I don't think our government necessarily wants us to believe in ghosts as for many people this would entail paying more attention to religion.
Firstly because religion isn't nearly as big in Western politics as it used to be, today’s elite (namely arms industry, processed food industry, and foreign government lobbyists) don't exactly want to make space for the church anymore than already have to.
Secondly it would cause people to take the ethics of their actions a little more seriously. One consequence would be more government whistle blowers and eventually far fewer people willing to cooperate in crimes against morality.

Also as of yet proving the existence of ghosts is hardly going to be any more of a political issue than say clarifying the government’s knowledge on UFO's. The government haven’t done that yet, so till they do we have little hope for ghosts.

But yeah you make a good point. Ghosts on CCTV have been seen all over the place, including in high security buildings, and of course there's other good reasons to.
Personally I think the main thing (other than guilt) that puts people of believing in the supernatural and therefore religion is the way religion is presented to us. That; and the fact that in spite of all this evidence the government WON'T clarify the existence of things like ghosts for us.


[edit on 090705 by Liberal1984]

Originally posted by Gemwolf
Or is it once again the case of "not enough proof"?

I think that this is the reason why images of ghosts caught on CCTV are not held to be indisuptable evidence of the existence of ghosts. In the modern era, video footage has become increasingly unacceptable in terms of offering valid evidence for the existence of the paranormal. Where once we thought that the widespread application of technologies such as digital cameras and camcorders would serve to support the case for ghosts and other paranormal phenomena, in practice the opposite is proving to be true.

The reason for this, of course, is that images and video are very easy to fake given the right software and motivation. Because of this, even clear footage of paranormal phenomena will be viewed with harsh skepticism. There are simply too many cases of misidentification or outright hoaxing to accept still images or video footage at face value. Were this not the case, I would have become a diehard believer long ago. In terms of CCTV, it doesn't help that the images and footage are often grainy, blurry or indistinct.

For footage to be accepted as legitimate and convincing evidence of the existence of any form of paranormal phenomena, a number of criteria would have to be present.

- The filmer or photographer would have to be a person of strong integrity, to reduce the chances of the footage being a deliberate hoax.

- The image would have to be almost crystal clear. The slightest distortion or ambiguity concerning the image would immediately lead to a rash of interpretations and doubts over what was being seen.

- The phenomena would have to be obvious, even blatant. Using the example of ghosts, they would have to be clearly visible and perhaps interacting with physical objects in some way that precludes them being a person (becoming transparent, moving through objects, etc).

Until these criteria are met, I doubt that any form of video or still images will serve to convince the general public of the existence of ghosts or other paranormal phenomena.