We are often asked the same few repetitive questions. Questions we simply do not have the answers to. Yet.
Here, I thought I’d clarify a few points with some of those questions. Not to diminish the questions, as they are all valid and fair, and, as my Nana taught me as a kid, asking questions is how you learn, so never be afraid to ask.
Questions like ”What is the most haunted location you’ve ever investigated?”, ”How do I know my house is haunted?’‘ and “What is a ghost?”
Sounds simple, right? Nope.
To answer this question, we would have to determine whether ghosts truly do exist. To save face and not dig myself into a hole, I typically offer a blanket statement: “I don’t know”. The main reason being that I don’t have enough information or evidence to back up such a bold statement. If I say a location is without a doubt haunted, I need to be able to back up my claim with facts, if I’m put in that corner of questioning. This often happens when being interviewed by probing journalists, and we’ve learned a few valuable lessons in our growth, from being burned.
Yes, I will admit I’ve had a few very interesting occurrences in my time doing this. Occurrences, I could find no explanation for at the time. Some, with many years having passed since the event, I still have no explanation. Even though I’ve read many books and articles, watched many documentaries and lectures, and spoken with many acquaintances in the field who are far more knowledgeable than I am, I am still unable to explain what I experienced.
The potentially paranormal experiences I’ve had in my 40-something years in this field of research are few and far between. Not many at all, if I’m honest. I could count them on one hand and still have a spare finger or two, but I’ve experienced enough to admit that I know something is definitely going on here. I may not understand what happened, but I know it happened.
It’s what keeps me excited and motivated to carry on. The fact that, while the research and investigation in general can be a lot of work and take a lot of time (and money), there are three factors that keep that spark alive and keeps the ”fire burning” for me.
- The experiences can be deeply personal.
- The boundary between reality and perception is fascinating.
- It challenges what we think we know about consciousness and death.
Honesty is important in this field. Not only in the work we do, but also in being honest with yourself. Admitting weaknesses and acknowledging limitations. If you don’t know something, say it. Don’t do as many do and just make it up by parroting catchphrases and opinions you’ve heard online, painted as truths. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing something. I’m learning all the time, as are many others out there. Each investigation session can bring forth new information and lessons learned. The paranormal is, and has always been, a journey of discovery and learning.
Whether it’s all in our heads, something naturally occurring, or maybe it really is ghosts, we first need to consider all the other possible explanations. Everything has a reason for occurring. Fact.
Whether it’s a natural, practical, or paranormal reason. Cause and effect are real. For something to happen, something needs to make it happen. Once we determine what a ghost is and what they are made of. Am I seeing it physically with my eyes? Did I really see what I thought I saw? Visual illusion? Am I not interpreting (or misinterpreting) something natural as being something it simply isn’t? Did I let my beliefs, preconceived ideas, or biases determine what I saw?
The uncomfortable truth is this: we do not have solid, repeatable scientific evidence that ghosts -as conscious, surviving human spirits – exist.
Despite centuries of stories, photographs, recordings, and personal experiences, nothing has yet passed the standards of controlled, independent verification. That doesn’t mean people aren’t experiencing something – it just means we don’t yet know what that something is.
Most of what we call “ghost evidence” falls into a few categories:
- Personal experiences (the most compelling, but also the least testable)
- Enviro
- nmental misinterpretations (sound, light, infrasound, EM fields)
- Psychological factors (expectation, fear, memory reconstruction)
- Equipment artefacts (radio interference, camera noise, pareidolia)
Human experiences of the paranormal are real, even if the explanation isn’t supernatural. People across cultures, time periods, and belief systems report remarkably similar encounters. Ghosts are certainly not a new phenomenon and date back thousands of years. That consistency suggests a genuine phenomenon, but not necessarily the one popular culture promotes.
In other words, the mystery might not be outside us – it might be partially within us.
The hard truths I’d tell a new researcher:
Most investigations won’t give you answers. You’ll spend long nights recording nothing. That’s normal. Anyone claiming constant activity is either lucky, biased, or dishonest.
Equipment doesn’t detect ghosts—people interpret data. EMF meters, spirit boxes, and word generator apps on phones don’t “prove” anything on their own. They measure normal physical phenomena. Meaning is assigned afterwards, often emotionally, or for social media content.
Your biggest tool is scepticism, not belief. Blind belief ruins good research faster than disbelief. The best investigators are open and critical in their thought process.
Famous cases are rarely clean. Many well-known hauntings collapse under scrutiny: contamination, exaggeration, hoaxes, or retrofitted stories. This doesn’t debunk the paranormal—it debunks bad storytelling.
If ghosts exist, they probably don’t behave as we think. They probably don’t perform on demand. They probably don’t reliably communicate. They probably don’t follow the rules from TV shows. In other words, don’t believe the hype.
While many paranormal researchers lean toward ideas like residual phenomena (non-conscious imprints), Psychological-environmental feedback loops, Misidentified natural phenomena, consciousness entities we don’t yet understand, etc. None are proven—but let’s face it, they’re more honest frameworks than “it’s definitely Uncle Fred.”
The paranormal isn’t about proving ghosts exist—it’s about exploring the limits of human understanding. Personally, I feel that we know far less than paranormal TV implies and that the greatest mystery may not be ghosts, but why humans experience them.
If someone enters the field with respect, good intentions, humility, a questioning mind, patience, and curiosity—not ego or certainty—they’re doing it right.
Do ghosts really exist? What are they? That’s up to you and how far you choose to travel on that journey of learning. Enjoy the trip!
