The Case for Ghosts:
An Objective Look at the Paranormal
By J. Allan Danelek, Llewellyn Publications, 2006

      Author Mary Roach wants to believe in ghosts. “[It’s] a nicer prospect than just being dead,” she explains. But when she wrote her book Spook, in which she searched for scientific evidence of the existence of spirits, she found none. J. Allan Danelek says he doesn’t necessarily want to believe in ghosts; he just wants to know the truth. In his book, The Case for Ghosts, he also finds no evidence, but he comes to a far different conclusion than does Roach.

      The opening arguments in Danelek’s case seem reasonable enough. He maintains that he is an objective commentator who can’t say for certain whether he believes in ghosts or not. He is determined, though, to defend those who do believe in ghosts from those naysayers who would deny the existence of spirits without valid scientific grounds for doing so. As an illustration of the bad science practiced by ghost deniers, he uses the analogy of Louis Pasteur. Pasteur theorized, in the nineteenth century, that illnesses were caused by invisible microorganisms, while the prevailing medical wisdom held that sickness was caused by “bad blood,” and cures could be effected by bloodletting – removing much of the bad blood from the patient’s system.

      Pasteur was ridiculed, Danelek points out, by the scientists who thought the existence of miniscule beings was too preposterous to consider. Bloodletting was the only practice that made sense, despite the lack of evidence that it actually worked (and, in fact, that it often killed the patient). Pasteur set off to prove his germ theory, and eventually he was able to devise experiments that convinced the scientific community that his seemingly wacky proposal was correct.

      This is where we are with ghosts, Danelek argues. Bad scientists insist that ghosts don’t exist, even though people see them all the time, and those scientists refuse to consider the possibility of ghosts regardless of the evidence. And perhaps, just like Pasteur, ghost hunters will soon come up with compelling evidence to suggest the existence of spirits; maybe the technology for doing so just isn’t quite ready yet.

      The problem with Danelek’s case is that it fizzles out after the introduction. Indeed, he doesn’t really make a case at all. Instead, he jumps into the talk of the spiritualist/ghost hunter trade, leaving science in the dust. He talks about the “mechanics of a haunting,” suggesting theories about what, physically, a ghost is made of. He lists the technological tools that ghost hunters use (cameras, tape recorders, thermometers, electromagnetic field detectors). He explains how ghost photos can be faked or misinterpreted. Completely absent, however, is a discussion of results or data. Nowhere does he say, “In x number of cases, y amount of EMF fluctuation was detected, versus z amount of EMF fluctuation in non-haunted locations,” or anything like it. He doesn’t even talk about anecdotal cases. If ghost hunters are his clients in this case, they are the victims of gross incompetence on the part of their consul.

      In the later parts of the book, Danelek strays even farther from the convincing, and gets quite a distance from the objective, too. He discusses the types of ghosts and spirits. He defines the categories of malevolent ghosts, poltergeists, demons, spirit guides and their kin. He classifies the different types of hauntings. Here, his material is based almost entirely on the stuff of movies and books, myths, religious beliefs and other unverifiable sources. Nowhere does he give a reason for classifying the purported spirits in such a way, beyond pure imagination or the consensus of the spiritualist crowd. It’s as if he were arguing for the existence of Martians by saying that of course there are Martians because there are pink ones and brown ones and green ones.

      Danelek also betrays his claims of disinterested objectivity when he suggests, in the book’s final chapter, that he believes that his personal spirit guide helped him write the manuscript. “Whole sections started to come together,” he explains, of the book’s mysterious inspiration, “while ideas that I was having trouble fleshing out suddenly became clear to me.” To many of us, this would seem like the natural, unspectacular, typical experience of a writing project, but to Danelek it is tantalizing evidence of a spiritual helper. Fine, if he wants to believe it, but it’s hardly scientific.

      Devoid as it is of any verifiable, reproducible data to back up his arguments about the various types of spirits, Danelek’s book is no real case for ghosts.

      That’s not to say that ghost hunters aren’t beset by unreasonable skeptics and bad scientists, but Danelek’s book, as articulate and amiable as it is, is not an antidote. Roach’s Spook comes closer, but unfortunately for ghost hunters, she comes up with – unsurprisingly – no hard evidence for the existence of ghosts. Deborah Blum’s Ghost Hunters is a relatively dry, journalistic account of the trials of William James, a Harvard psychologist (and brother of Henry James) who set out in the nineteenth century to prove the existence of ghosts; he too was ridiculed by the scientific establishment, and he too did his best to poke holes in the bad science that denied ghosts. Neither Roach’s book nor Blum’s is what ghost-o-philes are looking for; neither concludes that ghosts exist. Danelek’s book, however, wants far too badly to say that ghosts exist, and therefore it is not the book that believers need either.

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