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ghost question

Well that was the only time I had a dream/hallucination mix and I just wanted to show how messed up one's perceptions can be coming in and out of sleep and how that could explain the "mist people". What's SP?

De Bunk I'm not sure what you're babbling about.
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Sleep Paralysis.

No one really does.
 
JR....you may want to check out specific details of the story. You said no one spoke, yet the friend said his sister was seeing the same thing at the same time he was. The part where the friend sees the apparitions then turns to his sister and somehow knows without speaking to her that she is seeing the same thing. Is that an embellishment, or is that fact? It's a fun ghost story and nice to enjoy a woo-woo tingle from it, however, if you are interested in trying to validate it the first thing you might do is interview the friend and sister separately and take notes, like cops do, repeating the interview process several times to note any inconsistencies.
 
FYI the “only use 10% of our brains” is a total myth:

...attempts to map out the cerebral cortex, the center of the higher mental functions, have not found large areas that don't do anything. The general view is that the brain is too small (just three pounds), uses too many resources (20 percent of body oxygen utilization though it accounts for just 2 percent of weight), and has too much to do for 90 percent of it to be completely comatose.
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Also:

Myths About the Brain: 10 percent and Counting from brain connection

There is no scientific evidence to suggest that we use only 10% of our brains from Dr. Eric H. Chudler

The Ten-Percent Myth from CSICOP
 
RichardR said:
FYI the “only use 10% of our brains” is a total myth:

Also:

Myths About the Brain: 10 percent and Counting from brain connection

There is no scientific evidence to suggest that we use only 10% of our brains from Dr. Eric H. Chudler

The Ten-Percent Myth from CSICOP
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thank you for those links...I had already read the last one and used it for the basis of what i was trying to tell my friend, but he kept on with "this study found out that this and that and blah", but i couldn't reason with him so i just quit trying
 
I've had the sleep paralysis with hallucination thing. I could see a seething mass of *something* in the ceiling, plus the prescence thing, and was generally terrified all around. Trying to scream and run but unable to do either.

So yeah, there could be something along those lines involved, or it could be pure BS (self-delusion), or something inbetween.
 
The experience reminds me of the part in Poltergeist when all the misty looking people come down the stairs. I'm searching for a screen shot, but can't find one.
 
I know this doesn't necessarily fall under the sleep paralysis blanket, but it was a peculiar incident.
My wife and I routinely put in a movie when we go to bed. The DVD player restarts the movie automatically from start to finish. This may happen 3 or 4 times each night, depending on how long we remain abed in the morning. So, one of us may awaken, catch a bit of the film, drift off back to sleep; lather, rinse, repeat.
Last week I distinctly recall asking my wife 'but why did that guy wrap himself all up in cellophane at the end?'
All I got in response was a puzzled look. No such thing happened in the movie we'd put in. I just pulled the whole notion out of my sleepy ass. I think the film in question was "Brick"; an otherwise enjoyable film without cellophane.
 
The problems with the witnessed event are many. Some have been mentioned such as only hearing from one what the other remembers.

The brain turns unclear data into conclusions. That is how latent aaaack's clothes hamper became a person for a while. Once the brain receives more data it changes the interpretation. But while your brain is interpreting the clothes hamper is a person, you see details of the person that are not there. The brain takes lots of liberties filling in blanks. So any vision of "a mist" is not going to be very reliable.

In addition, your brain also regularly changes memories. This has been shown in the many studies that provide evidence that eye witness testimony in criminal cases is plainly unreliable. Also, people have been tricked to create memories that the researcher instills. Once the subject adopts the false memory, it becomes a real memory to that person.

The story is interesting. Many of us have fun stories of weird things. But unfortunately the explanation is usually uninteresting.
 
skeptigirl said:
The problems with the witnessed event are many. Some have been mentioned such as only hearing from one what the other remembers.

The brain turns unclear data into conclusions. That is how latent aaaack's clothes hamper became a person for a while. Once the brain receives more data it changes the interpretation. But while your brain is interpreting the clothes hamper is a person, you see details of the person that are not there. The brain takes lots of liberties filling in blanks. So any vision of "a mist" is not going to be very reliable.

In addition, your brain also regularly changes memories. This has been shown in the many studies that provide evidence that eye witness testimony in criminal cases is plainly unreliable. Also, people have been tricked to create memories that the researcher instills. Once the subject adopts the false memory, it becomes a real memory to that person.

The story is interesting. Many of us have fun stories of weird things. But unfortunately the explanation is usually uninteresting.
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Just another interesting point on memory being changed. Some research suggests that each time we remember a specific event, we're modifying that memory. The act of remembering gets tied into the memory itself. So even consistent remembering and recounting of an event is no garauntee of accuracy.

Also, memories are, at best reconstructions to begin with. For example, think back to the first time you got in a fight. Picture the scene in your head, as you remember it. What do you see?

I can almost garauntee what you see if yourself and your opponent, from a third person perspective. When we recall events, we often recall entire scense, rather than the actual first-person limited view that was all the information we actually had. The brain fills in the rest of the details. The stored memory is typically just key elements, certain images, sounds, events...the details are created to fill in the memory as needed.
 
i know this is an old thread, but this last weekend, the same friend of mine (my roomate) and I along with a couple other friends of mine stayed up drinking and talking and soon enough the topic fell on ghosts and my roomate rehashed this ghost story. I tried, in vein, to get through to him, but his major point besides "i know what i saw and what i felt" (which i could easily dispute) was that both him and his sister saw it and both still remember the event clearly is one i'm having more trouble tackling.

I explained that there have been events of mass hallucination before (UFO in Mexico) and he seemed to by that, but still couldn't think of how him and his sister could have both seen the exact same thing in that room. There's no point in talking about hypnogonic dreams or sleep paralysis because everything i read only involves one individual so any help providing an explanation that could account for both him and his sister having the same hallucination?

And no I haven't talked to his sister since I don't know her and he never really talks to her anymore, but lets assume that they both do have the same story...anyway in which they both could have seen the same things (ex relatives..animals...random ghosts floating around) at the same time? Has there been reports of a communal or dual sleep paralysis experience or anything of that sorts? Any information is much appreciated.
 
The skeptical main point is that they were both in an altered state of consciousness. That much is known because they didn't react to that stimuli the way someone who is alert and aware of their surroundings would. You also know that they did not in fact fearfully never talk about it again to one another. Their subsequent conversations about it in the future would have provided ample opportunity for the power of suggestion to take hold and/or a sense of deja vu about it. Haven't you ever been stopped in your tracks when some stimuli or thought made you suspicious that you've dreamt about it before, only for you to remember a moment later that you actually saw it some days ago, not dream it? Something like that happened as one of them was trying to remember his/her environment when he/she was only semi-conscious and the other was offering suggestions, so to speak.
 
Pot, acid, or maybe opium. I'm leaning towards pot because "they sat there in silence for a while", and because he was 15.
 
Zygar said:
Pot, acid, or maybe opium. I'm leaning towards pot because "they sat there in silence for a while", and because he was 15.
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definitely no drugs.

latent aaaack had a good point though so I might bring it up whenever this comes up again
 
...JR said:
... so any help providing an explanation that could account for both him and his sister having the same hallucination?

And no I haven't talked to his sister since I don't know her and he never really talks to her anymore, but lets assume that they both do have the same story...
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Why assume that?

My girlfriend plays the "I'm not nuts because so-and-so was right there, and saw it too" card all the time, but when I talk to 'so-and-so' the story is a lot different.

Some people have a compulsion to have some kind of 'great' story.
 
Just to chime in with my own "ghost story," I remember when I was about three years old, walking through our kitchen at night, and seeing a human shaped shadow leap from standing on the floor to sitting on the counter. Oddly enough, I don't remember being scared, so I suspect I was dreaming, though at the time it seemed quite real. It does amaze me that I remember it three decades later, though.

Marc
 
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