Do Ghosts exist?

Great Debates
61

It seems to me one of the problems we have when discussing ghosts is similar to a problem we have discussing God. We all know the popular image of ghosts. We’ve seen the movies and read the stories. Thus, almost any attempt to contemplate and debate the issue is marred by these images: white sheets, unfinished earth business, evil, lost souls, automatic writing, etc. It gets pretty easy to snicker at and dismiss the entire concept of ghosts because of how ridiculous it all starts to sound.

I don’t know how to explain what I saw on the Appalachian Trail. I think to call it “coincidence” doesn’t explain everything. I’d never seen anything I took to be supernatural until that event. I had never heard any stories regarding ghosts on the Appalachian trail or at its shelters until that event. Why, then, does the one time in my life when I see what seems to me to be a supernatural entity does it turn out to be almost exactly like what many others have reportedly seen–independent of me-- at the very same spot?

I don’t know if it was a “ghost”? But it was something that I could not and cannot explain. Most probably it has nothing to do with the cold spots, visions, etc. that others have reported. Yet we lump them all under the term “ghost” and wonder why the composite result looks laughable.

When I get up the nerve I’m going to hike back up to the Punchbowl Shelter again and spend the night. If the thing comes back again, I’ll at least be certain. But I’m not sure what I’ll be certain of.

62

Gaudere:

Pretty gross, Gaudere, but a good theory. My sister didn’t keep any of her books in her bedroom, though- they were in bookcases on the far side of the living room, next to the bathroom. No ticking sound there.

Maybe there were silverfish eating something else in the walls; I don’t know. I grew up in a house infested with the nasty critters, though, and I never heard a peep out of them. I’d be more likely to believe a natural explanation than a supernatural one, even though I’d prefer that ghosts are all around us.

In our old house, I was once extremely freaked out when my water glass slid smoothly across the table, as if moved by an unseen hand. Barely avoided wetting my pants. Looking back, I realize that it was pretty hot in that room, though it felt okay to us at the time (living in the Texas panhandle, it’s beastly hot in the summertime) and the icewater was cold. Sweat was beaded on the outside of the water glass. The table looked level, but of course it probably wasn’t perfectly level. The glass slid. Not so eerie after all, but very convincing at the time.

63

I nave no official opinion on this matter. However, I do have some thoughts on the suggestibility of the human mind.

There are some woods near my house. I saw my first white-throated sparrow there. When I first began to go to those woods, I would hear footsteps among the leaf litter. When I stopped, I could hear them better. They were the distinct sounds of footsteps through the forest. They moved with a purpose, never stopping for long, and progressed in a slow, delberate, stalking manner. Sometimes the footsteps weren’t even there! This happened every day and really creeped me out. But whenever I looked to the footsteps, no one was there. I could still hear the footsteps as I looked around the area they came from, but I saw no one there! Spooky.

One day I decided to study the white-throated sparrow’s behavior more closely. I found one, and followed it, and it began searching for food — by scratching through the leaf litter. I brought my binoculars up to every footstep and found that each one was caused by a sparrow’s kicking both its feet backwards to remove leaves to search for seeds! The sound, individually, sounded remarkably like one footstep. The pairing of the footsteps was an illusion by my brain because all other footsteps I heard were paired, and so I just assumed they were paired without listening closely. In addition, white-throats form flocks that slowly move across the flocks feeding territory. that was the slow deliberateness of the “footsteps”.
More on the topic of ghosts:

In the South, a great number of old abandoned “haunted houses” are not haunted at all and have a simple explanation: barn owls. Yes, barn owls often nest amongst the old abandoned building in feilds. They are mainly nocturnal and their calls — unearthly shrieks and howls — are often are given at the nest site. It is true that barn owls are snowy white and have a silent, erratic, mothlike flight.

Lets say some adventurous kids wander into that old barn. They hear the shreiks and howls, which make them jumpy. Suddenly, something white silently and shakily moves through the air. You think they would stay?

If that spreads, people are more likely to stay away from that barn, and so year after year barn owls can nest and roost in the barn — making it seem that the “ghosts” just won’t go away.

These barn owl hauntings do happen, but I can’t remember my source, otherwise I would put it up here.

Now, I’m not saying that all ghosts are barn owls. I’m just saying that some have been easily explained when looked into.

64

im dead so i dont believe in ghosts:)

What i liked was

“So, considering that neuroscience is well on the road to showing relatively conclusively that conciousness is simply the result of the activity of the brain, where does the conciousness behind these “ghosts” come from?”

ghostly science is well on the road to proving that ghosts are real… so ghosts are real.

65

This is a rare intelligent and objective post, I have to agree that any anomoly witnessed by even the most credible person is automatically explained with either an agressive skeptical approach like “You’re seeing things” or an equally credulous devout believer’s “Oh its another class-5 apparition, they’re everywhere.”

Taking either of these sides really perpetuates ignorance. Modern ideologoies strongly assert, and rightly so, that old-wive’s tales and local myth is not an explanation for anything, so many people are forced to take an aggressive skeptics approach by default. At the same time skeptical reasoning still hasn’t developed a model or theory that explains away why a healthy, non-metally ill person with no history of schizophrenia or hallucinations can, usually once in a lifetime, see something best described as a ghost.

Personally, I’d rather not take either traditional view but defend the validity of personal experience, especially by rational and credible witnesses. Holding a strong opinion on something where there are so little facts and no understanding of the phenomena at hand is practically the definition of ignorance. I’ve always respected people who admit and understand our limitations and respond accordingly by simply not taking either exremist view and simply admiting the jury is still very much out on this issue.