Ghosts, spirits, do you think they are real?

[Mr.NoBoddy]

I personally am not sure if to believe in these or not since there is no evidence to support them. I once had a experience where I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed this white floating orb like mist at the end of my bed which I stared at for at least 30 seconds before it started floating towards me and the orb started to form this UGLY evil looking face at which freaked out. >_< I even screamed and looked away and it was gone.

I can maybe dismiss that as I wasn't fully awake, my family members have seen some weird stuff in the house, three people witnessed a baseball being levitated and thrown. I wasn't there so I cannot say for sure among other things.

What do you personally believe? Should we just blow all this off as mass hysteria?

[ensayne]

I personally am not sure if to believe in these or not since there is no evidence to support them. I once had a experience where I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed this white floating orb like mist at the end of my bed which I stared at for at least 30 seconds before it started floating towards me and the orb started to form this UGLY evil looking face at which freaked out. >_< I even screamed and looked away and it was gone.

I can maybe dismiss that as I wasn't fully awake, my family members have seen some weird stuff in the house, three people witnessed a baseball being levitated and thrown. I wasn't there so I cannot say for sure among other things.

What do you personally believe? Should we just blow all this off as mass hysteria?

I believe its possible you hallucinated, especially considering that DMT is released during sleep (endogenously) and is possibly related to perceived dream-states.

[Deadeye]

I have never seen a ghost and I've looked for one. I hear all of the stories that you hear, so some believe.

I've been inside the death chamber in Dachu. I looked directly up to the nozzel that spit the gas pellets. I reached down and gripped the iron frame that covers the low glass windows, knowning that thousands had done the same in their death throws. I peeked into the crematorium chambers. There were ashes and charred bones inside. There were scratches on the walls where people had been hanged by nooses hung on hooks.

It gives me the creeps to write about it, but I didn't see a single ghost.

Now I've got the willies.

[Maryjane]

No, I do not believe in ghosts or spirits. I do believe people have over active imaginations.

[Blarg]

I don't believe they exist but I would like to believe it. I don't like the idea of simple rotting in the ground after you die, especially when someone close to me passes away.

[RickSp]

There is far more evidence that ghosts and spirits exist than there is of all the gods of all the major religions.

Do I believe that ghosts exist? I think that there are interesting possibilities but based on current evidence I don't think that the case has been made. So no, I don't believe in ghosts.

[Affluence]

Yes and It confirms belief in ghosts in the Bible just in case you did not know. It's one of those things that might happen once in a lifetime and you say WTF! Some things just dont fit under a microscope but are in fact real. Peace.

[notthecheatr]

Ghosts/spirits are by definition impossible to detect or distinguish scientifically (ghost hunters are wasting their time). Kind of like God, you would need a precise definition for exactly what a ghost is and if it isn't physical it ain't going to fly.

I'm not going to say they don't exist, but I don't think anyone can claim to make any factual statement about ghosts or their existence without a precise definition, which (again, like God) is precisely what we don't have.

[ItsDarts]

If you could see this "ghost" it means it was some kind of material object, only in the fact that visible light must have been reflecting off it in order for you to "See" it. The fact that you think you saw a horrible face coming at you tells me that you were probably just on the border of sleep and awareness. I have had many dreams that I could almost control, being on the border of awareness and sleep, but I always get greedy and being aware of what I'm trying to do, I usually become fully aware and the dream is gone.

The human mind can play many tricks on some people and never affect other people ever. I do not believe in ghosts, but I do believe in hallucinations. Also consider the phenomena where people can look at themselves in a mirror and think they are extremely fat, but 100% of everyone around them sees them as anorexic. This is just an example of how the mind can play tricks by altering the electrochemical reactions in the brain.

[Mr.NoBoddy]

What I think is interesting is when you see a chair sliding by itself or you catch a transperent man on a thermal camera. Once when my Dad got up due to the smoke alarming going off. When he walks out of the room the smoke alarm shuts off, so he goes back in the room and it goes off again. This keeps happening, so he decides to use the bathroom and stay a while in the hallway to see if it happens, of course it doesn't and only goes off when he enters the bedroom. My mother was at a motel and I was sleeping on the couch in the other room. My Dad finally had to remove the alarm to make it stop.

My point is when the physical happens that is very hard to discredit especially when there is no possible physical way it can happen. There has to be something to quantum physics or something that we don't understand yet, or have not yet discovered. Not to sound hypocritical but it started to make me think. Just the other night I saw a phone on the counter spin out of control for over a minute, not just slowly either. What makes it so creditable to me that ghosts and other astral beings is that when my little sister was two she use to talk to us about my aunt Joni who has been dead for more then three years around that time. We never mentioned that name around her ever, and she would talk about my dead uncle who never even met.

Of course I don't have concrete evidence of these things or else I would be rich but point being I am starting to think something is out there. Anyone who doesn't believe in ghosts I would suggest shadow a paranormal team. Although a lot of people don't have the time for it, so the question still remains. =)

[ItsDarts]

I'd have your dads hearing checked. When he's in the room he "hears" the smoke alarm.... when he leaves, he doesn't hear it. It only goes off when he's in the room, did he check the batteries? Why didn't you wake up? How old is your dad? Does he take medication? There are probably hundreds of other reasons this could have happened, assuming we're getting the full story.

But you're right, without further evidence, all we have is an anecdotal story from someone who seems to believe in ghosts to start with.

If I told you I had an elephant in my second story apartment, wouldn't you want more evidence? After all, its very possible to have an elephant in a second story apartment, although unlikely.

[th3sis]

The concepts of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena similar to them make them conveniently difficult to verify. I've heard it all when it comes to believers of undead spirits and other supposed spiritual anomalies, from the fact that you might not know them when you "see" them (kind of like how you'd never "see" a duck if you don't know what a duck looks like) to the laughable idea that you have to want to see them in order for it to work (which says a lot about the people who do "see" them).

The simple fact of the matter is that there is zero evidence to support claims that ghosts and things like them exist in any capacity. This isn't to say that it's completely impossible because, like the god argument, you can't prove that they don't exist either. But in terms of probability ot even plausibility? Odds are good that ghosts are a fabrication of the human mind.

I do believe that some people who claim to have seen something "odd" did in fact see something. But was it a ghost? Highly unlikely. And until they can prove it, and change the face of science forever in doing so, I'll continue to dismiss their passionate first-hand accounts as a trick of the eye or the brain.