Do you believe in ghosts?

[Vicarious]

Years ago I sort of did, but now I don't at all. I guess you need to believe in an immortal soul before you believe in ghosts, and furthermore, that requires you believe in a bunch of other things.

Nah, I don't think you have to believe in an immortal soul to believe in ghosts. I mean, I'm agnostic/borderline atheist yet I still believe in ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call them. I tend to think of it on a more scientific level. Everything is made up of energy (electrons, protons, etc), and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it has to go somewhere when someone dies. My theory is that when people, or sometimes even animals, die a particularly (in their opinion) traumatic death or maybe even make the conscious decision to just stick around, their energy hovers either where they died or seeks out a particular place or object, instead of being dispersed (what I believe to be the source of "residual" hauntings) and that energy retains certain characteristics of that person's personality, emotions, etc. (which are all essentially actions of energy being dispersed throughout the brain from neurons firing action potentials and various impulses about), these being the intelligent hauntings. It's fairly common knowledge among the paranormal community that "ghosts" appear however they want to appear, not exactly how they looked in life, and the fact that they can manipulate their appearance and other energy sources, such as electricity, magnetic fields, and sound waves just reinforces the idea for me. The fact that I've caught completely unexplainable voices on my digital recorder just completely solidified the existence for me. This probably doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone but me, but oh well, lol. It's just my theory.

 

[Patrick Williams]

The last house I lived in was haunted. I even had (reputable) paranormal investigators check it out. Having said that, I tended to believe that most hauntings were simply cases of residual energy. However, there seemed to be some intelligence behind the things that happened at my house. It wasn't just repetitive sounds/actions. You could actually elicit a response sometimes. It was weird, but I never felt threatened by it, or any need to be afraid. It actually became somewhat comfortable.

Don't the Buddhist believe that the soul stays on the earth for 7 days before it moves on or is that not correct?

 

[Billy]

How come so many of the ghost accounts are of famous people or whatever, how come its always some duke, or prince, or something and never the lowly piss-bucket boy?

 

[Patrick Williams]

How come so many of the ghost accounts are of famous people or whatever, how come its always some duke, or prince, or something and never the lowly piss-bucket boy?

Yes. And how about those who believe in reincarnation and do that past life regression stuff? Why is it they always claim they used to be Caesar, Cleopatra, a famous war general, a powerful tribal chief or something like that? Why don't you ever here them say, "I was absolutely nothing special...some little nobody shoe maker who died penniless and without one friend" or "I was the town heretic" or "I was a leper" or something like that...instead, it is always something mankind considers to be great or worthwhile...seems fishy to me.

 

[Silverwing]

Yes. Completely. Too many things have happened to my family, and myself to convince me otherwise. Although I would call them spirits or energies rather than ghosts.

 

[Rferraris]

I've seen them. Or been around them.
Could have been chemically induced. But I don't think so.

 

[Apone]

I can't say I have ever actually seen a ghost, but I definitely feel like in some way the identities of things continue on beyond physical death.

I think that it's possible and not altogether unlikely that there is a plane where beings still sort of have identities, but they don't have bodies… even in this world, people respond to each other's energy and positive energy is accepted and grows and is returned, and the same goes for negative energy… and in some ways this process doesn't depend on our physical forms at all-- so maybe it's possible for beings to exist without bodies, and it's also possible to know that they are there through the same facilities that lead to the exchange of energies-- and then maybe that knowing can bleed into your other senses.

I sometimes remember people/animals that I have known and I definitely do feel like whenever I think about them there is energy that travels to them, while other energies cannot reach them, and there are things that they can no longer see or feel, but there are also things that they can see and feel better now and then probably other things that they couldn't possibly explain to us.

It's kind of interesting now I think about some people in my life who have died and I don't know where they are now, but then when I think about other people I have this really strong sense of their being somewhere, or being happy, etc…

 

[hush]

No, not really, but it's possible. This is especially true considering I have have no idea what form ghosts or specters would come in. For all I know, I could be surrounded by invisible ghosts and be none the wiser. I'm skeptical, because I'm skeptical of most everything spiritual or paranormal, but I never firmly believe these things to be untrue. The idea certainly fascinates me, and it's something I've looked into a bit... but yeah, I don't know. Who knows what lies beyond after death? It could be anything, and no one has any way of knowing what the afterlife, if any, is like, so I remain tentatively skeptical.

 

[JGirl]

i do believe that there are spirits of those who have been here as mortals. i don't believe in things like demons or other nasty otherworldly things however.
i don't know about hauntings, however. i tend to think of them more as residual memory - not that the person is actually there anymore.
in another site i am a member at there was quite a debate about whether a ghost could be mentally ill. her argument was that all the shows on tv seem to be offering counselling to the menally ill ghosts so they could pass over into the light.
this sort of stuff gets on my nerves. it's all hype and nonsense and muddies any real incidences of contact from the other side that may take place.

 

[Cornerstone]

How come so many of the ghost accounts are of famous people or whatever, how come its always some duke, or prince, or something and never the lowly piss-bucket boy?

Probably because a lot of them are indeed bullshit. But there are plenty of cases where it is not somebody famous and is just somebody fairly random.

It's like the argument against reincarnation that always comes up; "People always say they were Napoleon" and it just isn't true. The only convincing case studies I've seen involved pretty anonymous people; sometimes soliders.

As for ghosts, though, I don't know. It feels like death is way too common for ghosts to be so rare if they were to exist. If it is simply due to a traumatic death then they would be everywhere; especially hospitals. If it is to do with not being ready for death and resisting the process of transition then maybe there are some people with very strong egos that that could happen to; but it would become more and more common I'd have thought these days. People can't even face getting old, death would really screw with them...

 

[AhSver]

I do and that's only because I saw one with my own eyes completely sober and not sleep deprived.
It was a fullmoon (or close) night in late July - early August a couple of years ago. It was nice and surprisingly cool, slightly humid. The air was full of flowery fragrance. A couple of light bugs drifted across the field trying to get laid. Overall a very pastoral pleasant setting.. I was sitting outside of the house listening to some Black Metal. There was a young tree on the hill (still is but I don't live there any longer), probably around 35 feet away from me, the moon behind it. I was looking at the moon but then my vision shifted as I saw black figure which light couldn't penetrate grow from the tree's shadow to stand next to it. It was a silhouette of a tall skinny man. It was standing facing me but didn't make any movements. At that moment my jaw dropped and I couldn't really move. Just sat there and watched long enough to realize that it wasn't an illusion. Within a minute the silhouette melted into the air and partially went back into the shadow.. Then I sat there for another 10 minute before deciding it's time to go home and get some sleep.
Pretty strange.

 

[DarkestHour]

I prefer to leave judgement suspended on them. The idea of ethereal beings wandering the earth is very interesting to me, particularly in cases where the being in question is malevolent or restless due to a dark life ending darkly. It does make me wonder just how time would be experienced in such a state. It's a smaller part of my interest in the immaterial, in general.

Besides that, I like imagining a mad poltergeist haunting an old castle and being a nuisance to visitors.

 

[AhSver]

There's this whole shadow realm / plane between the worlds where shadows do wonder.. If you every get to be sleep deprived for over three days you will start crossing that barrier, even though getting to be slightly mad because our brains are not made to function under such conditions and thus cannot sustain themselves for a long time. In this shadow world there are shadows wondering everywhere sometimes taking a notice of a person who crossed their path but usually they are indifferent. Don't know what they were, who they will be and how they ended up there. But it's true.

 

[Stu]

while it seems at times quiet clear that the model (mostly "newtonian") that we use to interact with objective reality is flawed or even false, it still seems to me that all the evidence supporting ghosts existence is purely subjective. Subjectivity is only warped when it allows for no objectivity.

You could argue that we are incapable of true objectivity though....

 

[acd]

I do and that's only because I saw one with my own eyes completely sober and not sleep deprived.
It was a fullmoon (or close) night in late July - early August a couple of years ago. It was nice and surprisingly cool, slightly humid. The air was full of flowery fragrance. A couple of light bugs drifted across the field trying to get laid. Overall a very pastoral pleasant setting.. I was sitting outside of the house listening to some Black Metal. There was a young tree on the hill (still is but I don't live there any longer), probably around 35 feet away from me, the moon behind it. I was looking at the moon but then my vision shifted as I saw black figure which light couldn't penetrate grow from the tree's shadow to stand next to it. It was a silhouette of a tall skinny man. It was standing facing me but didn't make any movements. At that moment my jaw dropped and I couldn't really move. Just sat there and watched long enough to realize that it wasn't an illusion. Within a minute the silhouette melted into the air and partially went back into the shadow.. Then I sat there for another 10 minute before deciding it's time to go home and get some sleep.
Pretty strange.

A few of my aunts and my mother have seen tall, thin silhouettes of pure black in the form of a man.
The silhouettes were so black that they stood out against the blackness of the dark rooms in which they were asleep. When my mother saw it, it sat down on her chest and she said she could not breathe. It laid down beside one of my aunts, and the other aunt, it just stood looking over her. These things all occurred at the same house. My mother said she hadn't experienced anything else like it. I don't know if its the same thing you are talking about. Just the shadow part makes me wonder.


I believe in unexplained entities.
I couldn't say what they are but I think there is much more out there than we are fully aware of. These kinds of experiences are basically universal.

Anyway, I have experienced a few things.
On one occasion, some figure bathed in silvery green light caressed me while I was about to fall asleep. When I snapped alert, I felt afraid but then a calming reassurance not to be afraid. It quickly receded backwards until it was gone. It happened in about 5 seconds, but felt much longer.
Years and years ago, I was with my friend and trying to channel spirits. (As some curious adolescents are wont to do!) felt a rush of energy up my spine and my friend said for a few seconds, my voice was different and there was a strange look in my eyes. I just remember the energy rush. She stopped everything instantly, so that is all that came of it. Maybe it was just another state of consciousness. I felt very focused on the task.

 

[Tin Man]

No, the idea seems really moronic. There are far more people dead than there have been alive. If even a fraction of the dead are still around we should be swimming in ghosts.

 

[barbad0s]

Idk, but I'm scared of the idea of them anyway. I would shit my pants if I saw one.

 

[ThomasJ79]

I used to believe in ghosts up until about college, but I don't know now. I've never seen them, but many people have told me they have and they don't seem to be lying. Here's an interesting story that I often tell people. I had an uncle that gave me a watch of his before he died, back when I was in high school. We're talking the late 90s here, back when people actually wore watches still. It was a nice gold watch, but it wasn't numbered. There was only a dash for each hour and no second hand. It was working just fine when he gave it to me, and the time was correct. At his funeral I put on that watch out of respect and saw that the time was not correct and figured the battery must have died. I told my family that it wasn't working before we went to the funeral. Then during the funeral I looked at my watch again and noticed that it was working again, and the time on the watch was correct! I got all excited and shared it with my family who got equally excited and my mom told me that he was reaching out to me. The rest of my family agreed. Well, I was looking at my watch again later and then it dawned on me: I must of flipped the watch around when I first put it on and didn't look at it until when I noticed it was working. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, feeling like an idiot. Well, at some later time it came up when some family members were telling my story to other people and I finally told them the truth and they wouldn't believe me! Oh well, I guess people will believe what they want to believe. At least they were able to get comfort out of the story and made me feel better.

 

[AhSver]

No, the idea seems really moronic. There are far more people dead than there have been alive. If even a fraction of the dead are still around we should be swimming in ghosts.

What if the fraction is very very tiny?

 

[Tin Man]

What if the fraction is very very tiny?

Then I would ask why. What is the criteria for a ghost to be created. It can't be a violent death or places like Omaha beach would be swimming with them. It also can't be unfinished business because nearly everyone has some unfinished business.