antiquity.

Dee claimed that one of these objects, a purple crystal on a chain, was given to him by the archangel Uriel, along with instructions for making a philosopher's stone — the mythical alchemical marvel that promised the gift of eternal life and the ability to turn base metals into gold, according to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) in London. Dee also possessed a Claude glass, a black glass mirror kept in a sharkskin case, which he used for "peering into the future," according to the RCP. 

Dee's obsidian mirror, now in the collection of the British Museum in London, is polished on both sides and is nearly perfectly circular, measuring about 7.2 inches (18.5 centimeters) in diameter and 0.5 inches (13 mm) thick, and weighing about 31 ounces (882 grams). A perforated square tab at the top of the mirror measures about 1.3 inches (33 mm) long and may have served as a handle, according to the study.

Inscriptions on notes that are stored with the mirror refer to it as "The Devil's Looking-glass" and "The Black Stone into which Dr Dee used to call his Spirits," according to the British Museum.

Drawings of mirrors that resemble Dee's appear in the Codex Tepetlaoztoc; this 16th-century Aztec pictorial manuscript was created by inhabitants of Tepetlaoztoc and depicts excessive tribute demands and other abuses of Indigenous people by Spanish conquistadors, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

The Aztecs used obsidian mirrors for scrying — peering into the future — and for religious rituals. These mirrors were strongly associated with one god in particular: Tezcatlipoca ("smoking mirror" in the Nahuatl language), a creation deity in the Aztec pantheon and a god of sorcerers, according to the British Museum.

"In the period iconography, he's often shown with a severed left foot, and he's got an obsidian mirror in place of his left foot," said lead study author Stuart Campbell, a professor of Near Eastern archaeology at The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. "Sometimes they appear on his chest; sometimes they appear on his head," Campbell told Live Science. "So there's quite a specific association with these types of mirrors and that particular deity."

The scientists analyzed Dee's mirror and related objects in the British Museum collections, including one rectangular obsidian mirror and two circular ones, using a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument. They then compared its chemical "fingerprints" — ratios of elements such as iron, titanium and rubidium — with ratios in samples of obsidian mined from different parts of Mexico.

"Because obsidian only occurs in very specific volcanic locations, it's almost always got a very distinct chemical profile," Campbell explained. "If you do a detailed chemical analysis, very often you can use that to assign it to a unique original source."

Their analysis showed that Dee's mirror — and a circular mirror that was similar to Dee's — were close matches to samples from Pachuca, a region in Mexico that was under Aztec control and "was the most heavily exploited" of the known obsidian resources for the Aztec Empire, according to the study.

At the dawn of the 16th century, obsidian mirrors that were crafted by Aztec people had a specific cultural context "with a set of very specific cultural meanings in the Aztec Empire," Campbell said. When colonizers brought those mirrors to Europe, they also transplanted the idea that mirrors could be used to peer into the future or contact other worlds, he explained. 

After Dee acquired his mirror and began using it for magical rituals, "it gained a whole new life and a whole new set of meanings — and it's continued to acquire those," Campbell said. "So, it now sits in the British Museum as an occult artifact. It's got its own biography and its own impact in the world. I think, because of that, it's a particularly fascinating object."

Originally published on Live Science.

Astronomers have spotted the outline of what appear to be two ghostly figures dancing among the stars.

Located about a billion light-years from Earth, the structures, formally named PKS 2130-538, have been nicknamed the "dancing ghosts" and were discovered as part of the first deep-sky search using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope. The search was a part of the first pilot survey by the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project.

In a new paper describing the structures, the researchers who spotted the ethereal figures said they are unlike anything ever seen.

Related: 12 trippy objects hidden in the zodiac 

"When we first saw the 'dancing ghosts,' we had no idea what they were," lead author Ray Norris, an astrophysics professor at Western Sydney University in Australia, said in a statement. 

After weeks of investigation, the researchers finally have an explanation for the spooky apparitions: Two supermassive black holes, at the centers of two galaxies, were "squirting out jets of electrons that are then bent into grotesque shapes by an intergalactic wind," Norris said.

These electrons come from so-called radio galaxies, which, like a lot of galaxies, are anchored down in their centers by enormous black holes with billions of times the mass of the sun. In the case of radio galaxies, their supermassive black holes produce a lot of light in the radio-frequency range of the spectrum. As a radio galaxy's matter gets snared by the immense gravitational pull of its supermassive black hole, the matter spirals inward, accelerating to blistering speeds. Because some of this matter is electrically charged, it bounces off the magnetic fields surrounding the black holes, emerging as a fast stream of charged particles called a jet. 

When the particle jets from these particular radio galaxies crashed into a stream of intergalactic dust, they imprinted the eerie image of dancing ghosts on the night sky. 

But much about these celestial ghosts is still baffling to researchers.

"We still don't know where the wind is coming from. Why is it so tangled? And what is causing the streams of radio emission? It will probably take many more observations and modeling before we understand any of these things," Norris said in the statement.

The ghosts aren't the first weird phenomenon to be discovered by the EMU project. In 2019, the team discovered giant, unexplained rings of radio emission surrounding distant galaxies. The researchers dubbed the rings, which measure nearly 1 million light-years across, Odd Radio Circles.

"We are even finding surprises in places we thought we understood," Norris said.

Originally published on Live Science.

If you believe in ghosts, you're not alone. Cultures all around the world believe in spirits that survive death to live in another realm. In fact, ghosts are among the most widely believed of paranormal phenomenon: Millions of people are interested in ghosts. It's more than mere entertainment; A 2019 Ipsos poll found that 46% of Americans  say they truly believe in ghosts. (The nation is discerning in its undead beliefs; only 7% of respondents said they believe in vampires).

And about 18% of people say they have either seen a ghost or been in one's presence, according to a 2015 Pew Research study. Why do so many claim to have such brushes with the afterlife?

"One common cause may be pareidolia, the tendency for our brains to find patterns (especially human faces and figures) amongst ambiguous stimuli," Stephen Hupp, clinical psychologist and professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Told Live Science in an email. "One common example is when we see faces or figures in the clouds and another is when random shapes and shadows in a dark house look like a ghost," said Hupp, who is also the editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

But the idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is an ancient one, appearing in countless stories, from the Bible to "Macbeth." It even spawned a folklore genre: ghost stories. Belief in ghosts is part of a larger web of related paranormal beliefs, including near-death experience, life after death, and spirit communication. The belief offers many people comfort — who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need? 

People have tried to (or claimed to) communicate with spirits for ages; in Victorian England, for example, it was fashionable for upper-crust ladies to hold séances in their parlors after tea and crumpets with friends. Ghost clubs dedicated to searching for ghostly evidence formed at prestigious universities, including Cambridge and Oxford, and in 1882 the most prominent organization, the Society for Psychical Research, was established. A woman named Eleanor Sidgwick was an investigator (and later president) of that group, and could be considered the original female ghostbuster. In America during the late 1800s, many psychic mediums claimed to speak to the dead — but were later exposed as frauds by skeptical investigators such as Harry Houdini. 

Related: 10 Ghost stories that will haunt you for life

It wasn't until recently that ghost hunting became a widespread interest around the world. Much of this is due to the hit Syfy cable TV series "Ghost Hunters," which aired 230 episodes and found no good evidence for ghosts. 

The show spawned dozens of spinoffs and imitators, and it's not hard to see why the show is so popular: the premise is that anyone can look for ghosts. The two original stars were ordinary guys (plumbers, in fact) who decided to look for evidence of spirits. Their message: You don't need to be an egghead scientist, or even have any training in science or investigation. All you need is some free time, a dark place, and maybe a few gadgets from an electronics store. If you look long enough any unexplained light or noise might be evidence of ghosts.

That vague criteria for ghostly happenings is part of the reason why myths about the afterlife are more alive than ever.

The science and logic of ghosts

One difficulty in scientifically evaluating ghosts is that a surprisingly wide variety of phenomena are attributed to ghosts, from a door closing on its own, to missing keys, to a cold area in a hallway, to a vision of a dead relative. 

When sociologists Dennis and Michele Waskul interviewed ghost experiencers for their book "Ghostly Encounters: The Hauntings of Everyday Life" (Temple University Press, 2016) they found that "many participants were not sure that they had encountered a ghost and remained uncertain that such phenomena were even possible, simply because they did not see something that approximated the conventional image of a 'ghost.' Instead, many of our respondents were simply convinced that they had experienced something uncanny — something inexplicable, extraordinary, mysterious, or eerie." 

Thus, many people who go on record as claiming to have had a ghostly experience didn't necessarily see anything that most people would recognize as a classic "ghost," and in fact they may have had completely different experiences whose only common factor is that it could not be readily explained. 

"There are plenty of misunderstood phenomena that influence ghost sightings. For example, sleep paralysis in a recognized experience that leads to people feeling like they have seen a ghost, demon, or alien," Hupp said.

Personal experience is one thing, but scientific evidence is another matter. Part of the difficulty in investigating ghosts is that there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of what a ghost is. Some believe that they are spirits of the dead who for whatever reason get "lost" on their way to The Other Side; others claim that ghosts are instead telepathic entities projected into the world from our minds.

Still others create their own special categories for different types of ghosts, such as poltergeists, residual hauntings, intelligent spirits and shadow people. Of course, it's all made up, like speculating on the different races of fairies or dragons: there are as many types of ghosts as you want there to be.

There are many contradictions inherent in ideas about ghosts. For example, are ghosts material or not? Either they can move through solid objects without disturbing them, or they can slam doors shut and throw objects across the room. According to logic and the laws of physics, it's one or the other. If ghosts are human souls, why do they appear clothed and with (presumably soulless) inanimate objects like hats, canes, and dresses — not to mention the many reports of ghost trains, cars and carriages?

If ghosts are the spirits of those whose deaths were unavenged, why are there unsolved murders, since ghosts are said to communicate with psychic mediums, and should be able to identify their killers for the police? The questions go on and on — just about any claim about ghosts raises logical reasons to doubt it.

Ghost hunters use many creative (and dubious) methods to detect the spirits' presences, often including psychics. Virtually all ghost hunters claim to be scientific, and most give that appearance because they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, Electromagnetic Field (EMF) detectors, ion detectors, infrared cameras and sensitive microphones. Yet none of this equipment has ever been shown to actually detect ghosts. 

"If someone hands you an electronic device to sense a ghost, then they’re probably doing it to get your money during a ghost tour," Hupp said.

For centuries, people believed that flames turned blue in the presence of ghosts. Today, few people accept that bit of lore, but it's likely that many of the signs taken as evidence by today's ghost hunters will be seen as just as wrong and antiquated centuries from now. 

Other researchers claim that the reason ghosts haven't been proven to exist is that we simply don't have the right technology to find or detect the spirit world. But this, too, can't be correct: 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. If ghosts exist and can be scientifically detected or recorded, then we should find hard evidence of that — yet we don't. If ghosts exist but cannot be scientifically detected or recorded, then all the photos, videos, audio and other recordings claimed to be evidence of ghosts cannot be ghosts. With so many basic contradictory theories — and so little science brought to bear on the topic — it's not surprising that despite the efforts of thousands of ghost hunters on television and elsewhere for decades, not a single piece of hard evidence of ghosts has been found.

And, of course, with the recent development of "ghost apps" for smartphones, it's easier than ever to create seemingly spooky images and share them on social media, making separating fact from fiction even more difficult for ghost researchers. 

Why do people believe in ghosts?

Most people who believe in ghosts do so because of some personal experience; they grew up in a home where the existence of (friendly) spirits was taken for granted, for example, or they had some unnerving experience on a ghost tour or local haunt. 

Belief in a spirit world may also fulfill a deeper psychological need.

"There’s still so much to this universe that we don’t understand, and it’s comforting to fill in the void with explanations. Supernatural explanations are often stated with confidence, even when there’s no actual evidence, and this confidence provides a false sense of actual truth," Hupp said.

For instance, some claim that support for the existence of ghosts can be found in no less a hard science than modern physics. It is widely claimed that Albert Einstein suggested a scientific basis for the reality of ghosts, based on the First Law of Thermodynamics: If energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, what happens to our body's energy when we die? Could that somehow be manifested as a ghost?

It seems like a reasonable assumption — until you dig into the basic physics. The answer is very simple, and not at all mysterious. After a person dies, the energy in his or her body goes where all organisms' energy goes after death: into the environment. The energy is released in the form of heat, and the body is transferred into the animals that eat us (i.e., wild animals if we are left unburied, or worms and bacteria if we are interred), and the plants that absorb us. There is no bodily "energy" that survives death to be detected with popular ghost-hunting devices.

Related: Top 10 most famous ghosts

While amateur ghost hunters like to imagine themselves on the cutting edge of ghost research, they are really engaging in what folklorists call ostension or legend tripping. It's basically a form of playacting in which people "act out" a legend, often involving ghosts or supernatural elements. In his book "Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live" (University Press of Mississippi, 2003) folklorist Bill Ellis points out that ghost hunters themselves often take the search seriously and "venture out to challenge supernatural beings, confront them in consciously dramatized form, then return to safety. ... The stated purpose of such activities is not entertainment but a sincere effort to test and define boundaries of the 'real' world."

If ghosts are real, and are some sort of as-yet-unknown energy or entity, then their existence will (like all other scientific discoveries) be discovered and verified by scientists through controlled experiments — not by weekend ghost hunters wandering around abandoned, supposedly haunted houses in the dark late at night with cameras and flashlights.

In the end (and despite mountains of ambiguous photos, sounds, and videos) the evidence for ghosts is no better today than it was a century ago. There are two possible reasons for the failure of ghost hunters to find good evidence. The first is that ghosts don't exist, and that reports of ghosts can be explained by psychology, misperceptions, mistakes and hoaxes. The second option is that ghosts do exist, but that ghost hunters do not possess the scientific tools or mindset to uncover any meaningful evidence. 

But ultimately, ghost hunting is not about the evidence at all (if it was, the search would have been abandoned long ago). Instead, it's about having fun with friends and family members, telling stories, and the enjoyment of pretending to search the edge of the unknown. After all, everyone loves a good ghost story.

Additional resources

• The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.
• Experiments suggest that children can distinguish fantasy from reality, but are tempted to believe in the existence of imaginary creatures, according to an article published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Have you ever been home alone and felt certain — certain — that someone was watching you? Afraid to turn around, lest you catch a ghostly visage out of the corner of your eye? 

You aren't alone. In fact, for some people, this feeling translates into a full-blown phobia that makes it difficult or impossible to live or sleep alone. This fear of ghosts may be much more common than usually believed, said Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, a psychiatrist at The D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) in Rio de Janeiro. 

"It is possibly as common as the common phobias that we meet with every day, such as fear of heights or certain insects," Oliveira-Souza told Live Science. 

Related: What Really Scares People: Top 10 Most Common Phobias

Ghostly fears

Shame and embarrassment, according to Oliveira-Souza, probably prevent many people from mentioning their fears to medical professionals. Oliveira-Souza became interested in the phenomenon after a patient he treated for depression happened to mention that the depression treatment had also cured him of his lifelong fear of ghosts, which had once made him frightened to sleep alone. To Oliveira-Souza, the patient's description matched the criteria for a phobia, a term in psychology used to describe overwhelming fears triggered by a certain situation — in this case, being alone or thinking of horror movies or other supernatural scares. He began to ask around and found that many friends, patients and relatives also reported getting spooked by the notion of ghosts. 

In a paper published in November 2018 in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, Oliveira-Souza highlighted a few of those cases. In one case, a 46-year-old hotel attendant who lived with her parents her whole life was bereft after her father died and her mother decided to move away; the woman was terrified to stay alone in the family apartment. When her mother left for a weekend trip before the planned move, the woman lurked in a nearby nightclub and wandered the streets of her neighborhood rather than face sleeping alone. Intrusive memories of her father's funeral haunted the woman when she did try to sleep. 

In another case, a 54-year-old lawyer was hesitant to leave a bad marriage because he was afraid to live alone; he'd slept in the same room as his older brother as a youth and had married hastily after his brother left home because his supernatural fear made him terrified of sleeping alone. The lawyer reported that even when alone in his office, he felt like someone was watching him, or that something would materialize out of nowhere in front of him. This feeling of being watched is also known as "Anwesenheit," a German word that means "presence." 

Related: Top 11 Spooky Sleep Disorders

Being alone, especially at night, triggered fears for all of Oliveira-Souza's patients. One 19-year-old college student slept with her parents out of fears of spirits breaking through her bedroom window. A 63-year-old widow was so terrified that someone or something was in her living room at night that she sometimes wet the bed rather than get up and walk to the bathroom. An 11-year-old girl reported fears that hands would drag her under her bed if she dangled her legs over the floor or that a terrifying apparition would appear in front of her in the darkness. 

Supernatural phobia

The 11-year-old outgrew her fears after puberty, as many people do. Most of the adults, on the other hand, responded well to treatment with antidepressants or benzodiazepines, the most common drugs used to treat specific phobias. 

"Regardless of the content of the phobic symptom in each case, these drugs relieve the anxiety that lies at the core of the dread," Oliveira-Souza explained.

Some patients were concurrently treated with cognitive behavioral therapy, a talk therapy method that works by untangling the specific fear (in this case, ghosts), from the physical and emotional experience of anxiety.

It's also likely that fear of ghosts occurs on a spectrum. A person without full-blown claustrophobia may still feel quite uncomfortable on a malfunctioning elevator after treatment, Oliveira-Souza said. In the same way, a person without a full supernatural phobia can still struggle to banish memories of horror films or Stephen King novels while alone on a dark and stormy night. 

• Spooky Sites: 7 of the Most Haunted Places in the United States
• 13 Bizarre Mythical Monsters to Haunt Your Halloween
• The 27 Oddest Medical Case Reports

Originally published on Live Science.

Halloween is a time when ghosts and spooky decorations are on public display, reminding us of the realm of the dead. But could they also be instructing us in important lessons on how to lead moral lives?

Roots of Halloween

The origins of modern-day Halloween go back to "samhain," a Celtic celebration for the beginning of the dark half of the year when, it was widely believed, the realm between the living and the dead overlapped and ghosts could be commonly encountered.

In 601 A.D., to help his drive to Christianize northern Europe, Pope Gregory I directed missionaries not to stop pagan celebrations, but rather to Christianize them.

Accordingly, over time, the celebrations of samhain became All Souls' Day and All Saint's Day, when speaking with the dead was considered religiously appropriate. All Saint's Day was also known as All Hallows' Day and the night before became All Hallows' Evening, or "Hallowe'en."

Christian ghosts

Not only did the pagan beliefs around spirits of the dead continue, but they also became part of many of early church practices.

Pope Gregory I himself suggested that people seeing ghosts should say masses for them. The dead, in this view, might require help from the living to make their journey towards Heaven.

During the Middle Ages, beliefs around souls trapped in purgatory led to the church's increasing practice of selling indulgences – payments to the church to reduce penalties for sins. The widespread belief in ghosts turned the sale of indulgences into a lucrative practice for the church.

It was such beliefs that contributed to the Reformation, the division of Christianity into Protestantism and Catholicism led by German theologian Martin Luther. Indeed, Luther's "95 Theses," that he nailed to the All Saints Church in Wittenburg on Oct. 31, 1517, was largely a protest against the selling of indulgences.

Subsequently, ghosts became identified with "Catholic superstitions" in Protestant countries.

Debates, however, continued about the existence of ghosts and people increasingly turned to science to deal with the issue. By the 19th century, Spiritualism, a new movement which claimed that the dead could converse with the living, was fast becoming mainstream, and featured popular techniques such as seances, the ouija board, spirit photography and the like.

Although Spiritualism faded in cultural importance after World War I, many of its approaches can be seen in the "ghost hunters" of today, who often seek to prove the existence of ghosts using scientific techniques.

A wide, wide world of ghosts

These beliefs are not just part of the Christian world. Most, although not all, societies have a concept of "ghosts." In Taiwan, for example, about 90 percent people report seeing ghosts.

Along with many Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, China and Vietnam, Taiwan celebrates a "Ghost Month," which includes a central "Ghost Day," when ghosts are believed to freely roam the world of the living. These festivals and beliefs are often tied to the Buddhist story of the Urabon Sutra, where Buddha instructs a young priest on how to help his mother whom he sees suffering as a "hungry ghost."

As in many traditions, Taiwanese ghosts are seen either as "friendly" or "unfriendly." The "friendly" ghosts are commonly ancestral or familial and welcomed into the home during the ghost festival. The "unfriendly" ghosts are those angry or "hungry" ghosts that haunt the living.

Role of ghosts in our lives

As a scholar who has studied and taught ghost stories for many years, I have found that ghosts generally haunt for good reasons. These could range from unsolved murders, lack of proper funerals, forced suicides, preventable tragedies and other ethical failures.

Ghosts, in this light, are often found seeking justice from beyond the grave. They could make such demands from individuals, or from societies as a whole. For example, in the U.S., sightings have been reported of African-American slaves and murdered Native Americans. Scholar Elizabeth Tucker details many of these reported sightings on university campuses, often tied in with sordid aspects of the campus's past.

In this way, ghosts reveal the shadow side of ethics. Their sightings are often a reminder that ethics and morality transcend our lives and that ethical lapses can carry a heavy spiritual burden.

Yet ghost stories are also hopeful. In suggesting a life after death, they offer a chance to be in contact with those that have passed and therefore a chance for redemption – a way to atone for past wrongs.

This Halloween, along with the shrieks and shtick, you may want to take a few minutes to appreciate the role of ghosts in our haunted pasts and how they guide us to lead moral and ethical lives.

Tok Thompson, Associate Professor of Teaching, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

If you believe in the paranormal you might not be surprised if you hear stories of deceased loved ones appearing during the night, huge explosions heard just as someone is drifting off with no obvious cause, and other peculiar occurrences. But what if you don't?

My interest in the paranormal started with an impromptu coffee with a colleague, Chris French, who researches reports of paranormal experiences. He told me stories of countless people who had recounted such events. These experiences tended to start while lying in bed. Then something unusual would happen – perhaps a demon would appear or the environment would seem strange or there would be a sensed presence. The person having this experience might also report being glued to their mattress, tarmacked into the bed, totally unable to move.

It's unsurprising that people who experience such things might interpret them as paranormal. But certain phenomena such as sleep paralysis provide an alternative to paranormal explanations for such occurrences. Hence my interest in the subject, as a sleep researcher.

Sleep paralysis

When we sleep, we cycle through different stages. We start the night in non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep – which gets progressively deeper. We then cycle back until we hit rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During REM sleep we are most likely to have vivid dreams. At this stage we are also paralysed, perhaps as a safety mechanism to stop us acting out our dreams so that we don't end up attempting to fly.

But during sleep paralysis, features of REM sleep continue into waking life. Those who experience it will feel awake yet might experience dream-like hallucinations and struggle to move. This experience is pretty common, occurring in around 8% of people (although estimates vary dramatically depending on who we are asking). It's even possible to induce sleep paralysis in some people, by disrupting their sleep in specific ways.

Certain researchers, French among them, believe that this explains a huge number of paranormal accounts. Information about sleep paralysis is finally seeping into public awareness, but we now need to understand more about this common complaint.

Our preliminary work, which I recount in my new book Nodding Off: The science of sleep from cradle to grave, hints at possible genetic and environmental explanations for why some people are more likely than others to experience sleep paralysis. This now needs to be replicated using much larger samples. Reviewing the literature, we have also highlighted a host of other variables associated with this common experience, including stress, trauma, psychiatric difficulties and physical illnesses.

Exploding head syndrome

Sleep paralysis aside, how else are sleep researchers helping to explain paranormal experiences? People sometimes describe experiencing huge explosions during the night which simply can't be explained. There is no sign that a shelf has fallen down or a car has backfired. There is no one playing the electric guitar next to their head.

Again, this can be linked to our sleep - this time explained by "exploding head syndrome," a term coined relatively recently by the neurologist JMS Pearce. When we fall asleep, the reticular formation of the brainstem (a part of our brain involved in consciousness) typically starts to inhibit our ability to move, see and hear things. When we experience a "bang" in our sleep this might be because of a delay in this process. Instead of the reticular formation shutting down the auditory neurons, they might fire at once.

As with sleep paralysis, this phenomenon is also under-researched. For this very reason, in 2017 my colleagues and I joined forces with BBC Focus and Brian Sharpless, a leading expert on this phenomenon, to collect data on this topic.

Imps and ghouls

Finally, what might scientists make of precognitive dreams? We might dream of a friend we haven't seen for years only to have them call us the very next day. French thinks science can provide an explanation for this too. Referencing work by John Allen Paulos that focuses on probabilities, he explains how such an occurrence may be surprising on any single day, but over time, quite likely to occur.

Researching my book, I spoke to Mrs Sinclair, who is 70, and lives alone. She told me about what she had thought was a ghost living in her house, an imp throttling her during the night and other things that had left her petrified. Having scientific explanations provided her with immense comfort and she no longer believes in paranormal explanations for the things that she experienced.

Our hope is that scientific explanations of paranormal experiences might help others by lowering anxiety. Decreasing anxiety has also been hypothesised as a potential method by which to reduce sleep paralysis. So, perhaps providing more information about these unusual experiences might even mean that things are less likely to go bump in the night.

Alice M Gregory, Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science .

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Editor's note: Dr. Paul Kingsbury presented some of his research on crop circles on Nov. 2 at the Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University.

Crop circles are some of the most beautiful, mysterious and controversial landscape phenomena in the contemporary world. They are found around the globe, appearing in countries with large areas of agricultural land. They are also central to a shift in culture with investigative approaches that mimic science and increasingly make the paranormal mainstream.

Unlike UFOs, ghosts and sasquatches, crop circles are tangible — people can touch and walk into them. At least 30 appeared in England last summer. In British Columbia, crop circle formations appeared in Vanderhoof, about 100 kilometres west of Prince George, in 1998 and 2001.

Crop circles and what people do with them represent one aspect of my ongoing four-year research project, which explores the recent growth of beliefs, practices and experiences related to the paranormal. My fieldwork studies investigative paranormal groups in the Vancouver area and paranormal conferences across North America and England.

Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people's lives in the West.

Because the paranormal refers to "events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding," researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with "normal" everyday life.

Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream.

Paranormal goes mainstream and scientific

Investigative organizations and international conferences that mobilize paranormal feelings, knowledge and practices are central to the merger between the paranormal and the mainstream.

Drawing on the models and techniques that mimic conventional science, these conferences and organizations are open to the public and have led to the democratization of paranormal investigation and availability of paranormal experiences.

Researchers — especially in the humanities — acknowledge the relevance of the paranormal. Yet enduring skepticism in the social sciences about the legitimacy of the claims about paranormal phenomena and experiences has resulted in a lack of critical studies on how people are actually engaging with the paranormal.

Academic research has already acknowledged the importance of local paranormal groups and international conferences that engage paranormal phenomena — in particular ghosts, UFOs and cryptids such as sasquatch. Yet we know very little about the relationships between these groups and conferences, as well as why and how they shape people's everyday lives.

My study helps explain how paranormal organizations and conferences are contributing to these sociocultural changes.

Rationality conflicts with crop circles' mystery

Crop circle research or "cereology" exemplifies the tension between the ordinary and extraordinary.

No matter what one understands to be the cause of crop circles, whether they are all human-made or involve aquifers, ley lines, divine feminine energy, ancient sacred sites, ball lightning or even UFOs, crop circles bring to the fore a mysterious disconnection between language and the visible, as described in Jean-François Lyotard's book Discourse, Figure.

The French philosopher argues there is an unstable relationship between linguistic meaning and units of signification, that is, the visible patterns of words, dreams, symbols and visual art. Because there is no inherent meaning in any given signifier (meaning always relies on another word and a wider context), and art and symbols are conceptually opaque by default, they necessarily defy easy rational understanding.

Case in point: Events at the 2017 Summer Lectures Crop Circle Conference in Devizes, England, illustrated the difficulty of researching crop circles.

One day during the conference, I went to visit a crop circle with fellow researchers only to find a sign on a gate to the property: "Crop circle closed." The person representing an organization that liaises between farmers and crop-circle researchers was not present. Because we could not proceed without trespassing, we got back into the car.

Back at the conference, an argument erupted over the behaviour of some researchers who had ignored the "Crop circle closed" sign, climbed over the fence and walked to the crop circle.

For one researcher, this transgression was troubling because it exhibited the crass consumption of what he believed was a sacred phenomenon. Another researcher, who had ignored the sign, replied that he respected this opinion, but felt the crop circle was "calling out" to him and that it would be more disrespectful to ignore the pull of the sacred.

The researchers had differing views on whether a "Crop circle closed" sign, which demarcated a boundary, should be obeyed or whether it was an inappropriate obstacle to the "call" of the crop circle.

The tension between the appearances and meanings of crop circles also informed the tricky patience demanded in a sacred geometry workshop. As participants drew lines with compasses and protractors, they struggled to accurately reproduce the complex patterns of crop circles, losing small pieces of pencil lead and struggling to keep their compasses from slipping on the paper. Conference organizer Karen Alexander said the exercise gave the participants a better appreciation and intimate understanding of crop circles.

Interpreting paranormal cultures

As a part of my work, I explore the tensions between the visual and language, focusing on the complexity of crop-circle landscapes where enthusiasts struggle to navigate toward, inside and away from crop circles.

Lyotard aligns these events with "figural space" — elusive elements that disrupt and exceed the capture of language. Crucial here is how crop circles — unlike ghosts, UFOs and sasquatches — are highly tangible signs. But what they mean and what they are remains a mystery.

Despite claims by "circle-makers" that they are human-made, the sheer size and complexity of the circles belies a 100 per cent human-made explanation.

According to researchers at the conference, hoaxers, when questioned about how they were able to make 80 or so perfectly round circles without breaking or snapping cereal stalks, are unable to reproduce the patterns and ignore the researchers' questions.

Furthermore, finding and getting to the crop circles — navigating narrow and winding English countryside roads and locating their exact whereabouts in large fields of wheat or barley — is no small feat.

Like all the other paranormal investigation cultures I have studied so far, crop circle research blurs the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary. Beyond this, one cannot discount the importance of geography in the micro-spaces of fields and conference venues. The regional nature and extent to which crop circles are landscape phenomena incites many people's desire to shape their encounters with the sublime.

Paul Kingsbury, Professor, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, Simon Fraser University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might be the world's most incredible science experiment. A particle collider seventeen miles in circumference, it accelerates protons to velocities approaching the speed of light and slams them together. Enthralled scientists from all over the world watch the subatomic demolition derby and record what happens. Thus far, they've witnessed the creation of quark-gluon plasma (the densest matter outside of black holes), found key evidence against supersymmetry, and discovered the Higgs boson, a result which garnered the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Much of the general public probably isn't aware of these fascinating, yet unfortunately, esoteric discoveries at the LHC. Particle physics simply doesn't inspire as much interest as say, ghosts. At least four in ten Americans believe in ghosts, and it's likely that even fewer people are aware of the LHC. On that note, at least one physicist contends that the LHC has, in fact, disproved the existence of ghosts.

The physicist in question is Brian Cox, an Advanced Fellow of particle physics at the University of Manchester and a popular science communicator in Britain. On a recent broadcast of BBC Radio Four's The Infinite Monkey Cage centered around science and the paranormal, Cox had this to say on the topic:

"Before we ask the first question, I want to make a statement: We are not here to debate the existence of ghosts because they don't exist."

He continued:

"If we want some sort of pattern that carries information about our living cells to persist then we must specify precisely what medium carries that pattern and how it interacts with the matter particles out of which our bodies are made. We must, in other words, invent an extension to the Standard Model of Particle Physics that has escaped detection at the Large Hadron Collider. That's almost inconceivable at the energy scales typical of the particle interactions in our bodies."

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was also on the show, pressed Cox to clarify his statement.

"If I understand what you just declared, you just asserted that CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, disproved the existence of ghosts."

"Yes," Cox replied.

"I would say if there's some kind of substance that's driving our bodies, making my arms move and legs move, then it must interact with the particles out of which our bodies are made. And seeing as we've made high precision measurements of the ways that particles interact, then my assertion is there can be no such thing as an energy source that's driving our bodies."

While there are numerous scientific explanations that effectively debunk the paranormal, this was a novel contention. And it makes sense. If ghosts are impinging on the physical world, then surely their wispy trails would be detected by physicists. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't happened.

Original article on RealClearScience.

A visitor to a famous—and famously haunted—hotel in Colorado claims to have captured a ghostly image.

According to a CNN story, "Tourist Henry Yau recently took a picture at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which appears to show two ghostly apparitions standing on a staircase.

In the photo, a woman can be seen at the top of the stairs in a period outfit with a child beside her." The photo has gone viral, leaving many scratching their heads and others heading to the Stanley to see for themselves.

American Horror Stories: Ghosts and Hauntings

Many commenters on social media think it's a ghost (or two), and several amateur ghost hunters have weighed in suggesting it's unexplainable. Others, however, have a pretty good idea of what it is. Researcher Kenny Biddle of the Geeks & Ghosts podcast and the "I am Kenny Biddle" blog, examined the photo and noted that Yau used the panoramic feature on his iPhone to capture a full view of the grand stairwell.

This offers a clue because the in panorama mode the camera doesn't just take one photo but instead scans across the scene rapidly. Biddle notes that "Panoramic images are not taken in the same fraction of a second as a normal images are. They take several seconds … which would allow Yau to start taking his panoramic image at one end of the room, and another guest or two to hit the halfway point down the stairs, turn the corner, and begin the second set of stairs to the floor as Yau ends his panoramic image on the other side of the room."

Odd glitches using the panorama function on cameras are common, and many websites display hundreds of bizarre and double images. A Tumblr account titled "Panorama Fail" offers dozens of accidental digital grotesqueries. The "ghost" is "most likely just a guest that was captured coming down the stairs while a panoramic image was taken over the course of several seconds," Biddle concludes.

British Viral 'Ghost Photo' Explained

Though some have dismissed the image as an artifact of the panorama feature, Biddle notes that "when looking at a close up of the alleged ghost and second ghost (to the left of the more solid looking figure), we see that the features of both figures match up: the hair, the spaghetti-strap top, the height of the head, shoulders, and the top of the dress. This is a double image of the same person, not someone else. This effect was caused by the low light environment, slower scanning speed due to the camera trying to take in more light, and the movement of this person as they rounded the corner."

Yau claims that he doesn't remember seeing anyone at the top of the staircase when he took the photo, but it's quite possible that he simply didn't notice the woman as she appeared and turned at the top of the stairs, as he was trying to hold the camera steady and take the photo. (Yau also claimed that he waited until there was no one in the area when taking the photo, though two people can be clearly seen on the left side of the photo.)

How the unexpected hotel guest was dressed likely also played a role in how her image was interpreted; she seems to be wearing a classic black or dark dress (as befits a fancy, well-known hotel); had she been wearing a yellow blazer and carrying a large Target shopping bag speculations about her spectral origins would likely have been scuttled.

Video: Do Ghosts Exist?

Creepy Context

Upon closer inspection there is nothing remarkable in the image; it's a perfectly ordinary blurry, double image common in long exposure and panoramic iPhone photographs. Had it been taken in any number of other locations, it would not likely have attracted such attention. So why is image played up as a mystery? The answer lies in its context.

Context plays two roles in the creation of "spooky" photos. Most people (that is, non-professional photographers) routinely take photos that are flawed in some way, or that have odd or unusual images in them, including flash reflected "orbs," odd shadows, blurry body parts, double exposures, objects behind a person seemingly coming out of their heads, and so on. Usually they are ignored or deleted, unless the photographer (or someone else) decides that there's some reason why the photo might be of something supernatural.

The photo was taken at a doubly famous hotel—not only is it where the Stephen King-scripted, Stanley Kubrick-directed horror classic "The Shining" was filmed, but it's also claimed to be one of the most haunted hotels in the country. In fact the hotel specifically advertises itself as a paranormal destination and caters to ghost hunting tourists. Because of this, guests there are more likely to see ghosts (in person and in photos) than in comparable non-haunted lodgings—and this is true whether ghosts exist or not.

Ghost Stories: The Science Behind Sightings

This is because of a psychological process called priming, in which our expectations can influence our interpretations. To some degree we see what we want or expect to see—and that can include ghosts. People who are aware of a building's haunted reputation are more likely to take many photos, and anything odd or even potentially mysterious in those photos is likely to be considered evidence of ghosts.

A person could take an equal number of similar odd photos at a location not assumed to be haunted—a local supermarket or lake shore, for example—and the odd photographic artifact would not be as closely examined nor interpreted as anything mysterious, just a flawed photo.

The second contextual factor is of course that the Stanley hotel and others like it have a vested economic interest in promoting such photos as ghostly—or at the very least maintaining an agnostic stance about them. This isn't necessarily cynicism but pragmatism: There is no publicity to be gained by casting any doubt a claimed ghost photo taken in their hotel that's making news.

Biddle told Discovery News, "This is a classic example of inexperienced investigators and fluff piece media jumping the gun and promoting an easily explainable anomaly as something supernatural rather than doing legitimate investigative/detective work to figure out the mystery. It's the reason paranormal investigation remains in the land of pseudoscience." Whether ghosts haunt the Stanley remains to be seen, but it's unlikely that Yau's staircase double exposure is one of them.

Originally published on Discovery News.

Science is powerful, but there is much it can’t explain. And when people see, hear or believe something that is not explained, science finds itself trying to prove things don’t exist, and that’s truly impossible. In the following pages, you’ll learn more about some of the most common inexplicable phenomena — from ghosts to supposed man-like beasts, from incredible experiences at the line between life and death to amazing but unexplained feats of the mind itself. How much of this is real? We’ll let you decide.

Related: Check out the 14 biggest historical mysteries that will probably never be solved.

The Taos Hum

Some residents and visitors in the small city of Taos, New Mexico, have for years been annoyed and puzzled by a mysterious and faint low-frequency hum in the desert air.

Oddly, only about 2 percent of Taos residents report hearing the sound. Some believe it is caused by unusual acoustics; others suspect mass hysteria or some secret, sinister purpose. Whether described as a whir, hum, or buzz and whether psychological, natural, or supernatural no one has yet been able to locate the sound's origin. Thing is, a survey revealed that those who claim to hear the sounds actually hear many different sounds, suggesting the experiences may be subjective, not actually objective sounds (and pretty certainly not one particular sound).

The next item on our list could fill big shoes if it had to. Guess what it is?

Bigfoot

For decades, large, hairy, manlike beasts called Bigfoot have occasionally been reported by eyewitnesses across America. Despite the thousands of Bigfoot that must exist for a breeding population, not a single body has been found. Not one has been killed by a hunter, struck dead by a speeding car, or even died of natural causes. In the absence of hard evidence like teeth or bones, support comes down to eyewitness sightings and ambiguous photos and films.

Since it is logically impossible to prove a universal negative, science will never be able to prove that creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster do not exist, and it is possible that these mysterious beasts lurk far from prying eyes. Call us skeptical, and check out our complete story about Bigfoot.

Intuition

Whether we call it gut feelings, a 'sixth sense,' or something else, we have all experienced intuition at one time or another. Of course, gut feelings are often wrong (how many times during aircraft turbulence have you been sure your plane was going down?), but they do seem to be right much of the time. Psychologists note that people subconsciously pick up information about the world around us, leading us to seemingly sense or know information without knowing exactly how or why we know it. But cases of intuition are difficult to prove or study, and psychology may only be part of the answer.

If your intuition is telling you that the next slide is about mysterious disappearances, you're right!

Mysterious Disappearances

People disappear for various reasons. Most are runaways, some succumb to accident, a few are abducted or killed, but most are eventually found. Not so with the truly mysterious disappearances. From the crew of the Marie Celeste to Jimmy Hoffa, Amelia Earhart, and Natalee Holloway, some people seem to have vanished without a trace. When missing persons are found, it is always through police work, confession, or accident never by 'psychic detectives'). But when the evidence is lacking and leads are lost, even police and forensic science can't always solve the crime.

One word about our next slide: Boo!

Ghosts

From the Shakespeare play "MacBeth" to the NBC show "Medium," spirits of the dead have long made an appearance in our culture and folklore. Many people have reported seeing apparitions of both shadowy strangers and departed loved ones. Though definitive proof for the existence of ghosts remains elusive, sincere eyewitnesses continue to report seeing, photographing, and even communicating with ghosts. Ghost investigators hope to one day prove that the dead can contact the living, providing a final answer to the mystery.

Our next mystery is not about ghosts. Our next mystery is not about ghosts. Wait a minute? Haven't I read that before somewhere?

Deja vu

Deja vu is a French phrase meaning 'already seen,' referring to the distinct, puzzling, and mysterious feeling of having experienced a specific set of circumstances before. A woman might walk into a building, for example, in a foreign country she'd never visited, and sense that the setting is eerily and intimately familiar. Some attribute deja vu to psychic experiences or unbidden glimpses of previous lives. As with intuition (see #3), research into ,human psychology can offer more naturalistic explanations, but ultimately the cause and nature of the phenomenon itself remains a mystery. [All About Deja Vu]

The next mystery is really out of this world. Read on!

UFOs

There is no doubt that UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) exist — many people see things in the skies that they cannot identify, ranging from aircraft to meteors. Whether or not any of those objects and lights are alien spacecraft is another matter entirely; given the fantastic distances and effort involved in just getting to Earth from across the universe, such a scenario seems unlikely.

Still, while careful investigation has revealed known causes for most sighting reports, some UFO incidents will always remain unexplained. [UFO Sightings & News]

You must check out the next mystery. We're deadly serious.

Related: What are the Marfa Lights?

Near-Death Experiences and Life After Death

People who were once near death have sometimes reported various mystical experiences (such as going into a tunnel and emerging in a light, being reunited with loved ones, a sense of peace, etc.) that may suggest an existence beyond the grave. While such experiences are profound, no one has returned with proof or verifiable information from "beyond the grave."

Skeptics suggest that the experiences are explainable as natural and predictable hallucinations of a traumatized brain. A study of people in cardiac arrest in 2015 found that when the heart is dying, it gets peppered by signals from the brain, which tries to stay active. The scramble of signals might be responsible for near-death experiences, researchers figure.

Two mysteries to go. Can you divine what they might be?

Psychic powers and ESP

Psychic powers and extra-sensory perception (ESP) rank among the top ten unexplained phenomena if for no other reason than that belief in them is so widespread. Many people believe that intuition (see #3) is a form of psychic power, a way of accessing arcane or special knowledge about the world or the future. Researchers have tested people who claim to have psychic powers, though the results under controlled scientific conditions have so far been negative or ambiguous. Some have argued that psychic powers cannot be tested, or for some reason diminish in the presence of skeptics or scientists. If this is true, science will never be able to prove or disprove the existence of psychic powers.

The Body/Mind Connection

Medical science is only beginning to understand the ways in which the mind influences the body. The placebo effect, for example, demonstrates that people can at times cause a relief in medical symptoms or suffering by believing the cures to be effective — whether they actually are or not. Using processes only poorly understood, the body's ability to heal itself is far more amazing than anything modern medicine could create. So while there are many unexplained phenomena, and frankly some of them are dubious, the explainable science of the body and mind, even if we're still trying to figure much of it out, may be among the most amazing phenomena of all.

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

— Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House," 1959

Of all the paranormal phenomena that surround Halloween, the haunted house may be the last to inspire real fear. Witches? Haven't been scary since the days of Salem. Zombies? Fun makeup, sure, but a bit campy. Vampires? Blame sparkly Robert Pattinson for taking the bite out of those bloodsuckers.

But the haunted house can send chills up the spine of the staunchest nonbeliever. Ghost stories tend to happen to the unsuspecting; who's to say they might not happen to you? They're also passed around by word of mouth, often by seemingly trustworthy sources. Nowadays, the Internet expands this oral tradition to almost anyone: Witness the website Jezebel's annual spooky stories contest (and then try to sleep soundly tonight).

Science, of course, counsels skepticism toward the idea of spirits and spooks. So if real ghosts aren't to blame for things that go bump, what might be? Though researchers have investigated culprits like electromagnetic fields and infrasound below the range of human hearing, the ultimate source of hauntings may just be that 3-lb. organ between the ears. [10 Ghost Stories That Will Haunt You for Life]

Seeking ghosts in sound

One plausible explanation for haunted houses is that people are responding to something in the environment — but that the "something" is far more mundane than restless spirits.

A possible culprit is infrasound, or sounds just below the typical human hearing threshold of 20 hertz. In 1998, Vic Tandy, a researcher at Coventry University in England, joined with fellow Coventry professor Tony Lawrence to write a paper based on Tandy's own spooky experiences at a medical equipment manufacturing shop. On occasion, employees reported spooky sensations and the feeling of a presence in the room; Tandy dismissed all of this until one night when he began to feel cold and gloomy. After checking that none of the medical gas bottles were leaking, he sat back at his desk, only to see a gray figure emerge in the corner of his vision. When he summoned the courage to look at the apparition directly, it faded away. [Infographic: Belief in the Paranormal]

A subsequent experience while cutting metal led Tandy to wonder if sound energy was causing his and his colleagues' inexplicable experiences. After a particular fan in the building was switched off, the "ghosts" disappeared, the researchers wrote in 1998 in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

Proving this notion has been more difficult. Lots of things create infrasound, from the wind gusts of air conditioners to earthquakes. In one experiment, researchers used hidden infrasound generators during ghost tours given at Mary King's Close in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. The close is now underground, but in the 1600s, it was a series of narrow alleyways and passages through tall buildings; local legend tells of plague victims bricked into the walls. During a city ghost festival in 2007, some unsuspecting tour groups were blasted with infrasound as they roamed these creepy passageways. [10 of the Spookiest Haunted Houses in America]

The results revealed no difference in the number of people who reported a paranormal experience whether they'd been exposed to infrasound or to ambient noise. However, the infrasound-exposed groups did report a greater overall number of spooky experiences, with more people reporting multiple such experiences. Meanwhile, 20 percent of those in the infrasound groups reported feeling the temperature rise during their tours, compared with only 5 percent in the ambient-noise group, the researchers reported in their preliminary results.

It was hardly a ringing endorsement of the notion that ghosts and ghouls are simply sounds below the threshold of the human ear; after all, people in haunted houses usually report cold spots, not feelings of excessive warmth. And it's not clear why infrasound would lead to an increase in spooky experiences per person, but not more people reporting spooky experiences.

Electrifying chills

Another natural explanation for ghosts might be electromagnetic energy. Spirits may not surround us, but electromagnetic fields generated by power lines and electronic devices certainly do. Could electronics be giving off ghostly vibes?

A few small experiments suggest electromagnetic fields might have this effect. In 2000, cognitive neuroscientist Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Canada and his colleagues used magnetic fields to stimulate the brain of a 45-year-old man who'd reported previous ghostly experiences; they managed, with the magnetic fields, to "conjure" an apparition similar to what the man had seen years before, along with a corresponding rush of fear, the researchers reported in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills.

The next year, in the same journal, Persinger and his colleagues reported on the strange case of a teenage girl who said she'd been impregnated by the Holy Spirit and felt the invisible presence of a baby on her left shoulder. The girl had experienced a brain injury earlier in her life, the researchers wrote, but the trauma wasn't the sole reason for the religious visitation: Next to the girl's bed was an electric clock that generated magnetic pulses similar to those used to trigger seizures in epileptic rats. Once the clock was removed, the feelings of a presence vanished. Persinger and his colleagues argue that some people are particularly prone to disruption of the temporal lobes, which happen to be where the brain synthesizes information.

Patients undergoing brain surgery reveal how important the temporal lobes can be to the experience of reality, said Christopher French, a psychologist at Goldsmiths College of the University of London who researches the roots of paranormal experiences. When surgeons stimulate the part of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobe meet — the temporoparietal junction — they "can actually switch out-of-body experiences on and off," French said.

In your head

But French and his colleagues have found little evidence that infrasound and electromagnetic fields explain ghostly apparitions. He and his team tried to create scientific hauntings by building a chamber in which participants were exposed to 50 minutes of infrasound, complex electromagnetic fields, both or neither. The participants then reported the sensations they'd experienced during their time in the chamber.

A majority of people reported some sort of weirdness during the experiment: Almost 80 percent said they'd felt dizzy, half said they felt like they were spinning and 23 percent felt detached from their bodies, the researchers reported in 2009 in the journal Cortex. Notably, 23 percent also said they felt a presence, and 8 percent felt sheer terror.

Some of these experiences certainly mimic the feeling of a haunting; others, not so much (5 percent of the participants reported becoming sexually aroused, for example). But when the researchers analyzed the data, they realized it didn't matter which experimental condition the participants were in. It made no difference if the electromagnetic fields were on or off, or if the infrasound was booming, French told Live Science. However, they did find that the participants' individual levels of suggestibility influenced the results.

"The most parsimonious explanation is just if you say to suggestible people, 'Go in here, and you may have some weird experiences,' some of them do," French said.

As French's work suggests, the real cause of hauntings may simply be the human brain. In one study, published in 1996 in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, two participants asked to keep a diary about "poltergeist-like" activity in their home for a month suddenly started seeing evidence of potential poltergeists all over the place. In a follow-up paper in the same journal, the study researchers hypothesized that haunting events happen because people misperceive slightly ambiguous events as paranormal and then become primed to look out for even more weird stuff. [Spooky! The Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Basic personality traits could make people particularly likely to attribute a bump in the night to a ghost or ghoul. A survey released recently by Chapman University in California found that the more generally fearful a person, the more likely he or she is to believe in the paranormal. Another study, published online in the journal Consciousness and Cognition in August 2013, found that paranormal believers are more likely to believe in the illusion of agency, or that there was a deliberate entity behind an event.

That study was based on a theory that people have evolved to see patterns where none exist. Imagine walking in the woods at night, said study researcher Michiel van Elk, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam. You hear a rustle in the trees. Do you keep going, or run away? If you keep going, you might be attacked. If you run away, no harm is done.

"It's better to be safe than sorry," Van Elk told Live Science.

Evolutionary theorists suggest that this tendency to attribute events to an entity with agency might explain beliefs in ghosts, angels, demons — and even God. To test the idea, Van Elk went to a psychic street fair and asked psychic believers to watch computer animations of moving points of light. Some of the points were arranged to look like the joints of an invisible stick figure walking; other dots moved at random. The participants were asked to determine whether the dots were moving randomly or whether a deliberate agent (a walking person) was behind the motion. In some cases, additional dancing dots were added in, to obscure the random or deliberate dots, making the task trickier.

Both paranormal believers and nonbelievers were good at telling the difference from movement with agency and random movement when the distinction was clear. But in more ambiguous cases, people with greater paranormal beliefs were more likely to jump to an explanation involving agency than the nonbelievers were.

"Even when there were only randomly moving dots, the psychic believers would say they saw a human figure moving in the dots," Van Elk said. [Optical Illusions: A Gallery of Visual Tricks]

The study suggests that falling prey to the illusion of agency could explain belief in the paranormal; a draft in an old house or the creak of wood settling could easily be misconstrued as a ghost. It's not clear, however, whether this illusory agency bias is genetic or learned, Van Elk said.

"This is still one of the key challenges of the field: to see if it is possible to come up with a good study to tease these two explanations apart. What is the nature part of the story, and what is the nurture part of the story?" he said.

Your lying eyes

Indeed, it's tough to even know how much to trust people's own reports of their experiments. In a follow-up, Van Elk wasn't able to replicate his 2013 study. He suspects the reason might be that his original psychic-believer participants might be more eager to please than other groups of people. In other words, they might not be hallucinating a person in the moving dots on a perceptual level. Instead, they could be interpreting information overly generously in order to meet what they think are the experimenter's expectations. It's not that they're lying, Van Elk said; rather, their interpretation feels as real to them as an actual perception. It's just that the mistake arises at a different level of brain processing. [7 Odd Hallucinations]

The psychic problem isn't the only evidence that suggests people overestimate their own trustworthiness. In one study, French and his team had participants watch a video of a psychic supposedly bending a metal key with his mind. In some versions of the experiment, the psychic (actually a sleight-of-hand magician) concluded by putting the key down on the table and saying, "If you look closely, you can see it's still bending."

The key was not still bending. But 40 percent of people who heard the verbal suggestion that it was bending reported seeing it move. By contrast, no one in the group that didn't hear the verbal cue said it had moved, French said.

And multiple witnesses don't necessarily make a report more believable. When another person in the room said they'd seen the key move after hearing the psychic suggest that it was still bending, the percentage of people who said they'd saw movement jumped from 40 percent to 60 percent, French said.

"If you've got one very confident but actually inaccurate witness, it can influence the memory of other witnesses," he said.

Studies find that people with paranormal beliefs tend to have particularly rich imaginations and are inclined to become easily engrossed in tasks, French said. They're also more prone than average to false memories. For example, people prone to false memories might say they remember clearly where they were and who they were with when they saw a video of the Bali nightclub bombing of 2002. But that bombing was not captured on video.

"Presumably, what they're doing is, they're remembering the time they imagined it," French said. "[And] when they're imagining something, it's so much like the real thing — maybe more so than it would be to the likes of me — they're more likely to make a false memory."

In other words, the possible explanation for spooks and spirits might be scarier than actual ghosts: You can't even trust your own mind.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Certain houses' reputations precede them. The Amityville house, for example, hardly needs an introduction: It is the real-life site of an alleged haunting in New York that spurred both a book and multiple films. On the West Coast, in sunny San Jose, the Winchester Mystery House acts as both tourist trap and ghostly hotspot: Original owner and designer Sarah Winchester built the bizarre, sprawling mansion with its own séance room and continuously added new rooms to confuse the spirits she thought were stalking her. 

Related: 11 of the most haunted places in the US

Science may suggest that ghosts are a figment of the imagination, but what's the fun in that? (Researchers who've tried to unearth proof of the paranormal have failed, but they have managed to create the illusion of ghosts, suggesting that hauntings are all in people's heads.) It's hard to hear the horror stories from Amityville or tread the halls of Sarah Winchester's creation without getting a little chill down your spine. In that spirit, we're highlighting some of the lesser-known "haunted" houses in the country. These homes may not really be haunted, but they sure feel that way. [Are Ghosts Real? The Pseudoscience of Hauntings]

Woodburn Mansion

The governors of Delaware might get more than they bargained for when they move into their official residence in Dover. Woodburn Mansion, built in 1798, has housed the state's governors since 1965. It's also allegedly the home to some mostly friendly ghosts, including the spirit of the builder, who quaffs any wine that might be left out each night. Visitors and residents have reported seeing the man, Charles Hillyard III, wearing a 1700s-style powdered wig and breeches. Another ghostly resident is a small girl in a gingham dress, supposedly sighted by guests during the inauguration of Gov. Mike Castle in 1985. (Photo Credit: National Park Service)

Franklin Castle

In Ohio, this imposing Cleveland home has a reputation for horror. Also known as the Tiedemann House, this home at 4308 Franklin Ave. was built in 1881. The haunted house rumors started around 1965, according to The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, which dismisses the tales as "spurious." (Photo Credit: Christopher Busta-Peck)

Spurious perhaps, but spooky nonetheless. According to legend, the house is full of hidden passages and rooms, used to conceal liquor during Prohibition. Several of the Tiedemann family children died while the family occupied the home (perhaps not an unusual occurrence in the late 1800s, but enough to fuel later rumors of murder and mayhem). Perhaps the creepiest tale is that an occupant once found piles of baby bones in one of the secret rooms. [10 Ghost Stories That Will Haunt You for Life]

Pioneer Park

Colorado's most famous spooky spot is the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired the Stephen King novel "The Shining." But the snowy ski town of Aspen has its share of things that go bump in the night.

Pioneer Park, or the Henry Webber House, is one of the few old structures left in Aspen. It was built in the 1880s and is supposedly haunted by the wife of the builder, Henry Webber. According to the Aspen Times, Harriet Webber died suddenly in 1881, only a year after the couple arrived in the then-mining town and set up a shoe business. Harriet's last words were allegedly, "Henry will know," spurring rumors that her death was a murder or a suicide. In fact, she died of strychnine overdose, which doesn't rule out the possibility of an accident: The poison was sold as an over-the-counter anxiety cure at the time. Henry Webber went on to marry his wife's niece — with whom he may have been having an affair — a mere four months later. (Photo Credit: National Park Service)

Rowan Oak

Does William Faulkner still walk the halls of his old home in Oxford, Mississippi? Legend has it the author's spirit is restless — and Rowan Oak, a stately 1844 mansion, seems ripe for haunting. Two imposing rows of pines lead to the pillared white porch. The house is open for public tours, but reports of paranormal experiences there are fittingly vague: A ghostly Faulkner has been seen writing on the walls of his office, according to legend, and he roams the grounds scaring off University of Mississippi students who venture near the house at night.

Visiting Rowan Oak after dark is strictly prohibited, a museum spokesman said, no matter your belief in the paranormal. "Our security guards are much scarier than any ghosts," he said. (Photo Credit: Used with permission by Rowan Oak)

Epperson House

With 56 rooms, an imposing Tudor facade and an original owner who died less than two years after the house was completed, it's no wonder that Epperson House near the University of Missouri–Kansas City has acquired a reputation as a ghostly hotspot.

According to the university, the ghost of a music student is said to play the organ in the home's living room. Security guards have reported disembodied footsteps, and a police officer even reported feeling a car rear-end his patrol vehicle in front of the house … only to get out and discover no damage and no sign of another car. (Photo Credit: Lance Nash/HexFX Aerials)

Ferry Plantation House

This brick plantation house in Virginia Beach is supposedly quite crowded. A whopping 11 spirits are said to haunt the place, which dates back to 1830. According to legend, dancing balls of light have been seen hovering over the roof of the house. A Lady in White supposedly manifests every now and then. Visitors have reported seeing small children on the stairs and in doorways. An old African-American man is said to walk upstairs and cross a sitting room, apparently lighting a ghostly fire in a now bricked-over fireplace.

The home has been the site of several visits by mediums and "paranormal investigators," all of whom come away with spooky stories and supposed spectral recordings. Myth or fact? See for yourself — the home is open for public tours. (Photo Credit: Rlevse, Creative Commons)

Moss Mansion

This handsome stone mansion in Billings, Montana, was built in 1903 with up-to-the-minute technology, like a call-button system for servants, according to the historical society that now owns the home. Preston Moss was a banker, newspaper founder and all-around entrepreneur — he even started his own toothpaste factory.

Over time, the Moss Mansion was witness to several deaths in the family, including the tragic loss of the family's sixth child, 5-year-old Virginia, from diphtheria in 1908. As with any old, creaky home with lots of history, the mansion has attracted its share of ghostly legends. That little Virginia still flits about the mansion is the tale with the most basis in history; another "manifestation" is said to be a male who likes to hang out in the master bedroom, according to HauntedHouses.com. Virginia's sister, Melville Hollingsworth Moss, is another candidate for the haunting. She lived in the mansion from the time she was 7 until her death 82 years later. (Photo Credit: Kelsey Palmer)

Rotherwood Mansion

Perched above the Holston River in east Tennessee, Rotherwood Mansion is allegedly home to at least two ghosts, one sad and one scary.

The melancholy ghost is known as the Lady in White. According to legend, she's the spirit of Rowena Ross Temple, daughter of the owner of Rotherwood. Rowena's first love supposedly drowned in the Holston shortly before their wedding; she married twice more, but then committed suicide by drowning in the same river that claimed her first fiancé. Her wedding-gown-clad ghost is said to roam the house and riverbanks, looking for her lost love, according to "Strange Tales of the Dark and Bloody Ground: Authentic Accounts of Restless Spirits, Haunted Honky-Tonks and Eerie Events in Tennessee" (Rutledge Hill Press, 1998).

Far more frightening is the ghost of Joshua Phipps, a slaveholder who ran the estate in the 1840s. Phipps was a sadistic master, the story goes, much hated by both his slaves and nearby townspeople. In 1861, Phipps fell ill. The ghost stories say he died not of his sickness, but of suffocation when a great black cloud of flies landed in his room, covering his face. At the funeral, a team of horses strained to carry the coffin up a hill, but the cart wouldn't budge — until thunder cracked and a huge black dog suddenly burst out of the casket and ran away. This black hound is said to still roam the mansion grounds.

Though these legends seem unusually detailed, they're likely more folklore than fact. The first records of the ghost stories don't appear until the 1940s, according to Virginia Creeper magazine. (Photo Credit: DM, Flickr Creative Commons)

Labadie Mansion

Haunted ruins and a murder mystery? This spot in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has it all. Little stands of the Labadie Mansion beyond a few brick walls, but these ruins are said to be haunted by the ghosts of Frank and Samantha Labadie, as well as their former slave, Enos Parsons.

The legend goes like this: In 1893, Frank Labadie shot Parsons in a jealous fit, believing that he had fathered his wife Samantha's newborn baby, which Frank threw in the creek. Decades later, in 1935, Frank claimed that Parsons was haunting him. He shot his wife and then himself. The ghosts of the entire family, including the baby in the creek, are said to haunt the ruins and surrounding woods, along with the ghost of Parsons. On occasion, the story goes, ghostly shots ring out, startling birds out of the trees.

Or maybe not. Other sources suggest that Samantha and Frank died of carbon-monoxide poisoning in 1935 from a leaky stove after celebrating 50 years of happy marriage — no slaves, illicit babies or murder involved. (Photo Credit: Johnny Fletcher)

Croke-Patterson Mansion

The Croke-Patterson Mansion in Denver looks more like a castle than a home. Built in 1890 from red sandstone, the mansion features high garret windows and multiple turrets. It also, according to local legend, is the territory of spirits.

Many of the spooky stories date back to the 1970s, when the building was undergoing renovations. Allegedly, work done during the day would be undone by morning. The owners bought two or three guard dogs to watch over the property, but the very next morning, one of the dogs was found dead on the driveway, having jumped through a window sometime the previous night. The next night, the second dog leapt to its death, according to tales collected by the alternative newspaper Westword. The third dog was found cowering in a corner.

Residents and overnight visitors have claimed to hear the incessant cries of a baby from the attic, and there are rumors that an infant was buried in a basement wall. Others have said they've lost their breath at the top of the attic stairs — and not just because of Denver's mile-high elevation. Allegedly, a former resident of the house committed suicide in the attic by inhaling poison gas.

But it's not all bad: One former resident, pregnant with triplets, reported waking up one morning to the ghost of a woman named Kate, who lent her a helping hand to get out of bed. Now that's a sweet spirit. (Photo Credit: National Park Service)

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitterand Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

People who believe in ghosts may be more afraid of actual, real-world dangers — things like violent crimes or nuclear war — than are people who don't hold paranormal beliefs, a new survey finds.

The Survey of American Fear asked people in the United States to divulge the terrors that keep them up at night. For the survey, nearly 1,500 participants responded to questions about 88 different fears and anxieties, ranging from commonplace phobias (like fear of heights) to less tangible concerns (like fear of government corruption). The survey also asked participants about their beliefs concerning paranormal and mythical things, like ghosts, Bigfoot and ancient aliens.

"The reason we ask [about paranormal things] on the survey is that we're interested in finding out what kind of clusters of beliefs tend to be associated with fear," Christopher Bader, a professor of sociology at Chapman University in California and leader of the second annual Fear Survey, told Live Science. [What Really Scares People: Top 10 Phobias]

Last year in the survey, researchers asked questions that gauged the respondents' scientific reasoning. This was done to find out how the individuals' knowledge of scientific ideas (how electricity works, why the sun sets in the west, etc.) related to those respondents' fears. But this year, the focus was on supernatural beliefs, not scientific ones.

Bader and his colleagues found that quite a few Americans hold paranormal beliefs. The most common of these is the belief that spirits can haunt particular places; 41.4 percent of the demographically representative group of participants said they held this belief. A lot of Americans (26.5 percent) also think that the living and the dead can communicate with each other in some way, the survey found.

Many survey participants said they believe in some form of fortune telling. More than 20 percent of those surveyed said they believe that dreams can foretell the future, and 13.9 percent said they believe in the clairvoyance of astrologers, fortune tellers and psychics. Slightly fewer participants (11.4 percent) said they believe in Bigfoot.

Participants also shared their thoughts on aliens. More than 20 percent said they believe that aliens visited Earth in the ancient past, whereas 18.1 percent of participants said aliens have come to Earth in modern times.

"It's interesting to see if someone who believes in ghosts also believes in Bigfoot," Bader said, "but that interests me far less than finding out this: If someone is a paranormal believer, does that also make them a more fearful person?"

The answer to that question is yes; people who hold paranormal beliefs are more likely to be afraid of, well, everything, said Bader. The relationship between paranormal beliefs and the different kinds of fear explored in the survey are all "statistically significant," he said. However, the relationship is strongest between paranormal beliefs and fear of crime and natural disasters, Bader said.

Why are people who believe in ghosts more likely to be afraid of real-life dangers? That isn't yet clear, but Bader did point to the effect that education has on people's reported fears, as well as their beliefs in the paranormal. Those most likely to report fear are also those with less education, and the same thing goes for beliefs in the paranormal, the researchers said.

"The educational effect is a really powerful one that we as a research team need to spend more time figuring out. It's related to all of the fears," Bader said. "Education even tells me something about your fear of things like clowns. If you have a lower level of education, you're more likely to be afraid of clowns."

For next year's survey, Bader and his colleagues hope to ask participants about their belief in certain conspiracy theories to see how these beliefs are related to reported fear, Bader said.

You can see the full results of the Fear Survey on the Chapman University website.

Follow Elizabeth Palermo @techEpalermo. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

If you're looking for something spooky to do this Halloween, you might consider walking around the block to search for ghosts in your neighborhood.

Just in time for the scariest night of the year, networking and communications company D-Link announced it is offering customers free refurbished cameras equipped with motion detectors and night-vision capabilities — perfect for keeping an eye out for things that go bump in the night. These Wi-Fi-enabled cameras, which let users monitor footage in real time from a mobile device, will be given away to those "looking to capture paranormal activity this Halloween season," according to company representatives.

But to get a free camera, you'll first have to prove your chops as a ghost buster. You can do this by going to D-Link's Web page and submitting a story about how you plan to use the camera. If you're chosen to receive a camera, you'll be asked to create a video detailing how you used the ghost-monitoring apparatus. Then, you'll have to spill all the gory details about what you saw. [13 Halloween Superstitions & Traditions Explained]

"When we ask customers what they're monitoring with our Wi-Fi cameras, we're always surprised to hear how many are looking to capture the paranormal," Daniel Kelley, vice president of marketing for D-Link, said in a statement. "So, in the spirit (pun intended) of the season, we decided to arm those DIY ghost hunterswith cameras and see what ghoulish images they come up with."

In your request for a free camera, you will need to specify whether you want to monitor ghostly activity inside (with D-Link's Cloud Camera 5000) or outside (with the Outdoor Cloud Camera). Footage from both cameras can be captured in real time from a laptop, smartphone or tablet device. You can also set up instant email alerts that will notify you if the motion sensors on the camera pick up any activity — paranormal or otherwise.

Though D-Link's decision to put free cameras in the hands of ghost hunters is a seasonally appropriate marketing move, it also speaks to a growing trend of ghost huntingthat has gripped parts of American society. Aided, in part, by the SyFy channel series "Ghost Hunters," Americans — as well as those in other parts of the world — are taking to local haunts in hopes of documenting paranormal activity.

And if you're a believer in spooky sightings, you're not alone. A 2005 Gallup poll found that 32 percent of Americans believe in ghosts and 37 percent believe some houses are haunted.

Follow Elizabeth Palermo @techEpalermo. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Ghost stories

From a spooky 3,200-year-old tale written on broken pottery pieces to amateur YouTube videos of "ghost chases," frightening tales of apparitions, demons and goblins have been documented since ancient times and continue to fascinate people today.

Although these paranormal events aren't supported by science, they have persisted throughout history. Here's a look at some of the most frightening cases.

1200 B.C. ghost story from Egypt

In 1915, Egyptologist Gaston Maspero published a translation of an ancient Egyptian ghost story, possibly set in Luxor (ancient Thebes, shown above), that was discovered on four pieces of pottery. In the story, a ghost of a mummified man tells a high priest of the god Amun about his current condition.

"I grew, and I did not see the rays of the sun. I did not breathe the air, but darkness was before me every day, and no one came to find me," the ghost says (translation by Maspero).

"The ghost seems to complain of some accident that has happened to himself or to his tomb, but I cannot make out what is the subject of his dissatisfaction," Maspero wrote. [Spooky Tales: The 10 Most Famous Ghosts]

The ancient Egyptians believed strongly in life after death, and created a series of spells called the "Book of the Dead," which they believed helped them reach the afterlife.

Ghost of Tu-po

Tu-po was an ancient Chinese ghost with revenge on his mind. Before he died, Tu-Po served as a minister to Chinese Emperor Hsuan (lived 827-783 B.C.). The two had a disagreement, and Hsuan had Tu-Po killed in about 786 B.C., despite warnings that Tu-Po would come back and haunt him.

Tu-Po did a lot more than haunt the emperor: Three years later, in 783 B.C., "Hsuan was killed with an arrow fired by an apparition resembling Tu-Po in front of an assembly of feudal lords," wrote Chinese philosopher Mo Tzu (lived 470-391 B.C.). (Translation by Yi-pao Mei, from "The Complete Book of Ghosts" by Paul Roland.)

Chained man in ancient Athens

Roman senator Pliny the Younger, who died in A.D. 113, told a ghost tale so haunting that it survives to this day. "There was at Athens a large and roomy house, which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. In the dead of the night, a noise — resembling the clashing of iron — was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains," disturbances that led to the appearance of a specter "form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dishevelled, hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands."

Needless to say, the house was abandoned and had to be rented out for a cheap price. When a philosopher named Athenodorus heard the story, he reportedly rented the house and confronted the ghost. The ghost appeared, and rattled around before vanishing. Athenodorus calmly marked the spot where the ghost vanished and, in the morning, ordered that the spot be dug up, the story goes. (Image Credit: Nick Pavlakis | Shutterstock.com) [Americans' Beliefs in Paranormal Phenomena (Infographic)]

"This was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was found there, for the body, having lain a considerable time in the ground was putrefied and mouldered away from the (chains). " After being given a proper burial, the ghost departed, and the house was haunted no more, according to Pliny's tale. (Translation from Pliny the Younger, The Harvard Classics, 1909-1914.)

Boarded-up bathhouse

The writer Plutarch, who lived from A.D. 45 to 120, tells a ghost story that has a much sadder ending than the one from Athens. In the city of Chaeronea, Greece, there was a boy named Damon who attracted the attention of a Roman military commander, who apparently loved him, historical records suggest. Damon refused the commander's advances, enraging him.

Knowing that he would be killed if he did nothing, Damon got a group of friends together, ambushed the Roman commander (and several other Roman soldiers), killing them. The city council of Chaeronea condemned Damon and his friends to death. After that proclamation, Damon, who had not been killed, had the council members killed.

Damon and his friends then took to the countryside, plundering it. Eventually, the townspeople allowed Damon to return, but he was killed shortly afterward in the local bathhouse.

"And because, for a long while thereafter, certain phantoms appeared in the place, and groans were heard there, as our Fathers tell us, the door of the vapour-bath was walled up, and to this present time, the neighbours think it the source of alarming sights and sounds," Plutarch wrote. (Translation from Loeb Classical Library, 1914.)

The Tower of London

Britain's numerous castles are hotspots for ghost stories. The 900-year-old Tower of London is said to contain numerous ghosts, and the Queen's House is considered by tower officials to be one of the most haunted places.

Among the ghosts in the Queen's House is that of Arabella Stuart, cousin of King James I. Arabella made the mistake of marrying against the king's wishes and was sent to the tower as punishment. According to the ghost story, she is still serving her time.

In another spooky tale, a phantom bear is said to haunt one section of the Tower of London, called the Martin Tower. A guard who saw the phantom bear is said to have dropped dead from the shock. The Tower of London served as a menagerie for part of its history and held a variety of animals, including bears.

Aokigahara Woods

At Aokigahara Woods, located at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, the corpses of dozens of suicide victims have been found over the past two decades, and the forest has become a popular place for troubled Japanese citizens to end their lives.

Today, there are signs in the forest, urging people not to end their lives and asking them to seek help. Given the number of suicides that have occurred in the forest, ghost stories abound, including several alleged encounters with the apparitions of those who have died there, which can be seen on You Tube.

Exorcism of Roland Doe

In 1949, a boy from Cottage City, Maryland, who was referred to as "Roland Doe" (not his real name), underwent an exorcism performed by a group of Roman Catholic priests, accounts suggest.

There are conflicting reports as to Roland's alleged powers: Some stories claim that Roland had supernatural strength, could speak in ancient languages that the boy had no knowledge of and could apparently move or levitate the mattress he was lying on.

Since 1949, investigators have called into question many of these claims, providing evidence to suggest that Roland was a psychologically troubled boy who hated to attend school and that his abilities were far from supernatural. In any event, the exorcism took place. The events inspired a 1971 novel called "The Exorcist" by William Peter Blatty, which, in turn, inspired the famous 1973 movie.

Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

In 1936, a photographer taking pictures of the 300-year-old Raynham Hall in Norfolk, U.K., captured an image of an apparition floating down the stairs. It's one of the most famous ghost photos ever taken, although some experts believe it was caused by double exposure.

The manor, covering an area of 7,000 acres (2,833 hectares), has a long history of being haunted, and the BBC notes that the ghost may be of Lady Dorothy Townshend, the wife of the second viscount of the estate. She died in 1726, supposedly of smallpox, after having an affair, which her husband Lord Townshend had learned about before her death. She is said to still wander the manor dressed in brown.

The CCTV ghost

Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, England, has a photogenic ghost of its own. In 2003, a CCTV camera caught an image of a skeletal figure, clad in centuries-old clothes, closing a sturdy fire door that had flung open. The ghost, nicknamed "skeletor," attracted a great deal of media attention.

"It wasn't just security staff who thought they were seeing things. A visitor wrote in the palace's visitor book on the [day that skeletor appeared on camera] that she too thought she had seen a ghost in that area," officials wrote on the Hampton Court Palace website.

Skeletor is not the only ghostly inhabitant of Hampton Court Palace. Catherine Howard, one of Henry VIII's wives, was imprisoned there and was supposedly dragged to her room, screaming all the way. The area that she haunts is called the "screaming gallery."

Amityville

The Amityville haunting is perhaps the most famous ghost story in America. Ronald Defeo Jr. was convicted for the 1974 killing of his mother, father and four of their children at their home in Amityville, New York. Reports indicate that the gun Ronald used didn't have a silencer, and there was no sign of a struggle inside the house — facts that left investigators puzzled.

In 1975, a new family, the Lutzes, moved into the Amityville home, having bought it at a discounted price. They lived there for less than a month. During that time, voices were heard around the house, their daughter developed an imaginary friendship with a red-eyed pig called Jodie, the house attracted swarms of flies, there was banging on the walls and the furniture was said to move on its own, according to reports from the family. [Spooky! Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were called in to investigate, and they also reported encountering paranormal phenomena. Ed Warren said he was pushed to the floor of the basement by an unknown force. The house still stands today, although recent owners say it is not haunted. The 1977 book "The Amityville Horror" and a number of films are based on the story.

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Ghost ships have long sparked fascination and fear, from mariners and nonmariners alike. These spooky vessels run the gamut from phantom ships that appear as eerie apparitions to real-life abandoned wrecks to those craft that disappeared mysteriously with no survivors, such as the HMS Erebus that was lost in the Canadian Arctic in 1845. Here's a look at some of the most haunted ships throughout history.

El Caleuche

El Caleuche is a ghost ship said to sail the waters off the coast of Chile. "El Caleuche always sails at night and appears suddenly through the fog or mist, brightly lit," writes author Ann Bingham in her book "South and Meso-American Mythology A to Z" (Chelsea House, 2010). The ship "guards the waters and punishes those who bring hardship to the sea or the creatures that live in it." 

The ship’s crew is said to consist of dead, shipwrecked, sailors along with witches. The witches are said to leave the ship by riding a seahorse named Caballo Marino Bingham added. Apparently the witches and shipwrecked sailors are a happy crew. "On calm nights, it is said, music and laughter can often be heard coming from the ship," Bingham writes. [The Top 10 Most Famous Ghosts]

HMS Erebus and Terror

On May 19, 1845, two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, departed England and set sail for the Canadian Arctic. Their goal was to travel through the treacherous waters of the Northwest Passage that separated the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Led by Sir John Franklin, the ships were to collect samples and conduct scientific studies along the way. Out of the 134 officers and men on the expedition, not a single one ever returned. 

Messages later discovered by a rescue mission indicate the ships became trapped in ice off of King William Island in the Canadian Arctic. Franklin died on June 11, 1847, and the ships were abandoned on April 22, 1848. The initial survivors attempted to cross the ice and reach safety on the Canadian mainland. [See Photos of the Lost Ship from the Franklin Expedition]

Recently, Parks Canada archaeologists found the wreck of the HMS Erebus during the 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition. (Image Credit: © Parks Canada)

København

On Dec. 14, 1928, the København, a Danish East Asiatic Company sailing ship left the Rio de la Plata (an area between Uruguay and Argentina) en route to Australia. It was notable for having five masts.

"She was a well-found vessel, fitted with wireless (radio) an auxiliary engine and ample lifeboats," writes Hamish Ross in Sea Breezes Magazine. "A training ship, she had a crew of 60 men, many of whom were cadets, some from very prominent Danish families."

The ship was in touch, through radio, with the Norwegian steamer William Blumer on Dec. 21, but after that it was never heard from again. 

"Following the København's disappearance, many theories sprang up as to her loss, but the most likely seems to be that she struck an iceberg in darkness or fog," writes Ross. "There were also reports of sightings of a phantom five-masted vessel in 1930." In 2012, a wreck was found at the island of Tristan da Cunha that could potentially be the København. (Image Credit: State Library of Queensland, courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

HMS Eurydice

In 1878, the HMS Eurydice, a Royal Navy training vessel, was lost while sailing near the Isle of Wight. A sudden snowstorm sunk the vessel, killing 364 crewmembers, on what had been a calm day. The storm occurred so suddenly, the ship's crew didn't have enough time to react, according to news reports. 

The "Eurydice continued at full sail with her gun ports open before disappearing in the midst of the blizzard," writes Victoria Bartlett in an article on the BBC website. Ultimately, there were only two survivors, Bartlett notes. The ship was refloated but, being heavily damaged, was scrapped. 

Since then, there have been stories of a ghostly HMS Eurydice haunting the area where the ship sank. "Sailors and visitors are also said to have witnessed sightings of a 'ghost ship' off the Isle of Wight," writes Bartlett. In the 1930s, a British submarine reported encountering the ghostly vessel. Additionally, "Prince Edward reportedly saw the ship while filming an ITV documentary in 1998," Bartlett writes. (Image Credit: public domain, courtesy Wikimedia)

Mary Celeste

On Dec. 4, 1872, a boarding party on the British brigantine ship named the Dei Gratia found a ship named the Mary Celeste adrift at sea in the Atlantic Ocean, not far from the Azores. The ship was completely deserted, the boarding party found. 

Of the 10 people known to have sailed aboard the Mary Celeste, none were ever found. A lifeboat was missing, but the ship's log gave no indication as to why the Mary Celeste was abandoned. The boarding party found that there had been some flooding, with at least one pump out of order. The ship was carrying over 1,700 barrels of alcohol, a few of which had spilled open. 

There was little damage, and the flooding posed little problem. A crew from Dei Gratia pumped out the water and sailed the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar where the British authorities began an investigation into what happened. They were unable to come up with a definitive answer, and the case of the Mary Celeste has remained unsolved ever since. 

Different ideas have been put forward. A few barrels of alcohol had spilled open, which might have made the crew afraid that their hold was going to explode. This could have prompted their captain, Benjamin Briggs, to order them to abandon ship. It's also been proposed that Briggs thought the flooding was worse than it actually was. With at least one pump not working, he may have given the order to abandon ship. [In Images: Ancient Maps and Sea Monsters]

Other, more far-fetched ideas involve sea monsters, mutineers or pirates. (Image Credit: Public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons) 

Flying Dutchman

The most famous ghost ship of all is the Flying Dutchman, said to haunt the waters near the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. 

"The term 'Flying Dutchman' actually refers to the captain, not his ship," writes Angus Konstam in his book "Ghost Ships: Tales of Abandoned, Doomed and Haunted Vessels" (Lyons Press, 2005). 

There are several variations of the story, but the most famous one is that the ship's pilot, Captain Hendrick Vanderdecken, who lived in the 17th century and served with the Dutch East India Company, encountered a storm off the Cape of Good Hope, Konstam notes. "He swore that he would spite God's wrath, and take his ship into Table Bay, despite anything that God and the elements could throw against him," Konstam writes. But the ship hit a rock and sank, taking the entire crew along with it. 

As punishment, the captain and his ghostly crew are said to sail the waters for all eternity, hoping one day to be forgiven. "They were hence refused admittance into every port, and are ordained still to traverse the ocean on which they perished, till the period of their penance expires," reads a story, published in an 1803 book by John Leyden, describing how the crew's punishment worked. (Image Credit: PLRANG | Shutterstock.com)

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It's almost Halloween — a time when ghouls, ghosts and goblins are said to roam the landscape and the barrier between the living and the dead becomes permeable. 

But though Halloween and its trick-or-treating traditions have gone global, almost every culture has its share of homegrown spirits and frights. From the flesh-hungry demons that terrify in Native American culture to the Frankenstein-like creatures formed from Earth in Jewish lore, here are five spooky spirit traditions from around the world.

1. All Hallows' Eve

All Hallows' Eve takes place in Western countries around the world on Oct. 31. The tradition is now linked to the Nov. 1 Christian holiday of All Saint's Day, in which people pray for the souls of departed loved ones. But many believe the roots of the holiday come from Celtic harvest festivals, most notably Samhain, which marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year. During Samhain the barrier between the spirit world and the ordinary one was said to be especially thin, allowing fairies and other spirits to wreak havoc on crops and livestock if not placated with offerings and treats. The souls of dead relatives were also said to revisit their old homes, so a place would be set for them at the dinner table. [13 Halloween Superstitions and Traditions Explained]

2. Hungry ghosts

In traditional Chinese culture, the seventh month of the Chinese calendar is Ghost month, a time when spirits and ghosts emerge from the lower realms. On the 15th day of the month (this year it occurred in August), the dead are supposed to visit the living. The spirits roaming the streets are said to have been neglected by their kin and therefore have long, needle-thin necks due to starvation.

Because the gates of both heaven and hell are open, so the legend goes, living relatives perform Buddhist or Taoist rituals to wash away the suffering of the dead. In countries such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, residents will make colorful paper incense sticks in the shape of dragons, burn fake hell currency and offer various paper goods to their ancestors.

3. Kite festival

Throughout Central America, families gather in cemeteries on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 to honor the dead. But in Sumpango, Guatemala, people also create elaborate, giant kites of paper or bamboo, some of which can be 20 feet (6 meters) across. On All Saint's Day, people go to a huge hill overlooking the biggest cemetery in town and release the kites. The kites are then ripped to shreds by high winds, symbolizing the cycle of life and death.

4. Cannibal spirits

In Native American culture, cannibalism was associated with inviting malevolent spirits into your body. Algonquin-speaking tribes feared the so-called windigo, a demonic creature that may take possession of someone's body. The windigos were said to stalk during winter and times of famine. People could essentially invite the windigo into them by partaking in cannibalism, or the evil spirits could enter their bodies during a dream. 

5. Earthen monster

In Jewish lore, human beings can invoke a Frankenstein-like monster called a golem into existence by fashioning a body out of Earth and then walking around it while either reciting the letters that form the secret name of God or writing the Hebrew letters for truth on its forehead. According to Jewish tradition, Adam, the first human being, was a golem, without a soul, for the first few hours of his existence. To destroy the golem, the creator would either walk backward and recite the letters of God's name backward, or erase the letters on its forehead. In some legends, Jews in 16th-century Prague created a golem to fight off anti-Semitic attacks.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

A poltergeist is perhaps the best-known — and most feared — type of ghost. It is a spirit that is said to harass and torment its victims. This harassment typically includes minor but mysterious and disturbing events such as loud sounds, moving furniture, sheets and covers being pulled off beds, small objects inexplicably falling off shelves, stones rising off the ground and being hurled at people, and so on. 

Of course, discussing different categories of ghosts is like discussing different breeds of dragons or races of leprechauns: it's all made up, so there are as many types as you can dream of. Nevertheless, people all over the world believe in ghosts and spirits, and a 2005 Gallup poll found that 37 percent of Americans believe in haunted houses — and nearly half believe in ghosts.

No one knows for certain what ghosts are, or if they even exist; some believe that they are spirits of the dead who for whatever reason get "lost" on their way to the afterworld; others think that ghosts are the souls of people whose deaths were violent or premature. 

History of poltergeists

In his book "Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead & Cultural Transformation," historian R.C. Finucane notes that the word poltergeist "takes its name from two German words, meaning 'to create a disturbance' (or more specifically to rumble, roll, or bluster), and 'spirit.' Though examples can be found in earlier centuries, this form of spiritual harassment only becomes commonplace in the post-Reformation era [around the 1600s]." 

The interpretation of mysterious disturbances as being caused by a ghost specifically is a fairly recent development; a few centuries ago such events might have been attributed to witchcraft or even Satan. Horror films about ghosts and evil spirits including "Poltergeist," "The Amityville Horror," and "The Exorcist" have influenced how modern people think of violent ghostly phenomena.

Poltergeists and pranking

Poltergeist activity centers on people and is often associated with the presence of children, leading many to suspect that childhood attention-seeking pranks are involved. Indeed, many poltergeist reports were proven to have been faked by children and teenagers — and one well-known case of alleged poltergeist activity in the mid-1800s even led to the creation of an American religion. 

It happened in Western New York in the early 1840s when a young peddler arrived at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Bell to sell his house wares. He was invited into the home by the Bells' housekeeper and stayed for some days. The maid was shortly dismissed from service but abruptly rehired a week later. The peddler was gone, but many of his items were now in use in the Bells' kitchen. The maid thought little of it until she began experiencing poltergeist phenomenon, only to find out from the peddler's ghost that he had been murdered in her absence. 

At least that was the story told by two young sisters named Maggie and Katie Fox, who claimed to communicate with the peddler's ghost through taps and knocks. The Fox sisters became famous across the country for their ability to communicate with spirits of the dead, drawing enthusiastic crowds for decades. Years later, however, the sisters admitted it had all been a hoax; there was no murdered peddler, and the spirit communications had been faked. Still, the sisters had inadvertently founded a religion called Spiritualism, which is still practiced today. 

Rapping and knocking communication from spirits has its origins in fakery and hoaxing, and decades later many psychic mediums continued the practice, pretending that knocks in darkened séance rooms came from the spirit world. For example, an Italian psychic medium named Eusapia Palladino, active in the late 1800s, claimed she experienced poltergeist activity including table rapping and sheets pulled off her bed. Palladino made a successful career out of faking spirit voices, knocks, and "flying objects" (made to move with hidden wires in darkened rooms) during séances for paying customers. 

Do poltergeists exist outside of folklore and historical hoaxes? If ghosts and spirits truly do move objects and cause the unexplained phenomena attributed to them, it is surprising that not a single film or video exists of such amazing incidents. Surveillance cameras and cell phones are everywhere, yet no one has ever captured a clock flying off a shelf on its own or cabinet doors violently banging open and closed in an empty kitchen. Modern reports of these "noisy spirits" are closer to urban legends than documented proof.

Though there's no scientific evidence for poltergeists or any other types of ghosts, they continue to intrigue, entertain and scare us — just as they have for centuries.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of six books including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries" and "The Martians Have Landed: A History of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes." His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

Thousands of workers at a garment factory in Bangladesh stopped working and rioted earlier this week, demanding that a ghost be removed from their building. The problem began when a female worker said she felt sick and attributed her condition to "an attack by a ghost" inside a toilet in the women's washroom.

According to news reports, more than 3,000 frightened workers at a plant in the city of Gazipur protested, with dozens of them vandalizing the factory before police used tear gas to quell the riot. This bizarre situation is understandable when we consider the psychological, historical and cultural context of the events.

A history of hysterias

This is not the first time that workers in Southeast Asian garment factories have fallen ill with apparently mysterious and unexplainable health problems. Between June and September 2011, more than 1,000 workers in shoe and clothing factories in Cambodia reported feeling fatigued, dizzy and nauseated. After rest and medical attention, they recovered and went back to work; few, if any, reported lingering symptoms. No toxins or environmental contaminants were found that could have caused the symptoms. [The 8 Most Bizarre Medical Conditions]

Similar events have occurred in Bangladesh in recent weeks, with hundreds of workers in the capital of Dhaka and other factory towns complaining of feeling ill with minor symptoms and no apparent cause. Medical authorities concluded that most of these cases were due to mass hysteria, also known as mass sociogenic illness. Mass hysteria often begins when individuals under stress convert that stress into physical ills. Co-workers, family and friends may also begin exhibiting the symptoms through contagion. Outbreaks are most common in closed social units (such as schools, hospitals and workplaces) and where afflicted individuals are under pressure and routine stress. Fear and concern about factory working conditions is especially prominent in the Bangladeshi public's mind because of the April collapse of a garment factory building that killed more than 1,000 workers.

Ghosts and mass hysterias

And what about the ghost in the toilet that sparked the riots? This case is unusual in that typically mass hysterias do not involve ghosts. However, both ghosts and hysterias often begin with unusual or (apparently) unexplained phenomena. It is only a small step from being concerned about a mysterious, undetectable health menace (perhaps a hidden gas leak or other potentially threatening toxic substance) to being concerned about a mysterious, unseen presence. The belief in ghosts is widespread among the largely Muslim Bangladeshi population, and it is not uncommon for accidents and illnesses to be blamed on evil spirits.

It's important to note that few, if any, of the thousands of factory workers claimed they personally encountered the ghost or had anything to do with it.And apparently, the woman herself didn't claim to actually see the ghost; instead, she said she felt sick and assumed that a ghost was responsible. Whereas American ghosts aren't typically thought of as spending a lot of time in the bathroom, in the Middle East and Asia, the idea of a ghost or spirit haunting a toilet is not uncommon. For example, genies and other spirits are said to dwell in many places, including toilets and sewers, and Japanese folklore tells of Hanako-san, a spirit that resides in women's bathrooms.

There is no real treatment for mass hysteria (other than attention from doctors or other authorities); the episodes tend to run their course and fade away almost as quickly as they started. Factories — full of textiles, chemicals, smells, stress and boredom — are ideal environments for the development of mass hysteria.

There is one significant difference between most cases of mass hysteria and this case: The Gazipurfactory workers (taking their cues from the sick woman) decided that they "know" what is to blame, and that explanation (no matter how fantastic) has a culturally clear and well-defined remedy: ritual exorcism.

With that in mind, the factory owners held special prayers at the site to remove the ghost. The factory was also shut down for several days to give everyone a chance to calm down; when the building reopens, it will likely be ghost-free — until the next time someone experiences something strange. 

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of "Skeptical Inquirer" science magazine and author of six books, including "The Martians Have Landed: A History of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes" and "Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore." His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

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Ooooowwwoooo! Werewolves, zombies and good old-fashioned ghosts may pop out of the crypt tonight, but Halloween's creepiest staples didn't just appear out of thin air. Many of them once instilled real fear in medieval towns, when folklore reigned supreme and getting freaked out came easy.

Here are some real science and history tales of the scary stars of Oct. 31.

1. Jack-o'-Lanterns

A standout among freaks and monsters, the nutritious pumpkin may be Halloween's most famous symbol. The practice of carving and lighting the gourd is a Celtic custom brought to America by Irish immigrants, who used the more-plentiful turnip back home. Glowing, frightening faces emanating from the pumpkins were meant to frighten off the evil spirits thought to roam the streets on Oct. 31, the Celtic New Year's Eve. [In Images: Peculiar Halloween Pumpkins]

2. Bats

They're blind, they hang out in caves and they inspire masked crusaders. But how did bats become associated with Halloween? The winged mammals can thank vampires for that. Like their Draculian counterparts, a small number of bat species actually subsist on animal blood — vampire bats have been known to attack humans on occasion — using sharp teeth to cut into the sleeping victim. Their nocturnal ways frightful appearances probably don't help either.

3. Gargoyles

They're one way to add a little freaky je ne sais quoi to otherwise lovely architecture. But gargoyles, those frightening stone monsters protruding from cathedrals worldwide, do actually have a function. They were incorporated into gothic stonework as early as the 13th century to keep rain water off cathedral roofs, their mouths serving as the ejector spout. More spiritually, gargoyles were supposed to protect the congregation from the ever-present evil forces lurking outside. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

4. Goblins

Made famous in fairy tales, the small and furry goblin is more mischievous than menacing. Legend tells of goblins hiding out in forests, pulling pranks and sometimes switching human babies for their own changeling spawn. Unlike some of the other creatures mentioned here and probably because of their disconnect from religion, goblins never quite crossed the threshold from the imaginary to cause real panic in medieval towns. [10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth]

5. Witches

Forget the pointy black hat and warty nose. Those popular associations are relatively recent compared with the long and often tragic history of witches across the globe. In the past, witches were thought to possess magical powers connected with the natural world. Like all pagans, they were demonized as heretics by the Christian church, a hunt that reached its apex in medieval Europe and 17th-century America. Good luck picking them out of a crowd today: Witch costumes frequently top the list at Halloween.

6. Zombies

Kings of the b-movie industry, zombies are individuals who've either had their souls sucked from their bodies or been revived from the dead through black magic. Zombie culture stems from the voodoo religion of Haiti, where it is still believed that people can fall into mindless trances just like the walking dead we've seen on film (minus the missing limbs and snacking on human flesh). An ethnobotanist investigating the claims in Haiti found a toxic drug that could actually induce a zombie-style catatonic state.

7. Ghosts

Poke two eyeholes into a bed sheet and you've got the easiest Halloween costume around. Becoming a real ghost is a bit more complicated. First you have to die, maybe tragically, then leave part of your soul hanging around Earth to spook relatives and haunt houses. From a supposedly scientific angle, parapsychologists argue that energy — including what's in the body — can never be completely destroyed. Society seems to agree: Various studies peg belief in ghosts at about 50 percent.

8. Werewolves

Typically normal and well-mannered until a full moon kicks in, werewolves are cursed shape-shifters that have appeared in the legend set of nearly every culture going back to ancient Greece. Like witches, they were hunted in medieval times and blamed for community murders that couldn't be explained otherwise. Though the violent werewolf stories of old seem to have fallen off the radar, except in Hollywood, there remains an excessive body-hair disorder lovingly nicknamed "the werewolf disease."

9. Vampires

They vant to suck your blood, and have for quite some time. Vampires have popped up in cultural folklore for thousands of years, though the fanged-and-coiffed version we know comes from the 18th- and 19th-century myths of Eastern Europe. There, it was believed that someone who was born with deformities or died an irregular death could, after burial, rise again to terrorize the living. Vampires were considered "undead" and needed to feast on human blood to remain so.

More substantial, remains of a woman with a brick shoved in her mouth (possibly to exorcise the corpse), lying in a 16th-century grave of plague victims in Italy, may be the first vampire burial known to archaeology. More recent research, however, questions the interpretation, suggesting the brick accidentally fell into the skull.

10. Demons

One of those all-encompassing terms for an "evil spirit," a demon can represent anything from a malevolent ghost or fallen angel to a puppet of Satan. Like the notion of evil itself, they have ancient origins and appear in folklore and literature across the world. The demon that possessed Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" is probably pop culture's most famous and most talented, with levitation capability, rotating head and amazing, lifelike spewing action!

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Fans of paranormal reality TV shows like "Ghost Hunters" and "Ghost Adventures" are treated to an array of technical jargon and references to fancy instruments — ion generators, electromagnetic field detectors and video goggles with built-in speech-synthesizers that allegedly can sense spirits.

This sprinkling of shady science can lend undue credibility to paranormal investigators, a researcher found.

For his study, Paul Brewer, a professor of communication at the University of Delaware, had a few hundred participants read one of three different versions of a newspaper article about a ghost hunter. (A fourth control group read an unrelated story.)

One version — the jargon-peppered "scientific" version — emphasized the investigator's "meticulous approach" and mentioned his technological devices. A supernatural version highlighted the investigator's strange childhood experiences and his "openness to nonscientific methods," such as communicating with spirits through a medium. A third version looked identical to the scientific one, except for an extra paragraph that quoted a professor debunking the ghost hunter's expertise and comparing his investigations to "old-time medicine shows."

The participants then filled out a questionnaire. Compared with the other groups, those who read the first scientific-sounding version of the article were more likely to answer that they believed in the paranormal and haunted houses. They also were more likely to characterize the investigators' work as scientific and credible, Brewer found.

"One key finding of this study is that media messages invoking the trappings of science can construct scientific authority even for pursuits regarded by mainstream science as pseudoscientific," Brewer wrote in his study published online Sept. 7 in the journal Science Communication.

But Brewer found that a rebuttal from a reputable source can undermine such "trappings of science" that make ghost hunters sound convincing. The participants who read the third version of the story —  the one that sounded scientific but also quoted a skeptic — were less likely to see paranormal investigators as credible than those who read the first scientific version, the study found.

Brewer tested whether different variables, such as age, gender, religion and TV habits, influenced the results. He found that overall television viewing and paranormal reality television viewing can predict beliefs about paranormal investigators and phenomena.

"Specifically, higher levels of viewing paranormal reality television predicted greater belief that paranormal investigators are scientific and credible, as well as greater belief in paranormal phenomena," Brewer wrote.

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A British woman claims she has been touched and groped by an unseen presence at night and suspects her assailant is a perverted poltergeist.

Doris Birch, a grandmother in Herne Bay, England, told ThisIsKent.co.uk, "It's like an octopus. It started four months ago. I was lying in bed when I felt this creepy pair of hands. I kicked frantically and it went away. Next time it came I hurled the duvet onto the floor!"

It has happened several times since then. Thinking that her experience was perhaps being caused by her bedding, Birch tried sleeping without the duvet, and even replaced her mattress. But the touching continued. A blogger for the Huffington Post, Alexandra Holzer, suggested that the best way to investigate Birch's odd phenomenon is with a psychic ghost buster and a close look at the history of the home. Holzer suggested that Birch was being plagued by the ghost of a sexual pervert who may have assaulted other women in years past; even death could not stop this serial groper, and his spirit is still getting thrills from touching this grandmother as she sleeps.

That may be one explanation, but before calling in ghost hunters and psychics to deal with this sexual harasser from beyond the grave, Birch might be interested in a more likely explanation for her experiences, one that I explored in my book "Scientific Paranormal Investigation."

Reports of groping ghosts are actually not as rare as you might guess. While the vast majority of ghost reports involve blurry figures or round white spots, seen both in photographs and in person, many reports come from people just like Birch, who feel unseen (or barely seen) presences in bed late at night.

Belief and psychology often play an important role in ghostly phenomena.The biggest clue to understanding what's going on in Birch's bedroom is the fact that the gropes always occur at night, when she is either asleep, drifting off to sleep, or waking from sleep. Psychologists know that the brain is especially susceptible to hallucinations and waking dreams during these times when consciousness fades. People often have these hallucinations while waking up (called hypnopompic activity) and while falling asleep (called hypnagogic activity). These are no more real than an ordinary dream, but can cause fear and concern if the person believes that the experiences were caused by some ghost or evil entity. [Alien Abductions Might Be Vivid Dreams, Study Shows]

People who experience these hallucinations often describe themselves feeling terrified, paralyzed, touched, and held or pushed down by some unseen force. Most are also convinced that they were fully awake at the time. Birch's report matches this phenomenon, and she is hardly the first to succumb to it: This phenomenon is probably the root of the succubus, a sensual demonic she-demon of medieval lore that sexually attacks men as they sleep.

It's important to note that many perfectly sane and rational people report these experiences. Folklorist David Hufford, in his book "The Terror That Comes in the Night," estimates that about 15 percent of people experience being assaulted in their sleep by an unknown entity at some point in their lives. The "attacks" are the result of ordinary brain functions, the form and specifics of the attacks are shaped by the victims’ belief system.

This psychological — as opposed to paranormal — explanation also answers two other aspects of Birch's experience. The strange phenomenon stopped as soon as she kicked at it, because she was fully awake by that point. It's also why changing the mattress didn't drive the ghost away; the problem was not in the mattress, nor in her house, but in her sleep disturbances.

It's not surprising that people who are not knowledgeable about psychology interpret their experiences as not only real and frightening, but also as being caused by a ghost. Ironically, the ghost-hunting psychics are more likely to fuel Birch's fears than to calm them. After all, the truth is more comforting than believing you're being groped by the ghost of a deceased pervert.

This story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

Let's say you're interested in ghosts, but haven't had any luck photographing them on any of your nocturnal visits to local cemeteries and abandoned insane asylums. The ghost-hunting guys on TV seem to capture plenty of ambiguous images (in between surprised looks and spooked "What-was-that?" exchanges), so why can't you?

Fear not; technology can help you easily fake ghost photos, though it comes at the cost of making it harder for serious ghost researchers to do their jobs.

These days almost everyone has a HD camera in their pocket in the form of a smartphone. So many people have high-quality cameras on them at virtually all the time that if ghosts exist,actual photographic evidence of them should be pouring in as more and more eyewitnesses record their amazing encounters.

Yet that hasn't happened; in fact, the evidence for ghosts seems to be getting worse, not better, in large part due to pranksters and ghost-generating apps. Several smartphone apps allow their users to easily tweak photos to make them look strange or mysterious, adding quasi-transparent ghostly images in the background. Up until a year or two ago, it took at least a little bit of effort to Photoshop an even halfway convincing snapshot of your recently departed grandmother's spirit appearing in an otherwise ordinary photo. With the help of these mobile apps, all it takes is a few pushes of a button to add shadowy or faint figures of spooky little girls, Confederate soldiers, outlaws, monks and any other historical (or horror film) caricature you can think of. [Why Ghosts Get Spooked by HD Cameras]

Faking images of spirits for fun and profit has a long tradition. In fact, the very first ghost photographs were hoaxes. William Mumler, a Boston-based photographer, first produced "spirit photographs" in 1861 anddozens more in the following decade. Mumler convinced many people that he andhis camera could photograph the spirit world.It wasn't true, of course, and Mumler was eventually revealed asa hoaxer and con artist. The "ghosts" he captured were merely double exposures of previous clients, notimages of the dead.

Bogus ghost photos have been around for years, but with so many fakes, how can you tell which photos (if any) really show something possibly paranormal? It's not easy.

In fact, faked ghost photos might even be damaging to the work of those who analyze ghostly photos, hoping to find evidence that ghosts exist.

One group in the United Kingdom that has raised concerns over the rise in fake ghost photos is the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP).Carrie Searley of ASSAP told Life's Little Mysteries, "Fake ghost photography is in the minority, however, it does occur. Here at ASSAP we like to turn it into a positive... one of our aims is to offer a scientific explanation as to the methodology used in creating a fake ghost photograph."

Before digital photography replaced film, investigators could examine the photograph's negative for evidence of fraud. "In the digital age of photography, being able to authenticate a photo can be tricky, as no negative is made," Searley said. "It is purely down to us to educate ourselves with the up-and-coming new photo apps that are being offered on the market."

To that end, ASSAP has requested the public's help in cataloguing known fakes created by sneaky smartphone apps. Of course, it will be a never-ending project, because new apps can be created (and old apps tweaked) to keep ahead of the fake-photo ghost busters.

The techniques and technology for faking ghost photos have changed in the last 150 years, but William Mumler would most likely be amused to know that others have carried on his not-so-proud tradition.

The story was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook.

Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His Web site is www.BenjaminRadford.com.

Fearsome Creatures

They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky. But Halloween's creepiest creature customs didn't appear out of thin air, not even the ghosts. Many of them once instilled real fear in medieval towns, when folklore reigned supreme and getting freaked out came easy. Here we offer up some real science and history of the scary stars of Oct. 31.

Jack-o'-Lanterns

A standout among freaks and monsters, the nutritious pumpkin may be Halloween's most famous symbol. The practice of carving and lighting the gourd is a Celtic custom brought to America by Irish immigrants, who used the more-plentiful turnip back home. Glowing, frightening faces emanating from the pumpkins were meant to frighten off the evil spirits thought to roam the streets on Oct. 31, the Celtic New Year's Eve. [In Images: Peculiar Halloween Pumpkins]

Bats

They're blind, they hang out in caves and they inspire masked crusaders. But how did bats become associated with Halloween? The winged mammals can thank vampires for that. Like their Draculian counterparts, a small number of bat species actually subsist on animal blood - vampire bats have been known to attack humans on occasion - using sharp teeth to cut into the sleeping victim. Their nocturnal ways and connection to Ozzy Osbourne probably don't help either. [Flying Mammals: Gallery of Spooky Bats]

Gargoyles

They're one way to add a little freaky je ne sais quoi to otherwise lovely architecture. But gargoyles, those frightening stone monsters protruding from cathedrals worldwide, do actually have a function. They were incorporated into gothic stonework as early as the 13th-century to keep rain water off cathedral roofs, their mouths serving as the ejector spout. More spiritually, gargoyles were supposed to protect the congregation from the ever-present evil forces lurking outside. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Goblins

Made famous in fairy tales, the small and furry goblin is more mischievous than menacing. Legend tells of goblins hiding out in forests, pulling pranks and sometimes switching human babies for their own changeling spawn. Unlike some of the other creatures mentioned here and probably because of their disconnect from religion, goblins never quite crossed the threshold from the imaginary to cause real panic in medieval towns. [Related: The Science of Fairy Tales]

Witches

Forget the pointy black hat and warty nose. Those popular associations are relatively recent compared with the long and often tragic history of witches across the globe. In the past, witches were thought to possess magical powers connected with the natural world. Like all pagans, they were demonized as heretics by the Christian church, a hunt that reached its apex in medieval Europe and 17th-century America. Good luck picking them out of a crowd today: witch costumes frequently top the list at Halloween. [13 Halloween Superstitions & Traditions Explained]

Zombies

Kings of the b-movie industry, zombies are individuals who've either had their souls sucked from their bodies or been revived from the dead through black magic. Zombie culture stems from the voodoo religion of Haiti, where it is still believed that people can fall into mindless trances just like the walking dead we've seen on film (minus the missing limbs and snacking on human flesh). An ethnobotanist investigating the claims in Haiti found a toxic drug that could actually induce a zombie-style catatonic state. [Zombie Facts: Real and Imagined (Infographic)]

Ghosts

Poke two eye holes in a bed sheet and you've got the easiest Halloween costume around. Becoming a real ghost is a bit more complicated. First you have to die, maybe tragically, then leave part of your soul hanging around earth to spook relatives and haunt houses. From a supposedly scientific angle, parapsychologists argue that energy - including what's in the body - can never be completely destroyed. Society seems to agree: various studies peg belief in ghosts at about 50 percent. [Countdown: Top 10 Most Famous Ghosts]

Werewolves

Typically normal and well-mannered until a full moon kicks in, werewolves are cursed shapeshifters that have appeared in the legend set of nearly every culture going back to ancient Greece. Like witches, they were hunted in medieval times and blamed for community murders that couldn't be explained otherwise. Though the violent werewolf stories of old seem to have fallen off the radar, except in Hollywood, there remains an excessive body-hair disorder lovingly nicknamed "the werewolf disease."

Vampires

They vant to suck your blood, and have for quite some time. Vampires have popped up in cultural folklore for thousands of years, though the fanged-and-coiffed version we know comes from the 18th and 19th-century myths of Eastern Europe. There, it was believed that someone who was born with deformities or died an irregular death could, after burial, rise again to terrorize the living. Vampires were considered "undead" and needed to feast on human blood to remain so.

Demons

One of those all-encompassing terms for an "evil spirit," a demon can represent anything from a malevolent ghost or fallen angel to a puppet of Satan. Like the notion of evil itself, they have ancient origins and appear in folklore and literature across the world. The demon that possessed Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" is probably pop culture's most famous and most talented, with levitation capability, rotating head and amazing, life-like spewing action! [Related: Ghost Stories Haunt American Culture]

So why do people believe in the paranormal?

Experiences perceived as paranormal are not uncommon, according to Richard Wiseman, a University of Hertfordshire psychologist and author of "Paranormality," (Macmillion, 2011), which delves into the science (or lack thereof) of hauntings, psychics, telepathy and other supposedly inexplicable phenomena.

The thrust of the book was to figure out why people have these weird experiences despite spirits and psychics and ghosts not existing, he said.

"There's also the notion that these beliefs are very comforting. So if you're ill, then the idea of the psychic healer is a nice idea," Wiseman told LiveScience in July. "And then there's the influence of the paranormal industry. The books, the television shows, the psychic hotlines all have a vested interest in getting the public to believe this stuff." [Read: Monsters, Ghosts & Gods: Why We Believe]

These beliefs can tell us a lot about human nature and psychology, it seems. For instance, reports of ghosts may be fueled more than anything else by the power of suggestion along with some fear. Say you're in a haunted house and you see something out of the corner of your eye; the "haunted" location could lend itself to one perceiving the odd glimpse as paranormal. Then there's fear: "When we become afraid, blood flows from the fingertips from the major muscles of the body as you get ready to run or fight, and that can make you cold," Wiseman said in July. "You also become hyper-vigilant, so you start noticing footsteps or voices you wouldn’t have noticed before, and start assuming this is some sort of weird paranormal activity." [Read: What's Really Behind Paranormal Experiences - Hint: It's Not Ghosts]

As for who believes, a small study published in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine in 2006 showed that seniors and grad students were more likely than freshmen to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas. So higher education seems to lend itself to belief in the supernatural. In additon, Gallup Poll in 2001 found younger Americans far more likely to believe in the paranormal than older respondents. A 2009 Pew Research Center survey revealed that about half of Catholics and black Protestants believed in or had experienced at least two of a list of supernatural phenomenon. The list included: belief in reincarnation, belief in spiritual energy located in physical things, belief in yoga as spiritual practice, belief in the "evil eye," belief in astrology, having been in touch with the dead, consulting a psychic, or experiencing a ghostly encounter.

Even if such ghosts and goblins aren't real, they can sure scare us. So if you're home alone and hear an seemingly unexplainable creaking noise or see a glimpse of a "ghost," Wiseman suggests knowledge is your best weapon against a freak out. "I think that just knowing what's going on helps," he said. Take a Ouji Board: Once you realize the glass is moved by one's unconscious movements, the resulting letters are less scary, albeit less meaningful possibly.

• Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena
• 13 Halloween Superstitions & Traditions Explained
• Halloween's Top 10 Scary Creatures

The Virgin Mary has apparently had a busy holiday season, making recent appearances in several states over the past few weeks.

The spate of Marian apparitions began earlier this month when Mari Valenzuela of Alhambra, Calif., noticed an image of the Virgin Mary in her melted candle. The stalagmitic lump, about an inch high and made of soft white wax, resembled a woman’s head and torso. Valenzuela showed the miracle to her priest, who assured her that it was a sign that her life was on the right path, according to a report from KTLA Channel 5 News.

The Virgin Mary next showed up, welcome but uninvited, to a backyard barbeque in McAllen, Texas. Rigo Garza hosted family and friends for a party, and one of his guests wandered over to his wooden fence. There, in a darkened oval knot of wood, the Virgin Mary appeared, according to Stephanie Bertini of local station KRGV-TV. Garza said that as soon as they saw it they knew it was a blessing from God. In fact, he credits the image with helping his mother's recent surgery go well, and the Garza family has constructed a small shrine for others to offer their prayers.

And just this week a woman in Dallas, Texas, reportedly photographed a transparent, oblong miracle. Aimee Guzman took a photograph through the back window of her Ford Expedition that she believes is of the Virgin Mary. According to a report from NBC affiliate KGNS, the woman attempted to clean the image off the window, but was unsuccessful. (It's not clear why Guzman would try to remove an image she believed was a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary.)

It's not surprising that human-shaped forms might be interpreted as religious figures, especially around the religious holidays. People see these images for the same reason they see faces in clouds, Rorschach blots and coffee stains. This phenomenon, called pareidolia, is well known in psychology, and it is the cause of many supposedly mysterious and miraculous events (including the famous "Jesus in the Tortilla"). Whether the result of a miracle or mundane psychological process, the sightings are welcomed by the faithful.

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His Web site is www.RadfordBooks.com.

In the new Clint Eastwood film "Hereafter," Matt Damon stars as George, a man who has the ability to communicate with ghosts. George, who retired from the contacting-the-dead business (calling it a curse instead of a blessing) is reluctantly drawn back into doing  readings for people who have recently lost loved ones.

People in nearly every culture have long believed that communication with the dead is possible, and throughout the ages many people have claimed to be able to speak with the dearly departed. Ghosts and spirit communication often show up in classic literature, including mythology, the Bible and Shakespeare's plays.

In Victorian England, it was fashionable in many circles to conduct séances; Ouija boards, three-legged tables, candles and other accoutrements were used to try to contact the dead. In the U.S., belief in communication with the dead rose dramatically in the 1800s along with the rise of Spiritualism, a religion founded on hoaxed spirit communication by two young sisters in Hydesville, N.Y. Despite the fact that the sisters later admitted they had only been pretending to get messages from the dead, the religion they helped start flourished, claiming more than 8 million adherents by 1900.

For well over a century, many mediums have been caught faking spirit communication. Harry Houdini exposed many psychics as frauds who used trickery to make vulnerable people believe in the reality of spirit messages. (For more on this, see Massimo Polidoro's book "Final Séance," Prometheus Books, 2001).

Whether real or faked, the messages supposedly conveyed from the great beyond have changed dramatically over time. A century ago, mediums "in touch with the spirit" during séances would write pages and pages of "automatic writing," the psychic's hands allegedly guided by ghosts to convey lengthy handwritten messages.

Curiously, ghosts seem to have lost their will (or ability) to write since that time — or even communicate effectively. These days the spirits (as channeled through mediums) seem to prefer a guessing game and instead offer only ambiguous, vague information: "I'm getting a presence with the letter M, or J in the name? A father, or father figure perhaps? Did he give you something special to remember him by, something small?"

If spirit communication is real, one might think that countless unsolved homicides and disappearances could be easily solved simply by contacting the dead and getting specific, incriminating evidence about the circumstances of their deaths.

In "Hereafter," George repeatedly views his ability as a curse. But in reality, those who claim to be psychic mediums (such as James van Praagh, John Edward, Alison DuBois, and Sylvia Browne) eagerly exploit their "curse," making millions of dollars on book deals, appearances, private readings and TV shows.

Yet their powers have never been proven under controlled scientific conditions, and their track records of success are spotty at best. In a 2002 case, Browne, a regular on the "Montel Williams" show, told the parents of missing child Shawn Hornbeck that their son was dead. His body, she said, would be found in a wooded area near two large boulders, and that he had been kidnapped by a very tall, "dark-skinned man" who wore dreadlocks. In fact, Hornbeck and another boy were found alive five years later in the home of a Caucasian, non-dreadlocked Missouri man named Michael Devlin who had kidnapped them.

There are even entire towns whose populations claim to get messages from the dead. For example, each year more than 20,000 people visit New York's Lily Dale Assembly, the oldest and largest Spiritualist community in the United States. The dozen or so permanent resident mediums offer their psychic services to tourists. [Related: Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe]

Despite more than a century of research, science has yet to validate the afterlife, ghosts or psychic powers. Of course, speaking to the dead requires no special skill or ability; it's getting a response that's the hard part. Shakespeare noted this in "Henry the Fourth, Part I," when Glendower claims to have psychic abilities: "I can call spirits from the vasty deep," to which his cousin Hotspur replies, "Why, so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?"

• Top 10 Most Famous Ghosts
• Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena
• Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal With the Dead

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine, and author of "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries"; his Web site is www.RadfordBooks.com.

The 2009 psychological horror film "The Haunting in Connecticut" tells the story of the Snedeker family, who in 1986 rented an old house in Southington, Connecticut. Allen and Carmen Snedeker moved in with their daughter and three young sons. While exploring their new home, Carmen found strange items in the basement: tools used by morticians.

The family soon discovered — to their horror — that their home had once been a funeral parlor, and the eldest son began seeing ghosts and terrifying visions. The experiences spread to other family members and got worse: Both parents said they were raped and sodomized by demons; one day as Carmen mopped the kitchen floor, the water suddenly turned blood red and smelled of decaying flesh; and so on.

Finally the family contacted a pair of self-styled "demonologists" and "ghost hunters," Ed and Lorraine Warren, who arrived and proclaimed the Snedeker house to be infested with demons.

The scariest part? It's all true, supposedly.

[The Top 10 Most Famous Ghosts]

The Snedekers have told their story many times, including on national talk shows and in a Discovery Channel TV show. The film's poster states in capital letters at the top that the movie is "based on true events." Yet others aren't so sure.

Investigator Joe Nickell reports in the May/June issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine that the Snedeker's landlady found the whole story ridiculous. She noted that nobody before or since had experienced anything unusual in the house, and that the Snedeker family stayed in the house for more than two years before finally deciding to leave.

[Video: Haunted House in New Jersey?]

Apparently being assaulted and raped by Satan's minions for months at a time wasn't a good enough reason to break the lease.

The Snedeker's story first came to light in horror novelist Ray Garton's 1992 book "In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting." In an interview in "Horror Bound" magazine, Garton discussed how the "true story" behind "The Haunting in Connecticut" came about.

Garton was hired by Ed and Lorraine Warren to work with the Snedekers and write the true story of their house from hell. He interviewed all the family members about their experiences, and soon realized that there was a problem: "I found that the accounts of the individual Snedekers didn't quite mesh. They couldn't keep their stories straight. I went to Ed with this problem. 'Oh, they're crazy,' he said…. 'You've got some of the story — just use what works and make the rest up… Just make it up and make it scary.'"

Garton, who had accepted the job expecting to have a real "true story" to base the book on, did as he was told: "I used what I could, made up the rest, and tried to make it as scary as I could."

Though the Snedekers stand by their story, it seems there is little or no proof that anything supernatural occurred at the house. Whether or not the Snedekers actually believed their story, they stood to make money from the book deal. They were aware that the Lutz family — of Amityville, New York — profited handsomely from selling the rights to their "true story" of a haunted house. "The Amityville Horror" has long since been revealed as a fiction by investigator Ric Osuna and others. Interestingly, the Warrens were also involved in the Amityville case.

[Spooky! Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

Fiction passed off as memoir or true story is certainly nothing new, from William Peter Blatty's book and film "The Exorcist" to James Frey's debunked bestseller "A Million Little Pieces." Filmmakers have a long history of touting movies as being based on true stories, when in fact they have little or no connection to any real events.

As for "The Haunting in Connecticut," Garton notes, "I suspect the movie will begin with the words: 'Based on a true story.' Be warned: Just about anything that begins with any variation of this phrase is trying a little too hard to convince you of something that probably isn't true."

Benjamin Radford has investigated and written about the "true stories" behind horror films such as "The Exorcist," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "The Amityville Horror." His books, films, and other projects can be found on his website.

More people believe in aliens and ghosts than in God, a new survey finds, according to a British newspaper.

The survey, however, was done by a marketing firm in conjunction with the release of an X-Files DVD, and details of how the poll was conducted were not reported in the Daily Mail. Survey questions, depending on how they are written, can greatly skew results, along with how subjects are sampled.

That said, the poll of 3,000 people found that 58 percent believe in the supernatural, including paranormal encounters, while 54 percent believe God exists. Women were more likely than men to believe in the supernatural and were also more likely to visit a medium.

Indeed, humans are prone to believing in things they can neither see nor find logical evidence for.

A survey of U.S. college students done in 2006 found 23 percent of freshmen had a general belief in paranormal concepts — from astrology to communicating with the dead. Interestingly, the number jumped to 31 percent among seniors and 34 percent among graduate students.

Researchers who have compared various human belief systems say our tendency to believe is deeply rooted.

"While it is difficult to know for certain, the tendency to believe in the paranormal appears to be there from the beginning," said Christopher Bader, a Baylor University sociologist. "What changes is the content of the paranormal. For example, very few people believe in faeries and elves these days. But as belief in faeries faded, other beliefs, such as belief in UFOs, emerged to take their place."

Religion and belief in the paranormal are not linked as one might imagine. A handful of surveys show just the opposite, in fact.

"Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief," said Rod Stark, another Baylor researcher. Some scientists think this is so because religions tend to discourage paranormal beliefs, and indeed most devout practitioners of a religion have been shown to be the least likely to believe in Bigfoot, ghosts or aliens.

• Top 10 Alien Encounters Debunked
• All About Cults, Religion and the Paranormal
• Top 10 Crazy Cults

This article is from the LiveScience Water Cooler: What people are talking about in the world of science and beyond.

It's Halloween season, and you know what that means: ghosts! A recent surveillance video depicting what many believe to be a ghost made international news.

The video was taken at Anytime Fitness, an all-night fitness club in Overland Park, Kansas. When owner Kim Peterson came in one morning and reviewed the previous night's security footage, she was surprised and mystified by what she saw: a glowing, fuzzy light apparently in a workout area, meandering around the weight benches and fitness machines.

The image appeared at 2:21 in the morning, about half an hour after the last person left the building. It reappeared about nine times over the next two hours, each time briefly moving across the room.

It baffled Peterson, her staff and members, and the security company. Lights have never activated the camera before, Peterson said. "I called the security company, and they said, 'I don't know why that light would make the camera kick on.'"

It seemed a real mystery.

Various people offered their theories, ranging from a hoax to a bug to headlights from a passing car. Peterson and her security company dismissed all those obvious explanations, and by far the most popular is that a ghost visited the gym for a early-morning workout. One woman at the club, Sharon Bohm, suggested it could be a spirit; Peterson's son was even more specific, suggesting it was his deceased grandfather, looking after his mother's new business. Gym members were asked to come up with a name for their resident ghost, and the case remains unsolved — until now.

Scientific ghostbusting

Before entertaining ghostly explanations, it's best to use scientific methodologies and critical thinking. A closer look at the image reveals some interesting clues about the ghost's identity.

Clue No. 1: The object is whitish and out of focus. Security cameras (especially the round "fish-eye" lenses used in the club) are designed to be mounted high above the ground and record activity twenty or more feet away. Things at that distance will be in focus, while objects close to the lens will be out of focus. Therefore the object was very close to the camera.

Clue No. 2: The object appears to be glowing, but there's no indication that it is in fact emitting light. It has all the characteristics of something that is instead reflecting white light, perhaps from one of the bright lights mounted around the camera (you can see them clearly in video footage of the story).

Clue No. 3: Though Peterson and news reporters claimed that that ghostly object "spent the night wandering around the weights," a closer look at the video shows that it instead wandered over or across them. Its movements do not show any interaction with the objects in the room at all, suggesting it was not in the room but instead above it.

Clue No. 4: Despite the fact that the gym had at least eight different cameras on and functioning that night, the "ghost" was seen on only one of them. If the spirited image had actually been in the room, other cameras should have recorded the same image from other angles. They didn't, therefore the object and phenomenon, whatever it is, only happened to that one camera.

One obvious answer, prematurely dismissed by Peterson and others, is almost certainly the correct one: the ghost is a bug. A spider or insect wandered onto the camera; that's why it was out of focus, why it seemed to glow, why it didn't interact with anything in the room, and why it only appeared on one camera. It's true that a moving light wouldn't activate the camera, as they are sensitive to motion, not light. But it was the bug's movement that triggered the sensor and started the recording.

While it is possible that the Anytime Fitness camera actually captured a ghost, in science the explanation that fits the facts with the fewest assumptions is the best. A bug on the camera fits all the facts and solves the mystery. And it's not the first time that a spider on a security camera created a ghostly image; in June 2007, a courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico, captured a nearly identical ghost that turned out to be a bug.

An exterminator—not an exorcist—could rid the gym of its ghost, but what's the fun in that? If they are still looking to name the mysterious image, how about Boris the Spider?

• Top 10 Most Famous Ghosts
• Monsters, Ghosts and Gods: Why We Believe
• Ghost Photos: A Close Look at the Paranormal

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. He has investigated mysterious phenomena and ghosts for over a decade. He solved the Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost case and recently investigated a haunted theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His books, films, and other projects can be found on his website

Monsters are everywhere these days, and belief in them is as strong as ever. What's harder to believe is why so many people buy into hazy evidence, shady schemes and downright false reports that perpetuate myths that often have just one ultimate truth: They put money in the pockets of their purveyors.

The bottom line, according to several interviews with people who study these things: People want to believe, and most simply can't help it.

"Many people quite simply just want to believe," said Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University. "The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some pretty bizarre explanations."

A related question: Does belief in the paranormal have anything to do with religious belief?

The answer to that question is decidedly nuanced, but studies point to an interesting conclusion: People who practice religion are typically encouraged not to believe in the paranormal, but rather to put their faith in one deity, whereas those who aren't particularly active in religion are more free to believe in Bigfoot or consult a psychic.

"Christians and New Agers, paranormalists, etc. all have one thing in common: a spiritual orientation to the world," said sociology Professor Carson Mencken of Baylor University.

Tall tales

A tale last week by three men who said they have remains of Bigfoot in a freezer was reported by many Web sites as anywhere from final proof of the creature to at least a very compelling case to keep the fantasy ball rolling and cash registers ringing for Bigfoot trinkets and tourism (all three men involved make money off the belief in this creature). Even mainstream media treated a Friday press conference about the "finding" as news.

Reactions by the public ranged from skeptical curiosity to blind faith.

"I believe they do exist but I'm not sure about this," said one reader reacting to a story on LiveScience that cast doubt the claim. "I guess we will find out … if this is on the up and up," wrote another. "However, that said, I know they exist."

A subsequent test on the supposed Bigfoot found nothing but the DNA of humans and an opossum, a small, cat-like creature.

Also last week, in Texas there was yet another sensational yet debunkable sighting of chupacabra, a beast of Latin-American folklore. The name means "goat sucker." In this case, law enforcement bought into the hooey with an apparent wink and nod.

Ellie Carter, a patrol trainee with the DeWitt County sheriff’s office, saw the beast and was, of course, widely quoted. "It was this — thing, looking right at us," she said. "I think that’s a chupacabra!" After watching a video of the beast taken by a sheriff's deputy, biologist Scott Henke of Texas A&M University said, "It's a dog for sure," according to a story on Scientific American's Web site.

Meanwhile, the sheriff did nothing to tamp down rampant speculation, expressing delight that he might have a monster on his hands. "I love this for DeWitt County," said Sheriff Jode Zavesky, who would presumably be just as thrilled to let Dracula or a werewolf run free.

With that kind of endorsement and the human propensity to believe in just about anything, it's clear that Bigfoot and chupacabra are just two members in a cast of mythical characters and dubious legends and ideas will likely never go away.

In a 2006 study, researchers found a surprising number of college students believe in psychics, witches, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas. A full 40 percent said they believe houses can be haunted.

Why are people so eager to accept flimsy and fabricated evidence in support of unlikely and even outlandish creatures and ideas? Why is the paranormal realm, from psychic predictions to UFO sightings, so alluring to so many?

The gods must be crazy

Since people have been people, experts figure, they have believed in the supernatural, from gods to ghosts and now every sort of monster in between.

"While it is difficult to know for certain, the tendency to believe in the paranormal appears to be there from the beginning," explained Christopher Bader, a Baylor sociologist and colleague of Mencken. "What changes is the content of the paranormal. For example, very few people believe in faeries and elves these days. But as belief in faeries faded, other beliefs, such as belief in UFOs, emerged to take their place."

Figuring out why people are this way is a little trickier.

"It is an artifact of our brain's desire to find cause and effect," Cronk, the psychology professor, said in an email interview. "That ability to predict the future is what makes humans 'smart' but it also has side effects like superstitions [and] belief in the paranormal."

"Humans first started believing in the supernatural because they were trying to understand things they couldn't explain," says Benjamin Radford, a book author, paranormal investigator and managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. "It's basically the same process as mythology: At one point people didn't understand why the sun rose and set each day, so they suggested that a chariot pulled the sun across the heavens."

Before modern scientific explanations of germ theory, explained Radford, who writes the "Bad Science" column for LiveScience, people didn't understand how diseases could travel from one person to another. "They didn't understand why a child was stillborn, or why a drought occurred, so they came to believe that such events had supernatural causes," he said.

"All societies have invoked the supernatural to explain things beyond their control and understanding, especially good and bad events," Radford said. "In many places — even today — people believe that disasters or bad luck is caused by witches or curses."

Which raises the bigger question: With science having answered so many questions in the past couple centuries, why do paranormal beliefs remain so strong?

Related to religion?

Sometimes the belief in curses crosses paths with religion, as was the case in 2005 when televangelist John Hagee (whose endorsement was solicited and received by presidential hopeful John McCain) blamed Hurricane Katrina on God's wrath for a gay parade that had been scheduled for the Monday of the storm's arrival.

"I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that," Hagee said at the time, reiterating the belief in 2006.

That might lead one to assume religion and paranormal beliefs are intertwined.

But in a 2004 survey, at the researchers at Baylor found just the opposite.

"Paranormal beliefs are very strongly negatively related to religious belief," study team member Rod Stark said this week.

Another study, of 391 U.S. college students done in 2000, found that participants who did not believe in Protestant doctrine were most likely to believe in reincarnation, contact with the dead, UFOs, telepathy, prophecy, psychokinesis, or healing. Believers were the least likely to buy into the paranormal. "This may partly reflect opinions of Christians in the samples who take biblical sanctions against many 'paranormal' activities seriously," the Wheaton College researchers wrote.

Cronk, the psychologist, did a small survey of 80 college students and found no connection between religiosity and paranormal belief.

But a 2002 study in Canada did find a correlation between religious beliefs and paranormal beliefs, Cronk notes. He figures that among other explanations, Canadians may not have the same belief systems as U.S. residents.

"My guess is that religiosity has a lot to do with how you were raised, and less to do with genetics," Cronk said. "Those people who may have a high genetic susceptibility to 'faith-based knowledge' may end up being highly religious or may end up having belief in the paranormal depending on how they were raised. Those people less susceptible to that method of forming beliefs may still end up being highly religious if they were raised in a religious family."

Religion vs. paranormal

Mencken, the Baylor sociologist, says sacrifice and stigma (for holding ideas outside the group norm) keep the paranormal at bay among the highly religious. He has two papers forthcoming that are based on a national survey of 1,700 people.

The first, to be published in the journal Sociology of Religion in 2009, reveals this:

"Among Christians, those who attend church very often (and are exposed to stigma and sacrifice within their congregations) are least likely to believe in the paranormal," Mencken told LiveScience. "Conversely, those Christians who do not attend church very often (maybe once or twice a year) are the most likely to hold paranormal beliefs."

A third group, which he calls naturalists, do not hold supernatural views, Christian or paranormal.

Another study to published in December in the Review of Religious Research, shows that those who go to church "are much less likely to consult horoscopes, visit psychics, purchase New Age items," and so on, Mencken said. "However, among those Christians who do not attend church, there is a much higher level of participation in these phenomena."

Educated to believe

Profiling the typical Bigfoot believer turns out to be as challenging as determining the scientific methodology of a psychic, however.

"Perhaps amazingly, [paranormal beliefs] are not related at all to education," Stark said. "Ph.D.s are as likely as high school dropouts to believe in Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, etc."

The 2006 study of college students, done by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward Jr. of the University of Central Oklahoma, reached a similar conclusion. Belief in the paranormal — from astrology to communicating with the dead — increases during college, rising from 23 percent among freshmen to 31 percent in seniors and 34 percent among graduate students.

Bader, the sociologist at Baylor, and his colleagues teamed up with the Gallup organization to conduct a national survey of 1,721 people in 2005 and found nearly 30 percent think it is possible to influence the physical world through the mind alone (another 30 percent were undecided on that point). More than 20 percent figure it's possible to communicate with the dead. Nearly 40 percent believe in haunted houses.

Asked if "creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster will one day be discovered by science," 18.8 percent agreed while 25.9 percent were undecided.

In a remote Himalayan village, on the other hand, belief in Bigfoot's cousin, the yeti, is seen by some as a sign of ignorance.

Media madness

Today's ubiquitous and often one-sided, promotional coverage of the paranormal, both on the Internet and TV, perpetuate myths and folklore as well or better than any ancient storyteller. Fiction and belief masquerade as fact and news, feeding the 24/7 appetite of the easily swayed.

Scientists are left with an impossible task: proving something does not exist. You can prove a rock is there. You can't prove that Bigfoot or a ghost or the god of thunder is not there. Bigfoot paraphernalia purveyors and cash-cow psychics know this well.

"Many paranormalists claim that their powers only work sometimes, or that they don't work if there is a 'non-believer' in the room," Cronk points out.

Or, in the case of the unsupportive DNA testing on Bigfoot last week, the top proponent, Tom Biscardi (who recently produced a film about Bigfoot and might be said to have an interest in garnering press coverage), simply dodged the mythbusting bullet by claiming the DNA samples might have been contaminated.

Money motivates even the law to look the other way.

Regarding the chupacabra "sighting" last week in Cuero, Texas: "It's amazing," said Zavesky, DeWitt County sheriff. "We still don't know what it is."

Of course his county, specifically the town of Cuero, has been dubbed the Chupacabra Capital of the World and benefits by monster tourism.

So while a sheriff might well be concerned if he thinks there's a goat-sucking, menace in town, Zavesky is in no hurry to catch the beast and debunk the myth. "It has brought a lot of attention to us," he said. "We're not near ready to put this one to bed yet."

• Our 10 Favorite Monsters
• Cryptozoology: The Creatures of Legend
• Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena

Odds are your city or town is haunted.

Just about every city has some supposedly haunted mansion, cemetery or lunatic asylum ("if you listen carefully to the wind on moonless nights, you can hear the screams of the insane…"). Most cities, in fact, have at least one company offering tours of their spookiest places.

Ghost tourism has boomed over the past decade, propelled by the public's interest in the mysterious and supernatural. There are hundreds of ghost tours offered across the country, from Hollywood ("Come see Haunted Hollywood and ghosts of the stars!") to New England ("Visit Boston's infamous haunted locales!").

Some places have more historical lore to draw upon than others. Salem, Massachusetts, for example, exploits its infamous witch trials of the 1690s, while tourists, goths, wannabe vampires, and Anne Rice fans flock to New Orleans, Louisiana, with its reputation for mysticism and voodoo.

Ghost hunting

Many tours tout their guides as "Certified Ghost Hunters" or "Certified Paranormal Investigators," though that's like claiming to be a "Certified Kitten Petter." For better or worse (usually worse), anyone can call himself or herself a ghost hunter; there is no accrediting institution, and "certifications" can be bought from online diploma mills for about $50.

Ghost tours can be a very lucrative business: It is a service with little overhead and start-up costs. Anyone can offer a ghost tour, and tickets often cost $10 to $30 or more per person. With a large group, a good storyteller can make $500 in one evening for guiding a walking tour and telling ghost stories. Everyone likes a good ghost story, and the tours can be fun. The best ones tell their audiences about fascinating local history, throwing in some spooky lore as well.

Tours are often run by self-proclaimed ghost hunters, but no one should confuse telling folklore with doing actual investigation. Ghost tours are one way in which the public learns about "real" ghost hunting, with many companies giving a "Ghost Hunting 101" course or talk along the way.

Reality

Unfortunately, much of what is taught (such as that spirit voices can be captured on audiotape, or that ghosts can be detected using electromagnetic fields) is unproven theory without any scientific basis. Most guides invite participants to take plenty of photos on the tour, and see if any "ghost orbs" (white spots) appear in the images.

If enough people take enough photos, usually a few will show something that looks odd, fooling the photographer into thinking a ghost has been photographed. What the tours often don't tell the customers is that these "orbs" could be any number of perfectly ordinary things such as insects, dust, or moisture on the camera lens.

So this Halloween, if there's a chill in the air and you want a chill in your spine, check out the local legends and lore—for entertainment only!

Frightening Features 

• Top 10 Most Famous Ghosts
• The Top 5 Haunted Places in America
• Halloween's Top 10 Scariest Creatures

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• Candy Fears are Mere Halloween Phantoms
• Halloween Too Scary for Some Kids
• Why Do We Carve Pumpkins?

Benjamin Radford is LiveScience's Bad Science columnist and an investigator. He has written several articles about ghosts and ghost hunting for LiveScience.com. He is author or co-author of three books; they can be found on his website.

The horror film "Poltergeist" is being re-released in theaters today to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The film, which is considered a classic and was nominated for three Oscars, has a lesser-known legacy: it strongly influenced the public's views about real-life ghosts.

About half of Americans believe in ghosts, according to a 2003 Harris poll. Since the scientific evidence for ghosts is shaky at best—and since relatively few people claim to have personally seen a ghost—most people get their information about them through the media.

Steven Spielberg, who wrote and produced "Poltergeist," is well known for his influence on pop culture in general. But his films have also shaped the public's perception of the paranormal. His successful films often include supernatural themes, including ghosts, aliens (e.g., "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," and "War of the Worlds"); miracles (the Indiana Jones series); and psychic powers ("Minority Report").

While audiences know the films are entertainment, there is a clear (if subtle and sometimes subconscious) influence on their beliefs about these topics.

Many horror films (including "The Amityville Horror" and "The Exorcist," to name two blockbusters), claim to have been based on a true story or real events. There is of course much creative license taken, and when those "true stories" are investigated, they turn out to be hoaxes or heavily embellished accounts of non-supernatural events. Entertainment depictions of ghosts and demons not only encourage the public's belief, but also inspire other stories. The Amityville story didn't appear in a vacuum; the "true" (actually fictional) account borrowed story elements from (and capitalized on the pop culture interest in) "The Exorcist," which came out several years earlier.

People who report real-life encounters with ghosts often take their cues from fictional accounts. For example, many believe that pets act strangely in the presence of spirits, that psychic mediums can contact the dead, and that scientific equipment can detect ghosts. These are unproven theories and fiction-friendly speculation depicted in film

In "Poltergeist" and other supernatural horror films, the paranormal phenomena is obvious, incontrovertible, and clearly mysterious (such as objects flying around a room by themselves). Unfortunately, in real cases of claimed hauntings, the evidence is far less impressive and far more ambiguous (ghosts are said to create odd feelings or curious—but not unexplainable—white spots in photographs). As always, the story gets better in the retelling.

• Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena

Benjamin Radford is LiveScience's Bad Science columnist, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and author of three books. He has investigated haunted houses and written articles about the true stories behind film such as the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Exorcist," and "The Amityville Horror." They can be found on his website.

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO—Over the past week, a glowing, fuzzy white blob became an unlikely international star. It was captured on videotape early Friday morning, June 15, by a security camera at a courthouse here.

The “ghost video” has been seen over 75,000 times on YouTube; what started as a local curiosity soon became a national, then international, story.

Theories abounded: Some said that the image was the ghost of a murdered man. Others thought it was just a video glitch, or a hoax, or a spider, or maybe a reflection from a passing car.

As a scientific paranormal investigator, I was asked by a Santa Fe newspaper to look into the case. Over the past decade, I have conducted dozens of investigations into lake monsters, psychics, ghosts, crop circles, and many other “unexplained” phenomena. This was certainly unexplained, and I was intrigued.

What it is not

After the first day of investigations, I eliminated most of the theories. It was almost certainly not a hoax, because it’s unlikely anyone would think to make a blurry, indistinguishable blob on a courthouse surveillance video. Nor was it a reflection or a video glitch.

I’ve seen dozens of “ghost” videos and images very similar to this. Usually they're simply misperceptions, camera artifacts, or common objects like dust or insects. The quality of the image is often inversely proportional to the belief that the object is a ghost; the fuzzier and more ambiguous the form, the more likely a ghost will be offered as an explanation. In cases like this, however, you have to eliminate all alternative explanations, and while a ghost remained a possibility, it was pretty far down on the list of likely candidates.

In the case of the courthouse ghost, nothing in the video is in focus, and it’s hard to know how far away the object is from the camera; is it a tiny object near the camera, or is it a large object farther away? Logic suggests that people living in the condominiums across the street and driving nearby would have noticed a giant glowing ball near the courthouse. So it was instead small, and probably close to the camera. But what?

What it is

To find out, I conducted experiments at the courthouse to test the two most likely explanations: floating cottonwood seed and insects. First, I dispersed cottonwood tree cotton into the air near the camera to see if the image looked similar to the “ghost.” Upon reviewing the tape with the court’s deputies and security officers, we had mixed results. The cotton did make a fluffy ball, but it did not glow, nor did it move as the ghostly image had.

The second set of experiments involved the bug hypothesis: could a spider or insect have created the image? It was a common explanation, but some scoffed, saying that the glowing image didn’t look like a bug at all. I suspected that the glow was simply a reflection, but I wasn’t sure what the camera would see.

I arrived at 7 a.m. and carefully placed ladybugs and other insects on top of the video camera. I waited for them to crawl around, and soon went inside the courthouse to check the videotape. While some of the images of ladybugs were obviously too large and dark to be ghostly culprit, at 7:26 a.m. we hit paydirt: The ghost appeared in the video.

Using the insects, I duplicated the ghost image. Everyone agreed that the image was exactly the same as the courthouse ghost in every respect, including size, shape, color, and movement.

The weeklong mystery is solved: The Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost was a bug. While I can’t identify the exact species, there is no doubt that it is the unwitting YouTube star. The insect or spider explanation fits all the facts. The object looked like it was purposely moving, not floating; the object is blurry because it is close to the security camera’s lens, and it is glowing because direct morning sunlight is hitting it from a low angle.

Certainly, the object was mysterious. Anyone can be fooled by such an image, and the lesson is that just because something seems mysterious or unusual doesn’t mean there isn’t a good scientific explanation if you look hard enough. Calling something unexplained is often simply the result of giving up too easily. Just ask the YouTube bug.

• The Evidence: Radford Recreates the 'Ghost'
• Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts
• Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena

Benjamin Radford is an investigator with Skeptical Inquirer science magazine, a LiveScience columnist, and author of hundreds of articles and several books on science, skepticism, and the paranormal. His latest book, co-authored with investigator Joe Nickell, is "Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World’s Most Elusive Creatures." This and other books are noted on his website.

One thing that ghosts , Bigfoot , and UFOs have in common is a lack of hard evidence for their existence. Many people report seeing these phenomena, though sightings are essentially stories, not proof.

According to many "ghost experts," just about anyone can find evidence of ghosts using a device found in nearly every home: a camera. Ghost stories and sightings are fine, but what can we make of images claimed to be actual photographs of dead spirits?

Last year an exhibition of spirit photography was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Several of the pictures on display were created by Boston photographer William H. Mumler, who first claimed to have captured ghosts on film. Mumler produced many "spirit photographs" in the latter half of the 1800s, depicting faint, ghostly images in otherwise normal portraits. This caused a sensation and convinced many people with his seemingly excellent proof of ghosts.

Yet there was more to Mumler's photographic proof of life after death than met the eye; he was exposed as a hoaxer when some of the "ghosts" he had photographed were seen very much alive, living and working in Boston. In the process of his work, Mumler had simply stumbled across a crude method of double exposure, and hatched a plan to make a fortune with his fakes.

Thus, ghost photography began as an unseemly blend of photographic error and outright hoax.

Ghost photo categories

The clear images of ghosts and dead souls depicted by Mumler are long gone. Despite dramatically improved optical equipment and cameras over the past century, most "ghost photos" fall into two categories: 1) hazy, indistinct shapes that can be interpreted as a human form; and 2) "mysterious" glowing white blobs called orbs.

Both can be easily (and accidentally) created by photographic error, and the latter are by far the most common. Books, television shows, and Web sites about ghosts often include photographs of orbs that investigators (or just ordinary people) find scary, amazing, or simply puzzling. Orb photos are essentially Rorschach cards, though the forms are usually white and round instead of black and blobby. The interpretations of both, however, reveal much about how the viewer sees the world.

Orbs may take a variety of forms. There is not one blanket cause for all orbs; many things can create the phenomena, including insects and dust close to the camera lens.

In a series of experiments, I was able to create orb photos under a wide range of circumstances. Orbs can be found in the most un-spooky of settings, and are actually fairly common in daily, amateur photography. They are usually only noticed when a person is actively looking for them as evidence of ghosts. For example, this photo is one of several images I snapped at a New Year's wedding reception that later revealed odd glowing orbs. Proof of spectral party crashers, or a simple photographic trick of light?

The easiest way to create an orb image is to take a flash photograph outdoors on a rainy night. The flash will reflect off the individual droplets and appear as white, floating orbs (the effect is most pronounced in a light rain, though even a little moisture in the air can create mysterious orbs). As researcher Joe Nickell notes in his book Camera Clues , unnoticed shiny surfaces are also common sources of orbs. (As well, flashes reflecting camera straps can produce other ghostly photo effects.)

During one investigation I conducted several years ago at Fort George ("Canada's most haunted place," in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario), I examined a large, wooden soldiers' barracks where ghosts and orbs had been reported. I took several flash photographs of the area, and I noticed that the building (essentially a barn-like structure) was quite dusty. As a television crew interviewed some ghost hunters, I noticed one orb, photographed it, and wondered what it might be ( image).

It hovered about chest-high and did not move at all, suggesting that it was not an insect nor a dust particle; instead it seemed supernaturally suspended in the air. It was several feet away from the nearest post, wall, or other visible means of support. The phenomenon was very strange.

I showed the image to one of the ghost hunters, who seemed pleased that I had captured what was obviously a ghost orb.

Upon further investigation...

Not content to simply declare my orb a sure sign of the supernatural, a fellow investigator and I searched even harder for a solution.

Sure enough, closer investigation revealed that the orb was in fact a tiny piece of dust or lint that clung to the remnants of a spider web ( image). It was a very unusual place for a web, and had I not traced the long, nearly-invisible line to its arachnid anchor, I would have rejected a web as an explanation. But it was a very long strand and just far enough away from the walkway that all but the tallest passersby would not walk through it. The dust mote was very difficult to see, and only apparent when a dark color appeared behind it for contrast, or when caught in a flash photograph.

Had an amateur ghost-hunter spent a few minutes taking flash photos of that room at night, the dust would likely have appeared as an orb--and its true cause almost certainly overlooked as an explanation.  

Orbs seem otherworldly because they are almost always invisible to the naked eye and go unnoticed until the photo is examined, later revealing the presence of a ghostly, unnatural, glowing object, sometimes appearing over or around an unsuspecting person. To those unaware of scientific and optical explanations, it is no wonder that orbs spook people (as Mumler's photos did 120 years ago). Most ghost investigators will admit that at least some orb photos are of ordinary phenomena. Still, they insist, there must be some orbs that defy rational explanation. None have yet been found. Of course it's possible that ghosts and spirits do exist and can be photographed. But if so, where's the proof? And why do images of ghosts look exactly like images of photographic errors?

Ghost enthusiasts are satisfied with hazy images and orbs, but this will never convince skeptics and scientists. So what would be good photographic proof of ghosts?

An authentic photograph of anyone born before the invention of photography would be a good start: Benjamin Franklin, William Shakespeare, or any of thousands of other people for whom we have a good record of their likeness but no photograph. Just one such photo would be more convincing than a thousand glowing blobs. Unfortunately, all the ghost photos offered so far are indistinguishable from intentional fakes and optical mistakes. Maybe next year.

Benjamin Radford is an investigator with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and author or co-author of three books .

Full Frightening Coverage

• What Halloween is Really About
• Top 5 Haunted Places in America
• The Shady Science of Ghost Hunting
• Halloween's Top 10 Scary Creatures
• Higher Education Fuels Stronger Belief in Ghosts
• Vampires a Mathematical Impossibility, Scientist Says
• Candy Fears are Mere Halloween Phantoms
• Halloween Too Scary for Some Kids
• In Search of the Real Dracula
• Pumpkin Shortage?

Ghosts are big business. For entities that may or may not exist, they seem to be everywhere, especially during Halloween.

They are in books and on television shows, such as CBS's "The Ghost Whisperer" and NBC's "Medium." Dozens of "ghost hunter" organizations exist across North America, small groups of self-styled ghost buffs who lurk around reputedly haunted places, hoping to glimpse or photograph a spirit.

The most famous ghost hunters are two plumbers who moonlight as paranormal investigators, seen in the popular Sci-Fi Channel reality show/soap opera series "Ghost Hunters." They go to haunted places and find "evidence" of ghosts such as cold spots, photographic anomalies called orbs, and other such spookiness.

The two featured investigators, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, are proudly blue-collar workers, not egghead Ph.D. scientists, which adds to their strong "regular guy" appeal.

Top 10 Scary Creatures / Top 5 Haunted Houses / Pumpkin Shortage?

Where are the ghosts?

While one doesn't need to be a scientist to search for ghosts, the pair (like most ghost hunters) could benefit greatly from a little critical thinking. They claim to be skeptics but are very credulous and seem to have no real understanding of scientific methods or real investigation. (Audiences don't seem to wonder why these "expert" ghost hunters always fail: Even after two seasons and over ten years of research, they still have yet to prove that ghosts exist!)

Though most ghost investigators' worst crime is wasting time, sometimes they make nuisances of themselves and even break the law.

In October 2005, three ghost hunters in Salem, Massachusetts, were arrested for trespassing on private property in search of ghosts. They had entered an abandoned hospital reputed to be haunted. The group was so busy looking for spirits they failed to notice the police station across the street; all three were arrested, fined, and sent home. Trespassing or vandalizing ghost hunters have also been arrested in cemeteries in Illinois, Connecticut, and other states.

Ghost detectors

When it comes to searching for ghosts, you'd think that only the most reliable methods would be used in an attempt to get solid evidence for something as mysterious and elusive as a spirit. Yet in ghost hunting, often the less scientific the methods and equipment, the more likely a researcher is to find "evidence" for ghosts.

Ghost hunters use a variety of creative—and dubious—methods to detect their quarry's presence, including psychics. Psychics not only claim to locate ghosts but also to communicate with the spirits, who unfortunately don't provide any useful or verifiable information from the afterlife [see a séance].

Virtually all ghost hunter groups claim to be scientific, and most give that appearance because they use high-tech scientific equipment such as Geiger counters, Electromagnetic Field (EMF) detectors, ion detectors, and infrared cameras [and sensitive microphones]. Yet the equipment is only as scientific as the person using it; you may own the world's most sophisticated thermometer, but if you are using it as a barometer, your measurements are worthless.

Just as using a calculator doesn't make you a mathematician, using a scientific instrument doesn't make you a scientist.

Devices that don't work

In 2003, while I was investigating a haunted house in Buffalo, New York, the owner of the house asked me what equipment I planned to use. He had glanced in my duffel bag, which contained two cameras, a tape recorder, notebooks, a tape measure, a flashlight, and a few other items. Perhaps he was expecting to see a Negative Ionizer Ghost Containment backpack like the kind Bill Murray wore in Ghostbusters.

An EMF meter is among the most common devices used by ghost hunters today. I spoke to Tom Cook, of TomsGadgets.com, a British purveyor of "scientific" paranormal kits for the enterprising (and gullible) investigator. Starter kits begin at £105 (US$180) and reach up to £500 (US$850) for a custom ghost-hunting kit. (Negative Ionizer Ghost Containment packs were not listed.)

I asked Cook what, exactly, the scientific rationale was behind the equipment he sold.

"At a haunted location," Cook said, "strong, erratic fluctuating EMFs are commonly found. It seems these energy fields have some definite connection to the presence of ghosts. The exact nature of that connection is still a mystery. However, the anomalous fields are easy to find. Whenever you locate one, a ghost might be present.... any erratic EMF fluctuations you may detect may indicate ghostly activity."

In the final analysis, Cook admitted, "there exists no device that can conclusively detect ghosts."

Uncomfortable reality

The uncomfortable reality that ghost hunters carefully avoid—the elephant in the tiny, haunted room—is of course that no one has ever shown that any of this equipment actually detects ghosts.

The supposed links between ghosts and electromagnetic fields, low temperatures, radiation, odd photographic images, and so on are based on nothing more than guesses, unproven theories, and wild conjecture. If a device could reliably determine the presence or absence of ghosts, then by definition, ghosts would be proven to exist. I own an EMF meter, but since it's useless for ghost investigations—it finds not spirits but red herrings—I use it in my lectures and seminars as an example of pseudoscience. The most important tools in this or any investigation are a questioning mind and a solid understanding of scientific principles.

The ghost hunters' anti-scientific illogic is clear: if one area of a home is colder than another, that may indicate a ghost; if an EMF meter detects a field, that too may be a ghost; if dowsing rods cross, that might be a ghost. Just about any "anomaly," anything that anyone considers odd for any reason, from an undetermined sound to a "bad feeling" to a blurry photo, can be (and has been) considered evidence of ghosts.

I was even at one investigation where a ghost supposedly caused a person's mild headache. Because the standard of evidence is so low, it's little wonder that ghost hunters often find "evidence" (but never proof) of ghosts. 

Reality check

The whole idea of ghosts runs into trouble as soon as a little logic is applied.

There's not even agreement on what ghosts are—or might be. A common claim is that ghosts are spirits of the dead who have been wronged or murdered. Let's inject some real-world statistics into that assumption and see what we get.

If murder victims whose killings remains unsolved are truly destined to walk the earth and haunt the living, then we should expect to encounter ghosts nearly everywhere. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, roughly a quarter of all homicides remains unsolved each year. (In fact, fewer homicides are solved now than in the past; in 1976, 79 percent of homicides were cleared, down to 64 percent in 2002.) There are about 30,000 homicides in America each year.

Using the most recent numbers, that's about 11,000 unsolved murders per year, and 110,000 over the course of only ten years, and probably well over million over the course of the twentieth century in America alone.

Where are all the ghosts?

And why aren't they helping to bring their killers to justice, with so many crimes unsolved? Why would they hang out in scary mansions instead of directing police to evidence that would avenge their murders?

For that matter, why are ghosts seen wearing clothing? It's one thing to suggest that a person's spirit has a soul that can be seen after death; but do shoes, coats, hats, and belts also have souls? Logically, ghosts should appear naked. The fact that they don't suggests that people's ideas of what ghosts are—and what they look like—are strongly influenced by social and cultural expectations. (For an excellent discussion of this, see Richard Finucane's book "Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead & Cultural Transformation.")

If ghosts exist, why are we no closer to finding out what they really are, after so much research?

The evidence for ghosts is no better today than it was a year ago, a decade ago, or a century ago. Ultimately, ghost hunting is not about the evidence (if it was, the search would have been abandoned long ago). Instead, it's about having fun with friends, telling ghost stories, and the enjoyment of pretending you are searching the edge of the unknown. (It's also about making money selling "Ghost Hunters" T-shirts, books, and videos.) Ghost hunters may be spinning their wheels, but at least they are enjoying the ride.

Benjamin Radford, of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine, has investigated ghosts and the paranormal for over a decade; you can read one of his haunted house investigations here.

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Believe it or not, higher education is linked to a greater tendency to believe in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, according to a new study.

Contrary to researchers' expectations, a poll of 439 college students found seniors and grad students were more likely than freshmen to believe in haunted houses, psychics, telepathy, channeling and a host of other questionable ideas.

The results are detailed in the January-February issue of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

'Not Sure'

The survey was modeled after a nationwide Gallup Poll in 2001 that found younger Americans far more likely to believe in the paranormal than older respondents.

The new study was done by Bryan Farha at Oklahoma City University and Gary Steward Jr. of the University of Central Oklahoma.

In general college students checked the "Believe" box less than the general population surveyed by Gallup. But the lack of "Don't Believe" responses among college students was lower for six of the 13 categories: psychic or spiritual healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, ghosts, clairvoyance and witches. That means a higher percentage of college students put themselves in the "Not Sure" column on these topics. [Table of results]

Less skeptical

More significantly, the new survey reveals college is not necessarily a path to skepticism in these realms.

While 23 percent of college freshmen expressed a general belief in paranormal concepts—from astrology to communicating with the dead—31 percent of seniors did so and the figure jumped to 34 percent among graduate students.

"As people attain higher college-education levels, the likelihood of believing in paranormal dimensions increases," Farha and Steward write.

The media are likely responsible for some people's beliefs in alien abductions and other paranormal concepts, the scientists write, based on their survey of existing studies. And some people tend to selectively confirm whatever ideas might be in their heads. Even smart people might believe in something offbeat because, in part, they're good at defending whatever they believe.

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