Ghosts....?

[Sally]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Has anybody ever seen a ghost?

What do you think ghosts are?

A restless spirit?

A 'recording' of a past event which somehow left it's mark on time?

A product of mass hysteria?

[Mr Stu]

I've not seen one myself but keep a very open mind regarding them - I've known/know a few people who have seen/experienced them and I have no reason at all to doubt what they say - scary stuff it is too!

[Rubyretro]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Has anybody ever seen a ghost?

What do you think ghosts are?

A restless spirit?

A 'recording' of a past event which somehow left it's mark on time?

A product of mass hysteria?

Ghosts have always fascinated me for the reason that they are so anchored in certain cultures, but don't exist in others.

Ghosts are only seen in countries in which they are part of the culture, or
-but it's rare- in countries in which they are not part of the culture by someone who is a foreigner from somewhere where they are.

Given that, I would have to conclude that they are the figment of imagination
and so no, I don't believe in them..

I think that it is physically possible to truly 'see' things which aren't there (I have never taken lsd myself, but I have been assured that you can really see things which aren't there, and the reverse whilst on an acid trip). I have also seen experiments with hypnotism where people in a deep trance are told that they will see (a minutely described) 'ghost' upon waking. They do, and they invariably refuse to believe that the 'ghost' was produced by their imagination and not something real because they 'saw it with their own eyes'.

But, but, but...

My Grandmother saw a ghost. She said that she was pegging out the washing one sunny Sunday morning, when she saw a gentleman in a stovepipe hat, the brass buttons on his coat glinting in the sunlight, walk across the garden, and then disappear at a spot which her dogs always ran away from, their tails between their legs. She said that she read afterwards that he was a well know local ghost, who was a local squire on his way to church, taking an old footpath which had once crossed her garden.

I've no doubt whatsoever that she 'saw' him. But did she read that article before she saw him, and then forget about it, and he popped out from her subconcious when she was daydreaming ?

Or could ghosts exist but have something to do with climates ? Do you need damp or rain ? (there are some tropical climates where ghosts exist, but it's mainly in damp northern countries). I live in the South of France, and I've never read or heard of one single ghost story...and I've actively hunted.

I wondered if it was something to do with atoms reclinging together ? (don't worry, I won't expand on that...).

In short, I've got some slight doubts (I am English, afterall !), but I don't believe in the esoteric and I need a scientific explanation..

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

I've seen ghosts - full bodied apparitions - three times in my life. These were not caused by imagination, the use of drugs or alcohol. I saw one of these apparitions in a building (a small hotel in Salisbury, England) that I had no idea was haunted. Frogg Moody, who lives in Salisbury, and to whom I told the story, also had no idea this hotel was haunted and yet I saw the exact image of the supposed ghostly "woman in grey" who was said to haunt the place.

Name the haunting phenomenon and I probably have a story about my own personal experience with that phenomenon, or, at least a story about someone I know. Sights, sounds, cold spots, hot spots, smells, voices, touches, the movement of objects, weird telephone, electrical, fire alarm occurrences, objects disappearing and then, after a search, reappearing at the same spot, lights being turned on/off, doors opening/closing, etc. Anything I could debunk, I did. Everything else is unexplainable.

Wolf.

[louisa]

I have a very open mind of this subject and I don't dispute that many people have had weird things happen to them, things that cannot be explained. However, I always look for a mundane reason for these happenings.

Thankfully I have never seen a ghost but I've had a couple of odd things happen, which I'll tell you about. I still think they must be explainable but so far I haven't been able to come up with anything.

My husband and I live alone so there was nobody else in the house to make any noises or disturbances. We live quite a way from our neighbours.

About seven years ago we were awoken at around 2.30am to the sound of the china windchimes going berserk. The windchimes hang in our bedroom window. We sleep with doors and windows closed so there was no breeze.

When I say they were going berserk, I mean they were clanging together like crazy! It was loud enough to wake us both up.

The next morning I experimented to see how much force it would take to make the chimes ring like that and I had to take the whole bunch of them at the top and shake them.

It's never happened since and I can't explain how it could happen, no matter how much I try. I'm surely there's an earthly answer

I thought that maybe a mouse had climbed onto them but it would have had to walk the length of the brass curtain rail to get the centre of the window where the chimes were hanging. We've lived here 15 years and we've never seen any mice.

[Beowulf]

Do you believe in ghosts?

Has anybody ever seen a ghost?

What do you think ghosts are?

A restless spirit?

A 'recording' of a past event which somehow left it's mark on time?

A product of mass hysteria?

Hi. Favorite subject of mine, ghosts. For some reason I have seen ghosts, heard ghosts and had ghost experiences throughout my life. In fact several members of my family have, we put it down to being Irish, lol.

First ghost I saw was when I was about 11 and was staying at my cousin's house in Elmhurst, Queens (NY). The house was built early 1900s. We were talking and giggling and staying up late at night, in her room. Her father worked nights and wasn't home. She had no mother at home, (divorce). Only our grandmother was home, and she was asleep in a room farther back in the house. My cousin's room was off the dining room, and there was a night light on in that room which sent a dim stream of light into her room from that entrance.

Suddenly this old woman was standing in that dimly lit doorway. She was standing very still and was wearing an ankle length black skirt, dark blouse, I think long sleeved, and had grey hair pulled back into a bun, which was down on the nape of her neck. She had a sharp nose and stared straight into the room ahead. She looked pretty severe.

The room was a long rectangle, horizonatal to the dining room and she was up at the top side of it. The bed was centered in the middle of the rectangle, on the other end. My cousin said, (pretty loud) 'who is that!' I was too afraid to speak. To my extreme horror this old woman then just glided into the room slowly and made a right turn and glided down MY side of the bed! She continued gliding right into a closet at the end of the room with only a curtain to it, no door. Went in, of course, never came back out. She seemed not to be aware of us at all. After that I was always afraid of my cousins closet.

I have no idea who that was, being young we didn't follow up on it.

I have no idea what ghosts are, but a lot of the stories do seem to point to the fact that life is more than what we know.

We did have a few kind of ghost noises in our home back a few years ago, complete with ghostly footsteps. My husband saw a person in the back yard he thinks was a ghost.

Because of Jack the Ripper, a footnote in one of the books pointed to a ghost story about JTR, and so I bought it. Literally the best ghost story book I've ever read. They are all purported to be true, and if you like reading these things, do get it. It's called Haunted Britain, by Elliott O'Donnell and was written in 1965. You can find it on Amazon, or Ebay or any of the booksellers online. It won't be in a bookstore.

[Sally]

Help, there's a ghost dog in my kitchen...

Hi all - so, some people give credence to ghosts and some don't.

Beowulf - your story sounds very typical of ghostly experiences in general - the ghost walking through a wall, etc, is the standard behaviour set for your average ghost

This is why I ask if perhaps a ghost is like a recording; actually in its own time - so walking through the doors of that time which may now be walls or cupboards - but visible to some people in the present.

Then again, the ghost dog in my kitchen seems to want to do very little else but stand about. I just moved house and there's a black dog in my kitchen. Seriously. I don't ever see him full on - just peripherally. But he's there alright. It's ok, I don't mind sharing.

More seriously, I haven't seen a ghost, but have met a lot of people who say they have. Yes, you can put it down to imagination - however, I once worked for a accountant who was the least imaginative person you can imagine. She was ruthlessly ambitious, callously driven to succeed, and without moral scruples of any sort. She and her husband (who she'd removed from a formerly happy marriage to somebody else) bought and installed office premises in an 18th century house where I lived.

One day she told me, out of the blue, that she'd seen a ghost. According to her, she was in her office one lunchtime shortly after moving into the premises when a woman simply appeared in front of her dressed in 'old fashioned' clothes. The woman just looked at her, apparently, before slowly fading into nothing again. She didn't appear again so far as I know. I never saw her when I worked there.

The accountant's story, more than any other, persuades me that ghosts could exist. The office was an upstairs room that would once have been a bedroom. If a ghost is a recording, did a woman in her bedroom 200 years ago see the accountant?

On the other hand, what about ghosts that move things, create temperature changes, and cause a malevolent presence to be felt by others?

Are ghosts and spirits essentially different things?

[Robert]

Hi Sally

As I understand it, there are supposedly "replays" such as when an apparition goes about its business without acknowledging the presence of the viewer. Such phenomena would provide no more evidence of life after death than would a Hollywood film featuring a movie star who has since died. And then there are the occasions when "spirits" give warnings, issue threats, recount the incidents of their lives etc. This would be a different kettle of fish.

I have never seen a ghost but am aware that many hardheaded people do claim to have had these experiences.

[Cogidubnus]

Ghosts

I believe I've seen two...but in very different circumstances, and one could easily be put down to a very strong emotional linkage...

#1 - My father died in a London Hospital four days before my 13th birthday...I was a somewhat immature lad I admit, and about six months later I came home from school to our terraced house in Brighton, entered via the front door , walked a couple of paces up the hall, looked up the stairs and "saw" my father on the half-landing, hitching up (at the hips) his trousers as he habitually did when he exited the loo...the apparition lasted (in my somewhat objective and immature view) some 15 seconds perhaps...very emotional...somewhat wishful thinking maybe...but why then after that length of time, and never after?

#2 - about three or four years after, I was (fatherless) running a little wild...in company with some four or five other lost souls I spent (as we often did) an evening in St Peters in the Park, Brighton, graveyard...contrary to expectation it's actually quite a warm, rewarding sort of place...about 11 o'clock three of us saw what we thought was the plumes, latterly, (as the wall lowered or the ground rose), head, of a roman soldier moving along (with the body obscured by) a wall between the graveyard and the path to Preston Manor...faint greeny colour but otherwise natural in appearance (as far as I can tell, being colour-deficient)...shat us out I can tell you...we RAN!

Dave

[Ginger]

I've seen one ghost, many years ago. It was the summer after I'd graduated from high school, and I was driving to visit my aunt. I'd had a favourite teacher, a mentor really, Mr. Stilwell. The man was physically distinctive - tall, fat and bearded, and he had a customized BMW motorcycle that he loved to ride. On my way to my aunt's, I passed him going the opposite direction on a country road. He smiled and waved at me, and I at him as we passed. There is zero doubt in my mind who it was - it was Mr. Stilwell out on his motorcycle. Later, over dinner at my aunt's house, I casually mentioned that I'd seen him, and conversation stopped, because unknown to me, he'd died a few days prior.

[kensei]

I think "ghost" and "haunting" are terms that are used to describe a variety of things. What I would call a true ghost would be literally the disembodied soul of someone who has died that has for whatever reason not gone on to the afterlife. Other kinds of hauntings include-

"Tape loop ghosts," the same figure seen over and over in the same place and time doing the same thing. Thought to be the energy of some event that's been imprinted on a place and somehow keeps replaying. Not a real ghost at all, and in fact apparitions of people who are found to still be alive have been seen in this way.

Poltergeists, hauntings that feature harsh and violent activity in a home, thought to be not the work of ghosts but usually the psychic outbursts- often involuntarily- of someone in the home with a troubled mind, often an adolescent.

Demons- the ones you really don't want. Evil spirits that exist to cause negativity of all kind for mankind. Whether a person is literally posessed, simply opressed (harassed), or a demon is just attached to a property, they usually require religious intervention to be gotten rid of.

Some believe there are also spirits that are simply part of nature and never had physical bodies that may be mistaken for ghosts.

My personal experience- a female friend of mine died in a car accident in 1995 at age 31 and got around quite a bit after death. The night after the accident I was lying in bed awake, feeling sad and missing her, when the distinct feeling of ice-cold fingers went down my back. Sat up, looked around, nothing there. But I felt that it was her standing there looking down on me and touching me briefly just to say hey, cheer up, I'm ok. There were others who knew her who also had visits from her, including visible ones, in the area where she lived in Minnesota and North Dakota. Then I heard she was also appearing to her younger sister way up in Alaska, who she'd been worried about living by herself up there. My friend had been a lover of strong coffee, and her sister said that in addition to appearing as an actual apparition she was often tapping her spectral fingernails on the coffee cups. Not a scary ghost story at all, but one that brought a lot of smiles.

Whenever there is conflict between science and the supernatural, I tend to think that the definition of science in simple terms should be "the study of everything," and that if a supernatural realm exists, i.e. one outside the rules of physics, nature, etc., then it should be included under that definition to the point where a rigorous and disciplined scientific investigation of these phenomena ought to be allowed to conclude, "Our official scientific explanation of this case is- it's supernatural."

[Robert]

Re the tape loops, if these are due to imprinted energy, one would expect sightings of the living to be reported far more frequently than they are. After all, when a person is still alive, the energy imprinted is relatively fresh. Yet often the apparition is only sighted once the person has died. And if a monk who lived centuries ago is still being sighted, on his way to prayers or whatever, then why are there no reports from the time when he was alive and the energy was undissipated?

[Beowulf]

Re the tape loops, if these are due to imprinted energy, one would expect sightings of the living to be reported far more frequently than they are. After all, when a person is still alive, the energy imprinted is relatively fresh. Yet often the apparition is only sighted once the person has died. And if a monk who lived centuries ago is still being sighted, on his way to prayers or whatever, then why are there no reports from the time when he was alive and the energy was undissipated?

That's a good point, I've never been so sure of the 'tape loop' idea. I think a lot of people grab onto the explaination because it gives them solice, but why would such a thing not happen on a more regular basis, like clockwork, if it's a loop? They seem to be more sporadic, and some of those appearances seem to pick the person deliberately, as if those people are chosen to see it.

And speaking of clockwork:

When my sister died, about 4 years ago, I went to my mothers house, whom she lived with. My sister was younger than me, and it of course seemed unfair, to die so young. We were crying and crying together in her room, this was the very next day.

I was there a few hours, and now was leaving, standing by the front door, saying goodbye. Suddenly both of us became of a loud whirring sound, and I looked up to see what it was, it was so close.

Just above my head, there was a clock on the wall, a simple clock with one AA battery, it was making the noise. The hands were moving around the clock at warp speed! I said, "Look at the clock!" My mother and I stood transfixed, staring at the clock, it was so bizarre and as we watched the recognition of it being unnatural made it feel surreal. The clock was just a cheap plastic wall clock, if anything it would slow down as the battery loses it's life.

We sat on the couch watching that clock do that for 15 minutes! When the hands stopped I figured I'd reset the time for my mother and so looked at the vcr which had a time display, (which I knew was approximately correct) and said to my mother what time is it? (She had got up and went to the back of the house) She yelled back, "4:10" (reading the time from her bedroom clock) because I was looking at the wall clock now, which said 4:10, I said, "no I mean the actual time" (thinking she was referring to the time on the wall clock, and she had seen that and was telling me that time). She then repeated 4:10, I glanced at the vcr display, and it WAS 4:10!

The wall clock had stopped exactly at the correct time!

The only other time the clock did this was the very next day, when the woman from the funeral home came over with an assistant to discuss the arrangements to be made.

As they were all sitting in the livingroom the whirring noise began, they all looked up to see the clock moving around. I asked my mother when she told me the story, "what did they think?" She said they indicated there was something a little odd about that, and kind of hinted maybe it might be my sister.

The clock again, when it stopped, this time after a half hour, stopped at the exact right time of the day. To the minute, as before.

To tell you the truth it made my mother and I feel better, because we felt she was letting us know she was still around. I always wondered if it also meant she wouldn't see us for a long time. I always wished I had counted the revolutions and tried to figure out if they were days, weeks, months, years? But then again, I don't really want to know

The clock has never done that again. It has been over 4 years since then.

[Robert]

A very interesting story, Beowulf. Well, if it was your sister, I don't think she'd have meant for you to count the revolutions, or anything like that, in order to decipher some sort of code. Not unless she was a Ripperologist!

[Archaic]

Re the tape loops, if these are due to imprinted energy, one would expect sightings of the living to be reported far more frequently than they are. After all, when a person is still alive, the energy imprinted is relatively fresh. Yet often the apparition is only sighted once the person has died. And if a monk who lived centuries ago is still being sighted, on his way to prayers or whatever, then why are there no reports from the time when he was alive and the energy was undissipated?

That's a really great observation, Robert!

Gee... Unless half the people I think I see walking down the street are actually "tape loops" of the spirits of the deceased...

Archaic