Who believes in ghosts?

[Dinsdale]

Just curious, of those who have expressed a belief in ghosts/poltergeists, do you believe in any other “supernatural” being/occurrences?

Aliens?
God?
Angels?
Witchcraft?
ESP?
…

[Scylla]

PLD:

It’s much simpler than that. We send our ghosts to the ethereal plane, steal heat, and generate cold spots there.

What do you think dreams are? Why do you think you always wake up hot and sweaty from them in the middle of the night?

[pennylane]

I was going to ask a question similar to this, so maybe I’ll just ask it here. Is there anyone who believes in “ghosts” (or similar beings) but does not believe in God and/or the afterlife?

[Gaudere]

Another example: the grandfather clock will, from time to time, make a noise that’s not a chime, more like running your fingers along a harp’s string. Kind of a bbbbrrringg…

Grandfather clocks make that noise all the time; maybe not usually several times a day, but often enough that I’ve noticed it. Perhaps you’d never noticed it before moving wherever you are, or is this your first grandfather clock? I think it’s when the coil inside switches from winding to unwinding. If my dad or grandad were still alive I’d ask them what it was, they were watchmakers. At any rate, I’ve lived with a grandfather clock for twenty-some years, and that noise is common.

[celestina]

I believe in ghosts, and I’ve seen them and talked with some too. I was staying with some friends who live in Brooklyn, and I asked the ghost who lives in their house with them not to bug them and to watch out for them. And he respected my wishes. The next time I went to visit, they told me the ghost hadn’t bothered them since the last time I’d been to visit. Whoo, and the French Quarter in New Orleans freaks me out. There are some really angry, sad ghosts in that place. I don’t see how folks stand it down there. There’s such a thick pall of sadness and anger and grief there. [shudder] Maybe that’s why folks drink so much down there.

So if ghosts exist in the same reality that I find myself in, then I guess there must be at least one to several possible kinds of afterlifes/realities. I have no idea why ghosts get stuck in houses or other places. Perhaps they like being there so much they don’t want to leave, or perhaps they just don’t know how to leave, or they don’t BELIEVE they can leave? [shrug] As far as belief in god, yeah, I believe. For now. I think I’m more inclined to believe in god because I’ve seen ghosts and stuff. I’ve also had freaky ESP experiences with a fella who lives miles away from me and who’d call me on the rare occasions I’d get really upset and ask me what was the matter and if I was okay. How could he know I was upset?

[UncleBeer]

[ul]
[li] Aliens? Possibly, but there ain’t a shred of evidence. And they’ve certainly not visited this planet recently[/li][li] God? No.[/li][li] Angels? No.[/li][li] Witchcraft? No.[/li][li] ESP? And no.[/li][/ul]

Nor is there such a thing as a “soul.” Or chakras, karma, auras, fate, predestination, perdition, valhalla, remote viewing, psychic surgery, holistic medicine, crystal or pyramid power, homeopathy, cartomancy, astrology, aeluromancy, pamistry, astragalomancy, alphitomancy, coscinomancy, geomancy, dowsing, metoposcopy, oinomancy, scrying, sideromancy, margaritomancy, daphnomancy, etc. What have I missed? Oh yeah, “cleidomancy,” (divination by interpreting the movements of a key suspended by a thread from the nail of the third finger on a young virgin’s hand while one of the Psalms was recited).
If it cannot be “sensed,” or reliably used, in the physical world, of what use is it anyway?

[Tars_Tarkas]

*Originally posted by UncleBeer *
**If it cannot be “sensed,” or reliably used, in the physical world, of what use is it anyway? **

Well, my dreams can’t be “sensed” in that i don’t remember them, and i never use them for anything reliably, but they are useful to me to keep my subconsious from going bonkers.
Why does everything need a purpose? Why can’t they just be?
And as for me, ghost may exist, they may not exist the way we think they do, they may just be left over energy, or maybe lost souls, or any number of things. but sometimes weird crap happens, and it can’t be explained, so who you gonna call?

[scotth]

*Originally posted by (your name here) *
**Course I do, my dear Doughnut. I’ll relate to you the one night which scared the poop outta me. I was spending the night at a friends house. We were to sleep in his attic, since that was the only place there was room for us both to fit. When I arrived at his house I didn’t like it, especially when I got his attic, I was nervous. To keep it short, the temperature enjoyed changing. There were cold pockets, of humanish size wandering though the room. Later, the themperature drastically changed in brief periods of time. I mean, sweating to shivering in 30 seconds. Then we saw orbs. Then we left. I saw more orbs. I have yet to return to the attic, or the house.
**

I have had a very similar experience, but I was seriously altered every time.

[GIGObuster]

so who you gonna call?

GIGObuster! . . . . . . . .

On second thought, better get the cops of the ghosts: CSICOP:

http://www.youngskeptics.org/library/detail.asp?Num=147

http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-01/ghost.html

At the same time, I resisted the “ghost” explanation and wondered about my willingness to accept the possibility. The noises, after all, were really nothing new, just the creaks and groans of the house. They had always been there, but rarely the focus of my attention. Either every house I’d ever visited had a resident ghost (possible, but surely unlikely), or house noises were commonplace, not the production of invisible spirits. But the door incident remained on my mind. I realized, finally, that my mind, operating out of awareness, demanded an explanation of the door’s behavior. It wasn’t the wind; it wasn’t my wife. What the hell was it? I had to know; but only the ghost hypothesis remained.
Because of my training as a Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapist (REBT) I had learned to challenge the notion of demandingness. After some mental work on that I finally realized that I didn’t have to know what prompted the door to open; once I achieved that, I stopped fixating on the damned (no irony intended) event. I had made the same error that humans have made since our cave-dwelling ancestors roamed the earth. When rational explanation failed to settle the matter, they invoked spirits and magical events. Any explanation would be better than chaos and, if one could invoke the spirits, it implied power over ugly reality. And we are the genetic inheritors of what worked for survival.
Albert Ellis (the creator of REBT), a highly esteemed psychologist, has suggested that human beings 1) have a strong tendency to be irrational, and 2) have a strong tendency to ignore data contrary to their beliefs. However, this can be overcome by training in critical thinking. That is the essence of his psychotherapy, teaching people how to think about their beliefs regarding reality. We need to teach our children how to think and reason at the earliest age possible, a process that should be ongoing.

[Homebrew]

*Originally posted by UncleBeer *
Nor is there such a thing as … margaritomancy

I don’t know about this. I’ve seen some strange things after a couple pitchers of Margaritas

[UncleBeer]

Well, my dreams can’t be “sensed” in that i don’t remember them, but they are useful to me to keep my subconsious from going bonkers.

Really? Is this the current scientific thinking? Or just one possible explanation among many? How do you know you have them if you don’t remember them? Perhaps the dream experience is simply a construct of a totally conscious mind. How do you really know you dream?

Anyway, how does the existence of dreams infer the existence of ghosts?

[Tars_Tarkas]

Anyway, how does the existence of dreams infer the existence of ghosts?

i was refering to the dismissle of all things non-physical. But some people(not me) think that ghosts are actually psychic energy left over from violent or passionate events, and are not really “souls” at all. Of course, to buy this, you gotta beleive in the whole “psychic energy” school of thought, and that is one step away from the nutters who go one about psychic energy being the mission component of the GUT. Then they start talking about aliens, anti-gravity rays, and the Pleidians, then the Greys, the Reptilians, and alien/human hybrids, underground bases…trust me, you don’t wanna know the rest.
And i remember reading somewhere that dreaming helps your mind stay focused, or something like that. if i have time today i will try to find it, but it is almost time to leave work.

[pldennison]

*Originally posted by Tars Tarkas *
**

*Originally posted by UncleBeer *
**If it cannot be “sensed,” or reliably used, in the physical world, of what use is it anyway? **

Well, my dreams can’t be “sensed” in that i don’t remember them,**

But they can be sensed, even if you can’t remember them. Give me an EEG and someone capable of reading it properly, connect it to your head, and I can tell you precisely when you are dreaming.

and i never use them for anything reliably, but they are useful to me to keep my subconsious from going bonkers.

Accepting the premise that dreams are in fact a psychic dumping ground for the brain, or a method for the brain to collate each day’s events, then they are in fact “reliably used in the physical world.”

but sometimes weird crap happens, and it can’t be explained, so who you gonna call?

“Hasn’t been explained” != “Can’t be explained.”

[delphica]

I don’t exactly believe in ghosts – that is, I don’t believe in the spirits of the dead walking around, or other spiritual type entities wandering about. But I do think that many of the people who experience ghosts are experiencing something. It drives me crazy that we don’t know what it is. Some sort of expression of one’s own memory? A momentary sensory mix-up that repeats itself under the right conditions?

My own ghost story is not particularly scary – and I know at least one other person once posted a similar story – but what’s with the ghost cat? Before we got our actual cat, we moved into a new apartment, and every few nights, I would feel a cat jump on to the bed. It was that typical cat thing – a little bump as the cat jumped on the bed, then a little padding around while he decided where he wanted to sleep, and then the plop of the cat lying down. The first times this happened, I was convinced an actual cat had gotten into the apartment, and got up and turned on the lights to look for him.

Now I highly doubt this is the manifestation of some cat that has gone to the Great Litterbox in the Sky. But what is it? A secret longing for a cat on my part? Something about our new apartment reminded me of my childhood home, and triggered a very realistic memory of my childhood cat getting into bed?

Questions about how the mind works, and how we form and express memory, are a lot more intriguing and mysterious to me than the idea of messages from beyond the grave (feline or otherwise). I have great faith that someday, science will be able to analyze and explain what we now call “ghostly” phenomona.

[mmm.forbidden_doughnut]

*Originally posted by glee *
**Welcome to the board! **

Thanks!

• by Enuma Elish * like underpants gnomes!

Not that is an option I hadn’t considered… hmmmm…

• by Uncle Beer* If they indeed exist, they must have far more interesting things to do than see what kind of mold is growing in your fridge.

Hungry, maybe? And Uncle Beer, I’ll have you know there was no mold growing in my fridge ** at that time**. We’d only been there one day! And thanks for moving us to the right forum. I feel like quite the rabble-rouser, starting a Great Debate and all.

Aliens? dunno. I rather doubt it.
God?** Yes **
Angels? ** Yes **
Witchcraft? ** Yes**
ESP? ** Yes **

• by plnnr* I wasn’t really a believer until recently…I’ll post my story when I get back in the office this afternoon. Spooked the every living poop out of me.

Still waiting…

• by Duck Duck Goose *…atoms have the quantum statistical value of fermions. That is, unlike photons, which are instead bosons, they are limited in number as well as limited to the number which may simultaneously occupy a particular quantum state. Popular physics works inform us that while the number of fermions in the universe is fixed, the number of bosons in not, hence bosons such as photons may be produced in such vast numbers as evidenced by the light which issues from light bulbs, whereas fermions such as electrons are not so easy to come by.

Superfluids have been demonstrated by such material as supercooled helium isotopes, which demonstrate unusual and notably reversed physical behavior, in that they flow more freely the more confined the space they are travelling. Such stark inversion of physical properties is highly characteristic of the concepts, philosophies, and phenomena of magick.

While temperature obviously plays a role in this effect, some accounts attribute this to a quantum statistical shift that occurs because of the element being an isotope; they say therefore that this property pertains to these atoms being bosons instead of fermions.

While changes in the number of atoms due to this process is as critical a point as where mediums are obtaining matter for materializations, since it is frequently reported not to be made by such a ?magical? process as the number of fermions in question ceasing to be limited, but borrowed from the bodies of participants in seances.

One word comes to mind: HUH?

• by Scylla* Well technically, that phenomenom proves the existance of ghosts. You see, your average poltergeist exists in the ethereal plane. When it manifests in the material plane it requires energy, which it absorbs in the form of heat from the proximity of its manifestation on the earthly plane. The heat given off from the energy expended manifests on the ethereal plane. The net effect is that ghosts are instruments of entropy, removing the energy they need to operate from the material plane, and expelling the waste heat in the ethereal plane.

See response to above quote.

• by Uncle Beer* Really? Is this the current scientific thinking? Or just one possible explanation among many?

Just because it is current scientific thinking doesn’t make it correct. It’s possible to be current and scientific and wrong. Too many examples of this throughout history to list. But the beauty of science (and history, for that matter) is that it is changing constantly as we gain more information. What’s current scientific thinking today maybe hullabaloo tomorrow. So, it’s far from concrete. The idea that the theory is one possible explanation among many is more appealing to me because it gives other avenues to investigate. Perhaps we will never know…

[Mangetout]

*Originally posted by Ferggie *
We (mostly my Mom) experienced a number of strange things in this one house we lived at when I was 9-14 years old. Things, mostly hairbrushes, would go missing and turn up in totally bizarre places, like behind books on a bookshelf. Reference books and such nobody had touched since we moved in.

“Hey, I can’t find my hairbrush!”
“Why don’t you try looking behind those books that we never look at”
Hmmmm.

[SpaceGhostofArrakis]

I do not Believe in Ghosts, but like every intelligent man I fear them
-Arthur C. Clarke

[UncleBeer]

But they can be sensed, even if you can’t remember them. Give me an EEG and someone capable of reading it properly, connect it to your head, and I can tell you precisely when you are dreaming.

I understand that, Phil. What I’m trying, not so effectively apparently, is to get the psi-believers thinking about the scientific method—how it works, what it does for us, how its proper use informs us of the true nature of the physical world, etc. Then, I’d like them to apply that methodology to the evidence for ghosts, or spirits, or any paranormal phenomenon. Using the framework of the scientific method, they will have then validated themselves, honestly and effectively, should yield the conclusion that paranormal beings simply do not exist, nor do paranormal events occur.

I guess I posted that as a goad, if you will. I wanted the psi-believers to challenge my statement, as you have done, using good design of experiments, ration, and accepted methodolgy.

[UncleBeer]

Just because it is current scientific thinking doesn’t make it correct. It’s possible to be current and scientific and wrong. Too many examples of this throughout history to list.

That’s exactly correct. That is one of the beautiful things about science, its self-correcting nature. However, the statement was made up there as a matter of fact and to the exclusion of any other theory. I was merely questioning this unsubstantiated dictate.

[DrFidelius]

I have it on good authority that the existence of ghosts is not dependant upon my belief in them.

Unlike fairies…