Ghosts are a figment of the imagination.

[EddieM]

I am pretty sure 99.999% (completely made up stat!) are nothing, probably floaters in your eyes / brain playing tricks on you... but the occasional thing really does seem to defy rational explanation. I'll remain skeptical but keep an open mind, never experienced anything supernatural personally.

 

[JBR]

We both went up and he unlocked the snooker room door and we went in. It was complete darkness but all the balls on the 2 snooker tables were moving by themselves going back and forth.

By coincidence, many years ago I was told of a very similar incident, but this was in an upstairs room of a club in Bradford. Presumably this was not the one to which you refer.

Anyway, that's by the by.

I have heard many stories of occurrences that defy explanation, and here on this thread are several others. My question, and it is a genuine one - I am not pouring scorn, is why have I never experienced anything along these lines?

 

[cajar]

I've read some articles by magicians (derren browns books too) where they say most of the trick takes place in the spectators mind AFTER the trick. ie they saw him lift a pack of cards, and later in their mind the story becomes that he opened a new pack of cards.

Apparently it's how our minds work, we will tell ourselves that it happened differently in order to justify not checking it at the time.

Just as an example Bahco, thinking about it now, you probably would've turned the light on and walked round the table. but you didn't at the time.

In hindsight you may tell yourself that you could clearly see the edges of the table so there was no need to turn the light on.

Then a trick where an assistant was hiding at the edge has just become even better because the spectator assures us he could see all around the table.

 

[Dave54]

Some people just don't seem to see anything. I know several people who have seen things, and several who have never seen anything. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it.
The other thing is that I've seen stuff there was an explanation for. A long time ago I was working in a steelworks which was reputedly haunted by the ghost of a past manager. People had claimed to see him around the place after his death. Anyway I was there on maintenance one weekend morning at 6 am.
Can't remember exactly why I was on my own, but it was only a small place, and for some reason I'd ended up on my Jack that morning. Anyway I was doing the stuff I had to do, and kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. it started to get to me, somebody looking at me around the coils of steel strip.

Anyway I stood still and watched where I thought I had seen movement. It was the works cats! They look at you around a corner, and then pull back before you properly see them.
Glad to say it wasn't the deceased manager!

 

[jeds]

As a surveyor I've been in some pretty spooky places. I surveyed a shop building in Tewkesbury high street a few years back. The staff said they never go upstairs because of the ghosts and it caused a bit of a stir when I said I was going up. I'm not kidding, they were getting rid of customers just so they could come and watch me walk up the stairs. It was weird but I didn't see or feel anything. In a place in Devises I had to go down a tiny floor hatch into a huge basement area. It seemed to go on forever underneath and no work had ever been carried out down there. Everything was completely original. The strange thing about it was the darkness. Even with a powerful LED torch nothing seemed to light up properly. So I don't mind admitting I was happy to get out but I didn't see or feel anything else.

On the TV programmes I've always wondered why they have to go to places at 3.00am and turn the lights out. Do ghosts not come out during the day or when the lights are on?

 

[JBR]

On the TV programmes I've always wondered why they have to go to places at 3.00am and turn the lights out. Do ghosts not come out during the day or when the lights are on?

I once watched one of them. I've never seen such blatently contrived wide-eyed screaming. Still, I suppose it makes for 'good television'. Needless to say, I have never watched it since.

 

[Brigadier]

I've never seen such blatently contrived wide-eyed screaming.

I believe there is a good line in "special interest, adult" films that also fit that bill

 

[Dave54]

As a surveyor I've been in some pretty spooky places. I surveyed a shop building in Tewkesbury high street a few years back. The staff said they never go upstairs because of the ghosts and it caused a bit of a stir when I said I was going up. I'm not kidding, they were getting rid of customers just so they could come and watch me walk up the stairs. It was weird but I didn't see or feel anything. In a place in Devises I had to go down a tiny floor hatch into a huge basement area. It seemed to go on forever underneath and no work had ever been carried out down there. Everything was completely original. The strange thing about it was the darkness. Even with a powerful LED torch nothing seemed to light up properly. So I don't mind admitting I was happy to get out but I didn't see or feel anything else.

On the TV programmes I've always wondered why they have to go to places at 3.00am and turn the lights out. Do ghosts not come out during the day or when the lights are on?

I did some domestic electrical work when I first came to Cornwall. Like you I've been in some spooky places. One was the roof space of a large 17th Century house which had servants quarters above the "new" 18th C part at the rear, and where the access to the old part of the roof space was through a trapdoor in the floor. The only people who had been there in the last 300 years were the bloke who put the servant's bells in, and the bloke who had wired up the place originally about 40 years earlier. That place also seemed to absorb the light. I had a lead light up there with me, and one of those feeble rubber covered torches. Weird place, and I wasn't sorry to get out of there. I didn't see anything there though.

One funny thing that happened was that I was doing some work on a new build, big (think Southfork big!) bungalow type place. Had to go up in the roof space to look at something. Small access hatch in a dark cupboard. So up I went, did what I had to do, and then went back to the hatch. . . Only it wasn't where I thought it was! I was there on my own, and it took me several minutes to find this bl**dy hatch! I imagined the "ghost" of an electrician, trapped forever in the roof!

 

[Doug99]

I've read some articles by magicians (derren browns books too) where they say most of the trick takes place in the spectators mind AFTER the trick. ie they saw him lift a pack of cards, and later in their mind the story becomes that he opened a new pack of cards.

Apparently it's how our minds work, we will tell ourselves that it happened differently in order to justify not checking it at the time.

Just as an example Bahco, thinking about it now, you probably would've turned the light on and walked round the table. but you didn't at the time.

In hindsight you may tell yourself that you could clearly see the edges of the table so there was no need to turn the light on.

Then a trick where an assistant was hiding at the edge has just become even better because the spectator assures us he could see all around the table.

And at 1230am he probably had a belly of beer as well to scramble his senses.

 

[longdogs]

I have told this story before on GD but here goes....

When I first met my wife, we went to a local pub. It was summer and I was wearing a white shirt. Half way through the evening, I looked down at my arms and I clearly saw a pair of those arm band things men used to wear to keep their sleeves up. I said to my then girlfriend, 'That's weird, I just saw..' and she finished off my sentence, 'Those arm bands that men used to wear.

Further into the evening, I opened a pack of cigs and we had one each (could smoke in pubs then) but after that we never ever found the rest, looked everywhere for them but they had just disappeared. No one had cleared the table or were even sitting near us.

As we were leaving, she went to the loo and I was looking at the photos etc on the wall and there was a sign saying that things often go missing in the bar since it had been renovated a few years back.

A strange evening.

 

[tony1851]

Just a general question which doesn't really seem to have been addressed:

Is it possible that ghosts and other psychic phenomena can only be observed
by a very small minority of people who are so attuned?
It is not good science to state that just because the majority of us don't experience these things, then they don't exist.

 

[cajar]

suppose it's possible yes, but other possibility is that they're just making up stories.

 

[Grenage]

Put five 'attuned' people who have never met, in a 'haunted' room where they can't speak. If they all give the same story to the letter, they would have a hope of convincing most of us. Even then, I'd be heavily sceptical.

 

[longdogs]

Although I am open minded to it, I just think that with all of today's technology, cameras, I phones etc, surely someone would have proven it by now

 

[JBR]

One thing that fuels my scepticism is that every picture of a reputed 'ghost' seems, by pure coincidence I'm sure, to be grainy and out of focus.