GHOSTS!!! Are you a Believer?

[Foxfyre]

No, and I find it incredibly embarrassing to find myself within earshot of someone who claims to have seen a ghost in person, and that they shared a 'connection'. It's rather like listening to a man claim that he's sleeping with a woman everyone present knows, without a doubt, that he's not, but prefers not to say anything to avoid causing a scene.

Though having said all that, I'll admit to being slightly superstitious and often contemplate the possibility of life after death. I dunno, I suppose I've just contradicted myself in one single breath. At any rate, I've never gone ghost hunting and regard ghost hunting programmes with an extreme level of scepticism, seeing as most of the guests/hunters act like they're a few slices short of a loaf, so to speak.

But you see, my experience has been just the opposite. While I cannot claim a personal experience with a ghost, ALL the people who have expressed their opinion to me that they did see or encounter an otherwise unexplainable presence have been people I trust implicitly to be honest, reasonable, unexcitable, and not given to fantasy or hallucinations.

So that leave me in a quandary. They were all either 'seeing things' or they saw the unexplainable.

So, I am inclined to believe that there is something there that we do not yet fully understand and can't measure. I am neither believer nor skeptic. I sure would like to know though.

I can sympathise that it's a sensitive subject that needs to be treated delicately when close friends and family are the ones claiming to have seen apparitions at the end of their bed, but I've never had to deal with that.

As I've already said/written, I'm superstitious and sometimes find myself contemplating what lies after death. Perhaps my inherent sense pragmatism and cynicism's just at odds with my gut.

As for the unexplained, here's an account I submitted to Teapartysamurai's halloween thread a couple of days ago (make of it what you will):

Ah, yes, how could I forget.

Many moons ago I was contracted to gut-out a portion of an old peoples' home in Southampton (where the Titanic cast off) that had been declared unfit for use. Due to the very delicate nature of the utilities we had to isolate before the gut-out/soft strip could commence, I decided to take a very hands-on approach. The area of most concern to the client and myself was the preservation of a copper pipe that conveyed pure oxygen to various points throughout the buildings that weren't scheduled to be refurbished. We pulled down the suspended ceilings to expose the pipe and make sure the direction it took matched that of what was on our drawings.

One evening I was in a remote corner of the site with a voice recorder, making detailed notes of where and how the pipe in question meandered through the building. I was using a fresh tape and was completely alone. I started at the far fire exit and made my way to the main doors which were scheduled to be sealed before work started. After I'd finished talking into the recorder I sat down and lit a cigarette while I listened over what I'd recorded to ensure I hadn't overlooked anything. I finished the cigarette and the recording came to an end, then briefly went-on to play unrecorded tape. Just as I was turning-off the recorder, I heard what I thought was the beginning of a word spoken by a voice that wasn't mine. I rewound the tape a bit and listened again. I heard myself droning-on about angles and colour coded markings. The tape went dead for a second or two, then I heard it. It was a very clear and aggressive voice saying "shut up, just shut up. Who are you", or something along those lines. I listened to it over again a couple of times and called-out on my walkie talkie asking where everyone was working, wondering if the recorder had recorded someone nearby. Nobody was anywhere even close to me, and there's no way a tape recorder can pick-up radio traffic.

So, what conclusion did you arrive at to explain that?

 

[earlycuyler]

Experiences of unexplainable events don't have to attach to a proposed spiritual event.

You are quite right. It took me the longest time to figure out how the lizards were getting into my house!~

 

[earlycuyler]

But you see, my experience has been just the opposite. While I cannot claim a personal experience with a ghost, ALL the people who have expressed their opinion to me that they did see or encounter an otherwise unexplainable presence have been people I trust implicitly to be honest, reasonable, unexcitable, and not given to fantasy or hallucinations.

So that leave me in a quandary. They were all either 'seeing things' or they saw the unexplainable.

So, I am inclined to believe that there is something there that we do not yet fully understand and can't measure. I am neither believer nor skeptic. I sure would like to know though.

Experiences of unexplainable events don't have to attach to a proposed spiritual event.

You are quite right. It took me the longest time to figure out how the lizards were getting into my house!~

Grim reaper zombie lizards of death and damnation ?

 

[Swagger]

But you see, my experience has been just the opposite. While I cannot claim a personal experience with a ghost, ALL the people who have expressed their opinion to me that they did see or encounter an otherwise unexplainable presence have been people I trust implicitly to be honest, reasonable, unexcitable, and not given to fantasy or hallucinations.

So that leave me in a quandary. They were all either 'seeing things' or they saw the unexplainable.

So, I am inclined to believe that there is something there that we do not yet fully understand and can't measure. I am neither believer nor skeptic. I sure would like to know though.

I can sympathise that it's a sensitive subject that needs to be treated delicately when close friends and family are the ones claiming to have seen apparitions at the end of their bed, but I've never had to deal with that.

As I've already said/written, I'm superstitious and sometimes find myself contemplating what lies after death. Perhaps my inherent sense pragmatism and cynicism's just at odds with my gut.

As for the unexplained, here's an account I submitted to Teapartysamurai's halloween thread a couple of days ago (make of it what you will):

Ah, yes, how could I forget.

Many moons ago I was contracted to gut-out a portion of an old peoples' home in Southampton (where the Titanic cast off) that had been declared unfit for use. Due to the very delicate nature of the utilities we had to isolate before the gut-out/soft strip could commence, I decided to take a very hands-on approach. The area of most concern to the client and myself was the preservation of a copper pipe that conveyed pure oxygen to various points throughout the buildings that weren't scheduled to be refurbished. We pulled down the suspended ceilings to expose the pipe and make sure the direction it took matched that of what was on our drawings.

One evening I was in a remote corner of the site with a voice recorder, making detailed notes of where and how the pipe in question meandered through the building. I was using a fresh tape and was completely alone. I started at the far fire exit and made my way to the main doors which were scheduled to be sealed before work started. After I'd finished talking into the recorder I sat down and lit a cigarette while I listened over what I'd recorded to ensure I hadn't overlooked anything. I finished the cigarette and the recording came to an end, then briefly went-on to play unrecorded tape. Just as I was turning-off the recorder, I heard what I thought was the beginning of a word spoken by a voice that wasn't mine. I rewound the tape a bit and listened again. I heard myself droning-on about angles and colour coded markings. The tape went dead for a second or two, then I heard it. It was a very clear and aggressive voice saying "shut up, just shut up. Who are you", or something along those lines. I listened to it over again a couple of times and called-out on my walkie talkie asking where everyone was working, wondering if the recorder had recorded someone nearby. Nobody was anywhere even close to me, and there's no way a tape recorder can pick-up radio traffic.

So, what conclusion did you arrive at to explain that?

No conclusion. I've just chalked it up as one of life's mysteries. I've seen strange, unexplainable anomalies when staring up at a clear sky in broad daylight. I can't explain them, but I don't dwell on them or devote myself to researching possible explainations, either. Though I concede that on the scale of things they're (supposedly) insignificant. I mean, if I were to look-up from my laptop after submitting this post and I found myself face-to-face with a shimmering likeness of my grandfather, then perhaps I'd be more concerned - and subsequently fixated with finding-out possible explainations.

 

[Zoom-boing]

I do believe although I've never had a personal experience.

When I die I'm gonna come back and haunt the shit out of you guys.

Word.

 

[logical4u]

I have known people with personal encounters of "ghosts". I have known people with encounters of spirits. I have no reason to doubt them. Other than those stories, they seem perfectly reasonable people.

I have had four (definitely out of the ordinary) encounters over thirty five years. The first two were when I was entering into adulthood, one was good, and the other evil. The other two involved evil attacking me, and being rescued by good. The first one, I never felt or saw the good, but survived a horrific attack that was unexplainable. The second one, I was informed that I would be attacked and I was powerless to stop it. I called out the big guns (Yeshua and His angels), it was amazing how fast that evil ran. The good stuck around and watched over us (we were out of town), with some caring motions that were comforting and unseen. Since then, a wild statement from an elderly person that was failing and bedridden without hope of doing violence on anyone about what would happen to me. I believe in angels and their counterparts and other things that are results of things that were made between spiritual and physical. I believe if the spirits are not from the Lord, then they are from that other being, and evil.

 

[Foxfyre]

I do believe although I've never had a personal experience.

When I die I'm gonna come back and haunt the shit out of you guys.

Word.

Oh sheesh. You sound like my mother. When somebody in the family teasingly mentioned that she had a burial plot all paid for and ready in my father's family plot in East Texas--my Mom and Dad went through a really ugly divorce when I was 18--she replied that if we put her there she would come back and unpleasantly haunt us for the rest of our days.

We believed her.

 

[mudwhistle]

Several of the Denizens of the USMB Coffee Shop admit to being fans of the popular TV series "Ghost Hunters". With Halloween coming a week from now and images of black cats, witches, and spooky scenes prominent in every store we enter, I was just wondering:

Do you really believe there are such things as ghosts? A spirit world that exists among us? Have you ever seen a ghost? Or are you a hardcore skeptic or non believer?

One of the more fascinating places the Ghost Hunters have visited is the historic St. James Hotel at Cimarron NM.

A photo of the upstairs hallway and claimed to show one of the ghosts who live there is here:

And a snip from an official ghost hunter write up:

As ghost hunters we were excited to stay in the second most haunted room of the St. James Hotel. The most haunted room, as told on the Unsolved Mysteries TV series, has been sealed for the protection of hotel employees and guests. The ghostly inhabitant still makes claim to owning the hotel as he won it in a Old West poker game on the very same night he was murdered in room 18. This hotel is full of Old West history, having guests such as Jesse James and Doc Holliday. We walked about the hotel using our EMF meters and found some strange readings. We also gathered some strange sounds from room 18 (the sealed room) which we are still analyzing.

As I was falling asleep I felt a tender touch on my back and then noticed that my wife was not lying near enough to have touched me. When I inquired if she had just touched me...she had not! Immediately after, she was startled by invisible fingers gliding over her hand.

Finally we slept, until 3:00 a.m. when we were awakened by a strange scream coming from inside our room, the Mary Lambert room. I began taking photographs, one of which contained a vortex. Vortex's are funnels of energy that are associated with ghostly activity.

The strangest phenomenon was a picture I had taken of the second story window. There is a face in the window...not a reflection, not someone looking in. A ghostly face staring back as I was walking past the forbidden room 18.

Even if you are not a ghost hunter, the history, the wonderful staff, and the great food makes St. James Hotel a wonderful vacation spot.

Submitted by Rick Smithson, May, 2005 - Rick is a certified ghost hunter and member of the International Ghost Hunters Society

The Ghosts of the St James Hotel - Cimarron, New Mexico - Page 3

So, are you a believer? Or no?

Let's keep this thread friendly please folks.

Hogwarts Castle is real

 

[Ropey]

When I was young I read "2001" (A Clarke) which begins with a posited premise that that for every person alive alive there are thirty spirits. But it got me to thinking. Now "modern humanity" is considered to be ~100,000 years old. So, as a given, if I apply two decades as a nominal span to a "modern generation," that's ~5,000 generations and so if I move to apply a statistical determination with a graphing to the standard distributive population curve, then apply the operation of a rough "integral" on the maximal area beneath the curve... ie. instead of the standard dx, you just divide by the average lifespan of an individual, then this relationship will also work in population rate estimates.

eg. if there are six billion humans at this given time and our worldwide average lifespan is ~75 years, then that means that 6bn/75 = 80 million people born per year, and also 80 million dying per year, if the population was static (not growing or shrinking). This relationship works for stable populations with the result being ~3 (strong rounding) people born per second and else fails when the populations are not stable (reality). This is just a static rough estimate of the spirits that could be revolving around us.

That's a lot of spirits to my calculations. To Arthur's posited premise? It's one hello of a lot of spirits (pun intended) and maybe they are here because they can't go there.

Seeing but not interacting must be hello... Believe? I have a hard enough time with the reality within my perspective and my personal faith. So I don't know.

ROFL, I didn't understand much of that, but I get the gist that statistically, if there ARE such things as ghosts/spirits/other worldly beings etc., there are likely to be a LOT of them.

I would tend to agree, but then wouldn't there be more encounters with the living? I don't know. I just know that the unexplainable happens all the time and I for one am willing to keep open the possibility.

I don't think there are any real encounters. I think there could be some shaded encounters and then humanity likely exaggerates the hello out of it because people like that kind of thing since it tells them that they 'live on'.

I'm not so sure of anything.

 

[Sherry]

When I was young I read "2001" (A Clarke) which begins with a posited premise that that for every person alive alive there are thirty spirits. But it got me to thinking. Now "modern humanity" is considered to be ~100,000 years old. So, as a given, if I apply two decades as a nominal span to a "modern generation," that's ~5,000 generations and so if I move to apply a statistical determination with a graphing to the standard distributive population curve, then apply the operation of a rough "integral" on the maximal area beneath the curve... ie. instead of the standard dx, you just divide by the average lifespan of an individual, then this relationship will also work in population rate estimates.

eg. if there are six billion humans at this given time and our worldwide average lifespan is ~75 years, then that means that 6bn/75 = 80 million people born per year, and also 80 million dying per year, if the population was static (not growing or shrinking). This relationship works for stable populations with the result being ~3 (strong rounding) people born per second and else fails when the populations are not stable (reality). This is just a static rough estimate of the spirits that could be revolving around us.

That's a lot of spirits to my calculations. To Arthur's posited premise? It's one hello of a lot of spirits (pun intended) and maybe they are here because they can't go there.

Seeing but not interacting must be hello... Believe? I have a hard enough time with the reality within my perspective and my personal faith. So I don't know.

ROFL, I didn't understand much of that, but I get the gist that statistically, if there ARE such things as ghosts/spirits/other worldly beings etc., there are likely to be a LOT of them.

I would tend to agree, but then wouldn't there be more encounters with the living? I don't know. I just know that the unexplainable happens all the time and I for one am willing to keep open the possibility.

I don't think there are any real encounters. I think there could be some shaded encounters and then humanity likely exaggerates the hello out of it because people like that kind of thing since it tells them that they 'live on'.

I'm not so sure of anything.

Maybe most spirits choose to completely pass over, while just a small minority linger between the two realms.

 

[Foxfyre]

Mudwhistle got me to thinking about Hogwarts Castle and the real castle that was the inspiration for it:

But most encounters with 'ghosts' that I have read about or that have been told to me have happened in more average, normal places. St. James for instance is not a particularly scary place when you visit, but there is something eerie about those historic old narrow hallways and the rooms that have been preserved much as they were in the wild west days when all the ghosts there were supposed to have lived.

 

[Sunshine]

The place were I fet the 'presence' on so many nights was not your typical 'haunted' house. My husband wasn't afraid to die, but he REALLY didn't want to have to leave me and the children.

 

[Foxfyre]

The place were I fet the 'presence' on so many nights was not your typical 'haunted' house. My husband wasn't afraid to die, but he REALLY didn't want to have to leave me and the children.

And that has been reported so often by so many--visitations from those who have passed on before--that it either is a natural illusionary phenomenon of the human condition or it is actually happening. I rather want the latter to be the case.

 

[007]

I not only believe, but I have both audio and video proof they exist.

They're there alright. Whether or not you admit it, believe it, or are enough of a thrill seeker to actually go out and hunt for them, they're there.

I do believe most people's spirits ascend to where ever / what ever heaven is, and it's only the ones that died a violent and/or untimely death or were heathens that remain.

 

[Sunshine]

The place were I fet the 'presence' on so many nights was not your typical 'haunted' house. My husband wasn't afraid to die, but he REALLY didn't want to have to leave me and the children.

And that has been reported so often by so many--visitations from those who have passed on before--that it either is a natural illusionary phenomenon of the human condition or it is actually happening. I rather want the latter to be the case.

As one who has experienced this, and in order to maintain sanity, I have opted to believe it is the former. LOL. Many people find comfort in this type of experience. I did not. And I seriously hope it never happens again. But my weird light effects with cemetery photography continue.

Just before he died, my husband had some kind of experience himself in which he thought he had joined some of his deceased relatives in heaven. He was actually talking to them. When I interrupted him and told him he was still on the earth, he looked VERY puzzled and said, 'where were we, then?' The afterlife is SO real to those who are about to embark upon it. I saw this many times in the year I worked with the dying.

 

[Foxfyre]

I not only believe, but I have both audio and video proof they exist.

They're there alright. Whether or not you admit it, believe it, or are enough of a thrill seeker to actually go out and hunt for them, they're there.

I do believe most people's spirits ascend to where ever / what ever heaven is, and it's only the ones that died a violent and/or untimely death or were heathens that remain.

See I don't know. But I do know there is so much that we can't experience with the senses or can't yet fathom when we do. I have to believe all the credible people I know, including you, who report having had encounters with ghostly beings did in fact experience something. Whether they correctly understood that something as a ghost, I cannot verify, but I do not disbelieve what they report.

 

[Montrovant]

I don't believe in ghosts.

I won't entirely dismiss the possibility, but to me it has always seemed as though people have an unexplained experience and decide it was a ghost because of bias. In other words, some other explanation, even some other supernatural explanation, could just as easily be the answer, but because people either already believe in ghosts, or because it is such a common thing, that's what they assume it must be.

Perhaps I just need a personal experience to change my mind.

 

[007]

I not only believe, but I have both audio and video proof they exist.

They're there alright. Whether or not you admit it, believe it, or are enough of a thrill seeker to actually go out and hunt for them, they're there.

I do believe most people's spirits ascend to where ever / what ever heaven is, and it's only the ones that died a violent and/or untimely death or were heathens that remain.

See I don't know. But I do know there is so much that we can't experience with the senses or can't yet fathom when we do. I have to believe all the credible people I know, including you, who report having had encounters with ghostly beings did in fact experience something. Whether they correctly understood that something as a ghost, I cannot verify, but I do not disbelieve what they report.

Yup, I have many EVP's. Some are harder to make out than others, but some are so clear it WILL creep you out when you hear them. Did me. Made my skin crawl.

And the video I have, I didn't know what I'd recorded until I got home and hooked the camera up to my 56" hidef TV and start playback. I caught a ball of light popping out of one side of a hotel hallway wall and deliberately moving across and upwards and disappeared into the other wall on the other side of the hallway. My eyes about popped out of my skull when I saw it. It's still fun to watch. It was in the Silver Queen bar and hotel in Virginia City, Nevada, where it is known that a prostitute over a hundred years ago laid in the tub and slit her writs committing suicide in room 111. As I stood outside that door, I had an OVERWHELMING feeling as though DEATH was INCHES in front of my face, looking BACK at me. It was moments later I videoed the glowing orb cross the hall one floor up, right above room 111.

 

[007]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlA5w9o--30]Ghost Adventures Best Evidence So Far (Part 1 of 3) - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcYUeya2SOs&feature=related]Ghost Adventures Best Evidence So Far (Part 2 of 3) - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47EwkMA-jNs&feature=related]Ghost Adventures Best Evidence So Far (Part 3 of 3) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[SFC Ollie]

The following picture was taken with an Instamatic camera in the mid 80's. The place is under the floor of the Roman Coliseum in Trier Germany.

After the picture developed I went back under the floor and looked for the wisps and the strange metal bar on the right........

And some say that some of the wood seems transparent.

You tell me.............