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Are People Here Scared Of Ghosts?

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AsamiYamazaki

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Sorry if there's been a thread on this before - it was a big of a vague one to search on :D

I was bemoaning the lack of good hauntings in Toronto recently, only to realize that if I went somewhere I genuinely believed to be haunted, with a high likelihood of witnessing something, I'd probably be so busy s******g bricks and keeping my eyes shut, I wouldn't get to see anything even if it happened. Except of course, if I had my eyes shut, I'd be terrified that something would grab me. So I can't imagine I'd get very far at all.

When I saw my grandmother at the foot of my bed when I was 8, I remember being absolutely beside myself with terror, because I realized I was seeing a ghost (poor thing - she totally picked the wrong person to visit) and was rammed under the bedclothes for the rest of the night.

A few years back, I was really anxious going into the Edinburgh vaults until the tour really kicked off, at which point I realized the whole experience was such a pile of hammed up theatrical nonsense that there was no way anything would/could ever happen.

Are there any other chickens on the board?
 
AsamiYamazaki said:
Are there any other chickens on the board?
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I'd say "cluck, cluck!", but the more ghost stories I hear or read, the more I find that the ghosts don't seem to do harm, so encountering one is not the really scary prospect it would have been some years earlier.
 
Nothing to be frightened off at all,whatever they turn out to be they can not hurt you ,so there is no reason to be scared ,ofc i have never seen a ghost so maybe if i did see one i would go cluck cluck chicken,but right now i really want to see one.
 
I do startle very easily for some reason so the kind of sudden crashes and bangs often attributed to poltergeist activity would probably frighten me. However, someone behind me with a balloon and a pin could do the job just as well so it's not really "ghosts" I'm scared of.
 
I just finished posting in my "co-worker stories" thread about how I drove past a cemetery with a little old church, because I was curious to have a look. Lots of haunting/oddity/orbs/you name it have been reported there.
I wasn't scared, but maybe it's because I have never seen anything of this sort :p My attitude is similar to the others replying above. I think I would be creeped out, surprised, confused, fascinated, but I don't feel like they would necessarily be out to get me.
That could change without notice if I saw something unexplainable :p
 
It depends where and how I saw them. If I saw someone in my bedroom I'd imagine it was a burglar and be fairly exercised by the matter.
The time I believe I saw 'ghosts' I felt annoyance, as though they were using our senses to manifest, tricking us in other words, their only real power being to scare or ward off.
 
When I saw a ghost as a youngster of about nine or ten I wasn't scared at all. Though later on when I was in my twenties and my family and then girlfriend lived in what we all became convinced was a haunted house, I was always petrified.
Then later on again in my thirties I was confronted by what I was convinced was a ghost, which I ended up chasing after through the house with no fear just extreme curiosity. As it turned out I'd actually chased one of the occupants through the house and cornered them in their bedroom before I realised, but I was totally convinced at the time so it counts.

I think your tolerance for fear changes as you get older, also I'd say from my own experience if it happens in your own home its horrible and oppressive but if it happens outside its fascinating and non threatening. But I would say when ghost hunting get a list of whose in the house at the time beforehand or it can turn out to be just plain embarrassing.
 
I've seen several ghosts but can't say they were frightening, just surprising.
 
I saw something when I was small but wasn't frightened.

However, a lot of stories I read about people's experiences suggest that environment places a huge part and I don't see how I would be able to avoid having the same atavistic response as anyone else.


So in summary. I'm a chicken too. :D

brrrrrk buk buk buk
 
This just my thought. If someone sees one when they are going about there own business and not expecting them they more an likely to be more surprised than scared. If some one sees one and they are on a ghost vigil, then i think they will be more scared as they are expecting it and so they have build up a thought of what might happen. And as most vigils are down in errie spooky places at night it adds to the atomsphere.
 
In daylight I am ultra rational, after dark I am scared of my own shadow.

Just moved into a new aartment, lovely, old building, old part of the city, wooden beamed roof - beautiful. For the first week though I took forever to get to sleep though as I was convinced I was going to wake up and see someone hovering around my bed!

Ridiculous, I know, but... :oops: :shock:
 
Glad to know I'm not totally alone in the chicken camp. I wonder whether it's easier for ghosts to manifest to people who aren't scared, therefore bypassing the need to be super-convincing by just appearing and taking a witness by surprise, or if a quaking chicken provides helpful energy to give strength to an apparition.

The chicken side of me fully refuses to believe the "ghosts can't hurt you" argument: there's always a first time, and poltergeists aren't exactly fluffy non-confrontational spooks. And then what about those hairy hands. Definitely not benign.

We were recently house-hunting which I fretted over a bit because what if somewhere turned out to have a really bad atmosphere at night, but we figured we could use our 3 year old as a psychic canary. Interestingly enough, when we were taking him on tours of haunted houses around Toronto etc. he didn't bat an eyelid, but when we stayed at my parents house in England that has always given me the willies, he was going on and on about the ghost every night. He did say though that the ghost made him laugh :roll:
 
Ooh! Ooh! Where in England? North? North-west? South? Midlands? :D

I'm not afraid of ghosts. I've seen/experienced all sorts of weird stuff and it generally doesn't scare me. Bring it on! :lol:

In fact, if you believe you have a ghost around and it's worrying you, send it to me. I'll sort it. :twisted:

Seriously, my feeling is that how we perceive ghosts may depend upon how comfortable we are with the idea of death.
When we have sorted out our beliefs about death - oblivion, Heaven, limbo, another incarnation, whatever - perhaps we can fit our concept of what a ghost is into that belief and deal with it.

I suspect that this tends to happen after bereavement. I help to run a bereavement support group and have met people who have lost loved ones in horrendous circumstances. They often have a stillness about them which suggests peace and acceptance. None that I've met have any fear of the supernatural.
 
I'm a right chicken when it comes to ghosts too, despite being fascinated by them. Always have been, right back to when I was tiny. Love to read about them, but sleep with the light on. :D

I used to be terrified giving lifts late at night to my friends who lived out in the countryside, where a "gruesome apparition" was said to haunt!

Strangely, when I did live in a spooky flat and did actually see something weird, I wasn't all that terrified (well, I hid under the duvet all night, but I didn't immediately move out). I think I'd be too scared to go back into that flat now, what a chicken.
 
I generally don't get afraid.My ultra-sceptic wife was with me when we visited Derby old jail. My confession here is that we were in gthe audience for Most Haunted live in Derby!! In our defence, it was very early on in the series and the tickets were free!.
The two wired things were that she went into the condemned mans cell and didn't like it. She said that she felt like the door was going to close. That night 'natural psychic' Derek said exactly the same thing. The other was that the other cell has no windows and is pitch black. I asked her to stand at the back abd I would take her photograph. She insists that something poked her in the back. After the photo was taken I walked around the outside of the cell, feeling the walls as I went along, for something sticking out. I admit my heart was beating a little faster, but if I felt a face or something I think my reaction may have been vert different indeed.
 
Tapeloop, sounds like we're a pair of matching chickens separated at birth.

Escargot, I think your point about bereavement is very true. The spirit world has to be less disturbing when you've got some loved ones living over there. And I remember how jealous my mum was when I told her I'd seen my gran, which to me seemed pretty boggling but now makes a lot of sense and also makes me wonder if my grandmother picked the person most likely to be accepting of seeing a ghost.

My parents' house in England is in Surrey. When my sister was younger, she'd seen the ghost of the old woman who lived there before she died and we moved in (the woman & her husband had wanted our family to have the house, to the point of trying to give it to us much to the horror of their semi-estranged family). My sister hadn't been scared at all - the woman was standing in the bathroom then was gone. However, when I first started going out with my husband, he had a really awful feeling of fear one time when he went in the bathroom (cue any toilet jokes now). He was a bit of a s**t at the time, so I like to think she stopped by to let him know his behaviour wasn't acceptable in her home :lol:
 
No, I'm not afrid of ghosts, though I've never yet actually seen one.

What terrifies me is walking, prowling, crawling, generally nosey walking corpses - though I've (thankfully) never encountered any of those either.

By the way, that's where we get the idea of sheeted ghosts - ambulatory corpses in their winding sheets.
 
I've just read this, by Kenneth Anger about Aleister Crowley:

Crowley was not afraid of devils, in fact, they were part of his family. He was never afraid of anything on the other side - angel, devil, these are names you put on entities - but he said, ‘Welcome friend.’
 
I'm very quick to say that, if confronted with anything paranormal ghosts, aliens etc I'd be all intrigued and reaching for the camera. But in truth I'd be a shivering wreck. I know this for fact now due to a bizarre event in Cornwall this time last year and a further event about 2 weeks ago when I woke up to hear something violently banging the cat flap repeatedly. I went straight down to the living room and grabbed the iron poker from beside the fire and then edged towards the kitchen (totally in the buff I hasten to add) loudly proclaiming I "was armed!" but you could hear the fright in my voice and I was shaking quite a lot. Of course it turned out to be two cats fighting through the flap....but I wasn't to know that! :(
 
linesmachine said:
....loudly proclaiming I "was armed!" but you could hear the fright in my voice and I was shaking quite a lot.
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Sounds like you were expecting an in-the-flesh human, nothing paranormal. Some person attempting to get into the house through the cat flap would be scary anytime.
 
....yes, sorry. I was just giving an example of "me in frightened mode". The event that occurred (and referred to in post) this time last year I initially took to be paranormal and I behaved in an equally unimpressive manner.

Actually we were having dinner with friends over the weekend and the wife said that, when confronted by something frightening I have a tendency to "squeak and hop around." Not quite the manly ideal that I was striving to....
 
OldTimeRadio said:
By the way, that's where we get the idea of sheeted ghosts
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If ah see a ghost, ah'm gonna be the one wearin' sheeted garments.


Actually, although I can't say I've seen a full-on, definite thing I could call a ghost, I've seen the odd strange thing over the years here and there. Most of the time I've only been spooked after the event, looking back. At the time, you just think "that's odd". I've gone off into dark buildings following noises and afterwards can't believe I would do such a thing.
Of course, I don't know, I might have seen a ghost, but not realised it. If there's a spectre wandering down the road with shoppers, I might be unaware it is indeed a spectre.

All in all though, I'm a coward, pure and simple.
 
I am indeed terrified of ghosts.
I had a certain experience, on-going for about a week, which isn`t all that terrifying in writing (which is half of why I haven`t posted it here) but which was push-you-to-a-breakdown horrifying in real life. No, nothing happened to me, but I sincerely felt that something could and would. That horror alone was enough to make me dread any and all ghostly encounters. (That is the other half of why I haven`t posted it - some sick fear that writing about it will bring it back...)
One singular event is scary and gives the chills, but to really feel that a ghost is out to get you is a completely different experience. I`m more terrified of that experience than ghosts themselves, I suppose.
 
tamyu said:
No, nothing happened to me, but I sincerely felt that something could and would. That horror alone was enough to make me dread any and all ghostly encounters.... but to really feel that a ghost is out to get you is a completely different experience. I`m more terrified of that experience than ghosts themselves, I suppose.
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I totally know what you mean Tamyu. The power of suggestion, or the hint of what "could be" is often worse than the reality itself. That's why Hollywood producers have always tried to leave it until the very last scene to actually show the beast in horror films! It's part of the human condition to be wary of the unknown, much more so than the actual known, however bad the actual known is....if you get my drift...
 
Well tamyu's post definitely worked on the less-is-more theory.

Gave me the willies and I don't even know what happened! :shock:
 
Is it ghosts that people really fear or is it the more general thought of being confronted and surprised by the unknown? Has it become an almost conditioned reflex?

It's a bit like a fear of falling. It's not the fall...it's the ground meeting you that's the problem.
 
It's cultural. You're scared of the things you've been taught to be scared of. If you come across something entirely new you have to learn whether or not it's scary.

As a non-supernatural example, I recently had a small operation under local anaesthetic. Having assisted in similar procedures and looked after happy patients afterwards I knew what to expect and wasn't remotely frightened or nervous.

While I was in there the next patient, who was sitting in the same room where Mr Snail was waiting for me, was shaking and nauseous with fear. Poor thing. :lol:
 
In the daylight, I'm desperate to see a ghost. When night falls however, I find myself willing 'things' to stay away from me.

Like someone else has said, I don't want to come across anything in my own home. I choose to live and stay in places that I think will be unlikely 'ghost habitats', much to the amusement AND annoyance of my husband. I love old buildings with atmosphere but I don't want to have to sleep in them.

So I suppose I am also a yellow chicken. :oops:
 
I'd love to stay in one of those 'Haunted Hotels', Y'no...the ones where Mary queen of Scots walks the halls or summat. I know that at first I'd be seeing it all as a joke, but that would change once it got dark. Bit like being on a roller coaster, only you get a cooked breakfast.
 
Cultjunky said:
I'd love to stay in one of those 'Haunted Hotels', Y'no...the ones where Mary queen of Scots walks the halls or summat. I know that at first I'd be seeing it all as a joke, but that would change once it got dark. Bit like being on a roller coaster, only you get a cooked breakfast.
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I have no problem at all with that. It's the idea of being trapped by night in a centuried cathedral while the long-interred dead, solid and very much NON-transparent, creep up from their subterene crypts to pay me a visit that terrifies this Yank.
 
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