Believing in ghosts

[StupidFaces]

I used to, now I think it’s ridiculous. People have been trying to prove the existence of ghosts for over 150 years and yet not one scrap of credible evidence to suggest they exist. I wish they did, I’d love it to be real but it just doesn’t make sense for them to exist does it?

Surely if ghosts were real, abattoirs would be haunted to fuck by the ghosts of dead cows? How come nobody ever sees a ghost dressed in trackies and Nike trainers? Why are they only ever dressed in Victorian/medieval clothes etc?

Do people think ghosts of fish haunt the ocean?

For those that do believe … what do you think about the above scenarios?

For those that done believe … would you be happy to spend a night alone in a supposedly haunted castle?

Yes ghosts are real, I believe there’s a whole spirit realm around us that we can’t see. I also believe in heaven or an afterlife and I’m not sure if sometimes spirits can get stuck or whether they just come back to visit?

I actually work in a care home and we always get a lot of activity right before a resident passes away, (seen and experienced by many different staff and other residents, and one colleague has even caught some activity on camera of some orbs and clear foot prints in the carpet). A colleague who is very spiritual tells me this is the residents loved ones coming to meet the resident as they are dying. Which is a nice thought.

Some very unpleasant and rude comments on here. I feel bad for people who are so closed minded.

"' when doing the business with DH!!"

Oh, that's reminded me of one night a few years ago. DH and I were in bed, under the covers (it was winter, so not warm), and about to do what couples do. 😉
There was a floor standing lamp in the room, by the bed, but it was off, all the lights were turned off.

The lamp was operated by a dimmer knob that you turned, from completely off to full brightness, which was very bright, so we rarely turned it up all the way.

Anyway, as I said, it was fully off as we prepared to get d & d. The lamp suddenly turned on, to near blinding full brightness. We both nearly jumped out of our skins. DH reached over and turned it back off again and we resumed business. We were both used to these happenings by now.

Its not narrow minded to be sensibly sceptical, on the contrary, i find the strong 'believers' in the supernatural are by far the least likely people to accept ideas that they don't agree with.

I feel bad for people who are so closed minded.

Most mature adults feel bad for people who are so credulous that they confidently believe in things that they have absolutely no objective evidence for.

Billions of brilliant, thinking, intelligent people around the world have (and have had for centuries) faith in a god or gods of whom there is no objective evidence.

"i find the strong 'believers' in the supernatural are by far the least likely people to accept ideas that they don't agree with."

Eh? That's quite a sweeping statement. Many people on here who are non belivers have certainly proved they won't accept the ideas of believers. Not that they won't accept the presence of ghosts, I get that, but they won't accept that with lived experience believe and are happy to make really derogatory comments about them.

I know it's a sweeping statement, I said what I said.

'Lived Experience' 🙄

So completely subjective, anecdotal evidence then?

Yes, lived experience. I have posted earlier about many visitors to my house noticing something happening (a moving shape in our sitting room). Many, unrelated visitors from many different backgrounds and in the house for many different reasons over extended periods of time. At all times of the day, night and year.

They all saw something in my house. They didn't know about it before it happened to them and told us about it. I've seen it. My husband and family members have seen it.

That's lived experience.

Never seen a ghost but when a close relative died (I didn't yet know) I was sleeping and felt like something was passing through my mind. Next day I found out relative had died and thought they were passing by to say goodbye. Just weird, made me think though.

I had similar thing happen when my uncle died. I felt a hand gently touch my face. It gave me a fright at the time and I jumped out of bed to turn the light on convinced someone was in my room.

while I was laying in my bed, I wasn’t asleep. I later found out my uncle had sadly passed away. So I now understand this was him saying goodbye.

Yes but the point I'm making is that labelling something 'lived experience' is a play on words to try and make it sound more convincing.

It still means the same thing, anecdotal evidence.

It's probably describing something really happening and not imaginary as it's being experienced by more than one person, but the hypothesis that it's supernatural is completely unproven.

Occam's Razor would suggest it's a natural phenomenon.

If it was happening to me I'd be really interested to try and capture evidence of it and see what was causing it, but I wouldn't suggest for a second that it was supernatural without some pretty convincing evidence to support that, not just the lack of an immediately obvious conventional explanation.

The only people getting angry on this thread are the woo-believers.

Makes you wonder why they're so emotionally invested in their unproven beliefs? Sounds to me like people of faith, who know their belief system isn't objectively factual but it is deeply felt as 'fact' and important to their lives. (Not all faith-holders get angry when challenged, but it's fairly usual.)

For all those taking "delusional" as an insult, why do you have such a dreadful opinion of mental disorders? You know they can happen to anyone at any time, don't you. Sometimes even very briefly.

Perhaps you'd prefer the words misapprehansion or misperception.
Same thing, less prejudice.

• misapprehension, even.

Science hasn't yet proved what conscience is, or where it comes from (Ie, your brain?) yet.

I think that’s fair, @ColonelDax — I mean, I was once thinking about my grandfather on the anniversary of his death, and a picture fell off the wall beside me. That actually happened, but ‘coincidence’ and/or ‘nearby railway, even though nothing else fell off in the years we lived in that flat’ are far more likely than ‘the spirit of my dead grandad showed up and started throwing things around’

Yep, we can prove than conscience exists. We can observe it exists to different degrees in various people. The facts that people's conscience can change as a result of life experiences, and that brain injuries can alter or remove the sense of conscience, strongly imply that it's a brain function.

As far as I know, no-one has seriously proposed that conscience is an external force or entity. So I'm not seeing the relevance here?

I would take your assertion more seriously if you knew the difference between ‘conscience’ and ‘consciousness’.

😂 Oh, she meant consciousness?

Still, most of my reply holds good!

Well, I thought so!

Yes exactly this.

Coincidence can be really convincing, and a lot of people would have seen that as a 'sign' without taking account of all the tens of thousands of times over the years they had thought about their grandparent and absolutely nothing happened.

Well, looks like the non believers have shouted loudest & are putting everyone else off posting now, so I'll sign out & leave @ColonelDax etc to it.

The difference between believing in purple sky dragons and ghosts is quite obvious to anyone with half a brain.

The reason people believe is because millions of people, throughout the world and through history have had these experiences both individually and collectively. People who have these experiences come from all walks of life. There are no collective experiences of seeing purple dragons.

Now there may be many explanations other than ‘ghosts’ but these are still peoples very real, lived experiences. To dismiss them all as people with mental Illness or belittle others as delusional shows a distinct lack of broad thinking and is more about ones of feelings of moral superiority than any actual critical thinking of your own.

Honestly, @OlympicProcrastinator, the use of logical analysis is the opposite of "a distinct lack of broad thinking".

I have absolutely nothing to gain by convincing anyone and that's not my intention.

Yes, lived experience is anecdotal evidence but the two terms are interchangable and in my mind neither carries more weight.

I've never suggested the thing in my house is supernatural. Merely unexplained.

The reason I've not tried to capture it is twofold. Firstly, it's not a major player in our lives and secondly, if we find out it's the outside light reflecting on the cat flap (we have neither a cat or an outside light so it's not that), then the mystery is gone like a pulled cracker.

Not really though. Purple sky dragons are just as unlikely as ghosts. 😂

Millions of people throughout history have believed an awful lot of things that we know aren't true. That's a really weak argument from popularity.

I'm going to assume your position isn't that people who believe in ghosts are more 'broad thinking' than people who just want some actual evidence before they believe that the dead can communicate with the living but only in selective and totally unprovable ways?!

Well I suppose it’s because words are important.

And terms like delusional are not being used in the medical sense.

Ive never seen a ghost, but I know rudeness when I see it.

don’t see why you need to belittle people who have experienced things they can’t understand.

Fwiw- I think there has to be a rational explanation for many of these things, but it could be an environmental reason rather than an issue with someone’s perception. And even then, the human brain is amazing and not fully understood.

remember that photo of the dress that divided people between those who thought it was black and blue vs white and gold? These people weren’t deluded- just average people.

Millions of people throughout history have believed an awful lot of things that we know aren't true

To be perfectly clear, I am not talking about belief, I am talking about actual experiences of unexplained phenomena for which there is plenty of evidence including footage, photographs and eyewitness. Science may not currently have a way of explaining things we do not yet understand and until it does, there will be people who scoff and belittle the people who have seen evidence as the evidence will not be good enough at the moment.

Rather similar to the times before science was able to prove the earth was in fact round, the earth moved round the sun and that gravity was created by the earths orbit.

I think it’s foolish to dismiss people’s experiences when they are so en masse.