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?

Look, I’m well aware that ‘ghosts exist’ is a shaky position to take! But I just don’t think this particular argument that you’re making here is very sound.

Those two statements aren’t categorically at odds with each other. Surely you can see that? It’s very, very unlikely that an entity that could be seen and heard with the eyes and ears couldn’t also be recorded- but it’s not impossible to imagine, is it? It’s be weird and otherworldly… kind of like the idea of ghosts 🤷‍♀️

In any case, there are, of course, thousands of dubious recordings of ghostly activity in existence.

It’s very unlikely that any of them are actually ‘ghosts’. But I think you’re wasting your time if you’re trying to use science to ‘prove’ ghosts can’t exist in some categorical way. If that could be done, surely someone would have done it once and for all to put a stop to all this nonsense that annoys you so much?

@DyslexicPoster "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?"

Actually, that bit about everyone thinking the thinking the world was flat isn't true, but we'll let that pass!

And nobody thinks we know it all. There is always more to know and understand. But we do know some things. The scientific method hasn't changed since Darwin. We know more. Knowledge has increased. But the fundamentals remain the same.

It’s true that science cannot disprove the existence of ghosts - although my personal view is that ghosts are so unlikely in the face of a complete lack of credible evidence over millennia that I can safely discount them (and the rest of paranormality).

But disproof is not my argument. My argument is that it’s wrong to go on believing in a phenomenon that fails every test. The OP pointed out logical inconsistencies and absurdities. That’s the starting point. When you move on to the absence of objective and rigorous evidence, the debunking of many claims, the facts of better explanations and, ultimately, a need for believers to suggest tangled and contradictory theories to keep their belief going, there’s nothing left.

I’m not suggesting that you have fallen into pseudoscience, but it is very revealing when ghost advocates start talking about time slips, unknown energies, quantum physics and the like. By that stage we’re in a Dr Who script.

My argument is that it’s wrong to go on believing in a phenomenon that fails every test

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

By what metric is it wrong? What is there, external to what's in your own mind, that gives you any authority to say what is wrong, rather than what you think is wrong. By what metric do you, or anybody else, get to decide, for everybody, which tests are worthy, and which tests are not? People tend to trust what they have experience of with their own senses, and you are telling them that they are categorically wrong, because of summaries you have read about experiments that were done when you weren't even there.

What gives you the authority to tell people that they are categorically wrong about their own senses?

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

It’s true that science cannot disprove the existence of ghosts - although my personal view is that ghosts are so unlikely in the face of a complete lack of credible evidence over millennia that I can safely discount them (and the rest of paranormality).

Well, this is the crux of it, isn’t it? There isn’t a scientific proof either way - so it’s pointless pretending that there is. I just felt that your argument was becoming a bit over-reaching when you told that pp they ‘couldn’t have it both’ ways, as if it was a sort of gotcha.

The heart of the argument is that you discount every single ‘paranormal’ instance without a second glance. That’s up to you. You don’t regard anything as ‘evidence’ unless it’s recorded on a graph.

You conceded that you’d be willing to believe me if I said I’d seen my friend at the Co-op (even, perhaps, without CCTV evidence!) because it doesn’t contravene known scientific principles. So you do trust people’s senses to a degree.

But if those same senses told you something you strongly believe to be impossible, you would discount it.

So far, so sensible, I guess. But the issue is where do you draw that line? I mean, if you’re doing a science experiment, you’re still observing the results with your human senses at some point.

We all rely on our senses to a large degree. If you saw something inexplicable in the cold light of day I’m willing to bet you’d have a good old think about it. So when people tell me that the inexplicable thing happened to them, I do the same - have a think about it. It’s fine that you don’t- but it doesn’t give you the right to look down on those who stop to consider the paranormal.

I know your argument rests on the balance of probability, and that you’ll argue for the absence of ‘rigorous’ proof or whatever. But people’s testimony means something (to me, at least) and I really don’t care about scientific conditions!

We all rely on our senses to a large degree. If you saw something inexplicable in the cold light of day I’m willing to bet you’d have a good old think about it. So when people tell me that the inexplicable thing happened to them, I do the same - have a think about it. It’s fine that you don’t- but it doesn’t give you the right to look down on those who stop to consider the paranormal

I think this is it, really. It's the judgement. Most people understand that it's fine to believe whatever you want, but that stepping into the realms of judging those who don't agree with you, is a different matter.

There's a lot of people who didn't believe in the paranormal until something happened to them that they couldn't explain. There's a lot of people who think there might be things going on that humans don't know about. There's a lot of people who think we know everything, so nothing can exist that we don't know about. Nobody has any right to tell anybody else where they should be, according to their own opinion.

Scientists acknowledge that science doesn't know everything, so basing your argument on what science proves doesn't logically follow.

@Watchkeys "There's a lot of people who think we know everything, so nothing can exist that we don't know about."

I don't actually know anyone who thinks that. I'm old,and I've known a lot of people with all sorts of beliefs, and NONE of them have thought that. Oh, except maybe a couple of really extreme Creationists might have....

@CurlewKate

Thank you for that information about people you have known.

The difficulty with this is that people say more than “I believe in…”.

They say “this castle is haunted”, “I can tell your future, for £50”, “I can contact your dead loved one”, “I can tell your past because I’m psychic”, “I knew your mum was ill because I’m telepathic”, “my house was ransacked by a poltergeist”, “the ouija board put me in touch with a Victorian murderer”, and so on. And, of course, “ghosts are real”.

Once someone makes a material claim it’s testable. If it fails the test, the claim is in doubt. If it fails repeatedly it’s discounted.

If you want to say you have faith, knock yourself out. If you want to say that the paranormal reveals the past or influences or predicts the world, don’t be surprised if others ask for proof and, with no proof, that others tell you you’re, at a minimum, mistaken. If you feel that’s ‘judging’ you there’s nothing I can do about that.

I think we’ve reached that point where you basically repeat “I don’t care what anyone says, I believe in claims of the paranormal and no amount of investigation or thought will change my mind”.

I had a poltergeist in my old house . The next occupant had an identical experience to me , I didn't know her or met her . It was an ex neighbor who never knew of my experience told me what was happening to the new occupant. It was identical to what I experienced. They got a medium in to send it on its way .

@Watchkeys You really aren't prepared to have any sort of discussion, are you. Fair enough.

What's the point of this post?

The truth is that nobody, including science/scientists, knows anything about the paranormal with 100% confidence.

Discuss all you like, it won't make any difference to anything, including the science/scientists. We simply don't know. Anybody who thinks they know, either way, is stating probability/likelihood as fact, which is their prerogative. On that basis, it's a fact that nobody has ever won the lottery, from my perspective. But I can take other perspectives into account, too. You could try it, it's nice!

*The difficulty with this is that people say more than “I believe in…”.

They say “this castle is haunted”, “I can tell your future, for £50”, “I can contact your dead loved one”, “I can tell your past because I’m psychic”, “I knew your mum was ill because I’m telepathic”, “my house was ransacked by a poltergeist”, “the ouija board put me in touch with a Victorian murderer”, and so on. And, of course, “ghosts are real”.*

Mmmm. It’s about judgement, isn’t it? It depends who is claiming what. If your position is ‘I will openly reject any information that seems to contradict the universe as I know it’, then great! It’s probably not going to do you any harm. But if I would rather take each new piece of evidence (yes, I’m calling people’s testimonies ‘evidence’ 😱) as an individual case for consideration, then that’s my look-out, I guess. I’m pretty confident in my judgment and am happy to take that stance.

I’m confident enough, for example, that I’m not going to part with £50 if someone can claim to contact my departed cat. But I’m also happy to go ‘Wow that’s weird’ if the contents of someone’s kitchen are thoroughly rearranged when the flat’s empty. I’m not going to stake anything on the existence of a ghost, but I’m intrigued.

I’m not at all bothered about you ‘judging’ me! I don’t know who you are. I’m just bringing my perspective to the table and arguing for more open-mindedness than some people are willing to give.

I don't know if I believe or not. I really wouldn't believe at all because so many things don't seem to add up but I've actually seen one. If only I had seen it then I'd just put it down to my own Imagination but it was also seen by a friend.

@GreenAppleCrumble I'm enjoying Danny Robins book very much. He's a fantastic teller of stories-and I actually decided to stop listening to one for a bit while I was on my own. But so far I don't understand how it's different to, say, MR James......

I’d really love to know more about this but will understand if you don’t want to share!

He is really good, isn’t he? I know you did that research into his background and there were some things that made you feel that he’s got a really vested interest in the paranormal, as it were. But I think he’s in earnest and tries to be even-handed. He’s definitely not a paid-up believer. And M.R. James was openly writing fiction, no?

Anything experienced as true by any individual is actually true because it has actually happened.

@GreenAppleCrumble "And M.R. James was openly writing fiction, no?"

Yes he/she( I can never remember which) was. The point is that there is nothing to indicate, except his say-so, that Robins isn't too. Well, not yet, anyway.

I think I see what GreenApple meant: MR James consciously imagined his stories. I’m perfectly happy to think that Danny Robins faithfully recorded other people’s.

The key, I think, is in the word ‘imagined’. Conscious imagination v unconscious imagination.

Anyway, it’s good that you are enjoying the book. I didn’t dislike it; but I can’t say I thought it was either particularly well-written or insightful.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying I'm listening to Robins as an audio book- he tells a story brilliantly and scarily! But I really don't see any difference between him retelling a story someone has told him, and someone telling a story they have imagined. It's fun, but I don't see how it moves anything forward...

Yes, I agree.

Out of interest, is the audiobook word-for-word the printed work?

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying Yes-it's not abridged.

Thanks. Just curious. I’ve never listened to an audiobook. But I’ve always assumed they would say if they’re abridged.

MR James (a he, very much, and one who lived in a very all-male world, medievalist scholar, fellow of King’s, Cambridge, Provost of Eton, never married, notoriously dismissive of women, often assumed by biographers to be a closeted gay man, used to read his stories aloud to all-male gatherings of his friends) is interesting because his ghost stories are readable in terms of exploring his own demons. Lots of the horrifying or frightening manifestations of ghosts in his stories suggest the sexual or feminine (like the spectre of bedclothes in ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to you, my Lad’), or his survivor’s guilt for outliving his younger friends and students during and after WW1.