Ghosts?

Originally Posted by Dragon

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You believe/know all that, but still remain an atheist?

It depends on the conversation. I could be backed into agnosticism with the right arguments, but not in any practical sense. That position would reach no further than that specific conversation. As Kant remarked, "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play."

Originally Posted by redcaimen

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Blake is saying this reductionist focus on the material "blinds the mocking eye". The rationalists ( I may not be using this term properly) can only see one facet of the gem.

I think physicalists might be what you are looking for; rationalists would be Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, who could be accused of having seen possibly nonexistent facets.

Originally Posted by Dedalus

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I think the more interesting question is not whether ghosts exist, but whether we are ghosts.

ha ha...i love it...

here are some of my thoughts on ghosts...

i believe that those who are earnestly seeking out empirical evidence in order to determine the validity of the belief in ghosts (or of an afterlife) do a very important service to furthering the collective knowledge on the matter...however, it would be a mistake to assume that every real thing can be physically quantified at the present time (or ever)...

i've always been fascinated by the subject of spirituality...i've done a bunch of research, including lots of experimentation with ouija boards...and about the ouija, i can tell you that something is definitely going on there...because that thing was moving/communicating, and it wasn't me moving it (not consciously, anyway)...yeah...definitely some weird was going down...now, whether that weird **** was that i was deeply tapping my unconscious or communing with spirits, i don't know...but any way you slice it, it's a very intriguing phenomenon

When I was living in Finland on an exchange trip I was in the darkroom processing film when one of our guys, Brownie, asked the other three of us to switch the redlights off while he did some developing. We dutifully waited - and waited - and waited. Unbeknown to us Brownie had left the room as a joke - leaving us waiting interminably.

When Brownie did turn up again switching the lights on and laughing we all groaned - except for Karen. She was adamant there were four people in the room the whole time. Brownie was adamant he left the minute the light had gone off - very strange.

Later on Karen confided in me she had I-see-dead-people syndrome, since she was a kid. She'd seen ghosts and disembodied heads above her bed at home. She made me promise not to tell the others.

Thus we were wondering who the extra person was so I devised a plan. I would sit with Karen in the darkroom, switch the lights off and WAIT. Simple enough an idea, and pretty silly, but I had no idea to expect what did come about.

We sat in the room and Karen was talking to me the whole time, and we werent taking it seriously. It was pitch black, the only noise being the drip of some taps and a few winking lights on the machines. Then her voice started wavering in the dark, her hand went for mine and I started getting a bit worried. Then mid sentence she started SCREAMING, which totally blew me, screaming as much as a person can scream. I was so terrified I shut my eyes, I didnt want to see anything.

So there we were, one girl screaming and me standing there wetting myself. It just went on and on. In the end I took her hand and walked her across the room. I could either have gone for the door, but it was a revolving one which took some time to revolve (an extra safety measure for the darkroom). I decided on the light switch, holding her hand and her screaming the whole time. She was frantic. I pressed the switch, and get this, it wasnt working. I think that was the one scariest moment, realising something really was wrong.

I tried again and again and again flipping it but nothing worked. In the end I walked her across the room again (still screaming), completely black and we went into the revolving door and SO SLOW it was, but we were out again. I cant describe how scary it is being in a utterly pitch room with someone screaming in your ear for a few minutes.


Later, after she'd calmed down I asked her what the hell happened. She said she saw two figures, one large and one small. It was only when the small one came up to her and stood at her feet did she start getting really scared. Then it opened its arms as if to hug her and thats when the sreaming started (she shut her eyes then).


The college was built on reclaimed land from the lake in the 1990s and was thus very newly built. Later we found out the Institute was founded by an old lady and her grandson, a boy at the time. I dont know to this day what happened, all I can say was there was a lot of darkness, screaming and light switches that didnt work, but worked fine after.

Originally Posted by teddieriley

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I got the chills remembering and typing about these stories.

I'm sitting here in my bedroom, and the entire time I'm reading your post and Zupermaus' posts, I'm constantly checking behind me, looking around, making sure my closet is open, etc LOL.

My parents believe there are ghosts and, though we are as fundamentally different as can be, the fact they're the most unimaginative people I've ever met was enough to convince me at an early age that there are most certainly ghosts. They used to live in this old carriage stop. There's a cemetery up on the hill overlooking the place and the rumor is a Union soldier was hanged in the attic. While my parents were there they constantly heard footsteps. Every night, someone walking up and down the halls. It would get to their bedroom and stop. They also heard a rhythmic, "let me in" tapping on their window.

And so, now...I live there, and I'm not easily scared or afraid of anything, really, besides death, but I can confirm there is something here. I get these random, large hand-prints on windows I never touch and have just cleaned. I once had an odd red hand-print on my office wall which I actually called my brother over to witness, because telling someone there is a red hand-print on your wall sounds way too ridiculous. My parents slept on the first floor whereas I sleep on the second and as opposed to a tapping, at night I'll get a large thud against the window (which could be explained by the many bats we have here, but it happens too often for me). I hear footsteps, much as they did, in the hallway downstairs every night. Food and books fall from completely flat shelves where my 17-year-old cat would never be able to jump.

I don't really tell anyone, and it's surprising to see the reactions when people come stay at my house. It's a nice reminder that I'm not actually crazy when 90% of the people staying over approach me at some point in the night or in the morning to ask if I was walking in the attic or downstairs, or why is the corner in their room creaking like someone is rocking back and forth. Good times.

At my alma mater there is a room in the Chemistry building where the lights are always left on at night, otherwise something moves equipment and stuff around, making a mess that the staff have to fix in the morning. At the same school, a classmate once swore he saw ghostly shapes moving across an open field at night. I have no reason to doubt him.

I've met a few people that claim they can see and interact with otherworldly beings. Aside from that, they try to live normal non-supernatural lives.

My brother's friend lives in a house that has a ghost that appears every day reading the newspaper in its favorite chair. I've not been there everyone that's visited has acknowledged they've seen it.

One of our company's previous offices had lots of weird things going on, all witnessed by people I consider sane and rational. An executive chair in a closed room (but glass walls) would start to rock on its own. CDs would suddenly fly out of a rack as if someone yanked them out.

Our network guy was crawling under desks to install network cable early one morning before anyone else arrived. He heard something, so he glanced to his side and glimpsed what looked like a child running past the entrance of the cubicle he was working in.

My fiancee (whose family tree includes at least one psychic) can sometimes sense things too. We were having dinner with her cousin, who mentioned not being able to sleep well lately because of nightmares. My fiancee suddenly stopped her and asked if the nightmares involved an old man with a beard that seemed to be watching her all the time. At this, her cousin went pale and nodded. My fiancee said she had felt the presence of the old man around her cousins house previously.

And yet I've never seen a ghost or spirit myself.

I have another story involving my fiancee and strange dreams. Don't know if it counts as a ghost or not. She used to work at a call center that didn't provide sleeping quarters (most do), so she decided to go and take a nap on a bench just outside the door to the office. She had a strange dream where she's lying on the same bench but there's a man standing over her telling her to wake up. Not exactly scary, but this becomes a recurring dream but only when she sleeps on that bench. After a week of this she is in the middle of the same dream -- same guy telling her to wake up, etc -- when her cell phone starts to ring. When she wakes up to check her phone she's surprised to see her own cell phone number calling her. This is weird, so she calls me at home (and wakes me up) to ask if I called her. Of course I hadn't. (I later get to see her phone's incoming call logs, and it did seem like her own phone called itself which AFAIK isn't possible.) After this episode she describes the man to one of the building staff, asking if it's one of the staff on the graveyard shift. The lady janitor she asked was surprised, because the man my fiancee described sounded like the janitor that had worked with them some years before, but passed away in his sleep from bangungot.

Originally Posted by zupermaus

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When I was living in Finland on an exchange trip I was in the darkroom processing film when one of our guys, Brownie, asked the other three of us to switch the redlights off while he did some developing. We dutifully waited - and waited - and waited. Unbeknown to us Brownie had left the room as a joke - leaving us waiting interminably.

When Brownie did turn up again switching the lights on and laughing we all groaned - except for Karen. She was adamant there were four people in the room the whole time. Brownie was adamant he left the minute the light had gone off - very strange.

Later on Karen confided in me she had I-see-dead-people syndrome, since she was a kid. She'd seen ghosts and disembodied heads above her bed at home. She made me promise not to tell the others.

Thus we were wondering who the extra person was so I devised a plan. I would sit with Karen in the darkroom, switch the lights off and WAIT. Simple enough an idea, and pretty silly, but I had no idea to expect what did come about.

We sat in the room and Karen was talking to me the whole time, and we werent taking it seriously. It was pitch black, the only noise being the drip of some taps and a few winking lights on the machines. Then her voice started wavering in the dark, her hand went for mine and I started getting a bit worried. Then mid sentence she started SCREAMING, which totally blew me, screaming as much as a person can scream. I was so terrified I shut my eyes, I didnt want to see anything.

So there we were, one girl screaming and me standing there wetting myself. It just went on and on. In the end I took her hand and walked her across the room. I could either have gone for the door, but it was a revolving one which took some time to revolve (an extra safety measure for the darkroom). I decided on the light switch, holding her hand and her screaming the whole time. She was frantic. I pressed the switch, and get this, it wasnt working. I think that was the one scariest moment, realising something really was wrong.

I tried again and again and again flipping it but nothing worked. In the end I walked her across the room again (still screaming), completely black and we went into the revolving door and SO SLOW it was, but we were out again. I cant describe how scary it is being in a utterly pitch room with someone screaming in your ear for a few minutes.


Later, after she'd calmed down I asked her what the hell happened. She said she saw two figures, one large and one small. It was only when the small one came up to her and stood at her feet did she start getting really scared. Then it opened its arms as if to hug her and thats when the sreaming started (she shut her eyes then).


The college was built on reclaimed land from the lake in the 1990s and was thus very newly built. Later we found out the Institute was founded by an old lady and her grandson, a boy at the time. I dont know to this day what happened, all I can say was there was a lot of darkness, screaming and light switches that didnt work, but worked fine after.

That is one scary but fun story. I would have loved to have been there.

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

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I'm sitting here in my bedroom, and the entire time I'm reading your post and Zupermaus' posts, I'm constantly checking behind me, looking around, making sure my closet is open, etc LOL.

Haha I'm totally like you. And I'm a grown man.

I'm an atheist, but I believe ghosts are out there. I've been ghost hunting with friends around my town in places that were supposedly haunted. My friends have claimed to seen ghosts, but I never saw anything myself.

Originally Posted by JammieDodger

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Actually, science is the highest authority. This is because scientific thought works on the basis that there has to be evidence for something existing before it is said to exist.
This is nerdly narcissism at its finest. These egghead science types crack me up. There isn't even a cure for the common cold yet they think that in the overly simplistic mathematical models that they've created for an infinitely complex universe that they know all the answers. Just because you haven't seen something out of a movie doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Scientists try to push theories of sub-subatomic particles and gateways to other universes but attribute any sort of afterlife to insanity or vivid dreams? Heaven forbid their be any sort of an afterlife like religious books say.

Originally Posted by shoe

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In japan, there are a lot of occurences of or ghost phenomena. A group of persons camping one time took a group photo in the woods. When they returned home and developed the film, there was an uknown person sitting amongs them smiling and posing for the photo. One other story about group photos was one occurence of a photo showing one of the members having two heads or double head one on top of the other. Bizarre, eerie stuff that makes your hair stand on end and tingles down your spine.
I've spoken to many hippies who visited Japan in the 60s and 70s and never used to believe in ghosts. After their visit, they were believers after visiting places locals referred to as haunted. Plausibly, they could have been tripping on acid, but I'd like to go for myself. There have been other ghost threads here before and I don't want to re-type anything but ghosts certainly exist and there is evidence to suggest this as well even though I think we are just breaking the surface. There was a show on AE or something about the Atlantic paranormal society. I thought this was interesting and they try very hard to dismiss what they've seen, but some of the videos are pretty undeniable.

Originally Posted by tiecollector

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There was a show on AE or something about the Atlantic paranormal society. I thought this was interesting and they try very hard to dismiss what they've seen, but some of the videos are pretty undeniable.

yeah...i enjoy watching that show, too...it's called ghost hunters on the sci-fi channel...even though i'm inclined to believe that the producers of the show are sincere and the footage is genuine, they could just as easily not be...that's why i like to do some more hands-on research

the john edward show is pretty funky, too

Originally Posted by nyc_gaucho

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yeah...i enjoy watching that show, too...it's called ghost hunters on the sci-fi channel...even though i'm inclined to believe that the producers of the show are sincere and the footage is genuine, they could just as easily not be...that's why i like to do some more hands-on research

the john edward show is pretty funky, too


I don't buy any of the TV psychics. I believe psychics do exist but I don't believe any of them are on TV. There is also that one from England that has her own show now. I won't believe someone is a psychic medium until it happens to me.

There is also Court TV series called Cold Case Files that often uses psychics to help them solve murders. That seems pretty legit.

Originally Posted by tiecollector

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This is nerdly narcissism at its finest. These egghead science types crack me up. There isn't even a cure for the common cold yet they think that in the overly simplistic mathematical models that they've created for an infinitely complex universe that they know all the answers. Just because you haven't seen something out of a movie doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Scientists try to push theories of sub-subatomic particles and gateways to other universes but attribute any sort of afterlife to insanity or vivid dreams? Heaven forbid their be any sort of an afterlife like religious books say.

I'm tired of hearing this. Science isn't a cohesive whole. Science doesn't claim to know everything, the point of scientific processes is that unless there is evidence for something to exist then there is no reason to believe it is there - that's why Science is the highest authority, because it is perfectly logical. And "just" because "science" hasn't found a cure for the common cold has no bearing on this at all - firstly curing the common cold is an incredibly complex problem that is practically impossible because of the rate at which cold viruses mutate. Secondly and more importantly Science isn't a religion, "scientists can't do x therefore they what they say about y holds no ground" is just illogical.