I recently watched an episode of “Ghost Hunters” where the hosts try to speak English to ghosts from ancient Mexico.

In this particular episode (Season 9, Episode 2), the team visits the old Spanish mission of San Juan Capistrano, California to investigate some of the ghost stories there. After night falls and they’ve up their equipment around the mission, the investigators walk around with audio recorders to communicate with the ghosts.

Just one problem—they’re speaking English.

This mission was part of colonial “New Spain,” later to become independent Mexico. At the time when Capistrano was still inhabited by monks and nuns, all of its residents spoke Spanish. For the first few hours of their investigation, the ghost hunters ask the spirits to manifest themselves—in English. They ask questions of the ghosts. And they seem to not realize that if there was a conscious ghost here, it wouldn’t understand a word they were saying.

To the credit of the “Ghost Hunters” team, this is not the worst attempt I’ve seen to interact with a ghost. I once saw an episode of “Ghost Adventures” where Zak Bagins tries to provoke a ghostly nun by showing her his tattoos and ripped abs. Still, it seems counterproductive to assume that all ghosts will understand your language.

Eventually, they seem to catch on to the fact that everyone in ancient Capistrano used to speak Spanish. Unfortunately for the ghost hunters, none of them know how to speak it. One of them tries out a casual “¿Qué pasa?” at one point.

When two of the investigators walk into a dark room, they tell the ghosts that they have come to pay their respects. One of them half-assedly translates this as, “¿Cómo está? ¿Respecto?” Then he continues to butcher the word “respecto” in every way possible. “Rospecto? Respectos?”

His partner chimes in. “El guapo! Yeah, that’s Spanish! El guapo! No el guapo? El guapo grande?”

After they’ve exhausted the vocabulary they learned from “The Three Amigos,” the ghost hunters address the ghosts again. “That’s all the Spanish that we know. Have you been able to understand any of that?”

As I watched the episode, my first thought was, Man, no living person could have understood any of that!

Here’s the strange thing, though: the ghost hunters still manage to pick up something.

Their audio devices record the sound of a woman’s voice whispering. At one point, a shadow passes in front of their light detector. They hear something shuffle in the dirt outside the mission. A door bangs loudly in front of them.

As in many episodes of the show, the ghost hunters capture phenomena that have no physical explanation.

This might be because the Spanish-speaking ghosts grew frustrated with these gringos who couldn’t speak intelligibly. Hell, if someone walked into my house shouting “Rospectos!” repeatedly, I’d probably bang on the walls too.

But could it be that the ghosts of San Juan Capistrano aren’t conscious spirits at all?

What if the phenomena captured by the team of “Ghost Hunters” aren’t being caused by entities who are trying to interact with them—what if they are residue from the past? Could it be that haunted places record an imprint of the past, much like the ghost hunters record video and audio during their research? Could it be that ghostly phenomena are just another form of “recording” that we don’t understand yet?

This is the intriguing theory that I look into in my latest e-book, “Ghosts: Recordings of the Past.” You can read get the book for free, and read all about it, by clicking this link.

In the meantime, join me in watching this new season of “Ghost Hunters” on SyFy. And please—if you’re going to communicate with any ghosts, try learning their language first.