Ghosts aren’t real, not exactly. But what is not real is still often believed in, and what is called belief is nothing more than the existence, however brief, of uncertainty. When it comes to belief in the paranormal, most Americans are uncertain. Nearly one in five US adults – more than 18 per cent of people polled – claim, according to a 2009 Pew Research Center survey, to have seen ghosts, while a similar Gallup poll reveals that three out of four Americans believe in some form of the paranormal, be it ghosts or astrology or aliens or some other kind of supernatural phenomenon. On the other side of the Atlantic, a 2013 poll indicated that 52 per cent of British adults also believe in ghosts and spirits.
The numbers aren’t declining. Since the 1970s, the number of American adults who say they believe in ghosts has risen from one in 10 to one in three. At first glance, this growth seems irrational, considering that the rapid advance of technological progress was expected by many to make the world more rational and secular. But when websites such as the Wayback Machine archive websites for posterity and social media accounts linger on after our deaths, a new digital afterlife has been created, one that we can’t necessarily control. It’s this lack of control, this inability to resist the increasing speed and permanence of the digital life, that’s brought new vitality to paranormal belief. As technology grows more present, the ghost is this anxiety over the new impermanence writ large.
Source: Aeon
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