Ghost Virus

May 12, 2000

With May sweeps in full swing, even local TV stations got into the act by pushing paranormal programming. While the Fox network touted its UFO and "Live on Stage" paranormal specials, Boston's NBC affiliate WHDH-TV (channel 7) broadcast a heavily promoted "news" story on their 11 p.m. 7 News program of May 12, 2000.

Entitled "Ghost Virus" and reported by 7 News correspondent Janet Wu, the segment claimed that a new theory may explain why certain people see ghosts. The report begins with a typical ghost story in which a young woman says that as a child she once awakened at night and, going downstairs, saw a girl in the family's rocking chair, soaking wet and looking very sad. Upon telling her mother of this apparition the next morning, she was told that "years ago" a girl who lived in that same house had drowned herself on prom night in a nearby pond. With this illustration, aided by eerie music and video effects, we are informed that "one in five people say they've seen a ghost or have experienced the paranormal."

How? Possibly because of a so-called "ghost virus" to which some people's immune systems are susceptible and "which carries the memory of a person who has died." Janet Wu then interviews Holden Scott, author of the techno-thriller "Skeptic" (Oh, the irony!), who came to believe in the plausibility of this virus while researching a book. His explanation of this phenomenon? "If someone is killed in a violent way, not only are their cells ripped apart but these viruses are ripped apart and float in the air, pretty much immortal." Wu then helpfully explains how viruses reproduce by replicating "tiny pieces" of their host. Scott believes "viruses in the brain copy memory."

Dr. Or Gozani, identified as a cell biologist at Harvard Medical School, then says this theory "has merit" since some viruses are inhaled. As our correspondent goes on to say, released at death, the ghost virus is inhaled by the living who then "see the dead person's memories." (Clips from Hollywood movies including "Ghost" are used to demonstrate this process.) This is why, Holden Scott says, those who see ghosts see the same thing in the same place; "they see a woman walking down the stairs or they hear a baby crying." Scott then obligingly takes Ms. Wu and her crew on a tour of some "haunted" places in the Boston area.

The first stop is the Cambridge YMCA's old locker room where, we are told, in the 1930's "a man supposedly hung a noose behind some lockers here and jumped to his death." Black and white video of the now decaying space is shown to suggest the long (un)dead past. Holden Scott: "So we're essentially breathing pieces of a man who died here a long, long time ago." Next we are shown Boston Common at night, where two "friendly" ghosts are said to be seen walking arm in arm. "According to legend," Janet Wu states, two women on their daily walk had been hit by a car in this area, to which Scott adds that their bodies were thrown a great distance. At the close of the report, Holden Scott admits he's never seen a ghost himself because he apparently cannot catch the "ghost virus."

So weak was this report that I was tempted to consider it a joke but for the promotion of the segment in commercials all day long, and the apparently straight forward report itself. If there is a hoax here, I would assume that Holden Scott engineered it with help from Dr. Gozani, but I have no proof of any such activity.

By taking the report at face value, what can we deduce about its validity? First, the shifting definition of how the ghost virus works indicates that this theory has not been thoroughly worked out. Does the virus when released by an expiring human being cause us to see "the dead person's memories" or enable us to see "the memory of a person who has died"? These are not necessarily the same thing and the report does not differentiate. Assuming that the virus actually carries memory, as replicated while the virus is in the brain (the theory favored by Holden Scott), why is it that seeing a ghost does not typically take place in the first person? That is, if memories from the dead are inhaled by the living, would we not experience those memories through the eyes of the dead who once lived them, rather than simply "seeing" the figure of the dead person at a distance?

Second, the virus itself is not explained with regard to the biological apparatus that would allow memory to float free within the virus and be thus replicated. Who is it that knows exactly how memory works and understands its physicality? While general areas of brain function have been mapped across the cerebrum, no one has yet physically removed "memory" from the brain in a way that would allow its reuse, storage, or transference. The idea that viral infection can carry away intact memories within its DNA or RNA is unlikely in the extreme.

But even allowing for this possibility, what's to keep the virus alive and thriving in such numbers or in such concentration that, 60 years later, we can become infected and then see, for example, our YMCA suicide or our Boston Common accident victims? If the virus is free borne, who's to say that a person in Virginia or a traveler who has returned to England won't see the Boston Common pair far away from the spot that they supposedly continue to "haunt"? (The linking of ghosts to a particular place is a staple of the ghost story and is, in fact, an element of the tale related at the start of the WHDH report.) Like many such "theories," the idea of the ghost virus does not withstand scrutiny.

One can only conclude that this theory is, at best, unproven. Whom within the scientific community, if anybody, is working on proving it? A number of scientists might have been consulted and their views given. Why was the report, which is entirely anecdotal and speculative, broadcast at all? WHDH apparently failed to ask these questions, nor did they include such information in their report. Score one more on the side of paranormal "news."

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