Are ghosts real? It’s a fair question to ask as the haunt-happy Halloween season descends on skeptics and believers alike.
But the number of people who’d answer “yes” may surprise you. Maybe your opinion even spooks yourself.
A HuffPost/YouGov poll of 1,000 people found that 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, 26 percent in witches and 24 percent in reincarnation. About one third said ghosts can do harm to living people compared to 43 percent who said ghosts were harmless. It was also found that the highest percentage of people who said they believed in paranormal activities also considered themselves to be religious or conservative.
Thanks to the perceived harmlessness of ghost, about 30 percent of Americans said they are open to living in a haunted house. Still, 42 percent said they would never consider it, according to a survey by Realtor.com.
But the question lingers: Are ghosts real?
To get some insight, Metro caught up with Dustin Pari, a paranormal investigator (a.k.a. ghost hunter) who starred on the popular series Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International. Together with the Ghost Hunters team, Pari has investigated ghosts and paranormal subjects all over the world.
For Pari, the answer to “are ghosts real?” is a resounding yes, since he believes he’s seen them with his own eyes.
“When I was 9 years old I had my first paranormal experience. I saw a shadow figure in the back of my bedroom and the shadow was standing all by itself,” Pari said.
One of the scariest paranormal experiences Pari has ever had was at the Clark Air Base Hospital in the Philippines. A hospital where many victims and soldiers passed away during the Vietnam War and World War II. “We could hear voices of American soldiers having a conversation and screaming,” Pari said.
He also shared an experience he had at a purportedly haunted lighthouse in St. Augustine, Florida.
“At the lighthouse, everyone in the Ghost Hunter team witnessed a woman walking around, and we caught her on camera,” Pari said. “She was grey colored, had grey hair and we could hear her voice loud and clear.”
Pari thinks that the belief in ghosts and paranormal activities are personal.
“A lot of people won’t believe it until they can see it for them self,” Pari said. “We have evidence of ghosts getting caught on camera and recordings of supernatural voices”
Why we believe in ghosts, according to a psychotherapist
The idea of ghosts and paranormal activities is a debated subject and can have a strong psychological impact on individuals and their lives, according to mental health experts. But there could be scientific reasons that explain why some people perceive ghosts.
“I think people are afraid of death and the unknown, so they create an idea of an afterlife to help overcome their fears and anxiety,” psychotherapist Jonathan Alpers told Metro.
Alpers explains that humans tend to get anxious when we don’t have answers to certain spirtual questions, and the future feels unknown.
“The brain needs information when there’s uncertainty, to help calm down certain fears and anxiety,” Alpers said. “That’s why creating an afterlife and believing in ghosts gives us answers and therefore calms us down.”
According to Alpers, there’s no scientific evidence that ghost actually exists. There are many things in life that are hard to explain and different stories and myths about these things fascinate people. “You can believe in whatever you want and then convince yourself that it’s true,” Alpers said.
He even suggests that a belief in ghosts and other paranormal activity has the potential to be detrimental to your wellbeing.
“People’s belief in ghosts can be harmful if it impacts them enough to avoid certain things, makes them afraid to go out or causes them to be paranoid,” Alpers said. “It is never healthy to be possessed with something.”
Perhaps paranormal encounters like the ones described by Pari are simply figments of overactive imaginations, or byproducts of a fear of the unknown. But for the nearly half of Americans who believe in ghosts, the hair that stands up on the back of their neck doesn’t lie.
We want to hear from you. Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not? Email Letters@metro.us or visit our Facebook page to weigh in.
