Ghosts

@vivify said
Do any of you believe in ghosts?

I am agnostic about it. Perhaps 100% of the sensationalization of ghost-stuff popularized in the mass media [especially here where I live] is showbiz fodder. But I've been in the human vicinity of some events and incidents in my extended family that leave me a tiny bit open-minded about the subject

@vivify said
Do any of you believe in ghosts?

I don't know what you mean by "believe in." I have had many paranormal experiences in my life, especially when I was younger. A number of these experiences were corroborated by other people at the time and none of them had satisfactory (naturalistic or scientific) explanations. Some of them fit in with what common folklore would call "ghost" or "poltergeist" activity, whatever that may be. Does that mean I "believe in" ghosts? I hardly know what to say; I don't doubt my senses, but I also cannot explain everything I have experienced. What I can say with certainty is that there are things in the universe we do not fully understand.

@vivify said
Do any of you believe in ghosts?

I believe in an afterlife, so yes I suppose I do.

If you specifically mean illuminated translucent images of dead people floating down corridors with their heads under their arm, then no I don’t believe in that type of paranormal activity.

@moonbus said
I don't know what you mean by "believe in." I have had many paranormal experiences in my life, especially when I was younger. A number of these experiences were corroborated by other people at the time and none of them had satisfactory (naturalistic or scientific) explanations. Some of them fit in with what common folklore would call "ghost" or "poltergeist" activity, whateve ...[text shortened]... . What I can say with certainty is that there are things in the universe we do not fully understand.

Care to expand on these experiences, how old you were and when they stopped etc?

@moonbus said
What I can say with certainty is that there are things in the universe we do not fully understand.

This is how I see it, too.

@divegeester said
Care to expand on these experiences, how old you were and when they stopped etc?

I was about 17 or 18. I lived in a house with my father and step-mother at the time. Other members of the family would come to visit (brother and sister lived with my mother at that time, but had visitation rights). All of these people reported strange goings-on over a period of years. Mostly noises, but sometimes objects were found to have moved when no one was in the house or in the room concerned.

One recurring phenomenon I recall well, and which was reported by several people was this: you know the sound of a dresser drawer being opened? The wood makes a special scraping noise as it is drawn outwards in its track, and then you let loose of the handles and they swing down and make a rattling-knocking noise as they smack the wooden frontpiece of the drawer. This is a quite distinct sound, and unique to each dresser drawer and type of handle. Well, several people reported hearing the opening of dresser drawers, but always in the next room (whatever room it was) and unoccupied, and NOT OUR DRESSERS. Some other dresser drawer with different handles. This happened often enough to several different people that we came to accept that the house was haunted. Now, just what haunting is, I do not pretend to know. I only know that we heard what we heard, and I have no reason to doubt my senses or the sanity of the other people who reported hearing this too.

It was always unnerving and startling when something like that happened. One would hear furniture moving, a chair scraping across the floor in the next room (for example), and thinking Sis must be there, one would open the door and find, to one's amazement, that no one was in the room (windows locked from inside, no other exit, no tape recorder playing noises, no tv or radio on in the background, no one hiding in the closet, yes, we did all the obvious forensic investigations). But nothing dangerous or threatening ever happened; no knives suddenly flew across the room and embedded themselves in a wall.

At some point, we decided to find out who had lived in the house before us, and we learned that a man had died in the house after a long illness. His name was Harry, so we half-jokingly attributed all strange goings-on to 'Harry' after that. We also figured that, if a burglar ever broke in, 'Harry' would have scared the living daylights out of him, so in a way we came to feel secure.

@moonbus said

At some point, we decided to find out who had lived in the house before us, and we learned that a man had died in the house after a long illness. His name was Harry, so we half-jokingly attributed all strange goings-on to 'Harry' after that. We also figured that, if a burglar ever broke in, 'Harry' would have scared the living daylights out of him, so in a way we came to feel secure.

I think somebody has probably died in most houses. (Especially old ones).

Personally, I don't believe in ghosts but the incidents you described are difficult to explain. That said, I am certain there is a reasonable (and natural) explanation, even if that explanation isn't apparent.

@vivify said
Do any of you believe in ghosts?

no

@ghost-of-a-duke said
I think somebody has probably died in most houses. (Especially old ones).

Personally, I don't believe in ghosts but the incidents you described are difficult to explain. That said, I am certain there is a reasonable (and natural) explanation, even if that explanation isn't apparent.

Moreover, very similar experiences are recounted in similar terms by people in all cultures in all time periods throughout history. I know what some people will say: it's imagination or hallucinations. While some of these experiences could be explained (explained away), I don't believe all of them can be. There remains a hard core of genuinely strange and unexplained phenomena.

If I had had sufficient resources at the time, I would have placed recording equipment in the rooms most often affected by strange occurrences and let it run continuously. Unfortunately, we had no digital video cameras in those days saving massive amounts of data to harddiscs. We had only magnetic tape recorders, and it would have used up miles and miles of tape just recording a few days. The occurrences were not regular, of course, but sporadic and widely separated in time.

I will also mention that I have known several people with psychic abilities. They have told me things they could not possibly have known by any conventional means. For example, one of them told me things about my maternal grandmother, things I could not possibly have known about her because they happened before I was born. Things only my mother would have known, and the psychic had had no previous contact with my mother. I later verified these claims with my mother. The psychic would go into a trance and speak in an accent foreign to her and use turns of phrase or idioms she would not ordinarily use, but familiar to a midwesterner (my grandmother was from Nebraska), and recount incidents which happened (before my birth). The psychic herself described what she was doing as "talking to spirits." Or ghosts? I don't know how she did that, only that she knew things she could not possibly have known by conventional means. I accepted her description of talking to spirits at face value, without knowing what a spirit would be. "Necromancy," I suppose is what a Christian fundamentalist would call it; talking to demons.

This phenomenon of talking with the dead is also recounted in similar terms in all cultures and times and places. I don't know quite what to make of it, but I accept it at face value, where the claims can be independently verified (as I was sometimes able to do).

@vivify said
Do any of you believe in ghosts?

The interesting question for you might be ... why do they always depict ghosts as white and not black. I think that kind of racism should be addressed and repartitions paid out immediately.

@kellyjay said
no

Ghosts are a biblical concept. The idea is that the soul continues to live on after death and goes somewhere, and can be called upon and communicated with, by certain people. That they can be inhabiting certain parts of the world is not farfetched at all. But they are like bigfoot, too many people claim to have seen them when they actually did not.

@moonbus said
Moreover, very similar experiences are recounted in similar terms by people in all cultures in all time periods throughout history. I know what some people will say: it's imagination or hallucinations. While some of these experiences could be explained (explained away), I don't believe all of them can be. There remains a hard core of genuinely strange and unexplained phenomen ...[text shortened]... pt it at face value, where the claims can be independently verified (as I was sometimes able to do).

Indeed .. a good summary.

@rajk999 said
Indeed .. a good summary.

I don't know what to make of it, but I don't think all these paranormal phenomena can be dismissed as illusions and hallucinations.

@moonbus said
I don't know what to make of it, but I don't think all these paranormal phenomena can be dismissed as illusions and hallucinations.

They cannot all be explained away, but the reports are far too exaggerated. One day as technology advances on we will be able to nail down the truth.