Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
Nessie is quoting Axxman300's post, Abaddon. The link to it is in post #124.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Read that. And I was responding to Nessie's post #128. Your problem is???
Axxman300
Philosopher
Guess it depends on which scientist you ask.
This guy suggests anywhere between 7 and 11 with 20 possible:
https://medium.com/the-philipendium/the-5-senses-or-maybe-7-probably-9-perhaps-11-f9e6c54f76f0
The other senses seem to draw from the original 5.
Then there's this:
https://www.livescience.com/60752-human-senses.html
Or this:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-biology2/chapter/human-senses/
Bottom line is that they all contribute to false input causing someone to believe they've seen something that wasn't there.
p0lka
Illuminator
I agree with the highlighted,
if we can see ghosts then the ghost is interacting physically with the world and reflecting light into our eyes. That would imply that any device that can detect reflected light should be able to detect ghosts, yet I don't think anyone has created such a device. Camera/video doesn't seem to do the job.
We kinda do know a bit about the nature of ghosts (if real), we know that they reflect light otherwise no one would see them.
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Axxman300
Philosopher
Speaking as the guy who's done the work, seeing something is not proof of anything. I have seen a lot of strange things, I have heard crazy things, but I have no proof. More important is that fact that many of the things I thought I saw have been explained with a little work (and in some cases a lot of work). A good ghost story shouldn't be confused as evidence. Some of my better investigations came from police officers about a house or business where weird stuff was going on. In all of those cases I found explanations related to plumbing (rattling hot water pipes) and in one case one room shook whenever a heavy vehicle drove past the house (geology and foundation issues).
As for ghosts not being an internal projection, the fact is that research has shown it most definitely is internal. A paranormal research team in Oklahoma successfully created a haunting in a public high school over ten years ago. They did it all by word of mouth telling the right kids at the school the standard (and warn out) legend of the janitor who committed suicide in the second floor janitor's closet. As far as I know the place still has the reputation of being haunted even after the research team told them otherwise. Why? Because people saw and heard stuff that had to be the ghost.
When people hear sounds from outside at 2 a.m. their response is dependent upon where they live. Folks living in bear country are going to respond differently than people living in raccoon country. There are parts of Chicago where people don't have the luxury of believing in ghosts when they hear someone downstairs or in the back yard.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to prove ghosts are real. That Nobel Prize money will come in handy, and I'd be set for life between the books I'd write, and the lecture circuit. So far I have nothing.
Axxman300
Philosopher
The problem with them reflecting light is that I've lost count of how many times TV ghost hunters "see" an apparition that doesn't show up on ANY of their cameras. That should be a huge clue as to where that image is actually being generated.
I'll expand on this.
Think about what happens when you dream. There is usually gravity, people talk like they would in real life, people do things that they would do in real life, and just about everything in your dreams works the way it should in the real world. In your dreams you often fabricate people who seem real, they talk, the do real things, maybe even have a real job within your dream world. This means that part of your brain can not only fabricate a fully functioning person but also a person that you can interact with. This is why most people who see a ghost will see one that fits their expectations.
This is why I've never been awakened by Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison in my room, And this is why - sadly - I've never encountered any Playmate of the Year at any of my investigations.
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Pixel42
Schrödinger's cat
That you're criticising Nessie for saying something that was actually said by Axxman300.
Nessie
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The person seen is best described as a ghost. It could be something we have not even heard about, but I think ghost is a good name for that as well.
Nessie
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All I can say is that in the ghost stories I know, no form of detection device was available, because a ghost was not expected and what device are you referring to?
Nessie
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When the police went outside, there was no sign of the girl but they did delay going after her, due to what was descried as an embarrassing exchange between the officers and the couple over how could the police see someone the couple said they could not.
What convinces me that there is such a thing as a ghost is that in this case and the others I know, those who saw the ghost thought they were seeing an actual person. It was only afterwards that they realised what they had seen was not a live, present person.
Nessie
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My and my spouses experience is suggestive of an explanation by plumbing or similar, but the noises we heard were one offs and never repeated.
The ghost stories I have all involve people not set up in any way to think "ghost" or which can be explained by a bear, racoon or other animal.
Think of this. Today we all have cameras with us pretty much 24 hours 7 days a week. We see that even at times of great personal peril and at great personal risk people snap videos and photos. I'd say for many of the younger folk it is almost instinctive to document your life via your camera.
Where are all the photos of these clear to see and describe and long lasting ghosts?
If there was ever a nail in the coffin of such phenomena I'd say the smart phone camera has been the nail that shows ghosts as external to the observers don't exist.
Have you snapped any photos of ghosts?
Sherman Bay
Master Poster
XKCD agrees with you.
Nessie
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No ghost photos, none had cameras or phones or the presence of mind to photo who they saw, since they all thought they were seeing an actual person and by the time they realised it was not, it was too late.
In my case, we moved into a tied house unaware that one of the workers who had completed some renovations and redecoration prior to us moving in, had died in the house of a heart attack. It was a single manned police station in a remote part of Scotland.
My spouse became aware of someone walking around the house, the initial thought being someone had come into the house, part of which was a police office. That did happen occasionally, especially with locals who knew us well.
I then experienced that late one night, when someone walked down the main corridor. Then, one day, the footsteps walked out of the kitchen back door and that was it, no more instances.
It was only when I confessed to a colleague that we had heard footsteps that I was told about the workman who had died.
The footstep sounds were exactly the same as when someone really was walking down the corridor. They could not be attributed to plumbing.
In my case, we moved into a tied house unaware that one of the workers who had completed some renovations and redecoration prior to us moving in, had died in the house of a heart attack. It was a single manned police station in a remote part of Scotland.
My spouse became aware of someone walking around the house, the initial thought being someone had come into the house, part of which was a police office. That did happen occasionally, especially with locals who knew us well.
I then experienced that late one night, when someone walked down the main corridor. Then, one day, the footsteps walked out of the kitchen back door and that was it, no more instances.
It was only when I confessed to a colleague that we had heard footsteps that I was told about the workman who had died.
The footstep sounds were exactly the same as when someone really was walking down the corridor. They could not be attributed to plumbing.
Exactly the same? Are you sure?
It seems that if you do not have the imagination to think of any other explanation, then ghosts is your answer.
I find that rather feeble, given that it is well known that people often hear things that we misattribute to something else than the real cause. Just this weekend it happened at my house that we heard an animal rumbling that we at first thought originated in the house, then (after sticking our heads out of a windows) thought it came from a lorry, then from a plane, and only the day after found that the next-door neighbour had bought a new kind of machine for the garden that he had inexplicably started in the middle of the night.
Animals regularly move around on our roof with foot-steps that can seem human-like when they are not moving too fast.
Nessie
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Yes. Since part of the house was the police office and being where we were, doors were not always locked, we had had people just walk into the house.
The footsteps walked right past me, but I saw no one. The same thing happened to my spouse.
Nessie
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Considering the death in the house and the lack of any other explanation, I think ghost is a not unreasonable answer.
Nothing like that explains what we heard. We would have been delighted to find out what had caused the noises.
Sherman Bay
Master Poster
So is God, leprechauns, and gossamer pixies; all equally reasonable.