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 knew someone years ago who had a ghost in their 1960s London council flat (I’ve forgotten about it but I bumped into them for first time in ages late last year).

Apparently it was a blue rinse and permed hair old lady dressed in a sort of crossover apron and long floral old lady dress of 60s/70s and slippers and they saw her mostly in the kitchen and living room just moving about. Apparently my friends looked into this and found out that she’d lived there since the block was built with her husband who’d died younger than her, and had lived there till late 80s when she went into a nursing home and died. Friends were housed there in late 80s/early 90s. My friend said she strangely didn’t feel scared or uneasy if she saw her, it was comforting and almost like a coloured sometime transparent moving picture of a figure. She did say that sometimes they’d find eg certain items in the flat moved to places they wouldn’t be and they’d never moved them.

I believe in ghosts, I go paranormal investigating with others and while we will always try to debunk things that happen there are times when there has been no reason to be found .One true example there was about 25 of us in a museum that was a one time a court we were all in a circle facing each other ,bar us the hall was empty , a 5p was thrown from behind me and landed between me and the next person .My DD is high functioning autistic so actually does not believe ghosts can exist but she has seen numerous "people" who no one else can see , my sister is the same .I can pick up on the shift in the atmosphere in the room .How it works I truly don't know , but when we were on holiday in a b&b , beautiful old farm house my daughter saw a woman dressed like a old fashioned cook , when the couple renovate the building the husband saw the same woman because at first he thought it was his wife till he realised the clothing .

I agree with all your points, and I don’t really believe in ghosts either, except I have seen one. It spoke to me. Other people corroborated my story without knowing about it.

There is something, we just haven’t found out what it is.

I don’t believe in seances, ouija boards, telepathy, etc etc etc but I have no way to explain away what happened to me, and there are lots of other people who have had similar experiences. There will be a scientific explanation.

GrandParade no I don't believe so and neither did he. He didn't know anything about a local ghost until he saw it. Was so terrified he said nothing. For weeks. And then it came up at dinner, about 10 people around the table discussing the man in the raincoat that had been seen by many people locally. This was a remote part of West Somerset.

I have to say, if this is what awaits me in the afterlife then I find it very depressing. To die and then spend your afterlife in someone else’s home just floating around, moving things. Sounds incredibly dull and boring.

No I don’t think it’s quite that. I mean if there is an afterlife it could be another plane (in the universe). I think with ghosts it’s residual energy, maybe the ghost felt happy where it lived or feels happy as in a child’s ghost, interacting/playingwith other live children or even if poltergeists moving things around. Sometimes maybe even the ghost believes it’s still “alive” and so that’s why it’s still where it lives when it was alive. Thats when priests to exorcise a property can come in handy.

Some ghosts if there was eg a murder hang around apparently not at rest.

Why would your imagination come up with a dream featuring squaddies when you spent the night in an army barracks...? Who could say?

They walk amongst us.

In the nicest possible way, he is now 91, and talks frequently about an experience had had over 80 years ago, when he was a child evacuee in a remote, unfamiliar place, and probably frightened and wary. It’s very likely that the tale has shifted in the telling over the decades since the event, even if the fear he experienced as a vulnerable displaced child was very real.

There was a recent post on here from someone who claimed to have experienced a timeslip walking back to a campsite with groceries, which made her miss the site entrance on a completely straight road, and her story was shifting even as she told it on the thread. I think a lot of the time it’s entirely unconsciously done, and the teller believes in their story.

Yes for me ghost clothes are the ultimate proof that they aren’t real! How would they get ghost clothes?
Also why are they always evil and trying to scare people? If I was a ghost I’d just give a friendly wave and a cheery smile, none of this hovering around in corners looking glum and scaring people!
And I occasionally hear of ghost pets, why am I not being haunted by every ant or bug I’ve accidentally squashed or cow I’ve eaten if animal can come back as ghosts?

You would be surprised

I have many books on the Supernatural/Paranormal and one, in particular, is a great book
Its about regular folks ghost tales and Council houses, OAP Homes, Hospitals, even shops can be haunted.
My Aunt lived in a haunted council house for example

Oh and, surprising to Me though localish, a ghost in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel who may have saved a young girl from being street robbed (I hate the mugging term, sounds like its the fault of the victim)

I think I’ve heard about this ghost in this tunnel. Have been to the tunnel and walked it a few times albeit when I was a bit younger.

Being open minded means being prepared to change your opinion if new evidence emerges. It does not mean accepting things without evidence.

I thought loads of people believed on here. They are always posting about being "ghosted".

There's a theory that ghosts aren't actually walking through walls but rather following the "map" they knew when they were alive. So if someone bricked a door up, the ghost would seem to walk through the wall.

It doesn’t make any sense, but when you see one, you just understand that we know very very little about the way things work.

I grew up in a council house that had been built in the 1900s (1901 if I remember correctly) and there was loads of weird stuff that happened like keys vanishing from a table when there was noone in that room, the stairs were always cold and damp feeling no matter what we did, the kitchen door would never stay shut regardless of what was done to it (I remember my dad bolting it shut at the top, too high for us kids to reach, then when we got up the next morning it was open again and the bolt nowhere to be found!)

It was just a really odd and creepy house in a big long terrace that had originally been built for families of the local salt mine/factory!

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

Of course they’re all fake

You believe prank YouTube videos and photoshopped pictures of fairies, seriously

It's up to us all to believe whatever we believe, though, isn't it? Why does your belief put you in a position to mock others? How do you know that your opinion that they're all fake is right? Why are you so attached to the fact that there are no other possibilities than your layman's opinion?

Or you recognise that it’s far more likely you experienced sleep paralysis, a mild hallucination (the floor shadows talked to me when I had a newborn who never slept — it was very vivid and frightening), imagined it, or interpreted a series of minor coincidences as a ‘pattern’ caused by the supernatural?

I do get sleep paralysis, but both times I’ve seen ghosts have been in the middle of the day while I was going about my normal business. I’m not sleep-deprived.

It happens to my brother as well. I reckon some people have perfect pitch, some can see colours very vividly, and some of us have the perfectly useless talent of seeing whatever we call ‘ghosts’.

Those who are interested, I’d strongly recommend a podcast called ‘We Can Be Weirdos.’ There’s an episode in which one of the chief curators at the British Museum talks about this very topic - Irving Finkelstein, I think his name is.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/we-can-be-weirdos/id1687199754?i=1000617896325

Irving Finkel.

I don't believe you have to be dead to be a ghost.
If someone is very unhappy or tortured in a room and then released I think you'd be able to sense the fear and negative energy in that room for many years even if the person has moved to another place and lives happily ever after their fear remains in that place and others may hear screams or feel tension the same way if someone has been arguing and you walk in the room afterwards you can feel the tension in the room even if they leave.
It's just residual energy which lingers.
Sometimes it may be energy of a deceased one that died in pain or fear, sometimes not.

I’ve experienced a lot of sleep paralysis, never seen a ghost during an episode though.

The only thing I’m attached to is reality. Denying the existence of ghosts isn’t opinion, it’s fact.

I feel very strongly that people shouldn’t be misled by foolish ideas and bogus ‘evidence’ for the ‘paranormal’ - or as it should be called, ‘childish nonsense’. It makes people stupider and more vulnerable.