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

Has anyone watched the video footage from the cab and dash cams of taxi drivers after the Japanese Tsunami a few years ago? They are on YouTube. Many taxi drivers reported ghost passengers and sightings after the event. Chilling to watch.

@OlympicProcrastinator

Has anyone watched the video footage from the cab and dash cams of taxi drivers after the Japanese Tsunami a few years ago? They are on YouTube. Many taxi drivers reported ghost passengers and sightings after the event. Chilling to watch.

I don't want to google this in case it bring up even scarier stuff (wimp! ). Can you post links?

@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.

That really isn't against our current understanding of physics. Time is more like a matrix, like space, than a line, if you were to visualise it. And matter bends the matrix dimensions. That's what creates gravity, like dropping a bowling ball onto a sheet to show the effect of gravity around a planet. Matter and energy are the same thing, and we know they bend time and space (black holes etc).

@EdwardCullensBiteOnTheSide haha! Most of the clergy I know drink bucket loads of tea. On zoom no one knows if it is tea in the mug or gin. I haven't cracked yet but long evening meetings on zoom may well mean that I'm drinking gin during the meeting rather than afterwards......

There you go Magenta. The one that’s not the taxi one, watch till the end because you can’t see it at first.

Placemarking.

Some of my most vivid memories from childhood seem to be hallucinations caused by high temperatures when I had tonsillitis. It’s got to the point where I can’t be sure which things I remember actually happened which is very unsettling.

One of my strongest memories is of my brother coming home around 11pm from the pub and deciding to cook chips. There was a chip pan fire and I remember watching as my DB used the fire extinguisher my DF always insisted be kept in the kitchen . I can still see the entire kitchen covered in white powder from the extinguisher. Apparently no such thing ever happened. It is still so real to me.

I worked as a bereavement councillor for a few years and when I was training we had some lectures from a psychiatrist/psychologist (can’t recall which) who said it is entirely normal for bereaved people to see, smell ans hear the person or pet they have lost. It’s the brains way of trying to process and cope at a horribly distressing time. Some people feel reassured and comforted by these hallucinations and some think they’re going mad. It often helped to let them know it is entirely normal and very usual to experience such things.

I’ve also had a near death experience. I had an allergic reaction to a contrast dye injected through a cannula for an MRI scan. I had the very real sense that I was dying and feeling as if I was zooming backwards. There was no light, or visions of relatives. I just remember feeling petrified and desperate to tell someone to do something because I was dying. I think all these sensations were the result if the sudden huge drop in blood pressure and the fact that the HCP’s had tipped the bed to get blood back to my head. Near death experiences must surely be the result of chemical changes and nothing more spiritual.

Most of the people I’ve been around when they have been actively dying have has powerful visual/auditory hallucinations. Seeing and hearing their late parents is very common. My DM when she was dying suddenly forgot her own DM was dead and was inconsolable when she saw her ‘ghost’. It was so so sad and I was unable to comfort her. I don’t believe in the paranormal but do believe there is a lot about the human brain we don’t understand.

Yes had quite a few weird things and some lovely things

1. Felt a ghostly weird presence in the loos in a pub in Henley
2. Was speaking to a girl who was looking at me really strangely and it went all blury and slow motion like at the sides like a film and this strange voice came out of her and said "Jealous" and then time started again - just like that.
3. Too many lovely things that I believe have been the Holy Spirit to mention including an intense feeling of liquid love in the middle of the night once
4. And waking up in the middle of the night and it felt like static in my ears and it hurt...and then I heard the most amazing choir - like nothing I had ever heard before and they were singing "He's got the whole world in his hands". I really believe I got to hear heaven....

@40somethingJBJ

I’m on the fence. I was brought up in a family of believers, and my late aunt’s house features in a book about local ghosts as there have been some very strange happenings there over the years, witnessed by most of the family. I’ve seen things I just can’t explain rationally, and “felt” strange things in various houses, and would’ve always said I was a believer.

However, since losing my mum and my aunt over a decade ago, and my dad a few weeks ago, I can’t help but think sws t, as big believers themselves, if there was a way to come back and visit/haunt/appear to me, one of them would’ve worked out how to do it by now, and none of them have! Of all the spirits to show themselves to me, it’s unlikely to be a random cloaked bloke that I have no connection with, so my belief has faded considerably.

Those who do believe would say that souls return to the place they came from mostly and they can't 'choose' to pop back just to say hello.

It's the souls that haven't moved on as they should have that hang around as ghosts until they eventually also return.

@OlympicProcrastinator

There you go Magenta. The one that’s not the taxi one, watch till the end because you can’t see it at first.

Really creepy and look so real. Not a vague white shape.

I think it's a load of old bollocks. I would love to have a belief in the afterlife but really, I know that's it you just have one life and then you die.
You only live on in other's memories & genes.

I've always been open minded. A few month ago my sister went to a medium evening to keep her friend company. She was the 2nd person the lady picked out of a room of people. She said she had a man with her who had died suddenly but it was expected and that he didnt want to leave but he just couldn't hold on any longer and said it was something to do with his stomach area (our dad had died 4 years ago, he had lung cancer and was given 3-12 months, he had no symptoms and only found out after he had small car accident and they did a scan. My mum thought he was asleep on sofa but soon discovered he had passed away) they put lung cancer as his cause of death but we always thought it was more to do with his kidney problem. Even though he was so ill, he had no symptoms. The lady then said she could see the sorting of photos, the week before my sister had been with my mum as she sorted out all her dining room draws, they sat looking at the old photos together. This is the bit which really freaked me out she said she could see a shorter haired girl who was having to inject her stomach but that it wasnt to do with diabetes. I had had a csection 2 weeks before and was having to inject my stomach 3 times a day. She also mentioned some ladies names (one was my auntie, who had died and it's not a popular name) Its in some ways comforted me but also freaked me out. Non of the information she had could of been found online, my sisters not on any social media.

LittleNightin

It's called a cold reading, mediums are expert at doing this.

I voted 'not unreasonable', but I don't believe in ghosts. What I do believe is that, because humans/creatures are made up of electricity, our energy may flow into other outlets, but we don't yet have the technology to test that, or how it works.

For example, a whole load of your importnwnt organs are in the attach and chest area, it won't be ear wax or a ingrown toenail that will finish you off.

@Tehmina23

I think it's a load of old bollocks. I would love to have a belief in the afterlife but really, I know that's it you just have one life and then you die. You only live on in other's memories & genes.

The genetic thing is another interesting issue. Epigenetics seems to show some evidence now that life experiences affect the genetic material passed down to descendants, and therefore the functioning of the genes they inherit.

@DorisDaisyMay this sounds like Clairaudience I know someone that used to hear ringing bells in her ears when near a dangerous person and was later proved to be (without me going into too much detail)

@MagentaDoesNotExist I sadly don't have children so won't be passing on my genes. Probably a good thing.

[quote Tehmina23]@MagentaDoesNotExist I sadly don't have children so won't be passing on my genes. Probably a good thing.[/quote]
I'm sorry to hear that, if you wanted to.

@KathleenTurnerOverdrive

LittleNightin

It's called a cold reading, mediums are expert at doing this.

But injection in the stomach is not a common thing? The aunties uncommon name.

I’ve had a couple of strange experiences that makes me believe. I once worked in a care home and people spoke about a corridor being haunted. I completely disbelieved it but one day as I was sorting some laundry I felt someone brush past me. It went really cold and there was a drought behind me. Turned around and there was absolutely nobody there and the whole wing was empty. On another occasion I had a contractor in my house doing some work. He came dashing out of the room and told me he could no longer complete the work as he’d seen a monk in the bedroom. He was a grown man and looked absolutely petrified.

@MagentaIsDoesNotExist

In my opinion, the issue is that what is meant by "ghosts" is unclear. I am not remotely "woo", I am a rationalist.

Science has paradigms. During previous ones, if someone had told you that snakes can sense heat on the sand from animals that have moved across it hours earlier, you might have said that is impossible. Now, we know that snakes can sense infrafed.

Previously it was a mystery how some birds managed to navigate their migrations of thousands of miles. We know now that, in some cases, they can sense the magnetic fields of the Earth.

Much other animal behaviour remains completely inexplicable. Yet we observe it, so there must be a rationale that is, as yet, obscure to us.

Humans have five senses because these are the ones that happened to evolve to best assist our survival in our particular environment. That does not mean that anything which exists outside of these five senses, or their range, does not exists. Otherwise we'd have no need for X-rays, for example.

To me, it would be the epitome of arrogance and stupidity if we were to assume that our current science tells us all there is to know. We are, after all, just a clever type of monkey, and we should not forget this. Einstein for example proved that Newton's physics was correct but within the limited bounds of its assumptions, and not applicable more widely.

I do not believe that there are "paranormal" phenomenon. But I do believe that our science is not advanced enough to claim that we can explain everything or that anything that our current science cannot explain doesn't exist. If that was the case then all scientists could retire. The entire purpose of it is to investigate and understand and perceive things that we cannot necessarily perceive directly without instruments that measure things beyond our field of vision etc.

There is also significant support from physics for the theories that there may be multiple dimensions that we cannot perceive, and that time is not linear.

I would also add to this, that the idea that what you see and perceive directly is "real" is a can of worms in itself. What do you mean by "real". A large percentage of matter is empty space yet your table does not appear to you to be transparent. Your brain interprets the sensory information it receives and creates your image of the world. There is no such thing for a human as a direct perception of what exists. See my username: magenta does not exist. Well, only in your mind.

Sorry to highlight my own post but I'd be very interested to hear responses to this both from those who strongly believe in ghosts as something "paranormal" aka outside of the realm of scientific discovery, and those who are sure there is nothing that our current level of science cannot explain.

When I was a teenager a friend and I were in a narrow country lane and we saw an elderly couple walking towards us. As courtesy we moved over to let them pass and as they came level with us they vanished. Afterwards we both recalled that although their lips were moving, no sound was coming out. After that I have had a few more scary encounters which make me believe.

I just remembered when we were 16 or 17 a friend of mine saw what she could only describe as a young man for a split second in my room. She had an absolute meltdown, it took a while to get it out of her what had happened and she desperately wanted to go home but it was a little late and I lived 45 mins away from her house so persuaded her to stay. She’s always been quite a non emotional person and certainly not dramatic so it was a bit of a shock. I bought it up with her a few years later and she point blank refused to talk about it.

But injection in the stomach is not a common thing? The aunties uncommon name.

I doubt the so ed medium said right out 'your sister objects herself in the stomach'. It will be along the lines of, I see someone else in your family who has some sort of pain in the stomach or the chest, who feels a sharp pain' Then the sitter fills in the information themselves, a stabbing pain could be interpreted as a stomach ache, a tattoo, indigestion, a hernia etc. Once the vague bait is chucked up, the sitter adds meaning which the medium embellishes. For every hit, there will be plenty more misses, but remember the hits