Professor Dr SC Ling in a WhatsApp chat specifically asked me this question:
What is the difference between a soul and the ghost of a person? Why is it ghosts are trapped here in this world to haunt here, and are not liberated like most souls that fly off to another world? She solicited my explanation on this as she mentioned she is as confused as my brother -in-law who is unable to understand spiritual entities like souls, ghosts, spirits, demons, and heavenly beings and powers like God, Jesus and angels. I pray God would lead them into knowledge and wisdom. Prayer is always the source of power for enlightenment, understanding and wisdom.
First, let me thank Prof Ling for her very interesting and challenging question for me to field. It is also a pleasure to engage with anyone who cares to share mysteries and difficult questions like hers.
Let me now divide my answer and explanation from two point-of-view. Since I am a research scientist, I shall try to tackle this mystery from the scientific perspective first, after which I shall subscribe my view from the traditional human perspective. Is that okay and comfortable to readers? Let me first give my personal scientific view.
I strongly believe souls have no mass like the photons of light, and I have explained this a few times in my other articles about the existence of ghosts here in this blog.
Very briefly to summarize, most souls would like to shed off all mass after the body dies so that they can be free and liberated (I shall explain this about Jesus in another article) and will not be affected by the pull of gravity. In this way they can fly off anywhere, to any world they like faster than light. I have also explained this in some details when I wrote my series of articles on space travels here in this same blog.
Naturally most would like to leave this world without carrying unnecessary burdens, like mass, luggage with them so that they can reach and explore much better worlds than ours much faster - faster than light. I have also explained this in my series of articles on Space Travels - how it is best to shed our physical body and leave them behind so that we can release the soul to let it fly faster-than-light to another world without needing to carry our massive physical bodies to another world or planet thousands to millions of light years away - we can never reach there with our physical body tagging along. Check that out in my blog article on Space Travels.
But some people who suffered traumatic deaths from to murder, tragic accidents or some unforeseen or unforgiving reasons still want to retain some mass in them like sub atomic particles to remain in this world to haunt and take revenge for their untimely death and hence are unable to leave due to the pull of earth gravity.
Consider, even light that is made up of massless photons are still being affected by super massive gravity that is able to bend them as shown by gravitational lensing in astronomy. Although light consisting of photons are massless, they still expert pressure and are affected by the pull of supermassive gravity - in fact if the gravity is strong enough as in a black hole, even light cannot escape, let alone a soul as a ghost if they are trapped in a black hole for all eternity - which in my belief is hell or hade
There is a relationship between mass and energy shown by Einstein's famous equation E= mc2. I believe for this reason, in order for ghosts to "materially" appear they need to draw heat energy from the surroundings causing the air or room to become very cold just before their 'material' appearance in a room, a confined space or in a building becomes possible. I have also explained in some detail in my other articles whether ghosts exist?
In short, most souls don't wish to carry any burden (mass) with them in order for them to fly off from this earthly physical world. But unfortunately some still carry mass and worldly burdens with them unwilling to leave them behind to haunt others.
Let me expand my idea further using modern physics theories (like quantum mechanics or theories about consciousness and energy) that support similar ideas that have appeared in philosophy, ancient beliefs, or metaphysical writings?
Physics and the Trapped Soul: Mass, Energy, and Persistence
Mass–Energy Equivalence: In Einstein’s famous formula E=mc², even a tiny amount of mass contains an enormous amount of energy. When a living body dies, the mass-energy bound up in that body doesn’t vanish, it is released or redistributed in other forms (heat, light, chemical energy, etc. Think of the body as a battery, when it “dies,” its stored energy dissipates into the environment (warmth in the air, heat in the ground, etc.). There is no room in standard physics for a large, undissipated “energy” packet floating around, unless it is confined in some physical form. Some early attempts to measure a “soul mass” (like the famous 1907 experiment by Duncan MacDougall) claimed a tiny weight loss (about 21 grams) at death. However, these experiments were deeply flawed and inconclusive; modern physics treats them as curiosities rather than evidence. In short, energy is conserved and just changes form, so any idea of a “trapped” soul would have to account for where that energy goes and how it stays localized.
Einstein’s 1905 thought experiment on mass–energy showed that emitting energy (red waves) causes the emitter’s mass to decrease in accordance with key points. According to physics, the energy / mass of a body at death is transformed, not destroyed. No known mechanism “traps” large amounts of energy in a disembodied soul, unless it takes some physical form we do not yet understand.
Gravity and Light: Metaphors of Entrapment
Even if a soul were massless or purely energetic, it would still feel gravity. In Einstein’s general relativity, gravity is not just a force on mass – it curves spacetime itself, and all particles and waves (even massless light) must follow those curves. In fact, massless photons of light are famously bent by gravity in phenomena like gravitational lensing, where light from a distant star or galaxy is warped into arcs by a massive object in between. NASA shows how a galaxy cluster bends light rays from a background galaxy, creating multiple distorted images.
In gravitational lensing, a massive foreground cluster curves spacetime so strongly that light from a distant galaxy is bent and magnified.
Metaphorically, if a “soul” were like a beam of light or a photon, it would still be deflected by the Earth’s gravity or trapped by a deep gravity well. And if a soul had mass, gravity would bind it even more strongly. Imagine a marble rolling on a rubber sheet dipped by a heavy weight; the marble (even if “light”) gets pulled toward the weight and can orbit it.
Likewise, a soul-entity could in principle be caught in a gravitational “well” or orbit, analogous to an object in freefall. In reality, however, any normal-sized remaining mass or energy in a body after death would be tiny and quickly dissipate. But this illustrates that gravity does affect even things with no rest mass – it “sees” energy and momentum, causing paths to curve.
The key point in General Relativity tells us that gravity bends the paths of even massless light. By analogy, any non-destroyed energy of a soul would still have to move along those bent trajectories (or fall into gravity wells), not hover freely.
Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness
Quantum physics introduces bizarre possibilities that some have tried to link with consciousness and “souls.” One idea is quantum entanglement, a phenomenon where two particles become linked so that measuring one instantly affects the other, no matter how far apart. Some researchers speculate that entangled quantum states in the brain might play a role in consciousness. For example, a recent experiment hinted that pairs of particles (possibly in brain tissue) behaved in synchrony as though entangled. If true, it suggests that part of our brain’s processing might be fundamentally quantum. The Big Think article notes that “some scientists suspect that quantum processes, including entanglement, might help us explain the brain’s enormous power… and its ability to generate consciousness”.
Other theories push this further. In the Penrose–Hameroff “Orch OR” hypothesis, tiny structures called microtubules inside neurons are proposed to harness quantum superposition and collapse to produce moments of conscious awareness. (Penrose and anesthesiologist Hameroff suggest that each quantum collapse yields a “proto-conscious” moment that microtubules weave into full consciousness.) These ideas remain highly controversial, but they raise the possibility that consciousness could be tied to quantum information. In quantum theory, information is very tightly conserved: quantum evolution is unitary, which (in principle) means information about a quantum state is never lost, only transformed. Some thinkers propose that the “pattern” of a mind or soul might be a form of quantum information that persists even if the body changes.
Quantum entanglement: Particles share a connected state instantaneously. If brains use entanglement, a part of “consciousness” could in principle remain correlated or extended beyond death.
Quantum superposition: Like Schrödinger’s cat being alive and dead until observed, consciousness might arise from superposed brain states. (Some speculate simple quantum minds could be widespread.)
Quantum information: In theory, information cannot be arbitrarily destroyed by physical laws. Thus, memory or identity could be seen as information patterns.
These ideas allow colorful analogies: perhaps a departed consciousness is like a ghost in the quantum machine, an entangled whisper of the original. For example, Christof Koch has speculated that coupling a brain to a quantum computer and entangling them could “expand our consciousness”. In fringe notions (no evidence yet), one could imagine a mind’s “quantum state” lingering in some form.
Quantum theories of mind are speculative. Physically, quantum processes in the brain (if they exist) might make consciousness hard to simulate classically, and some models (Penrose–Hameroff) even tie consciousness to quantum state collapses. This suggests consciousness might be viewed as quantum information – which, unlike ordinary energy, doesn’t simply vanish without a trace.
Thermodynamics and “Cold Spots”
Paranormal investigators often report cold spots – chilly air where a ghost is sensed – and claim spirits absorb thermal energy. Let me examine this in light of thermodynamics below.
The First Law of Thermodynamics (energy conservation) says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. The Second Law says heat flows spontaneously from hot to cold regions until equilibrium is reached. In other words, if a spot suddenly gets colder (a “cold spot”), that missing heat energy must have gone somewhere – the environment must become slightly warmer elsewhere to compensate. You can’t have a net removal of heat without raising something’s temperature or storing that heat in some way.
First Law: Energy is constant. If a ghost “sucks” heat out of the air, that energy has to go into the ghost or into the surroundings in another form.
Second Law: Systems move toward thermal equilibrium. A drop in temperature at one point means a rise somewhere else – otherwise entropy has decreased.
Thus, a ghostly cold spot if it is not accompanied by a warm spot violates these principles. In practice, so-called “ghost cold spots” often turn out to be drafts, sensor error, or simply normal heat flow from walls and open doors. Without a clear mechanism for how a spirit would carry away or re-channel that heat, physics demands there be an equalizing process.
Thermodynamics tells us energy (including heat) moves toward balance. A ghost that made a corner colder would either have to dump that energy somewhere else (making another corner warmer) or violate physics. No confirmed physics-friendly mechanism exists for a “cold-spot spirit absorber,” so natural explanations (air currents, insulation gaps) usually suffice - at least in the eyes of physicists.
Speculative Frontiers: Information and “It from Bit”
Beyond standard physics, some thinkers speculate that information itself is the true bedrock of reality – a notion that blurs the line between physical and metaphysical. Physicist John Archibald Wheeler famously coined the phrase “it from bit,” proposing that every physical thing (every “it”) ultimately derives its existence from yes–no information (bits).
In his words, “every item of the physical world… derives its significance from bits,” and reality is fundamentally information-theoretic. If one adopts this view, a “soul” might be seen as a pattern of information rather than a packet of energy or mass. The death of a body might correspond to erasure of one set of physical bits, but in principle the information pattern (the “bit pattern” of a personality) could persist in another form – perhaps in the universe’s quantum state or in some connected consciousness field.
Other speculative ideas include viewing the universe as a quantum computer, where consciousness is a process of information computation, or analogies to holograms: a holographic plate contains whole images in each piece, suggesting that perhaps every part of the universe encodes information about the whole. These are highly conjectural, but they offer a kind of bridge: if the soul is non-physical information, physics might allow it to “live on” without requiring extra mass or energy.
Key point: In cutting-edge thought, information is as real as mass or energy. Wheeler’s “it from bit” suggests reality arises from information. If consciousness is fundamentally informational, one could argue it doesn’t disappear like ordinary matter. However, this remains a poetic framework, not an established science of souls.
Conclusion in Science:
Bridging metaphysics and physics requires imagination and caution. Even though modern physics is unable to provide evidence for disembodied souls, it offers analogies. Scientific discoveries often are based on an initial hypothesis - logically inferred by existing knowledge or an effect. This is used as a springboard or a platform to launch an experimental study. Most of the time (99.9 %) the hypothesis is found to be true. However, it is extremely difficult to show the existence of ghosts or souls even though across the thousands of years and various domains of ethnicities, religious beliefs, cultures and social norms this has stood very firm and has been a silent acceptance.
However, some hardcore scientists insist that energy conservation tells us nothing magical remains after death – our body’s energy simply changes form. Gravity reminds us that even energy must follow spacetime’s curves. Quantum physics opens the door to non-intuitive possibilities (entanglement, information) that some speculate could relate to memory or consciousness. Thermodynamics warns that a “spirit” cooling a room would have to obey energy balance. These are only physical laws we understand in this physical dimension - but may not hold water in a spiritual dimension. Spirits, ghosts and the soul can appear through locked doors and walls as many, including my former classmates have seen and experienced. They defied all known physical laws
In purely scientific terms, so far there's no conclusive evidence of trapped souls, but experiences of "ghosts" could be linked to human psychology, brain chemistry, electromagnetic fields, or even collective cultural storytelling. Thus scientists blind to the spiritual world think that the idea of a trapped soul is metaphorically suggestive but not directly supported by tested physics - that they insist.
Having explained this heavy physics (hopefully readers can understand), I think this scenario creates an invitation to ponder the unseen – and science can illuminate the physics of energy, light, and information that any such phenomenon would need to obey. By speaking in both scientific and poetic terms, we can respectfully explore how concepts like ghosts might fit (or fail to fit) into our understanding of the universe.
Even if most people “leave freely,” physics reminds us that nothing we are physically made of truly disappears – it simply takes on new forms, sometimes subtle, always consistent with the elegant laws uncovered by Einstein, Maxwell, and others. Example matter and energy are related and interchangeable
Sources: Physics concepts from special relativity, general relativity, quantum theory, and thermodynamics, and historical references on soul-mass experiments.
Traditional View:
Let me now discard what scientists insist, and explore the answer to this mystery from the angle of traditional beliefs. When a person dies his soul is liberated from his body and flies off to another world. But why is it that some souls are trapped here in this world as ghosts and are unwilling to leave?
That's a profound and timeless question, and one that's been asked across cultures, religions, and philosophies for thousands of years.
Here’s my general summary of how different traditions and beliefs explain why some souls might remain "trapped" as ghosts:
1. Unfinished Business
Many traditions say that if a person dies with strong attachments, to family, revenge, unfulfilled duties, or unresolved emotions. Thus the soul lingers, unable to move on peacefully.
2. Sudden or Violent Death
When death is unexpected, violent, or traumatic, the soul might be confused, shocked, or unaware it has even died, leading it to stay near the place or people it knew.
3. Emotional Attachment to the Physical World
Greed, love, hatred, or longing for material possessions or loved ones can anchor a soul to the earthly realm.
4. Guilt or Fear of Judgment
In some religious traditions, a soul that feels guilty or fears punishment after death might refuse to move toward the "light" or the next stage, becoming earthbound instead.
5. Wrong Rituals or Lack of Proper Farewell
Some cultures believe that if the correct funerary rituals aren't performed (prayers, rites, blessings), the soul cannot transition properly and remains stuck.
6. Special Mission or Divine Purpose
A few teachings suggest that sometimes spirits stay behind for a reason, to protect someone, to guide, or to finish a sacred task. Others think ghosts and spirits are unhappy souls that like to remain in this world to haunt and take revenge on humans who tortured them when they were alive and living. In more psychological terms, some modern thinkers view "ghosts" as manifestations of residual energy or emotional imprints rather than conscious, suffering souls.
My personal view based on traditional beliefs is, I think the idea that love, fear, or unfinished purpose could tie consciousness to a place can also be very meaningful, whether taken literally or symbolically. It reflects how deeply we humans feel about life, death, and meaning.
Maybe more elite, more informed and more educated and enlightened readers of mine in this blog may like to share with me their more expert opinions, or what different religions (like Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism) say more specifically about this? Each has fascinatingly detailed beliefs about trapped souls!
Finally, I wish to thank Professor Dr SC Ling who asked me this very difficult and challenging question.
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