Seasonal question: Do you believe in ghosts?

[Hill-Shatar]

I know that there are things that can not be explained by the human mind rationally, such as weird whisper like sounds coming from the lower level of the house, as we are unable to percieve what is actually causing the soundwaves to vibrate through layers of walls and meters, perhaps of kilometers of air to reach us.

Do I believe there are things that are the manifestation of spiritual imprints left by those who have past on, who some believe reside as forms of electromagnetic pulses and plasma? I do not. Although it would give many piece of mind, perhaps one of the reasons why hauntings are so popular, Even if these 'people' are evil, in a sense of the word, doing malign deeds and the such, it gives others a sense of security that there is a place to go onto afterwards.

I personally believe in oblivion, myself. Although it would be an extremely pleasant thought if there was something afterwards, even if it was eternal torment; I have an extreme fear of oblivion. It was the stage that all teenagers go through when they ask the really deep questions, and my answers scared me to heck.

Sure, I have seen things that have made me wonder, but I can always rule them out with other, motre likely possibilities. Although I may find things weird such as a chair moving seemingliy in an empty room, I always typically blame that on one of the dogs tearing through the house again, instead of what others would think of it as.

Some people also suffer from night terrors, such as I did when I was young. I imagined some extrmely brutal and shocking images when I was little when I dreamed, and I have no idea where I got them from. However, my parents used to tell me stories of how I would be sitting their with my eyes open, screaming my head off, when they ran to my room I shared with my brother to check on me.

Still, I am sure that some of you have seen weird things happen. I know that once, when I was in my teens, one of my friends and I could have sworn we saw a woman walk through a solid wall, and we could never find an explanation that could really explain it, unless there was a small door there and she could run fast.

Everything out there must have an explanation in some way. If it does not exist on our plane, then it should not effect us at all, as we would be somewhat tangible. The universe is a ball, and while they play with that ball, everything remains the same on the inside.

Part of the problem may also come from human perception. To us, a cat inside a box does not exist to the human mind, yet a nut ionside a shell does. However, is the latter because we learned that there may be a treat iside what we crack open? Human's do not see the cat. However, look into the box, and that cat appears inbto our sense of reality. Hear the cat, and we can assosiate it with a cat. Hear a sciffle inside a box, and we just heard the box move.

Until I see something on the internet that I can examine at first hand that concludes that there are vengeful spirits that want to kill us all, and I am able to see the evidence with my own eyes, then I am fairly secure that they do not exist. If I see one, then I will be going to a doctor, a psychiatrist and a neurologist first to make sure that there are no problems with me. No forms of hallucetory effect from sleeping or sleep deprivation, or a form of 'temporary insanity', and the like.

[QUOTE=Luis Antonio]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.[/QUOTE]

When I was young I had a dream that giant Purple Hairy beings with heavy brow lines and a bulgy figure were standing around my bed with something akin to a phaser pointed at me. I thought it was real because I could feel my sweat on the bed. It was a night terror that I mentioned above.

Sleep walking is also a form of this, when the body racts to stimulus and uses unconcious memory to move throughout the house. My brother did that. My parents were exasperated with us both. Quite hilarious to listen back on.

[QUOTE=CE] However, what I found remarkable with this poll is that people consciously acknowledge their have been influenced by TV shows and horror movies.[/QUOTE]

For a time, as was everyone else here, I am sure, I was a horror freak. I could never fall asleep as I could imagine the hand coming up to grasp my ankle from the edge of the bed. It helps when you now sleep in a bed with someone else, as they typically use yopu as the security animal that they miss from when they were a kid. Happens to me, and you always have a sense that if anything bad happens, they can save you.

[QUOTE=CE]Several genetic and epidemiological studies has demonstrated that religious belief is 50% genetically determined.[/QUOTE]

Sorry to be nitpicky, but it was slightly oer fifty and had a decimal after it from the census I read a while ago. Of course, it seems that a while ago I began listing these things as four years ago... so...

Unfortunaely, I would type more but must go.

[C Elegans]

[QUOTE=Hill-Shatar]Sorry to be nitpicky, but it was slightly oer fifty and had a decimal after it from the census I read a while ago. Of course, it seems that a while ago I began listing these things as four years ago... so...
[/QUOTE]

Special note to Hill, all others can ignore this:
In twin and adoption studies that quantify genetic versus environmental influence of traits, it is typically unimportant to give exact figures including decimals. Analysis are done on large cohorts where effects of shared genes and non-shared (99.9% for monozygotic twins and 50% for dizygotic twins) and shared and non-shared environment. In many studies, personality traits have consistently shown around 50% genetic determination. This has also been the case for religious behaviour and religious attitudes, and the most well know study including religious behavior is probably Bouchard TJ Jr, Lykken DT, McGue M, Segal NL, Tellegen A: Sources of human psychological differences: the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Science 1990; 250:223–228. For the seriously interested, I recommend the review Bouchard TJ Jr, McGue M. Genetic and environmental influences on human psychological differences. J Neurobiol. 2003 Jan;54(1):4-45..

/end of scientific mode

For the generally interested, it may seem surprising and strange that religious behaviour show a genetic influence as high as around 50%. It should be noted that it is not religious affiliation (ie muslim, christian, hindu, specific churcher or cults) that is referred to here, it is religious behaviour such as participation in religious rites and meetings, and religious attitudes such as interest, self-rated belief and experiences, etc. The genetic influence seems to be strongest in value, attitude and interest issues, but lower (down to 30%) in degree of observing religious laws and church attendence.

So, what we mean when we say religious behaviour show a 50% genetic influence, is not, like the popular media like to express things, that there is "a gene for religiousity", but that there are genes that code for proteins that influence the development of a brain that is predisposed for religion when exposed to a religious culture.

You may wonder how this relates to believing in ghosts. The association is that belief in mystical phenomena and/or transcendence is related to religion. There is a large overlap between believing in one mystical phenomena and another. Furthermore, anaysis show that for instance new age beliefs and traditional religion have the same core features. There is increasing evidence supporting the hypothesis that the magical, mystical and religious minded people share the same basic traits.

[Gwalchmai]

I believe that it is thrilling to talk about ghosts. It is exciting to sit around the campfire with the flashlight under your chin, talking about the vengeful, disembodied hand that crawls through forest, slithering into unsuspecting kid’s sleeping bags. The kids laugh at this and look at each other saying, “Boo!” They may look askance at the nighttime trees and jump at the sound of every broken twig. In the morning, they will laugh and twitter, and generally feel good that they made it through the night, despite the silly, scary stories.

I believe that some mothers have made up stories in order to discourage their children from doing dangerous things. They might talk about the ghost of a child who drowned in the flooded river and who now tries to lure other children to their deaths so that he might have a playmate in death.

I believe that there are a lot of reasons why people might believe that ghosts exist.
:speech:

[Hill-Shatar]

Major edit- stupid purple monkeys. Never repsond to two things regarding decimals at once. It gets confusing.

[C Elegans]

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.

I really hope I do not, if you are correct it's too darn sad.

Blair Witch Project was listed as one example of movie, TV-shows were not specifically mentioned, but let's hope it wasn't as fictional and Blair Witch Project at least.

LOL Why are people scared of ghosts then?

That's what I wonder, too

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.

The sleep disturbance you refer to is most likely a form of narcolepsy. Vivid, intense dreams, often including noises and shapes, occur in a subgroup of patients that are sometimes misdiagnosed as psychotic because the patients themselves can only report their experiences, they don't realise they have been alsleep and dreaming. Hypnogogic states (states between sleep and awakeness) in general commonly produce hallucinations. Because the person is asleep, it is common that they can't move due to the low muscle tonus, and thus, their accounts will sound very much like Patrick's second paragraph. Hypnogogic states is also what I belive Curdis is referring to. Among scientists, it is thought that some cases of alien-abduction reports can be explained by hypnogogic states. People with sleep disturbances or neuropsychiatric conditions experience hypnogogic states more often than others.

There are however many possible reasons why people can have experiences that later are interpreted as meeting ghosts. Apart from normal perceptive illusions, there are also a number of disorders that are known to induce extraordinary experiences. Migrain and epilepsy are two nervous system disorders that often produce visions of light, figures and aura-like phenomena as well as a sense of presence of something. Sleep deprivation, drugs and stress can also induce similar experiences in people as well as controlled experiments with electromagnetism.

The human mind indeed does funny things, just think of how easy it is to provoke the most extraordinary experiences. There is an obvious cultural bias in how people interpret their experiences, that has been documented. Very few mystical phenomena are cross-cultural, a West African spirit is described completely different from a Western European one. There are however a few experiences that have similar elements in many cultures, primarily so called "near-death experiences". The light and the tunnel have been reported by people from different cultures, although the rest of the story varies a lot. Mystic minded people view this as evidence that it's an objective reality these people have encountered. Others, such as myself, hold it more likely that it's a consequence of the uniformity of human brain functioning. For example, severe hypoxia and ischemia is an urgent life-threatning state and it would be strange indeed if every individual brain reacted very differently at such a basic condition.

It certainly is! I think most kids enjoy the sensation of that creepy, gasping feeling that moderate fear is. It's a kind of emotional entertainment, just enough to raise your awareness level and vigilance, but not so much so you panic. I used to make up the most horrible ghost stories for my friends when I was a child and were out somewhere, and it was also fun to scare them so they didn't dare to go back to their rooms and everybody had to sleep in my room

Finally, @Hill: Honestly no, I don't understand. Not anything, actually. Perhaps you are in a hypnagogic state?
Ethnic geneology studies? Where did you get that from? Also, the reason I mentioned that decimals are not so important in this type of studies, is that decimals give a false sense of exactness in this case. Every population sample differs slighly from the other in epidemiologics, so if one study shows 42.8 genetic influence and another 54.6, it's normal variation.

[Hill-Shatar]

Oops, I just sent half of my response to this away on an email. I got a response back asking why in the hell I was talking about random percentages and ghosts.

Needless to say, I think this is a sign to edit my post entirely and try again tomorrow, when I am staying home and refreshed.

Bah, I need my coffee. I am more in a hypnopompic state. Probably explains why there is drool all over my new keyboard. Why I was also entertained by [url="http://www.bored.com/nosepilot/real.html"]this[/url] for the last few minutes.

Sorry, but my emails and your post intermingled. I thought you were nuts.

[C Elegans]

[quote="Hill]Oops"]

ROFLMAO

Accoring to some reports I've read, the hypnopompic* state is even more likely to produce vivid hallucinations Myself, I am in a clear hypnogogic* state, and I have visions of an angry face belonging to my professor. This hypnogogic precognition will most likely turn out to be a psychic prediction of the future unless I sleep immediately.

@all who wants to know in case you are not familiar with these terms:

*hypnogogic - the state between wakefulness and falling asleep

*hypnopompic - the state between being asleep and awakening. The type of experiences Curdis relates, are typical for the hypnopompic state.

[Fenix]

[QUOTE=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.
[/QUOTE]

Was that 12% of the people who belive in ghosts or 12% of the people in the poll.

I do believe in 'something' that may be considered ghostly, not something like, as previous said, a white sheet frolicking around at me. More like some kind of 'being' that has died or whatever, and trying to 'communicate'.

I do *not* mean stuff like that John Edwards guy with people who have copped it floating trying to tell relations this and that - I mean more like guardian spirits, for lack of a better name, that kind of promote a feeling of warning in someone when something is wrong, basically some kind of 'sense' that alerts you to something you don't know - I've had my fair share of experiences where things seem just a little too coincidental.