We get so angry when ghosts don't move objects, turn on lights, slam doors or finish the damned "shave and a haircut" tapping routine.
Every time I'm on a hunt, I think of Christopher Reeve. He was about the ideal example of the thing that a spirit would be up against. An active mind, memories, thoughts, but no body to carry it out. Every day, we think to ourselves about what we'll do later today, tonight, what we'll eat for supper, yada yada yada, and all those thoughts are followed by action. The combination of thought and body make is ideal for living in the mortal plane where we must feed ourselves, sleep, find shelter, mate, et cetera. In the spirit world, without the needs of the body and its DNA-driven animal-based needs, what do we develop?
Think about it. Christopher Reeve was paralyzed. He had to develop a whole new spirituality to deal with having thoughts and being unable to act upon them. He had to find something bigger than his immediate issues or he would go out of his mind. A blind person develops a sense of smell and hearing that is acutely developed.
What does a spirit develop? What would be critical in a spirit form when you no longer have to worry about moving a body, you can simply think and be there. If you don't need to worry about possessions, your weight, what others think, your health, feeding yourself, getting rest...what the hell is your main focus?
If we are to approach ghost hunting as hunting spirits, then one way to focus on it is to focus on where a spirit is coming from. I have to admit, I would not haunt the earth. Why? Because you realize that none of that was important. All of it was temporary. This spiritual form is permanent. Would I miss my loved ones? Why should I? They too are spirits-only held in physical vessels.
I am reminded of a famous saying "We aren't human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings have a human experience."
So, here is the question: If we are spirits in a physical form and the dead are spirits with no physical form, the only thing keeping us apart is our physical trappings that limit our senses. We are seeing, hearing and sensing with a human's limited capabilities. Are practices such as meditation and astral projection and remote viewing just ways of exiting physical form and lingering in the spiritual form and, if so, would that not be the ideal way to communicate?
Can a spirit with no physical form manipulate objects? Knock on walls? Close doors? Show itself in a shadowy form? If this is possible, it would suggest that telekinesis is definitely possible and that even a human being in physical form having a spiritual being inside should be able to manipulate objects, as well.
So, what do you see as the obstacles for the living to interact with the dead? Is it our physicality? Is it that we aren't thinking like a spirit form and what its priorities are? Is is that we are just not receptive to that higher spiritual part of ourselves except in those moments of prayer and meditation?