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'm not talking about scientific reports or studies.

Then you are not talking about science which is a discipline where hypotheses are tested, experiments repeated and findings are published for peer review. And as I said, it is a very specific discipline which requires a degree of certainty and control.

There is so little science around this because the subject of ghosts doesn't lend itself to scientific study. What would even be the scientific meaning of the word "ghost"?

...the onus is on the people making extraordinary claims to provide extraordinary evidence, so far they haven't managed to produce a single thing, so the only conclusion any reasonable person can draw is that it's total nonsense and that any conclusion that draws on it can be completely disregarded.

People are talking about their experiences. No one is forcing you to regard it. No one made you open the thread. And no one has forced you into a position where you have to sneer and mock. That's all on you. Not science.

I believe there are so many things we as humans don't see or understand. And our understanding of time and dimensions may vary from what we currently know as science. But so many people are very hostile and quick to criticise people who do believe in the paranormal. I'm not religious but wouldn't dare comment on those who are. Because my belief that it's false is no more correct than their belief that their religion is true. It's the same with so many aspects of life, like politics or whatever. It is really arrogant to presume to know best on subjects that rely on opinions and beliefs.

@TunnelOfGoats

I believe there are so many things we as humans don't see or understand. And our understanding of time and dimensions may vary from what we currently know as science. But so many people are very hostile and quick to criticise people who do believe in the paranormal. I'm not religious but wouldn't dare comment on those who are. Because my belief that it's false is no more correct than their belief that their religion is true. It's the same with so many aspects of life, like politics or whatever. It is really arrogant to presume to know best on subjects that rely on opinions and beliefs.

Spot on.

Who are you to "evaluate" other people's experiences?

It's not the experiences. It's the explanations.

There is so little science around this because the subject of ghosts doesn't lend itself to scientific study

That just isn't true. People are making claims about ghosts all the time, yet when it's subjected to any sort of scrutiny it fails the most simple of tests. This isn't because 'it doesn't lend itself to study', it's because ghosts do not exist.

Science has been long able to hypothesise about things which are only theoretical, i.e. the hypothetical, and then develop the means of proving the hypothesis true. Do you honestly think that people who are capable of hypothesising things like the Higgs Boson, Big Bang, nature of Black Holes etc and then later going on to validate those hypothesis, are totally incapable of doing the same with 'ghosts' simply because 'ghosts' are a bit nebulous and difficult to pin down?

How many people had witnessed a Higgs Boson prior to Peter Higgs and Co proposing Higgs mechanism? They still came up with a hypothesis that science was then able to set about validating. None of us have ever been anywhere near a black hole, nor were we around at the time of the big bang, yet as a species we are still perfectly capable of formulating hypothesis regarding these phenomenon and then demonstrating that the hypothesis 'fits' with what we understand about our universe.

What is the exception that makes 'spirits', 'ghosts', 'the divine' and so on so problematic that science 'can't study' them? It's clearly not lack of proximity or the ability to stick them in a lab, as that clearly isn't a problem with things like Big Bang and black holes.

My dd (9) has always said that there are people in her room with her. She also says that ghosts aren't dead people. They are something separate. Like a whole different type of life form 🤷🏻‍♀️

I would love to know what sort of scientific study would satisfy the sceptical?

@veronicagoldberg
I believe you. My late father did his National Service in the early 50s in Germany. One day after their basic training, they were taken to a site of a former concentration camp. I think it was Belsen. These young lads were not told were they were going before hand. When they arrived and got out, my father said exact same thing as you say, about a sadness and no birds. All of the young soldiers felt the same . A heaviness in the air and a feeling that terrible suffering had occurred at this place. He said there was loads of snakes in the grass and silence. They were then told by the CO's what had happened there . He cried so much when he told me about it, it terrified him and he was a rough around the edges working class Scotsman.

People are making claims about ghosts all the time, yet when it's subjected to any sort of scrutiny it fails the most simple of tests.

What tests @XDownwiththissortofthingX? What is the scientific definition of "ghost"? Or "god"?

Yes. I've had four instances in my life of feathers appearing no doubt in my mind what the origins were.

I believe in ghosts as I saw one, she was standing by my bed, I said hello, she turned her head, looked at me, with shock on her face, turned, walked down the hallway and into my daughters room. I did not sleep after.

The house we live in know, we used to rent it out for 10 years, a previous tenant committed suicide here. Next tenants moved in and the little girl always told her dad about the man. We moved in, just before 1st lockdown and my boy, kept telling me about the man, staring at him. So assume it's the tenant who died, who hasn't moved on. I knew he was harmless as he was a lovely bloke, who knew my other children, but the youngest was a baby when he passed, the one who constantly saw him.

I did a cleansing of the house and he hasn't seen him since.

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

The mocking and sneering is fully down to the person doing it, not their target

If people want to stop being ridiculed, they could stop being ridiculous.

How sad to be so narrow minded. Oh and opinionated

What is the exception that makes 'spirits', 'ghosts', 'the divine' and so on so problematic that science 'can't study' them? It's clearly not lack of proximity or the ability to stick them in a lab, as that clearly isn't a problem with things like Big Bang and black holes.

With science, it is about having the equations, and then means to observe and test. Before physicists hypothesised and eventually observed black holes, they still existed.

My mum died a few months back. The day after she passed away, I was crying, struggling to sleep and suddenly my bedside lamp flashed once. I remember sitting up to look at it then turned over and fell to sleep straight away, like it comforted me somehow. No other electrical issues since. Since her passing, I've also had a robin follow me and her funeral song play on the radio-must be 20 years since I last heard it on the radio.

I once saw a psychic years ago, completely at random and spur of the moment at a small festival type thing. Everything she said was accurate. Small details that no one would know and collectively, would be impossible to guess. I really do believe there is more to life/death than we currently comprehend.

No, but I would not dismiss anyone who says they do. I believe what they say they have experienced is real. Neither of us can provide a rational explantion for it. They ascribe it to the supernatural whereas I believe we just haven't yet discovered the science to explain it. However, in the absence of proof either way, we both simply have opinions.

Ghosts are a person's perception.

It can be entirely true from that person's point of view - as in the neurons in their brain firing in a certain way to give them the impression that their senses are behaving in a way which suggests a ghost - but ultimately, unless it can be objectively proven, it might very well be a false phenomenon. A trick of the mind.

Sort of like being in the matrix.

Yes.

I’ve seen a black figure walk past my bedroom at night. My teens have seen it too. My 15 year old sits on the stairs watching youtube a lot and she said she feels something watching over her shoulder. My 8 year old had to move bedrooms as she kept seeing a man standing in the corner of her room. She even drew him... a mostly black figure.

@TooBigForMyBoots

Definitions are one of the simple tests they fail.

Again, the onus isn't with the sceptics to disprove claims, it lies with the people making the claims to come up with definitions, hypothesis, repeatable experiments which demonstrate the viability of their hypothesis and so on.

I think the reason that otherwise enormously intelligent and inquisitive people can't or won't do this with ghosts, the divine and so on, is that the formulation of any hypothesis fails at a very early stage, so the obvious conclusion is that these things do not exist as part of our universe.

If you suggest that you have been visited by a dead relative, you don't just have the problem of putting forward a convincing argument for whatever you witnessed being a manifestation of your dead relative, in fact, that's rather secondary. Where has this manifestation come from? Why does it only appear to you? How does it materialise and dematerialise? Where does it abide when it is not busy scaring it's former relatives, and what is the nature of this 'place' it supposedly inhabits when it's not here? What is it composed of? Why are these phenomenon totally resistant to being recorded by any normal means? Why do only some people ever encounter these phenomenon? Why is it that this phenomenon does not mesh with what we understand about the nature of our universe, and more importantly, if this is what the 'believers' purport it to be, it throws our understanding of the universe into complete disarray and contradicts already well understood and demonstrably viable hypothesis.

So which is it? That nobody who 'believes' in these things is capable of formulating a single hypothesis that satisfactorily answers any of these questions, despite the human race being able to do just that for equally as perplexing and nebulous phenomenon, or is it quite simply that it is impossible to propose any viable hypothesis at all because the things that are being claimed simply do not exist, and contradict so many demonstrably valid prior hypothesis that they are patently absurd?

You keep asking about what 'science' says about these things, how it defines them and so on. The reality is that science says nothing much about them other than that they do not exist, because there is no credible evidence or reason to believe that they do which actually stands up to scientific scrutiny. What more are you expecting? I'm sure if there was any validity to these claims at all then there would already have long been teams of scientists postulating this or that and submitting their theories for scrutiny, yet science appears to be perfectly comfortable with it's conclusions about the existence or otherwise of 'ghosts' and such, despite people all over the world still claiming to believe and witnessing events they conclude are down to the paranormal, in spite of the fact that there are invariably far more satisfactory and credible explanations.

@blueshoes

Ghosts are a person's perception.

It can be entirely true from that person's point of view - as in the neurons in their brain firing in a certain way to give them the impression that their senses are behaving in a way which suggests a ghost - but ultimately, unless it can be objectively proven, it might very well be a false phenomenon. A trick of the mind.

Sort of like being in the matrix.

I always thought it might be something like that... but the smokey smell I detected that spooky night in the babies room (an experience which I could have imagined - or created in my own brain) was also real to my husband when he woke up on my return to bed . He could smell the smoke on me - even though he knew nothing about my experience.

@FrenchMustard,

That wasn't in Liverpool was it?

I did work in Liverpool years ago and used to go to get buns from a sandwich shop for lunch. I heard rumours about a ghost called Fred and staff said they wouldn't go into the cellar/basement alone, and certainly not if it was Winter and dark.

Was it Greenwoods? So long ago I can't remember?

How sad to be so narrow minded. Oh and opinionated

Another one who somehow concludes that believing in fact and science is 'narrow minded' and 'opinionated'.

Take it you don't have any opinions on anything then, and you are so 'open minded' that you believe anything anyone tells you without question, no matter how ridiculous?

Again, if people are going to make ridiculous claims, they haven't got a leg to stand on when they then turn around and complain that they are being ridiculed.

No. Until I see or feel something.. I can't believe it. Why has it never happened for me of it's real😕

The reality is that science says nothing much about them other than that they do not exist,

Science does not say that ghosts don't exist. As you keep saying you cannot prove a negative, so it would be an unscientific statement to make.

...yet science appears to be perfectly comfortable with it's conclusions about the existence or otherwise of 'ghosts' and such...

Science has not come to any conclusions about ghosts or gods or such. They are not really subjects of scientific study. You are believing in the existence of something that doesn't exist @XDownwiththissortofthingX.

With science, it is about having the equations, and then means to observe and test. Before physicists hypothesised and eventually observed black holes, they still existed

Correct, black holes existed prior to being observed, as did Gravity prior to Isaac Newton describing it. What both of these phenomenon have in common is that they both left enough tell-tale signs of their existence on the universe, that it prompted inquisitive minds to speculate about their nature, formulate hypothesis, and later prove the validity of these hypothesis.

You might want to ask yourself why scientists are seemingly uninterested in doing the same for 'ghosts'.

Science has not come to any conclusions about ghosts or gods or such. They are not really subjects of scientific study. You are believing in the existence of something that doesn't exist

Again, absolutely untrue. There is a reason why there are no viable hypothesis regarding the nature of the paranormal, and it isn't because of disinterest or want of trying, it's because it's impossible to describe the nature of that which does not exist.

I do but that's because I've seen many things that I can't not believe. I am a rational person and will always try to find a rational answer first.

Have a read of 'proof of heaven' by an atheist Neurosurgeon.