What Are Ghosts?

photo by Steve Donna Omeara

One common misconception about ghosts is the idea that they are spirits. People also debate that they are hallucinations, misperceptions, replays, etc. But the truth is, ghosts are a multiple cause phenomena, meaning different sightings have different causes.

Some ghost sightings are caused by hallucination, misperception, coincidence, etc, and this explains how, in different cases, they display very different characteristics. A witness may supposedly interact with a ghost caused by hallucination, but with misperception, this will not happen. 

So with that said, there is a problem in looking for a single explanation for all ghost sightings. Overall, the evidence is very contradictory, and this makes it impossible to come up with a single testable theory to explain everything. But if different explanations are considered, we can now realize that "ghost" actually refers to a number of phenomena that results in people seeing human (or animal) figures.

**Did you know:
Very few ghosts can be easily identified as an actual person, past or present. And although the 'spirit' theory is a popular assumption, there is little evidence to support the idea that ghosts are people who were once associated with a haunted location.

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