Scouting the Territory

    I'd like to mostly keep my original topic but focus more on the history of séances and the occult (possibly just in America, but I'm not entirely certain for now). I'd also like to talk about why people seem to be so fascinated with the idea of ghosts and contacting the dead. I still think it would be interesting to further explore more "modern" and "scientific" ways of contacting spirits today as well; however, after looking into the topic some more, I think I will end up discussing actual scientific explanations for why people think they see ghosts as well as the reasons for why different technologies used to detect or contact ghosts actually prove nothing. Originally, I wanted to touch on both sides of the "Are ghosts real?" argument, but after doing some further research, it would be far easier for me to explain why ghosts do not exist, as I am now thoroughly a skeptic. Thinking ahead, I think I'd like to open my paper with the history of séances and the evolution of our methods of supposedly contacting ghosts. Then I'd like to debunk these methods and finish off by exploring our fascination with the undead. 

    I was able to find some interesting resources online using key terms such as "séances," "ghosts," "ghosts and EMF," and "electric voice phenomenon" (EVP). All of these terms were pretty useful to me, but "séances" gave me some amazing and detailed history about the occult and people's fascination in general with contacting the dead. In general, most of the reliable-looking sources that I could find were all debunking ghosts and the pseudoscience behind them. 

The link below is an article explaining EVP and debunking it. It offers a lot of scientific explanations and provides examples of studies about EVP and human perception. This link is particularly useful because there are many links to sources embedded in the article, which can further help me research the topic.

https://theconversation.com/hearing-ghost-voices-relies-on-pseudoscience-and-fallibility-of-human-perception-48160

Here is a link that I found through Google Scholar for a book that explains some of the history of ghosts and séances. I can use this for some information about how séances first began and how they caught on in popularity. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=zYgxL5pmPlsC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Here is a link to another book. I can use this source to talk more about the history of ghosts/séances in America and further explore why people are so interested in communicating with the dead. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=woZD4S3yO2YC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Unfortunately, I was really only able to find one side of the "Are ghosts real?" debate. All of the sources I found just explained why ghosts do not exist.