You know what's weird? There seems to be (among the ghost hunter and paranormal enthusiast crowd, anyway) "facts" about ghosts that are commonly accepted as true that are just based on agreed upon folklore. They make cold spots, they make emf meters go bonkers, and so forth. This is the same as saying you can only kill a werewolf with a silver bullet, or vampires can change into bats. It's just generally accepted "canon" about a genre of monster.
"Weird" is a good word for it, "Embarrassing" is a better word.
My thinking as a ghost hunter was forced to evolve for exactly the reasons you spelled out. If any of the commonly accepted "facts" of the paranormal were true then we should have made progress decades ago, but in 2017 ghost hunters aren't any closer to proving anything than they were back when guys like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave paranormal research their blessings.
I tossed all of that bunk out and started from scratch and questioned everything anew:
1. Ghosts are caused by violent deaths....really? Okay, then why aren't Chicago, Berlin, or Juarez crawling with ghosts? What about the alleged ghosts of people who died peacefully in their sleep?
The revised version became: There's no single cause for a haunting, probably because there's no such thing as ghosts in the physical world.
2. High EMFs are signs of spiritual presence...Okay, says who? Parapsychologists in the 1970s began using EMF meters on their field trips, but these guys were usually with a University, and had basic instructions from the physics department guys on how they work, and how they don't work...so what about the locations where there is a lot of "activity", but the EMF fields are normal?
Before you can say that any piece of equipment detects a ghost you need to have access to a ghost to test it on...you see the problem here?
I live near Hopkins Marine Station, and MBARI where equipment is designed and tested to locate, and track the most elusive creatures on the planet. I have seen their devices, and I have talked to the engineers, and have massive respect for the research they put in to make these things work.
I got to see this thing in person:
http://www.mbari.org/at-sea/cabled-observatory/mars-science-experiments/foce/
The trick is to design an experiment that is effective, and no ghost researcher has ever done this.
Like I've said before, my focus now is not "What are ghosts?", but "Why do people, honest people, see them?" That's been the more productive avenue for me. People misinterpret things that they see all the time, and I find this fascinating.
