Does ghost exist?

[agrah upadhyay]

[Angela Poynton]

Define "Ghost" and I'll answer.

[agrah upadhyay]

My father define it as past and says past never comes back can not be in real physical aspect and I become fearless
But here my context is some kinda bad spirit! What we Java Ranchers think?

[Jeff Albertson]

Ghost backs up my machine every Thursday. I assume it exists...

[agrah upadhyay]

Ghost backs up my machine every Thursday. I assume it exists...

Well I did not ask for being so serious!

[Paul Sturrock]

Ghost backs up my machine every Thursday. I assume it exists...

Have you ever seen it though?

WooOOOOoo.....!!!
[ April 24, 2006: Message edited by: Paul Sturrock ]

[Bear Bibeault]

BOO!

[Deepak Bala]

I once tried the ooiegie board ( i am sure i spelled it wrong ) thing. We placed a coin over a piece of paper and we wrote letters on it. It actually moved !!! First i thought my friends were playing a trick on me so i tried to alone. It moved !!! My theory still is that my mind moved the coin. I dont deny the existence of ghosts either. I kind of vacillate between they exist and they dont.

[Angela Poynton]

I have seen and interacted with a number of people who were actually dead. So yes, I do believe "ghosts" exist.

[fred rosenberger]

I don't believe in ghosts.

Angela, i'm curious as to exactly HOW you've interacted with dead people. You are aware that if you can prove you can do this, you can win $1 million? and that's a U.S. million - 10^6. i believe over there you call that amount something else...

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Originally posted by Jeff Albertson:
Ghost backs up my machine every Thursday. I assume it exists...

You actually believe in marketing rethoric?
If so, I've this bridge...

I'm discinclined to believe in ghosts. I am inclined to believe in physical phenomena which could by the human brain be misinterpreted as what is generally defined as "ghost" though.

[Peter Rooke]

Must be a like a d�mon. [IMHO] Ooiegie board's are not to be messed with - heard some horror stories.

[Roger Nelson]

not only does ghosts exists they talk too
John Edward

[John Smith]

AP: I have seen and interacted with a number of people who were actually dead.

Did they look like the folks in "The Sixth Sense", or the director is completely off base?

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Originally posted by Peter Rooke:
Ooiegie board's are not to be messed with - heard some horror stories.

yes, they're quite painful when you're hit over the head with one

[Angela Poynton]

Originally posted by fred rosenberger:
I don't believe in ghosts.

Angela, i'm curious as to exactly HOW you've interacted with dead people. You are aware that if you can prove you can do this, you can win $1 million? and that's a U.S. million - 10^6. i believe over there you call that amount something else...

Well the $1 million would be cool but I can't prove it. Both times I was alone. The first time even I'm not certain that it wasn't a dream or a flight of childhood fancy as I was only 7 but the memory is still clear as day to me and combined with the second event I do wonder. Put simply the first time, it was the night before my Grandmother's funeral. I was upset because I was told I wouldn't be allowed to go to the funeral because I was "too young". That night I saw her and she came and sat with me on my bed and spoke to me, reassuring me that she was happy and that I shouldn't worry about not being at the funeral as she already knew how much I loved her. Then she was gone.

6 years later, I was waiting for the bus to school when I ended up getting into a conversation with a man I'd never met before. It was nothing sinister, just day to day stuff, he seemed really nice and the conversation left an imprint on my mind. The bus arrived and I got on and expected him to get on too but after I paid my fare I turned around to find he had dissappeared. It puzzled me all day. That night I found out that my half-brother who is 17 years older than me and whom I had never met for various reasons and had only seen childhood photos of had died the previous night. Two days later I got to see my first photo of him as a grown man, it was without any doubt the man I had spoken to at the bus stop the morning after my half-brother had died. I like to think he wanted to meet me before he passed over.

[Jeff Albertson]

Originally posted by John Meyers:
I once tried the ooiegie board ( i am sure i spelled it wrong ) thing.

ooOOOooo! The spirits are relaying the proper spelling to me: O-U-I-J-A. Just remeber Oui+ja (yes+yes).

[Christophe Verré]

My father define it as past and says past never comes back can not be in real physical aspect

Is your dad talking about Michael Jackson ?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Angela Poynton:


Both times I was alone.

Angela, thanks for sharing those.

[shan Iyer]

Ghosts
[ April 24, 2006: Message edited by: Shankar Iyer ]

[agrah upadhyay]

Well the $1 million would be cool but I can't prove it. Both times I was alone. The first time even I'm not certain that it wasn't a dream or a flight of childhood fancy as I was only 7 but the memory is still clear as day to me and combined with the second event I do wonder. Put simply the first time, it was the night before my Grandmother's funeral. I was upset because I was told I wouldn't be allowed to go to the funeral because I was "too young". That night I saw her and she came and sat with me on my bed and spoke to me, reassuring me that she was happy and that I shouldn't worry about not being at the funeral as she already knew how much I loved her. Then she was gone.

Really???

[Dave Lenton]

I do not believe that the case for or against ghosts has been sufficiently proved either way. There is absolutely no scientifically verified proof of ghosts, as the $1million prize money indicates (and yes, 10^6 is called a "million" here too ).

On the other hand, the case against ghosts has not been proved - there is no definitive proof that they do not exist. The combination of these two facts means that I can't state that ghosts do or don't exist.

However, the same also applies to Father Christmas and the Big Bang! One of these I consider highly unlikely and one I consider a lot more likely. In fact, if I was pretty pedantic, the same could apply to almost anything. The trick then is to determine how much I believe in ghosts, perhaps as a percentage chance of their existence.

In order to do this, I have to weigh up what I think I understand about how the universe works, and the evidence pointing towards one conclusion or another. My own personal view is that the idea of ghosts is sufficiently removed from what I consider to match my model of the universe that I consider their existence highly unlikely. For example: I do not understand what structure can preserve some essence of a person (either and image or a personality) after the breakdown of a person's body.

I am of course incredibly ignorant. I know only a tiny fraction of how the world works, so I have to keep an open mind in case my initial estimation of the likelihood of ghosts is incorrect. I also have to respect the fact that other people consider the likelihood of their existence to be considerably higher. I'm just not going to bet on it.
[ April 25, 2006: Message edited by: Dave Lenton ]

[Ashok Mash]

No offense to those who believe in ghosts, or who have had personal and close experiences like that of Angela, I personally don�t think there is no such thing as ghosts as in �ghosts�, �ghosts haunting people� in reality.

On another level, IMHO, there�s room to admit that there are things in this world that we don�t fully understand yet, and experiences of images of someone who are close to you flashing in front of you etc is not as rare as one would think, and even though there is a decent scientific explanations for most of them (like your brain projecting a image so strong, it ends tricking your eyes to believe that�s its seeing something, and your eyes in turn feeds the image to brain etc), some remains just bizarre.

My personal experience, living away from home for work, a few years back, I woke up from sleep, in a pool of sweat in the middle of a bitterly cold night, because I heard my mom calling me by my name, really loud � I truly believe I really heard it! After coming to my senses, and clearly dismissing it as a one off weird dream etc, I rang home just to check if everything is fine � I am not making this up � I got my mom on phone, and she was shaken from a dream she had a few hours earlier (time difference), that I was in a horrible car accident and then I was standing outside their bedroom window asking them to let me in!!

Likely to be a pure coincidence, but now and then I wonder if there was anything more to it than that!
[ April 25, 2006: Message edited by: Ashok Mash ]

[Angela Poynton]

Originally posted by Ashok Mash:
(like your brain projecting a image so strong, it ends tricking your eyes to believe that�s its seeing something, and your eyes in turn feeds the image to brain etc

Which could explain my first experience, but not my second.
I had never met my half-brother. I had only seen photos of him as a child I had no idea what he looked like as a grown man.

[Anoushka Sharma]

I see dead people walking

So ghosts exist :roll:

[Bo Yyempeti]

Originally posted by Dave Lenton:
I am of course incredibly ignorant. I know only a tiny fraction of how the world works, so I have to keep an open mind in case my initial estimation of the likelihood of ghosts is incorrect

About a hundred years ago, people did not believe in the existence of Radio waves - because they could not be perceived and measured by any instruments of those times and their presence could not be proven.

A few months ago I started reading a book on quantum physics - In Search Of Schrodinger's Cat. I never quite finished it as most of it went above what I could understand. What I did glean from the book is that at the quantum level, the world does behave in ways that are completely different classical physics. For example, when an electron moves from one shell to another, it does not "move" in the classical sense of progressing from point A to point B. Instead, at one instant it is in the first shell, at the next, it is in the other - like a teleport.

Our understanding of the world is incomplete. I try not to believe everything I see and dismiss everything that I don't.

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by Angela Poynton:
I had never met my half-brother. I had only seen photos of him as a child I had no idea what he looked like as a grown man.

That�s amazing indeed. I am not saying I know the answer, but for argument sake, you could say, probably your brain altered your memory of that morning, and patched the new face in - all that without you realizing any of it. I know it sounds highly unlikely, and it probably is all rubbish, but since we can't prove it this way or that, I guess we should believe what we like to believe.

As the Oracle (Matrix) said, "One can't see past the choices they make", which is a good thing I think!

[fred rosenberger]

Angela, please don't be offended by my skeptisism. I'm not attacking you, or anyone else's beliefs. i'm trying to explain why I choose not to believe.

Fantastic claims require fantastic evidence. Having said that, lack of evidence does NOT mean that the claim is false.

I am a skeptic. I choose not to believe any extrodinary claim without some evidence. If i told you i had a third arm, would you take me on my word? would you accept a fuzzy, grainy photograph?

or would you expect x-rays, signed affidavits by M.D.s, and even video?

I am not saying that ghosts don't exist, but there has been no scientific evidence that they do. There is no way to PROVE they don't exist, but i also don't believe it is necesarry to prove that. The burden of proof lies with the person/people making the claim that violates what we know so far.

Re: Father Christmas - no, i can't prove he doesn't exist. I CAN provide you with the laws of physics as we understand them, that have been tested over and over and over. In order for F.C. to do everything claimed of him, he'd have to break or be immune to many of them. So for him to exist, much of our understanding of physics would have to change.

Same goes for the big bang. All the known evidence points to it being what happened. A theory is postulated. Then some way to measure or test the theory is devised. the results from that test either help confirm the theory (but never actually PROVES it), or disproves the theory.

And that's one of the beautiful things about science. it likes to be proved wrong. it comes up with a theory that best fits with ALL the known data. it tries to explain things that don't fit the known theory. Good science even says "most of the evidence points to THIS, but we have THAT piece of data which seems to indicate we're wrong. We're trying to figure out why." When a new piece of evidence comes along that completly contradicts the theory, a NEW theory is created to fit all the data again. it is self correcting.

So, what i am trying to say is that i choose not to believe in something there is NO evidence for, especially one that seems to contradict what we DO know - or at least, think we know.

[Angela Poynton]

Fred, I understand what you are trying to say and I largely feel the same way, however my experiences have given me some proof that there is more going on that many would have us believe. I don't consider my visitors to have been "ghosts", I believe I was visited by at least one person who was no longer on this plain, I believe there were strong reasons for my visits and I believe that because I choose to keep an open mind about things like this and I don't fear it that I am more open to such experiences.
I have a friend who is very into "ghost hunting" I've never been on a hunt with him but am going later in the year, I have no expectations, I don't mind if anything happens or not. My own experiences tell me that if someone wants to interact with you they will find a way, and it won't need to be in a dark and scarey place to make it happen. I have had other experiences that have been less "obvious", different types of visitations, a very accurate and specific reading from a Medium etc. I could go on forever about this. Bascially, my point is, I acknowledge that there is no tangible proof that ghosts exist, but I refuse to close my mind to the possibilty that the dead can communicate with the living in some way.

As for Ashok's suggestion that my memory altered to fit the man. There were very specific features that I could not forget after I met him and that were there when I saw the photograph, very strong bright blue eyes and a scar on his face under his eye.

[fred rosenberger]

Believe me, my mind is open to the possibility. that goes for spirits, esp, telekenisis, and just about anything else.

i would be EXCITED if evidence was found. i'd probably even do a little dance. to discover evidence of something existing where no evidence existed before... THAT would be about the coolest thing EVER.

when i said "i choose not to believe...", i guess i should have qualified it with "...until something comes along to change my mind".

Skeptics don't say these things don't/can't exist. We're just looking for evidence it DOES, since most of these claims defy what we know today.

[Dave Lenton]

Originally posted by fred rosenberger:
Believe me, my mind is open to the possibility. that goes for spirits, esp, telekenisis, and just about anything else.

i would be EXCITED if evidence was found. i'd probably even do a little dance. to discover evidence of something existing where no evidence existed before... THAT would be about the coolest thing EVER.

when i said "i choose not to believe...", i guess i should have qualified it with "...until something comes along to change my mind".

Skeptics don't say these things don't/can't exist. We're just looking for evidence it DOES, since most of these claims defy what we know today.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm very sceptical indeed. Things like ghosts, fairies, deities, magic powers and so on are all things which I think are extremely highly unlikely, but at the same time I'd love it if some of them were true. Wouldn't it be amazing to live in a time when our understanding of the universe is being turned on its head?

Mind you, I think some of that quantum malarkey could well be doing exactly that, its just that its too complicated for me to understand

Also, the line "until something changes my mind" is quite important here - every sceptic... everyone on the planet even, should always be ready to change their mind about anything.

[Rambo Prasad]

I have a friend who is very into "ghost hunting"

Angela,
Sounds interesting!...What do you do during Ghost hunting....Can you say about it...?

[Angela Poynton]

Well I've never been so can't say for certain. What I've been told is that he spends one or more nights in a location that is supposedly "haunted". he takes a night vision video camera, emf reader, laser thermometer, and various bits of audio recording equipment and sees what he can see.

Lot of recordings of "orbs" and strange noises is all I've seen. I'm keeping an open mind about it.

This one I'm going to is a bit different for him because it's outdoors. We'll be camping in a Wood that has apparently seen a lot of supernatual activity.

[Mani Ram]

Originally posted by Angela Poynton:
he takes a night vision video camera, emf reader, laser thermometer, and various bits of audio recording equipment

What? No rifle? Not even bow & arrows? :roll:

[Angela Poynton]

Different kind of hunting... only want to catch ghost on camera not in cage.

[Abhinav Srivastava]

If you believe in God (classical) you should also believe in Ghosts/Spitits and at the same time not believe in Darwin's theories. Don't you think they contradict each other!

[fred rosenberger]

who's to say how long God's "day" is? maybe the God-day when he created all the animals was 4 million human-years long.

so no, i don't think they NECESARILY contradict each other.

Having said that, i guess i should state that i do NOT believe in God.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

Well, the bible states that all animals were created as they are now. It leaves no place for evolution, nor for dinosaurs or natural selection.
So "on the origin of species" is in direct defiance of religion (and that was written by a guy who wanted to go to seminary to become a priest...).

What I find weird is that the church denies ghosts and spirits but does talk about "the Holy Spirit" when referring to god, and "souls" which in every explanation seem awfully much like ghosts and spirits to me.

[Harish Verma]

Ghosts (the REAL kind, not the software) certainly do exist. Impeccable sources have confirmed this - time and time again. But - not all can encounter one - this is strictly controlled by what we call "karma". But for those fated thusly, there will invariably be encounters - however, these encounters are not always terrible and 'evil-dead' style. My old uncle saw ghosts twice - no kidding - and lived to tell the tale.

[Deepak Bala]

Impeccable sources have confirmed this - time and time again

Like what sources. There are trustable articles on this ?