Why do we believe in ghosts? By Assistant Professor Dr.Milos Hubina

               There are psychological reasons for it. We love stories, and we are all “story junkies.” Entertainment is one of the biggest industries, and storytellers, writers, movie directors, game developers, and actors are adored and well paid worldwide. When researchers let people choose between thinking of nothing or letting their minds ramble but receive small but painful electroshock, most chose the shocks. That horrifying was the prospect of an “empty mind” for them. And we like to fill our minds with stories and gossip more than anything else. The reasons for this are evolutionary: since we depend on each other for survival, understanding other people’s minds, motivations, intentions, and actions is crucial.

               Indeed, the fantastic Jataka stories, rather than Abhidharma or prajnaparamitas, spread Buddhist ideas worldwide.

               But why do we believe that the stories about ghosts are real?

We all see faces in the clouds, and when we hear an unexpected noise or see an ambivalent shape, our minds don’t go: “relax, it is just a wind or a falling branch.” They cry out – “DANGER, someone wants to hurt you.” Scholars call this tendency a “hypertrophied agency-detection system.” If then we check out – there is usually nobody there. Though this doesn’t mean that we automatically believe in invisible ghosts, the stories about invisible agents – spirits, gods, or ancestors thus have some intuitive plausibility.

               We are also natural dualists: the idea that mind and body can exist separately is not philosophical or religious speculation. Researchers showed babies two screens about 3 meters apart. An assistant came, visible to all, and hid behind one of the screens. A twin of the assistant, looking and dressed exactly like her, which the infants didn’t know about, stepped out from behind the second screen. To the infants, it seems like the assistant moved between the two screens without being seen.

               Interestingly, they weren’t surprised and didn’t t pay much attention to the situation. When researchers did the same with an ordinary box, the result surprised the infants, who looked much longer at the scene. That some invisible part of the assistant moved between the panels seemed unsurprising to them. But they didn’t expect the same from an inanimate box.

               Religious experts are mistaken when they attribute the widespread belief in ghosts to a lack of people’s religious education. The research shows that educated people are more inclined to believe in ghosts than karma. The reasons are not intellectual but psychological.