“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies, Horatio.” (from Hamlet, of course)
On the other hand, we’re taught in Physio-Psych that perception happens within the organism, which includes sight. Sight, we’re told, is the brain’s processing and interpretation of wavelength stimuli. So, basically, anything we see, we see it in our heads, not “out there.” I can’t see a very far leap from that to manufacturing a vision of something we expect to see, as we rely on a storehouse of knowledge to interpret, and not always accurately, our exterior environment. I can’t count the times I’ve seen people who had recently died. I see them at the market, on the street, in the car that just passed, etc. My mind was filling in the blanks on a shape that resembled someone I knew. In a sense, everything we see is a hallucination – we’re just very selective as to how we interface with our visual illusions.
How recently was she widowed? According to all the literature I’ve read, it’s very common for widows/widowers to see their spouses after death. Some psychologists believe it’s part of the brain’s attempt to process the loss…but we’re talking weeks or months, not many years. If her husband died five years ago, then I don’t know what was going on–and neither does anyone else.
I do get the impression from your account that this wasn’t one of those corner-of-the-eye, mistook-a-blanket-for-a-person things–that’s stuff we all do, and it wouldn’t have been memorable enough for her to mention.
Sounds like whatever it was, it was a pleasant experience.
So far all of the discussion has been expressions of opinion.
However, none of that opinion is based on fact.
So, I was not being facetious when I asked for references to scientific studies that have been performed.
Evidently, no such studies have been performed, so how can anyone say that peoples’ observations of “ghosts” are real, not real, hallucinations or anything else?
Nothing kills a discussion faster than the introduction of facts.
What is it that You are suggesting should be tested? As it stands, no scientific stidies are really possible without a coherent definition of a “ghost” and what it’s properties are. So far, there’s nothing to test. Show us a ghost and we’ll test it.
[moderating]
The title of this thread is “If she didn’t see a ghost, what was it?” The forum is GQ.
If you wish to debate the existence of ghosts, please go and do it in Great Debates, and leave this thread about what it is she might have seen and why.