A

scientific approach to the paranormal

Carrie Poppy · Writer, radio host, comedian

00:12
Eight years ago, I was haunted by an evil spirit.
00:20
I was 25 at the time, and I was living in a tiny house behind
someone else's house in Los Angeles. It was this guest house,
it had kind of been dilapidated, not taken care of for a long time.
And one night, I was sitting there and I got this really spooky
feeling, kind of the feeling like you're being watched. But no one
was there except my two dogs, and they were just chewing their
feet. And I looked around. No one was there. And I thought, OK,
it's just my imagination. But the feeling just kept getting worse,
and I started to feel this pressure in my chest, sort of like the
feeling when you get bad news. But it started to sink lower and
lower and almost hurt.
01:16
And over the course of that week, this feeling got worse and
worse, and I started to become convinced that something was
there in my little guest house, haunting me.
01:30
And I started to hear these sounds, this "whoosh," kind of
whisper, like something passing through me. I called my best
friend, Claire, and said, "I know this is going to sound crazy, but,
um ... I think there's a ghost in my house, and I need to get rid
of it." And she said -- she's very open-minded -- and she said,
"I don't think you're crazy. I think you just need to do a cleansing
ritual."
02:05
(Laughter)

1
02:07
"So get some sage and burn it, and tell it to go away."
02:15
So I said, "OK," and I went and I bought sage. I had never done
this before, so I set the sage on fire, waved it about, and said,
"Go away! This is my house! I live here. You don't live here!" But
the feeling stayed. Nothing got better. And then I started to
think, OK, well now this thing is probably just laughing at me,
because it hasn't left, and I probably just look like this impotent,
powerless thing that couldn't get it to go away.
02:48
So every day I'd come home and you guys, this feeling got so
bad that -- I mean, I'm laughing at it now -- but I would sit there
in bed and cry every night. And the feeling on my chest got
worse and worse. It was physically painful. And I even went to
a psychiatrist and tried to get her to prescribe me medicine, and
she wouldn't just because I don't have schizophrenia, OK.
03:22
(Laughter) So finally I got on the internet, and I Googled
"hauntings." And I came upon this forum of ghost hunters. But
these were a special kind of ghost hunters -- they were skeptics.
They believed that every case of ghosts that they had
investigated so far had been explained away by science. And I
was like, "OK, smart guys, this is what's happening to me, and
if you have an explanation for me, I would love to hear it."
03:55
And one of them said, "OK. Um, have you heard of carbon
monoxide poisoning?"
04:04
And I said, "Yeah. Like, gas poisoning?"
04:12
Carbon monoxide poisoning is when you have a gas leak
leaking into your home. I looked it up, and the symptoms of

2
carbon monoxide poisoning include a pressure on your chest,
auditory hallucinations -- whoosh -- and an unexplained feeling
of dread. So that night, I called the gas company. I said, "I have
an emergency. I need you to come out. I don't want to get into
the story now, but I need you to come out."
04:45
(Laughter)
04:46
They came out. I said, "I suspect a gas leak." They brought their
carbon monoxide detector, and the man said, "It's a really good
thing that you called us tonight, because you could have been
dead very soon."
05:01
Thirty-seven percent of Americans believe in haunted houses,
and I wonder how many of them have been in one and how
many of them have been in danger.
05:16
So that haunting story has led me to my job. I'm an investigator,
and I'm an investigator in two senses: I'm an investigative
journalist, and I'm also an investigator of the claims of the
paranormal and claims of the spiritual. And that means a few
things. Sometimes that means that I'm pretending to need an
exorcism so I can get -- yes, that's right! -- so I can go to an
exorcist and see if he's using gimmicks or psychological tricks
to try to convince someone that they're possessed. Sometimes
that means I'm going undercover in a fringe group which I report
on for a podcast that I co-host. And I've done over 70
investigations like this with my co-host, Ross. I would love to tell
you that nine times out of 10, science wins, saves the day, it's
all explained. That's not true. The truth is, 10 times out of 10,
science wins, it saves the day.
06:14
(Applause)

3
06:27
And that doesn't mean there's no such thing as a mystery. Of
course there are mysteries, but a mystery is a mystery. It is not
a ghost.
06:36
Now, I believe there are two kinds of truth, and it's taken me a
while to get to this place, but I think this is right, so hear me out.
I think there is outer truth and there's inner truth. So if you say
to me, "There was a man named Jesus and he once existed,"
that's outer truth, right? And we can go and look at the historical
record. We can determine whether that seems to be true. And I
would argue, it does seem to be true. If you say, "Jesus rose
from the dead," -- ooh, trickier.
07:09
(Laughter)
07:12
I would say that's an outer-truth claim, because he physically
rose or he didn't. I'm not going to get into whether he rose or he
didn't, but I would say that's an outer-truth claim. It happened
or it didn't happen. But if you say, "I don't care whether he rose
from the dead. It's symbolically important to me, and that
metaphor is so meaningful, so purposeful to me, and I'm not
going to try to persuade you of it," now you've moved it from
outer truth to inner truth, from science to art. And I think we have
a tendency to not be clear about this, to try to move our inner
truths to outer truths, or to not be fair about it to each other, and
when people are telling us their inner truths, to try to make them
defend them by outer-truth standards.
07:59
So I'm talking here about outer truth, about objective things.
And there was an objective reality in my haunted house, right?
Now that I've told you about the gas leak, I doubt a single
person here would be like, "I still think there was a ghost, too" -

4
-
08:15
(Laughter)
08:16
because as soon as we have these scientific explanations, we
know to give up the ghost. We use these things as stopgaps for
things that we can't explain. We don't believe them because of
evidence; we believe them because of a lack of evidence.
08:30
So there is a group in Los Angeles called the Independent
Investigations Group, or the IIG, and they do great work. They'll
give a $10,000 prize to anyone who can show, under scientific
conditions, that they have a paranormal ability. No one's done
it yet, but they've had a couple people who claim that they were
clairaudients, which means that they can hear voices either from
the great beyond or they can read minds. And they had one
person who was very sincere, who believed that he could read
minds. So they set up a test with him, and this is the way it
always works. The group says, "OK, we have a protocol, we
have a way to scientifically test this. Do you agree with it?" The
person says yes. Then they test it. It's very important that both
sides agree. They did that, they tested him. They said, "OK, you
know what? You weren't able to predict what Lisa was thinking.
It matched up about the same as chance. Looks like you don't
have the power."
09:34
And that gave them the opportunity to compassionately sit
down with him and have a very difficult discussion, which
basically amounted to, "Hey, we know you're sincere, and what
that means is, you do hear something in your head."
09:51
And that guy got to make the very difficult decision, but really
the life-changing decision about whether to go get help. We're

5
actually helping people to make these connections that maybe
before seemed like otherworldly explanations, help draw us into
reality and maybe change our lives for the better.
10:18
Now, on the other hand, maybe one time it'll turn out to be true.
Maybe we'll find out there are ghosts, and holy shit, it will be the
best thing! And every time I do one of these investigations, I still
get so excited, and I'm like 75 into them, and still I swear on
number 76, I'm going to be like, "This is the one!"
10:39
(Laughter)
10:41
Maybe I'm just eternally optimistic, but I hope I never lose this
hope, and I invite you to take this same attitude when people
share their outer beliefs with you. When talking about testable
claims, respect them enough to ask these good questions.
Challenge and see how you can examine them together,
because there's this idea that you can't respect a belief and still
challenge it, but that's not true. When we jiggle the lock, when
we test the claim, we're saying, OK, I respect you, I'm listening
to what you're saying, I'm going to test it out with you. We've all
had that experience where you're telling someone something,
and they're like, "Oh, that's really interesting, yeah," you know
you're being had. But when someone says, "Really? Huh.
Sounds a little sketchy to me, but I'm listening," you at least
know you're being engaged and respected. And that's the kind
of attitude we should have with these claims. That's showing
someone that you care what they're saying. That's respect.
11:46
Now, yes, most of these searches will come up empty, but that's
how all of science works. Every cure for cancer so far has not
panned out, but we don't stop looking, for two reasons.
Because number one, the answer matters. Whether it's looking
at the afterlife or the paranormal or the cure for cancer, it all

6
amounts to the same question: How long will we be here?
12:13
And two, because looking for the truth, being open-minded, and
being willing to be wrong and to change your whole worldview
is awe-inspiring.
12:26
I still get excited at ghost stories every single time. I still consider
that every group I join might be right, and I hope I never lose
that hope. Let's all never lose that hope, because searching for
what's out there helps us understand what's in here. And also,
please have a carbon monoxide detector in your home.
12:50
Thank you.
12:51
(Applause)