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Different Types Of ‘Ghost’

I wonder if Aliens ahem our Space Family have the same thing like Ghosts and Time Slips,,,,,so much to what to know but so little of access in our world to fully understand it sadly.
 
Personally, I think that if ghosts exist then the [physics/metaphysics/throw in a quantum here] might explain them.
And if other beings exist then they may or may not be superior in science to us.
It might be a case of Z'bing the Alien, taking a swig of absinthe, says "Yeah, well, we all got ghosts see? But we found why they exist and, frankly, that's more damn scary than seeing one!"
 
Windows and mirrors trap people’s souls.

Have you seen someone looking back at you in your bathroom mirror ?

Have you seen a spirit trapped in a house window looking at you ?

Onetime when my bathroom mirror was fogged up, I felt like someone on the other side was drawing a picture of a face in the foggy moisture.

This only happened once to me.
I'm going to in the future scare the bejesus out my nephew. He deserves it. I have very large mirror and I will hook up a holographic image beamed into it. Then I'll get him to say bloody Mary into it. Then turn on the projector and sound effects discreetly out the way.
 
Does anyone have any stories of ghosts of non-living things? There are a couple of ghost train stories that are not very convincing , the Silverpilen, and Lincoln funeral train.

I'm thinking specifically of stories where the machine is the ghost, not hauntings ON a train or other mechanism. Nor 'haunted' or 'cursed' vehicles / machines that are solid enough in themselves.
 
Does anyone have any stories of ghosts of non-living things? There are a couple of ghost train stories that are not very convincing , the Silverpilen, and Lincoln funeral train.

I'm thinking specifically of stories where the machine is the ghost, not hauntings ON a train or other mechanism. Nor 'haunted' or 'cursed' vehicles / machines that are solid enough in themselves.
How about the phantom No 7 bus

Last seen as recently as 1990 (1990!), the spooky apparition first came to fame in the 1930s, when it caused a significant road accident.

Late one night, a motorist driving along Cambridge Gardens suddenly swerved for no apparent reason. Sources differ as to what happened next.

Some say his car hit a wall and burst into flames, killing the unfortunate soul inside. It was at the inquest into his death that witnesses came forward, saying they'd seen a ghostly, unlit, driverless bus speeding down the centre of the road and that had caused the chap to crash.

Another version of events has the driver escaping — unhurt — and giving an eyewitness account: he told the police a bright red Number 7 double-decker had been hurtling towards him, forcing him off the road. In this account, the bus's lights are on, but there's no driver or passengers at home... spooky.

(Night buses were first introduced in London in 1913, but they were few and far between in the 1930s.)

Then more accidents started happening. Always at the same time (1.15am) and always at the same place on Cambridge Gardens.

Eyewitness accounts were remarkably similar: a speeding double-decker had forced a car off the road; when the startled drivers turned around to see the out-of-control, driverless bus, there was nothing there.
 
How about the phantom No 7 bus

Last seen as recently as 1990 (1990!), the spooky apparition first came to fame in the 1930s, when it caused a significant road accident.

Late one night, a motorist driving along Cambridge Gardens suddenly swerved for no apparent reason. Sources differ as to what happened next.
I've heard that one before. The 'conventional' explanation is that it was caused by some sort of reflection off the windows of a building and it disappeared when the road was straightened.

It's a pity the witnesses in later sightings couldn't identify the type of bus - that is, was it a 1930's type or contemporary with the sightings. If it was the former it makes a nonsense of the 'reflection' theory.
 
How about the phantom No 7 bus

Last seen as recently as 1990 (1990!), the spooky apparition first came to fame in the 1930s, when it caused a significant road accident.

Late one night, a motorist driving along Cambridge Gardens suddenly swerved for no apparent reason. Sources differ as to what happened next.
I first read about that in a book published in 1968. That there had been no sighting for many years was put down to the road being straightened and less dangerous.
 
You didn’t stipulate it had to have actually happened.

I find it hard to buy the reflections/road straightening explanation. All the ‘sightings’ were past 1am so it’s a very time-dependent reflection anomaly - why doesn’t it happen at other times in the night? And the last ‘incident’ was 1990 - when was the road straightened?

It’s an implausible explanation to an implausible story.
 
It does annoy me the people that outright say ghosts don’t exist. Millions of people have experienced unexplainable things and we don’t know what exactly a ‘ghost’ is supposed to be.
Just because they're 'unexplainable' to the individuals doesn't mean they are ghosts, and we've collected zero credible evidence, despite all of our technology.
I drove around a corner once and saw a figure on a horse that vanished as I drove by, I turned the car round and drove back again,
The rider was a trick of the eye, caused by a hedge, a lamp post, a red post box, and the landscape lining up for a split second.
I don't believe in ghosts, I'm happy to be proved wrong but it hasn't happened so far...
 
Just because they're 'unexplainable' to the individuals doesn't mean they are ghosts, and we've collected zero credible evidence, despite all of our technology.
I drove around a corner once and saw a figure on a horse that vanished as I drove by, I turned the car round and drove back again,
The rider was a trick of the eye, caused by a hedge, a lamp post, a red post box, and the landscape lining up for a split second.
I don't believe in ghosts, I'm happy to be proved wrong but it hasn't happened so far...
People have seen things there is no explanation for. I have seen a human shaped black mass in a stockroom that there was no explanation for. Believe me if there was any explanation I’d have happily taken it. There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy still holds true.

How can you say ‘ghost’ don’t exist when we don’t even know what ghosts are? Are they spirits of the dead? Are they reflections of the past? Is it something triggered in a person’s brain? We don’t know.
 
ChasFink the pedant can't resist.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy" refers not (as many assume) to someone whose personal philosophy is unnecessarily narrow, but to the limits of the field of philosophy (i.e. scientific inquiry, in the broadest sense) itself. Of course this is a very fortean viewpoint.

Whether ghosts indesputabaly exist depends on your definition of ghost. Are there phenomenological experiences that match many of the qualities traditionally associated with ghosts? Of course. Are there "spirits" of the dead wandering the Earth seeking closure of the circumstances of their demise? The jury is out.
 
I think it's 'define 'ghosts', that's being debated really isn't it?

As ChasFink says, people see things they can't explain. If an explanation is readily forthcoming afterwards, it was a 'trick of the light, hallucination, perceptual glitch'. If it isn't - it's a ghost. It's exactly the same as UFOs - do people see things in the sky that they can't readily identify? Of course. Most are later identified. Those that aren't, are UFOs by definition.

Are ghosts wandering spirits of the dead? Slips of the universe? Holes through time? Or is the human brain capable of conjuring, and in some cases transmitting, images?

It's almost more interesting to look into WHY we see things, rather than what those things are.
 
My recent experience reported here, helped to turn by belief in this subject completely round.

The image (for want of a better word) of the smiling little old lady in my bedroom which lasted a few seconds (I originally said 10 but thinking about it was probably less) has no logical explanation. My mother's encounter 40 plus years ago with the little girl in the neighbour's empty house, and also seen by others when the house was full, also has no explanation.

It's easy to dismiss these paranormal events of course - that is until you encounter one yourself. Having said this I don't believe what I and my mother saw were spirits of the dead but some sort of time replay of events. A slight chink in this belief though was my mother dismissing the image with "We don't want you here" and the girl immediately disappearing, which was suggestive of some reaction on the part of the girl. Who knows?
 
You didn’t stipulate it had to have actually happened.

I find it hard to buy the reflections/road straightening explanation. All the ‘sightings’ were past 1am so it’s a very time-dependent reflection anomaly - why doesn’t it happen at other times in the night? And the last ‘incident’ was 1990 - when was the road straightened?

It’s an implausible explanation to an implausible story.
The book published 1968 has a page or two on it. The road-straightening removed a notorious accident black spot that was associated with the ghost bus. I don't think the year this was done is mentioned in the book, sadly.

What is significant about the account I read is that the presence of the ghost bus was described by a witness at an inquest into a road death.
An inquest is a court of law and evidence is given under oath. Its not a pub story.
 
Tonight we saw an utterly charming explanation of what ghosts are on the TV sitcom "Moone Boy." The premise of the show is that the lead character. an adorkable kid, Martin, engages with his imaginary friend, whom only he can see. We saw one of the latter eps tonight where the family's grandad has dementia so he sees his childhood imaginary friend again as his mind sort of timeslips around, as senility takes him back and forth. The old fellow eventually dies peacefully and yet his imaginary friend still appears to Martin's imaginary friend. That imaginary friend explains that ghosts are imaginary friends who remain after the mind of their corporeal buddies die, and they still just fulfill
the desires of their host buddies. So he's off to peep at and scare nude women (his buddy was a rather horrible child/man/old man in life).
I never had an imaginary friend--this theory doesn't persuade me much, but I found it so original.
 
People have seen things there is no explanation for. I have seen a human shaped black mass in a stockroom that there was no explanation for. Believe me if there was any explanation I’d have happily taken it. There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy still holds true.

How can you say ‘ghost’ don’t exist when we don’t even know what ghosts are? Are they spirits of the dead? Are they reflections of the past? Is it something triggered in a person’s brain? We don’t know.
'Things there is no explanation for' only means the witnesses didn't know what they were seeing, there is an explanation for everything.
It's when we find something that we can't immediately explain that things become interesting, we do research, and hopefully we find answers.

How can you say ghosts DO exist when you can't even define what it is that you think you've seen?
We've evolved to see human shapes and faces in everything.

I don't doubt people have seen things they couldn't explain, but if you can't explain it then you can't explain it.
You can't say you can't explain it, then explain it as being 'a ghost'.

We'd both like to find that ghosts do exist, the difference is that you'd be happy to go into a darkened room and interpret anything you could as the paranormal, I prefer to put the lights on and eliminate all rational possibilities, so far I haven't seen anything that tells me it's not just my imagination.

In short, you want to believe, I want to understand; even if it means that the reality is disappointing.
 
Just because they're 'unexplainable' to the individuals doesn't mean they are ghosts, and we've collected zero credible evidence, despite all of our technology.
I drove around a corner once and saw a figure on a horse that vanished as I drove by, I turned the car round and drove back again,
The rider was a trick of the eye, caused by a hedge, a lamp post, a red post box, and the landscape lining up for a split second.
I don't believe in ghosts, I'm happy to be proved wrong but it hasn't happened so far...
I don't agree with your take on this.

There are undoubtedly ghost sightings that are pareidolia or have other rational explanations, however there have also been very convincing witness experiences and multiple witness accounts of 'something' that defied a conventional explanation. Personally, I'm not prepared to disregard what these people have experienced. Furthermore, 'credible' evidence implies film and photography, but what is to say that what people see can't be captured on film...?

Fundamentally, if we are to disregard the people from all walks of life and beliefs who come forward and risk ridicule to report paranormal experiences, then the concept of 'Fortean" is redundant and the world will be a greyer place for it.
 
I think it's 'define 'ghosts', that's being debated really isn't it? ...
I think so ...

There's little to be gained in debating mundane versus extraordinary explanations unless we can clearly specify what we're trying to explain in the first place.
 
I don't agree with your take on this.

There are undoubtedly ghost sightings that are pareidolia or have other rational explanations, however there have also been very convincing witness experiences and multiple witness accounts of 'something' that defied a conventional explanation. Personally, I'm not prepared to disregard what these people have experienced. Furthermore, 'credible' evidence implies film and photography, but what is to say that what people see can't be captured on film...?

Fundamentally, if we are to disregard the people from all walks of life and beliefs who come forward and risk ridicule to report paranormal experiences, then the concept of 'Fortean" is redundant and the world will be a greyer place for it.
If sightings are pareidolia or have other rational explanations then they aren't 'ghost' sightings.
Because somebody doesn't understand what they are seeing it doesn't mean it's automatically supernatural.

I'm not disregarding what people say, I'm analysing it, and it's at this point many people get uncooperative because they don't want an explanation, they want a story.

If people can see things but they can't be caught on camera then that implies it's in their head...

I want the truth, not self-deception.
The truth doesn't need me to make excuses for it, or dance around why there appears to be no evidence for something that probably doesn't exist.

Where is all of this amazing evidence that you so desperately want to believe?
It's all beginning to sound like the case for there being a god, and I don't do faith, I do science...
 
I want the truth, not self-deception.
The truth doesn't need me to make excuses for it, or dance around why there appears to be no evidence for something that probably doesn't exist.
fb69b97a7755b04e8cf39c6a95c62ead.jpg

:p
 
I don't really believe in ghosts but a good friend of mine who is a Catholic priest once told me about minor entities who seek attention and if you give them attention they get worse. Apparantly they want you to think they are a demon.

Now I don't take this seriously but the idea of weak entities acting up to get attention is pretty funny and a good example of how we anthropomorphise the unknown.
 
If sightings are pareidolia or have other rational explanations then they aren't 'ghost' sightings.
Because somebody doesn't understand what they are seeing it doesn't mean it's automatically supernatural.

I'm not disregarding what people say, I'm analysing it, and it's at this point many people get uncooperative because they don't want an explanation, they want a story.

If people can see things but they can't be caught on camera then that implies it's in their head...

I want the truth, not self-deception.
The truth doesn't need me to make excuses for it, or dance around why there appears to be no evidence for something that probably doesn't exist.

Where is all of this amazing evidence that you so desperately want to believe?
It's all beginning to sound like the case for there being a god, and I don't do faith, I do science...
The fundamental problem here is the use of materialist tools to try to examine non-materialist problems. The universe is vast and strange and there is a certain arrogance in assuming that everything can be reduced within the bounds of human comprehension.
 
The fundamental problem here is the use of materialist tools to try to examine non-materialist problems. The universe is vast and strange and there is a certain arrogance in assuming that everything can be reduced within the bounds of human comprehension.

I always find the concept of ghosts less interesting when there seems to be motives for its behaviour. The scariest and most compelling ones are completely unknowable.
 
The fundamental problem here is the use of materialist tools to try to examine non-materialist problems. The universe is vast and strange and there is a certain arrogance in assuming that everything can be reduced within the bounds of human comprehension.
That sounds like a cop out to get round any scientific enquiry, - don't question, have faith, don't turn the lights on and spoil the illusion.
And you've made the arrogant assumption that something 'non-materialistic' exists for us to discover.
If there is any evidence then let us analyse it, we'll either learn something that we didn't know or realise that we're fooling ourselves...
 
That sounds like a cop out to get round any scientific enquiry, - don't question, have faith, don't turn the lights on and spoil the illusion.
And you've made the arrogant assumption that something 'non-materialistic' exists for us to discover.
If there is any evidence then let us analyse it, we'll either learn something that we didn't know or realise that we're fooling ourselves...
Like dark matter?
 
That sounds like a cop out to get round any scientific enquiry, - don't question, have faith, don't turn the lights on and spoil the illusion.
And you've made the arrogant assumption that something 'non-materialistic' exists for us to discover.
If there is any evidence then let us analyse it, we'll either learn something that we didn't know or realise that we're fooling ourselves...
I also think it's arrogant to assume, like some do, that things that defy scientific explanation don't exist or are figments of imagination.
 
I also think it's arrogant to assume, like some do, that things that defy scientific explanation don't exist or are figments of imagination.
Yup, science is a process of enquiry. It is the study of nature. Any scientist worth their salt knows that the ore they find out, the more there is to learn.

Our very own Snailet of Physics once told me that examination of the tiniest particles and their mysterious interactions can induce a state of wonder that feels very much like religious reverence.
 
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