May 27, 2004

• Fake, real... who cares? It's the possibility that make ghost stories so much fun! Thanks for goosebumps. And the cat story. Which reminds me... When I was about 11, my best friend and I were trying to get my little sister to leave us alone. We were hanging out in a finished basement, with a closet under the stairs. We concocted this long story about how the closet was haunted by a psychotic killer who had killed the whole family that lived in the house before us. (This is funny because the house was a 1960's ranch). My sister finally freaked out and ran up the stairs, and we were rolling on the floor with laugher, when suddenly... THE DOOR TO THE CLOSET CREAKED OPEN! Talk about instant karma. I think I might have wet my pants.
• It's funny how here in the United States the only ghosts we have are in yuppie restaurants in California (seen only by the proprietor and a few cronies trying to play up a theme, yet are taken quite seriously by Discovery Channel shows). Also they bother people with a few screws loose already on Montel (one episode apparently had rabbit ghosts). At least in England the ghosts are dignified and stay in the historic castles and abbeys.
• I eat this stuff up. Ghost stories have the same appeal as conspiracy theories -- the more debatable the evidence, somehow the more convincing it all seems. Did anybody catch the ghost story on This American Life last week? Good stuff. Probably available for download.
• roly - there's also a haunted Toys R Us in Calif.
• Good gravy! How on EARTH could they have gotten that picture of a ghost which suspiciously looks just like a shadow on the wall??? /snide
• Years ago I stayed in a B&B in Charleston, SC. The owners told me of a "gentleman ghost" that haunted my room. They told me he usually appeared around women, but he always left if you were frightened. I figured this was a ruse to drum up more tourists. I half-awoke early the next morning to find a man sitting on my bed, rocking back and forth and moaning. I was laying face-down near the edge of the bed, so he was half-sitting on my back. I turned my head to see who it was, but all I could see was long dark hair and a white shirt with elaborate cuffs around the wrists. I was terrified, of course, and tried to speak, but all I could say was "No." Finally I woke myself up entirely and I was alone in the room. I don't know if I dreamed it or not, but it still unnerved me. More descriptions about the place here.
• Mickey -- I wonder if you would have seen the ghost had they not told you about him? I remember seeing this somewhere before: Ghosts created from low-frequency sounds. But this is the first link I found to the story.
• So, I used to work at Waterstone's Bookseller in Boston. Great place, sadly closed, R.I.P. Anyway, It was housed in the old Boston Spiritualist Temple (spiritualism was very very popular in New England in the late 18th early 19th century. Seances and whatnot, so I am told.), and there were many claims that it was haunted. One sunday morning before the store opened we were standing around the first floor, drinking coffee, eating bagels, talking about the building. And the ghosts. Whatever. Me, I'm a card carrying skeptic, and I always have been, so, as we were walking through the store turning on the computers and the lights and such I said as much to my friend Meghan. "And anyway," I said to her, walking up the stairs toward the second floor registers, "I've been working here for quite a while and I've never seen anything out of the ordinar-" and just then a book popped off the shelf. Like in Ghostbusters or something, for real. Honestly. Remember: the store is completely closed at this point, us walking up the stairs is the first people who have been through since 11:15 or so the night before. Not to mention: books at rest don't pop off shelves. Ever. Just doesn't happen. I was a little bit freaked out. I went over and picked up the book. it was Polaroids from the Dead, by Coupland.
• Allow me to bastardize thousands of years of philosophy by offering this weak collection of thoughts. If ghost were to exist we would have to agree that either they were exactly like humans, that is had both body/mind ('both' meaning the unity of) or were just the mind/spirit (whatever you want to suggest is the consciousness) part. Right? Following some of those there Newtonian laws, I suppose, and the idea against Descartes that a wholly disembodied entity can not in any way act on a bodied entity (no ghost in the machine), one would have to come to the conclusion that were ghosts to exist, they could not act upon us because a) they don't have a body, b) they would have to be a wholly non-physical entity. Therefore, we have nothing to be afraid of. They're all Caspers.
• so dirt, are you still a card carrying skeptic?
• Well, if they do exist, they might be physically incapable of doing anything to us... but what about our mental sanity? On the other hand, that photo looks just like an iPod ad. "Die. Haunt. Afterlife".
• mamasaurus: yup. but my skepticism includes my own, well, skepticism.
• Ghosts are like the good folk -- I was brought up to understand not everyone can see them. And those that do often wish they hadn't. Perfectly possible to be aware something is uncanny about a place -- for example, four adult men feeling abruptly icy-cold in one area of an old farmhouse, so cold we actually backed out of the room with our teeth chattering -- and this was a day in July when it was well over 90 degrees F outdoors. I think some would say it was haunted, all four of us felt very unwelcome there, though one was the former owner's grandson. Some places in old houses I find very difficult to be in or near. One instance of the latter, I stopped in the doorway of what looked to be a windowless room about five feet wide and ten or twelve feet long. A bare, dim bulb hung in the middle suspended on a cord from the ceiling. Didn't go in, didn't like the feel of it (understatement). Noticed a long strip of wood fastened along one of the longer walls about five feet above floor level. Thought it odd the large, sharp-ended meathooks hadn't been removed from it, since someone could easily blunder into them in so small a space. Later I remarked on this to the owner, who gave me an odd look and said I should come back and look again. Took me back, showed me the room -- only it was not, then, the same. A flight of stairs going up had been placed in the space I'd seen, the walls had flowered yellow paper. Owner told me when he'd bought the place, there had indeed been what he thought was an old cloakroom area there, and that there had been a row of big sharp hooks down one wall. Grateful I've never actually seen a ghost. (Or not to recognize as such, anyway.)
• one would have to come to the conclusion that were ghosts to exist, they could not act upon us because a) they don't have a body, b) they would have to be a wholly non-physical entity. You might wish to loosen your definition of matter a bit and reconsider the conclusions!
• In the '96-'97 academic year I had the misfortune to be locked into a lease of a converted 19th century farmhouse in Ithaca, NY. My bedroom was the former living room, and I was told by the owner that years before there had been "an incident" at the place, and she had picked the house up for a song. I spent NINE FRIGGING MONTHS with a dead little boy and three of his friends. I couldn't afford to move ( I was a guest lecturer at Cornell, and they pay pretty poorly), so every night I was treated to being awakened at about 3 AM or so to a chalky grey naked little seven-year-old (?) crouching at the foot of my bed, usually with one hand resting on his knee, like in Rodin's "The Thinker". He never said a word. He would pace around the room, sometimes, and his body was solid, i.e. when he passed in front of my night light, the light stopped until he fully crossed its path. He was 3 to four foot tall, tops. His "companions" were black disks, like the kind the RoadRunner used to throw against the wall to create a tunnel in the cartoons. They were like pancakes, or pizzas, actually, jet-black, and were in constant motion flying about the room. They would bend when they changed direction, and delighted in flying in one window and out the other for about 45 minutes or so. Sometimes they'd hover in formation behind the boy, like they were his pets. I saw this from the first night I was there-- my wife joined me later that first weekend and I said nothing about what I'd seen the previous coupla days. The next morning she said she had the most amazing dream--she woke to a large grey cat who was trying to look into her face. It was sitting on her chest and quite heavy. She shooed it away and went back to sleep. I then told her the story about what I'd seen. Our conjugal visits were always in hotels for the next 9 months--she wouldn't return to that house! I, however, HAD to. I pleaded, I burned sage, I called a "reputable" "cleanser" in Michigan who wanted $2000 plus expenses (HAH!) but in the end I just had a couple of shots before bed so I'd relax or sleep through his visits. Ghosts are real, and they SUCK.
• I've witnessed a number of 'ghostly' things over the years, but am open to alternative explanations. Books and photos have popped off shelves, doors opening and closing, wind in a closed room, sudden cold, footsteps in an attic crawlspace, etc. etc. The finest exhibition was in a house inhabited by a woman and her very rebellious teenage daughter. Maybe it was unconscious telekinetic warfare between them, but I've never seen so many ghost-like happenings in one location. One of them could hardly walk through a room without some small object tossing itself or a window or door slamming shut. Interestingly, the activity diminished as the daughter neared adulthood, but didn't vanish until they moved to a new house.
• Dizzy- your wife's dream of the cat is a very common manifestation; sometimes the cat is a baby or small monster, but they frequently accompany ghostly phenomena. There are some theories that these things, whatever they are, feed on our fear and need us to acknowledge them, and someone who is sensitive to their presence acts like a battery, giving them more energy to do their stuff. And, yeah, I've seen stuff like what you saw. Wish I'd known how to deal with it then. You have my sympathies.
• Ghosts are real, and they SUCK. ROFL! Dizzy, great story, and completely believable. I grew up in a very haunted house in the suburbs of NYC. My sisters and parents speak openly and frequently about our shared stories of paranormal experiences. The stories are so routine and corroborated, that they
• *holds flashlight under chin, makes spooky sounds*
• Did anyone have those Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books when they were little? The actual stories were crap, but the illustrations were so freaky. It was more like "Scary-illustrations-that-will-make-you-crap-your-pants,-crawl-into-your-parents'-bed,-and-give-you-nightmares-forever"!
• Yeah, I've never seen much that was really good myself. When I was five, my parents refurbished and moved into a hundred-year-old house in which a previous resident, one Mrs. Osburn, had died of old age. We'd awake in the morning to find the dining room furniture rearranged or the kitchen cabinet doors open. The dishwasher would kick on by itself, but after having three different repairmen come look at it and even replacing it with a new one, it still continued. Dad would smile everytime and say, "Looks like Mrs. Osburn's paying us a visit." The This American Life story is here under the heading "Fake Science." note: realaudio The first story is a story about ghost chasers, and it's creeeeeeepy.
• You know, ghostly things sitting on you just as you're waking up are likely to be illusions resulting from sleep paralysis. There's a mechanism which stops us moving around too much while asleep, and sometimes it doesn't switch off before consciousness kicks in. The result is very scary -I experienced it once myself while in digs. I was lying in bed, seemingly wide awake, but unable to move, and with a vivid sense that there was someone in the room. I didn't see anything, but I can well imagine that the tail end of a dream or something that was on my mind could easily have given me the impression that I had. I am entirely sure, however, that the 'presence' was not a ghost, or indeed, anything real.
• You know, ghostly things sitting on you just as you're waking up are likely to be illusions resulting from sleep paralysis. I've experienced this as well, so know what you mean. Our minds are very good at taking unusual stimulus and attempting a more 'normal' interpretation. What's interesting is when people report it in combination with other manifestations that can't be explained away so easily. Aside from hauntings, alien abductees report this phenomenon with great frequency. In other words, Plegmund, what if there really was someone in the room with you, and you woke up a bit too early? (cue creepy music)
• My family's first apartment had belonged to a woman who was a mistress, and died while pregnant. When my mom was pregnant with me, the ghost of the woman came to her darn near every night, trying to strangle my mom. Now the funny thing is this: my mom couldn't see the ghost, but felt herself being pressed on till she couldn't breathe. She would slap frantically at my dad, who could see ghosts. He'd wake up, see the ghost pressing down on my mom, and shout at her until she went away. When I was born, the ghost stopped harrassing my mom. Everyone thought she'd gone away. It was only close to ten years after we moved out did my parents find out she had been with me all that time. I didn't think much about having this silent lady who looked alot like my grandmother (this point my dad, my grandmother and I agreed upon, we were the only ones who could see her) sitting somewhere in the room whenever I was by myself. Until my early twenties, I could see certain things. I recall once while walking home, I stopped next to a multi-storeyed parking lot to play with a stray cat. The cat seemed more distracted than usual, always looking towards the wall of the parking lot building. Took me two minutes to look in the same direction as it did. There was a shadow of a man that started where the wall joined the ground, but no one was there to cast that shadow. Once I noticed it, the shadow flowed towards me and past me, disappearing. Then the cat stopped staring. I didn't feel any chill or particular terror, just a mild surprise. My family (maternal grandmother, father and me) have been credited with what the Chinese call "spirit eyes". We can see certain things, although the ability fades with age unless we deliberately practice to keep it up (We don't). Occasionally I'll still see something or someone nobody else can see in a room. I don't have too much of a problem with ghosts, as my dad explained to me since I was little that they usually can't do much against us.
• Usually? *shivers*
• What is a ghost? The disembodied spirit, or life-force, or soul, of a dead person. To believe in ghosts is presupposed by the belief that humans are what the Jesuits call "ensouled entities" - creatures who have a spirit that lives on after their flesh dies. At even a more basic level, it presupposes that there is *something* *after*. That's a hell of a lot of presupposing :) What I believe is that the human brain is an amazing organ, only minimally used during it's normal state of activity, and containing shitloads of parts that no one has much idea what they do. I dropped a wee bit of acid back in the day, and I saw some fun-kee shit - who's to say that, sometimes, the brain doesn't do a little self-acidizing? Couple that with the natural human tendency to invest random events with meaning, to make patterns out of chaos, a vivid imagination, and some polaroid film that's sat in the freezer a few months too long? Ghosties.
• Geez, I wish I was, like, fifteen years old so I could really enjoy this thread. I want to believe but I just cannot let go of my skepticism. Having said that, I grew up being a believer of this type of thing, but something happened along the way to kill all that. Like Fes said, maybe it was all the acid.
• Alnedra- that's an amazing story; thanks for sharing! Fes- I sympathize with your dismissal: I used to be a skeptic too. Maybe we're not seeing ghosts, but it's not all malfunctioning brains either. Just because you can't examine it under controlled conditions (whatever that means) doesn't mean it isn't real. Skeptics seem eager to define phenomena they don't understand, while those who have experienced same seem reluctant to do so. This thread gives some good examples. Why do you think this is?
• A hallucination is real. But that doesn't mean that you need to buy extra paint in order to cover up the blood dripping from the walls.
• Thought forms. Tulpas. The detritus of human minds. Or mad people whose consciousness is trapped here, somehow, in a half-life of nightmarish repetition of the fragments of their earthly lives.. or malfunctions of the physical brain. All these things are true. Perhaps. I don't dismiss ghosts. I've seen enough truly weird shit in my life to know that this world is not just .. as it appears. Maybe ghosts exist, this I can accept, but that doesn't mean that they are truly what they appear to be. The dead, or the living? Fragments of some other intelligence, taking on the shadow-forms of human lives to drink some form of psychic food from us? /shrug
• two random thoughts from a non-believer: 1. The most interesting phenomenon in this thread, to me, is that skeptics/non-believers/or "dismissers" feel like we have to apologize for not believing. I feel this very strongly when I find myself in a group talking about ghosts or astrology or aliens... There's a strong feeling of "Oh, you're not being fun." or "You just haven't experienced it yet." Truth be told, I've experienced some things that I have no problem subscribing to other -- in my mind, more rational -- explanations. 2. Isn't it kind of strange that all the reports of ghosts (at least the ones I am exposed to, but then I don't go looking for them, so maybe I'm missing the variety of ghost experience) are in the shape of a person, in their very same clothes as when they died, etc.? Why would a person's soul, or essence, take the shape of their body? And if a soul DID, how would it make such an exact duplicate? If you ask someone to draw themselves from memory, it is invariably distorted by their view of themselves (big nose, thighs, whatever). Wouldn't a soul be more representative of the inside of a person? Where are the lustful souls that might apparate themselves as a giant phallus? The angry souls that might appear as a giant mouth with razor teeth, or the creature from Aliens, or Darth Vader? All these ghosts seem very Victorian to me in their prim, propper adherence to some ancient Ghost Code whereby every ghost has to wander around, moan, wear their uniform, etc. /just thinking. trying not to be abrasive, which I know I can be when I talk about this stuff.
• cs1 it's the same for being vegetarian (to your first point) I'm told that ghosts are people "stuck" between here and there, and that's why they look like they did.
• boo! /from under a white sheet with eye-holes* *No kkk jokes, please.
• certainsome1- When you dream, do you look monstrous to yourself? Aside from the occasional nightmares, of course. I think we appear in dreams as an idealized version of ourselves, and, if apparitions are really evidence of the personality's survival, it would make sense that they might also appear in this ideal form. In a sense, they are dreaming themselves into reality. There are plenty of reports of this happening while the person was still alive, though usually at times of danger or near death. And holy men and women have been observed doing this for centuries.
• zedediah - well, we might disagree about dreams, then as well. To me, dreams have to do with a person's mind, not their "soul." Do you think that most people have an accurate understanding of their true selves? A murderer may think that they are innocent and justified, while reality is far from different. Wouldn't that person's soul reflect their ugliness (or "evilness") and not that person's intellectual belief? And if their soul does reflect that, then why would it look so true to the person's external appearance? Also, it sounds to me like you're saying that people's consciousness hangs around after death. So, do you think that thinking doesn't require a brain? If so, what do you make of all the experiments that demonstrate how brain damage affects thinking? And are you saying that there are reports of people making themselves into ghosts, visible by others? Because I've not heard of this before. Any pictures? Video?
• 'To me, dreams have to do with a person's mind, not their "soul."' But how do you know the 'mind' is not the same thing as the 'soul'? Where in the brain does the 'mind' reside, exactly? Does it have a point of origin or is it 'non-local'? Neurologists of world standing still argue over this. We can pinpoint the areas of certain specific functions of the brain as a mechanism, but not identify 'the mind' itself, nor even agree on a definition as such. Is it a cause, or an effect? Or is it an illusion of consciousness itself, and where does consciousness reside - what makes it function? By what process are you aware that you are conscious as a discrete entity, and do you require a pure understanding of yourself to arrive at this awareness? You seem pretty certain.., certainsome1. Perhaps too much so? Your skeptical viewpoint is based just as much on assumption as the viewpoint of the ghost-believers, it seems to me. 'Do you think that most people have an accurate understanding of their true selves?' Why do you think that a person needs an accurate understanding of their true selves, visually or otherwise, to take physical form as a 'ghost'? Why do you assume that the physical form of the ghost is a manifestation created by the ghost itself, and not the viewer? 'And are you saying that there are reports of people making themselves into ghosts, visible by others? Because I've not heard of this before.' An example would be the appearance or manifestation of a loved one at the exact moment of their death, miles away, witnessed or experienced by someone who had no knowledge of the event. There are many, many such examples. Of living people appearing as ghosts, there are not as many reports, but I've seen a few associated with spiritual people, for example Buddhist monks, who, while in meditation, have appeared as a physical real form in a distant location. Of course there are no photographs; nor would they be accepted by skeptics, for obvious reasons. Drive-by shootings happen every day in LA. There is only one piece of footage of a drive-by shooting actually occurring, yet the city is replete with people carrying cameras. I wonder why this is? Maybe it is because when something really really strange/disturbing/frightening occurs, the first impulse people have is to get the fuck out of there rather than snap a photo? I'm just sayin', is all.
• Nostrildamus- thanks! You answered cs1's questions better than I could ever have. certainsome1- All I have to add to Nostrilbashi's words of wisdom are two things: Do you think that most people have an accurate understanding of their true selves? I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say "no". I think our ego gets in the way too much of the time. We are all heroes in our own story, even the murderers. Knowing our 'true selves' takes work and honesty and dedication, but the ego is always there, trying to convince us that 'it' is our identity, not something deeper. it sounds to me like you're saying that people's consciousness hangs around after death I'm saying I don't know. I don't know, for certain, what happens after death, and I don't know, for certain, what we are capable of during life. There's a lot of odd phenomena out there, some of which I've witnessed, others reported by credible witnesses, and our science doesn't know how to deal with it. I prefer to keep an open mind, rather than undermine what I don't understand.
• But how do you know the 'mind' is not the same thing as the 'soul'? Well, see, I don't believe there is a "soul." As for the "mind" -- it's been made relatively clear to me that our thought processes, the seat of our emotions, and our consciousness is our brain. I suppose I presume, then, that our sense of self, our "mind" is from there as well. I suppose I agree with the neurologists that argue that the mind is an effect -- a sum total of the history and learned chemical reactions that, on the surface, seem clinical and reproduceable, but, in reality are exceedingly complex and unfathomable. You seem pretty certain.., certainsome1. Perhaps too much so? Your skeptical viewpoint is based just as much on assumption as the viewpoint of the ghost-believers, it seems to me. Well, I think that after 34 years you start to have some opinions about things like this. Why do you think that a person needs an accurate understanding of their true selves, visually or otherwise, to take physical form as a 'ghost'? Why do you assume that the physical form of the ghost is a manifestation created by the ghost itself, and not the viewer? My point was that all these tidy ghosts that create picture-perfect duplicates of themselves seems rather silly, and wish-fulfilling for those who want to see them. I DON'T think that, if there are ghosts, they'd need to have an accurate understanding of themselves to become a ghost. I think they would if they'd want to create a perfect illusion of themselves. Otherwise I think people who thought they were fat when they were alive would become pudgy ghosts, there'd be ghosts that are uglier than they truly were, etc. My real point was that I think that it's strange that ghosts somehow have these strict rules of appearance. Ghosts being conjured by the viewer is an really cool idea. I'd never heard that one before. What power is it that allows people to do this? How does that power manifest itself in other ways? An example would be the appearance or manifestation of a loved one at the exact moment of their death, miles away, witnessed or experienced by someone who had no knowledge of the event. There are many, many such examples. Of living people appearing as ghosts, there are not as many reports, but I've seen a few associated with spiritual people, for example Buddhist monks, who, while in meditation, have appeared as a physical real form in a distant location. Of course there are no photographs; nor would they be accepted by skeptics, for obvious reasons. Maybe I am just refusing to open my eyes to the possibility of what you write above, but my honest reaction to this is: people will see what they WANT to see. Much like the poster at the top of this thread who "saw a ghost" after being warned that they might see one. There is reams of paper filled with data that shows that people can fool themselves, that people's minds play tricks on them, that sounds (the link I put waaay above that nobody responded to) and other replicable physical events can trigger emotions/feelings/sights. Richard Feynman tells a story in one of his lectures about how one night when he was in college he was working on a paper up in his room. Suddenly he felt that something horrible had happened to his grandmother. He was certain she was dead. At that same moment, the phone rang downstairs. He knew it was his father, calling to tell him the news. He walked out to the landing. "Hey Pete! Phone!" someone called up. It wasn't for him. His grandmother wasn't dead, either. Nobody seems to remember those stories. They only remember when they happily (or unhappily) coincide with events.
• Drive-by shootings happen every day in LA. There is only one piece of footage of a drive-by shooting actually occurring, yet the city is replete with people carrying cameras. I wonder why this is? Maybe it is because when something really really strange/disturbing/frightening occurs, the first impulse people have is to get the fuck out of there rather than snap a photo? Fair enough. The "photo" thing was silly, and a kind of bait. However, now that I think of it, since so many houses are "known" to be haunted, why don't people just set up cameras, audio recorders, etc. in every room of one of the houses until they catch something? (btw, ever read "House of Leaves"? Creepiest haunted house story ever.)
• I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say "no". I think our ego gets in the way too much of the time. We are all heroes in our own story, even the murderers. Knowing our 'true selves' takes work and honesty and dedication, but the ego is always there, trying to convince us that 'it' is our identity, not something deeper. I completely agree. In many ways I think that self-knowledge is the purpose of a life: to understand yourself and why you act the way you do, and to accept that self is a life's work.
• I'm saying I don't know. I don't know, for certain, what happens after death, and I don't know, for certain, what we are capable of during life. There's a lot of odd phenomena out there, some of which I've witnessed, others reported by credible witnesses, and our science doesn't know how to deal with it. I agree that there are some phenomena out there that science doesn't know how to deal with. However, I also think that there are phenomena that people want to be attributed to other causes and so ignore simpler explanations for. (Which, I'd argue, goes back to what you were saying about the "ego" and self-knowledge: people really WANT there to be ghosts, God, faieries, etc. and so they see them wherever they look. And there are people who don't want to see them. I suppose I fall into that camp. However, I also believe that the burden lies on the people who DO believe to prove their existance, or at least the need for their existance. By that I mean, gravity is necessary in that an explanation is needed for why objects act the way they do. Ghosts are not "necessary.") I prefer to keep an open mind, rather than undermine what I don't understand. I prefer to question, and not take things on faith or hope. However, your jab is well placed and I think that I do have to crack open the door to my closet of "Things I Know" to allow the possibility that you could be right: there could be ghosts. But, again, I don't feel that the burden is on me to disprove their existance. (Funny, I didn't mean the name "certainsome1" to mean that I'm certain about anything. The name, which I don't like, came from a whim: I was listening to an old Sundays song.)
• And, finally, sorry for the length of my replies and the multiple postings. I'm enjoying this immensely, partly because I'm usually not good at being challenged, and this is forcing me to question my beliefs and motives. So, thanks.
• "..My point was that all these tidy ghosts that create picture-perfect duplicates of themselves.." ~ I don't really want to be argumentative, nor do I necessarily wish to identify myself as subscriber to the belief in 'ghosts' (I'd like to remain on the fence on the issue) but I'll add that we don't actually know what any of these alleged former-human beings really looked like in real life. Assuming that their 'spectres' look exactly the same as their earthly forms, and discounting the likelihood of ghosts based upon this point, is another convenient assumption for the skeptic. This seems to be somewhat of a strawman. (Probably based on all those old stories about some Elizabethan ghostly woman in white wandering about an abbey or something - which I don't count as believable). The most 'believable' ghost sightings (by nominally rational people or even trained observers who don't try to gain notoriety or money from their claims, or who in fact suffer ridicule because of their sightings, etc, as opposed to credulous spiritualists, faux-psychics, table-thumpers & the like) are very often not specific in any real regard to dress, features, or what-have-you, outside of internal details consistant with other experiencers of the same, or similar, phenomena. I don't know of many truly believable cases where a witness has pointed to some old painting or sepia-print victorian photograph and gone "There! that's the bloke!" - with a few notable exceptions, perhaps. Anyway, this is one of those arguments that never gets anywhere. I am one who believes that there is 'more in heaven & earth' etc, than we know, and as I said, I've had some rather odd experiences myself - and spoken to trustworthy, sane individuals who've had far weirder ones - that convince me that the ways of the universe are far beyond our present understanding, particularly in regards to the seat of consciousness and the nature of identity - even, perhaps, 'reality' itself (which is just a collectively agreed-upon construct of our own simian nervous-systems anyway). Some theorists in the field of Quantum Mechanics, for example, which produces quite real and verifiable results in the lab, suggest quite seriously that consciousness itself is 'non-local' and exists outside of any single locale, interacting with the fundamentals of 'reality' in a way that seems more like metaphysics than physics. This viewpoint could posit the brain and it's functions as more a transmitter/receiver than a source of consciousness, without invalidating any of the discoveries of neuroscience. I'm quite attracted to that idea. Whatever. I will say this, though, I'm not easily convinced by ghost stories, but: there's a book by John G. Fuller called The Ghost of Flight 401 which really made me take the existance of life after physical death more seriously. This was loosely made into a preposterous movie some years back starring Bill Shatner, which bears no resemblance to the events in the book apart from a plane being involved. Ignore the movie; I thoroughly recomend the book as it is written in objective, clinical style and is certainly not credulous in the recounting of a truly fascinating series of modern 'hauntings' associated with identifiable individuals and modern technology. Despite some wooly descents into speculative territory, the events recounted in the author's investigation are compelling. I've never seen a debunking of this book on grounds that the details were false, trumped up, or exaggerated. Well worth a read for the skeptic & enthusiast alike. But not after dark.
• Addendum: the Shatner movie was 'Horror @ 37,000 Feet' and was not based on the Fuller book. The 401 movie starred.. Borgnine. Apple-ologies. Either of those actors scare me more than any ghost!
• careful, nostril- Never Dis the Shatner.
• I agree that there are some phenomena out there that science doesn't know how to deal with. Scientific method is not useful for all data, especially when applied to human experience. The old saying, "if your only tool is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail", applies. There may be better tools to explain how the world works, but the scientific culture seems to resist finding new ones. people really WANT there to be ghosts, God, faieries, etc. and so they see them wherever they look. And there are people who don't want to see them. The majority of witnesses I've known fall into the catagory of "I don't want to see them, but I did anyway, and wish it would stop" or "What was THAT?" I know a delightful woman who routinely sees ghosts, fairies, spirit guides, you name it. Has done so since childhood. Is she schizophrenic? Possibly, but in all other regards, lives a normal life. Except that you can't play poker with her, as she always knows when you're bluffing. If we accept that some people are born with athletic ability, intellect, or artistic talent, why not accept that some people are born more 'sensitive' to subtle energies that you and I aren't aware of?
• A good ghost story is always poignant and interesting, and nobody likes to suggest to their friends that they are mistaken about what they saw or heard. But what if someone were currently campaigning for 'ghost science' to be taught alongside normal biology as a valid alternative? I have a feeling - actually I hope - that if that had been the case this thread would have gone in quite a different direction...
• If we accept that some people are born with athletic ability, intellect, or artistic talent, why not accept that some people are born more 'sensitive' to subtle energies that you and I aren't aware of? Because athleticism, intellect, and art are all demonstrable to third parties. Your "subtle energies" exist only and forever in the minds of the sensitives.
• But what if someone were currently campaigning for 'ghost science' to be taught alongside normal biology as a valid alternative? Paging Doctor Venkman, Doctor Peter Venkman to reception. Yeah, fiction, I know.
• *has big clean shave with Occam's razor, grins*
• Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass That darkness is about to pass. -- Emily Dickinson