Tony Jinks - Psychological Perspectives on Reality, Consciousness and Paranormal Experience

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Tom is 31 years old and works for a large multinational company as an internal IT consultant. That means he helps maintain the companys intranet and fixes all the problems employees encounter, or most times, create. To get an impression of Tom, imagine a Caucasian male of average height and weight, clean-shaven with mouse-brown hair and pale skin who wears thin-rimmed glasses and expresses a serious disposition (I can describe him this way because I guarantee hell never read this book).

In mid-2015 Toms company held a conference for employees at a hotel and function centre on the outskirts of a city, not far from the companys head office. The building was of late nineteenth-century sandstone construction, two stories high and in the shape of a square U, with meeting spaces and dining facilities in the main (horizontal) section facing a busy arterial road, and guest accommodation in each of the two wings projecting away from the traffic. As the conference was a two-day affair, Tom and his colleagues stayed overnight. Toms room was on the top floor of the southern wing, second door from the end of a long and well-lit hallway.

Following the completion of the first days session, Tom made his way upstairs to his room to freshen up before dinner. Arriving at the door, he dumped a bundle of conference paperwork from under one arm onto the carpeted floor and extracted the rooms key-card from his pocket. Tom inserted the card into the slot, but as he did so he felt an urge to look up and to his left. From his vantage point, he noticed the remaining corridor didnt end abruptly in a wall or a window but instead was intersected by another corridor running at right-angles to the main hallway he was standing in (something he hadnt really considered to that point in time). Toms analytical mind imagined the floor plan at this location to resemble a T shape, with him standing almost where the two lines joined. He also concluded the horizontal arms could be nothing more than short stubs. That made sense, since the buildings wing appeared to be only as wide as his corridor and the two rooms on each side. Yet for all Tom knew, there was a whole other section of the hotel that used this right angle corridor as a connection.

However these musings came later. When Tom looked up he was entirely focussed on what he saw . To his surprise, it was a man walking swiftly across the gap, travelling from left to right. At least Tom assumed the figure was male because the posture and walking style appeared masculine, and he seemed to be wearing dark trousers and a dark jacket. The face in profile was pasty and clean-shaven, and the hair short and black. The man was in view for only a few seconds, so that was the best Tom can remember on re-telling the story. The overall impression he got was that the man was walking to be somewhere , with purpose.

Initially, Tom wasnt the least bit disturbed. The corridor was empty and no-one else seemed to be upstairs, but if a man was roaming the far end of the building then it meant there were more corridors and rooms beyond. The man might have been a worker or guest with a perfectly good reason to be on the second floor, crossing from one part of the hotel to another. Curious about the mans identity, Tom left his room door half-open and walked the few steps to the corridors junction. Sticking his head into the gap and looking back-and-forth, he expected to see a flight of stairs or an open dooror the man just standing there. Instead he was disturbed to find this cross-corridor was indeed stumpy, and held nothing more than a small window to his right overlooking the hotels courtyard, and a door leading an external set of fire stairs to his left.

Tom thought the man must have been hiding in the recess next to the fire escape to begin with. After all, had the mystery figure recently entered the corridor from the outside staircase an alarm would have activated the moment the fire-door was opened. While troubling, that wasnt Toms real concern. What irked him most was where the man had gone . Recall the man had walked left to right across the corridors gap. That is, from the fire-door in one alcove to the window in the other alcove. However in the alcove there was no man, no hiding place, and no open window (which was securely locked). Needless to say Tom made a hasty retreat back to his room, trying to comprehend what hed just witnessed.

After reading this tale you would assume that Tom kept his story quiet, for fear of ridicule. He might admit that it happened, but many months later and only when he was trusting enough that the events he described wouldnt be dismissed as nonsense. Surprisingly, thats not the case. Tom is happy to say that he went straight down to pre-dinner drinks and treated his fellow workers to a detailed commentary of his sighting. Furthermore, his colleagues were equally happy to accept what he told them on face-value, and they spent the rest of the night musing on the event in the corridor (and other similar encounters the team had heard about, or even had themselves). No-one argued that Tom had not seen what he said he saw.

Who was the pale man in the dark clothing? Tom and his colleagues decided that if the man couldnt be found in the nook of the tiny corridor, and hadnt entered via the fire-door or exited via the window, then he must have been a ghost . Reflecting on the story, the acceptance of a ghost explanation is understandable. I associate with a lot of average people and Id be hard-pressed to find someone who