On the existence of ghosts, spirits, deities, and other worldly beings
Why spirits defy scientific investigation
One principle of natural laws—like the laws of thermodynamics or the law of gravity—is that they should be the same no matter where you are, what time it is, or who is doing the measuring. In other words, natural laws are invariant across space and time. Ghosts, spirits, deities, and other worldly creatures do not follow this principle.
The same holds true for supernatural interventions. Such phenomenon, if they do exist, are beholden to the whims of supernatural beings, who themselves have free will (or as close to free will as exists). They choose when and when not to intervene.
If a ghost flickers your light to get your attention, it may do so once in a while over a few days, not following a particular schedule and then, suddenly, stop. It may do so because its own attention was drawn elsewhere or because household ghosts in general are thought to only have a tenuous grasp to our reality. You may try to set up the necessary preconditions for a ghost to make its presence known—say with a Ouija board or a ritual—but the ghost may or may not comply.
Spirits, furthermore, may hold an affinity towards certain people, places, objects, or situations. It is a common idea in our mythos that certain places are sacred (others cursed) and thus more prone to supernatural activity.
There are also certain situations that some spirits are drawn to—in particular, those involving life-or-death. For example, when Ernest Shackleton and two other men trekked through the Antarctic, uncertain if they would make it to safety, all three men reported sensing the presence of another, unknown companion.
I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, "Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us." Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels "the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech" in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.
– South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, Ernest Shackleton
Similar experiences have been reported around car accidents and falls off cliffs. Supernatural spirits sometimes appear during these situations to provide comfort to the person in need—and, other times, to offer direct guidance. “Get up.”—For example, was some of the advice offered to James Sevigny after an avalanche swept him off a mountainside. He continued to receive instruction from the unknown presence until he found rescue, at which point the presence disappeared.
Natural explanations attribute such phenomenon to hallucinations, a trick of the brain—caused by distress. However, supernatural explanations cannot be scientifically ruled out.
It could be that some spirits want to help us, and in daily life use ambiguous ‘signs’ in order to preserve the choice of the individual they’re helping. Unless, that is, that the individual is in a life-or-death situation—in which case the spirit would appear more directly. How could we possibly test this hypothesis? We cannot test this in a lab…but we can collect anecdotes, of which there are many. We could do a survey to see what percentage of life-or-death situations involve an unknown presence—however, that would not tell us whether the phenomenon is neurological in basis or something else.
Just because a phenomenon cannot be studied in the sterile lab environment—devoid of the real life implications that spirits may be drawn to—should their existence be ruled out by default?
Of course, I am not saying that spirits must exist, but I am providing an explanation of how spirits could exist in a world in love with the scientific method.
In the age of science there is this tendency to want to make everything neat and fit into the current scientific model. In terms of people seeing or feeling entities, there is this inclination to reduce it to the brain. Which may be the case or at least is likely involved. But science does not rule out other possibilities. It is good to be open to them. How to test for them is obviously a harder question.
This was a fun read. It's fun to stop and speculate on this kind of topic within the specific bounds of the physical world. Like you said, theoretically, these kind of beings could exist on a plane where they're not tied to the laws of physics or other conventional factors, which would explain their inconsistent and immeasurable interaction with us. Thinking about it from that angle has made for me trying out some "bible fanfiction", transposing the supernatural beings described in the text to our world, which is especially fun when you try to imagine ways of illustrating hyperdimensional beings and places and our interaction with them.