In this episode, we are opening our minds to the world of paranormal sceptics and their questions:
‘Are ghosts real?’ And ‘Does paranormal activity exist or is it just a state of mind?’
I have to say, I love sceptics and I can’t wait to share 11 sceptical reasons why the doubters challenge paranormal activity and I have some slightly funny and not-so-funny experiences to share with you about paranormal sceptics I have encountered through my work.
#81 Sceptics & debunking: Are ghosts real? PROVE IT!
One of the main arguments from sceptics is that many experiences attributed to paranormal activity can be explained by psychological and environmental factors. Despite the critical stance of sceptics, their work plays a crucial role in advancing our understanding of both the natural and perceived supernatural world. By challenging paranormal claims, sceptics help promote rational thinking, encouraging inquiry where beliefs are based on evidence and logical reasoning rather than fear and superstition. While sceptics often face criticism from those who fervently believe in the paranormal, their efforts contribute to a broader dialogue about the nature of reality and the limits of human perception.
Our first sceptical question: Are ghosts real?
If you want my answer to this question, you all pretty much know what I am going to say… Yes, yes and yes and only because of many years of personal experience. When you regularly experience the paranormal, it makes it real after you do all the debunking and there is no possible logical rational reason left to doubt… it must be energetic + unseen =paranormal!
BUT, my answer is not for everyone and I get that, so I came up with 11 sceptical, well, logical reasons why sceptics doubt paranormal happenings.
The 11 possible rational causes for people experiencing paranormal activity:
So, what causes us to see ghosts, spirits, and wispy apparitions and how do sceptics rationalise the paranormal?
1. Eye conditions such as Charles Bonnet Syndrome where one of the main symptoms is seeing things that are not real because the brain needs to adjust to significant vision loss. Some people have reported seeing shadows out of the corner of their eyes, especially in poorly lit environments and thought they were going crazy. Also, those odd weird black dots, flecks or blobs commonly known as eye floaters which are age-related changes to the jelly-like substance in the eyes can distil fear in some people. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/eyes-charles-bonnet-syndrome
2. Substance usage and going through withdrawal: Altered mind states and psychedelic drugs can make you see things that aren’t there or do they relax the left brain and enhance the right brain activity to align with the energy world around us? Withdrawal symptoms can be complicated and different for many people and are paranormal sightings and experiences the mind playing tricks as the body is readjusting to being clear of the mind-altering substances?
3. Attention-seeking behaviours: Sceptics and I agree on this one! Paranormal claims are great for getting attention, mass attention. As we all know people love paranormal drama! I see this on all social media platforms and when people like me offer help to resolve paranormal issues, we are ignored because the person wants the attention. This can be for many different personal reasons that I covered back in episode 59.
4. Mental health conditions: I don’t want to repeat myself so I will cover this in the second question, so stay listening.
5. Hypnagogia: A friend suggested hypnagogia is a mind state that causes people to see things that aren’t in our rational environment usually before they fall asleep. This is where they may experience visual, auditory or sleep paralysis-type experiences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia
6. Pareidolia: this is a term describing people perceiving patterns or connections that do not exist, often paranormal such as seeing faces in random objects or interpreting ambiguous sounds as disembodied voices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
7. Environmental factors: such as electromagnetic fields affecting sensitive people’s perceptions, bumps, scratches and groaning rattles in the middle of the night and even strange patches of mould can affect our logical perception leading to sensations and hallucinations that some interpret as a ghostly presence.
8. Willingness to connect to the paranormal or paranormal addiction: I would imagine sceptics would say that the desire to experience the paranormal would make your brain create scenarios for paranormal happenings, internally and externally. I did a whole episode on paranormal addiction back in episode 19, check it out if you want to hear the whole story.
9. Vitamin B12 deficiency: I read this online and found it interesting – One of the many symptoms of B12 deficiency can be altered visual and auditory senses – seeing and hearing sounds and voices that aren’t there. Who would have thought?
10.Money-making charlatans and the power of suggestion: Some people are so desperate to connect with loved ones on the other side, that they can’t see through fake mediums, cold readers and tricksters who prey on the person’s personal trauma. These people give real authentic mediums a bad name!
11.Is there scientific proof? From a scientific perspective, the existence of ghosts is highly disputed. Paranormal investigators often use tools like electromagnetic field (EMF) meters, infrared cameras, and audio recorders attempting to detect ghostly presences and I have known paranormal investigators from a scientific background to use highly scientific equipment but they still say the results are inconclusive or easily debunked as natural happenings. Scientists and sceptics argue that without undeniable evidence, the existence of ghosts remains a matter of personal belief rather than scientific fact. What does it take to convince these people?
Let’s now dive into three short stories for you highlighting different types of sceptics:
STORY: The table tipping sabotage!!!
When I worked as a paranormal tour guide at an abandoned mental health institution, some of the tour guests would come on the tours to cause mischief and debunk the paranormal. The debunking is ok because we did that too as tour guides, but the mischief is not! The lady who runs the tours is very ethical about giving her guests REAL experience and she would say sometimes we get lots of responses to the investigation equipment and sometimes we don’t…. It all depends on the spirits at the location and if they want to communicate with the living.
Well, this one night, we were doing table tipping as one of the methods to communicate with the spirits. How table tipping works is: we had a small round wooden table with a single stem and three feet and the participants would place their hand lightly on the table for the spirits to use our energy to tip the table to the left for ‘YES’ and to the right for ‘ NO’.
So, four of us sat around the table this one night – myself and three guests. We had already been through the other guests in the group and these three ladies were the final participants for the evening. The table had been happily tipping left and right and answering people’s questions. The spirits in a particular building where we were located loved the table method of saying hello and getting a giggle out of people’s responses.
As soon as these three ladies sat down, the paranormal activity stopped… it was really odd. We sat there for 10 minutes asking questions and I could feel resistance in the table like it was trying to move but it couldn’t. I caught a smirky glimpse on the two ladies’ faces sitting opposite each other and I looked under the table. One of the women had her feet firmly holding one of the table legs so it couldn’t move. I looked at her and asked her to remove her foot, but she refused, so I asked what the problem was and this was her response – “ This is all BS and you are making the table move”. ‘Ok’ I said, remove your foot and see what happens.’ I removed my hands from the table and asked the spirits to use the energy of the lady next to me to move the table just a little so she could see this was real. Before I had even finished the sentence, the table gently slid a foot across the floor like someone pushed it. The two women were gobsmacked and shot out of their chairs like lightning… ‘What the…”
‘Now are you going to respect the spirits?’, I asked, ‘They are doing this for your benefit, not theirs. Would you like to sit down and have another go?’. Both women were red-faced and shook their heads in a ‘no’ response but 2 other people were excited to have a second turn.
Sceptics need to be respectful of what they don’t understand, we as humans don’t know it all and there are aspects of the rational and unseen world that we will never fully understand.
Our second sceptical encounter happened in early 2024 and I have called the experience:
Jenny’s haunted dream
A friend of mine is a very rationally minded psychologist and the energy world and the paranormal don’t usually fit into her realm of thinking… until… one night she experienced a dream that was beyond the reality of her normal dreams. She woke up extremely frightened, sweating and frantic in her mind and body and she felt extremely hate-fueled emotions that just weren’t in her normal realm of feeling. She sat with it all trying to nut out a logical reason but couldn’t come to a conclusion that settled her mind. Jenny contacted me really as a last resort because she couldn’t rationalise the goings-on on and it was all starting to affect her rational functioning at home and at work.
Jenny said to me…and this is important… ‘Do the energetic clearing but don’t tell me when you are going to do it. She didn’t want to think herself into me fixing the problem and that it was all psychological from the start. So, I tuned into Jenny’s energy by looking at a photo of her face that she sent me that morning. I picked up straight away on energetic attachments present in Jenny’s brow and crown chakras, her brain and her governing meridian line. The issues were present for a private reason that I won’t share here, but I will say once I cleared the energetic issue, the negative emotional imprints and the paranormal entities attached to Jenny, she was as clean as an energetic whistle.
Within an hour, she messaged me and said, “ You have done my energy clearing haven’t you?” ‘Yes’, I replied and I told her the time I finished. Jenny was speechless… she couldn’t rationalise how it all worked but it worked and now sits on the fence when it comes to energy work. I have done a few more mini-clearings for Jenny since then… she is still a fence sitter and that is 100% ok, but she is open to energy work being a possibility and experiencing it first hand made all the difference.
Our second sceptical question:
‘Does paranormal activity exist or is it just a state of mind?’
The question of whether paranormal activity exists or is merely a state of mind has long been a subject of intense debate between scientific, sceptical and metaphysical communities. Energetic awareness is not generally on the scientific or sceptical radar and paranormal activity encompassing extra sensory happenings such as ghostly sightings, telekinesis, psychic abilities, and other events that seem to defy the laws of nature baffle scientific and sceptical minds, they just don’t get it. Although the sciency sceptics who have experienced near-death experiences are more open to the possibility because of their personal experiences, these people give weight to the possibility of life after death.
Sceptics always argue that paranormal activity is largely a state of mind influenced by psychological, neurological, and environmental factors. They contend that many experiences deemed paranormal can be explained by cognitive biases, such as the human tendency to find patterns and make connections where none exist. Psychological happenings like pareidolia (seeing familiar patterns, such as faces, in random stimuli) and sleep paralysis can contribute to the perception of paranormal events because people want the drama of it all. Additionally, environmental factors like electromagnetic fields from the 5G towers and our addiction to electronics, infrasound – which are sound waves or frequencies, and carbon monoxide poisoning in large highly polluted cities can induce hallucinations or feelings of unease that are often misattributed to paranormal causes.
This question regarding mental health and paranormal influencers was covered fully in episode 80, where I did an in-depth exploration of the energetic side of mental health and paranormal presence. Check it out for an interesting look at my personal experiences of living with a schizophrenic family member and how psychic abilities were a possible cause of her visions.
SO, What do you think… Are you a sceptic or a believer or do you sit on the fence?
Sceptics and believers are more than welcome to email me or leave a fan mail message with a question, comment or share a paranormal or odd experience that might be paranormal… I welcome them all.
Want to share a paranormal experience? Send me your paranormal questions and your stories to:
spiritualbeing44@gmail.com
For information about paranormal house clearing, you can visit the ‘Services’ section:
House, business and property clearing:
https://www.spiritualbe-ing.com.au/
I look forward to sharing this spooky space again with you next week,
And remember, life is perfectly paranormal.
