Do ghosts exist?

[silencertalk]

Do ghosts exist?

[PTK]

There is no scientific evidence proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that "ghosts" in any interpretation exist, thus by logical thinking I do not believe they currently exist. Absence of any proof means that the issue in question is likely false, especially when all so-called "evidence" is anecdotal in nature without any means of verification by scientific method.

[Hush]

After 75 years of walking this planet earth I can honestly say I have not met one.

[jdj]

There is no scientific evidence proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that "ghosts" in any interpretation exist, thus by logical thinking I do not believe they currently exist. Absence of any proof means that the issue in question is likely false, especially when all so-called "evidence" is anecdotal in nature without any means of verification by scientific method.

What he said. Nothing 'supernatural' exists, it is only superstition.

[bakerjw]

To me this is easy if you believe that people have souls. When a person dies does their soul stay with the body or go somewhere else? The big 3 major religions believe that it goes to a place be it good or bad. A lot of agnostics and atheists even believe that they have souls. Even from where I fall on the religion scale I believe that some kind of ethereal awareness exists. So imho there is obviously something going on that we haven't discovered as of yet. The day may come when we can easily detect a life force be it still live, departing, or cross wired so that it got stuck.

[jdj]

A lot of agnostics and atheists even believe that they have souls.

Maybe agnostics, but I fail to see how an atheist would believe in souls unless by soul you simply mean mind or consciousness.

If you mean a soul that survives death, you would be hard pressed to find an atheists that believes in such a thing.

[bikefreek]

I strongly believe all ghosts are figments of our imagination....including the holy ghost

[silencertalk]

Well, there are people on this forum who believe that 1911s have souls but Glocks don't.

So I supposed how you define soul. I believe that people are more than the sum of their parts, and more than machines, but I don't believe in an afterlife. So if people have souls, and I would say they do along with consciousness, they don't continue to exist once the body is gone.

[JimmyB]

I’ve seen one. It was weird

My experience differs from most reported cases. The story is too long and drawn out to cover here but there is a spirit world and the boundary is crossed from time to time

[jdj]

I’ve seen one. It was weird
My experience differs from most reported cases. The story is too long and drawn out to cover here but there is a spirit world and the boundary is crossed from time to time

I absolutely do not doubt that you had a real experience. I also feel that the majority of people who report ghost, UFO, and other "paranormal" sightings are sincere. However, you do have to ask yourself what is more likely:

1. An entire spiritual realm exists and a ghost crossed over from it to visit you (as they visited other people with similar stories). However, these visits have never been corroborated by any hard evidence even though they have ocurred throughout history.

2. Your experience is the result of internal causes in your brain (an apparition or hallucination).

Again, I absolutely do not doubt your sincerity, I am not calling you a liar. The mind and your eyes are not a video camera. Look at the unreliability of eyewitness testimony or the "spiritual experiences" that can be induced by electromagnetic fields. Occam's razor, and Hume's maxim apply here.

"no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish."

Great reading here if you're interested in the philosophy:
http://www.bartleby.com/37/3/14.html

[Hush]

Well, there are people on this forum who believe that 1911s have souls but Glocks don't.

Steel is forged, shaped by hand and man's sweat, plastic...meh.

[JimmyB]

There were two other people involved. One person never did see what was right in front of all three of us but his wife did

His wife and I saw exactly the same thing with detail about the eyes, face, clothing, etc…
Too many strange details that were identical

His wife was freaked out and couldn’t sleep until a voice said “Delrin is dead but she’ll be alright”

A day or so later the local paper had a story about a missing girl by the name of Delrin
The missing girl was Romanian or something and had a difficult to pronounce name. Her nick name was Delrin
Her body was found dead a week later. She had already been killed the day of the sighting or the day before

There are many, many other strange details I could go into

[PTK]

A single individual with strong, vocal convictions about a hallucination or other psychedelic experience can influence the perceptions of others - my personal favorite example of this was the afterimage experiment in which one volunteer was put in a dark room with a number of other "volunteers" (staff members) and a single color projected onto a wall. Particular colors produce particular afterimages in the eye, and the real volunteer was asked, along with the staff members, to use a computer pad to indicate which color they saw as an afterimage. All of the staff members indicated the wrong color, and this false "right" answer was indicated to the true volunteer. Over the course of the next 30 minutes of colors and questions, they started answering incorrectly about not only the afterimage color, but the projected color itself! Repeated tests with other volunteers showed that nearly every person is susceptible to this effect.

The mind is an amazing thing.

[bikefreek]

There were two other people involved. One person never did see what was right in front of all three of us but his wife did

His wife and I saw exactly the same thing with detail about the eyes, face, clothing, etc…
Too many strange details that were identical

His wife was freaked out and couldn’t sleep until a voice said “Delrin is dead but she’ll be alright”

A day or so later the local paper had a story about a missing girl by the name of Delrin
The missing girl was Romanian or something and had a difficult to pronounce name. Her nick name was Delrin
Her body was found dead a week later. She had already been killed the day of the sighting or the day before

There are many, many other strange details I could go into

so 2 out of 3 people "saw something"... then later one of the 2 that "saw" it, surely while still thinking about it claims to "hear" something that no one else does.
did she give specifics about the voice before or after the news story broke (not before she read it...but before the news broke). Its amazing what the mind can pick up in passing without you having knowledge of it.

[LavaRed]

Well, there are people on this forum who believe that 1911s have souls but Glocks don't.

Steel is forged, shaped by hand and man's sweat, plastic...meh.

I agree, but only 1911's made of steel have souls.

I've often wondered what my WWII Ithacas would say if they could talk .

[JimmyB]

How did the guy’s wife(her name was Kathy) come up with such a strange name for the dead girl?


She said the voice came to her three time. The third time she said she felt a calm and never worried about it again

This all happened a week before the story broke. The girl that was killed lived close to me and was not listed as missing yet. Her body was not found for some time

Kathy and Clay(hubby’s name) lived 40 miles away. They had no idea there was any missing girl. I drove to their house and picked them up and we went to Vancouver where I lived.This is where the girl was killed. This is where we saw the ghost

[Hush]

I'm waiting for Crosshair's and/or Selectmarksman's input.

Jimmy B, I find your story interesting, please continue... did the ghost appear as they show them in movies or otherwise, please describe.
Thank you, Hush

[bikefreek]

How did the guy’s wife(her name was Kathy) come up with such a strange name for the dead girl?


She said the voice came to her three time. The third time she said she felt a calm and never worried about it again

This all happened a week before the story broke. The girl that was killed lived close to me and was not listed as missing yet. Her body was not found for some time

Kathy and Clay(hubby’s name) lived 40 miles away. They had no idea there was any missing girl. I drove to their house and picked them up and we went to Vancouver where I lived.This is where the girl was killed. This is where we saw the ghost

first your whole story really hinges on one persons word. second I have a hard time believing that a local girl can go missing for a week without being reported missing. Its very easy for the brain to hear something in the background (like a TV thats on while you are all bullshitting in the next room) and have that info be brought to light by some traumatic expirience (seeing something you cant explain). Ive gone to alot of places that people swear up and down are haunted. If a person expiriencing "something" is proof then my lack of expirience is disproof.

[Fastflt1]

[quote="silencertalk"]Well, there are people on this forum who believe that 1911s have souls but Glocks don't.

Glock's are made from a man made material, yet 1911's are made from earthly materials.

Final answer.


Did I WIN!!!








ETA: WOW, actually read the thread after my post. Boy...this is spooky.

[JimmyB]

Hush



The story is a long with many strange occurrences. If you want I can do the whole thing and PM it to you
It will be a long read, details cannot be ignored as I have no idea what is pivotal

To answer your question about whether or not it was a classical sighting or not.
The answer is a resounding NO

The ghost we saw was crossing over with no intention coming back or maybe no ability of returning

I’ll give a few details;

She was walking with her arms held high. Not straight up but at 45 degrees
Her hands were waving as if she was glad/happy to see what was on the other side

Her face was lit-up as if she were walking into a bright light
Her hair was blowing back as though she was walking into the wind
I could vividly see her feet as she was walking. She would put heel down first and roll her toes one at a time to contact the pavement. The little toe was first with second toe contacting next. Then the third toe
All the way to the big toe

The left foot moved precisely in the same way as the right

All of her features were perfectly normal except for her mouth and pupils

Her mouth was not human or at least a distortion of normal. It was the strangest grin/smile/horrific looking thing I’ve ever seen. It was much to wide, about 4 inches. There was no radius in her bite. Two straight sets of teeth


Her teeth were all identical in shape and size with precisely 1/16 of an inch gap between every tooth
Top teeth were identical to lower teeth is shape, size and gap. The top row mated edge to edge with lower set. There was no gap between top set and bottom set



The pupils(not iris) of her eyes were empty voids into another reality. They weren’t just black, although they were. They were more like portals.
When I was 300-400 yards away, I could still see her pupils. Not just a little but they were still strikingly apparent



Not one letter of one word is an exaggeration or something not vividly remembered
The event happened in 1987

Like I had said there are more details such as the feet, mouth, hair, eyes, etc..
All remembered with clarity and precision
I don’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning and couldn’t see what was wrong with the first wife when that should have been obvious as hell

How could I see and remember so much?

[tacticalsniper3]

How could I see and remember so much?

an experience like that sticks with you, it gets seared into your brain.

I do in fact believe that ghosts are real. I had an experience at my house.

It was about noon time and i was making some left overs for lunch. It was sunny and calm, all the windows and outside doors were shut in the house, except my cellar door. It was left open about 2 ft and I was on the other side of the room, and I was the only person home. The door shut and slammed like someone was pushing it.

[jlwilliams]

I know I saw something that I can't explain, with another person who couldn't explain it either. Without going through the whole 'telling a ghost story' thing, the experience fit the bill of 'seeing a ghost'.

The term 'ghost' is often defined as being the soul or spirit of a dead individual, but that may or may not be what it is people see. That being the rub with trying to explain the 'unexplained'. If a clearly definable answer were available, it wouldn't be classified as 'unexplained'.

The fact that there isn't a scientific explanation doesn't really bother me. The phenomenon of 'ghostly encounters' have been part of the human experience for all of recorded history. There have been countless cases ranging from those easily ascribable to halucination to those less easily written off. Like the ones with multiple witnesses, those are hard to write off. Someday, we may have a scientific answer. For now, we don't.

People have a genuine experience, of that I have no doubt. Is it the spirit of a dead person? I don't know. It's something. For now, the term ghost is fine with me.

I think the same about UFOs. People are certainly seeing things. Are they seeing visitors from another planet? I haven't seen proof to back that up. The "U" in UFO stands for unidentified. That means we don't know what it is. They are seeing UFOs.

[Glock35]

there are plenty of things humans don't understand; so to say one cannot scientifically explain it means little to me.
Especially if it is something complex (spirits, flying saucers that aren't military test flights, etc).
Until we understand the brain fully, speculation at best imo

[Hush]

Hm, very interesting. As Ive said before I'm now 75 y.o. and never had any of those experiences, no seeing ghosts or ufo's but I have been close to death 3 or 4 times and with my first experience due to an auto accident I was dying although I was unaware of it, I found myself at the beginning of a tunnel of bright light and as I entered my grandfather and my uncle came out to greet me, they were smiling and happy to see me but a voice told them to stop and return and then told me it was not my time yet, I had to go back for my children who were babies at that time and I only had two at that time, I awoke finding myself on the ground, people told me I pulled myself out of the wreck.
I've been told that's natures way of accepting death, a chemical is released in the brain to make dying a pleasant experience and it can be, after an operation years back I awoke in the recovery room and looked to the side and saw my wife, I smiled and said goodbye as this time I felt so relaxed and having no pain and weightless I had the feeling I was going back to my real home and as I was drifting off I saw below green fields, mountains and streams and then I heard my wife's voice begging me to come back and not leave her alone, I felt pity for her so I tried breathing hard purposely and I started coming around I heard noises which I found out after were like an alarm to warn of low blood pressure or something, I turned to the wife and said ok I'll stay with you this time but it felt so wonderful never ask me to come back again and as I continued with the purposeful deep breathing the pain returned and my body felt heavy and strained.
But that feeling of being out of body and going to my true, real home was wonderful.
Weather that helps one to accept death and the light goes out and then nothingness or we really go to our "real true home" with the lord remains to be seen but not relayed to the living who must take it on faith.

[JimmyB]

Hush quote

I've been told that's natures way of accepting death, a chemical is released in the brain to make dying a pleasant experience




For the person who goes through death this maybe true but neither I nor Kathy was dying and could have no chemical release. The event happened when everything was quite relaxed

also
The girl was already dead. Probably for a day or so. She had no chemicals to release. She did not come back to life

She was crossing over and seem happy to see people or something see really liked
That in-human distorted grim was both happy and full of regret

How can someone distinctly see someone’s pupils at 300 yards?



Hush
When you saw the bright light is was real. I saw its reflection/effects in her face and hair. It’s a light of power and not just illumination