# If Ghosts are not real, then how do they transcend the ages, and cultures? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 30, 2004, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079 "2004-10-30T22:31:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/21 "2004-10-31T05:38:41Z")
> [@mangeorge](#): > > So is that annoyance you feel at my challenge to scientific wisdom nothing but chemical and electrical interactions? Yes. All emotions are. > [@mangeorge](#): > > Is it of any real advantage to the species? Maybe. Until we get too smart for our own good. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/22 "2004-10-31T07:06:57Z")
**QED** , we already are. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/23 "2004-10-31T14:34:35Z")
Moving this from IMHO to Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/24 "2004-10-31T15:56:25Z")
> [@Phlosphr](#): > > The question is simple: Ghosts, and Ghost stories have been around for ages, millennia even, and yet, scientists and skeptics denounce them as mere figments of ones imagination. > > So how on earth have they transcended continents, cultures, and thousands of years still to be put off as something that simply does not exist? If hauntings have occured since the dark ages and before, and countless studies of the ‘paranormal’ have happened for many, many years, why then can we not come up with one shred of truth validating this ‘residual self-image’ we call a ghost? > > What say you teeming millions? Ghosts…real or not? The question is simple: Dragins, and dragon stories have been around for ages, millennia even, and yet, scientists and skeptics denounce them as mere figments of ones imagination. So how on earth have they transcended continents, cultures, and thousands of years still to be put off as something that simply does not exist? ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/25 "2004-10-31T15:58:31Z")
I don’t claim to be an expert on emergent properties, but I hardly think they are the end-all in ghost talk. Across cultures, people have mourned the loss of loved ones. Sometimes our own human cognitive processes can interfere with our perceptions, and I understand this. I am talking about the uniformity over the ages and across cultural barriers that is applied to ghostly figures. This is in my view the unexplained portion of the question of their existence. ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/26 "2004-10-31T16:00:00Z")
> [@](#): > > The question is simple: Dragins, and dragon stories have been around for ages, millennia even, and yet, scientists and skeptics denounce them as mere figments of ones imagination. People don’t generally claim to see dragons in modern day do they? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/27 "2004-10-31T16:02:10Z")
The spirals and wavy lines of phosphenes and hallucinations cross cultural lines, as do most other artifacts of vision. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/28 "2004-10-31T18:23:00Z")
> [@Phlosphr](#): > > Isn’t this a bit of a contradiction? I believe the there is quite a bit of uniformity across cultures with what a spectre looks like. Whispy, opaque, devoid of life…Ghostly if you will. I am not a cultural anthropoligist (and suspect you aren’t either), but I very much doubt your assertion. It is true of western cultures probably because of a common literal thread, but not so in other parts of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/29 "2004-10-31T18:27:16Z")
I don’t think it necessarily has to do with hallucinations and junk. There is also the “mass dellusion” of religion - where the “soul” goes after death, which is pretty much uniform across the world’s diverse people. Making the leap of attributing things to unhappy or restless souls isn’t that hard. There is also an almost universal “great flood” myth that circles the globe that no one can explain. _shrugs_ ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/30 "2004-10-31T18:29:48Z")
> [@Zagadka](#): > > IThere is also an almost universal “great flood” myth that circles the globe that no one can explain. _shrugs_ Actually, that’s not all that hard to explain since there are REAL floods all the time and there are probably lots of times when it seemed like the rain would never end. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/31 "2004-10-31T19:18:03Z")
If we’re in Great Debates now, I would like to ask that the OP actually demonstrate his original point. We cannot begin to debate how ghosts transcend ages and cultures until it is actually demonstrated that they do in some meaningful way. Yes, I admit, plenty of people around the world have seen a figure of a person after the person has supposedly died. I have already said why I do not think this is a _meaningful_ coincidence, and I can re-post the links to, or quotes from, various ghost descriptions in literature to show why I don’t think these sightings are particularly uniform across “ages and cultures.” If a “ghost” looks exactly like a “human being” I can’t exactly attribute the sightings to some wild global phenomenon of spiritual events unexplainable by known psychological effects (hallucination, falsehood, wishful thinking, error). Out of curiosity, _since what era_ were ghosts translucent? I have already posted links to the Pepper’s Ghost effect used on stage as of 1863. Are there descriptions of translucent ghosts that predate this effect? Do they predate the use of sheet glass or glass mirrors, used to produce the effect? You can see a ghostly image in any flat window, when it is well-lit inside, and dark without. Regarding the whole ancient Flood story (which appears both in the Bible and in Gilgamesh, which predates it) [this National Geographic site](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html) shows some interesting research that hopes to tie many of the ancient legends to an actual cataclysmic geological event in pre-history; tales of such a flood could easily have been spread from culture to culture and slowly disseminated around the world. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/32 "2004-10-31T19:38:38Z")
> [@SimonX](#): > > The question is simple: Dragins, and dragon stories have been around for ages, millennia even, and yet, scientists and skeptics denounce them as mere figments of ones imagination. > > So how on earth have they transcended continents, cultures, and thousands of years still to be put off as something that simply does not exist? Figment [this](http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/lehrstuehle/info3/research/komodo/komodoOpfer.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/lehrstuehle/info3/research/komodo/opfer.html&h=691&w=427&sz=118&tbnid=VCtTzHGFCP4J:&tbnh=135&tbnw=84&start=156&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522komodo%2Bdragon%2522%26start%3D140%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26c2coff%3D1%26sa%3DN), eh? Even without breathing fire, the Komoto Dragon might’ve been quite an adversary for ol’ King George. Or whoever that was. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/33 "2004-10-31T19:46:15Z")
> [@Fish](#): > > If we’re in Great Debates now, I would like to ask that the OP actually demonstrate his original point. Aha! something new here - retrocite. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![sleestak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/34 "2004-10-31T20:18:19Z")
There is a theory out there that belief in ghosts, life after death and similar ideas have the same root cause. The root cause is dreams. The example I remember went something like this. Primitave guy goes out hunting with his Buddy. Buddy gets chased down and eaten by a tiger. Primitive guy goes home and, being tired from running away, goes to sleep. He dreams of Buddy. Sunndenly Buddy, who was lunch for a tiger is talking to Primitive Guy. How is this? Obviously Buddy went somewhere else, he still lives on, just not here. How else could Buddy talk to Primitive Guy? If Buddy lives on somewhere then other people probably do as well. Therefore there are ghosts and life after death. I like the theory because it is fairly simple and explains how many different cultures have similar stories. Once the stories enter the culture they then get expanded. Pretty soon you get an elaborate belief system. That is how different cultures have similar ideas but different details. I can’t remember the book/author who proposed this idea but I think it makes a lot of sense. Slee ---
**Author:** ![PaulFitzroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@PaulFitzroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaulFitzroy)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/35 "2004-10-31T20:20:46Z")
I agree with Mangeorge, I’ve never understood how basic elements and chemicals and molecules can join together and create feelings, desires and emotions. I think there must be some supernatural explanation for it, because I don’t see how any scientist can prove how this element or that element or the other combination of elements can comprise intelligence, and moreover, creativity. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2004, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/36 "2004-10-31T21:50:50Z")
> [@Phlosphr](#): > > So how on earth have they transcended continents, cultures, and thousands of years still to be put off as something that simply does not exist? Not every culture has ghost. I recall my college cultural anthropology book contained an amuseing anecdote about whether some concepts transcended all cultures. He decided to tell some African tribesman the story of Hamlet thinking that it would be understandable by all. There were confused over why Hamlet was upset about his uncle wedding his mother and they didn’t understand what a ghost was. They had no concept of a loved one living on as an incoporeal form on earth. Marc ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/37 "2004-11-01T13:47:39Z")
> [@PaulFitzroy](#): > > I agree with Mangeorge, I’ve never understood how basic elements and chemicals and molecules can join together and create feelings, desires and emotions. I think there must be some supernatural explanation for it, because I don’t see how any scientist can prove how this element or that element or the other combination of elements can comprise intelligence, and moreover, creativity. No one else understands it either. To be completely accurate (to the point of being pedantic), there is no proof either way. Generally speaking, it seems to me that to assert “supernatural forces” _must_ be the explanation is equivalent to claiming “magic” (i.e., “There is no proof necessary.”) Generally speaking, it seems to me that to claim “basic elements and chemicals” _must_ be the explanation is an appeal to Occam’s razor (which is a good principle to follow, but does not constitute proof). Personally, I’m in the latter (scientific) camp. There is a lot of supporting evidence in various scientific fields that coheres pretty well. My feeling is that the former is usually either an excuse for “I don’t get it” or a shortcut for “it conflicts with something else I believe”. But, as of now, the nature of consciousness (and its related feelings, desires, and emotions) is a huge point of contention for which there’s no accepted explanation, much less absolute proof. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/38 "2004-11-01T20:10:14Z")
> [@mangeorge](#): > > Aha! something new here - retrocite. 😛 Perhaps we could call it “hindcite.” 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/39 "2004-11-02T00:56:25Z")
> [@Fish](#): > > Perhaps we could call it “hindcite.” 🆒 There you go! And as a matter of fact, it almost calls for a new smiley. Maybe a cute little nekkid butt smiley? ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2004, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079/40 "2004-11-02T01:08:21Z")
> [@PaulFitzroy](#): > > because I don’t see how any scientist can prove how this element or that element or the other combination of elements can comprise intelligence, and moreover, creativity. The arguments that “scientists can’t give me proof” is very different from saying “proof is not possible”. Newton couldn’t explain _why_ the apple fell, only demonstrating _how_ it fell. Marie Curie could discover radiation without knowing about the nucleus. And each of these examples is far far less complex than the human brain. Add to this quantum uncertainty, and you’ve probably got a brain where it’s impossible to ever predict what will happen next. But it does not necessarily conclude that something else is in control. I for one am happy with unpredictability. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-ghosts-are-not-real-then-how-do-they-transcend-the-ages-and-cultures/272079.md?page=3)