Scary stuff

In the "Man Bites Dog" section of the Oct. 18 Mirror there are a number of factual errors. As a member of the Society for Psychical Research (not "Physical Research"), I feel I must inform you of those mistakes. Tony Cornell (note spelling) is a well respected investigator of hauntings and poltergeist phenomena who recently gave a talk at the annual conference of the SPR at Cambridge University, England.

In addition to those grammatical errors mentioned above, the story itself is flawed. I assume that the source of your story was one similarly published in London's Guardian newspaper. They got the story wrong themselves, in fact, and your reporter then repeated the error. Tony Cornell did not attribute a lack of ghost stories to cell-phone use, and certainly did not indicate that cell-phones have anything to do with ghosts one way or the other.

In fact, at his SPR conference talk, Cornell said the following about theories attributing ghosts to electromagnetic fields, high frequency sound waves, or geomagnetism: "Such theories in the absence of any clear and unambiguous understanding of the cause and affect of apparitions and hauntings would appear to be grasping at psychological straws." Indeed, no cause is yet known for the appearance of ghosts, and of this Cornell is fully aware.

If indeed there has been a lessening of reports, this has more to do with the current scientific perspective that denies the possibility of spirit phenomena. The fact of the matter remains, people do see ghosts, and have for centuries, and we, as yet, have no clear scientific understanding of what these "ghosts" actually are, whether natural or supernatural.

--Christopher Moreman, M.A. University of Wales, Lampeter