Ghosts From Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal Read online

  Praise for Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal

  “Spectral entities are real—and dangerous. If only I’d taken Drs. Gilbert and Yates’s research seriously, I could have saved myself thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical expenses.”

  —Martin Heiss, former chairman of the Council for Logic and Data

  “Unbelievably absurd.”

  —Dr. Harold Filmore, head of the Columbia University Physics Department

  “Rigorously researched and thoroughly entertaining, Ghosts from Our Past is a much-needed kick in the pants to the stagnant field of parapsychology. Erin Gilbert and Abby L. Yates give me hope for the future.”

  —Christopher Merritt in American Parapsychology

  “An imaginative work of fiction, written by two women I have most definitely never met. Are you recording this? Turn that off.”

  —New York City’s Mayor Bradley

  “A fascinating journey through the spirit kingdom. Ghosts from Our Past is an eye-opening study that deserves a permanent place on every ghost hunter’s bookshelf.”

  —Maureen Kemp, author of Kemp’s Spectral Field Guide

  “5 stars. Arrived on time. Good condition.”

  —Amazon.com review

  Also by Erin Gilbert and Abby L. Yates

  A Glimpse into the Unknown: A Journey into a Portal; Catching Sight of the Other Dimension: Discovering the Undiscoverable: A Curiosity Piqued and Peaked

  Ghostbusters TM & © 2016 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Ebury Press, a division of Penguin Random House, London.

  Photography credits appear here.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gilbert, Erin, author. | Yates, Abby L., author. | Shaffer, Andrew,

  1978- author.

  Title: Ghosts from our past : both literally and figuratively : the study of

  the paranormal / Erin Gilbert, Abby L. Yates and Andrew Shaffer.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Three Rivers Press, [2016] |

  “Authors” Erin Gilbert and Abby L. Yates are fictitious characters played

  in the film by Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016004068| ISBN 9781101906002 (paperback) | ISBN

  9781101906095 (electronic)

  Subjects: LCSH: Ghostbusters (Motion picture : 2016)—Miscellanea. |

  Ghosts—Humor. | BISAC: FICTION / Media Tie-In. | HUMOR / Form / Parodies.

  Classification: LCC PN1997.G44535 G55 2016 | DDC 791.43/72—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016004068

  ISBN 9781101906002

  eBook ISBN 9781101906095

  Illustrations by Steven Salerno

  Cover: Motion Picture Artwork and Photos TM & © 2016 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  v4.1

  prh

  “We do not know what happens when we die, or where we go to, or how we get there. And if we can ‘come back’—in the spiritualistic sense—we do not know how that occurs either.”

  —Ghost hunter Harry Price

  “We know.”

  —Erin Gilbert and Abby L. Yates

  A Note to Readers

  Because this book is intended for a general audience, we have made every attempt to use the smallest words possible. Where specialized paranormal terminology is unavoidable, we’ve defined it in the dictionary at the back of the book.

  You’re welcome.

  Contents

  New Foreword by Martin Heiss

  Introduction to the Revised Edition

  Part 1: Our Stories

  Part 1—At a Glance

  Chapter 1: Ghost Girl: That One Time I Saw a Ghost (For Real)—Erin’s Story

  Chapter 2: Curious Georgina: Portrait of a Young Supernatural Scientist—Abby’s Story

  Chapter 3: The Metaphysical Examination Society—Our Story

  Part 2: Our Research

  Part 2—At a Glance

  Chapter 4: Ghosts Throughout History: Pondering the Preponderance of Paranormal Activity

  Chapter 5: Paranormal Investigators: A Look Back

  Chapter 6: A Scientific Exploration: Introducing Spectral Field Theory

  Chapter 7: Unnatural Anthropology: The Evolution of Supernatural Taxonomy

  Chapter 8: Vengeful Spirits and the Dangers of Their Return to Our World: Case Studies of Malevolent Entities

  Part 3: Our Methods

  Part 3—At a Glance

  Chapter 9: Paratechnology: A Primer

  The Ghostbusters’ Arsenal: An Update by Jillian Holtzmann

  Chapter 10: Preparing for the Metaphysical Examination: Choosing a Location

  Haunted History: Case Studies by Patty Tolan

  Chapter 11: Conducting the Metaphysical Examination: A Methodical Examination

  Chapter 12: Attracting the Paranormal: Luring Spirits from the Other Side

  New Afterword: Anyone Can Be a Scientist

  Epitaph to the Revised Edition by Kevin

  Ghostbusting Resources

  Paranormal Quickstart Guide

  Sample Waiver of Liability for Metaphysical Examinations

  Is It a Ghost? A Handy Quiz

  Kemp’s Spectral Classification Table

  Parapercipient Interview Form

  Supernatural Stakeout Journal

  The Devil’s Dictionary: Paraterminology You Need to Know

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Photography Credits

  About the Authors

  Excerpt from Erin and Abby’s Forthcoming Book, A Glimpse into the Unknown

  New Foreword

  As chairman of the Council for Logic and Data, I debunked dozens of paranormal pranksters over the years. Remember the famous episode of The Tonight Show where the skeptic exposed Uri Geller’s hands-free spoon bending as a stage trick? That wasn’t me. It was James Randi. But whenever he wasn’t available, the networks used to ring up ol’ Marty Heiss. No one’s called me in a while—someone obviously forgot to pass along my number to Jimmy Fallon.

  Anyway, I thought I’d seen just about everything . . . and then along come the Ghostbusters.

  At the CLD’s annual nondenominational winter holiday office party last year, I received a copy of Ghosts from Our Past as a white elephant gift. Everyone had a good laugh at it—and that was just from reading the synopsis aloud.

  Later that night, while nursing a bottle of eggnog by the fireplace at my home on the Upper West Side, I casually flipped through the massive tome. Ghosts from Our Past wasn’t high literature, although it may have been written while in that state of mind. Purportedly a work of serious scientific inquiry, the personal asides, run-on sentences, and numerous digressions distracted from whatever points the authors were attempting to make. My laughter soon gave way to secondhand embarrassment.

  Parapsychology has always existe
d on the fringes of the academic world, but rarely has it been tackled by anyone so unqualified. Their work wasn’t peer-reviewed because they didn’t have peers. They were all of twenty-two when they wrote it, with nothing more than undergrad degrees from a Big Ten school. Ghosts from Our Past was either the worst kind of hokum or an elaborate in-joke. For their benefit, I hoped for the latter.

  Blessedly, I soon forgot all about the book. I guess a great number of other readers did too, because I couldn’t find a used bookstore in the entire city that would take it off my hands. Their shelves were already stocked with unwanted copies, several of which were signed by Dr. Yates to coworkers at the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute of Science. One copy was personalized, To Mom. Thanks for everything!

  My heart broke in two—for that poor mother. Can you imagine pouring eighteen years into raising a child, only to have her waste her life on spooks and specters?

  The next time I heard their names, Yates and Gilbert were operating as paranormal exterminators under the name “Ghostbusters.” The press covered their little undead dog-and-pony show as if they were reality TV stars running for president. The public ate it up. Suddenly, everyone in town was talking about ghosts, including colleagues of mine I’d previously respected. Either ghosts were real, or New Yorkers were collectively losing their minds.

  Group delusions take many forms. One seventeenth-century afternoon in a French convent, a nun began meowing like a cat. Other nuns soon joined in, unable to help themselves. The meowing grew so loud that neighbors called the police, who arrived with nightsticks drawn. The threat of physical violence was apparently enough to return the nuns to their senses. They could not, for the life of them, recall why they’d started meowing in the first place.

  Unfortunately, not all group delusions are as benign as those habit-wearing cat ladies. When a delusion is driven by fear—a belief in malevolent spirits threatening the Big Apple, for instance—sociologists use a different term to describe it: mass hysteria.

  Thankfully, the group delusion that had taken hold of my fellow New Yorkers hadn’t progressed that far . . . yet. Since no one else seemed up to the task of busting the Ghostbusters, I valiantly nominated myself. I didn’t need a PKE meter or any other pseudoscientific gadgets to discredit them. I had the most advanced tool ever created on my side: the human brain. That, and a video camera. If you expose a fraud and don’t document it on video, all you’ve done is expose yourself as an amateur.

  Alas, ghosts are more than delusions. Spectral entities are real—and dangerous, which I learned in the most excruciatingly painful way possible. If only I’d taken Drs. Gilbert and Yates’s research seriously, I could have saved myself thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket medical expenses.

  Life is too short to be skeptical when it comes to spirits of the dead. Don’t let the many months I spent in physical rehab be in vain. Please read this important book. My former colleagues at the CLD may laugh at me now, but you will thank me when paranormal activity personally plagues you.

  —Martin Heiss, former chairman of the Council for Logic and Data

  Introduction to the Revised Edition

  Back when we wrote the first edition of Ghosts from Our Past, we were young and green and full of Chinese takeout. We’d just graduated with bachelors of science in physics. One of us—Abby—planned to return to Michigan for grad school while the other—Erin—had been accepted into the physics program at Princeton. Our final summer together in Ann Arbor loomed before us. While the rest of our friends backpacked through Europe or attended Lilith Fair, we decided to write a book about ghosts.

  It would be more than just a trial run for our eventual theses. We wanted to write a study so pioneering it would render every existing book on the paranormal obsolete.

  Like many books surveying the supernatural, we planned to delve into the long cultural history of ghosts. Unlike most of those books, however, we would dive deep into the science behind spectral entities. Not pseudoscience. Real science. While we were all of twenty-two, the great thing about science is that it has no age requirement, so long as the work holds up. Our schooling was far from complete, but we knew just enough to be dangerous.

  The ignorance of youth may have even worked in our favor: Our minds were unrestricted by the narrow hallways of academia. Much of the paranormal activity we examined had never been taken seriously by scientists before; most had never been taken seriously by anyone before.

  Although we couldn’t perform any experiments ourselves due to our nonexistent budget and lack of lab space, we had a wealth of research papers, journals, and rare books at the U of M’s Special Collections Library at our disposal. The undergraduate library next door was open twenty-four hours a day, meaning we could work around the clock. And our favorite Chinese place, Tomorrow’s Teriyaki, graciously supported us in our endeavor by delivering directly to our temporary workspace.

  Two weeks after sitting down, we had a single-spaced, 460-page manuscript that we christened Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal. Except for the autobiographical chapters, it was a genuine collaboration: We passed the laptop back and forth every other page, and sometimes every other sentence. Not to spoil anything, but our exhaustive research—combined with Erin’s mindblowing firsthand experience with the paranormal—led us to the unassailable conclusion that GHOSTS ARE REAL.

  We printed a truckload of copies but no one wanted them. We were too far ahead of our time. A promotional appearance on a campus talk show, Wolverine Scene, didn’t play out the way we’d intended, and our friendship and the book both died quiet deaths.

  Or so we thought. Years later, Abby discovered a copy propping up the monitor at her office, where it had apparently been sitting for fifteen-plus years. As she thumbed through it, a few things were painfully evident. We had gotten some stuff glaringly wrong, such as the squared x in the Yates-Gilbert Equation, which clearly should have been cubed. There’s also one too many mentions of The X-Files—but, hey, it was the nineties. Our unbridled enthusiasm for seeking the truth about unexplained phenomena couldn’t be untangled from our love of the show any more than you could untangle Mulder from Scully.

  Overall, though, the book wasn’t bad. Abby dug out the rest of our initial print run from storage and posted the books for sale online. Erin found this a little irritating. Not only was she not consulted, but Abby’s actions almost brought about the Fourth Cataclysm. But we’re all good now. These things happen. The important thing is that we’re closer than ever. Near-death experiences are best when they’re shared amongst friends!

  The previous edition of Ghosts from Our Past has since been pulled in favor of the one you’re reading now. We’ve updated it with the help of an editor, who suggested that we “organize” it into three parts: Our Stories (to share our backgrounds), Our Research (to present our findings), and Our Methods (to explain our process, so that others might follow our lead).

  Outside of the final chapter, however, we haven’t touched much of the original text—leave the past alone, we say. No need to go full George Lucas. We’ve also left our original hand-drawn illustrations intact. It was either that or let those sophomore-year Studio: Drawing I classes go completely to waste.

  Notably missing from this edition, however, are over two hundred pages of ghostly “orb” photographs taken in the depths of the rare-book room. Our pictures showed floating, glowing white spheres that had been invisible to the naked eye when we’d snapped them. Finally, we thought, evidence of ghosts! While the building may indeed be haunted, the mysterious orbs turned out to be nothing more than dust particles on Erin’s camera lens.

  There’s plenty of fresh material for you to chew on, however, including a new foreword by an actual ghost and a buttload of new resources tacked on as an appendix. Our fellow Ghostbusters, Dr. Jillian Holtzmann and Patty Tolan, contributed new sections focusing on their respective areas of expertise. Our multitalented rec
eptionist, Kevin, even wrote . . . a thing. Nice job, Kevin.

  What hasn’t changed is the way we’re treated by the scientific community. Pioneers always suffer for their innovations—just look at what happened to trailblazers like Galileo Galilei and Archibald Dutton. Some people just won’t be convinced that ghosts are real until one bites them on the gluteus maximus. As Jason Hawes, founder of the Atlantic Paranormal Society, says, “All a skeptic is is someone who hasn’t had an experience yet.”

  To put it another way: Haters gonna hate, until they ain’t.

  We doubt you’re a hater, though. You’ve made it this far. Since we’re all friends here, we feel safe telling you this: It’s okay if you’re on the fence about this whole ghost business. We don’t blame you for your caution; in fact, we applaud you. The great Carl Sagan said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Who are we to argue with him (or his ghost)? We are unquestionably proposing some extraordinary concepts here. At the same time, it’s one frigging extraordinary book.

  Before you turn the page and dig into the evidence, we want you to pick up your phone. Do it. We’re serious. Unless you’re driving and listening to the audiobook. Or reading this on your phone, in which case you already have your phone in hand.

  Got it? Good. Now we want you to call someone. Don’t call the Ghostbusters—Kevin has enough to deal with as it is. The recent events in Manhattan have us swamped. Instead, call in sick to work tomorrow, because once you start reading Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal, you’re not going to be able to stop.

  In fact, you might not ever go back to work, because there’s a good chance you’ll want to strap on a proton pack and follow in our footsteps. To which we say, good luck! Just don’t follow too closely—Erin has an itchy trigger finger.

  —Erin Gilbert, Ph.D., M.S., and Abby L. Yates, Ph.D.

  Part 1

  Our Stories

  Part 1—At a Glance