Ghosts are a figment of the imagination.

[gregers]

many years back i was working in a local church,spraying all the old oak for woodworm etc.guvnor sends me off onto another job,end of the day came and ended up driving past the church,the boss was still working there.
so i done what any other good humored chap would do ,i crept into the church saw the boss was working at the front by the pews and alter,so i hid behind a pillar and decided to make 'ghost like noises'.he jumped out of his bloody skin,looked round shook his head and got back down to work again,anyway cut a long story kept this going for about 1/2 hr,getting closer to him every time,eventually i was sitting on the front row and sent out a blood curdling scream,i have never seen someone jump so high.think he literally 5,hit himself.
after reciveing a 'godly' rolliking from him he eventually saw the funny side.
looking back i couldve given him a heart attack but it was funny.

where i work now the are reports of a ghost in 1 of our school buildings,on occasions when working by yourself AND no one else in the building you can hear doors open n close and other strange noises.

 

[JBR]

My sort of humour!

 

[Micilin]

As said above, People often see what they expect to see, or don't actually observe things outside their expectations.

Lots of examples of similar

http://youtu.be/BZ0l9s8_Hmk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-HxtKgKrL8

 

[JBR]

Very interesting... and fun. I wouldn't mind having a go at that.

The second one, though, I found particularly annoying because of the trite 'music' that you find on so many YouTube videos and which add nothing to the experience. (No problem. I just turned the sound off.)

I know. I'm a miserable old git.

 

[foxhole]

Ghost are very real , just needs the right conditions to see them, 1/2 a pint of vodka will do it , you can then also see the pink elephants and the fairies at the bottom of you garden.

 

[tony1851]

Mankind is an infinitessimally small part of our galaxy, of which there must be millions.
Do we really believe that we know everything? Are we the only beings in the universe? There are probably things out there (whether life-forms or phenomena) which our tiny brains could never even begin to comprehend.

 

[Safety First]

Our old cottage was a tiny shoemakers cottage built in 1800.

Front door opens facing the stairs, which stop on a tiny landing offering left to kids room or right to ours.

My wife and I were in bed one night (no TV, no radio, very quiet) and we heard our daughter (already put to bed) fairly loudly stomp her way up the stairs and stop on the landing. We waited for her to speak, or go into her room.........nothing..... complete silence.....

She was about 7 at the time and her younger sister was a risk of being woken by this naughty past-bedtime level of noise making and house- roaming. My wife and I looked each-other in a frustrated angry way and I crept out of bed to scold my daughter in hushed tones, where she had stopped on the landing outside our door.

No-one.
[/i]

Kids bedroom door was shut. I clicked (really loud) the old-style thumb latch- something we had not heard her do. 7 year old was asleep in top bunk- we had not heard her get into bed.

It was all so loud, so bold, so quick that neither of us found it scary. It still doesn't disturb me now. Someone came up the stairs, stopped on the landing, and disappeared. It was so real, it didn't scare us. Go figure?

 

[JBR]

Mankind is an infinitessimally small part of our galaxy, of which there must be millions.
Do we really believe that we know everything? Are we the only beings in the universe? There are probably things out there (whether life-forms or phenomena) which our tiny brains could never even begin to comprehend.

I agree. Statistically, there should be other forms of technologically advanced life on other planets, but they are too far away for us to get there or for 'aliens' to get here assuming, of course, that neither we nor they can travel faster than the speed of light.

But we are talking about supernatural phenomena on this planet and, even after all these years, we have no tangible evidence (apart from hearsay and out-of-focus photographs) to support them.

 

[tony1851]

But we are talking about supernatural phenomena on this planet and, even after all these years, we have no tangible evidence

This is the point I was attempting to make; we call 'supernatural' those occurances which are intangible, ie we can't see/touch/hear them etc. So we assume they are not 'real' and therefore can't exist, except in a few deluded minds.

But how can we be sure that our senses are so all-encompassing that we can be the arbiters of whether or not something exists.

In short, perhaps what we regard as ghosts or other 'supernatural' phenomena do actually exist, but in a much wider world than that which our senses are normally attuned to?

 

[Doug99]

Whenever my kids ask about the possibility of aliens, I get them to imagine walking along a beach and pick up and look closely to a single grain of sand.

This tiny speck of sand represents our solar system. The rest of the beach represents the universe. I then let them consider whether there may be an identical speck of sand a couple of miles along the coast, or just a few yards away.

It boggles the mind!

 

[JBR]

But we are talking about supernatural phenomena on this planet and, even after all these years, we have no tangible evidence

This is the point I was attempting to make; we call 'supernatural' those occurances which are intangible, ie we can't see/touch/hear them etc. So we assume they are not 'real' and therefore can't exist, except in a few deluded minds.

But how can we be sure that our senses are so all-encompassing that we can be the arbiters of whether or not something exists.

In short, perhaps what we regard as ghosts or other 'supernatural' phenomena do actually exist, but in a much wider world than that which our senses are normally attuned to?

Yes, there are many things around us that we cannot sense. Some, we have since discovered, are real: radio waves and neutrinos, for example.

I take your point. There may well be other things all around us that we cannot at present sense (but some people seem able to), and perhaps at some time in the future science will unravel those mysteries.

What at present are held by some people to be supernatural events could turn out to be undiscovered scientific phenomena. The 'stone tape' theory is one of my favourites and is quite believable.