Do You Think Ghosts Are Real?

[Nepenthe]

Well, you can't deny that there is something going on, as stories of ghosts and spirits have been around for thousands of years in most, if not all cultures.

It may even be the potential of the human mind temporarily showing itself. People claim to see the same things in the same places, so even if there is no spirit world, it could be collective human minds making these things happen.

Like some Jungian connection of consciousness? That'd be cool.
I also remember reading/hearing about claims that sounds from the past can be recorded in a physical medium, like the grooves of a record, and ghost experiences could possibly be explained this way. The idea of retrieving sound from a physical substrate like pottery goes back to 1962 in an Arthur C. Clarke essay from his book Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry Into the Limits of the Possible. There were grumblings about retrieving sound data with lasers but nothing came of it. A few years ago a brilliant hoax capitalized on this concept and the idea was briefly taken seriously by credulous folks online until its exposure. Like many cool sounding proposals, the real world of physics just refused to accommodate its validity.

I just think each ghost experience is unique and better explained by human psychology, the will to believe, anomalous interpretation of sensory stimuli, etc.

I know there's a few haunted places around where I live, and many people claim to see strange things happen.

Ever seen a channeling or a invocation? It's some powerful stuff. Made me pretty sure of the existence of the spirit world.

I have, but I've faked several as well so I have yet to see anything convincing.

I wanna go somewhere haunted

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[DallasApple]

Its happened to me too..

My grandmother (actually my now deceased grandfather) claims he saw my father pass through their room ..and stand in front to the window..he woke my grandmother up and said "there is Jay" my grandmother told him to go back to sleep and then the phone rang and it was the call to tell them my father had been killled..

Why would they lie about that...???

Other things have happened too..

Love

Dallas

 

[brbubba]

OP, my experience would seem to invalidate your conclusion. At around the age of 10, I had no preconception that ghosts could exist and aside from scary stories I don't think I had a definite belief that they did exist. However, one night I awoke startled and sat upright in bed. I looked around the room as you normally do when that happens. As I looked past the end of my bed, sitting on the floor was a shadow. I could only see the outlines of the shadow against the rest of the room. I froze in terror and the shadow slowly turned her head, I don't know how I knew it was a woman I just did, and looked at me. She then proceeded to get up and start walking across the room staring at me the whole time. I quickly jumped under the covers and yelled for my mother. That experience scared the crap out of me for years to come, but made me a full fledged believer.

 

[Neo-Logic]

I've heard stories of first-hand accounts of supernatural and paranormal events from people that I know to be of a sane mind and trust-worthy character that would have no incentive or motivation to tell me such things were they lies in their eyes. Having said that, to make such a conclusion on something as profound as the paranormal and supernatural phenomenons would require me to personally experience a life-changing and mind-blowing event. Anything short of that just will not do.

The short answer is: NO. I think ghosts and paranormal are fragments of our subconsciousness surfacing and interacting with our psyche in the most vulnerable or stressed mental states. They are human constructs originating from coincidental and natural things that we construe as extra ordinary when it's probably our own below-ordinary understanding of the situation or the thing we're experiencing that forces faulty and misconstrued assumptions.

 

[Penumbra]

No, I don't believe in ghosts. We don't have everything figured out about reality yet, so I can't say for sure that nothing like a ghost exists, but I think it's doubtful due to the lack of evidence. There are a few weird pictures or short video clips that aren't entirely explainable, but that isn't enough to convince me of some large supernatural phenomenon.


Years ago when I was in my mid-teens I experienced sleep paralysis and for a while that made me believe in ghosts until I found out what it was. Sleep paralysis can occur when you wake up during REM sleep. During REM sleep, the body is paralyzed and unconscious, so if you wake up, you may find that you are conscious but still paralyzed for a few seconds or a few minutes. In addition, the experience is accompanied by hallucinations of some sort of dark being near you and an acute sense of fear.

From a first hand perspective, the experience is terrifying, and mine lasted for several minutes. I woke up and was completely unable to move. I couldn't see very well (mostly because I could hardly move my eyes and it was a dark room), and I felt that there was some sort of ghostly presence near me and coming closer. I couldn't move at all, even down to my fingers and toes, and I couldn't scream or cry even, but I was completely conscious. I had that sense of fear that one gets in a dangerous situation, like a fight or flight response, but was unable to do anything except panic and scream on the inside. When I was finally free I was terrified but went on and figured that ghosts exist. I have a very analytical type of personality but this experience was just so vivid.

But then I found out what it was. There are myths all over the world about ghosts, old hags, demons, and aliens coming to someone at night and restraining them, but it's an observable aspect of the unconscious mind during REM sleep sometimes.

The experience has happened to me twice since then, every couple of years, but now that I know it is a well-researched phenomenon of the brain, I just let the experience pass. It's interesting because the hallucination seems to trigger the fear center of the brain directly, meaning it gives you a fearful fight or flight response regardless of whether you acknowledge that it's a mere hallucination or you think it's real. So I kind of feel a detached fear during the experience, where my brain is afraid but my reason and consciousness just calmly lets it pass.

I'm not saying all ghosts are due to this, but as a general rule I think people come up with explanations for things they don't understand. Some of them can be actual biological and vivid hallucinations while others can be unexplained external things that we establish patterns for. In order for me to believe in actual ghosts, I'd need some decent evidence.

Sleep paralysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

-Lyn

 

[ahmed.zafar]

Yes ghosts does exists. They are some time very kind and helpful. Ghosts are of much kinds as we Humans.

 

[brbubba]

Something very interesting I thought of the other day... Does science unfairly prejudice the burden of proof for ghosts??? Think about this for a moment. When we discover a new species in the deep jungles what do we do, we document it's existence! We take photos, study behavior, take notes, etc. So once someone gets back with this evidence do we suddenly say, bollox, prove that it exists scientifically! Obviously in some cases you can take samples, but in the ones where you can't just kill the creature or capture it do we honestly question it's existence?

I would firmly say no, but in the case of ghosts it seems pretty clear that all forms of evidence are automatically discounted. The very lack of belief in the phenomenon is the basis by which the evidence is judged.