A while back I wrote a post called Top 10 Reasons Ghosts Don’t Exist. It remains, without question, the most popular thing I’ve written on this site. Thank you to everyone who has read it!
I recently re-read my own article and found my arguments to be a bit weaker than I remembered, and this meant that I had to go back to the drawing board and bolster my thoughts. With that in mind, I decided I’d throw a few more reasons onto the pile to make my point even clearer.
11. Ghosts in Space
I mentioned briefly in my last post on the topic that I found it convenient that ghosts only seem to appear in places that are haunted; that it was odd how if you tell someone place isn’t haunted, they don’t seem to report supernatural activity there. An important question associated with this is, “What is a place?” It may seem like a stupid thing to ask at first. You give latitude and longitude and bam, you’ve got a location. Right? Not so fast! We’re literally never in the same place twice. Our planet is rotating through space in our solar system, which is orbiting the center of our galaxy which, in turn, is moving through space at unimaginable speed. Dispute all of these facts if you wish, but then you start to sound like the people that spent their free time accusing people of heresy.
So what does that have to do with ghosts? Well, the important thing is where do you find a ghost? When someone dies, does the spirit remember the location of their death? Relative to what? Landmarks? One answer I’ve heard is that ghosts haunt *things*. That’s right, that ghosts are somehow attached, or ingrained in stuff around us like a residue; buildings, appliances, cemeteries, etc.. Does that mean we could simply move a ghost problem somewhere else by picking up all of the haunted stuff and just…shifting it? This completely trivializes the entire notion. Watch out mom! There’s a poltergeist! Don’t worry honey I’m just going to move this scary old painting outside and he’ll go way.
12. Lonely Witnesses
Remember that time a ghost showed up in the middle of the Super Bowl halftime show, and millions of people saw it all at once? No? Neither do I. Because it never happened, and it never will happen. The thing about ghosts is that the seem to appear most frequently to people who are completely alone. Surprise! People’s best ghost stories take place when there are no other witnesses. Go figure. Come up with a counter example that has video evidence to go along with it, and I’ll eat my hat. Something tells me my hat isn’t in any danger.
13. A Smart Guy Told ME
Lots of people say things like, “Albert Einstein believed in ghosts!” Or “Alex Trebek claims he was abducted by free-masons and imprisoned in a Nazi submarine base in Antarctica!” Ok, good for them. Just because a smart person says something, that doesn’t mean it’s true. It certainly doesn’t mean they’re an expert on it. If Neil deGrasse Tyson wanted to explain the intricacies of surveying the sky with a radio telescope, I’d be all ears, but if he started describing the time he saw a dinosaur in central park, I’d have my doubts. Albert Einstein and Alex Trebek never said those things, and they never would. Nor would Neil deGrasse Tyson every claim to have seen a dinosaur. There isn’t a single credible source for evidence of the paranormal. Does that mean the right person hasn’t found it yet? Ghosts have existed in human culture for thousands of years. If something so prevalent hasn’t been proven as real by this point, I would go as far as saying it doesn’t exist at all.
14. Well maybe with More funding…
If there were an overwhelming number of scientists claiming that supernatural phenomenon were legitimate topics for research, it still wouldn’t mean ghosts exist. It would simply mean that there might be the slimmest chance that someone might have the inclination it were worth researching as a possibility. It’s a fact that there are not an overwhelming number of scientists claiming that supernatural phenomenon are legitimate topics for research. What does that tell you?
Well there’s a reason you won’t find scientists working on this problem: ghosts are an unfalsifiable claim. You can’t research and prove the existing of something that you cannot prove does not exist. Falsifiability is the core of the scientific process. If you can’t come up with an experiment to disprove the existence of something, you can’t argue that it exists at all. Anyone who has come up with such an experiment should (please!) put it in the comments.
15. IF Ghosts, Then What?
Ask a reasonable person if fairies and goblins exist and they’ll say no. Ask them if ghosts exist, and they might very-well say yes. But if ghosts exist, why not all manner of other things? Why aren’t we plagued by monsters and sorcerers everyday? Why would the one supernatural phenomenon we experience be ghosts? Who gets to decide which weird things are real, and which aren’t? A man with ten heads? A talking horse? The Loch Ness monster? Why dismiss any of these if we’re going to accept ghosts as a possibility? The answer to these questions is that we shouldn’t. Ghosts fall into the same category as mermaids and bigfoot; complete nonsense with no backing. But there’s something so alluring about the subject, something spiritual (pun intended) about ghosts which makes people almost feel offended by the idea that they aren’t real. To this I say: grownups shouldn’t be afraid to say they thing something is silly. If it seems childish and ridiculous in the back of your head, that’s probably because it is. Ghosts are just that. No amount of blurry night vision footage of some bros screaming at shadows can change that. If we want to accept ghosts as a possibility, the wheels come off of the logic bus completely. Nothing else makes sense anymore if they’re real. If ghosts, then what?
Conclusion
I hope this gave you some food for thought and some critical thinking tools. The case is certainly not closed, because it can’t be. But there’s a lot of nails in the coffin, and the dead will not be rising from this grave. Ghosts are not real. Check under your bed tonight, but for bed bugs, not ghosts.
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I don’t think ghosts can survive space.
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How can a ghost “survive” anywhere? Aren’t they dead already? Doesn’t this question imply there’s something missing from the way we frame the entire concept?
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I love this. Thank you so, so much for posting it.
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Interesting article. I like keeping an open mind on this topic.
You know what would also help your argument – why don’t you visit a supposedly “haunted” place and see what you find? I’m curious why some nonbelievers have yet done this or stated in their arguments. Are they scared? Are they just lazy and don’t want to add validity to their arguments? If they don’t believe in ghosts then staying alone should be no problem, right? Just bring something along to kill the time Oh! and don’t forget to document it. This would have to be done serval times though, not just once.
Until a person has experienced an event that defies physics and logic…only then do some think twice of perhaps the existence of something beyond this physical world. I don’t know why others seem to ‘experience or witness’ a spirit and others have never seen one – or never will. I’m waiting for a concrete study as well that disproves the existence of ghosts, yet there is not one. Vice versa. There’s so much of our physical world that we don’t know or have yet discovered, and we’re trying to comprehend a ‘spirit world’?
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I’ve had a number of experiences that seemed “paranormal” and yet I still don’t believe it had anything to do with ghosts. I’m not lazy or scared, it’s just that the burden of proof isn’t on the non-believer.
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I think reality tv is trumping scientific thought in modern culture. 😉 I think it’s a form of that Munchausen’s by Proxy disease.
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Not sure what you mean by this, but reality TV is certainly affecting modern thought (or lack thereof) on the matter.
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Nah look, hes right, the mind is a damn powerful thing, it will make you physically see what you want to see or that fear in your head. As he said, its simple psychology, science has explqined why you vividly see these things so theres not counter argument until you disprove that. Simple. However, a wise man knows that he knows nothing, there is an extremely high chance proven by pretty advanced studies that your life and everything in the universe is just a simulation for a superior race. Scientists say that since our time as humans on this earth, we have advanced in technology rather slow due to religion and basic human nature. It is entirely possible that an advanced race, much older than our ours, has created a simulation where the AI (artificial intelligence, aka us.) Has complete autonomy, meaining it has its own life in a simulation whilst believing with every fiber of their being that what the perceive as life is actually nothing more than a computer game for a much more technologically advance race. You cannot be sure of anything.
(P.s if you are stoned, this is gonna blow your mind.
Also, im pretty sure I read that theres a 1 in 6 billion chance that we are in our true reality, not a simulation. 🙂
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Just don’t smoke and drive my friend.
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I’ve read that we likely live in a simulation, mostly because everything that makes up material is actually quite spacious, and that most things can be broken down into data. But I don’t remember ever seeing that we’re basically sims to a superior race.
Likely it’s more that the way our brain perceives the world is not how the world is. Similar to how so many think technology, computers and AI are these new things so different from us. They are all made in our and natures image. It’s all natural because it exists. We can’t make something out of thin air, we have to have inspiration and knowledge before we can bend it with something else to make something new.
Sort of an art reflects life, or life reflects art.
Art reflects life.
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It seems more likely that we exist inside a simulation than that ghosts exist. Thanks for your comments.
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People want proof of an after life. A good part of the reason I used to think they might be real. The more I learn, the more that possibility is very unlikely and that we’d be better off learning to preserve ourselves and acknowledge that aging is actually a disease.
Ghosts give people hope that things don’t end after death, even if they are evil ghosts. That is why they are more popular than goblins or fairies. Same goes for religion being taken seriously, but not the Lochness monster or unicorns, which given the info we have now, are far far more likely. There are deer with fangs, I see no reason that at some point a horse developed a deformity or possibly evolution based attribute that looked like a horn, and because it was rare, it became fantastical, because humans have this weird fetish with things that are rare, as if by being rare, they must have value, which is ridiculous, but there you go.
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Ghosts are generally tied to some sort of religious construct, so in that regard I believe you’re correct that they’re a symbol of hope. For myself, I wish that ghosts existed because it would imply that there is much more to our little world to explore, and that life and death aren’t binary concepts. I will always hold that hope, even though I am willing to accept that it’s baseless, scientifically speaking.
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Sir I also not believe in ghosts like you.But what will be your answer if I ask you does god exist.Definitely,Your answer will be yes.So,Why do you not believe in ghosts if you believe in god.there is no any proof of god’s existense too and all your reasons about not believing in ghosts also fit on not believing in god
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It’s impossible to undermine true faith. That isn’t my goal. Instead, I wish for people to see that faith and knowledge aren’t the same thing, and that they can productively coexist. There will always be mysteries in our universe, and if you wish to assign them to a deity, I encourage that, as long as it doesn’t keep you from seeking scientific answers to questions.
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I have read all 15 of your reasons, and I didn’t see my best reason to conclude that ghosts are impossible.
Humans require a brain in order to see and think and move 9ask a blind person). Humans requires working eye parts and ear parts in order to have vision and hearing (ask any deaf person). Humans require a functioning muscular/ skeletal structure in order to move.
A ghost could not receive sound waves, or light or even move, therefore they are impossible
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