Do you believe in ghosts?

[ReBusEniGma]

I do not believe in ghosts in the context of the spirits of dead people materializing in some way, or being able to interact with the physical realm.

[OurLordPeace]

There is no empirical evidence for ghosts, thus I can dismiss (without offering any evidence) the idea of ghosts.

[Loach]

Ghosts don’t exist. At least not until November 5th.
Really this is something I have to battle with my ex-wife about. She fills the kids heads with this kind of drivel. Thankfully they are old enough to hear what I have to say on the matter and I’m careful to not imply what it says about their mother.

[Gyrate]

My favorite real-life ghost story is from 1921 and was reported on This American Life. The details are recounted by the lady of the house:

@Mrs H

Mr. H and I had not been in the house more than a couple of days when we felt very depressed. The house was overpoweringly quiet. The servants walked about on thickly carpeted floors so quietly that I could not even hear them at their work.

[…]

One morning, I heard footsteps in the room over my head. I hurried up the stairs. To my surprise, the room was empty. I passed into the next and then into all the rooms on that floor, and then to the floor above to find that I was the only person in that part of the house. Sometimes after I’ve gone to bed, the noises from the store room are tremendous, as if furniture was being piled against the door, as if china was being moved about, and occasionally a long and fearful sigh or wail.

Sometimes as I walk along the hall, I feel as if someone was following me, going to touch me. You can not understand it if you’ve not experienced it. But it’s real. As I was dressing for breakfast one morning, B, who is four years old, came to my room and asked me why I’d called him. I told him I’d not called him, that I’d not been in his room. With big and startled eyes he said, ‘Who was it, then, that called me? Who made that pounding noise?’

I told him it was undoubtedly the wind rattling his window. ‘No,’ he said, ‘It was not that. It was somebody that called me. Who was it?’ And so on he talked, insisting that he’d been called and for me to explain who it had been.

And as the story goes on, the adults and the children report being held down in their beds by unseen figures. Beds shake. Their plants die. They and their children feel weak and they have no energy. They get severe headaches.

@Mrs. H

Some nights, after I’ve been in bed for a while, I’ve felt as if the bed clothes were jerked off me. And I’ve also felt as if I’d been struck on the shoulder. One night I woke up and saw, sitting on the foot of my bed, a man and a woman. The woman was young, dark and slight and wore a large picture hat. I was paralyzed and could not move.

And finally, one day, they think to check the basement of the house. And IN THE BASEMENT THEY DISCOVERthat the furnace has been leaking carbon monoxide, which caused the hallucinations and other problems. So they fixed the furnace and the problems stopped.Spoooooooky.

[Yllaria]

@Orr_G

. . . My belief is that most experiences of ghosts are due to what the skeptics would call hallucinations or delusions: essentially, imagination given too much credence for one reason or another. . . . .

The brain also functions to fill in things that are normally there. If grandpa used to always sit in that chair, you can sometimes see him out of the corner of your eye just because your brain is completing the picture. I had a similar thing happen with, of all things, a neon insurance company sign.

I was driving my parents down a street in Davis, while they looked for the address for an insurance company that they wanted to visit. They couldn’t find it, so I went around a few blocks and tried again. I saw the name of the company on a neon sign in their window and circled for a parking space.

My parents hadn’t seen the address and asked if I was sure. I explained about the sign. They looked puzzled and asked if I was really sure. I parked and we walked down to the window. There was no neon sign. But there was the right address. The numbers had been painted over so that you wouldn’t see them unless you were within a couple of feet. Well, however we got there it was the right place, so we went in.

My parents finished their business and as we were leaving, I mentioned the trouble with finding the address and how I had seen a sign out of the corner of my eye. I described it. He said that, yes, they had such a sign, but it was out for repair. So my brain had filled in the ghost of a neon insurance sign.

[InternetLegend]

Nope. But I do enjoy the odd ghost story.