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How do we explain ghosts?

Are ghosts subject to "Stay at Home" orders? If not it seems like they could be a Covid-19 transmission risk if haunting multiple households.

Chris B.
 
Athyrio said:
Not seeing a "ghost:" but experiencing a ghostly encounter. I say the word ghostly because I do not know another term to explain it.
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Okay, I think I understand.

There are a few atmospheric conditions which can cause hallucinations which are unrelated to mental health. CO2 poisoning is a big one, and infrasound, and unshielded electronics (bad wiring, old CRT's) can contribute to visions of phantoms, or shadows. These are often the primary drivers for someone seeing a ghost.

A ghostly encounter, if I understand you correctly, is based on situational perception. This is more psychology than neurochemistry. The best examples come from police officers called into situation where security alarms have been triggered yet the building is secured, and even after the alarm company sends a technician to inspect the system the alarm continues to be tripped. Usually between the third or fourth time being dispatched to the location one or more of the officers becomes jumpy, and sees a shadow in a window. After a search of the location comes up empty the officers go from jumpy to spooked, and from there on the location gets a reputation for being haunted.

Another example is a person hearing someone come into a familiar space such as a home, office, or place of employment only to discover that they are alone, and no one has entered the location. This is a case of the brain putting sounds together to paint a familiar picture in a person's head when the sounds are actually unrelated to a door opening or closing, or footsteps, or whatever other noises are common. This kind of event is what forced me to re-think my belief in ghosts because the most common ghostly experience is that where the ghost is of someone who is still alive. Many people have been at home working on a project or watching TV and heard a family member in another part of the house only to later learn that family member was not there. Most folks rightly blow it off to a brain fart but there have been a few nasty arguments where one is accused of lying.

Part of my job is monitoring security cameras and I've learned that concentration is conditional, and that people move faster than you think they can. I think back on all the stories I was told about a man being seen in a location only to vanish a few seconds later while supposedly in a wide open area where leaving it unseen in a short amount of time was "impossible". I now have the luxury of video playback. Those cases where someone seemed to vanish were actually a case of a guy walking fast and me walking slow. Playback confirms that what I see the first time live on screen isn't always what happened when I review the footage later.

Not sure if this helped or not.
 
Axxman300 said:
Okay, I think I understand.

There are a few atmospheric conditions which can cause hallucinations which are unrelated to mental health. CO2 poisoning is a big one, and infrasound, and unshielded electronics (bad wiring, old CRT's) can contribute to visions of phantoms, or shadows. These are often the primary drivers for someone seeing a ghost.

A ghostly encounter, if I understand you correctly, is based on situational perception. This is more psychology than neurochemistry. The best examples come from police officers called into situation where security alarms have been triggered yet the building is secured, and even after the alarm company sends a technician to inspect the system the alarm continues to be tripped. Usually between the third or fourth time being dispatched to the location one or more of the officers becomes jumpy, and sees a shadow in a window. After a search of the location comes up empty the officers go from jumpy to spooked, and from there on the location gets a reputation for being haunted.

Another example is a person hearing someone come into a familiar space such as a home, office, or place of employment only to discover that they are alone, and no one has entered the location. This is a case of the brain putting sounds together to paint a familiar picture in a person's head when the sounds are actually unrelated to a door opening or closing, or footsteps, or whatever other noises are common. This kind of event is what forced me to re-think my belief in ghosts because the most common ghostly experience is that where the ghost is of someone who is still alive. Many people have been at home working on a project or watching TV and heard a family member in another part of the house only to later learn that family member was not there. Most folks rightly blow it off to a brain fart but there have been a few nasty arguments where one is accused of lying.

Part of my job is monitoring security cameras and I've learned that concentration is conditional, and that people move faster than you think they can. I think back on all the stories I was told about a man being seen in a location only to vanish a few seconds later while supposedly in a wide open area where leaving it unseen in a short amount of time was "impossible". I now have the luxury of video playback. Those cases where someone seemed to vanish were actually a case of a guy walking fast and me walking slow. Playback confirms that what I see the first time live on screen isn't always what happened when I review the footage later.

Not sure if this helped or not.
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Yes. There is a difference in a person claiming to have actually seen or to have visualized a ghost or apparition of some type and a person who describes a situation that is inexplicable to them and their mindset has convinced them that the situation had to have been caused by a supernatural event.

In my youth, that was the mistake I made - interpreting the event myself. My wife does believe in ghosts - I do not any more, but I will say this with no shame. There have been several events that have occurred in the past 4 years that we have been together that neither of us can rationally explain, and added to that, a couple of them happened shortly after the deaths of 2 significant people in our lives. That timing only made her beliefs stronger. Because of that, my wife has the upper hand when we choose to share those stories. I did not "see" a ghost - I simply cannot come up with an explanation for what happened that makes any sense.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Are ghosts subject to "Stay at Home" orders? If not it seems like they could be a Covid-19 transmission risk if haunting multiple households.

Chris B.
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Aliens stopped making crop circles during the foot and mouth outbreak 10 years ago, so I don’t see why other imaginary entities shouldn’t obey arbitrary human legislation.
 
ChrisBFRPKY said:
Are ghosts subject to "Stay at Home" orders? If not it seems like they could be a Covid-19 transmission risk if haunting multiple households.

Chris B.
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The one thing we can count on is a rise in spiritualism in places hard-hit by COVID-19 where ghosts are a tradition. I expect a flood of Italian COVID-19 ghost stories over the next five years.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
But we're not discussing this in a general sense: we're talking specifically about AmyW.
AmyW claims her belief in ghosts and spirits causes/caused 'high anxiety', 'confusion' and made her 'freak out'.
This is not the reaction of someone enjoying a spinechiller, so I think the point still stands: if you really feel this way, you wouldn't deliberately seek out more of the same. Over and over again.
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IMO, it's human nature to seek out things that either disgust or terrify us. A kid round my way crashed his motorbike into a passing car just before Christmas, offing himself in the process, and the scene certainly wasn't short of spectators, I was one of them!

Likewise, people who don't much like Horror movies will often return to the genre to freak themselves out, it gives them a cheap thrill.

I can't say I find Amy's comments strange, naive, maybe, but not strange.
 
Axxman300 said:
Things you should be afraid of right now:

Getting sick.
Not being able to pay your bills.
Someone you love getting sick.

*spiders are optional.

It's like going swimming in Loch Ness. You should be afraid of:

Hypothermia
Drowning

*eels are optional

Hiking in the Pacific North West one should be afraid of:

Ticks.
Getting lost.
Dehydration.
Blisters on your feet.

*bears are optional.
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This doesn't acknowledge the age-old fear, however one feels about it, of the unknown.

It may be irrational to not fancy jumping into the black waters of Loch Ness, but it's a perfectly natural fear to have. The same applies to the woods.
 
Athyrio said:
Does anyone see a difference between ghosts and ghostly experiences?
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A person who claims to see a ghost is either lying, or they literally saw something and have decided upon it being a "ghost."

A "ghostly experience,"IMO, is a more varied list of possibilities, the feeling of being watched, misplacing something around the house, hearing a noise, etc.
 
AmyW said:
Why do ghost stories exist and why do idiots like myself believe them?
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That's a very long discussion, tbh!

I don't think anyone is idiotic for believing in ghosts, it's hardly something a select few people believe, it's something many generations of people have believed. I don't believe people who subscribe to religion are idiots, either.

If you're killing in the name of religion, however, or in the name of the supernatural, then yeah, you might well be mental!
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
IMO, it's human nature to seek out things that either disgust or terrify us. A kid round my way crashed his motorbike into a passing car just before Christmas, offing himself in the process, and the scene certainly wasn't short of spectators, I was one of them!

Likewise, people who don't much like Horror movies will often return to the genre to freak themselves out, it gives them a cheap thrill.

I can't say I find Amy's comments strange, naive, maybe, but not strange.
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I would also like to add that Amy is receiving treatment for Obsessive Compusive Disorder, which can exacerbate situations like this, and make it easier to say things like "okay, so this example has been debunked, but what about this example? And this one?"

While intellectually Amy probably realises that they ought to be able to generalise previous explanations to new examples, their brain still jumps to those nagging doubts, and there's not a lot they can do about that.

So let's not be too hard on someone who is struggling with mental illness, okay? Okay.
 
AmyW said:
Why do ghost stories exist and why do idiots like myself believe them?
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Ghost stories exist for the same reason that stories about unicorns, leprechauns and fairies etc exist. We, as a species, have a tendency to explain things by inventing fictional explanations. In the case of ghosts there is the added belief held by many, of life existing beyond death in some form or other.
 
Axxman300 said:
In both cases the known threats should out-weigh the unknown:

http://www.lochnessswim.com/

https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/mthood/recarea/?recid=79439
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Of course, they should, but they seldom do.

Humans often worry about the most ridiculous things. Just look at the state of the world at the minute, and people are worrying about 5G phone masts, lol. They'll flock to the shop 5 days a week for non-essentials, but they won't go near a 5G mast, lest they be struck down by a powerful dose of radioactive cancer juice!

People are generally thick as pig excrement, so what they should and shouldn't do are seldom textbook decisions.
 
arthwollipot said:
I would also like to add that Amy is receiving treatment for Obsessive Compusive Disorder, which can exacerbate situations like this, and make it easier to say things like "okay, so this example has been debunked, but what about this example? And this one?"

While intellectually Amy probably realises that they ought to be able to generalise previous explanations to new examples, their brain still jumps to those nagging doubts, and there's not a lot they can do about that.

So let's not be too hard on someone who is struggling with mental illness, okay? Okay.
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I tend to agree.

I understand some people have a limited willingness to tolerate people asking questions that one might find silly, but if I don't think the person's intentionally trolling, I'm fine with taking the time to have a discussion, no matter how many times aspects of said discussion have to be debunked or explained.

As I've said before, this is literally how the Bigfoot threads work and have worked for years, except there's no longer anyone supporting Bigfoot's existence, so it's just an echo chamber of scepticism now, whereas many-a-day were once spent having to repeatedly explain to people why Bigfoot obviously doesn't exist... And nobody complained.

This is what this section of this forum is all about, after all...
 
Tassman said:
Ghost stories exist for the same reason that stories about unicorns, leprechauns and fairies etc exist. We, as a species, have a tendency to explain things by inventing fictional explanations. In the case of ghosts there is the added belief held by many, of life existing beyond death in some form or other.
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I don't think ghosts, or any myriad of mythical creatures, can be explained as simply as that, personally.

I don't think we invented these things just to explain away the weird, not necessarily. There's many reasons for why we tell stories and create myths, it's just part of our nature.

We've not really changed much when it comes to being a race of myth-makers and story-tellers, it's just that the Werewolves are replaced with evil Muslims, ghosts are replaced with corrupt politicians, we pass around conspiracies like kids used to pass around tales of "Bloody Mary", 5G masts are the latest haunted house on the corner of the street, lol.

Our fears change and adapt over time, but they're generally not far from the basic fears that humanity has always had.
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
Of course, they should, but they seldom do.

Humans often worry about the most ridiculous things. Just look at the state of the world at the minute, and people are worrying about 5G phone masts, lol. They'll flock to the shop 5 days a week for non-essentials, but they won't go near a 5G mast, lest they be struck down by a powerful dose of radioactive cancer juice!

People are generally thick as pig excrement, so what they should and shouldn't do are seldom textbook decisions.
Click to expand...


Unless you advertise the “5G waves” as reducing the appearance of fine wrinkles* and then a certain schizophrenic group of consumers will flock to them.



*according to one person out of the hundred people we randomly asked.
 
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