Why i don't believe in ghosts as potrayed in popular culture?

ChadRichens

How I explain my Experience.

I'm sitting in a room in broad daylight at two in the afternoon. There is one door to my right in clear visibility, and I'm sitting in a rocking chair on my laptop writing an article about String/M Theory. I "Feel a Presence" in the room with me... Look over to my left and as my head is turning I feel it move by me and out the door.

When it was in the room, I could immediately felt it there. When it was moving in the room, I could tell where it was through this feeling, And when it left the room, I could tell it was gone, not only from the room, but from anywhere near me, as if I could tell what ever I was experiencing was over.

edit by Ivan: Personal theory deleted.

Ghost803

I don't think any of the Ghost experiences are anything more than the illusions of the subconscious. I lived in India till I was ten and grew up with Ghost stories and streets that would be completely dark after seven in the evening. Open windows with no screens, and pitch black outside, only three bars seperated the outside from the inside. In general, the place was scary as hell to grow up as a kid. So even now when I return to India, I am scared of the dark a little bit and have seen what I think are hallucinations of figures and heard wierd noises.

But when I am in America, with a freaking street lamp everywhere and lacking tropical forests in which attractive women can lure you to certain death, I have no fear. None what so ever, I can be in pitch freaking dark and I dont get concerned. And I have never had any incidents here. I think another reason that America is lacking in really scary and widely believed stories is that it doesn't have much of a History.

Most of the cities are only a few centuries old and most of the suburbs are maybe a few decades. So you are lacking in really grisly, screwed up deaths in cities and areas populated by people. That is why most of the ghost stories in America seem to be surrounding battle fields and Native American burials.

jreelawg

I had an interesting dream the other day involving ghosts. I was in the bathroom, and suddenly and rush of coldness attacked, like cold air without the wind. I ran, and escaped, but the coldness followed me. It got me again, and I suddenly awoke and my chest was freezing cold. Of coarse, my blanket wasn't covering my chest and it was cold in the room. That is obviously just my imagination in dream world.


But, at one point in time I actually believed in some sort of shadow like thing that visited me in my sleep. I used to have sleep paralysis, and I would be awake yet unable to move or open my eyes, as I fought to break the paralysis, I could sense something in the room that seamed to be like a dark shadow. I could feel where it was in the room, and sometimes it would speak. Sometimes it would hover over me. I don't honestly believe it was a ghost or anything, but it was pretty scary, at times I was certain something was there.

Ivan Seeking

Agreed. However, you are assuming an explanation where we only have claims of phenomena. Why should we assume that ghosts have anything to do with dead people?

Disprove every natural explanation for what; evidence that science won't accept [not that I'm saying it should be accepted]?

HallsofIvy

I wouldn't call this an hallucination. If you were only half waked up I suspect what you saw were blood cells moving through your retina as if they were projected out in front of you- you can also see them when your eyes are really tired although normally they don't look like they are projected in front of you- that may be an artifact of not having been completely awake- your brain interpreted what you saw as being on the nearest surface to you. They appear as a swarm of greyish blobs- often elongated as they pass through capillary veins.

arildno

Not at all.
(Good) theories are first and foremost falsifiable (in contrast to bad ones, which lack falsifiability).
We will, incidentally, learn a lot about so-called para-normal phenomena if we are able to refute the specific, natural explanations for them.

As for your analogy with a courtroom, I don't get it.

nottheone

I don't know how anyone can say they don't believe in ghosts, the Ghost Hunters find something in every episode...... uh, did you hear that?

Last year I was at a friends house and we saw a light in the woods where there were no houses. It looked very strange, strange enough that we went in the woods to see what it was. We walked in for about 15 minutes without getting any closer. Stranger and stranger. Then we finally saw what it was, it was the moon. It didn't look anything like the moon at first, not until it rose a ways above the horizon.

Oscar Wilde

If you look hard enough for something chances are you'll find it.

That comment aside, I have had two odd experiences. I sleepwalk about 3 times a year or so, it's nothing really special or anything. One night I woke up on the downstairs couch (after already having tucked myself into bed earlier) with a blanket over me. Nothing strange so far, thus far my experience is easily explainable. All I could hear was my fat cat snoring on the couch, but then I heard footsteps coming up from the basement. Classic cliched horror right? I'm almost positive I imagined the footsteps but honestly at the time I was terrified by what was at hand. Anyways, there's an interesting story, more or less.

My mother in particular has had odd experiences with cats. We used to have a few cats, 2 were young and one was very, very old (24). We decided to put him to sleep because his life seemed to have deteriorated. A few days later our two other cats were acting peculiar, circling around a spot on the living room, staring at it with awe. Their tails were all puffed out in defense, and their posture was indicative of the same. I've always wondered about that day, we've had another similar experience but that isn't worth detailing; it is much the same.

That's all for my washed-up ghost stories.

Karl G.

Query: could a ghost collapse a wavefunction? :) Good Argument!

Ivan Seeking

Not for this forum.

Ghost803

I recently had a night terror. Or atleast thats what I think it was.

I woke up around 5:30 ish in the morning, an unusual time for me. And I couldn't really get myself out of bed. I usually sleep with my fan on. When I kinda woke up though, I began to freak cause I could hear the light sound of the fan getting really loud and then really low with intervals of just a second.

It was almost like the story by Edgar Allen Poe "The Telltale Heart" when the dude could hear the sound of a heartbeat and it was really loud. Then I saw someone out of the corner of my eye. Thinking it was my roomate, I opened one of my eyes and peeked. But there was no one there.

I began to pray to Buddha, lulz. It was wierd. First time when I could really feel my heart beat like hell and was actually terrified for the first time in my life.

DaveC426913

Night terrors are really more about waking up from the terror, rather than the terror occurring upon awakening. And victims tend to have no idea or memory of what caused them.

Count Iblis

Ghosts exist in the virtual worlds simulated by some brains.

NWH

I can honestly say, I've had visual experiences which I have no solid explination for. These experiences were also confirmed by the people around me at the time. The conditions were dark, misty and moon lit, out in the wilderness that is Kielder Reservoir. Mist and fog can be known to make shapes, but I've usually found it to pretty evenly distributed from what I've ever noticed. Seeing bodilly figures litterally all around you, some even having what resemble limbs isn't a happy sight, not when your visuals' position are confirmed by someone elses torch light, nor when you're standing litterally thirty feet from a grave yard. I can confidently say what I saw was a form of "ghost," whether it was an interdimentional being or an effect of nature is yet to be answered.

Quincy

Ghosts = Bulls*it. End of Discussion :)

Ivan Seeking

On what do you base your opinion?

DaveC426913

As stated, that was not an opinion; that was a claim of fact. Quincy apparently has access to data that the rest of us do not.