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 anybody ever done a ouija board?

I haven't and would never even consider it but when I was about fifteen I remember sitting in a science lesson at school and a girl suddenly stood up and started screaming. She was absolutely petrified.

I later heard she had done a ouija board a few days earlier and was convinced she had seen something standing in the middle of the classroom

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.

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.

I did a ghost tour last year around an old prison which has shut down and I feel 100% it was genuine and no one was leading the ouija boards or anything. I have lots of stories from there and it was terrifying.

When I was younger I used to always go out and do oujia boards and vowed never to do one again. I remember driving home afterwards and I actually ended up stopping on a roundabout at about 1/2am just screaming and sobbing at nothing. I still don't know why or how I got there!!

I also used to live somewhere where I always felt a presence watching me and I had friends who didn't believe in anything woo see a ghost (I've personally never seen a ghost) or feel weird while in the house. I've never been back there since I left.

I have experienced so many things and have so many stories which I know are true so I 1000% believe in the paranormal!

I try my best to be sceptical and I am very sceptical about 99% of things but I have witnessed too much fucking weird unexplainable shit to not be completely closed minded to the idea that there might be something out there that we don't understand.

Examples include but not limited to: coming downstairs after bedtime as a child to tell dm that grandad had a very important message for me to pass on, that he was OK, not to worry, his throat had stopped hurting and he would look out for me. My mum received a call after to tell her he had passed away (of throat cancer. I was 4, I knew he had a 'sore throat' but not exactly what was wrong).

I work in a nursing home and have done night shifts in the past. Dementia home so some pretty tormented/frightened /angry people living and very often dying there. Had a resident die in a room and body taken, room cleared etc. Call bell unplugged. Unplugged call bell kept going off in the night at the same time it went off every night while he lived there. I went to the room and said 'it's OK, you can go now' and the bell didn't go again in that room until a new resident moved in.

My dm does calligraphy as a hobby but is very good at it. Friend of hers asked her to some in their wedding album. Says when she finished she had a 'flash' and knew she had to do a nest with two eggs in it at the back, a blue and a pink one. Five years and a few rounds of ivf later and friend had given birth to twins, one boy one girl.

I'm also quite certain I've seen the odd 'modern' looking ghost but I can't be certain. People dressed in late 20thc /21st century clothes that have vanished when there was nowhere to vanish to etc.

Re ouija boards, a dbro of mine went to a cathedral (boarding) school, where some of them messed with one for a few nights. They didn’t think anything had happened, but shortly afterwards a couple of younger boys started really freaking out after ‘seeing’ something in a classroom - some of the buildings were very old.
In the end the bishop was brought in to exorcise the place. Dbro said he’d never mess with one of those again.

Similarly a dsis at uni in Scotland, and her flat mates played with one in their flat. Again they didn’t think anything had happened but things started moving around at night - inc. a wardrobe in dsis’s bedroom! She said she was so shit scared, she’d never do it again.

A friend of mine is a very well know psychic. I'm not very knowledgeable on ghosts, but she got. A reading for a friend of mine scarily accurate

My xbox has just turned itself on. The remote is no where near me, not touching anything else and I'm home alone. So if there are ghosts I think I might have a modern one or a victorian one who is curious about new technology.

Another small child one.
We moved house when my much younger dsis was only 3. For a while she would mention a ‘pretty lady’ who sat on the end of her bed and smiled at her.

Around the same time we heard that the former young wife who’d lived there, had died in childbirth. (This was many decades ago.)

But the woo-est thing I’ve heard in recent years was from a friend. While on holiday she and her married dd and Gdcs went to visit a site of Graeco-Roman ruins where none of them had ever been before. The youngest Gdc was still pre school, obviously couldn’t yet read, so couldn’t have read anything about it.

But as soon as they arrived, he said, ‘I used to live here!’ and went on quite happily to point out the remains of his house, his friend’s house (he even gave a suitable but slightly garbled name for him) and the cave where they used to hide, and the pool (remains of a Roman bath) where they’d swim.
The whole of the rest of family had shivers up the back of their necks.
When they left, the Gds said, ‘Thank you for bringing me home!’

It was some years ago now but the friend who lives far away now, only told me recently. Her gds has no recollection of it at all now.

@AntsInPenzance

Ghosts don't make any logical or scientific sense. It would literally require breaking our knowledge of the laws of physics.

I think the point here is that we only know those laws we've discovered - it's a mistake (IMO) to imagine there's nothing else to be discovered.

Dark matter, for instance. What's that? Scientists know it's there, but they have no idea what it is.

@SpudsandGravy exactly what I was trying to say.

I love the small children’s past lives one. When my dc were little I probed them in the hope of them coming out with something spooky, but nothing. Nada. So disappointing! Ds did say he remembered being born, and that he didn’t want to come out because he was warm and it was cold out in the world though. I shall have to make do with that!

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

Oh thats a freaky story alright.

I think ghosts are all around us,its just we notice the old fashioned clothes more.
Somebody in modern clothes is Tesco could well be a ghost we just dont take notice of it.

[quote MagentaDoesNotExist]@SpudsandGravy exactly what I was trying to say.[/quote]

You said it much better than me, but I'd not read your post when I wrote mine

@BorderlineHappy

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

Oh thats a freaky story alright.

I think ghosts are all around us,its just we notice the old fashioned clothes more.
Somebody in modern clothes is Tesco could well be a ghost we just dont take notice of it.

Do you have a link to that story?

One thing I would never do, not for all the money in the world, is a ouija board!

The more I read about this whole area the more I'm convinced that reincarnation is A Thing.

Anyone interested, whizz over to YouTube and search for 'The Boy Who Lived Before'. Absolutely fascinating (to me, anyway).

Yes. I’ve only seen one white glowing one moving around but I’ve had several very spooky experiences in a place where an unnaturally large amount of people have met unnatural ends. I never go their now.

@EdwardCullensBiteOnTheSide

One thing I would never do, not for all the money in the world, is a ouija board!

I agree. I actually don't believe in ghosts but I still would never, ever do a ouija board. I don't know why anyone would!

I watched another episode of Surviving Death on Netflix last night. They interview doctors who have been examining NDE's (near death experiences) for decades. The first episode is with a surgeon who had an NDE herself. It's really worth a look.

*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

When my eldest ds was 4, we were driving through the village of Dinnington in Somerset. He piped up from the back seat that he could see Roman soldiers walking on their knees.
I didn't really understand what he was talking about, couldn't see anything myself and just humoured him as you do when children say strange things.
But thinking about it, the Fosse Road begins in that area, or round about, built by the Roman's. Over time as new tarmac is laid on an old road, the roads height would increase I suppose.
So if ds was seeing Roman soldiers, it would look to a child as if they were walking on their knees if they were walking on the original road.
Why would a small child say that unless they had seen?

Sorry for the flurry of postings, but I always love these threads and this is a really good one.

I've been fascinated by the whole idea of ghosts/paranormal since I was a small child (a long time ago), and as soon as I was old enough to go to the library an elderly friend lent me her adult tickets so that I could get out relevant books that were interesting to me.

I don't believe I've ever seen a ghost, but I've had some odd experiences. I suspect that most/all of us have. Some/all of these could be just coincidence, but they're the main the things I'm left wondering about that I find hard/impossible to explain, when I'm thinking about this subject.

• I have a clear memory of having a really nasty injury of some sort to my left leg (on my thigh, above my knee but at the back) as a small child. I can see it in my mind's eye, and it was a nasty scabby thing that kept growing in size, and was painful. When my mother was still alive I asked her about it several times but she had absolutely no recollection of any such thing (though she was a nurse, and I'm sure she'd have remembered). Is it a coincidence that I have quite a large birthmark (one of the brown ones) in just that place on my left leg? Maybe, or maybe it's something left over from a previous life. I don't know, but I do wonder.

• I also remember a very peculiar experience during a science class at school. For some reason the teacher decided to call out questions that we had to try to answer, those getting the answer wrong being 'out'. Fairly quickly there were just two of us left. The teacher's questions became more and more difficult, but somehow the answers just kept appearing in my mind. Even as it was happening I recognised it as bizarre, as I'd really never paid enough attention to have remembered all of that stuff, and much of it was completely unfamiliar to me. However, I kept giving the answers that popped into my mind and I kept getting them right. I really can't explain it.

• About 20 years ago now I was walking the Pennine Way. I went on to be a fitter and more experienced walker, but at that time it was quite a struggle. There's one particular day that is particularly long, and I'd been worrying that I mightn't be able to do it. (That's a problem when doing a long distance trail, as fall behind just once and room bookings are lost, and the schedule goes to pot.) Somehow, when I got to the longest section, I had the very strange sensation that somebody was lifting my heavy rucksack off my back and taking most of the weight. The experience continued for many miles, and it was well into the day so not some adrenaline-fuelled early psychological sprint. I had the very clear feeling that my grandmother was somehow helping. Maybe not, but it was a very strange experience that I've never had again, despite a lifetime of backpacking . I'm still not sure what to make of it.

• Then there was an experience when I was a student. A large number of those in our department took a coach to another Uni for a sports afternoon. On the way two of the blokes at the back bought a bottle of whisky and raffled it. I bought a ticket because everybody did, but soon after buying the ticket I somehow just knew that I was going to win it. That wasn't good news as I didn't really drink, and definitely not whisky, and I knew that the buyers at the back would be pretty fed up because they had most of the tickets and wanted to drink it on the way home. I told my best friend that I knew I was going to win it and that I was worrying about what to do when I did, and sure enough - when the ticket was drawn I was the winner. No idea what to make of that one either.

I've had a few other strange experiences - where I live now I've smelled pipe tobacco in the sitting room on a number of occasions since I've moved in, though there's no way it could have got in through the thick and ancient stone walls from anywhere else. For about 18 months after one of my cats died I would hear in the kitchen on a regular basis the sound that she used to make when jumping up onto her stool (with irregular legs) to get to the surface with her food bowl. There are other things too, but the most recent is from about a year ago when my sister and I were in an agony of guilt and indecision about whether we could attend the distant funeral of our oldest friend at a time when our only other surviving relative was seriously ill in hospital and needed us to visit her each day. Our friend's mother had also died, only about a month before our friend. As we stood in the garden smoking (ugh... I know) , and batting it back and forth between us, we decided we'd have to just do what seemed to be appropriate the following week, and at that point we both saw a white feather float down to the ground just a few feet away from us. We had no idea where it came from, but I can promise that no bird had just flown overhead. It felt comforting, as though our friend and his mum were telling us to do what seemed right.

So, I prolly sound like an absolute lunatic now, but in my experience/belief little things like this, that are hard (though not impossible) to explain, are also part of the whole picture of things that we don't yet fully understand. I'm sure I'll always find them fascinating.

I know there's a lot of

No. I've always been intrigued and wanted to believe, but I just can't.. unless I experience something.

I could write a long wibbly reply involving accurate clairvoyants etc but on balance no, I think ghosties are a load of bollocks.