Do you believe in ghosts?

[Lorenzo]

A few years ago, a friend of mine bought a house that was inhabited by ghosts. She told me about it when I came to visit and warned me that the door to the upstairs slams shut several times a night. I slept in the guest room right next to the door. In the morning, she apologized for the door making so much noise and wondered if it bothered me. I said no...that it wasn't too bad. She seemed delighted and wanted to know if I wanted to come over for a "house cleansing" in a few weeks, and proceeded to tell me about a friend of hers that belonged to wicca.

I never told her that the door never slammed shut at all that night. I got the idea it would have disappointed her.

[Tyler]

Steve Shaw wrote:
"A lot of scientists doubt the existence of ball lightning"

Oh, bull! I watched some ball lightening (bright white/blue - size of a beach ball) hover about 4 feet off the ground, pass down the hallway of our house, go through the open basement door, go down the steps, around the corner, and hit my dad in the back of the neck while his hand was on the metal water faucet of the stationary tub. He said it felt like someone hit him with a hammer.

For ghost stories - you can get much better than New Orleans (or Billy, the guide on the Greyline Ghost tour)!

Well I'll be damned!
That must have been somthing to see!
I've heared stories about people attacked by ball lightning, but never anyone I know...so naturally I was a bit skeptical (actually I though it a load of hogwash, you know, urban legends and whotnot).
Did it burn him at all? Was he hurt? Did it damage anything else?

[Whistling Pops]

When I was a teenager there were stories about old abandoned houses that were supposed to be haunted. Some friends and I went to all these in the middle of the night and challenged any ghosts to appear. Needless to say, there weren't any. I think the ghosts that people see exist only in their minds. Some people claim to have been captured by aliens more than once. Same answer. Only in their minds.

[Tyler]

When I was a teenager there were stories about old abandoned houses that were supposed to be haunted. Some friends and I went to all these in the middle of the night and challenged any ghosts to appear. Needless to say, there weren't any. I think the ghosts that people see exist only in their minds. Some people claim to have been captured by aliens more than once. Same answer. Only in their minds.

Mebey it is! mebey there is no spoon.......
mebey everything around you exists in your mind....
mebey the world is flat, Colonel Sanders and Elvis are living in Idaho, there's nicotene in McDonald's fries, if God intended man to fly He wouldn't have invented Spanish air traffic controll, and soylent green is people!!!!

[Tyler]

oh, by the way....
there's no measure for how greatful I am to you all for the light-hearted banter in these times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[missy]

Tyler - no - didn't burn him or anything. We figured it "hit" him because he was making a ground by touching the faucet. He said it just felt like someone had hit him in the back of his head with a hammer.

Of course, I did always tease him about being a "hard headed German" anyway!!!

We used to see "St. Elmo's Fire" dancing around on the radio towers a lot, too.

[dwinterfield]

A lot of scientists doubt the existence of ball lightning, but I've seen it. Definitely, definitely. Over my house - watched it for two or three minutes before it disappeared over Epping Forest. Large, bright electric-red orb as big as a beach ball, drifting slowly about 100 feet above the ground, making a faint hissing sound and giving off white vapour.

Steve

If you like silly, fast paced action fiction, read Sandstorm by James Rollins. Ball Lightning plays a big role in it. You'll also learn a lot about the Arabian penninsula.

[Cynth]

I watched some ball lightening (bright white/blue - size of a beach ball) hover about 4 feet off the ground, pass down the hallway of our house, go through the open basement door, go down the steps, around the corner, and hit my dad in the back of the neck while his hand was on the metal water faucet of the stationary tub.

I keep telling my husband we should not use the plumbing during lightening storms!! Every time they say a storm is coming I run to the bathroom so I won't have to go during the lightening. He seems to find this funny.

Back to the topic, sorry. There certainly are things that have not been explained. It can never be proved that ghosts don't exist, since a negative statement can't be proved.

I think a ghost explanation is a complicated explanation (one that would have a lot of other implications) for phenomena that most likely have a simpler explanation. I suppose since I believe the mind and body are one, I cannot believe that the mind hangs together after the body has decayed. Which I guess is what a ghost would be.

Some odd things have happend to me, nothing earthshaking, which I think some people might have explained as ghost activity. I was able to explain them by figuring I had walked in my sleep or had actually been dreaming when I thought I was awake.

[I.D.10-t]

Do you believe in ghosts?

I wonder if they believe in me?

[Tyler]

Do you believe in ghosts?

I wonder if they believe in me?

I believe in you
I hope this dosn't mean you'll turn into Peter Pan, 'cause if you do I'll have Robin Williams on your ass in a heartbeat, Rufio.

[emmline]

Oh, and my father gave a lift to the Bluebell Hill ghost when he was stationed at Chatham. He saw the attractive young lady 'hitchhiking' in the rain, he presumed, and gave her a lift in his Austin 1100 (my mother still twitches an eyebrow in his direction when he tells the story). She didn't speak, but he was chatting away, telling her he was heading for the dockyard. Turned around to look at her wondering why she wasn't speaking and of course she wasn't there. Apparently he nearly lost control of the car thinking she'd 'fallen out' or something. Drove to the nearest phone-box, called the police, and spent the best part of 30 minutes running up and down the road looking for her until the police arrived and told him "it had happened before" and not to worry about it.

.

Are you kidding Gary? That's such an urban legend. Maybe your dad was...how's that go... taking the Micky?

[Tyler]

Oh, and my father gave a lift to the Bluebell Hill ghost when he was stationed at Chatham. He saw the attractive young lady 'hitchhiking' in the rain, he presumed, and gave her a lift in his Austin 1100 (my mother still twitches an eyebrow in his direction when he tells the story). She didn't speak, but he was chatting away, telling her he was heading for the dockyard. Turned around to look at her wondering why she wasn't speaking and of course she wasn't there. Apparently he nearly lost control of the car thinking she'd 'fallen out' or something. Drove to the nearest phone-box, called the police, and spent the best part of 30 minutes running up and down the road looking for her until the police arrived and told him "it had happened before" and not to worry about it.

.

Are you kidding Gary? That's such an urban legend. Maybe your dad was...how's that go... taking the Micky?

As i've said before...

Mebey it is! mebey there is no spoon.......
mebey everything around you exists in your mind....
mebey the world is flat, Colonel Sanders and Elvis are living in Idaho, there's nicotene in McDonald's fries, if God intended man to fly He wouldn't have invented Spanish air traffic controll, and soylent green is people!!!!

[Montana]

i wouldn't really say i believe in ghosts...but...as you know, i've been to edinburgh very often, there are many ghost tours in the old town, one is called: city of the dead ( http://www.blackhart.uk.com/cod/tours.html ). ....
anyway, a friend of mine is one of the tour guides, so i go for free.

Hey, thanks for the info, Amar. I went to the site and read all the stuff. If I ever get to Edinburgh, I'm going on the tour. Is your friend a historian? I'd think that would be a fun job; has anything ever happened to him in the Black Mausoleum?

All the things that you read about happening to people on this site are eerie. But ya gotta wonder about the power of suggestion. Kind of like Lorenzo's host, if you want to be scared or want something to be there (like banging doors), they will be but not everyone will experience it. Some people are more easy to hypnotize than others because they are more suseptible to the power of suggestion. So if ghosts aren't real, these are the people who are likely to believe they are and experience certain "events", I would think.
Just like the Amazing Randi could disprove all the things Yuri Geller did that appeared to happen, probably a number of ghostly things can be explained by something else. I liked the concept of low vibrations affecting people; that's an interesting explanation.
"High levels of low vibrations"...what a great name for a band or a tune!

[jsluder]

Personally, I've never had a paranormal encounter of any kind, but I don't discount the possibility that ghosts might exist. I like the idea that there are things in this world that can't be explained; a little bit of magic, I suppose.

My granddad, who lived in the mountains of western North Carolina, used to tell us about three "encounters" he had during his life. The first was when he was still a child and his mother died. She had just died and was still lying in her bed, when the rest of the family heard what sounded like a choir walking up the road toward the house and singing hymns. When they looked outside, my granddad said they couldn't see anyone, even though the singing voices kept drawing nearer and nearer. When the invisible choir had approached the front of the house, the singing suddenly rose straight up into the air and faded away.

The second encounter occurred as he was walking home along a road through the woods late one night. A man suddenly jumped out in front of him, and my granddad, who was carrying a pistol at the time, reacted in fright and shot him. The man fell over the bank at the side of the road, but when my granddad went to look for him, there was no body. The soft dirt of the bank hadn't even been disturbed. To his dying day, my granddad never figured out who or what he shot that night.

The third encounter took place when he was spending some time working in the Pacific Northwest region of the USA as a young man. There was a really bad flu going around that was affecting nearly everyone. Eventually, everyone in the home where he was staying had gotten sick, except my granddad. As he was tending to the rest of the residents, he suddenly started feeling sick and faint himself. Just as he was passing out on a bed, he saw a light and heard a voice telling him that everything would be okay. At that same moment, the engine died in a car that was driving by the house. The driver came into the house to get help and found everyone sick. This man just happened to be a doctor, and he stayed and nursed everyone back to health.

While all of these encounters could probably be explained away using psychology, I have no doubt that my granddad truly believed each event was quite real. And, since he could still have whipped my butt when he was 90 years old, I never saw fit to question him on it. (Those mountain folks can be a tough lot.)

John

[Fishie]

I went on a midnight ghost tour in New Orleans once. It was so terrible and unscary, that once we got near Bourbon street and heard all the people that were actually having fun, we snuck off!

I like the idea of mystical forces and such. It can really enhance one's experiences, but I have trouble making the leap of faith to say I believe.