The Death Of The Ghost

A few weeks back I wrote how our increasingly rational society was behind the growth of fantasy as people sought out their irrationality fix. Some people wrote to decry any idea that we were getting more rational, citing everything from medievalist religious views to the growth of New Age-ism.

But when the Society for Psychical Research starts to get worried, you know you’re on pretty firm ground. According to the SPR’s Tony Cornell, reports of ghost sightings have declined from two a week to none at all in just a few years. The SPR bizarrely blames it on the rise of mobile phone usage – read the article, I’m not going to begin to explain the ‘science’.

But the interesting thing is, the number of ghost sightings has remained pretty constant for centuries, according to Cornell. And now…nothing.