[Closed] #TOTW Ghosts - do they exist?

No, maybe a psychiatrist rather than exorcists!

Squirrels probably.

No idea,

My wife and rest of my family believe in ghosts (brother,mother, dad, aunt/uncles etc.) - all claim to have seen them with a verity of stories. I have no stories and I'm not so sure.

My mother and brother (when we were kids) had a similar experience in our family home. My mum being religious, had the house blessed by local vicar and they didn't experience any thing again in the house.

I once woke up to my radio going full blast down stairs and the light on.
There's no way I would have gone to bed leaving them both on.
My friend lived there before I did and him and his girlfriend both assumed the other was leaving the flower pot on the stairs....it wasn't.

Plumbing banging? Ours can make clunks and thumps sometimes which I take to be due to copper pipework flexing and contracting as it heats and cools. I reckon the brain, half-asleep, can hear an unexpected noise and helpfully convert that into "footsteps" or "murderer sharpening wicked blade".

That or we have ghosts too, IDK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00049t9

No idea

FTFY

No. Next.

I don't beleive they exist.

Any weird experience I've ever had I've found a logical explanation for it and it has turned out to NOT be a ghost :o)

My wife and her family are believers and I regularly tell them they're wrong - which ALWAYS goes down well!!

My mother and brother (when we were kids) had a similar experience in our family home. My mum being religious, had the house blessed by local vicar and they didn’t experience any thing again in the house.

OP - Why does your wife think would ghosts choose to walk around your house in the middle of the night?

My 7 year old asked the same question this morning. Spooky or what?!

Had an interesting chat with a tenant of a supposedly haunted house a few years back.

He was adamant he didn't believe in ghosts, but could recount several incidents of "ghostly" figures and noises that regularly appeared and he couldn't explain away - the house at a rural crossroads, and supposedly the site of murders and highwaymen.

So maybe no such thing as ghosts but we have imaginations that like to fill in blanks.

As nonbeliever, I really enjoyed uncanny on BBC sounds. It didn't make me believe in ghosts, but the accounts are compelling. Not sure if it's a good idea for the op to listen to it though...

My sister to this day insists she saw a ghost in an old farm house we lived in when when she was about 4 years old. By pure coincidence this was after my dad found some ancient lace clothing in the attic and an elderly neighbour told us it was haunted.

Plumbing banging?

Not that either - it makes a bloody racket when it is on (so know the noises well) so we have it set so heating doesn't come on until we are up anyway.

OP – Why does your wife think would ghosts choose to walk around your house in the middle of the night?

We have had this discussion. It hasn't convinced her that she is wrong though.

The human mind with it's power of imagination is a wonderful and terrifying thing.
"The number you are thinking about is 87"

Plumbing banging? Ours can make clunks and thumps sometimes which I take to be due to copper pipework flexing and contracting as it heats and cools

And of course t he whole house will do this, especially at times of year when there is a temperature difference between day and night.

My kids keep telling me about the rats in the attic - it's seagulls on the roof, but they sound so loud that I can understand why my kids think they are rats.

Any weird experience I’ve ever had I’ve found a logical explanation for it and it has turned out to NOT be a ghost :o)

I've had a few weird experiences where there was no logical explanation. It doesn't mean ghosts exist, just that sometimes weird things happen. Or that I wasn't paying much attention to the world. 😀

Why does no one ever see ghost ants?
We'd be INUNDATED with the buggers if they were real (ghosts that is. Ants ARE real,tbh)

DrP

I've never heard of a ghost in an intensive care unit. Pretty sure if anywhere was haunted they would be!

OP, your wife heard footsteps but the dog didn’t?
Skeptical.

Check your lawn for sausages?

If ghosts existed, somewhere like the City Of London, which for the best part of 2000 years had a significant density of people living horrible lives and dying terrible deaths, would be absolutely teeming with them. Every tourist photo of the Tower Of London or St Paul's would include an image of a headless horseman, plague victim or drowned child.

But, no, they're always 'found' in some farmhouse or pub in the arse-end of nowhere, and use their supernatural powers to move flowerpots in the middle of the night.

We have had this discussion. It hasn’t convinced her that she is wrong though.

Not just ghosts, by the sound of it 🤣

I had a small radio that I didn't use. It wasn't plugged in and had no batteries. Straight after my grandma had died, in the middle of the night, the radio emitted 5 to 10 seconds of very loud white noise. Both my Girlfriend and myself heard it. I cannot explain it.

I come from a scientific and engineering background so like fact and explanations, but I keep an open mind when it comes to the paranormal.

"Why does no one ever see ghost ants?"

Or dinosaur ghosts? They should be easy to see and they were around a lot longer than we will ever be.

I’ve never heard of a ghost in an intensive care unit. Pretty sure if anywhere was haunted they would be!

IF there were ghosts, my theory is that they'd haunt places that they were familiar with, not places that they barely knew. But, if you were haunting for a reason - revenge or whatever - you'd surely follow the person who you were trying to haunt, not get stuck in a particular place and randomly bother strangers.

Not that I've thought about this much. From similar, late night, semi-drunk ponderings, do all vampires originate in a Christian background? Do lycanthropes prefer being wolves? Why not lycanthrope otters?

Define ‘ghost’
I’ve heard things. Seen things. I’d like to think of my mind as ‘open, but not credulous’.

Suffice to say, I choose not to be on the fence, I instead choose both:

- ‘There are more things on Heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’

- ‘There are more things dreamt of in your philosophy, than on Heaven and Earth’

Here’s my favourite tale of an old skeptic having his mind turned by a rumpled bedsheet slipping off a neighbouring bed. Or was it pushed? 👻

Read by the late great Michael Hordern. ( He also played the old professor in a short film of the same name. It too is wonderful, IMO)

I’d like to write a ‘book-end’ tale, about a fanciful fellow who instead by the light of the midday sun has his trembling credulousness rudely awakened by a life-altering mundanity.

Pretty obvious to me that we are all living in a simulation. A ghost is just a symptom of when Zuckerberg decides to inhabit your avatar for a bit.

I had a small radio that I didn’t use. It wasn’t plugged in and had no batteries. Straight after my grandma had died, in the middle of the night, the radio emitted 5 to 10 seconds of very loud white noise. Both my Girlfriend and myself heard it. I cannot explain it.

This is an interesting one, for me. (I mentioned weird things happening above). I've had VERY odd things happen when people close to me have died. Both my sister and I had strange things happening when our mother died, which we talked about later. It's easy to put it down to grief or coincidence, but that's not always a good explanation. I've never ascribed it to being haunted, or ghosts, just 'weird stuff'.

Pretty obvious to me that we are all living in a simulation.

Statistically, we probably are.

Any weird experience I’ve ever had I’ve found a logical explanation for it and it has turned out to NOT be a ghost :o)

There's a very pervasive human desire to want explanations for things. It's how we got religion (which, as it turned out, wasn't a very good explanation anyway) and why we have ghosts, UFOs and so forth.

"I can't explain something therefore [supernatural]" is something of a leap. My old Sky box / amp / TV kept turning themselves on in the middle of the night, loud enough to wake me up. This was, of course, a poltergeist. I finally exorcised the demon by unplugging the Sky box for 30 seconds and powering it back up, clearing whatever glitch was causing it to come out of standby and wake up the other kit via HDMI-CEC.

It's OK sometimes to not understand things.

Whilst feeding my baby son one evening, a felt a cold breeze around my legs and the baby started giggling like someone was ticking him. He was gazing at something in front of him. I told my wife about it who told me not to be daft.
Next morning, my mum rang to tell me that my Grandfather has passed away the evening before.
I asked if it was around 7.30pm and she asked how did I know that ?
I like to think he had come to say goodbye ( he hadn't met the baby, as we were in hospital with him for 7 weeks when he was born due to complications and we had not long been at home).

Ghostsbolloxworld >>>>>>>

I don't believe in ghosts, but have had a few strange experiences in the family:

- Both my brother and I at separate times when we were kids believed that we saw the same 'boy' in our house.  We had never discussed this before someone was talking about ghosts and we recounted similar stories.  I now put it down to the overactive imagination of children waking up in the middle of the night.

- Back when I was living at home I was upstairs with my then GF, no-one else in the house. Loud (and to add to the freakishness) church type music started playing downstairs (radio was constantly tuned to R4).  Radio in the kitchen had turned on (my parents never listened to loud music), old style radio, so plugged in but uses a click down on button/manual tuner/no alarm or any other fancy gubbins.

- Staying in a rental cottage, allegedly haunted.  Bro and his wife in a loft room.  In middle of the night they were woken by a knock on the room door, which then slammed open.  No windows open or obvious draft.  No-one else up in the middle of the night.  Sure there's a good explanation but they were a bit freaked out by it.

Why is it that an ephemeral "being" which can pass through walls has such a heavy footfall?

Staying in a rental cottage, allegedly haunted.

Mechanical doping in the haunted cottage industry is widespread.

“Why does no one ever see ghost ants?”

Or dinosaur ghosts?

Ah, this is because they don't have souls, you see.

– ‘There are more things on Heaven and Earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’

– ‘There are more things dreamt of in your philosophy, than on Heaven and Earth’

Pick two.

Cross out "heaven and Earth" and write "universe" and you might have a point.

Sure there’s a good explanation but they were a bit freaked out by it.

Cross out “heaven and Earth” and write “universe” and you might have a point.

Sensible as that may be, I can’t yet bring myself to so disrespect Shakespeare’s turn of phrase (neither that of Michael Hordern for that matter!)

And anyway, who says that ‘universe’ is all that exists. And what is ‘existence’?

(Save that topic for a late night with a clear day the other side of it!)

Had a few things "fly about" in our house that I can't explain. Kids toy that we were looking for thrown in from another room that had nobody in it. Wooden spoon took off and hit the dining room window. Smoke alarm fell off ceiling, bounced down a step, hit a wall that had been taken out in the 1930s then bounced back up the step and finally came to rest about 15ft away, which is not a bad bit of rolling when you consider that it is square.

Mechanical doping in the haunted cottage industry is widespread.

I don't doubt that.  To be fair we had no knowledge of any alleged 'ghosts' until reading the visitors book.

I find birds roosting in the eves, particularly in the conservatory can sound like people moving around. Especially in the hour before sunrise. I think they're testing their wings before they leave the roost.Ive also had rats climbing the ivy and nesting in the insulation in the attic in the past.
Everything sounds a lot louder at night.

I had a fright the other evening. We're sitting in bed setting our alarms and hear a phone notification beep from the landing. I'm holding my phone my wife's holding her phone. I think we have an intruder, my wife thinks I'm having an affair and have a second phone.. so I'm having a whispering argument and looking for somthing heavy, I start creeping around the bed rooms and there on my youngest's bed-side she's found an old Samsung tablet and turned it on FFS.

When i first moved to London i had a flat in Walthamstow and pretty much every Saturday morning you would hear a running across the hallway and landing into the flat above. Fine. The only problem with this was that the guy live in SA for 10 months of the year! When i caught up with him, he told me that before moving to SA he often heard a child laughing in the hallway and none of the residents had kids!

Read into that what you will.

There's definitely something other than this life, history is full of stories and strange accounts and i would LOVE for them to exist but other than the above i've bot had any experiences at all (sadly!).

But, no, they’re always ‘found’ in some farmhouse or pub in the arse-end of nowhere

I met someone who was apparently sensitive to ghosts and whatnot and did have to express suprise they lived where they did. Since it was very close to the former town gallows and either directly on top of a vicious bit of a battle in medieval times or close to it.

Why is it that an ephemeral “being” which can pass through walls has such a heavy footfall?

Have you not seen Ghost?

Forgot the best one!

When my daughter was 3 or 4 she used to talk to the "dust people". Once when my wife asked where they were she got the reply "They're right here".

There’s definitely something other than this life

I know what you're trying to say but we can only use our limited senses to detect things and have spent the last few thousand years detuning those senses. Plenty of animals have senses that work in a different way to ours in terms of seeing or hearing different wavelengths, echo location, detecting scents, using magnetism, electricity, all sorts. Animals do all sorts of fantastic things that we have yet to explain. The moon exerts enough force on our planet to move water and causes changes in the behaviour of living things, yet we can't even explain gravity properly. Animals can detect earthquakes in advance, etc.

We see or feel something we can't explain, shrug our shoulders and say 'ghosts'.

Somebody else mentioned it on the previous page, but Uncanny on BBC Sounds is a good series. I’m not a believer myself, but I do love a ghost story. There’s a septic on every episode who they go to a few times in each story to get possible explanations for what’s been going on. It’s just a good fun listen. Even had it’s own hashtag #BloodyHellKen trending for a bit after the stories from the Belfast Student Halls. 😀

Only had one incident. Very very unnerving.

Theres been a number of reported poltergeist incidents, but I think thats connected with teenagers due to the natural energy that exists in them when young.

There was the case of the Rutherglen poltergeist, witnessed by policemen, senior officers at a loss to find an explanation. the case of that bothy ,in another thread recently 😕

Theres a 1949 documentary film called Le Sang des bêtes (Blood of the beasts)- Which I'd advise people dont watch as its extremely graphic and distressing, though in black and white - Amongst other horrific sights,it shows headless calves in the French veal trade, without half their legs or heads, totally bled, running (While strapped upside down) hard, and there's no brain signal being fed to the limbs, so the only explanation is some sort of energy that exists in the limbs made they act so.

Again, dont watch as you'll either throw up or have nightmares for weeks. I've only seen it as it was part of the meat trade when I worked in it.

So an energy can exist, but as to spirits of actual people I dont think thats it. More for want of another term- memory of what has been left in the area.

And anyway, who says that this ‘Universe’ is all that there is?

Oh, sure. The notion of atoms dates back to Ancient Greek philosophers; it was, what, the 1980s before we actually saw one. It would be arrogant in the extreme to say with absolute certainty that we have an absolute understanding of all there is.

But to borrow a quote myself: In response to "Science doesn't know everything" - "Yes, but Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you."

On one of my rides I am often startled by the seeming appearance of an almost spectre like man standing next to the trail half way up a climb .

It is a fairly shady wood . A certain broken tree when the sun is late in the day makes it appear that a person is standing there at the edge of your view, as you turn a corner into the climb. The mind is incredibly good at filling in blanks as has been mentioned.

Even though I’m aware of it, I’m often caugh by the surprise.

My father recounts a tale of his early days in the RAF when a gateguard spitfire suddenly started and 20 officers and men watched as the prop turned and flames came from the exhaust. So what? The spitfire had been decommissioned for 20 years at the time and it’s canopy sealed shut with screws. Mass hallucination? Some one playing a prank? Ghostly airplanes?

someone somewhere knows foshure

1. There aren't any ghosts.
2. If there are footsteps in the house at night, I'd rather it be a ghost than not a ghost.

I've seen loads of ghosts or spirits or 'energies' or whatever you want to call them, but I was under the influence of either ayahuasca, peyote or psilocybin when it happened.
Feels very real at the time though.

So the ghostly spitfire…
What your saying is that the ghost was that of a mechanic and who had fixed the engine, refuelled the plane and wanted to fly again?
Or possibly that the story was a load of bollocks to begin with and over time is greatly elaborated upon?
I could imagine a bored RAF bod on guard, freezing cold, being RAF they’re coming towards the end of the 1 hour on stag and his mind wandered. Then overtime this gets exaggerated to 20 officers had seen it.
If this was true it would be fairly widely known.
Be good to know the camp this occurred on.

Not that I’m a sceptic or anything….

When my daughter was 3 or 4 she used to talk to the “dust people”. Once when my wife asked where they were she got the reply “They’re right here”.

Maybe she was hinting to your wife that she needed to do some dusting.

Only if you believe. But some exist anyway and they have metal teeth and attack if you disturb them at night. Free free to share this with your wife

🙂

Is it the ghost of Richard Kiel?

Pretty obvious to me that we are all living in a simulation.

Statistically, we probably are.

Probably a glitch in the Matrix then.

they definitely exist 😉

https://50nerdsofgrey.com/40-instances-of-glitch-in-the-matrix-in-real-life-that-freaked-us-out/

And they're in the fridge too....

Do Ghosts exist?

yes, insomuch that it possible for physical and physiological reactions to an external stimulus that will make a ghost in your perception that is as real as anything else we see or feel.

Its already been proven in laboratory environments that high EMF can cause feelings of being touched, watched and general paranoia that "something" is about to get you. Similarly it is proven that infra sound can cause a response in humans including if its around 20Hz, oscillation of the optic nerve which can cause ghost like images to be perceived. Its amazing how many historical ghosts are grey/white ladies that are seen at the ends of long corridors when its stormy (great conditions to get wind blowing along the windows and creating infra sound) Same has been found in the Edinburgh Vaults (another area supposedly rife with spooks and spectres)

I also think its possible that in times of extreme stress we can leave an energy imprinted in certain areas that can be picked up by others for a short time after (which may explain battle field ghosts that were reported as full battle sounds hundreds of years ago and now a mere faint sword clash and "oooo arrghhhh eeeee"

Do I think that your great aunty maude is visiting and watching you have sexytime and commenting on your performance and technique....erm...no

envrionmetal appraisal of "haunted houses"

as part of my job we were looking at environmental sound issues from and industrial source, as well as normal noise complaint stuff we found 18.5-20Hz cycles from an air handling unit fan causing windows to move and latches to rattle on an old farmhouse about half a mile away.

So the ghostly spitfire…

So I think this would've been RAF Little Rissington* (I know it was it Gloucestershire and early 60's flying school) It was Xmas, and the Guard on stag came into the Mess in something of a lather, and told all the officers present to come outside. My dad being one of them. He admits he was half-cut at the time. Other's weren't apparently. I would imagine it's been exaggerated over time.

* strangely or not...there was a recorded UFO sighting here as well.

We see or feel something we can’t explain, shrug our shoulders and say ‘ghosts’.

That’s why I asked OP to define ‘ghost’.

Otherwise ‘ghosts’ are every kind of everything, both explained (ie pigeons), unexplained yet possibly fanciful (ie ‘dust people’?) and in-betweeny stuff ie Persinger’s ‘ interhemispheric intrusions’ vs subject suggestibility. The word ‘term inexplicable’ is also wrongly used to denote ‘unexplained’ phenomena.

I suppose that much remains ‘inexplicable’ simply by virtue of the fact that the moment has passed and the phenomenon was merely a momentary combination /happenstance of everyday events/forces, and so likely not repeatable/able to be recreated without prior knowledge of the actual combination.

As for ‘ghost’? Definition of?

The old English word ‘grima’ is especially interesting in so much as it defines both ‘masked, hidden, helmet, visor etc and also ‘ghost, spectre, etc’.

I used to live near a place that is listed in The Domesday Record as ‘Grimanlea’. The woods near there do (IME) have a certain ‘eerie quality’ to them, but I put it down to the quietness and stillness of the place, the topography of which is unusually sheltered from any winds all-year round, and the silently-running river nearby seems to further muffle any sounds.

No.

It’s a simple way for people to try and explain something they can’t understand.

Ooooh! I felt a draft and a baby giggled. Must be a ghost.

It was Xmas, and the Guard on stag came into the Mess in something of a lather, and told all the officers present to come outside.

Xmas? I would be voting for a prank if it wasnt completely made up? Having a guard go to the officers mess seems a bit suspect for starters.

If only we could issue everyone with cameras they carried round most of the time we'd get documented proof of all these incidents. Pics and recordings of ghosts, bigfoot, flying saucers, aliens, nessie etc also. Yep, that'd solve it.

I'm a qualified scientist.

There could be lots of strange things causing strange noises in the night that we don't know about. However I would say that ghosts would be significantly less likely than other things.

What are those other things? I don't know, I haven't got any data, and I haven't done any investigation 🙂

So what? The spitfire had been decommissioned for 20 years at the time and it’s canopy sealed shut with screws. Mass hallucination? Some one playing a prank? Ghostly airplanes?

Yeah my grandparents made up stories too.

Ghosts, phantoms, etc. may in principle exist in our world, but in a different form that we are not used to seeing.
Because a person's consciousness, his soul and energy, cannot just disappear after his death.
It all materializes into another form that we may not see or hear, it could be a transition into a fourth dimension that overlaps with ours, and since we live in the third, we cannot be aware of the fourth.
I think in the future we will know the exact answer to this question, as well as to the question about life after death

I didn't have to flush the toilet once.

Does that count?

Because a person’s consciousness, his soul and energy, cannot just disappear after his death.

I get that you feel confident for whatever reason to make such a claim, but is it a reasonable claim? What evidence do you have? And if you’ve solved the final mysteries of consciousness then great fame and fortune awaiting you. Such evidence might also great comfort to those who fear death/grieve for loved ones?

to be fair, my energy's disappeared

This thread reminds me that this is the 9th anniversary of me posting this:

https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/spookystrange-encounters

'I may have told this one before.

Still no idea what this was. Time travel, parallel universes, mere coincidence?

Don't know about ghosts, but I think there's definitely something. I have a few family members that are rather spiritual. I've been chatting to a nephew about a happy memories of a recently deceased grandparent, when he suddenly stopped, went as white as a, ahem, ghost. When I asked if he was OK, he replied that Grandad had just entered the room.... (Grandad was smiling and looked very pleased that we were having such a lovely chat about him)

My other story is from about 30 years ago. At the time, my family (Mum, Dad, Big Sis, Me, Little Sis) lived in a old farmhouse. We went to the Isle of Wight for a long weekend, with the elder sisters boyfriend house sitting for us.
On a phone call to Elder Sis, he stopped talking and said "hold on, younger sister is calling me and wants me to hear her play the recorder" - even though she was in the Isle of Wight with us. He never spent another night in the house on his own!

I'd like to think there is something; I follow an end of life nurse on Insta (hospicenursejulie) that has some lovely stories of death and dying people. Worth a look if you are on Instagram.