Believing in ghosts

Yes exactly this.

Coincidence can be really convincing, and a lot of people would have seen that as a 'sign' without taking account of all the tens of thousands of times over the years they had thought about their grandparent and absolutely nothing happened.

Well, I thought so!

😂 Oh, she meant consciousness?

Still, most of my reply holds good!

I would take your assertion more seriously if you knew the difference between ‘conscience’ and ‘consciousness’.

Yep, we can prove than conscience exists. We can observe it exists to different degrees in various people. The facts that people's conscience can change as a result of life experiences, and that brain injuries can alter or remove the sense of conscience, strongly imply that it's a brain function.

As far as I know, no-one has seriously proposed that conscience is an external force or entity. So I'm not seeing the relevance here?

I think that’s fair, @ColonelDax — I mean, I was once thinking about my grandfather on the anniversary of his death, and a picture fell off the wall beside me. That actually happened, but ‘coincidence’ and/or ‘nearby railway, even though nothing else fell off in the years we lived in that flat’ are far more likely than ‘the spirit of my dead grandad showed up and started throwing things around’

Science hasn't yet proved what conscience is, or where it comes from (Ie, your brain?) yet.

• misapprehension, even.

The only people getting angry on this thread are the woo-believers.

Makes you wonder why they're so emotionally invested in their unproven beliefs? Sounds to me like people of faith, who know their belief system isn't objectively factual but it is deeply felt as 'fact' and important to their lives. (Not all faith-holders get angry when challenged, but it's fairly usual.)

For all those taking "delusional" as an insult, why do you have such a dreadful opinion of mental disorders? You know they can happen to anyone at any time, don't you. Sometimes even very briefly.

Perhaps you'd prefer the words misapprehansion or misperception.
Same thing, less prejudice.

Yes but the point I'm making is that labelling something 'lived experience' is a play on words to try and make it sound more convincing.

It still means the same thing, anecdotal evidence.

It's probably describing something really happening and not imaginary as it's being experienced by more than one person, but the hypothesis that it's supernatural is completely unproven.

Occam's Razor would suggest it's a natural phenomenon.

If it was happening to me I'd be really interested to try and capture evidence of it and see what was causing it, but I wouldn't suggest for a second that it was supernatural without some pretty convincing evidence to support that, not just the lack of an immediately obvious conventional explanation.

I had similar thing happen when my uncle died. I felt a hand gently touch my face. It gave me a fright at the time and I jumped out of bed to turn the light on convinced someone was in my room.

while I was laying in my bed, I wasn’t asleep. I later found out my uncle had sadly passed away. So I now understand this was him saying goodbye.

Never seen a ghost but when a close relative died (I didn't yet know) I was sleeping and felt like something was passing through my mind. Next day I found out relative had died and thought they were passing by to say goodbye. Just weird, made me think though.

Yes, lived experience. I have posted earlier about many visitors to my house noticing something happening (a moving shape in our sitting room). Many, unrelated visitors from many different backgrounds and in the house for many different reasons over extended periods of time. At all times of the day, night and year.

They all saw something in my house. They didn't know about it before it happened to them and told us about it. I've seen it. My husband and family members have seen it.

That's lived experience.

I know it's a sweeping statement, I said what I said.

'Lived Experience' 🙄

So completely subjective, anecdotal evidence then?

Billions of brilliant, thinking, intelligent people around the world have (and have had for centuries) faith in a god or gods of whom there is no objective evidence.

"i find the strong 'believers' in the supernatural are by far the least likely people to accept ideas that they don't agree with."

Eh? That's quite a sweeping statement. Many people on here who are non belivers have certainly proved they won't accept the ideas of believers. Not that they won't accept the presence of ghosts, I get that, but they won't accept that with lived experience believe and are happy to make really derogatory comments about them.

Its not narrow minded to be sensibly sceptical, on the contrary, i find the strong 'believers' in the supernatural are by far the least likely people to accept ideas that they don't agree with.

I feel bad for people who are so closed minded.

Most mature adults feel bad for people who are so credulous that they confidently believe in things that they have absolutely no objective evidence for.

"' when doing the business with DH!!"

Oh, that's reminded me of one night a few years ago. DH and I were in bed, under the covers (it was winter, so not warm), and about to do what couples do. 😉
There was a floor standing lamp in the room, by the bed, but it was off, all the lights were turned off.

The lamp was operated by a dimmer knob that you turned, from completely off to full brightness, which was very bright, so we rarely turned it up all the way.

Anyway, as I said, it was fully off as we prepared to get d & d. The lamp suddenly turned on, to near blinding full brightness. We both nearly jumped out of our skins. DH reached over and turned it back off again and we resumed business. We were both used to these happenings by now.

Yes ghosts are real, I believe there’s a whole spirit realm around us that we can’t see. I also believe in heaven or an afterlife and I’m not sure if sometimes spirits can get stuck or whether they just come back to visit?

I actually work in a care home and we always get a lot of activity right before a resident passes away, (seen and experienced by many different staff and other residents, and one colleague has even caught some activity on camera of some orbs and clear foot prints in the carpet). A colleague who is very spiritual tells me this is the residents loved ones coming to meet the resident as they are dying. Which is a nice thought.

Some very unpleasant and rude comments on here. I feel bad for people who are so closed minded.

It is really interesting actually, I'd love to get to the bottom of what this is.

Setting up a camera is obviously the first step, then starting to look at different variables and remove them one by one to see if that makes a difference.

But...

I feel very confident in saying that there will be a simple explanation to this, because of Occams Razor. What is more likely, that the known laws of physics are being defied in a very specific way in one persons living room in the UK in a way never seen before and for no discernible reason, or that this is just an unusual shadow or lighting effect caused by something very specific to that room?

In the same way that he Collosi of Memnon were believed by the Romans to be magical statues that 'sang' to them, however we now understand that the noises they made were caused by temperature differences in the statue forcing air to whistle as it flowed through the cracks.

Completely supernatural and un-explainable, until it was explained and turned out to have a really sensible and mundane cause. 🙄

I find this kind of thing really interesting.

it’s obviously not an individual ‘deluded’ person.

and it’s completely unexplained.

doesn’t mean supernatural, of course, but the fact that it’s obviously not a common phenomenon shows that just because you haven’t seen something with your own eyes, doesn’t mean anyone who has is deluded!

Oh Christ, the sexy voyeur ghosts are the worst kind

There might be, just as there may be herds of specially adapted elephants wandering around on the bottom of the oceans of the world and we just haven't discovered them yet.

But until any evidence whatsoever can be produced to support that proposition, then the sensible default position is to not believe in it.

"known laws of physics".

Yep. And there may well be many unknown laws of physics that account for many of the things that people see.

I don't believe in ghosts and never have.

My mum died last year and I remember lying in bed having second thoughts and thinking maybe she'd pop back as a ghost and say hi!

But then I started to worry - if ghosts were real, or dead relatives were really 'watching over you' all the time, that means they could pop in or see you anytime!! I wouldn't fancy seeing a gohst when sitting on the toilet, or my mum springing up to 'watch over me' when doing the business with DH!!

I don't think gohsts exist, and if they did how would they know when it's ok to appear or when you need your privacy - they'd only know that because they'd already spotted what you were doing, and I don't like the idea of that!!

I don't think anyone is saying that we know all there is to know about the universe therefore its impossible for ghosts to exist. That would be a silly and narrow minded position, but I don't know anyone who holds it...

However, when something being proposed defies the currently known laws of physics and has absolutely no objective evidence to support it, then the default position of anyone sensible is to not believe in it, until such time as compelling evidence can be provided to show otherwise.

Its really not that complicated...