Killing Ghosts with iPhones

Why would ghosts be killed by mobile phones? That's the question we've all been asking. Apart from the important one of whether Luis Suarez is suffering from some kind of astigmatism.

It's not normally something that I worry about. And it's not often I bother to comment on what the Sun says. Normally, like all good Liverpool fans, I boycott the offensive rag, but on this occasion I read the website. And I think that's OK as it means I'm costing them server bandwidth and not buying anything from their advertisers, and I really don't care what Debbie from Dagenham thinks about what appears to be the murder of Colonel Gadaffi. I'm not saying Debbie doesn't have her own views, but I'm not totally sure that the copy next to her bare torso necessarily represents them in all their riches.

But I'm fascinated by this image of the world's electric network. Apart from the fact that the "scientist" who put this together, Felix from Montreal, has just cobbled together a load of stuff from the 'net himself, and remarks that you can't see electric cables from outer space. That doesn't matter. Because he's right - the world is criss-crossed with electricity - electrons surging in all directions, bringing the benefits of fossil-fuel burning to all people that can afford the bill.

But it does show that antipathy to humanity in the mass that some hold. Describes the human "sprawl" - as if  the world being filled with exciting, interesting, questioning, captivating people is some kind of mistake.Yes, I'm personally with those who think that it might be an idea, to lengthen the time human beings can populate this planet, to ensure there's not too many of us at one time. But I wasn't thinking of shrinking the number suddenly - rather gradually reducing, through non-violent means, the number being produced at any one time. People are great. We need lots of them. For as long as possible. And by the way, the population growth suggested by the Sun article is massively, eye-swivellingly, people-hatingly wrong compared to the UN's predictions.

But that's not what I'm really interested in. The minute I saw the idea of an "electric planet", I thought of a report I saw 11 years ago. And it told us that ghost sightings had died off in the 15 years since the widespread use of mobile phones. But then you see the maps of the earth with stuff going off and you think - is it really just the mobiles?

Let's pretend for a moment that ghosts can be perceived. I'm not saying they're objectively real. I'm saying they're perceivable. You can know that something is there. They could be an electrical field, they could be a hallucination (or an hallucination, according to Drayton). They could be the spirits of the dead, unable fully to shuffle off their mortal coil and go to join the choir invisible. Let's just assume you can perceive them. An Anglican vicar of my acquaintance claims he saw a Black Shuck once, but is perfectly prepared to accept it could just have been an Alsatian with a growth hormone imbalance - it just looked like a big ghost dog.

So if there's stuff to perceive - then 30 years ago, walking down a quiet country lane or standing around in a country house, you might have noticed it. It might have been a quiet electromagnetic anomaly, it could have been the effect of a pylon overhead - or it might even have been the subtle smile that told you that a young man or woman (according to choice) was interested in you. And with no iPhone, no Nokia, no Android, you might have noticed it. Today, it could have been rattling chains round your head while telling you about the darkness of the deepest pit of the Inferno, and if you were busy with Angry Birds or telling Twitter that there was some rubbish down the sides of the lane, FWIW, then frankly it would be wasting its time. My theory is that mobile phones didn't kill ghosts - the world was flooded with electromagnetic waves before then - it was our interactions with mobile phones that did. Before our current age of social networking, there was an era of yuppies with phones the size of bricks, shouting loudly into them that the signal wasn't up to much.

No, the difference between 30 years ago and now is that the people who might have noticed ghosts then - pallid, sensitive, needy types - are too busy worrying that they've been snubbed by a Facebook friend they met once in Stow-on-the-Wold Market, or wondering why their cutting remark about the woman who was just on the X-factor wasn't retweeted. They're not alert to the outside world anymore. The Wodewose tells me that every day he leads a troupe of 11 supernatural beings across the pelican crossing at Hockliffe, and nobody ever notices. I've asked him why he takes them all the way down to Hockliffe every morning - costing me diesel money and terrifying Jurgen, who drives the mini-bus - but he tells me something about a Roman legionary he was good mates with.

But my point is clear, if you follow it. We don't notice ghosts, whatever they are. We don't notice subtle inter-personal signals. We don't hear promptings from the Still Small Voice. We're too busy broadcasting our views and needs in all directions. Mobile phones didn't kill ghosts. We did.