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 Azreal13 wrote:

Nevertheless, there are still photos that have been around for 50 years to almost a century at this point that have stood up to analysis and that are supported by credible testimony. The problem is that there's almost nothing that can't be created from scratch these days, but there are still images that I find compelling. The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc.. we'll never reach a consensus because we don't have the means or (I assume) knowledge to do it for ourselves.

Out of curiosity, to which photos do you refer? I'd be interested in checking them out.

For me, the biggest problem with this subject is that evidence of the supernatural (or something which is considered to be supernatural but is merely beyond our current scientific understanding, as you say) simply can not be (or has not been) reproduced under controlled conditions. As such, no evidence produced thus far precludes a more materialistic explanation. That is what I need to see; not something that appears to be inexplicable or compelling, but something that precludes conventional explanation. That way, you and I can both agree that what we have is, in fact, genuine evidence that "non-material" forces are at work in a way that defies scientific understanding.

Captain Kirk once said something along the lines of, There is no such thing as the unknown, only that which is temporarily not understood. This sentiment pretty well characterizes a breathlessly optimistic approach to rational skepticism regarding the purportedly supernatural. But I’m not sure that optimism is very well grounded. We have to accept the possibility that there may be phenomena that must remain unknown to us as a matter of our own limited capacity to know. In which case, we should also recognize the distinction between what it is impossible for us to know, especially in the relatively narrow sense of materialism, and what is impossible to exist.

 Manchu wrote:
Captain Kirk once said something along the lines of, There is no such thing as the unknown, only that which is temporarily not understood. This sentiment pretty well characterizes a breathlessly optimistic approach to rational skepticism regarding the purportedly supernatural. But I’m not sure that optimism is very well grounded. We have to accept the possibility that there may be phenomena that must remain unknown to us as a matter of our own limited capacity to know. In which case, we should also recognize the distinction between what it is impossible for us to know, especially in the relatively narrow sense of materialism, and what is impossible to exist.

I actually have a tattoo on my arm which reads, "remember you are blind," in Latin. Although I have slowly become more of a positivist, it represents the idea that human perception is by its nature finite and non-comprehensive, as you say.

 Luciferian wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

Nevertheless, there are still photos that have been around for 50 years to almost a century at this point that have stood up to analysis and that are supported by credible testimony. The problem is that there's almost nothing that can't be created from scratch these days, but there are still images that I find compelling. The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc.. we'll never reach a consensus because we don't have the means or (I assume) knowledge to do it for ourselves.

Out of curiosity, to which photos do you refer? I'd be interested in checking them out.

For me, the biggest problem with this subject is that evidence of the supernatural (or something which is considered to be supernatural but is merely beyond our current scientific understanding, as you say) simply can not be (or has not been) reproduced under controlled conditions. As such, no evidence produced thus far precludes a more materialistic explanation. That is what I need to see; not something that appears to be inexplicable or compelling, but something that precludes conventional explanation. That way, you and I can both agree that what we have is, in fact, genuine evidence that "non-material" forces are at work in a way that defies scientific understanding.

Lol. Would you believe my tablet has crashed twice while trying to reply to this?

I've lost a bunch of written stuff, so here's just a picture..


This image was taken by a vicar nearly 50 years ago. The negative has been examined and is tamper free, and it has thus far defied all attempts at recreation. It's generally known as the Tulip Staircase Ghost. (Worth noting that the Tulip Staircase is of architectural interest as the first helical unsupported stair, which is why the pic was taken in the first instance.)

That pic doesn't work.

 ingtaer wrote:
That pic doesn't work.

Idea for a horror movie. Haunted images plague random protagonists #453. Whenever he tries to show them to anyone, things get worse!

I can see the picture. It is certainly an interesting and creepy image, and I've just read the backstory. While I can't say for certain that the image does not contain a ghost, I also can't say that it does. Even if the negative was unaltered, there could have been people on the stairs that the photographer didn't remember or any number of things. Definitely a cool picture, and one of the most compelling ones that I've seen, though still not concrete evidence of the "supernatural".

 Luciferian wrote:
I can see the picture. It is certainly an interesting and creepy image, and I've just read the backstory. While I can't say for certain that the image does not contain a ghost, I also can't say that it does. Even if the negative was unaltered, there could have been people on the stairs that the photographer didn't remember or any number of things. Definitely a cool picture, and one of the most compelling ones that I've seen, though still not concrete evidence of the "supernatural".

My beef with this image is that there is no mention of where the original and the negative are kept. No expert are named and there are no link to their research, methodology and results. The site were it was photographed is a tourist attraction that heavily markets itself for people who like folklore and ghost stories. To me that's all very fishy. If this image is real, almost unique, spectacular and unexplained, it's a very valuable artefact. Why is there so little detail on it. It doesn't even have an entry on wikipedia (unlike other similar pictures). Come to think of it, I couldn't find this picture anywhere except on paranormal website with largely a copy past of the story and its various claims. I didn't find any sort of mention of the photograph outside of those stories either (no interview on any paranormal show, or regular talk-show, no articles, no research, no biography, etc.).

epronovost wrote:

My beef with this image is that there is no mention of where the original and the negative are kept. No expert are named and there are no link to their research, methodology and results. The site were it was photographed is a tourist attraction that heavily markets itself for people who like folklore and ghost stories. To me that's all very fishy. If this image is real, almost unique, spectacular and unexplained, it's a very valuable artefact. Why is there so little detail on it. It doesn't even have an entry on wikipedia (unlike other similar pictures).

I was trying to remain in the spirit of taking claims in good faith, but you're correct. Without a verified chain of custody and documentation from the Kodak technicians who examined the film, it's totally unreliable as evidence.

I think it's worth pointing out that the Tulip Staircase Ghost's only real claim to fame is the claim that the negative was deemed untampered with by Kodak. To my knowledge this statement is just something this is continually repeated. No one has ever verified that anyone ever examined the negative, and the claim originates from England's Ghost Club, a group that is now defunct by decades and kept no records. EDIT: Arguably you can't even call it a group, since it's a name used by numerous bunches of enthusiasts in different places over the last 200 years.

The image is otherwise visually alike to numerous other photos of the era that used double and long exposure tricks like the Brown Lady or the Monk of Newby Church.

We can, at least, use this thread as evidence of prescience.

The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc..

 Azreal13 wrote:
We can, at least, use this thread as evidence of prescience.

The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc..

To be fair, I said as much myself. The evidence must preclude a materialistic explanation in order to meet my standards. Without being able to verify anything about the picture, I can't rule out a multitude of mundane explanations which do not rely on supernatural forces, or forces which are beyond our current scientific understanding. That's why I said that the evidence must come from a controlled environment; that would eliminate all of those considerations and leave me with no other option but to conclude that something beyond scientific understanding had taken place.

Assuming that the story behind the Tulip Stair Ghost picture is 100% factual, I still can not conclude that it is a picture of a ghost. That is a leap of logic.

Unfortunately, it's tough to even begin with the assumption that the story is factual, given the complete lack of documentation regarding the photograph. There are so many questions which must be satisfied before I can logically conclude that a supernatural event has taken place. If I want to know the truth of the matter, I must not simply accept that the photograph is what it is claimed to be.

The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.

I'm a historian. I'm very well versed in a number of "it's been repeated so much it must be true" statements that are absolute bullocks.

At least when it comes to the ghost you can say you have a picture purporting to be it.

When it comes to the examination I'm unaware of anyone having anything to suggest it actually took place. People just say it did, because some guy said it did 50 years ago. Maybe it did, and the paperwork is buried in a desk somewhere, but anyone can claim "experts examined it."

The only ghost image I think that has ever been fully verified authentic is the Freddy Jackson photo. The picture is totally real. It's just that it was taken before Freddy Jackson died, not after, something that was confirmed by Royal Navy records. Whether the guy who first offered the photo in the 70s was lying or simply so old he got some dates and pictures mixed up is anyone's guess.


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 ingtaer wrote:
The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.

There are a number of things that are naked to the human eye but can appear on photos. Somethings appear on photos explicitly because of how cameras work. Back scatter or red eye for example are caused by flash.

 LordofHats wrote:
"This cassette contains a recording" can to a point be taken for granted because we all know cassettes are used to record things.

In the 1960s if I'd handed you a DVD and told you it was a movie, you'd have laughed. Or perhaps more to the point, handing that cassette to one of the few remaining tribes that has no contact with the modern world and telling them it was music.

Just because one does not understand the medium that the recording was made with does not negate the fact the recording exists.

Or, considering the subject, MAY exist.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
In other words, since you are talking about unexplained phenomena and not just about ghosts, why insist on calling it ghosts?

Because the people who claim to experience them call them ghosts instead of unexplained phenomena. Sorta like how people seeing something they can't identify in the sky call them flying saucers, when they should be called unidentified flying objects.

 Vulcan wrote:
In the 1960s if I'd handed you a DVD and told you it was a movie, you'd have laughed. Or perhaps more to the point, handing that cassette to one of the few remaining tribes that has no contact with the modern world and telling them it was music.

Just because one does not understand the medium that the recording was made with does not negate the fact the recording exists.

Or, considering the subject, MAY exist.

Read the rest of that post.

Comparing a cassette, which we know records information, as a time travel in a bottle rhetorical argument to justify the stone tape hypothesis as anything but a long serious of unsupportable claims is like playing slight of hand with words. That there are things we do not know is not a basis by which to grant every claim weight or value. It's just a roundabout way of arguing from ignorance.

Read through that Tulip Staircase thing and it is interesting to note that its reliability is supposedly underpinned by the fact that Kodiak engineers said that it had not been tampered with. That's pretty weak for evidence. If I was to take a photo of my cat right now and swore up and down that there was no cat there when the photo was taken, if my camera and the photo were examined by experts they would find no evidence of tampering because I was lying...

 LordofHats wrote:
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 ingtaer wrote:
The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.

There are a number of things that are naked to the human eye but can appear on photos. Somethings appear on photos explicitly because of how cameras work. Back scatter or red eye for example are caused by flash.

Quite, but everything that a photo shows relies upon light, it just stretches my credulity that something would appear in a photo that was not visible to the eye like that. Of course you can play with a camera to get different effects (like prolonged exposure) but I struggle to see how it could work in such detail for something not visible without playing with it.

And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.

After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.

 Vulcan wrote:
And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.

Go start your own research lab. Give me the address. I'll send 500 claims to you every day. Better investigate all of them! Who knows. There really might be an alien from Alpha Centauri in this photograph on safari taking in the local wildlife.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. That which is asserted with weak evidence can be effectively disregarded until stronger evidence arises. There's no onus on the rest of us to give credence to the fringe belief that the illuminati created a magic bullet used to assassinate JFK. That it could potentially be true is not a reason to care and devote our time and energy to the task of proving or disproving it especially not when more mundane explanations exist.

After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.

I'm not even going to touch that because there's no where to go with it that isn't stupid.

 Vulcan wrote:
And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.

After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.

Indeed, but there also has to be a point where one has to say that the evidence (or lack thereof) points to the absence of something.

I guess it depends upon where ones own skepticism will define limits, personally I believe that extra terrestrial life exists. There is as little evidence (and remarkably similar evidence at that) for that as there is for ghosts/hauntings but I find it hard to believe that our little ball of rock was the only place to evolve life. I do not however think they visit this planet to abduct people, mutilate cattle, makes some pretty patterns in crops and basically go for a joy ride.
Ghosts/hauntings I just fail to see how or why that could occur be it residual energy/life force/chi what have you and have never come accross either a piece of evidence or testamony that changed my mind. We all get creeped out now and again and it often happens in old buildings but from there to ghosts just doesnt likely.

Edit to add quote.

 ingtaer wrote:
Indeed, but there also has to be a point where one has to say that the evidence (or lack thereof) points to the absence of something.

Honestly I generally avoid touching that post because like the "nonbelief is still belief" it's a line of discussion that almost no one is capable of actually intelligently participating in and generally grinds discussions to a halt.

That said,

I guess it depends upon where ones own skepticism will define limits, personally I believe that extra terrestrial life exists. There is as little evidence (and remarkably similar evidence at that) for that as there is for ghosts/hauntings but I find it hard to believe that our little ball of rock was the only place to evolve life.

This is a good example of how nebulous the issue is.

Most people worth their salt I think would never discredit that aliens probably exist. The scale of the universe and time? Earth-like conditions statistically should exist somewhere other than here, and would presumably produce life. Of course, we don't have to take this a a mass hypothetic relying on probability entirely. There's circumstantial evidence of microscopic life once existed on Mars, and potential conditions for organic life on Europa providing future routes for poking at life beyond Earth. Not sure we can really ever know if there's life out there that is intelligent like us. I find a lot of sense in the position that there's no reason to assume, given the age of the universe, that any alien life would be anymore or less sophisticated than we are if we presume that our evolution and development is within the vastness of the stars a repeatable series of happenstances arising from chaos. It makes sense on paper. Whether it bears any truth in reality I'll probably never live to see.

I do not however think they visit this planet to abduct people, mutilate cattle, makes some pretty patterns in crops and basically go for a joy ride.

Well now you're just being superstitious

Ghosts/hauntings I just fail to see how or why that could occur be it residual energy/life force/chi what have you and have never come accross either a piece of evidence or testamony that changed my mind. We all get creeped out now and again and it often happens in old buildings but from there to ghosts just doesnt likely.

I generally find studies into the psychological aspects fascinating.

There was a study for example that purported that the "sense of a presence" is caused by irregular signals in the part of the brain that governs self-awareness and spatial recognition. They posited that these irregularities could be induced within specific environmental conditions, and could be induced by manipulating the brains sense of self-position. It's pretty cool. EDIT: Effectively, they argue that the sense of a presence is caused by the same series of sensory signals that can cause phantom limb syndrome. The brain is looking for sensory data, and not interpreting what data it is getting correctly.

EDIT EDIT: Wow this one took me forever to find. I really should have just started on Wikipedia. They link right to the study. There's also an engineering professor at Coventry University who has experimented with infrasound frequencies and how they can induce a sense of "creepiness" in people, including hallucinations. He's even visited a haunted location in Coventry where he worked and found the appropriate sound waves present in the location.

Before reading this, please remember that I'm absolutely a skeptic and I'm not trying to relate a 'spooky' tale to try to convince people of paranormal activity, this just relates to film exposure etc:

I have personal experience of the 'stuff showing up on photos that weren't there at the time' phenomenon. In my 2nd year at university I and 3 others moved into a house. We were taking pictures when we moved in (as young people do). This was before widespread digital cameras/phones so it was on a standard camera with film.

When the pictures came back, one in particular stood out. It was of the two girls in the house on our sofa, and there was a faint grey curved line on the exposure that ran down the middle, directly between them.

The friend of one of the girls, who was into all that new age spirituality etc (worked part time at a hippy shop) started freaking out, blaming negative energy in the room, saying that there were things working against the two female housemates (funnily enough over the course of our lease they did have a massive falling out, as commonly happens with people living together).

I took that original photo and there was definitely nothing physical in the room that would account for that line down the photo. I'm not well-versed in film exposure techniques to know the most likely cause (I'm certainly not suggesting paranormal activity or relating the tale to be 'spooky').

 Manchu wrote:
Captain Kirk once said something along the lines of, There is no such thing as the unknown, only that which is temporarily not understood. This sentiment pretty well characterizes a breathlessly optimistic approach to rational skepticism regarding the purportedly supernatural. But I’m not sure that optimism is very well grounded. We have to accept the possibility that there may be phenomena that must remain unknown to us as a matter of our own limited capacity to know. In which case, we should also recognize the distinction between what it is impossible for us to know, especially in the relatively narrow sense of materialism, and what is impossible to exist.

This may be one of the most profound posts I have ever read on Dakka.
In my view, every animal has limits to its intellectual capacity. We Humans are greatly exalted above any other animal in this regard, yet our brain has its limits just as well. Just like a Chimpanzee will never be able to understand or even become aware of quantum mechanics, there might be a great many things about the universe that we simply will never be able to understand or even become aware of, simply because our brains are too limited to comprehend them.
Or in the words of the astrophysicist Martin Rees: “There is no reason to believe that our brains are matched to understanding every level of reality.”

 ingtaer wrote:
Read through that Tulip Staircase thing and it is interesting to note that its reliability is supposedly underpinned by the fact that Kodiak engineers said that it had not been tampered with. That's pretty weak for evidence. If I was to take a photo of my cat right now and swore up and down that there was no cat there when the photo was taken, if my camera and the photo were examined by experts they would find no evidence of tampering because I was lying...

 LordofHats wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ingtaer wrote:
The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.

There are a number of things that are naked to the human eye but can appear on photos. Somethings appear on photos explicitly because of how cameras work. Back scatter or red eye for example are caused by flash.

Quite, but everything that a photo shows relies upon light, it just stretches my credulity that something would appear in a photo that was not visible to the eye like that. Of course you can play with a camera to get different effects (like prolonged exposure) but I struggle to see how it could work in such detail for something not visible without playing with it.

One thing that came to my mind right off the bat was radiation. You see a lot of light and flashes in old films from Chernobyl where there are flashes of light etc that the people filming aren't seeing with the eye but the camera picks up.

Not saying that "ghosts" are emitting high doses of radiation, but if the whole theory that ghosts are a form of energy manifesting then it wouldn't be a huge leap to think that perhaps this could be what is caught in the picture?

Oh quite possibly, I guess.

I mean, I’m not a scientist by anyone’s stretch of the imagination. But that is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy.

Could it be X? Could it be Y? As long as you’re willing to listen to Those Thaf Actually Rpovably Know Better, the Answer is just as fascinating as the Question.

Hence why I dislike ‘lol, science, NooB’ answers. Because they’re simply not answers. Just a conflicting opinion.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh quite possibly, I guess.

I mean, I’m not a scientist by anyone’s stretch of the imagination. But that is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy.

Could it be X? Could it be Y? As long as you’re willing to listen to Those Thaf Actually Rpovably Know Better, the Answer is just as fascinating as the Question.

Hence why I dislike ‘lol, science, NooB’ answers. Because they’re simply not answers. Just a conflicting opinion.

Agreed, and that's the point I've been trying to make.

You just said it far better than I have.

 ingtaer wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.

After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.

Indeed, but there also has to be a point where one has to say that the evidence (or lack thereof) points to the absence of something.

I guess it depends upon where ones own skepticism will define limits, personally I believe that extra terrestrial life exists. There is as little evidence (and remarkably similar evidence at that) for that as there is for ghosts/hauntings but I find it hard to believe that our little ball of rock was the only place to evolve life. I do not however think they visit this planet to abduct people, mutilate cattle, makes some pretty patterns in crops and basically go for a joy ride.
Ghosts/hauntings I just fail to see how or why that could occur be it residual energy/life force/chi what have you and have never come accross either a piece of evidence or testamony that changed my mind. We all get creeped out now and again and it often happens in old buildings but from there to ghosts just doesnt likely.

Edit to add quote.

I think the key distinction with your extraterrestial life example is that we know life has formed at least once within the universe already, as demonstrated by our daily existence.

The rest comes down to a statistical analysis of our understandings of the conditions of the observed universe as to whether life may have formed elsewhere within the universe. Of course, there are two angles to this- the only existing life we know of requires the conditions found on Earth to exist. This requires a very specific set of cosmic conditions as a prerequisite, and makes Earth-like life rather unlikely. I think the current thinking is that statistically there is unlikely to be another planet with sufficiently similar conditions to Earth within our entire galaxy, although of course the Universe is far more vast.

However, life may be able to evolve and exist under different conditions to that found upon Earth. This is far more unknown and hypothetical, but does raise the probability of extraterrestial life somewhat.

Of course, as our current sample size is definitely one (as definite as anything is in our reality), we can play a statistics game with extraterrestial life in a way we currently cannot for a supernatural interpretation of the causes of the phenomena described as "ghosts".

Therefore, I do not consider the two concepts to be equivalent in likelihood.

My mother has always sworn blind that she took a photo of a ghost as a young girl. She was in an old house with her friend, in her friend's bedroom; and the two were mucking around with a Kodak instant camera (the kind which prints the photo instantly). She took a shot of her friend on the bed, and was more than a little freaked out to see an lady in Edwardian dress in the background.

My mother isn't a spiritualist of any kind. No religious affiliation. No incentive to lie, in other words. I asked her what had happened to the shot, and she said she gave it to a friend who was obsessed with the supernatural. Now I don't personally subscribe to 'ghosts' as manifestation of the undead. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And neither does my mother. But she remains convinced she photographed an Edwardian woman.

So what's the explanation?

The obvious answer is some form of spatial anomaly. Time and space are still quite nebulous concepts, but we're all quite aware that humans are only usually capable of perceiving time flowing in one direction. If there was some sort of naturally occuring phenomenon (I wouldn't care to speculate on the cause) that was capable of opening up a rip between two time periods for a short period of time, couldn't it explain matters?

It would offer an explanation for a lot of supernatural incidents. Sudden smells or noises. People that appear in photos (which captures a specific moment) but aren't there to the naked eye. Or alternatively, ghosts that appear and then vanish again. It would also explain why so often, links can be drawn between ghosts and the spots that they frequent. See for example, the case of Admiral Tryon spotted briefly in his home the day after Victoria went down.

If instead of seeing ghosts, we're just seeing the people themselves through some temporal glitch/spatial anomaly, it all makes perfect sense without any recourse to spirituality required.

 Ketara wrote:
My mother has always sworn blind that she took a photo of a ghost as a young girl. She was in an old house with her friend, in her friend's bedroom; and the two were mucking around with a Kodak instant camera (the kind which prints the photo instantly). She took a shot of her friend on the bed, and was more than a little freaked out to see an lady in Edwardian dress in the background.

My mother isn't a spiritualist of any kind. No religious affiliation. No incentive to lie, in other words. I asked her what had happened to the shot, and she said she gave it to a friend who was obsessed with the supernatural. Now I don't personally subscribe to 'ghosts' as manifestation of the undead. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And neither does my mother. But she remains convinced she photographed an Edwardian woman.

So what's the explanation?

The obvious answer is some form of spatial anomaly. Time and space are still quite nebulous concepts, but we're all quite aware that humans are only usually capable of perceiving time flowing in one direction. If there was some sort of naturally occuring phenomenon (I wouldn't care to speculate on the cause) that was capable of opening up a rip between two time periods for a short period of time, couldn't it explain matters?

It would offer an explanation for a lot of supernatural incidents. Sudden smells or noises. People that appear in photos (which captures a specific moment) but aren't there to the naked eye. Or alternatively, ghosts that appear and then vanish again. It would also explain why so often, links can be drawn between ghosts and the spots that they frequent. See for example, the case of Admiral Tryon spotted briefly in his home the day after Victoria went down.

If instead of seeing ghosts, we're just seeing the people themselves through some temporal glitch/spatial anomaly, it all makes perfect sense without any recourse to spirituality required.

Obvious answer? "Temporal glitches" only exist in fiction like Star Trek.
Real answer? Your mother had a bad dream.

 Strg Alt wrote:

Obvious answer? "Temporal glitches" only exist in fiction like Star Trek.
Real answer? Your mother had a bad dream.

I'm not entirely sure I'd trust the word of someone claiming my mother 'dreamt' taking a photograph in broad daylight with her best friend (who cross corroborates the story).

Regardless, I'm not asserting that 'temporal anomalies' ARE the cause of this sort of thing. Merely that if there is any basis in reality to 'ghost stories', that's the sort of thing I would expect to be behind it. Time and space are very strange things. Half of what we see in the night sky no longer exists, but you can look at and photograph it nonetheless. Current science certainly has a very rudimentary understanding of the field, and it's the logical place for further discoveries to be made.

I think many spiritualists would be severely disappointed however, if ghosts turned out to be something as mundane as the briefest glimpse of the past. It would excite a lot of historians, but put an end to many divine miracles, psychic mediums, and so on.