The “paranormal” fascinates, the activities of mediums and psychics have a capacity to capture the imagination of many people. Scepticism is much more general than it was a century ago, when even people as brilliant as Arthur Conan Doyle took an interest, but there still remain people who have a firm belief in ghosts and, perhaps, the possibility of communicating with those from other times or the possibility of mental contact with those absent and whose whereabouts is unknown.

“Ghosts,” “spirits of the dead,” “discarnate personalities” are explicable in terms of Albert Einstein’s concept of “space-time.” Albert Einstein saw space and time as one; space-time was a continuum, complete in a moment. Writing to the family of Michele Besso, a friend who had died, Einstein wrote, “. . . for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” Einstein may not have written that Besso was in a bad condition, but that he was fine in plenty of other moments, if past, present and future are one.

If Einstein was right (and if he was right, he is still right and will be right), then his thought might explain “paranormal” phenomena that people claim to have experienced. If all time happens at once, then feelings of déjà vu are logical, they are simply experiences we have had at points in our future, a future that happens simultaneously to our present and past. If Einstein was right, then ghosts are no more than images from that simultaneous past, or even that simultaneous future.

Not only does the world of theoretical physics offer a logical explanation of ghosts, it offers the possibility of understanding supposed “psychic” occurrences.

In sub-atomic physics there is the idea of “entanglement,” that particles that have become entangled at some point can still instantaneously affect each other, even though they may be on opposite sides of the universe. Einstein did not like the idea because he did not believe anything could travel faster than light, so instantaneous effects on distant particles were impossible. New Scientist explores the idea of retrocausality, particles affecting others by moving backward and forwards in linear time (though, inEinstein’s model, it would be moving in the same space-time). A particle instantaneously affecting another particle by travelling to a point in space-time when/where they shared a locality.

It is headache inducing stuff, but, if it is the case that particles move in time, then what appear as “psychic” experiences may be the result of the sub-atomic particles, associated with those who are interacting with each other, moving to where the people concerned were near each other. If supposed psychic communication becomes something operating through time as well as through space then it arises not from the possession of special powers but through the mundane interaction of particles, the behaviour of which is still baffling.

If relativity and retrocausality become established as facts, then the paranormal becomes the normal, although a normal beyond anything we had imagined.