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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Do you believe in 'ghosts'?

492 replies

Bump2021 · 11/01/2021 18:27

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

OP posts:
edwinbear · 11/01/2021 21:52

I had a few in my childhood home. It was owned by an elderly, retired, solicitor, eminently sensible chap, but after we had moved in, a neighbour told us he’d actually had it exorcised!

We had a ‘ghost’ walk to the back door every night, bang on 10pm, lots of people saw it, including my no nonsense, ex army grandfather. My best friend had something get into bed with her when she stayed for a sleepover one night (she never came again)! I experienced the same thing a few nights later. We had glowing crosses appear on the walks (we managed to get a photo of that, could have been bioluminescence). DH also saw lots of people strolling through the kitchen when we were outside having a BBQ one evening. It was a very old house, built in 1545 so had a lot of history I suppose.

I also had an ‘incident’ at my dad’s funeral. He was estranged from the family when he died, after he’d had a 6 month affair. Hid behaviour had been appalling frankly and he’d left a hell off a mess, trying to cut my mum out of his pension, forcing her to sell the marital home and give half the proceeds to his mistress. I sat there at his funeral furious at what he’d done, absolutely livid. As his coffin disappeared to be cremated, I suddenly had the most vivid flashback of a family holiday in happier times, when he’d pulled round a bay behind a RIB, with me holding onto a rope. I’d forgotten all about it, but it was the most fantastic fun. It was as if he was trying to remind me he wasn’t all bad.

So, lots of ‘woo’ experiences, all of which could be explained away, but there do seem to be a few too many for there not to be anything in it. In my view anyway.

edwinbear · 11/01/2021 21:53

appear on the walls

Kendodd · 11/01/2021 21:55

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.

Where is it before you're born then?

Littlepond · 11/01/2021 22:01

I have an illness / condition / mental health issue which means I frequently see things that aren’t actually there. Usually at night. Never occurred to me they could be ghosts. Always made more sense that I’m just mad 🤷🏼‍♀️

ElDavidmeister · 11/01/2021 22:02

I've been watching Haunted on Netflix. There's a fairly consistent correlation between seeing ghosts and a background in trauma. Seems odd that none of the story's are provided by anyone without that background, or perhaps the ghosts know who to target. They should be more transparent

MummaBear4321 · 11/01/2021 22:04

Yes. I have had people sitting on my bed as a teenager. I saw, clear as day, something unexplained in a house where someone committed suicide a week later. I have seen doors open and close by themselves, and in the same house appliances literally flick themselves on and off in front of my eyes. I am a super logical person, but I couldn't explain these things.

umpteennamechanges · 11/01/2021 22:08

@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.

This is what I believe.

There is a soul / energy / consciousness. When your body dies it should return, and then you are eventually reincarnated. Always as a human (you can't be reincarnated as a cat sadly).

There are two kinds of ghosts.

One are just sort of trapped energy on a loop. Just like a recording, there's no consciousness there.

The other is where something went wrong and the soul / energy / consciousness didn't 'return'. Eventually it will but may hang around for day, weeks, months , years, perhaps longer.

umpteennamechanges · 11/01/2021 22:08

...and our body is just basically a meat suit!

BerlinCalling · 11/01/2021 22:10

I think the only way I would believe in ghosts is if I saw the ghost of someone I knew was dead, like a grandparent. Some random floaty woman just isn't going to cut it 😁

Anotherlovelybitofsquirrel · 11/01/2021 22:10

Placemarking to read later!

Oh and yes, I live with at least one 👻

Chocolateandamaretto · 11/01/2021 22:11

I have seen a “ghost” as a fairly young child, which I believed at the time was my grandad. I can’t be sure if it was real because I was young and suggestible but it was comforting to think it was.

However I have had 2 experiences that didn’t involve seeing a ghost but rather feeling one....in particular staying in a holiday home with my family the living room held such a palpable sense of horror I couldn’t really go in there. I realised my family were all hanging out in the master bed and we spoke and realised we all felt it too. It was just utter conviction that something awful and violent had happened in that room and that someone had almost certainly died, and we’d all arrived at that conclusion separately. I don’t know if it was a ghost or just bad juju but I do think there’s stuff going on that is beyond our comprehension!

Animum2 · 11/01/2021 22:11

I don't know

More recently when I've been half asleep I keep seeing a shadowy tall man weating a top hat and walking stick and it's always by the bedroom door, DH has never seen it even when we have been in the room together

CounsellorTroi · 11/01/2021 22:14

@Hugoslavia

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.
Interesting. Human night vision is a bit rubbish compared with most other animals and we do find it difficult to focus in low light.
Worst · 11/01/2021 22:15

I had a lovely chat with my grandad when I was about 4 ❤️ He came into my room and tucked me in and sat on the end of the bed. We chatted about school and friends and what my mum was like at my age.

It freaked my parents the hell out though, and it really sucked to find out he’d been dead for 10 years. He was really nice.

ChestnutStuffing · 11/01/2021 22:15

@SirChing

The thing with psychics/mediums (the ones who truly believe they are and don't do readings for people for money or anything), are they hearing/seeing dead people or are the able to somehow read the mind of others?

I read somewhere in a "woo" book, that mediums are actually being fooled by demons, who present as dead people, in order to convince others to believe in the occult. But that supposes that demons are real of course, which is a whole different Avenue of paranormal.

Certainly if you were getting involved with this sort of thing, and it's "real" rather than a scam or someone who is flakey, there would be no way to know whether you were, say, talking to your dead husband, or talking to some malevolent being with it's own agenda. It's not like there are blue tick ghosts.
Fangdrew · 11/01/2021 22:16

@Youseethethingis your post made me cry. I’m so so sorry that you lost your baby xx

ladyvimes · 11/01/2021 22:17

Nope. Load of tosh.
Your brain is very clever at making you see things that aren’t there. I have honestly never heard a supernatural story that doesn’t have a rational explanation.

Frozenintime · 11/01/2021 22:18

I believe in spirits as energy. We have proven their existence with mapping technology and voice recording.
Evidence

GoudaGirl · 11/01/2021 22:20

No- trick of the brain and the environment. I am not saying people don't experience odd things, but there is a rational explanation for it.
Apparently almost everyone 'hallucinates' to some extent - e.g. the jangle of a key, the thinking you have heard a voice- it's all just the brain.

LudaMusser187 · 11/01/2021 22:26

I'm open minded. I think there could be something between life and death

A friend at work who is very sensible and not at all jokey told me about the ghost of a young girl he and his ex wife saw in their apartment over a period of about five years. He said that she was covered in burns and on one occasion she was sitting in the bath. Another time he saw her in the hallway.

It was a strange conversation because I've never before spoken to somebody who openly admits that they've seen a ghost

SenorFrog · 11/01/2021 22:31

No, not at all.

ktp100 · 11/01/2021 22:35

I was always a sceptic but then my Nan and Grandad moved into sheltered accommodation and my Nan started seeing things. My Nan is the most unaffected, straight talking, no bullshit person I know (no sign of dementia or anything) but she's very matter of fact about the things she's seen there.

We moved to a new house 5 years ago ad it's a bit weird. Our upstairs top corridor feels odd, people staying always comment on it, especially kids, and our son used to see things down there when he was 3-4ish (he would interact with them, laugh and point etc - he once asked me who the people in the old clothes were) and the daughter of the family we bought the house from said her and her siblings wouldn't go along that corridor on their own as kids.

OhWhyNot · 11/01/2021 22:41

Yes

I can describe the person I saw very clearly it was just for a second or two

I would prefer an explanation of my experience than a ghost or what we think of as being a ghost but there isn’t one as I found the experience frightening (not what I saw it wasn’t like anything from a horror film)

ginandwineandbaileys · 11/01/2021 22:42

Yes I've had a few encounters, lived in a house with obvious goings on as a student. I lived there with my boyfriend at the time, and a few friends. We regularly had other students who would come for poker nights who also experienced it. It was frightening, but no one was harmed

Wagsandclaws · 11/01/2021 22:43

Yes I do, I grew up in a haunted house. 👻

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