If ghosts are hallucinations, why are mostly people seen?

[freedy]

Are apparitions censored?

Ghostly monks, circus freaks or departed relatives are identified by their clothing. A modest spirit drapes themselves in robes instead of appearing as they were born – naked.

If a ghost is the soul of once living being, why do they take goods and chattels with them?

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

I wouldn't necessarily claim 'hallucination' for ghost stories of the calibre being described - in part because I've never heard of anyone having such a complicated spectral claim outside of crappy movies and, of course, bad reality television, where people have a reason to confabulate.

But, try this on for size...

As you are falling asleep, you see a shadowy something or other pass by your door. You bolt upright in bed and look straight over there, and it's gone. Now, we've evolved to freak out over predators, or perceived threats. The most threatening thing you could see passing by your door? A person. Maybe if we were surrounded by saber toothed tigers we'd see something else.

Exactly. To any person the most helpful and the most dangerous thing is another person. We are very concerned about people, and rightly so. Humans are social creatures and spend a whole lot of time looking at other people—seeing what they do, how they act, what they look like, where they are looking, their hand movements, their facial expressions. Of the information stored in your brain, you probably have more information about faces and people than anything else.

So if a person hallucinates, or catches something out of the corner of their eye, or sees a shape they can’t immediately identify, the brain is first going to check for the most expected images, then the most dangerous/helpful images, then the most familiar images. Those would all be people.

So when the brain manifests an image, it is much, much more likely to be a face or a person than a kangaroo or a vacuum cleaner. Even if it is not an image, our first inclination is that is may be a person because a person would be the most significant result.

 

[Drewbot]

Some of the stories could be attributed to sleep-paralysis, in which the victim is actually dreaming, and not hallucinating. The person is asleep, but the REM sleep cycle, intrudes into the N1 sleep cycle. They think they are aware of the happenings around them, but are dreaming, and usually paralyzed.

They think they are seeing things in their periphrial, however they are not.

This condition is often seen in people with narcolepsy.

 

[wellwhatif]

Hamlet Saw his fathers ghost.
Anything is possible.
And I think its not halluncinations.
It is something real that comes to you when truly justice is not done otherwise.

 

[Apology]

Hamlet Saw his fathers ghost.

Hamlet was a fictional character. It was a story, not a true account.

Anything is possible.

No, not anything is possible. I promise you that it's impossible to survive for an hour without any source of air. Please don't try to prove me wrong on this, just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I want you dead.

And I think its not halluncinations.

You're entitled to your opinion.

It is something real that comes to you when truly justice is not done otherwise.

This sentence doesn't make any sense. Please elaborate or clarify this thought.

 

[thebigm]

Some of the explanations may be that (as hinted upon earlier) the human brain is extremely good at constructing faces and human forms out of something non human. I think it’s part of the evolutionary survival instinct.

How many times have you thought you saw a person (or ghost?) standing beside or behind you and you’ve gotten a fright and turned round?

Now compare that to the number of times someone has been standing there and your brain has told you nobody is there.

I am guessing the former happens a lot more than the latter.

 

[HansMustermann]

Now compare that to the number of times someone has been standing there and your brain has told you nobody is there.

Uh, if you thought nobody was there, how would you know there was?

Evidence indicates that parts of the image are edited out before they even make it to the conscious levels. You routinely don't even "see" most people in a scene, if you're focusing on something else. So, yes, there will be a lot of times that someone is standing right in front of you, but if you're focusing on something else and they're not doing something to make them a more immediate concern, your brain will tell you that there's nobody there. Or rather, won't tell you that there is.

But of course you won't remember how often you didn't notice someone, because, well, you didn't notice them.

 

[Belz...]

Hi.

A somewhat stupid question just came into my mind:
Many people who try to rationally explain 'ghost' sightings say that most of them are due to misperception or hallucinations.

Same thing with UFOs and many other phenomena, yes.

Undoubtly there are many sightings who could be explained as misperceptions, but there are also many cases where this explanation fails, because of a lack of a 'stimulus' a person could misinterpret.

How, exactly, did you check for lack of such a stimulus. Hell, even in near-complete darkness people see shapes and movements where there are none. I should know. Don't forget that imagination and expectation also play a large role in sightnings.

Why -- and this is my (maybe silly) main question -- are mostly people (and on rare occasions animals) seen in this hallucinatory experiences and not ... ghost chairs or spooky computer ghosts or pink pig ghosts or ghostly landscapes or something like that?^^ If so many ghost sightings were due to hallucinations, wouldn't someone expect more weird sightings than just that of people who couldn't possibly be there?

I have no idea what you mean there, but most people don't see ghosts. I know of no more than one person who claims to have seen one.

I myself never have had a hallucination for myself, so I don't know how it is to hallucinate

We're not talking about drug-like hallucinations here, bloke.

 

[piojunbabia]

Same people has the same hallucinations. They might have taken hallucinogens same dosage at the same time. That explains.

 

[Belz...]

Also, check up on pareidolia: our brains are hard-wired to see human faces. Think of all the things that have been compared to human faces trhough history, that in reality have only the vaguest resemblence: Of cousre the numerous "Jesus on my toast" images, but even more famous things like the Man in the Moon (that doesn't really look much like a face).

Hell, I see faces in LETTERS.

 

[Drewbot]

Does Bigfoot count as people?

I did a poll on the old Bigfoot Forums, and around 40% of respondents answered 'yes' to the question;

'Have you ever hallucinated while driving?'

So I don't know if 40% is a general percentage of people who have had minor hallucinations, or if a Bigfoot Forum attracts a higher percentage of people prone to hallucinating.

 

[Halfcentaur]

I draw a lot of very intricate drawings in my work, flowing details and amorphous shapes and things. Something that really gets on my nerves, particularly in some of my friends from the psychedelic days, is their tendency to tell me the shapes they see in my pictures as if it's some kind of compliment. They think I am hiding these vague facial expressions or something as if it's more clever than just an ancient twisted tree. And yet, I didn't do that at all. They are just latching on to vague shapes and seeing faces and figures in them.

 

[Pup]

Exactly. To any person the most helpful and the most dangerous thing is another person. We are very concerned about people, and rightly so.

As thebigm also said, I think this is the reason that ghosts are usually people, or at least recognizably important things (animals, monsters, etc.) rather than toasters or notebooks.

Ever notice how a dog will focus more on another dog in a crowded area, than all the people? I think we're the same way, only with other people.

How many times have you thought you saw a person (or ghost?) standing beside or behind you and you’ve gotten a fright and turned round?

Now compare that to the number of times someone has been standing there and your brain has told you nobody is there.

I am guessing the former happens a lot more than the latter.

The latter happens to me a lot more than the former.

I'll turn around just to look behind me or head in the other direction, and be surprised that someone has come up right there. I see it happen often to other people, too, when I'm in a busy store for example and someone turns around and almost bumps into me, not realizing I'm there.

Can't remember the last time I thought someone was behind me and there wasn't anyone there. Actually, I do--was talking to my wife, thought she was still in the room behind me, said something again and she'd actually gone into the other room. But I don't think that's what you mean.

Don't know if I'm just odd, or if only certain kinds of people spend more time thinking people are behind them when they're not.

 

[Bikewer]

Why would aliens, presumably spanning the interstellar gulfs in very advanced spaceships indeed, bother to make big piles of rocks?
Wouldn't they turn the power-source for their spaceships and other technology to quickly producing snazzy nano-assembled condominiums and pools and shopping malls? And some of those nifty gravity-defying landspeeders to get around on?
Not to mention the alien equivalent of Hardee's and McDonalds..

But no, they stack rocks and scratch symbols in the dirt.

 

[Hannibal]

Why would aliens, presumably spanning the interstellar gulfs in very advanced spaceships indeed, bother to make big piles of rocks?
Wouldn't they turn the power-source for their spaceships and other technology to quickly producing snazzy nano-assembled condominiums and pools and shopping malls? And some of those nifty gravity-defying landspeeders to get around on?
Not to mention the alien equivalent of Hardee's and McDonalds..

But no, they stack rocks and scratch symbols in the dirt.

Maybe the Earth is used for "roughing it" survivalist-style weekends for aliens.....

 

[Zanders]

Some people see lights and blobs on cameras and in photos. They just claim that they are the spirits and souls of people. I think some people have seen ghost animals before, it's just that more people beleive in it people exclusive to people. They most likely see what they want to see by interpreting and organizing what they see.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Some people see lights and blobs on cameras and in photos. They just claim that they are the spirits and souls of people. I think some people have seen ghost animals before, it's just that more people beleive in it people exclusive to people. They most likely see what they want to see by interpreting and organizing what they see.

Those blobs of light on photos (or "orbs", as they're known) are reflections of the flash in motes of dust.

 

[sgtbaker]

Exactly. To any person the most helpful and the most dangerous thing is another person. We are very concerned about people, and rightly so. Humans are social creatures and spend a whole lot of time looking at other people—seeing what they do, how they act, what they look like, where they are looking, their hand movements, their facial expressions. Of the information stored in your brain, you probably have more information about faces and people than anything else.

So if a person hallucinates, or catches something out of the corner of their eye, or sees a shape they can’t immediately identify, the brain is first going to check for the most expected images, then the most dangerous/helpful images, then the most familiar images. Those would all be people.

So when the brain manifests an image, it is much, much more likely to be a face or a person than a kangaroo or a vacuum cleaner. Even if it is not an image, our first inclination is that is may be a person because a person would be the most significant result.

If I could add on, a little bit, to yours and RemieV's post; because of faulty memory issues with human beings, we tend to fill in what we don't fully remember. I don't believe it's always intentional but "ghost" sightings tend to be exaggerated over time. We have a very limited concept of time when it comes to recollection so a momentary flash of an image becomes stretched in our memories to occur over a period of seconds or even minutes.

 

[Robin]

Hi.

A somewhat stupid question just came into my mind:
Many people who try to rationally explain 'ghost' sightings say that most of them are due to misperception or hallucinations. Undoubtly there are many sightings who could be explained as misperceptions, but there are also many cases where this explanation fails, because of a lack of a 'stimulus' a person could misinterpret. Someone who sees a 'ghost' standing in front of a white wall and then disappear, for example. In this cases a skeptic would say that the most likely explanation is a hallucination. I want to focus on this cases, where the best 'natural' explanation is a hallucination. Why -- and this is my (maybe silly) main question -- are mostly people (and on rare occasions animals) seen in this hallucinatory experiences and not ... ghost chairs or spooky computer ghosts or pink pig ghosts or ghostly landscapes or something like that?^^ If so many ghost sightings were due to hallucinations, wouldn't someone expect more weird sightings than just that of people who couldn't possibly be there? I myself never have had a hallucination for myself, so I don't know how it is to hallucinate, but many users of hallucinogenic drugs or something like that report very strange hallucinations, whereas the standard ghost sighting is in my view often not very spectacular? I really hope not to promote woo with this thread, but I find this question interesting.

When I see a hat stand in the dark I often mistake it for a human.

When I see a rock in the dark I often mistake it for a human.

When I see a small tree in the dark I often mistake it for a human.

Why? I don't know. Maybe in our past other humans have been our greatest threat and our minds are tuned to spot them everywhere.

 

[nzric]

Hardwiring in the brain to recognise shapes. Babies can only see a short distance but smile when they see a pattern that resembles eyes and a mouth.

Also, it's about expectations. If I went into a morgue in the middle of the night, or if a close family member died and I was home alone & heard a noise, it would be natural to be keyed up to interpret sounds/movement/shapes as people.

You're not likely to think "I went to Aunt Milly's funeral today and I just saw a shape outside the window. Oh... I think it's a ghost horse" If you believe in ghosts your first reaction would be to assume it's Aunt Milly.

I'm a strongly skeptical atheist but in a 'haunted' house I would still be thinking "I know ghosts are make believe... but wouldn't it be interesting/creepy if..."