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?

@Mirabai "Non sequitur of the day. Some scientists believe in the existence of the divine and some don’t."
How many do? Very few.

Many many many. Surely you’re not under the mistaken impression that scientists are all atheists?

No idea how it works op, just thought I might have a go answering your questions. realistically no one has the answers, because you either believe (have a faith) or dont (atheist) or sit on the fence (agnostic).

Believing in ghosts isn’t a faith. It’s nonsense for the gullible and credulous, without the attempt to address the great mysteries of life, which is what the major religions do. Faith implies a system
of understanding the world. It does not imply behaving like a ten-year-old at a sleepover listening to, and believing, spooky stories.

I have the answer. There is no evidence for ghosts. If there was evidence for ghosts we would have it by now. Ghosts and the paranormal is all rubbish.

@Mirabai Many many many. Surely you’re not under the mistaken impression that scientists are all atheists?"

Of course not. But I would love to have a few names of some who aren't. Usually, the list includes many from a time when faith was a condition of academic tenure.

I absolutely believe in an afterlife and there being something after you die.

But the one thing I can't get past with ghosts is this: why are all these alleged photos of ghosts taken on very ancient cameras? everyone has smart phones now with cameras and recording options on them so why arent there more ghost photos nowadays? If ghosts do exist then surely there would be more photos around now, not less, as everyone has a camera on their phone with them all the time to capture this creepy stuff

I dont believe in spirits, ghosts etc logically but have had experiences that tell me different.

We lived in a Victorian house for the first 13 years of my dcs lives, my ds used to have night terrors, my dd swears to this day, she's now 22, that when she was in bed she used to see a woman walk up the stairs and sit at the top crying at night, she would then hear the front door open and close and then a man would walk up the stairs and he and the woman would go into the back bedroom. She felt paralysed when this happened. A couple of years after we moved out I found out that the female owner of the house had been murdered by her lodger in the back bedroom, after he came back from the pub one night.

Also in that house, I used to get premonitions of things happening. We lived backing on to a river/harbour and one day I had a vision of a child drowning, it was bugging me so much I went out the back gate down to the riverside and found 3 year old son of the neighbour down by the water on his own. I picked him up and then the neighbour came running out looking for him.

Another time a fella i met on a night out and arranged to meet again turned up on my doorstep. I invited him in and once in the kitchen he said he needed to tell me something. At that moment I saw, what I can only describe as a thought bubble over his head and it was the face of a woman I knew 10 years previously from the pub, so I said you know Julie Smith don't you? He replied yes, she's my girlfriend how did you know. I just asked him to leave. I can still picture it now over 10 years later- a vivid picture of julie over his head. So bizarre.

There's been other things, but those stand out the most.

The house we now live in, the elderly female owner died here, visitors often comment on the warm welcoming feeling in the house, and often when me or the kids are alone here you get a glimpse of someone walking passed a doorway and you think that someone else is home. The house never feels empty when your alone here. Neighbours have said the previous owner was a very happy, sociable spinster who always welcomed people into her home.

But no, I don't logically believe any of it.

For some reason the idea of a "chav ghost in trackies" is quite amusing 😊 I'm on the fence as I agree with everything you say, but I've had a couple of spooky encounters. One was my dad a few weeks after he died & it was lovely but sad at the same time

By the time I have woken up my phone, typed in my PIN, opened the camera app the ghost could have thumbed its nose at me and vanished. At least old fashioned cameras were point and click.

I was the opposite until I had actual experiences with hauntings. You can't explain things in scientific terms that can't be proven or disproven through scientific means. Maybe one day we'll be able to but right now it's down to experience. I know what I saw and heard, nothing can change that.

Read dr Michael newton books. He regresses people through hypnosis back to in between lives and previous lives. Or he did. He is dead himself now. Interesting anyway and the subject of ghosts are discussed. It's another matter as to whether you believe it but it offers an interesting perspective.

Yes but surely some ghosts would have been caught in the background whilst taking photos of other things? it just seems a little far fetched that there were loads of ghost photos around in the last century but what- none now that everyone has a phone?

Also the shutter speed is too slow to capture visuals moving very fast. That's why UFO photos are few but recently videos have been made available.

Just to add my own experience. Two week after my dog died, I felt and heard him doing the zoomies around my bed. We didn't have any more dogs and it happened twice in succession, like it would be as a living dog would. I believe it could only have been his energy hanging around. All of us, separately, seen him jump across the top of the stairs/heard scratching etc, felt him by our feet in bed through night... but didn't mention it until one of us spoke up about it. It only lasted for a few days but was nice, in a way, while it did.

So, they're not facts then. We could learn different. Thank you for making my point for me.

What we know now fits the evidence we have now

And our means of measuring and analysing it, which, unless you think these to be completely perfect, infallible, and unimprovable, makes a mockery of your point.

There's a lot of crime perpetrators caught years after the fact due to evidence that can now be detected, but couldn't at the time of the crime. Were those perpetrators not the perpetrators, because we didn't have the means to prove it?

Well, that’s what Google was invented for.

I love this post too
I have wondered the same questions’ no answers though unfortunately
what about the Victorian dressed ghosts I’ve heard about and! It makes no sense unless it’s made up
It’s all very strange

@Mirabai "Well, that’s what Google was invented for." Google supports my view. I was hoping you were going to come up with some new names.

If ghosts are real, I wonder why some people see/hear/sense them and others don’t. I’ve been to old peoples homes many times to visit great grandparents years ago, and a few weeks ago my grandad died and it was very traumatic for me because I was in the hospital with him and watched him take his last breath. I never felt his presence in the room. We stayed in the hospital room with him for some time after he passed, and I didn’t feel any energy in the room at all. Do some people just have this “gift” and others don’t?

😂

Very aggressive in your reply, have I inadvertently offended you? if so I apologise.
But What's the Easter message about if it wasn't Jesus coming back to say 'yahoo, I'm back'?! Spiritualism is an off shoot of Christianity, the spiritualist church believe in spirits.
Plenty of belief systems believe in an afterlife. Maybe not of the white sheeted variety, but in some sort of paradise/ heaven / reincarnation etc where the spirit lives on or starts over.

I’m a scientist and I know of many Christian, Muslim and Jewish doctors, professors and scientists. That’s before I get on to academics. Or think of countries such as USA or Israel.
If you’re also a scientist and network within the Uk or internationally, you’d surely be aware of that?
Whether they believe in the paranormal is another thing, but arguably there is little proof for religion and they do have faith.
Science does not know all the answers, it can only describe what it discovers.
Wittgenstein might make interesting reading for you (I’m not being disingenuous at all - it might be).
I think scientism is very limiting to society!

No, you didn’t offend me at all. I wasn’t defending faith, just distinguishing between faith, as in a way to live a life, and a willingness to believe in ghosts.

I do lapse into being a bit caustic about ghost believers because I think it’s so utterly stupid. Why would any adult swallow this nonsense? You might as well believe in The Wombles.

@WhatsTheUseOfWorrying

Your arguments here have as much strength as 'It's a fact that sprouts are horrible. How can any adult swallow the nonsense that they taste good? It's utterly stupid!'

You have an opinion. Others have different opinions. There is no proof either way (unless you can provide it?), and 'most scientists agree' isn't a strong argument.

We're all entitled to think what we think, but anybody calling another opinion 'stupid' when there's no evidence says more about themselves than about the other person.

I work alone as a night shift security manager. One of my locations is a former Victorian psychiatric complex. You might have a mental impression of what such a place looks like but it's actually lovely, from the buildings to the manicured gardens to the imposing church. It was built at a time when people began to think that nice surroundings would benefit patients. Another location is an abandoned care home that looks exactly as you might imagine. I've had strange experiences at both locations that I can't explain. I don't go in thinking "woo ghost", I'm looking for tangible reasons why an alarm might have activated. The truth is, I never felt creeped out at either location. I also used to patrol a former WW2 RAF station and that really did creep me out even though nothing truly creepy ever happened, it just had an unsettling vibe. Despite this and one or two other unexplainable, possibly paranormal, experiences throughout my life, I'm sort of on the fence about ghosts per se. I think a lot of it can be explained and maybe there is a perfectly rational explanation that science hasn't worked out yet. All I can say is I know what I experienced, I wasn't imagining it or misidentifying something perfectly normal. I couldn't do my job if I was someone that jumped at shadows. I once lived in a fairly new house that just felt dark and wrong (even my sceptic husband admitted this after we moved) and now I live in a building that's 150 years old that feels warm and welcoming. If there are any ghosts there then I'm happy to share my space with them.

@MsMarshaKlein

I'm sort of on the fence about ghosts per se

I think this is the only logical answer to so many people believing something that science has yet to prove.