What If Science Proved that Ghosts Were Real?

What If Science Proved that Ghosts Were Real?

Are there things hiding beyond the grave? Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’ll be taking a look at what would happen if science proved ghosts were real.

For this video, we’re looking at how the world would change if we found concrete evidence of the paranormal.

The idea that spirits wander the world dates back millennia. It’s a belief common to the animism and ancestor worship of pre-literate folk religions across cultures. Ghosts also appear in ancient Mesopotamian sources and ancient Egyptian culture. There’s even a ghost story in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, where King Saul talks to the ghost of the prophet Samuel, summoned by the Witch of Endor.

However, the modern concept of ghosts owes much to spiritualism, a relatively new religious movement that took off in the nineteenth century. It was set in motion by Kate and Margaretta Fox, sisters in New York, who in 1848 claimed that ghosts spoke to them through rapping sounds. They later admitted it was a hoax, but soon, there were so many people claiming they could commune with the dead that societies formed to investigate. The purported proofs that spiritualists offered included “spirit photography”, a technique for capturing “ghosts” on film pioneered by hoax photographer William H. Mumler. Mumler went as far as to scam Abraham Lincoln’s widow, using double exposure to create a photo with her and her husband’s “ghost”. He was eventually taken to court for fraud.


But the twenty-first century has seen a new type of paranormal proof, in the form of the seemingly endless ghost hunting shows produced since the early 2000s. The modus operandi of these shows is to use both spiritualism and science to obtain evidence of spiritual activity; they might hire a medium to join them during vigils, but they also use high-tech equipment, like night-vision cameras, high-quality microphones, spirit boxes, and even Microsoft Kinects. These shows have produced endless amounts of “evidence” for the paranormal since their inception, often in the form of blurry shapes, “orbs”, and EVP recordings of spirits talking. Though a lot of people deride ghost hunting shows as pure entertainment, many viewers do believe the evidence they produce. If ghosts do exist, then these investigations have probably given us the best evidence we have. Yet far more people aren’t convinced by them than are. So, maybe science has already proven ghosts exist, and it hasn’t changed all that much!

But that’s not very interesting! So what would happen if we somehow managed to get complete, irrefutable proof that the specters from penny dreadfuls were out there, roaming the veil between life and death?

Well, if this proof was compelling enough to sway even the most ardent skeptics, it would radically change how we view death. The existence of ghosts could offer instant peace of mind to those of us still in the land of the living. Death anxiety is a common problem in the modern world, with plenty of people scared of the potential oblivion that comes after you die. This is especially true for agnostics and atheists who either aren’t sure if they believe in an afterlife or adamantly think there isn’t one. Ghosts would prove that there is an afterlife of some form, which could genuinely bring peace to those of us who struggle to come to terms with this unfortunate part of the human condition.

The first thing we’d probably do with the knowledge would be to find out how to effectively communicate with the dead. Already, many mediums have turned their “abilities” into lucrative enterprises. If we could somehow evaluate which mediums were the real deal, and which weren’t, these “talents” would only become more valuable. Everybody has somebody dead they want to talk to, whether that’s a deceased relative or a celebrity like Elvis or Marilyn Monroe. Mediumship would become big business! It would also transform law enforcement. Though controversial, mediums have already been enlisted around the world to help the police solve crimes. If we could reliably talk to the dead, we could just ask who killed them. Of course, whether ghost testimony would be admissible in a court of law is another question entirely. But eventually, spirit witnesses might become part of trials!

On the other hand, it’s also possible that the effects would be less positive. It might turn out that talking to spirits would be more unsettling than comforting. For all we know, ghosts might all be extremely distressed and potentially dangerous. After all, ghost hunters frequently stumble on ghosts who are distressed by their circumstances and struggling to come to terms with their deaths. It can’t be fun to exist in a world you can barely interact with, and we have no idea whether or not ghosts can communicate with one another.

Plus, it could just be that we just aren’t meant to know what happens after we die. Many religious people have faith in an afterlife, but that’s very different from getting first-hand experience of the “land of the dead” before your time has come. If we’re all doomed to become restless, roaming ghosts, is that a truth anybody would actually want to know? Maybe the knowledge would “haunt” us throughout our lives, making us dread the moment we, too, become an unruly spirit.

Proof that ghosts exist could be mixed news for many religions too. The Hebrew Bible and Old Testament forbid communication with the dead, seeing it as immoral. That would suddenly become a much greater concern. Lobby groups might call for laws over whether people should talk to the dead, or who is allowed to and in what circumstances. Theologically, it also presents another difficulty, especially for Christian eschatology; how does one reconcile the existence of spirits here on Earth with the idea that we have designated destinations in the afterlife? It could create complications for Islam as well, as spirits are generally accepted to be djinn; while these are supernatural beings, they don’t have human origins and are more like angels or demons – though they can perform good or bad deeds. It could also pose problems for Hinduism, since it sheds doubt on reincarnation - with people’s disembodied spirits continuing to linger, instead of entering a new stage of being.

The existence of ghosts definitely wouldn’t mean that religions would be abandoned. In fact, proof that we have a spiritual component could give them a boost instead. But they might have to adapt to make sense of this newfound phenomenon. After all, if we could prove the existence of spirits, and communicate with them, what other parts of the afterlife might we be able to unravel?

If ghosts do exist, then we’ve either already got a lot of proof that most people write off as being nothing worthwhile, or we haven’t yet come up with a good method to find them. When we do, the discovery will have huge psychological and sociological ramifications, affecting all of the world’s religions and even the most ardent atheists. And that’s what would happen if science proved that ghosts were real.