True story of ghost experience

[rockhouse]

It was a 100 year old victorian style house in the middle of a 50 acre field in central texas.
My cousin and I got hired to remodel about 50% of the house. The owners wanted bathrooms moved, walls knocked down, windows moved, tile, trim, etc.
Anyway, it was indeed a spooky house, but we for some reason never even thought anything about it being "haunted" or anything...i think it's cause we were both constantly ready to punch the contractor over his inability to pay us on time...we were always too busy cussing and working our asses off.
The guy in charge named Kurt would drop by once or twice a day and drop off material and check on us...other than that we were all alone out there, way out it the country.
We had to plug our air compressor into the outlet in the houses kitchen, so the back door had to stay slightly ajar for our hoses to go through the door. Anyway, it all started about a week into the tear-out when we would hear the FM radio in the kitchen come on by itself. We always would think Kurt had shown up and was messin around with the radio, so we would go in there to see and there wouldn't be anyone around.
We never really thought much about it, i even told my because it was an old stereo and was prolly just weird like that.
Then it got to were the radio would turn on then turn up real loud. It was annoying more than anything, but we beagn to just jokingly say stuff in the kitchen like, "Ok, Ok, we get it! Yall like music. Now quit F'ng around with the stereo!"
The house had a long history. There were really old tin-style photos of various generations of the inhabitants throughout the house...those were creepy as hell too. So anyway, other things started happening...mainly like setting your hammer down RIGHT next to you, then turning back around and it's on the other side of the room. At first we both thought it was each other playin around but later it was obvious it wasn't us.
Atleast one of us used to get to the house right before sun-up to roll out the tools and plug in the compressor. One morning i pulled up and my because was already there and was standing by his car white as a sheet and with big eyes that were all watery.
I pulled up and was like, "dude, WTF's wrong with you?"
This is his story:
He got there about 20 minutes earlier and needed to take a dump. The Br's were outta commission so he grabbed a bucket and added a little water to it and headed over to the other side of the house. He was ALL ALONE out there as i was still 20 minutes away.
So he's sittin on his bucket smokin a cig with his back leaned against the outside of the house. All of a sudden he hears what sounds like a broom handle drop against the hardwood floor inside the house, (It's SUPER quiet out there so someone could fart upstairs and you could almost hear it outside if you were close enough to the house)
So he kinda perks up and listens harder at this point. He knew it wasn't me or Kurt cause he would've heard us drive up, (the dirt driveway was about 1/4 mile long).
So he's sitting on his bucket listening real close and he hears boot steps coming down the stairs inside the interior area of the house. At this point he's trying to finish his dump fast cause he's trippin out a little. After the steps sounded like they stopped at the bottom of the stairs he couldn't hear them anymore. So he's all perched up on his bucket, trying to wipe his butt and listening for anything else from deep inside the house were the stairs are at when all of a sudden he hears a loud coughing and clearing of the throat of an old man...right on IMMEDIATE OTHER SIDE of the wall to him!
He jumps up, pulls his britches up, and runs around the side of the house to his car as i pull up.
After he told me what happened we got brave and both stealthy surrounded the house from either side. We entered from different doors and searched the house but it was empty. When Kurt got there later we told him and he said he didn't like talkin about it. We were like, "about what?!" and he was like, "Tom the owner told me it was haunted by an oldman and woman from his family back in the day, and when i first came out here alone to measure up for materials, i kept hearing footsteps right behind me...thats why i don't like hangin out here during the day, this place freaks me out!"
So after this incident we asked Tom the owner and he said that they have been dealing with the noises and such for years and that occasionally someone will actually see the oldman or woman walking around the house as clear as day.
I sometimes wish i could find Tom's number and ask him if i could come back and try and record something.

 

[mugaliens]

But there is a perfectly valid and highly plausible explanation: human beings are very well-known poor sensors and recorders.

How can you even begin to look for an alternate explanation until you have somehow ruled out this highly confounding factor - you have no baseline for the reliable sensing and recording of events by humans.

I'm not trying to suggest there is no alternate explanation - I'm saying your search for it is stillborn.


It's be like looking for cosmic gravity waves in a laboratory situated on the San Andreas fault line. You're showing me charts rife with squiggles and wondering why I'm suspicious of your evidence.

Totally agreed! We're awesom at pattern recognition! The problem is, we're wrong about 95% of the time

 

[DaveC426913]

Totally agreed! We're awesom at pattern recognition! The problem is, we're wrong about 95% of the time

 

[ideasrule]

I'm pretty sure that i could have recorded/videoed it and people still wouldn't believe.

Try recording and videotaping. I want to see what's happening, even if the skeptics remain skeptical.

 

[GeorginaS]

Again, let me be clear that my point only concerns people who report blatant explicit undeniable apparitions, not those who feel their experience is slightly ambiguous.

Okay, but, what constitutes "blatant ghosts"? I don't understand. The supernatural has never been proven. There is no evidence to support that experiences people describe or recall is evidence of the paranormal. I also don't understand what an "undeniable apparition" is.

I'm sorry that you appear to have missed my comparison, or didn't catch the point of it, or something, when I talked about the zombie discussion on the General Board of this very site. The undeniable or obvious characteristics you're ascribing to ghosts is similar to the undeniable and obvious characteristics people can name to you (not "you" personally -- "you" in the generic "you" sense here, because you -- in the personal you -- appear to take issue with the use of that pronoun) as it pertains to zombies, werewolves, vampires, witches, ad infinitum. Saying that each has specific characteristics that everyone's familiar with does not prove anything in terms of the existence of such a thing. All that's demonstrated is that there's a common notion in a culture and/or everyone's heard the same stories. That's all we can be certain of; the content of the stories and the ascribed characteristics to various characters is consistent. There's no evidence of "blatant" or "undeniable" anythings.

 

[DocZaius]

Okay, but, what constitutes "blatant ghosts"? I don't understand. The supernatural has never been proven. There is no evidence to support that experiences people describe or recall is evidence of the paranormal. I also don't understand what an "undeniable apparition" is.

I'm sorry that you appear to have missed my comparison, or didn't catch the point of it, or something, when I talked about the zombie discussion on the General Board of this very site. The undeniable or obvious characteristics you're ascribing to ghosts is similar to the undeniable and obvious characteristics people can name to you (not "you" personally -- "you" in the generic "you" sense here, because you -- in the personal you -- appear to take issue with the use of that pronoun) as it pertains to zombies, werewolves, vampires, witches, ad infinitum. Saying that each has specific characteristics that everyone's familiar with does not prove anything in terms of the existence of such a thing. All that's demonstrated is that there's a common notion in a culture and/or everyone's heard the same stories. That's all we can be certain of; the content of the stories and the ascribed characteristics to various characters is consistent. There's no evidence of "blatant" or "undeniable" anythings.

Wow, we must be really talking past each other on this one. I'll try to be very clear because I am surprised you think I believe there's evidence for ghosts.

My personal opinion is that the likelihood that ghosts exist is astronomically, ridiculously low. Low enough to live my life as if they didn't exist. It is much more likely that a ghost story teller is mistaken, or hallucinating, or even lying. Now having said that, here's what I do when someone reports to me an experience where they encountered a ghost, and they are 100% sure it was a ghost. I can't tell them "the chances that you are lying to me, or were hallucinating are greater than the chances that you actually saw a ghost." The conversation ends there at best and the person is insulted at worst.

So what I do is I approach the situation with this attitude: "Assuming that what you are saying is true.."

And this is what I am doing in this case. Assuming that what rockhouse is saying is true and there is this ghost, "shouldn't you have done this, or wouldn't you have done that" etc... I think that you are picking up the parts where I am granting the story teller's ghost story for discussion's sake, and you are assuming I believe in ghosts.

Now the reason I bring up the "blatant" and "undeniable" adjectives is because that is important when I am granting the story teller's story. If they claim they saw something that might or might not be a ghost, there isn't much to talk about. But if they are making a claim that what they saw is impossible to be mistaken for anything else than a ghost, then my "shouldn't you have done this.." arguments are valid. Again, I don't think anything is undeniable. The "undeniable apparition" would be their claim.

Hope that clears up my stance!

PS: Why would I take issue with the "you" pronoun? I kinda like it...

 

[rockhouse]

Ok, let me flip the script...
What would you suspect if you were a healthy, 30 year old man with no history of mental illness, 100% sober on a bright sun-lit day, in a house where you set your hammer down on the floor, 1 foot from you, then take 1 measurement with your tape measure that takes about 10 seconds, turn around to grab your hammer from the floor but it's not where you saw yourself put it...it's actually sitting 10 feet from you on the otherside of the room, and you were the only one in said room during that time?

 

[zoobyshoe]

It was a 100 year old victorian style house in the middle of a 50 acre field in central texas...
...I sometimes wish i could find Tom's number and ask him if i could come back and try and record something.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks once broke his leg running in terror away from an hallucination. He was hiking up a mountain in Switzerland where there was known to be a feral bull which had attacked people. The path up the mountain was blocked by a gate and on the gate was a sign with a warning cartoon depicting a large bull flinging a person into the air with its horns. Sacks smiled at that, and put it out of his mind, thinking the danger of an encounter was slim. However, after a couple hours of hiking up the path...

"I had, indeed, just emerged from the mist, and was walking around a boulder as big as a house, the path curving around it so I could not see ahead, and it was this inability to see ahead which permitted The Meeting. I practically trod on what lay before me-an enormous animal sitting in the path, and indeed totally occupying the path, whose presence had been hidden by the rounded bulk of the rock. It had a huge horned head, a stupendous white body and an enormous mild, milk-white face. It sat unmoved by my appearance, exceedingly calm, except that it turned its vast white face up towards me. And in that moment it changed, before my eyes, becoming transformed from magnificent to utterly monstrous. The huge white face seemed to swell and swell, and the great bulbous eyes became radiant with malignance. The face grew huger and huger all the time, until I thought it would blot out the Universe. The bull became hideous, hideous beyond belief, hideous in strength, malevolence and cunning. It seemed now to be stamped with the infernal in every feature. It became first a monster, and now the Devil."

A Leg To Stand On
-Oliver Sacks
Harper Perennial, 1984, page 20

(The upshot was that he turned and ran so recklessly away that he tripped down an incline and suffered a massive injury to one leg.)

Startle, not to mention outright fear, can do an amazing number on your perceptions, and the point of quoting the Sacks story is to demonstrate that, and also that people don't exclusively hallucinate "ghost" experiences, they hallucinate all kinds of things spontaneously. Sack's bull was probably real, but its transformation before his eyes into a super bull monster certainly wasn't. He was primed to hallucinate a monstrous bull in reaction to his startle by the cartoon on the gate, and his realization he'd stupidly walked miles from help to find himself alone with an animal that had already attacked people. In the same vein, families who move into houses only to find them "haunted" are almost certainly reacting to authentic strange noises and events that trigger hallucinatory exaggerations of those stimuli, the content of which is directed by all the previous ghost lore they've heard. Given the spooky atmosphere of the house you were working on, all it would take was one instance of the radio apparently coming on by itself (some mundane electrical phenomenon) to trigger a cascade of related "poltergeist" hallucinations.

You really ought to watch as many of those Derren Brown youtube episodes as you can. His ability to confuse people rather quickly and then lead them into outright hallucinations is both alarming and entertaining. He specializes in "alert hypnosis"; subtly confusing perfectly conscious people (i.e. not in a trance) and planting ideas that take hold because they apparently offer a way out of the confusion.

In the case of "hauntings" you don't need a hypnotist there to plant the ideas. In our culture people are programmed with those ideas as a matter of course. As I pointed out "ghost" lore is in the air, everywhere: we grow up hearing ghost stories and they're reinforced in movies and on TV and in books, by stories like yours.

You don't need to be mentally ill or on drugs to hallucinate. There are many purely accidental routes to various kinds of hypnotic hallucinations. Know about phantom cell phone vibrations? :

http://www.google.com/#q=phantom+phone+vibration+&hl=en&sa=2&fp=e8d6ef47431c6a4a

 

[leroyjenkens]

Ok, let me flip the script...
What would you suspect if you were a healthy, 30 year old man with no history of mental illness, 100% sober on a bright sun-lit day, in a house where you set your hammer down on the floor, 1 foot from you, then take 1 measurement with your tape measure that takes about 10 seconds, turn around to grab your hammer from the floor but it's not where you saw yourself put it...it's actually sitting 10 feet from you on the otherside of the room, and you were the only one in said room during that time?

Once, I was watching TV and eating Hot Pockets and after I was done with the first one, I reached down to get the second one, but it wasn't there. Apparently I had already eaten it, but I didn't remember grabbing it and I thought I only ate one. I was wrong.

Maybe your tape measure took you 10 feet away from the hammer while you were measuring out 10 feet.
Or maybe you do have a ghost on your hands, but I don't think anyone here will give up and admit that's what it must be.

 

[rockhouse]

Haha, nice one about measuring 10 feet...hehe. Nah, actually the times it would happen would be like when i measured a vertical piece of trim, or when we were laying tile, on our knees obviously, the trowel would move from right next to me as i set the tile in the mortar, to way to the back of the room...as my cousin was on his knees on the opposite side of me.

But whatever...keep on writing it off with scientific/biological explanations...it's all good.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Haha, nice one about measuring 10 feet...hehe. Nah, actually the times it would happen would be like when i measured a vertical piece of trim, or when we were laying tile, on our knees obviously, the trowel would move from right next to me as i set the tile in the mortar, to way to the back of the room...as my cousin was on his knees on the opposite side of me.

But whatever...keep on writing it off with scientific/biological explanations...it's all good.

First you're completely alone with a hammer and measuring tape, now it's actually a trowel and your cousin's there.

I hope you can see why no one is too eager to be persuaded.

 

[whome9]

Experiments seem to show that a soul weighs a few grams, but I don't see how something of such low density can move objects.

 

[rockhouse]

First you're completely alone with a hammer and measuring tape, now it's actually a trowel and your cousin's there.

I hope you can see why no one is too eager to be persuaded.

Lol, you obviously know as much about construction/building as i do about physics.
Tile work comes LAST, as you don't want to install a nice floor then ruin it by tromping all over it, or dropping tools or paint all over it.
The times i used a HAMMER, we were in the tear-out/framing/trim-out phase...the time i used a TROWEL, we were in the tile-setting phase.
These were two DIFFERENT time periods of construction...and besides, unless my cousin's arms are telescopic and can bend at multiple angles while I'm not looking, it couldn't have been him stealing my tools.
Seriously Zooby, i laugh at your explanations and posts as to possible answers...like the old adage goes, "i guess you had to be there".

 

[zoobyshoe]

These were two DIFFERENT time periods of construction...

So, decide which one is when your tool seemed to move.

and besides, unless my cousin's arms are telescopic and can bend at multiple angles while I'm not looking, it couldn't have been him stealing my tools.

In the first version he wasn't even there. In the second "actual" version he was there, but too far away to move the tool. Why are there two separate versions of the same story told by the same teller? Does your cousin tell version # 1, version # 2, or a whole different version?

Seriously Zooby, i laugh at your explanations and posts as to possible answers...like the old adage goes, "i guess you had to be there".

Yeah, but if I had been there what version would I tell?

 

[GeorginaS]

Wow, we must be really talking past each other on this one. I'll try to be very clear because I am surprised you think I believe there's evidence for ghosts.

My personal opinion is that the likelihood that ghosts exist is astronomically, ridiculously low. Low enough to live my life as if they didn't exist. It is much more likely that a ghost story teller is mistaken, or hallucinating, or even lying. Now having said that, here's what I do when someone reports to me an experience where they encountered a ghost, and they are 100% sure it was a ghost. I can't tell them "the chances that you are lying to me, or were hallucinating are greater than the chances that you actually saw a ghost." The conversation ends there at best and the person is insulted at worst.

So what I do is I approach the situation with this attitude: "Assuming that what you are saying is true.."

I see. So what you were trying to express is that you humour people who tell you stories about ghosts, then? And when you humour them you say...

My mistake. I missed something, somewhere. Thank you for the clarification.

 

[DaveC426913]

Experiments seem to show that a soul weighs a few grams...

OK, granted this is a thread about ghosts & all, but let's not completely toss our brains out with the bathwater, hm?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Experiments seem to show that a soul weighs a few grams, but I don't see how something of such low density can move objects.

Making a statement like that is a ban-worthy offense. First of all, there is no scientific recognition of the soul, so the premise itself is crackpot. Next, there is certainly no published "mass of a soul".

Any scientific claim made must be supported by information published in applicable, mainstream journals. There will be no additional warnings.

 

[DaveC426913]

[Offending post has been deleted, as I predicted . I swear it wasn't me who reported it.]

Zooby raises a valid point. The very premise of this thread is that, while the events may be crystal clear to you rockhouse, that does not mean they are to others.



You have accomplished your initial task of retelling the story of what happened to you anecdotally. Since you're only given us the highlights, the best we can do is say "Wow, that must have been scary", and then close the thread.

That was accomplished dozens of posts ago.

But if you want to continue to discuss it, then we'll start asking for facts. And your facts have some missing bits. You would need to now go into an account of the events.

If you wish to pursue it, then give Zooby his due.

 

[ideasrule]

Also, I'm serious about trying to record or videotape what you see. If I was living anywhere near you, I'd be begging to live in your house for a while with a camera and microphone in hope of recording some interesting phenomena.

 

[rockhouse]

Ok, let me try and simplify it...

#1) The house that i lived in in my first story is no longer there. It was demolished and a medical center stands on top of the site. (all this is in my posts).
#2) While living at said house i was broke as hell, working 12 hours a day just to make ends meet and 20 years old, with a new wife and daughter. I couldn't afford lunch in many instances, let alone a recorder of any sort...and like i said, after awhile you just shrug that stuff off. (this is in my posts).
#3) The house in my second story still stands (as far as i know). It does not belong to me, but to a man named Tom. My because and i were the only 2 men hired to remodel the house. We started with the tear-out, followed by frame-up, window/door installation, trim-out, then floors, (tile work). We worked at this house for 3 months. During those 3 months, all that crazy crap was going on at various times. He's my cousin, not my siamese twin. There were countless times that i was alone and my tools would move from me in an instance. It was happening to him too. He's also the one that heard the coughing and footsteps on the stairs. Not just some knockin noises, but actual, steps...you know, like in a pattern coming down the stairs.

Basically what I'm trying to tell yall is that NOTHING holds water as to explaining how this stuff was happening and what the hell it was. I'm a cynical person. Believe me, i tried to debunk this stuff myself...i even WANTED it to be debunked, but it was not possible.

 

[rockhouse]

Yall act like I'm my stories are slippin. Lol, if you read my posts CAREFULLY, and apply some basic common sense and reading comprehension skills, all the facts are there.
I'm no liar.

 

[waht]

There were countless times that i was alone and my tools would move from me in an instance. It was happening to him too. He's also the one that heard the coughing and footsteps on the stairs. Not just some knockin noises, but actual, steps...you know, like in a pattern coming down the stairs.

What kinds of tools moved away from you and how far? Tools like a hammer which is heavy, or a screwdriver which could have rolled?

 

[DaveC426913]

Yall act like I'm my stories are slippin. Lol, if you read my posts CAREFULLY, and apply some basic common sense and reading comprehension skills, all the facts are there.
I'm no liar.

Nobody's calling you a liar.

As previously stated, your story is told to us as an anecdote, meaning there's nothing we can do except listen to it. It is not told as an account (which would list a comprehensive set of details that we could examine with or without your constantly adding to as we go along or correcting us because related events are spread all over the place).

So, now that you've told your anecdote, what more do you want from us?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Basically what I'm trying to tell yall is that NOTHING holds water as to explaining how this stuff was happening and what the hell it was. I'm a cynical person. Believe me, i tried to debunk this stuff myself...i even WANTED it to be debunked, but it was not possible.

It's perfectly possible, and has already been done in principle. You refuse to accept it. For example: I, waht, Georgina, Dave, and DrZaius (5 people in this thread alone) have all had similar experiences of hearing our name spoken and we're all perfectly willing to seriously consider it was just an hallucination. You, however, speak as if you're hallucination-proof, which is an untenable stance.

When you shift from saying hammer and slide rule alone, to trowel with cousin, then I have to also question the solidity of all your corroborative detail, and especially whether your claims of other people's experience of paranormal activity at the same sites would hold up if I went there and interviewed them. Like the UFO story I quoted in post #6 only some of the viewers vehemently maintained the flares could not have been of earthly origin, yet the pro-alien visitation journal neglected to interview the many observers who thought the lights could easily have been flares tied to balloons.

That same UFO story shows that the confidence and vehemence of any eyewitness in insisting what they saw was real is completely unreliable in determining if a thing is actually real.

Moving tools: I work with tools a lot. I was a machinist for a few years, I fix my own car and I am currently the handyman/caretaker of the building where I live, which includes carpentry and plumbing repairs. Tools disappear on me at least once per job. I unconsciously set them down in random places when I'm mentally preoccupied with something else.

Also, other people do, in fact, sometimes play tricks on you. Back 20 years ago when you could still smoke at work in the machine shop one of the other machinists used to snag my cigarettes from my tool chest when I wasn't looking and amuse himself watching as I hunted for where I'd put them. I had no idea he was doing this, I thought I genuinely misplaced them. Then he quit the shop and on his last day he called me over to his tool chest, opened the bottom and there were all the cigarettes that had gone missing over the months.

Every possible alternate explanation people have offered holds plenty of water. You claim you're cynical and skeptical on the one hand, that you WANT it to be debunked, but then you "laugh at" each and every skeptical alternative offered, which demonstrates you are actually running firmly in the rut of confirmation bias: you completely reject everything but "ghost", over and over.

 

[DaveC426913]

Moving tools: I work with tools a lot. I was a machinist for a few years, I fix my own car and I am currently the handyman/caretaker of the building where I live, which includes carpentry and plumbing repairs. Tools disappear on me at least once per job. I unconsciously set them down in random places when I'm mentally preoccupied with something else.

This happens so often in my circle of art friends that we have an explanation for it: it is the work of the Pencil Faeries. While working at your desk, you put your pencil down to use the eraser and when you reach for the pencil again, it is completely and utterly gone. No amount of searching will turn it up again. Pencil Faeries are nicer than Tool Faeries though; Pencil Faeries return things after 5 minutes.

I once saw, with my own eyes, a Pencil Faery in action. It was spectacular.

I was working in a library behind the counter where there were carpeted floors. I dropped my pencil and, duie to the carpeted floor, it made no noise when it landed. But I was totally 'on' today and flicked my eyes fast enough to see it land. The pencil landed on-end, cartwheeled across the carpet, then jumped a full foot up in the air, clearing the bottom shelf of the counter and the large cardboard box sitting on the shelf, impacted the back wal of the counter, and fell straight down behind the cardboard box. It I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have seen that pencil again.


rochhouse, I'm not suggesting your hammer or tape measure jumped 10 feet. What I'm suggesting is that this happens so often that Tool Faeries are a cultural cliche, in the same manner as sock-eating dryers and breeding coathangers.

 

[rockhouse]

Ok. Take a book that's near you, or a paper weight, or your cup of coffee.
Now set it at the other end of your desk to your right or left, but not near enough to the edge to fall off. Make sure no one is within many yards of you. Now turn your back on said object for, say, 10 seconds. Now if you were to turn back around to grab said object, but it was actually sitting on another desk, 10 feet away...thats the type of crap I am talkin about.
That type of stuff happening over a 3 month period. After awhile, you try and set up the situations, so you can debunk it, but the stuff still happens right under your nose, so to speak. Then after all this people are telling you that the coffee must've fallin off the desk. Or the book was actually moved by yourself unnoticed, or the paper weight was just round enough to roll somewhere...or you were actually hallucinating.
Obviously any sane and reasonable person would exhaust all of those possibilities first, and not find any of them to have happened, then it becomes a story to tell.
Thats like someone telling a story about a ball that disappeared from them as their back was turned, but neglect to inform you they were standing on a hill next to a storm drain when they set the ball down.
Anyhow, it's obvious that this will just go in circles. Yall have provided explanations and i have rejected them based on my own reasoning, logic, experience and understanding...nothing more can be done.

 

[GeorginaS]

I was working in a library behind the counter where there were carpeted floors. I dropped my pencil and, duie to the carpeted floor, it made no noise when it landed. But I was totally 'on' today and flicked my eyes fast enough to see it land. The pencil landed on-end, cartwheeled across the carpet, then jumped a full foot up in the air, clearing the bottom shelf of the counter and the large cardboard box sitting on the shelf, impacted the back wal of the counter, and fell straight down behind the cardboard box. It I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have seen that pencil again.

Did you stand and applaud? I would have.

rochhouse, I'm not suggesting your hammer or tape measure jumped 10 feet. What I'm suggesting is that this happens so often that Tool Faeries are a cultural cliche, in the same manner as sock-eating dryers and breeding coathangers.

I was about to mention disappearing socks, and it's doubly weird when you live alone.

However, seeing rockhouses' subsequent response, it appears that (s)he's accepting no other explanation other than ghosts. (It could be faeries or leprechauns. They are notorious for moving and stealing stuff too.) So, I'd have to say the same (again) as Dave, and ask what it is that rockhouse wants of us, at this point.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I once saw, with my own eyes, a Pencil Faery in action. It was spectacular.

I was working in a library behind the counter where there were carpeted floors. I dropped my pencil and, duie to the carpeted floor, it made no noise when it landed. But I was totally 'on' today and flicked my eyes fast enough to see it land. The pencil landed on-end, cartwheeled across the carpet, then jumped a full foot up in the air, clearing the bottom shelf of the counter and the large cardboard box sitting on the shelf, impacted the back wal of the counter, and fell straight down behind the cardboard box. It I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have seen that pencil again.

That is pretty spectacular. If you hadn't seen it, but proposed it as a hypothesis to explain the disappearing pencils, many would dismiss it as an impossible stretch and prefer to ascribe the disappearance to ghosts. As I alluded to earlier I think a lot of "hauntings" are precipitated by similar freak, but perfectly physical, occurances which are so odd no one would even think to propose them. As soon as something freaky happens many people instantly assume "ghost" and never investigate.

My high school science teacher told us of the time he uncovered a freak cause for a ghostly whine that sometimes pervaded his apartment. For a long time he couldn't locate the source because it would die out before he found it. Then one day he happened to be in the right place at the right time and realized it was coming from the toilet. He lifted the lid off the water tank and saw the hollow copper float vibrating and he could hear that the sound was emanating from this float. He hypothesized that some restriction in the water inlet pipes or tubing was causing a vibration when the water flowed, which was, by complete coincidence, at the resonant frequency of the float. Next day he replaced the float with one of a different material and the ghostly whine never occurred again.

 

[DaveC426913]

Ok. Take a book that's near you, or a paper weight, or your cup of coffee.
Now set it at the other end of your desk to your right or left, but not near enough to the edge to fall off. Make sure no one is within many yards of you. Now turn your back on said object for, say, 10 seconds. Now if you were to turn back around to grab said object, but it was actually sitting on another desk, 10 feet away...thats the type of crap I am talkin about.

You see, now you are making up a completely hypothetical story, eliminating any mitigating circumstances, leaving bare only the unexplainable parts, and then saying your story is "like that".

This is no different than saying: "picture a semi-translucent apparition wearing shredded clothes, hovering in the air, saying "boo" - my story's just like that".


Look, no one is refuting what you experienced. But again: You've told the anecdote. What more do you want? Do you want us to try to analyze it? We'd need an objectively-told account of the events.

 

[rockhouse]

^I guess this was a testimony, and nothing more. I tried to show an example of the weirdness of the experiences with the "desk" idea. I was trying to put the skeptics in a position mentally to understand the circumstances and situation, and to maybe shed some light, (atleast mentally), that no physical explanations suffice for the experiences.
So that's it. I'm done here.

PS. I will leave you with an idea of what type of guy i am, (cause i know that most just roll their eyes reading this like, "another one of these UFO/paranormal guys"). Most people embed links in their computer toolbars of things of frequent interest. In other words, you can tell a lot about a person by seeing what links are in their toolbar.
Mine are, in order: Yahoo! Mail, Visajourney.com, youtube, The war room (Sherdog MMA), The Heavyweights (Sherdog MMA), Modern Day M-14 rifles, Science Daily, then this Skeptics forum link.
NO UFO, paranormal, area 51, ghost hunter, reptile men type crap...adios.

 

[waht]

My high school science teacher told us of the time he uncovered a freak cause for a ghostly whine that sometimes pervaded his apartment. For a long time he couldn't locate the source because it would die out before he found it. Then one day he happened to be in the right place at the right time and realized it was coming from the toilet. He lifted the lid off the water tank and saw the hollow copper float vibrating and he could hear that the sound was emanating from this float. He hypothesized that some restriction in the water inlet pipes or tubing was causing a vibration when the water flowed, which was, by complete coincidence, at the resonant frequency of the float. Next day he replaced the float with one of a different material and the ghostly whine never occurred again.

I think this is a very common effect. A sequence of events becomes incoherent if you have gaps in your knowledge. The missing but crucial details which complete the picture were omitted, and the overall effect appears magic, and unexplained. But what is interesting is how people immediately fill in the blank with an explanation that has to contain a personalized entity as an agent responsible for the effect that you experience. In case of noise in the house it's ghosts, in case of UFO it's aliens, in case of an earthquake it's the wrath of god. The details of these ideas people pick up from other people, but what stays unchanged is a tendency to suspect that someone is responsible, and disregard a natural phenomena, sometimes even if all the details of an event are staring in front of you.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think this is a very common effect. A sequence of events becomes incoherent if you have gaps in your knowledge. The missing but crucial details which complete the picture were omitted, and the overall effect appears magic, and unexplained. But what is interesting is how people immediately fill in the blank with an explanation that has to contain a personalized entity as an agent responsible for the effect that you experience. In case of noise in the house it's ghosts, in case of UFO it's aliens, in case of an earthquake it's the wrath of god. The details of these ideas people pick up from other people, but what stays unchanged is a tendency to suspect that someone is responsible, and disregard a natural phenomena, sometimes even if all the details of an event are staring in front of you.

Interestingly, many skeptics make the same mistake. One reason subjects like "ghosts" or "UFOs" are considered to be crackpot by name alone [as if all claims are the same] is that the presumed explanations are souls of the dead, and ET. Pop interpretations of claims are assumed to be synonymous with the claims, which is often not how the information is presented by the alleged observers. The skeptics are often the ones who push the crackpot or unjustified interpretations because it makes the stories easier to dismiss. It is a classic crackpot debunking maneuver.

I have never once argued for any particular explanation generally for ghost or UFO reports, and certainly not any fringe explanations, but you wouldn't believe the amount of grief I've tolerated for allowing any discussion of claimed observations - void of all fringe theories, by definition! The only explanations that may be suggested must be based in known science. But that has never mattered to more people than you would believe. Consider the irony of science-minded people who despise claims of unexplained phenomena - the heart and soul of science and the reason it exists! Heaven forbid that people may occasionally experience things that we just don't understand.

 

[GeorginaS]

Of course we experience things we don't understand. We live in an environment in which we understand far less about it than we truly know. It's a condition of our current existence. And I can accept a whole bunch of, "Yep, that happens and we have no clue why". What I have trouble accepting is inventing a rationale wholesale and immediately ascribing what we don't know or can't explain to supernatural agency. Just because we don't have a verifiable answer -- yet -- doesn't make an apparition the cause. Sometimes we just have to live with, "We don't know". Inventing ethereal beings and insisting on their reality doesn't forward the cause of knowing.

I know you know all of that. I'm just saying.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There is another interesting denial mechanism that I have noticed. I have often been amazed by the number of people who dismiss ET claims because: That conclusion cannot be logically extrapolated from lights in the sky. What is amazing about this objection is that many people claim to have had direct encounters with ETs - something alien by any reasonable definition. While I don't accept these claims, they do exist, and a few accounts are actually a bit compelling in that there were either many witnesses to the claimed events, or other supporting information that lends credibility to the story. So even if ET believers are all gullible [not saying so, just assuming so for a moment], they don't necessarily derive their beliefs from simple lights in the sky. To believe they do is to be equally gullible.

It is annoying because I don't defend the claims, but let's at least get the basics correct - that is ETUFOs 101, day 1. Frankly, if you don't know this, then you have no business commenting at all. "Lights in the sky" is just one of a wide spectrum of reports, some of which can be quite baffling. Personally, I ignore all ET claims but am fascinated by a number of well-documented encounters with apparent anomalies - unrecognized phenomena. However, it is also true I have no way to rule out the possibility that ET has been here. No one can. We have no extraordinary evidence suggesting that we have been visited, but there are plenty of claims.

The pseudodebunking game seems to be this: Assume all claims are trivial. This is true for ghosts, UFOs, and any number of odd topics.

 

[zoobyshoe]

But what is interesting is how people immediately fill in the blank with an explanation that has to contain a personalized entity as an agent responsible for the effect that you experience. In case of noise in the house it's ghosts, in case of UFO it's aliens, in case of an earthquake it's the wrath of god. The details of these ideas people pick up from other people, but what stays unchanged is a tendency to suspect that someone is responsible, and disregard a natural phenomena, sometimes even if all the details of an event are staring in front of you.

I think the reason for this is that when surprised, frightened, or even just completely confused, we can easily revert to a child-like state of mind in which it's easy to resort to anthropomorphizations. I, personally, still tend to feel anger toward machines that don't work the way they're supposed to, as if the machine was expressing some will of its own. I can also get angry at the amorphous and fictional entity: the situation.

Of course we experience things we don't understand. We live in an environment in which we understand far less about it than we truly know. It's a condition of our current existence. And I can accept a whole bunch of, "Yep, that happens and we have no clue why". What I have trouble accepting is inventing a rationale wholesale and immediately ascribing what we don't know or can't explain to supernatural agency. Just because we don't have a verifiable answer -- yet -- doesn't make an apparition the cause. Sometimes we just have to live with, "We don't know". Inventing ethereal beings and insisting on their reality doesn't forward the cause of knowing.

I know you know all of that. I'm just saying.

I don't think most people in the general population are interested in "the cause of knowing". In my experience they're more interested in feeling good by whatever fast and sloppy means are immediately available. Like I said back in post #6 one big reward for believing in ghosts is that sharing these stories can be a powerful bonding experience and it feels good to be in sync with your peers and relatives.

Another big reward is that having such an experience might make a person feel special, perhaps elite. In some people's minds having a vocalizing ghost in your house is a greater status symbol than a vibrating toilet float any day.

The other major reward is probably the biggest: if there are ghosts, then we survive physical death, and death is on just about everyone's list of top fears.

I don't think the rationales are really random (or invented wholesale). They serve psychological and emotional needs.

 

[DaveC426913]

Like I said back in post #6 one big reward for believing in ghosts is that sharing these stories can be a powerful bonding experience and it feels good to be in sync with your peers and relatives.

Bonding... in sync...

Hm, let's ask rockhouse if that's what he's feelin' right now...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Bonding... in sync...

Hm, let's ask rockhouse if that's what he's feelin' right now...

He should have checked for a campfire and the glow of a doobie.

 

[GeorginaS]

I don't think most people in the general population are interested in "the cause of knowing". In my experience they're more interested in feeling good by whatever fast and sloppy means are immediately available.

Yes, okay, I suppose I have to agree with you there, although the thought of that makes me tired. I wonder if it's a function of age (although I know so many people far, far older than I am who have no interest in trying to know either, so, maybe it's not age) that renders the idea of "the general population" so tedious. Apparently, or so reading and studying tells me, humans are hardwired to select for noting patterns (whether or not they exist) and, more often than not, opting for malevolent agency in the unknown. They're coping mechanisms that ensure survival in primitive conditions far more readily than avid curiosity. You're far safer believing that that unseen thing shaking the branches in the tree down the path is an angry ancestor come back to steal your food therefore causing you to run away than you are getting in closer to inspect and know for certain what it is.

That so many people, at this point in human evolution, continue to opt for default setting I find dismaying and disappointing, for some reason, although I truly have no right to that disappointment. People are who they are.

Another big reward is that having such an experience might make a person feel special, perhaps elite.

Oh, absolutely. My mother tells me, in hushed tones, all about her mystical experiences. It makes her so much more in touch with what's really going on in the world, you see.

The other major reward is probably the biggest: if there are ghosts, then we survive physical death, and death is on just about everyone's list of top fears.

Well, yes, fear of the unknown is, supposedly, the top human fear. And the biggest unknown is death, so it follows.

I don't think the rationales are really random (or invented wholesale). They serve psychological and emotional needs.

I used those specific words as a sort of shortcut. I understand that the mental mechanism involved isn't random or invented wholesale. What I was referring to was the invention or selection of the agents supposedly involved. In this instance, as an example, the person in the OP chose "ghosts" as the agents of the unexplained rather than "angels" or "faeries" or even mischievous "imps". Really, any of those characters could have as easily fit the bill in terms of unseen actors perpetrating the confounding deeds. That's the sort of random rationales and inventions I was referring to, not the creation of them or the belief in them to begin with.

In other words, yes, I agree.

 

[waht]

Interestingly, many skeptics make the same mistake. One reason subjects like "ghosts" or "UFOs" are considered to be crackpot by name alone [as if all claims are the same] is that the presumed explanations are souls of the dead, and ET. Pop interpretations of claims are assumed to be synonymous with the claims, which is often not how the information is presented by the alleged observers. The skeptics are often the ones who push the crackpot or unjustified interpretations because it makes the stories easier to dismiss. It is a classic crackpot debunking maneuver.

The definition of ghosts is along the lines of "a disembodied soul, the soul of a dead person believed to be an inhabitant of the unseen world or to appear to the living in bodily likeness" (Webster). Hence, if somebody claims they've seen a ghost, how could one not presume they imply a soul of a dead person? In case of UFOs, the definition is understood by many to mean its reverse, that is it's an identified flying object from either an alien civilization or a super-secret military aircraft from area 51. Hence among the UFO crackpots, I don't trust them in their definition of the word, and am forced to inquire them in which definition they believe in.

However, it is also true I have no way to rule out the possibility that ET has been here. No one can. We have no extraordinary evidence suggesting that we have been visited, but there are plenty of claims.

Anecdotal evidence is probably the least credible evidence there is. Until one recognizes all the flaws of our own perception, there is no way to give an accurate account. So if there are really ETs flying around our planet, let them be discovered by scientific instruments, and not by sporadic accounts of UFOs, or cell phone cam quality videos.

The pseudodebunking game seems to be this: Assume all claims are trivial. This is true for ghosts, UFOs, and any number of odd topics.

I don't extend to parallel claims by inductive reasoning, rather than point out a general observation, and that is an innate bias generated by our own minds which craves anthropomorphization. Giving something unexplained human characteristics is a crucial jig-saw puzzle piece of explaining why do we interpret the world the way we do.

 

[zoobyshoe]

That so many people, at this point in human evolution, continue to opt for default setting I find dismaying and disappointing, for some reason, although I truly have no right to that disappointment. People are who they are.

They are, yes, and I don't think humans have evolved at all since they emerged as such, cro-magnons, something like 40,000 years ago. Instead I take what people loosely describe as "evolution" to be a cultural maturation which is the result of our ability to pass knowledge down to the next generation. That's tenuous and every individual born is at risk of not getting exposed to, or trained in, ways of reasoning that might be thousands of years old that could raise them above "default" level.

What I was referring to was the invention or selection of the agents supposedly involved. In this instance, as an example, the person in the OP chose "ghosts" as the agents of the unexplained rather than "angels" or "faeries" or even mischievous "imps". Really, any of those characters could have as easily fit the bill in terms of unseen actors perpetrating the confounding deeds. That's the sort of random rationales and inventions I was referring to, not the creation of them or the belief in them to begin with.

Yeah, I started pointing this out here several years ago:

You jump to say "ghost," instead of, for instance, demon, or pooka, or gremlin, because that's what the current conventional lore is about this stuff. As I've pointed out in several previous posts, even within a generally paranormal explanation, there is no good reason you should conclude this was the disembodied spirit of a dead person.

The fact you later found out someone had died in the house is pretty much irrelevant. It only seems signifigant if you already believe the spirits of the dead haunt their former dwellings. If you were predisposed to believe in demons, you would have assumed a demon was responsible. If you were predisposed to belief in Out Of Body experiences, you would have jumped to the conclusion that someone, somewhere was leaving their body and messing with your heads...

...When confronted with extremely weird happenings people are eager to sew them together into some kind of coherent whole. "Ghosts," or in this case, poltergeists ("Crashing or thumping ghost") have become the default explanation. This is really too bad since people start believing it is the right explanation, and start extrapolating the general characteristics and qualities of "poltergeists" from there.

Everyone pitches in. Someone decides the reason they throw things around is the same reason people do: they're angry and "unquiet" spirits. Someone else decides they must have led unhappy, frustrated lives and aren't evolved enough to pass on to "the next world" and so on. All invented, but passed on from person to person till everyone thinks someone with some "spiritual" insight actually determined all this to be true at some point in the past. All invented. No one knows for sure what's going on.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=684912&highlight=demon#post684912

 

[waht]

I think the reason for this is that when surprised, frightened, or even just completely confused, we can easily revert to a child-like state of mind in which it's easy to resort to anthropomorphizations. I, personally, still tend to feel anger toward machines that don't work the way they're supposed to, as if the machine was expressing some will of its own. I can also get angry at the amorphous and fictional entity: the situation.

This is also common, and I see this everyday in the work place: cries of "stupid machine is not working." There is a tendency to blame other people as being responsible for our inconveniences. But when there is no one to blame, there still is a need to blame someone, and so an imaginary someone is invented to directly blame. Although there are probably health benefits to this, as releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up.

 

[zoobyshoe]

This is also common, and I see this everyday in the work place: "this stupid machine is not working." There is a tendency to blame other people as being responsible for our inconveniences. But when there is no one to blame, there still is a need to blame someone, and so an imaginary someone is invented to directly blame. Although there are probably health benefits to this, as releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up.

I prefer to bottle mine. I make a good side income selling it to the D.o.D. ( R.Lee Ermy said "Looky there! I just demolished a WHOLE watermelon crop with ONE Zooby Bomb! That's a thing of beauty!")

 

[waht]

I prefer to bottle mine. I make a good side income selling it to the D.o.D. ( R.Lee Ermy said "Looky there! I just demolished a WHOLE watermelon crop with ONE Zooby Bomb! That's a thing of beauty!")

I'm still in awe that Ermy didn't blow himself up yet.

 

[GeorginaS]

Zoobyshoe, likely you've read a quantity of literature on the subject, but in case you'd be interested, there was a book published in 2009 entitled Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking In A Modern World by Hank Davis. It's a book written for lay people and is very well researched and properly cited and whatnot. Davis is an evolutionary psychologist and is a prof at the University of Guelph. The book is lucid, well researched and very clear.

I'm pointing you to this book as a matter of interest because what we're talking about is his central thesis in the book, that modern man in the Pleistocene epoch essentially came with and/or developed mental coping strategies that worked well for man at the time and were selected for because the people with those default survival instincts did in fact survive to perpetuate the species. He discusses how those synaptic connections worked well 50,000 years ago for the situations man at the time found himself in but how those same connections that we continue to own today don't serve us well. (I'm not explaining this well.) Davis explains or theorises about, then, why humans naturally list towards the supernatural and god/religion.

At any rate, I think it's a decent read, and I'd recommend it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Zoobyshoe, likely you've read a quantity of literature on the subject, but in case you'd be interested, there was a book published in 2009 entitled Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking In A Modern World by Hank Davis. It's a book written for lay people and is very well researched and properly cited and whatnot. Davis is an evolutionary psychologist and is a prof at the University of Guelph. The book is lucid, well researched and very clear.

I'm pointing you to this book as a matter of interest because what we're talking about is his central thesis in the book, that modern man in the Pleistocene epoch essentially came with and/or developed mental coping strategies that worked well for man at the time and were selected for because the people with those default survival instincts did in fact survive to perpetuate the species. He discusses how those synaptic connections worked well 50,000 years ago for the situations man at the time found himself in but how those same connections that we continue to own today don't serve us well. (I'm not explaining this well.) Davis explains or theorises about, then, why humans naturally list towards the supernatural and god/religion.

At any rate, I think it's a decent read, and I'd recommend it.

I haven't read that particular book, but I'm aware of Evolutionary Psychology. The same questions about why we have tendencies toward apparently counter-productive, outdated, primitive beliefs and behaviors, can also be addressed by other disciplines from a different perspective, and I'm persuaded that neuro-science has its toe in the best toehold. One neurologically centered book, Phantoms In The Brain, specifically addresses the limitations of Evolutionary Psychology in a couple, short but terribly incisive, places. I wonder if you read that book if if wouldn't also taint your view of EP. I'm not sure I could un-taint myself enough to give your recommendation an unbiased look.

 

[GeorginaS]

I haven't read that particular book, but I'm aware of Evolutionary Psychology. The same questions about why we have tendencies toward apparently counter-productive, outdated, primitive beliefs and behaviors, can also be addressed by other disciplines from a different perspective, and I'm persuaded that neuro-science has its toe in the best toehold. One neurologically centered book, Phantoms In The Brain, specifically addresses the limitations of Evolutionary Psychology in a couple, short but terribly incisive, places. I wonder if you read that book if if wouldn't also taint your view of EP. I'm not sure I could un-taint myself enough to give your recommendation an unbiased look.

I agree that the same concepts can be informed by and addressed by various disciplines at the same time and frequently overlap and compliment one another.

Thank you for pointing the direction to further reading. I've ordered Phantoms In The Brain and look forward to it.

 

[Chronos]

Perception is a cruel mistress. We routinely benchmark the unusual with hardwired responses. Science has little to do with it. Some would claim that science is blind - and I am content with that claim.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I agree that the same concepts can be informed by and addressed by various disciplines at the same time and frequently overlap and compliment one another.

I would say it's a good sign if they do overlap and compliment. It would strongly suggest some authentic insight has been arrived at.

Thank you for pointing the direction to further reading. I've ordered Phantoms In The Brain and look forward to it.

You will love it. It's a compelling, fascinating page-turner.

 

[DaveC426913]

I would say it's a good sign if they do overlap and compliment. It would strongly suggest some authentic insight has been arrived at.

I disagree. This "pretend tendency" has been used in the UFO-world to try to lend some credence to the field.

Consistently seeing "greys" and consistently seeing rotating-craft-with-bulbs-on-the-bottom makes it seem like there's some meat to the stories.

Bleh. Too early in the morning. I'll be more eloquent about that after waking up.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I disagree. This "pretend tendency" has been used in the UFO-world to try to lend some credence to the field.

Consistently seeing "greys" and consistently seeing rotating-craft-with-bulbs-on-the-bottom makes it seem like there's some meat to the stories.

What you're saying is "The plural of anecdote is not data."

I'm talking about something else entirely, the notion of disparate disciplines, say, sociology, physics, and art all overlapping in their view of something. I can't even think of a good example of this. That leads me to suppose if there were a good example it would be a significant indicator of authentic insight.