#TOTW Ghosts – do they exist?

I’m particularly interested by the ‘smelt mints the moment my nan passed’

They smelt the toothpaste on their breath as they had a scarf on as they were skiing, “Oooh! Mint that reminds me of foxes glacier mints”. Hears the news about gran, recalls her handing out mints, oooh I smelt mint this am.

It’s something like that or Gran took up snowboarding as a ghost.

A couple of observations; We still have a pretty wildly functioning “lizard brain” it’s mostly just concerned with shagging fighting food, and so on, it’s really phylo-gentically very primitive, but hugely powerful, and connected directly to perhaps one of nature’s most complex constructions devised so far. It’s no wonder that some of the time, we see or sense stuff that just gets “interpreted” especially when we can’t see properly, we’re tired, confused and so on.

Secondly, reading this I’m really struck by the fact that our ancestors (talking 10-15,000 YA) had a really complex and involved way of seeing themselves as part of the environment they moved and existed in. All the evidence seems to suggest that they didn’t see themselves as distinct or separate from it, and that still water (for example) was a liminal space occupied by and was a gateway to “other realms” – The reasons that water animals; Otters Beavers and so on were revered, and animals that could do water and air (swans especially) were seen as transcendental creatures. Makes me wonder if humans as a species are “tuned” a particular way in order to take advantage of their environment, and i wonder if there’s ways in which animals are similarly “tuned”. and that as we moved into much more complex and remoter environments, that “tuning” rather than become redundant, just gets switched on and off in ways that we don’t pay attention to any more.

Toothbrush gets put beside bins that night.

I hope you get haunted by a poltergeist from the environment agency. Putting WEEE in domestic waste, you monster.

@chewkw, and echoing @blokeuptheroad, I’d be really interested in hearing about the background to your views.

We have 5 senses, but I would agree with other that we have a sixth sense also. One where we fear something is about to happen. I myself feel I am more attuned to it, dont know why,maybe something to do with my autism, and I have certainly heard elsewhere that many autistic people feel they have a 6th sense.

The subject of the mind, its strengths especially in autism shows that it is a very complex structure that everyone can agree we know very little about.

I always found that if there was going to be a bit of a bust up and someone was going to have a fight, that I could sense it and usually got in the first wallop in(didnt always win 😆 )

Now some could say there that in such instances, there are precursors, stance, forwardness.aggressiveness  But one of the problems with autism is a lack of understanding of these social factors.

Some autistic people ,especially low functioning are blind to everything but colour. or certain words are represented to them at colours. Its called synesthesia.Or for example upon hearing a conversation, have reported a sensation of different tastes to run across their tongue or palate.

We all know fo the chill that runs down your back, or hairs standing on end  and ‘goosebumps’, these are reactions to an unseen and unknown stimuli.

So it is more than logical to assume that some are maybe more attuned to other unseen stimuli.

I remember a test done, where a 2 way mirror was placed in a hallway and in front was a staircase. The researchers were behind the mirror, and they allowed groups of people to walk along and up the stairs. The researchers stared intently at the back of these peoples heads and found that some of them , and this was confirmed in their reports, that those people felt compelled to turn around, while on the stairs and look intently at the mirror, as if they felt something was looking directly at them.

That was an interesting study, because it removed any social or emotional cues.

Another interesting point on this is ‘The coppers nose’ a gut feeling that something is amiss. I would surmise that policemen, during training(and no doubt to much initial laughter at the notion) are told not to ignore these feelings and to act upon them.

So again this is a sixth sense that people have, and this might be influenced by whatever magnetic field or energy surrounds each person or living being. Not a subject I know anything about, but understanding that some are more attuned and can sense something, then it is not too unreasonable to accept that there is a(for want of an all encompassing term) aura, emanating, that may change dependent on that individuals state of mind or feelings

Pretty much every city had Gallows. Yet some how no one has reported an evil spirit.

Till somewhere in the nineteenth century the custom was to carry out executions in a public place as close to where the ‘crime’ was carried out as possible.

The eighteenth century legal code meant that capital punishment was handed out for what would be considered very minor crimes today. The legal system was more of a theatrical spectacle than a search for the truth so a significant proportion, if not the majority, of the people executed would have either been completely innocent or have mitigating circumstances which would make them morally innocent (stealing food to feed starving children etc).

The majority of England & Wales should be swarming with ghosts if chewkw’s criteria for what causes a haunting was right.

I’ve never seen, heard, or experienced anything you could mistake for a ghost before (Ok I once thought I did but after a half mile walk to investigate the ‘figure’ it turned out to be moonlight reflected from a road sign distorted by trees and an overactive imagination). I have experienced bits of old buildings which ‘felt wrong’ but they were generally down to rather over bearing memorials to historic characters with a particularly grim reputation or just being on the cold, draughty, & shaded side of the building (people have always had enough brains to put the bits of the building they live in on the sunny side and store rooms, which have since been re-interpreted as dungeons on the cold side).

Another interesting point on this is ‘The coppers nose’ a gut feeling that something is amiss. I would surmise that policemen, during training(and no doubt to much initial laughter at the notion) are told not to ignore these feelings and to act upon them.

Nah! It’s just simply if something you’ve been told, see or hear doesn’t sound quite right then clarify. It’s not a six sense thing.

The researchers were behind the mirror, and they allowed groups of people to walk along and up the stairs. The researchers stared intently at the back of these peoples heads and found that some of them , and this was confirmed in their reports, that those people felt compelled to turn around, while on the stairs and look intently at the mirror, as if they felt something was looking directly at them.

“Am I supposed to go this way?” Looks around to see if there are any clues.

“Why are they wanting us to go upstairs?” Looks around for clues.

There are many reasons why they would look around.

I’m going to reply to dina-ti’s lengthy post to me and then hopefully put this to bed and discuss the actual subject.

You know how you keep posting up little apology’s about how you didnt mean to be insulting.

Mostly I seem to be explaining myself to you who seems determined to read the worst into everything I post. Earlier you took exception to my use of the word “pedestrian” and I still have no idea why.

Well clearly the truth of the matter is you are insulting people,and yet again you are acting like a complete dickhead.

My comment about chewkw earlier was bang out of order, agreed. Sorry.

Were you bullied at school or something ?.

Yes. Thanks.

Seems when you disagree with someone or some point, instead of either accepting it or at least debating the point, you launch into trying to ridicule that person.

Hm. If that’s genuinely true then again, I can only apologise. I try to play the ball not the man, I guess I need to try harder? I’ll give that some thought.

I was bullied at secondary school. But that dropped off quite quickly as people found i would happily punch them in the face.

Mostly I just took the kicking. I have zero tolerance for bullies and I’m genuinely appalled that you / anyone thinks that’s what I’m doing.

Or perhaps this is your nature and the reason you speak to people as you do is because you have no social circle to keep such outbursts in check.

This might be the crux of the issue, because it’s actually the opposite. I have a solid social circle – several, in fact – where we don’t need to dance on pins around each other. A typical exchange of greetings when meeting a friend might be “bellend” – “dickhead”. It’s pretty much a term of endearment, I guess an acknowledgement that we’re comfortable with each other.

I’ve said this before but it’s a trap I continually fall into and cannot seem to shake. I assume that people I interact with online are friends, that they’re people who know me, who understand that if I say something which could be taken the wrong way then I likely didn’t mean it like that.

I despise bullying and I despise “banter” because generally the recipients are unwilling victims and banter is just an excuse to be horrible, whereas people engaging in debates presumably do so voluntarily. That’s how I perceive “arguments” on the Internet, it’s a college debating team not a bar brawl.

Look. As we’re seemingly both on the spectrum, could we perhaps come to an agreement that maybe you cut me some slack in always assuming the worst and by turns I’ll try to be a little more careful in how I phrase things? I think this has all spiralled from a disagreement in politics and it rarely ends well when threads spill into each other. I don’t particularly want either of us to feel like we can’t engage with each other over differences of opinion, that’s how we get echo chambers. Moreover, the last thing I want is a feud with anyone.

Ghosts, then? They’re fun.

For those interested in learning something I can thoroughly recommend a couple of TED talks by Anil Kumar Seth – a British professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex.

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

How your brain invents your “self”

Righto Cougar. I’ll accept everything you’ve said, it is up to others to accept it or not. Last thing i want to do is having folk procrastinating and feeling upset.

I accept i’m maybe a bit too strong in my criticism, and maybe ,maybe a quiet word via private mail should have been my route rather than a  public fleecing.Last thing I would want is the thought of you worrying about this all day and blubbing into your pillow tonight. 🙁

Skeptical people have the right to be skeptical. Skeptical people have the right to some generally good natured ribbing. We’re all strangers here but at the same time we are not, so a comfortable environment is something we should look to promote, and all need to try to remember that fact.

Enough said. to business

@Chewie

You’re a fking lunatic 😆 😆 😛

I’ve never seen, heard, or experienced anything you could mistake for a ghost

Seeing dead people is a gift, although I consider it a curse.

I always found that if there was going to be a bit of a bust up and someone was going to have a fight, that I could sense it and usually got in the first wallop in(didnt always win 😆 )

So you could sense a fight was going to start and got in a pre-emptive strike and so guaranteed that fight did happen?

But one of the problems with autism is a lack of understanding of these social factors.

At least when applied to them. It can be easier to spot those factors when applied to others and for most fights its fairly easy to learn the cues. People can also be better at spotting cues when applied to others as opposed to themselves.

That was an interesting study, because it removed any social or emotional cues.

How many times did people look round when they werent being observed?

Another interesting point on this is ‘The coppers nose’ a gut feeling that something is amiss.

Yes responding to subconscious clues about someones behaviour. When I did pub doorwork I remember stopping one potential customer for id since whilst she looked old enough something wasnt quite right. Turned out she was the new barmaid that the manager had forgotten to mention was starting that night. So the not quite right was just the normal slight nerves about a new job.

Drac

Those are plausible explanations, and I’ll admit they appear more plausible than ‘ghosts’ or ‘supernatural’ stuff.

But

Doesn’t mean they’re right, and my point is that there are things we are still discovering and still to discover. Just because ‘it’ hasn’t been completely explained yet doesn’t mean it isn’t real, just that our data and measurement capabilities are not refined enough yet.

Copernicus theorised the heliocentric universe and got bifters for it. Galileo then measured and proved it a century later.

I hope you’ll come back (from the afterlife) to apologise if you turn out to be mistaken 😉

Righto Cougar. I’ll accept everything you’ve said

Thank you.

I accept i’m maybe a bit too strong in my criticism

Honestly, I welcome it, broadly for reasons you’ve already cited. If I have a spot on my nose, or BO, or I’m acting like a total prick, I’d hope that someone would give me a steer rather than me walking around all day with an egg custard on my face.

I do think you’ve got me all wrong, but if I am out of line then please call me out because I’m likely oblivious. Plus, better that than cultivating a grudge.

Friends? Group hug?

You are Bhuddist right?

Yes, I am. A very bad/naughty one too as I can’t be bothered at times to practice but I do try to follow as much as I can after all I am a mortal. In Buddhism We are responsible for our own actions and if we mess up we are to blame ourselves. In a simplistic sense blaming others are just an excuse.

I ask to give us all some context to the stuff you are coming out with. You see to most Westerners, me included all of this sounds utterly bonkers.

Yes, I know because that’s expected including myself. However, I try to find out or investigate their reasoning. i.e. get to the bottom. If I find them logical I will accept them otherwise I just find it useful to know.

It makes it slightly more understandable* though, if it is based on some kind of religious belief, rather than something completely made up in your own head. Just want to know where you are coming from.

Whatever it is based on is irrelevant other than for you/us to investigate. i.e. a bit like fact check or logic. There are always reasons behind all the beliefs but the problem is that most people just accept them blindly. No, I don’t make them up coz my brain is not that advance and I don’t have the accumulated knowledge to even string up all the logic. I only know the basic or at least some of the basic.

*As in understanding how you have come to believe these things, not in giving any credence to those beliefs.

Personal experience and curiosity after an encountered with a “being”.

p/s: I have nothing against science at all coz it is part of form/solid/physical dimension. Well, who is to say we will not be driving hoover cars in future and with unlimited cleaned energy to fuel the hoover cars? Who is to say we cannot be beamed up by Scotty?

Doesn’t mean they’re right, and my point is that there are things we are still discovering and still to discover. Just because ‘it’ hasn’t been completely explained yet doesn’t mean it isn’t real, just that our data and measurement capabilities are not refined enough yet.

Fair point but given what we have discovered and instruments invented yet we are no further forward in proving ghosts exist I’ll stick with the most likely causes.

How many times did people look round when they werent being observed ?

I dont know, it was part of another program and i was watching kind of halfheartedly

So you could sense a fight was going to start and got in a pre-emptive strike and so guaranteed that fight did happen?

Yeah pretty much 😆

But I suppose this was against people i’d have a run in before and they had no reason to come over to where i was standing, so i’d have said i made the right decision.

Friends? Group hug?

Of course. Piece said. Weight off chest etc etc. All good here.

We have 5 senses, but I would agree with other that we have a sixth sense also. One where we fear something is about to happen. I myself feel I am more attuned to it

@dyna-ti IMO the sixth sense you are referring to, is simply being highly attuned to to your environment and detecting small cues that might go unnoticed by others. Sometimes these cues might be so subtle, your subconscious notices them but you are not consciously aware of it.

Example, I had a mate and a work colleague who believed he had a special intuition about stuff and that his wife had some kind of psychic gift too.  He was a rational intelligent bloke otherwise,  but I am a bit of a sceptic about all that and we used to joke about it and I gave him a bit of stick.  One of his ‘gifts’ was to know when a woman in the office (large civil service department) was pregnant, even if she hadn’t told anyone.  I saw him do it a few times, to much shock and surprise with the person concerned exclaiming ‘I haven’t even told my husband, how could you possibly know’? or whatever. He got nicknamed the ‘baby whisperer’ and was a bit of a celebrity because of it.  But, I watched this for a bit and started to notice that the ladies concerned were behaving subtly differently to the way they normally did.  Occasionally placing a hand their belly perhaps or taking vitamin supplements when they hadn’t before.  My mate was simply being observant and picking up on little stuff that would normally go unnoticed in a busy office.  He remained convinced however, it was some kind of psychic ability!

Another example, in a previous life I was an ATO in the army, responsible for IEDD – (‘bomb disposal’ in layman speak).  I spent a lot of my career in Northern Ireland and a crucial part of my job was ‘threat assessment’, which was something we placed far more emphasis on than equipment or techniques. It was the art of reading a scene, putting yourself in the terrorist’s shoes and asking yourself how and why a particular incident had unfolded.  We were always aware of a ‘come on’ scenario, where the bad guys would try to draw you in with a hoax device or a staged break in or whatever to bring you to a location where the real device which was aimed at us would be. We all developed a sixth sense – but there was nothing magic about it, it was just experience and being hyper observant. West Belfast, 5th call out of the day, all previous being hoaxes.  This time all the windows in the local terraces were slightly open, and the kids who were normally playing in the street were absent.  In the chaos of a major incident with cordons, evacuation a flapping infantry incident commander and the RUC desperate to open up the roads and get traffic moving, you could easily miss stuff like that.  It was a real device and the locals had been warned.  I could give dozens of similar examples where the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood up, because something about a particular scene, was not quite right. Something in my peripheral vision, or the ‘atmospherics’ but it was simply being very attuned to the task in hand and spotting extremely subtle cues.

I experience that all too often, it’s my eldest leaving the living room door open and sitting down in her Ooodie

😆😆😆

@cougar and @dyna-ti WTF is happening here? You’ve both acted like adults and agreed to try and adjust. This isn’t supposed to happen on here so I’m going to have to report you both for being civil. Can’t believe I’ve been reduced to this.

Now, ghosts.

How do we know that we only exist in three dimensions, for starters?

There are 31 dimensions or existence

Not quite what I meant – I was talking about physical dimensions in the mathematical sense. So we have width, length, height, those are the three we can percieve, but it’s possible there are more literal physical dimensions that we just don’t know about intuitively.

you who seems determined to read the worst into everything I post

That’s universal on the internet. Everyone does it, me included. So you have to be hyper-careful with your posts. Fortunately, we can take our time and we have the chance to re-read and edit before pressing send, unlike real life. This paragraph for example has been edited three times before being posted for the first time 🙂

@chewkw, thanks for the clarification. It does help me understand why you say/think some of the stuff you do 👍

Big respect to @dyna-ti and @cougar for being grown ups. Unheard of! And also for their burgeoning bromance! 🥰 If there’s to be a big announcement, plenty of notice eh? So I can buy a new hat or whatever!

Deleted, duplicate post

Strange things keep happening in my house.

Furniture keeps disappearing. Plates keep, like, moving about the place. The table is shrinking. And last night, I found my guitar on the fire.

Definitely a poltergoost.

I joked about my sonos a few pages back, but thought I’d come back and share my spooky ‘ghost story’ to add to the collection.

There were a bunch of us staying over at a mates house when I was 18 or so, 3 of us stayed downstairs to sleep on the sofas. The three of us are chatting, it’s late night/early morning. We hear footsteps coming down the stairs (the stairway starts right next to the door of the living room, and the door is partially open). We all stop talking and look from the door to each other, waiting to see who comes in (there are another 5 or so friends asleep upstairs), and we see a shadow pass the door. OK, someone came down to get something from the kitchen. No more footsteps, no shadow going back the other way (so nobody went back upstairs). We call out, wait probably 10 seconds then I get up to go and see who it was. Downstairs was deserted, I go upstairs and everyone else is fast asleep.

It was really strange- all three of us saw it and testify to the same story. If it was footsteps alone we’d probably pass it off as clanging pipes or something (although we all knew the sound was of someone coming downstairs), but the shadow on the floor as if someone had walked past the door is something none of us can explain.

It’s an old house, creepy anyway, old wooden beams etc. My mum knew several people who live on that road who have told her stories about the house being ‘haunted’ when we mentioned our friends buying the property- I didn’t know this at the time of the ‘event’, only found out afterward when talking to my mum about it.

Oh and I particularly like the suggestion a few pages back that ‘ghosts’ are actually time travellers accidentally appearing in your house- just as plausible as the ghost idea but less scary in my book! Maybe it’s even Harry Potter and the gang apparating!

Time travel, eh?

One evening about ooh, 30-35 years ago, I was on my own watching telly in the study and there was an ad break. In the middle of an advert a video message cut in, with a futuristic talking head that said the message was an experiment in time travel from the future, that a radio signal was being sent back in time. It then finished in the middle of another different advert.

Never heard anything about it since. But it’s a bit suspicious. If you were sending a message back in time you’d do it for the previous few days so that the event would be fresh in people’s minds, not 30 years. And why target a TV transmitter in rural Mid Wales? If you wanted to find out about the results of the experiment you’d need to do something that loads of people would notice and write about.

The most likely explanation is that I had some kind of hallucination, but that is even weirder because it was not late at night, or in some kind of spooky setting and I was completely relaxed.

 and I was completely relaxed.

A bit too relaxed, in a herbally induced kind of way? 🙂

The most likely explanation is that I had some kind of hallucination, but that is even weirder because it was not late at night, or in some kind of spooky setting and I was completely relaxed.

I’d say the most likely explanation is that you saw a trailer for Quantum Leap but weren’t concentrating 😉

On the sixth sense/ bomb disposal/ baby whisperer, Matthew Syed talks about it in his book Bounce.

His example:
There is a simple house fire in a one-story house in a residential neighborhood. The fire is in the back, in the kitchen area. The lieutenant leads his hose crew into the building, to the back, to spray water on the fire, but the fire just roars back at them.

“Odd,” he thinks. The water should have more of an impact. They try dousing it again, and get the same results. They retreat a few steps to regroup.

Then the lieutenant starts to feel as if something is not right. He doesn’t have any clues; he just doesn’t feel right about being in that house, so he orders his men out of the building — a perfectly standard building with nothing out of the ordinary.

As soon as his men leave the building, the floor where they had been standing collapses. Had they still been inside, they would have plunged into the fire below.

Later, when Klein asked the commander how he knew something was about to go terribly wrong, the commander put it down to “extrasensory perception.” That was the only thing he could come up with to explain a lifesaving decision, and others like it, that seemed to emerge from nowhere. Klein was too much of a rationalist to accept the idea of ESP, but by now he had begun to notice equally perplexing abilities among other expert decision makers. They seemed to know what to do, often without knowing why. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127403440

If you were sending a message back in time you’d do it for the previous few days so that the event would be fresh in people’s minds, not 30 years. And why target a TV transmitter in rural Mid Wales? If you wanted to find out about the results of the experiment you’d need to do something that loads of people would notice and write about.

Somewhere, somewhen, someone is reading this with a big smile on their face, relieved to finally have confirmation that their experiment worked.

Somewhere, somewhen, someone is reading this with a big smile on their face, relieved to finally have confirmation that their experiment worked.

They’re off to Stephen Hawking’s party next

Righto Cougar. I’ll accept everything you’ve said, it is up to others to accept it or not. Last thing i want to do is having folk procrastinating and feeling upset.

Very well said, both of you guys. Things in print are so often harder to get in context than spoken words.

One evening about ooh, 30-35 years ago, I was on my own watching telly in the study and there was an ad break. In the middle of an advert a video message cut in, with a futuristic talking head that said the message was an experiment in time travel from the future, that a radio signal was being sent back in time. It then finished in the middle of another different advert.

Could it have been a hoax similar to that Ashtar Galactic Command thing in 1977?

There is a simple house fire in a one-story house in a residential neighborhood. The fire is in the back, in the kitchen area. The lieutenant leads his hose crew into the building, to the back, to spray water on the fire, but the fire just roars back at them.

I’ve seen Backdraft too. Donald Sutherland stole that film.

The time travel experiment advert made it to Cornwall too. I thought I had imagined it until now. 😀

@bsims serious? What date can you put on it?

Yes, very. I think early 90s, so I would have been early teens. I’m sure I was watching it in my bedroom at my parents house. None of my friends saw it. I periodically think about it but had started to believe I had imagined it or mis remembered.

What, this one?

I particularly like the suggestion a few pages back that ‘ghosts’ are actually time travellers accidentally appearing in your house-

Time travelling future hipsters wearing Edwardian or Victorian era clothing. Find out time travel is real and it’s somebody doing it ironically.

Edit – I see there is a clown laughing in that First Direct future commercial. Definitely a banker