How do we explain ghosts?

[8enotto]

A cat solved, or helped us solve the noises in a house we rented.

His ball stayed in the middle of the room in the winter months and went to the back wall in summer months. Spring and fall the house was creaky and noisy especially during rains or storms.

When the house sold we had to move out so half the foundations could be replaced. The nights with storms, especially in the fall, were freaking out my sister bad. She heard all sorts of stuff and worse, could demonstrate times and days it would probably happen. Her ideas went old house, bad events.

A marble on the dining room floor easily showed that the frost heave moved the house.

 

[p0lka]

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.

Let's get this right, the police are investigating a gunshot, they are told no one else is on the property other than them by the couple.

they find themselves in a position where they see a girl walk down the central staircase towards them,

why the police wouldn't immediately stop and question her is unexplained in this fantasy but whatever,

What actually is purported to have happened is..

“So who is she?” one PC asked. “Who is who?” the elderly man replied.“That girl” said the PC. “What girl?” the elderly man and his wife replied. The young female walked past them all, out of the door, on to the gravel drive, turned and went out of sight. She did not make a sound.

The girl might have the gun? Why didn't the police do their job and stop her?

what a load of bollocks things that don't ring true,

both of those Police Constables should have been sacked immediately, if it wasn't just a made up story.

EDIT:

Considering the death in the house and the lack of any other explanation, I think ghost is a not unreasonable answer.

Only if you already believe in ghosts.

Why couldn't it have been leprechauns?

 

[Nessie]

My belief, based on personal experience and experiences that I would consider to be reliable, is that there are ghosts, by the standard definition of ghosts and not leprechauns.

Exactly what ghosts are, is a completely different matter and pretty much totally unknown.

 

[Darat]

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.

And everyone's footsteps sounded the same?

 

[p0lka]

My belief, based on personal experience and experiences that I would consider to be reliable, is that there are ghosts, by the standard definition of ghosts and not leprechauns.

Exactly what ghosts are, is a completely different matter and pretty much totally unknown.

au contraire mon ami, it is known, there is no evidence for ghosts.
So far.

 

[Nessie]

And everyone's footsteps sounded the same?

No, the footsteps sounded like an adult wearing shoes.

 

[Czarcasm]

My belief, based on personal experience and experiences that I would consider to be reliable, is that there are ghosts, by the standard definition of ghosts and not leprechauns.

Exactly what ghosts are, is a completely different matter and pretty much totally unknown.

Looking through your posts its seem rather evident that you deem people "reliable" based on if they tell you what you already believe.

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” -Harlan Ellison

 

[Nessie]

au contraire mon ami, it is known, there is no evidence for ghosts.
So far.

There is credible witness evidence.

 

[AmyW]

Well this has turned interesting. So if ghosts are real then what are ghosts exactly? The dead? So you must then believe in the afterlife too?

 

[AmyW]

Nessie, what is a ghost? A dead person? This opens up a can of worms because if ghosts exist then the afterlife exists, therefore God must exist.......

 

[sackett]

Whoops! Hold that tigger, kiddoo!

Nessie, what is a ghost? A dead person? This opens up a can of worms because if ghosts exist then the afterlife exists, therefore God must exist.......

Don't inject "therefore" into your undigested thoughts quite so quickly. Can't you concieve of life after death without boring old God? Suppose we survive bodily death, but all on our own. Now we're incorporeal wraiths (or sumthin'; I can't write extended fiction with one finger) wandering around the universe with nothing to do & nobody to help us. Are we going to mooch around playing poltergeist? Or floating half-visibly down Rolfe's stairs?

Or are we going to run mad (not at lightspeed, alas) at the idea that this state may never end?

Pish. Let's blow our noses on the notion of SuperGod coming to bail us out. Let's bring some creativity to this here script conference!

And some beer nuts, dammit!

 

[arthwollipot]

Nessie, what is a ghost? A dead person? This opens up a can of worms because if ghosts exist then the afterlife exists, therefore God must exist.......

Ah, point of order there. Just because some kind of afterlife exists does not necessarily imply that the Christian God exists. There are lots of other possible kinds of afterlife that aren't Christian in nature.

 

[Axxman300]

The main reason I've been forced to re-evaluate the existence of ghosts as metaphysical entities is the fact that the most common type of ghost is that of a still living person.

Almost every one of these events is triggered by sound. Someone is at home and hears what they believe to be a loved one in another room, or walking about the house only to discover that this person is not present. This is something that can happen in the workplace. This not astral projection. This is the brain making an association with a familiar sound and linking it to a person based on the assumption that this person is present at the location.

This means that ghosts in general are a reflexive creation of the mind. The fact that people see or hear the ghosts of the living suggests there is a huge flaw in the assumptions made by paranormal researchers as they relate to the dead.

 

[kellyb]

There is credible witness evidence.

There's just as credible eyewitness evidence for aliens and bigfoot.

Do you accept those as real, too?

Re: the steps you hears, is there even a .001% chance someone was in the attic or the attached part of the house on the other side?

 

[Axxman300]

The point isn't if the witness is credible or not, the point is that their eyes and brains can be self-fooled.

 

[kellyb]

Nessie, what is a ghost? A dead person? This opens up a can of worms because if ghosts exist then the afterlife exists, therefore God must exist.......

They could just be spirit entities from another dimension that are sensed telepathically. Or stone tape theory. Or whatever. LOL

(I don't think they exist at all, for the record, but if they did, the question of what they are and what follows from there would be completely open.)

 

[xjx388]

Well this has turned interesting. So if ghosts are real then what are ghosts exactly? The dead? So you must then believe in the afterlife too?

Well, the afterlife is but one possibility. I once read a Piers Anthony novel a long time ago where ghosts weren’t spirits but a kind of psychic-energy-residual-recording thing.

They could actually be aliens made of energy who read our minds and take the form of things familiar to us.

Or: How about crossover interference from alternate universes?

Or maybe we are spirits and when we die there’s no such thing as an afterlife as we conceive it so if we can’t (or don’t want to) latch onto a new body we have to wander around until we do.

When you can just make stuff up without evidence or regard for reality the imagination is the only limit.

 

[steenkh]

Considering the death in the house and the lack of any other explanation, I think ghost is a not unreasonable answer.

I think that the death in the house is irrelevant to the explanation. As you have heard, people who think a death has happened in a house tend to see ghosts, even when no death has happened, and besides, there are lots of houses where people have died; indeed, most houses that are old will have had a death in the house. Hospitals should be crammed with ghosts.

Nothing like that explains what we heard. We would have been delighted to find out what had caused the noises.

Sure, but the fact is that you cannot rule out trivial causes simply because you cannot imagine any.

 

[AmyW]

Yes I guess so, it's what mediums claim you see, they claim that they can talk to the dead and they believe in god, not a Christian one but a creator. I don't like the thought of a creator, it somehow lessons my feelings of control. I want to believe that my mum, dad and genetics created me, not some fellow up in 'heaven'

 

[AmyW]

Well, the afterlife is but one possibility. I once read a Piers Anthony novel a long time ago where ghosts weren’t spirits but a kind of psychic-energy-residual-recording thing.

They could actually be aliens made of energy who read our minds and take the form of things familiar to us.

Or: How about crossover interference from alternate universes?

Or maybe we are spirits and when we die there’s no such thing as an afterlife as we conceive it so if we can’t (or don’t want to) latch onto a new body we have to wander around until we do.

When you can just make stuff up without evidence or regard for reality the imagination is the only limit.

I think it is because a lot of ghost theories are based around a person whom used to exist