Do you believe in ghosts/paranormal?

[Glitterandpolkadots]

I am curious to know if people do believe in ghosts/paranormal? If you do, what made you believe in it?

I think I do. Have had odd things happen. Once went to a campsite up by Blackpool, very odd atmosphere as soon as we arrived, we all just felt flat. I couldn't sleep one night due to snoring and I saw a bright white light/figure outside the tent and a childlike voice saying it hurts over and over again. Just couldn't wait to leave.

I absolutely do believe in the paranormal. I'm always curious about complete none believers who have a very black and white view of the world of science. Because science changes all the time.

So people will tell you that the weird stuff you have experienced is just sound waves low frequency, or an abundance of iron in the environment or carbon monoxide or any other thing they think is plausible, but the second you suggest, hey maybe this energy has come from something that was once alive and now isn't they imply you are an idiot.

I've seen a weighted door open the wrong way on it's hinges by itself which for a start should not be scientifically possible and my mother was there and saw it too. I've seen a few other things without explanations including working in an old hospital and watching the old stiff taps on a bath turn themselves on and off.

@ShaneTwane - that is so spooky!!

F

I'm always curious about complete none believers who have a very black and white view of the world of science

But don't you find it odd that ghosts/paranormal phenomena seem to reserve their energies for completely pointless demonstrations of their existence?

@veronicagoldberg I noticed similar during my visit to the Auschwitz camp too. There was one area outdoors which was more of a wide, woodland path. Further away from the barracks or any other memorials or buildings. We were surrounded by trees, it was a beautiful sunny warm day and could have been a park if you didn't know where you were, and yet we could hear no sounds of nature at all. Usually in any outdoors area you'd hear birds whistling in the trees and see them in the branches and bushes but it was just unnaturally still. Very, very eerie. The whole area of course felt so oppressive and sad but I will never forget that particular area of strange stillness and heavy silence.

To answer the OP I think I do believe in the paranormal and I've witnessed strange things. My rational mind says they were probably explainable in som way but my curious side feels that anything is possible in this world.

I believe many things are unexplained. I don't think I believe in "ghosts" but potentially in build up of energy, or in hallucinations, or that as human beings we are suggestible and unreliable witnesses.

We simply do not know all there is to be known.

I wouldn't say I believe in them in any specific way. However I also think that there are many things we don't understand, and there are many people over a great many years who claim to have had supernatural type experiences. Are they real? Maybe. What are they? No idea.

To me a positive denial is just irrational.

I do know a few people who I consider reliable narrators and not into woo who believe they have experienced ghosts. One in particular is extremely difficult to suggest an alternate explanation.

No. I don't believe in an afterlife, robins being dead family, white feathers or guardian angels.

I lived in a haunted house and we all saw things there with our own eyes.

I’ve had a few comforting experiences. My sister was a non-believer but had an experience that completely changed her mind just before our mothers death.

I think that there is much more to this universe that we can even begin to comprehend.

No absolutely not.

No

There a million pound prize for proof. It remains unclaimed.

Come on, you haunted house dwellers. Get your pet ghosts to perform and win the £1 million. Even if they are only knocking a box of crisps off a shelf to entertain a teenager, get them to do it under laboratory conditions.

One of the phenomena that does really interest me is the assumption by some that all reality is material and testable by standard scientific means, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a numpty. A belief which is not itself testable, as it happens.

No, I don't believe a jot of it. I think there is a scientific explanation for everything and I don't believe in any sort of afterlife or "crossing over" - once we're dead, we're dead. I envy people who believe in something else as it must be comforting but I just don't.

I don't judge people who believe in spirits or paranormal energy, etc. I do, however, harshly judge so-called "mediums", who are shameless charlatans preying on vulnerable people at their lowest moments.

Not all reality, as it happens. Just these ghosts and other supernatural events we keep hearing about. Don’t you find it weird that none of this activity has ever been recorded or proved?

Especially when, like some testers, you suggest that some of these ghosts, or whatever, are sentient beings. Why would old Fred content himself with pushing boxes of crisps at teenage Saturday girls?

What kind of recorded activity would it take to convince PPs who ask for it?

No I don't. Neither does dh. Nothing remotely paranormal ever happened to either of us. I don't know what anyone else is on about.

Of course, if this were a movie, I'd be the first to be killed by a falling blade of glass, as a sceptic.

@OldTinHat

What kind of recorded activity would it take to convince PPs who ask for it?

Try to think like a scientist. Do you think that infra red film of Derek Acorah in a darkened room saying, “ooh, I’ve seen an orb” would be considered a reliable piece of evidence?

Something out of Ghostbusters?

If you mean apparitional hauntings, clanking chains and semi-transparent entitles parading around in Victorian dress and going 'woooah', then no.

However, energy, time and consciousness are all peculiar and extremely complex phenomena. Generations of philosophers and scientists have devoted centuries of attention to those ideas and have never - probably will never - come up with a definitive set of answers.

If you're interested in the idea of hauntings emanating from within the psyche then I found Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' a fascinating read. Like most of his other work it's never been proven or disproven, but it has a certain plausibility.

I find it somehow comforting that there are many unanswerable questions likely destined to remain forever outside human experience or comprehension. It's sort of suggestive of the idea that, just perhaps, we are not all there is, and that our experience is not at the centre of everything.

I recently went on a "ghost hunt" with an organisation who go around the country to different haunted sites and carry out different experiments trying to speak to ghosts or see something spooky. I would say I'm an open sceptic. I'd love to believe in something else as I'd find it quite comforting, so went hopeful although pretty convinced I'd see nothing.
Sadly I was right. Absolute load of old bollocks. There were probably 30 of us and I was amongst 3 sceptics (they said at the beginning they loved to change sceptical people). I won't give away the group name or location as I don't want to upset anyone who might potentially be connected somehow, but honestly it was piffle.
The location had a lovely feeling despite all the over excited pronouncements of it's dark energy and atmosphere. I'd have happily slept there. We split into smaller groups to carry out experiments like ouiji boards and table moving and this out of tune radio thing which only gave me a migraine. When I tried the ouiji board with another sceptic it did absolutely nothing despite the group leader desperately trying to convince us it would. Strangely, when some other hardcore belivers did it, it flew round. Funny that. The picking up words from the out of tune radio was literally people screaming "oh my god did you hear that?!" at what was small parts of songs. That's not a ghost, that's bloody Coldplay. I was actually quite excited to go but I've come out an even bigger non-believer that I went in.

Yes I believe

From my own experience.

I don’t believe in everything paranormal but experienced seeing what I call a spirit (or ghost) it’s not something I would want to experience again not that it was scary what I saw at all but just the experience was unsettling

I don’t believe everything had to be scientifically proved. there isn’t a clear answer for many things that we accept

"Ghosts" as such- maybe not. But I think there are things that we can not explain by science. Perhaps it means science just hasn't caught up yet, perhaps it means there are some things that can't be explained!

I heard my Dad come in from the garden, door open, boots, creak of chair as he sat down, puffing noise he made when he took boots off, chair creak as he stood up.
This was the morning after he died.
But no, I don’t think I believe in life after death. I am happy to slip into a sleep from which I don’t wake up, and I am excited at the thought that one day my atoms will be recycled into new stars.