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| How do chains stay on a ghost? |
Faithful readers of this blog (all two of you) know that in previous posts there has been a lot of discussion (complaining, on my part) about the lack of activity that our last few investigations has turned up. While this fact may be disheartening to a professional ghost hunter, we, as group, never make the claim that we are professional (that is, we do not have a television reality show).
So, that fact that there has been enough paranormal activity in the world to fill countless volumes of books, fill up no fewer than five different "haunted" type television shows at any given time, and be the subject of endless legends, tales, word-of-mouth stories, etc., would lead one to believe that random spirits just flitter around in the air waiting to be documented. Well... not exactly.
The collected psychology of our "humanness" (for lack of a better word) makes us believe in a world past our physical realities (dogs, I don't think, have this problem). So, when everyone (by everyone, I mean people) "buys in" to the belief of a world out there that Shakespeare referred to as "The Undiscovered Country" it is a self-fulfilling prophecy that we as people create. In that world, spirits would, indeed, exist. But are they real, or part of our collective subconscious? A lot of people smarter than I have tackled this topic both from a theological and a secular perspective, so I won't even try to rehash those arguments (that's what Google is for).
So, when thinking about the last house we investigated, was it a Gateway to the Underworld? (uh, no...) Did bad things happen in that house? (maybe, but you could say that about almost all houses) Was there evidence of a black, shadowy figure moving across the bedroom? (one person's black, shadowy figure is another person's trick of the light) So what was it? The history of the house had kids playing with Ouija boards. Did that trigger paranormal activity? (we should speak with Hasbro about this...)
In the end, it's a matter of perspective. If a person truly believes something is haunted, then he or she is going to do everything they can to convince others (mostly because that person doesn't want others thinking he or she is crazy). A neutral, third party comes in to investigate. This party has no vested interest in the location, no personal ties, so this party can be objective. Does the owner of the property project his or her belief onto the neutral party? I believe so, in that we are always influenced by emotions and moods of people around us. It's what makes us human. The owner of the property is insistent that things are happening, and, like it or not, the investigative party is swayed by the emotions of the owner. We all buy into the stories (whether true or not).
When a person looks a cloud and sees a horse shape, he will point to his buddy and say "look at that cloud, it's a horse." His buddy will look up and say, "No, it's not a horse, it looks like a Volkswagen." The first person will then say, "No, see, there's the legs, and there's the tail and there's the head. I don't see why you don't see what I see." His buddy will stare at the sky and finally say, "Yes, I suppose that kinda looks like a tail, and that kinda looks like a head." The first person will then fill vindicated that he has convinced his buddy to see what he saw (even if his buddy secretly thinks that the cloud still looks like a Volkswagen). Perspective. People see or hear what they want and then try to convince others they are right.
The point is this. Scooby-Doo never caught a real ghost (and just for clarification purposes, we're talking classic Scooby-Doo, not that crap they put on with Scrappy-Doo in the later years). The idea is that Scooby-Doo and his gang always thought they were chasing a real ghost, no matter how many times they discovered it was a projected image or someone in disguise. They believed it up to the end (when the old man's mask always came off.) Their perspective was that they believed it was real, and they kept going on new investigations despite the fact that they never caught a real ghost.
So... I guess that's us. Pushing onward even though the masks always come off in the end.
