Do you believe in Ghosts?

In My Humble Opinion
141

Just for the record: my “vision” of the white jeans and Oxford shirt took place in a well lit dining room. Sure, it was dark out (it was about 8 pm in August in Chicago), but where I was, the lights were on (so I could see to clean).

As for the working around dead bodies makes one certain there are no ghosts–I don’t agree. I have coded and taken to the morgue any number of dying and dead people. I have visited my Dad (he is a pathologist) during any number of dissections and seen any number of bodies donated to science. Sure, dead is dead, physically. I have no fear of the dead, per se-nor much fear of dying (I don’t want to die painfully or by inches, the way some of my pts do). I have a great big question mark in my head re what we refer to as ghosts. That’s all.

142

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
I don’t agree. I have coded and taken to the morgue any number of dying and dead people.
[/QUOTE]

You take dying people to the morgue? Well, I guess that would finish 'em off . . .

143

[QUOTE=Eve]
You take dying people to the morgue? Well, I guess that would finish 'em off . . .
[/QUOTE]

Oops! Caught by the grammar ghoul.

Nah-first I make sure yer dead, then I takes ya to the morgue. Truly.

:wink:

144

I guess I’d have to consider myself agnostic, but leaning toward not believing. I love a good ghost story, but the idea of someone’s soul (which I’m not sure I believe in) hanging around just seems a little too unbelievable.

I do think that there’s more to a person than his or her physical existence and that we kind of…cling, I guess? But I think that presence is in the minds of the people who are left behind after someone dies, not some physical manifestation. So if you lose someone you love, you may “feel” their presence in a place that reminds you of them or in a situation when you wish they were there. I’ve felt that way before, skeptic that I am. After our cat died, I was in the room where he was hiding under the bed shortly before his death. I suddenly felt like if I looked under the bed I’d see him. I didn’t look, and I knew he wasn’t under there. It was just the combination of grief and my brain making a connection with the place.

I do get creeped out rather easily, largely because I have an overactive imagination. I was scared of the basement in the house I grew up in because I’d feel like someone was down there with me when I was alone. But it was also just a creepy basement–poorly lit and laid out with lots of blind corners. What kid wouldn’t be a little spooked by that? It doesn’t mean our house was haunted.

Kind of rambling, but I guess what I’m getting at is that things that don’t seem to have a rational explanation, IMO, are often a combination of memory, some sort of external factor, and our ability to make weird connections between unrelated things.

145

[QUOTE=glee]
[Princess bride ON] I do not think this phrase means what you think it means! [Princess bride OFF]
If evidence shows ghosts exist, then scientists will believe in them and construct a scientific explanation.
Therefore everything there is evidence for gets a scientific explanation.

What you mean is that you believe in things for which there is no evidence. That’s faith.
[/QUOTE]

You are correct.

146

[QUOTE=moonstarssun]
I guess I’d have to consider myself agnostic
[/QUOTE]
Don’t you mean aghostic?

Jeez, you give people a perfectly good made-up word… :wink:

147

[QUOTE=Misnomer]
Don’t you mean aghostic?

Jeez, you give people a perfectly good made-up word… :wink:
[/QUOTE]

Oops–and it’s the perfect word too. Damn ghosts must’ve distracted me.

148

[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Oops! Caught by the grammar ghoul.

Nah-first I make sure yer dead, then I takes ya to the morgue. Truly.

:wink:
[/QUOTE]

This is why I don’t hitchhike any more.

149

Can you believe in ghosts and not in God ?
Or, vice versa, can you believe in God and not in ghosts ?

150

[QUOTE=Jennshark]
Okay . . . all tempered with a disclaimer that I really am a skeptic :smiley: :

First, the setting: My house’s deed basically says “old” – date of construction is unknown. I think it’s about 1890 or so. The house is about 3ksqft, with a basement and two living stories, with hardwood floors on the staircase and second floor.

When partner and I first moved in I would see a lot of “black floaties” and quick movements of something dark when I walked through certain rooms. I was semi-aware of it and became very aware when one day partner said “you know, when I walk through the music and dining room, I see these black shapes . . .”

Another odd occurrence happened this past winter. I put my tea kettle on to boil and came upstairs to wake up SO. When I went back to the kitchen, SO’s first name was written in the steam on the inside of the kitchen window. We were the only people in the house.

When downstairs, we occasionally hear footsteps pacing back and forth upstairs and several times it has sounded as if the steps started downstairs. When this footstep noises happen the dogs will stand up and watch the ceiling with rapt attention.

The most disturbing incident, however, circulated around some loud knocking on the interior walls of the family room. It started last August and would occur early in the morning when I was in the room having morning coffee. It was a very distinct and loud rapping that would come in “threes” and ceased the day before a tragic, unexpected death in the family occurred in September.

I do know that we have something raccoon-ish residing in the attic and that old houses settle and have odd shadows and noises. It’s also true that as we have settled into this place and are coming to terms with some really big losses and changes (and having less screaming fights from the stress) that there have been fewer weird events and noises.

So, those are my stories and here is my disclaimer face: :dubious:
[/QUOTE]

Since a Ghoast or Spirit has no body,how would it make a sound,spirits are supposed to be able to walk through walls etc.,or have a shadow?

There are noises in most buildings,some from settling,or other causes that doesn’t mean a spirit makes them.

If Spirits are from another demension, what purpose does it have to be on earth when it could be in a better place? I was under the impression that people who belive in an after life thought they go to a heaven or a Hell. Who would want to leave heaven? Why would a supreme being let people come from Hell and hang around earth?

Monavis

151

[QUOTE=Gymnopithys]
Can you believe in ghosts and not in God ?
Or, vice versa, can you believe in God and not in ghosts ?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t see what one has to do with the other…

152

[QUOTE=Gymnopithys]
Can you believe in ghosts and not in God ?
Or, vice versa, can you believe in God and not in ghosts ?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, and yes.

God != afterlife != religion

153

[QUOTE=Gymnopithys]
Can you believe in ghosts and not in God ?
Or, vice versa, can you believe in God and not in ghosts ?
[/QUOTE]

Yes, especially if you’re talking about Capital “G” God/Jehovah/YHWH. I might believe in Dagda and ghosts, or Vishnu and ghosts or Apollo and ghosts.
If you mean “can you believe in ghosts and not a god?” well, that’s slightly different, but why not? I see no reason that a soul couldn’t evolve without divine intervention just like consciousness did. Well, there are all the scientific reasons, but let’s ignore those for a second.

Can I believe in God and not ghosts? No, because I cannot believe in God (cap-G God/Jehovah/YHWH).

154

[QUOTE=bup]
ladybug, because other people have posited that ghost experiences are overwhelmingly at night - were these at night?
[/QUOTE]

Only one was at night – the incident with the woman who disappeared on the side of the road. If I hadn’t seen so much detail on the woman’s face and clothing (between 18 and 25 years old, dressed as though she were performing in a living nativity, of all things) I would have dismissed it as a trick of light.

It was early afternoon when I saw the white hazy figure that ran from my sister’s room to my brother’s room. It scared the hell out of me, especially since I was alone at the time. I was sure that the light had taken the form of a person, but I kept telling myself that it was my imagination. I never told anyone about it. Many years later, long after my family had left that house, my brother and I somehow got on the subject of ghosts. I jokingly mentioned that I once thought I had seen a ghost in the old house. Without missing a beat, my brother asked “was it the one in Nancy’s room?” I asked him what he saw, and he described a white, hazy figure that walked around our sister’s room. That’s when I realized that I’d actually seen something.

As for my grandfather, I never saw him myself. For many years my brother and cousin insisted that they’d seen him on the back porch one afternoon after he died, watching them through the kitchen window. I didn’t believe their story. After all, they were only five years old when our grandfather died. I figured that they had a memory of Grandpa watching them before his death and that they mixed up the sequence of events in their heads. Not until a few years ago, when my mother told me that she saw her dead father standing at the top of the basement stairway, did I consider that there was something more to the story (mom’s sighting of Grandpa happened during the day, too, IIRC).