Finding answers, part 1

Everyone likes to see a definitive, uncontroversial answer backed up by uncontestable evidence. That’s only natural. I like to see that too.

In the sphere of physics, we have gravity. Throw something up, it falls back down. It can be proved as many times as you like.

In chemistry, we can react two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. The result is water. Always. Every time.

In biology, if two horses mate, the result is another horse. Not a leopard, not a frog, not a vulture. A horse. Every time.

I sometimes wish I worked in one of those sciences.

What I do isn’t even accepted as science by many of the blinkered philistines who beam their hideous, pompous, smug grins while declaring the paranormal to be all a fantasy—but enough of that. I don’t want to get distracted into another rant. Not this time, anyway.

Investigating the paranormal is unlike any other science, in that we have no means to prove, beyond all doubt, that what we study is there.

I’ve seen it. Many others have seen it. So far, it has proved impossible to film it, photograph it, record it, in any way that a fundie sceptic cannot replicate using modern technology. There are ghost photographs, films of moving objects, recordings of EVP’s that are not fake. They could be faked using modern technology, and that’s enough for the sceptics to discount and ignore them.

We cannot catch a ghost in a box—and I would oppose any attempt to do that—nor can we show where this spirit realm lies. We can’t go there unless we die. Then we can’t come back and relate our experiences. Even those who have had near-death experiences have seen them poo-poohed and ridiculed. The nearest things we have to eyewitness accounts are simply ignored.

So far, there has been no way to absolutely prove the existence of ghosts. We might not be using the right instruments, but we don’t know which alternative instruments to use. Suppose I was a physicist and wanted to study a hypothetical particle, such as the Higgs boson. This has not been proved to exist, its presence is inferred from observation. I could then receive vast funding for an enormous particle accelerator which might—or might not—prove the existence of this particle.

The evidence for the possible existence of the Higgs boson is decades old. The evidence for the possible existence of the paranormal spans millennia. One is hailed as a great potential discovery worthy of study. The other is dismissed as superstition, witchcraft, the rantings of diseased minds.

There must be a lot of diseased minds out there. Strange how so many of them hallucinate the same things, isn’t it?

Paranormal investigators are not cranks. Well, okay, there are some, but the cranks don’t usually last long. Those who stick at it will find something. It might take a long time, but it will happen. A voice, an image on film, an object moving on its own, something will show itself if you persist.

Then you’ll know. Then you’ll see how hard it is to convince anyone else. The only way, currently, to be convinced is to see it for yourself. It comes as a shock to realise that. As a former sceptic, I speak from experience.

Many investigators keep their identities secret to avoid the prejudice of the sceptic. The investigator takes the paranormal seriously, but is aware of the ridicule and possible shunning they will experience if they reveal their vocation.

It’s a thankless job, in many ways.