What is actually being seen when someone sees a ghost?

[Sojo]

I've always wondered what someone is actually seeing if they see a ghost?

Human vision is only capable of seeing things in a limited number of ways.

Are people who see a ghost simply hallucinating? (Even if multiple people see it.)

Are ghosts some kind of actual material that can reflect light to the human eye?

Are ghosts themselves some kind of light source or have a light source attached to them?

Are people viewing through some kind of space/time anomaly that allows them to see into another time or dimension?

Seems to me it would have to be one of the above (or perhaps a combination).

Anyone think it is one of these, or is there another aspect I can't think of?

Sojo

[Piney]

I always wondered if a subconscious thoughtform could take a life of it's own. 

[Silver]

There is a town in Wales where a soldier was seen by several people walking home from the railway station (during WW1). People who didn't actually know him were able to give an accurate description of him later. He never reached his home, he had in fact died in France about the time he was seen.

Edited June 12, 2022 by The Silver Shroud

[Duke Wellington]

28 minutes ago, Sojo said:

I've always wondered what someone is actually seeing if they see a ghost?

Human vision is only capable of seeing things in a limited number of ways.

Are people who see a ghost simply hallucinating? (Even if multiple people see it.)

Are ghosts some kind of actual material that can reflect light to the human eye?

Are ghosts themselves some kind of light source or have a light source attached to them?

Are people viewing through some kind of space/time anomaly that allows them to see into another time or dimension?

Seems to me it would have to be one of the above (or perhaps a combination).

Anyone think it is one of these, or is there another aspect I can't think of?

Sojo

I think shadow people are real.

They appear black but are semi-transparent so we can see through them. That indicates to me that whatever they are made from only partially interacts with the electro-magnetic spectrum.

That indicates to me their form is partially made out of atoms. Or some exotic unknown matter that only partially interacts with EM radiation.

[Sojo]

5 minutes ago, Piney said:

I always wondered if a subconscious thoughtform could take a life of it's own. 

I think this is considered to be a Tulpa generated from the mind of an individual. If such were possible, perhaps this could explain some sightings.

[XenoFish]

27 minutes ago, Sojo said:

I think this is considered to be a Tulpa generated from the mind of an individual. If such were possible, perhaps this could explain some sightings.

The idea of a place being haunted can spread memetically. 

A tulpa takes years of cultivation to create. 

https://selfdefinition.org/tibetan/tulpa-creation/alexandra-david-neel-comments.htm

http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/1929-pre-alexandra-david-neel-and-tulpas-tibet

(I don't understand why this comment is "funny".)

Edited June 12, 2022 by XenoFish

[Sojo]

32 minutes ago, The Silver Shroud said:

There is a town in Wales where a soldier was seen by several people walking home from the railway station (during WW1). People who didn't actually know him were able to give an accurate description of him later. He never reached his home, he had in fact died in France about the time he was seen.

Hmmm, I wonder if in this dimension he did die, but in another dimension he lived and made it home, and this is what the people were viewing into.

[Abramelin]

4 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

A tulpa takes years of cultivation to create. 

Bwahaha! At first I thought, "what has cultivating goddmn tulips (Dutch: tulp) got to with seeing ghosts??"

Sorry, please carry on.

[Knob Oddy]

I think that if you can photograph it, there must be something reflecting light. 

Not that I've seen many photos of ghosts..

[Knob Oddy]

9 minutes ago, Sojo said:

Hmmm, I wonder if in this dimension he did die, but in another dimension he lived and made it home, and this is what the people were viewing into.

Or the common myth that peoples spirit travels to their home or loved ones when they die. I've heard hundreds of stories, some on this site, of people smelling perfume that loved ones wear when they died thousands of miles away. Or some variation of visitation at time of death

 

[acute]

I think it depends on how much energy they can take from the local environment at the time.

It's why lamps will dim, candlelight will be reduced, batteries in tech devices will be drained, and ambient areas feel colder than they should.

In my experience, ghosts start to manifest as an orb, then a kind of flying veil, then a translucent shape, then a full-body (solid) apparition.

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by acute

[Knob Oddy]

2 minutes ago, acute said:

 

In my experience, ghosts start to manifest as an orb, then a kind of flying veil, then a translucent shape, then a full-body apparition.

Wow. How long did the whole process take?

I've never seen any of that, but I did have an unexplainable event happen to me when working in an old church that freaked me out so much that I left in a rush.

[stereologist]

One of the comments I have responded to in these threads about ghosts is the idea that they materialize or become matter.

The reverse process is at times an atomic bomb. The devastation of Hiroshima occurred when about 1/3 the mass of a US dime was transformed into energy. A ghost materializing would be a significant fraction of the reverse of a Hiroshima explosion. Remember that part of that explosion at Hiroshima went out and up and did not damage the city.

I am reminded that people feel cold wen a ghost is around. A reverse Hiroshima would freeze the air and the land around for a huge distance as it created the matter to be barely visible. Maybe an area in excess of 10km would become frozen including the air. That would barely make the ghost visible if it were materializing. When the ghost disappears, dematerializes, off goes a Hiroshima sized event.

[acute]

12 minutes ago, Hugh Mungus said:

How long did the whole process take?

I believe it's totally dependent on the energy they can collect to use.

It's not easy for them to create a full-body manifestation, but I have seen three of them so far.

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by acute
Oops! It's 3 not 2.

[Knob Oddy]

1 hour ago, The Silver Shroud said:

There is a town in Wales where a soldier was seen by several people walking home from the railway station (during WW1). People who didn't actually know him were able to give an accurate description of him later. He never reached his home, he had in fact died in France about the time he was seen.

I tried a Google search but couldn't find anything. Do you have any names/places I could search to make it easier to find? Or could you post a link? 

The story sound fascinating 

[Silver]

41 minutes ago, Hugh Mungus said:

I tried a Google search but couldn't find anything. Do you have any names/places I could search to make it easier to find? Or could you post a link? 

The story sound fascinating 

I will ask my mother. I lived in Wales until I was 20 years old, they are mostly Methodist, though nominally CofE. There is amongst some a belief in the Devil and demons and the afterlife.Belief of speaking in tongues, kettles seen lifting from hobs (poltergeists), and visitations from the dead are not openly spoken of but are not unknown. My father believed (because he was told by her) that one night his mother heard  knocking on her bedroom window and her husband calling "Martha, Martha" (her name). He was another who did not return from France and that happened in his last battle. The soldier trying to return home was in the Rhondda Valley. Personally, I am a sceptic, really, though I do have some beliefs of my own. 

Edited June 12, 2022 by The Silver Shroud

[Occupational Hubris]

Your brain is a complex biological machine made of lipids and various proteins that has no direct contact with the outside world. It relies on sensor input from other organs to craft a picture of what it thinks the world should (it thinks) look like. These inputs aren't always correct and aren't always interpreted the correct way. 

[kingsway]

i saw a shadow person a long time ago it was gone in 6 secs i must of been seeing things

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

Honestly - I know it’s been debunked but I’m a fan of the Stone Tape effect.

[jethrofloyd]

I don't know anyone who has ever seen a ghost. Not even when they were drunk.

[L.A.T.1961]

Its an interesting topic for speculation.

Is the universe set up to generate the world around us? if so what controls things we see?

Is intelligence capable of taking over the system, whether its natural or artificial.

Is the system a way of creating things without instrumentality, also a plot line from the Forbidden Planet. 

An intelligence could bypass an industrial revolution and go straight to a highly functioning civilization if this was available to them.

Are humans able to control this if only in a crude fashion and is it humans causing the system to create random events that fall outside of the everyday?

Perhaps we should not think of ghosts and ufo's as separate phenomena, but created by the same, built in, universe wide system?

 

[papageorge1]

18 hours ago, Sojo said:

 

Anyone think it is one of these, or is there another aspect I can't think of?

I think they can be different things.

Residual hauntings are energy play back of past events that can briefly be viewed by the physical eyes.  These are not intelligent and do not interact with the current environment. I would say this is a type of emotional energy that takes a memory form but in a way not yet understood by science.

In the case of intelligent ghosts that can interact with the current environment I believe we are using our physical vision to see a temporary 'materialization'. Often this requires the ghost to draw physical energy from the environment (leave cold spots, drain batteries, etcetera) to produce a physical form that can be cloudy and indistinctive to very well formed recognizable ghost forms. This is another process not understood by science but I believe it originates from efforts from the etheric plane of nature which is outside our familiar physical plane.

A third type of ghost can telepathically appear to one or more people and are not being perceived through the physical eyes. This involves the mental plane of nature also not yet understood by science.

[papageorge1]

18 hours ago, XenoFish said:

 

A tulpa takes years of cultivation to create. 

 

Interesting that you believe in tulpa which is well outside of our materialist understanding of reality.

[XenoFish]

14 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

Interesting that you believe in tulpa which is well outside of our materialist understanding of reality.

Not really. They're well cultivated figments of them imagination. To the point of being or becoming an auditory and/or visual hallucination. 

[papageorge1]

17 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Not really. They're well cultivated figments of them imagination. To the point of being or becoming an auditory and/or visual hallucination. 

According to Wikipedia: Tulpa is a concept in Theosophy, mysticism, and the paranormal, of an object or being that is created through spiritual or mental powers. Modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent.

It seems to me they are talking about creating an object or being and suggesting that is something more than a hallucination. Especially so when it mentions 'sentient and relatively independent'.

Edited June 13, 2022 by papageorge1