Are ghosts real?

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

97. I think ghosts are social osmosis and the power of suggestion

We come from a culture with several millennia worth of superstition, we learn from a young age that the dark is scary and our brains instinctively look to resolve humanoid forms and speech from whatever we're looking at. Even the most rational person could reliably recount the salient points of the book of genesis. It's in your brain and you aren't getting it out of there.

I used to work in a building that a man disappeared from, fact and urban legend had melded but the story goes he went into the office on a Saturday morning for no apparent reason and vanished without a trace. But my brain invented ghosts everywhere in that building. The cold draft in the elevator: ghost. The whining sound of the sump pumps in the parking garage: ghost. The sound of the girl who ran up and down the stairs like Jason Voorhees was chasing her: ghost. Strange smell in the mechanical penthouse: rotting corpse. Creepy old security guard: possible murderer.