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

But this is a contradiction, if she was really the most ‘sensible, normal, pragmatic person in the world’, she would never have gone to see a psychic!!

Why not? She felt like she was going mad in her own home and several people suggested seeing a psychic. I think she felt “well, what the hell”.
I’m sensible, normal(ish) and pragmatic and would never go to a psychic because I’m too scared but I don’t automatically disbelieve other people’s encounters just because I haven’t seen or heard them myself. That would be extremely arrogant.

@73kittycat73 Yes, that's it, Surviving Death!

@Spied that’s terrifying!
Mine was similar, very short version was sat in a circle with a group of friends as a teenager, heard a commotion in the bushes towards the back of the meadow we were sat in. Sounds of crashing about and a small animal being killed. We all just presumed it was a fox on the prowl. Looked up to a rise in the meadow with the sunset behind and there was a ginormous black wolf dog with glowing red eyes. As big as a pony. All of us stood up very slowly and agreed we wouldn’t run in case it chased us. I can still hear the awful low growl it made, even now 30 years later. Someone shouted “fuck this, run!” And we all ran screaming up the road to our group of friends.

@RichPetunia

The older I get, the more I think it’s time slips - glimpses into activities that have happened or are happening somewhere else along the timeline. Sounds a bit daft, but I know what I mean.

Yes I agree with this, like an echo, two parallel worlds meeting, kind of.

My belief is that a ghost is the soul of a dead person that is in limbo, not able or wanting to go to the other side, whatever that other side may be. I can't believe that when you die it is the absolute end, as our body is just our shell really. Who we are and everything about us is made up of feelings, emotions, energy etc, does that die when our body does? Think about physical attraction /chemistry, that is an emotion more than a physical feeling but it's possible to feel the connection from the other person without even touching them, this is just an example of the energy that I can't believe just dies with the body.

No, it’s a load of bollocks, apart from the ones that used to be in the house I lived in as a kid. They were so totally matter of fact and boring, and I was so young at the time, that I find this really conflicting.

Yes-I have tons of stories that I swear are true
The latest one is I was stood in our kitchen,gawping out of the window-just wasting 5 minutes
Suddenly a white staffie (with brindle markings on its back) ran from one side of the garden to the other (through a hedge and across my garden into a fence)
I ran outside-no dog-no sign of one either
Anyway I put it down to my eyes playing tricks on me
About 3 weeks later my son rings me-he’d been after a dog for a while and had seen a gorgeous rescue and he was going to go see him on his day off with the view of bringing him home if all went well
I got a picture about 24 hours later-it was the same dog I’d seen run across my garden…
He’s been with my son just over a year and they are as thick as thieves

@Darklylookingdeeply

Not sure what to believe really. There is a series on Netflicks you might be interested in. I think it's called after death or after life, something like that!

It's called Surviving Death and it's pretty good.

Yes, I’ve had a few spooky encounters.

In my old halls of residence in my second year, there was always a presence that I could not explain - the whole flat felt a bit off. In the bathroom it always felt like you were being watched so I never showered with the shower curtain - I couldn’t bear to not see the whole room. At night I slept with either a light on or a movie on repeat. I saw a lot of Ice Age that year ! One time I was alone in the flat and washing dishes, I didn’t think much of it when I heard a loud click. Shortly after I realised the oven switch was on - it was one of those red chunky ones that are quite stiff to flick down. My blood drained from my face when I realised, I turned it off and hurried back to my room I also felt uneasy in . I was even more convinced when I moved out of that flat for my 3rd year into another flat in the same building and it felt absolutely fine, no ghosties sensed there.

Another time when I was studying in the early hours in the library overnight. I went to the toilet when I encountered a woman all dressed in black, she scared the life out of me as I almost bumped into her. She didn’t speak or anything but we both went into the toilets (I was ahead of her) and after I shut my door, I heard another bathroom door close. I didn’t think anything of it until I came out and the stalls were completely empty - no sign of her at all. I got goosebumps that night and never went to the library overnight again.

I was a real skeptic until something happened to me that I know couldn't be explained.
I looked at every possibility and asked others to clarify and there was no explaining it at all.
I don't believe people can conjure up spirits to order like many would have you believe, moreover that they only communicate directly, not through a medium.
That's just my opinion though.

no

I once had it explained to me like this by someone very well read on the subject -
The body is a physical being which can obviously die. The soul/mind of a person, their "consciousness"....is not a physical thing....therefore cannot die with the body. It will sometimes linger, or sometimes will find another "host" body....ie. reincarnation. Very interesting subject whether you believe in it or not.

@GypsyLee what happened? You can't leave it there!

No. With all our technology no one has managed to produce incontrovertible photographic or video proof of a paranormal phenomenon.

I've never actually saw one but yeah I do believe. Its kind of on my bucket list to see a ghost. Although if I did see one I'd be a bloody ghostie myself as I'd die of fright

@Annamaywong25

I once had it explained to me like this by someone very well read on the subject - The body is a physical being which can obviously die. The soul/mind of a person, their "consciousness"....is not a physical thing....therefore cannot die with the body. It will sometimes linger, or sometimes will find another "host" body....ie. reincarnation. Very interesting subject whether you believe in it or not.

That depends on what you believe consciousness is. If you believe it is produced by the brain's biochemistry then it will die when the body does.

I'm very sceptical. I genuinely believe that people who think they've seen or experienced paranormal activity honestly do believe it and do think it has taken place. I do however believe there is other reasons such as tiredness/being half asleep, hallucinations, imagination etc that was the real cause.

Yes. I've had a couple of experiences. One in particular that I can't explain as I was wide awake, several things happened over the course of the day, etc.

I don't believe they are the spirits of the dead, but I do believe there may be some sort of memory/energy we can occasionally trip over, as we move through the world. I don't think they're sentient. I mean, once upon a time the idea of preserving memories on paper and on little plastic discs would have been crazy, but science worked out a way to make it happen.

I've had experiences. One a little boy, who stood at the end of my bed when I was a kid, and would sometimes walk up from his corner and peek round the door- later met a lady who lived in that house who told me of the loss of her little son, who died unexpectedly of heart failure in that room in the 70s

Second one, I was in a particular situation, when I saw a local lady who had a reputation for helping people similarly afflicted... She was wearing very specific clothes and when I described the experience to a neighbour they told me exactly who she was- she had died ten years before I moved to the area

Third one- our current house. Someone keeps fixing my collar and calling my DH's name.

@sally067

Something I'd like to think are real but in all likelihood aren't if I look at the science.

If there were ghosts wouldn't every living thing become a ghost? That's lots of living things throughout history if you go back to the time of the dinosaurs, so already at 100+ million years. Also what about the earliest humans, Homo erectus and neanderthals, etc. Then what about living things that don't live on this planet which in all probability there are out there - do they become ghosts too? Then our 'souls' and personality - they're basically chemicals in our brains so that would need to be able to transfer into some kind of invisible state which doesn't seem likely.

Something I did find interesting is that most hallucinations come from lack of oxygen and carbon monoxide poisoning which is why so many ghost stories were around in Victorian times as most of the street and home lighting came from candles.

I used to think that but the precept is that eventually their souls do cross over and it's not every person that dies, only a very few who don't cross over/return.

Hence why you don't see very ancient ghosts and why we aren't walking around in a ghost pea soup.

There's no point being scared of ghosts though.

Even if you believe in them, there's no evidence that they can harm people at all. Think of all the anecdotes of ghosts - how many were actually harmed?

@OliverBabish

I voted YANBU because I think there are things we don’t understand, but I’m not sure I’d call them ghosts

Always makes me laugh when I think of what I saw on here once - how come it’s never a girl from the 2000s in a Britney T-shirt? Why is it always gotta be a Victorian chick in a grey dress

I had a very strange experience with what something which looked like a man and woman in navy waterproofs! So no it's not always Victorian apparitions by any means.

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?

@spied and @StormBaby you may find this interesting www.ufoinsight.com/cryptozoology/strange-beasts/demonic-black-dogs.

My daughter has known George, her neighbour, for the past 2 years. They're in East Anglia, I'm many, many miles from them, and my grandparents lived 50 miles in the opposite direction from her.

Grandad passed away 17 years ago, when DD was about 8. George had no clue about Grandad but recently described him to a T while having a cuppa with DD. George could see him.

I cried when DD told me that, but I'm glad Grandad is watching over her and my grandchildren.

This was 10 minutes after George had, for reasons he can't explain, described a toddler who'd been known to DD. George even correctly named the little boy.

The little boy had passed away 3 or 4 days earlier. DD had never spoken of him to George or to anyone else at that point.

I once woke up suddenly in the night and sat bolt upright and saw a lady in white sat on the end of my bed. Even as I was half asleep and staring at 'her' I knew that it wasn't a ghost, nor a figment of my imagination. I wasn't dreaming. It was being woken up suddenly in the dark and my eyes/brain trying to find focus. I watched her disappear within a few seconds. I then researched it and there is a scientific reason for why the brain sees a white shape when woken suddenly around 2m away, which explains why so many people see them at the end of their bed at night and wake suddenly. Ironically I am one of the few people who has seen a ghost and now no longer believes in them.