Hunting the Haunting: Searching for Orbs, Specters, and Ghostly Creatures Through Digital Technologies

The development of digital technologies had a profound impact on religions, bringing about resistance and adaptations of traditional, theistic systems to this new technological and mediated environment, and on the dynamics of invention and creativity, as demonstrated by the wave of new digital religious movements. Scholars’ attention has mainly been put on the modalities of Searching God on the Net. This emphasis on “traditional” religions led to overlooking another dimension, the resurgence and innovative dynamics of beliefs and practices that fall under the category of “paranormal” or “alternative” forms of thinking, believing and acting—magical, witchcraft, occult, esoteric, spirit, and “spiritual” beliefs (understood in a broad sense)—are indeed also spreading and changing by means of new digital technologies. In this regard, digital technologies are not only “religious” or “sacred”, but they are also “haunted”. Departing from a particular topic of primary importance in this field, the ghost, i.e., the different ways by which spectral forms manifests themselves in the new ecosystems of digital technologies, and the way in which technologies reshape the ghost figure, this paper intends to shed light on the logics of this less considered facet of the digital revolution: the ways it participates in a reinvention of the paranormal and a hauntology of technologies. And in parallel to the quest for God online, it is also possible to engage in virtual ghost hunting.