People who believe in ghosts

But why would something moving slowly make you think "ghost"? It could be dodgy floorboards, or vibrations from somewhere else, an earthquake, magnets, static electricity. Why would you automatically assume a ghost before all of those things?

I'm not sure what I believe really but there have been a couple of weird things happen which probably do have a solid explanation but they are a bit bizarre.

The first happened to my sister, she was working in a shop many years ago. She started serving a lady. This woman said to my sister not to be alarmed but she was able to see people who have passed over, she told my sister there was a little lady standing besides her and described our deceased nan to a T, she then told my sister that nan was calling her by a weird name and proceeded to say our family nickname for my sister which is an unusual name and nothing like her given name at all, no one other than myself and parents (and grandparents) ever call her this. My sister had never met this woman before and never saw her again. Still find that very weird.

The other weird thing is probably just my brain playing tricks on me. My other grandmother gave me a little satin heart hanging decoration for my 15th birthday, I'm 53 now so it's many years old. It has sat hanging on my headboard for decades and I've never moved it. It is filled with rose buds and when I first got it it had a very strong fragrance of roses which has faded to nothing over these 38 years, if I sniff it now there's absolutely no scent at all yet many times when I've been sat in bed reading or watching TV I will suddenly experience an overwhelming whiff of roses. I dare say it's my brain but I'd love to think it was my dear old nan checking in on me.

Who knows, life is strange, the older I get the more questions I have than answers. Maybe ghost do exist? My ds21 used to talk to all the time to someone he called Mary when he was around 3/4, one day we passed by a local church and graveyard and he confidently told me 'that's where my friend Mary lives'. That did give me goosebumps but imaginary friend or something else? I'll never know.

I knew it from Shrek. Very funny joke, makes me miss the laugh button.

The reason I don’t believe in ghosts is because if there were then murder victims would haunt their attacker or do something to exact revenge like in the Lovely Bones or to reveal their guilt. DH did a crap driving manoeuvre a while back. I protested he could have killed us and he claimed it had been perfectly safe. I said well if you kill me I will haunt you. He then whinged about what a horrible thing that was to say but DD agreed with me on both counts. And I would.

Still, on the other hand you wouldn’t catch me spending a night in a “haunted” house.

People aren't 'triggered', they're just responding to how rude your responses are. It's fine you dont believe. Calling people thick and being derogatory isn't on.

Ghosts don't exist.

Nor do poltergeist, spirits, fairies ir elves.

My Dad who is usually a very sensible non-woo old-fashioned Yorkshireman still brings up the time he was staying in a pub-hotel in Gloucestershire and went outside for a fag at 5am in the summer.

A lady walked past in vintage-looking clothes and get this for spooky, DIDN'T SAY GOOD MORNING. That's the main reason he thinks it was a ghost, that she didn't say good morning to him. He accepts that lots of people wear vintage clothes, some even go as far as dressing head to toe from a particular era full-time but he can't understand why she didn't say good morning so leans towards ghost rather than, not everyone who lives outside of villages in Yorkshire say good morning to strangers.

A friend persisted for years in telling me how she'd seen a ghost cat. A ghost cat! in her flat. Wouldn't accept any other explanation. She sadly died of cancer very young and told me she'd come and visit me after she died to prove the existence of ghosts. Still waiting 7 years on.

All the woo people never seem to explain why, if it was possible that a spirit had such power to cross the great divide between life and death, that they'd arse about knocking on walls or moving cushions about instead of proving their existence and challenging everything known about death. No, it's always 'the telly went off for no reason, it's that ghost again!'.

The one and only occurrence that ever changed my mind was when I was in my bedroom in my late teens and the lights were off and I was on my laptop, so the brightness of the laptop made everything in front look more of a silhouette.

Anyway, I’m on MSN probably talking to a boy 🤣 and my door opens and I assumed my mum was poking her head around the door to ask me something, I see her hand come around the door, and then her head pop in, in looking ‘at her’ asking what she wants, she doesn’t answer and she just leaves.. so I follow, but I walk out of the door and she’s not upstairs (fairly large house she couldn’t have got further than the stairs) and I shout her in typical teenage fashion and she’s in the garden. I am thinking my mums having me on, mum thinks I’ve just seen something out the corner of my eye.. despite me actually looking at ‘her’ popping her head in my room.

Eventually we’re both so freaked out her boyfriend comes over to check the whole house for some random person who might be there.

Never found anything, can’t explain it to this day.

Also, not me but my brother as a toddler used to talk about and point out a ‘dirty bird man’ a lot in our childhood home, my parents later found out that our house was built on a geese farm.

as a teen he consistently went to turn off the landing light and the club would blow before he touched the switch. This would happen quite a lot but only with the landing light 😅 these things never really convinced me until I had my experience.

i love your confidence but you can’t prove that. The best you’ll ever get is “I don’t believe ghosts exist” or “I can usually come up with logical alternative explanations where people claim they have seen a ghost”

My friends DD many years ago aged about 4 started talking about a man called Peter who was in a fire.

DD wouldn't let it drop. Kept saying 'that looks like Peter who was in the fire' or 'remember when Peter was in the fire?'. When my friend would ask her about Peter she'd say 'I saw him Mummy, he was in the fire' if she saw a fire engine she'd say 'firemen came when Peter was in the fire'.

Friend was very woo and concocted all these scenarios from ghosts to her DD being reincarnated or psychic and in contact with dead people. I tried to be supportive of friends concern but also thought it was just something DD had dreamt or imagined.

After several weeks of this, friend who didn't usually watch Coronation Street was flicking through the channels and DD shouted 'THAT'S Peter, he was in the fire'.

It was Peter Barlow, character from Corrie who had recently been in a storyline where he fell asleep with a lit cigarette and set fire to his flat and was rescued by firemen.

Friend had no idea how her DD had seen it on the TV but obviously she had. Friend still tried to come up with some woo explanation instead of accepting that DD must've changed the channel while friend was answering the phone, running a bath, dozed off for a few minutes on the sofa or a million other reasons why she may have been out of the room or just not concentrating on what was on the TV.

I don't have to prove anything because I'm not the one making the ludicrous claim that ghosts exist.

The burden of proof is on the person making the ludicrous claim.

You made the ludicrous claim that ghosts don’t exist. For much of history and throughout different geographical locations there’s been talk of spirits of the dead , entities etc. in sheer numbers of humans who have existed, your views are the outlying ones so with your reasoning it’s down to you to prove your position

I've never encountered a ghost. Not sure I believe in them but I believe in spirits. Never encountered one of those, either. I have a science degree. I believe in Jesus Christ.

What others believe, or don't believe, doesn't bother me. They could be right, or wrong, or somewhere in between the same as me.

@TheHonestSnail "The burden of proof is on the person making the ludicrous claim."

It's only ludicrous in your opinion.

Why do we have to prove anything?

I don't care what other's belief systems are. If people want to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, that's up to them, it doesn't affect me.

Honestly I believe in ghosts because it makes life more fun. When the lights would cut at our shitty council house it was better to think it’s ghost over thinking this building has been so neglected over the years the wiring is on the blink.

They're myths. It's very simple.

Uneducated, early people thought all sorts of shit. That cyclops existed, sirens, that an eclipse meant the Gods were angry or that a single woman could blight a crop, fly around on a broomstick and curse people and they were burned alive or hanged for it.

That madness was caused by the moon or womens wombs were wandering around their bodies and making them insane.

That vampires were coming out of their graves and draining blood from people.

Don't talk shit about people believing in ghosts for millenia meaning they must be real. It just means people believed all sorts of shit in the past and now some thick, primitive people still do.

Remember the torso of a boy being found in the Thames? Adam they called him. An unidentified African boy ritualistically murdered im London because whoever killed him believed it would give them power in witchcraft.

People have believed that for millenia. Do you think it's true? Do you think witchcraft is real and children should be murdered because of it?

It's happening every day somewhere in the world. A recent case in the US, Ruby Franke torturing her DC because she thought they were possessed by demons. Another - Lori Vallow had her DC and husband murdered because she thought they were possessed by the spirits of dead evil people.

Does that mean there's evidence it was true? That people have believed shit like this for millenia means there's something in it?

Because that's the extreme end of 'ghosts/spirits are real, it's been documented for so long'.

It's not harmless and you need to prove it if you believe it.

I never mentioned ghosts! Quite honestly, I have no interest in ghosts - I do think they are a subjective phenomenon, on the whole (but notice I don't dismiss them completely because I believe in being open-minded).

What happened to us was nothing to do with ghosts. It's very complicated and happened over a long period about 15 years ago. It would come under the category 'poltergeist activity', if anything, but included some eerie events which you might call telepathy too.

We're both sceptical people but it changed out lives. I don't spend nights in this house when my husband's away - I go to a friend's house. We don't talk about what happened in the house either, only outside. I love my house and there's no bad feeling - just a strong memory of those events and the fact that 2 of the moving object instances happened apparently in response to us saying things like 'Oh, thank God all that stuff stopped!' It really as as though something - some force, not a ghost - was asserting itself and saying 'I'm finished when I'm finished, thanks!'

@TheHonestSnail

You are a very arrogant snail!

I'm sceptical too - but I keep an open mind. To do anything else is to be as bad as the people who swallow everything whole.

As I've explained several times upthread, when it happens to you it's very unsettling. And I've read/heard of many similar people - very level-headed and scientific, who say the same. It's fine to be superior and dismissive until you experience something truly inexplicable. And my bar is very high for belief - I'm not talking about creaks and shadows in the hall.

Ah so now were Getting to the rub of it! You believe the occult is evil, that belief in spirits is bad. That witches are all evil.

But none of what you’re saying takes away from the fact that your views within the context of humanity are the outlier views. So it is down to you to prove that ghosts don’t exist. Everything you’re saying is basically an updated view of “burn the witches”

interesting you use the word “uneducated” in the context of early people. Actually they were highly educated in the things that were important to them. What you’re really saying is that they were uneducated in your particular world view, just as, apparently your are uneducated in theirs.

I believe my eyes and ears on the basis that they are generally reliable tools in navigating my everyday life. But they are not infallible. I consider that the purpose of the brain and the senses is to interpret reality in a way that makes sense to us as humans, rather than faithfully recalling every detail of reality as it actually is.

The sky is blue. That is manifestly true; you look up at the sky and your eyes see blueness. Except that it is not blue; the blueness that our eyes perceive is an optical illusion caused by how our eyes and brain interpret light. The sky is blue; the sky is not blue. Two contradictory statements, simultaneously true.

My understanding is that the brain, eyes and ears work just as hard at screening out information perceived as unhelpful, as they do at letting useful information in. I remember a time when I temporarily lost my hearing - wax in both ears. When I had it removed and I could hear again, I realised I could hear everything. I mean everything; I came out of the surgery and was overwhelmed by the sounds of insects in the hedge, and could hear conversations across the square a couple of hundred feet away.

I was with my sister at the time but I couldn't hold down a conversation with her because of the intrusive noise, I was bombarded by the noise to the extent that it was really hard to function and think. I got back to normal in an hour or so and the noise levels settled down; I would guess by my brain resuming the work of blocking out the 'unnecessary' noise.

What other information could they be screening out on the grounds that we don't 'need' it? So again; suggest keeping an open mind and not taking things

The vast majority of people on the planet believe in the supernatural - ghosts, reincarnation, God(s). Personally. I think believing in ghosts is daft. But I do believe in God and I accept that other people think that’s daft. Any sort of believer (or non-believer) to tries to argue with you should be ignored imo.

Oh no, I’m not a witch, but so what if I was why would that make me “a stupid woman” to quote you, I’m not sure how your have extrapolated that I think children should be murdered, I’d love to know how you have reached that conclusion. Perhaps you could display your logical thinking in finally putting forward a rational argument

You dont appear to be using much logical reasoning in your arguments, just a lot of name calling, foot stamping, wild accusations and non sequiturs.

All you keep stating is your belief system which seems to be founded on nothing you can logically explain and calling everyone stupid who doesn’t believe the sane.

During lockdown I did an online mediumship course with the College of Psychic Studies, mainly because I had had a few experiences I couldn't explain and wanted to explore more.

Each week we would be matched with another attendee, who would be anywhere in the world, and we had to tune in to people who had been in their lives who had died. We would then explain what we picked up - and everyone was getting "hits", with details we could never have known about.

I discovered i was particularly good at it but I found it utterly exhausting. I didn't take it any further - it was just an interesting experience.

I have also done a reiki course, which involved sending healing energy to someone in another room, and I was able to do it best of everyone on the course (in terms of what the recipient felt)

Anyway, supernatural things most people are very sceptical of, but there is something there.

Can anyone explain this? A friend of mine's sister was walking through a cemetery in the daytime with her husband. She spotted a man dressed in a suit sitting on a bench staring at them and it unnerved her. She told her OH but he couldn't see anyone. They walked right past the man who was still staring but her OH couldn't see anyone. She could see him very clearly though. I'm not a believer but this did unnerve me!

She imagined it.