Ghostly experiences thread

Absolutezero

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

Kidchameleon

Good idea for a thread. I just hope its not ruined by the usual church bashing. Just remember guys, the church / religion do not own the supernatural.

To answer the OP, yes I have seen "dead" relatives. As have members of my family and friends. One friend in particular claims to see these things regularly. Years ago, I heard a voice calling me from another room (I live alone), when I went to the room I discovered one of my candles had sparked up my curtain!

ShooterSF

I find it odd ghosts tend not to appear in densely populated public areas where there's CCTV cameras or such considering so many people have seen or experienced one.

robindch

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Just remember guys, the church / religion do not own the supernatural.

I dare you tell that to the church.

Zombrex

Absolutezero wrote: »

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

I've had all the usual experiences, seeing faces in shadows/dark, waking up and feeling a presence in the room, waking up to fine someone in the room who disappears, feeling cold in a warm "haunted" room etc etc

Personally I find the actual natural explanations for these things (ie what we like to call "reality" around these parts) far more interesting that the supernatural mumbo jumbo people make up to explain these things.

For example the pattern matching of figures and faces that humans do naturally is a truly fascinating subject. Just try and get a computer to recognise a face to see the problems that evolution has over come in our brains. Knowing that the brain itself makes mistakes is reassuring to a computer scientist such as myself

stevejazzx

The most obvious explanation is that people don't understand how powerful their mind can be at deceiving them given the right set of circumstances.
If people understood how audible and visible manifestations created by an overactive mind can be realistically projected by their mind to itself then their definitiveness in relation to witnessing the supernatural would be greatly reduced.
If the supernatural exists in the way people who have claimed to experience it say it does then it must act irrationally, selectively and indeed covertly to avoid being detected by masses of people and technology. This proposition simply does not hold water.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

stevejazzx wrote: »

The most obvious explanation is that people don't understand how powerful their mind can be at deceiving them given the right set of circumstances..

Just in passing, I read a book a while back where the author drew parallels between the accounts people give of ghosts and the accounts they give of alien sightings. The experiences were much the same; all that was different was how people accounted for them.

stevejazzx wrote: »

If the supernatural exists in the way people who have claimed to experience it say it does then it must act irrationally, selectively and indeed covertly to avoid being detected by masses of people and technology. This proposition simply does not hold water.

I don't assert there are supernatural yokes, but I think we have to be careful about what we do assert about them. I've no idea how ghosts should behave, and so I've no basis for saying what behaviours on their part are irrational.

If I can quote from the Good Book

http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio1.htm

FORD PREFECT:
Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended. I came for a week and was stranded for fifteen years.

ARTHUR DENT:
But how did you get there in the first place?!

FORD PREFECT:
Oh easy! I got a lift with a Teaser. You don't know what a Teaser is, I - I'll tell you. Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.

ARTHUR DENT:
Ah. “Buzz them”?

FORD PREFECT:
Yeah. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul, who no one's ever going to believe, and then strut up and down in front of ‘em wearing silly antennae on their head and making “beep, beep” noises. Huh, rather childish really.

Andrewf20

Its the one think that defintely make me thinks twice as to whether something is going on out there. Ive met one or two people in my time who I trust to not make things up and who claim to have some tangible bizarre goings-on. One involves a suicide victim with pictures falling off walls on their anniversary with candles re-igniting after they were blown out etc. Coincidence perhaps but it does niggle me a little if im honest, even though im usually very skeptical.

Ive personally never experienced anything id deem paranormal.

Zombrex

Andrewf20 wrote: »

Its the one think that defintely make me thinks twice as to whether something is going on out there. Ive met one or two people in my time who I trust to not make things up and who claim to have some tangible bizarre goings-on. One involves a suicide victim with pictures falling off walls on their anniversary with candles re-igniting after they were blown out etc. Coincidence perhaps but it does niggle me a little if im honest, even though im usually very skeptical.

Ive personally never experienced anything id deem paranormal.

It doesn't have to be them making stuff up. The options aren't "Ghosts" or "He's lying".

In fact quite the opposite, we know how the brain can play a whole host of tricks on people, from viewing something that isn't there due to the way our brain takes short cuts when processing vision, right up to the minds annoying tendency to produce false memories that can seem as real as the real memories.

Your friends are at the mercy of some odd goings on, but it ain't ghosts, it is their own minds.

Andrewf20

Zombrex wrote: »

It doesn't have to be them making stuff up. The options aren't "Ghosts" or "He's lying".

In fact quite the opposite, we know how the brain can play a whole host of tricks on people, from viewing something that isn't there due to the way our brain takes short cuts when processing vision, right up to the minds annoying tendency to produce false memories that can seem as real as the real memories.

Your friends are at the mercy of some odd goings on, but it ain't ghosts, it is their own minds.

In relation to the family suicide, there were multiple witnesses to some very conincidental events happening on or around anniversary dates they claim. Yes, probably a rational explanation alright but the niggles still claw at me to a small degree. The couple at the centre of these experiences wouldnt be paranormal hunters so to speak and are not religious.

68Murph68

ShooterSF wrote: »

I find it odd ghosts tend not to appear in densely populated public areas where there's CCTV cameras or such considering so many people have seen or experienced one.

Also the fact that there has been no increase in photographic evidence for all of these supernatural phenomena despite the proliferation of camera phones???

I imagine the following cognitive biases would help explain a big percentage of stuff.

http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational

Penn

I remember years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night. It was nearly the fifth anniversary of my best friends death. I woke up, and in the corner of my eye could see a bright light in the corner of the room, and could hear a faint moaning noise.

The noise was the wind outside as my window was slightly open, and the light was my phone which was charging on the other side of the room, lighting up to say "Phone Charged".

There's always an explanation, the explanation just might not always be obvious, or might include factors you're simply not aware of. Since ghosts etc are outside of what we consider to be natural, all possible natural explanations should be considered before arriving at the conclusion that it was something supernatural.

HHobo

Absolutezero wrote: »

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

It is all nonsense in my opinion. When you learn just how fallible our memories and senses are, how much of what we see and hear is actually injected by our brains as a 'best guess' these kinds of experiences become expected and quite banal.

There is no rationality or sense to the manner, infrequency, vagueness or person-specific communications that seem to occur. Consider the poster earlier who recived a spectural warning about his curtain having caught fire. It seems inconsistant to me that he/she would be the recipiant of this handy warning when innumerable others are seemingly left to their fate. It seems dramatically more likely that he heard an unrealted sound, misremembers or imagined it than a dead person called out to him.

Calling to someone requires that you vibrate the air molecules in a very specific pattern. It requires physical interaction with the world. Why would this presence, capable of interaction with the world, and exceptionally fine-tuned interaction at that, not simply put out the fire.

Also, when a person is nearly destroyed by grief, how callous of thier departed loved ones to not give them some indication that they still exist in a form. What parent who had died would be able to resist comforting their grieving child or vice versa. No, it seems more reasonable by far that people's known-to-unrealiable senses simlpy let people hear and see that which in most cases they want to see and hear.

In other cases, our agency detection software simlpy takes the safer path and tells us that those shadows over there are a figure. Maybe they aren't but no-one has ever been harmed by a shadow that might have been a threat. Many have died to threats that might have been a shadow.

So... I don't believe there is anthing to these expereinces and stories. That is not to say that the person who recounts doesn't believe they are telling you the whole truth. People are often honest and wrong.

Kidchameleon

68Murph68 wrote: »

Also the fact that there has been no increase in photographic evidence for all of these supernatural phenomena despite the proliferation of camera phones???

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

Sarky

I suspect that they'd show up on the recording devices people invented to detect non-visible wavelengths, much like the multi-spectral detectors ghost hunters and the like always bring with them to supposedly haunted places. In a shocking turn of events, so far they have not picked up anything. Perhaps you're talking about some kind of sneaky wavelength that travels in a sort of sideways shuffle instead of rays?

Obliq

Kidchameleon wrote: »

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

That's interesting - I was just about to write about my "experience" which ties in neatly with this:

I used to work in an old folks home, and on my first ever night shift, a woman died. There was only myself and the nurse on duty - she showed me how to lay out the woman's body and we set the room for her relatives to sit with her. I was sent down to the laundry room to fetch fresh sheets for her bed, and set off from the room down the long, dimly lit corridor that stretched on through two sets of swing doors. The left turn for the laundry was after the first set of doors. I remember feeling accompanied (as you do, when feeling spooked, which I admit to!) through the doors and as I turned left I looked behind me.....

I still swear to this day that the air was rippling - warping, as if looking through antique glass. It rippled past me and continued down the length of the hall till it disappeared at the next set of doors.....I ran the rest of the way to the laundry :eek:

Now, most people I tell that to get spooked because they know me as an unbeliever of anything without evidence - but I generally add to the story that a) I had smoked a lot of weed the night before, b) I hadn't eaten dinner, and c) I needed a fag. Also, that was my first encounter with the death of a person. Make of it what you will I have no explanations except that I was clearly susceptible to seeing that under the circumstances. I can't tell you if it was "there" or not.

oldrnwisr

Kidchameleon wrote: »

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

OK, but your first reply to this thread was:

Kidchameleon wrote: »

To answer the OP, yes I have seen "dead" relatives. As have members of my family and friends. One friend in particular claims to see these things regularly. Years ago, I heard a voice calling me from another room (I live alone), when I went to the room I discovered one of my candles had sparked up my curtain!

If you want to suggest some kind of feeling of something being there fine, but seeing means something in the visible portion of the EM spectrum. So if you can see it there's no reason why a camera can't see it as well. Lots of people claim to see ghosts and yet no footage depsite the increasing prevalence of cameras as others have pointed out.

Kidchameleon

Sarky wrote: »

Perhaps you're talking about some kind of sneaky wavelength that travels in a sort of sideways shuffle instead of rays?

That's scientifically plausible so why not?

Obliq

oldrnwisr wrote: »

If you want to suggest some kind of feeling of something being there fine, but seeing means something in the visible portion of the EM spectrum. So if you can see it there's no reason why a camera can't see it as well. Lots of people claim to see ghosts and yet no footage depsite the increasing prevalence of cameras as others have pointed out.

That's just it - and exactly why I never say I've "seen a ghost". I actually think I saw what I expected to see, which was something (rather than nothing) - and I put that down to being a manifestation of my circumstances, not the dead woman's!

I'd like to know what people have actually seen, and how much they attribute to themselves....um....suggesting it to themselves?! Kid Chameleon?

Kidchameleon

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Lots of people claim to see ghosts and yet no footage depsite the increasing prevalence of cameras as others have pointed out.

I'm no expert on this ok but can dogs hear sounds that are too low frequency for a person to hear? If so then its not that big a jump to think one person may be more sensitive to certain light waves than another person. Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time so I don't put any weight into the camera argument.

Obliq

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time

Really? People can see in x ray and infrared?

Kidchameleon

Obliq wrote: »

I'd like to know what people have actually seen, and how much they attribute to themselves....um....suggesting it to themselves?! Kid Chameleon?

I know exactly what you are saying Obliq. Reminds me of the time when I was a nipper, I "heard" the banshee. Completely **** myself. I could hear her wailing as clear as day, seriously! I ran down stairs to my mam, to find her doing a bit of karaoke in the kitchen! The "banshee" was my mam

Kidchameleon

Obliq wrote: »

Really? People can see in x ray and infrared?

Its possible. Look up Tetrachromacy.

Sarky

Kidchameleon wrote: »

That's scientifically plausible so why not?

Obliq

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Its possible. Look up Tetrachromacy.

Actually, that's very, very interesting: http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision#.UPRC3Kp2NTM

"Color blindness ran in families, affecting men but not women. While color-blind men had two normal cones and one mutant cone, De Vries knew that the mothers and daughters of color-blind men had the mutant cone and three normal cones—a total of four separate cones in their eyes."

My father is very colour blind - great artist/draftsman with a penchant for pink/green clouds when he did water colours. Me, I'm a good artist too (untrained) who once helped a flatmate with her interior decor course work as she couldn't do a colour wheel out of magazine cuttings in the necessary number of sections. I doubled it, and she got an "A".



Not saying anything about ghosts or seeing things that others can't here, except that yes - I see colours in a big way (and can prove it!). That's mad Ted.;)

HHobo

Kidchameleon wrote: »

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

Existing camera technologies are capable of observing way more of the EM spectrum than our eyes can. If they are on a wavelength your camera can't see, then your eyes can't either. The same is true of sound. If your ears can hear it, then so too can recording devices.

[-0-]

Figments of people's imaginations and/or something they don't understsand. They don't exist.

HHobo

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time so I don't put any weight into the camera argument.

This simply isn't true. It might be plausable to say our eye are more sensitive in X way than Y camera but for every X there is camera that is far, far, far better than we are at detecting it.

There are innumerable wavelengths, particles, etc. that we can't see but our technology can and I can't think of a single one that ours can see that our technology can't.

If the notion of the supernatural is too be saved, you are wasting your time appealing to the natural.

MagicMarker

Kidchameleon wrote: »

I'm no expert on this ok but can dogs hear sounds that are too low frequency for a person to hear? If so then its not that big a jump to think one person may be more sensitive to certain light waves than another person. Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time so I don't put any weight into the camera argument.

Our eyes are far more complex, cameras are far more advanced.

Personally, I think it all being nonsense is more plausible than mutant super vision humans.

MrPudding

I had a terrifying experience about 20 years ago. I was sleeping on a friends floor and I heard the door open and footstep walking towards and then past me. When I opened my eyes and looked there was nothing. I was a little freaked out. This continued for about 20 minutes, with me getting more and more scared.

Ultimately I don't know what was happening, so I am putting it down to the fact that I was on the wrong end of an 18 hour LSD bender, but I suppose I will never really know...

MrP

Obliq

MrPudding wrote: »

the wrong end of an 18 hour LSD bender

MrP

Hmmm, knowing exactly what you are talking about here may have had something to do with my "light bending" experience too, but I didn't like to say....

However, that does not take away from the Super Human Vision I'd say I have (in colour terms anyway). I'd love to test that - might write to the research peeps and find out :-)

hollster2

I had an experience myself I did not believe id heard storys people told me and brushed them off, so ill start then.

About six years ago my parents were going away and they didnt want me to stay by myself as I was 7 months pregnant all during it I felt like someone was with me id see black shadows and quickly look behind me with no one there, so I went to stay in my aunties house.

I grew up around this house as it was were my nanny lived and my dad grew up in, so I arrived at the house and my auntie brought me upstairs were i was going to be sleeping and she brought me into my nannys old room were in, I had watched her die at home to cancer i was a bit nervous staying in the room because it brought back bad memories of that day.

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

MagicMarker

hollster2 wrote: »

I had an experience myself I did not believe id heard storys people told me and brushed them off, so ill start then.

About six years ago my parents were going away and they didnt want me to stay by myself as I was 7 months pregnant all during it I felt like someone was with me id see black shadows and quickly look behind me with no one there, so I went to stay in my aunties house.

I grew up around this house as it was were my nanny lived and my dad grew up in, so I arrived at the house and my auntie brought me upstairs were i was going to be sleeping and she brought me into my nannys old room were in, I had watched her die at home to cancer i was a bit nervous staying in the room because it brought back bad memories of that day.

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

Sounds like a dream tbh.

Apparently very vivid unusual dreams are common during pregnancy, plus the fact that you went to sleep in that room etc...

hollster2

sorry well theres always gonna be sceptics i know it wasnt

hollster2

Ive just remembered a story from when I was younger around age 11-14 cant remember exactly .

At the end of my road growing up there was an abandoned house everyone used to say it was haunted but I dont think anyone believed until strange things started to happen.

One day we all decided to gather around this house each one thinking they were brave looking in the window, each day something in the house was different there was a mirror broken on the floor and tiles next day we went back they were fixed which got us all terrified so we ran for the hills.

We decided to be brave and go up again next day and to our horror they were all broken again. next thing someone said they seen the curtain moved upstairs we all looked up and each one looked terrified we all said did you see that? ( the hairs are standing on my arms telling this) we all saw a little girl pale grey she was looking out at us and then she was gone curtain back we all ran as fast as we could home, after a few years the house was fixed.

Theres been so many owners just moved after a year or two just wondering has this something to do with it? guess ill never know.

hollster2

THIRD POST
My partner was talking to his mum one day they heard a loud crash and the tool box that was against there was was on the floor now it was full so it would have needed someone to put force into doing so,

Also she says shes heard noises and even seen white figure in her room, then one day we were hearing buzzing noises during the day and we seen the battery powered car started moving itself we just thought it was faulty so we took out the batterys, then we seen this thing speeding around the sitting room still we were terrified.

I think the was terrifying was just 1 month ago his mum came home to hear screaming upstairs his brother and comotion and boxing noises she thought someone was in attacking him until she got in and he was in bed jumping around saying get them off me and could hear these boxing him and no one there, aslo to follow this student staying in the room said he heard strange noises all night like furniture moving ive always felt uncomfortable sleeping in this room just still curious hows trapped in the house.

hollster2

MagicMarker wrote: »

Sounds like a dream tbh.

Apparently very vivid unusual dreams are common during pregnancy, plus the fact that you went to sleep in that room etc...

sorry 4 reacting so quick really i didnt know that but i know i was awake i cant explain it really!

Obliq

hollster2 wrote: »

Ive just remembered a story from when I was younger around age 11-14 cant remember exactly .

At the end of my road growing up there was an abandoned house everyone used to say it was haunted but I dont think anyone believed until strange things started to happen.

One day we all decided to gather around this house each one thinking they were brave looking in the window, each day something in the house was different there was a mirror broken on the floor and tiles next day we went back they were fixed which got us all terrified so we ran for the hills.

We decided to be brave and go up again next day and to our horror they were all broken again. next thing someone said they seen the curtain moved upstairs we all looked up and each one looked terrified we all said did you see that? ( the hairs are standing on my arms telling this) we all saw a little girl pale grey she was looking out at us and then she was gone curtain back we all ran as fast as we could home, after a few years the house was fixed.

Theres been so many owners just moved after a year or two just wondering has this something to do with it? guess ill never know.

Sorry now hollster - I'm very skeptic too. How many kids? How many still say the same thing? I ask because me and my pals (10 - 14) once saw a UFO that scared the pants off us all because we all convinced each other that the red/blue lights were hovering and not moving........but not now. Now it's a plane.
I could maybe believe the mirror thing if there were at least 5 written statements from adults confirming that they still believe they saw that too. Same with seeing the "grey girl".

hollster2

yeah there were a few my sister was there she remembers it!
we couldnt believe it either i was so againt it all aswell it only came back to me writing the story about my nan i gues ill never know, had the too wit the ufos but cant explain my story other than it scared the crapp out of us and we didnt go back to the house after that

Standman

Kidchameleon wrote: »

I know exactly what you are saying Obliq. Reminds me of the time when I was a nipper, I "heard" the banshee. Completely **** myself. I could hear her wailing as clear as day, seriously! I ran down stairs to my mam, to find her doing a bit of karaoke in the kitchen! The "banshee" was my mam

Reminds me of the time I heard a banshee screaming at nighttime in the field behind my house when I was a kid. Terrifying stuff. Finally one night I plucked up the courage to go out with a torch and investigate. Turned out to be one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIaFtAKnqBU

Obliq

hollster2 wrote: »

yeah there were a few my sister was there she remembers it!
we couldnt believe it either i was so againt it all aswell it only came back to me writing the story about my nan i gues ill never know, had the too wit the ufos but cant explain my story other than it scared the crapp out of us and we didnt go back to the house after that

Mmm. Not good enough proof for me to believe a word of it actually happening - which is a COMPLETELY different thing from not believing your story. I believe you believe it, but I think you (and your sister) would like to believe it.

hollster2

i understand well guess we will nevr know

Obliq

Standman wrote: »

Reminds me of the time I heard a banshee screaming at nighttime in the field behind my house when I was a kid. Terrifying stuff. Finally one night I plucked up the courage to go out with a torch and investigate. Turned out to be one of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIaFtAKnqBU

A bit like when I first moved to the West and there were any number of young fellas telling me ghost stories about banshees just as you were about to attempt a 2k walk home, and badgers that would break your limbs if they were fighting in the ditches and mistook you for another badger (you should grab a stick and break it, if you're ever in a tangle with a badger. The only time they'll let go is when they hear a bone break....MmmHmmm, I'm tellin you now.)

Anyhow, a few years later and I'm a single mum in a mobile home on the side of the road.....and I hear an animal screaming. I mean BEING KILLED. It was awful. Pitch black outside, young toddler inside the mobile, car running just down the quiet road.....and the screaming of a dying animal. What would you do?

Well, being me, I ran out the road and roared "the guards are coming, I'll have ya for that - f**k off NOW" - so they went. Gardai were called and calmly explained (after asking how long I'd been living here) that it was hunters rubbing polystyrene down a car window to lamp for foxes (it makes a sound like a dying rabbit). Well, there were no signs up to tell you that.

It's funny now....but no gun club members have admitted it to me to this day, although many have blushed a deep red

spookwoman

Infra sound can cause a lot of things inc people seeing or hearing whats not there. Infrasound can be caused by faulty electrical equipment. Also there is a condition associated with Migraine called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. Migraines are not always accompanied by a headache.

nagirrac

I have had a few experiences myself that I would put in the "'very weird" category and know quite a few people who have had similar or even more weird experiences. I would imagine it is mostly our minds playing tricks on us, but who knows, there is a lot out there for us to still discover.

The interesting thing is if you believe in ghosts then you believe in an afterlife of some sort. If such entities exist, they cannot be in what we observe as our physical reality or our space time. By definition they would have to be in some parallel universe or extra dimensions of reality we do not perceive with our 5 senses nor anything we can observe with instrumentation. If such entities exist and somehow under certain conditions people sense or observe them, then the suggestion is they somehow "leak" into our reality or are capable of materializing into our reality somehow.

I think I will go with the mind playing tricks on us, the mind can be one crazy place at times.

Dr. Loon

hollster2 wrote: »

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

Same thing happened to me a few years ago. I was sleeping on an air bed, and heard someone's feet brushing past the end. I opened my eyes but other than that I couldn't move. Very scary, but a dream, and a very common one. The not being able to move thing is also known as a night terror I believe.

These night terrors happen to me often. I always can't move, and there's always something watching or coming for me. Happened again recently enough... woke up, couldn't move, could hear footsteps running up the stairs! Thought someone was coming to kill me. When they happen, I'm screaming at my wife to wake me up, but all she can hear out of me is mumbling "mmmbmbmlelel fckkkf mmmnmblhhm". When I wake up, I'm going mad, "Why didn't you wake me?" All very amusing really, and simply a dream/delusion.

Also, as a kid, I was convinced I had been touched on the shoulder by a ghost beside a graveyard. Same graveyard, I thought I had been chased out of by a ghost in chains. At the time I was convinced of both. I still don't have an explanation for either, but I can come up with any number of natural explanations before jumping to ghost. Actually, it's only now I think of it, I realise that the gate at the far end of the graveyard was chained closed at night. A decent gust of wind, would rattle the chains. The graveyard is on a coast road, where high winds would be regular enough. There's that one solved.

Ultimately, some - possibly most - people wish to believe in this stuff, and so they'll jump to the nonsense conclusion way before they'll explain it rationally. Sad but true.

How come we don't see stone age ghosts? With dodgy stone axes and loin cloths? The ghosts we see are always from around a certain period really aren't they? Bit odd isn't it? Or the ghosts of animals? Do animals not get ghosts? Realistically, there'd just be f*cking millions of ghost cows pishing us all off constantly.

fisgon

it's often happened to me that I have thought I saw someone or something, a figure, a shape moving, something strange or inexplicable that could be interpreted as something supernatural. Then when I looked closer it turned out there was nothing there.

Without fail it has happened (a) when I was staying somewhere unfamiliar and (b) when I was dead tired or sleep deprived.

The experiences, fleeting as they are, are convincing enough when they happen, but when you examine them rationally, there is always an explanation. Those who don't find the rational explanation don't want to find it.

Pace2008

hollster2 wrote: »

I had an experience myself I did not believe id heard storys people told me and brushed them off, so ill start then.

About six years ago my parents were going away and they didnt want me to stay by myself as I was 7 months pregnant all during it I felt like someone was with me id see black shadows and quickly look behind me with no one there, so I went to stay in my aunties house.

I grew up around this house as it was were my nanny lived and my dad grew up in, so I arrived at the house and my auntie brought me upstairs were i was going to be sleeping and she brought me into my nannys old room were in, I had watched her die at home to cancer i was a bit nervous staying in the room because it brought back bad memories of that day.

So that night when I was in bed I took me a while to get to sleep but I finally did.

I was woken up by what i heard someone calling my name I opened my eyes and nothing there so I closed my eyes I heard it again so this time when I opened my eyes I was frozen in the bed I couldnt move and sitting at the side of the bed was a sillohette of my nanny white like she was floating and she smiled but at that point I was terrified I think it was the shock of what ive seen but I closed my eyes and when I opened she was gone till this day I wished id have just relaxed and said hello back.

You experienced a well-documented natural phenomenon known as sleep paralysis.

From what I gather, when you sleep your body is paralysed to prevent excessive movement that could result in injury. Sometimes, your mind can wake up while your body is still incapacitated. When this happens your consciousness is stuck somewhere between the waking world and dream world, and you're prone to varying degrees of hallucination. I've been getting sleep paralysis since my mid-teens and can fully appreciate how real the experience can seem. Hallucinations range from the audial, like hearing people conversing behind your bedroom door, to the visual - most often, in my case, of a figure at the end of the bed or in the corner of the room. On rare occasions I have had full outer-body experiences, apparently leaving my resting self and walking around the room -floating, in one instance - only to snap back into my bed some moments later. Sometimes the experience is non-threatening and even enjoyable in a strange sort of way, but more often it's permeated by a feeling of fear and dread. I think that any account of the paranormal that begins with the subject lying in bed can be safely dismissed without further inspection.

The experience is very real and seems far more like a memory of a physical event than the fuzzy recollection of a dream, But it's still just a trick of the mind. I've travelled to some strange, hitherto unexplored areas of my consciousnesses - I get sleep paralysis, I've tripped on mushrooms and acid, I've been down the depths of a K-hole - and having been there and back I have very little time for supernatural explanations when the reality is that our minds are complex and sometimes just plain weird. And I find the latter explanation far more interesting as well as more plausible.

kylith

I've had a couple of experiences which I struggle to explain. Maybe someone here can shed some light.

1) When I was about 8 I had an electronic keyboard that plays backing tracks for you to play along with, no tunes are recognisable and they were usually called 'Bossa Nova' or 'Swing'. There was one called 'Londonderry Air' which I was particularly fond of and used to leave playing for ages because I didn't have a radio in my room. One night I was sitting at the other side of the room with 'Londonderry Air' playing in the background when, suddenly, Danny Boy started to play over it. I thought it was weird because it'd never done that before, it's not programmed to play any recognisable songs. It wasn't until I told my mother about it that I learned that Danny Boy is The Londonderry Air, so I couldn't have imagined in the tune. The keyboard has never played it again, no matter how long I let it run for. There are 3 explanations I can come up with: 1) My brain had listened to the backing tune so much that it was able to guess what should have been playing 2) There's a musical ghost in my parents house 3) The keyboard achieved sentience and, bored of playing the same thing for hours on end, broke it's programming to play the song because it couldn't take it any more.

2) When I was about 15 I was alone in the house. I was upstairs in my room when I heard the piano make a noise as if someone had struck random keys as they walked past it, something I was in the habit of doing. I was definitely alone and no-one could have come in without me knowing it, my bedroom being directly above the front door. This was in the middle of the afternoon.

3) When I was 13 my grandmother died. She died at about lunchtime on a schoolday and I wasn't told until my brother picked me up after school. However I smelled her dying smell in my classroom at about 1pm that day (anyone whose been around someone who is dying knows the smell I mean). My father claims to have smelled it too, in the cab of his lorry a hundred miles away. It's nice to think that Nanny might have stopped off to say goodbye on her way to wherever she was going, but it's highly unlikely.

I've also heard a flute playing when I've woken up at night, which would tie in with the 'musical ghost' theory. However, I automatically dismiss any ghost claims that begin 'I'd just woken up and I saw/heard...' because they are, almost definitely, sleep artefacts.

Zombrex

Probably false memories. When you were 13 how did you know what a dead body smelt like?

kylith

Because the night before we'd been visiting her and my mother had pointed out the odour in her room and said 'that's what someone who's dying smells like'. It's well known in health care circles, apparently.