B. Ellis. Belief in ghosts is something that will never be fully explained. People have believed in ghosts since before people started writing down history. The only thing I can think of is that some people did not want to believe that their loved ones were gone for good, and so comforted themselves with the belief that their loved ones could come back.
Houston. I've got a much more precise explanation than that. How did people first get the idea that ghosts exist? Well, it must be because back in the neolithic period some hunter or gatherer decided to comfort a friend who'd just lost a parent. This hunter hid in the shadows one night and pretended to be the friend's deceased parent. He disguised his voice and covered himself with a white sheet so as to not give the game away. Well, things didn't go as expected! His friend wasn't comforted, he was terrified! So to cover his embarassment, our hunter told his friend it must have been his parent's left over spirit, which we now call a ghost. That must have been it.
Houston's explanation is precise, but it's not precise in any way that helps his argument. None of the details that he mentions are at all relevant to the ideas that some people presently have about ghosts. For instance, the type of ghost stories that are actually believed (as opposed to fiction) typically involve violent death, and typically link ghosts to specific places and times of appearance. Neither of these things is explained by any detail in Houston's explanation. Remember that Houston's explanation is perfectly possible, perhaps even plausible, but just about any physically possible explanation is equally plausible, and there is nothing in the present day phenomenon of belief in ghosts that makes Houston's explanation any better than any other.
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