Ghosts. Real or not?

[Coru]

Sorry if this exists already, i couldn't find it when searching

So I am running through the series 'Supernatural' at the moment and also I am watching "Scary Story" videos on Youtube and it made me think about my experiences with the supernatural and ghosts. In terms of ghosts, science can't prove or disprove the existence of them and all we can go on is the experiences of others, which could be real, or may be a mix of hallucinations or mind trickery.
Do you believe in such things, if so, what do you think ghosts are? Lost souls, imprints of events or our afterlife. Also, have you or someone you know ever had any personal encounters with any ghost apparitions?

Despite being an Atheist, who are usually seen as not very spiritual, I am quite spiritual and enjoy the supernatural and find it fascinating. My family sometimes make fun of me because of this, even though they are spiritual themselves, however, ghosts don't fit into their beliefs. I don't believe in many other supernatural entities, such as demons or angels or stuff like that but ghosts, for me, don't seem to fit into those categories even though there can be good and bad ghosts. My understanding of ghosts varies. I believe that they can simply be a psychic imprint of events in an area held in by the surroundings and replayed. This is called the Stone Tape theory. For me, this explains why sometimes apparitions seem to walk through walls or solid objects because those objects simply were not there at the time the event happened. However, I don't fully believe that because that would mean that they are not interactive at all, which, by personal accounts, i don't think is true. Therefore, I believe that some 'hauntings' are due to this 'stone tape' theory and the others are the traditional idea of ghosts. I do believe in ghosts though because it is scientific fact that energy can not be created or destroyed, so where does the energy that is used for our brains to keep functioning go when we eventually die?

I think the main reason I believe in ghosts though is due to my experiences at a young age. I haven't had an experience with an aggressive entity as of yet, and hope I never do, but one experience certainly scared me and to this day, it affects me. My first experience was when I was on a family holiday and we were living in a caravan for the holiday. Due to me having a large family, I had to sleep on the sofa in the front room. I must have been about 6 or so. I randomly woke up in the middle of the night and I saw this greyish, white silhouette of what looked like a young girl. I called out, not knowing what it was and said "Hello" quietly not to wake up my brother who was also sleeping in the front room. It then looked round to me and smiled. I must have fallen back asleep at this point because that's all I could remember, but i know for a fact I was awake so I believe I saw something.

My second experience, and the reason why I can no longer look out of any window when it is dark and must cover all windows when it is dark otherwise I will get very anxious and paranoid. roughly 3 or so years later, I was at home in my room and my bed is directly next to the window. My curtains were open and as I walked into my room and went over to my bed, I looked out the window and saw the face of a woman. It was pale and almost white, jet black long hair and she had bright red lips and it was formed into a large smile that I thought looked quite sinister. I immediately ran out of my room and told my dad, which he replied to "Don't worry, it was just your reflection" Which it definitely was not.

My final experience was when I was walking with my sister home and roughly 11 at night and we had to walk through a graveyard. As we were walking through it, I looked at a tombstone maybe 15 feet away and I saw a tall woman sitting on top of it looking down and she was in a white gown. I walked quickly out of that graveyard as soon as I saw it.

So those were my experiences. They aren't too interesting and are a bit wishy washy and can be dismissed as a possible hallucination or imagination, but it's what I remember and is the reason I believe in ghosts.

[Neo Emolga]

I kind of lean more to the side of "yes" with this one. I have heard of way too many accounts of ghost sightings and encounters and I know that while some of them could be lies, it's unlikely they were all lies. Any one that says no should have a heart rate monitor strapped to them and be pushed to walk through some haunted mental hospital or something like that. At night, of course. One of these places could suffice too. I'd be very surprised if they still only had indifferent reactions and their vital signs stayed the same during the whole trip through.

Because of all this, I don't mess with that kind of stuff.

[Suicune's Fire]

This is a difficult one. I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't believe the concept of a soul or spirit makes sense, so there's no real reason for me to believe in ghosts and the like. However, nothing is to say that I am correct, especially given people's experiences. I certainly don't like to doubt what people have seen, but I haven't experienced anything supernatural myself.

[Dragon Master Mike]

I've never had a single doubt to the existence of ghosts. I've never personally experienced anything that I can't rationally explain, but when I was younger, I used to think my house was haunted. Looking back on it, almost everything I can either find a solid reason why it probably wasn't a ghost, or say that it wasn't anything blatant enough that I can say that I wasn't imagining it. But my dad has told me a couple of really freaky stories...

When I was younger, we used to have a vacation house in the country. When I say younger, I mean I was like, three. My dad had bought a violin magnet that played sounds and left it on the counter. In the middle of the night, he heard something. He came down and it was the magnet. When he went to go turn on the light, the light blew out. The other story was also from there. Sometimes in the middle of the night, the stereo system would just turn on at random. It was always around the same time, but it wasn't every day, meaning that it couldn't have been an alarm. I don't know if either story has a rational explanation, but regardless, both are kinda creepy, especially the first.

[Trainer17]

I consider myself the biggest ghost as I tend to scare the **** out of people irl without them realizing a single thing. Other than that, I do believe in lingering spirits; good or bad; they won't pretty much bother you unless you give too much attention to them.

I tend to hang around less crowded places late night usually boozing out and thinking about my future when I happen to get a feeling something is watching me. I mean heck at least you ghosts care about me!

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[Noblejanobii]

Hm… this… this is a tough subject… especially for people of the Christian faith. Fortunately I'm catholic so we're pretty much the exception to everything, much like the Mongols.

So… hm… I don't believe that the source of ghosts is that people's souls get trapped between the earth and the afterlife and blah. And all those ghost hunting shows? Fake. Fake fake fake. Cool. But fake. However, the Bible has made mention more than once of being able to conjure the dead. It's mainly in the Old Testament so please forgive me in that my memory is sparse on this topic, however, there is one story that sticks out in my mind. So, there was this King called King David. Probably most famous King in the bible. However, the king before him (Saul I believe it was) is also pretty famous but… not in the good way. Anyway, long story short, the guy has been making some really stupid decisions and usually he'd consult the high priest Samuel, except Samuel's dead. So what does this King do? He goes to a witch and has her summon Samuel from the dead in his soulful form. Samuel's pissed (as you can imagine since he literally just got ripped from heaven) and pretty much tells Saul that was the last straw and that this is a high sin blah blah blah. You get the idea.

Anyway, long story short, summoning demons and ghosts? Heavy heavy sin according to Catholics. Considered one of the highest levels of sins you can get, which is why I don't go near their Ouija boards. Other Christian faiths it varies. Baptists, for example, say it's not possible to summon these kinds of things. Personally, I think ghosts and demons and such do exist, but they have to be summoned or drawn to this plane of existence from the one they dwell on (i.e. Heaven, hell, or purgatory). How they are summoned is varied but I think the more peaceful spirits can probably be drawn more easily than the evil ones. All I can say is, there's never been a successful summoning in my presence and I always carry a rosary on me for a reason.

[AWA1997]

I don't recall that story, and I have multiple versions of the Bible.

My family has a few stories. My freshman year, my mom had a visit from my grandma who had just passed away. The next morning, she got a call from her best friend, who heard the conversation from a whole different city.

When I was little, I was able to give a perfect description of my great grandpa without ever seeing a picture of him. And the description included a sore on the back of his head. This is important because he was killed in a car accident, dying when his head snapped back and crashed into the back window of his truck.

In the 1930's or 1940's (I don't have an exact year), my great grandparents (not the side involved in the previous story) came home to find themselves unable to open their front door. They left, and when they came back they discovered that there had been a break in and robbery. It is our family's belief that angels or ghosts or something held the door shut so that they didn't get hurt or killed.

Needless to say, I believe in them, but I don't believe they're trapped, I believe they can come and go as they wish, maybe with some help from a higher power.

[SassySnivy]

I believe in the paranormal and such. Definitely. There's just too much evidence to say otherwise! However, I'm not one to believe everything I hear about or see other accounts of, because of how deceptive people can be. Additionally, I believe that every other conclusion needs to be successfully ruled out until something can be considered paranormal.

In all honesty I do believe that most ghosts can be scientifically explained. :o For instance, I'm one of those people that believes that, for the most part, lingering ghosts are just the "energy signatures" of people in their day-to-day lives after they've moved on. They became so accustomed to a certain routine that their energy signature just sticks around.

However, I can't find much of an explanation behind demons. Demonic possessions can mostly be explained: the person usually (not always, but usually) has some kind of severe mental condition that causes them to act like they're from an Exorcism movie. Additionally, "demonic possessions" could also be the placebo effect / the power of suggestion at best. Obviously not EVERY case falls under one of those two things, I just think that possessions are more of a psychological thing than anything else. Do I believe it CAN and DOES happen? Absolutely. However, I need to rule out every other conclusion before I come to such a...um, conclusion.

[Corey]

I don't believe in ghosts or the paranormal at all. The only evidence people give for the paranormal are anecdotes, and anecdotes aren't evidence. There's simply no reliable, scientific evidence to support the existence of the paranormal. Even if I saw a "ghost," I still wouldn't believe it because the idea of ghosts or anything paranormal for that matter is so ludicrous to me and I know my own anecdote isn't fact. Even if I were with a thousand people and every single one of us all saw what appeared to be ghosts, I'd still rationalize it as a trick or an illusion. If there were cold hard, comprehensive scientific evidence that ghosts were real, I'd change my stance.

Like Xanthe, I don't believe in the concept of a spirit/soul. I believe that when you die, it's just lights out - you don't become a spook or anything. However, the paranormal is something that can never really be disproven. You can't really claim that stuff like this doesn't exist because there's no way to scientifically prove it unless it downright conflicts with scientific fact. For example, you could claim there was an invisible, undetectable pig on the moon and I couldn't disprove that. But if you said that invisible pig turns off Earth's gravity every night at 8:00 pm until 6:00 am, I could say you're wrong, because gravity, obviously, doesn't turn off at 8:00 pm and resume at 6:00 am.

I'm not telling anyone they're wrong because I can't! People will always have varying beliefs on stuff that can't be/hasn't been unproven. Like, people even choose not to believe stuff that can be and has been proven...But I, personally, don't believe in anything paranormal.

[Chibi Altaria]

Not really. I'm such a skeptic to begin with, if someone told me they saw a ghost I'd probably just be like "yeah, right," and blow them off.

I went to Tasmania for a Year 10 school trip, and we went to visit Port Arthur - originally a prison, now a tourist attraction - where we had a 'ghost tour' at night. Obviously the whole thing was fake, cause it was organised by guides and the like (I even saw the guides do stuff when they thought people weren't looking!), but one of my friends had a camera. When we were in a jail cell she was busy taking photos and when she showed me one, there was this ghostly, ethereal human projection in the image.We were the only ones in the jail at the time, and this was some old guy. There were no old guys on the tour that I saw. It was freaky.

However, I still don't believe in ghosts or spirits, unless I had some concrete evidence supporting otherwise. Not once have I experienced anything remotely supernatural.