What do you think?
Rate this book
Seeing Ghosts: Experiences of the Paranormal
Not everyone believes in ghosts, but ghostly encounters have been reported, in all sincerity, all over the world and for 3000 years at least. However, though everybody knows what is meant by seeing a ghost, few are aware that they fall into several distinct types, and seemingly always have.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2002
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 18, 2014
To my mind the single best book on apparitional experience for the lay reader, and a classic work far more readable than GNM Tyrells Apparitions or Hart's Six Theories. Up there with Green & McCreery. An excellent book which looks at exactly what happens when we "see a ghost", Evans draws on cases to show the diversity and difficulty of finding easy explanations.
April 16, 2014
A well-organised and thoughtful book that bases its analysis on almost 200 cases, which are interspersed throughout the text and incorporated as the argument develops.
Evans builds on the ideas of previous researchers, especially the SPR, but his interpretations take a slightly different trajectory from theirs. Unable to accept that all ghost cases are misperception or coincidence, but agreeing that the mechanism must be some form of hallucination, Evans pushes into the possible causes of these hallucinations, trying to account for their veridical content in many cases.
Two hypotheses are offered: (1) super-psi, an as yet unknown ability of the subject of a ghost experience to access information otherwise unknowable; and (2) the extended self, an as yet unknown vehicle by which the object of a ghost experience can influence the subject, in some instances perhaps from a point beyond death.
Evans suggests either hypothesis is adequate to explain the ghost experience, but evidently favours the parsimony of the latter, given the difficulties that arise when we consider the motivation for the percipient’s supposed use of super-psi. In other words: why see ghosts, unless ghosts are there and willing to be seen?
I was surprised by my own doubt concerning Evans’ even-handed and Fortean approach to his case material. The Chaffin case, for example, in which a dead father appears to reveal the location of his revised will is co-opted by Evans as support for his ‘extended self’ hypothesis (p. 104, 237). Yet this case has been satisfactorily resolved by Mary Roach, who has produced evidence that the ‘revised’ will was actually a fake by the dead man’s son, who therefore probably invented the story of the ghost.
Another case (p. 65) similarly bugged me (although I have no explanation). It concerns an investigator who arrives at a location and leaves the door unlocked for a delayed colleague. The householder soon after reports that she sees a ghost; the investigator sees nothing; but then the delayed colleague steps into the house and asks where the ‘other man’ has gone. Evans takes this tale at face value, partly because he is acquainted with the investigator concerned. Me, I was too suspicious not to feel this story too hokey somehow, nor to avoid wondering if the householder and the delayed colleague weren’t in collusion.
Evans seems averse to coincidence. ‘Surely this is stretching chance too far!’ (p. 225), he says, and makes similar remarks elsewhere. But improbable things can and do happen. My own hunch is that coincidence plays an important role in ghost experiences. Evans style of thinking is scientific in the respect that even though he posits currently unknown mechanisms, his are nevertheless mechanistic theories, envisaging a discrete chain of causes in the production of ghost experiences. Personally, I like the weirder option that ghosts are synchronicitous experiences, perhaps beyond causality. This is territory that Evans only begins to confront when considering the implications of his ‘extended self’ hypothesis for the relationship between ghosts and time (p. 265).
On the one hand, then, I found Evans not sceptical enough, whilst on the other, too mechanistic. What I suspect this might mean is that he is probably doing a better than average job of finding a useful middle ground between inflexible scepticism and irrational belief.
Evans builds on the ideas of previous researchers, especially the SPR, but his interpretations take a slightly different trajectory from theirs. Unable to accept that all ghost cases are misperception or coincidence, but agreeing that the mechanism must be some form of hallucination, Evans pushes into the possible causes of these hallucinations, trying to account for their veridical content in many cases.
Two hypotheses are offered: (1) super-psi, an as yet unknown ability of the subject of a ghost experience to access information otherwise unknowable; and (2) the extended self, an as yet unknown vehicle by which the object of a ghost experience can influence the subject, in some instances perhaps from a point beyond death.
Evans suggests either hypothesis is adequate to explain the ghost experience, but evidently favours the parsimony of the latter, given the difficulties that arise when we consider the motivation for the percipient’s supposed use of super-psi. In other words: why see ghosts, unless ghosts are there and willing to be seen?
I was surprised by my own doubt concerning Evans’ even-handed and Fortean approach to his case material. The Chaffin case, for example, in which a dead father appears to reveal the location of his revised will is co-opted by Evans as support for his ‘extended self’ hypothesis (p. 104, 237). Yet this case has been satisfactorily resolved by Mary Roach, who has produced evidence that the ‘revised’ will was actually a fake by the dead man’s son, who therefore probably invented the story of the ghost.
Another case (p. 65) similarly bugged me (although I have no explanation). It concerns an investigator who arrives at a location and leaves the door unlocked for a delayed colleague. The householder soon after reports that she sees a ghost; the investigator sees nothing; but then the delayed colleague steps into the house and asks where the ‘other man’ has gone. Evans takes this tale at face value, partly because he is acquainted with the investigator concerned. Me, I was too suspicious not to feel this story too hokey somehow, nor to avoid wondering if the householder and the delayed colleague weren’t in collusion.
Evans seems averse to coincidence. ‘Surely this is stretching chance too far!’ (p. 225), he says, and makes similar remarks elsewhere. But improbable things can and do happen. My own hunch is that coincidence plays an important role in ghost experiences. Evans style of thinking is scientific in the respect that even though he posits currently unknown mechanisms, his are nevertheless mechanistic theories, envisaging a discrete chain of causes in the production of ghost experiences. Personally, I like the weirder option that ghosts are synchronicitous experiences, perhaps beyond causality. This is territory that Evans only begins to confront when considering the implications of his ‘extended self’ hypothesis for the relationship between ghosts and time (p. 265).
On the one hand, then, I found Evans not sceptical enough, whilst on the other, too mechanistic. What I suspect this might mean is that he is probably doing a better than average job of finding a useful middle ground between inflexible scepticism and irrational belief.
March 13, 2023
I originally reviewed this on Amazon a few years ago. I found it the best investigation into ghost encounters that I have read. Most such books are purely anecdotal, but Evans separates sightings into classifications (‘Vordogers’ & others, which are ghosts of the living, Crisis Apparitions, some of whom survive the crisis, while others died during the crisis, Ancient Ghosts et al.)
Some of the cases could be due to mistaken identity. One case I think explains the near-identical timing of two siblings seeing their (unknown to them) recently-deceased father in the street, despite their being over a kilometre apart. Both saw him only fleetingly, and then he was gone. Only later did they learn of his death.
That case was from the 1930s. As, however, pics from the period reveal an almost homogeneously white population in very similar clothing to one another, I suspect they both saw people who superficially resembled their father, possibly because of a posture, tilt of the head etc. but a longer search revealed no sign. Upon learning of his death, they draw a — to me, wrong — opinion that they had seen his ghost.
One statement of Evans made me question his research method: he stated that Jesus’ earthly ministry “began with a journey through Hell”. It most certainly did not! Allowing Evans the benefit of the doubt, he equates the temptation in the wilderness with being in Hell; but that is far from ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’!
I nevertheless recommend this book as more informative than the usual “Missus White had a fright in the middle of the Night!” variety typifying most such books.
Some of the cases could be due to mistaken identity. One case I think explains the near-identical timing of two siblings seeing their (unknown to them) recently-deceased father in the street, despite their being over a kilometre apart. Both saw him only fleetingly, and then he was gone. Only later did they learn of his death.
That case was from the 1930s. As, however, pics from the period reveal an almost homogeneously white population in very similar clothing to one another, I suspect they both saw people who superficially resembled their father, possibly because of a posture, tilt of the head etc. but a longer search revealed no sign. Upon learning of his death, they draw a — to me, wrong — opinion that they had seen his ghost.
One statement of Evans made me question his research method: he stated that Jesus’ earthly ministry “began with a journey through Hell”. It most certainly did not! Allowing Evans the benefit of the doubt, he equates the temptation in the wilderness with being in Hell; but that is far from ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’!
I nevertheless recommend this book as more informative than the usual “Missus White had a fright in the middle of the Night!” variety typifying most such books.
December 16, 2014
boring
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews