When I started on the grand adventure of paranormal investigations, I believed that I could change the world with my data, my evidence, for the existence of “ghosts”, spirits, or beings that weren’t supposed to be here, because they were dead. It was so simple then; show the world (and by the world, I meant the six readers of my blog, and all those potential readers of the Paranormal Housewives site, and all those possible readers that I would one day reach). We were all so enthusiastic and naive, charmingly so; but it hurts to think what I thought was achievable and what actually happened.
I made three assumptions: #1–people would take a Spanish and Romance Languages PhD seriously. In a world dedicated to materialism, a non-scientist has no clout. #2–“people” existed who cared about survival of consciousness, the paranormal in general, and all the unexplained manifestations and phenomena out there. Most people had answered the life after death question via religion, science, or some blend of their personal, spiritual beliefs and felt no need to explore these issues further. #3–The Internet and social media turned everyone into experts, and therefore, nobody was an expert. There were millions of opinions and experiences, but no real interest in the idea that an individual or a group could have any authority on this issue due to the work that they invested, the time they spent investigating, or the depth of their passion and research. Truth and entertainment married and produced bizarre offspring. Anything could be faked, nobody could be trusted, and your fabulous EVP could be debunked or safely ignored, because, again, in the age of Instagram everything is equally insignificant: your summer vacation photos stand alongside your paradigm-shaking evidence for life after death. In the end, the Internet made all information equivalent: your ghost photo is cool, but check out this recipe for mango mojitos!
So I stopped telling my ghost stories. I stopped recounting the amazing things that happened to me on investigations, or simply in my own home. I have some kind of bizarre, paranormal experience every week. I would love to share those experiences, but not because I expect anyone to change their ideas, beliefs, or convictions regarding personal immortality or the nature of reality. Heck, most people are just trying to get through the day and don’t need to contemplate the complexities of the Block Universe, the Multiverse, or whether or not we exist in several dimensions at the same time. No, I can’t expect that anyone’s life will change because we recorded a Class A EVP in an abandoned mental hospital, or we were temporarily possessed by a criminal spirit in an old jail. That is now the stuff of entertainment, and the lines have blurred to such an extent that we can’t be sure that the EVP is fabricated or authentic, or if that spirit photo was created by the production team or not.
This is why telling our stories, no matter how compelling, is not going to shake up anyone’s notion of reality or confirm the existence of a Higher Consciousness. Truth be told, I always took my investigations, ideas, and data too seriously. I think that my obsession with wanting people to listen to me had more to do with an upbringing where I had to shout to be heard, and I was mostly ignored and belittled. I should not drag those feelings of resentment and frustration into my research and my writing on these topics. What it has taken time for me to understand is the following: you do something because you love to do it. If nobody is convinced, or even cares much, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t have “clout” in the scientific community, you can either be an intelligent layperson with something interesting to say to non specialists, or you can go back the grad school and get your degree in physics (never going to happen). What matters is that YOU care. Your passion matters whether or not others are swept up by it.
On a side note, we need a paranormal community that works together, not in competition. Maybe that already exists, but I have not found it. If you know of a such a thing in California, shoot me an email: kirstenthorne@gmail.com
In the meantime, this site will start considering other issues beyond the classic ghost stories, paranormal phenomena, and all the weird realities that intrude upon our limited, personal perception of the world. What other issues? Theories of reality that would explain the “paranormal” or at least, provide ghost stories with a plausible reason for existing. In the end, the ghost, or spirit, needs to be accounted for by a theory of reality that allows for it. Up to now, it seems that most assumptions center around the body having a soul that survives it and can manifest in physical form given the proper circumstances.
It’s time to consider other theories that are taken more seriously by physicists. Here are three possibilities that I would like to explore more deeply here:
#1–The multiverse. If there are infinite versions of us in the multiverse, then a slip between the worlds could cause us to perceive another version of the person whose spirit we think we are in contact with. It may be that we are simply seeing them in another dimension where they are fully alive and participating in their world, but for reasons unknown, have been able to cross universes briefly to visit this one. And perhaps our will and interest in them is enough to create that rift between worlds.
#2–The Block Universe (either growing or not). In the Block Universe, all events and circumstances are happening simultaneously, but we can only perceive a thin slice of the spacetime continuum that we are aware of. What we consider ‘past’ and ‘future’ are out there in the Block, unperceived by us, but still existing right now. Your “past” and your “future” are already occurring in this moment, but you can’t tap into that, due to the structure of your brain, which, by necessity, has to limit what you experience so that the illusion of time passing allows you to survive, create, reminisce, learn from “past” mistakes, and plan for the “future”. A ghost could simply be a manifestation of someone who has escaped the Block due to a breakdown in your time/space perception that is allowing you to peer into their current reality.
#3–Quantum universes. There are multiple possibilities for everything that happens, including you being both alive and dead. This might be how the Multiverse is created–for every outcome that you are NOT aware of, another dimension of reality is “split off” and becomes another world. So, you are both alive and dead somewhere. Of course, you can’t perceive yourself as “dead” or not existing, so you will always only be aware of being alive in the present moment. Perhaps in this way, you are immortal; but so is everyone else. So that “ghost” is simply the alive version of the person you think is long dead. And that person is alive right now, in 1872.
These theories are taken quite seriously by many scientists, physicists, and deep thinkers on the nature of reality (aka philosophers). Unless we start seriously exploring how these understandings of the universe(s) could explain what is currently mysterious and outside the realms of materialism, we will end up telling ghost stories in the dark. And yes, that’s fun, and I don’t plan to stop telling these stories, but I also want, I suppose, for all of us to be taken more seriously. And that means, my friends in the paranormal, we have lots of research and reading to do. Or just come here, and I’ll do my best to explain it.
With much spookiness and affection,
Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD
International Society for Paranormal Research 