To think ghost stories are BS, but my experience was a bit odd?

[BigMoan]

I moved into a 1950’s house previously occupied by a couple. They were the sole occupants since it was built. The husband died, and a few years later the wife moved to a care home. The house was then put on the market.

Our first night in the house, we’d put a car seat centrally on a table. It fell off.
Few days later, I heard our piano being played - I went in the room and no one was there.
Then a week or so later - daughter went to the bathroom, froze and said there’s someone in there. She described the person as a male, like a shadow and wearing a suit. I hadn’t mentioned anything about ghosts to her, and told her it was just a shadow - perhaps Daddy had walked past when she was about to go in. For a few weeks after she was scared of the bathroom, wanted an adult with her. And now - if ghosts come up in a book/on TV - she always refers back to this experience.

A few other weird things happened. And then nothing else. The house felt ‘creepy’ for a while. Absolutely nothing creepy about it now.

If course it’s ridiculous to think it was a ghost, but what was I experiencing? Was it just the strangeness of moving somewhere new? Just wondered if anyone else had had a similar experience?

OK, basic science is that the amount of energy in the universe remains constant, it just changes form. I'm inclined to believe that what people percieve as 'ghosts' are, like a PP said, some kind of residue - I also think that the ability to percieve such residue is very small and only exists in some people.

Having said that, I work in the funeral industry so I spend a fair bit of time around dead people. I do tend to treat them with courtesy (I have a habit of saying good morning, good night etc, or 'Excuse me [name] if I have to do something like move them around). I have never felt anything particularly 'spooky' when working in funeral homes, even when it's just me and a client or two lying in the back room...

@bigmoan Shows what you know, I'm haunted by ghost snails every third Thursday of the month

A ghost stick insect?? If someone kept them as pets? It would just seem implausible and ridiculous. However a ghost cat could be potentially reasonable.

And why is that? Presumably because a cat is a mammal and has a greater degree of consciousness? Much in the same way as we’d think a cat could dream.
I think it’s related! And I think it’s to do with the energy of consciousness. And what happens to that energy when you die!

My DM's house is definitely haunted - old Victorian house and both DP's used to smell strong smell of flowers/perfume in a certain part of the downstairs area - usually the hall - they rarely had flowers and mum rarely wore perfume. Funny thing was - they looked in attic a few years later and found very pretty drawings (coloured in) of flowers and did some research and discovered two sisters (young) lived here in Victorian times. The smells I think went away after that.

DM has also experienced 'presences' of certain people including pets in the house after they've passed and also had a strange experience after her DM (my DGM) passed and also her uncle who she was very close to too.

I've never had any experiences in my Victorian cottage.

Funnily enough - small 1930s semi where an old man moved to with some dogs a few doors down from where DM lived - another neighbour was an unofficial carer for him and dogwalker and also cleaned. The neighbours on the other side were related - one of them was unofficially adopted by the old man when young. The neighbour who dog-walked was asked to help clear out the house after the old man died - he'd been in a nursing home though for approx 6 months. One of the dogs was still alive and had been rehomed the other had died. She says that a CD player switched itself on and played a CD all by itself on one occasion - but she thought this had been switched off at socket. She also says she could feel the energy of this old man - where he used to sit/sleep - was mostly downstairs as they didn't want to install a stairlift but not only that also felt the energy of the dogs. She said it was strangely comforting as it was nice, almost like tea and toast/cakes energy and chatting.

Another young couple moved quickly into another house locally where an old lady had lived, gone into a home and died. A few people in the street wondered how quickly it had been bought as no for sale sign but turned out the buyers knew the old lady's family and put in a quick offer and bought privately. I was speaking to the mother of the couple one day, she was asking me questions about bins and collecting. I asked how she was getting on in the house as they had 2 young children (one a baby). We got into a habit of talking sometimes if I saw her and I lent her a drill I had for her DH. She asked me over for coffee one morning with the baby there and asked me briefly about the old lady who'd lived there. I said I hadn't known her that well personally, just seen from time to time but she was elderly and frail. She then said that her baby had sometimes in the big back bedroom fixed her eyes on a certain area and smiled for ages. Like someone was talking to her. The woman also mentioned to me that in that particular room it always felt warm, sunny, had a great atmosphere, the rest of the house did too but that room she said had a lovely calm atmosphere. It was where the baby was sleeping with her parents for now as they'd decorated the small box room for her but baby had had trouble sleeping (just usual sleep issues).

@Wreath21 I just read that Einstein believed in ghosts did to his theory of energy changes from one form to another…

Perhaps it's attuning your body into the energy you are thinking about.

Perhaps when you think about creepy crawlies and you feel an itch or your in bed and you get a scratch or feeling, it's actually the bloody great big hairy spider you killed the other week. Coming back to rub it's willie or mandibles on you 🤣

Due not did!

My grandma used to work at an old Georgian farmhouse. A big “rural residence”. When the owners died the family asked my grandma to stay there until the house was sold so that it wasn’t left empty so she did. Being a big family all my aunts and uncles took turns to go and stay with her so she wasn’t left in this massive isolated house alone.

My aunt took her young son one weekend. He was running around exploring the house having a whale of a time. Suddenly he came downstairs crying. When they asked what was wrong he said the lady upstairs had told him off for being too noisy. (The owner believed kids should be seen and not heard). He was 3 years old and very upset. Why would a 3 year old make that up?

My other aunt took her son once too. He was older, around 9 years old. He went off to explore the out buildings one day and suddenly returned to the house, white as a sheet, shaking and visibly upset. They asked what was wrong. He said “nothing, I just want to go home”. He refused to step foot in that house again and 40 years later will still not discuss the house or tell of what happened that day.

My uncle took his border collie once. As soon as the dog walked into the house it became anxious, then terrified, pissed itself and then sat in the corner shaking and whimpering. This was a well rounded working dog.

@Dottybackorcid

@Pikaso now you’d never see a stick insect/snail/spider behaving like the border collie, so I think it IS to do with how conscious an animal is, how much emotion they feel - and the energy of that emotion.

I have one.

When I was small, I used to be terrified of an elderly man in a black suit that would sit by my bedroom door. I suspect I saw him in that state between dreaming and wakefulness, and children tend to blur the two anyway.

I forgot all about it for years, until my grandmother's 90th birthday. My aunt made three photobooks of my gran's life, the first one being her first thirty years, the second being the second lot of thirty years etc.

I was looking through them, and I got the shock of my life. There was a photo in one of the books, and it was the man I used to see as a child.

It was my great grandfather.

I'd never seen a photo of him as an old man before, only as a young lad in the 20s so I had never realised who it was. Now it is possible seine had shown me the picture when I was very young and somehow it had stuck in my consciousness, but I do wonder whether we might pass down certain experiences the way we pass down genes.

After all, we seem to pass down aptitudes and skills. What if we inherit other elements as well?

I've always found it interesting that children all over the world are scared of monsters underneath them when they sleep, no matter the culture. When you think about it, it seems odd. What's the mechanism for that? It seems to be something hardcoded, but how?

Maybe other stuff gets passed down the same way?

My gran had a ghost dog in her house - little white poodle, used to sit by the front door. We all saw it at one point or another when we were children. I saw it a lot, but then I lived next door. I don't actually remember this personally, but have been told.

I could completely believe that it had become "folk memory" or similar because it had been spoken about in our family over the years.

However, visiting children who had never been to the house before would also point to the same spot by the door and say "Doggie!" And on further probing would describe a small white dog.

Seems the sweet spot to be able to see it was around 3-5 years old. Adults never saw it, only children.

I do think that ghost exist, they are energy from when people were living is my best guess.

I've had numerous experiences in the house I few up in which my ex Dh and I run bought when my Dad passed away.

I think that there are also things that aren't ghosts and are nothing to do with the human condition at all, they are to be avoided at all costs.

Too many people see and experience too many things to just pass it off so flippantly as ghosts don't exist. The truth is we just don't know for sure and maybe we aren't supposed to?

I know my experiences and my family/friends and the people who subsequently bought that house are real, I am glad I don't live there anymore.

@Packingsoapandwater that’s absolutely fascinating.

The thing I love about children is that they see the world in such a pure, untainted way. And then we as adults tend impose our adultish ways on them - “you do it like this, not that”. In an attempt to de-feralise them.
To tell them they are being irrational.

I always want to keep the childish part of myself very much alive.

Auditory hallucinations are very common. I regularly hear sounds of things I know aren't there, like my phone vibrating when it doesn't.

I also think we see things we don't expect in new houses exactly because they're new. We might not have been in a particular room when the sun was at a certain angle, or in certain weather, for example, and the different light or angle of the shadows gives us a strange feeling. Simply because its new.

Once we're more settled in a new environment, we naturally don't notice these things.

I keep telling DD there are ‘no such thing as ghosts’ - when she relays stories she’s heard at school…

Was it berry pomeroy by any chance?

So basing this on science, a theory is a ghost may residual energy.
So those that claim ghosts speak to them a whisper at about 40 decibels, would roughly translates out to about 10-8 watts of energy consumed. So where are these ghosts finding all the extra power to form sound waves and also how are they forming words with no vocal ability?

If they are residual energy surely they would be consumed using their own energy trying to communicate.

@Snoozer11 that sounds very rational!

Auditory hallucination - (perhaps what prompted my post) I distinctly heard a ‘pip’ noise that my phone makes in bed last night when I get a message. I was dreaming. Woke up and I turned to where I thought I’d actually left my phone and it wasn’t there. I then looked where I’d heard the ‘pip’ noise in my dream - and phone was there! So I thought, ah it must have been a real message and I DID hear it. Nope - no message, but very strange that I was able to find a lost phone from my dream about the ‘pip’.
My ‘ghostly’ alarm clock was a noise I’d never heard before though - but was like the repeated shrill of an alarm clock. Until I woke. I even looked down the back of the bed to see what the hell it was. Nothing.
The car seat falling off the middle of the table/piano playing we’re definitely not shadows/funny angles. The car seat was on the floor and made a loud bang as it fell (I was awake in a dark room for that one) - the piano, I was awake when I heard it play.

@Dottybackorcid

So basing this on science, a theory is a ghost may residual energy. So those that claim ghosts speak to them a whisper at about 40 decibels, would roughly translates out to about 10-8 watts of energy consumed. So where are these ghosts finding all the extra power to form sound waves and also how are they forming words with no vocal ability?

If they are residual energy surely they would be consumed using their own energy trying to communicate.

Not to mention that 'energy is not destroyed, it merely changes form' simply means that when a person dies, their energy is transferred into the organisms that digest us (just as we take in the energy of plants and dead animals when we eat them), or into heat and light if cremated.

It doesn't mean that when your elderly neighbour dies, her 'residual energy' somehow hangs about her house, waving at the babies of subsequent residents and moving small objects around.

Yes they're definitely real. When I was a teenager I sat up in bed. I was annoyed at having to go to bed as, as I couldn't go to sleep. I saw a shadow person walking into the room. I've never felt more scared in all my life. Never seen anything like it since. I wasn't allowed to talk about it with my siblings. Years later after I'd moved out I mentioned it to my sister. She said she had seen it too, in the same bedroom.

I was in hospital for induction doing laps to try and start my labour. My husband and I were aimlessly walking just doing as many sets of stairs as we could, paying no attention of where we were going. We both commented how we had goosebumps and had gone very cold and uneasy. We realised we were walking straight towards the mortuary.
I've got loads of stories I've either been told or experienced but they are too outing as I've shared them in RL. My dad is very no drama, doesn't care if you like him, in no way tries to impress. He is himself and wouldn't lie or embellish. He experiences things often and has his whole life.

@Packingsoapandwater I remember hearing about a study which said that memory has been found to be partly genetic, so you can sometimes "inherit" a memory from your parents. I guess it makes sense in a way when you look at how animals inherit instincts, it's not totally out of the question.

The scientific article I read said this in conclusion

There are two possible reasons for the failure of ghost hunters to find good evidence. The first is that ghosts don't exist, and that reports of ghosts can be explained by psychology, misperceptions, mistakes and hoaxes. The second option is that ghosts do exist, but that ghost hunters do not possess the scientific tools or mindset to uncover any meaningful evidence.

It is widely claimed that Albert Einstein suggested a scientific basis for the reality of ghosts, based on the First Law of Thermodynamics: If energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, what happens to our body's energy when we die? Could that somehow be manifested as a ghost?

Thing is - no one knows, but they make great stories! I love the discussion because it’s one of those things in life that no one can explain with absolute certainty!!

@Blurp that would also relate to inherit and learned behaviour in animals.

For instance animals born from eggs, that are fully formed and have inherited all there learned behaviour to swim, eat, hide, hunt, ect. Where as creatures that require more meternal care including humans have greater learned behaviour, that's not to say we have less inherited behaviour, traits and possibly some memory.