[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Objectivist]

Personally, I ponder the nature of time often and yet I really don't have a firm position. My symathies lie with presentism because I feel the past is truly gone and to the extent it exists it is in presents ghosts. Then as time goes on those ghosts fade while the set of possible paths that could have led to this moment increases. Then I think, certainly there is the way things actually happened so in some sense the past exists in some immutable way...from a god's eye view so to speak...regardless of whether from an objective reality (i.e. there are past objects) or an Akashic record.

Anyways, I was just curious what others thought about time.

I too am interested in what time is and find it very hard to think about.  I remember when I was a little kid I used to watch Captain Kangaroo in the mornings and I always loved the segment where they played the film backward and the toothpaste would go back into the tube and the egg would unscramble.  I understand sort of why that can't happen in real life.  I have a basic understanding of entropy.   I think the thing to say is that the past was real when it was the present but I don't know if I'm still watching Captain Kangaroo in the past.  

 I know the present is real and that the past was once the present and the future will be the present when it gets here if that makes any sense.