Materialist-determinist thinking traces back at least to David Hume (d. 1776) from whom came the paradigm that a proposal made sense only if it could be verified by empirical means. Pierre La Place (d.1827) added that if the position and motion of all atoms could be known at one time, everything in the future could be predicted.

   Only in the last twenty years has sufficient evidence accrued to finally kill off this concept--and leave room for uncertainty, free will and God. The first major blow came from quantum theory and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle at the beginning of the 20th century--but was swept under the carpet with the criticism that this sub-atomic stuff has no reality when translated to the real world.

   In recent years, that criticism has been made obsolete. The evidence comes from work such as using vaporized sodium atoms to successfully repeat work previously done with single photons or electrons  which showed that when presented with two alternate paths to a target, they take both paths, behaving like a wave if the path is unknown, but as a particle if the path taken has been determined. Thus, they are in a state of indeterminacy (superpositioning) until an observer forces them to show themselves as either wave or a particle. There are now many such demonstrations--even to blobs of Bose-Einstein condensates that are visible to the naked eye and which show interference of their associated waves when two are brought close to one another. (The condensate consists of many atoms behaving like a single 'superposed atom' at very low temperature.)

   So how does a quantum ghost 'become?' First build a corral to enclose 'free swimming' electrons at the surface of a copper sheet. Do this using a few dozen cobalt atoms (because individual cobalt atoms have their own magnetic field).

   You'll need to use a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), a simple device made from a fine iridium wire terminating at a point with a single atom. When this is passed over the surface of the copper sheet, a tiny voltage between the two causes electrons to tunnel across. A regulating device keeps the current constant and a plot of voltage variations transforms to a topographic map of the surface with its atomic peaks and valleys.

   So, using the STM, place a few dozen cobalt atoms so as to make a picket fence in the shape of ellipse that will have two foci such that a signal going from one focus will bounce off the corral wall to the other focus always with the same path length (not as difficult as it sounds).

   Having built our cobalt-copper corral, place a single cobalt atom (iron should do as well) at one of the foci, then use your STM to make a complete scan of the corral and plot your results.
   
   Around the cobalt atom at its focus point you will find that a small cloud of electrons from the copper sheet has now encircled the cobalt atom.  Measurement reveals that each electron in the cloud has the opposite spin to the electrons belonging to the cobalt atom.

   Now take a look at the other focal point of the ellipse and, surprise, surprise, you find a mirage-like ghost of the real cobalt atom together with its surrounding electron cloud!

   Guess what. People are now trying to use the ghost-image of the real cobalt atom to see if they can bond it with another real atom in order to make a hybrid molecule having one ghost atom and one real atom.