Why we keep hunting ghosts—and what it says about us

In 1874, the famous chemist Sir William Crookes sat in a dark room, staring at a curtain above an alcove. The curtain contracted and out came the luminous ghost of a young woman, dressed in a white shroud. He was fascinated.

But the ghost was fake and his participation in the seances nearly ruined his career. The lesson was not learned, however, and Crookes, like thousands after him, continued to search for evidence of the existence of spirits.

The popularity of Victorian seance and its associated pseudo-religion, spiritualism, quickly spread across the world. From small, silent living rooms with the hopes of the recently bereaved to large concert halls, audiences were hungry for a frightening spectacle.

Ghost hunting remains an extremely popular cultural interest. Platforms such as YouTube and TikTok are now full of amateur investigators who trudge through abandoned buildings and well-known haunted houses in order to collect evidence.

I’ve spent the last few years researching the social history of ghost hunting for my new book, “Ghosted: A History of Ghost-Hunting, and Why We Keep Looking,” to examine ghosts from the perspective of the living. Why do we continue to cling to the hope of finding definitive evidence of a spectral afterlife?

Active ghost investigation became an international phenomenon in 1848, when young sisters Kate and Mary Fox popularized a code for communicating with the ghost said to haunt their farm in Hydesville, New York.

Five years later it was estimated they had raised $500,000 (the equivalent of almost £15,000,000 today). Spiritualism has spread across the world, notably in the United Kingdom, France and Australia. She was helped by the grief following the American Civil War and, in the early 20th century, by the mass mourning of World War I.

People turned to spiritualism and ghost hunting for fame and fortune, but also for true hope and a craving for proof that death was not the end.

The advent of the skeptic

However, in direct parallel with spiritualism, there arose skeptics eager to seek the truth about ghosts. The most vocal critics of spiritualism were magicians, who felt that mediums were trying to copy their craft, but in a morally reprehensible approach. At least a magician’s audience knew he was being deliberately deceived.

The famous illusionist Harry Houdini, for example, often argued bitterly with his close friend and ardent spiritualist, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, over the fraudulent practice of mediums.

With the rise of modern scientific laboratories and the development of portable sound and image recording devices in the 20th century, ghost hunting became an increasingly popular and sensationalist pastime. Harry Price, psychic researcher, author and professional hobbyist, used ghost hunting to create a cult of personality for himself, detecting any interesting hauntings that could potentially lead to publicity.

But it was also Harry Price who introduced ghost hunting to the media as a form of entertainment. In 1936 he made a live radio broadcast on the BBC from a haunted house.

Price’s show is the forgotten precursor to ghost hunting as we know it today. Reality television shows mimic the format of his 1936 show, with examples such as “Most Haunted” gaining a loyal following since it began airing on Living TV in 2002. Although it is no longer produced for television, the Most Haunted team continues to film and release new episodes on its YouTube channel.

It is also an obvious influence for international copies such as Bytva ekstrasensov from Ukraine and Ghost Hunt from New Zealand. Social media has also changed the way we hunt ghosts. This has allowed amateur groups and investigators to gain a huge audience on various platforms.

But ghost hunting is also full of competition, as groups and investigators seek to outdo each other to obtain the best evidence. For many, that means arming themselves with Ghostbusters-style tools. These can include flashing gadgets and sensors including electromagnetic field detectors, high-tech sound recorders, and even motion-activated LED cat toys.

All this in order to obtain the most “scientific” evidence and, therefore, popularity and respect among their peers. It seems that the more we claim to be scientific in the search for ghosts, the more we allow pseudo-scientific theories to encroach on hunting.

It’s not about the evidence, it’s about the people

Yet we never give up. This is what fascinated me when I began my research. I wanted to know why, after centuries, we are no closer to obtaining conclusive evidence of the paranormal, but ghost hunting is more popular than ever.

I even went on a few ghost hunts myself to try to solve this riddle. The answer, I think, is that ghost hunting is not for scientific discovery at all. It’s for social connection, revealing more about the living than the dead.

I had one of the most fun experiences of my life while on a ghost hunt. Although skeptical, I was drawn to the research, but also to the way it allowed me to connect with new people and with the history of the haunted building itself.

What I have learned through my research and experiences is that ghost hunting is more about us, the living, than the ghosts we are trying to find. Ghost hunting, done ethically, is a crucial social activity. It allows us to process grief, analyze our fears of death, and explore what it means to be alive.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.