As a child I used to frequent catholic church. If I remember well, Roman soldiers in the pictures of The Way of the Cross, wore red kilts, used helmets and carried round shields, short swords or spears. The only thing I don't remember are the green tunics.zoobyshoe said:I would imagine that if we dug into it we could find the plumber's original report written down somewhere, as well as something about the "expert" opinion that he was seeing that particular Roman regiment. We could also look into SGTs suggestion about how Romans were costumed in any color movies, or colored representaions of any kind, that existed when he had his sighting.
That was me, and it is not incorrect:fileen said:Im slipping back a bit, someone said that schizophrenia causes auditory hallucinations. this is incorrect.
fileen said:Im slipping back a bit, someone said that schizophrenia causes auditory hallucinations. this is incorrect. (I know a lot about hallucinations) there are a lot of people very confused about this disease. most schizophrenics experience visual hallucinations only. auditory hallucinations are uncommon on their own, though can accompany the visual hallucinations. either way there are many many accounts of 'unexplained hallucinations' mine use to scared the crap out of me. I don't have schizorphrenia, or bipolar disorder or any other mental disease. for the last few years I have seen the best doctors in Canada. I have traveled all over the place for explanations. they have none. I have tried every test they will give me. I have had a hard time believing what I see to be 'ghosts' whatever that means. I am certain of nothing. thing is, all the doctors say the same thing 'all I can tell you is that your hallucinations are not psychological.' a few have advised me to 'seek spiritual guidance.' my personal doctor and I have worked on this for a very long time. its come to simply be a joke between us. I have completely baffled her and others. I have spoken to numerous religious experts from all sorts of different religions having no specific one of my own. none of them impressed me too much. I have spoken to people claiming to be psychic. it all seems ... well ... bull. any ways the point I am making is that the doctors keep telling me I am not the only one. apparently there are plenty of people who have uneplained hallucinations, most often children. most people grow out of it, or turn to the explanation of ghosts. the difference is the brain. the brain of a schizorphrenic is different from a normal working brain. not just chemically, but sometimes in proportion as well. another point I would like to make here is that unexplained hallucinations are common in gifted kids. this is possibly opening a whole new can of worms, but this is my biggest interest right now. I am profoundly gifted. this is really the only explanation I have for my daily hallucinations. I have had them all my life. my mom claimed I had "a wonderfully vivid and overactive imagination" I am currently an adult and still struggling with this. here's the catch. lots of gifted kids don't hallucinate. so this really isn't much of an explanation is it? I am not going to take a side on this. I've been observing. I want to know what you all think of this. I find it interesting. I also enjoy learning how people think and react with this subject. its a difficult one, and there's no real proof either way. so much we can't know. some of us have no explanation other than ghosts. what's a ghost? to me they are all around. not necessarily dead, but they are every where and I see hear, smell, and taste them. if I could make it stop I would. I have tried. I have taken lots of medications changing my brain and yet there is no effect. still there. I feel for people who see things. they are sure that what they see is real. it can seem very very real. I don't think it is fair for someone who doesn't experience it to sit there and tell me that I don't see anything because there is nothing there. I suffer severely from depression as well. one of the biggest sources of it comes from being told constantly that I am wrong. "theres nothing there" its hard to describe what its like to be misnderstood all your life. of course I have over come this now, but I still feel very alone despite my doctors attempted reassurance that I am not the only one. I am not ashamed of who I am. I don't hide this obstacle in my life. most people are aware. its funny peoples reactions. there is a huge stigma on people who see things. a stigma I don't see here. some of you have first hand experiences, some of you have only facts you have found in books and on the internet. all I say is this: until it happens to you, until you have been where I am you don't know the first thing about this. its impossible for you to understand. like being in love. until you feel it there is no way to understand it. I don't wish to offend anyone. I was not going to put much input to this conversation, but I felt that perhaps you should know that hallucinating is not such a huge phenomenon. it happens to lots of people, and there are many cases unexplained. I thought perhaps I might warn you that there may be someone close to you who you may offend unintentionally. I understand the point here is to debate and try to filter out the fact from fantasy, but I know there are not always solid facts, especially on this subject.
It sounds like you have only been seeing psychiatrists, although you didn't go into detail. Have you been to any neurologists?fileen said:I don't have schizorphrenia, or bipolar disorder or any other mental disease. for the last few years I have seen the best doctors in Canada. I have traveled all over the place for explanations. they have none.
There is some serious doubt about the way his hallucinations were depicted in "A Beautiful Mind". I haven't got to the bottom of this yet. I haven't found a description by Nash himself of what he experiences. If you know of any, I'd appreciate a link.SGT said:Mathematician John Nash had visual and auditory hallucinations. He even conversed with his hallucinations.
As for being brilliant, John Nash got a Nobel Prize for his work.
In his autobiography Nash understandably does not enter in details about his hallucinations.zoobyshoe said:There is some serious doubt about the way his hallucinations were depicted in "A Beautiful Mind". I haven't got to the bottom of this yet. I haven't found a description by Nash himself of what he experiences. If you know of any, I'd appreciate a link.
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/sfeature/sf_nash.htmlNow I must arrive at the time of my change from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as "schizophrenic" or "paranoid schizophrenic". But I will not really attempt to describe this long period of time but rather avoid embarrassment by simply omitting to give the details of truly personal type.
Interview with John Nash: Hearing Voices
John Nash Initially I did not hear any voices. Some years went by before I heard voices and -- I became first disturbed in 1959, and I didn't hear voices until the summer of 1964 I think, but then after that, I heard voices, and then I began arguing with the concept of the voices.
And ultimately I began rejecting them and deciding not to listen, and, of course, my son has been hearing voices, and if he can progress to the state of rejecting them, he can maybe come out of his mental illness.
The consequence of rejecting the voices is ultimately not hearing the voices. You're really talking to yourself is what the voices are, but it's also parallel to a dream. In a dream it's typical not to be rational.
I had some philosophical ideas that were involved. I found myself thinking in political terms, but then I found myself able to criticize this thinking -- that it wasn't very valuable to think in political terms. Even now, I sometimes have a new realization that it can be not so good to think in political terms about some of the current issues. One can leave that to others.
So in rejecting some of the political ideas, that had a relation to the voices, so I could think of a voice maybe as presenting what was analogous to a political argument, and then I could say, I don't want to listen to that.
I am sorry, but this is completely untrue. It is very common to experience only auditory hallucinations, that have no visual component whatever.fileen said:auditory hallucinations most often accompany visual hallucinations. its rare to have auditory hallucinations alone.
"The essential feature of the Paranoid Type of Schizophrenia is the presence of prominent delusions or auditory hallucinations in the context of a relative preservation of cognitive functioning and affect"
No, the word delusion means "a false belief", and is quite distinct from an hallucination:understand that the word delusion is used to describe a visual hallucination.
From the latter quote we get an exclusive report of auditory hallucinations. There is no indication of the elaborate visual/auditory things depicted in the movie. It could be he never had any visual hallucinations, or it could be that, because of the "embarrassment" he only rarely admits to them. I would still like to find more descriptions by him of what he went through to see if there wasn't some basis for Ron Howard to depict the extrordinary long running hallucination of the roomate who didn't actually exist as a visual phenomenon.SGT said:In his autobiography Nash understandably does not enter in details about his hallucinations.
From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/sfeature/sf_nash.html
(Note: it is only called an "aura" or "warning" if it leads into a more serious seizure. If it doesn't, it is called a simple-partial seizure as described below. There is no defect of consciousness during a simple-partial seizure, or during an "aura".)The features of seizures beginning in the temporal lobe can be extremely varied, but certain patterns are common. There may be a mixture of different feelings, emotions, thoughts, and experiences, which may be familiar or completely foreign. In some cases, a series of old memories resurfaces. In others, the person may feel as if everything—including home and family—appears strange. Hallucinations of voices, music, people, smells, or tastes may occur.These features are called "auras" or "warnings." They may last for just a few seconds, or may continue as long as a minute or two.
Experiences during temporal lobe seizures vary in intensity and quality. Sometimes the seizures are so mild that the person barely notices. In other cases, the person may be consumed with fright, intellectual fascination, or even pleasure.
The experiences and sensations that accompany these seizures are often impossible to describe, even for the most eloquent adult. And of course it is even more difficult to get an accurate picture of what children are feeling..."
"...Three-quarters of people with TLE also have simple partial seizures, in which they remain fully conscious. Some people have only simple partial seizures and never have a change in consciousness.."
I agree that the technicalities are irrelevant, but hallucinations can account for several of the alleged ghost appearances.fileen said:Im not about to argue with you. it doesn't seem that either of us will have our oppinions swayed in either direction. let's agree to disagree on this. its rather irrelevant anyways. the origional subject was the existence of ghosts.
Infrasounds are vibrations with frequency below 20Hz. I don't know about tigers, but elephants are capable of emitting infrasounds that can be detected at a distance of 2 km. See here.Nerro said:I really hope I'm not parroting here...
A while back I read that sounds with a frequency of 20Hz cause people to become uneasy and in many places where "hauntings" were reported a frequency of around 20Hz was observed in the background noises.
Apparently tigers also produce a sound with a frequency of ~20Hz when they roar just before they attack.
Entrez PubMedfileen said:this is new knowledge to me. I knew abot epilepsy, and I've been tested for it. eeg or ecg or something like that. read brain waves and take pictures. but elephants and tigers...this must be investigated!
This is Vic Tandy's hypothesis. We discussed it in excruciating detail in this thread:Nerro said:A while back I read that sounds with a frequency of 20Hz cause people to become uneasy and in many places where "hauntings" were reported a frequency of around 20Hz was observed in the background noises.
I see no reason why this term couldn't be used about hallucinations . A person that experiences hallucinations that someone is chasing them could be called delusional (As in the case of Jhonny Nash).a persistent false belief that is strongly held despite clear evidence that the belief is actually false. There are many different types of delusions, depending on what the delusion is about. An example would be a person's belief that the FBI was following him/her to put him/her in jail. This is called a delusion of persecution because the person believes he/she is being persecuted against. Delusion comes from the Latin word "deludo" meaning "to play false."
zoobyshoe said:There is no confusion on my part. More than one person reporting the same apparition at the same place isn't proof of anything in particular without a more detailed investigation. It is far less likely, however, to be "mere" hallucination since no two disconnected people are likely to have the same hallucination except by sheer coincidence.
If I were collecting anecdotes I would much rather talk to people involved in a situation like this, than anyone who saw something when completely uncorroborated by someone else.
This in a nutshell i think is the motivation for your entire position, and it further confirms my long held opinion that peoples beliefs are almost soley guided by their personal experiences. We can talk about evidence all day long, but it is hard (on either side) to crack through that experience that is jumping out in our minds.What I think is "needed" is for ghost believers to learn much, much more about hallucinations. I've had them myself and can tell you: seeing should not be believing.
I agree.Separate rooms is more convincing. It lessens the possibility that everyone is seeing the same freak illusion caused by some intricate play of light in a single location, or something along those lines.
No, I never said in some special cases we can. Not by anecdote over the internet. In the case of multiple unrelated witnesses the chance of it being hallucination starts to drop dramatically, provided it turns out they did all see exactly the same thing.
In two haunted house cases I've heard about, the famous Amityville Horror, and another much less well known one I saw featured on a TV program a few years back, it turns out that while everyone in these families all saw and heard frightening, mysterious things, each separate family member saw and heard separate things. No two reported seeing or hearing the same thing even when they were seeing things at the same time.
Why aren't all the family members seeing the same ghostly apparitions, etc? The obvious explanation is that it's because they are all hallucinating. Why? Because it started with some core family member upon whom all the others rely for their sense of stability. If Dad or Mom starts to break down and hallucinate, everyone else will follow suit by sympathetic reaction. Some families are, indeed, that close, and that interdependent.
I understand this distinction, and stories aren't evidence, they are eyewitness testimony.
In other words, they are the report of someone's first hand experience, not something you or I can physically examine.
Evidence for ghosts might consist of a piece of ectoplasm left by the ghost that you or I could examine and test, in the way that alleged bigfoot hair is presented from time to time for testing.
Me neither, truth is ultimately what I am after, but if i can challange people while being challanged in the process and force people to inspect their beliefs and methods as they force me to inspect mine then it just makes it all the more worth while and engaging for me.Well, I'm not out to poke holes in anyone's belief system as some kind of pastime or chess-like intellectual excercize.
I would actually take issue with this; the average person is more than aware of hallucinations and what they are; pretty much regardless of race, religion or cultural background. And of course many people will have reference points to go back to when they have had a hallucination as prehaps of a result of tiredness or ingestion of hallucinogens or illness.In the case of ghosts, as with a few other "paranormal" subjects, it's clear that the average person is completely uninformed about any possible neurological explanation. They never even s in trying to sort the experience out.
All individual visual sightings most definitely arnt perfectly consistant with hallucinations, and haven't been for a very long time. Hallucinations still do not account for group sightings and I've yet to hear a convincing argument for mass hallucinations.In fact though, all individual visual sightings of ghosts are all perfectly consistent with what you'd expect to find in the hallucinations of simple-partial seizures, fatigue hallucinations, auto-suggestive hallucinations, and hallucinations from serious organic brain problems like Multiple Sclerosis or brain tumors.
I think a good half of people whove seen ghosts would also go with the 'human imprint' idea, but i think the main and most important thing to remember is that they were sure enough that it wasnt a hallucination to call it one.I also hope I made my point about the assumption that, even within the paranormal range of explanations, the fact that everyone jumps to the conclusion that "ghosts" are the spirits of dead people makes the issue suspect.
From the interview whose link zoobieshoe provided, when he saw the apparition the road had already been excavated and according to him it is why he could not see the soldiers from the knee down.Overdose said:Coincidently I am actually from york and know the story of the marching romans well, my grandmother even knew the man in question.
The thing that always marked out the story in my mind was the fact he saw the romans marching but only from the knees up. Which was latter of course attributed to the fact that the roman road at that time would have been much further down into the ground.
The reason you cannot use delusion to refer to hallucination is simply because they are two different phenomena. The two words refer to two separate things. You can't use the word delulsion to refer to an hallucination for the same reason you can't use the word horse to refer to a cow.Ultimâ said:delusional:
I see no reason why this term couldn't be used about hallucinations .
Hallucinations can lead to delusions, and often do, but they are still two separate concepts. Horses and cow are frequently found in the same vicinity, but that doesn't make it OK to start using the word cow to refer to a horse.A person that experiences hallucinations that someone is chasing them could be called delusional (As in the case of Jhonny Nash).
His first hand account is much more interesting than the one at the York Ghost site. I like all the details about his psychological reaction, how he was afraid what would happen if one of them happened to see him, his constant references to where he was standing on the ladder.That's an interesting read Zoobyshoe, historically, the Romans are supposed to have been small in stature.
Where did you get this notion?Schizophrenia often occurs for a time after severe depression, but is usually diagnosable.
My experience that seeing is not believing is not only true in my case. It is a general truth about all human experience: we can't always automatically rely on what our senses tell us. I am not projecting a personal experience onto everyone else as you suggest. Anyone might hallucinate.Overdose said:This in a nutshell i think is the motivation for your entire position, and it further confirms my long held opinion that peoples beliefs are almost soley guided by their personal experiences.
You are simply asserting that they can't be without explaining why they can't be. All I get from that is that you are very much disinclined to consider them in that light.I can tell you that I've had experiences of hauntings and am close to a good number of people (mostly family) who have experienced similar things which cannot be simply attributed to hallucinations.
My "passion" is simply a bug up my behind in reaction to the resistance I get to this, very good and reasonable, first option that should be considered in all these stories.I also should finally say in relation to that quote that i have noticed in a lot of these types of threads that you have been following the hallucination explanation quite passionately.
I am only insistant that it is the first, logical thing to examine for. Hallucinations are a fact. Ghosts haven't ever been proven.i also sometimes feel that you are insisting that this is the only possible explanation and none else should be considered.
If, in fact, they are seeing exactly the same thing. I have informally explored some two person stories and dscovered they weren't actually both seeing the same thing.As i said earlier i think the odds of more than one person having the same hallucination would be so astronomical as to be verging on the impossible.
I never assume anyone is lying. Authentic liars are actually extremely rare in my experience.Assuming that is that there is enough motivation to conclude that it would be agaisnt their best interests to lie about the whole event of course.
No, they were both TV programs. One was interviews with the actual family on which the book and film The Amityville Horror was loosly based. The other was an entirely different family somewhere in the midwest.Do you have a link for this? I am interested to know the full story and exactly how extreme the difference were between what the family members saw.
You've got to get out more, Overdose. Group dynamics like this happen all the time. This is how cult leaders get people to drink poison Kool-aid.But the idea of family members group-sharing in a hallucination born out of an extreme closeness I am not that inclined to believe. It runs counter to what I've experienced and i think to what most people have experienced.
Are you speaking in legal terms, or what?I don't think you do understand the distinction, eye-witness reports/testimonies are evidence as are physical artifacts, they are simply different types of evidence.
I'm not interested in challenging anyones beliefs for the sake of making things interesting. I only call things into question when I happen to know of a good reason they should be questioned. Things are "interesting" enough as they are.Me neither, truth is ultimately what I am after, but if i can challange people while being challanged in the process and force people to inspect their beliefs and methods as they force me to inspect mine then it just makes it all the more worth while and engaging for me.
People are not "more than aware" at all. They are simply familiar with the basic concept. The average person has no conception of what might be going on in the brain to cause them.I would actually take issue with this; the average person is more than aware of hallucinations and what they are
Absolutely not. The schizophrenic guy who lives here in my building has assured me on several occasions that the voices he hears are the utterances of completely real people. The two guys who invaded my room during my sleep paralysis were so obviously real to me that it didn't occur to me to question their reality until after they suddenly vanished. Whether or not a person can distinguish hallucination from reality seems to be a hit or miss thing. Your assumption that everyone has a built in hallucination detector is completely wrong.I would still credit most people on a logical and instinctual level to differentiate between a hallucination and something which they feel has an external reality.
Their being positive about it bears no relation to it's authenticity. Halucinations often seem completely real. We just can't separate hallucination from reality according to how real it seemed to the experiencer. That particular screening method isn't reliable.Also don't forget that it isn't easy for anyone to say 'oh i saw a ghost' and if they do say it id imagine that theyd be inclined to make sure they were positive that they did see something that was external to their own imagination.
It is not the kind of thing that can be settled by people's judgements about how real they thought it was. That is simply the fact of hallucinations. The only way to settle the issue to general satisfaction would be to find a constant, non-disappearing ghost to study.Its healthy to doubt peoples judgment but it does you no favours to reject everyones abillity to judge outright.
I don't see why not.All individual visual sightings most definitely arnt perfectly consistant with hallucinations, and haven't been for a very long time.
I haven't ever heard of a group sighting of a ghost.Hallucinations still do not account for group sightings and I've yet to hear a convincing argument for mass hallucinations.
It depends on what the "same things" are.Hallucinations also do not persuade me too believe that familys without prior knowledge of a ghost in a particular house would experience the same things as a previous family.
Poltergeists are a whole different ball of wax. PF Mentor Evo has some amazing poltergeist stories, and I have read quite a few other reports on the net. These seem to be distincly different from ghost sightings.We also in this thread haven't touched upon poltergeist activity a great deal
Even within the paranormal context there is no good reason to call them one thing or another. How do you sense the difference between the spirit of a dead person and a visitation from someone who has slipped through time? Or a pooka excercizing its gleams and glamours, for that matter?I think a good half of people whove seen ghosts would also go with the 'human imprint' idea, but i think the main and most important thing to remember is that they were sure enough that it wasnt a hallucination to call it one.
What do you want clarified?Ivan Seeking said:Please provide links to medical websites whenever possible. There is a lot of information bantered about here that could easily be confirmed or refuted.
Tandy isn't making claims. He has a hypothesis or theory: spooky place + infrasound = ghost.Also, Tandy is not qualified to make the claims that he does - He's a computer scientist. And I have never found a good source that confirms his claims. As you might recall, we tried.
http://phoenix.herts.ac.uk/PWRU/RWhomepage.html and the Edinburgh vaults.Ivan Seeking said:Please provide links to medical websites whenever possible. There is a lot of information bantered about here that could easily be confirmed or refuted.
Also, Tandy is not qualified to make the claims that he does - He's a computer scientist. And I have never found a good source that confirms his claims. As you might recall, we tried.
Warning of imminent possession was a fog which the patient would see drifting towards him, settling initially on his chest and making him breathless, then entering his body through his nose and mouth, making him retch and wheeze as he resisted, and taking control of his whole body, including his voice. There was no hyperventilation or other features suggestive of a panic attack. There was no history of antecedent events, conflicts or stresses. While possessed, lasting from half an hour to several days, the patient was aware of his surroundings through all senses, although often blunted as though through a haze. He lost motor control, but retained awareness of emotions, remembering fear, anger and guilt. He would 'struggle' mentally to prevent his body's actions, usually unsuccessfully. He experienced command hallucinations, and occasionally the ghost's voice commented on his actions to unheard others. Even when not possessed, he thought the spirit could listen to his thoughts, punishing him if he told people about her. He remembered most events while possessed.
We were disturbed by a telephone call from the prison chaplain who described seeing the ghost possesses the patient in prison, seeing a descending cloud and an impression of a face alarmingly like a description of the dead woman given to us by the patient, of which the chaplain denied prior knowledge. Similar reports came from frightened cellmates. He and our hospital chaplain concurred on genuine possession.
BACKGROUND. An Indian man now in Britain explained his criminal behaviour as episodic ghost possession. Traditional exorcisms failed to help. METHOD. A 'Western' diagnosis of dissociative state or paranoid schizophrenia was made. Treatment commenced using trifluoperazine and clopenthixol. RESULTS. The patient underwent remission during neuroleptic treatment, despite previous evidence of genuine possession. CONCLUSIONS. Many cultures give rise to apparently genuine cases of ghost possession. Neuroleptics may relieve symptoms of exorcism- resistant possession.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/165/3/386
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=7994512
Yes, no, maybe. There is something very odd about the whole article: the authors are obviously and strangely dancing around the fact that the case might make Indian Culture seem superstition ridden, as it often does when things like this are reported. It is rather like they are torn between telling this howlingly funny story of the superstitions they encountered in India to the folks back home, but at the same tme, not wanting to offend any Indians involved who might hear of their report. The carefully worded conclusion: "Many cultures give rise to apparently genuine cases of ghost possession. Neuroleptics may relieve symptoms of excorcism-resistent possession," could not possibly be taken at face value by their fellow British Psychiatrists but as a tongue-in-cheek suggestion as to how to handle Native populations anywhere who firmly believe a psychiatric condition is a manifestation of paranormal phenomena: "Yes, it's ghost possession, Apu, but our Western Medication will remove your suseptibility to ghost possession!"PIT2 said:Its interesting that other people also witnessed this fog/cloud.