Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (30 page)

Cognitive Functions Theory

“It’s all in your head,” they say. And in some cases, they may be right, but in most cases, they are wrong. I stated earlier that the human body is the best detector of paranormal activity because of its long evolution and sensitivity to the world. I also think the brain is just as in tune with the environment and can accurately detect the presence of paranormal activity.

The human brain is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Our ability to think, reason, and feel has evolved and rocketed us to the top of the food chain in a relatively short time on the global timeline. But the brain is still a frontier that we do not fully understand yet, and it holds fascinating secrets waiting to be unlocked (it is estimated that we only understand about 25–30 percent of the brain). Many critics of the paranormal use this incomplete understanding of the brain as a defense and claim that paranormal activity is just a figment of our imaginations.

In humans the frontal lobes of the brain are where executive functions such as self-control, planning, reasoning, and thinking are located. They are enlarged for a mammal of our size, which is one of the reasons we are who we are. This is where all the important functions take place, so it is the area that we focus on when people start saying the paranormal is not real. It’s the part of the mind where perceptions and realities overlap. I have read two studies that suggest the brain can be manipulated into believing that it is in the presence of an otherworldly being through the electrical stimulation of these lobes.

In the 1980s Dr. Michael Persinger stimulated the temporal lobes artificially with a weak magnetic field to see if he could induce a religious state in several subjects. He claimed that the field could produce the sensation of “an ethereal presence in the room” that some call a doppelganger. Dr. Susan Blackmore, psychologist and author of
The Meme Machine
, and Richard Dawkins, atheist and author of
The Blind Watchmaker
, visited Persinger and took part in his trials. Dawkins reported a range of minor effects (relaxation, sensations in his limbs, etc.), while Blackmore reported “one of the most extraordinary experiences” she had ever had. Persinger’s trials were not conclusive, but all three agreed that stimulation of certain lobes in the brain can cause extraordinary sensations. These sensations can either be mistaken for spiritual activity or provide a closer connection to another dimension of reality.

The point is this—if the brain can be fooled into thinking it’s in the presence of a spirit by electrical stimulation of certain lobes, then the big question we have to ask is “What is causing these stimulations?” If you are in a building and suddenly feel a spirit is nearby, but there is no source of electricity or EMF, then it’s possible you are right. Even if your EMF detector is showing higher readings, you may still be right because ghosts give off EMF. On the other hand, if you run your EMF detector along some power lines and it’s spiking much higher than normal, it could be that higher concentrations of EMF are making you feel afraid. We know that EMF interacts with the human mind in strange ways. It can cause feelings of nausea, disorientation, a presence in the room, and fear. And in the end, fear is the real factor that paranormal investigators have to be on the lookout for.

Fear is a big player when it comes to the paranormal for a couple of reasons. Some people have preconceived notions of what ghosts are and others simply fear the unknown. Fear is a product of knowing the possible consequences of your actions. If you don’t know how badly you can get hurt doing something, then it’s easy to be fearless. If you don’t know that a plane can fall from the sky and kill everyone on board, then you are not afraid of flying. If you don’t know that a demonic entity can painfully scratch you and follow you home, then you have no reason to fear it. I know better.

A little fear is healthy because it ensures that you don’t get complacent, but in this business fear has to be controlled and eliminated as much as possible because it can get in the way of an effective investigation. As long as I’ve been doing this, I still get jumpy and frightened when things go bump in dark places. So I force myself to face my fears once the rush of being momentarily afraid and the pins and needles in my body have subsided. As you’ve seen in some of these chapters, I try to face my fears head on and defeat them.

Every human has a “fight-or-flight” instinct. We all get to a point where our body and mind tell us to either stand and fight or run away. There have been a few times I gave in and ran from a situation, but now that I’m more experienced I stand and fight. But that does not mean I still don’t carry around a little fear. I just control it and stay focused on the task at hand.

I think anyone who does not fear the paranormal is simply a nonbeliever. Skeptics believe that there is nothing out there that can hurt them, so they are not scared. There are those who say they have no fear of the paranormal and will go anywhere at any time to find answers. I think these are really skeptics who do not understand or believe in the consequences of their actions.

There are many more interactions between the brain and the paranormal, but those could fill a book by themselves. Parapsychology is an area that we are nowhere close to understanding. There is a Parapsychology Association (PA) that was founded in 1957 at Duke University and is dedicated to the study of the paranormal and its interaction on the human brain. It’s a great organization whose primary objective is to achieve a scientific understanding of “psi” and related phenomena. Since 1969, the PA has been an affiliated organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The Ebb and Flow of Science

Here’s what I really want people to know.

Many people assume that science itself is consistent, accurate, and trustworthy. In fact, science changes frequently and one of the leading proponents of scientific change was Thomas Kuhn. In 1962 Kuhn published
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, which challenged the evolution of scientific change. At the time there was a concept of how science ought to develop and a generally accepted theory of scientific progress, but Kuhn turned all of that upside down.

Basically it was believed that science developed by adding new truths to the existing database of old truths, or the increasing approximation of theories to the truth. Science was viewed as building blocks that are steadily added to a structure, like a Lego skyscraper, continually getting bigger and more comprehensive and eventually ending up with a law, such as the law of gravity. Occasionally science would have to correct a past error based on a new truth (such as the world is not flat after all) and start over. Progress might accelerate in the hands of a particular genius, like Albert Einstein, but progress itself was guaranteed by the steadfast and plodding scientific method, which I went over earlier.

Thomas Kuhn came along and dropped a bomb on everyone. He challenged this view and argued that science was not constant at all, but instead science underwent phases and had alternating “normal” and “revolutionary” (or “extraordinary”) phases.

Normal science is like solving a puzzle. The scientist has a reasonable chance of success depending on his own ability and the degree to which the puzzle itself and its methods of solution have familiarity (meaning the puzzle-solver is not blazing a new trail and has some historical work to fall back on). Normal science is expected to accumulate a growing stock of solutions to the puzzles.

Revolutionary science is different. It is not cumulative and involves a revision of existing scientific belief or practice. Not all the achievements of the preceding period of normal science are preserved in a revolution, and indeed a later period of science may find itself without an explanation for a phenomenon that in an earlier period was held to be successfully explained. So instead of using established blocks to build new knowledge upon, revolutionary science starts over from the ground level. Instead of continuing to build a skyscraper from the sixtieth floor, revolutionary science tears it down and starts over. This feature of scientific revolutions has become known as “Kuhnloss.”

Albert Einstein is a great example of a revolutionary phase in science. Until Einstein’s time (1879–1955), the theories of Sir Isaac Newton ruled physics. Newton said that time is absolute and constant. It ticks away slowly, one second at a time. But Einstein overturned that notion. He argued that time is another dimension and is inseparable from space and that time is relative.

So in short:

In normal science, the theory is not questioned. In revolutionary science it is.

In normal science there is cumulative progress. In revolutionary science there is not.

In normal science change is incremental and gradual. In revolutionary science the change is total.

It’s similar to setting a precedent in law. For example, in the case of
Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education
(1954) the United States Supreme Court made a landmark decision that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional. From that moment forward it was illegal in
any
state at
any
time to segregate a school. That is the same as revolutionary science. In traditional science every state would have to establish its own segregation laws instead of using the new ruling as its own. In revolutionary science, the previous laws are all thrown out and are then rewritten.

According to Kuhn, revolutions are similar to normal science, but better, more positive, and give us an opportunity to open our minds to new answers, so they should be welcomed. Kuhn claimed that normal science can succeed in making progress only if there is a strong commitment by the relevant scientific community to their shared theoretical beliefs, values, instruments, techniques, and metaphysics. This constellation of shared commitments Kuhn at one point calls a “disciplinary matrix.” For example, the field of chemistry has a database of truths (its disciplinary matrix) that it has compiled over the years, like the periodic table of elements. These truths should be shared with the other fields of science, like biology, physics, and astronomy.

But these matrices have anomalies. In every disciplinary matrix there is an unanswered puzzle that punches holes in the database and begs for a scientific revolution to answer it and revise the matrix. However, the decision to revise them is not always apparent or easy. According to Kuhn, a revision of a disciplinary matrix is not a decision that is rationally compelled, nor is the particular choice of revision rationally compelled, so the revolutionary phase is open to competition among differing ideas and rational disagreement about their relative merits. In short, people argue when they cannot agree on a truth.

This is the current position that paranormal researchers and traditional scientists find themselves in. The existence of paranormal energy challenges the disciplinary matrix of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and psychology and presents an unexplainable anomaly to these fields. We are the hole in their thinking that they cannot explain, so they just turn a blind eye and ignore us. Paranormal activity doesn’t adhere to the known laws of physics and challenges our beliefs on physical, spiritual, and religious levels, begging for a revolutionary phase in science.

The revolutionary search for a replacement paradigm is driven by the failure of the existing paradigm to solve certain important anomalies, in this case, the hundreds of thousands of reports of ghost sightings that cannot be explained by the existing disciplinary matrix. Any replacement paradigm had better solve the majority of those puzzles, or it will not be worth adopting in place of the existing paradigm.

In a nutshell, conservative scientists return to their base of knowledge instead of thinking innovatively and pressing the boundaries of revolutionary science. It’s their comfort zone, so they have a tendency to shun paranormal research since it’s outside that comfort zone. Paradigms and their theories are not questioned and not changed in normal science whereas they are questioned and are changed in revolutionary science.

So here’s the big question: Does the continued existence of paranormal energy require a Kuhn-loss revolution?

The field of paranormal research is at the point that Kuhn described as an immature science, meaning it lacks consensus. There are differing schools of thought that lack a common database to develop a disciplinary matrix. Every investigation team out there has a unique thought process with differing procedures, theories, and biases, which makes it hard for the field to progress as a whole (for example, some schools believe that white noise provides spirits a platform to communicate while others think it does not). Even localized progress by a particular school is made difficult, since much intellectual energy is put into arguing over the fundamentals with other schools instead of developing a research tradition.

Success is what will unite the field. Let’s say one paranormal investigation team makes a huge breakthrough or solves one of the theories above in a particularly impressive fashion. That success will draw people together and a widespread consensus will form around the new puzzle solvers. Imagine this—I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there’s a connection between paranormal activity and the phases of the moon. Suddenly the paranormal world rallies around me and we get agreement on the processes and procedures of paranormal investigation.

That consensus would allow agreement on the fundamentals of research because a problem-solution will embody particular theories, procedures, and instrumentation, scientific language, metaphysics, and so forth. This will raise new problems with few solutions, but the new issues can be addressed and answered using the techniques agreed upon in the disciplinary matrix. THAT’S WHAT A SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION IS.

As believers, skeptics, and critical thinkers, we must move beyond our emotional responses because by understanding how others have gone wrong and how science is subject to social control and cultural influences, we can improve our understanding of how the world works. It is for this reason that it is so important for us to understand the history of both science and pseudoscience. If we see the larger picture of how these movements evolve and figure out how their thinking went wrong, we won’t make the same mistakes. The seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza said it best: “I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”