Ghosts From Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal

by Erin Gilbert

  Old-School Methods for Attracting the Paranormal

  Frankly, we’re dubious about most traditional methods for communicating with ghosts. There’s no empirical evidence that any of these methods work—at least not as they’re supposed to. It’s possible that a ghost or two has dropped by during a Ouija board session, which would be a little like a ten-point buck aimlessly wandering into a deer hunter’s backyard. Old-school methods of attracting the paranormal are particularly vulnerable to manipulation by con artists and those seeking to make ghosts “appear” for profit or gain, so it’s still important that we review them before moving on to discussion of newer methods.

  Rituals and Spells: When Thomas Perks followed the steps in the ancient book of black magic to conjure spirits, he was performing a ritual. Rituals and spells might involve incantations, gestures, or other activities, usually performed within a specific order to achieve a desired result (in this case, the luring of spirits into our world). They may also require special objects. Potions associated with rituals and spells usually require difficult-to-obtain ingredients. While there are documented cases of rituals or spells working—see the Class V case study on the Zugspitze Terror—they are, by and large, ineffectual. There isn’t a page in The Big Book of Blasphemy that hasn’t been read aloud by hundreds of would-be conjurers. Only rarely do such gambits work. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to get hit by lightning. Which is actually much safer than conjuring, to be honest.

  Séances: From the French word for “session.” As we’ve stated elsewhere, séances and other such efforts to contact ghosts have been exploited by frauds. It takes more than a dark roomful of six to ten people holding hands to “conjure” a ghost—otherwise, scientists would have long ago called up ghosts in laboratory settings, and you’d be reading their book, not ours.

  Ouija Boards: Originally known as “talking boards” and “spirit boards,” these cardboard or wooden boards are used to communicate with the dead via a form of assisted automatic writing. Ouija boards come preprinted with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0–9, and the words yes, no, and good-bye. Sitters, working in a group, collectively rest their fingers lightly on a small, heart-shaped device called a planchette. Spirits guide the users’ hands, directing the planchette around the board to spell out messages and answer questions. Many studies have shown that these “spirits” are actually unconscious muscle movements on the part of the sitters, but that hasn’t slowed Ouija board sales.

  Allegedly based on ancient Fu Ji divination boards used in China around 1,100 BC, modern versions of the Ouija board first appeared during the nineteenth-century spiritualist movement. They are now sold in toy stores and novelty shops by Hasbro, which has trademarked the name “Ouija” (if that tells you anything about the authenticity of such boards).

  We’re not saying they can’t be used to communicate with spirits, but what kind of ghost is really going to want to talk to a bunch of fourteen-year-old girls at a slumber party asking questions about their crushes? Actually, that’s super creepy to think about.

  New-School Methods for Attracting the Paranormal

  While traditional methods may occasionally work in spite of themselves, it takes a lot more than a board game from Toys “R” Us or a mass-market paperback of An Introduction to Ritual Summoning to reach into the spirit world. It requires the application of science.

  Ghost Boxes: Late in Thomas Edison’s career, the brilliant inventor began work on a device to contact spirits on the other side. Although he called his would-be invention a “life-unit detector,” parapsychologists have come to call such communication devices “ghost boxes.”

  Scientists and clergy alike warned Edison not to turn his sizable genius on the question of the afterlife, advising him against trespassing “on lands not his own.” In a New York Times interview in 1921, Edison dismissed the collective concerns about his ghost box, which was still in the blueprint stages.

  “I am conducting a laboratory experiment,” he said matter-of-factly. He explained that his device would not only be able to detect the disembodied soul—or “life units,” in his parlance—but it would pave the way for two-way communication with the dead. He envisioned permanently establishing a line of communication between dimensions.

  “If personality exists after what we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave the Earth would like to communicate with those they have left here,” he wrote in Scientific American. He vowed not to release more details until he achieved positive results.

  Unfortunately, he passed away before unveiling his ghost box. His plans were never found, leaving generations of paranormal investigators to speculate on whether or not Edison ever progressed on the project—and if so, what the results of his testing revealed.

  Hundreds of inventors have attempted to make ghost boxes since then. No one has come close to a working model allowing for communication with spirits in the spectral ether. Radio-frequency-based devices are sometimes sold as “ghost boxes,” but these knock-off devices are generally limited to picking up transmissions from spirits that have already manifested on this side of the barrier—potentially useful for EVP, but worthless when it comes to reaching the great beyond.

  What would it take for a line of communication to be established between our world and the next? And would a working ghost box allow paranormal researchers to lure spectral entities across the barrier for experimentation?

  Edison once boasted that there were “half a dozen ways” of approaching the task. Based upon the unfinished nature of his work, however, he must have been missing some key information on the nature of the paranormal that prevented him from developing a working prototype. The missing information, we conjecture, is Spectral Field Theory. Specifically, the covariance of ████████ ████ ███ ██ ███████ █████ ███████ ████████ ██ ███ █████ ███ ██ ████ ███ ███████ ██ ██████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ██████ ████ ████ ██ █████ ████ ████ ███ ████████ █████ ███ ███ ████ ███ █████ ██ █████ ██ █████████ ███ ████ ████████ ███ ██ ████ █████ █████ ███ ████

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  UPDATE TO THE REVISED EDITION

  Unfortunately, we’ve been forced to redact large portions of this chapter. We would love—LOVE!—to share all of our research with you, but it’s simply not possible. Blacking things out is the best compromise we could come up with to me
morialize our work without, you know, watching someone else use it for malicious purposes.

  We wish to take this opportunity to express our sincere regret for how our research has been used in the past. We never intended for Spectral Field Theory—and, specifically, our critiques of conjuring—to be used by some deranged bellhop in an attempt to bring about the end of the world. SCREW YOU, ROWAN. SERIOUSLY. SCREW YOU.

  While our attorneys don’t want us to get any further into that unpleasant business, suffice to say we learned an important lesson the hard way. Which is not as much fun as learning lessons the easy way—through all-night study sessions. There’s just something about Chinese food and multiple liters of off-brand pop that softens your brain up so you can cram knowledge in there. Maybe the MSG and caffeine work in combination to break down the soft tissue of the brain, allowing— You know what? Let’s let a neurologist work on that one. We’re going to stick to what we know best: physics and the paranormal.

  If you find a copy of the previous edition of this book, we would advise you to destroy it. Toss it in the recycling bin. Or better yet, fling it into the fireplace, where you can be sure it goes up in smoke. We know, we know: It sounds bad. We’re advocating book-burning. Book burning is something we generally, vehemently disapprove of. But in this one, isolated case, it’s absolutely necessary.

  A Final Word

  In conclusion, we hope you’ve learned a thing or two (or two hundred!) about the paranormal from Ghosts from Our Past. We’re confident you now have everything you need to conduct your own metaphysical examinations.

  Let us take this moment to thank you for reading. We’re glad you’re still with us. Us ghostheads need to stick together—the path of a metaphysical examiner is not an easy one. Don’t ever, for a second, let anyone convince you that parapsychology is a waste of time. It’s not a “pseudoscience,” as conventionalists would have you believe. It’s a science. As anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “The whole history of scientific advance is full of scientists investigating phenomena that the establishment did not believe were there.”

  We are on the precipice of new and exciting discoveries as a result of Spectral Field Theory. The scientific inquiry into the paranormal has barely begun. Laboratory experiments with spectral particles will happen sooner rather than later; somewhere, a metaphysical examination will at last uncover conclusive proof of a paranormal entity in the wild. Whether you find ghosts or they find you, we wish you luck. Happy hunting!

  New Afterword

  Anyone Can Be a Scientist

  In TV and movies, scientists are typically portrayed as stoic figures in white lab coats and goggles, heating test tubes with Bunsen burners for the fun of it. While the stereotype is mostly fiction, Abby has fond memories of dressing up in her mother’s white chemistry lab coat and torching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with lighters.

  However, that was only one Michigan preteen’s version of science. Yours may vary!

  That’s what makes science so great. You don’t need a lab coat or goggles; you don’t need any specialized equipment.* You don’t even need a degree. America’s First Scientist, Benjamin Franklin, didn’t have a scientific degree. Neither did physicist Michael Faraday, naturalist Charles Darwin, or the Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science, Mary Somerville. If you want to be a scientist, all you need to do is think like one.

  THE GREAT NEWS IS: YOU MAY ALREADY BE DOING THAT.

  When Abby was torching those Ninja Turtles, she was—without even realizing it—following the scientific method. She asked a question: What will happen when I put Leonardo’s face in the flame of a lighter? Next, she formulated a hypothesis: I believe Leonardo’s face will melt. She gathered data: After several seconds in the lighter’s flame, Leonardo’s face melted into a goopy green goo, giving off a sweetly pungent odor, verifying the hypothesis. After repeating the same steps with Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello, Abby had enough data to postulate a theory: THE MELTING POINT OF A NINJA TURTLE IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 761 AND 3,591 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

  These days, Ninja Turtles aren’t so cheap. But that’s okay. Even if you don’t have any money—even if you can’t get a grant, or if your family won’t loan you the dough because they already footed the bill for your undergraduate studies and look where that got you—you can still be a scientist.

  Some of the greatest scientific minds of all time worked from a place of poverty. Einstein was a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office when he published his theories on the photoelectric effect and special relativity, forever changing the course of physics. In fact, he had only taken the job to stave off unemployment as he pursued his schooling. Einstein was so unremarkable at his day job that he was passed over for promotion, something we can all relate to.

  Being terrible at your job doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It just means you haven’t found the right outlet for your unique skillset. Not to unjustly compare ourselves to Albert Einstein or anything, but we’ve been passed over for promotion and fired before. Mostly fired. But if your passion truly lies elsewhere, like in SCIENCE, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll suck at whatever menial minimum-wage position you’re hired for. THAT’S A GOOD THING.

  Now that you know that you can be a scientist if you want to be, the question becomes: What do you study? Ideally, you’ll want to break new ground—to sail uncharted waters, to discover the undiscovered. But is that really possible these days?

  Scientists have been getting more and more specialized in their interests, to the point where somebody can devote an entire career to studying a single giant sequoia. Not to pick on dendrologists again, but that just sounds like a waste of time. Unless the tree is haunted, of course (yes, trees can be possessed). The point remains: Aren’t we running out of things to discover?

  The short answer is “no.”

  The long answer is also “no.”

  There’s still plenty of things we don’t know, both large and small. We don’t know why knuckles crack. We don’t know how cats fart without butt cheeks. And we certainly don’t have all the answers when it comes to the paranormal.

  Now, your particular passion may lie elsewhere . . . but us? We’re in this ghost business for the long haul. So what if paranormal investigators continue to be relegated to second-class status in the academic community? Is that going to stop us from being Ghostbusters? Hell, no. Nothing can stop us—not even death. Because we’ll do everything in our power to come back to this world and continue our work. Then we’d really be breaking new ground.

  —Erin Gilbert, Ph.D., M.S., and Abby L. Yates, Ph.D.

  * Unless you’re going to be splitting atoms. Then you definitely need specialized equipment.

  Epitaph to the Revised Edition

  When Abby asked me to write the epitaph for the end of this book, I didn’t hesitate to answer. Of course I’d do it. I’ll do anything for a paycheck, as long as it’s not illegal and I don’t have to come to the office on Wednesdays. (I’m flexible on the whole “illegal” thing.)

  I probably should have hesitated, though.

  First, I didn’t even know what an epitaph was. Or was it an “epigraph”? Whatever. Not only had I never written one before, but I hadn’t even read Ghosts from Our Past. They only gave me six months to write the epitaph, which is no time at all when you’re training for a hide-and-seek tournament.

  If you’d given me one guess as to what their book was about, based upon the title, I’d have said it had to do with regret—the way past decisions, much like spirits of the deceased, can haunt us in the present, creating a toxic web of guilt, anxiety, and remorse, which must be untangled and examined so that we can move forward with our lives, unencumbered by our histories, free from the ghosts of our past.

  If I had two guesses, I’d have said the book was probably about actual ghosts. The second option made the most sense, based on all the drawings of ghosts.

  Since I didn’t have time to read Abby and Er
in’s book, I decided to see if it had been made into a movie. It hadn’t, but I knew there were quite a few movies about ghosts out there. Any one would do.

  I asked the girl at the video store which one I should check out. She recommended the one with Patrick Swayze. She also recommended I stream it online, because they “weren’t the type of video store that carries movies like that.” Needless to say, the selection at the Adult Video Superstore in Chelsea wasn’t that “super.”

  Ten minutes into the Swayze movie, I was already in tears. Patty stopped by my desk. She sat down and started crying too. Then Abby and Erin pulled up chairs, and before long Holtzmann joined us. Everyone was sobbing. At the end, we all went our separate ways and never really spoke about what happened. I kind of wanted to talk about the movie. There were a few things I didn’t understand. Was Patrick Swayze’s character really a ghost the entire time? And if so, why would a bar hire a ghost as a bouncer?

  Of course, I never really needed to watch Road House to further my understanding of the paranormal. When you work with the Ghostbusters, you tend to run into ghosts now and again. Occasionally, they even run into you. I have plenty of personal experiences with ghosts to draw on for this epitaph. Unfortunately, I’m saving them for my own ghostbusting memoir, Kevin Knows Kevin.

  In conclusion, I’ll leave you with a few words of wisdom, courtesy of Patrick Swayze: “Be nice . . . until it’s time to not be nice.” He was talking about bar patrons, but it’s also an excellent philosophy for dealing with ghosts. Or clients, who just won’t stop calling when there’s something weird in their neighborhood. For the last time, Mrs. Ellingson, there’s nothing the Ghostbusters can do about the guy on your corner with the cat on his head. Yes, it’s strange. But don’t call us unless he starts floating, okay? The guy, that is. If the cat’s floating, you might want to check with animal control.