# Ghosts.... Do you believe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 27, 2000, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921 "2000-11-27T21:54:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2000, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/61 "2000-12-02T17:30:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David B \* > BTW: If you are lying to yourself, how do you know you’re lying? \*\* It’s easy. You just have to be very straight forward and honest about it. You work under the guise of keeping an open mind, and rationalize, rationalize, rationalize (haven’t you ever heard motivational tapes?) You know you’re lying to yourself when you start first with your conclusion and then figure out how to get there. In the immortal words of one of the great poets of our time, George Michaels: “…All we have to do now, is take these lies, and make them true somehow. Yah! Yah! Freedom!” I always thought that what George was saying was that it was actually the converse of “The truth shall set you free,” that was actually true. ---
**Author:** ![lolagranola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ea5d25/32.png) [@lolagranola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lolagranola)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2000, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/62 "2000-12-02T18:31:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course, every house has its noises. I recall hearing sounds that seemed to come from the roof, too. I recall thinking they might be footsteps. But when I was hearing it, we had been recently robbed, so I wasn’t thinking “ghosts,” I was thinking “burglars.” I’m sure I’d heard the exact same sounds prior and long after, but didn’t think about them then. I’m just as sure that if somebody had said the house was haunted, I’d have been thinking they were ghosts. (Indeed, when I was younger and read a book about UFOs, a bright flash of light passed over my window that night and I was SURE it was a UFO. Needless to say, it wasn’t.) I just wanted to point out that these were not regular house noises, of which we had many. These were distinct pacing noises. And yes, we were thinking burglars. That’s why my childhood has many memories of my dad getting a ladder to check to see who was on the roof. But even he would get a little concerned when the walking noises would continue down the hall (the floor creaked a little, making it very distinct). And actually, no one in my house believed in ghosts, so absolutely no one said it was haunted. I still don’t believe that the house was haunted. My only point was that the noises and various experiences were distinct and unexplainable. Since I don’t believe in ghosts or hauntings, I simply take the odd experiences as unexplainable events. I just don’t classify the sounds of footsteps going over the roof, down the hallway, across your room, a feeling of your bed going down like someone sat on it, and then icy hands on your back as normal. > [@](#): > > Well, if there were “many” that kind of makes up the “mass” part. But seriously, it depends on what you mean by “mass hysteria.” Studies have been done (even by a couple of guys I know) that show how people who think a place is haunted will see things that make them further believe it is haunted. So if you and several other people started to believe that “weird things” were going on in your house, odds are good that you would find more “weird things” the more you looked. That’s a good point. I always believe that you will find what you are looking for. I honestly don’t think that I, my family, or houseguests over the years were looking for weird things. I didn’t warn houseguests, and if the expressed concern over any odd events during the night, I told them to ignore it. Still, I do believe that one can unconciously expect things, and I would occasionally get a little jumpy, perhaps meaning that sometimes things might be more in the back of my mind than I thought. My father would simply insist that someone must be on the roof, or somehow animals were the cause of the noise. He had no theories on the footsteps down the hall, or anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Totoro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Totoro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Totoro)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2000, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/63 "2000-12-02T20:40:30Z")
The reason this question can never be answered is once dead, you can’t tell someone else what it’s like unless their dead also, and if it’s true and someone has made that connection, who’s going to believe them anyway? I believe in an afterlife, just because I know this isn’t all I get. I know people who tell me their ghostly experiences, and their beliefs in god. I just think that their’s something, I don’t know what, so I figure I’ll find out what it is at that time. Right now, I got problems that are tangible, and I just can’t worry about it now, but I think about it a lot anyway. Might as well work out the problmes I got in this life… ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2000, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/64 "2000-12-04T15:40:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eve \* > \*\*It’s like saying, “broccoli is good for me—I should like it.” But it still tastes awful, no matter how good for me it may be! \*\* Have you tried covering God in yummy cheese sauce? ---
**Author:** ![jab1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ee7513/32.png) [@jab1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jab1)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2000, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/65 "2000-12-04T17:44:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Totoro \* > \*\*The reason this question can never be answered is once dead, you can’t tell someone else what it’s like unless their dead also, and if it’s true and someone has made that connection, who’s going to believe them anyway? > > I believe in an afterlife, just because I know this isn’t all I get. I know people who tell me their ghostly experiences, and their beliefs in god. I just think that their’s something, I don’t know what, so I figure I’ll find out what it is at that time. Right now, I got problems that are tangible, and I just can’t worry about it now, but I think about it a lot anyway. Might as well work out the problmes I got in this life… \*\* You might start working on your English. ---
**Author:** ![JimmyNipples](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/eb9ed0/32.png) [@JimmyNipples](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimmyNipples)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2000, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/66 "2000-12-05T15:01:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by David B \* > Remember, I’ve always thought that it didn’t seem right to be alive one second and dead and gone the next. I don’t want to say it was an instinctual thought, but it seemed right to me to think this way. Maybe it is instinct? > > This is somewhat different from what you said. You already had some faith that people don’t just cease to exist when they die. Then you built on that faith by reading something that supported it. > > The way you had previously described it was as if you had no such faith and, in fact, didn’t really believe in life after death. But, since you didn’t like that belief, just convinced yourself to think differently. \*\* You’re right…I didn’t explain what I believed before my room mate’s mother died. That’s because I didn’t believe anything. I didn’t even think about death. Of course, I knew people died, but not 20 year olds, especially me. I was indestructible. Just like any young person. I had just talked with her that afternoon. It was a huge shock to me. I guess I didn’t want to believe that when you died, that was it. It’s much more comforting to think you live on in some other form. Right or wrong, it’s _nicer_ to think that. I wrestled with believing it for a while. If you had faith in an after life, you were weak and stupid and gullible. I had to take that leap of faith…and I’m okay with it. ---
**Author:** ![David\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/51bf81/32.png) [@David\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_B)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2000, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921/67 "2000-12-09T14:33:55Z")
I agree that it’s _nicer_ to believe in life after death. It’s also nicer to believe that I’m a multimillionaire and don’t have to go in to work on Monday. But just because it’s nicer doesn’t make it true. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghosts-do-you-believe/42921.md?page=3)