Do you believe in ghost/hauntings?

Do you believe in ghost/hauntings?

  • Yes, and I've experienced it

    Votes: 26 36.6%
  • Yes, but I have not experienced it

    Votes: 12 16.9%
  • Sometimes

    Votes: 1 1.4%
  • No, I don't believe in it

    Votes: 32 45.1%

  • Total voters
    71

breeze

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I believe the 99% of what people think of as paranormal activity (such as all the examples above) has an explanation rooted in the physical world, such as we understand it.

That is not to say I do not believe in the paranormal at all - I just don't think footsteps upstairs in the house when no one is there is it. Buildings carry noise, sounds travels and carries in extremely interesting ways, sometimes producing effects that, at first, seem impossible - I've lived in too many places where the footsteps of a human upstairs are barely audible but a mouse runs across a specific spot and suddenly it seems there's a herd of stampeding wildebeest up there.

Things that go bump in the night are just things, going bump... in the night. Ghosts have better things to do.
Since we're there more paranormal stuff. { posted before }
ghosts , mediums , the paranormal just in time for halloween
preface " I do not actually anticipate finding myself in existence after physical death....But is that the only honest way of looking at the survival evidence. No in all candor , there are three types of evidence which still remain essentially as they have remained through all psychical research , and which as far as i know , cannot be swept aside or weaken ".
Gardner Murphy " one of the eminent psychologists of our time "
Psychiatric Quarterly
This is very complicated stuff and i think Dr.Murphy was partially referring to the mediumship of Mrs.Leonard and the frederic myers tapes. I'll only give a brief description and facts just for halloween.

Mrs.Leonard is perhaps the most famous medium in history. She was investigated by the psychical society of harvard { the famous american think william james was a member } , maybe the psychical society of cambridge universtiy , a number of scientists and detectives. Dr.Murphy describes Mrs.Talbot's seance with mrs.leonard. Mrs.Talbot writes " Then feda { the aunt of mrs.leonard who took over her consciousness } gave a very correct description of my husband { sometimes the harvard chapter introduced subjects only hours before/subjects mrs.leonard had never meet } and a most extraordinary conversion followed. ..As time went on i was forced to belief this was my husband { who had passed away }"
What is interesting is mrs.leonard basically from what i can tell blew everybody away to the point some members of the harvard chapter started following her around day and night. They hired detectives to follow her and investigated her background. They all , as far as i know , came to the conclusion she was completely honest and only a hoax or very unusual scientific reasoning could explain her abilities. All these subjects and such took copious notes. Scientists tested her and this went for years and years.

Briefly frederic myers was a professor of classical languages at cambridge and a member of the psychical society at cambridge who said that after he died he would try to communicate with the living. A few years after he passed away various mediums throughout the world including mrs.leonard i think started receiving strange partial messages. When they were pieced together they were found to be messages from frederic myers. These messages lasted 30 years/50000 transcripts and are probably on file at cambridge universtiy. Some messages refer to material that in all probability was known to only one person in the world/frederic myers.
Myers SUPPOSELY communicates " I admit i have had bad , depressing , and painful hours after i left the earth but out of them blossomed a lovely life." Dr.Murphy studied some of the transcripts and wrote that they appear to be "autonomous ,self contained , completely and humanly purposive". Its strange mysterious stuff. Happy halloween.
 

Intrigue

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Anecdotes are meaningless.


Why? I mean sure it may not conclusively prove anything, but it is interesting. Doesn't it add any weight to support the theory? Or does it all have to be empirical data? Isn't there a plethora of sources of data citing infrared readings? And emf? What is considered "good" evidence?
 

bobbyboyle

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Why? I mean sure it may not conclusively prove anything, but it is interesting. Doesn't it add any weight to support the theory? Or does it all have to be empirical data? Isn't there a plethora of sources of data citing infrared readings? And emf? What is considered "good" evidence?
Yes, empirical data is the only thing that can be used to build a scientific theory. Anecdotes are meaningless, Ms Bannisters is correct.
 

AquaEyes11010

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I posted this response to a question asking what we thought about psychic phenomena on another web forum, but it also applies to my thoughts about ghosts and hauntings:



Nonbeliever, and here's my thought process on it...

When we see something we can't explain, it's unsettling, so we often seek an explanation to settle that feeling, even if we must create one. For those who see a "psychic performance" of some sort, we are immediately unsettled by the question "how did that happen?" If the psychic seems able to accomplish something which seems outside our own capabilities, we may ascribe to the psychic additional capabilities that are not had by all, and that explanation satisfies the unsettling feeling -- for some.

For others, the existence of those additional capabilities opens the door to further unsettling questions -- "what is/are the mechanism(s) by which these capabilities operate?", for example. "Magic" or "supernatural" explanations fall into this same category -- basically answering the question "how did that happen?" by saying "it's magic." Saying "it's magic" is turning an unknown thing into a category, which then becomes a known thing simply by giving it a name (but not understanding or seeking to understand how it works), and thus satisfies the unsettling feeling of the question "how did that happen?"

Not being able to find satisfactory explanations for these new questions, we skeptics go back to the beginning, and look deeper to see if there is an alternative explanation for "the psychic must have magical powers." These explanations are found within psychological study, and many experiments have been conducted testing how humans react and behave and perceive in a myriad of situations, more than those that encompass "psychic performances."

James Randi is a well-known skeptic, and he (and other skeptics, such as myself) follows the second course of action, attempting through rigorous observation and detailed collection and analysis of data to decipher what is actually going on, as opposed to what our psychological biases lead us to believe. Basically, this perspective is that psychic (and other supernatural) phenomena is a sort of optical illusion -- the result of a trick of the way our brains process stimuli. To test these ideas, a representation of the same "illusion" principle is presented in a controlled laboratory setting, and results of human participation are recorded and analyzed. If the results are similar in the lab to the "field" of a psychic performance, we can say then that "psychic ability" is not the only possible explanation. And since the alternative (illusions based on human perception) does not lead to further unsettling questions for the skeptics, this path is the one followed by them.

An example is an analysis of "cold reading" techniques. In short, when we are witnessing a psychic performance of calling out predictions in front of an audience, those who follow the path of explanation utilizing "psychic capabilities" will seek to affirm their beliefs. As a result, they will tend to remember more strongly the "hits" (correct predictions) and tend to forget the "misses" (incorrect predictions) of the psychic's readings. They will also tend to find any evidence of a pattern within randomness, emphasizing those points that fit the pattern and dismissing those points that don't. Skeptics like Randi would attempt to avoid the pitfalls of human perception and take a tally of hits and misses to find out the actual percentage of "hits" relative to the total number of predictions, and take into account hits based simply on probability that could be made by anyone knowing what characteristics are commonly found within an audience (i.e. what name is most common, what are the odds that someone in an audience lost a loved one to cancer, being able to make general assumptions based on appearance and physical/behavioral characteristics observed of audience members, etc).

So, in my opinion, it all comes down to what you want to believe, and you will find something that satisfies your unsettling question of "how did that happen?" either way. The divide is based on whether the "psychics have magical capabilities" explanation settles you, or leads to further unsettling. Being a skeptic, I think that believing in psychic/magical capabilities means that you answer the first question of "how did that happen?" but then tell yourself that it's pointless to ask further questions. I will always ask questions, so that path is not satisfactory to me.

Just remember that while a paranormal or supernatural explanation may satisfy your unsettling desire for an answer, that doesn't mean it is the correct answer.

:)
 
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