People who believe in ghosts

@SevenYellowHammers If something happens that you can't explain, you can't then jump to the 'explanation' that it was a ghost! You're allowed to admit that you can't explain it.

Yes. There is a difference between saying 'I haven't seen any evidence of ghosts' and saying 'ghosts don't exist'. I don't believe in ghosts because I've not seen any evidence of them, but if I did have evidence, I'd believe in them. However, it's annoying when people say something inexplicable happened so therefore it must have been a ghost. They are presuming that ghosts exist but they have no evidence.

What was it about this ghost child that told you it wasn't a real i.e. living child? If I saw a strange child in my house I would be asking where it came from. So what tipped you off it was an apparition? I'm asking out of genuine curiosity btw.

I believe in ghosts. When we moved into our current home ten years ago several times I woke in the night to see a child by my side of the bed. First time I thought it was my daughter who sleep walks and was a similar age but it obv was t. They just stood and stared. Didn’t look scared or sad just curious. It happened regularly and it didn’t bother me as there was no malevolent feeling. I used to say hello and tell it it was safe and welcome. Probably happened about 6/7 times over a couple of years then stopped. My older son also had the same experience

I definitely agree that memory is not 100% reliable as a faithful record of past events. I am definitely aware of things that at one time I was convinced happened and now, several years later, am not so sure that I recalled them accurately.

On the other hand, there are other memories that stick like glue and I am as convinced as I can be that I remember them correctly. Not every single detail; but the important parts, the ones which are pertinent to what the issue was about. The process of remembering things is uneven and arbitrary, and in a court of law that can be problematic as not remembering certain details with time can undermine a case. However I do feel that I recall significant incidents from the past, despite the loss of some memories enough is recalled to make the memory overall reliable. If I recall an unsettling incident, I trust my past self in my memories that it was indeed unsettling and for good reason.

Often it is the peripheral memories (eg of Walkers Crisps) which are lost, misremembered, or not correctly registered in the first place. The 'flashing faces' video shows what can happen to peripheral details when focusing on something else:

I haven’t had a lot of ghostly experiences but I did have one that was very convincing.

It was in the early 90s. It occurred very early, before anyone was up, in a care home I worked in.

It was summer and broad daylight. I wasn’t in the least scared and felt no sense of evil or menace.

What happened was that there was a bathroom for people who needed assistance and it had a sort of chair lift device over bath.

What happened was that as I walked past the door handle was going up and down rapidly and repeatedly like someone was trapped or the door was stuck.

There was a resident who used to wander and I thought it was them so I opened the door and there was no one there. The handle rattling stopped for a moment and started again.

I kind of shrugged and went on my way, thinking that was odd.

I didn’t think much about it but I mentioned it to my dad who was a carpenter and knows a lot about buildings and I asked if he thought it was subsidence or something.

To my surprise, he said he thought it was a ghost. He’s a very rational down to earth bloke and this wasn’t what I expected.

There is a punch line to this and it is that I later found that a resident had died in the bath. They had filled the bath, suffered a heart attack and fallen head first into filled bath.

I don’t know what I saw if it wasn’t a ghost. That’s actually more rational that any other explanation.

I’m a Christian so I do believe in spirituality I suppose. I think most people’s experiences have non supernatural causes and I think shows like “Uncanny” and “Most haunted” are silly.

But every so often something happens that you can’t explain. So I guess I do believe in ghosts but I’m not gullible and I’m not massively into the idea.

I think the OP’s friend’s experience doesn’t sound very likely to be supernatural.

Most people think that a memory is like a recording when it isn't, it's only ever a reconstruction of what happened influenced by that persons own personality, experiences and personal bias.

And can be easily influenced by lots of things, after the fact. By other people, by other memories and by other external factors. The reason courts want cases to come to court as quickly as possible is because witnesses change, they add on things they didn't say at the time or add on things they didn't witness at the time. People confess to things they didn't do because their percieved 'memory' was altered by the interviewer.

Just think of all the 'Mandela effect' things that people believe happened that have been proved to not have occurred so instead of people accepting it didn't happen, they invent ways that it must have happened because they remember it so strongly so there must be a tear in the space/time continuum or a glitch in the matrix.

Walkers crisps changing their colours for salt and vinegar and cheese and onion. It didn't happen. Walkers have always denied it happen but there are thousands of people who 'remember' it happening. There was a fascinating thread on MN once about it. Not just fascinating that so many people 'remembered' something that didn't happen, but that all these specific memories spanned about 20 years. Which proved how all those memories were false.

So, my friend saw someone in the cemetary that their OP didn't see could have gone from OP seeing someone, not mentioning it to their DH till later and saying 'that man looked weird', the DH saying 'what man?' just because they weren't paying attention to their surroundings then over time it becomes this entertaining story where the person says 'I definitely said to you, that man looks strange' DH says 'I didn't hear you say anything?' 'no, I did, and you said couldn't see him' 'did I say I couldn't see him?' 'no but you couldn't'. Over time the DH comes to believe the DW said something at the time and he must've looked and not seen the person because why wouldn't they look when someone says look at that man? and a ghost story is born.

I can't imagine coming on here and telling other pps that their experience is rubbish, or that their friends were lying!

When you have such an experience, there's usually a huge amount of context. A bald recount of the event always sounds implausible but in my case there was a gradual build-up of strange things, a weird atmosphere, all kinds of things which are crucial to the situation but hard to put into words. That's why I'm not telling my 'story' here, because...well, you just had to be there! Then you'd know if wasn't just something easily dismissed.

Similarly with friends. I KNOW my few friends who've had experiences aren't lyng - I know this for a fact. Whether they were mistaken, or judged time incorrectly (one spoke to a man in a large park and when she turned - she said no more than a couple of seconds later - he was gone, for example - who knows? But I'll listen with respect because I know they're not idiots and not fantasists, or they wouldn't have been my friends for decades!

I value your genuine engagement.

Hearsay from someone else - as far as I'm concerned = eqivalent toVictorian ghost stories, teen campfire scares.

But when someone I know well, and trust, trusts me enough to tell me <experience> I won't assume lying.

Occam's razor = the simplest explanation is usually the best. So if me and my companion both see a bloke and his dog walking towards us, and then the bloke and his dog then disappear... the simplest explanation is that we saw a bloke and his dog walk towards us, who then disappeared.

ETA " equivalent to".

To be fair OP, I do believe in ghosts but even I think your mum was being a bit obtuse 😂There are definitely several plausible explanations there.
I had to sit once for about two house while a friend showed me the "magical orbs" that had appeared on photos she'd taken, which google had apparently informed her were spirits being captured on camera. When I googled it myself, the first dozen or so results were about light reflecting on the lens, and how you could buy a special lens to stop it from happening. You had to go to the second page of results to get the nonsense about spirits 🙄

(I personally don't think ghosts are necessarily spirits... I think it might be some other explanation, like a weakness in the space-time fabric, or perhaps old buildings "recording" sights and sounds)

One thing I've learned: you can never predict who will believe in 'the supernatural' and who won't. I've met Christians who poo-poo belief in poltergeists etc, and scientists who do believe. It all depends on personal experience and how open-minded people are.

OK thanks, but I was specifically talking about the story I quoted and similar. It's wild to me people recite hearsay from someone else and can't see the obvious explanation for it: a shaggy dog story, not proof of the supernatural. If you want to tell me your story that your personally experienced I'm happy to speculate, but it will be rational, and because I wasn't there the first thing I will assume is you're lying for your own entertainment or to win an argument with a stranger online, because that's what Occam's razor demands.

Far from sheltered, (un)fortunately.

We aren't talking about pub-bantz shaggy (more like hair of the) dog stories here, though. Stories pitched for entertainment. Or teenage camp-fire stuff.

The stories I've heard are told hesitantly, cautiously, with an are-you-going-to-think-I'm-losing-it air and I'm-not-taking-this-seriously - are-you kind of attitude until you reassure them. And from people whom I've known a long time, who are not habitual liars.

Quite a few of the (not that many) stories I have heard are deeply personal, too. Not pub bantz material.

Oh come on! People lie to entertain all the time, are you incredibly sheltered or something? Never heard a shaggy dog story in the pub?

You seem to be implying that there are so few liars (I wish!) that it is more likely that ghosts exist than the acquaintance in question told a spooky story to entertain their sister. I want to believe as much as the next person but I at least try and be rational about it.

I was shot 7 times by a jealous bf. I survived, he didn[t. While I was still recovering from my wounds, I had a vivid dream in which he returned and asked me to forgive him. I said of course even though I was a long way from being healed.
Fast forward several months. My Doctor boss, also a psychiatrist, asked me if I had forgiven him. I said Yes of course. I really think that his spirit came to me that night.

The only people I know who lie for entertainment (or attention) are liars. And we are generally quite good, as a species, at spotting the unreliable members of our group, including the liars.

Far more recently, if you "believed" in UFOs, you were a gullible nut. Then the USA military started releasing its files and now you're looking a lot less nutty.

The most obvious explanation is your friend (or more likely her sister) was lying. You didn't experience it, but you are here saying it was true and asking for an explanation. As a scientist (who nevertheless believes because it's fun to do so) your story and many others in this thread are strikingly similar, and all start "a friend/relative told me..." and end "... explain that!"

I mean, Occam's razor - they're lying for entertainment, like many people do. And are you not entertained?

Yes - my experience didn’t cause me to suddenly believe every anecdote I hear/read. I always emphasise that I restrict my comments to my own personal experience - I don’t feel qualified to judge the veracity of other people’s.

So “I know what I saw” is my motto on this! What other people experience isn’t for me to comment on.

OK.

I'd quibble with that.

I don't "believe" that I went to Sainsbury's this afternoon and spoke with a cashier with a pink hairband. It happened, it is not a matter of "belief".

In the same way, people don't "believe" that they saw the thing that they saw. It happened, it is not a matter of "belief". (Especially so when more than one person shared the experience.)

And, as attested to by lots of people on this thread who've had supernatural experiences and still can't puzzle out what happened, it doesn't mean that they start "believing" in e.g. ghosts - they just start living with the realisation that there are phenomena that science can't yet explain.

Ham House is considered to be one of the most haunted houses in the UK. Years since I've been inside but i do like the tea house https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-samsung-rvo1&source=android-browser&q=ham+house+haunted#lfId=ChxjMe

I have an open mind, but two extremely level headed relatives have had weird experiences.

Also, I was in my local National Trust shop not long ago, waiting to pay, when the two women in front of me asked the woman on the till whether the house (17thC Ham House) was haunted.

She said she didn’t know, but the ghost tours they used to hold had been stopped. And a visitor once remarked to one of the staff how interesting it was that they had people in authentic period costumes in and out of the rooms.
They had no such thing!

Must say I’ve only been inside that house once, and didn’t care for it at all, it felt strange and unfriendly. To me it even looks forbidding from the outside.

Also, I remember as a student arguing with a friend who was an analytical chemist and a Christian. I said 'How, as a scientist, can you believe this stuff'? His response was that science cannot explain everything and in fact, it's interesting how many scientists are religious believers.

I don't have faith, but I'm interested in the fact that many scientists do.

And I've grown up a bit and wouldn't dream of making someone justify their faith nowadays!

My faith is in science - just to be clear. But my point is that many of the phenomena people call the supernatural may one day be explained by science, just as electricity was.

Yes - some of the most implausible things we humans will hear are the discoveries of quantum physics! They do take some believing, don't they?

When I watch Uncanny, I always feel sorry for Kieran, the supposed sceptic and scientist, who has to come up with a scientific explanations for the most bizarre occurrences. Often the most far-fetched things on that programme are poor Kieran's explanations! Several family members had witnessed a sizeable handbag moving at speed right across a room and Kieran (with a bit of a desperate look) suggested it might have been caused by a draught...er, a draught which no-one in the room felt). Bless him.