Swiss scientists have concluded that ghosts are an illusion of the mind. The scientists conjured up artificial apparitions, or a “feeling of presence”, so convincing and disturbing that some participants in the experiment asked for it to stop.
Cue the “science bit” about how mentally unstable or stressed people can lose track of the location of their body, which gives them the feeling that someone or something else is there with them. There was also some stuff about robot arms tapping people on the shoulder, out of sync, which all sounds very academic and intellectual and not sub-Scooby-Doo, or a risible waste of money, at all.
What these scientists don’t seem to have factored in is the concept of self-willed gullibility, in that some people actively enjoy believing in ghosts and won’t be talked out of it. I’m not referring to those awful con-artist mediums who pretend that they can speak to the dead, mentally torturing grieving relatives. This is about people who believe in ghosts for their own innocent, spine-tingling entertainment and wouldn’t necessarily need them to be proved or disproved.
There is a part of the human psyche that prefers to remain a gasping, tantalised idiot. When I see the spooky twins appear in the corridor in The Shining, I don’t want someone in a lab coat appearing in a corner of the screen, explaining just why this could never really happen.
In the same way, no one ever got on to a ghost train wishing that someone would turn the lights right up and spoil the whole thing. Sometimes it’s not that people are credulous, rather that they’re happy to go along with believing, for personal entertainment purposes. Science needs to go away and stop trying to spoil everyone’s fun.
