Have you ever seen a ghost?

[BCBG]

Serious question - have you ever seen a ghost? If so, why are you certain about what you saw? Could it have been a natural phenomenon? I ask because something I saw is preying on my mind. I was driving through a village on the East Sussex border one afternoon last year, thinking of God knows what, radio on, when all of a sudden the car filled with the smell of fuel (which makes me feel ill ). I then realised a plane was flying very low left to right across the road, so low that I thought it would crash. I couldn't see any markings on the plane but I remember the shape very clearly. I don't remember whether or not there was any noise, but I was so shocked I brought the car to a standstill and looked back across the road. I realised that to my right the land fell away very sharply, so it would have been possible for a plane to fly over me and then clear the trees heading off over the valley (i think) except that I couldn't see any plane. I honestly stood there and listened for an impact. I could still smell this incredible odour of aviation fuel (like when you are crossing the tarmac sometimes on a small airport and the wind catches you, only much stronger). Never thought about ghosts before, but I still wonder what exactly I saw that day.

I think it's always a good idea to go for the most likely explanation. So nerve spasm? Or a clip round the ear from the invisible ghost of a 1950's bobby who suspected you of scrumping apples?

I probably need to RTFT but I've always wondered if we are born attuned to spirits and then as we get older we lose it. My niece at 5 years old was in a car being driven through the former battlefields in France, she turned and looked at the woods and said 'there are people in hats in there'. There were no people to be seen. I know kids have vivid imaginations but it does make me think.

:)

No, no scrumping of apples took place. Rogue nerve spasm does provide a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Someone who is better acquainted with the venue than I claims they have seen someone there after the site is locked. Having not experienced this I can't comment. Generally this is not someone given to flights of fancy, however, as yet, no explanation as to who/what they saw has come up.

I would have put the nerve spasm theory forward theoretically in the past, but since the Bell's Palsy I can say with utter confidence that it could happen like that. The someone sticking a needle in my ear feeling is extraordinary. Absolutely "real". And the "hand pushing against my cheek" is also very odd indeed.

No.

I find such stories curious. Here we are, with supposed evidence of life-after-death, and all these apparitions ever do is float around a bit, rarely speak, and are fleeting in nature. It's not very interesting: what would be nice is if, say, Einstein could expand his physics a little more, or if Beethoven would be kind enough to finish his symphony. Instead, we are treated to retellings of how one's Grandmother materialized for ten seconds before strolling through the wall.

In many cases, there is a 'god of the gaps' reasoning going on: I cannot explain it, therefore it must be something paranormal. That's very bizarre reasoning. Clearly, "I cannot explain it" means no more than that, and not that there is not some more prosaic explanation.

And, we can be taken in by our imagination to the extent that we think we are seeing things that are not really there (there is a whole literature on this). Granted, the subject reporting the story does not think that they were imagining; but that presupposes she must be infallible about her own state of mind, and we have no reason to think that (we are often not).

It's not "venomous" to say this. I find it curious as to why otherwise intelligent people suspend their critical thinking skills when it comes to stories of the paranormal. I don't doubt that the experience being reported seemed very real, but we are not to conclude from that that things were as they really seemed.

This is a perfectly valid point of view.

Telling people they are feeble minded and accusing them of emotional manipulation are personal attacks which should not be allowed.

I've heard of ghost plane sightings before....and there are two posts about sightings on this thread, so I had a quick Google and there seem to be loads of similar sightings.

news.bbc.co.uk/local/northeastwales/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8454000/8454006.stm

What I find fascinating is the degree of vehemence involved in the assertion of rationality.

What it reminds me of is when I studied the Reformation, and in particular the reaction of the Protestants to the old images of saints. They didn't believe in saints, they didn't think that images were any conduit to God. But they couldn't just throw them out, they had to ritually 'kill' them. Most strikingly, they scratched out the eyes of pictures and cut the heads off statues.

Now you wouldn't do that, unless you were still afraid that the images still had a bit of power.* So I'm intrigued by the way that rationalists have to stamp very hard on the ghost believers here, just in case the ghosts might still get them.

*Similarly, in the Middle Ages, people went to a lot of trouble to bury some of the stones - and it is a lot of trouble to bury a ton weight of stone without earth moving equipment. Again, you don't do that unless you still think it can harm you.

Stones at Avebury that should have said

"Telling people they are feeble minded and accusing them of emotional manipulation are personal attacks which should not be allowed."

Well, your post was a bit emotionally manipulative, to be honest.

Let it go.

"What I find fascinating is the degree of vehemence involved in the assertion of rationality"

Oh, come on! Have you seen the vehemence which which the pseudoscientists cling to their frail reeds?

But how would a ghost "get" one?

Sure, if I ever were to see something especially incongruous, I would very likely have the same fearful response as many others. That doesn't presuppose a degree of belief: it is a perfectly normal evolutionary response. Once I'd calmed down, I'd be looking for a more earthly cause, or possibly suspect I had a transient mental disturbance.

It's very hard not to be seen as "stamping hard" on those who believe in "woo" like things. For you are essentially telling people that they do not know how to think logically, and that naturally seems to be a personal slight. For instance, someone further up the thread said something like the burden of proof is on the non-believer to show that ghosts and the like do not exist. That's about as bad as you can get, logically speaking. I don't doubt that they are otherwise intelligent, but on this particular subject, that sort of reasoning process indicates a black spot which is immune to evidence.

People do hallucinate (it's very common in certain situations), confabulate, imagine, and mis-remember events. The only thing that can sensibly be taken at face-value is the subject's impression that she experienced something other-worldly, not that she really did.

For me, I come on here to point out flaws behind the logic of those who believe in the supernatural. In RL I don't because they might spit in my tea . The point is I reckon that most posters who pull apart the belief on here, would not do so with their friends and family. In fact I am very adept at going along with it in RL and keeping my WTAF feelings to myself, unless they were being fleeced by a psychic or similar.

Alan and Bertrand, I haven't seen rudeness from either of you. There are other posters here, however, whose posts are most definitely written to elicit the worst reaction possible and deliberately include insults to try to provoke a reaction.

Of course it's possible to have a discussion and challenge others' beliefs and opinions. Telling people that their beliefs are "feeble minded", that nobody with an IQ in double figures would believe as they do, or that their brains have fallen out, is not a discussion, it's designed to start a row.

I can't say I believe in ghosts in the sense of dead people "haunting" a particular place or perhaps appearing to give a ghostly warning and drip a bit of ectoplasm on the floor, because I can't conceive of a mechanism for that to happen. However, I'm open to the idea that people could see or hear things that might not be happening at the same point in space-time as the viewer - because we don't really understand how time works.

There are lots of beliefs I have strongly pulled apart. People who believe that a race of 10 foot moth/men hybrids living in a forest somewhere in the U.S. Do you suppose it's because I secretly think there are? I'd love it if we discovered such a breed. It would be fascinating. Is there evidence? No. But I have no reason to not want it to be real, but thinking it would be fascinating if it was real, and suspending normal patterns of logic so that I can believe it is real are two very different things. Keep beliefs for fun in your RL with friends and colleagues but know when you're using emotional pleading to stop someone examining your belief on a public message board where people don't have to pander to it so as not to make you feel silly. If you think examination is stamping then that's unfortunate because you're not in a place to learn. Coincidentally I've never felt stamped on, not for sometime. I've felt challenged and that's good because it shows I genuinely want to get to the most truest sense of reality rather than nursing a pretence that is false.

But if someone said I was feeble minded after reading something I'd said, I'd ask why and thrash that out in a debate. Like if someone said me not believing in a particular religion made me feeble minded I'd ask them to explain what they meant by feeble minded and how my position was the same because I'm more likely to change their mind by asking questions and giving answers than just shutting down and feeling hurt and the myself and the person who called me that would learn something by pushing through the initial emotional response of anger/shame and so on.

"Because we don't understand how time works"

What do you mean? I understand how time works.

You're suggesting you know more about time than me and the generally accepted science. You're saying that sometimes time alters so we see the past. Do you ever see volcanos and dinosaurs? That's as much a part of the past as Victorians. In fact statistically speaking any time slip is more likely to reveal a dinosaur than a homosapien seeing as dinosaurs existed for 160 million years whereas humans have only been walking on earth for a mere snip of that, at a feeble 200,000 years. That's a whopping 800 times more likely to see a dinosaur during a temporary rip in the time/space fabric than a human.

How come there aren't 800 times more ghostly sightings of dinosaurs than there are humans? There should be.

Of course it's possible to have a discussion and challenge others' beliefs and opinions. Telling people that their beliefs are "feeble minded", that nobody with an IQ in double figures would believe as they do, or that their brains have fallen out, is not a discussion, it's designed to start a row.

Ok, let's clarify this. I never accused anyone of having an IQ not into double figures for believing in ghosts. I made that comment in response to one particular comment about a rule book that was an incredibly stupid comment. If that person doesn't wish to be ridiculed, they shouldn't post ridiculous stuff.

Some of the believers on here have been very hostile to those questioning their beliefs. Others, like Littleham for example, have been very reasonable. She posted an account of her mother's experience, I posted some rational explanations, and she replied saying my replies were interesting.

Others just put their fingers in the ears and scream "I saw a ghost" over and over. And insult you for questioning their story, and accuse you of being nasty and unkind.

One poster even said "I saw a ghost and I'm uninterested in anyone saying I didn't." Why bother to post that? Just go away and let the adults debate.

OK, I'd like a logical explanation for what DH and I heard from those who don't believe in ghosts.

DH and I were both going to bed. We were sitting on the bed chatting. We heard DS1 walking along the corridor towards. It sounded exactly like DS1, there was even a rustling noise which sounded exactly like his night-time pull ups. The footsteps stopped outside our bedroom door. DH and I both called to DS to come in. DS didn't come in, so I went to the door. He wasn't there. I went to his bedroom and he was fast asleep in bed.

DH doesn't think it was a ghost, but has no explanation for what we heard.

It sounded so much like DS walking along the corridor, that I think it must have been some time lapse thing...or a harmless ghost.

If only I had heard it I could have put it down to imagination.

He was sleepwalking. He got to your door, and whilst you were asking him to come in, walked back to his room. You never heard him go back as you and OH were both calling him, and your voices covered his footsteps, and when you checked him he was fast asleep, because he'd never been awake.

Yep. Sleepwalking.

I have never seen a ghost but have lived in very old places for about 20 years,and had some odd events.
Most recently involving a cd turning itself on and off,just as the tv screen flew through all the channels.

Most recently involving a cd turning itself on and off,just as the tv screen flew through all the channels.

The fact that they happened simultaneously suggests some kind of power surge or other electrical glitch. Nothing ghostly.