Do ghosts exist?
 

Or is it all superstitious nonsense?

i saw a ghost when i was about 8 or 9

You've never heard of Casper the friendly ghost?

Yes, they do. Insofar as many people believe them to. Is it a comfort for the worrying notion of mortality? I only hope a protracted debate on the SY message board will solve this age-old mystery once and for all.


nb - I'm being facetious, I heartily encourage more posts from Mr Priest.

Dunno.... some ppl saw them yet these phenomena can't be explained so far. God I miss watching Unsolved Mysteries now....!!!

Hah, Unsolved Mysterious, what a bunch of shit. Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed watching it.

i should add that even though i saw a ghost i'm not totally sure i believe in them

Why not a poll about conspiracy theories next?I'm sorely missing one now.

i tend to negate this question, avoiding an all-too expanded interpretation of the word "exist".

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Who the fuck knows. I'll believe it when I see one but I'm not ruling it out just yet.

You think your eyes tricked you? :confused:

i live in the most haunted city in europe, possibly even the world and i have never seen one. unless this whole city is just one ghostly apperition in which case i feel really stupid.

People genuinely see something, but it's not 'ghosts'

Here we go again...pay attention.

When do most people claim to see or hear ghosts?

Answer: When they are falling asleep or just wake up.
also, most ghost sightings occur after someone has lost a close friend or relative & their mind is still trying to cope with & process the information.

What they experience is a visual &/or auditory hallucination.

That makes the ghost real in that sense, because it is a manifestation of unconscious contents that we do not experience in our normal conscious waking state.
But in the sense of hollywood ghosts, no, that shit is not real. anyone who insists that ghosts are real is either
A)
in need of attention to the point where they are willing to be psychotic about it & embellish the truth...(more than a quarter of the respondents (so far) are truly fucked in the head.)
or
B) someone who runs a tourist trap based on the place supposedly being haunted or some paranormal writer that trafficks in preying upon the ridiculous superstitions of the gullible.

Ghostbusters actually exist now since the fuckin' movie. They have no training & there is no science behind it. The meters these charlatans use to measure "paranormal activity" are only devices that measure electromagnetic activity. So anytime the meter gets near an electrical piece of equipment or an outlet it starts reading. By the way, one should try to avoid these electromagnetic fields. They cause cancer. Don't sleep with your body too close to an outlet. We spend a third of our life sleeping. Above all, don't use a heating pad for extended periods of time & never sleep with an electric blanket.

no, but just i would like to see it again just to make sure, i mean it happened almost 20 years ago, i know what i saw but it was so brief, and seeing a ghost is a weird thing.

Mmmmmmeeerrrrrrrrghhh... yes. Some good points. Are we thereby dismissing the argument that in the hynogogic stage our perception is altered somewhat... possibly...inferring... that we see parts of 'reality' that are not present to the fully conscious.

I wanted to avoid the pseudo-acidhead thing... third eye/ pineal gland stuff... and there's 'science' in that statement... Feyerabend makes me happy... that empiricism may not answer all our questions.

I am convinced that, regardless of the validity or inferences of their claims, people who see ghosts/ believe in ghosts imbue 'ghosts' with a sense of reality... personally, I've had experiences, but I wouldn't like to suggest anything as a result of that... but there's nothing wrong with believing something to be true if it's in some way a comfort... in short, I think it's slightly disengenuous to be quite so dismissive.

when your dead your dead...

Take "disingenuous" & shove it right up your wannabe oneupsmanship ASS. You might just want to learn how to spell the word you try to cut me down with as well.

People genuinely see (or more often hear) something, but it's not 'ghosts'

is what I voted.

my experience doesn't really fit in with your criteria is was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, i wasn't recently bereaved (the figure i saw bore no resemblence to anyone i knew) and i wasn't looking for attention. i saw a grey figure walk through a locked door. it was over in about 2 seconds.

gulasch noir: I understand that point, it's kind of covered within the options. I consider the subject valid because I absolutely think that there are cases where there is no attempt at 'hoax' or deception. If that's the case then the mere fact that something is causing people to see, feel or hear something is fascinating in itself. That applies whether or not the subconsciously-perpetrated self-hoax is mental, physical or whatever. Basically, something is happening, and it's interesting.

When I was 10, I saw (or at least thought I saw) a ghost. I can explain, but there's a possibility that that was my own subconscious creation. But I can see how in many cases (maybe all, who knows...) they might be manifestations in the mind.

I grew up in a house that many would claim 'had a ghost' (until I was 12). No apparition was ever seen, but sometimes there would be light footsteps. On occasion, they would approach a room, then the door to that room would open. Some time later, it would close again. This phenomenon was experienced over several years by a number of people. All I can say is that this happened when people were in normal waking state, the sound heard was definitely more like footsteps than anything else, and that the doors (not just one) did open and close - that is undeniable fact. The fact that the same thing was heard and seen by different people over a period of years is fascinating, no matter what the cause.

Understandable :)

I've actually done quite a bit of research on this question and given a speech on it (granted, a small, graded, classroom speech) this year.

I've come to the conclusion, given the obscene amount of alleged sightings and whatnot, that yes, they (or something like them) do exist. However, I believe that 100% of photographic evidence, and in fact all forms of tangible evidence, is complete bullshit. And that goes for the Sylvia Browne nonsense, as well. Obviously Montel doesn't bother to google her before he books her on 75% of his shows.

People see things, and it's far too common to count off as nothing. What it is, I don't know. I've never had a decent conversation about it without someone claiming to have seen one - usually it's more than one person.

I've never seen one, and I genuinely feel I never will, but I do believe that there is something externally responsible for what people see. Sometimes.

I'm on a board with people who obviously suffer from severe cases of arrested development, i.e., they are complete fucking nerds.

What so "interesting" about perpetuating lies?

Nothing.

Kids are fascinated with telling lies & finding their boundaries by doing so.
Adults are fascinated by telling lies because, well, they are either fucking carelessly irresponsible, arrogant & willfully ignorant or they are serving a fucking evil agenda with their lies.

I agree somewhat, IT'S NOT NOTHING, acousticrock87
IT DOES COME FROM SOMEWHERE & NOT THIN AIR

SEE:

Loch Ness Monster...yeah there probably was some remnant of the Pleistocene Era (i think that's the right era) in that Scottish lake many thousands of years ago & it grew by oral & written tradition to be this monster that is still there so that Scotland can get tourist dollars.

Bigfoot: The gigantipithecus is on fossil record. As homo sapiens learned to use tools & could kill them, they retreated to remote wildernesses & high mountains. There probably were sasquatch & yeti...a long time ago. They certainly don't exist today as we've basically mapped the whole earth & there are no recent remains.

Chupacabra: some fucking wild weasel or huge rodent that got blew up in someone's imagination for effect.

the biggie:
U F FUCKING Os
Most sightings are near military bases. They are military test aircraft plain & simple. The experimental aircraft that crashed at Roswell, NM contained the bodies of dead chimpanzees as pilots. It was a military experiment. It was duringthe cold war & naturally the government wanted to conceal information about the crash. Local yokels saw the bodies first & thought they must be aliens because they watch & read too much science fiction. When the government denied the crash, it only made people that much more suspicious. Then the CIA or whatever got invloved & realized that they could divide & conquer people with their belief systems & deliberately from time to time stage events that are taken to be UFO sightings.
If there are "visitors" of any type then they certainly don't travel by spaceship. As mass approaches the speed of light it expands to infinity.

I tried so very hard to keep it brief & simple for those of you who like to write "long wind" ---here's a real short message: FUCK OFF.
Alas, some of us have knowledge to write about, whereas most do not.

One would think that someone would be appreciative of the fact that I'm relating the truth, but instead people get their panties in a bunch because the truth fucks too hard with their little retarded fantasyland worldviews.

how much time do you spend per day writing about knowledge?

& that's why I wrote this in my first post, Hip Priest:
That makes the ghost real in that sense, because it is a manifestation of unconscious contents that we do not experience in our normal conscious waking state.
But in the sense of hollywood ghosts, no, that shit is not real. anyone who insists that ghosts are real is either ...


& that's why I voted
People genuinely see something, but it's not 'ghosts'

don't start some my side against your side bullshit with me because you're only inventing an argument where none exists.

People love to do that shit here. & regrettably, I usually get sucked down to their LEVEL.

Lies aren't interesting to me. Most paranormal shit is pure lies.
I like art & science a good deal more, excuse me.

The unconscious mind & the manifestations thereof are interesting to me. So much so, that I know a tremendous amount about the subject & can articulate my thoughts accordingly.

Can you understand that or would you like to keep this shit going?

I took a picture of what appears to be a ghost, but I didn't see anything at the time. I need to go back and rule out other possibilities in order to satisfy my skepticism. This was in 1998 at the Crescent Hotel in Arkansas. (Sorry to be a tease, but I can't post the picture now, since I've lost my only print)

I don't believe atari's explanation above, but I also don't believe the common paranormal explanations (souls trapped on this plane and other nonsense). I lean towards something not supernatural, just not understood by science, yet. People have been seeing ghosts for a long time across cultures, but what ghosts are is purely conjecture.

what, that one didn't get a laugh from you atari? i must not be trying hard enough

Yes, I do believe there is some, as yet, unexplained phenomenon that occurs in relation to ghosts and ghost sightings. Most of the current theories and beliefs are hokey to the point of being intolerable though, I mean, paranormal activity meters? You mean my fucking refrigerator is a fucking spirit from the other world? Bullshit. We have to remember, people thought the world was flat once, and whoever thought otherwise was in big trouble.

that was fucking hilarious :D

thank you !@#$%, i was thinking of something all seriouslike to post, and then it hit me, open it up with a classy joke, to emphasize the impossibility of taking such a thread in anyway seriously. kudos to atari, who can always find a way to build and reason on anything man, no matter what kind of crap is shot in his direction.

I see dead people.

when i was in high school, i was smoking pot with my friend and with his considerable mexican accent he said "Aye See Ded Peepal" out of no where. damn that was funny.

Atari, are you high?


I answered that I believe in ghosts. I think they are more of supernatural footprints than lost souls though. I've never seen a ghost, but I have had supernatural experiences- I have been to cold spots, etc. Human souls don't linger on earth. I do believe in non-human supernatural entities though.

gee, isn't that a shame?

ever heard of a double exposure or overexposure to create an orb or blob of white? Then there's dust & pollen too.

people that think blurrs & orbs in photos are ghosts are downright lunatics.

Seriously, go live with some apes where you can contribute something to their society. You're only fucking up human society.

A Gallup Poll in 2001 revealed that 38% of Americans believe in ghosts. One in 1996 stated that 48% of the 1,000 polled believe that UFOs are real. Maybe Bob Barker is urging the wrong species (dogs & cats) to be spayed or neutered.

yr all full of poopoo.
Ghosts do not exist.
In order for ghosts to exist in visual light then there would need to be matter being created. The theory of conservation of matter states matter can not be created nor destroyed. Fuck ghosts!

As an experienced photographer, yes I have.
I dismiss those orbs and such as lens dust, processing defects or other tricks.

for over a generation, the Amazing Randi has offered $1,000,000.00 USD to anyone that can prove any paranormal claim.

Guess what? No one has.

Now this is an interesting site:

http://www.randi.org/

 

James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.


Randi has pursued "psychic" spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water "with a memory," and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural.

Not to get to philosophical or anything; no, I don't believe ghosts 'exist'.

hmm...
interesting.
GOD IS CRUEL

James Randi is one of my favorite sources on the topic. Brilliant man.

However, I don't disbelieve the paranormal because, by its nature, you cannot prove either way. It is in the hands of believers to prove it, but it is entirely possible for something unprovable to exist. I can't prove for $1,000,000 that I've experienced emotion in the past, but I have. I don't discount ghosts as lies because I don't know, and never will know. Granted, I do believe that 90% of the cases are highly explainable. But there are always those that aren't. I did select the "something, but not ghosts" choice for this reason.

Not to mention, from almost any theistic viewpoint, which I take, you have to make room for the possibility of divine cause. But that's a relatively restricted viewpoint.