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

In the same vein, a woman I worked with once told me that she got off the tube at Kings Cross and started following the ‘way out’ route, as she had done thousands of times. She suddenly smelt her deceased mother’s perfume, very strongly, together with an overpowering sense that she should turn round and not go any further.

She retraced her steps, got back on the train and got off at the next station instead. She felt a bit daft about it, until very shortly afterwards she heard that there was a massive fire at King’s Cross. If she hadn’t turned round she would have walked right into it.

Yes. Have had had many encounters over my life. If I hadn't I wouldn't believe. I think you need to experience it to believe it.

[quote MoveAsideCherry]@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime could it be that you'd watched something or seen something on the news in the lead up to that? I sometimes find that seeing/hearing certain things can play on your mind and come out unconsciously later and has affected me in similar ways. I once felt i couldn't walk home and had to get the bus...[/quote]
Well, no, not really: that a domestic cat belonging to an ordinary person had died several years earlier in a town where I didn't live isn't likely to have made the news, nor been seen by me, and none of the examples I gave could have been on the news because they hadn't happened at the time they were "sensed" or whatever one wants to call it, but they did happen after the sensing had.

I think maybe you meant umpteennamechanges' experience?

@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.

This! Very well said

@VenusClapTrap

In the same vein, a woman I worked with once told me that she got off the tube at Kings Cross and started following the ‘way out’ route, as she had done thousands of times. She suddenly smelt her deceased mother’s perfume, very strongly, together with an overpowering sense that she should turn round and not go any further.

She retraced her steps, got back on the train and got off at the next station instead. She felt a bit daft about it, until very shortly afterwards she heard that there was a massive fire at King’s Cross. If she hadn’t turned round she would have walked right into it.

A surprising number of people, my brother among them, did not arrive at King's Cross on the evening of that fire as they usually did at about the right (or wrong) time to be involved in it. Most (like my brother) had a tangible reason for being too early or too late for the horror, but some seem just to have decided to go home a different way for no reason they could put their finger on. Your friend having a reason for her action is unusual, I think.

In the same way, quite a number of people seem not to have used the tickets they had for the Titanic's first and last voyage. Some, like Marconi, had quite ordinary reasons for taking a different ship, others seem just to have decided at the last moment that they didn't want to go and had no idea why they felt that way. (I tend to discount the ones who claimed that God had given them a Dire Warning not to travel on her; that's likely to be rationalising a foreboding rather than God interfering for one individual's benefit. He mostly doesn't.)

That’s interesting, AskingQuestions.

@VenusClapTrap

I’ve never experienced anything, but I love woo threads!

To those posters commenting that ghosts are always Victorian or ladies in long white dresses, there was a very creepy story on a thread on here years ago about a ghost in modern clothes in a night club.

There is meant to be a ghost young woman in 60s clothes on the A22 near Caterham...never seen her myself.

Oh, I have been reminded: I once stopped for a hitch-hiker in jeans and a tee-shirt and wearing a rucksack of some sort, who wasn't there. She had her thumb out on the slip road into Leigh Delamere services, and I stopped to point out that it wasn't the best place to get a lift going west, but when I had, she wasn't to be seen. Nowhere for her to have gone during the relevant three to five seconds I wasn't looking directly at her, broad daylight and a sunny day but no shadows being cast on the place where she'd been standing. I have no idea what that was about, but I've never let it bother me.

As I said before, ghosts always seem to be so pointless.

I'm sceptical but accept that we still don't know everything about time and/or physics, so what we call " ghosts" may come to have an explanation in the future.

I've had a few strange experiences but nothing untoward.

1. In our current house (semi detached) when we first moved in, used to smell cigarette smoke randomly when in the lounge. Occasionally sense someone at the doorway to the kichen/lounge too. Our house has a hallway as you come in, so our hallway is next to neighbours' hallway with lounge the other side of that, so not smell drifting in. One day I just said out loud, "please don't smoke in the house, we don't smoke and don't like the smell.". It hasn't happened since.

1. Years ago travelling home on a late train, all stops to my station which was at the end of the line. The carriage I was in backed into the drivers compartment so you couldn't go further forward. I was reading but as the carriage emptied I was aware of a few people remaining, then it was down to just one man, sitting in the block of seats across the aisle from me, facing away from me. As we approached the station before mine he got up and stood by the doors. The train stopped, doors opened but he didn't get off, just stood leaning on the glass partition bit with his back to me. The doors shut and he stayed there, so started packing up my stuff, texted DH to say I was just about to get off the train and stood up.

We got to the station and I got off. Then realised I hadn't passed the man who'd been standing there. Looked up and down the platform. Completely empty.

1. Helping with an evening event for families at Halloween. We were doing a bat detecting walk but started with fancy dress competition and some spooky stories. I had made one up which related to the site (a manor house used to be there) and occupants from 150 or so years earlier.

Stories over we gathered outside. I was standing apart from the main group sorting out my bat detector when I felt a sharp rap on my ear. Looked at the ground as it felt as though some large twig might have fallen from the trees above. Nothing. The realised that I wasn't standing under a tree. I appreciate this may have been done weird muscular thing but I have never felt it since. It was a hard hit to the upper part of my ear, so not much muscle there.

No. But I have seen a UFO. Are UFO's woooo ?

Depends on the UFO, I should think.

I was quite impressed that when the American authorities finally got round to admitting that a lot of "UFO sightings" had in fact been people seeing experimental aircraft, the well-known UFOlogist Jenny Randles turned out to have called every single one correctly as "I don't think that one is extra-terrestrial in origin" well before the government announcement about them.

Again, though, they give me a strong case of "yes, but so what?" Nothing to be done whether they do or do not exist, so I cba worrying about them.

Actually, about UFOs: if they are reported as having interacted with living people as opposed to just blundering about in the sky for a bit, they always seem to abduct/give wonderful tidings to/communicate with people who were already slightly strange, and always in circumstances which cannot be checked. Nobody ever seems to have managed to use their phone to take pictures. Well, apart from some people in Bristol who had absolutely lovely photos of their regular UFO, which rose above the rooftops night after night and made its way in a stately manner along their cul-de-sac. That one was Mars.

I'm no aviation expert, and I have no particular knowledge of experimental aircraft. However, I'm absolutely certain that what I saw many years ago, hovering in the sky, silently, was not of this Earth.

Nobody ever seems to have managed to use their phone to take pictures. This obviously and demonstratively isn't true.

Since I saw the object that I saw all those years ago, long before there mobile phones with cameras were invented]. I've somewhat taken an interest in this subject. The internet is awash with images of unknown origin in the skies. A cursory look will confirm this. The vast majority of them have been concluded as fake. But a significant number, that have been scrutinised and examined by photographic and aeronautical experts, have been categorised as authentic. Or at the very least -unexplainable.

Anothername really.
I could have typed your message myself.It gave me a shock.Last summer I was sitting in the garden, beautiful warm summer's day. Coffee in hand Lockdown so not many planes going over.Blue, gorgeous summer sky except for one large fluffy cloud.I heard the 'plane approaching, it flew into the cloud and never came out, also the noise of the engines stopped. stopped.It was most bizarre, I stood for ages watching but nothing.I too searched the news that night.!

Yes I believe people who have seen ghosts. I wouldn't like to say what ghosts are but perhaps they are a hallucination produced by the brain/the environment/a combination of the two.

Clarich007 Wow, that is odd....

@Jaypreen

Nobody ever seems to have managed to use their phone to take pictures. This obviously and demonstratively isn't true.

Since I saw the object that I saw all those years ago, long before there mobile phones with cameras were invented]. I've somewhat taken an interest in this subject. The internet is awash with images of unknown origin in the skies. A cursory look will confirm this. The vast majority of them have been concluded as fake. But a significant number, that have been scrutinised and examined by photographic and aeronautical experts, have been categorised as authentic. Or at the very least -unexplainable.

That phrase was in the paragraph related not to nebulous sightings but to actual interaction with aliens who abduct/give wonderful tidings to/communicate with people. I have seen no convincing photographs of extra-terrestrial life; if there are any, I'd be interested, but the rules seem to be that they turn out to be hoaxes. (Please don't offer me Ilkley Moor in 198-whenever-it-was.) Since the fuzzy images produced as evidence always appear essentially humanoid, I'd be inclined to think that like the Face on Mars, any photographs which might be claimed are likely to relate to pattern-recognition rather than fact-observation: why would life evolve just like ours anywhere else, given the massive amount of variation among terrestrial creatures? (I am still not sure I really believe in tardigrades.)

That there are things in the sky which people do not recognise isn't in the least surprising to me. Since I said upthread that Jenny Randles correctly identified a large proportion of sightings as having terrestrial origin, it does rather stand to reason that I am accepting her view that the remainder might not! I just don't see what possible point there is in either them or speculating about them, unless one wants to believe huge conspiracy theories about the US government.

I have a photo with ‘something’ in it, however it has my mugshot in it so I’m not posting it in here.🤣
I was sat on my bed, all my hair stood on end, felt like a hand was touching my shoulder, so I took a photo over my shoulder. Had a quick glance, didn’t see anything major so carried on putting my makeup on. It wasn’t until later that day I took another look and there is a spiral of wispy energy reaching out to touch me. It looks like an umbilical cord of smoke. There was nothing there on the bed that could explain it. 🙀

What I, and many other people have seen, cannot be dismissed as glibly as things in the sky which people do not recognise.

I doubt I'd recognise cutting edge aircraft technology if I saw it. But what I saw in the sky in the early 1980's was not man made technology.

It defied gravity as if it zig zagged about as though it were as light as a feather,. It produced no sound whatsoever, had no obvious propulsion system, no windows, no markings, caused no air displacement, produced no exhaust and disappeared at an impossible speed that nothing organic could have survived.

I just don't see what possible point there is in either them or speculating about them.

Possibly you don't see the point. But then again you haven't experienced what I and many other people have. And had you done so - you might.

I hate to disillusion you, but I have; not once but several times, over the space of forty years and in three different countries as well as this one.

I think that they were completely irrelevant to anything whatever about my actual life, and see no point whatever in speculating about them. They happened, and then nothing happened. No interest.

On one occasion I took the trouble to take sights to establish how far above the horizon the object was (yes, I happened to be using a sextant at the time: doesn't everyone have one of those?), its distance from me, at what speed it travelled against the ground-level wind, and other such before ringing first a local airfield to find out whether they knew anything about it, and then at their instigation the local police, since if it was a manned object it was contravening laws about flight over a built up area if it hadn't registered a flight path. I then answered the phone to someone from the local airport, and the door to a policeman who took a statement, and later in the day to someone from Heathrow who wanted details.

So yes, actually I do know what I am talking about. It was a completely futile exercise, which I only did because I was annoyed by the initial suggestion by the airfiled that it was a hot-air balloon; I can actually recognise those, and even fly one, so he put my back up. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered, because what on earth would have been (and indeed was) the point?

No disillusion here, but thank you for your concern. Also I never claimed that you did not know what you were talking about. That seems to be something you're accusing others of [with the rather condescending tone you are writing with] specifically me - for some reason.

Your post does not negate the experience I had, and the characteristics [or lack of] of the craft that I saw, which cannot have been man made. The technology required for the craft I saw to do what it did, did not exist 40 years ago and does not exist today.

If you do see no point whatever in speculating about them then that leads me to wonder why you are here reading these posts?

Surely you can find something that actually has a "point" to occupy your time?

Possibly you don't see the point. But then again you haven't experienced what I and many other people have. And had you done so - you might.
may be what led me to react badly to your condescending assumptions about me.

Sorry but I'm afraid I don't see the point of reading your posts. To do so would be a completely futile exercise.

@OlympicProcrastinator

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.

Exactly this happened to a friend and I but no bang. We were sitting in my big bed in a rented flat, really laughing at something, and a ball of light appeared, moved across the room, hovered on a wall, and faded away.,