People who believe in ghosts

[Sheandhercat]

MIL came back from a trip to Edinburgh and told us of a “really spooky” thing that happened that MUST have been a ghost because there’s no other explanation. She was walking in a field, no other people around, and she got a whiff of strong rose perfume. That’s it. She said that plus another occasion where her cat was looking at something on the wall when there wasn’t anything there have her convinced that ghosts are real.

I try not to engage in these conversations with my opinion really because people can believe in whatever they want to and it’s pointless getting into a debate about it, because if someone’s already made up their mind it’s hard to convince them otherwise. But she asked me if I’d ever had anything happen and I said no I don’t believe in ghosts. This lead to a conversation where she just kept saying “well go on then, give me one possible explanation for the perfume if it’s not a ghost!” And I was giving explanations that she just wouldn’t accept. How does someone think it’s impossible that someone was around wearing perfume and the wind was just wafting the smell over, but it’s perfectly plausible and OBVIOUS that perfume has transcended into the afterlife and a ghost is the only possible option?!

even if there was no possible explanation I could think of, I still wouldn’t jump to “it must be a ghost” I’d just accept that I don’t know the answer. I don’t understand why it HAS to be a ghost when it just makes no sense. I’m just curious, how many people actually believe in ghosts and why?

I don't think that's what most people have in mind when they use the word 'ghost'. An unexplained visual phenomenon could be anything from physical sight problems, unusual weather conditions, a neighbour's chemistry experiment, an hallucination... The key thing is that it is unexplained. Calling it a 'ghost' doesn't help and it doesn't explain it.

My dad has visited and helped in some very dire situations, I'm absolutely certain.

I wouldn't have jumped to either of your MIL situations being that though!

I agree. Often we don't knowingly lie, but human memory is notoriously fallible. Every time we recall something, our brain tweaks it a bit. Try discussing something from the past with someone else who was there - there will be things they remember (or think they remember) that you can't, details you disagree on, things you swear are true but they disagree. I re-read my old diaries sometimes and it can be astonishing!

For pps convinced that everyone's lying - I'm only concerned with what happened to me. That's the only situation I can comment on or judge. Lying doesn't come into it for most people.

I don't tell Tom, Dick and Harriet about what happened - just a select few who I know respect my judgment. Similarly I know whose account(s) I'd respect.

I use the word respect deliberately. To respect someone's experience isn't the same as believing it's exactly what they think it is. Of course people can misjudge distance, time etc or be unaware of natural phenomena which might cause apparitions or sounds. I think I'm pretty good on those things - I was brought up in a 17th century house where a rhythmic tapping could regularly be heard in the dead of night. I knew this was a bloody death watch beetle, unfortunately for the house itself! And I know that old buildings move and creak when expanding and contracting, and that there are draughts etc etc.

But when a massive roll of sellotape shoots 3 ft across a flat table top from absolute stillness (oh, and stops at the other end).when no-one is touching anything and two people see it...especially just after you've been expressing relief that all the other weird happenings seem to have stopped...that's scary for anyone. Where's Kieran O'Keefe when you need him?

Well, I agree -- but I think there's some value to asking what kind of phenomena people use 'ghost' to designate across different cultures and time periods.

There's an influential sociological reading of 'ghosts' and 'hauntings' as being about that which we repress, an attempt to come to terms with some unresolved traumatic knowledge eg the rise of interest in mediums, seance and attempts to contact the dead during and after the mass slaughter of WWI.

Or, in pop culture, why it's a horror film cliché that a haunted house is 'built on an old Indian burial ground' -- it's fairly obviously a form of both displaced cultural guilt at the dispossession and genocide of native Americans by white settlers, a sense of Native Americans as 'other' and mystically attuned to the supernatural etc.

The ghost stories I grew up with were very inflected by the Famine, which depopulated my bit of rural Ireland. Lots of stories of the consequences of unburied bodies, improper burials, hauntings at the site of mass burial pits etc.

You're making my point for me. The term "ghost" has evolved to cover a particular category ( well, more than one, actually) of perceived events.

Everyone here who has recounted their experience recognises what the term "ghost" means.

@Greengage1983 ' (I personally don't think ghosts are necessarily spirits... I think it might be some other explanation, like a weakness in the space-time fabric, or perhaps old buildings "recording" sights and sounds)'

I would tend to agree with that.

However, there are also reports of poltergeist activity and demonic possession, which I think is ramping it up a notch or two...

This report is still being discussed
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231026-the-enfield-poltergeist-why-the-unexplained-mystery-that-shocked-1970s-britain-continues-to-disturb

Perhaps precisely because scientists are in the prime position to study the finer workings of everything (our bodies, nature, the universe and its laws) and easily see that there's no way any these can ever exist through pure evolution/without intelligent design.

Can you remember which room it was?

It was one of the downstairs ones towards the end of the tour. 1940’s set up I think?

It’s no more peculiar believing in ghosts than believing in god surely? There’s no evidence for either.

Some people are stupid and credulous. Even scientists.

I think it's fascinating what people believe and don't believe, and who believes and who doesn't. It's not as predictable as pps might think.

I'm not religious and I know that educated Christians, for eg, understand that much of scripture is not to be taken at face value. But even so, accepting that Christ is the son of the deity and that he rose from the dead is too much for me.

Some philosopher or commentator said 'When people stop believing in God they start believing in all sorts of things!' And I have found this to be true. I know people who mock religious believers, then admit to believing in horoscopes or crystals etc. Well, you can't have it both ways, surely??

All my posts on this thread have had one theme and it's something I feel very strongly about. You cannot dismiss other people's experiences with any authority. You weren't there. All you can do is call them liars or idiots. And keep an open mind, which is MUCH more the scientific approach. Keeping an open mind isn't the same as swallowing everything whole - it just means you approach something without prejudice.

Don't dismiss everyone as 'believing in ghosts'. What does that mean, anyway? I don't think I believe in ghosts but I have had unexplained things happen to me, and observed inexplicable events. I'm not an idiot - I'm a super-sceptic. I have an open mind and I know what I saw - I don't make judgements of other's experiences - how can any sensible person do that?

I think the people coming on here with a sneering, dismissive tone are the daft, blunt-brained ones. There may be more things in heaven and earth than in your philosophy, Horatio!

You know that when people say 'ghost' they mean some kind of manifestation or suggestion or impression of a person (or animal) who's died - a 'soul' or 'spirit' if you like. Yes - that's what people on here mean when they say they've experienced a ghost. They think they have an explanation for something they experienced but can't explain and have no evidence for.

True. And believing in either of those is no more peculiar than believing in the tooth fairy or the Loch Ness monster or Father Christmas. Maybe it's quite comforting or exciting to believe in some of them sometimes, but without evidence, we can't say they're real.

They have a name for the phenomenon - "ghost". Just as, when they see a dog, they have a name for the phenomenon - "dog". A name. Not an explanation,

There are lots of people here who use the term "ghost" for the phenomenon while saying they really can't explain what happened.

@Thegirlwhowent "but without evidence, we can't say they're real."

They are real to the person that experiences them !

This is like a person complaining of a pain. They can't say to the medic "My pain is like that pain over there", because a pain doesn't exist objectively. The best they can do is describe it as best they can, whether it's stabbing, burning stinging etc.
None of this makes the pain any less real or distressing.

There's a difference between what a person experiences and believes to have experienced , and what is objectively true - and therefore verifiable to everyone else. I'm not denying that people have experiences and believe they are due to ghosts (or fairies, or some kind of force field or 'energy' or whatever). But that doesn't mean those things are real i.e. verifiable facts which can be proved. We can say that the person experienced something, but we can't prove what caused it. In the same way, somebody can truly experience pain without there being a physical cause. Nor can there always be a demonstrable cause. I can accept they've had the experience, but not that it was caused by whatever they attribute it to.

@Thegirlwhowent "There's a difference between what a person experiences and believes to have experienced , and what is objectively true - and therefore verifiable to everyone else."

I agree.

But those people I know who have had "odd" experiences don't really care what others' thought because it's real to them.

You might find this interesting -

https://ewtn.co.uk/article-marys-major-message-in-the-silent-apparition-at-knock/