Cool your skin. Millions of people around the world believe in ghosts and now we know why (video)

A 2021 survey of Americans found that 41% of respondents believed in the existence of ghosts and 20% said they had personally encountered them. Therefore, statistics show that more than 50 million people have had encounters with spirits in the United States alone. Science Alert writes that in the context of the entire world we are talking about hundreds of millions, even billions of people.

In a new study, Barry Markovsky, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of South Carolina, sought to explain why so many people around the world believe in the existence of the afterlife and even claim to have personally encountered it.

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According to Markovsky, there was a case in his practice where the owner of a retail store claimed that ghosts were living in his house. It even provided CCTV footage of small balls of light moving around the room. In other cases, voices and other sounds may be heard when there appears to be no one in the room. Additionally, some videos show a book flying off the table or food falling off the shelf.

Markovsky often encounters similar stories, as part of the sociologist’s work is devoted to beliefs in such things as ghosts, aliens, superstitions and the power of pyramids. But as an advocate of scientific skepticism, the scientist remains biased, arguing that extraordinary claims require the same evidence.

Is it possible for ghosts to exist?

When most people describe their encounters with ghosts, they mention strange noises, moving objects, balls or rays of light, and translucent silhouettes. But no one describes a ghost as an aging, eating, or breathing person.

According to Markovsky, it is worth asking whether ghosts can be made of a special type of energy that floats and flies without dissipating. If this is true, it means that ghosts behave like matter when they glow, move objects, and make sounds. Simply put, they are things that take up space and have mass, like wood, water, or people. At the same time, they should not behave like matter once they pass through walls or disappear.

Unfortunately, centuries of physical research have not revealed anything like this, and so physicists insist that ghosts cannot exist. By the way, to date there is no convincing evidence that any part of a person can continue to exist after his death.

evidence of ghosts

With the advancement of technology, people all over the world are recording an incredible number of ghost encounters using a variety of cameras and microphones. It’s possible that concrete evidence already exists by now, but scientists still don’t have it.

Instead, we have a huge trove of obscure recordings corrupted by poor lighting or faulty equipment. There are also many “ghost hunters” around the world who use special devices to capture sounds, electric fields, and infrared radiation. All of these devices may seem quite scientific, but the truth is that they are not at all. The real problem is that measurements are meaningless unless we know what we are measuring.

Alternative explanations

According to Markovsky, personal experiences with ghosts can be misleading due to the limitations of human senses. Thus, there are various non-ghost explanations of so-called ghosts.

For example, a sociologist collected and examined all the materials of a store owner during his research. As a result, he concluded that the “balls of light” were tiny particles of dust floating in front of the camera lens. The way they “float” around the room is actually nothing more than an optical illusion – if you look closely, you’ll notice that they never move behind objects.

As for the sound from the store’s cameras and other sounds, it is a fact that the store is located in a crowded corner of a mini-mall. Three walls adjoin sidewalks, loading docks and parking lots, while the fourth wall adjoins the adjacent store. As a result, all these sounds may be coming from outside or from other rooms.

As for the products that someone supposedly threw off the shelf. It turns out that reality is simpler than it seems. The fact is that the shelf rests on adjustable brackets, one of which does not fit perfectly into the socket. Under the weight of the shelf, the bracket snapped into place with a visible jerk, causing objects to fall off the shelf.

Previously Focus He wrote that scientists named 5 scientific explanations for paranormal activity.