Other Do you believe in ghosts?

For some reason I'm on a qualia soup crusade today...

 

The Shinning, Hmm i think i've got that book in the other room, Never gone though it tho, and no i don't mention the girls to every guest that stays in room 14, They'd think/realise I'm crackers lol

 

But it is interesting how all apparitions appear to conform to archetypes. Creepy Little Girls, ladies in bridal or mourning dress (the White Lady or Black Lady), the Headless Horseman, the Convicted Murderer, the Fallen Soldier (a variety of which is the Wandering Roman Legion), the Lost Boy... It's Thirteen Ghosts all over.

It's never ordinary folk; butcher or baker or candle stick maker. Castles are full of the ghosts of their previous inhabitants (never their servants, strangely) but the grimy factories that prematurely claimed the lives of hundreds in tragic and grisly accidents remain untroubled.

It's all human imagination. It's why people who undergo 'past life regression' under hypnosis always recall being some king or queen, never a lowly goat herd.

 

This. It's kind of what I was edging at earlier talking about how we don't see many animal ghosts (I struggle to even say I've heard of a single case).

I really enjoyed the video, "Can't explain -> I can explain." It's common sense really.

 

Ok this is actually a true story I knew the people involed.

This happend when I was working on the railways there was a night gang who's job is to walk up and down the track to check that the keys are banged in and that the track is in a safe condition.

They each would have their own set route to walk.

They have there own cabin where they get changed and have their tea breaks etc and they have their favorite chairs, One old boy who had been there for years died at home heart attack or some such thing.

Anyway one of the other workers took over his walk and one night he reckons that he bent down to pick up a lose key and when he looked behind him the dead man was standing there watching him, Now nobody knows if he really did see him or just believed he did but his hair had turn white by the time he got back to the cabin, And nobody will sit in the chair that was the dead mans favorite.

I not saying this proof of ghost but that man truely believed he had seen the old boy and his hair turned white from the shock.

 

Sorry, but that's all utter balls. It very often is a servant/peasant/ordinary person and very often ordinary places too. Big Wood (yes, lol) near my Godmother's house for example, is in a lot of books on the unexplained and it's nothing special, just some trees... where loads of people have killed themselves. I'm not saying these things are real, but I really despise 'skeptics' too.

I enjoy listening to Dr Quantum audiobooks and much prefer his take on 'paranormal' events to "nothing weird has ever happened because I know everything lalala not listening".

You can say the ones you've heard of are 'mostly' something, but you cannot state they all are. Mainly because, as I said, that's nonsense.

 

An entire goat herd?

 

This. It's a plethora of individual experiences, and individuals can be (and very, very often are) wrong.

It seems convincing to hear that hundreds of thousands of people have had experiences of ghosts, until you consider what proportion of the population that is (about 0.015%). Ask yourself: does it seem unreasonable to say that 0.015% of humans have made a mistake? Personally, I find that a more plausible explanation. Here are the two against each other:

(1) 0.015% of humans had errors of senses, hallucinations, or mistook the normal for the paranormal for lack of understanding.

(2) There is an entire second layer to existence, a spiritual dimension, which has no tangible properties, cannot be detected in any way by any scientific process, leaves no trace, but to which normal, physical organisms such as humans are in some way "transported", and from which they then feel the need to shake floorboards, throw plates around and tell people where their money is hidden.

Which do you prefer?

 

True: I may have appeared to suggest that archetypes concern high-status people. They don't: they are symbolic stereotypes. The Big (Dark) Woods, the Old Crone (related archetypes: the Maiden, the Mother), the Desperate Man/Woman (related archetypes: the Broken Heart, the Fallen Woman/the Ruined Man, the Martyr, the Noble Self-sacrifice)...

But in many faery tales the 'ordinary person' is not all that ordinary. Enough to allow people to identify themselves with them, but also having a special quality that sets them apart, whether it is looks, strength, smarts, courage, honesty, compassion or a special legacy or special fate.

Common things commonly happen.

 

I prefer option one on the basis that, if there is an afterlife, then there would be far more ghosts than are being encountered.

Assuming that there is a spiritual dimension speak of, and that ghosts came into existence by not completing something before they died (You know, the typical. Revenge, setting things right, blah blah), then by rights there should be a shitload more ghosts than are claimed to be seen, and there would be a whole heap that don't look like they're from the middle ages.

I don't believe such a thing exists, and I do believe that people who claim to have "seen" ghosts have just coaxed themselves into thinking that because they have no better explanation for it - Even though there probably is one.

Mother often said she heard things, and sometimes talking, when we lived in an old victorian terrace. There was a sweet shop next door, we were on a main road. Logical explanation: Shuffling noises were rats. Talking was people walking past the house.

Her explanation: There's ghosts here.

 

Also, accounts of the supernatural have to explain why there isn't more concrete documentation of ghosts, why they haven't been seen clearly by many people at once, or caught on camera, or seen in public. What's the implication - that they're shy? That they don't want to blow their cover? They're ghosts!. Why would they be hiding and waiting until late on a stormy night in the middle of nowhere?

 

Wheather you DO or DONT believe in them: THEY ARE ALL AROUND!! (Most of us cant seem them though)

 

If only.

I had a very vivid dream when I was about four years old that has lodged itself into my conscience. I was up early in the morning and the doorknob on a cupboard door rattled so I hid under my bed. Then a parade of ghosts walked by with the last one, a skeleton, looking at me as it walked past.

I have had one unexplainable experience though. I think I was about 12 or 13 and was building something with lego on the floor of my bedroom when suddenly there were a few loud thuds and the heavy glass light fitting had fallen off it's screw-fitting on the ceiling, bounced sideways off a desk under where it would have fallen then bounced off a hard metal seat near the desk, then landed next to me. Yes, it could happen I guess, but the weight of it shouldn't have made it bounce as far across from it's original position as it did I would've thought - a good 2 or 3 meters away from the chair. It didn't roll into place, it just fell next to me. I'm surprised it didn't smash when it landed on the desk. Very strange.

I've also had an experience, I'm not sure what you'd call it but I woke myself and the mrs up in the middle of the night as I was arguing with my mum in a dream and shouted out 'EMBARRASING!' at the very, very top of my voice. It made my throat sore! Never done it since and never done it previously.

 

Dreams are strange like that. I've yelled a few random words. The weirdest feeling was I once woke up laughing. I wish I could remember that dream.

 

Which do YOU prefer boiled elephant
1. 100% of the population can be entirely mistaken, and without fully understanding something one can never properly know,
2. The world is flat?
Because, in the olden days they believed just that! Only years later with technological advances was it proven otherwise, and even then, no body believed.
Everything orbits the Earth... No wait, again the entire populous was wrong...
How many more examples do you want!

Open your minds people, Isn't there some silly statistic that only 12% of your brain is every utilised (not sure if this is even true). If that is the case maybe the 0.015% of the population of which have "experienced" something, genuinely did?!

Just a thought!

 

Except in my case 100% of people present saw and heard the exact same thing. (granted there were only 2 people there, but still...) Debunk that

 

If I look at a random scribble I see a face

 

Refer to the video posted above, it's almost as if it was made for this very post.

 

Not so much.
I am asking for someone to explain my experience as something other than "something I have attributed to something abnormal/supernatural/ghostly) As mentioned before I will most often not believe something without proof, but having experienced something I have "proof" I wanted to know if someone else had any other ideas on what it could be.

Believe me or not, what ever, I have major doubt on the validity of some of the other claims being made too, so I am on both sides of the fence. I believe there is something more than "this"? Yes. Is it false hope, probably. Do I expect you to believe? No?

 

Yes, but what I am saying (perhaps I have not yet, but consider this me doing so) is that we are acknowledging there is no evidence to back up claims of it being something say...obvious. But to use that as sole justification to claim supernatural or ghostly goings on is just absurd.

As said in the video, if you can't explain something, it's just that, not valid reason to suspect supernatural occurances.


For example, if say tonight I am having my dinner, and my food strangely moves across the table and I can see nothing that would influence it to do so, I am not going to believe a ghost made it do so, I am simply going to be unable to explain why or how that happened and obviously I would be a little bewildered, even apprehensive, but not suddenly finding myself talking to the 'spirits'.