Tough questions for ‘ghost busters’

As a physics professor and someone who has actually investigated some paranormal claims in a serious manner (and never once encountering a “ghost”), I was struck by how much the Daily Herald’s Halloween article “Harper class teaches the finer points of ghost busting” left out of any kind of skeptical view on the topic.

In the continuing education class run by Mary Marshall, she puts on display all kinds of interesting technical gadgetry that ghost hunters use. But, apparently, one thing she doesn’t do is explain to her students exactly how these devices work.

For example, ghost hunters make a big deal out of using EMF meters to “detect ghosts”, yet what these meters actually detect are electromagnetic waves. These waves are given off by pretty much any kind of electrical circuitry, which is ubiquitous in all houses (“haunted” or otherwise).

Did Ms. Marshall bother to teach this annoying fact to her students, or did she do as too many self-proclaimed paranormal investigators do and simply allow them to believe that any reading on an EMF meter could be a “ghost signal”?

I have three questions to ask:

1. What exactly is a “ghost”? How does one specifically define such a thing?

2. What are the physical mechanisms by which a ghost is supposed to interact with the universe around it?

3. What sort of protocols are there to distinguish a legitimate “ghost signal” from any other physical phenomena which could give the same kind of signal?

I have put these questions to ghost hunters before, and they have admitted openly that they do not have any adequate answers. In the end, all they seem to do is talk techno-babble and spin tall-tales.

And talk is cheap.

Matthew Lowry

Vernon Hills