Do you believe in 'ghosts'?

[Bump2021]

I'm not a woo person by nature, I'm more of a sceptic but there has been two or three occasions where I've encountered something unexplainable.

Do you believe in the paranormal?

YANBU - yes (please explain why)
YABU - no, it's a load of bollocks

Yes.

Sometimes I get asked to do house blessings when the homeowner thinks there is something off. So far only once I've felt something that shouldn't be there and it was asked to leave. I've not come across much in my own environs but I did go to one famously haunted site and was surprised at how uncomfortable I was even on a bright sunny day with lots of tourists around.

MilkMoon Mon 11-Jan-21 22:57:12
Annamaywong25
But of course consciousness is a product of the body — insofar as science currently understands it, it’s a matter of brain activity. When the body dies, consciousness dies with it.

Consciousness survives 3 minutes after death
Got that from a quick Google, will find more results if you do too.

No.

@73kittycat73

*MilkMoon Mon 11-Jan-21 22:57:12 Annamaywong25 But of course consciousness is a product of the body — insofar as science currently understands it, it’s a matter of brain activity. When the body dies, consciousness dies with it.*

Consciousness survives 3 minutes after death
Got that from a quick Google, will find more results if you do too.

Three minutes? Those must be strangely speedy and immediate ghosts, not Anne Boleyn drifting mistily along corridors looking for her head getting on for 400 years after it was cut off?

I used to believe in ghosts and maybe I still do. But I also think that there are bits of energy which, when we encounter them, our brains interpret as things we recognise; faces, beings.

I also used to believe in reincarnation, but now I am more minded to believe that we inherit memories and feelings from our ancestors and they occasionally pop up. When on a school trip, I knew my way round a Yorkshire village I had never previously visited. I knew that when I rounded the corner, that's where the butchers was. I knew where the path was up to the moors. Weird!

@mostlydrinkstea are you the lady vicar off Gogglebox?

Carl Edon.

You’re welcome.

@mellongoose Haworth?

The guy in the disco I have read about here before, it's very strange that he was angry! Maybe he was a vampire as they don't age and he recognised the op and thought she'd expose him 😂😂

@MagentaIsDoesNotExist love this, and your username.

[quote VenusClapTrap]@mellongoose Haworth?[/quote]
@VenusClapTrap yes. How did you know?! I was only 10 at the time.

Just a guess!

Yes.

I absolutely believe our lives do not end in death. Our body is just a shell.

I was never sure. I saw someone open a door a french door at a place my husband and I rented in Lyme Regis. I literally saw them come to the door, got up to open it (assumed a neighbour) and it opened before I got to it. No one in the courtyard and the gate was locked. Still not sure. But I can never explain that night.

Also, since I moved into my house a year ago I can hear footsteps in the kitchen at night on occasion and the kettle has been heard boiling with no one in there and the smell of cigarettes in certain rooms. Very weird... but I don’t know...

@EdwardCullensBiteOnTheSide I'm a vicar but not Revd Kate Botley.

Freaked me out all over again? 🤣

As a student I lived in a pretty ‘active’ house. It was a mid/late Victorian terrace, fairly standard for a student house. It was quite eerie, and one of those places where you could be working away and listening to ‘general house noise’ (footsteps, distant voices, etc), before eventually another housemate would come home and you would realise that you had been the only person home all afternoon. Or you could be cooking, and see shadows moving in the hall. That kind of thing. I hated going to the bathroom at night and I often had my door locked. My bedroom was a place that always felt safe and happy, and I spent a lot of my alone time in the house shut away in my room.

One day, I’m not sure why, we lifted the corner of the carpet in my bedroom. Carved into the floorboards all around the room were markings - runes of protection apparently. So I think I do believe in something. I’m certainly quite wary when going on holiday/staying in old cottages etc. And when we moved to this house I was quite apprehensive, but so far it’s been calm.

I also grew up in West Cornwall and had a few strange experiences as a child. There are some ancient places there that just have a weird vibe. And some not so ancient places (Tehidy) that are equally oppressive.

My experience was witnessed by another person who saw exactly what I did so there was no trick of the mind / hallucination etc etc.

I was laying in a double bed in the pitch black with someone chatting. We began laughing and laughing and at the point we were laughing the hardest and loudest, a ball of light appeared in the middle of the room (a bedroom, no windows open) with a bang as loud as a gun going off. In fact, it was as if someone had shot a gun at us in the dark to shut us up. The only difference in our experience was my friend said she saw a white light and I saw it as blue. It was round like a football. We sat in stunned silence before one of us braved it enough to get up and turn the light on.
Nothing there. No damage to anything, just an explosion in mid air, indoors with no visible after effects.

@mostlydrinkstea I wondered due to your username as she always had a big pot of tea of the table 😂

@BorderlineHappy

*In the late 1970s/early 1980's the place to go was TOTS (Talk of The south), which was a Disco in Southend on sea.

We used to go every week.

I started to notice a young man with blond hair. He was always alone and always stood not far from the bar. I would catch his eye and he would stare back but it felt very uncomfortable. He didn't smile back which was very odd as back then I was a gorgeous young thing! ;)

He was there every week and although I was having a riot of a time with my girl friends, I did start to look out for him. No one else appeared to notice him as we were all having such a great time.

He was always dresses the same in shirt and trousers. He wasn't fashionable but he wasn't unfashionable. He was good looking and had a very clear complexion and wavy blond hair.

I chat to anyone but I always had the feeling of being fearful of him and not to approach.

I suppose I just got used to seeing him there.

Fast forward nearly twenty years later and my disco days were long over and my then partner who was in the music business told me that he had to meet someone at the former TOTS. I think there was a name change and instead of a disco it was now a nightclub.

I decided to go with him to see how much it had changed inside.

We got there and off he went to meet this chap, it was only a quick chat.

I strolled around, feeling rather out of place amongst the pretty young things and then wham! Straight in front of me about ten feet away was the boy/man I used to see all of those years ago!

Everything around me seemed to fade away and I could not tear my eyes away from him. He was angry, very angry I could feel his anger and I felt terrified. I was fixed to the spot and I cannot find the words to describe just how petrified I was.

I felt as if I was in grave danger. This young man, perfectly ordinary looking was exactly the same as I'd seen him before. He hasn't aged and his hair and clothes were the same.

All of a sudden, the world started rushing back into view and I could see and hear everything going on around me, I spun around and knew I had to get out of there as soon as I could. Thankfully my now ex had finished with the bloke he had to meet and I tugged on his arm to get us out of there.

I have no idea what or why I saw this young man and why he should be so menacing.

Another poster did suggest that a teenager had been run over and killed nearby but it doesn't explain why this presence would want to scare the crap out of me!

He was so scary because he was so normal looking and whatever it was about him had the power to give off the very strong vibe of anger and danger.*

@MagentaDoesNotExist

That is really creepy. Thank you for reposting it.

[quote snappyoldfartpants]@MagentaIsDoesNotExist love this, and your username.[/quote]
Thank you.

Thinking about it I guess someone in modernish western clothes will be less likely to be assumed to be a ghost. Bit more obvious if they're in clothes from olden days so more reports of that sort of sighting?

Yes, that person walking along the street may look normal to you and be a ghost. This idea would answer those who query why we only see Victorian ghosts.

Not that I believe in ghosts, but I do wonder if there's something going on.

One explanation I remember reading was that one type of apparition some people see, the ones where the person or people are repeating actions without interaction with the watchers, are like a kind of energy "recording" fixed in that particular location when conditions are right. And then someone comes along who can "tune in" to that particular energy and sets a "replay" in motion, like watching a video.

One of the examples mentioned in that article (and it was years ago so I can't recall where I read it) was about the battle of Edgehill during the English Civil War. Reports begain circulating quite soon after the battle that people had been hearing the sounds of battle in the area night after night, after all had been done and dusted. Some senior people in the Army of one side (can't recall which side) gathered to go to the battlefield and investigate, and to their surprise they saw part of the battle unfold and could identify individual people.

What made me pay more attention to the aricle than just boredly reading through was that some of the faces recognised belonged to people who were still alive at that time. Which makes me think that there's something in the idea of an energy "recording", triggered to replay in the right conditions.

@TurquoiseDragon

Thinking about it I guess someone in modernish western clothes will be less likely to be assumed to be a ghost. Bit more obvious if they're in clothes from olden days so more reports of that sort of sighting?

Yes, that person walking along the street may look normal to you and be a ghost. This idea would answer those who query why we only see Victorian ghosts.

Not that I believe in ghosts, but I do wonder if there's something going on.

One explanation I remember reading was that one type of apparition some people see, the ones where the person or people are repeating actions without interaction with the watchers, are like a kind of energy "recording" fixed in that particular location when conditions are right. And then someone comes along who can "tune in" to that particular energy and sets a "replay" in motion, like watching a video.

One of the examples mentioned in that article (and it was years ago so I can't recall where I read it) was about the battle of Edgehill during the English Civil War. Reports begain circulating quite soon after the battle that people had been hearing the sounds of battle in the area night after night, after all had been done and dusted. Some senior people in the Army of one side (can't recall which side) gathered to go to the battlefield and investigate, and to their surprise they saw part of the battle unfold and could identify individual people.

What made me pay more attention to the aricle than just boredly reading through was that some of the faces recognised belonged to people who were still alive at that time. Which makes me think that there's something in the idea of an energy "recording", triggered to replay in the right conditions.

Haha! I am imagining the Brexiteers who were moaning about overpopulation discovering that 2/3 of the people they see on the high street are actually ghosts.

@mellongoose I’d love to say it was something woo, but don’t freak out - a village in Yorkshire that gets school trips, and which has a path up to the moors - it had to be Haworth!

In all seriousness though I think many such experiences (and despite being very science based I have had some inexplicable things happen to me too), it's likely in my view that there is some kind of matter or energy that we haven't understood yet. As another poster mentioned, we know dark matter exists and that there is more of it in the universe than actual matter but have literally no clue what it is. We have discovered new particles in Cern that were theoretical until a few years ago. And there will be much more to come I am certain.

There is, at this time, still no medical, biological or evolutionary explanation of how consciousness in the brain happens, or why it needed to evolve at all. It is, so to speak, a nomological dangler. And yet this concept of the conscious "self" is so central to our existence. Small children, before they start to distinguish our ideas of what is "real" or not, tend to me more sensitive to these experiences in general, across cultures and time, which seems strange as they would be unaware of that if they were fabricating quite persistent stories.

I remember many years ago reading about a little girl in born in one part of India who was adamant she was from another place entirely, hundreds of miles away. She named all of her family members, their town, gave lots of details. It turned out that another little girl the same age was saying the same about her family. And that both of them had almost died and been revived on the same day, when this began. Journalists went and spoke to both families and it seems impossible it could have been made up and neither had any contact outside their local area. Eventually both accepted that the other child was really the embodiment of their child and they swapped back to live with their "original" families.