Do you believe in ghosts?
 

Guys, as some people may know, I've recently moved house and me and my new flatmates think we've got a ghost!

First off random socks and tights have gone missing without a trace from the washer. Then today things got weirder, my flatmate told me that a pair of knickers had appeared in her washing and they don't belong to any of us! It's all very strange. Added to this, our fridge makes a weird moo-ing sound.

Anyways, the longer we stay here the more strange stuff is happening. Last week one of our bins went missing, only to be returned 3 days later.

Yesterday (I wasn't in, but am reliably told by my flatmates and the builder that was here) the back door of my car which was nicely parked and very definitely locked in front of the house was wide open when it had been shut literally 5 minutes before. I've checked everything and there's not a mark on it, and nothing, not even my stash of rolos has gone missing...

Lastly, the final straw is that our doorbell keeps randomly ringing and when we go and check there's no-one there. It's all a bit freaky.

Now, I'm sure there's logical explanations for most of this, and I'm not really sure where I stand on the whole paranormal activity thing, but it got me wondering, do you guys believe in ghosts and what freaky stuff happens in your house that you just can't explain away?

I havent experienced anything myself. But people who I know and trust have witnessed a ghost. They lived in an old cottage. Both had seen a lady in the corner of their bedroom brushing her hair etc, but neither had the courage to admit to seeing this. One night they saw this ghost together.

My daughter works in a local pub. Its very old and has a history for strange things happening. Noises from upstairs when no one is there. Cutlery moving and being seen moving across the room. Shes a sensible girl and wouldnt make it up.

So yes I do believe there is something true about ghosts living in the present time

im scared just reading the first two posts of this thread. :(

BOO! :)

Awh, Charlie!

To be honest, I think what this has shown me is that I've moved up in the world, cause if my car door had been open where I used to live, I'd be complaining about more than a ghost!

The cutlery and actually seeing a ghost would completely terrify me! Wow, that's crazy.

I don't believe in ghosts in the least, in fact most of my friends (or people I call my friends) are fanatics of the stuff and they tried taking me to what they called "active" areas and did calls and rituals and nada, not a trace. Though I'm not entirely religious and am a tad and the Bible blatantly states we rest until judgements which discourages the idea in me further. It makes no sense from a scientific stance point either, so it will take a lot to convince me.

Nah you've just got rats. Really big really clever rats.

Ghosts no - demons yes

Interesting. Why demons? If I may ask? :-)

A bunch of reasons. Twice in my life I woke up in the middle of the night and sensed something spectacularly evil in the room. It wasn't anything visible and it wasn't a fleeting experience. For a couple minutes I knew it was there and knew it would have liked to kill me if it could. These experiences were quite terrifying but I knew I would be ok because not long before them I experienced some really good things and (it seemed to me) the dark things were angry about it - but futily so. After those experiences I have thought that infant crib deaths are related to such things. I would never let an infant sleep in a room alone at night.

I also see people do some spectacularly horrid things that are quite subhuman - and I don't blame "chemical imbalances" but evil itself. I also see a lot of people here and other places who have things come to them and tell/show them things that are always nasty. I don't think most of these people are crazy, and I think they are seeing real things that are not imaginary. Unfortunately I even recall one person here who ended her life after weeks of writing about being harassed by what she called a demon. I didn't think she was crazy at all.

Kids often see things too and I believe them. I've also heard too many Ouija board stories and won't mess with them or any kind of "ceremonies" that kids/teens etc like to mess with. There are also many historical events like one that happened to Houston Stuart Chamberlain - one of main racial theorists of Nazi Germany. From the book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"

"Chamberlain was given to seeing demons who, by his own account, drove him on relentlessly to seek new fields of study and get on with his prodigious writings. One vision after another forced him to change from biology to botany to the fine arts, to music, to philosophy, to biography to history. Once, in 1896, when he was returning from Italy, the presence of a demon became so forceful that he got off the train at Gardone, shut himself up in a hotel room for eight days and, abandoning some work on music that he had contemplated, wrote feverishly on a biological thesis until he had the germ of the theme that would dominate all of his later works: race and history."

I am crushingly scientific as a rule but there are some mysterious things that are so prevalent that it seems (to me) more scientific to acknowledge them to a degree than to ridicule them away

I'm not sure where I stand on ghosts to be honest, I hope they're not real from an it would scare me shitless point of you, but there has been fairly solid evidence that may support the idea of the supernatural.

I don't however, believe in demons. I think things like cot deaths will eventually be explained by science, and to be honest evil things appearing in your head and so on to my mind at least is mental illness or an over active imagination, nothing more or less.

Oh and the disappearing socks in the washer happens to the best of us. A little green man is my friend and I's explanation: zombie thread

I find it hard to rationalize the existence of ghosts. The idea of demons is also far fetched but feels slightly more believable than spirits IMO.

Don't believe in ghosts or spirits or demons at all.

I believe humans are programmed to seek the spiritual, and to look for explanations for things, since right back in our evolutionary history, (hence every major civilisation developing some form of religion, often independently) and ghosts etc are by products of this.

Don't believe in ghosts, or psychics, or anything of the sort. People see what they want to see, basically, we can read anything into anything.

See, I find it virtually impossible to rationalise ghosts and spirits etc, but there's still that element of me that goes "it's possible". Especially when freaky things keep happening in (and outside) my house!

don't believe in ghosts, or spirits or demons or anything like that.

Yep definatly believe, I have seen and felt and heard ghosts in the house I live in.

I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that, I just seem to assume there's a plausible logical reason but then maybe I'm just a bit cynical. Creepy ghost stories in books and films etc are fun though :-)

Demon ^ lol

I believe I have had a fairly large chunk of paranormal experience in my mid-teens. However I don't tend to consider it so much a set of 'ghostly' experiences, and actually find myself quite sceptical when watching ghost programmes on TV.

I do love Hellraiser :laugh:

Definitely believe in ghosts - have seen and experienced ghostly stuff; nothing evil, just a bit freaky!
Do you have a wireless doorbell though? If you do it can ring if someone rings the bell of a neighbour on the same frequency - mine goes all the time since next door got a new bell!

I believe in ghosts.. When i was 11, i was going to bristol children hospital for a big operation and i was visited by my dead nan, i saw her and i told my parents and they got a medium out and she said apparently she was there to let me know i be ok after my operation and that i shouldn't worry about it.. She went away after i had my op.. :)

I personally believe in ghosts, but as far as I am aware, never had any encounters with them.

I'd say I'm open-minded but sceptical. I believe there are things that science is not sufficiently advanced enough to understand yet, both within the human brain and within the areas of energy and matter. I think as science advances some of these things will be easily explained.

I believe in ghost. I have lived in many houses that have ghosts in them. Most people dont but then I ask where do u go after u die if u dont go to heaven or hell then they shut up. So to me ghosts are real. It just to u to diside if that r.

I am open-minded to these things as this world is so intricate and amazing (even when it's crap it's amazing how it all got here) and there is so much we clearly don't know.
However, I have been watching lots of Derren Brown stuff this week and it's made me really think about how much we can trick our own minds.
For example, many people experience something called sleep paralysis. Everyone is paralysed by certain natural chemicals while they are in REM (dream) sleep, to stop them getting up and acting out their dreams. But some people get a weird semi-sleep state, where they can see the room they are in but also dream things in it, and are paralysed. I used to get this myself, feeling 'awake' but unable to move and convinced someone was in my room. When I awoke properly I was still in my locked bedroom with the window closed.

I recently thought I had a ghost in my flat, long story short, we had basically build up a silly back story about the previous occupant murdering his wife and doing a runner. This came about by some odd things including someone coming to the door looking for the guy (who owed him money), and on another occasion the police mentioning they'd been in my flat before because of a death. We made it worse by finding a creepy passport photo the night there was a power cut. But everyone's passport photo looks creepy, and we were in a suggestible state cos of the candlelight!

I set a 'test' for the ghost that involved asking a question and leaving a pen to point out the answer written on bits of paper. The pen moved to an answer while no-one was in the room (apparently).
A friend who is interested in this kind of thing offered to do an 'exorcism' but mentioned it was most likely we had created the symptoms of a haunting by our own belief - ie. either myself of my bf had moved that pen and couldn't remember doing so. (We hadn't walked back into the room together as had been taking turns in the bath).
This friend later went on to tell me he would have done what appeared to be an 'exorcism' and made things bang and crash etc and convinced us the spirit was leaving so we wouldn't have these mind-tricks anymore.

I think perhaps ghosts could exist, but not as departed souls exactly. I think maybe there isn't really such a thing as 'time' and that everything is actually all one moment. So ghosts are bit where for some reason the human brain doesn't have it's usual filters and the person sees something that is happening in a different time. If that makes any sense!

You don't have to go anywhere. Not everyone believes in Heaven and Hell, or in the concepts of them. For a lot of people they (their body, mind, everything that makes them 'them') simply cease to function anymore and their bodies will either be buried or cremated, donated to science, or be cryogenically frozen if they're being fancy.

Also, as a friendly aside. This forum does not really accept text speak because it is really hard to read and to understand. Some people suffer from dyslexia (or other difficulties), and not everyone has English as their first language, which makes it harder for them to know what you're saying.

First of all thank you ^, I hate text speak

To the point at hand, I believe highly in spirits and supernatural things, as referred to my thread I started during the full moon, that pretty much everyone missed the point of. But I've had paranormal things happen to me my whole life.

I used to hear voices calling my name from underneath my bed, things disappearing, some which never reappeared, a few times I have been saved by something that I couldnt see, or by extreme luck, like the time when I was about 11 or 12, and nearly got knocked off a trampoline, headed down head first, somehow managed to catch my legs on the side railing.

Also, I have been to a few haunted places, like a lighthouse in Florida, I heard a skittering across the floor, like a rock being tossed across the floor, I had a flashlight on me, I looked around and no rocks, nothing to have made the noise, I was the only one in the room, I have also seen shadows during the day moving across surfaces, and a few times with my close friends we have stayed up a little late, no later than normal and have noticed on our 8 acres of land several areas that were not touched my light (we have a signal tower near my house for trains, it flashes light)

The more you believe in something or want to believe in something the more real it seems/becomes however, it's possible it could all be in my head, I like to think I have guardians, when I see a red and blue glowing eye staring at me from a tree and get a chill down my spine I don't know what other explanation there could be. Ultimately it is each individual persons choice to believe or not.

Oh yes I also forgot to mention, I only heard voices under my bed in one room, when I moved, mmy sister had taken over the house, when she moved my niece in there she would wake up every night screaming and crying, as soon as they moved her out of the room, she stopped

No.
I'm normally quite open to discussion/persuasion about most of my views, however I don't know why but this is something I won't even consider. To me it's just a fact that ghosts don't exist, and whilst I think it's foolish to be quite so adament I can't shake off the instinct that it's just a fact. Like, I'd be more inclined to believe that Australia is a myth created by the media than I would that ghosts exist.

I believe that places can absorb feelings from events, and that these can be interpreted by the receiving mind in various ways. Places where a lot of trauma, violence, etc can retain the 'memory' of that - I believe. As well as places that have been the site for lots of prayer/positive intent - I've experienced this in a pantheistic temple.
But then I do have very sensitive sensitivities!

A library where I used to work, and which is now closed due to budget cuts, reputedly had a ghost, and a colleague was adamant about this, and really hammed it up, as it were. Various others had also seen it. Not me. I did hear something weird once when there, but I think it was an echo or something from the flats next door. Maybe.

Hmm, lots of food for thought!

I used to work in a hotel that was supposedly haunted and loads of weird stuff did happen, but I do think I convinced myself to be scared.

In other news, our house is still full of weird occurences, so I'm just not sure what to believe.

Also, Jenna, I nearly spilt my Fruit corner over my laptop when I read your Australia comment... I think I need a break from studying!

No, I don't believe in ghosts - but I'm clear as to the susceptibilty of the human mind to believe in them.

I well remember years ago spending a couple of nights on a remote uninhabited island in the Hebrides. Friends and I camped there in a long-deserted schoolhouse with no problems. But on another later occasion I spent a couple of nights in the same schoolhouse with two of the local fishermen who had taken us out there. After a couple of nights of their stories about the weird and wonderful goings on in the Islands I found myself looking over my shoulder hard when I went outside into the night for a pee!

It's all in the mind, and the more fertile your imagination the more you're likely to be convinced of ghostly activity. That said, I was once brought up short for a moment by an account by Gavin Maxwell (author of Ring of Bright Water, about the otters) where in one of his books he describes things flying off shelves in the house he wrote about. But then I remembered that, although highly intelligent, he was a very highly strung individual and was thus more liable to be vulnerable to his imagination. So, we can all be convinced about ghosts - given outside pressures - but I don't believe they really do exist.

Tony (shivering!)

Ive never experienced anything myself but I'm open minded and who knows what goes on? Anyway, I'm reading a series at the moment called The Mediator series, it's about a girl who can see and talk to ghosts and helps them move on. It's an awesome series and f anyone is interested it's by Meg Cabot. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mediator-Col...9222003&sr=1-1

I say no to all life after death things like ghosts and gods and heavens and hells. But I admit we don't know.

Also, I had a near death experience that, while I can rationalize the things I saw/felt, still gives me the shivers when I consider it.

I've seen a ghost before... rather not go into deets.

My goal is to do an ouija board where more than one person has been killed.

I believe in Ghosts. I believe I've seen a ghost before in a park when there is typically supposed to be a 'white lady' but, It was near a lake at night, changing temp so could be explained as mist. I still think it was a ghost though, because it was definietly lady shaped/detailed.

I also believe that sometimes my nan visits me. I can sometimes feel her/ sense her holding my hand/stroking my hair/hugging. I again know this can be explained as 'crazy' and 'imagination' because maybe thats what I want to believe as a comfort to my grieve and bereavement.

I think it is completely plausible that ghosts exist and paranormal (although I don't believe in Aliens- which is the thing that is a lot more likely apparently) but it isn't something that freaks me out and I've never had anything 'horrible' or 'scary' happen.

We also apparently have a ghost where I work (in a hotel) weird things do happen like doors opening/closing where no-one is around and the lift moves alot 'on it's own' but again it's not something that bothers me.

I don't believe in ghosts. I've never experienced anything paranormal, and I believe that most ghost sighting stories can be explained by expectation, imagination and visual illusions or not seeing something clearly.

I am, however, open to the idea of the existence of things arounds us that we cannot sense purely because of the nature of our limited senses. Stuff like children being able to hear more high-pitched sounds than can adults, and animals seeing and hearing things in other wavelengths leads me onto the thought that it's plausible that there may be things that have not yet been scientifically identified/detected but that are around us. I can't remember how that was supposed to be related to ghosts though. :S

I do enjoy scary stories though :)

This basically. But also the above comment. I think that most paranormal experiences can be attributed to really obvious things, but perhaps the less obviously explained ones are something, not spiritual, but not yet discovered.

When I was a kid I thought I saw a ghost. My friend was sleeping over and she went to the loo. I turned round and saw a figure that I thought was her but then I realised it was a boy dressed in old fashioned clothing. Then my friend opened the door and returned from the loo. This might be enough to convince some people but looking back on it there was probably something vaguely human shaped like a shadow or a coat which my imagination exaggerated. Especially when no one has ever died in my house or as far as I know on the grounds it's built on- the current house has only had one other occupier who moved out alive and well, and while the previous (1930s) house was flattened during WWII no one died. Before that house I'm pretty sure it was just farmland. So even if ghosts existed there would be no sensible reason for a 18th Century boy to turn up in my bedroom.