The Curse of the Invisible Ghost: Apparitional Observation & Inattentional Blindness in the Wild

Last Halloween, I wrote a post about how, whilst wandering the Backs dressed as a ghost, Cantabrigian parapsychologist Tony Cornell had very nearly discovered "inattentional blindness." This is a psychological phenomenon where individuals fail to notice unexpected stimuli when their attention is focused elsewhere. I also touched upon a proposal in Richards, Hellgren and French (2014) that this phenomonon may play some part in actual apparitional experiences. I didn't, however, linger on this, as I couldn't, and as we’ll see I’m not alone in this, quite see how this could actually happen; fortunately, two recent reports seem exemplary.

None other than emeritus psychology professor and sometime Cambridge Skeptics guest speaker Chris French (of Richards, Hellgren and French fame) also struggles to conjure a convincing connection between inattentional blindness and apparitional experiences; postulating, in his magnus opus The Science of Weird Shit (2024), the somewhat unconvincing hypothetical of a claim that a book was moved when no one was around, being, despite protestations to the contrary, down to the non-witness simply failing to notice the person that moved it. This, it turns out, is somewhat overly contrived when compared to those recent reports.

Kerry-Anne Docherty really should know better if she does indeed regular check her Ring doorbell camera; nonetheless, she was seemingly stupefied by poorly lit early-morning infrared footage of her neighbour Jackie Batt being passed by someone who fades away in a camera glitch. As Batt couldn’t remember passing anyone that morning, and she assure us she would, the two jumped to the conclusion that the fuzzy figure was the ghost of a 1940’s miner's wife; those details seemingly being projected on to the shadowy silhouette as their housing estate dates back to that date and, well, as far as I can make out, absolutely nothing else.

Aden Hudson’s mystification seems even less justified as footage of his ride home along a foggy, twisty Haddiscoe Dam in Norwich, Norfolk, which he apparently regularly films as it looks kinda cool, I guess, features nothing more than an obscure outline. This could, admittedly, be a wandering wraith or, I suspect, more likely a darkly dressed pedestrian or, to be completely honest, absolutely anything else. Hudson’s reasoning for this being a phantom hitch-hiker seems entirely dependent on local legends and the fact that he hadn’t noticed anyone and neither the “observant” driver nor the other passenger had pointed them out.

The pre-emptive protestations Prof French predicted included here are claims that they “honestly” didn’t see anyone (no, they didn’t), they would’ve remembered (no, they wouldn’t), and they’re sceptical (well, so am I). These, of course, being merely demonstrative of the lack of common understanding of the counterintuitive consequences of this phenomenon, so thoroughly documented by Cornell’s successors Mack and Rock (1988) and Chabris and Simons (2010). And I can’t help but wonder how many more apparitional experiences could be preemptively busted if a few more people knew about the gorillas in our midst.