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?

It’s all so illogical isn’t it.

The only thing that makes an ounce of sense to me is the theory that reality/time is in multiple layers. If time isn’t linear and/or there multiple universes all existing at once then maybe there are thin areas sometimes/somewheres where things collide.

i could sort of get on board with that idea.

I’m scared the white scary ghost people you see sometimes tv.

Sometimes when lying in my bed, I feel someone gently stroking my hair like my grandma used to. It gives a sort of ASMR feeling and is extremely comforting. I’d like to think that’s something. ❤️

@GrandParade That's interesting-for some reason when I was very young I got it into my head as Mrs James and have never properly got it out!

I'm a member of a fan fic writing group and once rewrote Whistle And I'll Come To You as a gay love story for the characters. Maybe truer than I thought!

@CurlewKate

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...

Really? But there is a difference, surely? I mean, one is fiction and one is (or purports to be…) non-fiction. I mean, if you assume everyone is lying, then yes, the latter becomes fiction too!

I guess I’m more gullible than you then! I tend to believe people unless there’s a particular reason to disbelieve them or there’s going to be material/financial harm if I’m mistaken.

It’s easy to dismiss the phenomena (even those with multiple witnesses) if you assume people are liars, yes.

The other point that @WhatsTheUseOfWorrying raises is the imagination- the suggestion that people are subconsciously creating these phenomena. Again, it’s harder with multiple witnesses but it’s a point sceptics regularly raise. I just don’t buy it though as an explanation for the thousands upon thought of weird experiences people have documented. As I’ve said before on these threads - I don’t think I’ve ever imagined something that wasn’t there. I’ve had those weird moments when you think you’ve heard a doorbell waking you up from a dream or you think you see a figure but it’s a trick of the light. But those are really easily solved or dismissed. I find it literally impossible to conceive of a situation where I would imagine something so vividly that it would deeply affect me. I’m sure it can happen in the odd case where there’s a chemical explanation- but again, I believe people when they say that they’re otherwise healthy and clear-headed!

Just out of interest, if you don’t dismiss the key players as liars, how do you explain the Rome apartment story?

That’s funny! 🤣 I think he was Montagu(e?) Something James. A reactionary old sod, but a brilliant ghost story writer. He’s buried in Eton — I was visiting a friend when there was a big restoration of his headstone. I love that there is MR James fan fic.

It’s not simply imagining - as in honest mistakes about - sights, sounds, smells, temperatures - though there’s plenty of that goes on - it’s imagining reasons for the sights and sounds.

As for the Rome story, I have no idea what the background or temperament of the witnesses was, beyond what I’m told in the book. Nor anything about others in the story or not in the story. (The husband doesn’t feature much IIRC, or the daughters.)

But if you want a best guess on the facts we’re given, what happened to Andrew when babysitting was a prank. Just like the Enfield Poltergeist.

Before you say “but a prank was ruled out”, we can’t know that. At least not on the basis of the book.

@GrandParade ". I love that there is MR James fan fic."

I am ashamed and somewhat embarrassed to admit that it wasn't MR James fanfic- it was a significantly lower brow and less worthy fandom. I just stole the story....

Thank you for engaging with this. I’m finding it really interesting 🤔

Yes, a prank can’t be ruled out if someone is lying. I thought it was weird what happened right at the end - after the now adult babysitter revisited the apartment. If people aren’t lying it’s harder to reconcile all these events 🤷‍♀️

I get what you’re saying about the reasons for sights/sounds etc. But I’m fairly happy for there to be no explanation settled on, with the door left open for it to be something ‘woo’, I guess! For example, if you go into your kitchen and every cupboard is wide open despite no-one having been in there, you might say - it’s the wind maybe? Or a prank?! But there are often ways of more or less ruling those things out, especially if the same thing happens repeatedly and for different witnesses. My reaction might not be to go ‘it’s definitely the ghost of Great Aunt Hilda’ but I would defintely be kicking round done paranormal ideas! Just because it would be so, so weird - not like a trick of the light or a waking dream.

I’m of the opinion that each case should be taken on it’s own merits, but also that the overwhelming wealth of testimony out there, much of it from regular, clear-minded people, can’t all be lies/misunderstandings.

@GreenAppleCrumble I don't think for a moment that they are liars. I think that they experienced what they recount. It's where that experience came from that I am interested in. When we think of all the things that were considered paranormal that have been explained it seems to be to be logical that others will be. Think about all the events that are explained now we have understand about sleep paralysis, for example.

And the effects of infrasound too.

@CurlewKate Sorry to press you on this, but I’m really fascinated that you can be so certain! If no one is lying, how did all the plates and bowls get out of the cupboards repeatedly for different witnesses over a number of years?

I think you must be implying someone is lying? (Which is fine, if you are - it’s a valid response.) Multiple people don’t make that sort of interpretative mistake, surely?

As far as I know, infrasound can make you feel ill/dizzy but it can’t move kitchenware? 🤷‍♀️

@GreenAppleCrumble OK. Obviously I can't absolutely know what happened. But if you held me at gun point, I would say that it was some sort of prank that went on for a while and it became built into people's mental furniture as having happened to them too. It's incredibly, scarily easy to plant memories in people's minds, unconsciously or consciously. In most families there will be anecdotes that more than one person claims happened to them. And I had a vivid memory of playing on a rug with my brother as a tiny baby- then I saw an old photograph that I must have seen before of the exact image. I genuinely though it was an insanely early memory-but it wasn't.

@GreenAppleCrumble So, things can not be true, but nobody is lying.

This is so true… both my mum and my sister claim they saw my grandma float off with a strange man in a hot air balloon that just turned up on their street 😆 I think one of them dreamt it but was so convinced it was true and told the story repeatedly that her sister also now has it as a “memory” but it isn’t her memory at all.

same thing happened to me and DP. I went into the shop and something funny happened, I came back and told him about it and it was a running joke for ages. One day I said “I’ll never forget walking in there and seeing that” and he said “no, I was the one who went in the shop” and we argued about which one of us went in, because both of us have such clear memories of walking into the shop and seeing it. But it wasn’t both of us. We have just heard the story so many times that the thought of it seems so real. I’m still convinced it was me who went in. Our brains are weird.

I once wrote an essay with a fact in it that I was convinced was right. I’d seen the fact online, I thought.

Only a bit later when I went looking online for the fact I realised it was completely wrong - and improbable. I came to realise I’d dreamt it. Curiously I can still see a mental image of the dreamt webpage it came from.

Somehow it had moved from a sleep state into my conscious mind as being real. (That’s my layman’s explanation of the mental process: I’m not a psychiatrist or neurologist.)

I put this down to the stress of the time.

@AnxiousAnniee Danny Robins, who wrote the book we're talking about, had a vivid memory of as a small child being able to flap his arms and fly a little. It was so vivid that he assumed everyone could do it and in his 20s casually mentioned it to friends. It was only their reaction that made him realise it had been a dream.

This post made me laugh! Sounds like what goes on inside my head in the middle of the night when I can't sleep 🤣

I see what you’re saying. I think we’ve all got those mistaken memories that are based on photos or conversations. I’m pretty sure I have them too.

But that’s not quite the same, is it? In this Rome story, as well as in a vast number of others, the weird experience is remarked on and agonised over immediately on the basis of it being so out of the ordinary. It has no time to become a distorted memory because it straightaway becomes the stand-out experience of that person’s life.

Misinterpreting a mundane memory, or later recalling a dream as if it were a real memory, is quite different, to my mind. It happens to most of us.

This is, I think, where we’re coming at it from a different perspective. I’m not talking about the regular mixed up jumble of thoughts/memories/misconceptions of human experience. I’m interested in those stand/out moments that stop people in their tracks, people like you and me, who are well aware of how life works and have probably had their fair share of misconceptions and tricks of the light.

I think I give people more credit, perhaps, to be able to recognise when something really weird has happened and when they’re just a bit confused.

Going to bow out for now as I have to get ready for guests!

I don’t think I’ll ever quite see eye-to-eye with @CurlewKate or@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying on this. The thing is, I’m probably not actually that far from your stance in terms how believing I am, despite everything I’ve said. I have no hard evidence (obviously!) and I have only one experience of my own to bring to the table (and I’m afraid I’m not going to describe it!). But I’m just frustrated, I guess, at other people’s certainty! How can you be so sure? So many weird things have happened to so many people. You can’t argue them all away (perhaps only because there isn’t time!) so how can you be so certain of your disbelief?

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

No he hasn't! It's all done for entertainment! He's too credulous if anything 😲🤣

@GreenAppleCrumble "But I’m just frustrated, I guess, at other people’s certainty! How can you be so sure? "

Because up to today. nothing has convinced me that the paranormal is a "thing". Who know what tomorrow will bring?

And just to repeat. I don't think people are usually lying or deluded. I think they are mistaken. Or misinterpreting. Or misinformed.

Laugh all you like. He has sifted through hundreds (probably more) of people’s testimonies and followed up many. So, yes - he’s investigated, in some cases chasing up witnesses from years ago, travelling to the locations involved etc. Not sure why that’s so amusing to you? No one’s claiming he did a science experiment 🤷‍♀️

Some of us are having a respectful discussion here 😊

@@GreenAppleCrumble for me there's a difference between investigating and recording. So far-and I haven't finished the book yet-he's storytelling and recording. There isn't any sense that he's looking for explanations.

But what makes you the authority? People equally think that you are mistaken. How are you so sure that you are right?

I don't understand how anybody can argue either side of this debate with any certainty.