It’s a glitch in the Matrix.
I know what we’re discussing isn’t pareidolia, but I think it’s something close. And I just had to share this.
Apologies if it’s too irreverant for a discussion on loved and missed relatives and cognitive functions.
Ha. The other night I walked out of the office where my computer is, into the family room. I saw my kid sitting at the other computer and almost said Hi to him before I realized…he is at camp this week.
Here’s what’s going on. Several times a week I walk out of this room and into or through that room, and often he is sitting there. It’s kind of a dark corner unless the light right over it’s on, and he turns that off so he can see the screen better, so it’s a puddle of relative darkness.
Being accustomed to coming out and seeing him there, I “saw” him out of the corner of my eye. Of course when I actually looked, he wasn’t there. But my mind expected to see him there, or at least thought it was a possibility. Probably my subconscious was wondering about him and whether he’s having fun and how the whitewater rafting thing was going for him.
(Of course, if I later found out that something had happened to him, right at that moment, I would take it as a premonition. But if he comes home as usual this weekend I’ll forget all about it.
I call that a “memory echo”.
For example, we had a dog as a kid, and everyday I came home from school, I’d hear the happy sound ::jingle jingle snort snort:: as he came trotting to the door to meet me with his tags jingling together.
I heard this sound, every day as part of the same formula for years. It was like choreography: reach in front zipped pocked of backpack, pull out key, hold screen door with right leg, insert key, hear snort-jingle from dog, open door while sliding backpack down arm to block dog from running out of the house, enter.
I didn’t have to think about the process at all, it was all done on autopilot. For years, every time I came home.
So, years later. Dog is long dead and buried. I’m visiting home from college. I pull my house key out of the front zipped pocket of my backpack… the rest was all on autopilot… I swear I heard the dog’s snort-jingle. I didn’t, but my brain had revived that little program so completely that I sort of processed the stuff that expected to be there.
My grandmother died last October. I’m not super-sentimental, we didn’t have an especially close relationship, and her death was pretty ordinary in the grand scheme of things. I don’t live near the rest of my family, but I was at my uncle’s house for a family 4th of July party. I’m walking through the yard, surrounded by family members, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Grandma and think, “oh, Grandma’s here”. I take another step and think, “umm, what now?”. I stop and look, and standing where I saw her is, in fact, my uncle’s mother-in-law. I know her, and have interacted with her maybe a dozen times (including at my grandmother’s funeral), and despite sharing a set of grandchildren with my grandmother, she does not look at all like she did. I do not believe in the supernatural, but I really did “see” my grandmother. Of course, this “seeing” took place under very special circumstances, was only true inside my head, did not hold up under foveal examination, and did not happen to anyone else.
All I can offer is that my mother said she distinctly saw my father soon after he had passed away. That was some years ago. She even said he spoke to her. It happened once only and even she admitted that it must have been an hallucination.
The most vivid and realistic dreams I ever had were of my parents after they had been dead for years. I’m still emotionally affected by those dreams even though they were years ago. The id is a strange thing; if the images of the people are that strongly ingrained, it’s easy to see them manifesting themselves as an hallucination during waking hours.
I’ve certainly had plenty of vivid dreams involving my grandfather or one of my mom’s old cats (oddly, not any of the other cats she’s had, nor the dog, but then, that cat had an extremely strong personality) after they died. The eeriest and most vivid dream I’ve had, though, was that my closest uncle (who, in waking life, is still alive and well) had died. His death wasn’t even in the dream: I dreamt that I was grieving for him.
I had an experience with priming that I’ve related here before, about seeing a sign on the side of a van and watching the letters re-arrange themselves from what I thought I saw to what was actually there. I also have hypnagogic visions, where I see things in my bedroom at night when I’m half awake and half asleep. I don’t think they’re ghosts; I think my brain is just having a bit of fun. It seems to happen more when the fans are on, I’ve noticed.
Contrary to popular belief, there has been a lot of research done on this topic, by competent real scientists.
As it turns out, this is the most common “ghost” phenomena reported; but the dead person is usually seen almost immedately after their death.
It is also a common phenomenon that living people under extreme distress are seen by loved ones far removed.
The biggest difficulty in this kind of research is “who ya gonna call” if you see one? So we have no way of actually quantifying its prevalence.
Thought I’d chime in and say, I have seen a Ghost in the dark house move from one room to another in '79. Not once but, at least two times, same one same situation.
I’ve since discounted it as some type of light smoke from the furnace or water heater, coming through the cracks in the floor from the basement. As, I walk through the front door it disturbed the smoke in such a way that my mind produced an image of something else there.
Then there was this apparition, or a ghost in broad daylight in '87. Which I cant really describe. This one had feeling associated with it.
I had also tried to debunk this as heat and cold mixture in a hallway with sunlight rays streaming from the other end. Which coincides with me just installing new AC system in a house and going to check the thermostat.
(I can’t remember if I had turned it on yet).
The strange thing is that my Step Father had passed away in the hospital at round that time. At least, that was what I was told by the Nurses on duty when I went to see him after work.
Third, was a possible GRB (gamma ray burst) in ‘97. Lying back starring at a star straight up, a new star appeared close to it, slowly at first, then kept getting brighter till’ it was about as bright the original star I was looking at, then all the sudden it seemed to waver, then it collapsed real fast and seemed to explode in brightness two times as much a moment later, then slowly fade away.
First I thought it was a star going Super Nova, but those don’t last 30 sec, but for weeks. Then I thought GRB.
But, it was most likely a satellite doing some maneuver, except this was midnight and it was stationary, Iridium flares happen around Dusk and Dawn, and I’m not sure there can be geocentric satellites this far up from the Equator.
Anyway, there is all kinds of strange stuff to see, but not necessarily resulting from some supernatural thing going on.
I have yet to see a UFO, Nessie or even Bigfoot. That doesn’t meant they can’t exist…It’s just Highly Unlikely. 
It really puzzles me that there is so much diversity if life in every nook and cranny on Earth, but not a peep if it anywhere else in the same solar system. :dubious:
Right. There are no such things as ghosts. But you did provide an explanation that seems to work all right.
You say that about every ghost sighting. I really wish you’d stop projecting like that.
To add to concepts like “mis-filed memory”, are the recent findings that imply that for episodic memory, every time you access such memories they are rewritten anew and it is quite natural for such memories to become embellished over time.
If she thought she saw her late husband, even if it was a split-second thing, and she wasn’t quite sure etc., she may replay the memory many times and very quickly it will acquire extra details, significance and certainly duration.
This is not delusion, this is a normal weakness of human memory.
Could you please cite one or more references in peer reviewed, scientific journals that document that?
Thanks.
Can you cite a peer-reviewed article proving there is no such thing as smurfs?
And that’s why technically you shouldn’t declare “Smurfs do not exist (beyond their fictional representations)”
You should say; there’s no evidence they exist, and lots of simpler, proven theories to explain any small number of sightings.
I think it’s more likely that she was lying than having a hallucination. /shrug
When my dog of nearly 20 years died, I would still “see” him in his corner or at the foot of the bed from time to time out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t a ghost, my brain was so used to him being there, that it would kind of fill in the blanks. I’d walk into a very familiar room and of course my dog was in that room like he had been for decades, then I’d remember he was dead. It’s natural, not supernatural.
It’s ok to go ahead and say the impossible is impossible. Ghosts not only lack evidence, they are (to the extent of whatever vague definition can be attributed to them) physical impossibilities.