From what I read, ghosts are said to oblivious to humans nearby…so they should appear in a haunted house whether humans are present or not.
So, I propose a definitive experiemnt: put a video recorder and camera in the basement of that house in England (where those 1st-century Roman soldiers appear to march through the walls). Let it run for a few months…if nothing shows up on the tape, then we can conclude that the ghosts DO NOT EXIST!
Simple, isn’t it? Whay isn’t it done?? 
It wasn’t that simple to prove the existence of, for instance, deep-jungle megafauna which humans have not physically documented in years. Cameramen have devised very elaborate photo-traps in hopes of capturing images of animals believed to be thought extinct or some whose existence hasn’t been proved at all.
Even if such an experiment were done and no visible footage of ghosts were seen, all it proves is that no ghost phenomena appeared during the observation period which were susceptible to observation by this camera. It would be a long, long way from saying “we filmed for 48 hours and didn’t see anything on the videotape, therefore ghosts don’t exist.”
Unless the environment is carefully controlled, even footage of an Event (that’s a good word for this) is insufficient as proof. After all, we have hundreds of Event photos in uncontrolled conditions and thousands more which turned out to be accidents, manipulated photos, double-exposures, light leaks, and outright hoaxes by the photographer. Set up a camera, fail to control the environment, and you’re almost begging someone to wander through the frame in a sheet, someone who thinks that doing so and saying boooOOOOooo is a great practical joke.
And I’ll give you my definition of a ghost, Snakespirit, but under duress. I don’t think it’s a good idea to define the answer before you have analyzed the evidence. For hundreds of years, we believed the Four Element Theory of matter, and we believed the planets in the sky were gods, because we decided upon an answer after only a cursory examination of what was before us. In one case, Science was wrong; in the other, the Church. In both cases we clung to our invented answer until it became dogma and it stifled human understanding for centuries.
A Ghost is (according to me) a phenomenon of unknown origin and composition consistent with the observation, sensation or perception of, or the interaction with, a living being, but which cannot be positively demonstrated to be the agency of any living being or to be the agency of non-conscious applications of known principles of physics.
How’s that for a first draft?
Sorry to bring up a really old point, but it should be pointed out that you can in fact alter your own brainwave frequencies between alpha and beta. Possibly even delta though this gets confusing. Look up self-hypnosis, self-induced hypnogogia and lucid dreaming.
Best laugh I had all day!
NOW I understand why it’s so important to keep ‘real’ in the description…
Very funny.
And if we see an entire ghost, it’s an ARSE whole… hee hee hee! 
Actually I did understand your real reason for keeping real in there, but the Allegedly Real Supernatural Entities doesn’t do it for me. Is it an entity? Might it just be an energy? I already spoke to "super"natural.
I think this is pointing in a good direction, though…
Diogenes the Cynic mentioned ‘event’ - and I think this is broad enough that we can include it in the definition somehow, but the ghost may cause the event rather than being the event.
I’m amazed at all the cooperation this thread has generated! Quite impressive. Congrats all!
Great idea, ralph, get right on it and let us know how it turns out.
:rolleyes:
Wow, wish I could take credit for that one. On cursory examination I can’t see anything wrong with it. I propose we work with that for awhile, look at it and see if it needs further refinement. OK?
As to being premature, yes, some day our definition is going to change, but I don’t think this one will lock us into anything that will stifle us.
As we discovered early in this thread, we do need to have a consistant definition for ghost, primarily to ensure we’re all on the same page.
I have copied that into a seperate file as a working definition for ghost. Great work!
Right on, and thanks for more support on that point.
sometimes people can be too skeptical. Biofeedback just claims that the brain can control the brain - no big surprise there, and certainly nothing that goes against known laws. IIRC, some outlandish claims were made for it, which might have made it suspect in some eyes.
When I was hooked up to a heart monitor, I could, with no prior practice, reduce my heart rate substantially - enough to totally freak out the nurse when she entered.
My recommended additions (to be accepted by consensus) underlined.
Recommended deletions in {brackets}.
Ghost:
A phenomenon of unknown origin and composition somewhat consistent with the observation, sensation or perception of, or the interaction with, a living being, {but} which cannot be positively demonstrated to be the agency of any living being or to be the agency of non-conscious applications of known principles of physics.
Also wondering about ‘physics,’ is ‘science’ as adequate? I’m just wondering if it’s a chemical application (odors) or something like that.
Also wondering if ‘non-conscious’ is necessary. Are there ‘conscious’ applications of physics we need to be concerned about? Or is NC there for a different reason?
Sssssss
Or, a ghost is anything that doesn’t exist.
Doesn’t work in my book. How can something that doesn’t exist be something that does exist?
I would hate to see the definition for a pink unicorn!
I would be quite happy with the looser definition “apparition of a dead person or animal; a disembodied spirit”, modified from the Concise OED. It’s also less of a mouthful and rather more straightforward. A “real” ghost would be one that is verifiable and not attributed to subjective errors in perception, hallucination, trickery, etc., while all other ghosts would retain imaginary status.
After all, if ghosts really exist – and the evidence so far is wholly lacking – it is possible they could be the non-conscious or unintentional applications of known principles of physics, or they may be mental projections from living persons with active imaginations and abnormally large pineal glands. The point is we haven’t observed ghosts with any kind of reliability or under controlled conditions, and therefore don’t have anything to go on other than fanciful and doubtful anecdotal accounts and popular tradition/literature. If, however, someone produced a verifiable ghost, the first place to look for an explanation would have to be physics, since physics describes the physical world and its contents (including eventual ghosts, and if you can see them and hear them it would seem they interact with the physical world on at least some levels). I would therefore suggest not limiting one’s options until a ghost is actually produced and examined, and we know a bit more than we know now (which is next to nothing). Until then, it would seem that ghosts must remain imaginary beings definied more by credulity than data of substantial quality.
Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. With your permission, Abe:
GHOST: An imaginary being defined by credulity, bounded by the fantasy of the proponent, and lacking substantial data.
I don’t know if I like the “somewhat” in there, Snakespirit. “Is consistent with” is not the same as “is equal to.” A waffle word like “somewhat” shouldn’t be necessary.
Where in my definition does it say the phenomenon doesn’t exist, Musicat? All I’m trying to do is come up with a definition that encapsulates what it is that we are looking at, what observable phenomena we are trying to study.
I’m definitely in the Ghosts Have Never Been Proven To Exist camp, if you didn’t know, but I acknowledge that it’s not very scientific to take up the position of I Don’t Know What A Soul Is Or What It Is Made Of But I Know It Doesn’t Exist Because I Said So.
So my definition was designed to describe what an Event appears to be (some kind of life) while excluding the things we can prove it isn’t (any living being, a hoax, a camera malfunction) but not going so far to declare what a ghost is made of or why it exists. I’m even trying to exclude the assumption that the experience is consistent with a human life form.
I realize that by my definition, Ghosts would appear everywhere. They would be, in essence, UFOs. My definition would not attempt to demonstrate or assume that the ghost is a roaming disembodied human spirit set to haunt these ruins for centuries until he can find the treasure that… wait a minute, slipped into Scooby Doo mode there. I am making no value judgements on what a ghost is or should be.
All I hope to do with that defintion is to say yes, people see weird stuff, but we can’t prove what some of it is, so we put it in the “unknown” box. It’s not exactly a great leap forward in terms of proving the secrets of life after death; I just like to maintain a tidy way of looking at things.
Can you think of a better way to do it?
As I discussed with Lib here, all we can actually do is seek unexplained physical phenomena since we can only speculate on their source. I venture that the UPP associated with ghosts is simply not there to be detected. If there is evidence of UPP traditionally associated with ghosts, let us see it. Personally, I wonder why such UPP would confine itself strictly to such unverifiable conditions.
In the spirit of thorough, scientific inquiry I tried to google 'nipple’and almost got fired, be careful.
How’s this for a definition:
Ghost: The bit of a dead person that doesn’t include what we would traditionally call a ‘corpse’. If there is rotting flesh involved, we would instead call it a ‘zombie’, and if the flesh is done rotting, we could call it an ‘animated skeleton’. If it was never a human, it might be an ‘angel’, ‘imp’, or ‘lens flare’. Optionally, we can allow the non-rotting-bit of dead non-humans to be called ghosts, allowing for cat-ghosts, ghost-birds, and ghost-pilots-of-alien-spaceships. Ghosts of non-and-never-was-living things (ghost-ships) are silly in concept and need a different name.
This persistent effort to include uncertainty and ambiguity into the defintion annoys me. If we’re seriously going to consider that these things really exist, then we don’t need to build fictionality into the definition.
An uncertain fuzzy white light in a photograph is not (necessarily) a ghost. It’s only a ghost if it was, in fact, a ghost. Have fun proving it was one.
Good idea. I vote we call a spade a spade, a ghost a ghost, and an uncertain fuzzy white light in a photograph “an uncertain fuzzy white light in a photograph” until it is proven otherwise.
How do you know it doesn’t exist Musicat? Are you accessing priviladged information? Talking to God or something?
This is just malicious speculation. The rest of us are seriously trying to accomplish something.
Yeah, I was thinking of some specific instance where the consistency came into question, but I don’t remember what it was. And the ‘but’ can stay or leave, I think it means the same either way; I didn’t think ‘but’ was necessary.
Since it’s your creation, and no one has raised serious objections, I’ll accept it and you decide on the final form, OK?
As for any jeering unwashed at the gates, from now on I’m only going to respond to serious posts and ignore obvious baiting troublemakers. Waste of time. If someone doesn’t have the time to read the parts of the thread that have already posted and agreed upon so that they at least know what we are talking about, then I don’t have time for them, either. You may do as you wish.
Once we get the definition set in silicon we can move on to the next step.
I don’t think ther is a next step, Snakespirit. We’ve defined the conflicting theories about the Unknown that have plagued us for thousands of years and dressed it in fancy language, but it boils down to this:
Sometimes people see stuff. Sometimes we know for certain what they saw.
That’s about all we can convincingly say with logic. Until we actually produce an Event which we can prove positively is not a hoax, a dream, a hallucination, a camera misadventure, a shadow on the wall, or even an alien, then we have nothing to measure.
If we ever do come across such a phenomenon we can certainly endeavor to study it. At the moment we have a bunch of Events but none of them in sufficiently controlled experimental environments to say anything conclusive.
And Musicat, you stated exactly what I’ve been trying to say all along. We’ll call it what it is, in non-judgemental terms. Once we know it’s a hoax, we’ll call it a hoax. Once we determine it cannot be anything we do know, we’ll try to find out what it is. Until then, it’s just a Thing Which Happened.