So, who here actually...

[rie'smom]

The older I get the less skeptical I am. While I've never had any ghostly experiences, I do not doubt that some people have had them.

 

[Pigeon]

ok, question to those of you who do NOT believe in spirits/ghosts. what IS your explaination for all that the others of us experience? do you figure we are dellusionaL/psychotic/deluded?

how do you explain very obvious physical phenomenom happenings, like 'chair stacking' others have mentioned or even photographs?? how do these things happen?


I have a story.
i took care of my mom before she died in our house ( she had alzheimers).
we went through her chest of drawers in her room several times, sorting things out, & it had been moved several times previously.
one day (months after her death) my daughter had a kitten in the empty room, rehabilitating ( it was a brand new found kitten dumped off at our farm ) (my mom loved cats, had several, but since my hubby was alergic , we placed her live in cat after she died)
anyway, we check on the kitten, she was batting around something on the floor. it was a OLD roll of negatives. they were of my mom taken in about 1940.
the ONLY thing in that room was the chest of drawers(closed, mostly empty) & tight against the wall ( if someone thinks the film was taped underneath....... highly unlikely , since as i mentioned it had been moved several times.)
there was no way that roll of film was there when she moved into our home.

The film was stuck someplace where the cat found it. There is absolutely nothing in your story that makes it more likely that this whole imaginary universe exists or that dead people came back than that the film was wedged in someplace you didn't notice.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is never anything approaching extraordinary evidence in any of these situations.

 

[epcot.girl]

ok, question to those of you who do NOT believe in spirits/ghosts. what IS your explaination for all that the others of us experience? do you figure we are dellusionaL/psychotic/deluded?

how do you explain very obvious physical phenomenom happenings, like 'chair stacking' others have mentioned or even photographs?? how do these things happen?

The senses (sight, touch, sound, whatever) are easily fooled - as demonstrated by optical illusions.

I also believe people play pranks, people move stuff and then forget they did it, and people do things while not being conscious of it (ie, when sleepwalking).

Photographs of 'ghosts' can be easily (and accidentally) caused by double exposure, for example.

The film was stuck someplace where the cat found it. There is absolutely nothing in your story that makes it more likely that this whole imaginary universe exists or that dead people came back than that the film was wedged in someplace you didn't notice.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is never anything approaching extraordinary evidence in any of these situations.

I agree.

 

[indimom]

ok, question to those of you who do NOT believe in spirits/ghosts. what IS your explaination for all that the others of us experience? do you figure we are dellusionaL/psychotic/deluded?

how do you explain very obvious physical phenomenom happenings, like 'chair stacking' others have mentioned or even photographs?? how do these things happen?

Nothing as bad as that. I just think there are a host of reasons for the things we see or think we see. Did you know there is a sleep cycle that some people have just as they are waking up? They can be "awake" and seeing what is happening around them in the "real world", but part of their brain is still asleep and dreaming. So, they could be having a dream about a loved one, right down to feeling their touch, when really there is nothing there.

I know a woman from another board who thought she was going crazy/seeing ghosts. She has damaged retinas and was diagnosed with a condition related to this. Essentially, her eyes and brain are still trying to communicate and sometimes hours or days later she will "see" unclearly something that happened earlier. It is as real as if it is happening in the now, but it's just a memory/visual breakthrough.

I have had random smells (bandaid smell was the most recent and it recurred numerous times). I assume these are a glitch in my brain.

I've clearly heard footsteps while trying to fall asleep, only to realize it was my eyelashes brushing the pillow when I blinked. Boy did realizing that make getting to sleep easier.

Chair stacking I would find hard to explain. Did the person SEE them being stacked?? Like float across the room and stack? I'd have to hear the story and know the person intimately to believe it.

I just think our brains are a lot more complicated than most people give them credit for and it will interpret things in a way that may or may not be accurate.

I totally admit, I could be wrong. But I've seen and heard nothing, not even stories from very good friends, that will convince me they've had a real ghost experience.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

ok, question to those of you who do NOT believe in spirits/ghosts. what IS your explaination for all that the others of us experience?

That they are looking/hoping for "more". They see what they want/need to see.

 

[ebtbmom]

ok, question to those of you who do NOT believe in spirits/ghosts. what IS your explaination for all that the others of us experience? do you figure we are dellusionaL/psychotic/deluded?

how do you explain very obvious physical phenomenom happenings, like 'chair stacking' others have mentioned .

Well first, I can have a difference of opinion with someone and not call them something that has a really derogatory tone like dellusional/psychotic/deluded. Some of my closest friends have had experiences and believe in ghosts and I would never call them any of these things just because I doubt what they say.

I have had strange experiences too, it's just that when I have them my mind doesn't immediatly go to "ghost". My son had a Seaseme St kitchen set when he was little and sometimes at night I would hear Cookie Monster talking in a really slurred demonic creepy sounding voice. After trial and error and a little investigation, I realized that this always happened when the batteries were about to die!
I hear weird sounds all night, like foot steps and squeals and "voices"-I also have 2 frisky cats so I have attributed nearly all of these sounds to them. Some of the voices I've heard have been when I was in the in between sleep/wake cycle so it was my brain trying to fool me.
This lady I worked with died. She used to always sit in the end seat at our lounge table drinking coffee. The few days after she died I would walk by and "see" her sitting there out of my peripheral vision. Of course I attributed it to me being used to seeing her there!
As far chair stacking, well I would never believe something like that unless I saw it, like literally saw the chairs moving and stacking themselves. First off, people like to play tricks on others, secondly we must be honest and admit that sometimes people fake stuff like this to get attention. I have a hard time understanding why a ghost would bother stacking chairs. If they have that much power to move physical objects why not get a pen and paper and write a letter to someone something like "I am Chris Smith and I was killed in the year 1950 by Bob Jones down the street and he hid the murder weapon in a box under the floor board-go find it" That's what I would do if I were a ghost-I would also haunt my DH and any new woman he has, things like scaring them at night and messing up her fancy shoes so she'll get out of my house!

 

[LilyWDW]

ok, question to those of you who do NOT believe in spirits/ghosts. what IS your explaination for all that the others of us experience? do you figure we are dellusionaL/psychotic/deluded?

how do you explain very obvious physical phenomenom happenings, like 'chair stacking' others have mentioned or even photographs?? how do these things happen?


I have a story.
i took care of my mom before she died in our house ( she had alzheimers).
we went through her chest of drawers in her room several times, sorting things out, & it had been moved several times previously.
one day (months after her death) my daughter had a kitten in the empty room, rehabilitating ( it was a brand new found kitten dumped off at our farm ) (my mom loved cats, had several, but since my hubby was alergic , we placed her live in cat after she died)
anyway, we check on the kitten, she was batting around something on the floor. it was a OLD roll of negatives. they were of my mom taken in about 1940.
the ONLY thing in that room was the chest of drawers(closed, mostly empty) & tight against the wall ( if someone thinks the film was taped underneath....... highly unlikely , since as i mentioned it had been moved several times.)
there was no way that roll of film was there when she moved into our home.

Most photographs are junk evidence. I have seen, in my years of doing this, MAYBE 5 photos that made me sit up and take notice. 5 out of thousands. The VAST VAST VAST majority of photographic evidence can be explained by normal means. Even the 5 that I have questioned I would not say are really evidence because we don't have a way to verify it.

Like I said, I believe in the possibility of the paranormal. I go into any case or analysis with the thought that it is NOT paranormal. I try to disprove the stories and the "evidence". If we don't then we are doing the field no good! So, I attempt to approach it in a scientific matter... something that I feel many do not try to do.

Yes, I have had personal experiences. However, I don't just take them at face value. I try to prove that they didn't happen. Some I could explain by normal means. A couple I could not.

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

Wanted to add something to consider. The human mind is a very powerful and complex thing. My youngest son sleep walks. He does things while sleep walking. Many different things. He remembers none of it the next day. We once video taped him as he "played" during a sleep walking episode. The next morning, as usual, he remembered none of it. He said that we were wrong. When we showed him the video, he freaked. Even faced with the video, he remembered none of it.

So, if he wondered how his toys were moved in the night, he now had his answer. No ghosts (not that he ever thought there were ghosts) - just a 9 year old boy sleep walking.

 

[lttlmc3]

Just jumping in here and saying that I believe in ghosts.

 

[ebtbmom]

Wanted to add something to consider. The human mind is a very powerful and complex thing. My youngest son sleep walks. He does things while sleep walking. Many different things. He remembers none of it the next day. We once video taped him as he "played" during a sleep walking episode. The next morning, as usual, he remembered none of it. He said that we were wrong. When we showed him the video, he freaked. Even faced with the video, he remembered none of it.

So, if he wondered how his toys were moved in the night, he now had his answer. No ghosts (not that he ever thought there were ghosts) - just a 9 year old boy sleep walking.

Wow, I bet he was freaked out! Now that you mention that, one of my close friends that strongly believes in ghosts is a chronic sleep walker! Interesting

 

[ebtbmom]

Just jumping in here and saying that I believe in ghosts.

What are your experiences that make you believe?

I've enjoyed this discussion, so many cool stories and interesting ideas!

 

[snarlingcoyote]

See, I used to have that opinion. I thought my ghosts were just. . .I dunno. I just refused to accept I'd seen ghosts unless I was telling them for Halloween stories and then only for fun spooky stories.

When we moved into the house and the door to the dog's yard opened and closed to let them in? I figured that it hadn't closed properly, the dogs had scratched, it opened. Once they were inside, I figured they'd closed it roughhousing in the bathroom.

Okay, case solved. I had no explanation one morning when I was fumbling around and realized that I hadn't been bonked in the head by the dryer door I'd left open, when I should've been bonked by it. . .and it was swinging back into place after having been moved to let me pass. The only possible rational explanation was that the house shifted on its base and then shifted back without any movement of any other objects in the house, except the door. Or that the door moved without anyone near it.

Then one day, sitting at my computer desk, I noticed the pull cord on the blinds (it had those little plastic bell caps) was bouncing. Bouncing the way it would if you tugged on the cord and let it go. Tug. Let go. I looked under the desk, I felt for drafts, I looked above the desk, I looked at the cord, I looked in the window. All the time, the cord was tug. bounce. Tug. Bounce. Finally, I just sat and watched it for several minutes. I didn't touch it because it was just too cool to watch something that couldn't happen, happen, kwim?

For that, I had no rational explanation and couldn't think of one.

One night, all night, I had a strange sensation in my legs. I wasn't in pain, but it felt like they were burned, like my skin would slip off or something. I woke up when the dogs wanted out. As I was the first one up, I got out of the bed that chilly morning, pulling myself out from under the electric blanket, the comforter, and other quilts. (Even with added insulation in the walls and ceiling, old houses are COLD in winter!) I threw on my heavy robe, shoved my feet into slippers and went down stairs. I let the dogs out (their door was in our bathroom) into the yard and then sat down to pee.

My robe fell open and on my calves were two pressure marks, of a hand on either calf, positioned so that the fingers were pointing up my calves. I just stared at it for a long time. I put my hand against the pressure mark. It wasn't just larger or smaller than my hand. The palm was smaller and the fingers were longer. So it couldn't have been my DH's hand either.

My BFF to this day has no rational explanation for the blind pulls, but she has the same explanation for these as she does for the stigmata of St. Francis of Assissi, that I caused this to happen in my sleep. Because of the number of bed coverings involved, even she can't say that I did it to myself in sleep.

I've had friends have strange things happen to them, and it's just funny sometimes listening to the lengths they go through to try and explain things away, when a very simple explanation that doesn't take a lot of contortions and whatifs exists.

Basically, some PP have said that we are all either lying or psychotic. That's not okay to me. You can say you don't believe but don't have any explanation for what happened, but that you think one exists, and that's okay. But you shouldn't resort to calling a lot of otherwise reputable folks liars or insane just to hold onto your belief system. Sorry to be so blunt.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Of course I believe.

What would be the different between a ghost and a spirit?

I have studied this for years and my best explanation is that spirits are around us and therefore go where we go. These can be spirits of those passed on, angels and (to go really out there) spirit guides who we may not have ever met (in this lifetime). Signs of their being are all around us if we open our minds and our hearts to them. To be closed off to the possibility of their existence, to me, is a shame.

If you want to read more about them, read some books from those who have had near death experiences. Spirits do exist, IMO, because there are thousands of years worth of independent reports from people who've died and come back to tell what they saw, often being greeted by their deceased relatives and other spirits they realize they "know" once they're reunited. (There is a lot more to learn from these people but that would open up another discussion.)

Ghosts, OTOH, are attached more to places than to people. And a pp broke those down even further into intelligent and residual hauntings.

Some of my closest friends have had experiences and believe in ghosts and I would never call them any of these things just because I doubt what they say.

So your closest friends have had experiences, shared them with you (probably despite some hesitation and embarrassment, though ultimately had trust in your understanding), and you doubted what they told you? Wow. What kind of close friends are you keeping? Why do you suppose they would say these things?

 

[Goofyluver]

So your closest friends have had experiences, shared them with you (probably despite some hesitation and embarrassment, though ultimately had trust in your understanding), and you doubted what they told you? Wow. What kind of close friends are you keeping? Why do you suppose they would say these things?

Do you expect your friends to believe exactly as you do? What kind of close friends are you keeping?

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Oh, and one other thing just as food for thought. Again, my understanding.

You can either see ghosts and spirits, or you can't. I cannot, apparently, though I have family members who can, and do - regularly.

And for the record, there are people who don't see things but hear them, or sense them in other ways.

The first step in developing this/these abilities in yourself is recognizing that there is a whole other area of our world that we may not fully understand or acknowledge but certainly does exist, IMO. Many people have devoted their entire careers to studying this realm of existence and have helped piece together the information we do know.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Do you expect your friends to believe exactly as you do? What kind of close friends are you keeping?

Exactly is a tough word. Too black and white for my tastes, actually, and definitely not what I meant. But to answer your question, no, of course not.

However, I do expect of my closest friends that if I have an unusual/upsetting/bewildering experience and I choose to share it with them that at the very least they aren't going to doubt what I'm saying. If they did I might as well head for the looney bin.

 

[Planogirl]

Those places aren't haunted, but they're good for the owners at making them money.

Just ask me about the Myrtles, which has, I would guess, 2 ghosts, but neither of them are the ghosts you probably think of when you think of the Myrtles (The one I'm pretty sure is real just doesn't have a good Hollywood style backstory, possibly ANY backstory. And the "big" Myrtles story? Never happened )

I actually believe that many of them are genuinely haunted but the legend kind of overtakes the truth.

I had a few experiences at the Myrtles that helped to convince me that ghosts are real. What they are exactly is still a mystery but I feel beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something to it.

 

[Planogirl]

The film was stuck someplace where the cat found it. There is absolutely nothing in your story that makes it more likely that this whole imaginary universe exists or that dead people came back than that the film was wedged in someplace you didn't notice.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There is never anything approaching extraordinary evidence in any of these situations.

I don't believe that there is actually any way to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts with our current technology. You can't prove to someone else that you saw something or heard something. The person you are describing it to can simply say that you imagined it or that it was an optical illusion or as so many in movies say, sunspots. Truth is in the eyes of the beholder or those who actually experience something.

I believe because of what I've experienced. I can tell others the stories but that in no way proves anything.

 

[snarlingcoyote]

I actually believe that many of them are genuinely haunted but the legend kind of overtakes the truth.

I had a few experiences at the Myrtles that helped to convince me that ghosts are real. What they are exactly is still a mystery but I feel beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something to it.

There's definitely something there. But most of it is to make money hand over fist; which they do quite handily!

Just to spoil the magic for everyone: The Chloe story? Never happened. Two children did die, but it was of Yellow Jack, I believe; definitely some epidemic or other. Not poisoning. The owner of the house did not own a Chloe. If you do geneaology, you know that there were slave censuses; some these censuses listed first names. There's no Chloe on any census. In addition, there was no legend of this until it turned up as a good haunting.

One person was murdered in the house. Yes, a judge was called out onto the side porch and shot and they never caught the person responsible. But he didn't crawl halfway up the stairs and die.

Also, the mirror. My mom has a mirror that is just about that old, it's some sort of family heirloom. The silvering has turned, as it does on these mirrors, and you just live with it. If you look at outside of direct light, it can make things look v. v. funny at times, like there are shadows where there shouldn't be, that sort of thing. It's just a trick of the silvering. You can see the same thing on any antique mirror with silvering that has turned black in places.

I think there's something out near the pond; so far, I guess since it isn't right inside the house, I don't think there's much of a told-as-true story about that entity. I also, just my feeling, not based on anything else, think there's something in the house, something that was there from the home's earliest days or something the first owners brought with them. (I have no idea if this is even possible, but it just seems likely.) But I don't think it's a slave ghost with an ear chopped off.

Still, I advise everyone to go to the Myrtles and have a good time.

 

[Goofyluver]

Exactly is a tough word. Too black and white for my tastes, actually, and definitely not what I meant. But to answer your question, no, of course not.

However, I do expect of my closest friends that if I have an unusual/upsetting/bewildering experience and I choose to share it with them that at the very least they aren't going to doubt what I'm saying. If they did I might as well head for the looney bin.

I have lots of friends (most of 'em, in fact) that believe in God. They know I "doubt" 'em. It doesn't matter if they tell me they believe in a higher being or that they saw their dead grandma walking down the hall. Without intending to ruffle anyone's feathers, I'll say that "doubt" doesn't even begin to capture the level of skepticism I hold in regards to the existence of other-worldly beings.

I don't want my friends to (nor do I need them to) "expect" me to support their stories, in the exact manner that they shouldn't "expect" me to actually believe their long-dead grandfather rattles chains at night. Yet somehow, we're still friends.