Ghosts

[sen_no_ongaku]

My impression is that when most people hear ghost stories, most are told in the third person, making it easy to dismiss them. Luckily for them, they don't have relatives in the Philippines.

A few weeks ago, my brother sent me a cellphone photo of his wife's aunt, taken at a party. In the background is a figure who partygoers say wasn't there for the picture, and who folks claim is her husband, who had died a few weeks previously.

A cousin tells me she once looked up through the skylight of a bathroom and saw half of a woman staring back at her.

An aunt tells me that she (and others) have heard children talking and running about in the basement of a particular house when nobody was around. Unlike others, though, she hasn't turned to see these children watching her.

An uncle visiting from the States once woke up to find all of his clothes ordered neatly in the front yard.

In a pathology lab, people occasionally report seeing an old man wandering around the halls. Sometimes they realize that they've seen him in pictures around the building; he is, after all, a former director of said lab. I don't know how they react when they find out that my grandfather passed away eight years ago. (My mother and grandmother [both doctors] half-jokingly -- but only half -- chastise my grandfather for having fun at the expense of others.)

I've stayed in some of these homes. I'm none too pleased about that.

I'm curious -- what take do you folks have on ghosts, if any? Utter bullshit? Hallucinations? Complete and total belief? Measured skepticism?

Comments

[shgb.livejournal.com]

Science is in no way incompatible with saying "there are wierd ass things we don't understand" as long as those things are still being investigated

Exactly! I really wish some of those pro-evolution people would come out and say this during an interview. The problem with something like Intelligent Design is that it goes from "we don't understand this" to "and because we don't understand this, it must be the work of some invisible designer". That's the same sort of logic that lead to Apollo's chariot.

Now, on the topic of ghosts... I think they are "real", in a certain sense. Not in the sense that there are invisible spirits walking around, but "real" in the sense that people who see them might actually see them. My theory is that these are are sensory perceptions that originate from inside the brain instead of through our sensory organs. Because they pass through the same processing centers that ordinary senses do, there is no way to distinguish them from Real sensory input.

Of course, I suppose it's entirely possible that these things are Real, and not "real", but I'd need to see more evidence before I believed that.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

I'm with you both. Just because we don't have an explanation for something doesn't mean that any explanation you come up with is valid.
___

I'd need to see more evidence

I'm just curious -- to you, what would constitute compelling evidence?

[shgb.livejournal.com]

...what would constitute compelling evidence?

I'm not sure, but it would probably involve repeatability and a control group.

[sigerson.livejournal.com]

That's the same sort of logic that lead to Apollo's chariot.

That's a beautiful way of putting it. cool.