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?

Well this is going to be a spirited discussion....

I don't believe in ghosts at all, because I naturally tend not to believe in things that have no basis in scientific fact. And yet, I have seen ghosts. Some years ago, I was doing a training course at an army barracks near Edinburgh. One morning, I awoke to find the room buzzing with the activity of men busying themselves getting their kit ready. At first I thought I had slept in, which is very much not like me, but a quick glance at my watch showed that it was still a couple of hours before we were due to get up. Then I realised that I didn't recognise the faces of any of the men and that they were wearing old-fashioned uniforms. I lay there watching them for a while before going back to sleep.

I mentioned what I'd seen to one of the instructors who was permanently stationed at the barracks. He told me that the barracks had a long history and was used as a staging post during WW1 for troops just before they were sent to the front. According to him, experiences such as mine were not uncommon.

Now, yes I know it could all have been a dream and I never really woke up at all. However, until speaking to the instructor after the fact I had no idea of the history of the place so why would my imagination have come up with a dream featuring squaddies with first world war uniforms and kit?

And there aren’t that many ghosts because all the bad ones are dragged off by badly drawn, groaning things.

Yeah, the ghost of Mrs Smith never turns up in the frozen food aisle in front of the shoppers.

And if ‘energy’ was hanging around after death, hospitals and hospices would have more ‘energy’ ghosts than you could shake a stick at.

Of course!

Who'd be seen dead haunting a 2 bed semi?

This is all you need. 😂

How do you know all those Chav's in Trackies you have seen are not ghosts, they could be non-translucent ghosts.

I have two interesting stories when my mum died. She died unexpectedly over the Christmas period, so could have been trauma from my brain that conjured it up

Story one:

Lying on the sofa during the day and I fell asleep. Woke up to my phone ringing and it was my mum. Picked the phone up and it was very static like a bad connection then her voice over the phone saying "darling, are you ok?" Totally freaked and put the phone down and woke up

Story 2:

About a week later, I was sleep in my bed and woke up to a really bright light in my room. Next minute I was standing in the middle of the room, and my mum passed through the wall wearing what could only be described as a white dressing gown (she had never owned one in her life) and an older man standing behind her wearing the same thing. She looked younger, very youthful and very happy. Gave me a massive hug and again asked if I was ok. Then I woke up

This was 7 years ago and I still remember it vividly. Whether she was as a "ghost" or down to my imagination brought on by a traumatic experience I will never know

I believe in spirts/souls of people that somehow live on

I can’t answer your questions as I don’t understand myself my own experience

but some things we don’t understand and maybe we never will

Dh and I once viewed a house that looked perfect on paper, but it had a horrible atmosphere - we only looked at part of the downstairs - I couldn’t wait to get out.

OTOH both of dds’ current houses - both terribly dated! - had lovely warm* atmospheres the moment you walked in, you could tell they’d been happy family homes.

*and I don’t mean the temperature!

Mn appears to be full of instances of rather dreary ghosts who specialise in turning the lights on and off, distracting dogs and hiding small items in semi-ds, occasionally branching out into dropping feathers in gardens or coming through stage ‘psychics’ with pieces of information so minor and arcane ‘(Liz says hello’) that the OP has to consult with several distant relatives to discover that a long-dead great-aunt was in fact called Elizabeth.

This reminds me of a quote in a Susan Jeffers book… “To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish”.

And the problem with that quote is that the people who would gain some insight from it, don’t even attempt to understand it.

I think hospitals, care homes and hospices have more than their fair share of ghost stories ..

I remember a thread about a dodgy string of lights that a poster’s friend had. The lights had come on FOR NO REASON! The poster seriously wanted to get a priest round her friend’s house to drive out the ghost.

I've seen a ghost, at Longleat. I was looking over a patch of lawn and saw a mistlike patch of air, as I looked I could see a lady in the midst of it gliding rather than walking. I looked away and when I looked back she'd gone

It depends what your definition of a "ghost" is.

Some people think they are sentient, they purposely come back to haunt a building/person for whatever reason. Personally, I find that difficult to believe.

Some people think they're residual energy that manifests in various ways. I could be persuaded to believe that.

Some people believe they're a time slip. Seems feasible to me, would need to see it with my own eyes to believe it though.

It's the people who think that upon finding a feather that they have been visited by an angel that I really feel are a bit dim. What is more likely, that a supernatural celestial spiritual being who serves God decided to visit your front room and communicate their presence via the medium of discarded epidermal avian growths or that said feather came from a pillow.

why would my imagination have come up with a dream featuring squaddies with first world war uniforms and kit?

Bit of a punt, but maybe doing a training course at an army barracks near Edinburgh had something to do with it?

As with religion, many people make lots of money out of 'ghosts' so they must exist.....

See also electrical faults, household pets acting like household pets, babies waving at sunbeams, extremely mainstream songs coming on the radio etc.

I also believe in ghosts. When my DF was living in the West Country, evacuated during Second World War, as an 8 year old he saw a man in a grey raincoat in a country lane. It made no noise, had no face and was 'floating'. He was absolutely terrified and it has stayed with him; he's now 91 and still talks about it.

'It was probably just his imagination' you may think.. he said nothing to anyone but a few weeks later it came up at the dinner table. The man in the grey mac. Turns out this ghost was well known in the area and been seen by many local folk.

😂😂😂

Once during a stay at our local hospital - an old Victorian Infirmary - one of the nurses told me the ward Sister disliked the night shift because she often saw ghosts of babies and children floating around, as that wing was the old children's hospital. Wish she hadn't told me that when I was in for an overnight stay!

Why did you look away? I wouldn’t have been able to take my eyes away if I saw something like that.

Isn’t this more likely to be in some way about the trauma of a displaced, possibly scared and homesick eight year old, evacuated to an unfamiliar place during a war, who ‘sees’ a frightening local ghost he’s been told about, with or without malicious intent, and misremembers the order of events?

Exactly, I’ve watched lots of tv shows/documentaries etc about ghosts and all the sightings/experiences seem to be of stereotypical ghosts. I’ve never heard of anyone seeing a dinosaur ghost, or an elephant or gorilla! And are there ghosts of whales, dolphins and fish all gliding through our seas and oceans?

And how come so many ghost sightings are when people are in bed having just dropped off to sleep or woken through the night? They claim to be fully awake but I’m pretty sure it’s all part of some kind of sleep phenomena.

Although, In saying that I do believe in energy and I imagine many of us have experiences with energy of some kind, wherever it originates.