Are you listening? I mean are you really listening?!!! How are you listening? What are your expectations? Knowing ghosts and believing in ghosts are two different things.
Sure, we're listening and watching for signs of the afterlife with our paranormal pursuits. IMHO, the issue as I see it is that we are going about it all wrong. If we allege that spirit communication is possible, I hope we can agree that the spirit realm is unlike our own. Therefore, the methodology of communication has to be unlike our own.
I've been at this for several decades now. It wasn't until the death of my brother over 1-1/2 years ago that made me think about taking a different pursuit angle. I am of a firm belief that if allowed, he would get some kind of message to me from beyond. We discussed this at length before his death. It isn't a point of contention with me. I feel my issue up to this point was that my expectations were based on my view of the world and my existence in it, not realizing that it wasn't up to me to decide the method of communication. It is up to my brother's spirit and the permission granted by the Creator to do so. So where does that leave me?
It has pointed me in the direction of what I refer to as "indirect communication." It is looking and listening in the simplest of places, in the simplest of ways from sources not of usual contemplation. This is in direct contrast to the bullshit being pushed now for years by Instrumental Transcommunication or ITC. It's a method claimed to be a method of contact with spirits electronically with a variety of instruments. We cannot say conclusively what constitutes a spirit or its ability to interact with the physical world. How dependable is a device in which we have no idea how it reacts with its target?
A research article found here: (https://digest.bps.org.uk/2022/03/22/repetition-can-make-even-the-most-bizarre-claims-seem-more-true/) illustrates an important point, the example being the Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect — that repeating a statement increases how true it’s perceived to be. A prominent idea for why this happens emphasizes the role of “processing fluency”; in essence, repetition makes the information easier to cognitively process, and this ease is misinterpreted as a signal that the information is true. There are no set standards for data capture, using tech devices or not. Direct access to that data is through our senses, the very same that conflate any results tailored by our brains to produce a perceivable conclusion. Because of this we can never know in an accurate way whether the information itself is accurate or even useful. The end result will be seeing not the data, but the utility of data captured. Yet, continued exaggerated tech device claims of "evidence" creates an infectious effect that makes outlandish claims seem more truthful.
Scientific experimentation, for instance, requires observation and the control of variables, and thus typically employs cause-to-effect reasoning: the experimenter, in setting up certain causal processes in an experiment, constrains the outcome of those processes (the effect). But, in many cases, we do not have control of the relevant causal processes. Rather, we are confronted with an effect and must reconstruct its cause.
By no means do I discount the personal experiences that many have had, but I would be willing to bet that the majority of those encounters were unsolicited. These claimed encounters were not subjective to an intentional, ghost hunting experience. IMHO, because of the popularity of the ghost TV shows and the message they peddle, we live not in the essence of what makes up our world, but rather in a created, representation of it with secondhand stories and cherry-picked data. The ghost TV shows take things a step further, animating that presented representation and injecting the alleged cause/effect attributable to the earthly presence of a spirit or demon. If we're going to attribute a source of negativity in an alleged haunting, you can always depend on the ole demon scenario. It is becoming a more popular choice due to easily presupposing a good that has been subverted in some way. This in itself is a distraction and deflection from assigned purpose to an alleged haunting. Do those who have no belief in a Creator take exception to this? Doesn't this acceptance of the presence of evil in essence presume a deviation from an ideal, thus acknowledging the exist of balance in the Universe by supposing good, the opposite of evil, exists as well? It would seem very difficult for non-believers in a Creator to argue their case using the concept of being dysteleological ... denying the existence of a final cause or purpose in life or nature.
What then is the interface between ours and the spirit world? I'm personally leaning toward becoming more in tune to that which has been in front of my face the whole time. I'm talking about the innumerable wonders of the Creator's doing. I'm going to take more notice of any and everything that nature provides, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. My Cajun Medicine Man friend often speaks of both the spirit world and ours coexisting in the same space. Since there both of the Creator's work, the interface must lie within that of creation itself. Spirit contact was part of the culture of Indigenous peoples long before the 19th Century. They didn't pursue the answers to the afterlife as a hobby or curiosity. It was already ingrained as a part of their lives. This alone makes them closer to the paranormal and/or supernatural and the thinning of the veil separating our world from the next. The advantage they possess with the most important differences from most of us is they live a life connected and related to all things of the earth, and all people on the earth.... "Mitakuye Oyasin." This means all living things on this planet have a dependence on each other. Not enough of us have slowed ourselves down to "stop and smell the roses."
The hypothesis: akin to a morse code message, the simplest of nature's displays could contain the attention getting prompts from beyond our physical realm. These indirect messages could come from things such as the vocalizations and actions of a bird or a sudden breeze in an otherwise dead-calm weather area, a feather falling into view out of nowhere while indoors, an unlikely interaction and conversation with a total stranger, a newspaper advertisement or article, et. al. Some may label them coincidences and synchronicity. The mistake is to make hastened conclusions from such occurrences. The point to this is that instead of attempting to influence contact electronically with devices, we let nature be our 'device' to communicate the message from the surrounding environment. Have you ever been in nature and came upon a very old tree. What was your impression of it? Did you walk up to it and touch it and for a moment, let your mind drift and meld into nature. Did you have an appreciation for all of the things that may have occurred near that tree over numerous decades of elapsed time.
My friend, Omolkhua once told me, "My grandmother would say that we age as the trees age. We die sooner than them but they do not change, and neither do we when we move forward. Do we believe that trees have a spirit? Yes. Do they hear us? Always. Do they guide us? Only if we let them. The same thing applies to those who have passed on... relatives... they're willing to guide us as long as we are willing to listen. But the world is not a one way road. There is the good and the bad. The medicine circle speaks about birth and death, the four medicines, the plants, the cedar being male, sage being female, tobacco being male, sweetgrass being female. So there's a balance. In this balance of our world and theirs, there's always something willing to cause you ill, disrupt your life."
It would seem that if one were engaged in a serious quest for accumulated data to attach a testable theory for ANY paranormal hypothesis, it would not involve having need to turn it into a popular media sub-culture that thrives on exaggeration and presumptive sensationalism to perpetuate their contentions, and that only serve to bury the very layers of the past which they claim to attempt to uncover.
Finally, leave your personal fears out of your search for answers. One of my favorite quotes about life comes from a commencement ceremony speech that actor/comedian Jim Carrey gave:
"Fear is going to be a player in your life. But you get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future. But all there will ever be is what's happening here in the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear... My soul is not contained within the limits of my body, my body is contained within the limitlessness of my soul."
- MoonJoey