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Do Spirits Have A 'Real' Existence?

My British Grandmother, who was known to have 'the sixth sense' in spades, lived with us for many years. We moved into a very old house and my Grandmother described all the people who had previously lived in the house, she said she would bump into them on the back stairs. It bothered her dreadfully to hang the clothes in the backyard because she said there was a man standing under the old grapevine in the garden, he would stand there and watch her. Our next door neighbor, a woman in her late 80's, told my Grandmother that this was the man who had a heart attack under the grapevine and had died. One day my Grandmother got fed up and walked up to this man and told him that he was dead and had to move on.
She never saw him again, and after that my Dad tore the old house down and built a new one, and that was the end of the Ghosts.
 
The water is moving, the fairies are not. Isn't that enough reason for the selective blurring?
 
Do they, though?

Like many of us here, I've seen and experienced some preternatural things - but I don't recall ever seeing a photo or film footage of a "ghost" yet, that was convincing? In a world where almost everyone now walks round with a decent camera on them most of the time - why are we not flooded now with photos of ghosts? There is a camera in the pocket of most adults on the planet, for the first time in history... convincing ghost photos should be coming out hourly lol.
True, but by the time you retrieve your phone from your back pocket, enter the security code/place your thumb/swipe right then lift and focus the entity/bigfoot/UFO has gone. Then there are numerous accounts of photographic and other recording equipment malfunctioning or having their batteries drain of power in an instant during paranormal investigations, so maybe 'they' don't want t be photographed...
 
True, but by the time you retrieve your phone from your back pocket, enter the security code/place your thumb/swipe right then lift and focus the entity/bigfoot/UFO has gone. Then there are numerous accounts of photographic and other recording equipment malfunctioning or having their batteries drain of power in an instant during paranormal investigations, so maybe 'they' don't want t be photographed...
Absolutely, and who knows if what we are seeing with our eyes will actually show up in a photograph?
 
The water is moving, the fairies are not. Isn't that enough reason for the selective blurring?
Yes, the fairies were all stood very still 'cos they were cut outs from a book.
Not sure what shutter speeds, exposure,film speed, depth of field was used but IIRC someone had worked all this out and given the poses,etc. thought it unlikely they were genuine. Again IIRC this was quite recent, last 15-20 years. I was surprised no one had done the analysis sooner.
 
According to Wikipedia, the Cottongley Fairies were photographed with a Midg Falling Glass Plate camera in which the focus and shutter speeds have to be perfect, and the glass plates were bad about getting stuck.

I don’t know, but I think a “ third party “ took these pictures ?
 
Ronnie Jersey, interesting stories.

A theory is when people die, they don’t know they are dead or have unfinished business.

These clueless ghosts roam the earth for a while before moving on.

Then again some ghosts are trapped in a particular setting for whatever reason.

I look at ghosts as sad things because no one reports a happy ghost.

Then there is “ Casper, the friendly ghost “ cartoon.
 
I'm open to the possibility of spirits. I don't think there's any such thing, but my own personal lack of experience with such things, apart from dream and drug states, doesn't mean there is nothing there. There are myriad psycho/physiological explanations for what people perceive, even supposedly sensed phenomena. Not really keen to have those kinds of experiences in my life. It's hard enough dealing with the living.
 
I think near death experiences are based on the local cultures. Here's some Japanese NDEs.

One 50-year-old asthmatic man said he had seen himself wade into a reservoir
and do a handstand in the shallows. ‘Then I walked out of the water and
took some deep breaths. In the dream, I was repeating this over and over.’

Another 65-year-old man saw himself about to wade across a river when
he heard someone call his name and say ‘come this way’. The man said he
turned around and went back the way he had come. He later revived from a
coma in which his heart had stopped beating.

Another patient, a 73-year-old woman with cardiac arrest, saw a cloud
filled with dead people. ‘It was a dark, gloomy day . . . I was chanting
sutras. I believed they could be saved if they chanted sutras, so that is
what I was telling them to do.’
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13217970-500-japanese-find-death-a-depressing-experience/
 
This is fascinating and would be a credible explanation of why they can seem like tropes.

I've been reading this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Fairies-Archives-Investigation-Authentic/dp/1938398262

(The Lost Archives of the Fairy Investigation Society) - mainly because I love things about Gerald Gardner style eccentric obsessives - and it's very striking that the eyewitness accounts of fairies people saw in various decades, the 1920s' fairies have a very 1920s' feel to them, the 1950s' fairies, a very 1950s' feel, etc... Contrast to the terrifying contemporary fictional fairies in 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' which seem far more in keeping with our time...

We can only "see" what we can imagine?
I've heard a theory about memory in children - that children really start to form memories as they develop speech. So, in essence, they only really remember those things that they have words to describle. Which makes me wonder if we only 'see' things that we have the words for.
 
From Daniken and Vallee to this time has been the trend to read the spiritual experiences as generated by UFO extraterrestrial voyagers, is an explanation that has been very successful till became a kind of secular religion. Its success come from it fits with the materialistic soul of our age. ( And from some magician help too). But by the nature of the explanations given the equation could be read perfectly backwards, and say that the UFO phenomenon is in reality an upgrade of this kind of Spirits phenomenon.
But the Culture is changing again, and in the times of the metaverse, online shared worlds, and well, even this chat...is the concept of materialism what is getting stressed.
 
True, but by the time you retrieve your phone from your back pocket, enter the security code/place your thumb/swipe right then lift and focus the entity/bigfoot/UFO has gone. Then there are numerous accounts of photographic and other recording equipment malfunctioning or having their batteries drain of power in an instant during paranormal investigations, so maybe 'they' don't want t be photographed...
Gopro’s in their what? Hundreds of thousand? Dashcams in their millions, CCTV’s in their hundreds of millions, and has anything conclusive been filmed? Nothing yet that I have seen.
 
My niece can barely talk. She seems to remember things well enough.
I think it should read 'comprehend language' - some people can never talk but their memories work fine, but they have the understanding of language and which word symbolises which object. It must need some kind of persistence of meaning otherwise nobody would be able to explain what they'd seen. Very small children obviously have memory - they remember that sitting in their high chair means dinner is coming and they have to sit still or they'll topple out - but they wouldn't retain this memory over years, or be able to explain how they understand that 'high chair means dinner'.
 
True, but by the time you retrieve your phone from your back pocket, enter the security code/place your thumb/swipe right then lift and focus the entity/bigfoot/UFO has gone. Then there are numerous accounts of photographic and other recording equipment malfunctioning or having their batteries drain of power in an instant during paranormal investigations, so maybe 'they' don't want t be photographed...
I don't know about all phones, but with my Iphone you don't have to unlock the phone to use the camera, you just swipe up to open the camera app.
 
I think it should read 'comprehend language' - some people can never talk but their memories work fine, but they have the understanding of language and which word symbolises which object. It must need some kind of persistence of meaning otherwise nobody would be able to explain what they'd seen. Very small children obviously have memory - they remember that sitting in their high chair means dinner is coming and they have to sit still or they'll topple out - but they wouldn't retain this memory over years, or be able to explain how they understand that 'high chair means dinner'.
They also seem to develop object permanence alongside language - so before there's much language, they still think if something disappears from view, it's no longer in the world (a bit like my dog who thinks if she puts her head under a cushion you can't see her anymore). So until language develops a little, it's almost like nothing in the world is real or permanent. That's a fairly old theory now, but some still think it's true.
 
True, but by the time you retrieve your phone from your back pocket, enter the security code/place your thumb/swipe right then lift and focus the entity/bigfoot/UFO has gone. Then there are numerous accounts of photographic and other recording equipment malfunctioning or having their batteries drain of power in an instant during paranormal investigations, so maybe 'they' don't want t be photographed...
Yes, I'll admit, one of my sons was very sceptical about husband and my ghost stories and was constantly saying "But if ghosts were real, someone would have a photo by now". And kept going on about he wanted to be the first person ever to get a really clear, unequivocal ghost photo so he'd be rich (being sarcastic). Then he moved into a new build flat on the site of an old hospital where thousands of children must have died, in the past... Quite a few weirdnesses have happened and when he first told me of some of his weird experiences in his flat, I came back with "So why don't you have a photo?" Now he sort of gets it. But I still think, just with the sheer number of decent cameras pretty well permanently carried around by most people - there would surely be something a bit more convincing, by now?
 
Yes, I'll admit, one of my sons was very sceptical about husband and my ghost stories and was constantly saying "But if ghosts were real, someone would have a photo by now". And kept going on about he wanted to be the first person ever to get a really clear, unequivocal ghost photo so he'd be rich (being sarcastic). Then he moved into a new build flat on the site of an old hospital where thousands of children must have died, in the past... Quite a few weirdnesses have happened and when he first told me of some of his weird experiences in his flat, I came back with "So why don't you have a photo?" Now he sort of gets it. But I still think, just with the sheer number of decent cameras pretty well permanently carried around by most people - there would surely be something a bit more convincing, by now?
Have you ever seen 'The Osbournes Want To Believe' with Ozzy, Sharon and their son Jack, who is a real-life paranormal investigator?
Perhaps they don't show it in the UK? Jack shows countless videos and photos of paranormal oddities, ghosts, and the like that regular folks take all the time.
Some of them are really odd and might actually be visits from 'the other side'.
Still I think it's not that easy to aim and focus to get a sharp image of things wandering past us......
 
Yes, I'll admit, one of my sons was very sceptical about husband and my ghost stories and was constantly saying "But if ghosts were real, someone would have a photo by now". And kept going on about he wanted to be the first person ever to get a really clear, unequivocal ghost photo so he'd be rich (being sarcastic). Then he moved into a new build flat on the site of an old hospital where thousands of children must have died, in the past... Quite a few weirdnesses have happened and when he first told me of some of his weird experiences in his flat, I came back with "So why don't you have a photo?" Now he sort of gets it. But I still think, just with the sheer number of decent cameras pretty well permanently carried around by most people - there would surely be something a bit more convincing, by now?
I think, and have said elsewhere, that indisputable proof is against their nature. They have some sort of existence but it is different from ours. To expand on that a bit, a definitive photo would constitute proof, and would therefore break some sort of law of "no definitive evidence". Who, or what, would enforce that law, I have no idea, or it may be a natural result of the interaction between our differing realities. For example, a ghost interacts and leaves some sort of incontrovertible evidence of its existence, which creates a paradox that means that the interaction could never have happened in the first place. Ghosts, and - more widely - high strangeness play fast and loose with our concepts of time, and much more.
 
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Well, gravity is pretty real, as anyone who has fallen over can testify. But, although you can get a film of something being affected by gravity, you can't take a picture of gravity itself. So maybe it's like that - a force that can be visible under certain conditions, or whose affects you can see, but not something that will capture on film?
 
Quite a few weirdnesses have happened and when he first told me of some of his weird experiences in his flat, I came back with "So why don't you have a photo?"
Would he feel comfortable with you sharing details of those weirdnesses? (Jumping up and down with enthusiastic anticipation here.)
 
We can not control the “ id “ part of the brain related to ego.

Is it possible that ghosts are a projection from our “id” ?
Would that mean that, when multiple people all see something, each one of them is seeing something different? Or would a dominant personality 'project' their own image sufficiently that others could see it? (Telepathic transmission is something I consider a strong possibility in multiple sightings).
 
We can not control the “ id “ part of the brain related to ego.

Is it possible that ghosts are a projection from our “id” ?
The "id" isn't a part of the brain, it is a theoretical psychological construct (and unproveable, but don't get me going on psychology as pseudoscience).
 
The "id" isn't a part of the brain, it is a theoretical psychological construct (and unproveable, but don't get me going on psychology as pseudoscience).
Yes, but it's individual to the..err..individual. So if multiple people saw the same thing, it would have to be a projection of one person's thoughts, if it came from the id of one person.
 
I tend to think that ghosts are more a cultural construct than a supernatural phenomenon. The ghosts of Japan are very different to the ghosts of England, the ghosts of the plains native Americans are very different to the unquiet spirits of the Meso-americans. A classical Greek ghost is very different to a Hebrew ghost.
Are we to believe that these are all manifestations of the same phenomenon?
Prof Brian Cox is on record as saying that we have a pretty good idea of how energy behaves in this universe, with our laws of physics. And energy without material form dissipates and cannot maintain coherence. Therefore, if there is some way that a person's spirit/life force/essence or whatever goes on beyond their corporeal death, then it does so in a way not bound by the laws of physics so they are either in another universe, an unknown dimension of this universe, or only in the imagination of people.
I think that perceived traits of spirits are transference by observers of their interpretation of what the observed phenomenon is.
Look at how many researchers, scientists and debunkers have passed on. Do you think Houdini would not have come back to prove his point were he able to do so? And by the same token, look at all the adepts, enlightened ones, religious leaders and believers that have passed on, were they able to, do you not think they would have given a sign?
I know many argue they have, but never in any definitive way recognisable by all.
It just doesn't make sense. If it was a real phenomenon, no matter how rare, or difficult to accomplish, if it was possible, it would happen more than it does, given the legions of the dead.
It just doesn't add up.
At least, not in my view.
 
I tend to think that ghosts are more a cultural construct than a supernatural phenomenon. The ghosts of Japan are very different to the ghosts of England, the ghosts of the plains native Americans are very different to the unquiet spirits of the Meso-americans. A classical Greek ghost is very different to a Hebrew ghost.
Are we to believe that these are all manifestations of the same phenomenon?
Prof Brian Cox is on record as saying that we have a pretty good idea of how energy behaves in this universe, with our laws of physics. And energy without material form dissipates and cannot maintain coherence. Therefore, if there is some way that a person's spirit/life force/essence or whatever goes on beyond their corporeal death, then it does so in a way not bound by the laws of physics so they are either in another universe, an unknown dimension of this universe, or only in the imagination of people.
I think that perceived traits of spirits are transference by observers of their interpretation of what the observed phenomenon is.
Look at how many researchers, scientists and debunkers have passed on. Do you think Houdini would not have come back to prove his point were he able to do so? And by the same token, look at all the adepts, enlightened ones, religious leaders and believers that have passed on, were they able to, do you not think they would have given a sign?
I know many argue they have, but never in any definitive way recognisable by all.
It just doesn't make sense. If it was a real phenomenon, no matter how rare, or difficult to accomplish, if it was possible, it would happen more than it does, given the legions of the dead.
It just doesn't add up.
At least, not in my view.
This is a fascinating topic.

What about the theory that there may be 'thin places' where it's possible to glimpse through into an interwoven universe? If the universe was sufficiently similar to this one, then that would account for why the 'ghosts' were cultural - they would be influenced by location.

Are there investigations where people from other cultures see ghosts in a place with a different culture? A Japanese person seeing a ghost in Chalfont St Giles, for example? Would they see a traditionally Japanese style ghost, or a typically British one?
 
I tend to think that ghosts are more a cultural construct than a supernatural phenomenon. The ghosts of Japan are very different to the ghosts of England, the ghosts of the plains native Americans are very different to the unquiet spirits of the Meso-americans. A classical Greek ghost is very different to a Hebrew ghost.
Are we to believe that these are all manifestations of the same phenomenon?
Prof Brian Cox is on record as saying that we have a pretty good idea of how energy behaves in this universe, with our laws of physics. And energy without material form dissipates and cannot maintain coherence. Therefore, if there is some way that a person's spirit/life force/essence or whatever goes on beyond their corporeal death, then it does so in a way not bound by the laws of physics so they are either in another universe, an unknown dimension of this universe, or only in the imagination of people.
I think that perceived traits of spirits are transference by observers of their interpretation of what the observed phenomenon is.
Look at how many researchers, scientists and debunkers have passed on. Do you think Houdini would not have come back to prove his point were he able to do so? And by the same token, look at all the adepts, enlightened ones, religious leaders and believers that have passed on, were they able to, do you not think they would have given a sign?
I know many argue they have, but never in any definitive way recognisable by all.
It just doesn't make sense. If it was a real phenomenon, no matter how rare, or difficult to accomplish, if it was possible, it would happen more than it does, given the legions of the dead.
It just doesn't add up.
At least, not in my view.
Interesting, because in 1953 in Great Britain Harry Martindale was working on a ladder in the cellar of the building when a group of Roman soldiers walked past him along the old Roman Road which ran through the basement. Harry was so shocked that he fell from his ladder.

https://ghostwalkbrighton.co.uk/legion-of-the-damned/

Subsequent discussion of the York Treasurer's House apparitions moved to:
Roman Soldiers At The Treasurer's House, York
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/roman-soldiers-at-the-treasurers-house-york.62846/
 
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