Have you ever seen a Ghost

[paradox]

i didn't mean to kill this thread, i hope i didn't do that.. in case thats what happened i wouldn't be put off by my comments.. i'm not trying to be some arrogant logician, i think those kinds of people are possibly almost as far away from the point as hard core religious nuts & the like.. i think the world is stranger than any of us can suppose. i don't think that ghosts don't exist, how could i when i don't even know what the word 'exist' really even means?

Edited September 9, 2013 by paradox

[whitewind]

Thred Killa!

In one sense, your logic is perfect. There is no reason to suppose that all energies dissipate though, perhaps an unexplained psychic phenomena at time of death causes ghostery to occur. Just suppose you are correct though, when phenomena have been experienced, logic suggests that there must be an alternative explanation.

In my first experience, an audible hallucination is most likely explained away as just that - an audible hallucination. Perhaps I drifted off and had a lucid dream, yet I thought I was awake and working.

However, how can one explain a shared visual hallucination? Is there a case to be made for telepathy here? I have had shared hallucinations before, but only as part of psychedelic experience. Perhaps one doesn't need the psychedelic experience to experience shared telepathy?

What do you think?

[Zen Peddler]

I have heard a ghost when we lived in a hanuted house. Scary even to think about now and sometimes wonder whether it was an elaborate illusion caused by electromagnetic radiation. Hard to rationalize.

[bogfrog]

.

Edited September 10, 2013 by Ceres

[Change]

ok, can someone answer me this?

Great questions Paradox, I wish i could answer them for you

A bit of skepticism is always healthy, Im glad you brought it up.

Thanks for trying to explain Ceres

Happy Ghost Hunting Everyone

[whitewind]

You assume that a full consciousness exists? I would hazard a guess that that it's a psychic field of a particular emotion and the mind fills out the rest ( which it is very good at )

Also one assumes that they aren't held here by gravity as we are? Until we rule out what is and isn't possible according to what we understand of physics, it's pretty much in the realm of guesswork as to what's going on

[whoami]

well even the mechanics of gravity is still debated, for example some scientists believe it may PUSH on us as opposed to pull, and the things that are subjected to this pushing force depends ob their constitution, something a 'ghost' would be vastly different to as opposed to a human so a ghost may not be subject to gravity at all, due to its constitution

[paradox]

If you believe that you have a soul/spirit/energetic life force or whatever you wanna call it, a non-physical essence, then why does it seem so far fetched that this could continue to exist independently of a living physical body.

Surely many of you have read up of NDE's and OBE's?

..besides, most humans have their blinkers on so tight they probably wouldn't notice a ghost if it screamed bloody murder in their face.

You only see what you are willing to. And yep, that certainly could be just the placebo effect. But i think that there is too much we don't know to rule out the existence of ghosts.

i don't believe that i have any of those things, but i don't believe i don't either. i don't believe in belief. for me belief is not the right way to go about interpreting my perceptions as i don't trust my perceptions enough to invest a strong sense of certainty in any of them..

i have experienced OBE's & had NDE's. these experiences only strengthened my lack of belief in belief as these & many other intense experiences have given me a deep respect for the utter weirdness of life, consciousness, existence, whatever you want to name this thing we all seem to be in the midst of & all experience in different ways..

i just think a great deal of these things like (what people call) ghosts are actually things we simply don't have the language to discuss at this point, at least in our culture our language for such things is woeful.. that doesn't mean i don't think we should discuss such things, just to me, making up a story to explain it like disembodied souls or 'ghosts' etc that you then believe in as an explanation kind of cheapens & over simplifies it somewhat & doesn't seem at all appropriate to my more subtle amalgamations of thought, perception & direct experience that make up my intuitive grasp of what the fuck is going on in this universe.

we experience the world inside our heads, the entire universe as we experience it only 'exists' as a holographic projection occurring inside of us. if 'ghosts' 'exist' it doesn't seem to me as though they should have an objective existence out there in the world but only manifest as aspects of our internal processes.. whether these experiences are stimulated by an objective phenomena i'm not really sure at all, but i seem to have demonstrated this to myself many times by conjuring 'spirits' & then simply exorcizing them at will through changing my conscious intent. what i'm talking about is not just some flimsy product of my surface level imagination but very extreme, almost schizophrenic & sometimes terrifying manifestations that are as 'real' as almost anything else you'd use that word to describe.

to call it psychological is not to discredit such things through logical explanation, i truly feel we don't give our own consciousness nearly the credit it deserves when describing our world.. oh if only we had subtle language to discuss the relationship between consciousness & the objective universe. alas

[bogfrog]

Ohk fair enough. I'll keep my cheap explanations to myself in future then

[paradox]

oh shit i'm sorry thats not what i mean really.. in fact i think my pitiful way of trying to put it is probably a lot cheaper than your's.. thats the predicament we're in, trying to explain these things.. what i was more trying to get at is i feel cheap in myself when i try to explain it to myself, not that i think anyones explanation is cheap. bad words.. i'm being an offensive dick again

[paradox]

another aspect of what i'm trying to say is that your intuitions, anyones is what matters & anyones perceptions of a phenomenon is what makes it real, so your explanation is very important & your intuitions are very important & meaningful. i know it probably doesn't seem like it but i have a lot of respect for your or anyones perspective, just i can't help from my perspective to pull my own brains apart. this is my problem & no one elses, i don't want to put anyone off, i just can't help doing what i do with my brain & i tend to come across as a cunt

[bogfrog]

No worries, you dont come across as a cunt, just another who reminds me how little i know.

Peace.

[paradox]

but you know just as much & more than me & you should go with your intuitions cause if you are a sensitive & intuitive person & you very clearly seem to be, it is worth a lot

[paradox]

ima shut up now

[Rum and Monkeys]

ima shut up now

Nooo, everyone keep going I'm loving this thread..

Is everyone out of 'supernatural' stories though ?

[bogfrog]

Hey Paradox, firstly I wanna apologise for my childish response, I shouldn't have tried to make you feel bad. That was my bruised-ego lashing out cause I felt intimidated when your eloquent and grounded argument dwarfed my flowery fairy story

I honestly didn't mean to, but I have been awake for several hours mulling over post #33. (My mind won't enter sleep-mode when I ask it to sometimes)

I am left feeling far more enthralled by the power of the mind, than the possibility of the existence of ghosts..

However since Rum and Monkeys asked if anyone had anymore stories, I do have one more up my sleeve.

I shall present it in two ways,

1st how I would have told this story prior to the previous 4 hours,

and

2nd, (dare I present my interpretation of Paradox's position considering my status as a complete logical-thinking-noob) the same story but with a "Paradox interpretation slant" (shit, i see what you mean about words getting in the way of communication -please do forgive my words for their incapability of expressing what i am trying to express here!)

1. (The 'Ghosts are considered real' version)

On a school camp we stayed near the headland of the local beach.

They had told us previously at school about a massacre which took place on this headland during maori inter-tribal warfare before europeans arrived in new zealand.

(The story went like this-

"Altogether, 250 were mercilessly slaughtered, and only one or two escaped by rushing to the cliff edge and throwing themselves 60 feet or 70 feet into the sea. As day dawned the rising sun revealed a ghastly sight. The dusky bodies of the victims had been piled in a huge heap and covered in places with a mantle of snow they resembled a huge pile of wood. So they named the place Purakanui, meaning a large pile of wood. That was about the year 1750 and today, nearly 200 years later, little evidence remains of that terrible massacre save the name of the district and the line of the trenches beneath the palisade in which human bones have been found."

-The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 11 1939

"Mapoutahi Pa (Goat Island Blueskin Bay)The Massacre at Mapoutahi Pa

The Story of a Southern Maori Inter-Tribal War Before The Coming of the Pakeha"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alpat/4758881553/ )

So here I was, about 11 years old, camping at the beach, it was late and everyone seemed to be asleep, so I decided to sneak off from the camp and walk into the water a little bit. I remember the light from the big bright moon rippling over the dark water. I was feeling elated having snuck away without being noticed and it was exciting to be in the ocean in the dark. But suddenly I remembered about the massacre and I started to feel afraid. Instantly I felt like a hand gripped around my ankle and fear shot through me like a lightning bolt. I sprinted out of the water and ran back to my tent, absolutely terrified.

2. (The 'Ghosts are considered a psychological phenomena' version)

(Hope u dont mind Paradox, i am tentatively borrowing this as the position-statement, plz excuse if my story shows i have misinterpretated! : "we experience the world inside our heads, the entire universe as we experience it only 'exists' as a holographic projection occurring inside of us. if 'ghosts' 'exist' it doesn't seem to me as though they should have an objective existence out there in the world but only manifest as aspects of our internal processes..")

I went into the water, I projected my fear onto my apparent perception of reality to form a false / mistaken sensory-experience of a hand grabbing my ankle under the water.

..Given that humans love to be story tellers and belief-system-constructors, the first version has a certain attraction, yet i can definitely see now why the second version is far more plausible.

It was probably some seaweed wrapping around my ankle right?

I can also see the parallels between religion and constructing mystical belief systems, to bring a sense of comfort and stability to an unstable and uncertain existence. (So belief is my safety-blanket!

How do you sleep at night, not believing in belief Paradox?)

I still am curious about residual energy.. -!: -!: and lots of other things. But thats too much to consider this morning. Fuck its 3.11am!

(Thanks for the mental exercise Paradox ;) If you ever happen to be bored and feel like letting me pick your brains, plz pm me, I am buzzing with questions and find you to be a very interesting specimen of anonymous internet stranger)

Edited September 10, 2013 by Ceres

[Distracted]

Never seen one.

Lived in what we belived was a haunted house when I was growing up... things like my brothers room would be ice cold in the heat of summer, things constantly being pushed off shelves when we were trying to sleep, curtains in my room used to wave about when the windows were all closed.

I remember hearing someone play a trombone solo once in my room... when I came to get my family to listen it stopped... soon as they went away it came back again.

ugh

could all this have been a group shared paranoia, one's paranoia feeding another persons? who knows? It was a creepy old house that a few people had died in... one of the main reasons why were decided to move to somewhere else.

[whitewind]

Bogfrog. Places have aura's we can percieve.

Once way back when in the UK I drove around trying to find somewhere to chill (as was my habit). One day I drove to this place where I got the terrors and couldn't get out of there fast enough. I didn't tell anyone, thinking I was just over-reacting (how easy we can kid ourselves) but later when discussing ghost stories I mentioned this to a girl who, it turned out, had had the exact same experience while picnicking with her family a few years previously. They got out of there as fast as they could. It turned out the location was indeed, as far as we could tell from description, the same. Furthermore, she had done some research and it was believed that a particularly nasty battle had occurred there a few hundred years previously and was considered by many locals to be haunted.

No prior knowledge for either myself nor her family of four! Interesting, mmm?

[Rum and Monkeys]

To all of the above;

AND I THOUGHT, GOING TO WORK WAS BAD ENOUGH!!!

Love you guys

[Change]

Thanks you to everyone for your storys

Ive really enjoyed all of them

There is a local gaol that you can visit at night to do ghost tours near me.

Ive been considering it for the last few weeks, because im really keen to get talking to a ghost but at the same time id rather it be a friendly ghost like Casper not a gaol ghost....

This is when my friend suggested he doesn't think that the ghosts are conscious, he think they are an imprint of where their consciousness was in the past, and because it was a traumatic experience they find it hard to let go and move on, thus imprinted there soul ghost like

He further suggested that its unlikely ill get to have a decent conversation with the ghost because its stuck in its past trama not living in the currect world that we all are.

So id love to hear what people think about talking with ghosts ?

[bogfrog]

Its friday the 13th, time for some experimentation Change? ;)

[Change]

Synchronistically without realizing the date i went to a local historic cemetery to watch the sun set

Once id arrived i decided i should try and stay as long as possible to face the dark and see if any Spirits were hanging around.

The moon lit the place up really well and its wasn't half as scarey as i expected.

Ill be making a few return visits over the next few weeks to leave some offerings

interestingly someone had places a few cow bones around the place and there was an egg sitting on top of a gravestone

So someone might be hanging around leaving there own offerings there.

Hopefully ill bump into them

[theuserformallyknownasd00d]

You need to leave them a note bro

"Hi, thanks for summoning me to your offering. Just a tip, up it to a steak and beer and maybe ill show my face"