To think adults believing in ghosts are odd

[nothingmore]

Hi,

Aibu to think grown adults believing in ghosts is a bit odd?

I have an acquaintance who is also going on about going on ghost hunts and 'investigations' at supposed haunted sights. Of course they always seem to come back from them and say the evenings where 'quiet'.

I feel it's a bit odd that a grown adult can believe in this sort of thing. They're obviously not hurting anyone with this hobby but I find it so strange they're certain that ghosts exist.

This argument is always the same. On one side, people who have seen ghosts. On the other side, people who haven't.

Ghosts exist. I saw one as a child, my ddad saw the same thingl I’ve also seen one while working nights at the hospital.
There is lots in this world we know but can’t explain, why would ghosts not exist?

Yanbu, it's ridiculous.

I used to think this was silly too. Then I started studying astrophysics. The universe is a bloody weird place that we know very little about. The amount that we don't know is truly staggering. Suddenly ghosts don't seem so strange to me anymore. I don't believe in them myself, but I can certainly see why someone might. The human mind does all kinds of backflips to explain the unexplainable. I don't see how it's any more ridiculous than string theory.

Why would they exist? There's no afterlife and souls aren't real.

Nobody has ever seen a ghost.

Lots of people think they have. Hard to relate to people that think this way, but they’re not doing any harm and may find it comforting. All very daft though, imo.

I don't know what I believe really but I don't see it as much different to believing in God etc.

However, I do believe there are things we don't understand yet and I have seen some really scary things out in the woods across the world. So who knows.

My mother and I used to argue about this often, she was a believer. She died suddenly a couple of years ago. If ghosts were real she would 100% have come back to laugh in my face and say I told you so. I wish she would in a way.

The thing is the universe is vast and complex - bigger than we can even imagine, and the human brain is also complex and again we know so little about it and how it works and where the energy that runs it goes that I think it’s foolish to assume we know everything there is about life and death (and everything in between!)

I've actually seen one so it's not weird to me

I don’t understand how people believe lots of stuff, gods, ghosts, flat earth etc. But people do and it is their prerogative. It is my prerogative to think they are not thinking logically.

I would love to say I don't believe I ghosts or demonic spirits! I'd give anything to be able to say it with conviction, but I cannot, it would be a lie. I'm scared of the dark and deep forests, empty old buildings, and the truth is that unless I believed ghosts exists, I wouldn't be scared of these things - because the fear I feel when I'm on the dark or an eerie place is a fear of spirits or demons.

I’m with you @Pinkout.

I've seen several ghosts and I am quite well, not under massive stress and the least imaginative person I know. I am not, however, convinced that there is no explanation for what I saw other than dead people trying to annoy me.
The experience is real, what causes that experience may well be fully explained one day, but I think that would be a shame, I like to think that there will always be some mysteries. I'd also hate to see the end of ghost hunting on TV, because it's all so obviously faked that it's really funny.

I find it strange that so many people are 100% certain they don't exist.

Exactly. The most intelligent, scientific attitude to it is that there is a phenomenon, cultural, social, physical, sociological, that we call ghosts.

My mum just bleats on (for attention) 'But ghosts can't exist'.

Well, why can't they? There are plenty of things we can't explain on a physical level.

My dad IS a physicist. He experienced a 'haunting' in my mum's old house. He has done a great deal of reading of quantum based theory about how particles interact and behave with each - not conclusively. If anything, firmly establishing that since there are particles that behave and interact in ways we can't understand or measure, then it's impossible to disprove one way or the other.

You can only perform a meaningful experiment if you are able to reproduce it - if there are factors that you can't measure or reproduce, then you can't know if you even did the same experiment twice.

(one of my dad's interpretations - and please don't grill me on this, because it's hard enough to keep up with his theories - is that particles can somehow take on a pattern of a person, and repeat that, in a way that the human brain can 'see' even though there's nothing there any more)

Long story short... 'Ghosts don't exist' is a highly unsophisticated scientific opinion!

It's not odd or weird.

At least I have actually seen an apparition, never seen any "Gods" though.

I've only seen the bottom half of one, MrBC has seen a full body. Both times at our little place.

We don't do drugs and aren't needing a lobotomy. We don't lack "critical thinking" (in fact my job requires a shit load of "critical thinking"), also we don't believe any old drivel. In fact we both are very practical and evidence driven people. I've never believed in any religion or afterlife and research the shit out of things because I prefer to find out the correct information rather than take everything that is "told" to me.

If you think about it we are just walking living computers, who's to say when we die that "energy" that was a living creature doesn't hang around or imprint onto something?

People who "ghost hunt" normally fall into 2 camps, those who do it because it's "spooky" and "hip" and those that are actually trying to scientifically prove if they exist or not.

@Cornettoninja

OMG! Skinwalker Range fascinates me as well.... If I ever win the Euro millions maybe we can get a little MNs group together and go on a little trip there

Isn't is a bit odd that with millions, maybe tens or hundreds of millions of 24/7 CCTV cameras around the world, in shops, offices, houses etc, not a single one has picked up a ghost. And the stuff that ghosts are sometimes accused of doing, moving furniture around and stuff, that's never been captured either.

I've seen a few ghosts, as has my dad and his dad before him. I was telling someone about one of the ghosts my dad saw once and they said my mum saw the exact same ghost in the same place, but not at the same time. Me and my friend also saw the exact same ghost at the same time.

Why do people judge people for believing in something? Why cant we all just live and let live?

Most of the current explanations for ghosts are in fact incompatible with the laws of physics. Not 'something we don't understand' but 'something that can't exist because otherwise gravity wouldn't work' kind of thing.

Multiple people can see the same ghost for the same reason an entire town was suddenly struck down with a dancing plague in which hundreds died. The most fascinating part of ghost investigations is what it tells us about the human brain.

I would never ever be critical of someone who believes in ghosts or God, if anything I feel kind of envious. They have or see something that I just can't, no matter how much I would want to.
It's a bit like the fact I that have daydreams (lot's of threads on mn about this phenomenon) that have been a massive part of my life since forever. Reading those threads, you will have a hard time trying to explain it to people who have never experienced it and I feel blessed to have it. It's like seeing colours that don't really exist and only a select people can see iyswim.

Please forgive the typos .

@thecatsthecats

Exactly! The Quantum Theory demonstration is amazing! How can a "particle" change it's behavior just by the simply fact it is being observed?

We don't "know" everything and the human brain is a complex system which they are still trying to fully understand and map.

So who's to say that there aren't some people that can; by simply observing an area in an unconscious manner; make the particles change in such a way that they are able to see something in another plane/area that others cannot see or think that should not be there?

Gets the little grey cells working at least

Why do people judge people for believing in something? Why cant we all just live and let live?

We all judge people every day for what they believe. I judge people who believe Trump is great, Boris is the answer to our prayers, face tattoos look good and loads of other things.

I judge people who believe in ghosts to be probably a bit thick, and definitely lacking critical thinking skills. But I also believe in live and let live. I wouldn't harm someone because they supported Trump, or believed in ghosts. But I'm fully entitled to judge them.

It is also strange that people who "see" ghosts are always people who lack critical thinking skills in the first place. It's as if ghosts are attracted to people open to believing in made up drivel.

This. And those who attempt to validate their beliefs by airy handwaving about astrophysics/science in general appear to know very little about either -- it always comes down to some ill-informed vagueness about 'energy' and 'staff we don't know' but which science will apparently demonstrate conclusively in future.

(And there's always a scattering who have completely misunderstood energy never 'dying' but being converted into another form as a justification of the existence of a soul or an afterlife. Or Hamlet, when they inevitably quote it with an air of great triumph on these threads.)

I don't see it as analogous to religious faith at all -- very few believers claim to have 'seen' God in some physically manifest form. Believers have faith in something unseen.

I didn't believe in them, either. I do now!