Last night I saw on Twitter this tweet "This is why we can't give up on educating people: Real Ghosts Exist To Nearly Half Of Americans, Poll Finds."

I replied suggesting if they wanted to prevent belief in ghosts, stopping educating people **exactly** what to do. Close all HE options! I used the Skeptical Inquirer to make my point, citing empirical evidence - see link below. Sadly they did not appreciate my contribution to the debate, and I fear I lost some followers
http://www.livescience.com/564-higher-e ... hosts.html

Interesting. I'd venture to suggest that the study may well be pretty fucking context-specific. E.g. were the students polled all students at Oklahoma universities? Can those results really be applied to a broader group? And so forth.

Yeah it was a small study and correlation is not cause. It's interesting mainly in that paranormal beliefs are stronger usually among the young: exposure to college seems to reverse this. A cuple of Australian studies i can think of show similar results curiously. I'll dig them out if I remeber when I have time

j x

I see the shimmering spectre of jerome walking among us! A decidedly ghostly presence of late.