I am not trying to convince myself of anything. I used to work in a haunted building, and some very scary stuff happened there. Trust me, I would rather not have had these experiences. It was especially bad when I had to be there by myself at night. Loud noises, human shaped reflections in the tv, etc. I used to wish that when I went to work that it would be completely uneventful. I am just happy that I don't work there anymore.

I think that I must be sensitive to ghosts (I find that females are more sensitive than males).

this is by no means proof of anything except to yourself, for instance should you tell me that you see/hear/feel the presence of a 'spirit' and I do not.. how do i know whether its true... Im NOT saying you are or would lie about such a thing but I can no more prove you are not experiencing these sensations than you can prove you are.

Also, you say you smell roses from time to time, my guess is that someone you were connected to has some link with roses and occasionally you catch or dare i suggest imagine you smell a scent and automatically link that scent to roses and hence to this person you knew.. but i dare say if i took six boxes and six flowers and placed a flower in each box, closed it and left a hole just big enough for you to smell the scent of each flower you would struggle to identify which box contained the rose.

Fisrt of, no-one is suggesting your lying, you may well believe that what you are experiencing is very real indeed, however, that does not make it real.
The human senses are extremely easy to fool and the sensations you describe could be caused by a whole host of reasons.
Why you consider it more logical to believe that these things are caused by dead people and not something more mundane such as EMF amazes me.
Secondly, you say "But ghosts are real, like it or not", yet you offer nothing more than your 'say so' to back up this statement.
If only it was that easy, we wouldnt need paranormal forums or investigations/research, sadly however, in the real world things are NOT always what they seem.

Moving on to haunted-one

I dont know how much you know about paranormal research but this very thing has been done to death...
There have been countless experiments and tests carried out on this subject and to date NO-ONE has been able to demonstrate under controlled scientific conditions that they have any pyschic ability whatsoever.

Sams turn

Ahhh, the old friend of a friend of a friend routine.
two things wrong with this Sam..... firstly its anecdotal which i have already explained is useless as proof

secondly, "so in reality beleives that his mate saw something", are we to accept what is tantamount to hear say as 'proof' ???

and last but not least Kismit,

As you rightly point out, this pic does not support the existence of ghosts.
The watermark/image could have a host of causes... the least of which may be to do with spirits.
In todays technological age photographs are very easily manipulated and may be altered to portray a host of things....
The one good thing here is that you say its on a 'normal' camera.
That being the case we can then look at the negative and should it show the same anomaly we can rule out, MS paint and a host of other photo software.
This in itself does not make it more likely to have a 'paranormal' explanation but does rule out one kind of possible cause.
Photo software is one reason why digital photography is completely useless in gathering photographic evidence for spirits/ghosts.

Anyway, its way to warm tonight to do any kind of serious thinking, my brain is starting to melt.....

Its nights like these that i wish i didnt have all this fur

Teddy. xxx

I believe spirits do exist, based some-what on what is said above, and also on my personal encounters. I don't know what you mean by ghosts, but ghost and spirits are pretty much the same thing to me. This theory would explain why mostly spirits who haunt things (and make themselves "visible" to us), usually have had something traumatic happen or maybe a very emotionally charged life.

I am sure a lot of people believe in spirits because they want something to believe in, something mysterious, maybe even an after-life. But have never experienced anything to make them believe in ghosts/paranormal.
And i am also a lot of believe do not want to believe what they cannot see. These are the skeptics, and appropriately so.

I mean there are people who will argue with any theory, idea, many people do not believe in evolution (which is widely accepted), but would rather believe in an ethereal entity "creating us". Sometimes what people believe in doesnt make much sense....

Yes they do exist in my opinion....

This is true but all to often we forget that the scientific comunity is made up of thousands of individuals . As you well pointed out some have easily bruised egos , but others are willing to understand a mistake is a mistake and something we should learn from . Steven Hawkings recent re-think on the inner workings of the black hole is an excellent example of an individual with enough intelligence to understand we can't allways be right . And we can re-adjust our way of thinking as new theories come into play .

There are many scientists who do believe in the paranormal and many even who experience it themselves as individuals . I've posted this site several times before but it's worth doing it again ..T.A.S.T.E.

I think that the problem with most studies which engage the topic of spirit /ghosts / dis-corperals is that they try to create a blanket answer for all ghostly phenomena .
A crisis apparition for instance as far as I know has no scientific explanation however it is constantly blanketed under EMF theories . Enity experiences are often diagnosed as sleep parallisis , but are they all. And more importantly it should not be used as a way of explaining all paranormal experiences , with the matter of fact case closed attitude which sometimes rears it's head . In my opinion that is .

The watermark remark was for Teddy , the photo which I posted in the gallery is just a watermark on a headstone . However it's still a pretty spooky picture , don't you think ?

First off, I am sorry to hear of your loss.
Secondly, Nowhere in my posts have I stated that science is perfect.
mistakes are made day in day out, we all make mistakes and scientists are no different from the rest of us.
Nor is science as black and white as you are trying to paint, with the emergence of new data theories change constantly.
Now while I accept that science is not perfect, it is the best we have.

I'm not trying to be a sh*t, but I was just wondering two things....

I dont believe in Daleks, should I stop watching Doctor Who?

And why do you presume I havent 'experienced' anything?? I actively investigate 'paranormal' phenomenon and have encountered one or two things that i simply cannot explain. But just because I have no explanation for them does not add any weight to the argument that they were caused by ghosts/spirits. For now they simply remain unexplainable.

You are quite right, I DONT believe in ghosts but Button does

Teddy. xxx

Whitegreyhat,

Einstein may have said that energy cannot be destroyed, what he didnt say was that it changed into some form of intelligent entity that could interact with this world.

I have seen many believers flaunt this statement by Einstein as if it were some kind of endorsement of life after death, I'm afraid it is no such thing.

When one energy changes into another it is usually a lower form of energy such as heat, not one that can walk through walls and go BOO! at Halloween parties.

Here is a quote from Einstein on life after death that I have yet to see a believer post ANYWHERE!, Cant think why though

Looks to me like dear ol Albert doesnt believe in the same 'energy' theory that you do and it was idea to begin with to.

Teddy.

em, why is this useless? might be for you but isn't to me or to my partner who as i explained before was a non beleiver as was his freind until he expereinced this unexplainable occurance. it has helped him to realise that people like ourselves, that do accept that there is more to death then just rotting away in a coffin, are not just a bunch of loonie toons

i'm not even trying to proof what they saw was paranormal but there is no other explaination for what his work colleague saw. besides its well known that the castle they work is haunted, and not just to the locals. but what his freind saw was not the usual ghost that is said to haunt the castle but another unknown spirit which i can't wait to do some research on and see if i can come up with an explaination as to why it was seen where it was.
i don't expect others to beleive me but then again would i beleive you?

bb sam

As I explained before, anecdotal evidence is unreliable and all to often biased.
Your partners friend may well be the most honest person in the world and may 100% believe in what he saw but that DOESNT make it real.
And for your partner to simply change his beliefs on someone elses hear say is almost laughable..... are you sure he was skeptical to begin??

Why is there no other explaination for what he saw?? What other explainations have you even considered for that matter?? And the castle where they work is allegedly 'haunted' since there is still NO PROOF that ghosts exist at all.

Teddy.

I didnt say it was entirely usless, i said it was useless as proof, which is not the same thing.
It may well indicate that something is going on, but 'something going on' hardly justifies a belief in ghosts. That 'something' which includes visual experiences may very well be caused by something more mundane like infra sound or EMF, both of which have been proven to cause the same

I have never stated that comfort was the 'only' reason, though sadly it is a factor whether you like it or not.
Many people who believe they have had a visit from a deceased loved one do in fact draw comfort from it.
The see it as a way of letting them know they are ok.
Personally I see that as a way of avoiding dealing with the reality of death as the final ending.
Obviously, Not all claimed sightings or experiences will have this result and many people are left traumatised by their experiences but again this in itself is NOT proof of ghosts/spirits or any kind of afterlife.

i dont know where you get your logic from but even if Roy and Robinson are right that cold reading cannot always be taken into account, it hardly means that ESP is any more likely the cause than perhaps a good guess.
One thing we have to remember is that as much as mediums may get things wrong, due to the law of averages there will be times when they get it right.
Derron Brown, Mark Edwards (no relation to John) and others have demonstrated many times that they can replicate what mediums do, without any psychic powers.

When dealing with ESP its comes to down a single thing, Either people can read other people's minds, or they can't. Science has more than adequately demonstrated that they can't. That's the end of the story. And being a holist instead of a reductionist, being related to psychics, or reading or hearing about weird things that happen to people, does not change this simple scientific fact.

Jim Holt in the New York Times (Circa April 2004) offers this calulation which you may find interesting.

"Have you ever had a premonition? Did you once have, say, a passing thought about an uncle, only to receive a phone call five minutes later informing you that the beloved relative had suddenly dropped dead? If so, this probably struck you as eerie. You might have vaguely believed it was ESP. Was it? Let's see.

Suppose you know of 10 people who die each year. Furthermore, suppose you think of each of them once annually. There are 105,120 five-minute intervals in a year. A simple probability calculation shows that there is a 10 in 105,120 likelihood that you will, as a matter of chance, have a thought about one of these people in the five minutes before you hear of his death. Multiply this likelihood by the population of the U.S. (about a quarter of a billion people) and you find that roughly 25,000 people each year--about 70 a day -- will have a "psychic" experience of this sort. In fact, it's just pure coincidence."

Teddy.

do you know what love i can't be bothered with explaining things to you, its obvious you only come on here to belittle people, so you carry on. i'm not interested.

And I never offered it as proof, I offered it as indicative of something to be looked at not dismissed out of hand. The effects that Infra sound and EMF have been proven to cause are weak at best and nowhere near as significant as many experiences reported and even taking this statement as fact could well indicate that this is the medium through which a paranormal reality operates, so this proof is mere speculation masquerading as case solved. It would seem the more rigorous standard skeptics demand for claims of a paranormal nature should be working both ways.

And I never claimed skepiticism was in any way influenced by wanting to believe in a particular world veiw, although sadly that too can be a factor whether you like it or not.

Is that such a bad thing if that's their way to come to terms with the finality of death then so be it, and who takes it upon themselves to tell people how they should react or make sense of a personal tragedy, not me would you?

Hmm, the logic being that if cold reading has been satisfactorily eliminated then either the persons claims of taliking to spirits are true or the information has been gleaned by some form of ESP, good guess work hardly brings about hits well above chance, that's grasping at straws and hardly scientific. Derren Brown etc use recognised methods such as directing the individual, hypnosis and pre selection of the test subject, all of which have been eliminated during investigations of the above, even bringing in magicians to oversee tests to ensure these tricks cannot be used. There are quite a few members of the magic circle who testify to the reality of paranormal phenomona BTW.

Good now we're getting somewhere, the possibilty of ESP stands at 50/50, unfortunately science has failed to prove, adequately or otherwise, that it doesn't exist, merely offered alternatives, such as the above article you offered, again see Winston Wu's Debunking Common Skeptical Arguments as to the amount of rigorous testing done that has come out favourably on the side of ESP.

Awwwwwwwwwww.............................

How cute is that????????????

Hammy x x x

What makes you think it's only at night? That seems to be the most active time, by far, but I've seen plenty of things that I'd rather forget DURING THE DAY. Also, it is possible that these things prefer darkness. Or, it's possible that if they spend more of their time being observed in more well-lit areas during the day:

1) people may be less afraid, thereby giving off less energy for them to feed off of

or

2) more people might be believed about their experiences if they couldn't be discounted as easily as being just shadows in the dark, imagination, what-have-you, thereby being more likely to seek help in ridding their home of the nasty things. They wouldn't want THAT, would they?

Also, I like the way you just assume that everyone who claims to have had an encounter is just automatically someone who WANTS to think that they exist. You obviously don't understand the difference between an EXPERIENCE and a WANT. It's for sure that they DON'T HAVE TO go hand-in-hand! I have NEVER WANTED to experience what I have. As far as being only in old buildings....no, and they don't even have to be in places where people have died. They can probably go where they want to, just like the living. As far as being in malls.....maybe someone out there has seen one at a mall, or maybe they get more enjoyment (energy) from scaring someone alone, or in a smaller group of people?

It's easy for you to assume something doesn't exist because you've been lucky enough to not encounter it (I assume you haven't). I won't even touch the whole scientific arena on this with you, as I already have with Hammy's Teddy (and at least he argues his point). I will, however, wish for you an experience like mine in your near future.....it would then be interesting to hear if your opinion has changed. You'll probably pee your pants, though!

Thank you for sharing that, and I am so glad to hear you have only experienced the "nice" ghosts, the wanted kind of visits. I am very sorry to hear about your mother, but having the "gift", or "sensitivity", (as some people call it) does feel more like a gift when you can pick up on a loved one being nearby. It feels more like a curse when it's of another nature. I don't experience those obvious "visits" from my mother as often as I'd like, but it's priceless when it does happen. None of my siblings have ever had a visit (that they know of?).

Out of curiosity, do you have brothers or sisters? If so, have they ever told you of any visits? Or are you the only child in your family able to do this? Has your mother been gone for long?

According to her, they are just like any humans...some are normal looking, some are disfigured, some are adults, some are children. They dont "say" anything per se. She has lived with afew. Some just go about doing their things, some just stares and some can be irriatating meaning, they go around, disturbing eg pushing, turning on tv etc. For her, she is so used to it...even if she sees one next to ppl, she will just let it be.

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the effects caused by infra-sound/EMF are in fact weak, they are nonetheless real and therefore need to be tested for and ruled out. On that basis, how can you judge just how significant an experience is if you have failed to do this?

Just to be clear here, are you suggesting that ghosts/spirits maybe using Infra sound/EMF as a means of communicating or letting us know they are there??
If so I'd be very interested in reading exactly how you propose to validate this theory?

I dont dispute this, but i thought we were talking about ghosts not scepticism. The thread asks if there is reason to believe that ghosts exist, perhaps you'd care to address the point being asked?

Death is the one thing in life we can be 100% sure of, i dont think it does anyone any good to pretend theres something after we pop our clogs. You dont mend a broken heart by pretending its not broken in the first place.

And that makes them right does it?? Many people believe in ESP simply because they lack an understanding of confirmation bias, The law of truely large numbers, subjective validation and a host of other varibles.

Let us set the record straight here, science has NEVER tried to prove that ESP doesnt exist. You simply CANNOT prove that something doesnt exist. What science has been trying to do is produce evidence that ESP DOES exist, it is in this that it has consistently FAILED.

As to Mr Wu, he quotes The Ganzfield experiments as evidence of ESP, a recent metanalysis of the Ganzfield studies has shown that there is no consistent evidence for the existence of ESP (psi), in fact in just about all his arguments Mr Wu quotes studies that have time and time again been found to be frought with fraud, error, incompetence, and statistical legerdemain.

Teddy.

Well they continue to be tested, see recent post about dodgy wiring on this forum, and also Dr Persingers continued experiments, still all the tests have indicated so far are vague effects not significant in terms of encounters worldwide. I don't use this as an argument that ghosts are real, I use it to point out this possibility amongst others has not yet been ruled out.

Put simply the theory goes that EMF may be the means through which paranormal events can manifest, either by altering states of consciousness in the brain thus making the experiencer succeptible to accessing other realitites, or else EMF effects may act as a trigger in certain environments to release stored images of past events ie, recording type ghosts. One thing 'the EMF all in the mind' hypothosis does not account for is how different witnesses can see the same apparition over long periods of time often without knowledge of any stories or legends surrounding such sightings. Again only a theory but no less valid than any other at this present time.

And I responded in kind to your comment that a need to believe in a certain world view can bias our conclusions and pointed out the problem can work both ways, which I think is pertinent to the subject at hand. I'm sure you knew what I meant any way so...

Well that's your opinion, albeit a pretty arrogant one. We'll have to agree to differ.

Which is why a fair proportion of scientists continue to study and investigate the phenomona is it. How long do you continue study of something before you decide it's wrong. Or are the only ones interested scientists and researchers who fail to understand things like variables, subjective validation and confirmation bias.

The forces of scientism consistantly claims there is no such thing as ESP, that is a claim that needs backing up with proof. A scientist will say there is no hard evidence or proof of ESP if that is what is found, unfortunately the former has so tainted the latter that a clear picture of what might or might not be is consistently muddied, it's not only bleevers who need to get their house in order.