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?

I’ve just finished Danny Robins’s book.

As research it’s worthless. It’s really just a collection of ghost stories.

And I find Danny Robins hopelessly credulous. The Enfield Poltergeist! Long debunked. And that ludicrous ‘levitation’ photo…

Every person who’d experienced the paranormal was a level-headed, dependable sort. Except of course we know nothing detailed or more complete about anyone written about.

The account of Averham civil war ghosts seemed rather inconsistent about place and distance. (‘Gordon’ the mystic archaeologist ‘whose surname is lost to the mists of time’ was a great walk-on part.)

Most of all, though, were you not struck by the way it’s written, the narrative technique? The author puts himself into events. He recounts them as if he were the interviewee. It’s written for people who want yarns, not serious investigation. No wonder it’s a best seller.

The ouija board chapter and Todmorden UFO club were hilarious highlights.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

As research it’s worthless. It’s really just a collection of ghost stories.

It’s not ‘research’. It’s people talking to other people about their experiences.

It’s interesting that you found the Todmorden bits in particular ‘hilarious’ given that some people’s lives have effectively been ruined by their experiences. Still, as long as it gave you a laugh!

I find your attitude quite distasteful, if I’m honest.

Yes, by all means, call everyone who claims to have had a paranormal experience a liar - it’s possible. But if you’d really read all those experiences with an open mind rather than a condescending sneer, it might just have given you cause for a moment of reflection.

There’s plenty to be gained from being sceptical, of course. But not a whole lot to be gained by being unbendingly scornful of others’ experiences, I think. I’m guessing no one close to you has ever confided an odd experience to you…

You said “Danny Robins has undertaken a huge investigation into all sorts of weird phenomena. You should read his recent book.”

So I did. I am very interested in the paranormal, or more precisely why people believe in the paranormal and how far they’ll go to persuade themselves.

It’s not a “huge investigation”. It’s not any investigation.

Why is it distasteful to think that his book doesn’t shed any light on anything?

And I did read it with an open mind. Scientists who’d come up with rigorous data supporting the reality of ghosts, even in some very slight way, would have been intriguing. But there’s just nothing in the book to support the idea of the paranormal.

Well, it is an investigation in the sense that he’s investigated a large number of instances. It’s not a ‘scientific’ investigation, no.

If I were writing about people’s experiences of, say, love or relationships, I wouldn’t launch a piece of scientific research.

Not everything can be stuffed into a test tube 🤷‍♀️

You can’t scientifically measure/analyse/test someone’s weird experience from their childhood. That’s nonsense. You can listen to, discuss and interpret people’s testimony. That’s it.

Or are you suggesting some sort of ghost-detecting experiment with special kit?!

People telling things to other people matters. Do you ever listen to and credit other people?

@GreenAppleCrumble
I haven't read Robins' book yet- but I have done some advance background searching. I'm prepared to have my mind changed, but I am a bit sceptical about him as an impartial observer. He says himself that he believes in manifestation, karma and premonition, and a couple of other paranormal things-I can't remember which and my notebook's in my car. He says that he finds it hard to distinguish dreams from reality, and was in his 20s before he realised that his childhood dreams of being able to low level fly "by flapping his arms" were in fact dreams. He grew up in a family where his mother had strenuously rejected her Catholicism, although he was fascinated and horrified by the iconography in his grandparents house. He felt that he was "missing something" and very much wants ghosts to be real-. He has also suffered severe anxiety attacks where he was convinced he was dying. He also began his psychical research at a time when he was in a bit of a career lull and worried about money-and was promoting a play he had written on the subject. As I said-I'm reserving judgement, but I do have reservations.

@GreenAppleCrumble Sorry- that's all taken from his own words in Dan Schreiber's podcast here. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/we-can-be-weirdos/id1687199754?i=1000627781847

People telling things to other people matters. Do you ever listen to and credit other people?

Depends on what they say and what they think about it. If someone I know says (and they have) that something ghostly has happened to them, I think it’s not ghostly but has a better explanation.

Doesn't the word "investigation" suggest some sort of evaluation? Story telling is great, and an important cultural practice, but it's different to an investigation investigation.

Sources matter. The credibility of the sources matter. The people who don’t get that are the kind of people who think research involves googling, and that ‘something someone said on the internet’ is a reason to not vaccinate their children.

If a number of independent credible people see a phenomenon at the same time, well that's data. The problem with ghost sightings is that it's usually one individual at a time. Therefore you can't really do much with that from a scientific viewpoint.

Well, i ve seen a ghost, possibly two.

One whilst helping a friend at 2am, that one was possibly a figment of our teenage imaginations and a moon lit night.

But the 2nd time was real, my partner had died, few days latter i was carry our DD upstairs (something regularly did btw) my DD suddenly started pointing at the top of the stairs and shouting Mama Mama Mama she was excited, i looked up and there was a silhouette of a person, (no cloths!) no real defined shape but there was something there, i felt warmth and calm and i knew everything would be ok & it has been.

If i had just seen this, then yes, could have been over emotional grief but my DD? she wasn't aware her Mum had died, she was a year old, zero concept of death, let alone grief.

I can't understand it but i believe it, equally i don't believe that ghosts move things or appear in spooky photos but we are more than blood and flesh, when we die, we are genetically exactly the same, yet something has gone and if it was once here but its now not, where is it?

Or are we just like a car that has run out of petrol and we just stop? if so, what did we see?

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

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

There isn't a large body of sane, sensible, educated adults claiming either of these things, but there is large body of sane, sensible, educated adults who accept the possibility of ghosts. If you don't believe in them, that's up to you, but you're actively telling us that science can't prove your point, and then using science as your proof. You must be able to see what a silly stance that is, in any argument. Haven't you got any better evidence than that evidence doesn't exist?

What you say is true - which is why I’m often only really intrigued by those phenomena that have multiple witnesses - of which there are many, many examples!

We're talking about two different things here. Both of them are important for different reasons.

Unemotional, clinical analysis of events to further our understanding of our world. And story telling, which enriches out souls and connects us to our culture and our past.

@decionsdecisions62 "If a number of independent credible people see a phenomenon at the same time, well that's data."

But what about events like The Angel of Mons or Our Lady of Fatima? Both seen by multiple people but not real..

Of course sources matter. But it isn’t a binary of ‘good sources/bad sources’. Or is it, in your book?

Reading a random account on the internet is not ‘evidence’ in any scientific sense. Nor is an anecdote from someone in person, no matter how much you trust them. But we’ll all make our own decisions based on the reliability of the source.

But neither of those are ‘scientifically reliable data’. None of this is! But what some posters seem to misunderstand is that we (or at least I) am not seeking to generate scientific data. I’m happy to listen to people’s testimonies and consider each on its merits. I would suspect that even those people who have experienced strange things for themselves don’t have a firm hypothesis about How Ghosts Work.

To me, the stories presented by people like Danny Robins are food for thought. Some of them are (if true) quite remarkable. The only way that some of the experiences can be instantly rubbished is by disbelieving the teller. Fine- of course you can do that! There’s no scientific method in there to make that hard to do!

But if you do stop and think - perhaps they’re telling the truth - well, it’s intriguing.

If there is something to the paranormal, it would make sense (to me) for it to defy classification by humans.

Your view seems to be that there is evidence of the paranormal: eye witness evidence. But your argument is also that the paranormal is external to science.

That’s contradictory. There can’t be evidence of sight, sound and touch of something external to science. You can’t have it both ways.

Incidentally, there’s nothing less plausible about modern day dinosaurs than there is about ghosts. It’s just that people grow up with the folklore of ghosts and are influenced by it.

@CurlewKate Angels of Mons was a made up story by Arthur machan. The reason a few folks saw the angels was because the idea disseminated in a story. I'm not sure that qualifies as independent unbiased sightings. This relates back to the idea of folklore and myth again.

That’s contradictory. There can’t be evidence of sight, sound and touch of something external to science. You can’t have it both ways.

Hang on, what? If I see my friend at the shops and tell my husband that, it’s just anecdote; it’s not ‘scientific data’ is it? I don’t see what point you’re making here? People are not saying ‘science’ showed them a ghost; they’re saying they saw a ghost, in the same way I saw my friend. Just because we can reduce the process of ‘seeing’ down to biological and physical processes, that doesn’t make either of those scenarios ‘science-based’!

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

Your view seems to be that there isevidence of the paranormal: eye witness evidence. But your argument is also that the paranormal is external to science

My view may seem to be that to you, but that's not what I've said. You don't even know what you're arguing against!

A claim that you saw your (living) friend at the Co-Op doesn’t test any laws of physics. If you claim that you saw your dead friend at the Co-Op it would.

What objective evidence could persuade people to believe you saw a dead person? Because you and your friend would be recorded on CCTV, for example.

When the CCTV doesn’t show your friend you can’t say “oh, I did see her with my own eyes, and I have good eyesight and it was a well-lit shop, but she’s external to science”. Well you could, but it wouldn’t be very convincing.

That is what you’ve said.

I get what you’re saying here, but it’s not quite what I was arguing against. You’d told a pp that they couldn’t have it ‘both ways’, as if they were trying to co-opt science in some way. But saying you saw something isn’t really relying on ‘science’ in any way; people saw stuff back in prehistoric times without understanding the science behind it! Those people claiming to have seen ghosts are not, as far as I can see, bringing science into it at all!

The ‘ghosts do or may exist’ argument on this thread goes:

• People see and hear ghosts and ghostly behaviour so there’s reason to think they’re real. If they weren’t real we wouldn’t see or hear them or see the objects they move about.

• The fact that there isn’t a shred of reliable objective evidence for any of this, including why ghosts or poltergeist activity is never seen on CCTV or webcams, is because the ghosts are beyond science and can’t be recorded.

These are incompatible. The second statement defies the first.

I'm a scientist. One off the first things my lecturer told me on my degree was that you can not dismiss what you can not disprove. It was revolutionary to me. It's the way religion and science can co exist. Respect of others theories. It's Darwins theory of evolution, not his fact of. I I'm totally invested in evolution. But I try not to scoff at Adam and Eve. That goes against science imo but I can't rock solidly prove there was no Adam or eve. I don't belive woman came from Adams rib, that is against science. But I don't say it at my church. I can't disprove God so I can't disprove his "magic"

Good science has a open mind. We thought the world was flat once. Science has changed so much since Darwin. If every scientist presumed we knew it all today how could ever learn more? Surely there's tons more science to discover? I think this is a major flaw in our species. Thinking we know all there is to know. Things are happening in physic every year that blows past theroys out the water.

Not to say I think we will ever prove the soul persists. But don't presume we know everything or will. There's a limit on our IQ and processing power. We are just humans.

Like if your team covid came from a lab or team covid came from someone eating a bat. If your solidly on one team then you could be one the researchers looking for that first infected human. Your pre bias has closed your mind to the possible answers.

No one has to belive. But stated solid facts? We are nothing but atoms, and our brains are just chemical signals. It's just a lot of atoms coming together to form a person. Don't think it's perfect or that it never malfunctions. Maybe ghosts are brain farts? Maybe is a missfire? But it can't be if if you say for a fact they don't exist or they don't ever get seen. In your mind, it would be real. That would be where it existed. One theory. Possibly bullshit theory but not impossible