Do ghosts exist?
 

Or is it all superstitious nonsense?

i saw a ghost when i was about 8 or 9

You've never heard of Casper the friendly ghost?

Yes, they do. Insofar as many people believe them to. Is it a comfort for the worrying notion of mortality? I only hope a protracted debate on the SY message board will solve this age-old mystery once and for all.


nb - I'm being facetious, I heartily encourage more posts from Mr Priest.

Dunno.... some ppl saw them yet these phenomena can't be explained so far. God I miss watching Unsolved Mysteries now....!!!

Hah, Unsolved Mysterious, what a bunch of shit. Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed watching it.

i should add that even though i saw a ghost i'm not totally sure i believe in them

Why not a poll about conspiracy theories next?I'm sorely missing one now.

i tend to negate this question, avoiding an all-too expanded interpretation of the word "exist".

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Who the fuck knows. I'll believe it when I see one but I'm not ruling it out just yet.

You think your eyes tricked you? :confused:

i live in the most haunted city in europe, possibly even the world and i have never seen one. unless this whole city is just one ghostly apperition in which case i feel really stupid.

People genuinely see something, but it's not 'ghosts'

Here we go again...pay attention.

When do most people claim to see or hear ghosts?

Answer: When they are falling asleep or just wake up.
also, most ghost sightings occur after someone has lost a close friend or relative & their mind is still trying to cope with & process the information.

What they experience is a visual &/or auditory hallucination.

That makes the ghost real in that sense, because it is a manifestation of unconscious contents that we do not experience in our normal conscious waking state.
But in the sense of hollywood ghosts, no, that shit is not real. anyone who insists that ghosts are real is either
A)
in need of attention to the point where they are willing to be psychotic about it & embellish the truth...(more than a quarter of the respondents (so far) are truly fucked in the head.)
or
B) someone who runs a tourist trap based on the place supposedly being haunted or some paranormal writer that trafficks in preying upon the ridiculous superstitions of the gullible.

Ghostbusters actually exist now since the fuckin' movie. They have no training & there is no science behind it. The meters these charlatans use to measure "paranormal activity" are only devices that measure electromagnetic activity. So anytime the meter gets near an electrical piece of equipment or an outlet it starts reading. By the way, one should try to avoid these electromagnetic fields. They cause cancer. Don't sleep with your body too close to an outlet. We spend a third of our life sleeping. Above all, don't use a heating pad for extended periods of time & never sleep with an electric blanket.

no, but just i would like to see it again just to make sure, i mean it happened almost 20 years ago, i know what i saw but it was so brief, and seeing a ghost is a weird thing.

Mmmmmmeeerrrrrrrrghhh... yes. Some good points. Are we thereby dismissing the argument that in the hynogogic stage our perception is altered somewhat... possibly...inferring... that we see parts of 'reality' that are not present to the fully conscious.

I wanted to avoid the pseudo-acidhead thing... third eye/ pineal gland stuff... and there's 'science' in that statement... Feyerabend makes me happy... that empiricism may not answer all our questions.

I am convinced that, regardless of the validity or inferences of their claims, people who see ghosts/ believe in ghosts imbue 'ghosts' with a sense of reality... personally, I've had experiences, but I wouldn't like to suggest anything as a result of that... but there's nothing wrong with believing something to be true if it's in some way a comfort... in short, I think it's slightly disengenuous to be quite so dismissive.

when your dead your dead...

Take "disingenuous" & shove it right up your wannabe oneupsmanship ASS. You might just want to learn how to spell the word you try to cut me down with as well.

People genuinely see (or more often hear) something, but it's not 'ghosts'

is what I voted.

my experience doesn't really fit in with your criteria is was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, i wasn't recently bereaved (the figure i saw bore no resemblence to anyone i knew) and i wasn't looking for attention. i saw a grey figure walk through a locked door. it was over in about 2 seconds.

gulasch noir: I understand that point, it's kind of covered within the options. I consider the subject valid because I absolutely think that there are cases where there is no attempt at 'hoax' or deception. If that's the case then the mere fact that something is causing people to see, feel or hear something is fascinating in itself. That applies whether or not the subconsciously-perpetrated self-hoax is mental, physical or whatever. Basically, something is happening, and it's interesting.

When I was 10, I saw (or at least thought I saw) a ghost. I can explain, but there's a possibility that that was my own subconscious creation. But I can see how in many cases (maybe all, who knows...) they might be manifestations in the mind.

I grew up in a house that many would claim 'had a ghost' (until I was 12). No apparition was ever seen, but sometimes there would be light footsteps. On occasion, they would approach a room, then the door to that room would open. Some time later, it would close again. This phenomenon was experienced over several years by a number of people. All I can say is that this happened when people were in normal waking state, the sound heard was definitely more like footsteps than anything else, and that the doors (not just one) did open and close - that is undeniable fact. The fact that the same thing was heard and seen by different people over a period of years is fascinating, no matter what the cause.

Understandable :)