Seasonal question: Do you believe in ghosts?

[C Elegans]

I just read a poll from the UK, where 68% said they believe in the existence of ghosts and 12% believed they had seen a ghost. Most remarkably though was that 76% said that TV shows and horror movies like "The Blair Witch Project" have helped convince them spooks and ghouls really exist.

Amazing stuff, in my opinion.

So, do you believe in ghosts? If so, why?

Personally I don't believe in ghosts anymore than I believe in gods, unicorns or Santa Claus. In the same manner as I would require scientific evidence to start believing a god exists, I would require scientific evidence to start believing ghost exist.

And a second question is, do you think TV shows and movies are good sources of information? I don't, and I'm curious to find out if anyone feel like defending those sources of information.

[Bloodstalker]

Do I believe in ghosts in the sense of the image of something akin to a white sheet floating around or the boogy man? No.

Do I believe that some things can happen that don't seem to have much in the way of an explanation which some people tend to catagorise as ghostly activity? Sure. I've had exerpiences that I would say fell into the catagory of weird stuff that I can't explain. Of course, I don't classify the idea of there not being an explanation for something as equal to an explanation hasn't been found for it. I don't believe that science has the answer to everything at the present (Else why would anyone still be doing research), but I also don't believe that just because science may not be able to explain something at the present it won't be able to explain it in the future.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I don't see any reason why a lack of proof should be seen as the same thing as no proof existing. While I don't think that this statement is an open invitation to just believe what you want without regard to thinking, I think it's also important to remain skeptical in an open way about things that you can't explain.

As far as T.V and movies being a dependable source for information, sure, why not? After all, they make movies all the time about great people like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And everyone who knows anything knows that those two figures are real (No offense CE. Maybe you just didn't see the correct version of the Life and Times of Santa Claus so you are operating on misinformation )

[Xandax]

[QUOTE=C Elegans]<snip>
So, do you believe in ghosts? If so, why?
<snip>[/QUOTE]

I do *not* belive in such - infact I think it is nonsences.
The main reason is that if Ghosts (and practically anything else "supernatural"/"paranormal) existed, it would be more documented then some vauge references of people claiming they have witnessed/experienced such phenomena.

It is the same with UFOs in my book. In my mind there is statistically no doubt there is life in space, however - I don't belive in UFOs, because if they were "here", there would be more referneces to them and more people would have seen it.
Afterall - a celebrity can't walk around withouth thousands of pictures being taken by countless people. However people claim to have seen ghosts (and similar) withouth any significant evidence then blurry pictures and vauge mentions.

No way in my book. Logic prevails yet again. :laugh: (<-- Look, even I am using new emoticons now )

[dragon wench]

I do not believe in things that float around attired in white sheets...
I'd love to know how that whole white sheet thing came about anyway.

Nor would I take any TV/movie representations of the paranormal as credible.

As far as a belief that the dead might linger once that energy is expelled upon death..
I don't think it can be truly proven or disproven, not at this point in time anyway.

[Georgi]

[QUOTE=C Elegans]Most remarkably though was that 76% said that TV shows and horror movies like "The Blair Witch Project" have helped convince them spooks and ghouls really exist.[/QUOTE]

Ummm... do these people not understand the difference between fact and fiction?

I don't believe in ghosts, because I've never seen one. Although a friend of mine reckons that her old bedroom at her mum's house is haunted, she saw a ghost when she was staying there once... now her sister won't sleep in that room anymore.

[Dottie]

Just like I don't think there is much difference between creationism and intelligent design I don't think there is much difference in believing in white floating sheets and believing in mysterious lingering energy. The core components remain intact, despite the attempt to make the belief less absurd.

In both cases you take an unsupported claim by a few people over an overwhelming absence of data. Why would you want to do that?

And a second question is, do you think TV shows and movies are good sources of information? I don't, and I'm curious to find out if anyone feel like defending those sources of information.

I doubt more than a very few select persons would claim that TV fiction is a good source of information. More interesting in my opinion is why people who do not view TV fiction as a good source of information still takes much impression of them. Not many people would view advertisement's as a good source of information about a certain product, but it has good effect regardless of this.

[ch85us2001]

[QUOTE=Xandax]It is the same with UFOs in my book. In my mind there is statistically no doubt there is life in space, however - I don't belive in UFOs, because if they were "here", there would be more referneces to them and more people would have seen it. [/QUOTE]
My thoughts exactly Xandax, it is a statistical probablility that there are "aliens" but I doubt they're here.

*sheepish grin* I believe in "ghosts" *turns red with embarressment* I also sometimes think that TV shows can be informational (NOT fiction, shows like ghosthunters on scifi). Too many wierd things have happened to me.

Well thats my two cents

[Red_X]

I agree with both sides, the proof is limited and not even that credited but also there are so many unexplained things that have happened to so many people you still just have to wounder. Do I believe in ghosts? Yes I do. Do I know why I believe in ghosts? I dont really have a great explination for it, I guess Its just because i believe that there is more then just what we see every day, there somthing beyond it all. Yes, Yes I know it sounds cheesy but thats the best way I could say it. I guess its just one of those unsolved mysteries that will ALWAYS be debated and always question. I just like keep an open mind about most things.

[C Elegans]

Hi Georgeous! Nice to see you

Ummm... do these people not understand the difference between fact and fiction?

It is well documented that people may differentiate between facts and fiction on a conscious level, although they underestimate how influenced they are by fiction like movies. However, what I found remarkable with this poll is that people consciously acknowledge their have been influenced by TV shows and horror movies. I wonder if this is related to the postmodernistic anti-intellectualism reasoning that "in the flood of information you have to choose yourself what suits you to believe in", ie the idea that all information has equal value?

I don't believe in ghosts, because I've never seen one. Although a friend of mine reckons that her old bedroom at her mum's house is haunted, she saw a ghost when she was staying there once... now her sister won't sleep in that room anymore.

There are many experiences that people may interpret as percepting a ghost, or some other kind of prescence. In consciousness research there is an expression for this type of experience, sensed prescence and research has shown this experience can be elicited in a varity of different way, including psychotropic drugs and experimental stimulation of the temporal lobes. However, let's presume that an objectively existing ghost is hauting your friends house. Since ghosts are immaterial, her sister need not be afraid, does she? :laugh: (<-- look, I also use the new smiley!)

reference list[/url] list contains some very good scientific studies and articles related to the field (a pity the excellent article is in Swedish so only you can read it) and I can also recommend [url="http://print.google.com/print?id=N6RtrzRvhh8C&dq=the+psychology+of+religion+hood&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhs%3DPG3%26hl%3Dsv%26client%3Dopera%26rls%3Dsv%26q%3Dthe%2Bpsychology%2Bof%2Breligion%2Bhood%26btnG%3DS%25C3%25B6k%26lr%3D&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1&sig=GHTFG-AD4oIgjRPSTOezGHs6S58"]this textbook[/url].

Is there any evidence that gods or ghosts do not exist? No, but just as with the pink unicorns, there is no evidence they do exist, so I remain a scientific atheist regarding the existence of transcendent phenomena.

In the meanwhile, I concur with British physicist Stehpen Hawking who once said that science will deliver "the mind of god". It is my belief that this prediction is correct in as much as science will deliver the mind of man, which I personally believe contains the mind of "god" (as well as ghosts).

[Lasher]

[QUOTE=Xandax]I do *not* belive in such - infact I think it is nonsences.
The main reason is that if Ghosts (and practically anything else "supernatural"/"paranormal) existed, it would be more documented then some vauge references of people claiming they have witnessed/experienced such phenomena.[/QUOTE]


Actually, there are a huge number of documented exorcisms and investigations out there... And I'm not very religious, but do I consider myself spiritual. I've seen too many things, read too many books, and known too many people to doubt the existence of spirits.

[Luis Antonio]

I have heard many "evidence" regarding the paranormal, specially due to the fact that evangelical churches in Brazil use the paranormal as an argument to bring in more of the scared people. I call this evidence because they use the so called experiences from certain people this way. It works like this: Someone comes out of the crowd, and this someone has been ensnared by evil spirits. Then, the priest/shepherd (as they call em) puts the spirit back where it should have been (usually in hell, because hell is a place from where you can never go back but strangely enough there are spirits who can return, anyhow, who am I to disagree with faith).

However, I do belive people have spirits, and I do believe they go somewhere. I feel scared when I watch terror movies, or when I hear someone telling their experiences or rendezvous with ghosts. I am rather imaginative, and I keep thinking - but that goes the same way as my relations with the so called UFO's: I think the stories are amusing enough to get me scared/instill me emotions but I dont think this is true. At least, as Xandax pointed out, why wont they just come openly and talk/contact us if they're so curious about a few of us?

Once i read (maybe in SYM) about people who have a certain sleep disturbance during a certain stage of the sleep where their bodies can move but their minds are still dreaming, so the sensorial imput makes dreaming such a real experience that this thing itself could explain the 5% of north american people who believes in UFO's and who say they've been abducted. So, if you think about it and relate with the ghostly visages people have, you may find a correlation(?) between them. BTW, the persons who go through these experiences will pass on any "truth test", because they're not lying: It is an experience they've "been through" even though only inside their own dreams.

Anyway, it is spooky. I'll test one of those new smilies now, as a way to demonstrate how spooky this thing may be: :speech:

[VonDondu]

I don't know why people believe everything they see on television or everything they read on the internet. To me, reporting what someone thinks does not make it true, and I don't believe than any media outlet is "authoritative".

I think I can understand why some people believe in ghosts. On a couple of occasions, I have gotten a serious case of the "creeps" that left me with the undeniable feeling that something was nearby. But I knew that it was nothing more than a feeling. For example, in one case, I experienced that feeling when I was walking through a vacant high-rise building that was being renovated. I was on the fifth floor, and it was dark outside. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an old light fixture outside the building through a window, and for a split-second, I thought it was a human head. It freaked me out, and I had chills for over an hour even though I realized it was just a light fixture.

I know what you're thinking: maybe it was a haunted light fixture.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in ghosts. On the one hand, enough people have said they've seen a ghost to raise the possibility that ghosts might really exist. But on the other hand, ghosts are not detectable by currently available scientific means, so there is no solid proof that they exist outside the minds of humans (and cats and dogs).

Ghosts are neither matter nor energy, so what else could they be? I seem to have a lot less confidence in science than a lot of people, just because I believe there are limits to what humans can observe and measure. There is evidence that subatomic particles "communicate" with each other (which I learned when I attempted to study quantum mechanics several years ago), which leads me to believe that the "building blocks of the universe" are too impossibly complicated to predict or even to understand.

I don't know if it's possible for a person's existence to leave an "impression" on the universe that other people can sense after he or she is gone, but at this point, I can't say it's impossible. I don't see how ghosts can have any effect on matter, and I don't see how they could have feelings. So I figure if ghosts are real, they're kind of like shadows on the sidewalk, and we have nothing to fear from them (unless we're afraid of our own shadows).

[Luis Antonio]

[QUOTE=VonDondu]
I think I can understand why some people believe in ghosts. On a couple of occasions, I have gotten a serious case of the "creeps" that left me with the undeniable feeling that something was nearby. But I knew that it was nothing more than a feeling. For example, in one case, I experienced that feeling when I was walking through a vacant high-rise building that was being renovated. I was on the fifth floor, and it was dark outside. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an old light fixture outside the building through a window, and for a split-second, I thought it was a human head. It freaked me out, and I had chills for over an hour even though I realized it was just a light fixture.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, I had those too. But I try not caring for those things much: They're even funny if you start thinking about it (without trying to scare yourself).

[Fiberfar]

I don't belive in white flying sheets. I had a scary incident that cannot be explained however. I'm pretty sure something was in an house I used to live in. I used to wake up from sounds from upstairs. I went to check on them and no one was there, nothing looked out of order. I checked all the bedrooms to see if someone was awake other than me. Nobody was. I opened the door to my room so that I could see the stairs, nobody passsed the stairs but I still heard the sound of people talking and walking.

Some of the things I had on a drawer fell down one night, though they couldn't fall down. I was not the only person to hear things there. My sister heard voices as well....

Scary place:speech: ...

[Georgi]

It is well documented that people may differentiate between facts and fiction on a conscious level, although they underestimate how influenced they are by fiction like movies. However, what I found remarkable with this poll is that people consciously acknowledge their have been influenced by TV shows and horror movies. I wonder if this is related to the postmodernistic anti-intellectualism reasoning that "in the flood of information you have to choose yourself what suits you to believe in", ie the idea that all information has equal value?

I think you are giving the people too much credit. However, it is possible that they meant documentary-type shows rather than clearly fictional stuff, I suppose.

this experience can be elicited in a varity of different way, including psychotropic drugs

Considering the friend, I don't think it can be ruled out.

However, let's presume that an objectively existing ghost is hauting your friends house. Since ghosts are immaterial, her sister need not be afraid, does she?

LOL Why are people scared of ghosts then?

[Fiona]

They've had a bad press ?

[Mr Sleep]

No I don't believe in ghosts any more than I believe that I'm going to get attacked by flying monkeys when I leave the house in the morning. Not as rational a non belief as your Ms Elegans but I bet there is some psychological condition which precipitates such scary considerations. However if you were a bit tup you might have seen the episode of the Simpsons where Monty Burns unleashes his creations (flying chimps) on the world.

Not sure what that has to do with ghosts but anyway. I think the likeliness that people believe they might have sen a ghost in their own minds is the only real explanation for quite so many people knowing somebody who's seen one. The mind does funny things and I wonder sometimes if horror movies aren't an influence, even subconciously, as to what we expect to see in certain situations. So I'm in a creepy creaky house, it's quite likely that I'd expect to hear some weird things which could cause me to see some very strange sightings.

Of course if you're toasted on acid then that might also precipitate seeing some strange things

[Curdis]

I've seen ghosts/visions, but I have a rational explanation.

This all happened before puberty so precedes my use of hallucinagenic drugs by a couple of years .

Sometimes, at night, after being woken (during or by a dream I don't know) I would go and seek my mother (in another bedroom). On more than one occassion I had to push through/away a ghost/vision which was in my path. They were real enough to my conscious that I would have to physically try to touch them to be able to tell that they were non-corporal. The most common "vision" was of mother Mary (I blame the Beatles).

Even at the time I was unconvinced that this was a "spiritual" phenomena, because, apart from their apparent existence, the visions really didn't have much of a message/meaning for me. I have since heard that such "visions" are relatively commonplace and are due to a failure to switch between asleep and awake states within the brain (although CE will be able to reveal the true extent of my ignorance on this topic).

So yes I have seen ghosts and must believe in them (to the extent indicated above).

To the much broader topic of the spiritual/spirit world I will make no such definitive statement, but that wasn't what was asked, was it? - Curdis !

[Gunofgod]

I once broke in to an abandoned house that was very spooky.I didn't see anything but I heard a lot of weird noises,whispers,sqeaky floorboards and doorhinges.:speech:

That house made me a believer.

[Patrick]

Personal but true story here. Listen and heed the moan.
Actually when I was 17 I laid on my bed and saw a figure that was clear and purpal at he same time. Looked like a Planetar from Monster manual 2 first ed. with no wings. Bald tall no lower body. CLear with purpal outline like a black light. It came through the wall and look at me and its eyes flashed a purpal color. Then it went where it came from. I did know if I should be scared or what. UI come to think this was not a bad deity at all but maybe a real planetar???

Second time. This was and is really frightning for me. I call it a deamon. I was sleeping on my bed at my Moms house and had a dream of a Black Meditating form of a human type being. It was so black it drew light in like a Black Hole. It would suck in my vision and all light around me and tried to kill me. I saw in the dream a vision of India and Africa nad the poverty they have and the dirty life and cultural heratige they have. It is apart from being that I am AMerican Irish/Norse. I was being sucked into this creature like the light/life force was drawn out of me. I felt it talking all my food and all of it was disapearing from my life house and refrigerator.
I Woke up. I was afixeated to the vision. I could not move a bone in my body for like 2 minutes. I could call out for help, though I tryed. FInally after about 2 minutes, I cried out. I was scared. Could barely move. Wierd. But Memerably. The deamon seem to be black all around and had sucked all into it creating death without excape. I was meditating and moved a arm or hand that couse a stir or fear and terror. I was running and screaming in the vision from my mom food filled refrigerator. Hard to describe. I live so I am thankfull, because I felt like I was going to die.
Party On folks, I still drink Guiness