Do You Believe In Ghosts?

I've never been able to believe in ghosts. I'm fairly cynical and I like solid proof. I'll never be able to believe in something unless someone hands me scientific proof or I see it with my own eyes.

It sucks sometimes, because I love the idea of believing in the supernatural and I kind of envy people who can.
 
Pike
Pike
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SinisterPledge
SinisterPledge
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EffyStonem,
I could give you a couple of good places to go, the best place is Fremantle Prison in WA. It was closed as a prison a long time ago. There has been several tv shows about the place. It even had a ch7 national news story there, a ghost was seen in the background while they did an interview.
 
JCoatsworth, I haven't seen a ghost for almost a year now, so I've only 48 years to talk about which year do I start with?

I don't know, just tell me about some things that you saw. I'd love to know. I have never seen a ghost and I have no reason to believe that they do exist.

---------- Post added at 07:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:08 PM ----------

Here's a thought. What came first.
A/ Hey I just saw a ghost.
or
B/ No, ghosts don't exist.

First off, I don't know about other people, but I don't say ghosts do not exist. I'm saying that I don't believe ghosts exist, until somebody shows me a ghost, or at least some solid evidence (and I have no idea what kind of evidence that could be).
Of course, A came first and B second. How can somebody say that something doesn't exist when nobody claims that it does exist. I can make something up and you can't say that it's not true before I have made it up.

It even had a ch7 national news story there, a ghost was seen in the background while they did an interview.
Is there a video? Because that could easily be some kind of hoax.
 
Yes and no. I'm very open minded towards subjects such as this, Ghosts,Aliens,UFO's etc, more because you get a lot of interesting reads about it and some interesting insight from people who claim to have witnessed or been apart of such events.

When I was about 4 years old, back at our old house that we lived in, before we moved in and before the family before us, apparently someone had died in the house (I think I was told it was a suicide/accident) been that long ago since I've thought or spoke about it, anyway, there were a few 'unusual' events that happened. A magazine on our sofa went flying across the room onto the floor, with only me and my mother in the room at the time. An old rocking horse in my room would move by it's self, rocking back and forward, things would go missing, the usual. Obviously there could be very logical explanations to this as I was to young at the time and didn't think anything of it lol.

But yes, I would say I lean more towards believing in Ghosts etc, than not.
 
Ex ghost hunter here. I've seen them, touched them, so some self professed expert telling people they don't exist is, in my eyes a silly person. From experience the age of a house doesn't matter, although it is a contributary factor. Group of ghosts go from point A to point B, if a housr is built on that route does the house become a haunted house?
Clark Gable once bought a film from the studio before it was released. In the photograph of the cast and crew after the film was completed was his wife, who was dead.

The problem with people who claim to have seen a ghost is any proof of it. I think there are organizations out there who will give money to those who can put proof on the table.

I am not saying you did or didn’t I just must say that I would want proof to put my beliefs behind. Once side of the fence can try their hardest to disclaim something that doesn’t exist while the other side has personal experiences.

As for me, I can’t seem to believe anything supernatural. While I would love-love-love to, I just never seem to be able to. All the literature, television, art and so on that I enjoy is typically based around supernatural elements (zombies, slayers, vampires, werewolves, ghost, and so on..). To my knowledge most supernatural history comes from a period of when things couldn’t be explained. When the world wasn’t connected and full of explanations.

All across the globe stories were passed on as truth. Multiple Gods, eat the dead to gain their strength, the world is flat, the earth is young, people come back from the dead. Now most of these beleifs have explanations.

While I would love to live in the Buffyverse, the reality of it is, that if I did believe in ghosts (or goblins, or gods, or zombies) I think I would lock myself in a closet for the rest of my life. I do, as others mentioned, believe that those who think they have seen a ghost must have some sort of mis-thinking of the situation (no offense). But then again, its hard to say you do or don’t believe something you have never seen. So many of you guys have seen a ghost and just because I haven’t doesn’t make it not true.

Someone mentioned an explanation of older houses releasing magnetic fields or something. I also would like to read into that. I find that explanation somewhat strange and would love to read it for myself.


Anyways, good topic. I would love to keep going with this. While I am a non-believer, the topic ghosts is still fun!
 
To those interested about the research I talked about, you probably won't be able to read the whole thing (I got things through my university so finding them online for free is a bit hard) but here is a link to abstracts and introductions of a few studies:

http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.2000.90.2.659?journalCode=pms

http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.2001.92.3.673

And this articles sites the study I was talking about, and it's a pretty interesting article, they are helping ghost hunters here lol

http://www.galileanministries.org/documents/hauntingsandmagnetismprimer.pdf

Oh and I stumbled about something about UFO

http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1981.53.1.115?journalCode=pms
 
Sort of interesting, I was hoping they would give decisive reasonings, but none of them did.
The first just seemed to go on about how they recreated an experience, but gave no proof that those ways were the only way the experience could happen.
The second on said of water leaking through bedrock - nothing was said how that would affect anything, just that there was a coincidence of something happening. They didn't give any data on how the water leaking through the bedrock was measured or if it was the same water. Not even what type of rock the bedrock is.
The third one, Geomagnetism - although the precise mechanisms have not fully been worked out yet. So why was it written in the first place?

---------- Post added at 09:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:09 PM ----------

And the fourth one. Are they being serious?
And as for the fourth one. If you see what you think is a UFO it'll likely be that they'll be an earthquake in up to a years time.
That is a stupid comment.
It is a fact that the tectonic plates are constantly on the move, at about the same speed a toenail grows in the average human, and that their are some 1 or 200 earthquakes per day.
 
Sort of interesting, I was hoping they would give decisive reasonings, but none of them did.
The first just seemed to go on about how they recreated an experience, but gave no proof that those ways were the only way the experience could happen.

It's still an amazing discovery, of course one article isn't going to prove everything. The point of a scientific article is to study one aspect of one thing. This isn't a Nobel prize were talking here.

The second on said of water leaking through bedrock - nothing was said how that would affect anything, just that there was a coincidence of something happening. They didn't give any data on how the water leaking through the bedrock was measured or if it was the same water. Not even what type of rock the bedrock is.

You guys are missing the Result AND discussion part of the article, all you get is the intro (which most likely only include large facts and is not always completely relevant to the actual data they collected). I have access to the articles because of my uni but couldn't find sources of them available for the entire internet community so I did the best with what I had.

[The third one, Geomagnetism - although the precise mechanisms have not fully been worked out yet. So why was it written in the first place?]

Again, it's the intro you're getting, the rest of the article most likely proves other thing, the mechanisms doesn't necessarily need to be fully understood to make conclusions. Do you know how many drugs were taking and their mechanism are still unknown or partially unknown, doesn't prevent the medecine from working perfectly fine. This is science, a discovery doesn't happen just like that, it often takes decades. And no this article is not pointless.


And the fourth one. Are they being serious?
And as for the fourth one. If you see what you think is a UFO it'll likely be that they'll be an earthquake in up to a years time.
That is a stupid comment.
It is a fact that the tectonic plates are constantly on the move, at about the same speed a toenail grows in the average human, and that their are some 1 or 200 earthquakes per day.

About the 4th article I just linked it because I thought it was interesting, and I'm sorry if you find that it's a stupid article but it's science proof. Sometimes it may state the obvious but it's still a proven scientific fact that has been measured.

I already said that everything hasn't been discovered yet, and that even I still believe in ghost somewhat, but at least some phenomena has been explained.
 
Pike,
the problem here is that no matter what proof some people have, if they choose not to believe they won't.
Personally I gave up trying to get people to believe, it is a waste of time. And I'm not a university professor who has to put out a paper in order to keep my job.
What I have done or what I've experienced that's for me, I don't do stuff or see things for others.

Mind you some stuff is what I call silly, like those psychic hotlines that give card readings over the phone. I was taught that one would have to put some forms of energy into the cards via touching them. So doing card readings over the phone, that just seems to me to be a load of twoddle. Not that the card readers will probably mind, I dare say they get paid heaps.
 
Pike
Pike
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Not only do I believe in ghosts but considering I've seen three looking straight at them throughout my life I know for a fact they are real. People say there are explanations for everything...well, yes. And sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one. I think it's so silly when people who have never had a supernatural experience don't believe in it or are convinced people who DO have experiences are mistaken or crazy. Also, I've always felt my body and mind weren't necessarily ME but just part of my life on the planet at the time so I've always been open-minded.

Also I fully believe the supernatural will one day be perfectly explainable by science, and not in the sense of "oh it's just your brain doing this", to me ghosts and other "paranormal" activity is as natural as the rain or sun.
 
I guess I do, My house in Yemen was said to be haunted, so when I was little I kept hearing stories about ghosts in my house.

It didn't help that our house was scary in itself, it's big, quiet, realllly white and just downright eerie. We lived in a fairly poor part of town too, and they cut the electricity almost weekly (last time we visited, it was daily) so that was scary, I also suffered from really horrible, slightly graphic nightmares back then, once I had a lucid dream I saw a ghost and was terrified of sleeping alone in that room.

Honestly, from what I heard, I'm not sure, probably, but I'm not taking any chances like using ouija boards and stuff lol
 
The existence of ghosts is not something that will or can ever be proven or disproven. Think about it: how would you prove the existence of a ghost? You can't capture one, and nowadays even the most compelling photo or video evidence can be doctored or faked.

You might be able to establish that there is some form of energy there, but you can't prove it's a ghost because we have no idea what a "ghost" actually is. You won't see a scientist saying, "This energy read-out corresponds exactly to the chemical makeup of the human soul!"

You see ghost hunters on TV going around with EMF meters and whatnot, but all that really tells you is that EMF energy is present. Lots and lots of things give off electro-magnetic energy, and we have no idea if ghosts are even one of those things. So, that's more playing for the cameras than anything truly scientific.

The only real evidence of a ghost is seeing or hearing one yourself... and unfortunately, that's not something that can be reproduced or observed under controlled circumstances, so it's not scientifically valid evidence.

It all depends on subjective experience.
 
BuffyElevated
BuffyElevated
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I'd have to say that I don't disbelieve, but I don't necessarily believe that ghosts are always spirits of dead people either. Chances are that in a lot of cases it's probably something we don't really understand either, but my mum and grandma both had what could be described as ghostly experiences of sorts.
 
Many years ago, when they were in a group called Earth, Ozzy Osbourne gave Geezer Butler a 16th C book of Black Magic written in latin. Because he knew Geezer liked reading that type of stuff. But Geezer got a bad feeling from the book so he put it in a closet.
That night he woke to see a black shape at the foot of his bed, after the shape faded away, Geezer thought it must have had something to do with the book. So he went to the closet with the intention of getting rid of the book, only the book wasn't there.
At that time the group was looking for a new name for the group and a new direction.
The experience was written into a song, the groups first record, 'That black shape with eyes of fire, beggar in black that points at me.'
The name of the track and the name of the group were/are the same, Black Sabbath.
 
Evil Angelus 95
Evil Angelus 95
I remember reading about that somewhere. Pretty creepy...
I do believe in ghosts because I've had some really unexplainable things happen to me in the past. Too many to even get into. But my husband and I both believe our duplex is haunted. And the neighbors on the other side of the duplex have seen and experienced the exact same things we've experienced. They all center on a little boy and a woman in white. I suppose there could be some explanation but I can't think of one! Except we're all crazy which is possible 😉

But I'm a firm believer even if I don't believe each and every story I've been told or shown on those Ghosthunter shows. I know my own experience and that's enough for me.
 
Anyone find it strange that those tv show about ghost hunters have people with EMF meters, temperature meters, camera's and gawd knows what else. And what do they have to show for it? You might hear a door close, or the person with the camera says something to make the viewer think.
Yet millions of people experience seeing a ghost of a person when they have no meters.
 
No. I once read that "haunted houses" are just old houses that have a carbon monoxide...leak or something. It makes people hallucinate. My family members on my mom's maternal side have had some "experiences" but it just isn't logical in my opinion. I don't really believe in the idea of a "soul" or a "spirit". I kind of wish that ghosts were real but they're just not in my opinion. Oh and I had my own "experience" supposedly when I was maybe 4. My great grandma had a teddy bear that would sing but after she died it stopped working and one night I was awake in my bed yelling, "Please stop! Make it stop singing please!" but it wasn't singing. But I've always been a little...odd. Oh and at that same grandma's funeral, I turned toward no one in particular and whispered, "I love you too grandma." and my entire family just stared at me. Even my mom, who doesn't believe in anything supernatural, admits that it freaked her out.

I've always wished that things like that were real. I grew up watching shows like Sabrina the Teenaged Witch, Buffy (obviously) and Charmed and I really loved The Craft haha...so I believed in things like magical powers and witches and ghosts when I was a kid, well sort of. I always hoped that I'd discover that those things were real one day.
 
No, I don't. I'm just the kind of person who needs absolute, scientific proof. I used to believe in ghosts to a degree, but over time I just find myself less able to believe in something like that. I'm not saying definitively that ghosts aren't real, I just need alot more proof to think otherwise.
 
JCoatsworth
JCoatsworth
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I would love to believe in the supernatural but I simply don't, shosts, psychics its all a load of rubbish..well, I should say it's all fiction, because I honestly think cold reading is bloody brilliant, psychics that are skilled..okay I should say mentalists are truly incredible, so good that they can convince sane, rationally thinking people that they are talking to their deceased loved ones.
 
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