Do you believe in Ghosts?

[dottiedodah]

just that really ,found some interesting things online that made me think .YABU ghosts dont exist YANBU could be something in it

no, i really have

I didn’t till I saw one.

Rationally, probably not. Be nice if they did though, like unicorns or centaurs or whatever, it would certainly make life less of a tedious grinding fucking bore

That's brilliant@jen337 . It was no more frightening than those little fellas.

A ghost that looks like Noddy Holder! Now that would be a fantsastic Dicken's adaptation. An IT's CHRISTMASSSSS Carol.

Re Roman soldiers, Google ‘The Treasurer’s House’ - Romans - in York!

I’ve never seen anything, but I did once strongly sense the presence of my lovely MiL who’d very recently died. I put it down entirely to my imagination, so when my father died only 6 months later, I fully expected to ‘sense’ the same.
But there was absolutely nothing.

I do think some people’s senses in this respect are much more finely tuned than others, and those people who say it’s all rubbish just don’t possess those senses, or else they’re entirely dormant. But of course they’d all scoff at that idea, too.

Some people say that they're in time with spirits. Others would say that those people just have different brains/imaginations. I work with people with schizophrenia and they come out with all sorts of things that are real to them. Jesus definitely wasn't walking to the shops with us though.

Also why was my post about bees having ghosts deleted for breaking talk guidelines???

In tune

My parents tell a story of me and crying inconsolably in one room at the tower where condemned prisoners waited for execution.

Would it be nice though, really? If you stop and think about it, it's an absolutely horrifying idea. Stuck alone with an eternally empty existence of never being able to do or influence anything.

Why on earth would anyone want to believe in that?

Or maybe the people who ‘see ghosts’ are just more credulous, irrational and superstitious? The vast majority of claims on here are most likely down to sleep paralysis, unconsciously rearranged memories, nerves in an unfamiliar spot perceived as frightening, natural phenomena, imaginative children, conditioning by being told somewhere was haunted, or are hearsay.

I felt a huge sense of oppression and weakness and actually passed out on the floor when visiting the Old Operating Theatre in London years ago. But I don’t think I was experiencing the presence of the pauper patients who were operated on in public without anaesthetic, I think I was just responding physically to the claustrophobic room on a hot day in a crowd.

I am not given to any woo woo stuff and think most mediums are fake. I'm also pretty cynical but I've had four separate experiences with ghosts and three other with things moving about with no explanation. So against my better judgement I do believe in them.

The physical body is just the hardware, the soul is the software. The Bhagavad Gita says that at death, the soul discards the body as if it were worn-out clothing. After an interval in the astral realms the soul is usually reborn in another body of some sort - human if you're extremely lucky, otherwise animal, ghost, demon or demigod

@Microdisney - totally agree with this. I also occasionally get sleep paralysis and was once certain that the bedroom door opened and someone sat down next to me on the bed. There was nobody else in the house and I remember trying to force my eyes open but couldn't move. I presume some people would think that was a ghost rather than my mind playing tricks on me.

We live in a 300 year old house and have had a couple of windows and a shower screen suddenly shatter. Odd but more likely due to changing pressure/temperature than anything other-worldly.

I agree that some people have a heightened sense of a place/events and that can stimulate their imagination to the extent they convince themselves they see ghosts.

Absolutely and the new advances in the field of quantum mechanics and theoretical physics (about 'time' having folds etc) not only backs up but actually REQUIRES the existence of ghosts - folds in the space-time continuum

What’s always so fascinating about ghosts and woo isn’t the ‘evidence’ or eye-witness accounts, but the psychology (and sometimes psychiatry) of those who believe in it.

Very often on these threads a bit of nastiness breaks out from believers when sceptics debate with them. It’s like defending a sort of value system with great personal investment.

One could of course compare woo with religious belief. But I think it’s actually a means of adopting a belief without any of the liturgy, rules, attendance and so on that mainstream religion requires. There are inevitably attempts by believers to pray science in aid - quantum mechanics, relativity, the multiverse etc. So it’s more like a non-religion religion.

No. Not since I was a child. My DS's, 15 and 11, have never believed in them because I told them there was no such thing. They seemed happy enough to go with that🤣

So are you saying that all these people who have had experiences are all showing signs of schizophrenia?

the couple of experiences I have had were also witnessed by 2 or 3 other people so definitely wasn’t in my mind.

your questions about all of the ghost animals were reminiscent of a child constantly asking questions, it’s ok that you don’t believe or haven’t witnessed anything, but don’t mock those who do think they have

Let's face it, if there was sufficient evidence of ghosts, nobody would have to ask other people if they think they exist.

‘Ghosts’ in this context are just mathematical constructs that are used in fields like string theory to make calculations easier! They’re just maths tools.

Physics doesn’t have anything whatsoever to say about the ‘supernatural’ — if something can be repeatedly observed and has consistent properties, it becomes part of physics and physicists try to figure out how it works, ie it’s ‘natural’!

Of course I knew someone would make this sort of reply.

So predictable.

The physical body is just the hardware, the soul is the software. The Bhagavad Gita says that at death, the soul discards the body as if it were worn-out clothing. After an interval in the astral realms the soul is usually reborn in another body of some sort - human if you're extremely lucky, otherwise animal, ghost, demon or demigod

As far as I know, there’s no evidence for the existence of a ‘soul’ . The soul would appear to be a construct of the brain, not an actual software programme .

So are you saying that all these people who have had experiences are all showing signs of schizophrenia?

The couple of experiences I have had were also witnessed by 2 or 3 other people so definitely wasn’t in my mind.

The most spectacular manifestation I have seen was seen by the other 9 people in the room too.

I think there's too much we just don't know yet so not going to go with an outright "no."
YANBU

The ghost my DS and I saw was a little boy in a blue hoodie, in broad daylight, on the top floor of a bus.