The Ghost Topic.

[Applejack1973]

One of our islands has histories about goblin like people from the underground.

Every night it is told that a part of the island opens up and goblins floods out.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Applejack1973

[Ride The Walrus]

Sounds like the symptoms of sleep paralysis.

As for me and ghosts, I love hearing about them and watching them every saturday on TV. I even have few experiences of my own.

Once I was finishing up a shower and I was looking at the rack that hangs from the shower head and it suddenly shook violently out of nowhere. I wasn't anywhere near it.

Another time, I was home alone here, my neice's kitchen playset was in the living room, but my neice wasn't here cuz she was staying with a family friend. And all through the night we'd hear the stove set go off periodically. There's button on the inside of the plastic so that when you put the toy pan on it, it would make bubbling sounds. Well, there was no toy on it at the time. We wouldn't play with the set, we were also there alone at the time as well, so nothing could be doing it. I even went out there to check it, there was absolutely nothing there.

When my neice was just an infant, she'd always be staring out into the corner of the room or get freaked out and cry when nothing is there. According to my sister, someone had apparently died in that room a long time ago and they suspect it's probably that. You know what they say about babies being closer to supernatural things.

Hm, can't think of anything else right now, besides the odd shampoo bottle crashing into the tub late at night with no one around or the times when things happen when I was little and just chalk that up to kid's imagination.

Dogs, too. My dog's had weird behaviour sometimes like staring in the corner, growling at nothing then running off and digging etc.

[Diogenes]

Ghosts? Nah. There are things we haven't explained yet, but jumping to "maybe it's your dead grandpa!" makes about as much sense as saying it's fairies or bigfoot (actually I'd probably believe bigfoot before ghosts, given that bigfoot is just a highly improbable animal and ghosts are basically magic). I've never seen any unambiguous evidence that they exist, or any explanation of how they could exist that jives with reality, and there have been so many hoaxes and honest misinterpretations that look no different from any unconfirmed incidents...there's just no proof, no indication that these superstitious guesses have anything to do with reality.

Whatever mysteries we have we need to face honestly and head on, not attribute them to some baseless superstition just because we don't yet have a real answer.

Dogs, too. My dog's had weird behaviour sometimes like staring in the corner, growling at nothing then running off and digging etc.

Dogs can sense things we can't. Not in a supernatural sense, but their sense of smell is much more powerful, and they can hear sounds in ranges that we can't. That you can't see what it's bothered about doesn't mean it isn't something natural. I know my dog goes nuts over things I can't see, but I also know she's worse when the windows are open, and I don't think ghosts are waiting for an open window to come in.

[JezMM]

I definitely believe in the idea of ghosts. Not that they're necessarily ghosts but that the phenomena that makes ghosts appear to people is most definitely a thing that exists.

My favourite story was from my Mum, with regards to my little sister. When she was really little, she had a few incidents where she said she saw people in various rooms around the house who weren't there (and after my Mum - feeling completely ridiculous - confronted these empty rooms and politely asked them to leave, she stopped mentioning them, coincidence or not who knows).

However the most fascinating one was when they were visiting some castle ruins, and she pointed to a completely empty space and said "that's a nice horse". My Mum checked the brochure and it turned out there used to be a large statue of a horse in that very spot that was destroyed long ago.

I've only had one moment of paranormal activity myself and it's completely vague and annoying. I just heard violent scratchings and thudding on the bathroom door downstairs (it was an old clicky door that made a unique sound when it moved, so it was very identifiable as that door in particular). At first I thought it was my cat but eventually it got so heavy it was literally making my room and bed (directly above the bathroom) shake. Utterly freaked out I sat up in bed and turned on the light and it instantly stopped. Creepy as hell and never happened again. Was way too major to be my cat (everyone else was in bed) and there wasn't an earthquake or anything that night.

Ghosts do really fascinate me as a concept though. I have fun coming up with more whimsical logic ideas behind them as anyone who reads my comic series knows. P=

Edited July 24, 2012 by JezMM

[Nepenthe]

Sounds like the symptoms of sleep paralysis.

Well, they couldn't have been fits of sleep paralysis because that implies that you're sleep. =P I never was sleeping, and indeed I corroborated with my mom to see if she used to remember sending me in that room to fetch her purse and other things and she does. I've also started to suffer a little bit of sleep paralysis lately and it feels absolutely nothing like what I remember happening to me (although it isn't any less annoying). So, it must be something else mental that went on. Just plain ol' blackouts? I don't know.

[Vertekins]

I believe in ghosts/spirits. Had too many peculiar experiences that cannot be explained with rational scientific explanation.

I used to be haunted by the daughter of my great grandmother's sister (I.e My great grandmother's niece). Annoyingly, she would tug on my the ear that I wasn't lying on when I was in bed so covering that ear with blanket so she couldn't do it was common, everyday practice for me. It was my way of telling her that I didn't want my ear tugged.

I went to my local spiritualist church out of curiosity after my mom suggested that I go along and see if any medium would single me out for a reading. Surprise surprise, a medium brought up the ear-tugging without any prior knowledge whatsoever and elaborated on the details he was recieving concerning the perpertrator's identity, noting how she died at a young age after doing going in the road to fetch a ball for two local children and was run over by a truck, later dying on the operating table during the attempt to save her.

This was entirely true and the level of detail in the reading was absolutely astounding, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt to me that it was not cold reading.

From those details, I discovered that it matched up perfectly with Iris, who is my great grandmother's niece who died in 1949 on the operating table after she was knocked over by a truck whilst fetching a ball for two other kids. The physical description of the spirit also correlated perfectly with Iris as a girl who was surprisingly tall and largely built for 6 years old (She was. Photos from the same year she died depict her as very tall and big-built for 6) and who had a very mischievious personality. Indeed, Iris used to play with my grandmother Margaret (Iris was her cousin). They were born in the same year.

She never meant to scare or harm me by doing it. She explained to the medium that it was simply her way of making me know that she was around because she simply wanted a bit of attention.

The house I currently live in is also haunted. The houses' previous owner Peggy walks from the kitchen and up the stairs in her nightgown occasionally and I have glimpsed her more than once. On the first time, I initially thought that a thin towel draped over the stair's guardrail was fluttering in wind on first glance. Then I noticed that it wasn't draped over the guardrail, it was on the stairs and was moving up the stairs slowly but smoothly and was billowing lightly and very eerily.

I swear my heart skipped a beat when I saw that for the first time XD My mom and sister have also seen her.

There's also been the extremely bizarre things that mobile phones left on record pick up on. My mom has left her mobile on sound record on the odd occasion in her bedroom and the things it picks up when it's left alone are always the same; The extremely distinctive sound of a workshop in operation. We later discovered that our house is built on the foundations of what used to be a workshop.

[Bria]

Ghosts? Did someone leave the Ghost Portal open again? :I

But yeah, I certainly believe that they can exist. I recall my grandfather mentioning him having a gentle ghost that lived in his house before they moved and I used to watch those television shows about haunted places.

[The drunkard from space!]

This topic's dying already? o.p Come now, surely more people have stories to share

[The Weeb with No Name]

Whatever mysteries we have we need to face honestly and head on, not attribute them to some baseless superstition just because we don't yet have a real answer.

It is unfortunate that this stuff is so thoroughly poisoned with deceit and fraud, playing on people's willingness to believe. From the outside in, it's easy to dismiss it all as sensationalist malarkey and just washing your hands of it.

Now, about what you said with ghosts not fitting "reality", well... What each of us call "reality" is really just what we make of it for ourselves. Nobody has all the facts, so all we can do is rely on our impressions of what could be real and what couldn't, based on what little (or much) experience we have.

My impression of life has left me to doubt my certainty of things in this world. In much of anything at all. I've fucked up too many times in my beliefs to trust them anymore, so I trust nothing completely. There's always room for doubt, for new information.

As a human, one of the most fantastically flawed computers in the world, absolute certainty in what could or couldn't be, what is or isn't, would be farcical. For all I "know", I could just be a brain floating in a jar stimulated to virtually perceive all that I do.

Shit.

Anyways, I hope you really mean what you say in needing to face mysteries head on, and with complete honesty. Know that true skepticism goes both ways; doubt the claim, and yet doubt your own conclusions.

When you find yourself both defending and criticizing your views, you'll know you're on the right path.

Probably.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Jayhawker30

[Lamor]

Never seen any ghost but..... everytime I'm in a bathroom late at night. I feel weird unexplainable desire to run as fast as possible and hide in my room. I know that's probably just my paranoia but....

[Patticus]

Never seen any ghost but..... everytime I'm in a bathroom late at night. I feel weird unexplainable desire to run as fast as possible and hide in my room. I know that's probably just my paranoia but....

Infrasound? EMF? The evolutionarily-advantageous fear of the dark and the unknown things it conceals? There are natural explanations for these things.

Unless you can prove to me that there are supernatural forces at work here, I'm going to go out on a limb here and tell you that there are only wholly natural forces at work.

[Noir]

I've never had my own experience the paranormal but apparently as a baby, I rarely cried and one of the few times I had, my mom distinctly heard a voice say "don't cry" with no one else in the house, so there's that.

Ghosts do really fascinate me though. It's not unlike magicians; I don't think any of it is real but it's a lot of fun regardless. I've always loved dramatizations of ghost sightings like Discovery Channel's The Haunting but then the shows like Ghost Hunters come off as trying so hard to be realistic when their entire premise is fake so I could never get into them. I'd love to believe all of it is true and I'd love to see a ghost myself, but at the end of the day I can't help but see them as fun tales.

[Tailikku]

I think I've had a brush with an actual spirit before. It was the day my maternal grandmother died from breast cancer, in the guest room at my cousins' house. Within the minute she died, my mom announced her passing and then I felt a slight cold twinge go up my spine. Bare in mind that I was in a room right next, but not connected, to that room so it was as if I was being touched by the spirit of my grandma.