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The ghost phenomenon has become so closely associated with the instinct of fear that it's almost a given that, if asked, most people would admit that of course they would be frightened if they encountered an apparition. Even many seasoned ghost investigators have been known to run like scared rabbits when they see or even hear something unexpected.
Why? Have ghosts really earned the reputation of being harmful to humans?
If you were walking unarmed in a dense tropical jungle that you know is inhabited by tigers and large snakes, you'd undoubtedly be petrified. The threat to your life and well-being is quite real and your fears justified. Tigers and snakes can and do kill.
Now place yourself alone at night in a house that has the reputation for being haunted.
Most people would probably experience the same fear. Yet, according to most authorities on the subject, the fear is not justified. Ghosts, by and large, are harmless. The true behavior of ghosts, as evidenced by many thousands of investigations and case studies conducted by paranormal experts, overwhelmingly contradicts the common idea that they are to be feared.
MALIGNED GHOSTS
Veteran ghost investigator Hans Holzer, in his book Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond (Black Dog & Leventhal, 1997), emphasizes "...the need to forget a popular notion: that they are always dangerous, fearful, and hurt people. Nothing could be further from the truth.... Ghosts have never harmed anyone except through fear found within the witness, of his own doing and because of his own ignorance as to what ghosts represent."
Loyd Auerbach, another respected ghost hunter of many years, agrees: "In many cultures and religions around the world, ghosts are thought to harbor ill will towards the living. This is unfortunate, since the evidence from thousands of cases...suggests that people don't change their personalities or motivation after death... nor do they turn evil." (Ghost Hunting: How To Investigate the Paranormal, Ronin Publishing, 2004.)
ROOTS OF FEAR
So why do we fear them? There are probably two main reasons.
Fear of ghosts - also known as spectrophobia or phasmophobia - most obviously stems from our fear of the unknown. This is a deep-seated fear that is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. The primitive parts of our brain that respond to instinct - a holdover from our cave-dwelling ancestors - flushes our bodies with adrenaline when we encounter a threat, preparing us to fight or flee. And when that threat is something unknown that might leap out of the darkness, we'd just as soon flee.
There's another component to this fear when that something in the dark is perceived as a ghost. After all, a ghost is the manifestation of a person who is dead. So now we are confronted not only with what we think is a threat to our lives, but a representative of death itself. Not only is it an entity that we don't understand, it is also a resident of the place many of us fear the most - the mysterious land of the dead.
The second main reason we fear ghosts is that we have been further conditioned to do so by popular culture. Almost without exception, books, movies and television shows portray ghosts as evil, capable of mischief, injury, even death. If the media are to be believed, ghosts actually enjoy scaring us out of our wits.
"What Hollywood and television portray is very inaccurate and cannot be relied upon as truthful," say Lewis and Sharon Gerew of the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance in their article, Co-Existence.
"They show these spirits of the dead as being evil in nature, filled with malice and harmful intent. I assure you that this is not the case."
Creepy, rotting, vengeful ghosts may make exciting movies, but they have very little basis in actual experience.
SCRATCHING, SLAPPING AND BITING
Ghost and haunting phenomena are harmless.
As much as they may unnerve and mystify us, there is really nothing to fear. Haunting phenomena seem to be recordings of past events on a particular environment. This is why haunted houses can "play back" the recordings of footsteps on a stairway, for example, or even the voices of an argument that took place many years previous. Apparitions can sometimes be seen performing the same task over and over again.
True ghosts or spirit apparitions may be earthly manifestations of those who have passed on. They are sometimes able to interact with the living and relay messages. (See "Ghosts: What Are They?".)
In neither case does the phenomena pose any real threat. Voices captured through electronic voice phenomena (EVP) techniques can at times be rude or even downright abusive, but again there is no real threat of harm.
So then how do we explain those rare cases in which a person is apparently scratched, slapped or even bitten by some unseen entity? Such instances have been documented in the famous Bell Witch case, the Esther Cox case in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and the terrifying "The Entity" case on which the film was based.
These cases, and others in which people are "attacked" and objects are thrown around, are considered by most researchers today as poltergeist activity. Although poltergeist means "noisy spirit," current parapsychology theory suggests that they are not spirits or ghosts at all. Poltergeist activity is psychokinetic activity caused by a living person. Usually that person is a teenager undergoing hormonal changes or someone under extreme emotional or psychological stress.
So what we generally consider the scariest aspects of ghosts - objects moving by themselves, TVs turning on, pounding on walls and very rarely a person being injured - are most likely caused by the unconscious working of a living human mind. We can't blame ghosts.
For those of us researching ghost and haunting phenomena, we must resist our fearful instincts in the face of the unknown. Fear can only inhibit our examination and understanding of one of the most intriguing aspects of the human experience.
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