What Ghosts CBS Gets Right and Wrong about the Paranormal

If anyone has been watching CBS on Thursday nights, they are likely going to notice that the network has a huge hit on its hands. It’s called Ghosts, and it carries an incredible cast, an extraordinary set, and awesome dialogue and writing. It tells the story of Samantha and Jay (played by the lovely Rose McIver and talented Utkarsh Ambudkar), who inherit a haunted mansion filled with ghosts.

This is no mere retake of Dark Shadows or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. It’s a series about heart, friendships, and spirits making funny comments as they encounter the living and the modern age.

An Americanized version of an equally successful British series with the same name, the cast of Ghosts CBS features the resolute Captain Isaac Higgintoot (Brandon Scott Jones), the very regal matriarch Hetty Woodstone (Rebecca Wisocky), the grounded scout master Pete (Richie Moriarty), the unyielding Viking Thorfinn (Devan Chandler Long), the sardonic Native American Sassapis (Roman Zaragoza), the animated jazz entertainer Alberta Haines (Danielle Pinnock), the irascible stock broker Trevor Lefcowitz (Asher Grodman), the quirky spaced-out flower child Susan “Flower” Montero (Sheila Carrasco), and a volley of other ghosts, neighbors, and contractors.

The show is a certified “hit” for CBS, filling in the vacant spot left by the end of The Big Bang Theory. It’s already entering modern culture with catchphrases, fan sites, and merch. But just how close is Ghosts CBS to the actual paranormal research that has been collected by serious researchers?

Only Samantha can see the Ghosts.

In the pilot, Samantha stumbles over a vase Trevor knocked over, and has a near-death experience that allows her to see ghosts. This has actually been reported in some cases; people starting to see ghosts after car accidents, long illnesses, and near-fatal injuries. But I don’t know how verifiable this is because I can’t find the actual cases. The problem here is that Jay and the other non-psychic folk should be hearing footsteps and distant voices too. Even skeptics have described seeing shadows, partial apparitions, and other traces of ghostly activity, but Samantha sees and hears them in full human form, much as how psychic Kim Russo has reported in her readings.

The Ghosts appear how they died.

This is actually true, but not always. In numerous cases, spirits have appeared to the living in the form in which they died. Numerous British ghosts have been described as carrying their heads, while others have been seen in more cadaverous states from being submerged in water. In America, hanging victims often appear headless. In the series, Flower has the scars of a bear attack, and Pete has an arrow in his neck. Crash walks around without a head, but it shouldn’t be found rolling around somewhere. He just can’t manifest it because it’s how he died.

The Ghosts can’t cross over.

This is true for most ghosts, but New Age belief claims we have pure spirits passing over and coming back all the time. In the episode “Possession,” there’s a neat scene where Flower tries running off the property and is simply deflected back. If anything, it would be more like Lou Costello as Horatio Prim in the film, The Time of Their Lives, when he chases after a car and bounces off an invisible boundary at the gates of Danbury Manor. Ghosts don’t haunt the locations they inhabit because they’re trapped; they’re considered earthbound because of unfinished business…a psychic link they can’t resolve. However, there have been locations where they just don’t pass over because they don’t want to; instead refusing to leave a place they loved in life.

The Ghosts haunt the place where they died.

All of the ghosts haunt Woodstone Mansion because it’s where they died, but this isn’t always the case in paranormal research. While some ghosts haunt their death sites, some of them (like Abraham Lincoln at the White House), return to the place most connected to them in life.

The Ghosts have special abilities.

Thorfinn can tamper with the electricity, Trevor with massive effort can touch things. Alberta can project her voice to the extent she can use Alexa, Flower can make people feel stoned, and Isaac can emanate the odor of decomposition after passing through the living. While each of these things has been reported as happening in numerous locations, this is the one thing not based on any sort of reality. I have read accounts of ghosts communicating over phone lines, making things vanish, and even starting inexplicable fires, so luckily the powers of the ghosts are remarkably tame. I would just guess these “gifts” are based on the strength of their personalities or a manifestation of their deaths, but there is no reason the others shouldn’t be able to go invisible or touch things except for the whims of the writers.

“Why do we pass through the walls but not fall through the floor?”

Interesting question, Trevor…

In paranormal circles, it is believed that ghosts draw on a theoretical substance called ectoplasm that allows them to manifest, move things and cause poltergeist effects. In their truest form, the ghosts would be invisible and immaterial, using ectoplasm to achieve certain feats.

I would speculate the Ghosts in the series are using this ability on an unconscious level to sit and not fall through the floor, but they haven’t experimented enough to the point that they all could move things, Trevor can conjure pants for himself or Crash can permanently manifest his head.

“Why do we sleep?”

Well, ghosts do go into periods of dormancy for days and even months and years. Maybe the ghosts of Woodstone sleep because they need to recharge or just because it’s a habit they got used to in life.

Why do the Cholera Ghosts rarely leave the cellar?

Maybe because it’s the same cellar from the original house on the property? Maybe they were bound there by a seance in the house?

The Viking Curse

Ironically, curses aren’t as big a thing in Norse lore as they are in Egyptian culture. In Norse myth, the dwarf Anvari places a curse on Andaravaut, his ring, which later becomes part of the Nibelung Treasure. There aren’t many other stories beyond that, so spare your sugar and cinnamon.

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