That’s true, and unusual experiences should not be dismissed out of hand.
On the other hand, if we don’t have a solid understanding of a phenomenon, we should be careful not to go beyond what we know until we have reason to do so.
This very thread shows that we do not have an agreed-upon, operational definition for what a ghost is or how one works. Yet our pop-culture ghost hunters go into situations as though they know way more than they do. When we don’t even know what ghosts are or how they relate to the physical world, how are tools like the ubiquitous EMF meter useful? Why jump to an attempt to “communicate with the spirit” before you establish that there’s a spirit present to communicate with? And why in the world wander around in the dark jumping at shadows? That might look good on TV, but it’s not how any other kind of professional investigator goes about things.
A better approach is to start from the claimed phenomenon itself. If someone saw a translucent humanoid shape, then that’s what we know. Calling it a spirit or ghost is still several steps away. Assuming it’s associated with other phenomena like cold spots or odd EMF readings is premature unless someone reported that, too. Investigate the report itself. Is there something about the environment that, under the conditions of the original sighting, would produce the impression of a translucent humanoid shape? (This is the one point where turning out the lights makes sense, if that better replicates the original conditions.) If the explanation’s not that simple, has the sighting happened multiple times or to multiple witnesses? Is it always in the same place and/or time? If there are multiple reports, are they actually of the same thing, or have different witnesses reported different weird things, perhaps because the site already has a reputation for being haunted? In the latter case, investigate each distinct phenomenon as its own thing until you have reason to think otherwise. One person’s apparition and another person’s cold spot are not necessarily related, much less caused by something we can definitively call “a ghost” until we know a lot more.
Basically, the “sciences” surrounding things like ghosts and UFOs have jumped way ahead of what the actual data shows, constructing entire edifices of assumptions that most researchers seem to start from even though they have yet to establish the basics. If investigations were conducted more like the above (principles I learned from skeptical paranormal researcher Ben Radford, who does conduct his investigations that way and has actually been able to solve some cases), I would have more respect for the work.
