Debate on ghosts is far from dead

By ROBERT DUNN Staff Writer

Published on October 27, 2006

It's the time of year when people may think that that the fleeting glimpse of something in the corner of their eye or that a sound in an empty room might be caused by a restless spirit or otherworldly being.

They might be right, so say some believers. Then again, they may be wrong, according to the scientific method.

Celtic tradition describes Halloween as the holiday when the spirits of the deceased from the previous year return to the plane of the living, leaving people with the only option but to dress in ghoulish costumes to frighten the ghosts away.

'During this time of year, the veil between worlds is supposed to be thinner than at any other time,' said Katherine Mayfield, a spiritualist and medium from Lake Pleasant.

Mayfield said that her function as a medium is to provide a link between the worlds of the living and the dead, connecting with the world of spirits.

Mayfield said she won't see people or hear actual voices when making spiritual connections, but rather she will get impressions of the personalities or essences of those she's asked to contact.

Mayfield said that she did one reading for a group of three women who had felt a close connection between themselves.

Mayfield determined that the three women had been connected in different ways throughout the past in other lives. In one scenario, the group had lived lives as three men who all knew each other, and Mayfield said she received an impression of one man striking one of the others. In another situation, two of the people were married as man and wife and the third was a close friend of the couple.

Mayfield said that her abilities allow her to bring guidance from the world of the spirits, or to facilitate the grieving process for people who have lost a loved one or even someone with whom they had a difficult relationship.

Professor: Dead tell no tales

It's not people talking to the dead that concerns Salman Hameed; it's when people claim the dead talk back, he said.

Hameed, a professor in the integrated science and humanities department at Hampshire College and an astronomer, teaches a course called 'The Lure of the Paranormal.'

One problem Hameed sees with those who claim to have paranormal abilities is that they are never able to provide any proof of those abilities, he said.

The burden of proof should be on the person making the claim that something is true, not on the audience to prove it's not true, he said.

'I have a pet dragon,' he often tells his classes as an example. 'Can you prove that I don't?'

Just because the class can't disprove the existence of the dragon, doesn't make that dragon real, Hameed said.

Hameed said that in his experience and research, information that mediums provide seems routine, vague and mundane, which is contrary to the drive that makes people seek out mediums in the first place.

It's a sense of wonder, curiosity and a need to make sense of the world that drives peoples' belief in the paranormal, Hameed said, but once people pass on, or their spirit leaves this dimension, that curiosity seems to vanish.

That lack of curiosity seems to affect the mediums as well, Hameed said, because they don't typically fish for information to larger questions.

'How are they communicating? How many people are dead? Are they all there? Where is Alexander the Great's gravesite? Let's say ghosts are real,' Hameed said. 'The number of problems they raise are greater than the number of problems they solve.'

These questions include how a medium can pick one voice out of the presumably billions of spirits that exist, the linguistic issues that seemingly don't apply when communicating with spirits from different eras and parts of the world and why such a phenomenon can't be measured, especially if spirits are, in fact, a form of energy.

Hameed said that it's peoples' ability to fool themselves that makes it easier to believe in a paranormal explanation for an event when a simpler, more scientific explanation may be the case.

Hameed said that a casual belief in the paranormal can be a fun and pleasant diversion, but it's when people begin to make life decisions based on the advice of someone who claims to have psychic abilities that he becomes concerned.

People once used astrology to predict the weather, as a medicinal aide and to explain fire, as well as a way to figure out their personal lives, Hameed said.

Science can't help with that last part, though.

'Personal lives are still too complicated,' Hameed said.

Robert Dunn can be reached at RDunn@gazettenet.com.