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• Almost every culture on Earth has had a concept of the survival of the human spirit after bodily death. These all allow for the possibility that this spirit (or 'shade') can return from the afterlife and 'haunt' our material reality if certain conditions are not fulfilled. Most religions develop around this basic tenet.
  
   
• Reports of ghostly apparitions have persisted throughout the history of civilization. They are found in the Bible, in texts of Greek and Roman scholars and throughout all more contemporary cultures.
  
   
• Today psychologists argue that many, if not at all, such cases can be accounted for by experience within altered states of consciousness. We are slowly recognizing what these are. They include;
  
  
  hypnagogic imagery - powerful visions on the border between sleep and wakefulness
  
  false awakenings - where the person thinks that they are awake and observe reality but are, in fact still dreaming
  
  lucid dream states - where the dream is so vivid it appears like real life and conscious though can for a time intervene and control what happens.
  
   
• The accepted view of psychology is that mind is an abstract concept fully dependant upon the brain. It can have no separate existence and so cannot survive bodily extinction. An alternative theory sees the mind as an energy field that operates through the brain, just as radio waves are decoded by a radio set and can exist even if the set is destroyed and those radio wave energies can no longer be decoded. The fact that apparitions of living people can be seen suggests the possibility that there is an energy field that is amenable to detection.
  
   
• A much researched theory argues that apparitions are like echoes of emotional events imprinted as an energy field and overlaid onto the natural field of a place or building. As such the ghost can be 'decoded' by someone's brain who is passing by, or activated like a video replay.

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