Believing In Tiffanie Wen's Why Do People Believe In Ghosts

Watching the joy in a child’s eye when Santa Claus is mentioned is something that will never grow old. Yet as they age, the belief will diminish and eventually disappear. There are beliefs though that may continue through adulthood ghosts, astrology, psychics, and countless more. In Why Do People Believe in Ghost by Tiffanie Wen she explores the cultural, emotional, and scientific reasoning behind believing in ghosts, although there are still questions left unanswered and unexplainable.
What exactly is a ghost? Well, “the word ‘ghost’ in English tends to refer to the soul or spirit of a deceased person that can appear to the living” (Wen). In general, these souls or spirits are those of loved ones, or alternatively spirits of negative energy
as in a demon. Believing in ghosts is a belief found all over the world. A poll from 2013 found that 42 percent of Americans and 52 percent of the population in the U.K believe in ghosts (Wen). These are just two statistics to exemplify that for a belief deemed unexplainable and unreal there is a large percent of believers in western cultures. Historically, western cultures are more rational and analytical comparatively to eastern cultures where folklore and tradition are held in high value. Asian culture is one that strongly exemplifies the cultural connection to belief in ghosts. “In China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand, the seventh month of the lunar calendar ushers in the Hungry Ghost Festival, when it is believed that ghosts of the deceased are temporarily released from the lower realm to visit the living” (Wen). This is a whole month of cultural celebration of the souls of deceased loved ones across the country. There are celebrations like this across the globe for example Day of the Dead in Mexico. Across the globe, countries and individuals create a cultural connection between them and the dead, despite having no real proof of existence.
Often when ghosts are thought about it, it is in the emotional sense. When someone loses a loved one they often tend to think that the loved one is watching, protecting, or looking after them. Ghosts are thought to “… ‘have an attachment to the human realm which keeps them haunting and helping humans’” (Wen). This creates an emotional tie between the person and the ghost(s). There is this idea of mortality, ghosts let people believe in something after worldly. “’Even though we find the idea of ghosts and spirits scary, in a wider context, they provide evidence for the survival of the soul’” (Wen). The idea of life after death is comforting and ghosts can be one way to find that comfort. When trying to explain the deemed unexplainable skeptics often search for scientific reason or theory to discredit believers. One of the main theories to discredit ghosts is the idea of sleep paralysis induced hallucinations. Sleep paralysis is “a phenomenon that occurs when someone wakes up while still in dream-inducing REM stage of sleep, in which your body is paralyzed” (Wen). There are stories across countries about being asleep and waking up to see someone in the room with the individual or on the scary side even holding the person down. To disprove these claims scientists have looked at sleep paralysis because it can be accompanied with “…visual and audio hallucinations, including the presence of monstrous figures, and difficulty breathing. The experience has been interpreted as paranormal in several cultures” (Wen). Just because there is a scientific explanation of these claims, it doesn’t mean that is exactly what happened. There is always more to study and learn.
Just as waking up in the middle night, unable to move or control one owns body accompanied with audio or video hallucinations would be quiet concerning there are ghost claims that happen during the day to day monotony of life.
To understand these claims the brain is often studied. Researchers have found that our brains “have the tendency to look at patterns and see them as deliberate” (Wen). In simpler terms our brains look for patterns and associate them to causation, instead of looking for outside explanations. “’People assume that if they can't explain something in natural terms, then it must be something paranormal’” (Wen). When there is no analytical explanation for an experience tendencies fall towards paranormal. Science is on a constant continuum of improvement and new findings, maybe someday there will be an all-inclusive finding about the truth behind ghosts and other paranormal phenomena.
Life is full of things that we can’t explain but in Why Do People Believe in Ghost by Tiffanie Wen she explores the cultural, emotional, and scientific reasoning behind believing in ghosts, although there are still questions left unanswered and unexplainable. In this point of time science and reason can’t answer all our questions. Children believe in Santa until they are told that he is not. Well, until there is an explanation for ghosts, astrology, psychics, and others humans will continue to
believe.