Ghosts

[Pendaric]

Anyone believe in them?

Anyone seen one, or think they've seen one?

My wife swears blind that the house she grew up in was haunted, and I've seen a couple of things happen there myself that I can't explain.

I don't necessarily believe in ghosts, but I don't necessarily think that it's an impossibility.

[Lisa0315]

I do.

[Christina]

I don't believe in them but I did live in a weird house once. When we looked at it to rent it, it was a great place with incredible views and huge windows but the only way that I can describe it was that it felt sort of dark and ominous. I chalked it up to the fact that the woods behind the big windows were overgrown and crowding the house. I still think that's what it was.

The night that we moved in ("we" being myself and a bunch of deadheads inclined toward woo) a neighbor came over and told us all sorts of fanciful stories about the old man who built the house and who was buried up on the back hill was haunting the place, and how a baby and then a puppy died in the back bedroom on consecutive Christmas nights. It turned out that really was 2 different nights in December, neither of which was Christmas. Of course I immediately discounted the never ending "sightings" of the old man by my housemates as the results of their overactive imaginations. What was weird was that I had brought a friend home that I am certain had never met any of my housemates or neighbors, and he woke me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat from having a nightmare about an old man chasing him around the house. I figure that one was a coincidence. A few nights later I woke up on my hands and knees digging in the planter box in a panic because an old man was yelling at me to clean up the yard. That was definitely me getting spooked by the endless drama of the old man in the house. These fools had the kids terrified so I never told anyone about that one or they would have seen it as incontrovertible proof. I walked in my sleep all the time as a kid and did all sorts of strange things.

The last thing was that one of the women started to refuse to sleep in her room because there was a ghost in the corner and it couldn't possibly be a trick of the light. The only other skeptic and I offered to spend the night in there and see it for ourselves. We tried to stay awake but eventually dozed off, and he woke me a bit later and pointed to something in the corner. It was a pale transparent glow with an amoeba-like shape and it immediately looked like a trick of the light to both of us. We shook the curtains around and waved our arms in front of them and pulled down the shade and it didn't have any effect on it. The we (he) reached up and stuck his arm in it and it looked to me like it just faded away. I'm sure that there was some sort of scientific explanation for what it was or appeared to be, but I could understand why she was a little freaked out.

[Lisa0315]

There is a place in Bisbee, Arizona, a historic hotel, in which many of our employees stay when traveling to our facilities in Mexico. Many of them have reported seeing or hearing two ghosts there. One of them is a prostitute, and the sounds coming from the floor above sound like someone moaning during sex. The problem is that there isn't another floor above.

The other ghost is a young boy. I don't know his story.

Lisa

[Garnet]

Arizona has a lot of hotels that are supposedly haunted:

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/AZ-HauntedHotels.html

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Well, we've got this little joint (http://www.stanleyhotel.com/) up the road.

And I'm pretty sure that Leadville is overrun. While my own woo outlook considers them more "psychic echoes" than ghosts, my hackles go up in that town because of the presences, and I don't like it there at all. So much godawful misery in that town's history.

[LoneWolf]

I don't believe in them even a little bit. I have stayed in some places that are supposedly haunted but I didn't experience anything. I was told it was because I was close-minded. Skepticism seems to inoculate oneself from being haunted. Go figure.

When I was young I thought I saw ghosts and demons and all manner of supernatural beings. I had a fairly active imagination. I also have episodes of sleep paralysis which can be accompanied by very realistic hallucinations. Of course I didn't understand all that when I was young.

[Ray Moscow]

I've stayed in a haunted pub a couple of times, and a couple of supposedly haunted houses, but no ghosts bothered me.

I might be psychicly challenged, though.

[Brianna]

I've heard the theory is they only bother people who believe in them. You think? :D

[Uthgar the Brazen]

They used to bother me periodically, but the last one making its way through and waking me up in the middle of the night got a sound cussing and a shoe thrown at it.

Been just fine ever since (knock on wood). :D

[Brianna]

They used to bother me periodically, but the last one making its way through and waking me up in the middle of the night got a sound cussing and a shoe thrown at it.

Been just fine ever since (knock on wood). :D

Superstitious much? :)

[Anne]

I want to believe in them, but just can't do it.

[Brianna]

It would help if you had a soul! :D

[Uthgar the Brazen]

Superstitious much? :)

Only to the point of keeping a shoe by the bed. :D

[Brianna]

Only to the point of keeping a shoe by the bed. :D

I knock on wood. That is about it.

[tjakey]

I would love to see a ghost, just like I would jump at the chance to ride in a UFO. ("I gotta get me one of these," being one of my favorite movie lines.)

But I spent a couple of years flying around AZ (and near Area 51) and never saw a single UFO; even on those late night, single pilot, up high and prime for the picking flights. I did see a pretty amazing meteor shower though.

I don't believe in either ghosts or UFOs, but that shouldn't matter if they actually exist.
So far though...

[darjeeling]

I want to believe in them, but just can't do it.

Same. It'd be fun.

[Ronin]

Anyone believe in them?

Anyone seen one, or think they've seen one?

My wife swears blind that the house she grew up in was haunted, and I've seen a couple of things happen there myself that I can't explain.

I don't necessarily believe in ghosts, but I don't necessarily think that it's an impossibility.

I don't believe in ghosts or "hauntings" or magic leprechauns, lucky coins, the power of a dead rabbit's foot, etc.

I've spent most of my life around the recently deceased, horrible trauma and the darkness of night (aka the "creepy crawlies").

I do observe that things may not always be "explained" fully due to various and assorted considerations.

Lots of things aren't necessarily "impossibilities", but since there is no evidence for them...they aren't "probabilities" or even "believable".

I've always been curious as to where credulity begins and ends with such claims?

Can y'all explain what methodology is used to claim a "belief" in some tenuous assertions over others or are all unfalsifiable claims to be "believed", by default?

[reddhedd]

I don't buy it myself. IMO, it's the same as a god...if it were really there, everyone would experience it, not just certain folks who are more 'sensitive'.

My neighbor believes her house is haunted and has had it 'cleansed' twice now...this last chick told her that she has to make friends with the house and its invisible occupants (little kids, apparently) and told her that when the kids feel accepted and loved, they'll leave. :rolleyes:

So neighbor lady now reads a children's story aloud in the evening, and has named the house, and leaves (interior) doors open so the ghosties can wander at will. (Supposedly, they were locked into rooms as kids, and so a closed door pisses them off, AND that scared energy is stuck in the house now.):dunno:

[reddhedd]

I think that if something has no real, strong evidence against it's existence, many people are open to the idea that it could exist. Just as the Deists believe, and it can't be disproven...there may have been a being that began the process that resulted in the Big Bang and then it wandered off for tea...

For some people, the fact that something can't be disproven means it may one day be proven, if/when our ability to detect these things improves.
Is that a methodology? No, but it adequately explains (for me) the 'belief' in Nessie, BigFoot, aliens, ghosts, and whatever else people think up to explain odd occurrences.
I don't really need to understand why, I just accept that other people hold these mostly harmless beliefs.

[Ronin]

For my part, I work quite a few fraud cases that are dependent upon this sort of credulity, so I don't really find the ideas "harmless" necessarily.

My curiosity is also mainly centered on how the credulous discern which unfalsifiable thing they "believe in" but use some sort of methodology to reject others.

Example:

Why do Muslims believe Mohammed was given the word of Allah by the angel Gabriel, but do not believe that Joseph Smith was given the even newer word pf God by the angel Moroni on golden plates?

[Daynna]

I don't believe in ghosts (or psychic ability), but my favorite TV shows are "Ghost Whisperer" and "Medium." :D

I used to believe I had a ghostly encounter. I saw something dark standing on top of my ex-husband, and couldn't move. Then I learned about sleep paralysis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

[David B]

I don't believe in ghosts (or psychic ability), but my favorite TV shows are "Ghost Whisperer" and "Medium." :D

I used to believe I had a ghostly encounter. I saw something dark standing on top of my ex-husband, and couldn't move. Then I learned about sleep paralysis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

I'm sure that sleep paralysis experiences have a role to play in explaining a lot of alleged ghost sightings.

Now I'll tell a little story, not about ghosts as such, but I think related to another class of ghost sightings.

One day, in full daylight, I was driving home from work, when a sudden movement in the sky caught my eye, and when I looked at it I saw a parachutist descending. Over the course of the next second or so the object changed, expanded, and my mind re-interpreted the image into what it in fact was - a maroon that calls out the local lifeboat crew.

When I was younger, the maroons were the only method of calling the crew, but pagers, and then mobile phones, but they still fire the maroons, I think as a PR exercise, to get tourists to watch the lifeboat being launched, and perhaps dispose them to giving money.

But, back at the point, if I'd seen the image, then driven behind a wood and lost sight of it, I'd have been asking people about the parachutist - it was that vivid an image.

Given the human facility to see images - especially faces - in inanimate objects, patterns of damp or shade on walls, whatever, it would be surprising to me if people did not, in the same way I saw the non parachutist, images of faces, or humanoid shapes sometimes, and, if they look away quickly, perhaps run, the memory of it I suggest is likely to become even more humanoid or facelike in retrospect that it was in the time. Like my memory of the non parachute.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe that there are features of the way people process and interpret images that might lead people to feel sure that they have seen a ghostly face and/or figure.

David

[Jobar]

I don't believe in ghosts, although I was one once.

When I was 21, I ran around with my slightly younger brother Jim and a crowd of local teenagers. (My bro and I had access to a car.) One afternoon Jim met them and told them I had to finish a job on the dairy farm, and wouldn't be around; then he suggested that all of them go to this old farmhouse/mansion located way out in the sticks. So they did, arriving there at nearly dark- and when they walked in, they heard a moaning and clanking noise from the second floor, and heavy footsteps approaching the stairway.

Needless to say, they all fled- and when they got outside and looked back, they saw a glowing skull floating in a window. At this point, some of the guys, not just the girls, were screaming. So they all ran back to the car and drove away, as fast as Jim would drive them.

At which point I pulled off the glowing skull mask, put away the length of chain I'd been dragging, and tromped in my heavy motorcycle boots off into the (now dark) woods where my motorcycle was hidden.

Thereafter, all of them swore that old house was for-real haunted. And my brother deserves an Oscar for the act he put on! I, of course, played the complete skeptic (an easy role!) and made out like they were all bullshitting me. That hoax lasted for more than ten years, until Jim and I agreed to come clean. We got a damn good laugh out of it, but I admit some of those we fooled weren't amused, even after that long. Man, I scared the piss out of 'em! :evil:

Originally posted here. (http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=3370222#post3370222) :)

[Free in Freeport]

I saw a holy ghost once. Or maybe it was a floating piece of swiss cheese.

:P

[Daynna]

Gawd I love swiss cheese. I would pray to it if it would be free swiss cheese for life.

[Ronin]

Gawd I love swiss cheese. I would pray to it if it would be free swiss cheese for life.

I know, right?

[Copernicus]

An even more important question. Are ghosts limited to just two spirit eyeballs, or can they see 360 degrees? Maybe eyeballs all around the spirit head? Or maybe the spirit head can just rotate in any direction? And do you only get spiritual equivalents of other body parts, or can you make some improvements on the old equipment? I don't see why ghosts should just have more or less spirit copies of the old body. That would not be fair to lots of folks. Fat people should be able to be skinny ghosts. And they should all be telepathic, too, since spirit bodies should not have to depend on anything as crude as sound waves to detect what other ghosts and people are saying. This all has to be thought through very carefully.

[Tangiellis]

I believe in ghosts. But I think its more that people and events tend to leave an imprint on a place. I also think some people can be more sensitive to those imprints than others. I had some strange occurrences in life, some of which were witnessed by other people.

There is also this thing with deceased relatives. It has happened too many times to too many different people to strike me as mere coincidence. Just about everybody I know has a relative that hangs around long after they've parted with life. In any case, it makes for interesting discussion.

[nygreenguy]

There is only a physical world, therefore ghost are impossible.

People see things all the time. The problem with seeing this is that we label some things as ok, and some things as crazy.

Jesus on toast= ok
Ghosts = ok
God talking to you= ok
God telling you to kill someone = not ok
aliens= depending on if they actually probed you or not

Even though all these ideas are equally crazy, we only criticize a few. It simply makes no logical sense.

[RBH]

I believe in ghosts. But I think its more that people and events tend to leave an imprint on a place. I also think some people can be more sensitive to those imprints than others. I had some strange occurrences in life, some of which were witnessed by other people. No offense intended, but maybe the variability is not in the sensitivity to "imprints" but rather in susceptibility to interpreting events as non-material.
There is also this thing with deceased relatives. It has happened too many times to too many different people to strike me as mere coincidence. Just about everybody I know has a relative that hangs around long after they've parted with life. In any case, it makes for interesting discussion.That's a quantitative argument -- "too many times" -- and estimating the appropriate probabilities is nigh unto impossible. Factor in salience and availability effects in memory -- one remembers the hits but not the misses -- and it becomes arguable that they're all coincidences.

All that said, there's no doubt that weird things happen, but I simply don't believe they're non-material or the lingering afterglow of dead folks.

[Ronin]

^This^

Will I now be added quantitatively as an anecdotal source for the "times when it missed"?

Or...will I be cast as a heartless, mocking and coldly unimaginative skeptic and left abandoned on the battlefield of interesting discussion?

:cool:

[Eudaimonist]

I think that ghosts exist in the murky realm of human psychology. No, I don't believe in disembodied consciousness.

If someone can explain how people can leave "an imprint" on a place that could produce an experience of ghosts, I'm ready to evaluate that alleged possibility.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Ray Moscow]

There is only a physical world, therefore ghost are impossible.

People see things all the time. The problem with seeing this is that we label some things as ok, and some things as crazy.

Jesus on toast= ok
Ghosts = ok
God talking to you= ok
God telling you to kill someone = not ok
aliens= depending on if they actually probed you or not

Even though all these ideas are equally crazy, we only criticize a few. It simply makes no logical sense.

Unless we've got physics completely wrong, which doesn't seem very likely, there can't be any ghosts -- outside of our minds, that is.

[sohy]

I'm a strong atheist so I'm obviously woo challenged, therefore I can't believe in ghosts. I do believe that the human imagination is unlimited, and humans often have difficulty discerning between what is the by product of the brain and what exists in the physical world.

[Jobar]

Ray Bradbury once wrote a poem about how if the Catholics are right, there can be no ghosts; on death, you're immediately whisked away to judgment and deposited in heaven, hell, or purgatory.

Oh wait, didn't they cancel purgatory? (Or was that limbo?)

[Sticky Beak]

I used to believe in the oogy boogies but while I may still get the creeps from being somewhere, I don't think it's ghosts, latent energy or any such other thing. It's just survival instinct: a place can feel wrong for all sorts of reasons from sounds and smells to things just looking wrong and we're primed to recognise such things quickly and get the hell out before the anachronistic dinosaurs eat us.

[nygreenguy]

I used to believe in the oogy boogies but while I may still get the creeps from being somewhere, I don't think it's ghosts, latent energy or any such other thing. It's just survival instinct: a place can feel wrong for all sorts of reasons from sounds and smells to things just looking wrong and we're primed to recognise such things quickly and get the hell out before the anachronistic dinosaurs eat us.

Oh yeah. We all still have irrational, yet necessary, fears.

[Zygote]

If someone can explain how people can leave "an imprint" on a place that could produce an experience of ghosts, I'm ready to evaluate that alleged possibility.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Spiritual homeopathy?

If medicinal substances can leave an imprint in water...

[Zygote]

I'm inclined to think that there may be more than credulity involved, that humans may have the ability to process sensory input that doesn't fit into the usual categories.

We may indeed be picking up on something that is indeed a natural phenomenon, but we lack the sensory vocabulary to describe it clearly. By way of explanation, we attribute it to something, anything, rather than leave it at "Huh, that was odd. Wonder what it was?"

I am reminded of the man who was blind after a stroke disabled his visual processing centers in his brain, yet he navigated a hallway of obstacles without either seeing or bumping into any of them.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98590831

[Matty]

I used to work in a very old (17o0's)pub that was supposed to be REALLY haunted. Worked there, slept there, hung out there, stayed awake all night on many occasions and never saw or heard a thing. we even got all atmosphered up one night with candles and silence and all that in case we were missing something

the landlords take was "well its an old and creaky building, and the doors dont close properly, but dont tell the tourists"

thats kind my take. i dont think there has ever been a "ghost" that didnt have a much more simple explanation than the disembodied soul of a dead person. Of course you have to prove the presence of a soul in order to get anywhere with that definition in any case.

[LoneWolf]

By way of explanation, we attribute it to something, anything, rather than leave it at "Huh, that was odd. Wonder what it was?"


That makes sense, evolutionarily speaking, as well. Back in the day when we weren't at the top of the food chain my guess is those who attributed unknown sounds out in the dark to some monster probably survived longer than the one who thought "Wonder what that is, let's go check it out."

[Matty]

true, and according to Lewis Wolpert we ware kinda hardwired for such extrapolations since the causative thinking ares of the brain were boosted when we became bipedal and began using tools. The innate need for a cause will gladly invent one if nothing obvious is already there or unsatisfactory for some reason ghosts gods, whatever.

throw innate pattern recognition into the mix and you have visions and inexplicable sightings etc, as a whole mish mash we should be surprised if people didn't "see" weird shit from time to time

[nygreenguy]

This reminds me, when I walk through the cemetery I notice as I walk by this one grave, I also hear rustling. It does seem odd, but if I simply take some time to think about it, there is a rational explanation. Its all well and possible that I passed it and by chance there was a rustling multiple times. Now when I pass it, I expect it. I am hypersensitive to it. Now, I hear rustling all the time in the grave yard but Im simply not as focused as I am in that one part.

This goes for many ghost sightings. People go to places expecting to see something and they become hypersensitive to it. Id be willing to bet if people didnt KNOW they were at a haunted place, they would simply pass off noises/sights as building settling, curtains waving, etc....

Were just far too biased!

[Zygote]

Add to all that the human tendency to be abysmal at gauging probability and coincidence and - poof - well, it couldn't have been anything but a ghost...or a god...or a miracle.

[Tangiellis]

No offense intended, but maybe the variability is not in the sensitivity to "imprints" but rather in susceptibility to interpreting events as non-material.
Perhaps you are right. I can't speak for others, only myself. I have, at many times in my life, been able to go into a place and "sense" what has happened there. This only occurs if there is a very strong "imprint" on the place. It isn't something tangible, rather the atmosphere of the place is different, heavy. I do not profess to be a psychic or anything. I have, however, told people things about their dwelling places that they have never told me.

That's a quantitative argument -- "too many times" -- and estimating the appropriate probabilities is nigh unto impossible. Factor in salience and availability effects in memory -- one remembers the hits but not the misses -- and it becomes arguable that they're all coincidences.
Frankly speaking, many things can be shuffled into the realm of coincidence. It all boils down to the individual and what they choose to believe. Our experiences in this world are all subjective, thus your conclusions may or may not match my own. I've seen enough, experienced enough, to be convinced that there are things in this world that defy rationality.
All that said, there's no doubt that weird things happen, but I simply don't believe they're non-material or the lingering afterglow of dead folks.
I don't disagree with you entirely. Whether the dead actually linger or not is immaterial; it is the effect of these events (whether imagined or conjured by an individual's subconscious or real unto themselves) that matters most.

[Monad]

I think that ghosts exist in the murky realm of human psychology. No, I don't believe in disembodied consciousness.

If someone can explain how people can leave "an imprint" on a place that could produce an experience of ghosts, I'm ready to evaluate that alleged possibility.

Mark

The question for me is how could an "imprint" function as an entity? (which ghosts are purportedly). Also if you think of an imprint as a sort of snapshot at a point in time how could a snapshot behave? (except to repeat itself) Also, even if it requires some sort of "strong" event to leave an imprint - after millennia of humans doing all sorts of stuff pretty much everywhere, then the world would be full of the bloody things.

[LoneWolf]

I've seen enough, experienced enough, to be convinced that there are things in this world that defy rationality.

Or, at least, defy your ability to find a rational explanation. :)

[Oolon Colluphid]

It's a lot of old bollocks.

By the standards by which science verifies the existence of stuff -- black holes, extra-solar-system planets, for instance -- the evidence is truly appalling. Anecdotes, for instance, just don't cut it -- let alone the frauds, both deliberate and honest self-deceptions: Harry Price and Derek Acorah, anyone?

The human mind is great at constructing models of the world based on sensory input, and sometimes it misconstructs things. People -- sane people -- do hallucinate (indeed, one could argue that that's exactly what our brains do for a living, and it's just that most hallucinations map onto the physical world quite well).

Believers are big on what you might call Ghost of the Gaps and the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Can't think of any other explanation? Say it was a ghost. Problem solved! Not.

There's countless oddities that people take for granted about ghosts, but which don't make a ha'peth of sense to anyone who knows a bit about physics. For example: you can see them, right? That means that photons are bouncing off them and onto your retinas. That means they are solid, made of matter that can have photons bounce off it. Yet they can come and go and walk through walls and stuff.

The whole concept of ghosts is based on mind-body dualism -- there has to be a mind or soul or spirit etc that can 'be' outside the body, when everything we know about minds clearly shows that they are a product of brains.

Most damning of all, what a 'ghost' is and how they're perceived has varied enormously across time and cultures. See for instance Ronald Finucane's Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead & Cultural Transformation (http://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Appearances-Dead-Cultural-Transformation/dp/1573920681). If ghosts were objectively real, they should be reported in much the same way, substantially independent of culture.

And I say all that as a serious collector of fictional ghost etc stories with, at last count, over 3,000: not merely Monty James and co, but Aickman, Askew, Atherton, Barker (Nugent), all three Benson brothers, Bierce, Blackwood, Broster, Burrage, Caldecott, Campbell, Capes, Crawford, de la Mare... you get the picture.

[Ray Moscow]

Oolon, you'd be happier if you just had the courage to believe.








(ducks rotten tomatoes and brickbats heading my way)

[Oolon Colluphid]

:tomato:

[Tangiellis]

Or, at least, defy your ability to find a rational explanation. :)

Perhaps. I was married to an atheist for seven years. He didn't shake me either. :p

[Catamite]

Ghosts don't exist.