A friend and I are arguing over ghosts.
I think it’s akin to astrology, homeopathy and palm reading. He says there’s “convincing “ evidence for its existence. He also took up company time to make a meme to illustrate our relative positions. (See image)
(To be fair, I’m also on the clock right now)
What do you think?
If ghosts were real, then I can think of a few people throughout history who would have been swarmed by them. Adolf Hitler would have approximately 13 million spirits haunting him by the end. Something like 100,000,000,000 humans have ever lived, and somehow all the ghosts are from culturally relevant time frames? For all the US civil war ghosts people have seen, you’d think there’d be orders of magnitude more native Americans haunting this place. Did the European colonists just make sure to let the Indigenous peoples finish all their business before hunting them to near extinction?
We have built systems that have detected:
- Black holes which collided 2000000000 lightyears away
- single photons
- neutrinos, particles that can pass through lightyears of lead
- concentrations of chemicals rated in picograms (0.000000000001g) per litre
- vibrations rated at 1/1000000 of a g
We have come into a world where people carry around, nearly 24/7, devices capable of recording high definition video, measuring variances in light, magnetism, vibration, storing time correlated data and even processing over it with enough proficiency to put digital bunny ears or makeup on you in real time.
Despite all this, we have no evidence and no mechanism by which we even might expect ghosts could exist. It’s reasonable to say you can’t be 100% certain they don’t exist, but it is also wildly unreasonable to say they do.
I believe in it, but only because things have occurred to me that cannot be explained by science.
And even those that have occurred to me I doubt some of, but those that happened to me and those with me simultaneously? That I have a harder time explaining.
Just 2 examples I can think of, out of multiple:
Tap for spoiler
First was my computer turning on at night (this was awhile back and that old computer was loud and had a bright blue power light). The first night it didn’t scare me - I thought maybe the power tripped or something and that somehow turned on the computer (it was connected to a power strip with a fuse switch to protect it from surges). I turned off the power strip switch and just went back to sleep. I would just turn it back on in the morning.
Second night, it happened again. Woke up to it on. Thought maybe Windows had a virus or something (Windows 7 at the time, upgraded recently from Vista) and maybe it wasn’t actually shutting down. Just turned it back off. Next day, take a look, can’t find any malware, shrug.
Third night, again. Same routine. Except, the monitor was on standby this time too. Just told myself I probably just forgot to switch off the monitor, even though it has a bright orange light that is on when on standby. Thing about me is even as a preteen, I had difficulty sleeping with any lights on. But still, maybe somehow missed it. Next day I reinstall Windows cleanly.
4th night, same routine. Monitor was also on again. A little eerie but maybe just forgot again.
5th night, same. Except, when I go turn off the power strip switch, I noticed something I had momentarily forgot: I had completely unplugged the power strip to the wall. There was no power running through it. Yet both it and the monitor were powered on.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s very reasonable at that point in time, to start freaking out a bit, because while my knowledge of physics at 13 wasn’t that great, even to this day I don’t know how a computer and monitor can stay on without being connected to a power source, much less turn on in the first place.
I did not sleep there that night. But, the next morning, I did investigate. Everything was off by then. I tried pressing the power switches on the computer and monitor. Nothing. The power strip was indeed still disconnected. I even opened up the computer in case someone somehow in my household where only I was tech savvy or the government put a battery inside to remotely turn it on for some reason. Nothing, hardware was normal. I convinced myself I must’ve been dreaming. I turned the monitor screen to face the wall though anyway.
Except it happened again on the 6th night. And this time the screen wasn’t on standby but on. How did I know? Not only was it emitting a grey light onto the wall it was facing, but the switch light was green. You had to press a button to turn on that monitor. And I had not plugged that computer back. It still had no power.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t brave enough to turn the monitor around and see what was on the screen. Maybe you would, but again, I had, at that point, other experiences happen to me in the past. This one just had more physical proof.
I did, however, go wake up my dad and asked if he saw that the computer was on. He did indeed see it was on. Therefore, I now know I’m not just dreaming it. I told him to go unplug it, since he didn’t know it was already unplugged, just to be sure. He went, froze, and said it’s not plugged in. He thought I was messing with him, I told him no, this has been happening and in wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me seeing this. We exited the room.
Next day we got rid of the computer, and I got a new one.
Tap for spoiler
This other example is much shorter, but basically me, my aunt, mom, and 2 cousins were celebrating my cousins birthday. His birthday, coincidentally btw, is on Halloween. After he blew out the candles on the cake the lights began to flicker, and a glass statuette of an angel my aunt had on a shelf flew at us and cut his sister on the face as it exploded against the wall. Then the lights turned off only in the dining room and kitchen. There was a pale woman suddenly in the kitchen wearing a black dress with red high heels, brown hair, and a yellow flower pinned on her dress we all saw and confirmed with each other later. The lights then turned back on.
They are not the type to play that kind of prank. After that happened, me and my cousins on 3 said at the same time what we saw. My aunt and mom said they saw the same thing. This I also cannot explain. It’d be one thing if we said different things, but we didn’t.
With all that said, despite everything that’s happened to me, ironically I’ll be the biggest skeptic you’ll meet when something strange does happen, or when watching those ghost videos or such. I think the grand majority of ghostly sightings are probably just hypnogogic hallucinations. I think the huge majority of online videos and photos are faked, and explain how they can be faked easily (helps that I worked in one of those Halloween houses setting things up).
I don’t think belief in the paranormal is by default irrationality, and I personally cannot state that without being a hypocrite after what has happened to me. I think belief without skepticism is, however, irrational. If anything, my experiences pushed me heavily into the sciences growing, looking for possible explanations for them.
And therefore to me, it is only logical for someone who has not experienced something unexplainable in any possible way to by default doubt the paranormal. That should be the default. Everyone should be a skeptic until it happens to you.
But it’s also left me pondering - how do you, rationally, test for these things? If they are actually uncommon - the true paranormal events without explanation - how would you go about setting up an experiment? Nevermind getting enough samples to test for - most of these things just happen suddenly. A lot of events that are actually unexplainable happen without warning, with no ability to control when it might occur. And that’s before adding in that some of these things might have the possibility of human level intelligence and/or be malicious.
I think something is occurring in regards to the paranormal events. I just don’t think we have the technology yet to figure out what. Sure for now we have names like ghosts and ghouls and so on. But maybe eventually in the future we’ll be able to explain the things even better - particularly the ones without current explanation I’m referring to - and then it’ll just be another thing, much like miasma simply became bacteria and viruses and so on
The bar for “convincing” is very low when you want to believe.
Dude just thinks he’s special. There would be ANY evidence by now. The superiority of the meme is laughable. Your friend is a fool.
From my perspective, ghosts are basically the result of…
- Delirium / psychosis or similar mental illness.
- Attention seeking.
- People attempting to explain something they saw/heard/experienced but don’t understand and aren’t open minded or curious enough to explore real answers to.
/3. Infrasound
ghosts are like religion: can neither be proven nor disprofen. what do you even consider a ghost? i do faintly believe in spirits:
when i am sitting at the grave of my grandfather, it does feel as he is around somehow. is that because i miss him and wish he is still with us? likely…
a friend of mine recently lost her father. they are both accomplished mountaineers. on a solo tour, she told me, she heared her father’s voice reminding her to be careful - while not paying attention during a dangerous passage. was it her father reaching out? was it her subconsciousness taking the persona of the father? we will never know…
in the end it doesn’t matter in the slightest, what these feelings of ghosts or spirits really are. if our ancestors keep watching out for us, that is great. if our subconsciousness keeps watching out for us, while taking on different personas, that is great. life goes on the same - even if it all was just imagination.
Isn’t it irrational to believe in things that cannot be proven or disproven?
The second example kind of feels like the Third Man Factor.
Ghosts are fun to think about and make good stories, but there’s never been one bit of reliable evidence. So no it’s not reasonable to believe in something that isn’t real.
If you ever watch the video of Karl Sagan describing what the fourth dimension is, that is a slight possibility for explaining poltergeist ghosts, possibly even alien abductions.
There is no reliable scientific proof. Thread/post end.
Nope. All “evidence” is fake. For example pretty much all UFO vids disappeared once 4k cameras got invented
If you’re willing to extend belief beyond what can be proven through science, sure.
What do I think?
I think anyone who claims to know and understand every aspect of the world as it truly is resides at the top of Mt. Stupid on the Dunning-Kruger graph (yes, I know it’s a disproved theory, but it’s still a useful descriptor of the way some people behave).
I also think anyone who believes in phenomena with little to know evidence can never actually end up on the right side of the bell curve meme (a curve that is also the result of faulty science, but still illustrative of some humans’ experiences).
I also think that terms like “ghost” or “magic” or “miracle” have so many connotations and interpretations, that it’s easy for miscommunication to happen if people don’t spell out exactly what they mean when talking about them.
I think ghosts are real in the sense that I believe people experience things they can’t explain, and so resort to blaming invisible sentiences, and I believe those experiences are real; I have many doubts over their explanations of those experiences.
I also think that anyone who enters into a discussion holding my stance, but framing it as “ghosts are real,” is looking more to start an argument than have an actual meaningful discussion.
I think ghosts are real in the sense that I believe people experience things they can’t explain, and so resort to blaming invisible sentiences, and I believe those experiences are real;
So my ex wife left me because she’s a ghost. Got it. /s
2 of 5 Americans believe in ghosts.
2 of 5 Amercians still support Donald Trump.
See this Venn diagram
You could ask him where he sees himself on that chart and what evidence he has that it’s not on the left side?
We have countless reports but no actual confirmed evidence. Nothing that constitutes proof.
You also have to wonder, where are all the billions of ghosts, both people and animals? We’d be seeing them everywhere.
And how far in the animal kingdom do ghosts go? People have reported ghost dogs, horses, cats, apes, chickens, bears. Do we get ghost mice, spiders, rabbits, whales? If not, why?
Ghost sharks, they could have been anywhere when they were alive.
Given that sharks are older than trees, and the ocean levels were much higher for millennia, you’d certainly expect to see shark ghosts swimming along 30 feet in the air.
Not to mention dinosaur ghosts. Those bastards were here for millions of years, and they were numerous. I’d expect the odd Ankylosaurus or Triceratops sighting.
