To people who believe in ghosts..

[AnxiousAnniee]

I used to believe in ghosts when I was a child but as an adult I don’t. I find that there’s too many things that don’t make sense to me and just aren’t logical. When you actually start thinking about it and what it means to be a ghost, I think it just seems silly. I get that everyone has a different opinion though so I’m really genuinely interested to hear what people believe about the following questions…

• if ghosts exist and look like the person who has died, how do they walk around and move things without muscles or a brain? How do people hear ghosts giggle and speak if they Dont have a brain or a voice box? If they are just a see through sprit how can they really do this? You can’t move, think, or talk without a brain. And they don’t have a brain or muscles because they are spirits.
• similarly with moving things around or opening cupboards. First of all why would they do this? Why would a ghost turn a tap on??? For what reason? Secondly if they are so light and see through and can walk through things, how can they pick things up instead of just moving through them?
• if a ghost is a spirit and someone’s soul, then how come they are always wearing clothes when people claim to have seen them? Clothes don’t die and clothes don’t have souls, so clothes don’t have an afterlife and shouldn’t come back as clothes ghosts. They should all be naked.
• how come people only ever see ghosts of loved ones and scary Victorian children or soldiers and things? How come no one ever sees a caveman ghost or a chav ghost in trackies? (Again, they shouldn’t really be wearing anything anyway)
• if ghosts are souls then that means everyone will turn into a ghost when they die. Which means we are currently SWAMPED with ghosts. They’re everywhere. We’re constantly walking through them everywhere we go because that many people have died in the world, we are bombarded with them
• what about baby ghosts? Babies can’t walk so does that mean that there’s loads of ghost babies just lay on the floor all around us?

I’m not taking the piss here, these are genuine questions that I have asked myself when I believed. And the more I think about it the more I just don’t believe it. However, I’m aware that people still do, so I’d love to hear what you think the answers are to these questions and what you think ghosts actually are, and their purpose?

Yes, sorry, it was @WhatsTheUseOfWorrying who was sneering:

It’s tricky stuff this science and rationalism: takes a bit of effort to grasp probability, think through problems and face the realities of the world. So much easier just to believe in ghosts and psychic powers.

My apologies, @CurlewKate

That’s not sneering. That’s straightforward comment.

TBH, these ghost threads always end up with the para-faithful playing the put-upon victims, no matter how they themselves post. 🤷‍♀️

Perhaps you weren’t aware that you were being sarcastic and condescending? If you think that’s ‘straightforward comment’ you really don’t understand language!

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying
Really happy for you to engage with the points I made (primarily to @CurlewKate) but perhaps you could be as polite and respectful as she manages to be?

@GreenAppleCrumble Oh, ok. Because you were giving the impression that only the existing scientific laws were acceptable."

When I said it would be incredibly exciting, I don't actually think that will happen. To quote a famous authority (for fellow oldies!) "Ye canna change the laws of physics!"

And that’s fair enough. But it might not mean ‘changing the laws of physics’ so much as discovering new ones? As I said, I’m not a scientist, but I do hear discussions sometimes about new ideas - and I’m fairly sure there are huge avenues for investigation that could throw up very challenging ideas?

No one is asking you to discount gravity, for example, but there are some interesting questions about the nature of time that are not necessarily dead ends.

@CurlewKate

Yes- several things. They have all turned out to be entirely explicable

Well then how are you assigning them to the 'inexplicable' category?! Honestly, it's not worth bothering arguing with someone who thinks that 'something inexplicable' is something they have an explanation for. It was a straightforward enough question.

Has Brian Cox got evidence that ghosts don't exist, then? I'd love to see it.

Actually the Brian Cox thing will be irrelevant, because we're talking about the paranormal, which is external to science anyway. He's saying that science proves ghosts don't exist. I'm saying (and I'm not alone in doing so) that science doesn't know everything. Cox's argument is that we can't prove that ghosts exist using science, and I agree with him.

@Watchkeys "
Well then how are you assigning them to the 'inexplicable' category?"

I'm sorry. I thought you were asking whether anything had ever happened to me that I couldn't explain-that appeared to be a paranormal experience until I looked into it further and discovered an explanation. Because that is what paranormal experiences are. It's just that believers tend not to do the looking into it bit.

Because that is what paranormal experiences are. It's just that believers tend not to do the looking into it bit.

That’s really not fair and makes me think that you haven’t really looked into many cases at all. There are numerous instances of people being deeply troubled by their experiences and searching desperately for an explanation. Your sweeping generalisation is very dismissive of their struggles.

Honestly, give ‘Into the Uncanny’ a read. It is a really honest investigation into a number of weird experiences from a sort of agnostic point of view. It may well be that there is a mundane (but obscure) explanation for each and every experience, but it’s very patronising to assume that the people who’ve actually been investigating these things or wrestling with them for decades (often in private for fear of the sort of derision we’ve seen on his thread) are just too stupid to work out the answer.

Many people don’t want a paranormal experience and will try their hardest to explain it away - and still fail.

‘Not looking into it’ can take a variety of forms. The most prevalent is wilful blindness to scientific discipline and the concept of likelihood. Which is a twin of a desire to believe, come what may.

There was a good example on this thread. It was said that ghosts are “external to science”. Yet ghosts are apparently not beyond our eyes, ears or moving objects around. They’re just beyond cameras, microphones or any other instrument.

Scientific instruments can measure and record everything our senses can and far, far more. Even things we cannot possibly detect ourselves. But not ghosts, apparently.

This argument has been done to death on other threads in the past. There is a belief that ghosts may be impressions left behind only as rare natural phenomena. But they lack any form of agency whatsoever. That does not seem to come within the criteria on which you base your questions @AnxiousAnniee

Have you read the book I mentioned? You’d be very hard-pushed to count ‘wilful blindness’ amongst the possible explanations for the strange phenomena cited. People have had their lives blighted by their inexplicable experiences. It’s a convenient narrative for you on this thread, I can see. But it’s not as simple as that.

As for the microphones and cameras argument… Have you ever searched for ‘video evidence of ghosts’ on the internet? There are thousands! The trouble is, video and camera evidence means nothing at all anymore thanks to photoshop and AI etc. No one is going to be convinced by an audio recording either! But saying ‘why is there no video evidence?’ is a bit like asking ‘why are there no ghosts in modern clothes/buildings?’ i.e. reveals that the asker has not really looked into the subject at all.

@GreenAppleCrumble "Honestly, give ‘Into the Uncanny’ a read."

OK, I will. I am a little sceptical about a journalist jack of all trades discovering a rich seam of popular interest just at a time when he was floundering a little professionally and had new young children to support, but I promise to be open minded!

@GreenAppleCrumble Downloaded it...

I definitely believe in ‘something’ ghost-like, but not sure what. My late parents both had this weird thing where they’d smell the perfume of their late mothers and asked me if I wanted to ‘come and smell it myself- no thanks! This happened quite a lot for them in the house and we did not have that particular scent around
The only weird thing I’ve ever done was an ouija board - really creepy - I know I was not pushing that counter & nor was the other person.
I can’t answer your questions, but they’re good ones.

😊 I’d be genuinely really interested to know what you think.

I am open minded, and I love all the Danny Robbins stuff, but felt really disappointed by the TV show as one section of it was total panto…. I’m a qualified acoustician and it made me cringe when he wandered around a town waving a sound level meter around in the air which is incapable of measuring infrasound, whilst saying “ooh, look at all the infrasound everywhere” There are all sorts of procedures for sound measurement, and using equipment which is capable of measuring anywhere near the correct frequency bands is definitely one of them.

When I moved into my current home I see a woman just stood in the kitchen. Scared me a lot. I see her a few more times randomly, just stood there. Not looking at me or anything. Thought I needed medicating and didn't mention it to anyone. My brother came to visit and said omg I just see a ghost of a woman stood in your kitchen, scared the life out of me. That was an interesting chat. I don't know why she was there but I still live here and haven't seen her since that time.

What did she look like? Things like this give me the creeps so much I’d have to move house I think 😂

the concept of likelihood

What's this got to do with impossibility? Are you saying ghosts are unlikely, or impossible? Impossible is an absolute. Unlikely means they might exist.

Oh that has reminded me, one day I was driving along a long country A road. Its busy and fast. There is a garage on one side of the road and a layby opposite. I saw a man in gray modern work where by the curb ready to sprint across the road. I blinked and he disappeared.

When I got home I saw a man 2-3 metres in front of me walk out from my hall, into my kitchen. He was solid, but completly black as if you was looking at some one with a bright light behind them. So you just see the outline kind of thing.

I thought it was dh at first but he was far too tall. I went into the dead-end kitchen but no one was there. I knew they wouldn't be before I walked over. Very strange. Very real. I think it was a brain fart but I did Google to see if anyone was run over by the garage. There's been lots of fatal crashes but no pedestrians hit there.

On that basis it’s possible that the moon is indeed made of cheese or that there are really are dinosaurs at the bottom of little Freddy’s back garden.

If a claim is sufficiently unlikely and completely resistant to proper proof, we discount it.

The only weird thing I’ve ever done was an ouija board - really creepy - I know I was not pushing that counter & nor was the other person.

Yes you very likely were,albeit unconsciously. It’s called the ideomotor effect.

https://www.cbsd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=80555&dataid=143557&FileName=Ideometer%20EffectMagic%20Beads%20Follow%20up.pdf

Ghosts have been part of human narrative/culture/history forever, no matter the culture or how old or new it is, pretty much the same as religion. If these things persist over millennia there should be a good reason for it.

Personally, I don’t think I have the knowledge or understanding to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. Nobody does really. So it is quite arrogant to assume people who disagree with us is wrong or stupid. I guess this is a topic that we need to agree to disagree on much like when we talk about God’s existence. For some there are signs, for some just silence 🤷‍♀️