Ghosts

[IATIA]

Let me go ask Casper what he thinks........


Nope, we do not believe in ghosts.

As atheists, we have no use for gods or souls. Seems a strange question to ask as the ghost is the disembodied spirit or soul.

[Minimalist]

Nope.  Silly shit.

[robvalue]

No. Like all supernatural crap, I've not heard even heard a sensible definition. It's always the argument from ignorance, "What else could it have been?"

My wife believes in them, because she learnt much irrational thinking from her parents.

[ignoramus]

All bullshit (but that didn't stop me from crying in "Ghost") did I just say that out loud!?

[rexbeccarox]

(I'm kinda drunk)

I've had some freaky things happen during times I've lived in freaky places. For example, when I was in college, I lived in a motel-cum-sortof-triplex. My landlord's old-school Ukrainian dad and I became good friends, and while we explored the broken-down bungalows around the property, we found the evidence that the property and its buildings had once been a swingers' resort in the 40's and 50's. While we couldn't actually pinpoint what happened, through newspaper clippings and local word-of-mouth, we figured out that some tragedy occurred, and it had something to do with the broken-down and rotted dock on the river about a half mile path behind the "house".

Rewind a little to when my mom drove across the state to help me move in: I went to class, and she began exploring the property. No way I could blame her: I lived in the mountains, away from anything that wasn't outside of a thirty-mile radius, on a beautiful whitewater river that made the most wondrous rushing noises.

My commute to school was long, but it was worth it every day: the sunset in the fall- the oranges and reds... and the indescribable harvest moon; the frozen cliffs, their beauty in the white ice that flanked them, but also in the falling water that couldn't be deterred; the reds and purples and yellows of spring as I drove up and down the mountain...

... but I digress.

One of the things my mom found was a cemetery, up on a hill, dating back to 1616. Most of the gravestones, at least the discernible ones, bore a distinct, and what we found out later, very local name.

... but this cemetery was so far from anywhere anyone would even know where to go. We took rubbings and photos, and went on our merry way.

As I got to know my landlord, he started to trust me with details, like the fact that he had lived there for ten years until his landlord died there and left the place to him. Turns out, several old dudes had died there.  Andy (my landlord) was a paramedic, so I think his living there might have been by design.

The point of all of this is that I had some really weird experiences, even to the point where money went missing, and strange things happened when groups of us were hanging out, like one chick put her smoke in the ashtray and when she went to grab it, it wasn't there. My very mellow cat would freak out regularly and I had an incident in which I felt like something grabbed my foot.

If I had an answer for any of the things that happened, they'd be nothing more than gaps answers. Just knowing the history of where I was living could have easily made something supernatural in my mind. Ghosts? No ghosts? Does it really matter?

/drunk

[StuW]

I believe in ghost in the way that I believe in UFO's are misidentified natural phenomena. Magnetic fields, natural or otherwise, can cause all manner of strange effects on the brain which is what I'd attribute most sightings to.

[Cecelia]

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe it's possible that people leave something behind when they die. And perhaps there's a yet undiscovered yet mostly undeveloped sense that picks this sort of thing up. I mean at this point it's just something I'd consider possible. It's also possible that time is concurrent, and sometimes we can see glimpses into others times or other universes even. And it's possible events that appear supernatural are just hallucinations. There's a lot we don't understand. I'm open to the possibility that the 'ghosts' people think they see are something -- but I think that something could be explained scientifically rather than supernaturally.

[Redbeard The Pink]

There's also some evidence to suggest that a great many ghost-related experiences are caused and/or enhanced by environmental factors that create some kind of low-frequency noise that can't quite be consciously noticed but is still unconsciously heard. Noises of that frequency are things we've actually evolved to be afraid of because the only natural phenomenon that make those noises are usually things that can kill us (earthquakes, big animals, stampedes, massive weather events, etc.).


When humans are exposed to sounds like these even in the absence of anything dangerous to make them, we tend to be set on edge and experience unexplained feelings of dread; some people even start to hear noises that aren't there and see things darting around the corners of their vision, following them, etc.


The first example of this I remember was from a story about an office building that was purported to be haunted in one section. When employees worked there, especially alone or at late hours, they would sometimes see and hear spooky things and have strange experiences. Investigation yielded that there was a malfunctioning fan in the ventilation system that was causing a bunch of the vents to thrum with a low-frequency sound. Once the fan was repaired, the experiences stopped and the office went back to normal.


Another example comes from research. Low-frequency sounds have been directed at unwitting crowds under various conditions, and crowds exposed to the sounds sometimes start getting agitated, even panicked. It's a weird phenomenon that warrants further study, but if there turns out to be anything to it then it could go a long way toward explaining certain paranormal phenomena.

[Kitty Galore]

I have been skeptical of ghosts even when I was somewhat religious. I believed that, yes people may be looking down upon me, or guiding me.... those are angels. I don't believe in them anymore. I am with Redbeard on this, I think there is an explanation for those experiences. Someones state of mind, energies, stuff like that, that we don't understand. That is what I attribute "ghosts" to. Pretty much always have. But I am scared to death of any haunting movie or pics... etc. So I may need to think that to keep myself from having anxiety attacks every time I think about it.

[abaris]

Neither my grandparents nor my parents, nor my deceased friends, not even my dogs made contact. Which I find deplorable. But it leads me to the certainty that there are no ghosts.