![]() ![]() Others succumb to another common mental state that has been clinically proven to greatly increase misperceptions and hallucinations: ordinary fatigue. ![]() The evening hours-which of course largely overlap with the darkness hours-are when people typically get off work to relax sometimes they drink alcohol or use recreational drugs. Furthermore, people are more likely to be in psychological states that can induce misperceptions (and even mild hallucinations) in the evening. Obviously, people are more likely to report potential ghostly activity at night in their homes instead of during the day at an office job, post office, or assembly plant. For one thing, there’s a sampling bias: most people are not at home during the daytime, and most of their waking hours while at home occur in the evening. There are several nonsupernatural reasons why ghost reports would occur more often at night, especially in homes. It is true that people are statistically more likely to report seeing a ghost in the evening, but it does not logically follow that ghosts must be more active after sunset. Educator and researcher Eleanor Sidgwick of the Society for Psychical Research concluded around 1885 when analyzing hundreds of eyewitness ghost reports that “ghosts may be seen in daylight or in artificial light, at dawn or at dusk, and in various parts of a house or outside in the yard,” according to Michaeleen Maher (2015, 328). Well over a century ago, it was recognized that ghosts were not necessarily associated with the dark-popular perception notwithstanding. ![]() People have reported seeing ghosts in broad daylight, in the morning, and at all times of the day. Yet even a casual review of ghost reports reveals that this is not true: most sightings do not occur in darkness. Some ghost hunters believe that darkness helps to draw out ghostly entities. The same holds true today that ghosts are more apt to appear when close scrutiny and open investigation are thwarted is not a coincidence. If automatic writings really did magically appear on mediums’ slates by ghostly hands-or the spirit trumpets really did float in the air from otherworldly forces-there’s no reason it couldn’t be done in a brightly lit room. Keep in mind of course that bringing literal and metaphorical light to supposed ghost activity would only reveal fakery and presumably not deter real paranormal entities. When mediums and ghost conjurors were caught faking, it was often because the investigators did not follow the rules carefully set for them but instead took steps to get a clearer view of what was going on, for example by bringing out hidden flashlights or whisking a dark cloth they’d been told not to touch off a prop concealing trickery. While it’s an unspoken rule that an inquisitive audience member is not allowed backstage-or onstage behind the magician while he or she performs-mediums offering a ghostly experience would give clear instructions about where their audiences could sit, what they could do, and so on. ![]() It’s the same reason that magicians carefully control where their audience sits they are keenly aware of the angles from which they can be observed and use that to their advantage in hiding their illusions. Whether ghosts indeed had a clause in their contracts to appear only out of the spotlight is unknown, but the darkness certainly helped mediums hide hoaxing and trickery. Spirits demanded such conditions, the mediums said” (Wicker 2003, 65). The mediums further improved their chances by constructing so-called spirit cabinets-curtained-off portions of the room from which the spirits emerged once all the lights were extinguished. In her book on the Spiritualist town of Lily Dale-the site of various CSI investigations over the years (see, for example, Radford 2002)-Christine Wicker notes that “mediums so disliked light that they nailed planks over the windows of their séance rooms…. Much of the reason that modern ghost hunters look for their quarry in the dark has nothing to do with science or investigation but instead early Spiritualist fraud and fakery-specifically the conditions under which ghostly hoaxing by psychic mediums would least likely be detected and visitors would be most open to misperception and psychological suggestion. Q: Why do ghost hunters look for ghosts at night with the lights off? Obviously it’s more dramatic, but is there some specific reason or investigative rationale behind it?Ī: Nearly every ghost-themed “reality” TV show and film has one or more scenes in which the investigators walk around a darkened place, usually at night, looking for ghosts. ![]()
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