By tradition, England is considered the classic "land of ghosts", almost their homeland, if such a concept is applicable to this kind of non-material phenomena. Indeed, according to the Dictionary of the Russian Language, a ghost is "a ghost of a person, absent or dead, who appears to people with a sick imagination." In turn, a ghost is defined as “something that only appears to be real; what seems to be. " And the Encyclopedic Dictionary does not mention such phenomena at all.
However, in England, the attitude towards ghosts is very serious. And clear evidence of this is the existence of such at first glance, but rather respectable organizations such as the commercial company Ghostbusters and the Club of Ghost Experts.
The first is headquartered in Grimsby, off the east coast of Central England. It is led by Robin Farman, a paranormal researcher and lecturer in parapsychology for 20 years. The company has a small staff: Farman's wife Sheila, a clairvoyant nicknamed the Immortal Aisha; his son Andy; two otherworldly experts, Janice Paterson and Rodney Mitchell, and Newfoundland Ben, a Farmen dog with a phenomenal flair for parapsychological manifestations.
All employees of the firm wear the same half-faith with the inscription "Ghostbusters", decorated with the corresponding design and the Grimsby coat of arms. On calls, they go in the aristocratic black limousine "Austin Princesses" 1959, formerly owned by the mayor of the city. At the same time, these catchy attributes, which outwardly look like clownery, are in fact a deeply thought-out result of many years of serious work and are intended primarily to calm down frightened people by their very appearance. Because it is this category that makes up the vast majority of Farmen's clients.
“When many of us read about ghosts making blood-curdling groans, or noisy poltergeists throwing a real bedlam in the house, we probably think,“This will never happen to me,”says Farmen. - But if, unexpectedly waking up at night in a cold sweat, you see a ghostly luminous figure in the twilight and this repeats over and over again, and visits to a psychoanalyst doctor do not give results, all your skepticism will surely evaporate. When furniture begins to inexplicably move around the apartment, and household things fly through the air and you hear the slamming of doors and the steps of some invisible person, then you, no doubt, will passionately want to call specialists from our company for help …
"Ghostbusters" do not refuse anyone, no matter where the challenge comes from and no matter how fantastic it may seem. One of the company’s employees - usually Farmen himself - immediately leaves for the site to meet with the person asking for help. According to Farman, the first thing to do is to establish the nature of what is happening: whether it is physical or psychological; optical illusion, play of light or the result of the special sensitivity of certain unusual people. It needs a professional. The first person you come across as a "ghost hunter" cannot be. After all, it often happens that someone was confused by a dress thrown on the back of a chair, and someone was confused by the reflection in the mirror or even on the door of a polished cabinet.
“Once we went to an extremely serious man,” says Farman, “and during the preliminary investigation we noticed that he had a strong smell of what we thought was disinfectant in his house. When asked what was going on with him, the owner replied that he was being attacked by some disembodied creatures. I really think such a phenomenon is possible in principle, and therefore I was ready to believe in his story.
We had already begun to negotiate about the upcoming visit of our team, when suddenly my counterpart jumped to his feet. “Look - there, there it is! he shouted, pointing his finger somewhere in the void. - There it is! I'm going to finish him off! - Snatching from behind the chair a huge balloon with amanita tincture (as it turned out later), the owner of the house began to fiercely pshik from him in all directions. - Here, finished! he finally said triumphantly, wiping the profuse sweat from his forehead. - With them, you understand, only like this …”. It turned out that cylinders with a fly agaric were prepared everywhere in the house and even in the car. It became absolutely clear to me - the person has hallucinations …
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More often, however, it happens that the expert comes to the conclusion that a detailed study is necessary. Then the whole group leaves for the "haunted house" with their unique equipment for detecting ghosts. The kit includes a temperature sensor connected with a long cord to the block, which gives a digital display of temperature fluctuations in the room, since, as the "ghost hunters" have established, it is usually observed a sharp decrease in mysterious phenomena.
To measure the light radiation, "Robogost" is used - a personal computer "Eikorn", capable of recording even the smallest light radiation of living and inanimate objects. In addition, it has two more special sensors - one registers sound waves, the other - vibration. The acoustic output is equipped with an amplifier, which makes it possible to hear even the "inaudible" flight of a piece of paper. In this case, if necessary, the speaker itself can be turned off, limiting ourselves to observing the screen, where the luminous ray shows the strength of the sound that occurs in the room with the sensor.
“I must warn you that ghost hunting is boring. After the equipment is installed, it remains only to wait for the ghost to deign to appear. And because their behavior is unpredictable, the wait can drag on indefinitely. In order not to feel the hospitality of the owners, one has to set up a temporary headquarters in a local hotel, only from time to time visiting the "haunted house" to take cassettes with recordings of instrument readings.
And yet, if paranormal manifestations do take place, in the overwhelming majority of cases, sooner or later, it is possible to catch the culprit of the disturbance red-handed, - assures the head of the unusual company. - Despite the name of our company, we do not hunt for ghosts in the literal sense of the word, we do not shoot at them from some kind of neutron cannon, - he continues. -
This is nonsense, invented by journalists in pursuit of sensations. It all depends on what is happening in the client's home. It can be a ghost, a ghost, a poltergeist, his own mania - whatever. And yet - we act depending on the attitude of the owner to the observed phenomenon. People do not always want to get rid of their ghosts, it is not so rare that they just want to understand. We also come across those in whose houses ghosts sometimes appear, but the owners keep on friendly terms with them - the spirits become almost family members.
If someone perceives him as a threat, we can use pentagrams or pyramids - they help. We can invite a medium, and he will ask the ghost to state what worries him. After that, appropriate measures should be taken, and the unwanted visitor, most likely, will "move out of the apartment." It happens that the rooms themselves create a special atmosphere. In such cases, it is enough to simply re-paint the walls, open windows and doors, and ventilate the room well in order to change this atmosphere and calm the owners.
The poltergeist phenomenon is another matter, says Farman. - You do not see any ghost, but suddenly a knock starts on the walls, some footsteps are heard, trinkets fall from the mantelpiece, otherwise things start flying around the room. It scares people crazy. A poltergeist has a tendency to show up in places of misfortune and collapse of hope, most often in the neighborhood of young people, much less often in the elderly. You can't drive him out - he doesn't give in. But in order to help the possessed by him, it is possible to use the services of a priest. In addition, poltergeists are very "shy". Sometimes it is enough to start an instrumental investigation to get rid of it.
For many years, Farmen and his comrades have been dealing with mysterious phenomena, but they prefer not to dwell on their essence.
- When we are asked: "Do you believe in ghosts?" - this is a question with a double meaning, because the word "ghost" usually means some deceased who suddenly appears to terrorize the living. I don't believe in such phenomena. But a lot of people observe ghosts of one kind or another, and I am interested to find out what it is - something from some other, other world or some anomalies of time. There are a lot of hypotheses on this score, so a rather vast field for research opens up here …
This is what the Ghost Club, led by its president, Peter Underwood, does. The evidence of ghost appearances is as old as the world, and examples of this can be found in every civilization, culture, habitat around the world, he argues. Plutarch, Pliny, Socrates, Cicero - they all took the existence of ghosts for granted, and so did many other prominent personalities in human history.
The most reliable evidence, both ancient and modern, describe these phenomena not at all in the form of something ephemeral, transparent, but as ordinary people of flesh and blood, whose immaterial nature betrays itself when they suddenly disappear under the most mysterious circumstances.
Ghosts are not only in human form. People often see animals, especially horses and dogs, perhaps because they have long lived next to humans. Ghosts and inanimate objects have been observed, including ghost ships, something like the Flying Dutchman; ghost cars (there is a dangerous turn on one road in Scotland, where, according to the testimony of different people, a small blue car appears and disappears); ghost trains (Abraham Lincoln's funeral train is said to have been seen for several years, each time in April, on the New York Central Railroad, slowly and sadly returning to Illinois). After all, there is plenty of evidence of "ephemeral" furniture, such as armchairs, which some ghosts like to sit in.
Over the years of research, the experts of the club have revealed interesting facts about the "localization" of ghosts. It turned out that, for example, among public buildings they prefer churches, and among residential buildings - houses of priests. It is not surprising, therefore, that most often ghosts appear in the form of a monk or nun, although they have many other images.
- There is an interesting photo of a ghost on the Tulip stairs in the Queen's House in Greenwich. It was taken in 1966 by Priest Hardy and his wife, who repeatedly saw someone's ghost at this place and finally decided to try to photograph it, says Peter Underwood.
- At first glance, it seems that the lens captured one figure, covered with a hood, creeping along the Tulip's stairs. But if you look closely, you can see that there are two figures in the photo, and one almost completely obscures the other. One can clearly distinguish between the left hands with the same wedding rings on the same finger. Such a ring could have belonged to the unfortunate Queen Henrietta, whose house was built on the orders of her husband, King Charles I. It seems that both figures are one and the same person, captured in motion.
So how do you explain that ghosts are to humans? For Underwood, there is no single overarching reason. As for individual special cases, he put forward an interesting hypothesis to explain them. It is now recognized that in tragic circumstances or when severely traumatized, people become more susceptible. In addition, in an extreme situation, hidden reserves of the human body, primarily in the field of the psyche, can be released, as well as other unusual effects can occur. But to confirm or refute this hypothesis, parapsychologists and psychoanalysts must study and systematize precisely the conditions under which people can see - and see - ghosts.
There are other types of ghosts, for example, crisis or near-death visions, while they appear no more than 4 days. Such phantoms usually appear to their relatives, friends or relatives, and later it becomes known that during these 4 days the person whose phantom they saw died or that he was sick and experienced a crisis at that time.
This kind of phenomenon was quite common during both world wars, when people were gripped by deep concern for the fate of loved ones, especially if they fought somewhere thousands of kilometers away. There are many testimonies of trustworthy, mentally perfectly healthy individuals who clearly saw a relative who for a moment visited them and immediately disappeared. They later learned that the one they saw died at the very moment when his phantom appeared to them.
However, according to Peter Underwood, prolonged encounters with ghosts are much more rare than many believe, and much less frightening than we are used to thinking. Of all the cases of "meetings" with them that people talk about, 98% are due to natural reasons. It is impossible to find them only for 2%. Moreover, recently it has been possible to find an objective criterion that makes it possible to reliably judge the authenticity of a particular ghost.
When it appears, a decrease in temperature by 8-9 ° C is invariably recorded in the immediate vicinity of the phantom in comparison with the temperature of the surrounding space. A large number of checks with the help of sensitive equipment revealed another interesting phenomenon: in the "haunted houses" in the usual places of their appearance "cold spots" are formed, which persist for a long time. At the same time, none of the experts of the club undertakes to explain why this is happening.
Underwood himself believes that this phenomenon is most likely associated with the "withdrawal" of energy from our space for the "materialization" of a ghost in it. Perhaps its physical nature can be unraveled if we turn to the latest works in the field of quantum theory. We are talking about the so-called quantum inseparability, implying “non-force”, “out-of-space” and “timeless” connection of particles.
According to this hypothesis, elementary particles interacting with each other can no longer be considered as separate objects, even if they go beyond the zone of conditional interaction. They seem to forever "remember" each other. Such "quantum inseparability" essentially means that all objects that once interacted with each other, in a sense, remain connected forever.
Moreover, this fixation of quantum connections is of a "nonlocal", "out-of-space" character. Unlike gravity and electromagnetism, it arises not due to any fields, but absolutely independently. Since at the same time nothing real, tangible is transferred through the space separating the particles, the matter between them cannot slow down such a connection.
Out-of-space connections do not go anywhere, and, therefore, they are not afraid of distances. At a distance of a million miles, they are as powerful as they are in a millimeter. And because these connections "ignore" space, they also do not care about time. For an outside observer, in accordance with the theory of relativity, this effect - which occurs instantly, ahead of light, the mutual influence of particles - should seem to be moving backward in time. It is possible to assume that in this way, literally passing through walls, ghosts appear, taking energy from our space for their "materialization". And the evidence of this is the drop in temperature at the place of their appearance.
- In "ghostology" there are no firm, well-established rules, and in our club we are always looking for corrections for our hypotheses and ideas. We always try to keep our minds free and assume that in the world of mechanization, standardization and automation there are things that we cannot explain, says Peter Underwood. “And Dr. Samuel Johnson, a medieval English writer, author of the philosophical treatise Russellas, Prince of Abyssinian, was not the only person who believed that the ghost phenomenon was“one of the most important questions that can appear before the human mind … This question is still, after millennia of existence of the human race, is still not resolved."
It seems increasingly likely that the border between that world and our world, so familiar and comfortable, is just one step away from us. The data we have collected suggest that in the course of each study of the "Club of Ghost Experts," we may be walking all the time along the border of the unknown …
Although Dr. Donald Carpenter, a theoretical physicist from America, was not a member of the British Ghost Club, it was the work of this society that played a major role in his decision to pursue such a mystical field as ghosts. At the same time, the matter was not at all in the physical hypotheses of Peter Underwood, although they probably contained a rational kernel. Carpenter was much more interested in the statistics of temperature fluctuations given in the works, obtained with the help of modern measuring equipment.
However, to be completely frank, it should be noted that interest in the investigations of English ghostologists, accidentally seen on the shelf of the university library, was awakened by one childhood memory of Carpenter himself. At the age of 9, he and his mother were at home when the ghost of his father suddenly appeared in the room, who had gone on business to another city.
Later they learned that he died that very night. As an adult, Carpenter once again encountered a ghost. 1971 - He spoke with a railroad worker who, Carpenter later found out, had died in an accident a few hours earlier.
The task that this physicist has set himself, at first glance, may seem absurd - to calculate the mass of the ghost.
To appreciate the courage of an American, one must take into account that, with rare exceptions, scientists, and especially physicists, a priori consider ghosts, spirits, and ghosts to be complete nonsense. The well-known formulation perfectly suits their attitude: "This cannot be because it can never be." In fact, they refuse in advance to consider everything that goes beyond the framework of modern scientific knowledge, and besides, it is difficult to reproduce with the help of experiments. And this applies not only to ghosts, but to a wide range of strange phenomena, such as UFOs, telepathy, poltergeist.
By the way, it may be recalled that at one time the French Academy of Sciences did not allow the possibility of meteorites falling to Earth, and ball lightning was considered an illusion back in the 30s.
Because the problem of the other world and everything connected with it is too vast and contradictory, before embarking on a solution to the task, Carpenter tried to clearly define the conditions necessary for this. Studying the works of the English club took a lot of time. But in the end, he had several starting points to facilitate the work ahead.
First, only "pure" ghosts were subject to consideration, leaving out spirits, poltergeists, ghosts of animals and inanimate objects. Further, it was necessary to proceed from the fact that, since the phenomena under consideration are homogeneous, they must have the same main characteristics.
After all, since ghosts in at least one aspect - the temperature jump when they appear - are likely to interact with our world, all known laws of physics must apply to them and no reference to magic and miracles is allowed. And the last thing. Based on the fact that, according to the descriptions of eyewitnesses, ghosts looked like ordinary people made of blood and flesh, the dimensions of phantoms in three-dimensional space on average should be 0.07 cubic meters (this is exactly the volume of a person weighing 70 kg).
It would seem that it is not so difficult to formulate the above 4 points. But this is only at first glance. Carpenter had to read hundreds of pages of eyewitness testimonies, tabulating repetitive points before drawing definitive conclusions about the ghosts' appearance.
As a rule, it appears before a person face to face, and only in those cases when there are several people in the room, someone sees it from the side. A faint white glow emanates from the phantom, less often bluish or greenish, sometimes with a reddish tint, with a power of one to 20 watts. In some cases, a faint odor may be felt near the ghost.
Behind the impossibility of comparison, eyewitnesses define it with one word: "Strange." The sounds that the ghost makes are often limited to groans, although sometimes you can hear howls, screams, ringing of chains, some kind of "burial" laughter, very rarely - individual words. The duration of the phantom phenomenon ranges from a few seconds to 10 minutes or more, with short visits being the most frequent.
So, the generalized portrait of the ghost robot is ready. And then the question arises: how does a person see a phantom? From a scientific point of view, three options are possible: the ghost excites electrochemical processes in the retina, which are transmitted along the nerves to the visual center in the cerebral cortex, forcing to see it; he can achieve the same result by acting directly on this center, where the visual sensation arises; in the end, a ghost can give birth to a stream of photons in the space bordering it, and a person sees it in the same way as an image on a TV screen.
“Without categorically rejecting the first two options, I still lean towards the third,” says Carpenter. - And that's why. When a ghost is observed by several people, each sees it from a different angle depending on where he is, as if he was looking at a TV screen, albeit three-dimensional. But that's not all. Since the ghost seems to be hanging in the air, it is the latter that is the substance that emits photons that “paint” the phantom. And since we have excluded magic, the only possible explanation for this process looks like this: the flow of photons is the result of a change in the electronic structure of atoms and molecules of air. In turn, this requires a certain amount of energy. Without going into details, suffice it to say that it is these costs of it, obviously, that cause a drop in temperature at the place where the ghosts appear.
To further prove the correctness of this conclusion, Carpenter made simple, but rather convincing calculations. A ghost with a maximum luminous power of 20 watts, drawing energy from a decrease in the ambient temperature, should cause it to fall at a rate of 14.5 ° C per minute until it reaches the dew point. That is, such a temperature at which the air cools to such an extent that the water vapor contained in it is saturated and begins to condense into separate droplets.
In a normal climate, this would take a little over a minute. At the same time, the ghost should have been shrouded in fog. However, this does not happen, because air has thermal conductivity and manages to partially replenish the energy costs at the phantom boundary due to the influx of heat from the surrounding space. But where the humidity is high - on the sea coast and even in England in general - and, consequently, the temperature of the dew point is higher, ghosts can often be observed as if surrounded by a light fog. A similar effect occurs when the ghost makes loud moans, for example. After all, energy is also needed to induce sound waves.
“Among other things, one very important conclusion follows from the above,” Carpenter says. - Namely, that ghosts are able to manipulate energy - to convert heat into electromagnetic or sound waves. But this is only possible if they are composed of matter or energy. Because none of the thousands of observations contains any indication of the material nature of the phantom, it is possible to assume that its essence is energy. Although what this energy is, we do not yet know. Another thing is important. According to the principle of equivalence of Einstein's theory of relativity, a certain amount of energy must correspond to a certain mass, the so-called mass equivalent.
On the other hand, energy doesn't come out of nothing. It only changes its shape. Consequently, the energetic essence of ghosts is inherited by them from the human body at the time of death. This is what in religion and everyday life is traditionally called "the soul of a person." Therefore, the expression: “The soul has left the body” - in the physical sense means that this material object has lost its energetic essence. As a consequence, according to the principle of equivalence, its mass should also decrease. The difference between its initial and final size will be the mass of the ghost.
“Let's move on,” Carpenter continues. - Because we proceeded from the fact that all ghosts obey the same laws, and all energetic entities have the same mass equivalent, originally embedded in material objects, no matter who - God, a higher mind or someone else - this means, that the mass of a person's body decreases by the same constant value, which does not depend on its size. In other words, it makes no difference whether it is a child or an adult …
Unfortunately, Carpenter could not find reliable data from the corresponding measurements at the time of death. The only thing that the American managed to firmly establish concerned babies and boiled down to the following: it was never noted that the surface of the cradle was even slightly straightened. As a result of the experiments, the scientist was able to find out that the latter is possible only if the change in the object's mass does not exceed 1% of the original.
For babies, this figure is 22.7 grams. So the mass of the ghost cannot be more than this figure. As for the lower limit, then through complex calculations, Carpenter was able to calculate it - 6 grams. In other words, the mass equivalent of a phantom lies in the range from 6 to 22.7 grams. To clarify and confirm Carpenter's conclusions, in his opinion, further experiments using the latest highly sensitive measuring equipment and involving, for example, thousands of adult hopeless patients and elderly volunteers, would help.
In addition, there are other questions to be answered. In what particular place does the energetic essence of a person, or his "soul" leave the body and in what direction does it move? When does it enter the body - at the moment of birth or even earlier? Do animals have such an energetic essence? If so, which ones? What forces determine the interaction of entities with each other? How are they affected by radiation or penetration through matter?
The difficulties are enormous. But if unbiased scientists, experimenters and observers manage to overcome them, an important breakthrough will be made in revealing many mysteries of nature, man, religious beliefs and even in the knowledge of the Universe.
"It is not yet possible to fully assess the significance of the results obtained," says Carpenter. - Another thing is unclear. Namely, in what direction may further research go in the future. And yet I believe that an important step has been taken: now it is possible to consider as scientifically proven the fact that the mysterious "something" that gives rise to the phenomenon of ghosts does not belong at all to the field of the human psyche, but to the world of physical phenomena.
The future will show the validity of the hypothesis proposed by Dr. Donald Carpenter. Moreover, if it is confirmed, it is inevitable to re-evaluate many of what is considered an immutable truth. But even now the clear and clear logic of Carpenter's conclusions convincingly testifies that there is nothing supernatural, magical in the phenomenon of ghosts, since the natural laws of nature apply to them. It's just that not all of them are known to us yet.
S. Demkin