Analyzing ghost evidence: Ruickbie excerpt #5

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: 

Ghost photo: Mary King's Close in Scotland  

In my survey, I also wanted to know what the ghost hunters thought ghosts were. The largest number of people believed that ghosts were ghosts in the traditional sense of the word, that is, the spirits of those who have passed on. However, the second largest group gave non-spiritual answers, ranging from quantum theory to extra dimensions and parallel worlds, to powers of the mind and environmental recordings. Some people also believed in both spiritual and non-spiritual theories, commonly expressed as describing one level of haunting as a recording (or residual haunting) and another as the spirit of the deceased to account for seemingly repetitive and interactive phenomena. While most ghost hunters had experienced something that they would call a ghost, not all of them saw that as evidence for life after death.

Ghosts as recordings, residues, imprints or impressions has been debated for some time. Archie Roy, Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University and President of the Society for Psychical Research (1992–1995), put it best when commenting on the Martindale case:

You have to postulate that in the case of a typical haunt some very emotion-laden scene or some very important scene from the point of view of the humans that took part in it, has in some way become registered on the environment. [...] a sort of psychic video that has been created. And someone who comes along who’s sensitive enough to act as a “psychic video player” will actually play that tape and see the figures, or perhaps even hear voices or hear sounds. [...] it is nothing to do with the people who were originally there, who are no longer there. It is simply a record.

Whilst superficially plausible, the recording theory is only using a modern technological metaphor in place of earlier spiritual theories: it is not a theory in itself because it does not adequately propose what the recording medium is, or how the playback mechanism works (or in most cases does not). Nor does the proposition address what is known about recordings. To make a visual recording one requires a recording device, a medium on which to record it, a means to develop that medium in the case of film, and a means to replay that medium on another, different device from that making the recording, either by displaying it on a screen, or projecting it; audio recording requires its own process of recording and playback. In the Martindale case, or others like it, there is no obvious recording or playback device and no obvious medium. Furthermore, Martindale witnessed a life-like, three-dimensional, full-colour event with sound that moved through space. It was not displayed or projected and was of a quality beyond our current technological level. Typically, a recording will degrade significantly over time as a consequence of the instability of the original recording medium and the effects of the environment in which it is stored, yet Martindale described an undegraded, pristine scene.

The emotional mechanism is also contradicted by Martindale’s experience. The apparitions he witnessed were engaged in a normal, undramatic and unimportant activity (for soldiers, at least). He described no emotional content to the scene itself. Nor was Martindale especially “sensitive:” as far as we know, he had no other experiences like this during his lifetime. What Martindale saw was not like any sort of recording as we know it, and none of the features said to be required to make or receive such a recording – emotional intensity and exceptional psychic sensitivity – were present. We can rule out that it was a “simply a record.”

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site, https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.