Do you believe in ghosts?

So I'm working as a young leader at this retreat centre next year. Anyway it's this big old but-not-that-old castle that's built on the remains of an even older castle, that was destroyed during this huge battle in the English Civil War. I've always been a bit sceptical about ghosts. I do believe in an afterlife but for some reason I just thought ghosts were the stuff of kid's stories.

Anyway I know there are tons of stories about this place being haunted, and when I was on my interview some of the staff told me about some of there own experiences of hauntings in the castle (If you have been to Alton Towers and have been on the Hex ride you will know one of them already). The team leader said to me that they were probably just trying to creep the newby out but all the same it got me thinking. Does anyone here believe in ghosts or had a paranormal experience?

 

I always have believed in them 100%. there's a lot of recordings and stuff (not the obviously fake ones) and many pictures, stories, etc.

 

Well, the life itself is something unknown after all, so why wouldn't exist ghosts? No one knows how everything started, but a lot believe in the end: Death. If the Beginning is unknown, why would it be different to the Ending? Maybe there wasn't a beginning and will never have the Ending, Every tip is "infinity" somehow, right?

I haven't seen a ghost, but I did have some... weird experiences.
I remember when I was little, I was going to drink water. In the middle of the way to there, I found someone going there as well. I thought it was my sister, so I followed. It went to my brother's door at the end of the corridor. While approaching the door, the person turned and simply vanished in my shadow. It was dark so when I got closer it was like it vanished in my shadow...

 

I believe this is the third ghost related thread that I see in the discussion zone, it seems to be quite a popular topic. Rather than repeating myself I' ll just answer the specific question asked in the title : nope, I don' t believe in them. Even if I was to see a transparent person supposed to be dead I wouldn' t. I mean, what the hell is a ghost exactly ? What are its definition and physical properties ? How can I evidence that it was indeed a "ghost", whatever a ghost is, rather than one of the many other conceivable explanations (it was a fluke of my brain, an alien using a mind-control device on me, a hoax, a bug in the matrix, Super Masked Cucumber' s latest secret outfit, etc etc ...).

When I witness weird things if I can' t evidence the validity of any explanation in any way then the only thing I' ll believe is that I don' t have the beginning of an explanation, and even though I can' t be certain of anything I' m inclined to think the most rational explanation is the most likely to be true.

 

Sometimes I have a mental argument with myself over believing that ghosts exist and not believing.
The truth is, I am complete terrified of ghosts (a sign of immaturity, right there), but I enjoy hearing stories about it, and then later regret it during a sleep-less night. I've had a few experiences (?) of them. One during my childhood.

I was sitting on one of our stair's steps, at the top. My back was leaning against railing, behind the railing is just another flight of stairs, basically making my back unreachable. I was beeping away, playing games on my mom's phone (who was completely in my sight, sitting on the couch) when I felt someone or something poke my back. I looked back only to see the flight of stairs behind me. I just shrugged it off and decided to go downstairs to see what was up. I went downstairs seeing one of my neighbours sitting on the corner of the kitchen. She told me that "she saw a man hanging on the stairs." SCARRED FOR LIFE. But I like to think it was all just a sick joke.

 

I have the same thing. If someone asked me I would say I don't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't stop me being terrified of them, and walking through a creepy old castle at night alone, It would be a lie if I said I wasn't worried about them. Aw and bless my Mom, I asked her what would she do if she saw a ghost. She said 'Well I'd be very worried about the poor thing'. It is kind of sad to think of a soul trapped on Earth, always haunting the same place. I wonder if some of them even realise they are dead?

 

I do not. Nothing has ever pointed to the existence of them, and it doesn't make any sense what so ever. I've seen videos of "ghosts," and they can usually be explained naturally. If they can't, I just consider it something unusual.

 

I am uncertain on this topic, honestly. When I was little, I used to swear up and down that my house was haunted. I used to see "ghosts" whenever I woke up from sleep and it was still dark outside. It really freaked me out. But as I got older, I didn't see them anymore, so I'm lead to believe that these images was just my imagination playing with me. I suppose for right now, I do not believe in them.

 

I believe in left over experiences, energy that contains memories, a possibility of something that i don't know about has been leftbehind in some form.

We are all connected, by some grand thing, even in death the connections are still there.

 

Hm interesting points. I think one of the things that gets me is that ghosts have been so prevalent in one form or another in so many cultures over so many centuries across the world. Seems far too common to be coincidence, but then there could be another explanation.

 

I could say the same things for gods, but how many people believe in a claim has absolutely no bearing on its validity. You' re right, it' s not a coincidence : death is shared by all cultures (and btw so are perception flaws, hallucinations, susceptibility to suggestion, and the desire to believe in an emotionally comfortable answer without a shred of evidence or in spite of it), it doesn' t take being a genius or having a specific culture to realize that death begs a simple alternative : is there some form of afterlife or not ?

 

Yes, that's the other explanations I was thinking of, however I couldn't find the words/was too lazy to put it as eloquently as you did :) Personally, being a Christian, I do believe in the afterlife. or at least in the immortality of the soul. I do not however, know all the different form or paths this could take. One of the reasons I got to thinking about ghosts so much was that if I believe in going to Heaven after you die, is it such a big leap to think that some souls might be trapped here on Earth?

 

Ah, "soul", I don' t like that word lol, it' s got an even blurrier definition than the word ghost (and hasn' t ever been evidenced to exist either). ^^

There were zombies in the bible but I don' t remember any ghost. I think some Christians are uncomfortable with this notion, but I really can' t say whether the bible is compatible with it or not. This reminds me a movie called The Others, you should watch it if you haven' t already (just don' t watch the trailer, the less you know about it the better).

 

I for one do believe but it is just a personal opinion. I love ghosts and haunted places, even though once I get to the haunted place, I start to tremble and still go through it. Haven't seen one yet but I want to.

 

Ish. I belive in ghosts, but I've never really tried to figure out if ghosts are real.
If they are, interesting.

 

I'm extremely obsessed with the paranormal, and yeah, I do, 100% believe in ghosts. I also suspect that my house may be haunted sometimes, but I don't think genuine stuff happen often enough for it to be considered "haunted". I've always wanted to visit a famous haunted spot, but I know the moment I get there I'd want to leave. XD I like scaring myself, until the scaring bit actually happens.

So, there's two unexplainable things that always come to mind whenever I talk to people about the paranormal. The first happened to me when I was four, and two of my cousins were having a sleepover at my house. The youngest was only a year old, and the eldest was four, too. Me and my four year old cousin woke up at about 7am - 8am, but I remember I thought it was later at the time, and that other people were awake. We went downstairs, but as we were on about the third or fourth step from the bottom, we heard a sound like a child playing with a toy, and the sound of glass breaking. It was a bit of a rhythm, the child would play, the glass would break, child would play, glass would break. At first, when I heard the child playing, I thought it was my one year old cousin, and this sound was coming from the kitchen, but then when we looked around the corner (the stairs in my house don't have a banister, there's like this wall when you walk downstairs where a banister would normally be) but when I looked around the banister, about to step off the bottom stair, we realized that there was nobody in the kitchen. At all. The rhythm of a child playing noise, and then the glass breaking went on for five minutes practically, whilst we just stood on the bottom step peeking around, frozen with fear. Then finally, we plucked up the courage to turn the corner. The second we walked into the kitchen, the rhythm just suddenly stopped, as if whatever was in there was just then aware of our presence or something. We searched the entire kitchen, and there was no glass broken, then the scullery (a scullery is a room in the house where plates, glasses, laundry facilities etc are kept, yeah, our house is ooolllddd XD) then the living room, and the entire ground floor of our house but there wasn't a single shard of broken glass anywhere. We were really freaked out, so we ran back upstairs and checked the room where my one year old cousin was sleeping, and she was there. We ran into the landing (um, I'm not sure if that word is still in use, it's the upstairs hallway XD) and I could feel something breathing on my neck. Me and my cousin just ran back into our bedroom after that. We were shaken up. When everyone else woke up later that day, we told them what happened, but as is Murphy's law, nobody believed us and told us it was probably our imagination. >.<

The other thing happened just a few years ago, I was probably between the ages of 9 - 11. This is pretty short, but basically I was sitting on the stairs, reading a book when somebody passed by and I moved on the stairs slightly to let them pass. But as the person passed, I remembered that me, my mom and my sister were the only people in the house, due to the fact that I could hear them talking in another room at the time, and I also realized that the person who passed was wwwaaayyy too quiet compared to the inhabitants of my house.. I snapped my head around to face them and all I saw was something like an alarmingly pale pair of feet leap around the side of the stairs and out of sight.

Apart from that, I lose stuff constantly, and I can specifically remember looking in a certain place, and the thing not being there, but then I'll come back and search the same place later and it's there. Now that I think about it, it could be related to these stuff, but it doesn't really freak me out so I don't consider it a paranormal experience, nor is there any proof saying it's just someone playing a prank on me, so...

 

There's no such thing as ghosts. Unless there is a way to scientifically prove there is, which there isn't, then really, there is no proper evidence in favor of it.

 

I do believe in paranormal phenomia. I myself have been in situations at my old house and that changed my whole perspective on after-life visits or unexplained "hauntings". Really, a ghost is just a person. Except they arent living and are just energy. Demons are a different story, but Im not going that far deep into things.

 

But God doesn't exist.