If you have read the title of this post and decided to check it out; it is probably due to; a)you are hoping to make your own ghost; b)you believe ghosts are possible recordings or residual energy of people who have past away and believe that making a ghost is impossible as they just occur; c) just curious about what I may write; or d)something completely different. Incidentally, please feel free to add into the comments why you are visiting my website and what you would like to see more of on here. As your feedback can help me to shape the content you the visitors are actually looking for here.

A few of the earliest questions that I looked in when I started to research the paranormal were; “what is a ghost?” And; “Are ghosts and spirits different?” The latter question is more confusing than you may actually believe, as whilst most modern ghost hunters present a clear cut difference, older literature and even some academic literature is less specific.

When I personally made the decision to go ghost hunting overnight at some reported haunted locations, I thought it wise to gain an understanding of what it was that I would be hunting. Turns out there are some clear belief driven aspects here to deal with though. The first being a clear distinction that ghost and spirits are different; and this difference is built upon their behaviour and interaction with the experiencer.

However, is it really as clear cut as that? Is it possible we could find ourselves considering that all ghosts are spirits, and all spirits are ghosts? It was questions such as these that kept me up at night; luckily back in the day we conducted all our ghost hunts during the night.

If ghosts are to be considered to be a residual ‘energy’ left behind and only act like a recording, then we would likely experience them as as something that just plays out in front of us. It would not really matter if we tried to interact as the ghost would simply carry on not changing a thing, following the very same pattern, so to speak.

Whilst ghost hunters claim that spirits often interact and provide ‘intelligent communication’ during their ghost hunts; I have found this harder to accept over the years as I have learnt more about psychical research. Especially as its particularly easy for ghost hunters to misinterpret information as being communication from spirits.

The question still remains though; ‘how does one make a ghost?’ If you are familiar with the Philip Experiment then is could be argued that they already achieved this challenge. Especially as they built a character together and then successfully managed some kind of communication with the character, which was later followed by physical activity. For the purpose of this post I am not going to enter into huge amounts of detail about the Philip Experiment, as I want to focus on the concept alone.

Firstly, many ghost hunters begin their investigation of a location knowing some information about its history and possible hauntings. This means that as they begin to move around the location, they may begin to associate the information they are aware of with physical places. Which means the ghost stories they may have read, become merged with the locations history and also the ghost hunters locality. Whilst we take this in on its own, this may seem relatively uninteresting. However, add into that, that it could be argued that ghost hunters enter haunted locations with the intent on finding a ghost and once again we have the elements of intention and attention helping to drive these experiences. Of course in many cases it could be said that the activity experienced was spontaneous and as such those present experienced something that may have occurred even if they were not there. However, as many of the claims from ghost hunters regarding their personal experience of the paranormal often relates to them performing some kind of action first; then could we not argue that they could be a part of the cause here?

Let us go back to the Philip Experiment. In which the group of sitters made up a spirit, providing it with enough information for them to regard it as a complete character, no different from those we hear of ghost hunters attempting to communicate with during their investigations. Placing that in some context, let me use a past experience of my own at Warwick Castle.

In a particular room at Warwick Castle where it is said Aleister Crowley may had performed a seance, I observed a group use two methods to attempt to communicate with Crowley; 1) EVP; and 2) Ouija Board. Now we must express that firstly both of these methods are open to misinterpretation and of course fraud. However, let us go with it and suggest neither were apparent on this occasion, although we must in reality concede to the possibility. Now, regardless of the fact that Crowley was a real person, those present knew select information about the character in question. Then by ‘calling out’ to Crowley using the Ouija Board and recording EVP, surely that once again demonstrates both intention and attention to the subject matter. Which in turn could provide results in a similar way to the Philip Experiment.

If this is indeed possible, and to me it certainly does provide explanation for many paranormal experiences had in these scenarios; then certainly the potential of our minds, subconscious or conscious is likely to be beyond our belief. In fact it is so much beyond our present belief that many chose to believe the source of these experiences to be the afterlife.

So, now we know this, how do we go about making our ghost? Well, I wish it was simple, but that does not seem to be the case. We currently live in a technological age where many ghost hunters are more focussed on their gadgets than the local environment where the phenomena is said to occur. Technology like REM Pods or EMF meters is being used to find and communicate with spirits, often as it its a proven piece of kit guaranteed to provide some kind of evidence. And just like modern technology there are constantly now ‘must have’ piece of kit that ghost hunters pay expensive price tags to own. Most of the technology is actually pretty useless from an investigation point of view, as its mostly a bunch of ‘buzzes’ and ‘flashing lights’ driven by local environmental changes.

The point here being, when making a ghost or having a paranormal experience; usually means we need to remove the distractions. In my opinion most of this ‘ghost hunter tech’ simply distracts the group from providing their intentions with the desired balance of attraction.

Perhaps a better starting point would be to hold as many focussed, seance style sittings in one location as possible to build up what is needed to create your ghost. Which would actually mirror many of the successful reports relating to both spirit communications and physical activity. Excluding spontaneous cases such as poltergeist cases.

Many years ago a group of us actually tried something similar. Whilst the results were not like that of the Philip Experiment or even close to the Scole Experiment, we did achieve some tiny anomalies. Perhaps we were halfway to making our own ghost.

For this post I will leave you with this. If during a paranormal investigation of a haunted location you focus your attention directly on communicating with one potential ghost that is related to and woven into that locations history; then if you experience anything paranormal would it be likely you may make the association to that ghost above all others? The answer is most likely in my opinion; as its hard to remain non-biased when you seek a desired outcome.

Perhaps our ghostly experiences are nothing more than self generated psi effects, which we mistake for proof of the afterlife. Then again, perhaps not.