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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Ghosts
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
... My daughter was born in a lucky caul, and the first thing the midwife said, before we even knew if we'd had a boy or a girl, was that we had a child with the "sight." Fortunately, there's been no indication of this so far. We would strongly discourage any suggestion of "the sight."
I seem to remember it is also alleged to protect from drowning. Have you kept it? And how old is she now?
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Stercus Tauri
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# 16668
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Posted
My grandmother (from the west of Scotland) was supposed to have the second sight. According to my mother, it was nothing dramatic; just useful. For example, once when my father was returning from the south, he had carefully not told anyone because he wanted to surprise her. But she laid a place at the dinner table for for him that day, and in he came. One of my cousins, who is old enough to remember her, says this is all BS, but I believe this and the other stories, not because I need to, but because I like to.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Heavenly Anarchist
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# 13313
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Posted
My mother always believed I had second sight, particularly in relation to my twin. She said I would fall asleep when he had surgery and that she sometimes had to pick me up from school because of it. I don't remember any of that at all. I've always had this feeling that I would know if something happened to him but as an adult I have had no experience of anything even vaguely spooky, I don't even experience any form of hallucination with my bipolar disorder. I am very intuitive and sensitive to atmosphere but nothing out of the ordinary.
My mother also said that my grandfather's ghost appeared in front of her cousin at his death. I also apparently knew he was dead before being told, but I suspect I was just very good at picking up other people's emotional signals. I think there was quite a cultural belief in 'spirits' in our background.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
I knew my grandfather had gone before the family. He had been in hospital - not nice for someone his generation to be in the old workhouse. Also not nice for his mind to have gone back to the field hospital in WWI where he had been an orderly. We children had not been taken to visit him.
That day there had been a day at my school in the next town for parents to discuss the future path through the school. My mother had left the school number with the hospital, but when they rang it, the school could not be bothered to let my mother know that Grandad was on his way. (I only found that out later - the secretaries were excellent at not telling people important and urgent things. It wasn't the only example.) My mother went home before me, so when I walked up the hill to our house I was alone.
An old man was walking up the other side of the road, and for a moment I thought it was Grandad, before thinking that it couldn't be because he was in hospital (it was a real man) but before the thought was finished, I knew that he was dead. I was absolutely sure of this.
When I went into the house I was expecting my mother to come and tell me, but she didn't. I thought that she was keeping silent so as not to disturb my seven year old sister, and was waiting for a good moment. Then, as we ate our tea, the phone rang. It was the hospital, and that was when my mother learned of her father's death. I didn't tell her that I already knew.
Not a ghost story, though. There are people in the family who have had some contacts with recently dead relatives which seem to be more than comforting mental echoes. (And we couldn't be more distant from the parts where the sight is endemic.)
It's quite difficult to reconcile this sort of thing with a scientific education and an analytical sort of mind. Let alone acceptable theologies. (I'm really bothered about all the Roman soldiers reputed to spend their time marching around the country - one, apparently, was a comfort to an elderly lady on Mersea Island as he walked along the road beside her to her home - but it's a terrible amount of time to be wandering this earth.)
[ 16. December 2013, 17:42: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Heavenly Anarchist:
My mother always believed I had second sight, particularly in relation to my twin. She said I would fall asleep when he had surgery and that she sometimes had to pick me up from school because of it. I don't remember any of that at all. I've always had this feeling that I would know if something happened to him but as an adult I have had no experience of anything even vaguely spooky, I don't even experience any form of hallucination with my bipolar disorder.
I don't know what you would or wouldn't know, but when my mother called my sister to tell her that her twin (our brother) was dead, my sister's first words were "I know."
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
Posts: 11914 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
... My daughter was born in a lucky caul, and the first thing the midwife said, before we even knew if we'd had a boy or a girl, was that we had a child with the "sight." Fortunately, there's been no indication of this so far. We would strongly discourage any suggestion of "the sight."
I seem to remember it is also alleged to protect from drowning. Have you kept it? And how old is she now?
The midwife split the caul and made it into two lucky charms, one for her and one for us. She said that it was her tenth caul delivery, so a bit less than one a year. I was more of a GLE then, and not keen on lucky charms, so I didn't keep ours. I assume the midwife still has hers as part of her collection.
We do prefer the theory that she can't drown, though I don't want that put to the test! She's now 17.
As an aside, when the midwife was making the charms, a doctor asked what she was doing, and was surprised to hear that lucky charms were prepared on the NHS!
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I think many people are haunted by things from their past, which at times of duress come forth within their perception as apparitions. But less so than once was due to changes in the zeitgesit. Today, people interpret such experiences more frequently as aliens, from other planets.
I'm respectful of people who suggest they've seen a ghost; their experience is persuasive to them, and perhaps God within infinite wisdom or neglect has decided that only an elect will have such perception. I am not part of such a special group, and not for want of wanting to be, nor a want of trying. I am haunted only by that bit of gristle, like Scrooge hoped.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Trin
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# 12100
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Posted
If they turn out not to be dead you have a laugh at your supposed "foreknowledge" and discount it as a weird trick of your imagination and forget about it within a few days.
If they turn out to be dead you remember the experience for the rest of your life.
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The supernatural annecdotes people file away in their brains are often presented rather like an incriminating object produced from a handbag and placed on the coffee table with a meaningful look around the room.
No need for the annecdotalist to actually say anything. Just get it out and leave everyone to draw their own conclusions. Handy because when you give the plain facts and don't explicity state your conclusions you can leave out the extra details that make the whole thing seem less likely to you.
I used to tell the story of the time I saw a huge serpent gracefully looping in the sky, some considerable distance away, from a plane window. I was the only English speaker on the plane so I said nothing and just carried on watching. It vanished off into the distance.
The part I wouldn't include: I was suffering from extreme fatigue, having been awake for almost two days at the time.
By omission, the whole annecdote takes on more credibility in the mind of the recipient than I give the experience myself. Plus I get to seem all deep and open minded about the mysterious forces beyond the knowledge of mortal men.
I would not dare to suggest any specifc individual here has been less than entirely honest, but you must admit, the temptation is there. This is the explanation for most "ghost stores". The rest are either made up, or the teller was taken in by a cow in a field, except in their version they ran away before realising it was a cow.
Posts: 442 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2006
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
If they turn out not to be dead you have a laugh at your supposed "foreknowledge" and discount it as a weird trick of your imagination and forget about it within a few days.
If they turn out to be dead you remember the experience for the rest of your life.
This.
And the brain doesn't store things always in an orderly, linear fashion. So, a feeling/memory generated after an event is referenced as if it happened before the event.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
I rip things to bits before deciding what sort of experience they are, and have never put things of this sort in the wrong order. They have not involved looking back and reordering to make a coherent narrative.
What I have put in the wrong order have been odd deju vu experiences - for instance involving the process of getting an inherited ink bottle down from the classroom windowsill. It was a large inkbottle with a pouring device for filling inkwells, which we did not use. On several occasions I got deja vu - usually recalling that last time I did it I had the feeling. I have never been absolutely sure that the first time I did it I had the feeling, though there was a period when I thought I had.
Then there was the friend who had suggested that I would be expecting trouble when on a train travelling through Hither Green, where there had been a bad crash. So every time I did, that thought was there. And no trouble, of course. But if there had been, that time would, no doubt, have become predictive. There must be dozens of people on any journey who have had bad feelings about it, which are subsequently forgotten.
In dim light I have seen the curtains move as if someone is behind them, and at the same time been able to see that they are not moving because of the relationship between parts of the pattern and other parts of the room. But what my head knows has not been able to stop the movement that my eyes are seeing.
The things that stand out as different from those sort of experiences do so from the time they occur, before the confirmation. They come with a marker of significance. They have to be anecdotal, what else could they be, but the number of confirmed events becomes convincing. I am not aware of having been convinced about something not afterwards confirmed - though there have been a few occasions when it seemed wise to travel another way from that planned, and nothing happened on either route. Not wholly convincing of having made a mistake, since it's not possible to prove that something wouldn't have happened down the road not travelled.
What I have not been able to get my mind around has been the certainty held by someone I met whose sight was always of bad things, and who believed that, once seen, those things could not be altered. It was not something I felt appropriate to argue about, because there was an unhealed hurt there. I've not had anything myself to experiment with.
I once read J W Dunne's "Experiment with Time", which, if there were anything in it, would explain practically all the sight experiences (and the unalterable nature of them). I remain unconvinced by it, though. And it wouldn't explain ghosts.
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
<cross-post, was addressing mostly Trin & lilBuddha>
The standard protestations just above point to an interesting problem: any observation of the external world by our brains can be faulty. We could call it the Matrix problem, there simply is no distinguishing between hallucination and reality. The way the Matrix problem gets resolved normally is by repetition and cross-checking with others. While this cannot establish reality in principle, it sure offers a pragmatic solution for getting on with one's life (whether it is real or hallucinatory). We do that all the time unconsciously. For example, when I ask my wife to pick up some milk from the supermarket on the way home, a sheer endless array of reality-markers get confirmed implicitly by her agreement, from the spatial structure of the world to the commercial function of a supermarket. Science is actually little more that a formalization of these processes for very difficult cases, and the modern obsession with science is basically the desire for normality written large.
The problem is of course that unique or very rare events witnessed by one person or very few fall out of this scheme of normality by default. This gets even worse if these events are "personal". A lottery win may be very rare and happens to only very few, but since it is a not a personal event (not something targeted by a person to the winner), we can get a handle on it by truly massive repetition and coordinated observation (millions of people try winning and the lottery company flags the winners for the media). However, assume that I have the unique magical ability to make a rose appear in your hand and I decide to do that once in my lifetime for someone I consider special. There is really no way to establish a modern normality of repetition and cross-checking for such an event. It cannot be elicited other than through my decision, so all reality-establishing methods grind to a halt.
This brings us to the case at hand, ghosts. The appearance of ghosts is a unique or very rare events witnessed by one person or very few. And it is generally personal, simply since the ghost is a person of some description. As such, it cannot possibly rendered "normal" in the modern sense. The only way this can get into the realm of normality is precisely if the appearances become impersonal. That is, if we are talking about a fairly regular appearance that is mostly indiscriminate. The one ghost story that modern normality loves is the haunted house, because one can in principle establish whether that is "true". One simply has lots of "sceptical" people stay there for a long time, and if they experience nothing, then the house is realized to be just another place.
However, the weakness of modern normality is readily apparent. There really is no a priori reason why there shouldn't be unique or very rare events witnessed by one person or very few, and furthermore, there really is no a priori reason either why some of these events shouldn't be personal. And so we have these typical battles about normality, with the modern normalizers insisting that personal experiences are not trustworthy and those who had those experiences being quietly sceptical about reality being contained by modern normality. The Matrix problem has been swept under the carpet, but it leaves a big bump there and sometimes people stumble over it.
Or to sum it up concisely: The plural of anecdote is not data, but the singular of data is not reality.
[ 17. December 2013, 09:03: Message edited by: IngoB ]
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Trin
Shipmate
# 12100
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Posted
You mention the matrix problem - the difficulty in distinguishing between hallucination and reality.
For purposes of illustration, let us amplify the problem:
If it could be shown that the victim of literally every paranormal experience ever endured was high on LSD at the time, a pragmatic person might think it safe to assume the reported phenomena did not exist in the real world.
But your line of reason IngoB would still hold true. You could say "There is no a priori reason why an LSD user may not happen to witness real paranormal activity whilst high." - And you would be correct, but we'd still all feel fairly confident that there was no actual ghost.
As it happens, they aren't high on LSD. But they are still subject to the biases, fears, fantasies, retrospective fallacies, and lapses of integrity which, in various combinations, result in the odd semi-credible sounding ghost story cropping up once or twice in a lifetime. I know, because I'm subject to the same biases, fallacies and the temptation not to let boring rationality and scepticism get in the way of a good story on the retelling - and this part is, to use your terminology, normalisable, even if the specifc claimed experiences are not.
This is the basis for my doubt. As you correctly point out, I cannot prove anything.
[ 17. December 2013, 11:46: Message edited by: Trin ]
Posts: 442 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2006
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I'm respectful of people who suggest they've seen a ghost; their experience is persuasive to them, and perhaps God within infinite wisdom or neglect has decided that only an elect will have such perception. I am not part of such a special group, and not for want of wanting to be, nor a want of trying. I am haunted only by that bit of gristle, like Scrooge hoped.
I don't know why you'd want to try and see a ghost. Seems rather unpleasant to me, although it's interesting to hear about other people's experiences.
The only ghost I want to experience more of is the Holy Ghost.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
If it could be shown that the victim of literally every paranormal experience ever endured was high on LSD at the time, a pragmatic person might think it safe to assume the reported phenomena did not exist in the real world.
The actual Matrix problem includes the very existence of LSD. It is simply our assumption that LSD is a psychoactive substance that can induce hallucinations. Perhaps LSD is instead a drug that removes our regular hallucinations for a brief period of time. Or perhaps both reality and LSD hallucinations are parts of a larger dream... Obviously, there is no way to overcome the Matrix problem. However, we cannot live according to such speculations. We must construct some kind of "normality" or become dysfunctional. My point was simply that this pressure to construct a liveable normality lead to biases. And in our days these biases are towards the "empirical": what is normal is what is repeatable and objective by mutual agreement of observers. Everything at odds with this threatens normality and is hence rejected, often dismissively. But the construction of normality does not determine reality.
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
As it happens, they aren't high on LSD. But they are still subject to the biases, fears, fantasies, retrospective fallacies, and lapses of integrity which, in various combinations, result in the odd semi-credible sounding ghost story cropping up once or twice in a lifetime. I know, because I'm subject to the same biases, fallacies and the temptation not to let boring rationality and scepticism get in the way of a good story on the retelling - and this part is, to use your terminology, normalisable, even if the specifc claimed experiences are not.
The problem is however not with the biases you are aware of. The problem is with the biases you are not aware of. Obviously it could be the case that every case of ghostly activity ever reported is simply a matter of human error (or indeed trickery). But it could just as well be that you are actively (if perhaps mostly subconsciously) shutting out evidence that would run contrary to your own convictions of normality. For all we know, you've been visited by dozens of ghosts and your home is the playground of demons, but you keep on attributing anything that doesn't fit your scheme of normality to approved normal causes. You were seeing things, but you were just tired. You are sure that you put this object there, but now it is there, so clearly your memory is shot. That voice you heard must be from someone on the street. The noises from the attic probably are birds or rats, perhaps it is time to call pest control. Etc. Of course, all of this can be perfectly true. That's not my point. My point is that our opinion concerning what is normal is a powerful filter, and it takes some doing for the abnormal to smash through it.
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
This is the basis for my doubt. As you correctly point out, I cannot prove anything.
I know the basis of your doubt. We all do, we all are children of our times. None of us can even imagine any longer a normality that would be filled with spirits. People always seek the "either/or", so once there were shamans now there are scientists (like yours truly, as it happens). But reality seems to me to be more "both/and" than we like, an unparsimonious mess in which Ockhams' razor gets stuck as in trying to cut treacle.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Augustine the Aleut
Shipmate
# 1472
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Posted
I cited the two instances which I described only because others, unbidden, had seen these particular apparitions which appear to be be linked to these places.
I omitted the most vivid experience I had of this nature, where I clearly saw the figure up fairly close and can still recall the details of clothing and appearance, quite simply as nobody else I knew had seen him. I leave this one open to it being a trick of my mind or my eyes.
My own feeling is that it is foolish and possibly dangerous to seek a connexion to these spirits (entities), but that there are some realities out there which we can't quite explain. I would share the sentiments of a medical researcher I know who said that, while she didn't believe in ghosts, she had seen one.
Posts: 6236 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: Oct 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I guess I'm on the other end of the spectrum, I would like the experience of seeing a ghost if it were possible. Not really seeking one, but would certainly not shy away. I am much more frighted of people than anything other worldly. People can do me harm, the spirit world is neglectful in contrast, and I'm a natural sceptic which may mean the ghosts are impossible to perceive because I dismiss them as my mind's creation.
I've had senses of thing, have excellent auditory memory, but would probably take the sound or voice of a ghost as a sign of imagination before anything else.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Trin
Shipmate
# 12100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Everything at odds with this threatens normality and is hence rejected, often dismissively. But the construction of normality does not determine reality.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
My point is that our opinion concerning what is normal is a powerful filter, and it takes some doing for the abnormal to smash through it.
An insightful point, and I take it.
The thrust of your argument though, I can't really engage with.
Many people: I've had a ghostly experience
Trin: Here are some reasons why I highly doubt ghosts are real.
IngoB: Aaah but what can we truly know about reality?
Seems a bit like goal post shifting to me.
Or perhaps you're aware of that but just want to talk philosophy. Which is fine. But you've widened the scope of the discussion, I feel.
Posts: 442 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2006
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I would like the experience of seeing a ghost if it were possible. Not really seeking one, but would certainly not shy away. I am much more frighted of people than anything other worldly. People can do me harm, the spirit world is neglectful in contrast, and I'm a natural sceptic which may mean the ghosts are impossible to perceive because I dismiss them as my mind's creation.
I've had senses of thing, have excellent auditory memory, but would probably take the sound or voice of a ghost as a sign of imagination before anything else.
People have many ways of altering their mental state, so if you believe that ghosts are simply signs of imagination there must be some way of inducing your imagination to create them. Hypnosis, perhaps?
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I would like the experience of seeing a ghost if it were possible. Not really seeking one, but would certainly not shy away. I am much more frighted of people than anything other worldly. People can do me harm, the spirit world is neglectful in contrast, and I'm a natural sceptic which may mean the ghosts are impossible to perceive because I dismiss them as my mind's creation.
I've had senses of thing, have excellent auditory memory, but would probably take the sound or voice of a ghost as a sign of imagination before anything else.
People have many ways of altering their mental state, so if you believe that ghosts are simply signs of imagination there must be some way of inducing your imagination to create them. Hypnosis, perhaps?
Which is why I want to see a real ghost. Not a figment of my little brain. No fako. Realo.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Everything at odds with this threatens normality and is hence rejected, often dismissively. But the construction of normality does not determine reality.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
My point is that our opinion concerning what is normal is a powerful filter, and it takes some doing for the abnormal to smash through it.
An insightful point, and I take it.
The thrust of your argument though, I can't really engage with.
Many people: I've had a ghostly experience
Trin: Here are some reasons why I highly doubt ghosts are real.
IngoB: Aaah but what can we truly know about reality?
Seems a bit like goal post shifting to me.
Or perhaps you're aware of that but just want to talk philosophy. Which is fine. But you've widened the scope of the discussion, I feel.
No end to how far this might be taken. Goal posts need to be generally established or there is not much point to the discussion. It is interesting to see where people think is the proper distance for the goal, though.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I would like the experience of seeing a ghost if it were possible. Not really seeking one, but would certainly not shy away. I am much more frighted of people than anything other worldly. People can do me harm, the spirit world is neglectful in contrast, and I'm a natural sceptic which may mean the ghosts are impossible to perceive because I dismiss them as my mind's creation.
I've had senses of thing, have excellent auditory memory, but would probably take the sound or voice of a ghost as a sign of imagination before anything else.
People have many ways of altering their mental state, so if you believe that ghosts are simply signs of imagination there must be some way of inducing your imagination to create them. Hypnosis, perhaps?
Which is why I want to see a real ghost. Not a figment of my little brain. No fako. Realo.
How would you know it was real?
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
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Posted
We lived in a house where I would often feel a presence in our dinning room and sometimes would catch something in the hall with the corner of my eye. It seemed benevolent and I simply thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. After we had moved one night my husband spoke abut feeling a presence often in the corner of the dinning room of our old house. " Very benevolent but still strange," he said. Ghost, or both of our minds playing tricks on us? Who knows?
Posts: 2641 | From: Third planet from the sun. USA | Registered: Nov 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
The thrust of your argument though, I can't really engage with.
Many people: I've had a ghostly experience
Trin: Here are some reasons why I highly doubt ghosts are real.
IngoB: Aaah but what can we truly know about reality?
Seems a bit like goal post shifting to me.
Except you didn't provide any reasons why you doubt that ghosts are real. You provided some reasons why you believe that people's testimony about ghosts could be erroneous. And I did (somewhat obliquely) attack precisely those reasons: I'm saying that your opinion about that is to a large extent determined by your view of normality (rather than reality). That's not to say that you are wrong (about reality), it is to say that it is not quite so easy here to say who is wrong and who is right. Because the issue at hand is one that lies outside of the modern comfort zone of normality.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I don't know what this one was, but there was confirmation, of a sort.
A friend and I would go and sit in a local church which was open all night, light candles, and pray. It was a fairly modern, 1960's sort of building.
One night, I couldn't settle. There were odd noises - nothing that couldn't be accounted for by temperature changes, or passing vehicles in the street, but also a powerful feeling that there was something around, an uneasy feeling. I really couldn't do what I usually did, which was what I do in Meeting at the Friends. I just waited until my friend was ready to go.
At which point he revealed that he had been aware of something, too. In his case, the odd noises had always come just as he was getting into his prayer state deeply.
We were both so convinced that something was amiss that we searched the building - up in the altar loft, round the passage behind the chancel, behind the altar, under the altar, in every part we could get into. The only thing was that beside the front pew on the right, a single freesia lay on the floor. We checked outside, as well.
We didn't go and tell the vicar, as it was a bit late on a Saturday night, and we thought that the following day's services would deal with anything intangible that was hanging around, anyway. But it was very odd. And not pleasant.
(The church has now changed its habits, following some tangible interferences, and is mostly locked.)
(The "of a sort" comment was because my friend and I could have picked up hints from body language, leaking pheromones or something, and fed each others' imaginations.)
[ 17. December 2013, 19:42: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
The most convincing story I know of, concerns a couple who moved into a house and were so sure it was haunted that they put it back on the market within the year, willing to take a substantial loss just to get out. They were professional people, and were worried that their professional credibility would be affected if it was known that they "believed in ghosts" so they wanted to keep everything quiet.
However, they had had the house re-surveyed and the electrics etc thoroughly checked to try to discover a reason for various problems - domestic appliances switching themselves on and off, odd noises, cold patches in the house etc, so they had some independent verification of inexplicable occurrences.
(I was a solicitor in the firm handling the sale, though I wasn't dealing with the sale myself.)
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Just to add - this was well over 20 years ago, and if there had been ongoing problems in the house I would have expected it to have become public knowledge by now but I haven't heard anything further.
Posts: 6414 | From: North East Scotland | Registered: Oct 2007
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Trin:
The thrust of your argument though, I can't really engage with.
Many people: I've had a ghostly experience
Trin: Here are some reasons why I highly doubt ghosts are real.
IngoB: Aaah but what can we truly know about reality?
Seems a bit like goal post shifting to me.
Except you didn't provide any reasons why you doubt that ghosts are real. You provided some reasons why you believe that people's testimony about ghosts could be erroneous. And I did (somewhat obliquely) attack precisely those reasons: I'm saying that your opinion about that is to a large extent determined by your view of normality (rather than reality). That's not to say that you are wrong (about reality), it is to say that it is not quite so easy here to say who is wrong and who is right. Because the issue at hand is one that lies outside of the modern comfort zone of normality.
The preposition that ghosts do not exist lies in there being no objective framework for their existence. So then, the burden of proof is on the believers, yes?
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm less sceptical about the after-effects of baleful deeds in poisoning a place or a local community. Sometimes it seems that it's not just the people who remember; the place seems to. At the other end of scale is the concept of "thin places", which also seems to have some weight. Peaceful places seem to be associated with much faithful prayer. I've had some experience of that on retreat, found it both refreshing and not easy to explain either.
I think this is where I am, too. Iona is just one classic example of a "thin place".
The vast majority of ghost stories are down to human imagination and also to the way that the mind tries to make sense of incomplete data. I listened to a fascinating discussion on the radio recently about song lyrics and how, if we can't hear the lyrics of pop songs clearly, we make up something that fits, even if it is complete nonsense. I suspect that the same thing goes on with ghost encounters. We hear or see something in a very partial way and the mind starts to fill in the gaps, leading to a wrong conclusion.
With regards to "spectral typing" - I once heard a story of an IT consultant who was asked to look into a problem with one woman in the office, whose computer kept on writing garbage when she wasn't looking. She would be sat at her desk and all would be fine. She would turn away for a moment and when she looked back, the screen was filled with nonsense. She had tried changing her screen and keyboard, but it still kept happening. The only option (as far as she was concerned) was that it was a ghost playing tricks on her.
The consultant sat with her and simply watched her at work. For an hour or so, nothing strange happened. Then a colleague brought her a cup of coffee. Having been told that she shouldn't run the risk of spilling coffee over the keyboard, she kept the cup on a shelf well away from the computer. As she reached across to pick up the coffee, her ample bosom brushed across the keyboard....
Hey presto - not a ghost after all. Just boob-typing.
Having said all that, there ARE occasions which defy "rational" explanations. In a previous parish, one of the churchwardens was very matter of fact about having a ghost in her house. Apparently, all the family had seen it regularly. It was a young woman who appeared in the front room from time to time.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The preposition that ghosts do not exist lies in there being no objective framework for their existence. So then, the burden of proof is on the believers, yes?
There are plenty of frameworks for the existence of ghosts (I mentioned one of them above), and the existence of ghost is demonstrated by personal experience to the satisfaction of many individuals (not including me so far, as it happens). You are here exactly trying to normalise this particular set of observation to the modern quasi-scientific mould of repeatable cross-checking. But we know right off the bat that this cannot work, as argued above. Just think about how such a "proof" (quasi-scientific evidence gathering), could be performed. There is just no way to organise it meaningfully. This does however not necessarily mean that ghosts lack reality. It means that they are not modern-normal.
Personally I think ghost stories are more believable than say alien abductions. Do I believe in the existence of ghosts? I can't say that I do, and I can't say that I don't. They fall in the "who knows" category for me. Sufficiently many people provide sufficiently tight testimony to assume that something is going on, and that not all of it can be "explained away" with references to faulty memory, observer biases, etc. Perhaps indeed people sometimes have "awake dreams". But then I worry that the implied significance of that statement is precisely what I cannot prove, namely that there is no "external meaning" to this. After all, the classical definition of a ghost is a disembodied soul of the dead. Any sensory percept of something incorporeal is by definition "hallucinatory", but not in the usual "meaningless" way...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Hey presto - not a ghost after all. Just boob-typing.
Helluva sensitive keyboard. This woman - bruised much? She seems extraordinarily unaware of contact with physical objects.
Just as some ghost stories seem too neatly explicable, so that story seems improbably illustrative of 'There was a comically simple explanation' genre.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Hey presto - not a ghost after all. Just boob-typing.
Helluva sensitive keyboard. This woman - bruised much? She seems extraordinarily unaware of contact with physical objects.
Just as some ghost stories seem too neatly explicable, so that story seems improbably illustrative of 'There was a comically simple explanation' genre.
I just offer it as a story that was told me by someone who claimed to have been there. Make of that what you will.
I think my bigger point is that we start with the assumption that there is a "simple, rational" explanation for these things. Only once we have eliminated all these possibilities should we resort to ghosts and so on.
Some time back, when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was popular on TV, I went through a whole period of people contacting me out of the blue, wanting their houses "exorcised". What seemed to have happened was that people were watching "demonic activity" on TV and then getting twitchy about odd noises and unexplained things that they would normally have ignored.
I would go round to the house, listen to their story and then pray in the room(s) where the "odd things" were happening. And that seemed to do it. I never had to go back a second time.
In most cases, I didn't actually think that there was "something going on" - they had just spooked themselves. Heck - I've done it from time to time myself.
There were two occasions where I was left unsure about what was going on. On one occasion, a woman who lived alone kept coming home to find the gas fire switched on when she hadn't touched it. That was weird but there were all sorts of possible explanations.
On the other time, a couple said that they had kept hearing a baby crying upstairs. They had just thought that it was sound coming from next door until they asked and found that none of their neighbours had babies. It didn't seem to be a TV or radio - all they ever heard were the muffled sounds of a baby crying. They seemed a very rational and down to earth couple - unlike some of the fruit-loops I had previously dealt with. Strange.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
A very odd thing happened once in my old home, involving the door bell. It was a very early version of the wireless type, and the receiver swallowed enormous amounts of electricity, so it had an option for running it off the mains, which I did.
After a while, it started to have single rings at odd times, when there was no-one there. I initially suspected someone was playing Knock Down Ginger, but there didn't seem to be anyone about giggling. I knew that there was only one other of its type in the vicinity (from doing a Christian Aid collection), several hundred yards away, so I didn't think it could be interference from someone calling at another user. I stuck a notice over the push asking callers to ring twice.
And the false rings doubled, too.
There came an evening when I was hosting a group of astrophysicists. I had changed the notice to asking for three rings. Followed by the phantom ringer.
During that evening, as we discussed the possible cause, tested with and without the mains connection (no problem with batteries), and the probable outcome of upping the ring numbers, the frequency increased, usually around the hour, but not at exactly 60 minute intervals. And it built up to 5 rings, after we had suggested that, only in my living room. I didn't have any heating or similar device which could have been cutting in or out. (Though maybe someone else in the flats did, even though we had separate supplies.) I even asked the AA man who was working on a car just up the road if he had been producing sparks.
We all agreed it was very peculiar.
The next day I contacted the power company and asked if there had been any spikes the previous evening, and had no satisfactory answer. I took the thing back to Argos, the shop, and got a refund.
I had had my suspicions of a family in another flat, with a small boy - though too young to have worked out a way of working my bell from indoors, and with their door too far away for him to get out of the way after ringing the bell manually, but the way that sequence followed discussion which they could not have overheard (no common walls between us) ruled that out.
It was very odd.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
I had a somewhat strange thing happen. I was walking to an appointment in an old residential neighborhood with houses with long front lawns, when a nine volt battery dropped squarely on top of my head. No trees overhead from where a bird or a squirrel might have dropped it. The nearest house and coverage was about twenty yards away. And no muffled sniggers. It would have been a hell of a lobbing shot, anyway. No planes either, although if it were dropped from a plane, I think it would have hit me with much more force than it did. Maybe it was a crow who liked a shiny thing, then dropped it because it wasn't worth the weight.
Or maybe it was a ghost. ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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