The Hollywood apparitions.

There are two basic types of 'ghost'.

One is the spirit of a dead person. That type might try to communicate, and it's the type that many so-called mediums claim to communicate with. However, remember that statistically, 98% of people are too stupid to join MENSA, and many of those who do join MENSA aren't all that bright. Death does not improve IQ. But I digress... that issue is for another post.

The other type, the 'recording', is simply an impression left on the environment by some highly-charged event. Emotions, if you like, imprinted on the stone of walls or even of the earth beneath our feet. I'm not going to speculate on how it works because I really have no idea of the mechanisms behind it.

It does work, that's all that matters at this stage. Repetitive appearances, often under atmospherically charged conditions such as thunderstorms or at the same time each year, are numerous and well documented. Many ghosthunters waste their time with these 'Hollywood'-style recordings, thinking them important.

They are important, but not to the true ghosthunter. They are entertainment, nothing more. Leave them to the physicists, to the people who might be able to find the mechanism behind them.

Those recordings are worthless as evidence of ghosts, or of an afterlife. They are not spirit manifestations. They are recordings. Their only value to the parapsychologist is as a test for mediums. If a medium claims to make contact with one of the characters depicted in this kind of apparition, they are fake. They might as well claim to make contact with Groucho Marx while watching 'Duck Soup'.

Don't waste time on these apparitions. They are as much use as evidence of the survival of the soul after death as a DVD of 'Jailhouse Rock' is as evidence that Elvis is still alive.

He's not, by the way.