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Ghostly experiences thread

Absolutezero

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

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Kidchameleon

Good idea for a thread. I just hope its not ruined by the usual church bashing. Just remember guys, the church / religion do not own the supernatural.

To answer the OP, yes I have seen "dead" relatives. As have members of my family and friends. One friend in particular claims to see these things regularly. Years ago, I heard a voice calling me from another room (I live alone), when I went to the room I discovered one of my candles had sparked up my curtain!

ShooterSF

I find it odd ghosts tend not to appear in densely populated public areas where there's CCTV cameras or such considering so many people have seen or experienced one.

robindch

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Just remember guys, the church / religion do not own the supernatural.

I dare you tell that to the church.

Zombrex

Absolutezero wrote: »

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

I've had all the usual experiences, seeing faces in shadows/dark, waking up and feeling a presence in the room, waking up to fine someone in the room who disappears, feeling cold in a warm "haunted" room etc etc

Personally I find the actual natural explanations for these things (ie what we like to call "reality" around these parts) far more interesting that the supernatural mumbo jumbo people make up to explain these things.

For example the pattern matching of figures and faces that humans do naturally is a truly fascinating subject. Just try and get a computer to recognise a face to see the problems that evolution has over come in our brains. Knowing that the brain itself makes mistakes is reassuring to a computer scientist such as myself

stevejazzx

The most obvious explanation is that people don't understand how powerful their mind can be at deceiving them given the right set of circumstances.
If people understood how audible and visible manifestations created by an overactive mind can be realistically projected by their mind to itself then their definitiveness in relation to witnessing the supernatural would be greatly reduced.
If the supernatural exists in the way people who have claimed to experience it say it does then it must act irrationally, selectively and indeed covertly to avoid being detected by masses of people and technology. This proposition simply does not hold water.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

stevejazzx wrote: »

The most obvious explanation is that people don't understand how powerful their mind can be at deceiving them given the right set of circumstances..

Just in passing, I read a book a while back where the author drew parallels between the accounts people give of ghosts and the accounts they give of alien sightings. The experiences were much the same; all that was different was how people accounted for them.

stevejazzx wrote: »

If the supernatural exists in the way people who have claimed to experience it say it does then it must act irrationally, selectively and indeed covertly to avoid being detected by masses of people and technology. This proposition simply does not hold water.

I don't assert there are supernatural yokes, but I think we have to be careful about what we do assert about them. I've no idea how ghosts should behave, and so I've no basis for saying what behaviours on their part are irrational.

If I can quote from the Good Book

http://www.clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio1.htm

FORD PREFECT:
Unfortunately I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended. I came for a week and was stranded for fifteen years.

ARTHUR DENT:
But how did you get there in the first place?!

FORD PREFECT:
Oh easy! I got a lift with a Teaser. You don't know what a Teaser is, I - I'll tell you. Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.

ARTHUR DENT:
Ah. “Buzz them”?

FORD PREFECT:
Yeah. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul, who no one's ever going to believe, and then strut up and down in front of ‘em wearing silly antennae on their head and making “beep, beep” noises. Huh, rather childish really.

Andrewf20

Its the one think that defintely make me thinks twice as to whether something is going on out there. Ive met one or two people in my time who I trust to not make things up and who claim to have some tangible bizarre goings-on. One involves a suicide victim with pictures falling off walls on their anniversary with candles re-igniting after they were blown out etc. Coincidence perhaps but it does niggle me a little if im honest, even though im usually very skeptical.

Ive personally never experienced anything id deem paranormal.

Zombrex

Andrewf20 wrote: »

Its the one think that defintely make me thinks twice as to whether something is going on out there. Ive met one or two people in my time who I trust to not make things up and who claim to have some tangible bizarre goings-on. One involves a suicide victim with pictures falling off walls on their anniversary with candles re-igniting after they were blown out etc. Coincidence perhaps but it does niggle me a little if im honest, even though im usually very skeptical.

Ive personally never experienced anything id deem paranormal.

It doesn't have to be them making stuff up. The options aren't "Ghosts" or "He's lying".

In fact quite the opposite, we know how the brain can play a whole host of tricks on people, from viewing something that isn't there due to the way our brain takes short cuts when processing vision, right up to the minds annoying tendency to produce false memories that can seem as real as the real memories.

Your friends are at the mercy of some odd goings on, but it ain't ghosts, it is their own minds.

Andrewf20

Zombrex wrote: »

It doesn't have to be them making stuff up. The options aren't "Ghosts" or "He's lying".

In fact quite the opposite, we know how the brain can play a whole host of tricks on people, from viewing something that isn't there due to the way our brain takes short cuts when processing vision, right up to the minds annoying tendency to produce false memories that can seem as real as the real memories.

Your friends are at the mercy of some odd goings on, but it ain't ghosts, it is their own minds.

In relation to the family suicide, there were multiple witnesses to some very conincidental events happening on or around anniversary dates they claim. Yes, probably a rational explanation alright but the niggles still claw at me to a small degree. The couple at the centre of these experiences wouldnt be paranormal hunters so to speak and are not religious.

68Murph68

ShooterSF wrote: »

I find it odd ghosts tend not to appear in densely populated public areas where there's CCTV cameras or such considering so many people have seen or experienced one.

Also the fact that there has been no increase in photographic evidence for all of these supernatural phenomena despite the proliferation of camera phones???

I imagine the following cognitive biases would help explain a big percentage of stuff.

http://io9.com/5974468/the-most-common-cognitive-biases-that-prevent-you-from-being-rational

Penn

I remember years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night. It was nearly the fifth anniversary of my best friends death. I woke up, and in the corner of my eye could see a bright light in the corner of the room, and could hear a faint moaning noise.

The noise was the wind outside as my window was slightly open, and the light was my phone which was charging on the other side of the room, lighting up to say "Phone Charged".

There's always an explanation, the explanation just might not always be obvious, or might include factors you're simply not aware of. Since ghosts etc are outside of what we consider to be natural, all possible natural explanations should be considered before arriving at the conclusion that it was something supernatural.

HHobo

Absolutezero wrote: »

I was looking at another thread in AH about creepy things and ghostly experiences people claim they have had and it got me thinking. A good number of contributors seem to have had escapes from paedophiles and the deranged but a number claim to have had poltergeist like experiences and ghostly manifestations of dead relatives etc. I just wonder what would the experience here be of the ghostly experiences stuff?

It is all nonsense in my opinion. When you learn just how fallible our memories and senses are, how much of what we see and hear is actually injected by our brains as a 'best guess' these kinds of experiences become expected and quite banal.

There is no rationality or sense to the manner, infrequency, vagueness or person-specific communications that seem to occur. Consider the poster earlier who recived a spectural warning about his curtain having caught fire. It seems inconsistant to me that he/she would be the recipiant of this handy warning when innumerable others are seemingly left to their fate. It seems dramatically more likely that he heard an unrealted sound, misremembers or imagined it than a dead person called out to him.

Calling to someone requires that you vibrate the air molecules in a very specific pattern. It requires physical interaction with the world. Why would this presence, capable of interaction with the world, and exceptionally fine-tuned interaction at that, not simply put out the fire.

Also, when a person is nearly destroyed by grief, how callous of thier departed loved ones to not give them some indication that they still exist in a form. What parent who had died would be able to resist comforting their grieving child or vice versa. No, it seems more reasonable by far that people's known-to-unrealiable senses simlpy let people hear and see that which in most cases they want to see and hear.

In other cases, our agency detection software simlpy takes the safer path and tells us that those shadows over there are a figure. Maybe they aren't but no-one has ever been harmed by a shadow that might have been a threat. Many have died to threats that might have been a shadow.

So... I don't believe there is anthing to these expereinces and stories. That is not to say that the person who recounts doesn't believe they are telling you the whole truth. People are often honest and wrong.

Kidchameleon

68Murph68 wrote: »

Also the fact that there has been no increase in photographic evidence for all of these supernatural phenomena despite the proliferation of camera phones???

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

Sarky

I suspect that they'd show up on the recording devices people invented to detect non-visible wavelengths, much like the multi-spectral detectors ghost hunters and the like always bring with them to supposedly haunted places. In a shocking turn of events, so far they have not picked up anything. Perhaps you're talking about some kind of sneaky wavelength that travels in a sort of sideways shuffle instead of rays?

Obliq

Kidchameleon wrote: »

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

That's interesting - I was just about to write about my "experience" which ties in neatly with this:

I used to work in an old folks home, and on my first ever night shift, a woman died. There was only myself and the nurse on duty - she showed me how to lay out the woman's body and we set the room for her relatives to sit with her. I was sent down to the laundry room to fetch fresh sheets for her bed, and set off from the room down the long, dimly lit corridor that stretched on through two sets of swing doors. The left turn for the laundry was after the first set of doors. I remember feeling accompanied (as you do, when feeling spooked, which I admit to!) through the doors and as I turned left I looked behind me.....

I still swear to this day that the air was rippling - warping, as if looking through antique glass. It rippled past me and continued down the length of the hall till it disappeared at the next set of doors.....I ran the rest of the way to the laundry :eek:

Now, most people I tell that to get spooked because they know me as an unbeliever of anything without evidence - but I generally add to the story that a) I had smoked a lot of weed the night before, b) I hadn't eaten dinner, and c) I needed a fag. Also, that was my first encounter with the death of a person. Make of it what you will

I have no explanations except that I was clearly susceptible to seeing that under the circumstances. I can't tell you if it was "there" or not.

oldrnwisr

Kidchameleon wrote: »

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

OK, but your first reply to this thread was:

Kidchameleon wrote: »

To answer the OP, yes I have seen "dead" relatives. As have members of my family and friends. One friend in particular claims to see these things regularly. Years ago, I heard a voice calling me from another room (I live alone), when I went to the room I discovered one of my candles had sparked up my curtain!

If you want to suggest some kind of feeling of something being there fine, but seeing means something in the visible portion of the EM spectrum. So if you can see it there's no reason why a camera can't see it as well. Lots of people claim to see ghosts and yet no footage depsite the increasing prevalence of cameras as others have pointed out.

Kidchameleon

Sarky wrote: »

Perhaps you're talking about some kind of sneaky wavelength that travels in a sort of sideways shuffle instead of rays?

That's scientifically plausible so why not?

Obliq

oldrnwisr wrote: »

If you want to suggest some kind of feeling of something being there fine, but seeing means something in the visible portion of the EM spectrum. So if you can see it there's no reason why a camera can't see it as well. Lots of people claim to see ghosts and yet no footage depsite the increasing prevalence of cameras as others have pointed out.

That's just it - and exactly why I never say I've "seen a ghost". I actually think I saw what I expected to see, which was something (rather than nothing) - and I put that down to being a manifestation of my circumstances, not the dead woman's!

I'd like to know what people have actually seen, and how much they attribute to themselves....um....suggesting it to themselves?! Kid Chameleon?

Kidchameleon

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Lots of people claim to see ghosts and yet no footage depsite the increasing prevalence of cameras as others have pointed out.

I'm no expert on this ok but can dogs hear sounds that are too low frequency for a person to hear? If so then its not that big a jump to think one person may be more sensitive to certain light waves than another person. Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time so I don't put any weight into the camera argument.

Obliq

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time

Really? People can see in x ray and infrared?

Kidchameleon

Obliq wrote: »

I'd like to know what people have actually seen, and how much they attribute to themselves....um....suggesting it to themselves?! Kid Chameleon?

I know exactly what you are saying Obliq. Reminds me of the time when I was a nipper, I "heard" the banshee. Completely **** myself. I could hear her wailing as clear as day, seriously! I ran down stairs to my mam, to find her doing a bit of karaoke in the kitchen! The "banshee" was my mam

Kidchameleon

Obliq wrote: »

Really? People can see in x ray and infrared?

Its possible. Look up Tetrachromacy.

Sarky

Kidchameleon wrote: »

That's scientifically plausible so why not?

Obliq

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Its possible. Look up Tetrachromacy.

Actually, that's very, very interesting: http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision#.UPRC3Kp2NTM

"Color blindness ran in families, affecting men but not women. While color-blind men had two normal cones and one mutant cone, De Vries knew that the mothers and daughters of color-blind men had the mutant cone and three normal cones—a total of four separate cones in their eyes."

My father is very colour blind - great artist/draftsman with a penchant for pink/green clouds when he did water colours. Me, I'm a good artist too (untrained) who once helped a flatmate with her interior decor course work as she couldn't do a colour wheel out of magazine cuttings in the necessary number of sections. I doubled it, and she got an "A".

Not saying anything about ghosts or seeing things that others can't here, except that yes - I see colours in a big way (and can prove it!). That's mad Ted.;)

HHobo

Kidchameleon wrote: »

There's tons of light waves / microwaves that cameras don't pick up that would otherwise be in every photo ever taken. Trillions of extra cameras would never change that. Point being, what if supernatural phenomena were on a different wavelength.

Existing camera technologies are capable of observing way more of the EM spectrum than our eyes can. If they are on a wavelength your camera can't see, then your eyes can't either. The same is true of sound. If your ears can hear it, then so too can recording devices.

[-0-]

Figments of people's imaginations and/or something they don't understsand. They don't exist.

HHobo

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time so I don't put any weight into the camera argument.

This simply isn't true. It might be plausable to say our eye are more sensitive in X way than Y camera but for every X there is camera that is far, far, far better than we are at detecting it.

There are innumerable wavelengths, particles, etc. that we can't see but our technology can and I can't think of a single one that ours can see that our technology can't.

If the notion of the supernatural is too be saved, you are wasting your time appealing to the natural.

MagicMarker

Kidchameleon wrote: »

I'm no expert on this ok but can dogs hear sounds that are too low frequency for a person to hear? If so then its not that big a jump to think one person may be more sensitive to certain light waves than another person. Oh and our eyes are far, far more advanced than any camera will ever be for a long long time so I don't put any weight into the camera argument.

Our eyes are far more complex, cameras are far more advanced.

Personally, I think it all being nonsense is more plausible than mutant super vision humans.

MrPudding

I had a terrifying experience about 20 years ago. I was sleeping on a friends floor and I heard the door open and footstep walking towards and then past me. When I opened my eyes and looked there was nothing. I was a little freaked out. This continued for about 20 minutes, with me getting more and more scared.

Ultimately I don't know what was happening, so I am putting it down to the fact that I was on the wrong end of an 18 hour LSD bender, but I suppose I will never really know...

MrP

Obliq

MrPudding wrote: »

the wrong end of an 18 hour LSD bender

MrP

Hmmm, knowing exactly what you are talking about here may have had something to do with my "light bending" experience too, but I didn't like to say....

However, that does not take away from the Super Human Vision I'd say I have (in colour terms anyway). I'd love to test that - might write to the research peeps and find out :-)