As others have said, skeptics and scientist seek to explain things not ‘explain them away.’.
It isn’t ‘We can claim it’s a hoax and ignore the possibility that it’s a real ghost.’ It’s ‘Analysis of the footage reveals that this is almost certainly a normal human being in a costume. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise.’
This is not only in response to you, but to others who either believe, condider, have doubts about, or reject the phenomenon.
My experience can be explained away by comparison to other events. It could be a hypnogogic hallucination, dream, whatever. It could also be a ghost. I agree that in most cases there is a logical, scientific explanation for most of the phenomenon. But people that use that as “disproof” of a phenomenon are not scientists.
It is right to subject these phenomenon to rigerous scientific investigation. And wrong to blindly accept every anecdote as true. Unfortunately we can’t go back in time to investigate anecdotes. And some scientists have better things to do than investigate the paranormal; this doesn’t mean it is not worthy of investigation.
I can respect a skeptic who withholds belief until proof is offered; indeed, they are the foundation of our scientific method. I have nothing but distain for someone who ridicules a belief or claims that it is nonexistant simply because they have not seen proof.
Priceguy, conscious control of brainwave frequencies is a widely accepted phenomenon, and is easily scientifically documented with an EEG and a trained observer. Open your mind. If it’s just me that you doubt, I don’t blame you, that’s your right. I doubted my kung-fu instructor could break four stacked 200 lb. blocks of ice with the palm of one hand till I saw it happen; it’s still hard to believe, but with practice the human mind and body can do amazing things. If you reject everything I say because I say that, then it would seem you’re easily swayed by anecdotal evidence.
Snakespirit It’s a marvelously odd universe and I consider very few things to be impossible. Randi’s old saw works both ways “If I push one hundred reindeer off of a cliff, I haven’t proven reindeer can’t fly. I’ve only proven that none of those reindeer can fly.” Blind dismissal is as bad as blind acceptance.
RE Biofeedback
Having spent a few years working for a biofeedback company, and having read studies of its applications, some conscious control of brainwaves is indeed possible. Sadly, biofeedback has been lumped in with homeopathy, crystal healing and other practices without scientific merrit.
Amazing. We were in GQ, and now we’re in GD.
All because I willed it to happen.
samclem GQ moderator
If there exists some previously unrecorded, corporeal component of our consciousness that can continue to live after the death of the body and effect change in the physical world, all the while eluding the detection of the most sophisticated equipment in the world, why hasn’t any one ever come forward? Of all the intelligent, skeptical people in the world who have ever died, none have ever, after death, found themselves living disembodied in the physical world? No one has ever decided “Hey, let’s go let everybody know that there really is life after death!” Why do ghosts never decide to show up at independent laboratories researching the paranormal?
Given the fact that people have been dying for a couple million years now, shouldn’t ghosts be just overrunning the world? Even if just a tenth of the people who ever died came back as ghosts, that’d be billions of ghosts.
I believe that the technical term for when one sees a ghost is “brain fart.”
Yeah! And what the hell happened to her? I’m blaming the supernatural, though time, sun, and too much partying could also explain it.
But can you light them?
[Anecdotal Evidence]Gee, you must have Special Powers! or something… [/Anecdotal Evidence]
:eek:
May I never cross you in word, thought or deed.
Maybe they’re afraid that no one would believe them!
Regarding hauntings, they are supposedly explained because the ghost came from a person that had a horrifying, unfair, or untimely death. And then his/her ghost remains haunting the place where it died.
As I pointed many times before, and I have never got any ghost proponent to explain properly, is then why one of the biggest sources of horrifying, unfair and untimely death: the car crash, does not produce then the “obvious” result: an infestation of ghosts in our freeways.
Some stretches of highway in Phoenix should be ghost central, alas, nothing.
Well here is my explaination for my ‘ghost’ phenomenons:
(Warning stories ahead)
Picture it, 1994, I was trying to sleep in my girlfriends bed while her parents were away. We had just had a night of hot steamy sex. As I’m attempting to fall asleep, I get a really damn erie sense of “DANGER! Danger Will Robinson!” I wake her up, tell her we are leaving her house. She asks why? I say, I feel bad mojo baby, yeah! She quizzes me on my bad feelings. I say it emanates from right before the stairs up to her room. She says, “OMGWTFBBQ! That’s where I used to hear ghosts running up into my room at night!” I say “W/EPOA9K!” We leave. We talk about the ghost on the way home and stuff. Many moons afterwards, like maybe one, I remember a story she told me a long while back about ghost and where they came from. I also remembered her shivering and freaking as we got near the bottom of the steps. On top of that, her father was a go’ole’boy who would have shot me 10 ways from Tuesday had he found me in her bed. Thus, my mind said “RUN! Forrest run!” So ghost? Probably not what I was feeling. I was convinced at the time. But all together, more likely mind tricks.
Picture it, 1996, I was doing a “ghost reading” for a friend. He said his house had been a speak-easy and a house of ill-repute. He wanted me to do a “ghost reading” for him to find and get rid of his ghosts. Why? Well, because I was studying psychology of course, duh! [Rolleyes^infinity] Also, while I had been talking to him at work, and we were discussing ghosts and strange phenomenon, I told him I have this bizarre thing about ghosts. My eyes water up and won’t stop if someone tells me a “ghost story” that my eyes decide is real enough to warrant watering. He says, “Neato-tordpedo! Here’s my story, Dorito!” So my eyes do a little watering, he says, “Friend, cure thee my house, hommie!” I say, “Sure, why not, I haven’t seen your house, cool.” So I go over, do my eye-watery thing, pick out the places where I think ghosts are, he freaks as “Those are the ghosts man!” He was toasty on the herb by this point in time. Of course, during my investigation, I also noticed him tensing up and getting nervous near the places where “Thar be ghost har, matey!” So, I did my best John Edward impression and said, “I see a letter, it’s a H… E… R… E! Here! Is that meaningful to you?” Of course, he ignored the four I got wrong. I did some mumbo-jumbo, planted some fun suggestions in his and his roommates minds. And they soon after had fun having orgies in their dreams with the fine lady ghosts.
Picture it, 2002, I was standing behind my parent’s house, smoking a smoke when I saw a ghost! “Egads! A ghost?” says I. I look in my sister’s room where my nephew was sleeping at the time. Instead, I see what looks to be my nephew standing in the window staring blankly out as a ghost is waving and shwishing around him. “Egads! I spy with my little eye, a ghost, possessing my nephew! Kind sir, I say, kind ghost, unhand him! Or rather, we will dual with pistols drawn at midnight!” The ghost did nothing but swirl about my nephews head. It was near midnight, after Thanksgiving, at my parent’s house, with a big moon up. I look closer and noticed something odd. My sister had a black-light and a strange swirling blue globe thing that she put in my nephew’s room for him to sleep. Indeed, she had brought it down for him. A plant was hung in the window, a new addition by my mother. A fan was blowing in the room, brought in by my mother, to blow on very light white curtains, a new addition by my mother as well. Also, a strange looking face was caused by, well, a giant group of spiders making whoopie in between the window and the torn screen. Altogether, it looked exactly like a dang ghost, especially when you were full and groggy.
So, how do I explain ghosts? I use actual real physical phenomenon to explain it all. One fun thing to do is to make UFOs in the sky. I’ve done it. People freak the freak out. It’s like making the crop circles and everyone going on and on about it.
Lucky for me that I didn’t, then.
I agree.
I’m not going to go around saying “there may be green-and-yellow sentient toads with telekinesis, but so far we haven’t seen proof”. I’m going to say “there are no green-and-yellow sentient toads with telekinesis”. Same with ghosts.
Cite? It sounded like classic pseudoscience to me, but if it is in fact legit I’ll happily apologize.
It’s a bit off-topic, and it’s kinda an old subject. I worked with it way back in the 1970’s when they were researching yogis and stuff, and then discovered that you don’t have to be a yogi, anyone can do it with training.
In the intervening time there have been a lot of pseudoscientists grabbing onto the subject and making extraordinary claims. Basically humans have four brainwave frequencies, Beta (waking), Alpha (dreaming & sometimes distraction while not sleeping), Theta (sometimes rarely when sleeping, can be induced voluntarily for pain control, not sure what else) and Delta (deep, dreamless sleep). Everybody experiences at least three of these every day, normally. Meditation training and biofeedback training can allow one conscious control of alpha and theta, but for most people it’s too much work for too little payback.
Science hasn’t done much of global use with it either, so it’s likely fallen into the realm of “useless facts of moderate interest.”
I thought that by now it was kinda like common knowledge, like gravity and nuclear fusion. I’m not really that interested in chasing down a cite, but if you’re interested I’m sure you can find something reputable via Google - and probably a lot of pseudoscience as well.
It’s legit, I’m lazy, no apology necessary, but if you want The Straight Dope, it’s there for the asking.
On page 1 of a google search I found this site about the VA using brainwave training to combat alcoholism
It’s not dramatic, I know, but I think it does demonstrate that it is a legitimate field of study, and lo and behold, they are even finding a use for it!
Only the illuminati can.
Anyone? Or are we just shooting the breeze here.
Putting define:ghost in Google gives this page:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oi=defmore&q=define:ghost
Extracting the ones most appropriate to this discussion:
I would like to suggest one of my own: Any sight, sound or smell that appears to be from abnormal or supernatural causes. But even this def refers to what people claim is a ghost; something that may prove to have very normal and natural causes if investigated.
It’s hard to define something that has never been proven to exist without prefacing it with “A fantasy which…”.
In a previous thread on ghosts, I asked a question about ghost sightings throughout history.
One claimant in that thread suggested that since people have been seeing ghosts for thousands of years, it must mean something and should not merely be ignored.
I asked if what we sighted and called “ghosts” in the 15th century were the same as what we sighted as “ghosts” in the 10th century, or in the 20th. Today we have a clear picture of “ghost” because of double-exposures and trick photography and alpha-channel translucency, but what did someone see as a “ghost” back then before the mass media? Have we indeed been seeing ghosts for thousands of years, or have we simply used the word “ghost” as a way to explain weird things for that period of time?
Humans have had the written word for a long time now. We’ve had oral traditions for longer than that. People would experience something and define it based on culture and other factors. A Russian who woke up in the middle of the night and briefly saw a person who looked like dear, departed granddad sitting in the kitchen eating and drinking, would know that a domovoi was happy with the family and that the house was protected. A member of the Yoruba seeing the same thing would know that they hadn’t been making enough offering to the ancestor spirits and that they were hungry and displeased.