When we, as ordinary citizens, go looking for evidence of ghost activity on the internet or in books, we find the trappings of science in the way the stories of hauntings are presented. Stories of ghostly comings and goings are classified into different classes of hauntings. There are certain conditions which are supposed to be present when ghosts are about.

Reading about ghosts in this way leads us to believe that because scientific-style presentation can be applied to stories of ghostly haunting, they must have been thoroughly investigated and found to be true. Let’s take a look at three classifications applied to ghosts.

There’s what psychic investigators call residual haunting which means that energy is left at a place after a particularly intense event like a rape or a murder or, on the other hand, after a period of happy experiences. In this kind of haunting, witnesses see an event reenacted by the ghosts. Hauntings have often been proved to be fraudulent and the signs of ghostly activity such as cold spots and variations in electromagnetic radiation have been proved by scientists to be due to natural causes. When you think about it, if hauntings can be explained by violent or otherwise extreme acts occurring in places, there should be ghosts on every street corner and every suburban home.

Poltergeists are manifestations of Psychic Energy present at a particular place. These events are associated often with the presence of teenage girls or people undergoing a time of emotional turbulence. These people are supposed to intentionally or unintentionally, move inanimate objects with psychic energy that is available to them. Of course, the skeptical point of view of these occurrences is that there is deliberate deception happening or the witnesses are deceiving themselves. Residents in houses affected by poltergeist activity have been caught by video cameras throwing objects in an attempt to fool witnesses into thinking they were seeing something supernatural.

Another supernatural manifestation is that of Satan or some other being from Hell. These are said to inhabit the bodies of living people and the unfortunate person must undergo an exorcism to rid him or her of the demon. Many skeptics believe that belief in these activities are the result of past traditions of people interpreting what we call mental illness as possession by Satan or some other demon. Some writers also believe that demonic possession has been largely replace by alien abduction as the delusion of choice for some individuals with mental or sexual problems.

How are we to regard reported ghostly activities? If we are honest, we cannot make a judgement without directly witnessing the phenomenon ourselves. We can have an opinion about stories we read or see in the movies, but this will be based on whether we have a natural tendency towards belief or skepticism. The fact that people have been telling these stories for hundreds of years does not make them true. We have all had the experience of stretching the truth a little to make a good story and there’s no reason to believe that this human failing is not the origin of stories of the supernatural.

This video is one of many on YouTube that may be genuine footage of something unexplained or a downright fraud.