When something puzzles, surprises, or overwhelms me I tend to be sucked into a vortex of discovery, often buffeted by contradiction and confusion. A sense of clarity normally emerges although the wonderful thing about being human is that our minds are often fluid. When someone suggests that changing my mind is in some way a negative trait I smile. As the English psychologist Edward de Bono observed, “If you never change your mind, why have one?” The subject of ghosts and the supernatural has encouraged me to perform several intellectual somersaults during my lifetime and when I commenced this latest investigation, spurred on by a recent conversation about death, I anticipated a chaotic journey.
As a kid, I was, unsurprisingly, open to the suggestive concepts that connected with all manner…