Like French, she believes a number of cognitive flaws mean ghosts and ghouls are so often used to explain the otherwise seemingly unexplainable. Though science still cannot fully explain the human fascination with the paranormal, understanding human emotions offers some answers. Belief in ghosts and spirits seems to be as old as humans, just like our uncomfortable relationship with our own mortality.
Incidentally, while paranormal experiences may provoke fright or adrenaline, they can also provide comfort as proof for life after death. Register or Log In. The Magazine Shop. Login Register Stay Curious Subscribe. Newsletter Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news. Sign Up.
Already a subscriber? Want more? More From Discover. Recommendations From Our Store. But many people also like to believe that death is not the end of existence — it is a comfort when we lose people we love or when we face the idea of our own mortality. Many cultures around the world have had beliefs that the dead can communicate with the living, and the phenomenon of spiritualism supposes that we can communicate with the spirits of the dead, often through the services of specially talented spirit mediums.
And we love to be scared, as long as we know we are not actually in danger. Halloween TV schedules are full of films where a group of usually young volunteers spends a night in a haunted house with gory results. We seem to enjoy the illusion of danger and ghost stories can offer this kind of thrill. This view of ourselves makes it easy for us to entertain the idea that our mind could have an existence separate from our body — opening the door to believing that our mind or consciousness could survive death, and so perhaps become a ghost.
Looking at how the brain works, the experience of hallucinations is a lot more common than many people realise. The Society for Psychical Research, founded in , collected thousands of verified first-hand reports of visual or auditory hallucinations of a recently deceased person. More recent research suggests that a majority of elderly bereaved people may experience visual or auditory hallucinations of their departed loved ones that persist for a few months. Another source of hallucinations is the phenomenon of sleep paralysis , which may be experienced when falling asleep or waking up.
This temporary paralysis is sometimes accompanied by the hallucination of a figure in the room that could be interpreted as a supernatural being. The idea that this could be a supernatural visitation is easier to understand when you think that when we believe in a phenomenon, we are more likely to experience it.
Consider what might happen if you were in a reputedly haunted house at night and you saw something moving in the corner of your eye. According to a Gallup survey from , about three out of four Americans harbor at least one paranormal belief. More than a third of people surveyed also said they believed in ghosts or spirits returning from the dead.
But just what makes us susceptible to these beliefs, despite an utter lack of evidence that they're real? Part of the reason many of us believe in ghosts simply comes down to the way our brains work, Barry Markovsky, a sociologist at the University of South Carolina, told Business Insider.
The human mind seeks patterns to make sense of ambiguous information. People who believe in ghosts are often in situations where they're expecting to see them , such as in a "haunted" house, Markovsky added.
In other words, if you're looking for something, you're more likely to find it. A wide variety of supernatural beliefs exist in different cultures, but ghosts are by far the most common one, Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and author of " Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries ," told Business Insider.
Part of the reason for this is that believing in ghosts may be related to a belief in the afterlife , a tenet of most major religions. Believing in the supernatural also has its roots in our desire to have control over our world, Radford explained.
After all, a world where random things happen is a scary one. Another Gallup poll found that in sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of people surveyed believed in witchcraft, and those who did tended to rate themselves as less happy than nonbelievers.
And a study found that lonely people are more likely to believe in the supernatural.
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