Could it be that certain houses or environments act as 'recorders' that replay incidents or images, could this be something to do with light, for instance...if you had a powerful enough telescope and were far enough away from earth you could witness Wrestlemania 3, could ghost phenomena simply be a variation on this? Just an idea.
Thoughts....
Short Answer: Nope.
You can't randomly store energy in any old place, and the specific energy required to store a recording in an active matrix would have to be detectable, and would require an unending power source. Recordings degrade over time, cassette tapes, VHS, film stock/negatives, CDs, harddrives, thumbdrives are passive information storage that a require upkeep, and eventually transfer to new mediums.
We explored this idea in the 1990s, throwing out explanations like the crystals in granite, limestone, lead paint, EM fields created by nails, and all kinds of crazy things. We found nothing. The key thing is if it's a "recording" then it should play itself with some consistency. This became known as
Residual Haunting, but the problem is a residual haunting would be the easiest haunting to prove, and record. This has never happened.
And if paranormal activity could project light it would be recorded on film, and detectable with cheap sensing devices, and security devices. This never happens under controlled conditions. And I've lost count of reports of a single member of a group seeing something that none of the others saw at the same time. Compare this with going to the zoo, where everyone sees the elephants in the same place at the same time. If a place is actively haunted then recording activity should happen, but it never does.
Are all reported cases really just made up or mistaken?
There are a number of factors that lay the groundwork for a place being labeled as haunted:
1. Cultural Beliefs.
2. Historical Factors (Tower of London, for example. Haunted before science was a thing).
3. Social Factors (urban legends).
4. Architecture
5. Climate
There are many countries whose cultures blindly accept ghosts as real. Other countries have evolved intellectually but keep their ghost stories alive (looking at you, England). You have to understand that ghost stories tend to evolve over time as they are retold. If you can backtrack a story back to its source you will usually find a non-paranormal explanation. Quite often the story is completely made up.
The key to understanding why and or how people see, or hear a ghost can be found with the most common ghost-type experience: A ghost of a still-living person. There are countless reports of someone seeing a family member around the home at a time when they are not there. Reports of seeing a coworker or hearing their voice only to discover they have the day off. The root cause of these experience is an involuntary misperception to neurological stimulus. Usually a familiar sound one closely associates with a specific person. Usually the story involves someone at home, absorbed with a project, who hears the unique sound of a certain family member walking around the house, or doing an activity which makes a specific noise. Often this person will glance down the hallway, or at an open door to see this phantom family member walk past. Later, when this person calls to this family member they discover they're alone, and later learn that family member was not in the house at the time.
This happens a lot, but most of the time the person who experiences the mystery family member correctly brushes it off as one of those things, and forgets about it. Most of these encounters are over in a matter of seconds, but a few are quite involved. Thing is, this is sort of a Pavlovian response. Your sister wears shoes which make a unique clicking sound as they pass over the uncarpeted places of the house. That clicking sound is automatically associated with your sister, and upon hearing that clicking sound you assume she's in the house with you. What really happens is something else made the clicking sound, but it was nearly identical to the noise made by your sister's shoes. Since you are at home, and the sound seems to come from inside the house, your files it under "Sister is Home", and not "Random Clicking Noise".
I bought a new truck later year after driving my last one for 27 years. The rearview and side mirrors still take getting used to, and I frequently wait for a speeding car to pass me only to have it vanish. My brain misidentified a shape as an approaching vehicle, and my instincts take over to remain safe.
People think they saw something, or swear they saw something. And often they did, but it was a trick of the eyes married with a sound, or smell that filled in a false mental picture. Almost like a mini-dream. Doesn't explain them all, but it explains most of that last 1% of the "unexplained".
