Kricket said:
Well, I think James Randi would be interested in said pictures. If you can prove they are ghosts, he may even have a million dollars for you…
The picture is all mine, taken with a crapy little 110. I wanted to get a few more together and post them somewere, but I am not to great at websites and such. I can’t even figure out how to get a home page!
Dave, I could sure use that kind of money right now! But one problem is that I am the type of person who doesn’t give a whit about negitives. OTOH I don’t have the means to doctor a picture either.
Showing my computer unknowledge here…I will have my husband scan them when he gets off work and then figure out how to get them on a home page somehow. I think I have one through ICQ?
And okay for the technical people who are trying to explain things away I have a question.
Who says that they can’t violate the laws on physics? They are on another plain and nobody know what they can or can’t do.
They have to be something if they have been recorded as cold spots. Cold spots are measurable. Then you go from there and rule out any other possible reason for the spot. Ceiling fans, air vents, Iceburg under the house.
I don’t remeber the specifics, but my father was looking into cuerlian photography. From what I remember it had something to do with energies and auras.
Like I said, the only answer the True Believer can ever come up with is, “It’s magic!” Sorry–if they are moving objects around on “our plane”, they are doing work, which in physical terms means they must be exerting energy and mass therefore have measurable mass and energy. If they have a mass or energy of zero on “our plane,” they cannot cause objects on “our plane” to move. Period.
Great. Let’s measure some.
Kirlian has a lot to do with baloney, but not much else. Kirlian photographs are pretty lie-detector tests; which is to say it measure skin galvanization.
kdorian wrote:
I had a similar experience as a child. I distinctly remember staring at a can of mustard powder in the kitchen spice rack (too high to reach), and watching the can fly off the shelf into my hand. I have no explanation for that event, but am convinced that there is an explanation within physical law. We may not be able to explain this type of event now (within the laws of physics), but someday we will know the physical mechanism of these experiences.
Bill
If dead people could come back from “the other side” and communicate as ghosts, don’t you think they would all be doing it, constantly? We would be so pestered by so many ghosts that there would be no doubt: your high-school sweetheart nagging you about your wife; grandma telling you to put your galoshes on; total strangers playing practical jokes . . . You’d think at least Houdini–who promised to come back!–would have.
To quote Milt Gross (who is dead and who has not come back) “Ba-nanner oil!”
Pictures?! You mean, photographs?!! Gasp My God! There’s no way photographs could possibly be close-up out-of-focus pictures of mundane objects, or double-exposures! They must be real ghosts!
I am a skeptic, but one incident I remember very well:
when I was 12 years old, my family was sitting around the dinner table. In the middle of the meal, the cap on a bottle of ketchuo flew into the air, and landed on the floor. my father said that it was probably some kind of gas generated by the ketchup, but I’ve alwys wondered about it.
I am also bothered by the previous poster’s point-there should be jillions of haunted houses out there-why are hauntings so rare?
The believers, not the ghosts. I must say it frustrates me when I’m around some of my family and they start talking about how they saw Great Grandma walking down the block one day, or they smelled the old (dead) tenant baking cookies upstairs, or they hear whoever walking up the stairs, or whatever. I usually just snort and walk away, but sometimes they pull me into a conversation. It is sort of like talking to a child about the bogeyman in the closet.
“See, it’s not there.”
“But it was there. You don’t just don’t think its there because you haven’t seen it!”
I don’t mind ghost stories, as long as people don’t start telling me that they really happened. Then it gets ridiculous. So, should I just keep trying to ignore them, or should I get on their case about propagating these myths?
PeeQueue
As for the electromagnetic explanation for UFO sightings and hauntings, I’m very sure I first heard about this back in 1984 or so. I saw an episode of Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World about ghost sightings and the like and wrote him a letter about it, explaining that I’d heard about the possibility of hallucinations being caused by magnetic fields that originated within the Earth. He replied that my letter was interesting.
I also saw an episode of Nova (I think it was Nova) that showed a ball of light shooting out of a block of rock as it was crushed in a press. The theory was that it was plasma. Ball lightning, maybe? (Or is ball lightning another myth?)
The webpage provided by Willie said:
It seems to me that someone simply got a geological map of the Earth and mapped UFO sightings on it, seeing how many of them occurred near active fault lines. And UFO sightings seem to be very common in Pacific Rim countries, as well as other geologically active areas.
Oh, god, that’s it! Earthquakes are caused by UFOs! Where’s Mulder and Scully?!?!?
Look, I have pictures, and they aren’t the fuzzy out of focus, if you turn the page this way, and kinda squint your eyes a bit you can kinda make it out type.
If I ever figure out the scanner I could send them out.
As for why isn’t everybody who’s dead haunting? Well, I think that comes down to personal belief. Christians believe the go to heaven end of story. Pagans believe you go to summerland, but are more open to live after death and comming back as spirit guides.
Then you could also go the route of if you don’t want to see them then you won’t.
Look, these are all my personal theories so don’t as me to go into scientific detail. I believe and that is all there is to it.
Explain to me how a friend of mine while moving out of her home got an erie feeling, so she left the house to sit on the front steps for so fresh air. When she came back in all her cleaning stuff was put away, and some of her boxes were moved around. She was the only one there, no children or pets, and her boyfriend was at work. She never left even the yard!
Don’t you think you’re being a little naive and facetious here? The very thing you’re accusing others of doing? If something is possible, that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to happen constantly, or often enough to your liking. We could use the same “skeptical” reasoning to disprove a great deal of accepted phenomena.
I don’t want to take the side of some out-dated spiritualistic belief, but I’ve always seen paranormal events as the anomolies that point out the limitations in our current thinking and beliefs of how the world should be.
Also, because most ghost stories/photos are capable of being explained away doesn’t mean that they all are falsified or just people in denial. I’d rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’m equally suspicious of those who KNOW (without a single doubt) ghosts are real as those who KNOW that ghosts don’t exist. I tend to think its our collective understanding, assumptions, modern orthodoxy, and simple-mindednes that limits what we can really understand.
There’s a similair thread in GQ under ‘Fox psychic show’ thats worth checking out.
My grandmother swears she has seen the ghost of her dead husband walking around in her house at times. She also claims to have seen other ghosts, one of whom is “living” in one of her empty bedrooms.
Of course, Grandma also likes Kentucky Fried Chicken, so you have to take her word with a pinch of salt…
[Disclaimer: Kentucky Fried Chicken is very good and this post in no way is suggesting otherwise.]
Well, to begin with, that isn’t even a remotely accurate description of what Christians or pagans believe, but anyhoo . . .
Are you saying that what you believe determines whether you come back or not? Because Christians outnumber pagans by several orders of magnitude, so any person whose ghost you think you’ve seen is statistically much more likely to have been a Christian.
And if you want to, you will, whether they exist or not.
“Don’t let your stinky facts and reality get in the way of what I want to be true, you meanie!” I’m sorry, but this is the Straight Dope, kiddo, and we don’t make unsupported assertions on investigatable matters around here. You assert that these ghosts exist and have energy and mass (an unquestionable axiom if they are interacting with physical obhects), so show us some scientific data.
My explanation is that that almost certainly never happened, and if it did, there is a perfectly mundane explanation, such as she did it beforehand and forgot about it. I’ve done similar things several times.
This is fun… It’s fun to believe in them, but when it boils down to it that’s all it is. Sometimes I hear stories from close friends - completely pointless, small-but-unexplained things that no one could just make up. I figure most accounts fall into these categories:
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Lies - Unintentional lies or fibs. Stretching the truth. “I smell something that smells like grandma’s perfume!” turns to “I saw granny in the living room!” Of course, granny has to be dead for this one to work. But you get the picture. People sometimes fib for a better story. It spices life up a bit.
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Damn Lies - Made Up Crap. Some people just make up stories completely and pass them around. Yes, they do. Even your friends. But not Cecil.
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Urban Legends - We all know where this goes.
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Passed Down - It happened to your sister’s friend. The next time you tell it, it happened to your sister. The next time, it happened to you. This is usually a mark of number 3, the Urban Legend.
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Proof That Is Always Unavailable - A lot of people use this one. “I have pictures!” Somehow, you never see them… They get lost, mama cleaned your room, your scanner did not come with a manual, etc. This is usually a sign of either 1 or 2 above.
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I Want To Believe - We would all like to see grandma again. If you believe in spirits already, you’ll likely convince yourself you indeed saw or heard grandma. Just like when my doc tells me not to concentrate on my heartbeat when he is taking my BP. Damn! Blup… Blup… Blup.
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Footsteps Upstairs - Whenever I hear this one, I always laugh. I’m like “Damn! There is someone walking around in your house and you immediately credit it to ghosts! Call 911!” Anyone I know, skeptics or believers, would be entirely freaked out by hearing footsteps in their house… And would think of an intruder, not a spirit. I simply give little credit to these accounts.
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Fake Memories - My brother and I were talking about some dumb thing my Aunt said. Then he reminded me that she did not actually say that… She said something that sounded like it but we misunderstood. We had talked about it so much I had come to believe what I thought I heard… Same thing happens with ‘sightings’. They grow on you.
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Real Things - Sort of. There are weird lights. There are weird sounds. And when you live expecting to hear them, they will stick out. The physical world is extremely goofy… We know only a fraction of what the effects of this earth can do and cause.
I completely believe that people see strange things. Maybe 40% of stories fall into the above categories. The majority are real… But not as in ghosts. Just regular, albeit strange earthly causes and occurences. About 5% of what I hear is actually near-unexplainable. That’s what research will solve… The EM stuff is really cool, and could be the answer to a great deal of questions. But there will always be things about the earth that we will never know. It’s fun to learn, though.
Infamus
“Don’t you think you’re being a little naive and facetious here?”
Facetious, yes–have I ever NOT been? But naive? No, I am being logical, sensible and skeptical. I am looking at facts, not superstition and fairy tales. I maintain–if Harry Houdini didn’t come back, ain’t NOBODY comin’ back.
I was hiking along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia and stopped in a lean-to known as the Punchbowl Shelter. I had camped out many times and generally did not buy into theories of ghosts.
In the dead of night I was awakened with the distinct feeling of someone else in the shelter. When I turned my flashlight on I was able to see the figure of a little child crouched in the corner of the shelter. He had the saddest face I have ever seen. I said something like “hello” and the kid slowly vanished.
I was wide awake at this point and stayed that way until the first light of day–at which time I quickly cleared out.
Since that time I have read and heard about several folks seeing a ghost of a little boy at this shelter. The location of the Punchbowl Shelter is very close to an area where the body of a child named Ottie Powell was found after disappearing from his home in the 1800s. The site is on a very tall mountain, and from what I’ve read there was much conjecture when the body was found about how a child could have made it alone to the top of a mountain so far up from his home in the valley.
I knew absolutely nothing about this when I first camped there. The descriptions of the ghost-child at the shelter from others are identical with mine.
Part of me believes this is all a coincidence and that I had a hallucination due to fatigue. Another part of me thinks that is a cop out answer.
The other day I asked about Borley Rectory in the “General Questions” forum and received a couple of interesting web sites regarding this supposedly haunted house. I have researched this place more since then, and I must say I am starting to become a believer.
It seems to me that in many cases of the paranormal, you scratch the surface and find a possibly “logical” explanation, but if you scratch a little more you start finding some interesting and somewhat unnerving things.
Okay, now that sweet little me was just demolished in GD, I will go on my merry little way.
Not being a smart-ass, this is a legit question, what is the definition of paranormal?
I didn’t think that I was wrong with the statement that Christians believe in Heaven, and Pagans believe in Summerland. My grandmother is Catholic and she strongly believes in heaven. I one the other hand believe in summerland.
Also if there were any other way to get to the upstairs than through the front door then I would be worried about people being up there in the middle of the day with a house full of people sitting in the living room and everybody counted for.
And I am computer illiterate. I can even make thing in bold print in here let alone get a scanned picture the right size to be sent so that it doesn’t overload anybodies e-mail.
I know I said that I was going, but you know how it goes in here. You just can’t stay away! 
I am not trying to make non-believers believe, I just made the statement that I do. I have had too many creepy things happen to me, and like I said I have the pictures. For me, for this that is enuff.
Okay, if you told me that the earth was flat, then I would as for facts.
::running and ducking::
Kricket, I have never heard of “Summerland.” What is it?
Again, my objection to the idea that ghosts are the spirits of dead people:
Most proponents claim that ghosts represent a part of the personality that cannot free itself from its surroundings, after death. This makes some sense-but why aren’t old battlefields simply full of these ghosts?
For that matter, more people are alive now than ever lived-so prortionately, the amount of haunting should be greater now than ever before.
Finally, why can the damn spirits catch on? You would think that after 1000 years, the ghosts of the Roman soldiers (seen in various parts of England) would realize it and call it a day?
Summerland is where pagans don’t go when they die. That’s where they don’t wait around until their not next life. It’s essentially equivalent to Heaven, which is where Christians and Jews don’t go when they die.