What are ghosts?

[Rie]

I think having lived in a house for some years that seemed possessed by some kind of non-human form of 'life' in the form of a polteirgeist, a nasty one at that, that maybe there are unquiet spirits around.
We grew used to the footsteps etc but investigated the history of the old house and indeed did find a typical story of an unresolved conflict and nastiness relating to the original owner of the house.

[Spode]

As far as I can tell, ghosts are our natural desire to continue after death, in some fashion or other. Paranormal sightings are little more than misattributed events imperfectly explained within the religious context of whoever happens to be witnessing it. I don't doubt that you saw weird things, don't misundertand. I simply feel that it is a far simpler explanation that you misunderstood what you saw, and mild visual and auditory hallucinations are also certainly possibilities.

My personality, whoever I am, is in my head. Once the meat in my head is dead, my personality is gone. If there is evidence otherwise, I'd like to see it.

If somehow my incorporeal essence were to linger around after my expiration date, I doubt I'd hide in your closet.

[Haswell]

If you believe in ghosts do you really feel like spending an eternity bugging the hell out of people? It's not really what is says in the brochure.

[David B]

Skepdic is usually a good first port of call when considering any alleged supernatural phenomena, Rie

http://www.skepdic.com/ghosts.html

http://www.skepdic.com/poltergeist.html

There is no good reason to think that what gives people the impression of phenomena like ghosts and poltergeists is not either natural or the result of them being deliberately hoaxed. And, of course, some of the claimants concerning such alleged phenomena are hoaxers themselves.

Bloody hell, though, I can understand why people who believe in such things might be upset by the sound of birds padding about on the roof of the block of flats I live in.

It often sounds so much as if it is coming from within the building that we had the place between ceiling and roof checked out for rats, with an all clear, It's birds - feral pigeons and herring gulls.

David

[kraut]

Funny, that before the search for a rational explanation the default position for some seems to be "GHOST" didit.

I live in house i build myself, with wood flooring. Changing outside temperatures can lead the floor to respond in a manner that is very akin to "footsteps", and still fools me sometimes.
Heater pipes, especially copper, also respond to heating or cooling with noise when restricted by going through walls.

There's no ghost out there, there is just your processor looking for explanations and getting it wrong through the filter of preconceived notions.

[borealis]

I lived in a 100+ year old house for a few years. It was so oriented that on sunny winter days the front heated up considerably, while the back stayed very cold. After sundown, as the front cooled, every rafter would creak in sequence, front to back, sounding exactly as if someone were deliberately walking upstairs from one end of the house to the other. Very spooky, and took me weeks to figure out the cause of the sounds.

[Goldie]

I grew up in an old house with hardwood floors. Every night, after we got into bet, upstairs (The upstairs was one, big room) you could hear the boards pop back up starting at the bottom stair, working it's way up, and down the center of the room to our beds.
My step sister lived with us for a year and we loved to invite friends to spend the night and tell them that our house was haunted. That the ghost walked the floors at night.

"Here it comes!" We'd cover our heads, as the footsteps of the ghost slowly came right up to our bed.
It was great fun for us, but one girl broke into tears and we had to get up and tell her what was going on. I'm not sure she believed us though, because she furthered our fun by telling everybody at school about our haunted house.

I've actually had unexplained experiences, but why does that automatically mean that it must be some sort of ghost?

There is no real proof that ghosts exist. It's just another part of the woo.

[borealis]

I've actually had unexplained experiences, but why does that automatically mean that it must be some sort of ghost?
- Goldie

Exactly. Few people get through life without having a few weird experiences, and if you can't find an explanation, it just means you haven't enough knowledge or data to explain them.

As it is, ghosts make no sense even by most religious standards.

[Alex]

I used to enjoy ghost stories when I was a child. The stories of M R James were considered to be among the "classics of the supernatural", and I remember being pleasantly frightened by some of them. I think the radio is the best medium for the transmission of ghostly tales because the imagination is more actively involved when nothing can be seen and we must "believe" only in what can be heard.

I should like to own an old and lonely house which was alleged to be haunted. No ghost would be seen dead in my modern home. :)

[Jobar]

I was once a ghost. :)

From this old II thread (http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives/showpost.php?p=3370222&postcount=254)-
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:

The moral of my (quite true!) little tale here, is that you may have had someone pranking on you. It's even possible that you were slipped a mickey to make you feel weird (the lost time). And the bolt was shot after you had fled, maybe disappointing the hoaxsters because you ran before they could spring the serious tricks on you.

Likely? I honestly don't know; I wasn't there. Possible? I know from treasured experience, damn straight!

Perhaps there was an entirely different explanation for the things you saw and felt. But Classical, literally any natural explanation at all makes more sense than any supernatural explanation.

[Daynna]

I've been in arguments with my husband about ghosts where we weren't speaking afterwards. :) It's so frustrating because he believes, even when I offer alternative explanations, he defaults to "it was a ghost."

[borealis]

I think having lived in a house for some years that seemed possessed by some kind of non-human form of 'life' in the form of a polteirgeist, a nasty one at that, that maybe there are unquiet spirits around.
We grew used to the footsteps etc but investigated the history of the old house and indeed did find a typical story of an unresolved conflict and nastiness relating to the original owner of the house.


You know, Rie, that almost any place where humans live has had humans live there before, and therefore you can always find, somewhere in the history of that place, that something sad or bad has happened. It's pointless to try to find a correlation betweeen odd noises in your house and human events in the past, even if one set aside the fact that there are no ghosts.

My current house is less than 25 years old, but has its share of creaks and groans and oddities of structure that lead to funny noises in different conditions. Then there's the damn squirrels that have found a way to get into one wall and must soon be dealt with, and they make some eerie sounds.

If my first thought on hearing odd noises was "ghosts - :eek:", I'd dig into the history and find that an elderly lady who lived here died of cancer, that a bootlegger occupied the house for several years, that several pet dogs have died here, including my own, that a couple centuries ago this lake was a campsite for Mi'q Ma'q people, that the area was logged by extremely poor people in the early twentieth century, and so on.

If you look for sad and bad, you will find some.

[Rie]

The thing is that this happened over a period of several years and consistently. The house didn't creak or groan but the unmistakeable sound of footsteps?
It wasthe home of a very bad incident as my sister in law researched it and found.
I was too busy working, teaching, to hang around imagining all this and certainly didn't look out for it.My mother in law , her mother , my ex-husband and myself all grew accustomed to this poltergeist.
I have since read many accounts of hauntings of, it seems, 'restless spirits'.
And I would be prepared to swear that this all happened and was witnessed by visitors and 5 people who lived there!

[Politesse]

So, here's an interesting "ghostly" phenomenon I saw on one occasion, about 3 years ago while on an archaeological survey not far from the abandoned hamlet of Castle Flats in Utah. I'm not sure how y'all will explain it, except to argue that I didn't see what I saw, to which all I can say is that the other person with me saw the same thing: a driverless, silent, 1915 or 1918 Ford Touring Car, passing us on a deserted Utah road in the dead of night. The driverless part is certain, despite the darkness- the moon was out, and that model hadn't a hood. The trunk was loaded up with articles, but the front was quite clearly empty. Not the first time driverless cars and other assorted supernatural oddities have been reported in that range, either. If it was a hoax, it's a damn complicated and expensive one with not much payoff (why do it somewhere where there are hardly any people?) and dangerous at that (why set your driverless and rather expensive car going down a windy road?). It's weird though, too, for the same reason. If it's a ghost, why would that particular ghost car be found out in the middle of nowhere? And it didn't look like a ghostly thing, if by that one means unsubstantial- only the lack of noise was odd. We were driving too, mind you, so it might have just been quiet, but... it's not like there was much background noise beside that, either.

What do you folks make of it? I've never known what drawer to put it in, so to speak. I'm not exactly a ghost believer, but I've never thought of a good "rational" explanation for that one that makes sense to me, either.

[Matty]

As far as I can tell, ghosts are our natural desire to continue after death, in some fashion or other. Paranormal sightings are little more than misattributed events imperfectly explained within the religious context of whoever happens to be witnessing it. I don't doubt that you saw weird things, don't misundertand. I simply feel that it is a far simpler explanation that you misunderstood what you saw, and mild visual and auditory hallucinations are also certainly possibilities.

My personality, whoever I am, is in my head. Once the meat in my head is dead, my personality is gone. If there is evidence otherwise, I'd like to see it.

If somehow my incorporeal essence were to linger around after my expiration date, I doubt I'd hide in your closet.

/thread :cool:

[Alex]

So, here's an interesting "ghostly" phenomenon I saw on one occasion, about 3 years ago while on an archaeological survey not far from the abandoned hamlet of Castle Flats in Utah. I'm not sure how y'all will explain it, except to argue that I didn't see what I saw, to which all I can say is that the other person with me saw the same thing: a driverless, silent, 1915 or 1918 Ford Touring Car, passing us on a deserted Utah road in the dead of night. The driverless part is certain, despite the darkness- the moon was out, and that model hadn't a hood. The trunk was loaded up with articles, but the front was quite clearly empty. Not the first time driverless cars and other assorted supernatural oddities have been reported in that range, either. If it was a hoax, it's a damn complicated and expensive one with not much payoff (why do it somewhere where there are hardly any people?) and dangerous at that (why set your driverless and rather expensive car going down a windy road?). It's weird though, too, for the same reason. If it's a ghost, why would that particular ghost car be found out in the middle of nowhere? And it didn't look like a ghostly thing, if by that one means unsubstantial- only the lack of noise was odd. We were driving too, mind you, so it might have just been quiet, but... it's not like there was much background noise beside that, either.

What do you folks make of it? I've never known what drawer to put it in, so to speak. I'm not exactly a ghost believer, but I've never thought of a good "rational" explanation for that one that makes sense to me, either.
Three possibilities:

You had some sort of hallucination and imagined the whole thing. Since a companion "saw" the same thing, it could be a strange case of what the French call, une folie à deux.

You witnessed some kind of prank. The prankster couldn't pull that intricate stunt on a busy highway in broad daylight - which is why a lonely road was chosen on a moonlit night. Who knows what the payoff might be for hoaxers?

You saw a "genuine apparition": but maybe it's a mistake to call this alternative a possibility. :)

[Daynna]

A fourth possibility is that he misinterpreted what he saw. Possibly saw someone driving an antique car, but didn't see the driver (trick of light, was bent over, wearing black, etc.).

This would have been my first thought if I saw a "driverless" old car. The leap to "IT WAS A GHOST!" rather than a more likely explanation is hard for me to understand.

[Faerie]

A fourth possibility is that he misinterpreted what he saw. Possibly saw someone driving an antique car, but didn't see the driver (trick of light, was bent over, wearing black, etc.).

This would have been my first thought if I saw a "driverless" old car. The leap to "IT WAS A GHOST!" rather than a more likely explanation is hard for me to understand.

Drove a chevrolet many years ago, dont remember the model exactly but the thing was probably produced in the early 70's, its seats was horribly saggy and I sunk well down into it with the result that my eyes were barely peeking over the dash, I had many a car pulling alongside me trying to see who or what is driving the car.

[Alex]

^^ Misinterpretation of information: this is the most likely possibility.

[borealis]

The thing is that this happened over a period of several years and consistently. The house didn't creak or groan but the unmistakeable sound of footsteps?
It wasthe home of a very bad incident as my sister in law researched it and found.
I was too busy working, teaching, to hang around imagining all this and certainly didn't look out for it.My mother in law , her mother , my ex-husband and myself all grew accustomed to this poltergeist.
I have since read many accounts of hauntings of, it seems, 'restless spirits'.
And I would be prepared to swear that this all happened and was witnessed by visitors and 5 people who lived there!

Did you read my other post about the 'footsteps' in the house I once occupied? Houses are usually constructed of units of timber, most of them are connected to each other in various sequences, rafters to beams, studs to baseplates, etc. Wood expands and contracts in heat and cold, making its own noises and pulling at the nails that hold it together. Sequential sounds - like footsteps - are likely, given the method of construction.

As I already said, you can find examples of human distress in the past of any place humans have lived if you look hard enough. If that were all it takes to have 'restless spirits' wandering about scaring the living, every house would be haunted, and usually by hordes of unhappy ghosts.

[Politesse]

A fourth possibility is that he misinterpreted what he saw. Possibly saw someone driving an antique carA rare antique? At 11 at night? In Utah?

but didn't see the driver (trick of light, was bent over, wearing black, etc.).Wearing black makes you invisible? Remember, we're not looking through a window, it's an open air car. If there were anything to see, it would have been difficult to miss.

This would have been my first thought if I saw a "driverless" old car. The leap to "IT WAS A GHOST!" rather than a more likely explanation is hard for me to understand.I didn't "leap" to anything. I'm not a believer in ghosts, for that matter. However, I can't really explain the phenomenon either.

Drove a chevrolet many years ago, dont remember the model exactly but the thing was probably produced in the early 70's, its seats was horribly saggy and I sunk well down into it with the result that my eyes were barely peeking over the dash, I had many a car pulling alongside me trying to see who or what is driving the car.Have you seen the kind of car in question? It's the opposite of deep, the seats stick out from the floor and the sides are short- almost like a pickup bed. You'd have to be trying really hard to not be seen in it.

[Jobar]

Nowadays it's not all that difficult to rig up a remote control for a car, with cameras for vision and everything. Consider how pilotless planes are becoming more and more common.

If I saw something like that, I'd have to turn around and follow it, though.

[David B]

Something going to, from, or in a film set?

David

[Daynna]

A rare antique? At 11 at night? In Utah?

Yes. Rare antique cars exist for a fact. There is no proof for the existence of ghosts.

Wearing black makes you invisible? Remember, we're not looking through a window, it's an open air car. If there were anything to see, it would have been difficult to miss.

I'm implying you could have been mistaken.

I didn't "leap" to anything. I'm not a believer in ghosts, for that matter. However, I can't really explain the phenomenon either.

Sorry, I did think you believed it was a ghost, but reread your original post and see you did not say that. My mistake. You did say you don't usually believe in ghosts, BUT there is no rational explanation. Your objections have quite a "believer" flavor to them. :)

It has been documented that hoaxters (is that a word?) exist. My default explanation in the absense of evidence would be "I don't know."

[Politesse]

It's just that while ghost cars seem implausible, so do remote controlled robots driving expensive antiques and otherwise unevidenced film sets in the middle of Castle Rock country in the dead of night. I've no particular reason to preference any explanation I've thus far received, as they all require spectacular suspension of disbelief that I'm not eager to surrender without some degree of evidence, and I lack the religious bias necessary to make any non-woo explanation automatically better, however far-fetched and implausible it is in itself. I've not seen a ghost, unless this was one, but I have encountered "spiritual" phenomena before. My "I don't know" probably means more than yours does, if it comes to that, as most of you are rushing to fill your "I don't know"s with piles of preconceived bias about what a thing can be.

[David B]

It's just that while ghost cars seem implausible, so do remote controlled robots driving expensive antiques and otherwise unevidenced film sets in the middle of Castle Rock country. I've no particular reason to preference any explanation I've thus far received, as they all require spectacular suspension of disbelief that I'm not eager to surrender without some degree of evidence.

My bold.

I, following Hume, prefer any naturalistic explanation to the reality of a ghost car, on the grounds that many alleged supernatural events have been explained rationally, while none, to the best of my knowledge, have been established in a way that satisfied sceptical examination.

David

[Politesse]

My bold.

I, following Hume, prefer any naturalistic explanation to the reality of a ghost car, on the grounds that many alleged supernatural events have been explained rationally, while none, to the best of my knowledge, have been established in a way that satisfied sceptical examination.

David
Don't you see something mildly circular here? You justify your opinion based on the fact that you haven't ever encountered something without a naturalistic explanation, while simultaneously explaining everything with a natural explanation, no matter how implausible or divorced from the available evidence that explanation might be? It's like someone saying "all objects are blue, because I've never seen an object that wasn't" but upon being confronted with a red one, saying "It must somehow fall in the blue spectrum even if I can't see it, because all objects are blue."

Mind you, I'm perfectly to assign a natural cause to my phenomenon, if it reasonably explains the situation and accounts for the extant evidence. Indeed, I would prefer to, as I can't imagine what a non-natural cause would be, it seems like an counter-logical concept to me.

[borealis]

Politesse, there's false memory to consider. It's a good story, one that would be interesting to entertain people with. You were with another person. Between you the story likely got told a number of times over the years, and it's possible that the details gradually got to be a little different from what the two of you actually saw. It happens, and false memories are very difficult to ferret out of one's own brain, though it sometimes happens that one suddenly remembers what really occurred.

[Jobar]

It's just that while ghost cars seem implausible, so do remote controlled robots driving expensive antiques and otherwise unevidenced film sets in the middle of Castle Rock country in the dead of night. I've no particular reason to preference any explanation I've thus far received, as they all require spectacular suspension of disbelief that I'm not eager to surrender without some degree of evidence, and I lack the religious bias necessary to make any non-woo explanation automatically better, however far-fetched and implausible it is in itself. I've not seen a ghost, unless this was one, but I have encountered "spiritual" phenomena before. My "I don't know" probably means more than yours does, if it comes to that, as most of you are rushing to fill your "I don't know"s with piles of preconceived bias about what a thing can be.

None of us know the actual explanation for what you saw- but even if we're willing to stipulate that your story happened exactly as you described it, and that there were no perceptual errors involved, still there are a number of natural explanations which, though certainly far-fetched, are still believable. Whereas any supernatural explanation- a 'ghost car', or a ghost driving a real car, or whatever- is unbelievable. None of the possibilities we've suggested require any contravention of natural law, or the postulation of some totally unknown and never-demonstrated phenomenon.

All the evidence we have before us is your story- although no one is accusing you of making that story up from whole cloth, still we are skeptics. Without truly massive, immediate, repeatable, physical evidence, it should be no surprise to you that we limit the possible explanations for it to natural ones.

[rog]

If one starts believing in ghosts, they are skiing down a very slippery slope ;)

[rog]

All the evidence we have before us is your story- although no one is accusing you of making that story up from whole cloth, still we are skeptics. Without truly massive, immediate, repeatable, physical evidence, it should be no surprise to you that we limit the possible explanations for it to natural ones.

Brain rot caused by superstitious religious beliefs?

[Rie]

I believe that ghosts are in the same category as the feeling of the 'prescence' of someone who had recently died.
It is common this feeling.
after a while the feeling lessens in intensity then finally goes.
Ghosts are those who died angry and not at peace with the world they are leaving.

[Faerie]

I believe that ghosts are in the same category as the feeling of the 'prescence' of someone who had recently died.
It is common this feeling.
Its called grief, you MISS the person who has died and therefore your thoughts are constantly on that person

after a while the feeling lessens in intensity then finally goes.
Sure, after a while you accept that this person is no longer with you, you move on and live your life, its part of the grieving process

Ghosts are those who died angry and not at peace with the world they are leaving.
Pray tell where those go that are at peace with the world they are leaving?

[Spode]

I believe that ghosts are in the same category as the feeling of the 'prescence' of someone who had recently died.
It is common this feeling.
after a while the feeling lessens in intensity then finally goes.
Ghosts are those who died angry and not at peace with the world they are leaving.

If any of this is true, why hasn't the existence of ghosts been reproduced under controlled experimentation?

Do only unhappy people become ghosts? What about chimps and bonobos with a bad lot in life? Don't forget dolphins and whales, stuck in big aquariums, denied their right to frolic and fuck on their own terms. Does the lack of ghost dolphin sightings mean anything in particular? Is there an intelligence threshold that first must be passed before imprinting your identity on your surroundings past your expiration?

[Jobar]

I figure that the most haunted places on Earth would be the sites of the Nazi extermination camps, or of more recent such atrocious crimes, if there were such things as ghosts. Yet to my knowledge such places aren't regularly reported as exhibiting ghostly apparitions.

[Politesse]

If any of this is true, why hasn't the existence of ghosts been reproduced under controlled experimentation?Out of curiosity, how would you design the experiment?

[rog]

If any of this is true, why hasn't the existence of ghosts been reproduced under controlled experimentation?Out of curiosity, how would you design the experiment?

Good question.

If I were a ghost believer, I might argue that the ghost is perceived directly by the mind bypassing the normal senses and therefore would not be detectable with known scientific equipment.... (after any attempts at experimentation by sceptics had failed to find anything)
Hey, it'd work for god too ;)

[Politesse]

If any of this is true, why hasn't the existence of ghosts been reproduced under controlled experimentation?Out of curiosity, how would you design the experiment?

Good question.

If I were a ghost believer, I might argue that the ghost is perceived directly by the mind bypassing the normal senses and therefore would not be detectable with known scientific equipment.... (after any attempts at experimentation by sceptics had failed to find anything)
Hey, it'd work for god too ;)

That's the general retreat position, but it strikes me that something like a poltergeist must have some detectable interaction with the physical universe. Either your dishes are rattling or they aren't. However they accomplish that is the means by which experimentation and scientific observation can take place.

[rog]

Maybe Mr Randi should up his offer to $10M...

[Jobar]

If any of this is true, why hasn't the existence of ghosts been reproduced under controlled experimentation?Out of curiosity, how would you design the experiment?

I can't direct you to any specific articles from that magazine, but the Skeptical Inquirer has a website where you can peruse their back issues. I know that people from that organization have searched for physical evidence of ghosts in a great many places supposedly haunted, with modern instruments ingeniously designed to detect many different phenomena.

http://www.csicop.org/si/

[Rie]

Footsteps is footsteps. An unmistakeable sound. And doors opening and politely shutting is doors opening and shutting.
The thing is that we all got used to the ghost.
After my sister in law's research turned up the story of the house, we all sort of felt we should accomodate 'the ghost'

[Jobar]

While I'm talking about CSICOP- the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal- I should also mention James Randi's famous million-dollar reward for anyone who could demonstrate *any* totally unexplainable power or event. This would have included ghosts; so although Randi retracted his million-dollar challenge not too long ago, for more than twenty years anyone who could reasonably demonstrate the existence of a ghost (to a panel of judges independent of Randi's organization) could have pocketed a cool million. (And that would have been paid *before* the tabloids and mass media started paying you for interviews.)

Randi still has his money. I think that one simple fact should demonstrate how extraordinarily unlikely the existence of ghosts is.

[Goldie]

Who decided that these things were ghosts or spirits, anyway? ...and...how did they come up with this idea?

Did the idea of ghosts come about in the same way that vampires and werewolves were willed in to being? How do you know who is troubled and who is not?

I know of many places with horribly troubled histories, like Jobar pointed out. No ghosts.

Ghosts are like Santa: something we wish into being.

[Jobar]

From ghosties and ghoulies
And long-legged beasties
And things that go bump in the night
Dear Lord deliver us!

I think that the terrors of the night- some of which were very real, and deadly dangerous- are the ultimate sources of all ghosts, vampires, werewolves... the entire supernatural bestiary. Tales told to children to keep them indoors, so that the *real* monsters- lions and tigers and bears, oh my!- wouldn't eat them when they wandered off.

[Rie]

Prescences - this is when a person senses something being 'present in a particular place but has no explicit way of proving its existence.
One investigator of 'ghostly' phenomena says 'these 'sightings' should not be readily dismissed, especially when the presence is reported independently by more than one person.
This is fair enough for me anyway as when my neighbour died I could 'feel' his being there for a few weeks and others in the 'hood' could also.
And, have you ever seen someone you know in a particular place and then remarked on this to the person only to be told that you were mistaken? I have.
And the old saying of everybody having a double?
I'm not being sensationalist but matter of fact re ghosts etc as my experience in that old house was so real. I asked my daughter who lived there whilst I was travelling did she ever experience theghost and she said yes and how silly it seemed when the door handle would turn and the door open.
Ghostly encounters go back to 16 th century and before but modern ones , being easier to DISPROVE, exist too.

[Rie]

I know, I know - I am posting twice here but I wondered if anyone knew that Charles Dickens wrote a book ,still published, called "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain" ?
Here is a quote from it - "I see you in the fire,"said the haunted man; "I hear you in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night."
I couldn't resist posting this typical Dicken's theme and the poetry of his use of words.
And don't they speak of 'The ghost of times past.'?

[borealis]

I'm curious as to why you dismiss out of hand and without even acknowledgement my explanation for the sound of footsteps.

[Rie]

Because 'they' were SO obviously footsteps and because the footsteps were only a part of a panoply of behaviours by something that had been proved to not be any of us in the house. This was the major reason for our research. we never got hysterical about it.
On the architectural side - it was an old beautifully built and no way 'creaky' floorboard type of house

[David B]

Because 'they' were SO obviously footsteps and because the footsteps were only a part of a panoply of behaviours by something that had been proved to not be any of us in the house. This was the major reason for our research. we never got hysterical about it.
On the architectural side - it was an old beautifully built and no way 'creaky' floorboard type of house

My bold.

My guess is that the human brain is set up to be very aware of footsteps, in much the same way as it it set up to see faces and human shapes. That is to say, to the point at which it gives some false positive.

Check out http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html, Rie, including the pictures.

I don't know if there is a name for an audio equivalent of that, but I'd guess that something like that is going on.

Others in this thread also report convincing sounding footsteps, but have tracked down the source. I see no reason to see your experience as any different.

David

[Daynna]

Remember that lady that thought her kids doll was saying Islamic related messages? Here is a Rogue's Gallery post about audio Pareidolia.

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/sgublog/?p=476

[Aupmanyav]

My guess is that the human brain is set up to be very aware of footsteps, ..You are absolutely right, it was a matter of life and death for our forebears.

[Goldie]

OY VEY!
*shakes head*
As if none of us have experienced these things after the deaths of loved ones. It has everything to do with grief of just seeing that person as a part of the usual landscape. Our brain puts them there. It's not supernatural. We all sense presences. But, we have the good sense to know that they are of our own making.

[Rie]

So you are saying that this feeling is of our own making? You could be right but 'good sense' is simply a common word for brushing aside intimations of things we can't explain by everyday logic.
Mankind would have not progressed far if only 'good sense' were followed.

[David B]

So you are saying that this feeling is of our own making?

Well, yes, basically. But IMV we have a subconscious impulse to look for patterns that fit the familiar, and sometimes they give false positives.

You could be right but 'good sense' is simply a common word for brushing aside intimations of things we can't explain by everyday logic.

Yes, that is sort of true. I can think of a many examples where 'good sense' has held back scientific endeavours to better understand the universe, but I'll give you two.

One being the idea that rocks just don't fall out of the sky. Took a long time for French scientists in particular to come to terms with the fact that sometimes they do.

The other being the idea that continents move. Though moving continents explained a lot about geology, the idea was resisted for a long time because no-one could imagine a mechanism that could move continents, until the 1960s.

In the end, though, the evidence for rocks falling, and for continents moving, became overwhelming.

Mankind would have not progressed far if only 'good sense' were followed.

Well, there is a sense in which you are right, but another sense in which progress in understanding stuff is only made through further good sense.

There are feasible explanations for why the human brain should be subject to the sort of delusion I point to earlier in the thread.

No sort of explanation of how the footsteps you describe could really be footsteps, nor any interesting metaphysics to explain why the universe should contain real phenomena like disembodied spirits, leave alone such putative entities making a noise when they putatively move around.

David

David

[Rie]

David, simply I believe in the SIXTH SENSE. As Shakespeare put it "There are more things under the sun, Horatio, than this world dreams of."

[Ray Moscow]

There are no doubt many things that we don't yet know or understand, but we need reliable evidence before believing in any of them.

For ghosts to exist anywhere except inside one's mind means we've got physics pretty much all wrong, and we need some strong evidence to demonstrate that.

[Goldie]

So you are saying that this feeling is of our own making? You could be right but 'good sense' is simply a common word for brushing aside intimations of things we can't explain by everyday logic.
Mankind would have not progressed far if only 'good sense' were followed.

Fine. Poor wording. Please subsitute "logical minds."

ETA: What Ray said ^^^

[borealis]

David, simply I believe in the SIXTH SENSE. As Shakespeare put it "There are more things under the sun, Horatio, than this world dreams of."

I would imagine Shakespeare would be astounded and possibly gratified to learn how many unexplainables of his day are explained a few centuries forward. For all his use of the supernatural in his plays, he seems to be more logical than not.

I don't really understand how a modern person can justify a belief in supernatural events. A person can believe there is a 'sixth sense' all they like, but I've never seen any evidence such a sense exists. If it does exist, it is very poorly developed, which seems odd, because our other senses are all reliably functional and we all know that we have them and of what use they are.

If the supernatural were a real phenomenon, then there would be good reason for humans to evolve a sense that detects and allows the brain to evaluate the impact such phenomena might have, good or bad, on our proceeding with whatever we're doing. If one had such a sense, one would avoid moving into a haunted location, if only to avoid the problems of broken crockery, interrupted sleep, spotty heating and frightened pets.

People don't avoid such pitfalls, however, because no such sense warns them. It is only after they think they've been touched by the supernatural that they also think they have a sixth sense that specializes in detecting such things.

IOW, no such sense exists.

[Yahzi]

Ghost is are nonsense term, like "square circle." A ghost is a person without a body, never mind the fact that persons are defined by their bodies.

English language allows us to process syntactically correct but semantically empty statements. Pirahã doesn't. As a consequence, they have no concept of (or use for) gods.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/everett07/everett07_index.html

[Rie]

Hey I was only posting about footsteps heard by two or more people and doors opening and shutting with no one there!

[rog]

Maybe vindictive aliens were beaming thoughts into your head, I'm joking of course, but still it's more likely than actual ghosts existing...

[Rie]

Later on when I had children, I was visiting the old house and the ghost was very active. My little girl, only a baby, was crying because of the noise the ghost made.
So I stood where it was making most noise , and being on familiar terms with it, I shouted 'Shut the fuck up!'
What happened next was a noise like a grand piano being dropped in the ceiling.
We went up in the morning to see if there was something that would make such a noise up there but no, there was nothing there at all.
All of this happened and the strangest thing is that we were all sort of buddies with the ghost in the end.

[borealis]

Given that 'ghosts' is the only explanation you'll accept for these experiences, what exactly do you think 'ghosts' are?

If you are a Christian believer, 'ghosts' are in most theologies also non-existing. You're either dead, inert, until the Last Trump or you're doomed to heaven or hell immediately after death. No ghosts. No do-overs. Being able to wander the earth trying to right wrongs you've done or wrongs done against you does not fit any theology I've heard of. In those theologies that accept someone might see apparitions, they are considered to be disguised demons, and not the souls of dead humans.

What kind of theology do you think allows for wandering spirits, other than theology thoroughly mixed with folklore?

[rog]

To believe in ghosts, one must believe in a 'soul' or 'spirit' that continues without support from a biological body. would you agree Rie?

[Rie]

Yes I do agree. It is a phenomena that most people pick up when they enter a house that has an atmosphere.
But since I can only say 'most' people then this is probably why ghosts are not felt or in some cases seen.
I accept the theory that a ghost is an 'unquiet' spirit, unable to move on as most people do. Of course where we move on to is a moot point.
I am simply posting about things that I witnessed and would swear to. I can't back down from the truth of my experience in the old house.

[borealis]

I don't think anyone's asked you to back down from your experiences. I think they are suggesting that your explanation of those experiences as 'ghosts' is the most unlikely explanation.

[Rie]

In that case 'they' should post on what is the most likely explanation. Not just say Hey Rie you must have imagined it or somesuch.
I want therefore a scientifically accepted explanation, one that the mind faced as I was with these events could accept as an alternative?

[David B]

Rie, http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html is a scientific explanation.

And, that this sort of effect also works for aural stimuli has been pretty much established further up the thread.

The creakings that sound like footsteps have also been addressed further up the thread, in terms of the physics of differential heating and cooling when parts of a building are differentially heated/cooled, and where differing components of a house have differential expansion rates.

Next time such creaks happen, concentrate on hearing them as creaks, and see what happens to your perception. Rather in the way that you can concentrate the seeming image of the dog's arse in the link above as being a picture of a dog's arse rather than an image of Christ.

David

[borealis]

In that case 'they' should post on what is the most likely explanation. Not just say Hey Rie you must have imagined it or somesuch.
I want therefore a scientifically accepted explanation, one that the mind faced as I was with these events could accept as an alternative?

I gave you a perfectly reasonable explanation for 'footsteps', one which can be extended to cover many other kinds of sounds and even the odd open/close door effects. You haven't given a reason for rejecting that possibility.

[Yahzi]

But since I can only say 'most' people then this is probably why ghosts are not felt or in some cases seen.[/qote]
You described your ghost as making sounds.

Sound is a physical phenomena: it is the agitation of air molecules. It is detectable by machines. So even unbelievers could hear ghosts making sounds.

Unless you're asserting those sounds were, themselves, ghostly (i.e. not physical)? In which case you're admitting that ghost phenomena are entirely imaginary.

I am simply posting about things that I witnessed and would swear to. I can't back down from the truth of my experience in the old house.
No one is denying what you experienced. What we are disagreeing with is the conclusions you draw from those experiences.

I once saw Penn and Teller shoot each other with .357 magnum pistols and catch the bullet in their teeth. I watched that event like a hawk, and I could not for the life of me see any way to fake it. Should I conclude that they actually caught a bullet in their teeth?

Or should I conclude that they fooled my sensory apparatus into drawing false conclusions?

Given that we know literally hundreds of ways to fool people's sensory apparatus into drawing false conclusions (just one - movies: you perceive motion from a series of still pictures), and given that physics dictates you can't catch a bullet in your teeth (and still have teeth), one conclusion makes sense and the other doesn't. Without invalidating what I experienced.

[Rilx]

There's an interesting physical phenomenon: resonance. Follow the links to the film about the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_resonance
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_resonance)

Old wooden houses can be real orchestras. You can hardy breath without getting responded to by fanfares.

[Daynna]

David B, I lol'd at the dog butt.

I wonder if there is smell paradolia? I have thought a smell was one thing, only to confirm it was something else, then went, "Oh yes, that IS what that smell is." About once every week or so, my dog smells strongly of cilantro all around his head and ears. I know we do not have cilantro in the house. I'll bet if I ever figure out what he is getting into, I'll recognize the smell as that.

Hi, I'm rambling.

[Rie]

It wasn't just footsteps once or twice and the old house was, as mansions really of the time were, really well constructed.
And the door opening and closing? It was all still going on when my daughter was grown up.
It's not that I want to believe in ghosts, it's simply that the history of many old hauntings is well documented and research suggests that something 'unpleasant' happened in every case in the past history of these places.
I honestly think you have to have experienced something like this and its assault on your everyday 'commonsense' to start to accept that "Weeell, maybe ???"

[David B]

It wasn't just footsteps once or twice and the old house was, as mansions really of the time were, really well constructed.
And the door opening and closing? It was all still going on when my daughter was grown up.
It's not that I want to believe in ghosts, it's simply that the history of many old hauntings is well documented and research suggests that something 'unpleasant' happened in every case in the past history of these places.
I honestly think you have to have experienced something like this and its assault on your everyday 'commonsense' to start to accept that "Weeell, maybe ???"

Oddly enough, I think it would be more surprising from a physical POV if it was only once or twice you heard the noises.

Differential heating or cooling should generally produce similar effects from similar heating or cooling. And if air cools in one part of a house faster than another - as will happen when one side gets out of sun while another into it, then that could cause a small air pressure difference, that could move a door.

David

[rog]

My little girl, only a baby, was crying because of the noise the ghost made.
So I stood where it was making most noise , and being on familiar terms with it, I shouted 'Shut the fuck up!'

This bit make me think you might have been subconsciously passing your fears on to other people, getting them to play along with the fantasy perhaps?

[Rie]

Actually there is a theory that poltergeists often manifest if there is a 'disturbed ' person whre they are active.
I was at a point in my marriage where I was very disturbed and anxious and on this visit the ghost was more than ever active.
I want to emphasise that it wasn't only me who witnessed the doors etc. but several people over the years.

[Yahzi]

Actually there is a theory that poltergeists often manifest if there is a 'disturbed ' person whre they are active.
I was at a point in my marriage where I was very disturbed and anxious and on this visit the ghost was more than ever active.
I want to emphasise that it wasn't only me who witnessed the doors etc. but several people over the years.
Did you not read my post?

No one here is suggesting you did not experience those things. What we are suggesting is that it is invalid to leap from those experiences to life-after-death.

Try to remember that your experiences are not the only data we have. In fact, we have literally thousands of years of experiences that demonstrate that dead people cease to interact with the world.

Put both sets of experiences on a scale. On the left side we have your bumps in the night. On the right side we have: the Holocaust museums, which should be hot-beds of ghostly activity, considering that people died there in terrible circumstances, and the people visiting there today are very disturbed while there (indeed, you would have to mentally ill not to be disturbed while visiting a Holocaust museum). Yet... I can't think of single ghost story from there.

And that's just one example. Europe is littered with battlefields sown with the bodies of young men who died under the most extreme circumstances. Whole towns, like Dresden and Hiroshima, perished in a few hours or less. America has battlefields like Antietam and tragedies like the Twin Towers.

All of these places should be swarming with ghosts. Yet... they aren't.

We can reach one of two conclusions:

Conclusion 1): 'Disturbed' people are prone to misinterpret sensory input.

Conclusion 2): Ghosts are formed by circumstances so narrowly constrained that they a) require tragic deaths but b) require not too many tragic deaths; that only some people can see these ghosts, and only some of the time; that these ghosts' interactions with the world are limited to bumps in the night rather than actual communication to resolve the issues that keep the ghost trapped on this plane; that there is another plane in the first place; that human personality, which is so dependent on physical brains that minor injury to the brain can change or eradicate personality, nonetheless survives the total destruction of the brain.

Take a step back from your personal, self-centered viewpoint. Consider the world from a wider perspective. Now can you see why we find your stories unconvincing?

[Goldie]

Do you not see the difference between real PROOF and some fly-by-night theory?


I have had experiences more severe than you have described! But, as a rational adult, I now see it for what it was. Do I know EXACTLY what it was? No. But I can make an EDUCATED guess.
For years, I thought I had surely seen a ghost.

Ghosts are something born of religion / pagan pasts...when there was no explanation. People need to know HOW and WHY and if they don't have the answers they'll make them up.
We used to think the world was flat. We know better now. Ghosts are an antiquated superstition. Look how many people make money off "believers." It's sickening.
Think about it.
Why a ghost instead of aliens??? Could be a magnetic force!
You see. You really don't know and you are listening to crackpot theories.

[Rie]

Ghosts are a phenomena for me that hasn't yet been proved or disproved. No need to call my approach to a situation I witnessed self centred?

[David B]

Ghosts are a phenomena for me that hasn't yet been proved or disproved. No need to call my approach to a situation I witnessed self centred?

Russell's Teapot is a putative phenomenon that hasn't been proved or disproved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

I didn't call your approach self centred, but you did not witness a situation, you, like all people, had visual and aural inputs to your brain which your brain then interpreted,

How your brain interpreted it is in conflict with physics, but not in conflict with the skepdic link I presented you with about the various ways by which the mind can misinterpret sense inputs.

Do you ever bother to read the links I provide from skepdic? Ever consider what they say?

There is no evidence of it so far!

Do you think the links I have made to sKepdic are wrong, and, if so, how?

David

[Goldie]

You say it has yet to be proved or disproved but you don't read the links so you can discuss???

[Rie]

I wikied it re ghosts and seances and this site told me exactly what I had thought - that certain people over many years testified to their experience of unexplained phenomena.
I was posting about an experience that I and others had.
I may have been upset at one of the experiences but the other people who witnessed the same noises and especially strange, the door opening and politely shutting.
Since people on a forum I respect are getting upset it seems to me by my 'intransigence' I will look at the links that David provided.
There is one recent publication that could be a good source re ghosts etc. It is by John and Anne Spencer "The Poltergeist Phenomenon".
Also of course there is the work of Carl Jung in 1967 "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" published by Collins

[Yahzi]

Ghosts are a phenomena for me that hasn't yet been proved or disproved. No need to call my approach to a situation I witnessed self centred?
I'm not making a moral judgment here; I am making an epistimological one.

You are assigning a very high value to your personal experiences. You are assigning a very low value to other people's experiences.

Worse, you are assigning a high value to some of your experiences - the ones that support the conclusion you find interesting. Meanwhile you are ignoring your own experiences that disprove this conclusion.

You are paying attention to data that supports the conclusion you prefer, and ignoring data that discounts it. This an absolutely common, ordinary feature of human thought processes (its called the Confirmation Bias). Everybody does it - without exception, everyone.

However, some people occasionally employ a specific technique that prevents (or at least mitigates) this ordinary weakness of human rationality. Those people are called scientists, and the technique is called a "double-blind study." That is, you do a test in which you don't know which evidence will prove or disprove your theory. Since you don't know what confirms your theory, you can't be biased for it. This allows you to collect all of the evidence (not just the stuff that supports you). And of course it assigns the same value to all of the evidence.

Now what I am asking you to do is perform some thought-experiments (ever so much easier than real ones). When I brought up the battlefields and disaster sites, it was supposed to draw your attention to all that disconfiirming evidence you already have. Once we have restored some balance to your selection of evidence, then you will be in a better position to make an informed judgment.

Instead, you just ignore contrary evidence, even when it is clearly presented. At some point Confirmation Bias begins to look like willful denial. Do you think we are at that point yet?

[Rie]

Not wanting to be offensive but previous poster's approach is patronising. And WTF is epistimological when it's home?
There are many logical and semantical and etymological flaws in yopur learned summation.

[David B]

Epistemology is theory of knowledge.

If you want to point any logical flaws in Yahzi's post out to me, and also point to what you see as semantic and etymological flaws, then please go ahead.

None jump out at me.

It looks to me, though, rather as if you just plucked a few big words from your memory without considering what they actually mean.

David

[Rie]

Oh well , I did understand the meaning of the terms I used but try saying 'epistomelogical' three times when you're drunk.

[DMB]

Back in the 1960s when I was an impoverished young schoolmistress I lived in a 15th-century black-and-white picturesque half-timbered house in the small mediaeval town of Tewkesbury (http://www.tewkesbury.cotswolds.info/).

In 1471, an important battle in English history was decided there, when the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians. See Battle of Tewkesbury. If you read the Wiki article, you will see the normal historical account and the fact that the Lancastrian Prince of Wales was slain on the battle field. However, there are many traditions about the battle in the town and one that I was immediately told of when I took up residence was that far from being killed on the battle field, the prince had been taken prisoner by the Yorkists but was then murdered in my house by Richard of Gloucester, later Shakespeare's villainous Richard III. There was even a bloodstain on the floorboards that could not be shifted. Oh, and the house was haunted by his unhappy ghost.

Various townspeople told me that huge sums of money couldn't tempt them to spend one night in the house. But the rent was cheap (perhaps understandably so) and I lived there happily on my own until I got married, and then my (first) husband moved in with me. Of course, being such an old house with masses of old timber, it creaked horribly. There were always various noises. No ghost ever bothered me.

I lived in a number of other reputedly haunted old houses. They don't bother me. I expect my scepticism upsets the ghosts' vibes.

ETA the house I lived in is shown in the first link. It is called the Cross House.

[Rie]

Despite all arguments I do believe in there being phenomena that can't be explained by scepticism.
I however do not go about my life looking for them.
What happened in my haunted house happened as far as I'm concerned.
My chief reference source has this to say ""We don't know what happened for sure. All we can be sure of is that they are reported in good faith as being a description of things that appear to have happened and that offer no other rational explanation."

[Daynna]

I went to a "haunted" hotel with my mom and some of her friends. When they would get frightened, they were not happy when I would point out that the noise was the ice maker in the hallway. "D

[Rie]

Ah HAH- you mean like the'haunted' refridgerator in 'Ghost Busters'?

[DMB]

<pedant mode> Rie, if you are going to quote Shakespeare, please make sure you do so accurately:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. </pedant mode>

But I think it would be a great mistake to take Shakespeare as any sort of authority, even though in his most famous speech in the play the same character also says:

death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns

That suggests that even Shakespeare had doubts about the existence of ghosts, and yet his was a pre-scientific time when people believed all sorts of woo, hence the burning of witches.

I have lived in a number of houses that were many hundreds of years old. And they have usually had ghost stories associated with them. And yes, something unpleasant has probably happened in them or is reputed to have done so. I posted about the most lurid one above. But if you think about it, almost any house of any age is probably associated with all sorts of events, some pleasant and some unpleasant. My husband and I currently have a house in France that goes back to the year 1200. It has certainly been associated with some pretty unpleasant people over the centuries. It has been invaded several times, and at the Revolution the aristocratic inhabitants were lucky to escape with their lives. I have often stayed there alone, and, of course, it is creepy at night, with unspecified noises and with bats and owls flitting about. But the ghosts have never managed to get me yet!

Our ancestors believed in ghosts and they have transmitted those beliefs to us. As everyone else has explained, our brains, which are machines for interpreting our surroundings, work frantically to interpret any new phenomenon they encounter. If they are already primed with a pre-existing explanation, then they will probably leap straight to that. As a survival mechanism it is the most efficient thing they could do. Something lurking in the shadows that could possibly be a large striped beast? -- Quick! Get away! It could be a tiger that wants you for lunch. Don't hang about to ponder the pros and cons and wonder whether it's just a trick of the light!

[borealis]

I grew up in a house that my father built. Where he chose to place it was directly over a small hollow, the remnant of a house long crumbled into the ground. We even knew the story of that house: several generations previous, a family related to ours had lived there. It was their last house, of several they built and then abandoned in a doomed effort to avoid the tuberculosis which killed their children one after another. Of course, the TB came with them every time, and the mother of this family died, old herself, with not a child left alive, a tragic figure.

Whenever something odd happened in the house, our parents joked that it was caused by 'Margaret' doing her housework. A butterknife mysteriously on the floor, a smell of cinnamon or ginger, ghostly music in the middle of the night. Of course, even as kids we knew there were more likely reasons for the displaced cutlery, and having a coal stove, a little spill of spices might heat up well after any baking had been done. The night music was a tricky one, until my dad discovered our furnace, an old fashioned thing, was prone to producing odd harmonic noises from the vibrating interplay of heat and vents and gratings.

[Goldie]

Back in the 1960s when I was an impoverished young schoolmistress I lived in a 15th-century black-and-white picturesque half-timbered house in the small mediaeval town of Tewkesbury (http://www.tewkesbury.cotswolds.info/).

In 1471, an important battle in English history was decided there, when the Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians. See Battle of Tewkesbury. If you read the Wiki article, you will see the normal historical account and the fact that the Lancastrian Prince of Wales was slain on the battle field. However, there are many traditions about the battle in the town and one that I was immediately told of when I took up residence was that far from being killed on the battle field, the prince had been taken prisoner by the Yorkists but was then murdered in my house by Richard of Gloucester, later Shakespeare's villainous Richard III. There was even a bloodstain on the floorboards that could not be shifted. Oh, and the house was haunted by his unhappy ghost.

Various townspeople told me that huge sums of money couldn't tempt them to spend one night in the house. But the rent was cheap (perhaps understandably so) and I lived there happily on my own until I got married, and then my (first) husband moved in with me. Of course, being such an old house with masses of old timber, it creaked horribly. There were always various noises. No ghost ever bothered me.

I lived in a number of other reputedly haunted old houses. They don't bother me. I expect my scepticism upsets the ghosts' vibes.

ETA the house I lived in is shown in the first link. It is called the Cross House.

That house...than town is incredible!
WOW!

[kennyc]

If you believe in ghosts do you really feel like spending an eternity bugging the hell out of people? It's not really what is says in the brochure.


Sorry off topic, but I LOVE your Avatar!

[Rie]

Yep, it was quoted by yours truly off the top of the head but I did get the gist of Shakespeare right, right?

[DMB]

Yep, it was quoted by yours truly off the top of the head but I did get the gist of Shakespeare right, right?

Naughty girl! You can always google quotes to check them. :)

I think that one has its meaning changed if you omit "philosophy". That word then would have included "natural philosophy", which would have comprehended the seeds of what we now call "science". At that time science was just beginning to be born and was feeling its way. It took large numbers of wrong turns for anything that we would recognise as "science" to get anywhere near the right track.

I've always been fascinated by 17th-century science and the very open-minded people who worked to advance it, hampered by a lack of technology and also by a lot of inherited "truths" formulated by previous thinkers. It was a real bootstrapping process that eventually laid the foundations for modern science. But even with a giant like Isaac Newton, with his development of mathematics, celestial mechanics and optics, we see a continuing belief in alchemy and biblical decryption.

[kennyc]

David, simply I believe in the SIXTH SENSE. As Shakespeare put it "There are more things under the sun, Horatio, than this world dreams of."


Very true, but if those things can't be examined by science and the scientific method then we can't say they exist.

[Magdlyn]

I figure that the most haunted places on Earth would be the sites of the Nazi extermination camps, or of more recent such atrocious crimes, if there were such things as ghosts. Yet to my knowledge such places aren't regularly reported as exhibiting ghostly apparitions.

Well, the Gettysburg Battlegrounds (US Civil War site) has had hundreds of ghosts sightings and photographs, since the battle in the 1860s. I once knew a person who visited the site and as he and his friends left in their pickup truck, they saw 2 soldiers in the back ride away w them. When they stopped, the soldiers got out and left. (Sure it couldve been a couple hoaxters...)

I'm not sayin, just sayin.'


http://www.gettysburgghosts.net/

[Iblis waswas]

Ghosts? They are either evidence of former hallucinogenic chemical intake, or a fabrication of the incredibly powerful 3D super computer that is the human brain. Avatars graphics were good, but nothing to what my brain comes up with during sleep. The brain is the best pattern matching entity in the world, the biological algorithms that it utilises make computers look infinitesimally basic, and such a pattern matching ability makes it very easy to make human like patterns, particularly voices and faces. All ghost stories are a product of this pattern matching.

Ghosts absolutely do not exist. Vampires on the other hand, well they are abundant.

[kennyc]

...

Ghosts absolutely do not exist. Vampires on the other hand, well they are abundant.

And what of zombies?

are they not the undead?

[David B]

Ghosts? They are either evidence of former hallucinogenic chemical intake, or a fabrication of the incredibly powerful 3D super computer that is the human brain. Avatars graphics were good, but nothing to what my brain comes up with during sleep. The brain is the best pattern matching entity in the world, the biological algorithms that it utilises make computers look infinitesimally basic, and such a pattern matching ability makes it very easy to make human like patterns, particularly voices and faces. All ghost stories are a product of this pattern matching.

Ghosts absolutely do not exist. Vampires on the other hand, well they are abundant.

My bold.

I used to see a Vampire almost daily in my youth.

They used to tow drones around for the local AA school to fire at, after the Mosquitoes and then the Meteors went out of service. Now they use radio controlled aircraft.

http://www.warbirdalley.com/vampire.htm



David

[Yahzi]

Not wanting to be offensive but previous poster's approach is patronising.
I'm not trying to be patronizing. However, it is difficult to avoid sounding patronizing when you are explaining to someone how their own mind works.

Remember that I am an expert on how your mind works because mine works exactly the same way. We are all human here.

Let me sum it up very simply:

reported in good faith as being a description of things that appear to have happened
This is unquestionably true.
and that offer no other rational explanation.
This is unquestionably false.

The second statement does not follow from the first. It is a logical error to put both of those clauses together in the same sentence.

For the last time: we do not doubt your experiences, because we assume you are honest. We do not believe your conclusions, because they are illogical.

[Rie]

I must say that you do absolutely not know how my mind works.
As Monty Python said "YES, we are all individuals!"

[Eudaimonist]

I must say that you do absolutely not know how my mind works.
As Monty Python said "YES, we are all individuals!"

"I'm not!"

No, actually I agree with you on this point. We are all human, but that doesn't mean we think and experience life in quite the same way.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Eudaimonist]

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

My favorite reply to this is:

Maybe so, but there are fewer things than are dreamt of in yours.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[Yahzi]

I must say that you do absolutely not know how my mind works.
So you're rejecting, at the outset, every explanation ever provided by psychology, neurology, cognitive science, and epistemology.

And yet... you demand rational explanations for your ghost experiences.

It turns out that if you demand rational explanations while refusing to consider rational explanations other than the one you've already picked, it really is true that your ghosts "offer no other rational explanation."

[Yahzi]

Maybe so, but there are fewer things than are dreamt of in yours.

That's my favorite reply, too. Well, now it is. :D

[Rie]

I 'still suits me' as the old song goes 'no matter what you say
And I definitely take umbrage in a very angry way if anybody claims to know how my mind works!
What a cheek!

[Yahzi]

I 'still suits me' as the old song goes 'no matter what you say
In other words, your views on ghosts are a matter of faith.

That's fair enough; but it does rather invalidate your opening post. Why ask us what ghosts are when you already know they are articles of faith?

And I definitely take umbrage in a very angry way if anybody claims to know how my mind works!
What a cheek!
Taking umbrage at an entire scientific and medical discipline seems... ambitious. :D

[Rie]

Then I was always 'ambitious' ! And don't tautologise me and my umbrage please! I am taking umbrage at anyone else knowing how my mind works..... You will advance argument further if you get your facts re what a person posts straight.

[Evilbetty]

The problem is that tales regarding ghosts are normally the product of either attention getters, nut jobs, or people wanting to get their bed and breakfast in the local tourism pamphlet. This makes them very easy to dismiss for different reasons such as hoax, perception, atmospheric conditions, etc.

The problem is that the science that could actually explain the possibility of ghosts doesn't exist yet and may not ever. The subject itself is not considered one of global importance and also not one that is quick to get you noted in the academic journals.

There could indeed be some electromagnetic wavelength in which the soul could exist after parting from the body, however this is likely not something we will know of in this life time in the fact that even if it was discovered it would likely be down played or dismissed due to some ridiculous religious issue with the people who support the institution financially. I mean if some one came forward and said "Hey I have scientific proof that ghosts exist, here it is" this would open a pandora's box of religious criticism and not just in our beloved U.S of A. People tend to take offense when you offer up solutions which conflict their beliefs.

I try to keep an open mind on subjects such as these. Sure a lot of the stories are indeed fake or misinterpreted, but for those to which the explanation is not a solid one or leaves room for error, I believe closing your mind to the possibility of something else is more harmful than having an open one.

Booberry was an awesome cereal.

[DMB]

What makes you think that there is such an entity as a soul that can be parted from a body?

[Evilbetty]

only my own groundless theories which are loosely based on limited reading and the Syfy channel. I personally am waiting on the soul-o-graph to be invented to find out for sure.

(I saw your question and my brain bled a little)

[rog]

I mean if some one came forward and said "Hey I have scientific proof that ghosts exist, here it is" this would open a pandora's box of religious criticism

But if he or she had actual verifiable proof, they'd win the Nobel Prize and probably retire a billionaire - If such a thing could be proved to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt, the impact on humanity would be epoch making.

It's not going to happen of course, but maybe let your imagination wonder about the possibilities for a moment :)

Tell you what, find me a real, chatty ghost and I'll find you a million pounds for having done so....

[Evilbetty]

Would that proof even make it through the door? I would imagine the funding to undertake a study to ultimately prove the theory would take quite a bit of cash with the range of sciences which could conceivably be involved. If enough facts are in place to draw a logical conclusion against it, (notice still drawing conclusions) who would give a grant for such a study? Questions like those of DMB would have to be faced and answered with solid facts. Even with a sound theory the burden of proof is too great in this case.

Again, not saying yes or no, I am saying keep an open mind about everything. If there are questions left to be asked, it is healthy to ask and wonder.

[Rie]

And apparently there is something called 'Quantum Entanglement'?
This next is scientifically without meaning as far as we understand Science but I found James Randi to be not likeable. There is a feeling of lack of 'warmth' about people who put all of their 'faith' in the fact that Science has all the answers we are likely to get.
I believe that we as a species need to keep that childlike openness.

[kennyc]

I 'still suits me' as the old song goes 'no matter what you say
And I definitely take umbrage in a very angry way if anybody claims to know how my mind works!
What a cheek!


Well that's just wrong, because there are many things we do know about how the mind (and brain because they are inseparable) works. Get angry, scream and shout, we all know what that's about.

:D

[kennyc]

And apparently there is something called 'Quantum Entanglement'?
This next is scientifically without meaning as far as we understand Science but I found James Randi to be not likeable. There is a feeling of lack of 'warmth' about people who put all of their 'faith' in the fact that Science has all the answers we are likely to get.
I believe that we as a species need to keep that childlike openness.

Yes, we must have a sense of wonder, we must be open to change and possibilities, but we must live and advance both our lives and life itself through the only truth we know - Science.

P.S. if you haven't already please read Carl Sagan's - The Demon Haunted World. http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

[rog]

Would that proof even make it through the door? I would imagine the funding to undertake a study to ultimately prove the theory would take quite a bit of cash with the range of sciences which could conceivably be involved. If enough facts are in place to draw a logical conclusion against it, (notice still drawing conclusions) who would give a grant for such a study? Questions like those of DMB would have to be faced and answered with solid facts. Even with a sound theory the burden of proof is too great in this case.


I was thinking - the hello I'm a ghost, watch me walk through this wall, in front of a hall full of Nobel laureates - kind of proof.

[David B]

Would that proof even make it through the door? I would imagine the funding to undertake a study to ultimately prove the theory would take quite a bit of cash with the range of sciences which could conceivably be involved. If enough facts are in place to draw a logical conclusion against it, (notice still drawing conclusions) who would give a grant for such a study? Questions like those of DMB would have to be faced and answered with solid facts. Even with a sound theory the burden of proof is too great in this case.


I was thinking - the hello I'm a ghost, watch me walk through this wall, in front of a hall full of Nobel laureates - kind of proof.

Illusionists would be better. Brian Josephson, for instance, has taken on board all sorts of woo.

Having said that, mind, Doug Henning had blind spots of his own:(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_David_Josephson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Henning

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/219-swift-september-19-2008.html#i4

Both fell under the spell of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, as did I.

Anyway, back at the point, replication under closely controlled conditions is the only sort of evidence that stands up. Nobel prizewinners on their own don't make it.

Scientists sometimes manage to fool themselves, or get fooled by others. A few examples follow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Targ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_E._Puthoff

I suspect that these above two have something to do with the TV prog Rie mentions above. Note a Scientology connection in the Puthoff link.

And let us not forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hagelin

Nor let us forget Benveniste - see that Josephson got involved with his work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Benveniste

David

[kennyc]

Thanks for those links David. Very interesting stuff!

[Evilbetty]

Indeed many thanks for those. As soon as I am done cramming information regarding Group Policy Objects in Active Directory into my mostly empty head I am going to give those a good read. This is why I came to these boards btw :) I have only recently gained the ability to assimilate information effectively so I am soaking up a life times worth of data in a very short time. Then I can go to parties and be like HEY GUYS LETS SLAM DOWN ON SOME PHILOSOPHIZING and actually make sense.

[Yahzi]

I found James Randi to be not likeable. There is a feeling of lack of 'warmth' about people who put all of their 'faith' in the fact that Science has all the answers we are likely to get.
You have misinterpreted James Randi's hostility. It is not a general attribute, but merely a specific response to scammers who cheat and harm vulnerable people. You only see Randi in this light because that is his public persona. In person, when not dealing with con artists, he is as friendly and warm as anyone.

Me, personally, I have trouble liking people who can stand next to a criminal and not snark.

[DMB]

"Magicians" like Randi are the most reliable debunkers of woo. Their professional skills are all about deceiving people into thinking they have witnessed things that they haven't, so they know how the frauds do things. A few such unsung heroes go round in India replicating the "miracles" of godmen and showing the credulous how they're done.