Do you believe in ghosts?
 

I definately do. I have worked for a paranormal investigation team as a psychic receptor even. I can't tell you how many ghosts I've seen/heard/felt. But my most recent encounter happened friday. I was taking a tour of an historic mansion, and was just about to enter one of the upstairs rooms, when a chill just ran down my spine and I knew there was something in the room. I walked into the room, and I caught the reflection of something passing by one of the mirrors. I went ahead and walked around the rest of the house. When I was finished I went and talked to the curator and asked her if she knew of any ghost stories in the house. She said that there was a recent wedding, when the bride was taking some pictures in one of the rooms something turned up on the prints. I asked her if it was the room I had felt something in. She wanted to know how I knew. She showed me some of the pictures. Some of the people in the pictures looked as if they were half there, as if someone were standing in front of them. Also in one picture you can see the reflection of a man in turn of the century clothing in the same mirror I had seen something cross in front of.

I never did, until I went over one of my friends houses. I was sleeping over, and I heard footsteps on the stairs. There was noone there. And then, I was like, laying in bed. And I felt something hovering over me. I looked up, and it was gone. A bunch of random stuff like that happened, like I would hear stuff, but nothing would be there to cause it. I asked her about it, and she said it's been happening to her since she moved in. Apparantly, someone died in that house, and they think its haunted.

I dunno if I know for certain it was true, but it was enough to make me rethink my view on it.

I kind of do. i've got my own theories on the nature of them, so i don't know if that counts. never had any run-ins with ghostly-phenomenon though.

Definitely believe in ghosts. I've never actually seen one, but I've felt them. My friends consider me a ghost-vibe buffer, because I can detect which direction they're in and sometimes the feelings surrounding their death.

Ugh, before last night I would have voted no, but... ugh.

I recently moved into a new house... well, it'd been making all sorts of various weird noises before... the house is fairly old, I thought it was just random creaking.

Last night though... my blinds fell down from my window (and they're above my bed, which means I got smacked in the face, rather odd way to be woken up). I looked at the window as soon as I moved the blinds off me, only to catch a glimpse of a woman in some sort of robe getting reflected off the window.

Makes me wonder why the hell this house was so cheap...

Damn, that's some freaky way to wake up.

Anyway, yeah, I believe in them. For further details as to why, go do some research on ghosts in a town called Decatur, Illinois, the town where i lived the first 14 years of my life.

Yes. I believe in ghosts. I usually can tell if there is a ghost in the room just by a gut feeling or a shiver along my spine. I'm not afraid, as I've not been met by a malicious ghost just yet, but I'm still a little wary.

In my house, there have been encounters with three different ghosts.

There's a soldier in the bathroom - I was washing my hair once, in a candle lit bathroom, and turned around to an image of a man stood near the door wearing full blue uniform with a smile on his face. I did a double take and he was gone. I swear I still hear him down there some days, just humming to himself or washing himself. He doesn't scare me anymore, because it feels as if he's watching over me, looking over me almost.

In the hallway, my sister said she saw the image of a woman leant against the wall with a goblet in her hand. I haven't seen this ghost myself, but with the man and woman and following little girl, I wouldn't doubt that they were a family.

The little girl was in the front bedroom. I'd seen her a few times, and at first I was really afraid. Until one day, she stood in the middle of the room, wearing her little white nightdress with blonde curls falling about her shoulders. But there were tears rolling down her face. I forced myself to sit up a little bit and not close my eyes. She raised her violin, which she had always carried before, and played me a melody. I smiled a little and she smiled back at me and then vanished. I've never seen her since.

It's easy just to pass ghosts off as dreams or the minds workings, but there are things that happen that just can't be explained. Like why I shiver every time I enter my friends bathroom, and the light pull just seems to sway even if I attempt to make it stop, as if something or someone is batting at it. Or why I said 'hello' while sat on the toilet one day, as if someone was speaking through me or I was speaking to someone.

If Shiney is correct about the ghosts in his house, I'm not looking forward to going there. But maybe I can put them at rest. I'll leave Shiney's stories up to him, though. We'll see in time. =)

Some freak-ass scary fucking ghosts here. The kind that give you nightmares and send chills up your spine, reduce your thought processes to that of a small child, hover over you as you are sleeping just waiting for you to wake up, that sort.

I don't care for malevolent ghosts..but at least they aren't violent.

I now demand stories, Shiney!

Also, Krylo had poltergeists in his house once.

The island where I had my basic training was the site of a major massacre during World War II. The place was haunted so badly that apparently the governemnt had to hire a cadre of Taoist priests to bless the island and exhume the graves.

Still, I have seen long hairs in the sink at times... and everyone, EVERYONE in the camp has short hair.

Ech, never believed in ghosts, never will. Spirits, poltergeists, ghosts, entities...bleh. I think it just goes to show how much horror movies can affect a person's perceptions.

Do I believe in ghosts? No. Ghost stories are nothing but melodrama.

I want to believe in ghost, but all my experances, (doors opening, feeling that some one is there, but isnt.) have a scientific answer.

Short answer: No.

Long asnwer: I have never had any kind of experience like this that I can remember. Though now that I think about it, when I was visiting one of the many old war time (1939-1945) bunkers and such I usually get cold vibes in some of the bunkers. And of course I usually pass it off by thinking to my self that it's just the cold win since after all I'm under the ground and stuff...But some times the bunkers have radiators and other things to keep them warm and there's no wind outside or anything...Makes me think a bit, but...Still no.

Well i know when we first moved into this house i was very scared. My door opens alot even when i lock it and my radio will turn on when it feels like it. But mostly my closet door just opens when it doesnt wanna be closed. SO, I named the ghost Jake cuz i felt it was a boy and Jake is a good name.

I do belive in them. On a number of occasions me and a friend have heard voices from nowhere that I can't explain.

There's been many times where I thought I saw a human figure out of the corner of my eye, which was gone when I turned my head. Of course, I have this annoying tendancy to take a closer look after that, and I can pretty much always find the mundane object that I fooled myself into thinking was a person.

The thing is, the human brain has evolved in such a way that it's very good at recognizing other humans, perhaps a little bit too good, to the point that we tend to see faces everywhere, from the craters on the Moon to a pile of rocks on Mars to a splotch of water on a shower curtain to a grilled cheese sandwich. I'd really like to find some hard evidence of the paranormal, as something like that would be really interesting to study, but I'm forced to conclude that such things simply don't exist.

Those links are just sad. I'm sorry, I just had to say that. To un-off-topic this, I believe in ghosts.

The problem with that theory is this: The first time I had an encounter with a ghost, I had never seen a horror movie nor heard a ghost story. I didn't even know what a ghost was. But when you see a little girl walking down the hallway carrying a Teddy Bear and singing to it, then disappear into a room without opening the door, you know that's just not normal

Yes I do believe in ghosts. Have I seen a ghost? I don't think so. I might have a few years back when I had a cold and walked out of my room to get some juice. As I walked back, I noticed that my room had a orange glow. Nothing in my room could produce an orange glow. But after about three seconds, it disappeared. I don't know if it was a really realistic dream, or it was real.

Makes me wonder why the hell this house was so cheap...

The disclosure laws in some states require sellers to tell you if there's anything that's "psychologically impacted" a house, like unnatural deaths on the property, or if it's supposed to be haunted...if you know enough to ask about it, anyway.

I believe in ghosts. If you grow up in the kind of creepy Southern woods I did -- among the creepy features of which was a slave graveyard, marked only by notes on old surveyor's maps and a gigantic oak tree -- it's kinda inevitable. But I also believe that the human mind has ways of playing tricks on itself, and I don't need to believe that I have a morbid imagination anyway -- I know it. So I try to approach weird shit skeptically, and most of the time there is a reasonable explanation. But there have been some things that can't be reasoned away, and one in particular I will not accept as being anything but very, very real.

I always accept other people's ghost stories as true, anyway, even if the natural explanations are right there in the telling of them. Whether it's literal truth is beside the point -- it's true for them, and Joe-Bob believing his case of the night hags is really the spirit of the grandpa who died when he was eight doesn't pick anybody's pocket or break anybody's leg.

I believe that people believe in ghosts.

As for myself... I live in two worlds. The world that is real, and the world I wish is real. In the real world, even though I am afraid of the dark, I don't believe in ghosts or goblins or aliens trying to control our world. In the world I wish was real, also known as the world of my imagination, there are ghosts and dragons and true love. Typically I believe more in my imaginary world at night...

I guess the real issue I have it that there is no way to trust other people's ghost stories. If I see a 'haunted house' program on tv, it is easy to fake that sort of thing. If I hear a ghost story from a friend, that is easy to make up too. I think that in order to believe in ghosts you'd have to experience it for yourself, and well... I don't know if my life or my land has been too peaceful, but I've never had any experience like that.

I also live in 2 worlds. The world of science and truth where things of this nature do not exist.

And the other world where other things are waiting to be definitively proven and disproven. ghosts, big foot, God, the mothman.

So in other words, I do not "believe" in ghosts. Because I do not "believe" in anything. I have only theories. I have the sense that one day ghosts will be proven to exist by science and that one day God will be proven to exist by science. until then the only worthwhile thing to do is to aid science in these endeavors, and not blindly believe in anything. just my personal opinion.

Do I belive in ghosts, specifically the spirits/shades of deceased people remaining here on earth? No, I believe we go to either Heaven or Hell when we die, no other options.

Do I believe is the supernatural? By definition as a Christian, yes. I believe unnatural things remain in this world, but I don't believe they were ever human.
I have seen some wierd crap happen though, including my name being called by nobody, and a vivid but strange dream that didn't make any sense at all, until I was sitting in church the next morning. Then I realized it was a huge, complicated metaphor. Absolutely everything fit together. That was awesome!
Anyway, yeah, sort of. For lack of a better option, I'm voting "yes", though not for ghosts as such.

Of course when you wake up in the middle of the night to something cold running over your skin, that you can still feel while concious, only to see white skulls with white flame hovering over you, yet casting no light, day after day, it's not really 'blindly believing'. It's having experienced it without any real evidence to show others.

Of course, that I could just brush off as a recurring dream that started when I moved in and left when I moved out for some sort of psychological reason, except for the symbol on the floor of the basement and base floor. It was very large in the basement and worn off of the red paint right next to a drain in the floor, and then appeared exactly the same, except smaller, on the kitchen floor directly above it, again, worn away from red tile. We put a dog mat over it, and the symbol appeared on both the bottom and top of the dog mat as being worn away.

After all, just because I thought I was concious doesn't mean I was. The symbols, however, definately existed.

I would accept that you have to actually experience this kind of thing to believe in it, however. It's strange, frightening, and, at the current, unexplainable. Humans don't like things they can't explain and tend to mark them down as not being real or make up other reasons for them to exist that fall into their current views of the world. Ergo, DI's explanation as people being too good at recognizing other people, or Osterbaum's explanation of cold winds.

Doesn't mean a good good good amount of 'ghost stories' aren't just hoaxes, cold winds, and optical illusions. It, however, also doesn't mean that they all are.

I've had some interesting run ins. Up until recently, I've never quite believed in ghosts, but apparently the combination of me and my two newest friends kind of resonates on a... I suppose you could call it metaphysical level. We've had a couple of sticky run ins with the Unknown since. Nothing ever completely definite, but when three people who have only known each other for a few months all simultaniously stop walking because we all fealt a chill run down our spine and saw a man in a white cape and a white wide brimmed hat covering his face duck behind a tree out of the corner of their eyes... well... too much of a coincidence if you ask me.

Well, I do believe in ghosts, and don't think I've experienced one though. I see things out of the corner of my eye all the time, sometimes I can explain it, sometimes I can't. I don't think I really want to experience one though, it seems a bit too freaky for my tastes.

And by the way, reading these stories in a dark room, at night, with your back to the rest of the room and an even darker hallway, its freaky. Really freaky. I keep looking behind me, expecting to see something standing there....

I remember I when I was 18, I worked a graveyard shift three nights a week as a security guard at a hospital. One of the rooms on my route was part of the kidney dialysis clinic. This particular room was where organ donors got their organs donated. One night, there was a body under a white sheet on the table in the middle of the refrigerated room, this was pretty common. My first time by, the body was lying there. My second time by a few hours later, the body was sitting upright. The sheet was still over his head, but I could see his back.

This was freaky, but it was all explainable by science. Rigor mortis, fluid shifting, etc. A ghost didn't do it because Ghosts Don't Exist.

and people used to think that they heard God or Satan directly talking to them. and science proved that those people were "schizophrenics."

other people think they see things only because they had one too many acid trips and their mind's chemical makeup has been forever altered. just because you experience something doesn't make it real in the world. it could just be in your own mind.

I'm about 100% sure that science didn't prove these people didn't have external input, and that the disagnostic of schizophrenia, while perfectly seeming reasonable to me, is based on the assumption, not the proof, that God and Satan (or anything else that's not in people's heads) doesn't really talk to people.

Personally, I think that doubting such things by raising the possibility that it "was all in their head" is a wise thing to do, but to try and turn that into a certitude is as bad as the opposite attitude.

Yes. I am a firm believer in the paranormal, but over the years I've learned to approach it with a very skeptical outlook, because I do know that the mind can play tricks on you (especially in places like a very dark hallway). But there are some experinces that you just can't rationally explain, and others that may have been mere coincidence, but still leave you with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomache or a tingly feeling on the back of your neck.

Anyway, I have a borderline experience to share, may or may not deal with ghosts, but still made quite an impression.

This happened the summer me and my dad were moving from Decatur, IL, to St. Paul, MN. Me and my sister were both home, making lunch in the kitchen, and one of our cats was sitting perfectly calmly on the counter. The phone rings, and the instant it does, the cat glares directly at the phone and growls at it. This was unusual, as he's never done that before. Anyway, my sister answers, and it's someone calling to let us know he was coming by to inspect the heater/water heater. This was the first me, my sister, or my dad had heard about it. Anyway, about an hour later, we were in the living room watching TV, and I had the cat laying on the couch purring, when the doorbell rang. The cat, once again, became extremely alert, glared at the front door, and growled. It was the same guy who called earlier. Anyway, me and my sister decided I should watch this guy (the water heater/furnace were inside of my room, and I had it set up in such a way where I could look like I was playing SNES when I was actually watching him). As far as I know, nothing else unusual happened, but still... something about my cat's highly unusual reaction to the two instances this guy made contact with us was unsettling.

This is a story that could be scientifically explained to 'no big deal' any number of ways, but... that still made it no less real for me and my sister. I don't know what really happened and why, and I never will.

And Krylo.... My god, do you know what the hell happened in that house? That's.... really damn freaky. Could you recognize what the symbol was, or describe it, or something?

It's been awhile BF (about 7 years), but what I remember it was an isoceles or equilateral, kind of fuzzy, triangle, in which there were two lines starting at the center of the 'bottom' of the triangle and bisecting the other two lines. Near the center, I believe a bit nearer the apex. That's all I remember of it. There may have been more.

I believe it was facing roughly north, the apex, that is. Although it may have been west too. I'm foggy on it.

And no, I don't know what happened in the house. I don't care to, to be honest. New family's problem now. And I got used to it, living there from 2nd to early 9th grade.

Oddly enough, the guy who moved out before us moved into a shanty with a dirt floor, and, apparently, we were the only family to have stayed there for very long. When we moved in, I specifically remembering kids commenting on how many people went through it.

Here's a poorly drawn artist's rendering. By artist I mean me. And by rendering I mean something done in paint in about 5 seconds.

I spent the whole night yesterday sort of wishing to see a ghost while I was lying in bed. So...I sort of want to believe but I don't. Didn't see anything, or anything like that. Of course I'm not saying that that doesen't mean that they don't exist...It's perhaps just my house or something.

And about the cold winds, that is a really really common explanation I here often. I laugh at it, (since usually there's no wind) but still I use that very same explanation my self.

I don't know about ghosts, per se, but I do think that something beyond that which is the norm exists and exerts itself to normal people every-so-often.

Beyond that, I'm pretty skeptical. I mean, if you show me a picture and call it an 'orb', I'll say: "Dude, it's a speck of dust." Show me a face or something, and I'll say "It's just your mind trying to make a picture out of it." If you ask me, the vast majority of psyhics on T.V. are full of crap.

I haven't had any "supernatural experiences" either. The closest thing to it was when my friend suggested a "shortcut" home, and we endly up driving through a neighborhood that had some undeveloped space on on side of the road. I'm talking the creepy looking trees. At night. After a few minutes of this, I say, "Why do I feel like a Scooby-Doo episode?" We around the bend in the road...and there is a graveyard.

Like I said, nothing even close to a supernatural experince.

Now...there are some things I really can't explain. For example, they have a show on the Sci-Fi channel called "Ghost Hunters" that I watch every now and then. I like the show generally because the two guys in charge of the ghost hunting group are, shall we say, believing skeptics, generally meaning they believe in ghosts, but they'll need something beyond orbs to call it a ghost.

Anyway, last week, they were on a military base. On of the crew members, a sound guy, was "hit" by something. It cleaned his clock pretty good. The was shaky for a good half hour. Now, they managed to get a recording of it.

The dude's equipment bag just flew up and hit in in the face. It wasn't him who did it. He had both hands on a boom-mike, and had his feet planted squarely. It just flew up and hit him in the face.

Now, I have no way of explaining that.

So...call me a believing skeptic. I believe there is something. What it is, I'll leave to everyone's personal theories.

I generally reserve judgement on ghosts, but I'll say I believe in them because of things like this thread. Whenever ghosts come up, it seems that a large number of people have had experiences with the paranormal, ordinarily logical and reasonable people, not wackos or anything like that. That tends to push me towards the "maybe they do exist" thought.

Fortunately, ghosts don't often inhabit suburbia, or the inner city, so I've been safe from any sort of paranormal experiences myself. At least for now.

Of course, I have a way overactive imagination, so my word may not be worth a whole lot.

Krylo, that seriously resembles a masons emblem. Remove the bottom line of the triangle, and but a G in the center and that's what you have. That may explain a few things.

whats a masons emblem

this is one of the symbols of the masons. You will see it on all there lodges:


http://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/www/Masonr...-sq_com4xp.gif

Way to post a nearly invisible symbol. :)

Oh yeah? Prove it. Keep "factual" statements out and "opinionated" statements in. I think, I doubt, I believe. Never "This is the unmitigated truth, so be it."

Why Thank you very much. I try. Actually when I previewed the post, it wasn't invisible it wasn't till I actually posted it that it became so. ANyway, let me try again:
http://www.geocities.com/luciandarius/mason.png

Prove to me that clear-colored, omnicient, silent elephants that float in the air and exhale toxic fumes don't exist! ooooooh!

Prove to me that they do exist.

I saw a presentation by the FAMOUS Warrens (google their name). They absolutely failed to scientifically prove anything about the existence of spirits. And a friend of mine knows them personally and they admitted in his confidence that they had faked some things for their cameras. It's these types of charlatans that get in the way of honest study. They've tainted our collective social trust on that subject. Still there are enough incidents to make me raise an eyebrow. Like I said, one day science will prove it.

While leaving the burden of proof to the ones making a positive claim is correct, it's not the same as proving the negative claim... scientifically, at least. Using science as an "all or nothing" reality yardstick isn't something I would do, personally.

As for ghosts (actual on-topicness here), while I'm pretty sure some unexplainable things happen, and that not that rarely (while not being in one's head, as well), it is pinning them on spirits that I find suspect. When you know nothing about something...

Actually, Arch, what you just said has a name. Argument to ignorance. One of the most common logical fallacies. Simply because there is no proof for something does not mean it doesn't exist, and simply because there is no proof against something doesn't mean it DOES exist. You can not know, so to take a solid stand without having proof is logically unsound.

I would register my experiences as proof. Of course, no one here knows if I'm lying or not, so it's correct for them to doubt (probably strongly), yet it's also correct for them to accept the possibility.

That's pretty much what I just spelled out, beside the name, right?

I thought I was being overly nitpicky.

Isn't this the same argument that was going around a few years ago about crop circles?
"There's no way anyone could make a crop circle that big in one night." They said.
"There are no foot prints." They said.
"There's no physical way you can prove that a human did it." They argued.
Then a handful of Australians showed the world how crop circles were made. A few men made a giant one in less than a night.
I don't want to derail the discussion into something about crop circles, but it tells me something. Things that are heralded as unexplainable turn out to be simple secrets. Ghosts just defy too many laws of physics for me to believe them. They violate almost every Newtonian law, the laws of conversation of mass and energy, and, in some cases, the law of entropy.
As a woman of science, I cannot bring myself to believe in them. Which is somewhat ironic considering the webcomic I work on.

Of course, there may be scientific laws and stuff going on here that we know nothing about. And sometimes some science laws contradict other ones when put into specific circumstances. Quantum Physics, for example. Many scientists, Einstein included, simply could not believe that that sort of stuff happened down at the quantum level, because it was so contraduictory to the set-up rules. ZTo quote Einstein, "God does not play dice with the universe."

If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that science doesn't always have the answers.

I trust science pretty much..But still I always think in a way that nothing is impossible, just unkilkely.

And people, even if you haven't ever seen a ghost or anything like it then that doesen't necesserally mean that ghost don't exist. If you haven't seen a trustworthy document, article or anything supporting that ghosts exist...That doesen't mean that they don't. So don't go around saying "There can't be ghosts cause I have never ever seen or heard of one." Or while I'm add it, remember that even if ghosts are scientifically impossible, then that doesen't mean that they don't exist. There's so much to science that hasn't been discovered yet.

I said no, but only because I haven't been presented with truth, I'm completely willing to accept the possibility of ghosts, but since there is no proof yet, I must say no.