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Ghosts?

DocHolliday

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I'm a dedicated believer in the scientific method, and I consider myself an extremely practical person. But I'm still baffled by the ferocity with which some express their disbelief. I can completely understand being skeptical, or not believing at all, but to rule out the very possibility? The coelacanth was thought to have gone extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, but then they were rediscovered in the 20th century. That's the joy of science, right there.

Here's the missing fellow now:
Coelacanth.jpg


Call me a hopeless romantic, even soft in the head, but I still like to think (to borrow a line) that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. The world would be a less interesting place if there weren't.
 

whodini

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Originally Posted by JLibourel
Well, I think there are a number of books available on "Haunted LA" or "Haunted Hollywood." Why not acquire a couple of those and start checking out some of these sites? Please let us know what you find. It may be interesting.
Yeah, a quick Google found all kinds of maps online of places around LA. The tours aren't necessarily cheap but the Queen Mary is infamous for being haunted: http://www.queenmary.com/index.php?page=night
 

The Deacon

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Originally Posted by whodini
Yeah, a quick Google found all kinds of maps online of places around LA.

The tours aren't necessarily cheap but the Queen Mary is infamous for being haunted: http://www.queenmary.com/index.php?page=night


A cousin was married on this ship in '93. I was alone walking to one of the ball rooms and I found the experience to be spooky as hell even before he told me it was supposed to be haunted. Maybe it was the lighting?
 

converge

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I may be a skeptic but I would certainly enjoy the idea of there being ghosts. That would mean that even if I lead a boring and mundane existence in this life, I would still have another chance during the next life. Ok, that was a little harsh.
smile.gif
I do not doubt that there are tons of personal experiences with unexplained phenomena (of course our minds never play tricks on us). My beef is that with all of these experiences, you figure there would be at least some conclusive evidence that could prove me wrong. And I'm not talking about those pictures with the random "orbs" floating around. Maybe our technology just cannot detect them yet (or ever)? Also, even if there are ghosts, I do not necessary believe that automatically proves there is also a God and an afterlife. Maybe they are just left-over energy that hasn't been "recycled" back into the universe? The concept of ghosts raises more questions than it answers. What species can actually become ghosts when they die? Humans are the obvious answer but what about other animals? Where do you draw the line?
 

blantonator

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Originally Posted by converge
I may be a skeptic but I would certainly enjoy the idea of there being ghosts. That would mean that even if I lead a boring and mundane existence in this life, I would still have another chance during the next life. Ok, that was a little harsh.
smile.gif


I do not doubt that there are tons of personal experiences with unexplained phenomena (of course our minds never play tricks on us). My beef is that with all of these experiences, you figure there would be at least some conclusive evidence that could prove me wrong? And I'm not talking about those pictures with the random "orbs" floating around. Maybe our technology just cannot detect them yet (or ever)?

Also, even if there are ghosts, I do not necessary believe that automatically proves there is also a God and an afterlife. Maybe they are just left-over energy that hasn't been "recycled" back into the universe?

The concept of ghosts raises more questions than it answers. What species can actually become ghosts when they die? Humans are the obvious answer but what about other animals? Where do you draw the line?


I tend to agree what you say here. I consider myself a big skeptic of everything. I'm a 'show me the proof' kind of guy. A recent study as of late has linked certain EMF fields acting on the a certain region of the brain to ghosts and god. The fields in some people create a feeling of being watched to actual hauntings. The scientists have measured these fields coming from alarm clocks to old house wiring.

I do think we can explain away 99% of ghost stories and hauntings, but there are some things, as of yet, we can't explain. Although I see no reason to believe that ghosts, even if they do exist, suggest an after life of any sort..

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." -Carl Sagan
 

The Deacon

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Originally Posted by converge
I may be a skeptic but I would certainly enjoy the idea of there being ghosts. That would mean that even if I lead a boring and mundane existence in this life, I would still have another chance during the next life. Ok, that was a little harsh.
smile.gif


I do not doubt that there are tons of personal experiences with unexplained phenomena (of course our minds never play tricks on us). My beef is that with all of these experiences, you figure there would be at least some conclusive evidence that could prove me wrong. And I'm not talking about those pictures with the random "orbs" floating around. Maybe our technology just cannot detect them yet (or ever)?

Also, even if there are ghosts, I do not necessary believe that automatically proves there is also a God and an afterlife. Maybe they are just left-over energy that hasn't been "recycled" back into the universe?

The concept of ghosts raises more questions than it answers. What species can actually become ghosts when they die? Humans are the obvious answer but what about other animals? Where do you draw the line?



I've always been interested in Ghost stories and in '97 I went back to my home town in Georgia for the summer. I took the opportunity to query all of my older relatives there about ghost stories they had heard and experiences they might have had.

My grandmother, now 90, had plenty. A few were about her first husband who died in his early 20's from pneumonia complications in the early 1940's. When my mom was a little girl she would scurry down the country road a short ways to point near a set of railroad tracks and meet him as he returned from work. She would be holding his hand swing it as she skipped back up to the house. After he died she continued this habit. It struck my Grandma as very strange as she'd watch her child holding air, skipping and smiling all the back to the house. She soon moved from
that area because she didn't want her neighbors to think her daughter was crazy.

My mom related to me that as a young girl she obsessed about seeing her dad and wanted nothing more than to be with him. One morning she awoke to feeling something on her face. It was a hand and it was solid. She looked through the fingers and as she did the hand was removed and her father was at the side of her bed looking down at her with a smile on his face. She asserts to this day that he was not shadowy or ethereal but solid after about 10 seconds he turned and walked through the open doorway. She jumped up to see where he went and he was gone. Immediately, she heard the trains whistles blowing and people coming out of their houses as they found out it was VJ Day.

After my Grandmom remarried and had three more children she experienced a visitor. Early one morning she laid in bed with her second husband when she had a funny feeling like someone else was in the room. When she looked around the room she saw someone sitting in the chair that is placed near the foot of the bed. She reared up on her elbow and wondered if she was imagining things. Her second husband awoke from her movement and asked what was wrong and he noticed where she was staring. He froze. She asked him if he saw what she saw and he said yes. There in the chair at the foot of the bed was the first husband looking and smiling at the both of them and again he was solid, not shadowy or spooky. Plain as day in their room. She told me that he had a look like he approved. After less than ten seconds he started to fade and then he was gone.

When still a little girl, my mom was at her Grandfather's house in the country. It was nightfall and she had to go to the outhouse. She was afraid to go because there was a big white bushy/furry dog near the outhouse. Her gradfather told her to go ahead and that there was no dog. My grandmom noticed how scared my mom was and went out there with mom to see what was up. She too saw the dog sitting silently. She walked with mom to the outhouse and the dog didn't move, just looked at them. when mom asked, my grandmom told her she saw it too but that it wouldn't hurt her. My Grandmom admitted to me that she was almost as scared as my mom. Sometimes in those woods behind my Great Grandpa's house his blood hounds would go tearing off deep and then he'd hear them yelping and running back out shivering. He would then say that the "hants are chasing the hounds"also

My grandmom told me that my mother was born with "the veil". Loosely translated that means she had a thin sheath over face when born. The claim is that such people are often clairvoyant or have other strange abilities. Great grandma was an empath (think Green mile w/out the theatrical bullshit) who would take the pain away from others absorb it , rest in bed til it passed. Grandmom says she has it to a lesser degree and that mom does too although I've never discussed that with mom. Grandmom told me three years ago at 43 that I was born with the veil. All I have is intuition. It used to freak my ex girlfriend when I'd call her at UMASS and ask what's wrong and what just happened.

Grandmom told me that those with the viel can see ghosts. In the south it seemed every other neighborhood had a haunted house. Sometimes plates, cupboards, dishes would rattle and break at a house on the corner from my mom, Ive seen the house. The occupants would occasionally come down to my Grandmoms and ask if the could bring my mom up there so they could stand behind her right shoulder and see the spirit that causes the trouble. My grandmom declined and told me that she never considered agreeing because such a trauma would probably have driven my mother nuts at an early age. Everyone in the area knew that the source of the trouble was the robber who was shot and killed as he was leaving that shot gun shack house, and they knew his name, no mystery.

NExt door to Grandmom sits a church. In the 1950's before the church was built another man was shot going over the bushes after robbing a house. He died. At roughly the same hour when the moon was in a particular position, people who see things would see the shadowy figure of a grown man at an angle standing at the bushes. One night both my mom and my Uncle both saw him simultaneously while they were talking and sitting on a swing set with it's back to the bushes. My Uncle confirmed this to me and my mom said you could never clearly see his face and if you stepped to the shadow it would fade away. It is still seen, even though it's now church property. My folks had a chance to buy it before the church did, I'm glad they didn't. I get goose bumps now and it keeps me from being in that area alone after nightfall or before dawn when I visit that house.


In 1968 my Grandmother's second husband died and was lying up at the funeral home. Back then, down home, people would be laid out for a few days prior to the funeral kind of like "lying in state". My Uncle was trying to nap at Grandmoms house but he wasn't very successful. He kept dreaming that his father in law was bugging him about something that had been stolen from him. When my uncle told my Grandmom that he dreamed that Grandpa Henry told him that his watch had been stolen by a young boy she confirmed that the funeral Director/mortician had told her that the watch was gone. I can tell numerous spirit stories regarding my Uncle. Often what he see's, hears and feels saves him and others from harm.

My Uncle has been at my Grandmom's house and dreamed of it being two separate houses and of two men and a woman having arguments and one of the men beating the other one and knocking him through a door in the specific part of the bedroom that is now a window. My grandmom confirmed that when she bought the house in the 1940's it was a two family house and that window was a doorway. SHe described to me the three people involved in that disagreement.

This is similar to a book about a taoist mystic (Entering the Dragon Gate) that I read where he was trained to read the energy that still inhabits a place so that he can "view" activity that took place as far back as hundreds of years. He allegedly trains others as well so that they can view among other things battles that took place on certain fields in China. Mass hypnosis maybe?

The theory is that the energy doesn't die, it changes into something else and some of us are blessed/cursed/trained to be able to read or sense it.

While commanding troops in Afghanistan my wife and other soldiers constantly saw the ghost of a little boy looking out of a window hole of a bombed out building. Everyone, Special Forces personnel and locals knew of the boy and the haunting and accepted it as an everyday occurence because they saw it also. The military used the house for training and soldiers felt the cold spot near the window on days that exceeded 100 farhrenheit.

I have more stories. I can totally understand non believers in ghosts and things supernatural. If you haven't experienced it, it might be very hard to give credence to it.
 

The Deacon

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Originally Posted by blantonator
I tend to agree what you say here. I consider myself a big skeptic of everything. I'm a 'show me the proof' kind of guy. A recent study as of late has linked certain EMF fields acting on the a certain region of the brain to ghosts and god. The fields in some people create a feeling of being watched to actual hauntings. The scientists have measured these fields coming from alarm clocks to old house wiring.

I do think we can explain away 99% of ghost stories and hauntings, but there are some things, as of yet, we can't explain. Although I see no reason to believe that ghosts, even if they do exist, suggest an after life of any sort..

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." -Carl Sagan


Your post reminded me of, and I may be mistaken,the native american concept of the dream world and waking world being two sides of the same coin with both being real. I cannot define the delienation of the various spiritual, paranormal, metaphysical, physical phenomena. Where does one start and another end? Dr. J jumping from the foul line, David Thompson on film leaping from the side of the top of the key and windmill cuffing a slam at the height of 6' 3 1/2 is freaky as hell and who's to say spirit wasn't involved? But I digress. I often used to tell my coworkers that I have a cottage on the tangent and sometimes I visit it!

Relative to the quoted poster's afterlife thoughts. When in her early eighties. my grandmom had a dream that she was in a room in a brand new small house sitting at a newly built wooden table with sawdust all around and joining her was her first husband and his mother who had died in 1976 and had been an escaped slave, so you can surmise what her age must have been when she passed and that is another story.

My grandmom said that in the dream she felt very relaxed and comfortable and that the burning love she had had in her youth for him had changed into what felt like a good friendship. He asked her if she had had a good life and such and the conversation was warm and positive. When she awoke she had sworn that it was real. This is not so much a ghost story in the conventional sense but to her it was as if she had really communed with both of these loved ones one of who'm had passed on 50 years before. There is some significance regarding the saw dust. She had always told me that in the South, blacks who knew the old ways believed that you kept hant's/spooks/ghosts out of your house by hanging a horse shoe above the inside of your front door or having a peice of newly cut wood in a room or at the front door. Perhaps that new item is unrelated to what the ghost knew in life and couldn't attach itself, who knows. But, the saw dust and the new wood table in the dream was indicative of a newness that is anti ghost. When my granddad appeared in the earlier post it wasn't as though he was not at rest or distressed, it was more as though he was travelling between worlds and paid a pleasant visit.

A year of so before he died he foretold his death to my then 20 year old grandmom and actually embraced the idea, telling her that he was going to be with his heavenly father. He told her this because at a fair they were at a fortune teller told her, among other truthful things, that despite granddad's love for her he would not be with her for long. Grandmom took that to mean he would be leaving her for another woman and said to him that two could play that game. MY grandad laughed when she told him what the fortune teller said. He then said he'd never leave her for another woman but instead would soon go to live with his father. She thought he meant his earhtly dad and he explained. She cried but in the end I guess he never really was far away.
inlove.gif
 

Dragon

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Originally Posted by converge
Also, even if there are ghosts, I do not necessary believe that automatically proves there is also a God and an afterlife. Maybe they are just left-over energy that hasn't been "recycled" back into the universe?

Maybe that`s what science will prove in the end...who knows? Maybe we are energy and God is just an energy too. Maybe after death, our conversion into a certain type of energy is the afterlife.
 

blantonator

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Originally Posted by The Deacon
I can totally understand non believers in ghosts and things supernatural. If you haven't experienced it, it might be very hard to give credence to it.

There are many things in life that I've not experienced, yet I believe them. The reason I'm a non-believer in psychics, faith healing, intuition, etc... is that there is no real evidence for any of it. In fact the Amazing Randi has been offering a prize of $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. And no one has claimed this prize.

If you and your family are truly 'gifted', I'd suggest you go collect your money! otherwise I call shenanigans.
 

JLibourel

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Here's another strange story told me by the man who was my best friend for many years. Sadly, he departed for the shadowlands not quite three years ago, just past his 52nd birthday. As best I recall it went like this:

One cold, damp night, he and a good friend of his were taking leave of each other as they stood outside his friend's house. Suddenly, they heard the anguished screams of a woman nearby. They looked about and saw a redheaded woman sitting in a nearby car. They rushed across the street to see if she needed assistance, but in the few seconds it had taken to get across the street, she had totally vanished. The car was empty. To make the matter even more strange, it had been a rainy night, and while the rest of the car was wet, the hood of the car was dry and warm to the touch!

About the only rationalistic explanation my friend could come up with was that just maybe it was some Cal Tech students playing tricks with holograms or something similar. Otherwise it remained a mystery to him.
 

The Deacon

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Originally Posted by blantonator
There are many things in life that I've not experienced, yet I believe them. The reason I'm a non-believer in psychics, faith healing, intuition, etc... is that there is no real evidence for any of it. In fact the Amazing Randi has been offering a prize of $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. And no one has claimed this prize.

If you and your family are truly 'gifted', I'd suggest you go collect your money! otherwise I call shenanigans.


I believe in Italy and France and the moon landing although I've never seen them. I've seen evidence of them, Santoni and Paraboot and moon rocks. I don't regret that the information received by my uncle relative to the watch in 1968 was not under the guise of a double blind experiment. Much of what took place was real to someone and at times verified by someone else after the fact who had the information/evidence. There were no scientists, Dr.s or lawyers(how honest these professions are!) around at the time nor would it have been practical at the time. One man's "shenanigan's" is another's experience...

I read Randi's challenge a few minutes ago and expected to see a similar spurious challenge as what the Gracie Jiu Jitsu family once offered. I read the protocals and think that it actually appears to be a workable test. Of the things I mentioned I could most readily see the possibility of testing empathic ability and the Afghanistan Ghost. Grandma's 90, I'm aware that she didn't have her mom's level of ability, would she be ok about the test? If not, there you go! It's all BS.

A lack of evidence that is acceptable to you or Randi really does not disprove a things existence.
 

The Deacon

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Originally Posted by blantonator
I tend to agree what you say here. I consider myself a big skeptic of everything. I'm a 'show me the proof' kind of guy. A recent study as of late has linked certain EMF fields acting on the a certain region of the brain to ghosts and god. The fields in some people create a feeling of being watched to actual hauntings. The scientists have measured these fields coming from alarm clocks to old house wiring.

I do think we can explain away 99% of ghost stories and hauntings, but there are some things, as of yet, we can't explain. Although I see no reason to believe that ghosts, even if they do exist, suggest an after life of any sort..

"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." -Carl Sagan


It is said that near the end Carl spoke of God as would a believer. Don't use him as your linchpin.
 

teddieriley

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Originally Posted by The Deacon

A lack of evidence that is acceptable to you or Randi really does not disprove a things existence.


+ 110%. And I don't want to hear, "it doesn't prove it either."
 

converge

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Originally Posted by The Deacon
It is said that near the end Carl spoke of God as would a believer. Don't use him as your linchpin.

Do you have a source for this? Or is it something you heard from someone else who heard from someone else? If so, it must be true.
 

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