People who claim to see spirits, what explanation can we give them?

Short couple of stories. I've heard a few stories from people and read a lot online about people who have claimed to encounter a ghost, spirit, or whatever you want to call it. Maybe some of it is just in their head but some can be pretty convincing and unexplainable.

For example: My best friend claims that a spirit told her that her grandma's time was coming (death) but she will be okay. She went to tell her mom and her mom didn't believe her until they got a phone call that her grandma just had died unexpectedly that same moment. Just pure coincidence?

My cousin lived in a really old house that made a lot of weird noise. She didn't think anything of it until one night she saw what she thought might've been a spirit of a man with a beard and long hair. She didn't tell anyone in fear of them thinking she was crazy until her room mate was crying one night and couldn't sleep. She asked her why and she told her what she saw and my cousin asked her to describe him. It turned out that it was the same thing that she saw. Coincidence again? Hallucinations? If it was hallucinations what chance of the two people hallucinating the same thing is to happen?

People might say those that claim to see have crazy imaginations or are mentally ill. I for one have never experienced or seen such a thing yet I am more on the side of believing they exist. I'm scared to death of them, I'm paranoid of them, I admit I'm scared of being alone late at night yet I've never seen one with my crazy paranoia.


Let me know if you have had any experiences, if you believe in it, or don't believe in it. I know that those who are skeptics will always try to come up with some explanation it doesn't exist and those that believe in it will do the same lol. I'm open to all sides...I just wish I had a concrete answer.

 

I'm a scientist, so that's why i don't believe in "God"... this is in the same league...
On the other side I'm really interested in these things and they can really fascinate me...
Didn't have an experience myself but my gf has... and she's really convinced ghosts exist... just like her girlfriends where she did the "talking to ghosts" game with about 10 years back.

 

My general feeling is that if a person claims belief in the supernatural, and indicates that their experience of the supernatural is something for which you should give them money or loyalty, then they are almost certainly frauds, and I refuse to pay heed to their claims.

If a person claims belief in the supernatural, but does not use that belief to get money or power, then my feeling is that I refuse to judge. I have heard many stories, some more credible and some less credible.

But the truth is that there is no evidence to be found that conclusively proves that the supernatural does not exist-- just as there is no evidence to be found as yet to conclusively prove it does exist. So belief is either a matter of choice or of personal experience. And I don't choose to unilaterally and universally dismiss the beliefs of a large number of people, and the claimed experiences of a similarly large number, without some good reason. And mere disagreement or doubt is not, to my mind, sufficient reason.

 

I don't attempt to dissuade anyone from believing what they saw or think they saw as I have no way of proving or disproving their claim. I will offer an alternative explanation if I consider there may be one but even if hadn't had a bizarre experience of my own once, I wouldn't/couldn't in all honesty, dismiss anything of this nature out of hand.

Are ghosts, spirits, and specters reliably witnessed by many, some evidence of an afterlife? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's evidence of other dimensions and time lines overlapping our own. Maybe it's the past interfering with the present. Who knows.

All I'm certain of is that we don't know more than we do know about almost everything.

Chelle, why are you so afraid of something you've never experienced and have only a minuscule chance of ever experiencing?

 

i had a crazy experience where after a crazy dream i woke up to find myself tightly cocooned in my sheets in a way that no amount of tossing and turning would have done; i didn't actually see anything though.

as for people that do, my theory is that since our universe is made up of time and space and we are beings of energy, that maybe that energy can kind of echo through the time and space so that you see it or encounter it as a spirit or ghost. i have a hard time believing however that any ghost would be a whole person stuck here on earth without a body.

that said, i really can't figure out why we don't have anything concrete on film by now since everybody and their dog has a video camera on their cell phone and if the human eye can see this stuff, a camera lens should be able to.

 

Wishful thinking and Pareidolia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I think many people had wishful thinking but haven't experienced anything as well though Cayvmann. I'm probably one of them.
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I believe the same as you. There's so much about science that we have yet to discover or fully understand. Scientists and their theories of parallel universes, different dimensions, possible time travel, all of time exists at the same time, etc. It possibly can some how tie in all together, but I do think that there is an amazing thing going on with science we may never see in our life. But that doesn't necessarily give an explanation for stories of those that have experienced things unexplainable by science such as the story about knowing things before it happened. Maybe it's coincidence but that's just ONE of the stories that we can't really come up with a scientific theory for other than coincidence.


Oh yeah, and I had an odd experience with time shifts which I don't want to go into detail about unless you PM me. It's a long story and I don't want it to take away from this thread. Plus I wasn't the only one that experienced it at that time so I don't think I'm insane. That was the only "unexplainable" thing I have experienced in my life. Well, twice and that was it. Never again.

 

Well, some claim they have caught these things on film or video. Trouble is, many can be explained away or leave themselves open to criticism over their legitimacy much like photos and videos shot of UFO's.

The human eye is a much more complicated and perceptive device than any photographic equipment. It also comes complete with an interpretative brain that provides a unique perspective on everything it witnesses. A perspective capable of giving an image or revealing attributes a camera can't hope to capture.

 

[quote="

Chelle, why are you so afraid of something you've never experienced and have only a minuscule chance of ever experiencing?[/quote]

I don't know. I guess if I see something for my own eyes with the possibility they exist...to me that means anything is possible. Even the worst. I'm also afraid I might be insane if I see one.

 

this is true; i just meant that if something is corporeal enough to have the light of a room bounce off of it and there is enough said illumination for our eyeball to pickup on that, it goes to reason it should show up on film.

if not that, then at least some of the shenanigan's that spirits are reported to pull such as furniture moving by itself or dishes stacking themselves strangely. if any of this stuff was captured i would think a lot of it would be able to be filmed by all the cameras out there by now. there's certainly enough interest to warrant it, including my own interest in it.

 

I also have a question about unexplainable NDE where people who describe every detail of something but that's a whole different story You can youtube it "The day I died part 4"

 

A week after my step father was killed on his motorbike, I woke in the middle of the night to see a man standing next to my bed, I was frozen solid and couldn't talk or move to wake my husband, I was terrified. After what felt like hours when it was mere seconds, he disappeared and I could move again. I was hysterical. Husband checked the house for an intruder as I am not prone to hysterics or saying 'I've seen something' unless I have.
No intruders and no explanation !

My youngest son was two when he died and very close to him, we called him 'the shadow' as wherever my step dad was so was my son. Two years after his death my son woke early crying his heart out. We finally got him to explain what was wrong and he said ' How can bampa blow the candles out for his birthday when you didn't get him a cake'. He was four and it was the day of my step dads birthday.
That really creeped us out.

I can't explain either of these incidents.

 

Cwtch, I'm not saying I don't believe you but I do have to ask some questions.

After doing A LOT of reading, because I've been thinking about this so much lately, it seems very common that people wake up to find their deceased loved one at their bed. Anyways, I know it wasn't a loved one but are you sure it wasn't sleep paralysis? I have sleep paralysis often where I am able to look around but I can't move or talk and along with it comes scary images or nightmares until I am finally able to move. How do you know it isn't sleep paralysis or a dream state where you're half/asleep and your brain is still thinking you're asleep?

I'm confused about the cake/candle part. There was a cake in the room?

 

no lol there wasn't a cake, that was why he was crying. He couldn't have known it was my step fathers birthday but he said he had been talking to his dead grandfather. Was weird.

The guy next to my bed - I can't say for certain it was my step father, it was just a strange coincidence that it happened a week after his death, I put it down to grief and really wanting to see him again.
It has never happened again so I don't think it was sleep paralysis, I was fully awake just terrified.
I can't explain any of it so I'm not going to say it was a ghost or not, just a weird incident.

 

I have a funny story that is coincidental. I'd like to think it meant something more though. My sister has this "friend". I dont' know if I'd call them a couple but they act like it for many years. She told him she had a dream he went to jail and she tried to bust him out. He thought it was funny because he had a dream that he went to jail for her because she was in trouble. Same night dream! hahah

 

I've had experience with this. I've seen and heard things, and was sure that I was awake, but I wasn't.

Sleep Paralysis: Awake But Still Asleep | Serendip Studio
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I've had experience with this. I've seen and heard things, and was sure that I was awake, but I wasn't.

Sleep Paralysis: Awake But Still Asleep | Serendip Studio

 

is the problem with double posting back ??

 

I may have hit the button twice. Or was drunk...

 

The day before my father died, I was visiting him in the hospital and he was awake and lucid (or so it seemed). He knew who I was, and was asking about what was going on, and as usual, what the date was (he was often unconscious for days at a time, so always asked that). Then he started talking about having been out to dinner with my mother a few days earlier, and having spoken with her recently. That's when I realised he wasn't quite lucid as she had died 25 years less a day earlier. I gave no thought to that when I told my father the date, and he didn't remark on it either. But he died the next day, 25 years to the day after she died.

Do I believe it my mother actually came to visit and chat with him when he was dying? No.

Do I want to believe she did, and was there to comfort him in his last few conscious moments? God, yes. And that is enough, for me.

 

My point is, there is plenty of photographs and video of this sort of thing out there. Whether what is portrayed is something supernatural, something explainable, or something contrived, is another matter.

Watching a purported ghost on a video will never be sufficient evidence of the supernatural for me, even if I was convinced that the setting had been strictly and reliably controlled. Seeing it with my own eyes would have the benefit of providing me with more to go on in determining what its nature might be, though it's doubtful I would ever come to any conclusion as what its actual nature was, even after ruling out a logical explanation.