Are Ghosts Information Patterns?

When we think of ghosts and paranormal activity, our minds usually conjure up white ephemeral shapes drifting through attics and basements, fears of possession by demonic and supernatural forces, and the echoey utterances of deeply unhappy spirits hell-bent on avenging their earthly mistreatment. Rarely, if ever, do we conceptualize ghosts as the embodiment of information, the leftover spillage of energy patterns slowly being stamped out by the inexorable passage of time.

Now that I’m in the process of making a horror film, this is what I’ve been thinking about lately. My movie, HellHouse, is not about paranormal activity, but rather a much more human terror caused by dementia and sadistic violence. The research I’ve been conducting, however, has found me revisiting a lot of old classics—The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining—and even newer films about struggles with the spirit world, including The Sixth Sense, Stir of Echos Paranormal Activity, 1408, and The Ring.

The idea of the spirit realm is not new. In fact, it’s one of the defining concepts in the collective psyche of our race. The earliest humans grappled with the idea of a spirit world. Philosophers like Descartes contemplated the divisions of the material world and the world of the mind. We are ‘haunted’ by the idea of our own mortality. Over the years we’ve struggled with the possibility that those who have died before us are not completely gone, that part of them lives on in some kind of supernatural realm that spills over into the world of the living.

simulation of dark energy distribution

I want to now lay out a concept of ghosts that is probably not new but certainly not boring. It centers around the idea of energy and information. To be sure, the physical universe—everything from galactic formation to organic intelligence—is constructed of energy and patterns of information. Underneath the velour of the macroscopic world the matrix of our reality is comprised of constantly shifting quantum particles, intertwined dimensions, and amplitude distributions the true nature of which is hardly understood. After all, over 90% of our universe is comprised of “dark energy” and physicists readily admit they have no idea what it is.

Let us consider for a minute the research that has been conducted in the last couple decades regarding the role of consciousness in the physical universe. Pioneering groups such as PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) and the Global Consciousness Project have been working to prove that consciousness has a physical impact on the world around us, that it can in fact influence random systems. Many of the researchers involved in these projects say the data collected shows nothing less than powerfully comprehensive evidence that mind does affect matter, albeit in small, sometimes negligible ways. By small they mean we can’t crunch cars, fly, and telekinetically control the world, like the recent film Chronicle would suggest. However, the research shows there is a strong likelihood that mind, matter, and energy are interconnected and affect one another.

face behind face belongs to Freddy Jackson who died two days before the pic was taken

Let’s take this conversation and embed it within the context of death, the cessation of the human mind. Let’s say the PEAR researchers are right, and the human mind affects the information of the physical world around it. If our consciousness affects matter, it stands to reason that our subjective state of mind would be a factor in the nature of the affectation. We already know that death is a tremendously powerful physiological process. Could it be that people who suffer extremely unpleasant deaths, or die under extreme physical and psychological duress, could leave behind traces of that information which remains in the general flow of energy? Perhaps paranormal visitations and hauntings are real and represent interactions with poorly understood remnants of human energy. Are ghosts information patterns?

Since I have no clue as to the answer, I will simply pose the question. Don’t haunt the messenger.

Psi Research, Human Consciousness, and Noosphere

Image via Wikipedia

The Margins of Reality, the Global Consciousness Project and the Noopshere

In the 1990′s researchers at Princeton launched the PEAR (The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research ) program to investigate the role of consciousness in the physical universe. The book that resulted from this research, The Margins of Reality, presents statistical data backing up the idea that the intentions of a human observer can affect random numbers. In other words, because of the presence of a human systems that should be behaving randomly stop behaving randomly and actually become ordered. This research evolved into The Global Consciousness Project, which uses random number generators–on days such as 9/11, the dates of celebrity deaths, and in general on days when certain events will attract the attention of millions of people–to document the effects of large scale human consciousness on random systems. The Project goes further to propose a global mind, a conjoined force of matter, energy, and consciousness, that some refer to as the noosphere.

INSCOM, Project Stargate, and Remote Viewing

If you’ve seen the movie The Men Who Stare At Goats or watched any number of conspiracy documentaries about covert government research projects you might be familiar with the concept of paranormal military programs. There is, in fact, a very real track record of the U.S military testing remote viewing and telepathy on civilians and for use as interrogation techniques in the War on Terror. One of the most documented of these programs was called Project Stargate, which lasted from the early 70′s to the mid-90′s. Project Stargate experimented with clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, and remote viewing in order to gather military intelligence and assist with covert missions.

Retroactive Precognition

In January of 2011 Dr. Daryl J. Bem of Cornell University wrote a controversial paper called “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect” in which he described a series experiments he conducted seeking to prove precognition. More specifically, Bem presented evidence that future events can affect present cognition. Working off the premise that there are “anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms”, Bem tested 1,000 college students for their ability to correctly intuit random information. In one study, Bem conducted a reverse memory test, having his subjects categorize random words that they would later commit to memory. Bem’s results showed that the students were more likely to recall words in the present if they later memorized them.

Ganzfeld tests

Ganzfield tests are parapsychology techniques which are used to test people for ESP powers. They typically involve various levels of sensory deprivation. For example, a normal Ganzfield test might feature a subject, the ‘receiver’, sitting in a chair with halved ping pong balls over his/her eyes and red light shining over them while listening to white or pink noise on headphones. Meanwhile the ‘sender’, another person in a separate location, chooses a concept, a picture, an idea, etc., and attempts to transmit that target into the mind of the ‘receiver’. During this session, the receiver speaks out loud, describing what he or she sees. With the incorporation of more contemporary tools, such as automated computer systems, researchers who use the ganzfield method continue to report statistically significant paranormal anomalies.

-Jake Anderson