Most paranormal investigation groups that visit haunted sites enlist the help of various technical devices to try to capture a physical anomaly supposedly manifested by the ghost. For the time being at least, my investigations of ghosts focus on the information given to me by the ghosts as I engage in conversation with them as a medium.
It should be enough to perform a fact check on that information given by the ghosts, to determine whether this paranormal proposition is clearly proven falsified, or whether the information is confirmed at which further studies at heightened scientific rigor are mandated.
What information do I need from a ghost in order to find out if that ghost fits the description of a formerly living human being?
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- The full name of the ghost. At a minimum their first name and last name, preferably also their middle name.
- Their date of birth. The year in which they were born, preferably also the month and day of birth.
- Do I need to know what city they were born in, in order to somehow look them up in an archive? I will attempt to get their city of birth.
- One thing that I have tried and will continue to try to get from them, is their Swedish social security number. Since they are deceased no one could use this number to harm them I assume. Having their social security number would almost be sufficient altogether.
- Names of their spouse or significant other. Preferably also the occupation of their spouse. A wife's maiden name.
- Names of their parents. Preferably also the occupation of their parents. Mother's maiden name.
- How many children they had and what their childrens' names were.
- Where they lived and during what years.
- The education and occupation of the ghost. What they worked with and during what years.
- What the ghost looks like. Male or female, their hair color, their attire.
- The behavior and personality of the ghost.
- If people are alive today who would have known the ghost when it was alive, then the manner of speaking - how they speak, what they say, and the words they use - should be familiar and recognizable to the persons who know the ghost. Anybody could say for instance, whether a letter was written by their mother or sibling, or not.
- And any other facts and details that the ghost might be able or willing to give, about the time period in which they lived, their society. Any specific information of historical significance that would be very hard for me to fabricate and which can be checked out for relevance.
- And, lastly, what year the ghost would have died. Preferably also the month and day on which they died. If they do not know then at least get the season, whether it was spring, summer, autumn or winter.
- Where they died. What city, what kind of a place was it, what was in their surroundings.
- The circumstances around their death. How did they die, was it an accident, crime, an illness. A description with details around their death.
I am currently investigating three sites with a total of seven ghosts and still interviewing them to gather more facts. Once I feel that I have obtained all or nearly all of the above listed facts from a ghost, I will wrap up that interview, the conversations will then either be posted on this website and/or submitted to an independent skeptic so that they have what I claim to be an original copy of the conversations. I will then proceed to having a fact check on the information given by that ghost. (Social security number would be ideal.)
| How do I perform a fact check?
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Once I reach this point where I am ready to submit the information given by a ghost to a fact check I will then worry about how to go about. I would imagine making phone calls to governmental offices that keep the records. In the case of the ghost living here at my home, once I have more facts from him around his death I will go to old newspaper archives. I may also ask local police whether they have any records which may be available to me for these purposes. |
I do not yet know if I will be asked or allowed to go through records on my own, or whether it will be that I submit my information to someone who looks it up for me.
Credibility note:
For those of you reading who are not skeptics, please note that there is a huge credibility issue here. If I am capable of going to some old records and looking up a person, there is probably no way for me to prove that I did not simply go to those records first, and then fabricate a conversation with a ghost based on the names, dates and other facts that I already found about a person. Now I do no such thing, but if any such trickery is possible then it renders the credibility of any confirmation in my findings to zero.
If the seven ghosts whom I have spoken with are confirmed as having lived, I will personally know that this is possibly evidence for the ghost phenomenon because I know that I did not cheat. Meanwhile in terms of formal evidence, which is evidence that is valid for everyone and not just me personally, finding these particular ghosts in records would probably not form formal evidence.
In some cases, it may be possible to obtain verification of whether I did or did not access certain records before a certain date. For instance, let's say I finish an interview with a certain ghost. I then submit those conversations to an independent skeptic on the 20th of a month. On the 22nd of that same month I go to some records to look up the facts I found from the interview. To access those records, one needs to make an appointment with the government office that maintains those records and one has to put their name on a list. The list says that nobody has looked up that particular page in the records or that particular person since say the year 1970, and I was born 1982. It is then slightly alright to assume that my interviews were constructed before these particular facts were looked up. However...
To figure out how to make any confirming findings count as credible, you have to think about all the ways in which a fraud psychic medium might be able to cheat, and to work your way around those possibilities of cheating. What I'm talking about here, is... don't forget that mediums can send out their friends to do preliminary fact checks too! So to not find the name of the medium on a list of who has accessed the records is not good enough. Also remember that there are people out there in the communities who have information about deceased people. Who's to tell that a medium, or their associate, has not spoken to any random neighbor or (living) person and found plenty of facts to construct a fabricated ghost out of it, which then obviously will be confirmed as having existed.
I just want to know the truth - and I don't care which it is
What I want is to find out if ghosts are real or not. I am not interested in false accuracy or in cheating. It would be very disappointing if cheating or involuntary sources of error would lead to a false positive result. I couldn't care less if ghosts do not exist. I don't need them, I can't say I want them. They add nothing into my life except an occasional distraction. I just want to find the truth. Perhaps the truth should be obvious. Many skeptics have at least already settled with the thought that ghosts are not real and that it has already been proven that they do not exist. But still many people out there believe in ghosts and continue to say that they experience them.
With my own example and with my own mediumship on the line, I intend to investigate the answer. I have no expectations on the outcome. I am skeptical enough to not be affected by any bias and to not be emotionally attached to the prospect of finding that ghosts be real. Also I am humble enough to be willing to humiliate myself a bit by revealing the conversations very openly and as they are and to possibly finding out that they were all imaginary. It would not bother me at all, I am willing to make a fool of myself in the name of skeptical investigation.
I believe there are many people who would benefit from seeing why ghosts do not exist. I offer an honest and open-minded investigation which will reveal ghosts as real, if they are real. I am not a skeptical debunker. My mind has not been made up yet.
I am both a skeptic and an experiencer of the paranormal. Perhaps that makes me neither, perhaps that makes me both. But that way I hope to make an investigation that both believers and skeptics can appreciate and learn from.
I will begin to keep a running list of the type of facts obtained from individual ghosts and make an announcement as soon as that particular ghost is ready to go through the fact check.
Kindly note that procedural improvements can be made to enhance the credibility of any confirming findings in future cases. But such procedures involve the collaboration of other people - skeptics - and are more elaborate. With these first seven ghosts I intend to perform a very low-key, simple procedure which does not grant credibility to any positive findings, but which is sufficient to find that these ghosts do not exist, if they do not exist. If these ghosts are found to exist I can then proceed to better protocols with regard to the investigation, fact check, etc. Such as by sending someone else not me personally to perform the fact check. But at this level of the investigation my methods are sufficient. I am basically looking for an easy falsification at this point, or to advance to more elaborate methods.
I've also decided to finish a conversation with a ghost - at least in some cases - with questions about what could they say about or to a relative or loved one that only the ghost would have known. And finally, what would they like to say to specific relatives or friends, or to the world.
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