No. My theory is that when a person “sees a ghost” , it’s because the neurons in their brain are sparking off in some unusual way due to intense emotions, adrenalin, that sort of thing.
Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good Victorian ghost story though.
I saw a show a couple of years back (and I can’t remember the name of it or even what channel it was on, so take it for what it’s worth) that posited that electromagnetic energy acting on people’s brains could make them hear, see, and feel things that weren’t actually there. They wired a woman up and by manipulating the energy coming through her skullcap thingy were able to make her think someone was walking up behind her and touching her shoulder. They also pointed out that electromagnetic energy is everywhere, has always been everywhere, and granite blocks rubbing together (like in old castles) are particularly adept at producing it, not to mention all the electric gadgets and gizmos we’re all surrounded with 24/7, and perhaps some people are more sensitive to fluctuations in energy than others.
I know absolutely nothing about electromagnetic energy, so I have no idea if this theory is plausible or not. Interesting to think about, anyway. My own feeling is, I’d like to believe in ghosts, and I enjoy a good hair-raising ghost story as much as the next person, but I’ve never seen anything I could accept as proof.
What a hard audience! When I speak at elementary schools, they don’t have any problems understanding the question. But by ghost I mean the spirit of a person, animal, or even plant that is left on this physical plane after its body has expired.
Here is an example:
Papa_Hound and I were watching television one night and he said that he was tired and wanted to go to bed. I went to the bathroom to take off my makeup and then later was brushing out my hair. When I looked in the mirror there was the face of an old woman in there! It couldn’t have been my face because my own face was reflecting very clearly beside this one, which was murky and faint. I went to bed but didn’t sleep that night! Later I asked Papa_Hound and he admitted he saw the same thing once but didn’t want to say anything about it because people would think he was crazy! The next day we called the people who sold us the house. They said they bought it from an old woman whose sister had passed away in the bathroom tub that had since been replaced!
Perfectly frankly, most of us here are not elementary students.
I know, they don’t have any trouble understanding the question.
It’s not that we don’t understand the question. It’s just that, unlike typical elementary school students, we realize that in order to usefully discuss the existence (or lack thereof) of something, one must have have a definition against which to make comparisons. Terms like “spirit” and “soul” are too vague to discuss meaningfully. The lack of concrete evidence for any such things doesn’t help any; a few fuzzy photos and tales told 'round campfires isn’t going to convince anyone with good critical thinking skills and a basic understanding of scientific principles.
Calling it a “spirit” is just substituting one meaningless word for another. It’s not a definition. What is a “spirit?” What is it made of? Where is it in the body? What do you mean by “physical plane?” These words have no scientific meaning. I don’t want to sound harsh but this is a forum where we like to have hard definitions and carefully delineated hypotheses for what we’re talking about.
Lots of old houses have had people die in them and the bathroom is accommon room to die in. Seeing a face in a mirror could have all kinds of mundane explanations, including tricks of light, suggestion or even hallucination. The human brain plays tricks on people. We’ve all had the experience of thinking we heard somebody call our name when there’s nobody there or thinking we saw something that was really something else. The brain tends to “fill in blanks” and sometimes processes sensory stimuli in such a way that we have fleeting perceptions of a false reality. It’s normal. I bet if your husband saw a picture of the woman who dies, he would swear it was exactly the woman he saw in the mirror, and he’d believe it too. His brain would “edit” his memory to make it appear that way. If you showed him a bunch of pictures of different old women, though, and he didn’t know which was the woman who died, his chances of picking her out would be no better than random chance.
It’s an easy question to understand. But elementary school students don’t have the knowledge or the sophistication or the skepticism to go beyond that. What is a ghost?
Water is sometimes hard and quite cold (good in a glass of scotch)… other times it is very hot, gaseous, and invisible (not good in a glass of scotch)… most of the time it is liquid and sloshy (serving only to dilute the scotch). Clearly it has contradictory properties and cannot exist.
(not that I believe in ghosts, please understand. I’m just pointing out that you have a fairly weak argument here… 
Define no brain. Ask nereologists…they will tell you they’ve seen some pretty damn amazing cases out there. Like I remember reading about a boy who has hydranencephaly. This is a condition, where there is LITERALY no brain. The brain is replaced by sacs of cerbal-spinal fluid. Apparently most textbook descriptions describe the kids as being in a persisant vegetative state. Some are, but there are kids who are conscious. The boy I mentioned above apparently is pretty much “normal”
A lot of times the cases aren’t documented or are just brushed off b/c doctors can’t really explain why this happened!
Like I do know that if someone with Down’s Syndrome has their IQ tested, and it’s found to be in the normal or supeior range, doctors dismiss that.
Like I have a wicked rare genetic syndrome where 99% of the people affected have significent apraxia, due to nerelogical issues. I have the SAME nereological issues, but have never had apraxia
Like there’s just so many odd cases of enginmas out there.
If you want to be picky, change the words “no brain” to “no material substance.”
I…how best to…OK: This is some fascinating stuff, and I’m really eager to learn more about these mentally unimpaired children with no brains. Could you please fight my ignorance and provide me a link to information about such cases? Thanks a million!
SkiDemon—you’d be kind to back off from the topic of your post.
We had a Member lose a kid from that, recently.
Kinder to leave that alone.
Nope
Yeah, I’ve had that problem myself . . .
I saw video of that experiment. One man became so terrified that he was nearly hysterical, begging them to get him out of the booth. Afterwards, he said that he felt like there was some sort of malevolent presence in the booth with him and he was too afraid to even open his eyes. Intellectually, he knew that he had been alone in there, but his feeling were so incredibly intense that it over-rode his logic.
Clothes do. I mean, how often do you see a naked ghost?
I like the idea of ghosts. But I don’t believe they exist.
Why do you speak at elementary schools about ghosts?
skidemon, I don’t think Hydrocephalic people have no brains at all. I’d love to see a cite about people who can function without any brain, even a cerebellum. I don’t think spinal fluid can process the information required to breathe, let alone think. I’m certainly willing to be proven wrong.
FWIW, here’s the wikipedia on Hydrocephaly:
There is nothing contradictory about these properties. They are well understood and clearly delineated by temperature and pressure. We can tell you exactly when water will change state from solid ice to liquid water to vapor. Ghost manifestation, on the other hand, has never been clearly defined and the forms they are claimed to take are all over the map and apparently willy-nilly with respect to conditions.