Do you believe in ghosts?

[poshlost]

No, I'm a lame old rational, logical, skeptical realist.

 

[patricky]

Glad you gave your answer so much thought. Or was it a "Joke"?

Glad you remembered the fear quotes. Or do you just "lack" a sense of humor?

Hyperbolic contradiction?

I can't find this term defined in any rhetoric or philosophy resources. If you're talking about a contraction of a conic section, please explain.

Do you have anything of a positive, or perhaps enlightening nature to add to this?

Your views are irrational and wrong. If you really believe otherwise, James Randi will give you a million bucks to prove it.

And, umm, hug?

 

[brocolliwatermelon]

Yes, I do. I've experienced stuff with other people, so it's not like we've all imagined it.

 

[IndigoSensor]

Your views are irrational and wrong. If you really believe otherwise, James Randi will give you a million bucks to prove it.

And, umm, hug?

Most people who believe in ghosts, or any kind of spiritual phenomenon would not want to "prove" what they believe. Let alone, much of this stuff can not be proven to the standards that randi wants. Spiritual and relegious matters are very nondescript by their very nature. They can not be proven, nor disproven. Saying that somones views are irrational and wrong is unfair, particulary in a matter where it can not be proven nor disproven.

What is wrong with believing in such things anyway? It causes no harm for one to believe in ghosts (yes I am aware there could be scenarios where it could, but I am talking about the majority here). Internal personal evidence is a powerful thing. I have experienced things in my life that very much make believe in spiritual matters. Will this make you believe me? Nope. Do I care either? Nope. Almost anyone who believes in ghosts does not care if someone believe them, because this is a personal and often very real matter to them. Saying that it is wrong changes nothing, nor does it make the person view things any differently.

 

[Stu]

Is it the case that if a person does not believe in ghosts that they therefore have no access to spirituality?

 

[Questingpoet]

Glad you remembered the fear quotes. Or do you just "lack" a sense of humor?



I can't find this term defined in any rhetoric or philosophy resources. If you're talking about a contraction of a conic section, please explain.



Your views are irrational and wrong. If you really believe otherwise, James Randi will give you a million bucks to prove it.

And, umm, hug?

No, I don't lack a sense of humor. Quite the opposite. I'm just subtle--minuse the " " of course. My views are neither irrational or wrong. What James Randi or anyone else have to say, while maybe interesting, has nothing to do with how I comprehend my world. I decide for myself what I want to believe, and believe we should all be free to do the same.

 

[Stu]

Please do not shut down this poll by fighting.

 

[The Jester]

Is it the case that if a person does not believe in ghosts that they therefore have no access to spirituality?

No. Ghosts are just a part of everything that's spiritual.
That'd be like saying: if you don't believe in Allah, you're not religious.

 

[54192&#cmy]

Yes I think they exist. I have seen people I have known after they passed away. I don't care if others believe me it's not up to them...

 

[muir]

Is it the case that if a person does not believe in ghosts that they therefore have no access to spirituality?

I don't think not believing in ghosts makes you spiritually bankrupt

I think it means you have to define your feelings and views in a different way

 

[Entyqua]

I absolutely love that this poll is nearly split 50/50

Interesting topic too...This is a very personal subject, I have voted and already said my experiences. I, however, cannot fathom not seeing them. Whats it like?

 

[CoffeeShopDiva]

I don't think this poll can be answered with a simple yes or no answer.

I have no proof that they exist, but I'm open to their possibility.

 

[Top cat]

If and individual believes they have seen or felt or interacted with a ghost, it is possible that their unconscious has projected the event into their perception of reality for reasons unknown. That individual is not "making it up" the way a con artist would. It is reality for them but do others have to accept that the event is a physical reality?

Do you have examples of events when a person's unconscious projects something to them? Sounds like something as unusual as ghosts

 

[DefectiveCreative]

I, however, cannot fathom not seeing them. Whats it like?

That's kind of an odd question, I mean, it's like asking what it's like to not see the inside of your own eyeballs or something. It's just...something you don't see. =/

Do you have examples of events when a person's unconscious projects something to them? Sounds like something as unusual as ghosts

Schizophrenia is considered by many psychologists (especially Jungian ones) to be an (extreme) example of the unconscious projecting its contents onto the subjects conscious perception of reality. It's also generally considered that many other hallucinations, whether brought about by illness or certain drugs or dehydration or whatever, are the same thing.

The idea is that these things weaken the barrier between the conscious and unconscious minds to such an extent that the contents of the unconscious mind start to leak across into our conscious perception of reality and the two then become indistinguishable from each other.

As wiki puts it:

Griffin and Tyrrell go so far as to say that "schizophrenia is waking reality processed through the dreaming brain."

 

[crystaluni]

i was a college student and was visiting milwaukee, wi for the weekend with my friend. one night, i couldn't sleep and went into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. i was listless, so i went to the window and stared out from the second floor. from the left side, what i can only describe as a round ball came into view. it was close to the size of a beachball, but slightly depressed on top so it wasn't a perfect circle. it was solid and i couldn't see through it. It was an opaque color of gray or whatnot. it moved completely smooth. i wasn't frightened and tried to process in my mind what i was seeing. the first thought that entered my mind was 'oh, it's a tumbleweed.' then i was like, 'stupid, there are no tumbleweeds in the city, and tumbleweeds don't move like that.' then, i thought, it moves like a kid on a skateboard, but it obviously wasn't. it was just something i had never encountered before that i was trying to put into a frame of reference that i could understand, but i couldn't. as it moved across the street, it slowed and came to a halt behind a car. i could no longer see it and was still not scared because i didn't know what it was. i kept standing there and waiting. after a few seconds, the object came out from behind the vehicle and went back on its trajectory across the street. i would've been content to watch it move on, but it turned into the driveway of the house i was in. that was when i somehow instinctively knew that it was coming for me, and i bolted.

Sounds like something I saw when I was half-asleep in my bedroom. I was still lying in bed shortly before dawn when I could hear the sound of chanting swelling all around me. "Nigher. Nigher. Nigher," the many-voiced chorus said. I was afraid, being surrounded by beings that I could hear, but could not see. I looked all around me, and everything in my bedroom looked normal, until I noticed a glowing ball of white light in one corner of my room. I thought that it might just be the light coming in from the window, but it looked spherical and dense to me, and more than four times the size of an adult human's head. Gradually, the ball rose up from my floor up to my ceiling, while the chanting grew louder and louder still.

Then suddenly, the white ball vanished, and the chanting stopped abruptly.

That morning, my older ESTP sister asked me at breakfast if I noticed anything strange happening toward dawn. I asked her why she asked that question, and if it was because she heard me stirring in my bedroom.

No she did not hear me stirring in my bedroom, she said. But she had an inexplicable feeling that scared her - she said that she somehow sensed an other-worldly presence in her bedroom that woke her up that early.

So I told her what I had experienced that same dawn.

This happened toward April of 2009. I did some random research on the web, and my semi-dream event seems to have coincided with the Jewish sun blessing of April 8 - a rare event that happens every 28 years according to this news article.

I also did more research on "glowing balls of light" and from what I've been reading they're called spiritual orbs by some. And I have three other "glowing ball" stories - one about my ESTP sister and two about a friend who self-types as ESTP. In all three stories, the orbs preceded the prodigious manifestation of intellectual gifts in childhood and adolescence. In all three stories, the fiery orbs were hanging over the heads of my sister and my friend - as recounted by the dumbfounded adults who saw them.

If there are such things as ghosts, i think that is why they gravitate towards children, because children had no idea what a ghost is and why they should fear them.

Boy do I have another weird story from childhood for you! And this time, it seems, a (human) ghost figured in it.

I was still a small child at the time, and still sleeping in the same room as my older ESTP sister, when I was awakened by a keen awareness that someone was in our bedroom. For fear that someone had truly walked into our bedroom, I was afraid to open my eyes. But slowly, I was able to dig up the courage to look at it. It was nothing more than an opaque black silhouette of a man walking toward a corner of our room, near where my head lay. The black figure crouched down over the opaque black silhouette of a box right beside my bed. At this point, I just shut my eyes and tried to convince myself that it was all a dream.

The next morning, as I was coming down the stairs, I saw my sister at the breakfast table, telling my mother something in an unusual tone of voice. My sister looked quite disturbed, and was convinced that she had seen a ghost in our bedroom the night before.

At this point I was like - sh*t. If I'm not the only one who saw something, then I wasn't dreaming.

My ESTP sister went on to describe in exact detail what I had seen the night before. And we both agreed that the silhouette looked as flat as cardboard - almost like a shadow projected against a wall, but much more opaque than an actual shadow.

And I was the kid who never, not for one moment, believed in Santa Claus or fairies. So that experience pretty much threw me off. How such things could happen, I was at a loss to explain.

But my ESFP mom, being the resourceful extrovert that she is, and convinced that my sister and I had seen a ghost, asked the security guards assigned to the compound if they were around during the construction of the house, and if anything unusual had happened during the time.

The only thing they could come up with that could relate to our possible ghost siting was that one of the carpenters who had worked on the house had died of a heart attack in that house during its construction. My ESTP sister added that the opaque black box that we had both seen the silhouette bending over might have been a toolbox that the carpenters used.

I still wonder what it was that my sister and I saw that night. Who knows - maybe we did see the ghost of a dead carpenter!

 

[Top cat]

Schizophrenia is considered by many psychologists (especially Jungian ones) to be an (extreme) example of the unconscious projecting its contents onto the subjects conscious perception of reality. It's also generally considered that many other hallucinations, whether brought about by illness or certain drugs or dehydration or whatever, are the same thing.

The idea is that these things weaken the barrier between the conscious and unconscious minds to such an extent that the contents of the unconscious mind start to leak across into our conscious perception of reality and the two then become indistinguishable from each other.

Thanks for this. I had the feeling drugs / illness / alcohol etc would be brought up. But I haven't actually heard of a story where the person had consumed any of these things and right after saw a ghost or any other experience like that.

Who is to say what we experience on a subconscious /unconscious level is not real? Or any subjective experience. Everyone has feelings, don't they. That is subconscious. And they are real

This happened toward April of 2009. I did some random research on the web, and my semi-dream event seems to have coincided with the Jewish sun blessing of April 8 - a rare event that happens every 28 years according to this news article.

I also did more research on "glowing balls of light" and from what I've been reading they're called spiritual orbs by some. And I have three other "glowing ball" stories - one about my ESTP sister and two about a friend who self-types as ESTP. In all three stories, the orbs preceded the prodigious manifestation of intellectual gifts in childhood and adolescence. In all three stories, the fiery orbs were hanging over the heads of my sister and my friend - as recounted by the dumbfounded adults who saw them.

Are you saying those orbs brought gifts for you?

The same for me really. I have had experiences where it did not matter what I believed or not.. because in the end I had no words to describe what I saw/heard/etc at all. So you do not need the belief for it to happen
And earlier there was a man who came on the forums who encountered some kind of small spinning figure. He also didn't believe in these things, nor was he religious in any sort of way.


Anyway if one is looking proof I think the best way is to find it yourself. You are the only one who can convince yourself. But there is a difference between going into research with an open mind and going into it already "believing" that is it not true.

 

[muir]

Thanks for this. I had the feeling drugs / illness / alcohol etc would be brought up. But I haven't actually heard of a story where the person had consumed any of these things and right after saw a ghost or any other experience like that.

Cultures all around the world are full of stories of drug fuelled encounters with different entities.

Many shamanistic cultures involve taking powerful hallucinagens and then communicating with spirits, demons, all sorts.

Terence McKenna called the entities he communicated with, whilst under the influence of DMT, self replicating machine elfs. Ancient art from around the world for example Australian aboriginal art has images of strange figures which have been called everything from spirits to spacemen.

In my opinion they are replications of something someone has seen whilst having a vision, whether drug induced or not.

I want to avoid entering into any discussions about the morality of drug taking because there are many negative associations in the west but for many cultures it is a healthy part of their social fabric.

Anyway the point i'm trying to make is that people all around the world have visions, often under the influence of drugs. I guess it boils down to whether you believe that these visions are a window into some sort of other existence or whether it is a response to psychotropic substances.

For arguments sake lets suppose for a moment that the window is into the human mind and not to an external dimension....is that any less fascinating or insightful?

 

[Stu]

For arguments sake lets suppose for a moment that the window is into the human mind and not to an external dimension....is that any less fascinating or insightful?

Perhaps even more fascinating and insightful.

 

[Top cat]

I agree. Thanks muir. You are right hehe. I missed that

It's definitely not a place you travel to. Just a shift in focus.

Thinking about it more, I guess I have heard of other things people use instead of drugs to get into these states. And I know you can get there also naturally.

 

[Soulful]

I absolutely love that this poll is nearly split 50/50

Interesting topic too...This is a very personal subject, I have voted and already said my experiences. I, however, cannot fathom not seeing them. Whats it like?

Me too. Every time I return to this poll, it's somewhere around 50/50.

It's always hard to explain the other side of the question . I'm not sure if you are asking about literally seeing them? (or sensing them?) The example that comes to mind right now is that it's the perspective that characters in a movie have - a movie without ghosts, that is. Imagine you're watching a character people watch; they are scanning their environment, taking note of the people around them, of the environment around them, and they are completely unaware of any energies around them. They simply ARE in a very 3-d sense, along with everything 3-d around them. What's there in 3-d, what they see, is all you get. What you see on that movie screen is all there is. It's like that. I'm not sure if that's what you meant but if it is, I hope this explains it.

I'm not sure what it's like to not sense energy. I don't think I sense ghosts or other/many spirit beings, but I think I sense energy.

What's it like to see them?