reasons. First of all, there must be a degree of self-determination involved, allowing the subject to go forward to the next dimension or return to the body. As a matter of fact, in many cases, though not in all, the person is being given that choice and elects to return to earth. Secondly, by the dissemination of these witnesses’ reports among those in the physical world, knowledge is put at our disposal, or rather at the disposal of those who wish to listen. It is a little like a congressional leak—short of an official announcement, but much more than a mere rumor. In the final analysis, those who are ready to understand the nature of life will derive benefits from this information, and those who are not ready, will not.
CHAPTER TWO
What Every Would-be Ghost Hunter Should Know
EVER SINCE I WROTE my first book, entitled Ghost Hunter, in 1965, that epithet has stuck to me like glue even when it was clearly not politic, such as when I started to teach parapsychology at the New York Institute of Technology and received a professorship. As more and more of my true ghost stories appeared in my books, a new vogue—amateur ghost hunting—sprang up. Some of these ghost hunters were genuinely interested in research, but many were strictly looking for a thrill or just curious. Foolish assumptions accompany every fad, as well as some dangers. Often a lack of understanding of the aspects of ghost hunting, of what the phenomena mean, is harmless; on the more serious side, this lack of knowledge can cause problems at times, especially when the possibility exists of making contact with a negative person for whom death has changed very little.
However, readers should keep in mind when looking at these pages the need to forget a popular notion about ghosts: that they are always dangerous, fearful, and hurt people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nor are ghosts figments of the imagination, or the product of motion picture writers. Ghostly experiences are neither supernatural nor unnatural; they fit into the general pattern of the universe we live in, although the majority of conventional scientists don’t yet understand what exactly ghosts are. Some do, however—those who have studied parapsychology have come to understand that human life does continue beyond what we commonly call death. Once in a while, there are extraordinary circumstances surrounding a death, and these exceptional circumstances create what we popularly call ghosts and haunted houses.
Ever since the dawn of humankind, people have believed in ghosts. The fear of the unknown, the certainty that there was something somewhere out there, bigger than life, beyond its pale, and more powerful than anything walking the earth, has persisted throughout the ages, and had its origins in primitive man’s thinking. To him, there were good and evil forces at work in nature, which were ruled over by supernatural beings, and were to some degree capable of being influenced by the attitudes and prayers of humans. Fear of death was, of course, one of the strongest human emotions. It still is. Although some belief in survival after physical death has existed from the beginning of time, no one has ever cherished the notion of leaving this earth.
Then what are ghosts—if indeed there are such things? To the materialist and the professional skeptic—that is to say, people who do not wish their belief that death is the end of life as we know it to be disturbed—the notion of ghosts is unacceptable. No matter how much evidence is presented to support the reality of the phenomena, these people will argue against it and ascribe it to any of several “natural” causes. Delusion or hallucination must be the explanation, or perhaps a mirage, if not outright trickery. Entire professional groups that deal in the manufacturing of illusions have taken it upon themselves to label anything that defies their ability to reproduce it artificially through trickery or manipulation as false or nonexistent. Especially among photographers and magicians, the notion that ghosts exist has never been popular. But authentic reports of psychic phenomena along ghostly lines keep coming into reputable report centers such as societies for psychic research, or to parapsychologists like myself.
Granted, a certain number of these reports may be inaccurate due to self-delusion or other errors of fact. Still an impressive number of cases remains that cannot be explained by any other means than that of extrasensory perception.
According to psychic research, a ghost appears to be a surviving emotional memory of someone