Bringing a Philosopher’s Mind to Paranormal Research
Saying that I’m a skeptic is not strong enough.
The logic of the universe suggests that consciousness does not survive the death of the body. A mind needs a body in order to process sensory input. If consciousness does survive death, then the experience of the nonphysical mind must be so different from the experiences of life as to defy explanation or translation.
Then there’s the trouble of how we quantify the paranormal. Science is designed to study the physical universe. According to current definitions, the paranormal is at least partially nonphysical. We have no science for that. Studying the paranormal cannot be a scientific endeavor because ghosts refuse to manifest in laboratory settings. Findings are impossible to replicate. No evidence is free from human error.
But maybe science isn’t everything.
Every culture with a recorded history tells stories of encounters with entities that seem to defy the physical laws of the known world. Even more interesting is that, independently of one another, these cultures have described such encounters in similar ways: as interactions with the dead and as encounters with nonhuman beings. Seeing a ghost is incredibly common.
In my day job I am a professor of philosophy and religious studies at an undergraduate institution in the United States. I have dedicated my professional life to studying human experience and the search for truth and meaning. I became interested in paranormal investigation in 2014 after I’d completed my doctorate and had some free time on my hands. I joined a local paranormal research team.
I looked specifically for a team of skeptics trained to debunk before believing. We do not have psychic mediums or sensitives on the team because it is impossible to verify their hunches scientifically. While we do consider information from psychics on occasion, their information must be validated by additional sources before we accept it as evidence. While I believe that most people claiming to be sensitive to extra-sensory realities are good and honest people, my experience is that two mediums turned loose in the same place often come up with different and contradictory information.
Our team files any subjective experience in the “interesting” category. Evidence, to us, must be captured by at least two sources, and we utilize human senses, recording devices, and environmental detectors like tri-field meters or electromagnetic field readers.
The first interesting experience I had occurred when my team investigated a government building in my hometown. One thing the janitorial staff reported is that they are lightly touched while cleaning late at night. This most often happens to female members of their crew and is often a light brush or tap, usually on the neck or arm.
Three investigators, myself included, took seats in a large auditorium in the building. One investigator stationed himself to my right several rows over, and the other investigator sat a few rows in front of me. I had long hair and always piled it up in a tight knot when investigating since many photographic anomalies are actually the hair of the person taking the picture. I wore a long-sleeved T-shirt.
Sitting in the dark, almost drowsy, I woke up quickly when something touched the back of my neck. It felt like a light fingertip dragged a couple of inches down from my hairline. Assuming that my collar had ridden up or that hair had worked loose, I reached back…and encountered nothing. My shirt was well below the place I’d felt the touch and my hair remained tightly wound.
I alerted my colleagues and both of them examined my neck and the surrounding area for anything that could have touched me. There seemed to be nothing. I traded seats with the other female investigator, and we invited anything present to touch one of us again. Nothing happened. We did determine that a light breeze came from the HVAC system but nothing strong enough to replicate a touch.
“Do you believe now?” my male colleague teased gently.
“No,” I said. “It was a subjective experience. I cannot rule out that it was something physical: hair, a spider web, my shirt, the breeze in the room.”
The next experience of touching was more dramatic. The team traveled to a fascinating location: a decommissioned hospital that has been turned into a haunted Halloween attraction. You know the type: locals pay to be chased by ghouls and zombies for a good scare. The building also has a reputation for being haunted, and the owners open it for ghost tours the rest of the year to generate income when it’s not Halloween season. It’s a haunted haunted house.
One of the reports is of an entity the owners call “the guardian.” This being manifests as a shadow figure, moves objects, and is known to scratch people, often women. He usually hangs out in one area of the building.
We’d been investigating in that area for a couple of hours with no luck. Nothing had happened at all, so we decided to relocate to another room a short distance away. Just as we settled down in the new location, I became aware of a burning between my shoulder blades. I had my two colleagues look at my back. A long scratch ran from one shoulder blade to the other.
As luck would have it, we had a camera positioned on our location and I am clearly visible in the footage. There is nothing in the area that could have caused the scratch. Even more interesting is the fact that the building was cold, so I wore a tank top, a long-sleeved shirt, and a thick hoodie. Furthermore, the location of the scratch was on the one part of my body that I cannot easily reach. The horizontal nature of the wound, from shoulder to shoulder, is impossible for me to make myself.
“Still a skeptic?” my colleague joked.
“Yes,” I said. “It could have been caused by brushing against something.”
He rolled his eyes.
In my years on this planet, I have played with a spirit board (often marketed as Ouija boards) a few times. Nothing has ever happened other than a few random moves of the planchette easily explained by the muscle spasms of the people touching the board.
Until this year.
I had the opportunity to visit the notorious Villisca Ax Murder House in Villisca, Iowa. (I name this location specifically because it is a museum that charges for the opportunity to investigate.) In 1912 eight people, two adults and six children, were murdered with an ax in the home. The murders have never been solved.
Five of us spent most of an afternoon and night in the house. One of the devices we employed was a spirit board.
Three of the team, myself included, placed a couple of fingers on the planchette. A fourth member filmed with a night-vision full-spectrum camera. The fifth member observed. The three people using the board employed blindfolds, despite the house being so dark that we could really only see the outline of the board. I led off the questioning.
Unlike previous experiments with this tool, the planchette leaped to life. I did not feel like I was pushing it so much as my fingers were pulled, struggling to keep up. I asked a series of questions:
“How old are you?” seven
Are you male? yes
Are you female? no
What is the first letter of your first name? T
Is your name Thomas? yes
Do people call you Thomas? no
Do they call you by a nickname? yes
Do people call you Tommy? no
Do they call you Tom? yes
Did you live in this house? no
Did you die in this house? no
Did you live next door? yes
Are you buried in the town cemetery? yes
What is the first letter of your last name? V
I paused. These answers came quickly and with no hesitation. I felt confident that none of my colleagues were consciously moving the planchette on the board. But what of the unconscious?
I called to the colleague observing and asked him to please hold up between zero and ten fingers behind his back. He readily complied and our colleague with the camera verified the number.
How many fingers is the nice man holding up? Nine
“Is that correct?” I asked.
“It is,” replied my colleague.
I felt a tingle work its way down my back. “That was excellent!” I said. “Let’s play again.”
Once again my colleague held up a number of fingers and had it verified with the camera. Once again I asked how many fingers. A second time the board got it right: two.
“Don’t tell me you’re still a skeptic,” my colleague said.
I hesitated. Counting zero as a number, there is a nine percent chance of selecting a number between zero and ten correctly. If I were playing a game of chance, it would not be a safe bet that someone could randomly guess the right answer. Possible? Yes. Probable? Absolutely not.
The next day, I confirmed that there are forty-seven people with the first name Thomas buried in the Villisca cemetery. None of them have family names beginning with the letter V. None of them died at the age of seven.
I have never seen a shadow figure with my own eyes. I have never heard an electronic voice phenomenon that I can say with absolutely certainty is not atmospheric contamination. I have never seen an object move in front of me.
There is so much about this universe that remains unknown. The possibility that consciousness can survive the death of the body, while inexplicable, is conceivable. There may well be nonhuman entities that do not conform to physicality. I don’t know what touched me or scratched me. I don’t know what made the planchette move. I remain confident that whatever did these things has a scientific explanation. These phenomena may have been caused by air movement, snagging on an object, and the unconscious movements of our team combined with a dollop of coincidence.
Or these experiences may be encounters with entities that continue to defy explanation. It is unquestionably true that many people have had similar experiences and explained them in similar ways: as encounters with ghostly beings. I find the terms “supernatural” or “paranormal” to be misnomers: nothing is beyond nature. Whatever these phenomena are, they are real and have consistent and logical explanations.
So, yes, I am still a skeptic. But maybe not as much.