Are Ghosts a Global Phenomenon Beyond Mythology?

[PIT2]

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.

Just for ur information. Everything in the report occurred in Britain. The prison was also in Britain. I don't know whether the people in the british jail had similar superstitions as the possessed man.

These parts were written in the article:

He and our hospital chaplain concurred on genuine possession. This is an acceptable belief within pastoral counselling (Issacs, 1987).


He admitted the charges, but claimed that his behaviour was under control of a ghost. Prison staff considered him to be malingering.

The reason i thought a natural phenomenom would be more likely, is because multiple people claim to have seen this fog.

 

[Evo]

http://phoenix.herts.ac.uk/PWRU/RWhomepage.html is a psychologist that does research into the paranormal. He believes that infrasounds along with air drafts are responsible for many of the alleged ghost phenomena, <snip>Do you think he is qualified or only believers are?

He is a psychologist investigating the paranormal with what appears to be a preformed mindset to discredit. That's fine, although an open mind is nice. I would take anything he says with that in mind, just as I would question the "results' of a firm believer in the paranormal.

The famous Haunted Gallery at Hampton Court Palace and the Edinburgh vaults.

This doesn't actually conclude anything, all it basically says is that "But Dr Wiseman's team said the experiences could be simply explained by the gallery's numerous concealed doors.

These elderly exits are far from draught-proof and the combination of air currents which they let in cause sudden changes in the room's temperature." Ok, let's see some examples where a door was opened (and the doors aren't being noticed as opening) in the specific locations of the sightings and the readings from the equipment that showed the instant temperature drop. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, let's see the actual information.

It gets worse...here they say "Column of cold air

In two particular spots, the temperature of the gallery plummeted by up to 2C.

"You do, literally, walk into a column of cold air sometimes," said Dr Wiseman. "It's possible that people are misattributing normal phenomena.

"If you suddenly feel cold, and you're in a haunted place, that might bring on a sense of fear and a more scary experience." DUH. He doesn't say what the scientific explanation is of this "normal phenomena" he mentions. I'm sure it is some form of natural phenomena, but isn't he supposed to be solving this? This is all handwaving, nothing that hasn't all been said before. Apparently he can't explain it either.

 

[SGT]

He is a psychologist investigating the paranormal with what appears to be a preformed mindset to discredit. That's fine, although an open mind is nice. I would take anything he says with that in mind, just as I would question the "results' of a firm believer in the paranormal.

This doesn't actually conclude anything, all it basically says is that "But Dr Wiseman's team said the experiences could be simply explained by the gallery's numerous concealed doors.

Agreed! Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is impossible to prove the phenomena are not the result of ghost activity, but the more natural explanations are found, the less likely is the ghost hypothesis.

These elderly exits are far from draught-proof and the combination of air currents which they let in cause sudden changes in the room's temperature."

Ok, let's see some examples where a door was opened (and the doors aren't being noticed as opening) in the specific locations of the sightings and the readings from the equipment that showed the instant temperature drop. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, let's see the actual information.

It gets worse...here they say "Column of cold air

In two particular spots, the temperature of the gallery plummeted by up to 2C.

"You do, literally, walk into a column of cold air sometimes," said Dr Wiseman. "It's possible that people are misattributing normal phenomena.

"If you suddenly feel cold, and you're in a haunted place, that might bring on a sense of fear and a more scary experience." DUH. He doesn't say what the scientific explanation is of this "normal phenomena" he mentions. I'm sure it is some form of natural phenomena, but isn't he supposed to be solving this? This is all handwaving, nothing that hasn't all been said before. Apparently he can't explain it either.

Dr Wiseman is a psychologist. We cannot ask him to give physical explanations of those phenomena. I am sure people with knowledge of physics could find the origin of the anomalies if they went to the local.

 

[Evo]

Someone needs to do a better job at this. There is a new "hauntings" show on the travel channel that is just awful. A group of flakes that are firm believers go into supposedly haunted places and predictably every sound and movement is a "spirit". I can't even sit through the whole thing, it's that bad.

Ok, SGT, zooby, Ivan, what do you say we all form a team and have people pay us to go out and investigate spooky places?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Do you think he is qualified or only believers are?

Did I say anything about believers being qualified to make a scientific determination?

Have the authors cited been published in mainstream journals wrt this subject?

As for Tandy, he makes claims supported nowhere by experimental evidence. He makes the specific claim that eyeballs rattle at 19.2 Hz, and this is responsible for ghost phenomenon. In fact nothing is found to support this claim.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

What do you want clarified?

This was in reference to definitions. When we are dealing with specific medical defintions, technical references should be used. No one here is an expert.

Also, fileen claims that the words hallucination, and delusion, are often used interchagebly. This statement should be supported with a link esp in light of the disagreement.

Tandy isn't making claims. He has a hypothesis or theory: spooky place + infrasound = ghost.

He specially claims this eye resonance, and that this induces many so called ghost observations. He was even making a machine which, to no surprise, has never been seen or used to show that any truth exists in any of these claims.

None of us wanted to spring the $35.00 for the Nasa paper. We read only abstracts of the other papers, without reading the whole of any, except the one Evo found online.

As I recall, I contacted NASA and found no confirmation of his statements. I will have to review.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Just for ur information. Everything in the report occurred in Britain. The prison was also in Britain. I don't know whether the people in the british jail had similar superstitions as the possessed man.

Yes, I believe you're right. The man's arrest and examination by the two Doctors must have taken place in Britain. The abstract says: "An Indian man now in Britain..."

This still leaves me confused about the extent to which the authors are actually persuaded that some ghost possessions are "apparently genuine" and the extent to which they might be tipping their colleages off to a way of handling transplants from the Indian subcontinent and other cultures.

The reason i thought a natural phenomenom would be more likely, is because multiple people claim to have seen this fog.

Multiple witnesses makes it much more interesting, yes. This is where it would be nice to have expanded, detailed accounts from the chaplain and other inmates to read. It might turn out that this sighting of a fog falls apart when you hear the details, or it might turn out it gets even more vivid and realistic sounding, as with the plumber.

 

[Overdose]

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.

As I've said its a point youve made well, but it unfortunately doesn't go far enough to begin to provide complete and coherent answers to what people are experiencing and reporting.

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.

They can't be, or rather or so unlikely to be (hallucinations) that i see very good reason to purpuse other answers. I've gone into detail in previous posts about specific cases, namely those where separate people see the same ghost in the same house, offen without ever knowing or having been in contact with the person who witnessed the ghost before them.

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.

Hey i agree, but it isn't the only answer out there, and in my case it is not as if the possiblity of hallucination hasnt been considered.

I am only insistant that it is the first, logical thing to examine for. Hallucinations are a fact. Ghosts haven't ever been proven.

Again i agree, but what you are actually doing in practice is offering it up
as the only explanation, even when the explanation is being stretched to its seams just to fit at times.

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.

How big was the disparity between what they saw in these cases?

I never assume anyone is lying. Authentic liars are actually extremely rare in my experience.

Well its another possibility to consider in my opinion just as are hallucinations.

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.

Youre trying to compare apples and oranges, there's a distinct difference between getting someone to to take part in something weird and agaisnt their best interests and a mutal group hallucination.

Are you speaking in legal terms, or what?

The general everyday kind.

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.

But what if people have already considered your line of reasoning and still don't accept it? at what point do you hang up your hat and move on? (im still trying to wrestle with this one myself btw)

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.

They don't need to be aware of the causal triggers in the brain to recognise the effect, i don't in great detail understand what happens neurologically in the brain when i get tired but i immeditately recognise when i am tired.

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.

Prehaps they are for all we know, why do believe you have the monopoly on the truth of his experiences?

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.

Ive never had sleep paralysis so i have no personal experience of something like that, I've heard some people claim they are hallucinations and others who are convinced their experiences have some kind of external reality. I am still sitting on the fence personally i can't say i lean either way, I am open to both view points.

Whether or not a person can distinguish hallucination from reality seems to be a hit or miss thing.

Says who? how are we to sort out the hits from the misses? I am guessing the misses would be conclusions people have reached that don't fall inline with your own conclusions that you reached in regards to your sleep paralysis experience?

Your assumption that everyone has a built in hallucination detector is completely wrong.

Im not saying everyone does, I am saying that most people have had hallucinations in whatever form by early adulthood and therefore are able to recognise them and separate them from reality, or at the very least have a good shot at doing so.

Their being positive about it bears no relation to it's authenticity.

I think it definitely leans in favour authenticity, rather than away from it.

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.

I don't think the nature of ghosts is going to change much from what they are, so I am not sure youre going to find a case that will ever completely satisfy you.

I haven't ever heard of a group sighting of a ghost.

Ivan posted up a police report of a group sighting a while back...i'll do a search for it and post it back in the thread.

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.

It does seem to be rare to get a sighting along with poltergeist activity together in the same location; it has been known to happen but it isn't that common.

How do you sense the difference between the spirit of a dead person and a visitation from someone who has slipped through time?

whether contact is possible with the ghost would be a good place to start.
(also note i never suggested that ghosts were people who have slipped through time, rather they might be the image or imprint of pre-existing people, being no more conscious and aware than a reel of film showing a person walking down a street).

Or a pooka excercizing its gleams and glamours, for that matter?

Ive no idea what a pooka is so you'll have to explain it for me.

Your certainly that people can tell the difference between hallucination and reality is unfounded

As is your certainly that people are mentaly unequiped to ever be able to distingusih and tell the difference.

There may, in fact, be something paranormal going on in some of these cases but the way to get to it isn't by assessing how sure the person is of what they saw.

I think it absolutely hinges on it, if they arnt sure atall of what they saw and state now and again, that it might have been some reflections off the tv or the next door neighbour walking past the window etc. then that persons story i would say to most people minds would loose a great deal of credibility and weight.

 

[zoobyshoe]

He specially claims this eye resonance, and that this induces many so called ghost observations.

No, I don't think you can find this stated by him in the form or spirit of a "claim" the way you are proposing. He has a hypothesis or theory that spooky place + infrasound = ghost. He is not claiming this accounts for all ghosts. He is simply extrapolating fom his own experience with the fan in his shop and saying the same thing might well be happening in other cases.

He was even making a machine which, to no surprise, has never been seen or used to show that any truth exists in any of these claims.

Meaning you are certain his machine must not have worked.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Ok, SGT, zooby, Ivan, what do you say we all form a team and have people pay us to go out and investigate spooky places?

Maybe you could bring your poltergeist with you, and we could set up fights with other poltergeists! We could charge SO MUCH for people to see that!

 

[Ultimâ]

Maybe you could bring your poltergeist with you, and we could set up fights with other poltergeists! We could charge SO MUCH for people to see that!

How would we distinguish the winner?...The one who throws the most stuff?

My experience that seeing is not believing is not only true in my case. It is a general truth about all human experience

Bear in mind, that believing may be needed for seeing =P (remember what I said about being in a particular frame of mind)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a firm believer in the existence of ghosts and wrote some interesting stories, some based on reported sightings from respectable people. One of these being the exorcism of a man's spirit (from his house) who had commited suicide in his house and manifesed as a dark cloud upstairs during the night.

edited: exorcism to banishing- changed back again

 

[zoobyshoe]

They can't be, or rather or so unlikely to be (hallucinations) that i see very good reason to purpuse other answers. I've gone into detail in previous posts about specific cases, namely those where separate people see the same ghost in the same house, offen without ever knowing or having been in contact with the person who witnessed the ghost before them.

This seems cut and dried on the surface, but I have never looked into a brief report like this without finding that it is never quite accurate. Sometimes it turns out one person saw a "figure", another, a "man" another, a "glowing orb" and another, "a man dressed in 17th century clothing, holding a book." In other words, the supposed separate reports of the same ghost turn out to be actually quite different from each other.

This happens all the time in reports of haunted Hotels where it is rumored that many different guests see the same ghost on different occasions. It turns out the teller of the story has called many different apparitions "the same ghost".

Again i agree, but what you are actually doing in practice is offering it up
as the only explanation, even when the explanation is being stretched to its seams just to fit at times.

I think it just seems like a stretch to you because you are sure people can tell the difference between hallucination and fact. They often can't.

How big was the disparity between what they saw in these cases?

Much closer than possible by chance but too different to say it was the same thing.

Youre trying to compare apples and oranges, there's a distinct difference between getting someone to to take part in something weird and agaisnt their best interests and a mutal group hallucination.

No, it's basically the same dynamic: the most influential person in a group steers the course of the others beliefs, by pressure or by example:

folie Ã* deux: Definition and Much More From Answers.com
Address:http://www.answers.com/topic/folie-deux

But what if people have already considered your line of reasoning and still don't accept it?

Then I would say that person doesn't realize we don't have built in hallucination detectors.

Prehaps they are for all we know, why do believe you have the monopoly on the truth of his experiences?

This sounds like the real argument you are trying to make is that nothing is an hallucination. If you only understood how the brain forms our experiences for us when it's working properly, you would understand how it easily creates hallucinations when it isn't working properly.

Says who? how are we to sort out the hits from the misses? I am guessing the misses would be conclusions people have reached that don't fall inline with your own conclusions that you reached in regards to your sleep paralysis experience?

When I say it's a hit or miss proposition, I'm saying that I don't know why some people have the presence of mind to consider that something which is impossible might be an hallucination, and others don't. Even with drugs like LSD. Some people hallucinate and remain aware of it, others get lost in the hallucnation and believe it all.

Im not saying everyone does, I am saying that most people have had hallucinations in whatever form by early adulthood and therefore are able to recognise them and separate them from reality, or at the very least have a good shot at doing so.

Absolutely not. People can hallucinate and have no idea they are hallucinating:

"Vilayanur Ramachandran, of the University of California, San Diego, told the Tucson conference about a particularly odd class of stroke effects. His patients are women who have not only been paralysed down one side by a stroke, but have also been robbed by the calamity of the knowledge that this has happened to them.
If someone "normally" paralysed is asked to pick up a tray of drinks, he will use his one good hand to pick it up from the middle. If one of Dr Ramachandran's patients is asked to do so, she will grasp one side of the tray as if her left hand was grasping the other, and lift confidently. "Oh, how clumsy I am" she will exclaim when she spills the tray's contents everywhere. His patients simply cannot see that one of their hands is not taking part in the process. They are lucid in all other respects: they are able to tell him when and where they had a stroke, but simply unable to admit even to themselves that this stroke has paralysed them.
He describes one patient who was convinced that her left hand, which could not move at all, was touching his nose. "I couldn't resist the temptation ... I said, 'Mrs B: can you clap?' "She said, 'Of course I can clap.' "I said, 'Clap!' "She went" (he moves his right hand in a lurching motion through the air to the point where it would have met the left hand). "This has profound philosophical implications," he continues, as laughter ripples round the conference hall, "because it answers the age-old Zen master's riddle - 'what is the sound of one hand clapping?' You need a damaged brain to answer this question." Dr Ramachandran follows his strange findings into unpopular waters. For decades now, nothing could have been more unfashionable in serious academic psychology than Freud. Yet what Ramachandran sees reminds him inescapably of Freudian theories of denial, repression and other defence mechanisms. He believes that the pattern of denial his stroke patients exhibit points to the mind's continuous struggle to produce a coherent picture of the worlds, and to prefer coherence to accuracy - a very Freudian notion.
In Ramachandran's view, the struggle is between the brain's hemispheres. When isolated facts are reported which might upset the mind's currently held view of the world, the reaction of the left hemisphere is to ignore them. Most of the time, this will be the correct response; sensory systems are not perfect. But the right hemisphere carries out the occasional reality check, just to be sure, and if it thinks something's awry, it gets together with the left hemisphere and, quite literally, changes the mind. In stroke patients who cannot recognise their condition this mechanism stops working. The right hemisphere messages never get through and then, he says, "There is no limit to the delusions that the left hemisphere will engage in."
The condition is not permanent. Though it will reassert itself, it can be dissipated for a few moments by squirting ice-cold water into the ear on the unparalysed side. The effect is easy to miss, because if you squirt cold water into the wrong ear, as Dr Ramachandran did the first time he tried it, you are left with a patient who is confused, and angry that anyone should have squirted cold water without warning or reason into her ear, but still unaware that she is paralysed. But if the water is squirted into the ear of the damaged hemisphere the patient experiences a period of confusion and then about ten minutes when she knows perfectly well that she has been paralysed - cannot imagine not knowing this, in fact. Six hours later, she will have forgotten the whole episode, and once more be convinced that everything is working properly."

WIRED 2.08: One Hand Clapping
Address:http://consc.net/misc/wired.html

(also note i never suggested that ghosts were people who have slipped through time, rather they might be the image or imprint of pre-existing people, being no more conscious and aware than a reel of film showing a person walking down a street).

I know. The "time traveller" notion is my idea.

Ive no idea what a pooka is so you'll have to explain it for me.

A "pooka" is a mischievous spirit with the power to make people see things. The character of Puck in Shakespeare's Midsommer's Night Dream, was a pooka. Harvey the rabbit in the James Stewart movie Harvey was a pooka. The word "spook" came from the word "pooka".

I think it absolutely hinges on it, if they arnt sure atall of what they saw and state now and again, that it might have been some reflections off the tv or the next door neighbour walking past the window etc. then that persons story i would say to most people minds would loose a great deal of credibility and weight.

People can't be categorically relied on to report completely mundane things accurately, even when they are 100% sure they know what they saw. This has been proven over and over in psychological tests.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Bear in mind, that believing may be needed for seeing =P (remember what I said about being in a particular frame of mind)

Carlos Castenada tells one story about how Don Juan took him out into the brushy desert at twilight and brought his attention to a patch of white on a bush 30 feet away or so. He told him to concentrate on the patch of white and empty his mind of thoughts.

Carlos tried, but something about the white patch struck him as fishy. He walked over to it, and found it was a piece of white cloth hanging on the bush.

Don Juan, he said was disgusted with him, and criticized him for always being too reasonable. He said if Carlos had only let his thoughts go, he might have turned the white patch into a new kind of animal or something else wonderful.

Really though, what's the point of that?

 

[SGT]

How would we distinguish the winner?...The one who throws the most stuff?

Bear in mind, that believing may be needed for seeing =P (remember what I said about being in a particular frame of mind)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a firm believer in the existence of ghosts and wrote some interesting stories, some based on reported sightings from respectable people. One of these being the exorcism of a man who had commited suicide in his house and manifesed as a dark cloud upstairs during the night.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in a lot of weird things, including the "Cottingley Fairies", a naive scam perpetrated by two schoolgirls.
The gullibility of a celebrity does not make true the stupid things they believe.
I am not saying that being conned by the two adolescents means that all other things Conan Doyle believed are necessarily false. It only implies that he cannot be cited as an authority in things supernatural.

 

[Ultimâ]

True, but some of his tales changed my thinking about ghosts. I'd like to dig up the details from the story about the priest who went to the house and removed the ghost though - Sadly I leant my book ('The lost world and other stories') to a friend whom I've lost contact with.

Really though, what's the point of that?

If you believe only what you see, then you will not see very much. Take protons and electrons for example, todays technology would be lagging behind greatly if people had to see to believe.

 

[SGT]

True, but some of his tales changed my thinking about ghosts. I'd like to dig up the details from the story about the priest who went to the house and removed the ghost though - Sadly I leant my book ('The lost world and other stories') to a friend whom I've lost contact with.

So a fictional work changed your thinking?

 

[Ultimâ]

So a fictional work changed your thinking?

Yup, changed my concept of ghosts to a certain degree. As I mentioned, the fictional work was based on recorded fact.

 

[Overdose]

This seems cut and dried on the surface, but I have never looked into a brief report like this without finding that it is never quite accurate. Sometimes it turns out one person saw a "figure", another, a "man" another, a "glowing orb" and another, "a man dressed in 17th century clothing, holding a book." In other words, the supposed separate reports of the same ghost turn out to be actually quite different from each other.

This happens all the time in reports of haunted Hotels where it is rumored that many different guests see the same ghost on different occasions. It turns out the teller of the story has called many different apparitions "the same ghost".

Thats interesting, i offen found the opposite to be true, but I am sure what you say is right as well.

I think it just seems like a stretch to you because you are sure people can tell the difference between hallucination and fact. They often can't.

Of course, it would be unreasonable to think the people would be able to tell the different on every occasion and in every instance. I just don't think it occurs nearly as offen as you think it does, simple as that.

No, it's basically the same dynamic: the most influential person in a group steers the course of the others beliefs, by pressure or by example

Is there any reason to actually believe that this was the case in the haunted house television program? did one family member seem to have abnormal control or a strange hold over the rest? if not then i think you have to be cautious in those types of conclusions.

Then I would say that person doesn't realize we don't have built in hallucination detectors.

A misrepresentation of my view (as I've already explained).

This sounds like the real argument you are trying to make is that nothing is an hallucination.

hmm not really, although i don't think every human experience can be put in one box marked 'hallucination' and one marked 'real'.

If you only understood how the brain forms our experiences for us when it's working properly, you would understand how it easily creates hallucinations when it isn't working properly.

Well I am certainly no expert in this field but I've read up enough on the subject to confidently say I am certainly not ignorant.
The real problem here isn't a lack of knowledge, i just don't see your conclusions as being valid in a lot of cases, for one i think youre far too quick to reach a conclusion that a lot of the time doesn't fit the facts.
I also believe that in a lot of instances where you would say the brain is malfunctioning or not working i would see reason to believe that it is in actual fact behaving in such a way as to receive extra or more information that the brain useally fails to picks up. And I am not nearly as sure as you that in these circumstances it is a case of the brain malfunctioning, it might actually be working more efficiently, and increasing the scope of experience.

When I say it's a hit or miss proposition, I'm saying that I don't know why some people have the presence of mind to consider that something which is impossible might be an hallucination, and others don't.

Its a very shaky foundation to believe that ghosts, disembodied voices are 'impossible' especially when people frequently experience these things in everyday life. But yes if these things are impossible to your mind, then they will always be a hallucination or a delusion, the belief guides the data as ever...

Absolutely not. People can hallucinate and have no idea they are hallucinating

I don't think think i ever said that they couldnt.
prehaps i should clarify, i certainly don't think its impossible that a person could hallucinate without knowing it, i just don't take the assumption that in the majority of cases people are too ignorant to recognise when they might be having one, as i have stated i think most people would recognise that they were having one.

I know. The "time traveller" notion is my idea.

Interesting, I've never personally heard many ghost reports where I've thought it might be someone whos slipped through time. The only one I've heard involved a women in a 50s vintage car and clothing of that era stuck on the side of a modern day road screaming and in distress and then apparently disappearing (if i remember right). But i also seem to remember a few things about that story not really adding up.

People can't be categorically relied on to report completely mundane things accurately, even when they are 100% sure they know what they saw. This has been proven over and over in psychological tests.

I think its pretty obvious that i wasnt stating that there could ever be 100% accuracy in a report, that's a misrepresenation of my view.

 

[Ultimâ]

hmm not really, although i don't think every human experience can be put in one box marked 'hallucination' and one marked 'real'

Bear in mind that everything we experience is subjective to a varying degrees.

I also believe that in a lot of instances where you would say the brain is malfunctioning or not working i would see reason to believe that it is in actual fact behaving in such a way as to receive extra or more information that the brain useally fails to picks up.

The brain acts as a kind of filter, so it's more like it's just allowing more information through.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Is there any reason to actually believe that this was the case in the haunted house television program? did one family member seem to have abnormal control or a strange hold over the rest? if not then i think you have to be cautious in those types of conclusions.

You don't know the most common things about mental illness and you're trying to suggest I'm being incautious. First you said no such dynamic existed: you'd never heard of such a thing. I give you a link, and now you're urging me to be cautious like you know anything about it.

hmm not really, although i don't think every human experience can be put in one box marked 'hallucination' and one marked 'real'.

If you would bother to research, not ghost stories, but mental illness and neurological disorders, you would start to see that there is a good basis for defining the difference between an hallucination and something that has a basis in reality. Having defined that, we can start to try and determine which is which in individual cases.

Well I am certainly no expert in this field but I've read up enough on the subject to confidently say I am certainly not ignorant.

I haven't seen any evidence that you know anything at all about it.

I also believe that in a lot of instances where you would say the brain is malfunctioning or not working i would see reason to believe that it is in actual fact behaving in such a way as to receive extra or more information that the brain useally fails to picks up.

A neuroscientist who has access to all kinds of brain scanning devices and also many patients with various disorders might be in a position to say he has "reason to believe" something unusual about the brain, but, really, you are just speculating. You don't have any reason to believe anything about the brain.

And I am not nearly as sure as you that in these circumstances it is a case of the brain malfunctioning, it might actually be working more efficiently, and increasing the scope of experience.

If you take mushrooms and meditate, you are very certainly going to increase the scope of your experience, Overdose. That is because mushrooms alter the way the brain works. Many things alter the way the brain works. The brain of an autistic savant works completely differently than other peoples, such that they can perform extrordinary mental calculations that are impossible for other people. Epilepsy gave Van Gogh a perspective on painting no one else had ever dreamed of. LSD completely altered R. Crumb's drawing style and subject matter. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Directed Hallucinations made Nikola Tesla one of the most remarkable electrical engineers of his time. If you think any of these people's brains were/are working "more efficiently" and were not malfunctioning, think again.

Its a very shaky foundation to believe that ghosts, disembodied voices are 'impossible' especially when people frequently experience these things in everyday life.

Apparently you are going to just wipe the story of the stroke patients out of your mind. One side of their body is completely paralyzed and yet they seem to believe it is working perfectly. It is impossible that it is working perfectly, yet they think it is. This is proof positive that people can have the most extrordinary, impossible hallucinations, and yet believe them completely and not even question them.

No one else has ever heard the voices that the schizophrenic guy here experiences, not me, not his family, not anyone else in the building, not his doctor, not even any other schizophrenic person: the voices they hear are completely different "personalities" than the ones he hears. Every person who hears disembodied voices hears their own individual set of them.

It is not "shakey ground" at all to conclude they are hallucinating.

i just don't take the assumption that in the majority of cases people are too ignorant to recognise when they might be having one, as i have stated i think most people would recognise that they were having one.

You haven't been paying attention at all: ignorance has nothing to do with it. Whatever causes the hallucinations is also robbing the person of the capacity to question their reality.

It seems patently obvious that if someone is paralyzed on a whole side of their body, they should know it. It seems so obvious, it should go without saying. Yet, the cases Ramachandran and others have studied show the strange truth: that some people who become paralyzed also lose the ability to realize thy are paralyzed.

I think its pretty obvious that i wasnt stating that there could ever be 100% accuracy in a report, that's a misrepresenation of my view.

I think it's pretty obvious I wasn't saying you stated there could ever be 100% accuracy in a report, and that I was bringing up a new issue to consider.

I think you're on very shakey ground taking all these stories as indications of anything other than the fact that people see what they think are ghosts. The reason I say that is because if you follow any thread on any subject what you find is lots of people giving incomplete and sometimes inaccurate accounts of lots of subjects. People compress information for brevity's sake, and they also speak off the top of their heads from memory, sometimes, and get things wrong. Verbal accounts can't be relied upon, not with anything. They may or may not have anything to do with the truth, and it is irrelevant how confident they are in what they're saying.

 

[invalid]

A personal experience with the paranormal

I know from personal experience that there are such things as ghosts. Now the story... During the last two years of University I moved into a rented house with three roomates. Let's call them Jane, Jim and Mike. Jane and Jim had separate but joined rooms in the basement. Mikes was the master bedroom right next to mine. Now for the occurrences:
- Mike had his clothes thrown on him in the middle of the night;
- Mike heard his window open at night and a plant on the sill move;
- Jane and Jim were constantly awakened by loud banging and knocking between their bedrooms (no pipes in that wall - just a cheap drywall renovation job)
- mold grew up the corners of Mike's room (wall to ceiling). When cleaned with bleach it would be back again in 2-3 days. We thought it may have been badly insulated but the landlady had a contractor take a look and it was fine
- In the morning I would find our lawnmower pulled out of the garage and in the middle of the backyard (2 days after Jim had mowed the lawn)
- I would hear music playing when alone in the house. It sounded like a radio playing classical music very far away. I would go outside to try and see where it might be coming from but would no longer hear it. Once back in the house I would hear it again. (I found out years later that Jane also heard this music from her basement bedroom, as if a radio or stereo was playing Greek classical upstairs - when she went up she no longer heard it)
- the final and penultimate occurrence was on a bright Sunday afternoon when Mike and myself were watching TV in the living room. He started freaking out and asked me if I hadn't seen a solid black shadow on the wall behind the tv that moved past and down the hall. I hadn't but I'm sure he had and I feel pretty sure it wasn't a hallucination! I guess some people might say it was a hallucination experienced due to nerves from the other events however would it not be more likely to see something like that at least at dusk when their really are shadows that can play tricks with your eyes?

Mike moved out soon after and guess what? I moved into his room (it was bigger), painted where the mold was, and never had a problem. We never really thought about it being a ghost necessarily until towards the end of our stay there. Jane (who had rented the house originally) made some inquiries and found out that the house had belonged to the owner's mother (an old Greek lady). When the mother died she put the house up for rent. Spirits/Ghosts/the Soul are real (just as religions have been asserting for thousands of years) and are simply a form of energy as is thought and mind. The interaction of thought and mind can affect (and be affected) by said spirits. This is why my roomate could see the shadow and I could not. I believe it was there and he could see it, even if I could not. I knew him well, he did not have any mental conditions that would cause hallucinations. He was not a crackpot (in fact he was a very left wing atheist into environmentalism and alternative political music). Before he lived there and after he moved out he experience no other strangeness.

If only one or two of these occurrences had happened I would have probably dismissed any paranormal cause. However, all of them together add up to ghost to me.

I certainly understand people desiring "proof" of paranormal behaviour but a great deal of the paranormal seems to depend on the mental state of the individual. Which has shaped my view that the fundamental building block of reality is consciousness. Those that seek too fervently often find self-delusion and skeptics usually find nothing.

Check out this movie http://www.strangehappenings.methyus.com/Videos/Tinker%27s-Creek-Ouija-Board-Orb.wmv from the site http://www.strangehappenings.methyus.com/Tinker%27s-Creek-Investigation.htm

I think it would be difficult to fake, what do you think? This site has quite a few interesting videos taken during their paranormal investigations.

How can physicists talk of Dark Matter, Dark Energy, the many dimensions of Superstrings and branes etc. and still pooh pooh what so many people have described from daily experience. Science may present abstract, mathematical proofs but I will accept my own experiences any day.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I know from personal experience that there are such things as ghosts.

Nothing in your story proves "ghosts", though. All it says is that people experience extremely strange things they don't know how to explain.

If only one or two of these occurrences had happened I would have probably dismissed any paranormal cause. However, all of them together add up to ghost to me.

You jump to say "ghost," instead of, for instance, demon, or pooka, or gremlin, because that's what the current conventional lore is about this stuff. As I've pointed out in several previous posts, even within a generally paranormal explanation, there is no good reason you should conclude this was the disembodied spirit of a dead person.

The fact you later found out someone had died in the house is pretty much irrelevant. It only seems signifigant if you already believe the spirits of the dead haunt their former dwellings. If you were predisposed to believe in demons, you would have assumed a demon was responsible. If you were predisposed to belief in Out Of Body experiences, you would have jumped to the conclusion that someone, somewhere was leaving their body and messing with your heads.

This is why Mentor Evo's stories are the most convincing I've ever heard: she simply states what happened and doesn't claim she knows anything about what caused it.

When confronted with extremely weird happenings people are eager to sew them together into some kind of coherent whole. "Ghosts," or in this case, poltergeists ("Crashing or thumping ghost") have become the default explanation. This is really too bad since people start believing it is the right explanation, and start extrapolating the general characteristics and qualities of "poltergeists" from there.

Everyone pitches in. Someone decides the reason they throw things around is the same reason people do: they're angry and "unquiet" spirits. Someone else decides they must have led unhappy, frustrated lives and aren't evolved enough to pass on to "the next world" and so on. All invented, but passed on from person to person till everyone thinks someone with some "spiritual" insight actually determined all this to be true at some point in the past. All invented. No one knows for sure what's going on.

I certainly understand people desiring "proof" of paranormal behaviour but a great deal of the paranormal seems to depend on the mental state of the individual.

This doesn't seem to be true with objects moving by themselves, hearing mysterious banging, etc. At least not from all the stories I've read.

However, in other matters, I would hope you could see the trouble with this need for a certain kind of mental state. If perception of the paranormal depends on being in a certain kind of mental state, which is often said, then a person like myself who knows something about psychology and neurology, immediately comes to the conclusion that the people who are percieving the paranormal are merely putting themselves into a kind of trance from which they are hallucinating.

Thi is exactly what Don Juan was trying to do to Carlos Castaneda in the story I told above: direct him into an hallucinatory trance by having him focus on the white patch in the distance at twilight. Carlos, though, ruined his set up by discovering it was a piece of cloth Don Juan had planted there.

------

People being touched, pushed, hit, objects being thrown, rearranged, loud banging and other sounds, haven't been proven to be one thing or another. Even within the general paranormal scope of things there are too many good models that all fit perfectly well to say that we know they are ghosts.

The whole subject remains a tantalizing mystery.

 

[PIT2]

Nothing in your story proves "ghosts", though. All it says is that people experience extremely strange things they don't know how to explain.

You jump to say "ghost," instead of, for instance, demon, or pooka, or gremlin, because that's what the current conventional lore is about this stuff. As I've pointed out in several previous posts, even within a generally paranormal explanation, there is no good reason you should conclude this was the disembodied spirit of a dead person.

This is why Mentor Evo's stories are the most convincing I've ever heard: she simply states what happened and doesn't claim she knows anything about what caused it.

The fact that he mentioned the word 'ghost' or even believed that a ghost was the explanation, does not make the story less convincing. U can simply ignore what he believes is the explanation. He did after all tell the facts of what they experienced.

If Evo had mentioned the word 'ghost' would that make her stories less convincing?

U seem to have a dislike of people labelling what they believe to be paranormal events, so i suggest u simply remove/ignore the label, instead of dismissing stories simply because they have a label.

And btw, the fact that a greek woman died in that house may of course be relevant to the situation so it would be silly to leave it out.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The fact that he mentioned the word 'ghost' or even believed that a ghost was the explanation, does not make the story less convincing.

Convincing of what? All it convinces me about is that something extremely strange happened.

Why couldn't a pooka sense that Greek music used to be played in that house and cause someone to re-hear it?

 

[PIT2]

Convincing of what? All it convinces me about is that something extremely strange happened.

Why couldn't a pooka sense that Greek music used to be played in that house and cause someone to re-hear it?

I didnt say it was convincing of anything.

 

[invalid]

greek ghost

Zoobeyshoe, you are correct that personal background does contribute to interpretation of the events as a ghost as opposed to a pooka, demon et. al.
If I was a born and raised Catholic I might have interpreted, as the Catholic church officially believes (at least as far as I know), a ghost is a demon imititating the deceased in order to harass the living. One possibility concerning ghosts comes from Eastern Mysticism/Western Spiritualism. When a person dies sometimes a remnant of their personality remains called an astral shell. This shell is not intelligent but simply mimics actions of the formerly living person (the person's true spirit has gone on to the spiritual realms waiting to reincarnate). The shell will slowly dissipate over time.
However it was my interpretation of the occurrences after the fact (coupled with the later revelation that an older Greek lady had died in the house) that lead me to specifically believe that it was her disembodied spirit that was to blame. Italics are the "enity"

The plant moving in the night and window opening (it's too hot in here for this sleeping boy) - it was in the high summer
The clothes being thrown on the roomate (don't throw your clothes on the floor you slob)
The lawnmower (You missed spots on the lawn)
The banging on the door (You two make a nice couple, you should get together) which they did soon after

Of course this is all my own interpretation, putting a purpose to these strange events, but it all made more sense to me when looked at in this light. Of course this wouldn't discredit the idea of an evil spirit mimicking a ghost to "fool" the living, though the actions are more positive than would be expected from a demon/devil.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Of course this is all my own interpretation, putting a purpose to these strange events, but it all made more sense to me when looked at in this light.

The need to make sense of the mysterious by proposing models to explain it is fine, as long as you don't get attached to any particular unproven model. It is one thing to say "I can tell you from personal experience that really weird, inexplicable things do happen," and another thing altogether to say: "I can tell you from personal experience that ghosts exist."

Of course this wouldn't discredit the idea of an evil spirit mimicking a ghost to "fool" the living, though the actions are more positive than would be expected from a demon/devil.

Your interpretation of the actions as "positive," though, is just as unfounded as the assertion they were done by a ghost. If they have an intention, it could just as easily be viewed as hostile, or as simply attention-getting. I don't see any inherently "positive" thing standing out.

Then there's the "Carrie" explanation you didn't explore: that these events were actually unconsciously unleashed psychokinetic manifestations of someone's emotional unrest. Everything stopped when Mike left. We might propose that Mike took his psychokiesis with him, or, that someone else in the house was being provoked into this by a dislike of Mike.

I'm curious about the music. You said it was Greek classical music. I'm not sure what that would mean. How was it different from Greek popular music?

 

[invalid]

Greek Classical Music

By Greek classical I mean the sounds of a full orchestra (especially apparent were a large number of violins), and with a Mediterranean flavour to the chords. I had heard similar music in restaurants in the area. Of course this could also indicate a draw of some sort from the subconscious memory.

 

[zoobyshoe]

By Greek classical I mean the sounds of a full orchestra (especially apparent were a large number of violins), and with a Mediterranean flavour to the chords.

OK, you actually mean an orchestral rendition of Greek music. Beng performed by an orchestra doesn't make music "classical," just "orchestral."

I wondered if you might be referring to something that sounded ancient, as if from the classical Greek era.

I had heard similar music in restaurants in the area. Of course this could also indicate a draw of some sort from the subconscious memory.

Was this an ethnic Greek neighborhood? Lots of Greek restaurants and buisnesses?

 

[PIT2]

A story about a guy who has 'musical hallucinations':

Neuron Network Goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an IPod

By CARL ZIMMER

Seven years ago Reginald King was lying in a hospital bed recovering from bypass surgery when he first heard the music.

It began with a pop tune, and others followed. Mr. King heard everything from cabaret songs to Christmas carols. "I asked the nurses if they could hear the music, and they said no," said Mr. King, a retired sales manager in Cardiff, Wales.

"I got so frustrated," he said. "They didn't know what I was talking about and said it must be something wrong with my head. And it's been like that ever since."

Each day, the music returns. "They're all songs I've heard during my lifetime," said Mr. King, 83. "One would come on, and then it would run into another one, and that's how it goes on in my head. It's driving me bonkers, to be quite honest."
http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=evilones&msg=8868.1

 

[zoobyshoe]

A story about a guy who has 'musical hallucinations':

A very interesting story. Oliver Sacks reports two cases of the same thing in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat in a chapter called Reminiscence. A somewhat deaf woman living in a nursing home wakes up one day to hear songs from her childhood in Ireland. At first she thinks it's a radio. She checks all the radios, but they're turned off. Then, she wonders if she isn't picking up a radio signal from the fillings in her teeth. Then she realized that no station would be playing her songs over and over like that, and she asks to see the doctor.

Sacks gets an EEG and a brain scan. The EEG shows seizure activity everytime she hears a song, and the brain scan shows a small infarct or thrombosis in her right temporal lobe.
-----------
I think we can rule this phenomenon out in invalid's case, though, because there are a couple of important differences: 1.) The music he heard was only audible inside the house. When he went outside, he couldn't hear it any more. 2.) Invalid only heard the music on one occasion. All these people who have the musical hallucinations reported in these stories hear the music very frequently, over and over, no matter where they are.

In the case of Invalid's music I would be more inclined to suspect a freak accoustic phenomenon than
a neurological problem.

 

[Evo]

A very interesting story. Oliver Sacks reports two cases of the same thing in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat in a chapter called Reminiscence. A somewhat deaf woman living in a nursing home wakes up one day to hear songs from her childhood in Ireland. At first she thinks it's a radio. She checks all the radios, but they're turned off. Then, she wonders if she isn't picking up a radio signal from the fillings in her teeth. Then she realized that no station would be playing her songs over and over like that, and she asks to see the doctor.

Sacks gets an EEG and a brain scan. The EEG shows seizure activity everytime she hears a song, and the brain scan shows a small infarct or thrombosis in her right temporal lobe.

Interesting, so the seizures trigger memories, but only musical memories. This would suggest that musical memories are stored separate from other memories?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Interesting, so the seizures trigger memories, but only musical memories. This would suggest that musical memories are stored separate from other memories?

It might be better to say that this spot in the right temporal lobe is somehow critical to the retrieval process of musical memories, although I couldn't say exactly how, and must also be connected to the presentation of sound imput from the ears to consciousness. Instead of imput from the ears memories seem to be being fed to consciousness as though they were imput from the ears.

Musical memories may all be encoded very close to this spot, or they may be scattered all over the place as component parts that are merely retrieved and assembled here. I think if you researched this you'd find a lot of "studies indicate..." with no hard conclusions being able to be drawn.

The right side of the brain, though, does seem to be the dominant musical hemisphere, where music is processed and appreciated, just as the left is the language dominant hemisphere in most people.

 

[Evo]

Since we don't really know much about how memory works, I think this is rather fascinating. It does seem to me that it would imply some sort of categorization of memory. How else could we explain such selective memories?

 

[hypatia]

In my first house, when I went to bed, I would sometimes hear my old parlor pump organ play..low erie notes. At first it scared me, thinking it was haunted. Then late one night, I was laying on the wood floor by the organ{playing with a kitten} and a airplane passed over, a few seconds later I could feel the floor vibrate. Bingo..the vibrations caused the billows to depress, just slightly enough to make the erie sound.