The experience of a ghost can occur to a variety of extents. Most people would probably say they have never experienced a ghost, and a lot of people who do visit a supposedly haunted site have no such experience at all. I am reminded of a show where the family of a house and the medium brought there were all describing the same ghost of a man hunching in the corner, but then the skeptic came in and sat down in that corner and felt nothing. It is important for skeptics to note that the experience of a ghost can be a true experience truly engaging the senses of that person. It is not just an idea or a thought that is expressed. It can engage vision, feeling, hearing, even smell and taste.
But those that can experience the sensation of a ghost, all do so to varying degrees. There are those who fall to the upper ranges of that scale, and can call themselves mediums, their experiences of ghosts are the most vivid. I would fall into that category.
I have always seen ghosts. As a child I thought nothing of it, I would have assumed that everybody saw these perceptions like I did. The boys running down the dock at the lake and one of them drowns, the scariness at the old barn, the woman from the 1980's being stabbed. I would always see the same image taking place like a movie half in my mind half suspended over where it takes place. Usually not clear like the things we see around us, but with a transparent quality. As much a feeling as a picture.
I would later come to realize that not all could see what I saw. But interestingly, my images of ghosts seemed very historically accurate. There was never any elements to them that would make one say stop, that does not fit in to the time and place depicted. And often at times I was describing accurate crime scenes or accidents that I should not have known about. I would also see ghosts in places that seemed to have no props around that might trigger such an association or imagination to create the scene. For instance seeing old women and children headed toward the sailships to gut fish, thinking there should be no harbor nearby only to look behind a corner to see that it was by the water. Or seeing a row of poor people standing in line to receive handouts of food from a lady working for a church, thinking why would this have taken place at a random door in a random building such as this, only to look up and see a sign above the door that it used to be an old church. I had not been to either of those places before.
Some ghosts are pleasant to see. Like the elegantly dressed 1800's lady in Stockholm's old mall PUB, leaning against the railing looking utterly bored, or the little ballerina girls from the 1800's dancing and performing to their parents, taking place in a now totally empty hall which I saw on my way up the stairs to my immunization clinic in Stockholm. Other ghosts are tremendously unpleasant. Wading through the ghostly images of dead bodies that had been dragged out into the streets after a disease epidemic ages ago in an old, small Polish town. Men standing in line looking straight into the cremation oven in the basement of a church. A woman being stabbed. Diseases, fires, drownings. A bomb from either the 1st or 2nd World War falling down from the sky into a Polish town incinerating the whole town so badly that as we were approaching the town all I could see was the spruce trees on fire. And the people dressed in early 1900's clothes just standing in the streets looking up at the bomb, fire glowing everywhere, and these ghosts coming toward me grabbing my arm and trying to express their panic and ask me for help.
Yes, that's right. Ghosts come to me for help. I was once woken up in the middle of the night by a boy who said he had committed suicide in the 1980's because of regular teenage troubles. He was not doing well in school, the girl he had a crush on didn't like him, his parents were divorced, he was worried about his future and felt life was wanting him to grow up too fast. He would not let me go to sleep and made me promise that I would contact his mother who was still alive and tell her about him. I did in fact write down his name and other contact information, but I never followed through with my promise. I just wanted to go to sleep. And that is one important distinction one has to make, to never act on these surreal impressions. That is what, in my opinion, distinguishes one between having disruptive perceptions and managing them. These experiences are not a part of my sense of reality, they are impressions, somewhat like if we watch a scary movie on TV and actually start to feel and imagine pictures depicted from it. We can have that experience, but without making it part of our reality.
Does this disturb my way of life? Sometimes it does. My experiences of ghosts have only intensified over the years. In my teens and early 20's they became more overwhelming and thereby also more uncomfortable, but in recent years I have found a kind of strength that makes them not disturbing anymore in the same way, as if I can handle them better. There were places I could not walk by because of the disturbing images I would see of a scene from the past where something horrible happened to someone, and the things I would feel along with those images. I would feel the feelings of disease, pain, suffering, and emotional problems from those ghosts. The images of ghosts usually come with a very uncomfortable feeling, something dark, negative, and unpleasant.
The most intense experience of a ghost I've ever had, happened in a little store on Drottninggatan in Stockholm, one of its busiest and most popular shopping streets. I was browsing the stores with my sister when my eyes happened to sweep past an old wooden staircase leading downstairs in that shop. The impression of the past was so strong and overcoming that my knees and body lost all strength and I very nearly fell down on the floor, fainted, and threw up, only I used all of my might not to let that happen. I saw a man from the 1600's, he was short and with black hair cut in a funny hairstyle with a short fringe. He was wearing a purple velvet jacket, and carrying under his arm a self-made book filled with pressed flowers and hand-written descriptions about each. For him, the book was worth a lot and it was important for him to keep it hidden and protected so that it, nor the idea, be stolen. The image was so strong I could even see the tailor, the old man who had hand-stitched his jacket, the dirt road outside of this building, and smell the newly cut and bound hay from hills nearby and horse dung. I have since never dared to enter that store again.
Upstairs in the shopping mall PUB is a shoestore I absolutely love, but I can never go in there because I am overcome by the image of 1800's men dressed in long sleeve shirts and vests, hair shiny with lots of product and thin moustaches, sitting by a long table and smoking cigars. The image occurs so thickly over the store that it is hard for me to walk by it, and it is almost as if the cigar smoke was really there.
The worst thing that ever happened, was when I was visiting a couple who were the acquaintance of a friend in Poland. We arrived late one evening and as the man opened the door to greet us, the ghost of a girl was standing behind him in the hallway saying "YOU are not coming in HERE!" As we were drinking tea, the girl was constantly screaming at me, "Get out! I hate you! Get out of my house!". She was pushing against me so hard, that I was actually holding on to the seat of the chair as hard as I could, or I would have ended up on the floor. Eventually I could not take it any longer, and so I decided to make a fool of myself and say to the couple whom I had not known earlier, "Did you know that this house is haunted?" "Oh yes," they said. "We have all kinds of things happening in here. Footsteps upstairs in the hallway, kitchen cabinets being flung open, and plates thrown on the floor."
There are many more ghost stories like these. It is something that I live with. It is part of the scenery around me, not the same as reality as we see it, but a different category altogether.
Usually when you see a ghost investigations program on TV they bring in a medium to describe their impressions of the ghosts. I always think, "I could do that!" And so, now I will.
Exposing this
Certainly I am aware that I should probably not speak about this. Especially since my career will be in conventional science. But such prevalent intolerance against this topic by non-experiencers, I believe is only based on a refusal to acknowledge other worldviews than their own. The experience of ghosts is so widespread and common, and touches on such an integral part of human culture and psychology, that I think it best to consider this and learn more about it rather than wish it did not exist. It may very well be a defect in the human mind, but I find it fascinating. Refusal to allow openness and investigation into these perhaps unflattering experiences, will only lead to the kind of censorship which is not productive to science or our furthering of the understanding of a human being.
I am not embarrassed about confessing that I do indeed see ghosts, and by doing so as a future physicist not a woo (woo is an experiencer, practitioner, or promoter of pseudoscience) makes me kind of a pioneer. I do believe I possess the ability of distinguishing between what is mutually real and that which is personally subjective. The extent of my experiences of ghosts qualify me as a suitable subject for the evaluation of mediumship, and by also being the investigator, with good skills and background in science and skepticism, with the honesty and willingness to find out the truth, I have enhanced access to the subject of study.
The woo and the investigator are typically two different people, and both from the opposite extremes of the subject. They have difficulty understanding one another, or relating to the other's perspective, yet are trying to show one another the world as they see it. Most often, skeptic and woo go different paths and agree to hate each other, declaring the other one's experience of reality either filled with delusion, or not perceptive enough. I try to bridge this gap, especially since I live with the interesting conflict of being both skeptic and woo. I try to merge these two worlds, not only in myself but to woos and skeptics otherwise. To show woos the scientific method, how to gain some trust in the skeptics and to see the good intentions that are behind the work that skeptics do, and to show that personal experiences not only can but also should be tested and evaluated with a great sense of distance, and humility and openness to be proven wrong and to discovering that what seemed real was only a personal, subjective experience and not derived from mutual reality. I also want to show to skeptics by my own examples what experiences of woo are like, and to hopefully one day earn the trust so that skeptics can know I am offering honest insight into these things so that they can dare to become curious, rather than dismissive, and ask questions and look a little bit closer.
Mutual respect and communication are important in the skeptic-woo relationship. Woos are convinced that skeptics are either evil, simply a less evolved and less perceptive type of human being, out for a massive cover up of their true skills, and skeptics seem to regard woos as either delusional, mentally deficit or malfunctional, immoral frauds. Rather than try to fight one another, I do believe that the best things can come from collaboration.
The problem that skeptics often have with woos, comes from that many woos practice something immoral with their woo (again, woo can also be a noun describing the beliefs and practices of pseudoscience). For a woo to live with a personal belief that their woo is real, is regarded as sad by the skeptics who are sworn to the expanding objective reality as defined by science. A bigger danger lies in promoting woo as real, because that way the loss of mutual reality can be spread to others as well, not just the primary experiencer and source. Thing is, anything not scientifically proven to be objective reality, must be regarded as unverified and even as potentially unreal, and that is a hard thing for woos to do when they experience and regard their personal experiences as a heightened sense of reality not yet defined by science. But spreading something unproven and calling it true is a very immoral thing to do, but even if it were to be not yet discovered reality, the humility must be there. Of course, many woos regard science as inferior, and do not wish to have it limit their reaches and capabilities. As a former woo I can totally relate to that, but now as a student of science I can say that knowing both worlds, a compromise must be reached, where woos acknowledge that the principle held by science of objective truth must be abided by, and for the rest we must remember that science is still not complete and we must remain open for new discoveries. That is why a scientific investigation of woo is needed.
Furthermore, a lot of woos practice their woo immorally. Charging people money for acting as a medium who supposedly tries to contact the spirits of loved ones. Not only is such practice not scientifically verified to being based on reality, any perceived efficacy is often just based on confirmation bias, hot and cold reading, and all those other big skeptical words. A practicing medium is either an outright and knowing fraud preying on the innocent, or by their intentional unwillingness for scientific evaluation of their work they are violating the principle that if their work has not been authenticated they are to be regarded as potentially inaccurate.
It is safe to say that by evaluation of the ease and clarity at which my experiences of ghosts manifest, I am at least as good as any of the other mediums out there that are regarded as good ones. In addition, most mediums seem to only describe their ghosts and to state what they are saying. Rarely do you have a medium who engages in two-way conversation with the ghosts, and that is something I can do.
By visiting supposedly haunted sites, both ones dedicated such by others or picked out by me, I will expose myself to these experiences. By describing them, bits of information should emerge that can be checked for accuracy against the historical records. Unfortunately, no measures can ever be taken to ensure that I did not have the opportunity to research a site before I went there, so in a sense it makes the outcome of these investigations questionable. A final conclusion of whether I am perceiving ghosts that are the true remnants of people that once lived or whether it is an entirely imaginary experience may not be obtainable, but at least in the process I can show what an experience of ghosts is like.
