Do You Believe In Ghosts?

[wayno30]

i know what cowboy boots sound like on a hardwood floor and we dont wear shoes in the house explain that this place got a ghost i need no more proof

 

[Carne Seca]

Hell yes!

 

[tryingtogrow89]

I think im going to make a strain called "Ghost", Fuck yea!

 

[Heisenberg]

i know what cowboy boots sound like on a hardwood floor and we dont wear shoes in the house explain that this place got a ghost i need no more proof

Really? Your requirement for proof is one single incident of hearing something unexplained? You can think of absolutely no other explanation aside from the supernatural? If you count the assumptions you would have to make for that conclusion to be true, assuming humans have a spirit, assuming the spirit lives on after death, assuming a spirit is fixated on your house, assuming spirits can interact with the physical world, ect ect. Thats a ton of assumptions to make based on some strange noise you heard one time. After all, human perception is one of the most unreliable ways of gathering evidence we have. It would be more likely that an actual cowboy broke in and walked in your house, that is after all, far more within the realm of possibility than a ghost.

I am not saying you didn't hear a ghost, just that your standards of proof and your process of drawing a conclusion are very poor, far more lax than I would require for believing something as extraordinary as a ghost.

 

[bobbypyn]

i can't believe this is even in contention amongst a buncha stoners!!! what is wrong with you people!!? MJ increases your spiritual awareness; the chinese have known this for thousands of years as have shamans of all peoples worldwide. www.worlditc.org on the left hand side, researcher's results, scroll down to George Meek, read the spiricom manuals, listen to the tape. decide for yourself. I talk to those who have shed their physical bodies on a daily basis. I do not suggest this for it is rather treacherous, it is only because I am Protected in these realms that i traipse so cavalierly through them but to deny the existence of the afterlife and it's inhabitants is utter insanity. you people are uber-retarded some times....

 

[wayno30]

its not once its all the time i dont even bother to look anymore..........the first night we moved in we were laying in bed and there was a buzzing noise....i said u hear that she said yes it got louder and louder until it was ear piercing and right on top of us we were freaked out jumped out of bed and it stopped ......not since......

 

[mouthmeetsoap]

i can't believe this is even in contention amongst a buncha stoners!!! what is wrong with you people!!? MJ increases your spiritual awareness; the chinese have known this for thousands of years as have shamans of all peoples worldwide. www.worlditc.org on the left hand side, researcher's results, scroll down to George Meek, read the spiricom manuals, listen to the tape. decide for yourself. I talk to those who have shed their physical bodies on a daily basis. I do not suggest this for it is rather treacherous, it is only because I am Protected in these realms that i traipse so cavalierly through them but to deny the existence of the afterlife and it's inhabitants is utter insanity. you people are uber-retarded some times....

bobbypyn, I just want proof. That's all. Can you show us some? I've held seances, played with Ouija boards and even went to supposed "haunted houses" looking to disprove these things for myself and I have successfully done just that. As a child I was enamored with the possibility of ghosts, but as I got older and less afraid of the dark I started realizing they were made up, just like Santa Clause, Jesus Christ and the Easter Bunny. I think some people want to believe it so badly that they see things and hear things that they feel they can't explain because they don't bother. Another reason they've been around so long is because as humans we like to be afraid sometimes. A ghost story is much better than a story about a draft slamming a door shut.

 

[nog]

i once saw something very wierd once but it may have been a natural phenomena like mist shaped like a human being

 

[bobbypyn]

bobbypyn, I just want proof. That's all. Can you show us some? I've held seances, played with Ouija boards and even went to supposed "haunted houses" looking to disprove these things for myself and I have successfully done just that. As a child I was enamored with the possibility of ghosts, but as I got older and less afraid of the dark I started realizing they were made up, just like Santa Clause, Jesus Christ and the Easter Bunny. I think some people want to believe it so badly that they see things and hear things that they feel they can't explain because they don't bother. Another reason they've been around so long is because as humans we like to be afraid sometimes. A ghost story is much better than a story about a draft slamming a door shut.

ummmm.... did you not read my post? ever heard of EVP? there's your proof, homey. Instrumental Transdimensional Communication. all documented using yall's sacred scientific method. the actual title of the research is An Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach To Contact With Higher Levels of Human Concsciousness. aka Spiricom. what more proof do you require?

and just because whatever entities you were seeking contact with chose not to engage you, by no means makes them imaginary. I've never seen an Eskimo either, but some things you just take on faith.

 

[tip top toker]

Who knows, i certainly can't say it's not possible, maybe not the white image of the person, but as a form of energy maybe. I mean people have near death out of body experiences, my father had one after getting hit by a car outside a church in italy, and i have to say he is the most honest person i know. We don't know or understand where our conciousness comes from so it only seems fair to say we can't know where it goes once the vessel ceases operation. I think that the type of terminology they'd use in the films But yeah, can't say either way but i've myself seen some peculiar things whih could indeed be summed up with hard science, or could indeed be somehting else.

 

[bobbypyn]

Santa Claus: Saint Nicholas, patron saint of pawnbrokers. REAL.

Jesus Christ: Yeshua Ben Joseph, Light of the World. returned to earth on July 23rd 1892 in the Person of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I. REAL

Easter Bunny: featured on many Cadbury's Creme Eggs commercials. REAL

 

[mouthmeetsoap]

ummmm.... did you not read my post? ever heard of EVP? there's your proof, homey. Instrumental Transdimensional Communication. all documented using yall's sacred scientific method. the actual title of the research is An Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach To Contact With Higher Levels of Human Concsciousness. aka Spiricom. what more proof do you require?

and just because whatever entities you were seeking contact with chose not to engage you, by no means makes them imaginary. I've never seen an Eskimo either, but some things you just take on faith.

I'd love to try this but alas there are qualifications to speak with the "higher evolved" spirits that Spiricom attempts to connect you with.

Spiricom even goes on to give an analogy as to why they DON'T have the abilities to communicate with spirits yet, saying something along the lines of the Wright Bros only breaking the surface when they first flew their plane. Again, I'd just like some solid evidence. The metascience foundations scientists have been on it for 25 years, yet they've had ONE instance of "two way conversation". One. I'd like to see the evidence of said conversation too. Couldn't find that. I found hundreds if images of Eskimos on google. Not saying you're wrong, just asking you to prove that I am.

 

[ginjawarrior]

ummmm.... did you not read my post? ever heard of EVP? there's your proof, homey. Instrumental Transdimensional Communication. all documented using yall's sacred scientific method. the actual title of the research is An Electromagnetic-Etheric Systems Approach To Contact With Higher Levels of Human Concsciousness. aka Spiricom. what more proof do you require?

and just because whatever entities you were seeking contact with chose not to engage you, by no means makes them imaginary. I've never seen an Eskimo either, but some things you just take on faith.

evp is about as bunk as it gets. highly subjective without being told what to hear everyone hears something different

 

[mouthmeetsoap]

Santa Claus: Saint Nicholas, patron saint of pawnbrokers. REAL.

Jesus Christ: Yeshua Ben Joseph, Light of the World. returned to earth on July 23rd 1892 in the Person of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I. REAL

Easter Bunny: featured on many Cadbury's Creme Eggs commercials. REAL

This says a lot.

 

[bobbypyn]

This says a lot.

Indeed it does.

and spiricom was not a one time deal; read the reasearch. hours and hours of real time two way conversations with the so called dead. EVP has been debunked? how? by whom? with what agenda? who funded their research and presented their findings publicly? and just because the recieved messages are somewhat indistinct and hard to decipher at times by no means negates their existence. you admit there is SOMETHING on those recordings; how did it get there? by what scientific means? stray radio waves? nope; research has been conducted inside giant faraday cages; same results, thereby negating the claim of stray radio signals. what else....?

 

[bobbypyn]

evp is about as bunk as it gets. highly subjective without being told what to hear everyone hears something different

but everyone hears SOMETHING that wasn't physically present at the time of the recording, correct? your claim is akin to someone saying that just because they can't read heiroglyphics that they're just a buncha meaningless pictures scribbled on the wall. ludicrous.


and Mr. Edison's phonograph was "debunked" in much the same manner by an esteemed member of the french Academie d' Science who proclaimed Mr. Edison's device nothing more than the clever use of ventriloquism. history marks his shame. shall it mark yours as well; that is the question at hand.
"As I understand it, it works whether you believe in it or not." Neils Bohr on the supernatural.

 

[ginjawarrior]

but everyone hears SOMETHING that wasn't physically present at the time of the recording, correct? your claim is akin to someone saying that just because they can't read heiroglyphics that they're just a buncha meaningless pictures scribbled on the wall. ludicrous.

they hear artifacts of the recording or radio interferance.
these words are supposed to be in english not hieroglyphs if one person hears "duck" and the next hears "stephan" then what exactly does it prove?

 

[imnotme]

I believe that our energy can continue to remain even after our body dies. I had a conversation with a ghost once while staying at the home of a relative.I know it sounds like BS, but it happened. My first son was newborn and his great grandmother came to see him. I didnt know she died 20+ years before. Its one of those things you never believe unless it you were the one it happened to. However, I dont believe in all those "Ghost Hunters" reality shows, pure BS.

 

[Heisenberg]

EVPs have been debunked in the sense that audio pareidolia offers a much less presumptuous explanation. Pareidolia is a well understood, well documented phenomenon that can be demonstrated and replicated. So in fact, there is no real reason to jump to the conclusion that ghosts are responsible.

I attempt to explain pareidolia in this post.

One of the most convincing occurrences of pareidolia in my opinion is electronic voice phenomena. This is when people leave an audio recorder in an old house that's suppose to be haunted, or an abandoned mental hospital, or even a graveyard. When the audio is played back and dissected, there are sometimes unexplained voices that can clearly, or sometimes not so clearly, say phrases. Sure, often these phrases make no sense. "she's in the mustard" "Laundry tuesday applecart" But still, there are voices saying these things and we can play it back over and over as proof! Ghost hunters have speculated that spirits use an enormous amount of energy to manipulate sounds in an effort to speak to us. The easiest to manipulate is white noise, and because it takes so much effort the spirits often get words wrong, or get cut off, in any case they can't do it for very long. If it takes so much 'energy', Why they would do it in an empty basement of an abandoned house is beyond me. I guess it's pretty easy to see the explanation which makes more sense, audio pareidolia.

Often the pareidolia is made worse by front loading. Front loading is when you are told what you are going to hear before you hear it, and so of course...that's what you hear. People who are front loaded often hear the same phrase as the original listener. People who aren't may still hear a voice, but each person is likely to hear slightly different words.

Another example of audio pareidolia is back masking. When you play records backwards it sometimes sounds like phrases. In the 80's thousands of parents actually thought this was a threat. They never stopped to ask, even if the phrases were constructed by a musical genius, what harm do they cause? Another case is when people hear words coming from the mouths of animals. I have heard some recordings of jackals, wolves and dogs and some of them made my neck hair prickle. Really spooky shit! I have heard a wolf howling quite clearly, "Sooo Alooooonnneee" and a dog when asked "how come you can talk?" easily say, "I learned".

Another great explination of audio pareidolia is here, with many examples to listen to.

The same site offers some critical thought on the subject in an answer to a student email.

Hi. My name is Jessica, I'm from Tucson, Arizona and I am a sophomore in high school. My question is, how does a person who is a self proclaimed expert in EVP's explain how they work?

EVPs are Electronic Voice Phenomena, supposed to be the voices of ghosts that appear on tape recorders at times when the ghost hunters say nothing was audible. I think you've hit the nail on the head by calling these experts "self-proclaimed". EVPs are not scientific by any definition. There is no plausible theory behind how they might exist, they fail to appear whenever controls are applied, and they're not reproducible by other researchers. Thus, the existence of EVPs remains squarely in the territory of "anecdote".

Usually the explanations given by ghost hunters depend on using one unknown to explain another: The voices appear on the tape recording because the spirits are able to manipulate electromagnetic fields that interact with the recorder's electronics in just such a way as to result in a perfect audio recording, with flux distributed on the magnetic tape at just the right amplitude and frequency. How ghosts acquired this intricate knowledge of recording electronics and an invisible dipole electromagnet is not convincingly argued.

That's not to say EVPs don't exist; if they did, it would be an exciting discovery with broad implications across many sciences. No doubt many ghost hunters have indeed honestly acquired recordings of sounds they're unable to explain; but science does not allow us to make the jump from "unexplained" to "conclusively explained as a ghost". The cause of the recording could be just as reasonably explained as a beam from the planet Neptune, from a shipwrecked spacefarer named Frank who crashed there in the year 1642 after a journey from Regulus. There are an infinite number of possibilities if your only criteria is "it must be conceiveable" rather than "there must be at least some evidence".

So, Jessica, according to what's known today, there is no such thing as an expert in EVPs.

Spiricom did try to apply some controls, such as the Faraday cage, but failed to control for the most obvious explanation of all, pareidolia.

Ouija boards take advantage of a well known, well understood phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect. To keep it simple, you are moving the game piece without realizing it. What happens when we take accomplished Ouija practicers and blindfold them? Well they still hit the letter perfectly. They site this as evidence the spirits are watching and guiding them to the letters. What happens if, after we blindfold them, we turn the board upside down without them realizing it? Well, they go to the place they think the letters are supposed to be. They behave as if the board was right side up. Are the spirits not paying attention, or is this action governed by the players consciousness?

I too would be very excited to find evidence of ghosts, but I feel the conclusion is worthy of the same standards of evidence we apply to everything else.

 

[bobbypyn]

they hear artifacts of the recording or radio interferance.
these words are supposed to be in english not hieroglyphs if one person hears "duck" and the next hears "stephan" then what exactly does it prove?

is that because only english is spoken in the afterlife? people die everyday all over the world; not all of them speak english. i already told you radio interference has been ruled out; artifacts from a brand new blank tape and or empty digital file? give me break dude...