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How many of us claim we’ve seen an “apparition” – a “ghost”?

Based on a 2009 survey of 2,003 adults taken by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., eighteen percent of us claim to have seen a ghost. (6) Given the United States population is well over 300 million, and assuming the Pew sample is representative of the population as a whole, that implies millions of us might claim we’ve seen a ghost – an “apparition”. Moreover, if a similar survey with similar results were available for the world population, it’s possible that a billion of us living today might claim we’ve seen something we thought was the spirit of a deceased person.

Obviously, we don’t know whether the eighteen percent is representative of any other population beyond the 2,003 adults included in the Pew survey.All we know for sure is that 360 of the 2,003 adults surveyed by Pew claim they have seen something they thought was the spirit of a deceased person.

Regardless of whether the number is only 360 people, or whether the number may go as high as a billion people, there are still at least two issues with the claims of seeing ghosts – “apparitions”:

1.We don’t know exactly what things were seen that were interpreted as “ghosts”. It’s likely that different things were seen by different people.

2.Whatever was seen by whomever, we don’t have enough details of any of those 360 sightings to say there is “credible evidence” of an afterlife.

So what do we have to do to get “credible evidence”?We have to define what we mean by “apparitions”, and then we have to search for the things we’ve defined.In this chapter, we focus on the definition of “apparitions”.

How do we define “apparitions”?

Briefly, an apparition is the sighting by a living person of something that is presumably produced by, and attributed to, a deceased person. A living person sees something that he or she believes is the product of – is evidence of – a deceased person.

In the published material relating to apparitions or ghosts, there are several visible effects that are typically attributed to deceased persons: (7) (8)

1.Full body apparitions that are clearly visible and recognizable as specific deceased persons.

2.Full body apparitions that are clearly visible, but not recognizable as specific deceased persons.

3.Full body or partial body apparitions that are not clearly visible, but are seen instead as white or dark shadows.

4.“Orbs”, or anomalous globe-shaped spots, that appear in photographs or videos taken at sites that are allegedly “haunted”.

5.“Vortices”, or small “clouds” – wisps of smoke-like light – that may also appear in photographs or videos taken at allegedly “haunted” sites.

Are there some apparitions that we exclude from our searches? If so, why?

Some apparitions in the published material are sightings of religious persons – Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, or Mary, just to name a few. We’re reluctant to comment one way or the other on the credibility of these apparitions, because of their religious nature – therefore, we exclude them from our searches (and from our evaluations).

We also exclude the visible effects that are presumably produced by “noisy ghosts” or “poltergeists” – effects such as objects flying across a room, objects disappearing and then appearing again, etc. – since we would be hard-pressed to establish any linkage between such effects and an afterlife.

So we confine our searches to the five types of visible effects listed earlier – less those apparitions that are religious in nature – and we exclude any sightings that are attributed to poltergeists.

In Chapter 3, we cover the skeptical comments associated with our five types of apparitions, as well as the criteria used to evaluate each apparition – each sighting – as credible evidence of an afterlife.

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