Investigating the Paranormal: Ghosts and Hauntings:
A Parapsychology Foundation Forum
Saturday, June 29, 2002

 

 
Three eminent parapsychology investigators, with different backgrounds and approaches to paranormal phenomena, spoke at an excellent half-day workshop, sponsored by the Parapsychology Foundation in New York City. Each investigator placed a different emphasis on aspects of "ghost hunting."
 
Tony Cornell has investigated hauntings, poltergeists, and mediums in England for the last 55 years. He is a graduate of Cambridge University; Vice-President and council member of the Society for Psychical Research in London, and the author of the recently-published book Investigating the Paranormal (Helix Press, 2002) and co-author of the book Poltergeists (1979, with Dr. Alan Gould). He notes in his book, Investigating the Paranormal, that "eight out of ten investigations result in nothing spectacular." Many apparent paranormal phenomena are the result of natural causes, particularly the personality and state of mind of the person experiencing the "haunting." He notes that "imagination, misinterpretation and exaggeration" frequently account for alleged hauntings. Sometimes outright fraud is involved.
 
The Society for Psychical Research emerged during a time when spiritualism was very popular in England. It was founded on a central question: "can science be equated with religion?" Existence after death is a central issue for all religions. The Society for Psychical Research was founded to investigate hauntings believed to be from persons who have died but remain in contact with the living world. After more than 100 years of serious scientific inquiry by SPR and other organizations, what have we established? Well, according to Tony Cornell, "not too much." We have established that there are credible, externally validated paranormal phenomena, but we still cannot explain them. Among other activities, SPR has attempted to apply physics to paranormal phenomena, by attempting in controlled laboratory experiments to duplicate the phenomena observed at a haunted site. They discovered they cannot get the same effects in a lab as they observed in the field, so that they cannot determine the precise physical causes of a haunting. Perhaps the most interesting thing about paranormal research is that death--the great mystery--remains the great mystery, despite the best efforts of dedicated researchers to determine the physical underpinnings of paranormal phenomena. The best that can be said is that the objective reality of hauntings has been documented. However, the cause and effect remain a mystery.
 
So where do we go from here? Tony Cornell's biggest criticism of psychical research conducted on site is that the investigators often go to the site with their minds already made up, based on what has been reported to them in advance or based on their own needs and wishes. He states that an open mind is absolutely critical. Most investigators will see nothing on a visit to a haunted site in at least half of their investigations. He has frequently visited a haunting and seen nothing, only to learn that the haunting resumes after he has left. Like Dr. Holzer, he has worked with mediums and psychics and documented the provenance of hauntings. He accompanied a noted Japanese psychic on a visit to a haunted house. The psychic sensed a young man with evil intent in the house who went across the garden into the house and into a bedroom where he was searching for a gun. The owner had been burglarized by a young man who stole his gun and died shortly afterward in a motorcycle accident. In other cases, the individuals being haunted were under stress for various reasons, misinterpreted natural phenomena, such as plumbing noises, and exaggerated these events into a haunting. Tony has learned not to argue but simply to perform a banishment using symbols relevant to the person's religious or cultural beliefs to give the person some relief from his or her own fears.
 
Tony Cornell answered questions from the audience.
 

 
Q: How does the investigator control his or her own fear?
A: All three speakers (Tony Cornell, Hans Holzer and Lloyd Auerbach) noted that they had never, in all their combined years of ghost hunting, experienced any serious damage from a haunting or any harm to themselves or others. Deal with your fear by being aware that the haunting is harmless to you and to the person who called you in. Lloyd Auerbach pointed out that the damage from a haunting is always self-inflicted, with persons being haunted experiencing fear, stress and the sense of their privacy being invaded.
 
Q: Did the ghosts you encountered in your work seem aware of you and eager to communicate with you?
A: In Tony Cornell's experience, ghosts wanting to communicate with the living are very rare. Most hauntings are imprints of experiences in life, much like a film being played over and over. Actual communications have generally been 5-10 seconds in duration, and there is not much that can be communicated in that time frame. He also noted that hauntings in England seem to be decreasing. This may be the result of amateur groups investigating local hauntings, but these groups are usually good about sharing their results with the SPR.
 

 
Dr. Hans Holzer is the dean of American ghost hunting. He has taught parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology. He is a prolific author of over 100 books and a noted lecturer. He has a Ph.D. from the London College of Applied Science. Dr. Holzer spoke about his work of the last five years, currently being developed as a book, which he said has been very important in his life. He has been working with noted psychics to document the social organization of life after death. He said there is an active culture, with levels of existence, tasks or professions, and a hierarchical organization that somewhat parallels existence on earth. The highest strata are composed of individuals who watch over activities on earth and can be appealed to for assistance, similar to guardian angels but not tied to any religion. His discoveries will be discussed in his forthcoming book, The Spirit Connection.
 
Dr. Holzer has come to realize that hauntings are the exception, rather than the norm, and represent individuals who are trapped in a terrible limbo. He distinguishes from imprints of events, which have no intelligence behind them. They re-enact events with strong emotional connotations that imprinted psychic energy upon the location where they occurred. These events, which generally involve apparitions, are most likely a replay from the past. A famous example, documented with an equally famous photograph, is the case of the monks of Westminster Abbey, who are walking through the Abbey below the current floor, at the level where the floor formerly existed.
 
If there are variations in the event, rather than an exact replay over and over, then the haunting probably involves a real person, with the same thoughts, abilities and emotions they possessed in life. Dr. Holzer believes we possess a "double body"--a physical body and an exact etheric duplicate body--also referred to as the spirit, the soul or the aura. He believes there is no heaven and no hell, but just the "other side" of existence where the etheric body dwells after physical death. Some people, particularly those who experience a traumatic, sudden, unexpected death or who died in considerable emotional turmoil, are "stuck" in the living plane and unable to cross over, particularly because they are not aware that they are dead and no longer operate on the physical, living plane. Dr. Holzer has discovered that the best way to help people trapped in this limbo is to convince them that they are in fact dead. Working with mediums, Dr. Holzer will "show" these trapped spirits calendars, newspapers, etc. When the trapped spirit believes him, he or she is often frightened and doesn't know what to do next. Dr. Holzer encourages them to ask for help from loved ones who passed over before them. Dr. Holzer has had experience with literally thousands of hauntings and has found this intervention technique to be uniformly effective. He is most concerned with the trapped spirits and emphasizes that these are real people trapped in a hellish limbo. He feels it is important to help them move forward.
 
Lloyd Auerbach is the Director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations and President of the California Society for Psychical Research. He has a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and an M.S. in Parapsychology. He has been investigating paranormal phenomena for over 22 years and has published books and articles in this area. He shared several cases, including a haunting by a woman who appeared to a family and spoke exclusively to the son and provided enough detail to document her life and death in the house. She also provided information, via the son, of the conversations of the researchers on the drive to the town. According to the son, she was not sure the researchers could be trusted, so she traveled with them in the car to get a sense of their personalities and motives. Lloyd asked her, via the son, why she stayed in the house rather than moving on. She responded that she had not been a devout person when alive and was afraid of what might be waiting for her on the other side. It was easier and more comfortable to just remain where she was. Lois always appeared fully clothed to the family, but sometimes was a little girl, other times a woman at different ages. She stated through the son that however she thought of herself was how she appeared to the family.
 
Lloyd presented this case as a credible haunting. Although the investigative team never saw the woman, the family seemed believable--all were well-adjusted and normal and were very insistent about no publicity for the haunting. Lloyd was called in by the mother who was concerned that while they all saw "Lois," she spoke only to the son. The mother wanted to be sure the son wasn't being harmed in any way by this contact. Many verifiable details were provided, including the birth and death dates of the woman as well as stories of her life that were validated by a distant cousin. Also, the information from the car conversations was unknown to the son who served as the "channel" for the woman. Lloyd maintained contact with the family. The son continued to converse with Lois through childhood, high school and college. He frequently sought advice from Lois about dating, etc.
 
Lloyd used this case to illustrate an important facet of the investigative process--the person or persons being haunted. Like Tony Cornell, he has had many experiences where people are misinterpreting or exaggerating events. It is important to be sensitive to the needs and issues of the people being haunted. He looks, for example, at the reading matter of the haunted person. Stacks of tabloids can indicate a very credulous, even gullible, person, someone who may be hoping for a paranormal event and exaggerating normal events into a paranormal disturbance. He noted that people can be fearful, feel invaded, etc. and that a primary responsibility of the investigator is to address people's needs, regardless of whether the haunting can be objectively documented.
 
He shared some additional examples of objectively-documented paranormal phenomena, including the U.S.S. Hornet museum, with over 50 reported sightings. Most of the docents served on the Hornet and felt it was one of the best and most significant experiences of their lives. Many of these docents have experienced sightings of shipmates who have died, including the ghost of Admiral Clark, who died elsewhere but apparently "retired" after death, along with other shipmates, to the place that was most meaningful to them in life.
 
 
Grace Agnew
NJGHS Member