The Great American History Blog: Civil War Ghosts: Fact or Fiction?

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Civil War Ghosts: Fact or Fiction?

Do ghosts from the American Civil War still walk amongst us, or are reported spectral visions and unearthly things that go bump in the night the product of over active imaginations? Trained lawyer and paranormal researcher Arthur S. Berger points out that paranormal research is not unlike legal advocacy. In a criminal court both sides present evidence, but evidence is not proof. It is up to the jury to decide if the evidence presented represents “proof beyond a reasonable doubt”. If juries have difficulty making decisions even in some fairly straightforward criminal cases, how much more difficult must it be to establish “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” of ghosts.

More useful is the standard of evidence used in civil cases, “preponderance of the evidence”. Preponderance of evidence is based on the quality of the evidence presented and its probable truth or accuracy, and not on the amount of evidence presented. Thus, one clearly knowledgeable witness may provide a preponderance of evidence over a dozen witnesses with hazy testimony. If a sceptic provides a demonstrable scientific explanation for a seemingly paranormal event, the explanation represents a higher standard of evidence than a dozen sightings by individuals of the paranormal event.

Take for example, what are known as “rare atmospheric phenomena.” In March 2005 a man in Clifton, Virginia reported, “We had a power outage last night and my wife was awakened by the answering machine clicking on and off as the power tried to recover, and then it went out completely. She went to the front door to see if it was raining or windy and saw a very large object hovering over a nearby house about 1/8 of a mile from our house. It was larger than the house, seemed to be at an angle to her view with the bottom exposed and had lights all around it evenly spaced. When it began to move away, several lightning flashes were seen and then it was gone. The power returned two hours later”. The appearance lasted just a few seconds, from the “balls of light” formation to the vertical lightning flash. The woman thought she was seeing a UFO, but was actually witnessing a natural, “rare atmospheric phenomena” involving multiple ball lightening, which, while an extremely rare event, is scientifically demonstrable.

Preponderance of evidence cuts both ways. For thousands of years Europeans believed all swans were white. Black swans were thought to be as mythical as unicorns. There were “no such things as” black swans. It only took the discovery of the first black swan in Australia in 1790 to topple thousands of years of European scientific “knowledge”. Similarly, those who said that tiny invisible organism were swimming in a clear glass of water and causing disease were laughed to scorn until 1676 when Anton van Leeuwenhoek observed bacteria and other microorganism using a single-lens microscope of his own design.