Why is it Historically Unlikely to See Ghosts at a Bus Stop, Particularly During the Day?

The history of ghosts and the supernatural is a long and complex one that is fraught with controversy and doubt, often mirroring changes in society and developments in science. In this essay I will be answering the question, ‘Why is it historically unlikely to see ghosts at a bus stop, particularly during the day?’ I will do this through exploring the history of ghosts, examining particular aspects of the question, and discussing the effects that developments in science have had on pre-conceived notions surrounding ghosts, ultimately determining an answer to the question of why it is historically unlikely to see ghosts at a bus stop, particular during the day.

The concept of ghosts has long fascinated and intrigued humans, with the first records of ghosts dating back to the pre-Abrahamic religions of ancient Mesopotamia, in which a ghost was thought to be created at time of a person’s death, taking on the memory and personality of the dead person. The Hebrew Bible also discusses ghosts (I Samuel 28:3–19 KJV) and in some cases condemns them, for example, 1 John 4:1-3 warns believers that not every spirit is "from God" and they should be carefully evaluated for demonic origin. Furthermore, in the age of antiquity, ghosts were common in records with some ancient Romans believing that ghosts could be used to exact revenge on an enemy by scratching a curse on a piece of lead or pottery and placing it into a grave. However, it is important to understand that belief in ghosts in ancient Rome and Greece is not only hard to quantify due to a lack of evidence but also that belief in ghosts was far from unanimous, with many thinking ‘ghosts’ to be the work of practical jokers. In Europe, the Middle Ages was a crucial period for the study of ghosts and the supernatural; before the rise of Christianity, ghosts were accepted as a natural aspect of human existence. The pagan belief systems held to the same understanding of ghosts that the Church would eventually adopt – that spirits of the dead could return to ask help from the living in completing unfinished business, to punish the living for incomplete or inadequate funerary rites, or because some aspect of their death left them unsettled. This concept was at first resisted by the medieval Church, but soon accepted and spread across Europe. The question, however, discusses bus stops, which were an invention of modernity, with the first recorded ‘bus stop’ being George Shillibeer’s 1829 London Horse Omnibus Service, running between stops at Paddington Station and the Bank of England. This, therefore, means that we must look at sightings of and beliefs ghosts from the 19th century onwards, because from this period urban populations grew, and public transport became more common in Western society.

(Omnibus c.1890)

The 19th century is routinely thought of as a period of secularisation and empiricism, with cultural authority shifting from traditional religion to the laws and reason of science. Max Weber, the German sociologist, described this period as, “characterised by rationalisation and intellectualisation and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world”. It may be said that this new focus on secularisation and fact left little space in academic circles for conversations about the supernatural and ghosts, with intellectuals neglecting these ‘old-age, pseudo sciences’ in order to discuss revolutionary ideas in fields like biology (Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859) or economics (Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in 1867). However, within this so called ‘age of disenchantment’, ghost stories and paranormal phenomena became nothing short of intoxicating for the ‘common’ Victorian audience. This period saw a rise in deep religious and spiritual revivals but also in parlour magic and spiritualism. Historians had believed these to be side-effects produced by the speed of cultural change, however it is now observed that the religious and scientific strands of the century were far more intertwined than separate, as during the rapid growth of the sciences, the supernatural and natural often became blurred in popular thought. This blurred vision continued through into the succeeding decades, but very soon scientific thought and reasoning turned to consult the supernatural and dismiss it once and for all.

As explored above, for over 3000 years people have reported, or at least been aware of, ghosts. However, as logic and reason came to the forefront of people’s minds in the last two centuries, ghost sightings have faced a lot more scrutiny and ‘ghost-hunting’ has now become to be viewed as a mere parlour game, with Benjamin Radford of the Committee for Skeptical Enquiry (an organisation focusing on the use of reason and scientific enquiry in order to dispute claims of supernatural appearances) stating ghosting hunting to be “all speculation and guesswork… merely a parlour game". But ghost ‘sightings’ are still common in society with 1 in 5 Americans believing they have encountered a ghost at some point in their life and 58 percent of those polled agreeing with the statement that “Places can be haunted by spirits.” (Pew Research Centre, 2009). There are countless ‘ghost stories’ online, none of which we know with absolute certainty to be true, but nonetheless this shows that belief in the supernatural is on the rise.

In terms of psychological enquiry, great progress has been made into explaining ghosts and sightings of them. Dr Christopher French, a psychologist heading up the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at London’s Goldsmiths University, believes that people misinterpret experiences as paranormal because of tendencies bred into us through thousands of years of evolution to help keep us alive. “Our brains almost seem prewired for what I would call weird beliefs,” he says, “Though we may see ourselves as rational beings, the reactionary way is our preferred mode of thinking, thanks to evolution”. French is working off Israeli psychologist Dr Daniel Kahneman’s theory that we have two systems of thinking:

• System 1 “is the brain's fast, automatic, intuitive approach”.

• System 2 is “the mind's slower, analytical mode, where reason dominates”.

French believes this can be applied to sightings of the supernatural, because humans are more likely to operate through System 1 when faced with ‘danger’ and therefore will act spontaneously and less carefully, meaning that events can be misinterpreted. This, when coupled with cognitive biases like patternicity (the tendency to see false connections in unrelated or meaningless data) leads the person to be adamant that they have seen a ghost. However, there are many more factors that have been proposed as to why people think they have seen ghosts. One example is sleep paralysis. With a condition like sleep paralysis, the individual can experience hallucinations while either sleeping or awake and they often suffer from the condition due to lack of sleep, stress, or anxiety. The most common thing to see during sleep paralysis is a dark figure in the room. Individuals will also experience being unable to move because the brain wakes up before the body. Another condition that can cause this effect is Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), with evidence showing that in the past, people who suffered from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy were thought to be possessed or receive divine messages and visions from God. TLE affects the nervous system, and people with TLE can experience seizures that can last 30 to 60 seconds. Because of this, an individual can claim to see things that are not there. It is also more likely for one to experience these conditions during the night as vision is often less accurate, furthermore illuminating the unlikelihood of seeing a ghost at a bus stop during the day. With most of these historic cases of ghost sightings being heavily undermined as a result of findings in psychology and genetics, we can observe the impact of the use of science in history and how both disciplines can be used together to reach more accurate findings and conclusions.

Furthermore, in folklore it is believed that ghosts haunt a particular area or place where either they were killed or plan to exact revenge on a person that is still alive. For example, the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana, built in 1796, is believed to be home to 12 different ghosts, with the ghost stories centring around the tale of a slave named Chloe, who had her ear chopped off after she was reportedly caught eavesdropping. Seeking revenge, Chloe killed two of the master’s daughters by poisoning a birthday cake. She was then hanged by her fellow slaves, and today is reportedly seen wandering the plantation with a turban on to conceal her ear. In addition, the house is reputedly built over an Indian burial ground, and the ghost of a young Native American woman has been reported. While places such as graveyards, large country houses and churches seem to have large numbers of ghost sightings recorded, usually dating back some considerable time in the building or area’s history, in contrast less interesting and more everyday places such as shopping centres and bus stops have very few, perhaps due to the modernity and normality of them. This ultimately suggests that the supposed normality and modernity of the bus-stop corroborates the unlikelihood of one seeing a ghost there.

(Myrtles Planation)

In conclusion, although the existence of ghosts has been repeatedly shown to be untrue through developments in scientific fields like psychology, proving “ghosts” to be the result of the human brain and natural instincts, they still hold an enormous position in almost every culture on earth. Whether it be the murderous Norwegian ghosts ‘gjengangers’, meaning ‘walking again’, who are believed to be people who died before their time, usually a victim of murder or suicide, and their purpose, as revenge-motivated ghosts, is to seriously disturb the lives of those who wronged them usually in vicious means. Or the child-stealing Mexican ghost ‘La Llorona’- a wailing woman whose misdeeds in life have left her spirit trapped on Earth, where she torments little children. Ghosts have clearly made an impact on the lives and culture of humans for the last 3000 years. For this reason, one must be careful not to decisively claim that it is historically unlikely to see ghosts at a bus stop, particularly during the day, because interpretations of ghosts fluctuate between different societies. The nature and definitions of ghosts change and along with cultures and history. However, being aware of the different definitions of ghosts, the context the question and after reviewing evidence and consulting psychological reasoning, I believe that the likelihood of seeing ghosts at a bus stop particularly during the day is immeasurably small if not completely unlikely. This is not only because of the context in which ghosts supposedly do their haunting, but also because of the overwhelming scientific evidence illustrating that seeing ghosts is a result of the one’s own brain and natural instincts rather than an actual visitation from a deceased being.

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Jay Frederick Palombella 28.05.21