Featured Image: Figure 1. New batteries to be tested at a supposedly haunted mansion in Clovis, California, the set for the show MysteryQuest: Return of the Amityville Horror. Photo by the author.
Q: I’ve been mulling over a question for years: If batteries are supposed to be drained during ghost investigations because spirits use the electricity to materialize, then why don’t these investigators bring van loads of car batteries and fire up generators while they’re investigating to give the spirits as much ability to manifest themselves as possible? Have you ever heard of anyone doing this?
—J. McLachlan
A: The question of why ghost hunters so rarely question their assumptions—much less construct valid experiments to test them—is an excellent one, and the answer reveals much about paranormal investigation in general.
Many theories about ghosts make testable claims and predictions, yet few good scientific tests have been conducted. For example, if an investigator believes that ghosts inhabit a building and also that ghosts give off electromagnetic fields, then logically a “haunted” building should have higher levels of electromagnetic fields than a comparable control building that the investigator believes is not haunted. If an investigator believes that a device can communicate with the dead, there are ways to test that theory. And so on.
Batteries are often said to become mysteriously drained, presumably by ghosts, in haunted locations. Some think it’s because ghosts are primarily energy and feed off the batteries to manifest themselves. This idea dates back over a century to the Spiritualist era when mediums—some of them sincere—would insist on conducting séances in the dark to assist the spirits. Another common and related assumption is that cold spots are created when ghosts use ambient air energy to materialize.
decapitated deer. Photo by the author.
There’s plenty of speculation and anecdote but little experimentation of this easily testable, verifiable claim. Either batteries in a supposedly haunted location lose their charge more quickly than identical batteries in a control location, or they do not.
I conducted just such a test at the “Haunted” Wolfe Manor in Clovis, California, in 2009 for the television show MysteryQuest. I purchased four sets of identical batteries (two each of C and D cells), sealed them in Ziploc bags, and used high-strength plastic tape to wrap them tightly, which I signed to prevent tampering (see Figure 1). I then placed half of them in Wolfe Manor and the other half at another location offsite (see Figure 2).
Twenty-four hours later, I used a battery meter to check the cells’ charges; my experiment showed no electricity drainage at all in the “haunted” location batteries. It didn’t prove anything, of course. If the batteries had been drained, it could have been, for example, that the batteries at the “haunted” location were defective or for some reason subjected to extreme heat that (intentionally or incidentally) drained the cells, and so on. Had there been an effect, I’d have had reason to replicate the experiment with a much larger sample, stronger controls, monitoring to prevent fraud, etc. In any event, this was a simple experiment that just about anyone could do, yet as far as I know this was the first time that any ghost investigator had tested this claim.
Why is there so little actual scientific experimentation of ghost claims? First, conducting scientifically valid experiments is not easy; it requires knowledge of basic experimental design (such as controls, control groups, and single- and double-blind testing protocols). These principles are not difficult to grasp, but they do require a greater understanding of science and its methods than the average person possesses. Most people have never done a scientific experiment in their lives outside of a few in high school science classes.
Second, of course, controlled experiments are not nearly as much fun as wandering around a haunted house at night with flashlight-lit friends looking for ghosts. Not doing the necessary research is a big mistake, because it is exactly this type of experimentation that could help prove that ghosts exist. All other types of evidence—all the anecdotes, stories, legends, orb photos, EVPs, and so on—have been (and likely will remain) inconclusive and ambiguous at best. But if a ghost investigator conducted a series of well-designed experiments proving that there was some measurable difference between a haunted location and a nonhaunted one, that would be valid, scientific evidence to build on.
It’s also possible that such tests have been done but never reported because of the file-drawer effect. If a ghost hunter conducts a test and it doesn’t turn out how they wanted it to, they can simply abandon it, and no one’s the wiser. You can be sure, however, that if a well-designed experiment revealed significant battery drain in haunted locations, it would be widely touted as real evidence for ghosts.
Because there’s no significant peer review among ghost hunters (as in most paranormal investigation), there’s little incentive to do good research. Ghost hunters on “reality” television shows are (ostensibly) producing entertainment, not scientific research. Ghost hunters around the world vary greatly in their understanding of scientific principles, as Sharon Hill noted in her book Scientifical Americans. Despite using scientific equipment and claiming to investigate scientifically, they demonstrate little regard—much less enthusiasm—for science.
Though mysterious battery draining is most often claimed to be associated with ghostly phenomena, it’s also claimed to occur inside crop circles. Cereaologists have peppered their books and blogs with such “mysterious” accounts but have had just as little inclination in testing these anecdotes as ghost hunters. On the rare occasions when ghost-related claims have been scientifically tested, it’s usually by skeptical academics such as Chris French and Richard Wiseman, who have discussed them in their books Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience and Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There, respectively. I’ve spent decades encouraging paranormal proponents from across the board, from cryptozoologists to ghost hunters, to incorporate better science into their research, but I have little reason to think it will happen.