Is There Anybody in There?Evidence for Survival from Hauntings

and Apparitions Research

Nancy L. Zingrone, PhDParapsychology Foundation

• Selected Apparitions and Hauntings

• The Cheltenham Ghost: Was She in There?

• What Constitutes Communication?

• Quantifying “Communication”

• Can Apparitions and Hauntings Really Provide Evidence of Survival?

The Talk:

Some problems• The astonishing cases (e.g., Moss Beach Distillery)

convince us but they raise the boggle threshold for skeptics and neutral folk: too good to be true, too much like fiction

• Evidence from “quieter” (more mundane cases) is easier for scientists and scholars to take in and ponder

• But can the evidence, even if its high quality, be convincing without personal experience?

Hauntings and Apparitions:

• Is a deceased individual at the center of the experiences?

• Is the phenomena place-centered or person- centered?

• Are the perceptions single or multi-sensory?

• Is the phenomena recurrent?

• Is it responsive or nonresponsive?

• Is there a “communicating” intelligence?

2010, Cambridge University Press

1984, Prometheus Press

1848, T.C. Newby

Covers retrieved from amazon.com

2002, John Murray

2002, Parapsychology

Foundation 2005, AtriadCornell & Roll Covers retrieved from amazon.com; Auerbachcover retrieved from tower.com

1963, University Books

1982, Heinemann

Selected Apparitions and Hauntings

• Begin soon after the event they depict is over

• Reoccur sometimes over centuries

• Might be only sounds, distant and faint but identifiable

• Might be complete visual suggestions of the original event with sounds, smells and identifiable individuals

• Seem to fade away as the memory of the event fades away

Ghostly Battles on a Grand Scale:

Pausanias2nd Century AD

Retrieved from wikipedia.com, “Pausanias, the Geographer” Battle of Marathon, 490 BCE

Retrieved from ancientgreekbattle.net

The Battle of Edge Hill, 1642Retrieved from heritage-history.com

British soldiers in a

Revolutionary War Re-enactment

Retrieved from notmytribe.com

Field Museum of Natural HistoryChicago, Illinois

Retrieved from chicago.about.com

• Seem to want to communicate

• Seem to be drawing attention to a need of their own or of the living around them

• Seem to show emotion

• May be dangerous or destructive

• May seem helpful or supportive

• Seem to be place-centered because they want to be or because they must be until they fulfill some purpose

Ghosts with a Purpose:

By Henry Ford, “Athenodorus the Philosopher Rents a Haunted House”

Retrieved from wikipedia, “Athenodorus Cananites”

Athenodorus CananitesStoic Philosopher

(74-7 BCE)

Original source:Letters of Pliny the Younger

Traveled in the Greco-Roman world

Tutor of Octavian(later Caesar Augustus)

The haunted house was in Athens

Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk, From the photo gallery “Sin and the Single Mother”

Eileen J. Garret’s Early Experience

As a child saw a favorite aunt walking up the path to the cottage with her

newborn

Word came later that her aunt had died in childbirth and the baby was still

born

Eileen J. Garret1895–1970

Horace Traubel(1858-1919)

Colonel Lawrence Moore Cosgrave(1890-1971)

Walt Whitman1819-1892

A Visit to a Dying Friend:

Retrieved from sisterhood.fash.blogspot.com

F. Reed Brown case, Maryland 1942

Two small boys see an apparition with red hair who looks like their

mother only younger

The family decides it’s the great-grandmother back to see them but

….

• Appear in a place they frequented in life and seem to see you

• React negatively or positively

• React passively but seem aware

• Appear and go about their business

• Seem to show an awareness of the current surroundings

• Seem to be totally unaware of the current surroundings

Ghosts with No Purpose or a Purpose that is Difficult to Discern:

Retrieved from ghosts.ws

The Cheltenham Ghost

The Cheltenham GhostRetrieved from art.com

SPR Researcher Andrew MacKenzie

Retrieved from ufopsi.com

Leaders of the Society for Psychical Research

Henry Sidgwick

(1838-1900)

Eleanor Sidgwick

(1845-1936)

F. W. H. Myers(1843-1901)

Edmund Gurney(1847-1888)

From the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

ExperimentsRichet, C. (1889). Further experiments in hypnotic lucidity or clairvoyance.

Theory/ConceptsSidgwick, H. (1889). The canons of evidence in psychical research.

Reports, Analysis, and Discussions of Many CasesSidgwick, Mrs. H. (1885). Notes on the evidence, collected by the Society, for phantasms of

the dead.

Report of a Single CaseMarillier, L. (1891) Apparitions of the Virgin in Dordogne.

Morton, R.C. (1892) Report of a haunted house.

Reports of SéancesHodgson, R. (1892). A record of observations of certain phenomena of trance.

Methodological DiscussionsEdgeworth, F.Y. (1885) The calculus of probability applied to psychical research.

Morton, R.C. (1892) Report of a haunted

house.• Rosina Clara Despard (1863-

1930)

• Moved into St. Anne’s, then Garden Reach, in 1882 with her family, she was 19

• From 1882 to 1884, she encountered the ghost

• In 1886 while taking her preliminary scientific examination for medical school, she met Frederic Myers, was encouraged to write up her investigation

St. Anne’s — “Garden Reach” — CheltenhamRetrieved from ghostsofbritain.com

Primary facts 1:

• Rosina experienced personally more than 6 sightings

• One sister saw the ghost, mistook her for a “Sister of Mercy”

• One housemaid mistook the ghost for an intruder

• Her 6 year old brother and another boy saw the ghost through a window and ran to find her

• Another sister passed the ghost on the stairs

• Footsteps heard by servants, family and visitors, 20 people in all

• Seen by the cook passing by the kitchen window in the daylight, walking through the garden

Primary facts 2:

• Father never had an experience

• Family recognized the ghost’s characteristic footsteps and stayed in their rooms

• A neighbor mistook the ghost for Rosina’s sister

• Collective sightings were frequent

• One sequential as the ghost walked out of the house and through the garden to the street

Primary facts 3:

• Seen in daylight, and darkness

• Seen in the upstairs hallway, on staircase, in drawing room, in the garden, on the road to the orchard, coming up the kitchen steps

• Also reports of bumps into bedroom doors, doorknobs turning with no one visible

• Attempts to photograph her failed

• Attempts to engage her in conversation failed

Primary facts 4:

• A bright light seen once

• Occasionally a candle flame seemed to move through the hallway flickering

• One of the family dogs, a retriever, was often found terrified in the kitchen in the morning

• A Skye terrier ran to closed doors when the footsteps passed, twice ran to a point in a room and jumped up as if to greet someone, yelped and ran away with his tail between his legs

• Horses and cats were not seen to react to anything seen or unseen

Principle Characteristics:

• Always in “widow’s weeds”

• Always with a handkerchief near her face

• Often mistaken for a real individual

• Often heard weeping

• Often seen weeping

• Sometimes when cornered seemed to be ready to speak but never did

Rosina’s Investigation:• Consisted of detailed

descriptions of specific sightings

• Attempts to follow her, corner her, speak to her, photograph her

• Maps of her habitual movements

• Corroboration from other witnesses

• Results of inquiry in the property’s reputation

• Attempts to quantify number of witnesses, types of phenomena, length of sightings

One of Rosina’s three maps

The History of Garden Reach 1:

• House built in 1860

• Owned by an “Anglo Indian”, Mr. Henry Swinhoe

• First wife died, Mr. S became alcoholic

• Married second wife, Imogen Swinhoe, stormy relationship, she became alcoholic

• They separated, she went to live elsewhere

• He died in 1876 in the house

• She died in 1878, was brought back and buried near by

The History of Garden Reach 2:

• Second owner, Mr. Littlewood, bought it, remodeled it, died 6 months later in the room in which Mr. Swinhoe had died (ghost never seen in that room)

• Widow of Mr. Littlewood moved away, never reported sightings

• Mr. Littlewood’s gardener reported frequently seeing a tall lady in widow’s weeds at the back of the garden

• Some evidence the ghost was seen as early as a month after Mrs. Swinhoe’s death

History of the house from 1882:

• 1882-1893, Despards in possession of the house

• House empty from 1893-1898

• 1898-1907, a boys school

• Empty until 1910

• 1910-1970, housed a convent, a training school for nannies, and a diocesan house

• Empty 1970 to 1973

• 1973 reopened as an apartment house

• No hauntings reported within the house from 1907 to the present but ….

Modern history:

• Persistent reports of the ghost in the neighborhood around the house from the first sightings in the 1870s to today

• Between 1958 and 1961, on the grounds of a hotel across the street, same description from waist up but bottom half “fading”

• In 1933 and during WWII she was reported in Weston House about a half mile away from Garden Reach

• In the 1960s Weston House housed doctors offices, no visual sightings, but unexplained noises, sense of being watched

• In 1979, a report of footsteps that drove a staff member from the house in a panic

The SPR Method as apparent in Rosina Despard’s report• Detailed observations including feelings of witnesses

(predominantly a sense of loss of power to the ghost)

• Attempts to determine the “reality” of the experiences

• Attempts to intervene

• Gathering of observations from others, including letters of corroboration in the report

• Drawing conservative conclusions on the meaning of the sightings

• Set up an experiment to see if they could identify photos from life of the ghost, the photo of Imogen’s sister was chosen

What Constitutes Communication?

Some problems revisited …• Scholars/Scientists/Folks for whom the evidence is still

not convincing/Skeptics – “Obvious communication” is too good to be believable• Can the evidence be quantified?• Does evidence coincide with theory?• Do varieties of evidence converge?• Or does the evidence only become meaningful in an

unequivocal way when there is personal experience to contextualize it?

Communication …• Awareness of the experiencer indicted by an action, or

movement• Pointing• Speech• Touch• Sounds

• Expression of emotion related to the experiencer• Positive or Negative

• Rattling doors as if to enter• Bending closer to get a look

Quantifying “Communication”

Characteristics of Hauntings with and without Apparitions? (Alvarado & Zingrone, JSPR, 1995)

• 500 cases of previously published haunting and poltergeist cases from the 9th to 20th centuries were collected in Gauld & Cornell’s Poltergeists (1979)• 328 were person-centered, 172 were house-centered • Of the 172 house-centered cases, 89 included

apparitions, 83 did not• Re-analyses of the features of these cases to see

whether features that could indicate “communication” were more prevalent in haunting cases with apparitions than they were in haunting cases without apparitions

Typical haunting cases in G & C’s collection

• Case #17, Eistet1t near Nuremberg, 1414-1418• Raps, imitative noises, apparitions, voices

• Case #22, Milan, 1464• Raps, hands seen

• Case #259, Strathtay, Scotland, 1878-1897• Large objects thrown, doors and windows opened, bedclothes disturbed,

voices, apparitions

• Case #428, Pittsburgh, 1971-1972• Small and large objects thrown, imitative noises, apparitions, misty figures,

electricity disturbed

• 38% of the 172 haunting cases (overall) were published in the 19th century and 30% during the 20th century• Cases coded for a variety of features on G & C’s

feature list including:• Apparitions• Misty figures• Voices, groans or whistles, miscellaneous sounds• Bells pulled or rung• Clothes cut or torn• Animals attacked or annoyed• Doors and window open or shut• Direct writing, painting, drawing • Candles or lamps dimmed or turned off … etc …

Trends in the data (characteristics indicative of presence, attention-seeking, or attempts to communicate on the part of apparitions:

• Longer duration• Raps• Luminous effects• Movement of small objects• Movement of large objects

• Cold breezes• Hot objects• Disturbance of bed clothes• Movement of handles• Movement of latches

• Ratings of testimony and details higher in cases with apparitions than those without (4.5 vs 3.3., p = .012)

• Higher mean frequency of events with apparitions than without (6.0 vs 4.3, p = .0042)

• Percentage of doors and windows opened & closed higher with apparitions than without (16% vs 4%, p = .035)

• Percentage of hands seen or felt with apparitions than without (11% vs 2%, p = .022)

• Percentage of voices, groans and whistles, etc., with apparitions than without (30% vs 16%, p = .057)

Conclusions …

• A number of characteristics that seemed indicative of intelligence (e.g., direct writing, painting or drawing, possession or obsession, communication through ESP) were not significantly different between hauntings with apparitions and those without: only voices, groans and whistles were suggestively different• Doors and latches, and hands seen or felt were

significantly different• Apparition cases significantly higher in testimony and

detail and frequency of events

So …• Was the testimony better and more features reported because

the experience of an apparition made the percipients more vigilant for phenomena or more likely to hallucinate?

• Are researchers more likely to pay more attention to detail or seek a more complete description of the phenomena when an apparition is reported than when a haunting does not include an apparition?

• Or did the presence of an apparition indicate (in more cases than not) that there was an active discarnate trying to communicate?

• And is this type of research the best to obtain evidence that (a) there is survival after death and (b) that those who have gone on still have the need to communicate?

Can Apparitions and Hauntings Really Provide Evidence of Survival?

Well, maybe / maybe not …

• Is one recorded incident of what looks like responsiveness enough to assume the case indicates a presence?• Are there physical variables in the

environment that inspire misperception, false memories, or hallucation?• If detail is provided or verified by

mediums on site- or after the fact, is that enough to say it’s communication and not ESP• Does the verification process uncover

impossibilities in the original details of the experiencers’ report?

Convergent evidence is probably better …

• Cases of similar structure, consistency of ontent over multiple observers who can be shown to be naïve of the already collected details

• Verification of information from mediums and a greater understanding of the processes of mediumship

• Evidence for survival from reincarnation research • Evidence from near-death experiences• Evidence from shared death experiences• Evidence of a consistent difference in process when the perception

is believed to be a communication as opposed to when it is believed to be a psychic impression• Qualitative research with mediums from different cultural

contexts• Neuroscientific evidence of brain differences during verifiable

communication or psi experience

Or will it take personal

experience to seal the deal ?

Bibliographic Resources:Alvarado, C. S., (2006). Neglected near death experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 24, 131–151.Alvarado, C. S., & Zingrone, N. L. (1995). Characteristics of hauntings with and without apparitions: An analysis of published cases. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 60, 385–397.Cornell, T. (2002). Investigating the Paranormal. New York: Parapsychology Foundation.Dash, M. (2009). Dry and Dust: A Fortean in the Archives — Adventures in Time #1: A Scottish Spinster at the Battle of Nechtansmere, 685 A.D. Retrieved from http://blogs.forteana.org/node/87 McCue, P. (2002). Theories of hauntings: A critical overview. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 66, 1–21.

Thank you …Email me:

nancy@theazire.org

ParapsychologyOnline on Facebook

ParapsychologyOnline on YouTube

http://www.parapsychologyonline.wordpress.com

http://theazire.org/moodle

Email the PF:

office@parapsychology.org

Parapsychology Foundation on Facebook

http://www.parapsychology.org

http://www.pflyceum.org

http://www.psi-mart.com

http://www.psychicexplorers.org